On arriving at St. Petersburg in 1892 to take charge of the

American legation, there was one Russian whom I more desired to

meet than any other--Constantine Pobedonostzeff. For some years

various English and American reviews had been charging him with

bigotry, cruelty, hypocrisy, and, indeed, with nearly every

hateful form of political crime; but the fact remained that under

Alexander III he was the most influential personage in the

empire, and that, though bearing the title of "procurator-general

of the Most Holy Synod," he was evidently no less powerful in

civil than in ecclesiastical affairs.

As to his history, it was understood to be as follows: When the

Grand Duke Nicholas, the eldest son of Alexander II,--a young man

of gentle characteristics, greatly resembling his father,--died

upon the Riviera, the next heir to the throne was his brother

Alexander, a stalwart, taciturn guardsman, respected by all who

knew him for honesty and directness, but who, having never looked

forward to the throne, had been brought up simply as a soldier,

with few of the gifts and graces traditional among the heirs of

the Russian monarchy since the days of Catherine.

Therefore it was that it became necessary to extemporize for this

soldier a training which should fit him for the duties of the

position so unexpectedly opened to him; and the man chosen as his

tutor was a professor at Moscow, distinguished as a jurist and

theologian,--a man of remarkable force of character, and devoted

to Russian ideas as distinguished from those of Western Europe:

Constantine Pobedonostzeff.

During the dark and stormy days toward the end of his career,

Alexander II had called in as his main adviser General

Loris-Melikoff, a man of Armenian descent, in whom was mingled

with the shrewd characteristics of his race a sincere desire to

give to Russia a policy and development in accordance with modern

ideas.

The result the world knows well. The Emperor, having taken the

advice of this and other councilors,--deeply patriotic men like

Miloutine, Samarine, and Tcherkassky,--had freed the serfs within

his empire (twenty millions in all); had sanctioned a vast scheme

by which they were to arrive at the possession of landed

property; had established local self-government in the various

provinces of his empire; had improved the courts of law; had

introduced Western ideas into legal procedure; had greatly

mitigated the severities formerly exercised toward the Jews; and

had made all ready to promulgate a constitution on his

approaching birthday.

But this did not satisfy the nihilistic sect. What more they

wanted it is hard to say. It is more than doubtful whether Russia

even then had arrived at a stage of civilization when the

institutions which Alexander II had already conceded could be

adopted with profit; but the leaders of the anarchic movement,

with their vague longings for fruit on the day the tree was

planted, decreed the Emperor's death--the assassination of the

greatest benefactor that Russia has ever known, one of the

greatest that humanity has known. It was, perhaps, the most

fearful crime ever committed against liberty and freedom; for it

blasted the hopes and aspirations of over a hundred millions of

people, and doubtless for many generations.

On this the sturdy young guardsman became the Emperor Alexander

III. It is related by men conversant with Russian affairs that,

at the first meeting of the imperial councilors, Loris-Melikoff,

believing that the young sovereign would be led by filial

reverence to continue the liberal policy to which the father had

devoted his life, made a speech taking this for granted, and that

the majority of those present, including the Emperor, seemed in

accord with him; when suddenly there arose a tall, gaunt,

scholarly man, who at first very simply, but finally very

eloquently, presented a different view. According to the

chroniclers of the period, Pobedonostzeff told the Emperor that

all so-called liberal measures, including the constitution, were

a delusion; that, though such things might be suited to Western

Europe, they were not suited to Russia; that the constitution of

that empire had been, from time immemorial, the will of the

autocrat, directed by his own sense of responsibility to the

Almighty; that no other constitution was possible in Russia; that

this alone was fitted to the traditions, the laws, the ideas of

the hundred and twenty millions of various races under the

Russian scepter; that in other parts of the world constitutional

liberty, so called, had already shown itself an absurdity; that

socialism, anarchism, and nihilism, with their plots and bombs,

were appearing in all quarters; that murder was plotted against

rulers of nations everywhere, the best of presidents having been

assassinated in the very country where free institutions were

supposed to have taken the most complete hold; that the principle

of authority in human government was to be saved; and that this

principle existed as an effective force only in Russia.

This speech is said to have carried all before it. As its

immediate result came the retirement of Loris-Melikoff, followed

by his death not long afterward; the entrance of Pobedonostzeff

among the most cherished councilors of the Emperor; the

suppression of the constitution; the discouragement of every

liberal tendency; and that fanatical reaction which has been in

full force ever since.

This was the man whom I especially desired to see and to

understand; and therefore it was that I was very glad to receive

from the State Department instructions to consult with him

regarding some rather delicate matters needing adjustment between

the Greek Church and our authorities in Alaska, and also in

relation to the representation of Russia at the Chicago

Exposition.

I found him, as one of the great ministers of the crown, residing

in a ministerial palace, but still retaining, in large measure,

his old quality of professor. About him was a beautiful library,

with every evidence of a love for art and literature. I had gone

into his presence with many feelings of doubt. Against no one in

Russia had charges so bitter been made in my hearing: it was

universally insisted that he was responsible for the persecution

of the Roman Catholics in Poland, of the Lutherans in the Baltic

provinces and in Finland, of the Stundists in Central Russia, and

of the dissenting sects everywhere. He had been spoken of in the

English reviews as the "Torquemada of the nineteenth century,"

and this epithet seemed to be generally accepted as fitting.

I found him a scholarly, kindly man, ready to discuss the

business which I brought before him, and showing a wide interest

in public affairs. There were few, if any, doctrines, either

political or theological, which we held in common, but he seemed

inclined to meet the wishes of our government as fully and fairly

as he could; and thus was begun one of the most interesting

acquaintances I have ever made.

His usual time of receiving his friends was on Sunday evening

between nine and twelve; and very many such evenings I passed in

his study, discussing with him, over glasses of fragrant Russian

tea, every sort of question with the utmost freedom.

I soon found that his reasons for that course of action to which

the world so generally objects are not so superficial as they are

usually thought. The repressive policy which he has so earnestly

adopted is based not merely upon his views as a theologian, but

upon his convictions as a statesman. While, as a Russo-Greek

churchman, he regards the established church of the empire as the

form of Christianity most primitive and pure; and while he sees

in its ritual, in its art, and in all the characteristics of its

worship the nearest approach to his ideals, he looks at it also

from the point of view of a statesman--as the greatest cementing

power of the vast empire through which it is spread.

This being the case, he naturally opposes all other religious

bodies in Russia as not merely inflicting injury upon

Christianity, but as tending to the political disintegration of

the empire. Never, in any of our conversations, did I hear him

speak a harsh word of any other church or of any religious ideas

opposed to his own; but it was clear that he regarded Protestants

and dissident sects generally as but agents in the progress of

disintegration which, in Western Europe, seemed approaching a

crisis, and that he considered the Roman Catholic Church in

Poland as practically a political machine managed by a hierarchy

in deadly hostility to the Russian Empire and to Russian

influence everywhere.

In discussing his own church, he never hesitated to speak plainly

of its evident shortcomings. Unquestionably, one of the wishes

nearest his heart is to reform the abuses which have grown up

among its clergy, especially in their personal habits. Here, too,

is a reason for any repressive policy which he may have exercised

against other religious bodies. Everything that detracts from the

established Russo-Greek Church detracts from the revenues of its

clergy, and, as these are pitifully small, aids to keep the

priests and their families in the low condition from which he is

so earnestly endeavoring to raise them. As regards the severe

policy inaugurated by Alexander III against the Jews of the

empire, which Pobedonostzeff, more than any other man, is

supposed to have inspired, he seemed to have no harsh feelings

against Israelites as such; but his conduct seemed based upon a

theory which, in various conversations, he presented with much

force: namely, that Russia, having within its borders more Jews

than exist in all the world besides, and having suffered greatly

from these as from an organization really incapable of

assimilation with the body politic, must pursue a repressive

policy toward them and isolate them in order to protect its rural

population.

While he was very civil in his expressions regarding the United

States, he clearly considered all Western civilization a failure.

He seemed to anticipate, before long, a collapse in the systems

and institutions of Western Europe. To him socialism and

anarchism, with all they imply, were but symptoms of a

wide-spread political and social disease--indications of an

approaching catastrophe destined to end a civilization which,

having rejected orthodoxy, had cast aside authority, given the

force of law to the whimsies of illiterate majorities, and

accepted, as the voice of God, the voice of unthinking mobs,

blind to their own interests and utterly incapable of working out

their own good. It was evident that he regarded Russia as

representing among the nations the idea of Heaven-given and

church-anointed authority, as the empire destined to save the

principle of divine right and the rule of the fittest.

Revolutionary efforts in Russia he discussed calmly. Referring to

Loris-Melikoff, the representative of the principles most

strongly opposed to his own, no word of censure escaped him. The

only evidence of deep feeling on this subject he ever showed in

my presence was when he referred to the writings of a well-known

Russian refugee in London, and said, "He is a murderer."

As to public instruction, he evidently held to the idea so

thoroughly carried out in Russia: namely, that the upper class,

which is to conduct the business of the state, should be highly

educated, but that the mass of the people need no education

beyond what will keep them contented in the humble station to

which it has pleased God to call them. A very curious example of

his conservatism I noted in his remarks regarding the droshkies

of St. Petersburg. The droshky-drivers are Russian peasants,

simple and, as a rule, pious; rarely failing to make the sign of

the cross on passing a church or shrine, or at any other moment

which seems to them solemn. They are possibly picturesque, but

certainly dirty, in their clothing and in all their surroundings.

A conveyance more wretched than the ordinary street-droshky of a

Russian city could hardly be conceived, and measures had been

proposed for improving this system; but he could see no use in

them. The existing system was thoroughly Russian, and that was

enough. It appealed to his conservatism. The droshky-drivers,

with their Russian caps, their long hair and beards, their

picturesque caftans, and their deferential demeanor, satisfied

his esthetic sense.

What seemed to me a clash between his orthodox conservatism on

one side, and his Russian pride on the other, I discovered on my

return from a visit to Moscow, in which I had sundry walks and

talks with Tolstoi. On my alluding to this, he showed some

interest. It was clear that he was separated by a whole orb of

thought from the great novelist, yet it was none the less evident

that he took pride in him. He naturally considered Tolstoi as

hopelessly wrong in all his fundamental ideas, and yet was

himself too much of a man of letters not to recognize in his

brilliant countryman one of the glories of Russia.

But the most curious--indeed, the most amazing--revelation of the

man I found in his love for American literature. He is a wide

reader; and, in the whole breadth of his reading, American

authors were evidently among those he preferred. Of these his

favorites were Hawthorne, Lowell, and, above all, Emerson.

Curious, indeed, was it to learn that this "arch-persecutor,"

this "Torquemada of the nineteenth century," this man whose hand

is especially heavy upon Catholics and Protestants and dissenters

throughout the empire, whose name is spoken with abhorrence by

millions within the empire and without it, still reads, as his

favorite author, the philosopher of Concord. He told me that the

first book which he ever translated into Russian was Thomas a

Kempis's "Imitation of Christ"; and of that he gave me the Latin

original from which he made his translation, with a copy of the

translation itself. But he also told me that the next book he

translated was a volume of Emerson's "Essays," and he added that

for years there had always lain open upon his study table a

volume of Emerson's writings.

There is, thus clearly, a relation of his mind to the literature

of the Western world very foreign to his feelings regarding

Western religious ideas. This can be accounted for perhaps by his

own character as a man of letters. That he has a distinct

literary gift is certain. I have in my possession sundry articles

of his, and especially a poem in manuscript, which show real

poetic feeling and a marked power of expression. It is a curious

fact that, though so addicted to English and American literature,

he utterly refuses to converse in our language. His medium of

communication with foreigners is always French. On my asking him

why he would not use our language in conversation, he answered

that he had learned it from books, and that his pronunciation of

it would expose him to ridicule.

In various circles in St. Petersburg I heard him spoken of as a

hypocrite, but a simple sense of justice compels me to declare

this accusation unjust. He indeed retires into a convent for a

portion of every year to join the monks in their austerities; but

this practice is, I believe, the outgrowth of a deep religious

feeling. On returning from one of these visits, he brought to my

wife a large Easter egg of lacquered work, exquisitely

illuminated. I have examined, in various parts of Europe,

beautiful specimens of the best periods of mediaeval art; but in

no one of them have I found anything in the way of illumination

more perfect than this which he brought from his monkish

brethren. In nothing did he seem to unbend more than in his

unfeigned love for religious art as it exists in Russia. He

discussed with me one evening sundry photographs of the new

religious paintings in the cathedral of Kieff in a spirit which

revealed this feeling for religious art as one of the deepest

characteristics of his nature.

He was evidently equally sensitive to the beauties of religious

literature. Giving me various books containing the services of

the Orthodox Church, he dwelt upon the beauty of the Slavonic

version of the Psalms and upon the church hymnology.

The same esthetic side of his nature was evident at various great

church ceremonies. It has happened to me to see Pius IX celebrate

mass, both at the high altar of St. Peter's and in the Sistine

Chapel, and to witness the ceremonies of Holy Week and of Easter

at the Roman basilicas, and at the time it was hard to conceive

anything of the kind more impressive; but I have never seen any

church functions, on the whole, more imposing than the funeral

service of the Emperor Nicholas during my first visit to Russia,

and various imperial weddings, funerals, name-days, and the like,

during my second visit. On such occasions Pobedonostzeff

frequently came over from his position among the ministers of the

crown to explain to us the significance of this or that feature

in the ritual of music. It was plain that these things touched

what was deepest in him; it must be confessed that his attachment

to the church is sincere.

Nor were these impressions made upon me alone. It fell to my lot

to present to him one of the most eminent journalists our country

has produced--Charles A. Dana, a man who could discuss on even

terms with any European statesman all the leading modern

questions. Dana had been brought into close contact with many

great men; but it was plain to see--what he afterward

acknowledged to me--that he was very deeply impressed by this

eminent Russian. The talk of two such men threw new light upon

the characteristics of Pobedonostzeff, and strengthened my

impression of his intellectual sincerity.

In regard to the relation of the Russo-Greek Church to other

churches I spoke to him at various times, and found in him no

personal feeling of dislike to them. The nearest approach to such

a feeling appeared, greatly to my surprise, in sundry references

to the Greek Church as it exists in Greece. In these he showed a

spirit much like that which used to be common among High-church

Episcopalians in speaking of Low-church "Evangelicals." Mindful

of the earnest efforts made by the Anglican communion to come

into closer relations with the Russian branch of the Eastern

Church, I at various times broached that subject, and the

glimpses I obtained of his feeling regarding it surprised me.

Previously to these interviews I had supposed that the main

difficulty in the way to friendly relations between these two

branches of the church universal had its origin in the "filioque"

clause of the Nicene Creed. As is well known, the Eastern Church

adheres to that creed in its original form,--the form in which

the Holy Ghost is represented as "proceeding from the

Father,"--whereas the Western Church adopts the additional words,

"and from the Son." That the Russo-Greek Church is very tenacious

of its position in this respect, and considers the position of

the Western Church--Catholic and Protestant--as savoring of

blasphemy, is well known; and there was a curious evidence of

this during my second stay in Russia. Twice during that time I

heard the "Missa Solennis" of Beethoven. It was first given by a

splendid choir in the great hall of the University of

Helsingfors. That being in Finland, which is mainly Lutheran, the

Creed was sung in its Western form. Naturally, on going to hear

it given by a great choir at St. Petersburg, I was curious to

know how this famous clause would be dealt with. In various parts

of the audience were priests of the Russo-Greek faith, yet there

were very many Lutherans and Calvinists, and I watched with some

interest the approach of the passage containing the disputed

words; but when we reached this it was wholly omitted. Any

allusion to the "procession" was evidently forbidden. Great,

therefore, was my surprise when, on my asking Pobedonostzeff,[5]

as the representative of the Emperor in the Synod of the

empire,--the highest assemblage in the church, and he the most

influential man in it, really controlling archbishops and bishops

throughout the empire,--whether the "filioque" clause is an

insurmountable obstacle to union, he replied, "Not at all; that

is simply a question of dialectics. But with whom are we to

unite? Shall it be with the High-churchmen, the Broad-churchmen,

or the Low-churchmen? These are three different bodies of men

with distinctly different ideas of church order; indeed, with

distinctly different creeds. Which of these is the Orthodox

Church to regard as the representative of the Anglican

communion?" I endeavored to show him that the union, if it took

place at all, must be based on ideas and beliefs that underlie

all these distinctions; but he still returned to his original

proposition, which was that union is impossible until a more

distinct basis than any now attainable can be arrived at.

[5] I find, in a letter from Pobedonostzeff, that he spells his

name as here printed.

I suggested to him a visit to Great Britain and his making the

acquaintance of leading Englishmen; but to this he answered that

at his time of life he had no leisure for such a recreation; that

his duties absolutely forbade it.

In regard to relations with the Russo-Greek Church on our own

continent, he seemed to speak with great pleasure of the

treatment that sundry Russian bishops had received among us. He

read me letters from a member of the Russo-Greek hierarchy, full

of the kindliest expressions toward Americans, and especially

acknowledging their friendly reception of him and of his

ministrations. Both the archbishop in his letter, and

Pobedonostzeff in his talk, were very much amused over the fact

that the Americans, after extending various other courtesies to

the archbishop, offered him cigars.

He discussed the possibility of introducing the "Holy Orthodox

Church" into the United States, but always disclaimed all zeal in

religious propagandism, saying that the church authorities had

quite enough work to do in extending and fortifying the church

throughout the Russian Empire. He said that the pagan tribes of

the imperial dominions in Asia seemed more inclined to

Mohammedanism than to Christianity, and gave as the probable

reason the fact that the former faith is much the simpler of the

two. He was evidently unable to grasp the idea of the Congress of

Religions at the Chicago Exposition, and seemed inclined to take

a mildly humorous view of it as one of the droll inventions of

the time.

He appeared to hold our nation as a problem apart, and was,

perhaps, too civil in his conversations with me to include it in

the same condemnation with the nations of Western Europe which

had, in his opinion, gone hopelessly wrong. He also seemed drawn

to us by his admiration for Emerson, Hawthorne, and Lowell. When

Professor Norton's edition of Lowell's "Letters" came out, I at

once took it to him. It evidently gave him great

pleasure--perhaps because it revealed to him a very different

civilization, life, and personality from anything to which he had

been accustomed. Still, America seemed to be to him a sort of

dreamland. He constantly returned to Russian affairs as to the

great realities of the world. Discussing, as we often did, the

condition and future of the wild tribes and nations within the

Asiatic limits of the empire, he betrayed no desire either for

crusades or for intrigues to convert them; he simply spoke of the

legitimate influence of the church in civilizing them.

I recall a brilliant but denunciatory article, published in one

of the English reviews some time since by a well-known nihilist,

which contained, in the midst of various charges against the

Russian statesman, a description of his smile, which was

characterized as forbidding, and even ghastly. I watched for this

smile with much interest, but it never came. A smile upon his

face I have often seen; but it was a kindly smile, with no trace

of anything ghastly or cruel in it.

He seemed to take pleasure in the society of his old professorial

friends, and one of them he once brought to my table. This was a

professor of history, deeply conversant with the affairs of the

empire; and we discussed the character and career of Catherine

II. The two men together brought out a mass of curious

information, throwing a strange light into transactions which

only the most recent historians are beginning to understand,

among these the assassination of Czar Peter III, Catherine's

husband. On one occasion when Pobedonostzeff was visiting me I

tested his knowledge in regard to a matter of special interest,

and obtained a new side-light upon his theory of the universe.

There is at present on the island of Cronstadt, at the mouth of

the Neva, a Russo-Greek priest, Father Ivan, who enjoys

throughout the empire a vast reputation as a saintly worker of

miracles. This priest has a very spiritual and kindly face; is

known to receive vast sums for the poor, which he distributes

among them while he himself remains in poverty; and is supposed

not merely by members of the Russo-Greek Church, but by those of

other religious bodies, to work frequent miracles of healing. I

was assured by persons of the highest character--and those not

only Russo-Greek churchmen, but Roman Catholics and

Anglicans--that there could be no doubt as to the reality of

these miracles, and various examples were given me. So great is

Father Ivan's reputation in this respect that he is in constant

demand in all parts of the empire, and was even summoned to

Livadia during the last illness of the late Emperor. Whenever he

appears in public great crowds surround him, seeking to touch the

hem of his garment. His picture is to be seen with the portraits

of the saints in vast numbers of Russian homes, from the palaces

of the highest nobles to the cottages of the humblest peasants.

It happened to me on one occasion to have an experience which I

have related elsewhere, but which is repeated here as throwing

light on the ideas of the Russian statesman.

On my arrival in St. Petersburg my attention was at once aroused

by the portraits of Father Ivan. They ranged from photographs

absolutely true to life, which revealed a plain, shrewd, kindly

face, to those which were idealized until they bore a near

resemblance to the conventional representations of Jesus of

Nazareth.

One day, in one of the most brilliant reception-rooms of the

Northern capital, the subject of Father Ivan's miracles having

been introduced, a gentleman in very high social position, and

entirely trustworthy, spoke as follows: "There is something very

surprising about these miracles. I am slow to believe in them;

but there is one of them which is overwhelming and absolutely

true. The late Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Archbishop

Isidore, loved quiet, and was very averse to anything which could

possibly cause scandal. Hearing of the wonders wrought by Father

Ivan, he summoned him to his presence and sternly commanded him

to abstain from all the things which had given rise to these

reported miracles, as sure to create scandal, and with this

injunction dismissed him. Hardly had the priest left the room

when the archbishop was struck with blindness, and he remained in

this condition until the priest returned and restored his sight

by intercessory prayer." When I asked the gentleman giving this

account if he directly knew these facts, he replied that he was,

of course, not present when the miracle was wrought; but that he

had the facts immediately from persons who knew all the parties

concerned, as well as all the circumstances of the case; and,

indeed, that these circumstances were matter of general

knowledge.

Sometime afterward, being at an afternoon reception in one of the

greater embassies, I brought up the same subject, when an eminent

general spoke as follows: "I am not inclined to believe in

miracles,--in fact, am rather skeptical; but the proofs of those

wrought by Father Ivan are overwhelming." He then went on to say

that the late metropolitan archbishop was a man who loved quiet

and disliked scandal; that on this account he had summoned Father

Ivan to his palace, and ordered him to put an end to the conduct

which had caused the reports concerning his miraculous powers;

and then, with a wave of his arm, had dismissed him. The priest

left the room, and from that moment the archbishop's arm was

paralyzed; and it remained so until the penitent prelate summoned

the priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored to its

former usefulness. There was present at the time another person

besides myself who had heard the previous statement as to the

blindness of the archbishop; and, on our both asking the general

if he was sure that the archbishop's arm was paralyzed as stated,

he declared that he could not doubt it, as he had the account

directly from persons entirely trustworthy who were cognizant of

all the facts.

Sometime later, meeting Pobedonostzeff, I asked him which of

these stories was correct. He answered immediately, "Neither: in

the discharge of my duties I saw the Archbishop Isidore

constantly down to the last hours of his life, and no such event

ever occurred. He was never paralyzed and never blind." But the

great statesman and churchman then went on to say that, although

this story was untrue, there were a multitude of others quite as

remarkable in which he believed; and he gave me a number of

legends showing that Father Ivan possessed supernatural knowledge

and miraculous powers. These he unfolded to me with much detail,

and with such an accent of conviction that we seemed surrounded

by a mediaeval atmosphere in which signs and wonders were the

most natural things in the world.

As to his action on politics since my leaving Russia, the power

which he exercised over Alexander III has evidently been

continued during the reign of the young Nicholas II. In spite of

his eighty years, he seems to be, to-day, the leader of the

reactionary party.

During the early weeks of The Hague Conference, Count Munster, in

his frequent diatribes against its whole purpose, and especially

against arbitration, was wont to insist that the whole thing was

a scheme prepared by Pobedonostzeff to embarrass Germany; that,

as Russia was always wretchedly unready with her army, The Hague

Conference was simply a trick for gaining time against her rivals

who kept up better military preparations. There may have been

truth in part of this assertion; but the motive of the great

Russian statesman in favoring the conference was probably not so

much to gain time for the army as to gain money for the church.

With his intense desire to increase the stipends of the Russian

orthodox clergy, and thus to raise them somewhat above their

present low condition, he must have groaned over the enormous

sums spent by his government in the frequent changes in almost

every item of expenditure for its vast army--changes made in

times of profound peace, simply to show that Russia was keeping

her army abreast of those of her sister nations. Hence came the

expressed Russian desire to "keep people from inventing things."

It has always seemed to me that, while the idea underlying the

Peace Conference came originally from Jean de Bloch, there must

have been powerful aid from Pobedonostzeff. So much of good--and,

indeed, of great good--we may attribute to him as highly

probable, if not certain.

But, on the other hand, there would seem to be equal reason for

attributing to him, in these latter days, a fearful mass of evil.

To say nothing of the policy of Russia in Poland and elsewhere,

her dealings with Finland thus far form one of the blackest spots

on the history of the empire. Whether he originated this iniquity

or not is uncertain; but when, in 1892, I first saw the new

Russian cathedral rising on the heights above Helsingfors,--a

structure vastly more imposing than any warranted by the small

number of the "orthodox" in Finland,--with its architecture of

the old Muscovite type, symbolical of fetishism, I could not but

recognize his hand in it. It seemed clear to me that here was the

beginning of religious aggression on the Lutheran Finlanders,

which must logically be followed by political and military

aggression; and, in view of his agency in this as in everything

reactionary, I did not wonder at the attempt to assassinate him

not long afterward.

During my recent stay in Germany he visited me at the Berlin

Embassy. He was, as of old, apparently gentle, kindly, interested

in literature, not interested to any great extent in current

Western politics. This gentle, kindly manner of his brought back

forcibly to my mind a remark of one of the most cultivated women

I met in Russia, a princess of ancient lineage, who ardently

desired reasonable reforms, and who, when I mentioned to her a

report that Pobedonostzeff was weary of political life, and was

about to retire from office in order to devote himself to

literary pursuits, said: "Don't, I beg of you, tell me that; for

I have always noticed that whenever such a report is circulated,

it is followed by some new scheme of his, even more infernal than

those preceding it."

So much for the man who, during the present reign, seems one of

the main agents in holding Russian policy on the road to ruin. He

is indeed a study. The descriptive epithet which clings to

him--"the Torquemada of the nineteenth century"--he once

discussed with me in no unkindly spirit; indeed, in as gentle a

spirit as can well be conceived. His life furnishes a most

interesting study in churchmanship, in statesmanship, and in

human nature, and shows how some of the men most severely

condemned by modern historians--great persecutors, inquisitors,

and the like--may have based their actions on theories the world

has little understood, and may have had as little conscious

ferocity as their more tolerant neighbors.

CHAPTER XXXVII

WALKS AND TALES WITH TOLSTOI--MARCH, 1894

Revisiting Moscow after an absence of thirty-five years, the most

surprising thing to me was that there had been so little change.

With the exception of the new gallery of Russian art, and the

bazaar opposite the sacred gate of the Kremlin, things seemed as

I had left them just after the accession of Alexander II. There

were the same unkempt streets; the same peasantry clad in

sheepskins; the same troops of beggars, sturdy and dirty; the

same squalid crowds crossing themselves before the images at the

street corners; the same throngs of worshipers knocking their

heads against the pavements of churches; and above all loomed,

now as then, the tower of Ivan and the domes of St. Basil,

gloomy, gaudy, and barbaric. Only one change had taken place

which interested me: for the first time in the history of Russia,

a man of world-wide fame in literature and thought was abiding

there--Count Leo Tolstoi.

On the evening of my arrival I went with my secretary to his

weekly reception. As we entered his house on the outskirts of the

city, two servants in evening dress came forward, removed our fur

coats, and opened the doors into the reception-room of the

master. Then came a surprise. His living-room seemed the cabin of

a Russian peasant. It was wainscoted almost rudely and furnished

very simply; and there approached us a tall, gaunt Russian,

unmistakably born to command, yet clad as a peasant, his hair

thrown back over his ears on either side, his flowing blouse kept

together by a leathern girdle, his high jack-boots completing the

costume. This was Tolstoi.

Nothing could be more kindly than his greeting. While his dress

was that of a peasant, his bearing was the very opposite; for,

instead of the depressed, demure, hangdog expression of the

average muzhik, his manner, though cordial, was dignified and

impressive. Having given us a hearty welcome, he made us

acquainted with various other guests. It was a singular

assemblage. There were foreigners in evening dress, Moscow

professors in any dress they liked, and a certain number of

youth, evidently disciples, who, though clearly not of the

peasant class, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with

interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of

the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they

seemed to show "the contortions of the sibyl without the

inspiration."

The professors were much more engaging. The University of Moscow

has in its teaching body several strong men, and some of these

were present. One of them, whose department was philosophy,

especially interested and encouraged me by assurances that the

movement of Russian philosophy is "back to Kant." In the strange

welter of whims and dreams which one finds in Russia, this was to

me an unexpected evidence of healthful thought.

Naturally, I soon asked to be presented to the lady of the house,

and the count escorted us through a series of rooms to a salon

furnished much like any handsome apartment in Paris or St.

Petersburg, where the countess, with other ladies, all in full

evening dress, received us cordially. This sudden transition from

the peasant cabin of the master to these sumptuous rooms of the

mistress was startling; it seemed like scene-shifting at a

theater.

After some friendly talk, all returned to the rooms of the master

of the house, where tea was served at a long table from the

bubbling brazen urn--the samovar; and though there were some

twenty or thirty guests, nothing could be more informal. All was

simple, kindly, and unrestrained.

My first question was upon the condition of the people. Our

American legation had corresponded with Count Tolstoi and his

family as to distributing a portion of the famine fund sent from

the United States, hence this subject naturally arose at the

outset. He said that the condition of the peasants was still very

bad; that they had very generally eaten their draught-animals,

burned portions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies,

and reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting that

the new commercial treaty with Germany might help matters, he

thought that it would have but little effect, since only a small

portion of the total product of Russian agriculture is consumed

abroad. This led him to speak of some Americans and Englishmen

who had visited the famine-stricken districts, and, while he

referred kindly to them all, he seemed especially attracted by

the Quaker John Bellows of Gloucester, England, the author of the

wonderful little French dictionary. This led him to say that he

sympathized with the Quakers in everything save their belief in

property; that in this they were utterly illogical; that property

presupposes force to protect it. I remarked that most American

Quakers knew nothing of such force; that none of them had ever

seen an American soldier, save during our Civil War, and that

probably not one in hundreds of them had ever seen a soldier at

all. He answered, "But you forget the policeman." He evidently

put policemen and soldiers in the same category--as using force

to protect property, and therefore to be alike abhorred.

I found that to his disbelief in any right of ownership literary

property formed no exception. He told me that, in his view, he

had no right to receive money for the permission to print a book.

To this I naturally answered that by carrying out this doctrine

he would simply lavish large sums upon publishers in every

country of Europe and America, many of them rich and some of them

piratical; and that in my opinion he would do a much better thing

by taking the full value of his copyrights and bestowing the

proceeds upon the peasantry starving about him. To which he

answered that it was a question of duty. To this I agreed, but

remarked that beneath this lay the question what this duty really

was. It was a pleasure to learn from another source that the

countess took a different view of it, and that she had in some

way secured the proceeds of his copyrights for their very large

and interesting family. Light was thus thrown on Tolstoi's

remark, made afterward, that women are not so self-sacrificing as

men; that a man would sometimes sacrifice his family for an idea,

but that a woman would not.

He then went on to express an interest in the Shakers, and

especially in Frederick Evans. He had evidently formed an idea of

them very unlike the reality; in fact, the Shaker his imagination

had developed was as different from a Lebanon Shaker as an eagle

from a duck, and his notion of their influence on American

society was comical.

He spoke at some length regarding religion in Russia, evidently

believing that its present dominant form is soon to pass away. I

asked him how then he could account for the fact that while in

other countries women are greatly in the majority at church

services, in every Russian church the majority are men; and that

during the thirty-five years since my last visit to Moscow this

tendency had apparently increased. He answered, "All this is on

the surface; there is much deeper thought below, and the great

want of Russia is liberty to utter it." He then gave some

examples to show this, among them the case of a gentleman and

lady in St. Petersburg, whose children had been taken from them

and given to Princess ----, their grandmother, because the latter

is of the Orthodox Church and the former are not. I answered that

I had seen the children; that their grandmother had told me that

their mother was a screaming atheist with nihilistic tendencies,

who had left her husband and was bringing up the children in a

scandalous way,--teaching them to abjure God and curse the Czar;

that their father had thought it his duty to give all his

property away and work as a laborer; that therefore she--the

grandmother--had secured an order from the Emperor empowering her

to take charge of the children; that I had seen the children at

their grandmother's house, and that they had seemed very happy.

Tolstoi insisted that this statement by the grandmother was

simply made to cover the fact that the children were taken from

the mother because her belief was not of the orthodox pattern. My

opinion is that Tolstoi was mistaken, at least as to the father;

and that the father had been led to give away his property and

work with his hands in obedience to the ideas so eloquently

advocated by Tolstoi himself. Unlike his master, this gentleman

appears not to have had the advantage of a wife who mitigated his

ideas.

Tolstoi also referred to the difficulties which translators had

found in securing publishers for his most recent book--"The

Kingdom of God." On my assuring him that American publishers of

high standing would certainly be glad to take it, he said that he

had supposed the ideas in it so contrary to opinions dominant in

America as to prevent its publication there.

Returning to the subject of religion in Russia, he referred to

some curious incongruities; as, for example, the portrait of

Socrates forming part of a religious picture in the Annunciation

Church at the Kremlin. He said that evidently some monk, who had

dipped into Plato, had thus placed Socrates among the precursors

of Christ. I cited the reason assigned by Melanchthon for

Christ's descent into hell--namely, the desire of the Redeemer to

make himself known to Socrates, Plato, and the best of the

ancient philosophers; and I compared this with Luther's idea, so

characteristic of him, that Christ descended into hell in order

to have a hand-to-hand grapple and wrestle with Satan. This led

Tolstoi to give me a Russian legend of the descent into hell,

which was that, when Christ arrived there, he found Satan forging

chains, but that, at the approach of the Saviour, the walls of

hell collapsed, and Satan found himself entangled in his own

chains, and remained so for a thousand years.

In regard to the Jews, he said that he sympathized with them, but

that the statements regarding the persecution of them were

somewhat exaggerated. Kennan's statements regarding the treatment

of prisoners in Siberia he thought overdrawn at times, but

substantially true. He expressed his surprise that certain

leading men in the empire, whom he named, could believe that

persecution and the forcible repression of thought would have any

permanent effect at the end of the nineteenth century.

He then dwelt upon sundry evil conditions in Russia, on which my

comment was that every country, of course, had its own grievous

shortcomings; and I cited, as to America, the proverb: "No one

knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it." At this

he asked me about lynch law in the United States, and expressed

his horror of it. I showed him that it was the inevitable result

of a wretched laxity and sham humanity in the administration of

our criminal law, which had led great bodies of people, more

especially in the Southern and extreme Western parts of the

country, to revert to natural justice and take the law into their

own hands; and I cited Goldwin Smith's profound remark that "some

American lynchings are proofs not so much of lawlessness as of a

respect for law."

He asked me where, besides this, the shoe pinched in the United

States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that

perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to

full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and

stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their

exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury,

not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited

the case of the crowds whom I had seen some years before huddled

together in New York tenement-houses, preyed upon by their

liquor-selling landlords, their families perishing of typhoid and

smallpox on account of the negligence and maladministration of

the local politicians, but who, as a rule, were almost if not

quite ready to mob and murder those of us who brought in a new

health board and a better order of things; showing him that for

years the very class of people who suffered most from the old,

vile state of things did their best by their votes to keep in

power the men who maintained it.

We then passed to the subject of the trans-Siberian Railway. In

this he seemed interested, but in a vague way which added nothing

to my knowledge.

Asking me regarding my former visit to Moscow, and learning that

it was during the Crimean War, he said, "At that time I was in

Sebastopol, and continued there as a soldier during the siege."

As to his relations with the imperial government at present, he

said that he had been recently elected to a learned society in

Moscow, but that the St. Petersburg government had interfered to

stop the election; and he added that every morning, when he

awoke, he wondered that he was not on his way to Siberia.

On my leaving him, both he and the countess invited me to meet

them next day at the Tretiakof Museum of Russian Pictures; and

accordingly, on the following afternoon, I met them at that

greatest of all galleries devoted purely to Russian art. They

were accompanied by several friends, among them a little knot of

disciples--young men clad in simple peasant costume like that

worn by the master. It was evident that he was an acknowledged

lion at the old Russian capital, for as he led me about to see

the pictures which he liked best, he was followed and stared at

by many.

Pointing out to me some modern religious pictures in Byzantine

style painted for the Cathedral of Kieff, he said, "They

represent an effort as futile as trying to persuade chickens to

reenter the egg-shells from which they have escaped." He next

showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the

meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, "What is

truth?" Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of

the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with

unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,--a peasant fanatic

brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in

this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that

famous question and its answer; the question coming from the

mighty of the earth, and the answer from the poor and oppressed.

The other picture represented the Crucifixion. It was painted in

the most realistic manner possible; nothing was idealized; it was

even more vividly realistic than Gebhardt's picture of the Lord's

Supper, at Berlin; so that it at first repelled me, though it

afterward exercised a certain fascination. That Tolstoi was

deeply interested was clear. He stood for a time in silence, as

if musing upon all that the sacrifice on Calvary had brought to

the world. Other representations of similar scenes, in the

conventional style of the older masters, he had passed without a

glance; but this spectacle of the young Galilean peasant, with

unattractive features, sordid garb, poverty-stricken companions,

and repulsive surroundings, tortured to death for preaching the

"kingdom of God" to the poor and down-trodden, seemed to hold him

fast, and as he pointed out various features in the picture it

became even more clear to me that sympathy with the peasant

class, and a yearning to enter into their cares and sorrows, form

the real groundwork of his life.

He then took me to a small picture of Jesus and his disciples

leaving the upper room at Jerusalem after the Last Supper. This,

too, was painted in the most realistic manner. The disciples,

simple-minded fishermen, rude in features and dress, were

plodding homeward, while Christ himself gazed at the stars and

drew the attention of his nearest companions to some of the

brightest. Tolstoi expressed especial admiration for this

picture, saying that at times it affected him like beautiful

music,--like music which draws tears, one can hardly tell why. It

was more and more evident, as he lingered before this and other

pictures embodying similar ideas, that sympathy for those

struggling through poverty and want toward a better life is his

master passion.

Among the pictures, not to be classed as religious, before which

he thus lingered were those representing the arrest of a nihilist

and the return of an exile from Siberia. Both were well painted,

and both revealed the same characteristic--sympathy with the

poor, even with criminals.

Some of the more famous historical pictures in the collection he

thought exaggerated; especially those representing the fury of

the Grand Duchess Sophia in her monastery prison, and the remorse

of Ivan the Terrible after murdering his son.

To my surprise, he agreed with me, and even went beyond me, in

rating landscape infinitely below religious and historical

painting, saying that he cared for landscape-painting only as

accessory to pictures revealing human life.

Among genre pictures, we halted before one representing a peasant

family grouped about the mother, who, with a sacred picture laid

upon her breast, after the Russian manner, was dying of famine.

This also seemed deeply to impress him.

We stopped next before a picture of a lady of high birth brought

before the authorities in order to be sent, evidently against her

will, to a convent. I cited the similar story from Manzoni's

"Promessi Sposi"; but, to my surprise, he seemed to know little

of that most fascinating of historical romances. This led to a

discussion in which he said he had once liked Walter Scott, but

had not read anything of his for many years; and he seemed

interested in my statement that although always an especial

admirer of Scott, I had found it almost impossible to induce the

younger generation to read him.

Stopping before a picture of Peter the Great's fatal conference

with his son Alexis, in reply to my remark upon the marvel that a

prince of such genius as Peter should have appeared at Moscow in

the seventeenth century, he said that he did not admire Peter,

that he was too cruel,--administering torture and death at times

with his own hands.

We next halted before a picture representing the horrible

execution of the Strelitzes. I said that "such pictures prove

that the world does, after all, progress slowly, in spite of what

pessimists say, and that in order to refute pessimists one has

only to refer to the improvements in criminal law." To this he

agreed cordially, and declared the abolition of torture in

procedure and penalty to be one great gain, at any rate.

We spoke of the present condition of things in Europe, and I told

him that at St. Petersburg the opinion very general among the

more thoughtful members of the diplomatic corps was that war was

not imminent; that the Czar, having himself seen the cruelties of

war during the late struggle in the Balkans, had acquired an

invincible repugnance to it. He acquiesced in this, but said that

it seemed monstrous to him that the peace of the empire and of

Europe should depend upon so slender a thread as the will of any

one man.

Our next walk was taken across the river Moskwa, on the ice, to

and through the Kremlin, and as we walked the conversation fell

upon literature. As to French literature, he thought Maupassant

the man of greatest talent, by far, in recent days, but that he

was depraved and centered all his fiction in women. For Balzac,

Tolstoi evidently preserved admiration, but he cared little,

apparently, for Daudet, Zola, and their compeers.

As to American literature, he said that Tourgueneff had once told

him that there was nothing in it worth reading; nothing new or

original; that it was simply a copy of English literature. To

this I replied that such criticism seemed to me very shallow;

that American literature was, of course, largely a growth out of

the parent stock of English literature, and must mainly be judged

as such; that to ask in the highest American literature something

absolutely different from English literature in general was like

looking for oranges upon an apple-tree; that there had come new

varieties in this growth, many of them original, and some

beautiful; but that there was the same sap, the same life-current

running through it all; and I compared the treatment of woman in

all Anglo-Saxon literature, whether on one side of the Atlantic

or the other, from Chaucer to Mark Twain, with the treatment of

the same subject by French writers from Rabelais to Zola. To this

he answered that in his opinion the strength of American

literature arises from the inherent Anglo-Saxon religious

sentiment. He expressed a liking for Emerson, Hawthorne, and

Whittier, but he seemed to have read at random, not knowing at

all some of the best things. He spoke with admiration of Theodore

Parker's writings, and seemed interested in my reminiscences of

Parker and of his acquaintance with Russian affairs. He also

revered and admired the character and work of William Lloyd

Garrison. He had read Longfellow somewhat, but was evidently

uncertain regarding Lowell,--confusing him, apparently, with some

other author. Among contemporary writers he knew some of

Howells's novels and liked them, but said: "Literature in the

United States at present seems to be in the lowest trough of the

sea between high waves." He dwelt on the flippant tone of

American newspapers, and told me of an interviewer who came to

him in behalf of an American journal, and wanted simply to know

at what time he went to bed and rose, what he ate, and the like.

He thought that people who cared to read such trivialities must

be very feeble-minded, but he said that the European press is, on

the whole, just as futile. On my attempting to draw from him some

statement as to what part of American literature pleased him

most, he said that he had read some publications of the New York

and Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, and that he knew and

liked the writings of Felix Adler. I then asked who, in the whole

range of American literature, he thought the foremost. To this he

made an answer which amazed me, as it would have astonished my

countrymen. Indeed, did the eternal salvation of all our eighty

millions depend upon some one of them guessing the person he

named, we should all go to perdition together. That greatest of

American writers was--Adin Ballou! Evidently, some of the

philanthropic writings of that excellent Massachusetts country

clergyman and religious communist had pleased him, and hence came

the answer.

The next day he came over to my hotel and we went out for a

stroll. As we passed along the streets I noticed especially what

I had remarked during our previous walks, that Tolstoi had a

large quantity of small Russian coins in his pockets; that this

was evidently known to the swarms of beggars who infest the

Kremlin and the public places generally; and that he always gave

to them.

On my speaking of this, he said he thought that any one, when

asked for money, ought to give it. Arguing against this doctrine,

I said that in the United States there are virtually no beggars,

and I might have gone on to discuss the subject from the

politico-economical point of view, showing how such

indiscriminate almsgiving in perpetual driblets is sure to create

the absurd and immoral system which one sees throughout

Russia,--hordes of men and women who are able to take care of

themselves, and who ought to be far above beggary, cringing and

whining to the passers-by for alms; but I had come to know the

man well enough to feel sure that a politico-economical argument

would slide off him like water from a duck's back, so I attempted

to take him upon another side, and said: "In the United States

there are virtually no beggars, though my countrymen are, I

really believe, among the most charitable in the world." To this

last statement he assented, referring in a general way to our

shipments of provisions to aid the famine-stricken in Russia.

"But," I added, "it is not our custom to give to beggars save in

special emergencies." I then gave him an account of certain

American church organizations which had established piles of

fire-wood and therefore enabled any able-bodied tramp, by sawing

or cutting some of it, to earn a good breakfast, a good dinner,

and, if needed, a good bed, and showed him that Americans

considered beggary not only a great source of pauperism, but as

absolutely debasing to the beggar himself, in that it puts him in

the attitude of a suppliant for that which, if he works as he

ought, he can claim as his right; that to me the spectacle of

Count Tolstoi virtually posing as a superior being, while his

fellow-Russians came crouching and whining to him, was not at all

edifying. To this view of the case he listened very civilly.

Incidentally I expressed wonder that he had not traveled more. He

then spoke with some disapprobation of travel. He had lived

abroad for a time, he said, and in St. Petersburg a few years,

but the rest of his life had been spent mainly in Moscow and the

interior of Russia. The more we talked together, the more it

became clear that this last statement explained some of his main

defects. Of all distinguished men that I have ever met, Tolstoi

seems to me most in need of that enlargement of view and

healthful modification of opinion which come from meeting men and

comparing views with them in different lands and under different

conditions. This need is all the greater because in Russia there

is no opportunity to discuss really important questions. Among

the whole one hundred and twenty millions of people there is no

public body in which the discussion of large public questions is

allowed; the press affords no real opportunity for discussion;

indeed, it is more than doubtful whether such discussion would be

allowed to any effective extent even in private correspondence or

at one's own fireside.

I remember well that during my former stay in St. Petersburg,

people who could talk English at their tables generally did so in

order that they might not betray themselves to any spy who might

happen to be among their servants.

Still worse, no one, unless a member of the diplomatic corps or

specially privileged, is allowed to read such books or newspapers

as he chooses, so that even this access to the thoughts of others

is denied to the very men who most need it.

Like so many other men of genius in Russia, then,--and Russia is

fertile in such,--Tolstoi has had little opportunity to take part

in any real discussion of leading topics; and the result is that

his opinions have been developed without modification by any

rational interchange of thought with other men. Under such

circumstances any man, no matter how noble or gifted, having

given birth to striking ideas, coddles and pets them until they

become the full-grown, spoiled children of his brain. He can at

last see neither spot nor blemish in them, and comes virtually to

believe himself infallible. This characteristic I found in

several other Russians of marked ability. Each had developed his

theories for himself until he had become infatuated with them,

and despised everything differing from them.

This is a main cause why sundry ghastly creeds, doctrines, and

sects--religious, social, political, and philosophic--have been

developed in Russia. One of these religious creeds favors the

murder of new-born children in order to save their souls; another

enjoins ghastly bodily mutilations for a similar purpose; others

still would plunge the world in flames and blood for the

difference of a phrase in a creed, or a vowel in a name, or a

finger more or less in making the sign of the cross, or for this

garment in a ritual, or that gesture in a ceremony.

In social creeds they have developed nihilism, which virtually

assumes the right of an individual to sit in judgment upon the

whole human race and condemn to death every other human being who

may differ in opinion or position from this self-constituted

judge.

In political creeds they have conceived the monarch as the

all-powerful and irresponsible vicegerent of God, and all the

world outside Russia as given over to Satan, for the reason that

it has "rejected the divine principle of authority."

In various branches of philosophy they have developed doctrines

which involve the rejection of the best to which man has attained

in science, literature, and art, and a return to barbarism.

In the theory of life and duty they have devised a pessimistic

process under which the human race would cease to exist.

Every one of these theories is the outcome of some original mind

of more or less strength, discouraged, disheartened, and

overwhelmed by the sorrows of Russian life; developing its ideas

logically and without any possibility of adequate discussion with

other men. This alone explains a fact which struck me

forcibly--the fact that all Tolstoi's love of humanity, real

though it certainly is, seems accompanied by a depreciation of

the ideas, statements, and proposals of almost every other human

being, and by virtual intolerance of all thought which seems in

the slightest degree different from his own.

Arriving in the Kremlin, he took me to the Church of the

Annunciation to see the portrait of Socrates in the religious

picture of which he had spoken; but we were too late to enter,

and so went to the Palace of the Synod, where we looked at the

picture of the Trinity, which, by a device frequently used in

street signs, represents, when looked at from one side, the

suffering Christ, from the other the Holy Ghost in the form of a

dove, and from the front the Almighty as an old man with a white

beard. What Tolstoi thought of the doctrine thus illustrated came

out in a subsequent conversation.

The next day he came again to my rooms and at once began speaking

upon religion. He said that every man is religious and has in him

a religion of his own; that religion results from the conception

which a man forms of his relations to his fellow-men, and to the

principle which in his opinion controls the universe; that there

are three stages in religious development: first, the childhood

of nations, when man thinks of the whole universe as created for

him and centering in him; secondly, the maturity of nations, the

time of national religions, when each nation believes that all

true religion centers in it,--the Jews and the English, he said,

being striking examples; and, finally, the perfected conception

of nations, when man has the idea of fulfilling the will of the

Supreme Power and considers himself an instrument for that

purpose. He went on to say that in every religion there are two

main elements, one of deception and one of devotion, and he asked

me about the Mormons, some of whose books had interested him. He

thought two thirds of their religion deception, but said that on

the whole he preferred a religion which professed to have dug its

sacred books out of the earth to one which pretended that they

were let down from heaven. On learning that I had visited Salt

Lake City two years before, he spoke of the good reputation of

the Mormons for chastity, and asked me to explain the hold of

their religion upon women. I answered that Mormonism could hardly

be judged by its results at present; that, as a whole, the

Mormons are, no doubt, the most laborious and decent people in

the State of Utah; but that this is their heroic period, when

outside pressure keeps them firmly together and arouses their

devotion; that the true test will come later, when there is less

pressure and more knowledge, and when the young men who are now

arising begin to ask questions, quarrel with each other, and

split the whole body into sects and parties.

This led to questions in regard to American women generally, and

he wished to know something of their condition and prospects. I

explained some features of woman's condition among us, showing

its evolution, first through the betterment of her legal status,

and next through provision for her advanced education; but told

him that so far as political rights are concerned, there had been

very little practical advance in the entire East and South of the

country during the last fifty years, and that even in the extreme

Western States, where women have been given political rights and

duties to some extent, the concessions have been wavering and

doubtful.

At this, he took up his parable and said that women ought to have

all other rights except political; that they are unfit to

discharge political duties; that, indeed, one of the great

difficulties of the world at present lies in their possession of

far more consideration and control than they ought to have. "Go

into the streets and bazaars," he said, "and you will see the

vast majority of shops devoted to their necessities. In France

everything centers in women, and women have complete control of

life: all contemporary French literature shows this. Woman is not

man's equal in the highest qualities; she is not so

self-sacrificing as man. Men will, at times, sacrifice their

families for an idea; women will not." On my demurring to this

latter statement, he asked me if I ever knew a woman who loved

other people's children as much as her own. I gladly answered in

the negative, but cited Florence Nightingale, Sister Dora, and

others, expressing my surprise at his assertion that women are

incapable of making as complete sacrifices for any good cause as

men. I pointed to the persecutions in the early church, when

women showed themselves superior to men in suffering torture,

degradation, and death in behalf of the new religion, and added

similar instances from the history of witchcraft. To this he

answered that in spite of all such history, women will not make

sacrifices of their own interest for a good cause which does not

strikingly appeal to their feelings, while men will do so; that

he had known but two or three really self-sacrificing women in

his life; and that these were unmarried. On my saying that

observation had led me to a very different conclusion, his

indictment took another form. He insisted that woman hangs upon

the past; that public opinion progresses, but that women are

prone to act on the opinion of yesterday or of last year; that

women and womanish men take naturally to old absurdities, among

which he mentioned the doctrines of the Trinity, "spiritism," and

homeopathy. At this I expressed a belief that if, instead of

educating women, as Bishop Dupanloup expressed it, "in the lap of

the church (sur les genoux de l'eglise)," we educate them in the

highest sense, in universities, they will develop more and more

intellectually, and so become a controlling element in the

formation of a better race; that, as strong men generally have

strong mothers, the better education of woman physically,

intellectually, and morally is the true way of bettering the race

in general. In this idea he expressed his disbelief, and said

that education would not change women; that women are illogical

by nature. At this I cited an example showing that women can be

exceedingly logical and close in argument, but he still adhered

to his opinion. On my mentioning the name of George Eliot, he

expressed a liking for her.

On our next walk, he took me to the funeral of one of his

friends. He said that to look upon the dead should rather give

pleasure than pain; that memento mori is a wise maxim, and

looking upon the faces of the dead a good way of putting it in

practice. I asked him if he had formed a theory as to a future

life, and he said in substance that he had not; but that, as we

came at birth from beyond the forms of space and time, so at

death we returned whence we came. I said, "You use the word

'forms' in the Kantian sense?" "Yes," he said, "space and time

have no reality."

We arrived just too late at the house of mourning. The dead man

had been taken away; but many of those who had come to do him

honor still lingered, and were evidently enjoying the "funeral

baked meats." There were clear signs of a carousal. The friends

who came out to meet us had, most of them, flushed faces, and one

young man in military uniform, coming down the stairs, staggered

and seemed likely to break his neck.

Tolstoi refused to go in, and, as we turned away, expressed

disgust at the whole system, saying, as well he might, that it

was utterly barbarous. He seemed despondent over it, and I tried

to cheer him by showing how the same custom of drinking strong

liquors at funerals had, only a few generations since, prevailed

in large districts of England and America, but that better ideas

of living had swept it away.

On our way through the street, we passed a shrine at which a mob

of peasants were adoring a sacred picture. He dwelt on the

fetishism involved in this, and said that Jesus Christ would be

infinitely surprised and pained were he to return to earth and

see what men were worshiping in his name. He added a story of a

converted pagan who, being asked how many gods he worshiped,

said: "One, and I ate him this morning." At this I cited

Browning's lines put into the mouth of the bishop who wished,

from his tomb,

"To hear the blessed mutter of the mass,

And see God made and eaten all day long."

I reminded him of his definition of religion given me on one of

our previous walks, and he repeated it, declaring religion to be

the feeling which man has regarding his relation to the universe,

including his fellow-men, and to the power which governs all.

The afternoon was closed with a visit to a Raskolnik, or Old

Believer, and of all our experiences this turned out to be the

most curious. The Raskolniks, or Old Believers, compose that

wide-spread sect which broke off from the main body of the

Russian Church when the patriarch of Moscow, Nikon, in the

seventeenth century attempted to remove various textual errors

from the Bible and ceremonial books. These books had been copied

and recopied during centuries until their condition had become

monstrous. Through a mistake of some careless transcriber, even

the name of Jesus had been travestied and had come to be spelled

with two e's; the crudest absurdities had been copied into the

test; important parts had become unintelligible; and the time had

evidently arrived for a revision. Nikon saw this, and in good

faith summoned scholars from Constantinople to prepare more

correct editions; but these revised works met the fate which

attends such revisions generally. The great body of the people

were attached to the old forms; they preferred them, just as in

these days the great body of English-speaking Protestants prefer

the King James Bible to the Revised Version, even though the

latter may convey to the reader more correctly what was dictated

by the Holy Spirit. The feeling of the monks, especially, against

Nikon's new version became virulent. They raised so strong an

opposition among the people that an army had to be sent against

them; at the siege of the Solovetsk Monastery the conflict was

long and bloody, and as a result a large body of people and

clergy broke off from the church. Of course the more these

dissenters thought upon what Nikon had done, the more utterly

evil he seemed; but this was not all. A large part of Russian

religious duty, so far as the people are concerned, consists in

making the sign of the cross on all occasions. Before Nikon's

time this had been done rather carelessly, but, hoping to impress

a religious lesson, he ordered it to be made with three extended

fingers, thus reminding the faithful of the Trinity. At this the

Raskolniks insisted that the sign of the cross ought to be made

with two fingers, and out of this difference arose more

bitterness than from all other causes put together. From that day

to this the dissenters have insisted on enjoying the privilege of

reading the old version with all its absurdities, of spelling the

word Jesus with two e's, of crossing themselves with two fingers,

and of cursing Nikon.

This particular Raskolnik, or Old Believer, to whom Tolstoi took

me, was a Muscovite merchant of great wealth, living in a superb

villa on the outskirts of the city, with a large park about it;

the apartments, for size and beauty of decoration, fit for a

royal palace--the ceilings covered with beautiful frescos, and

the rooms full of statues and pictures by eminent artists, mainly

Russian and French. He was a man of some education, possessed a

large library, loved to entertain scientific men and to aid

scientific effort, and managed to keep on good terms with his

more fanatical coreligionists on one side and with the government

on the other, so that in emergencies he was an efficient

peacemaker between them. We found him a kindly, gentle old man,

with long, white hair and beard, and he showed us with evident

pleasure the principal statues and pictures, several of the

former being by Antokolski, the greatest contemporary Russian

sculptor. In the sumptuous dining-room, in which perhaps a

hundred persons could sit at table, he drew our attention to some

fine pictures of Italian scenes by Smieradsky, and, after passing

through the other rooms, took us into a cabinet furnished with

the rarest things to be found in the Oriental bazaars. Finally,

he conducted us into his private chapel, where, on the

iconostas,--the screen which, in accordance with the Greek

ritual, stands before the altar,--the sacred images of the

Saviour and various saints were represented somewhat differently

from those in the Russo-Greek Church, especially in that they

extended two fingers instead of three. To this difference I

called his attention, and he at once began explaining it. Soon he

grew warm, and finally fervid. Said he: "Why do we make the sign

of the cross? We do it to commemorate the crucifixion of our

blessed Lord. What is commemorated at the crucifixion? The

sacrifice of his two natures--the divine and the human. How do we

make the sign? We make it with two fingers, thus"--accompanied by

a gesture. "What does this represent? It represents what really

occurred: the sacrifice of the divine and the human nature of our

Lord. How do the Orthodox make it?" Here his voice began to rise.

"They make it with three fingers"--and now his indignation burst

all bounds, and with a tremendous gesture and almost a scream of

wrath he declared: "and every time they make it they crucify

afresh every one of the three persons of the holy and undivided

Trinity."

The old man's voice, so gentle at first, had steadily risen

during this catechism of his, in which he propounded the

questions and recited the answers, until this last utterance came

with an outcry of horror. The beginning of this catechism was

given much after the manner of a boy reciting mechanically the

pons asinorum, but the end was like the testimony of an ancient

prophet against the sins which doomed Israel.

This last burst was evidently too much for Tolstoi. He said not a

word in reply, but seemed wrapped in overpowering thought, and

anxious to break away. We walked out with the old Raskolnik, and

at the door I thanked him for his kindness; but even there, and

all the way down the long walk through the park, Tolstoi remained

silent. As we came into the road he suddenly turned to me and

said almost fiercely, "That man is a hypocrite; he can't believe

that; he is a shrewd, long-headed man; how can he believe such

trash? Impossible!" At this I reminded him of Theodore Parker's

distinction between men who believe and men who "believe that

they believe," and said that possibly our Raskolnik was one of

the latter. This changed the subject. He said that he had read

Parker's biography, and liked it all save one thing, which was

that he gave a pistol to a fugitive slave and advised him to

defend himself. This Tolstoi condemned on the ground that we are

not to resist evil. I told him of the advice I had given to

Dobroluboff, a very winning Russian student at Cornell

University, when he was returning to Russia to practise his

profession as an engineer. That advice was that he should bear in

mind Buckle's idea as to the agency of railways and telegraphs in

extending better civilization, and devote himself to his

profession of engineering, with the certainty that its ultimate

result would be to aid in the enlightenment of the empire; but

never, on any account, to conspire against the government;

telling him that he might be sure that he could do far more for

the advancement of Russian thought by building railways than by

entering into any conspiracies whatever. Tolstoi said the advice

was good, but that he would also have advised the young man to

speak out his ideas, whatever they might be. He said that only in

this way could any advance ever be made; that one main obstacle

in human progress is the suppression of the real thoughts of men.

I answered that all this had a fine sound; that it might do for

Count Tolstoi; but that a young, scholarly engineer following it

would soon find himself in a place where he could not promulgate

his ideas,--guarded by Cossacks in some remote Siberian mine.

He spoke of young professors in the universities, of their

difficulties, and of the risk to their positions if they spoke

out at all. I asked him if there was any liberality or breadth of

thought in the Russo-Greek Church. He answered that occasionally

a priest had tried to unite broader thought with orthodox dogma,

but that every such attempt had proved futile.

From Parker we passed to Lowell, and I again tried to find if he

really knew anything of Lowell's writings. He evidently knew very

little, and asked me what Lowell had written. He then said that

he had no liking for verse, and he acquiesced in Carlyle's saying

that nobody had ever said anything in verse which could not have

been better said in prose.

A day or two later, on another of our walks, I asked him how and

when, in his opinion, a decided advance in Russian liberty and

civilization would be made. He answered that he thought it would

come soon, and with great power. On my expressing the opinion

that such progress would be the result of a long evolutionary

process, with a series of actions and reactions, as heretofore in

Russian history, he dissented, and said that the change for the

better would come soon, suddenly, and with great force.

As we passed along the streets he was, as during our previous

walks, approached by many beggars, to each of whom he gave as

long as his money lasted. He said that he was accustomed to take

a provision of copper money with him for this purpose on his

walks, since he regarded it as a duty to give when asked, and he

went on to say that he carried the idea so far that even if he

knew the man wanted the money to buy brandy he would give it to

him; but he added that he would do all in his power to induce the

man to work and to cease drinking. I demurred strongly to all

this, and extended the argument which I had made during our

previous walk, telling him that by such giving he did two wrongs:

first, to the beggar himself, since it led him to cringe and lie

in order to obtain as a favor that which, if he did his duty in

working, he could claim as a right; and, secondly, to society by

encouraging such a multitude to prey upon it who might be giving

it aid and strength; and I again called his attention to the

hordes of sturdy beggars in Moscow. He answered that the results

of our actions in such cases are not the main thing, but the

cultivation of proper feelings in the giver is first to be

considered.

I then asked him about his manual labor. He said that his habit

was to rise early and read or write until noon, then to take his

luncheon and a short sleep, and after that to work in his garden

or fields. He thought this good for him on every account, and

herein we fully agreed.

On our return through the Kremlin, passing the heaps and rows of

cannon taken from the French in 1812, I asked him if he still

adhered to the low opinion of Napoleon expressed in "War and

Peace." He said that he did, and more than ever since he had

recently read a book on Napoleon's relations to women which

showed that he took the lowest possible view of womankind. I then

asked him if he still denied Napoleon's military genius. He

answered that he certainly did; that he did not believe in the

existence of any such thing as military genius; that he had never

been able to understand what is meant by the term. I asked, "How

then do you account for the amazing series of Napoleon's

successes?" He answered, "By circumstances." I rejoined that such

an explanation had the merit, at least, of being short and easy.

He then went on to say that battles are won by force of

circumstances, by chance, by luck; and he quoted Suvaroff to this

effect. He liked Lanfrey's "History of Napoleon" and Taine's book

on the Empire, evidently because both are denunciatory of men and

things he dislikes, but said that he did not believe in Thiers.

We came finally under the shade of the great tower and into the

gateway through which Napoleon entered the Kremlin; and there we

parted with a hearty good-bye.

The question has been asked me, at various times since, whether,

in my opinion, Tolstoi is really sincere; and allusion has been

made to a book published by a lady who claims to have been in

close relations with his family, which would seem to reveal a

theatrical element in his whole life. To this my answer has

always been, and still is, that I believe him to be one of the

most sincere and devoted men alive, a man of great genius and, at

the same time, of very deep sympathy with his fellow-creatures.

Out of this character of his come his theories of art and

literature; and, despite their faults, they seem to me more

profound and far-reaching than any put forth by any other man in

our time.

There is in them, for the current cant regarding art and

literature, a sound, sturdy, hearty contempt which braces and

strengthens one who reads or listens to him. It does one good to

hear his quiet sarcasms against the whole fin-de-siecle

business--the "impressionism," the "sensationalism," the vague

futilities of every sort, the "great poets" wallowing in the mud

of Paris, the "great musicians" making night hideous in German

concert-halls, the "great painters" of various countries mixing

their colors with as much filth as the police will allow. His

keen thrusts at these incarnations of folly and obscenity in the

last quarter of the nineteenth century, and especially at those

who seek to hide the poverty of their ideas in the obscurity of

their phrases, encourage one to think that in the next generation

the day of such pretenders will be done. His prophesying against

"art for art's sake"; his denunciation of art which simply

ministers to sensual pleasure; his ridicule of art which can be

discerned only by "people of culture"; his love for art which has

a sense, not only of its power, but of its obligations, which

puts itself at the service of great and worthy ideas, which

appeals to men as men--in this he is one of the best teachers of

his time and of future times.

Yet here come in his unfortunate limitations. From his

substitutions of assertion for inference, and from the inadequacy

of his view regarding sundry growths in art, literature, and

science, arises endless confusion.

For who will not be skeptical as to the value of any criticism by

a man who pours contempt over the pictures of Puvis de Chavannes,

stigmatizes one of Beethoven's purest creations as "corrupting,"

and calls Shakspere a "scribbler"!

Nothing can be more genuine than his manner: there is no posing,

no orating, no phrase-making; a quiet earnestness pervades all

his utterances. The great defect in him arises, as I have already

said, from a peculiarity in the development of his opinions:

namely, that during so large a part of his life he has been wont

to discuss subjects with himself and not with other men; that he

has, therefore, come to worship idols of his own creation, and

often very unsubstantial idols, and to look with misgiving and

distrust on the ideas of others. Very rarely during our

conversations did I hear him speak with any real enthusiasm

regarding any human being: his nearest approach to it was with

reference to the writings of the Rev. Adin Ballou, when he

declared him the foremost literary character that America has

produced. A result of all this is that when he is driven into a

corner his logic becomes so subtle as to be imperceptible, and he

is very likely to take refuge in paradoxes.

At times, as we walked together, he would pour forth a stream of

reasoning so lucid, out of depths so profound and reach

conclusions so cogent, that he seemed fairly inspired. At other

times he would develop a line of argument so outworn, and arrive

at conclusions so inane, that I could not but look into his face

closely to see if he could be really in earnest; but it always

bore that same expression--forbidding the slightest suspicion

that he was uttering anything save that which he believed, at

least for the time being.

As to the moral side, the stream of his thought was usually

limpid, but at times it became turbid and his better ideas seemed

to float on the surface as iridescent bubbles.

Had he lived in any other country, he would have been a power

mighty and permanent in influencing its thought and in directing

its policy; as it is, his thought will pass mainly as the

confused, incoherent wail and cry of a giant struggling against

the heavy adverse currents in that vast ocean of Russian life:

"The cry of some strong swimmer in his agony."

The evolution of Tolstoi's ideas has evidently been mainly

determined by his environment. During two centuries Russia has

been coming slowly out of the middle ages--indeed, out of perhaps

the most cruel phases of mediaeval life. Her history is, in its

details, discouraging; her daily life disheartening. Even the

aspects of nature are to the last degree depressing: no

mountains; no hills; no horizon; no variety in forests; a soil

during a large part of the year frozen or parched; a people whose

upper classes are mainly given up to pleasure and whose lower

classes are sunk in fetishism; all their poetry and music in the

minor key; old oppressions of every sort still lingering; no help

in sight; and, to use their own cry, "God so high and the Czar so

distant."

When, then, a great man arises in Russia, if he gives himself

wholly to some well-defined purpose, looking to one high aim and

rigidly excluding sight or thought of the ocean of sorrow about

him, he may do great things. If he be Suvaroff or Skobeleff or

Gourko he may win great battles; if he be Mendeleieff he may

reach some epoch-making discovery in science; if he be Derjavine

he may write a poem like the "Ode to God"; if he be Antokolsky he

may carve statues like "Ivan the Terrible"; if he be Nesselrode

he may hold all Europe enchained to the ideas of the autocrat; if

he be Miloutine or Samarine or Tcherkassky he may devise vast

plans like those which enabled Alexander II to free twenty

millions of serfs and to secure means of subsistence for each of

them; if he be Prince Khilkoff he may push railway systems over

Europe to the extremes of Asia; if he be De Witte he may reform a

vast financial system.

But when a strong genius in Russia throws himself into

philanthropic speculations of an abstract sort, with no chance of

discussing his theories until they are full-grown and have taken

fast hold upon him,--if he be a man of science like Prince

Kropotkin, one of the most gifted scientific thinkers of our

time,--the result may be a wild revolt, not only against the

whole system of his own country, but against civilization itself,

and finally the adoption of the theory and practice of anarchism,

which logically results in the destruction of the entire human

race. Or, if he be an accomplished statesman and theologian like

Pobedonostzeff, he may reason himself back into mediaeval

methods, and endeavor to fetter all free thought and to crush out

all forms of Christianity except the Russo-Greek creed and

ritual. Or, if he be a man of the highest genius in literature,

like Tolstoi, whose native kindliness holds him back from the

extremes of nihilism, he may rear a fabric heaven-high, in which

truths, errors, and paradoxes are piled up together until we have

a new Tower of Babel. Then we may see this man of genius

denouncing all science and commending what he calls "faith";

urging a return to a state of nature, which is simply Rousseau

modified by misreadings of the New Testament; repudiating

marriage, yet himself most happily married and the father of

sixteen children; holding that Aeschylus and Dante and Shakspere

were not great in literature, and making Adin Ballou a literary

idol; holding that Michelangelo and Raphael were not great in

sculpture and painting, yet insisting on the greatness of sundry

unknown artists who have painted brutally; holding that

Beethoven, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Wagner were not great in

music, but that some unknown performer outside any healthful

musical evolution has given us the music of the future; declaring

Napoleon to have had no genius, but presenting Koutousoff as a

military ideal; loathing science--that organized knowledge which

has done more than all else to bring us out of mediaeval cruelty

into a better world--and extolling a "faith" which has always

been the most effective pretext for bloodshed and oppression.

The long, slow, every-day work of developing a better future for

his countrymen is to be done by others far less gifted than

Tolstoi. His paradoxes will be forgotten; but his devoted life,

his noble thoughts, and his lofty ideals will, as centuries roll

on, more and more give life and light to the new Russia.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

OFFICIAL LIFE IN ST. PETERSBURG--1892-1894

The difficulties of a stranger seeking information in Russia seem

at times insurmountable. First of these is the government policy

of suppressing news. Foreign journals come to ordinary

subscribers with paragraphs and articles rubbed out with pumice

or blotted out with ink; consequently our Russian friends were

wont to visit the legation, seeking to read in our papers what

had been erased in their own, and making the most amusing

discoveries as to the stupidity of the official censorship:

paragraphs perfectly harmless being frequently blotted out, and

really serious attacks on the government unnoticed.

Very striking, as showing control over the newspaper press, was

an occurrence during my first summer at Helsingfors. One day our

family doctor came in, and reported a rumor that an iron-clad

monitor had sunk, the night before, on its way across the gulf

from Reval. Soon the story was found to be true. A squadron of

three ships had started; had encountered a squall; and in the

morning one of them--an old-fashioned iron-clad monitor--was

nowhere to be seen. She had sunk with all on board. Considerable

speculation concerning the matter arose, and sundry very guarded

remarks were ventured to the effect that the authorities at

Cronstadt would have been wiser had they not allowed the ship to

go out in such a condition that the first squall would send her

to the bottom. This discussion continued for about a week, when

suddenly the proper authorities served notice upon the press that

nothing more must be said on the subject.

This mandate was obeyed; the matter was instantly dropped;

nothing more was said; and, a year or two afterward, on my

inquiring of Admiral Makharoff whether anything had ever been

discovered regarding the lost ship and its crew, he answered in

the negative.

But more serious efforts than these were made to control thought.

The censorship of books was even more strongly, and, if possible,

more foolishly, exercised. At any of the great bookshops one

could obtain, at once, the worst publications of the Paris press;

but the really substantial and thoughtful books were carefully

held back. The average Russian, in order to read most of these

better works, must be specially authorized to do so.

I had a practical opportunity to see the system in operation.

Being engaged on the final chapters of my book, and needing

sundry scientific, philosophical, and religious treatises, such

as can be bought freely in every city of Western Europe, I went

to the principal bookseller in St. Petersburg, and was told that,

by virtue of my diplomatic position, I could have them; but that,

in order to do so, I must write an application, signing it with

my own name, and that then he would sell them to me within a few

days. This took place several times.

Still another difficulty is that, owing to lack of publicity, the

truth can rarely be found as regards any burning question: in the

prevailing atmosphere of secrecy and repression the simplest

facts are often completely shut from the foreign observer.

Owing to the lack of public discussion, Russia is the classic

ground of myth and legend. One sees myths and legends growing day

by day. The legend regarding the cure of the Archbishop of St.

Petersburg by Father Ivan of Cronstadt, which I have given in a

previous chapter, is an example. The same growth of legend is

seen with regard to every-day matters. For example, one meets

half a dozen people at five-o'clock tea in a Russian house, and

one of them says: "How badly the Emperor looked at court last

night." Another says: "Yes; his liver is evidently out of order;

he ought to go to Carlsbad." Another says: "I think that special

pains ought to be taken with his food," etc., etc. People then

scatter from this tea-table, and in a day or two one hears that

sufficient precaution is not taken with the Emperor's food; that

it would not be strange if some nihilist should seek to poison

him. A day or two afterward one hears that a nihilist HAS

endeavored to poison the Emperor. The legend grows, details

appear here and there, and finally there come in the newspapers

of Western Europe full and careful particulars of a thwarted plot

to poison his Majesty.

Not the least of the embarrassments which beset an American

minister in Russia is one which arose at various times during my

stay, its source being the generous promptness of our people to

take as gospel any story regarding Russian infringement of human

rights. One or two cases will illustrate this.

During my second winter, despatches by mail and wire came to me

thick and fast regarding the alleged banishment of an American

citizen to Siberia for political reasons; and with these came

petitions and remonstrances signed by hundreds of Americans of

light and leading; also newspaper articles, many and bitter.

On making inquiries through the Russian departments of foreign

affairs and of justice, I found the fact to be that this injured

American had been, twenty years before, a Russian police agent in

Poland; that he had stolen funds intrusted to him and had taken

refuge in America; that, relying on the amnesty proclaimed at the

accession of the late Emperor, he had returned to his old haunts;

that he had been seized, because the amnesty did not apply to the

category of criminals to which he belonged; that he had not been

sent to Siberia; that there was no thought of sending him there;

but that the authorities proposed to recover the money he had

stolen if they could. Another case was typical: One day an

excellent English clergyman came to me in great distress, stating

that an American citizen was imprisoned in the city. I

immediately had the man brought before a justice, heard his

testimony and questioned him, publicly and privately. He swore

before the court, and insisted to me in private, that he had

never before been in Russia; that he was an American citizen born

of a Swedish father and an Alaskan mother upon one of the Alaskan

islands; and he showed a passport which he had obtained at

Washington by making oath to that effect. On the other hand

appeared certain officers of the Russian navy, in excellent

standing, who swore that they knew the man perfectly to be a

former employee of their engineering department and a deserter

from a Russian ship of war in the port of St. Petersburg. It was

also a somewhat significant fact that he spoke Russian much

better than English, and that he seemed to have a knowledge of

Russian affairs very remarkable for a man who had never been in

Russia; but to account for this he insisted upon the statement as

to his birth in Alaska. Appearances were certainly very strongly

against him, and he was remanded to await more testimony in his

favor; but the next thing I heard was that he had escaped, had

arrived in New York, was posing as a martyr, had graciously

granted interviews to various representatives of the press, and

had thereby stimulated some very lurid editorials against the

Russian Government.

Another case was that of a Russian who, having reached the United

States, burdened the files of the State Department and of the

legation with complaints against the American minister because

that official did not send out the man's wife to him. The

minister had, indeed, forwarded the necessary passports, but the

difficulty was that the German authorities would not allow the

woman to enter Germany without showing herself to be in

possession of means sufficient to prevent her becoming a public

charge; and these her husband could not, or would not, send,

insisting that now that he was naturalized he had a right to have

his wife brought to America.

I have no apology to make for the Russian system--far from it;

but I would state, in the interest of international comity, that

it is best for Americans not to be too prompt in believing all

the stories of alleged sufferers from Russian despotism, and

especially of those who wish to use their American citizenship

simply in order to return to Russia and enjoy business advantages

superior to those of their neighbors.

That there are many meritorious refugees cannot be denied; but

any one who has looked over extradition papers, as I have been

obliged to do, and seen people posing as Russian martyrs who are

comfortably carrying on in New York the business of

counterfeiting bank-notes, and unctuously thanking God in their

letters for their success in the business, will be slow to join

in the outcries of refugees of doubtful standing claiming to be

suffering persecution on account of race, religion, or political

opinion.

Nor are Russian-Americans the only persons who weary an American

representative. One morning a card was brought in bearing an

undoubted American name, and presently there followed it a tall

raw-boned man with long flaxen hair, who began orating to me as

follows: "Sir, you are an ambassador from the President of the

United States; I am an ambassador from God Almighty. I am sent

here to save the Emperor. He is a good man; he is followed up by

bad men who seek his life; I can save him; I will be his

cup-bearer; I WILL DRIVE HIS TEAM." This latter conception of the

Emperor's means of locomotion struck me as naive, especially in

view of the fact that near my house was an immense structure

filled with magnificent horses for the Emperor and court--a

veritable equine palace. "Yes," said my visitor; "I will drive

the Emperor's team. I want you to introduce me to him

immediately." My answer was that it was not so easy to secure a

presentation to the Emperor, offhand; that considerable time

would be necessary in any case. To this my visitor answered: "I

must see him at once; I am invited to come by the Empress." On my

asking when he received this invitation, he said that it was

given him on board the steamer between New York and Hamburg, her

Majesty and her children being the only other passengers besides

himself in the second-class cabin. To this I said that there must

certainly be some mistake; that her Majesty rarely, if ever,

traveled on public lines of steamers; that if she had done so,

she certainly would not have been a passenger in the second

cabin. To this he answered that he was absolutely certain that it

was the Empress who had given him the invitation and urged him to

come and save the Emperor's life. On my asking him the date of

this invitation, he looked through his diary and found it. At

this, sending for a file of the official newspaper of St.

Petersburg, I showed him that on the day named her Majesty was

receiving certain officials at the palace in St. Petersburg;

whereat he made an answer which for the moment threw me

completely off my balance. He said, "Sir, I have lived long

enough not to believe everything I see in the newspapers."

I quieted him as best I could, but on returning to his hotel he

indulged in some very boisterous conduct, one of the minor

features of which was throwing water in the faces of the waiters;

so that, fearing lest actions like this and his loud utterances

regarding the Emperor and Empress might get him into trouble, I

wrote a friendly letter to the prefect of St. Petersburg, stating

the case, and asking that, if it was thought best to arrest the

man, he should be placed in some comfortable retreat for the

insane and be well cared for until I could communicate with his

friends in America. Accordingly, a day or two afterward, a

handsome carriage drove up to the door of his hotel, bearing two

kindly gentlemen, who invited him to accompany them. Taking it

for granted that he was to be escorted to the palace to meet his

Majesty, he went without making any objections, and soon found

himself in commodious rooms and most kindly treated.

It being discovered that he was an excellent pianist, a grand

piano was supplied him; and he was very happy in his musical

practice, and in the thought that he was lodged in the palace and

would soon communicate his message to the Emperor. At various

times I called upon him and found him convinced that his great

mission would soon be accomplished; but after a week or ten days

he began to have doubts, and said to me that he distrusted the

Russians and would prefer to go on and deliver a message with

which he was charged to the Emperor of China. On my showing him

sundry difficulties, he said that at any rate there was one place

where he would certainly be well received--Marlborough House in

London; that he was sure the Prince of Wales would welcome him

heartily. At last, means having been obtained from his friends, I

sought to forward him from St. Petersburg; but, as no steamers

thence would take a lunatic, I sent my private secretary with him

to Helsingfors, and thence secured his passage to America.

A very curious feature in the case, as told me afterward by a

gentleman who traveled in the same steamer, was that this

American delighted the company day after day with his music, and

that no one ever saw anything out of the way in his utterances or

conduct. He seemed to have forgotten all about his great missions

and to have become absorbed in his piano.

Among the things to which special and continued attention had to

be given by the legation was the Chicago Exposition. I was

naturally desirous to see it a success; indeed, it was my duty to

do everything possible to promote it. The magnificent plans which

the Chicago people had developed and were carrying out with such

wonderful energy interested thinking Russians. But presently came

endeavors which might easily have brought the whole enterprise

into disrepute; for some of the crankish persons who always hang

on the skirts of such enterprises had been allowed to use

official stationery, and they had begun writing letters, and even

instructions, to American diplomatic agents abroad.

The first of these which attracted my attention was one

requesting me to ask the Empress to write a book in the shape of

a "Report on Women's Work in Russia," careful instructions being

given as to how and at what length she must write it.

A letter also came from one of these quasi-officials at Chicago,

not requesting, but instructing, me to ask the Emperor to report

to his bureau on the condition of the empire; funnily enough,

this "instruction" was evidently one of several, and they had

been ground out so carelessly that the one which I was instructed

to deliver to the Emperor was addressed to the "King of Holland."

It was thus made clear that this important personage at Chicago,

who usurped the functions of the Secretary of State, had not even

taken the trouble to find out that there was no such person as a

"King of Holland," the personage whom he vaguely had in mind

being, no doubt, the Queen Regent of the Netherlands.

Soon there followed another of these quasi-instructions, showing

another type of crankishness. Beginning with the weighty

statement that "the school-boys of every country are the future

men of that country," it went on with a declaration that it had

been decided to hold a convention of the school-children of the

world at Chicago, in connection with the Exposition, and ended by

instructing me to invite to its deliberations the school-children

of Russia. Of course I took especial care not to communicate any

of these things to any Russian: to have done so would have made

the Exposition, instead of the admiration, the laughing-stock of

the empire; but I wrote a letter to the assistant secretary of

state, Mr. Quincy, who presently put an end to these vagaries.

One is greatly struck in Russia by the number of able and gifted

men and women scattered through Russian society, and at the

remarkable originality of some of them. The causes of this

originality I touch in my chapter on Tolstoi.

It was a duty as well as a pleasure for me to keep up my

acquaintance with persons worth knowing; and, while many of the

visits thus made were perfunctory and tedious, some were

especially gratifying. My rule was, after office hours in the

afternoon, to get into the open sledge; to make my visits; and as

a result, of course, to see and hear a vast deal of frivolity and

futility, but, from time to time, more important things.

The entertainments given by wealthy Russian nobles to the

diplomatic corps were by no means so frequent or so lavish as of

old. Two reasons were assigned for this, one being the abolition

of the serf system, which had impoverished the nobility, and the

other the fact that the Emperor Alexander III had set the fashion

of paying less attention to foreigners than had formerly been the

custom.

The main hospitalities, so far as the Emperor and Empress were

concerned, were the great festivities at the Winter Palace,

beginning on the Russian New Year's day, which was twelve days

later than ours. The scene was most brilliant. The vast halls

were filled with civil and military officials from all parts of

the empire, in the most gorgeous costumes, an especially striking

effect being produced by the caftans, or long coats, of the

various Cossack regiments, the armor and helmets of the Imperial

Guards, and the old Russian costumes of the ladies. All of the

latter, on this occasion, from the Empress down, wore these

costumes: there was great variety in these; but their main

features were the kakoshniks, or ornamental crowns, and the

tunics in bright colors.

The next of these great ceremonies at the Winter Palace was the

blessing of the waters upon the 8th of January. The diplomatic

corps and other guests were allowed to take their places at the

palace windows looking out over the Neva, and thence could see

the entire procession, which, having gone down the ambassadors'

staircase, appeared at a temple which had been erected over an

opening in the ice of the river. The Emperor, the grand dukes,

and the Archbishop of St. Petersburg, with his suffragan bishops,

all took part in this ceremonial; and the music, which was

selected from the anthems of Bortniansky, was very solemn and

impressive.

During the winter came court balls, and, above all, the "palm

balls." The latter were, in point of brilliancy, probably beyond

anything in any court of modern times. After a reception, during

which the Emperor and Empress passed along the diplomatic circle,

speaking to the various members, dancing began, and was continued

until about midnight; then the doors were flung open into other

vast halls, which had been changed into palm-groves. The palms

for this purpose are very large and beautiful, four series of

them being kept in the conservatories for this special purpose,

each series being used one winter and then allowed to rest for

three winters before it is brought out again. Under these palms

the supper-tables are placed, and from fifteen hundred to two

thousand people sit at these as the guests of the Czar and

Czarina. These entertainments seem carried to the extreme of

luxury, their only defect being their splendid monotony: only

civil, military, and diplomatic officials are present, and a

new-comer finds much difficulty in remembering their names. There

are said to be four hundred Princes Galitzin in the empire, and I

personally knew three Counts Tolstoi who did not know each other;

but the great drawback is the fact that all these entertainments

are exactly alike, always the same thing: merely civil and

military functionaries and their families; and for strangers no

occupation save to dance, play cards, talk futilities, or simply

stare.

The Berlin court, though by no means so brilliant at first sight

and far smaller,--since the most I ever saw in any gathering in

the Imperial Schloss at the German capital was about fifteen

hundred,--was really much more attractive, its greater interest

arising from the presence of persons distinguished in every

field. While at St. Petersburg one meets only civil and military

functionaries, at Berlin one meets not only these, but the most

prominent men in politics, science, literature, art, and the

higher ranges of agriculture, commerce, and manufacture. At St.

Petersburg, when I wished to meet such men, who added to the

peaceful glories of the empire, I went to their houses in the

university quarter; at Berlin I met them also at court.

As to court episodes during my stay, one especially dwells in my

memory. On arriving rather early one evening, I noticed a large,

portly man, wearing the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honor,

and at once saw that he could be no other than Prince Victor

Napoleon, the Bonaparte heir to the crown of France. Though he

was far larger than the great Napoleon, and had the eyes of his

mother, Princess Clothilde, his likeness to his father, Prince

Napoleon ("Plon-Plon"), whom I had seen years before at Paris,

was very marked. Presently his brother, who had just arrived from

his regiment in the Caucasus, came up and began conversation with

him. Both seemed greatly vexed at something. On the arrival of

the Italian ambassador, he naturally went up and spoke to the

prince, who was the grandson of King Victor Emmanuel; but the

curious thing was that the French ambassador, Count de

Montebello, and the prince absolutely cut each other. Neither

seemed to have the remotest idea that the other was in the room,

and this in spite of the fact that the Montebellos are descended

from Jean Lannes, the stable-boy whom Napoleon made a marshal of

France and Duke of Montebello, thus founding the family to which

the French ambassador belonged. The show of coolness on the part

of the imperial family evidently vexed the French pretender. He

was, indeed, allowed to enter the room behind the imperial train;

but he was not permitted to sit at the imperial table, being

relegated to a distant and very modest seat. I was informed that,

though the Emperor could, and did, have the prince to dine with

him in private, he felt obliged, in view of the relations between

Russia and the French Republic, to carefully avoid any special

recognition of him in public.

A far more brilliant visitor was the Ameer of Bokhara. I have

already spoken of the way in which he was placed upon the throne

by General Annenkof. He now came to visit the Czar as his

suzerain, and with him came his eldest son and a number of his

great men. The satrap himself was a singular combination of

splendor and stoicism, wearing a gorgeous dress covered with

enormous jewels, and observing the brilliant scenes about him

with hardly ever a word. Even when he took his place at the table

beside the Empress he was very uncommunicative. Facing the

imperial table sat his great men; and their embarrassment was

evident, one special source of it being clearly their small

acquaintance with European table utensils. The Ameer brought to

St. Petersburg splendid presents of gold and jewels, after the

Oriental fashion, and also the heir to his throne, whom he left

as a sort of hostage to be educated at the capital.

An eminent Russian who was in very close relations with the Ameer

gave me some account of this young man. Although he was then

perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age, he was, as regards

conduct, a mere baby, bursting out into loud boohooing the first

time he was presented to the Emperor, and showing himself very

immature in various ways. Curiously enough, when he was taken to

the cadet school he was found to be unable to walk for any

considerable distance. He had always been made to squat and be

carried, and the first thing to be done toward making him a

Russian officer was to train him in using his legs. He took an

especial fancy to bicycles: in the park attached to the cadet

school he became very proficient in the use of them; and,

returning to Bokhara at his first vacation, he took with him, not

only a bicycle for himself, but another for his brother. Shortly

after his home-coming, the Ameer and court being assembled, he

gave a display of his powers; but, to his great mortification,

the Ameer was disgusted: the idea that the heir to the throne

should be seen working his way in this fashion was contrary to

all the ideas of that potentate, and he ordered the bicycles to

be at once destroyed. But on the young man's return to St.

Petersburg he bought another; resumed his exercises upon it; and

will, no doubt, when he comes to the throne, introduce that form

of locomotion into the Mohammedan regions of Northern Asia.

Among the greater displays of my final year were a wedding and a

funeral. The former was that of the Emperor's eldest daughter,

the Grand Duchess Xenia, at Peterhof. It was very brilliant, and

was conducted after the usual Russian fashion, its most curious

features being the leading of the couple about the altar and

their drinking out of the same cup.

Coming from the ceremony in the chapel, we of the diplomatic

corps found ourselves, at the foot of the great staircase, in a

crush. But just at the side was a large door of plate-glass

opening upon an outer gallery communicating with other parts of

the palace; and standing guard at this door was one of the

"Nubians" whom I had noticed, from time to time, at the Winter

Palace--an enormous creature, very black, very glossy, with the

most brilliant costume possible. I had heard much of these

"Nubians," and had been given to understand that they had been

brought from Central Africa by special command. At great

assemblages in the imperial palaces, just before the doors were

flung open for the entrance of the Majesties and their cortege,

two great black hands were always to be seen put through the

doors, ready to open them in an instant--the hands of two of

these "Nubians." I had built up in my mind quite a structure of

romance regarding them, and now found myself in the crush at the

foot of the grand staircase near one of them. As I looked up at

him he said to me, with deferential compassion, "If you please,

sah, would n't you like to git out of de crowd, sah, through dis

yere doah?" By his dialect he was evidently one of my own

compatriots, and, though in a sort of daze at this discovery, I

mechanically accepted his invitation; whereupon he opened the

door, let us through, and kept back the crowd.

Splendid, too, in its way, was the funeral of the Grand Duchess

Catherine at the Fortress Church. It was very impressive, almost

as much so as the funeral of the Emperor Nicholas, which I had

attended at the same place nearly forty years before. The Emperor

Alexander III, with his brothers, had followed the hearse and

coffin on foot, and his Majesty was evidently greatly fatigued.

Soon he retired to take rest, and then it was that we began to

have the first suspicion of his fatal illness. Up to that time

there had been skepticism. Very few had thought it possible that

a man of such giant frame and strength could be seriously ill,

but now there could be no doubt of it. Standing near him, I

noticed his pallor and evident fatigue, and was not surprised

that he twice left the place, in order, evidently, to secure

rest. There was need of it. In the Russian Church the rule is

that all must stand, and all of us stood from about ten in the

morning until half-past one in the afternoon; but two high

officials covered with gold lace and orders, bearing tapers by

the side of the grand duchess's coffin, toppled over from

exhaustion and were removed.

As to other spectacles, one of the most splendid was the midnight

mass on Easter eve. At my former visit I had seen this at the

Kazan Church; now we went to the Cathedral of St. Isaac. The

ceremony was brilliant almost beyond conception, as in the old

days; the music was heavenly; and, as the clocks struck twelve,

the cannons of the fortress of Peter and Paul boomed forth, all

the bells of the city began chiming, and a light, appearing at

the extreme end of the church, seemed to run in all directions

through the vast assemblage, and presently all seemed ablaze.

Every person in the church was holding a taper, and within a few

moments all of these had been lighted.

Most beautiful of all was the music at another of these Easter

ceremonies, when the choristers, robed in white, came forth from

the sanctuary and sang hymns by the side of the empty sepulcher

under the dome.

The singing by the choirs in Russia is, in many respects, more

beautiful than similar music in any other part of the world, save

that of the cathedral choir of Berlin at its best. I have heard

the Sistine, Pauline, and Lateran choirs at Rome; and they are

certainly far inferior to these Russian singers. No instrumental

music is allowed and no voices of women. The choristers are men

and boys. There are several fine choirs in St. Petersburg, but

three are famous: that of the Emperor at the Winter Palace

Chapel, that of the Archbishop at the Cathedral of St. Isaac, and

that of the Nevski Monastery. Occasionally there were concerts

when all were combined, and nothing in its way could be more

perfect.

Operatic music also receives careful attention. Enormous

subsidies are given to secure the principal singers of Europe at

the Italian, French, and German theaters; but the most lavish

outlay is upon the national opera: it is considered a matter of

patriotism to maintain it at the highest point possible. The

Russian Opera House is an enormous structure, and the finest

piece which I saw given there was Glinka's "Life for the Czar."

Being written by a Russian, on a patriotic subject, and from an

ultra-loyal point of view, everything had been done to mount it

in the most superb way possible: never have I seen more wonderful

scenic effects, the whole culminating in the return of one of the

old fighting czars to the Kremlin after his struggle with the

Poles. The stage was enormous and the procession magnificent. The

personages in it were the counterparts, as regarded dress, of the

persons they represented, exact copies having been made of the

robes and ornaments of the old Muscovite boyards, as preserved in

the Kremlin Museum; and at the close of this procession came a

long line of horses, in the most superb trappings imaginable,

attended by guards and outriders in liveries of barbaric

splendor, and finally the imperial coach. We were enabled to

catch sight of the Cossack guards on the front of it, when, just

as the body of the coach was coming into view, down came the

curtain. This was the result of a curious prohibition, enforced

in all theaters in Russia: on no account is it permitted to

represent the sacred person of any emperor upon the stage.

As to other music, very good concerts were occasionally given,

the musicians being generally from Western Europe.

Very pleasant were sundry excursions, especially during the long

summer twilight; and among these were serenade parties given by

various members of the diplomatic corps. In a trim steam-yacht,

and carrying singers with us, we sailed among the islands in the

midnight hours, stopping, from time to time, to greet friends

occupying cottages there.

As to excursions in the empire, I have already given, in my

chapter on Tolstoi, some account of my second visit to Moscow;

and a more complete account is reserved for a chapter on "Sundry

Excursions and Experiences." The same may be said, also,

regarding an excursion taken, during one of my vacations, in

Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.