Petersburg

J. Barnes. Voyage

Petersburg

It was an old play of his, written in France back in 1849; promptly banned by the censor, and licensed for publication only in 1855. It first reached the stage seventeen years later, when it ran for a pitiful five nights in Moscow. Now, thirty years after its conception, she had telegraphed asking permission to abridge it for Petersburg. He agreed, while gently protesting that this juvenile invention had been meant for the page, not the stage. He added that the play was unworthy of her great talent. This was a typical gallantry: he had never seen her act.

Like most of his life's writing, the play was concerned with love. And as in his life, so in his writing: love did not work. Love might or might not provoke kindness, gratify vanity, and clear the skin, but it did not lead to happiness; there was always an inequality of feeling or intention present. Such was love's nature. Of course, it "worked" in the sense that it caused life's profoundest emotions, made him fresh as spring's linden-blossom and broke him like a traitor on the wheel. It stirred him from well-mannered timidity to relative boldness, though a rather theoretical boldness, one tragicomically incapable of action. It taught him the gulping folly of anticipation, the wretchedness of failure, the whine of regret, and the silly fondness of remembrance. He knew love well. He also knew himself well. Thirty years earlier, he had written himself into the part of Rakitin, who offers the audience his conclusions about love: "In my opinion, Alexei Nikolaevich, every love, happy as well as unhappy, is a real disaster when you give yourself over to it entirely." These views were deleted by the censor.

He had assumed she would play the female lead, Natalya Petrovna, the married woman who falls in love with her son's tutor. Instead, she chose to be Natalya's ward Verochka, who, in the way of plays, also falls in love with the tutor. The production opened; he came to Petersburg; she called on him in his rooms at the Hotel de l'Europe. She had expected to be intimidated, but found herself charmed by the "elegant and likeable grandpa" that she discovered. He treated her like a child. Was this so surprising? She was twenty-five, he was sixty.

On the 27th of March he went to a performance of his play. Despite hiding in the depths of the director's box, he was recognised, and at the end of the second act the audience started calling his name. She came to take him onstage; he refused, but took a bow from the box. After the next act, he went to her dressing-room, where he grasped her hands and examined her beneath the gaslight. "Verochka," he said. "Have I really written this Verochka? I never paid her much attention when I was writing. The focal point of the play for me was Natalya Petrovna. But you are the living Verochka."