Arriving at the offices of The Citizen, Fyodor laid down his ground rules: he must be obeyed without question and there was not to be so much as a comma out of place. He would often spend an hour or more in silence, contemplating the proofs of an article, while the young secretary, Varvara Timofeyeva, looked meekly on. Prince Meshchersky turned out to be impossible to work with. He wrote up one of the Tsar’s private conversations without receiving official approval; he argued that all reform must now come to a full stop;7 the last straw was when he tried to publish an article suggesting that student dormitories should be surveilled by the police. I have my reputation as a writer and I also have children. I do not intend to destroy myself. Besides, the idea is deeply opposed to my convictions and fills my heart with indignation.384
Despite being a Romanov-funded publication, the magazine was briefly censored for criticising the government response to famines in the provinces, and Meshchersky’s indiscretion with the Tsar’s utterances landed Fyodor in the guardhouse for two days (it was, after all, Fyodor’s name on the masthead). Anna visited to keep him company, as did Maikov and a more recent acquaintance, Vsevolod Soloviev, a serious, religious young man who was convinced that Dostoevsky’s genius was not yet fully understood by his peers. Fyodor passed the two nights quite peaceably, praying with his hands crossed on his breast, reflecting on his prison years. Perhaps I never spent moments more consolatory to my soul than those moments of reflection in the middle of the night on that prison bed. This will perhaps strike the reader as strange, and he may be inclined to set it down to bragging and the desire to be original – and yet it was just as I have said. Yes, those moments were the light of my soul.385
After just over a year as editor of The Citizen, Fyodor decided to hand in his resignation. He had underestimated the stress of editing a weekly magazine, especially one owned by Meshchersky, and the trouble with the authorities had taken its toll on his health. He was constantly catching colds and his lungs were beginning to feel tight. The doctor prescribed compressed air baths, where he and a few other patients would sit under a gigantic metal bell, pressurised by a steam engine, for two hours at a time, three times a week. The treatment helped with the shortness of breath but it meant waking up early, which Fyodor hated. Worse than the toll on his health, he simply didn’t have time to work on fiction. There were two good things to come out of his time as editor of The Citizen, however. First, Fyodor’s column, A Writer’s Diary, had been a huge success – many said it was the best thing in the journal. Second, through his conversations with Varvara the secretary, he had begun to be convinced that the new generation of Populists were not necessarily opposed to Christianity, and indeed from the right perspective the two ideologies might even be complementary.
Fyodor’s relationship with Varvara had been terse, at first, but he had opened up a great deal once he established that she was a Christian. They talked about the Gospels, about realising Christ’s teachings and about the afterlife. He would sometimes treat her to a recitation of Pushkin’s poem ‘The Prophet’, which he knew by heart. He could see the influence of the Westernisers on her, and tried, at opportune moments, to school her about the dangers of turning too far towards the decadence of Europe. When an article about Bismarck and the papacy crossed his desk, he confided to her: ‘They don’t suspect that soon everything will come to an end – all their “progress” and chatter! They have no inkling that the Antichrist has been born, and is coming . . .’386
When Varvara began to object, he slammed his fist down on the desk.
‘The Antichrist is coming! It is coming! And the end of the world is closer than they think!’
Fyodor knew that Varvara had contacts at Notes of the Fatherland and charged her with approaching them discreetly to see whether he might write them a novel. He wanted to speak to the radicals from their own pulpit. This time, it was his conservative friends’ turn to be dismayed, having believed with some justification that Fyodor was now a hardened Slavophile. How could someone go from editing The Citizen, probably the most reactionary journal in Russia, to writing for Notes of the Fatherland ? The truth was that Fyodor refused to subscribe to any readymade ideology and would much rather invent his own. He had always supported some of the stated aims of the socialists, and he had for years been championing Russia’s unique and sacred mission under the Tsar. At different times, all ends of the political spectrum had allowed themselves to believe that he spoke for them, and by this point almost everyone had criticised him as a spokesperson for the enemy. But although Fyodor’s personal philosophy had evolved alongside certain individuals at different times, from Nekrasov to Maikov to Strakhov and now the young Vsevolod Soloviev, he valued his intellectual independence above all else. And what he most wanted to do now was to resign as editor of a right-wing journal to write a landmark novel for the mouthpiece of the radical left.
Fyodor had in mind a new kind of novel that would speak to young people like Varvara. The novel of aristocrats squabbling among themselves was finished. It has said everything that it had to say (superbly in the case of Lev Tolstoy). But that was the last word.387 Instead, Fyodor wanted to write about modern life: broken families, unusual arrangements, the unexplored clashes between different social strata. New characters will appear, unknown to us as yet, and a new ideal; but what sort of characters?388 One may make serious mistakes, exaggerations, misjudgements. But what else can a writer do if he doesn’t want to confine himself to the historical form, and is possessed by a longing for the present?
In April 1874, Nekrasov called on Fyodor and formally invited him to contribute to Notes of the Fatherland. Not only that, he was offering 250 roubles for each signature – a hundred more than Fyodor had received for any of his previous novels. Fyodor said that he would have to run the offer by his wife.
‘I would never have imagined you were under her thumb,’ said Nekrasov.389
Before Fyodor could open his mouth to explain the situation, Anna, who had been eavesdropping in the next room, told him to say yes.
Out of loyalty to Katkov, Fyodor put off giving Nekrasov a firm answer and went to Moscow to give The Russian Herald first refusal. But Katkov didn’t have the money to commit to a big new novel, since he was paying Tolstoy 500 roubles a signature for the serialisation of Anna Karenina.
Tolstoy was the talk of the town, and although Fyodor had never met him, he seemed to be well acquainted with everyone Fyodor knew. Turgenev had known him since the 1850s – their estates weren’t far from one another’s, and they had been shooting together, though they had once quarrelled to the point of almost fighting a duel.8 Strakhov was in regular correspondence with Tolstoy, who considered him a valuable critic. But Count Tolstoy hadn’t deigned to make himself known to Fyodor.
In the summer of 1874, Fyodor travelled alone to the German spa town of Bad Ems – to drink the waters and to observe the English.390 His doctor felt that the climate and the mineral waters there would help his lungs; Fyodor had developed emphysema and was having trouble breathing. Once he was in Europe, he was possessed by the idea of visiting Sonya’s grave, so he took the 600-kilometre train journey to Geneva expressly for the purpose. On arriving, he found that the headstone was already obscured by a cypress that had sprung up in the six years since he last stood on this spot. New life, but not his Sonya. He broke off a pine-scented sprig to give to Anna as a keepsake.
The family spent the winter in Staraya Russa. It was cheaper there; the children liked it; it was easy enough to get to St Petersburg when necessary; and crucially, it was a calm place to write his new novel, The Adolescent. He had tried narrating in the first person as a young man of illegitimate birth, Arkady Dolgoruky. The voice was painfully self-conscious. The aristocratic birth father, Versilov, was one of the ‘superfluous men’ of his generation, but he was also sympathetic and there was depth to explore there. The plot, however, was thrown together too hastily, and the later parts revolved increasingly around the threat of a compromising letter b
eing made public.
Nekrasov was complimentary about the first part as soon as it was published: ‘I got so carried away that I sat up all night reading, and I’m not supposed to do that sort of thing at my age, and with my health what it is.’ Vsevolod Soloviev, too, wrote a glowing review in the Petersburg News under a pseudonym. But when Fyodor next saw Maikov and Strakhov, they were distinctly cool with him. Not a word about my novel, clearly because they didn’t want to pain me. Instead they talked about Tolstoy’s novel, only a little, but with ridiculous enthusiasm.391 He asked why they were so against him publishing in Notes of the Fatherland when their beloved Tolstoy had done exactly the same thing, but Maikov simply frowned and said nothing. At parting, they couldn’t seem to find a good date to meet next.
When Soloviev paid a social call on Fyodor, he found him more than usually preoccupied.
‘Tell me honestly: do I look like I’m jealous of the glory of Lev Tolstoy?’392 Fyodor asked the moment he had stepped over the threshold.
‘I don’t exactly know whether you are jealous of Lev Tolstoy, but you don’t have to be,’ Soloviev replied judiciously. ‘You both have your own ways. There is no competition between you, and therefore no cause for jealousy from your side. Please tell me, who accused you of this?’
‘Yes, accuse is the word,’ Fyodor said, pacing the room. ‘They accuse me, my friends who have known me for a long time, probably about twenty years.’
‘They asked you about it to your face?’
‘Yes, almost. They are so obsessed by the thought that they can’t hide it, and they speak about it all the time,’ Fyodor told him irritably. ‘Well, the thing is I really do feel jealous, but not in that way. It is more about my working conditions.’ He outlined the difficulty of writing for money, always being in a rush to finish. He had recently re-read The Idiot as he and Anna wanted to publish their own edition, and although he found certain scenes that were just as he had planned them, there were others that could have been so much better if he’d had time on his side. Tolstoy, on the other hand, had all the time in the world. ‘He is a wealthy man, he has everything, he doesn’t have to worry about where his next payment is coming. He can take his time writing and improving his works, and that’s very important . . . So yes, I am jealous of him in that way.’
Since he couldn’t do any proper work while he was under the bell having his two-hour compressed-air treatments, he brought Anna Karenina in with him to pass the time. The novel is rather boring and so-so. I can’t understand what they’re all so excited about.393 His life was now arranged around these health treatments, compressed air in the winter and the mineral springs at Bad Ems in the summer. Three of the four weak spots on his lung from the previous summer had healed, but the fourth had got bigger.
It was difficult, leaving Anna and the children, and he worried about them, particularly as Anna was expecting their fourth child. When he caught the steamer, Fedya and Lyuba waved for a long time from the shore, before their pinprick forms turned away to head back to the house. In his first letter, Fyodor asked Anna to write to him every three days, and told her to try to be cheerful. He wrote to remind her to have a bath, to tell her to look after the nanny, and to bathe the children, and she replied that she hadn’t bathed herself or the children in over two weeks.9 The letters were always held up by a day or two, which was perhaps to be expected, since an official at the passport office had revealed the insulting fact that Fyodor was still under government surveillance after all these years.
Fyodor hardly knew anyone in Ems, but he did meet one person he got on with particularly well, through Katkov’s sister-in-law: a poet named Pelageya Guseva. I was at the spa, drinking the waters. She made an impression on me at the first meeting, cast a sort of spell on me. It was a case of fate. I did not choose it – I did not want to love her. My whole soul was in revolt at the fact that this could have happened to me.10 She was a forty-year-old widow, a faded beauty whose tendency to sickly pallor appealed to the old Romantic in Fyodor. She was also an admirer of his writing. They had wonderful conversations together and argued amiably and Fyodor made sure to tell her stories in which his wife featured prominently. When Anna wrote to Fyodor with the bad news that her brother had caught his wife in flagrante, Fyodor composed himself and replied: ‘Just like you, Anya, he’s filled with a sense of duty. He knows that he’s bound by the children.’394
It was just as well that he soon had to return for Anna’s confinement. When the couple were reunited, Fyodor discovered that some miscreant had published a rumour in the Petersburg Gazette that Fyodor was on the brink of death, which had not exactly set Anna at ease – she had telegrammed him immediately and received a response that he was quite well, but the German and Russian had been garbled, causing further confusion. In any case, the birth went well, and on 10 August 1875 they had a son, Alexei. It was a beautiful Indian summer that year and, despite nearly losing a suitcase containing the manuscript of The Adolescent on the way to the steamer, it was a pleasantly uneventful autumn for the family of five in St Petersburg. Fyodor finished correcting the last chapters of the book, which he handed to Notes of the Fatherland to go into their last issue of the year. I see that the novel is a loss, however: it will be buried with full honours amidst universal contempt.395 Readers, it seemed, would rather keep reading books about high passions among the gentry.
Soon after the conclusion of The Adolescent was published, Fyodor bumped into a friend on the street, who immediately began gushing about Part 7 of Anna Karenina, which had also just come out.
‘It’s completely unprecedented. Are there any of our writers who could rival it? Could anyone imagine anything like it in Europe? Is there any work in all our literature in recent years, or even earlier, that could stand next to it?’396
Well, undeniably there was nothing like Tolstoy in Europe – but he was no Pushkin, after all.
Ever since Time was banned and Epoch folded, Fyodor had thought about publishing a journal or diary of some kind again. He had always enjoyed writing feuilletons, whether they were unsigned articles on life in St Petersburg during the 1840s or notes on his travels around Europe with Strakhov; indeed, the most enjoyable part of editing The Citizen had been his Writer’s Diary column, which had received an enthusiastic response from its readers. But what he was planning now was altogether more ambitious, a stand-alone publication that would chart the life of Russia, month by month. You could leave out a great deal and confine yourself to a selection of events more or less characteristic of the moral life of the people, of the personal character of the Russian people at the present moment.397 The idea would be to intersperse recollections from his undeniably eventful life with opinion pieces on court trials and military conflicts, short stories and fables. Everything would be put in with an idea that would illuminate the whole. The very selection of facts will suggest how they are to be understood. And it ought to be interesting even for light reading, apart from its value as a work of reference. It would be, so to say, a presentation of the spiritual, moral, inner life of Russia. I want everyone to buy it, I want it to be a book that will be found on every table. It’s an immense undertaking.398 In 1876 he decided to take up this long-held ambition in earnest.
The owner of the house they rented at Staraya Russa died around this time, and Fyodor bought the two-storey wooden house for 1,150 roubles. At last, he owned a property he could leave to his family. Nestled on one bank of the Pererytitsa River, it had six rooms upstairs, hundred-year-old trees, a garden and an orchard, as well as a stable, an icehouse and a bathhouse. Here, Fyodor worked on A Writer’s Diary, wading into any and every debate with his opinions on belligerents in Europe, ‘the woman question’ and the need for women’s higher education, Jewish people.11 He was the sole author of every word of the issue, and he and Anna published it themselves. Finally, it didn’t matter what the critics said, nor whether he subscribed to a particular tendency, or published in a particular journal; with A Writer’s Diary he was talking dir
ectly to the people. It was an immediate success, and Fyodor soon got an enquiry from a journalist as to whether he had ever considered writing his memoirs. At the moment I’m incapable of doing that. As a result of my falling sickness (which, however, hardly troubles me any more), I have forgotten the plots of my novels. I do remember the general outline of my life.399
He and Anna were perfect collaborators, and their home life was now quite contented. In Staraya Russa, they rented a cow so that the children could have fresh milk every morning, which Fyodor would sometimes have to track down when it wandered off to find its friends. The only source of marital tension was Fyodor’s jealousy, which was particularly pronounced on 18 May 1876, when he received an anonymous letter from a ‘well wisher’, claiming that Anna had been bewitched by a dark stranger. The letter suggested that, if he didn’t believe in the truth of it, he should look at the portrait in her locket. When Anna came in to his study after dinner and sat down beside his desk, he paced around the room heavily.
‘Why are you so gloomy, Fedya?’ she asked.400
He stopped directly in front of her.
‘Do you wear a locket?’ he asked, choking with rage.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Show it to me!’
‘What for? You’ve already seen it many times.’
Dostoevsky in Love Page 20