I was sorely distressed about him, and resolved to arrange a meeting with Maria Dmitryevna at Smiyev, half-way between Kusnezk and Semipalatinsk. I hoped that an interview might put an end to the unhappy state of affairs. But I had set myself a difficult task; how was I to take Dostoevsky from Semipalatinsk to Smiyev, without anybody’s knowledge? The authorities would never permit him so long a journey. The Governor and the Colonel had already twice refused his applications for leave. It reduced itself simply to taking our chance. I wrote at once to Kusnezk and asked Maria Dmitryevna to come to Smiyev on a certain day. At the same time I spread a rumour in the town that Dostoevsky had been so run down by several violent epileptic attacks that he was obliged to keep his bed. I also informed his Colonel that he was ill, and under treatment by the military doctor, Lamotte. This Lamotte, however, was our good friend, and in our confidence. He was a Pole, formerly a student at the University of Vilna, and had been sent to Siberia for some political misdemeanour. My servants were instructed to say to everyone that Dostoevsky was lying ill in my house. The shutters were shut, “to keep the light from disturbing the invalid.” Nobody was allowed to enter. Luckily for us, all the commanding officers were away, from the Military Governor downwards.
Everything was in our favour. We started about ten o’clock at night. We drove like the wind; but poor Dostoevsky thought we were going at a snail’s pace, and conjured the coachman to drive still faster. We travelled all night, and reached Smiyev by morning. How terrible was Dostoevsky’s disappointment when we were told that Maria Dmitryevna was not coming! A letter from her had arrived, in which she told us that her husband was worse, and moreover that she had no money for the journey. I can’t attempt to convey the despair of Dostoevsky; I had to rack my brains to tranquillize him in any sort of way.
That same day we returned, having done the 300 versts in twenty-eight hours. Once at home, we changed our clothes and instantly went to see some acquaintances. So nobody ever knew anything about our prank.
Our life went monotonously on; Dostoevsky was mostly in dejected mood, and at times worked very hard; I tried to divert him as well as I could. There was no variety at all in our way of life; we walked daily to the bank of the Irtich, worked in the garden, bathed, drank tea, and smoked on the balcony. Sometimes I would sit with a rod by the water, while Dostoevsky lay near me on the grass and read aloud; all the books I had were gone through countless times in this way. Among others he read to me, “for my instruction,” Aksakov’s “Angling,” and “A Sportsman’s Sketches.” There was no library in the town. The numerous books on zoology and natural science that I had brought from Petersburg, I knew almost by heart. Dostoevsky preferred fine literature, and we eagerly devoured any new book. The monotony of our lives was redeemed, however, by the hours in which Dostoevsky’s creative inspiration came over him. In such hours, he was in so uplifted a state that I too was infected by it. Even life in Semipalatinsk seemed not so bad in those moments; but alas! the mood always went as suddenly as it had come. Every unfavourable report from Kusnezk brought it to an end at one blow; Dostoevsky instantly collapsed, and was seedy and wretched again.
As I have already mentioned, he was then working at “The House of the Dead.” I had the great good luck to see Dostoevsky in his inspired state, and to hear the first drafts of that incomparable work from his own lips; even now, after all these years, I recall those moments with a sense of exaltation. I was always amazed by the superb humanity that glowed in Dostoevsky’s soul, despite his grievous destiny, despite the prison, the exile, the terrible malady, and the eternal want of money. Not less was I astonished by his rare guilelessness and gentleness, which never left him even in his worst hours.
[Baron Vrangel goes on to tell of the arrival of the Governor-General, Hasford, at Semipalatinsk, and of his arrogant and domineering manner.]
I was invited to lunch with the other officials at the Governor’s. I had known his wife in Petersburg.
She received me very cordially, and offered me a place by her side.
At table the Governor assumed quite a different tone, and behaved like an ordinary mortal. He seemed in good spirits, asked me about my acquaintances, and let fall the remark that he was well aware of my relations with Dostoevsky. I made up my mind to play upon his better temper, and win him to Dostoevsky’s cause. Dostoevsky had shortly before written a poem on the death of Tsar Nicholas I.; we wanted to send it through General Hasford to the widowed Tsarina. The poem began, if I remember rightly, in this way:
“As evening-red dies in the heavens,
So sank thy glorious spouse to rest...”
To my most respectfully proffered request, Hasford replied with an energetic “No,” and added: “I’ll do nothing for a whilom enemy of the Government. But if they take him up in Petersburg of their own accord, I shall put no obstacle in the way.”
The poem reached the Tsarina, nevertheless, and that in the following way: I wrote two or three times to my father and my influential relations, and begged them to discover some means of bringing it to the Tsarina’s notice. My endeavours were finally crowned with success: Prince Peter Georgyevitch von Oldenburg undertook to deliver the poem. The Prince was an impassioned musician and a bad composer; at that time he consorted much with the well-known pianist, Adolf Henselt, who had to correct his compositions. This Henselt had been for many years teaching music in our family. My relatives applied to him, and he willingly acceded to our request. The poem really did reach the Tsarina; this was told me later by a high official. Dostoevsky wrote yet another poem: “On the Accession of Alexander II.” This I later gave personally to General Eduard Ivanovitch Totleben.
Dostoevsky was now terribly affected by his malady; often he feared for his reason. He clearly perceived the aim of his life to be literary work. But so long as he was in exile, he would not be allowed to publish his works; in his despair he even begged me to let them appear under my name. That I did not agree to this proposal, flattering as it was for me, I need not say. Literature, moreover, was his only means of earning money. He was longing at this time for a personal life; he wanted to marry, and hoped thereby to find “boundless happiness.” For many years he had suffered the direst need; who knows — if Dostoevsky had not taken that step for which his stern critics so severely blame him, one of the greatest Russian writers, the pride of Russia, might have languished to death in the deserts of Siberia.
The projected campaign never came off. The Governor-General departed, and our Semipalatinsk society sank back into its lethargy. After their urgent activities before the Governor-General, the soldiers needed some rest, and so Fyodor Michailovitch had a little spare time. We settled down again in our “Kasakov Garden,” and once more the days were all alike. From Kusnezk came the gloomiest tidings; Dostoevsky went no more to the soothsayers, bored himself to death, was always in bad spirits, and took no pleasure in work. He simply did not know how to kill the time. Then there occurred to his mind a certain Marina O., the daughter of an exiled Pole. When he used to go to the Issayevs’, he had interested himself in this girl at Maria Dmitryevna’s request, and given her some lessons.
Now he went to her father, who after some time declared himself willing to send her daily to Kasakov Gardens for instruction. Marina was then seventeen, and had grown into a blooming, pretty creature. She brought life into our house, was quite at her ease, laughing and romping, and coquetting with her teacher.
I was at that time absorbed in a love-affair, and sought diversion from it in long journeys. I was for two months absent from Semipalatinsk, and in that time covered more than 2,000 versts.
Dostoevsky stayed behind alone in the summer weather, changeable of mood, teaching Marina, working, but not over-diligently, and keeping up a lively correspondence with Maria Dmitryevna; his letters to her were as thick as exercise-books.
When, before my departure, I saw how eagerly Dostoevsky was interesting himself in the girl, who was evidently in love with her teacher, I began to hope that
intercourse with Marina would woo him from his fatal passion for Maria Dmitryevna. But when I came back from my trip, I heard of a real tragedy.
On my first view of Marina after my return, I was shocked by her aspect; she was hollow-eyed, emaciated, and shrunken. And Dostoevsky told me that he had observed this alteration, but that no efforts had enabled him to learn from her the cause of such a metamorphosis. Now, however, we both set ourselves to question the girl, and at last she poured out the following story: —
The son of the Mayor of Semipalatinsk, a youth of eighteen, had long had an eye for the pretty maiden; by the intervention of my housekeeper, he succeeded in making her his own; the scoundrel stuck to her for a while, and then deserted her. But that was not the worst. The boy’s coachman, a rascally old Circassian, knew of these relations; he had often gone for the girl by his master’s orders, to drive her to the rendezvous. On one such transit, he threatened that he would tell of the matter to her father and stepmother if she did not yield herself to him. The terrified Marina, who had very little force of character, consented. The coachman was now blackmailing her, and plundering her as he alone could; she hated and feared him, and implored us to save her from the clutches of this scoundrel.
The case cried to Heaven. I made use of my official powers, and expelled the Circassian from Semipalatinsk.
A year later, Marina was forced to marry, against her will, a boorish old Cossack officer, selected for her by her father. She hated him, and flirted as before with anyone she came across. The old man pestered her with his jealousy. Later on, when Dostoevsky was married, this Marina was the cause of quarrels and scenes of jealousy between him and Maria Dmitryevna; for Marina still would flirt with him, and this terribly enraged Maria Dmitryevna, who was even then marked for death.
When I returned from a trip to Barnaul, I found Dostoevsky still more broken-down, emaciated, and desperately depressed. He always got a little more cheerful in my company, but soon he was to lose heart altogether, for I had to tell him that I should be compelled to leave Semipalatinsk for ever.
[Vrangel left Semipalatinsk “for ever” in the New Year of 1855.]
The last days before my departure went by very quickly. By the end of December I was ready for the road. Dostoevsky was with me the whole day, and helped me to pack; we were both very sad. Involuntarily I asked myself if I should ever see him again.
After my departure he wrote me a succession of moving, affectionate letters, and said that he suffered frightfully from loneliness. In a letter of December 21 he writes: “I want to talk with you as we used to talk when you were everything to me — friend and brother; when we shared every thought of each other’s heart... Our parting grieved me bitterly.
I was young, strong, and full of roseate hopes; while he — great, God-given writer — was losing his only friend, and had to stay behind as a common soldier, sick, forsaken, desolate — in Siberia!
The day of my departure arrived. So soon as evening fell, Adam carried out my baggage; Dostoevsky and I embraced and kissed, and promised never to forget one another. As at our first meeting, both our eyes were wet. I took my seat in the carriage, embraced my poor friend for the last time, the horses started, the troika glided away. I took a last look back; Dostoevsky’s tragic figure was scarcely to be discerned in the failing light.
In February I came to Petersburg. And now began an unbroken correspondence between us. His fate was not even yet quite decided. I knew that there would be a general amnesty at the Coronation, but how far this would affect those concerned in the Petrachevsky affair was as yet uncertain. Even the highest officials of the police could give me no information. This uncertainty agitated Dostoevsky terribly. His impatience increased from hour to hour. He would not see that I, an insignificant little Siberian lawyer, could not possibly have any influence on the course of events, and that even my powerful relatives could do nothing to expedite his case. I did not want to pester them too incessantly, lest I should spoil all. But in his nervous excitement Dostoevsky could not understand that. I did everything that I at all could; but Count Totleben was the most urgent of any in his cause.
I had known Count Eduard Ivanovitch Totleben from my school-days; and had often met him at the house of my great-uncle Manderstyerna, then Commandant of the Petropaulovsky Fortress. He had attended the College of Engineering at the same time as Dostoevsky, and his brother Adolf had even been intimate with the latter. Directly I arrived in Petersburg I looked up Totleben, told him of Dostoevsky’s insupportable lot, and begged for his support. I visited his brother Adolf also. Both showed warm sympathy for Dostoevsky, and promised me to do all they could. The name of Totleben was then in everyone’s mouth, not only in Russia, but over all Europe. As a private individual, he was unusually attractive. The high honours with which he had been overwhelmed, had altered his character in no wise. He was still the same friendly, good-humoured, and humane person as when I had known him before the war. He did much for Dostoevsky by his intercession with Prince Orlov and other powerful men in Petersburg.
Dostoevsky esteemed Totleben very highly, and was much moved by his sympathy. In his letter to me of March 23, 1856, he writes: “He is through and through of knightly, noble, and generous nature. You can’t at all imagine with what joy I am following all that such splendid fellows as you and the Totleben brothers are doing for me.”
But the greatest influence on Dostoevsky’s fate was that of Prince Peter von Oldenburg. He had known me since my school-days. He was Proctor of the school, and came there nearly every day. And now, therefore, I was called upon again to turn to Adolf Henselt. I delivered to the Prince, through Henselt, the new poem that Dostoevsky had written on the Coronation. He mentions this poem in his letter to me of May 23, 1856:
“It would be, I think, clumsy to try unofficially for permission to publish my works, unless I offer a poem at the same time. Read the enclosed, then; paraphrase it, and try to bring it under the monarch’s notice in some way or other.”
I did all I could. The Prince gave the poem to the Tsarina Maria Alexandrovna; whether it ever reached the Tsar’s hands, I know not.
At the same time Dostoevsky informed me that he was going to send me an article, “Letters upon Art,” that I might deliver it to the President of the Academy, the Grand-Duchess Maria Nikolayevna. I never received that article.
In the same letter he writes of another article, which he had begun while we were still together — one “On Russia.” I never received that one, either.
All Dostoevsky’s thoughts were now set on one thing — whether, in case of his pardon, he would be permitted to publish his works. Not only his passion for literary activity, but also his great need, obliged him to strive for recognition in the highest quarters. He then required much money, and had none at all. He had numerous debts, and only that one hope — of earning something by means of the many stories and novels with which his brain was always filled.
In January, 1860, Dostoevsky at last got permission to settle in Petersburg. As the climate there was harmful to his wife’s health, he left her behind in Moscow, and came alone to Petersburg. He took rooms in Gorochovoya Street. We saw one another very often, but only in flying visits, for we were both carried away by the whirl of Petersburg life. Moreover, I was then engaged to be married, and spent all my free time with my betrothed, while Dostoevsky was working day and night. So our short interviews were chiefly taken up with loving memories of the past.
On one of our meetings we spoke of a forthcoming public event in Petersburg. I intended to make a speech “upon the liberties and rights accorded by the Tsarina Catherine II. to the Russian nobility.” Dostoevsky instantly sketched a brilliant discourse for me; but at the meeting I controlled myself, and did not deliver it.
I was once present at a public reading by Dostoevsky. He read Gogol’s “Revisor.” I already knew his masterly art in delivery. The room was packed. Dostoevsky’s appearance and his reading were greeted with thunders of applause. But I was not sa
tisfied with his performance that evening; I saw that he was not in the right mood; his voice sounded dead, and was sometimes barely audible. After the reading, he sought me out among the audience, and told me that he had not been in the mood; but that the organizer of the evening had urged him not to abandon the reading, and he never could say “No “to anyone. If I am not mistaken, that was his first reading after his return from banishment.
When in 1865 I returned to Copenhagen from my summer leave, I found a despairing letter of Dostoevsky’s from Wiesbaden. He wrote that he had gambled away all his money, and was in a desperate situation — he had not a penny left, and creditors were pressing him on every side. This craze of Dostoevsky’s for play was somewhat surprising to me.
In Siberia, where card-playing is so universal, he had never touched a card. Probably his passionate nature and shattered nerves needed the violent emotions which gambling afforded him. At all events, now I had to help my old friend out of his fix; I sent him some money, though I had not a great deal myself. With it I wrote, and said that he must positively come to me at Copenhagen.
He did actually come to Copenhagen on October, and stayed a week with me. He extraordinarily pleased my wife, and was much devoted to the two children. I thought him thin and altered. Our meeting gave us both great joy; we refreshed old memories, of course, recalled the “Kasakov Gardens,” our love affairs, etc. We spoke much of his first wife, Maria Dmitryevna, and of the fair Marina, of whom she had been so terribly jealous.
Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page 703
