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Title: My past and thoughts, vol. 6 (of 6)
The memoirs of Alexander Herzen
Author: Aleksandr Herzen
Translator: Constance Garnett
Release date: April 6, 2026 [eBook #78377]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78377
Credits: Lukas Bystricky and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PAST AND THOUGHTS, VOL. 6 (OF 6) ***
THE MEMOIRS OF ALEXANDER HERZEN
VI
NOTE
This translation has been made by arrangement from the sole complete
and copyright edition of _My Past and Thoughts_, that published in the
original Russian at Berlin, 1921.
_MY PAST AND THOUGHTS_
THE MEMOIRS OF
ALEXANDER HERZEN
_THE AUTHORISED TRANSLATION
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
BY CONSTANCE GARNETT_
VOLUME VI
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF
1928
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
T. & A. CONSTABLE LTD. EDINBURGH
*
ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION _page vii_
ENDS AND BEGINNINGS _page 1_
LETTER 1 _page 3_
LETTER 2 _page 17_
LETTER 3 _page 26_
LETTER 4 _page 36_
LETTER 5 _page 45_
LETTER 6 _page 51_
LETTER 7 _page 62_
LETTER 8 _page 76_
ANOTHER VARIATION ON AN OLD THEME _page 84_
THE SUPERFLUOUS AND THE EMBITTERED _page 99_
PRINCESS EKATERINA ROMANOVNA DASHKOV _page 113_
BAZAROV—
LETTER 1 _page 191_
LETTER 2 _page 204_
THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE AND SOCIALISM _page 210_
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
This volume concludes the ‘Memoirs of Herzen.’ Nothing in the complete
Russian edition has been omitted except two or three pages, which
are practically repetition of earlier passages, and a brief section,
Aphorismata, the humour of which has so evaporated with the lapse of time
that it could hardly be made intelligible to an English reader.
I have ventured to add to the volume Herzen’s famous letter to Michelet,
which is of interest in view of what has actually happened in Russia
during the last ten years.
INTRODUCTION
Herzen’s own story of his life as a connected narrative breaks off with
his arrival in London in 1852. A full description of his later years is
given in the Reminiscences of Madame Ogaryov-Tutchkov, from which the
following extracts are taken. As the latter is the central figure in the
picture of those years, some account of her is essential.
Natalya Alexyevna Tutchkov was born in 1827, and came of a distinguished
family. Her grandfather and his four brothers were highly cultured men,
remarkable for their gifts and their character. Her father was a friend
of the Decembrists, was slightly implicated in the conspiracy, and was
for a time under arrest. When released, he settled on his estate in the
province of Penza, where he was elected Marshal of Nobility and did much
good work for the welfare of the peasants and the administration of the
district. His two daughters, Elena and Natalie, had a happy childhood. In
1846 Ogaryov, an old friend of their father’s, came, after seven years’
absence, to his estate near the Tutchkovs. He saw a great deal of them,
and the young girls became very fond of him. In 1847 the Tutchkovs went
abroad, and Ogaryov gave them a letter of introduction to the Herzens,
who were at that time in Rome.
The Herzens welcomed them warmly, and Natalie Herzen and Natalie Tutchkov
became deeply attached to each other. Natalie Herzen called the young
girl ‘Consuelo di mia alma,’ and many of her letters are addressed to
her. She is said to have expressed a wish that in case of her death
Natalie Tutchkov should have charge of her children.
After the happy time in Italy they all returned together to Paris,
where they witnessed the terrible days of June 1848. Herzen (volume iv.
pp. 11-13) describes the mournful parting between his wife and her
‘Consuelo’; the Tutchkovs went home to their estate in Penza, where
Ogaryov was a frequent visitor. His affection for Natalya Alexyevna soon
passed into love, and he tried to obtain a divorce from his first wife,
Marya Lvovna, _née_ Roslavlov, who had left him several years before,
and was living in Paris with the well-known painter, Vorobyev, but out
of spite she refused to release him. In the end Natalie Tutchkov decided
to dispense with the legal ceremony, and in 1850 settled with Ogaryov
as his wife. In those days such a step required a good deal of courage,
and her parents were greatly distressed, though they, like every one
else, indeed, had a warm affection for Ogaryov. Not long afterwards Marya
Lvovna died, and the Ogaryovs were legally married.
Herzen had, on his first arrival in London in 1852, settled near Primrose
Hill with his son Sasha (Alexander), a boy of twelve, and his friend
Haug. The latter had quarrelled and left him by 1854. The two girls,
‘Tata’ (Natalie) and Olga, had joined him with their governess, Malwide
von Meysenbug, an excellent woman, well known in her own day as the
authoress of _Memoirs of an Idealist_, but now remembered only for her
correspondence with Nietzsche and Wagner.
Herzen repeatedly wrote to Ogaryov, begging him to come to London. At
last Ogaryov, who had been living since his marriage in the province of
Simbirsk, where he had a paper-mill, decided to go to England. It took
him some time to obtain permission to leave Russia, but “on April the
9th, 1856,” Madame Ogaryov writes,
“we crossed from Ostend to Dover on a very rough sea; it was
all I could do not to be ill. Ogaryov is a very good sailor.
When at last the steamer came to a standstill before the dark,
endless cliffs of Dover, dimly visible through the thick yellow
fog, my heart sank: I felt everything about me somehow strange
and cold; the unfamiliar language ... everything overwhelmed me
and made me think of my home and my family so far away.... We
found our luggage, took a cab and drove to the station; there
we hardly had time to have our things put in and to take our
seats when the train moved off with incredible swiftness—it was
an express: the objects beside the line flashed by, making an
unpleasant impression on unaccustomed eyes. I was vexed that
we had not managed to get breakfast. It was so important for
Ogaryov, who might easily have had an attack from exhaustion
and impatience to see his friend.[1] Four hours later we saw
London—grand, gloomy, for ever wrapped in a fog, like a muslin
veil—London, the finest city I had ever seen. We hurriedly got
into a cab and set off to seek Herzen at the address given us
by Dr. Pikulin: Chomley Lodge, Richmond. But a cab is not an
express train, and we needed all our store of patience; at last
we arrived in Richmond; in spite of the rain, the place made
a great impression on me; it was buried in verdure, even the
houses were covered with ivy, wild vines, and other creepers;
in the distance we caught sight of a magnificent immense park;
I had never seen anything like it! The cab stopped at the gate
of Chomley Lodge; the cabman, muffled up in a great-coat, with
a number of collars each wider than the one above it, gave
a loud ring at the bell. A woman came out; scanning us with
evident curiosity, for we probably looked very different from
Londoners, she bowed very civilly to us. To Ogaryov’s enquiry
whether Mr. Herzen was living here, she replied with alacrity:
‘Yes, yes, Mr. Herzen used to live here, but he moved a long
time ago.’
‘Where to?’ Ogaryov asked dejectedly.
‘Where is he now?’ she rejoined. ‘Oh, a long way from here;
I’ll fetch you the address.’
She went off, and returned with the address on a scrap of
paper. Ogaryov read, Peterborough Villa, No. 21 Finchley Road,
London. The cabman bent over the paper and evidently read it
for his own benefit.
‘Oh ... oh!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I’ll drive you back to
London, and there you must take another cab, my horse wouldn’t
get so far, it’s at the opposite end of the town, and he’s
tired already, here and back again’s a tidy journey.’
We sighed disconsolately and accepted his decisions without
protest. When we were back in London Ogaryov owned that he
would be glad to have a hasty meal, while our luggage was being
transferred to another cab; and we succeeded in obtaining
something to eat. Then we got into the second cab and drove
off again on the hard resounding road; we did not talk on the
way, but looked anxiously out of window, only from time to
time exchanging the same thought: ‘What if he is not there
either?’ At last we arrived. The cabman climbed down from
the box and rang the bell. We had a view of No. 21 above the
gate; the neat, prosaic brick house stood in the middle of a
flower-garden, surrounded by a high stone wall with bits of
broken glass on the top of it; the wall made the little garden
look like a deep bath. Herzen could not bear it and never sat
in the garden. The cook, François, a little, bald, middle-aged
Italian, opened the door of the house, looked at our trunks,
and closed it again; probably he was going to tell his master
of what he had seen. The impatient cabman rang again more
loudly. This time François came out briskly, ran down to the
garden gate, gave us a careless bow, and said in French:
‘_Monsieur pas à la maison._’
‘How annoying!’ Ogaryov answered quietly in French, and he
gave me his hand to step out of the cab, then bade the cabman
lift down the luggage and carry it into the house; then he
asked him his fare and paid it. François followed us in great
perturbation. In the hall Ogaryov turned to François and asked:
‘Where are the children?’
Herzen was standing at the top of the stairs. Hearing Ogaryov’s
voice, he ran down like a boy of twenty and rushed to embrace
him, then he turned to me. ‘Yes, Consuelo?’ he said, and kissed
me too.
At the sight of the general rejoicing, François at last
recovered; at first he stood thunderstruck, thinking the
Russians were taking the house by storm.
At Herzen’s summons the children appeared with their governess,
Malwide von Meysenbug. The younger, Olga, a little girl with
regular features, seemed lively and somewhat spoilt; the elder
girl, about eleven, was rather like her mother in her dark-grey
eyes, the shape of her forehead, and her thick eyebrows and
hair, though this was fairer than her mother’s. There was a
rather diffident, forlorn look in her face. She could not
readily express herself in Russian, and so was shy of speaking.
Later on she liked talking Russian to me at bedtime, and I
used often to sit by her little bed while we talked of her
dear mother. Herzen’s son, Alexander, a lad of seventeen, was
delighted to see us. He was at that stage when boyhood is over,
but the youth is not yet a young man. Until he left London, I
was like an elder sister to him, the friend to whom he confided
all that was in his heart.
For the first days after our arrival in London Herzen bade
François admit no visitors whatever; even the presence of
Malwide was irksome to him: he wanted to talk with us of all
that had been aching in his heart these last two years; he told
us all the details of the terrible blows he had endured, told
us of his wife’s illness and death.
Often the children or Malwide came in and interrupted our
conversation, and he preferred to begin talking when they had
all gone to bed, so we spent several nights without sleep, and
the dawn found us still up. I was only anxious on Ogaryov’s
account, but it could not be helped. Afterwards, when he had
relieved his heart and shared his sorrowful memories with us,
Herzen regained his liveliness and activity. He went about
London with us, showing us what had struck him at first,
among other things the London public-houses, where people sat
partitioned off from each other like horses in stalls, and the
markets on Saturday nights lighted up by torches, where only
the poor make their purchases, and where we heard on all sides:
‘Buy, buy, buy!’
A few days after our arrival, a little lodging, consisting of
two rooms, was found for us with a Mrs. Bruce, a few steps from
Herzen’s house.... We were very comfortable with that worthy
woman, but we spent the greater part of our time at Herzen’s.
There we met _émigrés_ from almost every part of Europe; there
were Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Poles, but at that time
only one Russian, Ivan Ivanovitch Savitch, a cousin of the
Savitch who suffered for his political views, I believe, when
Herzen was a student; that is, many years before. Yet Ivan
Ivanovitch, simply because he was his cousin, felt that he was
under suspicion, and so was afraid to return to Russia. He had
suffered great hardships and privations, but when we arrived he
had work as a private teacher, and rarely asked for help from
Herzen, who assisted all the _émigrés_ indiscriminately....”
“Soon after our arrival the news came that the daring
revolutionary, Orsini, had escaped from an Austrian prison and
would soon be in London.... A few days afterwards Herzen, on
returning from his daily excursion into town, told us that
Orsini had arrived, that he had seen him, and that Orsini would
be dining with us next day. I had heard so much about him that
I looked forward with interest to seeing him.
We were by then living at Herzen’s; this is how it came to
pass. One day Ogaryov and Herzen had gone to town together,
and I was alone in my lodging. Suddenly Miss Mills, the old
housemaid, appeared with Herzen’s two little girls. The elder,
Natasha, with a happy face, threw her arms round my neck and
said: ‘She has gone and taken all her things.’ Miss Mills told
me that Fräulein Meysenbug had left the house. I could make
nothing of it and went back with the children; we were met by
their brother Alexander. He looked distressed, picked up little
Olga and kissed her; his eyes were full of tears.
‘What is it for? what is it for?’ he said.
Herzen was quite incensed at this typically German proceeding.
‘She might have explained and talked things over,’ he said.
Nothing would induce him to go and ask her to come back.
She lived henceforward in lodgings, and we moved into Herzen’s
house and said good-bye for ever to our dear Mrs. Bruce.
But to return to Orsini. He arrived at the hour fixed. He was a
typical Italian: tall, with black hair and eyes, with a small
black beard and regular but rather marked features. Most likely
he was even handsomer in Italian military uniform, but in
London he was in a frock-coat, and he wore it with the peculiar
_chic_ with which all military men wear civilian dress. When
he talked, he impressed one by his extraordinary earnestness,
vivacity, and fervour, and at the same time by knowing where to
draw the line and avoid saying more than he meant to. I asked
him about his escape from prison, and he readily told me what
he could....”
“I remember that we spent not more than six months at
Peterborough Villa. Herzen was fond of changing from one house,
and even from one neighbourhood, to another:[2] he soon became
aware of all the inconveniences of any house he had taken, and
could not bear seeing the same faces in the omnibuses that
plied backwards and forwards between the centre of the city and
the suburb. Peterborough Villa had besides a great drawback.
It was not a detached house, but was joined by a party wall to
another next door to it. On Sundays various circles gathered
at our house: Czernecki and Tchorszewski invariably, Germans,
Italians, Frenchmen. Sometimes one of them would bring a new
casual visitor. Gradually they all grew lively, some one would
begin playing the piano, sometimes they sang in chorus. The
children, too, took part in the singing, and soon there would
be laughter and an uproar of merriment. Then a knocking at the
wall would remind us that it was highly reprehensible to spend
a Sunday like this in England. That used to make Herzen very
indignant, and he would declare that there was no living in
England except in a house standing quite apart and alone. He
commissioned his friend Saffi, who often took long walks in the
remoter parts of the town, to look out for a detached house for
him. When Saffi at last found Tinkler’s or Laurel House (it was
called by both names), he invited Herzen to go over it with
him, and they were both very much pleased with it.
Laurel House was in every respect the opposite of Peterborough
Villa. With its iron roof painted red, it looked more like an
English farm than a town house, and on the side next the garden
it was entirely covered with greenery; ivy twined from the
bottom to the top of its walls; in front of the house there was
a big oval lawn with little paths round it; there were bushes
of lilac, fragrant syringa, and other flowering shrubs on all
sides; there were masses of flowers, and there was even a
little greenhouse.
Dear house, how happy we were in it, and how rapidly and
successfully all that made the life of the two friends
developed in it!
Every day Herzen’s elder daughter and I used to gather two
nosegays, putting a big fragrant white lily in the middle; one
was for the drawing-room, the other for Ogaryov’s room....”
“We moved into our new abode and settled in happily. Herzen
could go into London by rail, the station was only a few paces
away. And when he was too late for the train, he could take the
omnibus which went from Putney Bridge to the City every ten
minutes.
Herzen used to get up at six in the morning, which is very
early for London habits; but, not expecting the same early
rising from the servants, he used to read for some hours in
his study. He read for a little while, too, when he went to
bed; and we sat up till after eleven, sometimes even later, so
that he had hardly six hours’ sleep. After dinner, as a rule,
he was at home, and then he usually read aloud something from
history or literature within the grasp of his elder girl, and,
when she had gone to bed, he read aloud books suitable for his
son’s age. Herzen followed every new scientific discovery and
read everything new in the literary way that appeared in any
European country or in America.
At nine o’clock in the morning coffee was served in the
dining-room. Herzen used to drink a whole glass of very strong
coffee, in which he would put a tablespoonful of cream; he
liked very good coffee. Then he read _The Times_, made his
own deductions, and told us various bits of news. He did not
like the politics of _The Times_, but thought it essential to
read it. Then he went into the drawing-room, where he worked
without a break till lunch. Between one and two there was
lunch, consisting of two dishes, almost always cold meat and
something left from the previous day’s dinner. A jug of pale
ale and a little claret or sherry stood on the table. Herzen
was very fond of pale ale and drank it every day. Ogaryov was
always late in the morning; by the time that he came down to
the dining-room Herzen had always left it. But at lunch we all
gathered together, the door was thrown open into the garden,
and the children ran off to play in the open air. Then the
friends talked of their work, of the articles they had to
write, and so on. Sometimes one of them brought a finished
article and read it aloud.
One day, soon after we had moved into Laurel House, Ogaryov
said to Herzen after lunch, in my presence: ‘You know,
Alexandr, the _Polar Star_ and your _Past and Thoughts_ are all
very good, but that’s not what’s wanted; it’s not talking with
our own people; we ought to bring out a journal regularly, once
a fortnight, or once a month; we could state our views, our
hopes for Russia, and so on.’
Herzen was delighted with the idea. ‘Yes,’ he cried eagerly,
‘we will bring out a journal, we will name it the _Bell_, the
bell that calls men to council, we two together just as we were
only two together on the Sparrow Hills—and who knows, perhaps
some one will answer our call!’
From that day they began getting ready articles for the _Bell_;
soon afterwards the first number of the Russian paper appeared
in London. Trübner, who always bought Herzen’s works, or took
them on commission, took the _Bell_ also. He sent it about in
all directions, and soon it was heard of even in Russia. About
that time Turgenev arrived from Paris. Ogaryov and Herzen told
him the joyful tidings, and showed him the first number of the
_Bell_, but Turgenev did not at all approve of the plan. As a
refined writer with rare gifts and exceptionally elegant taste,
he was delighted at the publication of the _Polar Star_ and _My
Past and Thoughts_, but, never in close sympathy with political
views and movements, he refused to believe that two men living
isolated in England could carry on a real correspondence with
their far-away country, could find in themselves anything to
tell or could understand its needs.
‘No, it’s impossible,’ said Turgenev; ‘give up this fantastic
notion, don’t waste your energies; you have plenty of work as
it is, the _Polar Star_ and _My Past and Thoughts_, and there
are only you two.’
‘Well, the thing is begun now, and we must go on with it,’ they
answered.
‘It won’t and can’t be a success, and literature will lose a
great deal,’ Turgenev protested hotly.
But the friends did not take his advice, whether from a
presentiment that the _Bell_ would rouse many from their
slumber and find contributors, or from simple obstinacy, I
cannot say.
With Turgenev, Vassily Petrovitch Botkin, author of the
_Letters from Spain_, came to see us. I knew something of
him from Herzen’s description and from the sketch ‘Basil and
Armance,’[3] but I must own that he seemed to me more eccentric
than I had expected. He could speak of nothing without
theatrical affectation, and was, moreover, a great gourmand,
and moved, one may say, to tenderness at the sight of dishes
which he particularly liked. He presented a complete contrast
to our household, in which no one cared enough even to order
the daily dinner. François himself chose the menu and cooked
the dinner for eight o’clock in the evening. When anything was
particularly nice we all praised it, but no one except Herzen
criticised the cooking, and he only very rarely.
After lunch Herzen and Ogaryov went off, each in accordance
with his tastes and inclinations. Herzen would go by train
or omnibus as far as the crowded streets, and there stroll
about, looking at the brightly lighted shop windows, and he
watched and observed a great deal that went on in the street.
He went into different coffee-houses, generally asked for a
tiny glass of absinthe and a syphon of Seltzer water, and
read there newspapers of all kinds.... He often brought home
with him savouries or sauces, the choice of which he did not
care to leave to François’ taste. Often, too, he brought us
something we particularly liked, a lobster, or a special
cheese, occasionally curaçao, or sweet things for the children,
crystallised fruits or dried cherries. When he was in a very
good humour, he liked to make us all guess whom he had met in
London. I could read his mobile, expressive features so well
that I could always tell; and so he would exclude me, and I was
always left to guess last.
When Ogaryov went out of our peaceful suburb, Fulham, he
tried to find still more solitary places for his walks. He
lived in his inner life, people worried him, but he was fond
of them in his own way, was particularly compassionate and
excessively kind to every one. Instinctively he held aloof from
his fellow-men; but when chance threw him into contact with
them, he was so good-hearted and unconstrained that none of the
people who talked to him imagined how oppressive they all were
to him. Herzen, on the contrary, was fond of people, and though
he was sometimes irritated if some one came at the wrong time,
his interest was quickly aroused and he was glad to see them.
Company was necessary to him, he was only afraid of bores.
On Sunday everything in England is locked up. The whole of
London is transformed into a sort of huge cupboard; shops,
bakeries, coffee-houses, restaurants, even the milkshops, are
closed. Silence reigns in the streets, the only movement is in
the parks, and even there it is not like week-days. Here and
there in the distance one sees preachers surrounded by dense
crowds of people listening with strained attention in unbroken
silence. The children walk decorously, not one bowls a hoop
nor tosses a ball in the air—and all this irritated Herzen.
He did not like going out on Sundays, and was obliged to keep
in hiding from the unceremonious visitors who called all day
long from early morning. On such days he stayed longer at work,
while the two elder children and I entertained the boring
visitors in the garden. Little by little more interesting
people began to arrive, the bell never stopped ringing;
then Herzen at last joined us. When he came out everything
was transformed and animated; there was a continual flow of
entertaining talk, discussion and interesting news, mostly
political. He was for his circle what the sun is for nature. As
a rule he had extremely good health.... Once he caught a very
bad chill and had a high temperature and shooting pain in his
side; both Ogaryov and I were much alarmed and sent at once for
our doctor and friend, the exile Deville. The latter was very
fond of Herzen, and came several times a day while he was ill,
but in less than a week the patient was on his legs again.”
“At that period so many Russians came that the servants were
constantly making mistakes; at last Herzen arranged that
all newcomers should be shown into the other half of the
drawing-room, where I saw them and learned who they were, how
long they were to be in London, and so on. Those who had come
only for a day or two on purpose to deliver manuscripts, had to
see him at once, for they always had a great deal they wanted
to tell him by word of mouth.... When people arrived who were
already known to him personally, or through their works, Herzen
was overjoyed, and gladly left his work for their sakes; in
such cases I called him to see them at once, but as a rule I
gave him the visitor’s name, etc., and then asked them to come
when he was at leisure, that is, at two or three o’clock in the
afternoon. Then after sitting a little with his visitors, he
would suggest going with them into London, for he needed fresh
air and exercise after his sedentary work.
Herzen used to try to keep Russians away on Sundays, for
we sometimes had so many visitors on that day that it was
impossible to be sure that no spy made his way in with them.
But it was not easy to induce the Russians to be careful;
they often would come on Sundays all the same, and were often
unnecessarily open with everybody, mentioning their own
surnames, though all of us made it a rule when introducing
visitors from Russia to Poles or other Russians, to say: ‘Our
fellow-countryman whose name I have forgotten, or I have not
heard,’ and when introducing them to foreigners, we said: ‘Un
compatriote, le nom de famille est trop difficile à prononcer,
trop barbare pour les oreilles occidentales, appelez-le par le
nom de baptême—M. Alexandre,’ or some Christian name.
I believe that not a single person came to harm through
carelessness on the part of Herzen or any of his household. He
always refused to give a note in his own handwriting addressed
to anybody in Russia, and did not like giving his portrait,
maintaining that to do so was unnecessary imprudence.
Unhappily I cannot say the same for Bakunin; later on, when he
came to London, he was guilty of thoughtless actions which had
deplorable consequences; he was like a child playing with fire.”
“One day a short, rather lame Russian came to see Herzen, who
had a great deal of conversation with him. Now that he is no
longer in this world I may reveal a secret known only to me,
I may tell the reason which brought him to London. After his
first visit Herzen said to Ogaryov and me: ‘I am very glad N.
has come, he has brought us a treasure, only not a word must
be said about it in his lifetime. Look, Ogaryov,’ Herzen went
on, handing him a manuscript, ‘it’s the Memoirs of Catherine
the Second, written by her in French; look at the spelling of
the period; it’s an authentic copy.’ By the time the Memoirs of
Catherine were published, N. was in Germany. From Germany he
wrote to Herzen that he would like to translate these Memoirs
into Russian. Herzen was delighted to send him a copy, and a
month later the translation was published by Czernecki; I don’t
remember who translated the book into German and English, I
only know that the Memoirs of Catherine the Second appeared
simultaneously in four languages and made an extraordinary
sensation throughout Europe. The editions were quickly
exhausted. Many people maintained that Herzen had written the
Memoirs himself, others were puzzled to think how they came
into Herzen’s hands. Efforts were made to discover who had
brought them from Russia, but that was a secret known only to
N. himself and three other persons who had been trained to
silence under Nicholas the First.
I forgot to say when speaking of Herzen’s character, that he
was very impressionable. Though as a rule of a serene and
at times even gay and mirthful disposition, he was apt to
become suddenly gloomy if anything disagreeable happened. Such
depression was frequently caused by his carelessness, which
grew upon him in the trifling affairs of daily life; he was
very precise in business, and never forgot anything relating
to the printing-press, to money matters, or to any questions
affecting people. When he set off after lunch to London he
would think he had remembered everything; his letters and his
proofs were ready—he would say good-bye, looking cheerful, but
five minutes later there would be a terrific ring at the bell:
this was Herzen back again with a gloomy face and a voice of
exasperation. ‘I have forgotten everything,’ he would say in
despair, ‘and now the train will be gone before I can get back
to the station.’
‘Well, go by the omnibus, then,’ his son would tell him, unable
to help smiling at his despair.
We all rushed to look for what was lost, ran to the
drawing-room where he had been writing, or to his own room,
and sometimes came back unsuccessful; no letters, no proofs!
Occasionally it turned out that they were in his pocket;
unluckily, he had so many pockets in his coat and in the cloak
which he wore over it to keep off the London dust; then Herzen,
more wrathful than ever, would have to cross Fulham Bridge to
the omnibus office, and just as he approached it would see one
going off, and have to wait there ten minutes for the next.”
“At Laurel House Ogaryov and I once got up some theatricals for
the children.... I made two red shirts for Herzen and Ogaryov.
Sasha put on a fur-lined coat inside out to represent a bear,
and Ogaryov, in a red shirt, was the bear-leader. The red shirt
was very becoming to him. With his big fair beard and curly
head he looked a typical Russian peasant. On the other hand,
the red shirt did not suit Herzen at all, he looked like a
foreigner in it. Not supposing that he would mind, I blurted
this out, and Herzen would never put on the red shirt again.”
[Somewhere about 1856 Herzen sent his son, who had been a brilliant
student of natural science in London, winning a silver and then a gold
medal in examinations, to Geneva to study under his old friend, Karl
Vogt. After six months in Geneva, the young man entered the University
of Berne, and there lived in the family of old Professor Vogt. In 1859
Herzen’s cousin,[4] Madame Passek, visited Berne and saw the young
student there. She writes:]
“In Berne we stopped for a few days at the Hôtel au Faucon,
and at once sent a note to Alexandr’s son, who was about to
take his final in medicine at the University of Berne, and was
living in the family of Professor Vogt, a man greatly respected
by every one. A few minutes later he arrived; he was a young
man with long fair hair, kind, pleasant face, and blue eyes
like his mother’s. He had left Russia as a child of seven, but
had not forgotten us; he was glad to see us, and at once made
such friends that with all the ardour and simplicity of youth
he confided to us his love for Emma, the thirteen-year-old
granddaughter of the Vogts. He said he had asked his father’s
permission to propose to her formally and after the engagement
to wait till she came of age; but his father would not consent,
and was vexed at his falling in love so young. ‘I reminded my
father,’ he said, ‘that he was not much older than I am when he
fell in love and married; he did not like this, and now we are
having a disagreeable correspondence.’
‘But why is your father against your love?’ I asked. ‘The Vogts
are an excellent family, he respects them, and is a friend of
their son, the famous naturalist, Karl Vogt.’
‘Well, you see, he has got it into his head that I should marry
a Russian, should live for Russia, love Russia. But how can one
love what one doesn’t know? I hardly remember Russia, it is a
foreign country for me, and what can I do for it? I am not a
politician, I am a man of peace. If I had a plot of land in
Switzerland, Emma, and my books, that would be enough for me.’
‘Do the Vogts know of your love for Emma, and what is their
attitude?’
‘They know and strongly disapprove—that makes my position all
the more difficult.’
We spent about a fortnight in Berne; Alexandr’s son spent
whole days with us. Through him we got to know the Vogts; they
treated us like old friends and often kept us to dinner. We
dined at their famous round family table, which had served
several generations of Vogts and Vollens.... The gifted
zoologist, Karl Vogt, came to see his parents while we were
in Berne. He was a man of clear, realistic intellect and of
the happiest disposition. He did not waste his energies in
yearning for impractical ideals; he was passionately fond of
nature, work was for him a pleasure, not a task, and he did not
ask from man or nature more than they could give.... In Berne
Alexandr’s son introduced us to Emma. With her grandmother’s
permission he brought her from Zurich, where she was at
boarding-school. She was still a child, fresh and rosy, with
bright, merry blue eyes—still a chrysalis, as Herzen said of
her.
After a fortnight in Berne we moved to Geneva.... Our young
friend soon came to see us there, and told us that he had
formally proposed to Emma, had informed her grandparents, and
obtained their consent, and had, as her recognised betrothed,
been with her to call on all their friends and relations. He
had done all this without his father’s knowledge, and now asked
me to break the news to him and try to settle it all peaceably.
It was settled peaceably—in appearance; but Alexandr was
planning to put an end to the engagement.
When his son came to London, however, with his fiancée to
introduce Emma to his family, Alexandr met them at the railway
station with a carriage and drove the betrothed child to his
house; everything there had been prepared for her reception,
and all the time she spent with him she was surrounded with
tenderness and attention; but this was all.
When Emma’s parents arrived in London, Alexandr received them
rather coldly, and advised them to take their daughter, till
she came of age, to live with them in South America, where they
were returning shortly. At the same time he sent his son on
a scientific expedition to Norway and Iceland, undertaken, I
believe, by Karl Vogt. During the years of parting the young
people wrote to each other; the letters from America did not
always reach their destination: the correspondence grew slacker
and slacker, and finally ceased.
I have heard that Emma married a rich banker in South America;
Alexandr’s son settled in Italy, where, later on, he married;
he has nine charming children, owns a villa near Florence, is
devoted to farming, does scientific work, and is well known
as a naturalist. The dreams of the boy of twenty have come
true.“[5]
[It seems probable that Natalya Alexyevna had cherished a girlish
adoration[6] for Herzen during the time she spent in his company in Italy
and in Paris. Now that she was in daily contact with him, this early
passion revived, and soon eclipsed her feeling for Ogaryov. About the
same time (possibly earlier) Ogaryov formed a permanent connection with
an Englishwoman, Mary (her surname is never given), by whom he had two
sons, Henry (born 1857) and ‘Toots.’ She seems to have been a kind, good
woman, but not of much education nor of intellectual tastes. Herzen’s
enemies have not hesitated to accuse him of treacherously seducing the
wife of his best friend. It must be borne in mind that Ogaryov remained
on the warmest terms with Herzen, continuing to live in his house so long
as they were in England, and no trace of resentment can be discerned.
It is, indeed, quite possible that his wife’s defection may have been
rather a relief than a subject of regret to him. Moreover, the initiative
and the responsibility seem to have been hers. At first no one but
Ogaryov and Herzen’s elder children understood the real position, and
Natalya Alexyevna’s daughter, Liza, as a child looked upon Ogaryov as
her father. Twins, a boy and girl, were born in 1861. Herzen seems to
have found little happiness in this new union, which was a constant
source of anxiety and misery. He was morbidly sensitive in regard to
the irregularity of the position, but accepted the tie as a binding
obligation and responsibility. Except for short intervals of absence on
business, or on visits to his children or his friends, he lived with
Natalya Alexyevna to the end of his life, though he does in his letters
to Ogaryov talk of escaping from his bondage.
In 1858, just after the birth of Liza, Natalya Alexyevna’s mother
arrived.]
“Herzen now thought our house overcrowded, and shortly
afterwards took another, called Park House, also in Fulham and
not far away, with a big garden and a fairly large vegetable
patch. My mother moved with us and spent six weeks there.
Though Park House was in some respects very superior to Laurel
House, I regretted the beautiful flower-garden we had left.
There was a very spacious verandah along one whole side of the
new house looking into the garden, and there we used to spend
the greater part of the day. On the ground floor there were
the kitchen and a little room for washing up the crockery, and
another tiny closet with an open rack in which the plates were
stood to dry without being wiped. These adjuncts to the kitchen
are usual in all English houses; in fact, Herzen used to say
that English houses were so exactly alike in the arrangement
of the rooms and even of the furniture, that he could find any
room and any object in them with his eyes bandaged....”
[The difference between the Russian and the English attitude (at that
period) in regard to law and punishment is well illustrated by the
following domestic incident.]
“We had four servants in Park House ... and on Saturdays, as
in all English houses, a charwoman came to scrub and clean
everything, even the front doorsteps. Mazzini recommended
Herzen an Italian cook, Tassinari, a revolutionary and ardent
patriot ... a stout, fresh-looking man, in spite of his grey
hair and long white beard, with a clever, expressive face and
big bright black eyes. He was an excellent cook, and Herzen
was well satisfied with him ... but he had one great defect,
jealousy or envy—painful as it is to admit it, those two
feelings are closely akin. The Irish housemaid, who was very
much with us, as she looked after my little girl, aroused this
feeling particularly. He was always finding fault with her,
would not give her lunch in the morning if she did not come in
at once when the bell rang, and so on. We brought from Laurel
House with us a middle-aged German called Trina, who took the
children out and read German with them. She had been with us
for six months, and seemed to be fond of us. One day Jules,
our manservant, said to me: ‘Isn’t it sad for poor Trina,
madam; last Sunday she was taking the wages you paid her to her
sister’s, and in the crush in the omnibus she had her pocket
picked.’
‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ I asked.
‘I expect she didn’t like to,’ answered Jules.
I went to Ogaryov and Herzen; they gave me the money and I
handed it to Trina. She thanked me, but seemed overcome with
confusion and did not look me in the face. I imagine it was
a clever trick on her part. Not long after this, Trina was
suddenly taken ill with acute rheumatism, and could not move
hand or foot; we sent for a doctor and a nurse, but she soon
begged to be taken to the hospital. Herzen hired an omnibus,
she was with the greatest care carried down on a mattress and
driven at a walking pace to the hospital. Some months later,
when she had completely recovered, she came back to us. That
was just when we were leaving Laurel House. Then Jules lost
his silver watch; he could not imagine who had taken it, but
was inclined to suspect the gardener and his wife. I was very
much annoyed at this suspicion, but I had no positive proofs
by which I could convince Jules that he was mistaken. We had
been for nearly two years at Laurel House, the same gardener
had been there all the time, and nothing had ever been missed.
After her return Trina went on visiting her sister, who kept, I
believe, a baker’s shop; she even took to asking me to let her
stay the night there, as it was a long way off; this was very
inconvenient, but I put up with it, as I liked her.
One day, when Trina was at her sister’s, Tassinari came into
the dining-room looking worried. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘they came
yesterday from the chandler’s, where we have an account; you
know they are also carriers, that is, they deliver parcels all
over the town.’
‘Well, what then?’ I asked.
‘You will see in a minute,’ our cook answered. ‘Do you know
this address, madam?’ and he handed me a piece of paper.
‘It’s Trina’s sister’s name,’ I answered, glancing at it.
‘They let us know,’ Tassinari went on, ‘parcels are very often
sent from Park House to that address, and that there is often
something that clinks in the parcels. It’s always the same box;
it comes back empty and is sent off from here full.... I told
them to keep back the box, which was to be sent to that address
yesterday; would not you like to look what there is in it,
madam?’
‘Of course not,’ I answered warmly, ‘you can’t open another
person’s boxes. Trina is sending something to her sister,’ I
said, with a simplicity certainly excessive at my years; but
the thought that she was capable of stealing did not enter
my head; besides, I imagined this was another instance of
Tassinari’s fault-finding ways. The Italian smiled.
‘Then shall I ask Monsieur Herzen?’ and he went off and knocked
at the drawing-room door.
Herzen listened to him and gave him leave to bring in the box.
Tassinari was triumphant; he quickly reappeared with the box,
deftly unfastened the lid, and began picking things out with a
gleeful face; there were curtains, ribbons, children’s smocks,
and I don’t know what else; I stood overwhelmed.
‘Herzen,’ I said, ‘could Trina really...?’
He looked at me with sympathy for my distress.
‘She could,’ he said.
He told Tassinari to pack the things in the box again, and put
it in the other half of the room, then dismissed him.
‘When Trina comes,’ said Herzen, ‘show her that box; we shall
see what explanation she gives. Of course, it is all very clear
and simple, but what matters is this: by English law we are
bound to prosecute a thief, or we are liable to a considerable
fine, and nothing would induce me to hand over a thief to the
police. Let her go back to Germany, for we can’t give her a
character....’
It was a long time before Trina returned; I suppose she was
waiting for the arrival of her box. At last she came into the
drawing-room, with apologies for having stayed away so long,
but turned pale and said no more when she saw the box on the
table. After listening to her protestations that she had done
wrong only once, I gave her Herzen’s advice to go back to
Germany, which she at once agreed to do. Three days later she
left our house, together with the Irish housemaid, who had been
in the secret, and had carried the box to the chandler’s.”
“Malwide von Meysenbug had all this time been living apart from
us, sometimes in lodgings and sometimes with friends, but she
looked forward to an independent life and to visiting Paris and
Italy, where she had never been. She suggested that she should
take Herzen’s younger daughter, Olga, with her on a visit to
Madame Schwabe, the widow of a wealthy banker with a large
family and a splendid estate in England. As Madame Schwabe was
going to Paris for the winter, Malwide asked Herzen to let Olga
go with them.... Soon afterwards Malwide left Madame Schwabe
and settled alone with little Olga.”
[Olga, who was devoted to Malwide, remained with her permanently. In a
letter from Fräulein von Meysenbug to Wagner she gives a charming picture
of the little girl’s enthusiasm at a performance in Paris of one of
Wagner’s operas, and her audible indignation when some of the audience
hissed the new music.]
“Among the Russians who came to see Herzen at Park House, I
cannot pass over Alexandr Serno-Solovyovitch, at that time
a very young man. Herzen liked him very much: it was evident
that, in spite of his youth, he had read and thought much; he
was intelligent and interested in all the important questions
of the day. I don’t remember where the rest of the family had
gone, but I know they were obliged to be out one day when
Serno-Solovyovitch particularly wanted to see the Zoological
Gardens. I went with him, taking Natasha, Olga, and my baby
Liza. Serno-Solovyovitch inspected the Gardens thoroughly,
and was very charming and attentive to the children. He spent
a few days more in London, continually seeing Herzen and
Ogaryov, and showing them the greatest warmth and respect. At
that time his bad qualities were slumbering, and circumstances
had not yet arisen to develop them. I shall have to speak of
him later.... It is painful to think how this intelligent
and cultured man perished in a strange land without being of
any service to his country, brought to ruin by vanity, envy,
and despair; but I must speak of him not so much on his own
account as because in his relations with him Herzen’s innate
characteristics—a magnanimity, kindness, and compassion almost
passing belief—were so strikingly displayed.”
[In the summer of 1859 Natalya Alexyevna, hearing from her sister,
Madame Satin, that she was visiting Germany with her children, went to
Dresden with her baby Liza and Natasha Herzen, then to Heidelberg with
her sister, where she saw many old friends and met Madame Passek for
the first time, and then to Berne to stay with the Vogts. On returning
to London the following winter she found Herzen and Ogaryov installed
in Orsett House, a large house of five storeys, in Westburn Terrace,
Wimbledon.]
“Herzen told me that while I was away an artist, Madame
O’Connell, a complete stranger, had written asking him to give
her five sittings. At the first sitting she had been extremely
kind, and had told him that having heard a great deal about him
she wanted to paint a portrait of him for posterity.... What
became of the portrait I do not know.”
[In the summer of 1861[7] Herzen went with his daughter Natasha to Paris
to see Olga, who was ill, and there]
“After long years of separation he met his cousin, Tatyana
Passek.[8] He told us a great deal about this, and said
that the Yakovlyevs[9] had treated her very badly and taken
possession of her share of the family property. When she had
been in need of money, Herzen had lent her what she wanted and
had never asked for repayment. In his views he had moved far
away from the friend of his youth. Madame Passek was religious,
and regarded the monarchy as the salvation of Russia.
They disputed hotly, both stoutly defending their convictions,
and parted with a smile, conscious that only the grave could
reconcile their divergent views, and that as long as they lived
they would be warriors in opposing camps.”
“Soon after Herzen’s return from France, he received visitors
who greatly interested us all—Sergey Ivanovitch Turgenev and
Lyov Nikolaevitch Tolstoy. The former we had known for years,
and we were used to his caprices and little peculiarities; the
latter we saw for the first time.
Not long before leaving Russia, Ogaryov and I had read
Tolstoy’s _Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth_, and tales of the
Crimean War, with enthusiasm. Ogaryov was constantly talking of
these tales and of their author.
When we came to London, we hastened to tell Herzen about this
new and exceptionally gifted writer. It turned out that Herzen
had read several of his works already, and was delighted with
them. He particularly admired the boldness with which Tolstoy
spoke of feelings so subtle and deeply concealed that no one
had put them into words, though many had perhaps experienced
them. As regards his philosophical views, Herzen thought them
feeble, misty, and often unsupported by evidence.
‘Tolstoy is in our house!’ Natasha and I thought, and we
hurried into the drawing-room to have a look at the illustrious
fellow-countryman, who was being read by all Russia. When
we went in Count Tolstoy was carrying on a heated argument
with Turgenev. Ogaryov and Herzen, too, were taking part in
the discussion. At that time (1861) Tolstoy looked about
thirty-five; he was of medium height, his features were ugly,
there was a piercing and yet dreamy look in his little grey
eyes. It was odd that his face never wore that expression of
childlike good-nature sometimes seen in Turgenev’s smile, and
so attractive in him.
As we went in, the usual introductions began. Of course,
Tolstoy had no idea that we were so excited at seeing him that
we hardly dared to speak to him, but only listened to what he
said to other people. He came to see us every day. It was soon
obvious that he was far more sympathetic as a writer than as
a thinker, for he was sometimes illogical; in defence of his
fatalism, he often had heated arguments with Turgenev, in the
course of which they said extremely disagreeable things to each
other. When there was no discussion going on, and when Tolstoy
was in a good humour, he would sit down at the piano and sing
us the soldiers’ songs composed in the Crimea during the war:
‘On the eighth day of September,
How the devil brought us here
To camp upon the mountains,’ etc.
We laughed as we listened, but in reality it was painful to
hear of what was done in the Crimea—the light-hearted way
in which the fate of thousands of soldiers was entrusted to
incompetent generals, and the incredible amount of thieving
that went on. Even lint was stolen and sold to the enemy, while
our long-suffering soldiers were dying.”
“Every year Turgenev paid one or two visits to London.
Once he came to see us soon after writing _Faust_. He read
it aloud to us, but neither Ogaryov nor Herzen liked it; the
latter was, however, very reserved in his observations, while
the former criticised it very severely. From that day Turgenev
lost all liking for Ogaryov.
I remember on one visit to London Turgenev was particularly
good-humoured and sweet to Herzen.
‘Do you know,’ he said to him, ‘I have not come alone this
time. Simply to see you, a queer fellow has set off on his
travels, without knowing a word of any foreign language, and
begged me to take him to London. Isn’t that heroic? Guess who
it is. But I tell you what,’ he went on, ‘perhaps you had
better call on him first: Ogaryov may not care much about
seeing him; there were some misunderstandings....’
‘Goodness,’ said Herzen, ‘surely it’s not Nekrassov? He knows
no foreign language. What makes him suppose I should care to
see him after the message he sent Ogaryov through you, Sergey
Ivanovitch?’
‘But you know he has come all the way from Russia on purpose to
see you!’
‘He can go back again,’ said Herzen, and he was not to be
moved. He was always far more ready to resent a slight to
Ogaryov than to himself.
For three days Turgenev went on trying to persuade Herzen to
see Nekrassov, but he was forced in the end to submit, and to
take the latter back without obtaining an interview.”
“When they met in Paris in 1869, they talked about literature,
and Herzen asked Turgenev what he was writing.
‘I am writing nothing,’ he answered, ‘I am no longer read
in Russia; I have begun writing in German for Germans, and
publishing in Berlin....’
Turgenev joked, but he was inwardly sore at the estrangement
of his fellow-countrymen. From the age of five-and-twenty he
had been the spoilt darling of fortune; his fame had grown
steadily; later on, thanks to Viardot’s translations, he became
no less famous in Europe, and the doors of all the best salons
of Paris and London were thrown open to him; he was being
spoilt by success, when his own country suddenly drew back and
turned away from him, and what for? His faithful picture of
Nihilism in _Fathers and Children_. He wrote as the nightingale
sings, with no idea of wounding any one’s vanity; he wrote
because writing was his vocation, but the younger generation in
Russia saw a spiteful intention in it, were resentful, and were
up in arms against Turgenev. These strained relations with his
own people lasted for several years.
Herzen disliked the anti-aesthetic side of Nihilism, and was
surprised at the indignation of young Russia with Turgenev. He
used to say to Russians: ‘Why, Bazarov is the apotheosis of
Nihilism; the Nihilists never rise to his level. There is a
great deal of humanity in Bazarov; what is there for them to be
offended at?’
Herzen and Turgenev had both fallen on evil days; they were
both ostracised by social opinion in Russia at that time,
Turgenev for his vivid presentation of Nihilism, Herzen for his
sympathy with Poland. The latter’s views and principles always
led him, of course, to espouse the cause of the weaker, but
he had taken no part in Polish affairs. There were, however,
evil-disposed persons who hinted that he had done so, and this
was enough to make almost every one abandon him.”
“In 1861, not long before the Emancipation of the Serfs, Herzen
had a letter with the London postmark, and from a Russian,
asking permission to call on him. The letter was simply written
and dignified, though not free from mistakes in spelling.
Herzen, as always, answered that he would be glad to see a
fellow countryman. A young man appeared and explained that he
was a peasant of the Simbirsk province, and that his name was
Martyanov. He was a tall, graceful, fair man, with regular
features and a rather cold-looking, ironical expression that
seemed full of a sense of his own dignity. He was engaged
on translation of some sort, and had been for some time in
London. At first Herzen was rather mistrustful of him, but
soon Martyanov’s character showed itself so clearly that it
was unthinkable to suspect him of being a spy. He was of an
unusually straightforward disposition and of sharply-defined
views; he believed in the Russian peasantry and in the Russian
Tsar. He was not very talkative as a rule, but at times he
spoke with great enthusiasm.
Sad to relate, this perfectly loyal Russian citizen came to
a sad end. After the Emancipation of the Serfs, the Polish
demonstrations and the pacification of Poland, Martyanov
decided to return to Russia. At the frontier he was detained
and sent to Siberia. What for he never knew.
The rumours of the Emancipation of the Serfs were at last
confirmed, ceased to be rumours and became truth, the great
and joyful truth. As he was reading the _Moscow News_ in his
study one day, Herzen ran his eyes over the preamble of the
manifesto, gave a violent tug at the bell, and, keeping the
paper in his hand, ran out with it on to the stairs, shouting
loudly in his resonant voice:
‘Ogaryov, Natalie, Natasha, come, make haste!’
Jules was the first to run out, asking:
‘Monsieur a sonné?’
‘Je ne sais pas, peut-être, mais que diable, Jules, allez les
chercher tous, vite—vite; qu’est-ce qu’ils ne viennent pas?’
Jules looked at him with surprise and pleasure.
‘Monsieur a l’air bien heureux,’ he said.
‘Ah! diable! je crois bien,’ Herzen answered carelessly.
At that instant we all ran up from different directions,
expecting something out of the ordinary, and from Herzen’s
voice something good. He waved the paper at us, but would not
answer our questions till he was back in his study with us
following him.
‘Sit down and listen,’ he said, and he began reading the
manifesto. His voice broke with emotion; at last, he passed the
paper to Ogaryov. ‘You read it,’ he said, ‘I can’t go on.’
Ogaryov read the manifesto through in his quiet, gentle voice,
though he was inwardly as rejoiced as Herzen; but his feelings
were always differently expressed.
Then Herzen suggested that they should go together for a walk
in the town; he wanted air and movement. Ogaryov preferred his
solitary walks, but on this occasion he readily agreed. At
eight o’clock they came back to dinner. Herzen put a little
bottle of curaçao on the table and we all drank a glass,
congratulating each other on the great and joyful news.
‘Ogaryov,’ said Herzen, ‘I want to celebrate the great event.
Perhaps,’ he went on with feeling, ‘there may be no happier day
in our lives. You know we live like workmen, nothing but toil
and labour; we ought sometimes to rest and look back over the
distance we have come, and to rejoice at the happy solution of
the question so near our hearts; perhaps we, too, have done our
bit towards it.’
‘And you,’ he went on, turning to Natasha and me, ‘must get
ready some coloured flags and sew big letters in white calico
on them; on one, “Emancipation of the Peasants in Russia,
February 19, 1861,” on another, “Russian Free Press in London,”
and so on. We will have a dinner for Russians; I’ll write an
article about it and read it aloud; I have the heading already:
“Thou hast conquered, Galilean.” Yes, the Tsar has conquered
me by accomplishing the great task. At the Russian dinner I
will propose in my own house a toast to the health of the
Tsar. Whoever removes the obstacles that hinder the advance of
Russia towards progress and prosperity is not acting against
us. In the evening we will invite not only Russians, but all
foreigners who sympathise with this great event, all who are
rejoicing with us.’
At last the day for this festival was fixed.... Flags were
made, English words were sewn on them, and little glass lamps
of different colours were procured for illuminating the house.
Prince Golitsyn,[10] hearing of Herzen’s plan, undertook to
write a quartet, which he called ‘Emancipation,’ and performed
it on the occasion.
On the morning of the festive day we had not very many guests,
only Russians and Poles. Among others there were Martyanov,
Prince Pyotr Dolgorukov, and Count Uvarov. Tchorszewski came
later than the rest; I remember we were all in the drawing-room
when he arrived.
‘Alexandr Ivanovitch, it is not a day for rejoicing; Russians
are shedding Polish blood in Warsaw!’ said Tchorszewski,
breathless.
‘What?’ cried Herzen.
‘Impossible!’ exclaimed the others. Tchorszewski took out of
his pocket photographs of the slain which he had just received
from Warsaw.
‘There have been demonstrations there,’ he told us; ‘the Poles
were praying in the street; all of a sudden the word of command
rang out, and Russian bullets felled several men who were
kneeling in prayer.’
All pressed round Tchorszewski and examined the photographs.
Herzen was pale and silent. His face was overcast, the serene
and happy expression was replaced by a look of anxiety,
trouble, and sadness.
Jules announced that dinner was served. We all went down to the
dining-room, every face looked troubled.... When champagne was
handed round, Herzen stood up and proposed a toast to Russia,
to its prosperity, its progress, and so on. We all stood glass
in hand, every one responded warmly, and other toasts were
proposed.... Herzen made a short speech, of which I remember
the first sentence: ‘Friends, our day of rejoicing is darkened
by unexpected news; blood is flowing in Warsaw, Slav blood, and
it is shed by brother Slavs!’
There was a hush, and all sat down again in silence.
In the evening the house was lighted up; flags fluttered on
it; Prince Golitsyn conducted his quartet in the drawing-room.
In response to Herzen’s invitation in the _Bell_, there was a
great gathering not only of our Russian and Polish friends, but
also of the Italian _émigrés_, Mazzini and Saffi among them,
the French exiles, among whom Louis Blanc and Talandier were
conspicuous, as well as Germans, English people, and numbers of
Poles and Russians whom we did not know.
At moments it seemed as though Herzen had forgotten the
events at Warsaw and recovered his gaiety. Once he even stood
on a chair, and with great feeling said: ‘A new era is coming
for Russia, and we shall be in Russia again, friends; I do
not despair of it, the nineteenth of February is a great
day!’ Kelsiev and some fellow-countrymen whom we did not know
responded. There were so many people that nobody could sit
down. Even outside our house there was such a huge crowd that
policemen had to stand there all the evening to protect the
place from thieves.
A photographer took a view of our house lighted up and decked
with flags. The figure of Prince Yury Golitsyn was seen on
the steps. This photograph was reproduced on the cover of the
published quartet ‘Emancipation.’ I preserved a copy, but it
was taken from me, together with my books, at the Russian
frontier.
A few days after this celebration, Herzen wrote the article
headed ‘Mater Dolorosa,’ in which he expressed his sympathy
with the oppressed Poles, and published it in the following
number of the _Bell_.
Martyanov came to Herzen after reading this article and said:
‘You have buried the _Bell_ to-day, Alexandr Ivanovitch; no,
you can’t revive it now, you have laid it in its grave.’
And so the first blow to the _Bell_ was given it by Herzen
himself through showing sympathy to suffering Poland. Russian
_amour-propre_ was wounded, and little by little every one
turned away from the London publications. The second blow to
the _Bell_ was dealt later by Bakunin.
One day after dinner the postman rang the bell, and Herzen
opened a huge letter. It was from Bakunin, who wrote describing
his escape from Siberia and the sympathy shown him in America.
Bakunin expressed a hope that he would soon be in London and
helping his friends in their propaganda, writing for the
_Bell_, and so on. Herzen pondered after reading the letter,
then said to Ogaryov:
‘I must own I am afraid of Bakunin’s coming, he will be sure
to ruin our work. You remember what Caussidière—or Lamartine,
was it?—said of him in 1848: “Notre ami Bakounine est un homme
impayable le jour de la Révolution, mais le lendemain il faut
absolument le faire fusiller, car il sera impossible d’établir
un ordre quelconque avec un pareil anarchiste.”’
Ogaryov agreed. He, too, thought that Bakunin would not be
satisfied with their propaganda, but would insist on activity
after the pattern of Western European revolutionary movements.
Moreover, Bakunin had always figured abroad as the champion of
Poland. Herzen and Ogaryov sympathised with the sufferings of
Poland, but disliked the aristocratic character of the Poles,
their attitude to the lower classes, and so on. As for Bakunin,
he saw nothing....
I very well remember Bakunin’s first appearance in our house.
It was between eight and nine in the evening, every one was
sitting at table, but, as I was not very well, I was having
dinner lying on the sofa. There was a loud ring at the bell,
Jules ran upstairs to the front door, and in a few minutes came
back with the visitor: it was Mihail Alexandrovitch Bakunin. I
don’t remember whether I have spoken before of his appearance.
He was very tall, with an intelligent and expressive face; in
his features there was a great likeness to the Muravyovs, to
whom he was related. Every one stood up as Bakunin came in.
The men embraced each other, Herzen introduced the children
and Malwide, who happened to be dining with us. After greeting
all the rest, Bakunin came up to me. He recalled our meeting
in Berlin not long before the Dresden barricades, when he was
captured and handed over to the Austrians.
‘That’s bad—lying down,’ he said to me briskly; ‘you must get
well; we must be acting, not lying down.’
Bakunin sat down to the table, the dinner began to be very
lively. Afterwards he told us about his imprisonment in
Austria.... I should like to repeat his account of it, as far
as I remember it.
Chained to the wall in an underground dungeon, he was brought
to such a pitch of misery that he resolved to commit suicide
and tried sucking phosphorus off matches. This, however, had
no satisfactory result; it gave him a pain in his stomach, but
he remained alive. After a year and a half or two years of
this existence, one night, Bakunin told us, he was awakened
by an unaccustomed sound. Doors were being noisily opened and
shut, locks grated; at last footsteps approached nearer, and
various officials entered his cell: the governor of the prison,
warders, and an officer. They ordered Bakunin to dress. ‘I
was tremendously delighted,’ said Bakunin; ‘whether they were
taking me to be shot or transferring me to another prison,
anyway it was a change, and so anyway it was for the better.
I was taken in a closed carriage to a railway station and put
in a closed compartment, with tiny windows at the top. The
compartment must have been shunted, when we changed to another
train, for I was not led out at any station.... To get a breath
of fresh air, I said I was hungry, but that did not lead to the
desired result, they brought me food to the carriage. At last
we reached our destination. I was brought out in fetters from
the dark railway carriage into the bright winter sunshine on
the platform. Casting a cursory glance round the station, I saw
Russian soldiers; my heart throbbed joyously, and I understood
what was happening.
‘Would you believe it, Herzen, I was as delighted as a child,
though I could not expect anything good for myself. I was taken
to a room apart, a Russian officer appeared, and they began
transferring me as though I were an inanimate object; official
documents in German were read. The Austrian officer, a spare,
lean man, with cold, lifeless eyes, began demanding the return
of the chains riveted on me in Austria. The Russian officer, a
very young, shy fellow, with a good-natured expression, agreed
at once. The Austrian fetters were removed and Russian ones put
on. Ah, dear friends, the chains seemed lighter, I was glad of
them, and smiled happily to the young officer and the Russian
soldiers. “Ah, lads,” I said, “so I may die in my own country.”
The officer interposed, “You are not allowed to speak.” The
soldiers looked at me with silent curiosity. Then I was put
in a closed carriage like a hen-coop, with little openings at
the top. It was a very frosty night, and I was unused to fresh
air. You know the rest; I wrote that I was confined in the
Peter-Paul Fortress and afterwards in the Schlüsselburg, that
Nicholas commanded me to write an account of my doings abroad.
I complied with his desire, and at the end of my confession
added: “Sire, for my openness, forgive me my German sins.” On
the accession of Alexander I was sent to Siberia; that blessed
news reached me in the Solovetsky monastery. In Siberia I was
very well off. Muravyov is a very sensible man—he did not worry
me, but it is a true saying: you may feed the wolf, but he’ll
still yearn for the forest. Though it was a shame to do it, I
had to deceive my friends, to break away to freedom.’
But Herzen’s foreboding was soon justified. With Bakunin’s
arrival the Polish note began to be more conspicuous in the
Free Russian Press. At first Bakunin published his articles
in the _Bell_; but Herzen, noticing this tendency in them,
suggested that he should bring them out as separate pamphlets
or print them in the series called ‘Voices from Russia,’
as their views diverged, and Herzen did not want to publish
articles in the _Bell_ with which he was not usually in
complete agreement. What was most unfortunate was that Ogaryov
was nearer in his ideas to Bakunin, and the latter acquired
a great influence over him. And Herzen always gave way to
Ogaryov, even when he recognised that Ogaryov was wrong.
While Bakunin was in London there came among other visitors
from Russia an Armenian called Nalbandov. He was a man of
thirty, ugly, awkward, shy, but kind-hearted, sensible, and
full of sympathy for everything good. He was a wealthy man....
After completing his studies, I believe, in the University
of Moscow, he had travelled for his own pleasure, and had
been in China; on his return to Russia he heard of the _Bell_
and of Herzen, and made up his mind to visit London. The
first time he came to see Herzen he could scarcely speak for
shyness. Afterwards, however, delighted at the friendly welcome
given him, he used often to visit us. Bakunin completely
took possession of him; every day he used to go about London
with him, and he insisted on Nalbandov having his photograph
taken. This was done in a very original way: Nalbandov had his
photograph taken, back view, reading a newspaper. This queer
man spent two months in London, well pleased with his stay
in England, and took no part at all in the work of Russian
propaganda. Yet on his way back to Russia he was arrested and
clapped into some fortress in the East, where he was probably
forgotten. He was ruined by the carelessness of Bakunin, who
sang his praises in a letter to some relative in Russia.
Bakunin’s letters were, of course, opened in the post; word was
sent to the frontier, and Nalbandov paid for his friendship
with Bakunin. We heard no more of the fate of this truly good
and worthy man.
Sad to say, Nalbandov was not the only one who suffered from
Bakunin’s recklessness. The latter had a really childish
inability to control his tongue.
After the Warsaw risings, when repressive measures were
being taken by the Russian Government for the pacification
of the country, Herzen was visited by a Russian officer,
Potyebnya, who had left his regiment, but continued living in
Warsaw, where he showed himself everywhere in public places,
sometimes in civilian dress, sometimes disguised as a Polish
monk. Occasionally he came across fellow-officers, but nobody
recognised him. Potyebnya was a fair man of medium height and
attractive appearance. Herzen and Ogaryov liked him very much
and tried to persuade him to remain in London, but he would
not. It was said that he was in love with a Polish woman, and
so had gone over to the side of the Poles. He came several
times when in London; the last time he said: ‘I shall not fire
on Russians, I could not bring myself to it.’ ‘Do stay with
us,’ said Herzen. ‘I cannot,’ he answered, with a mournful
smile.
Potyebnya was extraordinarily nice with children. My eldest
child, a little girl of four, was very fond of him. She was
often present when they were talking, busy with her playthings,
and we thought she noticed nothing. But we were once struck by
a saying of hers to Potyebnya. It was on the last evening that
he spent in Orsett House. The young officer had taken the child
on his knee and was talking to her. Suddenly she said:
‘Dear Potyebnya, don’t go away, stay with us.’
‘I can’t,’ he answered, ‘but I will soon come back; I am not
going far, only to the South of France.’
‘Oh no,’ she said; ‘you are going to Poland, and they’ll kill
you there.’
Then Herzen cried out: ‘If you won’t listen to us, listen to
the child, who makes such a dreadful prophecy.’ But Potyebnya
could not be shaken in his determination, and he went back to
Poland next day. A Russian bullet laid him low soon afterwards.”
[In 1863 Bakunin left London with the expedition described by Herzen in
volume v. pp. 169-175, and was stranded in Sweden.]
“Bakunin went to Stockholm to complain of the captain’s
treachery. He heard that the King’s brother was a very cultured
and liberal man, and hoped with his support to force the
captain to continue the voyage. But Bakunin’s hopes were not
realised. There was a highly cultured society in Stockholm and
great sympathy for every liberal movement. He was throughout
his stay well received by the King of Sweden’s brother, and
fêted by Stockholm society as the Russian agitator of 1848.
Dinners and evening parties were given in his honour, his
health was drunk, and people were delighted to get the chance
of seeing him, but he received no help as regards the captain.
The other _émigrés_ determined on bold action; they hired boats
and attempted to continue on their way. But a terrible storm
blew up, and all those luckless and foolhardy men perished....
While Bakunin remained in Sweden hoping that another expedition
would be arranged, his wife arrived in London from Siberia.
I was not at home at the time; I had, on the advice of our
doctor, gone to Osborne for the sake of the children....
One day Herzen was sitting at his writing-table when Jules
announced that a very young and pretty woman was asking to see
him.
‘Ask her name, Jules, I am always telling you,’ said Herzen,
with some impatience.
Jules went out, and at once came back with a look of
astonishment on his face.
‘Eh bien?’ said Herzen.
‘Madame Bakunin! comment, monsieur, est-ce possible?’ said
Jules incoherently, as he probably compared husband and wife
in his mind. Herzen had heard that Bakunin had married the
daughter of a Polish clerk in Siberia. ‘Surely she has not
turned up?’ he thought. Making himself a little tidier, he went
into the drawing-room, where he saw a fair, very young and
handsome woman in deep mourning.
‘I am Bakunin’s wife; where is he?’ she said. ‘And you are
Herzen?’
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘Your husband is not in London.’
‘Where is he?’ she repeated.
‘I have no right to tell you that.’
‘What, not me, his wife!’ she said in a tone of offence, and
she turned crimson.
‘We had better talk about the Bakunins. When did you leave his
brothers and sisters? What on earth is the name of their place?
You have stayed in the country with them—what are the names of
his brothers and sisters? I have forgotten and mixed them all
up....’
Madame Bakunin gave the name of the country place, and answered
all the questions correctly. The Bakunins had helped her to
obtain a passport and had provided the money for her journey....
At last Herzen was convinced that she really was Bakunin’s
wife, and suggested that she should stay in our house and for
the time occupy my room. Calling my maid, Herzen told her to
look after Madame Bakunin, which was rather difficult, simply
because the latter did not know one word of English.
But all the same Herzen did not tell her where Bakunin was,
which offended her very much, and left a shade of dislike for
him in her heart.
By the time I came back from Osborne she had moved into
lodgings, where she remained till she left London. We were
very good friends, but she got on best of all with Varvara
Timofyevna Kelsiev.[11] She told the latter a great deal
about her life and her marriage. ‘I liked a young doctor much
better,’ she said, ‘and I believe he was attracted by me, but I
preferred to marry Bakunin because he is a hero and has always
been for Poland. Though I was born and grew up in Siberia, I
love my fatherland; I wear mourning for it and always shall.’
There was a great deal that was childish and naïve in her,
but at the same time much that was sweet and sincere. Then
a telegram came from Bakunin addressed to me: ‘Natalya
Alexyevna, I commend my wife to you, take care of her.’ Soon
afterwards, however, he sent for her to Sweden, and a great
many of us went to the station with her to see her off to
Dover. Before she left London, Madame Bakunin invited us all
to dinner and regaled us with Polish dainties, which were
very nice and greatly delighted our Polish friends, Czernecki
and Tchorszewski. The latter, however, was such an admirer of
female beauty that, however bad the dinner, he would have been
in raptures if the hostess were handsome.”
“One summer we spent at Torquay. Malwide von Meysenbug came
from Italy with Olga, and I went down from London with Natasha
and my baby, Liza. Ogaryov and Herzen could only come for
visits, for they had to be in London to look after the Russian
Free Press, and to receive the Russians who used to come to
interview the editors of the _Bell_, bringing a great deal
of material for publication. That summer Tatyana Petrovna
Passek decided to visit Herzen. She arrived in London and
telegraphed to him; he hurried back from Torquay and met her
at the station. We were all delighted to see her; she had the
gift of winning people by her gentleness and typically Russian
good-nature. Unluckily, she only paid us a brief visit. Soon
Malwide went back to Italy with both Herzen’s daughters; on the
way they visited Nice, where the girls’ mother was buried....
In 1862, or 1863, we decided to leave London, as Herzen
thought it would be cheaper and more comfortable to live in a
suburb. There was, only fifteen minutes by rail from London,
a little place called Teddington, consisting of a long street
with country houses in large luxuriant gardens, and several
smaller houses, with little shops of various sorts.... There
Herzen found a fairly roomy house with a big garden, and we all
moved into it, taking with us Varvara Timofyevna Kelsiev and
her little girl, Marusya. The printing-press was moved to a
little house not ten minutes’ walk from us. There Czernecki was
installed with the companion of his life, Marianna; they had no
children.
Our new house had only one drawback: behind it there was a
factory from which often came a smell of burnt tallow. But the
doctor assured us that this would do the children no harm, and
so we meekly put up with the unpleasantness of it. The only one
of our intimate circle left in London was Tchorszewski, and he
came to Teddington at least once a week, partly on business,
and partly from affection for the family, of which he was like
an indispensable member. His devotion to Herzen and all of us
was beyond all bounds, and he proved it indeed after Herzen’s
death.”
[At Elmfield House, Teddington, they were visited, as described in volume
v. p. 111, etc., by Gonchar, who took Madame Kelsiev and her little girl
Marusya with him to Tulcea, the colony of Russian raskolniks to which
Kelsiev had previously gone, and there the mother and child died. (See
volume v. p. 115.) Soon afterwards Garibaldi’s visit took place, as
described in volume v.]
“After being a year in Teddington we spent a summer by the
sea at Bournemouth. Malwide von Meysenbug joined us there
with Herzen’s daughters. This was the last time we were all
together in England; but I will say nothing of that stay, as
nothing of general interest occurred. After living in Italy
neither Malwide nor the girls were willing to hear of a change.
Sometimes Herzen spent a month or two with them in Italy....
On our return to London Herzen began to make plans for
transferring the printing-press to Geneva. From the time of the
Polish rebellion the circulation of the _Bell_ had dropped;
fewer manuscripts were sent us from Russia than before. This
was obviously a grief to Herzen. ‘We are old,’ he used to say;
‘the Nihilists look upon us as reactionaries; it is time to
retire, it is time to set to work on some big job.’ But Ogaryov
did not lose heart. He thought that in Switzerland there would
be more people coming fresh from Russia, and that the Free
Press would begin to flourish again.
While Herzen and Ogaryov were settling things up and preparing
to go, I went to Paris with my children, thinking that it would
be easier for my relations to come there from Russia to see me.
Then a calamity befell me from which I could not recover; for
several years afterwards I moved about from place to place and
could nowhere find peace.”
[In 1864, in Paris, Natalya Alexyevna’s two younger children, the twins,
died of diphtheria.]
“At midnight, on the 15th of December 1864, Herzen and Ogaryov,
accompanied by some other persons, whom I did not notice at
the time, put me with my daughter Liza into the train for
Montpelier. Some of the company commended us to the care of the
guard, others gave us letters of recommendation to doctors and
various other persons.
Yielding to necessity, I set off with a heavy heart on this
long journey alone with my child; but I knew Herzen could
not take us. He promised to join us shortly at Montpelier.
The doctors insisted that we should leave Paris as soon as
possible, for diphtheria was raging there. The well-known
writer and journalist, Emile Girardin, had just lost from this
epidemic his only daughter, a child of my Liza’s age.
Herzen did in fact arrive in Montpelier soon afterwards. Doctor
Coste, who was attending us, beamed all over with enthusiasm
when he saw him. A few days later he took Herzen in the evening
to the ‘Cercle Démocratique’; there many people were eager to
make his acquaintance, warmly shook his hand, and talked of his
writings. Herzen was much moved when, on his return, he told me
of the warm welcome given him; indeed, he was extremely popular
at that time in France, north and south alike, with all classes
of the population.
From Montpelier Herzen went to Geneva, and there meeting his
son brought him to Montpelier. Alexandr Alexandrovitch spent
two days with me and then went back to Florence.
At the end of the winter we went to Cannes, and from there
again to Nice. In Cannes we made the acquaintance of Dr.
Bernacki;[12] he was recommended to us in the hotel when my
daughter had some trifling ailment. Bernacki turned out to be a
great admirer of Herzen; he was a Polish _émigré_, an elderly
man whose patriotism was as keen as ever, though he had lived
in France since 1830. He had married a widow, who died, leaving
him her son. Herzen saw all Bernacki’s surroundings; life is
hard for the rich Slav temperament in the narrow, petty life of
the French bourgeois. Bernacki brought up and at last married
this son who was not his own, and all his love was centred on
the latter’s children.
In the spring of 1865 we moved from Nice to a villa, Château de
la Boissière, near Geneva.”
[Here the whole group, including Malwide, Herzen’s two elder daughters,
and Ogaryov, were for some time together again.]
“Prince Dolgorukov left London soon after we did, and he too
settled in Geneva.... He was an intelligent man, but had a
great deal of _amour-propre_, and, as I have said already,
his views were absolutely different from Herzen’s, yet he
seemed drawn to the latter by a strange, inexplicable, and
irresistible attraction. The prince’s harsh, hasty, and
despotic temper caused him continual difficulties abroad.
At the Château de la Boissière there was rather a curious
incident with Prince Dolgorukov. I was not in the house at the
time, but I well remember Herzen’s humorous account of the
quarrel between Prince Dolgorukov and our servant, Jules.
Dolgorukov, Vyrubov, and some other guests were dining at the
house. When they got up from the table, Dolgorukov went out of
the dining-room meaning to give some order to our cook. He had
to go down some steps to reach the kitchen; there he halted,
listening to a conversation in which he caught his own name;
Jules in a loud voice was complaining of the prince, saying
that he gave the servants far more trouble than all the rest of
the visitors. Instead of calling Jules and pretending to have
heard nothing, Dolgorukov pushed open the door and, drawing
the blade out of his swordstick, began waving it in the air
while he scolded and shouted at Jules. The latter gave him back
as good as he got and raised his fist to strike Dolgorukov.
Hearing a great uproar below-stairs, and knowing the prince’s
troublesome temper, Herzen, calling Vyrubov to follow him,
hurried down to the kitchen.... He seized Dolgorukov’s arms,
and asked Vyrubov to hold Jules; the prince was led away to
the dining-room, where, frantic with rage, he snatched up a
decanter and smashed it into splinters on the table, then
seized a chair and threw it on the floor so that it was broken
to pieces. Herzen gazed at him in mute amazement. The prince,
choking with fury, at last articulated: ‘Never again will I set
foot in your house,’ and went off.
But he could not do without seeing Herzen; and a week later
wrote asking him to dismiss Jules for his impertinence. Only on
this condition, said the prince, could he visit Château de la
Boissière again.
To this missive Herzen replied that he was very sorry for
what had occurred, but that it was against his principles to
dismiss a servant simply for impertinence, the more so as
he ‘considered the prince more to blame than Jules, since
the latter could not be compared with Dolgorukov as regards
culture and education, and, moreover, the prince had begun
the quarrel.’ ‘We sometimes perhaps complain of servants in
their absence,’ wrote Herzen, ‘though we have many interests,
and our relations with our servants do not take the most
prominent place in them; but as for them, they may well pour
out their indignation with us pretty often to relieve all the
unpleasantness of their lot in life.’
By degrees the prince began to calm down. He told his cook to
meet Jules in the market and to ask the latter to come to him.
Jules was buying provisions in the market when the prince’s man
went up to him with this message. Jules followed the man, set
down his basket in the hall, and not without surprise walked
into Dolgorukov’s study. The latter, on his entrance, stood up
and came to meet him. In response to our cook’s bow, the prince
held out his hand.
‘Je veux, Jules, me réconcilier avec vous, voulez-vous?’ said
the prince.
‘Je veux bien, je veux bien, monsieur le prince,’ Jules
answered good-humouredly, ‘il ne faut pas se fâcher toujours.’
‘Alors buvons à notre réconciliation,’ said the prince, filling
two glasses with some good red wine and offering one to Jules.
They clinked their glasses, and drained them.
From that time forward Prince Dolgorukov took to visiting
Herzen again, and never referred to the past.
When we settled in Geneva there were a great many Russians
there; almost all of them were Nihilists. They took up an
extremely hostile attitude to Herzen.
The greater number of them lived either in the Russian hotel
or in a boarding-house kept by Madame X., a Russian who had
several years before visited Herzen in London, accompanied by
her husband and the writer Mihailov. Since then there had been
many changes in her life; her husband had long before returned
to Russia, lived somewhere in the wilds, and wrote constantly
for the reviews. Mihailov had been exiled. A year or two after
parting with Mihailov, she had succeeded not only in forgetting
him, but in replacing him by the younger Serno-Solovyovitch.
I permit myself to speak of the relations of Madame X. with
Mihailov and Alexandr Serno-Solovyovitch, because every one
knew of them at the time, and she made no secret of them....
Serno-Solovyovitch was younger than she was: hasty, jealous,
and hot-tempered, he had stormy scenes with Madame X., and she
began to be afraid of him. When a son was born, to put an end
to all relations with him she made up her mind to send the baby
off to her husband X. to be brought up. Two other Russians
assisted her in this, to my thinking, inhuman action: I cannot
see what right a mother has to rob a father of his child,
unless she keeps the child herself. Serno-Solovyovitch was
beside himself at the child’s being sent away, he threatened
to murder Madame X., broke into her room, and really did become
alarming, ‘You have taken everything from me,’ he said with
despair, ‘now I have nothing I care for.’ I do not know how
Madame X. managed it, but for the sake of her own peace and
comfort she got Serno-Solovyovitch put into a lunatic asylum.
Probably his friends helped her. O Pushkin! how right you were!
it is easier to defend oneself from foes than from friends!
One evening Herzen, Ogaryov, and I were sitting in the
dining-room; suddenly the door was thrown open, and a man with
a face of despair ran in, looked about him, then fell on his
knees before Herzen. It was Serno-Solovyovitch; I recognised
him.
‘Get up, get up, how can you!’ said Alexandr Ivanovitch in a
voice full of emotion.
‘No, no, I won’t get up. I have wronged you, Alexandr
Ivanovitch, I have slandered you, I have slandered you even in
print ... and yet it is from you I ask help. Protect me from
my friends, they will shut me up again that _her_ mind may be
at rest. You see I have run away from the madhouse and come
straight to you, my enemy.’
Herzen and Ogaryov raised him up, shook his hand, assured him
that they harboured no malice against him, and kept him in the
house, but earnestly begged him not to go where he would be
irritated (namely, to Madame X.’s).
They looked on him with all-forgiving compassion, and as I
watched them I thought that the first Christians must have
loved and forgiven like them.
Serno-Solovyovitch was fond of children; he liked to walk about
the garden and play with my little girl Liza. Malwide and
Olga had not yet arrived, and Natasha was with her brother in
Berne at Marya Kashparovna Reihel’s. Suddenly we received from
Malwide a telegram:
‘We will stay on longer as Serno-Solovyovitch is with you.’
Herzen answered by telegram:
‘As you like; Natalie is not afraid of him; he is playing with
Liza in the garden.’
On the morning after the first night that Serno-Solovyovitch
slept at the Château de la Boissière we all got up early and
met in the dining-room; we hoped that he was still peacefully
reposing in freedom, and yet we were a little uneasy. Suddenly
Jules came in with the coffee and said:
‘You told me to keep an eye on our visitor, but really no
one could do that. He was there all the time,’ he went on
anxiously, ‘but now the room is empty, he’s not there, M.
Herzen,’ he said in despair.
After waiting some time we began breakfast, but Herzen was
gloomy. ‘He will murder her,’ he said, ‘and I shall never
forgive myself for not keeping watch over him myself!’
All at once we caught the sound of footsteps coming nearer and
nearer, and Serno-Solovyovitch walked into the dining-room,
looking almost cheerful. He apologised, and told Herzen in a
low voice that he had gone out to buy a paper collar and cuffs,
as he felt uncomfortable at sitting down to table in a lady’s
company without. We felt as though a weight had been lifted off
us when he came in.
But not long afterwards Serno-Solovyovitch’s self-control gave
way, he went where he was irritated to frenzy, and he was taken
back again to the asylum.
Later on he was discharged, and then he joined a society of
working-class Socialists; but his success with them did not
fully satisfy him. He felt that he was severed from his own
country and grew more and more gloomy. He wrote a great deal
about socialism, but was dull and depressed, and held aloof
from every one.... He ended by suicide—and what a terrible
end! He sought death in three ways: he poisoned himself, cut
his veins, and stifled himself with charcoal fumes. He had
suffered enough, and so escaped to freedom.
While we lived near Geneva, Madame X. was only twice in our
house, and then not as an acquaintance but on business. I found
her very unattractive, and could not understand how it was
she had so much influence over undoubtedly good men. Various
persons came to see us from her boarding-house, chiefly men,
though I remember one very handsome young woman, who had
married a very young Prince Golitsyn in order to go abroad to
study. She saw him for the first time in church and never saw
him again. Such marriages were a fashion at that time and were
treated as a joke, but later on, so it was said, this reckless
marriage was the cause of great sorrow to Golitsyn: he fell in
love, and could not marry the girl he loved!
Herzen did not like living in Geneva; the _émigrés_ were in too
close proximity; having nothing to do, they had plenty of time
for gossip and tittle-tattle; their antagonism to Herzen, an
antagonism for which envy of his material resources was chiefly
responsible, irritated him extremely, and his irritability was
increased by the state of his health, which began to fail from
the year 1864.
The Château de la Boissière was abandoned; I sought solitude in
Montreux with my little girl and her governess, Miss Turner.
Malwide went back to Italy with Olga. Herzen remained with only
Natasha in Geneva; he moved into lodgings on the Quai du Mont
Blanc, while Ogaryov settled at Lancy, almost outside the town.
Living at Geneva was not a success; little good work was done,
and we had not what the English call a _home_.
I was drawn to Nice again, to the newly-dug graves.[13] Herzen
was fond of the scenery of the south; besides, he had in Nice
many precious memories, and his wife’s grave, which he never
forgot. Sending Natasha to Italy, he accompanied us to Nice,
and stayed there for a time himself.
Whether I wanted to or not, I had to make some acquaintances
for my daughter’s sake; a gloomy environment is bad for a
child. She used to play in the public gardens every day with
some children; she soon made friends with them, and so I came
to be acquainted with two or three families. I arranged with
a dancing-mistress to form a class, and had no difficulty in
finding some among my little girl’s friends who were glad to
join it. And so the children came to us twice a week. Among
others, we made the acquaintance of the family of Garibaldi (a
cousin of the celebrated Garibaldi), whose amiable wife and
children were in friendly relations with us till I went back to
Russia for good.
At that time Herzen was still in Nice. He wrote a great deal
in Nice—there was no one to hinder him; then he used to go and
read the papers at Visconte’s; after dinner he liked to go a
walk alone with Liza; sometimes he took her to the theatre, and
enjoyed her sallies, her apt remarks, and intelligence. He was
then writing for the _Week_ the series of articles entitled ‘To
Pass the Time.’ It was a comfort to him to be writing and being
printed in Russia. He was fond of reading aloud what he had
written before sending it off.”
[Ogaryov was now settled with Mary and their two children, Henry and
‘Toots,’ in Geneva.]
“... While Herzen was in Nice, a telegram arrived from
Tchorszewski, telling him that Ogaryov had broken his leg, and
begging him to come to Geneva as soon as possible. I was not
in the house at the time, and on returning home I found Herzen
sitting on a chair in the hall in a dazed condition; I was
astounded at his being there and looking so overwhelmed. He
handed me the telegram without a word. Glancing at it, I said:
‘Well, Herzen, you must make haste and go; let us look at the
time-table and pack up your things; you must not delay.’
But Herzen sat mute as though he did not hear what I said. ‘I
feel,’ he said at last, ‘that I shall never see him again.’
However, I managed to pack what was needed, and to see Herzen
off at the station; I felt that if anything could relieve
his mind it would be seeing Ogaryov. Such an accident was a
serious thing at his age. Herzen wrote afterwards, describing
with what terror and anxiety he travelled to Geneva; how,
meeting Tchorszewski at the station, he had not courage to ask
‘Is Ogaryov alive?’ At last Tchorszewski, of his own accord,
said that he thought that there was no ground for anxiety in
Ogaryov’s condition. Doctor Meyer had set the bone and put
the leg in a splint. Ogaryov had borne the operation with the
greatest fortitude.
I have searched in vain for the letter in which Herzen
described this unfortunate accident. I remember that he wrote
that Ogaryov was taking an evening stroll in the outskirts of
Geneva, when he had one of the fits to which he was subject. On
recovering consciousness, he got up and tried to go on, but,
as it was by then dark, he did not see the ditch, stumbled,
broke his leg, and was sick from the pain; after lying there
for a while, he tried again to get up, but could not. Then
he began to call to passers-by, but nobody came to him. As
ill-luck would have it, he was lying in a pool just outside the
lunatic asylum, and this was why everybody hurried away when
he shouted, supposing him to be a lunatic.
Seeing that no one would come, Ogaryov, with great presence of
mind, took a knife and a pipe out of his pocket, cut off his
boot, then lit his pipe, and lay there, I believe, till next
day. Early in the morning an Italian who knew Ogaryov passed
by, and, though the latter was lying at some distance from the
road, the Italian noticed him, and began looking more closely;
then Ogaryov called to him. The Italian went up, said he would
fetch a carriage, and took him home, Ogaryov suffering great
pain when moved.”
[Some months later—Natalya Alexyevna rarely gives dates—when Ogaryov was
able to hobble about, and the accident was almost forgotten, there was a
family gathering again.]
“Tchorszewski took an old château called ‘Prangius,’ about an
hour and a half’s drive from Geneva; here, for the last time,
the whole family were together again; Liza and I, Malwide and
Olga and Natasha.... Rather later Ogaryov joined us with little
‘Toots.’ Last of all, Alexandr (Herzen’s son) arrived with his
young wife. They were only just married, and Teresina did not
yet speak French, so we all had to talk Italian to her, which
curtailed conversation a good deal. Teresina liked going for
walks, sometimes with Herzen, sometimes with me.”
[At the end of the summer.]
“Alexandr and his wife went to spend the whole winter in Berlin
for the sake of his work.... Olga and Malwide went back to
Italy, where they were now so used to living that they liked
nothing else so well.... Herzen was intending to go to Vichy
for the first time. Ogaryov returned to Geneva with little
‘Toots,’ who had amused us all with his liveliness and
originality.... But before going to Vichy, Herzen went with us
to Lucerne, and from there he was summoned to Berne, as Prince
Dolgorukov, who was lying there seriously ill, wished to see
Herzen once more before his death.”
“After spending some time in Geneva we went to Paris, where
Vyrubov and Herzen’s French friends were very anxious that
he should settle with all the family.... To Herzen’s great
delight we found Sergey Petrovitch Botkin[14] and his family in
Paris. Botkin still hoped at that time that Herzen’s vigorous
constitution might successfully combat the diabetes from which
he was suffering, but this hope was not realised; doctors
cannot foresee the fatal accidents which have sometimes a
decisive effect on disease.
We had rooms in the Grand Hotel, on the fourth storey.
Botkin was as charming and attentive as ever. There was such
serenity and kindness in his beautiful smile that I thought
him handsome; I particularly liked to see his eyes rest upon
Herzen with such unfeigned love and admiration. Alexandr
Ivanovitch was glad to be with him too; he actually seemed
better when Botkin was present, for the latter had a charming
and encouraging effect on him.
We were sitting in the little drawing-room talking almost
light-heartedly of how we should probably be able to make a
home here; here there would be suitable and even interesting
society for Natasha; and as regards educational facilities, we
could find everything that could be desired.... All at once
Herzen was handed a letter from his son, telling him that
Natasha was very seriously ill, and begging him to go at once
to Florence.
Knowing his daughter’s strong constitution, Herzen was
perplexed, and sent a telegram asking what her illness
was. When he received the reply, he handed me the telegram
in silence, then said: ‘I would rather have heard she
was dead.’ The telegram read: ‘_Dérangement des facultés
intellectuelles._’[15] These terribly alarming words seemed to
paralyse him. He remained sitting with a pale face, in a sort
of stupefaction, not attempting to get ready: it was obviously
impossible to let him go alone, and indeed he said himself: ‘We
had better all go together.’
I hurriedly packed the most necessary things and, not staying
to say good-bye to any one in Paris, we paid our bill at the
hotel and went off to the station on the chance of getting a
train—they go pretty often. We had not to wait, but to hurry:
Herzen took the tickets, while I looked after the luggage,
and Liza, who was then ten, went to the buffet to buy some
provisions for the journey. We travelled without stopping.
It was very exhausting for us all, especially for the child.
As though she understood the gravity of the reason for our
journey, she did not complain, and was impatiently eager to
arrive and see Natasha. Herzen was silent almost the whole
way; his anxiety and impatience were apparent in his careworn
face. At last we reached Genoa; from there Herzen went on
alone, telling us to remain in Genoa till we heard from him:
if Natasha were fit to travel, Herzen would bring her, and we
would all return together to Paris; if the doctor decided that
she must stay on in Florence, he would let us know, and we
would join him there. Next day we found a letter and a telegram
for us at the post office. The telegram only told us to await
the letter; in the letter we were directed to go at once to
Florence, which we accordingly did.
When the train stopped at the station we saw Herzen and his
son, who had come to meet us. They took a carriage, and we
drove to the villa that young Herzen had bought. There we saw
Teresina with her first-born, a charming baby whom Herzen found
enchanting; then we went in to Natasha, who was very glad to
see us. However, Herzen thought it more comfortable for the
patient and for all of us to be in the town, and so next day we
moved with Natasha to the Hôtel de France.... There we spent
about a fortnight; again I had to part with Liza, whom I put
for the time in the care of Malwide and Olga, while I remained
with Natasha. There was nobody to nurse her but me. Malwide
would not undertake to look after the invalid, and I did not
care to leave her to strangers. It is true that before I came
the doctor had called in an acquaintance, a Miss Reynolds, to
nurse her, but though she was experienced, she only irritated
the patient. What was needed was not experience but love.
Anyway, my coming was crowned with success; the patient began
to recover, sleep and appetite returned, but I looked in
vain for any sign of joy in Herzen’s gloomy face: he seemed
crushed, and had not the strength to hope or to believe in
his beloved daughter’s recovery. He lived in a state of
morbid apprehension. The doctor sanctioned Natasha’s leaving
Florence.... Liza and Natasha set off with us for Paris. Only
Herzen’s son saw us off. For some reason Malwide and Olga did
not come to say good-bye.
This time we did not hurry; we travelled very slowly. We
stopped several times on the way to rest. We spent a day in
Genoa; I remember that there Herzen was writing to Florence,
and he said to me: ‘What am I to say to Olga and Malwide: ask
them to come to Paris or leave them in Italy? They so dislike
coming away!’ But I advised him to send for them, because I
saw that Natasha still needed me, and Herzen himself was too
unhinged to be fit to look after Liza. He could not be with
the patient either; her overwrought nerves could not stand her
father’s resonant voice.
We stayed two days in Nice, then rested at Lyons, and at
last reached Paris, where we went to the Pension Rovigan.
But it was not sufficiently comfortable for our invalid, and
so in his daily walks about the city Herzen looked out for
a spacious flat where there would be room for us all. Soon
after our return to Paris Malwide and Olga arrived, though
they certainly were very unwilling to come. They were sorry to
exchange Florence for Paris. Then we moved into a big flat in
the Pavillon Rohan, No. 172 rue Rivoli, into that fateful house
in which he who, forgetful of himself, thought and lived for
his country, for humanity, and for his family, after some five
days’ illness left us for ever.”
[Herzen had been suffering from diabetes since 1864, but the doctors
thought his strong constitution would enable him to resist the disease,
if only he received no shocks. The alarm caused him by his daughter’s
illness made him worse. In January 1870 he had an attack of pneumonia, of
which he died four days later at the age of fifty-eight. He was buried in
Nice beside his wife and children.
That his life with Natalya Alexyevna was not a happy one can be seen
from his correspondence with Ogaryov. They made more than one attempt
at separation, but Herzen could not bear parting from Liza. There seems
to have been something morbid and unbalanced in Natalya Alexyevna’s
character. Even Liza, to whom she was devoted, was after Herzen’s death
on very bad terms with her. They lived near Herzen’s other children
in Italy, but Liza did not always get on well with them, in spite of
the unvarying patience and affection of Natasha Herzen. Brilliantly
intelligent, vain and capricious, Liza committed suicide in 1875, at
the age of seventeen, after a dispute with her mother, who wished her to
break off an undesirable intimacy. Natalya Alexyevna went back to Russia
and lived in seclusion in the country. Later on she adopted the daughter
of a niece. The girl was consumptive, and for the sake of her health
Madame Ogaryov took her to the Black Forest, where the adopted daughter
died. Natalya Alexyevna just succeeded in reaching Russia before her own
death in 1913.
Ogaryov, who had become more or less of an invalid from the time of
his accident in 1866, was still living in Geneva in 1873, when his old
friend, Madame Passek, visited him there. Not long afterwards he moved
to England with ‘Mary,’ who faithfully cared for him to the end. Once a
wealthy man, he had lost or given away all he had and was maintained in
his last years by Herzen’s children. He died at Greenwich in 1877, and is
buried at Shooter’s Hill.
The following extracts from letters written by Herzen to Ogaryov throw
light on the former’s state of mind during his last years.]
“NICE, _May 31, 1868_.
“Ah, you dear, absurd person, you will hardly believe me, I
laugh at you and at myself quite genuinely—with no tinge of
anger or anything of the sort. I knew all along and wrote to
you in Geneva that whether it’s Lausanne or Prangius—it’s a
terror to you (you accepted the suggestion too hastily and I
made it too hastily)—you are so comfortably and peacefully
settled in your snug little den that the very idea of
travelling frightens you. Well, so be it, but why did you wait
till the trunks were packed and everything was ready, to write
of the difficult position that Toots put you in...?
It is too late not to go—you must think of some plan. I see you
want us to come to Geneva. Tell me how and I will do it. The
_only_ difficulty is Liza (who remembers you and has a romantic
affection for you). Are you really going to risk telling her
straight away not only the whole secret history, but two secret
histories?... And so I suggest that I should first come from
Lyons by myself, and all the rest we will put off and settle
later. I cannot guarantee that everything will be well at
Prangius. Below the surface of peace there are sometimes very
bad symptoms. One thing you might explain: why did you tell
me that I was wrong, and that you really did want to come to
Lausanne or anywhere else to see us all and to have a change
from the monotony of your life that I find so trying? I would
have arranged things accordingly. But there is no harm done.
Now it is no use sacrificing yourself, for a sacrifice always
makes itself felt. Believe me, I will manage it all, including
the shock to Liza’s feelings and the ridicule. I cannot
endure ridicule (that is, being laughed at) as an insult, but
everything else can be settled, and you can trust me to do all
I can to make it right and not too conspicuous. Well, amen.”
“MULHOUSE, _June 30, 1868_.
“... We are going to Basle to-night. I expect I shall stay
there till Tata[16] comes, or perhaps I shall go to Lucerne and
wait there till the question of Prangius is settled. Lucerne is
a beautiful place; I am quite ready to spend a month there.
But how I should like to settle down somewhere! though I see
no prospect of it.... You have always preached immobility,
and now you cannot walk; I, on the contrary, was always for
movement—and here, at fifty-six, I am utterly homeless.... Liza
is well, but Natalie[17] is convinced that she is ill and wants
to ask Adolph Vogt’s advice.”
“HOTEL BELLE VUE, LUCERNE.
“_July 7, 1868. Tuesday._
“... It is very nice here in the summer. The hotel is expensive
and the food is not up to much, but the view from the
windows—fields all round, gardens, and mountains ... right in
front is the lake, and mountains again.
Lucerne is infinitely more beautiful than Geneva, but it
probably begins to be cold here in October.... I fancy Natalie,
too, is tired of _vagabondage_, but as to where are we to
settle I must ask Tata’s advice. I am not equal to deciding it
alone! You can’t believe how tired I am. Oh, for a house, a
comfortable house, with a field adjoining—and then rest!”
“BERNERHOFF, NO. 6, BERNE.
“_July 11, 1868._
“... Yesterday I spent a long day which I shall not soon
forget. It began wretchedly with Natalie’s ill humour; I set
off _low-spirited_,[18] but all the way from Olten I travelled
with Lewes and his wife (you know, who writes English novels):
he cheered me up; he is an extraordinarily intelligent and
lively-minded man. Among other things he asked me: ‘Est-ce que
votre “Golos” parait toujours?’ for which he caught it severely.
But to the tragedy. Dolgorukov is very bad, but his strong
constitution is like a fortress that will not surrender.... He
talks incoherently, his eyes are dim, he does not know that the
end is so near, but he fears it. The worst of it is that there
is a fearful conflict going on inside him. His joy at seeing
me was immense, but noiseless; he keeps squeezing my hands and
thanking me. There is nobody in the world he trusts but me and
my representative, Tchorszewski. In the morning he summoned
Tchorszewski and Vogt ... then after all sorts of dreadful
incidents, he sent Vogt to tell N. to go back at once.
Vogt carried out this commission. N. of course was furious. But
Dolgorukov at once sent for him and begged his forgiveness.
When I went up, he sent them all away, and taking both my
hands, sat up and fixed his dim eyes on me.
‘Herzen, Herzen! For God’s sake, tell me, you are the only one
I trust, the only one I respect—is it madness, is it nonsense?
‘You see yourself,’ I said, ‘that it’s madness. What reasons
have you?
‘Yes, yes, it’s obvious, it’s delirium—so you think it’s
delirium?’ (And so on a dozen times over.) Then all at once,
sinking back, he repeated slowly twice:
‘No, but do you—for God’s sake, do keep a watch on the way they
are treating me,’ and he signified that I was to say no more.
After which he fell into a doze, and on waking asked us to
have dinner with his son, which we did. The son was irritated
at first, but after dinner, after two or three bottles of wine
and some absinthe, he recovered—he’s a queer fellow. All this
together affected my nerves, so that I did not sleep all night
and my head aches.
Tell me what impression this letter makes on you?
Vogt says that there isn’t a chance of saving him, and that if
he is left like this, he’ll pop off. I fancy there is a lot of
strength in him yet....”
“LUCERNE, BELLE-VUE.
“_July 14 (1868)._
“Well, at least I have escaped from the Dolgorukov nightmare.
An awful agony, and what’s more, he’s actually better, he’s
eating incessantly, and so keeps himself up. Adolph Vogt quite
worn out. The day before yesterday there was a hideous scene
with N. in my presence; afterwards I made peace between them.
He is persuaded that the fellow is only waiting to snatch
his money and be off!... N. came in and protested against
something. Dolgorukov shouted:
‘Hold your tongue and be off to Petersburg!’
Then he sent Vogt to tell him not to come near him. And though
I did bring him to reason a bit, yet next morning he told him
to go away and let him die in peace or recover. Tchorszewski is
the only one who is not moved to exasperation in this filthy
slough, and though fearfully depressed behaves well.”
“... Vogt says I have a strong tendency to diabetes, and
advises me to drink the waters at Lucerne, and not go to Berne
again for a fortnight. Altogether I am better now, though still
far from well. Tata has come with me....
Auerbach and his wife are here; they have lately come from
Russia, and have been in Vevey. Bakunin belongs heart and soul
to Elpidin’s party, and they are as thick as thieves.
_Caro mio_—it is time we retired and began on something else;
writing a great work or settling down to old age.... Liza was
very glad to see Tata, their meeting was delightful. I am very
much pleased with Tata.... Tchorszewski has just arrived for
a rest, and has brought the news that Dolgorukov is immensely
better. See what medicine can do!”
“LUCERNE, BELLE VUE.
“_July 23 (1868). Thursday._
“... I posted you a letter at ten o’clock last night, enclosing
one from Liza, who, _entfesselt_ from town life, enjoys the
woods and the fields so much that it is a pity to take her
away from here. She and Tata would have got on well, but Liza’s
rude pranks (her only serious defect) irritate Tata. Natalie in
such cases does, of course, everything to make matters worse.
It’s a bad look-out.
In my letter of yesterday I wrote to you about striking
work—the millstone is turning more slowly; we labour listlessly
and in vain, surrounded by jeers and vile envy. Russia is
deaf. The seed has been sown, it is covered with dung—there is
nothing to do till autumn. It has occurred to me to write to
you an official letter suggesting _stoppage_[19]—and I shall do
so.
But how could you imagine that by retiring and rest from the
_Bell_ ... I meant empty inactivity, and how could one set
about it? For that, one must wait for complete softening of the
brain, hardening of the heart, or terror over one’s health....
All I want after burying the _Bell_ is external peace, being
able to keep calm, almost indifferent to the annoyances all
about me. But the _Bell_ won’t do that; there’s no managing
it, it’s a good thing you have got it—make the most of it.
Good-bye.”
“ST. GALLEN, _Aug. 3, 1868_.
“... Liza wants to write to you that we crossed the Rhine under
a waterfall. She is well, eats enough for two, sleeps enough
for three; and if one could persuade Natalie not to spoil
her, we could boast of her at Prangius. But her temper and
naughtiness are great defects.”
[In September and October 1868 Herzen was at Vichy first alone, then with
his family, and had a quiet and pleasant time there. It had been decided
to go from Vichy to Lyons and then to Zurich, but later the plan was
changed, and it was proposed to go to Lausanne.]
“LYONS, HOTEL DE L’EUROPE.
“_Oct. 23, 1868._
“Well, here we are at Lyons. _Le chapitre_ of water cure is
over. What next?[20] In any case I shall come to Geneva. Our
plans are all unsettled. Natalie wants to go to Nice—we are on
the way to it here. I say that Liza’s education ought to be our
chief consideration. She is growing up mentally every day and
quite naturally, _i.e._ it does not interfere with her health.
Nice, of course, has no educational advantages except its
climate. Even Lyons has plenty of the museums and other things
that Liza needs. One winter can be sacrificed, but I won’t
agree to more.”
“MARSEILLES, _Dec. 4, 1868_.
“Cafe at the railway station, 9 A.M.
“... Our last meeting was confused. I am somehow stunned and
stupefied by such blows and shocks[21] and want to be alone. It
is over now, and thank God, and in 1864 there was Lyola’s[22]
operation. You know, I have not till now had the courage to
tell any one what happened then: ‘It is wonderful what a man
can endure.’ Had Natalie understood that moment and my love now
for Liza, she would not be constantly pulling at the strings,
for fear of breaking them. I am ready to forgive, for, as
Kukolnik puts it, ‘only the strong can forgive.’ But that’s not
all.
_A propos_, do you know I was expecting that Bakunin would send
to inquire after Tata and so make peace. But he hasn’t ... _é
rotta l’altissima colonna_.
It is summer here. All the windows are open. Sun is shining.
No, we’ll have to give up Zurich and Berne and Geneva. It
would be better to live in the same town with you, but it
is difficult. The irregularity of my position and (in a
different way) of yours makes it hard. When Toots is sent to
boarding-school, and you decide on some career for Henry, we
will talk about it.”
“_After Lunch._
“... As to Tata, it would have been too dreadful for me to lose
her. Dear Natalie (my wife), you and she, in spite of her youth
and crudity, understand me better than any one. But that menace
is over. Natalie[23] loves me, but she does not spare me. She
never will be a _sister_ (you remember her last letter), but
Tata can be.”
“LYONS, HOTEL DE L’EUROPE.
“_Dec. 30, 1868._
“... I am so sick of my irregular life that I keep thinking
about the future, about ‘a room of my own,’ books, and a
writing-table.... Ever since the end of 1864 I cannot settle
down anywhere, and, of course, that is chiefly Natalie’s fault.
If something could be arranged in Geneva or here (anywhere
between Nice and Genoa)! Florence does not attract me. However
I shuffle the cards, nothing turns up. Well, that’s an old
story.”
“NICE, _Feb. 20, 1869_.
“... Tata has had a long letter from Olga. There are hints and
surmises in it so awful that I am afraid to comment on them. It
is a systematic intrigue on the part of Meysenbug, who wants to
estrange Olga from all of us, from me in particular—an intrigue
that involves slander (I may have proofs of this). What is one
to say to it! I have written to Sasha and am waiting for his
answer.”
“PARIS, _Oct. 28, 1869_.
“... I have found temporary lodgings in a small but clean hotel
in the Champs-Élysées, Avenue d’Antin, No. 33. Not expensive as
prices are here. Then I have in view a very nice unfurnished
flat right opposite the Luxembourg Gardens. I think that
after knocking about all over the world one must at last fix
somewhere a home for one’s old age and settle the children and
the grown-ups in it. If I venture to take a house for _three
years_, I will offer you in a year’s time to move to Paris too.
For the present you had better stay in Geneva.... I can easily
find a flat with two bedrooms, a sitting-room, and a kitchen
somewhere near the Luxembourg Gardens. The worst of it is one
needs the courage of a Suvorov to sign a contract for three
years.”
“GENOA, HOTEL FEDER.
“_Nov. 14, 1869._
“... I don’t do anything at all, don’t want to do anything, and
don’t read anything—this is why I write long letters.
S. P. Botkin is a terrible medical prophet. He said to me:
‘All will go well if you have no violent shocks.’ Here is a
shock,[24] and apparently—thanks to your Providence, otherwise
my stomach—all has gone off well ... but no, Botkin is right. I
shan’t get off a visit to Vichy in the spring after all.”
“PARIS, 8 RUE ROVIGO.
“_Dec. 23, 1869._
“Dr. Charcot came yesterday, stayed over half an hour ... I did
not even ask him about myself, I have no thoughts to spare on
myself so far. I eat and drink well, but sleep badly. I drop
off into a dead sleep when I go to bed in the evening, but wake
up about four o’clock in terror that I shall not be able to
sleep any more.
I have found a flat with full board, expensive but very good,
quiet though quite central—172 rue Rivoli. By the end of two
months I shall see whether we are going to stay in Paris and
then find a permanent flat; as it is, I have to throw away 800
francs per month.
I very much dislike doing it, but large rooms and a certain
amount of comfort are essential for the invalid.[25] We are
saved all trouble and worries about housekeeping, etc.”
“8 RUE ROVIGO, _Dec. 29, 1869_.
“We are just going to move to Pavillon Rohan, 172 rue Rivoli.
It’s a huge house let out in big and small flats, with or
without board. We can rest there for a month, or even two, and
see what happens.... I have earned this expensive rest by what
I have been through during the last two months.
I cannot concentrate on anything, or settle down to any work,
and I am doing nothing but reading.
... Best wishes for the New Year—from which I expect nothing
new—and nothing good. All I ask is to keep what I have.”
“PARIS, 172 RUE RIVOLI.
“_Jan. 4, 1870._
“Again I don’t know what to write—everything is slow, dull, and
not particularly smooth. Tata is getting better and better. All
the rest hobbles on in the usual way.... I tell you candidly,
it seems to me there is no chance of arranging a common life
here. Everything hangs on a thread. With Tata alone we could
manage things better, and that is how it will end.”
ENDS AND BEGINNINGS
A year ago, when I was writing ‘Ends and Beginnings,’ I did not expect
to conclude them so abruptly. I wanted in two or three following
letters to define the ‘Beginnings’ more closely; the ‘Ends’ seemed to
me sufficiently clear of themselves. This I could not do. My outlook
changed: events gave me neither peace nor leisure—they made their own
commentaries and their own deductions. The tragedy is still developing
before our eyes, and is more and more passing from an individual conflict
into the prelude to a world struggle. Its prologue is complete; the plot
is well constructed; all is in a tangle; neither men nor parties can be
recognised. One cannot help recalling the image of Dante’s wrestlers,
in which the combatants’ limbs were not only intertwined, but by some
metamorphosis subsequently transformed into each other.
Everything youthful and enthusiastic, from the prayer before the Crucifix
to the feat of reckless daring, from the woman dressed in black to the
secret preserved by the whole people—everything that had faded away in
the old world, from the mitre and the sword of chivalry to the Phrygian
cap—has appeared once more in all its poetic brilliance in rebellious
Poland, as though to deck with the flowers of youth the _elders of
civilisation_, as they slowly move into the conflict that they dread.
On the other hand, the ‘Beginnings’ glimmer faintly through the
smoke of burnt cities and villages.... What is happening here is the
exact opposite.... All the surviving relics of the _old world_ have
risen up in defence of the rule of Petersburg, and are defending its
ill-gotten gains with all the weapons bequeathed by the barbarous ages
of military violence and the corrupt period of diplomatic intrigue.
These range from the torture and murder of prisoners to false amnesties
and sham declarations, from the barbaric exile of whole sections of
the population to newspaper articles and the filigree rhetoric of
Gortchakov’s notes.
The storms of recent days have ruffled the still waters of our pool.
Much that has lain buried in silence under the coffin-lid of past
oppression has come to the surface and revealed its utter putrefaction.
Only now we can measure the depth of the corruption which the Imperial
Government has developed in the cause of Germanising us for a century
and a half. The German lymph has matured in the coarse Russian blood,
the healthy organism has given it fresh strength, and, while infected by
it, has lost nothing of its own vice. The inhuman narrow ugliness of the
German officer and the petty vulgarity of the German official has long
ago blended in Russia with the features of the Mongol, the savage and
unrelenting cruelty of the oriental slave and of the Byzantine eunuch.
But we have not been used to seeing this composite personality outside
the army barracks and the government offices; it has never appeared so
strikingly outside the Service: scantily educated, it not only wrote
little but even read little. Now our Minotaurs come to the surface
not only in the palaces and torture-chambers, but in society, in the
universities, in literature.
We thought that our literature was so lofty, that our professors were
such apostles; we were mistaken in them, and how painful it is! we are
revolted by it as by every display of moral degradation. We cannot but
protest against the dreadful things that are being said and done; we
cannot but be repelled by the frenzy of violence, the inhuman butchery
and still more inhuman applause. Perhaps it may be our lot to fold our
hands and die in our retreat before this delirium of ‘cultured’ Russia is
over.... But this storm will not uproot the seed that lies hidden in the
soil; it will not hurt it, and maybe it will strengthen it. A new vital
force is strengthened by everything—ill deeds and good alike. It alone
can pass through blood, unstained, and say to the savage combatants: ‘I
know you not; you have worked for me, but it was not for my sake you
worked.’
Look at the savage satrap in Lithuania: he strangles the Polish element,
but the Russian autocracy will bear the marks of the struggle; he hunts
down the Polish nobles, but it will be the Russian nobles who will flee.
Like house-porters, they know not for whom they are sweeping, for whom
they are clearing a path, as little as the Roman she-wolf knew whom she
was suckling, whom she was rearing. Not Romulus, but Remus, wronged in
the past, will tread the bloodstained path: it is for him that Tsar and
satraps are clearing a road.
But before he comes much blood yet will flow, and there will be a fearful
collision of two worlds. Why must it flow? Why, indeed? There is no
help for it, if men gain no more sense. Events move rapidly and the
brain develops slowly. Under the influence of dark forces, of fantastic
images, the peoples move as though sleep-walking through a succession
of insoluble problems; after fighting together, and seeing nothing
clearly, during all the fifteen hundred years from the fearful collapse
of the Roman world, they reach the nineteenth century, which is no more
civilised than the times of Germanicus and Alaric.
_August 1, 1863._
Letter 1
And so, dear friend,[26] you will positively go no further, you want to
rest amidst the rich autumn harvest, in shady parks, languidly ruffling
their leaves after the long, hot summer. You are not alarmed at the
days growing shorter, at the mountain-tops turning white, and the cold,
sinister wind that blows at times; you are more afraid of our spring
floods, of the knee-deep mud, of the wild overflow of the rivers, of
the bare earth showing under the snow, and, in fact, of our dreams of a
future harvest from which we are separated by storms and hail, by drought
and deluge, and all the hard work we have not yet accomplished....
Well, in God’s name, let us part in love and concord like good
fellow-travellers.
You have only a little way further to go, you have arrived, here is the
brightly lighted house, the sparkling river and the garden, and leisure
and books at hand, while I, like an old post hack, always in harness,
shift from one task to another till I drop dead between two stations.
Believe me that I fully understand your dislike and dread of a life with
no order nor beaten paths, and your affection for established civic and
political forms, and, moreover, such as may become ‘better,’ but are so
far the ‘best’ existing.
We men of European town civilisation can, as a rule, only exist under
the established conventions. Town life accustoms us from early childhood
to the fact that discordant forces are balanced and kept in check behind
the scenes. When we are by chance thrown off the beaten track on which,
from the day of our birth, it guides and carefully moves us, we are as
completely at a loss as the theoretical savant, accustomed to museums
and herbariums and to wild beasts in glass cases, is at a loss when
confronted with the traces of a geological cataclysm, or with the dense
population of the Mediterranean Sea.
I have chanced to see two or three desperate haters of Europe who have
returned from beyond the ocean. They had gone thither, so revolted by the
Reaction after 1848, so exasperated against everything European, that
they had hastened on to Kansas or California, hardly willing to stop
at New York. Three or four years later they reappeared in the familiar
cafés and beer-shops of old Europe, ready to make any concession to avoid
seeing the virginal forests of America and her untilled soil, to avoid
being _tête-à-tête_ with Nature and meeting wild animals, rattlesnakes,
and men with revolvers. You must not imagine, however, that they were
simply terrified by danger, material privations, or the necessity of
work; here, too, men die of hunger if they do not work, and here, too,
they work sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, while the police and
the spies in the old continent are more dangerous than wild beasts and
revolvers. They were, above all, terrified and depressed by Nature
untouched by man, by the absence of that well-ordered organisation, that
peace secured by the administration, that artistic and epicurean comfort
which depend on permanent habitation, are protected by a strong wall of
police, rest upon the ignorance of the masses, and are defended by the
Church, the Law, and the Army. For the sake of this mess of pottage,
_well served_, we sacrifice our share of human dignity, our share of
sympathy for our neighbour, and give our _negative_ support to the
_régime_ which is in reality hateful to us.
In France we have seen another example: the literary men who lived in
rhetoric, the artists who lived in art for art’s sake and for money’s
sake, were beside themselves at the disturbance caused by the Revolution
of February. We have an acquaintance, a teacher of singing, who, to
escape 1848, moved from Paris to London, to the home of sore throats,
bronchitis, asthma, and speaking through the teeth—only to avoid hearing
the alarm bell and the masses singing in chorus.
In the Russia of to-day the causes which led men to flee from Paris
and from Arkansas are combined. In America what was most alarming was
naked Nature, wild Nature with the dew of creation not yet dry upon its
leaves, the Nature we love so ardently in pictures and poems. (The man
with the revolver naïvely killing his neighbour is as much in place in
the Pampas as the naïve tiger with teeth an inch long.) In France Nature
is not to be feared, it is swept and garnished, tigers do not walk about,
and the vine flourishes; but, on the other hand, in 1848, passions broke
loose again, and again the foundations of good order tottered. Among
us in Russia, while Nature is untouched, men and institutions, culture
and barbarism, the past that died an age ago, and the future which
will be born in ages to come—all are in ferment and dissolution, being
pulled down and built up, everywhere there are clouds of dust, posts
and rafters. Indeed, if one adds to our primitive means of travel the
highly developed means of making money in the Service, to the natural
mud of our roads the filth of the life of our landowners, to our winter
tempests the Winter Palace, together with the generals, the Cabinet
Ministers, the refreshment bars, and the Filarets, ‘the gendarme vanguard
of civilisation’ made in Germany, and the rearguard with axes in their
belt, primeval in their force and their simplicity, one must have a great
passion or a mighty madness to plunge of free will into that whirlpool,
which redeems its chaos by the rainbow-lights of prophecy and the grand
visions, for ever glimmering behind the fog and for ever unable to
disperse it.
Passion and madness are talents of a sort, and do not come at will. One
is irresistibly drawn into the whirlpool, another is repelled by its
froth and uproar. The point is that to one man sleep is dearer than
father and mother, and to another his dream. Which is better? I do not
know: and, indeed, both may lead to the same delirium.
But we will not give way to these philosophic reflections; they commonly
by one path or another conduct us to the unpleasant conclusion that
whether you batten in a feather-bed or fret yourself in a squirrel’s
wheel, you will do no good one way or the other, except perhaps to enrich
the soil when you are dead. Every life, as the students’ song has it,
begins with _Juvenes dum sumus_, and ends with _Nos habebit humus_!
We must not dwell on this mournful reduction of everything in the world
to nullity, or you will call me a nihilist, and that is now the term of
abuse which has replaced Hegelian, Byronist, and suchlike.
A living man thinks of what is living. The question between us is not
whether a man has the right to withdraw into a peaceful retreat, to turn
aside like an ancient philosopher from the Nazarene madness and the
influx of barbarians. Of that, there can be no question. I only want to
make clear to myself whether the ancient sanctuaries, built so solidly
and overgrown with the moss of mediaeval Europe, are so peaceful and
convenient, above all, so secure as they were; and, on the other hand,
whether there is not a magic spell in the visions we see in the snowstorm
and the ringing of the sledge-bells, and whether there is not some real
force in that magic.
There was a time when you defended the ideas of Western Europe, and you
did well; the only pity is that it was entirely unnecessary. The ideas of
Western Europe, that is, scientific ideas, have long ago been recognised
by all as the inalienable property of humanity. Science is entirely
without latitude or longitude; it is like Goethe’s ‘Divan,’ Western and
Oriental.
Now you want to maintain that the actual forms of Western European life
are also the heritage of mankind, and you believe that the manner of
life of the European upper classes, as evolved in the historic past, is
alone in harmony with the aesthetic needs of human development, that it
alone furnishes the conditions essential for literary and artistic life;
that in Western Europe art was born and grew up, and to Western Europe
it belongs; and finally, that there is no other art at all. Let us pause
first at this point.
Pray do not imagine that I shall from the point of view of civic
austerity and Puritanism protest against the place which you give to art
in life. I am in agreement with you on that point. Art—_c’est autant de
pris_; together with the summer lightnings of personal happiness, it is
our one indubitable blessing. In all the rest, we are either toiling or
drawing water in a sieve for humanity, for our country, for fame, for our
children, for money, and at the same time are solving an endless problem.
In art we find enjoyment, in it the goal is attained; it, too, is an
‘End’ in itself.
And so, giving to Diana of Ephesus what is due to Diana, I ask you
of what exactly you are speaking, of the present or the past? Of the
fact that art has developed in Western Europe, that Dante and Michael
Angelo, Shakespeare and Rembrandt, Mozart and Goethe, were by birth and
opinion ‘Westerners’? But no one disputes it. Or do you mean that a long
historical life has prepared both a better stage for art and a finer
framework for it, that museums are more sumptuous in Europe than anywhere
else, galleries and schools richer, students more numerous, teachers more
gifted, theatres better decorated, and so on? And that, too, is true. Or
nearly so, for ever since the great opera has returned to its primitive
state of performers strolling from town to town, only grand opera is
_überall und nirgends_. In the whole of America there is no such Campo
Santo as in Pisa, but still Campo Santo is a graveyard. It is quite
natural, indeed, that where there have been most corals there you find
most coral-reefs.... But in all this where is the new living creative
art, where is the artistic element in life itself? To be continually
calling up the dead, to be repeating Beethoven, to be playing Phèdre and
Athalie, is all very well, but it says nothing for creativeness. In the
dullest periods of Byzantium, Homer was read and Sophocles recited at the
literary evenings; in Rome, the statues of Pheidias were preserved, and
the best sculpture collected on the eve of the Genserics and the Alarics.
Where is the new art, where is the artistic initiative? Is it to be found
in Wagner’s ‘music of the future’?
Art is not fastidious; it can depict anything, setting upon all the
indelible imprint of the spirit of beauty, and impartially raising to the
level of the madonnas and demigods every casual incident of life, every
sound and every form, the slumbering pool under the tree, the fluttering
bird, the horse at the drinking-trough, the sunburnt beggar-boy. From
the sinister, savage fantasy of hell and the Day of Judgment to the
Flemish tavern with the back view of a peasant, from Faust to Faublas,
from the Requiem to the Kamarinsky, all lie within the domain of art....
But even art has its limit. There is a stumbling-block which neither the
violinist’s bow nor the painter’s brush nor the sculptor’s chisel can
deal with; art to conceal its impotence mocks at it and turns it into
caricature. That stumbling-block is petty-bourgeois vulgarity. The artist
who excellently portrays a man completely naked, covered with rags, or
so completely dressed that nothing is to be seen but armour or a monk’s
cassock, is reduced to despair before the bourgeois in a swallow-tail.
Hence the necessity of flinging a Roman toga upon Robert Peel; hence
a banker is stripped of his coat and his cravat, and his shirt is
unbuttoned, so that if he could see his own bust after death he would be
covered with blushes before his own wife.... Robert Macaire and Prudhomme
are great caricatures. Sometimes caricatures are works of genius; in
Dickens they are tragically true to life, but still they are caricatures.
Beyond Hogarth that style cannot go. The Vandyke and Rembrandt of petty
bourgeoisie are Punch and Charivari, they are its portrait gallery and
pillory; they are the family records and the whipping-post.
The fact is that the whole petty-bourgeois character, both in its good
qualities and its bad qualities, is opposed to art and cramping to it;
art withers in it like a green leaf in chlorine, and only the passions
common to all humanity can at times, by breaking into bourgeois life,
or, even better, breaking out of its decorum, raise it to artistic
significance.
Decorum, that is the real word. The petty bourgeois, like Moltchalin,[27]
has two talents, and he has the same ones, Prudence and Punctuality. The
life of the middle class is full of petty defects and petty virtues; it
is self-restrained, often niggardly, and shuns what is extreme, what
is superfluous. The park is transformed into the kitchen garden, the
thatched cottage into the little town house with an escutcheon painted
on the shutters, but every day they drink tea in it, and every day they
eat meat. It is an _immense step_ in advance, but not at all artistic.
Art is more at home with poverty and luxury than with crude prosperity,
with comfort when it is an end in itself; if it comes to that, it is more
at home with the harlot selling herself than with the respectable woman
selling at three times the cost the work of the starving seamstress.
Art is not at ease in the stiff, over-neat, careful house of the petty
bourgeois, and his house is bound to be such; art feels instinctively
that in that life it is reduced to the level of external decoration
such as wallpaper and furniture, to the level of a hurdy-gurdy; if the
hurdy-gurdy man is in the way he is kicked out, if they want to listen
they give him a halfpenny and with that have done with him.... Art which
is pre-eminently elegance of proportion cannot endure the yard-measure; a
life self-satisfied with its narrow mediocrity is defiled for art by the
worst of blots—vulgarity.
But that does not in the least prevent the whole cultured world from
passing into petty bourgeoisie, and the vanguard has arrived there
already. Petty bourgeoisie is the ideal to which Europe is everywhere
striving and ascending. It is the ‘hen in the soup,’ of which Henry the
Fourth dreamt. A little house, with little windows looking into the
street, a school for the boy, a dress for the girl, a servant for the
hard work—all that makes up indeed a haven of refuge—Havre de Grace! The
man turned off the soil which he had tilled for ages for his master,
the descendant of the villager, crushed in the struggle, the homeless
workman, doomed to everlasting toil and hunger, the day-labourer, born
a beggar and dying a beggar, can only wipe the sweat from their brows
and look without horror at their children by becoming property owners,
masters, bourgeois; their sons will not be kept in lifelong bondage for
a crust of bread, their daughters will not be condemned to the factory
or the brothel. How should they not strive to be bourgeois? The bright
image of the shopkeeper—who has replaced the knight and the priest for
the middle classes—hovers as the ideal before the eyes of the casual
labourer, until his tired and horny hands drop on his sunken chest, or
until he looks at life with that Irish tranquillity of despair which
precludes every hope, every expectation, except the hope of a whole
bottle of whisky next Sunday.
Bourgeoisie, the last word of civilisation, founded on the absolute
despotism of property, is the ‘democratisation’ of aristocracy, the
‘aristocratisation’ of democracy. In this order Almaviva is the equal
of Figaro—everything below is straining up into bourgeoisie, everything
above sinking down into it through the impossibility of maintaining
itself. The United States present the spectacle of one class—the middle
class—with nothing below it and nothing above it, and the petty bourgeois
manners and morals are retained. The German peasant is the petty
bourgeois of agriculture; the workman of every country is the petty
bourgeois of the future. Italy, the most poetical land in Europe, was
not able to hold out, but at once forsook her fanatical lover, Mazzini,
and betrayed her husband, the Hercules Garibaldi, as soon as Cavour, the
petty bourgeois of genius, the little fat man in spectacles, offered to
keep her as his mistress.
With the coming of bourgeoisie, individual characters are effaced, but
these effaced persons are better fed; clothes are made by the dozen,
not to measure or to order, but there are more people who wear them.
With the coming of bourgeoisie, the beauty of the race is effaced, but
its prosperity increases, the statuesque beggar from Transteverino is
employed for rough work by the puny shopkeeper of the Via del Corso. The
crowds of holiday-makers in the Champs-Élysées or Kensington Gardens,
or the audiences in churches or theatres, depress one with their
vulgar faces, their dull expressions; but the holiday-makers in the
Champs-Élysées, the audiences listening to the sermons of Lacordaire or
the songs of Levasseur,[28] are not concerned at that, they do not notice
it. But what is very important to them and very striking is that their
fathers and elder brothers were not in a position to go holiday-making or
to the theatre as they are; that their elders sometimes drove on the box
of carriages, but they drive about in cabs, and very often too.
It is for this reason that bourgeoisie is triumphing and is bound to
triumph. It is useless to tell a hungry man, ‘It suits you much better to
be hungry; don’t look for food.’ The sway of bourgeoisie is the answer
to emancipation without land, to the freeing of men from bondage while
the soil is left in bondage to a few of the elect. The masses that have
earned their halfpence have come to the top and are enjoying themselves
in their own way and possessing the world. They have no need of strongly
marked characters, of original minds. Science cannot help stumbling upon
the discoveries that lie closest at hand. Photography—that barrel-organ
version of painting—replaces the artist; if a creative artist does appear
he is welcome, but there is no desperate need of him. Beauty, talent,
are altogether out of the normal; they are the exceptions, the luxury
of Nature, its highest limit or the result of great effort, of whole
generations. The voice of Mario, the points of the winner of the Derby,
are rarities. But a good lodging and a dinner are necessities. There is
a great deal that is bourgeois in Nature herself, one may say; she very
often stops short in the middle, half-way, and evidently has not the
spirit to go further. Who has told you that Europe will have it?
Europe has been through a bad quarter of an hour. The bourgeois were
all but losing the fruits of a long lifetime, of prolonged efforts, of
hard work. A vague but terrible protest has arisen in the conscience of
humanity. The petty bourgeois have been reminded of their wars for their
rights, their heroic age and biblical traditions. Abel, Remus, Thomas
of Münster have been slain once more, and long will the grass grow upon
their tombs as a warning how the all-powerful bourgeoisie punishes its
enemies. Since then all has returned to its normal routine, which seems
secure, which is based on reason, which is strong and growing, but has
no artistic plan, no aesthetic chord: it does not seek to have them; it
is too practical; it agrees with Catherine II. that it is not becoming
for a serious man to play the piano well; the Empress, too, regarded men
from the practical point of view. The gardens are too heavily manured for
flowers to grow; flowers are too unprofitable for the petty bourgeois’
garden; if he does sometimes grow them, it is for sale.
In the spring of 1850 I was looking for lodgings in Paris. By that time
I had lived so long in Europe that I had grown to hate the crowding
and crush of civilisation, which at first we Russians like so much. I
looked with horror mixed with disgust at the continually moving, swarming
crowd, foreseeing how it would rob me of half my seat at the theatre and
in the diligence, how it would dash like a wild beast into the railway
carriages, how it would heat and pervade the air—and for that reason I
was looking for a flat, not in a crowded place, and to some extent free
from the vulgarity and deadly sameness of the lodgings _à trois chambres
à coucher de maître_.[29]
Some one suggested to me the lodge of a big old house on the further
side of the Seine in the Faubourg St. Germain, or close by. I went
there. The old wife of the concierge took the keys and led me by the
yard. The house and the lodge stood behind a fence; within the courtyard
behind the house, there were green trees. The lodge was neglected and
deserted-looking, probably no one had been living there for many years.
The somewhat old-fashioned furniture was of the period of the First
Empire, with Roman straight lines and blackened gilt. The lodge was by no
means large or sumptuous, but the furniture and the arrangement of the
rooms all pointed to a different idea of the conveniences of life. Near
the little drawing-room to one side, next the bedroom, was a tiny study
with cupboards for books and a big writing-table. I walked through the
rooms, and it seemed to me that after long wanderings I had come again
upon a dwelling for a man, _un chez soi_, not a hotel room nor a human
stall.
Everything—the theatre, holiday-making, books, pictures,
clothes—everything has gone down in quality and gone up terribly in
numbers. The crowd of which I was speaking is the best proof of success,
of strength, of growth; it is bursting through all the dams, overflowing
and flooding everything; it is content with anything, and can never have
enough. London is crowded, Paris is cramped. A hundred railway carriages
linked on are insufficient; there are forty theatres and not a seat free;
a play has to be running for three months for the London public to be
able to see it.
‘Why are your cigars so inferior?’ I asked one of the leading London
tobacconists.
‘It is hard to get them, and, indeed, it is not worth the trouble; there
are few connoisseurs and still fewer well-to-do ones.’
‘Not worth while? You charge eightpence each for them.’
‘That brings us hardly any profit. While you and a dozen like you will
buy them, is there much gain in that? In one day I sell more twopenny and
threepenny cigars than I do of these in a year. I am not going to order
any more of them.’
Here was a man who had grasped the spirit of the age. All trade,
especially in England, is based now on quantity and cheapness, and not at
all on quality, as old-fashioned Russians imagine when they reverently
buy Tula penknives with an English trademark on them. Everything has a
wholesale, ready-made, conventional character, everything is within the
reach of almost every one, but does not allow of aesthetic distinction
or personal taste. Everywhere the hundred-thousand-headed hydra lies in
wait close at hand round a corner, ready to listen to everything, to look
at everything indiscriminately, to be dressed in anything, to be fed on
anything—this is the all-powerful crowd of ‘conglomerated mediocrity’
(to use Stuart Mill’s expression) which purchases everything, and
so dominates everything. The crowd is without ignorance, but also
without culture. To please it art screams, gesticulates, falsifies,
and exaggerates, or in despair turns away from men and paints animal
portraits and pictures of cattle, like Landseer and Rosa Bonheur.
Have you seen in the last fifteen years in Europe an actor, a single
actor, who is not a clown, a buffoon of sentimentality, or a buffoon of
burlesque? Name him!
Many blessings have been vouchsafed to the epoch of which the last
expression is to be found in the notes of Verdi, but the artistic
vocation was certainly not among them. Its own creation—the _café
chantant_—an amphibious product, half-way between the beer-cellar and
the boulevard theatre, is precisely on its level. I have nothing against
_cafés chantants_, but I cannot give them serious artistic value;
they satisfy the ‘average customer,’ as the English say, the average
purchaser, the average bidder, the hundred-headed hydra of the middle
class, and there is nothing more to be said.
The way out from this position is far off. Behind the multitude now
ruling stands an even greater multitude of candidates eager to enter it,
to whom the manners, ideas, and habits of life of the middle class appear
as the one goal to strive for. There are enough to multiply their numbers
ten times over. A world without land, a world predominated by town
life, with the rights of property carried to the extreme point, has no
other way of salvation, and it will all pass through petty bourgeoisie,
which in our eyes has not reached a high level, but in the eyes of the
agricultural population and the proletariat stands for culture and
progress. Those who are in advance live in tiny cliques like secular
monasteries, taking no interest in what is being done by the world
outside their walls.
The same thing has happened before, but on a smaller scale and less
consciously; moreover, in the past there were ideals, convictions, words
which set both the simple heart of the poor citizen and the heart of the
haughty knight beating; they had holy things in common, to which all men
did homage as before the sacrament. Where is there a hymn nowadays which
could be sung with faith and conviction in every storey of the house from
the cellar to the garret? Where is our ‘Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’ or
our ‘Marseillaise’?
When Ivanov was in London he used to say with despair that he was looking
for a new religious type, and could find it nowhere in the world about
him. A pure artist, dreading falsehood in his painting like blasphemy,
understanding rather by imagination than by analysis, he asked us to show
him where were the picturesque features in which a new Atonement would
shine forth. We could not show them. ‘Perhaps Mazzini will,’ he thought.
Mazzini would have pointed him to the unity of Italy, perhaps to
Garibaldi in 1861, to that _last of the great men_ as to a _forerunner_.
Ivanov died knocking in vain, the door was not opened to him.
ISLE OF WIGHT.
_June 10, 1862._
Letter 2
Apropos of Mazzini. A few months ago the first volume of his collected
works appeared. Instead of a preface or notes, Mazzini connected the
articles written by him at various times, by means of a series of
amplifications; there is a mass of the most living interest in these
explanatory pages. The poem of his monastic life dedicated to one god and
one service is unintentionally revealed in these disconnected jottings,
possibly more fully than he meant.
An enthusiast, a fanatic with Ligurian blood in his veins, Mazzini was
from youth up irrevocably devoted to the great cause of the freedom of
Italy, and to that cause he remains faithful for ever—_ora e sempre_, as
his motto says: he finds his youth, love, family, faith, duty, all in
that. Espoused to one wife, he has not betrayed her, and grey-headed,
emaciated, sick, he holds off death, he refuses to die before Rome is the
capital of United Italy and the lion of Saint Mark tears to tatters the
black-and-yellow rag which flies above him.
The testimony of such a man, one, too, who attacked scepticism,
socialism, and materialism, a man who lived in every heart-throb of
European life for forty years, is extremely important.
After the first schoolboy enthusiasm of every revolutionary career, after
the romance of conspiracies, mysterious passwords, meetings at night,
vows over bloodless daggers, the young man reconsiders things.
In spite of the fascination for a youthful Latin soul of the setting and
ritual, the earnest and ascetic Mazzini soon discerned that there was
in Carbonarism far more ceremony and empty form than action, far more
meeting and preparing than doing. We, too, perceived long ago that the
political liturgy of the priests of conspiracy, like the church liturgy,
is only a dramatic performance; however much feeling and sincerity the
priests sometimes bring to the service, still the Lamb is slain in bread
and bleeds in wine. Mazzini noticed that thirty-five years ago.
Having reached that point, it was hard for the young Carbonaro to
stop. Watching recent events in the crumbling Empire, an eye-witness
of monarchical restorations, revolutions, constitutional attempts and
republican failures, Mazzini reached the conclusion that contemporary
European life had, as he expressed it, ‘no initiative of any sort,’ that
the conservative idea and the revolutionary idea have only negative
significance: one destroys, not knowing to what end, the other preserves,
not knowing to what end; that in everything that was going on (and
the revolution of 1830 was going on at that time) there was nothing
inaugurating a new order of things.
In these words of the future rival of the Pope there are echoes of the
funeral knell struck by the Pope’s friend, Maistre.
The void of which Mazzini was sensible may well be understood.
The flood-tide of the revolutionary sea rose triumphantly in 1789 and,
untroubled by any doubts, drowned the old world. But when everything was
covered by its waves, and when mitres, plumed hats, and heads without
bodies (among them one wearing a crown) had bobbed up for a moment and
sunk again to the bottom, then for the first time a fearful freedom
and emptiness was felt. The forces set free attacked one another, then
stopped, exhausted; they had nothing to do, they waited for the events
of the day as casual labourers wait for work. Those standing armies of
the Revolution boiled with martial energy, but there was no war to fight;
above all, there was no clear aim to fight for. And when there is no aim,
anything may become the aim. Napoleon assured them that he was the aim,
that war was the aim, and set blood flowing faster than the revolutionary
tide had flooded the world with ideas.
Mazzini saw that, and, before uttering his final verdict, he looked
beyond the political walls. There he was met by the colossal egotism
of Goethe, his serene callousness, his interest as of a naturalist in
human affairs; there he was met by the self-consuming colossal egotism
of Byron; the poetry of scorn beside the poetry of contemplation;
lamentation, laughter, proud flight, and revulsion from the modern world
beside the haughty satisfaction in it. The heroes of Byron impress
Mazzini; he tries to discover the origin of these strange hermits with
no religion and no monastery, these egoists, concentrated on themselves,
useless, unhappy, without work, without fatherland, without interests,
these ascetics, ready for sacrifices which they know not how to make,
ready to despise themselves as human beings. And again Mazzini stumbles
upon the same cause. Byron’s heroes are lacking in faith, in an objective
ideal; the poet’s vision, turning aside from his barren, repellent
surroundings, was reduced to the lyrical expression of states of feeling,
to the impulses of activity turned inwards, to morbid nerves, to the
spiritual abysses where madness and sense, vice and virtue, lose their
limits and turn to phantoms, to gnawing remorse and, at the same time,
morbid ecstasy.
Mazzini’s active spirit could not stop at this analysis of the malady.
At all costs he longed to find motive for action, the word of a new
faith,—and he found them.
Now the lever is in his hands. He will turn the world upside-down, he
will re-create Europe, he will exchange the coffin for the cradle, will
turn the demolishers into architects, will solve the problem of society
and the individual, of freedom and authority, will give faith to the
heart without robbing the mind of reason.... What, you may wonder, is
this _magnum ignotum_? _The unity and freedom of Italy with ancient Rome
for its centre._
In all this, of course, there is no place for analysis nor for criticism.
Was it not because Mazzini had found a new revelation, a new redemption
of the world, and an Italian _resorgimiento_, that he failed to foresee
one thing—Cavour? He must have hated Cavour more than Antonelli. Cavour
was the prose translation of his poem, he fulfilled the prosaic part of
Mazzini’s programme, _à la longue_ Rome and Venice will follow suit.
Cavour is the Italian Martha, thwarting the all-absorbing dream of the
Italian Mary with household trivialities; and while Mary, with tender
ecstasy, saw the redemption of the world in liberated Italy, Martha was
cutting out a Belgian dress for Italy, and the country, pleased that the
new garment did not pinch her, went along the beaten European track, the
great trade route, though there is no reaching a regeneration of the
world without risking a more perilous path.
The fanatic Mazzini was mistaken; the immensity of his error made
Cavour and United Italy possible. But for us it matters little how
Mazzini solved the question; what is of interest to us is that as soon
as a Western European stands on his own feet and shakes off ready-made
formulas, as soon as he begins to look at the state of contemporary
Europe, he is conscious of something amiss, he feels that things are
not going the right way, that progress has taken the wrong turning.
Revolutionaries and conservatives can easily cheat this feeling by
replacing what they lack with the principle of nationalism, especially
if, luckily for them, their native country is under foreign rule. But
what comes next? What are they to do when they have established the
independence of their people? Or what are they to do if it is already
independent?
Mazzini, conscious of the emptiness of the democratic idea, points to
the emancipation of Italy from the ‘Tedeschi.’ Stuart Mill sees that
everything around him is growing vulgar and petty; he looks with despair
at the overwhelming myriads of petty bourgeois massed together like
pressed caviare, with no initiative, no understanding, but in England
they have no Austrian yoke, no Pope, no Neapolitan Bourbon. What is to be
done there?
I foresee the wrath of our bond-slaves of the factories of learning and
the foundries of scholasticism; I can see how malignantly in the light
of day they will look at me with their night-owls’ eyes and say: ‘What
nonsense is he talking? As though historical development could turn
aside, as though it did not move according to its laws, like the planets
which never turn aside, and never break away from their orbits.’
To this last contention it may be said that anything may happen, and
that there is no reason why a planet should not sometimes break away
from its orbit. Saturn’s ring has been preserved and revolves with it,
while Jupiter’s necklace has broken into separate beads, and the earth
has one moon like a cataract in the eye. But one has but to glance into
a hospital instead of an observatory to see how the living _go off
the track_, develop in their abnormality and carry it to comparative
perfection, distorting and sometimes destroying the whole organism. The
delicate equilibrium of every living creature is uncertain and to some
extent adapts itself to abnormalities: but one step too far in that
direction, and the overstrained knot is broken and the elements released
form into new combinations.
The general laws, of course, remain the same, but they may vary in their
particular applications, till they appear absolutely opposite in their
manifestations. Fluff flies and lead falls in obedience to the same law.
In the absence of a set plan and fixed date, of a yard-measure and a
clock, development in nature and in history, far from not being able to
turn aside, is bound to be continually turning aside, in accordance with
every influence and by virtue of its irresponsible passivity and lack of
definite aim. In the individual organism the deviation reveals itself by
pain, and the warning of pain often comes too late. Complex, composite
organisms fly off at a tangent and are carried downhill, unconscious of
the road or the danger, owing to the constant change of generations.
There is very little possibility of stopping the deviation, arresting the
downward flight or overtaking it, and there is little desire to do so;
such a desire would in every case presuppose consciousness and aim.
Consciousness is a very different thing from practical application. Pain
does not cure, but calls for treatment. The diagnosis may be correct,
but the treatment may be bad; one may have no knowledge of medicine, yet
clearly perceive the disease. To demand a cure from a man who points out
some evil is exceedingly rash. The Christians who wept over the sins of
this world, the socialists who exposed the sores of the social order, and
we, dissatisfied, ungrateful children of civilisation, we are not the
physicians, we are the pain; what will come of our moaning and groaning
we do not know; but the pain is recorded.
We are confronted with a civilisation which has developed consistently on
the basis of a landless proletariat and the unlimited right of the owner
over his property. What Sieyès prophesied has come to pass: the middle
class has become all-important because it possesses property. Whether
we know how to emerge from petty-bourgeois rule to the rule of the
people or not, we have the right to regard bourgeois rule as a one-sided
development, a monstrosity.
By the word monstrosity, disease, we commonly understand something
unnatural, exceptional, not reflecting that abnormality and disease are
more _natural_ than the normal, which is merely the algebraical formula
of the organism, an abstraction, a generalisation, an ideal formed
from different particulars by the exclusion of what is accidental. The
deviation and the abnormality follow the same law as the organisms; if
they were not subjected to it, the organism would die. But, in addition
to that, they rest on their peculiar rights, they have their private
laws, the consequences of which we have again the right to deduce,
apart from any ability to correct them. Seeing that the forepart of the
giraffe has acquired a one-sided development, we could surmise that this
development was at the expense of the hind part, and that in consequence
there would infallibly be a series of defects in his organism
corresponding with his one-sided development, but for him natural and
comparatively normal.
Bourgeoisie makes up the forepart of the European camelopard; that might
be disputed, if the fact were not so obvious; but, once that is accepted,
we cannot overlook all the consequences of this supremacy of the shop and
trade. It is clear that the man at the helm of this world will be the
tradesman, and that he will set his trademark on all its manifestations.
The ineptitude of an aristocracy by birth and the misery of a proletariat
by birth are equally helpless against him. The government must die
of hunger or become his menial; its comrades in unproductivity, the
guardians of the human race in its immaturity, the lawyers, notaries,
judges and such, are equally under his yoke. Together with his supremacy,
the whole of moral life is degraded, and Stuart Mill, for instance,
did not exaggerate when he talked of the narrowing of men’s minds and
energies, the filing down of individuality, life continually becoming
more shallow, and wide human interests being continually more excluded
from it by its being confined to the interests of the counting-house and
bourgeois prosperity. Mill says plainly that, going by that road, England
will become a second China; to which we would add, and not England alone.
Perhaps some crisis will save us from the Chinese decay. But whence
and how will it come, and will the aged body survive it? That I cannot
tell, nor can Stuart Mill. Experience has taught us; more cautious than
Mazzini, we humbly adhere to the point of view of the dissector. We know
of no remedies and have little faith in surgery.
I have been particularly fortunate, I have lived next door to the
hospital and have had a first-rate seat in the anatomical theatre; I
had not to look in the atlas, nor to attend lectures on parliamentary
therapeutics, nor theoretical pathology; disease, death, and dissolution
were taking place before my eyes.
The death agony of the July monarchy, the fever of the Papacy, the
premature birth of the Republic and her death, the June days following
on the February twilight, all Europe in a fit of somnambulism falling
from the roof of the Pantheon into the muddy pond of the police! And then
ten years in the spacious museum of pathological anatomy, the London
Exhibition of specimens of all the progressive parties in Europe, side by
side with the indigenous specimens of every form of conservatism from the
times of the Judean high priests to the Puritans of Scotland.
Ten years!
I had leisure to look deeply into that life, into what was going on
around me; but my opinion has not changed since in 1848 I ventured, not
without horror, to decipher on the brow of those men the _Vixerunt_ of
Cicero!
With every year I struggle more and more against the lack of
comprehension of men here, their indifference to every interest, to
every truth, the trivial frivolity of their senile intellects, the
impossibility of persuading them that routine is not the infallible
criterion, and that habit proves nothing. Sometimes I stop short, I fancy
that the worst time is over, I try to be inconsistent: I fancy, for
instance, that suppressed speech in France is growing into thought.... I
expect, I hope.... Exceptions do happen sometimes.... Something seems to
be dawning.... No, nothing!
And no one feels this.... People look at you with a sort of pity as
at one deranged.... But I have happened to meet with old, old men who
shake their heads very mournfully. Evidently these old men are ill at
ease with the strangers of their household, that is, with their sons and
grandsons....
Yes, _caro mio_, there is still in the life of to-day a great type for a
poet, a type altogether untouched.... The artist who would look intently
at the grandfathers and grandsons, at the fathers and children, and
fearlessly, mercilessly embody them in a gloomy, terrible poem, would be
the laureate at the graveside of this world.
That type—the type of the Don Quixote of the Revolution, the old man
of 1789, living out his old age on the bread of his grandsons, French
petty bourgeois grown rich—has more than once moved me to horror and
depression. Think of him a little and your hair will stand on end.
ISLE OF WIGHT, COWES.
_July 20, 1862._
Letter 3
... Phew, what a disgusting summer! Cold, darkness, sleet, continual
winds, constant irritation of the nerves and also of the membrane of the
nose; and all that has been going on for three months, and there were
seven months before that on this side of the Sign of the Ram.
At last the sun has come out in a cloudless sky. The sea is smooth and
sparkling. I am sitting at my window in a tiny farm; I cannot take my
eyes off it; it is so long since I saw the sun and the distance. To-day
it is actually warm. I am simply delighted, seeing that Nature is not
played out yet. The rejoicing is endless: bees and birds are flying,
buzzing, singing, droning; in the little yard of the farm the cock, dry
at last, is crowing his loudest; and the old dog, oblivious of his age
and social position, lies on his back like a puppy, with his legs in the
air, rolling from side to side with an unconscious epicurean growl. There
are no people to be seen from my window, but fields, trees, and gardens
without end; in spite of the sea on one side, this view reminds one of
our great Russian landscapes, and there is the scent of grass and trees,
too.
It was more than time for the weather to improve, for I had really begun
to be afraid not of a social, but of a geological catastrophe; I had
begun to expect that after ten months of bad weather Europe would crack,
and by volcanic means cut the Gordian knot of contemporary problems and
_impasses_, bidding those who will to begin, not from their ABC, but from
a second Adam.
You, as a poet and idealist, probably don’t believe in such nonsense, but
Lamé,[30] as one of the greatest mathematicians of our age, is not of
that opinion. He fancies that the equilibrium of the crowded continents
is very insecure, and that, taking also into account their rapid movement
in one direction, and certain facts of the shifting of contours in
Iceland, the earthly globe may crack in Europe at any moment. He has even
drawn up a series of formulas and made a series of calculations.... But
there is no need to frighten you; the crack won’t reach as far as the
province of Orel.
We had better, taking advantage of the phenomenally fine weather, return
to our discussion of ‘Ends and Beginnings,’ and if the earthquake comes
it will settle things.
The Don Quixote of the Revolution sticks in my head. That austere, tragic
type is vanishing, vanishing like the aurochs of the White Russian
forest, like the Red Indian, and there is no artist to record his old
clear-cut features, marked with the traces of every sorrow, every grief
that comes from general principles and faith in humanity and reason.
Soon these features will perish, still unyielding, still wearing an
expression of proud and reproachful disdain, then their image will be
effaced and the memory of man will lose one of its noblest and loftiest
types.
These are the peaks in which the mountain range of the eighteenth century
ends; with them it reaches the limit; with them a series of ascending
efforts breaks off. There is no reaching a higher level through volcanic
action.
Titans, left after the struggle, after defeat, representatives of
unsatisfied ambitions, for all their Titanic effort turn from great
men into melancholy Don Quixotes. History rises and falls between the
prophets and the Knights of the Grievous Countenance. Roman patricians,
republicans, stoics of the early ages, hermits fleeing into the
wilderness from a Christianity vulgarised into the official religion,
Puritans who passed a whole century gnashing their teeth over failure
to attain their tedious ideal—all these, left by the retreating tide,
obstinately struggling forward and sticking in the mud, unsupported by
the wave, all are Don Quixotes, but Don Quixotes who have found their
Cervantes. For the champions of the early church, there are volumes of
legends, there are ikons and paintings, there are mosaics and sculpture.
The type of Puritanism is firmly fixed in English literature and in Dutch
painting, but the type of the Don Quixote of the Revolution is fading
before our eyes, growing rarer and rarer, and no one thinks of even
photographing it.
Fanatics of earthly religion, dreamers not of the Kingdom of Heaven,
but of the Kingdom of Man, they are left the last sentinels of the
ideal, long ago deserted by the army; in gloomy solitude they stand for
half a century, incapable of changing, still expecting the coming of
the republic on earth. The ground sinks lower and lower; they refuse
to see it. I still come upon some of these apostles of the ’nineties;
their clear-cut, melancholy, striking figures, standing out above two
generations, seem to me like austere, immovable Memnons, falling into
ruins stone by stone in the Egyptian desert.... While at their feet tiny
men and little camels swarm, bustle, drag their goods, hardly visible
through the whirling sand.
Death gives more and more warning of his approach; the aged, lustreless
eye is sterner, grows weary with the effort of seeking a successor,
looking for one to whom to yield place and honour. Son?—the old man
frowns. Grandson?—he waves his hand in despair. Poor King Lear in
democracy, whenever he turns his dimming eyes upon those of his own
household, everywhere he is met by lack of understanding, lack of
sympathy, disapproval, half-concealed reproach, petty considerations
and petty interests. They are afraid, before strangers, of his Jacobin
words; they beg pardon for him, pointing to his scanty grey hair. His
daughter-in-law worries him to be reconciled with the Church, and a
Jesuit _abbé_ flits in at times, like a passing crow, to see what
strength and consciousness is left, so as to catch him for God in his
deathbed delirium. Well it is for Citoyen Lear if there is somewhere in
his neighbourhood a Citoyen Kent who finds that ‘he is every inch’ a hero
of 1794, some obscure comrade of Santerre,[31] a soldier of the army of
Marceau and Hoche, Citoyen Spartacus Brutus junior, childishly faithful
to his tradition, and proudly keeping shop with the hand which held a
lance crowned with the Phrygian cap. Lear will visit him sometimes to
relieve his heart, to shake his head, and to recall old days, with their
immense hopes, with their great events, to abuse Tallien[32] ... and
Barras[32] ... the Restoration, with its _cafards_, the shopkeeper king,
and _ce traître de Lamartine_. Both _know_ that the hour of revolution
will strike, that the people will awaken like a lion and again hoist the
Phrygian cap, and one of them will fall asleep in these dreams.
Scowling Lear will follow the coffin of Spartacus Brutus junior, or
Spartacus Brutus junior, not concealing his profound loathing of all
the kindred of the deceased, will follow the coffin of Lear, and of the
two majestic figures one only will be left, and that one absolutely
superfluous.
‘He, too, is no more; he, too, has not lived to see it,’ thinks the old
man who is left, as he comes back from the funeral. Can superstition and
monarchy, the party of Pitt and of Coburg, have triumphed for good and
all? Can all our long lifetime, our efforts, our sacrifices?... No, that
cannot be; the truth is on our side, and the victory will be with us....
Reason and justice will triumph, in France first of all, of course, and
then in all humanity, and ‘Vive la République Une et Indivisible’! The
old man at eighty prays with his aged lips, just as another old man,
giving up his soul in peace to his Maker, murmurs ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ and
both tranquilly close their eyes and do not see that neither the Kingdom
of Heaven on earth nor the sole and indivisible Republic in France is
coming at all, and do not see it, because not the Lord but their decaying
body has received their soul in peace.
Holy Don Quixotes, the earth rest lightly upon you!
This fanatical conviction of the possibility of bringing about harmonious
order and the common weal, of the possibility of realising the truth
because it is the truth, this renunciation of everything private and
personal, this devotion which survives every ordeal, every blow, is the
topmost peak.... The mountain ends there; higher, beyond, is icy air,
darkness, nothing. We must go down again. Why cannot we go on? Why does
not Mont Blanc stand on Chimborazo and one of the Himalayas continue
them? That would be a mountain!
But no—every geological cataclysm has its romance, its mountain poem, its
individual peaks of granite and of basalt, whose mass towers above the
lower slopes. Monuments of the revolutions of the planets, they have long
ago been overgrown with forest and moss, bearing witness to thousands of
years of immobility. Our pioneers of the Revolution have left their Alps
in history; the traces of their titanic efforts have not passed away, and
it will be long before they pass. What more would you have?
Yes, that is enough for history. It has its own wholesale, ruthless
valuation; in it, as in the description of battles, we have the movement
of companies, the action of artillery, the attack of the left flank, the
retreat of the right; it has its leading figures, the ‘30th Light Cavalry
and afterwards the 45th.’ The bulletin goes no further; it is satisfied
with the sum total of the dead, but the ‘fifth act’ of every soldier goes
further, and it has a purely civilian interest.
What was not endured by these men of the latest flood-tide, left stranded
in the slime and mud by its ebb! What did not these fathers endure—more
solitary in their own families than monks in their cells! What terrible
conflicts every hour, every day!... What moments of weariness and despair?
Is it not strange that in the long series of ‘_Misérables_’ brought
before us by Victor Hugo there are old men ... but _the_ miserable old
man _par excellence_ is thrust into the background, neglected? Hugo
scarcely noticed that side by side with the agonising sense of guilt
there is another anguish, the agonising sense of one’s useless rectitude,
the recognition of one’s fruitless superiority over the feebleness of
every young creature near that has survived.... The great rhetorician and
poet, while dealing with the sorrowful lives in modern France, scarcely
touches upon the greatest sorrow in the world—that of the old man, young
in soul, surrounded by a generation growing more and more shallow.
Beside them what are the poignant but useless and purely subjective
sufferings of Jean Valjean described with such wearisome minuteness in
Hugo’s omnibus of a novel? Of course, one may feel compassion for every
form of unhappiness, but one cannot feel deep sympathy for all. The pain
of a broken leg and the pain of a broken life stir a different kind of
sympathy.
We are not sufficiently Frenchmen to understand such ideals as Jean
Valjean, and to sympathise with such heroes of the police as Javert. To
us Javert is simply loathsome. Probably Hugo had no idea, when he drew
this typically national figure of the jackal of Law and Order, how he was
branding his ‘charming France.’ In Jean Valjean all we can understand
is his external struggle of the good-luckless wild beast, baited by a
whole pack of hunting dogs. His inner conflict does not touch us; this
man, so strong in will and muscles, is in reality a singularly weak man.
A saintly convict, an Ilya Muromets[33] from the galleys of Toulon, an
acrobat at fifty, and a lovesick boy at almost sixty, he is a mass of
superstition. He believes in the brand on his shoulder, he believes in
his sentence, he believes that he is an outcast, because thirty years
ago he stole a loaf, and that not for himself. His virtue is morbid
remorse, his love is senile jealousy. His strained existence is raised to
truly tragic significance only at the end of the book by the heartless
narrow-mindedness of Cosette’s husband and the boundless ingratitude of
herself. And here Jean Valjean really has something in common with our
old men—the remorse of the one and the rectitude of the others blend in
burning suffering. The mercury frozen in the thermometer scalds like the
molten lead of the bullet. The consciousness of rectitude, consuming
half the heart, half the existence, is as painful as the gnawings of
conscience, and worse indeed. In the latter case there is the relief
of confession, the prospect of reward; in the former there is nothing.
Between the old man of the ’nineties—fanatic, dreamer, idealist—and the
son, older than he in prudence, good sense, and disillusionment, the
son so extremely well satisfied with things on a lower plane, and the
grandson who, swaggering in his uniform of _Guide Impérial_, dreams of
how to get a berth as a _sous-préfet pour exploiter sa position_, the
natural relation is violated, the balance is destroyed, and the normal
succession of generations is distorted.
Jean Valjean in his aged virginity, in his lyrical personal
concentration, did not himself know what he wanted from the younger
generation. What did he really want from Cosette? Could she have been
a friend to him? In the inexperienced innocence of his heart, he went
beyond the love of a father.... He wanted to love her exclusively for his
own sake, and a father’s love is not like that. Moreover, though he has
mentally been draping himself all his life in the jacket of a convict,
he is crushed under the burden of repulsion evinced for him by the very
narrow-minded young man—the typical representative of a generation
sinking into vulgarity.
I don’t know what Hugo meant to make of his Marius, but to me he is as
much a type of his generation as Javert is of his. In the instincts
of the young man there is still a glimmer of the virtues of another
period—warm and generous impulses, with no reflection, no roots, almost
no significance, springing from tradition and example. There is in him
no trace of the leaven of the eighteenth century, that restless itch
for analysis and criticism, that menacing summons of everything in the
world to the test of the intellect; he has no intellect, but he is
still a good comrade; he goes to the barricades, not knowing what is to
come afterwards; he lives by routine, and, knowing _à code ouvert_ what
is good and what is evil, troubles his head as little about it as a
man who knows for certain that it is sinful to eat meat in Lent. With
this generation, the revolutionary epoch comes finally to a standstill
and begins its descent; another generation, and there will be no more
generous impulses; everything will fall into its commonplace routine,
personality will be effaced, and the succession of individual specimens
will be scarcely perceptible in the daily routine of life.
I imagine that there must have been something of the sort in the
development of animals. The species in course of formation stirring
towards what is above its strength, while failing to make the most of
its powers, has gradually gained equilibrium and proportion, and lost
its anatomical eccentricities and physiological excesses while gaining
fertility, and beginning from generation to generation, from age to
age, to repeat its distinct form and its individuality in the image and
semblance of the first forefather who adopted steady habits.
When the species is evolved development almost stops; at any rate, it is
slower and on a humbler scale, as it is with our planet. Having reached
a certain stage of cooling, it changes its crust very slowly; there are
floods, but there are no world-wide deluges; there are earthquakes here
and there, there is no universal cataclysm. Species become stationary,
and are consolidated in various forms more or less one-sided in one
direction or another, and are satisfied with them; they are scarcely able
to escape from them, and if they did, or if they do, the result would be
just as one-sided. The mollusc does not try to become a crab, the crab a
trout, or Holland Sweden.... If we could presuppose ideals in animals,
the ideal of a crab would still be a crab, but with a more perfect
equipment. The nearer a country is to its final condition, the more it
regards itself as the centre of all civilisation and of every perfection,
like China, which stands unrivalled; like England and France, which in
their antagonism, in their rivalry, in their mutual hatred, never doubt
each that she is the foremost country in the world. Some species are at
rest in the position they have attained; development continues in the
unfinished species, beside the finished which have completed their cycles.
Everywhere where human swarms and ant-heaps have attained comparative
prosperity and equilibrium, progress becomes slower and slower,
imagination and ideals are dimmed. The satisfaction of the rich and
the strong suppresses the efforts of the poor and the weak. Religion
appears as the comforter of all the heavy laden. Everything that gnaws
at the heart, that makes men suffer, every craving left unsatisfied on
earth, all are set right and satisfied in the eternal realm of Ormuzd,
loftier than the Himalayas at the foot of Jehovah’s throne. And the more
unrepiningly men endure the temporary sorrows of earthly life, the fuller
the heavenly consolation, and that for no brief period, but for ever and
ever. It is a pity that we know little of the inner story of the Asiatic
peoples who have dropped out of history, know little of those uneventful
periods which preceded the violent inroads of savage races who devastated
everything, or the predatory civilisation which uprooted or reconstructed
everything. It would show us in simple and elementary form, in those
plastic biblical images which only the East creates, the transition of
the people from historical upheavals into a peaceful _status quo_ of
life, persisting in the accepted, untroubled sequence of generations,
like winter into spring, spring into summer....
With slow, untroubled steps England is advancing to that repose, to
that unruffled stagnation of forms, ideas, convictions. The other day
_The Times_ congratulated her on the lack of interest in parliamentary
debates, on the unrepining submission with which workmen starve to death,
‘while so lately their fathers, the contemporaries of O’Connor,’ agitated
the country with their menacing murmurs. As firmly as an aged oak stands
the English Church, its roots deep in the soil, graciously tolerating all
forms of Dissent, and convinced that they will not move far away.
Swaggering and resisting, as is her wont, France is shoved backwards
while making a show of progress. Behind these giants will come in two
columns others, once prophetically united under one sceptre ... on the
one hand, the thin, austere, ascetic type of the Spaniard, brooding
without thought, enthusiastic without an object, anxious without cause,
taking everything to heart, unable to improve anything, in short, a type
of a true Don Quixote de la Mancha; on the other, the sturdy Dutchman,
content when he has had a good meal, reminiscent of Sancho Panza.
Is not the reason that the children of to-day are older than their
fathers, older than their grandfathers, and able _à la_ Dumas junior
to talk of their ‘prodigal fathers,’ that senility is the leading
characteristic of the present age? At any rate, wherever I look I see
grey hairs, wrinkles, bent backs, last wills and testaments, balanced
accounts, funerals, _ends_, and I am always seeking and seeking
beginnings. They are only to be found in theories and abstractions.
_August 10, 1862._
Letter 4
Last summer a friend, a Saratov landowner, and a great Fourierist, came
to see me in Devonshire.
Please don’t be angry with me (it was not the landowner who said that to
me, but I who say it to you) for so continually wandering from the point.
Parentheses are my joy and my misfortune. A French literary man of the
days of the Restoration, a classic and a purist, more than once said to
me, taking a pinch of snuff in the prolonged academic fashion which will
soon have passed away altogether: ‘_Notre ami abuse de la parenthèse avec
intempérance!_’ It is for the sake of digressions and parentheses that I
prefer writing in the form of letters, especially letters to friends; one
can write without check whatever comes into one’s head.
Well, so my Saratov Fourierist came to Devonshire and said to me: ‘Do you
know what is odd? I have just been for the first time in Paris. Well—of
course ... it is all very fine, but, seriously speaking, Paris is a dull
place—really dull!’
‘What next?’ I said to him.
‘Upon my soul, it is.’
‘But why did you expect it to be amusing?’
‘Upon my word, after the wilds of Saratov!’
‘Perhaps it is just owing to that. But were not you bored in Paris
because it’s so excessively gay there?’
‘You are just as silly as you always were.’
‘Not at all. London, looking like a permanent autumn, is more to our
taste; though the boredom here, too, is awful.’
‘Where is it better, then? It seems the old proverb is right. It is where
we are not!’
‘I don’t know: but it must be supposed that it is not very nice there
either.’
This conversation, though it is apparently not very long, nor
particularly important, stirred in me a whole series of old notions
concerning the absence of a sort of fish-glue in the brain of the modern
man; that is why his mind is cloudy and thick with sediment—new theories,
old habits, new habits, old theories.
And what logic! I say it is dull in Paris and London, and he answers,
‘Where is it better, then?’ Not noticing that this was the line of
argument employed by our house-serfs of the old style: in reply to the
observation, ‘I fancy you are drunk, my boy,’ they answered, ‘Well, did
you stand treat?’ What grounds are there for the idea that men are happy
anywhere? that they can or ought to be happy? And what men? And happy
in what? Let us assume that men do have a better life in one place than
another. Why are Paris and London the pinnacles of this better life?
Is it from Reichardt’s guidebook?
Paris and London are closing a volume of world-history—a volume in which
few pages remain uncut. People, trying with all their might to turn
them as quickly as possible, are surprised that as they approach the
end there is more in the past than in the present, and are vexed that
the two fullest representatives of Western Europe are setting together
with it. The audacity and recklessness in general conversations which
float, as once the Spirit of God, over the waters, are terrific, but
as soon as it comes to action, or even to a critical appreciation of
events, all is forgotten, and the old weights and measures are hauled
out of the grandmother’s storeroom. Worn-out forms can only be restored
by a complete rebirth: Western Europe must rise up like the Phoenix in a
baptism of fire.
‘Oh, well, in God’s name, into the flames with it.’
What if it does not rise up again, but singes its beautiful feathers, or
maybe is burnt to ashes?
In that case continue to baptize it with water, and don’t be bored in
Paris. Take my father, for example: he spent eight years in Paris and
was never bored there. Thirty years afterwards he was fond of describing
the fêtes given by the maréchals and by Napoleon himself, the suppers at
the Palais Royal in company with actresses and opera dancers, decked in
diamonds that had been wrenched out of conquered royal crowns, of the
Yussupovs, the Tyufyakins and other _princes russes_ who lost there more
souls of peasants than were laid low at Borodino. With various changes
and _un peu plus canaille_ the same thing exists even now. The generals
of finance give banquets as good as those of the generals of the army.
The suppers have moved from the Rue St. Honoré to the Champs-Élysées and
the Bois de Boulogne. But you are a serious person; you prefer to look
behind the scenes of world-history rather than behind the scenes of the
Opera.... Here you have a parliament, even two. What more do you want?...
With what envy and heartache I used to listen to people who had come home
from Europe in the ’thirties, as though they had robbed me of everything
they had seen and I had not seen. They, too, had not been bored, but had
great hopes, some of Odilon Barrot, some of Cobden. You, too, must learn
not to be bored; and in any case be a little consistent; and if you still
feel dull, try to find the cause. You may find that your demands are
fantastic, then you must try to get over it; that it is the boredom of
idleness, of emptiness, of not knowing how to adapt yourself. And perhaps
you will find something else: that you are bored because Paris and London
have no answer to make to the yearnings that are growing stronger and
stronger in the heart of the man of to-day—which does not prevent their
standing for the highest culture and most brilliant result of the past,
and being rich endings of a rich period.
I have said this a dozen times. But it is impossible to avoid
repetitions. Persons of experience are well aware of it. I spoke to
Proudhon of the fact that articles which are almost identical, with only
slight variations, often appeared in his journal.
‘And do you imagine,’ Proudhon answered, ‘that once a thing has been
said, it is enough? That a new idea will be accepted straight off? You
are mistaken. It has to be repeated, it has to be dinned into people,
repeated over and over again, so that the mind is no longer surprised by
it, so that it is not merely understood, but is assimilated, and obtains
real rights of citizenship in the brain.’
Proudhon was perfectly right. There are two or three ideas which are
particularly precious to me; I have been repeating them for about fifteen
years; fact upon fact confirms them with unnecessary abundance. Part of
what I anticipated has come to pass, the other part is coming to pass
before our eyes, yet these ideas seem as wild, as unaccepted, as they
were.
And what is most mortifying, people seem to understand you; they agree,
but your ideas remain like aliens in their heads, always irrelevant,
never passing into that integral part of consciousness and the moral
being, which as a rule forms the undisputed foundation of our acts and
opinions.
It is owing to this inconsistency that people apparently highly cultured
are continually being startled by the unexpected, caught unawares,
indignant with the inevitable, struggle with the insurmountable, pass by
what is springing into life, and apply all sorts of remedies to those who
are at their last gasp. They know that their watch was properly set, but,
like the late ‘unlamented’ Kleinmihel, cannot grasp that the meridian is
not the same.
Pedantry and scholasticism prevent men from grasping things with simple
lively understanding more than do superstition and ignorance. With
the latter the instincts are left, hardly conscious, but trustworthy;
moreover, ignorance does not exclude passionate enthusiasm, and
superstition does not exclude inconsistency, while pedantry is always
true to itself.
At the time of the Italian war a simple-hearted, worthy professor
lectured on the great triumphs of ‘international law,’ describing how the
principles of Hugo Grotius had developed and entered into the conscience
of nations and governments, how questions which had in old times been
decided by rivers of blood and the miseries of entire provinces, of whole
generations, were now settled, like civil disputes between private
persons, on the principles of national right.
Who, apart from some old professional condottiere, would not agree with
the professor that this is one of the greatest victories of humanity
and culture over brute violence? The trouble is not that the lecturer’s
judgment is wrong, but that humanity is very far from having gained this
victory.
While the professor in eloquent words was inspiring his young audience to
the contemplation of these triumphs of peace, very different commentaries
on international law were taking place on the fields of Magenta and
Solferino. It would not have been easy for any international court to
avert the Italian war, since there was no international cause for it, for
there was no subject in dispute. Napoleon waged this war as a remedial
measure to pacify the French by the gymnastics of liberation and the
galvanic shocks of victory. What Grotius or Vattel[34] could have solved
such a problem? How was it possible to avert a war which was essential
for domestic interests? If it had not been Austria the French would
have had to beat somebody else. One can only rejoice that the Austrians
presented themselves.
Then, India, Pekin—war waged by democrats to maintain the slavery of
the blacks, war waged by republicans to obtain the slavery of political
unity. And the professor goes on lecturing; his audience are touched;
they fancy that they have heard the last creak of the gates of the
temple of Janus, that the warriors have laid down their weapons, put on
crowns of myrtle and taken up the distaff, that the demobilised armies
are tilling the fields.... And all this at the very moment when England
is covered with volunteers, when at every step you meet a uniform,
when every shopkeeper has a gun, when the French and Austrian armies
stand with lighted matches, and even a prince—I think it was of Hesse
Cassel—put on a military footing and armed with revolvers the two hussars
who had from the time of the Congress of Vienna ridden peacefully without
weapons behind his carriage.
If war breaks out again—and that depends on thousands of chances, on
one casual shot—in Rome or on the borders of Lombardy, a sea of blood
would flow from Warsaw to London. The professor would be surprised, the
professor would be pained. But one would have thought he should not be
surprised nor pained. The trend of history is plain for all to see! The
misfortune of the doctrinaires is that they, like our Diderot, shut their
eyes when arguing, that they may not see that their opponent wants to
retort; and their opponent is nature itself, history itself.
To complete the absurdity we ought not to lose sight of the fact that
in abstract logic the professor is right, and that if not a hundred but
a hundred million men had grasped the principles of Grotius and Vattel,
they would not slaughter each other either for the sake of exercise or
for the sake of a bit of land. But the misfortune is that under the
present political _régime_ only a hundred and not a hundred million men
can understand the principles of Grotius and Vattel.
That is why neither lectures nor sermons have any effect, that is why
neither the learned fathers nor the spiritual fathers can bring us any
relief; the monks of knowledge, like the monks of ignorance, know nothing
outside the walls of their monasteries, do not test their theories by
facts, their deductions by events, and, while men are perishing from the
eruption of the volcano, they are blissfully beating time, listening to
the music of the heavenly spheres and marvelling at its harmony.
Lord Bacon long ago divided the learned into the spiders and the bees.
There are periods in which the spiders are distinctly in the ascendancy,
and then masses of spiders’ webs are spun, but little honey is gathered.
There are conditions of life which are particularly favourable to
spiders. Lime trees, thickets, and flowering meadows, above all, wings
and a social conception of life, are necessary for the production of
honey. A quiet corner, untroubled leisure, plenty of dust, and lack of
interest in anything outside the inner process, is all that is needed for
producing spiders’ webs.
At ordinary times it is even possible to saunter along the dusty, smooth
highroad without breaking the spiders’ webs, but as soon as it comes to
crossing rough ground and hillocks there is trouble.
There was a really good, quiet period of European history beginning with
Waterloo and lasting till the year 1848. There was no war then, but
plenty of international law and standing armies.
The governments openly encouraged ‘true enlightenment’ and quietly
suppressed the _false_; there was not much freedom, but there was not
much slavery; even the despotic rulers were all good-natured in the
style of the patriarchal Francis II., the pious Friedrich Wilhelm, and
Alexander the friend of Araktcheyev. The King of Naples and Nicholas came
by way of dessert. Manufactures flourished, trade flourished even more,
factories worked, masses of books were written; it was the golden age for
all the spiders; in academic retreats and in the libraries of the learned
endless spiders’ webs were spun!...
History, criminal and civil law, international law, and religion itself,
were all brought into the region of pure science and thence dropped in
lacy fringes of spider’s web. The spiders swung at their own sweet will
in their meshes, never touching the earth. Which was very fortunate,
however, since the earth was covered with other crawling insects, who
stood for the idea of the state _armed for self-defence_, and clapped
over-bold spiders into Spandau and other fortresses. The doctrinaires
understood everything most perfectly _à vol d’araignée_. The progress of
humanity was as certain in those days as the route mapped out for the
Most High when he travelled incognito—from stage to stage with horses
ready at the stations. And then came—February the 24th, June the 24th,
the 25th, the 26th, and December the 2nd.
These flies were too big for a spider’s web.
Even the comparatively slight shock of the July revolution gave the
final death-blow to such giants as Niebuhr and Hegel. But its triumph
was still to the advantage of the doctrinaires; the journalists, the
Collège de France, the political economists sat on the top steps of the
throne beside the Orleans dynasty, those who remained alive recovered and
adapted themselves somehow to 1830; they would have probably got on all
right even with the republic of the troubadour, Lamartine.
But how could they compromise with the days of June?
How could they live with the 2nd of December?
* * * * *
Of course, Gervinus teaches us that an epoch of centralisation and
despotism necessarily follows a democratic revolution, but yet something
seemed amiss. Some began asking whether we should not go back to the
Middle Ages, others simply urged a return to Catholicism. The fakirs
of the Revolution pointed out with undeviating finger along the whole
railway line of time to the year 1793; the doctrinaires went on lecturing
regardless of facts, in the expectation that mankind will have had its
fling and return to Solomon’s temple of wisdom.
Ten years have passed.
Nothing of all that has come off. England has not become Catholic,
as Donoso-Cortès desired; the nineteenth century has not become the
thirteenth, as some of the Germans desired; the peoples resolutely
refuse French fraternity (or death!), international law after the pattern
of the Peace Society, honourable poverty after Proudhon, and a Kirghiz
diet of milk and honey.
While the Catholics....
The mediaevalists....
The fakirs of 1793....
And all the doctrinaires go on preaching....
Where is humanity going since it despises such authorities?
Perhaps it does not know.
But we ought to know for it.
Apparently not where we expected it to go. And, indeed, it is hard to
tell where one will get to, travelling on a globe which a few months ago
only just missed a comet, and may any day crack, as I informed you in my
last letter.
_September 1, 1862._
Letter 5
In the early days of my youth I was struck by a French novel which I have
not met since; it was called _Arminius_. Possibly it has no great merits,
but at the time it had a great influence on me, and I remember the chief
incidents to this day.
We all know something of the meeting and conflict between two different
worlds; the one, the classical world of culture, corrupt and effete;
the other, savage as a wild beast of the forest, but full of slumbering
forces and chaotic impulses. But we only, for the most part, know the
official public side of this contact, not that side concerned with
details and the privacy of home life. We know the events in the rough,
but not individual fortunes; not the dramas in which lives were silently
broken and perished in personal struggle, in which blood was replaced
by bitter tears, and devastated towns by ruined families and forgotten
graves.
The author of _Arminius_ tried to reproduce these two worlds—the one
moving from the jungle to history, the other from history into the
grave—as they met at the domestic hearth. In this, world history is
reduced to personal gossip, is brought nearer to us, more within our
grasp and comprehension.[35]
It never entered my head then that I should find myself in a similar
conflict, that a similar conflict would come into my own life with all
its ruinous force, and that my hearth would be devastated and shattered
at the meeting of two historic worlds.
In our attitude to the Europeans, in spite of all the points of
difference, which I understand quite well, there are points of
resemblance to the attitude of the Germans to the Romans. In spite of our
exterior, we are still barbarians. Our civilisation is skin-deep, our
corruption is crude, our coarse hair bristles through the powder on our
heads, and our sunburn shows through the powder on our cheeks. We have
plenty of the cunning of savages and the evasiveness of slaves. We are
ready to give blows indiscriminately and to fall at a man’s feet, when
we are guiltless, but I obstinately repeat we are very far behind the
corrosive hereditary subtleties of West European corruption.
Among us, intellectual development serves as a purification and
a guarantee—at least it has done so hitherto;[36] exceptions are
exceedingly rare, culture among us is a barrier which much that is
infamous never crosses; and it is owing to this that all through the
reign of Nicholas the government could not succeed in establishing a
secret police nor a literature in the pay of the police, like the French.
In Western Europe this is not so, and that is how it is that Russian
dreamers who have made their way into freedom readily surrender to any
man who touches with sympathy on their holy things, who understands
their cherished thoughts, forgetting that for him these holy things have
long ago passed into a commonplace, into a convention, that, for the
most part, they repeat them possibly even sincerely, but in the way in
which a priest, thinking of something else, blesses any one he meets. We
forget how many other elements are tangled in the complex, exhausted,
morbidly struggling soul of the Western European, how utterly he is
exhausted, worn out with envy, penury, vanity and _amour-propre_, and
into what a terrible epicureanism of the higher morbidly nervous kind the
humiliation, poverty, and struggle of competition have developed.
We find out all this when the blow has fallen; it stuns us. We feel
ourselves made fools of, and want to revenge ourselves. Looking at this I
sometimes think that much blood will flow from the ‘conflict of these two
different forms of culture....’ These lines were written some years ago.
I am still of the same opinion despite the fact that in Europe Russians
enjoy the reputation of a most depraved people. This is due to the lack
of polish in our conduct and the rustic habits of our landowners. We
have convinced the whole world of our viciousness, just as the English
have convinced it of their domestic virtue. As a matter of fact,
neither the vice nor the virtue goes very deep. Russians abroad not
only lead a disorderly life, but boast of their savage and dissolute
habits. Unfortunately, being brought into contact as soon as they pass
the frontier with the clumsy and servile country of _kellners_ and
_hofraths_, the Russians, like half-educated people in general, cease
to stand on ceremony, and let themselves go further and further, and
in this reckless mood arrive in Paris and London. It has happened to
me many times to observe how conspicuous Russians make themselves by
absolute trifles, and they keep up the first impression by the sort of
defiant _nargue_ with which they refuse to obey the received conventions
(though they are models of submissiveness and correctness at home!). A
man is recognised as a Russian in the big hotels, because he shouts in
the public room, guffaws loudly, and invariably protests at smoking being
forbidden in the dining-room. All this aggressiveness of an upper servant
outside his master’s house shows far more immaturity and unfamiliarity
with freedom than deep depravity; bragging always goes with this moral
‘unripeness.’ Like boys of fourteen, we not only want to drink too much,
but to show off to all the world: ‘Look how I have been going it!’ But
all the world judges differently. Looking at what the Russians lay bare,
it thinks, shaking its head, ‘What must they have concealed?’ And all the
while there is nothing there, just as there is nothing in the soldier’s
haversack on parade, though it looks as though it were stuffed.
Ages of civilisation, passing from generation to generation, acquire a
special bouquet which one does not catch at once; in this the fate of
man is similar to the fate of Rhine wine. There is nothing particularly
attractive about the propriety that is gained, though it is pleasanter
to go by its rules, as it is to go along a well-swept path. We, it must
be admitted, are badly swept, and there are a good many hard stones and
plenty of mud on our path.
Our breaking-in to culture is fresh in our memory: it was accomplished by
rough-and-ready means, just as a peasant taken into the master’s house is
shaved like a German and turned into a servant. Renouncing at the command
of the Most High the whole structure of the national life, the nobility
have obstinately retained all its bad qualities; flinging overboard
together with its prejudices the severe decorum and propriety of the
national manners, they have retained all the coarse habits of the master
and the Tatar lack of respect for self and for others. The oppressive
traditional morality of old days has been replaced neither by the
aristocratic conception of honour nor the citizen’s conception of public
duty and independence; it has been replaced much more simply by German
barrack discipline _in the army_, mean servility and cringing dependence
_in the public service_, and nothing at all _outside it_.
Outside the government service, the nobleman was transformed from the
servant who is beaten to a Peter the Great who is beating; in the
country he had full scope: there he became at once corporal, emperor,
grand gentleman, and father of his domain. This life of both wolf and
enlightener produced colossal monstrosities, from torturers like Bühren
and Potyomkin on the grand scale to the hangmen and Potyomkins on a
microscopic scale; from Izmailov flogging police captains to Nozdryov
with one whisker torn off; from the ‘Araktcheyev of all the Russias’
to the minor Araktcheyevs of battalions and companies who flogged the
soldier into his grave; from the bribe-takers of the first three grades
to the hungry swarms of clerks who scribbled the poor peasants into
their graves; with endless variations of drunken officers, bullies,
cardsharpers, heroes of fairs, dog-fanciers, brawlers, devotees of
flogging, and seraglio-keepers. Here and there among them is a landowner
who has turned a foreigner in order to remain a human being, or a ‘noble
soul,’ a Manilov,[37] a turtle-dove of a nobleman, cooing in his mansion
beside the stable where chastisement was administered.
One might wonder what good thing could arise, grow, and flourish in this
soil between the Araktcheyevs and the Manilovs? What could be reared by
these mothers who sent men for soldiers, cut off women’s hair, and beat
their servants, by these fathers who fawned on all above them and were
savage tyrants to all below them? Yet it was among them that the men of
the 14th of December arose, a phalanx of heroes, suckled like Romulus
and Remus on the milk of a wild beast.... Finely they throve on it! They
were heroes, wrought out of pure steel from head to foot, martyr warriors
who went forth consciously to inevitable ruin to awaken the younger
generation to new life and to purify the children, born in the midst of
brutality and slavishness. But who cleansed their souls with the fire
of purification, what virgin force renounced in them its filth and its
corruption, and made them the martyrs of the future?
It was in them; that is enough for me for the present. I make a note
of it and return to what I was saying: there is a sort of unstable,
unbalanced ferment and frenzy in the pothouse debauchery of our vice; it
is the delirium of intoxication which has taken hold of an entire class,
that has strayed off the path with no serious plan and aim. But it has
not that deeply penetrating, deeply rooted, subtle, nervous, intelligent,
fatal depravity from which the educated classes of Western Europe are
suffering, dying, and decaying.
But how has it come to pass, what moral simoom has blown on the civilised
world?... There has always been progress and more progress, there are
free institutions, railways, reforms, and telegraphs.
Much that is good is being accomplished, much that is good is being
accumulated, but the simoom still blows and blows like a _memento mori_,
continually increasing, and sweeping everything in the world before it.
To be wroth at this is as useless as to be wroth with the squirrels for
losing their fur, at the sea because after full tide, as though to mock
us at its very best moment, it begins to ebb. It is high time that we
accepted this fluctuation, this rhythm of all creation, this alternation
of night and day.
The period of ‘moulting’ in which we have found Western Europe is the
hardest; the new fur is scarcely showing while the old skin has grown
stiff, like that of the rhinoceros; here is a crack, there is a crack,
but _en gros_ it holds fast. This position between two skins is extremely
disagreeable. Everything strong suffers, everything weak that struggles
to the surface is ruined; the process of renewal is inextricably
connected with the process of decay, and there is no telling which will
get the upper hand.
Let me explain my thought further in the next letter. Perhaps I shall
succeed in proving to you that this is not a _manière de dire_, not
subjective indignation (indeed, it is difficult to have a personal
quarrel with world history), but a few facts noted by eyes free from the
myopia of scholastic pedantry and the blindness of mysticism.
Letter 6
We stopped at the reflection that we must not be angry with squirrels
for losing their fur, nor at the winter for following the summer every
year. To recognise the inevitable is a source of strength. It is only by
knowing the currents of the sea and the continually shifting equatorial
winds, apart from any desire to correct them, that one can navigate the
ocean.
Look how things are done as a rule in Nature. In every species, in the
shaping of every form, development goes on the principles by which the
germ was determined.
It grows, is defined, and acquires a more or less unalterable character
from the mutual interaction of the elements and environment. New
factors may arise, new conditions may alter the direction of growth, may
arrest what has begun, and change it into something quite different; but
if the development does not lose its individuality, if it continues,
the form will inevitably progress on the same lines, with its own
special characteristic, and will develop its one-sidedness, that is,
its individual case. This does not in the least hinder its neighbours,
either in space or time, from developing all sorts of variations on
the same theme with various complements and differences, with their
own one-sidedness in accordance with other conditions and another
environment. Only at the beginning of the development of forms there
is an undefined and characterless epoch, an epoch of, so to speak, the
pre-zoological stage in the egg and the embryo.
Of the transmutation of animal species we know very little. Their
whole history has taken place behind man’s back and covers whole
periods of time in which there has been no witness. We are confronted
now with finished, settled types, so far removed from each other that
any interchange between them is impossible. Behind every animal there
glimmers a long history—of efforts, of progress, of _avortements_, and of
reaching the equilibrium, in which its forms have come to rest at last,
not reaching its vague ideal, but coming to a standstill at the possible,
at what will just do.
Needless to say, there are no sharp limits nor irrevocable decisions
in any natural phenomena. The creative process that has come to a
standstill, that has been reduced to mere repetition, may always be
re-awakened; in some cases it has passed from the influence of the stars
under the influence of man; by his cultivation he has developed vegetable
and animal species which would not have developed of themselves.
All this casts an immense light on the question we are considering.
History presents us with a formation, caught in the very act, not yet
settled but settling, and preserving in its memory the leading phases of
its development and their ebbs and flows. Some sections of the human race
have attained consistent forms and have conquered their history, so to
speak; others in the heat of struggle and activity are creating it; while
others, like the bottom of a sea that has only recently dried up, are
ready for any sort of seeds, any sort of sowings, and give an unexhausted
rich soil for everything.
As it is impossible looking at a calm sea to say that it will not
within an hour be ruffled into a storm, so we cannot positively assert
that China, for instance, or Japan, will for ages and ages maintain
their aloof, cramped, stagnant form of existence. How can we tell
that some word will not fall like a drop of yeast among those sleepy
millions, and rouse them to a new life? But if we have no right to
form a final, unconditional conclusion, it does not follow that after
careful observation we have not the right to draw some conclusions. The
fisherman, looking at a cloudless sky, and noting that there is no wind,
will almost certainly be right if he concludes there will not be a storm
for an hour.
This is all I ask in my scrutiny of modern history. To me it is evident
that Western Europe has developed up to certain limits ... and at the
last moment has not the spirit either to cross them, or to be satisfied
with what it has gained. The difficulty of the position to-day rests
on the fact that at this moment the active minority does not feel
itself capable, either of creating forms of existence consistent with
modern thought, or renouncing its old ideals, or frankly accepting the
petty-bourgeois state that has been built up incidentally, as a form
of life suitable for the Germanic Latin people just as the Chinese
civilisation is for China.
This agonising state of hesitation and uncertainty makes the life of
Europe unendurable. Whether it will come to rest by casting off the
prejudices of the past and the hopes of the future, or the restless
spirit of the Western European heights and depths will wash away the new
dams, I do not know; but in any case I consider the present condition a
period of agony and exhaustion. Life is impossible between two ideals.
History provides us with one example in full detail.
The long process of the decline of the ancient world and the rise of
the Christian world presents us with every form of historical death,
transmigration of souls and rebirth. Whole States stood still, remained
outside the movement, did not come into the Christian formation, grew
decrepit, and fell into ruins. Savage races, as yet hardly gathered
into orderly herds, developed at their side into new and powerful
State-organisations.... While Rome, pre-eminently the classical city, was
transformed into a city pre-eminently Catholic.
Those who deny the inner inevitability of the death of ancient Rome, and
hold that it was slain by violence, forget one thing, that every death is
violent. Death does not enter into our conception of the living organism;
it is outside it, beyond its limit. Old age and disease protest against
death in their sufferings, and do not invoke it, and, if they could find
strength in themselves, or means outside themselves, they would conquer
death.
The barbarians are all very well, but we must not assume that the whole
sickness of the ancient world was due to their onslaughts. From the days
of Tacitus, its thought had unmistakably become gloomy and despondent.
The depression, the misery, reached the pitch of suicide; such a pitch,
in fact, that all the world almost went out of its mind and really
became unhinged, believing in the most incredible theodicy and the most
unnatural salvation, taking despair for consolation and the religion
of death for a new life. Men who could not go out of their minds
withdrew from the general saturnalia of death, the funerals in wreaths
of roses, with amphoras of wine, the funerals in crowns of thorns, with
lamentations over the sins of this world, and withdrew through the two
narrow gates of stoicism and scepticism.
Beside the men who disdained death, beside the men who disbelieved in
life, beside the fanatics who went forth to destroy the ancient world to
the last stone, and the fanatics who expected the old world to rise up
again with all the virtues of the days before the Punic Wars, there was
a pinchbeck mediocre class, a crowd of those who were neither blind nor
seeing, a crowd of the myopic who saw nothing, neither Catiline nor death
behind the bustle of their daily cares, the news of war, the affairs of
the senate, the gossip of the Court, the puzzles of scholasticism and the
endless problems of household management, who shrugged their shoulders,
listening to the ravings of the Christian Jacobins, despised the
barbarians and laughed at their uncouthness, never guessing that these
forest Hottentots, with their long hair and flaxen eyebrows, were coming
to take their place in history.
The barbarians, too, have played their part, their duty is over; an
immensely rich and ample period was developed by them, but they have
reached the limits of their formation; they must reject their fundamental
principles or come to a standstill in them.
It is very hard for the modern civilised world to come to terms with the
new principles which are harassing it. What could be improved has been
improved, what could be overturned has been overturned; it has next to
preserve what it has gained, or to move out of the _one-sidedness_, the
individual variation which constitutes its personality. The last word
of Catholicism was uttered by the Reformation and the Revolution; they
revealed its mystery; the mystic redemption was solved by the political
emancipation. The Nicene Creed founded on the remission of sin to the
Christian was expressed in the recognition of the rights of every man
in the Creed of the last œcumenical council, that is, the Convention of
1792. The morality of the Judean proletarian, Matthew the Evangelist,
is the same as that professed by the Geneva proletarian and deist, Jean
Jacques Rousseau. It came in as faith, hope, and charity, and goes out as
liberty, fraternity, and equality.
The Germanic Latin world reached its climax in the storms and the
hurricanes that followed the triumphal year 1789. The upheaval of the
French Revolution went on by summits and abysses, the great and the
terrible, victories and the Terror, partial landslides and earthquakes,
till 1848; then came _Amen, Ne plus ultra_. The cataclysm that had begun
with the Renaissance and the Reformation was over.
The work goes on inwardly: the weaving of the microscopic web, the slow
growth of drift from wind and water, the scurrying to and fro of history,
the volcanic labours underground, the impenetrable passing of last year’s
autumn into this year’s spring. Overhead are terrible apparitions, dead
men in old armour and old tiaras, and fantastic figures, incredibly
radiant shapes, agonisings, sufferings, frantic hopes, the bitter
consciousness of weakness and the impotence of reason. Below is the
bottomless pit of elemental passions, of primeval slumber, of childish
dreams, of cyclopean mole-like labour. The voice of man does not reach
to these depths, as the wind does not reach to the bottom of the sea;
only at times the trumpet-blasts and drum-beats of war are heard there,
calling to blood, promising slaughter and dealing destruction.
Between the fantastic dreamers at the top and the savages beneath hovers
the middle class, having neither the strength proudly to utter its: I am
king! nor the self-sacrifice to join the Jesuits or the Socialists.
Hesitating between two moralities, they furnish precisely by this
hesitation the material for developing that corruption of which I am
speaking.
But how is it between two moralities? What does it mean, ‘between two
moralities’? And are there two moralities? Is there not one eternal
morality, _une et indivisible_?
Absolute morality is bound to share the fate of everything absolute;
it has no existence at all outside theory, outside abstract thought.
There are several moralities, and they are all very relative, that is,
historical.
The first Christians stated this very directly, very boldly, without
beating about the bush, and, having announced that the new Adam brought
a new morality, that the heathen virtues were for the Christian but
brilliant vices, they closed Plato, closed Cicero, and proceeded to drag
from their pedestals golden-haired Aphrodite, ox-eyed Hera, and the other
sinful saints of the old morality.
Pliny looked upon them as fools, Trajan despised them, Lucian laughed
at them, but they ushered in a new world and a new morality. Their new
morality has grown old in its turn. And that is just what we are talking
about.
The Revolution secularised what it could out of the catechism, but the
Revolution, like the Reformation, took its stand in the precincts of the
Church. Egmont and Alva, Calvin and Guise, Louis XVI. and Robespierre,
had the same general convictions; they differed, like Dissenters, in
shades only of opinion. Voltaire, who arrived wrapped up in a fur cloak,
in a carriage, to see the sunrise, and who fell on his trembling knees
with a prayer on his lips, Voltaire, who blessed Franklin’s grandson ‘in
the name of God and liberty,’ is as religious as St. Basil the Great and
Gregory of Nazianzus, only of a different sect. The cold moonlight of
Catholicism has passed through all the vicissitudes of revolution, and at
its last gasp has unfurled a new standard inscribed _Deo et Popolo_!
Somewhere on the heights the dawn of a new day is struggling with the
moonlight, revealing the glaring incompatibility of faith and knowledge,
of church and science, of law and conscience; but of that they know
nothing in the plains below—that is for the small band of the elect.
The union of science and religion is impossible, but there _is_ an
irregular union, from which one can draw one’s conclusion as to the
morality which rests on such a union. The fact is that Reason, fearing
a scandal, conceals the truth she knows; Science conceals that she is
with child, not by Jehovah but by Pan, and will bear a new redeemer; and
both are keeping it quiet, whispering, talking in cypher or simply lying,
leaving men in an utter chaos of confused ideas, in which prayers for
rain are mixed up with barometers, chemistry with miracles, telegraphs
with rosaries. And all this is somehow through routine, through habit;
you may believe or not, so long as you maintain certain forms of
propriety. Who is deceived? What is it all for? One obligatory rule has
remained, strong and accepted. Think what you please, but lie like the
rest.
Prophets may guide the people by visions and passionate words, but they
cannot guide them if they conceal the gift of prophecy or bow down to
Baal.
Is it any wonder that life grows emptier with terrible rapidity, driving
men by lack of understanding and by deadly dullness to every kind of
frenzy, from gambling on the Exchange to playing at turning tables?
Apparently everything is going in the usual way; respectable people are
occupied with their daily cares and business, with practical objects,
they hate every sort of Utopia and all far-reaching ideals; but in
reality this is not so, and the most respectable people as well as their
forefathers have won everything good that they have won by constantly
running after the rainbow and accomplishing impossibilities, such as
Catholicism, the Reformation, the Revolution. These rainbow visions are
no more, or, at any rate, the optical illusion deceives no more.
All the old ideals are dead, every one of them, from the Crucifixion to
the Phrygian cap.
Do you remember that awful picture after the style of Jean Paul Richter’s
inspired rhapsody, in which he depicts, apropos of what I forget, all
the penitent nations on the dread Day of Judgment fleeing terrified to
the Cross, praying for salvation and the good offices of the Son of God?
Christ answers briefly: ‘I have no father!’
A similar answer is heard now from all the crosses, to which the
yearning peoples, worn out with struggle, weary and heavy laden, appeal.
From every Golgotha the answer comes more and more loudly: ‘I have no
liberty!’ ‘I have no equality!’ ‘I have no fraternity!’ And one hope
after another grows dim, casting its last dying light on the melancholy
figures of the Don Quixotes, who obstinately refuse to hear the voices
from Golgotha ... they beckon to men to follow them more quickly, and one
after another vanish in the dark night of winter.
And that is not all; with redoubled horror men have begun to discern that
the Revolution not only has no father, but no son.
The terrible fruitless days of June 1848 were the protest of despair;
they did not create, they destroyed ... but what they attacked turned
out to be the strongest. With the taking of the last barricade, with the
deportation of the last batch of untried exiles, came the era of order.
The Utopia of the democratic republic proved to be as evanescent as the
Utopia of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Emancipation has turned out to
be as much a failure as redemption.
But the social ferment has not calmed down sufficiently to allow people
to be occupied with their own affairs; they must occupy their minds,
and without Utopias, without epidemics of enthusiasm for ideals, they
are badly off. It would not be so bad if the masses of the people,
disappointed in their expectations, would simply rot and mildew in the
Irish manner, like stagnant water; but, as it is, they may rise up in
exasperation and test their Samson-like muscles, and see how strong are
the pillars of the social edifice in which they are fettered!
Where are we to find ideals that are free from danger?
No need to look far—in the soul of man are many mansions. The
classification of man by nationalities becomes more and more the wretched
ideal of this world which has buried the revolution.
Political parties have dissolved into national parties: that is not
merely a backsliding from the Revolution, it is a backsliding from
Christianity. The human ideals of Catholicism and the Revolution have
given place to a heathen patriotism; and the honour of the flag is the
one honour of the peoples that has remained inviolate.
When I recall how twelve years ago the rake and buffoon Romieu[38]
used to preach in the Paris salons to all who would listen that the
revolutionary forces that had been roused should be turned from their
path to national, maybe dynastic, questions, I cannot help blushing with
shame at the memory.
There must be fighting whatever it is for, or a Chinese slumber will fall
upon the people in this stagnation, and it will be long before there is
an awakening. But is there any need of an awakening? That is just the
question.
The last of the Mohicans of the eighteenth century, the Don Quixotes of
the Revolution, the Socialists, some of the literary men, the poets, and
the eccentric folk of all sorts, are not sleepy, and, as far as they can,
they prevent the masses from sleeping.
The taciturn bourgeois is ashamed to confess that he is sleepy and,
half-asleep, goes on muttering incoherent phrases about progress and
liberty....
He needs war to awaken him. And is there in all the arsenal of the past
a standard, a banner, a word, an idea for which men would go out to
fight, which they have not seen put to shame and trampled in the mud?...
Universal suffrage, perhaps?...
No; no man of our day will go out to fight for a deposed idol with the
radiant self-sacrifice with which his forefather went to the stake for
the right to sing psalms, with the proud self-confidence with which his
father faced the guillotine for the sake of the one and indivisible
republic. To be sure, he knows that neither psalms sung in German nor the
emancipation of the people _à la française_ will lead to anything.
And no one can die for a god of whom he knows nothing, and who keeps
hidden behind a wall. Let him first speak out who he is, let him own
himself for a god, and with the impertinence of St. Augustine declare
in the face of the old world that ‘its virtues are vices, its truths
falsehood and absurdity.’
Well, that will not be to-day nor to-morrow.
The sensible man of our age is like Frederick II., an _esprit fort_
in his study and an _esprit accommodant_ in the market-place. When he
entered his study from which his lackeys were dismissed, the king became
a philosopher; but when he came out of it, the philosopher became a
king....
Here, too, ‘the bulls stand before the mountain.’ And yet it cannot be
denied that the light of reason is more and more widely dissipating the
darkness of prejudice.... What is most annoying is that people have
no time and die early—a man is only beginning to grow sensible when
in a trice he is carried to the cemetery. One cannot help recalling
the celebrated horse whose master trained it to eat nothing, but death
interfered with his plans.
In the Alpine glaciers every summer a crust of ice melts, but its mass
is so great that the autumn always catches the work of the sunbeams
half-way, and the crust begins to freeze again, though sometimes it does
not attain its former thickness. The meteorologists have reckoned many
times how many ages and ages the summer will need to beat the winter at
its work and melt all the ice. Many doubt whether the sun itself will
last long enough to do all the work: possibly a volcanic eruption will
help.
A similar calculation has not yet been worked out in history.
_October 20, 1862._
Letter 7
Six days for labour and the seventh for rest. Moses and Proudhon were
right to defend the Sabbath day. Monotonous work is terribly exhausting.
A man must have periodical pauses, in which, after washing his hands and
putting on clean clothes, he can go out, not to work but for a walk, have
a look at his fellow-creatures and at Nature, possess his soul, breathe
freely, be [39]‘resurrected.’[40]
Here I, too, have made of my periodical chatter about ‘Ends and
Beginnings’ my Sunday rest, and in it I withdraw from the daily discords,
the journalistic rascalities and the workaday wrangles, in which the
hours and days of the month change, but opinions and the expression of
them remain the same.... I withdraw as into some remote cell from the
windows of which many details are unseen, many sounds unheard, though the
silent outlines of mountains, far and near, are clearly visible, and the
murmur of the sea comes in distinctly.
Perhaps you will think that I am not spending my holiday very gaily;
remember that I am in England, where of all the dull days Sunday is the
dullest.
Well, there is no help for it. You must be bored once more, while, for my
part, I will try to tell you as amusingly as I can about the melancholy
matters which we discuss.
But are they really melancholy? And if it really is so, is it not high
time we were resigned to them? We really should not talk for ever about
things which it is not in our power to change. Would it not be better,
like a sensible man, to make up the account-books we have inherited, and,
forgetting our inordinate expenses and irreparable losses, accept the
total in meekness of spirit as a new starting-point. Grieve as you will,
you will not mend things; there are plenty of ways of using inherited
capital; there are plenty of dreams men cherish when they receive it. We
have had such dreams too.... The _symphonia heroica_ is over, practical
life is beginning. The wine has gone flat, let us drink the dry _tisane
de champagne_. It is not so nice, but they say it is more wholesome. Part
of the cultured world pines, with the old maid’s yearning for happiness
which she has not lost but has never had, and, instead of firmly making
up her mind to widowhood without marriage, laments that the _ideal_ of
her youth has not carried her off.... Well, what is to be done? It has
not, and now it is too late.
People are vexed at not having wings, and so will not trouble to be well
shod. The painfulness of European life in its more cultured classes is
directly due to their false position between dreams of what is not and
contempt for what is.
Side by side with the ideals of seraphic wings which are retreating more
and more into the darkness of the past and the ideals of other wings
that are vanishing into the future, there is a whole independent world
at which the dreamers are incensed, because it has achieved what it
could and not what the dreamers expected, that is, not wings. So long as
the authority and power of this world is not recognised, so long will
the feverish ferment, the perpetual falsity in life, the involuntary
faithlessness both to its ideal and to practical life, which is revealed
in the continual contradiction of words and deeds, phrases and conduct,
continue. That world is not nimble in words and not eloquent, although
it has created a great lever, comparable with steam and electricity, the
lever of advertisement, of proclamation, of _réclame_.
With all that, it cannot stand at its full height in all its breadth and
say aloud to the people: ‘I am the alpha and omega of your development;
come to me and I will comfort you, I will give what can be given; but
leave off knocking at all the doors which are not opened to you, some
because there is no one to open them, others because they lead nowhere.
Remember at last that you have no other god but me, and cease to bow down
to all sorts of idols and desire all sorts of wings. Understand that you
cannot preach at the same time Christian poverty and political economy,
socialist theories and the unlimited right of property. So far my power
exists as a fact, but not as the recognised foundation of morality, not
even as a flag, and, what is worse, I am denounced, I am insulted in
churches, in academies, in aristocratic halls and clubs, in speeches and
in sermons, in novels and in newspapers.... I am sick of playing the
part of a provincial relation from whom city fops take money and domestic
supplies, but about whom they keep quiet or speak with a blush. I want
not only to rule, but to wear the purple.’
Yes, my dear friend, it is time to come to recognising with all meekness
and humility that bourgeoisie is the final form of Western European
civilisation, its coming of age—_état adulte_; this closes the long
series of its visions; with this the epic of its growth, the romance
of its youth, everything that has brought so much poetry and calamity
into the life of the nations, ends. After all men’s dreams and efforts
... this offers them modest repose and a less troubled life and a
comfort within their capacity, not beyond the reach of any one, though
insufficient for the majority. By hard work the nations of the West have
won their winter quarters. Let others show their mettle. From time to
time, of course, men of a different leaven, of heroic times, of other
formations—monks, knights, Quakers, Jacobins—will be seen again, but
their transient appearance will not be able to affect the prevailing tone.
The mighty elemental hurricanes, that tossed up the whole surface of the
European sea, have sunk into a quiet sea-breeze, not perilous for ships,
but helping them to sail along the coast. Christianity has grown shallow
and quietened down into the calm stony haven of the Reformation; the
Revolution, too, has grown shallow and sunk into the calm sandy haven
of liberalism. Protestantism, a religion austere in trifles, has found
the secret of reconciling the Church which despises earthly goods, with
the supremacy of commerce and profit. Liberalism, austere in political
trifles, has learned even more artfully to unite a continual protest
against the government with a continual submission to it.
With so indulgent a Church, with so docile a Revolution, Western Europe
has begun to settle down, to find its equilibrium: everything that
hindered it has been drawn gradually into the solidifying waves, like
insects caught in amber. Byron, unable to breathe, let out a scream of
anger and fled, one of the first, anywhere ... to Greece.[41] Stoically
remaining in Frankfort, Schopenhauer slowly expired, noticing, like
Seneca when his veins had been opened, the progress of death and
welcoming it as his deliverer.... This did not in the least hinder the
tendency of all European life towards stillness and crystallisation; on
the contrary, this tendency grew more and more distinct. Individuality
was effaced, the racial type concealed everything strikingly original,
restless, or eccentric. Men, like goods, were turned into something
wholesale, ready-made, cheaper, and commoner, individually, but stronger
and more numerous in the mass. Individual characteristics were lost,
like the drops of a cataract in the general flood, without even the poor
consolation of
‘Gleaming bright in the rainbow’s passing streak.’
Hence their hateful but natural indifference to the life of their
neighbours and the fate of individuals; it is the type, the race, the
work that matters, not the person. To-day one hundred men are buried in a
coal-mine, to-morrow fifty more will be buried; to-day ten men are killed
on one railway, and to-morrow five more will be; and every one looks on
this as individual misfortune. Society suggests insurance.... What more
can it do?... There can be no shortage in the transport of stock because
somebody’s son or father has been killed; there can be no shortage in the
living apparatus for coal-mining either. A horse is needed, a workman
is needed, and whether it is a bay, or whether it is Tom or Harry, is
absolutely no matter. In this _no matter_ lies the whole secret of
persons being replaced by masses, of individuals being swallowed up by
the race.
A storm seemed about to arise, threatening to awaken every one and
hinder the bourgeois crystallisation, to bring down belfries and towers
and frontiers and customs-houses, but it was turned aside in time by
the lightning conductors, and had not a chance. It is easier to picture
Europe returning to the Catholicism of the times of Gregory Hildebrandt
at the summons of Donoso Cortès and Count Montalembert, than turning into
a socialist republic of Fourier’s or Cabet’s pattern. But who speaks
seriously of socialism nowadays? The European world may rest easy on that
score; the shutters are put up, there are no lightnings on the horizon,
the storm is far away ... the bourgeois can quietly tuck himself up in
his quilt, tie his kerchief round his head, and put out his candle.
‘Gute Nacht, gute Nacht,
Liebe Mutter Dorothee!’
But poor Mother Dorothy, like Gretchen, has a brother a soldier, and
like all soldiers he is fond of noise and fighting and will not let her
sleep. She would have got rid of him long ago, but she has some valuable
belongings, so she must have a guard in case of hungry neighbours. Well,
it is not enough for her brother to be her guard; he is ambitious. ‘I am
a knight,’ he says, ‘I thirst for heroic deeds and promotion.’
Yes, if the army could be reduced to the defenders of property, the
bodyguard of capital, everything would quickly reach its stable
final order. But there is nothing perfect in this world, and the
hereditary knightly spirit keeps up the ferment and prevents life
from settling down. However tempting is plunder and however natural
is blood-thirstiness to men in general, the dash of a hussar, the
aggressiveness of a Suvorov, are not compatible with maturity, with
quiet unruffled culture. The dislike for everything military in China
is much more comprehensible in a mature people than the passion of a
Nicholas for ‘braid and epaulettes and buttonholes.’
That is just the trouble. What is to be done with the great people which
boasts of being a military people, which is all made up of Zouaves,
_pioupious_, and Frenchmen, who are also soldiers?
_Peuple de France, peuple de braves!_
It is absurd to talk about quiet nights, moonlight walks, free trade,
political freedom, or freedom of any sort, while five hundred thousand
bayonets, bored and idle, are clamouring for their ‘right to work.’
The Gallic cock sees to it that no turkey, duck, or goose in Europe can
sleep in peace.
As a matter of fact, if France would abandon the army and enter the
Civil Service (she cannot exist without being an official of some sort)
everything would go swimmingly. England would fling the useless guns
bought for her riflemen into the sea, my grocer Johnson (and Son) would
be the first to exchange his weapon for a fishing-rod, and go fishing
in the Thames. Cobden would weaken everything that Palmerston had
strengthened, and the Duke of Cambridge would be elected President of the
Peace Society.
But France does not dream of leaving military service—and, indeed, how
could she? Who would look after Mexico, the Pope, and the _almost_ united
Italy? The honour of the flag is involved, there is no help for it!
_Peuple de France, peuple de braves!_
What is to be done?
Allow me to break off here and to describe another meeting with an old
friend: he from his ‘crazy’ standpoint has found a bolder solution of
these questions than I have.
Some two years ago I was walking along the Strand, when I saw busily
engaged in the doorway of a big shop of travelling requisites a fat,
nimble little figure, startlingly out of place in London, and in various
ways suggestive of Italy, wearing a light grey hat, and a thin yellow
overcoat, and adorned with an immense black beard: I fancied I had seen
this figure before somewhere.... I looked more closely ... it was he,
it really was he, my vigorous, jolly medical student, with teeth like a
wolf’s and the good humour of a good digestion, the demonstrator with
whom in old days I had ‘cut up cats and dogs,’ as he expressed it, and
not in Italy, but in the anatomical theatre of the Moscow University.
This time I said to my Russian-Italian, ‘You can’t claim to be the first
to recognise an old friend.’
‘_Eccolo!_ How charming! Upon my soul!’ and he impetuously kissed me, so
intimately had he come to know me during his absence.
‘If you often fling up both hands like that,’ I observed to him, ‘you
certainly will have your travelling wallet stolen.’
‘I know, I know. It is the traditional home of thieving.... Do you
remember Don Juan, at the end of the poem, when he goes back to London?’
‘I remember. Well, and is your eccentric friend with you?’
‘To be sure. He is expecting me at the hotel; he did put his nose out
into the street, but went back at once. He said it was so crowded and
stuffy that he was afraid he would be sea-sick. So he sent me to buy a
few things for the journey. To-morrow we are setting out for Texas.’
‘Where?’
‘To Texas, you know, in America.’
‘What for?’
‘What we lived in Calabria for. My Telemachus has not changed one bit,
only he discourses with more assurance than ever. You remember how he
used to explain to you that the terrestrial globe was sick, and that it
was high time for men to be cured of civilisation, so now he is convinced
that the cure is progressing too slowly in Europe, so he is going off
to Texas or somewhere. I am used to him; we spend the whole day, as we
always did, in arguing, and it is wonderful what a tie that is. Oh, well,
we’ll have a look at America!’
‘And how did you get on in Calabria?’
‘At first he liked it there, though to my thinking the humblest district
town in the province of Saratov, say, is superior to the whole of
Calabria. You can get billiards there, anyway, and, maybe, some little
widow, or at any rate a soldier’s wife in a neighbouring village, but we
found none but brigands, shepherds, and priests, and there was no telling
which was a brigand, which was a shepherd, and which was a priest. We
took a tumbledown ruin of a Radcliffe castle; lizards, the beasts, ran
over the floor in broad daylight, while at night the bats flew about the
drawing-room, _flop, flop_, against the wall. But I did go away several
times to Naples and to Palermo.... And what do you think of Garibaldi?
Now he is a man! you can depend upon him!... But our friend stayed on
in his castle; he only once left it to go to Rome. Rome suited him, as
though the choir had just left off singing, “May he rest in peace with
the Saints.” He is a Hamlet, a grave-digger!’
‘Well, will your Hamlet show himself?’
‘Not a doubt. He has mentioned you several times; you are still astray at
times, but are on the right path, he says. Ha, ha, ha!’
‘I am glad to hear it. Let us go to him.’
‘Delighted.’
I found Yevgeny Nikolayevitch greatly aged. His face, much calmer, had
gained a shade of a sort of clerical pensiveness: the dry, even pallor
of his face gave it a lifeless appearance; the dark rings round his
eyes, which were more sunk than ever, gave a sinister look to their old
melancholy expression.
‘You are fleeing from us across the ocean, Yevgeny Nikolayevitch,’ I said
to him.
‘And I advise you to do the same.’
‘Why so?’
‘It is very wearisome here.’
‘Well, you knew that in the past. You told me so eight years ago.’
‘That is true. But I confess I thought there would be war.’
‘What war?’
‘War!’ and he waved his hand.
‘Have you grown so bloodthirsty in Calabria?’
‘It does not matter to me personally, but it is painful to be the witness
of it; I am sorry for the young generation.’
‘But what do you want war for? To help the young generation?’
‘I can’t help it. That is what it has come to.’
‘I frankly confess I do not clearly understand what you mean.’
‘You have hit on a knotty point!’ put in Filipp Danilovitch.
‘That is because you both doubt and believe. That is the trouble. It is
clear that tables do not turn, but when the question arises: but what
if tables really do turn, then it is not clear. Filipp Danilovitch here
is quite a different matter; he is orthodox; he knows that there is
progress, and that everything is for the best. But however I look at it,
I see that men have kicked over the traces and are plunging deeper and
deeper into the morass.’
‘The horse has kicked over the trace, so off with his leg, amputate it at
once. Drastic treatment!’ observed Filipp Danilovitch.
‘Find a remedy and amputation will not be necessary. But since there
is none, would you leave the invalid alone? The nations of West Europe
are tired out, and they have reason to be; they want to rest, to live
for their own pleasure; they are sick of perpetually remodelling and
reconstructing, and knocking down each other’s houses. They have
everything they need—capital and experience and order and moderation
... what hinders them? They had difficult problems, they had cherished
dreams: all that is over. Even the problem of the proletariat has
subsided. The hungry have become zealous admirers of other men’s property
in the hope of obtaining their own; they have become the quiet lazzaroni
of industry, whose murmuring and indignation have been stifled, together
with all their faculties, and that is undoubtedly one of the greatest
debts we owe the factory system.... But still there is no peace, no peace
... armies are kept up, fleets are kept up, all that is gained is wasted
on defence—and what can put an end to armaments except war?’
‘That is knocking out one nail with another in the homeopathic way,’
observed Filipp Danilovitch.
‘Is it possible,’ my queer friend continued, ‘to work in one’s own little
garden, with a light heart, knowing that there is a gang of bandits,
pandours, janissaries, in a cave close by?’
‘Allow me one word,’ Filipp Danilovitch interrupted. ‘I bet you a bottle
of Burgundy that you don’t know who these brakes on the wheels of
progress and enlightenment, these pandours and janissaries, are!’
‘Austria and Russia, I suppose.’
‘Ha, ha, ha! I knew I should win it. Pay up with a bottle of Chambertin;
it is the only wine I care for.’
‘Upon my word,’ Yevgeny Nikolayevitch observed reproachfully, ‘what can
Austria do? The country is exerting every effort to keep alive, straining
every muscle to hold its parts together. How could she be a menace to
any one? She is like a man holding his leg with one hand for fear it
should walk off without him, and his head with the other for fear it
should drop off his shoulders, and then people talk of her rushing into a
quarrel. It is high time after the last campaign to strike Russia, too,
off the list of bogeys: far from any one’s being afraid of her, no one
even builds any hopes on her now, neither Serbs nor Bulgars, nor any of
the Slav patriots who have been trying ever since the fourth century to
discover their fatherland and their independence. And a good thing too!
Let Russia “look for the life of the world to come,” while in the present
she is teaching her officials not to steal and her landowners not to use
their fists. In Europe there are systems of oppression better organised
which prevent the lungs from breathing and the heart from being at rest.’
‘So it is England and France whom you honour in this way?’
‘Of course, one might put up with England still, though she is
stealthily, indirectly, negatively oppressive, on the one hand supporting
what is decayed, on the other oppressing what is young, so that it cannot
grow: she tells the hungry man when she meets him: “Go your way and
God bless you, you are a free man, I won’t keep you.” While France ...
oh, well—it is one battalion: all France will follow the drum and fife
wherever you like—to Kazan or Ryazan, while she would make a dash at
England even without a drum if only to play the master of the house in
the docks and in the City, as she does in the Palace of Pekin. Who can
hope that these two sworn foes will go on calmly gazing at each other
with a hatred which centuries, education, and commercial interests have
been unable to overcome, while they move closer and closer together, so
that already it is only ten hours’ journey between Paris and London? On
the one side of the Channel the _légion d’honneur_, on the other the
_Habeas Corpus_, and they put up with each other! Do you understand what
it means to cherish that passionate hatred, and not to have the spirit to
fight? It makes me decide to go to Texas.’
‘It is difficult to understand, that’s true, but it is not altogether a
bad thing that it is so. You know, when your war does come and the French
cross the Channel to emancipate England, then I shall start for Texas
too.’
‘_À la bonne heure!_’ exclaimed Filipp Danilovitch, delighted.
‘It is drainage; war is a system of drainage for the purification of the
soil and the air. How could they remain in London? Moscow is not London,
and even the Russians picked up Germans on the way, and invaded Paris.’
‘Have you got a Louis XIX. up your sleeve?’
‘He won’t be wanted.’
‘Yevgeny Nikolayevitch,’ I said, after a pause, ‘and all this is simply
in order to reach a Dutch stagnation, and for this mess of pottage to
part with the finest dreams, the most sacred aims.’
‘And what is wrong,’ observed Filipp Danilovitch, showing his white teeth
again, ‘with eating herrings and pancakes, with a clear conscience and a
clean table-napkin in a house which has just been scrubbed, with a wife
of Rubens contours, and a ring of little toddlers about you! Schiedam,
faro, and curaçao, they are the only things Dutch I know. Ha, ha, ha!
What were all your Fouriers and Owens struggling to find?’
‘Not only they: the Catholics and the Protestants, the Encyclopaedists
and the Revolutionists ... what were they all struggling for ... and
their toil, their faith, their doom, does it all count for nothing? Do
you expect the City of God and the _Feste Burg_ and the Phalanstery and
the Jacobin Republic all to be realised in fact? I remember ...’ he
paused, and then, with some inner emotion, asked me: ‘Have you ever
experienced what a man feels when he imparts his outlook to another and
sees how it grows up in him?’
‘That is all very well, saving your presence,’ the pupil of Hippocrates
interrupted, ‘but what is the use of idle talk, what is the use of
bothering?’
‘_Ech_, Filipp Danilovitch, what is the use of you or me bothering? we
have not succeeded in finding a remedy for death, and you know the peace
of death is worse than Dutch stagnation. But there, God will forgive you;
you are orthodox. But you, now, how can you make such a blunder?’ he
added, turning to me, and shaking his head mournfully.
And then suddenly breaking into his nervous, mirthless laugh, he said: ‘I
have just remembered a German book in which the laborious existence of
the mole is described—it is very funny. The little beast, with big paws
and little chinks instead of eyes, tunnels in the dark, underground, in
the damp, tunnels day and night, without weariness, without recreation,
with passionate persistence. It barely stops to eat some little grains
and worms and sets to work again, but the hole is ready for the children,
and the mole dies in peace, while the children begin boring holes in all
directions for their children. What is the price paid for the lifetime
of toil underground? What correspondence is there between effort and
attainment? Ha, ha, ha! The funniest thing about it is that after making
his splendid corridors and passages which cost him the labour of a
lifetime, he cannot see them, poor mole!’
With this moral drawn by my crazy friend, I will conclude the first part
of my ‘Ends and Beginnings,’ and the last month of 1862. Within two days
we shall have the New Year, and I wish you a happy one; in it we must
gather up fresh strength for our mole-like labour; my paws are itching to
begin.
_December 29, 1862._
Letter 8
_Be a man, stop and make answer?_
‘_Halte-là! Stop!_’ was said to me this time, not by a lunatic, but,
quite the contrary, by a very sane gentleman who walked into my room with
a number of the _Bell._ in his hand. ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘to have it
out with you. Your “Ends and Beginnings” have passed every limit; it is
high time to take leave and put an end to them, with regrets for having
begun them.’
‘Has it really come to that?’
‘It has. You know I love you, I respect your talent....’
‘Well,’ I thought, ‘it’s a bad look-out; it is clear that he means
to abuse me in earnest, or he wouldn’t have attacked me with such a
flattering introduction.’
‘Here is my heart,’ I said; ‘strike.’
My resignation, together with the classical allusion, had a happy effect
on my irritated friend, and with a more good-natured air he said: ‘Listen
to me quietly, laying aside the vanity of the author and the narrow
exclusiveness of the exile: with what object are you writing all this?’
‘There are many reasons for it; in the first place, I believe what I
write to be the truth, and every man who is not indifferent to the truth
has a weakness for spreading it abroad. Secondly ... but I imagine the
first reason is sufficient.’
‘No. You ought to know the public whom you are addressing, the stage of
development it has reached, and the circumstances in which it is placed.
I’ll tell you plainly: you have the most fatal influence on our young
people, who are learning from you to despise Europe and her civilisation,
and consequently do not care to study it seriously, but are satisfied
with a smattering of the newest ideas and think that the breadth of their
own nature is enough.’
‘Ough! how elderly you have grown since I saw you last! you abuse the
young and want to rear them on falsehoods, like nurses who tell children
that the midwife brings the babies, and the difference between the boy
and the girl is the cut of their clothes. You had better consider for how
many centuries men have been lying shamelessly with a moral object, and
morality has been none the better. Why not try speaking the truth? If
the truth turns out to be bad, the example would be good. As to my bad
influence on the young—I’ve long been resigned to that, remembering how
all who have been of any use to the younger generation have invariably
been accused of corrupting it, from Socrates to Voltaire, from Voltaire
to Shelley and Byelinsky. Besides, I am comforted by the fact that it is
very difficult to corrupt our young Russians. Brought up on the estates
of slave-owners by Nicholas’ officials and officers, completing their
studies in army barracks, government offices, or the houses of the
gentry, they are either incapable of being corrupted, or their corruption
is already so complete that it would be hard to add to it by any bitter
truth about Western Europe.’
‘Truth!... But allow me to ask you whether your truth really is the
truth?’
‘I can’t answer for that. You may rely on one thing, that I say
conscientiously what I think. If I am mistaken, unaware of it, what can I
do? It is more your job to open my eyes.’
‘There’s no convincing you—and you know why; it’s because you are
partly right; you are a good dissector, as you say yourself, and a bad
accoucheur.’
‘But you know I am not living in a maternity hospital, but in a clinic
and an anatomical theatre.’
‘And you are writing for nursery-schools. Children must be taught that
they may not snatch each other’s porridge and pull each other’s hair. But
you regale them with the subtleties of your pathological anatomy, and
keep on telling them besides: Look here, how nasty the entrails of these
old Europeans are! What is more, you use two different measures and two
different standards. If you do take up the scalpel, you should be fair in
your dissection.’
‘What, am I dissecting the living too? How awful! And children too! You
do make me out a Herod!’
‘You may joke as you like, you won’t put me off with that. With great
insight you diagnose the malady of modern man, but when you have analysed
every symptom of chronic disease, you say that it is all due to the
patient’s being French or German. And our people at home actually imagine
that they have youth and a future. Everything that is precious to us in
the traditions, the civilisation, and the history of the Western nations
you cut open relentlessly and unsparingly, exposing horrible sores, and
in that you are performing your task as a demonstrator. But you are sick
of messing about for ever with corpses. And so, abandoning every ideal in
the world, you are setting up for yourself a new idol, not a golden calf,
but a woolly sheepskin, and you set to bowing down to it and glorifying
it as “The Absolute Sheepskin, the Sheepskin of the Future, the Sheepskin
of Communism, of Socialism!” You who have made for yourself a duty and a
profession of scepticism, expect from a people, which has done nothing
so far, a new and original form of society in the future and every other
blessing; and, in the excess of your fanatical ecstasy, you stuff up
your ears and close your eyes that you may not see that your god is as
crude and hideous as any Japanese idol, with its threefold belly and
flattened nose and moustaches like the King of Sardinia. Whatever you are
told, whatever facts are brought forward, you talk in “ardent ecstasy”
of the freshness of spring, of rising crops, of beneficent tempests, of
rainbows full of promise! It is no wonder that our young people, after
drinking deep of your still fermenting brew of Slavophil socialism, are
staggering, drunk and dizzy, till they break their necks or knock their
noses against our _real_ reality. Of course, it is as hard to sober them
as it is to sober you—history, philology, statistics, incontestable
facts, go for nothing with both of you.’
‘But excuse me, I, too, must tell you to call a halt. What are these
incontestable facts?’
‘There are masses of them.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as the fact that we Russians belong both by race and language to
the European family, _genus europaeum_, and consequently by the most
inevitable laws of physiology we are bound to follow the same line of
development. I have never heard of a duck belonging to the genus of ducks
breathing with gills....’
‘Only fancy, I haven’t either.’
I pause at this agreeable moment of complete agreement with my opponent
to turn to you again and submit to your judgment such attacks on the
honour and virtue of my epistles.
My whole sin lies in avoiding dogmatic statement and perhaps relying
too much on my readers; this has led many into temptation and given my
_practical_ opponents a weapon against me—not always of the same quality
and equal purity. I will try to condense into a series of aphorisms the
grounds of the theory on the basis of which I thought myself entitled
to draw the conclusions, which I have passed on like apples without
mentioning the ladder which I had put up to the tree, nor the pruner
with which I picked them. But before I proceed to do this, I want to
show you by one example that my stern judges cannot be said to be on
very firm ground. The learned friend who came to trouble the peace of my
retreat takes it as you see for an incontestable fact, for an invariable
physiological law, that if the Russians belong to the European family
the same line of development awaits them as that followed by the Latin
and Germanic peoples. But there is no such paragraph in the laws of
physiology. It reminds me of the typically Moscow invention of all sorts
of institutions and regulations in which every one believes, which every
one repeats, and which have never existed. One friend of mine and of
yours used to call them the laws of the English Club.
The general plan of development admits of endless unforeseen deviations,
such as the trunk of the elephant and the hump of the camel. There
are any number of variations on the same theme: dogs, wolves, foxes,
harriers, wolf-hounds, water-spaniels, and pugs.... A common origin by
no means implies a similar biography. Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus,
were brothers, but what different careers they had! It is the same in
all spiritual societies or communities. Every form of Christianity has
similarities in the organisation of the family, of the Church, and so on,
but it cannot be said that the history of the English Protestants has
been very similar to that of the Abyssinian Christians, or that the most
Catholic Austrian Army has much in common with the extremely orthodox
monks of Mount Athos. That the duck does not breathe through gills is
true; it is even truer that quartz does not fly like a humming-bird. You
certainly know, however, though my learned friend does not, that there
was a moment’s hesitation in the duck’s life when its aorta had not taken
its downward turn, but branched out with pretensions to gills; but having
a physiological tradition, the habit and possibility of development in
the duck did not stop short at the inferior form of breathing, but passed
on to lungs.
It only comes to this, that the fish has become adapted to the conditions
of aquatic life and does not advance beyond gills, while the duck
does. But why the fish’s breathing should blow out my theory, I do not
understand. It seems to me, on the contrary, to illustrate it. In the
_genus europaeum_ there are peoples that have grown old without fully
developing a bourgeoisie (the Celts, some parts of Spain, of Southern
Italy, and so on), while there are others whom the bourgeois system suits
as water suits gills. So why should not there be a nation for whom the
bourgeois system will be a transitory and unsatisfactory condition, like
gills for a duck?
Why is it a wicked heresy, a desertion of my own principles, and a
contradiction of the absolute laws of creation and rules and doctrines,
human and divine, that I do not regard the bourgeois system as the
final form of Russian society, the organisation towards which Russia is
striving and to attain which she will probably pass through a bourgeois
period? Possibly the European peoples will themselves pass to another
order of life, perhaps Russia will not develop at all; but just as that
is possible, there are other possibilities too. Especially as the order
in which problems arise, the accidents of time and place and development,
the conditions and habits of life and the permanent traits of character,
may give endlessly varied direction to development.
The Russian people, covering such wide spaces between Europe and Asia,
and standing to the general family of European peoples somewhat in the
relationship of a cousin, has taken scarcely any part in the family
history of Western Europe. Developing late and with difficulty, it must
either show a complete incapacity for progress, or must produce something
of its own under the influence of the past and of its neighbours’
examples and its own point of view.
Hitherto Russia has developed nothing of its own, but has preserved
something; like a river, she has reflected things truly but
superficially. The Byzantine influence has perhaps been the deepest; all
the rest has passed like Peter’s innovations: beards have been shaved,
heads have been cropped, the skirts of kaftans have been cut off, the
people have been silent and given way, while the minority changed their
costumes and went into the Service, while the State, after receiving
the general European outline, grew and grew.... It is the usual history
of childhood. It is over, that no one doubts, neither the Winter Palace
nor Young Russia. It is time to stand on our own feet: why must we take
to wooden legs because they are of foreign make? Why should we put on a
European blouse, when we have our own shirt with the collar buttoning on
one side?
We are vexed at the feebleness, at the narrow outlook of the Government,
which in its impotence tries to improve our life by putting on the
tricolor _camisole de force_ cut on the Parisian pattern, instead of
the yellow and black _Zwangsjacke_, which it wore for a hundred and
fifty years. But here we have not the Government, but the mandarins
of literature, the senators of journalism, the university professors
preaching to us that such is the inevitable law of physiology, that
we belong to the _genus europaeum_, and must therefore cut all the
old capers to a new tune, that we must stumble like sheep over the
same ditch, fall into the same pit, and afterwards settle down as an
everlasting shopkeeper selling greens to other sheep. A plague on
their physiological law! And why is it Europe has been luckier, why
has no one made her play the part of Greece and Rome over again? There
are in life and nature no monopolies, no measures for preventing and
suppressing new biological forms, new historical destinies and political
systems—they are only limited by practical possibility. The future is
a variation improvised on a theme of the past. Not only the phases of
development and the forms of life vary, but new nations are created, new
nationalities whose destinies are on other lines. Before our eyes, so to
speak, a new race has been formed, a variety European by free choice and
elemental composition. The manners, morals, and habits of the Americans
have developed a peculiar character of their own; the Anglo-Saxon and the
Celtic physical types have so changed beyond the Atlantic that you can
scarcely ever mistake an American. If a fresh soil is enough to make an
individual characteristic nation out of old peoples, why should a nation
that has developed in its own way under completely different conditions
from those of the West European States, with different elements in its
life, live through the European past, and that, too, when it knows
perfectly well what that past leads to? Yes, but what are those elements?
I have said what they are many times, and not once have I heard a serious
objection, but every time I receive again the same answers, and not from
foreigners only, but from Russians.... There is no help for it; we must
repeat our arguments again, too.
_January 15, 1863._
ANOTHER VARIATION ON AN OLD THEME
_A Letter to X_
No, dear friend, I am not going to keep the promise I made you to write
an article in explanation of what I said of Western Europe and what I
said of Russia.
After you had gone, under the influence of your criticisms and the
criticisms made by our common friends, I looked through part of what
I had written and found I had nothing to add. I had said all that was
in my heart, what I understood, and how I understood it. If I have not
succeeded in making my outlook clear in whole books, in a series of
articles, and a series of letters, how can I succeed in doing so in a few
pages? Even if my view were really simply morbid, partial, and personal
when I wrote ‘From the Other Side’ eight years ago, time has so terribly
confirmed it that it has become a more settled conviction, and has merely
cooled without being changed in anything essential. I refuse to repeat
coldly what I said then with warmth, and I write now rather to show you
that I listened to you attentively and took our friends’ criticisms
sincerely to heart. The chief points of their censure may be reduced to
two: first, that my attitude to Western Europe weakens convictions which
are still essential in Russia; secondly, that my attitude to Russia
approximates to that of the Slavophils. These criticisms are themselves
the proof that your feud with the Moscow Old Believers has not subsided;
that is a pity.
Carried away by your polemics, you do not notice how tedious and boring
your disputes have become. Your quarrel with the Slavophils has lost all
interest, especially since the death of Nicholas. It is high time to
apply the manifesto of August 26, 1856, to all these wretched wrangles,
and to consign them to oblivion with the other transgressions of
Nicholas’ reign.
A new life is unmistakably surging up in Russia; even the Government
is carried away by it. Questions, each more pressing than the last,
are arising on all sides; hopes crushed to the earth are reviving; one
wants to know what is being thought in Russia about the Emancipation of
the Serfs, about the abolition of spiritual and corporal punishment—the
censorship and the stick—about the restraint of official plundering and
the irresponsible tyranny of the police, and one reads instead scholastic
controversies about the precedence of races and the nationality of
truth. I have never denied that the Slavophils have a true sense of the
_living soul_ in the people, that they ‘look for the world to come,’
but unhappily I must repeat that their instinct is clearer than their
understanding, clearer, indeed, than their conscience. I have read with
horror and repulsion some articles in Slavophil reviews; they stink of
the torture chamber, of slit nostrils, penances, and the Solovetsky
monastery. If power came into the hands of these gentry, they would
be worse than the ‘Third Section,’ and am I supposed to be like these
savages in sympathy and opinion and language? Why, then, did one of
them not so long ago, under the protection of the irresponsible police,
fling at me a handful of patriotic mud with the insolence of a flunkey
protected from the stick by his safe perch behind the carriage, diffusing
such a national stench of the servants’ hall, and such a flavour of
orthodox lenten oil, that for several minutes I fancied myself in one of
the remote quarters of Moscow?
But your controversy with them is of no use; leave them alone or beat
them on their own ground. They do not know the real Russia, they are
changelings and corpses; not one of them will take up your challenge;
they have distorted their understanding by a false show of orthodoxy and
a pretence of nationalism.
It would be difficult to confute them by holding up Western Europe as an
example (here I am answering another criticism) when a single copy of
any newspaper you like is enough to show the terrible malady from which
Europe is suffering. To ignore her wounds and to preach reverence not
only for the ideas which she has worked out and which are inconsistent
with her life of to-day, but for her herself, is as impossible as to
persuade us that the fanatically crazy lucubrations of the followers of
Buddha, or the Carpathian Dissenters, are of more value and significance
than all the problems that occupy us.
You love European ideas—I love them too; they are the ideas of all
history, they are the monument on which is inscribed what has been
bequeathed not only by the men of yesterday, but by Egypt and India,
Greece and Rome, Catholicism and Protestantism, the Latin peoples and
the Germanic peoples. Without them we should sink into Asiatic quietism
or African blankness of mind. With those ideas, and only with them, can
Russia be brought into possession of that great part of the heritage
which comes to her share. About that we are completely in agreement. But
you are unwilling to recognise that contemporary life in Europe is not
in harmony with her ideas. You are alarmed for them; ideas which fail
to find their realisation at home seem to you unrealisable anywhere.
Historical embryology scarcely warrants such a conclusion. From the fact
that the new social ideas are not applied in the contemporary life of the
European peoples (even if this were completely proved) you cannot deduce
that they are impossible of realisation, that they cannot be applied in
practice anywhere. Has not the European ideal in one form, to wit, the
Anglo-Saxon, found complete expression on the other side of the Atlantic
Ocean?
The ways of development are very hard, and far from simple in nature
and in history; they make use of a terrible number of forces and forms.
That is not very obvious to us, because we are always confronted with
the complete result, with what has been accomplished and successful.
Numbers of unsuccessful forms were evolved by the way, did not attain
a full life (in comparison with those that follow), and were replaced
by others of which we know nothing. They were not sacrificed, for they
lived for themselves, but when they passed away they handed on their
heritage not to their own offspring, but to strangers, the mammoths and
ichthyosaurians to the elephants and crocodiles, Egypt and India to
Greece and Rome. It may very well be that the whole creative ability of
the Western European peoples has been spent and is exhausted in evolving
their social ideal, their science, in striving towards it, and in
realising separate partial phases of it with all the passion and fervour
of the struggle, in which men are ready to die because at every step they
fancy they are attaining the whole of their ideal.
Will the down-trodden masses wrest out of the hands of the monopolists
the powers evolved by science, and all the accumulation of technical
improvements, and make of them the common weal? Or will the propertied
classes, resting on the force of government and the ignorance of people,
keep the masses down? In either case the ideas are saved, and that is
what is of first importance for you. Science, independent of political
systems and nationality, remains as the grand achievement of European
life, ready to transform men’s hard existence of the past everywhere
where it meets a suitable soil, understanding and, together with
understanding, strength and freedom. The question of the future of Europe
I do not regard as finally settled; but, looking at it conscientiously
with the humble desire to see the truth and with prejudices rather in
favour of Western Europe than opposed to it, studying it for ten years,
not in theories and books, but in clubs and in market-places, in the
centre of its political and social life, I am bound to say that I see
neither a speedy nor a happy solution. Looking on the one hand at the
feverish, one-sided development of industry, at the concentration of all
riches, moral and material, in the hands of the minority of the middle
class, at the way in which that minority has taken hold of the Church and
the Government, the machines and the schools, at the fact that the army
obeys it, that the judges interpret the law in its favour, and, looking
on the other hand at the undeveloped state of the masses, the immaturity
and instability of the revolutionary party, I cannot predict the speedy
downfall of the bourgeoisie and the reform of the old political order
without a most terrible and bloody struggle.
It is of no use to dream now of the ordinary revolutions of the past,
made half in jest, with a song of Béranger and a cigar in the mouth; now
there is no Charles X. ready to flee at the sight of danger, no Louis
Philippe who would not bombard Paris; now there is no silly Austrian
Emperor who would give a Constitution at the first musket-shot. Though
the Prussian King is the same, he would not now take the cap off his
drunken head at the sight of murdered revolutionaries; even Pius IX. has
grown wiser. The June days of 1848 and Cavaignac have shown the world
what massacres of St. Bartholomew, what September days, await the future
conflict. Whether Europe will emerge rejuvenated from this ordeal, or
be drowned like Seneca in her own blood, I do not know; but I fancy
neither you nor I will live to see the day. Your hair is grey, while I am
forty-four.
Is it not natural under these circumstances for an enlightened man to
enlarge his horizon, to look about him, to enquire how other lands, not
drawn into the death-struggle of Europe, stand in regard to the future,
what can be expected from them, whither they are tending, and whether
there is no inconspicuous preliminary work being done there. But outside
Europe there are only two progressive countries, America and Russia,
with possibly Australia just beginning. All the rest lie in unbroken
slumber or struggle in convulsions which are alien to us and outside our
comprehension, like the Chinese rebellion, with its piles of corpses and
revolting butchery.
America is Europe colonised, the same race (predominantly Anglo-Saxon),
but living under different conditions. Wave after wave carries the
overflow to her shores further and further. Just as in Cromwell’s days
England sailed across the ocean and was scattered over the northern
plains and forests, so now crowds of European fugitives sail thither
to escape from hunger, from the stifling atmosphere, from persecution,
‘from the future,’ foreseeing troubles at home. It is the continuation
of the age-long movements to the West. Three millions of Irishmen have
settled there since the days of Robert Peel; the German monarchs who,
in the eighteenth century, traded in herds of their subjects for making
war against independence, for settling Pennsylvania, and so on, pause
when they see how the population is flowing away. The movement goes on
in America itself: the newcomers make their way through the settled
population, sometimes draw it with them, and keep pressing, crowding,
and hurrying to the South; to-day to the equator, where there will be a
new meeting and a new combination of the Anglo-Saxon element with the
Latin-Spanish.
We see that all this is but the clearing of the ground, the marking out
of the arena, and that no power can prevent the North Americans with
their overflowing strength, plasticity, and untiring energy from reaching
Central America and Cuba. While in Europe Venice is falling into ruins,
Rome is reduced to beggary, the little towns of Italy and Spain are
declining from lack of capital and labour, from indolence and lack of
energy, in California, in Honduras and Nicaragua, deserts are in a few
years being transformed into cultivated fields and clearings into towns,
the plains are lined with railways, capital is abundant, and the restless
vigour of the Republic absorbs more and more. What is growing is young.
The growth of Russia has been vigorous too, and it can hardly be over
yet, it can hardly have reached its natural limits; that is evident,
not only from its geographical physiology, but also from the unceasing
aggression of the Government, from the perpetual striving to get hold
of every morsel of land. But Russia is extending by a different law
from America; because in its present state it is not a colony, not an
overflow, not a migration, but an independent world advancing in all
directions, yet sitting tight on its own soil. The United States, like
an avalanche torn away from its mountain, carries everything before it;
every step gained by it is a step lost by the American Indians. Russia
saturates all about it like water, surrounds races on all sides, then
covers them with the uniform layer of the ice of autocracy—and under
it makes of the worshippers of the Grand Llama defenders of orthodoxy,
of Germans uncompromising Russian patriots. There is the same youthful
plasticity here. Why did Joseph II. laugh at laying the foundation of
Ekaterinoslavl, saying that the Empress had laid the first stone of the
city, and he the last? It was not a city that was founded then, but a
State. The Novorossisk region is the best proof of the plastic power
of Russia. And all Siberia? And the settlements on the banks of the
Amur, where to-morrow the Stars and Stripes of the American Republics
will be fluttering? And indeed the Eastern Provinces of European Russia
themselves.
Reading the chronicle of the Bagrov family,[42] I was struck by the
resemblance of the old man who migrated into the Province of Ufa to the
settlers who migrate from New York to Wisconsin or Illinois. It is a
completely new clearing of uninhabited places, and the turning of them to
agriculture and civilised life. When Bagrov summons the people from all
parts to dig the dam for the mill, when the neighbours come singing and
bring the earth, and he triumphantly crosses the conquered river at their
head, one fancies one is reading Fenimore Cooper or Washington Irving.
And all that happened only a hundred years ago; it was the same thing in
the Saratov province and in Perm. In Vyatka, in my day, it was hard to
keep the peasants from migrating into the forests and there making new
clearings; the land was still in their eyes common property, the _res
nullius_ to which every man has a right.
America presents no new elements; it is a further development of
Protestant Europe, set free from its historic past, and put under
different conditions of life. The grand idea developed by the Northern
States is purely Anglo-Saxon, the idea of self-government, that is of a
strong people with a weak government, the home rule of every tract of
land without centralisation, without bureaucracy, held together by an
inner moral unity. What attitude America will take up to socialism is
hard to say; the spirit of comradeship, of association, of enterprise
in common is highly developed in her, but it has not common ownership
nor our _artel_, nor the village community; the individual combines with
others only for a definite task, apart from which he jealously guards his
complete independence.
Russia, on the contrary, is a quite special world, with her own natural
habit of life, with her own physiological character—not European, not
Asiatic, but Slav. She takes her share in the destinies of Europe, though
she has not its historical traditions and is free from its obligations
to the past. ‘What good fortune for a Russian lawgiver,’ said Bentham to
Alexander I., when the latter was in London after the Napoleonic Wars,
‘that he has not to contend with Roman law at every step!’ And we add,
nor with feudalism, nor with Catholicism, nor with Protestantism. The
Book of Church Law and the Civil Code do not cover every aspect of life,
do not govern every action; other institutions have been introduced by
force and are maintained by force. We have nowhere those hard-and-fast
prejudices which, like a paralysis, deprive the Western European of the
use of half his limbs. The village commune lies at the basis of our
national life with the re-division of fields, with the common ownership
of land, with an elective control, with the equality of duties laid on
each workman (the _tyagla_). All this is in an oppressed, distorted
state, but it is all living, and has outlived its worst period.
If there is any truth in all this, one need not be a Russian to turn
special attention to Russia in these black days for Europe. And, as a
matter of fact, many vigorous minds are occupied with Russia. I have
myself chanced to speak of Russia with serious men like Proudhon and
Mazzini ... and I assure you that the attitude of hatred and fear, fully
deserved by the thirty years’ reign of Nicholas, is being replaced by
hesitation and a desire to gain a closer knowledge of this newcomer,
whose rights and power for the future they are neither able nor willing
to deny.
Russia could not really be understood by Western Europeans so long as
the latter had faith in themselves, and were advancing; but they are
convinced of the impossibility of progressing by way of revolutions,
having lost at one blow all the fruits of them, except the lesson of
failure. ‘The equality of slavery’ has let them look more closely at each
other, and this is why it is in England that there is least understanding
of Russia; the English have not taken an equal share in the Continental
revolutions, nor in the general downfall that has followed. Free after
their own fashion, they look with indifference at the land of slavery and
despotism. But other nations in their fetters feel instinctively that,
though a temporary necessity may yesterday have forced the discipline
of the barracks on a peaceful agricultural people and turned all Russia
into military settlements, another necessity may to-morrow do away
with all that, just as Alexander II. has done away with Araktcheyev’s
settlements; the period of military despotism will pass, leaving behind
a political unity indissolubly welded together and forces hardened in
a harsh and bitter school. The stumbling-blocks over which Europe has
tripped scarcely exist for us. In the natural simplicity of our peasant
life, in our uncertain and unsettled economic and judicial conceptions,
in our vague sense of property, in our lack of a strong middle class, and
in our extraordinary capacity for assimilating foreign ideas, we have
an advantage over nations that are fully organised and exhausted. The
Russian State has been firmly established by terrible means; by slavery,
the knout, and executions, the Russian people have been driven into
making a vast empire, through torture they have moved to the achievement
of their destinies. It is idle to waste anger on the past; it is the task
of the living to take advantage of all forces alike, whether they have
been won by good means or ill, by bloodshed or by the ways of peace. The
military settlements, as I have said, are passing away, but the villages
remain. In our shifting primitive soil there is nothing conservative but
the village commune; that is, nothing but what ought to be preserved.
I have read your discussions about the commune; they are very
interesting, but less to the point than appears on the surface. Whether
the village commune is racial in origin or the work of the Government,
whether the land belonged in the past to the commune, to the landowners,
or to the princes, whether the institution of serfdom strengthened the
commune or not, all that ought to be investigated; but what is most
important for us is the present position of affairs. The fact, whether
distorted or not, whether right or wrong, forces itself upon us. The
Government and the institution of serfdom have, in their own fashion,
maintained our native commune; the stable, permanent principle left in
it from patriarchal days is not lost. The common ownership of land, the
_mir_, and the village elections form a groundwork upon which a new
social order may easily grow up, a groundwork which, like our black
earth, scarcely exists in Europe.
That is why, dear friend, in the midst of the gloomy, heartrending
requiem, in the midst of the dark night which is falling upon the sick
and weary West, I turn away from the death agony of the mighty warrior
whom I honour, but whom I cannot aid, and look with faith and hope to our
native East, inwardly rejoicing that I am Russian.
The period upon which Russia is now entering is extraordinarily
important; instead of small political reforms for which we are too old,
not in experience, but in intelligence, we are confronted with a vast
economic revolution, the emancipation of the peasants. And that is not
all: our problems are so set that they can be solved by social and
political measures without violent upheavals. We are called to overhaul
the rights of land ownership and the relations of the workman to the
means of production. Is this, perhaps, our solemn entry upon our future
growth? The whole new programme of our historical activity is so simple
that there is no need of genius for it, but merely eyes to see what to
do. It is only the timidity, the clumsiness and bewilderment of the
Government that hinder it from seeing the way, and it is letting the
marvellous chance slip by. Good Lord! What might not be done in this
spring sunshine after the winter of Nicholas! The blood is thawed in the
veins and the oppressed heart beats more freely, and what profit might be
made of it!
Few feelings are more painful and oppressive than the sense that one
might make a dash forward now at once, that everything is in readiness,
and that the only thing lacking is understanding and courage on the part
of the leaders. The machine is stoked up and ready, the fuel is burning
for nothing, energy is being wasted, and all because there is no bold
hand to turn the key without fear of an explosion. Our leaders should
know that nations pardon a great deal—the barbarism of Peter and the
dissoluteness of Catherine; they pardon violence and wickedness, if only
they are aware of strength and boldness of mind. But however good the
heart may be, lack of understanding, colourless vacillation, incapacity
to take hold of circumstances and turn them to account, in a ruler whose
power is unlimited, is never forgiven, either by the people or by history.
My passionate impatience in this case is in no way a contradiction of my
resigned acceptance of the tragic fate of Europe. In Russia I see the
chance at hand. I feel I can touch it; there is no such possibility in
Western Europe, at any rate, at this moment. If I were not a Russian,
I should long ago have gone away to America. You know that I am not a
fatalist, and do not believe in anything ordained beforehand, not even in
the famous ‘Perfectibility of Humanity.’
Nature and history plod along from day to day and from age to age,
stepping aside, making new ways, stumbling upon old ones, amazing us now
by their swiftness, now by their slowness, now by their sense, now by
their folly, pressing in all directions, but advancing only where the
gates are open. When I talk of possible development I am not talking of
its inevitability; what part of all that is possible will be accomplished
I do not know, because very much in the life of nations depends on
persons and will. I feel in my heart and in my mind that history is
knocking at our door; if we have not the strength to open it, and those
who have are unwilling or incapable, progress will find fitter means in
America or in Australia, where political life is being formed on quite a
different basis. Perhaps even Europe herself will be renewed, will rise
up, will take up her bed and walk on her Holy Land, under which so many
martyrs are buried, and on which so much sweat and blood has been spent.
Perhaps!
But is it really possible that after setting one foot on the beaten track
we shall sink back into the swamp, giving the world the spectacle of
immense strength and complete incapacity to use it? Something forbids the
heart to accept that!
How bitter are these doubts, how bitter this loss of time and
strength!... When will the scales fall from their eyes? And why are they
afraid to answer the loud summons of the future? ‘A new period has come
for Russia,’ we said, when we heard of the death of Nicholas; now all the
Russian journals are saying it, the Tsar himself is saying it in other
words. Well, then let it be new.
Everything that is being done shows our unhappy passion for prefaces and
introductions at which we love to stop short complacently. As though it
were enough to decide to do something, for the thing to be done.
The Petersburg Government has but few traditions, yet those are like
fetters on the legs of Alexander II. How slowly and indirectly he
advances along the path of reform, of which he has himself said so much!
In what shallow waters the boat of his autocracy floats! At this rate it
will take us over two hundred years to catch up the Prussia of to-day.
And it is all due to the Nicholas tradition, the Nicholas policy, and,
what is perhaps worst of all, the Nicholas men.
It is high time to give up this stupid fear of free speech and daylight
through dread of some phantom revolution, for which there are no elements
ready. It is high time to abandon the futile meddling in every European
squabble, always in support of despotism, of brute force, and of flagrant
injustice. To the devil with this diplomatic influence which makes all
the nations hate us. It is not the Russian, but the Holstein policy of
Nicholas. Nicholas turned the sentimental Holy Alliance into a police
compact. Why does Alexander go on playing the same part? The Russian
Tsardom is not bound up in any way with the fate of the decrepit European
thrones, so why will he needlessly share all their abominations and bring
upon himself all the hatreds gained by them?
With the partition of Poland the attitude of the new Empire to old Europe
was transformed. But the memory of that crime ought not to lead to mere
dread of losing the ill-gotten gains, but to pangs of conscience and to
repentance. What has Alexander II. done to show repentance? All that
remains in our memory is the refrain of the song with which he concluded
his speech at Warsaw—_Pas de rêveries! Pas de rêveries!_
_Pas de rhétorique! Pas de rhétorique!_ we say in our turn. We have
no dreams! Crushed by authority, by injustice, by bribery, by the
suppression of free speech and the contempt for personal freedom, we
want to speak out fearlessly, to exchange ideas with each other and to
unmask the abuses of which even the Government is ashamed and which it
will never check without publicity. We want the peasants to be freed
from the power of the landowners and all subject Russia to be freed
from the stick; of course, that is not _rêverie_, but is something very
practical and extremely little. Yes, it is very little, but it is just
our youthfulness and our strength which makes us need so little in order
to push ahead boldly and rapidly. We ask no help from the Government; all
we ask of it is not to meddle. Western Europe, on the contrary, having so
much, cannot make use of its riches; they have cost it so much that it is
miserly over them; it is conservative, like every property-owner. We have
nothing to preserve. Of course, poverty is not of itself a claim to a
different future, nor are years of slavery a claim to freedom, but here,
starting from the opposite principles to opposite ends, I meet not the
Slavophils but some of their ideas.
I believe in the capacity of the Russian people; I see from the seedling
crop what the harvest may be; I see in their life, poor and oppressed as
it is, an unconscious fitness for the social ideal which European thought
has consciously reached.
So that, dear friend, is why it is that you have found a similar strain
in my views and in those—worse than false—mischievous and dangerous views
of the Moscow literary Old Believers, those orthodox Jesuits who reduce
every one to despondency. And that is why, warmly accepting the new
social religion that is arising on the blood-soaked fields of reformation
and revolution, repeating with throbbing heart the great legends of those
days, I turn away from contemporary Europe and have little sympathy with
the pitiful heirs of mighty fathers.
Do not let us dispute about methods, our aim is the same. Let us devote
all our efforts, each according to his strength at his own post, to throw
down every barrier that hinders the free development of the abilities of
our people and maintains the present worthless _régime_, let us stir the
minds of the people and the Government alike. And so I conclude my long
letter to you with the words: to work, to toil, to toil for the Russian
people, which has toiled enough for us!
LONDON, _February 3, 1857_.
THE SUPERFLUOUS AND THE EMBITTERED
_The Onyegins[43] and the Petchorins[44] were perfectly true
to life, they expressed the real misery and dislocation of
the Russian life of the period. The melancholy type of the
superfluous man, lost merely because he had developed into
a man, was to be seen in those days not only in poems and
novels but in the streets and the villages, in the hotels and
the towns.... But the days of the Onyegins and the Petchorins
are over. There are no superfluous men now in Russia: on the
contrary, now there are not hands enough to till the vast
fields that need ploughing. One who does not find work now has
no one else to blame for it. He must be really a frivolous
person, a wastrel or a sluggard._—‘The Bell,’ 1859, p. 44.
These two classes of superfluous men, between whom Nature herself raised
up a high mound of Oblomovs,[45] and History, marking out its boundaries,
dug out a ditch—the one in which Nicholas is buried—are continually
confounded. And so we want, with a partiality like that of Cato for the
cause of the vanquished, to champion the elder generation. Superfluous
men were in those days as essential, as it is now essential that there
should be none.
Nothing is more lamentable than, in the midst of the growing activity
as yet unorganised and awkward, but full of enterprise and initiative,
to meet the flustered, nervously overwrought lads who lose their heads
before the toughness of practical work, and hope and expect to arrive
without effort at a solution of difficulties, and to find answers to
problems, which they can never state clearly.
We will lay aside these voluntary superfluous men, and just as the French
only recognise as real grenadiers _les vieux de la vieille_, so we will
recognise as honourably and truly superfluous men only these of the
reign of Nicholas. We ourselves belong to that unhappy generation, and,
grasping very many years ago that we were superfluous on the banks of
the Neva, very practically took our departure as soon as the rope was
loosened.
There is no need for us to defend ourselves, but we are sorry for our
former comrades and want to distinguish them from the batch of invalids
that followed them from the hospital of Nicholas.
One cannot but share the healthy realistic attitude of one of the best
Russian magazines, in attacking the effete moral point of view which
in the French style seeks personal responsibility for public events.
Historical formations can no more be judged by a criminal court than
geological ones. And men who say that one ought not to direct one’s
thunders and lightnings against bribe-takers and embezzlers of Government
funds, but at the environment which makes bribes a characteristic symptom
of a whole tribe, such as the whole race of _beardless_ Russians for
instance, are perfectly right. All we desire is that the superfluous men
of Nicholas’s reign should have the rights of bribe-takers and enjoy the
privileges granted to the embezzlers of public funds. They deserve it the
more, since they are not only superfluous, but almost all dead; while
the bribe-takers and embezzlers are alive, and not only prosperous, but
historically justified.
Whom have we here to attack, whom have we here to ridicule? On the one
hand, men who have fallen from exhaustion; on the other, men crushed by
the machine; to blame them for it is as ungenerous as to blame scrofulous
and lymphatic children for the poorness of their parents’ blood.
There can be but one serious question about them: were these morbid
phenomena really due to the conditions of their environment, to their
circumstances?...
I think it can hardly be doubted.
There is no need to repeat how cramped, how painful, was the development
of Russia.
We were kept in ignorance by the knout and the Tatars: we were civilised
by the axe and by Germans: and in both cases our nostrils were slit and
we were branded with irons. Peter the Great drove civilisation into us
with such a wedge that Russia could not stand the shock and split into
two layers. We are only just beginning now, after a hundred and fifty
years, to understand how this split was made: there was nothing in common
between the two parts; on the one hand, robbery and contempt; on the
other, suffering and mistrust: on the one hand, the liveried lackey,
proud of his social position and haughtily displaying it; on the other,
the plundered peasant, hating him and concealing his hatred. Never did
Turk, slaughtering men and carrying off women to his harem, oppress so
systematically, nor disdain the Frank and the Greek so insolently, as did
the Russia of the privileged class despise the Russia of the peasant.
There is no instance in history of a caste of the same race getting the
upper hand so thoroughly and becoming so completely alien as our military
nobility.
A renegade always goes to the extreme, to the absurd and the revolting,
to the point at last of clapping a literary man in prison for wearing
the Russian dress, refusing to let him enter a restaurant because he is
wearing a kaftan and has a sash tied round his waist. It is colossal, and
reminds one of Indian Asia.
On the margins of these savagely opposed worlds strange figures appeared,
whose very distortion points to latent forces, cramped and seeking
something different. The Raskolniks and Decembrists stand foremost among
them, and they are followed by all the Westerners and Easterners, the
Onyegins and the Lenskys, superfluous and disillusioned people. All of
them, like Old Testament prophets, were at once a protest and a hope.
By them Russia was striving to escape from the Petersburg period, or to
transform it to her real body and her healthy flesh. These pathological
formations called forth by the conditions of the life of the period
invariably pass away when the conditions are changed, just as superfluous
people have passed away now; but it does not follow that they deserved
judgment and condemnation unless from their younger comrades in the
Service. And this is on the same principle on which one of the inmates of
Bedlam pointed with indignation at another inmate who called himself the
Apostle Paul, while he who was Christ himself knew that the other was not
the Apostle Paul, but simply a shopkeeper from Fleet Street.
Let us recall how superfluous people were evolved.
The hangings of the 13th of July 1826 on the Kronverg Courtyard could not
at once check the current of ideas, and as a fact the traditions of the
reign of Alexander and the Decembrists persisted through the first half
of Nicholas’s reign, though disappearing from sight and turning inwards.
Children still at school dared to hold their heads erect, they did not
yet know that they were the prisoners of education.
They were the same when they left school.
These were far different from the serene, self-confident, enthusiastic
lads, open to every impression, that Pushkin and Pushtchin[46] were when
they were leaving the Lyceum. They have neither the proud, unbending,
overwhelming daring of a Lunin,[47] nor the dissipated recklessness of
a Polezhaev,[48] nor the melancholy serenity of Venevitinov.[49] But
yet they preserved the faith inherited from their fathers and elder
brothers, the faith that ‘It is coming—the dawn of radiant happiness,’
the faith in Western liberalism in which all—Lafayette, Godefroi
Cavaignac, Börne, and Heine—believed. Frightened and disconsolate, they
dreamed of escaping from their false and unhappy position. This was
like that last hope which every one of us has felt before the death of
one we love. Only doctrinaires (whether red or parti-coloured, makes no
difference) readily accept the most terrible deductions, because they
really accept them _in effigy_, on paper.
Meanwhile every event, every year, confirmed for them the dreadful truth
that not only the Government was against them, with gallows and spies,
with the irons with which the torturer compressed Pestel’s head, and with
Nicholas putting those irons on all Russia, but that the people, too,
were not with them, or at least were completely alien. If the people
were discontented, the objects of their discontent were different.
Together with this crushing recognition they suffered, on the other hand,
from growing doubt of the most fundamental principles of the Western
European outlook. The ground was giving way under their feet; and in this
perplexity they were forced either to enter the Service or to fold their
hands and become superfluous, idle. We venture to assert that this is one
of the most tragic positions in the world. Now these superfluous people
are an anachronism, but, of course, Royer Collard or Benjamin Constant
would be an anachronism now, too. But they cannot be blamed for that.
While men’s minds were kept in misery and painful hesitation, not knowing
where to find an outlet, how to move, Nicholas went his way with dull
elemental obstinacy, trampling down the tilled fields and every sign of
growth. A master in his work, he began from the year 1831 his war upon
children; he grasped that he must beat out everything human in the years
of childhood, in order to make faithful subjects in his own image and
semblance. The training of which he dreamed was organised. A simple word,
a simple gesture was reckoned as much an insolence and a crime as an open
neck, as an unbuttoned collar. And this torture of the souls of children
went on for thirty years!
Nicholas—reflected in every inspector, every school director, every
tutor—confronted the boy at school, in the street, in church, even to
some extent in the parental home, stood and stared at him with pewtery
unloving eyes, and the child’s heart ached and grew faint with fear that
those eyes might detect some budding of free thought, some human feeling.
And who knows what chemical change in the composition of a child’s blood
and nervous system is caused by intimidation, by the checking of speech,
by the concealment of thought, by the repression of feeling?
The terrified parents helped Nicholas in his task; to save their children
by ignorance, they concealed from them their one noble memory. The
younger generation grew up without traditions, without a future, except a
career in the Service. The Government office and the barracks gradually
conquered the drawing-room and society, aristocrats turned gendarmes,
Kleinmihels turned aristocrats; the stupid character of Nicholas was
gradually imprinted on everything, vulgarising everything and giving
everything a formal red-tape aspect.
Of course, in all this misery, not everything perished. No plague, not
even the Thirty Years’ War, exterminated every one. Man is a tough
creature. The craving for humane culture, the striving for independent
initiative, survived, and most of all in the two Macedonian phalanxes
of our culture, the Moscow University and the Tsarskoe Syelo Lyceum. On
their youthful shoulders they carried across the whole kingdom of dead
souls the Ark in which lay the Russia of the future, her living thought,
her living faith in what was to come.
History will not forget them.
But in this conflict they lost, for the most part, the youthfulness of
their early years: they were overstrained, grew up prematurely. Old age
reached them before their legal coming of age. These were not idle, not
superfluous people; these were embittered people, sick in body and soul,
people who had been wrecked by the insults they had endured, who looked
at everything askance, and were unable to shake off the bitterness and
venom accumulated more than five years before. They unmistakably stand
for a step in advance, but still it is a morbid step; it is no longer a
heavy, chronic lethargy, but an acute suffering which must be followed by
recovery or death.
The superfluous people have made their exit from the stage, and the
embittered, who are more angry with the superfluous than any, will follow
them. Indeed, they will be gone very soon. They are too forbidding, and
they get too much on one’s nerves to last long. The world, in spite
of eighteen centuries of Christian austerities, is in a very heathen
fashion devoted to epicureanism and _à la longue_ cannot put up with the
depressing faces of Nevsky Daniels, who gloomily reproach them for dining
without gnashing their teeth, and for enjoying pictures or music without
remembering the troubles of this life.
Others are coming to take their place; already we see men of quite a
different stamp, with untried powers and stalwart muscles, coming from
remote universities, from the sturdy Ukraine, from the sturdy North-east,
and perhaps we old folks may yet have the luck to hold out a hand across
a sickly generation to the newcomers, who will briefly bid us farewell
and go on their wide road.
We have studied the type of embittered people, not on the spot, and not
from books, we have studied it from specimens who have crossed the
Nieman and sometimes even the Rhine since 1850.
The first thing that struck us in them was the ease with which they
despaired of everything, the vindictive pleasure of their denial, and
their terrible ruthlessness. After the events of 1848 they saw themselves
at once in a superior position, from which they looked down on the defeat
of the Republic and the Revolution, on the decay of civilisation, on the
defilement of banners, and could feel no compassion for those who still
struggled on. Where we stopped short, tried to restore animation, and
looked to see if there were no spark of life, they went further into the
desert of logical deduction, and easily arrived at those final, violent,
abrupt conclusions, which are alarming in their radical audacity, but
which, like the spirits of the dead, are but the essence gone out of
life, not life itself. In these deductions the Russian enjoys a terrible
advantage over the European; he has no traditions, no habits, nothing
akin to him to lose. The man who has no wealth of his own or of others
goes most safely along dangerous roads.
This emancipation from everything traditional fell to the lot not of
healthy youthful characters, but of men whose heart and soul had been
strained in every fibre. After 1848 there was no living in Petersburg.
The autocracy had reached the Hercules’ Pillars of absurdity; they had
reached the instructions issued to teachers at the military academies,
Buterlin’s scheme for closing universities, the signature of the censor
Yelagin on patterns for stencils. Can one wonder that the young men who
broke out of this dungeon were nervous wrecks and invalids?
So they faded without ever blossoming, knowing nothing of space and
freedom, nothing of frank speech. They bore on their countenances deep
traces of a soul roughly handled and wounded. Every one of them had some
special neurosis, and apart from that special neurosis they all had one
in common, a sort of devouring, irritable, and distorted vanity. The
denial of every right, the insults, the humiliations they had endured
developed a secret craving for admiration; these undeveloped prodigies,
these unsuccessful geniuses, concealed themselves under a mask of
humility and modesty. All of them were hypochondriacs and physically ill,
did not drink wine, and were afraid of open windows; all looked with
studied despair at the present, and reminded one of monks who from love
for their neighbour came to hating all humanity, and cursed everything in
the world from desire to bless something.
One half of them were continually remorseful, the other half continually
damning and denouncing.
Yes, the iron had entered deeply into their souls. The Petersburg world
in which they had lived was imprinted on themselves; it was thence
they took their restless tone, their language—_saccadé_, yet suddenly
passing into bureaucratic vapidity—their elusive meekness and haughty
fault-finding, their intentional frigidity and readiness on any occasion
to break out into abuse, the insulting way in which they scorned to
justify themselves, and the uneasy intolerance of the director of a
department.
This tone of a director’s reprimand, uttered contemptuously with eyes
screwed up, is more hateful to us than the husky shout of the general,
like the deep bark of an old dog, who growls in deference to his social
position rather than from spite.
Tone is not a matter of no importance.
_Das war innen—das ist draussen!_
Extremely kind at heart and noble in theory, they, I mean our embittered
people, may drive an angel to fighting and a saint to cursing by their
tone. Moreover, they exaggerate everything in the world with such
_aplomb_—and not to amuse but to wound—that there is simply no bearing
it. To every criticism, to every censure, they are always ready to add
gloomier details. ‘Why do you defend these sluggards (an embittered
friend, _sehr ausgezeichnet in seinem Fache_, said to us lately), drones,
cumberers of the earth, white-handed laggards _à la Onyegin_?... They
were formed differently, if you please, and the world surrounding them
was too dirty for them, not polished enough; they will dirty their hands,
they will dirty their feet. It was much nicer to go on moaning over their
miserable position, at the same time eating and drinking in comfort.’
We put in a word for our classification of the superfluous people into
those of the Old Dispensation and those of the New. But our Daniel
would not hear of a distinction: he would have nothing to say to the
Oblomovs nor to the fact that Nicholas cast in bronze had been gathered
to his fathers, and just for that reason had been cast in bronze. On the
contrary, he attacked us for our defence and, shrugging his shoulders,
said that he looked upon us as on the fine skeleton of a mammoth, as at
an interesting bone that had been dug up and belonged to a different
world with a different sun and different trees.
‘Allow me on that ground and in the character of a _Homo Benkendorfii
testis_ to defend our contemporaries. Surely you do not really imagine
that these men did nothing, or did something silly of their own choice?’
‘Most certainly; they were romantics and aristocrats; they hated work,
they would have thought themselves degraded if they had taken up an axe
or an awl, and it is true they would not have known how to use them.’
‘In that case I will quote names: for instance, Tchaadayev. He did
not know how to use an axe, but he knew how to write an article which
thrilled all Russia, and was a turning-point in our understanding of
ourselves. That article was his first step in the literary career. You
know what came of it. The German Vigel took offence on behalf of Russia,
the Protestant and future Catholic Benkendorf took offence on behalf
of orthodoxy, and, by the falsehood of the Most High, Tchaadayev was
declared mad and forced to sign an undertaking not to write. Nadyezhdin,
who published the article in the _Telescope_, was sent to Ust Sysolsk;
the old rector Boldyryev was dismissed: Tchaadayev was turned into an
idle man. Granting that Ivan Kireyevsky could not make boots, yet he
could publish a magazine; he published two numbers, the magazine was
forbidden; he contributed an article to the _Dennitsa_, and the censor,
Glinka, was put in custody: Kireyevsky was turned into a superfluous
man. N. Polevoy cannot, of course, be charged with idleness; he was a
resourceful man, and yet the wings of the _Telegraph_ were clipped, and,
I confess in my weakness, when I read how Polevoy told Panayev that he,
as a married man, handicapped by a family, was afraid of the police, I
did not laugh, but almost cried.’
‘But Byelinsky could write and Granovsky could give lectures; they did
not sit idle.’
‘If there were men of such energy that they could write and give lectures
in sight of the police-chaise and the fortress, is it not clear that
there were many others of less strength, who were paralysed and suffered
deeply from it?’
‘Why did they not take to making boots or splitting logs—it would have
been better than nothing?’
‘Probably because they had money enough not to be obliged to do such
dull work; I have never heard of anyone taking to cobbling for pleasure.
Louis XVI. is the only example of a king by trade and a carpenter by
inclination. However, you are not the first to observe this lack of
practical work in these superfluous men; to correct it, our watchful
Government sent them to hard labour.’
‘My antediluvian friend, I see that you still look down upon work.’
‘As on a far from entertaining necessity.’
‘Why should they not have taken their share of the general necessity?’
‘No doubt they should, but in the first place they were born, not in
North America, but in Russia, and unluckily were not brought up to it.’
‘Why were they not brought up to it?’
‘Because they were born, not in the tax-paying classes of Russia, but
in the gentry; perhaps that really is reprehensible, but, being at that
period in the inexperienced position of unborn infants, they cannot,
owing to their tender years, be held responsible for their conduct. And
having once made this mistake in the choice of their parents, they were
bound to submit to the education of the day. And by the way, what right
have you to demand of men that they should do one thing or another? This
is some new compulsory organisation of labour; something in the style of
socialism adapted to the methods of the Ministry of Crown Estates.’
‘I don’t compel any one to work; I simply state the fact that they were
idle, worthless aristocrats, who led an easy and comfortable life, and I
see no reason for sympathising with them.’
‘Whether they deserve sympathy or not, let every one decide for himself.
Every human suffering, especially if it is inevitable, awakens our
sympathy. And there is no sort of suffering to which one could refuse it.
The martyrs of the early centuries of Christendom believed in redemption.
They believed in a future life. The Roman Muhanovs, Timashevs, and
Luzhins compelled the Christians to bow down in the dust before the
august image of the Caesar; the Christians would not make this trivial
concession, they were thrown to the beasts in the arena. They were mad,
the Romans were half-witted, there is no place here for sympathy or
admiration.... But if so, farewell, not only to Thermopylae and Golgotha,
but also to Sophocles and Shakespeare, and incidentally the whole long
and endless epic poem which is continually ending in frenzied tragedies
and continually going on again under the title of history.’
As is usual in argument, our Daniel did not give in. I began to be tired
of it and, taking advantage of my palaeontological importance, said to
him: ‘Have it your own way, but you know it is a silly business pitching
into people who are either dead or not far off dying, and to pitch into
them in a society where almost all the living—military and civilian,
landowners and priests—are worse than they are; I tell you what, if you
are so particularly attracted by _censura morum_, are so fond of the
harsh duty of a moralist, do pick out something original. If you like, I
can pick you out types more pernicious than any superfluous persons, dead
or living.’
‘What types?’
‘Well, the literary ruffian, for instance.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘In our pale literature, maltreated by the censorship, there have been
numbers of queer fishes of all sorts, but until lately they were for
the most part clean, honest men. If there were any of the mercenary,
the disingenuous, the dealers in false coin and genuine police reports,
they were either on the side of the Government, or they scuttled about
underground and never crawled into conspicuous places, like the London
black beetles, which confine themselves to the kitchen and do not appear
in the drawing-room. And so we have preserved a naïve faith in the poet
and the writer. We are not used to the thought that it is possible to lie
in the spirit and trade in talents, as prostitutes delude with the body
and sell their beauty. We are not used to the money-grubbers who make
profit out of their tears over the people’s sufferings, or the traders
who turn their sympathy for the proletariat into a well-paid article.
And there is a great deal that is good in this confidence, which has not
existed for years in Western Europe, and we ought all to try and maintain
it. Believe me, that the man who denounces duplicity, crying shame and
curses upon the disgrace and decay of to-day, and at the same time locks
up in his cash-box money evidently stolen from his friends, is in the
present ferment of ideas, with our looseness and impressionability, more
pernicious and contaminating than all the idle and superfluous people,
all the embittered and the lachrymose!’
I do not know whether my Daniel agreed.
PRINCESS EKATERINA ROMANOVNA DASHKOV
‘I very much wish,’ Miss Katharine Wilmot writes to her relations in
Ireland, from the Princess Dashkov’s country estate, ‘that you could see
the Princess herself. Everything about her—dress, language, everything—is
original; whatever she does, she is absolutely unlike any one else. It is
not only that I have never seen such a creature, I have never even heard
of one. She teaches the masons how to build walls, helps make the paths,
goes to feed the cows, composes music, writes articles for the Press,
knows the Church ritual perfectly and corrects the priest if he makes a
mistake in the prayers, understands the theatre perfectly and corrects
her serf-actors when they go wrong in their parts; she is a doctor, a
chemist, a sick-nurse, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a judge, a legislator;
every day she does the most opposite things in the world, and carries on
a correspondence with her brother, who holds one of the foremost posts
in the Empire, with savants, with literary men, with Jews, with her son,
and with all her relations. Her conversation, charming in its simplicity,
sometimes borders upon childlike _naïveté_. Without stopping to think
she speaks at once French, Italian, Russian, and English, mixing all the
languages together.
‘She was born to be a minister or a general, her place is at the head of
a State.’
All that is true, but Miss Wilmot forgets that, in addition to all that,
Princess Dashkov was born a woman, and remained a woman all her life. She
was exceptionally developed on the side of the heart, of tenderness, of
feeling, of devotion.
For us that is particularly important. In Princess Dashkov the Russian
woman, awakened by the revolution made by Peter the Great, emerges from
her seclusion, displays her capacity, demands her share in politics, in
science, in the civilisation of Russia, and boldly takes her stand beside
Catherine the Great.
In Princess Dashkov we are conscious of that force, still formless, which
was struggling into life and freedom from under the mildew of Moscow
stagnation, something powerful, many-sided, active, something of Peter
the Great and of Lomonossov, but softened by aristocratic breeding and
womanliness.
Catherine II., in making her President of the Academy, recognised the
political equality of the sexes, which is perfectly consistent in a
country which accepted the civic equality of woman before the law,
while in Western Europe they still remain bound to their husbands or in
perpetual tutelage.
The memoirs of a woman who took a foremost part in the _coup d’état_ of
1762, and who was a close witness of all the events from the death of
Elizabeth to the Peace of Tilsit, are exceedingly important in Russian
history, so poor in striking individualities; they are the more so as we
know very little of our eighteenth century. We like to go much further
back in history. We see the Varangians, the men of Novgorod, and the men
of Kiev, and they block out our view of yesterday; the turreted walls of
the Kremlin screen the flat lines of the Peter-Paul fortress from us.
Going carefully through the royal records, we know little of what was
being written in bad Russian in the Government offices of Petersburg,
while sedition and tumult were roaring under the windows of the Winter
Palace, menacing its inhabitants with Siberia and death, and the throne
had not yet the strength and security which it gained not more than
seventy-five years ago. To repeat the story of that period is very
profitable, both for the Government, that it may not forget, and for us,
that we may not despair.
I should like, however briefly, to explain what I mean.
All Europe and, what is far worse, all Russians accept the power of the
Tsar in its present form as an eternal and immutable element of Russian
life, which has the right to jeer at all rash assaults on it and boldly
withstands every onslaught, resting firmly and securely on roots that
spread far into the earth.
The power of the Tsar has, on the contrary, been firmly established
only very recently. Even to this day it carries the traces of its
revolutionary origin; in it, as in the strata of the earth, the granite
of ancient times, the alluvial sands, the fragments casually brought
down from above, or thrust up from below, in places tightly compressed
together, but not chemically united, are mingled chaotically to this day.
The Byzantine necklet of Monomah, the throne of the Tsar Ivan the
Terrible, the Uspensky Cathedral, lead us astray. Did not Napoleon array
himself in the mantle of Charlemagne and put the iron crown on his head
at Milan? That is all forgery in the style of Chatterton; the venerated
emblems of what is old and past are borrowed to invest the new with
respect, and to persuade us of its durability, of its eternity, so to
speak.
The Russian Imperial autocracy developed from the power of the Tsar
in response to the acute need for a different manner of life. It is
a military and civil dictatorship with far more resemblance to the
Caesarism of Rome than to a feudal monarchy. A dictatorship may be very
strong and may absorb every power, but it cannot be permanent. It exists
so long as the circumstances that have called it forth remain unaltered
and so long as it is true to its destiny.
Of course, when, on landing from a steamer, one meets a freshly
pipe-clayed, spick-and-span regiment of Guards, an unquestioning
bureaucracy, galloping couriers, motionless sentinels, Cossacks with
whips, policemen with fists, half the town in uniform, half the town
standing at attention, and the whole town hurriedly taking off its
hat, and when one reflects that they are all deprived of every kind of
independence, and simply acting as the fingers, teeth, and nails of
one man who combines in his own person every form of authority—that of
landowner, priest and executioner, mother and sergeant—one may turn
giddy, be terrified, perhaps feel moved to take off one’s hat oneself,
and to bow down while one’s head is still on one’s shoulders. And it may
even more forcibly make one wish to return to the steamer and sail away
elsewhere. All that is so, and all that (except the last item) was felt
by the worthy Westphalian baron, Haxthausen.
The Tsardom acquired this grimly gloomy, oppressive aspect of brute force
especially in the thirty years of the reign of Nicholas; terrorism was
with him a principle. But here we cannot avoid asking why Nicholas could
not, in the course of those thirty years, forget the ‘bad quarters of an
hour’ he spent during the defence of the Winter Palace on the 14th of
December 1825. Why was it that he remembered that day on his deathbed and
sent his thanks to the Guards for it?
It was because from the very beginning of his reign he grasped that his
throne was only strong through _force_. By force alone he maintained his
position, but he felt that there was no lasting security in bayonets
and physical oppression; and he was seeking other means of support. The
allies to which he turned his attention could be relied upon; beside
autocracy he set orthodoxy and nationalism. But this was a reaction
against the movement inaugurated by Peter the Great, the whole gist of
which lay in the secularisation of the Tsardom and the diffusion of
European culture. Nicholas stood in direct contradiction to the living
principle of the Tsardom as it had been from the time of Peter the
Great, and so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the immediate
result of his reign was a dumb breach between him and Russia. If he
had lived another ten years, his throne would have collapsed of itself;
everything was ceasing to work, everything had grown slack and begun to
wilt; the spirit had gone out of everything, the irregularities of the
administration had reached monstrous proportions. He understood that, had
he followed Alexander’s lead, he would inevitably have had to replace the
autocratic power by more humane forms of government, but this he would
not do, and he imagined that he was so far independent of the principles
of Peter the Great that he could be another Peter without them.
He would have succeeded perhaps if the revolution wrought by Peter had
really been, as Moscow Old Believers hold, the consequence of personal
will and the caprice of genius. But it was not at all a matter of chance,
it came in response to the instinctive craving of Russia to develop its
forces. How else can its success be explained?
The political development of Russia moved slowly and was very late in
coming. Russia lived from hand to mouth and, harried by Tatars, with
difficulty gathered herself together into the ikon-like Suzdal-Byzantine
kingdom of Muscovy; its political forms were clumsy and coarse,
everything moved awkwardly, apathetically. The power of the Tsar was
insufficient even for the defence of the country, and in 1612 Russia was
saved without the help of the Tsar. And meanwhile something, that speaks
to this day in the heart of every one of us, whispered that there was an
immense vigour and strength under the old-fashioned burdensome garments.
That something is youth, self-confidence, consciousness of strength.
The abrupt break with the old order wounded—yet pleased; the people liked
Peter the Great; they put him into their legends and their fairy tales.
It was as though the Russians divined that at all costs our sloth must
be broken up and our slackness be braced by a strong political order. The
inhuman discipline of Peter the Great, and of such of his successors as
Bühren, aroused, of course, horror and loathing, but all that was borne
with for the sake of the wide horizons of the new life. It was just as
the Terror was endured in France.
The period initiated by Peter the Great was from the first more national
than the period of the Muscovite Tsars. It has entered deeply into our
history, into our manners, into our flesh and blood; there is something
in it youthful and extraordinarily akin to us; the revolting mixture
of barrack-room insolence and Austrian red-tape is not its chief
characteristic. With that period the precious memories of our mighty
growth, our glory, and our misfortunes are bound up; it has kept its word
and created a powerful State. The people love success and strength.
One side of its ideal was accomplished when, in Paris, Alexander dictated
the laws for all Europe. What was the next step? To go back again to
the period before 1700, and combine a military despotism with a Tsardom
bereft of everything human. This was what was desired by Nicholas and a
dozen crazy Slavophils—and nobody else.
If the people hate the alien German Government, which fully deserves it,
it does not follow that it loved the Muscovite rule; it forgot it in one
generation and knows absolutely nothing about it.
After Peter the Great what hindered the return to the period that was
only just over? The whole Petersburg system was hanging on a thread.
Drunken and dissolute women, dull-witted princes who could scarcely speak
Russian, German women and children, ascended the throne, and descended
from it; the palace became the nearest way to Siberia and prison; the
Government was in the hands of a handful of intriguers and _condottieri_.
Yet through all this chaos we see no special desire to return to the
earlier period. On the contrary, what remains constant through all
these convulsive changes, what develops in spite of them and gives them
a striking unity, is precisely the fidelity to the ideas of Peter the
Great. One party overthrows another, taking advantage of the fact that
the new _régime_ is not yet in working order; but whoever gained the
day, no one touched the principles of Peter the Great, but all accepted
them—Menshikov and Bühren, Minih and even the Dolgorukys, who wanted to
limit the Imperial power, though not by the old Boyar Duma.[50] Elizabeth
and Catherine II. flatter orthodoxy, and flatter nationalism in order to
possess the throne, but, once securely seated on it, they keep to the
same way, Catherine II. more so than any one.
The only opposition to the new order of things after its cruel
installation we see in the unorthodox _raskolniks_ and the passive lack
of sympathy of the peasants. The obstinate grumblings of a few old men
meant nothing. The crushed submission of all the ‘Old Believers’ was
the admission of their impotence. If there had been anything living in
their outlook there would certainly have been attempts, unsuccessful,
impossible, impracticable perhaps, but they would have been made. All
the Anna Leopoldovnas, the Anna Ivanovnas, the Elizabeth Petrovnas and
Catherine Alexyevnas, found bold and devoted men ready to face the block
and prison for their sakes. The Cossacks, faced with ruin, and the
serfs, crushed under the heel of the nobility, had their Pugatchov, and
Pugatchov his two hundred thousand fighting men; the Kirghiz-Kaisaks
moved into China; the Crimean Tatars joined the Turks; Little Russia
murmured loudly; everything injured or crushed by the Autocracy made its
protest, but the Old Russian party in Russia never did. It had neither
voice nor devoted followers, neither a Polubotok nor a Mazeppa![51]
And it was not until one hundred and fifty years after Peter the Great
that it found a representative and a leader, and that representative and
leader was Nicholas. It would have been a calamity if he had, with the
support of Church intolerance and nationalistic sentiment, succeeded in
transforming the Autocracy, and changing it from a dictatorship into a
purely monarchical or imperial government; but that was impossible. As
soon as Nicholas was dead, Russia broke again into the path traced out by
Peter the Great—not in the conquering or martial direction he had given
it, but towards the development of its material and moral powers.
Peter the Great was one of the first of the leading figures of the great
eighteenth century, and he acted in its spirit, he was saturated through
and through with it, like Frederick II. of Prussia, like Joseph II. of
Austria. His revolutionary realism gets the upper hand of his royal
dignity—he is a despot, but not a monarch.
We all know how Peter crushed the old order and how he built up the new.
To the burdensome, immovable Byzantine decorum he opposed the manners
of the pothouse, the tedious Granovitaya Palata was transformed under
him into a palace of debauchery; instead of the legal succession to the
throne he, on one occasion, endowed the Tsar with the right of appointing
his successor; on another occasion, wrote to the Senators that they
should themselves select the most suitable one in case he should perish
in a Turkish prison, and thereupon took the crown from his own son to
give it to the servant-girl who, after passing through many men’s hands,
had come into his. He left vacant the post of the most holy Patriarch,
forbade the display of holy relics, and wiped dry all the sorrowing tears
of the wonder-working ikons. In the land of unalterable precedence, he
placed above all the rest the plebeian Menshikov, he associated with
foreigners, even with negroes, got drunk in the company of skippers and
sailors, rioted in the streets—in fact, in every way outraged the rigid
propriety of the Old Russian life and the dignified formality of a Tsar.
He set the tone. His successors maintained it, exaggerating and
distorting it; for half a century after him, there was one unbroken orgy
of drink, blood, and debauchery—_l’ultimo atto_, as an Italian writer
expresses it, _d’una tragedia representata nel un lupanar_.
Where was orthodoxy, where was the principle of monarchy and chivalry, in
all this?
If in the second half of the reign of Catherine the tragic character
pales, the _locale_ remains the same; the history of Catherine II. cannot
be read aloud before ladies. Versailles, corrupted in the monarchical
style, looked with as much astonishment at the debauchery of the Russian
court as at the philosophical liberalism of Catherine II., for the French
court did not understand that the foundations of the Imperial power in
Russia were utterly different from those on which the Royal power of
France was founded.
When Alexander said at Tilsit to Napoleon that he did not agree with the
significance which the latter ascribed to the hereditary character of
the Tsardom, Napoleon thought that he was deceiving him. When he said to
Madame de Staël that he was only a ‘happy accident,’ she took it for a
phrase. But it was a profoundly true saying.
Moved to wrath by the cowardice of the German sovereigns, the Emperor
Alexander said in his proclamation of 22nd February 1813 to their
subjects: ‘Terror restrains your Governments, do not let that hold you
back; if your sovereigns, under the influence of cowardice and servility,
do nothing, then the voice of their subjects must be heard and must
compel the rulers who are leading their peoples into slavery and misery
to lead them into freedom and honour.’
The fact is, that Alexander retained a full understanding of the
tradition of Peter the Great; he was too close to the first period of
Imperial rule to pose as the military pope of all the reactions. Indeed,
it was with obvious doubt and uncertainty that he read the police reports
of Sherwood and Mayboroda.
With no doubt and no reflection, Nicholas sat down in his place and made
of his power a machine which was to turn Russia back in her tracks. But
the Tsardom ceased to be strong as soon as it became conservative. Russia
had given up everything human, she had given up peace and freedom, and
had gone into the German bondage only to escape from the cramped and
stifling condition which she had outgrown. To turn her back by the same
means was impossible.
It is only by going forward towards real objects, it is only by more
and more actively promoting the development of the national forces with
humane education, that the Tsardom can maintain itself. The oil with
which the engines on the new railways are greased will be better for
anointing the Tsars at their coronation than the holy unguents of the
Uspensky Cathedral.
Whether our interpretation of the Imperial rule is correct will be
clearly and vividly shown by the excellent memoirs of Princess Dashkov.
Our object will be fully attained if our brief sketch of its contents
drives readers to open the book itself.
* * * * *
In the year 1744, the Empress Elizabeth and the Grand Duke Peter stood
godfather and godmother to Ekaterina, the baby daughter of Count Roman
Vorontsov, brother of the great Chancellor. The Vorontsovs belonged
to that small number of oligarchic families which, together with the
paramours of the Empresses, ruled Russia at that time as they liked,
while the country passed abruptly from one reign to another. They played
the master in the Empire, just as nowadays in the houses of wealthy
landowners house-serfs govern districts far and near.
The Empress Elizabeth was loved, not at all because she deserved it, but
because her predecessor, Anna Ivanovna, had kept Bühren, a German, as
steward, and we Russians cannot endure German stewards. She was nearer to
the people than Anna Ivanovna and Anna Leopoldovna; in addition to the
blood of Peter, she had all the defects of the Russian character—that is,
she sometimes had regular drinking bouts, and every evening drank till
she could not wait for her maids to undress her, but ripped her laces and
her dresses off. She used to go on pilgrimages, fasted, was superstitious
and passionately fond of fine clothes—she left fifteen thousand dresses;
above all, she loved precious stones, as our wealthy merchants’ wives do,
and probably had just as much taste as they, of which we can judge by the
fact that she had a whole room decorated with amber.
The gentry in those days lived on quite a different footing with their
serfs from now; there was a certain intimacy and familiarity between
them, and, in spite of outbursts of domineering, they felt the novelty of
their power and the necessity of support.
All of a sudden, for instance, Elizabeth takes Shuvalov and drives with
him to Count Vorontsov’s to drink tea, to try on his Hungarian jacket, to
gossip with him a little, while if any one told lies too wildly she would
clip or cut out his tongue according to the degree of his guilt; and
all this in a motherly, homely way without fuss, while she refused from
motives of humanity to sign a single death-warrant.
When the Empress’s god-daughter had reached the age of fourteen she had
measles: measles and smallpox were no joke in those days, and almost
reached the proportions of a political crime; measles or smallpox might
attack Paul, that future hope of all Russia! A special Imperial decree
forbade families in which there was this terrible illness to have any
contact with the court. Our sick countess was hurriedly packed up and
sent off into the country some fifty miles away; it must be assumed that
the air there was not bad for the measles. With the countess were sent an
old German lady and the rigidly decorous widow of a Russian major: the
clever, plucky, and lively girl, on recovering from measles, almost died
of boredom with her two companions; luckily, she found in the country a
fairly good library. At fourteen our young countess knew four languages
besides Russian, which she did not know, but after her marriage learnt
thoroughly to please her mother-in-law. She did not attack novels but
Voltaire, Bayle, and so on. Reading became a passion with her, yet books
did not dispel her depression; she pined, and went back to Petersburg
languid and unwell. The Empress sent her own doctor to her—and that
doctor was Boerhaave; he said there was nothing wrong, that she was
physically well, but that her imagination was ailing—in fact, that she
was fourteen.
After Boerhaave, relations from all parts pounced on the poor girl, and
with inexhaustible cruelty undertook to entertain her, to distract her
mind, to feed her up; they tormented her with questions and advice. While
she only asked for one thing, to be left in peace; she was at the time
reading Hélvetius’ _De l’Entendement_.
The remedy soon arrived of itself.
One evening the young countess, who was fairly free to make her own
arrangements, went to Madame Samarin’s and stayed to supper, ordering the
carriage to be sent to fetch her home. At eleven o’clock the carriage
drove round and she came out; but the night was so fine and there was
no one in the streets, so she went home on foot, accompanied by Madame
Samarin’s sister. At the corner they met a tall graceful, man, who was
acquainted with her companion; he began talking to the latter, and
addressed a few words to the young countess.
The countess arrived home and dreamed of the handsome officer. The
officer arrived home in love with the handsome countess.
No need to lose precious time; the countess was no longer a child (it was
1759), and she was fifteen; the officer was young, handsome, brilliant,
and very tall, he was in the Preobrazhensky regiment, and belonged to an
old family. The relations blessed the match, the Empress sanctioned it,
and they were married. And so our young countess became Princess Dashkov.
A year and a half after their wedding, being on the eve of her second
confinement, she remained alone in Moscow, while her husband went to
Petersburg. His furlough was over, and he was asking for an extension of
leave. The Grand Duke was at that time in command of the Preobrazhensky
regiment; he would have given Dashkov the extension of leave at once,
but the position was serious, and he wanted to make friends with his
officers. The Empress was almost breathing her last; the Shuvalovs, the
Razumovskys, and the Panins were intriguing with and without the Grand
Duchess in favour of Paul, even in favour of the luckless Ivan—and most
of all in their own favour. The Grand Duke was not liked; he was not a
bad man, but he had every quality that the Russian temperament detests in
the German—_gaucherie_, a coarse heartiness, a vulgar tone, a pedantry
and a haughty self-complacency bordering on contempt for everything
Russian. Elizabeth, though herself perpetually tipsy, could not forgive
him for being drunk every evening. Razumovsky hated him for wanting to
make Gudovitch Hetman; Panin for his guard-room manners; the Horse Guards
for preferring his Holstein soldiers to them; the ladies for his inviting
actresses and German women of all sorts to sit down at his banquets
beside them; while the clergy detested him for his undisguised contempt
for the Orthodox Church. Seeing that Elizabeth’s end was near, and afraid
of being deserted by every one, the tactless Peter attempted to make up
to his officers and win their favour, and set about it with excessive
clumsiness. Among others he wanted to make sure of Dashkov, who was in
command of a company; and therefore, without refusing him his leave, he
invited him to Oranienbaum.
Dashkov, after his interview with Peter, set off for Moscow; on the way
he was taken ill with a sore throat and feverishness. Anxious not to
worry his wife, he bade them take him to his aunt, Madame Novosiltsov,
for he fancied that the pain in his throat was somewhat easier, and that
his voice was coming back a little; instead of that, the illness turned
out to be quinsy, and he was soon in a high fever.
At that very time, Prince Dashkov’s mother, with her sister, Princess
Gagarin, was sitting in our young princess’s bedroom, together with a
midwife, expecting the birth of the child in a few hours. The young
mother was still able to move about, and she went to fetch something in
another room, where her maid had long been awaiting her. The girl told
her in secret of her sick husband’s return, saying that he was at his
aunt’s, and begging her mistress not to betray her, as all were strictly
forbidden to tell her the news. The young princess uttered a shriek at
these unexpected tidings; recovering herself, she went upstairs to the
bedroom, as though nothing had happened, assured them that they were all
mistaken, that her confinement was not coming so soon, and persuaded
them to go and rest, promising by all that was holy to send for them if
anything should happen.
No sooner had the old ladies retired than the young princess flew with
all the impetuosity of her character to entreat the midwife to take
her to her husband. The kind-hearted German thought she had gone out
of her mind, and began trying in her Silesian accent to dissuade her,
continually adding: ‘No, no, I shall have to answer to God afterwards for
the slaughter of the innocent.’ The princess told the midwife resolutely
that, if she would not accompany her, she should go alone, and no force
on earth should stop her. The old woman was worked upon by terror,
but when the young lady told her that they must go on foot that her
mother-in-law might not hear the crunch of the sledge-runners, she again
resisted and stood motionless, ‘as though her legs had sent down roots
into the floor.’ At last this difficulty, too, was overcome; but on the
stairs the young princess’s pains returned, and so violently that the
midwife tried to dissuade her, but, clutching on to the stair-rail, she
was not to be turned from her resolution.
They walked out of the gate, and in spite of the pains reached the
Novosiltsovs’ house. Of the interview with her husband she remembered
only that she saw him pale, ill, lying unconscious, that she only had
time to take one look at him, and fell in a swoon on the floor. In this
condition the Novosiltsovs’ servants carried her on a stretcher home,
where, however, no one had suspected her absence. Fresh and more acute
pains restored her to consciousness, she sent for her husband’s mother
and aunt, and an hour later gave birth to her son Mihail.
At six o’clock in the morning her husband was brought into the house;
his mother put him in another room, forbidding any intercourse between
the two sick-rooms on the pretext that the young mother might catch the
quinsy, though in reality from a petty jealousy. The young couple at once
began a sentimental correspondence, which was, of course, attended with
much more risk for the young mother than quinsy, which is not in the
least infectious, could be; they were writing notes to each other at all
hours of the day and night, till the old lady found them out, scolded the
maids, and threatened to take away pens, pencils, and paper.
A woman who was capable of such love and such determination in getting
her own way in spite of danger, fear, and pain was bound to play a great
part in the times in which she lived and in the circle to which she
belonged.
On the 28th of July 1761, the Dashkovs moved to Petersburg. ‘The day,’
she said, ‘which twelve months later became so memorable and so glorious
for my country.’
In Petersburg she found awaiting her an invitation from the Grand Duke
to move to Oranienbaum. She did not want to go, and her father had
difficulty in persuading her to take his summer villa not far from
Oranienbaum. The fact is that by then she could not endure the Grand
Duke, while she was sincerely devoted to his wife. Before she had left
her father’s house she had been presented to the Grand Duchess; Catherine
had been gracious to her, the clever and highly cultured girl had taken
her fancy. With the smile, the _abandon_ with which Catherine for thirty
years fascinated all Russia, and the diplomatists and learned men of all
Europe, she won the devotion of Princess Dashkov for ever. From the first
interview the young girl loved Catherine passionately, ‘adored her’ as
schoolgirls adore their elder companions; she was in love with her as
boys are in love with women of thirty.
On the other hand, she felt as genuine an aversion for her godfather,
Peter. And a pleasant person he was, there is no denying. We shall see it
directly.
Her own sister, Elizaveta Romanovna, was openly Peter’s mistress. He
considered that Saltykov and Poniatowski, the fortunate predecessors
of the Orlovs, Vassiltchikovs, Novosiltsovs, Potyomkins, Lanskys,
Yermolevs, Korsakovs, Zoritches, Zavodovskys, Mamonovs, Zubovs, and a
whole phalanx of stalwart _virorum obscurorum_ gave him the right not to
be over-niggardly in his affairs of the heart, and not to conceal his
preferences.
His attitude to his wife was already such that, on Princess Dashkov’s
first being presented to him, he said to her: ‘Allow me to hope that you
will bestow upon us no less time than upon the Grand Duchess.’
For her part the impetuous young princess did not dream of concealing
her preference for Catherine. The Grand Duke observed it, and a few days
later led the young princess aside, and said to her, ‘in the simplicity
of his head and the kindness of his heart,’ as she puts it: ‘Remember
that it is safer to have to do with simple, honest people like your
sister and me than with great intellects who squeeze every drop out of
you and then throw you out of window like the skin of an orange.’
Princess Dashkov evasively observed that the Empress had expressed her
urgent desire that they should show respect equally to the Grand Duchess
and to His Highness.
Nevertheless, she could not avoid sometimes attending the Grand Duke’s
drinking-parties. These festivities were of a German barrack-room
character, coarse and drunken. Peter, surrounded by his Holstein generals
(that is, in her words, by corporals and sergeants of the Prussian army,
sons of German artisans whose parents did not know what to do with them,
and sent them for soldiers on account of their dissolute habits), with
the pipe always between his lips, sometimes went on drinking till his
flunkeys carried him out.
At one such supper-party in the presence of the Grand Duchess and
numerous visitors, the conversation turned on Tchelishtchev, a sergeant
of the Guards, and his supposed _liaison_ with the Countess Hendrikov, a
niece of the Empress.
Peter, who was already very drunk, observed that Tchelishtchev ought
to have his head cut off as a warning to other officers not to get up
love affairs with the female relations of the royal family. The Holstein
sycophants expressed their approval and sympathy by every possible token,
while the young princess could not refrain from observing that it seemed
to her very inhuman to inflict the death penalty for so trivial a crime.
‘You are still a child,’ answered the Grand Duke, ‘your words prove it;
otherwise you would know that to be sparing with the death penalty means
to encourage insubordination.’
‘Your Highness,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘you are trying to frighten
us; with the exception of the old generals, all of us who have the honour
to be sitting at your table belong to a generation which has never seen
the death penalty in Russia.’
‘That does not signify,’ retorted the Grand Duke; ‘fine sort of order
there has been in everything in consequence. I tell you, you are a child
and know nothing about these things.’
All remained silent. ‘I am ready,’ the young princess replied, ‘to
acknowledge that I am incapable of understanding you; but I cannot help
rejoicing when I think that your aunt is still on the throne and is still
well and strong.’
All eyes were turned upon the bold young woman. The Grand Duke did not
answer in words; he confined himself to putting out his tongue—a charming
trick to which he often resorted instead of a verbal reply, especially
when he was in church.
This conversation, which was the beginning of Princess Dashkov’s
political career, was the more remarkable for the fact that these
Nero-like speeches were uttered by the mildest man in the world, who had
never put any one to death. There were a large number of the officers of
the Guards and of the cadets sitting at the table, and Princess Dashkov’s
words were carried with lightning swiftness all over the town. They gave
her a great notoriety, which at first she was far from appreciating, and
which made of her one of the centres, and almost the principal one, round
which discontented officers rallied. At first the young princess was
delighted that the Grand Duchess was exceedingly pleased by her answer.
‘Time,’ she mournfully adds, ‘had not then taught me how dangerous it is
to tell the truth to sovereigns; if they can sometimes forgive it, their
courtiers never do.’
Her affection for Catherine increased. Elizabeth was then living at
Peterhof, and there the Grand Duchess was permitted _once a week_ to
see her son. On her way back from the Palace she usually drove to the
Dashkovs’, took the princess with her, and kept her for a whole evening.
When it was impossible to visit her, Catherine wrote a brief note to her;
from this there sprang up the friendly, intimate correspondence between
them which lasted even after the Dashkovs had left the summer villa. They
write about literature, about their day-dreams, about Voltaire, and about
Rousseau, in verse and in prose.
‘Such verse and such prose!’ writes Catherine, ‘and at seventeen! I
entreat you not to neglect such a talent. Perhaps I am not altogether an
impartial critic; your flattering attachment to me is to blame for your
having chosen me for the subject of your poem. Blame me for pride if you
like, but still I will say that it is long since I have read such correct
and such poetical work.’
Catherine, too, sends her essays and very emphatically insists that
they are to be shown to no one. ‘In the circumstances under which I
am compelled to live, everything serves as a ground for unpleasant
suppositions.’ She is so anxious that she begs Princess Dashkov to have
letters addressed to her maid, Katerina Ivanovna, and burns them when she
has read them. What she calls ‘trifling grounds’ may be surmised from one
letter in which she again speaks of her manuscript. The young princess
had returned it to her with much praise, assuring her that she had never
let it go out of her own hands. Not a word is said of the contents of the
manuscript, but it is evident from the following words (letter 21): ‘You
relieve me of my duties in regard to my son; I see in that a fresh proof
of the goodness of your heart. I was profoundly agitated by the tokens of
devotion with which I was greeted by the people on that day. I have never
been so happy.’
That letter was written soon after Elizabeth’s death, but we have not yet
reached that stage of our narrative.
Towards the end of December 1761, there was a rumour that Elizabeth was
very ill.
Princess Dashkov was lying in bed with a very bad cold when the news
reached her. The thought of Catherine’s danger struck her; she could no
more lie still in bed with it than with the thought of her husband’s
illness; and so, wrapped in a fur coat, on the frosty night of the 20th
of December, she set off for the wooden palace on the Moika, where the
royal family lived at that time. Not wishing to be seen, she left the
carriage at a little distance from the Palace, and walked towards the
little entrance at the side of the Grand Duchess’s apartments, though
she did not know the way to them. Fortunately she met Katerina Ivanovna,
the Grand Duchess’s maid; the latter said that the Grand Duchess was in
bed; but Princess Dashkov insisted on being announced, saying that she
absolutely must see her at once. The maid, knowing her and her devotion
to the Grand Duchess, obeyed. Catherine, who knew the Princess Dashkov
was seriously ill, and so would not have come out at night in the frost
without specially important reasons, ordered her to be shown up.
At first she showered reproaches on the princess for not taking care of
herself, and, seeing that she was cold, said to her: ‘Dear princess,
first of all you must get warm; come, get into my bed’; and only after
tucking her up, she asked her at last what was the matter.
‘In the present position of affairs,’ said Princess Dashkov, ‘when the
Empress has only a few days, perhaps a few hours, to live, you must,
without loss of time, take measures against the danger with which you are
threatened and steps to avert it. For God’s sake, trust me; I will show
you that I am worthy of your trust. If you have any definite plan, make
use of me, dispose of me, I am at your service.’
Catherine burst into tears and, pressing her friend’s hand to her heart,
said: ‘I assure you that I have no plan whatever; there is nothing I can
do, and I imagine that all that is left me is to await the course of
events with fortitude. I resign myself to the will of God, and rest all
my hopes on Him alone.’
‘In that case your friends must act for you. As for me, I feel I have
strength and energy enough to carry them all with me; and believe me,
there is no sacrifice which would hinder me.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Catherine interrupted, ‘do not expose yourself to
danger in the hope of resisting evil which seems really inevitable. If
you ruin yourself for my sake, you will only add an everlasting grief to
my unhappy lot.’
‘All that I can tell you is that I will not take a step which could
possibly involve you, or put you in danger. Whatever happens, may it come
upon me, and, if my blind devotion to you leads me to the scaffold, you
shall never be its victim.’
Catherine would have protested, but Princess Dashkov[52] interrupting
her, took her hand, pressed it to her lips, and, saying that she was
afraid to continue the conversation, asked leave to withdraw. Deeply
touched, they remained for some minutes in each other’s arms, then the
princess cautiously went out, leaving Catherine in great agitation.
We must add to this affecting scene that Catherine had all the same
deceived the princess; she had not entrusted her fate to God alone, but
also to Grigory Orlov, with whom she had thought out her plan, and Orlov
was already secretly trying to enlist the co-operation of the officers.
At Christmas the Empress died. Petersburg received the news gloomily; and
Princess Dashkov herself saw the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky regiments
march sullenly past her house with muffled murmurs.
Peter III., proclaimed Emperor, paid no regard to decorum; the drinking
bouts went on. A few days after Elizabeth’s death he visited the father
of Princess Dashkov, and through her sister announced his displeasure
at not seeing her at court. There was no escaping it; she went. Peter
III., dropping his voice, began telling her that she would end by drawing
upon herself his anger, and might very bitterly repent of it later on,
‘because there may easily come a time when Romanovna’ (that was what he
called his mistress) ‘will be in _that woman’s_ place.’
Princess Dashkov made a show of not understanding, and hurriedly took
her place at Peter III.’s favourite game. In this game (_campis_) each
player has several counters; the player who keeps one till the last
wins the game. Every one put down ten imperials, which, considering
Princess Dashkov’s income at that time, was not a trifling sum for her,
particularly as, when Peter III. lost, he used to take a counter out
of his pocket and lay it on the pool, so that he almost always won. As
soon as the game was over, the Tsar proposed a second; she refused. He
pestered her so much to play that, taking advantage of her ‘position as
spoilt child,’ she told him that she was not rich enough to lose for
certain, that if His Majesty played like other people she would, at any
rate, have a chance of winning. Peter III. responded with his ‘usual
buffooneries,’ and the princess made her bows and withdrew.
As she walked through the suite of rooms filled with courtiers and
persons of various grades, she felt as though she were at a masquerade,
there was no one she could recognise. She could not help laughing when
she saw Prince Trubetskoy, who was seventy, for the first time in his
life dressed up in a military uniform, standing at attention, in high
boots with spurs, all ready, in fact, for the most desperate battle. ‘The
pitiful little old man,’ she adds, ‘pretending to be ill and suffering,
as beggars do, lay in bed while Elizabeth was dying; he felt a little
better when Peter III. was proclaimed, and, learning that everything had
gone off well, he leapt up at once, armed himself from head to foot, and
showed himself like a hero in the Izmailovsky regiment to which he was
attached.’
Apropos of uniforms, the fatal passion for them was handed down from
Peter III. to Paul, from Paul to all his children, to all the generals,
staff and higher officers; Panin, who supervised the education of Paul,
complained that Peter III. was never present at his examinations. The
Holstein princes, his uncles, persuaded Peter to attend one at least;
he was very much pleased, and promoted Panin to be a general in the
infantry. To perceive the full absurdity of this, one must picture the
pale, sickly figure of Panin, who liked to be correctly dressed and
scrupulously groomed, and was rather like a courtier of the days of Louis
XIV. Panin detested Peter III.’s barrack-room tone, he hated uniforms and
all that nonsense. When Melgunov brought him the joyful tidings that he
was a general, Panin would have fled to Switzerland and lived there in
preference to wearing the uniform. News of this reached Peter III.; he
transferred him to the corresponding civilian grade. He never got over
his surprise at Panin. ‘Why,’ he used to say, ‘I always thought Panin was
a sensible man!’
While Peter III. was dressing his courtiers up as heroes, the usual
funeral ceremonies were taking place. The Empress did not leave her
rooms, and only appeared at the requiem service. Peter III., too, only
rarely showed himself, and then always behaved improperly, whispering
with the ladies, laughing with his adjutants, mocking at the clergy,
scolding the officers, and even the common soldiers, over buttons or some
such trifle. ‘The new Emperor,’ the English ambassador, Keith, said to
Prince Golitsyn, ‘is beginning his reign imprudently; if he goes on like
this he will come to be despised by his people and afterwards to be hated
by them.’
Peter III. did everything as though on purpose to arouse this hatred.
One evening, when Princess Dashkov was present, the Tsar was holding
forth, as his habit was, on the subject of his respect for Frederick
II., and suddenly turning to the Secretary of State, Volkov, who had
been Chief Secretary of the Privy Council under Elizabeth, he asked him
whether he remembered how they used to laugh over the perpetual failure
of the secret instructions sent to the army in the field. Volkov, who
together with Peter, then Grand Duke, had communicated to the Prussian
King all the army orders, and so stultified them, was so taken aback by
Peter III.’s words that he almost fainted. But the Tsar went on, jocosely
describing how in time of war they had betrayed to the enemy the country
in which he was heir to the throne.
At the conclusion of the peace with the Prussian King, in which he
shamefully yielded everything that had been won by Russian blood, there
was no end to the delight and rejoicing. There was festivity after
festivity. Among others Peter III. gave a great dinner, to which all the
ambassadors and members of the three first grades were invited. After
dinner the Tsar proposed three toasts, which were drunk to the firing
of cannon—to the health of the Imperial Family, to the health of the
Prussian King, to the permanence of the peace that had been concluded.
When the Empress drank the toast to the Imperial Family, Peter III. sent
his adjutant, Gudovitch, who was standing by his chair, to ask her why
she did not stand up. Catherine answered that since the Imperial Family
consisted only of her husband, her son, and herself, she had not supposed
that it would be His Majesty’s pleasure that she should stand up. When
Gudovitch repeated her answer, the Tsar bade him go back and tell the
Empress that she was ‘a fool,’ and ought to know that his uncles, the
Holstein princes, belonged to the Imperial Family too. This was not
enough; afraid that Gudovitch would soften his rudeness, he repeated
what he had said across the table, so that the greater number of the
guests heard it. For the first minute the Empress could not refrain
from shedding tears, but, anxious to end the scandal as quickly as
possible, she turned to the _kammerherr_, Strogonov, who was standing
behind her chair, and begged him to begin some conversation. Strogonov,
who was himself deeply shocked, began babbling something with a show of
liveliness. As he went out of the palace, he received the command to go
to his country estate, and not to leave it without permission.
This incident was exceedingly prejudicial to Peter III. Every one pitied
the unfortunate woman, who had been grossly insulted by a drunken boor.
Princess Dashkov was naturally bound to take advantage of this state of
public feeling. She became a desperate conspirator, persuading, sounding,
enlisting sympathisers, and at the same time she went to balls and danced
to avoid arousing suspicion. Prince Dashkov, insulted by Peter III., made
him some answer on parade. The princess, afraid of the consequences,
succeeded in procuring him a commission to Constantinople, and gave him
the advice to ‘make haste slowly’ with it. Having sent him off, she
surrounded herself with officers who put the fullest confidence in their
eighteen-year-old leader.
There were other people about Peter III. who were dissatisfied, but owing
to their age and position took no part in the conspiracy; they were glad
to take advantage of a change, but the risk of losing their heads on the
scaffold was too much for a Razumovsky or a Panin. The real conspirators
were Princess Dashkov with her officers, and Orlov with his adherents.
Of Razumovsky Princess Dashkov says: ‘He loves his country as much as the
apathetic man can love anything. Sunk in the bog of wealth, surrounded
by marks of respect, well received at the new court, and liked by the
officers, he has dropped into indifference and grown sluggish.’
Panin was a statesman and looked further ahead than the rest; his aim was
to proclaim Paul Tsar and Catherine Regent. So doing he hoped to curtail
the power of the Autocracy. Moreover, he thought to attain his object by
legal means through the Senate.
All this was far from being approved by Princess Dashkov. Moreover,
the dissatisfaction and murmuring among the soldiers were growing. The
disgraceful peace, on the one hand, and the insane war with Denmark
which with no serious object Peter III. wanted to wage over Holstein,
exasperated men’s minds. This war became an insane obsession with him;
even Frederick II. tried by letter to persuade him to defer it.
It is said that the young conspiratress used peculiarly eloquent weapons
to induce stubborn Panin to co-operate with her party. Panin was so
attracted by her intelligence, her energy, and, above all, her beauty,
that, old as he was, he fell passionately in love with her. Princess
Dashkov rejected his love with mirth, but finding no other means of
persuading him she made up her mind to bribe him with herself. After this
Panin was in her hands. It is only just to say that in two passages of
her memoirs she denies this rumour with indignation.[53]
Although the conspirators could reckon on Razumovsky and Panin, and,
what was more, on the Archbishop of Novgorod, and although a number of
officers adhered to the conspiracy, they had no definite plan of action.
Though at one in a common object, they could not agree on the steps to be
taken; Princess Dashkov, devoured by burning energy, was angry with their
deliberateness, did not know what to do, and at last went off to her
summer villa at Krasny Kabak. This summer villa was the first possession
she had entirely of her own: she at once set to work rebuilding, digging
ditches, laying out gardens. ‘In spite,’ she said, ‘of the affection I
had for that first bit of ground which was my own, I did not want to give
it my name, as I wished to dedicate it to the name of the saint on whose
day success crowns our great enterprise.’ ‘Make haste and give a name to
my villa,’ she writes to the Empress, when laid up with a fever, which
she had caught through riding up to her waist in a bog. Catherine could
make nothing of it, and thought that her friend was delirious.
But it was Peter III. who was really delirious; while Princess Dashkov
was planting acacias and clearing paths, he was moving rapidly on his
downward path; one folly succeeded another, one unseemly vulgarity was
followed by another twice as unseemly. Keith’s prophecy was coming true:
public feeling was passing from contempt into hatred.
The Austrian persecution of the Greek Church in Serbia had driven many
Serbs to appeal to the Empress Elizabeth, begging her to assign them
lands in the south of Russia. In addition to lands, Elizabeth ordered
a considerable sum of money to be given them for the expenses of their
moving and resettlement. One of their agents, Horvat, a wily, intriguing
fellow, took possession of the lands and money and, instead of carrying
out the conditions on which the land was given, began to dispose of the
emigrants as though they were his serfs. The Serbs presented a complaint,
Elizabeth ordered an enquiry, but before it was over she died. Horvat,
hearing of her death, went to Petersburg and began by giving two thousand
gold pieces to each of the three persons who were in closest relations
with Peter III.—L. Naryshkin, who was something in the way of a court
buffoon, General Melgunov, and the Prosecutor-General Glyebov. The two
latter went to the Tsar and told him straight out of the bribe. Peter
III. was much pleased at their openness, he praised them for it, and
added that if they would give him half he would go himself to the Senate
and command them to decide the case in favour of Horvat. They divided the
spoils, the Tsar kept his word, and for two thousand gold pieces lost
hundreds of thousands of new settlers; seeing that their comrades had
been cheated by the Government, those who had not yet started did not
venture to move.
When the case was over, Peter III. heard that Naryshkin had concealed
his bribe, and, to punish him for this lack of friendly confidence, took
the whole sum from him. And for a long time afterwards he used to tease
Naryshkin by asking him what he was doing with Horvat’s gold pieces.
Here is another charming anecdote of Peter III. One day the Tsar returned
home with Razumovsky after parade, much pleased with the Izmailovsky
regiment; suddenly he heard a noise a little way off; his favourite negro
was fighting with the fencing-master. At first Peter III. was delighted
with the spectacle, but all at once he pulled a solemn face and said:
‘Narcisse exists no longer for us.’ Razumovsky, who could make nothing
of it, asked what had so suddenly distressed His Majesty. ‘Why, don’t
you see,’ he cried, ‘that I cannot keep a man about me who has fought
with a fencing-master? he is disgraced, disgraced for ever.’ Razumovsky,
pretending to enter into these deep considerations, observed that the
negro’s honour might be restored by passing him under the flag of the
regiment. This idea delighted Peter III.; he at once called the negro,
bade him pass under the flag, and, feeling this was not quite sufficient,
ordered that he should be scratched with the lance of the flag that he
might wash out his offence with his own blood. The poor negro almost died
of fright, the generals and the officers could hardly restrain their
indignation and laughter. Only Peter III. performed the whole ritual of
the negro’s purification with perfect solemnity throughout.
And this buffoon was Tsar!... But not for long!
On the evening of the 27th of June Grigory Orlov came to Princess Dashkov
to tell her that Captain Passek, one of the most desperate conspirators,
was arrested. Orlov found Panin with her; to lose time, to procrastinate,
was now impossible. Only the lymphatic, slow, and cautious Panin
counselled waiting till the morrow, and first finding out how and why
Passek was arrested. This did not please Orlov or her. The former said
that he would go to find out about Passek. Princess Dashkov asked Panin
to leave her, pretending that she was excessively tired. As soon as Panin
had driven off, she threw on a man’s grey overcoat and set off on foot to
see Roslavlev, one of the conspirators.
Not far from home she met a man on horseback galloping full speed.
Although she had never seen Orlov’s brothers, she guessed that it was
one of them; when she reached him, she called his name. He pulled up the
horse, and she made herself known to him. ‘I was coming to you,’ he said.
‘Passek has been seized as a political criminal. There are four sentries
at the doors and two at the window. My brother has gone to Panin, and I
have been to Roslavlev.’
‘Is Roslavlev much alarmed?’
‘He is indeed.’
‘Send word to our men, Roslavlev, Lasunsky, Tchertkov, and Bredihin to
gather at once to the Izmailovsky regiment, and to make ready to receive
the Empress. Then say that I advise your brother or you to ride as fast
as you can to Peterhof for the Empress; tell her that I have a carriage
ready, tell her that I beseech her not to delay, but to drive full speed
to Petersburg.’
On the previous evening Princess Dashkov, who had heard from Passek of
the great discontent of the soldiers, and was afraid that something might
happen, had by way of precaution written to the wife of Catherine’s
_kammerdiener_, Shkurin, telling her to send a carriage with four
post-horses to her husband at Peterhof, and to bid him await her in
his yard. Panin laughed at this unnecessary fuss, supposing that the
_coup d’état_ was not so imminent; events proved how necessary Princess
Dashkov’s precautions were.
On parting from Orlov, she returned home. In the evening a tailor was to
have brought her a man’s dress, but did not bring it, and she was not
free enough dressed as a woman. To avoid rousing suspicion, she dismissed
her maid and went to bed; but half an hour had not passed before she
heard a knock at the outer door. It was the youngest Orlov, who had been
sent by his elder brothers to ask her whether it was not too soon to
disturb the Empress; Princess Dashkov was beside herself, and showered
reproaches upon him and all his brothers: ‘As though it were a question,’
she said, ‘of disturbing the Empress; better bring her unconscious,
fainting, to Petersburg than expose her to imprisonment or to sharing
the scaffold with us. Tell your brothers that some one must go this very
minute to Peterhof.’
The young man agreed with her.
Then followed agonising hours of solitude and suspense; she trembled for
her Catherine, and pictured her pale, worn out, in prison, going to be
beheaded, and all ‘through our fault.’ Exhausted and feverish, she waited
for news from Peterhof. At four o’clock it came: the Empress had gone to
Petersburg.
How Alexey Orlov went in the night to the pavilion to where Catherine
was calmly asleep; how, though, like Princess Dashkov, she did not know
the younger Orlov by sight, she instantly determined to set off in the
carriage that was waiting for her at Shkurin’s; how Orlov sat on the
box-seat as coachman, and knocked the horses up by his driving, so that
the Empress was obliged to walk with her maid; how they afterwards met an
empty cart; how Orlov hired it, and brought Catherine to Petersburg in
democratic style—all that is well known.
The soldiers of the Izmailovsky regiment received Catherine with
enthusiasm; they were told that Peter III. had tried that night to kill
her and her son. With shouts and uproar the soldiers escorted her from
the barracks to the Winter Palace, proclaiming her the reigning Empress
as they passed through the streets; they met with no hindrance of any
kind. The people flocked in crowds to the Palace, the leading noblemen
gathered together in the Cathedral, and the Archbishop, surrounded by
clergy, awaited the new sovereign with holy water.
When, after terrific efforts, Princess Dashkov succeeded in reaching
Catherine, they rushed into each other’s arms, and could only say: ‘Well,
thank God, thank God!’ Then Catherine told her how they had driven from
Peterhof, then they fell to embracing each other again. ‘I do not know,’
writes Princess Dashkov, ‘whether a mortal has ever been happier than I
was at that minute!’
‘And,’ she adds, ‘when I think by what extraordinarily small means this
revolution was effected, with no thought-out plan, by men who were not
agreed among themselves, who had different aims in view, and were not in
the least alike either in breeding or character, it is clear to me that
the finger of Providence was in it.’
The revolution, of course, was essential, but if the finger of Providence
was so directly concerned in it, then the divine hands were far from
being clean on that day.
After they had kissed each other to their hearts’ content, Princess
Dashkov noticed that the Empress was wearing the Catherine and not the
Andrew ribbon; she ran at once to Panin, took off his ribbon, put it on
the Empress, and put the Catherine ribbon and star in her pocket.
The Empress expressed a desire to put herself at the head of the troops
and to march to Peterhof. At the same time she ordered the princess
to accompany her. The Empress took a uniform from Captain Talyzin,
Princess Dashkov one from Sergeant Pushkin. Both uniforms were of the old
Preobrazhensky pattern. As soon as the Empress had arrived in Petersburg,
the soldiers had, of their own initiative, cast off their new uniforms
and put on their old ones.
While Princess Dashkov was changing her dress, Catherine was presiding
over an Extraordinary Council, consisting of the highest dignitaries
and senators who happened to be on the spot. The sentinels stationed
at the doors admitted to it a young officer with a bold carriage and
reckless air. No one but the Empress recognised him as Princess Dashkov;
she went up to Catherine and said that the guard was very inefficient,
that they would perhaps admit Peter III. himself if he should suddenly
appear (how little even she knew the buffoon!); the guard was immediately
strengthened; meanwhile, the Empress, who was dictating a manifesto to
Tyeplov, broke off to tell the members of the Council who this young
officer was who had come up _sans façon_, and begun whispering to her.
All the senators stood up to greet her. ‘I blushed to my ears at this
honour,’ says the charming sergeant, ‘and indeed I was rather embarrassed
by it.
‘Then, after taking the necessary measures to ensure the tranquillity of
the capital, we mounted our horses, and on the road to Peterhof reviewed
ten thousand men, who cheered the Empress with enthusiasm.’
At Krasny Kabak the insurrectionary army halted: the men, who had been
on their legs for twelve hours, needed a rest. Catherine and Princess
Dashkov, who had not slept at all the last few nights, were much
exhausted. The princess took an overcoat from Colonel Kar, spread it
over the solitary sofa in the little room they had taken at the inn, and
stationed sentries; then she and Catherine stretched themselves on the
sofa, not taking off their uniforms, but firmly resolved to get a little
sleep; they could not sleep, however, but spent the whole time talking,
making plans, and entirely forgetting the danger they were in.
There is no denying that there is something extraordinarily fascinating
in this daring exploit of two women, who changed the destinies of
an empire, in this revolution wrought by a handsome, clever woman,
surrounded by young men in love with her, and with the leading figure
among them a beauty of eighteen on horseback in the Preobrazhensky
regiment, with a sabre in her hand.
The unlucky Peter was meanwhile driving from Oranienbaum to Peterhof,
and from Peterhof to Oranienbaum, unable to think what to do or to
decide upon anything. He looked for Catherine through all the rooms of
the pavilion, behind doors and cupboards, as though she were playing
‘hide-and-seek’ with him, and, not without complacency, repeated to
‘Romanovna’: ‘There, you see I was right; I was sure she would do
something; I always said that woman was capable of anything.’
The old champion, Minih, still stood by him, all Russia and part of
Petersburg was still not against him, but he had already lost his head
entirely. Displaying incredible cowardice at Cronstadt, he bade the
Imperial yacht sail not to the fleet, but back to Oranienbaum; the ladies
were afraid of sickness and the sea, he was afraid of everything. It
was a calm moonlight night; the pitiful Tsar hid in the cabin with his
courtiers, while the two heroes, Minih and Gudovitch, sat in gloomy
brooding on deck, with shame and anger and sorrow in their hearts; they
saw that there is no saving people against their will. At four o’clock in
the morning they reached Oranienbaum again, and crestfallen stealthily
returned to the Palace. Peter sat down to write a letter to Catherine.
At the same time two fiery steeds were being saddled, one for Catherine,
the other for Princess Dashkov, and again, full of gaiety and energy,
they were at the head of their soldiers, who set off on the march at
five o’clock, and halted to rest at the Troitsky Monastery. Then Peter’s
envoys began appearing one after another, bringing proposals each more
foolish than the last; he abdicated from the throne, begged leave to go
to Holstein, and owned himself to blame and unfit to rule. Catherine
insisted on his unconditional surrender to avert greater troubles, and
promised in return to arrange his life as comfortably as possible in
whichever he preferred of the palaces away from the town.
Catherine’s troops calmly occupied Peterhof; Orlov, who had ridden on
to reconnoitre, had found no one there. The Holsteiners, who were about
Peter in Oranienbaum and were devoted to him, were ready to die for him,
but he told them to make no defence; he meant to flee, ordered a horse to
be brought, but did not mount it; instead, he got into a carriage with
Romanovna and Gudovitch, and mournfully went to surrender to his guilty
wife. He was led secretly into a remote room of the Palace. Gudovitch,
who even then behaved with extraordinary dignity, was arrested, together
with Romanovna; Peter was given food and drink, and taken to Ropsha
in the escort of Alexey Orlov, Passek, Baryatinsky, and Baskakov. He
selected Ropsha himself; it had belonged to him when he was Grand Duke.
Other authorities state, however, that he did not go to Ropsha at all,
but was on the estate of Razumovsky.
Princess Dashkov saw his letters to Catherine. In one he speaks of his
abdication, in another of the persons he would like to keep about him,
and enumerates everything he needed for his daily life, making special
mention of a store of Burgundy and tobacco. He asked further, it is said,
for a violin, a Bible, and various novels, adding that he meant to become
a philosopher.
On the evening of the day when Peterhof was taken, Princess Dashkov,
coming back from the Princess of Holstein’s to the Empress’s apartments,
came upon Orlov, who was lying at full length on a sofa in one of the
Empress’s inner rooms. He apologised for doing so, alleging that he had
hurt his foot. He was opening a big envelope; Princess Dashkov had seen
such envelopes in the hands of her uncle, the Vice-Chancellor; they were
used for the most important affairs of state communicated from the Privy
Council to the Tsar.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, with amazement.
‘The Empress told me to.’
‘Impossible,’ she answered. ‘You have no official status for doing it.’
At that moment word was brought that the soldiers had broken into the
cellars, and were drinking Hungarian wine in their helmets, taking it
for mead. Orlov did not stir. Princess Dashkov at once went downstairs,
assumed a threatening air, and with her thin girlish voice restored
discipline. Pleased with her success, she distributed among them all
the money she had on her; then, turning her purse inside out, told them
that her means were less than her goodwill, but that on their return to
Petersburg they should have leave to drink at the Government’s expense;
after this she went back.
Beside the sofa on which Orlov was lying she found a table laid for
three. The Empress came in, took her seat, and invited the princess to
sit down. All this so impressed the latter that she could not conceal her
emotion. The Empress noticed it, and asked her what was the matter.
‘Nothing,’ she answered; ‘most likely I am tired from sleepless nights
and excitement.’
Catherine, wishing to draw the princess into being civil to Orlov,
told her that in spite of her urgent wishes he was giving up military
service, and begged the princess to help her to dissuade him. ‘I shall be
charged,’ she said, ‘with horrible ingratitude if he leaves the army.’
But Princess Dashkov, mortified by her discovery, answered that Her
Majesty had so many means of rewarding his services that she had no need
to constrain him.
‘It was only then,’ she adds, ‘that I was convinced there was _une
liaison_ between them.’
It has been thought that she was mortified at this through jealousy,
and it is not a mistake. Only, she was not jealous on Orlov’s account;
she never liked and never respected either him or his brothers; she was
jealous over the Empress; she liked neither the choice nor the tone;
moreover, her dreams of exclusive confidence, of romantic friendship, of
all-powerful influence, paled and vanished at her discovery. And as a
fact, from that evening she had a rival and an enemy; she felt that the
very day after the _coup d’état_.
Crazy Peter’s saying about the orange skin began coming true with
extraordinary rapidity. The very day after ascending the throne the
Empress began appraising and rewarding Princess Dashkov’s services, she
began to be grateful—that is, ceased to be her friend.
After her triumphal entry into Petersburg, Princess Dashkov went away
to see her father, her uncle, and, most of all, to have a look at her
little one. It must not be forgotten that our Preobrazhensky sergeant
had a little daughter Nastya, whom she passionately loved, and with whom
she longed to play, after having played enough with the Tsar’s crown.
Her father’s house was full of soldiers, stationed there partly for
his protection, and partly because ‘Romanovna’ had been brought to his
house. Vadkovsky sent to ask the officer on duty whether all the guard
was needed; Princess Dashkov, speaking to him in French, told the officer
that half of the soldiers were not needed, and that she was dismissing
them.
When she went back to the Palace, Catherine received her with a look
of displeasure; the officer of the guard was present and was talking
to Orlov. The Empress reprimanded Princess Dashkov for acting on her
own initiative, and even observed that she had spoken French before the
soldiers. The princess, deeply wounded, listened to the reprimand, made
no reply, and, to change the conversation, gave Catherine the ribbon and
the order which she had put in her pocket the day before.
‘Not so fast, not so fast,’ said the Empress. ‘I had to reprimand you for
your impetuosity—you had no right to dismiss the soldiers on your own
authority; but I must also reward you for your services.’ With this she
put around her neck the ribbon that had been restored.
Instead of kneeling down before the Empress, as is done on such
occasions, Princess Dashkov said to her sorrowfully: ‘Your Majesty,
forgive me for what I want to say; the time is coming when truth must
be banished from your presence; before it comes, I beg you to take back
that order: as a decoration I cannot sufficiently value it; if it is a
reward—however great it might be, it could not reward my services, they
cannot be paid by anything, for they were not to be bought.’
‘But,’ said the Empress, embracing her, and leaving the ribbon,
‘friendship has its claims; surely I am not deprived of them now?’
Princess Dashkov, pleased again, kissed her hand, and the spirits of a
girl of eighteen got the upper hand; half a century later she does not
forget to add with pleasure: ‘Fancy me in a uniform, with a spur on one
high boot, looking like a boy of fifteen, with the red Catherine ribbon
across my shoulder.’ The new cavalier galloped back again to Nastya,
to show herself to the baby, to be present at her supper, and at last
undressing flung herself into bed; but this time, too, sleep fled from
her fretted nerves, or terrified her with dreams: the amazing scenes
of the preceding days, which she had not merely lived through, but had
partly brought about, passed incessantly before her imagination.
The Empress herself did not deny the important share Princess Dashkov had
taken in the revolution of the 28th of June; on the contrary, when the
wily old Bestuzhev was presented to her, she said to him: ‘Who could
have imagined that the daughter of Roman Vorontsov would have helped me
to ascend the throne!’
The news of the murder of Peter filled Princess Dashkov with horror
and aversion; she was so distressed and revolted by this stain on the
‘revolution which has not cost one drop of blood,’ that she could not
bring herself to go next day to the Palace. She omits in her memoirs all
the details of the revolting proceeding, in which three officers, one
of whom was of gigantic stature, were at work for half an hour stifling
with a napkin the poisoned prisoner, as though they could not wait for a
quarter of an hour. She assumed that Catherine did not know beforehand
of Alexey Orlov’s design;[54] it is more probable that she simply had
no idea of the connivance of Catherine, who could carefully conceal her
wishes. Not only Panin and the other conspirators knew nothing of her
intrigue with Grigory Orlov, but, as we have just seen, Princess Dashkov
had not suspected it.
Catherine perceived what was in the latter’s heart, and when she saw her
began to speak with horror of what had happened.
‘Yes, your Majesty,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘this death has come too
quickly and too soon for your fame and for mine.’
As she walked through the drawing-room, she said in a loud voice before
every one that, of course, Alexey Orlov would spare her his acquaintance.
For over twenty-five years they did not bow nor say a word to each other.
It is very possible that Catherine had not given instructions to murder
Peter. Alexander went further: he positively insisted that they should
not _kill_ Paul, when he sent a gang of the rebel nobles to him. We
know from Shakespeare how these orders are given by a glance, a hint, a
silence. Why did Catherine entrust the care of the pusillanimous Peter
to his worst enemies? Passek and Baskakov had meant to kill him several
days before the 27th of June, and did not she know that? And why were the
murderers so shamelessly rewarded?
Princess Dashkov quotes in Catherine’s defence a letter from Orlov,
written immediately after the murder, which the Empress showed her. This
letter, she says, bore unmistakable traces of uneasiness, distress,
consternation, and tipsiness. It was preserved by the Empress in a
special case, together with other important documents. After her death
Paul ordered Prince Bezborodka to go through these papers in his
presence; when they got to this letter, Paul read it aloud to the Tsarina
in the presence of Madame Nelidov.[55] Then he ordered Rastoptchin to
read it aloud to the Grand Dukes.
I have heard what the letter contained from a trustworthy man who had
read it himself; it was in this style: ‘Little Mother, Empress, how am I
to tell you what we have done! such a misfortune has happened! We came to
see your husband, and were drinking with him; you know what he is like
when he is drunk; word followed word. He so insulted us that we came to
blows. All of a minute he dropped dead. What is to be done? Take our
heads if you like, or, merciful Little Mother, think that what is done
cannot be undone, and overlook our offence.’[56]
Princess Dashkov, carried away by her love for Catherine, believed,
or professed to believe, that Mirovitch,[57] too, acted without her
knowledge; and the worst, most disgraceful and loathsome story of her
whole reign, the abduction by Alexey Orlov and De Ribasse of Princess
Tarakanov,[58] she does not mention at all.
It was, among other things, because she believed and wanted to believe in
the ideal Catherine that she could not maintain herself in favour. And
she would have been a splendid minister. Though indisputably gifted with
political insight, she had besides her enthusiastic temperament two great
defects which hindered her from making a career: she could not be silent,
her tongue was sharp and biting, and it spared no one except Catherine;
moreover, she was too proud, and she could not, and would not, conceal
her antipathies—in short, she could not ‘abase her personality,’ as the
Moscow Old Believers express it.
As a matter of fact, a friendship between Catherine and Princess Dashkov
was impossible. Catherine wanted not only to be sovereign by the Imperial
power, but to rule over every one in the world by her genius and her
beauty; she wanted to attract the attention of all to herself alone; she
had an insatiable desire to please. She was still in the full flower of
her beauty, but she was thirty. She could probably have borne to have
about her a weak woman, lost in the radiance of her glory and adoring
her, not very handsome and not very clever. But she could not endure at
her side the vigorous Princess Dashkov, who spoke of _her own fame_,
with her wit, her fire, and her nineteen years.
She withdrew herself from her with the rapidity of truly royal
ingratitude. In Moscow, after the Coronation, the old sinner Bestuzhev
proposed writing an address to the Empress, and begging her, in the name
of all her subjects, to take another husband. Grigory Orlov, who had
already been created a prince of the Empire, dreamed of being Tsar. This
roused the indignation of all decent people. Chancellor Vorontsov asked
for an audience, and warned Catherine, on the supposition that she did
not know what was being done. Catherine was surprised, and wanted to
reprimand Bestuzhev.
Hitrov, one of the devoted conspirators of the 27th of June, loudly
declared that he would sooner kill Orlov, or go to the scaffold, than
acknowledge him Emperor. It need hardly be said that Princess Dashkov’s
voice, too, was heard in the general murmur of displeasure; her words
were carried to Catherine. Suddenly one evening, Tyeplov, the secretary
of the Empress, came to Prince Dashkov and demanded to see him. The
Empress had written him the following note: ‘I sincerely desire not to
be compelled to consign to oblivion the services of the Princess Dashkov
on account of her imprudent behaviour. Tell her to remember this next
time she permits herself an indiscreet freedom of language amounting to
threats.’
Princess Dashkov did not answer a word to this letter; she held herself
aloof, and after the death of her husband in 1768 asked leave to visit
foreign lands. ‘I might very well go without question,’ she said
(probably never dreaming that in another eighty years a stupid law would
almost completely deprive Russians of the right of crossing the frontier,
and still less, that the Government would force every traveller to pay
ransom), ‘but my position as a lady of the court lays upon me the
obligation to ask the sanction of the Most High.’
Receiving no answer, she went to Petersburg, and at her first reception
asked Catherine to allow her to go abroad for the sake of her children’s
health.
‘I am very sorry,’ answered Catherine, ‘that such a distressing cause
obliges you to go. But, of course, Princess, you are perfectly free to
make what arrangements you like.’
Where was the time when they had lain in one bed, under one quilt, and
had wept and embraced each other, or, lying on Colonel Kar’s overcoat,
had dreamed for a whole night of political reforms?
Abroad Princess Dashkov revived, and became again the same proud,
indefatigable, indomitable, active woman, interested in every one and
throwing herself into everything.
On the wall in the hotel at Dantzig there hung a big picture representing
some battle between Prussians and Russians, in which, of course, the
Russians were being beaten. In the foreground there was a group of our
soldiers on their knees before the Prussians begging for mercy. Princess
Dashkov could not stand this. She induced two Russians to creep by night
into the room, with oil-paints and brushes, locked the door, and set to
work with her companions to repaint the uniforms, so that by the morning
the Prussians were on their knees begging the Russians to spare them.
When she had finished the picture, she sent for post-horses, and before
the hotel-keeper had grasped the situation, she was racing along the road
to Berlin, laughing at the thought of his amazement.
In Hanover she went to the Opera alone with Mlle. Kamensky. They were so
unlike the worthy German women that the Prince of Mecklenburg, who was
the chief authority in the town, sent to find out who they were. His
adjutant went unceremoniously into the box in which there were also two
German ladies, and asked our Russians whether they were not foreigners.
Princess Dashkov said ‘Yes.’
‘His Highness,’ added the adjutant, ‘wishes to know with whom I have the
honour of speaking.’
‘Our name,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘can be of no interest either to
you or to the Duke; as women we have the right not to say who we are, and
not to answer your question.’
The adjutant went away in confusion. The German ladies, who had from
the first felt involuntary respect for our ladies, gazed at them with
awe when they heard Princess Dashkov’s valiant answer. Seeing that the
Germans took them for very great ladies, Princess Dashkov, turning
courteously to them, said that though she would not answer the Prince’s
impudent question, she had no reason to conceal from them her identity.
‘I am an opera-singer, and my friend is a dancer; we are both out of a
job, and on the look-out for a good engagement.’ The German ladies opened
their eyes wide, blushed to their ears, and not only abandoned their
polite attentions, but tried so far as the size of the box permitted to
sit with their backs turned on them.
In Paris Princess Dashkov was surrounded by all the celebrities and made
friends with all of them except Rousseau; him she would not go to see on
account of his hypocritical humility and affected originality. Diderot,
on the other hand, became an intimate friend, spent whole evenings
_tête-à-tête_ with her, and discussed everything under the sun with
her. Princess Dashkov proved to him that serfdom was not so bad as was
supposed, trapped him into contradictory statements, and the susceptible
Diderot was ready to agree with her instantly.
A servant came in and announced that Madame Necker[59] and Madame
Geoffrin[60] had arrived. ‘Don’t receive them!’ cried Diderot, without
asking Princess Dashkov’s wishes; ‘say that she is not at home.’
‘There is not a better woman in the world than Madame Geoffrin, but she
is the greatest gossip in Paris; I positively won’t have her talking all
sorts of nonsense about you before she has time to know you properly. I
won’t have blasphemy against my idol.’ And Princess Dashkov sent word
that she was unwell.
Rulhière,[61] who was writing about Russia and the year 1762, also
urgently wished to see her. Diderot would not have him received either:
he wanted to keep Princess Dashkov to himself.
In London Princess Dashkov made the acquaintance of Paoli, but she did
not like his ‘Italian grimaces,’ which were unbecoming in a great man. In
Geneva she visited Voltaire and marvelled at him, though she could not
help laughing with some doctor over the way Voltaire lost his temper at
losing a game of draughts, and at the killing faces he made. The doctor,
observing that it was not only Voltaire who could make such faces, bade
his dog lift up his head, and Princess Dashkov could not control her
laughter at the extraordinary resemblance. From Geneva she went to Spa;
there she made great friends with Mrs. Hamilton[62] and, when she parted
from her, romantically swore to come again in five years to see her, if
they did not meet before, and, what was even more romantic, actually came.
The feeling of the most ardent, most active affection was almost the
strongest emotion in this proud and strong-willed woman. Deeply wounded
by Catherine’s treatment of her,[63] she looked prematurely old.
Diderot says that she looked nearly forty, though she was at that time
twenty-seven. Whether she loved any man after her husband’s death, or
was beloved by one, is not to be seen from her Memoirs; but it may be
said for certain that no man played a significant part in her life. After
Catherine she attached herself, with all the ardour of a hungry heart, to
Mrs. Hamilton. And in her old age an infinitely tender motherly affection
brought warmth into her life; I am speaking of Miss Wilmot, who edited
her Memoirs.
From Spa she went back to Moscow to the house of her sister, Madame
Polyansky; this sister, with her humble, prosaic name, was no other than
the notorious ‘Romanovna,’ who, if she had not been Madame Polyansky,
might easily have been Empress of all the Russias.
The clouds which had overcast Princess Dashkov’s sky were beginning to
clear away. The influence of the Orlovs had waned. The Empress, hearing
of her arrival, sent her sixty thousand roubles to buy an estate.
But the princess was utterly unable to get on with the favourites, and
there was no real intimacy between her and the court. Now she began to be
deeply absorbed in the education of her son; an ardent admirer of England
and English institutions, she made up her mind to go with her son to
Edinburgh. Moreover, she saw that she was completely superfluous in the
Winter Palace.
While she was preparing for this journey she betrothed her daughter to
Shtcherbinin. On the way to the estate of the young man’s brother, to
which she was going with the whole party, a servant fell off the box,
and three sledges passed over him; he was badly hurt and stunned; he had
to be bled, but how? Princess Dashkov had with her a case of surgical
instruments bought in London; she took out a lancet, but no one would
undertake to use it; the injured man lay unaided until, overcoming an
intense feeling of disgust, she opened his vein, and after successfully
performing the operation, almost sank into a swoon herself.
In Edinburgh she was soon surrounded by the leading celebrities,
Robertson, Blair, Adam Smith, Fergusson. She wrote long letters to
Robertson, and explained to him in detail her plan of education; she
wanted her son, who was at that time fourteen, to complete his studies
in two years and a half, and then, after making a tour of the whole of
Europe, to go into the Service.
Robertson presumed that he would need four years; the mother thought that
was too much. She wrote out in detail what her son knew already, and what
he must know.
‘_Languages_:
Latin.—The initial difficulties are overcome.
English.—The prince has a very good understanding of prose,
and to some extent of verse.
German.—He understands it perfectly.
French.—He knows like his mother tongue.
‘_Literature_: He is familiar with the best classical works.
His taste is more formed than is common at his age. He has an
excessive tendency to be critical, which is perhaps his only
defect.
‘_Mathematics_: A very important branch of study. He has been
fairly successful in the solution of advanced problems, but I
should like him to go further in algebra.
‘_Civil and Military Architecture_: I want him to make a
particular study of these subjects.
‘_History and Political Institutions_: He has a knowledge of
general history, and particularly of Germany, England, and
France, but he ought to go through a course of history more in
detail; he can study it at home with a tutor.
‘Now this is what I want him to study: 1. Logic and the
Philosophy of Reasoning. 2. Experimental Physics. 3. A little
Chemistry. 4. Philosophy and Natural History. 5. Natural Law,
International Law, public and private Law in its application to
the legal systems of European nations. 6. Ethics. 7. Politics.’
This extensive programme she divides into five sessions, and then, as
always, carries it out exactly. Her son passed his M.A. examination
in 1779; it is commonly said that she exhausted him, and, certainly,
he never did anything; moreover, he died very young, but whether his
education is to blame for that it is hard to say.
After the examination Princess Dashkov went at once to Ireland, queened
it in Dublin society, and composed church music, which was sung in
the Chapel of Magdalen in the presence of a vast concourse of people,
‘desirous,’ as she expresses it, ‘of hearing how the bears of the North
compose.’ Probably it was a successful experiment, for later on she was
busy negotiating with David Garrick for the performance on the stage of
her musical works. She was also writing long instructions to her son
in the style of the counsels of Polonius concerning the conduct of his
travels....
From England she went to Holland; in Haarlem she went to see a doctor of
her acquaintance, and there met Prince Orlov, by now married and out of
favour. The same day Orlov came to call on her, and just at dinner-time.
His visit was to Princess Dashkov ‘as unexpected as it was disagreeable.’
‘I have come to you not as an enemy, but as a friend and ally,’ said
Orlov, sitting down in a low chair. Then followed a silence on both
sides. He looked intently at young Dashkov, and observed: ‘Your son is
enrolled in the Cuirassiers, and I am in command of a regiment of the
Horse Guards; if you like, I will ask the Empress to transfer him to my
regiment; that will give him promotion.’
Princess Dashkov thanked him for his kind suggestion, but said that she
could not take advantage of his offer, because she had already written on
his behalf to Prince Potyomkin, and did not want without good reason to
do anything in opposition to him.
‘What could there be disagreeable to him in it?’ asked Orlov, feeling the
sting of this. ‘However, as you please; you may rely on me; your son will
make a great career; it would be hard to find a _handsomer_ young man.’
The mother flushed crimson with anger, and the conversation dropped. But
at the next meeting Orlov, addressing young Dashkov, said: ‘What a pity
that I shall not be in Petersburg when you arrive! I am certain that you
will oust the present favourite as soon as you appear at court; I should
be pleased to carry out my present duties—comforting the forsaken.’
Beside herself with indignation, Princess Dashkov sent her son out of the
room, and told Orlov that she thought it extremely improper to speak to a
boy of seventeen in that way, and that in so doing Orlov was compromising
the Empress, whom she had brought her son up to respect; that, as for
favourites, she begged him to remember that she had never known and
never recognised one of them.
After that they parted. Orlov went to Switzerland, Princess Dashkov to
Paris. Then we meet her inspecting the French fortresses with her son
and Colonel Samoylov, by special permission of Maréchal de Biron.[64]
From France she went to Italy, and there was completely absorbed in
pictures and statues, cameos and antiques, bought a picture of Angelica
Kauffmann’s as a present for the Empress, went to see the Pope and Abbé
Galiani,[65] and finally returned to Russia through Vienna.
In Vienna she had a heated argument with Kaunitz, with whom she was
dining. He called Peter the Great the political creator of Russia;
Princess Dashkov observed that this was a European misconception. Kaunitz
was not ready to yield his point; she was even less so. She admitted
that Peter had done a very great deal for Russia, but thought that the
material was ready, and that, together with his masterly use of it, he
had inhumanly oppressed and distorted it.
‘If he had really been a great statesman, he would by his intercourse
with other nations, and by trade, have gained without haste what he
attained by violence and cruelty. The nobility and the serfs were both
left worse off through his unbridled passion for innovations; from the
latter he took the protective tribunal to which alone they could appeal
in case of oppression, from the former he took all their privileges. And
to what end was it all? To clear the way for a military despotism, that
is, for the very worst of all existing forms of government. From simple
vanity he was in such a hurry to build Petersburg that he sent thousands
of workmen to die in the marshes. He not only forced the landowners
to provide a certain number of peasants, but compelled them to build
themselves houses according to his own plans, without asking whether they
needed them. One of his principal buildings, the Admiralty and Docks,
which cost immense sums, was constructed on the bank of a river which no
human efforts could make navigable even for merchant vessels, much less
for ships of the Navy.’
‘However,’ observed Kaunitz, ‘no one can help being touched at the sight
of a monarch learning shipbuilding with the axe in his hand.’
The ruthless lady would not let this pass. ‘Your Excellency,’ she
answered, ‘is doubtless joking. Who can know better than you how precious
is a monarch’s time, and whether he has the leisure to practise a
handicraft? Peter I. was in a position to command the services not only
of shipbuilders, but even of admirals. To my mind, when he was wasting
time in Saardam working with the axe and learning the slang of the Dutch
market, and sailors’ words with which he distorted the Russian language,
he was simply neglecting his duty.’
I foresee how the good Orthodox souls of our Moscow Slavophils will
rejoice at reading these words; they certainly ought, on days for
commemorating the dead, to keep the memory of our princess with pancakes
and lenten oil.
Joseph II. was ill, and wanted Princess Dashkov to remain a few days
longer, but she had received an invitation from Frederick II. for herself
and her son to be present at his manœuvres. She had, however, an informal
interview with Joseph II. in the study he devoted to natural history.
A week later Princess Dashkov was at the manœuvres at which Frederick II.
drilled forty-two thousand men, and to which he had never before admitted
women, but she was specially invited. The Prussian Princess herself
drove to fetch her, brought her to the spot where the King was to meet
her, and asked her to get out of the carriage, saying: ‘Dear Princess,
as I have not the slightest desire to see the old grumbler, I will drive
on,’ and Princess Dashkov was left to an innocent _tête-à-tête_ with
Frederick II., who took her and her son with him to a military inspection
of the provinces.
In July 1782 she returned to Petersburg. The Empress appointed her
President of the Academy of Science. Princess Dashkov was apparently
for the first time in her life disconcerted, and wanted to decline the
honour. She wrote a sharp letter to the Empress, and at twelve o’clock at
night drove with it to Potyomkin. Potyomkin had gone to bed; however, he
received her. He read the letter, tore it up and threw it on the floor,
but, seeing that she was angry, said to her: ‘Here are pen and paper, by
all means write it again; only, it is all nonsense; why do you refuse?
The Empress has been full of the idea for the last two days. In that
position you will be frequently seeing her, and the fact is, to tell the
truth, she is dying of boredom, perpetually surrounded by fools.’
Potyomkin’s eloquence overcame her opposition; she went to the Senate
to take the oath for her new duties, and from that moment became a
consummate president. She asked old Euler, the great mathematician, to
introduce her at the assembled Academy; she wanted to appear under the
aegis of learning before the academicians. She presented herself to them
not in silence, as Russian presidents usually do, but with a speech,
after which, seeing that the first place next the president was occupied
by Stehlin,[66] she turned to Euler and said: ‘Sit where you prefer;
whatever place you occupy will be the first.’
Then with her habitual energy she set to work to eradicate abuses,
that is, thefts; she increased the number of the pupils, improved the
printing-press, and finally proposed to the Empress the founding of a
Russian Academy. Catherine appointed her president of this new academy
too. Again Princess Dashkov made a speech. ‘You all know, gentlemen,’
she said, among other things, ‘the wealth and splendour of our language.
The powerful eloquence of Cicero, the measured grandeur of Virgil,
the fascinating charm of Demosthenes, and the light language of Ovid,
translated into Russian, lose nothing of their beauties.... But we are
without exact rules, the limits and meanings of words have not been
defined, and many foreign phrases have crept into our language,’ and
therefore she proposed that the Russian Academy should work at a grammar
and dictionary of the language. She herself prepared to share the
labours of the academicians, and did, in fact, work at the dictionary.
The Empress seemed to be pleased with her. Her energy at this period
was amazing. She undertook the publication of special geographical maps
of the different provinces, and edited the periodical, _Lovers of the
Russian Language_, to which the Empress herself, Von Vizin, Derzhavin,
and others contributed.
Her relations with the Empress were unmistakably improved. A
correspondence sprang up between them again; the letters deal with a
review they were publishing and various literary subjects. These letters,
which are of little general interest, are a striking proof of the degree
to which good manners, culture, and humanity have since sunk in the
Winter Palace. Catherine gives no orders, does not command in her notes,
does not confine herself to set forms, is not afraid of jesting; she has
confidence in herself, and the Empress often gives way to the woman of
intelligence. The Prussian Gatchina tone, translated into official red
tape by Nicholas, has replaced with brutal illiteracy the gentleness of
cultured language.
All would have been well if only Princess Dashkov could have kept on good
terms with the favourites; she got on better with Potyomkin than with any
of the rest, perhaps because Potyomkin was the cleverest of them; with
Lanskoy, and afterwards with Manonov, she was at daggers drawn. Zubov
gossiped spitefully against her, and did her a great deal of mischief.
In the summer of 1783 she was in Finland with the Empress, who had an
interview there with the King of Sweden. Lanskoy kept pestering her to
know why in the news published under the auspices of the Academy her name
was the only one mentioned of the persons who were with the Empress.
Princess Dashkov explained to him that it was not her doing at all, that
the Court news was sent and printed without alteration. Lanskoy went on
sulking and grumbling till she was sick of it.
‘You ought to know,’ she said to him, ‘that, though it is always an
honour and a happiness to me to dine with the Empress, I cannot really
be so much overwhelmed by it as to publish it in the papers. I am too
much accustomed to it; as a little child I used to dine on the Empress
Elizabeth’s knee, as a little girl I sat at her table; it is so natural
that it could not be a matter for boasting to me.’
Lanskoy grew heated, but Princess Dashkov, seeing that the room was
beginning to fill up, raised her voice, and said: ‘Sir, people whose
whole life has been devoted to the public welfare are not always
particularly powerful or happy, but they always have the right to insist
on being treated without insolence. They quietly go their own way and
outlive those meteors of a day which burst and fall, leaving no trace.’
The doors were flung open and the Empress walked in. Her arrival put an
end to the conversation. How could Lanskoy fail to hate her? It was as
well for her that he died soon after.
On her return from Finland Princess Dashkov received her friend, Mrs.
Hamilton, to stay with her. She took her to her new estate; there she
kept a village holiday, met with bread and salt the peasants newly
settled there, introduced them to the Englishwoman, and informed them
that henceforth the new village would be called Hamiltonovo. After this
she travelled with her to other estates in the provinces of Kaluga,
Smolensk, Kiev, and Tambov.
The following year Princess Dashkov received a cruel blow in her personal
life. Her son was in Rumyantsev’s army, and she was glad that he was not
in Petersburg. Latterly even Potyomkin had designs upon him. He once sent
Samoylov to fetch him late one evening, and Samoylov gave the mother a
hint of their project. She refused to have anything to do with it, and
said that if it happened she would take advantage of her son’s influence
to obtain leave of absence abroad for many years. For this reason she was
relieved that her son was away in Kiev. But there love had another arrow
in store for him, aimed not from above, but from below.
One day, as she came out of the Empress’s bedroom, she met Rebinder,
who warm-heartedly congratulated her on her son’s marriage. She was
thunderstruck. Rebinder was disconcerted; he had had no idea that young
Dashkov’s wedding was a secret. She was wounded in her motherly feelings
and in her pride; on the one hand, the _mésalliance_, on the other, the
lack of confidence. It was a heavy blow, it made her ill.
Two months later her son wrote her a letter, asking for her permission to
marry; this was a fresh blow—falsity, cowardice, deceit. Moreover, he had
so little understanding of his mother’s character that together with his
own letter he sent one from Field-Marshal Rumyantsev obviously written
at his request. Rumyantsev tried to persuade Princess Dashkov to sanction
her son’s marriage, spoke of the prejudices of aristocratic birth and of
the instability of fortune, and, in her words, ‘reached such a pitch of
futility as to give advice in a matter of such gravity between mother and
son, though nothing in their relations gave him a right to meddle.’
Wounded on two sides at once, she wrote a sarcastic letter to Rumyantsev,
in which she explained to him that, ‘among the various foolish ideas
with which her head was filled, there was happily no exaggerated respect
for aristocratic birth; but that, if she had been endowed with such
remarkable eloquence as the Count, she would have used it to show the
superiority of good breeding over bad.’
To her son her letter was strikingly simple; here it is: ‘When your
father intended to marry a Countess Vorontsov, he drove post-haste to
Moscow to ask his mother’s sanction. You are married; I knew this before
you wrote, and I know, too, that my mother-in-law had done no more to
deserve to have a friend in her son than I have.’
The discussions that followed this and other family affairs must have
cost her much mortification. Her daughter parted from her husband.
Miss Wilmot has omitted several pages in the Memoirs, after which
Princess Dashkov goes on like this: ‘All was black in the future and the
present.... I was so worn out by suffering that I was at times visited by
the thought of suicide.’
And so the demon of family troubles crushed her, as it has crushed many
strong characters. Family misfortunes wound so deeply, because they steal
upon one in silence and to combat them is almost impossible. Victory in
the struggle makes it worse. They are like those poisons whose presence
is only recognised when their effect is shown in pain, that is, when the
man is already saturated with them.
Meanwhile, the French Revolution had come. Catherine, who was growing
old, worn out by a life of vice, threw herself into reaction. This was
no longer the conspirator of the 27th of June, who said to Betsky:
‘I reign by the will of God and the election of the people,’ not the
Petersburg correspondent of Voltaire and the translator of Beccaria and
Filangier,[67] who proclaimed in her famous _Nakaz_[68] the evils of the
censorship and the advantage of an assembly of deputies from the whole
realm of Russia. In 1792 we find her an old woman afraid of thought, a
worthy mother of Paul.... And like a pledge that a savage reaction would
crush for long years every branch of free development in Russia, Nicholas
was born before her death. Catherine’s dying hand was still there to
caress this awful monster who was destined to cry _Halt!_ to the epoch of
Peter’s reforms, and to delay the progress of Russia for thirty years.
Princess Dashkov, an aristocrat and an admirer of English institutions,
could not sympathise with the Revolution; but still less could she share
the feverish terror of free speech and applaud the punishment of thought.
Catherine was alarmed by Radishtchyev’s pamphlet;[69] she saw in it the
‘signal of revolution.’ Radishtchyev was seized and sent without trial
to Siberia. Princess Dashkov’s brother, Alexandr Vorontsov, who loved
Radishtchyev, and had been a benefactor to him, retired from the Service
and went to Moscow.
Her own turn came next. Knyazhnin’s[70] widow asked her, for the benefit
of her children, to publish under the auspices of the Academy her
husband’s last tragedy. The subject was taken from the history of the
subjugation of Novgorod. Princess Dashkov directed that it should be
published. Field-Marshal Saltykov, ‘who,’ as she says, ‘could not be
charged with ever having read a book of any sort,’ read this one and
talked to Zubov of its pernicious tendency. Zubov spoke to the Empress
about it.
Next day the Petersburg police-master arrived at the Academy bookshop to
seize the copies of the Jacobin Knyazhnin’s inflammatory tragedy; and
in the evening the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, came himself to tell
Princess Dashkov of the Empress’s displeasure at the publication of the
dangerous play. Princess Dashkov answered coldly that probably no one
had read the tragedy, and that it was certainly less pernicious than the
French plays which were being performed at the Hermitage.
The ex-liberal Catherine met her with a frowning face. ‘What have I
done,’ she asked her, ‘that you publish such dangerous books against me
and my authority?’
‘And does your Majesty really think that?’ the princess asked.
‘That tragedy ought to have been burnt by the hand of the hangman.’
‘Whether it is burnt by the hand of the hangman or not is no concern of
mine. I shall not have to blush for it. But for God’s sake, madam, before
you decide on an action so opposed to your character, read the whole
play.’
At that the conversation ended. Next day Princess Dashkov attended a
great court reception, and made up her mind that if the Empress did
not send for her to her dressing-room, as she always did, she would
resign her post. Samoylov came out from the inner apartments. With a
patronising air he went up to Princess Dashkov and told her not to be
uneasy, that the Empress was not angry with her.
She could not brook this, and answered, as her habit was, in a loud
voice: ‘I have no reason to be uneasy, my conscience is clear. It would
greatly distress me if the Empress retained an unjust feeling towards
me; but I should not be surprised even then: at my age injustice and
misfortune have long ceased to surprise me.’
The Empress was reconciled with her, and tried once more to explain why
she had acted as she did. Instead of answering her, Princess Dashkov
replied: ‘A grey cat has run between us, madam: let us not awaken her
again.’
But Petersburg was becoming distasteful to her; she was sick of it. She
felt ‘utterly alone in these surroundings, which became every day more
hateful to her.’ This feeling of repulsion was so great that she made up
her mind to leave the court, Petersburg, her public activity, her Academy
of Science, and her Russian Academy, and finally her Empress, and to go
and live on her estate in the country.
‘With deep sorrow I thought of parting, perhaps for ever, from the
Sovereign whom I loved passionately, and loved long before she was on her
throne, when she had less means of bestowing benefits on me than I found
occasions for serving her. I still loved her, although she did not always
treat me as her own heart, her own brain, would have prompted her.’
That is all! Not one word of anger, of condemnation for complete lack of
heart, for ingratitude; even here she gives us to understand that it was
not Catherine’s fault, but other people’s.
The parting of these women was remarkable. The Empress said to her drily,
and with an angry face: ‘I wish you a good journey.’ Princess Dashkov
was amazed; she did not understand it, and went away after kissing her
hand. Next morning Troshtchinsky, the Secretary of the Empress, arrived,
and in her name handed the princess an unpaid bill, the unpaid bill of a
tailor who had done work for Shtcherbinin. The Empress sent word that she
was surprised that the princess should leave Petersburg without carrying
out her promise to pay her daughter’s debts. Zubov, who hated Princess
Dashkov, and was a patron of the tailor’s, had carried these paltry
details to the Empress. To crown it all, it appeared that the bill had
nothing to do with her daughter, but had been incurred by her husband,
Shtcherbinin, who was living apart from her.
Princess Dashkov, utterly revolted at this humiliation, firmly resolved
to leave Petersburg for ever.
But people of her temperament do not fold their hands at a little over
fifty, in the full possession of their faculties. She became a capital
manager of her estates; she built houses, drew maps, and laid out parks.
There was not a tree nor a bush in her garden which she had not planted
or to which she had not at least assigned its position. She built four
houses, and says with pride that her peasants were among the most
prosperous in the neighbourhood. While she was engaged in these rustic
pursuits, Serpuhovsky, the Marshal of the Nobility, suddenly arrived,
looking distressed.
‘What is the matter with you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ answered the Marshal; ‘the Empress is dead.’
Princess Dashkov’s daughter rushed to her, thinking that she would faint.
‘No, no, don’t worry about me,’ said her mother; ‘I am quite well, though
it would be happiness to die at this moment. My fate is worse; I am
destined to see all the reforms that had been begun destroyed, and my
country ruined and unhappy.’
With these words she fell into convulsions, and gave way to prolonged
grief.
It was not long before she felt the heavy, weighty, autocratic hand of
Peter’s crazy son.[71] First she received a decree discharging her from
her post; she asked the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, to testify to the
Tsar her gratitude for relieving her from the burden which had become too
great for her strength.
A little later she went to Moscow, but the Governor-General of Moscow
called on her at once and informed her that she should go back to the
country immediately, and there think of the year 1762. She answered,
‘that she never forgot that year, but that in accordance with the Tsar’s
will she would think of that time, which had left her neither stings of
conscience nor remorse.’
Her brother Alexandr, anxious to soothe her, told her that Paul was doing
all this now for the rehabilitation of his father’s memory, but that
after his coronation things would go better. On reaching Troitskoye she
wrote to him: ‘Dear brother, you write that Paul will leave me in peace
after the coronation. Believe me, you are much mistaken in his character.
When the tyrant has once struck his victim, he will repeat his blows
until he has crushed the victim utterly. The consciousness of innocence
and the feeling of indignation serve to give me courage to endure
discomfort so long as his growing spite does not assail all of you, my
relations, also. Of one thing you may rest assured, that no circumstances
will compel me to do anything or say anything to demean myself.
‘Examining my past life,’ she adds, ‘I am not without inner consolation,
aware in myself of sufficient strength of character, tested by many
calamities, to feel certain that I shall find again strength to endure
misfortune.’
She correctly gauged the character of the relentless, petty, frenzied
tyrant. Only a few days after she had reached Troitskoye, a courier from
the Governor-General arrived from Moscow. Paul commanded Princess Dashkov
to go at once to her son’s estate in a remote district of the Novgorod
Province, and there to await his further commands.
She answered that she was ready to obey the Sovereign’s will, and that it
was a matter of complete indifference to her where she ended her days,
but that she knew nothing of the estate nor of the roads thither, that
she would have to write from Moscow either for her son’s steward or for a
peasant from that village to guide her by the cross-country roads.
When she was ready and had obtained a guide, she drove off into her exile
in the winter frost, travelling slowly with her own horses, surrounded
by the spies of Arharov, and accompanied by her kind-hearted kinsman,
Laptyev, whom she tried in vain to dissuade from coming and exposing
himself to the persecution of the frenzied autocrat.
But as the foremost symptom of madness is inconsistency, she was here
mistaken: when it was reported to Paul that Laptyev had accompanied her,
he said: ‘He is not such a petticoat as our young men; he knows how to
wear the breeches.’
As a rule far more value is attached to such momentary flashes of humane
feeling in Paul and others than they deserve. What would Paul have done
if all the young men had known ‘how to wear the breeches’ like Laptyev?
he had plenty of Arharovs, Araktcheyevs, and Obolyaninovs to torture
them, fetter them in chains, and send them into exile. (Pahlen and
Bennigsen[72] did show him, however, that there was an even better way to
‘wear the breeches’!)
This approbation of the victim is the final outrage on him, the
miscreant sets his conscience at rest with it. On one occasion, in the
presence of Ségur, Potyomkin gave some colonel a blow, and, recollecting
himself, said to the ambassador: ‘How is one to treat them differently
when they put up with everything?’
And what would Potyomkin’s answer have been, if the colonel had given him
a blow or a challenge?
Princess Dashkov settled in a peasant’s hut. She took another for her
daughter, and a third as a kitchen. To add to the discomforts of this
life in the wilds in winter, exiles from Petersburg to Siberia were
brought by her windows. The figure of one young officer haunted her long
afterwards; he was some distant relative of hers. Learning that she was
here, he wanted to see her. Risky as such an interview was, she received
him. She was shocked to see the convulsive twitching of his face, and how
ill he looked; this was the result of the tortures in which his limbs had
been twisted and dislocated. What had this criminal done? He had said
something about Paul in the barracks, and some one had informed against
him. Yet perhaps he, too, knew how to ‘wear the breeches,’ till his arms
were wrenched out of their sockets.
Before the spring flooding of the rivers, which would have cut off
Princess Dashkov from all communication for a long period, she wrote a
letter to the Empress Marya Feodorovna, and enclosed in it a request for
permission to move to her Kaluga estate. Paul could not have liked the
tone of her letter; she said in it that it was as little to her honour
to write this letter as it was to her Majesty’s to read it, but that
religion and humanity compelled her to make a final effort to save all
her people from this cruel exile.
Paul, as usual, flew into a fury, and gave orders that pen and paper
should be taken from Princess Dashkov, that she should be forbidden all
correspondence, be kept under stricter supervision, and I do not know
what else. ‘It is not so easy,’ he said, ‘to turn me off the throne.’
With these orders a courier was despatched, but the Empress and Madame
Nelidov induced the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovitch to beg his infuriated
father for mercy, and the little boy, with the help of the wife and
mistress, succeeded. Paul took up a pen and wrote: ‘Princess Ekaterina
Romanovna, since you desire to return to your Kaluga estate, I give you
permission for the same. I remain well disposed to you.—PAUL.’
Arharov had to despatch another courier: fortunately the second overtook
the first.
In 1798 Paul suddenly took a fancy to Prince Dashkov, showered undeserved
favours of all sorts upon him, and made him the present of an estate.
Dashkov asked Kurakin to submit to Paul that, instead of an estate, he
would prefer permission for his mother to live where she chose. Paul gave
the permission with the proviso that she should never remain in the same
town where he was.
The mother was forgiven. Now came the son’s turn. A certain Altesti was
tried for misappropriation of public money, but really for being a friend
of Zubov. Dashkov said to Lopuhin that Altesti was innocent. In the
evening he received the following note: ‘Since you meddle in affairs that
have nothing to do with you, I have dismissed you from your duties.—PAUL.’
Dashkov, afraid of worse to follow, went off to his Tambov estate.
At last, on the 12th of March 1801, Paul’s life ‘came to an end,’ as
Princess Dashkov says. With deep emotion and intense joy she learned that
this pernicious man had ceased to exist. ‘How many times,’ she goes on,
‘have I thanked Heaven that Paul exiled me! by so doing he saved me from
the humiliating obligation of appearing at the court of such a sovereign.’
She breathed freely again in the reign of Alexander ... she could appear
at his court without the loss of her human dignity, but she did not feel
at home in the new surroundings. Many things had changed since Catherine
had sent her the tailor’s bill. Princess Dashkov, now an old woman, is
angry with the younger generation surrounding Alexander, and thinks that
they are all Jacobins or martinets.
One pure presence arrested her, and with respectful love, with reverence,
she looked upon her and attached herself to her; sorrowful and
unappreciated, this melancholy being moved thoughtfully through the halls
of the Winter Palace, and vanished like a shadow; she would have been
forgotten, if we did not sometimes come across a well-known picture of
the year 1815, in which the Emperor Alexander and the Empress Elizabeth
are represented as the peacemakers of Europe.
Miss Wilmot has appended to Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs a well-drawn
portrait of the Empress Elizabeth; the unhappy woman is standing with her
arms folded, she looks out mournfully from the paper, a hidden grief and
a sort of perplexity can be seen in her eyes, the whole figure expresses
one thought: ‘I am a stranger here’; indeed, she is holding up her skirt
and wraps as though on the point of departure.
How strange was her destiny, and that of Anna Pavlovna, the wife of the
Tsarevitch!
After the coronation Princess Dashkov saw that there was really no place
for her at the new court, and she began making plans for repose at
Troitskoye. In her honoured seclusion she again became a power.
Friends and relations, celebrities whose fame was waning, and rising
stars visited her.
‘Crossing your threshold
I am back in Catherine’s days.
Taking no share in the world’s hopes and fears,
You at your window stand with mocking gaze
To watch at times the flying wheel of change.
E’en so, withdrawing from the busy whirl
To court the Muses and their idle ease,
In porphyry baths and marble palaces,
Grandees in Rome endured their world’s decay.
And to them from afar the young men came,—
Dictator, consul, tribune, warrior chief—
To rest in peace, to heave luxurious sighs,
Then off at once upon the road again.’
She often visited Moscow. There she was held in the highest respect;
active and inexhaustible, she was seen at balls and dinners, and arrived
there indeed earlier than any. Young ladies trembled at her criticisms
and observations, men sought the honour of being presented to her.
At the other end of Moscow, not far from the Donsky Monastery, another
living monument of the reign of Catherine was passing his last days in a
palace surrounded by gardens. He led a gloomy life, retaining in spite of
his age his athletic frame and savage energy of character. In 1796, with
a scowling brow but unrepentant, he carried all over Petersburg the crown
of the man whom he had murdered; hundreds of thousands of people pointed
the finger at him; his companion, Prince Baryatinsky, turned pale and
nearly fainted; old Orlov merely complained of his gout.
But his sombre life was not to pass uncheered. At his side a gentle,
tender little girl, exceptionally graceful and talented, was growing up.
The haughty old man began to live for her; he became her nurse, petted
her, cared for her, waited on her, and loved her beyond all measure, as
no one but her dead mother could have loved her.
Sitting on his sofa, he made his daughter dance gipsy and Russian dances,
watched her movements with fond tenderness and unspoken pride, sometimes
wiping a tear from eyes which had, dry and cold, looked on so many
horrors.
At last the time came for the old man to bring his treasure out into the
world; but to whom was he to confide her, into what woman’s care was he
to entrust this cherished flower? There was, indeed, one woman whom he
could have trusted, who with her marvellous tact might have directed her
first steps; but they were not on good terms. She had not forgiven him
for the stain he had brought on her revolution forty-two years before.
And now the haughty Alexey Orlov, the Orlov of Chesme,[73] whom even
Paul could not crush, sought the favour of an interview with Princess
Ekaterina Romanovna, and, receiving permission to present his daughter to
her, joyfully hastened to take advantage of it and went with his Annushka
to see her.
Princess Dashkov came in to greet him; bowing, the old man kissed her
hand; both were agitated; at last Princess Dashkov said to him: ‘So many
years have passed since we have met, Count, and so many events have
transformed the world in which we once lived that, indeed, I feel that
we are meeting now as shades in the other world. The presence of this
angel’ (she added, feelingly pressing to her bosom the daughter of her
former enemy) ‘who has brought us together again makes that feeling even
stronger.’ In his delight Orlov kissed the hand of Miss Wilmot, who was
afraid of him, in spite of the fact that she calls him ‘a majestic old
man,’ and saw with surprise the portrait of Catherine on his breast,
framed in nothing but diamonds, and the _heiduks_ standing in the hall,
and with them a dwarf dressed like a jester.
The Count invited Princess Dashkov, and gave one of those fabulous
banquets of which we used to hear traditions in our childhood,
feasts reminiscent of Versailles and the Golden Horde. The gardens
were brilliantly lighted up, the house was thrown open, throngs of
house-serfs in gorgeous masquerade costumes filled the rooms, an
orchestra played, the tables groaned under the viands; in short, a royal
banquet. He had some one now to whom to entrust his daughter!
At the height of the festivities, the father called her, the guests
formed a circle, and she danced, danced with a shawl and danced with a
tambourine in the Russian style. The old father beat time and watched
Princess Dashkov’s face; the old lady was pleased, the crowd was silent
through respect for the father’s rank and the daughter’s extraordinary
grace. ‘She danced,’ says Miss Wilmot, ‘with such simplicity, such
natural charm, such dignity and expression, that her movements seemed her
language.’
After each dance, she ran to her father and kissed his hand. Princess
Dashkov praised her; her father bade her kiss the princess’s hand too.
But he fancied that she was overheated, and with his own hands wrapped
her in a shawl that she might not take cold. At supper, with a blare
of trumpets and kettledrums, the Count, standing, drank the health of
Princess Dashkov. Then followed her favourite Russian songs accompanied
by a full orchestra. Then the strains of the polka were heard, and Orlov
led Princess Dashkov into the drawing-room, where the music of the wind
instruments astonished our Irish girl, who had never before heard serfdom
put to the service of art. At last Princess Dashkov got up to take leave,
and the Count, bowing and kissing her hand, thanked her for honouring his
poor house.
This was how Orlov of Chesme celebrated his reconciliation with old
Princess Dashkov, and this was how the grim, harsh man loved his daughter.
I, too, like Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, am almost reconciled to him.
Savage were the days in which he lived, and savage were his actions; the
Russia of Peter’s creation was still in the melting-pot: let us not judge
him more severely than Princess Dashkov did, and, if the prayers of
parents can do much in the next world, let us forgive Orlov much in this
for his love for his daughter.
Her fate, too, was a strange one.
As a boy I saw her once or twice, then I saw her again in 1841 at
Novgorod; she was living near the Yurev Monastery. Her whole life was one
prolonged, sorrowful penitence for a crime that she had not committed,
one prayer for the remission of her father’s sins, one act of atonement
for them. She could not overcome the horror inspired in her by the murder
of Peter III., and was crushed at the thought of her father’s eternal
punishment. All her mind, all her Orlov energy, she fixed on this one
object, and little by little abandoned herself completely to gloomy
mysticism and superstition. Called by birth, by wealth, and by talent
to one of the foremost positions not only in Russia, but in Europe, she
spent her days with tedious monks, with old bishops, with all sorts of
paralytics, sanctimonious hypocrites, crazy saints. I am told that after
1815 German hereditary princes sought her hand; Alexander showed her
marked attention; she withdrew from the court. Her palace grew emptier
and emptier, and at last sank into complete silence; neither the clatter
of old-fashioned goblets nor the choruses of singers were heard in it,
and no one cared about the cherished racehorses. Only the black figures
of bearded monks moved gloomily about the garden avenues and looked at
the fountains, as though Count Alexey’s funeral were not yet over—and,
indeed, the prayer for the repose of his soul still went on.
In the drawing-room, where she had spun and twirled in the gipsy dance in
her girlish purity, innocent of the significance of the ardent movements
of the Asiatic dance, where smoothly, with downcast eyes, she had danced
with modestly raised hand our languid feminine dances, and where her
terrible father had gazed at her with tears in his eyes, the bigoted
fanatic, Foty,[74] sat now uttering incoherent speeches, and bringing
even greater horror into her crushed soul; the daughter of the haughty
conqueror of Chesme meekly listened to his sinister words, carefully
covering his feet with a shawl, perhaps the very one in which her father
had wrapped her!
‘Anna,’ Foty would say, ‘fetch me water,’ and she ran for water. ‘Now sit
and listen,’ and she sat and listened. Poor woman!
Her palace and gardens in Moscow she presented to the Tsar. What for? I
do not know. The immense estates, the stud-farms, all went to adorn the
Yurev Monastery; thither she transferred, too, her father’s coffin; there
in a special vault a lamp for ever burned, and a prayer was muttered
over him, there her own sarcophagus, still empty when I saw it, was
prepared. In the church twilight, the wealth of the Orlovs, transformed
into rubies, pearls, and emeralds, glitters mournfully in the settings
of ikons and the caps of archimandrites. With them the luckless daughter
tried to bribe the Heavenly Judge.
Catherine had robbed the monasteries of their estates and distributed
them among the Orlovs and her other lovers. What a nemesis!
Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs fail us about this time. The very details of
her interview with Orlov we have taken from the letters of the two Wilmot
sisters.
Miss Mary Wilmot, grieving for the loss of her brother and dull at
home, received an invitation from Princess Dashkov to spend a year or
two with her. Miss Mary did not know the princess personally, but (she
was Mrs. Hamilton’s niece) she had from her childhood heard of this
wonderful woman, had heard how at eighteen she had been at the head of
a conspiracy, how she had dashed on horseback before revolting troops,
how afterwards she had lived in England and stayed in Ireland, had been
President of the Academy, and had written passionate letters to Mrs.
Hamilton. The young girl imagined her something fantastic, ‘a fairy and
partly a witch,’ and for that very reason decided, in 1803, to go to her.
When she reached Troitskoye, however, she felt so scared and homesick
that she would have been glad to return if it had been possible.
A short old lady, in a long dark cloth dress with a star on the left
side, and something like a peaked hat, came to meet her. Round her neck
she had a shabby old kerchief—one damp evening, when out for a walk,
twenty years earlier, Mrs. Hamilton had given her that kerchief, and from
that time forward she had kept it as a holy relic. But if her attire
really was suggestive of a witch, the noble features of her face and the
expression of infinite tenderness in her eyes fascinated the Irish girl
from the first moment. ‘There was so much truth, so much warmth, dignity,
and simplicity in her manner, that I loved her before she said anything.’
Miss Mary was completely under her influence from the first day, was
surprised at it, and angry with herself, but could not resist the
attraction of the splendid old lady. She liked everything in her, even
her broken English, which gave something childlike to her words. ‘Tears
and life,’ she says, ‘have given serenity and softness to her features,
and their expression of pride, of which slight traces still remain, has
been replaced by indulgence.’
But how Princess Dashkov loved her! She loved her passionately, as she
had once loved Catherine. Such freshness of feeling, such feminine
tenderness, such craving for love, such youthfulness of heart, are
astounding at sixty. The solicitude of a mother, the solicitude of
a sister, a lover, are what Miss Mary found at Troitskoye; for her
entertainment Princess Dashkov went to Moscow, took her to balls, showed
her monasteries, presented her to Empresses, adorned her room with
flowers, spent evenings with her reading the letters of Catherine and
other celebrities.
Miss Wilmot begged and besought her to write her Memoirs. ‘And what I
would never do for my relatives or my friends, I am doing for her.’
She wrote her Memoirs for her, and dedicated them to her.
In 1805 Princess Dashkov invited Miss Mary’s sister, Miss Katharine,
who was then in France and was obliged to leave that country, being
persecuted as an Englishwoman. The sisters were not in the least alike.
Mary was a soft, tender creature, delighted to have some one to protect
her, and to nestle under some one’s wing; she attached herself to
Princess Dashkov, as the weak twig to a strong old tree; she calls her
‘my Russian mother’; she came to her from a little town, and had seen
nothing before except her ‘Emerald Isle.’ Her sister, who had lived in
Paris, was lively and hot-tempered, independent in her opinions, clever
and ironical, not particularly loving or tolerant, and rather free in her
speech. Moreover, there was a great deal in Russia that she positively
disliked—and so her letters have for us a special interest of their own.
‘Russia,’ she says, ‘is like a girl of twelve—wild and awkward, who has
been dressed up in a fashionable Parisian hat. We are living here in the
fourteenth or fifteenth century.’[75]
She was far more shocked by serfdom than her kind-hearted sister. In
vain Princess Dashkov pointed out to her the prosperity of her peasants.
‘They are well off,’ writes Miss Katharine, ‘while the princess lives,
but what will happen to them afterwards?’ Every landowner seems to her an
iron link in the fetters of Russia.
In the pitiful cringing, the shameless servility of our society she very
correctly sees the reflection of slavery. With amazement she sees again
in assembly halls and drawing-rooms slaves devoid of all moral feeling
and personal dignity. She is astonished at visitors who dare not sit
down, and stand for hours at a time at the door, shifting from one foot
to the other, till they are dismissed with a nod. ‘The conceptions of
good and evil are in Russia mixed up with the idea of being in favour
or out of favour. A man’s worth is easily ascertained from the address
calendar, and it depends on the Tsar whether a man is unreservedly taken
for a snake or an ass.’
The Moscow grandees did not overawe her with the galaxy of their stars,
with their ponderous dignity and boring dinners.
‘I feel,’ she writes after the festivities of 1806, ‘that I have been
floating all this time among the shades and spirits of Catherine’s
palace. Moscow is the imperial political Elysium of Russia. All the
personages of power and authority in the reigns of Catherine and Paul,
who have long ago been succeeded by others, retire into the luxurious
idleness of this lazy city, maintaining a supposed consequence which is
allowed them out of courtesy. Influence and power have passed years ago
to another generation; nevertheless, the _oberkammerherr_ of the Empress
Catherine, Prince Golitsyn, is still hung all over with orders and
decorations under the burden of which his ninety years are weighed down
to the ground; still, as in the palace of Catherine, a diamond key is
tied to his skeleton, which is dressed in an embroidered kaftan, and he
still majestically accepts tokens of respect from his companion shades
who once shared power and honour with him.
‘By his side is another gaudy _revenant_, Count Osterman, once the great
Chancellor; he is hung with ribbons of every possible colour, red, blue,
and striped; eighty-three years are piled upon his head, but still he
drives his skeleton about with the bones rattling behind a team of six
horses, dines with _heiduks_ waiting at his table, and keeps up the
solemn etiquette by which he was surrounded when he was in power.’ Among
the shades she saw, too, Count Alexey Orlov.
‘The hand that murdered Peter III. is studded with diamonds, among
his gifts from royalty the portrait of the Empress is particularly
conspicuous; Catherine smiles from it in everlasting gratitude.’
Miss Wilmot mentions, too, Korsakov, ‘who might have been taken for a
glittering vision of diamonds,’ Prince Baryatinsky and some other figures
from this world of the past, ‘from which they have retained the habit of
court gossip about important nonentities, haughtiness, vanity, and the
empty bustle in which they find their joy and their sorrow.’
And she concludes with indignation: ‘And yet the open coffin stands at
their tottering feet threatening to consign their paltry existences to
speedy oblivion.’
‘All these old grandees are surrounded by wives, daughters, and
granddaughters, dressed up to the nines, and sitting in gilded
apartments, in patriarchal fashion making their maids dance for their
amusement, and incessantly regaling one on jam. There is something
French in their appearance, and, being brought up by Frenchwomen, they
speak that language well and dress in the latest Parisian mode. But
there is very little real politeness in these ladies; their education is
absolutely superficial, and there is not a trace here of the charming
lightness of French society. When a Moscow lady has scanned you from
head to foot and kissed you five or six times (though twice, one would
think, would be more than enough), has assured you of her everlasting
affection, told you to your face that you are sweet and charming, asked
you the price of everything you have got on, and babbled about the coming
ball at the Hall of the Nobility, she has nothing more to say.’
Both sisters were greatly shocked by the vulgar habit of wearing other
people’s diamonds at balls. Moreover, every one knew whose they were;
thus a Princess Golitsyn used to lend her friends a girdle of diamonds
and a headdress of marvellous beauty that was known to the whole town. On
one occasion she adorned the shoulders of a niece of Princess Dashkov’s
with her jewels; the young lady had completely forgotten that the
princess was to be present; the stern and implacable old lady, it need
hardly be said, detested these displays of other people’s wealth. The
young lady was so terrified at the sight of Princess Dashkov that she
kept out of sight all the evening. But the fatal hour of supper arrived;
Miss Mary, feeling cold, put on her shawl; this struck the young lady as
a way of salvation, and she took hers to conceal the rivers of diamonds
from Princess Dashkov. They sat down, the aunt opposite; the soup tureen
screened the niece a little, but her headdress burnt her like fire.
Princess Dashkov stared at it. Red patches came out on the poor girl’s
face and tears came into her eyes. The princess said not a word.
The sisters, who in many ways disagreed over people and incidents,
are completely at one whenever Princess Dashkov is spoken of. Miss
Katharine’s sarcastic pen loses all its venom when writing of the
princess. We have put her description of her at the beginning of this
account. In it she has shown least appreciation of the tender, womanly
side, for which love was a necessity. This side of her nature was far
better understood by Miss Mary, and yet she abandoned her.
In 1807 Miss Katharine went away. Mary meant to leave a little later. She
was detained by a terrible blow which fell upon Princess Dashkov.
Though the latter loved her son devotedly, she had never quite forgiven
his marriage, and would never receive his wife; she was in correspondence
with her son, however, but did not see him. In spite of all entreaties,
and in particular those of Miss Wilmot, whose influence was so immense,
the mother’s wounded heart, which they had not known how to soften
immediately after the marriage, could not do violence to itself and be
fully reconciled. In 1807, immediately after Princess Dashkov had arrived
in Moscow, her son was taken ill, and a few days later he died.
This was a terrible blow for her, it shortened her life; repentance too
late laid all its irrevocable burden of regret upon her. She sent for her
daughter-in-law. And these women, who had done each other so much harm,
who had never met and had openly and senselessly hated each other, fell
sobbing in each other’s arms, and were reconciled for ever beside the
coffin of the man whom they had so much loved.
Life was shattered for the princess. One consolation was left her—that
was her child, her friend, her ‘Irish daughter,’ and _she_ was preparing
to leave her.
Why she went away I do not understand. It is hard to restrain a feeling
of vexation, seeing how unnecessarily Miss Wilmot abandoned Princess
Dashkov for the sake of her Irish relatives, who played an extremely
limited part in her life, and with whom she must have been very dreary.
Princess Dashkov, frightened of her isolation, wanted to go with her
to Ireland, there to end her existence, ‘which has no heirs and must
die out.’ Miss Wilmot persuaded her not to go and promised to come back
to her. The old woman felt it bitterly. Miss Mary, to spare her, set
off secretly, but, detained in Petersburg by the departure of the ship
and the incredibly stupid police measures taken against the English on
account of the war which had then been declared, she made up her mind to
go back for some months to Moscow; the figure of the old lady with tears
in her eyes rent her heart; she wrote to her of her intention.
Princess Dashkov’s joy and gratitude knew no bounds, and how did she
celebrate the news? She sent to the prison for five men who were there
for debt to be released, and charged them to celebrate a thanksgiving
service for her.
But the bitterness of separation was only deferred; the obstinate
Miss Mary would have her way, and went after all. Princess Dashkov,
heartbroken at parting from her friend, had gone to bed. At night Miss
Wilmot stole quietly once more into her room. The princess, who had been
weeping the whole day, had fallen asleep: ‘The expression of her face was
serene as a child’s. I softly kissed her and went away.’ They never saw
each other again.
The last days of our princess were passed in complete emptiness, through
which those dreary ‘shades’ flitted from time to time, covered with
stars and powder, and growing still more decrepit. Her thoughts were
concentrated on the young girl with a sorrow and dreamy tenderness which
makes the heartache; one has a distinct feeling that this grief must go
uncomforted.
‘What am I to say to you, my beloved child, not to grieve you?’ she
writes on the 25th of October 1809. ‘I am sad, very sad, tears are
flowing from my eyes, and I cannot get used to our separation. I have
built a few bridges. I have planted a few hundred trees, I am told
successfully; all that distracts me for a minute, but my sadness comes
back again.’
On the 29th of October she writes: ‘And how changed everything is in
Troitskoye since you left! The theatre is shut up, there has not been a
single performance, the pianos are mute, and even the maids do not sing.
But why am I telling you this? you are surrounded by your kinsfolk, you
are happy, contented....’
She writes her a few more lines on the 6th of November, and ends her
letter with the English words: ‘God bless you!’ Did Mary know that that
blessing came from a dying hand? Less than two months later, on the 9th
of January 1810, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna was no more.
Five years before her death, on the 22nd of October 1806, she concluded
her Memoirs with these words: ‘With an honest heart and pure intentions I
have had to endure many calamities; I should have been crushed under them
if my conscience had not been clear ... now I look forward without fear
and uneasiness to my approaching dissolution.’
What a woman! What a rich and vigorous life!
BAZAROV
Letter 1
Instead of a letter, dear friend, I am sending you a dissertation, and an
unfinished one too. After our conversation I read over again Pisarev’s
article on Bazarov, which I had quite forgotten, and I am very glad I
did—that is, not that I had forgotten it, but that I read it again. The
article confirms my point of view. In its one-sidedness it is more true
and more worth consideration than its opponents have supposed. Whether
Pisarev has correctly grasped the character of Bazarov as Turgenev meant
it, does not concern me. What does matter is that he has recognised
himself and his comrades in Bazarov, and has added to the portrait what
was lacking in the book. The less Pisarev has adhered to the narrow
framework in which the exasperated ‘Father’ has tried to confine the
obstinate ‘Son,’ the more freely has he been able to treat him as the
expression of his ideal.
‘But what interest can Mr. Pisarev’s ideal have for us? Pisarev is
a smart critic, he has written a great deal, he has written about
everything, sometimes about subjects of which he had knowledge, but all
that does not give his ideal any claim on the attention of the public.’
The point is that it is not his own individual ideal, but the ideal which
both before and since the appearance of Turgenev’s Bazarov has haunted
the younger generation, has been embodied not only in various heroes
in novels and stories, but in living persons who have tried to take
Bazarovism as the basis of their words and actions. What Pisarev says I
have seen and heard myself a dozen times; in the simplicity of his heart,
he has let out the cherished thought of a whole circle and, focussing the
scattered rays on one centre, has shed a light on the typical Bazarov.
To Turgenev, Bazarov is more than alien; to Pisarev, more than a comrade;
to study the type, of course, one must take the view which sees in
Bazarov the desideratum.
Pisarev’s opponents were frightened by his lack of caution; while
denouncing Turgenev’s Bazarov as a caricature, they repudiated even more
violently his transfigured double; they were displeased at Pisarev’s
having put his foot in it, but it does not follow from this that he was
wrong in his interpretation.
Pisarev knows the heart of his Bazarov through and through; he makes
a confession for his hero. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘at the bottom of his
heart Bazarov does accept a great deal of what he denies in words, and,
perhaps, it is just what is accepted and concealed that saves him from
moral degradation and from moral insignificance.’
We regard this indiscreet utterance, which looks so deeply into another
soul, as very important.
Further on, Pisarev describes his hero’s character thus: ‘Bazarov is
extremely proud, but his pride is not noticeable’ (clearly this is not
Turgenev’s Bazarov) ‘just because it is so great. Nothing would satisfy
Bazarov but an _eternity of ever-widening activity and ever-increasing
enjoyment_.’[76]
Bazarov acts everywhere and in everything only as he wishes, or as he
thinks advantageous and convenient; he is guided only by his personal
desire or personal calculation. He acknowledges no Mentor above him,
without himself nor within himself. Before him is no lofty aim, in his
mind is no lofty thought, and with all that his powers are immense. If
Bazarovism is a malady, it is a malady of our age, and will have to run
its course in spite of any amputations or palliatives.
Bazarov looks down on people, and rarely gives himself the trouble,
indeed, to conceal his half-contemptuous and half-patronising attitude
to those who hate and to those who obey him. He loves no one. He thinks
it quite unnecessary to put any constraint on himself whatever. There
are two sides to his cynicism, an internal and an external, the cynicism
of thought and feeling and the cynicism of manner and expression. The
essence of his inner cynicism lies in an ironical attitude to feeling of
every sort, to dreaminess, to poetical enthusiasm. The harsh expression
of this irony, the causeless and aimless roughness of manner, are part of
his external cynicism. Bazarov is not merely an empiricist; he is also
an unkempt Bursch. Among the admirers of Bazarov there will doubtless be
some who will be delighted with his rude manners, the vestiges left by
his rough student life, and will imitate those manners, which are in any
case a defect and not a virtue.[77] Such people are most often evolved
in the grey environment of hard work: stern work coarsens the hands,
coarsens the manners, coarsens the feelings; the man is toughened, casts
off youthful dreaminess, and gets rid of tearful sentimentality; there
is no possibility of dreaming at work; the hard-working man looks upon
idealism as a folly peculiar to the idleness and soft self-indulgence of
the well-to-do, he reckons moral sufferings as imaginary, moral impulses
and heroic deeds as far-fetched and absurd. He feels a repulsion for
high-flown talk.’
Then Pisarev draws the genealogical tree of Bazarov: the Onyegins and
Petchorins begat the Rudins and the Beltovs,[78] the Rudins and the
Beltovs begat Bazarov. (Whether the Decembrists are omitted intentionally
or unintentionally I do not know.) The bored and disillusioned are
succeeded by men who strive to act, life rejects them both as worthless
and incomplete. ‘It is sometimes their lot to suffer, but they never
succeed in getting anything done. Society is deaf and inexorable to them.
They are incapable of adapting themselves to its conditions, not one
of them ever rises so high as head clerk of a government office. Some
are consoled by becoming professors and working for future generations.
Their negative usefulness is incontestable. They increase the numbers of
men incapable of practical activity, in consequence of which practical
activity itself, or more precisely the forms in which it usually finds
expression now, slowly but steadily sink lower in public esteem.’
‘It seemed (after the Crimean War) that Rudinism was over, that the
period of fruitless ideals and yearnings was succeeded by a period of
seething and useful activity. But the illusion has faded. The Rudins have
not become practical workers, and a new generation has come forward from
behind them and taken up a reproachful and ironical attitude towards its
predecessors. “What are you whining about, what are you seeking, what
are you asking from life? You want happiness, I suppose? I daresay you
do! Happiness has to be fought for. If you are strong, take it. If you
are weak, hold your tongue; we feel sick enough without your whining!”
A gloomy, concentrated energy is expressed in this unfriendly attitude
of the younger generation to their Mentors. In their conceptions of good
and evil the young generation and the best men of the preceding one
are alike, the sympathies and antipathies of both are the same; they
desire the same thing, but the men of the past generation were in an
everlasting fuss and ferment. The men of to-day are not in a fuss, they
are not trying to find anything, they will not give in to any compromise,
and they hope for nothing. They are as helpless as the Rudins, but they
recognise their helplessness. “I cannot act now,” each of these new men
thinks, “and I am not going to try. I despise everything that surrounds
me, and I am not going to conceal my contempt. I shall enter on the
battle with evil when I feel myself strong.” Having no possibility
of acting, men begin to reflect and investigate. Superstitions and
authorities are torn to shreds, and the philosophy of life is completely
cleared of all sorts of fantastic conceptions. It is nothing to them
whether the public is following in their footsteps. They are full of
themselves, of their own inner life. In short, the Petchorins had will
without understanding, the Rudins understanding without will, the
Bazarovs both understanding and will. Thought and action are blended in
one firm whole.’
As you see, there is everything here (if there is no mistake), both
character-drawing and classification. All is brief and clear, the sum is
added up, the bill is presented, and perfectly correctly from the point
of view from which the author has attacked the question.
But we do not accept this bill, and we protest from our premature coffins
which have not yet arrived, though bespoken. We are not Charles V., and
have no desire to be buried alive.
How strange has been the fate of _Fathers and Children_! That Turgenev
created Bazarov with no idea of patting him on the head is clear; that
he meant to do something for the ‘Fathers’ is clear too. But when he
came to deal with such pitiful and worthless ‘Fathers’ as the Kirsanovs,
Turgenev was carried away by Bazarov in spite of his harshness, and
instead of thrashing the son he chastised the fathers.
And so it has come to pass that some of the younger generation have
recognised themselves in Bazarov. But we entirely fail to recognise
ourselves in the Kirsanovs, just as we did not recognise ourselves in
the Manilovs nor the Sobakevitches, although Manilovs and Sobakevitches
existed all over the place in the days of our youth, and are existing now.
Whole herds of moral freaks live at the same date in different layers
of society and in its different currents; undoubtedly they represent
more or less general types, but they do not represent the most striking
and characteristic side of their generation, the side which most fully
expresses its force. Pisarev’s Bazarov is, in a one-sided sense, to a
certain extent the extreme type of what Turgenev called the ‘Sons’; while
the Kirsanovs are the most commonplace and ordinary representatives of
the ‘Fathers.’
Turgenev was more of an artist in his novel than is thought, and that is
why he turned out of his course, and to my thinking he did well in so
doing—he meant to go one way, and he went another and a better one.
He might just as well have sent his Bazarov to London. That insignificant
creature, Pisemsky, did not shrink from travelling expenses for his
sorely tried freaks. We could perhaps have shown Bazarov on the banks of
the Thames that, without rising to the post of head clerk of an office,
one might do quite as much good as any head of a department; that society
is not always deaf and inexorable when the protest finds a response; that
action does sometimes succeed; that the Rudins and the Beltovs sometimes
have will and perseverance; and that, seeing the impossibility of
carrying on the work to which they are urged by their inner impulse, they
have forsaken many things, gone abroad, and without ‘fuss and ferment’
have established a Russian printing-press, and are carrying on a Russian
propaganda. The influence of the London press from 1856 to the end of
1863 is not merely a practical fact, but an historical fact. It cannot be
effaced, it has to be accepted. In London Bazarov would have seen that it
was only from a distance that we seemed to be waving our arms in despair,
and that in reality we were keeping our hands hard at work. Perhaps his
wrath would have been changed to lovingkindness, and he would have given
up treating us with ‘reproach and irony.’
I frankly confess this throwing of stones at one’s predecessors is very
distasteful to me. I repeat what I have said already: ‘I should like to
save the younger generation from historical ingratitude, and even from
historical error. It is high time that the fathers gave up devouring
their children like Saturn, but it is time the children ceased to follow
the example of those savages who slaughter their old people. Surely it
is not right that only in natural science the phases and degrees of
development, the variations and the deviations, even the _avortements_,
should be studied, accepted, considered _sine ira et studio_, while as
soon as one approaches history the physiological method is abandoned,
and the methods of the Criminal Court and the House of Correction are
adopted.’
The Onyegins and Petchorins have passed away.
The Rudins and the Beltovs are passing.
The Bazarovs will pass ... and very quickly, as a matter of fact. It is a
too artificial, bookish, overstrained type to persist for long.
A type has already tried to thrust himself forward to replace him, one
rotten in the spring of his days, the type of the orthodox student,
the conservative patriot trained at Government expense, in whom
everything loathsome in Imperial Russia was incarnate, though even he
felt embarrassed after serenading the Iversky Madonna, and singing a
thanksgiving service to Katkov.
All the types that arise pass, and all, in virtue of the law of the
conservation of energy which we have learnt to recognise in the physical
world, persist and will spring up in different forms in the future
progress of Russia and in her future organisation.
And so would it not be more interesting, instead of pitting Bazarov
against Rudin, to analyse what are the salient points connecting them,
and what are the reasons of their appearing and their transformation?
Why have precisely these forms of development been called forth by our
life, and why have they passed one into the other in this way? Their
dissimilarity is obvious, but in some respects they are alike. Typical
characters readily pounce on distinctions, exaggerate the angles and
prominent features for the sake of emphasising them, paint the barriers
in vivid colours, and tear apart the bonds. The shades are lost and unity
is left far away, hidden in mist, like the plain that joins the foot
of the mountains, whose tops, far apart from each other, are brightly
lighted up. Moreover, we load on the shoulders of these types more than
they can carry, and ascribe to them in life a significance they have
not had, or have only in a limited sense. To take Onyegin as the finest
type of the intellectual life of the period between 1820 and 1830, as
the integral of all the tendencies and activities of the class then
awakening, would be quite a mistake, although he does represent one of
the aspects of the life of that time.
The type of that period, one of the most splendid types of modern
history, was the Decembrist and not Onyegin. He could not be touched by
Russian literature for all these forty years, but he is not the less for
that.
How is it the younger generation have not the clearness of vision, the
imagination, or the heart to grasp the grandeur and the virtue of those
brillant young men who emerged from the ranks of the Guards, those
spoilt darlings of wealth and high rank who left their drawing-rooms and
their piles of gold to demand the rights of man, to protest, to make
a statement for which—and they knew it—the hangman’s rope and penal
servitude awaited them? It is a melancholy and puzzling question.
To resent the fact that these men appeared in the one class in which
there was some degree of culture, of leisure, and of security, is
senseless. If these ‘princes, boyars, voyevods,’ these secretaries of
state and colonels, had not been awakened by moral hunger, but had waited
to be aroused by bodily hunger, there would have been no whining and
restless Rudins, nor Bazarovs, priding themselves on their combination
of will and knowledge: in their place there would have been a regimental
doctor who would have done the soldiers to death, robbing them of
their rations and medicines, and have sold the death certificate to a
Kirsanov’s bailiff when he had flogged a peasant to death, or there
would have been a court clerk taking bribes, for ever drunk, fleecing
the peasants of their quarter-roubles, and handing overcoat and goloshes
to his Excellency, a Kirsanov and Governor of the province; and what is
more, serfdom would not have received its death-blow, nor would there
have been any of that underground activity under the heavy heel of
authority, gnawing away the imperial ermine and the quilted dressing-gown
of the landowners. It was fortunate that, side by side with men who found
their gentlemanly pastimes in the kennels and the serfs’ quarters, in
outraging and flogging at home and in cringing servility in Petersburg,
there were some whose ‘pastime’ it was to tear the rod out of their
hands and fight for freedom, not for licence but freedom for mind, for
human life. Whether this pastime of theirs was their serious work, their
passion, they showed on the gallows and in prison ... they showed it,
too, when they came back after thirty years spent in Siberia.
If the type of the Decembrist has been reflected at all in literature, it
is—faintly but with kindred features—in Tchatsky.[79]
His exasperated, bitter feeling, his youthful indignation, betray a
healthy impulse to action; he feels what it is he is displeased with, he
beats his head against the stone wall of social conventions and tries
whether the prison bars are strong. Tchatsky was on the straight road for
penal servitude, and if he survived the 14th of December he certainly
did not turn into a passively suffering or proudly contemptuous person.
He would have been more likely to rush into some indignant extreme, like
Tchaadayev, to become a Catholic, a Slav-hater or a Slavophil, but he
would not in any case have abandoned his propaganda, which he did not
abandon either in the drawing-room of Famussov or in his entrance-hall,
and he would not have comforted himself with the thought that ‘his hour
had not yet come.’ He had that restless energy which cannot endure to be
out of harmony with what surrounds it, and must either crush it or be
crushed. This is the ferment which makes stagnation in history impossible
and clears away the scum on its flowing but dilatory wave.
If Tchatsky had survived the generation that followed the 14th of
December in fear and trembling, and grown up crushed by terror,
humiliated and suppressed, he would have stretched across it a warm hand
of greeting to us. With us Tchatsky would have come back to his natural
surroundings. These _rimes croisées_ across the generations are not
uncommon even in zoology. And it is my profound conviction that we should
meet Bazarov’s children with sympathy and they us ‘without bitterness and
sarcasm.’ Tchatsky could not have lived with his hands folded, neither
in capricious peevishness nor in haughty self-admiration; he was not old
enough to find pleasure in grumbling sulkiness, nor young enough to enjoy
the conceit and self-sufficiency of adolescence. The whole character of
the man lies in this restless ferment, this leaven of energy. But it is
just that aspect that displeases Bazarov, it is that that incenses his
proud stoicism. ‘Keep quiet in your corner if you have not the strength
to do anything; it is sickening enough as it is without your whining,’ he
says; ‘if you are beaten, well, stay beaten.... You have enough to eat;
as for your weeping, that’s just an idle diversion’ ... and so on.
Pisarev was bound to speak in that way for Bazarov; the part he played
required it.
It is hard not to play a part so long as it is liked. Take off Bazarov’s
uniform, make him forget the jargon he uses, let him be free to utter one
word simply, without posing (he so hates affectation!), let him for one
minute forget his bristling duty, his artificially frigid language, his
rôle of castigator, and within an hour we should understand each other in
all the rest.
In their conceptions of good and evil the new generation are like the
old. Their sympathies and antipathies, says Pisarev, are the same;
what they desire is the same thing ... at the bottom of their hearts
the younger generation accept much that they reject in words. It would
be quite easy then to come to terms. But until he is stripped of his
ceremonial trappings Bazarov consistently demands from men who are
crushed under every burden on earth, outraged, tortured, deprived both of
sleep and of all possibility of action when awake, that they should not
speak of their misery; there is a smack of Araktcheyev about it.
What reason is there to deprive Lermontov, for instance, of his bitter
lamentation, his upbraidings of his own generation which sent a shock of
horror through so many? Would the prison-house of Nicholas be really
any better if the gaolers had been as irritably nervous and carping as
Bazarov and had suppressed those voices.
‘But what are they for? What is the use of them?’ ‘Why does a stone make
a sound when it is hit with a hammer?’
‘It cannot help it.’
And why do these gentlemen suppose that men can suffer for whole
generations without speech, complaint, indignation, cursing, protest? If
complaint is not of use for others, it is for those who complain; the
expression of sorrow eases the pain. ‘_Ihm_,’ says Goethe, ‘_gab ein Gott
zu sagen, was er leidet._’
‘But what has it to do with us?’
Nothing to do with you, perhaps, but something to do with others, maybe;
moreover, you must not lose sight of the fact that every generation
lives for itself also. From the point of view of history it leads on to
something else, but in relation to itself it is the goal, and it cannot,
it ought not to endure without a murmur the afflictions that befall it,
especially when it has not even the consolation which Israel had in
the expectation of the Messiah, and has no idea that from the seed of
the Onyegins and the Rudins will be born a Bazarov. In reality, what
drives our young people to fury is that in our generation _our_ craving
for activity, _our_ protest against the existing order of things was
_differently_ expressed from theirs, and that the motive of both was not
always and completely dependent on cold and hunger.
Is not this passion for uniformity another example of the same
irritable spirit which has made of formality and routine the one thing
of consequence and reduced military evolutions to the goose-step?
That side of the Russian character is responsible for the development
of Araktcheyevism, civil and military. Every personal, individual
manifestation or deviation was regarded as disobedience, and excited
persecution and incessant bullying. Bazarov leaves no one in peace; he
provokes every one with his scorn. Every word of his is a reproof from
a superior to a subordinate. There is no future before that. ‘If,’ says
Pisarev, ‘Bazarovism is the malady of our age, it will have to run its
course.’ By all means. This malady is only in place before the end of the
university course; like teething, it is quite unseemly in the full-grown.
The worst service Turgenev did Bazarov was putting him to death by typhus
because he did not know how to get rid of him. That is an _ultima ratio_
which no one can withstand; had Bazarov been saved from typhus, he would
certainly have grown out of Bazarovism, at any rate in science, which he
loved and prized, and which does not change its methods, whether frog or
man, embryology or history, is its subject.
‘Bazarov rejected every sort of convention, and was nevertheless an
extremely uncultured man. He had heard something about poetry, something
about art, and, without troubling himself to think, abruptly passed
sentence on the subject of which he knew nothing. This conceit is
characteristic of us Russians in general; it has its good points, such as
intellectual daring, but at times it leads us into crude errors.’
Science would have saved Bazarov; he would have ceased to look down on
people with deep and unconcealed contempt. Science even more than the
Gospel teaches us humility. She cannot look down on anything, she does
not know what superiority means, she despises nothing, is never false for
the sake of a pose, and conceals nothing to produce an effect. She stops
short at the facts to investigate, sometimes to heal, never to punish,
still less with hostility and irony.
Science—I anyway am not compelled to keep some words hidden in the
silence of the spirit—science is love, as Spinoza said of thought and
vision.
Letter 2
What has been leaves an imprint by means of which science sooner or later
restores the past in its fundamental features. All that is lost is the
particular atmosphere in which it has occurred. Apotheoses and calumnies,
partialities and envies, all fade and are blown away. The faint track
on the sand vanishes; the imprint which has force and persistence
stamps itself on the rock and will be brought to light by the honest
investigator.
Connections, degrees of kinship, testators and heirs, and their mutual
rights, will all be revealed by the heraldry of science.
Only goddesses are born without predecessors, like Venus from the foam of
the sea. Minerva, more intelligent, sprang from the ready head of Jupiter.
The Decembrists are our noble fathers, the Bazarovs our prodigal sons.
The heritage we received from the Decembrists was the awakened feeling
of human dignity, the striving for independence, the hatred for slavery,
the respect for Western Europe and for the Revolution, the faith in the
possibility of an upheaval in Russia, the passionate desire to take part
in it, the youth and freshness of our energies.
All that has been recast and moulded into new forms, but the foundations
are untouched.
What has our generation bequeathed to the coming one? Nihilism.
Let us recall the position of affairs a little.
Somewhere about 1840 our life began to force its way out more vigorously,
like steam from under a closed lid. A scarcely perceptible change passed
all over Russia, the change by which the doctor discerns before he can
fully account for it that there is a turn for the better, that the
patient’s strength, though very weak, is reviving—there is a different
_tone_. Somewhere inwardly in the moral invisible world there is the
breath of a different air, more stimulating and healthier. Externally
everything was deathlike under the ice of Nicholas’s government, but
something was stirring in the mind and the conscience—a feeling of
uneasiness, of dissatisfaction. The terror had grown weaker, men were
sick of the twilight of the kingdom of darkness.
I saw that change with my own eyes, when I came back from exile, first
in Moscow, afterwards in Petersburg. But I saw it in the literary and
scientific circles.
Another man, whose Baltic antipathy for the Russian movement places
him beyond the suspicion of partiality, described not so long ago how,
returning at that period to the Petersburg aristocracy of the barracks
after an absence of some years, he was puzzled at the decline of
discipline. Aides-de-camp and colonels of the Guards were murmuring, were
criticising the measures taken by the Government, and were displeased
with Nicholas himself. He was so overwhelmed, distressed, and alarmed for
the future of the Autocracy that in the tribulation of his spirit he felt
when dining with the aide-de-camp B., almost in the presence of Dubbelt
himself, that Nihilism had been born between the cheese and the dessert.
He did not recognise the new-born spirit, but the new-born spirit was
there. The machine wound up by Nicholas had begun to give way; he turned
the screw the other way and every one felt it; some spoke, others kept
silent and forbade speech, but all knew that things were really going
wrong, that every one was oppressed, and that this oppression would bring
no good to any one.
Laughter played its part too; laughter, never a good companion for any
religion, and Autocracy is a religion. The vileness and degradation
of the lower ranks of the officials had reached such a pitch that the
Government abandoned them to the satirist. Nicholas, roaring with
laughter in his box at the Mayor and his Derzhimorda,[80] helped the
propaganda, never guessing that after the approval of the Most High the
mockery would soon be promoted to the higher ranks.
It is difficult to apply Pisarev’s rubrics to this period without
modification. Everything in life consists of _nuances_, hesitations,
cross-currents, ebbing and flowing, and not of disconnected fragments. At
what point did the men of will without knowledge cease to be and the men
of knowledge without will begin?
Nature resolutely eludes classification, even classification by age.
Lermontov was in years a contemporary of Byelinsky; he was at the
university when we were, but he died in the hopeless pessimism of the
Petchorin movement, against which the Slavophils and ourselves alike rose
in opposition.
And by the way, I have mentioned the Slavophils. Where are Homyakov
and his brethren to be put? What had they—will without knowledge, or
knowledge without will? Yet the position they filled was no trifling one
in the modern development of Russia, they left a deep imprint on the life
of that time. Or in what levy of recruits shall we put Gogol, and by what
standard? He had not knowledge, whether he had will I don’t know, I doubt
it; but he had genius, and his influence was colossal.
And so, leaving aside the _lapides crescunt, planta crescunt et vivunt_
... of Pisarev, let us pass on.
There were no secret societies, but the secret agreement of those who
understood was immense. Circles consisting of men who had felt the
bear’s claw of the Government on their own persons, more or less, kept a
vigilant watch on their membership. Every action was impossible, even a
word must be masked, but great was the power of speech, not only of the
printed but even more of the spoken word, less easily detected by the
police.
Two batteries were quickly moved forward. Journalism became propaganda.
At the head of it, in the full flush of his youthful strength, stood
Byelinsky. University lecture-rooms were transformed into pulpits,
lectures into the preaching of humane culture; the personality of
Granovsky, surrounded by young professors, became more and more prominent.
Then all at once another outburst of laughter. Strange laughter, terrible
laughter, the laughter of hysteria, in which were mingled shame and
pangs of conscience, and perhaps not the tears that follow laughter, but
the laughter that follows tears. The absurd, monstrous, narrow world of
_Dead Souls_ could not endure it; it sank and began to disappear. And the
propaganda went on gathering strength ... always unchanged; tears and
laughter and books and speech and Hegel[81] and history—all roused men to
the consciousness of their position, to a feeling of horror for serfdom
and for their own lack of rights, everything pointed them on to science
and culture, to the purging of thought from all the litter of tradition,
to the freeing of conscience and reason. That period saw the first dawn
of Nihilism—that complete freedom from all established conceptions, from
all the inherited obstructions and barriers which hinder the Western
European mind from advancing in its historical fetters, from taking a
step forward.
The silent work of the ’forties was cut short all at once. A time even
blacker and more oppressive than the beginning of Nicholas’s reign
followed upon the revolution of February. Byelinsky died before the
beginning of the persecution. Granovsky envied him and wanted to leave
Russia.
A dark night that lasted seven years fell upon Russia, and in it that
intellectual outlook, that way of thinking that is called Nihilism, took
shape, developed, and gained a firm hold on the Russian mind.
Nihilism (I repeat what I said lately in _The Bell_) is logic without
structure, it is science without dogmas, it is the unconditional
submission to experience and the resigned acceptance of all consequences,
whatever they may be, if they follow from observation, or are required
by reason. Nihilism does not transform something into nothing, but shows
that nothing which has been taken for something is an optical illusion,
and that every truth, however it contradicts our fantastic ideas, is more
wholesome than they are, and is in any case what we are in duty bound
to accept. Whether the name is appropriate or not does not matter. We
are accustomed to it; it is accepted by friend and foe, it has become a
police label, it has become a denunciation, an insult with some, a word
of praise with others. Of course, if by Nihilism we are to understand
destructive creativeness, that is, the turning of facts and thoughts
into nothing, into barren scepticism, into haughty passivity, into the
despair which leads to inaction, then true Nihilists are the last people
to be included in the definition, and one of the greatest Nihilists
will be Turgenev, who flung the first stone at them, and another will
be perhaps his favourite philosopher, Schopenhauer. When Byelinsky,
after listening to one of his friends, who explained at length that the
_spirit_ attains self-consciousness in man, answered indignantly: ‘So, I
am not conscious for my own sake, but for the spirit’s?... Why should I
be taken advantage of? I had better not think at all; what do I care for
its consciousness?...’ he was a Nihilist.
When Bakunin convicted the Berlin professors of being afraid of negation,
and the Parisian revolutionaries of 1848 of conservatism, he was a
Nihilist in the fullest sense.
All these discriminations and jealous reservations lead as a rule to
nothing but artificial antagonism.
When the Petrashevsky group were sent to penal servitude for ‘trying to
uproot all laws, human and divine, and to destroy the foundations of
society,’ in the words of their sentence, the terms of which were stolen
from the inquisitorial notes of Liprandi, they were Nihilists. Since then
Nihilism has broadened out, has to some extent become doctrinaire, has
absorbed a great deal from science, and has produced leaders of immense
force and immense talent. All that is beyond dispute. But it has brought
forth no new principles. Or if it has, where are they? I await an answer
to this question from you, or perhaps from some one else, and then I will
continue.
THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE AND SOCIALISM
_A Letter to J. Michelet_
This letter was first published at Nice in 1851, but only
circulated in Piedmont and Switzerland, as the French police
seized almost the whole edition in Marseilles.
Dear Sir,—You hold so high a position in the esteem of all thinking
men, and every word which comes from your noble pen is received by the
European democracy with such complete and deserved confidence, that I
cannot keep silent in a matter that touches upon my deepest convictions.
I cannot leave unanswered the description of the Russian people which you
have included in your legend of Kosciuszko.[82]
This answer is necessary for another reason also. The time has come to
show Europe that when they speak about Russia they are not speaking of
something absent, defenceless, deaf and dumb.
We who have left Russia, only that free Russian speech may be heard at
last in Europe, we are on the spot and deem it our duty to raise our
voice when a man wielding an immense and deserved authority asserts that
‘Russia does not exist, Russians are not men, they are devoid of moral
significance.’
If by this you mean official Russia, the parade-Tsardom, the
Byzantine-German Government, then you are right. We agree beforehand
with everything that you tell us; it is not for us to play the part of
champion there. The Russian Government has so many agents in the press
that there will never be a lack of eloquent apologies for its doings.
But not official society alone is dealt with in your work; you touch on a
deeper question; you speak of the people itself.
Poor Russian people! There is no one to raise a voice in its defence!
Judge whether I can in duty be silent.
The Russian people, my dear sir, is alive, strong, and not old; on the
contrary, indeed, very young. Men do die even in youth, it does happen,
but it is not the normal thing.
The past of the Russian people is obscure, its present is terrible,
but it has claims on the future. It does not _believe_ in its present
position; it has the temerity to expect the more from time, since it has
received so little hitherto.
The most difficult period for the Russian people is drawing to its close.
A terrible conflict awaits it; its enemies are making ready.
The great question, ‘to be or not to be,’ will soon be decided for
Russia, but it is a sin to despair of success before the fight has begun.
The Russian question is assuming immense and fearful proportions; it is
the object of interest and anxiety to all parties; but I think that too
much attention is paid to Imperial Russia, to official Russia, and too
little to the Russia of the people, to voiceless Russia.
Even looking at Russia solely from the point of view of its Government,
do you not think it would be as well to become more closely acquainted
with this inconvenient neighbour who makes himself felt throughout the
whole of Europe, in one place with bayonets, in another with spies? The
Russian Government extends its influence to the Mediterranean by its
protection of the Ottoman Porte, to the Rhine by its protection of its
German uncles and connections, to the Atlantic by its protection of
_order_ in France.
It would not be amiss, I maintain, to appraise at its true value this
universal protector, to inquire whether this strange realm is destined
to play no other part than the repulsive one assumed by the Petersburg
Government, the part of a barrier continually thrown up on the path of
human progress.
Europe is approaching a terrible cataclysm. The mediaeval world is
falling into ruins. The feudal world is drawing to a close. Political and
religious revolutions are flagging under the burden of their impotence;
they have accomplished great things, but have not carried out their
tasks. They have destroyed faith in the Throne and the Altar, but have
not established freedom; they have kindled in men’s hearts desires which
they are incapable of satisfying. Parliamentarianism, Protestantism,
are only stop-gaps, temporary havens, weak bulwarks against death and
resurrection. Their day is over. Since 1849 it has been grasped that
petrified Roman law, subtle casuistry, thin philosophic deism, and barren
religious rationalism are all equally powerless to hold back the workings
of destiny.
The storm is approaching, it is impossible to avert it. Revolutionaries
and reactionaries are at one about that. All men’s minds are perturbed;
the oppressive, vital question lies heavy on the hearts of all. With
growing uneasiness all men ask themselves whether there is still strength
for recovery in old Europe, that decrepit Proteus, that decaying
organism. The answer to that question is awaited with horror, and the
suspense is terrible.
Indeed, it is a fearful question! Will old Europe have the power to
infuse new blood into its veins and fling itself into the boundless
future to which it is drawn by an invincible force, to which it is
being borne headlong, the path to which is perhaps over the ruins of
its ancestral home, over the fragments of past civilisations, over the
trampled riches of modern culture?
On both sides the full gravity of the moment has been understood; Europe
is plunged in dim, stifling gloom, on the eve of the momentous conflict.
It is not life, but an oppressive, agitating suspense. There is no regard
for law, no justice, no personal freedom even; everywhere the sway of the
secular inquisition is supreme; instead of order upheld by law, there is
a state of siege, all are governed by a single feeling—fear, and there
is plenty of it. Every question is thrown into the background before the
all-devouring interests of the reaction. Governments, apparently most
hostile, are united into a single world-wide police. The Russian Emperor,
without concealing his hatred for the French, rewards the Prefect of the
Parisian police; the King of Naples bestows a decoration on the President
of the Republic. The Prussian King, donning the Russian uniform, hastens
to Warsaw to embrace his foe, the Emperor of Austria, in the gracious
presence of Nicholas; while the latter, the schismatic of the one Church
of salvation, proffers his aid to the Pope of Rome. In the midst of these
Saturnalia, in the midst of this Sabbath of the reaction, nothing is left
to safeguard freedom from the caprices of tyranny. Even the guarantees
which exist in undeveloped societies, in China, in Persia, are no longer
respected in the capitals of the so-called civilised world.
One can hardly believe one’s eyes. Can this be the Europe which once we
knew and loved?
Indeed, if it were not for free and haughty England, ‘that jewel set in
a silver sea,’ as Shakespeare calls it, if Switzerland were, like Peter,
in fear of Caesar, to renounce its principles, if Piedmont, that branch
still left of Italy, that last refuge of freedom, which has been hunted
beyond the Alps, and cannot cross the Apennines, were led astray by the
example of her neighbours, if those three countries were infected by the
spirit of death that breathes from Paris and Vienna, it might be thought
that the Conservatives had succeeded already in bringing the old world
to its final dissolution, that the days of barbarism had already returned
in France and Germany.
In the midst of this chaos, in the midst of these pangs of death and
agonies of birth, in the midst of a world falling into dust about the
cradle of the future, men’s eyes involuntarily turn to the East.
There a hostile, menacing empire is seen standing out behind the mists,
like a dark mountain; at times it seems as though it is falling upon
Europe like an avalanche, that like an impatient heir it is ready to
hasten her tardy death.
This empire, absolutely unknown two hundred years ago, has suddenly made
its appearance, and with no right to do so, with no invitation, has
loudly and bluntly raised its voice in the council of European Powers,
demanding a share in the booty, won without its assistance.
No one has dared to oppose its pretensions to interfere in the affairs
of Europe. Charles XII. tried to do so, but his sword, till then
invincible, was broken; Frederick II. attempted to resist the claims of
the Petersburg Court; Königsberg and Berlin became the prey of the foe
from the North. Napoleon, with half a million men, penetrated to the very
heart of the giant, and stole away alone in the first peasant sledge
he came upon. Europe gazed with astonishment at Napoleon’s flight, at
the crowds of Cossacks racing in pursuit of him, at the Russian troops
marching to Paris, and giving the Germans their national independence
by way of alms on the road. Since then Russia has lain like a vampire
over the fate of Europe, watching the mistakes of rulers and peoples.
Yesterday she almost crushed Austria, assisting her against Hungary;
to-morrow she will proclaim Brandenburg a Russian province to appease the
Prussian King.
Is it credible that on the very eve of conflict nothing is known of this
combatant? Yet he stands already menacing, fully armed, prepared to cross
the frontier at the first summons of reaction. And meanwhile men scarcely
know his weapons, or the colour of his flag, and are satisfied with his
official speeches and the vague, incongruous tales that are told of him.
Some tell us only of the unlimited power of the Tsar, of the capricious
tyranny of his Government, of the slavish spirit of his subjects; others
assert, on the contrary, that the Imperialism of Petersburg has nothing
in common with the people, that this people, crushed under the twofold
despotism of the Government and the landowners, bears the yoke, but is
not resigned to it, that it is not crushed, but only unfortunate, and
at the same time declare that it is this very people which gives unity
and power to the colossal Tsardom that crushes it. Some add that the
Russian people is a _contemptible rabble of drunkards and knaves_; others
maintain that Russia is inhabited by a competent and richly gifted race.
It seems to me that there is something tragic in the senile heedlessness
with which the old world mixes up the different accounts it hears of its
antagonist. In this confusion of contradictory opinions there is apparent
so much senseless repetition, such distressing superficiality, such
petrified prejudice, that we are involuntarily moved to a comparison with
the days of the fall of Rome.
Then, too, on the eve of catastrophe, on the eve of the victory of the
barbarians, men loudly proclaimed the eternity of Rome, the impotent
madness of the Nazarenes, and the insignificance of the movement that was
arising in the barbarian world.
You have performed a great service: you first in France have spoken of
the Russian people, you have, unawares, touched on the very heart, the
very source of life. The truth would have been revealed to your eyes at
once, if you had not, in a moment of anger, pulled back your outstretched
hand, if you had not turned away from the source because its waters were
not clear.
I read your bitter words with deep distress, with melancholy, with
anguish in my heart. I confess I looked in vain in them for the
historian, the philosopher, and, above all, the tender-hearted man whom
we all know and love. I hasten to explain, I fully understood the cause
of your indignation; sympathy for unhappy Poland prompted your words. We,
too, deeply cherish this feeling for our Polish brothers, and in us the
feeling is not merely one of pity, but of shame, and pangs of conscience.
Love for Poland! We all love her, but is it necessary to combine with
that feeling hatred for another people as unhappy, a people forced to
aid with its fettered hands the misdeeds of its savage Government? Let
us be magnanimous, let us not forget that before our eyes the nation
decked with all the trophies of recent revolution has consented to the
establishment of _order_ in Rome like that in Warsaw. And to-day ... look
yourself what is going on about you ... yet we do not say that the French
_have ceased to be men_.
It is time to forget this unhappy conflict between brothers. Among us
there is no conqueror. Poland and Russia are crushed by a common foe.
Even the victims and the martyrs turn their backs upon the past, which is
equally sorrowful for them and for us. I, like you, appeal to your friend
the great poet, Mickiewicz.
Do not say of the Polish bard’s opinions that they are ‘due to
mercifulness, a sacred delusion.’ No; they are the fruits of long and
conscientious thought and a profound understanding of the destinies of
the Slav world. The forgiveness of enemies is a glorious achievement,
but there is an achievement still more glorious, more humane; that is,
the understanding of enemies, for understanding is at once forgiveness,
justification, reconciliation.
The Slav world is striving towards unity; that tendency became apparent
immediately after the Napoleonic period. The idea of a Slavonic
federation had already taken shape in the revolutionary plans of Pestel
and Muravyov. Many Poles had a hand in the Russian conspiracy of December
1825.
When the Revolution of 1830 broke out in Warsaw, the Russian people
displayed not the slightest animosity against the disobedient subjects
of their Tsar. The young were in complete sympathy with the Poles. I
remember with what impatience we awaited tidings from Warsaw; we cried
like children at the news of the memorial services held in the capital of
Poland for our Petersburg martyrs. Sympathy for the Poles exposed us to
the risk of cruel punishments, we were forced to conceal it in our hearts
and to be silent.
It may well be that during the war of 1830 a feeling of exclusive
nationalism and quite intelligible hostility prevailed in Poland.
But since those days the influence of Mickiewicz, the historical and
philological works of many Slav scholars, a closer knowledge of other
European nations, purchased at the bitter price of exile, has given a
very different turn to Polish thought. The Poles have come to feel that
the battle is not between the Russian people and themselves; they have
learned that for the future the only way they can fight is _for their and
our freedom_, the words inscribed on their revolutionary banner.
Konarski, who was tortured and shot by Nicholas at Vilna, called upon
Russians and Poles without distinction of race to rise in revolt. Russia
showed her gratitude by one of those almost unknown tragedies with which
every heroic action ends amongst us under the military heel of our German
rulers.
Korovazev, an army officer, resolved to save Konarski. The day when he
would be on duty was approaching, everything was in readiness for the
escape, when the treachery of one of the Polish martyr’s comrades brought
his plans to ruin. The young man was arrested and sent to Siberia, and
nothing has been heard of him since.
I spent five years in exile in the remote provinces of the Empire. There
I met many Polish exiles. Almost in every district town there is either a
whole group, or at least one of the luckless champions of independence.
I would gladly appeal to their evidence; certainly they cannot complain
of lack of sympathy on the part of the people around them. Of course,
I am not speaking here of the police or members of the higher military
hierarchy. They are nowhere conspicuous for their love of freedom, and
least of all in Russia. I might appeal to the Polish students exiled
every year to Russian universities to remove them from the influences
of their native land; let them describe how they were received by their
Russian comrades. They used to part from us with tears in their eyes.
You remember that when in 1847 the Polish emigrants in Paris celebrated
the anniversary of their revolution, a Russian mounted their platform
to beg for their friendship, and forgiveness for the past. That was our
unhappy friend Bakunin.... But not to quote my fellow-countrymen, I will
pick out one of those who are reckoned our enemies, a man whom you have
yourself mentioned in your legend of Kosciuszko. For evidence on this
subject I will refer you to one of the veterans of the Polish democracy,
Bernacki, one of the ministers of revolutionary Poland. I boldly appeal
to him, though long years of grief might well have embittered him against
everything Russian. I am convinced that he will confirm all that I have
said.
The solidarity binding Russia and Poland to each other and to the whole
Slav world cannot be denied; it is obvious. What is more, there is no
future for the Slav world apart from Russia; without Russia it will
not develop, it will fall to pieces and be swallowed up by the German
element; it will become Austrian and lose its independence. But in our
opinion that is not its fate, not the end for which it is destined.
Following the gradual development of your idea, I must confess that I
cannot agree with your view of Europe as a single individual in which
every nationality plays the part of an essential organ.
It seems to me that all the German-Latin nationalities are necessary in
the European world, because they exist in it, in consequence of some
necessity. Aristotle long ago drew a distinction between pre-existent
necessity and the necessity involved in the sequence of events. Nature
is subject to the necessity of the accomplished fact, but her hesitation
between various possibilities is very marked. On the same principle the
Slav world can claim its right to unity, especially as it is made up of
one race.
Centralisation is alien to the Slav spirit—federation is far more natural
to it. Only when grouped in a league of free and independent peoples
will the Slav world at last enter upon its genuine historical existence.
Its past can only be regarded as a period of growth, of preparation, of
purification. The political forms in which the Slavs have lived in the
past have not been in harmony with their national tendency, a tendency
vague and instinctive if you like, but by that very fact betraying an
extraordinary vitality and promising much in the future. The Slavs
have until now displayed in every phase of their history a strange
unconcern—indeed, a marvellous receptivity. Thus Russia passed from
paganism to Christianity without a shock, without a revolt, simply in
obedience to the Grand Duke Vladimir, and in imitation of Kiev. Without
regret they flung their old idols into the Volhov and accepted the new
god as a new idol.
Eight hundred years later, part of Russia in precisely the same way
accepted a civilisation imported from abroad.
The Slav world is like a woman who has never loved, and for that very
reason apparently takes no interest in what is going on about her. She
is a stranger to all, unwanted everywhere, but there is no answering for
the future; she is still young, and already a strange yearning has taken
possession of her heart and sets it beating faster.
As for the richness of the national spirit, we need only point to the
Poles, the one Slavonic people which has been at once free and powerful.
The Slav world is not in reality made up of nationalities so different in
kind. Under the outer crust of chivalrous Liberal and Catholic Poland,
and of imperial enslaved Byzantine Russia, under the democratic rule
of the Serb Voyevod, under the bureaucratic yoke with which Austria
oppresses Illyria, Dalmatia, and the Banat, under the patriarchal
authority of the Osmanlis and under the blessing of the Archbishop of
Montenegro, live nations physiologically and ethnographically identical.
The greater number of these Slav peoples have never been enslaved by
conquest. The dependence in which they are so often found has for the
most part consisted only in the recognition of a foreign potentate and
the payment of tribute. Such, for instance, was the character of the
Mongol power in Russia. Thus the Slavs have through long centuries
preserved their nationality, their character, their language.
Have we not therefore the right to look upon Russia as the centre of the
crystallisation, the centre towards which the Slav world in its striving
toward unity is gravitating, especially as Russia is so far the only
nation of the great race organised into a powerful and independent state?
The answer to this question would be perfectly clear if the Petersburg
Government had the faintest inkling of its national destiny, if that
dull-witted, deadly despotism could make terms with any humane idea. But
in the present position of affairs, what honest man will bring himself
to suggest to the Western Slavs their union with an empire which is
perpetually in a state of siege, an empire in which the sceptre has been
turned into a bludgeon that beats men to death?
The Imperial Pan-Slavism, eulogised from time to time by men who have
been suborned, or who have lost their bearings, has, of course, nothing
in common with a union resting on the foundations of freedom.
At this point we are inevitably brought by logic to a question of primary
importance. Assuming that the Slav world can hope in the future for a
fuller development, are we not forced to enquire which of the elements
that have found expression in its undeveloped state gives it grounds for
such a hope? If the Slavs believe that their time has come, this element
must be in harmony with the revolutionary idea in Europe.
You indicated that element, you touched upon it, but it escaped you,
because a generous sentiment of sympathy for Poland drew your attention
away from it.
You say that ‘the fundamental basis of the life of the Russian people is
_communism_,’ you maintain that ‘their strength lies in their agrarian
law, in the perpetual re-division of the land.’
What a terrible _Mene Tekel_ has dropped from your lips!... Communism—the
fundamental basis! Strength resting on re-division of the land! And you
were not alarmed at your own words?
Ought we not here to pause, to take thought, to look more deeply into the
question, and not to leave it before making certain whether it is a dream
or truth?
Is there in the nineteenth century an interest of any gravity which does
not involve the question of communism, the question of the re-division of
the land?
Carried away by your indignation you go on: ‘They (the Russians) are
without any true sign of humanity, of moral sensibility, of the sense
of good and evil. Truth and justice have for them no meaning; if you
speak of these things—they are mute, they smile and know not what the
words signify.’ Who may those Russians be to whom you have spoken? What
conceptions of _truth and justice_ appeared beyond their comprehension?
This is not a superfluous question. In our profoundly revolutionary epoch
the words ‘truth and justice’ have lost all absolute meaning identical
for all men.
The _truth and justice_ of old Europe are falsehood and injustice to the
Europe which is being born. Nations are products of Nature, history is
the progressive continuation of animal development. If we apply our moral
standards to Nature, we shall not get very far. She cares nought for our
blame or our praise. Our verdicts and the Montyon prizes[83] for virtue
do not exist for her. The ethical categories created by our individual
caprice are not applicable to her. It seems to me that a nation cannot
be called either bad or good. The life of a people is always true
to its character and cannot be false. Nature produces only what is
practicable under given conditions: all that exists is drawn onwards by
her generative ferment, her insatiable thirst for creation, that thirst
common to all things living.
There are peoples living a prehistoric life, others living a life outside
history; but once they move into the broad stream of history, one and
indivisible, they belong to _humanity_, and, on the other hand, all the
past of humanity belongs to them. In history—that is, in the life of the
active and progressive part of humanity—the aristocracy of facial angle,
of complexion, and other distinctions is gradually effaced. That which
has not become human cannot come into history: so no nation which has
become part of history can be reckoned a herd of beasts, just as there
is no nation which deserves to be called an assembly of the elect.
There is no man bold enough, or ungrateful enough, to deny the importance
of France in the destinies of the European world; but you must allow me
the frank confession that I cannot share your view that the sympathetic
interest of France is the _sine qua non_ of historical progress in the
future.
Nature never stakes all her fortune on one card. Rome, the Eternal City,
which had no less right to the hegemony of the world, tottered, fell into
ruins, vanished, and pitiless humanity strode forward over its grave.
On the other hand, unless one looks on Nature as madness incarnate, it
would be hard to see nothing but an outcast race, nothing but a vast
deception, nothing but a casual rabble, human only through their vices,
in a people that has grown and multiplied during ten centuries, that has
obstinately preserved its nationality, that has formed itself into an
immense empire, and has intervened in history far more perhaps than it
should have done.
And such a view is the more difficult to accept since this people, even
judging from the words of its enemies, is far from being in a stagnant
condition. It is not a race that has attained social forms approximately
corresponding to its desires and has sunk into slumber in them, like
the Chinese; still less, a people that has outlived its prime and is
withering in senile impotence, like the people of India. On the contrary,
Russia is a quite new State—an unfinished building in which everything
smells of fresh plaster, in which everything is at work and being worked
out, in which nothing has yet attained its object, in which everything is
changing, often for the worse, but anyway changing. In brief, this is the
people whose fundamental principle, to quote your opinion, is communism,
and whose strength lies in the re-division of land....
With what crime, after all, do you reproach the Russian people? What is
the essential point of your accusation?
‘The Russian,’ you say, ‘is a liar and a thief; he is perpetually
stealing, he is perpetually lying, and quite innocently—it is in his
nature.’
I will not stop to call attention to the sweeping character of your
verdict, but will ask you a simple question: who is it that the Russian
deceives, from whom does he steal? Who—if not the landowner, the
Government official, the steward, the police officer, in fact the sworn
foes of the peasant, whom he looks upon as heathens, as traitors, as half
Germans? Deprived of every possible means of defence, the peasant resorts
to cunning in dealing with his torturers, he deceives them, and he is
perfectly right in doing so.
Cunning, my dear sir, is, in the words of the great thinker,[84] the
irony of brute force.
Through his aversion for private property in land, so correctly noted
by you, through his heedless and indolent temperament, the Russian
peasant has gradually and imperceptibly been caught in the snares of
the German bureaucracy and of the landowners’ power. He has submitted
to this humiliating disaster with the resignation of a martyr, but he
has not believed in the rights of the landowner, nor the justice of the
law-courts, nor the legality of the acts of the authorities. For nearly
two hundred years the peasant’s existence has been a dumb, passive
opposition to the existing order of things. He submits to coercion,
he endures, but he takes no part in anything that goes on outside the
village commune.
The name of the Tsar still stirs a superstitious sentiment in the people;
it is not to the Tsar Nicholas that the peasant does homage, but to the
abstract idea, the myth; in the popular imagination the Tsar stands for a
menacing avenger, an incarnation of Justice, an earthly providence.
Besides the Tsar, only the clergy could possibly have an influence on
orthodox Russia. They alone represent old Russia in governing spheres;
the clergy do not shave their beards, and by that fact have remained
on the side of the people. The peasantry listen with confidence to the
monks. But the monks and the higher clergy, occupied exclusively with
life beyond the grave, care little for the people. The village priests
have lost all influence through their greed, their drunkenness, and their
intimate relations with the police. In their case, too, the peasants
respect the idea but not the person.
As for the dissenters, they hate both person and idea, both priest and
Tsar.
Apart from the Tsar and the clergy every element of government and
society is utterly alien, essentially antagonistic to the people. The
peasant finds himself in the literal sense of the word an outlaw. The
law-court is no protector for him, and his share in the existing order
of things is entirely confined to the twofold tribute that lies heavy
upon him and is paid in his toil and his blood. Rejected by all, he
instinctively understands that the whole system is ordered not for his
benefit, but to his detriment, and that the aim of the Government and
the landowners is to wring out of him as much labour, as much money, as
many recruits as possible. As he understands this and is gifted with a
supple and resourceful intelligence, he deceives them on all sides and
in everything. It could not be otherwise; if he spoke the truth he would
by so doing be acknowledging their authority over him; if he did not
rob them (observe that to conceal part of the produce of his own labour
is considered theft in a peasant) he would thereby be recognising the
lawfulness of their demands, the rights of the landowners and the justice
of the law-courts.
To understand the Russian peasant’s position fully, you should see him
in the law-courts; you must see his hopeless face, his frightened
watchful eyes, to understand that he is a prisoner of war before the
court-martial, a traveller facing a gang of brigands. From the first
glance it is clear that the victim has not the slightest trust in the
hostile, pitiless, insatiable robbers who are questioning him, tormenting
him and fleecing him. He knows that if he has money he will be acquitted;
if not, he will be found guilty.
The Russian people speak their own old language, the judges and the
attorneys write in a new bureaucratic language, hideous and barely
intelligible; they fill whole folios with ungrammatical jargon, and
gabble off this mummery to the peasant. He may understand it if he can
and find his way out of the muddle if he knows how. The peasant knows
what this performance means, and maintains a cautious demeanour. He does
not say one word too much, he conceals his uneasiness and stands silent,
pretending to be a fool.
The peasant who has been acquitted by the court trudges home, no more
elated than if he had been condemned. In either case the decision seems
to him the result of capricious tyranny or chance.
In the same way, when he is summoned as a witness he stubbornly professes
to know nothing, even in face of incontestable fact. Being found guilty
by a law-court does not disgrace a man in the eyes of the Russian
peasant. Exiles and convicts go by the name of _unfortunates_ with him.
The life of the Russian peasantry has hitherto been confined to the
commune. It is only in relation to the commune and its members that the
peasant recognises that he has rights and duties. Outside the commune
everything seems to him based upon violence. What is fatal is his
submitting to that violence, and not his refusing in his own way to
recognise it and his trying to protect himself by guile. Lying before a
judge set over him by unlawful authority is far more straightforward
than a hypocritical show of respect for a jury tampered with by a corrupt
prefect. The peasant respects only those institutions which reflect his
innate conception of law and right.
There is a fact which no one who has been in close contact with the
Russian peasantry can doubt. The peasants rarely cheat each other. An
almost boundless good faith prevails among them; they know nothing of
contracts and written agreements.
The problems connected with the measurement of their fields are often
inevitably complicated, owing to the perpetual re-division of land,
in accordance with the number of taxpayers in the family; yet the
difficulties are got over without complaint or resort to the law-courts.
The landowners and the Government eagerly seek an opportunity of
interference, but that opportunity is not given them. Petty disputes
are submitted to the judgment of the elders or of the commune, and the
decision is unconditionally accepted by all. It is just the same thing
in the _artels_. The _artels_ are often made up of several hundred
workmen, who form a union for a definite period—for instance, for a year.
At the expiration of the year the workmen divide their wages by common
agreement, in accordance with the work done by each. The police never
have the satisfaction of meddling in their accounts. Almost always the
_artel_ makes itself responsible for every one of its members.
The bonds between the peasants of the commune are even closer when
they are not orthodox but dissenters. From time to time the Government
organises a savage raid on some dissenting village. Peasants are clapped
into prison and sent into exile, and it is all done with no sort of plan,
no consistency, without rhyme or reason, solely to satisfy the clamour
of the clergy and give the police something to do. The character of the
Russian peasants, the solidarity existing among them, is displayed again
during these hunts after heretics. At such times it is worth seeing
how they succeed in deceiving the police, in saving their comrades and
concealing their holy books and vessels, how they endure the most awful
tortures without uttering a word. I challenge any one to bring forward a
single case in which a dissenting commune has been betrayed by a peasant,
even by an orthodox one.
The peculiarity of the Russian character makes police enquiries
excessively difficult. One can but heartily rejoice at the fact. The
Russian peasant has no morality except what naturally, instinctively
flows from his communism; this morality is deeply rooted in the people;
the little they know of the Gospel supports it; the flagrant injustice of
the landowner binds the peasant still more closely to his principles and
to the communal system.[85]
The commune has saved the Russian people from Mongol barbarism and
Imperial civilisation, from the Europeanised landlords and from the
German bureaucracy. The communal system, though it has suffered violent
shocks, has stood firm against the interference of the authorities; it
has successfully survived _up to the development of socialism in Europe_.
This circumstance is of infinite consequence for Russia.
The Russian Autocracy is entering upon a new phase. Having grown out
of an anti-national revolution,[86] it has accomplished its destined
task. It has created an immense empire, a formidable army, a centralised
government. Without real roots, without tradition, it was doomed to
ineffectiveness; it is true that it undertook a new task—to bring Western
civilisation into Russia; and it was to some extent successful in doing
that while it still played the part of an enlightened government.
That part it has now abandoned.
The Government, which severed itself from the people in the name of
civilisation, has lost no time in cutting itself off from culture in the
name of autocracy.
It renounced civilisation as soon as the tri-coloured phantom of
liberalism began to be visible through its tendencies; it tried to
turn to nationalism, to the people. That was impossible—the people and
the Government had nothing in common; the former had grown away from
the latter, while the Government discerned deep in the masses a new
phantom, the still more terrible phantom of the Red Cock.[87] Of course,
liberalism was less dangerous than the new Pugatchovism, but the terror
and dislike of new ideas had grown so strong that the Government was no
longer capable of making its peace with civilisation.
Since then the sole aim of Tsarism has been Tsarism. It rules in order to
rule, its immense powers are employed for their mutual destruction, for
the preservation of an artificial peace. But autocracy for the sake of
autocracy in the end becomes impossible; it is too absurd, too barren.
It has felt this and has begun to look for work to do in Europe. The
activity of Russian diplomacy is inexhaustible; notes, threats, promises,
councils are scattered on all sides, its spies and agents scurry to and
fro in all directions.
The Russian Emperor regards himself as the natural protector of the
German Princes; he meddles in all the petty intrigues of the petty German
courts; he settles all their disputes, scolding one, rewarding another
with the hand of a Grand Duchess. But this is not a sufficient outlet for
his energy. He undertakes the duty of chief gendarme of the universe; he
is the mainstay of every reaction, every persecution. He plays the part
of the representative of the monarchical principle in Europe, assumes the
airs and graces of the aristocracy, as though he were a Bourbon, or a
Plantagenet, as though his courtiers were Gloucesters or Montmorencys.
Unhappily there is nothing in common between feudal monarchism with its
definite basis, its past, and its social and religious ideas, and the
Napoleonic despotism of the Petersburg Tsar with no moral principle
behind it, nothing but a deplorable historic necessity, a transitory
usefulness.
And the Winter Palace, like a mountain top toward the end of autumn,
is more and more thickly covered with snow and ice. The vital sap
artificially raised to these governmental heights is gradually being
frozen; nothing is left but mere material power, and the hardness of the
rock which still resists the onslaught of the waves of revolution.
Nicholas, surrounded by his generals, his ministers, and his bureaucrats,
tries to forget his isolation, but grows hour by hour gloomier, more
morose, more uneasy. He sees that he is not loved; he discerns the deadly
silence that reigns about him through the distant murmur of the far-away
tempest, which seems to be coming nearer. The Tsar seeks to forget, he
proclaims aloud that his aim is the aggrandisement of the Imperial power.
That avowal is nothing new; for the last twenty years he has
unwearyingly, unrestingly laboured for that sole object; for the sake of
it he has spared neither the tears nor the blood of his subjects.
He has succeeded in everything: he has crushed Polish nationalism; in
Russia he has suppressed liberalism.
What more does he want, indeed? Why is he so gloomy?
The Emperor feels that Poland is not yet dead. In place of the liberalism
which he has persecuted with a savagery quite superfluous, for that
exotic flower cannot take root in Russian soil, another movement menacing
as a storm-cloud is arising.
The peasantry is beginning to murmur under the yoke of the landowners;
local insurrections are continually breaking out; you yourself quote a
terrible instance of this.
The party of progress demands the emancipation of the peasants; it is
ready to sacrifice its own privileges. The Tsar hesitates and holds it
back; he desires emancipation and puts hindrances in its way. He sees
that freeing the peasants involves freeing the land; that this in its
turn is the beginning of a social revolution, the proclamation of rural
communism. To escape the question of emancipation is impossible, to
defer its solution to the next reign is, of course, easier, but it is a
cowardly resource, and only amounts to the respite of a few hours wasted
at a wretched posting-station in waiting for horses....
From all this you see how fortunate it is for Russia that the village
commune has not perished, that personal ownership has not split up the
property of the commune; how fortunate it is for the Russian people
that it has remained outside all political movements, outside European
civilisation, which would undoubtedly have undermined the commune, and
which has to-day reached in socialism the negation of itself.
Europe, as I have said in another place, has not solved the problem of
the rival claims of the individual and the State, but has set herself the
task of solving it. Russia has not found the solution either. It is in
this problem that our equality begins.
At the first step towards the social revolution Europe is confronted
with the people which presents it with a system, half-savage and
unorganised, but still a system, that of perpetual re-division of land
among its cultivators. And observe that this great example is given us
not by educated Russia, but by the people itself, by its actual life. We
Russians who have passed through European civilisation are no more than a
means, a leaven, mediators between the Russian people and revolutionary
Europe. The man of the future in Russia is the peasant, just as in
France it is the workman.
But, if this is so, have not the Russian peasantry some claim on your
indulgence, sir?
Poor peasant! Every possible injustice is hurled at him: the Emperor
oppresses him with levies of recruits, the landowner steals his labour,
the official takes his last rouble. The peasant endures in silence but
does not despair, he still has the commune. If a member is torn from it,
the commune draws its ranks closer. One would have thought the peasant’s
fate deserved compassion, yet it touches no one. Instead of defending,
men upbraid him.
You do not leave him even the last refuge, in which he still feels
himself a man, in which he loves and is not afraid; you say: ‘His commune
is not a commune, his family is not a family, his wife is not a wife;
before she is his, she is the property of the landowner; his children are
not his children—who knows who is their father?’
So you expose this luckless people not to scientific analysis but to the
contempt of other nations, who receive your legends with confidence.
I regard it as a duty to say a few words on this subject.
Family life among all the Slavs is very highly developed; it may be the
one conservative element of their character, the point at which their
destructive criticism stops.
The peasants are very reluctant to split up the family; not uncommonly
three or four generations go on living under one roof around the
grandfather, who enjoys a patriarchal authority. The woman, commonly
oppressed, as is always the case in the agricultural class, is treated
with respect and consideration when she is the widow of the eldest son.
Not uncommonly the whole family is ruled by a grey-haired grandmother....
Can it be said that the family does not exist in Russia?
Let us pass to the landowner’s relation to the family of his serf. For
the sake of clearness, we will distinguish the rule from its abuses, what
is lawful from what is criminal.
_Jus primae noctis_ has never existed in Russia.
The landowner cannot legally demand a breach of conjugal fidelity. If the
law were carried out in Russia, the violation of a serf-woman would be
punished exactly as though she were free, namely by penal servitude or
exile to Siberia, with deprivation of all civil rights. Such is the law,
let us turn to the facts.
I do not pretend to deny that with the power given by the Government
to the landowners, it is very easy for them to violate the wives and
daughters of their serfs. By privation and punishment the landowner can
always bring his serfs to a pass in which some will offer him their
wives and daughters, just like that worthy French nobleman who, in the
eighteenth century, asked as a special favour that his daughter should be
installed in the Parc-aux-Cerfs.
It is no matter for wonder that honourable fathers and husbands find no
redress against the landowners, thanks to the excellent judicial system
of Russia. For the most part, they find themselves in the position of
Monsieur Tiercelin, whose daughter of eleven was stolen by Berruyer, at
the instigation of Louis XV. All these filthy abuses are possible; one
has but to think of the coarse and depraved manners of a section of the
Russian nobility to be certain of it. But as far as the peasants are
concerned they are far indeed from enduring their masters’ viciousness
with indifference.
Allow me to bring forward a proof of it.
Half of the landowners murdered by their serfs (the statistics give
their number as sixty to seventy a year) perish in consequence of their
misdeeds in this line. Legal proceedings on such grounds are rare; the
peasant knows that the judges show little respect for his complaints;
but he has an axe; he is a master of the use of it, and knows that he is.
I will say no more about the peasants, but beg you to listen to a few
more words about educated Russia.
Your view of the intellectual movement in Russia is no more indulgent
than your opinion of the popular character; with one stroke of the pen
you strike off all the work hitherto done by our fettered hands!
One of Shakespeare’s characters, not knowing how to show his contempt for
a despised opponent, says to him: ‘I even doubt of your existence!’ You
have gone further, for it is not a matter of doubt to you that Russian
literature does not exist. I quote from your own words:
‘We are not going to attach importance to the attempts of those few
clever people who have thought fit to exercise themselves in the Russian
language and cheat Europe with a pale phantom of Russian literature.
If it were not for my deep respect for Mickiewicz and his saintly
aberrations, I should really censure him for the indulgence, one might
even say charity, with which he speaks of this trifling.’[88]
I search in vain, sir, for the grounds for the contempt with which
you greet the first frail cry of a people that has awakened in its
prison-house, the groan suppressed by its gaoler.
Why are you unwilling to listen to the shuddering notes of our mournful
poetry, to our chants through which a sob can be heard? What has
concealed from your eyes our hysterical laughter, the perpetual irony
behind which the deeply tortured heart seeks refuge, in which our
fatal helplessness is confessed? Oh, how I long to make you a worthy
translation of some poems of Pushkin and Lermontov, some songs of
Koltsov! Then you would hold out to us a friendly hand at once, you would
be the first to beg us to forget what you have said!
Next to the communism of the peasants, nothing is so deeply
characteristic of Russia, nothing is such an earnest of her great future,
as her literary movement.
Between the peasantry and literature there looms the monster of official
Russia. ‘Russia the deception, Russia the pestilence,’ as you call
her. This Russia extends from the Emperor, passing from gendarme to
gendarme, from official to official, down to the lowest policeman in the
remotest corner of the Empire. Every step of the ladder, as in Dante,
gains a new power for evil, a new degree of corruption and cruelty. This
living pyramid of crimes, abuses, and bribery, built up of policemen,
scoundrels, heartless German officials everlastingly greedy, ignorant
judges everlastingly drunk, aristocrats everlastingly base: all this
is held together by a community of interest in plunder and gain, and
supported on six hundred thousand animated machines with bayonets.
The peasant is never defiled by contact with this governing world of
aggression; he endures its existence—only in that is he to blame.
The body hostile to official Russia consists of a handful of men who are
ready to face anything, who protest against it, fight with it, denounce
and undermine it. These isolated champions are from time to time thrown
into dungeons, tortured, sent to Siberia, but their place does not
long remain empty, fresh champions come forward; it is our tradition,
our inalienable task. The terrible consequences of speech in Russia
inevitably give it a peculiar force. A free utterance is listened to with
love and reverence, because among us it is only uttered by those who have
something to say. One does not so easily put one’s thoughts into print
when at the end of every page one has a vision of a gendarme, a troika,
and, on the far horizon, Tobolsk or Irkutsk.
In my last pamphlet[89] I have said enough about Russian literature. Here
I will confine myself to a few general observations.
Melancholy, scepticism, irony, those are the three chief strings of the
Russian lyre.
When Pushkin begins one of his finest poems with these terrible words:
‘All say—there is no justice upon earth....
But there is no justice—up above us either!
To me that is as clear as A B C,’
does it not grip your heart, do you not through the show of composure
divine the broken life of a man grown used to suffering? Lermontov, in
his profound repulsion for the society surrounding him, turns in 1830 to
his contemporaries with his terrible
‘With mournful heart I watch our generation,
Tragic or trivial must its future be.’
I only know one contemporary poet who touches the gloomy strings of
man’s soul with the same power. He, too, was a poet born in slavery and
dying before the rebirth of his Fatherland; that is the singer of death,
Leopardi, to whom the world seems a vast league of criminals ruthlessly
persecuting a handful of righteous madmen.
Russia has only one painter who has won general recognition, Bryullov.
What is the subject of his finest work which won him fame in Italy?
Glance at this strange painting.[90] On an immense canvas groups of
terrified figures are crowded in confusion, seeking in vain for safety.
They are perishing from an earthquake, a volcanic eruption in the midst
of a perfect tempest of cataclysms. They are overwhelmed by savage,
senseless, ruthless force, to which any resistance is impossible. Such
are the conceptions inspired by the Petersburg atmosphere. The Russian
novel is occupied exclusively in the sphere of pathological anatomy. In
it there is a perpetual reference to the evil consuming us, perpetual,
pitiless, peculiar to us. Here you do not hear voices from heaven,
promising Faust forgiveness for sinful Gretchen—here the only voices
raised are those of doubt and damnation. Yet if there is salvation for
Russia, she will be saved only by this profound recognition of our
position, by the truthfulness with which she lays bare before all her
plight. He who boldly recognises his failings feels that there is in
him something that has been kept safe in the midst of downfalls and
backslidings; he knows that he can expiate his past, and not only lift up
his head, but turn from ‘Sardanapalus the profligate to Sardanapalus the
hero.’
The Russian peasantry do not read. You know that Voltaire and Dante, too,
were not read by villagers, but by the nobility and a section of the
middle class. In Russia the educated section of the middle class forms
part of the nobility, which consists of all that has ceased to be the
peasantry. There is even a proletariat of the nobility which merges into
the peasantry, and a proletariat of the peasantry which rises up into the
nobility. This fluctuation, this continual renewal, gives the Russian
nobility a character which you do not find in the privileged classes of
the backward countries of Europe. In brief, the whole history of Russia,
from the time of Peter the Great, is only the history of the nobility and
of the influence of enlightenment upon it. I will add that the Russian
nobility equals in numbers the electorate of France established by the
laws of the 31st of May.
In the course of the eighteenth century, the new Russian literature
fashioned that rich, sonorous language which we possess now: a supple
and powerful language capable of expressing both the most abstract ideas
of German metaphysics and the light sparkling play of French wit. This
literature, called into being by the genius of Peter the Great, bore, it
is true, the impress of the Government—but in those days the banner of
the Government was progress, almost revolution.
Till 1789 the Imperial throne complacently draped itself in the majestic
vestments of enlightenment and philosophy. Catherine II. deserved to be
deceived with cardboard villages and palaces of painted boards.... No one
could dazzle spectators by a gorgeous stage effect as she could. In the
Hermitage there was continual talk about Voltaire, Montesquieu, Beccaria.
You, sir, know the reverse of the medal.
Yet in the midst of the triumphal chorus of the courtiers’ songs of
praise, a strange unexpected note was already sounding. That was the
sceptical, fiercely satirical strain, before which all the other
artificial chants were soon to be reduced to silence.
The true character of Russian thought, poetical and speculative, develops
in its full force on the accession of Nicholas to the throne. Its
distinguishing feature is a tragic emancipation of conscience, a pitiless
negation, a bitter irony, an agonising self-analysis. Sometimes this all
breaks into insane laughter, but there is no gaiety in that laughter.
Cast into oppressive surroundings, and armed with a clear eye and
incorruptible logic, the Russian quickly frees himself from the faith and
morals of his fathers. The thinking Russian is the most independent man
in the world. What is there to curb him? Respect for the past?... But
what serves as a starting-point of the modern history of Russia, if not
the denial of nationalism and tradition?
Or can it be the tradition of the Petersburg period? That tradition lays
no obligation on us; on the contrary, that ‘fifth act of the bloody drama
staged in a brothel’[91] sets us completely free from every obligation.
On the other hand, the past of the Western European peoples serves us as
a lesson and nothing more; we do not regard ourselves as the executors of
their historic testaments.
We share your doubts, but your faith does not cheer us. We share your
hatred, but we do not understand your devotion to what your forefathers
have bequeathed you; we are too down-trodden, too unhappy, to be
satisfied with half-freedom. You are restrained by scruples, you are held
back by second thoughts. We have neither second thoughts nor scruples;
all we lack is strength. This is where we get the irony, the anguish
which gnaws us, which brings us to frenzy, which drives us on till we
reach Siberia, torture, exile, premature death. We sacrifice ourselves
with no hope, from spite, from boredom.... There is, indeed, something
irrational in our lives, but there is nothing vulgar, nothing stagnant,
nothing bourgeois.
Do not accuse us of immorality because we do not respect what you
respect. Can you reproach a foundling for not respecting his parents?
We are independent because we are starting life from the beginning. We
have no law but our nature, our national character; it is our being, our
flesh and blood, but by no means a binding authority. We are independent
because we possess nothing. We have hardly anything to love. All our
memories are filled with bitterness and resentment. Education, learning,
were given us with the whip.
What have we to do with your sacred duties, we younger brothers robbed
of our heritage? And can we be honestly contented with your threadbare
morality, unchristian and inhuman, existing only in rhetorical exercises
and speeches for the prosecution? What respect can be inspired in us by
your Roman-barbaric system of law, that hollow clumsy edifice, without
light or air, repaired in the Middle Ages, whitewashed by the newly
enfranchised petty bourgeois? I admit that the daily brigandage in the
Russian law-courts is even worse, but it does not follow from that that
you have justice in your laws or your courts.
The distinction between your laws and our Imperial decrees is confined
to the formula with which they begin. Our Imperial decrees begin with a
crushing truth: ‘The Tsar has been pleased to command’; your laws begin
with a revolting falsehood, the ironical abuse of the name of the French
people, and the words Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. The code of
Nicholas is drawn up for the benefit of the Autocracy to the detriment
of its subjects. The Napoleonic code has absolutely the same character.
We are held in too many chains already to fasten fresh ones about us of
our own free will. In this respect we stand precisely on a level with
our peasants. We submit to brute force. We are slaves because we have no
possibility of being free; but we accept nothing from our foes.
Russia will never be Protestant, Russia will never be _juste-milieu_.
Russia will never make a revolution with the object of getting rid
of the Tsar Nicholas, and replacing him by other Tsars—parliamentary
representatives, judges, and police officials. We perhaps ask for too
much and shall get nothing. That may be so, but yet we do not despair;
before the year 1848 Russia could not, and should not, have entered on
a career of revolution, she had to learn her lesson—now she has learnt
it. The Tsar himself observes it, and is ferociously brutal in his
opposition to universities, to ideas, to knowledge; he is trying to cut
Russia off from Europe, to destroy culture. He is doing his job.
Will he succeed in it? As I have said before, we must not have blind
faith in the future; every seed has its claim to development, but not
every one develops. The future of Russia does not depend on her alone, it
is bound up with the future of Europe. Who can foretell the fate of the
Slav world, if reaction and absolutism finally vanquish the revolution in
Europe?
Perhaps it will perish.
But in that case Europe too will perish....
And progress will pass to America.
* * * * *
After writing the above I received the last two instalments of your
legend. My first impulse on reading them was to throw what I had written
in the fire. Your warm and generous heart has not waited for some one
else to raise a voice on behalf of the despised Russian people. Your
heart was too tender for you to play the part you had undertaken of the
_relentless_ judge, the avenger of the outraged Polish people. You have
been drawn into inconsistency, but it is the inconsistency of a noble
mind.
I thought, however, on reading over my letter that you might find in it
some new views on Russia and the Slav world, and I made up my mind to
send it you. I confidently hope that you will forgive the passages in
which I have been carried away by my Scythian impetuosity. It is not for
nothing that the blood of the barbarians flows in my veins. I so longed
to change your opinion of the Russian people, it was such a grief, such
a pain to me to see that you were hostile to us that I could not conceal
my bitterness, my emotion, that I let my pen run away with me. But now
I see that you do not despair of us, that under the coarse smock of
the Russian peasant you discern the man. I see this, and in my turn
confess that I fully understand the impression the very name of Russia
must produce on every free man. We often ourselves curse our unhappy
Fatherland. You know it, you say yourself that everything you have
written of the moral worthlessness of Russia is feeble compared with what
Russians say themselves.
But the time for funeral orations on Russia is past for us too, and with
you we say ‘in that thought lies hid the spark of life.’ You have divined
that spark by the power of your love; but we see it, we feel it. That
spark will not be quenched by streams of blood, by the ices of Siberia,
nor the suffocating heat of mines and prisons. May it spread under its
layer of ashes! The cold, deadly breath which blows from Europe cannot
put it out.
For us the hour of action has not come; France may still be justly proud
of her foremost position. That painful privilege is hers until 1852.
Europe will doubtless before us reach the goal of the grave or of the
new life. The day of action is perhaps still far away for us; the day of
recognising the idea, the day of utterance, has already come. We have
lived long enough in sleep and silence; the time has come to tell what we
have dreamed, what conclusions we have reached.
And indeed whose fault is it that we have had to wait until 1847 for a
German (Haxthausen) to _discover_, as you express it, the Russia of the
peasantry, as unknown before his time as America before Columbus?
Of course, it is we who are to blame for it, we poor dumb creatures with
our cowardice, our halting words, our terrified imagination. Even abroad
we are afraid to confess the hatred with which we look upon our fetters.
Convicts from our birth up, doomed to the hour of death to drag the
chains riveted to our legs, we are offended when we are spoken of as
though we were voluntary slaves, as though we were frozen negroes, and
yet we do not openly protest.
Ought we to submit meekly to these denunciations, or to resolve to check
them, lifting up our voice for Russian freedom of speech? Better for us
to perish suspected of human dignity than to live with the shameful brand
of slavery on our brow, than to hear ourselves charged with voluntary
servility.
Unhappily, free speech in Russia arouses terror and amazement. I have
tried to lift only a corner of the heavy curtain that hides us from
Europe, I have indicated only the theoretical tendencies, the remote
hopes, the organic elements of our future development; and yet my book
of which you speak in such flattering phrases has made an unpleasant
impression in Russia. Friendly voices which I respect condemn it. In
it they see a denunciation of Russia, denunciation!... For what? for
our sufferings, our hardships, our desire to force our way out of this
hateful position.... Poor precious friends, forgive me this crime, I am
falling into it again.
Heavy and dreadful is the yoke of years of slavery with no struggle,
no hope at hand! In the end it crushes even the noblest, the strongest
heart. Where is the hero who is not overcome at last by weariness, who
does not prefer peace in old age to the everlasting fret of fruitless
effort?
No, I will not be silent! My words shall avenge those unhappy lives
crushed by the Russian autocracy which brings men to moral annihilation,
to spiritual death.
We are bound in duty to speak, else no one will know how much that is
fine and lofty is locked for ever in those martyrs’ breasts and perishes
with them in the snows of Siberia, where their criminal name is not even
traced upon their tombstone, but is only cherished in the hearts of
friends who dare not utter it aloud.
Scarcely have we opened our mouth, scarcely have we murmured two or
three words of our desires and hopes, when they try to silence us, try
to stifle free speech in its cradle! It is impossible. A time comes when
thought reaches maturity and can no longer be kept in fetters by the
censorship, nor by prudence. Then propaganda becomes a passion; can one
be content with a whisper when the sleep is so deep that it can scarcely
be awakened by an alarm-bell? From the mutiny of the Stryeltsy to the
conspiracy of the Fourteenth of December there has been no political
movement of consequence in Russia. The cause is easy to understand:
there were no clearly defined cravings for independence in the people.
In many things they were at one with the Government, in many things the
Government was in advance of the people. Only the peasants, who had no
share in the Imperial benefits and were more oppressed than ever, tried
to revolt. Russia from the Urals to Penza and Kazan was, for three
months, in the power of Pugatchov. The Imperial army was defeated, put
to flight by the Cossacks, and General Bibikov, sent from Petersburg to
take the command of the army, wrote, if I am not mistaken, from Nizhni:
‘Things are in a very bad way; what is most to be feared is not the
armed hordes of the rebels, but the spirit of the peasantry, which is
dangerous, very dangerous.’ After incredible efforts the insurrection
was at last crushed. The people relapsed into numbness, silence, and
submission....
Meanwhile the nobility had developed, education had begun to fructify
their minds, and like a living proof of that political maturity, of that
moral development which is inevitably expressed in action, those divine
figures appeared, those heroes as you justly call them, who ‘alone in
the very jaws of the dragon dared the bold stroke of the Fourteenth of
December.’
Their defeat and the terror of the present reign have crushed every idea
of success, every premature attempt. Other questions have arisen; no one
has cared to risk his life again in the hope of a Constitution; it has
been too clear that any stroke won in Petersburg would be defeated by
the treachery of the Tsar; the fate of the Polish Constitution has been
before our eyes.
For ten years no intellectual activity could betray itself by one word,
and the oppressive misery has reached the point when men ‘would give
their life for the happiness of being free for one moment’ and uttering
aloud some part of their thoughts.
Some, with that frivolous recklessness which is only met with in us
and in the Poles, have renounced their possessions and gone abroad to
seek distraction; others, unable to endure the oppressive atmosphere of
Petersburg, have buried themselves in the country. The young men gave
themselves up, some to Pan-Slavism, some to German philosophy, some to
history or political economy; in short, not one of those Russians whose
natural vocation was intellectual activity could or would submit to the
stagnation.
The case of Petrashevsky and his friends, condemned to penal servitude
for life, and exiled in 1849, because they formed some political
societies not two steps from the Winter Palace, proves by the insane
recklessness of the attempt, and the obvious impossibility of its
success, that the time for rational reflection had passed, that feeling
was beyond restraint, that certain ruin had come to seem easier to endure
than dumb agonising submission to the Petersburg discipline.
A fable very widely known in Russia tells how a Tsar, suspecting his wife
of infidelity, shut her and her son in a barrel, then had the barrel
sealed up and thrown into the sea.
For many years the barrel floated on the sea.
Meanwhile, the Tsarevitch grew not by days but by hours, and his feet
and his head began to press against the ends of the barrel. Every
day he became more and more cramped. At last he said to his mother:
‘Queen-mother, let me stretch in freedom.’
‘My darling Tsarevitch,’ answered the mother, ‘you must not stretch, the
barrel will burst and you will drown in the salt water.’
The Tsarevitch thought in silence for a while, then he said: ‘I will
stretch, mother; better stretch for once in freedom and die.’
That fable, sir, contains our whole history.
Woe to Russia if bold men, risking everything to stretch in freedom for
once, are no more to be found in her. But there is no fear of that....
These words involuntarily bring to my mind Bakunin. Bakunin has given
Europe the sample of a free Russian.
I was deeply touched by your fine reference to him. Unhappily, those
words will not reach him.
An international crime has been committed; Saxony has handed over the
victim to Austria, Austria to Nicholas. He is in the Schlüsselburg, that
fortress of evil memory where once Ivan, the grandson of the Tsar Alexis,
was kept caged like a wild beast, till he was killed by Catherine the
Second,[92] who, still stained by her husband’s blood, first ordered the
captive’s murder, then punished the luckless officer who carried out her
command.
In that damp dungeon in the icy waters of Lake Ladoga there is no place
for dreams or hopes! May he sleep the last sleep in peace, the martyr
betrayed by two Governments, whose hands are stained with his blood....
Glory to his name! And revenge! But where is the avenger?... And we too,
like him, shall perish with our work half done; but then lift up your
stern and majestic voice, and tell our children once more that there is a
duty before them....
I will close with the memory of Bakunin and warmly press your hand for
him and for myself.
NICE, _September 22, 1851_.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Ogaryov suffered from some form of epilepsy.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[2] Herzen lived twelve years in London, and during that time took no
less than seven different houses: (1) ‘a house in one of the remotest
parts of the town, near Primrose Hill’; (2) Chomley Lodge, Richmond; (3)
Peterborough Villa, Finchley Road; (4) Laurel House, Fulham; (5) Park
House, Putney Bridge; (6) Orsett House, Wimbledon; (7) Elmfield House,
Teddington.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[3] See vol. ii. p. 403.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[4] See vol. i. p. 67.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[5] Natalya Alexyevna’s version is slightly different. She gives Emma
Vogt’s age as sixteen, and says that when the girl’s parents were
returning to America Herzen begged them to leave her in London, ‘but
they insisted on taking her with them.’ Neither Madame Passek nor Madame
Ogaryov can be relied upon for perfect accuracy, but I think the latter
is the more trustworthy.
[6] This is how I interpret the cryptic passage on page 113, vol.
iv.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[7] See vol. v. p. 245.
[8] See vol. i. chapter iii.
[9] Yakovlyev was the surname of the two brothers, Ivan, Herzen’s father,
and Pyotr, Madame Passek’s father.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[10] See vol. v. p. 82.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[11] See vol. v. pp. 105 and 106.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[12] See vol. iv. chap. iv.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[13] The two children who died in Paris were buried at
Nice.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[14] The famous doctor.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[15] As a matter of fact, Natalya Alexandrovna Herzen’s illness was what
would now be called a ‘nervous breakdown,’ and was followed by a complete
and permanent recovery.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[16] Herzen’s elder daughter Natalie, also called Natasha.
[17] Madame Ogaryov.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[18] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[19] English in the original.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[20] English in the original.
[21] The news that Tata had an attack of smallpox.
[22] Baby daughter who died.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[23] Natalya Alexyevna Tutchkov-Ogaryov.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[24] Tata’s nervous illness.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[25] Tata.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[26] Turgenev was the friend to whom these letters were
addressed.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[27] A character in the play _Woe from Wit_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[28] A famous singer who made his début in _La Caravane_ in 1813. He is
frequently mentioned in French memoirs of the period.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[29] A very intelligent man, Count Oscar Reichenbach, said to me once,
speaking of the better-class houses in London: ‘Tell me the rent and the
storey, and I will undertake to go on a dark night without a candle and
fetch a clock, a vase, decanters ... whatever you like of the things
that are invariably standing in every middle-class dwelling.’—(_Author’s
Note._)
[30] Lamé, Gabriel, born 1795, was a French mathematician who for
many years held an important post in the Transport Department of the
Russian Government. He published _Leçons sur la Théorie Mathématique de
l’Élasticité_, and many other works.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[31] A brewer who was in command of the ‘Garde Nationale’ in 1793.
[32] Members of the ‘Convention’ of 1792.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[33] A traditional hero of Russian legend.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[34] Vattel (1714-1767), a Swiss writer, author of _Traité du Droit des
Gens_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[35] I was so interested by _Arminius_ that I began writing a series of
similar scenes, and the chief police-master, Tsinsky, made a critical
analysis of them in my presence at the committee in 1834.
[36] This was written in 1855.—(_Author’s Notes._)
[37] A character in Gogol’s _Dead Souls_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[38] Auguste Romieu, celebrated in Paris for his wit and droll
adventures, began by writing vaudevilles (1822-1834). The Government of
July turned him into _un homme politique_, appointing him prefect of
several places in succession, and in 1849 he wrote _De l’Administration
sous le Régime républicain_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[39] The Russian word for Sunday means Resurrection.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[40]
Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Herrn,
Denn Sie sind selber auferstanden
Aus niedrigern Häuser dumpfen Gemächer.—_Faust._
—(_Author’s Note._)
[41] The intensity with which cultivated people felt their isolation
at that time, and tried to devise a life, pursuits, and so on for
themselves, you can see clearly in Trelawney’s _Recollections of the Last
Days of Shelley and Byron_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[42] _A Family Chronicle_, by Aksakov. There is an excellent translation
by Mr. Duff.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[43] Onyegin, hero of Pushkin’s poem.
[44] Petchorin, hero of Lermontov’s novel, _A Hero of Our Time_.
[45] Oblomov, hero of Goncharov’s novel of that name.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[46] Ivan Ivanovitch Pushtchin was a great friend of the poet Pushkin.
[47] One of the Decembrists.
[48] See vol. i. page 193.
[49] A young poet of the greatest promise who died in 1827 at the age of
twenty-two.—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[50] Of which Koshihin so picturesquely writes that the Boyars
sat silent with their eyes fixed on their beards to show their
profundity.—(_Author’s Note._)
[51] Polubotok was a candidate for the office of Hetman after Mazeppa’s
treason. Peter the Great appointed the weak Skuropadsky, saying that
Polubotok was ‘much too clever’ and might be another Mazeppa. He owned
more than two thousand peasant homesteads, and was one of the richest
men in Little Russia; he did his utmost to defend the interests of his
country against the encroachments of the Tsar’s officials, and for some
time with success, but in 1723 he was imprisoned in the Peter-Paul
fortress, where he died a year later.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[52] Diderot, in his extremely interesting account of his acquaintance
with Princess Dashkov, speaking of this interview, adds that Catherine
said to her: ‘You are either an angel or a demon.’ ‘Neither the one nor
the other,’ she answered; ‘but the Empress is dying and you must be
saved.’—(_Author’s Note._)
[53] Diderot in the above-mentioned essay relates that Princess Dashkov
told him of this rumour with the greatest resentment.—(_Author’s Note._)
[54] There are no grounds for supposing that Catherine knew of any plan
to murder Peter; there is strong evidence, indeed, that she did not know,
and that in fact there was no such plan. It is obvious that Peter was
killed in a drunken scrimmage.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[55] A mistress of Paul’s, and a friend of his wife’s.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[56] This is the drift of the letter; I cannot answer for the exact
words. I repeat what I heard long ago from memory.—(_Author’s Note._)
[57] Mirovitch plotted to rescue Ivan VI. from the Schlüsselburg and put
him on the throne. Ivan’s jailers had been instructed by the Empress
Elizabeth to kill him if any attempt were made to effect his escape—and
did so. For an impartial account of Catherine’s reign see Sir Bernard
Pares’ _History of Russia_.
[58] Princess Tarakanov was an adventuress who claimed to be one of the
natural children of the Empress Elizabeth (there were several). Alexey
Orlov captured her, by pretending to make love to her. She was imprisoned
in the Peter-Paul fortress, where she died of consumption.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[59] Madame Necker, wife of the great minister of finance and mother of
Mme. de Staël.
[60] Madame Geoffrin, a lady noted for her wit, whose salon was the
favourite resort of the philosophers of the day.
[61] Rulhière, Claude de (1735-1791), a French historian and poet.
[62] Hamilton, Elizabeth (1758-1816), a Scotswoman, authoress of _Letters
of a Hindoo Rajah_, _Letters on Education_, and also _On the Moral and
Religious Principle_, and _The Cottagers of Glenburnie_.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[63] An impartial reader of the Memoirs of both ladies will probably
be surprised at Catherine’s forbearance with Princess Dashkov, whose
tediously reiterated insistence on her own virtue and impeccability must
have been a severe tax on the quick-witted Empress’s patience and good
nature. Only on one occasion she permitted herself the gentle retort:
‘Dear princess, your reputation is better established than that of the
whole calendar of saints,’ the irony of which was probably not apparent
to Princess Dashkov.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[64] The duc de Biron, afterwards a general in the service of the
government of the Revolution, was beheaded in 1793.
[65] An Italian writer on philosophy, history, and economics
(1728-1789).—(_Translator’s Notes._)
[66] The former tutor of Peter III.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[67] An Italian writer of the school of the physiocrats.
[68] See Pares’ _History of Russia_, p. 241.
[69] The pamphlet referred to is _A Journey from Petersburg to Moscow_,
an impassioned protest against serfdom. (See vol. v. p. 313.)
[70] Knyazhnin translated tragedies from the French and wrote imitations
of them. This last one was called _Vadim of Novgorod_.—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[71] Catherine’s own Memoirs make it clear that, though crazy, Paul was
not the son of Peter III.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[72] By their successful conspiracy to assassinate Paul.—(_Translator’s
Note._)
[73] In 1770, Alexey Orlov, in command of the Russian fleet, defeated and
burnt the Turkish fleet at Chesme Bay.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[74] The archimandrite of the Yurev Monastery, famous for his fanaticism
and ascetic exploits. Alexander I. once had an interview with him, but
was repelled by his crassness.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[75] Miss Wilmot meant to say something biting, but paid us a compliment.
It is only a pity that she does not see how old the girl is now! It is
not something to be reckoned by years.—(_Author’s Note._)
[76] Youth is fond of expressing itself in all sorts of incommensurables,
and striking the imagination by images of infinite magnitude. The
last sentence reminds me vividly of Karl Moor, Ferdinand, and Don
Carlos.—(_Author’s Note._)
[77] The prophecy has now been fulfilled. This mutual interaction of men
on books, and books on men, is a curious thing. The book takes its whole
shape from the society in which it is conceived; it generalises, it makes
it more vivid and striking, and afterwards is outdone by reality. The
originals caricature their vividly drawn portraits, and actual persons
live in their literary shades. At the end of last century all young
Germans were a little after the style of Werther, while all their young
ladies resembled Charlotte; at the beginning of the present century the
university Werthers had begun to change into ‘Robbers,’ not real ones,
but Schilleresque robbers. The young Russians who have come on the scene
since 1862 are almost all derived from _What Is to be Done?_ with the
addition of a few Bazarov features.—(_Author’s Note._)
[78] The hero of Herzen’s novel, _Who Is to Blame?_—(_Translator’s Note._)
[79] The hero of _Woe from Wit_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[80] The reference is to the performance of Gogol’s _The Government
Inspector_.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[81] Hegel’s dialectic is a terrible battering-ram, in spite of its
double-facedness and its Prussian Protestant cockade; it dissolved
everything existing and dissipated everything that was a check on
reason. Moreover, that was the period of Feuerbach, _der kritischen
Kritik_.—(_Author’s Note._)
[82] It appeared in a feuilleton of the journal _l’Événement_, 1851, and
was later on included in a volume entitled _Democratic Legends_.—(_Note
to Russian Edition._)
[83] A philanthropist, Baron de Montyon (1733-1820) endowed prizes for
virtue and literary distinction to be distributed by the Institut in
Paris.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[84] Hegel.
[85] A peasant commune belonging to Prince Kozlovsky bought their
freedom. The land was divided amongst the peasants in proportion to the
sum contributed by each to the purchase-money. This arrangement was
apparently most natural and just. The peasants, however, thought it so
inconvenient and inconsistent with their habits that they decided to
regard the purchase-money as a debt incurred by the commune and to divide
the lands according to their accepted custom. This fact is vouched for by
Baron von Haxthausen. The author himself visited the village in question.
In a book recently published in Paris and dedicated to the Emperor
Nicholas, the writer says that this system of the division of land
seems to him unfavourable to the development of agriculture (as though
the object of it were the success of agriculture!); he adds, however:
‘It is difficult to escape these disadvantages, because this system
of land division is bound up with the organisation of our communes,
which it would be _dangerous to touch_; it is established on the
fundamental idea of the unity of the commune, and the right of every
member of it to a share in the communal property in proportion to his
strength, and so it supports the communal spirit, that trusty prop of
the social order. At the same time it is the best defence against the
increase of the proletariat and the diffusion of communistic ideas.’
(We may well believe that for a people in actual fact possessing their
property in common, communistic ideas present no danger.) ‘The good
sense with which the peasants avoid the inconveniences of their system
where such are inevitable is extremely remarkable; so is the ease with
which they agree over the compensation for inequalities arising from
differences of soil, or the confidence with which every one accepts the
decisions of the elders of the commune. It might be expected that the
continual re-divisions would give rise to continual disputes, and yet
the intervention of the higher authorities is only necessary in the very
rarest cases. This fact, _very strange in itself_, can only be explained
through the system, with all its disadvantages, having so grown into the
morals and conceptions of the peasants that its drawbacks are accepted
without a murmur.’
‘The idea of the commune is,’ says the same author, ‘as natural to the
Russian peasant, and as fully embodied in all the aspects of his life, as
the corporate municipal spirit that has taken shape in the bourgeoisie of
Western Europe is distasteful to his character.’—(_Author’s Note._)
[86] _I.e._, from the revolutionary changes made by Peter the
Great.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[87] To ‘let fly the Red Cock’ is the popular Russian phrase for
arson.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[88] The last sentence is omitted in the version of the ‘Légende’ in
Michelet’s Collected Works.—(_Translator’s Note._)
[89] _Du Développement des Idées révolutionnaires en Russie._
[90] The picture is called ‘The Last Day of Pompeii.’—(_Translator’s
Notes._)
[91] Quoted from the excellent expression of one of the contributors of
_Il Progresso_ in an article on Russia, August 1, 1851.—(_Author’s Note._)
[92] This is not a correct version either of the murder of Peter III. or
of Ivan VI. Catherine was certainly not directly responsible for either
of those crimes.—(_Translator’s Note._)
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