WITH THAT INEXPRESSIBLE MIXTURE of coarseness, fineness and mildness so characteristic of the peasants of Greater Russia, he was indeed a true type of the masses. He also had a curious look of unaccountable restlessness, possibly due to the effort of keeping his thoughts concentrated on upholding his proletariat attitude. At first sight he was antipathetic, but only until his magnetism had affected one. Habitually taciturn, when he did speak it was in a low voice, slow and measured, gradually warming up when obstinately defending his opinions regardless of anyone present. In arguing his favorite theme of the inherent supremacy of the Russian race, he sometimes was heard to say to the ladies in social circles which sought his presence, “You are not worth a single mujik, however bad.” All literary discussion with Dostoyevsky ended abruptly. He once stopped me with superb commiseration by saying, “We are blessed with all the talents of the whole world – even more – that of Russia; therefore we are able to understand you, but you are incapable of understanding us.” May his shade forgive me, for I am now going to show the contrary.
His opinion is unfortunate in so far that he judged of European affairs with an amusing ingeniousness and native simplicity. I well remember one of his outbursts one evening in Paris, when seized by a fit of inspiration he prophesied with Biblical indignation – like Jonah before Nineveh. These are his words, which I noted down at the time:
A prophet shall one day arise in the Café Anglais; he will write on the wall the three flaming words; they will declare the destruction of the old world, and Paris will fall by blood and fire with all that fills it with pride to-day – its theatres, and the Café Anglais….
In the imagination of this seer, this inoffensive establishment represented Sodom’s heart, a cave of attractive and infernal orgies, which had to be cursed and destroyed to prevent its being too much dreamt about. Eloquently and long he thundered on this theme like a Pope.
Dostoyevsky often reminds me of Jean-Jacques. It seems to me that I only got to know this vulgar pedantic fellow since I have studied this shadowy and gloomy philanthropist from Moscow. Both have the same kind of humour, the same alloy of coarseness and idealism, of sensitive refinement and brutal savagery and a common fund of human sympathy, all of which assured their success among their fellow contemporaries.
