Читать книгу The Autobiographical Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Страница 24

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It was the month of July, and my parents found the city deserted; all their friends had left for the country. The first to return was my father's stepson, Paul Issaieff, who had lately married a pretty middle-class girl. As my mother was still weak after her recent confinement, and could not run about looking for a flat, he offered his services. In the evening he would come and show my mother sketch-plans of the various places he had inspected during the day.

" But why do you look at such large flats ? " she said to him, " Until our debts are paid, we must be content with four or five rooms at most."

" Four or five rooms ! Then where will you put me and my wife? "

" Were you thinking of Uving with us ? " asked my mother, greatly surprised.

" Of course. Would you have the heart to separate father and son ? "

My mother was exasperated. "You are not my husband's son," she said severely. " You are not even related to him, as a fact. My husband took care of you when you were a child, but his duty now is to look after his own children. You are old enough now to work and to earn your own living."

Paul Issaieff was overwhelmed by this plain speaking. He was not to consider himself the son of the famous Dostoyevsky ! Others had better claims than he on his " papa " ! What an infamous plot had been hatched against him! He was furious, and so was his young wife.

" He promised me," she told my mother ingenuously, " that we should all hve together, that you would keep house, and that I should have nothing to do. If I had known that he was deceiving me, I certainly would not have married him."

This selfish little creature became, under the disciphne of years and sorrows, an excellent wife and mother, respected by all who knew her. Poor woman ! her married life was a long martyrdom.

Seeing that nothing could shake my mother's determination, and that Dostoyevsky was of one mind with his wife on the subject, Paul Issaieff turned for sympathy to my father's relatives, complaining bitterly of the dark intrigues of his " stepmother," and her efforts to separate "father and son," Dostoyevsky's family had more sense than he. They realised that my mother's character had developed, that the timid girl-bride had become the energetic wife, able to protect her home from intruders. They made a virtue of necessity, and ceased to harass her. Their position, moreover, had greatly unproved during the past four years. The sons had grown up and were able to work for their Uving; the girls had married, and their husbands helped their mother. My aunt Alexandra, now a widow, married a rich man. The only members of the family dependent on my father were my unhappy uncle Nicolai and the worthless Paul Issaieff.

As soon as my mother's health was restored, she took a small flat and furnished it cheaply. Her own pretty furniture had all been sold. Paul Issaieff, who had undertaken to pay the interest of the loan on the furniture during my grandmother's absence, spent the money my parents had sent him for this purpose on himself. Another disappointment, of a more serious nature, awaited my mother on her return to Petersburg. My grandmother's house-property was sold by auction by order of the poUce, and changed owners several times. Thanks to a badly worded lease, the agent had been able to pass it off as his own. The only hope was in a lawsuit, and lawsuits are very expensive in Russia. My mother preferred to give up her share of the inheritance; my grandmother followed her example, although she was now utterly ruined as a result of her unlucky sojourn in Europe. Fortunately, her son had made a rich marriage at Dresden. With his wife's fortune he bought a fine estate in the Government of Kursk, and set to work to apply the theories he had learnt at the Academy of Agriculture. My grandmother went to live with him and his family, and soon became absorbed in his agricultural experiments. Now that her favourite daughter was dead, she rarely came to Petersburg. Her relations with Dostoyevsky were always cordial, but she played a very small part in his life.

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When my uncle Mihail's creditors heard that Dostoyevsky had returned to Petersburg, they at once presented themselves, and again threatened him with imprisonment. My mother then entered upon the struggle, for which she had been bracing herself at Dresden. She lectured them and argued with them, and borrowed from money-lenders to pay off the most rapacious. Dostoyevsky was amazed at the facility with which his wife manipulated figures and talked the jargon of notaries. When pubHshers came to make proposals to him, he listened to them quietly, and said : " I cannot decide anything for the moment. I must consult my wife." People soon began to understand who it was that managed the business of the Dostoyevsky household, and they addressed themselves directly to her. Thus my father was relieved of all wearisome details, and was able to devote himself entirely to his works.

With a view to paying off the debts quickly, my mother introduced a rigid economy in her home. For many years we had to live in very modest dwellings; we had only two servants, and our meals were extremely frugal. My mother made her own dresses and her children's frocks. She never went into society, and very rarely to the theatre, in which she deUghted. This austere life was unnatural at her age, and made her unhappy. She was often in tears; her melancholy disposition, which painted the future in the darkest colours, conjured up visions of an old, infirm husband, sick children, a poverty-stricken household.66 She could not understand my father's serenity. " We shall never be without money," he would say, in tones of conviction. " But where is it to come from ? " she would ask, vexed at his confidence. My mother was still young. There are certain truths we only grasp after the age of forty. My father knew that we are all God's workers, and that if we perform our task faithfully, the Heavenly Master will not forsake us. Dostoyevsky had perfect faith in God, and never feared for the future of his family. He was right, for after his death we lacked nothing.

66 My father's Aunt Kumanin could no longer help him. She died while we were in Europe, leaving her affairs in great disorder. Her heirs quarrelled over her property for years. We did not receive our share till after ray father's death.

To comfort his wife and lighten her heavy burden, my father accepted the post of sub-editor of the newspaper. The Citizen, edited by Prince Mestchersky, an absurd person who was the laughing-stock of all the other journalists. Mestchersky, who had been brought up by English nurses and French tutors, could not even speak Russian correctly; my father had to be always on the watch to prevent him from publishing something ridiculous in the paper. His journalistic work exhausted him terribly, and directly the most pressing of the debts were paid, my father hastened to leave The Citizen and its fantastic editor to their fate.

My mother, for her part, did not spend all her time in weeping. She prepared my father's novels which had appeared in reviews for publication in book form, which brought in a little money. Moreover, it gave her experience ; she became an excellent editor in time, and after my father's death published several complete editions of his works. She was the first Russian woman to undertake work of this nature. Her example was followed by Countess Tolstoy, who came to Petersburg to make my mother's acquaintance and ask her advice. She gave all the necessary information, and thenceforward all Tolstoy's works were published by his wife. Long afterwards, when at Moscow, my mother showed the Coimtess the musuem she had organised in memory of her husband in one of the towers of the Historical Museum at Moscow. The idea appealed to Countess Tolstoy, and she asked the directors of the Museum to let her have a similar tower for a Tolstoy Museum. These two Europeans 67 were not content to be merely wives and mothers; they aspired to help their husbands to propagate their ideas, and they were anxious to place all relics of their great men in safe custody. Another friend of my mother's, Madame Shestakov, asked her advice in the organisation of a museum in memory of her brother, the famous composer. Glinka. My mother helped her considerably, and thus was the founder of one museum, and the inspirer of two others.

67 Countess Tolstoy was the daughter of Dr. Bers, a native of the Baltic Provinces.

My father Kved a very retired Hfe during the first years of his return to Russia; he went out very little, and received only a few intimate friends. He made few appearances in public; the Petersburg students kept up their grudge against him, and rarely invited him to their literary gatherings. They had scarcely begun to forget that Dostoyevsky had insulted them in the person of Raskolnikov, when he offended them still more deeply. In his novel, The Possessed, he had plainly shown them the folly and madness of revolutionary propaganda. Our young men were stupefied; they had looked upon the anarchists as Plutarchian heroes. This Russian admiration for incendiaries, which is so amazing to Europeans, is easily accounted for by the Oriental sloth of my compatriots. It is much easier to throw a bomb and run away to a foreign country than to devote one's life to the service of one's fatherland, after the fashion of patriots elsewhere.

Dostoyevsky attached no importance to the displeasure of the students, and wasted no regrets on his lost popularity with them. He looked upon them as misguided boys, and a man of his caUbre has no need of youthful adulation. The joy he felt in the creation of his masterpieces richly rewarded his toil; popular applause could add nothing to it. I think my father was happier in these early years of his return to Petersburg than later, in the agitated period of his great successes. His wife loved him, his children amused him with their infantine prattle and laughter; old friends often visited him, and he could exchange ideas with them. His health had improved, his attacks of epilepsy were no longer frequent, and the mortal disease which was to close his career had not yet declared itself.