By way of breaking the ice, he invited an old friend, who lived about
seventy versts from the Popèlski estate, to pay him a visit. In former
times Maxim used to be the visitor; but he knew that some young people
were staying at Stavruchènko’s house at that time, and so he wrote him
a letter inviting the whole party. This invitation was accepted with
pleasure. The two old men were bound by ties of friendship, and the young
people were all familiar with the once famous name of Maxim Yatzènko,
connected as it was with many a romantic tale. One of the sons of
Stavruchènko was a student in the University of Kiev, in the School of
Philology, very popular at that time. Another son was studying music in
the St. Petersburg conservatory. Another member of the party was a young
cadet, the son of a neighboring landlord. Stavruchènko was a vigorous
old man, gray-haired, wearing a long mustache after the Cossack fashion,
and the loose Cossack trousers tucked into the boots. His tobacco-pouch
and pipe were suspended from his belt, and he spoke nothing but Little
Russian; and beside his two sons, dressed in white sleeveless coats
and embroidered Little Russian shirts, he vividly recalled Gògol’s
Taras Bulbà with his followers. But Stavruchènko lacked the romantic
characteristics of Gògol’s hero. He was on the contrary an excellent and
practical landlord, who had always got on well with the serfs; and now
that serfdom was abolished he was clever enough to adapt himself to the
new conditions. He knew the people after the landlord fashion; that is,
he knew every peasant in his village, and every peasant’s cow, and almost
every extra coin in each peasant’s purse.
But if Stavruchènko did not have hand-to-hand encounters with his sons,
like Bulbà, they were forever at odds, regardless of time or place.
Everywhere, whether at home or abroad, endless disputes arose between
the old man and the young people; it usually began on the part of the
old man, who was always jeering at the “ideal Panitchis.” The Panitchis
would grow excited, the old man likewise; whereupon an indescribable
uproar would ensue, during which both sides would give and take some
pretty severe thrusts. It was a reproduction of the differences between
“Fathers” and “Sons;” only in the southwest, where a certain courtesy of
manner prevails, such scenes in the family circle are more gracefully
managed.
The young people who had been away at school from early childhood, had
only seen the country during their vacation, and therefore had not the
practical knowledge possessed by the father-landlords. When that tidal
wave known as the “love of the people” came rushing in upon society,
it found the young men in the higher classes of the Gymnasium. They
turned their attention to the study of the lower classes, seeking their
information at first in books. They soon proceeded, however, to the
immediate study of the manifestations of the “national spirit” in its
causes. In the southwestern districts the young Panitchis, in their
white _svìtkas_[15] and embroidered shirts, devoted themselves to the
fashionable amusement of “visiting the people.” They paid but slight
attention to their economical condition, but made notes of the words and
music of the _dùmkas_[16] and songs, studied the traditions, compared
historical events with the traces they had left upon the popular mind,
and looked upon the peasant in general through the poetical prism of an
intellectually popular idealism. Thus the constant clashing of opinions
diametrically opposed to one another entered into the disputes between
the old man and the young people, and they were always at variance. And
yet the old man himself listened with delight to the eloquent tirades of
the young fellows.
“Just hear him,” Stavruchènko would say to Maxim, with a sly nudge of
his elbow, while the student with flushed face and sparkling eyes was
delivering his oration. “Hear him, he talks like a book! One might really
imagine him a clever man. You had better tell us, you wise-head, how my
Nechipòr deceived you.” The old man’s mustaches twitched, and he laughed
heartily as he related with a purely Hohòl humor the tale of their
discomfiture.
The young men blushed, but they paid him back in his own coin, saying:
“If they were not familiar with the Nechipòrs and Hvèydkas in certain
villages, they had studied the class as a whole; and from that point of
view they deduced their generalizations. For the aged and experienced,
whose habits of thought are fettered by routine, the forest is hidden by
the trees that stand nearest, but young men can embrace the most remote
perspective at a glance.”
The old man was not displeased to hear the learned discourses of his
sons. “They did not go to school for nothing,” he often remarked, “but I
can tell you that my Hvèydka will lead you like calves by a rope. That’s
the way it is! But he cannot deceive me, for I can stuff him into my
tobacco-pouch and put him in my pocket. You are nothing but youngsters
and fools!”