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

headstrong and masterful, most irksome. In those days no single woman of good family could live alone; she was obliged to make her home with her relatives. The only way of getting rid of her was to marry her. Her sisters-in-law accordingly set to work; they gave parties and invited young men. The beautiful Swede, who sang with so much feeling, was greatly admired. Several suitors presented themselves. Maria Anna rejected them all. " My heart is broken," she said to her relations. " I cannot love any one." The sisters-in-law were annoyed at such speeches, which seemed to them absurd, and they tried to make their romantic kinswoman listen to reason. One day, when they were urging her to accept an advantageous offer, Maria Anna lost her temper and exclaimed : " Really your protdgS disgusts me so, that if I were absolutely obliged to marry some one, I would rather take poor old Snitkin. He at least is sympathetic." Maria Anna attached no importance to these imprudent words. Her sisters-in-law fastened upon them eagerly. They sent devoted friends to my grandfather, who spoke to him eloquently of the passion he had inspired in the heart of Mile. Miltopeus. My grandfather was greatly astonished. He certainly admired the fair Swede, and listened with delight to her operatic airs, but it had never entered his head that he could possibly find favour with a beautiful girl. Maria Anna took no notice whatever of him; she would smile abstractedly as she passed him, but rarely spoke to him. However, if she really loved him as they said, he was quite ready to marry her.

      Maria Anna's sisters-in-law laid my grandfather's proposal triumphantly before her. The poor girl was greatly alarmed. " But I won't marry that old gentleman," she said. " I mentioned him by way of comparison, to make you reaUse how odious the other suitor was to me." This explanation came too late. Maria Anna's relatives told her severely that a well-brought-up girl should never utter imprudent words; that it was permissible to refuse a suitor who made an offer without knowing how it would be taken, but that to refuse an offer after actually inviting it was to insult a worthy man who by no means deserved such treatment; that Maria Anna was twenty-seven years old, that her brothers could not keep her indefinitely with them, and that it was time to think seriously of her future. My grandmother saw that her sisters-in-law had laid a trap for her, and resigned herself to the inevitable. Fortunately, " poor M. Snitkin " was not antipathetic to her.

      The marriage of these two dreamers did not turn out badly. My grandfather never forgot the famous Asen-kova, and my grandmother cherished the memory of her fair-haired lover who had fallen on the field of honour; notwithstanding, they had several children. Their characters suited each other; my grandmother was masterful, her husband was timid; she ordered, he obeyed. Nevertheless, in matters he considered really important, he managed to enforce his will. He wished his wife to change her religion, for he thought their children could not be brought up as good Christians if their parents professed different creeds. My grandmother became Orthodox, but continued to read the Gospel in Swedish. Later, when the children began to talk, my grandfather forbade his wife to teach them her native tongue. "It is unpleasant to me to hear you talking Swedish together, when I can't understand it," he said. This embargo was very disagreeable to my grandmother, who could never learn to speak Russian correctly. AU her life she expressed herself in a picturesque idiom which made her friends smile. When something important had to be said, she preferred to speak German to her children.

      After their marriage my grandparents lived at first in lodgings, as people often did in Petersburg. But this manner of life did not please my grandmother, who had been accustomed to a more spacious existence in Finland. She persuaded her husband to buy a piece of land which was for sale on the other side of the Neva, in a lonely quarter not far from the Smolny monastery. There she had a large house built, and surrounded it with a garden. In the middle of Petersburg she lived as if she were in the country. She had her own flowers, fruit and vegetables. She did not Uke her husband's Ukrainian relatives, and received them only on family festivals. On the other hand, all the Swedes who came to Petersburg, and who were acquainted with one or the other of her numerous cousins in Finland, came to see her, lunched, dined, and sometimes stayed the night. The house was large and contained several guest-chambers. When they returned to Sweden, my grandmother's friends invoked her good offices for their children, whom they had placed in the various Crown establishments : sons who were to become officers in the Russian army. On the festivals of Christmas and Easter the house and garden echoed with the laughter and the Swedish chatter of little schoolgirls, pupils of the Cadet Schools, and shy young officers who could not as yet speak Russian fluently and were happy to find a bit of Finland in the strange capital. Like all the women of Germanic origin, my grandmother cared very little for her new country, and thought only of the interests of those of her own race.

      This Finland which invaded the house of her parents found no favour with my mother. The Swedish ladies, with their severe profiles, stiff, ceremonious manners and unknown language, frightened her. The little Anna would take refuge with her father, whom she resembled, and whose favourite she was. He took her to church, and visited the reUgious houses of Petersburg with her. Every year she accompanied him on a pilgrimage to the famous monastery of Valaam, on the islands of Lake Ladoga. My mother had all her life tender memories of this kind, simple, sentimental soul. She became religious like him, and remained faithful to the Orthodox Church. The new religious ideas, which her friends eagerly adopted, gained no hold over her; my mother thought more highly of the wisdom of the early Fathers than of the fashionable writers. Like her father, she loved Russia passionately, and could never forgive her mother the indifference, verging on scorn, displayed by her towards her husband's country. My mother considered herself a thorough Russian. And yet she was but half a Slav; her character was much more Swedish. The dreamy idleness of the Russian woman were unknown to my mother; she was very active all her life; I never saw her sitting with folded hands. She was always taking up fresh occupations, becoming absorbed in them and generally turning them to good account. She had nothing of the large-minded-ness of Russian women, which they generally increase by wide reading; but she had the practical mind which most of her countrywomen lack. This disposition made a great impression upon her women friends; later, during her widowhood, they habitually consulted her in difficulties, and the advice she gave them was generally good. Together with the good qualities of her Swedish ancestors, my mother had inherited some of their faults. Her self-esteem was always excessive, almost morbid; a trifle would offend her, and she easily fell a victim to those who flattered her. She was something of a mystic, believed in dreams and presentiments, and had to some extent the curious gift of second sight possessed by many Normans. She was always predicting in a jesting manner, without attaching any importance to what she was saying, and was the first to be astonished and almost alarmed when her predictions, often of a fantastic and improbable kind, were realised, as if by magic. This second sight left her completely towards her fiftieth year, together with the hysteria which ravaged her girlhood. Her health was always poor; she was anasmic, nervous and restless, and often had hysterical attacks. This neuroticism was aggravated by the characteristic indecision of the Ukrainians, which makes them hesitate between half a dozen possible courses, and leads them to transform the most trivial circumstances into dramas, and sometimes into melodramas.

       XIV

       MY mother's GIRLHOOD

       Table of Contents

       As their children grew up, two hostile camps were established in the house of my grandparents, as often happens when the father and the mother are of different races. The Swedish camp was composed of my grandmother and her elder daughter, Maria, a very overbearing young person; the Ukrainian camp contained my grandfather and his favourite child, Anna. The Swedes commanded and the Ukrainians obeyed grudgingly. My uncle Jean served as a Hnk between the opponents. He had inherited the Norman beauty of his mother with the Ukrainian character of his father, and was equally beloved by both parents.

      My aunt Maria was a beautiful creature, tall and slender, with blue eyes and magnificent golden hair. She had a great success in society and innumerable suitors. She made a love-match in marrying Professor Paul Svatkovsky, to whom the Grand-Duchess Maria had confided the education of her orphan children, the Dukes of Leuchtenberg. At the time of my aunt's marriage the young princes had finished their studies, but M. Svatkovsky continued to live in the palace of the Grand Duchess as a friend. My aunt made her home there; she had aristocratic