There is truth in the proverb - it's ill talking between a full man and a fasting.' More indulgence than this it was impossible to expect from my father.
Family dinners were given occasionally to near relations, but these entertainments proceeded rather from deep design than from mere warmth of heart. Thus my uncle, the Senator, was always invited to a party at our house for his birthday, 20 February, and we were invited by him for St John's Day, 24 June, which was my father's birthday ; this arrangement not only set an edifying example of brotherly love, but also saved each of them from giving much larger entertainment at his own house.
There were some regular guests as well. Sonnenberg appeared at dinner ex officio ; he had prepared himself by a bumper of brandy and a sardine eaten beforehand, and declined the tiny glass of stale brandy offered him. My last French tutor was an occasional guest - an old miser and scandal-monger, with an impudent face. M. Thirie constantly made the mistake of filling his glass with wine instead of beer. My father would say to him, 'If you remember that the wine is on your right, you will not make the mistake in future' : and Thirie crammed a great pinch . of snuff into his large and crooked nose, and spilt the snuff over his plate.
13
One of these visitors was an exceedingly comic figure, a short, bald old man, who always wore a short, tight tailcoat, and a waistcoat which ended where a modern waistcoat begins. His name was Dmitri Pimenov, and he always looked twenty years out of date, reminding you of 1810 in 1830, and of 1820 in 1840.
He was interested in literature, but his natural capacity was small, and he had been brought up on the sentimental phrases of Karamzin, or Marmon tel and Marivaux. Dmitriyev was his master in poetry ; and he had been tempted to make some experiments of his own on that slippery track which is trod by Russian authors
- his first publication was a translation of La Rochefoucauld's Pensees, and his second a treatise on Female Beauty and Charm.
But his chief distinction was, not that he had once published C.Y.E.-6
8o
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books which nobody ever read, but that, i f h e once began to laugh, he could not stop, but went on till he crowed convillsi,vely like a child with whooping-cough. He was aware of this, and therefore took his precautions when he felt it coming on : he pulled out his handbrchief, looked at his watch, buttoned up his coat, and covered his face with both hands ; then, when the paroxysm was imminent, he got up, turned his face to the wall, and stood in that position suffering torments, for half an hour or longer ; at last, red in the face and worn out by his exertions, he sat down again and mopped his bald head ; and for a long time an occasional sob heaved his body.
He was a kindly man, but awkward and poor and a man of letters. Consequently my father attached no importance to him and considered him as 'below the salt' in all respects ; but he was well aware of this tendency to convulsive laughter, and used to make his guests laugh to such an extent that other people could not help laughing too in an uncomfortable fashion. Then the author of all this merriment, with a slight smile on his own lips, used to look at us as a man looks at puppies when they are rioting.
My father sometimes played dreadful tricks on this unlucky admirer of Female Beauty and Charm.
A Colonel of Engineers was announced by the servant one day.
'Bring him in,' said my father, and then he turned to Pimenov and said, 'Please be careful before him : he is unfortunate enough to have a very peculiar stammer' - here he gave a very successful imitation of the Colonel - 'I know you are easily amused, but please restrain yourself.'
That was quite enough : before the officer had spoken three words, Pimenov pulled out his handkerchief, made an umbrella out of his hand, and finally sprang to his feet.
The officer looked on in surprise, while my father said to me with perfect composure : 'What can be the matter with our friend ? He is suffering from spasms of some kind : order a glass of cold water for him at once, and bring eau-de-cologne.'
But in these cases Pimenov clutched his hat and vanished.
Home he went, shouting with laughter for a mile or so, stopping at the crossings, and leaning against the lamp-posts.
For several years he dined at our house every second Sunday, with few exceptions ; and my father was equally vexed, whether
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he carne or failed to come. He was not kind to Pirnenov, but the worthy man took the long walk, in spite of that, until he died.
There was nothing laughable about his death : he was a solitary old bachelor, and, when his long illness was nearing the end, he looked on while his housekeeper robbed him of the very sheets upon his bed and then left him without attendance.
14
But the real martyrs of our dinner-table were certain old and feeble ladies, who held a humble and uncertain position in the household of Princess Khovansky, my father's sister. For the sake of change, or to get information about our domestic affairs -
whether the heads of the family had quarrelled, whether the cook had beaten his wife and been detected by his master, whether a·
maid had slipped from the path of virtue - these old people sometimes carne on a saint's day to spend the day. I ought to mention that these old widows had known my father forty or fifty years earlier in the house of the Princess Meshchersky, where they were brought up for charity. During this interval between their precarious youth and unsettled old age, they had quarrelled for twenty years with husbands, tried to keep them sober, nursed them when paralysed, and buried them. One had fought the battle of life in Bessarabia with a husband on half-pay and a swarm of children ; another, together with her husband, had been a defendant for years in the criniinal courts ; and all these experiences had left on them the traces of life in provincial towns - a dread of those who have power in this world, a spirit of humility and also of blind fanaticism.
Their presence often gave rise to astonishing scenes.
'Are you not well, that you are eating nothing, Anna Yakiniovna ? ' my father would ask.
Then Anna Yakiniovna, the widow of some obscure official, an old woman with a worn faded face and a perpetual smell of camphor, apologised with eyes and fingers as she answered : 'Excuse me, batyushka - I am really quite ashamed ; but, you know, by old custom to-day is a Fast-day.'
'What a nuisance ! You are too scrupulous, matyushka : "not that which entereth into a man defileth a man but that which cometh out" : . whatever you eat, the end is the same. But we ought to watch "what cometh out of the mouth", and that means
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scandal against our neighbours. I think you should dine a t home on such days. Suppose a Turk were to tum up, he might want pilaus ; but my house is not a hotel where each can order what he wants.' This terrified the old woman who had intended to ask for some milk pudding ; but she now attacked the kvass and the salad, and made a pretence of eating enormously.