Love of Russians for children's games--Peculiarities of Petrograd
balls--Some famous beauties of Petrograd Society--The varying garb of
hired waiters--Moscow--Its wonderful beauty--The forest of domes--The
Kremlin--The three famous "Cathedrals"--The Imperial Treasury--The
Sacristy--The Palace--Its splendour--The Terem--A Gargantuan Russian
dinner--An unusual episode at the French Ambassador's
ball--Bombs--Tsarskoe Selo--Its interior--Extraordinary collection of
curiosities in Tsarskoe Park--Origin of term "Vauxhall" for railway
station in Russia--Peterhof--Charm of park there--Two Russian
illusions--A young man of 25 delivers an Ultimatum to Russia--How it
came about--M. de Giers--Other Foreign Ministers--Paraguay--The
polite Japanese dentist--A visit to Gatchina--Description of the
Palace--Delights of the children's play-room there.
The lingering traces of the child which are found in most Russian
natures account probably for their curious love of indoor games.
Lady Dufferin had weekly evening parties during Lent, when dancing
was rigidly prohibited. Quite invariably, some lady would go up to
her and beg that they might be allowed to play what she would term
"English running games." So it came about that bald-headed Generals,
covered with Orders, and quite elderly ladies, would with immense
glee play "Blind-man's buff," "Musical chairs," "Hunt the slipper,"
and "General post." I believe that they would have joined cheerfully
in "Ring a ring of roses," had we only thought of it.
{178}
I think it is this remnant of the child in them which, coupled with
their quick-working brains, wonderful receptivity, and absolute
naturalness, makes Russians of the upper class so curiously
attractive.
At balls in my time, oddly enough, quadrilles were the most popular
dances. There was always a "leader" for these quadrilles, whose
function it was to invent new and startling figures. The "leader"
shouted out his directions from the centre of the room, and however
involved the figures he devised, however complicated the manoeuvres
he evolved, he could rely on being implicitly obeyed by the dancers,
who were used to these intricate entanglements, and enjoyed them.
Woe betide the "leader" should he lose his head, or give a wrong
direction! He would find two hundred people inextricably tangled up.
I calculate that many years have been taken off my own life by the
responsibilities thrust upon me by being frequently made to officiate
in this capacity. Balls in Petrograd in the "'eighties" invariably
concluded with the "Danse Anglaise," our own familiar "Sir Roger de
Coverley."
I never saw an orchestra at a ball in Petrograd, except at the Winter
Palace. All Russians preferred a pianist, but a pianist of a quite
special brand. These men, locally known as "tappeurs," cultivated a
peculiar style of playing, and could get wonderful effects out of an
ordinary grand piano. There was in particular one absolute genius
{179} called Altkein. Under his superlatively skilled fingers the
piano took on all the resonance and varied colour of a full
orchestra. Altkein told me that he always played what he called
"four-handed," that is doubling the parts of each hand. By the end
of the evening he was absolutely exhausted.
The most beautiful woman in Petrograd Society was unquestionably
Countess Zena Beauharnais, afterwards Duchess of Leuchtenberg; a
tall, queenly blonde with a superb figure. Nature had been very
generous to her, for in addition to her wonderful beauty, she had a
glorious soprano voice. I could not but regret that she and her
sister, Princess Bieloselskava, had not been forced by circumstances
to earn their living on the operatic stage, for the two sisters,
soprano and contralto, would certainly have achieved a European
reputation with their magnificent voices. How they would have played
Amneris and the title-rôle in "Aïda"! The famous General Skobeleff
was their brother.
Two other strikingly beautiful women were Princess Kitty Dolgorouki,
a piquant little brunette, and her sister-in-law, winning,
golden-haired Princess Mary Dolgorouki. After a lapse of nearly
forty years, I may perhaps be permitted to express my gratitude to
these two charming ladies for the consistent kindness they showered
on a peculiarly uninteresting young man, and I should like to add to
their names that of Countess Betsy Schouvaloff. I may remark that
the somewhat {180} homely British forms of their baptismal names
which these _grandes dames_ were fond of adopting always amused me.
Our two countries were in theory deadly enemies, yet they borrowed
little details from us whenever they could. I think that the racial
animosity was only skin-deep. This custom of employing English
diminutives for Russian names extended to the men too, for Prince
Alexander Dolgorouki, Princess Kitty's husband, was always known as
"Sandy," whilst Countess Betsy's husband was invariably spoken of as
"Bobby" Schouvaloff. Countess Betsy, mistress of one of the
stateliest houses in Petrograd, was acknowledged to be the
best-dressed woman in Russia. I never noticed whether she were
really good-looking or not, for such was the charm of her animation,
and the sparkle of her vivacity and quick wit, that one remarked the
outer envelope less than the nimble intellect and extraordinary
attractiveness that underlay it. She was a daughter of that
"Princesse Château" to whom I referred earlier in these reminiscences.
In the great Russian houses there were far fewer liveried servants
than is customary in other European countries. This was due to the
difficulty of finding sufficiently trained men. The actual work of
the house was done by hordes of bearded, red-shirted shaggy-headed
moujiks, who their household duties over, retired to their
underground fastnesses. Consequently when dinners or other
entertainments were given recourse was had {181} to hired waiters,
mostly elderly Germans. It was the curious custom to dress these
waiters up in the liveries of the family giving the entertainment.
The liveries seldom fitted, and the features of the old waiters were
quite familiar to most of us, yet politeness dictated that we should
pretend to consider them as servants of the house. Though perfectly
conscious of having seen the same individual who, arrayed in orange
and white, was standing behind one's chair, dressed in sky-blue only
two evenings before, and equally aware of the probability of meeting
him the next evening in a different house, clad in crimson, it was
considered polite to compliment the mistress of the house on the
admirable manner in which her servants were turned out.
There is in all Russian houses a terrible place known as the
"buffetnaya." This is a combination of pantry, larder, and
serving-room. People at all particular about the cleanliness of
their food, or the nicety with which it is served, should avoid this
awful spot as they would the plague. A sensitive nose can easily
locate the whereabouts of the "buffetnaya" from a considerable
distance.
From Petrograd to Moscow is only a twelve hours' run, but in those
twelve hours the traveller is transported into a different world.
After the soulless regularity of Peter the Great's sham classical
creation on the banks of the Neva, the beauty of the semi-Oriental
ancient capital comes as a perfect revelation. Moscow, glowing with
colour, {182} is seated like Rome on gentle hills, and numbers over
three hundred churches. These churches have each the orthodox five
domes, and this forest of domes, many of them gilt, others silvered,
some blue and gold, or striped with bands and spirals of vivid
colour, when seen amongst the tender greenery of May, forms a
wonderful picture, unlike anything else in the world. The winding,
irregular streets lined with buildings in every imaginable style of
architecture, and of every possible shade of colour; the remains of
the ancient city walls with their lofty watch-towers crowned with
curious conical roofs of grass-green tiles; the great irregular bulk
of the Kremlin, towering over all; make a whole of incomparable
beauty. There is in the world but one Moscow, as there is but one
Venice, and one Oxford.
The great sea of gilded and silvered domes is best seen from the
terrace of the Kremlin overlooking the river, though the wealth of
detail nearer at hand is apt to distract the eye. The soaring
snow-white shaft of Ivan Veliki's tower with its golden pinnacles
dominates everything, though the three "Cathedrals," standing almost
side by side, hallowed by centuries of tradition, are very sacred
places to a Russian, who would consider them the heart of Moscow, and
of the Muscovite world. "Mother Moscow," they call her
affectionately, and I understand it.
The Russian word "Sobor" is wrongly translated as "Cathedral." A
"sobor" is merely a {183} church of peculiar sanctity or of special
dignity. The three gleaming white, gold-domed churches of the
Kremlin are of quite modest dimensions, yet their venerable walls are
rich with the associations of centuries. In the Church of the
Assumption the Tsars, and later the Emperors, were all crowned; in
the Church of the Archangel the Tsars were buried, though the
Emperors lie in Petrograd. The dim Byzantine interior of the
Assumption Church, with its faded frescoes on a gold ground, and its
walls shimmering with gold, silver, and jewels, is immensely
impressive. Here is the real Russia, not the Petrograd stuccoed
veneered Russia of yesterday, but ancient Muscovy, sending its roots
deep down into the past.
Surely Peter prepared the way for the destruction of his country by
uprooting this tree of ancient growth, and by trying to create in one
short lifetime a new pseudo-European Empire, with a new capital.
The city should be seen from the Kremlin terrace as the light is
fading from the sky and the thousands of church-bells clash out their
melodious evening hymn. The Russians have always been master
bell-founders, and their bells have a silvery tone unknown in Western
Europe. In the gloaming, the Eastern character of the city is much
more apparent. The blaze of colour has vanished, and the dusky
silhouettes of the church domes take on the onion-shaped forms of the
Orient. Delhi, as seen in later years from the fort at {184} sunset
was curiously reminiscent of Moscow.
I do not suppose that more precious things have ever been gathered
together under one roof than the Imperial Treasury at Moscow
contained in those days. The eye got surfeited with the sight of so
many splendours, and I can only recall the great collection of crowns
and thrones of the various Tsars. One throne of Persian workmanship
was studded with two thousand diamonds and rubies; another, also from
Persia, contained over two thousand large turquoises. There must
have been at least a dozen of these glittering thrones, but the most
interesting of all was the original ivory throne of the Emperors of
Byzantium, brought to Moscow in 1472 by Sophia Palaeologus, wife of
Ivan III. Constantine the Great may have sat on that identical
throne. It seems curious that the finest collection in the world of
English silver-ware of Elizabeth's, James I's, and Charles I's time
should be found in the Kremlin at Moscow, till it is remembered that
nearly all the plate of that date in England was melted down during
the Civil War of 1642-1646. I wonder what has become of all these
precious things now!
The sacristy contains an equally wonderful collection of Church
plate. I was taken over this by an Archimandrite, and I had been
previously warned that he would expect a substantial tip for his
services. The Archimandrite's feelings were, however, to be spared
by my representing this tip as my contribution to the poor of his
parish. The Archimandrite {185} was so immensely imposing, with his
violet robes, diamond cross, and long flowing beard, that I felt
quite shy of offering him the modest five roubles which I was told
would be sufficient. So I doubled it. The Archimandrite pocketed it
joyfully, and so moved was he by my unexpected _largesse_, that the
excellent ecclesiastic at once motioned me to my knees, and gave me a
most fervent blessing, which I am persuaded was well worth the extra
five roubles.
The Great Palace of the Kremlin was rebuilt by Nicholas I about 1840.
It consequently belongs to the "period of bad taste"; in spite of
that it is extraordinarily sumptuous. The St. George's Hall is 200
feet long and 60 feet high; the other great halls, named after the
Russian Orders of Chivalry, are nearly as large. Each of these is
hung with silk of the same colour as the ribbon of the Order; St.
George's Hall, orange and black; St. Andrew's Hall, sky-blue; St.
Alexander Nevsky's, pink; St. Catherine's, red and white. I imagine
that every silkworm in the world must have been kept busy for months
in order to prepare sufficient material for these acres of silk-hung
walls. The Kremlin Palace may not be in the best of taste, but these
huge halls, with their jasper and malachite columns and profuse
gilding, are wonderfully gorgeous, and exactly correspond with one's
preconceived ideas of what an Emperor of Russia's palace ought to be
like. There is a chapel in the Kremlin Palace with the quaint title
of {186} "The Church of the Redeemer behind the Golden Railing."
The really interesting portion of the Palace is the sixteenth century
part, known as the "Terem." These small, dim, vaulted halls with
their half-effaced frescoes on walls and ceilings are most
fascinating. It is all mediæval, but not with the mediævalism of
Western Europe; neither is it Oriental; it is pure Russian; simple,
dignified, and delightfully archaic. One could not imagine the old
Tsars in a more appropriate setting. Compared with the strident
splendours of the modern palace, the vaulted rooms of the old Terem
seem to typify the difference between Petrograd and Moscow.
It so happened that later in life I was destined to become very
familiar with the deserted palace at Agra, in India, begun by Akbar,
finished by Shah Jehan. How different the Oriental conception of a
palace is from the Western! The Agra Palace is a place of shady
courts and gardens, dotted with exquisitely graceful pavilions of
transparent white marble roofed with gilded copper. No two of these
pavilions are similar, and in their varied decorations an
inexhaustible invention is shown. The white marble is so placed that
it is seen everywhere in strong contrast to Akbar's massive buildings
of red sandstone. During the Coronation ceremonies, King-Emperor
George V seated himself, of right, on the Emperor Akbar's throne in
the great Hall of Audience in Agra Palace.
{187}
Though Moscow may appear a dream-city when viewed from the Kremlin,
it is an eminently practical city as well. It was, in my time, the
chief manufacturing centre of Russia, and Moscow business-men had
earned the reputation of being well able to look after themselves.
Another side of the life of the great city could be seen in the
immense Ermitage restaurant, where Moscow people assured you with
pride that the French cooking was only second to Paris. The little
Tartar waiters at the Ermitage were, drolly enough, dressed like
hospital orderlies, in white linen from head to foot. There might
possibly be money in an antiseptic restaurant, should some
enterprising person start one. The idea would be novel, and this is
an age when new ideas seem attractive.
A Russian merchant in Moscow, a partner in an English firm, imagined
himself to be under a great debt of gratitude to the British Embassy
in Petrograd, on account of a heavy fine imposed upon him, which we
had succeeded in getting remitted. This gentleman was good enough to
invite a colleague and myself to dine at a certain "Traktir,"
celebrated for its Russian cooking. I was very slim in those days,
but had I had any idea of the Gargantuan repast we were supposed to
assimilate, I should have borrowed a suit of clothes from the most
adipose person of my acquaintance, in order to secure additional
cargo-space.
In the quaint little "Traktir" decorated in {188} old-Russian style,
after the usual fresh caviar, raw herrings, pickled mushrooms, and
smoked sturgeon of the "zakuska," we commenced with cold sucking-pig
eaten with horse-radish. Then followed a plain little soup, composed
of herrings and cucumbers stewed in sour beer. Slices of boiled
salmon and horse-radish were then added, and the soup was served
iced. This soup is distinctly an acquired taste. This was succeeded
by a simple dish of sterlets, boiled in wine, with truffles,
crayfish, and mushrooms. After that came mutton stuffed with
buckwheat porridge, pies of the flesh and isinglass of the sturgeon,
and Heaven only knows what else. All this accompanied by red and
white Crimean wines, Kvass, and mead. I had always imagined that
mead was an obsolete beverage, indulged in principally by ancient
Britons, and drunk for choice out of their enemies' skulls, but here
it was, foaming in beautiful old silver tankards; and perfectly
delicious it was! Oddly enough, the Russian name for it, "meod," is
almost identical with ours.
Only once in my life have I suffered so terribly from repletion, and
that was in the island of Barbados, at the house of a hospitable
planter. We sat down to luncheon at one, and rose at five. The
sable serving-maids looked on the refusal of a dish as a terrible
slur on the cookery of the house, and would take no denial. "No, you
like dis, sar, it real West India dish. I gib you lilly piece."
What with turtle, and flying-fish, and calipash and calipee, and
pepper-pot, and devilled land-crabs, I {189} felt like the
boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens after his monthly meal.
I was not fortunate enough to witness the coronation of either
Alexander III or that of Nicholas II. In the perfect setting of "the
Red Staircase," of the ancient stone-built hall known as the
"Granovitaya Palata," and of the "Gold Court," the ceremonial must be
deeply impressive. On no stage could more picturesque surroundings
possibly be devised. During the coronation festivities, most of the
Ambassadors hired large houses in Moscow, and transferred their
Embassies to the old capital for three weeks. At the coronation of
Nicholas II, of unfortunate memory, the French Ambassador, the Comte
de Montebello, took a particularly fine house in Moscow, the
Shérémaitieff Palace, and it was arranged that he should give a great
ball the night after the coronation, at which the newly-crowned
Emperor and Empress would be present. The French Government own a
wonderful collection of splendid old French furniture, tapestries,
and works of art, known as the "Garde Meubles." Under the Monarchy
and Empire, these all adorned the interiors of the various palaces.
To do full honour to the occasion, the French Government dispatched
vanloads of the choicest treasures of the "Garde Meubles" to Moscow,
and the Shérémaitieff Palace became a thing of beauty, with Louis
Quatorze Gobelins, and furniture made for Marie-Antoinette. To
enhance the effect, the Comte and Comtesse de Montebello {190}
arranged the most elaborate floral decorations, and took immense
pains over them. On the night of the ball, two hours before their
guests were due, the Ambassador was informed that the Chief of Police
was outside and begged for permission to enter the temporary Embassy.
Embassies enjoying what is known as "exterritoriality," none of the
police can enter except on the invitation of the Ambassador; much as
vampires, according to the legend, could only secure entrance to a
house at the personal invitation of the owner. It will be remembered
that these unpleasing creatures displayed great ingenuity in securing
this permission; indeed the really expert vampires prided themselves
on the dexterity with which they could inveigle their selected victim
into welcoming them joyfully into his domicile. The Chief of Police
informed the French Ambassador that he had absolutely certain
information that a powerful bomb had been introduced into the
Embassy, concealed in a flower-pot. M. de Montebello was in a
difficult position. On the previous day the Ambassador had
discovered that every single electric wire in the house had been
deliberately severed by some unknown hand. French electricians had
repaired the damage, but it was a disquieting incident in the
circumstances. The policeman was positive that his information was
correct, and the consequences of a terrific bomb exploding in one's
house are eminently disagreeable, so he gave his reluctant permission
to have the Embassy searched, though his earlier {191} guests might
be expected within an hour. Armies of police myrmidons appeared, and
at once proceeded to unpot between two and three thousand growing
plants, and to pick all the floral decorations to pieces. Nothing
whatever was found, but it would be unreasonable to expect secret
police, however zealous, to exhibit much skill as trained florists.
They made a frightful hash of things, and not only ruined the
elaborate decorations, but so managed to cover the polished floors
with earth that the rooms looked like ploughed fields, dancing was
rendered impossible, and poor Madame de Montebello was in tears. As
the guests arrived, the police had to be smuggled out through back
passages. This was one of the little amenities of life in a
bomb-ridden land.
During the summer months I was much at Tsarskoe Selo. Tsarskoe is
only fourteen miles from Petrograd, and some of my Russian friends
had villas there. The gigantic Old Palace of Tsarskoe is merely an
enlarged Winter Palace, and though its garden façade is nearly a
quarter of a mile long, it is uninteresting and unimpressive, being
merely an endless repetition of the same details. I was taken over
the interior several times, but such a vast quantity of rooms leaves
only a confused impression of magnificence. I only recall the really
splendid staircase and the famous lapis-lazuli and amber rooms. The
lapis-lazuli room is a blaze of blue and gold, with walls, furniture,
and chandeliers encrusted with that precious substance. {192} The
amber room is perfectly beautiful. All the walls, cabinets, and
tables are made of amber of every possible shade, from straw-colour
to deep orange. There are also great groups of figures carved
entirely out of amber. Both the lapis and the amber room have
curious floors of black ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, forming a
very effective colour scheme. I have vague memories of the "gold"
and "silver" rooms, but very distinct recollections of the bedroom of
one of the Empresses, who a hundred years before the late Lord Lister
had discovered the benefits of antiseptic surgery had with some
curious prophetic instinct had her sleeping-room constructed on the
lines of a glorified modern operating theatre. The walls of this
quaint apartment were of translucent opal glass, decorated with
columns of bright purple glass, with a floor of inlaid
mother-of-pearl. Personally, I should always have fancied a faint
smell of chloroform lingering about the room.
Catherine the Great had her monogram placed everywhere at Tsarskoe
Selo, on doors, walls, and ceilings. It was difficult to connect her
with the interlaced "E's," until one remembered that the Russian form
of the name is "Ekaterina." How wise the Russians have been in
retaining the so-called Cyrillian alphabet in writing their tongue!
In other Slavonic languages, such as Polish and Czech, where the
Roman alphabet has been adopted, unholy combinations of "cz," "zh,"
and "sz" have to be resorted to to reproduce sounds which the {193}
Cyrillian alphabet could express with a single letter; and the tragic
thing is that, be the letters piled together never so thickly, they
invariably fail to give the foreigner the faintest idea of how the
word should really be pronounced. Take the much-talked-of town of
Przemysl, for instance.
The park of Tsarskoe is eighteen miles in circumference, and every
portion of it is thrown open freely to the public. In spite of being
quite flat, it is very pretty with its lake and woods, and was most
beautifully kept. To an English eye its trees seemed stunted, for in
these far Northern regions no forest trees attain great size. Limes
and oaks flourish moderately well, but the climate is too cold for
beeches. At the latitude of Petrograd neither apples, pears, nor any
kind of fruit tree can be grown; raspberries and strawberries are the
only things that can be produced, and they are both superlatively
good. The park at Tsarskoe was full of a jumble of the most
extraordinarily incongruous buildings and monuments; it would have
taken a fortnight to see them all properly. There was a Chinese
village, a Chinese theatre, a Dutch dairy, an English Gothic castle,
temples, hanging gardens, ruins, grottoes, fountains, and numbers of
columns, triumphal arches, and statues. On the lake there was a
collection of boats of all nations, varying from a Chinese sampan to
an English light four-oar; from a Venetian gondola to a Brazilian
catamaran. There was also a fleet of miniature men-of-war, and three
of Catherine's great {194} gilt state-barges on the lake. One arm of
the lake was spanned by a bridge of an extremely rare blue Siberian
marble. Anyone seeing the effect of this blue marble bridge must
have congratulated himself on the fact that it was extremely
improbable that any similar bridge would ever be erected elsewhere,
so rare was the material of which it was constructed.
I never succeeded in finding the spot in Tsarskoe Park where a sentry
stands on guard over a violet which Catherine the Great once found
there. Catherine, finding the first violet of spring, ordered a
sentry to be placed over it, to protect the flower from being
plucked. She forgot to rescind the order, and the sentry continued
to be posted there. It developed at last into a regular tradition of
Tsarskoe, and so, day and night, winter and summer, a sentry stood in
Tsarskoe Park over a spot where, 150 years before, a violet once grew.
The Russian name for a railway station is "Vauxhall," and the origin
of this is rather curious. The first railway in Europe opened for
passenger traffic was the Liverpool and Manchester, inaugurated in
1830. Five years later, Nicholas I, eager to show that Russia was
well abreast of the times, determined to have a railway of his own,
and ordered one to be built between Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo, a
distance of fourteen miles. The railway was opened in 1837, without
any intermediate stations. Unfortunately, with the exception of a
few Court officials, no one ever wanted to go to Tsarskoe, so the
line could hardly be called a commercial {195} success. Then someone
had a brilliant idea! Vauxhall Gardens in South London were then at
the height of their popularity. The Tsarskoe line should be extended
two miles to a place called Pavlosk, where the railway company would
be given fifty acres of ground on which to construct a "Vauxhall
Gardens," outbidding its London prototype in attractions. No sooner
said than done! The Pavlosk "Vauxhall" became enormously popular
amongst Petrogradians in summer-time; the trains were crowded and the
railway became a paying proposition. As the Tsarskoe station was the
only one then in existence in Petrograd, the worthy citizens got into
the habit of directing their own coachmen or cabdrivers simply to go
"to Vauxhall." So the name got gradually applied to the actual
station building in Petrograd. When the Nicholas railway to Moscow
was completed, the station got to be known as the "Moscow Vauxhall."
And so it spread, until it came about that every railway station in
the Russian Empire, from the Baltic to the Pacific, derived its name
from a long-vanished and half-forgotten pleasure-garden in South
London, the memory of which is only commemorated to-day by a bridge
and a railway station on its site. The name "Vauxhall" itself is, I
believe, a corruption of "Folks-Hall," or of its Dutch variant
"Volks-hall." Even in my day the Pavlosk Vauxhall was a most
attractive spot, with an excellent orchestra, myriads of coloured
lamps, and a great semicircle of restaurants and refreshment booths.
When I {196} knew it, the Tsarskoe railway still retained its
original rolling-stock of 1837; little queer over-upholstered
carriages, and quaint archaic-looking engines. It had, I think, been
built to a different gauge to the standard Russian one; anyhow it had
no physical connection with the other railways. It was subsequently
modernised.
Peterhof is far more attractive than Tsarskoe as it stands on the
Gulf of Finland, and the coast, rising a hundred feet from the sea,
redeems the place from the uniform dead flat of the other environs of
Petrograd. As its name implies, Peterhof is the creation of Peter
himself, who did his best to eclipse Versailles. His fountains and
waterworks certainly run Versailles very close. The Oriental in
Peter peeped out when he constructed staircases of gilt copper, and
of coloured marbles for the water to flow over, precisely as Shah
Jehan did in his palaces at Delhi and Agra. As the temperature both
at Delhi and Agra often touches 120° during the summer months, these
decorative cascades would appear more appropriate there than at
Peterhof, where the summer temperature seldom rises to 70°.
The palace stands on a lofty terrace facing the sea. A broad
straight vista has been cut through the fir-woods opposite it, down
to the waters of the Gulf. Down the middle of this avenue runs a
canal flanked on either side by twelve fountains. When _les grandes
eaux_ are playing, the effect of this perspective of fountains and of
Peter's gilded water-chutes is really very fine indeed. I think that
the {197} Oriental in Peter showed itself again here. There is a
long single row of almost precisely similar fountains in front of the
Taj at Agra.
As at Tsarskoe, the public have free access to every portion of the
park, which stretches for four miles along the sea, with many
gardens, countless fountains, temples and statues. There was in
particular a beautiful Ionic colonnade of pink marble, from the
summit of which cataracts of water spouted when the fountains played.
The effect of this pink marble temple seen through the film of
falling water was remarkably pretty. What pleased me were the two
small Dutch châteaux in the grounds, "Marly" and "Monplaisir," where
Peter had lived during the building of his great palace. These two
houses had been built by imported Dutch craftsmen, and the sight of a
severe seventeenth-century Dutch interior with its tiles and sober
oak-panelling was so unexpected in Russia. It was almost as much of
a surprise as is Groote Constantia, some sixteen miles south of Cape
Town. To drive down a mile-long avenue of the finest oaks in the
world, and to find at the end of it, amidst hedges of clipped pink
oleander and blue plumbago, a most perfect Dutch château, exactly as
Governor Van der Stell left it in 1667, is so utterly unexpected at
the southern extremity of the African Continent! Groote Constantia,
the property of the Cape Government, still contains all its original
furniture and pictures of 1667. It is the typical
seventeenth-century Continental château, the main building with its
façade {198} elaborately decorated in plaster, flanked by two wings
at right angles to it, but the last place in the world where you
would look for such a finished whole is South Africa. To add to the
unexpectedness, the vines for which Constantia is famous are grown in
fields enclosed with hedges, with huge oaks as hedgerow timber. This
gives such a thoroughly English look to the landscape that I never
could realise that the sea seen through the trees was the Indian
Ocean, and that the Cape of Good Hope was only ten miles away.
Macao, the ancient Portuguese colony forty-five miles from Hong-Kong,
is another "surprise-town." It is as though Aladdin's Slave of the
Lamp had dumped a seventeenth-century Southern European town down in
the middle of China, with churches, plazas, and fountains complete.
There is really a plethora of palaces round Peterhof. They grow as
thick as quills on a porcupine's back. One of them, I cannot recall
which, had a really beautiful dining-room, built entirely of pink
marble. In niches in the four angles of the room were solid silver
fountains six feet high, where Naiads and Tritons spouted water fed
by a running stream. I should have thought this room more
appropriate to India than to Northern Russia, but one of the fondest
illusions Russians cherish is that they dwell in a semi-tropical
climate.
In Petrograd, as soon as the temperature reached 60°, old gentlemen
would appear on the Nevsky dressed in white linen, with Panama hats,
and white {199} umbrellas, but still wearing the thickest of
overcoats. Should the sun's rays become just perceptible, iced Kvass
and lemonade were at once on sale in all the streets. On these
occasions I made myself quite popular at the Yacht Club by observing,
as I buttoned up my overcoat tightly before venturing into the open
air, that this tropical heat was almost unendurable. This invariably
provoked gratified smiles of assent.
Another point as to which Russians were for some reason touchy was
the fact that the water of the Gulf of Finland is perfectly fresh.
Ships can fill their tanks from the water alongside for ten miles
below Kronstadt, and the catches of the fishing-boats that came in to
Peterhof consisted entirely of pike, perch, eels, roach, and other
fresh-water fish. Still Russians disliked intensely hearing their
sea alluded to as fresh-water. I tactfully pretended to ignore the
fringe of fresh-water reeds lining the shore at Peterhof, and after
bathing in the Gulf would enlarge on the bracing effect a swim in
real salt-water had on the human organism. This, and a few happy
suggestions that after the intense brine of the Gulf the waters of
the Dead Sea would appear insipidly brackish, conduced towards making
me amazingly popular.
In my younger days I was never really happy without a daily swim
during the summer months.
The woods sloping down to the Gulf are delightful in summer-time, and
are absolutely carpeted with flowers. The flowers seem to realise
how short the {200} span of life allotted to them is, and endeavour
to make the most of it. So do the mosquitoes.
I have very vivid recollections of one especial visit to Peterhof.
In the summer of 1882, the Ambassador and two other members of the
Embassy were away in England on leave. The Chargé d'Affaires, who
replaced the Ambassador, was laid up with an epidemic that was
working great havoc then in Petrograd, as was the Second Secretary.
This epidemic was probably due to the extremely unsatisfactory
sanitary condition of the city. Consequently no one was left to
carry on the work of the Embassy but myself and the new Attaché, a
mere lad.
The relations of Great Britain and France in the "'eighties" were
widely different from those cordial ones at present prevailing
between the two countries. Far from being trusted friends and
allies, the tension between England and France was often strained
almost to the breaking-point, especially with regard to Egyptian
affairs. This was due in a great measure to Bismarck's traditional
foreign policy of attempting to embroil her neighbours, to the
greater advantage of Germany. In old-fashioned surgery, doctors
frequently introduced a foreign body into an open wound in order to
irritate it, and prevent its healing unduly quickly. This was termed
a seton. Bismarck's whole policy was founded on the introduction of
setons into open wounds, to prevent their healing. His successors in
office endeavoured to continue this policy, but did {201} not
succeed, for though they might share Bismarck's entire want of
scruples, they lacked his commanding genius.
Ismail, Khedive of Egypt since 1863, had brought his country to the
verge of bankruptcy by his gross extravagance. Great Britain and
France had established in 1877 a Dual Control of Egyptian affairs in
the interest of the foreign bondholders, but the two countries did
not pull well together. In 1879 the incorrigible Ismail was deposed
in favour of Tewfik, and two years later a military revolt was
instigated by Arabi Pasha. Very unwisely, attempts were made to
propitiate Arabi by making him a member of the Egyptian Cabinet, and
matters went from bad to worse. In May, 1882, the French and British
fleets appeared before Alexandria and threatened it, and on June 11,
1882, the Arab population massacred large numbers of the foreign
residents of Alexandria. Still the French Government refused to take
any definite action, and systematically opposed every proposal made
by the British Government. We were perfectly well aware that the
opposition of the French to the British policy was consistently
backed up by Russia, Russia being in its turn prompted from Berlin.
All this we knew. After the massacre of June 11, the French fleet,
instead of acting, sailed away from Alexandria.
Amongst the usual daily sheaf of telegrams from London which the
Attaché and I decyphered on July 12, 1882, was one announcing that
the {202} British Mediterranean Squadron had on the previous day
bombarded and destroyed the forts of Alexandria, and that in two
days' time British marines would be landed and the city of Alexandria
occupied. There were also details of further steps that would be
taken, should circumstances render them necessary. All these facts
were to be communicated to the Russian Government at once. I went
off with this weighty telegram to the house of the Chargé d'Affaires,
whom I found very weak and feverish, and quite unable to rise from
his bed. He directed me to go forthwith to Peterhof, to see M. de
Giers, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was there in
attendance on the Emperor, and to make my statement to him. I placed
the Attaché in charge of the Chancery, and had time admitted of it, I
should certainly have smeared that youth's cheeks and lips with some
burnt cork, to add a few years to his apparent age, and to delude
people into the belief that he had already begun to shave. The
dignity of the British Embassy had to be considered. I begged of him
to refrain from puerile levity in any business interviews he might
have, and I implored him to try to conceal the schoolboy under the
mask of the zealous official. I then started for Peterhof. It is
not often that a young man of twenty-five is called upon to deliver
what was virtually an Ultimatum to the mighty Russian Empire, and I
had no illusions whatever as to the manner in which my communication
would be received.
{203}
I saw M. de Giers at Peterhof, and read him my message. I have never
in my life seen a man so astonished; he was absolutely flabbergasted.
The Gladstone Government of 1880-85 was then in power in England, and
it was a fixed axiom with every Continental statesman (and not, I am
bound to admit, an altogether unfounded one) that under no
circumstances whatever would the Gladstone Cabinet ever take definite
action. They would talk eternally; they would never act. M. de
Giers at length said to me, "I have heard your communication with
great regret. I have noted what you have said with even deeper
regret." He paused for a while, and then added very gravely, "The
Emperor's regret will be even more profound than my own, and I will
not conceal from you that his Majesty will be highly displeased when
he learns the news you have brought me." I inquired of M. de Giers
whether he wished me to see the Emperor, and to make my communication
in person to His Imperial Majesty, and felt relieved when he told me
that it was unnecessary, as I was not feeling particularly anxious to
face an angry Autocrat alone. I left a transcript I had myself made
of the telegram I had decyphered with M. de Giers, and left. A
moment's reflection will show that to leave a copy of decoded
telegram with anyone would be to render the code useless. The
original cypher telegram would be always accessible, and a decypher
of it would be tantamount to giving away the code. It was our
practice to make transcripts, giving the {204} sense in totally
different language, and with the position of every sentence altered.
After that, as events in Egypt developed, and until the Chargé
d'Affaires was about again, I journeyed to Peterhof almost daily to
see M. de Giers. We always seemed to get on very well together, in
spite of racial animosities.
The clouds in Egypt rolled away, and with them the very serious
menace to which I have alluded. Events fortunately shaped themselves
propitiously, On September 13, 1882, Sir Garnet Wolseley utterly
routed Arabi's forces at Tel-el-Kebir; Arabi was deported to Ceylon,
and the revolt came to an end.
A diplomat naturally meets Ministers of Foreign Affairs of many
types. There was a strong contrast between the polished and courtly
M. de Giers, who in spite of his urbanity could manage to infuse a
very strong sub-acid flavour into his suavity when he chose, and some
other Ministers with whom I have come in contact. A few years later,
when at Buenos Ayres, preliminary steps were taken for drawing up an
Extradition Treaty between Great Britain and Paraguay, and as there
were details which required adjusting, I was sent 1,100 miles up the
river to Asuncion, the unsophisticated capital of the Inland
Republic. Dr. ----, at that time Paraguayan Foreign Minister, was a
Guarani, of pure Indian blood. He did not receive me at the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, for the excellent reason that there was no such
place in that primitive {205} republic, but in his own extremely
modest residence. When his Excellency welcomed me in the whitewashed
sala of that house, sumptuously furnished with four wooden chairs,
and nothing else whatever, he had on neither shoes, stockings, nor
shirt, and wore merely a pair of canvas trousers, and an unbuttoned
coat of the same material, affording ample glimpses of his somewhat
dusky skin. In the suffocating heat of Asuncion such a costume has
its obvious advantages; still I cannot imagine, let us say, the
French Minister for Foreign Affairs receiving the humblest member of
a Foreign Legation at the Quai d'Orsay with bare feet, shirtless, and
clad only in two garments.
Dr. ----, in spite of being Indian by blood, spoke most correct and
finished Spanish, and had all the courtesy which those who use that
beautiful language seem somehow to acquire instinctively. It is to
be regretted that the same cannot be said of all those using the
English language. Not to be outdone by this polite Paraguayan, I
responded in the same vein, and we mutually smothered each other with
the choicest flowers of Castilian courtesy. These little amenities,
though doubtless tending to smooth down the asperities of life, are
apt to consume a good deal of time.
Once at Kyoto in Japan, I had occasion for the services of a dentist.
As the dentist only spoke Japanese, I took my interpreter with me.
After removing my shoes at the door--an unusual preliminary to a
visit to a dentist--we went upstairs, where {206} we found a dapper
little individual in kimono and white socks, surrounded by the most
modern and up-to-date dental paraphernalia, sucking his breath, and
rubbing his knees with true Japanese politeness. Eager to show that
a foreigner could also have delightful manners, I sucked my breath,
if anything, rather louder, and rubbed my knees a trifle harder.
"Dentist says," came from the interpreter, "will you honourably deign
to explain where trouble lies in honourable tooth?"
"If the dentist will honourably deign to examine my left-hand lower
molar," I responded with charming courtesy, "he will find it requires
stopping, but for Heaven's sake, Mr. Nakimura, ask him to be careful
how he uses his honourable drill, for I am terrified to death at that
invention of the Evil One." Soon the Satanic drill got well into its
stride, and began boring into every nerve of my head. I jumped out
of the chair. "Tell the dentist, Mr. Nakimura, that he is honourably
deigning to hurt me like the very devil with his honourable but
wholly damnable drill." "Dentist says if you honourably deign to
reseat yourself in chair, he soon conquer difficulties in your
honourable tooth." "Certainly. But dentist must not give me
honourable hell any more," and so on, and so on. I am bound to admit
that the little Jap's workmanship was so good that it has remained
intact up to the present days. I wonder if Japs, when annoyed, can
ever relieve themselves by the use of really strong language, or
whether the crust of conventional politeness is too thick to {207}
admit of it. In that case they must feel like a lobster afflicted
with acute eczema, unable to obtain relief by scratching himself,
owing to the impervious shell in which Nature has encased him.
I dined with the British Consul at Asuncion, after my interview with
Dr. ----. The Consul lived three miles out of town, and the coffee
we drank after dinner, the sugar we put into the coffee, and the
cigars we smoked with it, had all been grown in his garden, within
sight of the windows. I had ridden out to the Quinta in company with
a young Australian, who will reappear later on in these pages in his
proper place; one Dick Howard. It was the first but by no means the
last time in my life that I ever got on a horse in evening clothes.
Dick Howard, having no evening clothes with him, had arrayed himself
in one of his favourite cricket blazers, a pleasantly vivid garment.
On our way out, my horse shied violently at a snake in the road. The
girths slipped on the grass-fed animal, and my saddle rolled gently
round and deposited me, tail-coat, white tie and all, in some four
feet of dust. The snake, however, probably panic-stricken at the
sight of Howard's blazer, had tactfully withdrawn; otherwise, as it
happened to be a deadly Jararaca, it is highly unlikely that I should
have been writing these lines at the present moment. The
ineradicable love of Dick Howard, the cheery, laughing young
Antipodean, for brilliant-hued blazers of various athletic clubs will
be enlarged on later. In Indian hill stations all men habitually
ride out to dinner-parties, {208} whilst ladies are carried in
litters. During the rains, men put a suit of pyjamas over their
evening clothes to protect them, before drawing on rubber boots and
rubber coats and venturing into the pelting downpour. The Syce trots
behind, carrying his master's pumps in a rubber sponge-bag.
All this, however, is far afield from Russia. Alexander III
preferred Gatchina to any of his other palaces as a residence, as it
was so much smaller, Gatchina being a cosy little house of 600 rooms
only. I never saw it except once in mid-winter, when the Emperor
summoned the Ambassador there, and I was also invited. As the
far-famed beauties of Gatchina Park were covered with four feet of
snow, it would be difficult to pronounce an opinion upon them. The
rivers and lakes, the haunts of the celebrated Gatchina trout, were,
of course, also deep-buried.
Alexander III was a man of very simple tastes, and nothing could be
plainer than the large study in which he received us. Alexander III,
a Colossus of a man, had great dignity, combined with a geniality of
manner very different from the glacial hauteur of his father,
Alexander II. The Emperor was in fact rather partial to a humorous
anecdote, and some I recalled seemed to divert his Majesty. Outside
his study-door stood two gigantic negroes on guard, in Eastern
dresses of green and scarlet. The Empress Marie, though she did not
share her sister Queen Alexandra's wonderful beauty, had all of her
subtle and indescribable charm of manner, {209} and she was very
gracious to a stupid young Secretary-of-Embassy.
The bedroom given to me at Gatchina could hardly be described by the
standardised epithets for Russian interiors "bare, gaunt, and
whitewashed," as it had light blue silk walls embroidered with large
silver wreaths. The mirrors were silvered, and the bed stood in a
species of chancel, up four steps, and surrounded by a balustrade of
silvered carved wood. Both the Ambassador and I agreed that the
Imperial cellar fully maintained its high reputation. We were given
in particular some very wonderful old Tokay, a present from the
Emperor of Austria, a wine that was not on the market.
We were taken all over the palace, which contained, amongst other
things, a large riding-school and a full-sized theatre. The really
enchanting room was a large hall on the ground floor where many
generations of little Grand-Dukes and Grand-Duchesses had played.
As, owing to the severe winter climate, it is difficult for Russian
children to amuse themselves much out-of-doors, these large
play-rooms are almost a necessity in that frozen land. The Gatchina
play-room was a vast low hall, a place of many whitewashed arches.
In this delightful room was every possible thing that could attract a
child. At one end were two wooden Montagnes Busses, the descent of
which could be negotiated in little wheeled trollies. In another
corner was a fully-equipped gymnasium. There were "giants' strides,"
swings, swing-boats and a {210} merry-go-round. There was a toy
railway with switches and signal-posts complete, the locomotives of
which were worked by treadles, like a tricycle. There were dolls'
houses galore, and larger houses into which the children could get,
with real cooking-stoves in the little kitchens, and little parlours
in which to eat the results of their primitive culinary experiments.
There were mechanical orchestras, self-playing pianos and
barrel-organs, and masses and masses of toys. On seeing this
delectable spot, I regretted for the first time that I had not been
born a Russian Grand-Duke, between the ages though of five and twelve
only.
I believe that there is a similar room at Tsarskoe although I never
saw it.
{211}