One might take the daughter from the mother by force, but one could not convince the mother that it was wrong of her to sell her daughter. To save her one ought long ago to have saved her mother-saved her from the view of life approved by everybody, which allows a woman to live without marriage, that is without bearing children and without working, serving only as a satisfaction for sensuality.
Had I thought of that I should have understood that the majority of the ladies I wished to send here to save that girl themselves live without bearing children and without work, serving merely to satisfy sensuality and deliberately educate their daughters for such a life. One mother leads her daughter to the taverns, another takes hers to Court or to balls, but both share the same view of life: namely, that a woman should satisfy a man’s lusts and that for that service she should be fed, clothed, and cared for. How then can our ladies save that woman or her daughter?
CHAPTER IX
STILL stranger was my relation towards the children. In my role of benefactor I noticed them too. I wished to save innocent beings from perishing in that den of depravity, and I wrote them down intending to occupy myself with them ‘afterwards’ .
Among them I was particularly struck by a twelve-year-old boy, Serezha. He was a sharp, clever lad who had been living at a boot maker’s and was left homeless when his master was sent to prison. I was very sorry for the lad and wished to be of use to him.
I will tell how the help I gave him ended, for the story shows most clearly how false my position as a benefactor was. I took the boy home and put him in our kitchen. Was it possible to put a lousy boy taken from a den of depravity, among our own children? I considered myself very kind and good to let him inconvenience not me but our servants, and because we (not I but the cook) fed him, and because I gave him some cast-off clothes to wear. The boy stayed about a week. During that time I twice spoke a few words to him in passing, and while out for a walk called on a boot maker I know and mentioned the boy to him as a possible apprentice. A peasant1 who was staying with me invited the boy to live with him in the village as a labourer. The boy declined, and a week
1 Sutaev, of whom there is an account in my Life of Tolstoy. — A. M.
later disappeared. I went to Rzhimov House to inquire for him. He had been there, but was not at home when I called. That day and the day before he had gone to the Zoological Gardens, where he was hired for thirty kopeks a day to take part in a procession of costumed savages, who led an elephant about in some show they had on.
I returned another day, but he was so ungrateful that he evidently avoided me. Had I then reflected on that boy’s life and my own, I should have understood that he had been spoilt by learning the possibility of living an easy life without work and by having become unaccustomed to work; and I, to benefit him and improve him, had taken him into my house where he saw-what?
My own children older than himself, and younger, and of his own age-never doing any work for themselves but giving all sorts of work to others: dirtying things, spoiling everything about them, overeating themselves with rich, tasty, and sweet food, breaking crockery, spilling things and throwing to the dogs food that to him appeared a delicacy. If I took him from a ‘den’ and brought him to a good place, he was right to assimilate the views of life existing in that good place; and from those views he understood that in a good place one must live merrily, eating and drinking tasty things without working. It is true he did not know that my children do the hard work of learning the declensions in Latin and Greek grammar, nor could he have understood the object of such work.
But one cannot help seeing that had he understood that fact, the effect of my children’s example on him would have been still stronger. He would then have understood that my children are being educated in such a way that without working now, they may be able in future, by the aid of their diplomas, to work as little as possible and command as much as possible of life’s good things. And he understood this, and did not go with the peasant to tend cattle and live on potatoes and kvas, but went to the Zoological Gardens to dress as a savage and lead an elephant about for eight pence a day.
I might have understood how absurd it was of me, while educating my own children in complete idleness and luxury, to hope to correct other people and their children who were perishing from idleness in what I call the Rzhanov den, where at any rate three-fourths of the people-work for themselves and for others. But I understood nothing of all that.
There were very many children in most wretched conditions in Rzhanov House: the children of prostitutes, orphans, and children who were taken about the streets by beggars. They were all very pitiful. But my experiment with Serezha showed me that, living as I do, I could not help them. When Serezha was living with us, I detected in myself a desire to hide our life, and especially our children’s life, from him.
I felt that all my efforts to guide him to a good industrious life were destroyed by the example we and our children set. To take a child from a prostitute or a beggar is very easy. It is very easy, when one has money, to have him washed, cleaned, and dressed in good clothes, well fed, and even taught various sciences; but for us who do not earn our own bread, to teach him to earn his bread is not merely difficult but impossible; for by our example, and even by that material bettering of his life which costs us nothing, we teach him the opposite.
One may take a puppy, tend it, feed it, teach it to fetch and carry, and be pleased with it; but it is not enough to tend and feed a man and teach him Greek; one has to teach him to live: to take less from others and give more, but we, whether we take him into our house or put him into a Home founded for the purpose, cannot help teaching him the reverse.
CHAPTER X
THAT feeling of compassion for people and aversion from myself that I had experienced at Lyapin House I no longer felt; I was quite filled with the wish to accomplish the business I had started-that of doing good to the people I met here. And strange to say, whereas it seemed that to do good-to give money to those in need was a very good thing and should promote one’s love of people, it turned out on the contrary that this business evoked in me ill-will towards people and condemnation of them. During the first round, in the evening, a scene occurred just like the one at Lyapin House; but it did not produce on me the same impression as at Lyapin House but evoked quite a different feeling.
It began when in one of the lodgings I really found an unfortunate who was in need of immediate aid. It was a hungry woman who had not had anything to eat for two days.
It was like this: in one very large, almost empty, night-lodging I asked an old woman whether there were any very poor people there, people who had nothing to eat. The old woman thought awhile, and then named two, but afterwards she seemed to remember something. ‘Oh, yes, I fancy she is lying here,’ said she, looking into one of the occupied bunks. ‘Yes, this one, I fancy, has not had anything to eat.’ ‘Really? And who is she?’ ‘She was a strumpet, but nobody wants her now, so she gets nothing. The landlady has had pity on her, but now wants to turn her out… Agafya, eh, Agafya!’ cried the old woman.
We drew nearer and something on the bunk rose. It was a rather grey, dishevelled woman, lean as a skeleton, in a dirty, torn chemise, with particularly shining and fixed eyes. She looked past us with those fixed eyes; caught with her thin hand at a jacket lying behind her, in order to cover the bony breast exposed by her torn and dirty chemise, and ejaculated: ‘What? What?’ I asked her how she was getting on. It was long before she understood and replied: ‘I don’t myself know; they are turning me out.’ I asked her. I am ashamed to write it down-whether it was true that she had not had anything to eat. With the same feverish rapidity she replied, still not looking at me: ‘I did not eat yesterday and I have not eaten to-day.’
This woman’s appearance touched me, but not at all as I had been touched at Lyapin House: there pity for those people made me at once feel ashamed of myself, while here I was glad to have found at last what I was looking for-someone who
