I
A storm raged in the North Sea, as we approached the coasts of England.
But I met the storm with delight. I enjoyed the struggle of our steamer
against the furiously rolling waves, and sat for hours on the stem,
the foam of the waves dashing into my face. After the two years I had
spent in a gloomy casemate, every fibre of my inner self seemed to be
throbbing with life, and eager to enjoy the full intensity of life.
My intention was not to stay abroad more than a few weeks or months;
just enough time to allow the hue and cry caused by my escape to
subside, and also to restore my health a little. I landed under the
name of Lavashóff, the name under which I had left Russia; and,
avoiding London, where the spies of the Russian embassy would soon have
been at my heels, I went first to Edinburgh.
It has, however, so happened that I have never returned to Russia. I
was soon taken up by the wave of the anarchist movement, which was
just then rising in Western Europe; and I felt that I should be more
useful in helping that movement to find its proper expression than I
could possibly be in Russia. In my mother country I was too well known
to carry on an open propaganda, especially among the workers and the
peasants; and later on, when the Russian movement became a conspiracy
and an armed struggle against the representative of autocracy, all
thought of a popular movement was necessarily abandoned; while my
own inclinations drew me more and more intensely toward casting in
my lot with the labouring and toiling masses. To bring to them such
conceptions as would aid them to direct their efforts to the best
advantage of all the workers; to deepen and to widen the ideals and
principles which will underlie the coming social revolution; to
develop these ideals and principles before the workers, not as an
order coming from their leaders, but as a result of their own reason;
and so to awaken their own initiative, now that they were called upon
to appear in the historical arena as the builders of a new, equitable
mode of organization of society--this seemed to me as necessary for
the development of mankind as anything I could accomplish in Russia
at that time. Accordingly, I joined the few men who were working in
that direction in Western Europe, relieving those of them who had been
broken down by years of hard struggle.
* * * * *
When I landed at Hull and went to Edinburgh I informed but a few
friends in Russia and in the Jura Federation of my safe arrival in
England. A socialist must always rely upon his own work for his living,
and consequently, as soon as I was settled in the Scotch capital in a
small room in the suburbs, I tried to find some work.
Among the passengers on board our steamer there was a Norwegian
professor, with whom I talked, trying to remember the little that I
formerly had known of the Swedish language. He spoke German. ‘But as
you speak some Norwegian,’ he said to me, ‘and are trying to learn it,
let us both speak it.’
‘You mean Swedish?’ I ventured to ask, ‘I speak Swedish, don’t I?’
‘Well, I should rather say Norwegian; certainly not Swedish,’ was his
reply.
Thus happened to me what happened to one of Jules Verne’s heroes, who
had learned by mistake Portuguese instead of Spanish. At any rate,
I talked a good deal with the professor--let it be Norwegian--and
he gave me a Christiania paper, which contained the reports of the
Norwegian North Atlantic deep-sea expedition, just returned home. As
soon as I reached Edinburgh I wrote a note in English about these
explorations, and sent it to ‘Nature,’ which my brother and I used
regularly to read at St. Petersburg from its first appearance. The
sub-editor acknowledged the note with thanks, remarking with an
extreme leniency which I have often met with since in England, that
my English was ‘all right’ and only required to be ‘a little more
idiomatic.’ I may say that I had learned English in Russia, and, with
my brother, had translated Page’s ‘Philosophy of Geology’ and Herbert
Spencer’s ‘Principles of Biology.’ But I had learned it from books,
and pronounced it very badly, so that I had the greatest difficulty in
making myself understood by my Scotch landlady; her daughter and I used
to write on scraps of paper what we had to say to each other; and as
I had no idea of idiomatic English, I must have made the most amusing
mistakes. I remember, at any rate, protesting once to her, in writing,
that it was not a ‘cup of tea’ that I expected at tea time, but many
cups. I am afraid my landlady took me for a glutton, but I must say,
by way of apology, that neither in the geological books I had read in
English nor in Spencer’s ‘Biology’ was there any allusion to such an
important matter as tea-drinking.
I got from Russia the Journal of the Russian Geographical Society,
and soon began to supply the ‘Times’ also with occasional paragraphs
about Russian geographical explorations. Prjeválsky was at that time in
Central Asia, and his progress was followed in England with interest.
However, the money I had brought with me was rapidly disappearing, and
all my letters to Russia being intercepted, I could not succeed in
making my address known to my relatives. So I moved in a few weeks to
London, thinking I could find more regular work there. The old refugee,
P. L. Lavróff, continued to edit at London his newspaper _Forward_; but
as I hoped soon to return to Russia, and the editorial office of the
Russian paper must have been closely watched by spies, I did not go
there.
I went, very naturally, to the office of ‘Nature,’ where I was most
cordially received by the sub-editor, Mr. J. Scott Keltie. The editor
wanted to increase the column of Notes, and found that I wrote them
exactly as they were required. A table was consequently assigned me
in the office, and scientific reviews in all possible languages were
piled upon it. ‘Come every Monday, Mr. Levashóff,’ I was told, ‘look
over these reviews, and if there is any article that strikes you as
worthy of notice, write a note, or mark the article: we will send it
to a specialist.’ Mr. Keltie did not know, of course, that I used to
rewrite each note three or four times before I dared to submit my
English to him; but taking the scientific reviews home, I soon managed
very nicely, with my ‘Nature’ notes and my ‘Times’ paragraphs, to get a
living. I found that the weekly payment, on Thursday, of the paragraph
contributors to the ‘Times’ was an excellent institution. To be sure,
there were weeks when there was no interesting news from Prjeválsky,
and news from other parts of Russia was not found interesting; in such
cases my fare was bread and tea only.
One day, however, Mr. Keltie took from the shelves several Russian
books, asking me to review them for ‘Nature.’ I looked at the books,
and, to my embarrassment, saw that they were my own works on the
Glacial Period and the Orography of Asia. My brother had not failed to
send them to our favourite ‘Nature.’ I was in great perplexity, and,
putting the books into my bag, took them home, to reflect upon the
matter. ‘What shall I do with them?’ I asked myself. ‘I cannot praise
them, because they are mine; and I cannot be too sharp on the author,
as I hold the views expressed in them.’ I decided to take them back
next day, and explain to Mr. Keltie that, although I had introduced
myself under the name of Levashóff, I was the author of these books,
and could not review them.
Mr. Keltie knew from the papers about Kropótkin’s escape, and was
very much pleased to discover the refugee safe in England. As to my
scruples, he remarked wisely that I need neither scold nor praise the
author, but could simply tell the readers what the books were about.
From that day a friendship, which still continues, grew up between us.
* * * * *
In November or December 1876, seeing in the letter box of P. L.
Lavróff’s paper an invitation for ‘K.’ to call at the editorial office
to receive a letter from Russia, and thinking that the invitation was
for me, I called at the office, and soon established friendship with
the editor and the younger people who printed the paper.
When I called for the first time at the office--my beard shaved and my
top hat on--and asked the lady who opened the door, in my very best
English: ‘Is Mr. Lavróff in?’ I imagined that no one would ever know
who I was as long as I had not mentioned my name. It appeared, however,
that the lady--who did not know me at all, but well knew my brother
while he stayed at Zürich--at once recognized me and ran upstairs to
say who the visitor was. ‘I knew you immediately,’ she said afterwards,
‘by your eyes, which reminded me of those of your brother.’
That time, I did not stay long in England. I was in lively
correspondence with my friend James Guillaume, of the Jura Federation,
and as soon as I found some permanent geographical work, which I could
do in Switzerland as well as in London, I removed to Switzerland. The
letters that I got at last from home told me that I might as well stay
abroad, as there was nothing particular to be done in Russia. A wave of
enthusiasm was rolling over the country at that time in favour of the
Slavonians who had revolted against the age-long Turkish oppression,
and my best friends, Serghéi (Stepniák), Kelnitz, and several others
had gone to the Balkán peninsula to join the insurgents. ‘We read,’
my friends wrote, ‘the “Daily News” correspondence about the horrors
in Bulgaria; we weep at the reading, and go next to enlist either as
volunteers in the Balkán insurgents’ band or as nurses.’
I went to Switzerland, joined the Jura Federation of the International
Workingmen’s Association, and, following the advice of my Swiss
friends, settled in La Chaux-de-Fonds.