TRAVEL IN RUSSIA
After Christmas, the second Duma was convened and opened. Its doings were
not interesting. It was not a representative body, as the elections had
been carefully arranged; still it was better than nothing, and the very
existence of a Duma of any kind exercised a negative effect on matters
in general. The Government could be interpellated. Questions could be
asked. The officials in the country knew that their doings could be
discussed in the Duma, and this acted as a check. In April 1907, I had
an interview with Count Witte. Witte was a large, tall, burly figure,
with slightly ravaged features, intelligent eyes, the facile opportunism
and the deep-seated scepticism of those who have had a long experience
of affairs, of the ruling of men, and the vicissitudes of political
life. He received me abruptly, and with a manner that, far from being
ingratiating, seemed to express the unspoken thought, “Why have you come
to bother me,” but as the conversation went on he melted and became
charming.
The first question he asked me was why I stayed such a long time in
Russia, I said it was because it interested me. I then said: “Things seem
to be going better.” “Do you think so?” he asked, with a look of amused
scepticism. I asked him what he thought of the doings of the Extreme
Right, the reactionaries, who were now playing a noisy and important part
in political and social life.
He said they were a great danger. The Government would never dare to
touch them. He said both the Right and the Kadets had lost faith in him.
The Kadets because he had not given them the key of the fortress, and
the reactionaries because he had not hung all the Liberals. He talked
of the Jewish question, and said that the Jews had begged him not to
give them full rights, as they dreaded the consequences of a sudden act
of that kind. He said he had always thought it impossible to give the
Jews full rights all at once. He said the Kadets were guilty of all that
had happened in Russia in the last year, because they had refused to
support him when he was Prime Minister, and had been unwilling to help
him. Had they done so he might have done a great deal. He then talked
of Stolypin. He said Stolypin was an honest man, with no foresight, and
a fatalist. “You can’t govern if you are a _fatalist_,” he said, with a
gesture of contempt. He said the present electoral law was a farce, and
that the only alternative was to change it or to go back to the pre-Duma
state of affairs; and that would not last long. He said that the Kadets
recognised their mistakes now, and their failure, and he heard from all
quarters they were willing to accept his leadership now, but it was too
late. For a thousand reasons he would never take office again after what
he had gone through. I asked him how the funds had been obtained for the
great general strike. He said it had all been prepared when Plehve was
Minister, and had been kept secret. He said he considered the situation
in October to have been one of real revolution, as there were then no
troops available to deal with the situation.
The impression he gave me was of disillusion, indifference, fatigue, and
invincible pessimism. He evidently thought that whatever steps would be
taken would be fatal, and he was perfectly right.
In May I went back to London and stayed there till the middle of July,
when I came back to St. Petersburg.
I then started for a journey down the Volga. I went by train from St.
Petersburg to Ribinsk. On the way to Ribinsk my carriage was occupied by
a party of workmen, including a carpenter and a wheelwright, who were
going to work on somebody’s property in the Government of Tver; they
did not know whose property, and they did not know whither they were
going. They were under the authority of an old man who came and talked
to me, because, he said, the company of the youths who were with him was
tedious. He told me a great many things, but as he was hoarse, and the
train made a rattling noise, I could not hear a word he said. There were
also in the carriage two Tartars and a small boy about thirteen years
old, who had a domineering character and put himself in charge of the
carriage. The discomfort of travelling third-class in Russia was not the
accommodation, but the frequent awakenings during the night caused by
passengers coming in and by the guard asking for one’s ticket. The small
boy with the domineering character—he wore an old military cap on the
back of his head as a sign of strength of purpose—contributed in no small
degree to the general discomfort. He apparently was in no need of sleep.
He went from passenger to passenger telling them where they would have
to change and where they would have to get out, and offering to open the
window if needed. I had a primitive candlestick made of a candle stuck
into a bottle; it fell on my head just as I went to sleep, so I put it
on the floor and went to sleep again. But the small boy came and waked
me, and told me that my bottle was on the floor, and that he had put it
back again. I thanked him, but directly he was out of sight I put it
back again on the floor, and before long he came back, waked me a second
time—and told me that my candlestick had again fallen down. This time I
told him, not without emphasis, to leave it alone, and I went to sleep
again. But the little boy was not defeated; he waked me again with the
information that a printed advertisement had fallen out of the book I had
been reading on to the floor. This time I told him that if he waked me
again I should throw him out of the window.
Later in the night a tidy-looking man of the middle-class entered the
carriage with his wife. They began to chatter, and to complain of the
length of the benches, the officious boy with the domineering character
lending them his sympathy and advice. This went on till one of the
Tartars could bear it no longer, and he called out in a loud voice that
if they wanted beds six yards long they had better not travel in a train,
and that they were making everybody else’s sleep impossible. I blessed
that Tartar not unawares, and after that there was peace.
Towards ten o’clock in the morning we arrived at Ribinsk, and there I
embarked on a steamer to go down the Volga, as far as Nijni-Novgorod. I
took a first-class ticket and received a clean deck cabin, containing
a leather sofa (with no blankets or sheets) and a washing-stand with a
fountain tap. We started at two o’clock in the afternoon. There were
few passengers on board. The Volga was not what I had expected it
would be like—what place is? I had imagined a vast expanse of water in
an illimitable plain, instead of which there was a broad, brown river,
with green, shelving though not steep banks, wooded with birch trees and
fir trees and many kinds of shrubs; sometimes the banks consisted of
sloping pastures and sometimes of cornfields. In the evening we arrived
at Yaroslav, a picturesque little city on the top of a steep bank. All
day long the sky had been grey and heavy, with long, piled-up clouds,
but the sun, as it set, made for itself a thin strip of gold beneath
the grey masses, and when it had sunk, the masses themselves glinted
like armour, and the strip beneath became a stretch of pure and luminous
twilight. In the twilight the town was seen at its best. I went ashore
and walked about the streets of the quiet city; a sleepy town, with trees
and grass everywhere (the trees dark in the twilight); the houses low,
two-storied, and painted white, with pale green roofs, ghostlike in the
dusk, ornamented with pilasters, eighteenth-century and Empire arches and
arcades. Every now and then one came across a church with gilt minarets
glistening in what remained of the sunset. The whole was a symphony in
dark green, white, and lilac (the sky was lilac by now). The shops were
shut, the houses shuttered, the passers-by few. The grass grew thick on
the cobble-stones. I wandered about thinking how well Vernon Lee would
seize on the _genius loci_ of this sleepy city, dreaming in the lilac
July twilight, with its alternate vistas of luminous white houses and
dark glooms of trees. How she would extract the spirit of the place, and
find the exact note in other places which it corresponded with, whether
in Gascony, or Tuscany, or Bavaria; and I reflected that all I could do
would be to say I had seen Yaroslav—I had walked about in it—and that it
was a picturesque city.
We left Yaroslav at eleven at night. In the dining-room of the steamer I
had left a Tauchnitz volume called _Fräulein Schmidt und Mr. Anstruther_,
by the author of _Elizabeth and her German Garden_. I was looking forward
to reading this before going to sleep; but this was not to be. The volume
had disappeared. The next morning the matter was explained. There was a
family travelling in the steamer, consisting of a mother, a daughter, and
a son. The mother was young looking, although both the daughter and son
were grown up; they had found the book, and thought (I suppose) it had
been left behind, or that it belonged to the public library. The book
occupied them for the rest of the journey. They talked of nothing else.
The mother had read it before. The daughter must have sat up late reading
it, because she handed it over to the son early in the morning. They all
thought it interesting, but they evidently disagreed about it. These are
the things which ought to please an author.
We reached Nijni-Novgorod the next morning at eight. I took a cab.
“Drive,” I said, “to the best hotel.” “There is the Hôtel Rossia at the
top of the town, and the Hôtel Petersburg at the bottom,” the cabman
answered. “Which is the best?” I asked. “The Hôtel Rossia is the best at
the top of the town,” he answered, “and the Hôtel Petersburg is the best
at the bottom.” “Which is the most central?” I asked. “The Rossia is the
most central at the top, and the Petersburg is the most central at the
bottom.” “Which is nearest the Fair?” “They are neither near the Fair.”
“Are there no hotels near the Fair?” “There are no hotels near the Fair
_in the town_.”
We drove to the Rossia, a long way up a very steep hill, past the
Kremlin—a hill like Windsor Hill, only twice as long. The Kremlin is like
Windsor, supposing the outside walls of Windsor had never been restored
and the castle were taken away. When we got to the hotel the cabman
said: “This part of the town is deserted in summer; nobody lives here;
everybody lives near the Fair.” “But I said I wanted to be in the Fair,”
I answered. “Oh!” he answered; “of course if you want to be _in_ the Fair
there are plenty of hotels in the Fair.” So we drove down again, right
into the lower part of the town, and thence across a large wooden bridge
into the Fair.
Nijni-Novgorod occupies both sides of the Volga. On one side there is
a steep hill, a Kremlin, and a town covering the hill till it reaches
the quays and extending along them;—on the other side a huge plain and
the Fair. The hill part of the town is wooded and green; the Fair was
a town in itself, and during the Fair period the whole business of
life—shops, including hotels, theatres, banks, baths, post, exchange,
restaurants—was transferred thither. The shops were one-storied and
occupied square blocks, which they intersected in parallel lines. They
were of every description and quality, ranging from the supply of the
needs of the extremely rich to those of the extremely poor. I found a
room in an hotel. The hotels were crowded, although I was told that the
Fair had never been so empty. It had not been open long, and merchants
were still arriving daily with their goods. The centre of the Fair was a
house called the “Glavnii Dom,” the principal house; here the post and
the police were concentrated, and the most important shops—Fabergé, for
instance. There were many dealers in furs and skins; I bought nothing,
in spite of great temptation, except a blanket and a clothes-brush. The
blankets were dear. Star sapphires, on the other hand, seemed to be as
cheap as dirt. I never quite understood when the people had their meals
at the Fair. The restaurants, and there were many, seemed to be empty
all day; they were certainly full all night. Perhaps the people did
not eat during the daytime. In every restaurant there was a theatrical
performance, which began at nine o’clock in the evening and went on until
four o’clock the next morning, with few interruptions; it consisted
mostly of singing and dancing.
What surprised and struck me most about the Fair was the great size of
it. I had not guessed that the Fair was a large town consisting entirely
of shops, hotels, and restaurants. The most important merchandise that
passed hands at the Fair was furs. But there were goods of every variety:
second-hand books, tea, and silks from China, gems from the Urals, and
_art nouveau_ furniture. There were also old curiosity shops rich in
church vestments, stiff copes and jewelled chasubles, which would be
found most useful by those people who like to furnish their drawing-rooms
entirely with objects diverted from their proper use; that is to say,
teapots made out of musical instruments and old book bindings. Nijni,
during the Fair, was almost entirely inhabited by merchants—merchants
of every kind and description. The majority of them wore loose Russian
shirts and top-boots. I noticed that at Nijni it did not in the least
signify how untidily one was dressed; however untidy one looked, one
was sure of being treated with respect, because slovenliness at Nijni
did not necessarily imply poverty, and the people of the place justly
reasoned that however sordid our exterior appearance might be, there was
no knowing but it might clothe a millionaire. Another thing which struck
me here, a thing which has struck me in several other places, was the way
in which people determined your nationality by your clothes. While they
paid no attention to _degree_ in the matter of clothes at Nijni, as to
whether they were shabby or new, they paid a great deal of attention to
kind. For instance, the day I arrived I was wearing an ordinary English
straw hat. This headgear caused quite a sensation amongst the sellers
of Astrakan fur. They crowded round me, crying out: “Vairy nice, vairy
cheap, Engleesh.” I bought a different kind of hat, a white yachting cap,
and loose silk Russian shirt, such as the merchants wore.
That evening I went to a restaurant at which there was a musical
performance. I fell into conversation with a young merchant sitting at
the next table, and he said to me after we had had some conversation:
“You are, I suppose, from the Caucasus.” I said “No.” We talked of
other things, the Far East among other topics. He then exclaimed: “You
are, I suppose, from the Far East.” I again said “No,” and we again
talked of other things. He had some friends with him who joined in the
conversation, and they were consumed with curiosity as to whence I had
come, and I told them they could guess. They guessed various places, such
as Archangel, Irkutsk, Warsaw, and Saghalien, and at last one of them
cried out with joy: “I know what place you belong to; you are a native of
Nijni.” They went away triumphant. Their place was taken by a very old
merchant, a rugged, grey-haired, bearded peasant. He looked on at the
singing and dancing which was taking place on the stage for some time,
and then he said to me: “Don’t you wish you were twenty years younger?”
I said I did, but I did not think that I should in that case be better
equipped for this particular kind of entertainment, as I should be only
twelve years old. “Impossible!” said the old man indignantly. “You are
quite bald, and bear every sign of old age.”
I left Nijni on the wrong steamer—that is to say, by a line I did not
mean to patronise, because I knew it was the worst. There was no help for
it, because my passport was not ready in time. I took a first-class cabin
on a big steamer full of children with their nurses and parents. The
children ran about the cabin all day long without stopping. Children, I
noticed, are the same all over the world: they play the same games, they
make the same noise. In this case there were five sisters and a small
brother. What reminded me much of all children in general, and of my own
experience as a child in particular, was that the boy suddenly began to
howl because his sisters wouldn’t let him play with them, and he cried
out: “I want to play too”; and the sisters, when the matter was finally
brought before an arbitration court of parents, who were playing cards,
said that the boy made all games impossible. Also there were three nurses
in the cabin, who, whatever the children did, told them not to do it; and
every now and then one heard familiar phrases such as “Don’t sit on the
oilcloth with your bare legs.” “Don’t lean out of the window with that
cold of yours.” The passengers on the boat were uninteresting.
There was a couple who spoke bad French to each other out of refinement,
but who relapsed into Russian when they had really something interesting
to say. There was a student who played the pianoforte with astonishing
facility and amazing execution; there were the elder sisters of the small
children, who also played the pianoforte in exactly the same way as young
people play it in England—that is to say, with convulsive jerks over the
difficult passages, and uninterrupted insistence on the loud pedal, and a
foolish bass. The grown-up members of the party played “Vindt” all day.
When we arrived at Kazan I got out to look at the town. It also possesses
a Kremlin with white walls and crenellated towers and old churches, a
museum of uninteresting objects, and a large monastery. It was the most
stagnant-looking city.
The Volga beyond Nijni is considerably broader. It is never less than
1200 yards in breadth, and from Nijni onwards, on the right bank of the
river, there is a range of lofty hills, mostly wooded, but sometimes
rocky and grassy, which go sheer down into the river. The left bank is
flat, and consists of green meadows. Below Kazan it is joined by the
river Kama, and becomes a mighty river, never less than three-quarters
of a mile in breadth. In various parts of its course the Volga reminded
me of almost every river I had ever seen, from the Dart to the Liao-he,
and from the Neckar to the Nile. Below Kazan its aspect was gloomy and
sombre, a great stretch of broad brown waters, a wooded mountainous bank
on one side, a monotonous plain on the other. But when the weather was
fine—and it was gloriously fine after we reached Kazan—the effects of
light on the great expanse of water were miraculous. It is at dawn that
you feel the magic of these waters; at dawn and at sunset when the great
broad expanse, turning to gold or to silver, according as the sky is
crimson, mauve, or rosy and grey, has a mystery and majesty of its own.
We met other steamers on the way, but during the whole voyage from Nijni
to Astrakan we only passed two small sailing boats.
I got out at Samara and spent the night at an hotel. The next day I
embarked again for Astrakan, after having explored the town, in which I
failed to find an object of interest. From Samara to Saratov the hills on
the right bank of the river diminish in size, and instead of descending
sheer into the river, they slope away from it; and as the hills diminish,
the vegetation grows more scanty. The left bank is flat and monotonous
as before. From Samara to Saratov I travelled third-class, to see what
it was like on board the steamer. There are on the steamer four official
classes and an unofficial fifth-class. The third-class have a general
cabin on the lower deck with two tiers of bunks. The fourth-class have
a kind of enclosure, which contains one large broad board on which they
encamp. The fourth-class contains the “steerage” passengers. It is
indescribably dirty. The fifth-class is composed of still dirtier and
still poorer people, who lie about on boxes, bales, or on whatever vacant
space they can find on the lower deck. They lie, for the most part, like
corpses, in a profound slumber, generally face downwards, flat upon
the floor. The third-class is respectable and decently clean; it has,
moreover, one immense advantage—some permanently open windows. In the
first-class there was among the company a great aversion to draughts.
They had not what someone once called “La passion des Anglais pour les
courants d’air.” In the third-class there was no such prejudice. The
passengers were various. There were two students, some merchants, twenty
Cossacks going home on leave, a policeman, a public servant, several
peasants, and a priest.
On the bunk just over mine sprawled a large bearded Cossack, who at once
asked me where I was going, my occupation, my country, and my name. I
told him that I was a newspaper correspondent and an Englishman. I then
lay down on my bunk. Another Cossack from the other side of the cabin
called out at the top of his voice to the man who was over me: “Who is
that man?” “He is a foreigner.” “Is he travelling with goods?” “No; he
is just travelling, nothing more.” “Where does he come from?” “I don’t
know.” Then, looking down at me from his bunk, the Cossack who was above
me said: “Thou art quite bald, little father. Is it illness that did it,
or nature?” “Nature,” I answered. “Shouldst try an ointment,” he said. “I
have tried many and strong ointments,” I said, “including onion, tar, and
paraffin, none of which were of any avail. There is nothing to be done.”
“No,” said the Cossack, with a sigh. “There is nothing to be done. It is
God’s business.”
There was no particular discomfort in travelling third-class in the
steamer. The bunks, with the aid of blankets, were as comfortable as
those in the first-class. One could obtain the same food, and there was
plenty of fresh air. Nevertheless, if one only travelled thus for a day
and a night, it was indescribably fatiguing, because one had to change
and readjust one’s hours. For at the first streak of dawn, the people
began to talk, and by sunrise they had washed and were having tea. It is
not as if they went to bed earlier. For all day long they talked, and
they went to sleep quite late, about eleven. But they had the blessed
gift, possessed by Napoleon, of snatching half-hours or five minutes
of sleep whenever they felt in need of it. If one travelled like this
for several days running, one got used to it, of course, and one also
acquired the habit of snatching sleep at odd moments during the daytime;
but if one travelled like this for a day or two, it was, as I have said
already, extremely tiring.
The public servant, who had a small post in some provincial town, came
and talked to me. He asked me if Chaliapine, the famous singer, had
sung at Nijni. Chaliapine, he added, was his master. “I have,” he said,
“a magnificent bass voice.” “Are you fond of music?” I asked. “Fond
of music!” he cried. “When I hear music I am like a wild animal. I go
mad.” “Do you mean to go on the stage?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “when
I have learnt enough. In the meantime I am a public servant—I am in
the Government service.” “That, I suppose, you find tedious?” I said.
“It is more than tedious; it is disgusting,” and he began to abuse the
Government. I said: “There is a great difference between the Russia
of to-day and the Russia of four years ago.” “There is no difference
at all,” he said; “we have obtained absolutely nothing except paper
promises.” I said: “I am not talking of what the Government has done or
failed to do; I am talking of the general aspect of things, of Russian
life as it strikes a foreigner. I was here three or four years ago, and
I am struck by the great difference between then and now. Had I met you
then, you would not have talked politics with me; there were no politics
to talk.” “That is true,” he answered; “we have now a political life.”
Here one of the Cossacks asked him who he was. “I am a famous singer,” he
answered. “I have sung at the Merchants’ Club at the district town of A⸺.
I am a pupil of Chaliapine, who is the king of basses and is well known
throughout the whole civilised world, and who has sung in America. He is
a Russian. Think of that.” The Cossack seemed impressed. The singer got
out at one of the stations.
The people in the cabin had their meals at different times of the day;
the chief meal was tea, which took place twice a day. Every time we
stopped at a place a crowd of beggars invaded our cabin asking for alms.
The interesting point is that they received them. They were never sent
empty away, and were invariably given either some coppers, some bread,
or some melon. I am sure there is no country in the world where people
give so readily to the poor as in Russia. One had only to walk about the
streets in any Russian town to notice this fact. Here in the third-class
saloon it especially struck me. I did not see one single beggar turned
away without a gift of some kind. One little boy was given a piece of
bread and a large slice of water-melon.
At the many small stations at which we called on the banks of the river
there were crowds of itinerant vendors selling various descriptions of
food—hot pies, fried fish, gigantic water-melons, apples, red currants,
and cucumbers. The whole duration of each stop at any of these places was
occupied by the unloading and loading of the steamer with goods. This
was done by a horde of creatures in red and blue shirts called loaders,
who had a kind of ledge strapped on to their backs which enabled them to
support enormous loads. Like big gnomes, during the whole of the stop,
they scurried from the hold of the steamer to the wooden quay and back
again to the steamer. On the quay itself, either placidly looking on and
munching sunflower seeds, or else wildly gesticulating over a bargain
at a booth, a motley herd of passengers and inhabitants of the place
swarmed: many-coloured, bright, ragged, and squalid, like the crowds
depicted in a sacred picture waiting for a miracle or a parable under the
burning sky of Palestine.
Samara and Saratov have not the features which characterise the towns
of the Upper Volga. They have no Kremlin, no remains of a fortress
dominating the town and enclosed in old walls. Saratov is a collection of
wooden houses which look as if they had been made by a Swiss artisan for
the Earl’s Court Exhibition and exposed on the side of a steep hill.
Between Saratov and Tzaritsin the character of the river changes
altogether, the vegetation begins to dwindle; the great hills on the
right bank of the river diminish, and the farther one travels south,
the lower they become. The left bank is flat, monotonous, and green as
before. The river itself broadens, and in some places it is several
kilometres wide. You get the impression that you are travelling on a
large lake or on a sea, rather than on a river. The farther south one
travels, the greater is the beauty of the river. It is a solemn, majestic
river; one understands its having been the mother and inspirer of a
quantity of poetry, of folk-song and folk-lore; and one understands, too,
how appropriate the deep octaves, the broad, slow-dying notes and echoes
of the Volga songs are to these great, melancholy spaces of shining
water. Every day on the steamer between Saratov and Astrakan I awoke at
dawn and went out on to the deck to sniff the freshness and to watch the
process of daybreak. The soft, grey sky trembled into a delicate tint of
lilac, and over the far-off banks of the river, which were distant enough
to have the appearance of a range of _violet_ hills, came the first blush
of dawn, and then a deeper rose, while the whole upper sky was washed
with a clean daffodil colour, which was reflected in silver on the blue
water. And then the sun rose—a huge red ball of fire, casting golden
scales beneath him on to the water.
Towards noon, perhaps, the sky would be piled with white clouds, and the
river look like an immense hard glass, reflecting in unruffled detail
every curve and shadow of the cloudland, and the small motionless trees
of the banks which in the sunless heat are as unreal as a mirage. Later
in the afternoon the water seemed to grow more and more luminous; the
sensation of some kind of enchantment, of something wizard-like and
unreal, increased, and one would not have been surprised to catch sight
of the walls of Tristram’s Castle-in-the-air, the wizard walls, to
which he promised to bring Iseult—the castle built of the stuff which
rainbows are made of, of fire, dew, and the colours of the morning. But
with the sunset this feeling of unreality and enchantment ceased; the
nearer bank stood out in sharp outline, intensely real, between purple
skies and grey waters; and over the farther bank hung the intense blue
of woody distances. Between Tzaritsin and Astrakan the character of the
river changes yet again. The hills on the right bank vanish altogether;
both the banks were flat now—unlimited steppes with scant vegetation,
culminating in steep banks of yellow sand. It was here that the river
reminded me of the Nile.
Tzaritsin itself is a great trade centre; the best caviare and the
best water-melons used to be obtained there. Most of the third-class
passengers got out at Tzaritsin. I was amused by the process, which I
watched on shore, of a huge block of stone being hauled up a hill by a
gang of workmen. The spectacle was so utterly unlike anything in other
countries. Pieces of rock are also hauled up hills in other lands, but
the manner in which it is done is different. Seven men were hauling
the rope; they were ragged, dirty, and dressed in red and blue shirts,
stained and dusty, while their tufts of yellow hair stuck out of their
tattered peaked caps. By the block of stone stood the leader of the
gang. Then suddenly, when he thought the time had come, he intoned a
chant, a solo, about fifteen notes, which might have been written in the
Scotch scale (the scale of G major without the F sharp), plaintive and
unexpected; then he beat time with a wave of his left hand, and at the
fourth beat, the whole gang chimed in, imitating the melody in a rough
counterpoint, and hauling as they sang, and then abruptly ending on the
dominant. After a short pause, the leader again intoned his solo and the
chorus again repeated and imitated the plaintive melody, and this was
repeated till the block of stone was hauled up the hill.
The climate, when Tzaritsin was passed, grew hotter and hotter, and
the breeze made by the steamer only increased the heat. The moon rose,
and for a while the sky was still tinged with the stain of the sunset
in the west, and the water was luminous with a living whiteness. Then,
rapidly, because the twilight did not last long here, came the darkness,
and with it something strange and wonderful. We became conscious of an
extraordinary fragrance in the air. It was not merely the sweetness of
summer night. It was a pungent and aromatic incense which pervaded the
atmosphere—warm and delicious and filled with the essence of summer.
It was intoxicating; it came over you like a great wave, a breath of
Elysium. And the night with its web of stars, and the dark waters, and
the thin line of the far-off banks, made you once more lose the sense of
reality. You had reached another world—the nether-world, perhaps; you
breathed “the scent of alien meadows far away,” and you felt as if you
were sailing down the river of oblivion to the harbours of Proserpine.
This wonderful sweetness came, I learnt, from the new-mown hay, the
mowing of which takes place late here. The hay lay in great masses over
the steppes, embalming the midnight air and turning the world into
paradise.
On reaching Astrakan, you were plunged into the atmosphere of the
East. On the quays there were many booths groaning with every kind of
fruit, and a coloured herd of people living in the dust and the dirt;
splendidly squalid, noisy as parrots, and busy doing nothing, like wasps.
The railway to Astrakan was not yet finished, so you were obliged to
return to Tzaritsin by steamer if you wished to get back to the centre
of Russia. I pursued this course, and from Tzaritsin took the train for
Tambov. The train started from Tzaritsin at two o’clock in the morning;
I arrived at the station at midnight, and at this hour the station was
crammed with people. Imagine a huge high waiting-room with three tables
d’hôte parallel to each other in the centre of it; at one end of the
hall a buffet; on the sides of it, under the windows, tables and long
seats padded with leather, partitioned off and forming open cubicles.
These seats were always occupied, and the occupants went to bed on them,
wrapped up in blankets, and propped up by pillows, bags, rugs, baskets,
kettles, and other impedimenta. The whole of this refreshment hall was
filled with sleeping figures. There were people lying asleep on the
window-sills, and others on chairs placed together. Some merely laid
their heads on the table d’hôte, and fell into a deep slumber. It was
like the scene in _The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood_, when sleep overtook
the inhabitants of the castle. There was a bookstall and a newspaper
kiosk. The bookstall contained—as usual—the works of Jerome K. Jerome
and Conan Doyle, some translations of French novels, some political
pamphlets, a translation of John Morley’s _Compromise_, and an essay on
Ruskin—a strange medley of literary food. At the newspaper kiosk, the
newsvendor was so busily engrossed in reading out a story, which had
just appeared in the newspapers, about a saintly peasant who killed a
baby because he thought it was the Antichrist, that it was impossible
to attract his attention. His audience were the policeman, one of the
porters, and a kind of sub-guard. The story was indeed a curious one, and
caused a considerable stir. I wrote about it later on in the _Morning
Post_. ’
The journey to Tambov was long; in my carriage a railway official drank
tea, ate apples, and sighed over the political condition of the country.
Everything was as bad as bad could be. “It is a sad business,” he said,
“living in Russia now.” Then, after some reflection, he added: “But,
perhaps in other countries—in England, for instance—people sometimes find
fault with the Government.” I told him they did little else. He then took
a large roll out of a basket, and after he had been munching it for some
time, he said: “After all, there is no country in the world where such
good bread can be got as this.” This seemed to console him greatly.
The sunflower season had arrived. Sunflowers used to be grown in great
quantities in Russia, not for ornamental but for utilitarian purposes.
They were grown for the oil that is in them; but besides being useful
in many ways they formed an article of food. You pick the head of the
sunflower and eat the seeds. You bite the seed, spit out the husk, and
eat the kernel, which is white and tastes of sunflower. Considerable
skill is needed when cracking the husk and spitting it out, to leave
the kernel intact. This habit was universal among the lower classes in
Russia. It occupies a human being like smoking, and it is a pleasant
adjunct to contemplation. It is also conducive to untidiness. Nothing is
so untidy in the world as a room or a platform littered with sunflower
seeds. All platforms in Russia were thus, littered at this time of year.
When I was on the steamer at Tzaritsin, one of the Cossacks approached
me with this question, which seemed startling: “Do you chew seeds?” At
first I was at a loss to think what he meant, but I soon remembered the
sunflower, and when I had answered in the affirmative, he produced a
great handful of dried seeds and offered them to me. When I arrived at my
destination, Sosnofka, in the government of Tambov, I found the country
looking intensely green after a wet summer; the weather was hot, and the
nights had the softness and the sweetness that should belong to the month
of June.
I found a large crowd at the station gathered round a pillar of smoke
and flame. At first I thought, of course, that a village fire was going
on. Fires in Russian villages were common occurrences in the summer, and
this was not surprising, as the majority of the houses were thatched
with straw. The houses were so close one to another, and the ground was
littered with straw. Moreover, to set fire to one’s neighbour’s house
used to be a common form of paying off a score. But it was not a fire
that was in progress. It was the casting of a bell. The ceremony was
fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, with due solemnity and with
religious rites, and I was invited to be present.
“Heute muss die Glocke werden,”
wrote Schiller in his famous poem, and here the words were appropriate.
This day the bell was to be. It was a blazing hot day. The air was
dry, the ground was dry, everything was dry, and the great column of
smoke mixed with flame issuing from the furnace added to the heat. The
furnace had been made exactly opposite to the church. The church was a
stone building with a Doric portico, four red columns, a white pediment,
a circular pale green roof, and a Byzantine minaret. The village of
Sosnofka had wooden log-built cottages thatched with straw dotted over
the rolling plain. The plain was variegated with woods—oak trees and
birch being the principal trees—and stretched out infinitely into the
blue distance. Before the bell was to be cast a Te Deum was to be sung.
It was Wednesday, the day of the bazaar. The bazaar in the village of
Somotka was the mart, where the buying and selling of meat, provisions,
fruit, melons, fish, hardware, iron-mongery, china, and books were
conducted. It happened once a week on Wednesdays, and peasants flocked
in from the neighbouring villages to buy their provisions. But that
afternoon the bazaar was deserted. The whole population of the village
had gathered together on the dry, brown, grassy square in front of the
church to take part in the ceremony. At four o’clock two priests and a
deacon, followed by a choir (two men in their Sunday clothes), and by
bearers of gilt banners, walked in procession out of the church. They
were dressed in stiff robes of green and gold, and as they walked they
intoned a plain-song. An old card-table, with a stained green cloth, was
placed and opened on the ground opposite, and not far from the church,
and on this two lighted tapers were set, together with a bowl of holy
water. The peasants gathered round in a semicircle with bare heads, and
joined in the service, making many genuflexions and signs of the Cross,
and joining in the song with their deep bass voices. When I said the
peasants, I should have said half of them. The other half were gathered
in a dense crowd round the furnace, which was built of bricks, and open
on both sides to the east and to the west, and fed with wooden fuel. The
men in charge of the furnace stood on both sides of it and stirred the
molten metal it contained with two enormous poles.
On one side of the furnace a channel had been prepared through which
the metal was to flow into the cast of the bell. The crowd assembled
there was already struggling to have and to hold a good place for the
spectacle of the release of the metal when the solemn moment should
arrive. Three policemen tried to restrain the crowd; that is to say,
one police officer, one police sergeant, and one common policeman. They
were trying with all their might to keep back the crowd, so that when
the metal was released a disaster should not happen; but their efforts
were in vain, because the crowd was large, and when they pressed back a
small portion of it they made a dent in it which caused the remaining
part of it to bulge out; and it was the kind of crowd—so intensely
typical of Russia—on which no words, whether of command, entreaty, or
threat, made the smallest impression. The only way to keep it back was
by pressing on it with the body and outstretched arms, and that only
kept back a tiny portion of it. In the meantime the Te Deum went on and
on; and many things and persons were prayed for besides the bell which
was about to be born. At one moment I obtained a place from which I had
a commanding view of the furnace, but I was soon oozed out of it by the
ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and children.
The whole thing was something between a sacred picture and a scene in a
Wagner opera. The tall peasants with red shirts, long hair, and beards,
stirring the furnace with long poles, looked like the persons in the epic
of the _Niebelungen_ as we see it performed on the stage to the strains
of a complicated orchestration. There was Wotan in a blue shirt, with a
spear; and Alberic, with a grimy face and a hammer, was meddling with
the furnace; and Siegfried, in leather boots and sheepskin, was smoking
a cigarette and waving an enormous hammer; while Mimi, whining and
disagreeable as usual, was having his head smacked. On the other hand,
the peasants who were listening and taking part in the Te Deum, were
like the figures of a sacred picture—women with red-and-white Eastern
head-dresses, bearded men listening as though expecting a miracle, and
barefooted children, with straw-coloured hair and blue eyes, running
about everywhere. Towards six o’clock the Te Deum at last came to an end,
and the crowd moved and swayed around the furnace. The Russian crowd
reminded me of a large tough sponge. Nothing seemed to make any effect
on it. It absorbed the newcomers who dived into it, and you could pull
it this way and press it that way, but there it remained; indissoluble,
passive, and obstinate. Perhaps the same is true of the Russian nation;
I think it is certainly true of the Russian character, in which there is
so much apparent weakness and softness, so much obvious elasticity and
malleability, and so much hidden passive resistance.
I asked a peasant who was sitting by a railing under the church when the
ceremony would begin. “Ask them,” he answered; “they will tell you, but
they won’t tell us.” With the help of the policeman, I managed to squeeze
a way through the mass of struggling humanity to a place in the first
row. I was told that the critical moment was approaching, and was asked
to throw a piece of silver into the furnace, so that the bell might have
a tuneful sound. I threw a silver rouble into the furnace, and the men
who were in charge of the casting said that the critical moment had come.
On each side of the small channel they fixed metal screens and placed a
large screen facing it. The man in charge said in a loud, matter-of-fact
tone: “Now, let us pray to God.” The peasants uncovered themselves and
made the sign of the Cross. A moment was spent in silent prayer. This
prayer was especially for the success of the operation which was to take
place immediately, namely, the release of the molten metal. Two hours had
already been spent in praying for the bell. At this moment the excitement
of the crowd reached such a pitch that they pushed themselves right up
to the channel, and the efforts of the policemen, who were pouring down
with perspiration, and stretching out in vain their futile arms, like the
ghosts in Virgil, were pathetic. One man, however, not a policeman, waved
a big stick and threatened to beat everybody back if they did not make
way. Then, at last, the culminating moment came; the metal was released,
and it poured down the narrow channel which had been prepared for it,
and over which two logs placed crosswise formed an arch, surmounted by
a yachting cap, for ornament. A huge yellow sheet of flame flared up
for a moment in front of the iron screen facing the channel. The women
in the crowd shrieked. Those who were in front made a desperate effort
to get back, and those who were at the back made a desperate effort to
get forward, and I was carried right through and beyond the crowd in the
struggle.
The bell was born. I hoped the silver rouble which I threw into it, and
which now formed a part of it, would sweeten its utterance, and that it
might never have to sound the alarm which signifies battle, murder, and
sudden death. A vain hope—an idle wish.