The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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СКАЧАТЬ and were lavish of invitations to the illustrious writer. My father visited at their houses, but their ostentatious luxury was distasteful to him; he preferred the comfort and the subdued elegance of Countess Tolstoy's salon.

      Thanks to my father, this salon soon became the fashion and attracted numerous visitors. " When Countess Sophie invited us to her evenings, we went if we had no other invitations more interesting; but when she added: Dostoyevsky has promised to come, we forgot all other engagements and hastened to her house," said an old lady of the great Russian world (now a refugee in Switzerland) to me the other day. Dostoyevsky's admirers in the higher circles of Petersburg applied to Countess Tolstoy to make them acquainted with him. She placed her good offices at their disposal, although the business was not always very easy. Dostoyevsky was no worldling, and he did not care to make himself agreeable to persons who were uncongenial to him. When he met people of feeUng, good and honest souls, he was so kind to them that they could never forget it, and twenty years later would repeat the words he had said to them. But when he found himself in the company of one of the numerous snobs who swarm in the drawing-rooms of a capital, he remained obstinately silent. In vain Countess Tolstoy would try to draw him out by adroit questions, my father would answer " Yes " or " No " abstractedly, and continue to study the snob as if he were some strange and injurious insect. Thanks to this uncompromising attitude he made many enemies; but this was never a matter he took very seriously.97

      97 This haughtiness was in strong contrast to the exquisite politeness and amiability with which he would answer the letters of his provincial admirers. Dostoyevsky knew that his ideas and his counsels were sacred in the eyes of aU these country doctors, schoolmistresses, and obscure parish priests, whereas the snobs of Petersburg were only interested in him because he was the fashion.

      It will perhaps be objected that a great writer Uke Dostoyevsky should have been more indulgent to stupid and ill-bred people. But my father was right to treat them with contempt, for snobbery, introduced among us by the barons of the Baltic Provinces, was disastrous to Russia. Feudal Europe has been used for centuries to bow before titled persons, capitalists and highly placed functionaries. The baseness of Europeans in this connection has often amazed me during my travels abroad. The Russian, with his ideal of fraternal equality, does not understand snobbery and is repelled by it. My compatriots look upon the haughty attitude of the snob as a provocation and an insult, which they never forget and are eager to avenge. Two centuries of Baltic snobbery brought about the disintegration of Russia. On the eve of the Revolution all our classes were at daggers drawn. The hereditary nobility hated the aristocracy, which encircled the throne like a great Wall of China; the merchants were hostile to the nobles, who despised them and would not mix with them; the clergy were impatient of the humble position they occupied in the Empire; the intellectuals, who had sprung from the people, were indignant when they found that Russian society looked upon them as moujiks, in spite of their superior education. If all had followed Dostoyevsky's example and waged war against snobbery, the Russian Revolution might have followed a different course.

      In Countess Tolstoy's salon, as in the soireis of the students, Dostoyevsky had even more success with the women than with the men, and for the same reason : he always treated women with respect. The Russians have always retained their Oriental point of view with regard to women. Since the days of Peter the Great they have ceased to whip them; they bow low to them, kiss their hands and treat them as queens, trying to Uve up to their European civilisation. But at the same time they consider women as big children, frivolous and ignorant, who must always be amused by jests and anecdotes more or less witty. They dechne to discuss serious subjects with them, and laugh at their pretensions to an interest in politics. There is nothing more exasperating to an intelligent woman than to see fools and ignoramuses posing as her superiors. Dostoyevsky never adopted such a tone; he never tried to amuse or to fascinate women, but talked to them seriously, as to his equals. He would never follow the Russian fashion of kissing women's hands, he thought the practice humiliating to them. " When men kiss the hands of women they look upon them as slaves, and try to console them for their servitude by treating them Uke queens," he often said. " When in the future they come to recognise them as equals, they will be content to shake hands with them, as they do with their own comrades." Such speeches astonished the inhabitants of Petersburg, who could not understand them. It was one of the many ideas Dostoyevsky had inherited from his Norman ancestors. The English do not kiss the hands of their women, but greet them by clasping their hands. And yet there is no country where the women have a freer and more independent position than England.98

      98 Dostoyevsky's popularity with women may also have had another cause. According to one of his comrades in the Petra-chevsky conspiracy, my father was one of those men who, " though the most virile of males, yet have something of the feminine nature," as Michelet says.

      Dostoyevsky had a strong affection for Countess Tolstoy, who gave him that literary sjTnpathy which all writers need; but it was not to her he entrusted his family at his death. He had another friend, whom he saw less frequently, but for whom he had a greater veneration. This was Countess Heiden, nle Countess Zubov. Her husband was Governor-General of Finland, but she continued to live in Petersburg, where she founded a large hospital for the poor. There she spent her days tending the suffering, interesting herself in their affairs and trying to comfort them. She was a great admirer of Dostoyevsky. When they met they talked of religion; my father gave her his views on Christian education. Knowing the importance he attached to the moral training of his children, Countess Heiden became my mother's friend and tried to influence me for good. After her death, which left a great blank in my life, I understood all I owed to this saintly woman.

      The literary soirees inaugurated by the students of Petersburg soon became fashionable in the great world. Instead of getting up tableaux vivants or amateur theatricals, the great Russian ladies who patronised charities organised literary gatherings in their salons. Our writers placed themselves at their disposal and promised their help in working for a good cause. As always, Dostoyevsky was the great attraction of these evenings. As the public here was a very different one to that he met at the students' gatherings, he discarded the Marmeladov monologue in favour of other fragments from his works. Faithful to his idea of bringing the intellectuals and the masses together, he chose to read to these aristocratic assemblies the chapter in The Brothers Karamazov, where the staretz Zossima receives the poor peasant women who have come on pilgrimage. One of these women having lost her son of three years old, leaves her home and her husband and wanders from convent to convent, unable to find comfort in her grief. It was his own sorrow which Dostoyevsky painted in this chapter; he, too, could not forget his little Aliosha. He put so much feeling into the simple story of the poor mother that all the women in his audience were deeply moved. The Hereditary Grand Duchess Marie Fyodor-ovna, the future Empress of Russia, was present at one of these evenings. She, too, had lost a little son and could not forget it. As she listened to my father's reading, the Cesarevna 99 cried bitterly, When the reading was over, she spoke to the ladies who had organised the evening, and told them she wished to talk to my father. The ladies hastened to meet her wishes, but they cannot have been very intelligent persons. Knowing Dostoyevsky's somewhat suspicious character, they feared he might refuse to be presented to the Cesarevna, and determined to bring about the interview by a stratagem. They went to my father and told him in mysterious tones that a very, very interesting person wished to talk to him about his reading.

      99 Europeans often make a mistake in speaking of our Hereditary Grand Dukes as " Tsarevitcli." Tliis title belongs to the sons of the ancient Moscovite Tsars. The eldest son of the Emperor of Russia was the " Cesarevitch," and his wife the " Cesarevna." The word Tsar, which Europeans take for a Mongolian word, is only " Caesar " pronounced in the Russian manner.

      "What interesting person?" asked Dostoyevsky in surprise. " Oh! you will see for yourself. Come with us ! " replied the young women laughingly, and they took him to a little boudoir, pushed him in and closed the door behind him. Dostoyevsky was astonished at these mysterious proceedings. The little room was dimly lighted by a shaded lamp; a young woman was quietly seated by a small table. At this time of his Ufe my father no longer looked at young women; he bowed to the lady, as one bows to a fellow-guest, and thinking some joke was being СКАЧАТЬ