Demands for our release were continually raised, both in the Press and
in the Chamber of Deputies--the more so as about the same time that we
were condemned Louise Michel was condemned, too--for robbery. Louise
Michel, who always gives literally her last shawl or cloak to the woman
who is in need of it, and who never could be compelled, during her
imprisonment, to have better food, because she always gave her fellow
prisoners what was sent to her, was condemned, together with another
comrade, Pouget, to nine years’ imprisonment for highway robbery! That
sounded too bad even for the middle-class opportunists. She marched
one day at the head of a procession of the unemployed, and, entering
a baker’s shop, took a few loaves from it and distributed them to the
hungry column: this was her robbery. The release of the anarchists
thus became a war-cry against the government, and in the autumn of
1885 all my comrades save three were set at liberty by a decree of
President Grévy. Then the outcry on behalf of Louise Michel and myself
became still louder. However, Alexander III. objected to it; and one
day the prime minister, M. Freycinet, answering an interpellation in
the Chamber, said that ‘diplomatic difficulties stood in the way of
Kropótkin’s release.’ Strange words in the mouth of the prime minister
of an independent country; but still stranger words have been heard
since in connection with that ill-omened alliance of France with
imperial Russia.
At last, in the middle of January 1886, both Louise Michel and Pouget,
as well as the four of us who were still at Clairvaux, were set free.
We went to Paris and stayed there for a few weeks with our friend, Elie
Reclus--a writer of great power in anthropology, who is often mistaken
outside France for his younger brother, the geographer, Elisée. A close
friendship has united the two brothers from early youth. When the time
came for them to enter a university, they went from a small country
place in the valley of the Gironde to Strasburg, making the journey
on foot--accompanied, as true wandering students, by their dog; and
when they stayed at some village it was the dog which got his bowl of
soup, while the two brothers’ supper very often consisted of bread
only, with a few apples. From Strasburg the younger brother went to
Berlin, whereto he was attracted by the lectures of the great Ritter.
Later on, in the forties, they were both at Paris. Elie Reclus became a
convinced Fourierist, and both saw in the republic of 1848 the coming
of a new era of social evolution. Consequently, after Napoleon III.’s
_coup d’état_, they both had to leave France, and emigrated to England.
When the amnesty was voted, and they returned to Paris, Elie edited
there a Fourierist co-operative paper which was widely spread among the
workers. It is not generally known, but may be interesting to note,
that Napoleon III.--who played the part of a Cæsar, interested, as
behoves a Cæsar, in the conditions of the working classes--used to send
one of his aides-de-camp to the printing office of the paper, each time
it was printed, to take to the Tuileries the first sheet issued from
the press. He was, later on, even ready to patronize the International
Workingmen’s Association, on the condition that it should put in one of
its reports a few words of confidence in the great socialist plans of
the Cæsar; and he ordered its prosecution when the Internationalists
refused point-blank to do anything of the sort.
When the Commune was proclaimed, both brothers heartily joined it and
Elie accepted the post of keeper of the National Library and the Louvre
museum under Vaillant. It was, to a great extent, to his foresight
and to his hard work that we owe the preservation of the invaluable
treasures of human knowledge and art accumulated in these two
institutions; otherwise they would have perished during the bombardment
of Paris by the armies of Thiers, and the subsequent conflagration. A
passionate lover of Greek art, and profoundly acquainted with it, he
had had all the most precious statues and vases of the Louvre packed
and stored in the caves, while the greatest precautions were taken to
protect the building of the National Library from the conflagration
which raged round it. His wife, a courageous, worthy companion of
the philosopher, followed in the streets by her two little boys,
organized in the meantime in her own quarter of the town the feeding
of the population which had been reduced to sheer destitution by a
second siege. During the final few weeks of its existence, the Commune
at last realized that a supply of food to the population, which was
deprived of the means of earning it for itself, ought to have been the
Commune’s first duty, and volunteers organized the relief. It was by
mere accident that Elie Reclus, who had kept to his post till the last
moment, escaped being shot by the Versailles troops; and a sentence
of deportation having been pronounced upon him--for having dared to
accept so necessary a service under the Commune--he went with his
family into exile. Now, on his return to Paris, he had resumed the
work of his life--ethnology. What this work is may be judged from a
few, very few, chapters of it published in book form under the title
of ‘Primitive Folk’ and ‘The Australians,’ as well as from the history
of the origin of religions, which he now lectures upon at the _École
des Hautes Études_, at Brussels--a foundation of his brother. In the
whole of the ethnological literature there are not many works imbued
to the same extent with a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the
true nature of primitive man. As to his ‘Origin of Religions’ (which is
being published in the review, ‘Société Nouvelle,’ and its continuation
‘Humanité Nouvelle’), it is, I venture to say, the best work on the
subject that has been published--undoubtedly superior to Herbert
Spencer’s attempt in the same direction, because Herbert Spencer, with
all his immense intellect, does not possess that understanding of
the artless and simple nature of the primitive man which Elie Reclus
possesses to a rare perfection, and to which he has added an extremely
wide knowledge of a rather underrated branch of folk-psychology--the
evolution and transformation of beliefs. It is needless to speak of
Elie Reclus’s infinite good nature and modesty, or of his superior
intelligence and vast knowledge of all subjects relating to humanity;
it is all comprehended in his style. With his unbounded modesty, his
calm manner and his deep philosophical insight, he is the type of the
Greek philosopher of antiquity. In a society less fond of patented
tuition and of piecemeal instruction, and more appreciative of the
development of wide humanitarian conceptions, he would be surrounded by
flocks of pupils, like one of his Greek prototypes.
A very animated socialist and anarchist movement was going on at Paris
while we stayed there. Louise Michel lectured every night, and aroused
the enthusiasm of her audiences, whether they consisted of working men
or were made up of middle-class people. Her already great popularity
became still greater and spread even amongst the university students,
who might hate advanced ideas but worshipped in her the ideal woman;
so much so that a riot, caused by someone speaking disrespectfully of
Louise Michel in the presence of students, took place one day in a
café. The young people took up her defence and made a fearful uproar,
smashing all the tables and glasses in the café. I also lectured once
on anarchism, before an audience of several thousand people, and left
Paris immediately after that lecture, before the government could obey
the injunctions of the reactionary and the pro-Russian press, which
insisted upon my being expelled from France.
From Paris we went to London, where I found once more my two old
friends, Stepniák and Tchaykóvsky. The socialist movement was in full
swing, and life in London was no more the dull, vegetating existence
that it had been for me four years before.
We settled in a small cottage at Harrow. We cared little about the
furniture of our cottage, a good part of which I made myself with the
aid of Tchaykóvsky--he had been in the meantime in the United States
and had learned some carpentering--but we rejoiced immensely at having
a small plot of heavy Middlesex clay in our garden. My wife and myself
went with much enthusiasm into small culture, the admirable results
of which I began to realize after having made acquaintance with the
writings of Toubeau, and some Paris _maraîchers_ (gardeners), and
after our own experiment in the prison garden at Clairvaux. As for my
wife, who had typhoid fever soon after we settled at Harrow, the work
in the garden during the period of convalescence was more completely
restorative for her than a stay at the very best sanatorium.
* * * * *
By the end of the summer a heavy stroke fell upon us. We learned that
my brother Alexander was no longer alive.
During the years that I had been abroad before my imprisonment in
France, we had never corresponded with each other. In the eyes of
the Russian government, to love a brother who is persecuted for his
political opinions is in itself a sin. To maintain relations with
him after he has become a refugee is a crime. A subject of the Tsar
must hate all the rebels against the supreme ruler’s authority--and
Alexander was in the clutches of the Russian police. I persistently
refused therefore to write to him or to any of my relatives. After the
Tsar had written on the petition of our sister Hélène, ‘Let him remain
there,’ there was no hope of a speedy release for my brother. Two years
after that, a committee was nominated to settle terms for those who
had been exiled to Siberia without judgment for an undetermined time,
and my brother got five years. That made seven with the two years he
had already been kept there. Then a new committee was nominated under
Lóris Mélikoff, and added another five years. My brother was thus to be
liberated in October 1886. That made twelve years of exile, first in
a tiny town of East Siberia, and afterwards at Tomsk--that is in the
lowlands of West Siberia, where he had not even the dry and healthy
climate of the high prairies farther East.
When I was imprisoned at Clairvaux, he wrote to me, and we exchanged a
few letters. He wrote that as our letters would be read by the Russian
police in Siberia and by the French prison authorities in France, we
might as well write to each other under this double supervision. He
spoke of his family life, of his three children whom he characterized
admirably well, and of his work. He earnestly advised me to keep a
watchful eye upon the development of science in Italy, where excellent
and original researches are made, but remain unknown in the scientific
world until they have been re-manufactured in Germany; and he gave me
his opinions about the probable march of political life in Russia.
He did not believe in the possibility with us in a near future, of
constitutional rule on the pattern of the West European parliaments;
but he looked forward--and found it quite sufficient for the moment--to
the convocation of a sort of deliberative National Assembly (_Zémskiy
Sobór_ or _Etats Généraux_). It would not vote new laws, but would
only work out the schemes of laws to which the imperial power and
the Council of State would give their definitive form and the final
sanction.
Above all he wrote to me about his scientific work. He always had a
decided leaning towards astronomy, and when we were at St. Petersburg
he had published in Russia an excellent summary of all our knowledge of
the shooting stars. With his fine critical mind he soon saw the strong
or the weak points of different hypotheses; and without sufficient
knowledge of mathematics, but endowed with a powerful imagination, he
succeeded in grasping the results of the most intricate mathematical
researches. Living with his imagination amongst the moving celestial
bodies, he realized their complex movements often better than some
mathematicians--especially the pure algebraists--realize them, because
they often lose sight of the realities of the physical world to see
only the formulæ and their logical connections. Our St. Petersburg
astronomers spoke to me with great appreciation of that work of my
brother. Now he undertook to study the structure of the universe:
to analyze the data and the hypotheses about the worlds of suns,
star-clusters, and nebulæ in the infinite space, and to disentangle
their probable grouping, their life, and the laws of their evolution
and decay. The Púlkova astronomer, Gyldén, spoke highly of this new
work of Alexander, and introduced him by correspondence to Mr. Holden
in the United States, from whom I had lately the pleasure of hearing,
at Washington, an appreciative estimate of my brother’s researches.
Science is greatly in need, from time to time, of such scientific
speculations of a higher standard, made by a scrupulously laborious,
critical, and at the same time, imaginative mind.
But in a small town of Siberia, far away from all the libraries, unable
to follow the progress of science, he had only succeeded in embodying
in his work the researches which had been done up to the date of his
exile. Some capital work had been done since--he knew it--but how could
he get access to the necessary books so long as he remained in Siberia?
The approach of the term of his liberation did not inspire him with
hope either. He knew that he would not be allowed to stay in any of the
university towns of Russia or of Western Europe, but that his exile to
Siberia would be followed by a second exile, perhaps even worse than
the first, to some hamlet of Eastern Russia.
Despair took possession of him. ‘A despair like Faust’s takes hold
of me at times,’ he wrote to me. When the time of his liberation was
coming, he sent his wife and children to Russia, taking advantage of
one of the last steamers before the close of the navigation, and, on a
gloomy night, the despair of Faust put an end to his life....
* * * * *
A dark cloud hung upon our cottage for many months--until a flash of
light pierced it. It came next Spring, when a tiny being, a girl who
bears my brother’s name, came into the world, and at whose helpless cry
I overheard in my heart quite new chords vibrating.