Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works. Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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. . . Scarcely had he suitted his father's house, when the Lithuanian unciablity took possession of him; he felt himself ttracted by solitude. His new companions did not attract him. They were for the most part the sons of colonels23 and generals, who were commanding the garrisons in the various provincial towns.
21 When he placed his son at school in Petersburg, my grand-ither had counted on the kindness of his relative, General Mvopichin, who held an important administrative post. But iivopichin disliked his Moscow kinsman, and would do nothing )r his son. However, after the death of my grandfather, the ieneral remembered his obligations; he went to see my father t the School of Engineers, and invited him to his house. Dos-)yevsky, who was eighteen by this time, soon became a favourite ith all the Krivopichin family, of whom he speaks affectionately I his letters to his brother MUiail.
22 This was the name by which the School of Engineers was nown in Petersburg. The Palace of Paul does, in fact, look like ti ancient castle.
23 My grandfather's position at Moscow was equivalent to that of a lonel.
At this period there was little reading in the provinces, and even less thinking. It was difficult to find a serious book there, though one could always reckon on a bottle of champagne of a good brand. People drank a great deal, played very high, flirted, and, above all, danced with passion. The parents paid very little attention to their children, and left them to the care of servants. My father's new companions were like young animals, full of gaiety, loving to laugh, and run, and play. They made fun of the serious airs of their Moscow schoolfellow, and his passion for reading. Dostoyevsky, for his part, despised them for their ignorance; they seemed to him to belong to another world. This was not surprising. My father was several centuries ahead of his Russian companions. " I was struck by the foolishness of their reflections, their games, their conversation and their occupations," he wrote later. " They respected nothing but success. All that was righteous, but humiliated and persecuted, called forth their cruel mockery. At the age of sixteen, they talked of nice little lucrative situations. Their vice amounted to monstrosity." As he observed his schoolfellows, Dostoyevsky felt his father's Lithuanian disdain for the Russians awaking in his heart, the contempt of a civilised individual for brutes and ignoramuses.24
24 Although he despised them, my father never cast off his companions. Former pupils at the School of Engineers remember that he was always ready to protect new pupOs when they arrived, helping them with their lessons, and defending them against the tyranny of the elder boys. General Sav61ieff, who at this period was a yoimg officer acting as superintendent of the classrooms, states in his recollections that the school authorities considered Dostoyevsky a young man of high culture, with great strength of character and a deep sense of personal dignity. He obeyed the orders of his superiors readily enough, but declined to bow to the decrees of his elder comrades, and held aloof from all their demonstrations. This was a very characteristic trait, for in Russian schools boys as a rule show more deference to their elders than to their masters.
My father, however, found a friend at last. This was the young Grigorovitch, who, hke himself, was only half a Russian; his maternal grandmother was a Frenchwoman. She took a great interest in her grandson's education, and made him a well-informed young man. Gay and sociable as the French generally are, Grigorovitch was ready enough to play with his schoolfellows, but he preferred the society of my father. There was a bond of union between them : both were writing in secret, and dreaming of becoming novelists.25
25 My father had another friend at this period, the young Schidlovsky, his former schoolfellow at Tchermack's. For some reason unknown to me, Schidlovsky travelled a great deal, going sometimes to Reval, sometimes to Petersburg. He acted as bearer of dispatches to the young Dostoyevsky. Schidlovsky was a poet, an idealist and a mystic. He had a great influence on my father. He was probably of Lithuanian origin.
His friendship with young Grigorovitch did not make my father forget his brother Mihail. They corresponded constantly; some of their letters have been published. In these they speak of Racine, Corneille, Schiller and Balzac, recommend interesting books to each other, and exchange their literary impressions. My uncle took advantage of his term at Reval to study the German language thoroughly. Later he translated several of the works of Goethe and Schiller, and his translations were much appreciated by the Russian public.
Letters from the young Dostoyevsky to their father have also been published. They are very respectful; but as a rule contain nothing but requests for money. My grandfather was not loved by his children. This Lithuanian, who had so many good qualities, had also one great defect: he was a hard drinker, violent and suspicious in his cups. As long as his wife was there to intervene between him and the children all was well; she had considerable influence over him, and prevented him from drinking to excess. After her death my grandfather gave way to his weakness, became incapal of working, and resigned his appointment. Having placed his younger sons, Andrey and Nicolai, at Tchemack's school, and having married his eldest daughter Barbara to a native of Moscow, he retired to Darovoy and devoted himself to agriculture. He took his two younger daughters. Vera and Alexandra, with him, and led them a terrible life. At this time it was usual to bring up girls under the superintendence of their parents. The instruction given them was not very extensive; French, German, a little piano-playing and dancing fancy needlework. Only the daughters of the poor worked. The girls of noble families were destined for marriage, and their virginity was carefully guarded. My grandfather never allowed his pretty daughters to go out alone, and accompanied them himself on the rare occasions when they went to visit their country neighbours. The jealous vigilance of their father offended the delicacy of my aunts. Later they remembered with horror how their father used to visit their bedrooms at night to make sure that they had no hidden some lover under the bed. My aunts at this time were pure and innocent children.
My grandfather's avarice increased as his drinking habits became more confirmed. He sent so little money to his sons that they were in want of everything. My father could not indulge in a cup of tea when he came in from drill, which was often carried on in a down pour of rain; he had no change of boots, and, worst of all, no money to give to the orderlies who waited or the engineer cadets. Dostoyevsky rebelled against the privations and humiliations to which his father's meanness subjected him; a meanness for which there was no excuse, for my grandfather owned land and had money put away for the dowry of his daughters. My father considered that, as my grandfather had chosen a brilliant and distinguished school for him, he ought to have given him enough money to hve in the same manner as his comrades.
This state of friction between the father and his sons did not long continue. My grandfather had always been very severe to his serfs. His drunkenness made him so savage, that they finally murdered him. One summer day he left his estate Darovoye to visit his other property, Tchermashnia, and never returned. He was found later half-way between the two, smothered under the cushions of his carriage. The coachman had disappeared with the horses; several of the peasants of the village disappeared at the same time. When interrogated by the Court, other serfs of my grandfather's admitted that the crime was one of vengeance.
My father was not at home at the time of this horrible death. He no longer went to Darovoye, for in summer the pupils of the School of Engineers had to carry out manoeuvres in the neighbourhood of Petersburg. The crime committed by the peasants of Darovoye, of whom he had been so fond as a child, made a great impression upon his adolescent imagination.26 He thought of itall his life, and pondered the causes of this dreadful end deeply. It is very remarkable that the whole of my grandfather's family looked upon his death as a disgrace, never mentioned it, and prevented Dos-toyevsky's literary friends, who knew the details of his life, from speaking of it in their reminiscences of my father. It is evident that my uncles and aunts had a more European idea of slavery than the Russians of the period. Crimes of vengeance committed by peasants were very frequent at the time, but no one blushed for them. The victims were pitied, the murderers denounced with horror. The Russians had a naive belief that masters might treat their serfs hke dogs, and that the latter had no right to revolt. The Lithuanian family of my grandfather looked at the matter from a very different point of view.
26 According to a family tradition, it was when he heard of his father's death that Dostoyevsky had his first epileptic fit. We can only conjecture what his state of mind must have been, for all the correspondence with his brother Mihall which might have thrown some light on