Chapter 5

DETAILS OF HOME LIFE—EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PEOPLE IN RUSSIA—A DAY IN OUR HOUSE—VISITORS AND _HABITUÉS_—SONNENBERG—THE VALET AND OTHERS

The insufferable dreariness of our house grew greater every year. If my University time had not been approaching, if it had not been for my new friendship, my political enthusiasm and the liveliness of my disposition, I should have run away or perished.

My father was hardly ever in a good humour, he was perpetually dissatisfied with everybody. A man of great intelligence and great powers of observation, he had seen, heard, and remembered an immense amount; an accomplished man of the world, he could be extremely polite and interesting, but he did not care to be and sank more and more into ill-humoured unsociability.

It is hard to say exactly what it was that put so much bitterness and spleen into his blood. Periods of passion, of great unhappiness, of mistakes and losses were completely absent from his life. I could never fully understand what was the origin of the spiteful mockery and irritability that filled his soul, the mistrustful unsociability and the vexation that consumed him. Did he bear with him to the grave some memory which he confided to no one, or was this simply the result of the combination of two elements so absolutely opposed as the eighteenth century and Russian life, with the assistance of a third, terribly conducive to the development of ill-humour, the idleness of the slave-owner?

Last century produced in the West, particularly in France, a wonderful crop of men endowed with all the weak points of the Regency and all the strong points of Rome and Sparta. These mixtures of Faublas[57] and Regulus opened wide the doors of the Revolution and were the first to rush in, crowding each other in their haste to reach the ‘window’ of the guillotine. Our age no longer produces these single-minded powerful natures; the eighteenth century on the contrary called them forth everywhere, even where they were not needed, even where they could not develop except into something grotesque. In Russia men exposed to the influence of this mighty Western movement became original, but not historical figures. Foreigners at home, foreigners in other lands, idle spectators, spoilt for Russia by Western prejudices and for the West by Russian habits, they were a sort of intellectual superfluity and were lost in artificial life, in sensual pleasure and in unbearable egoism.

To this class belonged the Tatar Prince, N. B. Yussupov, a Russian grandee and a European _grand seigneur_, a foremost figure in Moscow, conspicuous for his intelligence and his wealth. About him gathered a perfect galaxy of grey-headed gallants and _esprits forts_, all the Masalskys and Santis and _tutti quanti_. They were all rather cultured and well-educated people; having no work in life they flung themselves upon pleasure, pampered themselves, loved themselves, good-naturedly forgave themselves all transgressions, exalted their gastronomy to the level of a Platonic passion and reduced love for women to a sort of voracious gourmandise.

The old sceptic and Epicurean Yussupov, a friend of Voltaire and Beaumarchais,[58] of Diderot and Casti,[59] really was gifted with artistic taste. To see this, one need but go to Arhangelskoe and look at his galleries, that is, if they have not yet been sold bit by bit by his heir. He was magnificently fading out of life at eighty, surrounded by marble, painted and living beauty. In his house near Moscow Pushkin conversed with him and addressed a wonderful epistle to him, and there, too, pictures were painted by Gonzaga,[60] to whom Yussupov dedicated his theatre.

By his education, by his service in the Guards, by position and connections, my father belonged to this circle, but neither his character nor his health permitted him to lead a frivolous life to the age of seventy: and he passed to the opposite extreme. He tried to lead a solitary life and found in it a deadly dullness, the mare because he tried to arrange it entirely _for himself_. His strength of will changed into obstinate caprice, his unemployed energies spoilt his character, making him insufferable.

When he was being educated, European civilisation was still so new in Russia that to be educated was equivalent to being so much the less Russian. To the end of his days he wrote more freshly and correctly in French than in Russian. He had literally not read one single book in Russian, not even the Bible. Though, indeed, he had not read the Bible in other languages either; he knew the subject-matter of the Holy Scriptures generally from hearsay and from extracts, and had no curiosity to look into it. He had, it is true, a respect for Derzhavin[61] and Krylov[62]: Derzhavin because he had written an ode on the death of his uncle, Prince Meshtchersky, Krylov because he had been with him as second at N. N. Bahmetyev’s duel. My father did once pick up Karamzin’s _History of the Russian Empire_, having heard that the Emperor Alexander was reading it, but he laid it aside, saying contemptuously: ‘It is nothing but Izyaslavitches and Olgovitches, to whom can it be of interest?’

For men he had an open, undisguised contempt—for all. Never under any circumstances did he reckon upon anybody, and I do not remember that he ever applied to any one with any serious request. He himself did nothing for any one. In his relations with outsiders he demanded one thing only, the observance of the proprieties; _les apparences, les convenances_ made up the whole of his moral religion. He was ready to forgive much, or rather to overlook it, but breaches of good form and good manners made him beside himself, and in such cases he was without any tolerance, without the slightest indulgence or compassion. I so long raged inwardly against this injustice that at last I understood it. He was convinced beforehand that every man is capable of any evil act; and that, if he does not commit it, it is either that he has no need to, or that the opportunity does not present itself; in the disregard of formalities he saw a personal affront, a disrespect to himself; or a ‘plebeian education,’ which in his opinion cut a man off from all human society.

‘The soul of man,’ he used to say, ‘is darkness, and who knows what is in any man’s soul? I have too much business of my own to be interested in other people’s, much less to judge and criticise their intentions; but I cannot be in the same room with an ill-bred man, he offends me, grates upon me; of course he may be the best-hearted man in the world and for that he will have a place in paradise, but I don’t want him. What is most important in life is _esprit de conduite_, it is more important than the most lofty intellect or any kind of learning. To know how to be at ease everywhere, to put yourself forward nowhere, the utmost courtesy with all and no familiarity with any one.’

My father disliked every sort of _abandon_, every sort of openness; all that he called familiarity, just as he called every feeling sentimentality. He persistently posed as a man superior to all such petty trifles; for the sake of what, with what object? What was the higher interest to which the heart was sacrificed?—I do not know. And for whom did this haughty old man, who despised men so genuinely and knew them so well, play his part of impartial judge?—For a woman whose will he had broken although she sometimes contradicted him; for an invalid who lay always at the mercy of the surgeon’s knife; for a boy whose high spirits he had developed into disobedience; for a dozen lackeys whom he did not reckon as human beings!

And what patience was spent on it, what perseverance, and how wonderfully well the part was played in spite of age and illness. Truly the soul of man is darkness.

Later on when I was arrested, and afterwards when I was sent into exile, I saw that the old man’s heart was more open to love and even to tenderness than I had thought. I never thanked him for it, not knowing how he would take my gratitude.

Of course he was not happy; always on his guard, always dissatisfied, he saw with a pang the hostile feelings he roused in all his household; he saw the smile pass from the face and the words checked at his entrance; he spoke of it with mockery, with vexation, but made not a single concession and went his way with the utmost persistence. Mockery, irony, cold, malignant and scornful, was a weapon which he used like an artist; he employed it equally against us and against the servants. In early youth one can bear many things better than sarcasm, and until I went to prison I was really estranged from my father, and joined with the maids and men-servants in leading a little war against him.

Moreover, he had persuaded himself that he was dangerously ill and was continually undergoing treatment; besides our own household doctor, he was visited by two or three others and had three or four consultations a year at least. Visitors, seeing always his unfriendly face and hearing nothing but complaints of his health, which was far from being so bad as he thought, left off coming. He was angry at this but never reproached a single person nor invited one. A terrible dullness reigned in the house, particularly on the endless winter evenings—two lamps lighted a whole suite of rooms; wearing felt or lamb’s-wool high boots, a velvet cap, and a coat lined with white lambskin, bowed, with his hands clasped behind his back, the old man walked up and down, followed by two or three brown dogs, and never uttering a word.

A carefulness spent on worthless objects grew with his melancholy. He managed the estate badly for himself and badly for his peasants. The village elders and his _missi dominici_ robbed their master and the peasants; on the other hand, everything that met the eye was subjected to redoubled supervision, candles were saved and the thin _vin de Graves_ was replaced by sour Crimean wine at the very time when a whole forest was cut down in one village, and in another his own oats were sold to him. He had his privileged thieves; the peasant whom he made collector of _obrok_ (payment from a serf in lieu of labour) in Moscow and whom he sent every summer to supervise the village elder, the market, the garden, the forest, and the field labours, saved enough in ten years to buy a house in Moscow. From a child I hated this minister without portfolio; on one occasion he beat an old peasant in the yard in my presence. I was so furious that I hung on to his beard and almost fainted. From that time I could not look at him without dislike until he died in 1845. I several times asked my father where did Shkun get the money to buy a house.

‘That’s what sobriety does,’ the old man answered, ‘he never takes a drop of liquor.’

Every year near the time of carnival, the peasants from the Penza province used to bring from near Kerensk _obrok_ in kind. For a fortnight a trail of poor-looking wagons were on the road, laden with pork, sucking pigs, geese, fowls, grain, rye, eggs, butter, and linen. The arrival of the Kerensk peasants was a holiday for all the house-serfs; they robbed the peasants and fleeced them at every step without the slightest right to do so. The coachmen charged them for the water in the well, and would not let their horses drink without payment. The women made them pay for warmth in the house, they had to pay homage to one aristocrat of the servants’ hall with a sucking pig and a towel, to another with a goose and butter. All the time they stayed in the yard the servants kept up a feast, holiday dishes were made, sucking pigs were roasted, and the hall was continually full of the fumes of onion, burnt fat, and the drink which had just been consumed. For the last two days of these junketings Bakay did not go into the hall and did not finish dressing, but sat in the outer kitchen with an old livery coat thrown over his shoulders, without his waistcoat and jacket. He was growing visibly thinner and becoming darker and older. My father put up with all this pretty calmly, knowing that it was inevitable and could not be altered.

After the dead provisions had been received, my father—and the most remarkable point about it is that the practice was repeated yearly—used to call the cook, Spiridon, and send him to the poultry bazaar and the Smolensky market to find out the prices; the cook returned with fabulously small prices, less than half the real ones. My father would tell him he was a fool and send for Shkun or Slyepushkin. The latter had a fruit stall at the Ilyinsky Gate. And both considered the cook’s prices terribly low, made inquiries and brought back prices rather higher. At last Slyepushkin offered to take the whole lot, eggs and sucking pigs and butter and rye ‘to save all disturbance to your health, sir.’ He gave a price I need hardly say somewhat higher than the cook’s. My father agreed. Slyepushkin would bring him oranges and little cakes in honour of the bargain, and brought the cook a note for two hundred roubles.

This Slyepushkin was in great favour with my father and often borrowed money from him; he showed his originality in his thorough understanding of the old man’s character.

He would ask for five hundred roubles for two months, and a day before the two months were over would appear in the hall with an Easter cake on a dish and the five hundred roubles on the Easter cake. My father would take the money, Slyepushkin would make a bow and ask for his hand to kiss, which was never given. But three days later Slyepushkin would come again to borrow money and ask for fifteen hundred roubles. My father would give it and Slyepushkin would again bring it by the time fixed. My father used to hold him up as an example, but a week later he would ask for a bigger sum, and in that way enjoyed the use of an extra five thousand roubles a year for his business, for the trifling interest of two or three Easter cakes, a few pounds of figs and Greek nuts and a hundred oranges and apples from the Crimea.

In conclusion, I will mention how some hundreds of acres of building timber were lost in Novoselye. In the ‘forties, M. F. Orlov who, I remember, had been commissioned by the Countess Anna Alexeyevna to purchase an estate for her children, began treating for the Tver estate which had come to my father from the Senator. They agreed on the price and the business seemed to be settled. Orlov went to look at the land and then wrote to my father that on the map he had shown him a forest, but that there was no such forest.

‘That’s a clever man,’ said my father, ‘he took part in the conspiracy and wrote a book on finance, but as soon as it comes to business you can see what a silly fellow he is. These Neckers! Well, I’ll ask Grigory Ivanovitch to ride over, he’s not a conspirator, but he’s an honest man and knows his work.’

Grigory Ivanovitch, too, went over to Novoselye and brought the news that there was no forest, but only a semblance of one rigged up; so that neither from the big house nor the high-road could the clearing catch the eye. After the land was assigned to him the Senator had been at least five times to Novoselye, and yet the secret had never leaked out.

To give a full idea of our manner of life I will describe a whole day from the morning; the monotony of the days was precisely what was most deadly; our life went like an English clock regulated to go slowly, quietly, evenly, loudly recording each second.

At nine o’clock in the morning the valet who sat in the room next the bedroom informed Vera Artamonovna, my ex-nurse, that the master was getting up. She went to prepare the coffee which he always drank alone in his study. Everything in the house assumed a different aspect, the servants began sweeping the rooms, or at any rate made a show of doing something. The hall, until then empty, filled up, and even the big Newfoundland dog Macbeth sat before the stove and watched the fire without blinking.

Over his coffee the old man read the _Moscow News_ and the _Journal de St. Pétersbourg_. I may mention that he had given orders for the _Moscow News_ to be warmed, that his hands might not be chilled by the dampness of the paper, and that he read the political news in the French text, finding the Russian obscure. At one time he used to get a Hamburg newspaper, but could not reconcile himself to the fact that the Germans printed in German characters, and was always pointing out to me the difference between the French print and the German, saying that these grotesque Gothic letters with their little tails were bad for the eyes. Afterwards he subscribed to the _Journal de Francfort_, but in the end he confined himself to the journals of his own country.

When he had finished reading he would observe that Karl Ivanovitch Sonnenberg was in the room. When Nick was fifteen Karl Ivanovitch had set up a shop, but having neither goods nor customers, after wasting on this profitable undertaking the money he had somehow scraped up, he retired from it with the honourable title of ‘merchant of Reval.’ He was by then over forty, and at that agreeable age he led the life of a bird of the air or a boy of fourteen, that is, did not know where he would sleep next day nor on what he would dine. He took advantage of my father’s being somewhat well-disposed towards him; we shall see at once what that meant.

In 1830 my father bought near our house another, bigger, better, and with a garden. The house had belonged to the Countess Rastoptchin, wife of the celebrated governor of Moscow. We moved into it; after that he bought a third house which was quite unnecessary, but was next it. Both these houses stood empty; they were not let for fear of fire (the houses were insured) and disturbance from tenants. Moreover they were not kept in repair, so they were on the sure road to ruin. In one of them the homeless Karl Ivanovitch was permitted to live on condition that he did not open the gates after ten o’clock (not a difficult condition, since the gates were never closed), and that he bought firewood and did not get it from our household supplies (as a matter of fact he bought it from our coachman), and that he waited upon my father in the capacity of a clerk of special commissions, _i.e._ came in the morning to inquire whether there were any orders, turned up at dinner and, if there were no one else dining with him, spent the evening entertaining him with news and conversation.

Simple as Karl Ivanovitch’s duties might appear to be, my father knew how to inject so much bitterness into them that my poor merchant of Reval, accustomed to all the calamities which can fall upon the head of a man with no money, with no brains, of small stature, pock-marked face and German nationality, could not always endure it. At intervals of two years or a year and a half, Karl Ivanovitch, deeply offended, would declare that ‘this is utterly unbearable,’ would pack up, buy or exchange various articles of suspicious value and dubious quality, and set off for the Caucasus. Ill-luck usually pursued him with ferocity. On one occasion his wretched nag—he was driving with his own horse in Tiflis and in the Redoubt Kali—fell down not far from the region of the Don Cossacks; on another, half his luggage was stolen from him; on another, his two-wheeled gig upset and his French perfumes were spilt over the broken wheel, unappreciated by any one, at the foot of Elborus; then he would lose something, and when he had nothing left to lose he lost his passport. Ten months later Karl Ivanovitch, a little older, a little more battered, a little poorer, with still fewer teeth and less hair, would as a rule meekly present himself before my father with a store of Persian insect powder, of faded silks and rusty Circassian daggers, and would settle in the empty house again on the condition of fulfilling the same duties and heating his stove with his own firewood.

Observing Karl Ivanovitch, my father would at once begin a small attack upon him. Karl Ivanovitch would inquire after his health, the old man would thank him with a bow and then after a moment’s thought would inquire, for instance: ‘Where do you buy your pomade?’ I must here mention that Karl Ivanovitch, the ugliest of mortals, was a terrible flirt, considered himself a Lovelace, dressed with an effort at smartness and wore a curled golden wig. All this, of course, had long ago been weighed and taken account of by my father. ‘At Bouïs’s on Kuznitsky Bridge,’ Karl Ivanovitch would answer abruptly, somewhat piqued, and he would cross one leg over the other like a man ready to defend himself.

‘What’s the scent called?’

‘Nacht-Violette,’ answered Karl Ivanovitch.

‘He cheats you, violet is a delicate scent.’ Then in French, ‘_C’est un parfum_, but that’s something strong, disgusting, they embalm bodies with something of that sort! My nerves have grown so weak it makes me positively sick; tell them to give me the eau-de-Cologne.’

Karl Ivanovitch would himself dash for the flask.

‘Oh no, you must call some one else or you will come still closer; I shall be ill, I shall faint.’

Karl Ivanovitch, who was reckoning on the effect of his pomade in the maids’ room, would be deeply offended.

After sprinkling the room with eau-de-Cologne my father would invent commissions; to buy some French snuff and some English magnesia, and to look at a carriage advertised for sale in the papers (he would never buy it). Karl Ivanovitch, bowing himself out agreeably and inwardly relieved to get off, would go away till dinner.

After Karl Ivanovitch, the cook made his appearance; whatever he bought or whatever he ordered, my father thought it extremely expensive.

‘Ough, ough, how expensive! Why, is it because no supplies have come in?’

‘Just so, sir,’ answered the cook, ‘the roads are so bad.’

‘Oh very well, till they are in better condition we will buy less.’

After this he would sit down to his writing-table and write reports and orders to the villages, make up his accounts, between whiles scolding me, receiving the doctors and above all quarrelling with his valet. The latter was the greatest victim in the whole house. A little, sanguine man, hasty and hot-tempered, he seemed as though created expressly to irritate my father and provoke his reprimands. The scenes that were repeated between them every day might have filled a farce, but it was all perfectly serious. My father knew very well that the man was necessary to him and often put up with rude answers from him, but never ceased trying to train him, in spite of his efforts having been unsuccessful for thirty-five years. The valet on his side would not have put up with such a life if he had not had his own recreations; he was as a rule rather tipsy by dinner-time. My father noticed this, but confined himself to roundabout allusions to it, advising him, for instance, to munch a little black bread and salt that he might not smell of vodka. Nikita Andreyevitch had the habit when he was a little drunk of scraping with his feet in a peculiar way when he handed the dishes. As soon as my father noticed this, he would invent some commission for him, would send him, for instance, to ask the barber Anton if he had changed his address, adding to me in French, ‘I know that he has not moved, but the fellow is not sober, he will drop the soup-tureen end smash it, spill the soup on the cloth and frighten me. Let him go out for an airing. _Le grand air_ will do him good.’

Usually on such occasions the valet made some answer; but if he could find nothing to say he would go out, muttering between his teeth. Then his master would call him and in the same calm voice ask him ‘what did he say?’

‘I didn’t address a word to you.’

‘To whom were you speaking, then? There is no one but you and me in this room or the next.’

‘To myself.’

‘That’s very dangerous, that’s the way madness begins.’

The valet would depart in a rage and go to his room; there he used to read the _Moscow News_ and plait hair for wigs for sale. Probably to relieve his anger he would take snuff furiously; whether his snuff was particularly strong or the nerves of his nose were weak I cannot say, but this was almost always followed by his sneezing violently five or six times.

The master rang the bell, the valet flung down his handful of hair and went in.

‘Was that you sneezing?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I wanted to bless you.’ And he would make a motion with his hand for the valet to withdraw.

On the last day of carnival, all the servants would, according to custom, come in the evening to beg the master’s forgiveness: on these solemn occasions my father used to go out into the great drawing-room, accompanied by his valet. Then he would pretend not to recognise some of them.

‘Who is that venerable old man standing there in the corner?’ he would ask the valet.

‘The coachman Danilo,’ the valet would answer abruptly, knowing that all this was only a dramatic performance.

‘Good gracious! how he has changed. I really believe that it is entirely from drink that men get old so quickly; what does he do?’

‘He hauls the firewood in for the stoves.’

The old man assumed an expression of insufferable pain.

‘How is it you have not learned to talk in thirty years?... Hauls—how can he haul the firewood in?—firewood is carried in, not hauled in. Well, Danilo, thank God, the Lord has been pleased to let me see you once more. I forgive you all your sins for this year, all the oats which you waste so immoderately, and for not brushing the horses, and do you forgive me. Go on hauling in firewood while you have the strength, but now Lent is coming, so take less drink, it is bad for us at our age, and besides it is a sin.’ He conducted the whole inspection in this style.

We used to dine between three and four o’clock. The dinner lasted a long time and was very boring. Spiridon was an excellent cook, but my father’s economy on the one hand, and his own on the other, rendered the dinner somewhat meagre, in spite of the fact that there were a great many dishes. Beside my father stood a red clay bowl into which he himself put all sorts of pieces for the dogs; moreover, he used to feed them with his own fork, which was deeply resented by the servants and consequently by me. Why, it is hard to say....

Visitors rarely called upon us and more rarely dined. I remember out of all those who visited us one man whose arrival to dinner would sometimes smooth the wrinkles out of my father’s face, N. N. Bahmetyev. He was the brother of the lame general of that name and was himself a general also, though long on the retired list. My father and he had been friends as long ago as the time when both had been officers in the Izmailovsky regiment. They had both been gay young rakes in the days of Catherine, and in the reign of Paul had both been court-martialled, Bahmetyev for having fought a duel with some one and my father for having been his second; then one of them had gone away to foreign lands as a tourist, while the other went to Ufa as Governor. There was no likeness between them. Bahmetyev, a stout, healthy and handsome old man, was fond of having a good dinner and getting a little drunk after it; was fond of lively conversation and many other things. He used to boast that in his day he had eaten as many as a hundred hearth-cakes, and he could when about sixty devour up to a dozen buckwheat pancakes drowned in a pool of butter with complete impunity. I have been a witness of these achievements more than once.

Bahmetyev had some shadowy influence over my father, or at any rate did keep him in check. When Bahmetyev noticed that my father’s ill-humour was beyond bounds, he would put on his hat and say with a military scrape: ‘Good-bye—you are ill and stupid to-day; I meant to stay to dinner but I cannot endure sour faces at table! _Gehorsamer diener!_’ ... and my father by way of explanation would say to me: ‘What a lively impresario. N. N. still is! Thank God, he’s a healthy man and cannot understand a suffering Job like me; there are twenty degrees of frost, but he dashes here all the way from Pokrovka in his sledge as though it were nothing ... while I thank the Creator every morning that I wake up alive, that I am still breathing. Oh ... oh ... ough ...! it’s a true proverb; the well-fed don’t understand the hungry!’ This was the utmost condescension that could be expected from him.

From time to time there were family dinners at which the Senator, the Golohvastovs and others were present, and these dinners were not casually given, nor for the sake of any pleasure to be derived from them, but were due to profound considerations of economy and diplomacy. Thus on the 20th February, the Senator’s name-day, we gave a dinner in his honour, while on the 24th June, my father’s name-day, a dinner was given at the Senator’s, an arrangement which, besides setting a moral example of brotherly love, saved each of them from giving a much bigger dinner at home.

Then there were various _habitués_; Sonnenberg would appear _ex officio_, and having just before dinner swallowed a glass of vodka and a Reval sardine at home he would refuse a minute glass of some specially flavoured vodka; sometimes my last French tutor, a miserly old fellow with an insolent face, fond of talking scandal, would come. Monsieur Thirié so often made mistakes, pouring wine into his tumbler instead of beer and drinking it off apologetically, that at last my father said to him, ‘The _vin de Graves_ stands on your right side, so you won’t make a mistake again,’ and Thirié, stuffing a huge pinch of snuff into his broad nose that turned up on one side, scattered the snuff on his plate.

Among these visitors one was an extremely funny individual. A little bald old man, invariably dressed in a short and narrow swallow-tail coat, and in a waistcoat that ended precisely where the waistcoat now begins, and carrying a thin little cane, he was in his whole figure the embodiment of a period twenty years earlier, in 1830 of 1810 and in 1840 of 1820. Dmitri Ivanovitch Pimenov, a civil councillor by grade, was one of the superintendents of the Sheremetyevsky Almshouse, and was, moreover, a literary man. Scantily endowed by nature and brought up on the sentimentalism of Karamzin, on Marmontel[63] and Marivaux,[64] Pimenov might be said to take a position midway between Shalikov and V. Panaev.[65] The Voltaire of this honourable phalanx was the head of the secret police under Alexander, Yakov Ivanovitch de Sanglain; its promising young man, Pimen Arapov.[66] They were all in close relation with the universal patriarch Ivan Ivanovitch Dmitriev;[67] he had no rivals, but there was Vassily Lvovitch Pushkin.[68] Pimenov went every Thursday to the ancient Dmitriev to discuss beauties of style and the deterioration of the language of to-day in his house in Sadovy Street. Pimenov himself had tried the slippery career of Russian literature; at first he had edited the _Thoughts of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld_, then he wrote a treatise on feminine beauty and charm. Of this treatise, which I have not taken in my hand since I was sixteen, I remember only long comparisons in the style in which Plutarch compares his heroes; of the fair with the dark, ‘though a fair woman is this and that and the other, on the other hand a dark woman is this and that and the other....’ Pimenov’s chief peculiarity lay not in his having edited books which no one ever read, but in the fact that if he began laughing he could not stop, and his mirth would grow into a regular fit of hysterics with sudden outbursts and hollow peals of laughter. He knew this, and so, when he saw something laughable coming, began to take measures; brought out a pocket-handkerchief, looked at his watch, buttoned up his coat, hid his face in his hands, and when the crisis came, stood up, turned to the wall, leaned against it and writhed in agony for half an hour or more, then, crimson and exhausted by the paroxysm, he would sit down mopping the perspiration from his bald head, though the fit would seize him again long afterwards. Of course my father had not the faintest respect for him: he was gentle, kind, awkward, a literary man and poor, and therefore not worth considering on any ground: but he was fully aware of his convulsive risibility. On the strength of it he would make him laugh until every one else in the room was, under his influence, also moved to a sort of unnatural laughter. The instigator of our mirth would look at us, smiling innocently, as a man looks at a crowd of noisy puppies.

Sometimes my father played dreadful tricks on the unfortunate amateur of feminine charm and beauty. ‘Colonel So-and-so,’ the servant would announce.

‘Ask him in,’ my father would say, and turning to Pimenov he would add: ‘Please be on your guard when he is here, Dmitri Ivanovitch; he has an unfortunate tic and when he talks he makes a strange sound as though he had a chronic hiccup.’ Thereupon he would give a perfect imitation of the Colonel. ‘I know you are ready to laugh, please restrain yourself.’

This was enough. At the second word the Colonel uttered, Pimenov would take out his handkerchief, make a parasol of his hands, and at last jump up.

The Colonel would look at him in amazement, while my father would say to me with great composure: ‘What is the matter with Dmitri Ivanovitch? _Il est malade_, he has spasms; tell them to make haste and get him a glass of cold water and give him eau-de-Cologne.’ On such occasions Pimenov would snatch up his hat and go, laughing, until he had reached the Arbatsky Gates, halting at the cross-roads and leaning against lamp-posts.

For several years he came regularly every alternate Sunday to dine with us, and his punctuality in coming and his unpunctuality if he missed a Sunday angered my father equally and impelled him to worry Pimenov. Yet the good-natured man went on coming, and coming on foot from the Red Gate to old Konyushenny Street till he died, and not at all funnily. After ailing for a long time, the solitary old bachelor, as he lay dying, saw his housekeeper carry off all his things, his clothes, even the linen from his bed, leaving him entirely uncared for.

But the real _souffre-douleur_ at dinner were various old women, the poor and casual dependents of Princess Hovansky, my father’s sister. For the sake of a change, and also partly to find out how everything was going on in our house, whether there were quarrels in the family, whether the cook had had a fight with his wife, and whether the master had found out that Palashka or Ulyasha were about to bring an addition to the household, they would sometimes come on holidays to spend a whole day. It must be noted that these widows had forty or fifty years ago, before they were married, been attached to the household of my father’s aunt, old Princess Meshtchersky, and afterwards to that of her niece, and had known my father since those days; that in this interval between their dependence in their youth and their return in old age, they had spent some twenty years quarrelling with their husbands, keeping them from drink, looking after them when they were paralysed, and escorting them to the cemetery. Some had been trailing from one place to another in Bessarabia with a garrison officer and a crowd of children, others had spent years with a criminal charge hanging over their husbands, and all these experiences of life had left upon them the traces of government offices and provincial towns; a dread of the powerful of this earth, a cringing spirit and a sort of dull-witted bigotry.

Amazing scenes took place with them.

‘Why is this, Anna Yakimovna; are you ill that you don’t eat anything?’ my father would ask. Huddling herself together the widow of some overseer in Kremenchug, a wretched old woman with a worn and faded face, who always smelt strongly of some plaster, would answer with cringing eyes and deprecating fingers: ‘Forgive me, Ivan Alexeyevitch, sir, I am really ashamed, but there, it is my old-fashioned ways, sir. Ha, ha, ha, it’s the Fast of the Assumption now.’

‘Oh, how tiresome! You are always so devout! It’s not what goes into the mouth, my good woman, that defiles, but what comes out of it; whether you eat one thing or another, it all goes the same way; now what comes out of the mouth, you must watch over ... your judgments of your neighbours. Come, you had better dine at home on such days, or we shall have a Turk coming next asking for pilau; I don’t keep a restaurant _à la carte_.’

The frightened old woman, who had intended to ask for some dish made of flour or cereals, would fall upon the kvass and salad, making a great show of eating a great deal.

But it is noteworthy that she, or any of the others, had only to eat meat during a fast for my father, though he never touched Lenten dishes himself, to say, shaking his head mournfully: ‘I should not have thought it was right for you, Anna Yakimovna, to forsake the habits of your forefathers for the last few years of your life. I sin and eat meat, owing to my many infirmities; but you, thank God, have kept the fasts all your life and suddenly at your age ... what an example for _them_,’ and he motioned towards the servants. And the poor old woman had to attack the kvass and the salad again.

These scenes made me very indignant; sometimes I was so bold as to intervene and remind him of the contrary opinion he had expressed. Then my father would rise from his seat, take off his velvet cap by the tassel, and, holding it in the air, thank me for the lesson and beg pardon for his forgetfulness, and then would say to the old lady: ‘It’s a terrible age! It’s no wonder you eat meat in the fast, since children teach their parents! What are we coming to? It’s dreadful to think of it! Luckily you and I won’t live to see it.’

After dinner my father lay down to rest for an hour and a half. The servants at once dispersed to beer-shops and eating-houses. At seven o’clock tea was served; then sometimes some one would come in, the Senator more often than any one; it was a time of leisure for all of us. The Senator usually brought various items of news and told them eagerly. My father affected complete inattention as he listened to him: he assumed a serious face, when his brother had expected him to be dying of laughter, and would cross-question him as though he had not heard the point, when the Senator had been describing something striking.

The Senator came in for it in a very different way when he contradicted or was not of the same opinion as his younger brother (which rarely happened, however), and sometimes, indeed, when he did not contradict, if my father was particularly ill-humoured. In these tragi-comic scenes, what was funniest was the Senator’s genuine heat and my father’s affected artificial coolness.

‘Well, you are ill to-day,’ the Senator would say impatiently, and he would snatch his hat and rush off. Once in his vexation he could not open the door and kicked it with all his might, saying ‘the confounded door!’

My father went up, coolly opened the door inwards, and in a perfectly composed voice observed: ‘The door does its duty, it opens inwards, and you try to open it outwards, and are cross with it.’ It may not be out of place to mention that the Senator was two years older than my father and addressed him in the second person singular, while the latter as the younger brother used the plural form, ‘you.’

After the Senator had gone, my father would retire to his bedroom, would every day inquire whether the gates were closed, would receive an answer in the affirmative, would express doubts on the subject but do nothing to make certain. Then began a lengthy routine of washings, fomentations, and medicines; his valet made ready on a little table by the bed a perfect arsenal of different objects—medicine-bottles, night-lights, pill-boxes. The old man as a rule read for an hour Bourienne’s _Mémorial de Sainte Helène_ and other memoirs; then came the night.

Such was our household when I left it in 1834, so I found it in 1840, and so it continued until his death in 1846.

At thirty when I returned from exile I realised that my father had been right in many things, that he had unhappily a distressingly good understanding of men. But it was not my fault that he preached even what was true in a way so revolting to a youthful heart. His mind chilled by a long life in a circle of depraved men put him on his guard against every one, and his callous heart did not crave for reconciliation, and so he remained in a hostile attitude to every one on earth.

I found him in 1839, and still more markedly in 1842, weak and really ill. The Senator was dead, the desolation about him was greater than ever and he even had a different valet; but he himself was just the same, only his physical powers were changed, there was the same spiteful intelligence, the same tenacious memory, he still worried every one over trifles, and Sonnenberg, still unchanged, camped out in the old house as before and carried out commissions.

Only then I appreciated all the desolateness of his life; I looked with an aching heart at the mournful significance of this lonely abandoned existence, dying out in the arid, barren, stony wilderness which he had created about himself, but which it was not in his power to change; he knew that, he saw death approaching, and, overcoming weakness and infirmity, he jealously and obstinately controlled himself. I was dreadfully sorry for the old man, but I could do nothing, he was unapproachable.

... Sometimes I passed softly by his study where, sitting in a rough, uncomfortable, deep armchair, surrounded by his dogs, he would all alone play with my three-year-old boy. It seemed as though the clenched hands and stiffened nerves of the old man relaxed at the sight of the child, and he found rest from the incessant agitation, conflict, and vexation in which he had kept himself, as his dying hand touched the cradle.