'A good branch of a rotten tree.'
After the Senator's death my father gave him his freedom at once. It \vas too late and simply meant getting rid of him; he just disappeared.
I will say only one thing more, to conclude this gloomy subject: the hall had no really bad influence upon me at all. On the contrary, it awakened in me from my earliest years an invincible hatred for every form of slawry and every form of tyranny. At times, when I was a child, Vt:>ra Artamonovna would say by way of the greatest rebuke for some naughtiness: ·�·ait a bit, you
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will grow up and turn into just such another master as the rest.'
I felt this a horrible insult. The old woman need not have worried herself-just such another as the rest, anyway, I have not become.
Besides the hall and the maids' room I had one other distraction, and in that I was not hindered in any way. I loved reading as much as I hated lessons. My passion for unsystematic reading was, indeed, one of the chief obstacles to serious study. I never could, for instance, then or later, endure the theoretical study of languages, but I very soon learnt to understand and gabble them incorrectly, and at that stage I remained, because it was sufficient for my reading.
My father and the Senator had between them a fairly large library, consisting of French books of the eighteenth century.
The books lay about in heaps in a damp, unused room on the ground floor of the Senator's house. Calot had the key. I was allowed to rummage in these literary granaries as I liked, and I read and read to my heart's content. My father saw two advantages in it, that I should learn French more quickly and that I was occupied-that is, I was sitting quiet and in my own room.
Besides, I did not show him all the books I read, nor lay them on the table ; some of them were hidden in a bureau.
What did I read? Novels and plays, of course. I read fifty volumes of the French Repertoire and the Russian Theatre; in every volume there were three or four plays. Besides French novels my mother had the tales of La Fontaine and the comedies of Kotzebue, and I read them two or three times. I cannot say that the novels had much influence on me; and though like all boys I pounced eagerly on all equivocal or somewhat improper scenes, they did not interest me particularly. A play which I liked beyond all measure and read over twenty times, (and moreover in the Russian translation in Theatre) the Marriage of Figaro,9 had much greater influence on me. I was in love with Cherubino and the Countess, and what is more, I was myself Cherubino; my heart throbbed as I read it and without clearly recognising it I was conscious of a new sensation. How enchanting I thought the scene in which the page is dressed up as a girl, how intensely I longed to hide somebody's ribbon in my bosom and kiss it in secret. In reality I had in those years no feminine society.
9 Le Mariage de Figaro, a satirical comedy by Beaumarchais (ne Caron, 1 732---99) , a watchmaker's son who rose to wealth and influence and by his writings helped to bring about the Revolution. ( Tr.)
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I only remember that occasionally on Sundays Bakhmetev's two daughters used to come from their boarding-school to visit us. The younger, a girl of sixteen, was strikingly beautiful. I was overwhelmed when she entered the room and never ventured to address a word to her, but kept stealing looks at her lovely dark eyes and dark curls. I never dropped a hint to any one on the subject and the first breath of love passed unknown to any one, even to her.
Years afterwards, when I met her, my heart throbbed violently and I remembered how at twelve years old I had worshipped her beauty.
I forgot to say that Werther interested me almost as much as the Marriage of Figaro; half the novel was beyond me and I skipped it, and hurried on to the terrible denouement, over which I wept like a madman. In 1 839 Werther happened to come into my hands again; this was when I was at Vladimir and I told my wife how as a boy I had cried over it and began reading her the last letters . . . and when I came to the same passage, my tears began flowing again and I had to stop.
Up to the age of fourteen I cannot say that my father greatly restricted my liberty, but the whole atmosphere of our house was oppressive for a lively boy. The persistent and unnecessary fussiness concerning my physical health, together with complete indifference to my moral \veil-being, was horribly wearisome.
There \vere ever-lasting prl'cautions against my taking a chill, or eating anything indigestible, and anxious solicitude over the slightest cough or cold in the head. In the winter I was kept indoors for weeks at a time and, when I was allowed to go out, it was only wearing warm high boots, thick scarves and such things. At home it was always insufferably hot from the stoves.
All this would inevitably have made me a frail and delicate child but for the iron health I inherited from my mother. She by no means shared my father's prejudices, and in her half of the house a llowed me everything which \Vas forbidden in his.
My education made slow progress without competition, encouragement, or approval ; I did my lessons lazily, without method or supervision, and thought to make a good memory and lively imagination take the place of hard work. I need hardly say that there was no supervision over my teachers either; once the terms upon which they were engaged were settled, they might, so long as they turned up at the proper time and sat through their hour, go on for years without rendering any account to any one.
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At twelve years old I was transferred from feminine to masculine hands. About that time my father made two unsuccessful attempts to engage a German to look after me.
A German who looks after children is neither a tutor nor a dyadka;10 it is quite a special profession. He does not teach the children and he does not dress them, but sees that they are taught and dressed, takes care of their health, goes out for walks with them and talks any nonsense to them so long as it is in German. If there is a tutor in the house, the German is under his orders; if there is a dyadka, he takes his orders from the German.
The visiting teachers who come late owing to unforeseen causes and leave early owing to circumstances over which they have no control, do their best to win the German's favour, and in spite of his complete illiteracy he begins to regard himself as a man of learning. Governesses employ the German in shopping for them and on all sorts of errands, but only allow him to pay his court to them if they suffer from striking physical defects or a complete lack of other admirers. Boys of fourteen will go, without their parents' knowledge, to the German's room to smoke, and he puts up with it because he must have powerful auxiliary resources in order to remain in the house. In fact what mostly happens is that at this time the German is thanked, presented with a watch and discharged. If he is tired of sauntering about the streets with children and receiving reprimands for their having colds, or stains on their clothes, the 'children's German' becomes simply a German, sets up a little shop, sells amber cigarette-holders, eaude-Cologne and cigars to his former nurslings and carries out for them secret commissions of another kind.