Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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was overwhelming. My grandmother, who had just arrived from Petersburg to make the acquaintance of her new grandchild, comforted them as far as she could. Seeing that my mother spent all her time in the cemetery, sobbing on the little grave, my grandmother proposed that she should be taken away to Vevey. There the three spent a most melancholy summer. My mother was constantly escaping from the house, and going by steamer to Geneva, to take flowers to her little lost one. She would come back in tears; her health becametworse and worse. My father, for his part, was uneasy in Switzerland, A denizen of the plains, he was accustomed to vast horizons; the mountains round Lake Leman oppressed him. " They crush me, they dwarf my ideas," he would say; " I cannot write anything of value in this country."
My parents accordingly decided to spend the winter in Italy; they hoped the southern sun might restore my mother's health. They went away alone; my grandmother remained in Switzerland with her Svatkov-sky grandchildren, who were to spend the winter in Geneva by the doctor's orders.
My parents travelled across the Simplon by the diligence. My mother always recalled this journey with pleasure. It was the month of August and the weather was magnificent. The diligence went up slowly; the passengers preferred to walk, taking short cuts. My mother walked, leaning on my father's arm; it seemed to her that she had left her sorrow on the other side of the Alps, and that in Italy life would smile upon her once again. She was barely twenty-one, and at that age the thirst for happiness is so great that the loss of a baby of three months old cannot darken one's days for very long.
My parents' first sojourn in Italy was at Milan. My father was anxious to see the famous cathedral which had so greatly impressed his imagination on his first visit to Europe. He examined it thoroughly, stood lost in admiration before the fa9ade, and even went up on the roof to see the view which extends over the wide Lombard plain. When the autumn rains began, my parents left for Florence, and settled there for the winter. They knew no one in the city, and spent several months tete-d-tete. Dostoyevsky never cared for casual acquaintanceship which leads no further. When a man pleased him, he gave him his heart, and remained his friend for life, but he could not offer his friendship to every passer-by.
My father was busily occupied in Florence; he was writing his novel. The Idiot, which he had begun at Geneva. My mother helped him, taking down the scenes he dictated to her in shorthand. She was careful, however, not to disturb him in his hours of meditation, and set herself to make a thorough study of Florence, its beautiful churches and its magnificent art collections. She habitually arranged to meet her husband in front of some famous picture; when he had finished his writing, Dostoyevsky would join her in the Pitti Palace. He did not like to study pictures Baedeker in hand; on his first visit to a gallery he would single out certain pictures which pleased him, and would often come back to admire them, without looking at any others. He would stand for a long time before his favourites, explaining to his young wife the ideas these pictures evoked in him. Then they would take a walk along the Arno. On their way home they would often make a ditour to see the doors of the Baptistry, which enchanted my father. In fine weather they would stroll in the Cascine or the Boboli Gardens. The roses blooming there in the month of January struck their northern imaginations. At that time of the year they were accustomed to see rivers covered with ice, streets full of snow, and passers-by muffled in furs; the January blossoms seemed to them incredible. My father speaks of the Boboli roses in his letters to his friends, my mother speaks of them in her reminiscences.
My parents were very happy in Florence; I think this was the most perfect moment of their wedding journey. Dostoyevsky loved Italy; he said the Italians reminded him of the Russians. There is, indeed, a good deal of Slav blood in Northern Italy. The Venetii who built Venice were of Slav origin and belonged to the same Slav tribe as the Russians, a tribe whose home was in the Carpathians. Intermarrying with Italians, the Venetii gave their Slav blood to the inhabitants of northern Italy. This blood flowed all over the plain of the Po, and descended along the Apennines. Russians travelling in Italy are often surprised to find in the depths of Tuscany or Umbria peasant-women of the same type as those they have seen at home. They have the same soft and patient look, the same endurance in work, the same sense of self-denial. The costume and the manner of knotting the handkerchief about the head are similar. Thus the Russians love Italy, and look upon it as to some extent their second country.
XVI I I
TRAVELS IN EUROPE : SECOND PART
Towards the spring my mother became enceinte for the second time. The news delighted my father; the birth of little Sophie had made him more eager than ever to be a father. As the climate of Florence suited my mother, my parents at first proposed to spend another year in Italy. But they changed their minds as the time for my mother's confinement approached. The fact was that in those days the hotels and furnished flats in Florence did not as yet possess any of those polyglot servants who speak all languages equally badly. The humble Florentine servants were content to speak good Italian. My mother soon learned to talk this language after a fashion, and acted as interpreter to my father, who was too busy with his novel to study Itahan. Now that she was about to take to her bed, and perhaps be dangerously ill, how, she wondered, would her husband be able to manage among Italian servants and nurses. My father wondered also, and told his wife he would prefer to winter in a country where he could speak the language. Dostoyevsky at this time was beginning to feel an interest in the Slav question, which eventually absorbed him so entirely. He proposed to my mother that they should go to Prague, where he wished to study the Czechs. My parents left Florence at the end of the summer, and travelled by easy stages that my mother might not be tired, stopping at Venice, Trieste and Vienna. At Prague they had a great disappointment; there were no furnished apartments to be had in the town. Dostoyevsky wanted to go back to Vienna, hoping to find there some Czech societies, literary or otherwise; but my mother disliked Vienna. She proposed that they should return to Dresden, of which she had such happy memories. My father agreed; he, too, remembered their stay in Dresden with pleasure.
My parents arrived in Dresden a fortnight before my birth. Dostoyevsky was very happy to have a little daughter to love once more. " I saw her five minutes after her arrival in the world," he wrote to one of his friends. " She is a beauty, and the image of me." My mother laughed heartily when she heard this. " You flatter yourself," she said to her husband. " Do you think you are handsome?" Dostoyevsky was never handsome, nor was his daughter; but she was always proud of being like her father.
The landlord of the furnished rooms occupied by my parents came to warn Dostoyevsky that by the laws of the town of Dresden he must go at once to the police office to announce the birth of his daughter to the Saxon authorities.
Dostoyevsky hastened to the office and declared to the officials that he was the happy father of a little girl called Aimee. The Saxons were not content with this, but made my father state his name, age, social position, date of birth. Having satisfied their curiosity on the subject of my father, they passed on to his wife, and asked what her maiden name was.
Her maiden name ! The devil I Dostoyevsky could not remember it! He racked his brains in vain !—he could not recall it. He explained matters to the pohce officers, and asked leave to go and consult his wife. The worthy Saxons looked at him with amazement; never had they encountered such an absent-minded husband ! They allowed Dostoyevsky to go. He came home in dudgeon.
" What is your name ? " he asked his wife severely.
"My name? Anna," replied my mother, much surprised.
" I know your name is Anna. I want to know your maiden name."
"Why?"
" Oh ! it is not I who would know it, but the pohce here. These Germans are so inquisitive. They insist on knowing what you were called before your marriage, and I have completely forgotten ! "
My mother instructed her husband, and advised him to write the name on a bit of paper. " Otherwise you will forget it again," she said laughingly. Dostoyevsky took her advice, and went off to show his bit of paper triumphantly to the Saxon authorities.63