[1]. The dates given here are those of the Russian calendar.
He was the elder son of Iván Yákovlev, a Russian noble, and Luise Haag, a German girl from Stuttgart. It was a runaway match; and as the Lutheran marriage ceremony was not supplemented in Russia, the child was illegitimate. “Herzen” was a name invented for him by his parents. Surnames, however, are little used in Russian society; and the boy would generally be called, from his own Christian name and his father’s, Alexander Ivánovich. His parents lived together in Moscow, and he lived with them and was brought up much like other sons of rich nobles. It was quite in Herzen’s power to lead a life of selfish ease and luxury; but he early chose a different path and followed it to the end. Yet this consistent champion of the poor and humble was himself a typical aristocrat-generous, indeed, and stoical in misfortune, but bold to rashness and proud as Lucifer.
The story of his early life is told fully in these pages—his solitary boyhood and romantic friendship with his cousin, Nikolai Ogaryóv; his keen enjoyment of College life, and the beginning of his long warfare with the police of that other aristocrat, Nicholas, Tsar of all the Russias, who was just as much in earnest as Herzen but kept a different object in view.
Charged with socialistic propaganda, Herzen spent nine months of 1834-1835 in a Moscow prison and was then sent, by way of punishment, to Vyatka. The exiles were often men of exceptional ability, and the Government made use of their talents. So Herzen was employed for three years in compiling statistics and organizing an exhibition at Vyatka. He was then allowed to move to Vladímir, near Moscow, where he edited the official gazette; and here, on May 9, 1838, he married his cousin, Natálya Zakhárin, a natural daughter of one of his uncles. Receiving permission in 1839 to live, under supervision of the police, where he pleased, he spent some time in Moscow and Petersburg, but he was again arrested on a charge of disaffection and sent off this time to Novgorod, where he served in the Government offices for nearly three years. In 1842 he was allowed to retire from his duties and to settle with his wife and family in Moscow. In 1846 his father’s death made him a rich man.
For twelve years past, Herzen, when he was not in prison, had lived the life of a ticket-of-leave man. He was naturally anxious to get away from Russia; but a passport was indispensable, and the Government would not give him a passport. At last the difficulties were overcome; and in the beginning of 1847 Herzen, with his wife and children and widowed mother, left Russia for ever.
Twenty-three years, almost to a day, remained for him to live. The first part of that time was spent in France, Italy, and Switzerland; but the suburbs of London, Putney and Primrose Hill, were his most permanent place of residence. He was safe there from the Russian police; but he did not like London. He spoke English very badly;[[2]] he made few acquaintances there; and he writes with some asperity of the people and their habits.
[2]. Herzen is mentioned in letters of Mrs. Carlyle. She notes (1) that his English was unintelligible; and (2) that of all the exiles who came to Cheyne Walk he was the only one who had money.
His own family party was soon broken up by death. In November, 1851, his mother and his little son, Nikolai (still called Kólya) were drowned in an accident to the boat which was bringing them from Marseilles to Nice, where Herzen and his wife were expecting them. The shock proved fatal to his wife: she died at Nice in the spring of 1852. The three surviving children were not of an age to be companions to him.
For many years after the coup d’état of Louis Napoleon, Herzen, who owned a house in Paris, was forbidden to live in France. He settled in London and was joined there by Ogaryóv, the friend of his childhood. Together they started a printing press, in order to produce the kind of literature which Nicholas and his police were trying to stamp out in Russia. In 1857, after the death of the great Autocrat, they began to issue a fortnightly paper, called Kólokol (The Bell); and this Bell, probably inaudible in London, made an astonishing noise in Russia. Its circulation and influence there were unexampled: it is said that the new Tsar, Alexander, was one of its regular readers. Alexander and Herzen had met long before, at Vyatka. February 19, 1861, when Alexander published the edict abolishing slavery throughout his dominions, must have been one of the brightest days in Herzen’s life. There was little brightness in the nine years that remained. When Poland revolted in 1863, he lost his subscribers and his popularity by his courageous refusal to echo the prevailing feeling of his countrymen; and he gave men inferior to himself, such as Ogaryóv and Bakúnin, too much influence over his journal.
He was on a visit to Paris, when he died rather suddenly of inflammation of the lungs on January 9, 1870. At Nice there is a statue of Herzen on the grave where he and his wife are buried.