Chapter 19: The Two Princesses

When I was five or six years old and was very naughty, Vera Artamonovna used to say: ‘Very well, very well, you wait a bit, I’ll tell the princess as soon as she comes.’ I was at once subdued by this threat and begged her not to complain.

Princess Marya Alexeyevna Hovansky, my father’s sister, was a stern, forbidding old woman, stout and dignified, with a birth-mark on her cheek and false curls under her cap; she used to screw up her eyes as she spoke, and to the end of her days, that is to the age of eighty, rouged and powdered a little. Whenever I fell into her hands she worried me; there was no end to her lecturing and grumbling; she would scold me for anything, for a crumpled collar, or a stain on my jacket, would declare I had not gone up to kiss her hand properly, and make me go through the ceremony again. When she had finished lecturing me, she would sometimes say to my father, as with her finger-tips she took a pinch out of a tiny gold snuff-box: ‘My dear, you should send your spoilt child to me to be corrected; he would be as soft as silk when he had been a month in my hands.’ I knew that they would not give me up to her, but I shivered with horror at those words.

My terror of her passed off with the years, but I never liked the old princess’s house; I could not breathe freely in it, I was not myself there, but like a trapped hare looked uneasily from one side to the other to make my escape.

The old princess’s household was not in the least like my father’s or the Senator’s. It was an old-fashioned, orthodox Russian household in which they kept the fasts, went to early matins, put a cross on the doors on the Eve of Epiphany, made marvellous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, ate pork with horse-radish, dined exactly at two o’clock and supped at nine. The European influences which had infected her brothers and turned them somewhat out of their native rut had not touched the old princess’s existence; on the contrary, she disapproved of the way in which ‘Vanyusha and Lyovushka,’ as she called my father and uncle, had been corrupted by ‘that France.’

Princess Marya Alexeyevna lived in the lodge of the house occupied by her aunt, Princess Anna Borissovna Meshtchersky, a maiden lady of eighty.

This Princess Meshtchersky was the living and almost solitary link connecting all the seven ascending and descending branches of the family. At the chief holidays all the relations gathered about her. She reconciled those who were at variance and brought together those who had drifted apart. She was respected by all, and she deserved it. At her death family ties were loosened and lost their rallying-point, and the relations forgot each other.

She had finished the education of my father and his brothers; after the death of their parents she looked after their property until they came of age. She put them into the Guards, and she made marriages for their sisters. I do not know how far she was satisfied with the results of her bringing up, which with the help of a French engineer, a kinsman of Voltaire, had turned them into landowners and _esprits forts_, but she knew how to retain their esteem, and her nephews, though not greatly disposed to feelings of obedience and reverence, respected their old aunt and often obeyed her to the end of her life.

Princess Anna Borissovna’s house, by some miracle preserved at the time of the fire of 1812, had not been repaired nor redecorated for fifty years: the hangings that covered the walls were faded and blackened; the lustres on the chandeliers, discoloured by heat and turned into smoky topazes by time, shook and tinkled, shining dingily when any one walked across the room. The heavy, solid mahogany furniture, ornamented with carvings that had lost all their gilt, stood gloomily along the walls; chests of drawers with Chinese incrustations, tables with little copper trellis-work, rococo porcelain dolls—all recalled a different age and different manners.

Grey-headed flunkeys sat in the vestibule, occupied with quiet dignity in various trifling tasks, or sometimes reading half aloud a prayer-book or a psalter, the pages of which were darker than its cover. Boys stood at the doors, but they were more like old dwarfs than children—they never laughed nor raised their voices.

A deathly silence reigned in the inner apartments; only, from time to time, there was the mournful cry of a cockatoo, its luckless faltering effort to repeat a human word, the bony tap of its beak against its perch, covered with tin, and the disgusting whimper of a little old monkey, shrunken and consumptive, that lived in the big drawing-room, on a little shelf of the tiled stove. The monkey, dressed like a _débardeur_, in full, red trousers, gave to the whole room a peculiar and extremely unpleasant smell. In another big drawing-room hung a number of family portraits of all sizes, shapes, periods, ages, and costumes. These portraits had a peculiar interest for me, especially from the contrast between the originals and their semblances. The young man of twenty with a powdered head, dressed in a light-green embroidered, full-skirted coat, smiling courteously from the canvas, was my father. The little girl with dishevelled curls and a bouquet of roses, her face adorned with a patch, mercilessly tight-laced into the shape of a wine-glass, and thrust into an enormous crinoline, was the formidable old Princess Marya Alexeyevna.

The stillness and the stiffness grew more marked as one approached the princess’s room. Old maidservants in white caps with wide frills moved to and fro with little teapots, so softly that their footsteps were inaudible; from time to time a grey-headed manservant in a long coat of stout dark-blue cloth appeared at the doors, but his footsteps too were as inaudible, and when he gave some message to the elder maidservant, his lips moved without making a sound.

The little, withered, wrinkled, but by no means ugly, old lady, Princess Anna Borissovna, was usually sitting or reclining on the big clumsy sofa, propped up with cushions. One could scarcely distinguish her; everything was white, her dressing-jacket, her cap, the cushions, the covers on the sofa. Her waxen white face of lace-like fragility together with her faint voice and white dress gave her an air of something that had passed away and was scarcely breathing.

The big English clock on the table with its loud-measured spondee—tick-tack, tick-tack—seemed marking off the last quarters of an hour of her life.

Between twelve and one, Princess Marya Alexeyevna would enter and settle herself with dignity in a big easy-chair. She was dull in her empty apartments. She was a widow, and I still remember her husband, a little grey-headed old gentleman who drank liqueurs and home-made beverages on the sly; he never played an important part in the house, and was accustomed to obey his wife implicitly—though he sometimes rebelled against her in words, especially after his secret potations. The princess would be surprised at the great effect produced on her spouse by the minute glass of vodka which he drank officially before dinner, and she would leave him in peace to play the whole morning with his blackbirds, nightingales, and canaries, which trilled shrilly against each other; he trained some of them with a little organ, others by whistling to them himself; he used to drive off very early to the bird-market to exchange, sell, and buy birds; he took an artistic delight in succeeding, as he supposed, in cheating a dealer.... And so he spent his profitable existence, until one morning, after whistling to his canaries, he fell forward on his face and two hours afterwards died.

His widow was left alone. She had had two daughters, both of whom married not for love but simply to escape from the maternal yoke. Both died in their first childbirth. The princess was really an unlucky woman, but her troubles rather warped her character than softened it. Her misfortunes made her not milder, not kinder, but harder and more forbidding.

Now she had no one left but her brothers and her old maiden aunt. She had scarcely parted from the latter all her life, and after her husband’s death she took complete control of the old lady’s household, and ruled her with a rod of iron under the pretext of looking after her and caring for her wants.

Old women of all sorts, either living with Princess Anna Borissovna or staying temporarily in her house, were always ranged along the walls or sitting in the various corners. Half saints and half vagrants, rather depraved and very devout, sickly and extremely unclean, these old women trailed from one old-fashioned house to another: in one they were fed, in another presented with an old shawl; from one place they were sent grain and fuel, from another linen and cabbage; and so they somehow made both ends meet. Everywhere they were regarded as a nuisance, everywhere they were passed over, everywhere put in the lowest seat, and everywhere received through dullness and emptiness and, most of all, through love of gossip. In the presence of other company these mournful figures were usually silent, looking with envious hatred at each other.... They sighed, shook their heads, made the sign of the cross, and muttered to themselves the number of their stitches, prayers, and perhaps even words of abuse. On the other hand, _tête à tête_ with their benefactresses, they made up for their silence by the most treacherous gossip about all the other benefactresses who received them, fed them, and made them presents.

They were continually begging from Princess Anna Borissovna, and in return for her presents, often made without the knowledge of Princess Marya Alexeyevna, who did not like indulging them, brought her holy bread, hard as a stone, and useless woollen and knitted articles of their own make, which the old lady afterwards sold for their benefit, regardless of the unwillingness of the purchasers.

Besides birthdays, namedays, and other holidays, the most solemn gathering of kinsmen and friends in Princess Anna Borissovna’s house took place on New Year’s Eve. On that day she ‘elevated’ the Iversky Madonna. The holy ikon was carried through all the apartments by monks and priests, chanting. Princess Anna Borissovna, the first to kiss the cross, walked under it, and after her all the visitors, men and maid servants, old people and children. Then they all congratulated her on the New Year, and made her all sorts of trifling presents such as are given to children. She would play with them for a few days, then give them away.

My father used to drag me off every year to this heathen ceremony; everything was repeated in exactly the same order, except that some old men and women were every year missing, and their names were intentionally avoided, until the old lady herself would say: ‘Our Ilya Vassilyevitch is no longer here, the Kingdom of Heaven be his!... Whom will the Lord summon this year?’ and she would shake her head dubiously.

And the ticking of the English clock would go on marking off the days, the hours, the minutes, and at last it reached the fatal second. The old lady felt unwell on getting up one day; she walked about the rooms and was no better; her nose began bleeding, and very violently; she felt faint and exhausted, and lay down fully dressed on her sofa, fell quietly asleep ... and never woke again. She was over ninety.

She left her house and the greater part of her property to her niece, the widowed princess, but did not hand on to her the inner significance of her life. Princess Marya Alexeyevna could not maintain the—in its own way—artistic rôle of head of the family, of the patriarchal link connecting many threads. With the death of Princess Anna Borissovna an aspect of gloom came over everything, as in mountainous places at sunset, long dark shadows lay upon all. Princess Marya Alexeyevna shut up her aunt’s house and remained living in the lodge; the big house was surrounded by weeds, the walls and frames grew blacker and blacker; the porch, in which ungainly yellow dogs were for ever asleep, fell out of the perpendicular.

Friends and relations came less frequently, her house was deserted, she was distressed at it, but did not know how to improve things.

The only survivor of the whole family, she began to be apprehensive for her own useless life, and mercilessly repulsed everything that could disturb her physical or moral equilibrium and cause her uneasiness or annoyance. Afraid of the past and of memories, she removed every object that had belonged to her daughters, even their portraits. It was the same with her aunt’s belongings—the cockatoo and the monkey were exiled to the servants’ hall, and then turned out of the house. The monkey lived out its days in the coachman’s quarters at the Senator’s, choking with the smell of rank tobacco and amusing the stable-boys.

The egoism of self-preservation has a fearfully hardening effect on the heart of the old. When her last surviving daughter’s condition was quite hopeless, the mother was persuaded to leave her and return home, _and she went_. At home she at once ordered spirits of various sorts and cabbage leaves for putting on her head to be got ready, that she might have everything necessary at hand when the _terrible news_ should come. She did not take leave of her dead husband nor of her daughter, she did not see them after their death and was not at their funerals. When later on the Senator, her favourite brother, died, she guessed what had happened from a few words dropped by her nephew, and _begged him_ not to tell her the melancholy news nor any details of the end. With these precautions against one’s own heart, and such an accommodating heart, one may well live to eighty or ninety in perfect health and with undisturbed digestion.

However, in justification of Princess Marya Alexeyevna, I must say that this monstrous avoidance of everything melancholy was more in fashion with the spoilt aristocrats of last century than it is now. The celebrated Kaunitz[1] in his old age sternly forbade any one’s death, or the smallpox, of which he was very much afraid, to be mentioned before him. When the Emperor Joseph II. died, his secretary, not knowing how to announce the fact to Kaunitz, decided to say, ‘the Emperor now reigning, Leopold.’ Kaunitz understood and, turning pale, sank into an armchair, asking no questions. His gardener avoided the word ‘grafting’ (in Russian the same word as ‘inoculation’) for fear of reminding him of smallpox.

He heard of the death of his own son by chance from the Spanish ambassador. And people laugh at ostriches who hide their heads under their wings to escape danger!

To preserve her peace untroubled, the old princess established a special sort of police, and entrusted the supervision of her safety to skilled hands.

Besides the old women dependents inherited from Princess Anna Borissovna, she had a permanent lady companion living with her. This post of honour was filled by the healthy, rosy-cheeked widow of a Zvenigorod government clerk, very proud of ‘being a lady’ and of her dead husband’s rank of assessor; a quarrelsome and irrepressible woman who could never forgive Napoleon the premature death of her Zvenigorod cow, who perished in the war of 1812. I remember how seriously troubled she was on the death of Alexander I. upon the question of the width of the crape weepers that would be appropriate to her rank.

This woman played a very insignificant part in the household while Princess Anna Borissovna was alive, but afterwards she managed so adroitly to humour the widowed princess’s caprices and apprehensive anxiety about herself, that she obtained the same control over her as the princess herself had had over her aunt.

Draped in her official weepers, this Marya Stepanovna bounced about the house like a ball from morning to night; she shouted and made an uproar, gave the servants no peace, made complaints against them, investigated the misdeeds of the maids, slapped the boys and pulled them by the ears, raced off into the kitchen, raced off into the stable, brushed away the flies, rubbed the princess’s feet, and made her take her medicine. The members of the household no longer had access to their mistress; the woman was a regular Araktcheyev, a Biron, in fact, a Prime Minister. The widowed princess, a haughty and, in the old-fashioned style, well-bred woman, was often, especially at first, annoyed by the Zvenigorod widow, by her shrill voice and market-woman’s manners, but she gradually put more and more confidence in her, and saw with delight that Marya Stepanovna considerably decreased the household expenses, which had not been over-high before. For whom the princess was saving her money it is hard to say; she had no near relatives except her brothers, who were twice as wealthy as she was.

For all that, the princess was really dull after the death of her husband and daughters, and was glad when an old Frenchwoman who had been her daughters’ governess, came to spend a fortnight with her, or when her niece from Kortcheva paid her a visit. But these were only passing and exceptional distractions, and the tedious society of her ‘lady companion’ did not fill the intervals satisfactorily.

An occupation, a plaything, and an entertainment had been provided for her in a very natural way not long before her aunt’s death.