II
The story of Sonia Kovalevsky’s life reads like an exciting novel, which is, if anything, too richly furnished with strange events. Such is life. It comes with hands full to its chosen ones, but it also takes away gifts more priceless than it gave.
At the age of eighteen Sonia Kovalevsky was already the mistress of her own fate. She had married the husband of her choice, and he had accompanied her to Heidelberg, where they both matriculated at the university. From thence he took her to Berlin, where she lived with a girl friend, who was a student like herself, and studied mathematics at Weierstrass’s for the space of four years, only meeting her husband occasionally in the course of her walks. Her marriage with Valdemar Kovalevsky, afterwards Professor of Paleontology at the university of Moscow, was a mere formality, and this extraordinary circumstance brings us face to face with one of the chief characteristics of her nature.
Sonia Kovalevsky did not love her husband; there was, in fact, nothing in her early youth to which she was less disposed than love. She was possessed of an immense undefined thirst, which was something more than a thirst for study, albeit that was the form which it took. Her inexperienced, child-like nature was weighed down beneath the burden of an exceptional talent.
Sonia Krukovsky was the daughter of General Krukovsky of Palibino, a French Grand-seigneur of old family; and when she was no more than sixteen, she had in her the making of a great mathematician and a great authoress. She was fully aware of the first, but of the latter she knew nothing, for a woman’s literary talent nearly always dates its origin from her experience of life. She was high-spirited and enterprising,—qualities which are more often found among the Sclavonic women than any other race of Europeans; she had that peculiar consciousness of the shortness of life, the same which drove Marie Bashkirtseff to accomplish more in the course of a few years than most people would have achieved during the course of their whole existence.
Sonia Kovalevsky’s girlhood was spent in Russia, during those years of feverish excitement when the outbreaks of the Nihilists bore witness to the working of a subterranean volcano, and the hearts and intellects of the young glowed with an enthusiasm which led to the self-annihilating deeds of fanaticism. A few winter months spent at St. Petersburg decided the fate of Sonia and her elder sister, Anjuta. The strict, old-fashioned notions of their family allowed them very little liberty, and they longed for independence. In order to escape from parental authority, a formal marriage was at this time a very favorite expedient among young girls in Russia. A silent but widespread antagonism reigned in all circles between the old and young; the latter treated one another as secret allies, who by a look or pressure of the hand could make themselves understood. It was not at all uncommon for a girl to propose a formal marriage to a young man, generally with the purpose of studying abroad, as this was the only means by which they could obtain the consent of their unsuspecting parents to undertake the journey. When they were abroad, they generally released each other from all claims and separated, in order to study apart. Sonia’s sister was anxious to escape in this way, as she possessed a remarkable literary talent which her father had forbidden her to exercise. She accordingly made the proposal in question to a young student of good family, named Valdemar Kovalevsky; he, however, preferred Sonia, and this gave rise to further complications, as their father refused to allow the younger sister to marry before the elder.
Sonia resorted to a stratagem, and one evening, when her parents were giving a reception, she went secretly to Valdemar, and as soon as her absence was discovered she sent a note to her father, with these words: “I am with Valdemar; do not oppose our marriage any longer.” There remained no alternative for General Krukovsky but to fetch his daughter home as speedily as possible, and to announce her engagement.
They were accompanied on their honeymoon by a girl friend, who was equally imbued with the desire to study, and soon afterwards Anjuta joined them. The first thing that Sonia and Valdemar did was to visit George Eliot in London; after which Valdemar went to Jena and Munich, while Sonia, with her sister and friend, studied at Heidelberg, where they remained during two terms before going to Berlin. The sister went secretly to Paris by herself.
Arrived at Berlin, Sonia buried herself in her work. She saw no one except Professor Weierstrass, who expressed the greatest admiration for her quickness at mathematics, and did all in his power to assist her by means of private lessons. If we are honest enough to call it by its true name, we must confess that the life led by these two girls, during eight terms, was the life of a dog. Sonia scarcely ever went out of doors unless Valdemar fetched her for a walk, which was not often, as he lived in another part of the town, and was constantly away. She was tormented with a vague fear of exposing herself. Inexperienced as both these friends were, they lived poorly, and ate little, allowing themselves no pleasure of any sort, added to which they were tyrannized over and cheated by their maid-servant. Sonia sat all day long at her writing-table, hard at work with her mathematical exercises; and when she took a short rest, it was only to run up and down the room, talking aloud to herself, with her brains as busy as ever. She had never been accustomed to do anything for herself; she had always been waited upon, and it was impossible to persuade her even to buy a dress when necessary, unless Valdemar accompanied her. But Valdemar soon tired of rendering these unrequited services, and he often absented himself in other towns for the completion of his own studies; and as they both received an abundant supply of money from their respective homes, they were in no way dependent upon each other.
The year 1870 came and went; for Sonia it had been a year of study, and nothing more. Her sleep had become shorter and more broken, and she neither knew nor cared what she ate, when suddenly, in the spring of the following year, she was sent for by her sister in Paris. Anjuta had fallen passionately in love with a young Parisian, who was a member of the Commune; he had just been arrested, and was in danger of losing his life. Sonia and Valdemar succeeded in penetrating through the line of troops, found Anjuta, and wrote to their father. General Krukovsky came at once, and it was only then that he discovered what his daughters were doing abroad, and learned for the first time that his eldest daughter had been living alone in Paris, for Anjuta had always been careful to send her letters through Sonia, with the Berlin postmark.
Anjuta showed great spirit, and after an interview with Thiers they succeeded in helping this very undesirable son-in-law to escape. Throughout the whole affair their father’s behavior is a rare proof of the nobility of the race from which Sonia sprang. This stern man not only forgave—he also admired his daughters for what they had done. The cold manner and grandfatherly authority with which he had hitherto treated them was superseded by a cordial sympathy such as would have been impossible before. He was much impressed by Anjuta’s passion, but Sonia’s platonic marriage distressed him greatly.
In the year 1874 Sonia took the degree of doctor at Göttingen, as the result of three mathematical treatises, of which one especially, her thesis “On the Theory of Partial Differential Equations,” is reckoned one of her most prominent works. Immediately after this, the whole family assembled on the old estate of Palibino. Sonia was completely worn out, and it was a long time before she was able to resume any severe brain work. Her holiday was cut short by her father’s death a few months later, and the following winter was spent with her family at St. Petersburg. Until now Sonia’s brain was the only part of her which was thoroughly awakened. She had been entirely absorbed in her studies, and had worked with the obstinate tenacity of auto-suggestion, more commonly found in women, especially girls, than in men. Marie Bashkirtseff had done the same, year in, year out; she had worked breathlessly, feverishly, with an incomprehensible, unwearied power of production,—while failing health was announcing the approach of death in her frail young body. Suddenly the end came.
Thousands of girls in middle-class families work themselves to death in the same way. Badly paid to begin with, they lower the prices still more by competing with one another. Others, placed in better circumstances, work with the same insistency at useless handicrafts, while a large number of women of the poorer classes work because they are driven to it by dire necessity. The result is the same in all cases; they lose the power of enjoyment, and forget what happiness means.
Sonia’s stay in St. Petersburg was the occasion of the first great change which took place in her, to be followed later on by many like changes. Mathematics were thrust aside; she did not want to hear any more about them, she wanted to forget them.
Mind and body were undergoing a healing process, struggling to attain an even balance in her fresh young nature. She felt the need of change, she required companionship, and she threw herself into the midst of all social and intellectual pursuits. It was then that the woman awoke in her.
During the period of nervous excitement and sorrow which followed after the death of her beloved father, she had become the wife of her husband, after having been nominally married for nearly seven years. Since then they had drawn closer to one another; and now that her fortune, as long as her mother lived, was not sufficient for her support, she and Valdemar invested their money in various speculations. With true Russian enthusiasm they set to work building houses, establishing watering-places, and starting newspapers, besides lending their aid to every imaginable kind of new invention. The first year all went well, and in 1878 a daughter was born. After that came the crash. Kovalevsky was bitten with the rage for speculation, and although he was nominated Professor of Paleontology at Moscow in 1880, and in spite of all that his wife could do to dissuade him, he took shares in a company connected with petroleum springs in the south of Russia. The company was a swindle, the undertaking proved a failure, and he shot himself.
Sonia had left him some time before. She knew what was coming, having been warned by bad dreams and presentiments, and as she had lost her influence over him, and was anxious to provide for her own and her child’s future, she left him and went to Paris. Just as she was recovering from the nervous fever to which she succumbed on hearing the news of her husband’s sudden death, she received the summons to go to Stockholm.
The invitation had been sent by the representatives of a Woman’s Rights movement which was then in full swing. It was an exceedingly narrow society of the genuine bourgeois kind, and as it was to them that she owed her appointment, they were anxious to bind her firmly to their cause. Sonia soon won their hearts by the sociability of her Russian nature, but as one term after the other passed by, she grew more and more weary of it, and whenever her course of lectures was over she hurried away as quickly as possible to Russia, Italy, France, England,—no matter where, if only she could escape out of Sweden into a freer atmosphere. She never looked upon her stay there as anything more than an episode in her life, and she longed to be back in Paris; but the years passed by, and she received no other appointment.
Her lectures at the university began to pall upon her; it gave her no pleasure to be forever teaching the students the same thing in a dreary routine. She needed an incentive in the shape of some highly gifted individual whom she could respect, and whose presence would call forth her highest faculties; but even the esteem in which she held some few people was not of long duration.
Her friendship with Fru Edgren-Leffler dates from this period. It was this lady’s renown as an authoress which roused Sonia’s talent for writing, for her life had been rich in experiences, and never wanting in variety until now, when, in a period of comparative leisure, she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon the past. She began by persuading Fru Edgren-Leffler to dramatize the sketches which she gave her, and “The Struggle for Happiness” was the first result of this collaboration. But Sonia soon realized that the honest, simple-minded Swede was not in sympathy with this department of literature; so she wrote a story on her own account, entitled “The Sisters Rajevsky,” which was a sketch of her own youth, followed by an excellent novel called “Vera Barantzova;” after which she began another novel called “Vae Victis,” which was never finished.