I will also note parenthetically about Kukolnik's portrait, that Varvara Petrovna had first chanced upon this picture while still a young girl at an upper-class boarding school in Moscow. She at once fell in love with the portrait, as is customary for all young girls in boarding schools, who fall in love with anything at all including their teachers, mainly of drawing and calligraphy. What is curious here is not the young girl's feelings, but that even at the age of fifty Varvara Petrovna still kept this picture among her most intimate treasures, so that perhaps only because of it had she invented a costume for Stepan Trofimovich somewhat resembling the one in the picture. But, of course, that is also a small thing.
For the first years, or, more precisely, for the first half of his residence at Varvara Petrovna's, Stepan Trofimovich still had thoughts of some sort of a work, and was seriously preparing every day to write it. But for the second half he must even have forgotten what it had all been about. More and more often he would say to us: "It seems I'm ready to work, the materials have all been collected, yet the work doesn't come! Nothing gets done!" And he would hang his head dejectedly. No doubt this was supposed to give him even more grandeur in our eyes as a martyr of learning; but he himself wanted something else. "I'm forgotten, no one needs me!" escaped him more than once. This intense spleen took particular hold of him at the end of the fifties. Varvara Petrovna finally understood that it was a serious matter. And she also could not bear the thought that her friend was forgotten and not needed. To distract him, and to patch up his fame at the same time, she then took him to Moscow, where she had a few refined literary and learned connections; but, as it turned out, Moscow was not satisfactory either.
It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the former tranquillity, something quite strange, but felt everywhere, even in Skvoreshniki. Various rumors arrived. The facts were generally more or less known, but it was obvious that, besides the facts, certain accompanying ideas also appeared, and, what's more, in exceeding numbers. That was what was bewildering: there was no way to adapt and find out just exactly what these ideas meant. Varvara Petrovna, owing to the feminine makeup of her character, certainly wanted to suppose some secret in them. She herself began reading newspapers and magazines, prohibited foreign publications, and even the tracts that were beginning then (she had it all sent to her); but it only made her head spin. She started writing letters: the replies were few, and the longer it went on, the more incomprehensible they became. Stepan Trofimovich was solemnly invited to explain "all these ideas" to her once and for all; but she remained positively displeased with his explanations. Stepan Trofimovich's view of the general movement was scornful in the highest degree; with him it all came down to his being forgotten and not needed by anyone. Finally he, too, was remembered, first in foreign publications, as an exiled martyr, and immediately after that in Petersburg, as a former star in a noted constellation; he was even compared for some reason with Radishchev.[14]Then someone printed that he had died, and promised an obituary. Stepan Trofimovich instantly resurrected and reassumed his majesty. All the scornfulness of his views of his contemporaries dropped away at once, and a dream began burning in him: to join the movement and show his powers. Varvara Petrovna instantly believed again and in everything, and started bustling about terribly. It was decided that they should go to Petersburg without the least delay, to find out everything in reality, to go into it all personally, and, if possible, to involve themselves wholly and undividedly in the new activity. Among other things, she announced that she was prepared to found her own magazine and dedicate her whole life to it from then on. Seeing it had even come to that, Stepan Trofimovich became more scornful than ever, and during the trip began treating Varvara Petrovna almost patronizingly, which she immediately laid up in her heart. However, she also had another quite important reason for going—namely, the renewal of her high connections. She needed as far as possible to remind the world of herself, or at least to make the attempt. And the avowed pretext for the trip was a meeting with her only son, who was then finishing his studies at a Petersburg lycée.
VI
They went and stayed in Petersburg for almost the whole winter season. By Lent, however, everything burst like an iridescent soap bubble. The dreams scattered, and the jumble not only was not clarified, but became even more repellent. First, the high connections all but failed, except perhaps in microscopic form, and with humiliating strain. The insulted Varvara Petrovna threw herself wholly into the "new ideas" and began holding evenings. She invited writers, and they were immediately brought to her in great numbers. Afterwards they took to coming on their own, without invitation, each one bringing another. Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty. Some (though by no means all) even came drunk, but it was as if they perceived some special, just-yesterday-discovered beauty in it. They were all proud of something to the point of strangeness. It was written on all their faces that they had just discovered some extremely important secret. They were abusive, and considered it to their credit. It was rather difficult to find out precisely what they had written; but there were critics, novelists, playwrights, satirists, exposers among them. Stepan Trofimovich even penetrated their highest circle, the place from which the movement was directed. It was an immensely steep climb to reach the directors, but they met him cordially, though none of them, of course, knew or had heard anything about him except that he "represented an idea." He maneuvered among them so far that he even managed to invite them a couple of times to Varvara Petrovna's salon, despite all their olympianity. These were very serious and very polite people; they bore themselves well; the others were evidently afraid of them; but it was obvious that they had no time. Two or three former literary celebrities who then happened to be in Petersburg, and with whom Varvara Petrovna had long maintained the most refined relations, also came. But, to her surprise, these real and indisputable celebrities were meek as lambs, and some of them simply clung to all this new rabble and fawned on them shamefully. At first Stepan Trofimovich was in luck; they seized on him and began displaying him at public literary gatherings. When he came out on the platform for the first time as a reader at one of these public literary readings, there was a burst of wild applause that continued for about five minutes. He recalled it with tears nine years later—rather more because of his artistic nature than out of gratitude. "I swear to you and will wager," he himself said to me (but only to me, and as a secret), "that no one in that whole audience knew a blessed thing about me!" A remarkable confession: indeed he must have possessed keen intelligence if he could understand his position so clearly, right there on the platform, despite all his rapture; and indeed he must not have possessed very keen intelligence if even nine years later he could not recall it without feeling offended. He was made to sign two or three collective protests (against what, he himself did not know); he signed. Varvara Petrovna was also made to sign some "outrageous act," and she signed.[15] However, though the majority of these new people had been Varvara Petrovna's guests, they for some reason considered it their duty to look upon her with contempt and unconcealed derision. Stepan Trofimovich hinted to me afterwards, in bitter moments, that it was then that she had begun to envy him. Of course, she understood that she ought not to associate with these people, but still she received them avidly, with all of a woman's hysterical impatience, and, above all, kept expecting something. At her evenings she spoke little, though she could speak, but rather listened. They talked about the abolition of censorship, about spelling reform, about replacing Russian letters with Roman, about someone's exile the day before, about some scandal in the Passage, about the advantages of dividing Russia into a free federation of nationalities, about abolishing the army and navy, about restoring Poland up to the Dnieper, about peasant reform and tracts, about the abolition of inheritance, the family, children, and priests, about women's rights, about Kraevsky's house, for which no one would ever forgive Mr. Kraevsky, and so on and so forth.[16] It was clear that among this rabble of new people there were many swindlers, but it was also unquestionable that there were many honest and even quite attractive persons, despite certain nonetheless surprising nuances. The honest ones were far more incomprehensible than the rude and dishonest ones; but it was not clear who was making use of whom. When Varvara Petrovna announced her idea of publishing a magazine, still more people came flocking to her, but accusations also immediately flew in her face that she was a capitalist and an exploiter of labor. The unceremoniousness of the accusations was equaled only by their unexpectedness. The elderly general Ivan Ivanovich Drozdov, a former friend and fellow officer of the late general Stavrogin, a most worthy man (though in his own way), known to all of us here, extremely obstinate and irritable, who ate terribly much and was terribly afraid of atheism, began arguing at one of Varvara Petrovna's evenings with a famous young man. The latter said straight off: "Well, you're a general if you talk like that," meaning that he could not even find any worse abuse than a general. Ivan Ivanovich got extremely fired up: "Yes, sir, I am a general, a lieutenant general, and I've served my sovereign, and you, sir, are a brat and an atheist!" An impossible scandal took place. Next day the incident was exposed in the press and signatures were gathered under a collective letter against the "outrageous act" of Varvara Petrovna in not wishing to throw the general out at once. A caricature appeared in an illustrated magazine, caustically portraying Varvara Petrovna, the general, and Stepan Trofimovich together as three retrograde cronies; the picture was accompanied by some verses written by a people's poet solely for the occasion. I will add, for my part, that in fact many persons with the rank of general have the habit of saying ludicrously: "I have served my sovereign..." as if they did not have the same sovereign as the rest of us, the sovereign's ordinary subjects, but their own special one.