Chapter 5 Golovin

It was a few days after I had been visited by the police and my papers had been seized during the June struggle, that I was visited for the first time by I. Golovin, until then only known to me from his dull writings and from the exceedingly bad reputation he had made for himself as an insolent and quarrelsome man. He had been at Lamoricière’s, had without the slightest suggestion on my part fussed about my papers, succeeded in doing nothing and came to me to reap the modest laurels of gratitude and to take advantage of the opportunity to force his acquaintance upon me.

‘I said to Lamoricière,’ he told me, ‘“General, it is a shame to worry Russian republicans and to leave the agents of the Russian Government in peace.”

‘“You know them, then?” Lamoricière asked me.

‘“Who does not know them!”

‘“Nommez-les, nommez-les.”

‘“Well, Yakov Tolstoy and General Zhomini.”

‘“To-morrow I will order the police to visit them.”

‘“But is Zhomini a Russian agent?” I asked.

‘“Ha, ha, ha—that we shall see now.”’

There you have the man.

The Rubicon was crossed, and, do what I would to restrain Golovin’s affection and above all his visits, everything was in vain. Twice a week he would come to us, and the moral level of our home was at once lowered—slander, quarrels, personalities arose. Five years later when Golovin tried to provoke me to fight, he said that I was afraid of him; when he said it, he did not suspect, of course, how many years I had been afraid of him before the London quarrel.

Even in Russia I had heard of his indelicacy, his lack of ceremony in money matters.

Shevyryov, returning from Paris, described to us the legal proceedings in which Golovin figured with a footman, with whom he had fought, and put this down to the discredit of us Westerners, among whom he reckoned Golovin. I observed to Shevyryov that the West ought only to be blamed for the fact that they fought, for in the East Golovin would simply have given the footman a beating and no one would have said anything about it.

His now forgotten writings about Russia disposed me even less to make his acquaintance. They were a hotch-potch of French rhetoric, the liberalism of the Roteck School, anecdotes flung in pell-mell, platitudes and continual personalities with no logic, no definite view, no coherence. Pogodin wrote minced prose, but Golovin thought in minced ideas.

I avoided his acquaintance so far as it was possible. His quarrel with Bakunin assisted me. Golovin sent an aristocratically liberal little article to some paper in which he referred to him. Bakunin announced that he had nothing in common either with the Russian aristocracy or with Golovin.

We have seen that after the June days I failed to steer clear of his undesirable acquaintance.

Every day showed me how right I had been to try to do so. In Golovin was combined all that is hateful to us in a Russian officer and in a Russian landowner, together with a mass of petty European defects, and that without any eccentricity, any talent or humour. His exterior—vulgar, aggressive and offensive—is like the characteristic label of a whole class of people, who hang about with cards or without cards at Spas and in great cities, invariably dining well, whom everybody knows, and about whom everything is known, except two things—what they live on and what they live for. Golovin was a Russian officer, a French brouilleur, hâbleur, an English swindler, a German Junker, as well as our native Nozdryov and Hlestakov in partibus infidelium.

Why had he left Russia? What was he doing in Europe, he so well placed in the officers’ circle of his brothers described by himself? Uprooted from his native soil, he could not recover his centre of gravity. After completing his studies at Dorpat University Golovin got a job in Nesselrode’s department. Nesselrode mentioned to him that his handwriting was bad, Golovin took offence and went off to Paris.

When he was summoned to return, he answered that he could not do so yet, as he had not finished his calligraphic studies. Then he published his compilation, La Russie sous Nicolas, in which he offended Nicholas most of all by saying that he made mistakes in spelling. He was commanded to return to Russia. He did not go. His brothers⁠[77] took advantage of the fact to put him on short commons—they sent him much less money than was his due. That is the whole story.

The man had not a particle of artistic feeling, of aesthetic taste, he had no desire to learn, no serious occupation. His imagination was turned on himself, he liked to pose, to preserve an appearance; he retained the habits of an ill-bred landowner of the middling sort all his life; they seemed easily compatible with the foraging nomadic life of the semi-refugee and semi-Bohemian.

Once I found him in Turin at the gates of the Hotel Feder with a whip in his hand ... before him stood a Savoyard, a half-naked barefoot boy of twelve. Golovin was flinging him sous and for every sou lashed him on the legs; the Savoyard hopped about, showing that it hurt a good deal, and asked for more. Golovin went on laughing and throwing halfpence. I do not suppose that he was whipping him very hard; still, he was whipping him, and how could it amuse him?

After Paris we met first again in Geneva and afterwards in Nice. He, too, had been turned out of France and found himself in a very unenviable position.⁠[78] He had absolutely nothing to live upon in spite of the fabulous cheapness of everything in Nice at that time. How often and ardently I desired that Golovin would come in for a legacy or marry an heiress ... that would have freed my hands.

From Nice he went away to Belgium, whence he was turned out; he went off to London, and there was naturalised, boldly adding to his surname the title Prince Hovra, to which he had no right. He returned to Turin, an English subject, and began publishing a paper. In it he annoyed the Ministers to such a point that they turned him out of the country. Golovin tried to obtain the protection of the English Embassy. The ambassador refused it him and again he drifted away to London. Here in the character of a knight of industry, in the department of revolution, he unsuccessfully attempted to get into various political circles, made the acquaintance of every one in the world and published inconceivable trash.

Towards the end of November 1853, Worcell came to see me to invite me to say something at the Polish anniversary. Golovin dropped in on us and, catching the subject of discussion, at once attacked Worcell with the question: ‘Might he make a speech?’

Worcell was annoyed. I was doubly so. Nevertheless he replied, ‘We are inviting every one, and shall be very glad; but that the meeting may have unity, we must know à peu près what each person is going to say. We are meeting on such a day, come to our discussion.’

Golovin, of course, accepted the invitation. Worcell, as he went away, said to me, shaking his head, in the hall: ‘What ill wind brought him?’

With a heavy heart I went to the preliminary meeting. I foresaw that it would not pass off without a scandal. We had not been there five minutes before my presentiment was justified. After two or three jerky generalisations, Golovin suddenly turned to Ledru-Rollin, first reminded him that they had met somewhere, of which Ledru-Rollin had no recollection, then, à propos of nothing at all, fell to proving to him that it was a blunder to be continually irritating Napoleon, that it would be better policy to spare him for the sake of the Polish cause. Ledru-Rollin changed countenance, but Golovin went on that Napoleon alone could save Poland, and ‘that,’ he added, ‘is not only my personal opinion, Mazzini and Kossuth see that now, and are doing their utmost to approach Napoleon.’

‘How can you believe anything so absurd?’ said Ledru-Rollin, beside himself with emotion.

‘I have heard it.’

‘From whom? From spies; an honest man could not have told you that. Gentlemen—I do not know Kossuth personally—still, I am convinced that this is not true; as for my friend Mazzini, I boldly take it upon myself to answer for him that he has never dreamed of such a compromise, which would be a terrible calamity, and at the same time false to his own religion.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ people said on all sides. It was clear that Golovin’s words had incensed every one. Ledru-Rollin turned to Worcell and said:

‘You see my apprehensions were well founded; the composition of your meeting is too varied to avoid the expression of opinions which I cannot accept nor even listen to. Allow me to withdraw and decline the honour of delivering a speech on the 29th.’

He got up, but Worcell, stopping him, observed that the committee for arranging the meeting had elected himself as their president, and in that capacity he must beg Ledru-Rollin to remain, while he put the question to their comrades whether after what had just been said they preferred to let Golovin make a speech and lose the co-operation of Ledru-Rollin, or the reverse.

Then Worcell turned to the members of the Central Committee. There could be no doubt about the result. Golovin foresaw it very well and so, without waiting for an answer, rose and disdainfully flung Ledru-Rollin the words: ‘I yield place and honour to you, and refuse to speak on the 29th of November as I had intended.’ After which with a heavy and valiant tread he walked out.

To put an end to the business at once, Worcell asked me to read them my speech or tell them the gist of it.

Next day the meeting, one of the last of the brilliant Polish meetings, took place. It was successful, there were masses of people. I arrived at eight o’clock—every place was taken and I had difficulty in making my way to the platform prepared for the speakers.

‘I have been looking for you everywhere,’ Dr. Darasz said to me; ‘Ledru-Rollin is waiting for you in our anteroom here and insists that he must speak to you before the meeting.’

‘What has happened?’

‘Oh, it’s all that cad Golovin.’

I went in to Ledru-Rollin—he was violently angry and with good reason.

‘Look here,’ he said to me, ‘what a letter that wretch sent me a quarter of an hour before I came here.’

‘I am not responsible for him,’ I said, opening the letter.

‘Of course not, but I want you to know the sort of man he is.’

The letter was rude and stupid. It was pure swagger on his part; he wanted to cover his fiasco. He wrote to Ledru-Rollin that, if the latter had none of the French courtesy, he must show at least that he was not devoid of French courage.

‘I always knew he was a troublesome and impudent man,’ I said, giving back the note, ‘but I certainly did not expect this. What do you intend to do?’

‘Give him such a lesson as he will not forget for some time. Here before the meeting I will tear the mask from this aventurier, I will describe our conversation—I will call upon you as a witness and a Russian too—and will read his letter—and then we shall see—I am not accustomed to swallow such sugar-plums.’

‘It is a pleasant prospect,’ I thought; ‘Golovin with his suspicious reputation will be faced with complete ruin. His one way of escape will be a duel. Such a duel must not be permitted, because Ledru-Rollin is perfectly right and has done nothing offensive. In his position he cannot fight with every stray person he meets. And what a disgrace—at a Polish meeting for one Russian exile to be plunged in the mud while another assists.’

‘But can’t you put it off?’ I asked.

‘To lose this opportunity!’

I still tried to stop it, putting in a suggestion of a court, a jury d’honneur—nothing had much effect....

Then we came out on to the platform—and were greeted with frantic applause. Applause and the noise of the crowd are an intoxicating influence, as we all know—I forgot about Golovin and thought about my own speech. Of that speech I have spoken in another place. My very appearance on the platform was greeted with the utmost warmth by Poles, Italians and French. When I had finished, Worcell, president of the meeting, came up to me and, as he embraced me, repeated, deeply moved: ‘Oh I thank you, I thank you!’ The applause and hubbub was redoubled, and it was to the sound of this uproar that I returned to my place.... At that moment Golovin came into my head, and I was panic-stricken at the approach of the moment when the tribune of 1848 would make mincemeat of that buffoon. I took out a pencil and wrote on a scrap of paper: ‘For God’s sake, manage so that the nasty Golovin affair should not spoil your meeting.’ The platform was in the shape of an amphitheatre; I handed the note to Pianciani, who was sitting in front of me, that he might pass it to Worcell. Worcell read it, scribbled something in pencil and passed it in the other direction, that is, towards Ledru-Rollin, who was sitting higher up. Ledru-Rollin reached over and put a hand on my shoulder and, nodding good-humouredly, said: ‘For your speech and for your sake I will put it off until to-morrow,’ and, more pleased than I can say, I went off to supper with Ruge and Coppingham at the American Stores.

Before I had time to get up next day my rooms were filled with Poles. They came to thank me, but probably they could have deferred their gratitude to a later hour. A more important matter was their impatience to settle the dispute, the Golovin business. Their fury found full vent. They had drawn up a document, in which Golovin was reviled, and an address to Ledru-Rollin, in which they declared that they absolutely refused to allow him to fight the duel. A dozen men were ready to fight Golovin. They had come to insist on my signing both the document and the address.

I saw that one scandal would give rise to half a dozen and, taking advantage of my success of the previous day, i.e. of the prestige it had given me, said to them: ‘What is your object? Is it to settle the business, so that Ledru-Rollin should be satisfied and the unfortunate incident which all but ruined your meeting should be obliterated; or to punish Golovin at all costs? In the latter case, gentlemen, I will have no hand in it, and you may do what you think best.’

‘Of course, our chief object is to settle the matter.’

‘Good; have you confidence in me?’

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘I am going alone to Golovin ... and if I arrange things so that Ledru-Rollin is satisfied, that shall be the end of it.’

‘Good; but if you don’t succeed in doing so?’

‘Then I will sign your protest and address.’

‘Right.’

I found Golovin gloomy and embarrassed, he was evidently expecting a storm, and I doubt whether he was pleased that he had provoked it.

Our interview was brief. I told him that I had saved him from two unpleasant experiences, and proffered my services to relieve him from the third, that is, to reconcile him with Ledru-Rollin. He was longing to end the trouble, but his conceit would not allow him to recognise that he was in fault, still less to admit it.

‘It is only for your sake that I consent,’ he muttered at last.

Whether for my sake or any one else’s, the affair reached a settlement. I went to Ledru-Rollin, waited a couple of hours in a cold room and caught a chill; at last he arrived, courteous and good-humoured.

I told him the whole story from the arrival of the chivalrous sons of Poland to the wrigglings of our matador, and Ledru-Rollin agreed, laughing, to consign the matter to oblivion and receive the penitent sinner. I went to fetch him.

Golovin was waiting in great agitation; learning that all had gone off well, he flushed, and stuffing all the pockets of his greatcoat with papers of some sort, drove off with me.

Ledru-Rollin received him like a true gentleman and at once began talking of other things.

‘I have come to you,’ said Golovin, ‘to say that I am very sorry....’

Ledru-Rollin interrupted him with the words, ‘N’en parlons plus ... here is your note, throw it in the fire,’ and without a pause went on with the story he was telling.... When we rose to take leave, Golovin drew a heap of pamphlets from his pockets and, handing them to Ledru-Rollin, said that these were his latest brochures, and he begged him to accept them as a sign of his particular respect. Ledru-Rollin, overflowing with gratitude, put the heap down with careful respect, and most likely never touched them again.

‘Here you have our literary age,’ I said to Golovin as we got into the cab. ‘I have heard of clever people taking a corkscrew with them to a duel, but to arm oneself with pamphlets is something new!’

Why did I save the man from public disgrace? Really, I don’t know and I simply regret it. Every time we show forbearance, spare, whitewash or rescue a man, we have to pay for it, in accordance with the great principle laid down by Byelinsky, that ‘The strength of scoundrels lies in the fact that they treat honest men as though they were scoundrels, while honest men treat them as though they were honest.’ The bandits of the journalistic and political world are dangerous and unpleasant, owing to their senseless and difficult position. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain. When you save such men you only restore them to their former⁠[79]⁠....

There is not one word of exaggeration in my story. Imagine then what was my astonishment when ten years later Golovin published in Germany a statement that Ledru-Rollin had apologised to him ... though he knew that both Ledru-Rollin and I, thank God, were alive and well.... Was not that a stroke of genius?

The meeting had taken place on the 29th of November, 1853. In March 1854 I published a brief appeal to the Russian soldiers in Poland, in the name of the ‘Russian Free Commune’ in London. Golovin was offended at this and brought me the following protest to be printed:—

‘I have read your “announcement” on Annunciation Day. It is headed “The Free Russian Commune in London,” and yet the words occur: “I do not remember in which province.”

‘Consequently it is a mystery to me whether this Commune consists of you and Engelson or you alone.

‘This is not the place to discuss the contents of the appeal, which was not shown me in manuscript. To refer to one thing only, I should not have signed a promise not to refrain from advising people who do not ask my advice. Neither modesty nor conscience would allow me to say that I have reconciled the name of the Russian people to the peoples of the West.

‘Therefore I feel bound to ask you to announce at the earliest opportunity that I have hitherto had nothing to do with any appeals printed by your press in Russian.

‘Hoping that you will not compel me to resort to any other form of publicity,—I remain your servant,

‘Ivan Golovin.

‘London, March 25, 1854.

‘To M. Herzen (Iskander).

‘P.S.—I leave it to your discretion to publish my letter in its present form or a summary of its contents.’

I was unspeakably delighted at this protest. I saw in it the beginning of a breach with this insufferably tiresome man, and a public announcement of the difference of our views. Europe and the Poles themselves have such a superficial view of Russia—especially in the intervals when she is not beating her neighbours or annexing whole kingdoms in Asia—that I had had to work for ten years to escape being mixed up with the famous Ivan Golovin.

Golovin followed up his protest by sending me a long incoherent letter, which wound up with the words: ‘It is possible that apart we may be yet more useful to the common cause if we do not waste our strength on conflict with each other.’

To this I answered:—

‘March 30, Thursday.

‘It is my duty to thank you for your letter received yesterday, of which the good intention—that of softening your published announcement—I fully appreciated.

‘I entirely agree with you that we shall be of more use apart. As for the conflict of which you write, it has never entered my head. I shall take no initiative in it, having nothing against you, especially if each of us goes his own way. Remember how long ago and how often I have told you in private what you now say in public. Our manners, opinions, likes and dislikes are all different. Permit me to remain on terms of civility with you, but accept our separation for a fait accompli, and both you and I will feel more free.

‘My letter is an answer. There are no questions in it. I beg you not to prolong this correspondence, and I rely upon your delicacy that our final parting shall not be accompanied either by rude language or by hostile action. With all good wishes.’

That Golovin did not in the least wish to break off relations with me was obvious; what he wanted was to vent his anger over our publishing an appeal without him and then to be reconciled, but I did not want to let slip this ardently desired opportunity.

Two or three weeks after my letter, I received a parcel from him; I opened it, a sheet of black-edged paper.... I looked; it was half of the invitation to the funeral sent out on the 18th of May, 1852. In answer to his letter from Turin I had sent it him, adding: ‘Your letter touched me, I have never doubted the kindness of your heart....’ Upon this letter, he wrote that he begged me to see him, gave me a new address, and added: ‘il ne s’agit pas d’argent.’ I answered that I could not go and see him, because it was not I who had business with him but he with me, because he and not I had begun the breach between us, and, finally, because he had brought that to the knowledge of outsiders. But that I was prepared to receive him when he liked to call.

He appeared next morning, meek and soft as silk. I answered him again and again that no hostile step would be taken on my side, but that our opinions and manners were so utterly dissimilar that it was useless for us to meet.

‘But how is it you did not notice that before...?’

I did not answer.

We parted coldly but civilly.

One would have thought it was all over. No! Next day Golovin treated me to the following letter:⁠[80]⁠—

‘Ad Usum Proprium.

‘After to-day’s conversation I cannot refuse you the satisfaction of having a Commune—have it! I have no intention of beginning an attack upon you, so consequently be sure to avoid anything that could give grounds for it.

‘When your new friends fail you, you will find in me one always devoted to you.

‘My advice is to write to the Morning Advertiser that you are not taking proceedings against them only because you despise the ignorance which cannot distinguish a patriot and a friend of freedom from a spy, which commends Brunov and slanders Bakunin.

‘I will not come and see you, as I shall be occupied with more important affairs than seeking sympathy.

‘When you care to visit me I shall always be glad to see you, especially as, having something in common, we shall always have something to talk over.

‘Golovin.

‘April 26, 1854.’

At the approach of summer I moved to Richmond, and for some time heard nothing of Golovin. All at once I had a letter from him. Mentioning no names, he wrote that it had reached his ears that ‘I had jeered at him’ in my own house, and asked (as though I had been his mistress) that I should send back his portrait which he had presented to me in Nice. In vain I rummaged about and hunted among my papers, I could not find the portrait.

It was annoying ... but I had to tell him that I had lost the portrait. I asked Savitch, a common acquaintance, to tell him that I had looked for it in vain, and to repeat that I wished him no harm whatever, and begged him to leave me alone.

In answer to this came the following letter:—

‘Honoured Alexandr Ivanovitch,—You told Savitch that if I wrote you a letter you would send back ten pounds. My intention was to send you twenty pounds—all that I had—and you wrote yourself that of the hundred pounds you would take only twenty. I had hoped to be out of my difficulties soon, but it has turned out otherwise. However, in a week or at most a fortnight, I could return you the ten pounds. You say that you are not my enemy, and I ask you to do this, not as a favour to a friend but as an act of justice. If you think otherwise, refuse, without buzzing it about among your admirers.

‘I. Golovin.

‘August 16.’

To this letter I made no answer. I need hardly say that I had given Savitch no message whatever about money. Golovin had purposely muddled things up, in order to give an appearance of a transaction to what was simply asking a favour. Of Savitch himself—one of the most amusing wild flowers of our native soil flung into a foreign land—we will speak some other time.

Following upon this came a second letter. He grasped that the absence of reply meant a refusal and, of course, appreciated the imprudence of the line he had taken.

Scared, he determined to attack the position by storm—he wrote to me that I was a German or a Jew,⁠[81] and sent me back my letter B, writing upon it ‘You are a coward.’ Then came two letters in a disguised handwriting filled with abuse after the style of C.⁠[82] I regret that some of them are lost; however, the tone is the same in all.

He expected that the letter in which he spoke of cowardice would be followed by my sending him seconds. My conceptions of honour were indeed strange and did not coincide with his. What fun would there be in killing a candidate for Bicêtre or a house of correction, or being killed or maimed by him? And certainly being tried for doing so, giving up one’s work—and all this to prove that I am not afraid of him ... as though mad dogs were the only creatures whose privilege it is to arouse terror without detriment to the honour of the terror-stricken.

Again a pause. Golovin ceased to show himself in our parages, caroused at some one else’s expense, said insulting things to some one else and borrowed money from some one else. Meanwhile, he was losing the last shreds of his reputation, old acquaintances were cutting him, new ones were avoiding him. Louis Blanc apologised to friends who met him with Golovin in Regent Street; Milner Gibson’s house was definitely closed to him, and even remote English simpletons—the stupidest people in the whole world—began to suspect that he was not a prince and not a statesman, in fact not a man at all; none but Germans who know men only from the bookseller’s catalogues regarded him as something ‘berühmt.’

In February 1855 a meeting was being prepared at St. Martin’s Hall; an impressive but unsuccessful attempt to unite the Socialists of all parties with the Chartists. I have described in detail elsewhere the results of this meeting, and the Marx intrigues against my election. Here I am dealing with Golovin.

I did not want to make a speech, and went to the sitting of the Committee to thank them for the honour and to refuse it. It was held in the evening, and as I was going out I met a Chartist on the stairs who asked me if I had read Golovin’s letter in the Morning Advertiser. I had not. Below the hall was a café, a public-house. The Morning Advertiser is in all the taverns—so I went in and he showed me the letter, in which Golovin wrote that it had come to his knowledge that the International Committee had elected me a member and asked me as a Russian to make a speech at the meeting, and therefore, with no motive but love of the truth, he warned them that I was not a Russian but a German Jew born in Russia, ‘a race under the special patronage of Nicholas.’

After reading this mischievous sally I went back to the Committee and said to the Secretary, E. Jones, that I took back my refusal. At the same time I showed him and other members of the Committee the Morning Advertiser, and added that Golovin very well knew my family history, and ‘was lying from love of the truth. Though indeed Jewish extraction could hardly have been an obstacle,’ I added, ‘since the first exiles after the creation of the world were Jews, i.e. Adam and Eve.’

The Committee laughed and accepted my new decision with applause led by the President.

‘As for your electing me a member—it is my duty to thank you for it, but to defend the choice is your affair.’

‘Yes, yes,’ I heard shouted on all sides.

Next day Jones printed a few lines in his paper The People, and sent a letter to the Daily News:⁠[83]⁠—

‘Alexander Herzen, the Russian Exile

‘Some sham democrat has written in the Morning Advertiser a libel with reference to M. Herzen, with design to damage, if possible, the approaching demonstration in St. Martin’s Hall. The effort is puerile, because that demonstration is one of peoples and principles, and does not in any way depend on the personality of any individuals. But in justice to M. Herzen, we are bound to say that the ridiculous statement about his not being a Russian and an exile is a downright falsehood, and that the statement that he belongs to the same race as Joshua and Josephus is utterly without foundation; not that it is not just as honourable to belong to that once mighty and ever consistent people, as to any other. He was five years a captive in the Ural mountains, and liberated thence only to be banished from Russia, his native clime.

‘M. Herzen is at the head of Russian democratic literature, and the most distinguished exile of his country; as such, the representative of its proletarian millions. He will be at the demonstration in St. Martin’s Hall, and will, we trust, receive a welcome that will show the world that the English can sympathise with the Russian people, while they desire to strike at the Russian tyrant.’

‘M. Herzen.

‘To the Editor of the “Daily News.”

‘Sir,—A letter inserted in one of your contemporaries denies M. Herzen, the well-known Russian exile, the right of representing, in the International Committee, Russian democracy, and even the Russian birthright.

‘M. Herzen already has disposed of the second allegation. Allow us, on behalf of the International Committee, to add to M. Herzen’s reply a few facts respecting the first one, which very likely his modesty has prevented him from alluding to.

‘At twenty years of age, condemned for a conspiracy against the despotism of the Tsar, he was sent to the frontier of Siberia, where he remained an exile for a period of seven years.

‘Pardoned a first time, he knew very soon how to deserve a second condemnation. In the meantime, political pamphlets, philosophical writings and novels secured him one of the most distinguished places in Russian literature.

‘However, for the literary and political part played by M. Herzen in this our country, we can do no better than to refer to an article published on the 6th inst. in the Athenaeum, of which nobody will suspect the impartiality.

‘Arrived in Europe in 1847, M. Herzen occupied an important rank amongst the distinguished men who attached their names to the great revolutionary movement of 1848. Since that time he has started in London the first Russian free press, wherein he prosecutes against the Tsar Nicholas and Russian despotism a deadly and most useful war.

‘In consequence of these facts, anxious as we were to unite the whole democracy in a common manifestation, we neither hoped nor wished to find in England or in Europe a nobler and truer representative of the revolutionary party in Russia.—Yours, etc.

‘(Signed on behalf of the International Committee)

The President. Secretaries—Robert Chapman, Conrad Dombrowski, Alfred Talandier.’

Golovin remained mute and went away to America.

‘At last,’ I thought, ‘we are rid of him. He is lost in that ocean of swindlers, fortune-hunters and adventurers of all sorts, will there become a pioneer or a digger, a card-sharper or a slave-holder, and whether he grows rich there or is hung by lynch law does not matter so long as he does not come back.’ Not a bit of it—a year later my Golovin popped up in London again and, happening in the street to meet Ogaryov, who did not bow to him, went up to the latter and asked him, ‘Why, have you been told not to bow to me, eh?’ and walked off. Ogaryov overtook him and saying, ‘No, it is to please myself that I cut you,’ went on his way. I need hardly say that this immediately produced the following note to Ogaryov:—

‘As I am about to edit The Whip, I do not seek to be on good terms with my enemies, but I do not wish them to imagine all sorts of nonsense about me.

‘In a couple of words I will tell you what passed between me and Herzen. I went to his house and begged him not to quarrel. “I cannot agree to that,” he said; “I do not sympathise with you, let us start a controversy.” I did not do so, but when he sent me back my letter unopened, then I called him a German. It was like Briscorn, who called Dolgoruky a German to make the soldiers laugh. But Herzen was pleased to answer, to give his version, and then to be furious not with himself but with me. But there was nothing offensive in this affair. Admitting that my treatment of him was bad and yours of me good, though you are not twins, still there was nothing to get wild over nor to fight about.

‘Golovin.

‘Jan. 12, 1857.’

We determined to remain absolutely silent: no punishment is so annoying to blusterers and hâbleurs as silence, as mute cold contempt. Twice more Golovin tried writing to Ogaryov biting and would-be witty notes, after the style of the following second missive, by now absolutely meaningless and suggestive of real insanity:—

‘Berlin, Aug. 20.

‘I have seen

‘The God of the Russian censorship

‘And held not my peace.

‘Buchberg and I were wrangling for two hours; he sobbed like a calf.

‘“Vous voulez la guerre, vous l’aurez.”

‘Herzen and I have been enemies for two or three years. What has come of it? No good to any one! Does he want to shoot at me? I have an arrow ready, but for the common good it would be better to shake hands!’

‘Victoria Hotel.

‘You are publishing your complete works: do they smell of a corpse as in Denmark?...’

Not a word of answer followed.

And, indeed, he had enough to drive him mad. Little by little all his resources, moral and material, had dried up. The literary enterprises that had maintained his credit were no more, he was undertaking jobs semi-decent, semi-dirty, of all sorts; everything brought him disaster or slipped out of his hands. He was not squeamish as to the means he used. One fine morning—most likely not knowing at whose expense he could have a good dinner—and he was very fond of a good dinner—Golovin wrote to Palmerston and offered his services—it was towards the end of the Crimean War—as a secret agent to the English Government, undertaking to be very useful, owing to his former connections in Petersburg and his excellent knowledge of Russia. Palmerston was disgusted and told his secretary to answer that the Viscount thanks M. Golovin for his offer, but does not require his services at present. For a long while Golovin used to carry this letter with Palmerston’s seal on the envelope, and show it to people.

After the death of Nicholas he inserted in some paper an abusive article attacking the new Empress, and signed it with a pseudonym; next day he sent a reply to his own attack to the same paper. Our friend Kauffmann, who edited a lithographed sheet, unmasked this proceeding, and there was an outcry about it in dozens of papers. Then he offered the Russian Embassy in London to edit a Government Gazette, but Brunov, like Palmerston, had no immediate need of his services.

Then he simply petitioned the Russian Government for pardon, and received it on condition of entering the service. He took alarm, began haggling over the place of his service, begging that Suvorov, then Governor-General of the Baltic provinces, should take him into his. Suvorov consented. Golovin did not go, but wrote a letter to Prince Gortchakov about a dream he had had. He dreamed that the Tsar had invited him to his council, and that he had zealously advised him to undertake good deeds.

Dreams do not always come true, and instead of a place in the Tsar’s councils, our now grey-headed rascal almost got into the house of correction. Meeting with a commercial factotum called Stern, Golovin went in for all sorts of speculations without a halfpenny in his pocket, forgetting that as long ago as 1848 his name had been exposed at the Bourse in Paris as a fraudulent speculator. He tried to cheat Stern, but Stern cheated him, and Golovin had recourse to his own method: he sent an article to the papers concerning Stern in which he touched upon his domestic life. Stern was furious and brought an action against him. Golovin went, terrified and distracted, to a solicitor. He was afraid of prison, of a heavy fine, of publicity. The solicitor proposed that he should sign a document to settle it, completely taking back what he had said. The solicitor prevailed, and Stern, after lithographing the document and the signature, sent them to all his and Golovin’s acquaintances. I received a copy:—

‘4 Egremont Place, London, May 29, 1857.

‘Dear Sir,—You having commenced an action for libel against me in respect of certain statements I have made both verbally and in writing, reflecting upon your character, and you having through the intervention of mutual friends consented to forgo further proceedings therein upon my paying the costs thereof and retracting such statements and also expressing my regret at having made use of them, I thus gladly avail myself of these terms, and beg to assure you, that if anything I may have written or said has tended in the most remote degree to injure you, I can only say that such was not my intention, and that I am very sorry for having adopted the course I did, which shall never be repeated by

‘Yours truly,

‘Golovin.

‘E. Stern, Esq.

‘Witness—H. Empson, Solicitor, 61 Moorgate Street, London.’

After that London was absolutely impossible for him.... Golovin left it, taking with him a regular portfolio of unpaid bills from tailors, shoemakers, restaurant-keepers, landladies.... He went off to Germany and all of a sudden got married. The news of this remarkable event he telegraphed the same day to the Emperor Alexander II.

Two years later, having drunk up his wife’s dowry, he published a sketch in some journal of the misery of a man of genius married to a simple woman who cannot understand him.

After that I heard nothing more of him for over five years.

At the beginning of the Polish rebellion there was a new attempt at reconciliation; ‘Our Polish and Russian friends expect it and insist upon it!’ I said nothing.

At the beginning of 1865 I met in Paris a bent old man with a sunken face, in a shabby hat and a threadbare overcoat ... it was windy and very cold.... I was going to a recitation at Alexandre Dumas’; which was also windy and vapid. The old man was buried in his coat collar; as he passed, he muttered without looking at me: ‘Used and done for!’ and went on. I stopped ... Golovin walked on with the same heavy tread without turning—I went on, too. I stopped because on two occasions he had met me in the London streets. Once he had muttered: ‘What spite!’ On the second, he had mumbled something to himself, probably abusive, but I did not hear; he had not addressed me, and I had no inclination to get up a street row with him. He afterwards told Savitch and Savashkevitch that he had met me and sworn at me, but I had said nothing.

‘What is Golovin doing here?’ I asked the same Golynsky to whom I have referred.

‘He is in a bad way; he has turned brocanteur and money-changer, he buys up bad pictures, cheats fools with them, but is more often cheated himself.... He is growing old and peevish, he sometimes writes articles which nobody accepts, he cannot forgive you your success and swears at you for all he is worth.’

There was no intercourse between us from that time forth. But every year or so when one least expects it comes a letter ... sometimes with an offer of reconciliation at the request of some Poles, sometimes simply with abuse. Not a word in reply from us.

I made up my mind, however dull it might be, to record our adventures, and for that purpose looked up letters of his that had been preserved. At the very moment that I had taken up my pen and written the first lines, I was handed a letter in Golovin’s writing. Here it is as a worthy epilogue:—

‘Alexandr Ivanovitch,—I rarely remind you of my existence, but a rumour has reached me that you “are washing your hands” and retiring from the belfry.

‘To my thinking if you put your hand to the plough you should not turn back, your resources would allow you to publish The Bell even at a loss. If possible insert the letter herewith enclosed.

‘Golovin.’

‘To Mr. Katkov, Editor of the “Moscow News.”

‘Dear Sir,—Pardon me for knowing you neither by your own name nor your father’s. I know you only from your blind hatred of the Poles, whom you do not recognise as human beings nor Slavs; I know you also from your ignorance of European questions.

‘I am told that in your paper the sentence occurred: The Dorpat pen commiserates Russia and drowns in insignificance, or something of the sort. I do commiserate Russia, I commiserate the janissaries and the disorder, I commiserate the nobles who are forced to make forged banknotes and forged lottery tickets, so that at the present moment three winning tickets for the hundred thousand rouble prize have been presented, and no one can distinguish which is the real one. I commiserate the drunken peasants, the thieving officials, and the priests who jabber nonsense; but I know that life in Russia is not a bed of roses.

‘His Majesty was pleased not to command me to write in my passport the stupid grade I got in the University, and I have written in His dossier the title of “Well-Intentioned,” which will remain in it, since what is written with the pen cannot be chopped away with the axe.

‘My fatherland was stolen from me for the sake of political economy; I remembered I was a man before I was a Russian—and I serve humanity, a career far grander than the Imperial service which was laid upon me as a duty.

‘In my own eyes I have not sunk lower, but I have risen. I have heard that if I came to Russia I should be shut up in a lunatic asylum; but they would have to let a great deal of blood to weaken my brain—a well-known operation in fifty degrees north latitude, performed on people who have a mind to go out of.

‘I have the honour to be your obedient servant,

‘Ivan Golovin.

‘Paris, Feb. 1, 1866.’