III
Up till now we have followed this remarkable woman’s life along a clear, though somewhat agitated course; but from henceforward there is something uncomfortable, something strange and distorted about it. It is very difficult for us to ascertain the cause of her increasing distraction of mind, and early death, and the difficulty is intensified by the fact that the material contributed by Fru Leffler is poor and contradictory, and also because her work is disfigured by the peculiar inferences which she draws.
I have seen four portraits of Sonia Kovalevsky, and they are all so entirely different that no one would imagine that they were intended to represent the same person. She had none of the fascinating, though irregular beauty of Marie Bashkirtseff, who carried on an artistic cult with her own person. Sonia’s powerful head, with the short hair, massive forehead, and short-sighted eyes of the color of “green gooseberries in syrup,” was placed on a delicate child-like body. Her chief charm lay in her extraordinary liveliness and habit of giving herself up entirely to the interest of the moment; but she was completely unversed in the art of dress, and did not know how to appear at her best; she never gave any thought to the subject at all until she was thirty; and although she paid more attention to it then, she never learned the secret. She aged early, and a celebrated poet has described her to me as being a withered little old woman at the age of thirty. These external circumstances stood more in her way in Sweden, among a tall, fair people, than would have been possible either in Russia or in Paris. Between herself and the Swedish type there was a wide gulf fixed, which allowed no encouragement to the finer erotic emotions to which she was very strongly disposed; she felt crushed, and her impressionable, unattractive nature suffered acutely from being so unlike the ordinary victorious type of beauty. The picture of her when she was eighteen bears a strong resemblance to the late King Louis II. of Bavaria; not only are her features like his, but also the expression in the eyes and the curve of the lips. The second picture dates from the year 1887. It has something wearied and disillusioned about it, and she seems to be making an effort to appear amiable. It was taken at the time when she was struggling to accustom herself to the stiff, prudish, and somewhat pretentious ways of Stockholm society. The third portrait was taken at the time when she won the Prix Bordin in Paris, and it is a regular Russian face, with a much more cheerful expression than the former ones. But in the last picture, taken in the year 1890, which was, to a certain extent, official and very much touched up, how ill she looks; how disappointed and how weary! These four portraits are, to my mind, four different women; they show us what Sonia was once, and what she became after living for several years in an uncongenial atmosphere.
Sonia Kovalevsky was a true Russian genius, with an elastic nature. She was lavish and careless in her ways, and she thrived best upon a torn sofa in an atmosphere of tea, cigarettes, and profusion of all kinds,—intellectual, spiritual, and pecuniary; she needed to be surrounded by people like herself, who were in sympathy with her, and the inhabitants of Stockholm were never that. She had been torn away from the Russian surroundings in which she had lived in Berlin. She, who never could endure solitude, found herself alone among strangers, who forced themselves upon her,—hard, angular, women’s rights women, who expected her to be their leader, and to fulfil a mission. She seldom rebelled against the duties which were constantly held before her eyes, partly because her vanity was flattered by the public position which she occupied, and also because her livelihood depended upon it, now that her private means were not sufficient for her support, and for the numerous journeys which she undertook.
A great deal of her time was spent in travelling to and fro between Stockholm and St. Petersburg, where she went to visit Anjuta, whose marriage had turned out most unhappily, and who was suffering from a severe illness, of which she afterwards died. After her sister’s death Sonia took a great interest in the study of Northern literature, which was then just beginning to attract attention. She also wrote books, and solved some mathematical problems. Every time that she returned to Stockholm, after spending her holidays in Russia or the South, she had almost entirely forgotten her Swedish, and every year that passed by called forth fresh lamentations over her exile. The tone of society in Stockholm was unendurable to her; but she was of too disciplined a character, and too gentle, too submissive in her loneliness, to rebel against it. Her life became monotonous, which it had never been before, and her courage began to give way. She yearned for sympathy, for excitement, for her native land,—for everything, in fact, which was denied her.
She also longed for something else, which was the very thing that she could not have. She was seized with an eager, nervous longing to be loved. She wanted to be a woman, to possess a woman’s charm. She had lived like a widow for years during her husband’s lifetime, and for years after his death as well. As long as her mathematical studies produced a tension in her mind, she asked for nothing better, but buried herself in her work, and was perfectly contented. When she started being an authoress, a change came over her character. The development of the imagination created a need for love, and because this devouring need could not be satisfied, she became exacting, discontented, and mistrustful of the amount of affection which was accorded her. In her younger days she had asked for nothing more than that curious kind of mystic love, known only to Russians, which had run its course in mutual enthusiasm of a purely intellectual and spiritual character. It was otherwise now. She lamented her lost youth, and the time wasted in study; she regretted the unfortunate talent which had deprived her womanhood of its attractiveness. She wanted to be a woman, and to enjoy life as a woman.
She had also another wish, just as passionate in its way and as difficult of fulfilment as the former one, and this was her wish to receive an appointment in Paris. It was to a certain extent fulfilled when she was awarded the Prix Bordin on Christmas Eve, 1888, on the occasion of a solemn session of the French Academy of Science, in an assembly which was largely composed of learned men. It was the highest scientific distinction which had ever been accorded to a woman, and from henceforth she was an European celebrity, with a place in history. But it gave her no pleasure. She was as completely knocked up as she had been after receiving her doctor’s degree. She had worked day and night for days beforehand, and during the weeks that followed she took part in the social functions which were given in her honor. She left no pleasure untasted, and yet she was not satisfied, for by this time her yearning for love had reached its highest pitch.
A short time before, Sonia had made the acquaintance of a cousin of her late husband’s, “fat M.,” as she called him. The companionship of a sympathetic fellow-countryman put her in the height of good humor, and she soon found it so indispensable that she wanted to have him always at her side, and was never happy except when he was there. M. K. did not return this strong affection; he was, however, quite willing to marry her, and the result was that a most unfortunate relationship sprang up between them. Sonia could not exist without him, so they travelled from Stockholm to Russia, and from Russia to Paris or Italy, in order to spend a few weeks together, and then separated, because by that time they were mutually tired of each other. It was on one of these journeys, when Sonia had come out of the sunshine of Italy into the winter of Sweden, that she caught cold, and no sooner had she arrived at Stockholm than she did everything to make her condition worse. In a desperate mood of indifference she immediately commenced her lectures, and went to all the social entertainments that were given. Dark presentiments and dreams, in which she always believed, had foretold that this year would be fatal to her. Longing for death, yet fearing it, she died suddenly in the beginning of the year 1891.