Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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friends, beautiful dresses and fine carriages. When she visited her relations, her tone was more arrogant than ever. She treated her younger sister as a little schoolgirl, which was, perhaps, not to be wondered at, for my mother was still at the High School. Her morbid self-esteem was wounded by the authoritative tone of her elder sister. She was proud, and resented patronage, dreaming of independence. A great wave of Uberahsm was passing over Russia at the time. Young Russian girls, who had hitherto been brought up more or less on French lines, now refused to accept the husbands their parents chose for them, and to go into society. Their mothers had danced to excess; the daughters despised balls, and preferred literary gatherings or scientific lectures. They laughed at novels and were full of enthusiasm for the works of Darwin. They became careless in their dress, cut their hair short to save time, put on spectacles, and wore black dresses and men's blouses. It was their dream to go and study at the University. When parents opposed this wish, they ran away with idealistic students, who married them in order to save them from " the odious despotism of parents." These marriages were generally platonic; the couple lived apart and rarely met. But by way of compensation, the young wife would choose a lover among the students of the University and live with him in " civil marriage." Free love seemed the ideal love to these reckless young creatures. Some of them even went farther. Male and female students subscribed to hire large dwellings and found communes in which all the women belonged indiscriminately to all the men. They were very proud of this grotesque institution, which they ingenuously assumed to be the last word in human civilisation. They were not aware that they were, in fact, retrograding to the condition of those antediluvian tribes among whom marriage was unknown.
Brought up as she had been, my mother could not, of course, participate in these follies. An obedient daughter of the Orthodox Church, she looked upon free love as a mortal sin. Short hair and spectacles seemed to her very ugly. She loved pretty clothes and graceful coiffures. She tried to read Darwin, but found him very wearisome; the idea of simian descent did not attract her. Her young imagination was fired only by the poems and novels of the Russian authors. She had no desire to be carried off by a student; she preferred to quit her parental home on her husband's arm, with the blessing of her father and mother. In all the new movement towards liberty, my mother chose only what was really good in it—work, and the independence it offers to all who take to it seriously. She studied diligently at school, and on leaving received a silver medal of which she was very proud. For a time she followed a course of higher studies, organised by the parents of her school-friends. The behaviour of the girl-students at the University was becoming so scandalous that many parents in alarm subscribed to form private classes, at which the professors gave lessons to their daughters, thus inducing them to continue their studies, while saving them from contamination. My grandmother was one of the subscribers; but higher studies had no attraction for my mother. She cared nothing for science, and did not see how it was to benefit her. Young Russians incline to vagueness in their aspirations : they study to develop their minds, to understand hfe better, to appreciate literature more fully. These abstract aims did not appeal to my mother's practical mind. What she wanted was to learn some craft by which she could earn money to buy books and theatre tickets, and later to travel. My grandmother, who controlled the purse-strings, was not fond of spending money on what she considered unnecessary things; my mother, for her part, disliked having to ask for every cent; she preferred to earn for herself. She saw in the papers M. Ohlin's advertisement, in which he promised those who made good progress in his courses of stenography posts in the law-courts, at the meetings of learned societies, at congresses, and, in short, everywhere where rapid reporting was a desideratum. The idea pleased my mother. She joined the new classes and worked industriously. This purely mechanical science would have been distasteful to a girl of lively imagination; my mother, who had singularly little, found it very interesting. At this time her father was seriously ill, and had been in bed for some months. When she came back from her lessons, she would go at once to see him. He would lie propped up on pillows, turning over her notebooks with trembling fingers, and asking her the meaning of all the mysterious signs. The poor invalid was delighted that his favourite had at last found a congenial occupation. He died a few weeks later; my mother mourned him passionately, and devoted herself more than ever to her stenography to divert her thoughts from her sorrow. The interest her father had shown in her studies was a further incentive. When the holidays came and the classes ceased, my mother was afraid she might forget her stenography during the summer. She therefore proposed to M. Ohlin that she should make transcriptions from books and send them to him to correct. Ohlin, who had already begun to distinguish her from the other students, consented willingly. My mother worked a great deal throughout the summer, and in the autumn was at the top of her class. Thus she was the only stenographer Ohlin could recommend to Dostoyevsky. He rightly feared the opposition of my grandmother, who, like all the Swedes of her day, was a strict upholder of the proprieties. However, my father's hterary fame saved the situation.
Dostoyevsky, as it happened, was the favourite author of my grandfather, who had become one of his devotees on the appearance of his first novel, and had followed his literary career with great interest. When Dostoyevsky was condemned to penal servitude, my grandfather thought he had disappeared for ever. He remained faithful to his memory and often spoke of him to his children. " The modern authors are worthless," he would say. " In my young days they were much more serious. Young Dostoyevsky, for instance ! What a magnificent talent, what a sublime soul he had ! What a pity that his literary career was cut short so soon ! " When Dostoyevsky began to write again, my grandfather's admiration revived. He subscribed to all the periodicals in which my father's works appeared, and read them with enthusiasm. His children, who had been infants at the time of Dostoyevsky's first works, now shared their father's admiration. The Insulted and Injured made a deep impression on their young imaginations. When the new number of the periodical was due, all the family watched feverishly for the arrival of the postman. My grandfather seized the review first of all, and carried it off to read it in his study. If he laid it down, my mother would creep in, and hiding it under her schoolgirl apron, would run off to read it in the garden, under the shade of her favourite tree. My aunt Maria, who was not yet married at the time, sometimes caught her sister in the act, and would take the book from her, invoking her rights as the elder of the two. The whole of my grandfather's family fought over The Insulted and Injured, weeping at the sorrows of Natalia and little Nelly, and following the evolution of the drama with anguish. My grandmother alone showed no interest. She disliked novels and never read them; politics absorbed her entirely. I remember her later, when she was seventy years old, reading the newspaper through her spectacles. She followed the course of political events throughout Europe and talked of them continually. The marriage of Prince Ferdinand of Coburg occupied her thoughts a good deal. Would Princess Clementine find a good match for him among the princesses of Europe ? This grave question disturbed my poor grandmother greatly. . . .
My grandfather had always talked of Dostoyevsky as the writer of his youth, and my grandmother was convinced that his favourite author was a very old gentleman. When Ohlin proposed to my mother that she should work for Dostoyevsky, she was much flattered and agreed joyfully. My grandmother, looking upon the novelist as a distinguished old man, raised no objections. The day when the work was to begin, my mother dressed her hair demurely, and for the first time regretted that she had no spectacles to put on her nose. On her way to her employer's house, she tried to imagine what this first session would be like. " We shall work for an hour," she thought, " and then we shall talk of literature. I will tell him how I admire his genius, and which are my favourite heroines. I must not forget to ask him why Natalia does not marry Vania, who loved her so deeply. . . . Perhaps it would be well to criticise some of the scenes, so as to show Dostoyevsky that I am not a Uttle goose, and that I know something about literature. ..." Unhappily, the event dispelled all my mother's artless day-dreams. Dostoyevsky had had an epileptic attack the night before; he was absent-minded, nervous and peremptory. He seemed quite unconscious of the charms of his young stenographer, and treated her as a kind of Remington typewriter. He dictated the first chapter of the novel in a harsh voice, complained that she did not write fast enough, made her read aloud what he had dictated, scolded her, and declared she had not understood him. Feeling tired after his attack, he sent her away unceremoniously, telling her to come back the next day at the same hour. My mother was much hurt; she had been accustomed to very different treatment from men. Without being pretty, she was fresh, gay and amiable, and very attractive to the young men who frequented my grandmother's