The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1889-10-18
An ExiLe.s STORY.
me Mental TOrtures Endured by q Once
Promising Russian Author.


me Mental TOrtures Endured by q Once
Promising Russian Author.
To me perhaps the most attractive
and sympathetic of the Tomsk ex:les
was the Russian author Felix Volk-
hofski, vino was banished to Siberia for
life in 1878, upon the charge of belong
ing to a society that intends. at a more
or less remote time in the future, to
overthrow the existing form of govern
ment. He was Fabout thirty-eight
years of age at the time made his &C
quaintance, and was a man of cultivated
mind, warm heart and high aspirations.
He knew English well, was familiar
with American history and literature,
and had, believe, translated into Rus
sian many of the poems of Longfellow.
He spoke to me with great admiration,
/ remember, of LongfellOw's "Arsenal
at Springfield, and 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 i'm
prisOnment in the fortress of PetrOpa-
vlovsk; his hair was prematurely white,
and when his face was in repOse there
seemed to be an expression of profound
melancholy in his dark brown eyes, l
became intimately acquainted with him
and very warmly attached to him; and
when babe him goodbye for the last
time on my return from Eastern Siberia
in 1866, he put his arms around me and
kissed me, and said: George Ivan
ovitch, please don't forget us! In bid
ding you goodbye, feel as if some
thing were going out of my life that
would never again cone into it..
Since my return to America / have
heard from Mr.. Volkhofski only once
He wrote me last winter a profoundly
sad and touching letter, in which he in
formed me of the death of his wife by
suicide. He himself had been thrown
out of employment by the suppression
Of the liberal Tomsk newspaper, the
Siberian Gazette; 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 pri-
vate lessons and by taking in sewing.
Anxiety and Overwork had finally
broken down her health. she had be-
come an invalid, and in 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 ulti-
mately be better off if she were dead.
A little more than year ago she put
an end to her unhappy life by shooting
herself through the head with pistol.
Her husband was devotedly attached to
her; and her death, under such circum-
stances and in such way, was a terrible
blow to him. In his letter to me he re-
ferred to copy of James Russell
I-Owell's poems that had caused to be
sent to him, and said that in reading
AFTER the Burial he wildly realized
for the first time that grief is of NO
nationality; the lines, although written
by bereaved American, expressed the
deepest thoughts and feelings of a
bereaved Russian. He sent me with
his letter a small, worn, leather match
box. which had been given by Prince
Krapotkin to his exiled brother Alex
ander; which the latter had left to
VOlkhOfski; 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 the association with
the lives of four political offenders, all
of whom | had known. One of them
was a refugee in London, another was
in exile in Tomsk, and two had escaped
the jurisdiction of the Russian Govern
ment by taking their own lives.
tried to read Volkhofski's letter
aloud to my wife; but as l recalled the
high character and lovable personality
of the writer. and imagined what this
last blow of fate must have been to
such MANN exile. in broken health,
and with a family of helpless children
dependent upon him the written lines
vanished in mist of tears, and with a
choking in my throat 1 put the letter
and the little match box away.
The Tsar may whiten the hair of
such men as Felix Volkhofski in the ST.
lent bomb-proof classmates of the fort
ress. and he may send them in gray
convict overcoats to Siberia; but time
will come, in the providence of God,
when their names will stand higher
than his on the roll of history, and
when the record of their lives and suf-
ferings will be source of heroic in
SEPARATION to all Russians who love lib
erty and their country. George Ken
nan. in Century.