Table Of ContentTHE ROMANTIC EXILES
E. H. CARR was one of the most distinguished twentieth
century British historians. Mter working for the Foreign
Office from 1916 to 1936, he became Professor of
International Relations at University College Wales,
Aberystwyth. He held the post of assistant editor of The
Times from 1941 to 1946 before becoming Tutor in
Politics at Balliol College, Oxford; he was made a Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1955. Best known as
the author of the classic What is History?, Carr was also
the author of a multi-volume history of the Soviet Union
and a number of other works in the fields of inter
national relations and Russian history. He died in 1982.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Dostoevsky, I82I-I88I
KarlMarx:
A Study in Fanaticism
Michael Bakunin
International Relations Since the Peace Treaties
Great Britain as a Mediterranean Power
Britain:
A Study of Foreign Policy from the Treaty of Versailles to the
Outbreak of War
Propaganda in International Politics
The Twenty l1iars' Crisis, I9I9-I939
The Future of Nations:
Independence or Interdependence?
Conditions of Peace
Nationalism and After
The Soviet Impact on the Western World
International Relations Between the Two World Wars, I9I9-I93 9
Studies in Revolution
The New Society
German-Soviet Relations Between the Two World Wars, I9I9-I939
What is History?
I9I7: Before and After
The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin, I9I7-I929
From Napoleon to Stalin and Other Essays
The Twilight of the Comintern, I93 0-I93 5
The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War
A HISTORY OF SOVIET RUSSIA
The Bolshevik Revolution, I9I7-I923
The Interregnum, I923-I926
Socialism in One Country, I924-I926
Foundations of a Planned Economy, I926-I929
The Romantic
Exiles
E.H.
CARR
Serif
London
This edition first published 2007 by
Serif
4 7 Strahan Road
London E3 5DA
135798642
First published by Victor Gollancz 1933
Published by Serif 1998
Copyright© Estate of E. H. Carr, 1933, 1998
This edition copyright © Serif, 2007
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978 I 897959 55 8
ISBN 10: I 897959 55 9
Printed and bound in Malaysia by Forum
CONTENTS
Preface 9
I The Departure II
2 The Promised Land 25
3 A Family Tragedy: I 43
4 A Family Tragedy: 11 78
s The Engelsons 108
6 First Years in London Il9
7 Poor Nick: I 137
8 The Recurrent Triangle 164
9 The Great Quinquennium 179
10 Bakunin; or the Slippery Path 192
II Poland; or the Cruise of the Ward Jackson 204
IZ Herzen's Last Years zx!!
13 A Voltairean among the Romantics 242
14 The Affaire Nechaev; or the First Terrorist 255
15 The Affaire Postnikov; or the Eternal Spy 274
16 Poor Nick: 11 291
17 The Last Tragedy J06
Epilogue 320
AI'I'ENiliX A: Letter of Herwegh to
Malwida von Meysenbug (187o) 325
AI'I'ENDIX B: Letter of Thomas Carlyle
to Herzen (April 13th, 1855) 326
AI'I'ENDIX C: List of Addresses at which
Herzen resided in London (1852-65) 328
AI'I'ENiliX D: Bedlam; or A Day of our Life J29
AI'I'ENiliX E: The Ward j(u:kson:
Foreign Otlice Documents 337
AI'I'ENI>IX F: Note on Sources 341
PREFACE
to the First Edition of 1933
IN presenting to the reader the story of The Romantic Exiles, I have
two special debts of gratitude to acknowledge.
Mademoiselle Natalie Herzen, sole survivor of the party which
sets out from Moscow in the first sentence of the book, has been
good enough to supplement my written sources by drawing on
the ample store ofher personal reminiscences. The many conversa
tions which I have been privileged to have with her in her home
at Lausanne have been of particular assistance to me in the later
chapters. She also placed at my disposal the unpublished letter of
Carlyle to Herzen which is printed in Appendix B. I desire here
not only to thank her warmly for all her kindness, but to apologize
for having ventured, throughout the book, to call her by her pet
name of Tata (a common Russian diminutive of Natalie). The
fact that I already had two Natalies on my hands, and could not
conveniently cope with a third bearer of that name, must be my
excuse for this otherwise unwarrantable liberty.
My other principal debt is to Monsieur Marcel Herwegh, the
only surviving son of George and Emma Herwegh. The unhappy
drama which divided for ever the families ofHerzen and Herwegh
left behind it a lasting bitterness; and Herzen's account of the
quarrel-the only account hitherto known - reflects this bitterness
to the full. The chapters of Herzen's memoirs which tell the story
of the rupture were given to the world by the Soviet State Pub
lishing House in 1919; and from this moment it was inevitable
that the copious papers in the possession of the Herwegh family
should sooner or later be used to redress the balance and to correct
the serious omissions and inaccuracies of the Herzen version. I
am grateful to Monsieur Marcel Herwegh for having permitted
me to use these papers for this purpose. His generosity has enabled
me, in Chapter 3 and 4, to tell the story frankly and impartially
with all the documents on both sides before me. In so doing, I
have been able for the first time to set the role of George and
Emma Herwegh in its true light, and to depict them, not as
monsters of iniquity, but as human beings of flesh and blood,
whose fallibility (like that ofNatalie Herzen or ofHerzen himself)
9
PREFACE
does not diminish their claim on our sympathy and our under
standing. These papers have now been presented by Monsieur
Herwegh to the British Museum.
It is, however, fair that, in tendering my sincere thanks to
Mademoiselle Herzen and to Monsieur Herwegh, I should make
it clear that neither of them is in any way responsible for any
statement or expression of opinion which may be found in this
book. There may be much in it from which one or both of them
will dissent. I have refrained where possible from judgements of
my own; but I have not been able to avoid giving from time to
time my own interpretations of the situations and~ events described.
These interpretations are personal to mysel£ The facts are there;
and the reader can pass his own judgements, which may well be
different from mine.
I have one further apology to make, I am well aware that I
have not done justice in these pages to that amazing energumen of
revolutionary anarchism - a figure at once subhuman and super
human - Michael Bakunin. His meteoric orbit touches and
intersects at irregular intervals the circle of The Romantic Exiles;
and it is these points of contact and intersection which alone are
dealt with here. But Bakunin deserves a volume to himself; and I
plead guilty to an ambition to write it at some future time.
I may add that-the vagaries of Russian being almost as strange
as those of English - the name Ogarev is pronounced approxi
mately A-ga-ry6£ The names of the other principal actors in the
story hold no concealed pitfalls for the Occidental reader. The
standard English transliteration of Russian names has been fol
lowed. But variants (particularly -eff for -ev) will be found here
and there in quotations from the French or from older documents.
E. H. C.
CHAPTER I
The Departure
ON Sunday, xgjanuary, 1847, a party oftravellers left Moscow
in two carriages padded, for protection against the winter cold,
with fur. The party consisted often persons: Alexander Herzen;
his wife Natalie; their three children, Alexander (or Sasha for
short) aged seven, Kolya aged three, a deaf-mute, and Natalie
the younger, commonly called Tata, aged two; Herzen's mother,
Luisa Haag; two female friends and dependants of the family; a
Baltic German named Karl Sonnenberg, who had been imported
years ago from Reval to be Herzen's tutor, and who now acted
as major-domo ofhis household; and a children's nurse. The terms
ofHerzen's passport, which was good for six months, showed that
he was travelling with his family, for the sake of his wife's health,
to Germany and Italy.
A small army of friends, some twenty strong, accompanied
them to the first post-station outside Moscow. Its name, which
means in translation 'Black Mud', might have held a threat for
the travellers at a later season of the year; but now the ground
was deep in snow, and the going, for carriages on runners, was
excellent. The parting was hearty and convivial. It occurred to
nobody that the Herzens were turning their back on Moscow for
the last time.
Next day they reached Tver; and Herzen indited a jocular note
to Granovsky, one of the friends who had taken leave of them at
Black Mud:
As you see, we are making an excellent journey and an excellent meal,
namely on sturgeon, in the fair city ofTver. I am writing to you because
Jan. 22nd is your name-day. Make my excuses to Liza Bogdanovna
[Granovsky's wife] for not calling on that day. The reason is, of course,
a paltry one: I shall be in Novgorod. I crave mercy.
We are all well. Sasha is cheerful, Natalie (the second*) is cheerful
and Kolya is splendid; he indulges in all the infirmities of nature in
the carriage, which does not contribute to the bien-ltre of living in a
* Words added in Natalie Herzen's handwriting.
11
