What Humboldt wanted was to discuss his observations on the magnetic pole, and to compare the meteorological records he had taken in the Ural Mountains with those at Moscow; but the Rector preferred to show him some relic plaited out of the hair of Peter the Great. It was with difficulty that Ehrenberg and Rose found an opportunity to tell him something of their discoveries.[50]
50. Odd views were taken in Russia of Humboldt’s travels. There was a Cossack at Perm who liked describing how he escorted “a mad Prussian prince called Gumplot.” When asked what Gumplot did, he said: “He was quite childish, picking grasses and gazing at sand. At one place he told me through the interpreter to wade into a pool and fish out what was at the bottom—there was nothing but what there is at the bottom of every pool. Then he asked if the water at the bottom was very cold. You won’t catch me that way, thought I; so I saluted and said, ‘The rules of the service require it, Your Excellency.’” [Author’s Note.]
Even in unofficial circles, we don’t do things much better in Russia. Liszt was received in just the same way by Moscow society ten years ago. There was folly enough over him in Germany; but that was quite a different thing—old-maidish gush and sentimentality and strewing of roses, whereas in Russia there was servile acknowledgement of power and prim formality of a strictly official type. And Liszt’s reputation as a Don Juan was mixed up in an unpleasant way with it all: the ladies swarmed around him, just as boys in out-of-the-way places swarm round a traveller when he is changing horses and stare at him or his carriage or his hat. Every ear was turned to Liszt, every word and every reply was addressed to him alone. I remember one evening when Homyakóv, in his disgust with the company, appealed to me to start a dispute with him on any subject, that Liszt might discover there were some people in the room who were not exclusively taken up with him. I can only say one thing to console our ladies—that Englishwomen treated other celebrities, Kossuth, Garibaldi, and others, in just the same way, crowding and jostling round the object of worship; but woe to him who seeks to learn good manners from Englishwomen, or their husbands!
Our other distinguished visitor was also “a Prometheus of our time” in a certain sense; only, instead of stealing fire from Zeus, he stole it from mankind. This Prometheus, whose fame was sung, not by Glinka but by Púshkin himself in his Epistle to Lucullus, was Uvárov, the Minister of Education.[51] He astonished us by the number of languages he spoke and by the amount of his miscellaneous knowledge; he was a real shopman behind the counter of learning and kept samples of all the sciences, the elements chiefly, in his head. In Alexander’s reign, he wrote reform pamphlets in French; then he had a German correspondence with Goethe on Greek matters. After becoming minister, he discoursed on Slavonic poetry of the fourth century, which made Kachenovsky remark to him that our ancestors were much busier in fighting bears than in hymning their gods and kings. As a kind of patent of nobility, he carried about in his pocket a letter from Goethe, in which Goethe paid him a very odd compliment: “You have no reason to apologise for your style: you have succeeded in doing what I could never do—forgetting German grammar.”
51. Serghéi Uvárov (1786-1855) was both Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences. He used his power to tighten the censorship and suppressed The Moscow Telegraph, edited by Polevoi, which was the most independent of Russian journals; in this way he “stole fire from mankind.” The reference to Púshkin is malicious: what Púshkin wrote about Uvárov in that poem was the reverse of complimentary. “Lucullus” was Count Sheremétyev and Uvárov was his heir.
This highly placed Admirable Crichton invented a new kind of torture for our benefit. He gave directions that the best students should be selected, and that each of them should deliver a lecture in his own department of study, in place of the professor. The Deans of course chose the readiest of the students to perform.
These lectures went on for a whole week. The students had to get up all the branches of their subject, and the Dean drew a lot to determine the theme and the speaker. Uvárov invited all the rank and fashion of Moscow. Ecclesiastics and judges, the Governor of the city, and the old poet, Dmítriev—everyone was there.
It fell to me to lecture on a mineralogical subject. Our professor, Lovetski,—he is now dead,—was a tall man with a clumsy figure and awkward gait, a large mouth and a large and entirely expressionless face. He wore a pea-green overcoat, adorned in the fashion of the First Consulate with a variety of capes; and while taking off this garment in the passage outside the lecture-room, he always began in an even and wooden voice which seemed to suit his subject, “In our last lecture we dealt fully with silicon dioxide”—then he took his seat and went on, “We proceed to aluminium ...” In the definition of each metal, he followed an absolutely identical formula, so that some of them had to be defined by negatives, in this way: “Crystallisation: this metal does not crystallise”; “Use: this metal is never used”; “Service to man: this substance does nothing but harm to the human organism.”
Still he did not avoid poetical illustration or edifying comment: whenever he showed us counterfeit gems and explained how they were made, he never failed to add, “Gentlemen, this is dishonest.” When alluding to farming, he found moral worth in a cock that was fond of crowing and courting his hens, and blue blood in a ram if he had “bald knees.” He had also a touching story about some flies which ran over the bark of a tree on a fine summer day till they were caught in the resin which had turned to amber; and this always ended with the words, “Gentlemen, these things are an allegory.”
When I was summoned forth by the Dean, the audience was somewhat weary: two lectures on mathematics had had a depressing effect upon hearers who did not understand a word of the subject. Uvárov called for something more lively and a speaker with a ready tongue; and I was chosen to meet the situation.
While I was mounting to the desk, Lovetski sat there motionless, with his hands on his knees, looking like Memnon or Osiris. I whispered to him, “Never fear! I shan’t give you away!”—and the worthy professor, without looking at me and hardly moving his lips, formed the words, “Boast not, when girding on thine armour!” I nearly laughed aloud, but when I looked in front of me, the whole room swam before my eyes, I felt that I was losing colour, and my mouth grew strangely dry. It was my first speech in public; the lecture-room was full of students, who relied upon me; at a table just below me sat the dignitaries and all the professors of our faculty. I took the paper and read out in a voice that sounded strange to myself, “Crystallisation: its conditions, laws, and forms.”
While I was considering how I should begin, a consoling thought came into my head—that, if I did make mistakes, the professors might perhaps detect them but would certainly not speak of them, while the rest of the audience would be quite in the dark, and the students would be quite satisfied if I managed not to break down; for I was a favourite with them. So I delivered my lecture and ended up with some speculative observations, addressing myself throughout to my companions and not to the minister. Students and professors shook me by the hand and expressed their thanks. Uvárov presented me to Prince Golitsyn, who said something, but I could not understand it, as the Prince used vowels only and no consonants. Uvárov promised me a book as a souvenir of the occasion; but I never got it.
My second and third appearances on a public stage were very different. In 1836 I took a chief part in amateur theatricals before the Governor and beau monde of Vyatka. Though we had been rehearsing for a month, my heart beat furiously and my hands trembled; when the overture came to an end, dead silence followed, and the curtain slowly rose with an awful twitching. The leading lady and I were in the green-room; and she was so sorry for me, or so afraid that I would break down and spoil the piece, that she administered a full bumper of champagne; but even this was hardly able to restore me to my senses.
This preliminary experience saved me from all nervous symptoms and self-consciousness when I made my third public appearance, which was at a Polish meeting held in London and presided over by the ex-Minister Ledru-Rollin.
But perhaps I have dwelt long enough on College memories. I fear it may be a sign of senility to linger so long over them; and I shall only add a few details on the cholera of 1831.
The word “cholera,” so familiar now in Europe and especially in Russia, was heard in the North for the first time in 1831. The dread contagion caused general terror, as it spread up the course of the Volga towards Moscow. Exaggerated rumours filled men’s minds with horror. The epidemic took a capricious course, sometimes pausing, and sometimes passing over a district; it was believed that it had gone round Moscow, when suddenly the terrible tidings spread like wildfire, “The cholera is in the city.”
A student who was taken ill one morning died in the University hospital on the evening of the next day. We went to look at the body. It was emaciated as if by long illness, the eyes were sunk in their sockets, and the features were distorted. Near him lay his attendant who had caught the infection during the night.
We were told that the University was to be closed. The notice was read in our faculty by Denísov, the professor of technology; he was depressed and perhaps frightened; before the end of the next day he too was dead.
All the students collected in the great court of the University. There was something touching in that crowd of young men forced asunder by the fear of infection. All were excited, and there were many pale faces; many were thinking of relations and friends; we said good-bye to the scholars who were to remain behind in quarantine, and dispersed in small groups to our homes. There we were greeted by the stench of chloride of lime and vinegar, and submitted to a diet which, of itself and without chloride or cholera, was quite enough to cause an illness.
It is a strange fact, but this sad time is more solemn than sad in my recollection of it.
The aspect of Moscow was entirely changed. The city was animated beyond its wont by the feeling of a common life. There were fewer carriages in the streets; crowds stood at the crossings and spoke darkly of poisoners; ambulances, conveying the sick, moved along at a footpace, escorted by police; and people turned aside as the hearses went by. Bulletins were published twice a day. The city was surrounded by troops, and an unfortunate beadle was shot while trying to cross the river. These measures caused much excitement, and fear of disease conquered the fear of authority; the inhabitants protested; and meanwhile tidings followed tidings—that so-and-so had sickened and so-and-so was dead.
The Archbishop, Philaret, ordained a Day of Humiliation. At the same hour on the same day all the priests went in procession with banners round their parishes, while the terrified inhabitants came out of their houses and fell on their knees, weeping and praying that their sins might be forgiven; even the priests were moved by the solemnity of the occasion. Some of them marched to the Kremlin, where the Archbishop, surrounded by clerical dignitaries, knelt in the open air and prayed, “May this cup pass from us!”
Philaret carried on a kind of opposition to Government, but why he did so I never could understand, unless it was to assert his own personality. He was an able and learned man, and a perfect master of the Russian language, which he spoke with a happy flavouring of Church-Slavonic; but all this gave him no right to be in opposition. The people disliked him and called him a freemason, because he was intimate with Prince A. N. Golitsyn and preached in Petersburg just when the Bible Society was in vogue there. The Synod forbade the use of his Catechism in the schools. But the clergy who were under his rule trembled before him.
Philaret knew how to put down the secular powers with great ingenuity and dexterity; his sermons breathed that vague Christian socialism to which Lacordaire and other far-sighted Roman Catholics owed their reputation. From the height of his episcopal pulpit, Philaret used to say that no man could be legally the mere instrument of another, and that an exchange of services was the only proper relation between human beings; and this he said in a country where half the population were slaves.
Speaking to a body of convicts who were leaving Moscow on their way to Siberia, he said, “Human law has condemned you and driven you forth; but the Church will not let you go; she wishes to address you once more, to pray for you once again, and to bless you before your journey.” Then, to comfort them, he added, “You, by your punishment, have got rid of your past, and a new life awaits you; but, among others” (and there were probably no others present except officials) “there are even greater sinners than you”; and he spoke of the penitent thief at the Crucifixion as an example for them.
But Philaret’s sermon on the Day of Humiliation left all his previous utterances in the shade. He took as his text the passage where the angel suffered David to choose between war, famine, and pestilence as the punishment for his sin, and David chose the pestilence. The Tsar came to Moscow in a furious rage, and sent a high Court official to reprove the Archbishop; he even threatened to send him to Georgia to exercise his functions there. Philaret submitted meekly to the reproof; and then he sent round a new rescript to all the churches, explaining that it was a mistake to suppose that he had meant David to represent the Tsar: we ourselves were David, sunk like him in the mire of sin. In this way, the meaning of the original sermon was explained even to those who had failed to grasp its meaning at first.
Such was the way in which the Archbishop of Moscow played at opposition.
The Day of Humiliation was as ineffectual as the chloride of lime; and the plague grew worse and worse.
I witnessed the whole course of the frightful epidemic of cholera at Paris in 1849. The violence of the disease was increased by the hot June weather; the poor died like flies; of the middle classes some fled to the country, and the rest locked themselves up in their houses. The Government, exclusively occupied by the struggle against the revolutionists, never thought of taking any active steps. Large private subscriptions failed to meet the requirements of the situation. The working class were left to take their chance; the hospitals could not supply all the beds, nor the police all the coffins, that were required; and corpses remained for forty-eight hours in living-rooms crowded with a number of different families.
In Moscow things were different.
Prince Dmitri Golitsyn was Governor of the city, not a strong man, but honourable, cultured, and highly respected. He gave the line to Moscow society, and everything was arranged by the citizens themselves without much interference on the part of Government. A committee was formed of the chief residents—rich landowners and merchants. Each member of the committee undertook one of the districts of Moscow. In a few days twenty hospitals were opened, all supported by voluntary contributions and not costing one penny to the State. The merchants supplied all that was required in the hospitals—bedding, linen, and warm clothing, and this last might be kept by convalescents. Young people acted gratuitously as inspectors in the hospitals, to see that the free-will offerings of the merchants were not stolen by the orderlies and nurses.
The University too played its part. The whole medical school, both teachers and students, put themselves at the disposal of the committee. They were distributed among the hospitals and worked there incessantly until the infection was over. For three or four months these young men did fine work in the hospitals, as assistant physicians, dressers, nurses, or clerks, and all this for no pecuniary reward and at a time when the fear of infection was intense. I remember one Little Russian student who was trying to get an exeat on urgent private affairs when the cholera began. It was difficult to get an exeat in term-time, but he got it at last and was just preparing to start when the other students were entering the hospitals. He put his exeat in his pocket and joined them. When he left the hospital, his leave of absence had long expired, and he was the first to laugh heartily at the form his trip had taken.
Moscow has the appearance of being sleepy and slack, of caring for nothing but gossip and piety and fashionable intelligence; but she invariably wakes up and rises to the occasion when the hour strikes and when the thunder-storm breaks over Russia.
She was wedded to Russia in blood in 1612, and she was welded to Russia in the fire of 1812.
She bent her head before Peter, because he was the wild beast whose paw contained the whole future of Russia.
Frowning and pouting out his lips, Napoleon sat outside the gates, waiting for the keys of Moscow; impatiently he pulled at his bridle and twitched his glove. He was not accustomed to be alone when he entered foreign capitals.
“But other thoughts had Moscow mine,” as Púshkin wrote, and she set fire to herself.
The cholera appeared, and once again the people’s capital showed itself full of feeling and power!
In August of 1830 we went to stay at Vasílevskoë, and broke our journey as usual at Perkhushkov, where our house looked like a castle in a novel of Mrs. Radcliffe’s. After taking a meal and feeding the horses, we were preparing to resume our journey, and Bakai, with a towel round his waist, was just calling out to the coachman, “All right!” when a mounted messenger signed to us to stop. This was a groom belonging to my uncle, the Senator. Covered with dust and sweat, he jumped off his horse and delivered a packet to my father. The packet contained the Revolution of July! Two pages of the Journal des Débats, which he brought with him as well as a letter, I read over a hundred times till I knew them by heart; and for the first time I found the country tiresome.
It was a glorious time and events moved quickly. The spare figure of Charles X had hardly disappeared into the fogs of Holyrood, when Belgium burst into flame and the throne of the citizen-king began to totter. The revolutionary spirit began to work in men’s mouths and in literature: novels, plays, and poetry entered the arena and preached the good cause.
We knew nothing then of the theatrical element which is part of all revolutionary movements in France, and we believed sincerely in all we heard.
If anyone wishes to know how powerfully the news of the July revolution worked on the rising generation, let him read what Heine wrote, when he heard in Heligoland that “the great Pan, the pagan god, was dead.” There is no sham enthusiasm there: Heine at thirty was just as much carried away, just as childishly excited, as we were at eighteen.
We followed every word and every incident with close attention—bold questions and sharp replies, General Lafayette and General Lamarque. Not only did we know all about the chief actors—on the radical side, of course—but we were warmly attached to them, and cherished their portraits, from Manuel and Benjamin Constant to Dupont de l’Eure and Armand Carrel.
Our special group consisted of five to begin with, and then we fell in with a sixth, Vadim Passek.
There was much that was new to us in Vadim. We five had all been brought up in very much the same way: we knew no places but Moscow and the surrounding country; we had read the same books and taken lessons from the same teachers; we had been educated either at home or in the boarding-school connected with the University. But Vadim was born in Siberia, during his father’s exile, and had suffered poverty and privation. His father was his teacher, and he was one of a large family, who grew up familiar with want but free from all other restraints. Siberia has a stamp of its own, quite unlike the stamp of provincial Russia; those who bear it have more health and more elasticity. Compared to Vadim we were tame. His courage was of a different kind, heroic and at times overbearing; the high distinction of suffering had developed in him a special kind of pride, but he had also a generous warmth of heart. He was bold, and even imprudent to excess; but a man born in Siberia and belonging to a family of exiles has this advantage over others, that Siberia has for him no terrors.
As soon as we met, Vadim rushed into our arms. Very soon we became intimate. It should be said that there was nothing of the nature of ceremony or prudent precaution in our little coterie of those days.
“Would you like to know Ketcher, of whom you have heard so much?” Vadim once asked me.
“Of course I should.”
“Well, come at seven to-morrow evening, and don’t be late; he will be at our house.”
When I arrived, Vadim was out. A tall man with an expressive face was waiting for him and shot a glance, half good-natured and half formidable, at me from under his spectacles. I took up a book, and he followed my example.
“I say,” he began, as he opened the book, “are you Herzen?”
And so conversation began and soon grew fast and furious. Ketcher soon interrupted me with no ceremony: “Excuse me! I should be obliged if you would address me as ‘thou.’”
“By all means!” said I. And from that minute—perhaps it was the beginning of 1831—we were inseparable friends; and from that minute Ketcher’s friendly laugh or fierce shout became a part of my life at all its stages.
The acquaintance with Vadim brought a new and gentler element into our camp.
As before, our chief meeting-place was Ogaryóv’s house. His invalid father had gone to live in the country, and he lived alone on the ground-floor of their Moscow house, which was near the University and had a great attraction for us all. Ogaryóv had that magnetic power which forms the first point of crystallisation in any medley of disordered atoms, provided the necessary affinity exists. Though scattered in all directions, they become imperceptibly the heart of an organism. In his bright cheerful room with its red and gold wall-paper, amid the perpetual smell of tobacco and punch and other—I was going to say, eatables and drinkables, but now I remember that there was seldom anything to eat but cheese—we often spent the time from dark till dawn in heated argument and sometimes in noisy merriment. But, side by side with that hospitable students’ room, there grew more and more dear to us another house, in which we learned—I might say, for the first time—respect for family life.
Vadim often deserted our discussions and went off home: when he had not seen his mother and sisters for some time, he became restless. To us our little club was the centre of the world, and we thought it strange that he should prefer the society of his family; were not we a family too?
Then he introduced us to his family. They had lately returned from Siberia; they were ruined, yet they bore that stamp of dignity which calamity engraves, not on every sufferer, but on those who have borne misfortune with courage.
Their father was arrested in Paul’s reign, having been informed against for revolutionary designs. He was thrown into prison at Schlüsselburg and then banished to Siberia. When Alexander restored thousands of his father’s exiles, Passek was forgotten. He was a nephew of the Passek who became Governor of Poland, and might have claimed a share of the fortune which had now passed into other hands.
While detained at Schlüsselburg, Passek had married the daughter of an officer of the garrison. The young girl knew that exile would be his fate, but she was not deterred by that prospect. In Siberia they made a shift at first to get on, by selling their last belongings, but the pressure of poverty grew steadily worse and worse, and the process was hastened by their increasing family. Yet neither destitution nor manual toil, nor the absence of warm clothing and sometimes of daily food—nothing prevented them from rearing a whole family of lion-cubs, who inherited from their father his dauntless pride and self-confidence. He educated them by his example, and they were taught by their mother’s self-sacrifice and bitter tears. The girls were not inferior to the boys in heroic constancy. Why shrink from using the right word?—they were a family of heroes. No one would believe what they endured and did for one another; and they held their heads high through it all.
When they were in Siberia, the three sisters had at one time a single pair of shoes between them; and they kept it to walk out in, in order to hide their need from the public eye.
At the beginning of the year 1826 Passek was permitted to return to Russia. It was winter weather, and it was a terrible business for so large a family to travel from Tobolsk without furs and without money; but exile becomes most unbearable when it is over, and they were longing to be gone. They contrived it somehow. The foster-mother of one of the children, a peasant woman, brought them her poor savings as a contribution, and only asked that they would take her too; the post-boys brought them as far as the Russian frontier for little payment or none at all; the children took turns in driving or walking; and so they completed the long winter journey from the Ural ridge to Moscow. Moscow was their dream and their hope; and at Moscow they found starvation waiting for them.
When the authorities pardoned Passek, they never thought of restoring to him any part of his property. On his arrival, worn out by exertions and privations, he fell ill; and the family did not know where they were to get to-morrow’s dinner.
The father could bear no more; he died. The widow and children got on as best they could from day to day. The greater the need, the harder the sons worked; three of them took their degree at the University with brilliant success. The two eldest, both excellent mathematicians, went to Petersburg; one served in the Navy and the other in the Engineers, and both contrived to give lessons in mathematics as well. They practised strict self-denial and sent home all the money they earned.
I have a vivid recollection of their old mother in her dark jacket and white cap. Her thin pale face was covered with wrinkles, and she looked much older than she was; the eyes alone still lived and revealed such a fund of gentleness and love, and such a past of anxiety and tears. She was in love with her children; they were wealth and distinction and youth to her; she used to read us their letters, and spoke of them with a sacred depth of feeling, while her feeble voice sometimes broke and trembled with unshed tears.
Sometimes there was a family gathering of them all at Moscow, and then the mother’s joy was beyond description. When they sat down to their modest meal, she would move round the table and arrange things, looking with such joy and pride at her young ones, and sometimes mutely appealing to me for sympathy and admiration. They were really, in point of good looks also, an exceptional family. At such times I longed to kiss her hand and fall upon her neck.
She was happy then; it would have been well if she had died at one of those meetings.
In the space of two years she lost her three eldest sons. Diomid died gloriously, honoured by the foe, in the arms of victory, though he laid down his life in a quarrel that was not his. As a young general, he was killed in action against Circassians. But laurels cannot mend a mother’s broken heart. The other two were less fortunate: the weight of Russian life lay heavy upon them and crushed them at last.
Alas! poor mother!
Vadim died in February of 1843. I was present at his death; it was the first time I had witnessed the death of one dear to me, and I realised the unrelieved horror, the senseless irrationality, and the stupid injustice of the tragedy.
Ten years earlier Vadim had married my cousin Tatyana, and I was best man at the wedding. Family life and change of conditions parted us to some extent. He was happy in his quiet life, but outward circumstances were unfavourable and his enterprises were unsuccessful. Shortly before I and my friends were arrested, he went to Khárkov, where he had been promised a professor’s chair in the University. This trip saved him from prison; but his name had come to the ears of the police, and the University refused to appoint him. An official admitted to him that a document had been received forbidding his appointment, because the Government knew that he was connected with disaffected persons.
So Vadim remained without employment, i.e. without bread to eat. That was his form of punishment.
We were banished. Relations with us were dangerous. Black years of want began for him; for seven years he struggled to earn a bare living, suffering from contact with rough manners and hard hearts, and unable to exchange messages with his friends in their distant place of exile; and the struggle proved too hard even for his powerful frame.
“One day we had spent all our money to the last penny;”—his wife told me this story later—“I had tried to borrow ten roubles the day before, but I failed, because I had borrowed already in every possible quarter. The shops refused to give us any further credit, and our one thought was—what will the children get to eat to-morrow? Vadim sat in sorrow near the window; then he got up, took his hat, and said he meant to take a walk. I saw that he was very low, and I felt frightened; and yet I was glad that he should have something to divert his thoughts. When he went out, I threw myself upon the bed and wept bitter tears, and then I began to think what was to be done. Everything of any value, rings and spoons, had been pawned long ago. I could see no resource but one—to go to our relations and beg their cold charity, their bitter alms. Meanwhile Vadim was walking aimlessly about the streets till he came to the Petrovsky Boulevard. As he passed a bookseller’s shop there, it occurred to him to ask whether a single copy of his book had been sold. Five days earlier he had enquired, with no result; and he was full of apprehension when he entered the shop. ‘Very glad to see you,’ said the man; ‘I have heard from my Petersburg agent that he has sold 300 roubles’ worth of your books. Would you like payment now?’ And the man there and then counted out fifteen gold pieces. Vadim’s joy was so great that he was bewildered. He hurried to the nearest eating-house, bought food, fruit, and a bottle of wine, hired a cab, and drove home in triumph. I was adding water to some remnants of soup, to feed the children, and I meant to give him a little, pretending that I had eaten something already; and then suddenly he came in, carrying his parcel and the bottle of wine, and looking as happy and cheerful as in times past.”
Then she burst out sobbing and could not utter another word.
After my return from banishment I saw him occasionally in Petersburg and found him much changed. He kept his old convictions, but he kept them as a warrior, feeling that he is mortally wounded, still grasps his sword. He was exhausted and depressed, and looked forward without hope. And such I found him in Moscow in 1842; his circumstances were improved to some extent, and his works were appreciated, but all this came too late.
Then consumption—that terrible disease which I was fated to watch once again[52]—declared itself in the autumn of 1842, and Vadim wasted away.
52. Herzen’s wife died of consumption at Nice in 1852.
A month before he died, I noticed with horror that his powers of mind were failing and growing dim like a flickering candle; the atmosphere of the sick-room grew darker steadily. Soon it cost him a laborious effort to find words for incoherent speech, and he confused words of similar sound; at last, he hardly spoke except to express anxiety about his medicines and the hours for taking them.
At three o’clock one February morning, his wife sent for me. The sick man was in distress and asking for me. I went up to his bed and touched his hand; his wife named me, and he looked long and wearily at me but failed to recognise me and shut his eyes again. Then the children were brought, and he looked at them, but I do not think he recognised them either. His breathing became more difficult; there were intervals of quiet followed by long gasps. Just then the bells of a neighbouring church rang out; Vadim listened and then said, “That’s for early Mass,” and those were his last words. His wife sobbed on her knees beside the body; a young college friend, who had shown them much kindness during the last illness, moved about the room, pushing away the table with the medicine-bottles and drawing up the blinds. I left the house; it was frosty and bright out of doors, and the rising sun glittered on the snow, just as if all was right with the world. My errand was to order a coffin.
When I returned, the silence of death reigned in the little house. In accordance with Russian custom, the dead man was lying on the table in the drawing-room, and an artist-friend, seated at a little distance, was drawing, through his tears, a portrait of the lifeless features. Near the body stood a tall female figure, with folded arms and an expression of infinite sorrow; she stood silent, and no sculptor could have carved a nobler or more impressive embodiment of grief. She was not young, but still retained the traces of a severe and stately beauty; wrapped up in a long mantle of black velvet trimmed with ermine, she stood there like a statue.
I remained standing at the door.
The silence went on for several minutes; but suddenly she bent forward, pressed a kiss on the cold forehead, and said, “Good-bye, good-bye, dear Vadim”; then she walked with a steady step into an inner room. The painter went on with his work; he nodded to me, and I sat down by the window in silence; we felt no wish to talk.
The lady was Mme. Chertkóv, the sister of Count Zachar Chernyshev, one of the exiled Decembrists.
Melchizedek, the Abbot of St. Peter’s Monastery, himself offered that Vadim should be buried within the convent walls. He knew Vadim and respected him for his researches into the history of Moscow. He had once been a simple carpenter and a furious dissenter; but he was converted to Orthodoxy, became a monk, and rose to be Prior and finally Abbot. Yet he always kept the broad shoulders, fine ruddy face, and simple heart of the carpenter.
When the body appeared before the monastery gates, Melchizedek and all his monks came out to meet the martyr’s poor coffin, and escorted it to the grave, singing the funeral music. Not far from his grave rests the dust of another who was dear to us, Venevitínov, and his epitaph runs—
and Vadim knew it as well.
But Fortune was not content even with his death. Why indeed did his mother live to be so old? When the period of exile came to an end, and when she had seen her children in their youth and beauty and fine promise for the future, life had nothing more to give her. Any man who values happiness should seek to die young. Permanent happiness is no more possible than ice that will not melt.
Vadim’s eldest brother died a few months after Diomid, the soldier, fell in Circassia: a neglected cold proved fatal to his enfeebled constitution. He was the oldest of the family, and he was hardly forty.
Long and black are the shadows thrown back by these three coffins of three dear friends; the last months of my youth are veiled from me by funeral crape and the incense of thuribles.
After dragging on for a year, the affair of Sungurov and our other friends who had been arrested came to an end. The charge, as in our case and in that of Petrashev’s group, was that they intended to form a secret society and had held treasonable conversations. Their punishment was to be sent to Orenburg, to join the colours.
And now our turn came. Our names were already entered on the black list of the secret police. The cat dealt her first playful blow at the mouse in the following way.
When our friends, after their sentence, were starting on their long march to Orenburg without warm enough clothing, Ogaryóv and Kiréevski each started a subscription for them, as none of them had money. Kiréevski took the proceeds to Staal, the commandant, a very kind-hearted old soldier, of whom more will be said hereafter. Staal promised to transmit the money, and then said:
“What papers are those you have?”
“The subscribers’ names,” said Kiréevski, “and a list of subscriptions.”
“Do you trust me to pay over the money?” the old man asked.
“Of course I do.”
“And I fancy the subscribers will trust you. Well, then, what’s the use of our keeping these names?” and Staal threw the list into the fire; and I need hardly say that was a very kind action.
Ogaryóv took the money he had collected to the prison himself, and no difficulty was raised. But the prisoners took it into their heads to send a message of thanks from Orenburg, and asked some functionary who was travelling to Moscow to take a letter which they dared not trust to the post. The functionary did not fail to profit by such an excellent opportunity of proving his loyalty to his country: he laid the letter before the head of the police at Moscow.
Volkov, who had held this office, had gone mad, his delusion being that the Poles wished to elect him as their king, and Lisovski had succeeded to the position. Lisovski was a Pole himself; he was not a cruel man or a bad man; but he had spent his fortune, thanks to gambling and a French actress, and, like a true philosopher, he preferred the situation of chief of the police at Moscow to a situation in the slums of that city.
He summoned Ogaryóv, Ketcher, Satin, Vadim, Obolenski, and others, and charged them with having relations with political prisoners. Ogaryóv replied that he had written to none of them and had received no letter; if one of them had written to him, he could not be responsible for that. Lisovski then said:
“You raised a subscription for them, which is even worse. The Tsar is merciful enough to pardon you for once; but I warn you, gentlemen, that you will be strictly watched, and you had better be careful.”
He looked meaningly at all the party and his eye fell on Ketcher, who was older and taller than the rest, and was lifting his eyebrows and looking rather fierce. He added, “I wonder that you, Sir, considering your position in society, are not ashamed to behave so.” Ketcher was only a country doctor; but, from Lisovski’s words, he might have been Chancellor of the imperial Orders of Knighthood.
I was not summoned; it is probable that the letter did not contain my name.
This threat we regarded as a promotion, a consecration, a powerful incentive. Lisovski’s warning was oil on the flames; and, as if to make it easier for the police, we all took to velvet caps of the Karl Sand[53] fashion and tricolor neckties.
53. The German student who shot Kotzebue.
Colonel Shubinski now climbed up with the velvet tread of a cat into Lisovski’s place, and soon marked his predecessor’s weakness in dealing with us: our business was to serve as one of the steps in his official career, and we did what was wanted.
But first I shall add a few words about the fate of Sungurov and his companions.
Kolreif returned to Moscow, where he died in the arms of his grief-stricken father.
Kostenetski and Antonovitch both distinguished themselves as private soldiers in the Caucasus and received commissions.
The fate of the unhappy Sungurov was far more tragic. On reaching the first stage of their journey from Moscow, he asked permission of the officer, a young man of twenty, to leave the stifling cottage crammed with convicts for the fresh air. The officer walked out with him. Sungurov watched for an opportunity, sprang off the road, and disappeared. He must have known the district well, for he eluded the officer; but the police got upon his tracks next day. When he saw that escape was impossible, he cut his throat. He was carried back to Moscow, unconscious and bleeding profusely. The unlucky officer was deprived of his commission.
Sungurov did not die. He was tried again, not for a political offence but for trying to escape. Half his head was shaved; and to this outward ignominy the court added a single stroke of the whip to be inflicted inside the prison. Whether this was actually carried out, I do not know. He was then sent off to work in the mines at Nerchinsk.
His name came to my ears just once again and then vanished for ever.
When I was at Vyatka, I happened to meet in the street a young doctor, a college friend; and we spoke about old times and common acquaintances.
“Good God!” said the doctor, “do you know whom I saw on my way here? I was waiting at a post-house for fresh horses. The weather was abominable. An officer in command of a party of convicts came in to warm himself. We began to talk; and hearing that I was a doctor, he asked me to take a look at one of the prisoners on march; I could tell him whether the man was shamming or really very bad. I consented: of course, I intended in any case to back up the convict. There were eighteen convicts, as well as women and children, in one smallish barrack-room; some of the men had their heads shaved, and some had not; but they were all fettered. They opened out to let the officer pass; and we saw a figure wrapped in a convict’s overcoat and lying on some straw in a corner of the dirty room.
“‘There’s your patient,’ said the officer. No fibs on my part were necessary: the man was in a high fever. He was a horrible sight: he was thin and worn out by prison and marching; half his head was shaved, and his beard was growing; he was rolling his eyes in delirium and constantly calling for water.
“‘Are you feeling bad, my man?’ I said to the patient, and then I told the officer that he was quite unable to march.
“The man fixed his eyes on me and then muttered, ‘Is that you?’ He addressed me by name and added, in a voice that went through me like a knife, ‘You won’t know me again.’
“‘Excuse me,’ I said; ‘I have forgotten your name,’ and I took his hot dry hand in my own.
“‘I am Sungurov,’ he answered. Poor fellow!” repeated the doctor, shaking his head.
“Well, did they leave him there?” I asked.
“No: a cart was got for him.”
After writing the preceding narrative, I learned that Sungurov died at Nerchinsk.