(Dostoevsky:) letters and reminiscences

DOSTOEVSKY:
LETTERS AND REMINISCENCE

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DOSTOEVSKY:

LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY

S. S. KOTELIANSKY
AND J. MIDDLETON MURRY

С V>av>V try W^Tf^cbtAR M\s>'ma^,.. )

LONDON

CHATTO & WINDUS

1923

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

T. AND A. CONSTABLE LTD.

EDINBURGH

*

ALL RIGHTS

RESERVED

CONTENTS

LETTER FROM F. M. DOSTOEVSKY TO HIS

BROTHER page 1

DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 15

REMINISCENCES OF DOSTOEVSKY BY HIS WIFE 97

DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS TO HIS WIFE ON THE

POUSHKIN CELEBRATIONS 155

DOSTOEVSKY AND POBIEDONOSZEV : SOME

LETTERS 237

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 267

LETTER FROM F. M. DOSTOEVSKY
TO HIS BROTHER

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER

The following is the full text of Dostoevsky 's letter,
written on the day he was sentenced to death,
December 22, 1849, to his brother Mihail. Only the
first paragraph of the letter has been published before.
It is now published in full for the first time. It is a
document of exceptional importance.

The original letter cannot now be traced. But a
copy of it, made by Madame Dostoevsky, is now kept
in the Central Archives. It has now been made public.

Mihail Dostoevsky was, after all, allowed to see
Fiodor before his departure for Siberia. In his
Reminiscences (1881), A. P. Miliukov relates that Fiodor
said to his brother at parting :

' During these three months I have gone through
much ; I mean, I have gone through much in
myself; and now there are the things I am going
to see and go through. There will be much to be
written.'

The Peter and Paul Fortress,
December 22, 1849.

MlHAIL MlHAILOVICH DOSTOEVSKY,

Nevsky Prospect, opposite Gryazny Street,
in the house of Neslind.

Brother, my precious friend ! all is settled ! I
am sentenced to four years' hard labour in the
fortress (I believe, of Orenburg) and after that to
serve as a private. To-day, the 22nd of December,
we were taken to the Semionov Drill Ground.
There the sentence of death was read to all of us, we
were told to kiss the Cross, our swords were broken
over our heads, and our last toilet was made (white
shirts). Then three were tied to the pillar for
execution. I was the sixth. Three at a time were
called out ; consequently, I was in the second batch
and no more than a minute was left me to live.
I remembered you, brother, and all yours ; during
the last minute you, you alone, were in my mind,
only then I realised how I love you, dear brother
mine ! I also managed to embrace Plescheyev and
Durov who stood close to me and to say good-bye

6 DOSTOEVSKY

to them. Finally the retreat was sounded, and
those tied to the pillar were led back, and it was
announced to us that His Imperial Majesty granted
us our lives. Then followed the present sentences.
Palm alone has been pardoned, and returns with
his old rank to the army.

I was just told, dear brother, that to-day or
to-morrow we are to be sent off. I asked to see you.
But I was told that this was impossible ; I may
only write you this letter : make haste and give
me a reply as soon as you can. I am afraid that
you may somehow have got to know of our death-
sentence. From the windows of the prison-van,
when we were taken to the Semionov Drill Ground,
I saw a multitude of people ; perhaps the news
reached you, and you suffered for me. Now you
will be easier on my account. Brother ! I have
not become downhearted or low-spirited. Life is
everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is
outside us. There will be people near me, and to
be a man among people and remain a man for ever,
not to be downhearted nor to fall in whatever
misfortunes may befall me — this is life ; this is
the task of life. I have realised this. This idea
has entered into my flesh and into my blood. Yes,
it 's true ! The head which was creating, living
with the highest life of art, which had realised and
grown used to the highest needs of the spirit, that

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER 7

head has already been cut off from my shoulders.
There remain the memory and the images created
but not yet incarnated by me. They will lacerate
me, it is true ! But there remains in me my heart
and the same flesh and blood which can also love,
and suffer, and desire, and remember, and this,
after all, is life. On voit le soleil ! Now, good-bye,
brother ! Don't grieve for me !

Now about material things : my books (I have
the Bible still) and several sheets of my manu-
script, the rough plan of the play and the novel
(and the finished story A Child's Tale) have been
taken away from me, and in all probability will
be got by you. I also leave my overcoat and old
clothes, if you send to fetch them. Now, brother,
I may perhaps have to march a long distance.
Money is needed. My dear brother, when you
receive this letter, and if there is any possibility of
getting some money, send it me at once. Money I
need now more than air (for one particular purpose).
Send me also a few lines. Then if the money from
Moscow comes, — remember me and do not desert
me. Well, that is all ! I have debts,1 but what
can I do ?

Kiss your wife and children. Remind them of
me continually ; see that they do not forget me.

1 Money owed by Dostoevsky to Krajevsky was paid by A

Child's Talc.

8 DOSTOEVSKY

Perhaps, we shall yet meet some time ! Brother,
take care of yourself and of your family, live
quietly and carefully. Think of the future of yoi
children. . . . Live positively. There has nevei
yet been working in me such a healthy abundance
of spiritual life as now. But will my body endure ?
I do not know. I am going away sick, I suffer
from scrofula. But never mind ! Brother, I have
already gone through so much in life that now
hardly anything can frighten me. Let come what
may ! At the first opportunity I shall let you know
about myself. Give the Maikovs my farewell and
last greetings. Tell them that I thank them all
for their constant interest in my fate. Say a few
words for me, as warm as possible, as your heart
will prompt you, to Eugenia Petrovna.1 I wish
her much happiness, and shall ever remember her
with grateful respect. Press the hands of Nikolay
Apollonovich 2 and Apollon Maikov, and also of all
the others. Find Yanovsky. Press his hand,
thank him. Finally, press the hands of all who
have not forgotten me. And those who have
forgotten me — remember me to them also. Kiss
our brother Kolya. Write a letter to our brother
Andrey and let him know about me. Write also

1 Eugenia Petrovna was the mother of the poet Apollon Maikov,
Dostoevsky'a friend.

2 N. A. Maikov, the father of A. N. Maikov.

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER 9

to Uncle and Aunt. This I ask you in my own
name, and greet them for me. Write to our sisters :
I wish them happiness.

And maybe, we shall meet again some time,
brother ! Take care of yourself, go on living, for
the love of God, until we meet. Perhaps some
time we shall embrace each other and recall our
youth, our golden time that was, our youth
and our hopes, which at this very instant I am
tearing out from my heart with my blood, to bury
them.

Can it indeed be that I shall never take a pen
into my hands ? I think that after the four years
there may be a possibility. I shall send you every-
thing that I may write, if I write anything, my
God ! How many imaginations, lived through by
me, created by me anew, will perish, will be ex-
tinguished in my brain or will be spilt as poison in
my blood ! Yes, if I am not allowed to write, I
shall perish. Better fifteen years of prison with a
pen in my hands !

Write to me more often, write more details,
more, more facts. In every letter write about all
kinds of family details, of trifles, don't forget.
This will give me hope and life. If you knew
how your letters revived me here in the fortress.
These last two months and a half, when it was
forbidden to write or receive a letter, have been

10 DOSTOEVSKY

very hard on me. I was ill. The fact that you
did not send me money now and then worried me
on your account ; it meant you yourself were in
great need ! Kiss the children once again ; their
lovely little faces do not leave my mind. Ah,
that they may be happy ! Be happy yourself too,
brother, be happy !

But do not grieve, for the love of God, do not
grieve for me ! Do believe that I am not down-
hearted, do remember that hope has not deserted
me. In four years there will be a mitigation of
my fate. I shall be a private soldier, — no longer
a prisoner, and remember that some time I shall
embrace you. I was to-day in the grip of death for
three-quarters of an hour ; I have lived it through
with that idea ; I was at the last instant and now
I live again !

If any one has bad memories of me, if I have
quarrelled with any one, if I have created in
any one an unpleasant impression — tell them they
should forget it, if you manage to meet them. There
is no gall or spite in my soul ; I should dearly love
to embrace any one of my former friends at this
moment. It is a comfort, I experienced it to-day
when saying good-bye to my dear ones before death.
I thought at that moment that the news of the
execution would kill you. But now be easy, I am
still alive and shall live in the future with the

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER 11

thought that some time I shall embrace you. Only
this is now in my mind.

What are you doing ? What have you been
thinking to-day ? Do you know about us ? How
cold it was to-day !

Ah, if only my letter reaches you soon. Other-
wise I shall be for four months without news of
you. I saw the envelopes in which you sent money
during the last two months ; the address was
written in your hand, and I was glad that you were
well.

When I look back at the past and think how
much time has been wasted in vain, how much
time was lost in delusions, in errors, in idleness, in
ignorance of how to live, how I did not value time,
how often I sinned against my heart and spirit,
— my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness,
each minute might have been an age of happiness.
Si jeunesse savait ! Now, changing my life, I am
being reborn into a new form. Brother ! I swear
to you that I shall not lose hope, and shall preserve
my spirit and heart in purity. I shall be reborn
to a better thing. That is my whole hope, my whole
comfort !

The life in prison has already sufficiently killed
in me the demands of the flesh which were not
wholly pure ; I took little heed of myself before.
Now privations are nothing to me, and, therefore,

12 DOSTOEVSKY

do not fear that any material hardship will kill me.
This cannot be ! Ah ! To have health !

Good-bye, good-bye, my brother ! When shall
I write you again ? You will receive from me as
detailed an account as possible of my journey.
If I can only preserve my health, then everything
will be right !

Well, good-bye, good-bye, brother ! I embrace
you closely, I kiss you closely. Remember me
without pain in your heart. Do not grieve, I pray
you, do not grieve for me ! In the next letter I
shall tell you how I go on. Remember then what
I have told you : plan out your life, do not
waste it, arrange your destiny, think of your
children. Oh, to see you, to see you ! Good-bye !
Now I tear myself away from everything that was
dear ; it is painful to leave it ! It is painful to
break oneself in two, to cut the heart in two.
Good-bye ! Good-bye ! But I shall see you, I
am convinced — I hope ; do not change, love me,
do not let your memory grow cold, and the thought
of your love will be the best part of my life. Good-
bye, good-bye, once more ! Good-bye to all !
— Your brother Fiodor Dostoevsky.

Dec. 22, 1849.

At my arrest several books were taken away
from me. Only two of them were prohibited books.

LETTER TO HIS BROTHER 13

Won't you get the rest for yourself ? But there is
this request : one of the books was The Work of
Valerian Maikov : his critical essays — Eugenia
Petrovna's copy. It was her treasure, and she
lent it me. At my arrest I asked the police officer
to return that book to her, and gave him the
address. I do not know if he returned it to her.
Make enquiries ! I do not want to take this memory
away from her. Good-bye, good-bye, once more !
— Your F. Dostoevsky.

On the margins :

I do not know if I shall have to march or go on
horses. I believe I shall go on horses. Perhaps !

Once again press Emily Fiodorovna's hand, kiss
the little ones. Remember me to Krayevsky :
perhaps . . .

Write me more particularly about your arrest,
confinement, and liberation.

F. M. DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS
TO A. N. MAIKOV

i§

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV

The eight hitherto unpublished letters written by
F. M. Dostoevsky to A. N. Maikov are taken from the
originals kept in the Poushkin Department of the
Russian Academy of Sciences in Petersburg. These
letters are preserved there, together with Dostoevsky 's
other letters to Maikov which have already been
published.

The letters here published are of great interest,
chiefly owing to their outspoken tone, but also as
containing many facts bearing on Dostoevsky 's life
abroad during the period 1867-1871.

Maikov was a great friend of Dostoevsky 's, and their
friendship, which dated from before 1848, was the
greater because of the affinity of their political views.

Owing to that affinity ' the friends understood each
other from their letters, just as well as by personal
contact.' That is why the letters have a special
significance. Furthermore, they contain Dostoevsky 's
most intimate convictions and utterances about Russia
and the Russian people, his prognostications of the
future destinies of Russia, and his opinions about the
' disintegrated ' West.

These letters also tell the history of Dostoevsky 's
creation of The Idiot, and the author's own opinion of
that work ; they afford a clear and concise explanation
of the idea of The Devils (called The Possessed in the

В

18 DOSTOEVSKY

English translation) ; they contain Dostoevsky's
account of the psychology of his creative activity ;
they also include his literary judgments and opinions
of certain writers, such as Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev,
Schedrin, and Danilevsky.

To A. N. Maikov

January 12th, 1868.
Geneva, December dlstf 1867t

My dear and good friend, Apollon Nicolayevich,
the time has come, at last, when I can write you a
couple of pages ! What have you thought of me ?
That I have forgotten you ? I know you won't
think that. Believe me : I have not had a single
hour of time ; I mean literally. I have forgotten
all. What is my poor Pasha 1 doing ; to whom I
have sent no money now for two months ? (I
have not had, literally, a farthing to send him !)
I write to you and shall describe everything, and
shall await your answer with morbid impatience.
Being in the dark is killing me.

And as for me, this is my story : / worked and
was tortured. You know what it means to com-
pose ? No, thank God, you do not know ! I
believe you have never written to order, by the
yard, and have never experienced that hellish
torture. — -Having received in advance from the

* Dostoevsky's stepson, Pavel Alexandrovich Isayev, the son of hie
first wife by her first marriage.

19

20 DOSTOEVSKY

Russky Viesinik so much money (Horror! 4500
roubles), I fully hoped in the beginning of the year
that poesy would not desert me, that the poetical
idea would flash out and develop artistically towards
the end of the year, and that I should succeed
in satisfying every one. Moreover, this seemed to
me the more likely inasmuch as many creative
ideas are always flashing through my brain and
my soul, and being conceived. But then these
are only flashes, and they need a complete realisa-
tion, which invariably comes unexpectedly and all
of a sudden. It is impossible, however, to calcu-
late when it is going to come. Only afterwards
when one has received a complete image in one's
heart can one start artistic composition. And
then one may even calculate without mistake.
Well : all through the summer and all through the
autumn I selected various ideas (some of them most
ingenious), but my experience enabled me always
to feel beforehand the falsity, difficulty, or ephemer-
ality of this or that idea. At last I fixed on one
and began working, I wrote a great deal ; but on
the 4th of December (new style) I threw it all to
the devil. I assure you that the novel might have
been tolerable ; but I got incredibly sick of it just
because it was tolerable, and not positively good.
I did not want that. Well, what was I to do ?
The 4th of December ! And meanwhile the con-

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 21

ditions of our existence can be described as
follows.

Did I tell you, I don't remember (indeed, I re-
member nothing), that, finally, when all my means
had come to an end, I wrote to Katkov x asking
him to send me one hundred roubles a month ?
I believe I did tell you. He agreed and began
sending punctually. But in my letter to Katkov,
thanking him, I confirmed positively, on my honour,
the assurance I had given him that he should have
the novel, and that in December I would send a
considerable part of it to the office. (I promised
the more readily, because the writing had gone
well and so much had been written !) After that
I wrote to him saying that my expenses were extra-
ordinary and asking whether he could send me out
of the agreed sum (500 roubles) one instalment of
200 instead of 100 (for December). His consent
and the money came in December, just at the
moment when I had destroyed the novel. What
was I to do ? All my hopes were shattered. (I
had realised at last that all my real hopes are set
on my work and writing novels, that, were I to
write a decent novel, I could pay off my debt
to the Editor, and to you, send a biggish sum to
Pasha and to Emily Fiodorovna,2 and myself be

1 Editor and publisher of the monthly review Russkp Viestnik.

2 The widow of Dostoevsky's brother, Mihail Mihailovich.

22 DOSTOEVSKY

able to live. Were I, however, to write a really
good novel, — I could sell the book-rights and manage
to get some money, pay half or two-thirds of my
debts and return to Petersburg.) But everything
went smash. On receiving the 200 roubles from
Katkov, I confirmed my promise that the novel
would arrive without fail in time for the January
number ; I regretted that theirs* part would reach
the editorial office late. But I promised it without
fail for January 1st (old style), and I begged him
not to bring out the January number of the Russky
Viestnik without my novel (as the review never
comes out before the middle of the month).

After that (since all my future turned on this) I
began tormenting myself with thinking out a new
novel. The old one I would not go on with for the
world. I could not. I thought from the 4th till
the 18th December (old style) inclusive. On the
average, I fancy I turned out six plans (at least
six) every day. My head became a mill. How it
was I didn't go off my head, I don't understand.
At last on December 18th I sat down to write the
new novel ; on the 5th January (new style) I sent
off to the Editor five chapters of Part I (about
five printed sheets) with a letter in which I promised
to send the remaining two chapters of Part I on
January 10th (new style). Yesterday, the 11th,
I despatched those two chapters and so have de-

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 23

livered the whole of Part I, — about six or six and a
half printed sheets.

The first parcel they ought to have received
before December 30th (old style), and the second
they will get by January 4th ; consequently, if
they like they can still publish Part I in the
January number. Part II (of which of course I
have not yet written a line) I gave my word to
send to the Editor by February 1st (old style),
punctually and unfailingly.

Do understand, my friend ; how could I have
thought of writing letters to any one, and there is
the further question, what could I have written
about ? And therefore, like the humane man you
are, understand, and, as a friend, forgive me my
enforced silence. Besides, the time itself was a very
hard one.

Now about the novel, so as to make an end of
that. In the main I myself cannot tell what the
thing I sent off is like. But as far as I can form an
opinion — it is not very ship-shape and not at all
effective. I have long been troubled by a certain
idea, but I have been afraid to make a novel of it ;
for the idea is too difficult, and I am not ready for
it, although the idea is perfectly alluring and I love
it. That idea is — to depict a thoroughly good man.
In my opinion, there can be nothing more difficult
than this, above all in our time. Certainly you will

24 DOSTOEVSKY

absolutely agree with this. At one time this
assumed a partial creative form ; but only a partial
one, when a complete one was needed. My desper-
ate position alone compelled me to make use of
this abortive idea. I took my chance as at roulette :
4 Perhaps the idea will develop under the pen ! '
That is unpardonable.

On the whole the plan has been created. Details
occur in the subsequent development, which tempt
me very much and keep up the ardour in me.
But the whole ? But the hero ? For the whole
turns on the figure of the hero. So it has posited
itself. I am obliged to posit a figure. Will it
develop under the pen ? And imagine what horrors
presented themselves : it turned out that besides
the hero there was also a heroine, consequently
two heroes ! And apart from these heroes there
are two more characters — absolutely front-rank
characters — that is to say, nearly heroes. (Sub-
sidiary characters, to whom I am greatly in debt —
a great multitude ; besides, the novel is in eight
parts.) Out of the four heroes — two are firmly
outlined in my soul, one is not yet outlined at all,
and the fourth, the principal, the first — is extra-
ordinarily faint. Perhaps in my heart he dwells
firmly enough ; but — he is terribly difficult. At
any rate I should need twice as much time (this is a
minimum) in order to write it.

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 25

The first part, in my opinion, is weak. But it
seems to me there is still hope for it : the hope is
in this, that nothing is yet compromised and that
the subsequent parts are capable of satisfactory
development. (At least I hope they are !) Part I
is, essentially, a mere introduction. One thing is
necessary : that it should arouse a certain curiosity
about what is going to follow. But of this I
positively can't judge. I have one reader only —
Anna Gregorevna [Dostoevsky's wife] ; she likes
it very much ; but she is no judge in my business.

In Part II everything must be definitely posited
(but still far from being explained). Then there
will be one scene (one of the vital ones), but how is
it going to turn out ? Yet I have it written in the
rough, and well.

On the whole all this is still in the future ; but
from you I expect a strict judgment. Part II
will decide everything : it is the most difficult ;
but write to me also about the first part (although
I know in my heart that it is not good, write to me
nevertheless). Besides, I implore you, let me know
immediately the Russky Viestnik is out — whether
my novel is published there ? I am still terribly
afraid it may have arrived too late. And that it
should appear in January is to me of the utmost
necessity. Let me know, for the love of God, let
me know instantly, even if you send only two lines.

26 DOSTOEVSKY

When I sent Katkov Part I, I told him almost
exactly the same as I have told you about my
novel. The novel is called The Idiot, Yet no man
can judge himself, especially when he is hot from
the work. Perhaps Part I also is not so bad.
If I have not developed the principal character,
this was necessary by the laws of my whole scheme.
That is why I await your opinion with such eager
impatience. But enough about the novel. All
the work I have done since the 18th of December
has put me into such a fever that I can neither
think nor speak of anything else. Now I '11 say a
few words about our life here from the time I left
off writing to you.

My life certainly is work. But we have this to
the good that, thanks to the monthly receipt of a
hundred roubles, we are in want of nothing. Anna
Gregorevna and I live modestly, but quite com-
fortably. But expenses are impending and a small
sum, if only a very small one, must always be kept
in reserve. In a month and a half Anna Gregorevna
(who bears up excellently) is going to make me a
father. You realise what expenses are impending.
But during that period I shall ask for 200 roubles
per month, and the Editor will send it. I have
already sent him the equivalent of nearly a thousand
roubles. And by February 5th I shall have sent
the equivalent of another 1000 (and perhaps better

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 27

stuff, more solid, more effective) ; consequently I
am entitled to ask for a somewhat larger sum.
By the way, my dear fellow, but for the destruc-
tion of the novel, I could certainly have paid you
what you lent me by the New Year. But now I
ask you to wait another couple of months ; for I
can't ask the Editor for a considerable sum until
I have delivered Part II. But then I will pay you
without fail. But my chief, but my most terrible
obsession is the thought of what is happening to
Pasha ? My heart bleeds and the thought of him,
added to all my literary torments in December, drove
me simply to despair ! What is he doing ? In
November and in December I sent him no money ;
but even before November he had left off writing
to me. With the last allowance I made to him
(60 roubles from Katkov), sent through you, I
wrote him a long letter, and also asked him to
make an inquiry, very important to me, and quite
easy for him. I implored him to answer me. Not
a single line from him. For the love of God, do
give me some news of him. Does he hate me,
does he ? What for, why ? Is it because I strained
my resources to the very utmost to send him money
and wait with burning impatience for the moment
when I can send him more ? It is impossible that
he should hate me. I put it all down not to his
heart, but to his lightmindedness and to his in-

28 DOSTOEVSKY

capacity to make up his mind even to write a letter,
just as he could not make up his mind to learn even
the multiplication table till he was twenty.

He lived in the same house with Emily Fiodor-
ovna and got into debt in spite of the fact that
up to November I was sending him quite enough.
It was through you that I paid that debt to Emily
Fiodorovna. But how were they all in November
and December ? They themselves are in want.
Fedya l works, but he can't keep them all, and I
can't send any money for a month (through you,
of course ; I implore you, my dear friend, it is to
you that the money from Katkov will come. Don't
disdain my request and don't be annoyed with
them. They are poor. And I will be your servant
all my life long, I will prove to you how much I
value what you have done for me). To-morrow I
shall write to Fedya. Are they still living in
Alonkin's house ? I expressly asked Pasha to
send me Alonkin's Christian name and his father's
name (I forgot it) so that I could write to him.
Alonkin trusts me, but he will turn them out of
the flat, if he does not hear from me ; since I had
made myself responsible to him for it. Neither
from Pasha, nor from Emily Fiodorovna have I
had an answer about the man's Christian name and
his father's name. And how can I write a letter to

1 Fiodor — Bon of Mihail Mihailovich, Dostoeveky's brother.

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 29

Alonkin without that ? He is a merchant, he will
be offended.

But perhaps I may be able to send them money
before ; although I am in awful need of money in
expectation of my wife's confinement. Although
we rub along without denying ourselves the prime
necessities, yet our things are constantly being
pawned. Every time I receive money I redeem
them ; but towards the end of the month we pawn
them again. Anna Gregorevna is my true helper
and comforter. Her love to me is boundless ;
although there is a great deal of difference in our
characters. (She sends her best greetings to you
and to Anna Ivanovna [Maikov's wife]. She loves
you awfully because you value her mother, whom
she adores. She values you both very highly, you
and Anna Ivanovna, and esteems you deeply, with
sincere, with the sincerest feeling.)

Above all we have suffered real discomfort in
Geneva from the cold. Oh if you only knew, what
a stupid, dull, insignificant, savage people it is !
It is not enough to travel through as a tourist. No,
try to live there for some time ! But I can't de-
scribe to you now even briefly my impressions : I
have accumulated too many. Bourgeois life in
this vile republic has reached the nee plus ultra.
In the administration, and all through the whole
of Switzerland — there are parties and continuous

30 DOSTOEVSKY

squabbles, pauperism, terrible mediocrity in every-
thing. A workman here is not worth the little
finger of a workman of ours. It is ridiculous to
see and to hear it all. The customs are savage ;
oh, if you only knew what they consider good and
bad here. Their inferiority of development : the
drunkenness, the thieving, the paltry swindling,
that have become the rule in their commerce !
Yet they have some good traits which after all
place them immeasurably above the Germans.
(In Germany I was above all struck by the stupidity
of the people : they are infinitely stupid, they are
immeasurably stupid.) Yet with us — even Nicolay
Nicolayevich Strahov,1 a man of high intellect,
even he does not want to understand the truth :
1 The Germans,' he says, ' have invented gun-
powder.' But it is their life that settled it for
them ! And we at that very time were forming
ourselves into a great nation, we checked Asia for
ever, we bore an infinity of sufferings, we managed
to endure it all, we did not lose our Russian idea,
which will renew the world, but we strengthened
it ; finally, we endured the German, and yet after
all our people is immeasurably higher, nobler,
more honest, more naive, abler ; full of a different
idea, the highest Christian idea, which is not even
understood by Europe with her moribund Catholicism

1 Dostoevsky's friend and biographer.

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 31

and her stupidly self-contradictory Lutheranism.
But I shan't go on about that ! But it is so diffi-
cult for me to live without Russia, I have such a
yearning for the country that I am positively
wretched ! I read the Moscowskya Viedomosti and
Golos, every number to the very last letter ! Good
luck to the Golos for its new policy. I could say
much, a great deal, to you, my friend ; and what
a mass of things have accumulated ! But perhaps
this year I shall embrace you. But I await your
letters without fail. For the love of God, do write,
my dear fellow. In my gloomy and tedious isola-
tion— this is my sole comfort. Anna Gregorevna
finds herself happy because she is with me. But I
need you also, I need also my country.

In Switzerland there are still enough forests,
there are still on its mountains incomparably more
forests than there are in other countries of Europe,
although they are diminishing terribly with each
year. And now imagine : five months in the year
there is awful cold and bises (north winds breaking
through the chain of the mountains). And for
three months — almost the same winter as we have.
Everybody shivers from the cold, they don't take
off their flannels and cotton-wool (they have no
public baths — imagine now the uncleanliness to
which they are accustomed); they don't provide
themselves with winter clothes, they run about

32 DOSTOEVSKY

almost in the same clothes as in the summer
(and flannel alone is quite insufficient for such a
winter), and with all this — not a grain of under-
standing how to improve their houses ! Why,
what use is a fireplace burning coal or wood, even
if you were to keep it going all day long ? And to
keep it going all the time costs two francs a day.
And what a lot of wood is consumed ; — even then
there 's no warmth. Why, if they had only double
windows — then even with an open fireplace it
might be tolerable ! I won't ask them to introduce
stoves ; then all these forests could be saved. In
twenty- five years' time nothing will be left of them.
They live like veritable savages ! But still they
can put up with things ! In my room, even when
heated to the extreme, it is only 5° Centigrade
(five degrees of warmth) ! I sat in my overcoat,
and in that cold waited for money, pawned things
and thought out the plan of the novel — isn't it
pleasant ? They say that in Florence this winter
there were nearly 10 degrees of cold. In Mont-
pellier there were 15° Centigrade. In Geneva the
cold did not rise higher than 8° ; but still it is just
as bad, if the water in the room freezes. Now I
have lately changed my rooms, and we have now
two nice rooms, one always cold, the other warm.
Since therefore it is constantly 10° or 11° in the
warm room life is tolerable. I have written so

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 33

much, but have not managed to say anything !
That is why I don't like letters. The chief thing —
I am awaiting a letter from you. For the love of
God write as soon as you can : a letter to me, in
my present depression, will have almost the value
of a good deed. Yes, I have forgotten to ask you :
don't tell any one what I have written you about
the novel, for the time being. I don't want it to
reach the Russky Viestnik by any chance ; for I
have told them a fib, having said that I had written
a good deal in the rough and that I am now only
reshaping and copying it. I shall manage to do
it and — who knows ? — perhaps on the whole it will
turn out not a bad novel. But again about the
novel ; I tell you — I have gone mad about it.

My health is very satisfactory. I have fits only
very rarely, and now it is two and a half or three
months on end since I had any. My sincerest
greetings to your parents. — Remember me also to
Strahov when you see him. And tell him to remem-
ber me to Averkiev and Dolgomostiev, particu-
larly to Dolgomostiev. Haven't you met him ?

I embrace and kiss you. — Your true and loving

F. Dostoevsky.

My particular greetings to Anna Ivanovna.
I have had a letter from Yanovsky. He is a very
good man, at times wonderful. I love him deeply.

с

34 DOSTOEVSKY

II

To A. N. Maikov

■

Geneva, February ШК 1Ш
March, 1st

My good, precious and only friend — (all these
epithets are applicable to you and I am happy
in applying them) — don't be cross because of my
unconscionable silence. Judge me with the same
understanding and the same heart as before. My
silence was unconscionable ; but I almost literally
could not answer you — although I did try several
times. I have got stuck — my head and all my
faculties — in Part II [of The Idiot], trying to
complete it in time. I did not wish to spoil it
definitely, — too much depends on its success. But
now I don't want even success. I only want to
avoid complete failure : in the subsequent parts
I may still improve, for the novel is turning out a
long one. I have at last sent off Part II also (I
was too late, but I believe it will get there in time).
What shall I tell you ? Myself I can't say any-
thing. So much so, that I am incapable of any
opinion. I like the finale of Part II, but it is only
myself who likes it ; what will the readers say ?
As to all the rest, it is just as in Part I, i.e. I think
it flags rather. For me it would be quite enough

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 35

if only the reader read it without great boredom,
— I no longer claim any other success.

My dear friend, you promised me immediately
after reading Part I to write your opinion of it to
me here. And now I haunt the post office every
day, but there is no letter, and you have probably
had the Russky Viestnik. I draw the clear con-
clusion : the novel is weak, and since thanks to
your delicacy you are too shy and sorry to tell me
that truth to my face, you are postponing your
reply. And I need just that truth ! I long for any
opinion. Without it it is pure torture. True, you
wrote me two letters before the review was out ;
but it can't be that you, in such a matter, should
be exacting about letters ! But enough of that.
If you knew, my friend, with what happiness I
re-read your last letter again and again ! If you
only knew what my life here is like, and what the
receipt of a letter from you means to me ! I see
nobody here, I hear of nothing, and from the be-
ginning of the New Year even the newspapers
(Moscowskya Viedomosti and Golos) have not been
arriving. Anna Gregorevna and I live all by our-
selves ; but, although we live fairly harmoniously
and love one another and besides are both busy,
yet I, at least, am weary. Anna Gregorevna main-
tains perfectly sincerely (I am convinced of it)
that she is very happy. Imagine, up till now we

86 DOSTOEVSKY

have not yet been blessed, and the expected gentle-
man has not yet come into the world. I expect
him every day, because there are all the symptoms.
I expected him yesterday, on my birthday ; he
did not come. I await him to-day, but to-morrow
he is sure to come.

Anna Gregorevna is waiting reverently, loves the
coming guest boundlessly, and bears up cheerfully
and firmly ; but just recently her nerves have got
on edge and at moments dark thoughts come to
her : she is afraid she may die, etc. So that the
situation is rather anxious and troublesome. Of
money we have the very tiniest bit ; but at any
rate we are not in distress, though expenses are on
the way. Yet in that state Anna Gregorevna has
written shorthand and copied for me, and has also
managed to sew and to prepare everything that is
needed for the baby. The worst of all is that
Geneva is too bad ; a gloomy place. To-day is
Sunday ; there is nothing gloomier and nastier
than their Sunday. To move to another place now
is impossible ; owing to my wife's illness we shall
have to stay here for another five weeks, and then
I am still in the dark as to money. The coming
month will be a difficult one to me : my wife's
illness, and Part III, which although it may be
delayed, must be sent off regularly. And then
comes Part IV ; only then can I think of leaving

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 37

Geneva, towards May. It is a good thing that the
winter here has become milder. The whole of
February here was warm and bright, exactly as in
Petersburg in April, on a bright day.

I am always, incessantly, interested in every-
thing you may write to me here. In the news-
papers I am always looking for something of the
same kind, as it were for a needle in a bundle of
hay — reflecting and conjecturing. The abomina-
tion and vileness of our literature and journalism
I sense even here. And how naive all that trash
is ! The Sovremennik and the others try their
hardest with the same old Saltykovs and Eliseyevs
— and the same old stale hatred for Russia, and the
same old French Workers' Associations, and nothing
but that. And Saltykov attacking the Zemstvo —
all just as it should be. Our Liberals cannot help
being at the one and same time inveterate enemies
of Russia — conscious ones. Let anything succeed
in Russia, let there be any profit for her — and their
venom overflows. I have observed it a thousand
times. Our extreme Radical party plays exactly
the same game as the Viest [an extreme reactionary
paper], nor can it be otherwise. And the cynicism
and filthiness of all that riff-raff, — this I learn at
times from the newspapers.

The editorial office sent me No. 1 of the Russky
Viestnik. I have read it from the first page to the

88 DOSTOEVSKY

last. There is nothing of yours there — you must
have been either too late, or they keep you to adorn
the February number — and in the January number
there is Polonsky (a very fine poem), and Turgenev
— with a very weak story [The History of Lieutenant
Yergunov]. I read the review of Tolstoy's War and
Peace. How much I should like to read it all. I
have read only half. It must be a capital thing ;
though it is a pity that there are so many small
psychological details in it. There should be a wee
bit less. Yet owing to those details what a lot of
good there is in it ! — For the love of God, write me
oftener about literary matters. You mentioned
the Viestnik Europa (is it Stasyulevich's ?). It
seems to me that we have quite enough reviews
with those ideas. — Imagine : I know nothing about
the Moskva, about the Moskvich. — Your Sophia
Alexeyevna is a perfect beauty ; but a thought
flashed across me : how fine it would be, if such a
1 Sophia Alexeyevna ' could appear as an episode
in a whole poem about those times, I mean, in a
poem about the Raskolniki [a religious sect], or in a
verse-novel about those times ! Has such a design
never entered your head ? Such a poem would
produce an enormous effect. Well now, well, what
about your Slovo о Polku Igoreve — you do not say
where it is going to be published ? In the Russky
Viestnik, probably. In that case I shall read it!

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 89

You can imagine with what impatience I await it.
Apart from the reading which you have mentioned,
— have you read it anywhere in public ? Tell me all
about it. What did you read at the Krylov
anniversary, apart from what you sent me ? I read
about it in the papers ; but it is not clear.

There seems to have been lately a kind of lull in
Russia. I 've read lately only about the subscrip-
tions for the famine-stricken. Slavdom and Slav
aspirations must arouse a whole host of enemies
among Russian Liberals. When will these obsolete
and retrograde dregs be washed away ! For a
Russian Liberal can't be considered as anything
but as obsolete and retrograde. The so-called
* educated society ' of old is a motley collection of
everything that has separated itself from Russia,
that has not understood Russia and has become
Frenchified, — that is what a Russian Liberal is,
and that is why he is a reactionary. Recall the
best Liberals — recall Bielinsky : isn't he a conscious
enemy of his fatherland, isn't he a reactionary ?

Well, they can go to the devil ! Here I only
meet filthy little Poles in the cafes, in huge crowds ;
— but I enter into no relations whatsoever with them.
With the priest here [A. K. Petrov] I am not ac-
quainted. But when the child is born, I shall have
to meet him. But remember, my friend, that our
priests, I mean those abroad, are not all like the

40 DOSTOEVSKY

Wiesbaden one, of whom I spoke to you when I
left Petersburg. (Have you met him ? He is a
rare creature ; worthy, humble, with a sense of
personal dignity, of an angelic purity of heart, and
a passionate believer.) Well, God grant that the
local one turns out a good one, although he must
be spoilt by the aristocracy. Here, in Geneva
(according to the Journal des Etrangers), there is
a terrible number of Russian aristocrats ; it only
makes it the stranger that they have been wintering
not in Montreux, for instance, but in Geneva where
the climate is not good.

If I move anywhere, it will be to Italy ; but this
is still in the future, and at any rate I shall let you
know immediately so that there should be no delay
about the address. And you, for the love of Christ,
write to me — I can't say that my health is very
good. Since the spring my fits have been more
frequent. — I read your account of your having served
on a jury, and my heart thrilled with excitement.

Of our courts (from all that I have read) I have
formed this opinion : The moral nature of our
judges, and above all of our jurymen, is infinitely
higher than the European ; and crime is regarded
from a Christian point of view. Even Russian
traitors abroad agree about this. But one thing
has not yet been really settled ; in that humanity
towards the criminal there still seems to me to be

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 41

a great deal of the theoretical, Liberal, non-inde-
pendent. It does appear now and then. But judg-
ing at this distance I may be badly mistaken. At
any rate in this respect our nature is infinitely
higher than the European. And generally all our
conceptions are more moral, and our Russian aims
are higher than those of the European world. We
have a more direct and noble belief in goodness,
goodness as Christianity, and not as a bourgeois
solution of the problem of comfort. A great re-
newal is about to descend on the whole world,
through Russian thought (which, you are quite
right, is solidly welded with Orthodoxy), and this
will be achieved in less than a hundred years, —
this is my passionate belief. But in order that this
great object may be achieved, it is essential that
the political right and supremacy of the Great-
Russian race over the whole Slav world should be
definitively and incontestably consummated. (And
our little Liberals preach the division of Russia
into federal states !)

I have again a most enormous favour to ask you,
or rather two favours, and I hope for everything
from your good heart and your brotherly sympathy
to me. This is what it is about. I wrote to Katkov
when I sent him Part II, asking him for 500
roubles. It is terrible — but what can I do ? I
can't help asking. At first I had these dreams :

42 DOSTOEVSKY

(1) To write the four parts (i.e. 28-24 folios), and

(2) to write well, — and only then to approach
Katkov with my great request. But I repeat — I
can't help asking. Now, with Part II, I have
sent to the office altogether 11 J folios, — it means
approximately 1700 roubles. Altogether I owe
them 4560 roubles (oh !), it means then I still owe
them 2860 roubles, and in this state of affairs I am
asking again for 500 roubles, i.e. raising my debt
again to 2860 -{-500=3360 roubles. But there is
this to keep in view that by May 1st I shall again
deliver the equivalent of 1700, and therefore there
will still remain a debt of about 1700 roubles. I
worried terribly, when sending that request for
500 roubles. If only the novel were good ! Then
it would be more pardonable to ask. Will they
send it me, or not, — I do not know. But however,
in any case, I am telling you all about it and along
with this come my two great requests. Request
No. 1 : I asked Katkov, if he agreed to let me
have the 500 roubles, to send me 300 roubles here,
and 200 roubles to Petersburg, to you personally.
And yet, in spite of the fact that you may perhaps
receive these 200 roubles, I still remain a scoundrel
towards you and can't pay you (who are certainly
in need) not as much as a farthing ! Myself and
Anna Gregorevna are so tormented by it that at
times we speak of it at night ; but still my request

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 43

is — wait a little longer and thereby you will save
me from awful sufferings. And my sufferings con-
sist in this — request No. 2, — that I can't even imagine
without horror what is happening now to Emily
Fiodorovna. She has her son Fedya ; but is it
not cruel and is it not indecent on my part to rely
and to throw all the burden of the family on this
young man ? He is young and timid and ought not
to be allowed to waste his young years and cer-
tainly may lose patience, — and that leads to a wrong
path. It might very, very easily lead there. I
must help them : I am obliged to. Even if only a
little. Besides them there is Pasha. There again
it 's the same story : it is impossible for a young
boy, a minor, to live by his own work, — it is im-
possible, absurd, and indecent on my part. Cruel !
It means pushing him to perdition ; he won't stand
the strain. To me it was that Marie Dmitrievna
[Dostoevsky's first wife] bequeathed him, it was
her last request. And therefore I implore you, in
case you receive the 200 roubles, to do this : give
one hundred roubles to Emily Fiodorovna, and one
hundred to Pasha, but give Pasha at first only
50 roubles (without telling him that you have
another 50 roubles for him), and in two months'
time give him the other 50 roubles. (Besides
board and lodging, he must have a new supply of
underwear, and clothes, he needs some other little

44 DOSTOEVSKY

things, in a word he must have 50 roubles at once.)
Those 200 roubles, if Katkov agrees, you will
receive in a fortnight, or if he is late it may take a
month. I shall tell Pasha not to call on you too
early. You wrote me that on the former occasion
they worried you very much ; forgive them, my
dear friend ! To Emily Fiodorovna deliver the
money yourself, or let her know through Pasha
that she is to call on you to receive it. All this,
of course, if you receive the money ; I shall write to
them. Well, that is my second request, I worry
you extremely ; but, my friend, save me from these
sufferings.

To imagine their situation is such a pain to me
that I would rather bear it myself. And to think
that everything, my whole fate depends on the
success of the novel ! Oh, it 's hard to be a poet
in such conditions ! Now how different, for in-
stance, are Turgenev's circumstances, and how
dare he after that appear with his Yergunov I He
himself literally told me that he was a German,
and not a Russian, and he considered it an honour
to reckon himself a German, and not a Russian,
— this is the literal truth.

Good-bye for the present, my friend. What
more than anything else makes me glad on your
account is that you do not allow your spirit to be
idle. Desires, ideals, and aims are fermenting in

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 45

you. That 's a great deal. In our time, if a man
is seized with apathy, he is lost, dead, and buried.
Good-bye, I embrace you closely and wish you all
that is best. Write me, write me if only a few
words about my novel. Even the tiniest thing.

I constantly read all the political news. There
is an infinitude of lies ; but I am terribly scared by
the weakening and lowering of our foreign policy
lately. Apart from this in Russia herself the
Sovereign's reforms have many enemies. The only
hope is in him. He has already proved his firmness.
God grant he may rule long !

Anna Gregorevna greets you, Anna Ivanovna
and Eugenia Petrovna. I also ; please remember
me to them. I somehow believe a Misha or a Sonia
is going to make his appearance to-day, — this has
already been settled.1 — Good-bye, my dear friend.
Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

Ill

To A. N. Maikov

Geneva, ^ig"* 1868.
20th February

Now I 'm again writing you a few lines, my dear
friend Apollon Nicolayevich, and again to make an
extraordinary request. (Did you receive my letter

1 Sophie or Sonia Dostoevsky was born 22nd February 1868.

46 DOSTOEVSKY

of yesterday in which I wrote to you that Katkov
might perhaps send you in two or three weeks'
time two hundred roubles ? I asked you most
earnestly to help me and to divide that money
(one hundred to Emily Fiodorovna, fifty to Pasha
at once, and to keep the remaining fifty (also for
Pasha), without telling him about it, and to hand
it over to him after two months). Owing to an
urgent cause and an important reason I must dis-
pose of the money differently. Namely : hand over
one hundred to Emily Fiodorovna, and fifty to
Pasha now ; give the remaining fifty roubles, my
dear friend, to Anna Nicolayevna Snitkin, Anna
Gregorevna's mother. You may let her know
through Pasha that she should call on you to get
it. Or rather we ourselves will write to her, and
she will call on you. When leaving Petersburg
we pawned, I believe, all our movables, all our
furniture, and all our things. For a whole year
Anna Nicolayevna paid the interest (a very high
one too) for us out of her pocket ; but now she
herself has great expenses, and although she does not
ask us for money to pay the interest and continues
to pay it as before, — we must help her now and just
at this moment. And Pasha, I will send to some-
how, if I have money later, in two months' time.

Don't disappoint me, my precious friend, don't
disappoint me ; but do all these commissions which

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 47

have a most vital importance for me, I earnestly
entreat you. I shall try my best to prevent them
all from worrying you much ; I will ask them.
Good-bye for the present. I embrace you closely.
— Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

P.S. — Last night I had a fit, so violent, that I
have not recovered yet and I am aching all over ;
in particular my head aches unbearably.

P.S. — I am so distracted, everything is muddled
up in my head because of the fit. I wrote a letter
to Pasha, a most urgent one ; but, although he has
given me his address, I am afraid to send it to him,
because he may have moved again to new rooms,
and I ask you to hand over the letter to him. My
dear friend, Apollon Nicolayevich, forgive me for
all this unconscionable trouble I am giving you ;
but the letter to Pasha, which I enclose here, is so
highly important to me and it deals with a question
so affecting my heart and soul that nothing can be
more important to me than its speedy delivery.
Be my benefactor. You have only to send this
letter to him through some one at the Address-
Office. It is close to where you live and you will
find it at once. — In any event, I also inscribe on
the letter the address of Pasha's late rooms, which
also are not far from your house. Be my bene-
factor and deliver it to him immediately.

48 DOSTOEVSKY

IV

To A. N. Maikov

Geneva, March 1"S 1868.

Most kind and true friend, Apollon Nicolayevich,
I received your letter, thank you extremely. But
I am in the most terrible agitation and anxiety ;
for I have received a letter (from Anna Nicolayevna,
my wife's mother) with strange news : that Pasha
had called on her, ridden the high horse, said that
1 he does not want to know whether I am in need,
that I am obliged to keep him ' ; that since a good
deal of money was expected from Katkov, he was
going to Moscow, would see Katkov personally,
would explain to him his position and ask him for
money, on my account. Anna Nicolayevna posi-
tively informs me that he has already left for
Moscow (on the 5th February, old style), and that
he has quarrelled with his chiefs and she is afraid of
his being dismissed.

Can you imagine now my situation ? What is
my position in the eyes of Katkov ? Myself I
blush for my affairs, and each time I am positively
afraid to apply to Katkov because they have treated
me so decently and well, and this ties my hands
terribly. Without having yet seen a single line,
they have trusted me to the extent of 500 roubles

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 49

in advance (me, a sick man, abroad ; and, as ill-
luck would have it, I have just asked for another
500 roubles!). How terrible to think of Pasha
coming and interrupting Katkov in his occupations,
which are really enormous, and beginning to shout,
and perhaps even to be insolent, and of course
blackening my character as much as he can !
— Finally. Yesterday I pawned my last coat. I
have thirty francs only, and forty to pay to the
nurse ; I have to pay the midwife 100 francs,
120 francs for the rooms and attendance due by
March 20th, i.e. in six days' time (prices this month
are higher), and 300 francs I owe for the things
pawned. In six days at the latest my 30 francs
will come to an end, and then — not a brass farthing,
nothing to pawn, and my whole credit exhausted.
My whole hope was that Katkov would agree to
my request about the 500 roubles, would send you
two hundred (as I had written), and would send me
300 roubles here, and those 300 would come here
by March 20th, that is, in six days' time. Now
what shall I do if Pasha makes him angry and
finally exhausts his patience (for any man may
lose patience at last in certain circumstances), and
he answers me with a refusal. Well, what shall I
do then ? Then I am done for, absolutely done
for, because my wife has now been confined and is
ill. And at this moment I receive your letter.

D

50 DOSTOEVSKY

■

The date is not put down ; but on the envelope is
the mark of the Petersburg post office dated
February 26th.

In that letter you say not a single word about
this. Then perhaps it is untrue. And yet Anna
Nicolayevna asserts it positively. In that case, it
is perhaps true ; but you are not aware of it (for
it is indeed difficult for you to know, just for the
reason that if he had made up his mind to do this,
he certainly would have avoided meeting you).
I sit now crushed and broken and do not know
what to do. I had thought of writing to-day to
Katkov and apologising to him, by explaining to
him the whole circumstances ; for, firstly, as re-
gards Katkov personally I feel so ashamed that I
could sink into the ground, and secondly, as regards
the money I am afraid that he may get cross and
not send it. On the other hand, suppose I send
the letter, and all this turns out untrue ? I had
better make up my mind to write to-morrow and
to send to-morrow (the letter to Katkov). If only
some news would arrive to enlighten me ! But
there is no news coming from anywhere ! But to
wait is dangerous, and also difficult. At any rate
I implore you, my dear friend : investigate this
business and send me news immediately, or I shall
die of anguish. But if it is not true, if Pasha only
talked, but did not act, I mean, did not go to

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 51

Moscow, did not speak to Katkov and did not even
write to him (it is almost the same thing, writing
and seeing him personally), — then please do not
tell Pasha that I have learnt it from Anna Nicolay-
evna. I am afraid he will be very rude to her. In
a word, in any event, not a word to him about Anna
Nicolayevna. I regard you as my Providence.
I '11 send Katkov a letter after all ; I must. If
Pasha is not to blame, — if he did not go to Katkov,
certainly what I write won't do him any great
harm : the prank of a young man who is not known
there at all. For my own part I must tell you that
I am sorry for Pasha ; I do not blame him very
much : indeed, it 's a case of youth and lack of
self-control. It must be excused, and he should
not be treated harshly ; for, being such a little
fool, it won't take him long to go to the dogs.
And I imagined that he had grown sensible and
realised that he was already nearly 21 years old,
and ought to work, since there was no capital.
I thought that having obtained employment he at
last realised that honest work was his duty, just as
it is the duty of every one, and that he must not
act stubbornly and without listening to any one,
as though he had made a vow to do nothing and
would not stir. And he, as I see it now, imagined
that he was doing me a favour by having secured
employment. And who put it into his head that

52 DOSTOEVSKY

-

I was obliged to keep him for ever, even after 21 ?
His words to Anna Nicolayevna (which must cer-
tainly be true) — ' I don't want to know whether
he is himself in need ; he is obliged to keep me ■
— are too significant in a certain sense to me. This
means that he does not love me. Certainly I am
the last to blame him, and I know how little an
impulse or an arrogant word may mean, that is,
I know that a word is not an act. All my life long
I will help him and I want to do so. But there 's
the point : has he done much for himself ? It is
only for the last three months that he has had no
allowance from me. Yet during these three months
he received from me 20 roubles in cash, and I paid
his debt of 30 roubles to Emily Fiodorovna. And
so, really what he has not received only amounts
to one month's allowance ! And already he has
managed to get into a fever about it ! It means,
then, that the man must be incapable of doing
anything for himself ! It is not a comforting
thought. Out of my very last resources I am now
sending money both to him and to Emily Fiodor-
ovna. And yet I am convinced that at Emily
Fiodorovna's they are running me down for all
they are worth. And added to all this I am a sick
man. What would happen if I were unable to
work — what then ?

My dear friend, you alone are my Providence and

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 58

true friend ! Your letter of yesterday revived me.
I have never had anything harder and more diffi-
cult to bear in my life : on February 22nd (old
style) — my wife (after awful pains lasting 30 hours)
bore me a daughter and is still ill, and you can
consequently imagine how my nerves are on edge.
The least bit of unpleasant news has to be kept
back from her ; for she loves me so much. Sonia,
the baby, is a healthy, big, handsome, lovely,
superb baby : positively half the day I kiss her
and can't go away from her. This is good ; but
what is bad is this : all the money I have is 30
francs ; everything to the very last rag, mine and
my wife's, has been pawned. My debts are urgent,
pressing, immediate. My whole hope is in Katkov,
and the incessant thought : suppose he does not
send ? The exasperating news about Pasha ; my
terrible and continuous fear which does not allow
me to sleep at night : what if Anya falls ill ?
(To-day is the tenth day.) And I have no means of
calling in a doctor or of buying medicine ; Part III
of the novel, which is not yet begun, which I under-
took on my word of honour to deliver to the Editor
by the first of April (old style) ; the whole plan of
Parts III and IV radically altered last night, for
the third time (and therefore, at least, another
three days needed for the thinking out of the new
arrangement) ; the increased strain on my nerves

54 DOSTOEVSKY

and the number and violence of my fits, — there you
have my condition !

In addition to all this, — up to the coming of your
letter, — complete despair on account of the failure
and badness of my novel, and consequently, with-
out mentioning my anguish as an author, — the
conviction that all hopes have vanished, for all my
hopes were fixed on the novel ! Imagine, then, how
your letter gladdened me ; am I not right now in
calling you my Providence ? Indeed in my present
circumstances you are just the same to me, as my
dead brother Misha was.

And so you gladden me with the news of my
success. It gives me new heart. Part III I shall
complete and send off by April 1st. Haven't I
written as much as 11| folios in two months ! I
implore you, my dear friend, when you have read
the finale of Part II (i.e. in the February number),
write me immediately. Believe me, your words to
me are a well-spring of living water. I was inspired
when I wrote that finale and it cost me two fits
one after another. But I may have exaggerated
and lost my sense of proportion, and therefore I
await your impartial criticism. Oh, my dear friend,
do not condemn me for this anxiety, as if it were
the anguish of ambition. Ambition, of course,
there is, could one do without it ? — But here my
chief motives, I call God to witness, are different.

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 55

In the case of this novel too much is at stake, in
every way.

Your letters always stimulate me and for several
days on end act as leaven on everything in me. I
should awfully like to have a talk with you about
certain things. This time I have confined myself
to family trifles ; wait till next time. Surely it is
the same Danilevsky, the late Fourierist, who was
mixed up in our affair ? Yes, he has a strong head.
But in the Journal of the Ministry of Education ! It
has a small circulation, it is little read. Can't it
be pubUshed separately ? Oh, how much I should
like to read it ! . . .

Write me about yourself as much as you can.
My greetings to all yours. My wife loves you
deeply and sends her greetings to Anna Ivanovna.
She is in ecstasies over her work, and I too. As
regards The Idiot, I am so much afraid, so much
afraid, — that you can't even imagine my fear. A
kind of unnatural fear even ; which has never beset
me before ! . . . What depressing, trifling letters I
am writing you ! I embrace you closely. — Wholly
your F. Dostoevsky.

Anyhow I shall write more often now.

Anya burst into tears when she read in your letter
about the success of The Idiot. She says that she
is proud of me.

56 DOSTOEVSKY

To A. N. Maikov

~ March 20th no._

°ENEVA> April 2nd 1868'

Kindest and good friend, Apollon Nicolayevich,
first of all I thank you, my dear friend, most deeply
for the execution of all my commissions which have
turned out so troublesome, and in doing which you
have had to run about so much. Forgive me for
worrying you ; but indeed you are the only man
on whom I can rely (which is no excuse at all for
worrying you). Secondly — I thank you for your
greetings, congratulations, and wishes of happiness
for us three. You are right, my good friend, you
have described from nature the feeling of being a
father, and you have taken your beautiful words
from nature : all is perfectly true. I have had,
now almost for a month, feelings utterly new and
hitherto completely unknown to me ; from the
moment when I saw my Sonia for the first time up
to this minute when we have just been washing her,
by our common efforts, in the tub. Yes, an angelic
soul has flown into our house too. But I shall not
describe to you my sensations. They grow and
develop with each day. Now, my dear friend :
last time when I wrote to you in such anxiety, I
forgot (!) to tell you that as far back as last year

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 57

in Dresden, Any a and I had agreed (and she scolded
me terribly for having forgotten to tell you) that
you are to be Sonia's godfather. My dear friend,
don't refuse ! It is now nearly ten months since
we decided on it. If you refuse, it will bring Sonia
unhappiness : the first godfather and he refused !
But you will not refuse, dear friend. I add, that
this will not cause you the least possible trouble ;
and as to our becoming related by compaternity
— so much the better. The godmother is Anna
Nicolayevna. Did she tell you ? For the love of
God let me know your answer as soon as possible
— for it is needed for the christening. It is now
nearly a month, and she is not yet christened !
(Could it be like that in Russia ?) And your god-
daughter (I am sure she is your goddaughter) — I
inform you — is very good-looking in spite of the
fact that she takes after me impossibly, even
ridiculously — to the verge of strangeness even.
I would not believe it if I did not see it myself.
The baby is only about a month old ; but she has
perfectly my expression of face, my complete
physiognomy, — up to the wrinkles on her forehead,
— she lies in her cot as though she were composing
a novel ! I don't speak about the features. Her
forehead is like mine, even strangely so. It should
of course follow that she is not very good-looking
(for I am a beauty only in the eyes of Anna Gregor-

58 DOSTOEVSKY

evna — and seriously a beauty to her, I tell you !).
But you, an artist yourself, know excellently well
that it is possible to look exactly like a plain
person, and yet to be very lovely. Anna Gregorevna
is extremely keen on your being godfather. She
loves you and Anna Ivanovna very much and
respects you boundlessly.

You are too much of a prophet : you prophesy
that now that I have new cares I shall become an
egoist, and this, unfortunately (since anything else
was impossible), has come true. Imagine : all
this month I have not written a single line ! My
God, how am I treating Katkov, my promises, my
words of honour, my obligations ! I was incredibly
glad when, because of my confession that I might
be late in view of my wife's confinement, the
Russky Viestnik announced at the end of Part I
of my novel, that the continuation would follow
in the April, not in the March number. But, alas !
even for getting it ready for the April number
only twenty days remain now (I am awfully be-
hind !), and not a single line is written. To-morrow
I am writing to Katkov to apologise, — but they
can't make a fur coat out of my promises. And yet
I must manage to have it ready for the April
number, although the time is so short. And mean-
while, apart from all the rest, all my existence (as
regards money) depends on them. In truth a

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 59

desperate position ! But what can I do : the whole
month has passed in extraordinary fears, troubles
and anxieties. And I have not slept for whole
nights on end, not only on account of moral
anxieties, but because I could not help myself.
And with epilepsy it is awful. My nerves are upset
now to the last degree. March here was disgust-
ingly bad, — with snow and frost, almost as bad as
in Petersburg. Anna Gregorevna was terribly
upset physically (don't for the world tell Anna
Nicolayevna, for she will imagine God knows what.
Simply that Anya could not recover for a long time,
and added to this, she nurses the child herself).
She has little milk. We also use the bottle. Still
the baby is very healthy (touch wood !). And
Anya is beginning to go out for walks. It is now
the third day of wonderful sunny weather and the
first shoots of green. I can hardly recover yet
from all this. Then there 's the awful trouble,
— money. They have sent us 300 roubles. This,
owing to the exchange, is 1025 francs. But we have
almost nothing left. Expenses have increased, we
had to pay our former debts, to redeem the pawned
things, and exactly three weeks from now great
expenses are imminent on account of our having
to move into other rooms (they are turning us out
of these because of the baby's crying), and, besides,
certain payments must be made, — terrible! And

60 DOSTOEVSKY

we have also, beginning from to-day, to exist for
at least two months before we can hope to receive
any more money from the Russky Viestnik. But I
can get nothing from the R.V. until I have de-
livered Part II, and when am I going to write it ?
Again perhaps in 18 days, the time it took me
to write the instalment published in the January
number ? Your disposition of the money was
very good. And though it is too bad of me to
trouble you, do send me the remaining 25 roubles
here, to Geneva, if possible at once. The last ex-
treme of need ! (N.B. — Simply put a 25-rouble
note in a letter, register it, so that it shall not be
lost, and send it to my address.)

I am very glad that you handed over to Pasha
50, and not 25 roubles. That is good. I am
awfully glad that he has got employment. My
dear friend, look him up, if only now and then !
When I write to him, I shall tell him that, having
learnt from you that you have given him 25 roubles
on credit, I have already repaid you. But I want
to know this : isn't Pasha going to write me any-
thing and congratulate me about Sonia ? Others
have congratulated me : you, Strahov, the Moscow
people, Petersburg friends of Anna Gregorevna ;
but Pasha — not only have I received nothing from
him lately, but I have had no reply to the letter
I sent him about six weeks ago, addressed to you

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 61

(did you receive it ? Somehow you did not mention
it). On this point, extremely important : After
all I do not know whether he was in Moscow or
not ? Did he go to Katkov ? It is very important
for me to know. Remember, I sent Katkov a long
letter of apology, solely on that account ! I must
know. Can't you get to know the truth about it,
my dear friend, for the love of Christ ! . . . (Emily
Fiodorovna I have officially, solemnly notified that
a daughter has been born to me ; but nothing, no
reply from her !) Moreover, on the previous
occasion, she sent me no answer to my extremely
important question about their flat and Alonkin
the landlord. It surprises even me. Indeed it is
quite disgustingly rude !

As regards my will and all your other advice, I
have always been of exactly the same opinion
myself. But, my friend, my sincere and devoted
friend (perhaps my only one !), — why do you con-
sider me so good and generous ? No, my friend,
no, I am not so good as all that, and this troubles
me. And Pasha — poor Marie Dmitrievna gave him
into my charge on her deathbed ! How could I
desert him ? (You yourself didn't advise it.) No,
no, I must help him, moreover, I love him sincerely ;
indeed for over ten years I brought him up in my
house ! He is like a son to me. We lived together.
And to leave him to his own resources so young,

62 DOSTOEVSKY

and alone, — how can I possibly do it ? After all,
however poor I may be, help him I must. True,
he is a great lazybones ; but in truth I myself,
at his age, was perhaps even worse (I remember
it). Now he should be supported. To leave a
good and pleasant impression on his heart now will
help him in his later development. And that he is
now employed and works for himself, — I am awfully,
awfully glad of it, — let him do some work. And
you I embrace and kiss as a brother for having
gone to Rasin and secured the post for him there.
... As for Emily Fiodorovna, there again my dead
brother Misha is concerned. And indeed you do
not know what he was to me — all my life, from my
first conscious moments ! No, you don't know !
Fedya is my godson, moreover he is a young man,
who is earning his bread by hard work. And in
his case, if only it is possible, I must help at times
(for he is a young man ; everything ought not to
be thrown on his shoulders, — it is too hard). And
yourself, my dear friend, why do you make your-
self out to be so practical and egotistical : didn't
you lend me 200 roubles and didn't you lose nearly
2000 roubles by my brother Misha's death and the
failure of the review ! Yet I should not have
broached these subjects. At any rate, I consider
your advice perfectly correct. — And as for myself,
there 's a very appropriate proverb : ' Don't boast

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 63

when going to war.' And I say this because I
have been harping on my obligation to help and so
on. And how can I tell what is going to happen
to myself?

However ugly, however beastly living abroad
has become to me, do you know that at times I
think with fear of what will happen to my health
when it pleases God to permit me to return to
Petersburg ? If my fits occur here so often, — what
would it be like there ? I am positively losing my
mental faculties, for instance, my memory. . . .
All that you write about Russia, and especially
your mood (rose-coloured), makes me very happy.
It is perfectly true that it is not worth while
paying attention to various particular cases : it is
only the whole that should be considered, its
impetus and aim, and all the rest is bound to come
as part of the tremendous regeneration which is
taking place under the present great Sovereign.
My friend, you really look at things exactly as I
do, and you have at last expressed what I was say-
ing, saying aloud three years ago, at the time I was
editing the review ; but it was not understood,
namely : that our constitution is the mutual love
of the Monarch for the people and of the people for
the Monarch. This principle of the Russian State,
the principle of love not of strife (which I believe
was first discovered by the Slavophils), is the greatest

1

64 DOSTOEVSKY

of all ideas, an idea on which much will be built.
This idea we shall proclaim to Europe, which does
not understand anything at all about it. Our
wretched, uprooted tribe of clever ones, alas !
was sure to end like that. They will die like that,
they can't be reborn. (Take Turgenev, now!)
But the newest generation — it is there we have to
look. (Classical education might be of great
assistance. What is Katkov's Lyceum ?) While
here abroad, with regard to Russia I have finally
become sTconiple'te moliarcmst. If any one has
(lone anything in Russia, it is obviously the Tsar
alone. (But not on this account only, but simply
because he is the Tsar, beloved by the Russian
people, beloved for himself and because he is the
Tsar. With us the people have given and give
their love to every Tsar, and only in him do
they finally believe. To the people it is a mystery,
a priesthood, an anointment.) Our Westerners
understand nothing about this ; they pride them-
selves on basing themselves on facts, and they
overlook the primary, the greatest fact of our
history. I like your idea of the pan-Slav signifi-
cance of Peter the Great. It is the first I have
heard of this idea and it is a perfectly true one.
But there : I read the Golos here. Terribly dis-
tressing facts are at times described in it. For
instance, about the chaotic state of our railways

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 65

(the newly constructed ones), about affairs in the
Zemstvos, about the awful condition of the colonies.
The dreadful misfortune is that we still have so
few men of executive capacity. Talkers there are,
but men who do things — you can count them on
your fingers. Of course I 'm not referring to ad-
ministrators in high positions, but simply to officials
of all kinds in general, a whole host of whom is
needed, and who are not there. For the courts,
for the juries, perhaps there are plenty of men.
But what about the railways ? And the other
public services ? It is a terrible conflict of new
men and new demands with the old order. I do
not speak of inspiring them with an idea : free-
thinkers we have in plenty, but Russian men are
but few. The chief thing — the self-realisation of
the Russian man in oneself — that is what is needed.
And how greatly publicity helps the Tsar and
all Russians, — even the hostile publicity of the
Westerners. I long for us to have political
railways soon (the Smolensk-Kiev railway : as
soon as possible), and also new guns as soon as
possible ! Why is Napoleon increasing his army,
and thus running the risk of making himself un-
popular with his people, at such a critical moment ?
The devil knows why. But it won't end well for
Europe. (I 'm deeply convinced of this somehow.)
Awkward, if we get mixed up in it. If they would

E

66 DOSTOEVSKY

only wait a couple of years. Nor is it Napoleon
alone. Apart from Napoleon the future is threaten-
ing, and we must be prepared for it. Turkey is on
its last legs ; Austria is in much too abnormal a
state (I only analyse the elements, but form no
judgment) ; there is the damned problem of the
proletariat, in its acute stage, in the West (which
is not even mentioned in the politics of the day !),
and, lastly, chiefly, Napoleon is an old man in
indifferent health. He won't live long. As long
as he lives he will be involved in more failures, and
the Buonapartes will become still more loathsome
to the French, — what will happen then ? For this
contingency Russia must prepare herself without
fail and without delay ; for it may come to pass
very soon.

How glad I am that the Heir Apparent has
revealed himself to Russia in such a good and
noble manner, and that Russia testifies her hopes
in him and her love for him, as to a Father. God
grant that our Alexander live happily for another
forty years. He alone has done for Russia almost
more than all his predecessors taken together.
And the most important thing is that he is so much
loved. This is now the mainstay of the whole
Russian movement ; on it alone all regeneration
is based. Oh, my friend, how I should love to
come back, how sickening my life is here ! A bad

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 67

life. And, above all, my work does not go right.
If only I could finish the novel satisfactorily, how
good it would be ! This is the beginning of my
whole future. Anna Gregorevna does not feel
homesick, and sincerely says she is happy ; but I
am nauseated. I go nowhere and see no one.
And even if I had acquaintances I don't think I
should go to them, I have completely lost my bear-
ings,— and yet my work does not come off. At five
o'clock every day I leave the house for two hours
and go to the cafe to read Russian newspapers !
I know no one here, and I 'm glad of it. It is horrible
to meet our clever ones. Poor ! Insignificant !
Rubbish, puffed up with self-love ! Sh . . . ! Loath-
some ! By chance I met Herzen in the street ;
we talked for ten minutes in a hostile-polite tone,
mockingly, and then parted. No, I shan't go.
Нолу far behind the times, how terribly backward
they are, and they understand nothing ! And
puffed up, how terribly puffed up they are !
I read here greedily the announcements in the
papers about the appearance of the numbers of
the reviews and the lists of contents. How strange
are the titles and lists of contents of publications
like the Otechestvennya Zapiski ! Yes, rags instead
of flags, that is true ! My dear friend, don't give
them anything, wait. And the question as to where
to publish your things seems to worry you. Don't

68 DOSTOEVSKY

be worried, my friend. I am writing hastily now,
or I would have a good talk with you. I have an
idea for you ; but its exposition would require a
whole letter, and now I have no time. I will write
soon. This idea I conceived apropos your * Sophia
Alexeyevna.' And believe me, it is serious, do not
laugh ! I will expound it to you. It is neither
novel nor poem. But it is so deeply needed, it is
so necessary, and so original and new and of such
an urgent, Russian tendency, that you yourself
will be surprised ! I shall expound the programme
to you. It is a pity I must do it in a letter and
not do it in friendly talk. Through it you might
become famous, and it is important that you should
bring it out as a book, after having previously
published a few fragments. The book should sell
enormously. — So you have finished your trans-
lation of the Apocalypse ? And I thought you had
given it up. Certainly it cannot possibly escape
the ecclesiastical censorship, not possibly ; but if
you have translated perfectly accurately, then of
course it will pass. I received a letter from Strahov.
It made me happy. I want to answer him as soon
as possible ; but as he did not give his address
(he forgot !) I shall answer him through you. And
I shall ask you to let him have the letter.

My dear friend, do write to me more frequently.
You can't believe what your letters mean to me !

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 69

To-day is already the third of April of the new style,
and the 25th is the last day (absolutely the last)
for the delivery of the novel, and / have not a line,
not a single line written ! Lord, what shall I do ?
Well, good-bye, I kiss and embrace you. Anya
greets you, and we both greet Anna Ivanovna.
— Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

P.S. — For the love of God, tell me everything
you hear (if only you do hear) about The Idiot. I
must, must, must know without fail ! For the love
of God ! The finale of Part II — about which I
wrote to you — is the same as that published at the
end of Part I. And I relied on it so much ! Though
I still believe in the perfect fidelity of the character
of Nastasya Filipovna. By the way, many little
things at the end of Part I are taken from life, and
certain characters are simply portraits, — for in-
stance, General Ivolgin and Kolya. But perhaps
your opinion is quite true.

VI

To A. N. Maikov

Florence, May~^, 1869.
2i(th

What a long, long time I have refrained from
replying to your good sincere words, my good and
only friend ! But you are right; for of all those

70 DOSTOEVSKY

whom I have happened to meet and to live with
for the last forty-eight years, you and you alone
I consider as a man after my heart. Of all those I
have met, during all these forty-eight years, I have
hardly one, hardly a single one like you (I do not
speak of my dead brother). You and I, although
we do not mix in the same society, yet in heart, in
soul, in our cherished convictions and in our
cordial intercourse, are almost chums. Even our
intellectual conclusions and those derived from our
experience have of late begun to be strangely
similar, and I think the ardour of our hearts is the
same. Judge, for instance, from this fact, my dear
friend. Do you remember last year, I believe it
was in the summer and I believe exactly a year
ago (as far as I remember, before the summer
holidays), I wrote you a letter (to which I received
no answer from you for three or four months ; at
that point our correspondence was interrupted,
and when it started again in the autumn, we began
to write about completely different things and forgot
where we had stopped in the summer). Well, in
that letter, at the end, I wrote you, full of serious
and profound rapture, of a new idea that had
occurred to me, strictly for you, for your use.
(The idea occurred by itself, as something inde-
pendent and as a complete whole ; but as I could
not possibly regard myself as the person who ought

LETTEIIS TO A. N. MAIKOV 71

to realise that idea, I naturally destined it, or
wished to destine it for you. So perhaps it was
born in me for you, indeed, as I have already said,
or rather indissolubly connected with your image,
as a poet.) If you had answered me immediately
then, in the summer, I would have sent you a com-
prehensive explanation of the idea, with full de-
tails ; I had then thought out what to write to you
to the last line. But I think it is as well that
you did not reply then. Judge : my idea con-
sisted then in this (I '11 say only a few words about
it now) that a series of legends, ballads, songs,
little poems, romances — call them what you like
— might be composed in attractive, fascinating
verses, in such verses as can be learnt by heart
without the least effort, — which is always the case
with profound and beautiful verses ; here the
essence and even the metre depend on the soul of
the poet, and they come suddenly, completely
ready in his soul, even independently of himself.
... I 'II make a long digression : a poem, in my
view, makes its appearance like a virgin precious
stone, a diamond, completely ready in the poet's
soul, in all its essence ; and that is the first act of
the poet, as creator and maker ; the first part of
his creation. If you like, it is not even he who
is the creator, but life, the mighty essence of life,
the God living and real, concentrating his power

72 DOSTOEVSKY

in the diversity of creation here and there, and most
often in the great heart and in the great poet, so
that if the poet himself is not the creator (and one
ought to agree that he is not, especially you, a
master and poet yourself; for indeed the creation
comes suddenly out of the poet's soul far too com-
pletely, far too definitely, far too finished) — well,
if the poet himself is not the creator, then at any
rate his soul is that very same mine, which begets
diamonds and without which they cannot be found
anywhere. Then follows the poet's second act less
profound and mysterious, but that in which the
poet is concerned as artist, — the business of cutting
and polishing the diamond which he has obtained.
Here the poet is almost a jeweller. Now, in this
series of legends in verse (in thinking of those
legends I thought at times of your poem, Clermont
Cathedral) should be depicted from the very outset
— with love and with our thought, — and with a
Russian conception, — the whole of Russian history,
those moments and points being distinguished in
which at certain times and in certain places it as
it were concentrated itself and manifested itself,
all of it, suddenly, in its complete wholeness. Such
all-revealing moments can be found, throughout
the ages, ten at least, perhaps even rather more.
Well now, to seize those points and to tell them in
a legend, to all and sundry, but not as a simple

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 73

chronicle, no, but as a sincere poem, even without
strict adherence to the facts (but with extraordinary
clarity) ; to seize the chief point and to relate it
so that men can see out of what idea the poem was
begotten, with what love and pain it was brought to
light. But without egoism, without words from one-
self, but naively, as naively as possible, with love for
Russia streaming forth as from a living spring,
— and nothing else. Imagine to yourself that in the
third or fourth legend (I composed them all in my
mind then and went on composing them long after-
wards) I took the capture of Constantinople by
Mahomet II (and this came directly and involun-
tarily as a legend from Russian history, by itself
and without design ; afterwards I wondered, at
the way — without hesitation, reflection, or con-
scious thought — it had occurred to me to connect
the capture of Constantinople with Russian history,
without the faintest doubt). To relate all that
catastrophe in a naive and concise account ! The
Turks closely investing Tsargrad (Constantinople) ;
the last night before the assault at dawn ; the last
Emperor walking in the Palace. . . .

(' The King pacing with long strides.')
The prayer before the image of Our Lady ; the
prayer ; the assault ; the fight ; the Sultan with
a bloody sword entering Constantinople. At the
Sultan's command the body of the last Emperor

74 DOSTOEVSKY

searched for and found among a heap of the slain ;
and recognised by the eagles embroidered on his
boots ; Saint Sophia, the trembling Patriarch, the
last Mass, the Sultan on his horse dashing up the
stairs into the middle of the Church (historique).
Having reached the middle he stops his horse in
confusion, looks round musingly, anxiously, and
utters the words : ' Here is the house of prayer for
Allah ! ' Whereupon the ikons and the Communion
table are thrown out, the altar is destroyed, a
mosque is erected, the corpse of the Emperor is
buried ; and the last of the Palaeologi appears in
the Kingdom of Russia with a double-headed eagle
for her dowry ; the Russian wedding ; Ivan III in
his wooden hut, instead of a palace, and into this
wooden hut passes the great ideal of the pan-
Orthodox significance of Russia, and there is laid
the first stone of the future hegemony of the East ;
there the circle of Russia's future destinies is ex-
tended ; there is laid down the idea not only of a
great state, but of a whole new world, which is
destined to renew Christianity by the pan-Slav,
pan-Orthodox idea and to introduce a new idea to
mankind. Then comes the disintegration of the
West, a disintegration which will occur when the
Pope distorts Christ finally and thereby begets
atheism in the defiled humanity of the West.
Nor is this idea concerned with that epoch alone ;

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 75

I had another idea, along with the picture of the
wooden hut and of the wise Prince — cherishing a
grand and profound ideal, of the Metropolitan, in
poor clothes, sitting with the Prince, and of ' Fomin-
ishna,' gladly settled in Russia. — Suddenly, in
another ballad, we pass to a description of the end
of the 15th and of the beginning of the 16th century
in Europe, Italy, the Papacy, art in the churches
and Raphael, the worship of Apollo Belvedere, the
first rumours of the Reformation, of Luther,
America, gold, Spain and England, — a whole vivid
picture, parallel to all the preceding Russian pic-
tures,— but with hints of the future of that picture,
of future science, of atheism, of the rights of man.
realised in the Western way, and not in ours, — all
which serve as the source of all that is and will be.
In my ardent musings I also thought that the
legend ought not to end with Peter the Great, for
instance, on whom a specially fine utterance and
fine poem is needed, — a legend based on a bold and
frank point of view, on our point of view. I would
go as far as Biron and Katherine and even further,
— I would go as far as the liberation of the peasants
and up to the wanderings of the aristocrats all over
Europe with their last paper rouble notes, and their
ladies copulating with the Borghesans, up to the
preaching of atheism by seminary students, up to
the appearance of omni-human citizens of the world,

76 DOSTOEVSKY

up to the Russian Counts who write criticisms and
stories, etc. etc. The Poles would have to occupy
much space. Then I would finish with imaginary
pictures of the future : of Russia after two cen-
turies, and alongside with her — of the eclipsed,
lacerated, and brutalised Europe, with her civilisa-
tion. Here I would not stop at any imagination. . . .
You consider me at this moment certainly mad,
strictly and chiefly because I have written so much ;
for all this ought to be spoken of personally and not
written about. For in a letter one can't say any-
thing intelligibly. But I have become excited.
You see, when I read in your letter that you were
writing those ballads, I was struck with wonder :
I wondered how it is that to us, separated for so
long, the same idea, of the same poem, has occurred ?
I was made happy by this and then I began to think :
Do we understand this properly, in the same way ?
You see, my idea is that the ballads could become
a great national work and would contribute
mightily to the regeneration of the consciousness
of the Russian. Why, Apollon Nicolayevich, every
schoolboy will know and learn these poems by heart.
But having learnt a poem, he will also learn the idea
and attitude, and as this attitude is true, it will
abide in his soul all his life long. Since the verses
and poems are comparatively short, the whole
reading world of Russia will read them, as they

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 77

read your Clermont Cathedral, which even now many-
know by heart. And therefore — it is not only a
poem and a literary work, — it is science, it is preach-
ing, it is an heroic act. When last year I wanted
to write to you and urge you to set to work on that
idea, I thought to myself : How shall I tell it him
so that he will understand me completely ? — And
suddenly, a year later, you yourself become inspired
with the same idea and find it necessary to write it !
It means, then, the idea is true ! But one thing,
one thing is needed, without fail : the poems must
have an extraordinary poetic charm, they must
carry the reader away, carry him away without fail,
carry him away to the point of being involuntarily
learnt by heart. My friend ! remember, that per-
haps all your poetical career up till now was only a
preface, only an introduction, and that only now you
will have the power to utter the new word, your new
word ! And therefore look at the matter more
seriously, more deeply, and with more enthusiasm.
And above all, — simplicity and naivete ! And re-
member this too : write in rhymes, and not in the
old Russian metre. Do not laugh ! It is important.
Rhyme now is simplicity, and the old Russian metre is
academism. Not a single poem in unrhymed verse
is learnt by heart. The people no longer compose
songs in the old metre, but compose in rhymes. If
there are to be no rhymes (and no ballad metre),

78 DOSTOEVSKY

—really you '11 ruin the thing. You may laugh at
me ; but I tell you the truth ! The crude truth !

About Yermak [the conqueror of Siberia] I can't
say anything ; you certainly know better than I.
In my notion, there is at first the Cossack dare-
devilry, vagabondage and brigandage. Then is
shown the man-genius under a sheep-skin coat ; he
divines the magnitude of his work and its future
significance ; but only when his whole work has
made a favourable start and is running smoothly.
There is born a Russian feeling, an orthodox feeling
of being one with the Russian root (and it may even
be a direct feeling, something of a nostalgia), and
thence comes his embassy and homage to the great
Russian King who completely expresses, in the
popular conception, the Russian people. (N.B. — The
chief and completest expression of that conception
reached its full, ultimate development, do you know
when, to my thinking ? In our century. Certainly
I am speaking of the people, and not of putrefied
seminarists and aristocrats.)

But enough of this now. I only believe this :
that you and I agree in ideas, and I am glad of it.
Please send me something of what you have written,
and if possible, send me a good deal. I shall not
misuse it. You yourself can see that it interests
me to the point of agitation.

You will ask : why didn't I write to you for so

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 79

long ? But I have been silent for so long, that I find
it difficult even to answer the question. Chiefly —
nostalgia ; but were I to speak and to explain
further, then there would be a great deal to tell.
But my nostalgia is such, that if I were by myself,
I should fall ill of anguish. It is a good thing that
I am with Anna Gregorevna, who as you know is
again expecting to be confined. These expectations
agitate us both. (We have Anna Gregorevna's
mother staying with us now, and in Anna's present
state this is necessary.) It was a great disappoint-
ment to me to have to remain in Florence, when a
month ago we had decided to move to Dresden.
All this happened for lack of money. It ended in
my promising a story (it will be a very short one x)
to the Zarya. My dear Nicolay Nicolayevich
[Strahov] (who is perhaps cross with me now)
arranged that affair (he gave 125 roubles to Marie
Gregorevna Svatkovsky to pay interest (60 roubles),
and the remaining 65 roubles he divided between
Pasha (25 roubles) and Emily Fiodorovna (40
roubles) ; and besides he promised to send me here,
to Florence, 175 roubles by a definite date). Now
I relied on receiving the money by that date for the
means of moving to Dresden. But there was a
little contretemps. Instead of sending the money
by registered post, the Zarya sent it through an

1 The Eternal Husband, published in Nos. 1 and 2 of Zarya> 1870.

80 DOSTOEVSKY

agency, and I received it ten or twelve days late.
(Because it was not posted, I almost missed getting
it altogether ; for the agency might have failed to
find me at all in Florence.) Thus, for a fortnight,
expecting money, we spent some more money, and
we had not enough to take us to Dresden. I sent
a request for relief to the Russky Viestnik. By
January I shall send off a novel to the Russky
Viestnik.1 In Dresden I shall work without lifting
my head from the grindstone. But generally there 's
a mass of troubles and worries. The heat in Florence
is getting awful ; it is a suffocating city, burning
hot. The nerves of all of us are on edge, — which is
particularly bad for my wife. We are crowded at
the present moment (and all this en attendant) in
the smallest, tiniest little room, facing the market.
I am sick of this Florence, and now because of the
heat and the overcrowding I can't even sit down
to work. On the whole, terrible nostalgia, the worse
for being in Europe ; everything here makes me
feel like a beast. I have decided at all costs to
return to Petersburg next spring (when I finish the
novel), — even if they put me in the debtors' prison.
I do not mention spiritual interests ; but even my
material interests suffer here, abroad. Imagine,
for instance, this circumstance : no matter how,

1 The novel is The Possessed, which, however, did not begin to
appear in the Russky Viestnik until January 1871,

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 81

my works (all of them) have gone into a third,
fourth, and fifth edition. The Idiot (whatever he
is, I shall not argue now) is anyhow good merchan-
dise. I know for certain that a second edition will
be sold out in a year. Why not publish it then ?
It 's just the time now, and chiefly — I want to for
one special reason. What did I do ? Six weeks
ago I gave Marie Gregorevna Svatkovsky the follow-
ing commission : to call on A. F. Basunov [book-
seller and publisher] (with a letter of introduction
from me) and to give him this message : Won't he
undertake to bring out The Idiot ? (It would be
ready by next winter, if he took it up now.) The
price — 2000 roubles (I even thought of letting him
have it for 1500, if he paid the money down). The
legal and formal aspects of the agreement need not
postpone matters : for I could send a formal and
duly certified authorisation from here. I asked
Marie Gregorevna just to ask Basunov, without
specially urging him, to say yes or no, and let me
know here. If the answer is no (although he is
quite aware how my books have been selling
hitherto and what sort of merchandise they are),
—then it is all right, I don't mind. I shall publish
it myself when I come back and I shan't be the
loser by it. It seems that my commission was not
a difficult one, was it ? It could have been done
in two minutes, by two words with Basunov. What

F

82 BOSTOEVSKY

then ? It is now six weeks and I have not heard a
word from Marie Gregorevna. Yet I asked her to
do this (the first request in my life) simply because
she herself eagerly offered to do any commissions
for me in Petersburg, when she was in Switzerland
last year. Thus my interests obviously suffer,
solely because I am abroad. And not only this one
thing ! A great number of things, which I cannot
do without, have been left behind in Russia ! Did
I or did I not tell you that I had a certain literary
idea (a novel, a parable on atheism), compared with
which all my previous literary career has been
negligible, a preface merely, and to which I am
going to devote all my subsequent life ? But
I cannot write it here ; utterly impossible ; I
absolutely must be in Russia. Without Russia I
can't write it. . . .

And what a mass of troubles ! What a mass of
worries ! If only they were spared me ! Apollon
Nicolayevich, for the love of God, write to me about
Pasha and about his quarrels with Emily Fiodor-
ovna ! It may be nonsense : but it is important
to me. Yet Emily Fiodorovna has not written
me a word about Pasha, but she sent me a letter
the other day full of reproaches. They have queer
notions. True, they are poor, but I can do only
what I can. . . . Listen, Apollon Nicolayevich, I
have a favour to ask you. If you can — do it, if

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 83

not — refuse to do it. And for the love of God don't
trouble yourself. Yet the trouble is not great ;
but my request is a delicate one. It 's about that
same Basunov. I beseech you to call on him at
his shop and to ask him : Is he or is he not disposed
to publish The Idiot, and to give me 2000 roubles
for it? (I don't want to take less.) With Alexander
Fiodorovich Basunov, as perhaps you know, you
may talk frankly. Moreover, you are to make no
efforts, and particularly don't try any special coax-
ing,— only — in a friendly way — if a conversation
arose — Basunov likes asking advice — say a good
word for The Idiot. But above all — don't show
any particular eagerness. Having learnt what he
says — write to me. That 's all I ask.

I 'm sure, I 'm sure you won't refuse my request
(it 's a very important thing to me, in spite of the
fact that I do not wish to reduce the price ; and if
he says 4 no,' — well, that 's as he pleases, I shall
not lose, I '11 publish it myself, or I '11 wait). But
there is one delicate point in the affair. It is this.
I had commissioned Marie Gregorevna to do this
very thing, and made her promise secrecy, although
I informed her at the same time that I was going
to write to you about it. Won't she be offended by
my asking you and passing her over ? At the same
time, why should she be offended ? Especially as
she knows that. you were to hear about it from me.

84 DOSTOEVSKY

And besides — she hasn't replied to me, although
the time is passing, and the business is important
to me. If she would only write to say that she did
not want to undertake the commission, then at
least my hands would not be tied ; but I 've had
no word from her. At all events I think it 's quite
all right ; I mean, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you
were to call on Basunov, for instance, and ask him :
whether he had received any proposal from me
about publishing The Idiot ? And then, if you
thought the conversation was taking a good turn,
if you spoke to him about the terms. Well now,
this is my earnest request to you, Apollon Nicola-
yevich ! If you can, do it, I beseech you. I do not
ask you to conclude the business (it cannot be
concluded, for an agreement and a power of attorney
are necessary), but only to begin it, and to let me
know about it, if only a line. Only please do not
scold and reproach me for troubling and worrying
you constantly. — I consider it necessary, though,
to tell you that one of these days I am going to
write to Marie Gregorevna and to ask her to pro-
ceed no further in the matter with Basunov, and
to consider my request as never having been made.
I should have written this to her, even if I had not
intended to ask you about Basunov. But the best
of all, the best of all — would be if you would take
the trouble to see Marie Gregorevna herself and

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 85

simply ask her : Has she done anything in my
business, or has she forgotten about it ? But I am
afraid to trouble you ; it means too much running
about for you.

I still hope to leave this place soon and go to
Dresden again. Letters addressed to me in Dresden
Will be forwarded to me to Florence, if I remain in
Florence ; for I have already written about it to
the Dresden post-office. But this is an extreme
supposition ; I really do hope to leave soon for
Dresden, and therefore if you wish to write me
(I shall be eagerly expecting a letter), write to me
at the poste restante, Dresden.

In truth we have to move to Dresden for many
urgent reasons, and chiefly because it is a city
familiar to us, and comparatively cheap ; we even
have friends there, and it is the place where Anna
Gregorevna hopes to realise her expectations (it
will be towards the beginning of September). Anna
Gregorevna thanks you deeply for your good words ;
she often remembers you and feels homesick. I am
very glad that her present occupation will to some
extent dispel her homesickness. Good-bye, my
friend. I have written three sheets, and what have
I told you ? Nothing. We have been separated
too long, and because of the separation we have lost
touch with one another on many questions. Some
idea of all that is taking place in Petersburg reaches

86 DOSTOEVSKY

me. I have the Russky Viestnik, Zarya, and I read
the Golos which is taken in by the local library.
How do you like Danilevsky's Russia and Europe ?
In my opinion the book is important in the extreme ;
but I am afraid it has not received enough attention
in the reviews. I consider Averkiev's Comedy the
best work of the year. At the first reading I was
in raptures ; now after the second I 've begun to
regard it a little more cautiously. I press your
hand firmly and embrace you. — Wholly and ever
your F. Dostoevsky.

VII

To A. N. Maikov

Dresden, ^th August, 18G9.

I am absolutely delighted by your opinion and
shall certainly write without waiting for your long
letter, my dearest and precious friend Apollon
Nicolayevich. (But remember, remember, dear
man, that you promised me a long letter soon !)
Firstly, I thank you for your thought about me and
my interests.1 . . .

Next year (even if I have to go to the debtors'
prison) I must return to Russia. Yes, things have
now taken such a turn that it 's better for me to sit

1 The letter then enters into details ahout a will made by
Postoevsky's aunt which are omitted here,

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 87

in the debtors' prison in Russia than to remain
abroad. My health is quite good, leaving aside my
fits, and I can bear all kinds of trouble ; but if I
were to remain here a year longer, I should be sur-
prised if I were able to write anything ; I don't mean
write it well, but write it at all — I 've got so out
of touch with Russia. I feel it. Anna Gregorevna
also longs for Russia, I can see it. Besides, the loss
of one child (a child such as I have never seen, so
strong, beautiful, so full of understanding and
feeling) was due solely to the fact that we could not
fall in with the foreign way of feeding and rearing
babies. If we lose the one which is expected, we
both shall fall into real despair. Anna Gregorevna
expects her confinement in three weeks at the
latest.1 I am terribly afraid for her health. Her
first confinement she bore courageously. This time
it is a completely different thing : she is seedy all
the time, and besides she feels nervous and anxious ;
she 's become impressionable and, added to this, she 's
seriously afraid of dying in childbirth (when she
remembers the pains of the first childbirth). Such
fears and anxieties are truly dangerous in natures
which are not timid and weak, and therefore I am
very anxious. By the way : my wife greets you and
your wife affectionately. She remembers you often

1 The second child, Lubov or Aimee, was born at Presden, on
September 14, 18G9/

88 DOSTOEVSKY

and passionately, she thanks you for your congratula-
tions on my novel, and we decided, eight months ago,
to ask you to stand godfather again. Pray, Apollon
Nicolayevich, do not refuse ; it is our great fixed
desire. (The godmother as before is to be Anna
Nicolayevna, whom you know, — my wife's mother.)

In general I am having a very worrying time and
an awful lot of troubles ; nevertheless I have to sit
down to write — for the Zarya [The Eternal Husband],
and then begin a long thing for the Russky Viestnik
[The Possessed]. ... It is eight months since I wrote
anything. I shall certainly start writing in a fever ;
but what will happen later ? Ideas I have of some
sort ; but I need Russia.

Of course I know better than you how you spend
the summer, and I knew beforehand that you would
not write to me before the autumn. Yet there was
one point about which I did expect to receive two
lines of information from you. I don't mean it as
a reproach. It was with regard to Basunov and
the publication of The Idiot, — simply a matter of
4 Yes ' or 4 No ' ; I did not even dare dream of
putting on you, my dear man, the whole burden of
the business ; and it wouldn't have been decent on
my part to trouble you in such a way. Still, just
the i yes ' or * no,' with Basunov's views, would have
been interesting ; though I am not very keen on
selling the work now. Later on — it may perhaps suit

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 89

me better — and apart from this, in any case, I now
have other aims and intentions ; for, come what
may, I have decided to return to Russia next year.

One more favour, my dear friend ! Write me a
word about Pasha ! I am in anguish and torment,
thinking and pondering over him. 1 know he has
his salary — if only he continues his work ; but I
should like to help him awfully. At the present
moment I haven't a penny to spare ; but in a month
or five weeks I shall send my story to the Zarya,
which, owing to its length, will, I believe, fetch
more than I 've had in advance from the Zarya.
Then I shall again be able to give Pasha a small
sum (a little is better than nothing). God knows
how much I shall need money myself by that time.
The Dostoevskys have probably received some
money and will not need help from me for some
time. Write to me about that, my dear friend.

Write to me also about yourself. Write me the
promised long letter. I think by the time this
letter reaches Petersburg you will have returned
from the country.

I press your hand firmly, I greet your wife. Do
you know, at times I have an idea that we have lost
touch with one another much more than we think,
and that it is already difficult to communicate our
ideas fully in letters. — Wholly and ever your

F, Dostoevsky,

90 DOSTOEVSKY

VIII

To A. N. Maikov

Dresden, Jf£ October, 1870.
21st

Your letter, my dear and much-esteemed Apollon
Nicolayevich, — a letter which delighted and sur-
prised me, — I 've left unanswered till now because
I have been sitting down to some troublesome work,
and wished to finish it at all costs. And therefore
I not only failed to answer several letters, but
didn't even read anything all that time (except
newspapers, of course). The work which I 've
taken so long over is only the beginning of the novel
for the Russky Viestnik [The Possessed] and I shall
have to write day and night for another six months
at least ; so that I am sick of it beforehand. There
is of course something in it which draws me to
write it ; but speaking generally — there is nothing
in the world more disgusting to me than literary
work, I mean strictly, the writing of novels and
stories — that is what I have come to ! As for the
idea of the novel, it is not worth explaining. In
the first place, to express it fully in a letter is quite
impossible, and you will be punished enough if you
are inclined to read the novel, when it is published.
Then why should I punish you twice ?

You wrote a great deal about St. Nicholas — the

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 91

Miracle-Worker. He will not desert us, because
St. Nicholas is the Russian spirit and stands for
Russian unity. We are no longer children, you and
I, much-esteemed Apollon Nicolayevich ; we know,
for instance, this fact : that in case, — not only of
a Russian disaster, but in case merely of Russian
troubles, — the most un-Russian part of Russia,
— a Radical — a Petersburg official, or a student —
even they become Russians, begin to feel themselves
Russians, although they may be ashamed of ad-
mitting it. Last winter I happened to read a
serious admission in a leading article in the Golos —
that 4 we almost rejoiced during the Crimean War
at the success of the Allied arms and at the defeat
of our own.' No, my Radicalism did not go so
far as that ; at that time I was still serving my
time in the galleys and did not rejoice at the success
of the Allies ; but together with my comrades, the
unhappy ones x and their soldier-guards, I felt my-
self a Russian, I wished success to Russian arms
and, — although I still retained a strong leaven of
scabby Russian Liberalism, preached by . . . like the
dung-beetle Bielinsky and the rest, — I did not con-
sider myself inconsistent, when I felt the Russian
in myself. True, the facts showed that the disease
which had attacked cultured Russians was much

1 The convicts and exiles in Siberia are called ' unhappy ones ' by
the people.

92 DOSTOEVSKY

more violent than we ourselves had imagined, and
that the matter had not ended with the Bielinskys,
Krayevskys, etc. But then came the miracle testi-
fied by St. Luke. The devils had entered into the
man and their name was legion, and they asked
Him : Suffer us to enter into the swine, and He
suffered them. The devils entered into the swine,
and the whole herd ran violently down a steep place
into the sea and were drowned. When the people
came out to see what was done they found the man,
out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at
the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and
those who saw it told them by what means he that
was possessed of the devils was healed. Exactly
the same has happened with us in Russia. The
devils went out of the Russian and entered into a
herd of swine, — into the Nechayevs, Serno-Solovio-
viches, etc. [terrorists]. These are drowned and
will be drowned, and the healed man, from whom
the devils had been cast out, is sitting at the feet
of Jesus. So it ought to happen. Russia has
spewed out the abomination on which she has been
surfeited, and certainly nothing Russian was left
in those spewed-out scoundrels. And observe this,
my dear friend : he who loses his people and
nationality, loses also the belief of his fathers, and
God. Well, if you want to know, — this is precisely
the theme of my novel. It is called The Devils

■

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 93

[called The Possessed in the existing English trans-
lation], and it is a description of how these devils
entered into a herd of swine. Beyond all doubt I
shall write it badly ; being more of a poet than an
artist I have always taken themes beyond my
powers. But since not one of all the critics who
have passed judgment on me has denied me a
certain talent, then in this long novel too there are
likely to be passages that are not so bad. Now
that 's all.

And in Petersburg there still seem to be many
clever people who, although they are horrified by
the scoundrels into whom the swine have entered,
still go on dreaming how fine it was during the
liberal-humane times of Bielinsky, who still think
that the enlightenment of that time should be
brought back. Now, this idea can be seen even
in the newest nationalist converts, etc. The old
fellows do not give in : the Plescheyevs, Annenkovs,
Turgenevs, and whole journals like the Viestnik
Europa are of this school. They go on giving prizes
in girls' schools, distributing to the girls books like
the works of Bielinsky, in which he bewails the fact
that Tatyana remained faithful to her husband.
No, it won't be uprooted for a long time, and there-
fore, it seems to me, we have nothing to fear from
external political commotions, such as, for instance,
a European war on behalf of the Slavs ; although

94 DOSTOEVSKY

it is strange : we are alone, and they are all of them
together. The present position allows us two or
three years of certain peace — shall we realise our
position ? Shall we prepare ? Shall we build
enough railways and fortresses ? Shall we get
another million rounds of ammunition ? Shall we
settle firmly on the border territories, and will
reforms be introduced into the poll-tax and the
recruiting for the army ? These are the things that
are needed, and the rest, that is, the Russian spirit,
unity, — all this exists and will endure, and it will
be so strong, it will have such wholeness and
sacredness that even we are impotent to fathom
the whole depth of that force, to say nothing of
foreigners ; and — my idea is that nine-tenths of our
power consists just in the fact that foreigners do
not understand and never will understand the depth
and power of our unity. Oh, how clever they are !
I have been assiduously reading for the last three
years all the political papers, that is, the most im-
portant of them. How remarkably well they know
their own affairs ! How they can foretell events !
What a knack they have of hitting the nail exactly
on the head ! (Compare them with our political
papers, with their imitative rubbish, all imitation
— with the exception perhaps of the Moscowskya
Viedomosti.) What then ? No sooner do they
touch on Russia, — than they start muttering the

LETTERS TO A. N. MAIKOV 95

devil knows what, like a feverish man in the dark !
In Europe I think they know the star Sirius more
thoroughly than they know Russia. And this very
thing, for a time, is our power. And the other
power will be our own belief in our individuality,
in the sacredness of our destiny. The whole
destiny of Russia lies in Orthodoxy, in the light
from the East, which will suddenly shine forth to
Western humanity, which has become blinded and
has lost Christ. The cause of the whole misfortune
of Europe, everything, everything without excep-
tion, has been that they gained the Church of Rome
and lost Christ, and then they decided that they
would do without Christ. Conceive now, my dear
friend, that even in such superior Russians as, for
instance, the author of Russia and Europe, I have
not met with this idea about Russia — this idea of
her exclusive Orthodox mission to mankind. And
if this is so, — then it is really early as yet to demand
independent thought from us.

But I have gone too far into the wood, and I am
on the fourth page already. I live somehow, try
to work, I am too much behind everywhere in de-
livering my work, everywhere I have broken my
promises, — and suffer because of it. Anna Gregor-
evna too is depressed ; so that I do not know what
to do. I ought to return in the spring ; — but I have
still no money, — not only not enough to pay my

96 DOSTOEVSKY

debts, but not enough even to get back home. I
have few acquaintances here, yet there are as many
Russians in Dresden as there are Englishmen.
Rubbishy people, these Russians are, generally
speaking, I mean. . . . And, my God, what trash
there is among them ! And why do they wander
about ?

My little girl is healthy, well-nourished, weaned,
she begins to understand well and even to speak ;
but she is a very nervous child, so that I am afraid
for her, although she is healthy. My greatly re-
spected friend, why do you give me so few details
when you write about Pasha, about such an event
as his marriage ? For the love of Christ, tell me
if you know. I have had no news from Pasha.
And he is dear to me. Of course, it would be ridicu-
lous on my part, at this distance, after a separa-
tion of three years, to claim to have an influence on
his decisions. Still it is sad. I have a cousin,
Misha, who married when he was still younger than
Pasha ; but he is a very intelligent boy, a boy of
character. But Pasha is different — in character,
and in the smallest matter of self-discipline.

If you can write anything to me, you will make
me very, very grateful. My wife greets you.
Luba kisses you. Good-bye, keep well and happy.
— Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

REMINISCENCES OF F. M. DOSTOEVSKY

BY HIS WIFE

ANNA GREGOREVNA DOSTOEVSKY

G

REMINISCENCES

Anna Gregorevna Dostoevsky, nee Snitkin, had been
trained as a shorthand writer. She finished her training
in 1866, and became Dostoevsky 's secretary at a time
when he was hastily finishing The Gambler. During
the whole of October 1866, she wrote to his dictation.
They were married on February 15, 1867, in a style
which gave much satisfaction to the bride. She
describes the scene in her Reminiscences, in a passage
as yet unpublished :

1 Fiodor Mihailovich arranged things well : the
church was lighted brightly, a splendid choir sang,
there was a crowd of beautifully dressed guests ;
but all this I learnt only later, from what had been
told to me ; for up to nearly half-way through the
ceremony I felt as if I were in a mist, I crossed my-
self mechanically and my answers to the priest's
questions were scarcely audible. I did not even
notice which of us was the first to step on to the
pink silk cushion — I think that Fiodor Mihailovich
was the first ; for I have given way to him all my
life long. It was only after the Communion that
my head became clear, and that I began to pray
ardently. Afterwards every one told me that
during the wedding ceremony I was terribly
pale. . . .'

The couple left Russia, originally for Dresden, two
months later, on April 14, 1867, intending to remain

99

100 DOSTOEVSKY

away for only three or four months. Circumstances,
however, some of which are sufficiently indicated in
the letters to Maikov, delayed the return until the
spring of 1871. At that time Dostoevsky was very ill
and very homesick, as may be seen from his letter of
March 18, 1871, to N. N. Strahov :

' I have been ill for some time, and above all I
have felt homesick after my epileptic fit. When I
have not had a fit for a long time, and then it
suddenly breaks out, then I feel an unusual nos-
talgia, a moral one. It drives me to despair.
Formerly this depression used to last about three
days after the fit, and now it lasts seven or eight
days ; but all the time I have been in Dresden my
fits have been less frequent than anywhere else.
Secondly, there is the longing for work. I am almost
worn out with the slowness of my work. I must go
to Russia, although I have got quite unaccustomed
to the Petersburg climate. But, after all, whatever
happens, return J must. . . . My writing does not
come off, Nicolay Nicolayevich, or it is produced
with terrible difficulty. What all this means — I do
not know. But I think it is my need for Russia.
At whatever cost I must return to Russia. . . .'

In his letter of February 4, 1872, to S. D. Yanovsky,
six months after his return to Russia, he writes :

* I spent four years abroad — in Switzerland,
Germany, and Italy, and got terribly sick of it in
the end. With horror I began to notice that I was
falling behind Russia ; I read three papers, and
spoke with Russians ; but there was a something
which as it were I did not understand. I had to

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 101

come back and see with my own eyes. Well, I Ve
returned, and found nothing particularly puzzling ;
in a couple of months I shall understand everything
again ! '

But if Dostoevsky desired to return to Russia for his
own sake, he was still more anxious to do so on account
of his wife. In a letter to A. N. Maikov, Dostoevsky
writes :

* to remain in Dresden for another year is im-
possible, quite out of the question. It would mean
just killing Anna Gregorevna with despair, over
which she has no control, since hers is a genuine
case of home-sickness.'

It was something more, perhaps, than home-sickness ;
for Madame Dostoevsky 's existence was one of in-
cessant work, incessant anxiety. The following pages
show some of her troubles ; but it should further be
remembered that during the last fourteen years of
Dostoevsky 's life, — the most intense and productive
years of his creative activity, — Anna Gregorevna was
not only his wife and true friend, but also, as the
Reminiscences indicate, his assistant, shorthand writer,
publisher, financial adviser, and business manager.

The Reminiscences of Madame Dostoevsky, for the
year 1871-1872, are taken from three of her notebooks
found in the Poushkin Department of the Russian
Academy of Sciences in Petersburg.

OUR RETURN TO RUSSIA IN 1871

Our return to Petersburg, after an absence abroad
for over four years, took place on a hot summer day,
on July 8, 1871.

From the Warsaw station we drove past the
cathedral of Holy Trinity, in which our wedding
had taken place. Both Fiodor Mihailovich and
myself crossed ourselves, and seeing us do this our
little baby daughter [Lubov] also made the sign of
the cross. I remember Fiodor Mihailovich saying :
' Well, Anechka, we have lived happily these four
years abroad, despite the fact that at times life
has been hard. What is life in Petersburg going
to give us ? Everything is in a mist before us !
I foresee a good many troubles, difficulties, and
worries before we stand on our own feet. On
God's help only do I rely ! ' — * Why worry before-
hand ? ' I remember answering him. ■ Let us rely
on God's mercy. The chief thing now is that our
long-cherished dream has been realised, and we
are again in Petersburg, again in our mother
country.'

103

104 DOSTOEVSKY

Various feelings agitated us both. In me pre-
vailed a feeling of boundless joy. I, who from my
early youth had dreamt about life in Europe, and
was so happy in going there, had for the last two
years of our stay there not only grown cold to
foreign countries, I had come to hate them almost.
Everything abroad — religion, language, people,
customs, manners — seemed to me not only foreign,
but hostile. I missed Russian black bread, deep
snow, sledges, the sound of Russian church bells ;
in a word, everything that I have been accustomed
to from my childhood. I saw that Fiodor Mihailo-
vich worked without sparing himself; and I saw
that now and then he received large sums of money ;
but, as a considerable part of it had to be given to
our relations, and interest had also to be paid on
the articles we had pawned when we left for abroad,
I lost hope of being able to save any considerable
amount to pay over to our creditors, on our return
to Petersburg, to prevent them from worrying us
at the outset, and to get time to look round and see
what we could do to improve our entangled cir-
cumstances. I perfectly understood that only by
returning home and by acting in person, and not
through intermediaries, could we settle our financial
affairs. It also seemed to me that in Petersburg
I might find some work for myself, as stenographer,
or translator, and thus be able to bring in a certain

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 105

contribution. I also thought that my mother's
house, in the Kostromsky Street, which was in-
tended for me, would pass into my hands. In that
case our liberation from our debts would proceed
more successfully. I meant to sell the house im-
mediately, to pay the most pressing debts, and to
discharge the rest by instalments from the money
received for Dostoevsky's novels. That is why I
so much wished to go back to Russia. And yet
all kinds of obstacles to our return cropped up
constantly, and finally, we had not sufficient money
to go back to Russia and to make our own home.
A large sum happened to be due to us ; and yet
we could not manage to go home. This was due
partly to the fact that we anticipated in the very
near future an addition to the family, partly to the
fact that our baby was too young to take to Russia
in the winter. There were never - ending diffi-
culties of all sorts in the way of our return, and at
last I came to the firm conviction that if we did not
get away from Germany, we should be doomed to
remain ' emigres against our will.' This idea was
so intolerable that I agreed in anticipation to
impending misery and misfortune of every kind,
provided only they happened at home. In a word,
I experienced in my own case what home-sick-
ness meant, and I would not wish my worst
enemy to meet with that misfortune. I did my

106 DOSTOEVSKY

best to hide from Fiodor Mihailovich my home-
sickness and my depression ; but could anything
be concealed from his penetration ? The impossi-
bility of saving me from the misery of living abroad
was a great grief to him. Fiodor Mihailovich him-
self missed Russia very much : he always loved her
so deeply. And besides he was haunted by a
tormenting idea that by living abroad so long he
would forget her, would cease to understand
Russian life and Russian actualities. In other
words, he feared that he would himself fall a victim
to the thing with which he had once reproached
Turgenev. ' You can't know life from the news-
papers alone,' he would say to me. * A writer
should not leave his country for a long time, he
should live one life with her ; otherwise he is lost ! '
And Fiodor Mihailovich was alarmed lest such a
long absence might have a bad effect on his literary
talent, might ruin him. And truly his literary
career was everything in his life, his vocation, as
well as his only means of making a living. One
can therefore imagine his overwhelming joy when
favourable circumstances enabled us to return
home.

This time we did not allow the consideration that
I expected an addition to the family in the very
near future to stop us [Fiodor Fiodorovich
Dostoevsky was born in July 1871, a week after

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 107

the return]. But our feelings of joy were mingled
also with apprehension as to how we could straighten
out our affairs. We owed about twenty-five
thousand roubles, and our whole fortune, on the
day of our arrival, consisted of sixty roubles in cash
and two trunks bought abroad. In one of these
were Fiodor Mihailovich's clothes, his manuscripts
and notebooks ; in the other — my things and the
children's. When I think back on it all now, I
think how much spiritual energy and power was
needed to begin a new life in such circumstances.

On our arrival we stopped at the Commercial
Hotel, in the Great Konyushenna Street, and stayed
there for two days. To stay on there was inadvis-
able, in view of the coming addition to the family,
and it did not suit our means either ; so we moved
to a house in the Ekaterininsky Prospekt, where we
took two furnished rooms on the fourth floor. We
chose that neighbourhood in order that our little
girl might spend the hot days of July and August
in the Yussupov Park, which was quite close at
hand.

During the very first days of our arrival Fiodor
Mihailovich's relations came to see us, and we
received them all very cordially. During these
last four years the position of Emily Fiodorovna
Dostoevsky had changed for the better : her elder

108 DOSTOEVSKY

son, Fiodor Mihailovich (the ' junior,' as our rela-
tions called him, to distinguish him from my hus-
band, Fiodor Mihailovich ' senior '), had given many
well-paid music lessons ; her second son, Mihail
Mihailovich, had had work in a bank ; her daughter,
Ekaterina Mihailovna, also had some kind of
occupation. Consequently the family had lived
quite comfortably. Moreover, Emily Fiodorovna
had during that time become accustomed to the
idea that Fiodor Mihailovich, having his own family
to keep, could assist her only in exceptional circum-
stances. Pavel Alexandrovich Isayev was the
only one who could not rid himself of the idea that
4 his father,' as he called Fiodor Mihailovich, * was
obliged ' to keep not only him, but also his family.
But him too I received kindly, because I happened
to make the acquaintance of his wife, whom he had
married only in April of that year. I liked
Nadezhda Mihailovna Isayev at first sight, and, in
spite of the slight difference in our ages, we became
friends at once. She was a good-looking woman,
not tall, very modest, and not stupid ; so that I
could not possibly understand why she had decided
to choose for her life-companion such an impossible
man as Pavel Alexandrovich Isayev. I was sin-
cerely sorry for her ; for, knowing his character,
I foresaw that her life was not going to be happy.
Eight days after our arrival in Petersburg, on

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 109

July 16, at 9 o'clock in the morning took place
the expected event — the birth of our elder son
Fiodor.1

When I began to recover, we had our boy bap-
tised, his godfather being Apollon Nicolayevich
Maikov, who acted in the same capacity to our
two daughters. For his godmother Fiodor Mihailo-
vich chose our daughter Lyubochka, who was not
yet two years old.

At the end of August, Fiodor Mihailovich went
off to Moscow and brought back a certain sum of
money, not a very big sum, but enough to make
it possible for us to move from the furnished rooms
to a flat. The chief problem was our lack of
furniture, which we had to get before taking the
flat. The idea occurred to me of going to the
Apraxin market and of asking the dealers there if
they would agree to sell us furniture for monthly
payments of 25 roubles, the furniture to be con-
sidered the property of the dealer until the whole
sum was paid. One dealer there, Lubimov, agreed
to these terms and let us have at once goods to

1 On this subject I may add : I felt ill up to July 15th. Fiodor
Mihailovich, who prayed the whole day and night for the happy issue
of my labour, told me afterwards that during his prayer he decided
that if a son was born, if it were only ten minutes before midnight,
to call him Vladimir, in honour of St. Vladimir, who is commemo-
rated on July 15th, and not Fiodor as we had intended. But our
son was born on July 16th, and was called Fiodor, the name so
dear to me.

110 DOSTOEVSKY

the value of 400 roubles. But, Heavens, what
things they were ! The furniture was new ; but
it was made of birch or pine and, not to speak of
its absurd style, it came from such a bad market,
that after three years of use it became unglued and
fell to pieces. In the end we had to throw it
away and to replace it by new stuff. But even
for that furniture I was grateful. It enabled us to
have our own flat ; for living in furnished rooms
was unthinkable, the close proximity of tiny babies
preventing Fiodor Mihailovich from either sleeping
or working.

Having arranged the matter of furniture I began
looking for a flat, and in this Isayev offered his
assistance. That very evening he announced that
he had found an excellent flat — eight rooms — at
the very low rent of 100 roubles per month. 4 We
don't need such a large flat,' I said. ' It isn't
at all large,' answered Isayev. * You will have a
drawing-room, study, bedroom, and nursery ; we
shall have a drawing-room, study, bedroom ; and
the dining-room we shall share between us.' ' Do
you suppose that we are to live together ? ' ' Why
not ? I told Nadya that when " my father "
came back we should all live together.' This time
I had to talk to him seriously and to convince him
that circumstances had changed and that / would
in no event agree to our living together. As usual,

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 111

Isayev became impertinent and threatened to
complain to Fiodor Mihailovich. But I refused to
listen. I had not spent four years of independent
life for nothing, and when Isayev turned to Fiodor
Mihailovich, he received the answer that he had
left everything to me and whatever I decided must
hold good. For quite a long time Isayev could not
forgive me for upsetting the plans he had formed.
I took a flat in Serpuhov Street, from Mme.
Archangelsky, and signed the agreement in my own
name so as to relieve Fiodor Mihailovich of the
necessity of negotiating with the landlady, the
house-porter, etc.

The flat consisted of four rooms : a study (in
which Fiodor Mihailovich slept on a divan), a
drawing-room, a dining-room, and a nursery in
which I also slept. In arranging the house I com-
forted myself with the thought that I should not
have to buy many household things and clothes ;
for before we left Russia our things had been dis-
tributed among various people for safe-keeping.
And soon after I recovered from my illness, I began
to busy myself with getting these things together.
But here unpleasant surprises came one after the
other. It began in this way. I went off to my
mother's house, in which an old maid called Olga
Vasilievna had been living for many years. She
was an extremely honest woman ; and to her safe-

112 DOSTOEVSKY

keeping my mother, three years previously, just
before she went abroad to pay us a short visit,
had entrusted various household effects, samovars,
copper utensils, glass and china. To my great dis-
tress it turned out that a few months previously
Olga Vasilievna had died, that as she was a single
woman a country cousin had turned up and buried
her, and that the magistrate had ordered that all
the effects found in the house should be sold in
order to defray the expenses which the cousin
had incurred on the funeral. There were people,
lodgers in the house, who knew that Olga Vasilievna
was only taking care of our things. But the cousin
said ' she knew nothing about that,' but if she were
told who had entrusted Olga with the goods and
what they were, she would return them. And thus
she took away all our things with her to the country.
I wrote to her, to Torzhok, but received from her
only a pair of malachite ear-rings and a tea-caddy,
which she admitted had not belonged to her late
aunt. As to the other things, she suggested that
we should bring an action against her in court for
their recovery. Of course, I brought no action.
The other unpleasant surprise was the history of
my china and glass, which I charged my sister Marie
Gregorevna to keep for me. I may say that my
father was a great connoisseur and expert in china.
He loved to go round the antique shops and to

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 118

buy beautiful things. After his death several
beautiful old cups of Vieux-Saxe and Sevres came
to me, and also some old cut-glass. All these
things were kept in a special cupboard, and I felt
sure that they were safe. But this is what hap-
pened. When my sister returned from her summer
holiday in the country, and was setting her house-
hold things in order, she told the parlourmaid to
wash the things in the cupboards, my things
included, and specially asked her to be careful with
my things as they did not belong to her. And then
the maid, whom my sister had scolded for some-
thing and threatened to sack, deliberately, out of
spite, in order to pay my sister out, in the presence
of the chambermaid and cook, threw the whole
huge tray on the floor, with such force that every-
thing was smashed to smithereens, and not a single
thing could be glued together. Certainly, my sister
made it up to me by sending me a tea-service
and other crockery ; but even now I remember
with regret the cups with the little shepherdesses
on them, and also the tea-glass with a fly, so vividly
painted on it that every one who drank from it
would invariably try to remove it, imagining it was
alive. And I would pay a good deal to get them
back. The impressions of childhood remain with
us all our life long. It was just my luck that the
maid's spite should have been vented on these

н

114 DOSTOEVSKY

things of mine, and not on those of my sister who
had given her the scolding. There is truth in the
proverb : 4 Misfortunes never come singly.'

I was also greatly distressed by another surprise.

During the whole four years of our stay abroad
Fiodor Mihailovich used to send Praskovya Petrovna
(the mother of Vanya, the natural son of Fiodor
Mihailovich's brother — Mihail Mihailovich Dos-
toevsky) money to pay the interest on the
things which we had pawned on leaving Russia
(Fiodor Mihailovich's fur coat and my fur cloak),
and we congratulated ourselves that we should
only have to redeem the things and not to spend
much money on buying warm clothes. Imagine
our sorrow — mine and Fiodor's — when Praskovya
Petrovna, whom I had asked to bring us the pawn-
brokers' receipts, came to us and told us with tears
in her eyes a story (perhaps false) of how she had
been paying the interest all the time, but had for-
gotten to pay the last instalment, and that our
things were now lost. She cried, promised to get the
things back ; but all these were empty promises,
never fulfilled. True, we owe her thanks for having
returned to us the pawnbrokers' receipts for the
gold and silver things we pawned. These things
had to lie there pledged for another five years before
we managed to redeem them.

When we left in 1867 for abroad, for three months

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 115

only, we moved certain articles of furniture (the
bed, a large chest of drawers filled with cushions
and blankets, Fiodor Mihailovich's library, etc.)
to Emily Fiodorovna, in whose flat Isayev at that
time was settled. There were also stored the old
icons of the Saviour and Our Lady in silver frames,
which had been presented to me when I married.
When I was arranging the flat I asked Isayev to
fetch my icons. He brought them to me — but
without the silver frames. Thereupon he told a
story of how his landlady (he had had a dozen
landladies in four years) had robbed him, how
once when he returned home he found that the
silver frames were missing, what steps he took for
their recovery, the proceedings in court. As to
the furniture, cushions, blankets, he said that he
had taken them for his own family ; and as to the
library, he candidly confessed that as he had no
money he had been selling one book after another.
He also sold all books presented to Fiodor Mihailo-
vich, with autographs and dedications by their
authors. When I expressed regret at the loss of
the library Isayev turned round on me and
declared that we ourselves were to blame for every-
thing : 4 Why hadn't we sent him money punctu-
ally ? ' As if we were obliged to keep a robust,
strong, lazy fellow !

The loss of Fiodor Mihailovich's library we felt

116 DOSTOEVSKY

particularly keenly. I remember how, when we
lived abroad, Fiodor Mihailovich longed for his
books, and I comforted him with the assurance
that the library was perfectly safe and that he
would have it back on his return to Russia. And
now came the loss — irreparable to us : for our
financial circumstances, right up to the death of
Fiodor Mihailovich, were such that we never had
means to acquire a decent library again. And
Fiodor Mihailovich was justly proud of his old
library, on which he had spent large sums of money
every year. To judge from the bills of Basunov
the bookseller, the library contained many serious
works ; for instance, it was rich in the literature of
the Old Believers. And all this had been sacrificed
for a mere song. Later on, in the Alexandrovsky
market, I chanced to find one of the books sold by
Isayev which had belonged to me ; a book which
had been given to me as a prize when I passed from
one class to another in the Maryinsky Gymnasium
for Girls. In the book remained the fly-leaf, with
the inscription setting forth the name of the person
to whom the book had been given. Of course I
bought the book back.

These are the kinds of losses by which we had,
through most incredible accidents, to pay for the
four years spent abroad.

Yet not all the surprises were unpleasant. There

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 117

came to light one circumstance which gave me great
joy. In the winter of 1871 I happened to pay
a visit to my cousin, Dr. M. N. Snitkin. In the
spring of that year he had married Ekaterina
Ippolitovna, the sister of Mme. Saint-Hilaire. When
she heard about our misfortunes with regard to our
things, Ekaterina Ippolitovna said to me : ' I Ve
heard from my sister Sasha (Alexandra Ippolitovna
Saint-Hilaire) that at the top of her house there
was a basket of papers belonging to your husband.*
I began to question her, and it turned out that about
three years before Fiodor Mihailovich 4 junior ' had
asked Mme. Saint-Hilaire's permission to leave with
her, for a short time, a wicker basket containing
his uncle's papers. He himself had disappeared ;
but the basket remained with them. Next day I
sent for the basket. And there arrived a large
laundry-basket, packed full with papers and note-
books, not locked but tied with a thin string.

My ecstasy can be imagined when, examining
the contents of the basket, I found several note-
books by Fiodor Mihailovich, several books of
memoranda relating to the conduct of the reviews
Vremya and Epocha, left by Mihail Mihailovich ;
and a mass of most varied correspondence. These
recovered papers more than once served us a good
turn in our subsequent life, when it was necessary
to prove or refute certain facts in the life of Fiodor

118 DOSTOEVSKY

Mihailovich which had been unknown to me before
1867. As it appeared later, Isayev, on our depar-
ture, took that basket of letters and notebooks
to his rooms. When he moved from Emily Fiodor-
ovna's house, he left the basket there, but as she
did not know what to do with it, she handed it
over to her son, Fiodor 4 junior,' who placed it for
safe-keeping with friends. And then every one
forgot about it. It had occurred to me that Fiodor
Mihailovich might have notebooks and manuscripts
of an earlier period — for instance, of the period when
he wrote his Insulted and Injured or The House of
the Dead. And it seemed to me another basket
of papers and manuscripts must be in existence, a
basket also taken by Isayev, and from him passed
through several hands, now lying in somebody
else's attic, forgotten by everybody until the mice
began to look after it. But in spite of all my efforts
I could not discover it.

The Beginning of the Struggle with
the Creditors

In September 1871 a newspaper announced to
the public Dostoevsky's return from abroad, and
thereby rendered us no good service. Our creditors,
hitherto silent, at once presented themselves, de-
manding payment. The first, and a very formid-

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 119

able one, was G. Hinterlach. Fiodor Mihailovich
owed him nothing personally, nor was it a debt
contracted during the run of the reviews. It was
a debt of the late Mihail Mihailovich's, my husband's
brother, contracted when he was in the tobacco trade.
[This tobacco business ceased to exist in 1861.]
In order to stimulate the sale of his firm's tobacco,
Mihail Dostoevsky advertised in the papers that
every box of cigars of a certain kind contained a
prize, — a pair of scissors, a razor, a needle-case, a
penknife, and so on. These prizes attracted
customers, and at first the scheme was a great suc-
cess. But as the choice of prizes was limited, the
customers soon began to fall off and the despatch
of boxes had to be stopped. The prizes consisted
exclusively of metal articles which Mihail Dostoevsky
bought from the wholesale dealer G. Hinterlach
(Nevsky, opposite the Gostiny Dvor, in the court-
yard). The latter sold him the goods on credit
and on bills at a high rate of interest. When the
subscription to the review Vremya went off success-
fully, Mihail Dostoevsky paid Hinterlach in full,
having always considered him the most exacting
of his creditors. And three or four days before
his death (in July 1864) Mihail Dostoevsky told
his wife and Fiodor Mihailovich with joy that he
had at last settled everything with ' that blood-
sucker Hinterlach.' And when on the death of

120 DOSTOEVSKY

Mihail Dostoevsky all his affairs devolved on Fiodor
Mihailovich, and against his will he had to take
over the liabilities of the review Vremya, — Mme.
Hinterlach came to him and said that Mihail
Dostoevsky owed her about two thousand roubles.
Fiodor Mihailovich remembered what his brother
had said about his having paid his debt to Hinter-
lach, and informed Mme. Hinterlach of this. But
she said that this was a separate debt, and that she
had given the amount to Mihail Dostoevsky without
having received any acknowledgment from him.
Mme. Hinterlach implored Fiodor Mihailovich
either to pay her the 2000 roubles or to give her a
bill ; she assured him that if she failed to get a
bill, her husband would make it very unpleasant
for her. She cried, fell on her knees before Fiodor
Mihailovich, went into hysterics. Fiodor Mihailo-
vich, who always believed in human honesty,
believed her, and gave her two bills, of 1000
roubles each. The first bill had been paid before
1867, but the second bill, amounting with four
years' interest to 1300 roubles, was presented by
Hinterlach for payment immediately after our
arrival. He sent a threatening letter, and Fiodor
Mihailovich went to him to ask for a postponement
till the New Year (1872), when he was to receive
money for his novels. Fiodor Mihailovich returned
home in utter despair. Hinterlach declared that

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 121

he was not going to wait any longer and decided
to attach all our movables, and if the latter were
not sufficient to cover the debt, he would put
Fiodor Mihailovich in the debtors' prison. Fiodor
Mihailovich said to him : ' If I 'm sitting in prison,
in one room together with other people, away from
my family, how shall I be able to work ? How
shall I be able to pay you if you deprive me of the
possibility of working ? ' — 4 Oh, you are a famous
author, and I reckon the Literary Fund will get
you out immediately,' said Hinterlach. Fiodor
Mihailovich, who had no particular respect for the
Committee of the Literary Fund as constituted at
that time, expressed his doubt about getting any
assistance from that body ; and declared that even
if they offered him such assistance, he would
rather go to prison than accept it. In the evening
Fiodor Mihailovich and I discussed the matter for
a long time, and decided to propose to Hinter-
lach the following new arrangement : to pay him
50 roubles down, and monthly instalments of 25
roubles, and have half of the debt discharged in the
coming year. With that offer Fiodor Mihailovich
paid Hinterlach a second visit, and came home
utterly disgusted. After a long conversation,
Hinterlach had said to him : ' Now, you are a
gifted author, and I want to show you that I, a
small German shopkeeper, can put a famous Russian

122 DOSTOEVSKY

author in the debtors' prison, and be sure, I mean
to do it.' * I was revolted by this impertinent
behaviour to my dear husband ; but I realised that
we were in the hands of a scoundrel and had no
means of getting rid of him. Foreseeing that
Hinterlach would not stop at mere threats, I
decided to try to arrange the matter myself, and
without saying a single word to Fiodor Mihailovich
about my intention (he would certainly have for-
bidden it), I went off to Hinterlach. He received
me arrogantly and said : * Either you put the money
on the table, or in a week's time your movables
will be attached and sold by auction, and your
husband settled in "Tarasov's House." ' 2 To this
I answered coolly, that our flat had been taken
by me, and not by Fiodor Mihailovich, and was
registered in my name (and I had done this to pre-
vent my husband from being troubled with house-
hold worries, negotiations with the landlady and
house-porter, etc.) ; and therefore I should not
allow my things to be attached. As to the furni-
ture, I had bought it on credit and until I paid the
furniture dealer, it all belonged to him, and could
not be attached. He could attach a few of Fiodor
Mihailovich's clothes ; but these would fetch too

1 It must be said that after their victory in the Franco-Prussian
war all Germans living abroad became extremely arrogant and tried
to show the superiority of their nation over other nations.

2 The debtors' prison was so called in the vernacular.

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 123

small a sum to be worth the trouble. As proof I
showed him the lease of the flat and a copy of my
agreement with the furniture dealer. As to Hinter-
lach's threat about the debtors' prison, I said to
him that if he fulfilled it and Fiodor Mihailovich
were compelled to go to prison, if it were only for
a few days, ' Then I give you my word of honour,
Herr Hinterlach, that I shall go down on my knees
and pray my husband to remain in prison up to the
time when the date of your bill has expired.1 I
shall take rooms myself close to the prison, I and
the children will visit him daily, and I shall help
him in his work. Certainly, if he stays in prison
with others in one room, my husband will find it
difficult to work, but with God's help he will get
accustomed to it and will work. But as for you,
Herr Hinterlach, you won't get a brass farthing,
and besides you will be obliged to pay his " main-
tenance." a I give you my word that it will all
be as I say, and you will be cruelly punished for
your obstinacy.' Hinterlach began to talk about
my husband's ingratitude, and said he had waited
a long time for his money. This finally revolted
me ; I was beside myself, and said : 4 No, it is you

1 The imprisonment of a debtor extinguished the debt. For a sum
of 1300 roubles one would have to sit in prison, if I remember right,
either nine or fourteen months.

2 A creditor at that time had to pay in a certain sum of money to
the debtors' prison monthly to feed and keep his debtor, and this
was called 'maintenance.'

124 DOSTOEVSKY

who should be grateful to my husband for having
given a bill to your wife for a debt which had
perhaps been paid already. She had had no
acknowledgment from Mihail Dostoevsky, and my
husband was under no obligation to make himself
responsible for the sum. Fiodor Mihailovich, in
giving a bill to your wife, acted out of generosity,
out of pity ; for your wife cried and said that
you would curse and reproach her eternally, if she
failed to get a bill from him. But don't think that
your cruelty will go unpunished. If you dare to
act as you threaten to do, I on my part will do my
very best to make things unpleasant for you : I
shall describe the affair with all the details and
publish it in the Syn Otechestva. Let every one see
what the so-called " honest Germans " are capable
of. People will recognise you under an invented
name, and if you take proceedings against me, I
shall prove that I have written the truth ; there are
witnesses in whose presence your wife implored
Fiodor Mihailovich to give her the bill.'

In a word, I was beside myself and spoke without
picking my words, just to give vent to my over-
powering anger against the man. And although
more than once in my life I have been the victim
of my anger, this time it was of real service to me :
the German was frightened of my threat to expose
him in the newspapers and, after thinking for some

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 125

time, he asked me what I wanted. ' The very
same terms my husband asked you to grant yester-
day,' I said. 'Well, give the money, then,' said
Hinterlach. I asked him to put down our terms
in detail on paper and sign them ; for I was afraid
that he might take back his words, and begin tor-
menting us again. A complete conqueror, I re-
turned home with the document in my pocket, and
with the knowledge that thereby for some time at
least I had secured my dear husband's peace and
my own.

But before I tell about our struggle with our
creditors and the incredible efforts and difficulties
(lasting for another ten years, almost until the death
of my dear husband) which we encountered in the
attempt to pay off our debts, I want to say a few
words about how those debts, which tormented us
both so much, had mounted up.

Only a very small part of them (two or three
thousand roubles) had been contracted by Fiodor
Mihailovich himself for his personal needs. Partly
they were debts incurred by Mihail Dostoevsky
in connection with his tobacco business, which I
mentioned above. But in the main they were
debts contracted for the running of the reviews
Vremya and Epocha, which were published by
Fiodor Mihailovich's brother, Mihail Mihailovich.

126 DOSTOEVSKY

In 1864 Mihail Mihailovich died, after a short illness
of three days only. His family (a wife and four
little children), accustomed to live comfortably,
was left without any means. And then Fiodor
Mihailovich, who had been left a widower with no
children, considered it his duty to pay his brother's
debts, and as it were to clear his brother's memory
from reproach, and also to support his family.
With these noble objects Fiodor Mihailovich de-
cided to sacrifice his talent (by changing it into
small coin), his powers, and his time, and to take
on his shoulders the load of a business completely
unfamiliar to him (the publication and running of
the review Epocha). Having become editor of the
paper, Fiodor Mihailovich had inevitably to take
over the liabilities of the review, namely, the debts
to the paper manufacturers, to the printers, binders,
as well as those due to the authors who published
their works in the review. Fiodor Mihailovich
might possibly have been able to realise his noble
intentions, if caution and even a slight business
capacity had formed elements of his character.
But these qualities Fiodor Mihailovich lacked
altogether. On the contrary, he had the com-
pletest trust in people and a sincere conviction of
human honesty. When later on I heard stories
from eye-witnesses of the financial obligations which
Fiodor Mihailovich had incurred, and learnt from

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 127

old letters the details of many such instances, I
was astounded at the utterly childish unpracti-
cally of my dear husband. Every one, who had
no conscience and was not too lazy, deceived him
and dragged money or bills out of him. During
his brother's lifetime Fiodor Mihailovich had no
connection with the business side of the Vremya,
and was ignorant of the exact financial status of
Mihail Mihailovich. But after his death people
began coming to Fiodor Mihailovich, some, perfect
strangers to him, declaring that the deceased owed
them such and such sums. In most cases they did
not present to Fiodor Mihailovich any proofs of the
correctness of their claims, and Fiodor Mihailovich,
who believed in human honesty, did not even think
of asking for proofs or of documentary evidence.
He would merely say : 1 1 haven't any money at
all just now ; but if you like, I can give you a bill ;
only I ask you not to demand payment soon ; I
will pay you as soon as I can.' People took the
bills, promised to wait and, of course, did not keep
their promises, but presented the bills for im-
mediate payment. I shall cite one case, the correct-
ness of which I happened to verify from documents.
There was one insignificant writer B. who published
stories in the Vremya. He came to Fiodor Mihailo-
vich asking for money for some stories of his which
had not been paid for. He put the amount owing

128 DOSTOEVSKY

to him at 250 roubles. As usual, Fiodor Mihailo-
vich had no money (the subscription money had
been received by Mihail Mihailovich, and the further
subscription money went to the family of the de-
ceased), and he offered him a bill. B. was deeply
moved, thanked Fiodor Mihailovich earnestly,
promised to wait until things improved, and asked
for an undated bill, so as not to be obliged to take
proceedings, as he would be if the date were fixed.
Fiodor Mihailovich agreed. Imagine his astonish-
ment when, in two or three weeks' time, the bill
was presented for payment, and attachment of his
property was threatened. Fiodor Mihailovich went
to B. for an explanation. B. expressed extreme
indignation over the affair, and said : ' Don't you
see, my landlady pressed me hard for money and
threatened to turn me out of the flat. Reduced to
extremity, I decided to give her your bill, and she
promised not to present it. I am in despair at
having placed you in such a situation ; I will arrange
the matter,' etc. etc. As a result, in order to save
our property from attachment, Fiodor Mihailovich
had to raise money at heavy interest to pay that
bill. About eight or nine years later, in the
'seventies, I had on one occasion to go through a
mass of documents, papers, and notebooks kept by
Fiodor Mihailovich. Among the notebooks were
also books of memoranda relating to the Vremya.

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 129

Imagine my surprise and indignation, when I found
B.'s receipt for this very same sum of money which
had already been paid him by Mihail Mihailovich,
and also a note signed by B. in which he acknow-
ledged the receipt of an advance of 60 roubles on
account of a story which he undertook to write.
I showed all these documents to Fiodor Mihailo-
vich. His reply was : ' I could not have thought
he was capable of deceiving me. What a man may
be brought to by necessity ! '

In my opinion a considerable part of the financial
obligations shouldered by Fiodor Mihailovich were
of a similar nature. In this way a debt of about
twenty thousand roubles had accumulated and,
with the ever-growing interest, it amounted to
twenty-five thousand roubles, and all the last
thirteen years of our married life we were engaged
in paying off this debt. It was only one year before
Fiodor Mihailovich's death that all our debts were
paid off, and that we could begin to breathe freely
without fear of being tortured, threatened, attacked,
etc. Moreover, for the payment of these, partly
fictitious debts, Fiodor Mihailovich had to work
beyond his powers, to work hurriedly, sometimes
running the risk of spoiling an imaginative work,
and terribly tormented by the thought of what
he was doing. Fiodor Mihailovich, myself, and all
our family had to deny ourselves not only pleasure

I

130 DOSTOEVSKY

and comfort, but our most urgent needs. We had
to work hard during the whole time of our married
life, concentrating all our thoughts on getting
quit of the tormenting debts. How much happier,
and more easily and comfortably my poor husband
could have lived these fourteen years, and I too,
if there had not always hung over us the worry of
debt. If we had had money, Fiodor Mihailovich
would not have been compelled to offer his work
to editors, but could have waited until they came
to him and offered to buy his novels, as was the case
with all well-to-do writers : Turgenev, Ostrovsky,
Pisemsky, etc. Had he not had those debts and
the resulting cares that oppressed his spirit, Fiodor
Mihailovich need not have written his works
hurriedly, as he was compelled to do. He could
have gone carefully through them, polishing them,
before letting them appear in print ; and one can
imagine how much they would have gained in
beauty. Indeed, until the very end of his life
Fiodor Mihailovich had not written a single novel
with which he was satisfied himself ; and the cause
of this was our debts !

And when I think of my life, there always arises
in me a bitter feeling. I can understand the moral
satisfaction when you pay your own debts. You
remember that once some one helped you out of a
tight corner, helped you in an anxious moment,

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 131

and you are delighted at the possibility of paying
them back with gratitude. But quite a different
feeling arises in my heart when I have to pay
other people's debts, the debts of a man whom I
have never known — Mihail Dostoevsky died in
1864, — and above all, fictitious debts, on bills
extorted from my dear husband under false pre-
tences. I often thought how far happier and more
joyful my life would have been if I had not had
those eternal troubles : where to get by such and
such a date such and such a sum of money, where
and for what amount to pawn this or that thing,
how to arrange so that Fiodor Mihailovich should
not get to know about a visit from this threatening
creditor, or should not discover that I had pawned
that article. Truly my life was darkened by all
these affairs and worries, on them my youth was
wasted, my health suffered because of them, and
my nerves were shattered for ever.

And when I think that at least half of these
debts, and therefore half of our miseries, could have
been spared Fiodor Mihailovich and his family, if
amongst his friends and acquaintances there had
been found one or two good men, who would have
cared to advise Fiodor Mihailovich in these prac-
tical matters which were so totally unfamiliar to
him, it has always seemed to me inconceivable
(and, to tell the truth, cruel) — that Fiodor Mihailo-

132 DOSTOEVSKY

vich's friends (nomina sunt odiosa1), knowing his
purely childish unpractically, his extreme trust-
fulness, his ill-health and complete insecurity,
could allow him to act in person and alone in this
business of clearing up the liabilities of the review
after the death of Mihail Dostoevsky. Could not
the • friends ' foresee that Fiodor Mihailovich, so
unpractical and so trustful, was in this case bound
to make irreparable mistakes ? Could not my dear
husband's ' friends ' have formed among them-
selves a group to help him to investigate the business,
to settle the claims and to demand proofs of each
debt ? I am convinced that had such a group
been formed, many claims would not have appeared
at all, as they would have had to be submitted
to a proper control. No, among Fiodor Mihailo-
vich's ' friends ' and ' admirers ' not a single good
man was found who cared to sacrifice his time and
power and thereby to render him a true friendly
service. Of course they were all sorry for Fiodor
Mihailovich, and sympathised with his impossible
position ; but all their sympathy was ' words,
words, words.'

It may perhaps be said that Fiodor Mihailovich's
1 friends ' were poets, novelists, critics, and what
could they have understood of practical matters ?

1 Anna Gregorevna has evidently in view Dostoevsky's twc
greatest friends — N. N. Strahov and A. N. Maikov.— Tr,

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 133

Could they have given him practical advice ? But
surely they were not raw youths at that time (the
'sixties), and they managed their own affairs
superbly.

It will perhaps be said that Fiodor Mihailovich
wanted to be independent, and would not have
welcomed such assistance from his friends. But
this is an absolutely false idea. The proof of this
is the readiness and the complete confidence with
which he transferred all his business affairs into my
hands, and listened to and adopted all my advice,
although at the outset he naturally could not
consider me an experienced business person. But
he trusted me ; and just as profoundly did he trust
his friends also, and certainly would not have
refused their assistance had it been offered to him.
Yes, this has always astonished me and I never
could explain to myself these * friendly ' relations,
and in my soul there has always remained a bitter
feeling of dissatisfaction and resentment against
those ' friends ' of my dear husband.

II

SUPPLEMENT

ave already mentioned that when our creditors
learnt of our arrival from the papers, they just
threw themselves on us. From their point of view

134 DOSTOEVSKY

they were right ; for they had been waiting a long
time and wanted to get their money. But what
could we do, if we had no means of satisfying them
at once ? My hope of obtaining the house which
had been intended for me, and of selling it immedi-
ately in order to pay off our more pressing creditors,
could not be realised at once ; for my mother, on
account of my brother's marriage, still remained
abroad. In November 1871 also my sister, Marie
Gregorevna Svatkovsky, who managed my mother's
house, went away to Rome for the whole winter
She had promised, on her return in the spring, tc
hand over the houses, as well as all the account}
concerning it, to my mother, who intended tc
return to Russia in January 1872. We had thu.1
willy-nilly to wait till the spring. And in the spring
a terrible calamity befell us all : my sister Mari<
fell ill with typhus in Rome and died there oi
May 1, 1872. After her death it transpired tha
Marie had transferred her power of attorney fo
the management of my mother's houses to he
husband ; and the latter, in his turn, had trans
ferred it to a person who was unworthy of th
trust. In the course of three or four years thi
gentleman, having pocketed all the income derive
from the houses, did not consider it necessary t
pay the rates or the taxes. Thus large arreai
were accumulated, and my mother's houses wei

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 135

ordered to be sold by public auction. To our great
misfortune, we had no means to pay the arrears
and thus to save the houses from the enforced sale.
Yet we reckoned that the houses would fetch a
good price, and that my mother would receive,
after paying the debts on the houses, a consider-
able sum, part of which she would give me instead
of the house intended for me. But something
completely unexpected happened. The gentleman
who managed the houses entered into fictitious
agreements with persons he had suborned, to whom
he alleged he had let the houses on lease, for the
maximum period allowed by law, ten years, and
had received the rent due for all that period. This
transaction transpired only at the auction ; and it
is obvious that no one was to be found who wanted
to buy houses from which no income was to be
derived for ten years. And then the scoundrel
bought our houses for the amount of the arrears
due to the Government and the comparatively
small sum of debts resting on the property (about
ten thousand roubles), — thus having managed to
acquire for 12,000 roubles three houses and two
large annexes, the value of which was not less than
40,000 roubles. It turned out in the end that not a
penny was left to my mother, myself, or my brother.
Certainly, we could have taken proceedings; but
in order to do this money was needed, and we had

136 DOSTOEVSKY

none. And besides, we had to deal with a clever
swindler who managed to arrange things correctly
from the legal point of view ; so we should hardly
have won the case. Besides, by taking legal action,
we should have had to involve also my sister's
husband, and this would have ended in a quarrel,
and we should have been deprived of the possi-
bility of seeing my sister's four orphan-children,
of whom we were very fond. Having weighed all
the possibilities, we decided not to take proceed-
ings, and to reconcile ourselves to the loss of the
houses. But how hard it was for me to bear the
blasting of this, the most solid of my hopes of
improving our difficult situation ! But the utter
hopelessness of this affair only became clear to me
finally a couple of years later ; for at first I still
cherished the hope of receiving a certain sum of
money and thus paying our most urgent debts.

At first I allowed the creditors to carry on
negotiations with Fiodor Mihailovich, who insisted
on it. But the results of those negotiations were
disappointing : the creditors were impudent to him,
threatened to distrain on our household things
and to put him in the debtors' prison. After such
negotiations Fiodor Mihailovich would be driven
to despair, would pace his room for hours, would
ruffle his hair on his forehead (his habitual gesture
in great agitation), and repeat : ' Well, what are

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 137

we to do now ? ' And the next day there would
often follow a fit of epilepsy. I was terribly sorry
for Fiodor Mihailovieh and, without telling him,
I decided not to allow the creditors to see him, but
to take all this annoying business on myself alone.
The servant was ordered once and for all, when
opening the door to a caller, to say ' the master is
asleep,' or 4 the master is not at home, so will you
please speak to the lady ? She is always at home in
the morning till 12.' What strange types used to
come to me during those days ! In most cases they
were bill brokers who bought bills for a mere nothing
and demanded payment in full, all sorts of civil
servants' widows, landladies of furnished rooms,
retired officials, low-down solicitors. Certainly,
they all threatened distraint and the debtors'
prison ; but I had already learnt how to talk to
them. My chief argument was the same as I
employed in dealing with Hinterlach : ' I owe you
nothing personally, the flat is in my name, and the
furniture belongs to the furniture-dealer. Fiodor
Mihailovieh has nothing but his wearing apparel,
which I suggest you should distrain on.' As
regards the debtors' prison, I assured them that
Fiodor Mihailovieh would readily go there, since
there he would be able to work. But in that case
they would receive nothing. If, however, they
wanted to settle matters amicably, I promised to

138 . DOSTOEVSKY

pay by instalments, at such and such a date, on
such and such a month, so much money, and of
this they might be assured. I gave my word for
it, and now I could pay so much. The creditors,
seeing the futility of their threats, would agree, and
we would sign a separate agreement which gave
me the certainty that so long as I kept my word,
Fiodor Mihailovich's peace would not be disturbed :
he would not be called before the magistrates,
threatened, talked impudently to, etc. But how
terribly difficult I found it to pay the promised
sums at the appointed dates ! What artifices I
had to employ, to borrow money from relations,
to pawn our things ! We had to deny ourselves
and our family primary necessities in order to be
able to fulfil my obligations. Indeed, the money
we received was never regular. It depended alto-
gether on the success of the work, and with us, as
the saying goes, it was 4 either plenty or nothing.'
We had to run into arrears for the flat, to take
credit from the grocer's shop, to pawn things, and
when we happened to receive money (400 or 500
roubles at a time), usually on the day after the
receipt of the money (Fiodor Mihailovich always
gave all the money to me) there remained 25 or
30 roubles only. My rule was, on receipt of the
money, to redeem the things from the pawnbrokers
(I had pledged things to the amount of 400 roubles),

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 139

firstly, so as not to pay interest, which was enormous
then, sometimes 5 per cent, per month ; and, secondly,
in order that the pawnbroker's shop * should know
that I was capable of redeeming my things and
so should keep them safe. Besides this, I had a
certain moral satisfaction in the knowledge that
the things, of which I was so fond (all presents
from Fiodor Mihailovich, my mother, and brother)
were again in the house, if only for a short while.
The visits of the creditors, and my negotiations
with them, at times did not pass unnoticed by my
dear husband. He would ask me, who had called,
and on what business, and seeing my reluctance to
tell him, he would reproach me for my reserve,
for my not being quite frank with him. His com-
plaints on such occasions he also expressed in his
letters. But how could I be perfectly frank with
him in these material difficulties of mine ! For
the sake of his health and of his work, on which
our whole existence depended, he needed peace :
worries upset him terribly and provoked his epi-
leptic fits, which prevented him from working. It
was a kind of [a word missing in the MS.].
Moreover, when he occasionally learnt what un-
pleasant things I had to suffer, Fiodor Mihailovich
began to grieve over the fact that he had given

1 At that time there did not exist monts-de-piete, or societies for
lending money on movables, but there were pawnbrokers' shops,
mostly kept by Jews.

140 DOSTOEVSKY

me a life so full of cares and distress. And this
again agitated and distressed him. And, with all
my sincere desire to be frank with him — I had,
after all, to conceal from him assiduously every-
thing that might upset him, even at the risk of
being reproached for my so-called reserve and lack
of candour. How bitterly I felt those unjust
reproaches ! Yes, I had to endure a hard, a ter-
ribly hard life in the material sense during the
twelve or thirteen years of our married life ; for
only in the year before Fiodor Mihailovich's death
were all our debts paid, and I was able to put by
small sums for the rainy day.

I remember with great bitterness of heart how
unceremoniously certain relations of Fiodor Mihailo-
vich's dragged money from our pocket for their
own needs. However small our means, Fiodor
Mihailovich did not consider it possible to refuse
assistance to his brother Nicolay Mihailovich, or
to his stepson Pavel Alexandrovich Isayev, and in
urgent cases also to his other relations. Apart from
a fixed monthly allowance (50 or 60 roubles), 4 brother
Kolya ' received every time he paid us a visit
five roubles ; and what bitterness I felt when he,
perhaps not without interested motives, increased
his visits under various pretexts : to congratulate
the children on their birthdays, to inquire after
the health of every one of our family, and so on.

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 141

It was not miserliness that was responsible for this
bitterness, but the painful consciousness that there
were only twenty roubles in the house at the
moment. Yet Fiodor Mihailovich would call me
and say : * Anechka, give me five roubles for
Kolya ' ; when on the following day there was a
payment due to some one, and if I could keep the
five roubles, I should not have to go again to the
pawnbroker's shop. But ' brother Kolya ' was a
pleasant and appealing person, and although at
times I was angry with him for his repeated visits,
I was always fond of him and valued his delicacy.
The man who particularly irritated me was Pavel
Alexandrovich Isayev. He did not ask, he de-
manded, and was perfectly convinced that he had
a right to demand. Every time Fiodor Mihailo-
vich received a large sum of money he gave Isayev
without fail a considerable amount for his family.
But Isayev very often had extra needs, and on
these occasions he went straight for relief to Fiodor
Mihailovich, although he knew perfectly well how
hard our life was. He would come, and this is
roughly the conversation which would take place.

He : ' Well, how is papa ? How is his health ? I
must see him, I am in urgent need of forty roubles.'

I : ' Pavel Alexandrovich, you know we have
not yet received money from Katkov ; we have
no money at all. To-day I had to pawn my

142 DOSTOEVSKY

brooch for twenty-five roubles.' I show him the
pawnbroker's ticket.

He : ' Well, pawn something else.'

1 : 4 But I have already pawned everything, and
here are the proofs.'

He : • But I must have the money for this.'

I : ' Buy it when we get the money.'

He : ' I can't postpone getting it.'

I : • But I have no money.'

He : ' That is no business of mine — get it.'

And then I would begin persuading, coaxing
Isayev to ask Fiodor Mihailovich not for 40 roubles,
which I had not got, but for 15 roubles, so that I
might be left with five in any case. Isayev after
much coaxing would compromise, and consider
that he was doing me a great favour by being
satisfied with a smaller amount than he had origin-
ally asked for. Then my dear husband would call
me to his study and say : ' Please, Anechka, give
me 15 roubles, Pasha asks me for it.' And I would
give the money with an unfriendly feeling, knowing
that, if Isayev had not extorted this amount, we
could have lived for three days in peace, and now
I had to go again to-morrow to the pawnbroker
and to pawn something else. All these are painful
recollections, and I cannot forget how much dis-
tress that rude man caused me. Perhaps it may be
asked why I did not resolutely protest against his

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 143

rudeness. But to make such a protest I should
have had to quarrel with Isayev and his family ;
whereas I had taken a sincere liking to his wife and
was sorry for her. Besides, I knew this trait in
Fiodor Mihailovich's character : his good, sympa-
thetic attitude to all who were wronged. In case
of a quarrel Isayev might have moved Fiodor
Mihailovich to pity, and presented himself as un-
justly treated by me. And Fiodor Mihailovich,
just because he was good, would undoubtedly have
believed him and considered him an unhappy man
to be pitied and helped. I had had experience of
this once already when on one occasion I had a
quarrel with Isayev. The latter immediately
complained of me to Fiodor Mihailovich, repre-
sented the whole thing in a distorted light and
reminded Fiodor Mihailovich of the request which
his, Isayev's, mother had made to him ' to love
Pasha.' It ended in this, that Fiodor Mihailovich
asked me ' not to wrong Pasha, since although he
was light-minded, yet he was a pleasant man, and
was very fond of us all.' To safeguard Fiodor
Mihailovich's peace I preferred to suffer myself
and to deny myself everything, provided peace was
preserved in our family.

I go back to the winter of 1871-1872, the first
winter after our return from abroad, I must say

144 DOSTOEVSKY

that, in spite of the worries caused us by our
creditors, I remember that winter with real pleasure.
The mere fact that we were again in our own country,
amongst Russians and everything Russian, gave me
unusual happiness. Fiodor Mihailovich, too, was
satisfied with his return to Russia and with the
possibility of meeting his friends again, and observ-
ing Russian life, with which he felt himself out of
touch. In addition to meeting again Apollon
Nicolayevich Maikov, with whom he had been
friends since their youth, and N. N. Strahov, his
favourite companion, — Fiodor Mihailovich made
the acquaintance, — through his visits to his relation
M. I. Vladislavlev, — of many scholars, as for in-
stance, V. V. Grigoriev. He also made the acquaint-
ance of Prince V. P. Meschersky, of T. I. Filippov,
and of the whole circle that used to meet at
Meschersky's dinners on Wednesdays. There, I
believe, he also met, and later became friends with
K. P. Pobiedonoszev, and this friendship con-
tinued right down to Fiodor's death. I remember
that during that winter N. Y. Danilevsky also came
to Petersburg. Fiodor Mihailovich who had known
him in his young days as a Fourierist, and who
greatly valued his book Russia and Europe, wished
to renew the old friendship. Having met him at
Strahov's, Fiodor Mihailovich asked him to lunch
at our house where many interesting and clever

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 145

people assembled. The conversation went on till
late in the evening.

That same winter Tretiakov asked Fiodor
Mihailovich's permission to have his portrait
painted for the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. For
this purpose the artist Perov arrived from Moscow.
Fiodor Mihailovich was certainly flattered, the
more so that Perov turned out to be an extremely
nice and simple man. Before setting to work
Perov visited us daily for a week, and found Fiodor
Mihailovich in various moods. He talked to him,
discussed matters with him, and was thus able to
catch and to embody in the portrait Fiodor Mihailo-
vich's most characteristic expression, namely, the
one Fiodor had when absorbed in his creative work.
I may say that Perov managed to convey in the
portrait Fiodor' s ' moment of creation.' That ex-
pression I noticed many times in Fiodor's face
when I happened to enter his study. I used to
watch him * looking into himself,' and to leave the
room without saying a word. Afterwards I would
learn that Fiodor was so absorbed in his thoughts
that he had not noticed my entering the room, and
did not believe I had been there. Perov was a
clever man, and Fiodor loved talking to him. I
also became friends with him and was always
present at the sittings. That winter I did not go

into society. I myself nursed my elder son Fedya,

к

146 DOSTuEVSKY

and I could not well leave him alone for long. In
fact I was so busy with the children, with working
for Fiodor and with the house, that that happy
winter passed like a dream. There came the
spring of 1872, and with it a whole series of
misfortunes, which left behind unforgettable
consequences.

Fiodor Mihailovich's fits of jealousy very much
grieved and tormented me. The most exasperat-
ing thing was that his jealousy had no grounds
whatsoever ; yet its manifestations placed me at
times in an absurd position. I shall describe one
such case. I have already mentioned that I
dreamt of earning money by my shorthand and
thus of assisting the family. An occasion of using
my knowledge unexpectedly presented itself. In
1872 a conference of farmers was to take place in
the city of Novo-Alexandria or Lomzha, and a
shorthand-writer was needed for the conference.
I was informed of this by my brother, a former
student of the Petrovsky Agricultural School, who
continued to take an interest in farming. Since
the choice of a shorthand-writer depended on
Professor Shafranov, I wrote to him, with the
permission of my husband. Fiodor Mihailovich
always maintained that in looking after the children
and the house and in assisting him in his work, I
was doing quite enough for the family ; but knowing

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 147

my ardent desire to earn some money by other
means he hesitated to oppose me, in the expectation
(as he admitted to me later) that the post would
already have been filled. Professor Shafranov re-
plied that he agreed to recommend me and com-
municated the terms. True, they were not very
tempting, and the greater part of the money would
have been spent on the journey and on my stay in
Alexandria. But to me it was not so much the
money that mattered as the start I had made in
getting work. If I did this work successfully, I
could, relying on Professor Shafranov's recom-
mendation, get more. Fiodor Mihailovich had no
serious objections to the journey ; for my mother
had promised to come to live with us during my
absence and to look after the children and the
house. Fiodor Mihailovich himself had no work
for me at that time ; he was busy re-shaping the
plan of his novel The Possessed. My intended
journey obviously did not please him, and he tried
to find various pretexts for my giving it up. How
could I, a young woman, go by myself to a strange
place, especially a Polish place ? How would I
live there, etc. etc. ? My brother, who used often
to come to see me, suggested that in order to re-
solve his doubts, Fiodor and I should go to see him
the following evening, and promised to invite a
friend of his (whose name I do not remember now,

148 DOSTOEVSKY

but it ended with 4 kyants ' or ' idse,' 1 who had
been several times in Alexandria and who was also
going to the conference. We decided to do so.
Next day Fiodor Mihailovich and myself went off
to see my brother; and Fiodor Mihailovich, who
had not been troubled by his epileptic fits for a
long time, was in an excellent mood. We were
having a quiet talk when suddenly there rushed
in, almost at a run, a young man of about twenty-
three, tall, with curly hair, with unusually protrud-
ing eyes and red lips, the type that is everywhere
recognised as 4 disgustingly handsome.' Entering
and seeing his c god ' he became so confused that
he hardly bowed to Fiodor or to the hostess, but
gave all his attention to me (evidently, an earthly
creature like himself), seized my hand, kissed it,
shook it vigorously several times, saying in his
lisping voice, that he was extremely delighted that
I was going to the conference and that he was eager
to be of service to me. His exaltation struck me
as comic, and I put it down to his shyness and con-
fusion. But this was not Fiodor Mihailovich's

1 I had never seen that 'kyants' before, but knew of him by
report. He was a nice, not particularly clever, Caucasian youth,
whom his friends, on account of his passionate temper and impetu-
osity, called 'the wild Asiatic' He was much hurt by that nick-
name, and to prove that he was a European, he created to himself in
each art a 'god.' In music his 'god' was Wagner; in painting,
Ryepin ; and in literature, Dostoevsky. Hearing that he was going
to make Dostoevsky's acquaintance and might render him a service,
the youth was in a state of perfect bliss.

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 149

way of looking at it. Although he himself rarely
kissed the hands of ladies and attached no signifi-
cance to it at all, he was always displeased if some
one applied this form of politeness to myself. And
the young man's attitude irritated him extremely.
My brother, who noticed that Fiodor Mihailovich's
mood had changed (and his fluctuations from one
mood into another were very rapid), hastened to
start a business-like conversation about the con-
ference ; but the youth was still confused and
replied neither to my brother's questions nor to
those of Fiodor Mihailovich, but addressed himself
exclusively to me. To my question : Was it a
difficult journey and would there be many changes
of train before we reached Alexandria ? the young
man replied that I was not to worry, that he was
willing to come with me there, and that if I liked,
he would travel in the same car as myself. I
certainly declined his offer, saying that I would
manage it all myself. To Fiodor Mihailovich's
question whether there was a hotel there and would
it be a suitable place for a young woman to stop at,
the young man, still without venturing to look at
his c god,' and addressing me, exclaimed : 4 But if
Anna Gregorevna wishes, I could stop at the same
hotel with her ; — although I meant to stay with a
friend.'

4 Anya, do you hear, Anya ? The young man

150 DOSTOEVSKY

agrees to stop at the same hotel with you. But this
is ex-cel-lent ! ' Fiodor Mihailovieh cried out in
his full voice, and struck the table with all the
strength of his fist. The glass of tea that stood on
the table went flying on the floor and was smashed
to smithereens ; the hostess rushed to support the
lamp that shook from the blow, and Fiodor Mihailo-
vieh jumped up, rushed to the hall, threw his over-
coat on and disappeared. I rushed after him,
crying : ' Fedya, what 's the matter ? Fedya,
come here ' ; but there was not a trace of him.
Instantly I went to put on my cloak, but it took
some time, and when I came out of the gate I saw
a man in the distance running in the opposite
direction to our usual walk home. So I had to
run ; and as I had young legs, in five minutes I over-
took Fiodor Mihailovieh, who by that time was out
of breath and could not run as quickly. I hailed
him several times and asked him to stop ; but he
refused to hear me. At last I managed to overtake
him ; I ran in front of him, seized with both my
hands the skirts of his overcoat that he had thrown
over his shoulders, and exclaimed : ' Fedya, you
are going mad. Where are you running? This
is not our way home. Wait, put your arms into
the sleeves. You must not walk like that, you '11
catch a cold.' My voice and agitated appearance
had an effect on Fiodor Mihailovieh ; he stopped

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 151

and put on the coat with my assistance ; I buttoned
it up, took his arm, and led him in the opposite
direction. Fiodor Mihailovich, although he did all
I told him, yet preserved a troubled expression.
I lost my temper and said : ' Well, you have been
jealous, haven't you ? You think I managed to
fall in love with "the wild Asiatic " in a couple of
minutes, and he with me, and we were going to
elope, were we not ? Now you ought to be ashamed
of yourself ! ' . . . And I began remonstrating
with my poor husband, explaining how much he
offended me by his jealousy. ' Why, haven't we
been married for six years ? Don't you know how
I love you and value our family happiness ? And
you are capable of being jealous of the first fellow
I meet and of placing me in a ridiculous position,
etc., etc' As my reproaches went on, Fiodor
Mihailovich tried to apologise and to justify him-
self, and promised never to be jealous of me. But
I took no notice of all this. In a word, I got from
him all the amends that an ' infuriated wife ' could
get. But I could not be cross for long with my
dear husband. Having got into a temper and said
all sorts of absurdities, I cooled down quickly, and
I felt terribly sorry for Fiodor Mihailovich, the
more so that I knew that he could not restrain
himself in a fit of jealousy. Seeing the change in
my mood, he began laughing at himself, inquired

152 DOSTOEVSKY

how many things he had spoilt to-night at my
brother's, and whether he hadn't incidentally given
my rapturous admirer a hiding. It ended in our
making peace on our way home, and as it was a
wonderful evening we walked all the way. The
incident did not pass without his buying Turkish
Delight and smoked sturgeon.1 It was a long way,
and with our calls at the shops, it took us an hour
and a half. On coming home, I found my brother
there. Poor Ivan Gregorevich, seeing our flight,
had imagined God knows what ; he rushed off to
us, and was astonished at finding neither myself
nor Fiodor Mihailovich at home. Before our
arrival he passed a whole hour in dark thoughts
and presentiments ; and how surprised he was
when he saw us arrive home in the most amicable
mood. We treated him to tea and sturgeon ; and
there was much laughter. To my question how he
explained our strange flight to the young man, Ivan
Gregorevich answered : ' When he asked what was
the matter, I said : " Damn you ! Can't you see
it yourself ? " '

The story ended happily ; but I understood that
I had to give up my journey. Certainly I could

1 When little differences arose between us, and Fiodor felt himself
in the wrong, but did not want to apologise, he would bring me a
present — a pound of Turkish Delight or smoked sturgeon (my
favourite), or both articles together, in proportion to the offence. I
called this 'the olive branch,' and threatened to quarrel with him
more often, so as to get these good things the oftener.

REMINISCENCES BY HIS WIFE 153

have persuaded Fiodor Mihailovich, and he would
have let me go ; but then he would have begun to
get agitated, he would not have held out, but would
have rushed after me to Alexandria. It would
have resulted only in a scandal, and in the waste
of money, of which we had so little.

Thus ended my attempt to earn a living by
shorthand.

F. M. DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS TO HIS
WIFE (ON THE POUSHKIN CELEBRA-
TION OF 1880 IN MOSCOW)

(Just published in the original, from the hitherto un-
published materials in the Russian State Archives, by
the Department of the Central Archives, Moscow, 1922)

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE

INTRODUCTION BY N. BELCHIKOV

Dostoevsky's letters to his wife on the Poushkin Cele-
bration of 1880 in Moscow, when he, on behalf of
the Slav Charitable Society, delivered his famous
speech1 of June 8, 1880, are published from the
originals, found amongst Dostoevsky's letters to his
wife. The Department of the Central Archives took
these letters from the State safes, together with other
documents and materials relating to the works of
Dostoevsky, in November 1921.2

F. M. Dostoevsky's letters to Anna Gregorevna were
kept by her in a buckram wallet which contained
eleven medium-sized packets. Those on the Poushkin
Celebration were in a special packet (the eleventh), on
the front of which is inscribed in his wife's handwriting
a list of them and their dates.

In his wife's own Notebook (one hundred and
eighty -seven numbered pages), entitled by her,
1 Explanations of domestic affairs and instructions by

1 Dostoevsky's speech on Poushkin is contained in Pages from the
Journal of an Author, by F. M. Dostoevsky, translated by S. S.
Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry, published by Maunsel & Co.,
Dublin.

2 An English translation of some of this material has recently
appeared, published by the Hogarth Press, entitled Stavrogin's
Confession.

157

158 DOSTOEVSKY

Anna Gregorevna Dostoevsky in case of my death or
of a serious illness — March 1902, and for the years
following ' (on the binding of which is written, ' en cas
de ma mort ou une maladie grave '), she expresses on
pp. 23-24, relating to ' The Letters of the late Fiodor
Mihailovich Dostoevsky to me from 1867-1880/ the
following wish : ' Dostoevsky 's letters to me, as
being of great literary and public interest, may
be published after my death in a review or in book
form. ... If they cannot be published as a whole,
then those relating to the Poushkin Celebration should
be chosen.'

Anna Gregorevna defined the significance of these
letters absolutely correctly. In them is a clear picture
of those days when men of different views gathered
together round Poushkin's statue to give voice to their
sincere opinion of those ideals for which Poushkin
stood.

Dostoevsky reveals the struggle of the two irre-
concilable tendencies of the social ideas and ideals of
that period, and he points out his part in it and the
significance of his own utterance. We see, too, the
active and impatient party spirit of his contempor-
aries. On May 28-29, 1880, he writes to his wife :
* Remain here I must and I have decided to remain. . . .
The chief point is that I am needed here not only by
the " Lovers of Russian Literature," but by our whole
party, by our whole idea, for which we have been
fighting these thirty years. For the hostile party
(Turgenev, Kovalevsky, and nearly the whole Univer-
sity) is quite determined to belittle Poushkin's signifi-
cance as the representative of the Russian nation, and
thereby to deny the very nation itself.' And further,

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 159

explaining why his presence is absolutely necessary :
1 Against them, on our side, we have only Ivan Sergue-
yevich Aksakov (Yuriev and the rest have no weight),
but Ivan Aksakov has grown rather out of date and
Moscow is rather bored by him. Myself, however,
Moscow has not heard nor seen, and it is in me alone
that the people are interested. My voice will have
weight, and thus our side will triumph. All my life I
have been fighting for this ; I can't run away from the
field of battle now. When Katkov, who on the whole
is not a Slavophil, says to me : " You mustn't go away,
you can't go away," then, certainly, stay I must.'

Nobody thought, of course, of belittling Poushkin's
significance. It was a false deduction of Dostoevsky's,
due to his party bias and his belief that the real truth
was only on the lips and in the consciousness of the
men of his group. Without having yet seen Turgenev,
or the other Westerners, Dostoevsky already held fast
to that idea. Indeed, still further anticipating this
difference of opinion, he wrote the following to K. P.
Pobiedonoszev on May 19> 1880, before he left for
Moscow : ' I am obliged to go to Moscow for the
unveiling of the Poushkin memorial. And it turns out,
as I had foreseen, that I am going not for pleasure, but
perhaps even for immediate unpleasantness. For the
point at issue involves my most cherished and funda-
mental convictions. While still in Petersburg I heard
that in Moscow there is a certain clique which is
trying to proscribe opinions contrary to its own at
the Anniversary, and that it fears certain reactionary
words.'

P. Bartenev preserved the following curious touch
in his Reminiscences (Russky Arlchiv, 1891, vol. ii. p. 97,

160 DOSTOEVSKY

note) : ' Although Dostoevsky's speech was not known
to any one before he delivered it, yet at one of the
sittings of the Preparations Committee it was nearly
decided not to allow Dostoevsky to read anything at
the Poushkin Commemoration. Several members of
the Committee insisted on his non-admittance, saying
that Dostoevsky had insulted Turgenev at a public
dinner in Petersburg, by asking the latter point-blank
and so loud that all could hear, what he wanted from
our students, thereby putting the famous friend of the
young generation in an awkward and embarrassing
position. But this time the majority of the members
of the Committee did not permit this ostracism. The
discussions, however, were fiery/

Dostoevsky, in his letter to his wife of June 5, refers
to the friction among the parties, as something that,
in his view, threatened trouble. ' Ostrovsky, the local
Jupiter, came up to me. Turgenev, very amiable, ran
up. The other liberal groups, amongst them Plesche-
yev and even the lame Yazykov, bear themselves with
reserve and almost haughtily, as if to say : You are a
reactionary, but we are radicals. And, generally,
complete dissension is already begun. I am afraid
that all these different tendencies existing side by side
for so many days may end in a fight/

Behind the struggle between these social groups and
their tendencies we discern the desire of the ambitious
Dostoevsky for his own success. In his letter of May
27-28 he writes : ' If my speech at the solemn opening
is successful, then in Moscow (and therefore in all
Russia) I shall henceforth be more famous as a writer,
I mean famous in the sense in which Turgenev and
Tolstoy have already won greatness/

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 161

Dostoevsky's speech had an extraordinary success.
It was applauded equally by Aksakov, considered the
leader of the Slavophils, and by Turgenev, the head of
the Westerners.

Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov in a letter to his wife
(June 14, 1880), on the Moscow celebrations, thus sums
up his impression of Dostoevsky's fiery eloquence :
1 On the next day, June 8, Dostoevsky was to read
(thus had we divided it between ourselves, knowing the
similarity of our ideals) ; but seeing his nervous
agitation I proposed that he should read first. He
read, read masterfully, such a superb original thing,
comprehending the national question still more widely
and deeply than my article, and not merely in the form
of a logical exposition, but in real and living images,
with the art of a novelist ; the impression was indeed
overwhelming. I have never seen anything like it.
It gripped everybody 5 both the public and all of us
who sat on the platform, even, to a certain extent,
Turgenev. (They cannot bear one another.) Dostoev-
sky's success is a genuine portent. He completely
overshadowed Turgenev and all his disciples. Hitherto
Turgenev has been the idol of the younger generation ;
in all his public speeches there were subtle allusions
of a vague radical kind, which created a furore. He
has always subtly flattered the young ; and the very
day before, speaking of Poushkin, he praised Bielinsky,
and gave us to understand that he also was very fond
of Nekrasov, etc. But Dostoevsky went straight and
defiantly to the point : he maintained that Bielinsky
understood nothing of Tatyana [the heroine of Poush-
kin's Eugene Oniegin] ; put his finger straight on
Socialism ; gave the young a whole sermon : " humble

L

162 DOSTOEVSKY

thyself, proud man, cease to be a wanderer in foreign
lands, seek the truth in thyself, not outward truth,"
etc. Tatyana, whom Bielinsky (and all the new gener-
ation after him) called " a moral embryo " because she
fulfilled her duty of faithfulness, Dostoevsky, on the
contrary, exalted ; and he put directly to the public
the moral question : " Can personal happiness be
created out of the unhappiness of another ? "

1 It was indeed remarkable how the young men, of
whom there were perhaps a thousand in the hall, took
that speech. They all went into such raptures that
one young man rushed up to Dostoevsky on the
platform, and fell into a nervous swoon. There were
present girl-students from Gerye's school (an extreme
Westerner), who only last year were wild about Tur-
genev. At the meeting they produced a laurel crown,
from Heaven knows where, and presented it, amid
universal applause, to Dostoevsky, for which they wil
probably have to pay dearly.

* One must remember, too, that Dostoevsky has the
reputation of a " mystic," not a positivist, but a believer
here he even mentioned Christ. In a word, the
triumph of our tendency in the person of Dostoevskj
was complete, and all the speeches of the men of tht
so-called " forties " appeared mere rubbish. The
excitement was so great that a long adjournment wa:
necessary/ (Russky Arkhiv, 1891, vol. ii. pp. 96-97.)

Dostoevsky himself, still under the fresh impressioi
of the ecstasy aroused by his fiery speech, believed ii
its great effect : ' It is a great victory for our idea ove
the twenty-five years of delusions. ... A complete
a most complete victory ! ' (Letter to his wife
June 8.)

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 163

In a letter written to Countess S. A. Tolstoy (the
wife of Alexey K. Tolstoy, the poet), on June IS, 1880,
the day after his return from Moscow, Dostoevsky
relates similar curious details concerning the impression
produced by his inspired speech : ' Would you believe
it . . . after my speech crowds of people in the audience
wept, and embraced one another and vowed to one
another henceforth to be better men. This was not a
single case — I heard a number of accounts from persons
even perfectly unknown to me, who crowded closely
round me and spoke to me in frenzied tones (literally)
of the impression my speech had made on them. Two
greybeards came up to me and one of them said : " For
twenty years we have been enemies and for twenty
years we have done harm to one another ; after your
speech, we have now become reconciled, and have
come to tell you." They were perfect strangers to me.
There were many such declarations, and I was so over-
whelmed and exhausted that I myself was as ready to
fall down in a swoon, just like the student whom his
friends had at that moment brought to me and who
through ecstasy fell before me on the floor in a swoon.
. . . And what a lot of women came to me to the Loskut-
naya Hotel (some did not give their names) with the
sole object of pressing and kissing my hands, when
left alone with me.' (Viestnik Europa, No. 1, 1908, pp.
215-18.)

Indeed, there was genuine ecstasy ; there was a
wave of impulse, and on the immediate wave men of
various ' faiths ' came together : all were seized by one
feeling — the wise Turgenev, the well-balanced Annen-
kov, the calm Aksakov. But, of course, there was no
complete reconciliation, no meeting of roads, no fusion

164 DOSTOEVSKY

of ideas. Victory there was, but a temporary one
It was impossible to fuse together the social and idea
currents, so different in their essence, represented Ъ
Turgenev and Dostoevsky, and the unprecedente<
days of unanimous rapture were short-lived. Th<
Viestnik Europa was right in not trusting too much t<
this elated mood of reconciliation when it declared 01
the occasion of Dostoevsky 's speech that ' the signi
ficance of Poushkin was estimated not so much in th<
spirit of calm historical criticism, as with an ecstati<
feeling of worship, which corresponded to the mood о
the moment. Dostoevsky even said that Poushkii
was a prophet, and his poetry — the transformation о
the future of Russia, when the Russian people wil
announce the truth to all mankind. With us, as w<
know, all public infatuations take the form of seizures
which pass quickly away, leaving behind them at time
a remarkably weak impression/ All fused together
but did not really unite, in the seizure of enthusiasm fo
the mighty and profound speech of Dostoevsky, wh<
manifested a width of outlook never attained by Tur
genev. Dostoevsky 's speech, as Aksakov said, was ai
' event/ but it was not the cement which could bin»
life together.

The Liberal Press, immediately the speech wa
published, regarded it critically ; and only a mont
later Dostoevsky himself had to undergo a feeling с
disappointment with his contemporaries. While th
raptures were still sounding, the Viestnik Europa cease
to share the general exultation and coldly observed
1 We think that Dostoevsky 's statement of the futur
or even the present superiority of the Russian peopl
over all the rest of the world, has, to begin with, th

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 165

lefect ; it is an example, and by no means a new one, of
lational self-glorification.' The attitude of the Oteche-
tvennya Zapiski was still more severe. In that journal

jleb Ivanovich Uspensky, giving a hasty account of his
mpressions of the Poushkin Celebration, wrote :

Immediately after the speech M. Dostoevsky was
ewarded not only with ovations, but with adoration/
md he concluded his article thus : ' It is difficult to
inderstand one who in himself reconciles such contra-
lictions, and it will not be surprising if his speech, when
t appears in the press and is carefully read, produces
i quite different impression.' And so it happened.
Jspensky himself, after reading the published speech,
mswered it more resolutely in an article in the Oteche-
tivennya Zapiski entitled ' On the next day.' * In
M. Dostoevsky 's words, the connection between the
' wanderer " and the people is indissoluble ; his purely
lational traits are indubitable ; everything in him is
national, everything is historically inevitable, according
to law. Now, basing myself on these assertions, I
reported Dostoevsky 's speech, as it was published
in my Letter from Moscow, rejoicing not at the
11 universal bird in the hand " which M. Dostoevsky
promises to the Russian people in the future, but
only at this, that certain phenomena of Russian fife
are beginning to be cleared up in a human sense,
being measured in " the scale of mankind," not with
maliciousness, as it has been in the past, but with a
certain carefulness which has been lacking hitherto.
But M. Dostoevsky, as it turns out, had a different
design.

' From the passages of his speech which I quoted,
the reader could already get an occasional glimpse of

166 DOSTOEVSKY

the u omni " hare.1 Here and there, as if unintention-
ally, the word " perhaps " is stuck in ; here and there
is thrust, also as though accidentally, in the same
breath, " for ever " and " for a long time." Such hare
leaps make it possible for the author gradually to turn
all Poushkin's " fantastic work " into the most ordinary
doctrine of complete stagnation. Little by little, from
hillock to hillock, by leaps and bounds, the " omni "
hare reaches an impassable copse, in which his tail is
no longer seen. At this point it appeared, for the
reader somewhat imperceptibly, that Aleko [a Poushkin
character], who, as we know, is a purely national type,
is expelled by the people because he is not national.
In the same way the national type of wanderer, Oniegin,
is dismissed by Tatyana for the same reason. It turns
out somehow that all these human-wanderer-national
traits are negative traits. One more leap, and the
" omni-human " man is transformed into " a blade of
grass borne by the wind," into a visionary uprooted
from the soil. " Humble thyself" — cries the threaten-
ing voice — " happiness is not beyond the seas." What
does this all mean ? What remains then of the
" universal bird in the hand " ?

' There remains Tatyana, the key and solution of all
the " fantastic work." It turns out that Tatyana is
the very prophetic character for which all the com-
motion began. She is prophetic for this reason.
Having driven away the " omni-human " Oniegin
because he was uprooted from the soil, she lets herselJ
be devoured by the old General (since she cannot build
her personal happiness on the unhappiness of another)

1 The reference is to the claim of ' omni-human ' significance mad<
for Poushkin by Doatoeveky in his speech.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 167

although she still loves the wanderer. Admirable : she
sacrifices herself. But alas ! it now appears that her
sacrifice is not voluntary : " I am given unto another ! "
To be hired is to be sold. It turns out that her mother
forced her to marry the old boy, and the old boy,
married to a young girl, who did not want to marry
him — the old boy could not help knowing it — is called
in the speech an " honest man." The speech does not
say what the mother is like. Probably she, too, is a
sort of " omni-human." Behold to what a homily of
forced and stupid and coarse sacrifice the author
has been driven by his abundance of hare-leap
ideas.'

The Slovo was still more severe. ' The most surpris-
ing thing in Dostoevsky 's speech is that, having taken
his audience off its guard by this " omni-humanity "
and universality of the Russians, having obtained
ovations for this conjuring trick which was not seen
through at first, Dostoevsky most crudely and bitterly
jeered at this " omni-human " Russian. We do not
think that Dostoevsky can deny that he created a
furore chiefly because it was extremely gratifying to
his audience to know that they bear in their hearts the
ideal of universality and omni-humanity, as their
special and specific essence. In our view, neither the
public nor Dostoevsky need much praise for this ; for
arrogating exclusively to themselves a quality so
tremendous, which is inherent in all European peoples.
It is unjust and extremely egotistical, just as egotistical,
as, for instance, the denial of the rights of man to the
peasants during the time of serfdom. The serf-owning
landlords either completely deprived their peasants
of many human qualities, or diminished those

168 DOSTOEVSKY

qualities to the utmost limit. And Dostoevsky (so
it at first appeared) teaches Russian society to think
of other people, as our landowners thought of
their peasants. It actually appears, however, that
Dostoevsky was sneering at the Russian aspirations to
universality. . . .'

Even Leontiev, the Conservative, as he calls himself
in the preface to his article ' On Universal Love/ pub-
lished in book form, replied to Dostoevsky 's speech
with a long article, published in the Varshavsky Dnievnik
( July- August 1880). ' In my opinion/ wrote Leontiev,
1 Dostoevsky 's speech is a fiery, inspired, red-hot speech,
but its foundations are utterly false, for it is illegitimate
to confound so rashly and crudely as Dostoevsky did,
the objective love of the poet, the love of a fine taste that
needs variety, many-sidedness, an antithesis and even
a tragical struggle, with moral love, with the feeling of
mercy and the aspiration towards universal, monotonous
meekness.'

In its main theses Dostoevsky 's speech was most
substantially criticised by the famous Petersburg
professor Gradovsky (1841-89), jurist and publicist, a
member of the staff of the Golos, in his article ' Dream
and Reality ' (Golos, June 25, 1880). In a serious and
interesting article he controverts Dostoevsky 's theses,
and gives, in contrast to Dostoevsky, a comprehensive
interpretation of the type of ' wanderer/ created by
the social conditions.

1 Above all it seems to us unproved/ wrote Gradovsky,
' that the " wanderers " have dissociated themselves
from the very being of the Russian people, that they
have ceased to be Russians. Up till now the bounds of
their negation have not been in the least defined ; the

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 169

object of their negation has not been indicated. And
until this is defined we have no right to pronounce a
final verdict.

1 Still less have we the right to define them as " proud
men," and to see the cause of their estrangement in
this sinning against the Holy Ghost.

1 Dostoevsky has expressed the " holy of holies " of
his convictions, that which is at once both the strength
and the weakness of the author of The Brothers Kara-
mazov. In his words is contained a great religious ideal,
a mighty preaching of personal morality, but there is
not a hint even of social ideals/

Gradovsky's criticisms were acute and irresistible.
They made such a strong impression on Dostoevsky that
he wrote his ' Answer to Gradovsky,' concerning which
he writes to Pouzykovich on July 18, from Staraya
Roussa : ' On May 20 I went to Moscow for the
Poushkin Celebration — suddenly came the death of the
Empress. The Celebration was continually postponed
until June 6. In Moscow I had not even the time to
sleep, — I was so continuously busy and surrounded by
new people. Then came the Celebration and then,
literally exhausted, I returned to Staraya Roussa.
There I immediately sat down to the Karamazovs,
wrote three folios, sent them off, and without having
any rest, wrote straight off a whole number of The
Journal of an Author (containing my speech), so as to
publish it separately, as the only number (of The Journal
of an Author) for this year. In it are also my answers
to my critics, above all to Gradovsky. A new and
unexpected turn showed itself in our society at the
Poushkin anniversary (after my speech). But they
have thrown themselves at it to diminish it and destroy

170 DOSTOEVSKY

it, because of their fear of the new mood in society, a
mood which they call reactionary. It has become
necessary to re-establish things and I have written
an article, so exasperating, so purposely severing all
connection with them that now they will curse me in
the Seven Councils. Thus,' Dostoevsky concludes, ' in
the single month after my return from Moscow I have
written altogether literally six printed folios. Now
I am done for and almost ill ' (Moskovsky Sbornik, edited
by S. Sharapov, Moscow, 1887).

A day before this, on July 17, Dostoevsky wrote
to Elena Alexandrovna Stakenschneider the following
lines :

1 On June 111 returned from Moscow to Roussa,
terribly tired, but I sat down to the Karamazovs
immediately and wrote in one gulp three folios. After
sending this off, I began to read all that had been
written about me and my Moscow speech in the
papers — I had read nothing of it till then, as I was busy
working — and I decided to reply to Gradovsky, that is,
not so much to Gradovsky, as to publish our complete
profession of faith all over Russia : for the momentous
and grand, the utterly new turn in the life of our
society which showed itself at the Poushkin anniversary,
has been maliciously erased and mutilated. In the
Press, especially the Petersburg Press, they have
become literally frightened of the utterly new thing,
unlike anything that has been before, which declared
itself in Moscow. For it means that society does not
want only to sneer at Russia, only to spit on her ; it
means that society persistently desires something
different. The Westerners need to erase it all, to
destroy, to sneer, to distort, and to reassure every one.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 171

There was nothing new in it ; it was only the usual
complacency after a good Moscow dinner. We fed
famously. While still in Moscow I decided, after
having published my speech in the Moscowskya Viedo-
mosti, to bring out in Petersburg one single number of
The Journal of an Author — the only number for this
year — and to publish in it my speech and a short preface
which occurred to me literally at the very moment
when I stood on the platform, immediately after my
speech, and Turgenev and Annenkov also, together
with Aksakov and others, rushed up to embrace me and,
pressing my hands, told me over and over again that I had
written a work of genius. Alas ! are they thinking the
same of it now ? The thought of how they are taking
it, now the raptures are over, forms the theme of my
preface. The preface and speech I sent off to Peters-
burg to the printers, and I already had the proofs when
I suddenly made up my mind to write a new chapter
for The Journal, a profession of faith, addressed to
Gradovsky. It ran into two folios ; I have written it
and put my whole soul in it, and to-day, only to-day,
I 've sent it off to Moscow to the printers.' (Russky
Arkhiv, vol. iii. pp. 307-8, 1891.)

Dostoevsky made still more bitter confession con-
cerning contemporary criticisms of his speech in a
letter to O. F. Miller (August 26, 1880) : ' You see how
I have got it from nearly all our Press for my speech in
Moscow : it 's as though I 'd committed a theft, fraud,
or forgery in a bank. Even on Yukhanzev (a notorious
swindler of the time) they did not pour such filth as
they 've poured on me.' (Dostoevski's Biography, etc.,
Petersburg, 1883, p. 343.)

F. M. DOSTOEVSKY'S LETTERS TO HIS WIFE
ANNA GREGOREVNA DOSTOEVSKY

(During May and June, 1888, from Moscow,
on the Poushkin Anniversary.)

Moscow, May 23-24, 1880.
My dearest friend Anya, you can't imagine how
the news of the death of the Empress ups^t me.
Peace to her soul, pray for her. I heard about it
from the passengers in the train just after we left
Novgorod. The thought struck me immediately
that the Poushkin festivities might not take place.
I even thought of returning home from Tchudov,
but gave up the idea because I could not decide.
I kept thinking 4 If there are no celebrations, then
the memorial could be unveiled without celebra-
tions, with just literary meetings and speeches.'
Only on the 23rd when I bought the Moscowskya,
Viedomosti as we left Tver, I read the announcement
of Governor-General Dolgorouky, that the Sovereign
had ordered the postponement of the unveiling of
the memorial to another date. I thus arrived at

172

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 173

Moscow without any object whatsoever. I think
of leaving on Tuesday the 28th at 9 o'clock in the
morning. Till then I shall, at least, avail myself
of the opportunity now that I am in Moscow and
get to know something. I shall also see Lubimov
and have a talk with him about the whole idea, also
Katkov. I shall go the round of the booksellers,
etc. If only I can manage it all ! I shall, at last,
also learn all the ins and outs of these literary
intrigues. I parted with Anna Nicolayevna in
Tchudov ; we kissed each other cordially. She
promised to come back if it is at all possible. It
was a hot day. Literally I did not sleep a wink
and I was tired and completely done up when I
arrived at Moscow about 10 o'clock (Moscow time).
At the station Yuriev, Lavrov, all the editorial
staff and contributors of the Russkaya Mysl,
Nicolay Aksakov, Barsov, and a dozen others
were waiting to welcome me. We were introduced
to one another. Immediately they asked me to
come to Lavrov for a specially arranged supper.
But I was so worn out by the journey, so unwashed,
my linen, etc., so dirty that I refused. To-morrow,
the 24th, at 2 o'clock, I shall go to see Yuriev.
Lavrov said that the best and most comfortable
hotel in Moscow was the ' Loskutnaya " (on the
Tverskoy, close to the Square, close to the Church
of Our Lady of Iversk), and he instantly rushed

174 DOSTOEVSKY

away and brought back with him a driver saying
he was a cabman, but I don't believe he was a cab-
man, but an expensive coachman or perhaps his
own. When he put me down at the hotel, he
refused any money, but I forced 70 kopecks on him.
The ' Loskutnaya ' is full up, but they found a
room for me at three roubles per day, very decently
furnished ; but its windows face the court and a
wall, so that I think it will be dark to-morrow. — I
foresee that my speech cannot be published before
I deliver it. It would be strange to publish it now.
Thus, my journey will not pay for itself for the
time being. It is now one o'clock in the morning.
It is very hard to be without you three, without
you and the dear children.

I kiss you all a great deal, first you, and then
Lilya and Fedya. Give them a big kiss from me
and tell them that I love them awfully. Probably
I shall not have time to get anything from the
booksellers, for they will hardly settle accounts in
two days.

Good-bye for now. I wonder if I shall have a
letter from you. Write care of Elena Pavlovna.
I don't think you can answer this letter, however,
as I should not get it before the 29th, and on the
29th I want to be in Roussa. If you yourself have
thought of writing to Elena Pavlovna, it would be
splendid. If any misfortune happens (which God

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 175

forbid) wire to me to the ' Loskutnaya,' on the
Tverskoy, F. M. Dostoevsky. My room is No. 82.
Once again I embrace all the three of you and kiss
you many times. — Your F. Dostoevsky.

II

Loskutnaya, on the Tverskoy,
Moscow, Sunday, May 25, 1880.

My dear friend Anya, yesterday morning Lavrov,
N. Aksakov, and a lecturer of the University called
Zveriev, arrived on an official visit ; they came to
present their respects. The same morning I had
to return visits to all three. It took a long time
driving about. After that I went to Yurie v. A
rapturous reception with embraces. I learned that
they wanted to petition that the unveiling of the
memorial should be put off to the autumn, in October
instead of June or July, as the authorities seem
inclined to suggest ; but then the opening will be
escamote, for no one will come.

From Yuriev I could not get any sensible account
of the progress of the affair ; he is a chaotic man,
Repetilov in a new shape. [Repetilov — a char-
acter from Griboyedov's play Sorrow through In-
telligence.] Yet he is by no means a fool. (In-
trigues there certainly were.) I mentioned, by the
way, my article, and suddenly Yuriev said to me :

176 DOSTOEVSKY

4 I didn't ask for your speech ' (that is, for his
magazine). Yet I remember that in his letters
he did ask for it. The point is that Repetilov is
sly : he does not want to take the speech now and
pay for it. ' In the autumn, you give it us in the
autumn ; to nobody else but us. We are the first
to ask you, you see, and by that time you will have
polished it more carefully.' (As much as to say
that he knows exactly it is not carefully polished
now.) It 's true I immediately stopped talking
about the speech and promised it for the autumn,
but only in a general way. I disliked the business
awfully. — Then I went to Madame Novikov ; was
received very graciously. After that — visits, then
to Katkov : I found neither Katkov nor Lubimov
at home. I went off to the booksellers. The two
(Kashkins) have moved. They all promised to
give me something on Monday. I wonder if they
will. However, I am leaving on Monday and shall
try to find out their new addresses. Afterwards
I called on Aksakov. He is still in town, but I
did not find him at home, but in the bank. Then,
coming home, I dined. After this, at seven o'clock
I drove to Katkov : I found both Katkov and
Lubimov, was received very, very cordially, and I
talked with Lubimov about the delivery of the
Karamazovs. They insist very strongly on having
it in June. (When I come back I shall have to

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 177

work like the devil.) Afterwards I mentioned the
speech, and Katkov pleaded with me to let him
have it, that is, for the autumn. Being furious with
Yuriev, I almost promised. So that now, should
the Russkaya My si want the speech, I '11 make
them pay through the nose for it, or it goes to
Katkov. (The speech by that time can be made
longer.)

From Katkov's (where I upset a cup of tea over
myself) I went to Varya. I found her in, and
although it was about ten already we drove with
her to Elena Pavlovna. Varya had just had a
letter from brother Andrey (concerning the titles of
nobility) to be handed over to me. I took the
letter. Elena Pavlovna, as it turned out, had
moved to another house ; she has given up keeping
apartments. We went to the new house to pay
her a visit and found there Masha and Nina Ivanov
(with whom Elena Pavlovna has made it up), and
Khmyrov. The Ivanovs are going in a couple of
days to * Dorovoye,' Khmyrov is also going, as his
wife is staying there with Vera Mihailovna. We
sat there about an hour. Coming home, I found a
letter, delivered in person by N. Aksakov and
Lavrov : they invite me on the 25th (that is, to-day)
to dinner and will call for me at 5 o'clock. The
dinner is given by the contributors of the Russkaya
Mysl, but others will be present as well. I think

м

178 DOSTOEVSKY

there will be between fifteen to thirty guests, from
Yurie v's hints (when I saw him). Apparently the
dinner is being given to celebrate my visit, that is,
in my honour ; it will probably be in a restaurant.
(All these young Moscow authors ardently long to
make my acquaintance.) It is now after two
o'clock. In two hours they will come here. My
only trouble is, what to put on — a frock-coat or
evening jacket ? Now this is the whole bulletin.
I have not asked Katkov for money, but I told
Lubimov that I might need some in the summer.
Lubimov answered that he would give it me the
moment I asked for it. To-morrow I shall go the
round of the booksellers. I '11 have to call on
Elena Pavlovna to see if there is a letter from you ;
to be at Mashenka's, who begged me to come, etc.
After to-morrow, on Tuesday, the 27th, I am
leaving for Roussa, but don't yet know whether
by the morning or afternoon train. I am afraid
that to-morrow they won't let me do much work :
Yuriev roared all the while that he ' must have a
chat, a chat ' with me, etc. On the whole, I miss
you very much, and my nerves are not right. 1
don't think I shall write to you again unless some
thing very special happens. Good-bye for now
darling. I kiss you a great deal and the children
Many kisses to Lilya and Fedya. I love you al
very much. — Your F. Dostoevsky.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 179

P.S. — (May 25, 2 o'clock in the afternoon.)
My dear Anya, I have broken open yesterday's
envelope so as to send a postscript. This morning
Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov came to me to beg me
most insistently to remain here for the celebrations,
since they will take place, according to everybody,
before the 5th. He says that I ought not to go
away, that I have no right to, that I have an in-
fluence on Moscow, and above all on the students
and the younger generation as a whole ; that my
going off will injure the triumph of our convictions ;
that yesterday at dinner he had heard the draft
of my speech and that convinced him finally that
I must speak, and so on, and so on. On the other
hand, he said to me that as delegate of the Slav
Charitable Society I could not very well go away,
since all delegates remain waiting here, in view of
the rumour that the ceremony is coming off. He
left, and immediately after came Yuriev (with whom
I am dining to-day), and said the same. Prince
Dolgorouky left to-day (the 25th) for Petersburg,
and promised to send a telegram from Petersburg
stating the exact day of the unveiling of the
memorial. The telegram is expected not later than
Wednesday, the 28th, but it may also come to-
morrow. This is what I decided : to remain here
and wait for the telegram about the day of the
opening, and if the opening is really fixed between

180 DOSTOEVSKY

the first and fifth of June, then I shall remain.
But if it be postponed, then I '11 leave for Roussa
on the 28th or 29th, — this is what I said to Yuriev.
The principal thing is that I can't find out anything
about Zolotariov. Yuriev promised to find out
to-day and to come to me with news of him. Then
in spite of being a delegate of the Slav Charitable
Society I could go away, having charged Zolotariov
to be present at the ceremony alone. (By the way,
wreaths for the memorial are being charged to the
delegates' own account, and a wreath costs 50
roubles !) [Here four lines are struck out.] Then
Yuriev began bothering me about publishing my
speech in the Russkaya Mysl. Finally I told him
frankly exactly how matters stood, namely, that»
I had almost promised it to Katkov. He was
terribly excited and grieved ; he apologised, main-
tained that I had not understood him right, that
it had resulted in a misunderstanding ; and when I
let drop a hint that I am paid for my work, he said
that Lavrov had instructed him to pay anything
I might ask, i.e. even 400 or 500 roubles. It was
at this point I told Yuriev that I had almost
promised the article to Katkov. What I had in
view was to ask him to put off the Karamazovs, and
to make up for this, instead of the Karamazovs,
he would have the speech on Poushkin. But now, j
if I let the Russkaya Mysl have my speech, it will

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 181

look as if I am trying to get a postponement from
Katkov with the express object of availing myself
of that postponement in order to work for his
enemy Yuriev. (Imagine, now, what a position
I am in ! But it is Yuriev himself who is to blame.)
Katkov will be offended. True, Katkov won't
pay, for instance, 400 roubles (it is for the Kara-
mazovs that he is giving 300 roubles ; for the speech
he may not give 300 roubles), so that the one or
two hundred more from Yuriev would cover my
staying here till the unveiling of the memorial. In
a word, there 's a mass of worries and difficulties.
How it will all end I don't know, but I have decided
meanwhile to remain here till the 28th. So that,
if the unveiling of the memorial is not fixed
before the 5th, I shall return to Roussa on the
29th or 30th, having arranged to publish my speech
somewhere. (But try to write to me immediately ;
I again repeat my request.) Am I not to have a
single line from you ? Do write without fail to the
addresses which I told you of yesterday in my
letter (the one with the postscript). Telegraph, if
you like.

Yuriev told me that a number of people called
on him to-day to abuse him : why had he con-
cealed yesterday's dinner from them ? Four
students even came to him to ask for a place at
the dinner. Among the others were Suhomlinov

182 DOSTOEVSKY

who is here now, Gatzuk, Viskovatov, and more of
them. I 'm off to the booksellers. Good-bye for
now. I kiss you all once again. — Your

F. Dostoevsky.

Yuriev has already got Ivan Aksakov's speech
on Poushkin. That is probably why they were so
vague the day before yesterday. But having
heard yesterday at the dinner what I was saying
about Poushkin he probably decided that my
article, too, is indispensable. Turgenev has also
written an article on Poushkin.

Ill

Loskutnaya, on the Tverskoy
(Room No. 33),
Moscow, May 26-26, 1880.

My dear friend Anya, here is one more letter
(I am writing after one o'clock in the morning).
Perhaps you will receive it after my return (for I
still intend leaving on Tuesday the 27th), but I
write to you in any event, for circumstances are
shaping so that I shall perhaps have to remain here
for some time longer. But to begin at the begin-
ning. To-day, the 25th, at 5 o'clock, Lavrov anc
Nicolay Aksakov called on me and took me in theii
own carriage to the Hermitage restaurant. The}
were in frock-coats and I too went in a frock-coat

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 183

although the dinner, as it turned out, was given
expressly in my honour. At the Hermitage
authors, professors, and men of letters, twenty-two
of them altogether, already awaited us. The first
thing Yuriev, who received me most ceremoniously,
said was that many people had done their utmost
to be present at the dinner, and if it had been post-
poned for one day only, hundreds of guests would
have come. But it had been arranged too hastily,
and now they are afraid that, when the many others
come to hear about it, their reproaches will be
bitter for not having been asked. There were
present four professors of the University, one
director of a public school, Polivanov (a friend of
the Poushkin family), Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov,
Nicolay Aksakov, Nicolay Rubinstein (the Moscow
one), etc., etc. The dinner was arranged extra-
ordinarily sumptuously. A whole reception room
was engaged (at no small cost). The dinner was
on such a luxurious scale that afterwards two
hundred magnificent and expensive cigars appeared
with the coffee and liqueurs. They order these
things differently in Petersburg ! Dried sturgeon,
osiotr a yard long, a yard long stewed sterlet,
turtle soup, strawberries, quails, wonderful
asparagus, ice-cream, rivers of most exquisite
wines and champagne. Six speeches (the speakers
rising from their chairs) were made to me, some

184 DOSTOEVSKY

very long ones. They were by Yurie v, both
Aksakovs, three of the professors and Nicolay
Rubinstein. At dinner two congratulatory tele-
grams were received, one of them from a most
respected professor who had been called away
suddenly from Moscow. They spoke of my ' great !
significance as an artist with ' universal sympathy,'
as a publicist and as a Russian. After that, an
infinite number of toasts were given, at which all
got up and came to me to touch glasses. Further
details when we meet. All were in a state of rap-
ture. I answered them all with a speech which
went off very well and produced a great effect, by
managing to switch on to Poushkin. This made a
great impression.

Now for a most intolerable and most awkward
business : a deputation from the ' Lovers of Russian
Literature ' called to-day on Prince Dolgorouky,
and he declared that the opening of the memorial
would take place between the first and fifth of June.
Yet he did not fix a definite date. Now, of course,
they are all in raptures, as the authors and certain
delegations will not disperse, and although there
will be no music and no theatrical performances,
there will be meetings of the 4 Society of Lovers of
Literature,' speeches and dinners. But when I
announced that I was going away on the 27th,
there was an absolute storm : 4 We shan't let

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 185

you ! ' Polivanov (who is on the Unveiling Com-
mittee of the Memorial), Yuriev and Aksakov
declared aloud that all Moscow was buying tickets
for the sittings, and all those who bought tickets
(for the meetings of the ' Lovers of Russian Litera-
ture ') asked when they took them (and sent to
inquire several times) : Will Dostoevsky speak ?
And as they could not tell at which meeting I was
going to speak, at the first or at the second, — then
they all began taking tickets for both meetings.
* All Moscow will be offended and indignant with
us, if you go away now,' they said to me. I made
the excuse that I must write the Karamazovs (and
deliver the part for the June No.) ; they began in
all seriousness to shout about sending a deputation
to Katkov to ask him to postpone the date. I
began saying that you and the children would be
anxious if I were to remain here for so long, and
then (perfectly seriously) they not only proposed
sending you a telegram, but also a deputation to
Staraya Roussa to ask you if I may remain here.
I answered that to-morrow, that is, Monday the
26th, I '11 decide.

I am sitting here in terrible perplexity and
uneasiness. On the one hand, there is the con-
solidation of my influence not in Petersburg alone,
but also in Moscow, which matters a great deal ;
on the other, there is this being away from you,

186 DOSTOEVSKY

the difficulties about the Karamazovs (the writing
and delivery on the appointed date to Katkov's
magazine), the expense, etc. Finally, although
my ' Word ' on Poushkin will now certainly be
published, where is it to appear ? I almost
promised it, on Saturday, to Katkov. And in this
case the ' Lovers of Russian Literature ' and Yuriev
will be saddened. If I give it to them, Katkov
will be angry. I am still thinking of going away
without fail, if not on the 27th, then on the 28th
or 29th, as soon as Dolgorouky sends a notification
of the exact date of the opening. Perhaps, I shall
have to wait until that notification arrives. On
the other hand, all that Dolgorouky has said as yet
has been his personal opinion ; he has not yet got
the definite date from Petersburg. (I think he is
going to Petersburg himself for a few days.) So
suppose I remained till June 5th, and then there
suddenly came an order to postpone everything
till the 10th or 15th, should I still have to wait
here ? To-morrow I shall tell Yuriev, that I am
going on the 27th, that only in the case of definite
and serious circumstances I shall remain. At any
rate, I am in awful perplexity now. After dinner
I called at Elena Pavlovna's but found nothing
from you. Certainly it is still early for letters
from Roussa, but shall I really receive none to-
morrow ? With Elena Pavlovna I drove off tc

I

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 187

Mashenka Ivanov and told her that I had dined
with Rubinstein ; she was in raptures. At any
rate, as soon as you receive this letter, answer me
without fail : even if I leave, Elena Pavlovna will
send on the letter, without opening it, to Roussa.
So answer immediately, without fail. Elena Pav-
lovna's absolutely exact address is : ' Ostozhenka,
borough of Voskresenye, in the house of Mme.
Dmitrevsky, to be given to F. M. Dostoevsky.'
Should you want to telegraph, send either to Elena
Pavlovna, or direct to me, Hotel Loskutnaya,
on the Tverskoy, — I am certain to receive it.
(Your letters you had better address to Elena
Pavlovna.)

I was elected a member of the ' Society of Lovers
of Russian Literature ' as far back as a year ago,
but the late secretary, Bezsonov, neglected to
notify me about the election, for which they now
apologise. I hold you firmly in my arms, my
dear one. I kiss the children. I have strange and
ominous dreams at night. — Wholly your

F. Dostoevsky.

P.S. — I think after all I shall put my foot down
and leave on the 27th. True enough, I shall not
be able to publish my speech then, for it will not
have the value of a speech, it will only be an article.
This must be thought out.

188 DOSTOEVSKY

[On the margin is the following.] I made a good
speech.

I embrace you once again. Kiss the children,
tell them about their Daddy.

IV

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, May 27, 1880, 3 p.m.

My dear friend Any a, more news. When I
arrived in Moscow, Yuriev and Lavrov saw me to
the Loskutnaya, and I engaged there a room,
No. 32, at three roubles per day. The next morning
the manager of the hotel (a young man, apparently
an educated man) came to me and in a gentle
voice proposed that I should move to No. 33, the
room opposite. As No. 33 was incomparably
better than my No. 32, I instantly agreed and
moved in. I only wondered to myself, how it was
that such a nice room should go for the same price,
three roubles ; but since the manager said nothing
about the price, but simply asked me to move in
there, I concluded then that it also was three
roubles. Yesterday, the 26th, I dined at Yuriev's,
and Yuriev suddenly said that in the Town Hall
I am registered as staying in the Loskutnaya,
No. 33. I was surprised and asked him : ' How
does the Town Hall know ? ' ' But you are staying

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 189

there at the expense of the Town Hall,' Yuriev
replied. I lifted up my voice at that ; Yuriev
replied resolutely that I could not do otherwise
than accept accommodation from the Town Hall ;
that all the visitors are staying at the hotels at
the expense of the City, that even Poushkin's
children and Poushkin's nephew Pavlischev are
staying at our hotel, all of them at the expense of
the City ; that by refusing to accept the hospitality
of the City, I will offend them and it will be con-
sidered a scandal ; that the City is proud to count
men like myself among its guests, etc. etc. At
last I decided that even if I did accept my lodging
from the City I shall on no account accept board
as well. When I returned home, the manager
came in again to ask me : Was I satisfied ? Did I
want anything ? Was it quiet ? All this with the
most obsequious politeness. I instantly asked
him : ' Is it true that I am staying at the expense
of the City of Moscow ? ' — ' Precisely so.' — ' And my
board ? ' — ' All your board as well.' — ' But I do
not want to ! ' — ' In that case you will offend not
only the Town Hall, but the whole City of Moscow.
The City is proud to have such guests, etc' — Any a,
what shall I do now ? I can't refuse to accept it ;
there will be rumours about it ; it will become an
anecdote, a scandal, as though I had refused the
hospitality of the whole City of Moscow, etc. Then

190 DOSTOEVSKY

in the evening I asked Lavrov and Yuriev, — and
they were surprised at my scruples and simply say
that I shall offend all Moscow, that people will
remember it, that there will be gossip about it.
So I see positively that I must accept their hospi-
tality entire. But, how all this will worry me ! —
Now I shall deliberately go out to dine at a
restaurant so as to reduce my bill as much as pos-
sible, seeing that the bill will be presented to the
Town Hall. And I 've already twice complained
about the coffee and sent it back to have it boiled
thicker. In the restaurant they will say : See
how he plays the gentleman at other people's
expense. Twice I 've asked in the office for stamps ;
when the bill is presented to the Mansion House,
they will say : See, how he enjoyed himself ! He
even got his stamps at our expense ! It is a great
strain on me, but certain items I will certainly
have put to my account. I believe this might be
arranged. As a result, however long I stay in
Moscow I shan't have very great expenses.

(N.B. — Yesterday I received from (the book-
sellers) Soloviov, from Kishkin and from Priesnov
170 roubles altogether ; you yourself will see the
accounts when I come home. From the Central
Shop and from the Morosovs I have not received
anything yet.)

Yesterday at four o'clock in the afternoon

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 191

Dolgorouky stated (definitely) that the unveiling
of the memorial would take place on the 4th June
and that Petersburg urgently desired it. A final
telegram from Dolgorouky as to the exact day of
the unveiling will arrive only to-morrow, but
every one is firmly convinced that the opening will
be on the 4th, and besides, letters to this effect
have also been received from Petersburg. Delega-
tions (a multitude) from various towns and organisa-
tions are waiting here and not going away. There
is the greatest excitement. They positively won't
let me go away. I have decided now : I believe
I '11 stay for certain if the opening takes place on
the 4th. Then I '11 leave for Roussa, and on the
8th or 9th I shall be with you. This morning
Grigorovich called on me, also Yuriev ; they began
crying that my going away will be considered by all
Moscow as an affectation ; every one will be sur-
prised ; all Moscow keeps on inquiring whether I
shall be present ; that people will circulate stories
about the whole affair. It will be said that I was
so lacking in patriotism that I would not put aside
my personal business for a higher object. For in
the rehabilitation of the significance of Poushkin
every one all over Russia sees a means for ex-
pressing the new change of convictions, of mentality,
of tendencies. Two things stand in my way as a
hindrance and torment my soul : the first is the

192 DOSTOEVSKY

Russky Viestnik and the obligation which I ack-
nowledged a month ago to deliver the Karamazovs
for the June number. If I come home on the 10th,
what shall I be able to do in some ten days ? Four
days ago Lubimov said that a further postpone-
ment, till July, depended on Markevich ; if he sent
in some part of his novel, mine could be postponed ;
but if he does not, they can't do it. An answer
from Markevich will not come before the 10th of
June. Thus, I am in the dark and anxious. I had
thought of writing the Karamazovs here, but because
of the continuous bustle, visits and invitations, it is
almost impossible. The second reason which tor-
ments me is my longing to be with you : I have
not had a single line from you up till now, and we
had agreed that you would write care of Elena
Pavlovna ! What is the matter with you, tell me
for the love of God ! Why don't you write ? Are
you well, safe ? Are the children well ? If you
had written telling me whether to wait here or not
till the unveiling I should be easy about it. You
must have seen in the papers that the Empress
was dead. Why didn't you write then, foreseeing
that I must certainly be in a difficult position.
Every day, and yesterday in the rain, I 've had a
very long drive to Elena Pavlovna's to inquire :
Aren't there any letters ? There and back the cab
fare is one rouble. Do write, write without fail.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 198

But I believe I shall decide to remain here for
certain. If only I could be sure of the date, other-
wise what shall I do if they postpone it again ?
Yesterday, by a most pressing invitation, I was at
an evening party at Lavrov's. Lavrov, the pub-
lisher and the backer of the Russkaya Mysl, is my
passionate, frenzied admirer, who has been feeding
on my works for many years now. He himself is a
very rich retired merchant. His two brothers deal
in grain, but he has got out of the business and lives
on his capital. He is thirty-three years old, a most
sympathetic and sincere man, devoted to art and
poetry. At the evening party about fifteen local
men of letters and authors were present, a few also
from Petersburg. My appearance there yesterday
aroused enthusiasm. I did not intend remaining
to supper, but, seeing that I should mortally offend
all of them, I remained. The supper was like a
grand dinner, luxuriously served, with champagne.
After supper, champagne and cigars — 75 roubles
per hundred. (The dinner the other day was a
subscription dinner, a very modest one, not more
than 3 roubles a head, but all the luxuries, the
flowers, turtle soup, cigars, the reception room
itself, Lavrov himself contributed.) I came home
about four in the morning. To-day Grigorovich
told me that Turgenev, who has come back from
visiting Leo Tolstoy, is ill, and that Tolstoy is

N

194 DOSTOEVSKY

almost deranged, and perhaps gone completely off
his head.1 Annenkov too has returned ; what will
our meeting be like ? Yuriev came here for my
article just now, imploring me to give it without
fail to the Russkaya Mysi. Zolotariov is coming
(he sent a message). Only from you alone I receive
no news. Any a, for the love of Christ, write to me
at the addresses I gave you. Have you had all
my letters ? Up till now I have written every
day. You, Anya, love to ask, Do I love you ?
And you yourself don't miss me at all, and I miss
you. How are the little ones ? Only to hear s
little word from them ! It is not easy, almosl
another fortnight of being away from you. Good
bye for now, my darling, I kiss you ever so much
I kiss the children and bless them. If anything
new happens, I shall write to-morrow. — Wholl}
your F. Dostoevsky.

P.S. — In our hotel, besides myself, three other
are also staying at the expense of the Mansioi
House : two professors from Kazan and Warsaw
and Pavlischev, Poushkin's own nephew.

1 A reference to the abandonment of artistic work by Tolstoy an
his absorption in religious and philosophical problems. Tolstoy
Critique of Dogmatic Theology appeared in 1880, and his Brit
Exposition of the Gospels in 1881.

■

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 195

Loskutnaya, Room No. 33,

Moscow, May 27-28, 2 a.m.

My dear friend Anya, at last, this evening, I
received from you five lines, in pencil, written on
the 24th. And this I received only on the evening
of the 27th ! How long a letter takes ! I was
awfully glad, but also saddened, for there were
only five lines, and they began with 4 Dear Fiodor
Mihailovich.' Well, never mind ! I hope to re-
ceive more next time. You know now everything
from my letter ; it seems I shall certainly have to
remain here for the unveiling of the memorial. In
the evening I was at Katkov's. I told him every-
thing (he had already heard from others about how
1 Moscow ' was waiting for me) ; and he said firmly
I must not go away. To-morrow there will be a
telegram from Dolgorouky and the day of the
opening will be definitely settled. But every one
says the 4th. If the opening takes place on the
4th, I '11 leave probably on the 8th (if not on the
7th even), and on the 9th I shall be in Roussa. I
called on Katkov with the object of obtaining a
postponement of the Karamazovs till the July
number. He listened to me very amiably (and
was altogether very friendly and obliging, as he

;ver had been, to me before), but he said nothing

196 DOSTOEVSKY

definite about the postponement. All depends on
Markevich, that is, on whether he sends in the
next instalment of his novel. I told Katkov
about my acquaintance with the high personage
at Countess Mengden's and then at K. K.'s. He
was pleasantly surprised ; his expression com-
pletely changed.

This time I did not upset the tea, for which he
treated me to expensive cigars. He saw me down
to the hall and thereby surprised the whole office,
who were watching us from the other room, for
Katkov never comes down with any one. I think
on the whole the affair with the Russky Viestnik
will somehow be arranged. I did not say a single
word about the article on Poushkin. Perhaps
they '11 forget about it, so that I shall be able to
give it to Yuriev, from whom I am certain to get
more money. I dream even of finding a moment
of time here before the 8th to sit down to the
Karamazovs, so as to be ready for any emergency,
but it is hardly possible. — If my speech at the
solemn opening is a success, then in Moscow (and
therefore in all Russia) I shall henceforth be more
famous as a writer. (I mean, famous in the sense
in which Turgenev and Tolstoy have already won
greatness. Goncharov, for instance, who never
moves out of Petersburg, although he is known
here, yet it is only vaguely and coldly.) — But how

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 197

can I manage to live without you and without the
little ones all this time ? Is it an easy thing, for
twelve whole days ? I sit and dream of the children,
and am sad all the while. Did Grandma return ?
How are you there all by yourselves ? Are you
afraid of anything, are you worried about any-
thing? For the love of God, write me oftener,
and if anything should happen (which God forbid)
telegraph me instantly. By the way (read this
carefully), address all letters direct to me in the
future to the Loskutnaya Hotel, on the Tverskoy,
Moscow, F. M. Dostoevsky, Room No. 33. Why
should I have to go every evening to Elena Pavlovna
for your letters ? First, it is a long way ; secondly,
I lose time, so that if I happened to want to do
something (the Karamazovs), I should have no
time at all. Also I must have tired them out.
To-day I drove on there from Katkov ; I received
your letter and found there the I vano vs . Mashenka
played Beethoven very well. Here it is half sun,
half showers, and it is fairly windy and fresh.
Mashenka is going with Natasha the day after to-
morrow to ' Dorovoye,' and Ninochka is remaining
here. Ninochka is untamed and taciturn ; you
can't get anything out of her ; it 's as though she
were ashamed. All of them live near Elena Pav-
lovna. Well, good-bye for now. I believe I have
written everything I wanted to. If there is some-

198 DOSTOEVSKY

thing new to-morrow, I shall write ; if not then the
day after to-morrow. As for Leo Tolstoy, Katkov
also declared that people say he has gone quite off
his head. Yurie v urged me to go to Yasnaya
Polyana ; there and back including my visit would
take less than two days altogether. But I shall
not go, although it would be very interesting.
To-day I dined at the Moscow Tavern on purpose
to keep down the bill at the Loskutnaya. But I
came to the conclusion the Loskutnaya may per-
haps after all charge for my having dinner there
every day. In the Loskutnaya they are polite to
a degree ; not a single letter of yours will go wrong,
and as I shall in no case change my hotel now, you
may without hesitation send me letters addressed
to the Loskutnaya. Good-bye for now, I kiss you
4 dear Anna Gregorevna.' Hug the little ones as
tightly and warmly as you can, tell them Daddy
told you to. — Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

Elena Pavlovna's children are with her and they
are charming.

VI

Loskutnaya, Room S3,
Moscow, May 28-29, 2 a.m.

My dear Anya, the only news is that a telegram
came from Dolgorouky to-day saying the unveiling
of the memorial is on the 4th. This is now settled.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 199

So that I can leave Moscow on the 8th or even on
the 7th, and of course I '11 try to hurry. But
remain here I must, and I have decided to remain.
The chief point is that I am needed here not only
by the ' Lovers of Russian Literature,' but by our
whole party, by our whole idea, for which we have
been fighting these thirty years. For the hostile
party (Turgenev, Kovalevsky, and almost the whole
University) is quite determined to belittle Poush-
kin's significance, as the representative of the
Russian nation, and thereby to deny the very
nation itself. Against them, on our side, we have
only Ivan Sergueyevich Aksakov (Yuriev and the
rest have no weight). But Ivan Aksakov has grown
rather out of date and Moscow is a bit bored by
him. Myself, however, Moscow has not heard or
seen, and it is in me alone that the people are
interested. My voice will have weight, and thus
our side will triumph. All my life I have been
fighting for this ; I can't run away from the field
of battle now. When even Katkov, who on the
whole is not a Slavophil, says to me : ' You must
not go away, you can't go away,' then, certainly,
stay I must.

This morning, at twelve o'clock, when I was
still asleep, Yuriev arrived with that telegram. I
began to dress while he was there. Suddenly just
at that moment two ladies were announced. I

200 DOSTOEVSKY

was not dressed and sent to inquire who they were.
The waiter returned with a note, that a Mme.
Ilyin wished to ask my permission to select from
all my works passages which were suitable for
children, and to publish such a book for children.
There *s an idea ! We ought to have thought of it
ourselves long ago and published such a little book
for children. Such a book would certainly sell
and perhaps give us a profit of 2000 roubles. Make
her a present of 2000 roubles — what impertinence !
Yuriev immediately went down (since it was he
himself in his thoughtless way who had directed
her to me) to say that I could not possibly agree,
and that I couldn't receive her. He went out,
and suddenly Varvara Mihailovna arrived, and
no sooner had she entered when Viskovatov ap-
peared. Seeing that I had visitors Varvara im-
mediately ran away. Yuriev came back and
explained that the other lady visitor was on her
own ; she did not give her name, but only said
that she had come to express her boundless respect,
admiration, gratitude for all that I had given her
by my works, etc. She went away ; I did not see
her. I asked my visitors to tea, when suddenly in
came Grigorovich. They all sat for a couple of
hours, and when Yuriev and Viskovatov left,
Grigorovich remained without any thought of
going. He began telling me various stories of

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 201

things that had happened in the last thirty years,
recollecting the past, etc. He certainly made up
half of it ; but it was interesting. Then when it
was past four he declared that he was not going
to part with me and began begging that we should
dine together. We went again to the Moscow
Tavern, where we dined at our leisure, and he talked
all the while. Suddenly Averkiev and his wife
turned up. Averkiev sat down at our table, and
Donna Anna declared that she would call on me
(much I want to see her !). It turned out that
near us were dining Poushkin's relations, his two
nephews, Pavlischev and Poushkin, and some one
else. Pavlischev also came up and declared that
he too would call on me. In a word, here as in
Petersburg they won't let me alone. After dinner
Grigorovich began asking me to drive with him to
the park ' for a breath of fresh air,' but I refused,
left him, walked home, and in ten minutes drove
to Elena Pavlovna for your letter. But there was
no letter, I only met the Ivanovs there. Mashenka
is going to-morrow. I sat till eleven and returned
home to have tea and write to you. This is all
my news.

The worst of it is that letters take three or four
days. As I wrote to you that I was coming home,
you of course won't write to me, expecting me on
the 28th ; and now the time it will take before my

202 DOSTOEVSKY

letter of yesterday and of to-day about my new
decision reaches you ! I am afraid you will be
wondering what has happened and be uneasy.
But it can't be helped. The only bad thing is that
I shall perhaps have no letters from you for two
days, and I am pining for you. I am sad here in
spite of guests and dinners. Ah, Anya, what a
pity that you could not have arranged (of course,
it was out of the question) to have come with me !
They say that even Maikov has changed his mind
and will come here. There will be a lot of fuss ;
I have to present myself at the Town Hall as a
delegate (I don't know when yet), in order to receive
my admission card for the ceremony. The windows
of the houses that surround the square are being
let at 50 roubles a window. They are also building
wooden stands for the public at an equally enormous
price. I am afraid too of its being a rainy day and
I may catch a cold. I am not going to speak at
the dinner on the opening day. At the meeting
of the c Lovers of Russian Literature,' I believe, I
am to speak on the second day. Besides that,
instead of a theatrical performance they think of
having certain works of Poushkin read by well-
known authors (Turgenev, myself, Yurie v), each
selecting a passage. [They have asked me to read
the scene of the Monk-Chronicler (from Boris
Godounov), and also the ' Miser's Monologue ' (from

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 203

the Poor Knight).] Besides, Yuriev, Viskovatov
and myself will each read a poem on Poushkin's
death ; Yuriev Guber's, Viskovatov Lermontov's,
myself Tyuchev's.

The time passes, and people keep me from doing
anything. Up till now I have not called for money
at the Central Shop or at the Morosovs. I have not
been to Chayev's yet ; I must call on Varya ; I
should also like to make the acquaintance of the
church dignitaries, Nicolay Yaponsky and the local
vicar Alexey, very interesting men. I don't sleep
well, I have nothing but nightmares. I am afraid
of catching a cold on the opening day and of cough-
ing while I am reading.

With terrible impatience I keep expecting a note
from you. Oh, my God, how are the children,
how I long to see them ! Are you well, happy, or
are you cross ? It is difficult without you. Well,
good-bye for now. To-morrow I shall not go to
Elena Pavlovna's, she herself promised to send me
any letter if it comes. I hug you all warmly, I
bless the little ones. — Wholly your

F. Dostoevsky.

P.S. — If anything happens, telegraph to the
Loskutnaya. Address letters there, too. Do my
letters arrive safely ? Bad luck if any get lost !

204 DOSTOEVSKY

VII

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, May 30, 1880.

1 am writing to you now, although the letter
will not go away till to-morrow, my dear Anya.
There is almost no news. Only that I am in for
a lot of bother and various official ceremonies :
I have to present myself at the Town Hall, obtain
admission cards, find out where to stand and sit
at the ceremony, etc. And above all, those wreaths
— they say I must have two. The Town Hall is
arranging for them — 30 roubles for the two. Stupid !
Zolotariov has not come yet, but he is coming, and
I '11 put the whole ceremony of the unveiling on
to his shoulders : in a frock-coat only and with no
hat on I really may catch a cold. Yesterday
morning the Averkievs came in to see me ; Poush-
kin's nephews, Pavlischev and Poushkin, called on
me also, to make my acquaintance. After that
I drove to Yuriev (about all these cards and cere-
monies), but did not find him at home. I dined at
home, and after dinner in came Viskovatov, who
declared his love for me, and asked, why I did not
love him ? etc. Still he was more possible than
I 've known him before. (By the way, he told me
that Sabourov (Minister of Education), a relation
of his, had read certain passages of the Karamazovs

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 205

and literally wept for ecstasy. At nine o'clock we
drove to Yuriev, but again did not find him. Visko-
vatov suddenly remembered that Anna Nicolayevna
Englehardt was here and suggested we should call
on her. We took a cab and arrived at ten o'clock
at Dusseau's Hotel. She was already in bed, but
was very glad, and we sat for an hour, talking of
the beautiful and the sublime. She is not here for
the celebration, but to meet some relatives. But
now she is not well ; she has a swollen leg. This
morning when I was asleep Ivan Sergueyevich
Aksakov called on me, but told them not to wake
me. After this I drove to Polivanov (Director of
the Secondary School and the Secretary of the
Society). He explained to me all the steps I must
take at the Mansion House, and about the admis-
sion cards, and despatched a young man to help
me. He introduced me to his family. A whole
company of teachers and pupils gathered round
and we went (in the same building) to look at the
Poushkin portraits and things which are at present
at the school. After that, having come home, I
found a note from Grigorovich, inviting me to dine
at Tiestov's at six. I wonder whether I shall go.
Meanwhile I sat down to write you my bulletin.
At 8 o'clock I shall go to Elena Pavlovna for your
letter. (Yesterday, the 29th, I received one.)
After that, I '11 go home and sit down to my speech,

206 DOSTOEVSKY

which must be polished up. A horrid existence
on the whole ; the weather is wonderful. All the
people here are in their own homes ; I am the only
visitor. In the evening I shall write more.

May 30-31, 1 a.m.
At Tiestov's restaurant I found no Grigorovich,
so I returned home and dined. After that I drove
to Elena Pavlovna ; she was not at home, but her
children told me there had been no letter from
you. By my reckoning perhaps to-morrow there
will be a letter from you for certain. Putting two
and two together I now understand that from all
my previous letters you came to the conclusion
that I was coming on the 28th. But you must by
now have received the letters in which I hesitated
whether to return or not, and therefore there should
be an answer now. The trouble was that we some-
how failed to make all this clear before I went away.
For you could have written in any case, even
reckoning that I was coming back, care of Elena
Pavlovna, so as not to leave me in the dark about
yourself and the children. I also imagine that on
the 2nd I shall have a letter from you sent direct
to the Loskutnaya. Your letters addressed care of
Elena Pavlovna, that is, your previous letters you
might have sent without any fear, for even had I
gone away, nobody would have opened them, and

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 207

she would have sent them back to Roussa. But
it would be better to address your letters to the
Loskutnaya, so that I don't have to go to Elena
Pavlovna's because the great to-do begins im-
mediately (from the 2nd). I shall have to get up
early and bustle about all day long ; I shall not
have the time even to keep on going to Elena
Pavlovna. Also I shall stop writing detailed
bulletins to you, as I have done till now : I shall
have no time at all. On the 3rd the Mansion House
receives guests ; there will be speeches, frock-coats,
silk hats, white ties. And then there is the un-
veiling dinner at the Town Hall ; after which on
the mornings of the 5th and 6th there will be
meetings, and in the evenings literary readings.
Also on the 2nd there will be an evening meeting
of the ' Lovers of Literature,' when it will be
settled who shall speak and at what time. I
believe I shall have to speak on the second day,
on the 6th. I have been to Morosov and to the
Central Shop. From Morosov I got altogether 14
roubles, and at the Central, although they told me
you had written to them to remit me 50 roubles,
they ask for a postponement until the 6th or 7th.
As on the 7th, moreover, I shall have to make
farewell visits, and there is a number of them, I
may be able to leave only on the 8th, and shall let
you know by which train. But I shall try to leave

208 DOSTOEVSKY

on the 8th for certain. I called on Varya. She
told me a great deal about her grandchildren and
asked my advice. She is a sensible and good woman.
In the evening I managed to have just a glance at
the MS. How are the little ones ? I miss them
very much ; I don't hear their sweet voices. And
I keep on wondering if anything has happened to
you all ? If anything should happen (which God
forbid), wire to me without fail. Good-bye for now,
my darling. Ah, if I received only a line from you
to-morrow ! I embrace you and the children, and
kiss you all a great deal. And the Karamazovs,
oh, the Karamazovs ! Ah, what a throwing away of
precious time ! Still I am now absorbed in this
affair : they (the Westerners) have a strong party.
I embrace you again and again. — Your

F. Dostoevsky.

Yesterday afternoon the gold link in my cuff
was broken ; the one I had repaired. Half of it
remained in the sleeve of my shirt, and the other
I must have dropped somewhere in the street.

VIII

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, May 81, 1880, 1 a.m.

My dear Any a, I thought of not writing to you
to-day, for I have almost nothing to write about.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 209

But as I 've at last received your note (of the 29th),
and as days are certainly coming when in the bustle
I shall not be able to write you anything, or at best
a couple of lines, I have decided to write now. I
am so very glad that you are all well ; I am glad for
the little ones and for you ; it is as if my anxiety
had rolled away from my heart, although I still
miss you. It is annoying that Grandma won't
wait my arrival. — Aksakov promised me Gogol's
autograph,1 although I wonder if I shall have time
to get it now. And besides, I have forgotten and
muddled in my head all the directions for the
celebrations, so that I shall have to inquire who
lives where from Yuriev. A certain mathematician
(I forget his name) called on me to-day and sat for
a long time in the reading-room of my hotel,
waiting for me to get up. When I awoke, he came
in, stayed precisely three minutes, and did not
even sit down : he called to declare his deep respect,
admiration for my talent, his devotion, gratitude ;
he expressed it all ardently and went away. An
oldish man, with a most sympathetic face. After
that came Lopatin, the young man whom Polivanov
had charged to look after my tickets for the Town
Hall, and to give me all necessary information, etc.

1 Gogol's letter of March 1841, to Aksakov, is among Dostoeveky's
personal archives. It was forwarded to Dostoevsky by Aksakov on
September 3, 1880. •

210 DOSTOEVSKY

We entered into a conversation and, to tny pleasant
surprise, I found him an extraordinarily clever
man, very intelligent, extremely decent, and sharing
my own convictions to an extreme degree. In a
word, a most pleasant meeting. After that came
Grigorovich, and lied and gossiped a great deal.
They really seem to be preparing themselves to
say something spiteful at the sittings and dinners.
Grigorovich is also a delegate from the Literary
Fund. The other three are : Turgenev, Gayevsky,
Krayevsky. Each received 150 roubles from the
Fund for their expenses. Only our Slav Society
voted nothing, nor could it have done so. Grigoro-
vich complains that 150 roubles is too little. In-
deed, money goes so fast here that although I
shall have to pay little at the hotel, yet I shall
have spent a great deal : cabmen, tobacco, special
expenses, buying of wreaths, etc. Apropos, the
two obligatory wreaths are prepared by the Town
Hall at 30 roubles for the two from each dele-
gate. If Zolotariov does not come, then I shall
certainly have to pay. I must also buy cuff-links.
I dined at the Moscow Tavern. Then I went to
Elena Pavlovna and got your note. Her Manya
is a most lovely girl of twenty, and I noticed there
a young doctor as their guest, who was very in-
trigued by her. After that together with Visko-
vatov we went to Anna Englehardt, who is still

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 211

sitting at home with her bad leg, and there we met
her doctor, who says that the illness is pretty
serious if it be even slightly neglected. Then we
walked home with Viskovatov. In the morning
there were two thunderstorms and a downpour,
and now the night is wonderful. These are all my
adventures for the time being. How am I going
to read my speech ? Aksakov said that his was
the same as mine. It is sad if we coincide so
literally in our ideas. — How shall I read at the
evening literary recitals the scene of Pimen and
the Poor Knight, and also (most important)
Tyuchev on Poushkin's death ? It is interesting
to try and imagine my meeting with Annenkov.
Will he indeed hold out his hand ? I should not
like quarrels. Well, good-bye for now, darling
Anya. Kiss the little ones warmly, remind them
of me. Remember me to Anna Nicolayevna. How
is she, has she had a good journey ? Mine was
not. I ought to call on Katkov. Farewell, I
embrace you closely. — Wholly your

F. Dostoevsky.
I bless the little ones.

P.S. — [The first word is struck out] near Auntie
playing cards with her. how can he think of coming
here.

212 DOSTOEVSKY

IX

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, June 2-3, 1880,

2 A.M.

My dearest lovely friend Anyechka, yesterday
evening I went off to Elena Pavlovna for your
letter but received none ; and to-day your two
letters arrived at the Loskutnaya, one at 4 o'clock
in the afternoon, the other in the evening. In a
word, letters addressed to the Loskutnaya ap-
parently reach here quicker than if sent to Elena
Pavlovna. Kiss the children hard for their lovely
messages at the end and buy them some sweets,
without fail. Do you hear, Any a ? — Even doctors
prescribe sweets for children. — As to your remark
that I do not love you much, I say it is sillyssimo.
I think only of you and the children. And I see
you in my dreams. — There has been a hubbub
again here. Yesterday the Celebration was again
suddenly postponed, but now it is definitely stated
that the opening will be on the 6th. The wreaths
are prepared by the Town Hall at 8 roubles each.
I need two, which I shall order to-morrow. Zolo-
tariov has not come yet. The train from Peters-
burg with various delegates for the Celebration
is arriving here only the day after to-morrow.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 213

Now to proceed : two days ago in the evening
there was a consultation at Turgenev's of nearly
all participants in the Celebration (I was excluded),
as to what precisely should be read, how the Cele-
bration should be arranged, etc. I was told they
met at Turgenev's as though by chance. Grigoro-
vich told me this as if to comfort me. Certainly,
I myself would not have gone to Turgenev without
a formal invitation from him ; but the noodle
Yuriev whom I haven't seen for four days now,
blabbed to me four days ago that there was going
to be a gathering at Turgenev's. Viskovatov
thereupon told me that already three days ago he
had received an invitation. Thus I was simply
passed over. (Of course it is not Yuriev, it is the
doing of Turgenev and Kovalevsky ; Yuriev has
only remained out of sight, and probably that is
why he does not show himself.) And then yester-
day morning, I was no sooner awake than enter
Grigorovich and Viskovatov to inform me that the
full programme of the Celebration and of the evening
readings had been fixed at Turgenev's. According
to them there is to be music and a recital of the
Poor Knight by the actor Samarin ; the reading
of the Poor Knight has been taken away from
me, also the reading of the poem on the death of
Poushkin (and it was just the poem I wanted to
read). Instead of this I have been appointed to

214 DOSTOEVSKY

read Poushkin's poem The Prophet. I shall prob-
ably not refuse to read The Prophet, but why have
I not been officially informed ? Then Grigorovich
declared that I was requested to come to-morrow
to the Hall of the Noblemen's Assembly (close to
here), where everything will be finally arranged.
(It means then my opinion was not asked, and now
I am told to come to the Noblemen's Assembly to
a general rehearsal; with the public present, and
above all with the pupils of the secondary schools
(free admission), as the rehearsal is arranged for
them so that they too may hear. Thus I am placed
in a most awkward position : they have settled
things without me, never asked my consent before-
hand to read the poems allotted to me, and yet I
can't help being at the rehearsal and reading to
the young. It will be said : Dostoevsky did not
want to read to the young. Finally, I am at a loss
how to appear to-morrow : whether in a frock-
coat like the public, or in full dress. I was in a very
bad way yesterday. I dined alone ; in the evening
I called on Anna Nicolayevna (Englehardt) ; her
doctor was there (he is her friend, related to her
even). I sat for half an hour, and they both walked
back with me to my hotel. This morning Grigoro-
vich and Viskovatov called again, and Grigorovich
was very pressing that we three should dine to-
gether at the Hermitage, and then spend the even-

It

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 215

ing in the Hermitage park. They went away,
and I drove to Katkov, whom I had not called on
for three days. There I chanced on Lubimov, who
had just had a letter from Markevich promising to
send in his novel for the June number ! So that
I may be easy on that score. It is a very good
thing. At Katkov's there was news : he had only
just received an official letter from Yuriev, as
Chairman of the 4 Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature ' (of which Society Katkov has been a
member from times immemorial). Yuriev informed
him that the invitation card for the celebrations
had been sent to the Moscowskya Viedomosti by
mistake, and that the Council of the Society for
the arrangement of the celebrations had revoked
the invitation, as contrary to the resolution of the
Council, so that the invitation must be considered
as not having been issued. The style of the letter
was most dry and rude. Grigorovich assured me
that Yuriev had been made to sign it, chiefly by
Kovalevsky, but of course also by Turgenev.
Katkov was evidently irritated. ' Even without
this I would not have gone,' he said to me, as he
showed me the letter. He wants to publish it as
it stands in the Viedomosti. This is certainly
quite odious, and the important thing is they had
no right at all to act like that. It is abominable,
and had I not been so much involved in the Celebra-

216 DOSTOEVSKY

tion, I would perhaps break off my connection
with them. — I will speak sharply to Yuriev about
the whole affair. Then I asked Katkov who was
the best dentist here, and he mentioned Adelheim
at the Kuzvetsky Most, saying that I should tell
Adelheim that he, Katkov, had sent me to him.
My little plate has broken down completely and
hangs on a thread. I drove up to Adelheim and
he put in a new one for five roubles. From him I
went home, and together with Grigorovich and
Viskovatov drove to the Hermitage, where we
dined for a rouble each. Then the rain be^an.

о

When it stopped for a little, we went out and the
three of us got into a single cab and drove to the
Hermitage park. On our way there it began rain-
ing. We arrived at the park soaked through and
asked for tea in the restaurant. We bought one-
rouble tickets with admission to the Hermitage
Theatre. The rain kept on. Grigorovich told all
sorts of fibs, then we went into the theatre, to the
second act : the opera Paul et Virginie was on, —
theatre, orchestra, singers, — none of them bad,
only the music is bad (in Paris it was performed
several hundreds of times). Charming scenery for
Act III. Without waiting for the end, we came
out and each went home. At the Loskutnaya I
found your second letter. To-morrow's rehearsal
agitates me extremely. Grigorovich has promised

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 217

to call for me, so that we can go there together.
I got rather wet. On my journey here I caught
a chill in my left arm, and it still rather aches.
Yesterday morning I called on the bishops Alexey
and on Nicolay (Yaponsky). I was very pleased
to make their acquaintance. I sat there for about
an hour ; a countess was announced, and I left.
I had a heart-to-heart talk with both. They said
that my visit had done them great honour and
given them happiness. They had read my works.
So they appreciate who stands for God. Alexey
blessed me ardently. He gave me the Host.
Good-bye for now, my darling. If I can, I shall
write you to-morrow, too. I love you very much.
A good kiss for the little ones. To Anna Nicola-
yevna my lowest bow, and kiss her little hand
besides for me. — Wholly without division your

F. Dostoevsky.

(Postscript on the first page) : But you are mis-
taken. My dreams are very bad ones. Listen :
you keep on writing about the application to the
nobility. Firstly, even if I could, I have no time,
above all, this matter must be done from Peters-
burg, through people. I shall explain it all to you
when we meet. I '11 do it without fail in Peters-
burg. Here no applications will serve any purpose :
I know it, I am firmly convinced.

218 DOSTOEVSKY

(Postscript on the second page) : I called on Ivan
Aksakov — he is away in his country house. —
Chayev is also in the country. I shall go to
Muraviov if I find time. Once more wholly yours,
loving you.

X

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, June 3-4, Tuesday, 2 a.m.

My lovely darling Anyechka, to-day I again

received a dear little letter from you, and am very

grateful to you that you do not forget your Fedichka.

Since your letters began coming frequently I really

do feel more peaceful and happier about you. I

am also glad because of the children. This morning

Lopatin came to me and brought the programme

of the dates and ceremonies. I gave him 17 roubles

to order the wreaths at the Town Hall (two wreaths).

Zolotariov is not here yet. After this came a

certain barrister Soloviov and introduced himself.

He is a learned man, and came only to speak about

mystical religious problems (a new craze.) After

that came Grigorovich and Viskovatov, and then

Yuriev. We all attacked Yuriev terribly for his

letter to Katkov and scolded him awfully. Then

I lunched with Grigorovich and Viskovatov in the

Moscow Tavern and there made the acquaintance

of the actor Samarin ; the old fellow is sixty-four ;

he was all the while making speeches to me. He

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 219

will act at the Poushkin Celebration the Poor
Knight, in costume. (He took it away from me.)
The Moscow Tavern is always very crowded, and
it is seldom that people do not turn round and
look at me : every one knows, every one knows
who I am. Samarin told many stories about the
artistic life of Moscow. Then, straight from lunch,
we drove to the general meeting of the committee
of the ' Lovers of Literature ' for the settling of the
final programme of the morning sittings and the
evening festivities. Turgenev, Kovalevsky, Chayev,
Grot, Bartenev, Yuriev, Polivanov, Kalachov, and
others were there. Everything has been settled
to our common satisfaction. Turgenev was rather
nice to me, and Kovalevsky (a large fat carcass
and enemy of our way of thinking) gazed at me
fixedly all the time. I am to read on the second
day of the morning sessions, June 8th, and at
the evening festivity of the 6th I am to read
(music has been allowed) the Pimen scene (from
Poushkin's Boris Godounov.) Many are to read,
nearly all. Turgenev, Grigorovich, Pisemsky, and
others. On the second evening, the 8th, I shall
recite three poems by Poushkin (the second
part of the Western Slavs, and the She- Bear), and
in the finale, at the conclusion of the festivity, I
shall read Poushkin's Prophet,— a, little poem
awfully difficult to read aloud ; they have purposely

220 DOSTOEVSKY

put me in the finale in order to produce an effect —
I wonder if I shall ? Sharp at ten I returned home
and found two cards from Souvorin saying that he
will come at 10. The two cards were a mistake
(they had stuck together), and as I thought from
the second that he had already called and found
me out, I drove to his hotel, the Slavianky Bazaar
(not far from here), and I found him and his wife
at tea. He was awfully pleased. The • Lovers of
Literature ' have put him on the black list for his
articles just as they have Katkov. He was not
even given an admission card for the morning
sessions. I had one card (Varya's), which she had
refused, and I offered it to him. He was delighted.
He will pay them off later. He said that Burenin
too was here. — At Chayev's we made an appoint-
ment for to-morrow at the Armoury at one o'clock
in the afternoon, where he will show us everything.
Grigorovich and Viskovatov also wished to come.
But I wonder if they will. They went away after
nine straight from the session to the Hermitage
and insisted tremendously that I should come, too,
but I went to Souvorin. When Souvorin heard
that we were going to-morrow to the Armoury
Chamber he asked me to take him and his wife
there, and afterwards suggested that we should all
dine together at the Moscow Tavern, he and his
wife, myself, Grigorovich and Viskovatov, and

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 221

then drive to the Hermitage. He, poor thing,
seems to be tied to his wife. He will certainly be
at the evening sessions, where one pays for ad-
mission. The rehearsal of the reading for the
pupils of the schools has been abandoned. After
to-morrow, the 5th, the trials begin ; all delegates
are to appear at the Town Hall in frock-coats, and
I am afraid I shall not have time to write to you.
To-morrow a trainful of Petersburg delegates
arrive at our Loskutnaya. On the 8th all will be
over ; so on the 9th I '11 pay my visits, and on the
10th I leave — at what hour I will write later.
Maikov telegraphed that he was coming. Polonsky
too. Now, that is all, my precious, so expect me
on the 11th, and this I believe is for certain. Sou-
vorin is asking for my speech. I positively do not
know who to give it to or how to arrange it. Wait
till he hears me at the reading.

I warmly embrace you, my Anka. I kiss you a
great many times for much — much and much. I
kiss the little ones and bless them. You write that
you have dreams, and that I do not love you.
And I keep on having very bad dreams, nightmares
every night about your being unfaithful to me
with others. God knows it torments me terribly.
I kiss you a thousand times. — Wholly your

F. Dostoevsky.

Kiss the children.

222 DOSTOEVSKY

XI

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, June 5, 1880, 8 p.m.

My lovely Anyutka, I have just received your
lovely little letter of June 3rd and hasten to write
to you quickly as much as I shall have time for.
No, my darling, don't ask now for long letters, for
there will hardly be time just to write you letters
at all. Literally, the whole time, every minute,
will now be occupied, and even that won't be enough
for what is taking place here, — that 's certain, let
alone for letters. To begin at the beginning.
Yesterday morning myself, Souvorin, his wife,
Burenin and Grigorovich were in the Kremlin, in
the Armoury, where we examined all the ancient
things ; Chayev, the inspector of the Armoury,
showed them to us. After that we went to the
Patriarch's sacristy. Having looked at everything,
we went to Tiestov's for a snack and remained to
lunch. After that I called for a short while on
Anna Nicolayevna Englehardt and had to buy a
few things in the shops. Then, as agreed, we went
to the Hermitage Park. The Souvorins, Grigoro-
vich, and the rest were already there. In the park
I met nearly all the delegates who have recently
arrived from Petersburg. All kinds of persons
came up to me ; I can't remember them all.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 223

Gayevsky, Lentovsky, the singer Melnikov and
others. I sat all the time at tea with the Souvorins
and Burenin, and now and then with Grigorovich,
who kept on coming and going away. And sud-
denly a rumour spread that the Celebration had
been postponed. The rumour was spread by
Melnikov. It was 11 o'clock, and I drove off to
Yuriev. He was not at home, but I found his son
and he assured me that it was nonsense. (And so
it turned out to be.) Having come home I began
to prepare myself for my reading on the evening
of the 6th. It is, Any a, a stiff job. Imagine,
the unveiling of the memorial will be on the 6th,
and from 8 in the morning I shall be on my
feet. At 2 o'clock the ceremony will be over,
and the Solemn Service at the University begins.
(No, upon my word, I shan't go on.) After that
dinner at the Mansion House, and the very same day,
at 9 o'clock in the evening, tired, exhausted,
crammed with food and drink, 1 have to read the
monologue of the Chronicler (from Boris Godounov)
— a most difficult thing to read aloud, requiring
calmness and control of the subject. I feel I am
not yet ready. Moreover, the evening almost
starts with me — the most inconvenient position. I
sat till 4 o'clock in the morning, and unexpectedly
this morning after 9 o'clock I was awakened by
Zolotariov who has at last arrived. I slept alto-

224 DOSTOEVSKY

gether 5J hours. After him came Fiodor Petrovich
Kornilov, after them Lopatin with the wreaths
(the wreaths cost 14, not 17 roubles, but without
ribbons). The ribbons, as well as to-morrow's
to-do, I handed over to Zolotariov. So I shall have
to pay the 14 roubles for the wreaths myself. True,
Zolotariov will have to pay just as much for the
rest of the accessories. At 2 o'clock we set off
to the Mansion House. All delegations (there are
a hundred delegations) presented themselves to
Prince Oldenburgsky, etc. The ceremonial, the
fuss, the chaos — I don't describe ; it is too im-
possible to describe. I saw and spoke even with
Poushkin's daughter. Ostrovsky, the local Jupiter,
came up to me. Turgenev, very amiable, ran up.
The other liberal groups, amongst them Plescheyev
and even the lame Yazykov, bear themselves with
reserve and almost haughtily, as if to say : You
are a reactionary, but we are radicals. And,
generally, complete dissension has already begun.
I am afraid that all these different tendencies
existing side by side for so many days may end in
a fight. The history of Katkov's exclusion from
the Celebration revolts many people terribly. I
came home and dined at home in the hope oi
receiving a little letter from you and answering
you, then to go through Pirnen and my speech,
afterwards to prepare my shirt and frock-coat foi

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 225

to-morrow, and then go to bed earlier. But
Gaydebourov came in, and suddenly after him
Maikov, and then Viskovatov. Maikov came (to
Moscow) to read his poems. He is all right, nice ;
having a sniff round. I talked to them for a while,
but sent them off soon. I am finishing these lines.
Zolotariov does not come, and the wreaths are
not finished. This morning I was at Varya's.
To-morrow all day long until night I shall be busy.
After to-morrow there will be the session of the
4 Lovers of Literature,' but I am not reading at
that session, and after that there will be a dinner
for 500 guests with speeches, and perhaps a free
fight. Then on the morning of the 8th there is my
speech at the session of the ' Lovers of Literature,'
and in the evening, at the second festivity of the
4 Lovers ' I among others am reading several
poems of Poushkin, and finishing with The Prophet.
You write that I ought to leave on the 8th, but it
is only on the 9th that I shall be paying my visits.
I '11 leave on the 10th and arrive on the 11th, and
this only if I am not detained for one more day,
which is quite possible. But I '11 let you know
then. It is much better for me to leave by the
1 p.m. train, than by the morning train, for in the
first case I shall miss only one night's sleep, but in
the second I shan't sleep two nights, for the night
before leaving I shan't sleep or I '11 get up at 6.

p

226 DOSTOEVSKY

Letters about my own triumphs I shan't have to
write, since my day is on the 8th, and on the 6th
I am only reading Pimen. Think it over, the
speech will have to be published. Although there
are three claimants, Yuriev is again drawing back,
and Katkov after his affair might perhaps become
completely indifferent to the whole business of
the ceremony, and Souvorin, for all I know, may
not repeat his request. Then it would be bad.
Therefore it is quite possible that I may be back
one day late. Recently I received 18 roubles 75
kopecks from Alexandrov. I called on Varya and
I seem to have said my good-byes. She is going
to her daughter in the country. — Good-bye for now,
my darling. There are of course a thousand things
one can't manage to write in a letter ; what can
one say in a letter ? But now there is no time, no
time at all to write letters ! Even this minute I
am all exhausted and worn out. And I have to
sit up for a long time. And when shall I have my
sleep out ? I embrace you warmly — warmly, the
little ones I kiss terrifically and bless them. — Wholly
your F. Dostoevsky.

I don't want to write of love, for love is not in
words, but in deeds. And when shall I get tc
deeds ? They are long overdue.

All the same I '11 try to find time to write you, il
it 's onlv a few lines.

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 227

XII

Loskutnaya, Room 33,

Moscow, June 7, 1880,
Midnight.

My lovely dearest darling Anya, I write in a hurry.
The unveiling of the memorial took place yesterday,
how then can I describe it ? Even twenty pages
would not describe it, and I haven't a minute.
This is the third night. I have slept for only five
hours, — to-night will be the same. Then there
was the dinner with speeches.1 Then the reading
with music at the evening literary festivity at the
Noblemen's Assembly. I read the scene of Pimen.
In spite of the impossible choice (for surely one
cannot shout Pimen across a whole hall) and the
fact that I had to read in the worst sounding hall,
they say that it went off superbly, but that I was
not very audible. I was received excellently ;
they would not let me begin for a long time ; they
kept applauding ; and after the reading they called
me out three times. But Turgenev, who read

1 On June 6th, the Moscow City Society gave a luncheon in the
Hall of the Nobility to the delegations which had arrived for the
unveiling of the Poushkin memorial. On the evening of the same
day the ' Society of Lovers of Russian Literature ' gave a literary and
musical soiree, at which Turgenev read Poushkin's poem The
Cloud.

On June 7th, the inaugural session of the ' Society of Lovers of
Russian Literature ' took place, after which a subscription dinner,
organised by the Society, was held.

228 DOSTOEVSKY

shockingly, was called out more often than I.
Behind the scenes (a huge place in darkness) I
noticed about a hundred young people, who began
a frenzied shouting each time Turgenev appeared.
It immediately occurred to me that they must be
a claque put there by Kovalevsky. And so it
turned out. To-day at the morning sitting be-
cause of that claque Ivan Aksakov refused to make
his speech after Turgenev (in which the latter
underrated Poushkin, taking away from him the
name of national poet), and he explained to me
that the claqueurs were arranged beforehand and
placed there by Kovalevsky (all of them are his
students and all Westerners), in order to proclaim
Turgenev as the head of their school of thought,
and to humiliate us, in case we go against them.
Nevertheless, the reception given to me yesterday
was most wonderful, although only the pubUc in
the chairs applauded. Besides, crowds of men
and women kept on coming to me behind the scenes
to press my hand. In the interval I crossed the
hall, and a multitude of people, youths, greybeards,
women, threw themselves at me, saying : ' You are
our prophet, we are better men after reading the
Karamazovs.9 (In a word, I became convinced that
the Karamazovs have a colossal significance.) To-
day, coming out from the morning session, at which
I did not speak, the same thing happened. On the

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 229

staircase and at the cloak-room, men, women, and all
sorts of people detained me. At the dinner in the
evening two ladies brought me flowers. Some of
them I recognised by their names — Mme. Tretiakov,
Mme. Golokhvastov, Mme. Moshnin, and others.
I '11 pay a visit to Mme. Tretiakov the day after
to-morrow. (She is the wife of the Tretiakov who
has a picture gallery.) To-day was the second
dinner — the literary one, a couple of hundred
people. The young generation met me at my
arrival, hailed me, paid court to me, made frenzied
speeches — and all this still before the dinner. At
dinner many speeches were made and toasts given.
I did not want to speak, but towards the end of the
dinner many people jumped up from the table and
forced me to speak. I said only a few words, —
and there was a roar of enthusiasm, literally a roar.
After that in the next hall they sat round me — a
dense crowd — and spoke much and ardently (at
the coffee and cigars). But when at half -past nine
I got up to go home (two-thirds of the guests were
still there), they shouted out ' Hurrah ! ' to me,
in which even those who did not sympathise had
to take part involuntarily. After that, all that
crowd poured with me down the stairs, and without
overcoats, with no hats on, came out into the street
and put me into my cab. And suddenly they threw
themselves on me to kiss my hands. Not one, but

230 DOSTOEVSKY

scores of people, and not students only, but grey-
beards. No, Turgenev has only claqueurs, but my
people have true enthusiasm. Maikov was there
and witnessed all this ; he must have been surprised.
Several people (strangers to me) said in a whisper
that for to-morrow, at the morning sitting, a real
row was prepared for me and Aksakov. To-
morrow, the 8th, is my really fateful day : in the
morning I read my speech, and in the evening I
read twice, The She-Bear and The Prophet. The
Prophet I intend to read well. Wish for me !
There is great commotion and excitement here.
Yesterday at the Town Hall lunch Katkov ven-
tured to make a long speech and did produce an
effect, at least on a part of the public. Kovalevsky
is outwardly very amiable to me, and in one toast
he mentioned my name among others. Turgenev
too. Annenkov tried to make up to me, but I
turned away. You see, Anya, I have written to
you, although my speech is not yet finally revised.
On the 9th I am paying visits, and I must make
up my mind definitely who I shall give my speech
to. Everything depends on the effect it will make.
I have stayed here a long time, spent a fair amount
of money, but in all this I have laid a foundation
for the future. I must now correct my speech,
and get my linen ready for to-morrow. — To-morrow
is my important debut. Am afraid I shall not have

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 231

enough sleep. I am afraid of having a fit. — The
Central Shop will not pay in spite of everything.
Good-bye for now, my darling. I embrace you, do
kiss the little ones. I '11 probably leave on the
10th, and shall arrive on the night of the 11th.
Be ready. I embrace you all warmly and bless
you. — Your eternal and invariable

F. Dostoevsky.

This letter will probably be the last.

XIII

Loskutnaya, Room 33,
Moscow, June 8, 1880, 8 p.bi.

My dear Anya, to-day I sent you yesterday's
letter of the 7th, but now I can't help sending you
also these few lines, although I am awfully tired
out morally and physically. So perhaps you will
receive this letter together with the preceding one.
This morning was the reading of my speech at the
4 Lovers.' г The hall was packed. No, Anya, no,
you can never present to yourself nor imagine the
effect it produced ! What are my Petersburg

1 At the second special session on June 8th of the ' Society of
Lovers of Russian Literature. ' Dostoevsky's speech appeared neither
in the Russkaya My si, nor in the Russky Viestnik (with whose
editors, Yuriev and Katkov, Dostoevsky, as we have seen, had
been negotiating), but in the daily Moscowskya Viedomosti, No. 162,
1880. It was republished in the sole number of The Journal of an
Author for 1880.

282 DOSTOEVSKY

successes? Nothing, nothing at all, compared to
this ! When I came out, the hall thundered ap-
plause, and for a long, very long time, they would
not let me speak. I bowed, made gestures, asking
them to let me read — nothing was of any avail :
raptures, enthusiasm (all because of the Kara-
mazovs). At last I began reading : I was inter-
rupted positively at each page, and at moments at
each phrase, by a thunder of applause. I read
loudly, with fire. All that I wrote about Tatyana
was received with enthusiasm. (This is a great
victory for our idea over the twenty-five years of
delusions !) When at the end I proclaimed the
universal union of people, the hall was as though
in hysterics, and when I finished, — I cannot tell
you about the roar, about the wail of ecstasy :
strangers among the public cried, wept, embraced
one another, and swore to one another to be better,
not to hate one another from henceforth, but to love.
The order of the session was upset ; all rushed to
me to the platform — grand ladies, students, Secre-
taries of State, students — all embraced, kissed me.
All the members of our Society who were on the
platform embraced me and kissed me, and all,
literally all, cried for ecstasy. The calls for me
lasted half an hour ; they waved their handker-
chiefs ; suddenly, for instance, two old men,
strangers to me, stopped me : ' We have been

I

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 233

enemies for twenty years, we have not spoken to
one another, and now we have embraced and made
peace. It is you who have reconciled us. You are
our saint, you are our prophet ! ' ' Prophet,
prophet ! ' the crowd shouted. Turgenev, about
whom I had put in a good word in my speech,
threw himself at me to embrace me with tears.
Annenkov ran up to press my hand and kiss my
shoulder. ' You are a genius, you are more than
a genius ! ' they both said to me. Ivan Aksakov
ran up to the platform and declared to the public
that my speech — is not a mere speech, but a political
event ! A cloud had been hiding the horizon, and
now Dostoevsky's words, like the sun, have driven
it away, have shed their light upon all. From this
moment begins true brotherhood, and there will
be no more misunderstanding. 4 Yes, yes ! ' they
all cried, and embraced again, and wept again.
The sitting was closed. I tried to escape behind
the scenes, but everybody forced their way in there
from the hall, mostly women. They kissed my
hands, would not let me be. The students rushed
in. One of them, in tears, fell down before me on
the floor in hysterics and lost consciousness. Com-
plete, completest victory ! Yuriev rang his bell and
announced that the 'Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature ' unanimously elected me honorary
member. Again wailing and shouting. After an

234 DOSTOEVSKY

interval almost of an hour the session was resumed.
All the other speakers had a mind not to read.
Aksakov got up and declared that he would not
read his speech since all had been said and all had
been solved by the great word of our genius —
Dostoevsky. However, we all made him speak.
The reading went on, and meanwhile a conspiracy
was arranged. I was worn out and wanted to go
home, but they forced me to stay. In that one
hour they managed to get a sumptuous laurel
crown, a yard and a half across, and at the end of
the sitting a number of ladies (over a hundred)
stormed the platform and crowned me in sight of
the whole hall with the wreath : ' From women of
Russia, of whom you spoke so much good ! ' All
cried ; enthusiasm again. Tretyakov, the Lord
Mayor, thanked me on behalf of the City of Moscow.
— Admit, Anya, that for this it was worth staying
on : this is a pledge for the future, a pledge for
everything, should I even die. — When I came home,
I received your letter about the new-born foal,
but you write so unfeelingly about my staying on.
In an hour's time I '11 go off to read at the second
literary festivity. I shall read The Prophet. To-
morrow— visits. After to-morrow, on the 10th I
am leaving. On the 11th I shall be at home,
unless anything very important detains me. The
speech must be placed, but to whom shall I give

LETTERS TO HIS WIFE 235

it ? They are all tearing it between them. Terrible !
Good-bye for now, my dear, desirable and precious
one. I kiss your little feet. I embrace the children,
I kiss them, — bless them. I kiss the foal. I bless
you all. My head is queer, my hands and feet
shake. Good-bye for now, for a little while. —
Yours all and wholly F. Dostoevsky.

DOSTOEVSKY AND POBIEDONOSZEV :
SOME LETTERS

DOSTOEVSKY AND POBIEDONOSZEV

Dostoevsky's acquaintance with Pobiedonoszev, during
the last ten years of his life (1871-1881), is an episode
of great interest in the social history of that time, and
of importance in the history of Dostoevsky's life as
man and author. Up till now no light has been thrown
upon it.

Dostoevsky met Pobiedonoszev in the winter of
1871-1872 at the house of Prince Meschersky, the
editor of the reactionary paper Grazhdanin. The
acquaintance continued and developed, and in the year
1873 (when Dostoevsky was editor of the Grazhdanin)
it ripened into friendship. Of the first moment of
their friendship, Dostoevsky wrote to his wife (on June
26, 1873) : ' Pobiedonoszev came yesterday to the office
of the Grazhdanin. He waited for me, but I was out ;
so he left a note asking me to call on him after 8 o'clock.
I called last night and sat with him till about midnight.
He talked all the time, told me a great deal, and pressed
me to go and see him again to-day. He said that I
was to let him know if I did not feel well enough, and
he would come to me instead. He wrapped me up in
a rug, and although the maid ran to the hall to let me
out, he himself saw me down three dark flights of
stairs, with a candle in his hands, to the porch. What
would Vladislavlev say if he had seen it ? He read
Crime and Punishment when he was in the Isle of Wight,
for the first time in his life. It was recommended to

239

240 DOSTOEVSKY

him by a certain person, an admirer of mine already
too well known to you [probably the Tsarevitch], whom
he escorted to England. Consequently things aren't
so very bad. But please don't talk about it.'

The description of the meeting and of the unex-
pectedly cordial and attentive reception from the
omnipotent Pobiedonoszev shows that Dostoevsky
was at his house for the first time, and was affected by
Pobiedonoszev 's attitude to him. From the first
Pobiedonoszev had a warm regard for him. In a
letter to Aksakov on January SO, 1881, Pobiedonoszev
wrote : ' The time when he edited the Grazhdanin
brought us close together. At that time, in sympathy
for his desperate position, I worked with him the whole
summer, and we became very friendly.' Their friend-
ship grew, and they used to meet regularly on Saturday
evenings.

Staraya Roussa, May 19, 1879.

Dear and much respected Konstantin Petrovich,
although to-day is only the 19th of May, my letter
will not reach you earlier than the 21st, and there-
fore I hasten to congratulate you on your birthday.
I remember, by the way, that exactly a year ago
I came to you this very day in the morning, and it
seems to me that it was only a fortnight or three
weeks ago, or at most a month — so impossibly
quickly time passes ! I have now been here a
month alone with my family and have seen hardly
any one. The weather has been fine on the whole,
the bird-berry tree and apple tree shed their blossom
long ago here, and the lilac is in full bloom. I have
sat and worked, but have not done much ; I sent
off, however, half the book (2J folios) [part of The
Brothers Karamazov] for the May number of the
Russky Viestnik, but I am sitting waiting for the
proofs, and I do not know what is going to happen.
The point is that this book of the novel is the cul-
minating one. It is entitled * Pro and Contra,' and
the theme of the book is : denial of God and the

Q

242 DOSTOEVSKY

refutation of this denial. The denial now is finished
and sent off, but the refutation will only come in
the June number. The denial I described just as
I felt it myself and realised it strongest, that is,
just as it is now taking place in our Russia in nearly
the whole upper stratum of society, and above all
with the young generation. I mean, the scientific
and philosophical refutation of the existence of
God has been given up, it no longer occupies at all
socialists of to-day (as it occupied them throughout
the whole of the last century and the first half of
the present one) ; instead, men are denying with all
their might and main the divine creation, the world
of God and its meaning. These are the only things
which modern civilisation finds utter nonsense. I
flatter myself with the hope that even in such an
abstract theme I have not betrayed realism. The
refutation of this (not a direct, not a face to face
refutation) will appear in the last word of the
dying old monk. — Many critics have reproached
me because I generally choose for my novels themes
that are not right, are not real, and so on. I, on
the contrary, know nothing more real than just
these themes. . . .

I sent it off all right, and yet I have a presenti-
ment that for some reason they may suddenly decide
not to publish it in the Russky Viestnik. But enough
of that. One goes on talking of one's worries. I

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 243

read the newspapers here and understand nothing.
They simply write of nothing. Only yesterday I
read in the Novoye Vremya about the order of the
Minister of Education that teachers should refute
socialism in class (and therefore should enter into
discussions with the pupils ?). The idea is so
dangerous that it passes understanding.

When I arrived here the talk was about the
officer Dubrovin of the local Vilmanstrand regiment
(who was hanged). They say he pretended mad-
ness up to the very rope, although it might not
have been pretence, for he was incontestably mad
without it. But when one begins to judge from
an example before one's eyes, one is for the hun-
dredth time struck with two facts which with us
in Russia are unchangeable. Thus : consider only
the regiment in which Dubrovin was, and, on the
other hand, himself. One sees such a difference
between them that they appear as beings from
different planets ; and yet Dubrovin lived and
acted in the firm belief that every one, the whole
regiment, would suddenly become like himself, and
would be occupied only by that which concerned
him. On the other hand, we say immediately :
they are mad. Yet those madmen have their
logic, their doctrine, their esse, their God even, and
they are planted in them as firm as firm can be.
This is left out of consideration. Nonsense, people

244 DOSTOEVSKY

say. It is not like anything they know, therefore
it is nonsense. It is culture we have not got, dear
Konstantin Petrovich (the culture which exists
everywhere else), and it is not there because of the
nihilist, Peter the Great. It was torn out by the
root. And since man does not live by bread alone,
our poor, uncultured man involuntarily invents
something most fantastical, most absurd, and most
unlike anything. (For although he has taken
absolutely everything from European socialism,
yet even this he has remade so that it is unlike
anything.)

Now I 've written four pages, and see, dear
Konstantin Petrovich, I 've written you exactly
what I did not want to write ! But there 's nothing
to be done. I press your hand closely and send
you my sincere wish for all that is best, and for
long, long life. I am pleased now that you will
receive these words of mine and that you will read
them.

If you write me even a single line, you will greatly
support my spirit. In the winter too I came to
you to heal my spirit.

May God send you peace of mind — I know not
what to wish a man more than this in these days
of ours.

My deep bow to your much respected wife. — Your
absolutely devoted servant, F. Dostoevsky.

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 245

II

Bad-Ems, August 9-21, 1879.

Much respected Konstantin Petrovich, I have
not replied up till now to your superb letter ad-
dressed to me to Staraya Roussa, for I thought to
see you personally, if only for one minute, on my
way to Ems ; I went to your house (by the Finnish
church) but did not find you, though the porter
told me that you came there frequently. I was
very sorry, for from you I always hear a living and
strengthening word, and it was just support I
needed. I went to Ems perfectly ill. My angina
pectoris got so much worse in Staraya Roussa
because of the bad weather during the whole summer,
that I was ill not only in body, but also in spirit.
Added to this, my hard work on the Karamazovs,
and, finally, the painful effect of contemplating
what is going on, and the ' Mad House ' of the
Russian Press and intellectuals.

I have been here now three weeks taking the
cure, and I wonder what will come of it ; for, at the
present exchange, my journey cost me 700 roubles,
which (it may turn out) might very, very well
have been saved for the family. I lie here and
continuously think that I will, clearly, die soon —
well, in a year Or two — and what is going to happen

246 DOSTOEVSKY

to the three little golden heads after me ? It 's
true, here I am generally in the most gloomy mood.
A narrow defile, rather picturesque as a landscape,
but which I have been visiting for four summers
now, and in which I hate each stone, for it is diffi-
cult even to imagine how much home-sickness I
have suffered here during my four visits. The
present visit is the most awful : a crowd of many
thousands of all sorts of riff-raff from all Europe
(Russians there are few, and those only the utterly
unfamiliar ones from the Russian borders) crammed
into a narrow space ; no one to exchange a single
word with, and above all — it is all strange, all
completely strange — this is unbearable. And I
have to go on like this up to our September, i.e.
five whole weeks. And mark you : literally half
of them are Jews. When in Berlin, on my way,
I observed to Pouzykovich that, in my view, Ger-
many, Berlin at any rate, was becoming Judaised.
And here I read in the Moscowskya Viedomosti an
extract from a pamphlet, which has just appeared
in Germany, Where is the Jew here? It is an
answer by a Jew to a German who dared to write
that Germany was becoming Judaised in all re-
spects. ' There is no Jew,' the pamphlet says,
and there is a German everywhere ; but if there
is no Jew, there is everywhere a Jewish influence,
for, it alleges, the Jewish spirit and nationality are

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 247

higher than the German, and they have indeed
inculcated in Germany the spirit of speculative
realism, etc. etc. Thus, my view turned out to be
right ; the Germans and Jews themselves testify
to it. But apart from the speculative realism
which is rushing upon us also, you can't believe
the dishonesty of everything here, in commerce
at any rate. The present-day German trader
not only deceives the foreigner (this would yet
be pardonable), but he literally robs him. When I
complained of it here, I was told, with a laugh,
that the Germans also were treated in the same
way. Well, never mind ! When I came here I
instantly sat down to my work again and, at last,
the day before yesterday I sent off to Moscow the
August quota (of the Karamazovs). It will appear
on August 31. It is the sixth book of the novel and
is called A Russian Monk. (N.B. — Biographical
data of the life of old Zosima and a few of
his precepts.) I expect abuse from the critics ;
although I myself know that I have not accom-
plished even a tenth part of what I wanted to do,
yet pay attention to this fragment, much respected
and dear Konstantin Petrovich, for I should very
much like to know your opinion. I wrote this book
for a few, and consider it the culminating point of
my work. Apropos, this year I shall not finish
the novel : the third and last part will remain for j

248 DOSTOEVSKY

next year. — And now I am sitting down again to
work here.

In Berlin I met Pouzykovich. He will probably
be helped by some one ; he gave me his word that
in three days' time he would bring out the promised
number of the Grazhdanin in Berlin, but he has not
brought it out yet. I don't think he '11 bring it
out at all. I have observed one trait in him : he
is a lazybones and incapable of work. You know,
up till recently I took an interest in him, but now
he has driven me into despair. And he constantly
throws the blame on others. But now I have
written a whole letter, and all about myself. Do
forgive me, much respected and dear Konstantin
Petrovich. Your prisoners (Saghalien and all you
wrote me about them) tortured my whole soul ; it is
too intimate to me, in spite of the twenty-five years'
distance. But about this in a personal talk. And
now till the desired, happy meeting. — Wholly your
and ever devoted to you, F. Dostoevsky.

Ill

Bad-Ems, August 24, 1879.
Much respected and worthiest Konstantin Petro-
vich, I received your two letters here and am
deeply grateful to you for them, particularly for
the first one in which you speak of my spiritual

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 249

state. You are perfectly, deeply right, and your
thoughts have only strengthened me. But I am
sick in soul, and diffident. Sitting here, in sad
and utter solitariness, I have become depressed
against my will. However, I '11 ask you this : can
one remain quiet in our time ? See, you yourself
point out in your second letter (and what is a
letter ?) all the unbearable facts which are taking
place ; I am now busy with the novel (and I shall
finish it only next year !), and yet I am tormented
with the desire to continue The Journal of an
Author, for there is, indeed I have, something to
say — and just as you would wish — without barren,
behind-scenes polemics, but with a firm and fearless
word. And every one now, those even who have
something to say, are afraid. What are they
afraid of ? Positively — of a ghost. The l common-
European ' ideas of science and enlightenment
stand despotically over every one, and no one dares
to speak. I understand too well why Gradovsky's
last articles, greeting the students as the intelli-
gentsia, had such a tremendous success with our
4 Europeans.' The fact of the matter is that he
sees the whole remedy for all the present-day
horrors of our unsettledness in that very Europe,
in Europe alone. My literary position (I never
spoke to you about this) I consider almost pheno-
menal : as a man steadily writing against European

250 DOSTOEVSKY

principles, who has compromised himself for ever
with The Possessed, that is, by his reaction and
obscurantism — how that man, apart from all
Europeanisers, their reviews, their newspapers,
their critics, is yet acknowledged by our young
generation, by that very unsettled nihilism-ridden
young generation, etc. ? This has been expressed
to me by them, from many places, in individual
declarations and by whole bodies of them. They
have already declared that from me alone they
expect a sincere and sympathetic word, and that
myself alone they consider as their leading writer.
These declarations of the young generation are
known to the literary workers, to the bandits of
the pen and the sharpers of the Press, and they are
very much impressed by it. Otherwise, how would
they let me write freely ! They would devour me,
like dogs, but they are afraid, and wonder con-
fusedly what will come of it all. Here I read the
nasty rag Golos, — Lord, how stupid, how abomin-
ably lazy and stagnantly petrified. Believe me,
my anger at times is transformed into positive
laughter, for instance in reading the articles of
the schoolboy thinker, E. Markov, on the woman
question. It is sheer stupidity, the utter nakedness
of stupidity. You say you did not like Pouzyko-
vich's paper. Yes, indeed ; but it is quite im-
possible to speak to that man, quite impossible to

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 251

advise him. he is so touchily self-confident. Above
all, he cares only about the circulation ; as to all
the rest he does things with an extraordinarily easy
conscience. Your opinion of what you read from
the Karamazovs flattered me much (concerning
the power and energy of the work), but you put at
once the most necessary question : that for the
time being I have not given a reply_to_all ^ those
atheistic propositions, but the reply is urgent.
That is just the point, and my whole trouble and
my whole uneasiness is about that. For I had
intended Book VI, The Russian Monk, to be as a
reply to all this negative side ; it will appear on
August 31. And therefore I fear on its account :
will it be a sufficient reply ? The more so because

the answer is, indeed, not a direct one, not an

. —

answer to the propositions expressed before (in

The Great Inquisitor and elsewhere) point by point,
but an indirect one. In my reply is represented
something directly opposite to the world-concep-
tion expressed in the earlier book, but again it is
represented not point by point, but, so to say, in
an artistic picture. And that 's just what worries
me, that is, shall I be understood and shall I
achieve even a particle of my aim. Added to this
are still the demands of art : I needed to represent
a modest character and a majestic one, whereas
life is full of comicality and is grand only in its

252 DOSTOEVSKY

inner sense, so that against my will, because of the
demands of art, I was compelled in the life-history
ofmy monk to touch also on some rather frjvnlnng
sides, so as not to injure the artistic realism. Then
there are the monk's precepts, at which people will
just shout that they are absurd, for they are too
ecstatic ; certainly, they are absurd in the every-
day sense, but in the other, the inner sense, I think
they are right. Anyhow, I worry much, and I
should very much like to have your opinion, for I
value and respect it very much. I wrote the book
with great love. But I see I have talked too much
about my work. On September 1 or 2, I shall be
in Petersburg (hastening to Staraya Roussa to my
family), I shall call on you (I don't know at what
time, I can't settle beforehand), and if I am lucky
I may find you in, and see you if only for a short
while. Good-bye, kindest and sincerely respected
Konstantin Petrovich, may God grant you many
years to live — there can be no better wish in our
time, for such men as you must live. Now and
then a silly and sinful idea flashes across my mind :
what will happen to Russia, if we, the last of the
Mohicans, die ? True, I instantly smile at myself.
Yet nevertheless we must live and work untiringly.
And are not you a worker ? Apropos : Pouzyko-
vich having heard from me the content of your
letter concerning the dispatch of the prisoners to

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 253

Saghalien, pressed me to let it be published in the
Grazhdanin. Of course I did not let him have it.
— Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.

IV

Staraya Roussa, May 19, 1880.
Deeply esteemed Konstantin Petrovich, as in
past years, so once again I cannot miss the 21st
without wishing you, sincerely and from my whole
heart, all that is best, all that you wish for yourself
on your birthday. May God grant you health
above all, and then supreme success in your new
labours ! I send my message to your old flat and
hope that the post-office knows your new address.
Before my departure from Petersburg (exactly a
week ago) I intended to come to see you without
fail in order to take leave of you for the whole
summer, and to ask your parting blessing, which,
for a particular reason, I very much needed. But
the bustle and anxieties of my departure decided
otherwise, and I could not get to you. I did not
come to Roussa here for rest and peace : I have
to go to Moscow for the unveiling of the Poushkin
memorial, as a delegate of the Slav Charitable
Society. And it turns out, as I had foreseen, that
I am going not for pleasure, but perhaps even for
immediate unpleasantness. For the point at issue
involves my most cherished and fundamental con-

254 DOSTOEVSKY

victions. While still in Petersburg I heard that in
Moscow there is a certain clique which is trying to
proscribe opinions contrary to its own at the
anniversary, and that it fears certain reactionary
words which might be said by others at the meetings
of the • Lovers of Russian Literature,' who have
taken upon themselves the whole arrangement of
the anniversary. But in fact I was invited by
Yuriev, the President of the Society, and the
Society itself (from their official notice) is going to
speak at the opening. The papers even have
already published rumours about certain intrigues.
I have prepared my speech on Poushkin precisely
in the most extreme spirit of my convictions (ours,
I venture to say). Therefore I anticipate some
kind of attack. But I will not be disconcerted
and am not afraid. I must serve my work and
shall speak without fear. The professors are pay-
ing court to Turgenev, who is becoming definitely
a personal enemy of mine. (In the Viestnik
Europa he let out some petty scandal about me
concerning a certain happening, which never hap-
pened, thirty-five years ago.) But praise Poushkin
and glorify Verochka I cannot. There, why should
I trouble you with small-talk ? But the real point
is not the small-talk, but a public matter and a
great one too, since Poushkin expresses precisely
that idea, which we all (a tiny group as yet) serve.

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 255

And this must be pointed out and expressed : that
is just what is hateful to them [the Westerners].
Well, perhaps they will simply not allow me to
speak my mind. In that case I shall publish my
speech.

I firmly press your hand, deeply esteemed
Konstantin Petrovich. On my return I shall sit
down to finish the Karamazovs. All the summer I
shall be in labour. But I do not grumble, I love
this labour. From next year onward I have already
decided I shall renew without fail The Journal of
an Author. Then I shall again turn to you (as I
have done before) for advice which, I ardently
believe, you will not refuse me.

Meanwhile accept the assurance of my ardent
devotion. — Your most humble servant,

F. Dostoevsky.

My wife congratulates you and scolds me because
I have forgotten to mention her.

V

Staraya Roussa, July 25, 1880.
Kindest and deeply esteemed Konstantin Petro-
vich, you gladdened me very much by your
letter, and still more by your promise not to forget
me in the future. I finally decided not to go to

256 DOSTOEVSKV

Ems : I have too much work to do. Because of
the chaos in the spring I neglected the Karamazovs,
and now I have made up my mind to finish them
before I go away from Staraya Roussa, and there-
fore I sit down to them day and night. — Now about
your commission :

Father Roumyanzev is my old and true friend,
the worthiest of the worthiest priests I ever knew.
It is in his house that your Father Alexey Nadiozhin
lives. The family of a certain M. Rot, of Peters-
burg, rents a flat in the house of Roumyanzev for
the summer season ; M. Rot is a Louga landowner,
and proprietor of several houses in Petersburg ;
however, he is ruined now. Alexey is a friend of
the Rots and lives, although apart from the family,
on the top in the attic, but, it seems to me, he
simply hangs on for the time being to the Rots
— though he gives lessons to the numerous Rot
children. I saw him once before at Father
Roumyanzev's, but only had a glimpse of him.
On receiving your letter I immediately went to
Roumyanzev, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon (quite
close to me), and communicated to him in secret
your commission, having made him promise not
to say a single word to Father Alexey. Rou-
myanzev and Father Alexey, although they are
acquainted (they live in the same house), are not
very much so. By my wish, Roumyanzev immedi-

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 257

ately invited Father Alexey, who was walking in
the garden, to tea which was ready on the table.
Father Alexey, although he kept on refusing, at
last came in, and I spent with him a whole hour,
saying nothing to him about your commission.
This is my observation and conclusion :

He is forty-seven, bald, black-haired, sprinkled
with grey. His face is rather fine looking, but
flushed. He is evidently of a strong constitution.
But positively ill. He is resigning his priesthood
because of the absolute impossibility to officiate
by reason of his ill-health. This is irrevocable,
and himself he will never agree to remain a priest,
as he himself declared to me several times during
our conversation. His illness is a strange one,
but, luckily, familiar to me, for I myself suffered
of the same illness in the years 1847, '8, and '9. I
also have a brother (still alive) who suffers from
the same illness precisely. Its chief cause is a
most violent abdominal plethora of blood. But
in certain cases the fits of this illness bring on moral
derangement, of the soul. A man gets infected
with an unbounded suspicion and at last imagines
himself to suffer from all diseases, and is continu-
ously treated by doctors and treats himself. The
chief cause is this, that haemorrhoids in this stage
react on the nerves and upset them almost to the
point of psychical fits. Father Alexey has now

R

258 DOSTOEVSKY

been convinced for a few years that because of his
haemorrhoids he is suffering from anaemia of the
brain. ■ Last year I consented to officiate at the
Easter matins,' he said, ' and I got so weak that
my legs felt paralysed, I could not stand. Once I
also officiated at vespers but could not finish.
Since then I have ceased to officiate. I believe
that if I were told now that to-morrow I should
have to officiate, I should not sleep all night, but
tremble, and certainly I should not be able to walk
to the Church, but would faint.' (There is visible,
at any rate, a very great conscientiousness in his
devotion to his office* and to the administration of
sacraments.) He formerly was a domestic priest
of Voyekov's, then inspector of a charitable in-
stitution in the Nevsky Lavra Monastery ; he gave
many lessons, eight hours weekly. 4 When I
finished the week, and Sunday came, I would sit
at home lying on the couch the whole day and
reading a book — it is a great delight ! ' Now he
spends the whole time undergoing cures ; he drinks
here some water specially prepared for him ; he
loves to talk much of his diseases and with en-
thusiasm. I do not know whether he is as ex-
pansive on other topics also, for evidently he has
no other topics now : he brings down everything
immediately to the subject of his illness. He is
artless and not sly, although he hardly has any

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 259

great need of spiritual communion with people ;
in spite of his artlessness he is somewhat suspicious,
not only with regard to his diseases. I believe
he is a perfectly honest man. The appearance
of indubitable honesty. Of true convictions, far re-
moved from Lutheranism, he looks upon Orthodox
Russians of our educated society quite correctly.
Conscientiousness he has, but has he ardour for
spiritual work ? I do not know. Of the future
he is not afraid : ' By himself alone, a man is not
poor/ he said to me. He is rather hurt that on
his request for assistance it was decided to pay
him 48 roubles per annum, or to pay for him in
the hospital, in case he goes there before he is
cured. ' I have spent on cures all I had saved,'
he said ; ' I did not trouble any one, and now they
give me only 48 roubles ! ' Though, if ever he
criticises, he does it without any great spite. The
final trait : he seems to be rather fond of comfort,
he loves a separate room, if only a single one, but
well-arranged. He loves to be alone, loves to read
a book, he is a bit of a maniac, but he does not
avoid company. That is all I managed to observe.
I send you a hasty photograph without retouching.
But the chief and final observation — he would not
for anything in the world continue being a priest.
He has a rather independent air, is not insinuating,
self-seeking, intriguing — all this is completely lack-

260 DOSTOEVSKY

ing in him. His motto is rather : ' Leave me
alone.'

Now, to conclude about myself : besides the
Karamazovs, I am bringing out shortly, in Peters-
burg, one number of The Journal of an Author, the
only number for this year. In it is my speech in
Moscow, a preface to it, written in Staraya Roussa,
and, finally, a reply to my critics, chiefly to
Gradovsky. But it is not a reply to the critics,
it is my profession de foi for the whole future. In it
now I express myself definitively and undisguisedly,
I call things by their names. I think, all manner oi
stones will be cast at me. I won't go further into
the matter now ; it will come out in the very
beginning of August, on the 5th or even earlier.
but I would very much ask you, deeply respected
friend, not to disdain to read The Journal and to
tell me your opinion. What is written there is
fateful to me. From next year I intend to renew
The Journal of an Author, and now I appear such
as I wish to be in the renewed Journal.

I watch your valuable activity from the* news-
papers. Your superb speech to the schoolgirls I
read in the Moscowskya Viedomosti. Above all,
God grant you health. One must not tire oneseli
too much. Indeed, the chief thing is to give the
lead. And a lead is organised only by a long action.
I remember too well your words in the spring.

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 261

Sod bless you. — Embracing you and affectionately
ievoted to you. Your Fiodor Dostoevsky.

P.S. — I do not know your address ! I address
this simply to the Grand Procurator of the Holy
Synod — perhaps it will reach you.

VI

Staraya Koussa, August 16, 1880.

Deeply esteemed and kindest Konstantin Petro-
vich, I thank you from my whole soul for your good,
splendid, enheartening letter. Enheartening, in-
deed, for I, as a man, always need the encourage-
ment of those in whom I believe, whose under-
standing and convictions I deeply respect. Every
time I write something and send it for publication
— I am as in a fever. Not that I did not believe in
what I myself had written, but always the question
torments me : how will it be taken ? Will people
want to understand the essence of the matter ?
Would it not rather result in bad than in good
that I made public my intimate convictions ? The
more so that I am always compelled to express
certain thoughts only in the basic idea, which
always greatly needs a further development and
argumentation. And the opinion of men like you
— is positively my support ! It means then, I
was not mistaken in everything, it means, I was

262 DOSTOEVSKY

understood by those whose understanding and
impartial judgment I value, and, therefore, my
labour was not in vain.

I tell you frankly : now I am finishing the
Karamazovs, This last part, I myself see and
feel, is so original and unlike what others write,
that I positively do not expect the approval of our
critics ; the public, the readers — that is a different
matter : they always supported me. I should be
deeply grateful to you if you give your attention
to what will be published in the August number
of the Russky Viestnik (which is now being printed),
and then in the September number where the fourth
and last part of the Karamazovs ends. In the
September book will be a trial, our crown-prose-
cutors and advocates — all this will be shown in a
particular light. The Journal of an Author I
decided to bring out in the coming year without
fail. The present, ' only number for this year,'
has had an indubitable success with the public :
in three days up to 3000 copies sold in Petersburg
alone, and I brought out altogether 4200 copies.
I think I shall have to publish a second edition.
My wife told me how kindly you had received her.
I thank you for sending me the Varshavsky Dnievnik,
Leontiev after all is a bit of a heretic — did you notice
it ? Anyhow, of this I shall talk to you in person,
when I come to Petersburg at the end of Sep-

LETTERS TO POBIEDONOSZEV 263

tember ; there 's much of interest in his opinions.
— Accept, deeply respected Konstantin Petrovich,
the assurance not only of my sincerest feelings,
but also of my profound, great hope for all the
good which I expect, and not only myself, but
every one, from your new splendid activity. — Your
adherent and admirer F. Dostoevsky.

POBIEDONOSZEV'S LETTERS TO ALEX-
ANDER III (at that time Tsarevitch) on
the Occasion op Dostoevsky's Death

January 29, 1881.

Last night F. M. Dostoevsky passed away. He
was a close friend to me, and it is sad that he is
no more.

But his death is a great loss to Russia too. In
the circle of writers he — he alone almost — was an
ardent preacher of the fundamental principles of
religion, nationhood, love of the country. Our
unhappy younger generation, gone astray like sheep
without a shepherd, cherished a belief in him, and
his influence was very great and beneficent. Many
— unhappy young people — turned to him as to a
confessor, personally and in writing. There is no
one now to replace him.

He was poor and left nothing except books.
His family is in need. I am writing now to Count
Loris-Melikov, and asking him to petition the Tsar
and to ask that the Sovereign would please to take
an interest.

264

POBIEDONOSZEV'S LETTERS 265

Will not Your Highness support this applica-
tion ? You knew and valued the deceased
Dostoevsky from his works, which will for ever
remain a memorial of the great Russian talent.

II

February 1, 1881.

F. M. Dostoevsky was buried to-day in the
Nevsky Lavra Monastery. It is very sad that he
is no more. Eternal memory to him. I feel his
loss very keenly : I had arranged for him a quiet
hour, on Saturdays after vespers, and he often
came to me, and we spoke much and long after
midnight.

Yesterday he was to bring out the first number
of his Journal, and he had it quite ready ; and
yesterday, on the day of his funeral the number
appeared. In case it has not yet reached Your
Highness, I enclose it herewith. There are in it
splendid pages — from the very first.

K. POBIEDONOSZEV.

[As a result of Pobiedonoszev's application a
pension of 2000 roubles was granted to Dostoevsky's
widow.]

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

Aksakov, Ivan Sergueyevich (1823-1886), the three
volumes of whose autobiography, Years of Child-
hood, A Russian Schoolboy, and A Russian Gentleman,
have been translated into English by J. D. Duff.

Aksakov, Nicolay Petrovich (1848-1909), doctor of
philosophy, writer on theological and philosophical
questions, and poet ; Secretary (1878-1880) of the
\ Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.'

Annenkov, Pavel Vassilevich (1812-1887), literary
critic, first editor of Poushkin's Complete Works,
and friend of Turgenev.

Averkiev, Dmitrii Vassilevich (1836-1905), author and
playwright.

Barsov, Elpidifor Vassilevich (1837-1919)> ethnologist
and archaeologist, collector of old manuscripts,
member of the ' Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature/ and librarian (in 1880) of the Tchertkov
Town Library.

Bartenev, Piotr Ivanovich (1829-1912), publisher of the
Russky Arkhiv ; a Poushkin scholar.

Bezsonov, P. A. (1828-1898), librarian of Moscow
University, Secretary of the ' Society of Lovers
of Russian Literature,' and professor of Slavonic
languages at Kharkov University.

269

270 DOSTOEVSKY

Bielinsky, Vissarion Gregorevitch, critic. In 1867
Dostoevsky, at the request of K. I. Bibikov, wrote
' My Reminiscences of Bielinsky/ Dostoevsky
found it difficult to write that article and expressed
his regret as follows : ' I was foolish enough to
undertake that article. As soon as I started I saw
at once that there was no possibility of making a
decent job of it (for I wanted to write everything).
Ten printed sheets of a novel would have been easier
for me to write than those two sheets. The result
was that I wrote that damnable article, on an average
calculation, about Jive times, and then crossed out
everything, and what was left I re-made anew.
At last I managed to produce an article, — but so
trashy, that it nauseates me. What masses of
most valuable facts I was compelled to strike out !
As was to be expected, there remained only all the
trashy and mediocre stuff. An abomination ! '
(See Biography, Part n. p. 178.)

Burenin, Victor Petrovich (6. 1841), poet and journalist,
literary critic of the Novoye Vremya.

Ghayev, N. A. (1824-1914), playwright ; President
(1878-1884) of the ' Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature/

Danilevsky, Nicolay Yakolevich (1822-1885), author of
the famous book Russia and Europe. (On December
11 /23, 1868, Dostoevsky wrote to Maikov from
Florence : ' I also had a letter from Strahov ; much
literary news. I was delighted by the news about
Danilevsky 's article " Europe and Russia," which
Strahov describes as a capital thing. I own to you
that since that very year 1849 I have heard nothing

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 271

of Danilevsky [i.e. since Dostoevsky's and
Maikov's trial in connection with the Petrashevsky
Group]. But I have thought of him at times. I
remembered what a desperate Fourierist he had
been. And to turn from Fourierism to Russia, to
become a Russian again and to learn to love one's
soil and essence ! That is how a big man can be
recognised ! Turgenev has become a German in-
stead of a Russian writer, — that is how a rotten man
can be recognised. Nor shall I ever believe the
words of the late Apollon Grigoryev, that Bielinsky
would have ended by becoming a Slavophil. A man
like Bielinsky would never have ended like that.
He was only a scab — and nothing else. . . .')

See Biography, Part п. pp. 200-201. (All the
passages omitted there are now restored from the
original letter.)

Dolgomostiev, I. G., contributor to Vremya and Epocha ;
according to N. N. Strahov, ' a noble and clever
young man/ who died insane in 1867.

Dostoevsky's brother, Andrey (1825-1897), civil
engineer. In 1828 the Dostoevskys were entered
in the third part of the Genealogical Book of the
Moscow Province, owing to the official position of
their father, the regimental surgeon, Mihail Andrey-
evich Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky, Emily Fiodorovna, the widow of Dos-
toevsky's brother, Mihail Mihailovich.

Dostoevsky's children, Lilya and Fedya. Lilya (Lubov
or Aimee) born in 1869, and Fedya (Fiodor) born in
1871.

272 DOSTOEVSKY

Dostoevsky's nieces, Masha and Nina Ivanov, the
daughters of his sister, Vera Mihailovna Ivanov.
Masha was born in 1848 and Nina in 1857.

Dostoevsky's elder brother, Mihail (1820-1864), was in
1861 the official editor and publisher of Vremya С A
Literary and Political Review '), of which the un-
official editor was F. M. Dostoevsky. Its chief
contributors were A. A. Grigoriev and N. N. Strahov.
On May 24, 1863, Vremya was suppressed by the
Government on account of N. N. Strahov's article,
' The Fatal Question,' published in No. 4. In
1864, in place of the suppressed Vremya, Mihail
Dostoevsky began the publication of the review
Epocha, which ceased to appear in 1865, after the
second number, for lack of money to carry on. The
Vremya had a fair number of subscribers, judged
by Russian standards of the time. In 1861 the
number was 2300, and in 1862 it had increased to
4302.

Dostoevsky's niece, Natasha (6. 1867), the youngest
daughter of his sister, Vera Mihailovna.

Dostoevsky, Nicolay Mihailovich, was the youngest
brother of Fiodor. (1, Mihail ; 2, Fiodor ; 3, Audrey ;
4, Nicolay.)

Dostoevsky's sister, Vary a — or Varvara Mihailovna
(b. 1822).

Dostoevsky's sister, Vera Mihailovna (6. 1829), wife of
Dr. Alexander Pavlovich Ivanov (1813-1868).

Eliseyev, G. S., member of the editorial staff of the
Sovremennik and Otechestvennya ZapisJd.

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 273

Englehardt, Anna Nicolayevna (1835-1903), translator,
daughter of N. P. Makarov, the lexicographer, and
the wife of A. N. Englehardt, publicist and model
farmer.

Gatzuk, Alexey Alexeyevich (1832-1891), archaeologist,
publisher of Gatzuk's Newspaper and Gatzuk's
Calendar.

Gaydebourov, Pavel Alexandrovich (1841-1893), jour-
nalist, editor and publisher of the Nedyelya.

Gayevsky, Victor Pavlovich (1826-1888), a Petersburg
barrister, one of the founders of and chief workers
on the ' Literary Fund ' ; a Poushkin scholar ;
delegate from the Petersburg Branch of the Russian
Musical Society, from the Petersburg Conserva-
toire, and from the ' Literary Fund ' to the Poushkin
Celebration.

Golokhvastov, probably Olga Andreyevna, nee Andrey-
evsky, author, and wife of P. D. Golokhvastov,
author and social worker.

Grigorovich, Dmitri Vassilevich (1822-1899)» novelist,
delegate of the ' Literary Fund ' to the Poushkin
Celebration.

Grot, Yakov Karlovich (1812-1893), Academician,
linguist, historian of Russian literature, and editor
of the works of 18th and 19th century Russian
authors ; member of committee for the erection of
the memorial to Poushkin.

Isayev, Pavel Alexandrovich, Dostoevsky's stepson, the
son of his first wife, Marie Dmitrievna, by her first
marriage. P. A. Isayev was a heavy cross in the
life of the Dostoevskys ; Anna Gregorevna mentions

s

274 DOSTOEVSKY

him more than once in her Reminiscences. Lubov
Fiodorovna Dostoevsky , in her Reminiscences of her
father, published last year in Munich (and recently
translated into English and published in this country)
tells a new, curious, but improbable story of her
father's first marriage :

4 On her coming from Kuznetsk to Semipalatinsk,
Marie Dmitrievna (Dostoevsky 's first wife) managed
to arrange a cosy home which became the gathering-
place of the local intellectuals. Dostoevsky 's con-
jugal happiness continued even after his return to
European Russia ; but it all turned out to be a
phantom. His wife's health began to grow worse.
He had to remove her from Petersburg to Tver.
And here, with one foot in the grave, she made a
terrible confession to her husband. She said that
she had married him out of pure convenience,
tempted by his literary fame and connections ; that
the night before their wedding she had spent with
her lover, a young, beautiful tutor, and that she
continued her liaison with him during the whole of
her married life. He always — she said — followed
her like her shadow, and it was only when she lost
her good looks owing to consumption that he dis-
appeared without leaving his address. Marie
Dmitrievna declared to her husband that she not
only did not love him, but that she just despised
him, as a former convict. . . . Dostoevsky left his wife
and went off to Petersburg. . . .'

The exactness of these data can be tested very
easily by reference to Anna Gregorevna's Reminis-
cences, as well as to Dostoevsky 's letters. Dostoev-
sky's first marriage was, indeed, a failure. His

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 275

married life began stormily : with scenes of mutual
jealousy ; but the very fact mentioned by Anna
Gregorevna, that Dostoevsky fulfilled the last wish
of his first wife ' to love Pasha ' and all his life long
continued to help his stepson who caused him
trouble, worry and unpleasantness, makes the
authenticity of the daughter's story about her father
rather doubtful. The daughter's assertion that her
father left his dying wife in Tver and himself rushed
off to Petersburg is refuted by Dostoevsky 's letter
to his brother, Mihail Mihailovich, sent from Moscow
on April 15, 1864, on the eve of her death. (Marie
Dmitrievna Isayev-Dostoevsky died not in Tver, as
Dostoevsky 's daughter writes, but in Moscow) :
4 Yesterday Marie Dmitrievna was seized with a
positive fit : blood gushed from her throat and
began pouring over her bosom and choking her. We
all awaited the end. We were all round her. She
took leave of every one, became reconciled to every
one, and made known all her requests. She sent
greetings to your whole family and wished you a
long life. She particularly wished Emily Fiodor-
ovna a long life. She expressed her desire to be
reconciled to you. (You know, my friend, she was
all her life convinced that you were her secret
enemy.) She has passed a bad night. To-day, this
moment, Alexander Pavlovich has said definitely,
that she will die to-day. And there is no doubt of
it.' In postscript F. M. Dostoevsky adds : ' Marie
Dmitrievna is dying peacefully, in sound mind. She
blessed Pasha (P. A. Isayev) in his absence.'

Nevertheless, that there was almost constant ill-
feeling towards Dostoevsky on the part of his step-

276 DOSTOEVSKY

son and his sister-in-law is manifest. So great was
it that when the little Sonia died (May 16/28, 1868),
Dostoevsky asked that the news should be kept
from them for a time, and wrote : ' It seems to me
that not only will none of them regret the death of
my child, but perhaps the very opposite, and the
mere thought of that exasperates me. What wrong
has the poor child done them ? Let them hate me,
let them laugh at me and at my love, — that I don't
mind/

(See Biography, Part n. p. 187. The phrases
omitted there are here restored from the original.)

Kalachov, Nicolay Vassilevich (1819-1885), historian,
jurist, Senator and Keeper of the Moscow Archives
of the Ministry of Justice.

Kasatkin, Nicolay (Yaponsky) (1836-1912), Bishop of
Reval, the head of the Russian Orthodox Mission in
Japan.

Katkov, Mihail Nikiforovich (1818-1887), reactionary
publicist, editor of the monthly review Russky
Viestnik and of the daily Moscorvskya Viedomosti.

Khmyrov, Dmitri Nicolay evich (b. 1847), teacher of
mathematics, husband of Dostoevsky 's niece, Sophie
Ivanov (b. 1847).

K. K., probably the Grand Duke Konstantin Kon-
stantinovich Romanov.

Kornilov, Fiodor Petrovich (1809-1895), member of the
State Council, State Secretary ; member and
director of the committee for the erection of the
Poushkin memorial.

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 277

Kovalevsky, Maxim Maximovich (1851-1916), historian
of law, sociologist, professor at Moscow University
(1877-1887), held the chair of State Law.

Krayevsky, Andrey Alexandrovich (1810-1889), jour-
nalist, publisher of the review Otechestvennya
Zapiski and of Golos ; delegate from the Society of
the City of Petersburg, and from the * Literary
Fund ' to the Poushkin Celebration.

Lavrov, Platonov, Suffragan Bishop Alexey (1829-1890),
Bishop of Mozhaysk, second Suffragan Bishop of
Moscow, subsequently Archbishop of Vilna and
Lithuania.

Lavrov, Vukol Mihailovich (1852-1912), publisher and
translator ; brought out the monthly review Russ-
kaya My si from 1880 onwards. (He is described by
Dostoevsky, in his letter of May 27.)

Lento vsky, Mihail Valentino vich (d. 1906), theatrical
manager.

Lopatin, probably Lev Mihailovich Lopatin (1855-1920),
subsequently professor at the Moscow University ; a
philosopher with a tendency towards spiritualism.

Lubimov, Nicolay Alexeyevich (1800-1897), professor
at Moscow University, physicist, also publicist and
co-editor with Katkov of the Russky Viestnik.

Maikov, Apollon Nicolayevich (1821-1897), poet and
journalist, and friend of Dostoevsky. It is to
Maikov and Strahov that most of the already known
letters of Dostoevsky are addressed.

Marie Alexandrovna, the wife of Alexander II, died on
May 22, 1880.

278 DOSTOEVSKY

Markevich, Boleslav Mihailovich (1822-1884), novelist,
who published in the Russky Viestnik for 1880, the
second part of his trilogy, the novel entitled
Crisis.

Melnikov, Ivan Alexandrovich (1831-1906), baritone
singer, actor at the Maryinsky Theatre, Petersburg.

Mengden, Countess, probably Zinaida Nicolayevna, nee
Bourtsev, the wife of Count Georgy Fiodorovich
Mengden, Major-General, Brigade Commander of
the 1st Horse Guards Division.

Merenberg, Nathalie Alexandrovna (1836-1913), Poush-
kin's daughter, morganatic wife of Prince Nicolas of
Nassau.

Novikov, Olga Alexeyevna (1840-1921), nie Kireyev, a
Slavophil writer who wrote on Anglo-Russian rela-
tions and signed her articles О. K. She spent most
of her life in England.

Oldenburgsky, Prince Piotr Georgevich (1812-1881), the
Chairman of the committee for the erection of the
Poushkin memorial.

Ostrovsky, Alexander Nicolayevich (1825-1893), a prolific
and distinguished dramatist, only one of whose
plays, The Storm, has been translated into English
(by Constance Garnett), although several have
appeared in French.

Pavlischev, Lev Nicolayevich (b. 1834), the son of Poush-
kin's sister, author of reminiscences of his uncle ;
had a post at the Chief Commissariat Board.

Petrov, A. K. Of this Geneva priest Dostoevsky wrote
to Maikov on August 19? 1869 '• ' From all the data
(mark you, not from guesses, but from facts) I know

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 279

he is employed by the secret police/ — Biographyt
Part и. p. 192.

Pisemsky, Alexey Feofilaktovich (1820-1881), novelist,
several of whose works are to be read in French —
e.g. Dans le Tourbillon and Mille Ames.

Plescheyev, Alexey Nicolayevich, poet, delegate of the
paper Molva to the Poushkin Celebration. He was
born in Kostroma on November 22, 1825, and, like
Dostoevsky, was entered in the lists of the Moscow
Nobility. Both were condemned to death, but
instead of being executed were exiled and deprived
of their status of nobility.

In the Archives of the late Moscow Deputies'
Councils have been found documents relating to
the exclusion of Dostoevsky from the lists of
Moscow Nobility. (The Archives of the Moscow
Deputies' Council relating to the State-criminals
Plescheyev and Dostoevsky, No. 62, 1850. The
hearing began on July 12, 1850. It was concluded
on September 1, 1850.) In this case two documents
are of interest : the first is the copy of the instruc-
tion of the late Minister of the Interior (later the
Moscow Civil Governor) concerning the Gracious
Order of H.I. M. to deprive Plescheyev and Dostoev-
sky as State-criminals of all rights of status, with the
statement of the nature of their crime and the
measures taken for their punishment. The second
document is the accompanying report of the Chief
of the Moscow Province addressed to Prince
Golizyn. (Prince Golizyn (1800-1 873) was Marshal
of Nobility from 1848 to 1861 of the Zvenigorod
District of the Moscow Province, and from 1859

280

DOSTOEVSKY

chief director of the Golizyn Hospital. P. P. Novo-
silzev (1797-1869), vice-Governor of Moscow from
1831 to 1851 ; subsequently Governor of Ryazan.)

* Ministry of the
Interior.
Chief of the
Moscow Government.

Clerks* Office.

No. 11176.
July 6, 1850.

Moscow.
Re State-Criminals.

1 To His Excellency
M. F. Golizyn,
Ministry of the
Interior.

Department of the
Police Executive.

Branch II.,
Table 2.

July 15, 1850,
No. 254.

Received on July 12.

Dear Sir,

Prince Mihail Fiodorovich.

The Copy of the Instruction
issued by the Minister of the
Interior, of June 15, under
No. 254, with the declaration
of the Gracious Order relating
to the State-Criminals Plesche-
yev and Dostoevsky, I con-
sider necessary to forward to
Your Excellency, as supple-
mentary to the report to the
Marshal of Nobility of Febru-
ary 27, under No. 3708.

Accept, Dear Sir, the assur-
ance of my profound respect
and devotion.

N. Novosilzev.'

To the Moscow Civil Governor.

By my instruction of Febru-
ary 15th last, under No 102,
Your Excellency will have
been aware that the Ruling
Senate, having heard the re-
port of the Minister of War of
December 23 of last year,
together with the declaration
of His Imperial Majesty's
gracious confirmation concern-

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 281

ing the persons condemned by

By Gracious Order the Military Court, according
re State-Criminals. to the Field Penal Code, for

criminal designs against the
Government, has instructed
me, by the order of December 30th, independently of
the order made about the publication of the above-
mentioned Gracious declaration in the Senate journal,
to notify the same to those Chiefs of Provinces, in whose
lists of the Nobility the names of the criminals in
question are entered.

Among those condemned are : the nobleman Alexey
Plescheyev, holding no office, and the retired Inspector-
Lieutenant Fiodor Dostoevsky, who have been
sentenced by the Auditor-General to death by military
execution, but His Majesty the Emperor on the 19th
day of December 1849 was graciously pleased to order
that : Plescheyev, instead of being executed, shall,
after having been deprived of all his rights of status, be
enrolled for military service as private in the Orenburg
battalions of the line ; and Dostoevsky, instead of being
executed, shall, after having been deprived of all his
rights of status, be deported to hard labour for four
years in the fortresses, after which time he shall be
enrolled as private in military service.

Having established from the information collected by
the Ministry in my charge that Plescheyev and Dos-
toevsky are entered in the lists of Noblemen of the
Moscow Province, I have the honour to inform Your
Excellency of the same in order that the necessary
steps may be taken in fulfilment of the above-mentioned
Order of the Ruling Senate.

The original is signed : Minister of the Interior,

Count Perovsky.

Countersigned : Vice-Director, V. Safonov.

Attested : Senior Assistant Director of the Office,

Rudnev.

282 DOSTOEVSKY

Polivanov, Lev Ivanovich (1838-1899), educationist,
director of the Polivanov Secondary School, Secre-
tary (1878-1880) of the ' Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature,' member of the Unveiling Committee of
the Poushkin Memorial.

Polonsky, Yakov Petrovich (1820-1898), poet.

Poushkin, Anatolii Lvovich, the poet's nephew, the son
of his brother Lev.

Rubinstein, Nicolay Gregorievich (1835-1898), director
of the Moscow Conservatoire.

Sabourov, Andrey Alexandrovich (1837-1916), Minister
of Education (who succeeded D. A. Tolstoy).

Saltykov, Mihail Efgrafovich (who used the pseudonym
N. Schedrin), author of The Golovlevs, one of the
greatest of Russian novels, which has been trans-
lated into French and American, but not yet into
English. Author also of many shorter tales and
fables difficult to render into another language owing
to their whimsical allusiveness.

Samarin, Ivan Vassilevich (1817-1885), actor. Of the
Moscow Maly Theatre.

Soloviov, F. G. (1834-1888), Moscow barrister, delegate
to the Poushkin Celebration from the Council of
Barristers.

Suhomlinov, Mihail Ivanovich (1828-1901), Academi-
cian, historian of literature.

Souvorin, Alexey Sergueyevich (1834-1912), journalist,
editor and publisher of the daily paper Novoye
Vremya ; afterwards Tchehov's intimate friend.

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 288

Tretyakov, Serguey Mihailovich (1834-1892), Mayor of
Moscow, brother of Pavel Tretyakov.

Tretiakov, Vera Mihailovna, nSe Mamontov (1844-
1899), the wife of P. M. Tretiakov, the founder of
the Tretiakov Picture Gallery in Moscow.

Turgenev, Ivan Serguey evich (1818-1883), had inspired
Dostoevsky with a feeling of hostility almost from
the outset of their literary careers. According
to early letters of Dostoevsky 's there had been at
first kindness between them ; but resentment of
Turgenev 's aristocratic manner provoked Dostoev-
sky to almost passionate dislike and jealousy. This
was not lessened by the fact of Turgenev's long
residence abroad. In March 1869 Dostoevsky
wrote to his niece : ' You write about Turgenev and
the Germans. Turgenev has become stale through
living abroad and has lost all his talent, which even
the Golos has pointed out to him. I am not afraid
of becoming Germanised because I hate all Germans :
but it is Russia I need : without Russia I shall lose
my last little powers, my last little talents/ etc.
Turgenev was the delegate of the Petersburg
1 Literary Fund ' to the Poushkin Celebration. He
arrived in Moscow from Petersburg on April 18,
1880, and the three weeks from the beginning of
May till the 24th he spent on his estate, Spasskoye.
— On April 23, the Moscow authors and men of
letters gave a dinner in the Hermitage Restaurant
in honour of Turgenev. (See Peterburgskya Viedo-
mosti, No. 117, 1880.) — This is the dinner which
Dostoevsky had in view when he wrote about ' the
professors paying court to Turgenev.'

284 DOSTOEVSKY

In Viestnik Europa for February 1880, we find
Turgenev's letter to the editor, being a reply to one
from В. M. Markevich in which the latter, under the
signature of A Resident of another Town/ attacked
Turgenev for the applause he had won in 1879, by
' playing up ' to the younger generation. In his
letter to the editor Turgenev retaliated and thus
characterised the ' A Resident of another Town ' :
* Think only from whose lips these calumnies,
these accusations come ! From the lips of a
man, who since his young days has earned the
reputation of a virtuoso in servility and " boot-
licking," voluntary at first and finally involuntary/ —
(See Turgenevsty Sbornik, edited by A. F. Koni, 1921,
Petersburg, p. 45 et seq.) Apart from this letter in
the Viestnik Europa there is nothing in any way
bearing on Dostoevsky that comes from Turgenev.
Evidently, however, Dostoevsky 's suspicious nature
took the letter in question as aimed at himself and
also ascribed all the allusions to a ' fact ' which had
taken place in his life thirty-five years before. It
is to the hostility already mentioned that the caustic
remark in the letters (p. 160) — ' to glorify Verochka ' —
must be ascribed. On January 17, 1879, Turgenev's
comedy, A Month in the Country, written in 1850, was
produced for the benefit of Marie Gavrilovna Savina
(the most famous of Russian actresses), who scored
a brilliant success in the part of Verochka. Towards
the end of the 'seventies Savina's talent had fully
developed, and Turgenev, when he saw for the first
time on the stage what Savina had made of the
character of Verochka (the character having been
only slightly outlined in the play), looked fixedly in

BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 285

the actress's face in her dressing-room in the
theatre, and exclaimed : ' Verochka ! ... So this is
the Verochka that I wrote !!!...' On the day
following the benefit, Savina was to read at a soiree,
organised for the benefit of the ' Literary Fund/
where Turgenev was also present, the dialogue
between Count Lyubin and Darya Ivanovna
Stupendyevna, from Turgenev's comedy, The
Provincial. Dostoevsky too was there, and said to
Savina that evening : ' Every word of yours comes
out as if it were ivory,' and added rather venomously,
1 while this old boy (i.e. Turgenev) lisps.' The
success of Verochka in the hands of Savina was
lasting and much-talked-of. And Turgenev, in
spite of his sixty-seven years, was violently infatu-
ated by the actress. It is this infatuation at which
Dostoevsky hints : he never missed a chance of
having a fling at Turgenev. (For the whole episode
see Turgenev and Savina, by A. F. Koni, Petersburg,
1918.)

Viskovatov, Pavel Alexandrovich (6. 1842), professor at
Dorpat (Yuriev) University, held the Chair of
Russian Literature, and was delegate of the Univer-
sity to the Poushkin Celebration.

Yanovsky, Doctor S. D., an old friend of Dostoevsky 's
(from 1845) and most devoted to him ; author of
Reminiscences of Dostoevsky. Died in Switzerland
in 1897, at the age of 79-

Yazykov, Mihail Alexandrovich (1811-1885), friend of
Turgenev, Ghief of the Novgorod Excise Board.

Yuriev, Serguey Andreyevich (1821-1888), author, trans-
lator of Shakespeare and of the Spanish playwrights ;

286 DOSTOEVSKY

President of the ' Society of Lovers of Russian
Literature* (1878-1884); and editor (1880-1885) of
the monthly review Russkaya Mysl, published by
V. M. Lavrov.

Zolotariov, I. F., one of the oldest members of the ' Slav
Charitable Society * ; the second delegate of the
1 Society ' to the Poushkin Celebration.

Zveriev, Nicolay Andreyevich (1850-191 1)} professor at
Moscow University, held the Chair of History and
Philosophy of Law ; subsequently Senator and
Member of the State Council.

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