I MET Alexander Alexandrovitch Beekof, the hunter of Archangel
at Moscow. He had purchased three fine pictures by our friend
Pereplotchikof, and they stood in his room in the Gostinny Dvor in
wooden packing cases. Alexander Alexandrovitch stood me a lunch at
Martianitch’s in the Red Square on a meatless day--a merchant’s
restaurant where you may see many antique Russian types of merchants
wearing knee boots and blouses and longish hair. We had a nice dish of
fish-pie (_rastegai_) with our soup, and though no wine was available,
the bill, as I saw, for the two of us was twenty roubles, and three
roubles more went for the tip. In that way war prosperity expressed
itself. My friend had to spend many days in Moscow collecting boots in
small parcels. As the Government allows no packing-cases with goods
to be taken by train from Moscow to Archangel (I imagine fine art is
exempted from this regulation), Alexander Alexandrovitch Beekof had to
buy some twenty portmanteaus to take his purchases of boots back to his
native city.
Pereplotchikof the painter is not very well. Heart weakness deprived
him of the use of his legs this summer. He was confined to his bed and
felt very wretched. I spent many mornings and evenings sitting and
talking to him. The doctors say that vegetarianism has been too much
for his constitution. One evening I brought him a quantity of rich
honey I had come across in a little shop in Moscow. He was delighted
as a child, and honey he said was ideal food for him. In exchange for
this gift he gave me an old cross which he had once picked up on a
market stall.
Alexey Sergeitch came with me to visit Pereplotchikof one evening and
was much touched to see the change in him. But we had a very lively
talk of old days on the Dwina. Alexey Sergeitch is now a teacher of
history in several secondary schools in Moscow. He has just published
his first book, the fruit of some historical research, and he looks
forward to writing other books of like character, so making a career
in history. He has the directly opposite view to mine regarding Russia
and we had many long and inconclusive debates on Church and State. His
sister, Varvara Sergevna, is nurse in an immense military hospital on
the Volhonka. I spent an evening up till midnight with her, helping
to cut rolls of linen for bandages with atrociously blunt scissors.
Russia has few machines for this work. Every night thousands of Russian
girls are arduously cutting linen as we did with Varvara.
Nicholas, my first Russian friend, whom I met in London ten years ago
and tried to learn Russian from, the boy who invited me to spend my
first Christmas in Russia at his father the deacon’s in Lisitchansk, is
now settled down and married, and has a family at Kishtim in the Urals,
where his knowledge of English has found him a place in the office of
an Anglo-Russian mining company.
Nicholas and I lived with another poor student, three in a room, in
Moscow--that was after the Christmas in the country. Our most intimate
friend was a certain Sasha, a gaunt but happy student of philology.
He used to bring stories and read them aloud to our weekly student
parties on Saturday evening. From him I heard first some of the stories
of Kuprin and also Chekhof’s Dushetchka or “Little Soul,” which Mrs.
Garnett has lately translated under the title of “The Darling”[6]--a
famous story. Sasha has grown cold to Nicholas now, and I had lost
sight of him, but the many references to my work in the Russian Press
brought to his mind the idea that the Englishman he once knew was the
same as the one now so well known. So he wrote to me, and I tried to
see him this summer--married now and in good circumstances, working in
the Russian Foreign Office.
[6] “The Darling” by Anton Chekhof tr. by Constance Garnett.
Julia, of whom I wrote in “The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary,” as
a type of a Martha, has had a year of pain, caught erysipelas from a
servant, and this developed into a sort of blood-poisoning. Sores
appeared all over her body, and then one big sore threatening her with
death; she has been, as it were, vivisected through the open wound all
the summer, and felt that she herself must have cut up live animals for
science’s sake in some previous existence, and is now living through
the animals’ experience that her soul may really know what it means.
She has been in terror lest her sisters should be infected from her
and she has been afraid lest she should die and they be left without
her motherly protection. Poor Julia! But I left her on a fair way to
recovery. Little Lena is very well. The old lady, the Queen of Spades,
is more frail and is suffering from the effects of a bad fall.
Varvara Ilyinitchna is much older, has lost a son, has had heart
attacks, and is bound to take things more easily. Alexander Fedotch
looks extremely well. The daughter is matron of a small hospital, and
has a wonderful time with her men.
Amelia Vasschevina, the old grandmother, has sold the white house,
has paid her debts and has a large margin over. I fear, however,
high prices will whittle her little fortune of ready money away. Her
daughter Masha, the despair of all doctors, suffering from an incurable
internal complaint which has been diagnosed as cancer, appendicitis,
neuritis, inflammation of the solar plexus and what not, and for
which she has had all manner of treatment and swallowed all sorts of
medicine, has recommenced her work as a dentist. And though suffering
agonies of pain she has the nerve to doctor teeth and smile at the
lugubrious and fearful faces of her patients. Poor Masha, she has been
cut open and examined and sewn up again, mesmerised, prayed into, and
this last spring a miracle worker was brought to consider her. He
always carried about with him an Indian sword.
He said: “Don’t tell me what you think is the matter with her or what
the symptoms are. That would only make it more difficult for me.” He
came into her room took out a bit of glass from a waistcoat pocket, and
looked at her face through it.
“You will live,” said he, and he dropped his glass and went away. “But
I charge you nothing,” he added, and he brandished his sword as he went
out at the door.
Loosha, of whom I have sometimes written, feels more happy than she has
ever done before. What the secret is I do not know. But she has begun
to write poetry.
Katia of Kief married the young lawyer. He was taken for the war, but
the family used influence to bring him back to a safe job in the rear.
I do not know what happened to discarded Boris.
Mme. Odintsefa is still keen on her evangelicals, and reads Spurgeon’s
sermons with the same enthusiasm as in old days she read Mrs. Besant.