the fighting to take that city. This probably was much the most
difficult and dangerous time she ever encountered. They were working
in the very front lines, in the mud and dirt and under heavy shell
fire. At one time when the shells were falling both in front and
behind their tents, and it was impossible to move the wounded, Nelka
realized that perhaps she would not come out alive. She wrote several
short goodbye notes, one of which was written to my mother, which I
reproduce here. I am grateful to think that at that critical moment
she remembered me.
Kara Youssouff. 29 February 1913.
"Dearest Veta:
We are under fire--the projectiles are going over our heads, one just
fell on the other side of our tents, and the ground is torn up before
our eyes. Perhaps we may miraculously escape--if not, goodbye.
Perhaps some one may pick this up and send it. I send you much, much
love--give my love to my friends in Petersburg, it is terrible for
the poor wounded. Love to Max. Nelka."
Here is a letter from Aunt Susie Blow to Nelka in 1913:
"Nothing I can say suggests what I feel. The picture of you with
those awful bombs bursting above you, before you, to right and left
of you and the other picture of you plunging knee deep in mud and
battling with mud and rain, as you made your way from tent to tent
will never leave me. And what pictures of horror must move in ghastly
procession in your mind. You have always wanted first hand
experience. Now you have had such experience of famine, of war, of
religious enthusiasm, of patriotic devotion. How will it all affect
the necessary routine of life?"
Sofia 1913.
"I know I have written since the fall of Adrianople and I think I
sent you a word from there. Did I tell you that the Consulate was in
several places shattered by shells? What I noticed the most was the
air of proprietorship of the soldiers in the town and how one felt
the immediate transformation of the Turkish town into a Bulgarian
one."
Sofia 1913.
"I do not know what I think about the Turks. I only know that I abhor
the 'Young Turks' (political party). In general I suppose they are
more civilized than the Bulgars. I do not care for them as a nation,
but I wish nevertheless that the war would continue until they get to
the very door of Constantinople. About occupying the city itself I do
not know, because it is so complicated. Of course I wish it might
belong to one of the Balkan states and I simply can't endure the
mixing in of 'powers.' Powers--by what I would like to know, except
size and force alone. I wish they would fight it out and take
Constantinople and be done with it and the whole Balkan peninsula as
well. I hate threats and tyranny based on the power to destroy if
they want. Either gobble it up or leave it alone, but not dictate!!!"
"It is very strange, but it seems to me that everything that makes
for terrestrial power makes for spiritual defeat."
"I am crazy to go to Tchatalja but a definite attack does not seem
imminent."
"I am well and, as result of feeding on air and no sleep, had to move
the buttons of my apron which had become tight. I can speak quite a
little Bulgarian."
"I understand fully what is meant by 'A la Guerre, comme a La
Guerre.' It is extraordinary how every preconceived notion and habit
is thrown to the winds. I like it very much. Everyone acts as the
immediate occasion seems to necessitate and it is so much more
simple. Everything is changed and I see that it is just so everywhere
in time of war because one thing is so very much more important than
all the rest. It is when nothing is supremely important that life is
simply impossible and that you are baffled at every step."
"It was terrible in many ways. Those first days at Kara Youssouff,
but I feel it was the greatest privilege to be there. One felt
helpless before such a demand but it was all so real and every breath
meant so much."
Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned to America and
joined her aunts.
Before leaving she spent several days with my mother and me in our
country place. After she left my mother wrote to Nelka:
"Max and I miss you very much. I was so happy to have you with us for
a time; your visits are always so nice and cheerful. I always
remember them with so much pleasure. We had a long talk with Max
about you and decided you were a real friend for us and Max said: 'we
must always be real friends to her.' He is very fond of you."
(I was then 16 years old and very much in love with Nelka.)
Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned again to America
and joined her aunt Martha in Washington.
She brought Tibi back with her and here a tragic event took place
which had a decisive influence on both Nelka's and my life.
While in Washington Tibi somehow got hold of rat poison and despite
the help of the best veterinarian and also the help of two human
doctors who were friends of Nelka, Tibi died.
Nelka took the death of her mother in a most tragic and painful way,
but the death of Tibi affected her to a much greater degree. Her
grief was beyond all comprehension and she went into a state of utter
despair, verging on the frantic. Her Aunt Susie and a few friends
tried to help her as much as they could but absolutely nothing seemed
to help.
Just before she had left Russia, Princess Wasilchikoff had asked her
to assume the reorganization of a sister community and hospital in
Kovno, a fortress-town near the German border. Nelka did not accept
the offer though it was of considerable interest to her, because she
was then returning to America and had plans to stay with her aunts.
But when her little dog died, she quickly changed her mind and
telegraphed Princess Wasilchikoff that she was ready to accept her
proposition. This she did primarily to try and get her mind focused
on something and to get it off the brooding about Tibi. Her grief and
despair can be judged from the various letters which she wrote to her
aunt at that time, and for a long time to come.
Ashantee 1913.
"If that cannot be done I want to be buried in unconsecrated ground
with Tibi and shall arrange for it. I cannot leave Tibi where she is
buried and not know what will happen later."
"I hope when I die to know that it will be alright but I cannot get
any nearer to being reconciled now, and it just comes over me with a
fresh feeling all the time, that I cannot accept it. I have never
felt so about anything. I am glad that you miss darling little Tibi.
I feel estranged from everyone except those who knew and cared for
Tibi."
During her trip back to Europe, she wrote from Rotterdam 1913.
"It just seems some times more than I can bear. I don't know how to
get reconciled--that is the worst. I don't accept it and I have an
outraged sense all the time of the fearful crime to that happy little
life, and so many constant torments come up afresh all the time, that
I just feel crazy. I tried to face it all and wear it out of my head
in the beginning, but that did not work and now this willful keeping
from thinking as much as I can does not help either. Why couldn't
anything have happened to me that would not have hurt Tibi? I suffer
because that little face is just always before me. If I could just
have her for an hour and know that she was all right, I would die the
happiest person in the world."
Paris 1913.
"I can't keep up my spirits all the time. I am terribly tired, look a
perfect sight, but I don't care. Paris has not changed much. It will
always be the most beautiful city in the world, I think, and the most
civilized. Church was such a delight this morning. I like this Paris
one better than anyone I know, but it all now seems simply a past and
I know it will always be so."
Poustinka 1913.
"It seems to me almost superfluous to comment any more on the sadness
and pain of what occurred--it is also just more and more and
everywhere. The more one sees of life, the more frightened one is of
being happy. I think life is just totally and absolutely
inexplicable."
"Veta has got a little apartment opposite the Lycee and Max hopes to
get in January. I am giving him English dictations and he is studying
all day. Veta thinks of nothing else and wants to get him safely
married at 21, which she thinks is the best thing for Russian men."
Well, I was safely married at 21 but not with the approval of my
mother who opposed my marriage to Nelka because of our age
difference.
Poustinka 1913.
"I have not yet seen about the cemetery here but I think I will
arrange to be buried there if it is allowed, or else to find some
piece of land somewhere. I just hope, hope, hope in something beyond
as I never have before. I simply can't stand the injustice of Tibi,
of her death and I can never get reconciled to it for a minute."
And a year later she wrote from Kovno in 1914:
"The approach of this anniversary has been taking me, despite of
myself, over every minute of those dreadful, dreadful days a year
ago. I don't want to speak of it all to you or make you feel any more
than I have already the weight of a grief that will never leave
me--but I do want to tell you that I shall also never forget how good
you were to me and how you helped me through that simply fearful
night. I don't know how anything could be any worse but still if you
had not been there I don't know what I would have done--and I shall
always remember and be glad that Tibi died not far from you."
I think unquestionably the loss of Tibi was the greatest suffering
that Nelka ever experienced in her life, even though the loss of her
mother and of her aunts was a great shock each time and deep grief
which held on for a long time. But there was something about the
death of this little dog which hurt Nelka more than anything else.
While in later years she never hardly spoke about it, I think the
pain always remained.
Nelka was a great believer in 'circumstances' in life. The death of
Tibi was a 'circumstance' which affected Nelka's life and mine as
well. Had Tibi not died as she did then, Nelka would not have
returned that year to Russia. By returning to Russia in 1913 and
then the war breaking out the next year, she was prevented from
returning to America and thus never again saw her Aunt Susie, who
died without her in 1916, while Nelka was at the front. She then
stayed on through the war and then the Revolution, and we were
married in 1918. Had Tibi not died, all the conditions would have
been different and very likely we would not have been married, at
least this is possible. I think both she and I have been believers in
'circumstances.' I know that I am. Circumstances which affect all our
life. Sometimes one small event, something so insignificant that it
is hardly noticed, can bring about a chain of events which entirely
and basically change the whole course of one's life. This is what I
think the death of Tibi did to the lives of both Nelka and me.
When Nelka came back to Russia in 1913 she undertook the
reorganization job offered by Princess Wasilchikoff. Nelka felt it
would help her forget and would act as a relief valve for her
feelings. Princess Wasilchikoff offered Nelka complete freedom and
independence of action and decision in all concerning the sister
community and the hospital. She could act and do as she wished and
desired. So Nelka agreed with the stipulation that she would
undertake this job for one year, and having made her arrangements
left for Kovno. The whole picture of the Kovno enterprise is very
vividly seen from a number of letters written by Nelka during 1914.
Kovno 1913.
"I think life is a great mystery and thus far renounciation seems to
me the only achievement."
Kovno 1914.
"Kovno is a little different from what I expected. It is much more of
a hospital than I thought but it is to be completely made over. It is
now for 50 beds and a separate house for eye illnesses with two wards
in it. There are 40 sisters and 18 servants."
"Two hours after I arrived I attacked their hair (the sisters), and
now it is as flat as paper on the wall. I also berated a doctor
within the first 24 hours for not appearing for his lecture. I
thought I better acquire the habit of discipline at once for the
position is rather appalling and I am trying my best to impose
terror. When I feel the terror getting rooted, I will try for a
little affection and good will."
"I am now racking my brains how to get 180 dresses and aprons made by
Easter and keep within the limit for cost."
"I am preparing different and complete charts for all the wards and a
laboratory is to be opened in a month. The planning is not the most
difficult; it is arranging things within given conditions and in a
certain sense in a margin, and appeasing demands and complaints from
all sides. The new division of the work was very complicated, too. In
one ward, every sister, who was ordered to it either wept, flatly
refused or prepared to lose everything and leave on account of the
nature of the sister at the head of it. Of course I had to insist on
acceptance of the distribution of service, on principle, but I am
glad to have found good reason to get rid of the said sister, in
time. Finally the young sister who has to go there now, and who
reiterated for days that she would rather wash dishes for the rest of
her days than go there, after a frank talk of half an hour, said she
would, and that I wouldn't hear another word from her. I was reduced
to real tears of gratitude and admiration for the effort."
Kovno 1914.
"My head I know is not as strong and clear as it was."
"I have a very nice room which is in the most immaculate order
imaginable--I am never in it. Next to it I have what is called my
'chancellery' which has an immense big writing table, another table,
three chairs, bells and excellent light and telephone. I spend most
of the time in it when I am not going the rounds on a rampage. I
like to know that my food costs only 15 cents a day."
During some time in 1914 I was very ill in Petersburg. My mother was
at the same time in bed with the flu and unable to take care of me,
so in desperation she telegraphed to Nelka in Kovno and Nelka arrived
immediately.
Kovno 1914.
"I spent three days in Petersburg, arriving there finding both Veta
and Max very ill. Max with fever of 104 or more. Max had all kinds of
complications afterwards ending in an abscess in the ear. I looked
after him for three days and nights and then Veta got up."
Kovno 1914.
"Every day I live the more insoluble everything seems and the more
convinced I am of the insolubility of everything. There are lovely
things and tracks in life and humanity, but as a whole the latter is
so loathsome and life so sad and dreadful. I feel a terrible fatigue
of life and it seems to me that all my energy is simply restless,
except the energy to denounce. If I live a hundred years ten times
over I think my feeling of indignation for some things will never
diminish."
Always still feeling the loss of Tibi, Nelka did not seem to be able
to get reconciled. She wrote to her aunt:
Kovno 1914.
"I have just the interest of having begun the thing and wishing to
see it permanently established, as I have started it, but at bottom I
don't care what happens to anything, and I am only thankful I have
had my thoughts arrested momentarily. I had no right to complain of
anything or wish for anything as long as Tibi was alive, and what
torments me most is not my grief but that Tibi should have suffered.
I don't understand anything and I only live in hope and helplessness.
I can bear the grief of Tibi's death but I cannot get reconciled to
the conditions of it."
During that winter my mother moved from the country where we were
living to Petersburg, and Nelka happened to be with us when this took
place and took part in the moving. Here is some of the description of
the event:
Kovno 1914.
"We followed the next day with a dog and a cat. Veta, Max and I with
all the baggage, a parrot 'Tommy' and two small birds in separate
cages. I tried to look out for all three and froze my fingers off
holding one cage and another that I wrapped up in my shawl. And so we
started off in immediate danger of upsetting every minute. A day or
two before the sleigh with Veta and Max and her sister-in-law and the
driver upset completely in a ditch, horse on his back and toes in the
air."
"Max's examinations were to be in two days so of course we tried to
beat him into a cold corner to study in the midst of the confusion."
"Of course I took a sympathetic part in all this and did my share by
scolding Max almost unremittantly from morning till night. He is a
very bright and attractive boy, but easy going."
(Exactly four years later Nelka married the "easy going boy.")
Kovno 1914.
"I would give anything to spend a few hours with you and see how you
are and have a nice talk. You don't know how much I realize what a
rock you are of effective support and comprehension."
(Nelka never again saw her aunt who died in 1916 while Nelka was at
the front.)
Kovno 1914.
"I ought never to move from Cazenovia if I had any character. I shall
have learned a lot of things when I die--and all for what?"
Kovno 1914.
"I suppose I shall die a hopeless procrastinator but if I make small
progress I also have no peace. It torments me dreadfully to have
things undone. I wish I had passed beyond this world, in my soul."
Kovno 1914.
"I realize tremendously how an institution of this kind depends on
the managing head. So much has to be looked after and such constant
questions come up that no system or plan suffices by itself. It is
very hard to get things done quickly without being somewhat impetuous
and one cannot preserve control over everything without a great
deal of calm. I think more than ever that institutional life is
perfectly anti-human. It cannot be run without a certain amount of
injustice--that is the innocent suffering for the guilty, that is
if one attempts to have rules. It would be far more just to have
no rules and exact of each one according to my own judgment.
I think that regulations are only made in support of idiotic
administrations."
Kovno 1914.
"Max wrote me such a nice, vivid letter."
"Politics are certainly very interesting now. I feel dreadfully sorry
for Servia and I hope if there is war with Austria that the last
Servian will die on the battlefield."
In May, June and early July of 1914, Nelka was writing to her Aunt
Susie about her plans of returning to America. Finally she had made
arrangements to sail the first week of August. But then the war broke
out and she never got off.
Kovno 1914.
"I have written to the Russian Line and got special permission to
sail from Copenhagen. If nothing unforeseen happens, I will leave
here on the 4th of August for Stockholm. I had hardly finished this
when the town was put under martial law. Everything is upside down.
The inhabitants are all ordered to leave. The bank is packing up,
people streaming all day there. Everyone ordered off the streets at
night. The streets are occupied with soldiers and cannons moving to
the front, and the aspect seems serious. No one can tell anything. I
have already signed a paper not to leave without the permission of
the fort. If we have war I am ready to stay to the end. I have the
greatest sympathy for Servia and would like to work in the Red Cross
there if not here. I shall try to write you again before being shut
up for good, if the town is besieged. We are only a few hours from
the frontier."
Kovno 1914.
"Since last night the town is under martial law. Everything is upside
down. Cannons hustling to the front. Cavalry going off. All the
inhabitants are ordered to leave. We are in the very seat of war. If
we have war I am ready to stay to the end if need be. I only hope you
won't feel too terribly uneasy. The lack of communications will be
the worst. I feel great sympathy for Servia and hope this war will
help them. All the big buildings are to be turned into hospitals. The
new bank will be splendid--tile floors and water. It can hold at
least a thousand, I think. All kinds of specimens are turning up to
be enrolled as sisters, but I am relentless and shall take no
adventuresses if I can help it."
Kovno 1914.
"I am glad it is for Servia, but O what a horror. I had none of this
impression at Adrianople--the panic of a whole town before the war.
Mobilization was begun last night, but the inhabitants were ordered
to leave six days ago. I cannot describe it. It is just everything
that one has ever read about war and a great deal besides. I am glad
I have a good lot of sisters. I hope they will all do their duty.
Communication will be cut off any minute. I shall be so anxious about
my family if we are shut up for long. Well, goodbye. I pray for the
best. One must be ready for anything."
Kovno 1914.
"Everything is cut off from Europe and I am dreadfully worried and
unhappy to have no news from you and all the family. The whole
fortress was put in a state of defense in no time, and the whole town
has been ordered out from one station. You can't imagine the scenes.
Prince Wasilchikoff has helped me very much in the place of his wife
who had to go to Petersburg, and now he is going to join his
regiment. I hope he can take this letter to send through Sweden. My
consolation is that the war was started in behalf of Servia--it
alleviates the horror of all that is going on. Prince Wasilchikoff
came in for a moment and said that the political situation was very
good and that England has declared war. Everyone is going to the war
with enthusiasm. Don't worry too much. This section of the Army will
not give in till the last. The Commander Grigorieff is splendid and
General Rennenkamph is a real fighting man. I have 56 sisters ready
in Kovno. My heart and head are full of anxiety and love for you, for
you all. I may be able to get letters to you still, but if not, look
out for Tibi's little grave whatever happens."
The absorbing work in Kovno, the excitement and the patriotic fervor
were all beneficial to Nelka's state of mind in that it took it off
her constant thinking about the death of her little dog.
While Nelka had her own sisters and hospital, the Army decided to
consolidate the services under their jurisdiction and turned their
own Army sisters over to Nelka and she found herself at the head of
some 300 sisters. This was a large complicated administrative job but
she handled it with great efficiency. Most of the time the fortress
was under fire and it soon became obvious that it would not hold out.
The commanding general did not prove to be as good and efficient as
Nelka supposed and he also lost his nerve. Under the increasing
pressure of the Germans, he ordered the complete evacuation of the
fortress, of the troops and material, while this was still possible.
However, this was accomplished in a very poor manner and the
commander himself left the fortress 17 hours before Nelka did. He
also lost a great deal of his equipment.
Nelka in turn completed a full evacuation of her whole hospital and
saved all of her material. Everything in the hospital building which
could not be moved was destroyed and she went even that far to have
all brass knobs removed from the doors and thrown into the river so
that the Germans would not get the metal.
So Kovno fell, but the war went on and Nelka's hospital was
reestablished some 40 or 50 miles to the rear as a rear unit taking
care of the evacuated wounded. They were settled in a large
agricultural school building in very fine surroundings. I managed to
visit Nelka at that hospital for a few days.
Soon, however, the fighting resumed and the Germans resumed their
advance. The hospital once again had to be moved. At that moment
Nelka came down with a very severe case of scarlet fever. The doctor
said that she could not be moved, just as the hospital was getting
under way. The head doctor had her arranged in bed in a tent, leaving
her one nurse. At the last moment when leaving, he slipped a revolver
under her pillow! But Nelka recovered. The Germans did not reach
that point and ultimately she was able to rejoin her unit.
Soon after that she was sent to the rear to a town called Novgorod,
to organize a new unit. There she spent most of the winter and once
again I managed to visit her there, as it was not very far from
Petersburg.
All during the war, at different intervals, Nelka came back to
Petersburg, mostly for just a few days and because of some business
for her hospital or unit. Each time when she came to Petersburg she
stayed at my mother's and thus I was able to see her occasionally.