ORDINARY MISFORTUNES AND POLITICAL MISFORTUNES—TEACHERS AND
COMMISSIONAIRES—AGENTS AND SALESMEN—ORATORS AND LETTER-WRITERS—DO-NOTHING
FACTOTUMS AND EVER-BUSY DRONES—RUSSIANS—THIEVES—SPIES
(_Written in 1856 and 1857_)
... From the _sulphurous gang_, as the Germans themselves called the
Marxists, it is an easy and natural transition to the muddy slime, to the
lowest dregs which drift from continental shocks and commotions to the
shores of Britain, and most of all to London.
It may well be imagined what incongruous elements are caught up from
the Continent and deposited in England by those ebbs and flows of
revolution and reaction which exhaust the constitution of Europe like
an intermittent fever; and what amazing types of people are cast down
by these waves and stray about in the damp swamps of London. What must
be the chaos of ideas and theories in these specimens of every kind of
moral formation and reformation, of every protest, every Utopia, every
disillusionment, and every hope, who meet in the alleys, eating-houses
and beer-shops of Leicester Square and the adjoining back streets?
‘There,’ as _The Times_ puts it, ‘lives a wretched population of
foreigners wearing hats such as no one wears, and hair where none should
be, a miserable, poverty-stricken, harassed population who set all the
powerful monarchs of Europe trembling except the Queen of England.’
Yes indeed, there in the public-houses and beer-shops sit these foreign
visitors over their gin with hot or cold water or without water at all,
or with a mug of bitter porter, and still bitterer words on their lips,
waiting for a revolution, for which they are no longer adapted, and
money from relations, which they will never get.
What original, what odd figures I have studied among them! Here, side by
side with the Communist of the old faith, hating every man of property in
the name of universal brotherhood, is the old Carlist who had shot at his
own brothers in the name of patriotism from devotion to a Montemolin[2]
or a Don Juan, of whom he knew nothing and knows nothing. There, side
by side with the Hungarian who describes how with five _honveds_[3] he
sent a squadron of Austrian cavalry flying, and to make himself look
more martial buttons his Hungarian coat up to the throat, though its
proportions betray that its youth belonged to another wearer, sit the
German who gives lessons in music, Latin, every literature and every
art, for his daily beer; the cosmopolitan and atheist who despises every
nationality except Kur-Hesse or Hesse-Cassel, according to which of the
Hessen he happens to have been born in; the Pole of the old-fashioned
pattern who loves independence as a Catholic may; and the Italian for
whom independence means hatred of Catholicism.
Beside the revolutionary _émigrés_ are the _conservative émigrés_: the
business man or the notary who has absconded _sans adieux_ from his
fatherland, creditors and guarantors, and who also reckons himself
unjustly persecuted; the _honest_ bankrupt convinced that he will soon
clear his character and obtain fresh credit and capital; just as his
neighbour on the right knows for certain that in a day or two ‘La
Rouge’ will be proclaimed by ‘Marianne’ in person; while his neighbour
on the left is equally certain that the Orleans family is packing up
in Claremont and the princesses are ordering splendid dresses for a
triumphal entry into Paris.
To the _conservative_ group of the ‘guilty but not convicted through
absence of the accused’ belong also more thorough-going persons than
bankrupts or notaries of too ardent imagination; these were persons who
had had _great misfortunes_ in their native land and were trying with
all their might to pass off their _ordinary misfortunes_ for _political
misfortunes_. This peculiar nomenclature calls for explanation.
One of our friends went as a joke to a matrimonial agency. He was asked
for ten francs and questioned as to what kind of bride he desired,
whether fair or dark, how much dowry she must have, and so on. The sleek
little old man, after noting down his answers, began with apologies and
circumlocutions to question him about his origin and was greatly rejoiced
on learning that he was of noble rank; then, redoubling his apologies and
observing that the silence of the grave was their rule, asked him: ‘_Have
you not had misfortunes?_’
‘I am a Pole and in exile, that is without country, without rights,
without property.’
‘The last item is unfortunate, but excuse me, for what reason did you
leave your _belle patrie_?’
‘By reason of the last rebellion.’ (This happened in 1848.)
‘That is of no consequence. _Political misfortunes we do not count_, they
are rather to the good, _c’est une attraction_. But allow me, can you
assure me that you have had no _other misfortunes_?’
‘I should think I have had; why, my father and mother are dead.’
‘Oh, no, no....’
‘What then do you mean by the words, _other misfortunes_?’
‘You see, you might have left your lovely fatherland for _private_
reasons and not for political ones. Sometimes in youth imprudence, bad
example, the temptations of great cities—you know how it is.... An
I.O.U. thoughtlessly given, a sum of money not your own spent somewhat
irregularly—a signature or something....’
‘I understand, I understand,’ said my friend. ‘No, I assure you I have
not been tried either for theft or forgery.’
... In the year 1855 a Frenchman, _exilé de sa patrie_, went from one to
another of his comrades in misfortune, proposing they should assist him
to publish a poem after the style of Balzac’s ‘Comédie du Diable,’ which
he had written in prose and verse with new orthography and newly invented
syntax. Among the characters in the poem were Louis-Philippe, Jesus
Christ, Robespierre, Maréchal Bugeaud, and God Himself.
Among others he approached with this request Schoelcher, the most honest
and rigid of mortals.
‘Have you been in exile long?’ the champion of the negroes asked him.
‘Since 1847.’
‘Since 1847? And you came here?’
‘From Brest, from penal servitude.’
‘What affair was that? I don’t remember it at all.’
‘Oh, well, the case was very famous at the time! Of course, it was more
of an individual case.’
‘What was it, though?’ ... Schoelcher asked, somewhat perturbed.
‘_Ah, bah, si vous y tenez_, I protested in my own way against the rights
of property, _j’ai protesté à ma manière_.’
‘And you ... you have been in Brest?’
‘_Parbleu oui_, seven years of penal servitude for _burglary_ (_vol avec
effraction_),’ and Schoelcher, with the voice of the chaste Susannah
dismissing the indiscreet old men, bade the independent protester leave
him.
The persons, whose misfortunes were fortunately _general_ and whose
protests were collective, whom we have left in grimy public-houses and
black cook-shops at unpainted tables with gin or porter before them, had
their fill of suffering, and, what was most distressing, without the
faintest idea what they suffered for.
Time passed with terrible leisureliness, but it passed; revolution was
nowhere in sight, except in their imaginations, while poverty, actual and
merciless, mowed closer and closer the pastures on which they grazed, and
all this mass of people, for the most part good people, went hungrier
and hungrier. They had no habit of work; their thoughts, bent on the
political arena, could not concentrate on the practical; they caught at
anything, but with exasperation, with annoyance, with impatience, without
perseverance, and everything slipped through their fingers; those who had
the strength and manliness for work were gradually detached and swam up
out of the bog, but the others!
And what an endless number there were of those others! Since those days
the French amnesty and the amnesty of death has carried off many, but in
the early ’fifties I came upon the great tide.
The German refugees, especially those not of the working class, were very
poor, not less so than the French. They were rarely successful. Doctors
who had studied medicine thoroughly, and in any case knew their work a
hundred times better than the English sawbones who were called surgeons,
could hardly get together a meagre practice. Painters and sculptors,
with pure and platonic dreams of art and its sacred service, but without
productive talent, without intensity and persistence, without unerring
instinct, perished in the crowd of competing rivals. In the simple
conditions of their little native town, on the cheap German food, they
might have led long and tranquil lives, preserving their virginal worship
of their ideals and their faith in their sacred vocation. There they
would have lived and died, suspected of talent. Torn up from their little
native gardens by the French upheaval, they were lost in the forest
jungles of London life.
If one is not to be crushed and stifled in London, one must do a great
deal of work, and do it smartly, at once, and do what comes first,
what is in demand. One must fix the distracted attention of the blasé
crowd by intensity, impudence, mass or variety. Ornaments, patterns
for embroidery, arabesques, models, sketches, portraits, frames,
water-colours, cameos, flowers—anything, so long as it is done quickly,
so long as it is done in the nick of time and in immense quantity.
Twenty-four hours after the news of Havelock’s victory in India, Julien,
_le grand Julien_,[4] had composed a musical performance with the cries
of African birds and the tramp of elephants, with Indian chants and
firing of cannon, so that London read the news in the newspapers and
listened to its presentation at the concert simultaneously. He made
immense sums out of this composition, which ran for a month. Meanwhile
the dreamers from beyond the Rhine fell by the roadside in this inhuman
race for money and success; exhausted, they folded their hands in
despair, or worse still, raised them against themselves to put an end to
the unequal and humiliating struggle.
Apropos of concerts, those of the Germans who were musical were better
off altogether; the number of such employed every day by London and its
suburbs is colossal. Theatres and private lessons, modest working-class
balls and immodest ones at the Argyle Rooms, at Cremorne and the Casino,
_cafés chantants_ with dancing, _cafés chantants_ with living pictures
in tights, Her Majesty’s, Covent Garden, Exeter Hall, the Crystal
Palace, St. James’s at the top and the corners of all the main streets
at the bottom occupy and maintain the whole population of two or three
German duchies. A poor fellow will dream of the Music of the Future
and of Rossini doing homage to Wagner, will read Tannhäuser at home
from the score with no instrument, and then, sitting behind a retired
tambour-major and a mummer with an ivory stick, play some Mary Anne polka
or Flower and Butterfly _redowa_ for four hours in succession and be
given two shillings to four-and-sixpence for his evening. Then he will go
out into the dark night, through the rain to an underground beer-shop,
chiefly frequented by Germans, and there find my old friends Kraut and
Müller: Kraut, who has been working for six years at a bust, which keeps
growing worse and worse; and Müller, who has been for twenty-six years
writing a tragedy called ‘Eric,’ which he read to me ten years ago and
again five years ago, and would be reading to me again now if we had not
quarrelled. And we quarrelled about General Urban,[5] but of that another
time....
... And what did not the Germans do to win the favourable notice of the
English, and all without success?
Germans, who all their lives have smoked in every corner of their
dwellings, at dinner and at tea, in bed and at their work, do not in
London smoke in their smutty, smoke-begrimed drawing-room, and will not
allow their guests to do so. Men who have always in their own country
been in the habit of going to a tavern to drink and sit over a pipe in
good company will pass the London public-houses without looking at them,
and send a maid there for beer with a mug or a milk-jug.
I once happened in the presence of a German _émigré_ to fold up a
letter addressed to an Englishwoman. ‘What are you about?’ he cried in
excitement. I started, and involuntarily dropped the letter, supposing
that there was a scorpion in it at least. ‘In England,’ he said, ‘a
letter is always folded in three and not in four, and you writing to a
lady too! and such a lady!’
On my first arrival in London I went to look up a German doctor of my
acquaintance. I did not find him at home, and wrote on a sheet of paper
that was lying on the table something of this kind: ‘_Cher docteur_, I
am in London and should very much like to see you. Won’t you come this
evening to such-and-such a tavern to have a bottle of wine as in old
days, and to have a good talk?’ The doctor did not come, and next day
I received a note from him to this effect: ‘M. Herzen, I am very sorry
that I could not take advantage of your kind invitation. My duties do not
leave me much leisure. I will try, however, to visit you in a day or two,
etc....’
‘... Why, it seems the doctor has got a practice then?’ I inquired of
the German patriot to whom I was indebted for the information that the
English fold their letters in three. ‘Not at all; _der Kerl hat Pech
gehabt_ in London, _es geht ihm zu ominös_.’ ‘Then what is he doing?’
and I handed my friend the note. He smiled, but observed that I should
not have left on any doctor’s table an open letter in which I invited him
to have a bottle of wine: ‘And besides, why ask him to such a tavern,
where there is always a crowd? Here people drink at home.’ ‘It is a
pity,’ I observed, ‘that knowledge always comes too late; now I know how
to invite the doctor and where to bid him come, but I certainly shall not
ask him.’
Now we will go back to our exiles dreaming of revolution, of remittances
from relations, and of earning without working.
For a man who has not been a workman to begin working is not so easy as
it seems; many people imagine that if need has arisen, if there is work,
if there are tools, the workman too is ready. Work requires not only its
special education and training but also self-sacrifice. The exiles, for
the most part, came from second-rate drawing-rooms and literary circles,
and were journalistic hacks or budding lawyers. They could not live in
England by the work they were accustomed to, and any other was unnatural
to them; moreover, they felt it not worth while to begin anything new,
they were always listening for the bugle-call: ten years passed, fifteen
years passed, no call to battle came.
In despair, in vexation, without clothes, without a secure prospect for
the morrow, surrounded by growing families, they shut their eyes and
fling themselves headlong into schemes and speculations. Their schemes do
not succeed, their speculations come to grief, both because the schemes
they hatch are nonsensical and because instead of capital all they bring
to them is a sort of helpless clumsiness, an excessive irritability, an
incapacity to find their bearings in the simplest position, and again an
incapacity for sustained labour and for enduring the first thorny steps.
When they fail they find their solace in blaming their poverty: ‘With two
or three hundred pounds everything would have gone splendidly!’ The lack
of capital really is of course a drawback, but that is the common lot of
working people. There is no scheme too wild for them, from a joint-stock
society for procuring eggs from Havre to the invention of special inks
for trade-marks and of some sort of essences by which the vilest spirits
can be transformed into excellent liqueurs. But while the societies are
being formed and capital is being collected for all these marvels, they
must have food to eat and some sort of clothing to shield them from the
north-east wind and the modest eyes of the daughters of Albion.
Two palliative measures were undertaken with this view: one very tiresome
and very unprofitable, the other also unprofitable, but attended with
more entertainment. Quiet people with _Sitzfleisch_ took to giving
lessons in spite of the fact that they had not only given no lessons
before, but had very probably never received any. The fees were terribly
lowered by competition.
Here is a specimen of the advertisement published by an old man of
seventy, who, I fancy, belonged rather to the class of _independent_ than
of _collective_ protestors:—
MONSIEUR N. N.
Teaches the French Language
on a new and easy System of rapid proficiency;
has attended members of the British Parliament
and many other persons of respectability,
as vouchers certify; translates and interprets
that universal continental language,
and English,
In a Masterly Manner.
Terms Moderate:
Namely, Three Lessons per week for Six Shillings.
Giving lessons to English people is not a particularly pleasant task; an
Englishman does not stand upon ceremony with any one whom he employs for
payment.
One of my old friends received a letter from an Englishman asking him to
give French lessons to his daughter. My friend went at the hour fixed
to arrange terms. The father was having an after-dinner nap, but the
daughter greeted him rather civilly; then the old man came out, looked
B. up and down and asked: ‘_Vous être le_ French teacher?’ B. admitted
it. ‘_Vous pas convenir a moa._’ With this the British ass pointed to
his visitor’s moustache and beard. ‘Why didn’t you give him a punch?’ I
asked B. ‘Well, I thought of it, but when the bull had turned away, the
daughter with tears in her eyes mutely begged my forgiveness.’
Another resource is simpler and not so tedious; it consists in a
spasmodic and artistic selling of things on commission, pressing all
sorts of goods on people regardless of whether they want them. The French
for the most part dealt in wines and spirits. One Legitimist used to
offer his acquaintances and co-religionists brandy which he obtained in
an exceptional way through connections, of which in the present state
of France he could not and ought not to speak, and, moreover, through a
ship’s captain whom it would be a _calamité publique_ to compromise. The
brandy was nothing special and cost sixpence more than at the shops. The
Legitimist, accustomed to plead ‘with declamation,’ would add insult to
his insistence: he would take a wine-glass in two fingers by the foot,
would slowly describe circles with it, splash a few drops, sniff them in
the air and invariably be astonished at the extraordinarily fine aroma of
the brandy.
Another comrade in affliction who had once been a provincial professor of
literature had recourse to the seductions of wine. He obtained his wine
straight from the Côte d’Or, from Burgundy, from his old pupils, and was
extraordinarily successful in his choice of it.
‘_Citoyen_,’ he wrote to me, ‘ask your brotherly heart (_votre cœur
fraternel_) and it will tell you that you ought to grant me the agreeable
privilege of furnishing you with French wine. And in so doing your heart
will be at one with taste and with economy. While you drink excellent
wine at the very lowest price you will have the happiness of thinking
that in purchasing it you are alleviating the lot of a man who has
sacrificed all to the cause of his country and of freedom.
‘_Salut et fraternité!_ P.S.—I have taken the liberty of despatching you
with this a few samples.’
These samples were in half-bottles on which he had with his own hand
inscribed not only the name of the wine but various incidents from its
biography: ‘Chambertin (_Gr. vin et très rare!_), Côte Rôtie (_Comète_),
Pommard (1823!), Nuits (_provision Aguado!_).’
Two or three weeks later the professor of literature would send a fresh
set of samples. A day or two after sending them he would usually appear
himself and sit on for two or three hours until I had consented to keep
almost all the samples and paid for them. As he was relentless and
this was repeated several times, I used in the end to praise some of
the samples, pay him for them, and give him back the rest as soon as
he opened the door. ‘I do not want to encroach on your valuable time,
_citoyen_,’ he would say to me, and spare me for a fortnight from the
sour Burgundy born under the comet and the sugary Côte Rôtie from the
cellars of Aguado.
The Germans and Hungarians applied themselves to other branches of
industry.
One day at Richmond I was lying down with a terrible attack of headache.
François came up with a visiting-card saying that a gentleman urgently
desired to see me, that he was an Hungarian, _ajutante del generale_
(all the Hungarian exiles who had no honest calling dubbed themselves
Kossuth’s adjutants). I glanced at the card—it was an absolutely unknown
name adorned with the title of captain.
‘Why have you admitted him? How many thousand times have I told you of
it?’
‘This is the third time he has called to-day.’
‘Well, ask him into the drawing-room.’ I went down like a raging lion,
fortifying myself with a dose of a sedative.
‘Allow me to introduce myself, Captain So-and-so. I was for a long time
a prisoner of the Russians with Rüdiger after Vilagosz. The Russians
treated us extremely well. I was particularly favoured by General
Glazenap and Colonel ... What was it...? Russian surnames are very
difficult ... itch ... itch....’
‘Please don’t trouble. I do not know any colonel. Very glad that you were
comfortable. Won’t you sit down?’
‘Very, very comfortable ... we used to play every day with the officers
_shtoss_ and _bank_ ... very fine fellows and they can’t endure the
Austrians. I even remember a few words of Russian—_gleba_, _sheverdak_,
_une pièce de vingt-cinq sous_.’
‘Allow me to inquire to what I am indebted...?’
‘You must excuse me, baron ... I was taking a walk in Richmond ...
lovely weather, only it’s a pity it has come on to rain. I have heard so
much about you from the _old man himself_ and from Count Sandor—Sandor
Téléki—and also from the Countess Teresa Pulszky[6] ... What a woman the
Countess Teresa!’
‘Quite so, _hors ligne_!’
Silence.
‘Ye—es, and Sandor ... we were in the _honveds_ together.... I
particularly wanted to show you ...’ and he drew out from under his chair
a portfolio, untied it, and took out portraits of the armless Raglan,[7]
the revolting countenance of St.-Arnaud,[8] and Omer Pasha[9] in a fez.
‘A remarkable likeness, baron. I have been in Turkey myself. I was at
Kutais in 1849,’ he added, as though to guarantee the likeness in spite
of the fact that neither Raglan nor St.-Arnaud were there in 1849. ‘Have
you seen this collection before?’
‘Of course I have,’ I answered, moistening my head with lotion. ‘These
portraits are hung up everywhere in Cheapside, along the Strand, and in
the West End.’
‘Yes, you are right, but I have the whole collection, and those are not
on Chinese paper. In the shops you would pay a guinea for them, and I can
let you have them for fifteen shillings.’
‘I am really very much obliged to you, but tell me, captain, what do I
want with the portraits of St.-Arnaud and all this crew?’
‘Baron, I will be open with you. I am a soldier and not one of
Metternich’s diplomats. Having lost my estates near Temesvar, I am
temporarily in straitened circumstances and am therefore selling _objets
d’art_ on commission (and also cigars—Havanna cigars and Turkish
tobacco—Russians and we Hungarians know what is good in that line!), and
so I make the poor halfpence with which to buy the bitter bread of exile,
_wie der Schiller sagt_.’
‘Captain, be completely open and tell me what will you make off each
collection?’ I asked (though I doubt whether Schiller did utter that line
of Dante).
‘Half a crown.’
‘Then let us settle the matter like this: I will offer you a whole crown
if you will let me off buying the portraits.’
‘Really, baron, I am ashamed, but my position ... but you know it all,
you feel it all.... I have so long cherished a respect for you ... the
Countess Pulszky ... and the Count Sandor, Sandor Téléki....’
‘Excuse me, Captain, I have such a headache that I can hardly sit up.’
‘Our governor (namely Kossuth), our old man, often has a headache too,’
the _honved_ observed by way of encouragement and consolation; then
he hurriedly tied up his portfolio, and together with the striking
likenesses of Raglan and company carried off a fairly good portrait of
Queen Victoria on a coin.
Among these pedlars of exile who offer profitable purchases and the
_émigrés_ who have been for the last ten years stopping every man wearing
a beard in the streets and squares, begging for two shillings to make
up their fare to America or sixpence to pay for the coffin of a baby
who has died of scarlet fever, there are the exiles who write letters,
sometimes on the grounds of acquaintance, sometimes of non-acquaintance,
expatiating on extreme straits of all kinds and temporary money
difficulties, often with prospects of growing wealthy in the far future
and always with an original taste in epistolary composition.
I have a portfolio of such letters. I will quote two or three
particularly characteristic.
‘_Herr Graf!_ I was a lieutenant in the Austrian army, but fought for
the freedom of the Magyars, was forced to flee, and have worn out all
my clothes; if you have any old trousers to spare, you will confer an
unspeakable obligation on me.
‘_P.S._—To-morrow at nine o’clock I will wait upon your _courier_.’
That is an example of the naïve style, but there are letters that are
classical both in language and in their clear-cut incisiveness: ‘_Domine,
ego sum Gallus, ex patriâ meâ profugus pro causâ libertatis populi. Nihil
habeo ad manducandum, si aliquod pro me facere potes, gaudeo, gaudebit
cor meum._
‘_Mercuris dies 1859._’
Other letters neither laconic nor classical in form are distinguished by
a peculiar method of reckoning.
‘_Citoyen_, you were so kind as to send me three pounds last February
(you may not remember it, but I remember it). For a long time past I have
been meaning to repay you, but have received no money at all from my
relations; I am expecting a rather considerable sum in a few days. If I
were not ashamed, I would ask you to send me another two pounds, and then
I could repay you the five pounds in a _round sum_.’
I preferred the sum to remain triangular. The gentleman who was so set
upon round sums began to spread it abroad that I was in touch with the
Russian Embassy.
Then come business letters and oratorical letters, and both kinds lose a
great deal in translation.
‘_Mon cher Monsieur!_ No doubt you know of my discovery. It should bring
glory to our century and a crust of bread to me. And this discovery
remains buried in obscurity because I have not the credit for a paltry
two hundred pounds, and instead of working at it am obliged to _courir le
cachet_ for wretched pay. Every time that permanent and profitable work
presents itself an ironical destiny breathes upon it (I am translating
word for word), it flies away—I pursue it, its obstinate insolence
baffles my projects (_son opiniâtre insolence bafoue mes projets_), again
my hopes are raised and I fly after it—after it. I am flying after it
now. Shall I catch it? I almost believe so—if you have confidence in my
talent, are willing to _embarquer votre confiance en compagnie de mon
esprit et la livrer au souffle peu aventureux de mon destin_.’
Further on he explains that he has eighty pounds, even eighty-five pounds
in prospect; the remaining hundred and fifteen pounds the inventor seeks
to borrow, promising thirteen or at least eleven per cent. in case of
success. ‘Could capital be better, more safely invested in our day when
the finances of the whole world are unstable and states are tottering,
propped on the bayonets of our foes?’
I did not give the hundred and fifteen. The inventor began to admit
that there was something a little dubious in my behaviour, ‘_il y a du
louche_,’ and that it would be as well to be on one’s guard with me.