Part 4

For some time she struggled on through thick and thin, without however sinking low enough to give her superiors no longer any cause to shake their heads or to admonish her. Lively, witty, and unassuming, the task of entertaining people at their social gatherings fell to her share, and she bore the weight of it without a murmur, until her wasted amiability resulted in an undue familiarity in the circle of her admirers, of both sexes, causing her much vexation. When the first excitement of novelty was passed, she devoted herself chiefly to her true but stolid friend, Anne Charlotte Leffler. It was one of those friendships which are getting to be very common now that women are becoming intellectual; it was not the result of any deep mutual sympathy, nor was it formed out of the fulness of their lives, but rather from the consciousness that there was something lacking, as when two _minus_ combine in the attempt to form one _plus_. Then as soon as the _plus_ is there, all interest in one another, and all mutual sympathy is a thing of the past, as it proved in this case, when the Duke of Cajanello appeared on Fru Leffler’s horizon, and she afterwards, in the honeymoon of her happiness, possibly with the best of intentions, but with very little tact or sympathy, wrote her obituary book on Sonia.

One of the results of this friendship was a series of unsuccessful literary attempts, for which the material was provided by Sonia, and dramatized by Fru Leffler. The latter tried to put Sonia’s psychological, intuitive experiences into a realistic shape, and the result was, as might be expected, a failure. Sonia was a mystic, whose whole being was one indistinct longing, without beginning and without end; Fru Leffler was an enlightened woman, daughter of a college rector, “who worked incessantly at her own development.” Even while the work of collaboration was in progress, a slight friction began to make itself felt between the two friends. Fru Leffler was vexed at having, as she expressed it, “repudiated her own child” in the story called “Round about Marriage,” in which she attempted to describe the lives of women who remain unmarried. The storms raised by Sonia’s vivid imagination oppressed her, and imported a foreign element into her sober style, resulting in long padded novels, which were too ambitious, and had a false ring about them. Her influence on Sonia produced the opposite result. Sonia saw that Fru Leffler was less talented than she had supposed, and this made her place greater confidence in her own merits as an author. She began to write a story of her own youth, called “The Sisters Rajevsky,” which we have already mentioned, followed by a story about the so-called Nihilists, “Vera Barantzova;” both these books displayed a wider experience, and contained the promise of greater things than any of the contemporaneous literature by women, but they did not receive the recognition which they deserved, because nobody understood the characters which she depicted.

Up till now there has been a fundamental error in all the attempts made to understand Sonia Kovalevsky, and the fault is chiefly due to Fru Leffler, who wrote of her from the following standpoint:--

“I am great and you are great, We are both equally great.”

Sonia and her biographer are by no means “equally great.” To compare Fru Leffler to Sonia is like comparing a nine days’ wonder to an eternal phenomenon. One is an ordinary woman with a carefully cultivated talent, while the other is one of those mysteries who, from time to time, make their appearance in the world, in whom nature seems to have overstepped her boundaries, and who are created to live lonely lives, to suffer and to die without having ever attained the full possession of their own being.

In the year 1888, at the age of thirty-eight, Sonia learned for the first time to know the love which is a woman’s destiny. M. K. was a great, heavy Russian boyar, who had been a professor, but was dismissed on account of his free-thinking views. He was a dissipated man and rich, and had spent his time in travelling since he left Russia. He was no longer young, like the Duke of Cajanello. A few years older than Sonia, he was one of those complacent, self-centred characters who have never known what it is to long for sympathy, who are totally devoid of ideals, and are not given to vain illusions. Comparatively speaking, an older woman always has a better chance with a man younger than herself, and there was nothing very surprising in the love which the young and insignificant Duke bestowed on Fru Leffler. With Sonia it was quite different. The boyar had already enjoyed as many of the good things of this world as he desired; he was both practical and sceptical, the kind of man whom women think attractive, and who boast that they understand women. I am not at liberty to mention his name, as he is still alive and enjoys good health. He was interested in Sonia, as much as he was capable of being interested in any one, because she was a compatriot to be proud of, and he also liked her because she was good company, but Sonia never acquired all the power over him which she should have had. He was not like a susceptible young man who is influenced by the first woman who has really given him the full passion of her love. The long-repressed love which was now lavished upon him by the woman who was no longer young had none of the surprise of novelty in it, not even the unexpected treasure of flattered vanity. He accepted it calmly, and never for a moment did he allow it to interfere with his mode of life. Even though he had no wife, his bachelor’s existence had never lacked the companionship of women. Sonia should occupy the position of wife, but an ardent lover it was no longer in his power to be.

The conflict points plainly to a double rupture between them,--the one internal and the other external,--both brought about by the spirit of the age.

Sonia’s womanhood had awakened in her the first time they met, and he became her first love. She loved him as a young girl loves, with a trembling and ungovernable joy at finding all that had hitherto been hidden in herself; she rejoiced in the knowledge that he was there, that she would see him again to-morrow as she had seen him to-day, that she could touch him, hold him with her hands. She lived only when she saw him; her senses were dulled when he was no longer there. It was then that Stockholm became thoroughly hateful to her; it seemed to hold her fast in its clutches, to crush the woman in her, and to deprive her of her nationality. He represented the South,--the great world of intellect and freedom; but above all else, he was home, he was Russia! He was the emblem of her native land; he had come speaking the language in which her nurse had sung to her, in which her father and sister and all the loved and lost had spoken to her; he was her hearth and home in the dreary world. But more than all this, he was the only man capable of arousing her love.

But if she took a short holiday and followed him to Paris and Italy, his cold greeting was sure to chill her inmost being, and instead of the comfort which she had hoped to find in his love and sympathy, she was thrown back upon herself, more miserable and disappointed than before.

Her spirits were beginning to give way. It seemed as though the world were growing empty around her and the darkness deepening, while she stood in the midst of it all, alone and unprotected. But what drove matters to a climax was that their most intimate daily intercourse took place just at the time when she was in Paris working hard, and sitting up at nights. When she was awarded the _Prix Bordin_ on Christmas Eve, 1888, in the presence of the greatest French mathematicians, she forgot that she was a European celebrity, whose name would endure forever and be numbered among the women who had outstripped all others; she was only conscious of being an overworked woman, suffering from one of those nervous illnesses when white seems turned to black, joy to sorrow,--enduring the unutterable misery caused by mental and physical exhaustion, when the night brings no rest to the tortured nerves. As is always the case with productive natures under like circumstances, her passions were at their highest pitch, and she needed sympathy from without to give relief. It was then that she received an offer of marriage from the man whom she loved; but she was too well aware of the gulf which lay between his gentlemanly bearing and her devouring passion to accept it, and determined that since she could not have all she would have nothing. It may be that she was haunted by the recollection of her first marriage, or she may have been influenced by the woman’s rights standpoint which weighs as in a scale: For so and so many ounces of love, I must have so and so many ounces of love and fidelity; and for so and so many yards of virtuous behavior, I have a right to expect exactly the same amount from him.

It happened, however, that the man in question would not admit of such calculations, and Sonia went back to Stockholm and her hated university work with the painful knowledge of “never having been all in all to anybody.” After a time she began to realize that love is not a thing which can be weighed and measured. She now concentrated her strength in an attempt to free herself from her work at Stockholm, which had been turned into a life-long appointment since she won the _Prix Bordin_; she longed to get away from Sweden, where she felt very lonely, having no one to whom she could confide her thoughts. She had some hopes of being given an honorary appointment as a member of the Imperial Russian Academy, which would place her in a position of pecuniary independence, with the liberty to reside where she pleased. But when she returned to her work at Stockholm in the beginning of the year 1891, after a trip to Italy in company with the man whom she loved, it was with the conviction, grown stronger than ever, of not being able to put up with the loneliness and emptiness of her existence any longer, and with the determination of throwing everything aside and accepting his proposal.

She came to this decision while suffering from extreme weariness. Her Russian temperament was very much opposed to the manner of her life for the last few years. Her spirits, which wavered between a state of exaltation and apathy, were depressed by a regular routine of work and social intercourse, and she was never allowed the thorough rest which she so greatly needed. In one year she lost all who were dear to her; and though dissatisfied with her own life, she was able to sympathize deeply with her beloved sister Anjuta, whose proud dreams of youth were either doomed to destruction, or else their fulfilment was accompanied with disappointment, while she herself was dying slowly, body and soul. Life had dealt hardly with both these sisters. When Sonia travelled home for the last time, after exchanging the warm, cheerful South for the cold, dismal North, she broke down altogether. Alone and over-tired as she always was on these innumerable journeys, which were only undertaken in order to cure her nervous restlessness, her spirits were no longer able to encounter the discomforts of travel, and she gave way. The perpetual changes, whether in rain, wind, or snow, accompanied by all the small annoyances, such as getting money changed, and finding no porters, overpowered her, and for a short time life seemed to have lost all its value. With an utter disregard for consequences, she exposed herself to all winds and weathers, and arrived ill at Stockholm, where her course of lectures was to begin immediately. A heavy cold ensued, accompanied by an attack of fever; and so great was her longing for fresh air, that she ran out into the street on a raw February day in a light dress and thin shoes.

Her illness was short; she died a couple of days after it began. Two friends watched beside her, and she thanked them warmly for the care they took of her,--thanked them as only strangers are thanked. They had gone home to rest before the death-struggle began, and there was no one with her but a strange nurse, who had just arrived. She died alone, as she had lived,--died, and was buried in the land where she had not wished to live, and where her best strength had been spent.

VII

There is yet another picture behind the one depicted in these pages. It is large, dark, and mysterious, like a reflection in the water; we see it, but it melts away each time we try to grasp it.

When we know the story of a person’s life, and are acquainted with their surroundings and the conditions under which they have been brought up; when we have been told about their sufferings, and the illness of which they died, we imagine that we know all about them, and are able to form a more or less correct portrait of them in our mind’s eye, and we even think that we are in a position to judge of their life and character. There is scarcely any one whose life is less veiled to the public gaze than Sonia Kovalevsky’s. She was very frank and communicative, and took quite a psychological interest in her own character; she had nothing to conceal, and was known by a large number of people throughout Europe. She lived her life before the eyes of the public, and died of inflammation of the lungs, brought on by an attack of influenza.

Such was Sonia Kovalevsky’s life as depicted by Fru Leffler, in a manner which reveals a very limited comprehension of her subject; the chief thing missing is the likeness to Sonia.

This sketch was afterwards corrected and completed with great sympathy and delicacy by Ellen Key, but she has also failed to catch the likeness of Sonia Kovalevsky.

And mine--written as it is with the full consciousness of being better able to understand her than either of these two, partly on account of the impressions left by my own half-Russian childhood; partly, too, because in some ways my temperament resembles hers--my sketch, although it is an analysis of her life, is not Sonia Kovalevsky.

She is still standing there, supernaturally great, like a shadow when the moon rises, which seems to grow larger the longer one looks at it; and as I write this, I feel as though she were as near to me as a body that one knocks up against in the dark. She comes and goes. Sometimes she appears close beside me sitting on the flower-table, a little bird-like figure, and I seem to see her quite distinctly; then, as soon as I begin to realize her presence, she has gone. And I ask myself,--Who is she? I do not know; she did not know it herself. She lived, it is true, but she never lived her own, real, individual life.

She remains there still,--a form which came out of the darkness and went back into the same. She was a thorough child of the age in every little characteristic of her aimless life; she was a woman of this century, or rather, she was what this century forces a woman to be,--a genius for nothing, a woman for nothing, ever struggling along a road which leads to nowhere, and fainting on the way as she strives to attain a distant mirage. Tired to death, and yet afraid to die, she died because the instinct for self-preservation forsook her for the space of a single instant; died only to be buried under a pile of obituary notices, and forgotten for the next novelty. But behind them all she stands, an immortal personality, hot and volcanic as the world’s centre, a thorough woman, yet more than a woman. Her brain rose superior to sex, and learned to think independently, only to be dragged down again and made subservient to sex; her soul was full of mysticism, conscious of the Infinite existing in her little body, and out of her little body again soaring up towards the Infinite,--a one day’s superficial consciousness which allowed itself to be led astray by public opinion, yet possessing, all the while, a sub-consciousness, which, poetically viewed, clung fast to the eternal realities in her womanly frame, and would not let them rise to the brain, which, freed from the body, floated in empty space. Hers was a queenly mind, feeding a hundred beggars at her board,--giving to all, but confiding in none.

Ellen Key once said to me: “When she shook hands, you felt as if a little bird with a beating heart had fluttered into your hand and out again.” And another friend, Hilma Strandberg, a young writer of great promise, whose after career belied its commencement, said, after her first meeting with Sonia, that she had felt as though the latter’s glance had pierced her through and through, after which she seemed to be dissecting her soul, bit by bit, every bit vanishing into thin air; this psychical experience was followed by such violent bodily discomfort that she almost fainted, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she managed to get home.

Both these descriptions prove that Sonia’s hands and eyes were the most striking part of her personality. Many anecdotes are told about her penetrating glance, but this is the only one which mentions her hands, although it is true that Fru Leffler remarked that they were very much disfigured by veins. But this one is sufficient to complete a picture of her which I remember to have seen: she has a slender little child’s body, and her hands are the hands of a child, with nervous, crooked little fingers, anxiously bent inwards; and in one hand she clasps a book, with such visible effort that it makes one’s heart ache to look at her.

The hands often afford better material for psychological study than the face, and they give a deeper and more truthful insight into the character because they are less under control. There are people with fine, clever faces, whose hands are like sausages,--fleshy and veinless, with thick stumpy fingers which warn us to beware of the animated mask. And there are round, warm, sensuous faces, with full, almost thick lips, which are obviously contradicted by pale, blue-veined, sickly-looking hands. The momentary amount of intellectual power which a person has at his disposal can change the face, but the hands are of a more physical nature, and their speech is a more physical one. Sonia’s face was lit up by the soul in her eyes, which bore witness to the intense interest which she took in everything that was going on around her; but the weak, nervous, trembling little hands told of the unsatisfied, helpless child, who was never to attain the full development of her womanhood.

II

_Neurotic Keynotes_

I

Last year there was a book published in London with the extraordinary title of “Keynotes.” Three thousand copies were sold in the course of a few months, and the unknown author became a celebrity. Soon afterwards the portrait of a lady appeared in “The Sketch.” She had a small, delicate face, with a pained and rather tired expression, and a curious, questioning look in the eyes; it was an attractive face, very gentle and womanly, and yet there was something disillusioned and unsatisfied about it. This lady wrote under the pseudonym of George Egerton, and “Keynotes” was her first book.

It was a strange book! too good a book to become famous all at once. It burst upon the world like the opening buds in spring, like the cherry blossom after the first cold shower of rain. What can have made this book so popular in the England of to-day, which is as totally devoid of all true literature as Germany itself? Was it only the writer’s strong individuality, which each successive page impressed upon the reader’s nerves more vividly and more painfully than the last? The reader, did I say? Yes, but not the male reader. There are very few men who have a sufficiently keen appreciation for a woman’s feelings to be able to put their own minds and souls into the swing of her confession, and to accord it their full sympathy. Yet there are such men. We may perhaps come across two or three of them in a lifetime, but they disappear from our sight, as we do from theirs. And they are not readers. Their sympathy is of a deeper, more personal character, and as far as the success of a book is concerned, it need not be taken into consideration at all.

“Keynotes” is not addressed to men, and it will not please them. It is not written in the style adopted by the other women Georges,--George Sand and George Eliot,--who wrote from a man’s point of view, with the solemnity of a clergyman or the libertinism of a drawing-room hero. There is nothing of the man in this book, and no attempt is made to imitate him, even in the style, which springs backwards and forwards as restlessly as a nervous little woman at her toilet, when her hair will not curl and her stay-lace breaks. Neither is it a book which favors men; it is a book written against them, a book for our private use.

There have been such books before; old-maid literature is a lucrative branch of industry, both in England and Germany (the two most unliterary countries in Europe), and that is probably the reason why the majority of authoresses write as though they were old maids. But there are no signs of girlish prudery in “Keynotes;” it is a liberal book, indiscreet in respect of the intimacies of married life, and entirely without respect for the husband; it is a book with claws and teeth ready to scratch and bite when the occasion offers,--not the book of a woman who married for the sake of a livelihood, but the book of a devoted wife, who would be inseparable from her husband if only he were not so tiresome, and dull, and stupid, such a thorough man, insufferable at times, and yet indispensable as the husband always is to the wife.

And it is the book of a gentlewoman!

We have had tell-tale women before, but Heaven preserve us! Fru Skram is a man in petticoats; she speaks her mind plainly enough,--rather too plainly to suit my taste. “Gyp,” a distinguished Frenchwoman, has written “Autour du Mariage,” and she cannot be said to mince matters either. But here we have something quite different; something which does not in the least resemble Gyp’s frivolous worldliness or Amalie Skram’s coarseness. Mrs. Egerton would shudder at the thought of washing dirty linen in public, and she could not, even if she were to force herself, treat the relationship between husband and wife with cynical irony, and she does not force herself in the very least.

She writes as she really is, because she cannot do otherwise. She has had an excellent education, and is a lady with refined tastes, with something of that innocence of the grown woman which is almost more touching than a girl’s innocence, because it proves how little of his knowledge of life in general, and his sex in particular, the Teutonic husband confides to his wife. She stands watching him,--an eating, loving, smoking organism. Heavens! how wearisome! So loved, and yet so wearisome! It is unbearable! And she retreats into herself, and realizes that she is a woman.

It is almost universal amongst women, especially Germans, that they do not take man as seriously as he likes to imagine. They think him comical,--not only when they are married to him, but even before that, when they are in love with him. Men have no idea what a comical appearance they present, not only as individuals, but as a race. The comic part about a man is that he is so different from women, and that is just what he is proudest of. The more refined and fragile a woman is, the more ridiculous she is likely to find the clumsy great creature who takes such a roundabout way to gain his comical ends.