To maintain such numbers of servants as were kept in our house would
have been ruinous if all provisions had to be bought at Moscow; but in
those times of serfdom things were managed very simply. When winter
came, father sat at his table and wrote the following:--
‘To the manager of my estate, Nikólskoye, situated in the government
of Kalúga, district of Meschóvsk, on the river Siréna, from the Prince
Alexéi Petróvich Kropótkin, Colonel and Commander of various orders.
‘On receipt of this, and as soon as winter communication is
established, thou art ordered to send to my house, situated in the
city of Moscow, twenty-five peasant-sledges, drawn by two horses each,
one horse from each house, and one sledge and one man from each second
house, and to load them with [so many] quarters of oats, [so many] of
wheat, and [so many] of rye, as also with all the poultry and geese
and ducks, well frozen, which have to be killed this winter, well
packed and accompanied by a complete list, under the supervision of a
well-chosen man;’ and so it went on for a couple of pages, till the
next full-stop was reached. After this there followed an enumeration of
the penalties which would be inflicted in case the provisions should
not reach the house situated in such a street, number so-and-so, in due
time and in good condition.
Some time before Christmas the twenty-five peasant-sledges really
entered our gates, and covered the surface of the wide yard.
‘Frol!’ shouted my father, as soon as the report of this great event
reached him. ‘Kiryúshka! Yegórka! Where are they? Everything will be
stolen! Frol, go and receive the oats! Uliána, go and receive the
poultry! Kiryúshka, call the princess!’
All the household was in commotion, the servants running wildly in
every direction, from the hall to the yard, and from the yard to the
hall, but chiefly to the maid-servants’ room, to communicate there the
Nikólskoye news: ‘Pásha is going to marry after Christmas. Aunt Anna
has surrendered her soul to God,’ and so on. Letters had also come from
the country, and very soon one of the maids would steal upstairs into
my room.
‘Are you alone? The teacher is not in?’
‘No, he is at the university.’
‘Well, then, be kind and read me this letter from mother.’
And I would read to her the naïve letter, which always began with the
words, ‘Father and mother send you their blessing for ages not to be
broken.’ After this came the news: ‘Aunt Eupraxie lies ill, all her
bones aching; and your cousin is not yet married, but hopes to be after
Easter; and aunt Stepanída’s cow died on All Saints’ day.’ Following
the news came the greetings, two pages of them: ‘Brother Paul sends you
his greetings, and the sisters Mary and Dária send their greetings,
and then uncle Dmítri sends his many greetings,’ and so on. However,
notwithstanding the monotony of the enumeration, each name awakened
some remarks: ‘Then she is still alive, poor soul, if she sends her
greetings; it is nine years since she has lain motionless.’ Or, ‘Oh, he
has not forgotten me; he must be back, then, for Christmas; such a nice
boy. You will write me a letter, won’t you? and I must not forget him
then.’ I promised, of course, and when the time came I wrote a letter
in exactly the same style.
When the sledges had been unloaded, the hall filled with peasants. They
had put on their best coats over their sheepskins, and waited until
father should call them into his room to have a talk about the snow and
the prospects of the next crops. They hardly dared to walk in their
heavy boots on the polished floor. A few ventured to sit down on the
edge of an oak bench; they emphatically refused to make use of chairs.
So they waited for hours, looking with alarm upon everyone who entered
father’s room or issued from it.
Some time later on, usually next morning, one of the servants would run
slyly upstairs to the class-room.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then go quickly to the hall. The peasants want to see you; something
from your nurse.’
When I went down to the hall, one of the peasants would give me
a little bundle containing perhaps a few rye cakes, half a dozen
hard-boiled eggs, and some apples, tied in a motley coloured cotton
kerchief. ‘Take that: it is your nurse, Vasilísa, who sends it to you.
Look if the apples are not frozen. I hope not: I kept them all the
journey on my breast. Such a fearful frost we had.’ And the broad,
bearded face, covered with frost-bites, would smile radiantly, showing
two rows of beautiful white teeth from beneath quite a forest of hair.
‘And this is for your brother, from his nurse Anna,’ another peasant
would say, handing me a similar bundle. ‘“Poor boy,” she says, “he can
never have enough at school.”’
Blushing and not knowing what to say, I would murmur at last, ‘Tell
Vasilísa that I kiss her, and Anna too, for my brother.’ At which all
faces would become still more radiant.
‘Yes, I will, to be sure.’
Then Kiríla, who kept watch at father’s door, would whisper suddenly,
‘Run quickly upstairs; your father may come out in a moment. Don’t
forget the kerchief; they want to take it back.’
As I carefully folded the worn kerchief, I most passionately desired to
send Vasilísa something. But I had nothing to send, not even a toy, and
we never had pocket-money.
* * * * *
Our best time, of course, was in the country. As soon as Easter
and Whitsuntide had passed, all our thoughts were directed towards
Nikólskoye. However, time went on--the lilacs must be past blooming at
Nikólskoye--and father had still thousands of affairs to keep him in
town. At last, five or six peasant-carts entered our yard: they came
to take all sorts of things which had to be sent to the country house.
The great old coach and the other coaches in which we were going to
make the journey were taken out and inspected once more. The boxes
began to be packed. Our lessons made slow progress; at every moment we
interrupted our teachers, asking whether this or that book should be
taken with us, and long before all others we began packing our books,
our slates, and our toys, which were of our own making.
Everything was ready: the peasant-carts stood heavily loaded with
furniture for the country house, boxes containing the kitchen utensils,
and almost countless empty glass jars which were to be brought back in
the autumn filled with all kinds of preserves. The peasants waited
every morning for hours in the hall; but the order for leaving did
not come. Father continued to write all the morning in his room, and
disappeared at night. Finally, our stepmother interfered, her maid
having ventured to report that the peasants were very anxious to
return, as haymaking was near.
Next afternoon, Frol, the major-domo, and Mikhael Aléeff, the first
violin, were called into father’s room. A sack containing the ‘food
money’--that is, a few coppers a day--for each of the forty or fifty
souls who were to accompany the household to Nikólskoye, was handed
to Frol, with a list. All were enumerated in that list: the band
in full; then the cooks and the under-cooks, the laundresses, the
under-laundress, who was blessed with a family of six mites, ‘Polka
Squinting,’ ‘Domna the Big One,’ ‘Domna the Small One,’ and the rest of
them.
The first violin received an ‘order of march.’ I knew it well, because
father, seeing that he never would be ready, had called me to copy it
into the book, in which he used to copy all ‘outgoing papers’:--
‘To my house servant, Mikhael Aléeff, from Prince Alexéi Petróvich
Kropótkin, Colonel and Commander.
‘Thou art ordered, on May 29, at six A.M., to march out with my loads,
from the city of Moscow, for my estate, situated in the government
of Kalúga, district of Meschóvsk, on the river Siréna, representing
a distance of one hundred and sixty miles from this house; to look
after the good conduct of the men entrusted to thee, and if any one
of them proves to be guilty of misconduct, or of drunkenness, or of
insubordination, to bring the said man before the commander of the
garrison detachment of the separate corps of the interior garrisons,
with the inclosed circular letter, and to ask that he may be punished
by flogging [the first violin knew who was meant], as an example to the
others.
‘Thou art ordered, moreover, to look especially after the integrity
of the goods entrusted to thy care, and to march according to the
following order: First day, stay at village So-and-So, to feed the
horses; second day, spend the night at the town of Podólsk;’ and so on
for all the seven or eight days that the journey would last.
Next day, at ten instead of at six--punctuality is not a Russian
virtue (‘Thank God, we are not Germans,’ true Russians used to say),
the carts left the house. The servants had to make the journey on
foot; only the children were accommodated with a seat in a bath-tub
or basket, on the top of a loaded cart, and some of the women might
find an occasional resting-place on the ledge of a cart. The others
had to walk all the hundred and sixty miles. As long as they were
marching through Moscow, discipline was maintained: it was peremptorily
forbidden to wear top-boots or to pass a belt over the coat. But when
they were on the road, and we overtook them a couple of days later, and
especially when it was known that father would stay a few days longer
at Moscow, the men and the women--dressed in all sorts of impossible
coats, belted with cotton handkerchiefs, burned by the sun or dripping
under the rain, and helping themselves along with sticks cut in the
woods--certainly looked more like a wandering band of gypsies than the
household of a wealthy landowner. Similar peregrinations were made by
every household in those times, and when we saw a file of servants
marching along one of our streets, we at once knew that the Apúkhtins
or the Pryánishnikoffs were migrating.
The carts were gone, yet the family did not move. All of us were sick
of waiting; but father still continued to write interminable orders to
the managers of his estates, and I copied them diligently into the big
‘outgoing book.’ At last the order to start was given. We were called
downstairs. My father read aloud the order of march, addressed to ‘the
Princess Kropótkin, wife of Prince Alexéi Petróvich Kropótkin, Colonel
and Commander,’ in which the halting-places during the five days’
journey were duly enumerated. True, the order was written for May 30,
and the departure was fixed for nine A.M., though May was gone, and the
departure took place in the afternoon: this upset all calculations.
But, as is usual in military marching-orders, this circumstance had
been foreseen, and was provided for in the following paragraph:--
‘If, however, contrary to expectation, the departure of your highness
does not take place at the said day and hour, you are requested to act
according to the best of your understanding, in order to bring the said
journey to its best issue.’
Then, all present, the family and the servants, sat down for a moment,
signed themselves with the cross, and bade my father good-bye. ‘I
entreat you, Alexis, don’t go to the club,’ our stepmother whispered to
him. The great coach, drawn by four horses, with a postillion, stood
at the door, with its little folding ladder to facilitate climbing in;
the other coaches also were there. Our seats were enumerated in the
marching-orders, but our stepmother had to exercise ‘the best of her
understanding’ even at that early stage of the proceedings, and we
started to the great satisfaction of all.
The journey was an inexhaustible source of enjoyment for us children.
The stages were short, and we stopped twice a day to feed the horses.
As the ladies screamed at the slightest declivity of the road, it was
found more convenient to alight each time the road went up or down
hill, which it did continually, and we took advantage of this to have a
peep into the woods by the roadside, or a run along some crystal brook.
The beautifully kept high road from Moscow to Warsaw, which we followed
for some distance, was covered, moreover, with a variety of interesting
objects: files of loaded carts, groups of pilgrims, and all sorts of
people. Twice a day we stopped in large, animated villages, and after
a good deal of bargaining about the prices to be charged for hay and
oats, as well as for the samovárs, we dismounted at the gates of an
inn. Cook Andréi bought a chicken and made the soup, while we ran in
the meantime to the next wood, or examined the farmyard, the gardens,
the inner life of the inn.
At Máloyaroslávetz, where a battle was fought in 1812, when the Russian
army vainly attempted to stop Napoleon in his retreat from Moscow,
we usually spent the night. M. Poulain, who had been wounded in the
Spanish campaign, knew, or pretended to know, everything about the
battle at Máloyaroslávetz. He took us to the battlefield, and explained
how the Russians tried to check Napoleon’s advance, and how the Grande
Armée crushed them and made its way through the Russian lines. He
explained it as well as if he himself had taken part in the battle.
Here the Cossacks attempted _un mouvement tournant_, but Davout, or
some other marshal, routed them and pursued them just beyond these
hills on the right. There the left wing of Napoleon crushed the Russian
infantry, and here Napoleon himself, at the head of the Old Guard,
charged Kutúzoff’s centre, and covered himself and his Guard with
undying glory.
We once took the old Kalúga route, and stopped at Tarútino; but here M.
Poulain was much less eloquent. For it was at this place that Napoleon,
who intended to retreat by a southern route, was compelled, after a
bloody battle, to abandon his plan, and was forced to take the Smolénsk
route, which his army had laid waste during its march on Moscow.
However, in M. Poulain’s narrative, Napoleon did not lose the battle:
he was only deceived by his marshals; otherwise he would have marched
straight upon Kíeff and Odéssa, and his eagles would have floated over
the Black Sea.
Beyond Kalúga we had to cross for a stretch of five miles a beautiful
pine forest, which remains connected in my memory with some of the
happiest reminiscences of my childhood. The sand in that forest was as
deep as in an African desert, and we went all the way on foot, while
the horses, stopping every moment, slowly dragged the carriages in the
sand. When I was in my teens, it was my delight to leave the family
behind, and to walk the whole distance by myself. Immense red pines,
centuries old, rose on every side, and not a sound reached the ear
except the voices of the lofty trees. In a small ravine a fresh crystal
spring murmured, and a passer-by had left in it, for the use of those
who should come after him, a small funnel-shaped ladle, made of birch
bark, with a split stick for a handle. Noiselessly a squirrel ran up a
tree, and the underwood was as full of mysteries as were the trees. In
that forest my first love of Nature and my first dim perception of its
incessant life were born.
Beyond the forest, and past the ferry which took us over the Ugrá, we
left the high road and entered narrow country lanes, where green ears
of rye bent toward the coach, and the horses managed to bite mouthfuls
of grass on either side of the way, as they ran, closely pressed to
one another in the narrow, trenchlike road. At last we saw the willows
which marked the approach to our village, and suddenly we caught sight
of the elegant, pale-yellow bell tower of the Nikólskoye church.
* * * * *
For the quiet life of the landlords of those times Nikólskoye was
admirably suited. There was nothing in it of the luxury which is seen
in richer estates; but an artistic hand was visible in the planning of
the buildings and gardens, and in the general arrangement of things.
Besides the main house, which father had recently built, there were,
round a spacious and well-kept yard, several smaller houses, which
gave a greater degree of independence to their inhabitants, without
destroying the close intercourse of the family life. An immense
‘upper garden’ was devoted to fruit-trees, and through it the church
was reached. The southern slope of the land, which led to the river,
was entirely given up to a pleasure garden, where flower-beds were
intermingled with alleys of lime-trees, lilacs, and acacias. From the
balcony of the main house there was a beautiful view of the Siréna,
with the ruins of an old earthen fortress where the Russians had
offered a stubborn resistance during the Mongol invasion, and farther
on, the boundless yellow grain-fields, with copses of woods on the
horizon.
In the early years of my childhood we occupied with M. Poulain one of
the separate houses entirely by ourselves; and after his method of
education was softened by the intervention of our sister Hélène, we
were on the best possible terms with him. Father was invariably absent
from home in the summer, which he spent in military inspections, and
our stepmother did not pay much attention to us, especially after her
own child, Pauline, was born. We were thus always with M. Poulain, who
thoroughly enjoyed the stay in the country, and let us enjoy it. The
woods; the walks along the river; the climbing over the hills to the
old fortress, which M. Poulain made alive for us as he told how it
was defended by the Russians, and how it was captured by the Tartars;
the little adventures, in one of which he became our hero by saving
Alexander from drowning; an occasional encounter with wolves--there
was no end of new and delightful impressions. Large parties were
also organized in which all the family took part, sometimes picking
mushrooms in the woods, and afterward having tea in the midst of the
forest, where a man a hundred years old lived alone with his little
grandson, taking care of the bees. At other times we went to one of
father’s villages where a big pond had been dug, in which golden carp
were caught by the thousand--part of them being taken for the landlord
and the remainder being distributed among all the peasants. My former
nurse, Vasilísa, lived in that village. Her family was one of the
poorest; besides her husband, she had only a small boy to help her, and
a girl, my foster-sister, who became later on a preacher and a ‘Virgin’
in the Nonconformist sect to which they belonged. There was no bound to
her joy when I came to see her. Cream, eggs, apples, and honey were all
that she could offer; but the way in which she offered them, in bright
wooden plates, after having covered the table with a fine snow-white
linen tablecloth of her own making (with the Russian Nonconformists
absolute cleanliness is a matter of religion), and the fond words with
which she addressed me, treating me as her own son, left the warmest
feelings in my heart. I must say the same of the nurses of my elder
brothers, Nicholas and Alexander, who belonged to prominent families of
two other Nonconformist sects in Nikólskoye. Few know what treasuries
of goodness can be found in the hearts of Russian peasants, even
after centuries of the most cruel oppression, which might well have
embittered them.
On stormy days M. Poulain had an abundance of tales to tell us,
especially about the campaign in Spain. Over and over again we induced
him to tell us how he was wounded in a battle, and every time he came
to the point when he felt warm blood streaming into his boot, we jumped
to kiss him and gave him all sorts of pet names.
Everything seemed to prepare us for the military career: the
predilection of our father (the only toys that I remember his having
bought for us were a rifle and a real sentry-box); the war tales of
M. Poulain; nay, even the library which we had at our disposal. This
library, which had once belonged to General Repnínsky, our mother’s
grandfather, a learned military man of the eighteenth century,
consisted exclusively of books on military warfare, adorned with rich
plates and beautifully bound in leather. It was our chief recreation,
on wet days, to look over the plates of these books, representing the
weapons of warfare since the times of the Hebrews, and giving plans
of all the battles that had been fought since Alexander of Macedonia.
These heavy books also offered excellent materials for building out of
them strong fortresses which would stand for some time the blows of a
battering-ram and the projectiles of an Archimedean catapult (which,
however, persisted in sending stones into the windows, and was soon
prohibited). Yet neither Alexander nor I became military men. The
literature of the sixties wiped out the teachings of our childhood.
M. Poulain’s opinions about revolutions were those of the Orleanist
‘Illustration Française,’ of which he received back numbers, and of
which we knew all the woodcuts. For a long time I could not imagine a
revolution otherwise than in the shape of Death riding on a horse, the
red flag on one hand and a scythe in the other, mowing down men right
and left. So it was pictured in the ‘Illustration.’ But I now think
that M. Poulain’s dislike was limited to the uprising of 1848, for one
of his tales about the Revolution of 1789 deeply impressed my mind.
The title of prince was used in our house with and without occasion. M.
Poulain must have been shocked by it, for he began once to tell us what
he knew of the great Revolution, I cannot now recall what he said, but
one thing I remember, namely, that ‘Count Mirabeau’ and other nobles
one day renounced their titles, and that Count Mirabeau, to show his
contempt for aristocratic pretensions, opened a shop decorated with
a signboard which bore the inscription, ‘Mirabeau, tailor.’ (I tell
the story as I had it from M. Poulain.) For a long time after that I
worried myself thinking what trade I should take up, so as to write,
‘Kropótkin, such and such a handicraft man.’ Later on, my Russian
teacher, Nikolái Pávlovich Smirnóff, and the general Republican tone
of Russian literature influenced me in the same way; and when I began
to write novels--that is, in my twelfth year--I adopted the signature
P. Kropótkin, which I never have departed from, notwithstanding the
remonstrances of my chiefs when I was in the military service.