This simple remark struck me. I could not but acknowledge its justice; but it then seemed to me that, though it was true, what I had begun might perhaps also be useful. But the farther I went with the affair and the more I came in contact with the poor, the oftener I remembered those words and the more significance for me did they acquire. Indeed, I drive up in an expensive fur coat, or in my own carriage; or a man who has no boots sees my two thousand ruble lodgings, or even merely sees that I give away five rubles without regret because it comes into my head to do so; and he knows that if I give away rubles like that, it is because I have collected many and have a lot of superfluous ones I have not given away but on the contrary have extracted with ease from other people. What can he see in me but a man who has taken what ought to be his?
And what feeling can he have towards me but a desire to get back as many as possible of the rubles I have taken from him and from others? I want to get into touch with him, and complain that he is not frank; but I fear to sit on his bed lest I should get lice or be infected, and I dare not let him into my room. When he comes, hungry, to see me, he has to wait in the hall (if he is lucky) or in the porch. Yet I say he is to blame that I cannot get into touch with him and that he is not frank!
Let the most cruel of men try to gorge himself on five-course dinners among people who have eaten little and eat only black bread. No one will find it possible to eat and see the hungry folk licking their lips. So, to be able to eat tasty food where there are hungry people, it is first of all necessary to hide oneself from them and eat where they cannot see one. And that is just what we do first of all.
And I looked more simply at our life and saw that to come in close touch with the poor is not difficult for us just by accident, but that we purposely arrange our life so as to make such contact difficult.
More than this, standing on one side to look at our life-the life of the rich-I saw that all that is considered as welfare in our life consists in, or at any rate is inseparably bound up with, what separates us as far as possible from the poor. Indeed all the efforts of our wealthy life, beginning with food, clothes, dwellings, our cleanliness, and even our very education-have as their chief aim to segregate us from the poor. And on thus dividing ourselves-separating ourselves with impassable walls-from the poor, at least nine-tenths of our wealth is spent. The first thing a man who gets rich does is to cease to eat out of the common bowl;1 he gets crockery, and separates himself from the kitchen and the servants.
He feeds his servant well that her saliva may not flow at sight of his tasty food, and he eats by himself: but as it is dull eating alone, he devises ways of improving the food and decorating the table, and the very manner of taking our food (dinners) becomes a subject of vanity and pride; and the way of partaking of food becomes a way of separating himself from others. It is unthinkable for a rich man to invite a poor man to his table. One must know how to take a lady to table, how to bow, to sit, to eat, to use a fingerbowl, and
1 In a Russian peasant family it is usual for all to eat out of one common family bowl, each with his own wooden spoon.-AM.
only the rich know how to do all that. The same occurs with clothes. If a rich man wore simple clothes merely to protect his body from the cold: an overcoat, a sheepskin, felt and leather boots, a peasant coat, trousers, and shirt-he would need very little, and he could not, if he had two sheepskins, refuse to give one to a man who had none; but a rich man begins by having apparel made for him which consists of several articles and is only suitable for special occasions and therefore will not do for a poor man. He has dress-coats, vests, pea-jackets, patent leather shoes, capes, shoes with French heels, fashionable clothes composed of small pieces, hunting dress, travelling jackets, and so forth, which are suitable only in conditions remote from poverty.
Thus clothes also become a means of separation from the poor. Fashion makes its appearance, which is just what separates the rich from the poor. It is the same, even more clearly, with our dwelling places. In order to live alone in ten rooms it is necessary that this should not be seen by those who are living ten in a room. The richer a man is the more difficult it is to make one’s way to him-the more porters there are between him and the poor, and the less possible is it to take a poor man over his carpets and seat him in a satin chair. It is the same with means of conveyance. A peasant driving in a cart or on a carrier’s sledge must be very harsh not to give a lift to a traveller on foot-there is room and opportunity for him to do so. But the finer the carriage the more remote the possibility of giving a lift to anyone. Some of the smartest vehicles are even named ‘sulkys’.
The same is true of the whole manner of life expressed by the word cleanliness.
Cleanliness! Who does not know people, especially women, who make a great virtue of this cleanliness? And who does not know the devices of this cleanliness, which are endless when obtained by the labour of others? Who among those who have become rich does not know by experience with what difficulty and trouble he accustomed himself to this cleanliness, which only confirms the proverb, ‘White hands love other people’s work’?
To-day cleanliness consists in changing one’s shirt every day; to-morrow in changing twice a day. To-day in washing one’s neck and hands every day; to-morrow one’s feet also, after tomorrow one’s whole body each day and with some special friction besides. To-day one has a table-cloth for two days; to-morrow a fresh one every day; and then two a day. To-day the footman’s hands must be clean; to-morrow he must wear clean gloves and in clean gloves must bring in a letter on a clean tray. And there are no limits to this cleanliness when it is obtained by other people’s labour-and which is of no use to anyone except as a means of separating oneself from others and making intercourse with them impossible.
More than that, when I looked into the matter I became convinced that the same thing is true of what is generally called education.
Language does not deceive; it calls by its true name what people understand by that name. What the common folk call ‘education’ is, fashionable dress, refined conversation, clean hands, and a particular kind of cleanliness.
Of such a man in contradistinction to others, they say that he is an ‘educated man’. In a rather higher circle they mean by ‘education’ the same that is meant among the people, but to the conditions of ‘education’ are added piano-playing, a knowledge of French, ability to write a Russian letter without mistakes in spelling, and yet more external cleanliness. In a still higher circle by ‘education’ is meant all this, with the addition of a knowledge of English, and a diploma from one of the higher educational institutions, and a yet higher degree of cleanliness.
But the first, the second, and the third kind of education are essentially one and the same. ‘Education.’ consists of those forms and that knowledge which will separate a man from others. It’s object is the same as that of cleanliness-to separate us from the mass of the poor, in order that those cold and hungry people may not see how we make holiday. But to hide oneself is impossible, and they do see.
And thus I became convinced that the reason it was impossible for us, the rich, to help the town poor, lay also in the impossibility of coming into close touch with them, and that this impossibility we ourselves create by our whole life and by the whole use we make of our wealth. I became convinced that between us-the rich-and the poor there stands a wall of cleanliness and education that we have erected and reared by our wealth, and to be able to aid the poor we have first of all to destroy that wall, so that we might apply Sutaev’s method of distributing the poor among us. And from this side, too, I reached the same conclusion to which the course of my reflections on town poverty had brought me: that the cause of that poverty is our wealth.
CHAPTER XV
I BEGAN to examine the matter from yet another side-the purely personal one. Among the things which particularly struck me during the time of my philanthropic activity there was a very strange one for which I was long unable to find an explanation. It was this: every time it chanced, in the street or at home,
