XX I I

      DOSTOYEVSKY IN HIS HOME

       Table of Contents

       The Russian students are not very orderly in their habits. They interfered with my father's work by coming to see him at all hours of the day, and thus Dostoyevsky, who never refused to receive them, was obliged to sit up at night writing. Even before this, when he had any important chapters on hand, he preferred working at them when every one around him was asleep. This nocturnal toil now became a fixed habit. He would write until four or five in the morning, and would not get up till eleven o'clock. He slept on a sofa in his study. This was then the fashion in Russia, and our furniture-dealers used to stock Turkish sofas with a deep drawer, in which the pillows, sheets and blankets were hidden during the day. Thus the bedroom could be transformed into a study or drawing-room in a few minutes. On the wall over the sofa there was a large and beautiful photograph of the Sistine Madonna, which had been given to my father by friends who knew how he loved the picture. His first glance when he woke fell upon the sweet face of this Madonna, whom he considered the ideal of womanhood.

      When he rose, my father first did some gymnastic exercises; then he went to wash in his dressing-room. He made very thorough ablutions, using a great deal of water, soap and eau de Cologne. He had a perfect passion for cleanhness, though this is not a characteristically Russian virtue. It did not make its appearance in Russia before the second half of the nineteenth century.76 Even in our own days, it was not uncommon to see authentic old princesses with their nails in deep mourning. Dostoyevsky's nails were never in mourning. However busy he was he always found time to perform his manicure carefully. It was his habit to sing while he was washing. His dressing-room was next to our nursery, and every morning I used to hear him singing the same little song in a low voice :

      " Wake her not at early dawn !

      Sweetly she sleeps in the mom !

      Morning breathes upon her breast,

      Touches her cheeks with rose."

      76 Our grandmothers used to tell us how in their youth young girls who were going to a ball would send their servants to ask their mothers if they should wash their necks for a low. or only a slight dicolktage.

      My father then went back to his room and finished dressing. I never saw him in dressing-gown and slippers, which Russians habitually wear for the greater part of the day. From early morning he was always carefully dressed and shod, wearing a fine white shirt, with a starched collar.77

      77 At this period only working men wore coloured shirts.

      He always wore good clothes; even when he was poor, he had them made by the best tailor in the town. He took great care of his clothes, always brushed them himself, and had the secret of keeping them fresh for a very long time. If he happened to spill a drop of grease on them when moving his candlesticks, he at once took off his coat and asked the maid to remove the spot. " Stains offend me," he would say; "I cannot work when I know they are there. I think of them all the time, instead of concentrating on my writing." When he had finished dressing and said his prayers, Dostoyevsky would go into the dining-room to drink his tea. It was then we used to go and wish him good-morning, and chatter to him about our childish affairs. He liked to pour out his tea himself, and always drank it very strong. He would drink two glasses of it, and carry away a third to his study, where he sipped it as he wrote. While he was breakfasting the maid cleaned and aired his room. There was very little furniture in it, and what there was, was always ranged along the walls, and had to be kept in place. When several friends came at the same time to see my father, and displaced his chairs, he always put them back in their places himself after the visitors had left. His writing-table was also very neat. The newspapers, the cigarette-box, the letters he received, the books he consulted, all had to be in their places. The slightest untidiness irritated him. Knowing what importance he attached to this meticulous order, my mother went every morning to see that her husband's writing-table was properly arranged. She would then take up her station beside it, and lay out her pencils and notebooks on a small round table. When he had finished his breakfast my father returned to his room, and at once began to dictate to her the chapters he had composed the night before. My mother took them down in shorthand and transcribed them. Dostoyevsky corrected these transcriptions, often adding fresh details; my mother copied them out again and sent them to the printers. In this manner she saved her husband an immense amount of work. He would not, perhaps, have written so many novels if his wife had never learnt stenography. My mother's handwriting was very beautiful; my father's was less regular, but more elegant. I called it " Gothic writing," because all his manuscripts were adorned with Gothic windows, delicately drawn with pen and ink. Dostoyevsky traced them mechanically as he pondered on his work; it seems as if his soul had craved for these Gothic Unes, which he had admired so much in the cathedrals of Milan and Cologne. Sometinaes he would sketch heads and profiles on his manuscripts, all very interesting and characteristic.78

      78 Drawing was very carefully taught at the Engineers' School.

      When dictating his works to my mother, Dostoyevsky would sometimes stop and ask her opinion. My mother was careful not to criticise. The malicious criticisms in the newspapers were sufficiently wounding to her husband, and she was anxious not to add weight to them. Still, fearing that praise might become monotonous, she ventured on certain slight objections. If the heroine were dressed in blue, my mother was all for pink; if there were a cupboard on the left, she preferred to have it on the right; she would change the shape of the hero's hat, and sometimes cut off his beard. Dostoyevsky always made the suggested modifications eagerly, in the ingenuous belief that it was to please his wife. He saw through her devices no more clearly than he had seen through those of the Russian convicts in Siberia when, to distract his thoughts, they would talk politics to him, and question him on the life in European capitals. Dostoyevsky was so honest that it never occurred to him that any one could wish to deceive him. He himself never said anything untrue except on one day in the year—^the first of April. " April fool " was a tradition, and my father loved traditions. One spring morning he came out of his bedroom with a face of consternation. " Do you know what has happened to me in the night ? " he said to my mother as he entered the dining-room. "A rat got into my bed. I strangled it. . . . Please tell the maid to go and take it away. I can't go back into my room while the rat is there. It horrifies me ! " and he hid his face in his hands. My mother called the maid and went with her into the master's room. My brother and I followed; we had never seen a rat, and we wondered what it would be like. The maid shook the sheets, pillows and blaiikets—then lifted up the carpet. Nothing I The corpse of the rat had disappeared. " But where did you throw it ? " asked my mother, returning to the dining-room, where my father was quietly drinking his tea. He began to laugh. " April fool 1 " he cried, delighted with the success of his trick. When he had finished his dictation to my mother, Dostoyevsky would send for us, and give us some dainties for our luncheon. He was very fond of such delicacies, and in a drawer of his bookcase he kept boxes of dried figs, dates, nuts, raisins and those fruit pastes which are' made in Russia. He liked to eat such things occasionally during the day, and even during the night. This " dastarhan " 79 was, I think, the only Oriental habit my father had inherited from his Russian ancestors; perhaps his delicate constitution needed all these sweet things. When we came to his study he would give