Read Online The Gentle Barbarian by V. S. Pritchett - Free Book Online Page A

As the household wept she ordered them to bring in the icon of the Holy Virgin of Vladimir. She lay on her bed imitating the death rattle with her favourites kneeling at her bedside—they knew it was all a farce—and obliged the forty servants from the highest to the lowest to come in and kiss her hand in farewell. When this was done she suddenly called out in a stentorian voice to Polyakov, her chief servant: “Bring some paper.” Her box of loose sheets for making strange notes was at her bedside and when it was given to her, she wrote down:
    Tomorrow the following culprits must appear in front of my window and sweep the yard. You were overjoyed that I was dying. You were drinking and celebrating a name day and your mistress dying!
    The next day the drinkers, from the principal servants downwards, were made to put on smocks with circles and crosses on their backs and clean out the yards and gardens with brooms and shovels in sight of her terrifying window.
    In the following year—in 1846, according to Mme. Zhitova—Ivan did come home to ask her to recognise his brother’s marriage and to give him money. She stormed and refused. They got on to the subject of serfdom. Mme. Zhitova says she heard a conversation. It could have been matched, in this period, in landowners’ houses in Ireland or in the American South.
    â€œSo my people are badly treated! What more do they need? They are very well fed, shod and clothed, they are even paid wages. Just tell me how many serfs do receive wages?”
    â€œI did not say that they starve and are not well-clothed,” began Ivan Serfevitch cautiously, stammering a little, “but they tremble before you.”
    â€œWhat of it?”
    â€œListen mama, couldn’t you now, this minute, if you wanted, exile any
    one of them?”
    â€œOf course I could.”
    â€œEven from a mere whim?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œThen that proves what I have always told you. They are not people—they are things.”
    â€œThen according to you they ought to be freed?”
    â€œNo, why? I don’t say that, the time hasn’t come yet.”
    â€œAnd won’t come.”
    â€œYes it will come, it will come soon,” cried Ivan Sergevich passionately in the rather shrill voice he used when excited and he walked quickly round the room.
    â€œSit down, your walking about worries me,” his mother said.
    â€œI see you are quite mad.”
    The Viardots’ third season in Petersburg lasted until the spring of 1845 and they returned to France. Turgenev resigned from his post in the Civil Service on the excuse that he was having serious trouble with his eyes and accepted an invitation to stay with the Viardots at Courtavenel. There are signs that Pauline had lost her indifference and was falling in love against her will, and Turgenev spoke of this time as “the happiest time of my life.” From any other man these words would indicate that he had conquered, that the love was returned and fulfilled; but one notices that when he became the master of the love story, he is far more sensitive to the beginnings of love than to its fulfilment, to the sensation of being—to use one of his titles—“on the eve” of love, of standing elated as he waits for the wave to curl and fall. The spring—and also the autumn—mean more to him than high summer.
    He went back to Petersburg and had some small successes writing for
The Contemporary,
a new review which was making an impression, and was distraught at being unable to see her. At last, in 1847, he borrowed money and went to Paris again and the Viardots let the penniless writer stay on at Courtavenel whether they were away or not. They were often away for months on end, as Pauline travelled from success to success all over Europe. If, as some believe, they ever became lovers, it was in the next three years and if they did not, it was the time when what has