MUMMERS AT A COUNTRY HOUSE
ON St Stephen’s Day we drove in sledges to a country house. I feasted my
eyes on a wonderful sight—high trees standing between the white ground
and the great sun, and casting strange shadows on the whitest snow, and
between the shadows a thousand living sparkles literally shot flames
from the glistening snow. I had never seen anything like it before; it
was very beautiful. We left the forest and passed over a vast plain of
tumbled snow. There was snow everywhere as far as the eye could see. The
sky above was deep glowing blue; the horizon lines a nascent grey
darkness. One looked out upon an enchanted ocean of snow; the wind had
wreathed it fantastically in crested waves, or left it gently dimpled
like the sands of the seashore. Wave behind wave glistened and sparkled
to the horizon, and a gentle breeze raised a snow spray from a thousand
crests. The snow scud fled from wave to wave. Yes, it was very beautiful
and new, and the world seemed very broad and full of peace. I felt it a
privilege to exist in the presence of such beauty. It was my nameday,
and it seemed as if there were a special significance in all the beauty
which lay about me. Pure flame colours were about me as the glistening
white robe of a candidate, to whom new mysteries are to be revealed.
The road was hard-beaten snow, a series of frozen cart ruts. The horses
scampered ahead and the sledges shot after them. The sledge slipped over
the snow like a boat over the reeds of a river. The red-faced driver sat
immobile in his seat. We lay back in the sledges and took advantage of
every inch of fur and rug. The runners were very low, and we could have
touched the snow as we passed. Sometimes we rushed into a drift, and the
snow would rise in a splash over us. And wasn’t it cold! My feet became
like ice.
Our new host was a Count Yamschin, owner of a large estate in the
Government of Ekaterinoslav. We arrived at his house in the afternoon,
and I heard the deacon give orders to the sledge-drivers to return for
us at midnight.
The house was a large one, the rooms spacious. Like Russian houses in
general, it was simply and meagrely furnished. But for the people in
them the rooms would have seemed empty. There were no carpets on the
floor; only here and there a soft Persian rug. The firelight from the
logs blazing on the broad hearth was the only illumination until late in
the twilight. One watched the shadows about the high ceiling and in the
recesses; animated faces moved into the bright gleam of light or passed
into the shade. In a corner darker than the others stood the precious
Ikons, the sacred pictures.
There were ten or fifteen people in the room, and we chatted in groups
for half an hour. The principal topic of conversation was about a
mystery play which was going to be performed in the evening. It was
called the _Life of Man_, and everyone had evidently heard much about it
before the performance. “You will see,” said the deacon, “it is an Ikon
play. The Ikon speaks.” Presently the eldest son came striding in in
jack-boots and besought us to go into the concert-hall. This was
apparently part of a separate building, and we had all to wrap ourselves
up and step into our goloshes, so as to trip through the shrubbery with
no discomfort. It was a large hall and would have easily held all the
people of the village. There was a stage curtained off, and in the body
of the hall a grand piano. We held an impromptu concert, made up for the
most part of songs and recitations in the Little Russian language.
Little Russian is to Russian what broad Scotch is to English. I met a
student who knew many long speeches from Shakespeare by heart, but
Shakespeare in Russian translation. Shakespeare is a compulsory subject
in most Russian colleges, and students have, on the whole, as good a
knowledge of it as English people have. The young man professed to be
extremely enthusiastic over the _Life of Man_, which was an expansion of
Shakespeare’s thought:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.”
“Do you believe in God?” asked the student, abruptly.
“Yes,” I said. “I use the word God and mean something by it.”
“You are old-fashioned.” He laughed. “We don’t believe in God, we
students; we are all atheists. You’re coming to Moscow, you’ll see. We
don’t believe in anything except Man. We have given too much time to God
already; it’s high time we turned our attention to Man. Is it possible
you have not yet heard that God is dead? Why, where have you been?”
“I see you have been reading Nietzsche,” I remarked with a smile.
He looked at me with annoyance. “The English also read Nietzsche?”
I assented.
“Well,” he went on, “we’ve got God on the stage, you’ll see. We don’t
call him God, but it’s God all the same. We call him the old man in
grey. We had to do that so as to smuggle him past the censor. The
censor, you know, has just stopped Oscar Wilde’s _Salome_, not because
it’s indecent, but because it deals with a biblical subject. I think
we’ve got a better censor than yours, however; he has licensed _Ghosts_
and _Mrs Warren’s Profession_, and it’s perfectly easy to manage him.”
“What did the deacon mean when he said the Ikon speaks?”
“Oh, that is his way of looking at it. The huge figure in grey, which
you will see, is really meant for God. God gives the play for the
benefit of mankind. God speaks the opening words. He shows the life of
one man and says it is a typical life, and _that_ is man’s life upon
this earth, _that_ and neither more nor less. During all the five acts
God stands in a dark corner like an Ikon; he is visible to the audience
as a God, but the actors on the stage behave, for the most part, as if
it were only a sacred picture. God holds a candle, and as the play gets
older the candle gradually burns lower and lower until, when Man dies,
it finally expires. To Man on the stage this candle is only visible as
the little lamp burning before the Ikon. He makes plans, he succeeds, he
fails, he prays or curses, he is trivial or serious, and all the while
the candle representing his life burns lower and nothing can stop the
wasting of the wax.”
At this point Miss Yamschin came and called us all back to dinner. So we
all trooped back to the room where the log fire gleamed. Three or four
paraffin lamps were now lit, and a pleasant light was diffused through
their green shades. An uncle of Nicholas’s had arrived, a station-master
from a village ten versts away on a by-line. He waited impatiently while
the deacon explained who I was, and then transfixed me with this
question:
“Who lost the Japanese War—the Russian Government or the people?”
“The Government, of course,” I replied. Whereupon he unexpectedly flung
his arms round my neck and kissed me on both cheeks.
“If I had had charge of the war, whew!” he whistled. “D’you see the palm
of my hand there; now, there’s the Japanese Army.” Puff, he puffed out
his cheeks with air and blew the Japanese Army off his palm and off the
face of the earth. He winked at me with assurance. “That’s what I’d do.”
He tapped his head and his chest and said knowingly: “Do you see these,
ah-ha, pure Russian, they are.”
“Speak to me in English,” he went on. “I learned English at school, but
I’ve forgotten—‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note’—eh? D’ye know
that?”
When we got to table the uncle made a long speech, wishing prosperity
and happiness to the young Englishman who had come out to Russia to make
his fortune. England was the greatest country in the world, next to
Russia. If the English soldiers would give up rum and take to vodka they
would be the greatest soldiers in the world. When we had all drunk that
toast he proposed another, hoping I might find a beautiful Russian girl
to love. The count was what we should call a good sort in England. He
let everyone do exactly as he pleased, except in the matter of wine, to
which no refusals were accepted. It was an uproarious dinner-table; not
only the young men, but the girls joined in the conviviality. I was
lionised. They drank eleven healths to me all round; it was a matter of
wonder what the next plea would be, but the uncle’s brain was very
fertile. I counted that in all I drank twenty-six glasses of wine that
day, and yet when I had been in England I was not quite sure whether I
was a teetotaller or not. I was finally persuaded to make a speech in
Russian, in which my Russian gave way, and I was forced to conclude in
English. I managed to propose the host’s health, and that was the best
thing I could have done. Approbation was uproarious.
When, at last, the dinner was over, we filed into the concert-hall to
see the _Life of Man_ performed. My student companion was evidently one
of the actors, since I looked to resume our conversation, but he was
nowhere to be found. The drama was one of Leonid Andrief’s, a new
Russian author, whose works have been making him a great name in Russia
during the last five years. _The Life of Man_ was produced in the
Theatre of Art, Moscow, said to be the greatest theatre in the world. It
has made a great impression in Russia; I have come across it everywhere
in my wanderings, even in the most unlikely places. Its words and its
characters have become so familiar to the public that one scarcely opens
a paper without finding references to it. It has been the inspiration of
thousands of cartoonists.
It was true, as the student had said, God, as it were, gave the play.
The words of the prologue were among the most impressive I have ever
heard, and spoken as they were in dreadful sepulchral tones by a figure
who, at least, stood for God, they are fixed indelibly in my memory. My
programme said, “_Prologue: Someone in the greyness speaks of the life
of a Man_.” As the Prologue is a summary of the play, I shall give it.
Picture a perfectly dark stage, and in the darkness a figure darker than
the darkness itself, enigmatical, immense.
“_Behold and listen_,” it said, “_ye people, come hither for amusement
and laughter. There passes before you the life of a Man—darkness in the
beginning, darkness at the end of it. Hitherto not existent, buried in
the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none; he secretly
oversteps the bounds of nonentity, and with a cry announces the
beginning of his little life. In the night of nothingness, a lamp casts
a gleam, lit by an unseen hand—it is the life of Man. Look upon the
flame of it—the life of a Man._
“_When he is born he takes the form and name of man and in all things
becomes like other people already living upon the earth. And the cruel
destiny of these becomes his destiny, and his cruel destiny the destiny
of all people. Irresistibly yoked to time he unfailingly approaches all
the steps of Man’s life, from the lower to the higher, from the higher
to the lower. By sight limited, he will never foresee the next steps for
which he raises his tender feet; by knowledge limited, he will never
know what the coming day will bring him, the coming hour—minute. And in
his blind ignorance, languishing through foreboding, agitated by hopes,
he submissively completes the circle of an iron decree._
“_Behold him—a happy young man. Look how brightly the candle burns! The
icy wind of the limitless sky cannot disturb, or in the slightest
deflect the movement of the flame. Radiantly and brightly burns the
candle. But the wax diminishes with the burning. The wax diminishes._
“_Behold him—a happy husband and father. But, look how dully and
strangely the candle-light glimmers, as if its yellowed flame were
withering, trembling from the cold and hiding itself. And the wax is
wasting, following the burning. The wax is wasting._
“_Behold him—an old man, sickly and weak. Already the steps of life are
ending, and a black chasm is in the place of them—but, spite of that,
his trembling feet are drawn forwards. Bending towards the earth, the
flame, now blue, droops powerlessly, trembles and falls, trembles and
falls—and slowly expires._
“_So Man will die. Coming out of the night he will return to the night
and vanish without traces into the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt,
known by none. And I, then, named by all He, remain the true
fellow-traveller of Man in all the days of his life, in all his ways.
Unseen by Man and near him, I shall be unfailingly beside him when he
wakes and when he sleeps, when he prays or when he curses. In the hours
of pleasure when he breathes freely and bravely, in the hours of
despondency and grief, when the languor of death darkens his soul and
the blood grows cold about his heart, in the hours of victory and of
defeat, in the hours of the great struggle with the inevitable, I shall
be with him. I shall be with him._
“_And you come hither for amusement, you, the devoted of death, behold
and listen. With this far-off and phantasmal figure there unfolds itself
to your gaze, with its sorrows and its joys, the quickly passing life of
Man._”
The voice from the grey figure ceased, and in the dark a curtain came
down over the scene.
The play was as foreshadowed. In the first act a Man is born, in the
second he is a struggling young man, in the third he is a successful
man, in the fourth he is in decline, and in the fifth he dies. The
figure in grey appears at the birth of Man, and is visible to the
audience throughout the five acts. He holds a burning candle, which is
radiantly bright in Act iii., but which gutters out at the end of Act v.
Fates, old women, nornas, are in attendance at the birth, and they are
again in attendance at death.
The story is delicately told and affecting. Man is young and happy and
the obstacles in his life are only means of happiness; he succeeds and
all the world does homage to him; he passes the prime of life and new
obstacles appear, and these serve only to bring him unhappiness; he is
brought low and he dies.
The actor who played Man’s part was a robust, handsome man with flashing
eyes and long hair. Whilst he played the young Man he was careless,
brave, free, and when he became old he was dignified, proud and
obstinate. His destiny, it seemed to me, was comprised between a
challenge and a curse. In his despair in Act ii., when life seemed a
feast to which he was not bidden, he was stung to anger and defiance
against Fate. He turned to where the ikon stood and flung a challenge at
the Unknown.
“_—Hi you! you there! what d’you call yourself? Fate, devil or life,
there’s my glove; I’ll fight you! Wretched, poor-spirited folk curse
themselves before your enigmatical power: thy stone face moves them to
terror, in thy silence they hear the beginning of calamities and their
own terrible ruin. But I am brave and strong and I challenge you to
battle. With bright swords, with sounding shields, we will fall at one
another’s heads with blows at which the earth will tremble. Hi! Come out
and fight._
“_To thy ominous slow movement I shall oppose my living, vigilant
strength; to thy gloom my gay sounding laugh! Hi! Take that blow, ward
it off if you can! Your brow is stone, your reason lost. I throw into it
the red-hot shot of my bright sense; you have a heart of stone that has
lost all pity, give way! I shall pour into it the burning poison of my
rebellious cries! By the black cloud of thy fierce anger the sun is
obscured; we shall light up the gloom with dreams! Hi! Take that!_
“_Conquering, I will sing songs which all the world will cheer; silently
falling under thy blow, my only thought shall be of rising again to
battle! There is a weak place in my armour, I know it. But, covered with
wounds, the ruby blood flowing, I shall yet gather strength to cry—and
even then, thou evil enemy of Man, I shall overcome Thee. And, dying on
the field of battle, as the brave die, with one loud amen I shall annul
thy blind pleasure! I have conquered, I have conquered my wicked enemy;
not even in my last breath do I acknowledge his power. Hi, there! Hi!
Come out and fight! With bright swords, with sounding shields, we shall
fall at one another with blows at which the earth will tremble! Hi! Come
out and fight!_”
The deacon, the count, his daughters, the tenants and guests all looked
on with breathless interest. We of the audience knew that which Man on
the stage knew not. We knew that even whilst he was raging against Fate
his fortune was being achieved and his success assured by two men in a
motor-car who were driving about the town, unable to find Man’s wretched
dwelling.
Success came and it vanished. “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher;
so I thought, but Man cursed. He pointed with outstretched arm as if in
delirium at the stone face of the ikon and shrieked:
“_I curse Thee and all Thou gavest me. I curse the day on which I was
born and the day when I shall die. I curse all my life, its pleasures
and pains, I curse myself! I curse my eyes, my hearing, my tongue, I
curse my heart, my head—and everything I throw again into Thy stern
face, senseless Fate. Cursed, cursed for ever! And with the curse I
overcome Thee. What remains that Thou canst do with me? Hurl me to the
ground, hurl, I shall laugh and shout ‘I curse Thee!’ With the pincers
of Death stop my mouth; with my last sense I shall cry into Thy ass’s
ears, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Take my dead body, nibble it, like a
dog, carry it away into the darkness—I am not in it, I am vanished away,
but vanished, repeating, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Through the head
of the woman thou hast insulted, through the body of the child thou hast
killed—I send to Thee the Curse of Man._”
The dreadful grey figure stood unmoved, silent as the Sphinx. Only the
flame of the candle in its hand wavered as if the wind blew it. All of
us in the audience shuddered, and the uncle who had become very solemn
suddenly began to sob.
Act v. was a dance of drunkards and fates in a cellar tavern, dark,
dirty, fearful. The dreadful, implacable figure in grey stood far in the
darkest corner, and near him, on a bench, sat Man breathing out his
last. The uncle astonished me, and for the moment almost terrified me by
crying out in English:
“Out, out, brief candle.”
Truly, it is strange what quantities of English literature one finds in
even remote places in Russia.
But to return, Man died, and none too soon, and the candle went out.
There was no cheering of the actors, though they were warmly
congratulated by the count later on. We all left the little theatre and
went back to supper.
At midnight the sledges came. The uncle insisted on our going home with
him. So we went to his railway station. Thus ended our night with the
mummers at Count Yamschin’s country house.
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