I.

HE WAS BORN IN 1821 in a hospital at Moscow. Implacable Fate decreed that his eyes should first open on scenes exasperated by the greatest misfortunes. His father, a retired military doctor, was attached to that establishment. His family belonged to that class of “nobility” which furnish the vast army of petty officials, and like nearly all of them, he had a small property and a few serfs, in the province of Tula. The boy was often taken there, and these first impressions of the countryside will from time to time appear in his works, but not often, and always curtailed. Contrary to most Russian writers, who as a rule are fond of the country and invariably return to scenes connected with the localities in which they grew up, Dostoyevsky only refers to them casually. Psychologically this is no loss, for to his human soul the suburbs of great towns and their miserable streets are the “green fields” of his choice. When recalling these days of his childhood, the time when particular impressions are first made, it is not the memories of peaceful woods and open skies that will influence the writer’s imagination, but the garden of the poor-house, the uniformed patients in their brown coats and white caps, the mild games played by the “humiliated” and “outraged.”

Michael Dostoevsky, ca. 1847. From Letters (Chatto 1914).

The doctor was in bad circumstances and had many children. After the two eldest, Michael and Feodor, had spent some time at a school in Moscow, the father obtained a nomination for them to the College of Military Engineers at St. Petersburg. These two brothers, further united by the same love of literature, were always the best of friends. They supported each other in all the great crises of their lives. The letter written to Michael finds the best place in the volume of Correspondence which tells all about the private life of Feodor. Both boys found themselves very much out of place in this technical college, which for them took the place of a university. Dostoyevsky had no classical education. It would have given him the polish and sedateness acquired by an early acquaintance with literature. He made up for it, whether for good or evil, by devouring Pushkin and Gogol and the French novels, Balzac, Eugène Sue, and George Sand, all which seem to have had a great ascendancy over his imagination. But Gogol was his favorite master. In Dead Souls he found the revelation regarding the poor wretches, to whom he was naturally attracted. Dostoyevsky left college in 1843 with the rank of sub-lieutenant, but did not wear his epaulettes more than a year, when he retired to give himself up exclusively to literature, as a profession.

From that day commenced, to last forty years, that ferocious duel between the writer and misery. The father was dead, and the small patrimony, divided amongst so many, soon vanished. The young Feodor undertook translation work and toyed with journalism. During those forty years, his private correspondence, much resembling Balzac’s, is but one long cry of anguish, a constant recapitulation of his indebtedness, bewailing his “cab-horse” work, hired in advance by his publishers. The only daily bread he was certain of was that of the convict prison – should he get there. Thoroughly hardened against all physical privations, Dostoyevsky was most sensitive in other ways. Pride, which was his chief characteristic, suffered terribly at the slightest occasion which revealed his poverty. One sees this festering sore in his letters, in the heroes of his romances, who are visible embodiments of his soul – all are ever tormented by feelings of shyness and distrust. Thus already an invalid, with nerves badly shaken, he was subject to hallucinations. He thought himself the victim of every kind of disease. Often before going to sleep he placed a note upon the desk to this effect – “It is possible that I may fall into a lethargic sleep to-night; therefore care must be taken not to have me buried before a certain number of days…”