Nikanór Ivánovich is a great trial to me. I cannot overcome my antipathy and aversion for him. ‘O Lord, grant me to see my own iniquities and not to judge my brother-man.’ But I see all his faults, discern them with the penetration of malignity, see all his weaknesses, and cannot conquer my antipathy for him – my brother-man, who like myself proceeds from God.
What do such feelings mean? I have experienced them more than once in my long life. My two strongest aversions were for Louis XVIII, with his big stomach, hooked nose, repulsive white hands, and his self-confidence, insolence, and obtuseness – there, I cannot keep from abusing him – and the other antipathy is for this Nikanór Ivánovich who tormented me for two hours yesterday. Everything about him, from the sound of his voice to his hair and his nails, evokes repulsion in me, and to explain my gloominess to Márya Martemyánovna I told her a lie, saying that I was not well. After they had gone I prayed, and after the prayer I grew calm. I thank Thee, O Lord, that the one and only thing I need is in my own power. I remembered that Nikanór Ivánovich had been an infant and that he would die. I recalled the same with reference to Louis XVIII, knowing him to be already dead, and I regretted that Nikanór Ivánovich was no longer here that I might express my goodwill to him.
Márya Martemyánovna brought me some candles so that I can write in the evenings. I went out. To the left the bright stars have disappeared in a wonderful aurora borealis. How beautiful, how beautiful! But now I will continue.
My father and mother had gone abroad, and I and my brother Constantine, born two years after me, were in our grandmother’s complete control for the whole of their absence. My brother had been named Constantine to denote that he was to become Emperor of Constantinople.
Children love everybody and especially those who love and caress them. My grandmother caressed and praised me, and I loved her in spite of the smell, repulsive to me, which always hung about her, notwithstanding her perfumes, and was especially noticeable when she took me on her lap. Her hands too were unpleasant to me – clean, yellowish, shrivelled, slippery, and shiny, with fingers bent inwards and with long nails from which the skin had been pushed back unnaturally far. Her eyes were dull, weary, almost lifeless, and this together with her smiling, toothless mouth, created a painful though not exactly repulsive impression. I attributed that expression of her eyes – which I now remember with loathing – to her exertions on behalf of her people, as it was explained to me, and I pitied her for that languid expression. Once or twice I saw Potëmkin19 – a one-eyed, squinting, enormous, dark, perspiring, and dirty man who was terrible. He seemed to me particularly terrible because he alone was not afraid of grandmother, but spoke loud in her presence in his bellowing voice, and boldly caressed and teased me, though addressing me as ‘your Highness’.
Among those I saw with her in my early childhood was Lanskóy.20 He was always with her and everybody noticed him and paid court to him. My grandmother especially looked at him continually. Of course I did not then understand what it meant, and Lanskóy pleased me very much. I liked his curls, his handsome thighs in tightly stretched elk-skin breeches, his well-shaped calves, his merry careless smile, and the diamonds that glittered all over him.
It was a very merry time. We were taken to Tsárskoe Seló, where we boated, dug in the garden, went for walks, and rode on horseback. Constantine, plump, red-haired, un petit Bacchus, as grandmother called him, amused everybody by his tricks, his boldness, and his devices. He mimicked everybody, including Sophia Ivánovna and even grandmother herself.
The most important event of that time was Sophia Ivánovna Bénkendorf’s death. It happened one evening at Tsárskoe Seló, in grandmother’s presence. Sophia Ivánovna had just brought us in after dinner and was smilingly saying something, when her face suddenly became grave, she reeled, leant against the door, slipped, and fell heavily. People came running in and we were taken away. But next day we learnt that she was dead. I cried for a long time and was depressed and not myself. Everybody thought I was crying about Sophia Ivánovna, but it was not for her that I cried, but that people should die – that death should exist. I could not understand and could not believe that it was the fate of everybody. I remember that in my childish, five-year-old soul the questions, What is death? and, What is life which ends in death? then arose in their full significance – those chief questions which confront all mankind and to which the wise seek and find replies, and which the frivolous try to thrust aside and forget. I did what was natural for a child, especially in the world in which I lived: I put the question aside, forgot about death, lived as if it did not exist, and have now lived till it has become terrible to me.
Another important event connected with Sophia Ivánovna’s death was our being transferred to the charge of a man, and Nicholas Ivánovich Saltykóv being appointed our tutor – not the Saltykóv who in all probability was our grandfather, but Nicholas Ivánovich who was in service at my father’s court; a little man with a huge head and a stupid face with a continual grimace, which my little brother Constantine imitated wonderfully. Being entrusted to a man grieved me, because it meant parting from my nurse, dear Praskóvya Ivánovna.
Those who have not the misfortune to be born in a royal family must, I think, find it difficult to realize how distorted is the view of people and of our relation towards them which is instilled into us and was instilled into me. Instead of the feeling of dependence on grown-up and older persons natural to a child, instead of gratitude for all the blessings which we enjoyed, we were led to believe that we were some kind of exceptional beings who not only ought to be supplied with all the good things a human being can have, but by a word or a smile could not only more than pay for all those blessings, but could also reward people and make them happy. It is true that we were expected to treat people politely, but with my childish instinct I realized that this was only for show, and was done not for the sake of the people to whom we had to be polite but for our own sake, so that our grandeur should be still more noticeable.
One fěte-day we were driving along the Névski Prospect in an enormous landau: we two brothers and Nicholas Ivánovich Saltykóv. We sat in the chief seats. Two powdered footmen in red liveries stood behind. It was a bright spring day. I wore an unbuttoned uniform with a white waistcoat and the blue St Andrew’s ribbon across it. Constantine was dressed in the same way; on our heads we wore plumed hats which we continually raised as we bowed. The people everywhere stopped and bowed; some of them ran after us. ‘On vous salue,’21 Nicholas Ivánovich kept repeating. ‘A droite.’22
We went past the guard-house and the guards ran out. Those I always noticed, for I loved soldiers and military exercises from my childhood. We were told, especially by grandmother – the very one who believed it least of all – that all men are equal and that we ought to remember this, but I knew that those who said so did not believe it.
I remember once how Sásha Golítzin, who was playing with me at barricades, accidentally knocked me and hurt me.
‘How dare you!’
‘I did not mean to. What does it matter?’
I felt the blood rush to my heart with vexation and anger. I complained to Nicholas Ivánovich and was not ashamed when Golítzin begged my pardon.
That is enough for to-day. My candle has burnt low and I have yet to chop sticks, my axe is blunt and I have nothing to sharpen it on, besides which I don’t know how to.