The Russian frontier--Frontier police--Disappointment at aspect of
Petrograd--Lord and Lady Dufferin--The British Embassy--St. Isaac's
Cathedral--Beauty of Russian Church-music--The Russian language--The
delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd--Princess Chateau--Pleasant
Russian Society--The Secret Police--The Countess's hurried
journey--The Yacht Club--Russians really Orientals--Their
limitations--The "Intelligenzia"--My Nihilist friends--Their lack of
constructive power--Easter Mass at St. Isaac's--Two comical
incidents--The Easter supper--The red-bearded young priest--An Empire
built on shifting sand.
Petrograd is 1,050 miles from Berlin, and forty years ago the fastest
trains took forty-five hours to cover the distance between the two
capitals. In later years the "Nord-Express" accomplishing the
journey in twenty-nine hours.
Rolling through the flat fertile plains of East Prussia, with their
neat, prosperous villages and picturesque black-and-white farms, the
surroundings had such a commonplace air that it was difficult to
realise that one was approaching the very threshold of the great,
mysterious Northern Empire.
Eydkuhnen, the last Prussian station, was as other Prussian stations,
built of trim red brick, neat, practical, and very ugly; with crowds
of red-faced, amply-paunched officials, buttoned into the tightest of
uniforms, perpetually saluting each other.
{82}
Wierjbolovo, or Wirballen Station as the Germans call it, a huge
white building, was plainly visible only a third of a mile away. At
Wirballen the German train would stop, for whereas the German
railways are built to the standard European gauge of 4 feet 8½
inches, the Russian lines were laid to a gauge of 5 feet 1 inch.
This gauge had been deliberately chosen to prevent the invasion of
Russia by her Western neighbour. This was to prove an absolutely
illusory safeguard, for, as events have shown, nothing is easier than
to _narrow_ a railway track. To broaden it is often quite
impossible. The cunning little Japs found this out during the
Russo-Japanese War. They narrowed the broad Russian lines to their
own gauge of 3 feet 6 inches, _and then sawed off the ends of the
sleepers_ with portable circular saws, thus making it impossible for
the Russians to relay the rails on the broad gauge. I believe that
the Germans adopted the same device more recently.
I think at only one other spot in the world does a short quarter of a
mile result in such amazing differences in externals as does that
little piece of line between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen; and that is at
Linea, the first Spanish village out of Gibraltar.
Leaving the prim and starched orderliness of Gibraltar, with its
thick coating of British veneer, its tidy streets and buildings
enlivened with the scarlet tunics of Mr. Thomas Atkins and his
brethren, {83} you traverse the "Neutral Ground" to an iron railing,
and literally pass into Spain through an iron gate. The contrast is
extraordinary. It would be unfair to select Linea as a typical
Spanish village; it is ugly, and lacks the picturesque features of
the ordinary Andalusian village; it is also unquestionably very
dirty, and very tumble-down. Between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen the
contrast is just as marked. As the German train stopped, hosts of
bearded, shaggy-headed individuals in high boots and long white
aprons (surely a curious article of equipment for a railway porter)
swooped down upon the hand-baggage; I handed my passport to a
gendarme (a term confined in Russia to frontier and railway police)
and passed through an iron gate into Russia.
Russia in this case was represented by a gigantic whitewashed hall,
ambitious originally in design and decoration, but, like most things
in Russia, showing traces of neglect and lack of cleanliness. The
first exotic note was struck by a full-length, life-size ikon of the
Saviour, in a solid silver frame, at the end of the hall. All my
Russian fellow-travellers devoutly crossed themselves before this
ikon, purchased candles at an adjoining stall, and fixed them in the
silver holders before the ikon.
Behind the line of tables serving for the Customs examinations was a
railed-off space, containing many desks under green-shaded lamps.
Here some fifteen green-coated men whispered mysteriously to each
other, referring continually to huge registers. {84} I felt a thrill
creep down my back; here I found myself at last face to face with the
omnipotent Russian police. The bespectacled green-coated men
scrutinised passports intently, conferred amongst themselves in
whispers under the green-shaded lamps, and hunted ominously through
the big registers. For the first time I became unpleasantly
conscious of the existence of such places as the Fortress of St.
Peter and St. Paul, and of a country called Siberia. I speculated as
to whether the drawbacks of the Siberian climate had not been
exaggerated, should one be compelled to make a possibly prolonged
sojourn in that genial land. Above all, I was immensely impressed
with the lynx-eyed vigilance and feverish activity of these
green-coated guardians of the Russian frontier. From my subsequent
knowledge of the ways of Russian officials, I should gather that all
this feverish activity began one minute after the whistle announced
the approach of the Berlin train, and ceased precisely one minute
after the Petrograd train had pulled out, and that never, by any
chance, did the frontier police succeed in stopping the entry of any
really dangerous conspirator.
Diplomats with official passports are exempt from Customs
formalities, so I passed on to the platform, thick with pungent
wood-smoke, where the huge blue-painted Russian carriages smoked like
volcanoes from their heating apparatus, and the gigantic wood-burning
engine (built in Germany) vomited dense clouds from its funnel,
crowned with {85} a spark-arrester shaped like a mammoth tea urn, or
a giant's soup tureen. Everything in this country seemed on a large
scale.
In the gaunt, bare, whitewashed restaurant (these three epithets are
applicable to almost every public room in Russia) with its great
porcelain stove, and red lamps burning before gilded ikons, I first
made the acquaintance of fresh caviar and raw herrings, of the
national cabbage soup, or "shtchee," of roast ryabehiks and salted
cucumbers, all destined to become very familiar. Railway restaurants
in Russia are almost invariably quite excellent.
And so the train clanked out through the night, into the depths of
this mysterious glamour-land.
The railway from the frontier to Petrograd runs for 550 miles through
an unbroken stretch of interminable dreary swamp and forest, such as
would in Canada be termed "muskag," with here and there a poor
attempt at cultivation in some clearing, set about with wretched
little wooden huts. After a twenty-four hours' run, without any
preliminary warning whatever in the shape of suburbs, the train
emerges from the forest into a huge city, with tramcars rolling in
all directions, and the great golden dome of St. Isaac's blazing like
a sun against the murky sky.
I had pictured Petrograd to myself as a second Paris; a city
glittering with light and colour, but conceived on an infinitely more
grandiose scale than the French capital.
We emerged from the station into an immensely {86} broad street
bordered by shabbily-pretentious buildings all showing signs of
neglect. The atrociously uneven pavements, the general untidiness,
the broad thoroughfare empty except for a lumbering cart or two, the
absence of foot-passengers, and the low cotton-wool sky, all gave an
effect of unutterable dreariness. And this was the golden city of my
dreams! this place of leprous-fronted houses, of vast open spaces
full of drifting snowflakes, and of an immense emptiness. I never
was so disappointed in my life. The gilt and coloured domes of the
Orthodox churches, the sheepskin-clad, red-shirted moujiks, the
occasional swift-trotting Russian carriages, with their bearded and
padded coachmen, were the only local touches that redeemed the
streets from the absolute commonplace. The Russian lettering over
the shops, which then conveyed nothing whatever to me, suggested that
the alphabet, having followed the national custom and got drunk, had
hastily re-affixed itself to the houses upside down. Although as the
years went on I grew quite attached to Petrograd, I could never rid
myself of this impression of its immense dreariness. This was due to
several causes. There are hardly any stone buildings in the city,
everything is of brick plastered over. Owing to climatic reasons the
houses are not painted, but are daubed with colour-wash. The
successive coats of colour-wash clog all the architectural features,
and give the buildings a shabby look, added to which the wash flakes
off under the winter snows. There is a natural craving {87} in human
nature for colour, and in a country wrapped in snow for at least four
months in the year this craving finds expression in painting the
roofs red, and in besmearing the houses with crude shades of red,
blue, green, and yellow. The result is not a happy one. Again,
owing to the intense cold, the shop-windows are all very small, and
there is but little display in them. Streets and shops were alike
very dimly lighted in my day, and as there is an entire absence of
cafés in Petrograd, there is none of the usual glitter and glare of
these places to brighten up the streets. The theatres make no
display of lights, so it is not surprising that the general effect of
the city is one of intense gloom. The very low, murky winter sky
added to this effect of depression. Peter the Great had planned his
new capital on such a gigantic scale that there were not enough
inhabitants to fill its vast spaces. The conceptions were
magnificent; the results disappointing. Nothing grander could be
imagined than the design of the immense _place_ opposite the Winter
Palace, with Alexander I's great granite monolith towering in the
midst of it, and the imposing semicircular sweep of Government
Offices of uniform design enclosing it, pierced in the centre by a
monumental triumphal arch crowned with a bronze quadriga. The whole
effect of this was spoilt by the hideous crude shade of red with
which the buildings were daubed, by the general untidiness, and by
the broken, uneven pavement; added to which this huge area was
usually untenanted, except by a {88} lumbering cart or two, by a
solitary stray "istvoschik," and an occasional muffled-up pedestrian.
The Petrograd of reality was indeed very different from the sumptuous
city of my dreams.
For the second time I was extraordinarily lucky in my Chief. Our
relations with Russia had, during the "'seventies," been strained
almost to the breaking point. War had on several occasions seemed
almost inevitable between the two countries.
Russians, naturally enough, had shown their feelings of hostility to
their potential enemies by practically boycotting the entire British
Embassy. The English Government had then made a very wise choice,
and had appointed to the Petrograd Embassy the one man capable of
smoothing these troubled relations. The late Lord Dufferin was not
then a diplomat by profession. He had just completed his term of
office as Governor-General of Canada, where, as in every position he
had previously occupied, he had been extraordinarily successful.
Lord Dufferin had an inexhaustible fund of patience, blended with the
most perfect tact; he had a charm of manner no human being could
resist; but under it all lay an inflexible will. No man ever
understood better the use of the iron hand under the velvet glove,
and in a twelvemonth from the date of his arrival in Petrograd he had
succeeded not only in gaining the confidence of official Russia, but
also in re-establishing the most cordial relations with Russian
society. In this he was very ably seconded by Lady Dufferin, who
combined a perfectly natural manner with {89} quiet dignity and a
curious individual charm. Both Lord and Lady Dufferin enjoyed
dancing, skating, and tobagganing as wholeheartedly as though they
were children.
Our Petrograd Embassy was a fine old house, with a pleasant intimate
character about it lacking in the more ornate building at Berlin. It
contained a really beautiful snow-white ball-room, and all the
windows fronted the broad, swift-flowing Neva, with the exquisitely
graceful slender gilded spire of the Fortress Church, towering three
hundred feet aloft, opposite them. We had a very fine collection of
silver plate at the Embassy. This plate, valued at £30,000, was the
property of our Government, and had been sent out sixty years
previously by George IV, who understood the importance attached by
Russians to externals. We had also a small set, just sufficient for
two persons, of real gold plates. These solid gold plates were only
used by the Emperor and Empress on the very rare occasions when they
honoured the Embassy with their presence. I wonder what has happened
to that gold service now!
Owing to the constant tension of the relations between Great Britain
and Russia, our work at the Petrograd Embassy was very heavy indeed
at that time. We were frequently kept up till 2 a.m. in the
Chancery, cyphering telegrams. All important written despatches
between London and Petrograd either way were sent by Queen's
Messenger open to Berlin, "under Flying Seal," as it is termed. The
Berlin Embassy was thus kept constantly posted as {90} to Russian
affairs. After reading our open despatches, both to and from London,
the Berlin Embassy would seal them up in a special way. We also got
duplicates, in cypher, of all telegrams received in London the
previous day from the Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Constantinople
Embassies which bore in any way on Russia or the Eastern Question.
This gave us two or three hours' work decyphering every day. Both
cyphering and decyphering require the closest concentration, as one
single mistake may make nonsense of the whole thing; it is
consequently exhausting work. We were perfectly well aware that the
Russian Government had somehow obtained possession of one of our
codes. This particular "compromised code" was only used by us for
transmitting intelligence which the Russians were intended to know.
They could hardly blame us should they derive false impressions from
a telegram of ours which they had decyphered with a stolen code, nor
could they well admit that they had done this.
As winter came on, I understood why Russians are so fond of gilding
the domes and spires of their churches. It must be remembered that
Petrograd lies on parallel 60° N. In December it only gets four
hours of very uncertain daylight, and the sun is so low on the
horizon that its rays do not reach the streets of the city. It is
then that the gilded domes flash and glitter, as they catch the beams
of the unseen sun. When the long golden needle of the Fortress
Church blazed like a flaming torch {91} or a gleaming spear of fire
against the murky sky, I thought it a splendid sight, as was the
great golden dome of St. Isaac's scintillating like a second sun over
the snow-clad roofs of the houses.
Soon after my arrival I went to the vast church under the gilded dome
to hear the singing of the far-famed choir of St. Isaac's.
Here were none of the accessories to which I had been accustomed; no
seats; no organ; no pulpit; no side-chapels. A blue haze of incense
drifted through the twilight of the vague spaces of the great
building; a haze glowing rosily where the red lamps burning before
the jewelled ikons gave a faint-dawnlike effect in the semi-darkness.
Before me the great screen of the "ikonostas" towered to the roof,
with its eight malachite columns forty feet high, and its two smaller
columns of precious lapis lazuli flanking the "Royal doors" into the
sanctuary. Surely Montferrand, the Frenchman, had designedly steeped
the cathedral he had built in perpetual twilight. In broad daylight
the juxtaposition of these costly materials, with their discordant
colours, would have been garish, even vulgar. Now, barely visible in
the shadows, they, the rich mosaics, the masses of heavily-gilt
bronze work in the ikonostas, gave an impression of barbaric
magnificence and immense splendour. The jasper and polychrome
Siberian marbles with which the cathedral was lined, the gold and
silver of the jewelled ikons, gleaming faintly in the candle-light,
strengthened this impression of sumptuous opulence. Then the choir,
standing {92} before the ikonostas, burst into song. The exquisitely
beautiful singing of the Russian Church was a perfect revelation to
me. I would not have believed it possible that unaccompanied human
voices could have produced so entrancing an effect. As the "Cherubic
Hymn" died away in softest _pianissimo_, its echoes floating into the
misty vastness of the dome, a deacon thundered out prayers in a
ringing bass, four tones deeper than those a Western European could
compass. The higher clergy, with their long flowing white beards,
jewelled crowns, and stiffly-archaic vestments of cloth of gold and
silver, seemed to have stepped bodily out of the frame of an ikon;
and the stately ritual of the Eastern Church gave me an impression as
of something of immemorial age, something separated by the gap of
countless centuries from our own prosaic epoch; and through it all
rose again and again the plaintive response of the choir, "Gospodi
pomiloi," "Lord have mercy," exquisitely sung with all the tenderness
and pathos of muted strings.
This was at last the real Russia of my dreams. It was all as I had
vaguely pictured it to myself; the densely-packed congregation, with
sheepskin-clad peasant and sable-coated noble standing side by side,
all alike joining in the prescribed genuflections and prostrations of
the ritual; the singing-boys, with their close-cropped heads and
curious long blue dressing-gowns; the rolling consonants of the Old
Slavonic chanted by the priests; all this was really Russia, and not
a bastard imitation of an exotic {93} Western civilisation like the
pseudo-classic city outside.
Two years later, Arthur Sullivan, the composer, happened to be in
Petrograd, and I took him to the practice of the Emperor's private
church choir. Sullivan was passionately devoted to unaccompanied
part-singing, and those familiar with his delightful light operas
will remember how he introduced into almost every one of them an
unaccompanied madrigal, or a sextet. Sullivan told me that he would
not have believed it possible for human voices to obtain the
string-like effect of these Russian choirs. He added that although
six English singing-boys would probably evolve a greater body of
sound than twelve Russian boys, no English choir-boy could achieve
the silvery tone these musical little Muscovites produced.
People ignorant of the country have a foolish idea that all Russians
can speak French. That may be true of one person in two thousand of
the whole population. The remainder only speak their native Russ.
Not one cabman in Petrograd could understand a syllable of any
foreign language, and though in shops, very occasionally, someone
with a slight knowledge of German might be found, it was rare. All
the waiters in Petrograd restaurants were yellow-faced little
Mohammedan Tartars, speaking only Russian and their own language. I
determined therefore to learn Russian at once, and was fortunate in
finding a very clever teacher. All men should learn a foreign
language from a lady, {94} for natural courtesy makes one listen to
what she is saying; whereas with a male teacher one's attention is
apt to wander. The patient elderly lady who taught me knew neither
English nor French, so we used German as a means of communication.
Thanks to Madame Kumin's intelligence, and a considerable amount of
hard work on my own part, I was able to pass an examination in
Russian in eleven months, and to qualify as Interpreter to the
Embassy. The difficulties of the Russian language are enormously
exaggerated. The pronunciation is hard, as are the terminations; and
the appalling length of Russian words is disconcerting. In Russian,
great emphasis is laid on one syllable of a word, and the rest is
slurred over. It is therefore vitally important (should you wish to
be understood) to get the emphasis on the right syllable, and for
some mysterious reason no foreigner, even by accident, _ever succeeds
in pronouncing a Russian name right_. It is Schouvaloff, not
Schòuvaloff; Brusìl-off, not Brùsiloff; Demìd-off, not Dèmidoff. The
charming dancer's name is Pàv-Lova, not Pavlòva; her equally
fascinating rival is Karsàv-ina, not Karsavìna. I could continue the
list indefinitely. Be sure of one thing; however the name is
pronounced by a foreigner, it is absolutely certain to be wrong.
What a wise man he was who first said that for every fresh language
you learn you acquire a new pair of eyes and a new pair of ears; I
felt immensely elated when I found that I could read the cabalistic
signs over the shops as easily as English lettering.
{95}
A relation of mine had given me a letter of introduction to Princess
B----. Now this old lady, though she but seldom left her own house,
was a very great power indeed in Petrograd, and was universally known
as the "Princesse Château." For some reason or another, I was lucky
enough to find favour in this dignified old lady's eyes. She asked
me to call on her again, and at our second meeting invited me to her
Sunday evenings. The Princesse Château's Sunday evenings were a
thing quite apart. They were a survival in Petrograd of the French
eighteenth century literary "salons," but devoid of the faintest
flavour of pedantry or priggism. Never in my life, before or since,
have I heard such wonderfully brilliant conversation, for, with the
one exception of myself, the Princesse Château tolerated no dull
people at her Sundays. She belonged to a generation that always
spoke French amongst themselves, and imported their entire culture
from France. Peter the Great had designed St. Petersburg as a window
through which to look on Europe, and the tradition of this amongst
the educated classes was long in dying out. The Princess assembled
some thirty people every Sunday, all Russians, with the exception of
myself. These people discussed any and every subject--literature,
art, music, and philosophy--with sparkling wit, keen critical
instinct, and extraordinary felicity of phrase, usually in French,
sometimes in English, and occasionally in Russian. Their knowledge
seemed encyclopædic, and they appeared equally at home in any of the
three {96} languages. They greatly appreciated a neatly-turned
epigram, or a novel, crisply-coined definition. Any topic, however,
touching directly or indirectly on the external or internal policy of
Russia was always tacitly avoided. My _rôle_ was perforce reduced to
that of a listener, but it was a perfectly delightful society.
Princesse Château had a very fine suite of rooms on the first floor
of her house, decorated "at the period" in Louis XVI style by
imported French artists; these rooms still retained their original
furniture and fittings, and were a museum of works of art; but her
Sunday evenings were always held in the charming but
plainly-furnished rooms which she herself inhabited on the ground
floor. We had one distinct advantage over the old French _salons_,
for Princesse Château entertained her guests every Sunday to suppers
which were justly celebrated in the gastronomic world of Petrograd.
During supper the conversation proceeded just as brilliantly as
before. There were always two or three Grand Duchesses present, for
to attend Princesse Château's Sundays was a sort of certificate of
culture. The Grand Duchesses were treated quite unceremoniously,
beyond receiving a perfunctory "Madame" in each sentence addressed to
them. How curious that, both in English and French, the highest
title of respect should be plain "Madame"! As the Russian equivalent
is "Vashoe Imperatorskoe Vuisochestvo," a considerable expenditure of
time and breath was saved by using the terser French term. And
through it all moved the mistress of the house, the stately {97}
little smiling old lady, in her plain black woollen dress and lace
cap, dropping here a quaint criticism, there an apt _bon-mot_.
Perfectly charming people!
The relatives and friends of Princesse Château whom I met at her
house, when they discovered that I had a genuine liking for their
country, and that I did not criticise details of Russian
administration, were good enough to open their houses to me in their
turn. Though most of these people owned large and very fine houses,
they opened them but rarely to foreigners. They gave, very
occasionally, large entertainments to which they invited half
Petrograd, including the Diplomatic Body, but there they stopped.
They did not care, as a rule, to invite foreigners to share the
intimacy of their family life. I was very fortunate therefore in
having an opportunity of seeing a phase of Russian life which few
foreigners have enjoyed. Russians seldom do things by halves. I do
not believe that in any other country in the world could a stranger
have been made to feel himself so thoroughly at home amongst people
of a different nationality, and with such totally different racial
ideals; or have been treated with such constant and uniform kindness.
There was no ceremony whatever on either side, and on the Russian
side, at times, an outspokenness approaching bluntness. As I got to
know these cultivated, delightful people well, I grew very fond of
them. They formed a clique, possibly a narrow clique, amongst
themselves, and had that complete disregard for outside criticism
which is often found associated with {98} persons of established
position. They met almost nightly at each others' houses, and I
could not but regret that such beautiful and vast houses should be
seen by so few people. One house, in particular, contained a
staircase an exact replica of a Grecian temple in white statuary
Carrara marble, a thing of exquisite beauty. In their perpetual sets
of intellectual lawn tennis, if I may coin the term, the superiority
of the feminine over the male intellects was very marked. This is, I
believe, a characteristic of all Slavonic countries, and I recalled
Bismarck's dictum that the Slav peoples were essentially feminine,
and I wondered whether there could be any connection between the two
points. Living so much with Russians, it was impossible not to fall
into the Russian custom of addressing them by their Christian names
and patronymics; such as "Maria Vladimirovna" (Mary daughter of
Vladimir) or "Olga Andreèvna" (Olga daughter of Andrew) or "Pavel
Alexandrovitch" (Paul son of Alexander). I myself became Feòdor
Yàkovlevitch, (Frederic son of James, those being the nearest Russian
equivalents). On arriving at a house, the proper form of inquiry to
the hall porter was, "Ask Mary daughter of Vladimir if she will
receive Frederic son of James." In due time the answer came, "Mary
daughter of Vladimir begs Frederic son of James to go upstairs." My
own servants always addressed me punctiliously as Feòdor
Yàkovlevitch. On giving them an order they would answer in Moscovite
fashion, "I hear you, Frederic son of James," {99} the equivalent to
our prosaic, "Very good, sir." Amongst my new friends, as at the
Princesse Château's, no allusions whatever, direct or indirect, were
made to internal conditions in Russia. Apart from the fact that one
of these new friends was himself Minister of the Interior at the
time, it would not have been safe. In those days the Secret Police,
or "Third Section," as they were called, were very active, and their
ramifications extended everywhere. One night at a supper party a
certain Countess B---- criticised in very open and most unflattering
terms a lady to whom the Emperor Alexander II was known to be
devotedly attached. Next morning at 8 a.m. the Countess was awakened
by her terrified maid, who told her that the "Third Section" were
there and demanded instant admittance. Two men came into the
Countess's bedroom and informed her that their orders were that she
was to take the 12.30 train to Europe that morning. They would
remain with her till then, and would accompany her to the frontier.
As she would not be allowed to return to Russia for twelve months,
they begged her to order her maid to pack what was necessary; and no
one knew better than Countess B---- how useless any attempted
resistance would be.
This episode made a great stir at the time. As the words complained
of had been uttered about 3 a.m., the police action had been
remarkably prompt. The informant must have driven straight from the
supper party to the "Third Section," and {100} everyone in Petrograd
had a very distinct idea who the informant was. Is it necessary to
add that she was a lady?
Some of my new friends volunteered to propose and second me for the
Imperial Yacht Club. This was not the club that the diplomats
usually joined; it was a purely Russian club, and, in spite of its
name, had no connection with yachting. It had also the reputation of
being extremely exclusive, but thanks to my Russian sponsors, I got
duly elected to it. This was, I am sure, the most delightful club in
Europe. It was limited to 150 members of whom only two, besides
myself, were foreigners, and the most perfect _camaraderie_ existed
between the members. The atmosphere of the place was excessively
friendly and intimate, and the building looked more like a private
house than a club, as deceased members had bequeathed to it pictures,
a fine collection of old engravings, some splendid old Beauvais
tapestry, and a great deal of Oriental porcelain. Above all, we
commanded the services of the great Armand, prince of French chefs.
Associating so much with Russians, it was possible to see things from
their points of view. They all had an unshakable belief in the
absolute invincibility of Russia, and in her complete
invulnerability, for it must not be forgotten that in 1880 Russia had
never yet been defeated in any campaign, except partially in the
Crimean War of 1854-50. My friends did not hide their convictions
that it was Russia's manifest destiny to absorb in {101} time the
whole of the Asiatic Continent, including India, China, and Turkey.
There were grounds for this article of faith, for in 1880 Russia's
bloodless absorption of vast territories in Central Asia had been
astounding. It was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905
that the friable clay feet of the Northern Colossus were revealed to
the outside world, though those with a fairly intimate knowledge of
the country quite realised how insecure were the foundations on which
the stupendous structure of modern Russia had been erected.
I am deeply thankful that the great majority of my old friends had
passed away in the ordinary course of nature before the Great
Catastrophe overwhelmed the mighty Empire in which they took such
deep pride; and that they were spared the sight and knowledge of the
awful orgy of blood, murder, and spoliation which followed the ruin
of the land they loved so well. Were they not now at rest, it would
be difficult for me to write of those old days.
To grasp the Russian mentality, it must be remembered that they are
essentially Orientals. Russia is not the most Eastern outpost of
Western civilisation; it is the most Western outpost of the East.
Russians have all the qualities of the Oriental, his fatalism, his
inertness, and, I fear, his innate pecuniary corruption. Their
fatalism makes them accept their destiny blindly. What has been
ordained from the beginning of things is useless to fight against; it
must be accepted. The same {102} inertness characterises every
Eastern nation, and the habit of "baksheesh" is ingrained in the
Oriental blood. If the truth were known, we should probably find
that the real reason why Cain killed Abel was that the latter had
refused him a commission on some transaction or other. The fatalism
and lack of initiative are not the only Oriental traits in the
Russian character. In a hundred little ways they show their origin:
in their love of uncut jewels; in their lack of sense of time (the
Russian for "at once" is "si chas," which means "this hour"; an
instructive commentary); in the reluctance South Russians show in
introducing strangers to the ladies of their household, the Oriental
peeps out everywhere. Peter the Great could order his Boyards to
abandon their fur-trimmed velvet robes, to shave off their beards,
powder their heads, and array themselves in the satins and brocades
of Versailles. He could not alter the men and women inside the
French imported finery. He could abandon his old capital, matchless,
many-pinnacled Moscow, vibrant with every instinct of Russian
nationality; he could create a new pseudo-Western, sham-classical
city in the frozen marshes of the Neva; but even the Autocrat could
not change the souls of his people. Easterns they were, Easterns
they remained, and that is the secret of Russia, they are not
Europeans. Peter himself was so fully aware of the racial
limitations of his countrymen that he imported numbers of foreigners
to run the country; Germans as Civil and Military administrators;
{103} Dutchmen as builders and town-planners; and Englishmen to
foster its budding commerce. To the latter he granted special
privileges, and even in my time there was a very large English
commercial community in Petrograd; a few of them descendants of Peter
the Great's pioneers; the majority of them with hereditary business
connections with Russia. Their special privileges had gradually been
withdrawn, but the official name of the English Church in Petrograd
was still "British Factory in St. Petersburg," surely a curious title
for a place of worship. The various German-Russian families from the
Baltic Provinces, the Adlerbergs, the Benckendorffs, and the
Stackelbergs, had served Russia well. Under their strong guidance
she became a mighty Power, but when under Alexander III the reins of
government were confided to purely Russian hands, rapid deterioration
set in. This dreamy nation lacks driving power. In my time, the
very able Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. de Giers, was of German
origin, and his real name was Hirsch. His extremely wily and astute
second in command, Baron Jomini, was a Swiss. Modern Russia was
largely the creation of the foreigner.
I saw a great deal, too, of a totally different stratum of Russian
society. Mr. X., the head of a large exporting house, was of British
origin, the descendant of one of Peter's commercial pioneers. He
himself, like his father and grandfather, had been born in Russia,
and though he retained his English speech, he had adopted all the
points of {104} view of the country of his birth. Madame X. came of
a family of the so-called "Intelligenzia." Most of her relatives
seemed to have undertaken compulsory journeys to Siberia, not as
prisoners, but for a given term of exile. Madame X.'s brother-in-law
owned and edited a paper of advanced views, which was being
continually suppressed, and had been the cause of two long trips
eastward for its editor and proprietor. Neither Mr. nor Madame X.
shared their relatives' extreme views. What struck me was that
behind the floods of vehement invective of Madame O---- (the editor's
wife) there was never the smallest practical suggestion. "You say,
Madame O----," I would hazard, "that the existing state of things is
intolerable. What remedy do you suggest?" "I am not the
Government," would retort Madame O---- with great heat. "It is for
the Government to make suggestions. I only denounce an abominable
injustice." "Quite so, Madame O----, but how can these conditions be
improved. What is your programme of reform?" "We have nothing to do
with reforms. Our mission is to destroy utterly. Out of the ruins a
better state of things must necessarily arise; as nothing could
possibly be worse than present conditions." And so we travelled
round and round in a circle. Mr. O----, when appealed to, would
blink through his spectacles with his kindly old eyes, and emit a
torrent of admirable moral aphorisms, which might serve as
unimpeachable copy-book headings, but had no bearing whatever {105}
on the subject we were discussing. Never once amidst these floods of
bitter invective and cataracts of fierce denunciation did I hear one
single practical suggestion made or any outline traced of a scheme to
better existing conditions. "We must destroy," shouted Madame O----,
and there her ideas stopped. I think the Slavonic bent of mind, like
the Celtic, is purely _des_tructive, and has little or no
_con_structive power in it. This may be due to the ineradicable
element of the child in both races. They are "Peter Pans," and a
child loves destruction.
Poor dreamy, emotional, hopelessly unpractical Russia! Madame
O----'s theories have been put into effect now, and we all know how
appalling the result has been.
These conversations were always carried on in French for greater
safety in order that the servants might not overhear, but when Mr.
and Madame O---- found difficulties in expressing themselves in that
language, they both broke into torrents of rapid Russian, to poor
Madame X.'s unconcealed terror. The danger was a real one, for the
O----'s were well known in police circles as revolutionists, and it
must have gone hard with the X.'s had their servants reported to the
police the violent opinions that had been expressed in their house.
Many of the Diplomatic Body were in the habit of attending the
midnight Mass at St. Isaac's on Easter Day, on account of the
wonderfully impressive character of the service. We were always
{106} requested to come in full uniform, with decorations and we
stood inside the rails of the ikonostas, behind the choir. The time
to arrive was about 11.30 p.m., when the great church, packed to its
doors by a vast throng, was wrapped in almost total darkness. Under
the dome stood a catafalque bearing a gilt coffin. This open coffin
contained a strip of silk, on which was painted an effigy of the dead
Christ, for it will be remembered that no carved or graven image is
allowed in a church of the Eastern rite. There was an arrangement by
which a species of blind could be drawn over the painted figure, thus
concealing it. As the eye grew accustomed to the shadows, tens of
thousands of unlighted candles, outlining the arches, cornices, and
other architectural features of the cathedral, were just visible.
These candles each had their wick touched with kerosine and then
surrounded with a thread of guncotton, which ran continuously from
candle to candle right round the building. When the hanging end of
the thread of gun-cotton was lighted, the flame ran swiftly round the
church, kindling each candle in turn; a very fascinating sight. At
half-past eleven, the only light was from the candles surrounding the
bier, where black-robed priests were chanting the mournful Russian
Office for the Dead. At about twenty minutes to twelve the blind was
drawn over the dead Christ, and the priests, feigning surprise,
advanced to the rails of the ikonostas, and announced to an
Archimandrite that the coffin was empty. The Archimandrite ordered
them {107} to search round the church, and the priests perambulated
the church with gilt lanterns, during which time the catafalque,
bier, and its accessories were all removed. The priests announced to
the Archimandrite that their search had been unsuccessful, whereupon
he ordered them to make a further search outside the church. They
went out, and so timed their return as to arrive before the ikonostas
at three minutes before midnight. They again reported that they had
been unsuccessful; when, as the first stroke of midnight pealed from
the great clock, the Metropolitan of Petrograd announced in a loud
voice, "Christ is risen!" At an electric signal given from the
cathedral, the great guns of the fortress boomed out in a salute of
one hundred and one guns; the gun-cotton was touched off, and the
swift flash kindled the tens of thousands of candles running round
the building; the enormous congregation lit the tapers they carried;
the "Royal doors" of the ikonostas were thrown open, and the clergy
appeared in their festival vestments of cloth of gold, as the choir
burst into the beautiful Russian Easter anthem, and so the Easter
Mass began. Nothing more poignantly dramatic, more magnificently
impressive, could possibly be imagined than this almost instantaneous
change from intense gloom to blazing light; from the plaintive dirges
of the Funeral Service to the jubilant strains of the Easter Mass. I
never tired of witnessing this splendid piece of symbolism.
It sounds almost irreverent to talk of comical {108} incidents in
connection with so solemn an occasion, but there are two little
episodes I must mention. About 1880 the first tentative efforts were
made by France to establish a Franco-Russian alliance. Ideas on the
subject were very nebulous at first, but slowly they began to
crystallise into concrete shape. A new French Ambassador was
appointed to Petrograd in the hope of fanning the faint spark into
further life. He, wishing to show his sympathy for the _nation
amie_, attended the Easter Mass at St. Isaac's, but unfortunately he
was quite unversed in the ritual of the Orthodox Church. In every
ikonostas there are two ikons on either side of the "Royal doors";
the Saviour on one side, the Madonna and Child on the other. The new
Ambassador was standing in front of the ikon of the Saviour, and in
the course of the Mass the Metropolitan came out, and made the three
prescribed low bows before the ikon, previous to censing it. The
Ambassador, taking this as a personal compliment to France, as
represented in his own person, acknowledged the attention with three
equally low bows, laying his hand on his heart and ejaculating with
all the innate politeness of his nation, "Monsieur! Monsieur!
Monsieur!" This little incident caused much amusement, as did a
newly-arrived German diplomat, who when greeted by a Russian friend
with the customary Easter salutation of "Christ is risen!" ("Kristos
voskress!") wished to respond, but, being ignorant of the traditional
answer, "He is verily risen," merely made {109} a low bow and said,
"Ich auch," which may be vulgarly Englished into "The same here."
The universal Easter suppers at the conclusion of the Mass play an
important part in Russian life, for they mean the breaking of the
long and rigorous Lenten fast of the Eastern Church, during which all
meat, butter, milk, and eggs are prohibited. The peasants adhere
rigidly to these rules, so the Easter supper assumes great importance
in their eyes. The ingredients of this supper are invariable for
high and low, for rich and poor--cold ham, hard-boiled eggs dyed red,
a sort of light cake akin to the French _brioche_, and a sour
cream-cheese shaped into a pyramid and decorated with little crosses
of dried currants. I think that this cake and cream cheese (known as
"Paskva") are prepared only at Easter-time. Even at the Yacht Club
during Holy Week, meat, butter, milk, and eggs were prohibited, and
still Armand, our incomparable French chef, managed to produce
_plats_ of the most succulent description. Loud praises were
lavished upon his skill in preparing such excellent dishes out of
oil, fish, flour, and vegetables, the only materials allowed him. I
met Armand in the passage one day and asked him how he managed to do
it. Looking round to see that no Russians could overhear, Armand
replied with a wink, "Voyez-vous Monsieur, le bon Dieu ne regarde pas
d'aussi près." Of course he had gone on using cream, butter, and
eggs, just as usual, but as the members of the Club did not know
this, and thought {110} that they were strictly obeying the rules of
their Church, I imagine that no blame could attach to them.
On Easter Eve the two-mile-long Nevsky Perspective was lined with
humble folks standing by white napkins on which the materials for
their Easter supper were arranged. On every napkin glimmered a
lighted taper, and the long line of these twinkling lights produced a
very charming effect, as of myriads of glow-worms. Priests would
pass swiftly down the line, each attended by an acolyte carrying a
pail of holy water. The priest would mutter a rapid blessing,
sprinkle the food and its owner with holy water, pocket an
infinitesimally small fee, and pass on again.
A friend of mine was once down in the fruit-growing districts of the
Crimea. Passing through one of the villages of that pleasing
peninsula, he found it decorated in honour of a religious festival.
The village priest was going to bless the first-fruits of the
orchards. The peasants stood in a row down the village street, each
one with the first crop of his orchard arranged on a clean napkin
before him. The red-bearded priest, quite a young man, passed down
the street, sprinkling fruit and grower alike with holy water, and
repeating a blessing to each one. The young priest approached, and
my friend could hear quite plainly the words of his blessing. No.
---- it was quite impossible! It was incredible! and yet he could
not doubt the evidence of his own ears! The young priest was
speaking in good Scots, {111} and the words of the blessing he
bestowed on each parishioner were, "Here, man! tak' it. If it does
ye nae guid, it canna possibly dae ye any hairm." The men addressed,
probably taking this for a quotation from Scripture in some unknown
tongue, bowed reverently as the words were pronounced over them.
That a Russian village priest in a remote district of the Crimea
should talk broad Scots was a sufficiently unusual circumstance to
cause my friend to make some further inquiries. It then appeared
that when the Government dockyard at Sebastopol was reopened, several
Scottish foremen from the Clyde shipbuilding yards were imported to
supervise the Russian workmen. Amongst others came a Glasgow foreman
with his wife and a son who was destined for the ministry of the Free
Church of Scotland. Once arrived in Russia, they found that
facilities for training a youth for the Presbyterian ministry were
somewhat lacking in Sebastopol. Sooner than sacrifice their dearest
wish, the parents, with commendable broadmindedness, decided that
their offspring should enter the Russian Church. He was accordingly
sent to a seminary and in due course was ordained a priest and
appointed to a parish, but he apparently still retained his Scottish
speech and his characteristically Scottish independence of view.
After a year in Petrograd I used to attempt to analyse to myself the
complex Russian character. "We are a 'jelly-folk,'" had said one of
my friends to me. The Russian term was "Kiselnui {112} narod," and I
think there is truth in that. They _are_ an invertebrate folk. I
cannot help thinking that Peter the Great was one of the worst
enemies of his own country. Instead of allowing Russia to develop
naturally on lines suited to the racial instincts of her people, he
attempted to run the whole country into a West European mould, and to
superimpose upon it a veneer imported from the France of Louis
Quatorze. With the very few this could perhaps succeed, with the
many it was a foregone failure. He tried in one short lifetime to do
what it had taken other countries centuries to accomplish. He built
a vast and imposing edifice on shifting sand, without any
foundations. It might stand for a time; its ultimate doom was
certain.
From the windows of our Embassy we looked upon the broad Neva. When
fast bound in the grip of winter, sledge-roads were made across the
ice, bordered with lamp-posts and marked out with sawn-off fir trees.
Little wooden taverns and tea-houses were built on the river, and as
soon as the ice was of sufficient thickness the tramcar lines were
laid across it. A colony of Laps came yearly and encamped on the
river with their reindeer, for the temperature of Petrograd rarely
falling more than ten degrees below zero, it was looked upon as a
genial winter climate for invalids from Lapland. A stranger from
another planet might have imagined that these buildings were
permanent, that the fir trees were really growing, and that all the
life {113} on the frozen river would last indefinitely. Everyone
knew, though, with absolute certainty that by the middle of April the
ice would break up, and that these little houses, if not removed in
time, would be carried away and engulfed in the liberated stream. By
May the river would be running again as freely as though these
temporary edifices had never been built on it.
I think these houses built on the ice were very typical of Russia.
{114}