Novels, Tales, Journeys

Imagine my amazement when I learned of your departure for the country. Seeing Princess Olga alone, I thought you were unwell, and did not want to believe her words. The next day I received your letter. I congratulate you, my angel, on your new way of life. I’m glad you like it. Your complaints about your former position moved me to tears, but seemed much too bitter to me. How can you compare yourself with wards and demoiselles de compagnie? Everybody knows that Olga’s father owed everything to yours and that their friendship was as sacred as the closest family ties. You seemed pleased with your lot. I never supposed there was so much touchiness in you. Confess: Is there not some other, secret reason for your hasty departure? I suspect…but you are playing modest with me, and I’m afraid to anger you in absentia with my guesses.

What can I tell you about Petersburg? We’re still at our dacha, but almost everyone has already gone. The balls will begin in some two weeks. The weather is fine. I walk a great deal. The other day we had guests for dinner—one of them asked whether I had any news of you. He said that your absence at the balls is noticeable, like a broken string in a piano—and I agree with him completely. I keep hoping that this fit of misanthropy will not last long. Come back, my angel; otherwise I will have no one to share my innocent observations with this winter, and no one to whom I can pass on the epigrams of my heart. Good-bye, my dear—think it over, and think better of it.

Krestovsky Island2

3. LIZA TO SASHA

Your letter has comforted me greatly. It reminded me so vividly of Petersburg, it was as if I could hear you! How ridiculous your eternal suppositions are! You suspect some deep, secret feelings in me, some unhappy love—is it not so? Rest assured, my dear, you’re mistaken: I resemble a heroine only in that I live in the deep countryside and pour tea like Clarissa Harlowe.3

You say you will have no one to whom you can pass on your satirical observations this winter—but what about our correspondence? Write to me everything you notice; I repeat to you that I have not renounced society altogether, that everything concerning it interests me. In proof of that I ask you to write about who it is that finds my absence so noticeable. Is it not our amiable babbler Alexei R.? I’m sure I’ve guessed right…My ears were ever at his service, and that was just what he needed.

I’ve made the acquaintance of the * * * family. The father is a banterer and the soul of hospitality; the mother is a fat, merry woman, a great lover of whist; the daughter—a slender, melancholy girl of about seventeen, brought up on novels and fresh air. She spends all day in the garden or in the fields with a book in her hands, surrounded by yard dogs, talks in singsong about the weather, and with great feeling treats you to preserves. I have discovered that she has a whole bookcase full of old novels. I intend to read them all, and have started with Richardson. One must live in the country to have the possibility of reading the much-praised Clarissa. I began, God help me, with the translator’s preface and, finding assurance in it that, while the first six parts were a bit boring, the last six would fully reward the reader’s patience, I bravely set about it. I read one volume, a second, a third—finally got as far as the sixth—boring, much too much. Well, I thought, now I’ll be rewarded for my pains. What then? I read about the death of Clarissa, the death of Lovelace, and that was it. Each volume consisted of two parts, and I had not noticed the transition from the six boring ones to the six interesting ones.

Reading Richardson gave me an occasion to reflect. What a terrible difference between the ideals of grandmothers and of granddaughters! What do Lovelace and Adolphe have in common?4 Yet the role of women does not change. Except for a few ceremonious curtsies, Clarissa is exactly like the heroine of the latest novels. Perhaps it is because the ways of pleasing, in a man, depend on fashion, on momentary opinion…while in women they are based on feeling and nature, which are eternal.

You see: I chatter away with you as usual. Don’t you be skimpy in these postal conversations. Write to me as often as you can and as much as you can: you cannot imagine what it means to wait for mail day in the country. Waiting for a ball cannot compare with it.

4. SASHA’S REPLY