This phalanx is the revolution in person, austere at seventeen ...
the fire of her eyes subdued by spectacles that the light of the
mind may shine more brightly; _sans-crinolines_ advancing to replace
_sans-culottes_.
The girl-student and the young-lady-_bursche_ have nothing in common with
the Traviata ladies. The Bacchantes have grown grey or bald, have grown
old and retired, while the students have taken their place before they
are out of their teens. The Camélias and the Traviatas of the salons
belonged to the Nicholas period. They were like the parade-generals of
the same period, the dandy martinets whose victories were won over their
own soldiers, who knew every detail of military _toilette_, all the
glitter of the parade, and never soiled their uniforms with the blood
of an enemy. The courtesan-generals, jauntily ‘street-walking’ on the
Nevsky, were crushed at once by the Crimean War; while ‘the intoxicating
glamour of the ball,’ the love-making of the boudoir, and the noisy
orgies of the generals’ ladies, were abruptly replaced by the academic
hall and the dissecting-room, where the cropped student in spectacles
studied the mysteries of nature. Then all the camélias and magnolias
had to be forgotten, it had to be forgotten that there were two sexes.
Before the truths of science, _im Reiche der Wahrheit_, distinctions of
sex are effaced.
Our Camélias stood for the Gironde, that is why there is such a flavour
of Faublas about them.
Our student-girls are the Jacobins, Saint-Just in a
riding-habit—everything sharp-cut, pure, ruthless. Our Camélia wore a
_masque_, a _loup_ from warm Venice.
Our students wear a mask too, but it is a mask of Neva ice. The first may
stick on, but the second will certainly melt away; that, however, is in
the future.
This is a real, conscious protest, a protest and dividing line. _Ce n’est
pas une émeute, c’est une révolution._ Dissipation, luxury, persiflage
and dress are shoved aside. Love, passion, are in the far background.
Aphrodite with her naked archer sulks and withdraws, Pallas Athene
takes her place with her spear and her owl. The Camélias were impelled
by vague emotion, indignation, unsatisfied voluptuous desire ... and
they went on till they reached satiety. In this case they are impelled
by an idea in which they believe, by the declaration of ‘the rights of
woman,’ and they are fulfilling a duty laid upon them by their faith.
Some abandon themselves on principle, others are unfaithful from a sense
of duty. Sometimes these students go too far, but they always remain
children—disobedient, conceited, but children. The gravity of their
radicalism shows that it is a matter of the head, not of the heart.
They are passionate in relation to what is universal, and show no more
‘pathos’ (as they used to call it in old days) in individual encounters
than any Leontine. Perhaps less. The Leontines played, they played with
fire, and very often, ablaze from head to foot, saved themselves in the
Seine; seduced by life before they had developed any prudence, it was
sometimes hard for them to conquer their hearts. Our students begin with
criticism, with analysis; a great deal may happen to them too, but there
will be no surprises, no downfalls; they fall with a parachute of theory
in their hands. They fling themselves into the stream with a handbook on
swimming, and intentionally swim against the current. Whether they will
swim long _à livre ouvert_ I do not know, but they will certainly take
their place in history, and will deserve to do so.
The most short-sighted people in the world have guessed as much.
Our old gentlemen, senators and ministers, the fathers and grandfathers
of their country, looked with a smile of indulgence and even
encouragement at the aristocratic Camélias (so long as they were not
their sons’ wives).... But they did not like the students ... so utterly
different from the ‘charming rogues’ with whom they had at one time liked
to warm in words their old hearts.
For a long time the old gentlemen were angry with the austere Nihilist
girls and sought an opportunity of dealing with them as they deserved.
And then, as though of design, Karakozov fired his pistol-shot.... ‘There
it is, your Majesty,’ they began to whisper, ‘that is what dressing not
according to set rule ... these spectacles and shock-heads, come to.’
‘What? not according to set rule?’ says the Tsar. ‘We must take sterner
measures.’ ‘Slackness, slackness, your Majesty! We have only been waiting
for your gracious permission to save the sacred person of your Majesty.’
It was no jesting matter; all set to work in earnest. The Privy Council,
the Senate, the Synod, the ministers, the bishops, the military
commanders, the police-captains and gendarmes of all sorts, took counsel
together, talked and deliberated, and decided in the first place to
turn students of the female sex out of the universities altogether.
Meanwhile, one of the bishops, fearing deception, recalled how in the
time of the false Catholic Church a Pope Anna had been elected to the
papacy, and offered his monks as inspectors ... since there is no
bodily shame before the eyes of the dead. The living did not accept his
suggestion: the generals for their part supposed that such expert’s
duties could only be entrusted to an official of the highest rank placed
beyond temptation by his rank and his monarch’s confidence; the military
department wanted to offer the post to Adlerberg the Elder; while the
civilians preferred Butkov. But this did not take place—it is said
because the Grand Dukes were anxious to secure the job.
Then the Privy Council, the Synod and the Senate ordered that within
twenty-four hours the girls were to grow their cropped hair, to remove
their spectacles, and to be forced to have good sight and to wear
crinolines. And in spite of the fact that in the Book of Heavenly Wisdom
there is nothing said about ‘distension of skirts’ or widening of
petticoats, while the plaiting of hair is positively forbidden in it, the
clergy assented. For the first time the Tsar’s life seemed secure till
he reached the Elysian Fields. It was not their fault that in Paris also
there were Champs-Élysées, and with an accent on them too.
These extreme measures were of enormous benefit, and this I say without
the slightest irony, but to whom? To our Nihilist girls.
The one thing that they lacked was to fling off their uniform, their
formalism, and to develop in that broad freedom to which they have the
fullest claim. It is terribly hard for one used to a uniform to cast
it off of himself. The garment grows to the wearer. A high priest in a
dress-coat would give over blessing and intoning.
Our girl-students and _Burschen_ would have been a long time getting
rid of their spectacles and emblems. They were stripped of them at
the expense of the Government, which added to them the aureole of a
_toilette_ martyrdom.
After that, all they have to do is to swim _au large_.
_P.S._—Some are already coming back with the brilliant diploma of Doctor
of Medicine, and all glory to them!
NICE, _Summer 1867_.