The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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       XVI

      DOSTOYEVSKY's second MARRIAGE

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       In spite of the opposition of his relations, Dostoyevsky married my mother on February 12th of that winter, five months after their first meeting. As he had no money, he could not take his young wife on a honeymoon journey. The couple took up their quarters in a lodging which my grandmother had furnished for them. Their decision to spend their honeymoon in Petersburg was very imprudent, and nearly brought about the wreck of their happiness.

      Having failed to prevent the marriage, Dostoyevsky's relations conceived the idea of estranging the husband and wife. They changed their tactics; the enemies of my mother became her friends, and feigned an unbounded admiration for her. They invaded her home, and rarely left her alone with her husband. These people who had hitherto neglected my father, and had visited him but rarely, now spent the entire day with the newly married couple, lunching and dining at their table, and often staying till midnight. My mother was greatly surprised at this behaviour, but she did not venture to complain; she had been taught from childhood to be amiable and polite to all her mother's guests, even to those she disliked. The artful relatives took advantage of her youthful timidity; they overran her home and behaved as if it belonged to them. Pretending to give her good advice, they begged her not to disturb her husband tod often, but to leave him in peace in his study. " You are too young for him at present," said these perfidious counsellors; " your girlish talk cannot interest him. Your husband is a very serious man, he wants to think over his books a great deal." On the other hand, they would take my father aside and tell him that he was much too old for his young wife and that he bored her. " Listen how prettily she chatters and laughs with her young nephews and nieces," his sister-in-law would whisper, " Your wife needs the society of young people of her own age. Let her amuse herself with them, or she will begin to dislike you." My father was hurt when he was assured that he was too old for his wife; my mother was indignant at -the thought that the great man she had married considered her silly and tiresome. They sulked, too proud to speak frankly to each other dt their grievances. If my parents had been in love they would have ended by quarrelling and reproaching each other, and would thus have exposed the machinations of the mischief-makers; but they had married on the strength of a mutual sympathy. This sympathy was capable of becoming ardent love under favourable circumstances; but it was also capable of turning to profound aversion. My mother saw with alarm how rapidly the admiration she had felt for Dostoyevsky before their marriage was diminishing. She began to think him very weak, very simple and very blind. " It is his duty as a husband to protect me from all these schemers, and to turn them out of the house," thought the poor bride. " Instead of defending me, he allows his relations to lord it over me in my own house, to eat my dinners and to make fun of my inexperience as a housekeeper." While my mother was crying in her bedroom, her husband was sitting alone in his study, and instead of working, was thinking sadly that his hopes of a happy married life were not very likely to be realised. " Can she not understand what a difference there is between me and my foohsh nephews ? " he would say to himself in mute rebuke of his wife's supposed levity. His relations were delighted. Everything was going on as they wished. . . .

      The spring was approaching, and people began to make plans for the summer exodus. My father's sister-in-law proposed that they should take a large villa at Pavlovsk, in the neighbourhood of Petersburg. " We could all be together," she said to Dostoyevsky, " and we should have a delightful summer. We will make excursions and take your wife out with us all day. You can stay at home and work at your novel without any interruptions." These plans were not very attractive to my father, and still less so to his wife. She told her husband that she would prefer to go abroad; she had long wished to visit Germany and Switzerland. My father, too, was eager to see once more the Europe he remembered with so much pleasure. He had already made three visits to foreign countries, the third mainly for the purpose of playing roulette. He thought he was now cured of the fatal passion, but he was mistaken. During his travels in Europe with my mother, he had several fresh attacks of the malady. It gradually weakened, however, and completely lost its hold upon him when he was approaching his fiftieth year. Like his passion for women, his passion for roulette lasted altogether only ten years.

      My father began to look about for money for the projected journey. He would not apply to his aunt Kumanin, for only a few months before she had given him ten thousand roubles, which were spent in publishing the newspaper Epoha. He preferred to go to M. Katkov, the publisher of an important Moscow review, in which Dostoyevsky's novels now appeared. My father went to see him at Moscow, described the plan of the new novel he was about to begin, and asked for an advance of a few thousand roubles. Katkov, who looked upon Dostoyevsky as the great attraction of his review, readily complied with his request. My father then announced to his family that he was shortly going abroad with his young wife. The schemers clamoured that if he intended to desert them for three months, he must at least leave them some money. Each produced a list of things required, and when my father had satisfied them all he had so little money left that he was obliged to give up the projected journey.

      My mother was in despair. " They will make mischief between me and my husband this summer ! " she cried, with tears, to her mother. " I feel it, I can see through all their schemes." My grandmother was much troubled; her younger daughter's marriage did not promise well. She, too, feared a sojourn at Pavlovsk, and wanted her daughter to go abroad. Unfortunately, she was unable to advance the funds for the journey; the money my grandfather had left her had been invested in the building of two houses close to her own, which she let. She Uved on the income from these houses. She had been obliged to mortgage a part of her income in order to give her daughter a trousseau and to furnish her new home. It was therefore very difficult for her to find a considerable sum of money immediately. After careful consideration, my grandmother advised her daughter to pledge СКАЧАТЬ