Two Russian reformers, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy

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IVAN TURGENEV ^ '

LEO TOLSTOY . . . • • . 219

Chapter I

CHILDHOOD is only too often a bondage which is never explained; but the childhood of genius, a martyrdom though it may be, not infrequently finds eventual expression. This interpretation, however, of the vague years with their formless misgivings and regrets, their unreasoned revolts, their gasps of antipathy and thankfulness — all this is usually toned down delicately in a mirage of memory in which resentment escapes in a half-whimsical sigh or a smile of forgiving irony. But in some very rare instances the dreams of early youth penetrate into the world of art without any such softening process of memory. One of these exceptional cases is the childhood of Ivan Turgenev.

Born at Orel on October 28, 1818, Turgenev was the son of a rich landed proprietor, and received at Spasskoe, his mother's property, the usual cosmopolitan education of Russians of his class. Here Fraulein, " Misses," and " Mammzell " instructed him in their respective languages. Here, too, he was constantly beaten, and experienced in all its bitterness the acrid distress of childhood. Long afterwards, in one of those projections of memory almost physical in their intensity, he was to picture himself as " drinking, with a kind of bitter pleasure, the salt water of his tears." But it was here, too, that he breathed in those unforgettable impressions of Russian country life with which he was afterwards to charm and to astonish Europe. At Spasskoe he learned to become a sportsman, and commenced those wandering habits which were to give liberty, through his " Annals of a Sportsman," to millions of human beings. His love of nature was at this time almost a passion, and he has told us that in the evenings he would often steal out by himself to meet and to embrace — a lime-tree. Over and over again in his novels he returns to that mysterious Russian garden in which there seemed to ferment the drowsy, humming life of all the summers in the world. One sees him escaping to the solace of this haunted garden, a lonely boy, spied upon by parasites and often punished with malignant severity. One sees him becoming involuntarily a watcher, as though he had been born a connoisseur of souls. For, here on the very threshold of youth, disillusion has come to him. The difficult relations between his father and mother were not concealed from these young, questioning eyes. Child as he was, he had learned to suspect those nearest to him. Long afterwards he exclaimed, with a knowledge of Hfe that had its origin in his very childhood : " But as for marrying, what a cruel irony ! "

And it was not only with lime trees that he kept appointments in this garden of wonder. Very soon he knew what it was to wait breathlessly for hurried footsteps on the fine sand. Very soon he divined some, at least, of the secrets of that human passion which retained for him to the very end something of freshness and mystery and tenderness. He met once suddenly among the raspberry bushes a young serf girl in whose presence he became speechless. Perhaps it was she who came to him in the blazing heat of a summer day and, though he was the master, seized him by the hair as she uttered the one word, " Come." The name of this girl was Claudie, and forty years later Turgenev recalled with intense emotion "ce doux empoignement " of his hair. But neither Claudie nor any other serf girl taught him to believe in love, and he had already ceased to believe in the bounty of Providence. " It is here in this same garden," he wrote from Spasskoe in 1868, " that I witnessed, when quite a child, the contest of an adder and a toad which made me for the first time doubtful of a good Providence."

In order to understand not only the childhood of Ivan Turgenev but also the whole trend of his work, his aspirations, his reasonable patience, one must know something of Madame Turgenev, his mother. For, it was she, more than any one else, who imbued his youth with the idea of tyranny and his manhood with an unceasing resistance to it. Madame Turgenev had experienced tyranny in her own childhood. Her step-father hated her and ill-treated her until she reached her seventeenth year, when he began to persecute her with still more sinister attentions. She escaped from his house half-dressed, and took refuge with her uncle, Ivan Loutovinoff, at Spasskoe. In spite of the demands of her mother, her uncle retained the guardianship of his niece, and at the age of thirty she inherited his immense fortune, including the property of Spasskoe, where her husband, Serguei Nicolaevitch Turgenev, whom she married soon after her uncle's death, came to live. Here she lived the life of a Russian chatelaine of the old school. She had her own chapel and her own theatre, the actors being recruited from her serfs, who also provided her with an orchestra. Her adopted daughter admits, in one passage at least, that though she was neither young nor beautiful, and in spite of the fact that her face was pitted with smaU-pox, she was so spintuelle that she was always surrounded by a crowd of adorers. Her relations with both her sons seem to have been always more or less difficult, but this entry in her private journal, dated 1839, is addressed to her son Ivan : " C'est que Jean, c'est mon soleil a moi; je ne vois que lui, et lorsqu'il s' eclipse, je ne vois plus clair, je ne sais plus ou j'en suis. Le coeur d'une mere ne se trompe jamais, et vous savez, Jean, que mon instinct est plus sur que ma raison."

It was stated in a review that Madame Turgenev bequeathed this journal to her son, but her adopted daughter maintains that it was burnt in the garden before her eyes in 1849. " Is it in virtue," she asks, " of the fatal law of heredity that Ivan Turgenev in his turn refused to publish his own journal, and, following the example of his mother, burnt it at Bougival in a garden ? " Both of these journals are a loss, the one to literature, the other to all those who would seek to understand the mental attitude of the serf-owners of long ago.

Madame Turgenev could not understand how her son, who was a noble, could wish to become a writer. A writer, she tells him, is a man who scratches paper for money. Her son should enter the army and serve the Czar. She was not, however, wholly hostile to the Arts ; and when Liszt came to Moscow, as he did that very year, Madame Turgenev went with her son to the concert-hall. She was unable to walk, and as, through an oversight, the customary means of conveying her had been neglected, Ivan carried her in his arms up the steep steps of the concert-haU. When Madame Viardot came to Moscow in 1846 Madame Turgenev, in spite of her disapproval of her son's enthusiasm, went to hear her. " II faut avouer pourtant," she admitted grudgingly, " que cette maudite bohemienne chante fort bien ! "

But if Madame Turgenev was disdainful towards artists, she was absolutely tyrannous towards her serfs, even towards the doctor, Porphyre Kartacheff, who accompanied Ivan when he was a university student in Berhn. Porphyre acted as a kind of superior valet, and when they returned to Russia the relations between master and servant were most cordial and Madame Turgenev alone continued to treat him as a serf. Ivan implored his mother to emancipate him, but she absolutely refused. Once, when her adopted daughter was ill, Madame Turgenev wished to call in other doctors, but Porphyre assured her that it was unnecessary and that he himself would cure the patient. Madame Turgenev looked him in the eyes as she said : " Remember, if you do not cure her you will go to Siberia." Porphyre accepted the risk and, fortunately for him, his patient recovered.

The chatelaine was equally inflexible in her attitude towards her son, Nicolas, who aroused her anger by wishing to make a love-match with a Mile Schwartz. " Just as Ivan Tvirgenev," comments his adopted sister, "was Russian in appearance, so his brother was English. When I read the romance of * Jane Eyre ' I could not represent to myself Rochester except with the features of

Nicolas Turgenev." For the rest, Nicolas seemed to her to be a born tease, was a master of languages, had a strong voice as opposed to Ivan's shriU one, and was far less anxious than Ivan to render services to his fellow beings. Under the heading " A mon fils Nicolas " there was a note in Madame Turgenev' s journal warning him against the trammels of passion. She was unable, however, to prevent this marriage, but when she learnt that her son Nicolas had children in St. Petersburg she would not allow them to enter her house. She ordered them to be brought in front of the window, from which she observed them dispassionately, remarking that the eldest resembled his father at the same age. And this was her only comment on her grandchildren. She always asserted, indeed, that this union was illegal, and she tried uselessly to bribe her son to desert his wife and children. In 1849, however, she actually gave her consent to this marriage, just as a teirible affliction had fallen upon her son's household, the three children having died in one winter. "One might say," Nicolas observed long afterwards to his adopted sister, " that it was the malediction of my mother which brought about the death of my children." This recalled a repellent and characteristic scene. Madame Turgenev, for some reason or other, had asked her son for the portrait of his children, but when it arrived at Spasskoe she tore it into fragments.

Such violence was by no means unusual, and as one gradually realises the picture of Turgenev S home one begins to understand those half-savage interiors into which he introduces us so often in " The Annals of a Sportsman." There was a major-domo named Soboleff upon whom she was accustomed to vent her spleen. One of his duties was to bring her a glass of water, of which she constantly complained, finding it always of the wrong temperature. On one occasion, she threw the water in his face, after which lie brought her more in another glass. Then, standing in front of an Icon, the serf exclaimed : "I swear before this sacred image that I have not changed the water. . . . That which Madame has just drunk is the same as the other." Madame Turgenev ordered him out of the room at once, and when he was next seen he appeared altogether a changed being : " Instead of the elegant evening coat, he was wearing a wretched grey cloth caftan and held a broom in his hand. An order from his mistress had made him forfeit his position of major-domo for that of sweeper of the yard. He remained for four years in this new employment, until he was replaced by the mute, the master of Moumou."

The old despot remembered well the tyranny that had warped her own youth. Once she visited with her adopted daughter her mother's property, and together they explored the silent old house. As they came out of the drawing-room they passed into a corridor, where Madame Turgenev's companion was astonished at seeing a door barricaded by planks. " I went up to it and placed my hand on the old brass latch which stuck out between the planks, when Madame Turgenev seized my hand and cried out : ' Don't touch it, don't touch it ; these rooms are accursed.' I shall never forget her accent nor the expression of her face, such fear and hatred and fury were written in it." Madame Turgenev dragged her away from these apartments of her step-father, which she remembered with all tlie~bld~ fierce bitterness unassuaged.

Life with Madame Turgenev, towards the end, became utterly intolerable for everybody. On October 28, 1845, the birthday of Ivan was being celebrated with the customary fete, which included sucking-pigs and a plentiful supply of brandy. The festivities took place as usual, but in the evening Madame Turgenev pretended to be dying. She sent for her confessor, and placing before her the portrait of her son Ivan, exclaimed, " Adieu, Ivan ! Adieu, Nicolas ! Adieu, my children ! " Then she ordered her forty servants and all the men employed about the house, from the attendant to the cashier, to say " Good-bye " to her. When they had filed out of the room, Madame Turgenev declared that she felt better, and asked for tea. The next day the following " order " appeared :

" I give orders that to-morrow morning the disobedient servants, Nicolas Jakovlef, Ivan Petrof and Egor Kondratatief, shall sweep the court in front of my windows." These names were those of the servants who had not appeared at her bedside, possibly because they were a little drunk that evening. " Good-for-nothings ! drunkards ! " exclaimed Madame Turgenev — " they rejoiced at the death of their mistress ! " At another time the chatelaine said that she was too ill to allow the fetes of Easter week to take place.

But Madame Turgenev had the courage of her qualities, and when cholera broke out in the village she exhibited not the faintest trace of fear. When it had diminished she went to confession, and with all her old arrogance insisted upon confessing in the presence of her little court, in spite of the fact that it was against the rules of the Church. Her despotism was quite as merciless as that of any one of the Russian serf-owners who appear in " The Annals of a Sportsman." When she discovered the marriage of her son, Nicolas, she was enraged against Poliakoff, her major-domo, for having kept the news from her. So furious was she on this occasion that she was on the point of throwing a huge crutch at his head when the entrance of Nicolas Turgenev, her brother-in-law, checked her, thus probably saving PoUakoff's life. The next day he was banished to a distant property and was reduced from the rank of major-domo to that of a simple copyist. His wife, Agatha, was enceinte at the time and sick with grief, but Madame Turgenev was immovable. The next year, however, she did repent of this particular act of tyranny, and not only restored Poliakoif to his old position but actually asked Agatha to pardon her. But it was almost impossible to make Madame Turgenev realise the very idea of liberty, and Turgenev championed the cause of the serfs in vain. But even in those early days he prophesied that the day of freedom would assuredly come.

He also championed his brother's cause, now that Madame Turgenev had depiived Nicolas of all means of existence. To every demand his mother opposed a deep cunning under the mask of generosity. She offered, in fact, a property to each of her sons, but always declined to legalise the action. Nothing, indeed, seems to have given her greater amusement than this comedy of giving which meant noticing at all. "I pity my brother," protested Ivan Turgenev. " Why have you made him so wretched ? You accorded him authority to marry, you made him leave the service and come here with his family, while at St. Petersburg he was earning his living . . . and since he has arrived, you torture him . . . you torment him ceaselessly. ..." Neither of her sons was allowed to come into her presence without permission, and once when Ivan asked to see her she flew into a rage and tore up his portrait. But she was enemy who has slain his dream. The fantasy of bojdsh passion has become a nightmare of hatred. Knife in hand he awaits the man whom Zinalaida is luring into this garden which has lost its innocence. Through the long hours of the night he watches, and then he hears footsteps at last. He is ready to kill now, to kill swiftly and surely ; but all at once he stays his hand. It is his own father who is approaching the fountain in that mysterious garden.

Instantly the boy's soul seems to shrivel, driven back into the timidity of youth. All the hidden, hideous background of his dear fantasy reveals itself. That is what life is, it seems. The suffering of love strikes at each in turn. And now — so infinitely deeper is the psychology of Turgenev than the inflamed Byronism of the Romantics — the boy feels drawn towards his father by reason of this mystery which has entered the life of each. He continues to share this mystery and to be drawn towards the master of Zinalaida, even when he sees her kissing her naked arm, red from the lash of his father's horsewhip. Yes, love is like that, too ; it has room for everything, the implacable malady. Here, as in all his works, Turgenev refuses to make life fit in with the little plots and plans of the experienced novelist. Zinalaida, after all this inner tragedy which is regarded as comedy by the outside world, survives and marries. Her boy lover will see her again,

Tttrgenev 35

and will consciously seek to renew that spell which had brought the magic of regret into his youth. But some wretched little accident intervenes, and when at last he calls at her house it is only to hear that she is dead.

In the quiet of Spasskoe the slow years followed each other languidly as the whisper of the outer world comes to those who cling to the steppes. It was the steppes and the natural life of the Russian peasant, stifled and starved though it was, that saved the future novelist from the artificial influences of his home. He was badly treated, but his brother Nicolas fared even worse. Only the servants deigned to speak the mother tongue. The conversations between his parents, often bitter and quarrelsome, were carried on in French, and when Varvara Petrovna uttered a prayer to her God it was in the polite language of France. Sympathy between parents and children was non-existent, and in his childhood Turgenev acquired that intensified sense of injustice which was afterwards to find expression in so many of his works.

The days of foreign governesses and tutors passed, and Turgenev was placed in a school kept by a German in Moscow, after which he entered the Institut Lazaref in the same city. Here, too, his native language was ignored, but the boy became enthusiastic on the subject of Zagoskino, one of whose works was being read aloud by a professor. "I know him by heart," he writes; " one day I fell on a pupil who interrupted the reading with my fists clenched." In 1832, in his fifteenth year, he left the Institut Lazaref in order to prepare for the University. A complete period of his life had already closed, a period which, so far as his art is concerned, was unconsciously fruitful. Already there had come into being that curious duality which is so significant in the evasive temperament of Turgenev. It is a commonplace to explain this duality by the statement that there were two Turgenevs, the one occidental and the other oriental. The duality, however, lies far deeper than this, and had already asserted itself in his suppressed and imaginative youth. There were already formed, in embryo as it were, the two Turgenevs who were to exist always side by side, the one luminous, receptive, impassive, with a deep love of nature and a sympathy for his fellow man, sensitive to all impressions whether of life or art, the other equally sensitive, but suspicious almost to the point of malady, distrustful alike of nature and of man, sombre with the ineradicable doubt of the ultimate purpose of life, as though his whole future had been shadowed by that combat between an adder and a toad in the garden of Spasskoe. The one Turgenev was to become docile, affectionate, fond of home and of the simplest domestic pleasures, while the other Turgenev, remembering aU the enigmatic secrets and bitter suspicions of his early home, was to insist, sometimes sadly, sometimes ironically, on celibacy. Already passion had entered those curious twin lives, for the first of which it was to retain always the aroma of tenderness, of romance, of the eternally unexpected, while for the other life of that other Turgenev it was to be ever tainted by the poison of suspicion, by the gnawing regret for the misunderstood moment and the ironical caress. To Turgenev, as to Alfred de Musset, there sounded even in childhood a haunting whisper of a companion who was never to forsake him :

Le del m'a confie ton coeur; Quand tu seras dans la douleur, Viens k moi sans inquidtude ; Je te suivrai sur le chemin, Mais je ne puis toucher ta main.

Ami, je suis la Solitude.

What solitude was to the French poet, suspicion became for the Russian novelist.

But in the early university days Turgenev surrendered himself to the generous influence of ideas. At the University of Moscow he came under the spell of German philosophy, and particularly under that of Hegel. These influences, however, which inspired so many young Russians, did not damp the normal high spirits of youth. The devotees of Hegel seem to have been rather uproarious undergraduates, and there were frequent disturbances inthe class-rooms and even the lectures were occasionally interrupted. In 1835, on the death of his father and the entry of his brother into the School of Artillery, the family moved to the new capital, and Turgenev entered the University of St. Petersburg. Here, no less a person than Gogol was one of the examiners, but it was not until he had resigned that the students became aware that he was the famous author of the " Revizor."

Even as a boy of seventeen Turgenev had developed a curious love of mystification, which never wholly deserted him in after-life. Questioned by a professor on the subject of trials by ordeal, the future novelist enumerated the different tests, including among them that of the calf's tail. Asked for details, he explained that in certain cases a calf's tail was greased and placed in the hands of the accused. The beast was then struck with a stick, and if its tail did not slip through the hands of the accused at the first blow he was declared innocent . Asked for references, Turgenev gave several, but was eventually exposed on a point of chronology. Years afterwards he loved to invent more personal mystifications. He would declare himself the hero of incidents or accidents, ranging from the capture of a woman's heart to an affair of a runaway horse. He would even invent a wholly imaginary game bag and invite his friends to dinner on the strength of it. In short, he was to jest on the most trivial and on the most serious matters.

At Petersburg, however, he was seized by literary aspirations for the first time, although he had already made crude attempts at poetry in his school days. Already, too, the love of wandering, which he has so often interpreted, seems to have entered his heart. In 1838 he started on his first journey abroad on the steamer Nicholas I. The crossing was not without a hint of tragedy, for the young student was startled while at a game of cards by the cry of " Fire." Turgenev, according to some accounts, dashed on deck, hustling women and children and crying out at the top of his shrill voice, which contrasted so with his enormous body, " Save me ! I am the only son of a rich widow. Ten thousand roubles to him who will save me. " It seems that for the moment Turgenev, who after all was only a boy at the time, lost his head, though he denied specifically that he ever uttered the words imputed to him. In any case the incident is not in the least typical. What is typical is that years afterwards, while taking part in private theatricals, he exclaimed once again, with one knows not what touch of acrid selfmockery, " Save me ! I am the only son of a rich widow."

Turgenev visited Europe to see, in his own words, " men and things, more especially men." It is worth while insisting upon this point because the future author of " The Annals of a Sportsman " is said to have sworn an Oath of Hannibal against serfdom and to have gone to the West solely in search of weapons against the enemy of his country. Turgenev, with those sad memories of his childhood in his heart, may have formulated some such design, but he was probably quite unconscious of any special mission when he commenced, with his mentor, Porphyre Kartacheff, his studies at Berlin. Here he found himself again in the familiar atmosphere of Hegel. But other things had entered his life besides German philosophy. It is the period of those generous illusions which afterwards become comparatively cold. It is the period in which even Turgenev was almost whole-hearted in his scrutiny of life. Never was life to be so nearly sweet as it was in these careless student days. These memories, at least, were to survive almost untainted by irony. We have glimpses of the young Russian enjoying life, indulging in a little love affair with a couturilre, growing enthusiastic about German poetry, and even rat-hunting with a spirited terrier ! He travels, too, in Switzerland and Italy as well as in Germany, until at the age of twenty-three he returns to Russia. The period of youth is over. It is fortunately by no means a sealed book, for Turgenev is the Sanin of " Torrents of Spring," no less certainly than he is the hero of " First Love."

Almost every great writer has one book more close to him than any other. Dickens has acknowledged " David Copperfield," and Turgenev has acknowledged " First Love," which on his own authority is absolutely taken from his own life. But there is another book which is almost equally personal, whose pages are also torn from memory. It is, indeed, a sequel to "First Love," and may well be said to be, with its companion volume, to the great Russian what " Le Petit Chose " was to Alphonse Daudet. For, Sanin at twentyone is Turgenev himself, and the charm of that love-torrent at Frankfort is the charm of a remembered passion. Like the author, Sanin is tall, with clear eyes and an attractive expression. Glancing back at him, Turgenev maintains that softness and nothing but softness was the keynote of his nature. But it is impossible to judge Sanin harshly, for all the fragrance of unsullied memory steals into this love-story of reality. Sanin in the confectioner's shop chatting with these Italians over chocolate and angel-cake, with the poor old ex-baritone dancing attendance in the background, who can forget the picture ? Life glides by for Sanin like a dream, and we share the dream even as we fear the exquisite regret which is to follow it. Sanin, however, can be hard enough on occasion, in spite of that inner softness of his, as he soon proves. They were lunching together outside a cafe — the beautiful Italian girl, Gemma, her German fiance, her brother, and Sanin himself. A drunken German officer recognised her as the daughter of a confectioner and, swaggering up to the table, seized a rose that belonged to her in the presence of her fiance. Instantly Sanin, who is not her fiance at all, takes up the challenge and rebukes the officer's insolence with all the courage of youth and devoted love. A duel follows as a matter of course, but Turgenev remains a remorselessly sincere artist who is incapable of sacrificing his art to the trumpet-call of the noisy romancers. It is life, life, life that he gives us in that duel scene in the fresh morning, as the doctor, openly bored, sits yawning on the grass while the seconds discuss the preliminaries.

Sanin survives the foolish duel, and now there is nothing whatever to check the " torrents of spring " that are surging in his heart. He loves this beautiful Italian girl, and his secret escapes from him as simply and with as inevitable an accordance with nature as buds burst into the larger life. Sanin himself at this time " lives like a plant," and his life is almost as free from complexity. Gemma has broken with her German fiance and will marry him, Sanin. But first he will return to Russia and sell his property. It is all quite simple, for he is his own master and there is nothing to stand between him and the girl he loves. Then he meets the ridiculous and clumsy Ippolit Polozov, who suggests that his rich wife might purchase Sanin's property. So Sanin drives with him to discuss the matter with Maria Nikolaevna, who is half a gipsy and possesses that daring and alluring beauty which works such havoc in the romances of Turgenev. It is the old, old story. The good love is being poisoned by the evil passion. The spell of youth and goodness and freshness has been exchanged for the spell of the flesh. Sanin's romance is over, and he sends a lying letter of excuse to his fiancee and in the end accompanies Maria Nikolaevna to Paris. Years afterwards he learns that Gemma had gone to the United States. He writes to her, and she sends him a photograph which seems to be the Gemma of twenty years ago. It is the photograph of her eldest child, and she herself has been happily married across the Atlantic during these long years of his disillusion.