Itsometimes happens that a hidden characteristic of the age is disclosed, not through any acuteness on the part of the spectator, nor as the result of critical research, but of itself, as it were, and spontaneously. A worn face rises before us, bearing the marks of death, and never again may we gaze into the eyes which reveal the deep psychological life of the soul. It is the dead who greet us, the dead who survive us, and who will come to life again and again in future generations, long after we have ceased to be; those dead who will become the living, only to suffer and to die again.
These self-revelations have always existed amongst men, but among women they were unknown until now, when this tired century is drawing to its close. It is one of the strangest signs of the coming age that woman has attained to the intellectual consciousness of herself as woman, and can say what she is, what she wishes, and what she longs for. But she pays for this knowledge with her death.
Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal was just such a self-revelation as this; the moment it appeared it was carried throughout the whole of Europe, andfurther than Europe, on far-reaching waves of human sympathy. Wherever it went it threw a firebrand into the women’s hearts, which set them burning without most of them knowing what this burning betokened. They read the book with a strange and painful emotion, for as they turned over these pages so full of ardent energy, tears, and yearning, they beheld their own selves, strange, beautiful, and exalted, but still themselves, though few of them could have explained why or wherefore.
It was no bitter struggle with the outer world to which Marie Bashkirtseff succumbed at the age of four-and-twenty; it was not the struggle of a girl of the middle classes for her daily bread, for which she sacrifices her youth and spirits; she met with no obstacles beyond the traditional customs which had become to her a second nature, no obstruction greater than the atmosphere of the age in which she lived, which bounded her own horizon, although in her inmost soul she rebelled against it. She had everything that the world can give to assist the unhindered development of the inner life,—mental, spiritual, and physical; everything that hundreds of thousands of women, whose narrow lives need expanding, have not got,—and yet she did not live her life. On every one of the six hundred pages of her journal (written, as it is, in her penetrating Russian-French style) we meet the despairing cry that she had nothing, that she was ever alone in the midst of an everlasting void,hungering at the table of life, spread for every one except herself, standing with hands outstretched as the days passed by and gave her nothing; youth and health were fading fast, the grave was yawning, just a little chink, then wider and wider, and she must go down without having had anything but work,—constant work,—trouble and striving, and the empty fame which gives a stone in the place of bread.
The tired and discontented women of the time recognized themselves on every page, and for many of them Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal became a kind of secret Bible in which they read a few sentences every morning, or at night before going to sleep.
A few years later there appeared another confession by a woman; this time it was not an autobiography, like the last one, but it was written by a friend, who was a European celebrity, with a name as lasting as her own. This book was called “Sonia Kovalevsky: Our Mutual Experiences, and the things she told me about herself.” The writer was Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who had been her daily companion during years of friendship.
There was a curious likeness between Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal and Sonia Kovalevsky’s confessions, something in their innermost, personal experiences which proves an identity of temperament as well as of fortune, something whichwas not only due to the unconscious manner in which they criticised life, but to life itself, life as they moulded it, and as each was destined to live it. Marie Bashkirtseff and Sonia Kovalevsky were both Russians,[1]both descended from rich and noble families, both women of genius, and from their earliest childhood they were both in a position to obtain all the advantages of a good education. They were both born rulers, true children of nature, full of originality, proud and independent. In all respects they were the favorites of fortune, and yet—and yet neither of these extraordinary women was satisfied, and they died because they could not be satisfied. Is not this a sign of the times?
Thestory of Sonia Kovalevsky’s life reads like an exciting novel, which is, if anything, too richly furnished with strange events. Such is life. It comes with hands full to its chosen ones, but it also takes away gifts more priceless than it gave.
At the age of eighteen Sonia Kovalevsky was already the mistress of her own fate. She had married the husband of her choice, and he had accompanied her to Heidelberg, where they bothmatriculated at the university. From thence he took her to Berlin, where she lived with a girl friend, who was a student like herself, and studied mathematics at Weierstrass’s for the space of four years, only meeting her husband occasionally in the course of her walks. Her marriage with Valdemar Kovalevsky, afterwards Professor of Paleontology at the university of Moscow, was a mere formality, and this extraordinary circumstance brings us face to face with one of the chief characteristics of her nature.
Sonia Kovalevsky did not love her husband; there was, in fact, nothing in her early youth to which she was less disposed than love. She was possessed of an immense undefined thirst, which was something more than a thirst for study, albeit that was the form which it took. Her inexperienced, child-like nature was weighed down beneath the burden of an exceptional talent.
Sonia Krukovsky was the daughter of General Krukovsky of Palibino, a French Grand-seigneur of old family; and when she was no more than sixteen, she had in her the making of a great mathematician and a great authoress. She was fully aware of the first, but of the latter she knew nothing, for a woman’s literary talent nearly always dates its origin from her experience of life. She was high-spirited and enterprising,—qualities which are more often found among the Sclavonic women than any other race of Europeans; she had that peculiar consciousness of the shortness of life,the same which drove Marie Bashkirtseff to accomplish more in the course of a few years than most people would have achieved during the course of their whole existence.
Sonia Kovalevsky’s girlhood was spent in Russia, during those years of feverish excitement when the outbreaks of the Nihilists bore witness to the working of a subterranean volcano, and the hearts and intellects of the young glowed with an enthusiasm which led to the self-annihilating deeds of fanaticism. A few winter months spent at St. Petersburg decided the fate of Sonia and her elder sister, Anjuta. The strict, old-fashioned notions of their family allowed them very little liberty, and they longed for independence. In order to escape from parental authority, a formal marriage was at this time a very favorite expedient among young girls in Russia. A silent but widespread antagonism reigned in all circles between the old and young; the latter treated one another as secret allies, who by a look or pressure of the hand could make themselves understood. It was not at all uncommon for a girl to propose a formal marriage to a young man, generally with the purpose of studying abroad, as this was the only means by which they could obtain the consent of their unsuspecting parents to undertake the journey. When they were abroad, they generally released each other from all claims and separated, in order to study apart. Sonia’s sister was anxious to escape in this way, as she possessed a remarkableliterary talent which her father had forbidden her to exercise. She accordingly made the proposal in question to a young student of good family, named Valdemar Kovalevsky; he, however, preferred Sonia, and this gave rise to further complications, as their father refused to allow the younger sister to marry before the elder.
Sonia resorted to a stratagem, and one evening, when her parents were giving a reception, she went secretly to Valdemar, and as soon as her absence was discovered she sent a note to her father, with these words: “I am with Valdemar; do not oppose our marriage any longer.” There remained no alternative for General Krukovsky but to fetch his daughter home as speedily as possible, and to announce her engagement.
They were accompanied on their honeymoon by a girl friend, who was equally imbued with the desire to study, and soon afterwards Anjuta joined them. The first thing that Sonia and Valdemar did was to visit George Eliot in London; after which Valdemar went to Jena and Munich, while Sonia, with her sister and friend, studied at Heidelberg, where they remained during two terms before going to Berlin. The sister went secretly to Paris by herself.
Arrived at Berlin, Sonia buried herself in her work. She saw no one except Professor Weierstrass, who expressed the greatest admiration for her quickness at mathematics, and did all in his power to assist her by means of private lessons.If we are honest enough to call it by its true name, we must confess that the life led by these two girls, during eight terms, was the life of a dog. Sonia scarcely ever went out of doors unless Valdemar fetched her for a walk, which was not often, as he lived in another part of the town, and was constantly away. She was tormented with a vague fear of exposing herself. Inexperienced as both these friends were, they lived poorly, and ate little, allowing themselves no pleasure of any sort, added to which they were tyrannized over and cheated by their maid-servant. Sonia sat all day long at her writing-table, hard at work with her mathematical exercises; and when she took a short rest, it was only to run up and down the room, talking aloud to herself, with her brains as busy as ever. She had never been accustomed to do anything for herself; she had always been waited upon, and it was impossible to persuade her even to buy a dress when necessary, unless Valdemar accompanied her. But Valdemar soon tired of rendering these unrequited services, and he often absented himself in other towns for the completion of his own studies; and as they both received an abundant supply of money from their respective homes, they were in no way dependent upon each other.
The year 1870 came and went; for Sonia it had been a year of study, and nothing more. Her sleep had become shorter and more broken, and she neither knew nor cared what she ate, whensuddenly, in the spring of the following year, she was sent for by her sister in Paris. Anjuta had fallen passionately in love with a young Parisian, who was a member of the Commune; he had just been arrested, and was in danger of losing his life. Sonia and Valdemar succeeded in penetrating through the line of troops, found Anjuta, and wrote to their father. General Krukovsky came at once, and it was only then that he discovered what his daughters were doing abroad, and learned for the first time that his eldest daughter had been living alone in Paris, for Anjuta had always been careful to send her letters through Sonia, with the Berlin postmark.
Anjuta showed great spirit, and after an interview with Thiers they succeeded in helping this very undesirable son-in-law to escape. Throughout the whole affair their father’s behavior is a rare proof of the nobility of the race from which Sonia sprang. This stern man not only forgave—he also admired his daughters for what they had done. The cold manner and grandfatherly authority with which he had hitherto treated them was superseded by a cordial sympathy such as would have been impossible before. He was much impressed by Anjuta’s passion, but Sonia’s platonic marriage distressed him greatly.
In the year 1874 Sonia took the degree of doctor at Göttingen, as the result of three mathematical treatises, of which one especially, her thesis “On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations,” isreckoned one of her most prominent works. Immediately after this, the whole family assembled on the old estate of Palibino. Sonia was completely worn out, and it was a long time before she was able to resume any severe brain work. Her holiday was cut short by her father’s death a few months later, and the following winter was spent with her family at St. Petersburg. Until now Sonia’s brain was the only part of her which was thoroughly awakened. She had been entirely absorbed in her studies, and had worked with the obstinate tenacity of auto-suggestion, more commonly found in women, especially girls, than in men. Marie Bashkirtseff had done the same, year in, year out; she had worked breathlessly, feverishly, with an incomprehensible, unwearied power of production,—while failing health was announcing the approach of death in her frail young body. Suddenly the end came.
Thousands of girls in middle-class families work themselves to death in the same way. Badly paid to begin with, they lower the prices still more by competing with one another. Others, placed in better circumstances, work with the same insistency at useless handicrafts, while a large number of women of the poorer classes work because they are driven to it by dire necessity. The result is the same in all cases; they lose the power of enjoyment, and forget what happiness means.
Sonia’s stay in St. Petersburg was the occasion of the first great change which took place in her,to be followed later on by many like changes. Mathematics were thrust aside; she did not want to hear any more about them, she wanted to forget them.
Mind and body were undergoing a healing process, struggling to attain an even balance in her fresh young nature. She felt the need of change, she required companionship, and she threw herself into the midst of all social and intellectual pursuits. It was then that the woman awoke in her.
During the period of nervous excitement and sorrow which followed after the death of her beloved father, she had become the wife of her husband, after having been nominally married for nearly seven years. Since then they had drawn closer to one another; and now that her fortune, as long as her mother lived, was not sufficient for her support, she and Valdemar invested their money in various speculations. With true Russian enthusiasm they set to work building houses, establishing watering-places, and starting newspapers, besides lending their aid to every imaginable kind of new invention. The first year all went well, and in 1878 a daughter was born. After that came the crash. Kovalevsky was bitten with the rage for speculation, and although he was nominated Professor of Paleontology at Moscow in 1880, and in spite of all that his wife could do to dissuade him, he took shares in a company connected with petroleum springs in the south ofRussia. The company was a swindle, the undertaking proved a failure, and he shot himself.
Sonia had left him some time before. She knew what was coming, having been warned by bad dreams and presentiments, and as she had lost her influence over him, and was anxious to provide for her own and her child’s future, she left him and went to Paris. Just as she was recovering from the nervous fever to which she succumbed on hearing the news of her husband’s sudden death, she received the summons to go to Stockholm.
The invitation had been sent by the representatives of a Woman’s Rights movement which was then in full swing. It was an exceedingly narrow society of the genuinebourgeoiskind, and as it was to them that she owed her appointment, they were anxious to bind her firmly to their cause. Sonia soon won their hearts by the sociability of her Russian nature, but as one term after the other passed by, she grew more and more weary of it, and whenever her course of lectures was over she hurried away as quickly as possible to Russia, Italy, France, England,—no matter where, if only she could escape out of Sweden into a freer atmosphere. She never looked upon her stay there as anything more than an episode in her life, and she longed to be back in Paris; but the years passed by, and she received no other appointment.
Her lectures at the university began to pall upon her; it gave her no pleasure to be forever teaching the students the same thing in a dreary routine.She needed an incentive in the shape of some highly gifted individual whom she could respect, and whose presence would call forth her highest faculties; but even the esteem in which she held some few people was not of long duration.
Her friendship with Fru Edgren-Leffler dates from this period. It was this lady’s renown as an authoress which roused Sonia’s talent for writing, for her life had been rich in experiences, and never wanting in variety until now, when, in a period of comparative leisure, she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the past. She began by persuading Fru Edgren-Leffler to dramatize the sketches which she gave her, and “The Struggle for Happiness” was the first result of this collaboration. But Sonia soon realized that the honest, simple-minded Swede was not in sympathy with this department of literature; so she wrote a story on her own account, entitled “The Sisters Rajevsky,” which was a sketch of her own youth, followed by an excellent novel called “Vera Barantzova;” after which she began another novel called “Vae Victis,” which was never finished.
Uptill now we have followed this remarkable woman’s life along a clear, though somewhat agitated course; but from henceforward there is something uncomfortable, something strange and distorted about it. It is very difficult for us toascertain the cause of her increasing distraction of mind, and early death, and the difficulty is intensified by the fact that the material contributed by Fru Leffler is poor and contradictory, and also because her work is disfigured by the peculiar inferences which she draws.
I have seen four portraits of Sonia Kovalevsky, and they are all so entirely different that no one would imagine that they were intended to represent the same person. She had none of the fascinating, though irregular beauty of Marie Bashkirtseff, who carried on an artistic cult with her own person. Sonia’s powerful head, with the short hair, massive forehead, and short-sighted eyes of the color of “green gooseberries in syrup,” was placed on a delicate child-like body. Her chief charm lay in her extraordinary liveliness and habit of giving herself up entirely to the interest of the moment; but she was completely unversed in the art of dress, and did not know how to appear at her best; she never gave any thought to the subject at all until she was thirty; and although she paid more attention to it then, she never learned the secret. She aged early, and a celebrated poet has described her to me as being a withered little old woman at the age of thirty. These external circumstances stood more in her way in Sweden, among a tall, fair people, than would have been possible either in Russia or in Paris. Between herself and the Swedish type there was a wide gulf fixed, which allowed no encouragement to thefiner erotic emotions to which she was very strongly disposed; she felt crushed, and her impressionable, unattractive nature suffered acutely from being so unlike the ordinary victorious type of beauty. The picture of her when she was eighteen bears a strong resemblance to the late King Louis II. of Bavaria; not only are her features like his, but also the expression in the eyes and the curve of the lips. The second picture dates from the year 1887. It has something wearied and disillusioned about it, and she seems to be making an effort to appear amiable. It was taken at the time when she was struggling to accustom herself to the stiff, prudish, and somewhat pretentious ways of Stockholm society. The third portrait was taken at the time when she won thePrix Bordinin Paris, and it is a regular Russian face, with a much more cheerful expression than the former ones. But in the last picture, taken in the year 1890, which was, to a certain extent, official and very much touched up, how ill she looks; how disappointed and how weary! These four portraits are, to my mind, four different women; they show us what Sonia was once, and what she became after living for several years in an uncongenial atmosphere.
Sonia Kovalevsky was a true Russian genius, with an elastic nature. She was lavish and careless in her ways, and she thrived best upon a torn sofa in an atmosphere of tea, cigarettes, and profusion of all kinds,—intellectual, spiritual, and pecuniary; she needed to be surrounded by peoplelike herself, who were in sympathy with her, and the inhabitants of Stockholm were never that. She had been torn away from the Russian surroundings in which she had lived in Berlin. She, who never could endure solitude, found herself alone among strangers, who forced themselves upon her,—hard, angular, women’s rights women, who expected her to be their leader, and to fulfil a mission. She seldom rebelled against the duties which were constantly held before her eyes, partly because her vanity was flattered by the public position which she occupied, and also because her livelihood depended upon it, now that her private means were not sufficient for her support, and for the numerous journeys which she undertook.
A great deal of her time was spent in travelling to and fro between Stockholm and St. Petersburg, where she went to visit Anjuta, whose marriage had turned out most unhappily, and who was suffering from a severe illness, of which she afterwards died. After her sister’s death Sonia took a great interest in the study of Northern literature, which was then just beginning to attract attention. She also wrote books, and solved some mathematical problems. Every time that she returned to Stockholm, after spending her holidays in Russia or the South, she had almost entirely forgotten her Swedish, and every year that passed by called forth fresh lamentations over her exile. The tone of society in Stockholm was unendurable to her; but she was of too disciplined a character,and too gentle, too submissive in her loneliness, to rebel against it. Her life became monotonous, which it had never been before, and her courage began to give way. She yearned for sympathy, for excitement, for her native land,—for everything, in fact, which was denied her.
She also longed for something else, which was the very thing that she could not have. She was seized with an eager, nervous longing to be loved. She wanted to be a woman, to possess a woman’s charm. She had lived like a widow for years during her husband’s lifetime, and for years after his death as well. As long as her mathematical studies produced a tension in her mind, she asked for nothing better, but buried herself in her work, and was perfectly contented. When she started being an authoress, a change came over her character. The development of the imagination created a need for love, and because this devouring need could not be satisfied, she became exacting, discontented, and mistrustful of the amount of affection which was accorded her. In her younger days she had asked for nothing more than that curious kind of mystic love, known only to Russians, which had run its course in mutual enthusiasm of a purely intellectual and spiritual character. It was otherwise now. She lamented her lost youth, and the time wasted in study; she regretted the unfortunate talent which had deprived her womanhood of its attractiveness. She wanted to be a woman, and to enjoy life as a woman.
She had also another wish, just as passionate in its way and as difficult of fulfilment as the former one, and this was her wish to receive an appointment in Paris. It was to a certain extent fulfilled when she was awarded thePrix Bordinon Christmas Eve, 1888, on the occasion of a solemn session of the French Academy of Science, in an assembly which was largely composed of learned men. It was the highest scientific distinction which had ever been accorded to a woman, and from henceforth she was an European celebrity, with a place in history. But it gave her no pleasure. She was as completely knocked up as she had been after receiving her doctor’s degree. She had worked day and night for days beforehand, and during the weeks that followed she took part in the social functions which were given in her honor. She left no pleasure untasted, and yet she was not satisfied, for by this time her yearning for love had reached its highest pitch.
A short time before, Sonia had made the acquaintance of a cousin of her late husband’s, “fat M.,” as she called him. The companionship of a sympathetic fellow-countryman put her in the height of good humor, and she soon found it so indispensable that she wanted to have him always at her side, and was never happy except when he was there. M. K. did not return this strong affection; he was, however, quite willing to marry her, and the result was that a most unfortunate relationship sprang up between them. Sonia couldnot exist without him, so they travelled from Stockholm to Russia, and from Russia to Paris or Italy, in order to spend a few weeks together, and then separated, because by that time they were mutually tired of each other. It was on one of these journeys, when Sonia had come out of the sunshine of Italy into the winter of Sweden, that she caught cold, and no sooner had she arrived at Stockholm than she did everything to make her condition worse. In a desperate mood of indifference she immediately commenced her lectures, and went to all the social entertainments that were given. Dark presentiments and dreams, in which she always believed, had foretold that this year would be fatal to her. Longing for death, yet fearing it, she died suddenly in the beginning of the year 1891.
Thosewho know something about Russian women, without having any very detailed knowledge, divide them into two types, and a superficial observer would class Sonia Kovalevsky as belonging to one or the other of these. The first type consists of luxurious, languishing, idle, fascinating women, with passionate black eyes, or playful gray ones, a soft skin, and a delicate mouth, which is admirably adapted for laughing and eating. These women have a most seductive charm; their movementssuggest that they are wont to recline on soft pillows, dresseden négligé, and their power of chattering is unlimited, and varies in tone from the most enchanting flattery to the worst temper imaginable. They are, in fact, the most womanly of women, as little to be depended upon in their amiability as in their anger; they are quick to fall in love, and men are as quickly enthralled by them. But Sonia Kovalevsky was not one of these.
The women of the second type present the greatest contrast that it is possible to imagine. They are honest and straightforward, and essentially what is called “a good fellow,” plain, sensible, brave, energetic, as strong in soul as in body,—thinking heads, flat figures; they have none of that grace of form which is peculiar to a large number of Russian women. Their faces are generally sallow, and their skin is clammy, but thoroughly Russian in spite of it. There is something lacking in them, which for want of a better expression I shall call a want of sweetness. There is a curious neutrality about them; it takes one some time to realize that they are women. And they themselves are but dimly conscious of it, and then only on rare occasions. They are generally people with a mission,—working people, people with ideas.
It is these women who have furnished the largest contingent to the ranks of the Nihilists. It is they who chose to lead the lives of huntedwild beasts, and who found ample compensation in mental excitement for all that they had renounced as women and as persons of refinement. But although this last is a genuine Russian type, it is by no means confined to Russia. It is a type peculiar to the age. The class of women who become Nihilists in Russia are the champions for women’s rights in Sweden, and it is they who agitate for women’s franchise in England, who start women’s clubs in America, and become governesses in Germany.
The type is universal, but it is left to circumstances to decide which special form of mania it is to take,—a form of mania which calls itself “a vocation in life.” In Russia the woman, in whom sex lay dormant, felt it her calling to become a murderess, and that merely from a general desire to promote the popular welfare; in Germany this philanthropic spirit took the form of wishing to prune little human plants in the Kindergarten. But this is a long chapter, which I cannot pursue any further at present, and which, like many others on the characteristics of the woman of to-day, I shall keep for a separate book. We must include Sonia Kovalevsky in this latter type: she considered herself as belonging to it, and the whole course of her life is in itself sufficient to prove that she was one of them. The nature of her friendships with men furnishes us with yet another proof. She had a large circle of acquaintances, amongst whom were some of the best known andmost talented men of Russia, Scandinavia, England, Germany, France, and Italy,—all of whom enjoyed her society, although not one of them fell in love with her, and not one among those thousands said to her, “I cannot exist without you.”
She belonged to the class of women with brains, and she was numbered amongst them. She was their triumphant banner, the emblem of their greatest victory, and their appointed Professor. “She did not need the lower pleasures; her science was her chief delight.” She stood on the platform and taught men, and believed it to be her vocation. Was it not for this that she had toiled during long years of overwork and study, whilst concealing her real purpose under the threadbare cloak of a feigned marriage?
She was a woman of genius with a man’s brain, who had come into the world as an example and a leader of all sister brains.
She was, and she was not! Sometimes she felt that she was, and then again she did not. In her latter years she disclaimed the whole of her former life, and silence reigned among the aggrieved sisterhood whenever her name was mentioned; if these latter years had never been, they would have sent the hat round in order to erect a monument in her memory. But that became impossible; silence was best.
She was a woman. She was a woman in spite of all—in spite of a feigned marriage which lastednearly ten years, in spite of a widowhood which lasted just as long, in spite of her Doctor’s degree and the Professorship of Mathematics and thePrix Bordin—she was a woman still; not merely a lady, but an unhappy, injured little woman, running through the woods with a wailing cry for her husband.
She was far more of a woman than those luxurious, prattling, sweatmeat-eating young ladies whose languid movements lead us to suppose that they have only just got out of bed; she was more of a woman than the great majority of wives, whose sole occupation it is to increase the world, and to obliterate themselves in so doing.
She, who never charmed any man, was more of a woman than the charmers who turn love into a vocation. She was a new kind of woman, understood by no one, because she was new; she did not even understand herself, and made mistakes for which she was less to blame than the spirit of the age, by whose lash she was driven. And when she became free at last, it was too late to map out a future of her own.
Who knows whether it would have been better for her had she been free from the first? A woman has no destiny of her own; she cannot have one, because she cannot exist alone. Neither can she become a destiny, except indirectly, and through the man. The more womanly she is, and the more richly endowed, all the more surely will her destiny be shaped by the man who takes her to behis wife. If then, even in the case of the average woman, everything depends upon the man whom she marries, how much more true must this be in the case of the woman of genius, in whom not only her womanhood, but also her genius, needs calling to life by the embrace of a man. And if even the average woman cannot attain to the full consciousness of her womanhood without man, how much less can the woman of genius, in whom sex is the actual root of her being, and the source from whence she derives her talent and herego. If her womanhood remains unawakened, then however promising the beginning may be, her life will be nothing more than a gradual decay, and the stronger her vitality, the more terrible will the death-struggle be.
That was Sonia’s life. No man took her in his arms and awoke the whole harmony of her being. She became a mother and also a wife, but she never learned what it is to love and be loved again.
AsI write, the air is filled with a sweet penetrating fragrance, which comes from a tuberose, placed near me on the window-sill. The narrow stalk seems scarcely strong enough to support its thick, knob-like head with the withered buds and sickly, onion-shaped leaves. A tuberose is a poorunshapely thing at the best of times, but this plant is unhealthy because it has lived too long as an ornament in a dark corner of the room under the chandeliers, among albums and photographs. It was dying visibly, decaying at the roots, and there was no help for it. Of course it was a rare flower, but it grew uglier from day to day.
They put it on the window-sill, where there was just room for one plant more, and a pot of mignonette was fetched out of the kitchen garden, attired in an artistic ruffle of green silk paper, and placed under the chandelier in its stead. It fulfilled its duty well, and seemed to thrive admirably among the albums, visiting-cards, and photographs. Nobody looked after the tuberose on the window-sill until it suddenly reminded them of its existence by a strong smell, and even then they only cast a hasty glance and noticed how sickly it looked. When I examined it more closely, I discovered three blossoms in full flower, and quite healthy; the stem was bent forward, and the blossoms were pressing against the window-pane, doing their best to catch the rays of the sun as long as the short autumn day lasted. It thrust forth its dying blossoms and renewed itself now that the great warmer of life was shining on, and embracing it.
To me this flower is an emblem of Sonia Kovalevsky.
She was a rare, strange being in this world of mignonette pots and trivialities. Everythingabout her was out of proportion, from her thin little body, with its large head, to the sweet fragrance of her genius. She, too, stood in the place of honor under the chandelier, among fashionable poets and thinkers who wrote and thought in accordance with the spirit of the age; and she, too, sickened, as though she desired something better, and the nervous blossoms which her mind thrust forth grew more and more withered, and the thin stem which carried her stretched more and more towards the greater warmer of life, which shines upon and embraces the just and the unjust,—only not her, only not her!
What was the reason? Why did she get none of that love which is rained down upon the most insignificant women in so lavish a manner by impetuous mankind?
“She was not in the least pretty, that is it,” reply her several women admirers.
But we women know well that it is not the prettiest women who are the most loved, and that, on the contrary, the most ardent love always falls to the share of those in whom men have something to excuse. Barbey d’Aurevilly, the greatest women’s poet, has told us so in his immortal lines.
“She was too old,—that is to say, she aged too early,”—say her women admirers, still anxious to find an explanation.
But that is ridiculous. Sonia Kovalevsky diedat the age of forty, and that is the age when a Parisiangrande mondaineis at the height of her popularity; and as for aging early—! A woman of genius does not grow old as quickly as a teacher in a girl’s school, and the fading tuberose which thrusts forth fresh blossoms has a far sweeter and more penetrating fragrance than her white knob-headed sisters.
“She asked too much,” asserts Fru Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who was of the same age as Sonia, and married at the time when she died; and her entire book on Sonia is founded on the one argument, that she asked too much of love.
But how is it possible? Does not experience teach us that it is just the women who ask most who receive most? Always make fresh claims,—that is the motto of the majority of ladies in society, and with this solid principle to start from they have none of them failed.
“She had everything that a human being can desire,” said that worthy writer, Jonas Lie, in an after-dinner speech. “She had genius, fame, position, liberty, and she took the lead in the education of humanity. But when she had all this it seemed to her as nothing; she stretched out her hand like a little girl, and said, ‘Oh, do but give me also this orange.’”
It was kindly said, and also very true. Father Lie was the only person who understood Sonia, and saw that she remained a little girl all herlife,—a woman who never reached her maturity. But, tell me, dear Father Lie, do you consider love to be worth no more than an orange?
No, these explanations will never satisfy us; they are far too shallow and simple. The true reason lies deeper; it is more a symptom of the time in which she lived than those who knew her will allow. Even so friendly and intelligent an exponent as Ellen Key, her second biographer, does not seem to be aware of the fact that, although Sonia is a typical woman of her time,—typical of the more earnest upholders of women’s rights, and the representative of the highest intellectual accomplishments to which women have attained,—she is also typical of that which the woman of this century loses in the struggle, and of that in which the woman of the future will be the gainer.
If Sonia failed to please,—she whose personal charm was so great, whose vivacity was so prepossessing, as all who knew her declared that it was; if she failed where so many lesser women have succeeded, her failure was entirely due to her ignorance of the art of flirtation,—an art which is as old as sex, and to which men have been accustomed since the world began. Even the most refined, the most highly-developed men, are not geniuses in this matter, where everything has always been most carefully arranged for them. And if they did not fall in love with Sonia, it was due to a kind of purity with which sheunconsciously regarded the preliminaries of love,—a kind of nobility which existed in her more modern nature, and a lack of the ancient instinct which had been a lost heritage to her.
Sonia belonged to a class of women who have only been produced in the latter half of our century, but in such large numbers that it is they who have determined the modern type. We cannot help hoping that they are but transitory, so greatly do their assumptions seem opposed to their sex, and yet they are formed of the best material that the age supplies. They are the women who object to begin life by fulfilling their destinies as women, and who consider that they have duties of greater importance than that of becoming wives and mothers; they are the “clever” daughters of the middle-class families, who, as governesses and teachers, swarm in every country in Europe. The popular opinion about them is that they do not want to marry; and as that, by the majority of men, is interpreted to mean that they are no good as wives, they turn to the herd of geese who are driven yearly to the market, and who go cackling to meet their fate. And although the descendants of such fathers and such mothers present a very small amount of intelligence capable of development, yet it is they who form the majority, and the majority is always right. Formerly, it was people’s sole object to get their daughters married, clever and stupid alike; it was an understood thing. Butnowadays, the ones with “good heads” are set apart to lead celibate lives, while those who are “hard of understanding” are brought into the marriage market. This method of distribution has already become one of the first principles of middle-class economy. The daughters who are considered capable of providing for themselves are given a good education, accompanied by numerous hints as to the large sums which their parents have spent on them; while, together with the inevitable marriage portion, every effort is made to find husbands for the others with as little delay as possible. The first named are “the clever women,” but the latter make “the best wives;” and man’s sense of justice in the distribution of the good things of this life has fixed a stern practical barrier between these two classes.
The intellectual women themselves were originally to blame for raising a distinction which is so essentially characteristic of our time. They were the first to separate themselves, and to force the narrow-mindedbourgeoisto entertain other than the ordinary ideas concerning women. They thrust aside the dishes which were spread for them on life’s table, and grasped at others which had hitherto been considered the sole property of men, such as smoking and drinking. And when it appeared that they were really able to pass examinations and smoke cigarettes, without suffering any apparent harm from either, the spiritof equality, so popular at the present time, was quick to recognize a proof of the equality between man and wife, and to proclaim the equal rights of both, as well as the equality of the brain. They did not mention the other human ingredient, which could never be either equal or identical, because it is always inconvenient to go to the root of a thing, and the arguments of this materialistic century are too superficial ever to go below the surface.
Can it be true that the talented woman has actually forgotten that destiny intended her to be a woman, and bound her by eternal laws? Can it be true that the best women have an unnatural desire to be half men, and that they would prefer to shirk the duties of motherhood? A woman’s stupidity would not suffice to account for such an interpretation; it needs all a man’s thick-headedness; and yet there is no doubt that that is, to a great extent, the popular view of the case. The women whose intellectual abilities are above the average are often those who lay themselves open to the reproach that they have abandoned their sex; and yet, strange to say, some of them have attained to mature womanhood at an exceedingly early age. Sonia, who waspar préférencethe woman of genius of this century, was only nine years old when she flew into a passion of jealousy, caused by a little girl who was sitting on the knees of her handsome young uncle. She bit him in the arm till it bled, merely because shebelieved that he liked the child better than herself; that this was something more than mere childish naughtiness, is shown by the fact that her feelings towards her uncle were so changed that from that moment she felt disillusioned, and treated him with coldness.
Disillusioned! Even in their childhood these women have a strong, though indistinct, consciousness of their own worth as compared to ordinary women. They are always on the watch, and they have a good memory. Unlike ordinary young girls, they do not fall in love with mere outward qualities, nor with the first man who happens to cross their path. They wish to marry some one superior to themselves, and they do not mistake a passing passion for love. Then when the first years of adolescence with their hot impulses are past, and a temporary calm sets in, they experience a new desire, which is that they may enter into the full possession of their own being before beginning to raise a new generation. Physical maturity, which has hitherto been considered sufficient, has placed the need for intellectual and psychical maturity in the shade. They want to be grown-up in mind and soul before entering on life; they do not wish to remain children always; they want to develop all their capabilities,—and this longing for individuality, for which the road has not yet been made clear, nearly always leads them astray into the wilderness of study.
This is certainly the case when they are urged on, as Sonia Kovalevsky was, by a remarkable talent. She was not even obliged to follow the usual weary path of study; richly endowed and favorably situated as she was, she discovered a more direct way than is possible to the majority of girl students. Few have been able to begin as she did at the age of seventeen, under the protection of a devoted husband, and under the guidance of learned men, who took a personal interest in her welfare. Few have finished at the age of twenty-four, and have been loaded with distinctions while in the full bloom of their youth, able to stand on the threshold of a rich, full life, while fortune bid them take and choose whatever they might wish.
Yet these were but hollow joys that were offered to her. Those six years of protracted study left her weak in body and soul, and so weary that she needed a long period of idle vegetation, and she felt an aversion from the very studies in which she had accomplished so much. Sonia had overworked herself in the way that most girls overwork themselves in their examinations, whether it be for the university or as teachers; they work on with persistent diligence, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but going straight ahead as though they were the victims of hypnotic suggestion, with all their energies paralyzed except one solitary organ,—the memory. A man never does this; he interrupts his studies with socialrecreations and by means of a system of hygiene, applied alike to body and soul, from which a woman is excluded, no less on account of her womanly susceptibility than owing to conventional views. During this period of nervous tension, her sex is silent; or if it shows itself at all, it does so only in general irritability.
This was the case with Sonia; but until she became thoroughly engrossed in her work at Weierstrass’s, Valdemar Kovalevsky had a great deal to endure. It was not enough for her that she made him run all kinds of messages, which a servant could have done as well, but she was always going to see him in his bachelor apartments, and planning little excursions, and she was never satisfied unless she could have him to herself. Valdemar did not understand her. He had willingly consented to become the husband, in name only, of an undeveloped little girl, and be respected the distorted ideas of the time, which had got firmly fixed into this same little girl’s head. It is very natural that Sonia should not have understood the situation; it was not her business to do so, it was his. But she was always irritable and vexed after atête-à-têteof any length with him, and long after his death she used scornfully to say: “He could get on capitally without me. If he had his cigarettes, his cup of tea, and a book, it was all that he required.”
Valdemar Kovalevsky, the translator of Brehm’s Birds and other popular scientific works intoRussian, appears to have belonged to that portion of the male sex who are called “paragons.” He drudged diligently, had few wants, always did what was right, and never gave in. But he was in no way suited to Sonia, and the fact of his having agreed to her proposal proves it. After he had gone to Jena to escape from her wilful squandering of his time, an estrangement took place between them, and at Berlin she seems to have behaved as though she were ashamed of him. She was living then, as we have seen, with a girl friend who was a fellow-student of hers; and although she let Valdemar fetch her from Weierstrass’s, she introduced him to no one, and did not let it appear that he was her husband. Afterwards, when she had finished her studies and undergone a long period of enforced idleness at the time when her nerves were shaken by her father’s death, she clung so closely to him that a little warmth came into his stolid nature. But, naturally enough, neither her affection nor the birth of a daughter could change his nature, and even during the short time when they were together at St. Petersburg he allowed an intriguing swindler to come between them. Repulsed, dissatisfied, and saddened, Sonia went to Paris.
She wished to stand alone, and the only way in which this was possible was to turn her studies to account and to work for her own bread. She had given up the wish to be a learned woman; shewanted to be a wife, to be loved and made happy; she had done her best, but it had turned out a failure. It was just about this time that she received an invitation through Professor Mittag-Leffler to be teacher under him in the new high school at Stockholm. He was Fru Leffler’s brother, and a pupil of Weierstrass’s. Sonia gratefully consented, but a fine ear detects a peculiar undertone in the letters with which she responded.
In Stockholm she did not show the womanly side of her character to any one, least of all to Professor Mittag-Leffler, with whom she was on terms of the most cordial friendship. She found herself in very uncongenial surroundings, in a society where life was conducted on the strictest utilitarian principles. It was the worst time of her life, and one from which her impressionable nature never entirely recovered.
Before this, however, while she was in Paris, she had an experience which was truly characteristic of her.
In the interval which elapsed between her separation from her husband and his death, she made the acquaintance of a young Pole, who was, as Fru Leffler tells us, “a revolutionary, a mathematician, a poet, with a soul aglow with enthusiasm like her own. It was the first time that she had met any one who really understood her, who shared her varying moods, and sympathized with all her thoughts and dreams as he did.They were nearly always together, and the short hours when they were apart were spent in writing long effusions to each other. They were wild about the idea that human beings were created in couples, and that men and women are only half beings until they have found their other half....” He was with her by night and day, for he could seldom make up his mind to go before two o’clock in the morning, when he would climb over the garden wall, quite regardless of what people would think. Fru Leffler, who had passed the twenty years of her first marriage in the outer courts of the temple of Hymen, and only learned to know love and the joys of motherhood at the age of forty, alludes to this incident as being “very curious.” Because the two did nothing but talk, talk, talk, revelling in each other’s conversation, and assuring one another that they “could never be united,” because “he was going to keep himself pure” for the girl who was wandering about on this or another planet, and keeping herself for him.
One would imagine that this was childish nonsense, and that a woman of Sonia’s intelligence, with her position in the world, must surely have sent the silly boy about his business as soon as he began to talk in this strain. But no! her soul melted into his “like two flames which unite in one common glow.” And there they sat, nervous and excited, unable to tear themselves away from each other, flinging endless chains of wordsbackwards and forwards across the table, and pouring streams of witticism into Danaïde’s barrel, talking as though life depended upon it, for there must not be any pauses,—anything was better than those dreadful pauses, when one seems to hear nothing but the beating of one’s own pulse, when shy eyes meet another’s, and cold damp hands seek for a corner in which to hide themselves.
We do not know what pleasure the “pure” young mathematician, poet, and Pole could find in this, nor do we care; we leave that to those who take an interest in the ebullitions of model young men of his class. The only part of the situation with which we are concerned is Sonia herself, and she is extremely interesting. In the first place, such a situation as this is never brought about by the man, or, at any rate, not more than once; and a woman cannot be entrapped into it against her will. The silliest schoolgirl knows how to get rid of a troublesome man when she wishes; they all do it brilliantly. It is quite a different matter when she wants him to stay, when she is trembling with excitement, and dreads the moment when he will rise to go. Who is not well acquainted with the situation, especially when the parties concerned are an intelligent girl and a dilettante man? In this case Sonia was the intelligent girl. Her behavior was that of a young lady who is painfully conscious of her own inexperience. A marriedwoman who knows what love is can be calm in the presence of the warmest passion. She knows so well the path which leads astray that she no longer fears the unknown, and uncertainty has no attraction for her.
I shall probably be told that it is the married women who enjoy these situations most. That is quite true. There are many married women for whom marriage is neitherl’amour goût, norl’amour passion, norl’amour savant, nor yet any other love, but a mere mechanical transaction. If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his wife’s love. Not motherhood, but the lover’s kiss, awakes the Sleeping Beauty. And in the Madonna’s immaculate conception the Church has incarnated the virgin mother in a profound symbol, which only needs a psychological interpretation to make it applicable to thousands of every-day cases.
Extraordinary though it may seem, Sonia was on this occasion, as on many other occasions in later life, a woman who experienced desire without being in the least aware of it. She was like a virgin mother who had borne a child without knowing man’s love. Valdemar Kovalevsky, who seems to me to have been incapable of filling any position in life, was certainly not the husband for Sonia, who, as a woman of genius, cannot be judged by the same standard as ordinary women. The average man is certainly not suited to be the husband of an exceptional woman with anoriginal mind and sensitive temperament. But they do not know themselves; for it is in the nature of great talents to remain hidden from their owners, who have a long way to go before they attain to the full realization of their own powers. Only those geniuses whose talents have little or no connection with their individuality are sufficiently alive to their own claims not to fall short in life, and not to allow themselves to be hindered by any natural modesty.
Modesty comes only too naturally to great geniuses. They are conscious of being different from other people, yet when they are compelled to come forward they only do so under protest, and then beg every one’s pardon. The richest natures are the least conscious of their own powers; they are ashamed because they think that they are offering a copper, when in reality they are giving away kingdoms. This is doubly true of the woman who knows nothing of her own powers until the man comes to reveal them to her.
It was the same with Sonia. She was always giving away handfuls,—her mind, her learning, her social gifts; she placed them all at the disposal of others; yet when she, who felt the eternal loneliness which accompanies genius, asked for the entire affection of another, she was told that she asked too much. There can be no agreement between that which genius has the right to ask, and mediocrity the power to give. It wasnot a very strong affection that she had for the young Pole, and, such as it was, it did but intensify her sense of loneliness. It was at Paris that she received the news of her husband’s suicide; and she, who suffered so acutely from every successive death in her family, seemed doomed to receive one blow after another at the hand of fate. She had scarcely recovered from a nervous fever, resulting from the shock, when she was called to Stockholm by the supporters of women’s rights,—to Stockholm, where her soul congealed, her mind was unsatisfied, and where her body was to die.
I shallonly give a hasty sketch of the years that followed. Fru Leffler has given us a detailed account of them in her book on Sonia, and Ellen Key, in her life of Fru Leffler, has made the crooked straight, and has filled in some of the gaps. I shall merely touch upon this period for the sake of those of my readers who are not acquainted with either of the above-mentioned works. These years were about the most lifeless, and, psychologically speaking, the most empty in Sonia’s life. She was called upon to take part in a movement which from its commencement was doomed to fail on account of its narrow principles. The social circle was dividedinto two separate groups, one of which consisted of ladies and dilettante youths, very excitable and full of zeal for reform, but without a single really superior man among them; the other was of an essentially Swedish character, consisting chiefly of men; the “better class” of women were excluded, and drinking bouts, night revelling, club life, song-singing, and easy-going friendship was the rule. These included a few talented people among their number, and expressed the utmost contempt for the other group. For the first time in her life Sonia was made to do ordinary every-day work, and to exert herself after the manner of a mere drudge, or a cart-horse, for payment. Her position rendered her dependent on the moral standard of aclique. With the flexibility of her Russian nature, she renounced the freedom to which she had been accustomed, and devoted herself to her duties as lecturer under a professor. This work soon began to weary her to death. Mathematics lost their charm now that the genius of old Weierstrass was no longer there to elucidate the problems, and to encourage her to do that which women had hitherto been unable to accomplish.
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 peopleat 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 twominuscombine in the attempt to form oneplus. Then as soon as theplusis 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, withoutbeginning 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 understandSonia Kovalevsky, and the fault is chiefly due to Fru Leffler, who wrote of her from the following standpoint:—