Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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are said around him; he walks in the streets, talking to himself, laughing and gesticulating, till passers-by smile, taking him for a madman. Suddenly he will stop, struck by the look of an unknown person, which stamps itself on his brain. A word, a phrase he overhears reveals to him a whole life, an ideal which will eventually find expression in his works.
The little villa of Staraja Russa no longer exists. Built of poor wood bought at a low price by the old Colonel, it was unable to resist the annual inundations of the Pereritza, and at last fell to pieces, in spite of all efforts to save it. As long as it survived it attracted many visitors. All who came to Staraja Russa made a pilgrimage to the little house where Dostoyevsky spent the last summers of his life. They looked at the table on which he had written The Brothers Karamazov, the old arm-chairs in which he sat to read, the numerous souvenirs of him we had kept.69 Among these pious pilgrims was the Grand Duke Vladimir, who came one day when he was in the neighbourhood holding a review of young soldiers. He told my mother how greatly he admired Dostoyevsky. '' This is not the first domicile of his I have visited," he added. " Passing through Siberia, I stopped at Omsk to see the prison where he suffered so greatly. It is entirely changed now. The Memories of the House of the Dead effected a vast reform in all Siberian prisons. What a genius your husband was ! What a power of touching the heart he had!" The Grand Duke Vladimir was the grandson of Nicholas I, who had condemned my father to penal servitude. Ideas change quickly in Russia, and grandchildren are ready to recognise the misdeeds of their grandparents.
69 These relics were all placed in a little museum we made in our new villa.
My father liked Staraja Russa so well, that my mother proposed we should spend a winter there in order to economise and pay off the debts more rapidly. They took another villa in the centre of the town, a larger and warmer house, and we spent several months there. In the course of this winter my brother Alexey was born. There had been some discussion as to his name. My mother wished to call him after her beloved brother, Jean. Dostoyevsky suggested Stepan, in honour of that Bishop Stepan who, according to him, was the founder of our Orthodox family. My mother was somewhat surprised at this, as my father rarely spoke of his ancestors. I imagine that Dostoyevsky, who felt an ever-increasing interest in the Orthodox Church, wished to show his gratitude to the first of our Lithuanian ancestors who had adopted Orthodoxy. However, my mother disliked the name Stepan, and my parents finally agreed to call the child Alexey. My mother's health had improved so much that the birth of this child caused her little suffering. Little Alexey seemed strong and healthy, but he had a curious forehead. It was oval, almost angular. His little head was like an egg. This did not make him an ugly baby; it only gave him a quaint expression of astonishment. As he grew older, Alexey became my father's favourite. My brother Fyodor and I were forbidden to go into our father's room uninvited; but this rule did not apply to Alexey. As soon as his nurse's back was turned he would escape from his nursery, and run to his father, exclaiming : " Papa, zizi! " 70
70 i. e. tchassi, show.
Dostoyevsky would lay aside his work, take the child on his knee, and place his watch against the baby's ear, and Aliosha would clap his little hands, delighted at the ticking. He was very intelligent and lovable, and was deeply mourned by the whole family when he died, at the age of two and a half years, at Petersburg, in the month of May, just before our annual journey to Staraja Russa. Our boxes were packed, and the last purchases were being made, when Ahosha was suddenly seized with convulsions. The doctor reassured my mother, telling her that this often happened to children of his age. Ahosha slept well, awoke fresh and lively, and asked for toys to play with in his httle bed. Suddenly he fell back in another convulsion, and in an hour he was dead. It all happened so quickly that my brother and I were still in the room. Seeing my parents sobbing over the little lifeless body, I had a fit of hysterics. I was taken away to some friends, with whom I stayed for two days. I returned to my home for the funeral. My mother wished to bury her darhng beside her father in the cemetery of Ochta, on the other side of the Neva. As the bridge which now connects the banks did not then exist, we had to make a long detour. We drove in a landau, with the little cofiin between us. We all wept, caressing the poor httle white, flower-decked coffin, and recalling the baby's pretty sayings. After a short service in the church, we passed to the burial-ground. How well I remember that radiant May day! All the plants were in blossom, the birds were singing in the branches of the old trees, and the htanies of the priest and the choir sounded melodiously in the poetic surroundings. Tears ran down my father's cheeks; he supported his sobbing wife, whose eyes were fixed on the little coffin as it gradually disappeared under the earth.
The doctors explained to my parents that Alexey's death was due to the malformation of his skull, which had prevented his brain from expanding. For my part, I have always thought that Ahosha, who was very hke my father, had inherited his epilepsy. But God was good to him, and took him home at the first attack.
During the winter preceding the death of Alexey, a celebrated Parisian fortune-teller had visited Petersburg, and there was a great deal of talk about her predictions and her clairvoyance. My father, who was interested in all occult manifestations, went to see her with a friend, and was surprised at the accuracy with which she told him of events in his past life. Speaking of his future, she said : A great misfortune will befall you in the spring. Struck by these words, Dostoyevsky repeated them to his wife. My mother, who was superstitious, thought of them a good deal in March and April, but, absorbed in her preparations for our departure, she had entirely forgotten them in May. How often my parents recalled that prediction during the melancholy suDfimer after the death of Alexey !
XX I
" THE JOURNAL OF THE WRITER "
At last all the debts were paid. My father was now free to devote himself to his art—its master, and not its slave ! He could now give his children some pleasures, and afford a few presents for his poor wife, who had sacrificed her youth to enable him to discharge his obligations. The first diamonds Dostoyevsky offered to my mother were very small, but his joy in giving them was great.
Yet my father had no thought of enjoying the rest so hardly earned. Scarcely was he clear of debt than he threw himself into the public arena, and began to publish the Journal of the Writer,71 of which he had long been dreaming. Russian novelists cannot devote themselves exclusively to art, after the manner of their European confreres ; the moment always comes when they have to be priests, confessors and educationists. Our poor paralysed Church and our horrible schools cannot function normally, and every really patriotic writer is obliged to take over part of their duties. After his return from abroad, Dostoyevsky saw with alarm how swiftly unhappy Russia was rolling towards the abyss in which she now hes, thirty-five years after his death. He had just spent three years in Italy and Germany, in the great flowering time of their patriotism. In Petersburg he found only malcontents, who hated their native land. The unhappy Russian intellectuals, educated in our cosmopolitan schools, had only one ideal: to transform our interesting and original Russia, a land full of genius and promise, into a grotesque caricature of Europe. This state of mind was the more dangerous because our masses continued to be strongly patriotic admirers of their own country, proud of their nationality and contemptuous of Europe. Dostoyevsky, who knew both worlds—^that of our intellectuals and that of our peasantry—^recognised the strength of the one and the weakness of the other. He realised that the intellectuals only existed by virtue of the Tsars; that on the day when they, in their blindness, pulled down the throne, the people would take the opportunity of vengeance on the bare,72 whom they despised and hated for their atheism and cosmopolitanism. Dostoyevsky's prophetic spirit foresaw all the horrors of the Russian Revolution.
71 He also published under this title his articles for The Citizen
72 The name the Russian masses give to nobles and intellectuals.
When he began the publication of the Journal of the Writer, Dostoyevsky hoped to reunite this handful of wrong-headed intellectuals with the great popular masses by awakening in them the sentiments of patriotism and religion.73 His ardent voice was not lost in the wilderness; many Russians saw the danger of this