A Herzen Reader

"No it is not, Mikhail Semyonovich. I know that you love me and wish me the best. It is painful for me to upset you, but I cannot deceive you: let our friends say what they will, but I will not shut down the printing press. The time will come when they will look differently on the mechanism I have set up on English soil. I will continue to print, and will print without stop­ping. If our friends do not value my activities, it will cause me great pain, but it will not stop me; others will value it, the younger generation, the next generation."

"So neither the love of friends nor the fate of your children matter?"

I took him by the hand and said:

"Mikhail Semyonovich, why do you wish to spoil for me the festive oc­casion of our meeting—I am not going to America, and under the present state of affairs I am not going to Russia either; I will be printing because it is the only way of doing something for Russia, the only means of maintain­ing a living connection with it. If what I print is bad, then tell our friends to send manuscripts—they must feel the lack of free speech."

"No one will send anything," said the already irritated old man; my words had really upset him, he felt a rush of blood to his head and wanted to send for a doctor and leeches.

We did not return to this conversation. Only just before his departure he said sadly, shaking his head:

"You have taken so much joy from me with your stubbornness."

"M. S., let us each follow our own path, and maybe one of them will lead somewhere."

He left, but his unsuccessful mission still fermented inside him, and he, who loved powerfully also angered powerfully, and as he left Paris he sent me a stern letter.¹¹ I read it with the same degree of love with which I threw my arms around him in Folkstone, and followed my own path.

Five years had passed since my meeting with Shchepkin when the Rus­sian press in London again crossed his path. The management of the Mos­cow theaters withheld money from the budget that was due to the actors. That was an age of making claims, and the actors chose Shchepkin as their intercessor in Petersburg. The director at that time was the well-known Gedeonov. Gedeonov began by flatly refusing to issue the past payments, saying that the books had been checked and it was impossible to alter previ­ously made arrangements.

The conversation became more insistent on Shchepkin's part, and, of course, bolder on the side of the director.

"I will have to see the minister," said the actor.

"It's good that you told me. I will report to him about this matter and you will be refused."

"In that case I will submit an appeal to the sovereign."

"You dare take such garbage and push your way to his imperial high­ness? As your superior, I forbid you."

"Your excellency," Shchepkin said, bowing, "you agree that the money belongs to the poor actors. They entrusted me with obtaining it; you have refused and promised a refusal from the minister. I wish to ask the sover­eign, and, as my superior, you have forbidden me. I have only one means left—I will relate the entire matter to The Bell."

"You have lost your mind," shouted Gedeonov. "I wonder whether you understand what you are saying—I will order your arrest. Listen, I will ex­cuse you only because you said this in the heat of the moment. You should be ashamed of making such a commotion over these trifles. Come to the office tomorrow and I will see what can be done."

The following day the money was allocated for the actors, and Shchepkin went home.¹² [. . .]

September 10, 1863

Notes

Source: "Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin," Kolokol, l. i7i, October i, i863; i7:268-74, 458-6i.

Herzen uses the word pravda.

Seventeenth-century Flemish painters.

The Russian army intervened in Hungary in i849 and helped to crush the revolu­tionary movement.

Shchepkin was in the party that accompanied Herzen and his family on the first stage of their journey out of Moscow in i847. Sergey T. Aksakov (i79i-i859) was a writer, theater critic, and the father of two prominent Slavophiles, Konstantin and Ivan, and was deeply respected by Herzen. It was safe to mention the father's name in The Bell since he had also passed away.

A reference to the arrest (April Й49) and trial of a progressive Petersburg circle in the wake of the i848 upheavals in Europe that so frightened Nicholas I; Dostoevsky was accused of having read Belinsky's letter to others in the group. The letter the critic had written to Gogol criticized what Belinsky saw as fawning praise for a repressive regime in Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (i847).