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.
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.