1
POLISH REFUGEES
ALOYSIUS BERNACKI—STANISLAW WORCELL—THE POLISH AGITATORS BETWEEN 1854 AND
1856—THE DEATH OF WORCELL
Nuovi tormenti e nuovi tormentati!—_Inferno._
Other misfortunes, other sufferers await us. We live on yesterday’s
battlefield: all around are the hospitals, the wounded, the prisoners,
the dying. The army of Polish emigrants is the oldest of all and the
most worn out by suffering, but it has remained obstinately alive. In
migrating abroad the Poles, in spite of Danton’s dictum, took their
fatherland with them, and with heads erect they have proudly and sternly
carried it about the world. Europe has stood aside with respect before
the solemn procession of valiant warriors. The peoples have come forward
to do them homage; the kings have turned away and averted their eyes to
let them pass unnoticed. Europe was awakened for one instant by their
footsteps, brought tears and sympathy for them, found money and the
spirit to give it.[60] The melancholy image of the Polish refugee, the
knight-errant of national independence, has survived in the popular
memory. Twenty years in exile have not weakened his faith, and at every
momentous crisis, in every hour of conflict and struggle for freedom, the
Poles have been the first to answer the roll-call, just as Worcell and
the elder Darasz were the first to rally to the Provisional Government of
1848.
But the government of which Lamartine was one had no need of them and
did not think of them at all. The most convinced republicans thought
of Poland in order to make use of her by the insincere summons to war
and revolt of the 15th of May 1848. They saw the deception, but the
French bourgeois (with whom Poland was a fad, just as Italy was with the
English) have been sulky with Poland ever since. People no longer talked
in Paris with the same rhetoric of _Varsovie échevelée_, and the common
people only kept, together with many Napoleonic memories, the legend
of ‘Poniatowski’ supported by a rough woodcut in which Poniatowski is
drowning on horseback in his _chapska_.
The year 1849 marks the beginning of the most depressing time for the
Polish exiles. It dragged on wearily up to the Crimean War and the
death of Nicholas. Not one real hope, not one drop of living water. The
apocalyptic time, foretold by Krasinski, seemed to have come. Cut off
from their fatherland, the refugees were cast away on other shores, and,
like trees without fresh sap, were withering and fading away; they were
becoming aliens to their own people without ceasing to be aliens to the
foreigners among whom they lived. The latter to some extent sympathised
with them, but their misfortunes lasted too long, and there is no good
feeling in man that can stand too long a strain. Moreover, the Polish
question was pre-eminently a national question, and only accidentally a
revolutionary one, in so far as it was a revolt against a foreign yoke.
The refugees looked backward as much as they looked forward, they
were striving to re-establish—as though there were anything worth
re-establishing in the past except independence—and independence alone
implies nothing: it is a negative conception. Could any country be
more independent than Russia? To the complex, laboriously worked-out
formula of future social organisation, Poland contributed no new idea,
nothing but her historical claim and her readiness to help others in the
legitimate hope of reciprocity. The struggle for independence always
calls forth warm sympathy, but foreigners can never make it their cause.
Only those interests are common to all which by their very essence
transcend nationality—such, for instance, as the interests of Catholicism
and Protestantism, revolution and reaction, economics and Socialism.
* * * * *
In 1847 I made the acquaintance of the Polish democratic Central
Committee. At that time it was held in Versailles, and the most active
member was, so I fancied, Wysocki. No real intimacy was possible. The
refugees did not want to hear from me what I knew; all they wanted to
hear was the confirmation of their hopes and assumptions. They wanted
to learn about the conspiracy that was undermining the whole political
fabric of Russia, asked whether Yermolov was taking part in it ...
and I could tell them of nothing but the radical tendencies among the
young people, of Granovsky’s propaganda, of the immense influence of
Byelinsky, of the shades of opinion in the two parties struggling at that
time in literature and society—the Westerners and the Slavophils. That
seemed to them of little consequence.
They had a rich past, we had a great hope; their breast was covered with
scars, while we were toughening our muscles to receive them. Beside them
we were like recruits beside veterans. The Poles are mystics, we are
realists. They are attracted by the mysterious twilight in which outlines
are blurred and phantoms hover, in which one can imagine infinite
distance, infinite height, because nothing can be seen distinctly. They
can live in this half-dreaming state, without analysis, without cold
investigation, without gnawing doubts. In the depths of their souls there
is an element of mediaevalism alien to us, and a crucifix before which
they can pray at moments of grief and fatigue. In Krasinski’s poetry the
_Stabat Mater_ drowns the national hymns, and draws us not to the triumph
of life, but to the triumph of death, to the Day of Judgment.... We are
either _more stupid_ in our faith or _more intelligent_ in our doubt.
This mystical tendency developed to the furthest limit after the time of
Napoleon. Mickiewicz, Towianski and even the mathematician Wronski all
helped to create the Messianic idea. In old days there were Catholics
and Encyclopaedists, but there were no mystics. The old men who had been
educated in the eighteenth century were free from theosophic fantasies.
The tempering given by the classical tradition of the _grand siècle_ was
permanent, like that of Damascus steel. It was my luck to meet two or
three specimens of such old Polish Encyclopaedists.
In Paris, and in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, moreover, there lived
from 1831 onwards a nuncio of the Polish Diet, Count Aloysius Bernacki,
who was minister of finance at the time of the revolution, and marshal
of the nobility of some province; he presented his fellow-nobles to
Alexander I., who was playing the Liberal in Poland in 1814.
Completely ruined by the confiscations, he settled in 1831 in Paris, in
a small lodging in the Chaussée d’Antin, as I have mentioned already,
whence he issued every morning in a dark brown coat to take a walk and
read the newspapers, and, at a later hour, came out again in a dark blue
coat with gilt buttons to spend the evening with some one; in 1847 I
made his acquaintance. The house he lived in was dilapidated, the lady
who owned the house wanted to have it repaired. Bernacki wrote a letter
to her, which so touched the Frenchwoman (not at all an easy thing to do
when it is a question of money) that she entered into negotiations with
him and only asked him to leave the house for a time. When she had the
house done up, she let Bernacki have his rooms again at the same rent.
He saw with grief the new and handsome staircase, the new wallpaper,
window-frames, and furniture, but submitted to his fate.
Temperate in all things, absolutely sincere and honourable, the old
man was an admirer of Washington and a friend of O’Connell. A true
Encyclopaedist, he advocated egoism _bien entendu_ and spent a whole life
in self-sacrifice, and had sacrificed everything, from wealth and family
to social position and native land, without ever showing any special
regret or deigning to complain.
The French police left him in peace and even respected him, knowing
that he had been a minister and a nuncio; the prefecture seriously
imagined that a nuncio of the Polish Diet was something of the nature of
a papal nuncio. This was known among the exiles, and so his comrades
and fellow-countrymen were constantly sending him to interview the
police on their behalf. Bernacki went without a murmur and wearied the
officials with correctly turned complimentary speeches, until they often
made concessions to get rid of him. After the complete suppression of
the February revolution, the tone changed; no smiles nor tears nor
compliments nor grey hairs were of any avail, and just then, as ill
luck would have it, the widow of a Polish general who had fought in the
Hungarian War arrived in Paris, entirely destitute. Bernacki asked the
prefecture to assist her; in spite of the high-sounding title, ‘Son
Excellence Monsieur le Nonce,’ the prefecture refused flatly. The old man
appealed to Carlier; to get rid of him and at the same time to humiliate
him, Carlier replied that assistance was given only to the refugees of
1831. ‘If you feel such sympathy for this lady,’ he added, ‘send in an
application for yourself for assistance on the ground of poverty; we will
assign you twenty francs a month, and you can make what use you like of
them.’
Carlier was caught. Bernacki received the prefect’s suggestion in the
most simple-hearted way and at once accepted it, thanking him effusively.
From that time forward, the old man went every month to the prefecture,
waited for an hour or two in the anteroom, received twenty francs and
took the money to the widow.
Bernacki was a good deal over seventy, but he was wonderfully
well-preserved; he liked dining with his friends, sitting up with them
till two o’clock in the morning and sometimes drinking a glass or two
of wine. One night we were going home with him about three o’clock in
the morning; we had to pass through the Rue Lepelletier. The Opera House
was glowing with lights; _pierrots_ and _débardeurs_, wrapped in shawls,
dragoons and police-officers were thronging in the entry. In jest,
feeling confident that he would refuse, I said to Bernacki:
‘_Quelle chance!_ Shall we go in?’
‘With the greatest pleasure,’ he answered. ‘I haven’t seen a masked ball
for fifteen years.’
‘Bernacki,’ I said to him jestingly, as we went into the hall, ‘when are
you going to begin to grow old?’
‘_Un homme comme il faut_,’ he answered laughing, ‘_acquiert des années,
mais ne vieillit jamais._’
He kept up his character to the end, and, like a well-bred man, took his
leave from life quietly and on good terms with it; he felt unwell in the
morning and died in the evening.
At the time of Bernacki’s death I was in London. There soon after my
arrival I made friends with a man whose memory is still precious to me
and whose coffin I helped to carry to the Highgate Cemetery—I am speaking
of Worcell. Of all the Poles I got to know then, he was the one I liked
best, and the one who was least antagonistic to Russians. It was not
that he was fond of Russians, but he looked at things humanely and so
was incapable of wholesale condemnation and narrow-minded hatred. He
was the first man with whom I discussed the founding of the Russian
printing-press. After listening to me the sick man grew animated, took
pencil and paper, began making calculations, reckoning how much type we
should require and so on. He made out the chief orders, he introduced me
to Czernecki, with whom I worked so much later on.
‘My God, my God,’ he said, as he held the first page of proof in his
hand, ‘a free Russian press in London ... how many evil memories are
effaced from my mind by that sheet of paper smeared with printer’s ink!’
‘We ought to go hand in hand,’ he often repeated afterwards; ‘our path
is one, our cause is one ...’ and he laid his wasted hand on my shoulder.
At the Polish anniversary of the 29th of November 1853, I made a speech
at the Hanover Rooms with Worcell in the chair. When I had finished
amidst loud applause, Worcell embraced me and kissed me with tears in his
eyes.
‘Worcell and you on the platform made a great impression upon me just
now,’ one of the Italians (Count Nani) said to me as we went out. ‘It
seems to me that that noble, grey-headed, frail-looking old man and your
healthy, stalwart figure were the typical representatives of Poland and
Russia.’
‘Only add,’ I said, ‘that Worcell in giving me his hand and embracing me
_forgave Russia in the name of Poland_.’
Indeed we might have gone hand in hand—but it was not to be.
Worcell was _not alone_.... But first let me speak of him alone.
When Worcell was born, his father, one of the wealthy Polish aristocrats
in Lithuania, a kinsman of Eszterhazy, of Potocki, and I do not know of
whom else, sent for the village-elders and young women from five of his
estates, that they might be present at the christening of the little
count, Stanislaw, and might remember all their lives the banquet given
by their lord on the occasion. This took place in 1800. The Count gave
his son the most brilliant, the most many-sided education; Worcell was a
mathematician, a linguist, and familiar with the literatures of five or
six countries; in his early youth he had acquired an immense amount of
knowledge and at the same time he was a man of the world, belonging to
the most aristocratic Polish society at one of the most brilliant periods
of its decline, between 1815 and 1830; Worcell married young and was only
just entering upon ‘practical’ life, when the rebellion of 1831 broke
out. He gave up everything and threw himself heart and soul into the
movement. The rebellion was suppressed, Warsaw was taken. Count Stanislaw
crossed the frontier like the rest, leaving family and fortune behind.
Instead of following him, his wife cut off all relations with him. As a
reward for doing so, part of the property was restored to her. They had
two children, a son and a daughter; how they were brought up, we shall
see later; to begin with, their mother trained them to forget their
father.
Meanwhile Worcell made his way through Austria to Paris and at once found
himself in perpetual exile and entirely without means. He was not in the
least daunted. Like Bernacki, he adopted a life of monastic self-denial
and zealously entered upon his mission, which only ceased twenty-five
years afterwards, when he drew his last breath in a little damp basement
room, in a wretched lodging-house in gloomy Hunter Street.
To reorganise the Polish party of progress, to extend the propaganda of
its principles, to concentrate the refugees’ forces, to prepare for a new
rebellion and to advocate this from morning till night, to devote his
whole time to it—such was the plan of Worcell’s whole life, from which he
never deviated and to which he subordinated everything. With this object
he got into touch with all the revolutionists of France, from Godefroi
Cavaignac to Ledru-Rollin; with this object he became a freemason, and
kept in close relations with the followers of Mazzini, and later on with
Mazzini himself. Worcell firmly upheld the banner of the revolutionary
party of Poland in opposition to the party of the Czartoryzskis. He was
convinced that the aristocracy had been the ruin of the revolution,
he looked upon the old nobles as the enemies of his cause, and sought
support from the new, the purely democratic Poland.
Worcell was right.
The Polish aristocracy, sincerely devoted as they were to their cause,
were in many ways opposed to the tendencies of our times; the image of
the Poland of the past was for ever hovering before their eyes, not a
new Poland, but the old Poland restored; their ideal was based as much
on memories as on hopes. The fetters of Catholicism were quite enough
to hold Poland back—the armour of feudal chivalry would have paralysed
her completely. In joining hands with Mazzini, Worcell wished to unite
the Polish cause with the general European movement for republicanism
and democracy. It is clear that he was bound to seek support among the
humbler gentry, among townspeople and workmen. It was only in those
classes that insurrection could begin. The aristocracy would join the
movement, the peasants might be drawn into it, though they never would
have taken the initiative.
Worcell may be reproached with stepping into the rut in which the
European revolution was already sunk and foundering, for seeing in
that path the only way of salvation; but, having once taken it, he was
consistent. Circumstances vindicated him completely. Where, indeed, could
revolutionary forces be found in Poland, if not in the social layer
to which Worcell always turned, and which was forming, growing up and
gaining strength between 1831 and 1860?
However different our views may be of revolution and the methods of
bringing it about, we cannot deny that everything gained by revolution
has been gained by the middle classes and the workers of the towns. And
the Polish question was a purely patriotic one; national independence
was more precious than social revolution, even to the heart of Worcell
himself.
A sort of shudder of awakening ran over slumbering Europe some eighteen
months before the revolution of February. The Cracow affair, the
trial of Miroslawski, even the war of the Sonderbund and the Italian
_risorgimento_ were signs of it. Austria replied with an outbreak of
imperial terrorism, Nicholas presented her with Cracow, which did not
belong to him—but tranquillity was not restored. Louis-Philippe fell
in February 1848, it was a Pole who carried his throne to be burned.
Worcell at the head of the Polish democracy came forward to remind the
Provisional Government of Poland. Lamartine met him with cold rhetoric.
The Republic was more peaceable than the Empire.
There was a moment when it was possible to hope; that moment was missed
by Poland, missed by all Western Europe, and Paskevitch announced to
Nicholas that Hungary lay at his feet.
After the fall of Hungary, there was nothing more to expect, and Worcell,
forced to leave Paris, moved to London.
In London at the end of 1852 I found him a member of the European
Committee.[61] He knocked at every door, wrote letters, newspaper
articles, worked and hoped, persuaded and entreated—and as, with
all that, he had to eat, took to giving lessons in mathematics, in
geometrical drawing, and even in French; coughing and breathless from
asthma, he walked from one end of London to the other to earn two
shillings or at the most half a crown. And then part of what he earned he
gave to his comrades.
His spirit never flagged, but his body could not keep pace with it. The
London atmosphere, damp, soot-laden, never warmed by the sun, was bad for
his weak chest. Worcell was wasting away, but still he persevered. So he
lived on to the Crimean War; he could not, I had almost said he _should_
not, have survived that.
‘If Poland does nothing _now_, all is lost, for many years, if not for
ever, and I had better close my eyes,’ Worcell said to me, as he set off
with Kossuth for a tour round England.
They held meetings in all the principal towns. Worcell and Kossuth were
received with loud applause, small sums of money were subscribed for
the cause—and that was all. The Government and the Parliament are very
good at knowing when public opinion is simply stirred, and when it is
insistent. A strong Government after bringing forward a Conspiracy Bill
fell in anticipation of a mass-meeting of protest in Hyde Park. There was
in the meetings held by Kossuth and Worcell nothing definite, nothing
forcible enough to induce the Government and Parliament to acknowledge
the rights of Poland and to express sympathy with the Polish cause. The
terrible reply of the Conservatives was unanswerable: ‘All is quiet in
Poland.’ The English Government would have had, not to recognise an
accomplished fact, but to bring it about, to take the initiative in
revolution, to rouse Poland. Public opinion in England does not go so far
as that. Moreover, _in petto_, every one was longing for the end of the
war which had only just begun, was costly and, in reality, quite useless.
At intervals between the meetings Worcell returned to London. He was too
intelligent not to realise their failure, he was visibly ageing, he was
gloomy and irritable, and, with the feverish energy with which dying men
fly to all manner of remedies, he went back to Birmingham or Liverpool,
with sinister apprehensions, and obstinate hopes in his heart, to raise
his lament for Poland from the platform. I looked at him with great
distress. But how could he imagine that England would rouse Poland, that
the France of Napoleon III. would stir up revolution? How could he build
hopes on the Europe which had let Russia invade Hungary and the French
invade Rome? Did not the very presence of Mazzini and Kossuth in London
loudly proclaim the degradation of Europe?
... About the same time the long-rankling dissatisfaction of the younger
refugees with the Central Committee became articulate. Worcell was
petrified—he had not expected this blow, and yet it came quite naturally.
The small group of people immediately surrounding Worcell were far from
being on his level. He understood this, but having grown accustomed to
his chorus had fallen under its influence. He imagined that he was their
leader, while the chorus that followed him directed his course as they
wished. Worcell alone rose to the heights on which he could breathe
freely, where it was natural for him to be—the chorus, like plebeian
relations, dragged him down to the low level of personal squabbles and
petty calculations. The leader, old before his time, gasped in this
atmosphere from spiritual breathlessness as much as from physical.
These people did not understand the importance of the alliance which I
proposed.
They looked upon it as a means of giving a different colour to the cause;
their everlasting repetition of commonplaces, their patriotic phrases,
their stock memories—had all grown insipid and boring. Association with
the Russians would introduce a novel element. Moreover, they hoped to
improve their almost bankrupt position at the expense of the Russian
propaganda.
From the very beginning, there was no real understanding between the
members of the Central Committee and me. Suspicious of everything
Russian, they wanted me to write and publish something like a _profession
de foi_. I wrote _The Poles Forgive Us_. They asked me to alter certain
expressions. I did so, though I was very far from agreeing with them. In
reply to my article L. Z. wrote an appeal to the Russians and sent it
to me in manuscript. There was not a trace of a new idea in it; there
were the same phrases, the same allusions to the past, and outbursts
of Catholicism as well. Before translating it into Russian, I pointed
out to Worcell the absurdities of the original. Worcell agreed and
asked me to explain the matter in the evening to the members of the
Central Committee. Then followed the eternal scene between Trissotin
and Vadius:[62] the very passages which I criticised were, it appeared,
essential to save Poland from ruin. As for the Catholic phrases, they
said that whatever their personal convictions might be, they wished to
keep with their people; and the people were devoted to their oppressed
mother, the Latin Church.
Worcell supported me. But as soon as he began to speak, his comrades
made an uproar. Worcell was coughing from the tobacco smoke and could
not make himself heard. He promised me to talk to them afterwards and to
insist upon the chief corrections. A week later the _Polish Democrat_
came out. Not one word was altered in the appeal; I refused to translate
it. Worcell told me that he too was amazed at this proceeding. ‘It is not
enough for you to be amazed; why did you not stop it?’ I said to him.
It was evident to me that sooner or later Worcell would be faced with the
question, whether to break off from the existing members of the Central
Committee and remain in close relations with me, or to break off his
association with me and remain on the same terms with his half-baked
revolutionists ... Worcell chose the latter course; I was grieved by
this, but neither complained of it nor resented it.
At this point I must go into melancholy details. When I set up the
printing-press, it was decided that all the expenses of publishing
(paper, type, rent, labour, etc.) should fall upon me. The Central
Committee undertook the dispatch of the Russian papers and pamphlets at
their own expense and through the same channels as the Polish pamphlets.
All that they took to send off I gave them free of charge. It would seem
that mine was the lion’s share, but apparently it was not enough.
For their own purposes and principally in order to collect funds, the
Central Committee arranged to send a delegate to Poland. They even wanted
him to go to Kiev and, if possible, to Moscow for propaganda among the
Russians, and asked me to give him letters. I refused, afraid of getting
people into trouble. Three days before the delegate set off I met Z. in
the street in the evening, and he asked me at once: ‘How much are you
giving for the expenses of the delegate?’
It struck me as a strange question, but knowing what straits they were
in, I said that I would give ten pounds (250 francs), if they liked.
‘What do you mean? You must be joking,’ said Z. frowning. ‘He will need
at least sixty pounds and we need forty pounds to make that up. We cannot
leave it like that, I will talk to the comrades and come to you.’
He did, in fact, come next day accompanied by Worcell and two other
members of the Central Committee. On this occasion Z. simply accused me
of refusing to give enough money for the expenses of the delegate, though
I had agreed to give him Russian papers to take.
‘Upon my soul,’ I said, ‘you decided to send the delegate, you think it
necessary; so the cost of it falls on you. Worcell is present, let him
remind you of our agreement.’
‘What’s the use of discussing _trifles_: as though you didn’t know that
we haven’t a farthing!’
This tone sickened me at last.
‘I think you haven’t read _Dead Souls_,’ I said, ‘or I would have
reminded you of how Nozdryov, showing the boundary of his estate to
Tchitchikov, told the latter that the land on both sides of the boundary
was his. That is very much like our position: we have divided our work
and our burdens by arranging that both parts should fall on my back.’
The little bilious Lithuanian began to lose his temper and make an outcry
about honour, and wound up his absurd and discourteous speech by the
question, ‘What do you want, then?’
‘That you should not take me for a _bailleur de fonds_ nor a democratic
banker, as one German called me in a pamphlet. You think too much of my
fortune and, I fancy, too little of me; you are mistaken....’
‘Excuse me, excuse me ...’ cried the Lithuanian, pale with fury.
‘I cannot permit this conversation to go further,’ Worcell, who had been
sitting gloomily in the corner, observed, rising to his feet, ‘or you
must continue it without me. _Cher_ Herzen, you are right, but think of
our position: it is essential to send the delegate and we have not the
means.’
I stopped him. ‘In that case you might have asked me whether I could do
anything, but you could not demand it; and to demand it in this coarse
way is simply disgusting. I will give the money; I do so entirely for
your sake, and I give you my word of honour, gentlemen, this is for the
last time.’
I handed Worcell the money and they all gloomily withdrew.
The delegate went and returned, having done nothing. The war drew near,
began. The _émigrés_ were dissatisfied; the younger section blamed
Worcell’s comrades for incapacity, laziness and seeking their own
interests instead of those of Poland. Their discontent reached the point
of open protests, they talked of demanding accounts from the members
of the Central Committee, of making an open declaration of lack of
confidence. The one thing that restrained them and made them hesitate was
their love and respect for Worcell. I did all I could through Czernecki
to strengthen their scruples, but blunder after blunder committed by the
Central Committee was enough to drive any one out of patience.
In November 1854 there was another Polish meeting, but its spirit was
different from that of the previous year. An M.P., Joshua Wolmsley,
was asked to take the chair. The Poles put their cause under English
patronage. To prevent the speeches from being too _red_, Worcell wrote
notes to some of us, on the same pattern as the one I received from him:
‘You know that we have a meeting on the 20th; we cannot as on the
previous occasion ask you to say a few sympathetic words for us; the
war and the necessity for securing English support compel us to give
a somewhat different tone to the meeting. Herzen, Ledru-Rollin and
Pianciani will not speak for us. The speakers will be principally
English; of our comrades, only Kossuth will make a speech in order to
give an account of our position, etc.’
I answered that ‘I received his invitation _not_ to speak at the meeting,
and accepted it the more readily as it was so easy to comply with.’
Support from the English was not forthcoming; concessions were made
in vain; even the subscriptions did not amount to much. Wolmsley said
that he was ready to give money, but did not wish to put his name down
as a subscriber, that as a Member of Parliament he could not take
part officially in raising funds for an object not sanctioned by the
Government.
All this, and among other things my exclusion from the platform,
intensified the irritation of the younger comrades; a statement of the
charges against the Central Committee was already being passed from hand
to hand. As luck would have it, I was obliged to find fresh quarters for
the Russian press. Z., who rented the house in which the Russian as well
as the Polish press was installed, was heavily in debt; the bailiffs had
been in twice already; they might be expected any day to seize our press
together with the furniture. I commissioned Czernecki to move it; Z. made
difficulties, was unwilling to let the type and other belongings go; I
wrote him a cold letter. In answer to it Worcell, ill and agitated, came
to Richmond next day to see me.
‘You are giving us the _coup de grâce_; at the very moment when there is
such strife raging among us you are moving the press.’
‘I assure you that I am not doing so for any political reason, any
quarrel, or as a protest, but simply I am afraid that everything will be
distrained at Z.’s. Can you assure me that that will not happen? I will
rely on _your_ word of honour and not move the press.’
‘He certainly is in very great straits.’
‘How can you, then, wish me to risk the loss of my only weapon? Even if
I should be able to recover it later on, think of the loss of time. You
know how these things are done here.’
Worcell did not speak.
‘I’ll tell you what I can do for you: I will write a letter, saying that
for business reasons I am compelled to move the press, but so far from
meaning that I am breaking off from you, it will come to our having two
presses instead of one. You can publish this letter if you like or show
it to any one you please.’
I did in fact write this letter, addressing it to a humble member of the
Central Committee, who was in charge of the office.
‘No doubt you have heard,’ asked Worcell, ‘that they are drawing up an
act of indictment against us?’
‘I have.’
‘This is how I am rewarded in my old age ... this is what I have been
brought to ...’ and he shook his grey head mournfully.
‘I doubt whether you are right, Worcell. They are so accustomed to love
and respect you, that it was only through fear of wounding you that
things have not come to a head before. You know that it is not with you
they have a quarrel, let your comrades go their own way.’
‘Never, never; we have done everything together, we share the
responsibility.’
‘You won’t save them.’
‘And what did you say half an hour ago about Russell’s betraying his
comrades?’
It was in the evening. I was standing at a little distance from the
fireplace, Worcell was sitting at the window with his face towards the
fire. His face, worn by illness, with the red glow of the fire quivering
over it, struck me as more wasted and suffering than ever—a tear, the
bitter tear of age, rolled down his hollow cheek ... several minutes of
unbearably painful silence followed ... he got up, I went with him to his
bedroom, the great trees were rustling in the garden. Worcell opened the
window and said: ‘I should last twice as long here with my poor chest.’
I gripped him with both hands: ‘Worcell,’ I said, ‘stay with me; I will
give you a second room, no one shall interfere with you, do as you
like, breakfast alone, dine alone if you like; you will rest here for
two or three months.... You will not be continually worried, you will
be refreshed. I entreat you as a friend, as though I were your younger
brother.’
‘I thank you. I thank you with all my heart. I would accept your
invitation at once, but under present circumstances it is simply out of
the question ... on the one hand, there is the war; on the other, our
fellows will take it as meaning that I have deserted them. No, every man
must bear his own cross to the end.’
‘Well, sleep well to-night at least,’ I said to him, trying to smile.
There was no means of saving him!
In the autumn of 1856 Worcell was advised to go to Nice and to stay a
little while first on the warm shores of the Lake of Geneva. When I heard
of it I offered him the money necessary. He accepted it, and that brought
us together again; we began seeing each other more frequently. But he
was a long time preparing to go; the damp London winter with its smoky
stifling fog, its everlasting humidity and terrible north-east winds,
was beginning. I tried to hurry him off, but already he began to betray
a sort of instinctive dread of change, of movement. He was afraid of
solitude. I suggested that he should take some one with him to Geneva;
there I should have handed him over to Karl Vogt.
He accepted everything, agreed to everything, but did nothing. He lived
in an underground basement; it was scarcely ever light in his room, there
he was fading away, ill with asthma, without air, breathing coal smoke.
Peter Taylor told Worcell’s landlady to send him every week her bill for
his lodging, board and washing; he paid this bill, but gave not a single
pound into the old refugee’s hands.
It was definitely too late for him to travel; I offered to take a good
room for him in the Brompton Consumption Hospital.
‘Yes, that would be very nice, but it is impossible. Only think what a
dreadful distance it is from here.’
‘Well, what of it?’
‘Szabicki lives here and all our affairs are here; _he would have to come
every morning to bring me a daily report_.’
At this point self-sacrifice bordered upon madness.
... The war was ending, Nicholas was dead, a new Russia was arising, we
lived to see the Paris Peace, and to see the _Polar Star_ and everything
we published bought up to the last copy. We began publishing the _Bell_
and it went well.... Worcell and I rarely saw each other; he rejoiced
at our success with that inner suppressed but burning pain with which a
mother who has lost her son watches the development of another’s boy....
The time of the fatal alternative set by Worcell in his _oggi o mai_ had
come, and he was fading out of life....
Three days before his end Czernecki sent for me. Worcell had asked for
me—he was very ill, they were expecting the end. When I came in he was in
a state of semi-consciousness not unlike a trance; he lay on the sofa,
pale and waxen ... his cheeks were terribly sunken, and these fits of
unconsciousness had been frequent with him during the last few days, he
was slowly growing used to death. A quarter of an hour later Worcell
began to come to himself, spoke in a faint voice; he recognised me, sat
up and lay half reclining.
‘Have you read the papers?’ he asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me how the Neufchâtel question is going. I can read nothing.’ I
told him, he listened and understood everything.
‘Ah, how I want to sleep! Leave me now, I shall not sleep with you here,
and I shall be easier if I sleep.’
Next day he was a little better. He wanted to say something to me ...
twice he began and stopped ... and only when he was left alone with me
the dying man called me to his side and, feebly taking my hand, said:
‘How right you were ... you don’t know how right you were! ... it has
been on my mind to tell you so.’
‘Don’t let us talk any more about them.’
‘Go your own way ...’—he raised his dying but bright and radiant eyes
upon me. He could talk no more. I kissed him on the lips, and it was well
I did, for our parting was a long one. In the evening he got up, sipped a
little warm gin and water with the landlady—an excellent simple-hearted
woman, who had a religious reverence for Worcell as a being of a higher
order—went back to his own room, and fell asleep. Next morning Szabicki
and the landlady asked whether he wanted anything more. He asked them
to make a fire and let him sleep again; they did so. Worcell never woke
again.
When I came he was gone. His thin, thin face and body were covered by a
white sheet. I looked at him, said a last good-bye, and went to fetch a
sculptor’s workman to take a mask of him. His last interview, his great
agony I have described in another place; I will add one terrible touch to
it.
Worcell never spoke of his family. Once he was looking for some letter
to give me; rummaging in the table he opened a drawer. There lay a
photograph of a well-fed-looking young man with the moustache of an
officer. ‘A Pole and a patriot, no doubt,’ I said, more in jest than by
way of inquiry.
‘That,’ said Worcell, looking away and hurriedly taking the portrait
out of my hand, ‘is my son.’ I learned later that he was in the Russian
service in Warsaw.
His daughter had married a count and was living in wealthy style. She did
not know her father.
Two days before his death he was dictating his will to Mazzini ... his
last message to Poland, his farewell to her and greetings to friends....
‘That is all,’ said the dying man. Mazzini did not put down the pen.
‘Think a little,’ he said; ‘is there nothing else you want at this
moment? Are there no others to whom you should have something to say?’
Worcell understood, his face clouded over and he answered: ‘There is
nothing for me to say to them.’
I know no curse which would sound more terrible and lie more heavily upon
one than those simple words.
* * * * *
With the death of Worcell the democratic party of the Polish emigrants
in London grew pettier. It had rested upon him, upon his beautiful, his
revered personality. The radical party fell apart into little cliques,
almost hostile to each other. The yearly meetings split up, became
poor in numbers and interest. There was still the everlasting requiem,
the rehearsal of losses, new and old, and, as always in requiems, the
visionary hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting,
the faith in the second coming of Buonaparte and the resurrection of
Poland.
Two or three worthy old men remained like grand and mournful monuments;
like the grey-headed, long-bearded Israelites weeping at the walls of
Jerusalem. They pointed, not like leaders, to the path ahead, but like
monks, to the grave; they bring us to a standstill with their _Sta
viator_!
The best of the best among them had kept a youthful heart in his decrepit
body, and a gentle, childishly pure youthful light in his blue eyes. He
was already on the brink of the grave, he would soon pass away, and soon,
too, his opponent Czartoryzski.
Is not that really _finis Poloniae_?
Before we part for ever from the touching and sympathetic personality
of Worcell in the cold Highgate cemetery, I should like to give a few
more trifling details about him. So men coming from a funeral check their
mourning to tell stories of the dead man.
Worcell was very absent-minded in little daily affairs; he always left
behind him his spectacles, spectacle-case, handkerchief, snuff-box; on
the other hand, if a handkerchief not his own lay beside him he would
put it in his pocket; he came to see me sometimes with three gloves,
sometimes with one.
Before he moved to Hunter Street, he lived close by in a semicircle of
small houses at 43 Burton Crescent, not far from the New Road. After the
English fashion all the houses in the Crescent were single dwellings.
The house in which Worcell lived was the fifth from the end and, knowing
his absent-mindedness, he always counted the doors. Returning one day
from the opposite side of the Crescent, Worcell knocked and, when the
door was opened, walked into his room. A girl, probably the daughter of
the house, came out of it. Some one coughed twice behind him: a complete
stranger was sitting in the armchair. ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Worcell,
‘I am afraid you have been waiting for me.’ ‘Allow me,’ observed the
Englishman, ‘before answering, to know with whom I have the honour of
speaking.’
‘I am Worcell, and I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance; what can
I do for you?’
Here Worcell was suddenly struck by the idea that he had come to the
wrong place; looking about him he saw that the furniture and everything
else was not his. He told the Englishman of his plight, and apologising
went off to the fifth house from the other side. Fortunately the
Englishman was a very polite person, which is not a very common find in
London.
Three months later the same thing happened again. This time when he
knocked, the maid who opened the door, seeing a venerable old man, asked
him to walk into the parlour, where the Englishman was having supper with
his wife. Seeing Worcell walk in, he held out his hand good-humouredly
and said: ‘It’s not here, you live at No. 43.’
In spite of this absent-mindedness, Worcell preserved to the end of his
life an extraordinary memory; I used to refer to him as to a lexicon
or encyclopaedia. He had read everything in the world and studied
everything, mechanics and astronomy, the natural sciences and history.
Though he had no Catholic prejudices, from the old _pli_ of the Polish
mind he believed in a spiritual world, unnecessary and impossible, but
apart from the material world. It was not the religion of Moses, Abraham
and Isaac, but the religion of Jean Jacques, of George Sand, of Pierre
Leroux, of Mazzini and the rest. But Worcell had less right to it than
any of them.
When his asthma was not worrying him very much and he was not very
gloomy, Worcell was very charming in company. He told stories superbly,
and especially reminiscences of the old life of the Polish nobility. I
used to listen attentively to his tales. The world of Pan Tadewsz, the
world of Murdelio ... passed before one’s eyes; a world the end of which
one could not regret; on the contrary, one rejoices that it is no more,
though one cannot refuse to acknowledge a sort of brilliant, unbridled
poetry in it entirely lacking in the life of the Russian nobility.
West European aristocracy is indeed so completely alien to us that all
accounts of our grandees may be reduced to stories of savage luxury, of
banquets in which a whole town takes part, of multitudes of house-serfs,
of tyrannising over the peasants and poor neighbours, together with
slavish cringing before the emperor and the court. The Sheremetyevs
and the Golitsyns with all their palaces and great estates were in
no way distinguished from their peasants, except by wearing a German
coat, reading and writing French, and enjoying wealth and the Tsar’s
favour. They were all continually justifying Paul’s dictum, that he had
no one about him but servants in high positions; it was to such that he
was speaking when he said it. All that is very good, but one ought to
recognise it. What can be more pitiful _et moins aristocratique_ than the
last representative of Russian nobility and high rank whom I have seen,
Prince Sergey Mihailovitch Golitsyn, and what can be more loathsome than
an Izmailov?
The manners of the Polish Pans were bad, barbarous, almost unintelligible
now; but they were on another plane, due to a different mould of
character, and there was not a shade of churlishness in them.
‘Do you know,’ Worcell asked me once, ‘why the Passage Radziwill in the
Palais Royal is so called?’
‘No.’
‘You remember the celebrated Radziwill, the friend of the Regent, who
drove with his own horses from Warsaw to Paris and bought a house for
every night he had to sleep on the journey; the quantity of wine drunk
by Radziwill was too much for his less vigorous host; the Duke became
so much attached to him, that though he saw him every day, he used to
send him notes in the morning. One day Radziwill wanted to tell the
Regent something; he sent a lad with a letter to him. The fellow looked
and looked, but could not find the place, and came back to confess his
failure. “You fool,” the Pan said to him, “come here, look out of window,
do you see that big house?” (the Palais Royal).—“Yes, I see it.”—“Well,
that is where the greatest Pan here lives. Any one will show it you.”
The lad went off and looked and looked, but could not find the place.
The fact is that the palace is screened by houses, and one has to make a
_détour_ by the Rue Honoré. “Phew, what a bore!” said the Pan; “tell my
steward to buy the houses between my house and the Palais Royal, and to
make a street, so that this fool won’t lose his way next time I send him
to the Regent.”’
I will give another example of how financial operations are conducted as
a rule in our world.
After my arrival in London in 1852, while speaking of the low state of
the Italian party funds with Mazzini, I told him that in Genoa I had
proposed to his friends that they should put a tax on their incomes and
pay, those with no families 10 per cent., those with a family less.
‘They will all agree,’ observed Mazzini, ‘but very few will pay it.’
‘That would be shameful; they will pay,’ I said. ‘I have long wished to
contribute my mite to the Italian cause, it is as dear to me as my own; I
will give 10 per cent. of my income at the same time. That will be about
£200. Here is £140, but £60 I will keep for the present.’
In 1853 Mazzini vanished. Soon after his departure two refugees called
upon me, one wearing a fur collar because he had ten years previously
been in Petersburg; the other with no collar, but with a grey moustache
and a little military beard. They came with a message from Ledru-Rollin;
he wanted to know whether I was not intending to send a sum of money to
the European Committee. I confessed that I had no such intention.
Some days later the same question was put to me by Worcell, ‘Where can
Ledru-Rollin have picked up that idea?’
‘Why, you did give some to Mazzini.’
‘That is rather a reason for not giving to any one else.’
‘I believe you still have £60 to give.’
‘Promised to Mazzini.’
‘That is all the same.’
‘I don’t think so.’
A week passed; I had a letter from Mazzoletti, in which he informed me
that it had come to his knowledge that I did not know to whom to send £60
still in my hands; for which reason he begged me to send the money to him
as the representative of Mazzini in London.
This Mazzoletti really was Mazzini’s secretary. An official and
a bureaucrat by nature, he amused us by his official dignity and
bureaucratic manner.
When a telegram appeared in the newspapers announcing the rising in Milan
of the 3rd of February 1853, I went to Mazzoletti to find out whether
he had any news. Mazzoletti asked me to wait; then came out to me with
an anxious but valiant air, carrying some papers and accompanied by
Bratiano, with whom he was in earnest conversation.
‘I have come to you to find out if you have any news.’
‘No, I only heard myself from _The Times_; I am awaiting a dispatch from
hour to hour.’
Two or three others arrived. Mazzoletti was pleased, and so groaned and
complained that he had no time to spare. In course of conversation he
began to drop hints of news and explanations.
‘How do you know that?’ I asked him.
‘That ... these, of course, are my own deductions,’ Mazzoletti observed,
somewhat disconcerted.
‘I will come to you to-morrow morning....’
‘If any news comes to-day I will let you know.’
‘You will oblige me; from seven till nine o’clock this evening I shall be
at Verrey’s.’
Mazzoletti did not forget. At seven o’clock I was dining at Verrey’s: an
Italian whom I had seen twice walked in, he came up to me, looked about
him, waited till the waiter had gone to fetch something, and saying that
Mazzoletti had charged him to tell me that there was no telegram, went
away.
On receiving the letter from the state secretary of revolution, I
answered him jokingly, that he was wrong in picturing me as standing
helpless in the midst of London, not knowing to whom to give £60; that
without a letter from Mazzini I had no intention of giving the money to
any one whatever.
Mazzoletti wrote me a long and somewhat wrathful note, which was
intended, without lowering the dignity of the writer or exceeding the
limits of parliamentary courtesy, to be sarcastic at the expense of the
recipient.
Not a week had passed after these overtures when early one morning Amelia
G., one of the women most devoted to Mazzini and an intimate friend of
his, called upon me. She told me that the rising in Lombardy had failed,
that Mazzini was still in hiding there and asking them to send him money
at once, and they had no money.
‘Here,’ I said, ‘is the famous £60; only, don’t forget to tell your privy
councillor Mazzoletti, and Ledru-Rollin too if occasion arises, that
I did not do so badly in refusing to fling these 1500 francs into the
bottomless pit of the European Committee.’
In anticipation of our Russian national inference from my story, I ought
to say that no one ever profited by the money so collected.[63] In Russia
some one would have stolen it: here it vanished exactly as though
someone had burnt the banknotes in a candle without taking the numbers.
2
PATER V. PETCHERIN
‘Yesterday I saw Petcherin.’
I started at the name.
‘What,’ I asked, ‘_the_ Petcherin, is he here?’
‘Who, the Reverend Petcherin? Yes, he is here.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the Jesuit monastery, Saint Mary’s Chapel, at Clapham.’
The Reverend Father Petcherin!... That sin too lies at the doors of
Nicholas. I had not known Petcherin personally, but I had heard a
very great deal about him from Ryedkin, Kryukov and Granovsky. He had
returned, a young professor, from abroad, to take the Chair of Greek in
the Moscow University; it was at one of the very darkest periods of the
persecution by Nicholas between 1835 and 1840. We were in exile, the
later young professors had not yet arrived, the _Telegraph_ had been
forbidden, the _European_ had been forbidden, the _Telescope_ had been
forbidden. Tchaadayev had been declared insane.
It was not till after 1848 that the Terror in Russia went to even further
extremes.
But the frenzied tyranny of the last years of Nicholas’ reign was
unmistakably the fifth act. By then it was already becoming apparent that
something was not only breaking and ruining, but was itself being broken
and dropping into ruins. There was the sound as though the floor were
cracking under a collapsing roof.
In the ’thirties, on the contrary, the frenzy of power went its
accustomed routine with its regular step; all around was silence and
desolation, everything was dumb submission with no hope, no human
dignity, and at the same time dull, stupid and petty. Any one who looked
for sympathy met a flunkey’s menace or panic, all turned from him or
insulted him. Petcherin was gasping for air in this Neapolitan cave of
slavery, he was overtaken by horror, misery, he had at all costs to
escape from this accursed land. To get away he needed money. Petcherin
began to give lessons, reduced his expenditure to the barest necessaries,
missed the gatherings of his comrades, went out little, and after saving
a small sum went away.
Soon afterwards he wrote a letter to Count Strogonov; he informed him
that he should not return. Thanking him and bidding him farewell,
Petcherin spoke of the unbearably suffocating atmosphere from which he
was escaping, and besought him to protect the luckless young professors
doomed by their culture to the same agonies, to shield them from the
blows of brute force.
Strogonov showed this letter to many of the professors.
There was silence about him for some time in Moscow, then suddenly we
heard with an infinitely bitter feeling that Petcherin had become a
Jesuit, that he was serving his novitiate in a monastery. Poverty,
friendlessness, solitude had broken his spirit. I looked through his
_Triumph of Death_, and asked myself: ‘Can this man possibly be a
Catholic, a Jesuit? Why, he has already gone from the rule of the Tsars,
where _history is made_ under the stick of the policeman, and under guard
of the gendarme. Why then did he so soon feel the need of other control,
other authority?’
The Russian felt isolated, forlorn in the closely classified West, up to
its neck in business; he was too conscious of being without kith or kin.
When the cord by which he was bound was broken and his life, suddenly set
free from every external guidance, was left in his own hands, he did not
know what to do, could not deal with it, and thrown out of his natural
orbit with no goal before him, no boundaries to restrain him, he sank
into a Jesuit monastery!
At two o’clock on the day after I heard his name, I went to Saint Mary’s
Chapel. The heavy oak door was closed—I knocked three times with a
knocker in the shape of a ring, the door opened and a thin young man of
about eighteen appeared, wearing a monk’s cassock; in his hand was a
breviary.
‘Whom do you wish to see?’ the brother who acted as porter asked.
‘The Reverend Father Petcherin.’
‘Kindly give me your name.’
‘Here is my card and a letter.’ In the letter I had put an announcement
of the Russian printing press.
‘Come in,’ said the young man, closing the door behind me. ‘Will you wait
here?’ and he indicated two or three large chairs with antique carving on
them in the spacious vestibule.
Five minutes later he returned, and told me in French, with a slight
accent, that _le père Petcherin sera enchanté de me recevoir dans un
instant_.
After that he led me across the refectory into a small, lofty room, dimly
lighted, and again asked me to sit down. On the wall there was a crucifix
carved out of stone, and, if I am not mistaken, on the other side there
was also a Madonna. About the heavy, massive table there were large
wooden armchairs and ordinary chairs. A door on the opposite side led by
a porch into a spacious garden; its worldly greenness and the rustle of
the leaves seemed somehow out of keeping.
The brother doorkeeper showed me a notice on the wall, in which was the
statement that the reverend fathers saw those that had need of them
between four and six. It was not yet four.
‘I think you are not an Englishman and not a Frenchman?’ I asked him,
listening to his accent.
‘No.’
‘_Sind Sie ein Deutscher?_’
‘_Oh, nein, mein Herr. Ich bin beinahe ihre Landsmann, ich bin ein Pole._’
Well—the brother doorkeeper was not a bad choice, he spoke in four
languages. I sat down; he went away; I felt strange at seeing myself in
these surroundings. Black figures kept walking by in the garden; two men
in semi-monastic dress passed close by me; they gravely but courteously
bowed, looking at the ground; on each occasion I rose and as gravely
bowed in return. At last a little very elderly priest came in wearing a
biretta and the regular garb in which priests are dressed in monasteries.
He came straight up to me, his robes rustling, and asked me with the
purest French accent: ‘You wish to see Petcherin?’ I answered by giving
my name.
‘I am greatly delighted at your visit,’ he said, holding out his hand;
‘please sit down.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, somewhat taken aback at not having
recognised him. It had not entered my head that I should meet him in
such a costume. ‘Your dress....’
He gave a slight smile and at once went on: ‘It is a long while since I
have had any news of my own country, of our friends, of the university.
You probably knew Ryedkin and Kryukov.’
I looked at him; his face was old, older than his years, one could see
that behind those wrinkles much had passed, and passed away, _tout
de bon_, that is, had died, leaving only its funereal traces on his
features. The artificial clerical composure with which monks destroy
as with corrosive sublimate whole sides of their heart and their mind
had reached even his speech and all his movements. A Catholic priest
has always something of the widow, he too is always in mourning and in
solitude, he too is faithful to something which is not, and quenches his
real passions by stimulating his imagination.
When I told him about our common acquaintances and about the death of
Kryukov, at which I had been present, and how his students had borne
him to the cemetery across the whole length of the town, and then about
Granovsky’s triumphs, about his public lectures, we both sank into
thought. What was passing in the skull under the biretta I do not know,
but Petcherin took it off as though it weighed heavily on him at that
moment, and laid it on the table. Conversation did not run easily.
‘_Sortons un peu au jardin_,’ said Petcherin, ‘_le temps est si beau, et
c’est si rare à Londres._’
‘_Avec le plus grand plaisir_, but tell me, please, why are we talking in
French?’
‘Yes, indeed! Let us speak Russian. I believe I have quite forgotten it.’
We went out into the garden. The conversation again passed to our
university days in Moscow.
‘Oh,’ said Petcherin, ‘what a terrible time it was when I left Russia! I
cannot think of it without shuddering!’
‘Only imagine what is being done there now; our Saul has gone completely
mad since 1848,’ and I told him of several atrocious incidents.
‘Unhappy country, especially for the minority who have received the
unlucky gift of culture. And yet what a good people! I often think of
our peasants when I am in Ireland. They are very much alike; the Celtic
peasant is just such a child as ours. You should go to Ireland, and you
will be convinced of it yourself.’
So the conversation was prolonged for half an hour; at last when I
prepared to leave him I said to him: ‘I have a favour to ask of you.’
‘Please tell me what it is.’
‘Several of your poems came into my hands in Petersburg: among them is a
trilogy—“Polikrat Samossky,” “The Triumph of Death” and something else:
haven’t you got them, or can you not let me have them?’
‘How can you recall such nonsense! They were the crude, childish
productions of a certain period and a certain mood.’
‘Perhaps,’ I observed smiling, ‘that is why I like them; but have you got
them or not?’
‘No, indeed!’
‘And you could not dictate them?’
‘No, no, certainly not.’
‘But if I can find them somewhere in Russia will you permit me to publish
them?’
‘I really look upon those trivial productions as though some one else had
written them; they mean no more to me than a sick man’s ravings after his
recovery.’
‘Since they mean nothing to you, then I can publish them—without your
name, of course?’
‘Do you like those verses still?’
‘That’s my business. You only tell me whether you will allow me to
publish them or not.’
Even then he would not give me a direct answer. I did not insist further.
‘Why,’ observed Petcherin, as I was saying good-bye, ‘you have brought me
none of your publications. I remember some three years ago there was talk
in the newspapers of a book published by you, I believe in German.’
‘Your cloth,’ I answered, ‘will tell you on what grounds I could not
bring it; accept my not doing so as a sign of respect and delicacy.’
‘You little know our tolerance and our love; we may grieve over error,
pray for its correction, earnestly desire it, and in any case love the
man.’
We parted. He forgot neither the book nor my answer, and three days later
wrote me the following letter in French:—
J.M.J.A., ST. MARY’S, CLAPHAM, _April 11, 1853_.
I cannot disguise from you the sympathy that is awakened in
my heart by the word freedom—freedom for my unhappy country!
Do not for one instant doubt the sincerity of my desire for
the resurrection of Russia. For all that, I am far from
agreeing with your programme in all respects. But that is
of no importance, the love of the Catholic priest embraces
all opinions and all parties. When your most precious hopes
deceive you, when the powers of this world rise up against
you, you will still have left an unfailing refuge in the
heart of the Catholic priest: in him you will find affection
without insincerity, precious tears and the peace which this
world cannot give you. Come to me, dear fellow-countryman. I
should be very pleased to see you once more before I go away to
Guernsey. Do not forget to bring your brochure for me.
V. PETCHERIN.
I took him the books, and four days afterwards received the following
letter:—
ST. PIERRE, ISLAND OF GUERNSEY, J.M.J.A.,
CHAPELLE CATHOLIQUE, _April 15, 1853_.
I have read both your books with great attention. One thing
has particularly impressed me: it seems to me that you and
your friends rest your hopes exclusively on philosophy and on
_belles lettres_. Can you imagine that it is their vocation to
reform society as it is? Pardon me, but the evidence of history
is entirely against you. There is no instance of a society
being founded or recreated by philosophy and literature. I say
plainly (_tranchons le mot_), only religion has ever served as
the foundation of a state; philosophy and literature, alas! are
but the latest flower of the social tree. When philosophy and
literature attain their apogee, when philosophers, orators and
poets are the ruling power and settle all public questions,
then comes the end, the downfall, then comes the death of
society. That is shown by Greece and Rome, that is shown by
the so-called Alexandrian period; never was philosophy more
encouraged, never was literature more flourishing, yet it
was a period of deep social degradation; whenever philosophy
has undertaken the re-creation of the social order, it has
invariably passed into a social despotism, for instance in the
case of Frederick II., Catherine II., Joseph II., and in all
the revolutions that have failed. You have let fall a phrase
felicitous or infelicitous as you like: you say that the
phalanstery is nothing but the barracks in another form, and
that Communism can but be the autocracy of Nicholas transformed
into another aspect. In fact, I see a shadow of melancholy
resting on you and your Moscow friends. Indeed, you seem
yourselves conscious that you are all Onyegins, _i.e._ that you
and your friends are all in negation, in doubt, in despair. Is
it possible to rebuild society on such foundations?
Perhaps what I have said is a commonplace, and you know it
better than I do. I write this not for the sake of argument,
not to begin a controversy, but I thought myself bound to make
this criticism, because sometimes the noblest minds and best
hearts are mistaken in their fundamental principle, without
themselves being aware of it. So I write this to you to show
how attentively I have read your book, and to give you a fresh
proof of the respect and love which, etc.
V. PETCHERIN.
To this I answered him in Russian:
25 EUSTON SQUARE, _April 21, 1853_.
HONOURED FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN,—I thank you most sincerely for your
letter, and ask your leave to say a few words _à la hâte_, on
the principal points of it.
I entirely agree with you that literature like the flowers of
autumn appears in all its brilliance before the downfall of
states. Ancient Rome could not be saved by the witty phrases of
Cicero, nor by his thin morality, nor by the Voltairianism of
Lucian, nor the German philosophy of Proclus; but note that it
could not be saved by the Eleusinian mysteries either, nor by
Apollonius of Tyana, nor all the efforts to prolong and revive
paganism.
It was not only impossible but useless. There was no need to
save the ancient world, it had outlived its age, and a new
world had risen up to take its place. Europe is precisely in
the same position; literature and philosophy are not preserving
its decrepit forms, but thrusting them into the tomb, breaking
them up, setting us free from them.
The new world is approaching exactly as it was then. Do not
think that I have been inconsistent in calling the phalanstery
a barracks; no, all doctrines and schools of socialists that
have appeared hitherto, from Saint-Simon to Proudhon, who
stands for nothing but negation, are poor, they are the first
murmur, the first spelling out word by word, they are the
Therapeutes and the Essenes of the ancient East. But who has
not a foreboding, a glimpse of the vast issues that are dimly
apparent through those one-sided efforts, and who would punish
children because their teeth are cut with difficulty or come
through irregularly?
The despondency of modern life is the despondency of the
twilight, of transition, of forebodings. Animals are uneasy
before an earthquake.
Nothing has got beyond that point. Some try to force open the
door to the future, others forcibly prevent the past from
going; some look to prophecies, others to memories, their work
consists in hindering each other, and both alike are stuck in
the bog.
Beside it is another world—Russia. Its foundation is a
communistic peasantry still slumbering, with a surface scum
of cultivated people reduced to the condition of Onyegin, to
despair, to exile, to your fate and to mine. It is a bitter
lot for us. We are victims of the fact that we are born out of
our right time. For our cause that makes no difference; at any
rate, it has not the same importance.
Speaking of the revolutionary movement in new Russia, I have
said that from Peter the Great Russian history is the history
of the nobility and of the Government. The revolutionary
ferment is found in the nobility; though in Russia it has had
no outlet—open, active, in the market-place—no outlet except
the literary career; there too I have tracked it.
I have had the boldness to say in my letter to Michelet that
cultured Russians are the most emancipated of men; we have
gone incomparably further in negation than, for instance, the
French. In negation of what? Of the old world, of course.
Together with his idle despair Onyegin now is arriving at
positive hopes. You have perhaps not noticed them. Abjuring
Europe in its effete form, abjuring Petersburg, which is Europe
again but adapted to our manners, weak and cut off from the
people, we have perished. But little by little something new,
grotesque in Gogol, exaggerated in the Panslavists, has been
developing. This new element is the element of faith in the
strength of the people, a faith full of love. With it we have
begun to understand the peasantry. But we are far away from
them. I am not saying that it will be our lot to re-create
Russia; we must be thankful to have welcomed the common people,
and to have divined that the new world belongs to them.
One word more. I am not confounding science with literary and
philosophical culture. Science, if it does not re-create a
state, does not really decline with it. It is a means, it is
the memory of the human race, it is its conquest over Nature,
its emancipation. Ignorance, ignorance alone is the cause of
pauperism and slavery. The masses have been left by their
educators in the condition of cattle. Science, nothing but
science, can correct that now and give them bread and shelter.
Not through propaganda but through chemistry, mechanics,
technology, railways, it may restore the brain which has been
cramped morally and physically for ages.
I shall be truly delighted, _et cetera_.
A fortnight later, I received the following letter from Father Petcherin:
J.M.J.A., ST. MARY’S, CLAPHAM, _May 3, 1853_.
I answer you in French for reasons of which you are aware. I
could not write to you before, I was burdened with duties in
Guernsey: one has little time for philosophical theory when one
lives in the midst of a reality pulsating with life; one has
no leisure to settle speculative problems of the future destiny
of mankind when mankind in flesh and blood comes to pour out
its sorrows on one’s bosom, and to beg for advice and help.
I must frankly confess that your last letter filled me with
horror, and a very egoistic horror I must admit.
What will happen to us when your culture (_votre civilisation
à vous_) gains the day? For your science is everything, alpha
and omega. Not that broad science which embraces all the
faculties of man, everything visible and invisible, science as
it has been understood by the world hitherto, but a limited,
narrow science which analyses and dissects matter, and knows
of nothing else. Chemistry, mechanics, technology, steam,
electricity—the great science of eating and drinking, the
worship of the individual (_le culte de la personne_) as
Michel Chevalier would have said! Woe to us if _that_ science
triumphs! In the days of their persecution by the Roman
Emperors Christians had at least the possibility of flight into
the wilderness of Egypt, the sword of the tyrants was checked
at that boundary which they could not pass. But whither can
one flee from the tyranny of your material civilisation? It
levels mountains, excavates canals, lays down railways, sends
steamers; its newspapers penetrate to the burning wastes of
Africa, to the pathless forests of America. As once Christians
were dragged into the amphitheatres to be exposed to the jeers
of the crowd greedy for spectacles, so now they will drag us
men of prayer and silence into the public market-place, and
there ask: ‘Why do you flee from our society? You ought to take
part in our materialistic life, in our trade, in our marvellous
industry. Go, make speeches in the market-place, go and preach
political economy, deliberate on the fall and rise of the
exchange. Go and preside at our feasts, paradise is here on
earth—let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!’ That is what
moves me to horror, for where are we to find a refuge from the
tyranny of matter, which is gaining more and more mastery of
all?
Forgive me if I have somewhat exaggerated the gloomy colours
of my picture; it seems to me that I have only carried the
foundations laid by you to their legitimate conclusion. I
should not have left Russia for an intellectual caprice
(_caprice de spiritualité_). Russia has indeed begun with
science as you understand it, and she is continuing with it.
She holds in her hands the gigantic lever of material power.
She calls all talents to serve her and to celebrate her
material prosperity. She will become the most cultured country
in the world. Providence has allotted to her the material
world; she will make a paradise of it for her elect. She
understands civilisation just as you understand it, the science
of the material has always been her strength. But we who have
faith in an immortal soul and a future life, what have we to do
with this civilisation of the present minute? Russia will never
have me for its subject.
I have propounded my views with simplicity, to make our
position clear to each other. Forgive me if I put too much heat
into my words. As I am going back to Ireland on Friday morning
it will be impossible for me to come to you, but I shall be
very glad if it will suit you to visit me on Wednesday or on
Thursday after dinner.—Receive, etc.
V. PETCHERIN.
I answered him next day.
25 EUSTON SQUARE, _May 4, 1853_.
HONOURED FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN,—I went to see you to press the hand
of a Russian whose name was familiar to me and whose position
was so like my own.... Although life and convictions have put
you among the triumphant ranks of the conquerors and me in
the melancholy camps of the vanquished, I had no thought of
touching upon the difference of our opinions. My wish was to
see a Russian, my wish was to bring you living news of your
native land. From a sense of delicacy I did not offer you my
pamphlets, it was your own wish to see them. Hence your letter,
my answer, and your second letter of the 3rd of May; you attack
me, my opinions (exaggerated and not fully held by me), I
cannot but defend myself. I only wrote to you that I reckon the
sum total of our conquests over Nature and of all our culture,
of course, entirely outside the domain of _belles lettres_ and
abstract philosophy.
But this is a lengthy subject, and I have no desire without
special provocation to repeat everything that has so many
times been said about it. Allow me rather to reassure you
in regard to your anxiety about the future of men who love
the contemplative life. Science is not a special school or
doctrine, and so it can become neither a government, an
arbitrary law, nor a persecution. You probably meant to speak
of social ideas, of freedom. In that case, take the most
‘materialistic’ and ‘most free’ country, England. Men of the
contemplative life as well as the advocates of a Utopia find in
it a nook for tranquil reflection and a platform for preaching
their doctrines. And yet England, a Protestant monarchy, is
very far from complete tolerance.
And what is there to fear? The rumble of the wheels bringing
bread to the hungry, half-clad crowd? We do not forbid men
to thrash corn for fear they should disturb our poetic
tranquillity.
There will always and everywhere be contemplative natures;
there will be more freedom for them both as to thought and
stillness; let them find themselves a quiet spot; no one will
disturb and no one will summon them, no one will persecute
them, no one will either oppress them or support them. I
imagine it is wrong to be afraid of improving the life of the
masses because the process of improving it may grate upon the
ears of men who do not want to hear anything external. No one
asks even for self-denial, for kindness, for sacrifice in
this case. If it is noisy in the market-place you should not
carry your wares there but go away from it. But the newspapers
follow us everywhere—what contemplative nature is dependent for
happiness on the first edition in Paris or the first edition in
London?
But, you see, if instead of freedom the anti-materialistic and
monarchial principles triumph, then it will be hard for us to
find a place, not where we may rest undisturbed, but where we
may escape the hangings, burnings, and torturings which are
still to be found to some extent in Rome and Milan, in France
and Russia.
Which then need feel afraid? Of course, death is of no
consequence _sub specie aeternitatis_, but from that point of
view, you know, everything else is of no consequence either.
Forgive me, honoured fellow-countryman, for my frank opposition
to what you say, and consider that I could make no other answer.
My warmest good wishes that you may have a good journey to
Ireland.
With that our correspondence ended.
Two years passed. The grey fog on the European horizon was lighted up
by the glare of the Crimean War which made its darkness blacker than
ever, and all at once, among the bloody news of campaigns and sieges,
I read in the newspapers that somewhere in Ireland the Reverend Father
Vladimir Petcherin had been brought up for trial for publicly burning a
Protestant Bible in the market-place. The haughty British judge, taking
into consideration the senselessness of the action and the fact that the
prisoner was a Russian, confined himself to a paternal exhortation to a
greater propriety of behaviour in the streets for the future....
Can those chains weigh lightly upon him ... or does he often take off his
biretta and lay it wearily on the table?
3
THREE TRIALS
I
THE DUEL
In 1853 the celebrated communist Willich introduced me to a Parisian
workman called Emanuel Barthélemy. I knew his name before from the June
trial, from his sentence, and finally from his escape from Belle-Île.
He was a young man, short, but of a muscularly powerful build; his
pitch-black curly hair gave him a Southern look; his face, slightly
marked with smallpox, was clear-cut and handsome. Continual conflict
had aroused in him an inflexible will and the power of directing it.
Barthélemy was one of the most single-minded natures which it has been
my lot to meet. Of bookish school education he had none except in his
own line: he was an excellent mechanic. We may note in passing that it
was from the ranks of the mechanics, machinists, engineers, and railway
workers that the most resolute fighters on the June barricades came.
The thought of his life, the passion of his whole existence was an
unflagging thirst like that of Spartacus for the revolt of the working
people against the middle classes. This idea was in him inseparable from
a savage desire to massacre the bourgeois.
What a commentary that man furnished me on the horrors of 1793 and 1794,
on the days of September, on the hatred with which the parties nearest
of kin destroyed each other! In him I saw face to face how a man can
combine a thirst for blood with humanity in other relations, even with
tenderness, and how a man may be at peace with his own conscience while
like Saint-Just sending dozens of men to the guillotine.
‘That the revolution may not be for the tenth time stolen out of our
hands,’ Barthélemy would say, ‘we must crush our worst foe at home, in
our own family. At the counter, in the office, we always find him—it’s
in our own camp we ought to destroy him!’ On his proscription lists
were the names of almost all the refugees: Victor Hugo, Mazzini, Victor
Schœlcher,[64] and Kossuth. He made very few exceptions; among them, I
remember, was Louis Blanc. The peculiar object of his most genuine hatred
was Ledru-Rollin. The keen, passionate but extremely composed face of
Barthélemy would twitch convulsively when he spoke of ‘the dictator of
the bourgeoisie.’
He talked in a masterly fashion, a talent that is growing more and more
rare. Public speakers in Paris, and still more in England, are endless
in number. Priests, lawyers, members of parliament, men selling pills or
cheap pencils, hired orators—secular and spiritual—in the parks, they all
have a wonderful faculty for preaching, but very few can talk for the
benefit of a room.
Barthélemy’s one-sided logic, continually turned in one direction, acted
like the flame of a blowpipe. He spoke smoothly without raising his voice
or gesticulating; his choice of words, his sentences were correct, pure,
and completely free from the three curses of modern French, revolutionary
jargon, legal expressions and the easy familiarity of shop-boys.
Where had this workman, brought up in the stifling foundries where iron
was forged and wrought for machines, in stifling Parisian alleys, between
the pot-house and the forge, in prison and in penal servitude—where
had he gained his true conception of beauty and proportion, of tact
and grace—a conception lost by bourgeois France? How had he managed to
preserve the unaffected naturalness of his language among the frigid
rhetoricians, the Gascons of revolutionary babble?
It is indeed a puzzle.
It seems as though the atmosphere must be fresher about the workshops.
Here is his life, however.
He was not yet twenty when he was mixed up in some _émeute_ in the
time of Louis-Philippe. A gendarme stopped him, and as he began to say
something the gendarme gave him a punch in the face with his fist.
Barthélemy, who was being held by a _municipal_, tore himself away, but
could do nothing. This blow awakened the tiger in him. Barthélemy—an
eager, good-humoured young working lad—got up the next day transformed.
It must be observed that though Barthélemy was arrested the police
released him, finding him not guilty. As for the outrage done him, no one
cared to discuss it. ‘What do you want to run about the streets for when
there is an _émeute_ going on? Besides, how could we find the gendarme
now?’
So there it was. Barthélemy bought a pistol, loaded it and took to
sauntering about that part of the town; he hung about for a day or two,
when all at once he saw the gendarme standing at the corner. Barthélemy
turned away and cocked his pistol. ‘Do you recognise me?’ he asked the
police officer. ‘I should think I do.’ ‘Then you remember how you...?’
‘Come, go along, go on your way,’ said the gendarme. ‘_Bon voyage_ to you
too,’ said Barthélemy, and pulled the trigger. The gendarme fell, and
Barthélemy walked away. The gendarme was mortally wounded, but did not
die on the spot.
Barthélemy was tried for simple murder. No one took into consideration
the greatness of the insult—especially according to French ideas—the
impossibility of a workman sending a challenge, the impossibility of
taking legal proceedings. Barthélemy was condemned to penal servitude.
This was the third school in which he was trained after the forge and
the prison. When Crémieux, the Minister of Justice after the February
revolution, revised sentences, Barthélemy was released.
The days of June came. Barthélemy, one of the most ardent followers of
Louis Blanc, showed himself then in his full strength.