To his life’s end Tchaikovsky could never recall this hour without a shiver of horror. This first great trouble of his life was only partly obliterated by a still greater grief—the death of his mother. Although in after life he passed through many sad experiences, and knew disappointment and renunciation, he could never forget the sense of resentment and despair which possessed him as the carriage containing his beloved mother passed out of sight. The shadow of this parting darkened the first year of his school life. Home-sickness and yearning effaced all other impressions, and destroyed all his earlier tendencies, desires, and thoughts. For two whole years it is evident from his letters that he lived only in the hope of seeing his parents again. He knew no other preoccupations or distractions.
Hardly had the boy’s mother left St. Petersburg, when an epidemic of scarlet fever broke out in the school. The Vakars hastened to take Peter into their own house, but unhappily the boy, although he escaped illness himself, carried the infection with him. The eldest son, the pride of the home, developed the complaint and died of it. Not a word of reproach was breathed to Peter Ilich, the unhappy cause of the disaster; but the boy could not rid himself of the sense that the parents must regard him with secret bitterness. It is not surprising that just at this time life seemed to him cold and cheerless, and that he longed more than ever for his own people.
The Vakars left Petersburg in April, 1851, and a new home was found for the two brothers in the family of M. Weiss. This change does not appear to have had much effect on Peter Ilich. The tone of his letters remains as homesick as before. But in the following May, Plato Vakar and his wife took the boys into their own house, where they remained until their parents returned to settle in St. Petersburg. In these surroundings Peter’s spirits brightened perceptibly.
In September his father came alone and spent three weeks with his boys. His departure was not so tragic an event as had been the mother’s a year earlier. Peter was now older, and had learnt to do without his parents. Henceforth his letters are calmer; his entreaties to his mother to come occur less frequently, and are sometimes put in a playful manner.
In May, 1852, the Tchaikovsky family returned to St. Petersburg. His modest savings and the pension he drew from the Government enabled Ilia Tchaikovsky to retire from work and live reunited with his children.