I
... We were a party of eight in the room, and we were talking of
contemporary affairs and men.
‘I don’t understand these men!’ observed A.: ‘they’re such desperate
fellows.... Really desperate.... There has never been anything like
it before.’
‘Yes, there has,’ put in P., a man getting on in years, with grey hair,
born some time in the twenties of this century: ‘there were desperate
characters in former days too, only they were not like the desperate
fellows of to-day. Of the poet Yazikov some one has said that he had
enthusiasm, but not applied to anything--an enthusiasm without an
object. So it was with those people--their desperateness was without an
object. But there, if you’ll allow me, I’ll tell you the story of my
nephew, or rather cousin, Misha Poltyev. It may serve as an example of
the desperate characters of those days.
He came into God’s world, I remember, in 1828, at his father’s native
place and property, in one of the sleepiest corners of a sleepy province
of the steppes. Misha’s father, Andrei Nikolaevitch Poltyev, I remember
well to this day. He was a genuine old-world landowner, a God-fearing,
sedate man, fairly--for those days--well educated, just a little
cracked, to tell the truth--and, moreover, he suffered from epilepsy....
That too is an old-world, gentlemanly complaint.... Andrei
Nikolaevitch’s fits were, however, slight, and generally ended in sleep
and depression. He was good-hearted, and of an affable demeanour, not
without a certain stateliness: I always pictured to myself the tsar
Mihail Fedorovitch as like him. The whole life of Andrei Nikolaevitch
was passed in the punctual fulfilment of every observance established
from old days, in strict conformity with all the usages of the old
orthodox holy Russian mode of life. He got up and went to bed, ate his
meals, and went to his bath, rejoiced or was wroth (both very rarely, it
is true), even smoked his pipe and played cards (two great
innovations!), not after his own fancy, not in a way of his own, but
according to the custom and ordinance of his fathers--with due decorum
and formality. He was tall, well built, and stout; his voice was soft
and rather husky, as is so often the case with virtuous people in
Russia; he was scrupulously neat in his dress and linen, and wore white
cravats and full-skirted snuff-coloured coats, but his noble blood was
nevertheless evident; no one could have taken him for a priest’s son or
a merchant! At all times, on all possible occasions, and in all possible
contingencies, Andrei Nikolaevitch knew without fail what ought to be
done, what was to be said, and precisely what expressions were to be
used; he knew when he ought to take medicine, and just what he ought to
take; what omens were to be believed and what might be disregarded ...
in fact, he knew everything that ought to be done.... For as everything
had been provided for and laid down by one’s elders, one had only to be
sure not to imagine anything of one’s self.... And above all, without
God’s blessing not a step to be taken!--It must be confessed that a
deadly dulness reigned supreme in his house, in those low-pitched, warm,
dark rooms, that so often resounded with the singing of liturgies and
all-night services, and had the smell of incense and Lenten dishes
almost always hanging about them!
Andrei Nikolaevitch--no longer in his first youth--married a young
lady of a neighbouring family, without fortune, a very nervous and
sickly person, who had had a boarding-school education. She played the
piano fairly, spoke boarding-school French, was easily moved to
enthusiasm, and still more easily to melancholy and even tears....
She was of unbalanced character, in fact. She regarded her life as
wasted, could not care for her husband, who, ‘of course,’ did not
understand her; but she respected him, ... she put up with him; and
being perfectly honest and perfectly cold, she never even dreamed of
another ‘affection.’ Besides, she was always completely engrossed in
the care, first, of her own really delicate health, secondly, of the
health of her husband, whose fits always inspired in her something
like superstitious horror, and lastly, of her only son, Misha, whom
she brought up herself with great zeal. Andrei Nikolaevitch did not
oppose his wife’s looking after Misha, on the one condition of his
education never over-stepping the lines laid down, once and for all,
within which everything must move in his house! Thus, for instance, at
Christmas-time, and at New Year, and St. Vassily’s eve, it was
permissible for Misha to dress up and masquerade with the servant
boys--and not only permissible, but even a binding duty.... But, at
any other time, God forbid! and so on, and so on.