CHA P T E R I I
Gossip o f Nurses and Conversation of Generals - A False Position -
Boredom - The Servants' Hall -Two Germans -Lessons and Reading
Catechism and the Gospel
U N T I L I was ten, I noticed nothing strange or peculiar in my position.1 To me it seemed simple and natural that I was living in my father's house, where I had to be quiet in the rooms inhabited by him, though in my mother's part of the house I could shout and make a noise to my heart's content. The Senator gave me toys and spoilt me ; Calot was my faithful slave ; Vera Artamonovna bathed me, dressed me, and put me to bed ; and Mme Proveau took me out for walks and spoke German to me. All went on with perfect regularity ; and yet I began to feel puzzled.
My attention was caught by some casual remarks incautiously dropped. Old Mme Proveau and the household in general were devoted to my mother, but feared and disliked my father. The disputes which sometimes took place between my parents were often the subject of discussion between my nurses, and they always took my mother's side.
It was true that my mother's life was no bed of roses. An exceedingly kind-hearted woman, but not strong-willed, she was utterly crushed by my father ; and, as often happens with weak
:haracters, she was apt to carry on a desperate opposition in natters of no importance. Unfortunately, in these trifles my father was almost always in the right, and so he triumphed in the end.
Mme Proveau would start a conversation in this style : 'In her place, I declare I would be off at once and go back to Germany.
The dullness of the life is fit to kill one; no enjoyment and nothing but grumbling and unpleasantness.'
'You're quite right,' said Vera Artamonovna ; 'but she's tied hand and foot by someone' - and she would point her knittingneedles at me. 'She can't take him with her, and to leave him here alone in a house like ours would be too much even for one not his mother.'
1. Herzen's parents were never married with the Russian rites, and he bore throughout life a name which was not his father's.
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Children in general find out more than people think. They are easily put off, and forget for a time, but they persist in returning to the subject, especially if it is mysterious or alarming ; and by their questions they get at the truth with surprising perseverance and ingenuity.
Once my curiosity was aroused, I soon learned all the details of my parents' marriage - how my mother made up her mind to elope, how she was concealed in the Russian embassy at Cassel by my uncle's connivance, and then crossed the frontier disguised as a boy; and all this I found out without asking a single question.
The first result of these discoveries was to lessen my attachment to my father, owing to the disputes of which I have spoken already. I had witnessed them before, but had taken them as a matter of course. The whole household, not excluding the Senator, were afraid of my father, and he spared no one his reproofs ; and I was so accustomed to this, that I saw nothing strange in these quarrels with my mother. But now I began to take a different view of the matter, and the thought that I was to some extent responsible threw a dark shadow sometimes over my childhood.
A second thought which took root in my mind at that time was this - that I was much less dependent on my father than most children are on their parents ; and this independence, though it existed only in my own imagination, gave me pleasure.
2
Two or three years after this, two old brother-officers of my father's were at our house one evening - General Essen, the Governor of Orenburg, and General Bakhmetev, who lost a leg at Borodino and was later Lieutenant-Governor of Bessarabia. My room was next the drawing-room where they were sitting. My father happened to mention that he had been speaking to Prince Yusupov with regard to my future; he wished me to enter the Civil Service.
'There's no time to lose,' he added ; 'as you know, he must serve a long time before he gets any decent post.'
'It is a strange notion of yours,' said Essen good-humouredly,
'to tum the boy into a clerk. Leave it to me ; let me enroll him in the Ural Cossacks ; he will soon get his commission, which is the main thing, and then he can forge ahead like the rest of us.'
But my father would not agree : he said that everything military
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C H I L D H O O D, Y O U T H A N D E X I L E
was distasteful t o him, that he hoped in time t o get m e a diplomatic post in some warm climate, where he would go himself to end his days.
Bakhmetev had taken little part in the conversation; but now he got up on his crutches and said :
'In my opinion, you ought to think twice before you reject Essen's advice. If you don't fancy Orenburg, the boy can enlist here just as well. You and I are old friends, and I always speak my mind to you. You will do no good to the young man himself and no service to the country by sending him to the University and on to the Civil Service. He is clearly in a false position, and nothing but the Army can put that right and open up a career for him from the first. Any dangerous notions will settle down before he gets the command of a regiment. Discipline works wonders, and his future will depend on himself. You say that he's clever ; but you don't suppose that all officers in the Army are fools ? Think of yourself and me and our lot generally. There is only one possible objection - that he may have to serve some time before he gets his commission ; but that's the very point in which we can help you.'
This conversation was as valuable to me as the casual remarks of my nurses. I was now thirteen ; and these lessons, which I turned over and over and pondered in my heart for weeks and months in complete solitude, bore their fruit. I had formerly dreamt, as boys always do, of military service and fine uniforms, and had nearly wept because my father wished to make a civilian of me ; but this conversation at once cooled my enthusiasm, and by degrees - for it took time - I rooted out of my mjnd every atom of my passion for stripes and epaulettes and aiguillettes. There was, it is true, one relapse, when a cousin, who was at school in Moscow and sometimes came to our house on holidays, got a commission in a cavalry regiment. After joining his regiment, he paid a visit to Moscow and stayed some days with us. My heart beat fast, when I saw him in all his finery, carrying his sabre and wearing the shako held at a becoming angle by the chin-strap. He was sixteen but not tall for his age ; and next morning I put on his uniform, sabre, shako, and all, and looked at myself in the glass. How magnificent I seemed to myself, in the blue jacket with scarlet facings ! What a contrast between this gorgeous finery and the plain cloth jacket and duck trousers which I wore at home I My cousin's visit weakened for a time the effect of what the
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generals had said ; but, before long, circumstances gave me a fresh and final distaste for a soldier's uniform.
By pondering over my 'false position', I was brought to much the same conclusion as by the talk of the two nurses. I felt less dependence on society (of which, however, I knew nothing), and I believed that I must rely mainly on my own efforts. I said to myself with childish arrogance that General Bakhmetev and his brother-officers should hear of me some day.