Meanwhile, in the wearisome leisure to which I a m condemned by circumstances, as I find in myself neither strength nor vigour for fresh toil, I am recording our recollections.5 Much of what bound us so closely has found a place in these pages, and I give them to you. For you they have a double meaning, the meaning of epitaphs, on which we meet with familiar names.
But it is surely an odd reflection, that, if Sonnenberg had learned to swim or been drowned when he fell into the river, or if he had been pulled out by some ordinary private and not by that Cossack, we should never have met; or, if we had, it would have been at a later time and in a different way - not in the little room of our old house where we smoked our first cigars, and where we drew strength from one another for our first long step on the path of life.
CHAPTER V
Details of Home Life - Men of the Eighteenth Century in Russia -
A Day at Home - Guests and Visitors - Sonnenberg - Servants 1
The dullness and monotony of our house became more intolerable with every year. But for the prospect of University life, my new 5. This was written in 1853·
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friendship, my interest in politics, and my lively turn of character, I must either have run away or died of the life.
My father was seldom cheerful; as a rule he was dissatisfied with everyone and everything. He was a man of unusual intelligence and powers of observation, who had seen and heard a great deal and remembered it ; he was a finished man of the world and could be exceedingly pleasant and interesting ; but he did not choose to be so, and sank deeper and deeper into a state of morbid solitude.
What precisely it was that infused so much bile and bitterness into his blood, it is hard to say. No period of passion, of great misfortunes, mistakes, and losses, had ever taken place in his life. I could never fully understand the source of that bitter scorn and irritation which filled his heart, of his distrust and avoidance of mankind, and of the disgust that preyed upon him.
Perhaps he took with him to the grave some recollection which he never confided to any ear ; perhaps it was merely due to the combination of two things so incongruous as the eighteenth century and Russian life ; and there was a third factor, the traditional idleness of his class, which had a terrible power of producing unreasonable tempers.
2
In Europe, especially in France, the eighteenth century produced an extraordinary type of man, which combined all the weaknesses of the Regency with all the strength of Spartans or Romans. Half like Faublas and half like Regulus, these men opened wide the doors of revolution and were the first to rush into it, jostling one another in their haste to pass out by the 'window' of the guillotine. Our age has ceased to produce those strong, complete natures; but last century evoked them everywhere, even in countries where they were not needed and where their development was bound to be distorted. In Russia, men who were exposed to the influence of this powerful European current, did not make history, but they became unlike other men. Foreigners at home and foreigners abroad, spoilt for Russia by European prejudices and for Europe by Russian habits, they were a living contradiction in terms and sank into an artificial life of sensual enjoyment and monstrous egoism.
Such was the most conspicuous figure at Moscow in those
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days, Prince Yusupov, a Tartar prince, a grand seigneur of European reputation, and a Russian grandee of brilliant intellect and great fortune. He was surrounded by a whole pleiad of greyhaired Don Juans and free-thinkers - such men as Masalsky, Santi, and the rest. They were all men of considerable mental development and culture; but they had nothing to do, and they rushed after pleasure, loved and petted their precious selves, genially gave themselves absolution for all transgressions, exalted the love of eating to the height of a Platonic passion, and lowered love for women into a kind of gluttonous epicureanism.
Old Yusupov was a sceptic and a bon-vivant ; he had been the friend of Voltaire and Beaumarchais, of Diderot and Casti ; and his artistic taste was beyond question. You may convince yourself of this by a single visit to his palace outside Moscow and a glance at his pictures, if his heir has not sold them yet by auction. At eighty, this luminary was setting in splendour, surrounded by beauty in marble and colour, and also in flesh and blood. Pushkin, who dedicated a noble Epistle to him,1 used to converse with Yusupov in his country-house ; and Gonzaga, to whom Yusupov dedicated his theatre, used to paint there.
3
By his education and service in the Guards, by his birth and connections, my father belonged to the same circle ; but neither temperament nor health allowed him to lead a life of dissipation to the age of seventy, and he went to the opposite extreme. He determined to secure a life of solitude, and found it intensely tedious - all the more tedious because he had sought it merely for his own sake. A strong will was degraded into stubborn wilfulness, and unused powers spoilt his temper and made it difficult.
At the time of his education European civilisation was so new in Russia that a man of culture necessarily became less of a Russian. To the end of his life he wrote French with more ease and correctness than Russian, and he literally never read a Russian book, not even the Bible. The Bible, indeed, he did not read even in other languages ; he knew, by hearsay and from extracts, the matter of Holy Scripture in general, and felt no curiosity to examine further. He did not respect Derzhavin and Krylov, the first because he had written an ode on the death of his uncle, 1. To a Great Man (1830).
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Prince Meshchersky, and the latter, because they had acted together as seconds in a duel. When my father heard that the Emperor Alexander was reading Karamzin's History of the Russian Empire, he tried it himself but soon laid it aside :
'Nothing but old Slavonic names ! Who can take an interest in all that ? ' - such was hJs disparaging criticism.
His contempt for mankind was unconcealed and without exceptions. Never, under any circumstances, did he rely on anyone, and I don't remember that he ever preferred a considerable request in any quarter ; and he never did anything to oblige other people. All he asked of others was · to maintain appearances : les appearances, les convenances - his moral code consisted of these alone. He excused much, or rather shut his eyes to much : but any breach of decent forms enraged him to such a degree that he became incapable of the least indulgence or sympathy. I puzzled so long over this unfairness that I ended by understanding it : he was convinced beforehand that any man is capable of any bad action, and refrains from it only because it does not pay, or for want of opportunity ; but in any breach of politeness he found personal offence, and disrespect to himself, or 'middle-class breeding', which, in his opinion, excluded a man from all decent society.