Читать книгу The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Страница 23

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Towards the spring my mother became enceinte for the second time. The news delighted my father; the birth of little Sophie had made him more eager than ever to be a father. As the climate of Florence suited my mother, my parents at first proposed to spend another year in Italy. But they changed their minds as the time for my mother's confinement approached. The fact was that in those days the hotels and furnished flats in Florence did not as yet possess any of those polyglot servants who speak all languages equally badly. The humble Florentine servants were content to speak good Italian. My mother soon learned to talk this language after a fashion, and acted as interpreter to my father, who was too busy with his novel to study Itahan. Now that she was about to take to her bed, and perhaps be dangerously ill, how, she wondered, would her husband be able to manage among Italian servants and nurses. My father wondered also, and told his wife he would prefer to winter in a country where he could speak the language. Dostoyevsky at this time was beginning to feel an interest in the Slav question, which eventually absorbed him so entirely. He proposed to my mother that they should go to Prague, where he wished to study the Czechs. My parents left Florence at the end of the summer, and travelled by easy stages that my mother might not be tired, stopping at Venice, Trieste and Vienna. At Prague they had a great disappointment; there were no furnished apartments to be had in the town. Dostoyevsky wanted to go back to Vienna, hoping to find there some Czech societies, literary or otherwise; but my mother disliked Vienna. She proposed that they should return to Dresden, of which she had such happy memories. My father agreed; he, too, remembered their stay in Dresden with pleasure.

My parents arrived in Dresden a fortnight before my birth. Dostoyevsky was very happy to have a little daughter to love once more. " I saw her five minutes after her arrival in the world," he wrote to one of his friends. " She is a beauty, and the image of me." My mother laughed heartily when she heard this. " You flatter yourself," she said to her husband. " Do you think you are handsome?" Dostoyevsky was never handsome, nor was his daughter; but she was always proud of being like her father.

The landlord of the furnished rooms occupied by my parents came to warn Dostoyevsky that by the laws of the town of Dresden he must go at once to the police office to announce the birth of his daughter to the Saxon authorities.

Dostoyevsky hastened to the office and declared to the officials that he was the happy father of a little girl called Aimee. The Saxons were not content with this, but made my father state his name, age, social position, date of birth. Having satisfied their curiosity on the subject of my father, they passed on to his wife, and asked what her maiden name was.

Her maiden name ! The devil I Dostoyevsky could not remember it! He racked his brains in vain !—he could not recall it. He explained matters to the pohce officers, and asked leave to go and consult his wife. The worthy Saxons looked at him with amazement; never had they encountered such an absent-minded husband ! They allowed Dostoyevsky to go. He came home in dudgeon.

" What is your name ? " he asked his wife severely.

"My name? Anna," replied my mother, much surprised.

" I know your name is Anna. I want to know your maiden name."

"Why?"

" Oh ! it is not I who would know it, but the pohce here. These Germans are so inquisitive. They insist on knowing what you were called before your marriage, and I have completely forgotten ! "

My mother instructed her husband, and advised him to write the name on a bit of paper. " Otherwise you will forget it again," she said laughingly. Dostoyevsky took her advice, and went off to show his bit of paper triumphantly to the Saxon authorities.63

63 My Russian name is Lubov. As it is rather difiicult for foreigners to pronounce, we got into the habit of translating it by Aimee, which means very nearly the same thing. My father used to call me Liuba, which is the Russian diminutive of Lubov, and I figure in the Dresden letters imder this name. As I grew older I preferred the pet name of LUa, which my grandmother gave me, and which was easier for my childish tongue. To please me, my parents also called me Lila, and it is thus that Dostoyevsky writes of me in all his later letters.

My mother's health had improved greatly in the Italian climate, and she was able to nurse me herself. She also engaged a German nurse for me, distrusting her own inexperience. My grandmother came to be with her daughter during her confinement, and watched over me carefully, fearing a second domestic calamity. However, I was not at all like my elder sister. I was a sturdy Slavo-Norman, determined not to leave this planet until I had studied it thoroughly.

My grandmother had not returned to Russia after the death of little Sophie. When she quitted Petersburg for a few months, she had left the management of her house property in the hands of one of her relatives. Being much occupied with other business, he let all the houses on a long lease, without taking the trouble to consult my grandmother. As she could not return to her own house at Petersburg, my grandmother elected to stay near her daughter Anna, all the more wiUingly because her favourite daughter Marie was also spending the greater part of her time in Europe. Marie's husband managed the affairs of one of his former pupils, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, who lived abroad, and constantly visited the Duke either at Geneva or in Rome. My aunt, who was very intimate with the morganatic wife of the Duke, always accompanied her husband, and often took her children with her. My grandmother went from one daughter to another, and was very happy in Europe, which to her Swedish mind was much more interesting than Russia. But she felt the separation from her son, who at this time was studjdng agriculture at the Petrov-skoe Academy near Moscow. My mother was very fond of her brother Jean, and she, too, longed to see him after years of separation. They both wrote to my uncle and begged him to come and see them. He got leave, and arrived in Dresden, intending to stay only two months, but he was obliged to remain there over two years. A strange fatality seemed to pursue my mother's family in this connection: whenever any of them visited Europe intending to stay a few months, it always became necessary for them to remain several years. My Aunt Marie, indeed, never returned to Russia. She died in Rome two years after the time of which I am writing, and was buried there.

My uncle Jean had at the Academy a friend whom he greatly loved and admired, called Ivanov. He was older than my uncle, whom he protected and looked after as if he had been a yoimger brother. When Ivanov heard that my grandmother wished to see her son, he urged my uncle strongly to accept the invitation of his relatives. Knowing the somewhat vacillating character of his young comrade, Ivanov went himself to see the Director of the Academy, persuaded him to grant my uncle leave of absence for two months, took steps to hasten the issue of his passport, and saw him off at the station. My uncle was somewhat surprised at this eagerness for his departure, but he attached no importance to it. When he arrived in Dresden he talked enthusiastically of his dear Ivanov, wrote him letters and awaited his answers impatiently. A few weeks later Ivanov was found murdered in the park surrounding the Academy. The police set to work to track the murderer, and finally discovered a political plot, in which most of the students were imphcated. These young fanatics had been working to overthrow the Government, instead of attending to their agricultural studies. Ivanov was one of the chief agitators; he thought better of it, however, began to have doubts, and finally gave notice to his comrades that he intended to leave the secret society. The young revolutionaries were furious at his defection, and determined to punish it by death; they enticed him into a lonely part of the park one night, and there one of his comrades, named Netchaiieff, killed him while the others held his arms. This political affair, which was known as the Netchaieff Case, made a great sensation in Russia; it is still remembered there.

The curious part of this story is that my uncle, who was almost inseparable from Ivanov, knew nothing at all of the plot. It is probable that Ivanov, who was really attached to him, prevented his companions from drawing him into this dangerous business. My poor uncle felt his friend's death bitterly; he understood now why Ivanov had been so anxious for him to go abroad. He knew, no doubt, the fate he had to expect from his comrades, and wished to place his young friend out of danger. My grandmother was greatly alarmed when she heard of the murder of Ivanov, and forbade her son to return to Russia, more especially as the Academy of Agriculture was closed by order of the Government. Throughout the proceedings, my uncle settled at Dresden with his mother. He afterwards married a young girl of the Russian colony in Dresden.

The Netchaieff Case made a deep impression on Dostoyevsky, and provided the subject for his famous novel. The Possessed. His readers at once recognised the Netchaieff affair, though the action took place in different surroundings. The critics argued that my father, who was living abroad at the time of the Netchaieff Case, had not at all understood it. No one knew that he had had an opportunity of forming a very clear idea of the plot by questioning my uncle Jean, who was intimately connected with the victim, the murderer, and the other revolutionaries of the Academy, and was able to reproduce their conversation and their political ideas.64

64 My uncle was very brave and very intelligent. He had inherited his father's religious and monarchical ideas and was not afraid to profess them openly. It was probably on this accoimt that his comrades concealed the plot from him. If our revolutionaries were merciless to those who forsook them after sharing their faith, they did not molest those who had the courage of their opinions.

Schatov, Verhovensky, and many other characters in The Possessed are portraits. Of course, Dostoyevsky could not tell his critics of his sources, for fear of compromising his brother-in-law. My uncle's relations were truly thankful that the police had forgotten his existence, and had not ordered him to attend the trial as a witness. He might have been bewildered and have said something imprudent that would have endangered him. It is probable that his fellow-students followed Ivanov's example, and were careful not to commit my uncle, who was a general favourite. He was a delightful creature, a true Christian. He treated all men as his brothers. People began by laughing at him and ended by loving him. Dostoyevsky was always much attached to his brother-in-law.65

65 A curious thing happened to the novel The Possessed. When Dostoyevsky began it, he had taken Nicolai Stavrogin for the hero, but when he had nearly finished the book, he realised that Verhovensky was much more interesting, and decided that he must be the hero. He had to rewrite almost the whole of the book, and cut out several chapters in which he had developed his study of Stavrogin. My mother wanted to publish one of these chapters in the last edition, at the begimiing of this century. But she asked the advice of several old friends of my father's, and they were opposed to its inclusion.

When the Russian colony heard that the famous novelist Dostoyevsky was living in Dresden with his family, many people wished to make his acquaintance. They came to see him and invited him to their houses. My mother might have led a much more cheerful life at Dresden than at Geneva or Florence, but she was very unhappy there. She was now suffering from homesickness, that curious malady which often attacks young creatures who have been torn too abruptly from their native soil. She hated Germany, hated foreigners. Dresden, which she had thought so charming, now seemed odious to her. She had moments of despair, thinking that she would perhaps never see her dear Russia again. She suffered the more acutely because, now that her health was restored, her Norman nature asserted itself, and made her long for action and struggle. She pined in her furnished flat, between her husband and her child. She thought that at Petersburg she would certainly find a means of paying off the debts which were crushing her life. Moreover, her family affairs were causing her much anxiety. One of the houses belonging to my grandparents was to come to my mother, according to her father's will. The Russian law did not allow her to sell it before her brother was of age. Jean was now just on the verge of his majority, and my mother hoped to sell her house and pay her husband's debts. The house-agent, who had taken all my grandmother's property on lease, paid her regularly for the first few months; then he had ceased to pay, and did not answer the letters she wrote him. My mother wrote to friends at Petersburg and begged them to go and see him and inquire into the matter. They did so, but could never find him at home; the neighbours whom they questioned declared that his business was in a bad way, and that the police had paid him visits. All this alarmed my mother, and she implored my father to return to Russia. She no longer feared the machinations of his relatives; she knew that she had now her husband's entire confidence. Her character, moreover, had changed greatly; her school-friends scarcely recognised their gay companion. Privations, exile, the influence of Europe, where life is more serious and difficult than the childish life of Russia, had prematurely aged her.

Dostoyevsky was not home-sick, and felt very comfortable abroad; his health had improved, his epileptic attacks occurred only at long intervals. Yet he, too, wanted to return to Petersburg; he feared that he would cease to understand Russia if he stayed any longer in Dresden. All his life he had this fear, in Germany as in Siberia. Probably Dostoyevsky was conscious that there was very little of the Russian in him. Turgenev and Count Alexis Tolstoy spent their whole Uves abroad, yet this did not prevent them from giving their readers admirable types of Great Russia. They nearly always spoke French, yet they wrote most excellent Russian. These writers carried Russia with them in their blood, and remained eternally Russian, though they naively accounted themselves perfect Europeans. My father, who, on the other hand, gloried in being a Russian, was really much more European than they. He was capable of being absorbed by Europe; it was therefore more dangerous for him to go away from Russia. His mastery of the Russian language was also imperilled. It has often been made a reproach to my father that his style is heavy, incoherent and careless; this has been explained by the fact that he was obliged to work for his daily bread, and had not time to correct his manuscripts. But those who have a good style know that it is easy to write well at the first attempt. I think Dostoyevsky's faulty style may rather be accounted for as follows: he wrote Russian badly because it was not his ancestral tongue.

During the second part of her stay in Dresden my mother became enceinte for the third time. She proposed at first to stay at Dresden for her confinement; then, fearing illness might keep her another year in Germany, she changed her mind, and made her husband start for home at once. We arrived at Petersburg a few days before the birth of my brother Fyodor.