Most kind and true friend, Apollon Nicolayevich, I received your letter, thank you extremely. But I am in the most terrible agitation and anxiety; for I have received a letter (from Anna Nicolayevna, my wife’s mother) with strange news: that Pasha had called on her, ridden the high horse, said that ‘he does not want to know whether I am in need, that I am obliged to keep him’; that since a good deal of money was expected from Katkov, he was going to Moscow, would see Katkov personally, would explain to him his position and ask him for money, on my account. Anna Nicolayevna positively informs me that he has already left for Moscow (on the 5th February, old style), and that he has quarrelled with his chiefs and she is afraid of his being dismissed.
Can you imagine now my situation? What is my position in the eyes of Katkov? Myself I blush for my affairs, and each time I am positively afraid to apply to Katkov because they have treated me so decently and well, and this ties my hands terribly. Without having yet seen a single line, they have trusted me to the extent of 500 roubles in advance (me, a sick man, abroad; and, as ill-luck would have it, I have just asked for another 500 roubles!). How terrible to think of Pasha coming and interrupting Katkov in his occupations, which are really enormous, and beginning to shout, and perhaps even to be insolent, and of course blackening my character as much as he can!—Finally. Yesterday I pawned my last coat. I have thirty francs only, and forty to pay to the nurse; I have to pay the midwife 100 francs, 120 francs for the rooms and attendance due by March 20th, i.e. in six days’ time (prices this month are higher), and 300 francs I owe for the things pawned. In six days at the latest my 30 francs will come to an end, and then—not a brass farthing, nothing to pawn, and my whole credit exhausted. My whole hope was that Katkov would agree to my request about the 500 roubles, would send you two hundred (as I had written), and would send me 300 roubles here, and those 300 would come here by March 20th, that is, in six days’ time. Now what shall I do if Pasha makes him angry and finally exhausts his patience (for any man may lose patience at last in certain circumstances), and he answers me with a refusal. Well, what shall I do then? Then I am done for, absolutely done for, because my wife has now been confined and is ill. And at this moment I receive your letter. The date is not put down; but on the envelope is the mark of the Petersburg post office dated February 26th.
In that letter you say not a single word about this. Then perhaps it is untrue. And yet Anna Nicolayevna asserts it positively. In that case, it is perhaps true; but you are not aware of it (for it is indeed difficult for you to know, just for the reason that if he had made up his mind to do this, he certainly would have avoided meeting you). I sit now crushed and broken and do not know what to do. I had thought of writing to-day to Katkov and apologising to him, by explaining to him the whole circumstances; for, firstly, as regards Katkov personally I feel so ashamed that I could sink into the ground, and secondly, as regards the money I am afraid that he may get cross and not send it. On the other hand, suppose I send the letter, and all this turns out untrue? I had better make up my mind to write to-morrow and to send to-morrow (the letter to Katkov). If only some news would arrive to enlighten me! But there is no news coming from anywhere! But to wait is dangerous, and also difficult. At any rate I implore you, my dear friend: investigate this business and send me news immediately, or I shall die of anguish. But if it is not true, if Pasha only talked, but did not act, I mean, did not go to Moscow, did not speak to Katkov and did not even write to him (it is almost the same thing, writing and seeing him personally), then please do not tell Pasha that I have learnt it from Anna Nicolayevna. I am afraid he will be very rude to her. In a word, in any event, not a word to him about Anna Nicolayevna. I regard you as my Providence. I’ll send Katkov a letter after all; I must. If Pasha is not to blame, if he did not go to Katkov, certainly what I write won’t do him any great harm: the prank of a young man who is not known there at all. For my own part I must tell you that I am sorry for Pasha; I do not blame him very much: indeed, it’s a case of youth and lack of self-control. It must be excused, and he should not be treated harshly; for, being such a little fool, it won’t take him long to go to the dogs. And I imagined that he had grown sensible and realised that he was already nearly 21 years old, and ought to work, since there was no capital. I thought that having obtained employment he at last realised that honest work was his duty, just as it is the duty of every one, and that he must not act stubbornly and without listening to any one, as though he had made a vow to do nothing and would not stir. And he, as I see it now, imagined that he was doing me a favour by having secured employment. And who put it into his head that I was obliged to keep him for ever, even after 21? His words to Anna Nicolayevna (which must certainly be true) ‘I don’t want to know whether he is himself in need; he is obliged to keep me’—are too significant in a certain sense to me. This means that he does not love me. Certainly I am the last to blame him, and I know how little an impulse or an arrogant word may mean, that is, I know that a word is not an act. All my life long I will help him and I want to do so. But there’s the point: has he done much for himself? It is only for the last three months that he has had no allowance from me. Yet during these three months he received from me 20 roubles in cash, and I paid his debt of 30 roubles to Emily Fiodorovna. And so, really what he has not received only amounts to one month’s allowance! And already he has managed to get into a fever about it! It means, then, that the man must be incapable of doing anything for himself! It is not a comforting thought. Out of my very last resources I am now sending money both to him and to Emily Fiodorovna. And yet I am convinced that at Emily Fiodorovna’s they are running me down for all they are worth. And added to all this I am a sick man. What would happen if I were unable to work—what then?
My dear friend, you alone are my Providence and true friend! Your letter of yesterday revived me. I have never had anything harder and more difficult to bear in my life: on February 22nd (old style) my wife (after awful pains lasting 30 hours) bore me a daughter and is still ill, and you can consequently imagine how my nerves are on edge. The least bit of unpleasant news has to be kept back from her for she loves me so much. Sonia, the baby, is a healthy, big, handsome, lovely, superb baby: positively half the day I kiss her and can’t go away from her. This is good; but what is bad is this: all the money I have is 30 francs; everything to the very last rag, mine and my wife’s, has been pawned. My debts are urgent, pressing, immediate. My whole hope is in Katkov, and the incessant thought: suppose he does not send? The exasperating news about Pasha; my terrible and continuous fear which does not allow me to sleep at night: what if Anya falls ill? (To-day is the tenth day.) And I have no means of calling in a doctor or of buying medicine; Part III of the novel, which is not yet begun, which I undertook on my word of honour to deliver to the Editor by the first of April (old style); the whole plan of Parts III and IV radically altered last night, for the third time (and therefore, at least, another three days needed for the thinking out of the new arrangement); the increased strain on my nerves and the number and violence of my fits,—there you have my condition!
In addition to all this,—up to the coming of your letter, complete despair on account of the failure and badness of my novel, and consequently, without mentioning my anguish as an author,—the conviction that all hopes have vanished, for all my hopes were fixed on the novel! Imagine, then, how your letter gladdened me; am I not right now in calling you my Providence? Indeed in my present circumstances you are just the same to me, as my dead brother Misha was.
And so you gladden me with the news of my success. It gives me new heart. Part III I shall complete and send off by April 1st. Haven’t I written as much as 11 folios in two months! I implore you, my dear friend, when you have read the finale of Part II (i.e. in the February number), write me immediately. Believe me, your words to me are a well-spring of living water. I was inspired when I wrote that finale and it cost me two fits one after another. But I may have exaggerated and lost my sense of proportion, and therefore I await your impartial criticism. Oh, my dear friend, do not condemn me for this anxiety, as if it were the anguish of ambition. Ambition, of course, there is,—could one do without it?—But here my chief motives, I call God to witness, are different. In the case of this novel too much is at stake, in every way.
Your letters always stimulate me and for several days on end act as leaven on everything in me. I should awfully like to have a talk with you about certain things. This time I have confined myself to family trifles—wait till next time. Surely it is the same Danilevsky, the late Fourierist, who was mixed up in our affair? Yes, he has a strong head. But in the Journal of the Ministry of Education! It has a small circulation, it is little read. Can’t it be published separately? Oh, how much I should like to read it!
Write me about yourself as much as you can. My greetings to all yours. My wife loves you deeply and sends her greetings to Anna Ivanovna. She is in ecstasies over her work, and I too. As regards The Idiot, I am so much afraid, so much afraid, that you can’t even imagine my fear. A kind of unnatural fear even; which has never beset me before! What depressing, trifling letters I am writing you! I embrace you closely.
Wholly your F. Dostoevsky.
PS. Anyhow I shall write more often now. Anya burst into tears when she read in your letter about the success of The Idiot. She says that she is proud of me.