Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (884 page)

He told me of one incident, among others, which will show how nervous and irritable he sometimes was. When in Paris, it had occurred to him to pay a visit to Rome. To do this, he had to have his passport signed by the Papal Nuncio in Paris. Dostoevsky went twice to the Nuncio’s, but on neither occasion found him. When he went for the third time, he was received by a young abbé, who asked him to wait a while, as Monsignor was just breakfasting, and would take his coffee first. Dostoevsky leaped up as though gone suddenly crazy, and cried: “
Dites à votre Monseigneur, que je crache dans son café
—
qu’il me signe mon passeport, ou je me précipiterai chez lui avec scandale!”
The young abbé stared at him in consternation; he rushed into his chief’s apartment, came back with another abbé, and requested our Fyodor Michailovitch to clear out at once, and let the porter of his hotel come and see about the passport.

“Yes — I was too hot-tempered that time!” concluded Dostoevsky, with a shy smile. But evidently this irritability long endured; for in one of his later letters he writes: “I have become frightfully nervous and irritable; my character gets worse every day, and I can’t imagine what it will end in.”

FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF SOPHIE KOVALEVSKY 1866

ANYUTA was so delighted by her first literary success that she at once began another story. The hero of this tale was a young man who had been brought up far away from home in a monastery by his uncle, a monk. The hero, whose name was Michael, had some resemblance to Alyosha in the “Brothers Karamazov.” When I read that novel, some years afterwards, I was instantly struck by the resemblance; I spoke of it to Dostoevsky, whom I very often met at that time.

“I believe you are right!” said he, striking his forehead. “But I give you my word of honour that I never once thought of this Michael, when I created my Alyosha.... Perhaps he was unconsciously in my memory,” he added, after a pause.

When this second story of Anyuta’s appeared in print, the catastrophe arrived; a letter of Dostoevsky’s fell into my father’s hands, and there was a great fuss. We had hardly returned to Petersburg from the country before Anyuta wrote to Dostoevsky asking him to call. And he came — on the very day she fixed. I can still remember with what feverish impatience we awaited his arrival, and how, for a whole hour before he could be expected, we jumped at every tingle of the bell. But this first visit of Dostoevsky’s was a complete failure.

Our father had a great prejudice against all literary men. It is true that he allowed my sister to make acquaintance with Dostoevsky, but it was not without secret anxiety. When we were going back to town (he stayed in the country), he said, on parting, to my mother:

“Do reflect, Lisa, on the great responsibility you are undertaking. Dostoevsky does not belong to our circles. What do we know of him, after all? Only that he is a journalist, and has been in prison. A nice recommendation! We shall have to be very cautious about him.”

Father especially enjoined on mother that she should never leave Anyuta a moment alone with Dostoevsky. I begged for permission to be present at this first meeting. Our two old German aunts came into the room every minute on one pretext or another, and stared at our guest as if he were some strange animal; finally they both sat down on the sofa and stayed there till he went.

Anyuta was furious that her first meeting with Dostoevsky, on which she had set such high hopes, should be taking place in such circumstances; she looked cross, and would not speak. Dostoevsky too was very uncomfortable in the presence of the two old ladies. It was clear that he was sharply annoyed. He looked ill and old that day, as he always did when he was in a bad temper. He pulled nervously at his short blonde beard, bit his moustache, and made dreadful faces.

Mama did her very best to get up an interesting conversation. With the friendliest conventional smile on her lips, but evidently in the greatest perplexity, she tried to say all sorts of pleasant and flattering things to him, and to ask him intelligent questions.

Dostoevsky answered monosyllabically and discourteously. At last Mama was
au bout de ses ressources,
and said no more. Dostoevsky sat with us half-an-hour; then he took his hat, bowed hastily and awkwardly to us all, but shook hands with none of us — and went.

As soon as he was gone, Anyuta ran to her room, threw herself on the bed, and began to cry. “You always spoil everything!” she said, over and over again.

Yet, some days later, Dostoevsky reappeared, and his visit this time was very opportune, for Mama and the aunts were out, and only my sister and I at home. He thawed at once. He took Anyuta by the hand, sat down beside her on the divan and instantly they began to talk as if they were two old friends. The conversation did not, as on his first visit, drag itself with difficulty from one uninteresting theme to another. Anyuta and he had to make the best use of their time, and say as much as they possibly could to one another, so on they gabbled, joked, and laughed.

I was sitting in the same room, but taking no part in their conversation; I stared unwinkingly at Dostoevsky, and devoured every single word he said. This time he looked different from what he had at his first visit — young, frank, clever, and attractive.
‘
“Can he really be forty-three years old?” thought I.

“Can he really be three-and-a-half times as old as I am, and twice as old as Anyuta? They say he’s a great writer, and yet one can talk to him like a chum!” And all at once he seemed to me such a dear. Three hours went by in no time. Suddenly there was a noise in the ante-room: Mama had come back from town. She did not know that Dostoevsky was there, and came in with her hat on, laden with parcels.

When she saw Dostoevsky with us, she was surprised and a little alarmed. “What would my husband say?” was probably her first thought. We rushed to meet her, and when she saw we were in such high spirits,
she
thawed in her turn, and asked Dostoevsky to stay for lunch.

From that day forward he came to-our house as a friend. As our stay in Petersburg was not to be very long, he came frequently, say three or four times in the week.

It was particularly agreeable when he came on evenings when we had no other visitors. On such occasions he was remarkably vivacious and interesting. Fyodor Michailovitch did not like general conversation; he could only talk as a monologuist, and even then only when all those present were sympathetic to him, and prepared to listen with eager attention. When this condition was fulfilled, he talked most beautifully — eloquent and convincing as no one else could be.

Often he told us the story of the novels he was planning, often episodes and scenes of his own life.

I can still remember clearly how, for example, he described the moment when he, condemned to death, stood with eyes blindfolded before the company of soldiers, and waited for the word “Fire!” and how instead there came the beating of drums, and they heard that they were pardoned.

Dostoevsky was often very realistic in his conversation, and quite forgot that young girls were listening, I suppose. Our mother used sometimes to be terrified. In this way he once told us a scene out of a novel he had planned in his youth. The hero was a landed proprietor of middle age, highly educated and refined; he often went abroad, read deep books, and bought pictures and engravings. In his youth he had been very wild indeed, but had grown more staid with years; by this time he had a wife and children, and was universally respected. Well, one morning he wakes very early; the sun is shining into his bedroom; everything about him is very dainty, pretty, and comfortable. He is penetrated with a sense of well-being. Thorough sybarite that he is, he takes care not to awake completely, so as not to destroy this delightful state of almost vegetable felicity. On the boundary between sleep and waking, he enjoys in spirit a series of agreeable impressions from his latest trip abroad. He thinks of the wonderful light on the naked shoulders of a St. Cecilia in one of the galleries. Then some fine passages from a book called “Of the Beauty and Harmony of the Universe” come into his mind. But in the midst of these pleasant dreams and sensations he suddenly becomes aware of a peculiar feeling of discomfort, such as that from an internal ache or a mysterious disturbance. Very much like what a man experiences who has an old wound, from which the bullet has not been extracted; in the same way,
he
has been feeling perfectly at ease when suddenly the old wound begins to smart. And now our landed proprietor speculates on what this may portend. He has no ailment, he knows of no trouble, yet here he is, utterly wretched. But there must be something to account for it, and he urges his consciousness to the utmost.... And suddenly it
does
come to him, and he experiences it all as vividly, as tangibly — and with what horror in every atom of his being! — as if it had happened yesterday instead of twenty years ago. Yet for all that twenty years it has not troubled him.

What he remembers is how once, after a night of debauchery, egged on by drunken companions, he had forced a little girl of ten years old.

When Dostoevsky uttered those words, my mother flung her hands above her head, and cried out in terror: “Fyodor Michailovitch! For pity’s sake! The children are listening!”

At that time I had no idea what Dostoevsky was talking about, but from my mother’s horror I concluded that it must be something frightful.

Mama and Dostoevsky became good friends, all the same. She was very fond of him, though he gave her much to bear.

Before we left Petersburg Mama decided to have a farewell evening-party, and invite all our acquaintances. Of course, Dostoevsky was asked. At first he refused, but unluckily Mama succeeded in persuading him to come.

The evening was unusually dull. The guests took not the slightest interest in one another; but as well-bred people, for whom such dull evenings form an essential part of existence, they bore their tedium stoically.

One can easily divine how poor Dostoevsky felt in such company! In his personality and appearance he was frightfully alien to everybody else. He had gone so far in self-immolation as to put on a dress-coat; and this dress-coat, which fitted very badly and made him uncomfortable, ruined his temper for the whole evening. Like all neurotic people, he was very shy in the company of strangers, and it was clear that his ill-temper was to be displayed on the earliest possible opportunity.

My mother hastened to present him to the other guests; instead of a courteous acknowledgment, he muttered something inarticulate, and turned his back at once. But the worst was that he monopolized Anyuta from the very beginning. He withdrew with her into a corner of the room, plainly intending to keep her there all the time. That was, of course, contrary to all etiquette; and he behaved to her, moreover, with anything but drawing-room manners — holding her hand and whispering in her ear. Anyuta was much embarrassed, and Mama was vexed to death. At first she tried to convey to him delicately how unsuitable his conduct was. She passed the couple as if by chance, and called my sister, as if to send her into the other room on some message. Anyuta tried to get up and go, but Dostoevsky coolly held her back, and said: “No, wait — I haven’t finished yet.” But with that my mother’s patience came to an end.

“Excuse me, Fyodor Michailovitch; she must, as daughter of the house, attend to the other guests,” said she indignantly, leading my sister away with her.

Dostoevsky was furious; he stayed silently sitting in his corner, and casting malignant looks on every side.

Among the guests was one who displeased him extraordinarily from the first moment. This was a distant relative of ours, a young German, an officer in one of the Guards’ regiments.

Handsome, tall, and self-satisfied, this personage excited his hostility. The young man was sitting, effectively posed, in a comfortable chair, and displaying his slender ankles, clad in close-fitting silk socks. He bent gaily towards my sister, and evidently said something very funny to her. Anyuta, who had not yet recovered from the scene between Dostoevsky and my mother, heard him with a somewhat stereotyped smile—” the smile of a gentle angel,” as our English governess laughingly described it.

As Dostoevsky watched the pair, a veritable romance formed itself in his brain: Anyuta hates and scorns the German, self-satisfied fop that he is, but her parents mean to marry her to him. The whole party has of course been got up to this end alone!

He believed at once in this hypothesis, and got into a fury. That winter, people were talking much of a book by an English clergyman: “Parallels between Protestantism and [Greek] Orthodoxy.” In our Russo-German circle it was exciting great interest, and the conversation grew more animated as soon as this book was mentioned. Mama, who was herself a Protestant, remarked that Protestantism had one advantage over Orthodoxy, and that was that Protestants were more conversant with the Bible.

“And was the Bible written for fashionable ladies?” Dostoevsky suddenly broke out, having sat stubbornly silent till now. “For in the Bible it is written, among other things: ‘And God made them male and female.’ And again: ‘Therefore shall a woman forsake her father and mother, and shall cleave unto her husband.’ That was Christ’s conception of marriage! What have
our
mothers to say to it, they who think only of how they may get rid of their daughters to the best advantage?”

Dostoevsky said these words with uncommon pathos. The effect was stupendous. All our well-bred Germans were confounded, and stared with all their eyes. Not for some moments did they realize how unsuitable Dostoevsky’s speech had been, and then they all began to talk at once, so as to obliterate the unfortunate impression.

Dostoevsky cast another malignant look on all, retired to his corner, and spoke not a word for the rest of the evening.

When he came next day, Mama tried by a cool reception to give him to understand that she felt herself to be offended. But in her great good-nature she never could long be angry with anyone, and so they soon became friends again.