mean to patronise because I knew it was the worst. There was no help
for it, because my passport was not ready in time. I took a first-class
cabin on a big steamer full of children with their nurses and parents.
The children ran about the cabin all day long without stopping.
Children, I notice, are the same all over the world; they play the same
games: they make the same noise. In this case there were five sisters
and a small brother. What reminded me much of all children in general
and of my own experience as a child in particular was that the boy
suddenly began to howl because his sisters wouldn’t let him play with
them; and he cried out, “I want to play too,” and the sisters, when
the matter was finally brought before an arbitration court of parents,
who were playing cards, said that the boy made all games impossible.
Also there were three nurses in the cabin, who, whatever the children
did, told them not to do it, and every now and then one heard familiar
phrases such as “Don’t sit on the oilcloth with your bare legs,” “Don’t
lean out of the window with that cold of yours.” The passengers on the
boat were uninteresting.
There was a couple who spoke bad French to each other out of
refinement, but who relapsed into Russian when they had really
something interesting to say. There was a student who played the
pianoforte with astonishing facility and amazing execution; there were
the elder sisters of the small children, who also played the pianoforte
in exactly the same way as young people play it in England--that
is to say, with convulsive jerks over the difficult passages and
uninterrupted insistence on the loud pedal and a foolish bass. The
grown-up members of the party played “Vindt” all day.
When we arrived at Kazan I got out to look at the town. It also
possesses a Kremlin with white walls and crenelated towers and
old churches, a museum which contains the most uninteresting and
heterogeneous collection of objects imaginable, and a large monastery.
It is the most stagnant-looking city I have ever seen.
The Volga beyond Nijni is considerably broader. It is never less than
1200 yards in breadth, and from Nijni onwards, on the right bank of the
river, there is a range of lofty hills, mostly wooded, but sometimes
rocky and grassy, which go sheer down into the river. The left bank is
flat, and consists of green meadows. Below Kazan it is joined by the
river Kama, and becomes a mighty river, never less than three-quarters
of a mile in breadth. These facts could be derived quite easily and
more abundantly from a handbook of geography. “What does the Volga look
like?” is the question, I suppose, people wish to have answered. My
answer to that is that in various parts of its course the Volga reminds
me of almost every river I have ever seen, from the Dart to the Liao-he
and from the Neckar to the Nile. Below Kazan its aspect is gloomy and
sombre, a great stretch of broad brown waters, a wooded mountainous
bank on one side, a monotonous plain on the other. But if the weather
is fine--and it was gloriously fine after we reached Kazan--the effects
of light on the great expanse of water are miraculous. It is at dawn
that one sees the magic of these waters; at dawn and at sunset that the
great broad expanse, turning to gold or to silver according as the sky
is crimson, mauve, or rosy and grey, has a mystery and majesty of its
own. We met other steamers on the way, but during the whole voyage from
Nijni to Astrakan we only passed two small sailing boats.
I got out at Samara, and spent the night at a hotel. The next day I
embarked again for Astrakan, after having explored the town, in which
I failed to find an object of interest. From Samara to Saratov the
hills on the right bank of the river diminish in size, and instead
of descending sheer into the river they slope away from it, and as
the hills diminish the vegetation grows more scanty. The left bank
is flat and monotonous as before. From Samara to Saratov I travelled
third class, to see what it was like on board the steamer. There are
on the steamer four official classes and an unofficial fifth class.
The third class have a general cabin on the lower deck with two tiers
of bunks. The fourth class have a kind of enclosure, which contains
one large broad board on which they encamp. The fourth class contains
the “steerage” passengers. It is indescribably dirty. The fifth class
is composed of still dirtier and still poorer people, who lie about
on boxes, bales, or on whatever vacant space they can find on the
lower deck. They lie for the most part like corpses, in a profound
slumber, generally face downwards, flat upon the floor. The third class
is respectable and decently clean; it has, moreover, one immense
advantage--some permanently open windows. In the first class there
was among the company a great aversion to draughts. They had not what
some one once called “La passion des Anglais pour les courants d’air.”
In the third class there was no such prejudice. The passengers were
various. There were two students, some merchants, twenty Cossacks going
home on leave, a policeman, a public servant, several peasants, and a
priest.
On the bunk just over mine sprawled a large bearded Cossack, who at
once asked me where I was going, my occupation, my country, and my
name. I answered more or less in the words of the song that
“My name it is Jack Rover,
From over the hills I come;
I get my living on the ups and downs;”
in fact, that I was a newspaper correspondent and an Englishman. I then
lay down on my bunk. Another Cossack from the other side of the cabin
called out at the top of his voice to the man who was over me: “Who is
that man?” “He is a foreigner.” “Is he travelling with goods?” “No, he
is just travelling, nothing more.” “Where does he come from?” “I don’t
know.” Then, looking down at me from his bunk, the Cossack who was
above me said, “Thou art quite bald, little father. Is it illness that
did it or nature?” “Nature,” I answered. “Should’st try an ointment,”
he said. “I have tried many and strong ointments,” I said, “including
onion, tar and paraffin, none of which were of any avail. There is
nothing to be done.” “No,” said the Cossack, with a sigh. “There is
nothing to be done. It is God’s business.”
There is no particular discomfort in travelling third class on the
steamer. The bunks are, with the aid of blankets, as comfortable as
those in the first class. One can obtain the same food, and there
is plenty of fresh air. Nevertheless, if one only travels thus for
a day and a night it is indescribably fatiguing, because one has to
change and readjust one’s hours. For at the first streak of dawn the
people begin to talk, and by sunrise they have washed and are having
tea. It is not as if they went to bed earlier. For all day long they
talk and they go to sleep quite late, about eleven. But they have the
blessed gift possessed by Napoleon and Sarah Bernhardt of snatching
half-hours or five minutes of sleep whenever they feel in need of it.
If one travels like this for several days running, one gets used to it,
of course, and one also acquires the habit of snatching sleep at odd
moments during the daytime, but if one travels like this for a day or
two the result is, as I have said before, extreme bodily fatigue.
The public servant, who had a small post in some provincial town, came
and talked to me. He asked me if Shaliapin, the famous singer, had
sung at Nijni. Shaliapin, he added, was his master. “I have,” he said,
“a magnificent bass voice.” “Are you fond of music?” I asked. “Fond
of music!” he cried. “When I hear music I am like a wild animal. I go
mad.” “Do you mean to go on the stage?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “when
I have learnt enough. In the meantime I am a public servant--I am in
the Government service.” “That, I suppose, you find tedious,” I said.
“It is more than tedious, it is disgusting,” and he began to abuse the
Government. I said there was a great difference between the Russia
of to-day and the Russia of four years ago. “There is no difference
at all,” he said; “we have obtained absolutely nothing except paper
promises.” I said: “I am not talking of what the Government has done or
failed to do; I am talking of the general aspect of things, of Russian
life as it strikes a foreigner. I was here three or four years ago, and
I am struck by the great difference between then and now. Had I met you
then you would not have talked politics with me; there were no politics
to talk.” “That is true,” he answered, “we have now a political life.”
Here one of the Cossacks asked him who he was. “I am a famous singer,”
he answered. “I have sung at the Merchants’ Club at the district town
of A----. I am a pupil of Shaliapin, who is the king of basses and is
well known throughout the whole civilised world, and who has sung in
America. He is a Russian. Think of that.” The Cossack seemed impressed.
The singer got out at one of the stations; perhaps one day he will be
as well known as Shaliapin; perhaps, on the other hand, he has merely
been called and will not be chosen.
The people in the cabin had their meals at different times of the day,
the chief meal consisting of tea, which took place twice a day. Every
time we stopped at a place a flood of beggars invaded our cabin asking
for alms. The interesting point is that they received them. They were
never sent empty away, and were invariably given either some coppers,
some bread, or some melon. I am sure there is no country in the world
where people give so readily to the poor as in Russia. One has only to
walk about the streets in any Russian town to notice this fact. Here
in the third-class saloon it especially struck me. I did not see one
single beggar turned away without a gift of some kind. One little boy
was given a piece of bread and a large slice of water-melon.
At the many small stations at which we called on the banks of the river
there were crowds of itinerant vendors who sold various descriptions
of food--hot pies, fried fish, gigantic water-melons, apples, red
currants, and cucumbers. The whole duration of each stop at any of
these places was occupied by the unloading and loading of the steamer
with goods. This is done by a horde of creatures in red and blue
shirts called loaders, who have a kind of ledge strapped on to their
backs which enables them to support enormous loads. Like big gnomes,
during the whole of the stop, they are seen scurrying from the hold of
the steamer to the wooden quay and back again to the steamer. On the
quay itself, either placidly looking on and munching sunflower seeds
or else wildly gesticulating over a bargain at a booth, a motley herd
of passengers and inhabitants of the place is swarming: many-coloured,
bright, ragged, and squalid, like the crowds depicted in a sacred
picture waiting for a miracle or a parable under the burning sky of
Palestine.
Samara and Saratov have not the features which characterise the towns
of the Upper Volga. They have no Kremlin, no remains of a fortress
dominating the town and enclosed in old walls. Saratov is a collection
of wooden houses which look as if they had been made by a Swiss artisan
for the Earl’s Court Exhibition and exposed on the side of a steep hill.
Between Saratov and Tzaritsin the character of the river changes
altogether, the vegetation begins to dwindle, the great hills on the
right bank of the river diminish, and the farther one travels south
the lower they become. The left bank is flat, monotonous, and green as
before. The river itself broadens, and in some places it is several
kilometres wide. You get the impression that you are travelling on
a large lake or on a sea rather than on a river. The farther south
one travels the greater is the beauty of the river. It is a solemn,
majestic river; one understands its having been the mother and
inspirer of a quantity of poetry, of folk-song and folk-lore; and
one understands, too, how appropriate the deep octaves, the broad
slow-dying notes and echoes of the Volga songs are to these great
melancholy spaces of shining water. Every day on the steamer between
Saratov and Astrakan I awoke at dawn and went out on to the deck to
sniff the freshness and to watch the process of daybreak. The soft,
grey sky trembled into a delicate tint of lilac, and over the far-off
banks of the river, which were distant enough to have the appearance
of a range of violet hills, came the first blush of dawn, and then
a deeper rose, while the whole upper sky was washed with a clean
daffodil colour, which was reflected in silver on the blue water. And
then the sun rose--a huge red ball of fire, casting golden scales
beneath him on to the water.
Towards noon, perhaps, the sky will be piled with white clouds, and the
river looks like an immense hard glass, reflecting in unruffled detail
every curve and shadow of the cloudland, and the small motionless trees
of the banks which in the sunless heat are as unreal as a mirage. Later
in the afternoon the water seems to grow more and more luminous; the
sensation of some kind of enchantment, of something wizard-like and
unreal increases, and one would not be surprised to catch sight of
the walls of Tristram’s Castle in the air, the wizard walls to which
he promised to bring Iseult--the castle built of the stuff of which
rainbows are made, of fire, dew, and the colours of the morning. But
with the sunset this feeling of unreality and enchantment ceases and
gives way; the nearer bank stands out in sharp outline, intensely real
between purple skies and grey waters, and over the farther bank hangs
the intense blue of woody distances. Between Tzaritsin and Astrakan
the character of the river changes yet again. The hills on the right
bank vanish altogether; both the banks are flat now--unlimited steppes
possessing scant vegetation and culminating in steep banks of yellow
sand. It was here that the river reminded me of the Nile.
Tzaritsin itself is a great trade centre; the best caviare and the
best water-melons are to be obtained here. Most of the third-class
passengers got out at Tzaritsin. I was amused by the process, which I
watched on shore, of a huge block of stone being hauled up a hill by a
gang of workmen. The spectacle was so utterly unlike anything one sees
in other countries. Pieces of rock are also hauled up hills in other
lands, but the manner in which it is done is entirely different. Seven
men were hauling the rope; they were ragged, dirty, and dressed in red
and blue shirts, stained and dusty, while their tufts of yellow hair
stuck out of their tattered peaked caps. By the block of stone stood
the leader of the gang. Then suddenly, when he thought the time had
come, he intoned a chant, a solo, about fifteen notes, which might have
been written in the Scotch scale (the scale of G major without the F
sharp), plaintive and unexpected; then he beat time with a wave of his
left hand, and at the fourth beat the whole gang chimed in, continuing
the melody in parts and hauling as they sang, and then abruptly ending
on the dominant. Then after a short pause the leader again intoned his
solo and the chorus again made harmonies to the plaintive melody, and
this was repeated till the block of stone was hauled up the hill.
What I should like to know is when people of a country leave off
singing natural folk-song tunes like “Ca’ the Yowes,” for instance,
and when they begin to substitute for them the répertoire of the
music-hall, How much education and progress is necessary to effect the
change? I wonder whether in a hundred years’ time Russian song will
have disappeared as it exists now, and whether its place will be taken
by the music-hall refrains of London. This is not meant to be said in
dispraise of music-halls. I appreciate and immensely enjoy music-hall
tunes, especially the tunes of the stately music-halls of England. I
think the English people have a genius, which other countries try in
vain to imitate, for creating catching, rhythmical tune mixed with
broad and sometimes inspired farce, and their achievements in this
province have certainly added to the gaiety of nations, but I am for
rendering to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. The music-hall tune is
a thing of the town, and songs like the “Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond,”
“Come o’er the Sea, Charlie,” “Ca’ the Yowes,” “Dans le jardin de mon
père,” and the songs of the Volga are things of the country, and I
think it is melancholy that the latter should disappear and that their
place should be usurped entirely by the town-mouse and his music. But
perhaps this does not happen.
The climate, when Tzaritsin is passed, grows hotter and hotter, and the
breeze made by the steamer only increases the heat. The moon rises and
for a while the sky is still tinged with the stain of the sunset in the
west, and the water is luminous with a living whiteness. Then, rapidly,
because the twilight does not last long here, comes the darkness
and with it something strange and wonderful. One is aware of an
extraordinary fragrance in the air. It is not merely the sweetness of
summer night. It is a pungent and aromatic incense which pervades the
whole atmosphere; warm and delicious and filled with the whole essence
of summer. It is intoxicating and comes over one like a great wave, a
breath of Elysium; a message, as it were, from the great white fields.
And the night with its web of stars, and the dark waters, and the
thin line of the far-off banks, make one once more lose all sense of
reality. One has reached another world, the nether-world perhaps; one
breathes “The scent of alien meadows far away,” and one feels as if one
were sailing down the river of oblivion to the harbours of Proserpine.
And this wonderful sweetness comes, I ascertained, from the new-mown
hay, the mowing of which takes place late here. The hay lies in great
masses over the steppes, embalming the midnight air and turning the
world into paradise.
In reaching Astrakan one is plunged into the atmosphere of the East.
On the quays there is an infinite quantity of booths containing every
kind of fruit and a coloured herd of people living in the dust and the
dirt; splendidly squalid, noisy as parrots, and busy doing nothing,
like wasps. The railway to Astrakan is not yet finished, so one is
obliged to return to Tzaritsin by steamer if one wishes to get back to
the centre of Russia. I pursued this course; and from Tzaritsin took
the train for Tambov. The train started from Tzaritsin at two o’clock
in the morning; I arrived at the station at midnight, and at this hour
the station was crammed with people. Imagine a huge high waiting-room
with three tables d’hôte parallel to each other in the centre of it; at
one end of the hall a buffet; on the sides of it under the windows are
tables and long seats padded with leather, partitioned off and forming
open cubicles. These seats are always occupied, and the occupants go
to bed on them, wrapped up in blankets, and propped up by pillows,
bags, rugs, baskets, kettles, and other impedimenta. The whole of this
refreshment hall is filled with sleeping figures. There are people
lying asleep on the window sills and others on chairs placed together.
Some merely lay their heads on the table d’hôte, and fall into a
profound slumber. It is like the scene in “The Sleeping Beauty in the
Wood,” when sleep overtook the inhabitants of the castle. There are a
bookstall and a newspaper kiosk. The bookstall contains--as usual--the
works of Jerome K. Jerome and Conan Doyle, some translations of French
novels, some political pamphlets, a translation of John Morley’s
_Compromise_, and an essay on Ruskin--a strange medley of literary
food. At the newspaper kiosk the newsvendor is so busily engrossed in
reading out a story which had just appeared in the newspapers of how a
saintly peasant killed a baby because he thought it was the Antichrist,
that it is impossible to get him to pay any attention to one. He is
reading out the story to an audience consisting of the policeman,
one of the porters, and a kind of sub-guard. The story is, indeed, a
curious one, and has caused a considerable stir; and I intend to relate
it at a future date.[2]
[2] See page 214.
The journey to Tambov was long; in my carriage was a railway
official who drank tea, ate apples, and sighed over the political
condition of the country. Everything was as bad as could be. “It is
a heavy business,” he said, “living in Russia now.” Then, after some
reflection, he added: “But, perhaps in other countries, in England for
instance, people sometimes find fault with the Government.” I told him
they did little else. He then took a large roll out of a basket, and,
after he had been munching it for some time, he said: “After all there
is no country in the world where such good bread can be got as this.”
And this seemed to console him greatly.
The sunflower season has arrived. Sunflowers are grown in great
quantities in Russia, not for ornamental or decorative purposes but
for utilitarian purposes. They are grown for the oil that is in them;
but besides being useful in many ways they form an article of food.
You pick the head of the sunflower and eat the seeds. You bite the
seed, spit out the husk, and eat the kernel, which is white and tastes
of sunflower. Considerable skill is needed when cracking the husk and
spitting it out to leave the kernel intact. This habit is universal
among the lower classes in Russia. It occupies a human being like
smoking, and it is a pleasant adjunct to contemplation. It is also
conducive to untidiness. Nothing is so untidy in the world as a room
or a platform littered with sunflower seeds. All platforms in Russia
are thus littered at this time of year. When I was on the steamer at
Tzaritsin one of the Cossacks approached me with this question, which
seemed startling: “Do you chew seeds?” At first I was at a loss to
think what he meant, but I soon remembered the sunflower, and when I
had answered in the affirmative he produced a great handful of dried
seeds and offered them to me. I had to change three times on the way
to my destination, which was the environs of Tambov. During one of
the journeys the carriage, a kind of first-class saloon carriage, was
occupied by a cashier carrying money, and he had with him two gendarmes
with loaded rifles so as to guard him, since assaults on cashiers with
the object of robbery are not becoming less frequent. On the small
lines the first-class carriages are often saloon carriages in which
any seat makes into a bed. When I arrived at my destination I found
the country looking intensely green after a wet summer; the weather
was boiling hot and the nights had the softness and the sweetness that
should belong to the month of June.
SKETCHES IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH RUSSIA
I
THE RELIGION OF RUSSIAN PEASANTS
The contrast which strikes the traveller who travels directly from
Central to Little Russia (which is in the South) is not unlike
that of which a traveller would be aware if he went straight from
Cambridgeshire or Norfolk to South Devon or Normandy. The season in
both places is doing the same thing. The vegetation in the one place
is not startingly behindhand or ahead of the vegetation in the other
place; autumn in both places has reached the same stage; only in each
place it has reached that stage in a different manner. In Central
Russia there is a bite in the morning air, a smell of smoke, of damp
leaves, of moist brown earth, and a haze hangs before the tattered
trees, which are generously splashed with crimson and gold. In Little
Russia the pageant of decay is just as far advanced; but little green
remains in the yellow and golden woods; everything is hot and dry;
there is no sharpness in the air and no moistness in the earth; summer
instead of being conquered by the invading cold seems to be dying
like a decadent Roman emperor of excess of splendour and softness and
opulence. The contrast in the habitations of man is sharper still. In
Central Russia the peasant’s house is built of logs and roofed with
straw or iron according to the means of the inhabitant. The villages
are monotonously and uniformly brown, colourless, and sullen; in the
South the houses are white or pale green; these are surrounded with
orchards and fruit trees; they often possess the luxury of glass
verandahs; there is something well-to-do and smiling about them,
something which recalls the whitewashed, straw-thatched cottages of
South Devon, or the farms in Normandy, and all the delicious things
which the French language conveys and suggests better than any other,
since it is lighter; for in a few words, such as--
“Dans le jardin de mon père
Les lilas ont fleuri.”
It conjures up endless vistas of joyousness, gaiety, and sunshine.