Dostoyevsky, The Man Behind: Memoirs, Letters & Autobiographical Works - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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at the " treachery " of his stepfather ! The idle rascal had arranged his life so satisfactorily! His stepfather would work and he would amuse himself; later he would inherit Dostoyevsky's works and would live on the income they yielded. And now a young girl, whom his stepfather hardly knew, had upset all these agreeable plans! Paul Issaieff was most indignant. He put on spectacles, as he always did when he wanted to look important, and told his stepfather that he wished to speak to him seriously. He warned him against the disastrous passions of old men,60 pointed out all the unhappiness this marriage with a young girl would bring upon him, and admonished him severely as to the duties of a stepfather. " I, too, am thinking of marrying some day," he said; "I shall probably have children; it will be your duty to work for them." My father was enraged, and turned the idiot out of the house. This was the usual ending to discussions between the stepfather and the stepson.

      60 My father was then forty-flve.

      Paul Issaieff hastened to warn the family of the danger which threatened their parasitical security. Dostoyevsky's nephews and nieces were greatly alarmed; they, too, had counted on living all their lives at their uncle's expense; they, too, had looked forward to becoming his heirs. Dostoyevsky's sister-in-law, in her turn, wished to talk to him seriously. " Why do you want to marry again ? " she asked. " You had no children by your first marriage, when you were a young man. How can you hope to have any at your present age ? " This marriage with a young girl of nineteen seemed an absurdity, almost a vice, to my father's relatives. His literary friends were also somewhat surprised. They could not understand why Dostoyevsky, who, at the age of thirty-three, had married a woman of his own age, or perhaps older, now, when he was past forty, cared only for quite young girls. Anna Kronkovsky and my mother were about the same age when he asked them in marriage. I think this peculiarity may be explained by the treachery of Maria Dmitrievna, which produced a profound and ineradicable impression on my father's mind, and made him distrust all women of mature age. He could now only believe in the innocence of a young heart and a pure spirit, which a man of character would always be able to mould as he wished.61 Dostoyevsky, after marrying my mother, carried on her moral education very carefully. He superintended her reading, keeping erotic books from her, took her to the museums, showed her beautiful pictures and statues, and tried to kindle in her young soul the love of all that is great, pure and noble.

      61 The Eternal Husband, it will be remembered, was also attracted only by young girls after the death of his unfaithful wife.

      He was rewarded by the absolute fidelity of his wife, both during his life and after his death.

      Like most Lithuanians, Dostoyevsky was pure and chaste. " The Lithuanian despises indecency and debauchery," says Vidunas. " There is no obscenity in his folk-songs, and in Lithuania one does not find on walls and fences those pornographic scrawls so conunon in other countries." When he visited Paris, Dostoyevsky frequented the cafes, and went to see the dancing in the casinos of the Champs Elys^es. The gross songs he heard and the erotic dances he witnessed filled him with indignation; he spoke of them with disgust to his Russian friends. This was, perhaps, the reason why my father, when he took his young wife to Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Austria, did not visit France with her. Nevertheless, the disgust which Dostoyevsky had felt when studying Parisian life did not affect his admiration for French literature. He was one of the rare travellers who distinguish between the France that works and the France that amuses itself.

       XVI

      DOSTOYEVSKY's second MARRIAGE

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       In spite of the opposition of his relations, Dostoyevsky married my mother on February 12th of that winter, five months after their first meeting. As he had no money, he could not take his young wife on a honeymoon journey. The couple took up their quarters in a lodging which my grandmother had furnished for them. Their decision to spend their honeymoon in Petersburg was very imprudent, and nearly brought about the wreck of their happiness.

      Having failed to prevent the marriage, Dostoyevsky's relations conceived the idea of estranging the husband and wife. They changed their tactics; the enemies of my mother became her friends, and feigned an unbounded admiration for her. They invaded her home, and rarely left her alone with her husband. These people who had hitherto neglected my father, and had visited him but rarely, now spent the entire day with the newly married couple, lunching and dining at their table, and often staying till midnight. My mother was greatly surprised at this behaviour, but she did not venture to complain; she had been taught from childhood to be amiable and polite to all her mother's guests, even to those she disliked. The artful relatives took advantage of her youthful timidity; they overran her home and behaved as if it belonged to them. Pretending to give her good advice, they begged her not to disturb her husband tod often, but to leave him in peace in his study. " You are too young for him at present," said these perfidious counsellors; " your girlish talk cannot interest him. Your husband is a very serious man, he wants to think over his books a great deal." On the other hand, they would take my father aside and tell him that he was much too old for his young wife and that he bored her. " Listen how prettily she chatters and laughs with her young nephews and nieces," his sister-in-law would whisper, " Your wife needs the society of young people of her own age. Let her amuse herself with them, or she will begin to dislike you." My father was hurt when he was assured that he was too old for his wife; my mother was indignant at -the thought that the great man she had married considered her silly and tiresome. They sulked, too proud to speak frankly to each other dt their grievances. If my parents had been in love they would have ended by quarrelling and reproaching each other, and would thus have exposed the machinations of the mischief-makers; but they had married on the strength of a mutual sympathy. This sympathy was capable of becoming ardent love under favourable circumstances; but it was also capable of turning to profound aversion. My mother saw with alarm how rapidly the admiration she had felt for Dostoyevsky before their marriage was diminishing. She began to think him very weak, very simple and very blind. " It is his duty as a husband to protect me from all these schemers, and to turn them out of the house," thought the poor bride. " Instead of defending me, he allows his relations to lord it over me in my own house, to eat my dinners and to make fun of my inexperience as a housekeeper." While my mother was crying in her bedroom, her husband was sitting alone in his study, and instead of working, was thinking sadly that his hopes of a happy married life were not very likely to be realised. " Can she not understand what a difference there is between me and my foohsh nephews ? " he would say to himself in mute rebuke of his wife's supposed levity. His relations were delighted. Everything was going on as they wished. . . .

      The spring was approaching, and people began to make plans for the summer exodus. My father's sister-in-law proposed that they should take a large villa at Pavlovsk, in the neighbourhood of Petersburg. " We could all be together," she said to Dostoyevsky, " and we should have a delightful summer. We will make excursions and take your wife out with us all day. You can stay at home and work at your novel without any interruptions." These plans were not very attractive to my father, and still less so to his wife. She told her husband that she would prefer to go abroad; she had long wished to visit Germany and Switzerland. My father, too, was eager to see once more the Europe he remembered with so much pleasure. He had already made three visits to foreign countries, the third mainly for the purpose of playing roulette. He thought he was now cured of the fatal passion, but he was mistaken. During his travels in Europe with my mother, he had several fresh attacks of the malady. It gradually weakened, however, and completely lost its hold upon him when he was approaching his fiftieth year. Like his passion for women, his passion for roulette lasted altogether only ten years.

      My father began to look about for money for the projected journey. He would not apply to his aunt Kumanin, for only a few months before she had given him ten thousand roubles, which were spent in publishing the newspaper Epoha. He preferred to go to M. Katkov, the publisher of an important Moscow review, in which Dostoyevsky's novels now appeared. My father went to see him at Moscow, described the plan of the new novel he was about to begin, and asked for an advance of a few thousand roubles. Katkov, who looked upon Dostoyevsky as the great attraction of his review, readily complied with his request. My father then announced to his

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