Our acquaintances, and the Russian ones especially, used to meet at
our house on Sunday evenings. In 1862 the number of the latter greatly
increased: merchants and tourists, journalists and officials of all the
departments, and of the Third Section[29] in particular, were arriving
for the Exhibition. It was impossible to make a strict selection; we
warned our more intimate friends to come on another day. The respectable
boredom of a London Sunday was too much for their discretion, and these
Sundays did to some extent lead to disaster. But before I tell the story
of that, I must describe two or three samples of our native fauna who
made their appearance in the modest drawing-room of Orsett House. Our
gallery of living curiosities from Russia was, beyond all doubt, more
interesting than the Russian Section at the Great Exhibition.
In 1860 I received from a hotel in the Haymarket a Russian letter in
which some unknown persons informed me that they were Russians and were
in the service of Prince Yury Nikolayevitch Golitsyn, who had secretly
left Russia: ‘The prince himself has gone to Constantinople, but has sent
us by another route. The prince bade us wait for him and gave us money
enough for a few days. More than a fortnight has passed; there is no news
of the prince; our money is spent, the hotel-keeper is angry. We don’t
know what to do. Not one of us speaks English.’ Finding themselves in
this helpless position, they asked me to get them out of it. I went to
them and arranged things. The hotel-keeper knew me, and consented to wait
another week.
Five days later a sumptuous carriage with a pair of dapple-grey horses
drove up to my front-door. However often I explained to my servants that
no one was to be admitted in the morning—even though he should arrive in
a four-in-hand and should be called a duke—I could never overcome their
respect for an aristocratic turn-out and title.
On this occasion both these temptations to transgression were present,
and so a moment later an immense man, stout and with the handsome face of
an Assyrian bull-god, was embracing me and thanking me for my visit to
his servants.
This was Prince Yury Nikolayevitch Golitsyn. It was a long time since I
had seen so solid and characteristic a specimen of old Russia, so choice
a flower of our fatherland.
He at once began telling me some incredible story, which afterwards
turned out to be true, of how he had given a Cantonist an article from
the _Kolokol_ to copy, and how he had parted from his wife; how the
Cantonist had given the police information against him, and how his
wife did not send him money; how the Tsar had sent him into perpetual
banishment to Kozlov, in consequence of which he had made up his mind to
escape abroad, and had carried off with him over the Moldavian frontier
some young lady, a governess, a steward, a ‘regent’ and a maid-servant.
At Galatz he had picked up also a valet who spoke five languages after a
fashion, and seemed to him to be a spy. Then he explained to me that he
was an enthusiastic musician and was going to give concerts in London;
and that therefore he wanted to make the acquaintance of Ogaryov.
‘They d-do make you p-pay here in England at the C-customs,’ he said with
a slight stammer, as he completed his course of universal history.
‘For goods, perhaps, they do,’ I observed, ‘but the Customs-house is very
lenient to travellers.’
‘I should not say so. I paid fifteen shillings for a crocodile.’
‘Why, what do you mean?’
‘What do I mean? Why, simply a crocodile.’
I opened my eyes wide and asked him: ‘But what is the meaning of this,
prince? Do you take a crocodile about with you instead of a passport to
frighten the police on the frontier?’
‘It happened like this. I was taking a walk in Alexandria, and I saw a
little Arab selling a crocodile. I liked it, so I bought it.’
‘Oh, did you buy the little Arab too?’
‘Ha-ha!—no.’
A week later the prince was already installed in Porchester Terrace, that
is, in a large house in a very expensive part of the town. He began by
ordering his gates to be for ever wide open, which is not the English
custom, and a pair of dapple-grey horses to be for ever waiting in
readiness at the door. He lived in London as though he were in Kozlov or
in Tambov.
He had, of course, no money, that is, he had a few thousand francs,
enough to pay for the advertisement and title-page of a London life; they
were spent at once; but he made a sensation, and succeeded for a few
months in living free from care, thanks to the stupid trustfulness of the
English, of which the foreigners from all parts of the Continent have not
yet been able to cure them.
But the prince did have his fling. The concerts began. London was
impressed by the prince’s title on the placards, and at the second
concert the room (St. James’s Hall, Piccadilly) was full. The concert
was magnificent. How Golitsyn had succeeded in training the chorus and
the orchestra is only known to himself, but the concert was absolutely
first-rate. Russian songs and prayers, the Kamarinsky and the Mass,
fragments from Glinka’s opera and from the Gospel (Our Father)—it was all
splendid. The ladies could not sufficiently admire the colossal fleshy
contours of the handsome Assyrian god, so majestically and gracefully
wielding his ivory sceptre; the old ladies recalled the athletic figure
of the Emperor Nicholas, who had conquered the hearts of the London fair
most of all by the tight doeskin _collants_, white as the Russian snows,
of his Horse Guard uniform.
Golitsyn found the means of making this success his ruin. Intoxicated by
the applause, he sent at the end of the first half of the concert for a
basket of bouquets (remember the London prices), and before the beginning
of the second part of the programme he appeared on the platform; two
liveried servants carried the basket, and the prince, thanking the
singers and chorus, presented each with a bouquet. The audience received
this act of gallantry on the part of the aristocratic conductor with a
storm of applause. My prince, towering to his full height and beaming all
over, invited all the musicians to supper at the end of the concert.
At this point not only London prices but also London habits must be
considered. Without sending previous notice in the morning, there is no
place where one can give a supper to fifty persons at eleven o’clock at
night. The Assyrian chief walked valiantly along Regent Street at the
head of his musical army, knocking at the doors of various restaurants;
and at last he knocked successfully. A restaurant-keeper, grasping the
situation, rose to the occasion—cold meats and ardent beverages.
Then followed a series of concerts with every possible variation, even
with political tendencies. At each of them the orchestra struck up Herzen
waltzes, an Ogaryov quadrille, and then the Emancipation Symphony ...
compositions with which the prince is very likely even now enchanting
Moscow audiences, and which have probably lost nothing in moving from
Albion, except their names; they could easily be altered to Potapoff
waltzes, Mina waltzes, and Komissaroff’s _Partitur_.
With all this glory there was no money, he had nothing to pay with.
His purveyors began to murmur. And little by little there was actually
something like the slave revolt of Spartacus....
One morning the prince’s factotum, that is, his steward who styled
himself his secretary, together with the ‘regent,’ that is, not the
father of Philippe of Orleans, but a fair-haired, curly-headed Russian
lad of two-and-twenty who led the singers, came to me.
‘We have come to see you, Alexandr Ivanovitch, sir.’
‘What has happened?’
‘Why, Yury Nikolayevitch is treating us very badly. We want to go back to
Russia, and we ask him to settle our account—do not fail in your gracious
kindness, defend us.’
I felt myself instantly surrounded by the atmosphere of ‘Home,’ which
seemed to rise up like steam in a bath-house.
‘Why do you come to me with this complaint? If you have serious grounds
for complaining of the prince, there is a Court of Justice here for every
one, which will not turn aside in favour of any prince or any count.’
‘We have heard of that indeed, but _why go to law_? You had much better
go into it.’
‘What good will it be to you if I do go into it? The prince will tell me
to mind my own business; I shall look like a fool. If you do not want to
go to law, go to the ambassador; the Russians in London are in his care,
not in mine....’
‘But where should we be then? As soon as Russian gentlemen sit together,
what chance can there be of settling with the prince? But you see, you
are on the side of the people; so that is why we have come to you. Do be
gracious, and take up our cause.’
‘What fellows you are! But the prince won’t accept my decision; what will
you gain by it?’
‘Allow me to lay before you,’ the secretary retorted eagerly, ‘he will
not venture on that, sir, as he has a very great respect for you;
besides, he would be afraid. He would not be pleased to get into the
_Kolokol_—he is ambitious.’
‘Well, listen, to waste no more time; here is my decision. If the prince
will consent to accept my mediation, I will undertake the matter; if not,
you must go to law; and as you know neither the language nor the mode of
proceeding here, if the prince really is treating you unfairly, I will
send you a man who knows English and English ways and speaks Russian.’
‘Allow me,’ the secretary was beginning.
‘No, I won’t allow you, my dear fellow. Good-bye.’