MY FATHER’S DEATH—MY HERITAGE—THE PARTITION—TWO NEPHEWS
From the end of the year 1845, my father’s strength grew steadily less;
he changed unmistakably after the loss of the Senator, whose death was
completely in keeping with his whole life, taking place casually and
almost in his carriage. In 1839 he spent one evening as usual with my
father; he had come from some School of Agriculture, brought with him a
model of some agricultural machine, the use of which I imagine could have
very little interest for him, and at eleven o’clock in the evening he
went home.
It was his habit to take a very light repast and to drink a glass of red
wine on reaching home; that evening he declined to take anything and
told my old friend Calot that he was rather tired and would go to bed.
Calot helped him undress, put a candle by his bedside and went out; he
had scarcely reached his room and taken off his coat when the Senator
rang the bell; Calot ran, the old man was lying dead on the floor by the
bed. This was a great shock to my father and very much alarmed him. His
solitude was even more complete, his own turn was terribly near, his
three elder brothers were in their graves; he was gloomier, and though,
as his habit was, he concealed his feelings and maintained his frigid
pose, yet his muscles failed him; I say muscles intentionally, for his
brain and his nerves remained unchanged to the very end.
In April 1845, the old man’s face looked as though he were near his
death, his eyes had lost their lustre; he was by now so thin that
sometimes, showing me his hands, he would say:
‘The skeleton is quite ready, you have only to take off the skin.’
His voice was weaker, he spoke more slowly; but his mind, his memory,
and his will were the same as ever, there was the same irony, the same
continual dissatisfaction with every one.
‘Do you remember,’ one of his old friends asked ten days before his
death, ‘who was our _chargé d’affaires_ in Turin after the war? You used
to know him abroad.’
‘Syeverin,’ answered the old man after thinking a few seconds.
On the 3rd of May I found him in bed, his cheeks were flushed with fever,
which had scarcely ever happened to him before; he was restless and said
that he could not get up; then he ordered leeches to be applied and, as
he lay in bed, continued his biting remarks during that operation.
‘So you are here,’ he said, as though I had only just come in; ‘you had
much better go off somewhere and amuse yourself, my dear fellow, it is a
very melancholy spectacle to watch a man’s dissolution, _cela donne des
pensées noires_, but first give the lad ten kopecks for vodka.’
I fumbled in my pocket and found nothing less than a twenty-five-kopeck
piece and would have given it, but the sick man saw it and said: ‘How
tiresome you are, I said ten kopecks.’
‘I haven’t got it.’
‘Give me my purse out of the bureau,’ and after a long search he found a
ten-kopeck piece.
Golohvastov, my father’s nephew, came in; the old man did not speak. In
order to say something, Golohvastov observed that he had just come from
the governor-general’s; at that word my father put his finger to his
black velvet skull-cap, like a soldier saluting. I had studied all his
gestures so thoroughly that I knew at once what was wrong; Golohvastov
ought to have said: ‘From Shtcherbatov’s.’
‘Only fancy, how strange,’ the latter went on, ‘it turns out that he has
gallstones.’
‘Why is it strange that the governor-general should have gallstones?’ the
invalid asked slowly.
‘Well, _mon oncle_, he is over seventy, and it is the first time he has
suffered in that way.’
‘Well, but here am I, though I am not governor-general, still it is just
as strange; I am seventy-six and it is the first time I am dying.’
He was fully aware of his position and that gave his irony a _macabre_
character, which made one smile while petrified with horror. His valet,
who always reported on small domestic matters to him in the evenings,
told him that the bridle was in a very bad condition and that they would
have to buy a new one.
‘What a queer fellow you are,’ my father answered; ‘a man is passing away
and you talk to him about a bridle. Wait a day or two till you have put
me on the drawing-room table, then tell him (pointing to me), he’ll bid
you buy a saddle and reins as well, though they are not wanted.’
On the 5th of May his temperature was higher, his features were more
sunken and began to look black, the old man was visibly wasting away from
the burning fever. He spoke little but with perfect collectedness. In
the morning he asked for coffee and for broth, and frequently drank some
sort of tisane. In the dusk, he called me to him and said: ‘It is over,’
passing his hand over the quilt like a sword or a scythe as he spoke. I
pressed his hand to my lips, it was burning. He tried to say something,
was beginning ... and, without having said anything, ended: ‘But there,
you know.’ And he turned to G—— I—— who was standing on the other side of
the bed: ‘Very bad,’ he said to him and rested his weary eyes upon him.
G—— I——, an extremely honest man who at that time was managing my
father’s business affairs and was more trusted by him than any one, bent
down to him and said: ‘All the measures you have tried hitherto have been
useless, allow me to advise you to resort to another remedy.’
‘What remedy?’ asked the sick man.
‘Won’t you send for the priest?’
‘Oh,’ said my father, turning to me, ‘I thought G—— I—— really had some
remedy to advise.’
Soon afterwards he fell into a sleep which lasted till next morning; I
suppose it must have been a state of unconsciousness. His illness made
fearful progress during the night; the end was near, at nine o’clock I
sent a horse messenger for Golohvastov.
At half-past ten my father asked to be dressed. He could not stand up
nor hold anything securely in his hand, but he noticed at once that the
silver buckle with which his trousers were fastened was missing and asked
for it. When he was dressed he moved, supported by us, into his study.
There was a big Voltairian armchair and a hard, narrow couch in the
room; he bade us lay him down on the latter and at once uttered a few
unintelligible and incoherent words, but five minutes later opened his
eyes, and meeting Golohvastov’s gaze asked him: ‘Why have you come so
early?’
‘I happened to be close by, uncle,’ answered Golohvastov, ‘so I looked in
to ask how you are.’
The old man smiled as though he would say, ‘You don’t take me in, my dear
fellow!’ Then he asked for his snuff-box. I handed it him and opened
it, but, though he made great efforts, he could not control his fingers
sufficiently to take a pinch; this seemed to strike him, he looked
gloomily around him, and again his brain seemed clouded, he uttered a few
inarticulate words, then asked: ‘What do you call those pipes that are
smoked through water?’
‘Hookahs,’ observed Golohvastov.
‘Yes, yes ... my hookah’—and that was all.
Meanwhile Golohvastov outside the door was getting the priest ready with
the sacrament. He asked the sick man in a loud voice whether he would
receive him; my father opened his eyes and nodded. K—— opened the door
and the priest walked in ... my father was unconscious again, but a few
words intoned by the priest and still more the smell of the incense
aroused him, and he crossed himself; the priest went up to him; we moved
away.
After the ceremony my father saw Dr. Levental zealously writing a
prescription.
‘What are you writing?’ he asked.
‘A prescription for you.’
‘What prescription, musk or something? You ought to be ashamed, you had
better prescribe opium to help me off peacefully.... Lift me up, I want
to sit in the armchair ...’ he added, turning to us. Those were almost
the last coherent words he uttered. We lifted up the dying man and sat
him in the chair. ‘Push me up to the table.’ We did so. He looked feebly
at all. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, indicating M—— K——. I mentioned his name.
He wanted to rest his head on his hand, but his arm gave way and fell
as though lifeless on the table; I put mine in its place. Twice he
bent a weary sick glance on me as though asking for help, a more and
more peaceful and serene expression came into his face ... there was a
sigh—another sigh, and the head that was so heavy on my arm began to grow
stiff.... Everything in the room preserved for some minutes a deathly
silence.
This was on the 6th of May 1846, about three o’clock in the afternoon.
He was buried in the Dyevitchy Monastery with great pomp and ceremony;
two families of peasants who had been set free by him came from
Pokrovskoe to bear the coffin. We followed them, with torches,
choristers, priests, archimandrites, bishops ... and the heart-rending
‘With thy Saints give rest,’ and then the grave and the heavy falling of
the earth on the coffin lid, and with that was ended the long life of the
old man who had so obstinately and powerfully maintained his authority
over his household, who had so weighed on all who surrounded him; and now
all at once his authority had vanished, his power was removed, he was
gone, utterly gone!
Earth was scattered on the grave, the priests and monks were taken off to
dinner. I did not join them, but went home. The carriages drove away, the
beggars pressed round the monastery gates, the peasants stood in a group,
wiping the sweat from their faces; I knew them all well, said good-bye to
them, thanked them and drove away.
Before my father’s death we had almost entirely moved out of the little
house into the big one in which he was living; and so it was natural that
in the bustle of the first few days I had not had time to look round.
But what I saw now on returning from the funeral sent a strange pang to
my heart; in the courtyard and in the porch I was met by the servants,
men and women, begging my favour and protection (why, I will explain at
once). There was a smell of incense in the drawing-room. I went into the
room in which my father’s bed used to stand, it had been carried out; the
door, which had for so many years been approached with cautious steps,
not only by the servants but even by myself, was wide open, and the maid
was setting a small table in the corner. Every one turned to me for
orders. My new position was detestable, revolting to me—this house and
everything in it belonged to me because some one was dead, and that some
one was my father. It seemed to me that in this coarse taking possession
there was something unclean, as though I were robbing the dead man.
There is something profoundly immoral in inheritance; it distorts
the legitimate grief at the loss of one near to us by entering into
possession of his belongings. Fortunately we avoided other revolting
consequences—the savage recriminations and hideous quarrelling of those
who share the booty. The division of all the property was complete in
a couple of hours, during which no one raised his voice or uttered a
single cold word, and after which all present separated with increased
respect for one another. This fact, the chief credit for which is due to
Golohvastov, deserves a few words of explanation.
During the lifetime of the Senator, he and my father made wills
bequeathing the ancestral estate to each other, on condition that the
survivor would leave it to their nephew Golohvastov. Part of his own
estate my father sold and assigned the sum he received from it to us.
Afterwards he gave me a little estate in the province of Kostroma, doing
so because Olga Alexandra Zherebtsov insisted upon it. The government
sequestered this estate contrary to the law before any inquiry was
made of me whether I intended to return. My father sold, after the
Senator’s death, the latter’s Tver estate. So long as my father’s own
estates covered what he sold of the property belonging to his brother,
Golohvastov said nothing. But when the idea occurred to the old man to
give me the estate in the Moscow province on condition that I should, in
accordance with his instructions, pay a sum of money for it, partly to
my brother and partly to other persons, then Golohvastov observed that
this was inconsistent with the wishes of the Senator who had intended the
estate to pass to him. The old man, who could not endure the slightest
opposition, especially in plans which he had long cherished and therefore
considered beyond all criticism, heaped sarcasms upon his nephew.
Golohvastov refused to have anything to do with his affairs, above all
to act as his executor. The misunderstanding was at first so acute that
they broke off all relations.
This was a serious blow to my father. There were few people in the world
that he really liked and Golohvastov was one of them. He had grown up
before his eyes, the whole family was proud of him. My father put great
trust in him, and always held him up to me as a model, and now, all of
a sudden, ‘Mitya, sister Lizaveta’s son,’ was on bad terms with him,
was refusing to carry out his arrangements, was putting his veto on his
plans, and already he could see behind him the ironical eyes of ‘the
Chemist,’ as with a smile he rubbed his nose with fingers burnt with acid.
As his habit was, my father showed not the faintest sign of his
mortification; he avoided talking about Golohvastov, but became
perceptibly more morose and uneasy and talked more often of ‘this awful
age in which all ties of relationship have grown lax, and age no longer
meets with the respect with which it was surrounded in happier days,’ I
suppose when Catherine II. was the representative of all the domestic
virtues!
At the beginning of the quarrel I was at Sokolovo and scarcely heard of
it, but the day after my return to Moscow Golohvastov called upon me
early in the morning. Being an extremely pedantic and formal person,
he told me all about it at very great length and in fine and correct
language, adding that he had made haste to come to me expressly to warn
me what was wrong before I should hear anything of the quarrel.
‘I may well be called Alexander,’ I said jocosely, ‘I will cut the
Gordian knot for you at once. Whatever happens, you must be reconciled,
and, to remove all subject of dispute, I tell you plainly and directly
that I refuse to accept Pokrovskoe; and the forest there alone will be
enough to cover the loss of the Tver estate.’
Golohvastov was a little embarrassed and therefore proceeded to prove to
me even more circumstantially all that I had thoroughly grasped from his
first few words. We parted on the best of terms.
One evening a few days later my father began of his own accord speaking
of Golohvastov. As his way was, when he was displeased with any one, he
did not leave him a leg to stand on. The ideal which he had held up to
me since I was ten years old, the model son, the exemplary brother, the
best of nephews, and the man who dressed so well that the knot of his
cravat was never too large or too small, appeared now, as though in some
photographic negative, with all the hollow places prominent and all the
white spots black.
The change to simple abuse would have been too abrupt and conspicuous
without all sorts of fine shades, transitions, and connections. My father
was too clever to be so inconsequent.
‘Oh, tell me, by the way, I keep forgetting to ask you, have you seen
Dmitry Pavlovitch’ (he had always called him ‘Mitya’) ‘since you came
back?’
‘Yes, once.’
‘Well, how is his Excellency?’
‘Oh, he is quite well.’
‘It’s quite right that you should see him; one ought to stick to such
people. I like him and have always liked him and, indeed, he deserves to
be liked. Of course he, too, has many absurd failings.... But God alone
is without sin. Making his career so rapidly has turned his head....
Well, he is young for the Anna ribbon; besides he has such duties; he as
curator goes to scold the schoolboys and so he has got into the way of
talking to people as though they were inferiors ... he lectures and the
pupils stand at attention and listen to him ... he imagines that he can
talk in that tone to every one. I don’t know whether you have noticed
it, but his voice even is different. I remember under the late Empress,
Prince Prozorovsky used to give commands to his orderlies in just that
harsh voice. Ridiculous as it seems, he came here to give me a lecture. I
listened to him and thought, “What if my sister Lizaveta could have seen
it!” I gave her away to Pavel Ivanovitch on their wedding day, and here
was her son shouting: “Well, uncle, if that is how it is, you had better
apply to Alexey Alexandrovitch, but I beg you to excuse me.” I have one
foot in the grave, as you know, and no end of worries and infirmities; I
am a long-suffering Job, in fact. And he shouts at me and gets crimson in
the face.... _Quel siècle!_ I know that he is accustomed to _décastères_.
Why, he never goes anywhere, but likes to sit at home giving orders to
his elders and stable-boys, and then those wretched little clerks with
“your Excellency this,” and “your Excellency that!” Why, it has turned
his brain....’
In short, just as by slightly changing the features in the portrait
of Louis Philippe you can finally get from a fine-looking old man
to a rotten pear, so the model Mitya passed point by point into a
Cartouche[117] or a Shemyaka.
When the last touches had been put in, I told him all my conversation
with Golohvastov. The old man listened attentively, scowled, and then,
after deliberately, carefully, methodically taking pinches of snuff, said
to me:
‘Pray don’t imagine, my dear fellow, that you are troubling me by
refusing Pokrovskoe.... I am not bowing down and begging any one to
take my estate, and I am not going to beg you to. There are plenty who
would be glad of it. Every one thwarts my plans; I am sick of it; I will
give everything to a hospital—the patients will be glad to have it. As
though Mitya were not enough, here are you teaching me what to do with my
property, and it is only the other day that Vera was washing you in a
tub. No, I am tired of it, it is time I was out of the way; I had better
go to the hospital myself.’
So the conversation ended.
At eleven o’clock next morning my father sent his valet for me. This
happened very rarely; as a rule, I went in to see him before dinner or,
if I were not dining with him, went round to tea.
I found the old man at his writing-table with his spectacles on and some
papers in front of him.
‘Come here and, if you can spare me an hour, help me to put some of these
papers in order. I know you are busy, you are for ever writing your
articles, you are a literary man.... I saw your article in the _Post
of the Fatherland_, I couldn’t make anything of it. It is full of such
learned expressions. I don’t know what literature is coming to.... In old
days Derzhavin and Dmitriev used to write, but nowadays it is you ...
and our cousin Ogaryov. Though, after all, it is better to stay at home
and write nonsense than to be always driving about, going to Yar’s and
drinking champagne.’
I listened and could not imagine what this _captatio benevolentiae_ was
leading up to.
‘Sit down here, read this document and tell me your opinion.’
It was his will and a few codicils added to it. From his point of view
this was the greatest mark of confidence he could have shown me.
A strange psychological fact. From what I read and from what he said I
drew two conclusions: first, that he was longing to be reconciled to
Golohvastov, and secondly, that he greatly appreciated my refusing to
take the estate; and, indeed, from that time, that is, from October 1845
up to the time of his death, he not only put confidence in me in every
case, but sometimes asked my advice and on two occasions even acted upon
it.
Yet what would a man have thought who had overheard our conversation
the day before? I have not altered one word of my father’s answer about
Pokrovskoe, I remember it well.
The will in itself was clear and simple; he left all his real property to
Golohvastov, all his personal belongings, money, and houses to my mother,
my brother, and me, to be divided equally among us. On the other hand,
the codicils, written on all sorts of scraps of paper and undated, were
far from being simple. The responsibility he laid upon us, and especially
upon Golohvastov, was extremely unpleasant. These codicils contradicted
each other and had that character of indefiniteness which commonly leads
to ugly quarrels and recriminations.
For instance, the following words occurred in one: ‘I set free all the
house-serfs who have served me well and zealously and I charge you to
give them rewards and money according to their deserts.’
In one the old brick house was left to G—— I——. In another the house
was disposed of differently, and money was left to G—— I——, but it was
nowhere stated that this money was to be instead of the house. In one
codicil my father left a certain sum of ten thousand silver roubles to a
cousin, while in another he left this cousin’s sister a small estate on
condition that she paid her brother out of it this ten thousand roubles.
I must observe that I had heard beforehand from him of half of these
arrangements, and not I alone. The old man had, for instance, spoken
several times before me of leaving the house to G—— I——, and had even
advised him to move into it.
I suggested to my father that he should invite Golohvastov and commission
him and G—— I—— to put all these notes together into one codicil.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Mitya might be of use, but then he is very busy.
You know these political gentlemen.... What does he care about his dying
uncle? He is always inspecting seminaries.’
‘He’ll be sure to come,’ I observed, ‘it’s a matter of so much
consequence for him.’
‘I am always glad to see him. Only my head is not always strong enough
to talk business. Mitya, _il est très verbeux_—talks my head off, and my
thoughts will be in a whirl directly; you had better take him all these
papers and let him first make his comments on the margin.’
Two or three days later Golohvastov came himself; being extremely
methodical, he was more alarmed by the confused state of the will than
I was, and being a classical scholar he expressed his feelings thus:
‘_Mais, mon cher, c’est le testament d’Alexandre le Grand_.’
My father, as he always did in such circumstances, affected to be twice
as ill as usual, aimed indirect shafts of sarcasm at Golohvastov, then
embraced him, touched his cheek with his own, and the family Campo
Formio[118] was concluded.
So far as we could, we persuaded the old man to revise his supplementary
notes and to turn them into a single codicil. He meant to write this
himself, and in six months had not finished it.
After the division of the property, the question naturally arose who
were to receive their freedom and who not. As for the money gratuities,
I had persuaded my father to fix a definite sum; after long discussions
he had fixed three thousand silver roubles. Golohvastov told the servants
that, not knowing which of them had served in the house and how they had
served, he left the selection to me. I began by putting on the list all
who were serving in the house. But when news of my list spread abroad,
a perfect stream of serfs of past generations burst upon me from all
parts—old men with grey unshaven chins and bald heads, clad in rags,
with that tremulous shaking of the head and hands which is the fruit of
twenty or thirty years of drunkenness; wrinkled old women wearing caps
and huge flounces; and children to whom I had stood godfather by proxy
though I had no conception of their existence. Some of these people
I had never seen at all, others I remembered faintly as in a dream;
finally some turned up who had, I knew for a fact, never served in our
house, but had always lived away with a passport, and others who had
once lived not in our house but in the Senator’s, or had spent all their
days in the country. If these hobbling old men and old women, shrunken
and blackened with age, had wanted freedom for themselves, they would
have been no great loss; but on the contrary they were quite ready to
end their days in the service of Dmitry Pavlovitch, but each of them had
sons, daughters, grandchildren. I pondered and pondered, and in the end
put down all their names. Golohvastov was perfectly aware that half of
these strangers had never been in our service, but, seeing my list, he
gave orders that deeds of freedom should be drawn up for all of them;
as we signed them, he passed his finger through his hair and said to
me, smiling: ‘I fancy we have set free several serfs belonging to other
people.’
Golohvastov too was an original person in his own way, like all my
father’s family.
My father’s younger sister had been married to Pavel Ivanovitch
Golohvastov, an old, old-fashioned, and very wealthy Russian gentleman
of ancient lineage. There are glimpses of Golohvastovs here and there in
Russian history from the days of Ivan the Terrible; their names are met
with in the days of the False Dmitri and in the Time of Trouble. Avraamy
Palitsyn[119] brought upon himself first the anger of Dmitry Pavlovitch
and afterwards a very long critical article through having incautiously
referred to one of the latter’s ancestors in his account of the Siege of
the Troitse-Sergievsky Monastery.
Pavel Ivanovitch was a morose and niggardly but extremely honest and
business-like man. I have described already how he hindered my father
from getting out of Moscow in 1812 and how he died afterwards in the
country from a stroke.
He left two sons and a daughter. They lived with their mother in the
very same big house on the Tversky Boulevard the fire in which had so
astonished their old father. The rather strict, niggardly, and oppressive
tone characteristic of the old father survived him.
An elaborate, solemn dullness and affectation of courteousness and
benevolence always reigned in their house, together with a sense of their
own dignity which, _à la longue_, was excessively boring. The spacious
and well-kept rooms were too empty and silent. The daughter would sit in
silence at her work; the mother, who preserved traces of great beauty and
was still a youngish woman, forty-five or thereabouts, was in failing
health and usually lay on the sofa; both spoke in a drawling, rather
sing-song tone, as Moscow ladies generally did in those days. Dmitry
Pavlovitch at eighteen was like a man of forty. The younger brother was
livelier, but then he scarcely ever put in an appearance....
And all that has passed away ... while I still remember Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s mother making a solemn presentation to him of a horse and
droshky for his exclusive use. Their former tutor, Marshal, an excellent
man, who served me as the model for Joseph in _Who is to Blame?_ used to
give me lessons after Bouchôt left us.
However one may try to evade or disguise them, however cleverly one may
settle these agitating questions of life and death and destiny, there is
still no escaping them with their funeral crosses and with that smile on
the grinning jaws of the dead face that seems so inappropriate!
Though indeed, on second thoughts, one sees that there is nothing for it
but to smile. Take the fate of those two brothers, for instance—thinking
about them leads one to strange reflections!
The difference between my father and the Senator pales before the sharp
contrast between the Golohvastovs, though they grew up in the same room,
had the same tutor, the same teachers, the same surroundings.
The elder brother had fair hair with a British shade of red in it, light
grey eyes which he was fond of screwing up and which were suggestive of
the steely imperturbability of his soul. With advancing years his figure
became more and more expressive of a feeling of complete respect for
himself and of a comfortable digestion in a spiritual sense. By that time
he had begun not merely to screw up his eyes, but also his nostrils,
which were of a peculiar, rather attractive cut. As he talked, he used to
pass the third finger of his left hand through the hair on his temples,
which was always curled and carefully arranged, while he kept his lips
perpetually curved in a benevolent smile; the latter trick he inherited
from his mother and from Lampi’s[120] portrait of Catherine II. His
regular features together with his graceful and rather tall figure, his
carefully rounded movements, and his neckerchief, the knot of which ‘was
never too big nor too small,’ gave him the somewhat majestic comeliness
of the man who gives the bride away at a wedding, of an honourable
witness, of a man who has to distribute prizes to the best schoolboys,
or at the very least of a man who has come to congratulate, to wish one a
happy Christmas or New Year. But for the daily round, for workaday life,
he was too elegant.
His whole life was a series of rewards for success and morality. He fully
deserved them. Marshal, whose hair had been turned white by his younger
brother, could not find words strong enough for Dmitry Pavlovitch’s
merits and had absolute confidence in the impeccability of his French
syntax. He did in fact speak French with that inapproachable correctness
with which Frenchmen never speak the language (probably because the sense
of the immense importance of knowing the French grammar is not so highly
developed in them). At fourteen he not only took part in the management
of the estate, but translated the whole of Heraskov’s _Rossiad_ into
French prose by way of an exercise in style. Most likely his old father
in the other world was more delighted at hearing of this than the ‘Swan
on the waters of the Meander.’ But Golohvastov did not merely speak
French and German correctly and know Latin well, he knew Russian and
spoke it well and correctly.
Just as Marshal considered him his best pupil, so his mother considered
him her best son, his uncles thought him their best nephew, and Prince
Dmitry Vladimirovitch Golitsyn, whose department he entered, esteemed
him the best of his subordinates. And what is still more important, all
this really was true. Yet, strange to say ... one felt the absence of
something in him. He was an intelligent, competent man, he had read and
remembered a great deal—what more, one may say, could one ask?
I have since more than once met these characters, these ‘level’ minds,
these brains so clearly comprehending—in a certain sphere and to a
certain depth. They are so intelligent in their judgments, never
deviating from their data; they are still more intelligent in their
conduct, never stepping aside from the beaten track; they are the true
contemporaries of their age, of their circle. Everything they say is
true, but they might say something different; everything they do is good,
but they might do something else. They are usually moral, but the evil
spirit whispers in one’s ear: ‘But are they capable of being immoral?’
The Germans would call such people ‘reasonable’; you find them among the
Whigs in England, of whom the genius and highest representative now is
Macaulay and in old days was Sir Walter Scott, among the followers of
the practical philosophy of the ‘hermit _de la Chausseé d’Antin_’[121]
and of the philosophical disquisitions of Weiss.[122] Everything in
these gentlemen is correct, decorous, distinguished, in place; they very
properly love virtue and avoid vice; everything about them has the charm
of a grey summer day—free from rain and sun; but something is lacking, a
trifle, a nothing, as with the daughters of Tsar Nikita ... but
‘That was just what was missing,’
and without it all the rest is no use.
Golohvastov’s younger brother was born a cripple; this circumstance
alone deprived him of the possibility of attaining the antique pose
and Versailles deportment of his elder brother. Moreover he had black
hair and big black eyes which he never screwed up. This vigorous and
handsome exterior was all there was; within, rather unbalanced passions
and confused ideas strayed at random. My father, who thought nothing of
him, would say when he was particularly displeased with him: ‘_Quel jeu
intéressant de la nature_ to see on Nikolasha’s shoulders’—and the old
man shrugged his own—‘the head of the Shah of Persia!’
While his elder brother could never find a minute’s leisure and was
continually doing something, Nikolay Pavlovitch did absolutely nothing
all his life. In his youth he did not study; at twenty-three he was
married, and in a very amusing fashion. He eloped with himself. Having
fallen in love with a poor girl of no rank, who was like an extremely
charming Greuze head or elegant Sèvres china doll, he asked permission
to marry her, and at that I am not surprised. His mother, who was
filled with aristocratic prejudices and imagined that no one less
than a Rumyantsov or an Orlov would be a fitting bride for one of her
sons—and even such a bride would have had to bring a whole population
of the province of Voronezh or Ryazan as a dowry—of course refused her
consent. But in spite of his brother’s persuasions and his uncles’
and aunts’ admonitions, the young girl’s bright eyes gained the upper
hand. Our Werther, seeing that he could not alter the decision of his
relations, one night let down from his bedroom-window a box, some linen,
and his valet Alexandr, then let himself down, leaving his door locked
on the inner side. By the time the door was opened at the dinner hour
next day he was already married. His mother was so distressed at the
secret marriage that she took to her bed and died, laying her life as a
sacrifice on the altar of etiquette and decorum.
A deaf and grumbling old lady with a little moustache, the widow of an
officer who had been in command of the fortress of Orsk in the time of
the plague and of Pugatchov, lived in their house. She often used to tell
me afterwards about the terrific incident of the elopement, and every
time added: ‘My good sir, ever since he was a little boy I have seen that
Nikolay Pavlovitch would never come to any good and would never be a
comfort to Elizaveta Alexeyevna. He was twelve years old, you know, when
he came running to me—I shall never forget it—laughing till the tears
came into his eyes, and saying, “Nadyeshda Ivanovna, Nadyeshda Ivanovna,
make haste, look out of the window and see what has happened to our cow!”
I ran to the window and fairly groaned. Why, only fancy, sir, the dogs, I
suppose it was, had torn her tail off, anyway the poor darling was left
without a tail.... It was a Tyrolese cow.... I couldn’t help saying, “So
this is how you laugh at your mamma’s cow, and your own property! Well,
you will come to no good!” And I gave up all hope of him from that day.’
The prediction so strangely based upon a cow’s tail not being in its
proper place was quickly fulfilled. The brothers divided the property and
the younger one proceeded to waste his in riotous living.
Every one knows the series of sketches in which Hogarth represents side
by side the lives of the industrious man and the idler. The industrious
man yawns in church while the idler is playing knuckle-bones; the
industrious man reads an edifying book in the family circle while the
idler is drinking gin, and so on. Except for the difference in social
position, the parallel was true of the two brothers. One of Hogarth’s
heroes begins by stealing and ends on the gallows, while the other spends
his whole life in dullness and lectures his friends to death. Thieving
was a _hors-d’œuvre_, it was not the thief’s fault that his mother did
not leave him two thousand souls in the Kaluga province and half a
million of money, as Elizaveta Alexeyevna did her son. He would hardly in
that case have put himself to so much trouble and effort, for thieving
is far from a recreation, it is a very unpleasant and extremely risky
pursuit.
On dividing the property, both brothers set zealously to work, one to
improve his estate, the other to ruin his; I do not know whether Dmitry
Pavlovitch added a hundred roubles to his fortune by his unflagging
efforts, but within ten years Nikolay Pavlovitch had debts of more than a
million.
Soon after his mother’s death Dmitry Pavlovitch, after establishing
his sister, that is, marrying her off, went to Paris and London to see
Europe; while Nikolay Pavlovitch set about showing himself to Moscow:
balls, dinners, entertainments followed one another; his house was packed
from morning to night with gourmands fond of a good dinner, connoisseurs
of good wine, young people fond of dancing, interesting Frenchmen,
officers of the Guards—wine flowed, bands played, and he even sometimes
fêted local divinities of the first magnitude, such as Prince D. V.
Golitsyn and Prince Yussupov.
Meanwhile Dmitry Pavlovitch, still unmarried, after duly inspecting
Europe and learning English, returned, furnished with plans of Devonshire
farms and Cornwall stud-stables and accompanied by an English groom and
two immense thoroughbred Newfoundland dogs of incredible stupidity with
long hair and shaggy paws. Sowing and winnowing machines, extraordinary
ploughs, and models of all sorts of agricultural devices were brought by
sea.
While Dmitry Pavlovitch was studiously introducing the four-field system
of husbandry, which does not suit our soil, and sowing our orthodox
meadows with clover, while he was giving English training to colts of
Russian parentage and studying Thiers, Nikolay Pavlovitch—and this I
consider the worst and silliest part of his conduct—managed to get
tired of his wife and, as though he thought balls and dinner-parties
not a sufficiently rapid means for reaching ruin, took as a mistress a
stage-dancer who was certainly not worthy to tie his wife’s stay-lace.
From that moment everything went like wildfire; an inventory was made of
the estate, his wife pined and grieved over the fate of her children and
herself, caught a cold and died after a few days’ illness—the family was
ruined.
Seeing this, Dmitry Pavlovitch took vigorous measures to prevent his
estate, too, going to his brother’s creditors—he made up his mind to get
married. He carefully selected a sensible and careful wife, his marriage
was not the fruit of unbridled passion; from dynastic considerations he
desired direct heirs in order to secure the property of his ancestors.
His brother’s marriage bitterly chagrined Nikolay Pavlovitch. He had not
expected such a surprise from him; they were destined, it seemed, to
astonish each other by their matrimonial alliances. To console himself he
was wilder than ever in his debauchery. Slow as such processes are with
us, at last the day came when his estate was to be sold by auction. I
do not imagine that Dmitry Pavlovitch would have been greatly concerned
over his brother’s fate, but here again dynastic considerations came in
and led him, with the assistance of his uncles, to attempt to save his
brother. They began buying up all sorts of bills, paying forty kopecks
in the rouble, that is practically threw a large sum of money into the
fire, and only saw afterwards that it was quite useless, for the bills
were so many. One episode in this story has remained in my memory. At
the division of the family property Nikolay Pavlovitch had received his
mother’s diamonds, and these too he had in the end pawned. To see the
diamonds that had once decked the majestic form of Elizaveta Alexeyevna
sold to some merchant’s wife was more than Dmitry Pavlovitch could
stand; he represented to his brother all the iniquity of his conduct;
the latter wept and swore that he was penitent; Dmitry Pavlovitch gave
him an I O U and sent him to the pawnbroker’s to redeem the diamonds.
Nikolay Pavlovitch asked his permission to bring the diamonds to him that
he might keep them in safety as the sole heritage of his daughters. He
did redeem the diamonds and was taking them to his brother, but probably
changed his mind on the way; for instead of taking them to his brother,
he went to another pawnbroker and pawned them again. The reader must
imagine the amazement of the Senator, the annoyance of Dmitry Pavlovitch,
and my father’s abundant reflections on the subject to understand how
heartily I laughed over this extremely comic incident.
When all his resources were completely exhausted, when the estate
was sold and the house was for sale, the servants scattered in all
directions, and the diamonds not redeemed a second time, when Nikolay
Pavlovitch had actually given orders for his garden to be cut down for
firewood to heat his stove, the same kindly fate that had spoiled him
all his life came to his help again. He drove over to his cousin’s
summer villa and there went out for a walk, stopped in the middle of a
conversation, put his hand to his head, fell down and died.
In those latter years the _diligent_[123] Dmitry Pavlovitch had left his
plough like Cincinnatus and was administering the republic of learning
in Moscow. This is how it came to pass. The Emperor Nicholas, assuming
that Major-General Pissarev had cropped the students’ hair sufficiently
and trained them to button up their uniforms, wished to replace the
military rule of the university by civilian control. On the road between
Moscow and Petersburg he appointed Prince Sergiey Mihailovitch Golitsyn
director of the university—on what grounds it would be difficult to say,
probably he could not have explained even to himself why he did it.
Possibly he appointed him in order to prove that the post of director
was altogether superfluous. Golitsyn, whom the Tsar had taken with him,
half-dead already at being driven at break-neck speed, was so terrified
at his new appointment that he tried to refuse it. But in these cases it
was impossible to argue with Nicholas; his obstinacy was like the morbid
persistence of pregnant women when they have a craving for something.
When Vrontchenko was made Minister of Finance he flung himself at the
Tsar’s feet protesting his incapacity for the position. Nicholas made him
the profound answer: ‘That’s all nonsense; I never governed an empire
before, but here you see I have learned and you will learn too.’ And
Vrontchenko willy-nilly remained Minister to the great delight of all the
‘protected females’[124] of Myestchansky Street, who illuminated their
windows, saying, ‘Our Vassily Fyodorovitch has become a Minister!’
After galloping another hundred versts Golitsyn, still more crushed,
determined to enter upon negotiations and announced that he would only
accept the post if he should have a trustworthy colleague who could help
him to shepherd the university flock. Fifty versts farther on the Tsar
told him to find a colleague for himself; so they reached Petersburg
without disaster.
After taking a month’s rest to recover from the journey, Golitsyn drove
slowly to Moscow and set to work to find a colleague. He had an assistant
in the university, Count A. Panin, the most exalted of mortals next to
his own brother and the drum-major of the Preobrazhensky Regiment; but he
was really too exalted for the little old gentleman to select him. After
looking about him in Moscow, Golitsyn’s eye fell upon Dmitry Pavlovitch.
From his own point of view he could have made no better choice. Dmitry
Pavlovitch had all the qualities which those in power seek in a man of
our day without the defects for which they persecute him—education, good
family, wealth, knowledge of scientific agriculture, and a complete
absence, not merely of ‘unsound ideas’ but any sort of incident in his
life. Golohvastov had had no single love intrigue, had never fought
a duel, had never played a game of cards in his life, and had never
once been drunk, while on the other hand he frequently went to mass on
Sundays—and not to mass just anywhere, but to mass in Prince Golitsyn’s
private chapel. To this distinction must be added a masterly knowledge of
the French language, polished manners, and only one passion, a perfectly
innocent one—a passion for horses. No sooner had Golitsyn thought of him
than Nicholas raced headlong to Moscow again. There Golitsyn caught him
before he sped on to Tula and presented to him Dmitry Pavlovitch. The
latter left the Tsar’s presence assistant director.
From that day Dmitry Pavlovitch began to grow perceptibly fatter, his
deportment was still more expressive of dignity. He took to speaking
through his nose more than ever and began to wear a more ample
dress-coat, with no star as yet but with an unmistakable anticipation of
one.
Until his university appointment we were as intimate as the difference of
our years permitted (he was sixteen years older than I). At this point
I almost quarrelled with him, at least for ten years we looked on each
other with chilly hostility.
There was no private reason for this. His behaviour to me was always
full of delicacy, equally free from unnecessary intimacy and mortifying
aloofness. This deserves to be noted, since my father in his efforts to
bring us together did everything that was calculated to make us dislike
each other.
He was continually impressing upon me that the Senator and Dmitry
Pavlovitch were my _natural protectors_, that I ought to _cling_ to them,
that I ought to appreciate the kindness they showed me as relations. To
this he would add that of course all their attentions were really for
his sake and not for mine. As regards the old Senator, to whom I was
almost as much used as to my father, with the difference that I was not
afraid of him as of my father, these words had no effect upon me, but
they did tend to make me avoid Golohvastov, and that they did not succeed
in doing so was thanks to the tact with which Golohvastov always behaved.
My father used to say these things to me not in moments of vexation but
when he was in his very best humour, and he said them because in the days
of Catherine patronage was the regular thing; subordinates dared not
resent familiarity from a superior, and every one in the world openly
sought patrons and protectors.
When Dmitry Pavlovitch received his university appointment I thought,
like Golitsyn, that it would be a very good thing for the university;
it turned out quite the other way. If Golohvastov had become a governor
or a chief prosecutor it may be presumed that he would have been better
than many governors or many chief prosecutors. The post in the university
was not at all the right one for him; his frigid formalism, his pedantry
led him into making petty regulations and treating the students like
schoolboys; there had not been so much interference in the life of the
lecture-room and so much discontent even under Pissarev. And what made it
worse was that Golohvastov was on the moral side what Panin and Pissarev
had been only in regard to hair and buttons.
Till then, in spite of all his Toryism of the Russian provincial stamp,
there had always been something cultured and liberal about him—a love
for legality, an indignant resentment of arbitrary tyranny and official
plundering. When he received his university post he ranged himself _ex
officio_ on the side of every oppressive measure; he considered this
inevitable in his position. My time as a student was the period of the
greatest political enthusiasm; could I remain on good terms with so
zealous a servant of Nicholas?
His pedantry and the everlasting ceremonial solemnity, the _mise en
scène_ of himself, sometimes brought him into the most amusing situations
from which, everlastingly occupied with keeping up his dignity and
invariably self-satisfied, he could never extricate himself adroitly.
As president of the Moscow censorship committee he was, of course, an
oppressive burden upon it and was the cause of books and articles being
sent for censorship to Petersburg. There was an old fellow in Moscow
called Myasnov, a great amateur of horseflesh, who had compiled some sort
of genealogy of pedigree horses, and anxious to gain time asked leave
to send to the censor the proofs instead of the manuscript, in which
he wanted probably to make corrections. Golohvastov made difficulties,
delivered a long speech in which he very verbosely expounded the
arguments for and against granting permission, and ended by saying that
he might, however, sanction the proofs being sent for censorship if the
author would guarantee that there was nothing in his book opposed to the
government, religion, or morality.
Myasnov, a choleric and irritable old man, got up and said with a grave
face: ‘Since the responsibility rests upon me, I think it is essential to
explain that there is of course not one word opposed to the government
in my book, nor opposed to morality, but as regards religion I am not so
certain.’
‘You don’t say so?’ said Golohvastov, surprised.
‘Well, you see, there is a text in the Book of Moral Precepts that says:
“They that swear over earthen pots, they that plait their hair and that
go to the coursing of steeds shall be accursed”; and since I say a very
great deal in my book about the coursing of steeds, I really don’t know——’
‘That can be no obstacle,’ observed Golohvastov.
‘I humbly thank you for setting my mind at rest,’ said the sarcastic old
man, bowing himself out.
When I came back from my second exile Golohvastov’s position in the
university was not the same. The post that had been filled by Prince
_Sergiey_ Mihailovitch Golitsyn was by then held by Count _Sergeyey_
Grigoryevitch Strogonov. Strogonov’s ideas, though confused and not
clear, were still incomparably more cultured. He wanted to raise the
significance of the university in the eyes of the Tsar, he defended its
rights, protected the students from police raids, and was liberal so
far as it was possible to be liberal while wearing the epaulettes of
an adjutant-general on his shoulders and being the humble possessor of
the Strogonov estates. In such cases one must not forget _la difficulté
vaincue_.
‘What a terrible story that is of Gogol’s, _The Overcoat_,’ Strogonov
said once to Yevgeny Korsh. ‘That ghost on the bridge, you know, simply
pulls the greatcoat off the shoulders of nearly every one of us. Put
yourself in my place and then look at that story.’
‘That’s v—very d—difficult for me,’ answered Yevgeny Korsh. ‘I am not
used to looking at things from the point of view of a man who has thirty
thousand souls.’
Indeed, with two such blind spots in the eye as the estates and the
adjutant-general’s epaulettes it is hard to look clearly at the light
of day, and Count Strogonov did sometimes step over the traces and
behave like a regular adjutant-general, that is, with stupid coarseness,
particularly when his liver was out of order; but he could not keep up
the deportment of a general, and in that again the good side of his
nature was apparent. To explain what I mean I will quote an example.
On one occasion a student from among those educated at government expense
who had finished his studies very successfully and had afterwards
received a post as a senior master in a provincial high school, hearing
that there was a vacancy in one of the Moscow high schools for a junior
master in his subject, came to beg the Count to transfer him. The young
man’s object was to continue his studies, for which he had not the means
in the provincial town; but unluckily Strogonov came out of his room as
yellow as a church candle.
‘What right have you to this post?’ he asked.
‘I ask for the post, Count, because there is a vacancy.’
‘Yes, and there is another vacancy,’ the Count interrupted, ‘that of the
Russian ambassador to Constantinople. Wouldn’t you like that?’
‘I did not know that it was in your Excellency’s gift,’ answered the
young man. ‘I will accept the post of ambassador with genuine gratitude.’
The Count looked more jaundiced than ever but asked him civilly into his
study.
My personal relations with him were very curious; our very first
interview was not without the peculiar flavour typically Russian.
One evening in Vladimir I was sitting at home; all at once the German
teacher at the high school, a doctor of the Jena University called
Delitch, called upon me, wearing his uniform. He informed me that the
director of the university, Count Strogonov, had arrived from Petersburg
that morning, and had sent him to invite me to call upon him at ten
o’clock next day.
‘It’s impossible; I don’t know him at all and you must have made a
mistake.’
‘That is not possible. _Der Herr Graf geruhten aufs freundlichste sich
bei mir zu beurkunden über ihre Lage hier._ You will go?’
Being a Russian, I went on arguing with Delitch, convinced myself still
more thoroughly that it was quite unnecessary to go, and went next
morning.
Alfieri, not being a Russian, acted differently when the French marshal
who had taken Florence, and to whom he was a stranger, invited him. He
wrote to him that if this was simply a private invitation he was very
much obliged for it but begged to be excused, as he never visited persons
with whom he was unacquainted; but if it were a command, then knowing the
military position of the town he _se constituera prisonnier_ at eight
o’clock in the evening without fail.
Strogonov invited me as a curiosity connected in the past with the
university, as a reprobate graduate. He simply wanted to see me, and,
moreover, such is the weakness of the heart of man even under the finery
of a general, to boast to me of his reforms in the university.
He gave me a very good reception. He paid me a lot of compliments and
quickly reached the point desired: ‘It is a pity you can’t be in Moscow,
you would not recognise the university now; from the buildings and
the lecture-rooms to the professors and the curriculum, everything is
changed,’ and so on, and so on.
To show that I was listening attentively and that I was not a vulgar fool
I very modestly observed that I supposed the curriculum was so changed
because many new professors had returned from foreign parts.
‘No doubt,’ answered the Count, ‘but besides that, there is the spirit of
the administration, the unity, you know, the moral unity....’
To give him his due, however, he did more good to the university with
his ‘moral unity’ than Zemlyanika[125] to his hospital by ‘honesty and
discipline.’ The university was very much indebted to him, but still one
cannot but smile at the thought that he boasted of it to a man who was
under police supervision for political offences. It is just as absurd
that a man exiled for political offences should have gone with no sort of
necessity at the summons of an adjutant-general. Oh, Russia!... It is no
wonder that foreigners can make nothing of us!
I saw him for the second time in Petersburg, just at the moment when I
was being exiled to Novgorod. Sergeyey Grigoryevitch was staying with
his brother, the Minister of Home Affairs. I went into the drawing-room
just as he was going out. He was in white breeches and in all his court
finery, with a ribbon across his shoulder; he was going to the palace.
Seeing me, he stopped and drawing me aside began questioning me about my
case. His brother and he were revolted at the iniquity of my exile.
This was at the time of my wife’s illness, a few days after the birth of
a baby who died. I suppose great indignation or irritability was apparent
in my eyes and my words, for he suddenly began persuading me to bear my
trials with Christian meekness.
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘it falls to the lot of every man to bear a cross.’
‘A good many sometimes indeed,’ I thought, looking at the crosses of all
sorts and sizes that covered his breast, and I could not help smiling.
He divined my thought and flushed crimson.
‘I daresay you think,’ said he, ‘that it is very well for me to preach.
Believe me that _tout est compensé_.’
Besides preaching to me he joined Zhukovsky in actively exerting himself
on my behalf, but the jaws of the bulldog that had me in its grip would
not readily loose their hold.
When I settled in Moscow in 1842 I visited Strogonov from time to time.
He was well disposed to me but was sometimes sulky. I very much liked
these ebbs and flows in him. When he was in a liberal frame of mind
he used to talk of books and magazines, extol the university, and was
continually comparing its present state with the pitiful condition in
which it had been in my day. When he was in a conservative mood he
reproached me for not being in the service and for having no religion,
abused my articles, saying that I was corrupting the students, abused the
young professors and declared that they were more and more set on forcing
him to be false to his oath or to close their lecture-rooms.
‘I know what an outcry that would excite; you will be the first to call
me a vandal.’
I bowed my head in assent and added: ‘You will never do that, and so I
can thank you most sincerely for your good opinion of me.’
‘I certainly shall,’ muttered Strogonov, pulling his moustaches and
turning yellower. ‘You will see.’
We all knew that he would never do anything of the sort and so could let
him threaten it periodically, especially when we remembered his enormous
estates, his rank, and his liver.
Once he was so carried away in talking to me that, abusing everything
revolutionary, he told me how on the Fourteenth of December Trubetskoy
left the square, ran distracted to his father’s house and, not knowing
what to do, went to the windows and began drumming on the panes; and so
spent some time. ‘A Frenchwoman who was governess in their family could
not refrain from saying to him aloud, “For shame! Is this your place
when the blood of your friends is flowing in the square? Is this how
you understand your duty?” He snatched up his hat and went—where do you
think?—to hide in the Austrian embassy.’
‘Of course he ought to have gone to the police and given information,’ I
said.
‘What!’ cried Strogonov amazed, and he almost drew back in horror.
‘Why, do you think like the Frenchwoman,’ I said, ‘that it was his duty
to go to the square and shoot at Nicholas?’
‘You see,’ observed Strogonov, shrugging his shoulders and looking
instinctively towards the door, ‘what an unfortunate turn of mind you
have.... I am only saying that with these people ... when there are no
true moral principles based on faith, when they leave the straight path
... everything is in a tangle. You will see all that as you get older.’
That age I have not yet reached, but this lack of readiness in Strogonov
at which Tchaadayev used often to mock maliciously is to my mind greatly
to his credit.
They say that during the time when the spirit of our Saul of the Neva was
completely darkened, after the February revolution, Strogonov too was
carried away. He is said to have insisted in the new censorship committee
on prohibiting everything written by me. I take that as a genuine sign of
his goodwill to me; when I heard of it I set up a Russian printing press.
But our Saul went much further. The reaction overtook and outstripped the
Count, he would not take part in strangling the university and resigned
his position as director. But that is not all. Two or three months after
Strogonov’s resignation Golohvastov too resigned, horrified by a series
of senseless measures dictated to him from Petersburg.
So ended the public career of Dmitry Pavlovitch, and having cast off the
burden of state affairs he settled down to dignified repose like a true
Muscovite, busying himself with looking after his land and surrounded by
his family, his trotting horses, and his well-bound books.
In his private life all had gone well during the period of his
curatorship, that is, children had come into the world in due season
and had cut their teeth in due season. His estate was provided with
lawful heirs. Moreover, the last ten years of his life were soothed
and delighted by another personage. I mean Bytchok the trotter, who
for speed, beauty, muscles, and hoofs was the champion not only of
Moscow but of all Russia. Bytchok furnished the poetic side of Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s serious existence. Several portraits of Bytchok in oils
and in water-colours hung in his study. Just as Napoleon is represented
first as a thin consul with long, damp locks; then as a fat emperor with
a tuft of hair on his forehead and little short legs, sitting astride on
a chair; then as an emperor retired from business, standing, his hands
folded behind his back, on a rock in the midst of the splashing ocean—so
Bytchok was represented at the various moments of his brilliant career:
in the stall in which he spent his youth; in the fields, free, with only
a little bridle on; and finally in light hardly visible harness with a
minute box on runners and beside him a coachman in a velvet cap and a
blue, full coat, with a beard combed as regularly as an Assyrian bull
god—the very coachman who had won upon him I do not know how many goblets
of Sazin workmanship which stood under glass cases in the drawing-room.
One would have thought that, free from the tedious cares of his
university work, with an immense estate and an immense income, Dmitry
Pavlovitch might well have lived and lived long. Fate decreed otherwise;
soon after his retirement he, a strong, healthy man, a little over fifty,
began to ail, got worse and worse, developed consumption of the throat,
and after a painful illness died in 1849.
And here I cannot help pausing to reflect over those two graves, and the
series of strange questions to which I have referred already rise up in
my mind again.
Death brought the two unlike brothers to the same level. Which of them
made the best use of his interval between the two mute and blank abysses?
One wasted both himself and his property, but he had his brief time
of honey of the best lime-flower flavour. Let us admit that he was a
useless man, but he did no intentional harm to any one. He left his
children in poverty; that was bad, but still they received an education
and were bound to get something from their uncle. And how many men who
have worked hard all their lives breathe their last with bitter tears in
their eyes, looking at their children for whom they could secure neither
education nor provision. Carlyle, to comfort people who are too much
touched at the fate of the luckless son of Louis XV., tells them: ‘It is
true that he was trained as a shoemaker, that is, he received the poor
education which millions of children of poor villagers and workmen have
received and are receiving now.’
The other brother did not live at all, he ‘served’ life just as priests
serve the mass, that is, with extraordinary dignity performed an
accustomed ritual, more ceremonial than profitable. He no more paused
to consider why he was performing it than his brother. If from Dmitry
Pavlovitch’s life two or three things, such as Bytchok, races, the
goblets, and two or three entrances and exits—for instance when he
entered the university with consciousness that he was in control of it,
when he went out of the room for the first time wearing his star, when
he was presented to his Imperial Majesty and when he led his Imperial
Majesty through the lecture-rooms—all that is left is prose: nothing but
a stiff and constrained official business morning. No doubt the thought
of the importance of his share in the affairs of state afforded him
satisfaction: etiquette is a poetry of a sort, an artistic gymnastic of
a sort like parades and dances; but what a poor sort of poetry compared
with the sumptuous feasts in which his brother spent his life after
secretly marrying a pretty girl with enchanting eyes.
And to complete it all, Dmitry Pavlovitch’s regular life, his exemplary
behaviour in the moral, the official, and the hygienic sphere, did not
even win him health or length of years and he died as suddenly as his
brother, only with far greater suffering.[126]
Well, and _all right_[127] too!