and emphatically, but in the most violent fray something remained
outside the pale.... For our nervous friends of Engelson’s generation
this limit did not exist, they did not think it necessary to restrain
themselves; for the sake of a vain and momentary vindictiveness, for the
sake of getting the upper hand in an argument, they spared nothing, and
I have often, with horror and amazement, seen them—including Engelson
himself—without a trace of pity, fling the most precious pearls into the
corrosive fluid of their bitterness, ‘and weep afterwards.’ With the
change of the nervous current, remorse would follow, and entreaties for
forgiveness from the outraged idol. They are not fastidious, and pour
filth into the very cup from which they drink.
Their repentances are sincere, but do not prevent repetitions of the
offence. Some spring regulating and controlling the action of the wheels
within them is broken; the wheels turn with tenfold swiftness, doing no
work, but injuring the machine; harmonious combination is broken, the
æsthetic mean is lost; there is no living with them, and there is no
living for them themselves.
Happiness does not exist for them, they are not able to take care of it.
The slightest cause provokes them to ruthless antagonism and makes them
behave rudely with every one near them. By irony they have ruined and
spoilt as much in life as the Germans have by mawkish sentimentality.
Strange to say, these people are greedily anxious to be loved, they seek
enjoyment, and when they lift the cup to their lips some evil spirit jogs
their arm, the wine is spilt upon the floor, and the cup, passionately
flung down, rolls in the mud.
III
The Engelsons soon went away to Rome and Naples; they meant to be away
for six months, and returned in six weeks. Seeing nothing, they trailed
their boredom about Italy, sorrowed in Rome and grieved in Naples, and at
last made up their minds to come back to Nice—‘to you for healing,’ he
wrote to me from Genoa.
Their gloomy depression had increased while they were away. In addition
to their nervous hysteria, there were now quarrels which assumed a more
and more exasperated and envenomed character. Engelson was to blame for
his unrestrained language and cruel words, but she always provoked them,
provoked them intentionally, with secret spite and peculiar success in
his most good-natured moments; he was never allowed to forget himself for
an instant.
Engelson was incapable of holding his tongue; talking to me was a comfort
to him, and so he used to tell me everything, even more than he ought,
which was awkward for me. I felt that I could not be so open with them as
they were with me. Talking came easy to him, complaining comforted him
for a time—it did not me.
One day, sitting in a little tavern with me, Engelson said that he was
being worn out in the daily struggle, that there was no way of escape
from it, that again the thought of cutting short his life seemed to him
the only salvation.... With his nervous impulsiveness it might well be
expected that if a pistol or a glass of poison did come in his way he
would sooner or later make an attempt with one or the other.
I was sorry for him. And both of them were to be pitied. She might have
been a happy woman if her husband had been a man of serene temper who
would have known how to develop her slowly, to be light-hearted in his
merriment, and in case of need to influence her, not merely by persuasion
but also by authority—grave authority, without irony. There are immature
natures which cannot guide themselves, just as there are persons of
lymphatic constitution who need a corset to escape curvature of the spine.
While I was thinking of that, Engelson, going on with his talk, came to
the same conclusion himself. ‘That woman does not love me,’ he said,
‘and cannot love me; what she does understand and looks for in me is
bad, and what is good in me is so much Chinese to her. She is corrupted
by bourgeois ideas, by her external _Respektabilität_, her petty
domesticity. We torment each other, we are tormenting each other to
death; I see that clearly.’
It seemed to me that if a man could talk in that way of the woman nearest
to him, the chief tie between them was broken. And so I admitted to him
that, having watched their life together for a long time past with deep
sympathy, I had often asked myself why they went on living together.
‘Your wife is pining for Petersburg, for her brothers and her old nurse;
why don’t you arrange for her to go home, and you to remain here?’
‘I’ve thought of it a thousand times; it’s the one thing I wish for. But
in the first place, she has no one to go with; and in the second, she
would be bored to death in Petersburg.’
‘Well, but she’s bored to death here. As for having no one to send her
with, that’s a relic of our old Russian notions. You can take your wife
to the steamer at Stettin, and the steamer will find its way by itself.
If you haven’t the money, I’ll lend it you.’
‘You’re right, and that’s what I shall certainly do. I am sorry for her,
my heart aches for her, all the love I have in me I have concentrated on
her. I sought in her not only a wife, but a creature whom I could develop
and educate after my own fancy. I thought that she would be my child—the
task was beyond my strength. But who could have guessed that I should
find such contradictions, such stubbornness?’—he paused, and then added:
‘To tell you all I think—she needs a different husband ... if a man
turned up worthy of her whom she could love, I would give her up to him,
and we should both recover—that would be better than Petersburg.’
I took all this _au pied de la lettre_. That he was sincere, there is no
doubt. That is just the difficulty with these impulsive, uncontrolled
creatures; they can, like good actors, enter so thoroughly into different
parts, and so identify themselves with them, that a cardboard dagger
seems to them the real thing, and they shed genuine tears over ‘Hecuba.’
We were then living together at Ste. Hélène. Two days after my
conversation with Engelson, Madame Engelson, with a tear-stained face,
came into the drawing-room late in the evening, a candle in her hand; she
set the candle on the table, and said she wanted to have a little talk
with me. We sat down ... after a brief and obscure prelude touching upon
the fate which pursued her, on Engelson’s unfortunate character and her
own, she announced that she had made up her mind to return to Petersburg,
and did not know how to do it. ‘You alone have influence over him;
persuade him to let me go really. I know that in moments of vexation he
is ready in words to put me in the posting-chaise at once, but all that
is only words. Persuade him, save us both, and give me your word to look
after him just at first, comfort him ... it will be hard for him, he is
ill and nervous.’ And again sobbing, she hid her face in her handkerchief.
I did not believe in the depth of her woe, but I saw very clearly what a
false move I had made by speaking openly to Engelson; it was evident to
me that he had repeated our conversation to her.
I had no choice left; I repeated my own words to her, softening them in
form. She got up, thanked me, and added that if she did not go she would
throw herself into the sea; that she had that evening been burning a
great many papers, and wished to put some others in a sealed packet in
my keeping. It was clear to me that she was by no means so passionately
anxious to go away, but through some self-indulgent caprice wanted to
drag on and pine away in melancholy. Moreover, I saw that, if she were
wavering without any settled plan, he was not wavering but distinctly
did not want her to go. She had great power over him; she knew this,
and, building upon it, allowed him to rage, to rear, to foam at the bit,
knowing that, however he might jib, things would go not as he willed but
as she willed.
She never forgave me for my advice; she feared my influence, though she
had unmistakable proof of my powerlessness.
For ten days there was no talk about going away. Then followed periodical
skirmishes. Once or twice a week she would come to me with tear-stained
eyes and announce that now all was over, and that next day she would get
ready to go to Petersburg or to the bottom of the sea. Engelson would
come out of his room, twitching convulsively, with a green face and
trembling hands; he would vanish for some ten hours, and would come back
covered with dust, exhausted and rather drunk, would take a passport to
be viséd, or obtain a permit for Genoa; then it would all subside again
and fall back into the everyday routine.
Externally, Madame Engelson was completely reconciled with me, but from
that time she began to conceive something like a hatred for me. Before
that she had disputed with me and been angry without concealing it ...
now she became extraordinarily amiable. She was annoyed that I had seen
through something; that I had not been touched by her tragic destiny or
taken her for an unhappy victim, but had looked on her as a capricious
invalid; that, far from shedding tears of platonic sympathy with her, I
doubted whether she did not find enjoyment rather than distress in tears,
heartrending scenes, explanations lasting several hours, and so on and so
on.
Time passed, and by degrees much was changed. With the rapidity which
only occurs in nervous invalids she regained her health, became more
lively, and even more careful of her dress. And although the most
nonsensical things would lead again to the old scenes between her and
Engelson, to a farewell _à la_ Socrates before the hemlock, and to a
readiness to follow in Sappho’s footsteps to the bottom of the sea, yet
on the whole things went better. The woman who had been for ever lying
down from weakness, for ever exhausted, drew herself up as erect as
Sixtus V., and began to grow so stout that one day poor Kolya, sitting at
dinner and looking at her full bosom, said, shaking his head: ‘_Sehr viel
Milch_.’
It was evident that some new interest was occupying her, that something
had awakened her from her morbid lethargy. From the time of my open
explanation with her, she had begun a persistent game, thinking over
every move, like the gamblers _du Café Régent_, and patiently correcting
her mistakes. Sometimes she betrayed herself and made a blunder, carried
too far in one direction or the other, but she steadily returned to her
original plan. This plan went now beyond the tightening of her grip
over Engelson, and beyond revenging herself on me; she aimed at nothing
less than getting us all, the whole household, in her power, and taking
advantage of Natalie’s being more and more seriously ill to control the
education of the children and our whole life—or, if she failed, breaking
off my relations with Engelson at all costs.
But before she could obtain complete success, there were many very
difficult moves to be taken, painful concessions, cat-like tactics, and
much patient waiting: she accomplished a great deal, but not everything.
Engelson’s incessant chatter hindered her as much as my open eyes.
She might have made a better use of the energy, the force and the
persistence which she wasted on her craftily interwoven schemes ... but
personal feeling and vanity intoxicate people, and, once entering upon
the dark game of intrigue, it is hard to stop and hard to see anything
clearly. As a rule, light is only brought into the room after the crime
has been committed; that is how it is that both the catastrophe and the
sting of conscience are irremediable.
IV
... Of the misfortunes that fell upon me in 1851 and 1852 I speak in
another place. Engelson brought me much comfort in my sorrow. I should
have stayed a long time with him near the graveyard, but the restless
vanity of his wife had no pity even on mourning.
Some weeks after the funeral, Engelson, agitated and melancholy, with
evident reluctance and evidently not of his own initiative, asked me
whether I were not thinking of entrusting the education of my children to
his wife.
I answered that the children, except the eldest, Sasha, were going to
Paris with Marya Kasparovna Reihel, and I openly admitted that I could
not accept his suggestion.
My answer wounded him, and it hurt me to wound him. ‘Tell me,’ I said,
‘speaking honestly, do you think your wife competent to educate children?’
‘No,’ Engelson answered, ‘but ... but perhaps it’s a _planche de salut_
for her; she is just as wretched as ever, and it would mean your trusting
her, and a new duty.’
‘Yes, but if the experiment didn’t answer?’
‘You are right; let us say no more about it; it is sad.’
Engelson really agreed with me, and said no more. But she had not
expected so simple an answer; on this question I would not give in, and
she would not, and, beside herself with vexation, she immediately made up
her mind to take Engelson away from Nice. Three days later he told me he
was going to Genoa.
‘What is the matter?’ I asked; ‘and why are you going so soon?’
‘Well, you see for yourself my wife does not get on with you, nor with
your friends, so I’ve made up my mind ... and perhaps it is for the best.’
And next day they went away.
Afterwards I left Nice. On my way through Genoa we met peaceably.
Surrounded by our friends, among whom were Medici, Pisacane, Cosenz, and
Mordini, she seemed calmer and better in health. Nevertheless, she could
not let slip any chance for having a spiteful dig at me. I moved away,
said nothing; that was no use. Even when I had gone to Lugano she kept
up her poisoned _petits points_, and this in the rare postscripts to her
husband’s letters, as though with his _visa_.
At last these pin-pricks, at a time when I was utterly crushed by grief
and distress, drove me out of all patience. I had done nothing to deserve
them, nothing to provoke them. On getting one of her spiteful postscripts
saying that Engelson would still have to pay dearly for his whole-hearted
devotion to friends who would do nothing for him, I wrote to Engelson
that it was time to put a stop to this.
‘I do not understand,’ I wrote, ‘why your wife has got a grudge against
me. If it is because I did not give my children into her keeping,
surely that is no justification for it?’ I reminded him of our last
conversation, and added: ‘We know that Saturn devoured his own children,
but for any one to show his gratitude to his friends for their sympathy
by bestowing his children’s education on them is something unheard of.’
She never forgave me that sally, but, what is far more remarkable, he
never forgave me for it either, though at first he showed no sign of
resenting it ... but he reproached me with those words a year later....
I went to London; Engelson settled for the winter in Genoa, and
afterwards moved to Paris.[97]
V
The proverb, ‘He who has not been in the sea has not prayed to God,’ may
be varied in this way: the woman who has not had children does not know
what disinterested devotion is, and this is particularly true of married
women; in them childlessness almost always develops a coarse egoism—if,
that is, some impersonal interest does not incidentally save them. The
old maid has some belated yearnings that soften her, she is still seeking
and still hoping: the childless woman with a husband has reached her
haven successfully; at first she instinctively grieves at having no
children, then she takes comfort and lives for her own pleasure, and,
if she is not successful in that, for _her own sorrow_, or for somebody
else’s displeasure, somebody else’s sorrow, if it is only her maid’s. The
birth of a child may save her. A child trains its mother in sacrifice, in
giving way, in eagerly spending her time not on herself, and trains her
to indifference to all external reward, recognition, gratitude. A mother
does not keep an account with a baby; she requires nothing from it but to
be well, to be hungry, to sleep—and to smile. Without drawing the woman
out of the home, the baby transforms her into a citizen.
It is quite a different thing when another woman’s child comes for
any reason whatever, and especially unavoidably, into the house of a
childless woman. She will perhaps dress it up and play with it, but only
when she cares to; she will spoil it when she is pleased to; at all other
times the child will knock in vain at the doors of the heart that has
grown hard or slothful from self-indulgence. In short, the child can
reckon upon all the spoiling and pampering which would be given to a dog
or a canary, but nothing more.
One of our friends had a daughter whose mother was a young widow. With a
view to the mother’s marrying again, an attempt was made to get the child
away, and she was kidnapped in the father’s absence. After a prolonged
search the little girl was found; but the father, having been turned out
of France, could not come to Paris to fetch her, and besides he had not
the money. Not knowing what to do with her, he asked Engelson to take
her for a little while. Engelson consented, but very quickly regretted
it. The child was naughty—indeed, considering the irregular way in which
she had been brought up, it is quite likely she was very naughty; but,
all the same, her naughtiness was that of a child of five years old,
and Engelson was too humane and understanding to be capable of turning
against a child for naughtiness. And indeed the trouble was not that she
was naughty; the child hindered, not him so much as his wife, though she
never did anything. Engelson, with a sort of exasperation, complained to
me in his letters of the child!
In regard to her father, Engelson wrote to me: ‘Is it not strange that
H., who once agreed with you that my wife was _not a suitable person to
bring up your children_, has entrusted his _own daughter to her_?’
He knew perfectly well that the father had not chosen Madame Engelson to
bring up his little girl, but had been forced by actual necessity to have
recourse to her assistance. There was something so cruel, so ungenerous
in this remark that it sent a pang to my heart. I could not get used to
this lack of mercy, this brutality of language which did not hesitate
at anything! Intensely malignant insinuations which may in a moment of
irritation occur to any one’s mind, but which we could not bring our lips
to utter, are spoken by people like Engelson with readiness and enjoyment
at the slightest tiff.
Giving full vent to his irritation, Engelson in his letter incidentally
attacked Tessier too, and other friends, and even Proudhon, for whom
he had a great respect. Together with Engelson’s letter came one from
Tessier, who was also in Paris; he made some friendly jests about
Engelson’s ‘tempers and tantrums,’ without suspecting that the latter had
been writing about him. I disliked the position of a sort of negative
treachery, and I wrote to Engelson that it was a shame to talk in that
abusive way of men with whom life itself has brought us into intimate
relations; that they were, any way, good people, as he knew himself.
In conclusion, I told him that it was a shame to exaggerate everything
so, and to be sighing and groaning and reduced to despair over the
naughtiness of a child of five.
This was enough. My ardent admirer, the friend who had kissed my hand in
his enthusiasm, who came to me to share every grief and offered to shed
his blood and lay down his life for me, not in word but in deed ... this
man, bound to me by his own confession and by my misfortunes, of which
he was the witness, by the coffin which we had followed together, forgot
everything. His vanity was wounded ... he wanted to revenge himself, and
he did revenge himself.
Four days later I received from him the following reply:—
‘_February 2nd, 1853._
‘There are rumours that you have decided to come here;—Marya
Kasparovna is, I believe, recovering (last week, any way, she
seemed in better spirits, got up for five minutes, and has an
appetite). Concerning the commission you gave me in regard to
T., all I have to tell you is that the things the General asks
him to get ready are not at T.’s, but were left by them at
Vogt’s in Geneva, and that Madame T. thinks your silence _peu
gracieux_, and adds that a correspondence with you could not
cause them any inconvenience.
‘In short, I need not have written before you come if it had
not occurred to me that silence may often be taken as a sign of
assent. I do not wish to mislead you or keep you in error in
regard to me: I do not agree with what you said in your last
letter to me of January 28th.
‘These were your words: “Come, now, is it worth while to get
into such a state—‘and oh, the baby—and oh dear, oh dear—and
good God, what am I to do?’ Just think; isn’t it beneath you?
surely, it’s nothing new to you! You have seen life and know
what people are. Every day I grow more indulgent and more aloof
from others.”
‘To this I answer, without for the present going off into a
dissertation on respectability in general, and without even
congratulating you on your satisfaction with yourself, that of
course a man is absurd who falls into a rage and a frenzy when
he is bitten by gnats or bugs, but the man is even more absurd
who under the same circumstances forces himself to assume an
air of stoical indifference.
‘You perhaps do not agree with this, for you put playing a part
above everything. Don’t be angry! Wait a minute! Let me finish.
In the first chapter of your _Vom andern Ufer_ in the Russian
and German versions these are your words: “Man likes to produce
an effect, to play a part, especially a tragic one; to suffer
is good and noble, it presupposes unhappiness; suffering is a
distraction, a comfort ... yes, yes, it is a comfort.” As I
have said to you already in Nice, I was at first inclined to
take this _dictum_ of yours as a careless oversight, and not a
happy one. At the time you answered that you did not remember
the words.
‘Though by no means applying those words exclusively to
you—that is, not assuming that you judged in this case of
men in general by yourself—I had hitherto imagined that
this _dictum_ of yours, like most of the _Réflexions de
La Rochefoucauld_, which it greatly resembles, like the
description of the talented men of our period, once drawn in
a masterly fashion by Byelinsky, was an “hyperbole, a jest.”
And so when I learnt that H. in Switzerland was indignant with
the General for the way he behaved in your affair, I took his
indignation, not for playing a part, but for real feeling, and
wrote to you: “Yes, I see H. is a brother to me.” When T., in
the presence of a witness, declared that he had been sentenced
for life—plus two years, I believed him too, and even repeated
this to several people. Yesterday Madame T. told me her husband
had never been sentenced at all. _Ergo_, in the eyes of the
persons to whom I repeated his lie I am just such a _blagueur_
as he. I do not like it. Who is to blame? I am, of course,
because I was “young and credulous”; but they are to blame too,
because they told a lie. I have never in Russia, nor anywhere,
met such _blagueurs_ as in Nice. In my letter to you of the
19th of January I told you that I want without _esclandre_ to
get away from these people; they are antipathetic to me. I
wrote this to you because I wanted to be open with you. But
_absorbed in yourself_ you could not grasp this very simple
idea. Or you would hardly, I suppose, have given me a most
trivial commission to T. You, too, say that you are holding
yourself aloof from people, but at the same time you ask them
to write to you. I do not understand that sort of aloofness.
‘Assuming that in serious matters to be frank is an essential
condition of honesty, I have to tell you this, too, without
loss of time. You write to me that when you have despatched the
General to Australia, and dismissed every one else, you will
be left with me and with your enemies—and that if, moreover,
I were a little more stable, and less dependent upon my own
and other people’s nervous caprices and agitations, you would
be disposed to make _un bout de chemin_ with me. To this I am
obliged to reply that, feeling in myself neither a taste nor
a talent for playing parts, and especially tragic ones, I am
ready to serve you with my advice, but not with my company.’
Of course, I had not supposed that a man who with tears and sobs had led
me on to confidences difficult to utter, a man who had come so near
to me and on whom I had leaned as on a brother in moments of weakness
and helplessness, when my pain was beyond human endurance, that the
eyewitness of all that had happened could regard my misery as stage
trappings and scenery, of which I should take advantage to play a tragic
part. In his ecstasies over my book he had been picking out stones in
it and laying them up in his bosom to fling them at me when the chance
might come. It was not enough for him to tear the present to pieces—he
defiled and vulgarised the past: breaking with me, he could not show it
the respect of dejected silence, but covered it with merciless abuse and
ironical jeering.
This letter wounded me, wounded me very much.
I answered him sadly, with suppressed tears; I said good-bye to him, and
asked him to break off our correspondence.
That was followed by complete silence between us....
With Engelson once more something seemed to have snapped within me. I was
even poorer, more isolated; there was coldness all about me, nothing near
me.... At times a hand seemed held out to me more warmly; some fanatic of
no understanding, not even seeing that we were not of the same religion,
would approach hurriedly, and as hurriedly turn away. Though indeed I did
not seek closer intimacy with any, I had grown accustomed to men coming
and going, to all sorts of nonentities of whom one expected nothing, and
to whom one gave nothing except a cigar, wine, and sometimes money. My
one salvation lay in work; I was writing _My Past and Thoughts_, and was
setting up a Russian printing-press in London.
VI
A year passed: the printing-press was in full swing, it was being noticed
in London and feared in Russia. In the spring of 1854 I received a short
manuscript from Marya Kasparovna. It was not difficult to guess it had
been written by Engelson. I published it at once.
Then came a letter from him asking me to put an end to our unhappy
misunderstanding and to let us meet again in common work. Of course, I
held out both hands to him.
Instead of an answer he arrived in London himself for a few days, and
stayed with me. Sobbing and laughing, he begged me to forget the past,
was lavish in words of affection, and again seized my hand and pressed it
to his lips. I embraced him, deeply touched, in the firm conviction that
the quarrel would not be renewed.
But only a few days later clouds foreboding little good appeared on the
horizon. The shade of fatalism, of Buonapartism, which had peeped out in
his letters from Geneva had developed. From hatred for Nicholas and the
rank and file of the French Revolution of 1848, he had passed over _armes
et bagages_ into the enemy’s camp. We argued; he was obstinate. Knowing
that he always rushed to extremes and came back as quickly, I waited for
the turn of the tide, but it did not come.
Unhappily, Engelson was busy at that time with an amazing project with
which he was passionately in love.
He had made a plan for an air battery—that is, a battery of balloons
loaded with explosives and at the same time with printed proclamations.
This was at the beginning of the Crimean War. Engelson proposed letting
off such balloons from ships on the coast of the Baltic. I greatly
disliked this scheme; what could one make of propaganda with projectiles?
Where was the sense in it for us Russians to burn Finnish villages
and help Napoleon and England? Moreover, Engelson had discovered no
new means of steering balloons. I made little opposition to his plan,
supposing he would drop this nonsense of himself.
But not at all. He went off with his plan to Mazzini and Worcell.
Mazzini said that things of that sort were not in his line, but that
he was ready through his friends to send his plans to the Minister of
War. The War Office gave an evasive reply, and put the project aside
without a definite refusal. He asked me to gather together two or three
of the military men among the refugees and put the balloon question to
them. All were against it, and I told him over and over again that I,
too, was against it; that our work, our strength, lay in propaganda,
nothing but propaganda; that we should lose in moral prestige by siding
with Napoleon, and should ruin ourselves in the eyes of Russia _faisant
cause commune_ with her enemies. Engelson lost his temper and was beside
himself. He had come to London confident of a triumph, and, meeting with
opposition even from me, imperceptibly returned to his hostile attitude.
Soon afterwards he went to fetch his wife, and brought her in May to
London. A complete transformation had taken place in their relations; she
was expecting to be a mother, and he was rapturously delighted at the
prospect of a child. Misunderstandings, quarrels, and explanations were
all a thing of the past. She with a sort of insane, half-mad mysticism
was turning tables and absorbed in spiritualism. The spirits told her
many things, and among others predicted my speedy demise. He was reading
Schopenhauer, and told me with a smile that he was doing all he could
to encourage her mystic tendencies, that this faith and exaltation was
bringing peace and calm into her soul.
With me she behaved affectionately, perhaps in expectation of my
approaching death; would come to me with her work, and make me read
aloud articles and chapters from _My Past and Thoughts_. When a
month later differences arose again over Engelson’s Buonapartism and
air-balloons, she took the part of the reconciler—came to me begging me
to spare a poor invalid, and assuring me that every spring Engelson was
attacked by a hypochondriacal condition in which he did not know himself
what he was doing.
Her serene gentleness was the gentleness of the conqueror, the mercy of
complete triumph. Engelson, imagining that he held her under control by
turning tables, lost sight of one thing—that she was not only twisting
tables with her fingers, but him round her finger, and that he always
gave the answers she wanted better than the tables did.
One evening Engelson began discussing his balloons again with a
Frenchman, and said all sorts of biting things to him; the latter replied
with irony, and of course that infuriated Engelson more than ever. He
snatched up his hat and ran away. In the morning I went round to have it
out with him on the subject.
I found him at his writing-table, his face still completely distorted
with fury, and a frenzied expression in his eyes. He told me that the
Frenchman (a refugee whom I had known for years and know still) was a
spy, that he would unmask him, would kill him; and he gave me a letter he
had only just written to a doctor of medicine in Paris; in the letter he
implicated persons living in Paris, and slandered the refugees in London.
I was dumbfoundered.
‘And do you mean to send that letter?’
‘At once.’
‘And by post?’
‘Yes, by post.’
‘That’s treachery,’ I said; and flung his scrawl on the table. ‘If you
send that letter....’
‘Well, what?’ he shouted, interrupting me in a wild, hoarse voice—‘what
are you trying to threaten me with? I’m not afraid of you nor of
your nasty friends.’ With this he leapt up, opened a big knife, and
brandishing it about, shouted gasping: ‘Come, come, show your mettle ...
I’ll teach you ... wouldn’t you like to try ... come on!’
I turned to his wife, and saying, ‘Has he gone quite out of his mind? You
had better get him away somewhere ...,’ went out of the house.
On this occasion, too, Madame Engelson played the part of peacemaker. She
came to me in the morning entreating me to forget what had passed the day
before. He had torn up the letter—was ill and gloomy. She took it all as
a calamity, as physical derangement, was afraid that he was seriously
ill, and shed tears. I yielded to her entreaties.
After that we moved to Richmond, and Engelson did the same. The birth of
a son and the first months of looking after him gave Engelson new life;
he was off his head with joy. When the baby was born he embraced and
kissed effusively first the maid and then his old landlady. Anxiety over
the baby’s health, the novelty of paternal feeling, the novelty of the
baby himself, occupied Engelson for some months, and all went well again.
All at once I got a big envelope from him, accompanied by a note asking
me to read the enclosed document and tell him my opinion candidly. It
was a letter to the French Minister of War. In it he again proposed
air-balloons, bombs, and manifestoes. I thought it all bad, from the
quarter to which he was appealing down to the language, which was lacking
in dignity, and I told him so.
Engelson answered by a rude note and began to sulk.
After that he gave me another manuscript to publish. I did not conceal
from him that it would produce a very bad effect on Russian readers,
and that I did not advise publishing it. Engelson reproached me with
wanting to set up a censorship, and said that he supposed I had founded
the printing-press exclusively to publish my own immortal works. I did
publish the manuscript, but my instinct had been right. It aroused
general indignation in Russia.
All this indicated that a new rupture was not far off. I must own that
this time I felt no great regret. I was weary of this fever varied by
paroxysms of friendship and hatred, of having my hands kissed and then
getting a moral box on the ears. Engelson had overpassed the limit
beyond which not even memories nor gratitude could save the situation. I
liked him less and less, and waited coolly for what was to come. At that
point an event occurred so important that for a time all quarrels and
dissensions were eclipsed by a single feeling of joy and expectation.
On the morning of the fourth of March I went as usual at eight o’clock
into my study, opened the _Times_, read a dozen times and did not
understand, did not dare to understand, the grammatical sense of the
words at the head of the news column: _The death of the Emperor of
Russia_.
Hardly knowing what I was doing, I rushed with the _Times_ in my hands
into the dining-room; I looked for the children and the servants to tell
them the great news, and with tears of joy in my eyes gave them the
newspaper.... I felt as though several years had rolled off my shoulders.
It was impossible to stay indoors. Engelson was at that time living in
Richmond. I hurriedly put on my coat and hat and was about to go to him,
but he anticipated me, and was already in the hall; we fell on each
other’s necks and could say nothing but: ‘Well, at last he is dead!’
Engelson, as his way was, capered about, kissed every one in the house,
sang and danced; and we had hardly recovered ourselves when a carriage
suddenly stopped at the front door and some one gave a violent tug at
the bell: three Poles had driven full speed from London to Twickenham,
without waiting for a train, to congratulate me.
I ordered champagne; no one reflected that it was only eleven o’clock
in the morning, or earlier. Then, quite aimlessly, we all went off to
London. In the streets, on the Exchange, in the restaurants, people were
talking of nothing but the death of Nicholas; I did not see one man who
did not breathe more easily from knowing that that sore was taken out of
the eye of humanity, and did not rejoice that that oppressive tyrant in
the big boots had at last returned to clay.
On Sunday my house was full all day; French and Polish refugees, Germans,
Italians, even English acquaintances kept coming and going with beaming
faces. It was a bright, warm day; after dinner we went out into the
garden.
Some lads were playing on the bank of the Thames. I called them up to
the railing and told them we were celebrating the death of their enemy,
and flung them a handful of small silver for beer and sweets. ‘Hurrah!
hurrah!’ shouted the lads. ‘Impernikel is dead! Impernikel is dead!’
My visitors too began flinging them sixpences and threepenny-bits; the
lads bought ale and tarts and cakes, got hold of a concertina, and
began dancing. After that, as long as I lived at Twickenham, the lads
used to take off their caps when they met me in the street, and shout:
‘Impernikel is dead! hurrah!’
The death of Nicholas multiplied our hopes and energies tenfold. I at
once wrote the letter to the Emperor Alexander, afterwards published, and
made up my mind to bring out the _Polar Star_ at once.
‘May reason prevail!’ broke involuntarily from my tongue at the head
of my programme. ‘The _Polar Star_[98] has been hidden behind the
storm-clouds of the reign of Nicholas; Nicholas has gone, and the _Polar
Star_ appears again on the day which is our Good Friday, the day on which
five gibbets became for us five crucifixes.’
It was a powerful, stimulating impetus; we set to work with redoubled
energy. I announced that I was bringing out the _Polar Star_; Engelson
at last took up his article on socialism about which he had been talking
in Italy. It might have been expected that we should go on working for a
couple of years or more ... but his irritable vanity made any work with
him insufferable. His wife encouraged his infatuation. ‘My husband’s
article,’ she used to say, ‘will be taken as a new epoch in the history
of Russian thought. If he writes nothing else, his place in history will
be assured.’
The article, ‘What is the State?’ was good, but its success did not
justify his wife’s anticipations. Moreover, it appeared at the wrong
moment. Awakening Russia demanded, just at that time, practical advice,
and not philosophical treatises _à la_ Proudhon and Schopenhauer.
The whole of the article had not yet been published, when a new quarrel
of a different character from all the preceding ones almost completely
severed all relations between us.
One day when I was with them I spoke jestingly of their having sent for
the third time for a doctor for their baby, who had a cold in its head
and a slight chill.
‘So because we are poor,’ said Madame Engelson, and all her old spiteful
hatred a hundred times intensified flamed in her face, ‘our little one is
to die without medical assistance? And you say that? You, a socialist
and the friend of my husband, who refuse him fifty pounds, and are
exploiting him over his lessons.’
I listened in amazement, and asked Engelson whether he shared this view
or not. He was embarrassed, his face flushed in patches, he besought her
to be silent.... She went on. I got up and, interrupting her, said: ‘You
are ill and are nursing your baby, I am not going to answer you, but I am
not going to listen either.... You will hardly think it strange that I
shall not set foot in your house again.’
Engelson, distraught and melancholy, caught up his hat and came out into
the street with me: ‘Don’t take _au pied de la lettre_ the unbridled
language of an hysterical woman....’ He went off into a muddle of
explanations. ‘I will come and give my lesson to-morrow,’ he said. I
shook hands with him and went home without a word.
All this calls for explanations, and the most painful ones, too, relating
not to opinions and public affairs but to the kitchen and account
books. Nevertheless, I will make an effort to clear up this side of our
relations too. Squeamishness, that sentimentalism of purity, is out of
place in pathological investigation.
The Engelsons were scarcely entitled to reckon themselves poor people.
They received ten thousand francs a year from Russia, and he could easily
earn another five thousand by translations, reviews, and school-books;
Engelson was a proficient linguist. Trübner’s, the booksellers, had
ordered a lexicon of Russian roots and a grammar from him; he could, like
Pierre Leroux, like Kinkel, like Esquiros, give lessons. But, like a
regular Russian, he took up everything—the dictionary, the translations,
and the lessons—never finished anything, never put himself out, and never
earned a farthing.
Neither husband nor wife was prudent or capable of managing their
affairs. The continual fever in which they lived prevented them from
thinking about household management. He had come from Russia with no
definite plan, and remained in Europe with no definite object. He had
taken no steps whatever to secure his property, and _un beau jour_,
panic-stricken, made a hasty arrangement of some sort by which he limited
his income to ten thousand francs, a sum which he did not receive quite
punctually, but always received sooner or later.
That Engelson would not make both ends meet with his ten thousand francs
was evident; that he would not know how to economise was equally clear;
all that was left for him was to work or to borrow. At first, after
coming to London, he borrowed about forty pounds from me ... a little
time afterwards he asked for money again.... I had a serious and friendly
talk with him about this, and told him I was ready to help him, but that
I absolutely refused to lend him more than ten pounds a month. Engelson
frowned. However, he did twice take a ten-pound note; then suddenly he
wrote to me that he needed fifty pounds, and, if I did not care to lend
it him or did not trust him, he begged me to get it for him by pawning
some diamonds. All this could hardly be taken seriously; if he had
really wanted to pawn the diamonds, he ought to have taken them to some
pawnbroker and not to me.... Knowing him and being sorry for him, I wrote
that I would pawn the diamonds for fifty pounds, if they would give that,
and would send him the money. Next day I sent a cheque, but the diamonds,
which he would certainly have sold or pawned, I put away to keep for him.
He took no notice of the fact that no interest was asked for the fifty
pounds, and believed that I had pawned the diamonds.
The second point relating to the lessons is even simpler. While I was in
London, S. gave Russian lessons to my children, charging four shillings
an hour. In Richmond, Engelson offered to take S.’s place. I asked him
about terms; he answered that it was difficult for him to talk of terms
with me, but that, as he had no money, he would take what I had paid S.
On reaching home I wrote a letter to Engelson: I reminded him that he had
himself fixed the terms for the lessons, but that I begged him to take
double the amount for all the lessons in the past. Then I wrote what had
led me to keep his diamonds, and sent them back to him.
He sent a confused answer, thanked me, expressed vexation, and came in
the evening himself, and went on coming as before. His wife I did not see
again.
VII
A month later, Zeno Swentoslawski, and with him Linton,[99] the English
republican, were dining with me. Engelson came in towards the end of
dinner. Swentoslawski, the purest-hearted and best of men, a fanatic who
at over fifty retained the reckless fire of a Pole and the impulsive
impetuosity of a boy of fifteen, was urging the necessity of our
returning to Russia and beginning a keen propaganda in print there. He
undertook to convey the type, and so on.
After listening to him, I said half in jest to Engelson: ‘I say, you
know, _on nous accusera de lâcheté_ if he goes alone.’
Engelson made a grimace and went away.
Next day I went up to London and did not come back till the evening;
my son, who was lying down with a feverish attack, told me, in great
excitement, that Engelson had come in my absence, that he had abused me
terribly, had said that he would pay me out, that he was not going to put
up with my authority any longer, and that he did not need me now _since
his article had been published_. I did not know what to think, whether
Sasha was delirious from fever or Engelson had come in dead drunk.
From Malwida von Meysenbug[100] I learnt more. She told me with horror
of his violence. ‘Herzen,’ he had shouted in a nervous, gasping voice,
‘called me _lâche_ yesterday in the presence of two strangers.’ Malwida
interrupted him, saying that I had not been talking about him at all,
that I had said ‘_on nous taxera de lâcheté_,’ speaking of all of us
generally. ‘If Herzen feels that he is doing something mean, let him
speak for himself, but I will not allow him to speak like that of me, and
in the presence of two blackguards too.’
My elder girl, then ten years old, had run in at the sound of his shouts.
Engelson had gone on: ‘No, this is the end of it, it is enough. I am not
accustomed to it, I will not allow myself to be trifled with, I will
show him whom he has to deal with ...,’ pulled a revolver out of his
pocket and went on shouting, ‘It is loaded, it is loaded, I will wait for
him....’
Malwida got up and told him that she insisted on his leaving her, that
she was not obliged to listen to his wild ravings, that she could only
put down his behaviour to illness. ‘I am going,’ he said; ‘don’t trouble;
but first I want to ask you to give Herzen this letter.’ He opened it
and began reading it aloud; the letter was a string of abuse.
Malwida von Meysenbug refused the commission, asking him why he expected
her to act as an intermediary in forwarding such a letter.
‘I will find means without your help,’ observed Engelson, and went away.
He did not send the letter, but a day later he sent me a note; in it,
without saying one word about what had passed, he wrote that he had an
attack of hæmorrhage, that he could not come to me, and begged me to send
the children to him.
I said that there was no answer, and again all diplomatic relations were
broken off; hostile relations remained. Engelson did not let slip a
chance of turning them to account.
From Richmond I moved in the autumn of 1855 to St. John’s Wood. Engelson
was forgotten for some months. Suddenly, in the spring of 1856, I
received a note, suggestive of a duel, from Orsini, whom I had seen two
days previously.
Coldly and courteously, he asked me to let him know whether it was the
truth that Saffi and I were spreading a rumour that he was an Austrian
spy. He asked me either to give an unqualified _démenti_, or to indicate
from whom I had heard this abominable calumny.
Orsini was justified; I should have done the same in his place. Perhaps
he ought to have had more confidence in Saffi and in me—but the insult
was terrific.
Any one who knew anything of Orsini’s character would understand that
such a man, attacked in the most holy of holies of his honour, could not
stop short at half measures. The affair could only be settled by our
_absolute_ innocence or by the death of some one.
From the first minute it was clear to me that the blow came from
Engelson. He no doubt reckoned on one side of Orsini’s character, but
fortunately there was another which he had overlooked. Orsini combined
with violent passions an intense power of self-control; he was cautious
among dangers, thought over every step he took, and never reached a
decision on the spur of the moment, because when once he had reached a
decision he wasted no time in criticism, in doubt, in reconsideration,
but carried it out. We saw this later in the Rue Lepelletier. He acted in
the same way now. He tried without haste to investigate the matter, to
find out who was guilty, and then, if he succeeded, to kill him.
Engelson’s second mistake lay in quite unnecessarily bringing in Saffi.
The facts were these. Six months before my rupture with Engelson I
happened to be one morning at the house of Mrs. Milner-Gibson (the wife
of the minister): there I found Saffi and Pianciani; they were saying
something to her about Orsini. As I went away I asked Saffi what they
had been talking about. ‘Only fancy,’ he answered: ‘Mrs. Milner-Gibson
had been told in Geneva that Orsini had been bribed in Austria....’ On
reaching home at Richmond I had repeated this to Engelson. We were both
then dissatisfied with Orsini. ‘The devil take him entirely!’ observed
Engelson, and nothing more was said on the subject. When Orsini made
his marvellous escape from Mantua we thought in our own circle of the
accusation heard by Mrs. Milner-Gibson. The arrival of Orsini himself,
his story, his wounded foot, entirely effaced this absurd suspicion.
I asked Orsini to give me an interview. He asked me to go the following
evening. In the morning I went to Saffi and showed him Orsini’s note. He
at once offered to go with me, as indeed I expected he would. Ogaryov,
who had only just arrived in London, was a witness of this interview.
Saffi described the conversation at Mrs. Milner-Gibson’s with the
simplicity and straightforwardness which are his distinguishing
characteristics. I filled in the rest of the story. Orsini thought a
minute, and then said: ‘Well, may I ask Mrs. Milner-Gibson about this?’
‘Of course,’ answered Saffi.
‘Yes, I believe I have been too hasty; but,’ he asked me, ‘tell me, why
did you speak of it to an outsider instead of warning me?’
‘You forget, Orsini, the time when it happened, and that the _outsider_
to whom I spoke was at that time not an outsider; you know better than
most people what he was then to me.’
‘I have mentioned no one....’
‘Let me finish. Why, do you suppose it is easy for a man to repeat such
things? If these rumours had spread, perhaps I ought to have warned
you—but who is speaking about it now? As for your having mentioned no
one’s name, you are making a great mistake there. Bring me face to face
with my accuser, then it will be still more evident what part each has
played in these slanders.’
Orsini smiled, got up, came to me, embraced me, embraced Saffi, and said:
‘_Amici_, we will end the matter; forgive me, let us forget all about it
and talk of something else.’
‘That’s all very well, and you were perfectly right to ask me for an
explanation, but why do you not name my accuser? In the first place, it
is useless to conceal it ... it was Engelson told you this.’
‘Give me your word that you will drop the matter?’
‘I will give you my word before two witnesses.’
‘Well, you have guessed right.’
I anticipated this confirmation, yet it sent a pang to my heart as though
I had still doubted it.
‘Remember what you have promised,’ Orsini added, after a brief silence.
‘You need not worry about that. But to make up to me and to Saffi you
might tell us how it happened; you see, we know all that matters.’
Orsini laughed. ‘What curiosity!’ he said. ‘You know Engelson. He
came to me the other day: I was in the dining-room’—(Orsini lived in
a boarding-house)—‘and having dinner alone. He had already dined. I
asked for a bottle of sherry for him; he drank it, and at once began
complaining of you—that you had ill-treated him, that you had broken off
all relations with him—and after gossiping about all sorts of things
asked how you had received me on my return. I answered that you had
given me a very friendly welcome, that I had dined with you, and that I
had been to you in the evening.... Engelson all at once began shouting:
“That’s just like them ... I know those gentry; it’s not long since he
and his friend and admirer Saffi were saying that you were an Austrian
spy, but now you’re famous again and in the fashion, and he is your
friend!” “Engelson,” I observed, “do you fully understand the gravity of
what you’ve just said?” “Fully, fully,” he repeated. “Will you be ready
under all circumstances to repeat your words?” “Under all circumstances!”
‘When he had gone I took a sheet of paper and wrote you a letter. That’s
the whole story.’
We all went out into the street. Orsini, as though guessing what was
passing within me, said by way of consolation, ‘He’s crazy.’
Soon afterwards Orsini went to Paris, and his beautiful classical head
rolled bleeding on to the platform of the guillotine.
The first news of Engelson was the news of his death in Jersey.
No word of reconciliation, no word of remorse reached me....
(1858.)
_P.S._—In 1864 I received a strange letter from Naples. It spoke of the
apparition of my wife’s soul, and of her having appealed to me to turn to
religion and purify my soul with it, and to abandon worldly vanities....
The writer said that it was all written at the dictation of the spirit;
the tone of the letter was warm, friendly, and ecstatic.
The letter was unsigned; I recognised the handwriting; it was from Madame
Engelson.[101]
FOOTNOTES
[1] There is this now.—(_Author’s Note._)
[2] _Le Charivari_ was the French _Punch_ (earlier in date, however,
_Punch_ being called ‘The London Charivari’ as a sub-title), founded in
1831 by Charles Philipon, a caricaturist of great talent.
[3] The Comte d’Argout had much to do in bringing about the fall of
Charles X., and held several important ministerial appointments under
Louis-Philippe.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[4] I have heard this criticism a dozen times since.—(_Author’s Note._)
[5] The Comte de Chambord, grandson of Charles X., was by the royalists
called Henri Cinq.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[6] The celebrated Victor Panin.—(_Author’s Note._)
[7] _I.e._ stabs with a dagger.
[8] At the Rouen elections for the Constituent Assembly in April, the
Socialist candidates were heavily defeated; the workmen, suspecting some
fraud, assembled, unarmed, before the Hôtel de Ville, to protest. They
were attacked by soldiers and National Guards; eleven were killed and
many wounded.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[9] Sibour, Marie Dominique Auguste (1792-1857), was appointed on 10th
of July 1848, by General Cavaignac, to the archi-episcopal see of
Paris to replace Affre, who died of wounds received in the June days.
He was himself assassinated in church by the Abbé Vergur, whom he had
interdicted.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[10] Written at the end of 1853.
[11] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[12] Cavaignac, Louis-Eugène (1802-1857), the youngest of the three
distinguished Frenchmen of that name, was commander-in-chief in 1848,
and an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of the Republic when
Louis-Napoleon (afterwards Napoleon III.) was elected on 10th December
1848.
[13] Lamoricière, Louis de (1806-1865), a prominent politician and
general, was exiled in December 1848, and afterwards took command of the
Papal troops.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[14] David (d’Angers), Pierre-Jean (1789-1856), must not be confounded
with the great painter Louis David. David d’Angers was a celebrated
sculptor of republican principles, who executed busts or medallions of
most of the eminent men of his day. He was a great friend of Hugo, who
wrote of him in _Les Rayons et les Ombres_: ‘La forme, ô grand sculpteur,
c’est tout et ce n’est rien. Ce n’est rien sans l’esprit, c’est tout avec
l’idée!’—(_Translator’s Note._)
[15] Barbès, Armand (1809-1870), called the ‘Bayard de la démocratie,’
was a people’s representative in 1848, imprisoned in 1849, and set free
in 1854.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[16] Ramon de la Sagra (1798-1871), a Spanish economist, took part in
the revolutionary movement of 1848 in France, and wrote advocating the
views of Proudhon. In 1854 he returned to Spain, and was several times
elected a member of the Cortes. He was, of course, not seventy, as Herzen
mistakenly assumes, but fifty, in 1848.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[17] A mountain chain of Old Castile, where the French defeated the
Spanish in 1808.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[18] Written in 1856.
[19] Rayer, P. F. O., was a distinguished French physician, and author of
numerous medical works.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[20] Delessert, Gabriel, born 1786, was prefect of police of the town of
Paris for twelve years from 1836.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[21] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[22] Arago, Emmanuel (1812-1896), the son of the more distinguished
F. D. Arago, who was one of the members of the Provisional Government
formed after the _coup d’état_ of 24th February 1848. The others were
Ledru-Rollin, Dupont de l’Eure, Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine, Crémieux,
Marrast, Flocon, and Louis Blanc.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[23] Bastide, Jules (born 1800), a publicist and politician, was minister
for foreign affairs in 1848. He had had an eventful career, and for two
years took refuge in England after escaping from prison, where he was
thrown for taking part in the riots that followed the funeral of Lamarque
in 1832.
[24] Changarnier, Nicolas (1793-1877), a prominent politician and
general, was exiled at the _coup d’état_ of 1851, but lived to serve in
the Franco-German War of 1870.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[25] Guinard, Auguste-Joseph (born 1799), had been one of the first to
proclaim the republic in February 1848, and at the head of the 8th Legion
had occupied the Hôtel de Ville.
[26] Forestier, Henri-Joseph (born 1787), was a painter of merit. He was
colonel of the 8th Legion of the National Guard.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[27] Karl Blind (born 1826), a writer and revolutionist, was for the
part he took in the insurrections in South Germany sentenced to eight
years’ imprisonment, but was rescued by the mob. He settled in England,
where he continued journalistic and propaganda work up to the time of his
death.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[28] How well founded my apprehensions were was shown by a police raid on
my mother’s house at the Ville d’Avray. They seized all the papers, even
the correspondence of her maid with my cook. I thought it inopportune to
publish my account of the 13th of June at the time.—(_Author’s Note._)
[29] Oran, a province of Algeria in which the French carried on a
successful campaign against Abd-el-Kader in 1847.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[30] Pyat, Félix (1810-1889), a journalist, dramatic writer, and
communist leader, supported Ledru-Rollin’s appeal to the French people
in 1849, and on its failure escaped to Switzerland and then to London,
where he was a member of the ‘European Revolutionary Committee.’ He
returned to France at the amnesty of 1870, and was in 1871 one of the
leaders of the Commune, on the fall of which he again escaped to London.
He was condemned to death in his absence, but was again pardoned in
1880.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[31] Grandville, Jean-Ignace-Isidore (born 1802), was one of the most
celebrated book-illustrators of his time. Perhaps his most famous book
is _Les animaux peints par eux-mêmes_. He was deeply interested in
animals, insects, and fishes, and drew them wonderfully. He edited _La
Caricature_, in which all the most eminent people of his time in Paris
are depicted. He died, insane, in 1850.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[32] In 1848 there was an insurrection in Baden, headed by Struve and
Hecker, which aimed at establishing a republic. The troops sided with the
insurgents, the Grand Duke fled, and in May 1848 a Constituent Assembly
was called. After several battles the Grand Duke was by Prussian aid
reinstated in July of the same year.
[33] Görgei, Arthur (1818), was commander-in-chief of the Hungarian
forces in 1848, was victorious over the Austrians in the spring of
that year, but was defeated early in August by the Russian general
Paskevitch, and on the 13th of that month surrendered the Hungarian army
unconditionally to Rüdiger, another Russian general. He was accused of
treachery.
[34] Coblenz was one of the chief centres to which the _émigrés_ of the
great French revolution flocked from 1790 onwards.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[35] The Commission of Inquiry was presided over by Odilon Barrot;
the report, drawn up by one Bauchart, is described as a ‘_monument
impérissable de mauvaise foi et de basse fureur_.’
[36] Kapp, Friedrich (1820-1884), a German historian, after the
revolution of 1848 went to New York, but returned to Berlin in 1870,
became a Liberal member of the Reichstag.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[37] The more thoroughgoing of the followers of John Huss were called
Taborites, from their headquarters at Mt. Tabor in Bohemia.
[38] Heinzen, Karl Peter (1827-1880), wrote for the _Leipziger
Allgemeine Zeitung_ and the _Rheinische Zeitung_, and his articles led
to the suppression of these two papers. He published an attack on the
government, ‘Die prussische Bureaucratie,’ for which he was prosecuted.
In 1848 he was one of the leaders of the Baden revolution. Later on he
escaped to America, where he edited _The Pioneer_.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[39] Undergraduates in their first year were called ‘foxes’ in German
universities.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[40] See Vol. II. Chapter 27.
[41] The ‘Bolognese insurrection’ began on 2nd February 1831 at the house
of Ciro Menotti at Modena. There thirty-one conspirators surprised by the
ducal troops held the soldiers at bay for hours.
[42] Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, two young Venetians, lieutenants in the
Austrian navy, attempted an insurrection in 1843. On its failure they
escaped to Corfu; but, misled by false information, landed in Calabria
with twenty companions, were caught and shot at Cosenza in July of the
same year. Their letters to Mazzini in London had been opened by the
English authorities, who then resealed them and sent the information so
gained to the Austrian Government. Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen
were principally responsible.
[43] Babeuf, François-Émile, nicknamed Gracchus (1760-1797), conspired
against the Directoire, was condemned to death, but stabbed himself. He
advocated a form of communism called _babouvisme_.
[44] The reference is to Orsini’s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III. on
14th January 1858.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[45] ‘In 1857 Pisacane seized the _Cagliari_ steamer, freed the political
prisoners in the island of Ponza, and with a small force effected a
landing on the Neapolitan coast at Sapri, hoping to join others of the
republican party. Met by overwhelming numbers, he fell at the head of his
men, most of them falling with him.’
[46] The ‘wild boar’ meant is, of course, Ferdinand II. of Naples,
nicknamed Bomba because of the cruel bombardment of Naples and other
cities during the suppression of the insurrection.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[47] Here is a poor prose translation of these wonderful lines, which
have passed into a popular legend:—
‘They gathered with weapons in their hands, but they did not war with
us; they threw themselves on the earth and kissed it, the tear quivered
in their eyes, and all wore a smile. We were told they were robbers who
had come out of their dens; but they took nothing, not even a crust of
bread, and we heard from them one cry only: “We have come to die for our
country!” They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they
are dead!
‘At their head came a young leader with golden hair and blue eyes....
I made so bold I took him by the hand and asked: “Whither goest thou,
splendid leader?” He looked at me and said: “My sister, I go to die for
my country!” and my heart ached; I had not strength to say: “God be thy
help!”
‘They were three hundred, they were young and strong! And they are dead!’
And I knew the _bel capitano_, and more than once talked with him of the
fortunes of his distressful country.—(_Author’s Note._)
[48] Napoleon, so the newspapers wrote, ordered Orsini’s head to be
steeped in sulphuric acid that it might be impossible to take a death
mask from it. What progress in humanity and chemistry since the days when
the head of John the Baptist was given on a golden dish to the daughter
of Herod!—(_Author’s Note._)
[49] Pope Pius VII. signed the Concordat of 15th July 1801 with Napoleon,
was forced by the latter to come to Paris to consecrate him as Emperor in
1804, was later on kept prisoner in Fontainebleau, and only returned to
Rome in 1814.
[50] The Cristinos were the supporters of the Spanish Queen Regent
Cristina against the Carlists.
[51] Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, elected Pope in 1846, known as Pius
IX.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[52] Cosenz (born 1820) was an Italian general who defended Venice
against the Austrians in 1848, joined Garibaldi in 1859, was minister
of war under the latter’s dictatorship in Naples, later on was several
times elected to the Chamber of Deputies, and was a senator after
1872.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[53] Barbier, Henri-Auguste (1805-1882), a French poet, was the author of
a volume of verses called _Iambes_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[54] All this has greatly changed since the Crimean War
(1866).—(_Author’s Note._)
[55] _The Times_, two years ago, reckoned that on an average in every
police district in London (there are ten) there were two hundred cases
of assaults on women and children per annum; and how many assaults never
lead to proceedings?—(_Author’s Note._)
[56] The _Sonderbund_ was the alliance of the seven Catholic cantons of
Switzerland, which aimed at separation from the Federal Government. It
was dissolved after a brief civil war.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[57] Weitling, Wilhelm (born 1808), got into touch with communists in
Paris and Switzerland during his wanderings as a journeyman tailor, was
prosecuted for propaganda of his ideas in Germany, escaped to America,
where he became the head of a communist colony in the state of Iowa,
wrote _Das Evangelium des armen Sünders_, _Garantien der Harmonie und
Freiheit_ (1842), and _Die Menschheit wie sie ist und wie sie sein
sollte_ (1845).—(_Translator’s Note._)
[58] Périer, Casimir-Pierre (1777-1832), was a wealthy banker who
supported the Liberal opposition under Charles X., and after the Paris
revolution of 1830 became Minister of the Interior under Louis-Philippe,
in which capacity he vigorously suppressed risings in Paris and Lyons.
[59] Laffitte, Jacques (1767-1844), was a French financier who took
an active part in bringing about the revolution of 1830, and was at
first the most influential minister of Louis-Philippe’s government. He
was dismissed by the king because he wished the French to go to the
assistance of Italy in her effort to throw off the Austrian yoke, and was
succeeded by Périer.
[60] Cavaignac, Godefroy (1801-1845), the eldest son of J. B. Cavaignac,
the member of the Convention, took a leading part in the July revolution
of 1830, was tried and acquitted, again arrested in 1834, and escaped to
England. In 1841 he returned to France and became one of the most active
editors of _La Réforme_. His popularity greatly favoured the rise of his
brother, Louis-Eugène, the general, who, though he put down the June
rising in 1848, remained under a cloud under Napoleon III. because he
refused to take the oath of allegiance.
[61] Marrast, Armand (1801-1852), a journalist, was a member of the
Provisional Government of 1848, and then mayor of Paris and president of
the National Assembly.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[62] Drouey (1799-1855) led the revolution in his canton in 1845, in
1849 was elected vice-president of the Swiss Federal Union, and in 1850
president.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[63] Blenker, Ludwig (born 1812), served in 1832 in Greece in the
Bavarian legion of King Otto, and was afterwards a wine merchant in
Worms. In 1848 he became a prominent figure of the revolutionary party
in Rheingessen, and as a leader of the insurgents took Worms and stormed
Landau. When the Baden rising was suppressed he escaped to Switzerland,
whence he was expelled, and then went to America, where during the Civil
War in 1861 he collected a troop of German _Jäger_ and saved Washington
from the enemy, became a general, but afterwards for some negligence in
the commissariat was forcibly retired with M’Clellan, and spent the rest
of his days peacefully on his farm.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[64] Here I seem to have justified the famous ‘I hear the silence!’ of
the Moscow police-master.
[65] As a matter of fact, _our_ scepticism was not known in the last
century; England and Diderot alone are the exceptions. In England
scepticism has been at home for long ages, and Byron follows naturally on
Shakespeare, Hobbes, and Hume.—(_Author’s Note._)
[66] Here Herzen ignorantly uses the word ‘Quaker’ as equivalent to
‘Nonconformist,’ or perhaps ‘Puritan.’ It is needless to point out that
tolerance is one of the most prominent principles of the Society of
Friends.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[67] These fragments, printed in vol. iv. of _The Polar Star_, ended with
the following dedication, written before the arrival of Ogaryov in London
and before the death of Granovsky:
‘... Accept this skull—it belongs to you by right’ (_Pushkin_).
Here for the time we will stop. Some day I shall publish the chapters I
have omitted and shall write others, without which my narrative remains
unintelligible, incomplete, perhaps useless, and in any case will not be
what I meant. But all that must be later, much later....
Now let us part; and one word at leave-taking, to you friends of my youth.
When everything had been buried, when even the clamour partly provoked by
me, partly spontaneous, had subsided about me, and people had dispersed
to their homes, I lifted up my head and looked around me; I had nothing
living, nothing akin to me but my children. Wandering among strangers,
watching them more closely, I gave up seeking _friends_ and held
aloof—not from men but from intimacy with them.
It is true, at times it seems that I have still feelings in my heart,
words which it is a pity not to utter, which might do good or at
least bring comfort to the listener, and one is sorry that it must
all be smothered and lost in the soul, as the eye loses itself in the
empty distance ... but that is the rapidly fading glow of sunset, the
reflection of the retreating past.
It is to that that I have turned back. I have left the world alien to
me and have come back to you; and again we have been living together as
in old times, are meeting every day, and nothing is changed, no one has
grown older, no one is dead—and I am as at home with you, and it is as
clear that I have no other standpoint than ours, no vocation but that to
which I dedicated myself from childhood.
My story of the past is, maybe, dull and feeble, but you, friends, will
give it a warm reception; this work has helped me to live through a
terrible period, it has lifted me out of the idle despair in which I was
perishing, it has brought me back to you. With it I enter upon my winter,
not _gaily_ but _calmly_ (in the words of the poet whom I love beyond
measure):—
‘_Lieta no ... ma sicura!_’ said Leopardi of death in his _Ruysch e le
sui mummie_.
So all unwittingly you have saved me: accept this skull—it belongs to you
by right.
ISLE OF WIGHT, VENTNOR, _October 1, 1855_.
[68] This endorsement is done for security in sending cheques in order
that no one else should be able to receive the money.
[69] This was not P. D. Kisselyov, who was in Paris later, the well-known
minister of crown property, a very decent man; but the other one,
afterwards transferred to Rome.—(_Author’s Notes._)
[70] I translate it word for word.—(_Author’s Note._)
[71] Mlle. Le Normand (1772-1843) was a well-known fortune-teller of the
period.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[72] Later on Professor Tchitcherin preached a doctrine somewhat similar
in the Moscow University.—(_Author’s Note._)
[73] Pestel was the leader of the Union of the South, and Ryleyev of
the Union of the North, which combined in the attempt to overthrow the
autocracy and establish constitutional government in Russia on December
14, 1825.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[74] A French revolutionist, one of the founders of the _culte de la
raison_, beheaded in 1794.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[75] I cannot forbear adding that I had to correct this very page at
Freiburg, and in the same Zöringer Hof. And the host was still the same,
looking like a regular innkeeper, and the dining-room in which I sat with
Sazonov in 1851 was the same, and the room in which a year later I wrote
my will, making Karl Vogt my executor: and this page brings back to me so
many details.
Fifteen years!
Unconsciously, unaccountably, one is seized with terror....
_14th October 1866._—(_Author’s Note._)
[76] Frappoli, Ludovico (1815-1878), an Italian politician who took part
in the revolutionary movement of 1848, was a partisan of Garibaldi’s, and
always on the extreme left in the Italian Parliament. He reintroduced
Freemasonry into Italy.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[77] Leroux, Pierre (1797-1871), a prominent follower of St. Simon.
[78] Considérant, Victor (1808-1893), a philosopher and political
economist, advocate of Fourierism.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[79] In Stuart Mill’s new book _On Liberty_, he uses an excellent
expression in regard to these truths settled once and for ever: ‘the deep
slumber of a decided opinion.’—(_Author’s Note._)
[80] _Histoire de la Révolution Française._
[81] I had then published _Vom andern Ufer_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[82] My answer to the speech of Donozo Cortes, of which fifty thousand
copies were printed, was all sold out; and when two or three days later
I asked for a few copies for myself, they had to be bought through the
bookshops.—(_Author’s Note._)
[83] After this was written I met him again in Brussels.—(_Author’s
Note._)
[84] I have to some extent modified my opinion of this work of Proudhon
(1866).—(_Author’s Note._)
[85] Proudhon himself said: ‘_Rien ne ressemble plus à la préméditation
que la logique des faits._’
[86] As I was correcting the proofs of this, I came upon a French
newspaper with an extremely characteristic incident in it. Near Paris
a student had a liaison with a girl, which was discovered. The girl’s
father went to the student and on his knees besought him, with tears, to
vindicate his daughter’s honour and marry her; the student refused with
contumely. The kneeling father gave him a slap in the face, the student
challenged him, they shot at each other; during the duel the old man had
a paralytic stroke. The student was disconcerted, and ‘decided to marry,’
and the girl was grieved, and also decided to marry. The newspaper
adds that this happy _dénouement_ will no doubt do much to promote the
old father’s recovery. Can this have happened outside a madhouse? Can
China or India, at whose grotesque absurdities we mock so much, furnish
anything uglier or sillier than this story? I will not say more immoral.
This Parisian romance is a hundredfold more wicked than the burning of
a widow or the burying of a vestal virgin. In those cases there was
religious faith, removing all personal responsibility, but in this case
there is nothing but conventional, shadowy ideas of external honour, of
external reputation.... Is it not clear from this story what the student
was like? Why should the girl’s life be bound to his _à perpétuité_? Why
was she ruined to save her reputation? Oh, Bedlam! (1866.)—(_Author’s
Note._)
[87] Cambacérès, Jean-Jacques (1753-1824), one of the nearest advisers
of Napoleon, and compiler of the _Code Civil_. He attempted to dissuade
Napoleon from the invasion of Russia.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[88] Leone Leoni is the hero, or rather villain, whose name supplies the
title of one of George Sand’s earlier novels.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[89] A character in the famous romance _Astrée_ by Victor d’Urfé
(1568-1626), adopted into the Russian language as the type of the
faithful and devoted swain.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[90] The reference is to the _Voyage du jeune Anarchasis_, by Barthélemy
(1779).—(_Translator’s Note._)
[91] Bouilhet, Louis, was a great friend of Flaubert, with whom he
collaborated. His own works include _Hélène Peyron_, and a very
successful drama, _La Conjuration d’Amboise_.
[92] Ribeyrolles, a talented writer on _La Réforme_, the organ of the
Extreme Left, of which Flocon was editor.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[93] Louis Blanc, author of _L’Histoire de Dix Ans_, one of the most
widely read books of the epoch.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[94] The real name of Messenhauser was Cæsar Wengel, a soldier and
writer, who took an active part in the rising of 1848, first in Lemberg
and then in Vienna. On the suppression of the rising he was sentenced to
be shot, and asked that as an officer he might give the word of command
to the soldiers who were to shoot him, and so conducted the business of
his own execution with remarkable composure.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[95] I was in those days what the Poles call a ‘passport man,’ and had
not yet cut off all possibility of return to Russia.—(_Author’s Note._)
[96] His article on ‘The Position of Russia in the All-World Exhibition’
was published in vol. ii. of the _Polar Star_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[97] A series of very remarkable letters of his, of which I propose to
publish a considerable number some day, date from this period.—(_Author’s
Note._)
[98] The _Polar Star_ is the name of the paper edited by Ryleyev, one of
the five Decembrists hanged by Nicholas in 1825. On the anniversary of
their execution Herzen brought out the first number of his paper of the
same name.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[99] W. J. Linton, a friend of Mazzini, and author of a series of
sketches of Italian, French, and Polish exiles, and of Herzen, called
_European Republicans_. His wife, Mrs. Lynn Linton, a prominent figure
some forty years ago, wrote several novels, and created a journalistic
sensation by an onslaught on ‘The Girl of the Period.’—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[100] Baroness Malwida von Meysenbug, authoress of _Memoirs of an
Idealist_, was a great friend of Wagner, and also of Nietzsche, whom she
cared for at times with motherly kindness. At this date she was living in
Herzen’s house as the governess of his children, the youngest of whom,
Olga, remained in her charge for many years.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[101] With this ends that part of _My Past and Thoughts_ which was
corrected by the author in its final form and published in four volumes.
The chapter which follows (in the next volume) is now published for the
first time, and is that for which, as Herzen himself more than once says,
he wrote all the rest.—(_Note to the Russian edition_, 1921.)