“A HOUSE OF GENTLEFOLK”

In 1859, three years after Rudin, appeared A House of Gentlefolk, in popular estimation the most perfect of Turgenev’s works. This verdict, repeated by many critics, was gained no less by the pathos of Lavretsky’s love story than by the faultless character drawing, the gentle, earnest, religious Liza[16] being balanced against the voluptuous, worldly coquette, Varvara Pavlovna. The story which chronicles how the latter, la belle Madame de Lavretsky, twists her honest, candid husband round her finger, how at length Lavretsky discovers her infidelities, and returns to Russia where he meets and falls in love with Liza, and how, on the false news of his wife’s death, they confess their mutual passion—when their dream is shattered by the dramatic reappearance of Varvara Pavlovna—is characteristic of Turgenev’s underlying sad philosophy.

Both Turgenev’s temperamental melancholy and irony are seconded by, indeed are enrooted in, his calm, piercing perception of the ineffectual struggle of virtue in the vortex of worldly power. All the great literature of all the ages warns us that the world is mainly swayed by force and craft, twin children of human necessity and appetite. Virtue, beautiful in its disinterested impulse, as the love of truth, has always to reckon with the all-powerful law of life, self-interest, on which the whole fabric of society is reared. Goodness is but a frail defence against the designs of force and egoistic craft. We see magnanimity falling before unscrupulousness; while the stupidity of the mass of men is twisted adroitly by the worldly to their own advantage. While Turgenev’s philosophy reinforces the experience of the ages, his pictures of life are distinguished by the subtle spiritual light which plays upon the egoistic basis. In his vision “the rack of this tough world” triumphs, but his peculiarly subtle appeal to our sense of spiritual beauty registers the common earthiness of the triumph of force and evil. That triumph is everywhere; it is a fundamental law of nature that worldly craft and appetite shall prevail, whelming the finer forces, but Turgenev’s sadness and irony, by their beauty of feeling, strengthen those spiritual valuations which challenge the elemental law. His aesthetic method is so to place in juxtaposition the fine shades of human worldliness that we enjoy the spectacle of the varied strands composing a family or social pattern. In the sketch of Lavretsky’s ancestors, for two generations, the pattern is intricate, surprisingly varied, giving us the richest sense of all the heterogeneous elements that combine in a family stock. In the portraits of Varvara Pavlovna’s father and mother we recognize the lines of heredity:

“Varvara Pavlovna’s father, Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, a retired major-general, had spent his whole time on duty in Petersburg. He had had the reputation in his youth of a good dancer and driller. Through poverty he had served as adjutant to two or three generals of no distinction, and had married the daughter of one of them with a dowry of twenty-five thousand roubles. He mastered all the science of military discipline and manoeuvres to the minutest niceties, he went on in harness, till at last, after twenty-five years’ service, he received the rank of a general and the command of a regiment. Then he might have relaxed his efforts and quietly secured his pecuniary position. Indeed this was what he reckoned upon doing, but he managed things a little incautiously. He devised a new method of speculating with public funds—the method seemed an excellent one in itself—but he neglected to bribe in the right place and was consequently informed against, and a more than unpleasant, a disgraceful scandal followed ... he was advised to retire from active duty.... His bald head, with its tufts of dyed hair, and the soiled ribbon of the order of St. Anne, which he wore over a cravat of the colour of a raven’s wing, began to be familiar to all the pale and listless young men who hang morosely about the card-tables while dancing is going on. Pavel Petrovitch knew how to gain a footing in society; he spoke little, but from long habit, condescendingly—though of course not when he was talking to persons of a higher rank than his own.... Of the general’s wife there is scarcely anything to be said. Kalliopa Karlovna, who was of German extraction, considered herself a woman of great sensibility. She was always in a state of nervous agitation, seemed as though she were ill-nourished, and wore a tight velvet dress, a cap, and tarnished hollow bracelets.”

In this incisive little cameo Turgenev has told us everything about Varvara Pavlovna’s upbringing. It is typical of Turgenev’s method, of indicating with sparse, magic touches the couche sociale, so that we see working in the individual the forces that form him as a social type. Varvara Pavlovna, in her arts, is the worldly woman incarnate, sensual in her cold, polished being, in her luxurious elegance, in her inherently vulgar ambition. But Turgenev’s instinctive justesse is shown in the attractiveness of Varvara Pavlovna’s bodily beauty. Remark that the more Turgenev unmasks her coldness and falsity the more he renders tribute to her bodily charm, to the subtle intelligence in her dark, oval, lovely face, with its splendid eyes, which gazed softly and attentively from under her fine brows. She is a worldly syren, lovely and desirable in her sensual fascination. But she is not too discriminating in the choice of her male adorers. His remembrance of all her deceptions stings Lavretsky when in her manoeuvres to be reinstated in society she descends upon him suddenly at O——:

“The first thing that struck him as he went into the entrance hall was a scent of patchouli, always distasteful to him; there were some high travelling-trunks standing there. The face of his groom, who ran out to meet him, seemed strange to him. Not stopping to analyse his impressions, he crossed the threshold of the drawing-room.... On his entrance there rose from the sofa a lady in a black silk dress with flounces, who, raising a cambric handkerchief to her pale face, made a few paces forward, bent her carefully dressed, perfumed head, and fell at his feet.... Then, only, he recognised her: this lady was his wife!

“He caught his breath.... He leaned against the wall.

“‘ThÉodore, do not repulse me!’ she said in French, and her voice cut to his heart like a knife.

“He looked at her senselessly, and yet he noticed involuntarily at once that she had grown both whiter and fatter.

“‘ThÉodore!’ she went on, from time to time lifting her eyes and discreetly wringing her marvellously beautiful fingers with their rosy, polished nails. ‘ThÉodore, I have wronged you, deeply wronged you; I will say more, I have sinned; but hear me; I am tortured by remorse, I have grown hateful to myself, I could endure my position no longer; how many times have I thought of turning to you, but I feared your anger; I resolved to break every tie with the past.... Puis, j’ai ÉtÉ si malade.... I have been so ill,’ she added, and passed her hand over her brow and cheek. ‘I took advantage of the widely-spread rumour of my death, I gave up everything; without resting day or night I hastened hither; I hesitated long to appear before you, my judge ... paraÎtre devant vous, mon juge; but I resolved at last, remembering your constant goodness, to come to you; I found your address at Moscow. Believe me,’ she went on, slowly getting up from the floor and sitting on the very edge of an armchair. ‘I have often thought of death, and I should have found courage to take my life ... ah! life is a burden unbearable for me now!... but the thought of my daughter, my little Ada, stopped me. She is here, she is asleep in the next room, the poor child! She is tired—you shall see her; she at least has done you no wrong, and I am so unhappy, so unhappy!’ cried Madame Lavretsky, and she melted into tears....

“... ‘I have no commands to give you,’ replied Lavretsky in the same colourless voice; ‘you know, all is over between us ... and now more than ever; you can live where you like; and if your allowance is too little——’

“‘Ah, don’t say such dreadful things,’ Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him, ‘spare me, if only ... if only for the sake of this angel.’ And as she uttered these words, Varvara Pavlovna ran impulsively into the next room, and returned at once with a small and very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms. Thick flaxen curls fell over her pretty rosy little face, and on to her large sleepy black eyes; she smiled, and blinked her eyes at the light and laid a chubby little hand on her mother’s neck.

“‘Ada, vois, c’est ton pÈre,’ said Varvara Pavlovna, pushing the curls back from her eyes and kissing her vigorously, ‘prie-le avec moi.’

“‘C’est Ça, papa?’ stammered the little girl lisping.

“‘Oui, mon enfant, n’est-ce pas que tu l’aimes?’

“But this was more than Lavretsky could stand.

“‘In what melodrama is there a scene exactly like this?’ he muttered and went out of the room.

“Varvara Pavlovna stood still for some time in the same place, slightly shrugged her shoulders, carried the little girl off into the next room, undressed her and put her to bed. Then she took up a book and sat down near the lamp, and after staying up for an hour she went to bed herself.

“‘Eh bien, madame?’ queried her maid, a French woman whom she had brought from Paris, as she unlaced her corset.

“‘Eh bien, Justine,’ she replied, ‘he is a good deal older, but I fancy he is just the same good-natured fellow. Give me my gloves for the night, and get out my grey, high-necked dress for to-morrow, and don’t forget the mutton cutlets for Ada.... I daresay it will be difficult to get them here; but we must try.’

“‘A la guerre comme À la guerre,’ replied Justine, as she put out the candle.”

The reader should contrast with the above satiric passage, the summer evening scene in the garden at Vassilyevskoe (chap. xxvi.), where Marya Dmitrievna’s party sit by the pond fishing. The soft tranquillity of the hour, the charm of this pure young girl, Liza, with “her soft, glowing cheeks and somewhat severe profile” as “she looked at the water, half frowning, to keep the sun out of her eyes, half smiling,” the tender evening atmosphere, all are faintly stirred, like the rippling surface of a stream, by a puff of wind, by Liza’s words upon her religious thoughts on death. In this delicate, glancing conversation, Turgenev while mirroring, as in a glass, the growing intimacy of feeling between Liza and Lavretsky, discloses almost imperceptibly the sunken rock on which his happiness is to strike and suffer shipwreck—Liza’s profound instinct of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice. Her sweet seriousness, her slowness of brain, her very lack of words, all appear to Lavretsky enchanting. This scene in the garden, in its tender breathing tranquillity, holds suspended beneath the gentle, flowing stream of the lovers’ happiness, the faint, ambiguous menace of the days to come.

In depicting the contest between Varvara Pavlovna’s worldliness and Liza’s spirituality, how comes it that Turgenev’s parti pris for Liza has not impaired the aesthetic balance? It is because he shows us how Lavretsky’s mistake in marrying this syren has tied his hands. The forces of worldly convention when reinforced by Liza’s religious conviction that Varvara Pavlovna, odious as she is, is still Lavretsky’s wife, are bound to triumph. Accordingly the more the all-pervasive, all-conquering force of worldliness is done justice to, and the more its brilliant, polished appearances are displayed in all their deceptive colours, the greater is our reaction towards spiritual beauty. Therefore Turgenev, with his unerring instinct, intersperses Liza’s sad love story with scenes of the brilliant worldly comedy played between that comme-il-faut pair, Panshin, the brilliant young official from Petersburg, Liza’s suitor, and Varvara Pavlovna.

Turgenev sees through the pretences of his worldly types at a glance. All the inflexions of their engaging manners reflect as in a clear mirror the evasive shades of their worldly motives. He has a peculiar gift of so contrasting their tones of insincerity that the artificial pattern of their intercourse gleams and glistens in its polished falsity. As a social comedy of the purest water, how delightful are the scenes where the foolish Marya Dmitrievna, the old counsellor Gedeonovsky, and Panshin with his diplomatic reserve, are fascinated by the seductive modesty of Varvara Pavlovna (chap. xxxix.). How natural in the interplay of ironic light and shade is the picture of Varvara Pavlovna’s conquest of her provincial audience. Note, moreover, how in art and literature and music, what always thrills these ladies and gentlemen is the polished, insipid, chic morceau. Their talk, their manner, their aspiration are all of the surface, facile, smooth polished, like their scented, white hands, and one listens to their correctly modulated voices exchanging compliments and social banalities, suavely, in the reception room, while beneath this correct surface is self, self and worldly advantage. That is the one reality. The world of beautiful feeling, of disinterested, generous impulse, is on quite another plane; it is as strange and alien to their minds as the peasant’s rough, harsh world of labour. Examine the exact relation Panshin bears to the world in which he is so successfully playing his part:

“Panshin’s father, a retired cavalry officer and a notorious gambler, was a man with insinuating eyes, a battered countenance, and a nervous twitch about the mouth. He spent his whole life hanging about the aristocratic world; frequented the English clubs of both capitals, and had the reputation of a smart, not very trustworthy, but jolly good-natured fellow. In spite of his smartness, he was almost always on the brink of ruin, and the property he left his son was small and heavily encumbered. To make up for that, however, he did exert himself, after his own fashion, over his son’s education. Vladimir Nikolaitch spoke French very well, English well, and German badly; that is the proper thing: fashionable people would be ashamed to speak German well; but to utter an occasional—generally a humorous—phrase in German is quite correct, c’est mÊme trÈs chic, as the Parisians of Petersburg express themselves. By the time he was fifteen, Vladimir knew how to enter any drawing-room without embarrassment, how to move about in it gracefully and to leave it at the appropriate moment. Panshin’s father gained many connections for his son. He never lost an opportunity, while shuffling the cards between two rubbers, or playing a successful trump, of dropping a hint about his Volodka to any personage of importance who was a devotee of cards. And Vladimir, too, during his residence at the University, which he left without a very brilliant degree, formed an acquaintance with several young men of quality, and gained an entry into the best houses. He was received cordially everywhere: he was very good-looking, easy in his manners, amusing, always in good health, and ready for everything; respectful, when he ought to be; insolent, when he dared to be; excellent company, un charmant garÇon. The promised land lay before him. Panshin quickly learnt the secret of getting on in the world; he knew how to yield with genuine respect to its decrees; he knew how to take up trifles with half ironical seriousness, and to appear to regard everything serious as trifling; he was a capital dancer; and dressed in the English style. In a short time he gained the reputation of being one of the smartest and most attractive young men in Petersburg. Panshin was indeed very smart, not less so than his father; but he was also very talented. He did everything well; he sang charmingly, sketched with spirit, wrote verses, and was a very fair actor. He was only twenty-eight, and he was already a Kammer-Yunker, and he had a very good position. Panshin had complete confidence in himself, in his own intelligence, and his own penetration; he made his way with light-hearted assurance, everything went smoothly with him. He was used to being liked by everyone, old and young, and imagined he understood people, especially women: he certainly understood their ordinary weaknesses. As a man of artistic leanings, he was conscious of a capacity for passion, for being carried away, even for enthusiasm, and, consequently, he permitted himself various irregularities; he was dissipated, associated with persons not belonging to good society, and, in general, conducted himself in a free and easy manner; but at heart he was cold and false, and at the moment of the most boisterous revelry his sharp brown eye was always alert, taking everything in. This bold, independent young man could never forget himself and be completely carried away. To his credit it must be said, that he never boasted of his conquests.”

The passage we have cited illustrates Turgenev’s method of so placing in perspective the fine shades of worldliness that their social significance is seen contrasted with the force of spiritual beauty beyond, out of their ken. Panshin cannot but rise in the world, for his polished astuteness is weakened by no feeling of mental integrity, his coldness is impaired by no sympathy with merit which is unsuccessful. In official life as in society Panshin is the type of the arriviste, and his “Western” liberal sympathies, one knows, are part of the flowing tide; otherwise Panshin would not be expressing them. In ten years later the official tide will be flowing the other way, and Panshin, more dignified and stouter, with the Vladimir Cross on his frock-coated breast, will be emphasizing the necessity for severer measures of Governmental reaction. The Panshins are legion.

To reveal Panshin’s essence in his actions Turgenev employs but a single stroke—Panshin’s spitefulness to the old music-master, Lemm, a musician of genius, but solitary, poor and despised because “he did not know how to set about things in the right way, to gain favour in the right place, and to make a push at the right moment.” Lemm has composed for his pupil, Liza, a religious cantata. Panshin has seen the score, inscribed “For you alone,” and for the pleasure of mortifying the old man who has called him a dilettante, he twits Lemm about the composition, thereby betraying the young girl’s confidence:

“... Liza’s eyes were fixed directly on Panshin, and expressed displeasure. There was no smile on her lips, her whole face looked stern and even mournful.

“‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

“‘Why did you not keep your word?’ she said. ‘I showed you Christopher Fedoritch’s cantata on the express condition that you said nothing about it to him.’

“‘I beg your pardon, Lisaveta Mihalovna, the words slipped out unawares.’

“‘You have hurt his feelings and mine too. Now he will not trust even me.’

“‘How could I help it, Lisaveta Mihalovna? Ever since I was a little boy I could never see a German without wanting to tease him.’

“‘How can you say that, Vladimir Nikolaitch? This German is poor, lonely, and broken-down—have you no pity for him? Can you wish to tease him?’

“Panshin was taken aback.

“‘You are right, Lisaveta Mihalovna,’ he declared. ‘It’s my everlasting thoughtlessness that’s to blame. No, don’t contradict me; I know myself. So much harm has come to me from my want of thought. It’s owing to that failing that I am thought to be an egoist.’

“Panshin paused. With whatever subject he began a conversation, he generally ended by talking of himself, and the subject was changed by him so easily, so smoothly and genially, that it seemed unconscious.”

Thus delicately Turgenev indicates the impassable spiritual gulf between Panshin and the pure, serious Liza. It is an illustration of Turgenev’s genius in disclosing life as a constantly growing, changing phenomenon. His artistic synthesis reproduces all the hesitating inflexions in Liza’s feeling, and soon the interest that, as an inexperienced girl, she takes in Panshin’s attentions will fade before the mounting wave of Lavretsky’s love.

The sequel our readers have divined, if they do not already know A House of Gentlefolk. We have seen above how Varvara Pavlovna’s return from the void, blights Lavretsky’s future; and now through the closing chapters, xliii. to xlv., of the worldly comedy of her social rehabilitation, sounds the low, piercing note of Liza’s renunciation. For her the convent, for Lavretsky henceforward his unavailing memories. It is the idealistic girl, who at the Church’s behest, immolates herself and the man she loves on the altar of her religion. And Varvara Pavlovna is left softly smiling at Lavretsky’s inner misery; and “the day after his departure, Panshin appeared at Lavricky, the lofty apartments of the house, and even the garden re-echoed with the sound of music, singing and lively French talk—and Panshin, when he took leave of Varvara Pavlovna, warmly pressing her lovely hands, promised to come back very soon—and he kept his word.”

It is life, and to those who rebel against the innocent bearing the sorrow of renunciation, Turgenev addresses the beautiful Epilogue in which we see Lavretsky, years later, revisiting the house of Marya Dmitrievna now dead and gone, and sitting alone in the room where he had so often looked at Liza, he hears the happy laughter of the young, careless people, the young generation, ringing in the sunlit garden:

“Lavretsky quietly rose and quietly went away; no one noticed him, no one detained him; the joyous cries sounded more loudly in the garden behind the thick green wall of high lime trees. He took his seat in the carriage and bade the coachman drive home and not hurry the horses.... They say, Lavretsky visited that convent where Liza had hidden herself—that he saw her. Crossing over from choir to choir, she walked close past him, moving with the even, hurried, but meek walk of a nun; and she did not glance at him; only the eyelashes on the side towards him quivered a little, only she bent her emaciated face lower, and the fingers of her clasped hands, entwined with her rosary, were pressed still closer to one another. What were they both thinking? What were they feeling? Who can know? Who can say? There are such moments in life, there are such feelings.... One can but point to them—and pass by.”

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VI
“ON THE EVE”