My father and mother had a large family, and I was their second
daughter.{10} My father had, besides his government posts, a very large
medical practice and often overworked. He tried to give us the best
education and surrounded us with all the comforts of life. My mother did
the same, but she also instilled into us the idea that, as we had no
fortune at all, and the family was large, we must prepare ourselves in
order to earn our own livings. Besides learning our own lessons we had
to teach our younger brothers, do sewing, embroidering, and
housekeeping, and later on prepare for the examination of a private
teacher.
Our first governesses were German; we were taught French first by
mother, then by governesses, and later by the French lecturer of the
university. We were taught the Russian language and science by
university students. One of them tried in his own way to develop my
mind and to make me a believer in extreme materialism; he used to lend
me Bluechner and Feuerbach, suggested that there was no God and that
religion was an obsolete superstition. At first I was fascinated by the
simplicity of the atomic explanation and the reduction of everything in
the world to the correlations of atoms, but I soon felt the want of the
ordinary orthodox faith and church, and I gave up materialism for ever.
Up to the time of the examinations we daughters were educated at home.
At the age of sixteen I went in for the private teacher's examination at
the Moscow university, taking Russian and French as my principal
subjects. The examiners were the well-known professors, Tikhonravov,
Ilovaiskii, Davidov,{11} Father Sergievskii,{12} and M. Paquaut. It was
an interesting time. I was working with a friend, the daughter of the
Inspector of the University, and therefore moved in university circles,
among intelligent professors and students. It was the beginning of the
'sixties, a time of intellectual ferment. The abolition of serfdom had
just been announced; every one was discussing it, and we young people
were enthusiastic for the great event. We used to meet, discuss, and
enjoy ourselves.
At that time a new type had just appeared in life and in literature;
there was the new breath of nihilism among the young. I remember how at
a large party, when professors and students were present, Turgenev's
_Fathers and Sons_ was read aloud, and Bazarov seemed to us to represent
a strange type, something new, something which contained a promise for
the future.
I was not a good student, always concentrating exclusively upon the
subject which I liked. For instance, I liked literature very much. I was
carried away by Russian literature and read a great many books, getting
the oldest books and manuscripts from the university library, beginning
with the chronicles and ending with the latest Russian writers. I was
fascinated and surprised that the Russian tongue should have developed
out of the feeble beginnings in monastic writings into the language of
Pushkin. It was like the growth of a living creature.
In my youth Tolstoy's _Childhood_ and Dickens's _David Copperfield_ made
the greatest impression on me. I copied out and learnt by heart passages
in _Childhood_ which I particularly liked, for instance: "Will one ever
get back the freshness, the freedom from care, the desire for love, and
the power of belief which one possessed in childhood?--" When I finished
_David Copperfield_, I cried as though I were being separated from a
close friend. I did not like studying history from the text-books; in
mathematics I only liked algebra, and that, owing to a complete lack of
mathematical gifts, I soon forgot.
I was successful in the university examinations; in both Russian and
French I received the mark "excellent," and I was given a diploma of
which I was very proud. Later, I remember, I was pleased at hearing
Professor Tikhonravov praise my essay on "Music" to my husband; he
added: "That is just the wife you need. She has a great _flair_ for
literature; in the examination her essay was the best of the year."
Soon after the examination I began writing a story, taking as the
heroines myself and my sister Tanya, and calling her Natasha. Leo
Tolstoy also called the heroine in his _War and Peace_ Natasha.{13} He
read my story{14} some time before our marriage and wrote of it in his
diary: "What force of truth and simplicity." Before my marriage I burnt
the story and also my diaries, written since my eleventh year, and other
youthful writings, which I much regret.
Of music and drawing I learnt little; I did not have enough time, though
throughout my life I have loved all the arts and have more than once
returned to them, using the little leisure left to me from a life which,
in my girlhood and particularly during my marriage, was always busy and
hardworking.