Charlotte messenger. [volume] (Charlotte, Mecklenburg Co., N.C.) 1882-18??, 1888-12-08
THE STORY OF AN EXILE.
PATHETIC EXPERIENCE OF A RUS
SLAM BANIsHED TO SIBERIA.
A Man of Fine Attachments Doomed
to Perpetual Banishment-His
Wife's Sad Fate.


to Perpetual Banishment-His
Wife's Sad Fate.
The following from the Century is one
of the most touching stories that Mr..
Kennan has yet told Of the fate of Sibe-
rian exiles: ITO me, perhaps, the most
attractive and sympathetic Of the Tomsk
exiles was the Russian author, Fexil
Volkhofski, who was banished to Siberia
for life in 1878, upon the charge of be-
longing to society that intends, at
more or less remote time in the future, to
overthrow the existing form of Govern
ment.' He was about thirty-eight years
of age at the time l made his acquaint-
ance, and was man of cultivated mind,
warm heart, and high aspirations.
He knew English we'll. was famil-
lar with American history and
literature, and had, l believe
translated into Russian many of the
poems of Longfellow. He spoke to me
with great admiration, l remember, of
Longfellow's arsenal at Springfield
ana recited it to me aloud. He was one
of the most winning and lovable men
that it has ever been my good fortune to
know; but his life had been terrible
tragedy. His health had been shattered
by long imprisonment in the fortress of
Petropavlovsk; his hair was prematurely
white; anc when his face was in repose
there seemed to be an expression of pro-
found melancholy in his dark brown eyes.
l became intimately acquainted with him
and very warmly attached to him; and
when / bade him goodbye for the last
time on my return from Eastern Siberia
in 1885,, he put b 8 arms around me and
kissed me, and said, George Ivanovitch,
please don't forget usl In bidding you
goodbye, l feel as if something were
going out of my life that would never
again come into it,
'.Since my return to America have
heard from Mr.. Volkhofski only once.
| He wrote me last winter profoundly
sad and touching letter, in VIII ch he IN
! formed me of the death of his wife by
J suicide. He himself had been thrown
out of employment by the suppression of
the liberal Tomsk newspaper, the SibTtan
Gazet e; and his wife, whom | remember
as a pale, delicate, sad-faced woman,
twenty-five or thirty years of age, had
tried to help him support their family of
young children by giving private lessons
and by taking in sewing. Anxiety and
overwork had finally broken down her
health she had become an invalid, and
in a morbid state of mind, brought on
by unhappiness and disease, she reasoned
herself into the belief that she was an
incumbrance, rather than help, to her
husband and her children, and that they
would ultimately be better off if she were
dead. A little more than a year ago she
put an end to her unhappy life by shoot
ing herself through the head with a
pistol. Her husband was. devOtedly
! attached to her; and her death,
under such circumstances and in such
a way, was terrible blow to him. In
his letter to me he referred to copy of
James Russell Lowell's poems that had
caused to be sent to him, and said that
in reading after the Burial he vividly
realized for the first time that grief is OF
no nationality; the lines, although writ
ten bv bereaved American, expressed
the deepest thoughts and feelings of a
bereaved Russian. He sent ME with his
letter small, worn, leather matchbox,
which had been given by Prince Pierre
Krapotkin to his exiled brother Alex
ander; which the latter had left to Volk-
hofski; and which Volkhofski had in
turn presented to his wife short time
before her death. He hoped, he said,
that it would have some value to me, on
account of its association with the lives
of four political offenders, all of whom
had known. One of them was refugee
in London, another was an exile IN
Tomsk, and two had escaped the juris-
diction of the Russian Government by
taking their own lives.
81 tried to read Volkholski's lettel
aloud to my wife; but as | recalled thu
high character and loyable personality
of the writer, and imagined what this las
blow of fate must have been to such
man-in exile, in broken health. and will
family OF helpless children dependent
upon him-the written Ines vanished II
a mist OF tears. and with a choking in ny
throat put the letter and the lit:l'
matchbox away.
1.-THE Tsar may whiten the hair of sucl
men as Felix Volkhofski in the silen
bomb.proof casemates of the fortress
and he may send them in gray convic
} overcoats to Siberia; but time will com
in the providence of God, when thei
names will standhigher than his on tn
roll of history. and when the record
their lives and sufferings will be a soura
of heroic inspiration to all Russians VIII