V
As I write, the air is filled with a sweet penetrating fragrance, which comes from a tuberose, placed near me on the window-sill. The narrow stalk seems scarcely strong enough to support its thick, knob-like head with the withered buds and sickly, onion-shaped leaves. A tuberose is a poor unshapely thing at the best of times, but this plant is unhealthy because it has lived too long as an ornament in a dark corner of the room under the chandeliers, among albums and photographs. It was dying visibly, decaying at the roots, and there was no help for it. Of course it was a rare flower, but it grew uglier from day to day.
They put it on the window-sill, where there was just room for one plant more, and a pot of mignonette was fetched out of the kitchen garden, attired in an artistic ruffle of green silk paper, and placed under the chandelier in its stead. It fulfilled its duty well, and seemed to thrive admirably among the albums, visiting-cards, and photographs. Nobody looked after the tuberose on the window-sill until it suddenly reminded them of its existence by a strong smell, and even then they only cast a hasty glance and noticed how sickly it looked. When I examined it more closely, I discovered three blossoms in full flower, and quite healthy; the stem was bent forward, and the blossoms were pressing against the window-pane, doing their best to catch the rays of the sun as long as the short autumn day lasted. It thrust forth its dying blossoms and renewed itself now that the great warmer of life was shining on, and embracing it.
To me this flower is an emblem of Sonia Kovalevsky.
She was a rare, strange being in this world of mignonette pots and trivialities. Everything about her was out of proportion, from her thin little body, with its large head, to the sweet fragrance of her genius. She, too, stood in the place of honor under the chandelier, among fashionable poets and thinkers who wrote and thought in accordance with the spirit of the age; and she, too, sickened, as though she desired something better, and the nervous blossoms which her mind thrust forth grew more and more withered, and the thin stem which carried her stretched more and more towards the greater warmer of life, which shines upon and embraces the just and the unjust,—only not her, only not her!
What was the reason? Why did she get none of that love which is rained down upon the most insignificant women in so lavish a manner by impetuous mankind?
“She was not in the least pretty, that is it,” reply her several women admirers.
But we women know well that it is not the prettiest women who are the most loved, and that, on the contrary, the most ardent love always falls to the share of those in whom men have something to excuse. Barbey d’Aurevilly, the greatest women’s poet, has told us so in his immortal lines.
“She was too old,—that is to say, she aged too early,”—say her women admirers, still anxious to find an explanation.
But that is ridiculous. Sonia Kovalevsky died at the age of forty, and that is the age when a Parisian grande mondaine is at the height of her popularity; and as for aging early—! A woman of genius does not grow old as quickly as a teacher in a girl’s school, and the fading tuberose which thrusts forth fresh blossoms has a far sweeter and more penetrating fragrance than her white knob-headed sisters.
“She asked too much,” asserts Fru Anne Charlotte Edgren-Leffler, Duchess of Cajanello, who was of the same age as Sonia, and married at the time when she died; and her entire book on Sonia is founded on the one argument, that she asked too much of love.
But how is it possible? Does not experience teach us that it is just the women who ask most who receive most? Always make fresh claims,—that is the motto of the majority of ladies in society, and with this solid principle to start from they have none of them failed.
“She had everything that a human being can desire,” said that worthy writer, Jonas Lie, in an after-dinner speech. “She had genius, fame, position, liberty, and she took the lead in the education of humanity. But when she had all this it seemed to her as nothing; she stretched out her hand like a little girl, and said, ‘Oh, do but give me also this orange.’”
It was kindly said, and also very true. Father Lie was the only person who understood Sonia, and saw that she remained a little girl all her life,—a woman who never reached her maturity. But, tell me, dear Father Lie, do you consider love to be worth no more than an orange?
No, these explanations will never satisfy us; they are far too shallow and simple. The true reason lies deeper; it is more a symptom of the time in which she lived than those who knew her will allow. Even so friendly and intelligent an exponent as Ellen Key, her second biographer, does not seem to be aware of the fact that, although Sonia is a typical woman of her time,—typical of the more earnest upholders of women’s rights, and the representative of the highest intellectual accomplishments to which women have attained,—she is also typical of that which the woman of this century loses in the struggle, and of that in which the woman of the future will be the gainer.
If Sonia failed to please,—she whose personal charm was so great, whose vivacity was so prepossessing, as all who knew her declared that it was; if she failed where so many lesser women have succeeded, her failure was entirely due to her ignorance of the art of flirtation,—an art which is as old as sex, and to which men have been accustomed since the world began. Even the most refined, the most highly-developed men, are not geniuses in this matter, where everything has always been most carefully arranged for them. And if they did not fall in love with Sonia, it was due to a kind of purity with which she unconsciously regarded the preliminaries of love,—a kind of nobility which existed in her more modern nature, and a lack of the ancient instinct which had been a lost heritage to her.
Sonia belonged to a class of women who have only been produced in the latter half of our century, but in such large numbers that it is they who have determined the modern type. We cannot help hoping that they are but transitory, so greatly do their assumptions seem opposed to their sex, and yet they are formed of the best material that the age supplies. They are the women who object to begin life by fulfilling their destinies as women, and who consider that they have duties of greater importance than that of becoming wives and mothers; they are the “clever” daughters of the middle-class families, who, as governesses and teachers, swarm in every country in Europe. The popular opinion about them is that they do not want to marry; and as that, by the majority of men, is interpreted to mean that they are no good as wives, they turn to the herd of geese who are driven yearly to the market, and who go cackling to meet their fate. And although the descendants of such fathers and such mothers present a very small amount of intelligence capable of development, yet it is they who form the majority, and the majority is always right. Formerly, it was people’s sole object to get their daughters married, clever and stupid alike; it was an understood thing. But nowadays, the ones with “good heads” are set apart to lead celibate lives, while those who are “hard of understanding” are brought into the marriage market. This method of distribution has already become one of the first principles of middle-class economy. The daughters who are considered capable of providing for themselves are given a good education, accompanied by numerous hints as to the large sums which their parents have spent on them; while, together with the inevitable marriage portion, every effort is made to find husbands for the others with as little delay as possible. The first named are “the clever women,” but the latter make “the best wives;” and man’s sense of justice in the distribution of the good things of this life has fixed a stern practical barrier between these two classes.
The intellectual women themselves were originally to blame for raising a distinction which is so essentially characteristic of our time. They were the first to separate themselves, and to force the narrow-minded bourgeois to entertain other than the ordinary ideas concerning women. They thrust aside the dishes which were spread for them on life’s table, and grasped at others which had hitherto been considered the sole property of men, such as smoking and drinking. And when it appeared that they were really able to pass examinations and smoke cigarettes, without suffering any apparent harm from either, the spirit of equality, so popular at the present time, was quick to recognize a proof of the equality between man and wife, and to proclaim the equal rights of both, as well as the equality of the brain. They did not mention the other human ingredient, which could never be either equal or identical, because it is always inconvenient to go to the root of a thing, and the arguments of this materialistic century are too superficial ever to go below the surface.
Can it be true that the talented woman has actually forgotten that destiny intended her to be a woman, and bound her by eternal laws? Can it be true that the best women have an unnatural desire to be half men, and that they would prefer to shirk the duties of motherhood? A woman’s stupidity would not suffice to account for such an interpretation; it needs all a man’s thick-headedness; and yet there is no doubt that that is, to a great extent, the popular view of the case. The women whose intellectual abilities are above the average are often those who lay themselves open to the reproach that they have abandoned their sex; and yet, strange to say, some of them have attained to mature womanhood at an exceedingly early age. Sonia, who was par préférence the woman of genius of this century, was only nine years old when she flew into a passion of jealousy, caused by a little girl who was sitting on the knees of her handsome young uncle. She bit him in the arm till it bled, merely because she believed that he liked the child better than herself; that this was something more than mere childish naughtiness, is shown by the fact that her feelings towards her uncle were so changed that from that moment she felt disillusioned, and treated him with coldness.
Disillusioned! Even in their childhood these women have a strong, though indistinct, consciousness of their own worth as compared to ordinary women. They are always on the watch, and they have a good memory. Unlike ordinary young girls, they do not fall in love with mere outward qualities, nor with the first man who happens to cross their path. They wish to marry some one superior to themselves, and they do not mistake a passing passion for love. Then when the first years of adolescence with their hot impulses are past, and a temporary calm sets in, they experience a new desire, which is that they may enter into the full possession of their own being before beginning to raise a new generation. Physical maturity, which has hitherto been considered sufficient, has placed the need for intellectual and psychical maturity in the shade. They want to be grown-up in mind and soul before entering on life; they do not wish to remain children always; they want to develop all their capabilities,—and this longing for individuality, for which the road has not yet been made clear, nearly always leads them astray into the wilderness of study.
This is certainly the case when they are urged on, as Sonia Kovalevsky was, by a remarkable talent. She was not even obliged to follow the usual weary path of study; richly endowed and favorably situated as she was, she discovered a more direct way than is possible to the majority of girl students. Few have been able to begin as she did at the age of seventeen, under the protection of a devoted husband, and under the guidance of learned men, who took a personal interest in her welfare. Few have finished at the age of twenty-four, and have been loaded with distinctions while in the full bloom of their youth, able to stand on the threshold of a rich, full life, while fortune bid them take and choose whatever they might wish.
Yet these were but hollow joys that were offered to her. Those six years of protracted study left her weak in body and soul, and so weary that she needed a long period of idle vegetation, and she felt an aversion from the very studies in which she had accomplished so much. Sonia had overworked herself in the way that most girls overwork themselves in their examinations, whether it be for the university or as teachers; they work on with persistent diligence, looking neither to the right nor to the left, but going straight ahead as though they were the victims of hypnotic suggestion, with all their energies paralyzed except one solitary organ,—the memory. A man never does this; he interrupts his studies with social recreations and by means of a system of hygiene, applied alike to body and soul, from which a woman is excluded, no less on account of her womanly susceptibility than owing to conventional views. During this period of nervous tension, her sex is silent; or if it shows itself at all, it does so only in general irritability.
This was the case with Sonia; but until she became thoroughly engrossed in her work at Weierstrass’s, Valdemar Kovalevsky had a great deal to endure. It was not enough for her that she made him run all kinds of messages, which a servant could have done as well, but she was always going to see him in his bachelor apartments, and planning little excursions, and she was never satisfied unless she could have him to herself. Valdemar did not understand her. He had willingly consented to become the husband, in name only, of an undeveloped little girl, and be respected the distorted ideas of the time, which had got firmly fixed into this same little girl’s head. It is very natural that Sonia should not have understood the situation; it was not her business to do so, it was his. But she was always irritable and vexed after a tête-à-tête of any length with him, and long after his death she used scornfully to say: “He could get on capitally without me. If he had his cigarettes, his cup of tea, and a book, it was all that he required.”
Valdemar Kovalevsky, the translator of Brehm’s Birds and other popular scientific works into Russian, appears to have belonged to that portion of the male sex who are called “paragons.” He drudged diligently, had few wants, always did what was right, and never gave in. But he was in no way suited to Sonia, and the fact of his having agreed to her proposal proves it. After he had gone to Jena to escape from her wilful squandering of his time, an estrangement took place between them, and at Berlin she seems to have behaved as though she were ashamed of him. She was living then, as we have seen, with a girl friend who was a fellow-student of hers; and although she let Valdemar fetch her from Weierstrass’s, she introduced him to no one, and did not let it appear that he was her husband. Afterwards, when she had finished her studies and undergone a long period of enforced idleness at the time when her nerves were shaken by her father’s death, she clung so closely to him that a little warmth came into his stolid nature. But, naturally enough, neither her affection nor the birth of a daughter could change his nature, and even during the short time when they were together at St. Petersburg he allowed an intriguing swindler to come between them. Repulsed, dissatisfied, and saddened, Sonia went to Paris.
She wished to stand alone, and the only way in which this was possible was to turn her studies to account and to work for her own bread. She had given up the wish to be a learned woman; she wanted to be a wife, to be loved and made happy; she had done her best, but it had turned out a failure. It was just about this time that she received an invitation through Professor Mittag-Leffler to be teacher under him in the new high school at Stockholm. He was Fru Leffler’s brother, and a pupil of Weierstrass’s. Sonia gratefully consented, but a fine ear detects a peculiar undertone in the letters with which she responded.
In Stockholm she did not show the womanly side of her character to any one, least of all to Professor Mittag-Leffler, with whom she was on terms of the most cordial friendship. She found herself in very uncongenial surroundings, in a society where life was conducted on the strictest utilitarian principles. It was the worst time of her life, and one from which her impressionable nature never entirely recovered.
Before this, however, while she was in Paris, she had an experience which was truly characteristic of her.
In the interval which elapsed between her separation from her husband and his death, she made the acquaintance of a young Pole, who was, as Fru Leffler tells us, “a revolutionary, a mathematician, a poet, with a soul aglow with enthusiasm like her own. It was the first time that she had met any one who really understood her, who shared her varying moods, and sympathized with all her thoughts and dreams as he did. They were nearly always together, and the short hours when they were apart were spent in writing long effusions to each other. They were wild about the idea that human beings were created in couples, and that men and women are only half beings until they have found their other half....” He was with her by night and day, for he could seldom make up his mind to go before two o’clock in the morning, when he would climb over the garden wall, quite regardless of what people would think. Fru Leffler, who had passed the twenty years of her first marriage in the outer courts of the temple of Hymen, and only learned to know love and the joys of motherhood at the age of forty, alludes to this incident as being “very curious.” Because the two did nothing but talk, talk, talk, revelling in each other’s conversation, and assuring one another that they “could never be united,” because “he was going to keep himself pure” for the girl who was wandering about on this or another planet, and keeping herself for him.
One would imagine that this was childish nonsense, and that a woman of Sonia’s intelligence, with her position in the world, must surely have sent the silly boy about his business as soon as he began to talk in this strain. But no! her soul melted into his “like two flames which unite in one common glow.” And there they sat, nervous and excited, unable to tear themselves away from each other, flinging endless chains of words backwards and forwards across the table, and pouring streams of witticism into Danaïde’s barrel, talking as though life depended upon it, for there must not be any pauses,—anything was better than those dreadful pauses, when one seems to hear nothing but the beating of one’s own pulse, when shy eyes meet another’s, and cold damp hands seek for a corner in which to hide themselves.
We do not know what pleasure the “pure” young mathematician, poet, and Pole could find in this, nor do we care; we leave that to those who take an interest in the ebullitions of model young men of his class. The only part of the situation with which we are concerned is Sonia herself, and she is extremely interesting. In the first place, such a situation as this is never brought about by the man, or, at any rate, not more than once; and a woman cannot be entrapped into it against her will. The silliest schoolgirl knows how to get rid of a troublesome man when she wishes; they all do it brilliantly. It is quite a different matter when she wants him to stay, when she is trembling with excitement, and dreads the moment when he will rise to go. Who is not well acquainted with the situation, especially when the parties concerned are an intelligent girl and a dilettante man? In this case Sonia was the intelligent girl. Her behavior was that of a young lady who is painfully conscious of her own inexperience. A married woman who knows what love is can be calm in the presence of the warmest passion. She knows so well the path which leads astray that she no longer fears the unknown, and uncertainty has no attraction for her.
I shall probably be told that it is the married women who enjoy these situations most. That is quite true. There are many married women for whom marriage is neither l’amour goût, nor l’amour passion, nor l’amour savant, nor yet any other love, but a mere mechanical transaction. If the husband is indifferent he cannot rouse his wife’s love. Not motherhood, but the lover’s kiss, awakes the Sleeping Beauty. And in the Madonna’s immaculate conception the Church has incarnated the virgin mother in a profound symbol, which only needs a psychological interpretation to make it applicable to thousands of every-day cases.
Extraordinary though it may seem, Sonia was on this occasion, as on many other occasions in later life, a woman who experienced desire without being in the least aware of it. She was like a virgin mother who had borne a child without knowing man’s love. Valdemar Kovalevsky, who seems to me to have been incapable of filling any position in life, was certainly not the husband for Sonia, who, as a woman of genius, cannot be judged by the same standard as ordinary women. The average man is certainly not suited to be the husband of an exceptional woman with an original mind and sensitive temperament. But they do not know themselves; for it is in the nature of great talents to remain hidden from their owners, who have a long way to go before they attain to the full realization of their own powers. Only those geniuses whose talents have little or no connection with their individuality are sufficiently alive to their own claims not to fall short in life, and not to allow themselves to be hindered by any natural modesty.
Modesty comes only too naturally to great geniuses. They are conscious of being different from other people, yet when they are compelled to come forward they only do so under protest, and then beg every one’s pardon. The richest natures are the least conscious of their own powers; they are ashamed because they think that they are offering a copper, when in reality they are giving away kingdoms. This is doubly true of the woman who knows nothing of her own powers until the man comes to reveal them to her.
It was the same with Sonia. She was always giving away handfuls,—her mind, her learning, her social gifts; she placed them all at the disposal of others; yet when she, who felt the eternal loneliness which accompanies genius, asked for the entire affection of another, she was told that she asked too much. There can be no agreement between that which genius has the right to ask, and mediocrity the power to give. It was not a very strong affection that she had for the young Pole, and, such as it was, it did but intensify her sense of loneliness. It was at Paris that she received the news of her husband’s suicide; and she, who suffered so acutely from every successive death in her family, seemed doomed to receive one blow after another at the hand of fate. She had scarcely recovered from a nervous fever, resulting from the shock, when she was called to Stockholm by the supporters of women’s rights,—to Stockholm, where her soul congealed, her mind was unsatisfied, and where her body was to die.