Chapter 20: The Forlorn Child

In the middle of 1825 ‘the Chemist,’ who found his father’s affairs in great confusion, sent his brothers and sisters from Petersburg to the Shatskoye estate; he assigned them the house there and their keep, proposing to arrange for their education and their future later on. My aunt, Princess Marya Alexeyevna, drove over to have a look at them. A child of eight caught her attention by her mournfully pensive face; my aunt put her in the carriage, took her home and kept her.

The mother was delighted, and went off with the other children to Tambov.

The Chemist gave his consent—it did not matter to him.

‘Remember all your life,’ Marya Stepanovna kept saying to the little girl when they had reached home, ‘remember that the Princess is your _benefactress_ and pray that her days may be long. What would you be without her?’

And so into this lifeless house, gloomily oppressed by two irrepressible old women, one full of whims and caprices, the other her indefatigable spy, devoid of all trace of delicacy or tact, a child was brought, torn from everything familiar to her, strange to everything surrounding her, and adopted out of boredom as people take a puppy, or as my aunt’s husband used to keep canaries.

The little girl with a pale face and blue shadows under her eyes was sitting at the window in a long woollen dress of deep mourning when my father brought me a few days later to visit my aunt the princess. She was sitting in silence, scared and bewildered, gazing out of the window, afraid to look at anything else.

My aunt called her up and introduced her to my father. Always frigid and ungracious, he patted her carelessly on the shoulder, observed that his late brother had not known what he was about, abused ‘the Chemist,’ and began talking of something else.

The little girl had tears in her eyes; she sat down again by the window and again fell to looking out.

A hard life was beginning for her. Not one warm word, not one tender glance, not one caress; beside her, around her, strangers, wrinkled faces, yellow cheeks, decrepit creatures whose life was smouldering out. Princess Marya Alexeyevna was always stern, exacting, and impatient, and she kept the forlorn child at such a distance that it could never enter her head to take refuge with her, to find warmth or comfort in being near her, or to shed tears. Visitors took no notice of her. Marya Stepanovna put up with her as one of the princess’s whims, as something superfluous which she must not harm; she even made a show of protecting the child and making a fuss over her before the princess, especially if visitors were present.

The child did not grow used to her surroundings, and a year later was as little at home as on the day of her arrival, and was even more depressed. Even Princess Marya Alexeyevna was surprised at her ‘seriousness,’ and sometimes, seeing her sitting dejectedly for hours together at her little embroidery frame, would say to her: ‘How is it you don’t play and run about?’ The little girl would smile, flush, and thank her, but stay where she was.

And the old lady left her in peace, in reality caring nothing about the child’s sadness and doing nothing to relieve it. Holidays came, other children were given playthings, other children talked of treats, of new clothes.... No presents were given to the little orphan. The princess considered that she had done enough for her in giving her shelter; she had shoes, what did she want with dolls? And in fact she did not need them—she did not know how to play; besides, she had no one to play with.

Only one creature realised the forlorn child’s position; an old nurse had been put in charge of her, and she alone loved the child simply and naïvely. Often in the evening when she undressed her she would ask: ‘But why is it you are so sad, my little lady?’ The child would throw herself on her neck and weep bitterly, and the old woman would shed tears and shake her head as she went away with the candlestick in her hand.

So the years passed. She did not complain, she did not murmur; only, at twelve she longed for death.

‘It always seemed to me,’ she wrote, ‘that I had come by mistake into this life, and that soon I should go home again—but where was my home?... When we drove out of Petersburg I saw a great mound of snow over my father’s grave; when my mother left me in Moscow she vanished on the wide unending road.... I wept bitterly and prayed God to take me quickly home.... My childhood was most mournful and bitter; how many tears I shed unseen, how many times before I understood what prayer meant I would get up secretly at night (not even daring to say my prayers except at the fixed time) and pray to God that some one might love me and pet me. I had no amusement nor plaything which could interest or comfort me, for, if anything were given me, it was invariably accompanied by the words: “You don’t deserve it.” Every rag I received from them I paid for with my tears: afterwards I got over that; I was overcome by a craving for knowledge, and envied other children for nothing more than for their lessons. Many praised me, thought I had abilities, and said compassionately: “If only that child had a chance.” “She would astonish the world,” I added inwardly, and my cheeks glowed; I hurried away with visions of my pictures, my pupils, and meanwhile they would not give me a piece of paper nor a pencil.... The longing to get into another world grew stronger and stronger, and with it my scorn for my dark prison-house and its cruel sentinels; I was continually repeating the lines from “The Monk”:

“A mystery this; already I know
All the sorrow of life, in the spring of my days.”

‘Do you remember, we were once staying with you long ago in the other house and you asked me if I had read Kozlov and repeated just that passage from him? A shudder ran over me, I smiled, hardly able to keep from crying.’

There was always a strain of deep melancholy in her heart; it was never quite absent, and only at times hushed at some radiant moment.

Two months before her death, going back once more to her childhood, she wrote: ‘Around me all was old, bad, cold, dead, false; my education began with upbraidings and insults, and the result of this was estrangement from all, distrust of their kindness, aversion for their sympathy, and absorption in my own inner life....’

But to be able to be absorbed in one’s own inner life one must have not only a terribly deep nature into which one can retreat at will, but a terrific strength of independence and self-sufficiency. Very few can live their own life in hostile and vulgar surroundings from the oppression of which there is no escape. Sometimes the spirit is broken by it, sometimes the health gives way.

Loneliness and harsh treatment at the tenderest age left a dark trace on her soul, a wound which never fully healed.

‘I do not remember,’ she writes in 1837, ‘any time when I could utter the word “mother” freely and spontaneously, any person on whose bosom I could lay my head in security, forgetting everything. I have been a stranger to all since I was eight years old; I love my mother ... but we do not know each other.’

Looking at the pale face of the twelve-year-old girl, at her big eyes with rings round them, at her tired listlessness and everlasting depression, many thought she was one of the predestined victims of consumption, those victims marked out by the finger of death from childhood with a special imprint of beauty and premature thoughtfulness. ‘Perhaps,’ she says, ‘I should not have survived this struggle if I had not been saved by our meeting.’

And I was so slow to understand her and read her heart!

Till 1834 I failed to appreciate the richly gifted nature that was unfolding beside me, although nine years had passed since the old princess had presented her to my father in her long woollen dress. It is easy to explain. She was shy, I was absorbed in my many interests; I was sorry for the child who sat so solitary and depressed in the window, but we did not see each other very often. It was only rarely and always unwillingly that I went to Princess Marya Alexeyevna’s; still more rarely did she bring her to see us. Besides, my aunt’s visits almost always left unpleasant impressions. She usually quarrelled with my father over trifles and, though they had not seen each other for two months, they said nasty things to each other, hiding them in affectionate phrases, just as nasty medicines are covered with a coat of sugar. ‘My dear boy,’ the princess would say; ‘My dear girl,’ my father would answer, and the quarrel would go on as before. We were always glad when the princess departed. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that at that time I was completely absorbed by my political dreams and my studies, and lived in the university and my comrades.

But what had she to live in, besides her melancholy, during those long dark nine years, surrounded by silly fanatics, haughty relations, tedious monks, and fat priests’ wives, hypocritically patronised by the ‘lady companion,’ not allowed to go farther from the house than the gloomy courtyard overgrown with weeds and the little garden at the back?

From the foregoing lines it may be seen that the princess was not particularly lavish in her expenditure on the education of her adopted child. Her moral training she undertook herself; it consisted in external observances and in the development of a complete system of hypocrisy. The child had from early morning to be laced in, stiffly erect, with her hair properly dressed: this might be admissible so far as it was not injurious to health; but the princess put her soul in stays as well as her waist, suppressing every open spontaneous feeling; she insisted on a smile and an air of gaiety when the child was sad, on amiable phrases when she wanted to cry, on an appearance of interest in everything indiscriminately—in fact, on continual duplicity.

At first the poor girl was taught nothing on the pretext that learning early was useless; later on, that is _three or four years later_, wearied by the observations made by the Senator and even by outsiders, the princess made up her mind to arrange for her to be taught, keeping the strictest economy in view. For this purpose she took advantage of an old governess who considered herself under obligations to the princess and sometimes stood in need of her assistance. In this way the French language was brought down to the lowest price; on the other hand, it was taught _à bâtons rompus_.

But the Russian language, too, was equally cheapened; to teach it and all other subjects, the princess engaged the son of a priest’s widow, to whom she had been a benefactress—of course, at no special expense to herself; through her good offices with the Metropolitan the widow’s two sons had been made priests in the cathedral. The tutor was their elder brother, the deacon of a poor parish, burdened with a large family. He was in the lowest depths of poverty, was glad of any payment, and dared not haggle over terms with his brothers’ benefactress.

Nothing could have been more pitiful, more insufficient than such an education, and yet all went well, it all brought forth marvellous fruits, so little is needed for development if only there is something to develop.

The poor deacon, a tall, thin, bald man, was one of those enthusiasts whom neither years nor misfortunes can cure of their dreams; on the contrary, their troubles tend to keep them in a state of mystic contemplation. His faith, which approached fanaticism, was sincere and not without a shade of poetry. Between these two, the father of a hungry family and the forlorn child fed on the bread of charity, a good understanding sprang up at once.

The deacon was received in the princess’s household as a poor man, defenceless, and at the same time mild-tempered, usually is received, with barely a nod, or barely a condescending word. Even the ‘lady companion’ thought it necessary to show her disdain; while he scarcely noticed either them or their manners, taught his subjects with love, was touched by his pupil’s readiness of understanding, and could move her to tears. This the old princess could not understand; she scolded the child for being a cry-baby and was greatly displeased, declaring that the deacon was upsetting her nerves. ‘This is really too much,’ she said, ‘it’s unchildlike!’

Meanwhile the old man’s words were opening before the young creature another world, attractive in a very different way from that in which religion itself was turned into an affair of diet, reduced to keeping the fasts, and going to church at night, in which everything was limited, artificial, and conventional, and cramped the soul with its narrowness. The deacon put the Gospel into his pupil’s hands—and it was long before she let it go again. The Gospel was the first book she read, and she read it over and over again, with her one friend Sasha, her old nurse’s niece, now a young maid of the princess’s.

Later on I knew Sasha very well. Where and how she had managed to develop her intelligence I never could understand, as she spent her childhood between the coachman’s quarters and the kitchen, and never left the maids’ room, but she was extraordinarily developed. She was one of those innocent victims who perish unnoticed in the servants’ quarters, and more often than we suppose, crushed by the conditions of serfdom. They perish not only without compensation, without commiseration, without an hour of brightness, without a joyful memory, but without knowing, without themselves suspecting, what is perishing in them and how much is dying with them. Their mistress says with vexation: ‘The wretched girl was just beginning to be trained to her work when she took to her bed and died.’ ... The seventy-year-old housekeeper grumbles: ‘What are servants coming to nowadays? They are worse than any young lady,’ and goes to the funeral dinner. The mother weeps and weeps and begins to drink—and that is the end.

And we pass hurriedly by, not seeing the terrible dramas enacted at our feet, thinking we have more important things to fill our time, and feeling that we have done our part with a few roubles and a kindly word. And then all at once astounded, we hear the heart-rending moan with which the crushed spirit reveals itself for all time, and, as though awakening from sleep, we ask ourselves whence came that spirit, that strength.

Princess Marya Alexeyevna killed her maid, unintentionally and unconsciously, of course; she worried her to death over trifles, broke her heart, oppressed her whole life, wore her out with humiliations, with harshness and insensibility. For several years she forbade her marriage, and only allowed it when she could see consumption in her suffering face.

Poor Sasha, poor victim of the loathsome, accursed Russian life defiled by serfdom, by death you escaped to freedom! And yet you were incomparably happier than others in the gloomy bondage of the princess’s house: you met a friend, and the affection of her whom you loved so immeasurably was with you to the grave. You cost her many tears; not long before her own death she still thought of you, and blessed your memory as the one bright image of her childhood!

The two young girls (Sasha was a little the elder) used to get up early in the mornings when all the household was still asleep, read the Gospel and pray, going out into the courtyard under the open sky. They prayed for the princess and her lady-companion, besought God to soften their hearts; they invented ordeals for themselves, ate no meat for weeks together, dreamed of a nunnery and of the life beyond the grave.

Such mysticism is in keeping with adolescence, with the age in which everything is still a secret, still a religious mystery, when the awakening thought is not yet shining clearly through the mists of early morning, and the mist is not yet dissipated by experience nor passion.

At quiet and gentle moments, I loved in after years to hear of these childish prayers, with which one full life began and one unhappy existence ended. The image of the forlorn child outraged by coarse patronage, and of the slave girl outraged by her hopeless bondage, praying for their oppressors in the neglected courtyard, filled the heart with tenderness, and breathed a rare peace upon the spirit.

The pure and gracious being, whom no one of those near her in the princess’s senseless household appreciated, won, besides the devotion of the deacon and Sasha, a warm response and homage from all the servants. These simple people saw in her more than a kind and gracious young lady, they divined in her something higher for which they felt reverence, they had faith in her. The girls of the princess’s household, when they were going to their wedding, would beg her to pin some ribbon with her own hands. One young maidservant—I remember her name was Yelena—was suddenly taken very ill; it turned out to be acute pleurisy, there was no hope of saving her, the priest was sent for. The frightened girl kept asking her mother if she were dying; the mother, sobbing, told her that God would soon summon her. Then the sick girl besought her mother with bitter tears to fetch her young lady that she might come herself to bless her with the holy ikon for the other world. When she came the sick girl took her hand, laid it on her forehead, and repeated: ‘Pray for me, pray for me!’ The young girl, herself in tears, began praying in a low voice, and the sick girl died as she prayed. All in the room knelt round, crossing themselves; Natalie closed the dead girl’s eyes, kissed the cold forehead, and went away.[2]

Only cold and narrow natures know nothing of this romantic period; they are as much to be pitied as those frail and feeble beings in whom mysticism outlives youth and remains for ever. In our age this does not happen with realistic natures; but how could the secular influences of the nineteenth century penetrate into the princess’s house, every crevice was so well padded?

A crack was found, nevertheless.

My Kortcheva cousin used sometimes to come on a visit to the princess. She was fond of the ‘little cousin,’ as one is fond of children, especially if they are unhappy, but she did not understand her. With amazement, almost with horror, she discovered later on her exceptional nature, and, impulsive in everything, at once determined to make up for her neglect. She begged from me Hugo, Balzac, or anything new I might have. ‘The little cousin,’ she said to me, ‘is a genius, we ought to do what we can for her!’

The ‘big cousin’—and I cannot help smiling at this name for her, for she was a tiny creature—at once communicated to her protégée every stray thought in her own mind, Schiller’s ideas and the ideas of Rousseau, revolutionary ideas picked up from me and the dreams of a lovesick girl picked up from herself. Then she secretly lent her French novels, verses, poems; they were for the most part books that had appeared since 1830. With all their defects, they stimulated thought, and stirred and fired youthful hearts. In the novels and stories, the poems and songs of that period, whether the author intended it or not, there was always a strong vein of social feeling: everywhere social sores were revealed and the moan of the hungry, innocent slaves of labour could be heard; even by that date their murmur and complaint was no longer feared as a crime.

I need hardly say that my cousin lent the books without any discrimination, without any explanations, and I imagine that there was no harm in that; there are natures which never need help, support, guidance from others, who always walk most safely where there is no fence.

Another person who carried on the secular influence of my Kortcheva cousin was soon added to the list. The princess at last made up her mind to take a governess, and to avoid expense engaged a young Russian girl who had only just left boarding-school.

Russian governesses do not cost much, at any rate they did not in the ’thirties, yet for all their defects they were better than the majority of French girls from Switzerland, of retired courtesans and actresses who catch at teaching in despair as their last resource for earning their bread, a resource needing neither talent nor youth, nothing in fact but the ability to pronounce ‘Hrrrra’ and the manners _d’une dame de comptoir_, which is often taken in the provinces for ‘good’ manners. Russian governesses come from boarding-schools, or educational establishments, and so have had some sort of regular education, and are free from the petty-bourgeois tone which the foreign women bring in with them.

The French governesses of to-day must be distinguished from those who used to come to Russia before 1812. In those days France was less bourgeois and the women who came to Russia belonged to quite a different social stratum. To some extent they were the daughters of _émigrés_ and of ruined noblemen, or widows of officers, often their deserted wives. Napoleon used to marry off his warriors in the way that our landowners used to marry their serfs, without much regard for love or inclination. He wanted, by these marriages, to unite his new military aristocracy with the old nobility; he wanted to knock his Skalozubs[3] into shape by means of their wives. Accustomed to blind obedience, they married without protest, but soon abandoned their wives, finding them too stiff for the festivities of the barracks and the bivouac. The poor women made their way to England, to Austria, to Russia. The old Frenchwoman who used to stay with the princess belonged to this class of old-fashioned governess. She spoke with a smile in choice language and never made use of a single strong expression. She was entirely made up of good manners and never forgot herself for a minute. I am convinced that even at night in her bed she was more preoccupied with the proper way of sleeping than with sleeping.

The young governess was an intelligent, bright, energetic girl with a good share of boarding-school enthusiasm and an innate feeling for what is fine. Active and ardent, she brought more life and movement into the existence of her pupil and friend.

There had been a tone of mourning, of melancholy in the sad and depressing friendship with the consumptive Sasha. Her company, together with the deacon’s teachings and the absence of every kind of diversion, was drawing the young girl away from the world, from men. This third person, young, full of life and gaiety, and at the same time sympathetic with everything dreamy and romantic, came in the nick of time: she drew her back to earth, to the basis of truth and reality.

At first the pupil to some extent adopted her Amelia’s external manners; a smile was more often to be seen on her face, and her conversation grew livelier; but within a year the natures of the two girls defined their mutual attitude. The careless, charming Amelia gave way before the stronger nature and was completely dominated by her pupil, saw with her eyes, thought her thoughts, lived in her smile and in her affection.

Before I had finished my studies at the university, I took to going more frequently to the princess’s house. The young girl seemed pleased when I came, and sometimes her cheeks glowed and her talk grew more animated, but she quickly withdrew into her usual dreamy stillness, recalling the cold beauty of sculpture or Schiller’s ‘Mädchen aus der Fremde’ who checked all approach.

It was not unsociability nor coldness, but an active inner life; not understood by others, she did not as yet even understand herself, and had rather a dim presentiment than a knowledge of what was in herself. In her lovely features there was still something incomplete, not fully expressed, they lacked a spark, a touch of the sculptor’s chisel which would decide whether she was destined to pine and fade away in a barren desert, knowing neither herself nor life, or to reflect the glow of passion, to be enfolded by it, and to live, perhaps to suffer—certainly, indeed, to suffer, but to live abundantly.

I first saw the token of life coming out on her half-childish face on the eve of our long separation.

Well I remember her eyes with quite a different light in them, and all her features with their significance transformed, as though penetrated by a new thought, a new fire ... as though the secret had been guessed and the inner mist dissipated. This was when I was in prison. A dozen times we said good-bye, and still we could not bear to part. At last my mother, who had come with Natalie[4] to the Krutitsky Barracks, resolutely got up to go. The young girl shuddered, turned pale, squeezed my hand with unnatural force, and repeated, turning away to hide her tears, ‘Alexandr, don’t forget your sister.’

The gendarme saw them out and set to walking to and fro. I flung myself on my bed and long gazed at the door behind which that bright apparition had vanished. ‘No, your brother will not forget you,’ I thought.

Next day I was taken to Perm, but before I speak of our separation I will tell of something else that prevented me, before my prison days, from understanding Natalie better and growing more intimate with her. I was in love!

Yes, I was in love, and the memory of that pure youthful love is as dear to me as the memory of a spring day spent by the sea among flowers and singing. It was a dream, full of much that was lovely, that vanished as dreams usually do vanish!

I have mentioned already that there were very few women in our circle, especially of the sort with whom I could have been on intimate terms: my affection for my Kortcheva cousin, at first ardent, gradually became quieter in tone. After her marriage we saw each other less often, and then she went away. A vague yearning for a warmer, tenderer feeling than the affection of my men friends hovered about my heart. Everything was ready, all that was lacking was ‘she.’ In one of the families of our acquaintance there was a young girl with whom I quickly made friends. It was a strange chance that brought us together. She was betrothed, when all at once some dissension arose, her fiancé abandoned her and went off to the other end of Russia. She was in despair, overcome with distress and mortification. With deep and sincere sympathy I saw how she was being consumed by grief. Without daring to hint at the cause, I tried to comfort her and distract her mind, brought her novels, read them aloud to her, told her long stories, and sometimes neglected to prepare for my lectures at the university in order to stay longer with the distressed girl.

Gradually her tears fell less frequently, from time to time a smile glimmered through them; her despair passed into a languid melancholy; soon she began to feel alarmed for her past, she struggled with herself and defended it against the present, from a _point d’honneur_ of the heart, as a soldier defends the flag, though he knows that the battle is lost. I saw these last clouds faintly lingering on the horizon and, myself carried away, with a beating heart, softly, softly drew the flag out of her hands, and by the time she had given it up I was in love. We believed in our love. She wrote verses to me, I wrote whole essays to her in prose, and then we dreamed together of the future, of exile, of prisons. She was ready for anything. The external side of life never took a very clear shape in our imaginations; dedicated to the conflict with a monstrous power, we felt success almost incredible. ‘Be my Gaetana,’ I said to her after reading Saintine’s[5] ‘The Mutilated Poet,’ and I used to fancy how she would follow me to the Siberian mines.

‘The Mutilated Poet’ was the poet who wrote a lampoon upon Sixtus V. and gave himself up when the Pope promised not to inflict the death penalty. Sixtus V. ordered his tongue and hands to be cut off. The figure of the luckless victim, choked by the mass of ideas which swarmed in his brain and found no outlet, could not but attract us in those days. The martyr’s sad and exhausted eyes found peace when they rested with gratitude and some remnant of happiness on the girl who had loved him in old days and did not abandon him in misfortune. Her name was Gaetana.

This first experience of love was soon over, but it was perfectly sincere. Perhaps, indeed, it was right for this love to pass, or it would have lost its finest, most fragrant quality, its innocent freshness, its nineteen-year-old charm. Lilies of the valley do not flower in winter.

And can it be, my Gaetana, that you do not recall our meeting with the same serene smile, can it be that there is any bitterness mixed with your memory of me after twenty-two years? That would be very grievous to me. And where are you, and how have you spent your life?

I have lived my life and now am going slowly downhill, broken, and morally ‘mutilated.’ I seek no Gaetana, I go over the memories of the past and meet your image joyfully.... Do you remember the window in the corner facing the little side street into which I had to turn, and how you always came to it to watch me pass, and how disappointed I was if you did not come to it, or moved away before I had time to turn?

But I do not want to meet you in reality; in my imagination you have remained with your youthful face, your _blond cendré_ curls: remain as you were. And you, too, if you think of me, will remember a slender lad with sparkling eyes and fiery words, and may you think of him like that and never know that the eyes have lost their lustre, that I have grown heavy, that my brow is furrowed, that long ago my face lost the radiant, eager look of old days which Ogaryov used to call ‘the look of hope.’ And, indeed, hope too is gone.

We ought to be to each other as we were then ... neither Achilles nor Diana grow old.... I do not want to meet you as Larin met Princess Alina:[6]

‘Do you remember Grandison?
Cousin, how is Grandison?—
Oh, Grandison! In Moscow living,
On Christmas Eve he left his card,
A son of his was married lately.’

The last glow of dying love lighted up for a moment the prison vault, warmed the heart with its old dreams, and then each took our separate paths. She went away to the Ukraine while I was going into exile. Since then I have had no tidings of her.