Transcriber's Note
Words printed in italic font are marked with _underscores_.
RUSSIAN ESSAYS AND STORIES
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
A YEAR IN RUSSIA
WITH THE RUSSIANS IN MANCHURIA
RUSSIAN ESSAYS AND
STORIES
BY
MAURICE BARING
AUTHOR OF “A YEAR IN RUSSIA” ETC.
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1908_
DEDICATED
TO
EVAN CHARTERIS
DEDICATION
TO EVAN CHARTERIS
MY DEAR EVAN,--This book, which you expressed a wish I should dedicate
to you, consists of short essays and stories dealing entirely with
Russian subjects.
These essays (which deal with Russia) are in no sense political. I will
not go so far as to say they are uninteresting; such modesty is, as
Bacon once pointed out, a gross form of boasting; besides which it is
a mistake. If one underrates one’s wares one is taken at one’s word. I
have found this out to my cost. Once when I was competing in a Civil
Service Examination, and appeared as a candidate in the German _viva
voce_, the German examiner asked me if I could speak German.
“Yes, a little,” I answered modestly.
“Oh!” said the examiner, “I will then wish you good morning. I will no
doubt have the pleasure of seeing you again the next time there is an
examination.”
The next time there was an examination and I presented myself again to
the German _viva voce_ examiner, who happened to be a different man,
when he asked me if I could speak German, I replied thus--
“Yes, I speak it as well as Bismarck spoke it, and my written style
combines the solidity of Lessing’s, the limpidity of Goethe’s, and the
lightness of touch of Heine’s, as you have no doubt observed from my
written papers.”
“Then I need not trouble you any further,” said the examiner. This time
I got full marks.
In the last book I wrote, which was also about Russia, there was
a preface in which I said that I had no political opinions and
that my only object was to give a record of things seen. In spite
of this Conservatives said my book was a revolutionary pamphlet,
and Liberals--English Liberals of course--Russian Liberals knew
better--declared it was an apology for reaction.[1] What better proof
could I have had of its fundamental impartiality? But impartiality is
unpopular. People prefer to see dogmatic opinions nailed like a flag to
one side or the other; they cannot bear being told that both sides are
right--and wrong. They do not much like being told that one is quite
indifferent as to what people’s political opinions may be, because one
is interested in them as human beings. In saying that such impartiality
is unpopular, I have greatly understated the question. If one takes an
impartial view of certain questions which inspire violent partisanship;
if, for instance, one is opposed to vivisection and at the same time
one has no sympathy with anti-vivisectionists--if, for instance, one
believes in the innocence of Dreyfus, and the Dreyfusards inspire one
with disgust, or if, as in this case, one sympathises with the Russian
Liberals and yet considers that their apologists in England talk
incredible nonsense--it is almost impossible to get a hearing at all.
Both sides reject you, because you refuse not to admit that there are
weaknesses and a certain measure of right on either side. The partisan
cannot bear this to be said. His side must be altogether right, the
other side must be altogether wrong; and if you venture to say that
such a view is exaggerated and incomplete, you are howled down. People,
and especially English people, are extraordinarily sensitive on this
score (curiously enough), when a foreign country is in question. They
regard every foreign country as being divided into two camps, the
angels on one side, the devils on the other. In Russia the angels are
all Revolutionaries, the devils are all Reactionaries. You, who have
been in Russia, know that this is not the case. People in Russia, as
elsewhere, are all made of the same stuff: their opinions are largely
due to circumstance. But we English have a passion for meddling with
other people’s business, without understanding what that business is.
This is especially the case when any complex problem arises in a
foreign country, such as the Dreyfus case or the Russian Revolution.
Some people call this our great traditional sympathy with “nations
rightly struggling to be free.” Unfortunately such sympathy being
generally based on a total misapprehension of the questions at issue,
very often does more harm than good. For instance, when not long ago
in the House of Commons it was debated whether or no the King should
pay a visit to the Emperor of Russia, and some one suggested that were
the visit to be cancelled the immense majority of the Russian people
would regard it as an insult, and that the Russian peasants bore no
ill-will towards the Emperor, but rather complained of the results
of a system of government, which in the last few years has undergone
and is still undergoing radical change--when such arguments were
brought forward some of the Labour Members nearly burst with ironical
cheers. Here, they thought, was the voice of officialdom, Torydom, and
hypocrisy speaking. Now turn to the facts. When Professor Kovolievski
was elected a member for the first Duma in the government of Kharkov
as an advanced Liberal member, he after his election asked some of his
peasant electors whether he was not right in supposing that had he said
anything offensive with regard to the Emperor at his meetings, there
would have been no applause.
[1] The book is at this moment forbidden by the Censorship in Russia.
“We should not only not have applauded,” was the answer, “but we should
have beaten you to death.”
And I am convinced that if any of our Labour Members went to any
Russian village with an interpreter, and made speeches on the subject
of the Emperor of Russia, such as they made in the House of Commons,
they would swiftly be lynched. This, of course, does not mean that the
Russian peasant is averse to reform, or does not suffer from the evil
effects of bad government; but it means that he is a Russian, and that
is a thing which our enthusiastic Liberals entirely overlook, and they
overlook it because they do not know what Russia is, or what a Russian
is. They are divorced from fact and soar in wide spaces of theory. And
that is the reason that although all my sympathies in Russia are with
the poor, and with any people who contribute a mite towards the cause
of reform, the ignorance of English Liberals on the subject makes me
sick.
In this book you will not find, thank Heaven, very much talk of
politics. You will find, on the other hand, truthful and accurate
records of real people, seen with the naked eye, unobscured by
prejudice and not magnified by the spectacles of exaggeration. Also
some true stories. I hope it will amuse you.
That is all I have to say about this book. Books, like every other
human thing, rarely end by being what they were meant to be. The
books we dream of are magnificent, interesting, exhaustive, bulky,
but nevertheless not too long. They glow in the imagination like a
living coal. The books we write are scrappy, short, not sufficiently
interesting, and often appear to be too long in spite of their brevity.
So far from glowing, they resemble the ashes of an extinct cigar.
Every time one finishes a book one thinks the next one will be better;
but this is an illusion. This book is no exception to the melancholy
rule, but such as it is, it is yours, and, I repeat once more, I hope
you will like it.
M. B.
NORTH COTTAGE
_London, 1908_
PREFACE
The essays and stories contained in this book are reprinted for the
greater part from the _Morning Post_, by whose kind permission I
have been allowed to republish them here. My thanks are also due to
the Editor of the _Oxford and Cambridge Review_ for permission to
republish the article on Andreev’s _Life of Man_; and to the Editor
of that brilliant but too short-lived periodical the _Ne Plus Ultra_
(published at Eton), for allowing me to make use of a story called “The
Amorphists,” which appeared in its columns. My thanks are due to Mr. H.
Belloc, who kindly read the proofs of this book for me.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
A JOURNEY IN THE NORTH 1
DOWN THE VOLGA 21
SKETCHES IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH RUSSIA:
1. THE RELIGION OF RUSSIAN PEASANTS 57
2. A CONVERSATION WITH A LANDOWNER 70
3. THE BIRTH OF THE BELL 80
CONVERSATIONS WITH DIMITRI NIKOLAIEVITCH:
1. ENGLISH LIBERALS IN RUSSIA 89
2. BYRON 96
MODERN LITERATURE IN RUSSIA 113
THE RUSSIAN STAGE 122
A RUSSIAN MYSTERY PLAY 136
A DREAM IN THE DUMA 158
A ZEMSTVO REPORT 170
ANTI-SEMITISM IN RUSSIA 180
PRINCE OUROUSOV’S MEMOIRS 189
STORIES
POGROM 203
THE ANTICHRIST 214
“DIRGE IN MARRIAGE” 223
THE GOVERNOR’S NIECE 233
A POLICE OFFICER 243
THE AMORPHISTS 254
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN RUSSIA 264
RUSSIAN ESSAYS AND STORIES
A JOURNEY IN THE NORTH
I started at night. The battle for a place in the third-class carriage
was fought and won for me by a porter. A third-class carriage in Russia
is not at all uncomfortable if you have a thick blanket, because every
passenger has a right to the whole length of a seat. Three people can
sit on the seat but only one can lie on it. The other two lie in berths
above you or below you, as the case may be. At the end of the seat is
a passage, and then there are further seats stretched horizontally
across the windows. The seats are made of wood, and if you have a thick
blanket and a pillow they are quite as comfortable as any other bed.
The differences between railway carriages in Russia and in England
is that the Russian carriage is broader and bigger. Every carriage
(whatever the class) is a corridor carriage. The first class is divided
into separate compartments, but in the second and third class there is
no partition and no doors dividing the corridor from the seats occupied
by the passengers.
When you first step into the third-class carriage it is like entering
pandemonium. It is almost dark, save for a feeble candle that gutters
peevishly over the door, and all the inmates are yelling and throwing
their boxes and baskets and bundles about. This is only the process of
installation; it all quiets down presently, and everybody is seated
with his bed unfolded, if he has one, his luggage stowed away, his
provisions spread out, as if he had been living there for years and
meant to remain there for many years to come.
This particular carriage was full. The people in it were workmen going
home for the winter, peasants, merchants, and mechanics. Opposite to my
seat were two workmen (painters), and next to them a peasant with a big
grey beard. Sitting by the farther window was a well-dressed mechanic.
The painter lighted a candle and stuck it on a small movable table
that projected from my window; he produced a small bottle of vodka
from his pocket, a kettle for tea, and some cold sausage, and general
conversation began. The guard came to tell the people who had come to
see their friends off--there were numbers of them in the carriage, and
they were most of them drunk--to go. The guard looked at my ticket for
Vologda and asked me where I was ultimately going to. I said “Viatka,”
upon which the mechanic said: “So am I; we will go together and get
our tickets together at Vologda.” The painter and the mechanic engaged
in conversation, and it appeared that they both came from Kronstadt.
The painter had worked there for twenty years, and he cross-questioned
the mechanic with evident pleasure, winking at me every now and then.
The mechanic went into the next compartment for a moment, and the
painter then said to me with glee: “He is lying; he says he has worked
in Kronstadt, and he doesn’t know where such and such things are.”
The mechanic came back, “Who is the Commandant at Kronstadt?” asked
the painter. The mechanic evidently did not know, and gave a name at
random. The painter laughed triumphantly and said that the Commandant
was some one else. Then the mechanic volunteered further information
to show his knowledge of Kronstadt; he talked of another man who
worked there, a tall man; the painter said that the man was short.
The mechanic said that he was employed in the manufacture of shells.
They talked of the disorders at Kronstadt last year. The painter said
that he and his son lay among cabbages while the fighting was going
on. He added that the matter had nearly ended in the total destruction
of Kronstadt. “God forbid,” said the peasant sitting next to me. No
sympathy was expressed with the mutineers. The painter at last told
the mechanic that he had lived for twenty years at Kronstadt, and that
he, the mechanic, was a liar. The mechanic protested feebly. He was an
obvious liar, but why he told these lies I have no idea. Perhaps he
was not a mechanic at all. Possibly he was a spy. He professed to be a
native of a village near Viatka, and declared that he had been absent
for six years (the next evening he said twelve years).
From this question of disorders at Kronstadt the talk veered, I forget
how, to the topic of the Duma. “Which Duma?” some one asked; “the town
Duma?” “No, the State Duma,” said the mechanic; “it seems they are
going to have a new one.” “Nothing will come of it,” said the painter;
“people will not go” (he meant the voters). “No, they won’t go,” said
the peasant, cutting the air with his hand (a gesture common to nearly
all Russians of that class), “because they know now that it means being
put in prison.” “Yes,” said the painter, “they are hanging everybody.”
And there was a knowing chorus of “They won’t go and vote; they know
better.” Then the mechanic left his seat and sat down next to the
painter and said in a whisper: “The Government----” At that moment
the guard came in; the mechanic stopped abruptly, and when the guard
went out the topic of conversation had been already changed. I heard
no further mention of the Duma during the whole of the rest of the
journey to Vologda. The people then began to prepare to go to sleep,
except the peasant, who told me that he often went three days together
without sleep, but when he did sleep it was a business to wake him.
He asked me if his bundle of clothes was in my way. “We are a rough
people,” he said, “but we know how not to get in the way. I am not
going far.” I was just going to sleep when I was wakened by a terrific
noise in the next compartment. Some one opened the door and the
following scraps of shouted dialogue were audible. A voice: “Did you
say I was drunk or did you not?” Second voice (obviously the guard):
“I asked for your ticket.” First voice: “You said I was drunk. You are
a liar.” Second voice: “You have no right to say I am a liar. I asked
for your ticket.” First voice: “You are a liar. You said I was drunk.
I will have you discharged.” This voice then recited a long story to
the public in general. The next day I ascertained that the offended man
was a lawyer, one of the “bourgeoisie” (a workman explained to me), and
that the guard had, in the dark, asked him for his ticket, and then
as he made no sign of life had pinched his foot; this having proved
ineffectual, he said that the man was drunk, whereupon the man started
to his feet and became wide awake in a moment. Eventually a gendarme
was brought in, a “protocol” was drawn up in which both sides of the
story were written down, and there, I expect, the matter will remain
until the Day of Judgment.
I afterwards made the acquaintance of two men in the next compartment;
they were dock labourers and their business was to load ships in
Kronstadt. They were exactly like the people whom Gorki describes. One
of them gave me a complete description of his mode of life in summer
and winter. In summer he loaded ships; in winter he went to a place
near Archangel and loaded carts with wood; when the spring came he
went back, by water, to St. Petersburg. He asked me what I was. I said
that I was an English correspondent. He asked then what I travelled
in. I said I was not that kind of correspondent but a newspaper
correspondent. Here he called a third friend, who was sitting near
us, and said, “Come and look; there is a correspondent here. He is an
English correspondent.” The friend came--a man with a red beard and
a loose shirt with a pattern of flowers on it. “I don’t know you,”
said the new man. “No; but let us make each other’s acquaintance,” I
said. “You can talk to him,” explained the dock labourer; “we have been
talking for hours. Although he is plainly a man who has received higher
education.” “As to whether he has received higher or lower education we
don’t know,” said the friend, “because we haven’t yet asked him.” Then
he paused, reflected, shook hands, and exclaimed: “Now we know each
other.” “But,” said the dock labourer, “how do you print your articles?
Do you take a printing press with you when you go, for instance, to
the north like you are doing now?” I remarked that they were printed
in London, and that I did not have to print them myself. “Please send
me one,” he said; “I will give you my address.” “But it’s written in
English,” I answered. “You can send me a translation in Russian,” he
retorted.
“English ships come to Kronstadt, and we load them. The men on board
do not speak Russian, but we understand each other. For instance, we
load, and their inspector comes. We call him ‘inspector’ (I forget the
Russian word he used, but it was something like skipador), they call
him the ‘Come on.’ The ‘Come on’ comes, and he says ‘That’s no good’
(niet dobrò), he means not right (nié harosho), and then we make it
right. And when their sailors come we ask them for matches. When we
have food, what we call ‘coshevar,’ they call it ‘all right.’ And when
we finish work, what we call ‘shabash’ (it means ‘all over’), they call
‘Seven o’clock.’ They bring us matches that light on anything,” and
here he produced a box of English matches and lit a dozen of them just
to show. “When we are ragged, they say, ‘No clothes, plenty vodka,’ and
when we are well dressed, they say, ‘No plenty vodka, plenty clothes.’
Their vodka,” he added, “is very good.” Then followed an elaborate
comparison of the wages and conditions of life of Russian and English
workmen. Another man joined in, and being told about the correspondent,
said: “I would like to read your writings, because we are a ‘gray’
people (_i.e._ a rough people), and we read only the _Pieterbourski
Listok_, which is, so to speak, a ‘black gang’ newspaper. Heaven knows
what is happening in Russia. They are hanging, shooting and bayoneting
every one.” And he went away. The dock labourer went on for hours
talking about the “Come on,” the “All right,” and the “Seven o’clock.”
Then I went back to my berth and slept, till the dock labourer came
and fetched me and said that I had to see the soldiers. I went into
the next compartment, and there were two soldiers; one was dressed up,
that is to say he had put on spectacles and a pocket-handkerchief over
his head, and was giving an exhibition of mimicry, of recruits crying
as they left home, of mothers-in-law, and other stock jokes. It was
funny, and it ended in general singing. A sailor came to look on. He
was a non-commissioned officer, and he told me in great detail how the
Sveaborg mutiny had been put down. He said that the loyal sailors had
been given 150 roubles (£15) a-piece to fight. I think he must have
been exaggerating. At the same time he expressed no sympathy with the
mutineers. He said that rights were all very well for countries like
that of the Finns. But in Russia they only meant disorders, and as long
as the disorders lasted Russia would be a feeble country. He had much
wanted to go to the war, but had not been able to do so. In fact, he
was thoroughly loyal and _bien pensant_.
We arrived at Vologda Station some time in the evening. The station
was crowded with peasants. While I was watching the crowd a drunken
peasant entered and asked everybody to give him ten kopecks. Then he
caught sight of me and said that he was quite certain I would give him
ten kopecks. I did, and he danced a kind of wild dance and finally
collapsed on the floor. A man was watching these proceedings, a fairly
respectably dressed man in a pea-jacket. He entered into conversation
with me, and said that he had just come back from Manchuria, where he
had been employed at Mukden Station. “In spite of which,” he added,
“I have not yet received a medal.” I said that I had also been in
Manchuria. He said he lived twenty versts up the line, and came to
the station to look at the people--it was so amusing. “Have you any
acquaintances here?” he asked. I said “No.” “Then let us go and have
tea.” I was willing, and we went to the tea-shop, which was exactly
opposite the station. “Here,” said the man, “we will talk of what was,
of what is, and of what is to be.” As we were walking in a policeman
who was standing by the door whispered in my ear, “I shouldn’t go in
there with that _gentleman_.” “Why?” I asked. “Well, he’s not quite
reliable,” he answered in the softest of whispers. “How?” I asked.
“Well, he killed a man yesterday and then robbed him,” said the
policeman. So then I hurriedly expressed my regret to my acquaintance,
and said that I must at all costs return to the station. “The policeman
has been lying to you,” said the man. “It’s a lie; it’s only because
I haven’t got a passport.” (This was not exactly a recommendation in
itself.) I went into the first-class waiting-room. The man came and
sat down next to me, and now that I examined his face I saw that he
had the expression and the stamp of countenance of a born thief. One
of the waiters came and told him to go, and he flatly refused, and the
waiter made a low bow to him. Then gently but firmly I advised him to
go away, as it might lead to trouble. He finally said: “All right, but
we shall meet in the train, in liberty.” He went away, but he sent an
accomplice, who stood behind my chair, and who also had the expression
of a thief.
After waiting for several hours I approached the train for Yaroslav.
Just as I was getting in a small boy came up to me and said in
a whisper, “The policeman sent me to tell you that the man is a
well-known thief, that he robs people every day, and that he gets into
the train, even into the first-class carriages, and robs people, and
he is after you now.” I entered a first-class carriage and told the
guard there was a thief about. I had not been there long before the
accomplice arrived and began walking up and down the corridor. But the
guard, I am happy to say, turned him out instantly, and I saw nothing
more of the thief and of his accomplice.
A railway company director, or rather a man who was arranging the
purchase of a line, got into the carriage and began at once to
harangue against the Government and say that the way in which it had
changed the election law was a piece of insolence and would only make
everybody more radical. Then he told me that life in Yaroslav was
simply intolerable owing to the manner in which all newspapers and
all free discussion had been stopped. We arrived at Yaroslav on the
next morning. I went on to Moscow in a third-class carriage. The train
stopped at every small station, and there was a constant flow of people
coming and going. An old gentleman of the middle class sat opposite to
me for a time, and read a newspaper in an audible whisper. Whenever
he came to some doings of the Government he said, “Disgraceful,
disgraceful!”
Later on in the day a boy of seventeen got into the train. He carried
a large box. I was reading a book by Gogol, and had put it down for a
moment on the seat. He took it up and said, “I very much like reading
books.” I asked him how he had learnt. He said he had been at school
for one year, and had then learnt at home. He could not stay at school
as he was the only son, his father was dead, and he had to look after
his small sisters; he was a stone quarrier and life was very hard. He
loved reading. In winter the moujiks came to him and he read aloud to
them. His favourite book was called _Ivan Mazeppa_. What that work may
be I do not know. I gave him my Gogol. I have never seen any one so
pleased. He began to read it--at the end--then and there, and said it
would last for several evenings. When he got out he said, “I will never
forget you,” and he took out of his pocket a lot of sunflower seeds
and gave them to me. As we neared Moscow the carriage got fuller and
fuller. Two peasants had no railway tickets. One of them asked me if I
would lend my ticket to him to show the guard. I said, “With pleasure,
only my ticket is for Moscow and yours is for the next station.” When
the guard came one of the peasants gave him 30 kopecks. “That is very
little for two of you,” the guard said. They had been travelling nearly
all the way from Yaroslav; but finally he let them be. We arrived at
Moscow in the evening.
While talking with a person who had had a lot to do with the workmen
in Moscow, I was told that they had been much demoralised by the
extreme Revolutionary Party, and that now they preferred doing nothing
and living at the expense of others to working. “The other night,” my
informant told me, “a friend of mine, a hospital nurse, was waked at
midnight by two workmen whom she knew well, and had always known to be
most respectable men. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘We have come for
Brownings,’ they said (Colt pistols). ‘I haven’t any Brownings,’ she
said. ‘Are you not afraid some other hooligans might come and rob you?’
they asked. ‘No,’ she answered; ‘but what do you want Brownings for?’
‘We are going out _expropriating_,’ they said, as quietly as if they
had remarked that they were going to their dinner. She then argued with
them until four in the morning, and saw that in any case they did not
go out expropriating on that night.” But this word “expropriation” put
into vogue by the revolutionaries, has had a disastrous effect on the
working classes, who think they have only to stretch out their hands
and take by right anybody else’s property.
I travelled back to St. Petersburg in a third-class carriage, which
was full of recruits. “They sang all the way (as Jowett said about
the poetical but undisciplined undergraduate whom he drove home from
a dinner party) bad songs,--very bad songs.” Not quite all the way,
however. They were like schoolboys going to a private school, putting
on extra assurance. In the railway carriage there was a Zemstvo
“Feldsher,” a hospital assistant who had been all through the war. We
talked of the war, and while we were discussing, a young peasant who
was in the carriage joined in and startled us by his sensible and acute
observations on the war. “There’s a man,” said the Feldsher to me,
“who has a good head. And it is sheer natural cleverness. That’s what
a lot of the young peasants are like. And what will become of him? If
only these people could be developed!” A little later I began to read
a small book. “Are you reading Lermontov?” asked the Feldsher. “No,” I
answered, “I am reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” “Ah,” he said with a
sigh, “you are evidently not a married man, but perhaps you are engaged
to be married?”
Just as I was preparing to sleep, the guard came and began to search
the corners and the floor of the carriage with a candle as if he had
dropped a pin or a penny. He explained that there were twelve recruits
in the carriage, but that an extra man had got in with them and that
he was looking for him. He then went away. Thereupon one of the
recruits explained to me that the man was under one of the seats and
hidden by boxes, as he wished to go to St. Petersburg without a ticket.
I went to sleep. But the guard came back and turned me carefully over
to see if I was the missing man. Then he began to look again in the
most unlikely places for a man to be hid. He gave up the search twice,
but the hidden man could not resist putting out his head to see what
was happening, and before he could get it back the guard coming in at
that moment caught sight of him. The man was turned out, but he got
into the train again, and the next morning it was discovered that he
had stolen one of the recruits’ boxes and some article of property from
nearly everybody in the carriage, including hats and coats. This he had
done while the recruits slept, since when they stopped singing and went
to sleep they slept soundly. Later in the night a huge and old peasant
entered the train and crept under the seat opposite to me. The guard
did not notice him, and after the tickets had been collected from the
passengers who got in at that station the man crept out, and lay down
on one of the higher berths. He remained there nearly all night, but at
one of the stations the guard said: “Is there no one for this station?”
and looking at the peasant, added: “Where are you for, old man?” The
man mumbled in pretended sleep. “Where is your ticket?” asked the
guard. No answer. At last when the question had been repeated thrice,
he said: “I am a poor, little, old man.” “You haven’t got a ticket,”
said the guard. “Get out, devil, you might lose me my place--and I a
married man. Devil! Devil! Devil!” “It is on account of my extreme
poverty,” said the old man, and he was turned out.
The next morning I had a long conversation with the young peasant who,
the Feldsher said, had brains. I asked him, among other things, if
he thought the Government was right in relying on what it calls the
innate and fundamental conservatism of the great mass of the Russian
people. “If the Government says that the whole of the peasantry is
Conservative it lies,” he said. “It is true that a great part of the
people is rough--uneducated--but there are many who know. The war
opened our eyes. You see, the Russian peasant is accustomed to be told
by the authorities that a glass (taking up my tumbler) is a man, and
to believe it. The Army is on the side of the Government. At least it
is really on the side of the people, but it feels itself helpless. The
soldiers are afraid of being punished. If they could act together like
they did at Kharkov this summer (a regiment mutinied there and all the
troops sent to quell the mutiny joined the mutineers) all would be over
in a day--and the Government will never yield except to force. There is
nothing to be done.” And we talked of other things. The recruits joined
in the conversation, and I offered a small meat patty to one of them,
who said: “No, thank you. I am greatly satisfied with you as it is,
without your giving me a meat patty.”
The theft which had taken place in the night was discussed from every
point of view. “We took pity on him and we hid him,” they said, “and
he robbed us.” They spoke of it without any kind of bitterness or
grievance, and nobody said, “I told you so.” Then we arrived at St.
Petersburg.
DOWN THE VOLGA
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 does not consist
in the accommodation, but in the fact that one is constantly waked
during the night 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, and 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 cried 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 unawares, and after that there was peace.
The comfort of travelling third class in Russia is that there is always
tea to be had. One would need the pen of Charles Lamb to sing the
praises of Russian tea. The difference between our tea and Russian tea
is not that Russian tea is weaker or that it has lemon in it. I have
heard Englishmen say sometimes: “I don’t want any of your exquisite
Russian tea; I want a good cup of strong tea.” This is as if you were
to say: “I don’t want any of your soft German music; I want some nice
loud English music.” It is a question of kind; not of degree. You can
have tea in Russia as strong as you like. The difference is not in
the strength, but in the flavour and in the fact that it is always
made with boiling water, and is always fresh. But if you put a piece
of lemon into a strong cup of Ceylon tea and think that the result is
Russian tea you are mistaken. Russian tea is an exquisitely refreshing
drink, and I sometimes wonder whether tea in England in the eighteenth
century, the tea sung of by Pope and of which Dr. Johnson drank
thirty-six cups running, was not probably identical with Russian tea.
It certainly was not Ceylon tea.
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, an extraordinarily 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 very dark in the twilight); the houses low, two-storeyed, and all
painted white, with pale green roofs as white as ghosts in the dusk,
ornamented with pilasters and Eighteenth-century and Empire arches
and arcades. Every now and then one came across a church with the
remains of the sunset making the gilt minarets glisten. The whole was
a symphony in dark green, white and lilac (the sky was lilac by now).
The shops were all shut, the houses shuttered, the passers-by few. The
grass grows 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 with
which it corresponded, 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 and
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 very
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. This 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 intensely amusing and interesting, but they evidently disagreed
about it. These are the things, by the way, which ought to please an
author. An author is delighted with a few neatly-turned “clichés” in a
literary journal, turned out machine-made from the brains of literary
men who have lost all their freshness of palate and can no more enjoy
a book than a tea-taster can enjoy a cup of tea; but the reward really
worth getting is the passionate interest of the man in the street, of a
family, for instance, on a steamer between Yaroslav and Nijni-Novgorod.
What they disagreed about was the character of the heroine. The girl
loathed her. The mother faintly tolerated her. The son liked her.
The girl’s argument was clear and forcible. She said she thought
that Fräulein Schmidt was an egotist and fundamentally intolerant,
and that she looked down on humanity from a pedestal of superiority.
She said she felt the same thing about Elizabeth; Elizabeth and
Fräulein Schmidt, she argued, enlisted your understanding, your sense
of amusement in a most subtle way, in describing the pain of being
interrupted in some delicious occupation by a dreadful bore. The girl
said that all these descriptions of bores amused her immensely, but
they made her sympathise with the bore. She preferred them to Elizabeth
and to Fräulein Schmidt. She felt sure Elizabeth and Fräulein Schmidt
had no conception of how trying she probably was to the poor bores.
Fräulein Schmidt had infinite tolerance for clever and charming people
like Professor Martens and her father, but of the people like the
stepmother she never gave one a glimpse of the good side.
Now the daughter argued that these people always have a good side. The
son said they did not, that they were described just as they were.
The daughter said she had studied music in Berlin and Leipzig, and
had lived in three German families, and that she had often endured a
great deal from people exactly like Fräulein Schmidt’s stepmother;
but she had always found that they were at the same time pathetic in
their kindness at times. Fräulein Schmidt never gave you a hint of a
kind side. She merely said these people starved the soul--which was
nonsense; nobody, she added, starves one’s soul, one does that oneself.
The mother said that Fräulein Schmidt probably understood the good
side of the boring people, and did not mention it because it is not so
amusing to describe. The daughter answered that it was interesting,
if not amusing, and often touching. Fräulein Schmidt thought herself
superior to everybody, because she read Matthew Arnold.
The son said that as far as he got he thought that the people described
were just like those whom he had known at Heidelberg; that Fräulein
Schmidt was charming and Mr. Anstruther loathsome. “Yes,” said the
girl, “but she makes him loathsome on purpose. One wonders how
Rose-Marie could ever have liked him for one second. She flatters
herself, too, by being careful to let us know the old man thought she
was like Hebe. She was evidently not a bit like Hebe.” And so the
discussion continued without end.
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 is a huge plain,
and the Fair. The hill part of the town is wooded and green; the Fair
is a town in itself, and during the Fair period the whole business of
life, shops, including hotels, theatres, banks, baths, post, exchange,
restaurants, is transferred thither. The shops are one-storeyed, and
occupy square blocks, which they intersect in parallel lines. They
are 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 a hotel. The hotels were crowded just then, 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 is a house called the “Glavnii Dom,” the principal house;
here the post and the police are concentrated and the most important
shops--Fabergé, for instance. There is, of course, a large quantity
of dealers in furs and skins; I bought nothing, in spite of great
temptation, except a blanket and a clothes brush. The blankets are
dear. Star sapphires, on the other hand, seemed to be as cheap as
dirt. But perhaps this is always the case everywhere. I never quite
understood when the people had their meals here. The restaurants, of
which there is a large quantity, 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. Politically the place was as quiet as possible, but,
contrary to my expectations, it is what is called a “Progressist” place.
The newspapers are all Liberal, and Progressist “candidates” were
expected to get in at the next elections. I saw a newspaper editor who
complained of the new system the Government have adopted of inflicting
fines, right and left, on newspapers. His newspaper, which is the chief
Nijni daily, was fined 1000 roubles (£100) for having printed a leading
article against capital punishment in general. He showed me the article
and I read it. It was certainly abstract. He said that he expected
Liberal members to be returned for Nijni, although an immense amount of
pressure would no doubt be exerted to prevent such a thing happening.
I left Nijni on Saturday the 10th. What surprised and struck me most
about the Fair was the great size of it. One hears of the Fair of
Nijni, and one pictures to oneself a quantity of small booths in a
market-place. One does not realise--at least I did not--that the Fair
is a large town consisting entirely of shops, hotels, and restaurants.
The most important merchandise that passes hands at the Fair consists
of furs. But there are goods of every variety; second-hand books,
tea and silks from China, gems from the Urals, and “art nouveau”
furniture. There are also old curiosity shops rich in old 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,
with cigarette ash trays made of Venetian wells and teapots made out
of musical instruments and old book bindings. Nijni during the Fair
is almost entirely inhabited by merchants--merchants of every kind
and description. The majority of them wear 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 does not
necessarily imply poverty, and the people of the place justly reason
that however sordid one’s exterior appearance may be there is no
knowing but that one may be a millionaire. Another thing which struck
me here, a thing which has struck me in several other places, was the
way in which people determine your nationality by your clothes. And
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-headed, bearded, peasant merchant.
He contemplated 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.”