2
The year which we spent after leaving College formed a triumphant conclusion to the first period of our youth. It was one long festival of friendship, of high spirits, of inspiration and exchange of ideas.
We were a small group of college friends who kept together after our course was over, and continued to share the same views and the same ideals. Not one of us thought of his future career or financial position. I should not praise this attitude in grown-up people, but I value it highly in a young man. Except where it is dried up by the corrupting influence of vulgar respectability, youth is everywhere unpractical, and is especially bound to be so in a young country which has many ideals and has realised few of them. Besides, the unpractical sphere is not always a fool's paradise : every aspiration for the future involves some degree of imagination ; and, but for unpractical people, practical life would never get beyond a tiresome repetition of the old routine.
Enthusiasm of some kind is a better safeguard against real degradation than any sermon. I can remember youthful follies, when high spirits carried us sometimes into excesses ; but I do not remember a single disgraceful incident among our set, nothing that a man need be really ashamed of or seek to forget and cover up. Bad things are done in secret ; and there was nothing secret in our way of life. Half our thoughts - more than half - were not directed towards that region where idle sensuality and morbid selfishness are concentrated on impure designs and make vice thrice as vicious.
3
I have a sincere pity for any nation where old heads grow on young shoulders ; youth is a matter, not only of years, but of temperament. The German student, in the height of his eccen-
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tricity, is a hundred times better than the young Frenchman or Englishman with his dull grown-up airs; as to American boys who are men at fifteen - I find them simply repulsive.
In old France the young nobles were really young and fine; and later, such men as Saint-Just and Hoche, Marceau and Desmoulins, heroic children reared on Rousseau's dark gospel, were young too, in the true sense of the word. The Revolution was the work of young men : neither Danton nor Robespierre, nor Louis XVI himself survived his thirty-fifth year. Under Napoleon, the young men all became subalterns ; the Restoration, the 'resurrection of old age', had no use for young men; and everybody became grown-up, business-like, and dull.
The last really young Frenchmen were the followers of Saint
Simon.1 A few exceptions only prove the fact that their young men have no liveliness or poetry in their disposition. Escousse and Lebras blew their brains out, just because they were young men in a society where all were old. Others struggled like fish jerked out of the water upon a muddy bank, till some of them got caught on the barricades and others on the Jesuits' hook.
Still youth must assert itself somehow, and therefore most young Frenchmen go through an 'artistic' period : that is, those who have no money spend their time in humble cafes of the Latin quarter with humble grisettes, and those who have money resort to large cafes and more expensive ladies. They have no
'Schiller' stage ; but they have what may be called a 'Paul de Kock'
stage, which soon consumes in poor enough fashion all the strength and vigour of youth, and turns out a man quite fit to be a commercial traveller. The 'artistic' stage leaves at the bottom of the soul one passion only - the thirst for money, which excludes all other interests and determines all the rest of life; these practical men laugh at abstract questions and despise women - this is the result of repeated conquests over those whose profession it is to be defeated. Most young men, when going through this stage, find a guide and philosopher in some hoary sinner, an extinct celebrity who lives by sponging on his young friends - an actor who has lost his voice, or an artist whose hand has begun to 1 . Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1 76o-I825), founded at Paris a society which was called by his name. His views were socialistic.
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shake. Telemachus imitates his · Mentor's pronunciation and his drinks, and especially his contempt for social problems and profound knowledge of gastronomy.
In England this stage takes a different form. There young men go through a stormy period of amiable eccentricity, which consists in silly practical jokes, absurd extravagance, heavy pleasantries, systematic but carefully concealed profligacy, and useless expeditions to the ends of the earth. Then there are horses, dogs, races, dull dinners ; next comes the wife with an incredible number of fat, red-cheeked babies, business in the City, The Times, parliament, and old port which finally clips the Englishman's wings.
We too did foolish things and were riotous at times, but the prevailing tone was different and the atmosphere purer. Folly and noise were never an object in themselves. We believed in our mission; and though we may have made mistakes, yet we respected ourselves and one another as the instruments of a common purpose.
4
But what were these revels of ours like ? It would suddenly occur to one of us that this was the fourth of December and that the sixth was St Nicholas's Day. Many of us were named after the Saint, Ogarev himself and at least three more. 'Well, who shall give a dinner on the day ? ' 'I will - I will.' 'I'll give one on the seventh.' 'Pooh I what's the seventh ? We must contribute and all give it together ; and that will be a grand feed.'
'All right. Where shall we meet ?'
'So-and-so is ill. Clearly we must go to him.'
Then followed plans and calculations which gave a surprising amount of occupation to both hosts and guests at the coming banquet. One Nikolay went off to a restaurant to order the supper, another elsewhere to order cheese and savouries ; our wine invariably came from the famous shop of Depre's. We were no connoisseurs and never soared above champagne ; indeed, our youthful palates deserted even champagne in favour of a brand called Rivesaltes Mousseux. I once noticed this name on the card of a Paris restaurant, and called for a bottle of it, in memory of 1833. But alas ! not even sentiment could induce me to swallow more than one glass.
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The wine had to be tasted before the feast, and as the samples evidently gave great satisfaction, it was necessary to send more than one mission for this purpose.
5
In this connection I cannot refrain from recording something that happened to our friend Sokolovsky. He could never keep money and spent at once whatever he got. A year before his arrest, he paid a visit to Moscow. As he had been successful in selling the manuscript of a poem, he determined to give a dinner and to ask not only us but such bigwigs as Polevoy, Maksimovich, and others. On the day before, he went out with Polezhayev, who was in Moscow with his regiment, to make his purchases ; he bought all kinds of needless things, cups and even a samovar, and finally wine and eatables, such as stuffed turkeys, patties, and so on. Five of us went that evening to his rooms, and he proposed to open a single bottle for our benefit. A second followed, and at the end of the evening, or rather, at dawn of the next day, it appeared that the wine was all drunk and that Sokolovsky had no more money. After paying some small debts, he had spent all his money on the dinner. He was much distressed, but, after long reflection, plucked up courage and wrote to all the bigwigs that he was seriously ill and must put off his party.