SAN FRANCISCO
We were surrounded at the railway station by a crowd of Negroes, Japs
and Chinamen. We drove to the Lyndhurst, a small hotel in Geary Street,
where Mr. Shaniavski had secured apartments for us. Nothing was said to
the hotel management concerning us, beyond the fact that we were foreign
tourists who did not care to go to a large hotel. Our rooms were engaged
for a week and paid for in advance.
San Francisco, the Queen of the Pacific, and the glory of the Eastern
coast, is a rich and populous city about one hundred years old. After
lunch we went out to explore the place. There are but few cabs in the
streets, everyone takes the tram or the cable road; the way in which
it climbs the steepest hills is wonderful. We took the cable road to
Golden Gate Park, which is very beautiful indeed. Buffaloes graze on the
green lawns and strange birds flash among the boughs. I thought that a
beetle had settled upon my hat and when I blew it off, it appeared to
be a butterfly of fantastical appearance, the size of a bird. In the
part of the park called the Children’s Garden, all kinds of games and
amusements are organised. We saw saddle-horses not bigger than foundland
dogs, and baby-coaches drawn by white sheep. We had tea in the Children’s
Restaurant, where gentlemen are admitted only when accompanied by their
families.
On leaving the park we rode out to the Presidio, a military ground with
big cannon pointing menacingly on to the Pacific Ocean. We stood with the
rest of the crowd to see the President of the United States, who had come
down from San Raphaelo, a fashionable sea-bathing place, to review four
batteries of artillery, two light-batteries of field pieces and a troop
of cavalry. After which the gentlemen of our party went for a stroll
through the Chinese part of the town to Cliff House where seals are
reared; these animals come in hundreds to bask in the sun at a few steps
only from the cliffs. We ladies preferred to go out shopping. We lingered
before the windows of entrancing shops, and listened to an orchestra
playing in a music-shop to attract purchasers.
The climate here is perfect, one doesn’t suffer at all from the heat, in
summer and winter the temperature is nearly always the same. I was very
much astonished, however, to see ladies enveloped in furs in July.
We managed to keep up our incognito at the Lyndhurst, and attracted no
special attention until after the publication in the _Examiner_ of a
statement, that “General Doukhovskoy was supposed to have reached San
Francisco travelling incognito.” After that it was noticed that “The
middle-aged gentleman who appeared to be the leader of the party, but
whose name was registered in the books of the hotel as ‘Mr. Sergius,’
didn’t go out as frequently as at first.” Another San Francisco paper
reproduced our portraits, after which Sergy told me to wear my hat when
I went down to the dining-room, in order not to be easily recognised by
my portrait, copied in different newspapers in which I was reproduced
without my hat.
Our first care in the morning was to peruse the earliest editions of
the papers to see if we were found out. The reporters were on our track
again. A journalist who had been tracking down Mr. Shaniavski all along,
step by step, discovered him out at the Lyndhurst, and wanted to have all
sorts of information about General Doukhovskoy, and again Mr. Shaniavski
told him that he knew nothing about the General.
Sarah, the chambermaid, tried to penetrate our incognito and to learn who
and what I was. More than once, while doing up my room, she expressed the
desire to see a real Russian General. Looking at my hands she said: “I
daresay you have never known what work means, look at your hands, they
are much too white!”
It was Mme. Beurgier who had lifted up the veil of our incognito by
buying a sewing-machine for me. She had ordered it to be sent to
Vladivostock, and the order for the machine gave the information about
our party. Happily we were leaving San Francisco on the following day.
I was greatly amused by the idea that it was a sewing-machine that had
revealed our secret.