THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDER HERZEN
II
NOTE
This translation has been made by arrangement from the sole complete
and copyright edition of _My Past and Thoughts_, that published in the
original Russian at Berlin, 1921.
_MY PAST AND THOUGHTS_
THE MEMOIRS OF
ALEXANDER HERZEN
_THE AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
BY CONSTANCE GARNETT_
VOLUME II
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
T. & A. CONSTABLE LTD. EDINBURGH
*
ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
FIRST PUBLISHED 1924
CONTENTS
PART III
VLADIMIR ON THE KLYAZMA
(1838-1839)
CHAPTER XIX:—The Two Princesses _page 1_
CHAPTER XX:—The Forlorn Child _page 11_
CHAPTER XXI:—Separation _page 29_
CHAPTER XXII:—In Moscow while I was away _page 50_
CHAPTER XXIII:—The Third of March and the Ninth of May 1838 _page 63_
CHAPTER XXIV:—The Thirteenth of June 1839 _page 87_
PART IV
MOSCOW, PETERSBURG, AND NOVGOROD
(1840-1847)
CHAPTER XXV:—Dissonance—A New Circle—Desperate Hegelianism—V.
Byelinsky, M. Bakunin, and others—A Quarrel with Byelinsky and
Reconciliation—Argument with a Lady at Novgorod—Stankevitch’s
Circle _page 104_
CHAPTER XXVI:—Warnings—The Promotion Office—A Minister’s
Secretariat—The Third Section—The Story of a Sentry—General
Dubbelt—Count Benckendorf—Olga Alexandrovna Zherebtsov—My
Second Exile _page 151_
CHAPTER XXVII:—The Provincial Government—I am under my own
Supervision—The Duhobors and Paul—The Paternal Rule of the
Landowners—Count Araktcheyev and the Military Settlements—A
Ferocious Investigation—Retirement _page 188_
CHAPTER XXVIII:—Grübelei—Moscow after Exile—Pokrovskoe—The
Death of Matvey—Father Ioann _page 207_
CHAPTER XXIX:—OUR FRIENDS—The Moscow Circle—Table Talk—The
Westerners (Botkin, Ryedkin, Kryukov, and Yevgeny Korsh)—On
the Grave of a Friend _page 227_
CHAPTER XXX:—OUR ‘OPPONENTS’—The Slavophils and
Panslavism—Homyakov—The Kireyevskys—K. S. Aksakov—P. Y.
Tchaadayev _page 254_
CHAPTER XXXI:—My Father’s Death—My Heritage—The
Partition—Two Nephews _page 304_
CHAPTER XXXII:—The Last Visit to Sokolovo—The Theoretical
Rupture—A Strained Position—Dahin! Dahin! _page 340_
CHAPTER XXXIII:—A Police-Officer in the Part of a Valet—The
Police-Master Kokoshkin—‘Disorder in Order’—Dubbelt Once
More—The Passport _page 353_
APPENDIX (TO CHAPTER 29):—N. H. Ketscher—Basil and Armance _page 365_
PART III
VLADIMIR ON THE KLYAZMA
(1838-1839)
_Do not expect from me long accounts of my inner life of
that period.... Terrible events, troubles of all sorts, are
more easily put upon paper than quite bright and cloudless
memories.... Can happiness be described?_
_Fill in for yourselves what is lacking, divine it with the
heart—while I will tell of the external side, of the setting,
only rarely, rarely touching by hint or by word, on its holy
secrets._
Chapter 19
THE TWO PRINCESSES
When I was five or six years old and was very naughty, Vera Artamonovna
used to say: ‘Very well, very well, you wait a bit, I’ll tell the
princess as soon as she comes.’ I was at once subdued by this threat and
begged her not to complain.
Princess Marya Alexeyevna Hovansky, my father’s sister, was a stern,
forbidding old woman, stout and dignified, with a birth-mark on her cheek
and false curls under her cap; she used to screw up her eyes as she
spoke, and to the end of her days, that is to the age of eighty, rouged
and powdered a little. Whenever I fell into her hands she worried me;
there was no end to her lecturing and grumbling; she would scold me for
anything, for a crumpled collar, or a stain on my jacket, would declare
I had not gone up to kiss her hand properly, and make me go through the
ceremony again. When she had finished lecturing me, she would sometimes
say to my father, as with her finger-tips she took a pinch out of a tiny
gold snuff-box: ‘My dear, you should send your spoilt child to me to be
corrected; he would be as soft as silk when he had been a month in my
hands.’ I knew that they would not give me up to her, but I shivered
with horror at those words.
My terror of her passed off with the years, but I never liked the old
princess’s house; I could not breathe freely in it, I was not myself
there, but like a trapped hare looked uneasily from one side to the other
to make my escape.
The old princess’s household was not in the least like my father’s or
the Senator’s. It was an old-fashioned, orthodox Russian household in
which they kept the fasts, went to early matins, put a cross on the doors
on the Eve of Epiphany, made marvellous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, ate
pork with horse-radish, dined exactly at two o’clock and supped at nine.
The European influences which had infected her brothers and turned them
somewhat out of their native rut had not touched the old princess’s
existence; on the contrary, she disapproved of the way in which ‘Vanyusha
and Lyovushka,’ as she called my father and uncle, had been corrupted by
‘that France.’
Princess Marya Alexeyevna lived in the lodge of the house occupied by her
aunt, Princess Anna Borissovna Meshtchersky, a maiden lady of eighty.
This Princess Meshtchersky was the living and almost solitary link
connecting all the seven ascending and descending branches of the
family. At the chief holidays all the relations gathered about her. She
reconciled those who were at variance and brought together those who had
drifted apart. She was respected by all, and she deserved it. At her
death family ties were loosened and lost their rallying-point, and the
relations forgot each other.
She had finished the education of my father and his brothers; after the
death of their parents she looked after their property until they came
of age. She put them into the Guards, and she made marriages for their
sisters. I do not know how far she was satisfied with the results of
her bringing up, which with the help of a French engineer, a kinsman of
Voltaire, had turned them into landowners and _esprits forts_, but she
knew how to retain their esteem, and her nephews, though not greatly
disposed to feelings of obedience and reverence, respected their old aunt
and often obeyed her to the end of her life.
Princess Anna Borissovna’s house, by some miracle preserved at the time
of the fire of 1812, had not been repaired nor redecorated for fifty
years: the hangings that covered the walls were faded and blackened; the
lustres on the chandeliers, discoloured by heat and turned into smoky
topazes by time, shook and tinkled, shining dingily when any one walked
across the room. The heavy, solid mahogany furniture, ornamented with
carvings that had lost all their gilt, stood gloomily along the walls;
chests of drawers with Chinese incrustations, tables with little copper
trellis-work, rococo porcelain dolls—all recalled a different age and
different manners.
Grey-headed flunkeys sat in the vestibule, occupied with quiet dignity in
various trifling tasks, or sometimes reading half aloud a prayer-book or
a psalter, the pages of which were darker than its cover. Boys stood at
the doors, but they were more like old dwarfs than children—they never
laughed nor raised their voices.
A deathly silence reigned in the inner apartments; only, from time to
time, there was the mournful cry of a cockatoo, its luckless faltering
effort to repeat a human word, the bony tap of its beak against its
perch, covered with tin, and the disgusting whimper of a little old
monkey, shrunken and consumptive, that lived in the big drawing-room,
on a little shelf of the tiled stove. The monkey, dressed like a
_débardeur_, in full, red trousers, gave to the whole room a peculiar and
extremely unpleasant smell. In another big drawing-room hung a number of
family portraits of all sizes, shapes, periods, ages, and costumes. These
portraits had a peculiar interest for me, especially from the contrast
between the originals and their semblances. The young man of twenty with
a powdered head, dressed in a light-green embroidered, full-skirted coat,
smiling courteously from the canvas, was my father. The little girl with
dishevelled curls and a bouquet of roses, her face adorned with a patch,
mercilessly tight-laced into the shape of a wine-glass, and thrust into
an enormous crinoline, was the formidable old Princess Marya Alexeyevna.
The stillness and the stiffness grew more marked as one approached the
princess’s room. Old maidservants in white caps with wide frills moved
to and fro with little teapots, so softly that their footsteps were
inaudible; from time to time a grey-headed manservant in a long coat of
stout dark-blue cloth appeared at the doors, but his footsteps too were
as inaudible, and when he gave some message to the elder maidservant, his
lips moved without making a sound.
The little, withered, wrinkled, but by no means ugly, old lady, Princess
Anna Borissovna, was usually sitting or reclining on the big clumsy sofa,
propped up with cushions. One could scarcely distinguish her; everything
was white, her dressing-jacket, her cap, the cushions, the covers on the
sofa. Her waxen white face of lace-like fragility together with her faint
voice and white dress gave her an air of something that had passed away
and was scarcely breathing.
The big English clock on the table with its loud-measured
spondee—tick-tack, tick-tack—seemed marking off the last quarters of an
hour of her life.
Between twelve and one, Princess Marya Alexeyevna would enter and settle
herself with dignity in a big easy-chair. She was dull in her empty
apartments. She was a widow, and I still remember her husband, a little
grey-headed old gentleman who drank liqueurs and home-made beverages
on the sly; he never played an important part in the house, and was
accustomed to obey his wife implicitly—though he sometimes rebelled
against her in words, especially after his secret potations. The princess
would be surprised at the great effect produced on her spouse by the
minute glass of vodka which he drank officially before dinner, and she
would leave him in peace to play the whole morning with his blackbirds,
nightingales, and canaries, which trilled shrilly against each other; he
trained some of them with a little organ, others by whistling to them
himself; he used to drive off very early to the bird-market to exchange,
sell, and buy birds; he took an artistic delight in succeeding, as
he supposed, in cheating a dealer.... And so he spent his profitable
existence, until one morning, after whistling to his canaries, he fell
forward on his face and two hours afterwards died.
His widow was left alone. She had had two daughters, both of whom married
not for love but simply to escape from the maternal yoke. Both died in
their first childbirth. The princess was really an unlucky woman, but her
troubles rather warped her character than softened it. Her misfortunes
made her not milder, not kinder, but harder and more forbidding.
Now she had no one left but her brothers and her old maiden aunt. She had
scarcely parted from the latter all her life, and after her husband’s
death she took complete control of the old lady’s household, and ruled
her with a rod of iron under the pretext of looking after her and caring
for her wants.
Old women of all sorts, either living with Princess Anna Borissovna or
staying temporarily in her house, were always ranged along the walls or
sitting in the various corners. Half saints and half vagrants, rather
depraved and very devout, sickly and extremely unclean, these old women
trailed from one old-fashioned house to another: in one they were fed,
in another presented with an old shawl; from one place they were sent
grain and fuel, from another linen and cabbage; and so they somehow made
both ends meet. Everywhere they were regarded as a nuisance, everywhere
they were passed over, everywhere put in the lowest seat, and everywhere
received through dullness and emptiness and, most of all, through love
of gossip. In the presence of other company these mournful figures were
usually silent, looking with envious hatred at each other.... They
sighed, shook their heads, made the sign of the cross, and muttered to
themselves the number of their stitches, prayers, and perhaps even words
of abuse. On the other hand, _tête à tête_ with their benefactresses,
they made up for their silence by the most treacherous gossip about all
the other benefactresses who received them, fed them, and made them
presents.
They were continually begging from Princess Anna Borissovna, and in
return for her presents, often made without the knowledge of Princess
Marya Alexeyevna, who did not like indulging them, brought her holy
bread, hard as a stone, and useless woollen and knitted articles of
their own make, which the old lady afterwards sold for their benefit,
regardless of the unwillingness of the purchasers.
Besides birthdays, namedays, and other holidays, the most solemn
gathering of kinsmen and friends in Princess Anna Borissovna’s house
took place on New Year’s Eve. On that day she ‘elevated’ the Iversky
Madonna. The holy ikon was carried through all the apartments by monks
and priests, chanting. Princess Anna Borissovna, the first to kiss the
cross, walked under it, and after her all the visitors, men and maid
servants, old people and children. Then they all congratulated her on the
New Year, and made her all sorts of trifling presents such as are given
to children. She would play with them for a few days, then give them away.
My father used to drag me off every year to this heathen ceremony;
everything was repeated in exactly the same order, except that some old
men and women were every year missing, and their names were intentionally
avoided, until the old lady herself would say: ‘Our Ilya Vassilyevitch
is no longer here, the Kingdom of Heaven be his!... Whom will the Lord
summon this year?’ and she would shake her head dubiously.
And the ticking of the English clock would go on marking off the days,
the hours, the minutes, and at last it reached the fatal second. The old
lady felt unwell on getting up one day; she walked about the rooms and
was no better; her nose began bleeding, and very violently; she felt
faint and exhausted, and lay down fully dressed on her sofa, fell quietly
asleep ... and never woke again. She was over ninety.
She left her house and the greater part of her property to her niece,
the widowed princess, but did not hand on to her the inner significance
of her life. Princess Marya Alexeyevna could not maintain the—in its
own way—artistic rôle of head of the family, of the patriarchal link
connecting many threads. With the death of Princess Anna Borissovna
an aspect of gloom came over everything, as in mountainous places at
sunset, long dark shadows lay upon all. Princess Marya Alexeyevna shut
up her aunt’s house and remained living in the lodge; the big house was
surrounded by weeds, the walls and frames grew blacker and blacker; the
porch, in which ungainly yellow dogs were for ever asleep, fell out of
the perpendicular.
Friends and relations came less frequently, her house was deserted, she
was distressed at it, but did not know how to improve things.
The only survivor of the whole family, she began to be apprehensive for
her own useless life, and mercilessly repulsed everything that could
disturb her physical or moral equilibrium and cause her uneasiness or
annoyance. Afraid of the past and of memories, she removed every object
that had belonged to her daughters, even their portraits. It was the same
with her aunt’s belongings—the cockatoo and the monkey were exiled to the
servants’ hall, and then turned out of the house. The monkey lived out
its days in the coachman’s quarters at the Senator’s, choking with the
smell of rank tobacco and amusing the stable-boys.
The egoism of self-preservation has a fearfully hardening effect on the
heart of the old. When her last surviving daughter’s condition was quite
hopeless, the mother was persuaded to leave her and return home, _and she
went_. At home she at once ordered spirits of various sorts and cabbage
leaves for putting on her head to be got ready, that she might have
everything necessary at hand when the _terrible news_ should come. She
did not take leave of her dead husband nor of her daughter, she did not
see them after their death and was not at their funerals. When later on
the Senator, her favourite brother, died, she guessed what had happened
from a few words dropped by her nephew, and _begged him_ not to tell her
the melancholy news nor any details of the end. With these precautions
against one’s own heart, and such an accommodating heart, one may well
live to eighty or ninety in perfect health and with undisturbed digestion.
However, in justification of Princess Marya Alexeyevna, I must say
that this monstrous avoidance of everything melancholy was more in
fashion with the spoilt aristocrats of last century than it is now. The
celebrated Kaunitz[1] in his old age sternly forbade any one’s death, or
the smallpox, of which he was very much afraid, to be mentioned before
him. When the Emperor Joseph II. died, his secretary, not knowing how to
announce the fact to Kaunitz, decided to say, ‘the Emperor now reigning,
Leopold.’ Kaunitz understood and, turning pale, sank into an armchair,
asking no questions. His gardener avoided the word ‘grafting’ (in Russian
the same word as ‘inoculation’) for fear of reminding him of smallpox.
He heard of the death of his own son by chance from the Spanish
ambassador. And people laugh at ostriches who hide their heads under
their wings to escape danger!
To preserve her peace untroubled, the old princess established a special
sort of police, and entrusted the supervision of her safety to skilled
hands.
Besides the old women dependents inherited from Princess Anna Borissovna,
she had a permanent lady companion living with her. This post of honour
was filled by the healthy, rosy-cheeked widow of a Zvenigorod government
clerk, very proud of ‘being a lady’ and of her dead husband’s rank of
assessor; a quarrelsome and irrepressible woman who could never forgive
Napoleon the premature death of her Zvenigorod cow, who perished in the
war of 1812. I remember how seriously troubled she was on the death of
Alexander I. upon the question of the width of the crape weepers that
would be appropriate to her rank.
This woman played a very insignificant part in the household while
Princess Anna Borissovna was alive, but afterwards she managed so
adroitly to humour the widowed princess’s caprices and apprehensive
anxiety about herself, that she obtained the same control over her as the
princess herself had had over her aunt.
Draped in her official weepers, this Marya Stepanovna bounced about the
house like a ball from morning to night; she shouted and made an uproar,
gave the servants no peace, made complaints against them, investigated
the misdeeds of the maids, slapped the boys and pulled them by the ears,
raced off into the kitchen, raced off into the stable, brushed away the
flies, rubbed the princess’s feet, and made her take her medicine. The
members of the household no longer had access to their mistress; the
woman was a regular Araktcheyev, a Biron, in fact, a Prime Minister. The
widowed princess, a haughty and, in the old-fashioned style, well-bred
woman, was often, especially at first, annoyed by the Zvenigorod widow,
by her shrill voice and market-woman’s manners, but she gradually
put more and more confidence in her, and saw with delight that Marya
Stepanovna considerably decreased the household expenses, which had not
been over-high before. For whom the princess was saving her money it is
hard to say; she had no near relatives except her brothers, who were
twice as wealthy as she was.
For all that, the princess was really dull after the death of her husband
and daughters, and was glad when an old Frenchwoman who had been her
daughters’ governess, came to spend a fortnight with her, or when her
niece from Kortcheva paid her a visit. But these were only passing and
exceptional distractions, and the tedious society of her ‘lady companion’
did not fill the intervals satisfactorily.
An occupation, a plaything, and an entertainment had been provided for
her in a very natural way not long before her aunt’s death.
Chapter 20
THE FORLORN CHILD
In the middle of 1825 ‘the Chemist,’ who found his father’s affairs
in great confusion, sent his brothers and sisters from Petersburg to
the Shatskoye estate; he assigned them the house there and their keep,
proposing to arrange for their education and their future later on. My
aunt, Princess Marya Alexeyevna, drove over to have a look at them. A
child of eight caught her attention by her mournfully pensive face; my
aunt put her in the carriage, took her home and kept her.
The mother was delighted, and went off with the other children to Tambov.
The Chemist gave his consent—it did not matter to him.
‘Remember all your life,’ Marya Stepanovna kept saying to the little
girl when they had reached home, ‘remember that the Princess is your
_benefactress_ and pray that her days may be long. What would you be
without her?’
And so into this lifeless house, gloomily oppressed by two irrepressible
old women, one full of whims and caprices, the other her indefatigable
spy, devoid of all trace of delicacy or tact, a child was brought, torn
from everything familiar to her, strange to everything surrounding her,
and adopted out of boredom as people take a puppy, or as my aunt’s
husband used to keep canaries.
The little girl with a pale face and blue shadows under her eyes was
sitting at the window in a long woollen dress of deep mourning when my
father brought me a few days later to visit my aunt the princess. She
was sitting in silence, scared and bewildered, gazing out of the window,
afraid to look at anything else.
My aunt called her up and introduced her to my father. Always frigid and
ungracious, he patted her carelessly on the shoulder, observed that his
late brother had not known what he was about, abused ‘the Chemist,’ and
began talking of something else.
The little girl had tears in her eyes; she sat down again by the window
and again fell to looking out.
A hard life was beginning for her. Not one warm word, not one tender
glance, not one caress; beside her, around her, strangers, wrinkled
faces, yellow cheeks, decrepit creatures whose life was smouldering out.
Princess Marya Alexeyevna was always stern, exacting, and impatient, and
she kept the forlorn child at such a distance that it could never enter
her head to take refuge with her, to find warmth or comfort in being near
her, or to shed tears. Visitors took no notice of her. Marya Stepanovna
put up with her as one of the princess’s whims, as something superfluous
which she must not harm; she even made a show of protecting the child and
making a fuss over her before the princess, especially if visitors were
present.
The child did not grow used to her surroundings, and a year later was as
little at home as on the day of her arrival, and was even more depressed.
Even Princess Marya Alexeyevna was surprised at her ‘seriousness,’ and
sometimes, seeing her sitting dejectedly for hours together at her little
embroidery frame, would say to her: ‘How is it you don’t play and run
about?’ The little girl would smile, flush, and thank her, but stay where
she was.
And the old lady left her in peace, in reality caring nothing about the
child’s sadness and doing nothing to relieve it. Holidays came, other
children were given playthings, other children talked of treats, of new
clothes.... No presents were given to the little orphan. The princess
considered that she had done enough for her in giving her shelter; she
had shoes, what did she want with dolls? And in fact she did not need
them—she did not know how to play; besides, she had no one to play with.
Only one creature realised the forlorn child’s position; an old nurse
had been put in charge of her, and she alone loved the child simply and
naïvely. Often in the evening when she undressed her she would ask: ‘But
why is it you are so sad, my little lady?’ The child would throw herself
on her neck and weep bitterly, and the old woman would shed tears and
shake her head as she went away with the candlestick in her hand.
So the years passed. She did not complain, she did not murmur; only, at
twelve she longed for death.
‘It always seemed to me,’ she wrote, ‘that I had come by mistake into
this life, and that soon I should go home again—but where was my home?...
When we drove out of Petersburg I saw a great mound of snow over my
father’s grave; when my mother left me in Moscow she vanished on the
wide unending road.... I wept bitterly and prayed God to take me quickly
home.... My childhood was most mournful and bitter; how many tears I
shed unseen, how many times before I understood what prayer meant I
would get up secretly at night (not even daring to say my prayers except
at the fixed time) and pray to God that some one might love me and pet
me. I had no amusement nor plaything which could interest or comfort
me, for, if anything were given me, it was invariably accompanied by
the words: “You don’t deserve it.” Every rag I received from them I
paid for with my tears: afterwards I got over that; I was overcome by a
craving for knowledge, and envied other children for nothing more than
for their lessons. Many praised me, thought I had abilities, and said
compassionately: “If only that child had a chance.” “She would astonish
the world,” I added inwardly, and my cheeks glowed; I hurried away with
visions of my pictures, my pupils, and meanwhile they would not give me
a piece of paper nor a pencil.... The longing to get into another world
grew stronger and stronger, and with it my scorn for my dark prison-house
and its cruel sentinels; I was continually repeating the lines from “The
Monk”:
“A mystery this; already I know
All the sorrow of life, in the spring of my days.”
‘Do you remember, we were once staying with you long ago in the other
house and you asked me if I had read Kozlov and repeated just that
passage from him? A shudder ran over me, I smiled, hardly able to keep
from crying.’
There was always a strain of deep melancholy in her heart; it was never
quite absent, and only at times hushed at some radiant moment.
Two months before her death, going back once more to her childhood, she
wrote: ‘Around me all was old, bad, cold, dead, false; my education began
with upbraidings and insults, and the result of this was estrangement
from all, distrust of their kindness, aversion for their sympathy, and
absorption in my own inner life....’
But to be able to be absorbed in one’s own inner life one must have not
only a terribly deep nature into which one can retreat at will, but a
terrific strength of independence and self-sufficiency. Very few can live
their own life in hostile and vulgar surroundings from the oppression of
which there is no escape. Sometimes the spirit is broken by it, sometimes
the health gives way.
Loneliness and harsh treatment at the tenderest age left a dark trace on
her soul, a wound which never fully healed.
‘I do not remember,’ she writes in 1837, ‘any time when I could utter the
word “mother” freely and spontaneously, any person on whose bosom I could
lay my head in security, forgetting everything. I have been a stranger
to all since I was eight years old; I love my mother ... but we do not
know each other.’
Looking at the pale face of the twelve-year-old girl, at her big eyes
with rings round them, at her tired listlessness and everlasting
depression, many thought she was one of the predestined victims of
consumption, those victims marked out by the finger of death from
childhood with a special imprint of beauty and premature thoughtfulness.
‘Perhaps,’ she says, ‘I should not have survived this struggle if I had
not been saved by our meeting.’
And I was so slow to understand her and read her heart!
Till 1834 I failed to appreciate the richly gifted nature that was
unfolding beside me, although nine years had passed since the old
princess had presented her to my father in her long woollen dress. It
is easy to explain. She was shy, I was absorbed in my many interests; I
was sorry for the child who sat so solitary and depressed in the window,
but we did not see each other very often. It was only rarely and always
unwillingly that I went to Princess Marya Alexeyevna’s; still more rarely
did she bring her to see us. Besides, my aunt’s visits almost always
left unpleasant impressions. She usually quarrelled with my father over
trifles and, though they had not seen each other for two months, they
said nasty things to each other, hiding them in affectionate phrases,
just as nasty medicines are covered with a coat of sugar. ‘My dear boy,’
the princess would say; ‘My dear girl,’ my father would answer, and the
quarrel would go on as before. We were always glad when the princess
departed. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that at that time I was
completely absorbed by my political dreams and my studies, and lived in
the university and my comrades.
But what had she to live in, besides her melancholy, during those long
dark nine years, surrounded by silly fanatics, haughty relations, tedious
monks, and fat priests’ wives, hypocritically patronised by the ‘lady
companion,’ not allowed to go farther from the house than the gloomy
courtyard overgrown with weeds and the little garden at the back?
From the foregoing lines it may be seen that the princess was not
particularly lavish in her expenditure on the education of her adopted
child. Her moral training she undertook herself; it consisted in external
observances and in the development of a complete system of hypocrisy.
The child had from early morning to be laced in, stiffly erect, with her
hair properly dressed: this might be admissible so far as it was not
injurious to health; but the princess put her soul in stays as well as
her waist, suppressing every open spontaneous feeling; she insisted on
a smile and an air of gaiety when the child was sad, on amiable phrases
when she wanted to cry, on an appearance of interest in everything
indiscriminately—in fact, on continual duplicity.
At first the poor girl was taught nothing on the pretext that learning
early was useless; later on, that is _three or four years later_, wearied
by the observations made by the Senator and even by outsiders, the
princess made up her mind to arrange for her to be taught, keeping the
strictest economy in view. For this purpose she took advantage of an
old governess who considered herself under obligations to the princess
and sometimes stood in need of her assistance. In this way the French
language was brought down to the lowest price; on the other hand, it was
taught _à bâtons rompus_.
But the Russian language, too, was equally cheapened; to teach it and all
other subjects, the princess engaged the son of a priest’s widow, to whom
she had been a benefactress—of course, at no special expense to herself;
through her good offices with the Metropolitan the widow’s two sons had
been made priests in the cathedral. The tutor was their elder brother,
the deacon of a poor parish, burdened with a large family. He was in the
lowest depths of poverty, was glad of any payment, and dared not haggle
over terms with his brothers’ benefactress.
Nothing could have been more pitiful, more insufficient than such an
education, and yet all went well, it all brought forth marvellous fruits,
so little is needed for development if only there is something to develop.
The poor deacon, a tall, thin, bald man, was one of those enthusiasts
whom neither years nor misfortunes can cure of their dreams; on the
contrary, their troubles tend to keep them in a state of mystic
contemplation. His faith, which approached fanaticism, was sincere
and not without a shade of poetry. Between these two, the father of a
hungry family and the forlorn child fed on the bread of charity, a good
understanding sprang up at once.
The deacon was received in the princess’s household as a poor man,
defenceless, and at the same time mild-tempered, usually is received,
with barely a nod, or barely a condescending word. Even the ‘lady
companion’ thought it necessary to show her disdain; while he scarcely
noticed either them or their manners, taught his subjects with love, was
touched by his pupil’s readiness of understanding, and could move her
to tears. This the old princess could not understand; she scolded the
child for being a cry-baby and was greatly displeased, declaring that the
deacon was upsetting her nerves. ‘This is really too much,’ she said,
‘it’s unchildlike!’
Meanwhile the old man’s words were opening before the young creature
another world, attractive in a very different way from that in which
religion itself was turned into an affair of diet, reduced to keeping the
fasts, and going to church at night, in which everything was limited,
artificial, and conventional, and cramped the soul with its narrowness.
The deacon put the Gospel into his pupil’s hands—and it was long before
she let it go again. The Gospel was the first book she read, and she
read it over and over again, with her one friend Sasha, her old nurse’s
niece, now a young maid of the princess’s.
Later on I knew Sasha very well. Where and how she had managed to develop
her intelligence I never could understand, as she spent her childhood
between the coachman’s quarters and the kitchen, and never left the
maids’ room, but she was extraordinarily developed. She was one of those
innocent victims who perish unnoticed in the servants’ quarters, and
more often than we suppose, crushed by the conditions of serfdom. They
perish not only without compensation, without commiseration, without an
hour of brightness, without a joyful memory, but without knowing, without
themselves suspecting, what is perishing in them and how much is dying
with them. Their mistress says with vexation: ‘The wretched girl was just
beginning to be trained to her work when she took to her bed and died.’
... The seventy-year-old housekeeper grumbles: ‘What are servants coming
to nowadays? They are worse than any young lady,’ and goes to the funeral
dinner. The mother weeps and weeps and begins to drink—and that is the
end.
And we pass hurriedly by, not seeing the terrible dramas enacted at
our feet, thinking we have more important things to fill our time, and
feeling that we have done our part with a few roubles and a kindly word.
And then all at once astounded, we hear the heart-rending moan with which
the crushed spirit reveals itself for all time, and, as though awakening
from sleep, we ask ourselves whence came that spirit, that strength.
Princess Marya Alexeyevna killed her maid, unintentionally and
unconsciously, of course; she worried her to death over trifles, broke
her heart, oppressed her whole life, wore her out with humiliations, with
harshness and insensibility. For several years she forbade her marriage,
and only allowed it when she could see consumption in her suffering face.
Poor Sasha, poor victim of the loathsome, accursed Russian life
defiled by serfdom, by death you escaped to freedom! And yet you were
incomparably happier than others in the gloomy bondage of the princess’s
house: you met a friend, and the affection of her whom you loved so
immeasurably was with you to the grave. You cost her many tears; not long
before her own death she still thought of you, and blessed your memory as
the one bright image of her childhood!
The two young girls (Sasha was a little the elder) used to get up early
in the mornings when all the household was still asleep, read the Gospel
and pray, going out into the courtyard under the open sky. They prayed
for the princess and her lady-companion, besought God to soften their
hearts; they invented ordeals for themselves, ate no meat for weeks
together, dreamed of a nunnery and of the life beyond the grave.
Such mysticism is in keeping with adolescence, with the age in which
everything is still a secret, still a religious mystery, when the
awakening thought is not yet shining clearly through the mists of early
morning, and the mist is not yet dissipated by experience nor passion.
At quiet and gentle moments, I loved in after years to hear of these
childish prayers, with which one full life began and one unhappy
existence ended. The image of the forlorn child outraged by coarse
patronage, and of the slave girl outraged by her hopeless bondage,
praying for their oppressors in the neglected courtyard, filled the heart
with tenderness, and breathed a rare peace upon the spirit.
The pure and gracious being, whom no one of those near her in the
princess’s senseless household appreciated, won, besides the devotion of
the deacon and Sasha, a warm response and homage from all the servants.
These simple people saw in her more than a kind and gracious young lady,
they divined in her something higher for which they felt reverence, they
had faith in her. The girls of the princess’s household, when they were
going to their wedding, would beg her to pin some ribbon with her own
hands. One young maidservant—I remember her name was Yelena—was suddenly
taken very ill; it turned out to be acute pleurisy, there was no hope
of saving her, the priest was sent for. The frightened girl kept asking
her mother if she were dying; the mother, sobbing, told her that God
would soon summon her. Then the sick girl besought her mother with bitter
tears to fetch her young lady that she might come herself to bless her
with the holy ikon for the other world. When she came the sick girl took
her hand, laid it on her forehead, and repeated: ‘Pray for me, pray for
me!’ The young girl, herself in tears, began praying in a low voice,
and the sick girl died as she prayed. All in the room knelt round,
crossing themselves; Natalie closed the dead girl’s eyes, kissed the cold
forehead, and went away.[2]
Only cold and narrow natures know nothing of this romantic period;
they are as much to be pitied as those frail and feeble beings in whom
mysticism outlives youth and remains for ever. In our age this does not
happen with realistic natures; but how could the secular influences of
the nineteenth century penetrate into the princess’s house, every crevice
was so well padded?
A crack was found, nevertheless.
My Kortcheva cousin used sometimes to come on a visit to the princess.
She was fond of the ‘little cousin,’ as one is fond of children,
especially if they are unhappy, but she did not understand her. With
amazement, almost with horror, she discovered later on her exceptional
nature, and, impulsive in everything, at once determined to make up for
her neglect. She begged from me Hugo, Balzac, or anything new I might
have. ‘The little cousin,’ she said to me, ‘is a genius, we ought to do
what we can for her!’
The ‘big cousin’—and I cannot help smiling at this name for her, for she
was a tiny creature—at once communicated to her protégée every stray
thought in her own mind, Schiller’s ideas and the ideas of Rousseau,
revolutionary ideas picked up from me and the dreams of a lovesick girl
picked up from herself. Then she secretly lent her French novels, verses,
poems; they were for the most part books that had appeared since 1830.
With all their defects, they stimulated thought, and stirred and fired
youthful hearts. In the novels and stories, the poems and songs of that
period, whether the author intended it or not, there was always a strong
vein of social feeling: everywhere social sores were revealed and the
moan of the hungry, innocent slaves of labour could be heard; even by
that date their murmur and complaint was no longer feared as a crime.
I need hardly say that my cousin lent the books without any
discrimination, without any explanations, and I imagine that there was no
harm in that; there are natures which never need help, support, guidance
from others, who always walk most safely where there is no fence.
Another person who carried on the secular influence of my Kortcheva
cousin was soon added to the list. The princess at last made up her mind
to take a governess, and to avoid expense engaged a young Russian girl
who had only just left boarding-school.
Russian governesses do not cost much, at any rate they did not in the
’thirties, yet for all their defects they were better than the majority
of French girls from Switzerland, of retired courtesans and actresses
who catch at teaching in despair as their last resource for earning
their bread, a resource needing neither talent nor youth, nothing in
fact but the ability to pronounce ‘Hrrrra’ and the manners _d’une
dame de comptoir_, which is often taken in the provinces for ‘good’
manners. Russian governesses come from boarding-schools, or educational
establishments, and so have had some sort of regular education, and are
free from the petty-bourgeois tone which the foreign women bring in with
them.
The French governesses of to-day must be distinguished from those who
used to come to Russia before 1812. In those days France was less
bourgeois and the women who came to Russia belonged to quite a different
social stratum. To some extent they were the daughters of _émigrés_ and
of ruined noblemen, or widows of officers, often their deserted wives.
Napoleon used to marry off his warriors in the way that our landowners
used to marry their serfs, without much regard for love or inclination.
He wanted, by these marriages, to unite his new military aristocracy
with the old nobility; he wanted to knock his Skalozubs[3] into shape by
means of their wives. Accustomed to blind obedience, they married without
protest, but soon abandoned their wives, finding them too stiff for the
festivities of the barracks and the bivouac. The poor women made their
way to England, to Austria, to Russia. The old Frenchwoman who used to
stay with the princess belonged to this class of old-fashioned governess.
She spoke with a smile in choice language and never made use of a single
strong expression. She was entirely made up of good manners and never
forgot herself for a minute. I am convinced that even at night in her
bed she was more preoccupied with the proper way of sleeping than with
sleeping.
The young governess was an intelligent, bright, energetic girl with a
good share of boarding-school enthusiasm and an innate feeling for what
is fine. Active and ardent, she brought more life and movement into the
existence of her pupil and friend.
There had been a tone of mourning, of melancholy in the sad and
depressing friendship with the consumptive Sasha. Her company, together
with the deacon’s teachings and the absence of every kind of diversion,
was drawing the young girl away from the world, from men. This third
person, young, full of life and gaiety, and at the same time sympathetic
with everything dreamy and romantic, came in the nick of time: she drew
her back to earth, to the basis of truth and reality.
At first the pupil to some extent adopted her Amelia’s external manners;
a smile was more often to be seen on her face, and her conversation
grew livelier; but within a year the natures of the two girls defined
their mutual attitude. The careless, charming Amelia gave way before the
stronger nature and was completely dominated by her pupil, saw with her
eyes, thought her thoughts, lived in her smile and in her affection.
Before I had finished my studies at the university, I took to going more
frequently to the princess’s house. The young girl seemed pleased when I
came, and sometimes her cheeks glowed and her talk grew more animated,
but she quickly withdrew into her usual dreamy stillness, recalling
the cold beauty of sculpture or Schiller’s ‘Mädchen aus der Fremde’ who
checked all approach.
It was not unsociability nor coldness, but an active inner life; not
understood by others, she did not as yet even understand herself, and
had rather a dim presentiment than a knowledge of what was in herself.
In her lovely features there was still something incomplete, not fully
expressed, they lacked a spark, a touch of the sculptor’s chisel which
would decide whether she was destined to pine and fade away in a barren
desert, knowing neither herself nor life, or to reflect the glow of
passion, to be enfolded by it, and to live, perhaps to suffer—certainly,
indeed, to suffer, but to live abundantly.
I first saw the token of life coming out on her half-childish face on the
eve of our long separation.
Well I remember her eyes with quite a different light in them, and all
her features with their significance transformed, as though penetrated by
a new thought, a new fire ... as though the secret had been guessed and
the inner mist dissipated. This was when I was in prison. A dozen times
we said good-bye, and still we could not bear to part. At last my mother,
who had come with Natalie[4] to the Krutitsky Barracks, resolutely got
up to go. The young girl shuddered, turned pale, squeezed my hand with
unnatural force, and repeated, turning away to hide her tears, ‘Alexandr,
don’t forget your sister.’
The gendarme saw them out and set to walking to and fro. I flung myself
on my bed and long gazed at the door behind which that bright apparition
had vanished. ‘No, your brother will not forget you,’ I thought.
Next day I was taken to Perm, but before I speak of our separation I will
tell of something else that prevented me, before my prison days, from
understanding Natalie better and growing more intimate with her. I was in
love!
Yes, I was in love, and the memory of that pure youthful love is as dear
to me as the memory of a spring day spent by the sea among flowers and
singing. It was a dream, full of much that was lovely, that vanished as
dreams usually do vanish!
I have mentioned already that there were very few women in our circle,
especially of the sort with whom I could have been on intimate terms:
my affection for my Kortcheva cousin, at first ardent, gradually became
quieter in tone. After her marriage we saw each other less often, and
then she went away. A vague yearning for a warmer, tenderer feeling than
the affection of my men friends hovered about my heart. Everything was
ready, all that was lacking was ‘she.’ In one of the families of our
acquaintance there was a young girl with whom I quickly made friends. It
was a strange chance that brought us together. She was betrothed, when
all at once some dissension arose, her fiancé abandoned her and went off
to the other end of Russia. She was in despair, overcome with distress
and mortification. With deep and sincere sympathy I saw how she was
being consumed by grief. Without daring to hint at the cause, I tried to
comfort her and distract her mind, brought her novels, read them aloud to
her, told her long stories, and sometimes neglected to prepare for my
lectures at the university in order to stay longer with the distressed
girl.
Gradually her tears fell less frequently, from time to time a smile
glimmered through them; her despair passed into a languid melancholy;
soon she began to feel alarmed for her past, she struggled with herself
and defended it against the present, from a _point d’honneur_ of the
heart, as a soldier defends the flag, though he knows that the battle
is lost. I saw these last clouds faintly lingering on the horizon and,
myself carried away, with a beating heart, softly, softly drew the flag
out of her hands, and by the time she had given it up I was in love. We
believed in our love. She wrote verses to me, I wrote whole essays to
her in prose, and then we dreamed together of the future, of exile, of
prisons. She was ready for anything. The external side of life never took
a very clear shape in our imaginations; dedicated to the conflict with a
monstrous power, we felt success almost incredible. ‘Be my Gaetana,’ I
said to her after reading Saintine’s[5] ‘The Mutilated Poet,’ and I used
to fancy how she would follow me to the Siberian mines.
‘The Mutilated Poet’ was the poet who wrote a lampoon upon Sixtus V. and
gave himself up when the Pope promised not to inflict the death penalty.
Sixtus V. ordered his tongue and hands to be cut off. The figure of the
luckless victim, choked by the mass of ideas which swarmed in his brain
and found no outlet, could not but attract us in those days. The martyr’s
sad and exhausted eyes found peace when they rested with gratitude and
some remnant of happiness on the girl who had loved him in old days and
did not abandon him in misfortune. Her name was Gaetana.
This first experience of love was soon over, but it was perfectly
sincere. Perhaps, indeed, it was right for this love to pass, or it would
have lost its finest, most fragrant quality, its innocent freshness, its
nineteen-year-old charm. Lilies of the valley do not flower in winter.
And can it be, my Gaetana, that you do not recall our meeting with the
same serene smile, can it be that there is any bitterness mixed with your
memory of me after twenty-two years? That would be very grievous to me.
And where are you, and how have you spent your life?
I have lived my life and now am going slowly downhill, broken, and
morally ‘mutilated.’ I seek no Gaetana, I go over the memories of the
past and meet your image joyfully.... Do you remember the window in the
corner facing the little side street into which I had to turn, and how
you always came to it to watch me pass, and how disappointed I was if you
did not come to it, or moved away before I had time to turn?
But I do not want to meet you in reality; in my imagination you have
remained with your youthful face, your _blond cendré_ curls: remain as
you were. And you, too, if you think of me, will remember a slender lad
with sparkling eyes and fiery words, and may you think of him like that
and never know that the eyes have lost their lustre, that I have grown
heavy, that my brow is furrowed, that long ago my face lost the radiant,
eager look of old days which Ogaryov used to call ‘the look of hope.’
And, indeed, hope too is gone.
We ought to be to each other as we were then ... neither Achilles nor
Diana grow old.... I do not want to meet you as Larin met Princess
Alina:[6]
‘Do you remember Grandison?
Cousin, how is Grandison?—
Oh, Grandison! In Moscow living,
On Christmas Eve he left his card,
A son of his was married lately.’
The last glow of dying love lighted up for a moment the prison vault,
warmed the heart with its old dreams, and then each took our separate
paths. She went away to the Ukraine while I was going into exile. Since
then I have had no tidings of her.
Chapter 21
SEPARATION
‘_Ah, people, wicked people,_
_You separated their...._’
So my first letter to Natalie ended, and it is note-worthy that,
frightened by the word ‘hearts,’ I did not write it. And I signed the
letter ‘your brother.’
How dear ‘my sister’ was then to me and how continually in my thoughts is
clear from the fact that I wrote to her from Nizhni, and from Perm on the
very day after my arrival there. The word ‘sister’ expressed all that was
recognised in our affection; I liked it immensely and I like it now, used
not as the limit of the feelings but, on the contrary, as the mingling of
them all; in it are united affection, love, the tie of kinship, a common
devotion, the surroundings of childhood, and habitual association. I had
called no one by that name before, and it was so precious to me that even
in later years I often used it to Natalie.
Before I fully understood our relations, and perhaps just because I did
not understand them fully, a temptation awaited me which has not left so
bright a memory as my episode with Gaetana; a temptation that humiliated
me and cost me much regret and inner distress.
Having very little experience of life, and being flung into a world
completely strange to me, after nine months of prison, I lived at first
carelessly without taking stock of what I saw; the new country, the new
surroundings made me rather dizzy. My social position was transformed. In
Perm and in Vyatka I was regarded very differently from in Moscow; there
I had been a young man living in my father’s house, here in this stagnant
waste I was independent, and was accepted as a government official,
although I was not exactly one. It was not hard for me to perceive that
without much effort I might play the part of a man of the world in the
drawing-rooms beyond the Volga and the Kama, and be a lion in Vyatka
society.
In Perm, before I had time to look about me, the landlady to whom I
had gone to take lodgings asked me whether I wanted a kitchen garden
and whether I was keeping a cow! It was a question by which I could,
with horror, judge the depth of my descent from the academic heights
of student life. But at Vyatka I made acquaintance with all the world,
especially with the younger people of the merchant class, which is much
better educated in these remote provinces than in those nearer the
centre, though they are no less given to drink and debauchery. Distracted
from my usual pursuits by office work, I led a restlessly idle life;
owing to my peculiar impressionability, or perhaps mobility, of character
and absence of experience, adventures of all sorts might well be expected.
From a coquettish passion _de l’approbativité_ I tried to please right
and left indiscriminately, forced my sympathies, made friends over a
dozen words, became far more intimate than I need, recognised my mistake
a month or two later, said nothing from delicacy, and dragged a weary
chain of false relations until it was broken by an absurd quarrel
in which I was blamed for capricious impatience, ingratitude, and
inconstancy.
At first I did not live alone in Vyatka. A strange and comic figure,
which from time to time appears at all the turning points of my life, at
all its important events, the person who drowns to make me acquainted
with Ogaryov, and waves a handkerchief from Russia when I cross the
frontier at Taurogen—K. I. Sonnenberg—was living with me in Vyatka; I
forgot to mention this when I described my exile.
This was how it happened: at the moment when I was being sent to Perm,
Sonnenberg was preparing to go to the Fair at Irbit. My father, who
always liked to complicate everything simple, suggested to Sonnenberg
that he should go to Perm and there _furnish my house_, in return
undertaking to pay his travelling expenses.
At Perm Sonnenberg zealously set to work, that is, to the purchase of
unnecessary articles, all sorts of crockery, saucepans, bowls, glass,
and provisions. He went himself to Obva to procure a Vyatka horse _ex
ipso fonte_. When everything was complete I was transferred to Vyatka. We
sold, half-price, the goods he had purchased and left Perm. Sonnenberg,
conscientiously carrying out my father’s wishes, thought it his duty
to go to Vyatka too to furnish my house. My father was so well pleased
with his devotion and self-sacrifice that he offered him a salary of a
hundred roubles a month so long as he would stay with me. This was more
profitable and more secure than Irbit—and he was in no hurry to leave me.
In Vyatka he bought not one but three horses, one of which belonged to
himself, though it too was bought at my father’s expense. These horses
raised us considerably in the esteem of Vyatka society. Karl Ivanovitch,
as I have mentioned already, was, in spite of his fifty years and the
rather glaring defects of his features, a great flirt, and entertained
the agreeable conviction that every girl and woman who came near
him risked the fate of the moth flying round a lighted candle. Karl
Ivanovitch had no intention of wasting the effect produced by the horses,
but tried to turn them to advantage on the erotic side. Moreover, all our
circumstances were favourable to his designs; we had a verandah looking
out into a courtyard beyond which there was a garden. From ten o’clock
in the morning Sonnenberg, arrayed in Kazan morocco leather boots, a
gold embroidered _tibiteyka_, and a Caucasian _beshmyet_, with an immense
amber mouthpiece between his lips, would sit on watch, pretending to be
reading. The _tibiteyka_ and the amber mouthpiece were all aimed at three
young ladies who lived in the next house. The young ladies for their
part were interested in the new arrivals and gazed with curiosity at the
oriental-looking doll smoking on the verandah. Karl Ivanovitch knew when
and how they secretly lifted their blind, thought that things were going
swimmingly—and tenderly blew a light coil of smoke in the direction of
the objects of his devotion.
Soon the garden gave us the opportunity of making our neighbours’
acquaintance. Our landlord had three houses, and the garden was shared in
common by them. In one of the houses we were living, together with the
landlord and his stepmother, a fat, flabby widow who looked after him so
masterfully and with such jealousy that it was only on the sly that he
ventured to speak to the ladies of the garden. In the second house lived
the young ladies and their parents, and the third house stood empty.
Within a week Karl Ivanovitch was quite at home with the ladies of our
garden. He would spend several hours a day swinging the young girls in
the swing and running to fetch their capes and sunshades, in fact he was
_aux petits soins_. The young ladies were more free in their behaviour
with him than with anybody else, because he was more beyond suspicion
than Caesar’s wife: a mere glance at him was enough to check the faintest
breath of scandal.
In the evening I too used to walk into the garden, from that herd
instinct which makes people do what others are doing, apart from
any inclination. To the garden came, besides the lodgers, their
acquaintances; the chief subject of talk and interest was flirtation and
watching one another. Karl Ivanovitch devoted himself to sentimental
espionage with the vigilance of a Vidok,[7] and always knew who walked
oftenest with whom, and who looked significantly at whom. I was a
terrible bone of contention for all the secret police of our garden; the
ladies and the men wondered at my reserve, and for all their efforts
could not discover on whom I was dancing attendance, and who particularly
attracted me; and indeed it was not easy to do so, for I was not dancing
attendance on any one and I did not find any of the young ladies
particularly attractive. In the end they were vexed and offended by this,
they began to consider me proud and sarcastic, and the young ladies’
friendliness grew perceptibly cooler—though every one of them tried her
most killing glances upon me when we were alone.
While things were like this, one morning Karl Ivanovitch informed me
that the landlady’s cook had opened the shutters of the third house and
was cleaning the windows. The house had been taken by a family who had
arrived in the town.
The garden was entirely absorbed in details concerning the new arrivals.
The unknown lady, who was either tired from the journey or had not yet
had time to unpack, as though to spite us, refused to show herself
outside. Every one tried to see her at a window or in the porch, some
succeeded, while others watched for days together in vain; those who
saw her reported her pale and languid, interesting, in short, and
good-looking. The young ladies said that she looked melancholy and ill. A
young clerk in the governor’s office, a sprightly and quite intelligent
fellow, was the only one who knew the strangers. He had once served
in the same provincial town with them, and every one besieged him with
questions.
The sprightly clerk, pleased at knowing what other people did not
know, held forth endlessly upon the charms of their new neighbour. He
praised her to the skies, declared that you could see she was a lady
from Petersburg or Moscow. ‘She is intelligent,’ he repeated, ‘charming,
cultured, but she won’t look at fellows like us. Ah, upon my soul,’ he
added, suddenly turning to me, ‘there’s a happy thought; you must keep up
the honour of Vyatka society and get up a flirtation with her.... Why,
you are from Moscow, you know, and in exile; no doubt you write verses.
She’s a heaven-sent find for you.’
‘What nonsense you do talk,’ I said, laughing, but I flushed crimson: I
longed to see her.
A few days later I met her in the garden and found that she really was a
very charming blonde. The gentleman who had talked about her introduced
me. I was agitated and was as little able to hide it as my companion his
smile.
The shyness due to vanity passed and I got to know her; she was very
unhappy and, deceiving herself by assumed composure, was pining away and
languishing in a sort of indolence of the heart.
Madame R—— was one of those secretly passionate natures only to be met
among women of a fair complexion. The ardour of their hearts is masked
by the mildness and gentleness of their features; they turn pale with
emotion, and their eyes do not flash but rather grow dim when feeling
brims over. Her languid eyes looked exhausted with a vague craving, her
yearning bosom heaved irregularly. There was something restless and
electric in her whole being. Often when walking in the garden she would
suddenly turn pale and, inwardly troubled or agitated, would answer
absent-mindedly and hurry into the house. It was just at those moments
that I liked to look at her.
I soon saw what was passing within her. She did not love her husband and
could not love him; she was twenty-five, he was over fifty, yet that
disparity she might have got over, but the difference of education, of
interests, of temperament, was too great.
Her husband scarcely ever came out of his room; he was a dry, harsh, old
man, an official with pretensions to being a landowner, irritable like
all invalids and like most people who have lost their fortune. She was
sixteen when she was married to him and then he had some property, but
afterwards he had lost everything at cards and was forced to go into the
service for a living. Two years before he was transferred to Vyatka he
began to fall into ill-health, a sore on his leg developed into disease
of the bone. The old man became surly and ill-humoured, was afraid of his
illness, and looked with helpless suspicion and uneasiness at his wife.
She waited upon him with mournful self-sacrifice, but she did this only
as her duty. Her children could not give all that her yearning heart
craved.
One evening, speaking of one thing and another, I said that I should very
much like to send my cousin my portrait, but that I could not find a man
in Vyatka who could hold a pencil.
‘Let me try,’ said the lady. ‘I used to draw rather successful portraits
in pencil.’
‘I shall be delighted. When?’
‘To-morrow before dinner, if you like.’
‘Of course. I will come to-morrow at one o’clock.’
All this was in her husband’s presence; he said not a word.
Next morning I got a note from Madame R——. It was the first I had ever
received from her. She very courteously and circumspectly informed me
that her husband was not pleased at her having offered to draw my
portrait, begged me not to judge harshly of the whims of an invalid, said
that he must not be worried, and, in conclusion, offered to make the
sketch some other day, saying nothing about it to her husband, that he
might not be annoyed by it.
I warmly, perhaps excessively warmly, thanked her. I did not accept her
offer to draw the portrait in secret, but nevertheless these two notes
made us much more intimate. Her attitude to her husband, upon which I
could never have touched, was openly expressed; a secret understanding, a
league against him, was unconsciously formed between us.
In the evening I went to see them—not a word was said about the portrait.
If her husband had been cleverer he must have guessed what had happened;
but he was not clever. I thanked her with my eyes, she answered with a
smile.
Soon they moved into another part of the town. The first time I went to
see them I found her alone in a barely furnished drawing-room; she was
sitting at the piano, her eyes were tear-stained. I begged her to go on;
but the music halted, she played false notes, her hands trembled, the
colour left her face. ‘How stifling it is!’ she said, getting up quickly
from the piano.
In silence I took her hand, a weak, feverish hand; her head, like a
flower grown too heavy, as though passively obeying some external force,
sank on my breast, she pressed her forehead against me and instantly fled.
Next day I received a rather frightened note from her, trying to throw
a sort of mist over what had passed; she wrote of the terribly nervous
condition in which she had been when I came in, of scarcely remembering
what had happened. She apologised for her behaviour—but the thin veil of
her words could not conceal the passion that glowed through them.
I went to see them; that day her husband was a little better, though he
had not risen from his bed since they had been in their new quarters.
I was worked up by excitement, played the fool, fired off witty jokes,
talked all sorts of nonsense, made the invalid almost die with laughter,
and of course all that was to cover her embarrassment and my own.
Moreover, I felt that the laughter was intoxicating her and drawing her
on.
* * * * *
This orgy of love lasted for a month; then my heart was as it were tired,
exhausted; I began to have moments of depression, I studiously concealed
them, tried not to believe in them, wondered what was passing within
me—while still love was cooling.
I began to feel constrained by the presence of the old man. It was
awkward and hateful for me in his company. Not that I felt myself in the
wrong as regards the man who had the civil and ecclesiastical rights of
property in a woman who could not love him and whom he was incapable
of loving, but my double part struck me as humiliating; hypocrisy and
duplicity are the vices most foreign to my nature. While growing passion
was in the ascendant I thought of nothing, but as soon as it was somewhat
cooler I began to have doubts.
One morning Matvey came into my bedroom with the news that old R—— ‘had
passed away.’ I was overcome by a strange feeling at this news, I turned
on the other side and was in no hurry to dress. I did not want to see
the dead man. Vitberg came in, quite ready to go out. ‘What!’ he said,
‘you’re still in bed! Haven’t you heard what’s happened? I expect poor
Madame R—— is all alone, let us go and see, make haste and dress.’ I
dressed—and we went.
We found Madame R—— in a swoon or in a sort of nervous lethargy. There
was no pretence about it: her husband’s death had recalled her helpless
position; she was left alone with her children in a strange town,
without money, without friends or relations. Besides, she had on previous
occasions fallen into this cataleptic condition, which was brought on by
some violent shock and lasted several hours. Pale as death, with her face
cold and her eyes closed, she lay, from time to time giving a gasp, and
breathless in the intervals.
Not one woman came to help her, to show her sympathy, to look after the
children or the house. Vitberg remained with her, the prophetic clerk and
I undertook to see after things.
The old man, looking black and sunken, lay in his uniform on the
drawing-room table, frowning as though he were angry with me. We laid
him in the coffin, and two days later lowered him into the grave. After
the funeral we went back to the dead man’s house; the children in their
black frocks with crape weepers huddled in the corner, more amazed and
frightened than grieved: they whispered together and walked on tiptoe.
Madame R—— sat with her head leaning on her hands, as though pondering,
and did not say a single word.
In that drawing-room, on that sofa I had waited for her, listened to the
sick man moaning and the drunken servant swearing. Now everything was so
black.... In the midst of funereal surroundings and the smell of incense,
I was haunted by vague and gloomy recollections of words and minutes of
which I still could not think without tenderness.
Her grief gradually subsided and she looked more resolutely at her
position; then, little by little, other thoughts began to light up her
careworn and despondent face. Her eyes rested upon me with a sort of
agitated inquiry, as though she were waiting for something ... a question
... an answer....
I said nothing—and she, frightened, alarmed, began to feel doubts.
Then I saw that her husband had in reality been an excuse for me in
my own eyes—love had burnt itself out in me. It was not that I had no
feeling for her, far from it, but the feeling was not what she wanted.
I was now occupied by a different order of ideas, and that outburst of
passion seemed to have possessed me simply to make another feeling clear
to myself. Only one thing I can say in my defence—I was perfectly sincere
in my infatuation.
While I had lost my head and did not know what to do, while with cowardly
weakness I was waiting for the chances of time and circumstance, time and
circumstance complicated my position still further.
Tyufyaev, seeing the helpless position of a young and beautiful widow
left without any support in a remote town in which she was a stranger,
like the true ‘father of the province,’ showed her the tenderest
solicitude. At first we all thought that he felt real sympathy for her.
But soon Madame R—— observed with horror that his attentions were by no
means so simple. Two or three dissolute governors before him had kept
Vyatka ladies as mistresses, and Tyufyaev, following their example, lost
no time but at once began making declarations of love to her. Madame
R—— of course responded with cold disdain and mockery to his elderly
blandishments. Tyufyaev would not recognise himself rebuffed, but
persisted in his insolent attentions. Seeing, however, that he was making
little progress, he gave her to understand that her children’s future lay
in his hands, that without his assistance she could not place them in
schools at government expense, and that he on his side would not exert
himself in her favour if she did not adopt a less chilly attitude to him.
The insulted woman sprang up like a wild beast wounded. ‘Kindly leave my
house and don’t dare to set foot in it again,’ she said, pointing to the
door.
‘Ough, what a temper you have got!’ said Tyufyaev, trying to turn things
off with a jest.
‘Pyotr, Pyotr,’ she shouted in the entry, and the terrified Tyufyaev,
fearing a public scandal, abashed and humiliated, fled to his carriage,
gasping with fury.
In the evening Madame R—— told Vitberg and me all that had happened.
Vitberg at once realised that the Lovelace put to flight and insulted
would not leave the poor woman in peace; Tyufyaev’s character was pretty
well known to us all. Vitberg resolved at all costs to save her.
Persecutions soon followed. The petition with regard to the children was
presented in such a way that refusal was inevitable. The landlord and
the shopkeepers demanded payment with remarkable insistence. God knows
what might not be expected; the man who had done Petrovsky to death in a
madhouse was not to be trifled with.
Though burdened with an immense family and weighed down by poverty,
Vitberg did not hesitate for one minute, but invited Madame R—— to move
with her children into his house two or three days after his wife’s
arrival in Vyatka. In his house Madame R—— was safe, so great was the
moral power of this exile. His inflexible will, his noble appearance,
his fearless words, his scornful smile were dreaded even by the Vyatka
Shemyaka.[8]
I lived in a wing apart in the same house and dined at Vitberg’s table,
and so here we were under the same roof, just when we ought to have been
seas apart.
In this close proximity she soon saw that there was no bringing back the
past.
Why had she met me, at that time so unstable? She might have been
happy, she deserved to be happy. The sorrowful past was over, a new
life of love and harmony was so possible for her! Poor woman! Was it my
fault that this storm-cloud of love which had swooped down upon me so
irresistibly, so ardently, intoxicated me, drew me on, and then melted
away?
I lived in a state of anxious perturbation. Perplexed, foreseeing
trouble, and dissatisfied with myself, again I turned to dissipation and
sought distraction in noise, was vexed at finding it and vexed at not
finding it, and awaited a few lines from Natalie as for a breath of pure
air in the midst of sultry heat. The gentle image of the child on the
verge of womanhood rose brighter and brighter above all this ferment of
passion. My outburst of passion for Madame R—— made my own heart clear to
me and revealed its secret.
More and more absorbed by my feeling for my far-away cousin, I had not
clearly analysed the sentiment that bound me to her. I was used to the
feeling and did not watch closely to see whether it had changed or not.
My letters became more and more troubled; on the one hand I felt deeply
not only the wrong I had done Madame R——, but the fresh wrong I did her
in the lying of which I was guilty by my silence. It seemed to me that I
had fallen, that I was unworthy of any other love ... while my love was
growing and growing.
The name of _sister_ began to fret me, affection now was not enough for
me, that gentle feeling seemed cold. Her love was apparent in every line
of her letters, but that did not satisfy me. I wanted not only love
but the very word itself, and I wrote: ‘I am going to put a strange
question to you. Do you believe that the feeling you have for me is
only affection? Do you believe that the feeling I have for you is only
affection? I don’t believe it.’
‘You seem somewhat troubled,’ she answered. ‘I knew your letter
frightened you much more than it frightened me. Set your mind at rest,
dear, it has changed absolutely nothing in me, it could not make me love
you more, or less.’
But the word had been uttered: ‘The mist has vanished,’ she writes, ‘all
is clear and bright again.’
With unclouded joy she gave herself up to the feeling that had been
given its name; her letters are one youthful song of love rising from a
childish whisper to lyrical heights.
‘Perhaps at this moment,’ she writes, ‘you are sitting in your study, not
writing, not reading, but pensively smoking a cigar, and your eyes are
fixed on the vague distance and you have no answer for the greeting of
any one who comes in. Where are your thoughts? What are you seeing? Do
not answer, let them come to me....’
‘Let us be childish, let us fix an hour for both of us to be in the open
air, an hour in which we can both be sure that nothing separates us but
distance. At eight o’clock in the evening you, too, are surely free? Or
else I go out as just now upon the steps—and come back at once thinking
that you are indoors.’
‘Looking at your letters, at your portrait, thinking of my letters, of
my bracelet, I wished I could skip a century and see what will be their
fate. The things which have been for us holy relics, which have healed
us, body and soul, with which we have talked and which have to some
extent replaced us to each other in absence; all these weapons with which
we have defended ourselves from others, from the blows of fate, from
ourselves, what will they be when we are gone, will their virtue, their
soul remain in them, will they awaken, will they warm some other heart,
will they tell the story of us, of our sufferings, of our love, will they
win one tear? How sad I feel when I imagine that your portrait will one
day hang unknown in some one’s study, or a child perhaps will break the
glass and efface the features.’
My letters were not like this[9]; in the midst of full, enthusiastic love
there is a note of bitter vexation with myself and repentance; the dumb
reproaches of Madame R—— were gnawing at my heart and troubling the clear
radiance of my feeling; I seemed to myself a liar, and yet I had not been
lying.
How could I acknowledge the position? How was I to tell Madame R—— in
January that I had made a mistake in August when I spoke of my love? How
could she believe in the truth of my story—a new love would have been
easier to understand, treachery would have been simpler. How the far-away
image of the absent could enter into conflict with the present, how
another love could have crossed that mountain barrier and become stronger
and more recognised—that I did not understand myself, but I felt that it
was all true.
Moreover, Madame R—— herself with the elusive agility of a lizard slipped
away from any serious explanation; she had an inkling of danger, was lost
in conjecture, and at the same time was avoiding the truth. It was as
though she had a foreboding that my words would reveal terrible facts,
after knowing which all would be over, and she cut short all talk at the
point where it was becoming dangerous.
At first she was looking about her; for a few days she thought she had
found her rival in a charming, lively young German girl whom I liked as a
child, with whom I was at ease just because it had never entered her head
to flirt with me, nor mine to flirt with her. A week later she perceived
that Paulina was not at all dangerous. But I cannot go further without
saying a word about the latter.
In the government dispensary at Vyatka there was a German chemist, and
there was nothing strange about that, but what is strange is that his
assistant was Russian and was called Bolman. With this latter I became
acquainted; he was married to the daughter of a Vyatka government clerk,
a lady who had the longest, thickest, and most beautiful hair I have ever
seen. The dispenser himself, Ferdinand Rulkovius, was at first absent,
and Bolman and I used to drink together various ‘fizzing drinks’ and
artistic cordials compounded from the pharmacy. The dispenser was away
in Reval, there he made the acquaintance of a young girl and offered her
his hand; the girl, who hardly knew him, married him rashly, as a girl
generally does, and a German girl in particular; she had no notion even
into what wilds he was taking her. But when after the wedding she had to
set off, she was overcome with terror and despair. To comfort his bride,
the dispenser invited a young girl of seventeen, a distant relation of
his wife, to go with them to Vyatka. She, even more rashly, with no idea
of what was meant by Vyatka, consented. Neither of the German girls
spoke a word of Russian, and in Vyatka there were not four men who spoke
German. Even the teacher of that language in the high school did not know
it, a fact which surprised me so much that I actually ventured to ask him
how he managed to teach it.
‘With the grammar,’ he answered, ‘and with dialogues.’
He further explained that he was really a teacher of mathematics, but
that, as there was no post vacant, he was meanwhile teaching German,
and that he received, however, only half the salary.[10] The Germans
were dying of ennui, and seeing a man who, if he could not speak German
well, could at least do so intelligently, were highly delighted, regaled
me with coffee and some sort of ‘_Kalteschale_,’ told me all their
secrets, their hopes and their wishes, and within two days called me
their friend and still more hospitably treated me to sweet cakes and
pastries flavoured with spices. Both were fairly well educated, that is,
knew Schiller by heart, played the piano, and sang German songs. There
the likeness between them ended. The dispenser’s wife was a tall, fair,
lymphatic woman, very good-looking but sleepy and listless; she was
extremely good-natured and, indeed, with her physique it would have been
hard to be anything else. Being convinced once for all that her husband
was her husband, she loved him quietly and steadily, looked after the
kitchen and the linen, read novels in her leisure moments, and in due
time successfully bore the chemist a daughter with white eyebrows and
eyelashes and a scrofulous constitution.
Her friend, a short, dark brunette, vigorously healthy, with big black
eyes and an independent air, was a beauty of the sturdy peasant type; a
great deal of energy was apparent in her words and movements, and when
at times the dispenser, a dull, close-fisted fellow, made somewhat
discourteous observations to his wife, while she listened with a smile
on her lips and a tear on her eyelash, Paulina would flush crimson and
give the offending husband such a look that he would instantly subside,
pretend to be very busy, and go off to his laboratory to pound and mix
all sorts of nasty things for the preservation of the health of the
Vyatka officials.
I liked the simple-hearted girl who knew how to stand up for herself,
and I do not know how it happened, but it was to her I first talked of
my love and translated some of Natalie’s letters. Only one who has lived
for long years with people who are completely alien know how precious
are these confidences of the heart. I rarely talk of my feelings, but
there are moments, even now, when the longing to express myself becomes
insufferable, and at that time I was four-and-twenty, and I had only just
realised my love. I could bear separation, I could have borne silence
too, but, meeting with another child on the threshold of womanhood, in
whom everything was so unaffectedly simple, I could not refrain from
giving away my secret. And how grateful she was for my confidence, and
how much good she did me!
Vitberg’s always serious conversation sometimes wearied me; fretted by
my difficult relations with Madame R——, I could not be at my ease with
her. Often in the evening I used to go off to Paulina, read foolish
stories aloud to her, listen to her ringing laugh and to her singing,
especially for my benefit, ‘Das Mädchen aus der Fremde’—by which she and
I understood another ‘maiden from a strange land,’ and the clouds were
dissipated, there was an unfeigned gaiety, an untroubled serenity in my
heart, and I would go home in peace when the dispenser, after stirring
his last mixture and preparing his last ointment, began boring me with
absurd political inquiries—not, however, before I had drunk a ‘draught’
of his mixing and eaten the herring salad mixed by the little white hands
_der Frau Apothekerin_.
* * * * *
Madame R—— was wretched, while with pitiful weakness I waited for time to
bring some chance solution and prolonged the half-deception. A thousand
times I longed to go to Madame R——, to throw myself at her feet, to
tell her everything, to face her wrath, her contempt ... but it was not
indignation that I feared—I should have been glad of it—I feared her
tears. One must have endured many evil experiences to be able to bear a
woman’s tears, to be able to feel doubts while they trickle still warm
over the flushed cheek. Besides, her tears would have been sincere.
A good deal of time passed like this. Rumours began to reach me that
my exile might soon come to an end. The day no longer seemed so remote
on which I should fling myself into a chaise and dash off to Moscow,
familiar faces hovered before my imagination and among them, foremost of
them, the cherished features; but scarcely did I abandon myself to these
dreams when the pale, mournful figure of Madame R—— would rise up on the
other side with tear-stained eyes, full of pain and reproach, and my joy
was troubled: I felt sorry, terribly sorry for her.
I could no longer remain in a false position, and plucking up all
my courage I made up my mind to get out of it. I wrote her a full
confession. Warmly, openly, I told her the whole truth. Next day she said
she was ill and did not leave her room. All the sufferings of a criminal,
the fears that he will be unmasked, I passed through on that day. She had
another attack of her nervous stupor—I dared not visit her.
I wanted my repentance to be complete. I shut myself up with Vitberg in
his study and told him the whole story. At first he was astonished, then
he listened to me not as a judge but as a friend, did not worry me with
questions, did not preach to me with stale morality, but devoted himself
to helping me find means for softening the blow—he alone could do that.
His affection was very warm for those of whom he was fond. I had been
afraid of his rigorous morals, but his affection for me and for Madame
R—— completely outweighed that. Yes, in his hands I could leave the
unhappy woman to whose hard lot I had given the finishing blow, in him
she found strong moral support and authority. She respected him like a
father.
In the morning Matvey gave me a note. I had scarcely slept all night.
With a trembling hand I broke the seal. She wrote gently, in a noble and
deeply mournful spirit; the flowers of my eloquence had not concealed
the snake beneath them, in her words of resignation could be heard the
stifled moan of a wounded heart, the cry of pain, repressed by a supreme
effort. She blessed me on my way to my new life, wished me happiness,
called Natalie a sister, and held out a pleading hand to us for
forgetfulness of the past and friendship for the future—as though she had
been to blame!
Sobbing, I read her letter over and over again. _Qual cuor tradisti!_
Later on I met her. She gave me her hand affectionately, but we felt
awkward; each of us had left something unsaid, each of us tried to avoid
touching on something.
A year ago I heard of her death.
When I left Vyatka I was for a long time worried by the thought of
Madame R——. As I regained my composure I set to work to write a story of
which she was the heroine. I described a young nobleman of the period of
Catherine who has abandoned the woman who loves him and married another.
She pines away and dies. The news of her death is a heavy blow to him, he
becomes gloomy and pensive, and at last goes out of his mind. His wife,
an ideal of gentleness and self-sacrifice, after trying everything, leads
him in one of his quieter moments to the Dyevitchy Convent and kneels
down with him at the unhappy woman’s grave, begging her forgiveness and
her intervention. From the windows of the convent the words of a prayer
reach them, soft feminine voices sing of forgiveness—and the young man
recovers. The story was a failure. At the time when I wrote it Madame
R—— had no thought of coming to Moscow, and the only man who guessed
that there was anything between us was the ‘ubiquitous German,’ K. I.
Sonnenberg. After my mother’s death in 1851, we had no news from him. In
1860 a tourist, describing his acquaintance with Karl Ivanovitch, now a
man of eighty, showed me a letter from him. In a postscript the old man
told him of the death of Madame R—— and said that my brother had had her
buried in the Novo Dyevitchy Convent!
I need hardly say that neither of them knew anything about my story.
Chapter 22
IN MOSCOW WHILE I WAS AWAY
My peaceful life in Vladimir was soon troubled by news from Moscow which
reached me now from all sides and deeply distressed me. To make this
intelligible I must go back to 1834.
The day after I was arrested in 1834 was the nameday of my aunt, the
princess, and so when Natalie had parted from me in the graveyard she
had said: ‘Until to-morrow’; she was expecting me, several members of
the family had arrived, when suddenly my cousin made his appearance and
told them the full details of my arrest. This news, utterly unexpected,
gave her a shock; she got up to go into the other room, and after taking
two steps fell unconscious on the floor. The princess saw it all and
understood it all; she determined to oppose this love from the beginning
by every means in her power.
What for?
I do not know: she had of late, that is after I had finished my studies,
been very well disposed to me; but my arrest and rumours of our
free-thinking attitude, of our giving up the Orthodox Church and entering
the Saint Simon ‘sect,’ infuriated her; from that time forward she never
spoke of me except as ‘that unhappy son of brother Ivan’s.’ The Senator
had to use all his authority to induce her to allow Natalie to go to the
Krutitsky Barracks to say good-bye to me.
Fortunately I was exiled and the princess had plenty of time before her.
‘And where is this Perm or Vyatka? He’ll be sure to break his neck there,
or have it broken for him; and in any case he’ll forget her there.’
But as though to spite the princess, I had an excellent memory. Natalie’s
correspondence with me, for a long time concealed from the old lady, was
at last discovered, and she sternly forbade the maids and menservants to
receive letters for the young girl, or to take letters to the post.
‘So I daresay some fine morning that unhappy son of my brother’s will
open the door and walk in; it’s no use wasting time thinking about it,
and putting things off—we’ll make a match for her and save her from the
political criminal who has no religion or principles.’
The princess, sighing, would talk of the poor, forlorn girl, saying
that she had scarcely anything, that it would not do for her to pick
and choose, that she would like to see her settled in her own lifetime.
She had, as a fact, with the help of her dependents, settled, after a
fashion, the fate of one distant cousin who had no dowry by marrying her
off to an attorney of some sort. A nice, good-natured, and well-educated
girl, she married to satisfy her mother; two years later she died, but
the attorney was still living, and from gratitude was still looking
after her Excellency’s affairs. In this case, however, the bride was
not portionless, the princess was prepared to treat her like her own
daughter, to give her a dowry of a hundred thousand roubles and to leave
her something in her will besides. On such terms suitors are always to
be found, not only in Moscow but everywhere else, especially when there
is the title of princess as well as a ‘lady companion’ and numerous ‘old
women’ in attendance.
The whispering, the negotiations, rumours, and maidservants brought
Princess Marya Alexeyevna’s intention to the ears of the unhappy victim
of so much solicitude. She told the ‘lady companion’ that she would not
accept any offer of marriage. Then followed an insulting and ruthless
persecution without one trace of delicacy, a petty persecution pursuing
her every minute and catching her at every step, at every word.
‘Imagine bad weather, terrible cold, wind, rain, an overcast, as it were,
expressionless sky, a very horrid little room which looks as though a
corpse had just been carried out of it, and these _children_, who have no
aim, no pleasure even, making a noise, shouting, spoiling and defiling
everything near them; and it would be bad enough if one had simply to
look at them, but when one is forced to be in their company ...’ she
writes in one letter from the country where the princess had gone for the
summer; and she goes on: ‘there are three old women sitting here with us,
and they are all three describing how their late husbands were paralysed
and how they used to look after them; and it is chilly enough without
that.’
Now systematic persecution was added to these surroundings, and it was
practised not only by the princess but also by the wretched old women,
who were perpetually worrying Natalie, persuading her to be married and
abusing me; as a rule, she said nothing in her letters of the continual
annoyances she had to endure, but sometimes bitterness, humiliation and
boredom were too much for her. ‘I don’t know,’ she writes, ‘whether they
can invent anything more to oppress me. Can they possibly have wit enough
for that? Do you know that I am actually forbidden to go into another
room, even to move to another seat in the same room? It is a long while
since I have played the piano; lights were brought and I went into the
drawing-room, thinking they might be merciful, but no, they brought
me back and set me knitting; perhaps, at least I might sit at another
table—I can’t endure being beside them—might I do even that? No, I must
sit just here beside the priest’s wife, listen, look, and talk, while
they speak of nothing but Filaret or criticise you. For a moment I felt
vexed, I flushed crimson, then all at once my heart was weighed down by a
feeling of bitter sadness, not because I had to be their slave, no ... I
felt horribly sorry for them.’
Matchmaking negotiations were formally beginning.
‘A lady has been here who is fond of me, and whom I am not for that
reason fond of.... She is doing her very utmost to settle things for me,
and she made me so angry that I sang after her—
“I had rather be dressed in my winding-sheet
Than the wedding veil without my sweet.”’
A few days later, 26th October 1837, she writes: ‘What I have been
through to-day, my dear, you can’t imagine. They dressed me up and
dragged me off to Madame S——, who has been extremely gracious to me ever
since I was a child; Colonel Z—— goes there every Tuesday to play cards.
Imagine my position: on the one side the old ladies at the card-table, on
the other all sorts of disgusting figures, and he.... The conversation,
the company—everything was so alien to me, so strange and horrid, so
lifeless and vulgar, I was more like a statue than a living creature.
Everything that was going on seemed like an oppressive nightmare. I kept
asking like a child to go home, they would not heed me. The attention of
the host and of _the visitor_ overwhelmed me; he got as far as writing
half my monogram in chalk. Oh dear, I am not strong enough and I can look
for support to no one of those who might be a help; I am all alone on the
edge of a precipice, and a whole crowd of them are doing everything they
can to push me over; sometimes I am weary, my strength fails me and you
are not near and I cannot see you in the distance; but the mere thought
of you—and my soul is stirred and ready to do battle again in the armour
of love.’
Meanwhile every one liked the Colonel: the Senator was friendly to
him, and my father gave it as his opinion that ‘a better match could
not be expected and should not be desired.’ ‘Even his Excellency D.
P. (Golohvastov) is pleased with him,’ wrote Natalie. The princess
said nothing directly to Natalie, but restricted her freedom even more
severely and hurried things on. Natalie tried to play the part of a
complete imbecile in his presence, hoping to repel him, but not at all;
he went on coming more and more frequently.
‘Yesterday,’ she writes, ‘Amelia was here and this is what she said: “If
I heard that you were dead I should cross myself with joy and thank God.”
She is right in a great deal but not altogether; her soul living only in
sorrow could fully grasp the sufferings of my spirit, but the bliss with
which love fills it she could scarcely understand.’
But the princess was not losing heart. ‘Wishing to have a clear
conscience, the princess invited a priest who is a friend of Z—— and
asked him whether it would not be a sin to marry me against my will. The
priest said it would be actually a godly work to make so good a provision
for an orphan. I am sending for my own priest,’ Natalie adds, ‘and shall
tell him the whole story.’
‘_October 30th._—My clothes are here, my attire for to-morrow, and the
ikon, the rings; all sorts of arrangements and preparations have been
made, and not a word to me. The Nasakins and others have been invited.
They are preparing a surprise for me and I am preparing a surprise for
them.
‘_Evening._—Now a family council is going on. Lyov Alexeyevitch (the
Senator) is here. You urge me to be strong—there is no need, my dear.
I am equal to extricating myself from the awful, loathsome scenes into
which they are dragging me on the chain. Your image is bright above me,
there is no need to fear for me, and my very distress and sadness are so
sacred and have taken so firm a hold on my soul that tearing them away
would hurt even more, the wounds would re-open.’
However, though they did their best to mask and cover up the position,
the Colonel could not avoid seeing the positive aversion of his proposed
bride; he began to be less frequent in his visits, declared himself ill,
and even hinted at some addition to the dowry; this greatly incensed the
princess, but she got over even that humiliation and was ready to give
her an estate near Moscow as well. This concession he had apparently not
anticipated, for after it he disappeared altogether.
Two months passed quietly. All at once the news came that I had been
transferred to Vladimir. Then the princess made her last desperate
effort to marry off her protégée. One of her acquaintances had a son,
an officer, who had just returned from the Caucasus; he was young,
cultivated, and a very decent fellow. The princess condescended so far
as herself to suggest to his sister that she should ‘sound’ her brother
and see whether he cared for the match. He yielded to his sister’s
representations. The young girl did not care to play the same disgusting
and tedious part a second time, so, seeing that the position was taking
a serious turn, she wrote to the young man a letter, told him directly,
openly, and simply that she loved another man, trusted herself to his
honour and begged him not to add to her sufferings.
The officer with great delicacy drew back. The princess was amazed
and affronted and made up her mind to find out what had happened. The
officer’s sister, to whom Natalie had spoken herself, and who had
promised her brother to say nothing to the princess, told the whole story
to the ‘lady companion’; the latter of course at once reported it to her
mistress.
The princess almost choked with indignation. Not knowing what to do,
she ordered the young girl to go upstairs to her room and not to show
herself; not content with that, she ordered her door to be locked and
put two maids on guard; then she wrote notes to her two brothers and one
of her nephews and asked them to come and give her advice, saying that
‘she was so distressed and upset that she could not think what to do in
the misfortune that had befallen her.’ My father refused, saying that he
had plenty of worries of his own, that there was no need to attach such
importance to what had happened, and that he was a poor judge in affairs
of the heart. The Senator and D. P. Golohvastov appeared next evening in
answer to her summons. They talked for a long time without reaching any
conclusion and at last asked to see the prisoner. The young girl came
in, but she was no longer the shy, silent, forlorn girl they had known.
Unflinching firmness and stubborn determination were apparent in the calm
and proud expression of her face; this was not a child but a woman who
had come to defend her love—my love.
The sight of the prisoner on her trial confounded her judges. They were
awkward; at last Dmitry Pavlovitch, _l’orateur de la famille_, expatiated
at length on the cause of their coming together, the distress of the
princess, her heartfelt desire to settle her protégée’s future, and the
strange opposition on the part of her for whose benefit it was all being
done. The Senator with a nod and a movement of his finger expressed his
assent to his nephew’s words. The princess said nothing but sat with her
head turned away, sniffing salts.
The prisoner on her trial heard all they had to say and asked with
straightforward simplicity what they required of her.
‘We have no thought of requiring anything from you,’ observed the nephew.
‘We are here at Aunt’s desire to give you sincere advice. A match
excellent in all respects is offered to you.’
‘I cannot accept it.’
‘What is your reason for that?’
‘You know it.’
The orator of the family coloured a little, took a pinch of snuff, and
screwing up his eyes went on: ‘There is a great deal to which objection
might be urged. I would call your attention to the very small ground for
your hopes. It is so long since you have seen our unfortunate Alexandr;
he is so young and impetuous—are you certain of him?’
‘Yes, and whatever his intentions may be, I cannot change mine.’
The nephew had exhausted his eloquence; he got up saying: ‘God grant
that you may not regret it! I feel very anxious about your future.’ The
Senator scowled; the luckless girl now appealed to him. ‘You have always
shown me sympathy,’ she said to him. ‘I implore you, save me, do what
you like but take me out of this life. I have done no harm to any one, I
ask for nothing, I am not trying to do anything, I am only refusing to
deceive a man and ruin myself by marrying him. What I have to endure on
account of it you cannot imagine; it pains me to have to say this in the
presence of the princess, but to put up with the slights, the insulting
words, the hints of her friends is too much for me. I cannot, I ought not
to allow it, for insulting me is insulting....’ Her nerves gave way, the
tears gushed from her eyes; the Senator leapt up and walked about the
room in agitation.
Meanwhile the ‘lady companion,’ boiling over with fury, could not
restrain herself and said, addressing the princess: ‘So that’s our nice,
modest girl, there’s gratitude for you.’
‘Of whom is she speaking?’ shouted the Senator. ‘How is it, sister, you
allow that woman, devil knows what she is, to speak like that of your
brother’s daughter in your presence? And if it comes to that, why is this
drab here at all? Did you invite her to the family council too? Is she a
relation or what?’
‘My dear,’ answered the panic-stricken princess, ‘you know what she is to
me and how she looks after me.’
‘Yes, yes, that’s all very nice, let her give you your medicine and what
you like; that’s not what I am talking about. I ask you, _sœur_, why
is she here when family affairs are being discussed, and how dare she
put her word in? One might suppose it was all her doing, and then you
complain—Hey, my carriage!’
The ‘lady companion’ flushed, and ran out of the room in tears.
‘Why do you spoil her like this?’ the Senator went on, carried away; ‘she
fancies she is sitting in the tavern at Zvenigorod; how is it you aren’t
disgusted by it?’
‘Leave off, my dear, please,’ the poor princess groaned, ‘my nerves are
so upset—oh! You can go upstairs and stay there,’ she added, addressing
her niece.
‘It’s time to be done with all this Bastille business. It’s all nonsense
and leads to nothing,’ observed the Senator and took his hat.
Before driving away, he went upstairs; Natalie, overcome by all that
had passed, was sitting in an armchair with her face hidden, weeping
bitterly. The old man patted her on the shoulder and said:
‘Calm yourself, calm yourself, it will all come right. You must just try
not to make sister angry with you; she is an invalid, you must humour
her; after all, she only wishes for your good, you know; but, there, you
shan’t be married against your will, I’ll answer for that.’
‘Better a nunnery, a boarding-school, to go to Tambov to my brother, or
to Petersburg, than to endure this life any longer,’ she answered.
‘Come, come! try and soothe my sister, and as for that fool of a woman
I’ll teach her not to be rude.’
The Senator, as he crossed the drawing-room, met the ‘lady companion’:
‘I’ll ask you not to forget yourself,’ he shouted at her, holding up a
menacing finger; she went sobbing into the bedroom where the princess lay
on the bed while four maids rubbed her hands and feet, moistened her
temples with vinegar, and poured Hoffman’s drops on lumps of sugar.
So ended the family council.
It is clear that the girl’s position was hardly likely to be improved
by what had happened; the ‘lady companion’ was more on her guard, but,
cherishing now a personal hatred for Natalie, and desirous of avenging
the affront to herself, she poisoned her existence by petty indirect
means. I need hardly say that the princess acquiesced in this ignoble
persecution of a defenceless girl.
This had to be ended. I made up my mind to come forward, and wrote a
long, calm, and sincere letter to my father. I told him of my love and,
foreseeing his reply, added that I did not want to hurry him, that I
should give him time to see whether it was a passing feeling or not, and
that all that I begged of him was that the Senator and he would enter
into the poor girl’s position and would remember that they had the same
rights over her as the princess herself.
My father answered that he could not endure meddling in other people’s
affairs, that what the princess did in her own house was not his
business; he advised me to abandon foolish ideas ‘induced by the idleness
and ennui of exile,’ and added that I had much better prepare myself for
travel in foreign lands. We had often talked in past years of a tour
abroad, he knew how passionately I wished for it, but found endless
difficulties and always ended by saying: ‘You must first close my eyes,
then you’ll be free to go to the ends of the earth.’ In exile I had lost
all hope of going abroad, I knew how hard it would be to get permission,
and, besides, it would have seemed a lack of delicacy to insist on a
voluntary separation after the involuntary one. I remembered the tears
quivering on his old eyelids when I was setting off to Perm ... and now
here was my father taking the initiative and suggesting I should go!
I had been open, I had written sparing the old man, asking so little—and
he had answered with irony and strategy.
‘He doesn’t want to do anything for me,’ I said to myself, ‘like Guizot
he advocates _la non-intervention_. Very well then, I’ll act myself, and
now good-bye to concessions.’ I had not once before thought about the
ordering of the future; I believed, I knew that it was mine, that it was
ours, and I left the details to chance; the consciousness of love was
enough for us, our desires did not go beyond a momentary interview. My
father’s letter forced me to take the future into my own hands. It was
useless to wait—_cosa fata capo ha!_ My father was not very sentimental,
while as for the princess—
‘Let her weep,
Her tears mean nought!’
Just at that time my brother and Ketscher came to stay in Vladimir.
Ketscher and I spent whole nights together, talking, recalling the past,
laughing through our tears, and laughing till we cried. He was the first
of our set whom I had seen since we left Moscow. From him I heard the
chronicles of our circle, what changes had taken place in it, and what
questions were absorbing it, what fresh people had arrived, where those
who had left Moscow were, and so on. When we had discussed everything
I told him of my plans. After considering how I ought to act, Ketscher
concluded with a proposition the absurdity of which I only appreciated
afterwards. Desirous of trying every peaceful method, he offered to go to
my father and to talk to him seriously. I agreed.
Ketscher, of course, was better fitted for any good deed, and, in fact,
for any evil deed, than for diplomatic negotiations, particularly with
my father. He had in a marked degree all the characteristics that were
calculated to ruin any chance of success. His very appearance was enough
to make any conservative depressed and alarmed. A tall figure, with hair
strangely dishevelled and arranged on no fixed principle, with a harsh
countenance reminiscent of a number of the members of the Convention of
1793, and especially of Marat, with the same big mouth, the same hard,
disdainful lines about the lips, and the same expression of mournful and
exasperated gloom; to this must be added spectacles, a wide-brimmed hat,
extreme irritability, a loud voice, lack of all habit of self-control,
and the power of arching his eyebrows higher and higher as he grew more
indignant. Ketscher was like Laravigny in George Sand’s excellent novel,
_Horace_, with an admixture of something of the Pathfinder and Robinson
Crusoe, as well as an element purely Muscovite. His open, generous
temperament had set him from childhood in direct conflict with the world
surrounding him; he did not conceal his antagonism and was accustomed to
it. A few years older than we, he was continually scolding us and was
dissatisfied with every one. He used to quarrel and bring accusations
against us and make up for it all by the simple good-nature of a child.
His words were rough, but his feelings were tender and we forgave him
much.
Imagine him, this last of the Mohicans with the face of a Marat, this
‘friend of the people,’ setting off to advise my father! Many times
afterwards I made Ketscher describe their interview; my imagination was
unequal to picturing all the oddity of this diplomatic intervention.
It took place so unexpectedly that for a moment my old father lost his
bearings and began explaining the weighty reasons which led him to
oppose my marriage; then, recovering himself, he changed his tone and
asked Ketscher on what grounds he had come to discuss a matter which
was none of his business. The conversation took a more bitter tone.
The diplomatist, seeing that his position was not improving, tried to
frighten the old man about my health, but it was too late, and the
interview ended, as might have been expected, in a series of malignant
sarcasms from my father and rude rejoinders from Ketscher.
He wrote to me: ‘Expect nothing from the old man.’ That was all I wanted.
But what was I to do? How was I to begin? While I was thinking over a
dozen different plans a day and unable to decide between them, my brother
was preparing to return to Moscow.
That was on the first of March 1838.
Chapter 23[12]
THE THIRD OF MARCH AND THE NINTH OF MAY 1838
In the morning I wrote letters; when I had finished we sat down to
dinner. I could not eat, we said nothing, I felt unbearably oppressed—it
was between four and five, at seven the horses were to come round. At
the same time next day he would be in Moscow while I—and every minute my
pulse beat faster.
‘I say,’ I said at last to my brother, looking at my plate, ‘will you
take me with you to Moscow?’
He put down his fork and looked at me uncertain whether he had heard me
aright.
‘Take me through the town gate as your servant, I want nothing more, do
you agree?’
‘Yes if you like, only, you know, afterwards you’ll....’
It was too late, his ‘if you like’ was already in my blood, in my brain.
The idea that had only flashed upon me a minute before had now taken deep
root.
‘What is there to discuss, anything may happen—and so you’ll take me?’
‘Of course—I don’t mind—only....’
I jumped up from the table.
‘Are you going?’ asked Matvey, anxious to put in a word.
‘I am,’ I answered in such a tone that he said no more. ‘I’ll be back the
day after to-morrow, if any one comes tell them I have a headache and am
asleep, in the evening light the candles, and now get me my linen and my
bag.’
The bells were tinkling in the yard.
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes, and so good luck to us.’
By dinner-time next day the bells ceased tinkling, we were at Ketscher’s
door. I bade them call him out. A week before, when he had left me in
Vladimir, there had been no idea of my coming, and hence he was so
surprised on seeing me that at first he did not say a word and then went
off into a peal of laughter: but soon looked anxious and led me indoors.
When we were in his room he first carefully locked the door and then
asked me: ‘What has happened?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘I couldn’t stay in Vladimir, I want to see Natalie—that’s all, and you
must arrange it, and this very minute, because I must be back at home by
to-morrow.’
Ketscher looked into my face and raised his eyebrows.
‘What folly, the devil knows what to call it, to come like this with no
need and nothing prepared! Have you written, have you fixed a time?’
‘I have written nothing.’
‘Upon my word, my boy, but what are we to do with you? It’s beyond
anything, it’s raving madness!’
‘That’s just the point, that you must think what to do without losing a
minute.’
‘You’re a fool,’ said Ketscher with conviction, raising his eyebrows
higher than ever. ‘I should be glad, very glad indeed, if it were a
failure, it would be a lesson to you.’
‘And rather a long lesson if I am caught. Listen: as soon as it is dark
we’ll go to the princess’s house, you shall call some one out into the
road, one of the servants, I’ll tell you which—and then we’ll see what to
do. What do you say to that?’
‘Well, there’s no help for it, we’ll go, we’ll go; but I should like
you not to succeed in seeing her! Why on earth didn’t you write
yesterday?’—and Ketscher, pulling his broad-brimmed hat over his brows
with an air of dignity, threw on a black cloak lined with red.
‘Oh, you hateful grumbler!’ I said to him as we went out, and Ketscher,
laughing heartily, repeated: ‘But really it’s enough to make a hen laugh,
to come like this without sending a word; it’s beyond anything.’
I could not stay at Ketscher’s—he lived terribly far away, and his mother
had visitors that day. He took me to an officer of hussars whom he
knew to be an honourable man, and who, having never been mixed up with
political affairs, was not under police supervision. The officer, a man
with long moustaches, was sitting at dinner when we went in; Ketscher
told him what we had come about. The officer in reply poured me out
a glass of red wine and thanked us for the confidence we put in him;
then he took me into his bedroom, which was adorned with saddles and
saddle-cloths so that one might have supposed that he slept on horseback.
‘Here is a room for you,’ he said; ‘no one will disturb you here.’ Then
he called his orderly, a hussar, and told him not to let any one go into
that room on any pretext. I found myself again under the guardianship
of a soldier, with this difference, that at the Krutitsky Barracks the
gendarme had been keeping me from all the world, while here the hussar
was keeping all the world from me.
When it was quite dark, Ketscher and I set off. My heart beat violently
when I saw again the familiar streets and houses which I had not seen for
nearly four year.... Kuznetsky Bridge, Tversky Boulevard ... and here was
Ogaryov’s house; they had clapped an immense heraldic crest on it and it
looked different. In the lower storey, where we spent such happy youthful
days, a tailor was living.... Here was Povarsky Street—I held my breath:
in the corner window of the little room there was a candle burning, that
was her room, she was writing to me, she was thinking of me, the candle
twinkled so gaily, it seemed twinkling _to me_.
While we were considering how best to call some one out into the street,
one of the princess’s young footmen ran out towards us.
‘Arkady,’ I said as he reached us. He did not recognise me. ‘How is
this,’ I said, ‘don’t you know your own people?’
‘Oh, is it you?’ he cried.
I put my finger on my lips and said: ‘If you would like to do me a
friendly service, deliver this little note at once, as quickly as you
can, through Sasha or Kostinka, do you understand? We will wait for the
answer round the corner, and don’t breathe a word to any one of having
seen me in Moscow.’
‘Don’t be uneasy, we’ll do it all instantly,’ answered Arkady, and he
skipped back into the house.
We walked up and down the side-street for about half an hour before
a little, thin, old woman came out, flustered and looking about her;
this was that same brisk servant girl who in 1812 had begged the French
soldiers for ‘_manger_’ for me; we had called her Kostinka ever since I
was a child. The old woman took my face in both hands and showered kisses
upon it.
‘So you’ve flown to see us,’ she said. ‘Ah, you headstrong boy, when will
you learn sense, you foolish darling?—and you’ve given our young lady
such a fright that she almost fainted.’
‘And have you a note for me?’
‘Yes, yes, he is impatient,’ and she gave me a scrap of paper.
A few words had been scribbled in pencil with a trembling hand: ‘My God,
can it be true—you, here! To-morrow between five and six in the morning I
will expect you. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it! surely it must
be a dream!’
The hussar again put me into his orderly’s keeping. At half-past five
next morning I stood leaning against a lamp-post, waiting for Ketscher,
who had gone in at the side-gate of the princess’s house. I will not
attempt to describe what was passing in me while I waited at the
lamp-post; such moments remain one’s own secret because there are no
words for them.
Ketscher beckoned to me. I went in at the little gate, a boy who had
grown up since I left showed me in with a friendly smile, and here I
was in the hall which at one time I used to enter yawning, though now I
was ready to fall on my knees and kiss every plank on the floor. Arkady
led me into the drawing-room and went out. I sank exhausted on the
sofa, my heart throbbed so violently that it hurt me, and besides I was
frightened. I linger over my story for the sake of spending longer over
these memories, though I see that my words give a poor idea of them.
She came in all in white, dazzlingly lovely; three years of separation
and the struggles she had been through had given the finishing touches to
her features and her expression.
‘This is you,’ she said in her soft, gentle voice.
We sat down on the sofa and remained silent.
The expression of joy in her eyes almost approached suffering. I suppose
when the feeling of happiness reaches its highest point it is mingled
with an expression of pain, for she said to me: ‘How exhausted you look!’
I held her hand, she leaned her head on the other, and there was no need
for us to talk ... a few brief phrases, two or three reminiscences, words
from our letters, some idle remarks about Arkady, about the hussar, about
Kostinka, that was all.
Then the old woman came in, saying that it was time for me to go, and I
got up without protesting, and she did not try to keep me ... our hearts
were so full, all thoughts of more or less, of shorter or longer, all
vanished before the fullness of the present....
When we had passed the town gate, Ketscher asked: ‘Well, have you settled
anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘But you talked to her?’
‘Not a word about that.’
‘Does she consent?’
‘I didn’t ask, of course she consents.’
‘Well, upon my soul, you behave like a child, or a lunatic,’ observed
Ketscher, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders with
indignation.
‘I’ll write to her and then to you, and now, good-bye. Now drive ahead
full speed!’
It was thawing, the spongy snow was black in places, the endless white
plain lay on both sides, little villages flashed by with their smoke,
then the moon rose and shed a different light on everything; I was alone
with the driver and kept looking out, yet all the while was there with
her, and the road and the moon and the fields were somehow mixed up with
the princess’s drawing-room. And, strange to say, I remembered every word
uttered by the nurse, by Arkady, even by the maid who had led me out to
the gate, but what I had said to her and what she had said to me I could
not remember!
Two months were spent in making arrangements. I had to borrow money,
and to get her baptismal certificate; it appeared that the princess had
taken it. One of my friends—swearing, bribing, treating policemen and
clerks—succeeded by all sorts of false statements in getting another from
the Consistory.
When everything was ready, we, that is Matvey and I, set off.
At dawn on the eighth of May we were at the last posting-station before
Moscow. The drivers had gone to get horses. The air was heavy, there were
drops of rain, and it seemed as though a storm were coming on; I remained
in the covered chaise and hurried on the driver. Some one spoke near me
in a strange, high, sing-song voice. I turned round and saw a pale, thin
girl of about sixteen, in rags and with her hair hanging about her; she
was begging. I gave her some small silver coin, she laughed seeing it,
but instead of going away clambered on to the box of the chaise, turned
towards me and began muttering half-coherent sentences, looking straight
into my face; her eyes were clouded and pitiful, wisps of hair fell over
her face. Her sickly face, her unintelligible mutterings, together with
the light of early morning, aroused a sort of nervous uneasiness in me.
‘She’s crazy, you know, that is, she is simple,’ observed the driver.
‘And where are you poking yourself? I’ll give you a lash with the whip
and then you’ll know! Upon my soul, I will, you shameless hussy!’
‘Why are you scolding, what have I done to you—here your master’s given
me a silver bit, and what harm have I done you?’
‘Well, he’s given it to you, and so be off to your devils in the forest.’
‘Take me with you,’ added the girl, looking piteously at me, ‘do, really,
take me....’
‘To put you in a show in Moscow as a freak, some sea monster,’ observed
the driver. ‘Come, get down, we’re just off.’
The girl made no attempt to move, but kept looking pitifully at me. I
begged the driver not to hurt her, he lifted her gently under his arm and
set her on the ground. She burst out crying and I was ready to cry with
her.
Why had this creature crossed my path just on that day, just as I was
driving into Moscow? I thought of Kozlov’s ‘Mad Girl,’ and she, too, had
been met near Moscow.
We drove off, the air was full of electricity, unpleasantly heavy and
warm. A dark blue storm-cloud with grey streamers reaching to the earth
was slowly trailing over the fields, and all at once a zig-zag of
lightning ran slanting through it, there was a clap of thunder and the
rain came down in torrents. We were nearly seven miles from the Rogozhsky
Gate and after reaching Moscow had an hour’s drive to the Dyevitchy
field. We reached A——’s, where Ketscher was to wait for me, literally
without a dry thread on us.
Ketscher was not there. He was at the bedside of a dying woman, E. D.
Levashev. This woman was one of those marvellous products of Russian life
which reconcile one to it, one of those types whose whole existence is an
heroic feat, unseen by any but a small circle of friends. How many tears
she had wiped away, how much comfort she had brought to more than one
broken heart, of how many young lives she had been the support, and how
much she had suffered herself! ‘She spent herself in love,’ Tchaadayev,
one of her closest friends, who dedicated his celebrated letter about
Russia to her, said to me.
Ketscher could not leave her; he wrote that he would come about nine
o’clock. I was alarmed by this news. A man absorbed by a great passion
is a dreadful egoist; in Ketscher’s absence I could see nothing but
an obstacle in my path.... When it struck nine, when the bells began
ringing for evening service and then another quarter of an hour passed,
I was overcome by feverish anxiety and cowardly despair.... Half-past
nine—no, he would not come, the sick woman was probably worse, what was I
to do? I could not remain in Moscow, one incautious word from the maid or
the old nurse in the princess’s house would give everything away. To go
back was possible, but I felt I had not the strength to go back.
At a quarter to ten Ketscher appeared in a straw hat with the drowsy
face of a man who has not slept all night. I rushed up to him and as I
embraced him showered reproaches upon him. Ketscher, frowning, looked
at me and asked: ‘Why, isn’t half an hour enough to get from A——’s to
Povarsky Street? I might have been gossiping with you here for an hour,
and I daresay it would have been very nice, but I could not bring myself
to leave a dying friend sooner than I need for the sake of that. She
sends you her greetings,’ he added, ‘she blessed me with her dying hand,
hoping for the success of our enterprise, and gave me a warm shawl in
case of need.’ The dying woman’s greetings were particularly precious to
me. The warm shawl was very useful in the night, and I had no time to
thank her nor to press her hand ... soon afterwards she died.
Ketscher and A—— set off. Ketscher was to drive out of the town with
Natalie, while A—— was to come back and tell me whether everything had
gone off successfully and what I was to do. I was left waiting with his
charming and delightful wife; she had herself only lately been married,
and, being an ardent, passionate nature, she took the warmest interest
in our enterprise. She tried with feigned gaiety to assure me that
everything was going splendidly, though she was herself so fretted by
anxiety that her face was continually changing. We sat together in the
window and conversation did not flow easily; we were like children shut
up in an empty room as a punishment. Two hours passed in this way.
There is nothing in the world more shattering, more unendurable than
inactivity and suspense at such moments. Friends make a great mistake in
taking the whole burden off the shoulders of the principal _patient_.
They ought to invent duties for him if there are none, to overwhelm him
with physical exertions, to distract his mind with work and arrangements.
At last A—— came in, we rushed to meet him.
‘Everything is going gloriously, I saw them gallop off,’ he shouted to us
from the yard. ‘You go at once out at the Rogozhsky Gate, there by the
little bridge you will see the horses not far from Perov’s restaurant.
Good luck to you! And change your cab half-way, so that your second
cabman may not know where you have come from.’
I flew like an arrow from the bow.... And here was the little bridge
not far from Perov’s; there was no one there, and on the other side of
the bridge, too, there was no one. I drove as far as the Izmailovsky
Menagerie, there was no one. I dismissed the cabman and went forward on
foot. Walking backwards and forwards, at last I saw on another road a
carriage of some sort. A handsome young coachman was standing by it. ‘Has
a tall gentleman in a straw hat driven by here,’ I asked him, ‘and not
alone, with a young lady?’
‘I have seen no one,’ the coachman answered reluctantly.
‘With whom did you come here?’
‘With gentlefolks.’
‘What is their name?’
‘What is that to you?’
‘What a fellow you are really, if it was nothing to do with me, I should
not be asking you.’
The coachman gave me a searching look and smiled—apparently my appearance
disposed him more favourably to me.
‘If you have business with them then you ought to know their names
yourself.’
‘You are a regular flint; well, I want a gentleman named Ketscher.’
The coachman smiled again, and pointing towards the graveyard said:
‘There, do you see something black in the distance? That’s himself, and
the young lady is with him; she did not bring her hat, so Mr. Ketscher
gave her his, luckily it was a straw one.’
Again this time we met in a graveyard!
With a faint cry she flung herself on my neck.
‘And it’s for ever!’ she cried.
‘For ever,’ I repeated. Ketscher was touched, tears gleamed in his eyes,
he took our hands and in a trembling voice said, ‘Friends, be happy!’ We
embraced him. This was our real wedding!
For over an hour we waited in the private dining-room of Perov’s
restaurant, and still the carriage and Matvey did not come! Ketscher
frowned. The possibility of trouble never entered our heads, we were so
happy there, the three of us, and as much at home as though we had always
been together. There was a wood in front of the windows, from the storey
below came strains of music and a gypsy chorus; the weather was lovely
after the storm.
I was not, like Ketscher, afraid of the police being put on our track
by the princess; I knew that she stood too much on her dignity to let a
policeman be mixed up in our family affairs. Besides, she never took any
step without consulting the Senator, nor the Senator without consulting
my father; my father would never consent to the police stopping me in
Moscow or near Moscow, which would mean my being sent to Bobruisk or to
Siberia for disobedience to the will of the Most High. The only possible
danger was from the secret police, but it had all been done so quickly
that it was hard for them to know it. Besides, if they had got an inkling
of anything, it would never occur to any one that a man who had secretly
returned from exile and was eloping with his bride would be quietly
sitting in Perov’s restaurant where people were coming in and out from
morning to night.
At last Matvey appeared with the carriage.
‘One more glass,’ commanded Ketscher.
And we set off.
And then we were alone, that is, the two of us, flying along the Vladimir
road.
At Bunkovo while they were changing horses we went into the inn. The old
hostess came to ask us whether we would like anything; and, looking at us
good-naturedly, said: ‘How young and pretty your good lady is, and the
two of you, God bless you, make a pretty pair.’ We blushed up to our ears
and did not dare to look at each other, but asked for tea to cover our
confusion. Between five and six next day we reached Vladimir. There was
no time to be lost; leaving Natalie with the family of an old official, I
rushed off to find whether everything was ready. But who was there to get
things ready in Vladimir?
There are good-natured people everywhere. A Siberian regiment of
Uhlans was stationed at Vladimir at the time; I was only very slightly
acquainted with the officers, but, meeting one of them rather often in
the public library, I took to bowing to him; he was very polite and
charming. A month later he admitted that he knew me and my story in 1834
and told me that he was himself a student of the Moscow University. When
I was leaving Vladimir and looking about for some one in whose hands
to leave various arrangements, I thought of this officer, and told him
openly what I wanted. Genuinely touched by my confidence, he pressed my
hand, promised to do everything, and kept his word.
He was awaiting me in full dress uniform, with white facings, with his
casque uncovered, with a cartridge-case across his shoulder, and all
sorts of cords and trimmings. He told me that the bishop had given
the priest permission to marry us, but had bidden him first show the
baptismal certificate. I gave the officer the baptismal certificate,
while I went off to another young man who had also been a Moscow student.
He was serving his two provincial years in accordance with the new
regulation, in the governor’s office, and was almost dying of boredom.
‘Would you like to act as best man?’
‘Whose best man?’
‘Mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘Yes, yes, mine.’
‘Delighted. When?’
‘At once.’
He thought that I was joking, but when I briefly told him how it was, he
skipped with delight. To be best man at a clandestine wedding, to have
to make arrangements, possibly to get into trouble, and all that in a
little town absolutely without any diversions! He promised at once to get
a carriage and four horses and ran to his chest of drawers to see whether
he had a clean white waistcoat.
As I drove away from him, I met my Uhlan with a priest sitting on his
knee. Imagine a smart, gaily attired officer in a little droshky with a
stout priest, adorned with a huge, flowing beard, and arrayed in a silk
cassock, which kept catching in all the Uhlan’s useless accoutrements.
This sight might have attracted attention not only in the street that led
from the Golden Gate of Vladimir, but in the Paris boulevards, or even in
Regent Street. But the Uhlan did not think of that, and, indeed, I only
thought of it afterwards. The priest had been going from house to house
holding services, as it was St. Nicholas’ Day, and my cavalry officer had
captured him by force and requisitioned him. We drove off to the bishop’s.
To explain the position I must describe how the bishop came to be
involved in it. The day before I went away the priest who had agreed to
marry us suddenly announced that he would not do so without the bishop’s
sanction, that he had heard something and was afraid to do it. In spite
of all my eloquence, as well as the Uhlan’s, the priest was obstinate and
stuck to his point. The Uhlan suggested the priest of his regiment. The
latter, a priest with a cropped head and shaven skin, wearing a long,
full-skirted coat and trousers tucked into his high boots, and placidly
smoking a soldier’s pipe, though affected by certain details of our
proposition, yet refused to perform the ceremony, declaring, in a mixture
of Polish and White Russian, that he was strictly forbidden to marry
‘civilians.’
‘And we are still more strictly forbidden to be witnesses and best men at
such marriages without permission,’ observed the officer.
‘That’s a different matter, as God’s above us, it’s a different matter.’
‘God helps those who help themselves,’ I said to the Uhlan. ‘I’ll go
straight to the bishop. And by the way, why don’t you ask permission?’
‘That won’t do. The Colonel would tell his wife and she’d gossip about it
all over the place. Besides, he’d very likely refuse it.’
Bishop Parfeny of Vladimir was a clever, austere, rough old man; managing
and self-willed, he might equally well have been a governor or a general,
and, indeed, I think he would have been more in his right place as a
general than as a monk; but it had turned out otherwise, and he ruled
his diocese as he would have ruled a division in the Caucasus. I noticed
in him far more of the qualities of an administrator than of one dead to
the things of this life. He was, however, rather harsh than ill-natured;
like all business-like men, he grasped questions quickly and clearly and
was furious when people talked nonsense to him or did not understand him.
It is far easier to come to an understanding with men of that sort than
with soft but weak or irresolute persons. In accordance with the custom
of all provincial towns, on arriving in Vladimir I went once after mass
to call on the bishop. He received me graciously, gave me his blessing,
and regaled me with sturgeon; then invited me to come some evening and
talk to him, saying that his eyes were failing and he could not read
in the evening. I went two or three times; he talked about literature,
knew all the new Russian books and read the magazines, and so we got on
splendidly together. Nevertheless, it was with some alarm that I knocked
at his episcopal door.
It was a hot day. His Reverence the bishop received me in the garden. He
was sitting under a big, shady lime tree, and had taken off his monk’s
cap and let his grey locks flow in freedom. A bald, impressive-looking
head-priest was standing before him, bareheaded, and right in the sun,
reading some document aloud; his face was crimson and big drops of
perspiration stood out on his forehead, he screwed up his eyes at the
dazzling whiteness of the paper with the sunlight upon it, yet he did not
dare to move nor did the bishop tell him to step out of the sun.
‘Sit down,’ he said after blessing me, ‘we are just finishing, these are
our little Consistory affairs. Read,’ he added to the head-priest, and
the latter, after mopping his face with a dark blue handkerchief and
coughing aside, set to reading again.
‘What news have you to tell me?’ Parfeny asked me, handing the pen to the
head-priest, who seized this excellent opportunity to kiss his hand.
I told him of the priest’s refusal.
‘Have you the necessary papers?’ I showed him the governor’s permission.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes.’
Parfeny smiled: ‘And on the lady’s side?’
‘There is a baptismal certificate; it will be brought on the day of the
wedding.’
‘When is the wedding?’
‘In two days.’
‘Have you found a house?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There you see,’ Parfeny said to me, putting his finger on his lips and
pulling his mouth towards his cheek, one of his favourite tricks; ‘you’re
an intelligent and well-read man, but you won’t catch an old sparrow by
putting salt on its tail. There is something shady about it, so, since
you have come to me, you had much better tell me all about it truthfully.
Then I’ll tell you straightforwardly what can be done and what can’t, and
in any case my advice will do you no harm.’
My case seemed to me so clear and so just that I told him the whole
story, without, of course, going into unnecessary details. The old man
listened attentively and often looked into my face. It appeared he was an
old acquaintance of the princess’s, and therefore could to some extent
judge for himself of the truth of my account.
‘I understand, I understand,’ he said when I had finished. ‘Well, let me
write a letter to the princess on my own account.’
‘I assure you that no effort at peace will lead to anything, her
ill-humour and exasperation have gone too far. I have told your Reverence
all about it, as you desired, now I will add that if you refuse to help
me I shall be forced to do secretly, stealthily, by bribes, what I am
doing now quietly, but straightforwardly and openly. I can assure you of
one thing, neither prison nor a fresh term of exile will stop me.’
‘You see,’ said Parfeny, getting up and stretching, ‘what a headstrong
fellow you are. Perm has not been enough for you, you are not broken
in yet. Am I saying that I forbid it? Get married if you like, there
is nothing unlawful about it; but it would have been better peacefully
with the consent of the family. Send me your priest, I’ll persuade him
somehow; only remember one thing, without the proper certificate on the
bride’s side don’t you attempt it. So it’s a case of “Neither prison nor
exile”—upon my word, what are people coming to! Well, the Lord be with
you! Good luck to you, only you’ll get me into trouble with the princess.’
And so in addition to the Uhlan officer his Reverence Parfeny, bishop of
Vladimir and Suzdal, came into our conspiracy.
When as a preliminary measure I had asked the governor’s permission, I
had not spoken of my marriage as though it were clandestine; silence
about that was the surest means of avoiding talk about it, and nothing
could be more natural than the arrival of my future bride in Vladimir,
since I had not the right to leave it. It was also natural that under the
circumstances we should wish the wedding to be as quiet as possible.
When we arrived with the priest at the bishop’s on the ninth of May,
his servitor told us that he had gone to his country house and would
not be back until night. It was already between seven and eight in the
evening, weddings cannot be celebrated after ten, and the next day was
Saturday. What was to be done? The priest was scared. We went in to see
the head-monk, the bishop’s chaplain; he was drinking tea with rum in it
and was in the most affable frame of mind. I told him our difficulty,
he poured me out a cup of tea and insisted on my adding rum to it; then
he took out immense silver spectacles, read the baptismal certificate,
turned it over, looked at the other side where there was nothing written,
folded it up, and giving it back to the priest said: ‘It’s all perfectly
regular.’
The priest still hesitated. I told the chaplain that if I were not
married to-day it would be terribly upsetting for me.
‘Why put it off?’ he said. ‘I will tell his Reverence; marry them, Father
Ioann, marry them—in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
Amen.’
There was nothing for the priest to say, he drove off to write out our
names while I galloped off for Natalie.
When we were driving out at the Golden Gate alone together, the sun,
which had till then been hidden by the clouds, shed a dazzling light upon
us with its last bright, red glow, and so triumphantly and joyously that
we both said in one breath: ‘That’s to see us off!’ I remember her smile
at the words and the pressure of her hand.
The little church of the sledge-drivers’ quarter was empty, there were
neither choristers nor lighted candelabra. Five or six common soldiers
of the Uhlan regiment came in as they were passing, and went out again.
The old deacon chanted in a soft, faint voice, Matvey looked at us with
tears of joy, our young ‘best men’ stood behind us with the heavy crowns
with which all the drivers of Vladimir were crowned. The deacon with a
shaky hand passed us the silver bowl of union ... it grew dark in the
church, only a few candles glowed here and there; all this was, or seemed
to us, extremely picturesque just from its simplicity. The bishop drove
by, and seeing the church doors open stopped and sent to inquire what
was happening. The priest, turning a little pale, went out himself to
him, and returning a minute later with a cheerful face, said to us: ‘His
Reverence sends you his episcopal blessing and bade me tell you he is
praying for you.’
By the time we were driving home the news of our clandestine marriage was
all over the town; ladies were waiting on the balconies and the windows
were open. I let down the carriage windows and was a little vexed that
the darkness prevented me from showing my ‘fair bride.’
At home we drank two bottles of wine with Matvey and the ‘best men,’ the
latter stayed twenty minutes with us, and then we were left alone, and
again, as at Perov’s, that seemed so natural that we were not in the
least surprised at it, though for months afterwards we could not get over
the wonder of it.
We had three rooms, we sat at a little table in the drawing-room, and
forgetting the fatigue of the last few days we talked half the night.
To have a crowd of outsiders at the wedding festivities has always seemed
to me something coarse, unseemly, almost cynical; why this premature
lifting of the veil from love, this initiation of indifferent casual
spectators into the privacy of the family? How all these hackneyed
greetings, commonplace vulgarities, stupid allusions, must wound the
poor girl who is thrust into the public eye in the part of bride ... not
one delicate feeling is spared, the luxury of the bridal chamber, the
charm of the night attire displayed, not only for the visitors but for
every idle gazer. And afterwards the first days of the new life that is
beginning, in which every minute is precious, which ought to be spent far
away in solitude, are, as though in mockery, passed in endless dinners
and exhausting balls, amidst a crowd.
Next morning we found two rose-bushes and an immense nosegay awaiting us
in the dining-room. Dear, kind Yulia Fyodorovna (the governor’s wife),
who took a warm interest in our romance, had sent them. I embraced
and kissed her footman and then we went off to see her. As the bride’s
trousseau consisted of two dresses, the one in which she had travelled
and the other one in which she had been married, she put on the wedding
dress.
From Yulia Fyodorovna’s we drove to the bishop’s; the old man himself led
us into the garden, with his own hands cut us a nosegay of flowers, told
Natalie how I had tried to frighten him with the prospect of my own ruin,
and in conclusion advised her to study housekeeping. ‘Do you know how to
salt cucumbers?’ he asked Natalie.
‘I do,’ she answered, laughing.
‘Oh, I don’t feel sure of it. And you know, it is essential!’
In the evening I wrote a letter to my father. I begged him not to be
angry at the accomplished fact, and, ‘since God had united us,’ to
forgive me and add his blessing. My father as a rule wrote me a few
lines once a week; he did not write one day earlier or later in reply,
and even began his letter exactly as usual: ‘I received your letter of
the 10th of May, at half-past five the day before yesterday, and from it
learned, not without regret, that God had united you with Natasha. I do
not repine against the will of God in anything, but submit blindly to the
trials which He lays upon me. But since the money is mine and you have
not thought it necessary to regard my wishes, I must inform you that I
shall not add one kopeck to your present allowance of one thousand silver
roubles a year.’
How spontaneously we laughed at this distinction between the spiritual
and temporal power.
And yet how we needed something more! The money I had borrowed was all
spent. We had nothing, absolutely nothing, no clothes, no linen, no
crockery. We sat shut up in a little flat because we had nothing to
go out in. Matvey with a view to economy made a desperate effort to
transform himself into a cook, but except beefsteaks and collops he could
cook nothing, and so for the most part confined himself to ready-cooked
provisions, ham, salt fish, milk, eggs, cheese, and extremely hard cakes
flavoured with mint and not in their first youth. Dinner was an endless
source of amusement to us; sometimes we had milk first by way of soup,
and sometimes last by way of dessert. Over this Spartan fare we used to
recall, smiling, the long process of the sacred ritual of dinner at the
princess’s and at my father’s, where half a dozen flunkeys ran about
the room with bowls and dishes, cloaking under the magnificent _mise en
scène_ the really very unattractive fare.
So we struggled along in poverty for a year. ‘The Chemist’ sent us ten
thousand paper roubles; more than six thousand of this went to pay our
debts, and what remained was a great help. At last even my father was
tired of attacking us like a fortress by hunger, and without adding to my
allowance he began sending us presents of money, though I never dropped a
hint about money after his famous _distinguo_!
I began looking for another lodging. A big, deserted manor-house with a
garden was to let. It belonged to the widow of a prince who had ruined
himself at cards, and it was being let very cheaply because it was far
away and inconvenient, and, above all, because the princess bargained
to keep part of it, in no way separated from the rest, for her son, a
spoilt fellow of thirty, and for the servants. No one would agree to
this partial possession; I at once accepted it, for I was fascinated by
the loftiness of the rooms, the size of the windows, and the big, shady
garden. But this very loftiness and spaciousness made a very amusing
contrast with our complete lack of movable belongings and articles of the
first necessity. The princess’s housekeeper, a good-natured old woman,
who was greatly attracted by Matvey, provided us at her own risk, first
with a table-cloth, then with cups, then with sheets, then with knives
and forks.
What bright and untroubled days we spent in the little three-roomed flat
at the Golden Gate and in the princess’s immense house!... There was
a big, scarcely furnished drawing-room, in it we were sometimes taken
by such childishness that we raced about it, jumped over the chairs,
lighted candles in all the candelabra ensconced on the wall, and after
illuminating the room _a giorno_, recited poetry. Matvey and our maid, a
young Greek girl, took part in everything and ‘played the fool’ as much
as we did. Discipline was ‘not maintained’ in our household.
And for all this childishness our life was full of a deep earnestness.
Cast away in the quiet, peaceful little town, we were completely devoted
to each other. From time to time came news of some one of our friends,
a few words of warm sympathy, and then again we were alone, absolutely
alone. But in this solitude our hearts were not closed by our happiness;
on the contrary, they were more open to every interest than ever before;
we led a full and many-sided life, we thought and read, gave ourselves
up to every pursuit and again concentrated on our love; we compared our
thoughts and dreams, and saw with amazement how endless was our sympathy,
how in all the subtlest turns and twists of feeling and thought, taste
and antipathy, all was kinship and harmony. The only difference was that
Natalie brought into our union a gentle, mild, gracious element, the
characteristics of a young girl with all the poesy of a loving woman,
while I brought lively activity, my _semper in motu_, infinite love, and,
moreover, a medley of earnest ideas, laughter, ‘dangerous’ thoughts and
Utopian projects.
My desires had reached a standstill, I was satisfied, I lived in the
present, I expected nothing from the morrow, I carelessly trusted that
it would take nothing from me. Personal life could give nothing more, it
had reached the limit; any change could but diminish it, on one side or
another.
In the spring Ogaryov came from his exile for a few days. He was then
in the very height of his powers; he was soon to pass through painful
experiences; at moments he seemed to feel that trouble was near, but he
could still turn round and look upon the lifted hand of destiny as a
dream. I myself thought then that the storm-clouds would be dissipated;
carelessness is characteristic of everything young and not devoid of
strength, and in it is expressed a trust in life and oneself. The feeling
of complete mastery over one’s fate lulls us asleep ... while dark clouds
and black-hearted people draw us without a word to the edge of the
precipice.
And well it is that man either does not suspect, or can shut his eyes
and forget. Where there is apprehension there can never be complete
happiness; complete happiness is serene as the sea in the calm of summer.
Apprehension gives its peculiar, feverish, morbid thrill which fascinates
like the thrill of suspense at cards, but how far away it is from the
feeling of harmonious infinite peace. And so, whether it be a dream or
not, I deeply prize that trust in life, before life itself has refuted it
and has awakened one.... The Chinese die for the coarse illusion of it
given by opium.
So I ended this chapter in 1853 and so I end it now.
Chapter 24
THE THIRTEENTH OF JUNE 1839
One long, winter evening towards the end of 1838 we were sitting, as
always, alone, reading and then not reading, talking and then being
silent, and in silence continuing the talk. There was a hard frost
outside, and even in the room it was not at all warm. Natasha did not
feel well and was lying on the sofa, covered with a cloak. I was sitting
on the floor near her; my reading did not get on, she was inattentive,
thinking of something else and absorbed, and her face kept changing.
‘Alexandr,’ she said, ‘I have a secret, come nearer and I will tell you
in your ear, but guess it yourself.’
I did guess, but insisted on her telling me. I longed to hear this news
from her: she told me, we looked at each other in excitement and with
tears in our eyes.
How rich is the human heart in the capacity for happiness, for joy, if
only people know how to give themselves up to it without being distracted
by trifle. As a rule the present is spoilt by external worries, empty
cares, irritable fussiness, all the rubbish which is brought upon us in
the midday of life by the vanity of vanities, and the stupid ordering of
our everyday life. We waste our best minutes, we let them slip through
our fingers as though we had an endless store of them. We are usually
thinking of to-morrow, of next year, when we ought with both hands to be
clasping the brimming cup which life itself, unbidden, with her customary
lavishness, holds out to us, and to drink and drink of it until the cup
passes into other hands. Nature does not care to waste time offering it
and pressing us.
One would have thought nothing could have been added to our happiness,
and yet the news of the coming child opened new vistas of feeling, new
raptures, hopes and apprehensions of which we had before known nothing.
Love, a little scared and agitated, grows more tender, is more anxious
in its solicitude, from the egoism of two it becomes not a mere egoism
of three but the sacrifice of two for a third; family life begins with
the child. A new element is entering into life, a mysterious person is
knocking at its portals, a guest who is yet is not, but whose coming is
essential, who is eagerly awaited. What will he be? No one knows, but
whatever he may be like, he is a happy stranger, with what love he is met
on the threshold of life!
And then there is the agonising anxiety: would he be born alive or
not? There are so many unhappy possibilities. The doctor smiles at the
questions: ‘He knows nothing or will not say,’ one thinks; everything is
still hidden from outsiders; there is no one to ask, besides one is shy.
And then the child gives signs of life. I know no loftier and more
religious feeling than that which fills the heart at feeling the first
movements of the future being, struggling and stretching its immature
muscles, that first touch with which the father blesses the newcomer and
yields a place for him in his life.
‘My wife,’ a French bourgeois said to me once, ‘my wife’—and seeing that
there were neither ladies nor children present, added in an undertone—‘is
pregnant.’
Indeed, the muddle of all our moral conceptions is such that pregnancy
is looked upon as something improper. Though childbirth should claim
unconditional respect for the mother, whoever she may be, the facts are
kept secret not from a feeling of respect or spiritual delicacy, but
from a regard for propriety. All that is the depravity of idealism,
the corruption of monasticism, the accursed immolation of the flesh;
it all comes from that unhappy dualism which draws us like Magdeburg
hemispheres in opposite directions. Jeanne Deroin,[13] in spite of her
socialism, hints in her _Almanach des Femmes_ that in time children will
be born differently. How differently?—As the angels are born.—Well, that
makes it clear.
Honour and glory to our teacher, the old realist Goethe. He had the
courage to set the woman with child beside the innocent maidens of
romanticism, and did not fear to mould in his mighty verse the changing
forms of the future mother, comparing them with the supple limbs of the
future woman.
Truly the woman who bears with the memory of past transports the whole
cross of love, all its burden, sacrificing beauty and time, suffering,
feeding from her own bosom, is one of the most beautiful and touching
figures.
In the Roman elegies, in the Weaver, in Gretchen and her despairing
prayer, Goethe has expressed all the solemn beauty with which nature
surrounds the ripening fruit and all the thorns with which society crowns
that vessel of the future life.
Poor mothers, who hide as though it were shame the traces of love, how
brutally and mercilessly the world persecutes them, and persecutes them
at the very time when the woman needs peace and kindness, savagely
poisoning for her those priceless moments in which life droops fainting
under the weight of happiness.
Gradually the secret is with horror discovered: the luckless mother at
first tries to persuade herself that it is fancy, but soon doubt is
impossible; with despair and tears she follows every movement of her
babe, she would like to check the secret workings of its life, to turn
it back, she hopes for some misfortune as a mercy, as pardon—while
inexorable nature goes its way; she is young and healthy!
To force a mother to desire the death of her own child, and sometimes
even more, to drive her to be its murderess and then to punish her, or
to cover her with shame if the mother’s heart is too strong for her—how
intelligently and morally is society organised!
And who has weighed, who has considered what passes in her heart while
the mother crosses the terrible path from love to fear, from fear
to despair, to crime, to madness, for infanticide is physiological
abnormality. She too has had, of course, moments of forgetfulness, in
which she has passionately loved her coming little one, only the more
because his existence was a secret between them; there have been times
when she has dreamed of his little feet, of his milky smile, has kissed
him in his sleep, has found in him a likeness to one who has been so dear
to her....
‘But do they feel it? Of course there are unhappy victims ... but ... the
others, but the average?’
It would be hard, one fancies, to sink lower than those bats that flit
about at night in the fog and slush of the London streets, those victims
of ignorance, poverty, and want, with whom society guards its respectable
women from the excesses of their admirers’ sensuality ... in them, of
course, it would be hardest of all to assume traces of maternal feeling,
would it not?
Allow me to tell you of a little incident that occurred to me. Three
years ago I met a young and beautiful girl. She belonged to the higher
ranks of prostitution, that is, did not democratically walk the streets,
but lived in bourgeois style, kept by a merchant. It was at a public
ball; the friend who was with me knew her and invited her to drink a
bottle of wine with us in the gallery, she, of course, accepted the
invitation. She was a merry, careless creature, and probably like Laura
in Pushkin’s _Don Juan_ was never worried by the fact that far away in
Paris it was cold while she heard the watchman in Madrid cry ‘The sun
is shining.’ ... After swallowing the last glass she rushed back to the
ponderous whirl of the English dances and I lost sight of her.
This winter, one wet evening I crossed the street to stand under the
Arcade in Pall Mall to escape the streaming rain; a poorly dressed woman,
shivering with cold, was standing under the lamp-post in the archway,
probably on the watch for her prey. Her features struck me as familiar,
she glanced at me, turned away and tried to shrink out of sight, but I
had time to recognise her. ‘What has happened to you?’ I asked her with
sympathy. Her sunken cheeks were suffused with bright crimson, whether
from shame or consumption I do not know, but it did not seem like rouge;
those two years and a half had made her look ten years older.
‘I was ill for a long time and was very unfortunate,’ with a look of
great distress she glanced towards her shabby clothes.
‘But where is your friend?’
‘He was killed in the Crimea.’
‘Why, but he was a merchant, wasn’t he?’
She was confused, and instead of answering, said: ‘I am very ill even
now, and besides I have no work at all. Why, have I changed so much?’ she
asked, looking at me suddenly in embarrassment.
‘Very much: in those days you were like a little girl, and now I
shouldn’t mind betting that you have children of your own.’
She flushed crimson, and with a sort of terror asked: ‘How did you know
that?’
‘Well, you see, I do know. Now tell me, what really has been happening to
you?’
‘Nothing, only you are right, I have got a little boy ... if only you
knew,’ and at those words her face brightened, ‘what a splendid, handsome
little fellow he is, even the neighbours all admire him. But that man
married a rich girl and went away to the Continent. The baby was born
afterwards. He is to blame for my position. At first I had money and
used to buy him everything in the biggest shops, but now things have got
worse and worse and I have taken everything to “my uncle.” I have been
advised to put baby out in the country, it certainly would be better for
him, but I can’t; I look at him, I just look at him and feel, no, we had
better die together; I tried to find a situation, but they won’t take
me with the baby. I went back to mother’s, she was all right, she’s got
a kind heart, she forgave me, she is fond of the boy and makes a lot of
him; but for five months now she has been bedridden—what with the doctor
to pay and the medicine and then, as you know yourself, coal and bread
and everything so dear this year, there was nothing but starvation before
us there. So I——,’ she paused, ‘of course, it would be better to throw
myself in the Thames than ... but there’s baby and I’m sorry for him,
whom should I leave him to, and you know he’s such a darling!’
I gave her something and in addition took out a shilling and said: ‘And
spend that on something for your baby.’ She took the coin joyfully,
held it in her hand, and all at once, giving it back to me, added with
a mournful smile: ‘Since you are so kind, buy him something yourself
in some shop here, a toy or something, for no one has ever given him a
present, poor little darling, since he was born.’
I looked with emotion at this _lost_ woman and pressed her hand
affectionately.
The zealous champions of ladies with camellias and pearls would do better
to leave velvet furniture and rococo boudoirs alone and look at the
wretched, starved, and shivering prostitution close at hand, the fatal
prostitution which forces its victims down the road to ruin and gives no
chance for rallying nor repentance. Scavengers more often find precious
stones in the gutter than amongst the tinsel of tawdry finery.
That reminded me of that clever translator of _Faust_, poor Gérard de
Nerval, who shot himself last year. He had not been home for five or six
days. It was discovered at last that he was spending his time in the
lowest dens near the town gates, as Paul Niquet used to do, that there
he had made friends with thieves, with low creatures of all sorts, was
treating them to drink, playing cards with them, and sometimes sleeping
under their protection. His old friends tried to persuade him to come
away and to put him to shame. Nerval, defending himself good-naturedly,
once said to them: ‘Let me tell you, my friends, you are fearfully
conventional. I assure you that the society of these people is no worse
than that of any others I have been among.’ He had been suspected of
madness; after that saying I imagine the suspicion passed into conviction!
The fatal day was approaching and everything became more and more
dreadful. I looked at the doctor and the mysterious face of the midwife
with slavish reverence. Neither Natasha nor I nor our young maid knew
anything about it; luckily, at my father’s request, an elderly lady, an
intelligent, practical, and capable woman called Praskovya Andreyevna,
came from Moscow to stay with us. Seeing our helplessness she took the
reins of management entirely into her own hands and I obeyed her like a
nigger.
One night I felt a hand touch me, I opened my eyes. Praskovya Andreyevna
was standing before me in a nightcap and dressing-gown with a candle
in her hand; she told me to send for the doctor and the midwife. I was
petrified as though the news were something quite unexpected. I felt as
though I should have liked to take a dose of opium, turn over on the
other side and sleep through the danger ... but there was no help for it.
I dressed with trembling hands and rushed to wake Matvey.
A dozen times I ran out from the bedroom into the hall to listen for a
carriage in the distance. Everything was still but for the faint, faint
rustle of the breeze of morning in the warm June air of the garden;
the birds were beginning to sing, the crimson dawn threw a light flush
over the leaves, and again I hurried back to the bedroom, pestered kind
Praskovya Andreyevna with stupid questions, squeezed Natasha’s hands
convulsively, did not know what to do, trembled and was in a fever ...
but at last the chaise rattled on the bridge—thank God, it was in time!
At eleven o’clock in the morning I started as from a violent electric
shock when the loud scream of a new-born baby reached my ear. ‘A boy,’
Praskovya Andreyevna called to me as she went towards the cradle; I would
have taken the baby from the pillow, but I could not, my hands trembled
so violently. The thought of danger (which often indeed is only beginning
at this stage) that had weighed upon me vanished at once, a wild joy
took possession of my heart as though all the bells were pealing for a
festival of festivals! Natasha smiled at me, smiled at the baby, wept
and laughed, and only her broken breathing, her weary eyes, and deathly
pallor reminded me of the struggle, the agony that she had just passed
through.
Then I left the room, I could bear no more. I went into my study and
flung myself on the sofa, at the end of my strength, and lay for half an
hour without definite thought, without definite feeling, in a sort of
anguish of bliss.
That face of exhausted ecstasy, that joy flitting on the brink of death
upon the mother’s countenance, I recognised again in Vandyke’s Madonna
in the Corsini Gallery at Rome. The baby has just been born, they are
holding it up to the mother; exhausted, with not a drop of blood in her
face, faint and weary, she smiles, while her tired eyes rest on the baby
with a look of infinite love.
It must be admitted that the Virgin Mother is quite out of keeping with
the celibate religion of Christianity. With her, life, love, gentleness
cannot but break into the everlasting funeral, the dread day of judgment,
and the other horrors of Church theology.
That is why Protestantism has rejected the Virgin Mother _only_ from its
barn-like chapels, from its factories of God’s word. She really does
interfere with Christian propriety, she cannot escape from her earthly
nature, she warms the cold church, and in spite of everything remains
a woman, a mother. She makes up for the supernatural conception by the
natural birth, and snatches a blessing on her labour from the lips of
monastic worshippers who curse everything bodily.
Michael Angelo and Raphael grasped that in their painting.
In ‘The Day of Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel, in that massacre of St.
Bartholomew in the other world, we see the Son of God going to preside
over the executions; He has already lifted His hand.... He will give the
signal, and tortures, agonies will follow, the last trump will sound, the
universal _auto-da-fé_ will begin crackling; but—the Mother, trembling
and suffering for all, presses up to Him in horror, and is imploring Him
on behalf of the sinners; looking at her He will perhaps be softened and
forget His cruel ‘Woman, what hast thou to do with me?’ and will not give
the signal.
The Sistine Madonna is Mignon after the child’s birth, she is frightened
at her incredible fate, helpless....
‘Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, gethan?’
Her inner peace is shattered, she has been told that her son is the Son
of God, that she is the Mother of God; she looks with a sort of nervous
ecstasy, with mesmeric clairvoyance she seems to be saying: ‘Take Him, He
is not mine.’ But at the same time she presses Him to herself as though,
if she could, she would fly with Him far away and would simply fondle
and feed at her bosom not the Saviour of the world but her own babe. And
all this is because she is a human mother and has no kinship with Isis
and Rhea and all the other gods of the female sex.
That is why it has been so easy for her to conquer the cold Aphrodite,
that Ninon L’Enclos of Olympus, whose children no one troubles about.
Mary with her babe in her arms, with her eyes always gently looking down
upon Him, surrounded by the halo of womanliness and the holiness of
motherhood, is nearer to our hearts than the golden-haired Aphrodite.
To my thinking Pius IX. and his Conclave were very consistent in
proclaiming the unnatural or, in their language, immaculate conception of
the Virgin. Mary, born naturally like you and me, would naturally stand
up for men and sympathise with us: in her the living reconciliation of
flesh and spirit would steal into religion. If even she was not humanly
born, there is nothing in common between her and us, she will not feel
for us, and the flesh is once more damned—and the Church more essential
than ever for salvation.
It is a pity that the Pope is a thousand years too late. That, it
seems, is Pius IX.’s fate. _Troppo tardi, Santo Padre, siete sempre e
sempre—troppo tardi!_
* * * * *
When I wrote this part of my Memoirs I had not our old letters. I got
them in 1856. After reading them over I had to correct two or three
passages, not more. My memory had not betrayed me. I should have liked to
add a few of Natalie’s letters, and at the same time I am restrained by a
sort of dread and cannot decide the question whether I ought to lay bare
our life any further, and whether those lines so dear to me might not
meet with a cold smile.
Among Natalie’s papers I found my own notes to her, written partly
before prison and partly from the Krutitsky Barracks.... Some of them
I append to this part. Perhaps they will not seem superfluous to those
who are fond of tracing the sources of men’s destinies, perhaps such
will read them with that nervous interest with which we look through the
microscope at the development of the living organism.
I[14]
_August 15th, 1832._
DEAR NATALYA ALEXANDROVNA,—To-day is your birthday; I should
very much have liked to wish you many happy returns in person,
but there really is no possibility. I am sorry I have not been
to see you for so long, but circumstances have quite prevented
me from disposing of my time as I should have liked. I hope
that you will forgive me, and wish you the full development of
all your talents and all the treasures of happiness which fate
bestows on the pure in heart.—Your devoted
A. H.
II
_July 5th or 6th, 1833._
You are wrong, Natalya Alexandrovna. You are quite wrong in
thinking that I should confine myself to one letter—here is
another for you. It is extremely pleasant to write to persons
with whom one is in sympathy, there are so few of them, so few
that one wouldn’t use a quire of paper on them in a year.
I am a graduate, that is true, but they did not give me the
gold medal. I have a silver medal—_one of three_!
A. H.
_P.S._—To-day there was the prize-giving, but I didn’t go for I
don’t care to be second.
III
(_At the beginning of 1834._)
Natalie! we are expecting you impatiently. M—— hopes that in
spite of E—— I——’s threats yesterday Amelia Mihailovna will be
sure to come too, and so, till we meet,—Wholly yours,
A. H.
IV
KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_December 10th, 1834_.
I have just written a letter to the colonel in which I have
asked for a permit for you, there is no answer yet. It will be
harder for you to arrange it, but I rely on Mother. You were
in luck in regard to me, you were the last of my friends whom
I saw before my arrest [we parted confidently hoping to see
each other soon at nine o’clock, but at two I was already in
the police-station], and you will be the first to see me again.
Knowing you, I know that that will give you pleasure, let me
assure you that it will me too. To me you are a sister.
There is not much for me to say about myself. I have settled
down and grown used to being a prisoner. The most dreadful
thing for me is the separation from Ogaryov, he is essential
to me. I have not seen him once—that is, not properly—though
on one occasion I was sitting alone in a little lobby (at the
committee), my examination was over; from my window the lighted
porch could be seen; a chaise was brought round, I rushed
instinctively to the window, opened the little pane and saw an
adjutant get in together with Ogaryov. The chaise drove off
and he had no chance to see me. Can we be fated to perish by
a mute, inglorious death, of which no one will hear? Why then
has nature given us spirits craving for activity, for glory?
Can that be a mockery? But no, faith, strong and living, glows
here in my heart, there is a providence watching over us! I am
reading with delight _The Lives of the Saints_; there you have
examples of self-sacrifice, there you have men!
I have just received the answer, it is not cheering—they refuse
the permit.
Good-bye, remember and love your brother.
V
_December 31st, 1834._
I will never take upon myself the responsibility which you
lay upon me, never! You have a great deal that is _your own_,
why then do you give yourself up to my will like this? I want
you to make _of yourself whatever you can make of yourself_;
for my part I undertake to assist that development, to remove
obstacles.
As for your position, it is not so bad for your development as
you imagine. You have a great advantage over many; as soon as
you began to understand yourself, you found yourself alone,
alone in the whole world. Others have known a father’s love and
a mother’s tenderness—you have not had them. No one has cared
to look after you, you have been left to yourself. What can be
better for development? Thank your fates that no one did look
after you, they would have instilled something alien to you,
they would have warped your childish soul—now it is too late.
VI
KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_February 1835_.
I am told you have an idea of going into a nunnery; don’t
expect me to smile at the idea, I understand it, but it needs
to be very, very thoroughly weighed. Can it be that the
thought of love has never stirred your bosom? A nunnery means
despair, there are no nunneries now for prayer. Can you doubt
that you will one day meet a man who will love you, whom you
will love? How joyfully I shall press his hand and yours. He
will be happy. If that _he_ does not appear—then go into a
nunnery, that is a million times better than a vulgar marriage.
I understand _le ton d’exaltation_ of your letters—_you are in
love!_ If you write to me that you are seriously in love I’ll
say nothing—a brother’s authority stops at that. But I must
have you say those words. Do you know what ordinary men are?
They may of course make some people happy—but can they make you
happy, Natasha? You think too little of yourself! Better into a
nunnery than into the common herd. Remember one thing, that I
say this because I am your brother, _because I am proud of you
and for you_.
I have received another letter from Ogaryov; here is an extract
from it: ‘L’autre jour donc je repassais dans ma mémoire toute
ma vie. Un bonheur qui ne m’a jamais trahi, c’est ton amitié.
De toutes mes passions, une seule qui est restée intacte c’est
mon amitié pour toi, car mon amitié est une passion.’
In conclusion, one word more. What is so strange about it if he
does love you? What would he be if he did not love you, seeing
a shade of attention on your side? But I beseech you don’t tell
him of your love—not for a long time.
Farewell.—Your brother,
ALEXANDR.
VII
What marvels happen in the world, Natalie! Before I got your
last letter I had answered all your questions. I have heard
that you are ill and melancholy. Take care of yourself, drink
resolutely the—not so much bitter as—loathsome cup which your
_benefactors_ fill for you.
And after that on another sheet of paper follows:—
Natasha, my dear, my sister, for God’s sake don’t lose heart,
despise these abominable egoists, you make too much allowance
for them, despise them all—they are wretches! It was an awful
moment for me when I read your letter to Amelia. My God, what
a position I am in! What can I do for you? I swear that no
brother loves his sister more than I do you, but what can I do?
I received your letter and am pleased with you. Forget him, if
that is how it is; it was an experiment, and if it had really
been love it would not have been expressed like that.
VIII
KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_April 2nd_.
My heart is torn to shreds, I have not been so crushed, so
shattered, all the while I have been in prison as now. It is
not exile that is the cause of it. What do I care whether it is
Perm or Moscow, Moscow is no better than Perm. Let me tell you
all about it.
On the 31st of March we were summoned to hear our sentence. It
was a glorious, magnificent day. Twenty fellows were gathered
together, who were to be immediately scattered, some to the
cells of the fortresses, others to distant towns, while all of
them had spent nine months in captivity. They all sat, a noisy,
merry company, in the big hall. When I went in, Sokolovsky,
with a beard and a moustache, threw himself on my neck, and
S—— was there too. Ogaryov was brought in a good while after
me, and all rushed to greet him; we embraced with tears and a
smile. Everything rose up in my heart, I lived, I was a youth,
I pressed every one’s hand, in fact it was one of the happiest
moments of my life. I had not a gloomy thought. At last the
sentence[15] was read out.
All was well, but yesterday—damnation take it!—has shattered me
in every nerve. Obolensky is being confined in the same place
with me. When the sentence had been read us, I asked leave of
Tsinsky for us to see each other and was given permission.
On returning I went to see him, and meanwhile they had
forgotten to tell the colonel about the permission. Next day
that blackguard of an officer S—— reported the matter to the
colonel, and in that way I got three of the very best officers
into trouble who had shown me no end of kindness; they were
all reprimanded and all punished, and now have to be on duty
for three weeks (and it is Easter!) without being relieved.
Vassilyev the gendarme has been flogged, and all through me. I
bit my fingers, cried, raged, and the first thought that came
into my head was revenge. I told things about the officer which
may ruin him (he used to go off somewhere with a prisoner), and
then remembered that he is a poor man and the father of seven
children; but ought one to spare the sneak? Did he spare others?
IX
_April 10th, 1835. Nine o’clock._
A few hours before departure I am still writing, and writing to
you—my last word as I go away shall be for you. Bitter is the
feeling of separation, and involuntary separation, but such is
the fate to which I have given myself up, it draws me on and I
submit. When shall we see each other? Where? All that is dark,
but bright is the thought of your affection, the exile will
never forget his charming sister.
_Perhaps_ ... but I cannot finish, for they have come for
me—and so farewell for long, but, on my word, not for ever, I
cannot think that.
All this is written in the presence of the gendarmes.
Traces of tears can be seen on this note and the word _perhaps_ has been
twice underlined by her. Natalie carried this note about with her for
several months.
PART IV
MOSCOW, PETERSBURG, AND NOVGOROD
(1840-1847)