Childhood, Youth and Exile

'I suppose, Sir, the birthday party went off well last night ? '

' I should rather think s o I There never was such a party in all my time at College.'

'I suppose you won't want me to go to the University with you today ? '

I feel remorse and make n o reply.

'Your papa asked me why you were not up yet. But I was a match for him. "He 4as a headache," I said, "and complained when I called him ; so I left the blinds down." And your papa said I was right.'

'For goodness sake, let me go to sleep I You wanted to go, so be off with you I '

'In a minute, Sir; I'll just order the cabbage first.'

Heavy sleep again seals my eyelids, and I wake in two hours'

time, feeling a good deal fresher. I wonder what my friends are doing. Ketscher and Ogarev were to spend the night where we dined. I must admit that the punch was very good ; but its effect on the head is annoying. To drink it out of a tumbler is a mistake, I am quite determined in future to drink it always out of a liqueur-glass.

Meanwhile my father has read the papers and interviewed the cook as usual.

'Have you a headache to-day ?' he asks.

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'Yes, a bad one.'

'Perhaps you've been working too hard.'

But the way he asked the question showed he did not believe that.

'Oh, I forgot; you were dining with your friends last night, eh ?'

'Yes, I was.'

'A birthday party ? And they treated you handsomely, I've no doubt. Did you have soup made with Madeira ? That sort of thing is not to my taste. I know one of your young friends is too often at the bottle; but I can't imagine where he gets the taste from.

His poor father used to give a dinner on his birthday, the twentyninth of June, and ask dl his relations ; but it was always a very modest, decent affair. But this modern fashion of champagne and sardines a l'huile - I don't like to see it. Your other friend, that unfortunate young Ogarev, is even worse. Here he is, left to himself in Moscow, with his pockets full of money. He is constantly sending his coachman, Jeremy, for wine; and the coachman has no objection, because the dealer gives him a present.'

'Well, I did have lunch with Ogarev. But I don't think my headache can be due to that. I think I will take a turn in the open air ; that always does me good.'

'By all means, but I hope you will dine at home.'

'Certainly; I shan't be long.'

8

But I must explain the allusion to Madeira in the soup. A year or more before the grand birthday party, I went out for a walk with Ogarev one day in Easter week, and, in order to escape dinner at home, I said that I had been invited to dine at their house by Ogarev's father.

My father did not care for my friends in general and used to call them by wrong names, though he always made the same mistake in addressing any of them : and Ogarev was less of a favourite than any, both because he wore his hair long and because he smoked without being asked to do so. But on the other hand, my father could hardly mutilate his own grandnephew's surname ; and also Ogarev's father, both by birth and fortune, belonged to the select circle of people whom my fa tiler recognised.

Hence he was pleased to see me going often to their house, but he

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would have been still better pleased if the house had contained no son.

He thought it proper therefore for me to accept the invitation.

But Ogarev and I did not repair to his father's respectable diningroom. We went first to Price's place of entertainment. Price was an acrobat, whom I was delighted to meet later with his accomplished family in both Geneva and London. He had a little daughter, whom we admired greatly and had christened Mignon.2

When we had seen Mignon perform and decided to come back for the evening performance, we went to dine at the best restaurant in Moscow. I had one gold piece in my pocket, and Ogarev had about the same sum. At that time we had no experience in ordering dinners. After long consultation we ordered fish-soup made with champagne, a bottle of Rhine wine, and a tiny portion of game. The result was that we paid a terrific bill and left the restaurant feeling exceedingly hungry. Then we went back to see Mignon a second time.

When I was saying good-night to my father, he said, 'Surely you smell of wine.'

'That is probably because there was Madeira in the soup at dinner,' I replied.

'Madeira ? That must be a notion of M. Ogarev's son-in-law; no one but a guardsman would think of such a thing.'

And from that time until my banishment, whenever my father thought that I had been drinking wine and that my face was flushed, he invariably attributed it to Madeira in the soup I had taken.

9

On the present occasion, I hurried off to the scene of our revelry and found Ogarev and Ketscher still there. The latter looked rather the worse for wear ; he was finding fault with some of last night's arrangements and was severely critical. Ogarev was trying a hair of the dog that bit him, though there was little left to drink after the party, and that little was now diminished by the descent of my man Peter, who was by this time in full glory, singing a song and drumming on the kitchen table downstairs.

2. Mter the character in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. The Prices were evidently English.

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10

When I recall those days, I cannot remember a single incident among our set such as might weigh upon a man's conscience and cause shame in recollection ; and this is true of every one of the group without a single exception.

Of course, there were Platonic lovers among us, and disenchanted youths of sixteen. Vadim even wrote a play, in order to set forth the 'terrible experience of a broken heart'. The play began thus - A garden, with a house in the distance; there are lights in the windows. The stage is empty. A storm is blowing.

The garden gate clinks and bangs in the wind.

'Are the garden and the gate your only dramatis personae ? ' I asked him. He was rather offended. 'What nonsense you talk ! '

he said ; 'it is no joking matter but an actual experience. But if you take it so, I won't read any more.' But he did, none the less.

There were also love affairs which were by no means Platonic, but there were none of those low intrigues which ruin the women concerned and debase the man; there were no 'kept mistresses' ; that disgusting phrase did not even exist. Cool, safe, prosaic profligacy of the bourgeois fashion, profligacy by contract, was un·

known to our group.

If it is said that .I approve of the worst form of profligacy, in which a woman sells herself for the occasion, I say that it is you, not I, who approve of it - not you in particular but people in general. That custom rests so securely on the present constitution of society that it needs no patronage of mine.

Our interest in general questions and our social ideals saved us; and a keen interest in scientific and artistic matters helped us too. These preoccupations had a purifying effect, just as lighted paper makes grease-spots vanish. I have kept some of Ogarev's letters written at that time ; and they give a good idea of what was mostly in our minds. For example, he writes to me on 7 June 183 3 :

'I think we know one another well enough to speak frankly.

You won't show my letter to anyone. Well, for some time past I have been so filled - crushed, I might say - with feelings and ideas, that I think - but 'think' is too weak : I have an indelible impression - that I was born to be a poet, whether writer of verse or composer of music, never mind which. I feel it impossible to

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part from this belief; I have a kind of intuition that I am a poet.

Granting that I still write badly, still this inward fire and this abundance of feeling make me hope that some day I shall write decently - please exCI.i.se the triviality of the phrase. Tell me, my dear friend, whether I can believe in my vocation. Perhaps you know better than I do myself, and you will not be misled.'

He writes again on 18 August :

'So you answer that I am a poet, a true poet. Is it possible that you understand the full significance of your words ? If you are right, my feelings do not deceive me, and the object and aspiration of my whole life is not a mere dream. Are you right, I wonder ? I feel sure that I am not merely raving. No one knows me better than you do - of that I am sure. Yes ! that high vocation is not mere raving, no mere illusion; it is too high for deception, it is real, I live by virture of it and cannot imagine a different life for myself. If only I could compose, what a symphony would take wing from my brain just now ! First a majestic adagio ; but it has not power to express all; I need a presto, a wild stormy presto. Adagio and presto are the two extremes. A fig for your andante and allegro moderato ! They are mere mediocrities who can only lisp, incapable alike of strong speech or strong feeling.'

To us this strain of youthful enthusiasm sounds strange, from long disuse; but these few lines of a youth under twenty show clearly enough that the writer is insured against commonplace vice and commonplace virtue, and that, though he may stumble into the mire, he will come out of it undefiled.

There is no want of self-confidence in the letter; but the believer has doubts and a passionate desire for confirmation and a word of sympathy, though that hardly needed to be spoken. It is the restlessness of creative activity, the uneasy looking about of a pregnant soul.

'As yet,' he writes in the same letter, 'I can't catch the sounds that my brain hears ; a physical incapacity limits my fancy. But never mind I A poet I am, and poetry whispers to me truth which I could never have discovered by cold logic. Such is my theory of revelation.'

Thus ends the first part of our youth, and the second begins with prison. But before starting on that episode, I must record the ideas towards which we were tending when the prison-doors closed upon us.

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The period that followed the suppression of the Polish revolt in 1830 was a period ot rapid enlightenment. We soon perceived with inward horror that things were going badly in Europe and especially in France - France to which we looked for a political creed and a banner; and we began to distrust our own theories.

The simple liberalism of 1826, which by degrees took, in France, the form sung by Beranger and preached by men like Lafayette and Benjamin Constant, lost its magic power over us after the destruction of Poland.

It was then that some young Russians, including Vadim, took refuge in the profound study of Russian history, while others took to German philosophy.

But Ogarev and I did not join either of these groups. Certain ideals had become so much a part of us that we could not lightly give them up. Our belief in the sort of dinner-table revolution dear to Beranger was shaken; but we sought something different, which we could not find either in Nestor's Chronicle 3 or in the transcendentalism of Schelling.

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During this period of ferment and surmise and endeavour to understand the doubts that frightened us, there carne into our hands the pamphlets and sermons of the Saint-Simonians, and the report of their trial. We were much impressed by them.