Chapter 24: The Thirteenth of June 1839

One long, winter evening towards the end of 1838 we were sitting, as always, alone, reading and then not reading, talking and then being silent, and in silence continuing the talk. There was a hard frost outside, and even in the room it was not at all warm. Natasha did not feel well and was lying on the sofa, covered with a cloak. I was sitting on the floor near her; my reading did not get on, she was inattentive, thinking of something else and absorbed, and her face kept changing.

‘Alexandr,’ she said, ‘I have a secret, come nearer and I will tell you in your ear, but guess it yourself.’

I did guess, but insisted on her telling me. I longed to hear this news from her: she told me, we looked at each other in excitement and with tears in our eyes.

How rich is the human heart in the capacity for happiness, for joy, if only people know how to give themselves up to it without being distracted by trifle. As a rule the present is spoilt by external worries, empty cares, irritable fussiness, all the rubbish which is brought upon us in the midday of life by the vanity of vanities, and the stupid ordering of our everyday life. We waste our best minutes, we let them slip through our fingers as though we had an endless store of them. We are usually thinking of to-morrow, of next year, when we ought with both hands to be clasping the brimming cup which life itself, unbidden, with her customary lavishness, holds out to us, and to drink and drink of it until the cup passes into other hands. Nature does not care to waste time offering it and pressing us.

One would have thought nothing could have been added to our happiness, and yet the news of the coming child opened new vistas of feeling, new raptures, hopes and apprehensions of which we had before known nothing.

Love, a little scared and agitated, grows more tender, is more anxious in its solicitude, from the egoism of two it becomes not a mere egoism of three but the sacrifice of two for a third; family life begins with the child. A new element is entering into life, a mysterious person is knocking at its portals, a guest who is yet is not, but whose coming is essential, who is eagerly awaited. What will he be? No one knows, but whatever he may be like, he is a happy stranger, with what love he is met on the threshold of life!

And then there is the agonising anxiety: would he be born alive or not? There are so many unhappy possibilities. The doctor smiles at the questions: ‘He knows nothing or will not say,’ one thinks; everything is still hidden from outsiders; there is no one to ask, besides one is shy.

And then the child gives signs of life. I know no loftier and more religious feeling than that which fills the heart at feeling the first movements of the future being, struggling and stretching its immature muscles, that first touch with which the father blesses the newcomer and yields a place for him in his life.

‘My wife,’ a French bourgeois said to me once, ‘my wife’—and seeing that there were neither ladies nor children present, added in an undertone—‘is pregnant.’

Indeed, the muddle of all our moral conceptions is such that pregnancy is looked upon as something improper. Though childbirth should claim unconditional respect for the mother, whoever she may be, the facts are kept secret not from a feeling of respect or spiritual delicacy, but from a regard for propriety. All that is the depravity of idealism, the corruption of monasticism, the accursed immolation of the flesh; it all comes from that unhappy dualism which draws us like Magdeburg hemispheres in opposite directions. Jeanne Deroin,[13] in spite of her socialism, hints in her _Almanach des Femmes_ that in time children will be born differently. How differently?—As the angels are born.—Well, that makes it clear.

Honour and glory to our teacher, the old realist Goethe. He had the courage to set the woman with child beside the innocent maidens of romanticism, and did not fear to mould in his mighty verse the changing forms of the future mother, comparing them with the supple limbs of the future woman.

Truly the woman who bears with the memory of past transports the whole cross of love, all its burden, sacrificing beauty and time, suffering, feeding from her own bosom, is one of the most beautiful and touching figures.

In the Roman elegies, in the Weaver, in Gretchen and her despairing prayer, Goethe has expressed all the solemn beauty with which nature surrounds the ripening fruit and all the thorns with which society crowns that vessel of the future life.

Poor mothers, who hide as though it were shame the traces of love, how brutally and mercilessly the world persecutes them, and persecutes them at the very time when the woman needs peace and kindness, savagely poisoning for her those priceless moments in which life droops fainting under the weight of happiness.

Gradually the secret is with horror discovered: the luckless mother at first tries to persuade herself that it is fancy, but soon doubt is impossible; with despair and tears she follows every movement of her babe, she would like to check the secret workings of its life, to turn it back, she hopes for some misfortune as a mercy, as pardon—while inexorable nature goes its way; she is young and healthy!

To force a mother to desire the death of her own child, and sometimes even more, to drive her to be its murderess and then to punish her, or to cover her with shame if the mother’s heart is too strong for her—how intelligently and morally is society organised!

And who has weighed, who has considered what passes in her heart while the mother crosses the terrible path from love to fear, from fear to despair, to crime, to madness, for infanticide is physiological abnormality. She too has had, of course, moments of forgetfulness, in which she has passionately loved her coming little one, only the more because his existence was a secret between them; there have been times when she has dreamed of his little feet, of his milky smile, has kissed him in his sleep, has found in him a likeness to one who has been so dear to her....

‘But do they feel it? Of course there are unhappy victims ... but ... the others, but the average?’

It would be hard, one fancies, to sink lower than those bats that flit about at night in the fog and slush of the London streets, those victims of ignorance, poverty, and want, with whom society guards its respectable women from the excesses of their admirers’ sensuality ... in them, of course, it would be hardest of all to assume traces of maternal feeling, would it not?

Allow me to tell you of a little incident that occurred to me. Three years ago I met a young and beautiful girl. She belonged to the higher ranks of prostitution, that is, did not democratically walk the streets, but lived in bourgeois style, kept by a merchant. It was at a public ball; the friend who was with me knew her and invited her to drink a bottle of wine with us in the gallery, she, of course, accepted the invitation. She was a merry, careless creature, and probably like Laura in Pushkin’s _Don Juan_ was never worried by the fact that far away in Paris it was cold while she heard the watchman in Madrid cry ‘The sun is shining.’ ... After swallowing the last glass she rushed back to the ponderous whirl of the English dances and I lost sight of her.

This winter, one wet evening I crossed the street to stand under the Arcade in Pall Mall to escape the streaming rain; a poorly dressed woman, shivering with cold, was standing under the lamp-post in the archway, probably on the watch for her prey. Her features struck me as familiar, she glanced at me, turned away and tried to shrink out of sight, but I had time to recognise her. ‘What has happened to you?’ I asked her with sympathy. Her sunken cheeks were suffused with bright crimson, whether from shame or consumption I do not know, but it did not seem like rouge; those two years and a half had made her look ten years older.

‘I was ill for a long time and was very unfortunate,’ with a look of great distress she glanced towards her shabby clothes.

‘But where is your friend?’

‘He was killed in the Crimea.’

‘Why, but he was a merchant, wasn’t he?’

She was confused, and instead of answering, said: ‘I am very ill even now, and besides I have no work at all. Why, have I changed so much?’ she asked, looking at me suddenly in embarrassment.

‘Very much: in those days you were like a little girl, and now I shouldn’t mind betting that you have children of your own.’

She flushed crimson, and with a sort of terror asked: ‘How did you know that?’

‘Well, you see, I do know. Now tell me, what really has been happening to you?’

‘Nothing, only you are right, I have got a little boy ... if only you knew,’ and at those words her face brightened, ‘what a splendid, handsome little fellow he is, even the neighbours all admire him. But that man married a rich girl and went away to the Continent. The baby was born afterwards. He is to blame for my position. At first I had money and used to buy him everything in the biggest shops, but now things have got worse and worse and I have taken everything to “my uncle.” I have been advised to put baby out in the country, it certainly would be better for him, but I can’t; I look at him, I just look at him and feel, no, we had better die together; I tried to find a situation, but they won’t take me with the baby. I went back to mother’s, she was all right, she’s got a kind heart, she forgave me, she is fond of the boy and makes a lot of him; but for five months now she has been bedridden—what with the doctor to pay and the medicine and then, as you know yourself, coal and bread and everything so dear this year, there was nothing but starvation before us there. So I——,’ she paused, ‘of course, it would be better to throw myself in the Thames than ... but there’s baby and I’m sorry for him, whom should I leave him to, and you know he’s such a darling!’

I gave her something and in addition took out a shilling and said: ‘And spend that on something for your baby.’ She took the coin joyfully, held it in her hand, and all at once, giving it back to me, added with a mournful smile: ‘Since you are so kind, buy him something yourself in some shop here, a toy or something, for no one has ever given him a present, poor little darling, since he was born.’

I looked with emotion at this _lost_ woman and pressed her hand affectionately.

The zealous champions of ladies with camellias and pearls would do better to leave velvet furniture and rococo boudoirs alone and look at the wretched, starved, and shivering prostitution close at hand, the fatal prostitution which forces its victims down the road to ruin and gives no chance for rallying nor repentance. Scavengers more often find precious stones in the gutter than amongst the tinsel of tawdry finery.

That reminded me of that clever translator of _Faust_, poor Gérard de Nerval, who shot himself last year. He had not been home for five or six days. It was discovered at last that he was spending his time in the lowest dens near the town gates, as Paul Niquet used to do, that there he had made friends with thieves, with low creatures of all sorts, was treating them to drink, playing cards with them, and sometimes sleeping under their protection. His old friends tried to persuade him to come away and to put him to shame. Nerval, defending himself good-naturedly, once said to them: ‘Let me tell you, my friends, you are fearfully conventional. I assure you that the society of these people is no worse than that of any others I have been among.’ He had been suspected of madness; after that saying I imagine the suspicion passed into conviction!

The fatal day was approaching and everything became more and more dreadful. I looked at the doctor and the mysterious face of the midwife with slavish reverence. Neither Natasha nor I nor our young maid knew anything about it; luckily, at my father’s request, an elderly lady, an intelligent, practical, and capable woman called Praskovya Andreyevna, came from Moscow to stay with us. Seeing our helplessness she took the reins of management entirely into her own hands and I obeyed her like a nigger.

One night I felt a hand touch me, I opened my eyes. Praskovya Andreyevna was standing before me in a nightcap and dressing-gown with a candle in her hand; she told me to send for the doctor and the midwife. I was petrified as though the news were something quite unexpected. I felt as though I should have liked to take a dose of opium, turn over on the other side and sleep through the danger ... but there was no help for it. I dressed with trembling hands and rushed to wake Matvey.

A dozen times I ran out from the bedroom into the hall to listen for a carriage in the distance. Everything was still but for the faint, faint rustle of the breeze of morning in the warm June air of the garden; the birds were beginning to sing, the crimson dawn threw a light flush over the leaves, and again I hurried back to the bedroom, pestered kind Praskovya Andreyevna with stupid questions, squeezed Natasha’s hands convulsively, did not know what to do, trembled and was in a fever ... but at last the chaise rattled on the bridge—thank God, it was in time!

At eleven o’clock in the morning I started as from a violent electric shock when the loud scream of a new-born baby reached my ear. ‘A boy,’ Praskovya Andreyevna called to me as she went towards the cradle; I would have taken the baby from the pillow, but I could not, my hands trembled so violently. The thought of danger (which often indeed is only beginning at this stage) that had weighed upon me vanished at once, a wild joy took possession of my heart as though all the bells were pealing for a festival of festivals! Natasha smiled at me, smiled at the baby, wept and laughed, and only her broken breathing, her weary eyes, and deathly pallor reminded me of the struggle, the agony that she had just passed through.

Then I left the room, I could bear no more. I went into my study and flung myself on the sofa, at the end of my strength, and lay for half an hour without definite thought, without definite feeling, in a sort of anguish of bliss.

That face of exhausted ecstasy, that joy flitting on the brink of death upon the mother’s countenance, I recognised again in Vandyke’s Madonna in the Corsini Gallery at Rome. The baby has just been born, they are holding it up to the mother; exhausted, with not a drop of blood in her face, faint and weary, she smiles, while her tired eyes rest on the baby with a look of infinite love.

It must be admitted that the Virgin Mother is quite out of keeping with the celibate religion of Christianity. With her, life, love, gentleness cannot but break into the everlasting funeral, the dread day of judgment, and the other horrors of Church theology.

That is why Protestantism has rejected the Virgin Mother _only_ from its barn-like chapels, from its factories of God’s word. She really does interfere with Christian propriety, she cannot escape from her earthly nature, she warms the cold church, and in spite of everything remains a woman, a mother. She makes up for the supernatural conception by the natural birth, and snatches a blessing on her labour from the lips of monastic worshippers who curse everything bodily.

Michael Angelo and Raphael grasped that in their painting.

In ‘The Day of Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel, in that massacre of St. Bartholomew in the other world, we see the Son of God going to preside over the executions; He has already lifted His hand.... He will give the signal, and tortures, agonies will follow, the last trump will sound, the universal _auto-da-fé_ will begin crackling; but—the Mother, trembling and suffering for all, presses up to Him in horror, and is imploring Him on behalf of the sinners; looking at her He will perhaps be softened and forget His cruel ‘Woman, what hast thou to do with me?’ and will not give the signal.

The Sistine Madonna is Mignon after the child’s birth, she is frightened at her incredible fate, helpless....

‘Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, gethan?’

Her inner peace is shattered, she has been told that her son is the Son of God, that she is the Mother of God; she looks with a sort of nervous ecstasy, with mesmeric clairvoyance she seems to be saying: ‘Take Him, He is not mine.’ But at the same time she presses Him to herself as though, if she could, she would fly with Him far away and would simply fondle and feed at her bosom not the Saviour of the world but her own babe. And all this is because she is a human mother and has no kinship with Isis and Rhea and all the other gods of the female sex.

That is why it has been so easy for her to conquer the cold Aphrodite, that Ninon L’Enclos of Olympus, whose children no one troubles about. Mary with her babe in her arms, with her eyes always gently looking down upon Him, surrounded by the halo of womanliness and the holiness of motherhood, is nearer to our hearts than the golden-haired Aphrodite.

To my thinking Pius IX. and his Conclave were very consistent in proclaiming the unnatural or, in their language, immaculate conception of the Virgin. Mary, born naturally like you and me, would naturally stand up for men and sympathise with us: in her the living reconciliation of flesh and spirit would steal into religion. If even she was not humanly born, there is nothing in common between her and us, she will not feel for us, and the flesh is once more damned—and the Church more essential than ever for salvation.

It is a pity that the Pope is a thousand years too late. That, it seems, is Pius IX.’s fate. _Troppo tardi, Santo Padre, siete sempre e sempre—troppo tardi!_

* * * * *

When I wrote this part of my Memoirs I had not our old letters. I got them in 1856. After reading them over I had to correct two or three passages, not more. My memory had not betrayed me. I should have liked to add a few of Natalie’s letters, and at the same time I am restrained by a sort of dread and cannot decide the question whether I ought to lay bare our life any further, and whether those lines so dear to me might not meet with a cold smile.

Among Natalie’s papers I found my own notes to her, written partly before prison and partly from the Krutitsky Barracks.... Some of them I append to this part. Perhaps they will not seem superfluous to those who are fond of tracing the sources of men’s destinies, perhaps such will read them with that nervous interest with which we look through the microscope at the development of the living organism.

I[14]

_August 15th, 1832._

DEAR NATALYA ALEXANDROVNA,—To-day is your birthday; I should
very much have liked to wish you many happy returns in person,
but there really is no possibility. I am sorry I have not been
to see you for so long, but circumstances have quite prevented
me from disposing of my time as I should have liked. I hope
that you will forgive me, and wish you the full development of
all your talents and all the treasures of happiness which fate
bestows on the pure in heart.—Your devoted

A. H.

II

_July 5th or 6th, 1833._

You are wrong, Natalya Alexandrovna. You are quite wrong in
thinking that I should confine myself to one letter—here is
another for you. It is extremely pleasant to write to persons
with whom one is in sympathy, there are so few of them, so few
that one wouldn’t use a quire of paper on them in a year.

I am a graduate, that is true, but they did not give me the
gold medal. I have a silver medal—_one of three_!

A. H.

_P.S._—To-day there was the prize-giving, but I didn’t go for I
don’t care to be second.

III

(_At the beginning of 1834._)

Natalie! we are expecting you impatiently. M—— hopes that in
spite of E—— I——’s threats yesterday Amelia Mihailovna will be
sure to come too, and so, till we meet,—Wholly yours,

A. H.

IV

KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_December 10th, 1834_.

I have just written a letter to the colonel in which I have
asked for a permit for you, there is no answer yet. It will be
harder for you to arrange it, but I rely on Mother. You were
in luck in regard to me, you were the last of my friends whom
I saw before my arrest [we parted confidently hoping to see
each other soon at nine o’clock, but at two I was already in
the police-station], and you will be the first to see me again.
Knowing you, I know that that will give you pleasure, let me
assure you that it will me too. To me you are a sister.

There is not much for me to say about myself. I have settled
down and grown used to being a prisoner. The most dreadful
thing for me is the separation from Ogaryov, he is essential
to me. I have not seen him once—that is, not properly—though
on one occasion I was sitting alone in a little lobby (at the
committee), my examination was over; from my window the lighted
porch could be seen; a chaise was brought round, I rushed
instinctively to the window, opened the little pane and saw an
adjutant get in together with Ogaryov. The chaise drove off
and he had no chance to see me. Can we be fated to perish by
a mute, inglorious death, of which no one will hear? Why then
has nature given us spirits craving for activity, for glory?
Can that be a mockery? But no, faith, strong and living, glows
here in my heart, there is a providence watching over us! I am
reading with delight _The Lives of the Saints_; there you have
examples of self-sacrifice, there you have men!

I have just received the answer, it is not cheering—they refuse
the permit.

Good-bye, remember and love your brother.

V

_December 31st, 1834._

I will never take upon myself the responsibility which you
lay upon me, never! You have a great deal that is _your own_,
why then do you give yourself up to my will like this? I want
you to make _of yourself whatever you can make of yourself_;
for my part I undertake to assist that development, to remove
obstacles.

As for your position, it is not so bad for your development as
you imagine. You have a great advantage over many; as soon as
you began to understand yourself, you found yourself alone,
alone in the whole world. Others have known a father’s love and
a mother’s tenderness—you have not had them. No one has cared
to look after you, you have been left to yourself. What can be
better for development? Thank your fates that no one did look
after you, they would have instilled something alien to you,
they would have warped your childish soul—now it is too late.

VI

KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_February 1835_.

I am told you have an idea of going into a nunnery; don’t
expect me to smile at the idea, I understand it, but it needs
to be very, very thoroughly weighed. Can it be that the
thought of love has never stirred your bosom? A nunnery means
despair, there are no nunneries now for prayer. Can you doubt
that you will one day meet a man who will love you, whom you
will love? How joyfully I shall press his hand and yours. He
will be happy. If that _he_ does not appear—then go into a
nunnery, that is a million times better than a vulgar marriage.

I understand _le ton d’exaltation_ of your letters—_you are in
love!_ If you write to me that you are seriously in love I’ll
say nothing—a brother’s authority stops at that. But I must
have you say those words. Do you know what ordinary men are?
They may of course make some people happy—but can they make you
happy, Natasha? You think too little of yourself! Better into a
nunnery than into the common herd. Remember one thing, that I
say this because I am your brother, _because I am proud of you
and for you_.

I have received another letter from Ogaryov; here is an extract
from it: ‘L’autre jour donc je repassais dans ma mémoire toute
ma vie. Un bonheur qui ne m’a jamais trahi, c’est ton amitié.
De toutes mes passions, une seule qui est restée intacte c’est
mon amitié pour toi, car mon amitié est une passion.’

In conclusion, one word more. What is so strange about it if he
does love you? What would he be if he did not love you, seeing
a shade of attention on your side? But I beseech you don’t tell
him of your love—not for a long time.

Farewell.—Your brother,

ALEXANDR.

VII

What marvels happen in the world, Natalie! Before I got your
last letter I had answered all your questions. I have heard
that you are ill and melancholy. Take care of yourself, drink
resolutely the—not so much bitter as—loathsome cup which your
_benefactors_ fill for you.

And after that on another sheet of paper follows:—

Natasha, my dear, my sister, for God’s sake don’t lose heart,
despise these abominable egoists, you make too much allowance
for them, despise them all—they are wretches! It was an awful
moment for me when I read your letter to Amelia. My God, what
a position I am in! What can I do for you? I swear that no
brother loves his sister more than I do you, but what can I do?

I received your letter and am pleased with you. Forget him, if
that is how it is; it was an experiment, and if it had really
been love it would not have been expressed like that.

VIII

KRUTITSKY BARRACKS,
_April 2nd_.

My heart is torn to shreds, I have not been so crushed, so
shattered, all the while I have been in prison as now. It is
not exile that is the cause of it. What do I care whether it is
Perm or Moscow, Moscow is no better than Perm. Let me tell you
all about it.

On the 31st of March we were summoned to hear our sentence. It
was a glorious, magnificent day. Twenty fellows were gathered
together, who were to be immediately scattered, some to the
cells of the fortresses, others to distant towns, while all of
them had spent nine months in captivity. They all sat, a noisy,
merry company, in the big hall. When I went in, Sokolovsky,
with a beard and a moustache, threw himself on my neck, and
S—— was there too. Ogaryov was brought in a good while after
me, and all rushed to greet him; we embraced with tears and a
smile. Everything rose up in my heart, I lived, I was a youth,
I pressed every one’s hand, in fact it was one of the happiest
moments of my life. I had not a gloomy thought. At last the
sentence[15] was read out.

All was well, but yesterday—damnation take it!—has shattered me
in every nerve. Obolensky is being confined in the same place
with me. When the sentence had been read us, I asked leave of
Tsinsky for us to see each other and was given permission.
On returning I went to see him, and meanwhile they had
forgotten to tell the colonel about the permission. Next day
that blackguard of an officer S—— reported the matter to the
colonel, and in that way I got three of the very best officers
into trouble who had shown me no end of kindness; they were
all reprimanded and all punished, and now have to be on duty
for three weeks (and it is Easter!) without being relieved.
Vassilyev the gendarme has been flogged, and all through me. I
bit my fingers, cried, raged, and the first thought that came
into my head was revenge. I told things about the officer which
may ruin him (he used to go off somewhere with a prisoner), and
then remembered that he is a poor man and the father of seven
children; but ought one to spare the sneak? Did he spare others?

IX

_April 10th, 1835. Nine o’clock._

A few hours before departure I am still writing, and writing to
you—my last word as I go away shall be for you. Bitter is the
feeling of separation, and involuntary separation, but such is
the fate to which I have given myself up, it draws me on and I
submit. When shall we see each other? Where? All that is dark,
but bright is the thought of your affection, the exile will
never forget his charming sister.

_Perhaps_ ... but I cannot finish, for they have come for
me—and so farewell for long, but, on my word, not for ever, I
cannot think that.

All this is written in the presence of the gendarmes.

Traces of tears can be seen on this note and the word _perhaps_ has been twice underlined by her. Natalie carried this note about with her for several months.