THE VANISHED POMPS OF YESTERDAY
By
Lord Frederic Hamilton
THE VANISHED POMPS OF YESTERDAY
THE DAYS BEFORE YESTERDAY
HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE
George H. Doran Company
New York
THE VANISHED POMPS
OF YESTERDAY
BEING
Some Random Reminiscences of a
British Diplomat
BY
LORD FREDERIC HAMILTON
Author of "Here, There and Everywhere," "The Days
Before Yesterday," etc., etc.
A New and Revised Edition
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1921
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
EMILY LADY AMPTHILL
MY FIRST CHEFESSE
WITH EVER-GRATEFUL RECOLLECTIONS
OF HER KINDNESS
FOREWORD
TO THE SECOND EDITION
The account of the boating accident at Potsdam on page 75, differs in several particulars from the story as given in the original edition. These alterations have been made at the special request of the lady concerned, who tells me that my recollections of her story were at fault as regards several important details. There are also a few verbal alterations in the present edition.
CONTENTS
Special Mission to Rome—Berlin in process of transformation—Causes of Prussian militarism—Lord and Lady Ampthill—Berlin Society—Music-lovers—Evenings with Wagner—Aristocratic Waitresses—Rubinstein's rag-time—Liszt's opinions—Bismarck—Bismarck's classification of nationalities—Bismarck's sons—Gustav Richter—The Austrian diplomat—The old Emperor—His defective articulation—Other Royalties—Beauty of Berlin Palace—Description of interior—The Luxembourg—"Napoleon III"—Three Court beauties—The pugnacious Pages—"Making the Circle"—Conversational difficulties—An ecclesiastical gourmet—The Maharajah's mother
Easy-going Austria—Vienna—Charm of town—A little piece of history—International families—Family pride—"Schlüssel-Geld"—Excellence of Vienna restaurants—The origin of "Croissants"—Good looks of Viennese women—Strauss's operettas—A ball in an old Vienna house—Court entertainments—The Empress Elisabeth—Delightful environs of Vienna—The Berlin Congress of 1878—Lord Beaconsfield—M. de Blowitz—Treaty telegraphed to London—Environs of Berlin—Potsdam and its lakes—The bow-oar of the Embassy "four"—Narrow escape of ex-Kaiser—The Potsdam palaces—Transfer to Petrograd—Glamour of Russia—An evening with the Crown Prince at Potsdam
The Russian frontier—Frontier police—Disappointment at aspect of Petrograd—Lord and Lady Dufferin—The British Embassy—St. Isaac's Cathedral—Beauty of Russian Church-music—The Russian language—The delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd—Princess Chateau—Pleasant Russian Society—The Secret Police—The Countess's hurried journey—The Yacht Club—Russians really Orientals—Their limitations—The "Intelligenzia"—My Nihilist friends—Their lack of constructive power—Easter Mass at St. Isaac's—Two comical incidents—The Easter supper—The red-bearded young Priest—An Empire built on shifting sand
The Winter Palace—Its interior—Alexander II—A Russian Court Ball—The "Bals des Palmiers"—The Empress—The blessing of the Neva—Some curiosities of the Winter Palace—The great Orloff diamond—My friend the Lady-in-Waiting—Sugared Compensations—The attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880—Some unexpected finds in the Palace—A most hilarious funeral—Sporting expeditions—Night drives through the forest in mid-winter—Wolves—A typical Russian village—A peasant's house—"Deaf and dumb people"—The inquisitive peasant youth—Curiosity about strangers—An embarrassing situation—A still more awkward one—Food difficulties—A bear hunt—My first bear—Alcoholic consequences—My liking for the Russian peasant—The beneficent india-rubber Ikon—Two curious sporting incidents—Village habits—The great gulf between Russian nobility and peasants
The Russian Gipsies—Midnight drives—Gipsy singing—Its fascination—The consequences of a late night—An unconventional luncheon—Lord Dufferin's methods—Assassination of Alexander II—Stürmer—Pathetic incidents in connection with the murder of the Emperor—The funeral procession and service—Details concerning—The Votive Church—The Order of the Garter—Unusual incidents at the Investiture—Precautions taken for Emperor's safety—The Imperial train—Finland—Exciting salmon-fishing there—Harraka Niska—Koltesha—Excellent shooting there—Ski-running—"Ringing the game in"—A wolf-shooting party—The obese General—Some incidents—A novel form of sport—Black game and capercailzie—At dawn in a Finnish forest—Immense charm of it—Ice-hilling or "Montagnes Russes"—Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland
Love of Russians for children's games—Peculiarities of Petrograd balls—Some famous beauties of Petrograd Society—The varying garb of hired waiters—Moscow—Its wonderful beauty—The forest of domes—The Kremlin—The three famous "Cathedrals"—The Imperial Treasury—The Sacristy—The Palace—Its splendour—The Terem—A Gargantuan Russian dinner—An unusual episode at the French Ambassador's ball—Bombs—Tsarskoe Selo—Its interior—Extraordinary collection of curiosities in Tsarskoe Park—Origin of term "Vauxhall" for railway station in Russia—Peterhof—Charm of park there—Two Russian illusions—A young man of twenty-five delivers an Ultimatum to Russia—How it came about—M. de Giers—Other Foreign Ministers—Paraguay—The polite Japanese dentist—A visit to Gatchina—Description of the Palace—Delights of the children's playroom there
Lisbon—The two Kings of Portugal, and of Barataria—King Fernando and the Countess—A Lisbon bull-fight—The "hat-trick"—Courtship window-parade—The spurred youth of Lisbon—Portuguese politeness—The De Reszke family—The Opera—Terrible personal experiences in a circus—The bounding Bishop—Ecclesiastical possibilities—Portuguese coinage—Beauty of Lisbon—Visits of the British Fleet—Misguided midshipman—The Legation Whale-boat—"Good wine needs no bush"—A delightful orange-farm—Cintra—Contrast between the Past and Present of Portugal
Brazil—Contrast between Portuguese and Spanish South America—Moorish traditions—Amazing beauty of Rio de Janeiro—Yellow fever—The commercial Court Chamberlain—The Emperor Pedro—The Botanical Gardens of Rio—The quaint diversions of Petropolis—The liveried young entomologist—Buenos Ayres—The charm of the "Camp"—Water throwing—A British Minister in Carnival-time—Some Buenos Ayres peculiarities—Masked balls—Climatic conditions—Theatres—Restaurants—Wonderful bird-life of the "Camp"—Estancia Negrete—Duck-shooting—My one flamingo—An exploring expedition in the Gran Chaco—Hardships—Alligators and fish—Currency difficulties
Paraguay—Journey up the river—A primitive Capital—Dick the Australian—His polychrome garb—A Paraguayan Race Meeting—Beautiful figures of native women—The "Falcon" adventurers—A quaint railway—Patiño Cué—An extraordinary household—The capable Australian boy—Wild life in the swamps—"Bushed"—A literary evening—A railway record—The Tigre midnight swims—Canada—Maddening flies—A grand salmon-river—The Canadian backwoods—Skunks and bears—Different views as to industrial progress
Former colleagues who have risen to eminence—Kiderlin-Waechter—Aehrenthal—Colonel Klepsch—The discomfiture of an inquisitive journalist—Origin of certain Russian scares—Tokyo—Dulness of Geisha dinners—Japanese culinary curiosities—"Musical Chairs"—Lack of colour in Japan—The Tokugawa dynasty—Japanese Gardens—The transplanted suburban Embassy house—Cherry-blossom—Japanese politeness—An unfortunate incident in Rome—Eastern courtesy—The country in Japan—An Imperial duck-catching party—An up-to-date Tokyo house—A Shinto Temple—Linguistic difficulties at a dinner-party—The economical colleague—Japan defaced by advertisements
Petrograd through middle-aged eyes—Russians very constant friends—Russia an Empire of shams—Over-centralisation in administration—The system hopeless—A complete change of scene—The West Indies—Trinidad—Personal character of Nicholas II—The weak point in an Autocracy—The Empress—An opportunity missed—The Great Collapse—Terrible stories—Love of human beings for ceremonial—Some personal apologies—Conclusion
THE VANISHED POMPS OF
YESTERDAY
"Lo, all our Pomp of Yesterday
Is one with Ninevah and Tyre!"
—RUDYARD KIPLING
THE VANISHED POMPS
OF YESTERDAY
CHAPTER I
Special Mission to Rome—Berlin in process of transformation—Causes of Prussian militarism—Lord and Lady Ampthill—Berlin Society—Music-lovers—Evenings with Wagner—Aristocratic Waitresses—Rubinstein's rag-time—Liszt's opinions—Bismarck—Bismarck's classification of nationalists—Bismarck's sons—Gustav Richter—The Austrian diplomat—The old Emperor—His defective articulation—Other Royalties—Beauty of Berlin Palace—Description of interior—The Luxembourg—"Napoleon III"—Three Court beauties—The pugnacious Pages—"Making the Circle"—Conversational difficulties—An ecclesiastical gourmet—The Maharajah's mother.
The tremendous series of events which has changed the face of Europe since 1914 is so vast in its future possibilities, that certain minor consequences of the great upheaval have received but scant notice.
Amongst these minor consequences must be included the disappearance of the Courts of the three Empires of Eastern Europe, Russia, Germany, and Austria, with all their glitter and pageantry, their pomp and brilliant mise-en-scène. I will hazard no opinion as to whether the world is the better for their loss or not; I cannot, though, help experiencing a feeling of regret that this prosaic, drab-coloured twentieth century should have definitely lost so strong an element of the picturesque, and should have permanently severed a link which bound it to the traditions of the mediæval days of chivalry and romance, with their glowing colour, their splendid spectacular displays, and the feeling of continuity with a vanished past which they inspired.
A tweed suit and a bowler hat are doubtless more practical for everyday wear than a doublet and trunk-hose. They are, however, possibly less picturesque.
Since, owing to various circumstances, I happen from my very early days to have seen more of this brave show than has fallen to the lot of most people, some extracts from my diaries, and a few personal reminiscences of the three great Courts of Eastern Europe, may prove of interest.
Up to my twentieth year I was familiar only with our own Court. I was then sent to Rome with a Special Mission. As King Victor Emmanuel had but recently died, there were naturally no Court entertainments.
The Quirinal is a fine palace with great stately rooms, but it struck me then, no doubt erroneously, that the Italian Court did not yet seem quite at home in their new surroundings, and that there was a subtle feeling in the air of a lack of continuity somewhere. In the "'seventies" the House of Savoy had only been established for a very few years in their new capital. The conditions in Rome had changed radically, and somehow one felt conscious of this.
Some ten months later, the ordeal of a competitive examination being successfully surmounted, I was sent to Berlin as Attaché, at the age of twenty.
The Berlin of the "'seventies" was still in a state of transition. The well-built, prim, dull and somewhat provincial Residenz was endeavouring with feverish energy to transform itself into a World-City, a Welt-Stadt. The people were still flushed and intoxicated with victory after victory. In the seven years between 1864 and 1871 Prussia had waged three successful campaigns. The first, in conjunction with Austria, against unhappy little Denmark in 1864; then followed, in 1866, the "Seven Weeks' War," in which Austria was speedily brought to her knees by the crushing defeat of Königgrätz, or Sadowa, as it is variously called, by which Prussia not only wrested the hegemony of the German Confederation from her hundred-year-old rival, but definitely excluded Austria from the Confederation itself. The Hohenzollerns had at length supplanted the proud House of Hapsburg. Prussia had further virtually conquered France in the first six weeks of the 1870 campaign, and on the conclusion of peace found herself the richer by Alsace, half of Lorraine, and the gigantic war indemnity wrung from France. As a climax the King of Prussia had, with the consent of the feudatory princes, been proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles on January 18, 1871, for Bismarck, with all his diplomacy, was unable to persuade the feudatory kings and princes to acquiesce in the title of Emperor of Germany for the Prussian King.
The new Emperor was nominally only primus Inter Pares; he was not to be over-lord. Theoretically the crown of Charlemagne was merely revived, but the result was that henceforth Prussia would dominate Germany. This was a sufficient rise for the little State which had started so modestly in the sandy Mark of Brandenburg (the "sand-box," as South Germans contemptuously termed it) in the fifteenth century. To understand the mentality of Prussians, one must realise that Prussia is the only country that always made war pay. She had risen with marvellous rapidity from her humble beginnings entirely by the power of the sword. Every campaign had increased her territory, her wealth, and her influence, and the entire energies of the Hohenzollern dynasty had been centred on increasing the might of her army. The Teutonic Knights had wrested East Prussia from the Wends by the Power of the sword only. They had converted the Wends to Christianity by annihilating them, and the Prussians inherited the traditions of the Teutonic Knights. Napoleon, it is true, had crushed Prussia at Jena, but the latter half of the nineteenth century was one uninterrupted triumphal progress for her. No wonder then that every Prussian looked upon warfare as a business proposition, and an exceedingly paying one at that. Everything about them had been carefully arranged to foster the same idea. All the monuments in the Berlin streets were to military heroes. The marble groups on the Schloss-Brücke represented episodes in the life of a warrior. The very songs taught the children in the schools were all militarist in tone: "The Good Comrade," "The Soldier," "The Young Recruit," "The Prayer during Battle," all familiar to every German child. When William II, ex-Emperor, found the stately "White Hall" of the Palace insufficiently gorgeous to accord with his megalomania, he called in the architect Ihne, and gave directions for a new frieze round the hall representing "victorious warfare fostering art, science, trade and industry." I imagine that William in his Dutch retreat at Amerongen may occasionally reflect on the consequences of warfare when it is not victorious. Trained in such an atmosphere from their childhood, drinking in militarism with their earliest breath, can it be wondered at that Prussians worshipped brute-force, and brute-force alone?
Such a nation of heroes must clearly have a capital worthy of them, a capital second to none, a capital eclipsing Paris and Vienna. Berliners had always been jealous of Vienna, the traditional "Kaiser-Stadt." Now Berlin was also a "Kaiser-Stadt," and by the magnificence of its buildings must throw its older rival completely into the shade. Paris, too, was the acknowledged centre of European art, literature, and fashion. Why? The French had proved themselves a nation of decadents, utterly unable to cope with German might. The sceptre of Paris should be transferred to Berlin. So building and renovation began at a feverish rate.
The open drains which formerly ran down every street in Berlin, screaming aloud to Heaven during the summer months, were abolished, and an admirable system of main drainage inaugurated. The appalling rough cobble-stones, which made it painful even to cross a Berlin street, were torn up and hastily replaced with asphalte. A French colleague of mine used to pretend that the cobble-stones had been designedly chosen as pavement. Berliners were somewhat touchy about the very sparse traffic in their wide streets. Now one solitary droschke, rumbling heavily over these cobble-stones, produced such a deafening din that the foreigner was deluded into thinking that the Berlin traffic rivalled that of London or Paris in its density.
Berlin is of too recent growth to have any elements of the picturesque about it. It stands on perfectly flat ground, and its long, straight streets are terribly wearisome to the eye. Miles and miles of ornate stucco are apt to become monotonous, even if decorated with porcelain plaques, glass mosaics, and other incongruous details dear to the garish soul of the Berliner. In their rage for modernity, the Municipality destroyed the one architectural feature of the town. Some remaining eighteenth century houses had a local peculiarity. The front doors were on the first floor, and were approached by two steeply inclined planes, locally known as die Rampe. A carriage (with, I imagine, infinite discomfort to the horses) could just struggle up one of these Rampe, deposit its load, and crawl down again to the street-level. These inclined planes were nearly all swept away. The Rampe may have been inconvenient, but they were individual, local and picturesque.
I arrived at the age of twenty at this Berlin in active process of ultra-modernising itself, and in one respect I was most fortunate.
The then British Ambassador, one of the very ablest men the English Diplomatic Service has ever possessed, and his wife, Lady Ampthill, occupied a quite exceptional position. Lord Ampthill was a really close and trusted friend of Bismarck, who had great faith in his prescience and in his ability to gauge the probable trend of events, and he was also immensely liked by the old Emperor William, who had implicit confidence in him. Under a light and debonair manner the Ambassador concealed a tremendous reserve of dignity. He was a man, too, of quick decisions and great strength of character. Lady Ampthill was a woman of exceptional charm and quick intelligence, with the social gift developed to its highest point in her. Both the Ambassador and his wife spoke French, German, and Italian as easily and as correctly as they did English. The Ambassador was the doyen, or senior member, of the Diplomatic Body, and Lady Ampthill was the most intimate friend of the Crown Princess, afterwards the Empress Frederick.
From these varied circumstances, and also from sheer force of character, Lady Ampthill had become the unchallenged social arbitress of Berlin, a position never before conceded to any foreigner. As the French phrase runs, "Elle faisait la pluie et le beau temps à Berlin."
To a boy of twenty life is very pleasant, and the novel surroundings and new faces amused me. People were most kind to me, but I soon made the discovery that many others had made before me, that at the end of two years one knows Prussians no better than one did at the end of the first fortnight; that there was some indefinable, intangible barrier between them and the foreigner that nothing could surmount. It was not long, too, before I became conscious of the under-current of intense hostility to my own country prevailing amongst the "Court Party," or what would now be termed the "Junker" Party. These people looked upon Russia as their ideal of a Monarchy. The Emperor of Russia was an acknowledged autocrat; the British Sovereign a constitutional monarch, or, if the term be preferred, more or less a figure-head. Tempering their admiration of Russia was a barely-concealed dread of the potential resources of that mighty Empire, whose military power was at that period absurdly overestimated. England did not claim to be a military State, and in the "'seventies" the vital importance of sea-power was not yet understood. British statesmen, too, had an unfortunate habit of indulging in sloppy sentimentalities in their speeches, and the convinced believers in "Practical Politics" (Real Politik) had a profound contempt (I guard myself from saying an unfounded one) for sloppiness as well as for sentimentality.
The Berliners of the "'seventies" had not acquired what the French term l'art de vivre. Prussia, during her rapid evolution from an insignificant sandy little principality into the leading military State of Europe, had to practise the most rigid economy. From the Royal Family downwards, everyone had perforce to live with the greatest frugality, and the traces of this remained. The "art of living" as practised in France, England, and even in Austria during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was impossible in Prussia under the straitened conditions prevailing there, and it is not an art to be learnt in a day. The small dinner-party, the gathering together of a few congenial friends, was unknown in Berlin. Local magnates gave occasionally great dinner-parties of thirty guests or so, at the grotesque hour of 5 p.m. It seemed almost immoral to array oneself in a white tie and swallow-tail coat at four in the afternoon. The dinners on these occasions were all sent in from the big restaurants, and there was no display of plate, and never a single flower. As a German friend (probably a fervent believer in "Practical Politics") said to me, "The best ornament of a dinner-table is also good food"; nor did the conversation atone by its brilliancy for the lack of the dainty trimmings which the taste of Western Europe expects on these occasions. A never-failing topic of conversation was to guess the particular restaurant which had furnished the banquet. One connoisseur would pretend to detect "Hiller" in the soup; another was convinced that the fish could only have been dressed by "Poppenberg." As soon as we had swallowed our coffee, we were expected to make our bows and take our leave without any post-prandial conversation whatever, and at 7 p.m. too!
Thirty people were gathered together to eat, weiter nichts, and, to do them justice, most of them fulfilled admirably the object with which they had been invited. The houses, too, were so ugly. No objets d'art, no personal belongings whatever, and no flowers. The rooms might have been in an hotel, and the occupant of the rooms might have arrived overnight with one small modest suit-case as his, or her, sole baggage. There was no individuality whatever about the ordinary Berlin house, or appartement.
I can never remember having heard literature discussed in any form whatever at Berlin. For some reason the novelist has never taken root in Germany. The number of good German novelists could be counted on the fingers of both hands, and no one seemed interested in literary topics. It was otherwise with music. Every German is a genuine music-lover, and the greatest music-lover of them all was Baroness von Schleinitz, wife of the Minister of the Royal Household. Hers was a charming house, the stately eighteenth century Haus-Ministerium, with its ornate rococo Fest-Saal. In that somewhat over-decorated hall every great musician in Europe must have played at some time or other. Baron von Schleinitz was, I think, the handsomest old man I have ever seen, with delightful old-world manners. It was a privilege to be asked to Madame de Schleinitz's musical evenings. She seldom asked more than forty people, and the most rigid silence was insisted upon; still every noted musician passing through Berlin went to her house as a matter of course. At the time of my arrival from England, Madame de Schleinitz had struck up a great alliance with Wagner, and gave two musical evenings a week as a sort of propaganda, in order to familiarise Berlin amateurs with the music of the "Ring." At that time the stupendous Tetralogy had only been given at Bayreuth and in Munich; indeed I am not sure that it had then been performed in its entirety in the Bavarian capital.
In the Fest-Saal, with its involved and tortured rococo curves, two grand pianos were placed side by side, a point Wagner insisted upon, and here the Master played us his gigantic work. The way Wagner managed to make the piano suggest brass, strings, or wood-wind at will was really wonderful. I think that we were all a little puzzled by the music of the "Ring"; possibly our ears had not then been sufficiently trained to grasp the amazing beauty of such a subtle web of harmonies. His playing finished, a small, very plainly-appointed supper-table was placed in the middle of the Fest-Saal, at which Wagner seated himself alone in state. Then the long-wished-for moment began for his feminine adorers. The great ladies of Berlin would allow no one to wait on the Master but themselves, and the bearers of the oldest and proudest names in Prussia bustled about with prodigious fussing, carrying plates of sauerkraut, liver sausage, black puddings, and herring-salad, colliding with each other, but in spite of that managing to heap the supper-table with more Teutonic delicacies than even Wagner's very ample appetite could assimilate.
I fear that not one of these great ladies would have found it easy to obtain a permanent engagement as waitress in a restaurant, for their skill in handling dishes and plates was hardly commensurate with their zeal. In justice it must be added that the professional waitress would not be encumbered with the long and heavy train of evening dresses in the "'seventies." These great ladies, anxious to display their intimate knowledge of the Master's tastes, bickered considerably amongst themselves. "Surely, dear Countess, you know by now that the Master never touches white bread."
"Dearest Princess, Limburger cheese is the only sort the Master cares for. You had better take that Gruyère cheese away"; whilst an extremely attractive little Countess, the bearer of a great German name, would trip vaguely about, announcing to the world that "The Master thinks that he could eat two more black puddings. Where do you imagine that I could find them?"
Meanwhile from another quarter one would hear an eager "Dearest Princess, could you manage to get some raw ham? The Master thinks that he would like some, or else some raw smoked goose-breast." "Aber, allerliebste Gräfin, wissen Sie nicht dass der Meister trinkt nur dunkles Bier?" would come as a pathetic protest from some slighted worshipper who had been herself reproved for ignorance of the Master's gastronomic tastes.
It must regretfully be confessed that these tastes were rather gross. Meanwhile Wagner, dressed in a frock-coat and trousers of shiny black cloth, his head covered with his invariable black velvet skull-cap, would munch steadily away, taking no notice whatever of those around him.
The rest of us stood at a respectful distance, watching with a certain awe this marvellous weaver of harmonies assimilating copious nourishment. For us it was a sort of Barmecide's feast, for beyond the sight of Wagner at supper, we had no refreshments of any sort offered to us.
Soon afterwards Rubinstein, on his way to St. Petersburg, played at Madame de Schleinitz's house. Having learnt that Wagner always made a point of having two grand pianos side by side when he played, Rubinstein also insisted on having two. To my mind, Rubinstein absolutely ruined the effect of all his own compositions by the tremendous pace at which he played them. It was as though he were longing to be through with the whole thing. His "Melody in F," familiar to every school-girl, he took at such a pace that I really believe the virulent germ which forty years afterwards was to develop into Rag-time, and to conquer the whole world with its maddening syncopated strains, came into being that very night, and was evoked by Rubinstein himself out of his own long-suffering "Melody in F."
Our Ambassador, himself an excellent musician, was an almost lifelong friend of Liszt. Wagner's wife, by the way, was Lizst's daughter, and had been previously married to Hans von Bulow, the pianist. Liszt, when passing through Berlin, always dined at our Embassy and played to us afterwards. I remember well Lord Ampthill asking Liszt where he placed Rubinstein as a pianist. "Rubinstein is, without any question whatever, the first pianist in the world," answered Liszt without hesitation. "But you are forgetting yourself, Abbé," suggested the Ambassador. "Ich," said Liszt, striking his chest, "Ich bin der einzige Pianist der Welt" ("I; I am the only pianist in the world"). There was a superb arrogance about this perfectly justifiable assertion which pleased me enormously at the time, and pleases me still after the lapse of so many years.
Bismarck was a frequent visitor at our Embassy, and was fond of dropping in informally in the evening. Apart from his liking for our Ambassador, he had a great belief in his judgment and discretion. Lady Ampthill, too, was one of the few women Bismarck respected and really liked. I think he had a great admiration for her intellectual powers and quick sense of intuition.
It is perhaps superfluous to state that no man living now occupies the position Bismarck filled in the "'seventies." The maker of Modern Germany was the unchallenged dictator of Europe. He was always very civil to the junior members of the Embassy. I think it pleased him that we all spoke German fluently, for the acknowledged supremacy of the French language as a means of communication between educated persons of different nationalities was always a very sore point with him. It must be remembered that Prussia herself had only comparatively recently been released from the thraldom of the French language. Frederick the Great always addressed his entourage in French. After 1870-71, Bismarck ordered the German Foreign Office to reply in the German language to all communications from the French Embassy. He followed the same procedure with the Russian Embassy; whereupon the Russian Ambassador countered with a long despatch written in Russian to the Wilhelmstrasse. He received no reply to this, and mentioned that fact to Bismarck about a fortnight later. "Ah!" said Bismarck reflectively, "now that your Excellency mentions it, I think we did receive a despatch in some unknown tongue. I ordered it to be put carefully away until we could procure the services of an expert to decipher it. I hope to be able to find such an expert in the course of the next three or four months, and can only trust that the matter was not a very pressing one."
The Ambassador took the hint, and that was the last note in Russian that reached the Wilhelmstrasse.
We ourselves always wrote in English, receiving replies in German, written in the third person, in the curiously cumbrous Prussian official style.
Bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favourite theory of the male and female European nations. The Germans themselves, the three Scandinavian peoples, the Dutch, the English proper, the Scotch, the Hungarians and the Turks, he declared to be essentially male races. The Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and indeed every Slavonic people, and all Celts, he maintained, just as emphatically, to be female races. A female race he ungallantly defined as one given to immense verbosity, to fickleness, and to lack of tenacity. He conceded to these feminine races some of the advantages of their sex, and acknowledged that they had great powers of attraction and charm, when they chose to exert them, and also a fluency of speech denied to the more virile nations. He maintained stoutly that it was quite useless to expect efficiency in any form from one of the female races, and he was full of contempt for the Celt and the Slav. He contended that the most interesting nations were the epicene ones, partaking, that is, of the characteristics of both sexes, and he instanced France and Italy, intensely virile in the North, absolutely female in the South; maintaining that the Northern French had saved their country times out of number from the follies of the "Méridionaux." He attributed the efficiency of the Frenchmen of the North to the fact that they had so large a proportion of Frankish and Norman blood in their veins, the Franks being a Germanic tribe, and the Normans, as their name implied, Northmen of Scandinavian, therefore also of Teutonic, origin. He declared that the fair-haired Piedmontese were the driving power of Italy, and that they owed their initiative to their descent from the Germanic hordes who invaded Italy under Alaric in the fifth century. Bismarck stoutly maintained that efficiency, wherever it was found, was due to Teutonic blood; a statement with which I will not quarrel.
As the inventor of "Practical Politics" (Real-Politik), Bismarck had a supreme contempt for fluent talkers and for words, saying that only fools could imagine that facts could be talked away. He cynically added that words were sometimes useful for "papering over structural cracks" when they had to be concealed for a time.
With his intensely overbearing disposition, Bismarck could not brook the smallest contradiction, or any criticism whatever. I have often watched him in the Reichstag—then housed in a very modest building—whilst being attacked, especially by Liebknecht the Socialist. He made no effort to conceal his anger, and would stab the blotting-pad before him viciously with a metal paper-cutter, his face purple with rage.
Bismarck himself was a very clear and forcible speaker, with a happy knack of coining felicitous phrases.
His eldest son, Herbert Bismarck, inherited all his father's arrogance and intensely overweening disposition, without one spark of his father's genius. He was not a popular man.
The second son, William, universally known as "Bill," was a genial, fair-headed giant of a man, as generally popular as his elder brother was the reverse. Bill Bismarck (the juxtaposition of these two names always struck me as being comically incongruous) drank so much beer that his hands were always wet and clammy. He told me himself that he always had three bottles of beer placed by his bedside lest he should be thirsty in the night. He did not live long.
Moltke, the silent, clean-shaved, spare old man with the sphinx-like face, who had himself worked out every detail of the Franco-Prussian War long before it materialised, was an occasional visitor at our Embassy, as was Gustav Richter, the fashionable Jewish artist. Richter's paintings, though now sneered at as Chocolade-Malerei (chocolate-box painting), had an enormous vogue in the "'seventies," and were reproduced by the hundred thousand. His picture of Queen Louise of Prussia, engravings of which are scattered all over the world, is only a fancy portrait, as Queen Louise had died before Richter was born. He had Rauch's beautiful effigy of the Queen in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg to guide him, but the actual model was, I believe, a member of the corps de ballet at the Opera. Madame Richter was the daughter of Mendelssohn the composer, and there was much speculation in Berlin as to the wonderful artistic temperament the children of such a union would inherit. As a matter of fact, I fancy that none of the young Richters showed any artistic gifts whatever.
Our Embassy was a very fine building. The German railway magnate Strousberg had erected it as his own residence, but as he most tactfully went bankrupt just as the house was completed, the British Government was able to buy it at a very low figure indeed, and to convert it into an Embassy. Though a little ornate, it was admirably adapted for this purpose, having nine reception rooms, including a huge ball-room, all communicating with each other, on the ground floor. The "Chancery," as the offices of an Embassy are termed, was in another building on the Pariser Platz. This was done to avoid the constant stream of people on business, of applicants of various sorts, including "D.B.S.'s" (Distressed British Subjects), continually passing through the Embassy. Immediately opposite our "Chancery," in the same building, and only separated from it by a porte-cochère, was the Chancery of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy.
Count W——, the Councillor of the Austrian Embassy, was very deaf, and had entirely lost the power of regulating his voice. He habitually shouted in a quarter-deck voice, audible several hundred yards away.
I was at work in the Chancery one day when I heard a stupendous din arising from the Austrian Chancery. "The Imperial Chancellor told me," thundered this megaphone voice in stentorian German tones, every word of which must have been distinctly heard in the street, "that under no circumstances whatever would Germany consent to this arrangement. If the proposal is pressed, Germany will resist it to the utmost, if necessary by force of arms. The Chancellor, in giving me this information," went on the strident voice, "impressed upon me how absolutely secret the matter must be kept. I need hardly inform your Excellency that this telegram is confidential to the highest degree."
"What is that appalling noise in the Austrian Chancery?" I asked our white-headed old Chancery servant.
"That is Count W—— dictating a cypher telegram to Vienna," answered the old man with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes.
This little episode has always seemed to me curiously typical of Austro-Hungarian methods.
The central figure of Berlin was of course the old Emperor William. This splendid-looking old man may not have been an intellectual giant, but he certainly looked an Emperor, every inch of him. There was something, too, very taking in his kindly old face and genial manner. The Crown Princess, afterwards the Empress Frederick, being a British Princess, we were what is known in diplomatic parlance as "une ambassade de famille." The entire staff of the Embassy was asked to dine at the Palace on the birthdays both of Queen Victoria and of the Crown Princess. These dinners took place at the unholy hour of 5 p.m., in full uniform, at the Emperor's ugly palace on the Linden, the Old Schloss being only used for more formal entertainments. On these occasions the sole table decoration consisted, quaintly enough, of rows of gigantic silver dish-covers, each surmounted by the Prussian eagle, with nothing under them, running down the middle of the table. The old Emperor had been but indifferently handled by his dentist. It had become necessary to supplement Nature's handiwork by art, but so unskilfully had these, what are euphemistically termed, additions to the Emperor's mouth been contrived, that his articulation was very defective. It was almost impossible to hear what he said, or indeed to make out in what language he was addressing you. When the Emperor "made the circle," one strained one's ears to the utmost to obtain a glimmering of what he was saying. If one detected an unmistakably Teutonic guttural, one drew a bow at a venture, and murmured "Zu Befehl Majestät," trusting that it might fit in. Should one catch, on the other hand, a slight suspicion of a nasal "n," one imagined that the language must be French, and interpolated a tentative "Parfaitement, Sire," trusting blindly to a kind Providence. Still the impression remains of a kindly and very dignified old gentleman, filling his part admirably. The Empress Augusta, who had been beautiful in her youth, could not resign herself to growing old gracefully. She would have made a most charming old lady, but though well over seventy then, she was ill-advised enough to attempt to rejuvenate herself with a chestnut wig and an elaborate make-up, with deplorable results. The Empress, in addition, was afflicted with a slight palsy of the head.
The really magnificent figure was the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. Immensely tall, with a full golden beard, he looked in his white Cuirassier uniform the living embodiment of a German legendary hero; a Lohengrin in real life.
Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia was a strikingly handsome woman too, though unfortunately nearly stone deaf.
Though the palace on the Linden may have been commonplace and ugly, the Old Schloss has to my mind the finest interior in Europe. It may lack the endless, bare, gigantic halls of the Winter Palace in Petrograd, and it may contain fewer rooms than the great rambling Hofburg in Vienna, but I maintain that, with the possible exception of the Palace in Madrid, no building in Europe can compare internally with the Old Schloss in Berlin. I think the effect the Berlin palace produces on the stranger is due to the series of rooms which must be traversed before the State apartments proper are reached. These rooms, of moderate dimensions, are very richly decorated. Their painted ceilings, encased in richly-gilt "coffered" work in high relief, have a Venetian effect, recalling some of the rooms in the Doge's Palace in the sea-girt city of the Adriatic. Their silk-hung walls, their pictures, and the splendid pieces of old furniture they contain, redeem these rooms from the soulless, impersonal look most palaces wear. They recall the rooms in some of the finer English or French country-houses, although no private house would have them in the same number. The rooms that dwell in my memory out of the dozen or so that formed the enfilade are, first, the "Drap d'Or Kammer," with its droll hybrid appellation, the walls of which were hung, as its name implies, with cloth of gold; then the "Red Eagle Room," with its furniture and mirrors of carved wood, covered with thin plates of beaten silver, producing an indescribably rich effect, and the "Red Velvet" room. This latter had its walls hung with red velvet bordered by broad bands of silver lace, and contained some splendid old gilt furniture.
The Throne room was one of the most sumptuous in the world. It had an arched painted ceiling, from which depended some beautiful old chandeliers of cut rock crystal, and the walls, which framed great panels of Gobelin tapestry of the best period, were highly decorated, in florid rococo style, with pilasters and carved groups representing the four quarters of the world. The whole of the wall surface was gilded; carvings, mouldings, and pilasters forming one unbroken sheet of gold. We were always told that the musicians' gallery was of solid silver, and that it formed part of Frederick the Great's war-chest. As a matter of fact, Frederick had himself melted the original gallery down and converted it into cash for one of his campaigns. By his orders, a facsimile gallery was carved of wood heavily silvered over. The effect produced, however, was the same, as we were hardly in a position to scrutinise the hall-mark. The room contained four semi-circular buffets, rising in diminishing tiers, loaded with the finest specimens the Prussian Crown possessed of old German silver-gilt drinking-cups of Nuremberg and Augsburg workmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
When the Throne room was lighted up at night the glowing colours of the Gobelin tapestry and the sheen of the great expanses of gold and silver produced an effect of immense splendour. With the possible exception of the Salle des Fêtes in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, it was certainly the finest Throne room in Europe.
The first time I saw the Luxembourg hall was as a child of seven, under the Second Empire, when I was absolutely awe-struck by its magnificence. It then contained Napoleon the Third's throne, and was known as the "Salle du Trône." A relation pointed out to me that the covering and curtains of the throne, instead of being of the stereotyped crimson velvet, were of purple velvet, all spangled with the golden bees of the Bonapartes. The Luxembourg hall had then in the four corners of the coved ceiling an ornament very dear to the meretricious but effective taste of the Second Empire. Four immense globes of sky-blue enamel supported four huge gilt Napoleonic eagles with outspread wings. To the crude taste of a child the purple velvet of the throne, powdered with golden bees, and the gilt eagles on their turquoise globes, appeared splendidly sumptuous. Of course after 1870 all traces of throne and eagles were removed, as well as the countless "N. III's" with which the walls were plentifully besprinkled.
What an astute move of Louis Napoleon's it was to term himself the "Third," counting the poor little "Aiglon," the King of Rome, as the second of the line, and thus giving a look of continuity and stability to a brand-new dynasty! Some people say that the assumption of this title was due to an accident, arising out of a printer's error. After his coup d'état, Louis Napoleon issued a proclamation to the French people, ending "Vive Napoleon!!!" The printer, mistaking the three notes of exclamation for the numeral III, set up "Vive Napoleon III." The proclamation appeared in this form, and Louis Napoleon, at once recognising the advantages of it, adhered to the style. Whether this is true or not I cannot say. I was then too young to be able to judge for myself, but older people have told me that the mushroom Court of the Tuileries eclipsed all others in Europe in splendour. The parvenu dynasty needed all the aid it could derive from gorgeous ceremonial pomp to maintain its position successfully.
To return to Berlin, beyond the Throne room lay the fine picture gallery, nearly 200 feet long. At Court entertainments all the German officers gathered in this picture gallery and made a living hedge, between the ranks of which the guests passed on their way to the famous "White Hall." These long ranks of men in their resplendent Hofballanzug were really a magnificent sight, and whoever first devised this most effective bit of stage-management deserves great credit.
The White Hall as I knew it was a splendidly dignified room. As its name implies, it was entirely white, the mouldings all being silvered instead of gilt. Both Germans and Russians are fond of substituting silvering for gilding. Personally I think it most effective, but as the French with their impeccable good taste never employ silvering, there must be some sound artistic reason against its use.
It must be reluctantly confessed that the show of feminine beauty at Berlin was hardly on a level with the perfect mise-en-scène. There were three or four very beautiful women. Countess Karolyi, the Austrian Ambassadress, herself a Hungarian, was a tall, graceful blonde with beautiful hair; she was full of infinite attraction. Princess William Radziwill, a Russian, was, I think, the loveliest human being I have ever seen; she was, however, much dreaded on account of her mordant tongue. Princess Carolath-Beuthen, a Prussian, had first seen the light some years earlier than these two ladies. She was still a very beautiful woman, and eventually married as her second husband Count Herbert Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor's eldest son.
There was, unfortunately, a very wide gap between the looks of these "stars" and those of the rest of the company.
The interior of the Berlin Schloss put Buckingham Palace completely in the shade. The London palace was unfortunately decorated in the "fifties," during the époque de mauvais goût, as the French comprehensively term the whole period between 1820 and 1880, and it bears the date written on every unfortunate detail of its decoration. It is beyond any question whatever the product of the "period of bad taste." I missed, though, in Berlin the wealth of flowers which turns Buckingham Palace into a garden on Court Ball nights. Civilians too in London have to appear at Court in knee-breeches and stockings; in Berlin trousers were worn, thus destroying the habillé look. As regards the display of jewels and the beauty of the women at the two Courts, Berlin was simply nowhere. German uniforms were of every colour of the rainbow; with us there is an undue predominance of scarlet, so that the kaleidoscopic effect of Berlin was never attained in London, added to which too much scarlet and gold tends to kill the effect of the ladies' dresses.
At the Prussian Court on these State occasions an immense number of pages made their appearance. I myself had been a Court page in my youth, but whereas in England little boys were always chosen for this part, in Berlin the tallest and biggest lads were selected from the Cadet School at Lichterfelde. A great lanky gawk six feet high, with an incipient moustache, does not show up to advantage in lace ruffles, with his thin spindle-shanks encased in silk stockings; a page's trappings being only suitable for little boys. I remember well the day when I and my fellow-novice were summoned to try on our new page's uniforms. Our white satin knee-breeches and gold-embroidered white satin waistcoats left us quite cold, but we were both enchanted with the little pages' swords, in their white-enamelled scabbards, which the tailor had brought with him. We had neither of us ever possessed a real sword of our own before, and the steel blades were of the most inviting sharpness. We agreed that the opportunity was too good a one to be lost, so we determined to slip out into the garden in our new finery and there engage in a deadly duel. It was further agreed to thrust really hard with the keen little blades, "just to see what would happen." Fortunately for us, we had been overheard. We reached the garden, and, having found a conveniently secluded spot, had just commenced to make those vague flourishes with our unaccustomed weapons which our experience, derived from pictures, led us to believe formed the orthodox preliminaries to a duel, when the combat was sternly interrupted. Otherwise there would probably have been vacancies for one if not two fresh Pages of Honour before nightfall. What a pity there were no "movies" in those days! What a splendid film could have been made of two small boys, arrayed in all the bravery of silk stockings, white satin breeches, and lace ruffles, their red tunics heavy with bullion embroidery, engaged in a furious duel in a big garden. When the news of our escapade reached the ears of the highest quarters, preemptory orders were issued to have the steel blades removed from our swords and replaced with innocuous pieces of shaped wood. It was very ignominious; still the little swords made a brave show, and no one by looking at them could guess that the white scabbards shielded nothing more deadly than an inoffensive piece of oak. A page's sword, by the way, is not worn at the left side in the ordinary manner, but is passed through two slits in the tunic, and is carried in the small of the back, so that the boy can keep his hands entirely free.
The "White Hall" has a splendid inlaid parquet floor, with a crowned Prussian eagle in the centre of it. This eagle was a source of immense pride to the palace attendants, who kept it in a high state of polish. As a result the eagle was as slippery as ice, and woe betide the unfortunate dancer who set his foot on it. He was almost certain to fall; and to fall down at a Berlin State ball was an unpardonable offence. If a German officer, the delinquent had his name struck off the list of those invited for a whole year. If a member of the Corps Diplomatique, he received strong hints to avoid dancing again. Certainly the diplomats were sumptuously entertained at supper at the Berlin Palace; whether the general public fared as well I do not know.
Urbain, the old Emperor William's French chef, who was responsible for these admirable suppers, had published several cookery books in French, on the title-page of which he described himself as "Urbain, premier officier de bouche de S.M. l'Empereur d'Allemagne." This quaint-sounding title was historically quite correct, it being the official appellation of the head cooks of the old French kings. A feature of the Berlin State balls was the stirrup-cup of hot punch given to departing guests. Knowing people hurried to the grand staircase at the conclusion of the entertainment; here servants proffered trays of this delectable compound. It was concocted, I believe, of equal parts of arrack and rum, with various other unknown ingredients. In the same way, at Buckingham Palace in Queen Victoria's time, wise persons always asked for hock cup. This was compounded of very old hock and curious liqueurs, from a hundred-year-old recipe. A truly admirable beverage! Now, alas! since Queen Victoria's day, only a memory.
The Princesses of the House of Prussia had one ordeal to face should they become betrothed to a member of the Royal Family of any other country. They took leave formally of the diplomats at the Palace, "making the circle" by themselves. I have always understood that Prussian princesses were trained for this from their childhood by being placed in the centre of a circle of twenty chairs, and being made to address some non-committal remark to each chair in turn, in German, French, and English. I remember well Princess Louise Margaret of Prussia, afterwards our own Duchess of Connaught, who was to become so extraordinarily popular not only in England but in India and Canada as well, making her farewell at Berlin on her betrothal. She "made the circle" of some forty people, addressing a remark or two to each, entirely alone, save for two of the great long, gawky Prussian pages in attendance on her, looking in their red tunics for all the world like London-grown geraniums—all stalk and no leaves. It is a terribly trying ordeal for a girl of eighteen, and the Duchess once told me that she nearly fainted from sheer nervousness at the time, although she did not show it in the least.
If I may be permitted a somewhat lengthy digression, I would say that it is at times extremely difficult to find topics of conversation. Years afterwards, when I was stationed at our Lisbon Legation, the Papal Nuncio was very tenacious of his dignity. In Catholic countries the Nuncio is ex officio head of the Diplomatic Body, and the Nuncio at Lisbon expected every diplomat to call on him at least six times a year. On his reception days the Nuncio always arrayed himself in his purple robes and a lace cotta, with his great pectoral emerald cross over it. He then seated himself in state in a huge carved chair, with a young priest as aide-de-camp, standing motionless behind him. It was always my ill-fortune to find the Nuncio alone. Now what possible topic of conversation could I, a Protestant, find with which to fill the necessary ten minutes with an Italian Archbishop in partibus. We could not well discuss the latest fashions in copes, or any impending changes in the College of Cardinals. Most providentally, I learnt that this admirable ecclesiastic, so far from despising the pleasures of the table, made them his principal interest in life. I know no more of the intricacies of the Italian cuisine than Melchizedek knew about frying sausages, but I had a friend, the wife of an Italian colleague, deeply versed in the mysteries of Tuscan cooking. This kindly lady wrote me out in French some of the choicest recipes in her extensive répertoire, and I learnt them all off by heart. After that I was the Nuncio's most welcome visitor. We argued hotly over the respective merits of risotto alia Milanese and risotto al Salto. We discussed gnocchi, pasta asciutta, and novel methods of preparing minestra, I trust without undue partisan heat, until the excellent prelate's eyes gleamed and his mouth began to water. Donna Maria, my Italian friend, proved an inexhaustible mine of recipes. She always produced new ones, which I memorised, and occasionally wrote out for the Nuncio, sometimes, with all the valour of ignorance, adding a fancy ingredient or two on my own account. On one occasion, after I had detailed the constituent parts of an extraordinarily succulent composition of rice, cheese, oil, mushrooms, chestnuts, and tomatoes, the Nuncio nearly burst into tears with emotion, and I feel convinced that, heretic though I might be, he was fully intending to give me his Apostolic benediction, had not the watchful young priest checked him. I felt rewarded for my trouble when my chief, the British Minister, informed me that the Nuncio considered me the most intelligent young man he knew. He added further that he enjoyed my visits, as my conversation was so interesting.
The other occasion on which I experienced great conversational difficulties was in Northern India at the house of a most popular and sporting Maharajah. His mother, the old Maharani, having just completed her seventy-first year, had emerged from the seclusion of the zenana, where she had spent fifty-five years of her life, or, in Eastern parlance, had "come from behind the curtain." We paid short ceremonial visits at intervals to the old lady, who sat amid piles of cushions, a little brown, shrivelled, mummy-like figure, so swathed in brocades and gold tissue as to be almost invisible. The Maharajah was most anxious that I should talk to his mother, but what possible subject of conversation could I find with an old lady who had spent fifty-five years in the pillared (and somewhat uncleanly) seclusions of the zenana? Added to which the Maharani knew no Urdu, but only spoke Bengali, a language of which I am ignorant. This entailed the services of an interpreter, always an embarrassing appendage. On occasions of this sort Morier's delightful book Hadji Baba is invaluable, for the author gives literal English translations of all the most flowery Persian compliments. Had the Maharani been a Mohammedan, I could have addressed her as "Oh moon-faced ravisher of hearts! I trust that you are reposing under the canopy of a sound brain!" Being a Hindoo, however, she would not be familiar with Persian forms of politeness. A few remarks on lawn tennis, or the increasing price of polo ponies, would obviously fail to interest her. You could not well discuss fashions with an old lady who had found one single garment sufficient for her needs all her days, and any questions as to details of her life in the zenana, or that of the other inmates of that retreat, would have been indecorous in the highest degree. Nothing then remained but to remark that the Maharajah was looking remarkably well, but that he had unquestionably put on a great deal of weight since I had last seen him. I received the startling reply from the interpreter (delivered in the clipped, staccato tones most natives of India assume when they speak English), "Her Highness says that, thanks to God, and to his mother's cooking, her son's belly is increasing indeed to vast size."
Bearing in mind these later conversational difficulties, I cannot but admire the ease with which Royal personages, from long practice, manage to address appropriate and varied remarks to perhaps forty people of different nationalities, whilst "making the circle."
CHAPTER II
Easy-going Austria—Vienna—Charm of town—A little piece of history—-International families—Family pride—"Schlüssel-Geld"—Excellence of Vienna restaurants—The origin of "Croissants"—Good looks of Viennese women—Strauss's operettas—A ball in an old Vienna house—Court entertainments—The Empress Elisabeth—Delightful environs of Vienna—The Berlin Congress of 1878—Lord Beaconsfield—M. de Blowitz—Treaty telegraphed to London—Environs of Berlin—Potsdam and its lakes—The bow-oar of the Embassy "four"—Narrow escape of ex-Kaiser—The Potsdam palaces—Transfer to Petrograd—Glamour of Russia—An evening with the Crown Prince at Potsdam.
Our Embassy at Vienna was greatly overworked at this time, owing to the illness of two of the staff, and some fresh developments of the perennial "Eastern Question." I was accordingly "lent" to the Vienna Embassy for as long as was necessary, and left at once for the Austrian capital.
At the frontier station of Tetschen the transition from cast-iron, dictatorial, overbearing Prussian efficiency to the good-natured, easy-going, slipshod methods of the "ramshackle Empire" was immediately apparent.
The change from Berlin to Vienna was refreshing. The straight, monotonous, well-kept streets of the Northern capital lacked life and animation. It was a very fine frame enclosing no picture. The Vienna streets were as gay as those of Paris, and one was conscious of being in a city with centuries of traditions. The Inner Town of Vienna with its narrow winding streets is extraordinarily picturesque. The demolisher has not been given the free hand he has been allowed in Paris, and the fine baroque houses still remaining give an air of great distinction to this part of the town, with its many highly-decorative, if somewhat florid, fountains and columns. One was no longer in the "pushful" atmosphere of Prussia. These cheery, easy-going Viennese loved music and dancing, eating and drinking, laughter and fun. They were quite content to drift lazily down the stream of life, with as much enjoyment and as little trouble as possible. They might be a decadent race, but they were essentially gemüthliche Leute. The untranslatable epithet gemüthlich implies something at once "comfortable," "sociable," "cosy," and "pleasant."
The Austrian aristocracy were most charming people. They had all intermarried for centuries, and if they did not trouble their intellect much, there may have been physical difficulties connected with the process for which they were not responsible. The degree of warmth of their reception of foreigners was largely dependent upon whether he, or she, could show the indispensable sechzehn Ahnen (the "sixteen quarterings"). Once satisfied (or the reverse) as to this point, to which they attach immense importance, the situation became easier. As the whole of these people were interrelated, they were all on Christian names terms, and the various "Mitzis," "Kitzis," "Fritzis," and other characteristically Austrian abbreviations were a little difficult to place at times.
It was impossible not to realise that the whole nation was living on the traditions of their splendid past. It must be remembered that in the sixteenth century the Hapsburgs ruled the whole of Europe with the exception of France, England, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries. For centuries after Charlemagne assumed the Imperial Crown there had been only one Emperor in Europe, the "Holy Roman Emperor," the "Heiliger Römischer Kaiser," the fiction being, of course, that he was the descendant of the Cæsars. The word "Kaiser" is only the German variant of Cæsar. France and England had always consistently refused to acknowledge the overlordship of the Emperor, but the prestige of the title in German-speaking lands was immense, though the Holy Roman Empire itself was a mere simulacrum of power. In theory the Emperor was elected; in practice the title came to be a hereditary appanage of the proud Hapsburgs. It was, I think, Talleyrand who said "L'Autrice a la Fächeuse habitude d'être toujours battue," and this was absolutely true. Austria was defeated with unfailing regularity in almost every campaign, and the Hapsburgs saw their immense dominions gradually slipping from their grasp. It was on May 14, 1804, that Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French in Paris, and Francis II, the last of the Holy Roman Emperors, was fully aware that Napoleon's next move would be to supplant him and get himself elected as "Roman Emperor." This Napoleon would have been able to achieve, as he had bribed the Electors of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Saxony by creating them kings. For once a Hapsburg acted with promptitude. On August 11, 1804, Francis proclaimed himself hereditary Emperor of Austria, and two years later he abolished the title of Holy Roman Emperor. The Empire, after a thousand years of existence, flickered out ingloriously in 1806. The pride of the Hapsburgs had received a hundred years previously a rude shock. Peter the Great, after consolidating Russia, abolished the title of Tsar of Muscovy, and proclaimed himself Emperor of All the Russias; purposely using the same term "Imperator" as that employed by the Roman Emperor, and thus putting himself on an equality with him.
I know by experience that it is impossible to din into the heads of those unfamiliar with Russia that since Peter the Great's time there has never been a Tsar. The words "Tsar," "Tsarina," "Cesarevitch," beloved of journalists, exist only in their imagination; they are never heard in Russia. The Russians termed their Emperor "Gosudar Imperator," using either or both of the words. Empress is "Imperatritza"; Heir Apparent "Nadslyédnik." If you mentioned the words "Tsar" or "Tsarina" to any ordinary Russian peasant, I doubt if he would understand you, but I am well aware that it is no use repeating this, the other idea is too firmly ingrained. The Hapsburgs had yet another bitter pill to swallow. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the ancient prestige of the title Kaiser and the glamour attached to it were maintained throughout the Germanic Confederation, but in 1871 a second brand-new Kaiser arose on the banks of the Spree, and the Hapsburgs were shorn of their long monopoly.
Franz Josef of Austria must have rued the day when Sigismund sold the sandy Mark of Brandenburg to Frederick Count of Hohenzollern in 1415, and regretted the acquiescence in 1701 of his direct ancestor, the Emperor Leopold I, in the Elector of Brandenburg's request that he might assume the title of King of Prussia. The Hohenzollerns were ever a grasping race. I think that it was Louis XIV of France who, whilst officially recognising the new King of Prussia, refused to speak of him as such, and always alluded to him as "Monsieur le Marquis de Brandenbourg."
No wonder that the feeling of bitterness against Prussia amongst the upper classes of Austria was very acute in the "'seventies." The events of 1866 were still too recent to have been forgotten. In my time the great Austrian ladies affected the broadest Vienna popular dialect, probably to emphasise the fact that they were not Prussians. Thus the sentence "ein Glas Wasser, bitte," became, written in phonetic English, "a' Glawss Vawsser beet." I myself was much rallied on my pedantic North-German pronunciation, and had in self-defence to adopt unfamiliar Austrian equivalents for many words.
The curious international families which seemed to abound in Vienna always puzzled me. Thus the princes d'Aremberg are Belgians, but there was one Prince d'Aremberg in the Austrian service, whilst his brother was in the Prussian Diplomatic Service, the remainder of the family being Belgians. There were, in the same way, many German-speaking Pourtales in Berlin in the German service, and more French-speaking ones in Paris in the French service. The Duc de Croy was both a Belgian and an Austrian subject. The Croys are one of the oldest families in Europe, and are ebenbürtig ("born on an equality") with all the German Royalties. They therefore show no signs of respect to Archdukes and Archduchesses when they meet them. Although I cannot vouch personally for them, never having myself seen them, I am told that there are two pictures in the Croy Palace at Brussels which reach the apogee of family pride. The first depicts Noah embarking on his ark. Although presumably anxious about the comfort of the extensive live-stock he has on board, Noah finds time to give a few parting instructions to his sons. On what is technically called a "bladder" issuing from his mouth are the words, "And whatever you do, don't forget to bring with you the family papers of the Croys." ("Et surtout ayez soin de ne pas oublier les papiers de la Maison de Croy!") The other picture represents the Madonna and Child, with the then Duke of Croy kneeling in adoration before them. Out of the Virgin Mary's mouth comes a "bladder" with the words "But please put on your hat, dear cousin." ("Mais couvrez vous donc, cher cousin.")
The whole of Viennese life is regulated by one exceedingly tiresome custom. After 10 or 10.15 p.m. the hall porter (known in Vienna as the "House-master") of every house in the city has the right of levying a small toll of threepence on each person entering or leaving the house. The whole life of the Vienna bourgeois is spent in trying to escape this tax, known as "Schlüssel-Geld." The theatres commence accordingly at 6 p.m. or 6.30, which entails dining about 5 p.m. A typical Viennese middle-class family will hurry out in the middle of the last act and scurry home breathlessly, as the fatal hour approaches. Arrived safely in their flat, in the last stages of exhaustion, they say triumphantly to each other. "We have missed the end of the play, and we are rather out of breath, but never mind, we have escaped the 'Schlüssel-Geld,' and as we are four, that makes a whole shilling saved!"
An equally irritating custom is the one that ordains that in restaurants three waiters must be tipped in certain fixed proportions. The "Piccolo," who brings the wine and bread, receives one quarter of the tip; the "Speisetrager," who brings the actual food, gets one half; the "Zahlkellner," who brings the bill, gets one quarter. All these must be given separately, so not only does it entail a hideous amount of mental arithmetic, but it also necessitates the perpetual carrying about of pocketfuls of small change.
The Vienna restaurants were quite excellent, with a local cuisine of extraordinary succulence, and more extraordinary names. A universal Austrian custom, not only in restaurants but in private houses as well, is to serve a glass of the delicious light Vienna beer with the soup. Even at State dinners at the Hof-Burg, a glass of beer was always offered with the soup. The red wine, Voslauer, grown in the immediate vicinity of the city, is so good, and has such a distinctive flavour, that I wonder it has never been exported. The restaurants naturally suggest the matchless Viennese orchestras. They were a source of never-ending delight to me. The distinction they manage to give to quite commonplace little airs is extraordinary. The popular songs, "Wiener-Couplets," melodious, airy nothings, little light soap-bubbles of tunes, are one of the distinctive features of Vienna. Played by an Austrian band as only an Austrian band can play them, with astonishing vim and fire, and supremely dainty execution, these little fragile melodies are quite charming and irresistibly attractive. We live in a progressive age. In the place of these Austrian bands with their finished execution and consummately musicianly feeling, the twentieth century has invented the Jazz band with its ear-splitting, chaotic din.
There is a place in Vienna known as the Heiden-Schuss, or "Shooting of the heathens." The origin of this is quite interesting.
In 1683 the Turks invaded Hungary, and, completely overrunning the country, reached Vienna, to which they laid siege, for the second time in its history. Incidentally, they nearly succeeded in capturing it. During the siege bakers' apprentices were at work one night in underground bakehouses, preparing the bread for next day's consumption. The lads heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump," and were much puzzled by it. Two of the apprentices, more intelligent than the rest, guessed that the Turks were driving a mine, and ran off to the Commandant of Vienna with their news. They saw the principal engineer officer and told him of their discovery. He accompanied them back to the underground bakehouse, and at once determined that the boys were right. Having got the direction from the sound, the Austrians drove a second tunnel, and exploded a powerful counter-mine. Great numbers of Turks were killed, and the siege was temporarily raised. On September 12 of the same year (1683) John Sobieski, King of Poland, utterly routed the Turks, drove them back into their own country, and Vienna was saved. As a reward for the intelligence shown by the baker-boys, they were granted the privilege of making and selling a rich kind of roll (into the composition of which butter entered largely) in the shape of the Turkish emblem, the crescent. These rolls became enormously popular amongst the Viennese, who called them Kipfeln. When Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI of France, she missed her Kipfel, and sent to Vienna for an Austrian baker to teach his Paris confrères the art of making them. These rolls, which retained their original shape, became as popular in Paris as they had been in Vienna, and were known as Croissants, and that is the reason why one of the rolls which are brought you with your morning coffee in Paris will be baked in the form of a crescent.
The extraordinary number of good-looking women, of all classes to be seen in the streets of Vienna was most striking, especially after Berlin, where a lower standard of feminine beauty prevailed. Particularly noticeable were the admirable figures with which most Austrian women are endowed. In the far-off "'seventies" ladies did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments of material—they dressed, and their clothes fitted them; and a woman on whom Nature (or Art) had bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to the world. In the same way, Fashion did not compel a pretty girl to smother up her features in unbecoming tangles of tortured hair. The usual fault of Austrian faces is their breadth across the cheek-bones; the Viennese too have a decided tendency to embonpoint, but in youth these defects are not accentuated. Amongst the Austrian aristocracy the great beauty of the girls was very noticeable, as was their height, in marked contrast to the short stature of most of the men. I have always heard that one of the first outward signs of the decadence of a race is that the girls grow taller, whilst the men get shorter.
The Vienna theatres are justly celebrated. At the Hof-Burg Theatre may be seen the most finished acting on the German stage. The Burg varied its programme almost nightly, and it was an amusing sight to see the troops of liveried footmen inquiring at the box-office, on behalf of their mistresses, whether the play to be given that night was or was not a Comtessen-Stück, i.e., a play fit for young girls to see. The box-keeper always gave a plain "Yes" or "No" in reply. After Charles Garnier's super-ornate pile in Paris, the Vienna Opera-house is the finest in Europe, and the musical standard reaches the highest possible level, completely eclipsing Paris in that respect. In the "'seventies" Johann Strauss's delightful comic operas still retained their vogue. Bubbling over with merriment, full of delicious ear-tickling melodies, and with a "go" and an irresistible intoxication about them that no French composer has ever succeeded in emulating, these operettas, "Die Fledermaus," "Prinz Methusalem," and "La Reine Indigo," would well stand revival. When the "Fledermaus" was revived in London some ten years ago it ran, if my memory serves me right, for nearly a year. Occasionally Strauss himself conducted one of his own operettas; then the orchestra, responding to his magical baton, played like very demons. Strauss had one peculiarity. Should he be dissatisfied with the vim the orchestra put into one of his favourite numbers, he would snatch the instrument from the first violin and play it himself. Then the orchestra answered like one man, and one left the theatre with the entrancing strains still tingling in one's ears.
The family houses of most of the Austrian nobility were in the Inner Town, the old walled city, where space was very limited. These fine old houses, built for the greater part in the Italian baroque style, though splendid for entertaining, were almost pitch dark and very airless in the daytime. Judging, too, from the awful smells in them, they must have been singularly insanitary dwellings. The Lobkowitz Palace, afterwards the French Embassy, was so dark by day that artificial light had always to be used. In the great seventeenth century ball-room of the Lobkowitz Palace there was a railed off oak-panelled alcove containing a bust of Beethoven, an oak table, and three chairs. It was in that alcove, and at that table, that Beethoven, when librarian to Prince Lobkowitz, composed some of his greatest works.
Our own Embassy in the Metternichgasse, built by the British Government, was rather cramped and could in no way compare with the Berlin house.
I remember well a ball given by Prince S——, head of one of the greatest Austrian families, in his fine but extremely dark house in the Inner Town. It was Prince S——'s custom on these occasions to have three hundred young peasants sent up from his country estates, and to have them all thrust into the family livery. These bucolic youths, looking very sheepish in their unfamiliar plush breeches and stockings, with their unkempt heads powdered, and with swords at their sides, stood motionless on every step of the staircase. I counted one hundred of these rustic retainers on the staircase alone. They would have looked better had their liveries occasionally fitted them. The ball-room at Prince S——'s was hung with splendid Brussels seventeenth century tapestry framed in mahogany panels, heavily carved and gilt. I have never seen this combination of mahogany, gilding, and tapestry anywhere else. It was wonderfully decorative, and with the elaborate painted ceiling made a fine setting for an entertainment. It was a real pleasure to see how whole-heartedly the Austrians threw themselves into the dancing. I think they all managed to retain a child's power of enjoyment, and they never detracted from this by any unnecessary brainwork. Still they were delightfully friendly, easy-going people. A distinctive feature of every Vienna ball was the "Comtessen-Zimmer," or room reserved for girls. At the end of every dance they all trooped in there, giggling and gossiping, and remained there till the music for the next dance struck up. No married woman dared intrude into the "Comtessen-Zimmer," and I shudder to think of what would have befallen the rash male who ventured to cross that jealously-guarded threshold. I imagine that the charming and beautifully-dressed Austrian married women welcomed this custom, for between the dances at all events they could still hold the field, free from the competition of a younger and fresher generation.
At Prince S——'s, at midnight, armies of rustic retainers, in their temporary disguise, brought battalions of supper tables into the ball-room, and all the guests sat down to a hot supper at the same time. As an instance of how Austrians blended simplicity with a great love of externals, I see from my diary that the supper consisted of bouillon, of plain-boiled carp with horse-radish, of thick slices of hot roast beef, and a lemon ice—and nothing else whatever. A sufficiently substantial repast, but hardly in accordance with modern ideas as to what a ball-supper should consist of. The young peasants, considering that it was their first attempt at waiting, did not break an undue number of plates; they tripped at times, though, over their unaccustomed swords, and gaped vacantly, or would get hitched up with each other, when more dishes crashed to their doom.
In Vienna there was a great distinction drawn between a "Court Ball" (Hof-Ball) and a "Ball at the Court" (Ball bei Hof). To the former everyone on the Palace list was invited, to the latter only a few people; and the one was just as crowded and disagreeable as the other was the reverse. The great rambling pile of the Hof-Burg contains some very fine rooms and a marvellous collection of works of art, and the so-called "Ceremonial Apartments" are of quite Imperial magnificence, but the general effect was far less striking than in Berlin.
In spite of the beauty of the women, the coup d'oeil was spoilt by the ugly Austrian uniforms. After the disastrous campaign of 1866, the traditional white of the Austrian Army was abolished, and the uniforms were shorn of all unnecessary trappings. The military tailors had evolved hideous garments, ugly in colour, unbecoming in cut. One can only trust that they proved very economical, but the contrast with the splendid and admirably made uniforms of the Prussian Army was very marked. The Hungarian magnates in their traditional family costumes (from which all Hussar uniforms are derived) added a note of gorgeous colour, with their gold-laced tunics and their many-hued velvet slung-jackets. I remember, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887, the astonishment caused by a youthful and exceedingly good-looking Hungarian who appeared at Buckingham Palace in skin-tight blue breeches lavishly embroidered with gold over the thighs, entirely gilt Hessian boots to the knee, and a tight-fitting tunic cut out of a real tiger-skin, fastened with some two dozen turquoise buttons the size of five-shilling pieces. When this resplendent youth reappeared in London ten years later at the Diamond Jubilee, it was with a tonsured head, and he was wearing the violet robes of a prelate of the Roman Church.
As an instance of the inflexibility of the cast-iron rules of the Hapsburg Court: I may mention that the beautiful Countess Karolyi, Austrian Ambassadress in Berlin, was never asked to Court in Vienna, as she lacked the necessary "sixteen quarterings." To a non-Austrian mind it seems illogical that the lovely lady representing Austria in Berlin should have been thought unfitted for an invitation from her own Sovereign.
The immense deference paid to the Austrian Archdukes and Archduchesses was very striking after the comparatively unceremonious fashion in which minor German royalties (always excepting the Emperor and the Crown Prince) were treated in Berlin. The Archduchesses especially were very tenacious of their privileges. They never could forget that they were Hapsburgs, and exacted all the traditional signs of respect.
The unfortunate Empress Elisabeth, destined years after to fall under the dagger of an assassin at Geneva, made but seldom a public appearance in her husband's dominions. She had an almost morbid horror of fulfilling any of the duties of her position. During my stay in the Austrian capital I only caught one glimpse of her, driving through the streets. She was astonishingly handsome, with coiled masses of dark hair, and a very youthful and graceful figure, but the face was so impassive that it produced the effect of a beautiful, listless mask. The Empress was a superb horse-woman, and every single time she rode she was literally sewn into her habit by a tailor, in order to ensure a perfect fit.
The innumerable cafés of Vienna were crowded from morning to night. Seeing them crammed with men in the forenoon, one naturally wondered how the business of the city was transacted. Probably, in typical Austrian fashion, these worthy Viennese left their businesses to take care of themselves whilst they enjoyed themselves in the cafés. The super-excellence of the Vienna coffee would afford a more or less legitimate excuse for this. Nowhere in the world is such coffee made, and a "Capuziner," or a "Melange," the latter with thick whipped cream on the top of it, were indeed things of joy.
Few capitals are more fortunate in their environs than Vienna. The beautiful gardens and park of Schönbrunn Palace have a sort of intimate charm which is wholly lacking at Versailles. They are stately, yet do not overwhelm you with a sense of vast spaces. They are crowned by a sort of temple, known as the Gloriette, from which a splendid view is obtained.
In less than three hours from the capital, the railway climbs 3,000 feet to the Semmering, where the mountain scenery is really grand. During the summer months the whole of Vienna empties itself on to the Semmering and the innumerable other hill-resorts within easy distance from the city.
When the time came for my departure, I felt genuinely sorry at leaving this merry, careless, music and laughter-loving town, and these genial, friendly, hospitable incompetents. I feel some compunction in using this word, as people had been very good to me. I cannot help feeling, though, that it is amply warranted. A bracing climate is doubtless wholesome; but a relaxing one can be very pleasant for a time. I went back to Berlin feeling like a boy returning to school after his holidays.
The Viennese had but little love for their upstart rival on the Spree. They had invented the name "Parvenupopolis" for Berlin, and a little popular song, which I may be forgiven for quoting in the original German, expressed their sentiments fairly accurately:
Es gibt nur eine Kaiserstadt,
Es gibt nur ein Wien;
Es gibt nur ein Raubernest,
Und das heisst Berlin.
I had a Bavarian friend in Berlin. We talked over the amazing difference in temperament there was between the Austrians and the Prussians, and the curious charm there was about the former, lacking in intellect though they might be, a charm wholly lacking in the pushful, practical Prussians. My friend agreed, but claimed the same attractive qualities for his own beloved Bavarians; "but," he added impressively, "mark my words, in twenty years from now the whole of Germany will be Prussianised!" ("Ganz Deutschland wird verpreussert werden") Events have shown how absolutely correct my Bavarian friend was in his forecast.
In June, 1878, the great Congress for the settlement of the terms of peace between Russia and Turkey assembled in Berlin. It was an extraordinarily interesting occasion, for almost every single European notability was to be seen in the German capital. The Russian plenipotentiaries were the veteran Prince Gortchakoff and Count Peter Schouvaloff, that most genial faux-bonhomme; the Turks were championed by Ali Pasha and by Katheodory Pasha. Great Britain was represented by Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury; Austria by Count Andrassy, the Prime Minister; France by M. Waddington. In spite of the very large staff brought out from London by the British plenipotentiaries, an enormous amount of work fell upon us at the Embassy.
To a youngster there is something very fascinating in being regarded as so worthy of confidence that the most secret details of the great game of diplomacy were all known to him from day to day. A boy of twenty-one feels very proud of the trust reposed in him, and at being the repository of such weighty and important secrets. That is the traditional method of the British Diplomatic Service.
As all the Embassies gave receptions in honour of their own plenipotentiaries, we met almost nightly all the great men of Europe, and had occasional opportunities for a few words with them. Prince Gortchakoff, who fancied himself Bismarck's only rival, was a little, short, tubby man in spectacles; wholly undistinguished in appearance, and looking for all the world like an average French provincial notaire. Count Andrassy, the Hungarian, was a tall, strikingly handsome man, with an immense head of hair. To me, he always recalled the leader of a "Tzigane" orchestra. M. Waddington talked English like an Englishman, and was so typically British in appearance that it was almost impossible to realise that he was a Frenchman. Our admiration for him was increased when we learnt that he had rowed in the Cambridge Eight. But without any question whatever, the personality which excited the greatest interest at the Berlin Congress was that of Lord Beaconsfield, the Jew who by sheer force of intellect had raised himself from nothing into his present commanding position. His peculiar, colourless, inscrutable face, with its sphinx-like impassiveness; the air of mystery which somehow clung about him; the romantic story of his career; even the remnants of dandyism which he still retained in his old age—all these seemed to whet the insatiable public curiosity about him. Some enterprising Berlin tradesmen had brought out fans, with leaves composed of plain white vellum, designed expressly for the Congress. Armed with one of these fans, and with pen and ink, indefatigable feminine autograph-hunters moved about at these evening receptions, securing the signatures of the plenipotentiaries on the white vellum leaves. Many of those fans must still be in existence, and should prove very interesting to-day. Bismarck alone invariably refused his autograph.
At all these gatherings, M. de Blowitz, the then Paris correspondent of the Times, was much to the fore. In the "'seventies" the prestige of the Times on the Continent of Europe was enormous. In reality the influence of the Times was very much overrated, since all Continentals persisted in regarding it as the inspired mouthpiece of the British Government. Great was the Times, but greater still was de Blowitz, its prophet. This most remarkable man was a veritable prince of newspaper correspondents. There was no move on the European chess-board of which he was not cognisant, and as to which he did not keep his paper well informed, and his information was always accurate. De Blowitz knew no English, and his lengthy daily telegrams to the Times were always written in French and were translated in London. He was really a Bohemian Jew of the name of Oppen, and he had bestowed the higher-sounding name of de Blowitz on himself. He was a very short, fat little man, with immensely long grey side-whiskers, and a most consequential manner. He was a very great personage indeed in official circles. De Blowitz has in his Memoirs given a full account of the trick by which he learnt of the daily proceedings of the Congress and so transmitted them to his paper. I need not, therefore, go into details about this; it is enough to say that a daily exchange of hats, in the lining of the second of which a summary of the day's deliberations was concealed, played a great part in it.
When the Treaty had been drawn up in French, Lord Salisbury rather startled us by saying that he wished it translated into English and cyphered to London that very evening in extenso. This was done to obviate the possibility of the news-paper correspondents getting a version of the Treaty through to London before the British Government had received the actual text. As the Treaty was what I, in the light of later experiences, would now describe as of fifteen thousand words length, this was a sufficiently formidable undertaking. Fifteen of us sat down to the task about 6 p.m., and by working at high pressure we got the translation finished and the last cyphered sheet sent off to the telegraph office by 5 a.m. The translation done at such breakneck speed was possibly a little crude in places. One clause in the Treaty provided that ships in ballast were to have free passage through the Dardanelles. Now the French for "ships in ballast," is "navires en lest." The person translating this (who was not a member of the British Diplomatic Service) rendered "navires en lest" as "ships in the East," and in this form it was cyphered to London. As, owing to the geographical position of the Dardanelles, any ship approaching them would be, in one sense of the term, a "ship in the East," there was considerable perturbation in Downing Street over this clause, until the mistake was discovered.
Berlin has wonderful natural advantages, considering that it is situated in a featureless, sandy plain. In my day it was quite possible to walk from the Embassy into a real, wild pine-forest, the Grünewald. The Grünewald, being a Royal forest, was unbuilt on, and quite unspoilt. It extended for miles, enclosing many pretty little lakelets. Now I understand that it has been invaded by "villa colonies," so its old charm of wildness must have vanished. The Tiergarten, too, the park of Berlin, retains in places the look of a real country wood. It is inadvisable to venture into the Tiergarten after nightfall, should you wish to retain possession of your watch, purse, and other portable property. The sandy nature of the soil makes it excellent for riding. Within quite a short distance of the city you can find tracts of heathery moor, and can get a good gallop almost anywhere.
There is quite fair partridge-shooting, too, within a few miles of Berlin, in the immense potato fields, though the entire absence of cover in this hedgeless land makes it very difficult at times to approach the birds. It is pre-eminently a country for "driving" partridges, though most Germans prefer the comparatively easy shots afforded by "walking the birds up."
Potsdam has had but scant justice done it by foreigners. The town is almost surrounded by the river Havel, which here broadens out into a series of winding, wooded lakes, surrounded by tree-clad hills. The Potsdam lakes are really charmingly pretty, and afford an admirable place for rowing or sailing. Neither of these pursuits seems to make the least appeal to Germans. The Embassy kept a small yacht at Potsdam, but she was practically the only craft then on the lakes. As on all narrow waters enclosed by wooded hills, the sailing was very tricky, owing to the constant shifting of the wind. Should it be blowing fresh, it was advisable to sail under very light canvas; and it was always dangerous to haul up the centre-board, even when "running," as on rounding some wooded point you would get "taken aback" to a certainty. Once in the fine open stretch of water between Wansee and Spandau, you could hoist every stitch of canvas available, and indulge with impunity in the most complicated nautical manoeuvres. Possibly my extreme fondness for the Potsdam lakes may be due to their extraordinary resemblance to the lakes at my own Northern country home.
The Embassy also owned a light Thames-built four-oar. At times a short, thick-set young man of nineteen pulled bow in our four. The short young man had a withered arm, and the doctors hoped that the exercise of rowing might put some strength into it. He seemed quite a commonplace young man, yet this short, thick-set youth was destined less than forty years after to plunge the world into the greatest calamity it has ever known; to sacrifice millions and millions of human lives to his own inordinate ambition; and to descend to posterity as one of the most sinister characters in the pages of history.
Moored in the "Jungfernsee," one of the Potsdam lakes, lay a miniature sailing frigate, a complete model of a larger craft down to the smallest details. This toy frigate had been a present from King William IV of England to the then King of Prussia. The little frigate had been built in London, and though of only 30-tons burden, had been sailed down the Thames, across the North Sea, and up the Elbe and Havel to Potsdam, by a British naval officer. A pretty bit of seamanship! I have always heard that it was the sight of this toy frigate, lying on the placid lake at Potsdam, that first inspired William of Hohenzollern with the idea of building a gigantic navy.
The whole history of the world might have been changed by an incident which occurred on these same Potsdam lakes in 1880. I have already said that William of Hohenzollern, then only Prince William, pulled at times in our Embassy four, in the hope that it might strengthen his withered arm. He was very anxious to see if he could learn to scull, in spite of his physical defect, and asked the Ambassadress, Lady Ampthill, whether she would herself undertake to coach him. Lady Ampthill consented, and met Prince William next day at the landing-stage with a light Thames-built skiff, belonging to the Embassy. Lady Ampthill, with the caution of one used to light boats, got in carefully, made her way aft, and grasped the yoke-lines. She then explained to Prince William that this was not a heavy boat such as he had been accustomed to, that he must exercise extreme care, and in getting in must tread exactly in the centre of the boat. William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew best, responded by jumping into the boat from the landing-stage, capsizing it immediately, and throwing himself and Lady Ampthill into the water. Prince William, owing to his malformation, was unable to swim one stroke, but help was at hand. Two of the Secretaries of the British Embassy had witnessed the accident, and rushed up to aid. The so-called "Naval Station" was close by, where the Emperor's Potsdam yacht lay, a most singularly shabby old paddle-boat. Some German sailors from the "Naval Post" heard the shouting and ran up, and a moist, and we will trust a chastened William and a dripping Ambassadress were eventually rescued from the lake. Otherwise William of Hohenzollern might have ended his life in the "Jungfernsee" at Potsdam that day, and millions of other men would have been permitted to live out their allotted span of existence.
Potsdam itself is quite a pleasing town, with a half-Dutch, half-Italian physiognomy. Both were deliberately borrowed; the first by Frederick William I, who constructed the tree-lined canals which give Potsdam its half-Batavian aspect; the second by Frederick the Great, who fronted Teutonic dwellings with façades copied from Italy to add dignity to the town. It must in justice be added that both are quite successful, though Potsdam, like most other things connected with the Hohenzollerns, has only a couple of hundred years' tradition behind it. The square opposite the railway really does recall Italy. The collection of palaces at Potsdam is bewildering. Of these, three are of the first rank: the Town Palace, Sans-souci, and the great pile of the "New Palace." Either Frederick the Great was very fortunate in his architects, or else he chose them with great discrimination. The Town Palace, even in my time but seldom inhabited, is very fine in the finished details of its decoration. Sans-souci is an absolute gem; its rococo style may be a little over-elaborate, but it produces the effect of a finished, complete whole, in the most admirable taste; even though the exuberant imagination of the eighteenth century has been allowed to run riot in it. The gardens of Sans-souci, too, are most attractive. The immense red-brick building of the New Palace was erected by Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War, out of sheer bravado. He was anxious to impress on his enemies the fact that his financial resources were not yet exhausted. Considering that he already possessed two stately palaces within a mile of it, the New Palace may be looked upon as distinctly a work of supererogation, also as an appalling waste of money. As a piece of architecture, it is distinctly a success. This list does not, however, nearly exhaust the palatial resources of Potsdam. The eighteenth century had contributed its successes; it remained for the nineteenth to add its failures. Babelsberg, the old Emperor William's favourite residence, was an awful example of a ginger-bread pseudo-Gothic castle. The Marble Palace on the so-called "Holy Lake" was a dull, unimaginative building; and the "Red Prince's" house at Glienicke was frankly terrible. The main features of this place was an avenue of huge cast-iron gilded lions. These golden lions were such a blot on an otherwise charming landscape that one felt relieved by recalling that the apparently ineradicable tendency of the children of Israel to erect Golden Calves at various places in olden days had always been severely discountenanced.
In spite of the carpenter-Gothic of Babelsberg, and of the pinchbeck golden lions of Glienicke, Potsdam will remain in my mind, to the end of my life, associated with memories of fresh breezes and bellying sails; of placid lakes and swift-gliding keels responding to the straining muscles of back and legs; a place of verdant hills dipping into clear waters; of limbs joyously cleaving those clear waters with all the exultation of the swimmer; a place of rest and peace, with every fibre in one's being rejoicing in being away, for the time being, from crowded cities and stifling streets, in the free air amidst woods, waters, and gently-swelling, tree-clad heights.
A year later, I was notified that I was transferred to Petrograd, then of course still known as St. Petersburg. This was in accordance with the dearest wish of my heart. Ever since my childhood's days I had been filled with an intense desire to go to Russia. Like most people unacquainted with the country, I had formed the most grotesquely incorrect mental pictures of Russia. I imagined it a vast Empire of undreamed of magnificence, pleasantly tempered with relics of barbarism; and all these glittering splendours were enveloped in the snow and ice of a semi-Arctic climate, which gave additional piquancy to their glories. I pictured huge tractless forests, their dark expanse only broken by the shimmering golden domes of the Russian churches. I fancied this glamour-land peopled by a species of transported French, full of culture, and all of them polyglot, more brilliant and infinitely more intellectual than their West European prototypes. I imagined this hyperborean paradise served by a race of super-astute diplomatists and officials, with whom we poor Westerners could not hope to contend, and by Generals whom no one could withstand. The evident awe with which Germans envisaged their Eastern neighbours strengthened this idea, and both in England and in France I had heard quite responsible persons gloomily predict, after contemplating the map, that the Northern Colossus was fatally destined at some time to absorb the whole of the rest of Europe.
Apart then from its own intrinsic attraction, I used to gaze at the map of Russia with some such feelings as, I imagine, the early Christians experienced when, on their Sunday walks in Rome, they went to look at the lions in their dens in the circus, and speculated as to their own sensations when, as seemed but too probable, they might have to meet these interesting quadrupeds on the floor of the arena, in a brief, exciting, but definitely final encounter.
Everything I had seen or heard about this mysterious land had enhanced its glamour. The hair-raising rumours which reached Berlin as to revolutionary plots and counter-plots; the appalling stories one heard about the terrible secret police; the atmosphere of intrigue which seemed indigenous to the place—all added to its fascinations. Even the externals were attractive. I had attended weddings and funeral services at the chapel of the Russian Embassy. Here every detail was exotic, and utterly dissimilar to anything in one's previous experience. The absence of seats, organ, or pulpit in the chapel itself; the elaborate Byzantine decorations of the building; the exquisitely beautiful but quite unfamiliar singing; the long-bearded priests in their archaic vestments of unaccustomed golden brocades—everything struck a novel note. It all came from a world apart, centuries removed from the prosaic routine of Western Europe.
Even quite minor details, such as the curiously sumptuous Russian national dresses of the ladies of the Embassy at Court functions, the visits to Berlin of the Russian ballets and troupes of Russian singing gipsies, had all the same stamp of strong racial individuality, of something temperamentally different from all we had been accustomed to.
I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing for myself at last this land of mingled splendour and barbarism, this country which had retained its traditional racial characteristics in spite of the influences of nineteenth century drab uniformity of type.
As the Petrograd Embassy was short-handed at the time, it was settled that I should postpone my leave for some months and proceed to Russia without delay.
The Crown Prince and Crown Princess, who had been exceedingly kind to me during my stay in Berlin, were good enough to ask me to the New Palace at Potsdam for one night, to take leave of them.
I had never before had an opportunity of going all over the New Palace. I thought it wonderfully fine, though quite French in feeling. The rather faded appearance of some of the rooms increased their look of dignity. It was not of yesterday. The great "Shell Hall," or "Muschel-Saal," much admired of Prussians, is frankly horrible; one of the unfortunate aberrations of eighteenth century taste of which several examples occur in English country-houses of the same date.
My own bedroom was charming; of the purest Louis XV, with apple-green polished panelling and heavily silvered mouldings and mirrors.
Nothing could be more delightful than the Crown Prince's manner on occasions such as this. The short-lived Emperor Frederick had the knack of blending absolute simplicity with great dignity, as had the Empress Frederick. For the curious in such matters, and as an instance of the traditional frugality of the Prussian Court, I may add that supper that evening, at which only the Crown Prince and Princess, the equerry and lady-in-waiting, and myself were present, consisted solely of curds and whey, veal cutlets, and a rice pudding. Nothing else whatever. We sat afterwards in a very stately, lofty, thoroughly French room. The Crown Prince, the equerry, and myself drank beer, whilst the Prince smoked his long pipe. It seemed incongruous to drink beer amid such absolutely French surroundings. I noticed that the Crown Princess always laid down her needlework to refill her husband's pipe and to bring him a fresh tankard of beer. The "Kronprinzliches Paar," as a German would have described them, were both perfectly charming in their conversation with a dull, uninteresting youth of twenty-one. They each had marvellous memories, and recalled many trivial half-forgotten details about my own family. That evening in the friendly atmosphere of the great, dimly-lit room in the New Palace at Potsdam will always live in my memory.
Two days afterwards I drove through the trim, prosaic, well-ordered, stuccoed streets of Berlin to the Eastern Station; for me, the gateway to the land of my desires, vast, mysterious Russia.
CHAPTER III
The Russian frontier—Frontier police—Disappointment at aspect of Petrograd—Lord and Lady Dufferin—The British Embassy—St. Isaac's Cathedral—Beauty of Russian Church-music—The Russian language—The delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd—Princess Chateau—Pleasant Russian Society—The Secret Police—The Countess's hurried journey—The Yacht Club—Russians really Orientals—Their limitations—The "Intelligenzia"—My Nihilist friends—Their lack of constructive power—Easter Mass at St. Isaac's—Two comical incidents—The Easter supper—The red-bearded young priest—An Empire built on shifting sand.
Petrograd is 1,050 miles from Berlin, and forty years ago the fastest trains took forty-five hours to cover the distance between the two capitals. In later years the "Nord-Express" accomplishing the journey in twenty-nine hours.
Rolling through the flat fertile plains of East Prussia, with their neat, prosperous villages and picturesque black-and-white farms, the surroundings had such a commonplace air that it was difficult to realise that one was approaching the very threshold of the great, mysterious Northern Empire.
Eydkuhnen, the last Prussian station, was as other Prussian stations, built of trim red brick, neat, practical, and very ugly; with crowds of red-faced, amply-paunched officials, buttoned into the tightest of uniforms, perpetually saluting each other.
Wierjbolovo, or Wirballen Station as the Germans call it, a huge white building, was plainly visible only a third of a mile away. At Wirballen the German train would stop, for whereas the German railways are built to the standard European gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches, the Russian lines were laid to a gauge of 5 feet 1 inch.
This gauge had been deliberately chosen to prevent the invasion of Russia by her Western neighbour. This was to prove an absolutely illusory safeguard, for, as events have shown, nothing is easier than to narrow a railway track. To broaden it is often quite impossible. The cunning little Japs found this out during the Russo-Japanese War. They narrowed the broad Russian lines to their own gauge of 3 feet 6 inches, and then sawed off the ends of the sleepers with portable circular saws, thus making it impossible for the Russians to relay the rails on the broad gauge. I believe that the Germans adopted the same device more recently.
I think at only one other spot in the world does a short quarter of a mile result in such amazing differences in externals as does that little piece of line between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen; and that is at Linea, the first Spanish village out of Gibraltar.
Leaving the prim and starched orderliness of Gibraltar, with its thick coating of British veneer, its tidy streets and buildings enlivened with the scarlet tunics of Mr. Thomas Atkins and his brethren, you traverse the "Neutral Ground" to an iron railing, and literally pass into Spain through an iron gate. The contrast is extraordinary. It would be unfair to select Linea as a typical Spanish village; it is ugly, and lacks the picturesque features of the ordinary Andalusian village; it is also unquestionably very dirty, and very tumble-down. Between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen the contrast is just as marked. As the German train stopped, hosts of bearded, shaggy-headed individuals in high boots and long white aprons (surely a curious article of equipment for a railway porter) swooped down upon the hand-baggage; I handed my passport to a gendarme (a term confined in Russia to frontier and railway police) and passed through an iron gate into Russia.
Russia in this case was represented by a gigantic whitewashed hall, ambitious originally in design and decoration, but, like most things in Russia, showing traces of neglect and lack of cleanliness. The first exotic note was struck by a full-length, life-size ikon of the Saviour, in a solid silver frame, at the end of the hall. All my Russian fellow-travellers devoutly crossed themselves before this ikon, purchased candles at an adjoining stall, and fixed them in the silver holders before the ikon.
Behind the line of tables serving for the Customs examinations was a railed-off space, containing many desks under green-shaded lamps. Here some fifteen green-coated men whispered mysteriously to each other, referring continually to huge registers. I felt a thrill creep down my back; here I found myself at last face to face with the omnipotent Russian police. The bespectacled green-coated men scrutinised passports intently, conferred amongst themselves in whispers under the green-shaded lamps, and hunted ominously through the big registers. For the first time I became unpleasantly conscious of the existence of such places as the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of a country called Siberia. I speculated as to whether the drawbacks of the Siberian climate had not been exaggerated, should one be compelled to make a possibly prolonged sojourn in that genial land. Above all, I was immensely impressed with the lynx-eyed vigilance and feverish activity of these green-coated guardians of the Russian frontier. From my subsequent knowledge of the ways of Russian officials, I should gather that all this feverish activity began one minute after the whistle announced the approach of the Berlin train, and ceased precisely one minute after the Petrograd train had pulled out, and that never, by any chance, did the frontier police succeed in stopping the entry of any really dangerous conspirator.
Diplomats with official passports are exempt from Customs formalities, so I passed on to the platform, thick with pungent wood-smoke, where the huge blue-painted Russian carriages smoked like volcanoes from their heating apparatus, and the gigantic wood-burning engine (built in Germany) vomited dense clouds from its funnel, crowned with a spark-arrester shaped like a mammoth tea urn, or a giant's soup tureen. Everything in this country seemed on a large scale.
In the gaunt, bare, whitewashed restaurant (these three epithets are applicable to almost every public room in Russia) with its great porcelain stove, and red lamps burning before gilded ikons, I first made the acquaintance of fresh caviar and raw herrings, of the national cabbage soup, or "shtchee," of roast ryabehiks and salted cucumbers, all destined to become very familiar. Railway restaurants in Russia are almost invariably quite excellent.
And so the train clanked out through the night, into the depths of this mysterious glamour-land.
The railway from the frontier to Petrograd runs for 550 miles through an unbroken stretch of interminable dreary swamp and forest, such as would in Canada be termed "muskag," with here and there a poor attempt at cultivation in some clearing, set about with wretched little wooden huts. After a twenty-four hours' run, without any preliminary warning whatever in the shape of suburbs, the train emerges from the forest into a huge city, with tramcars rolling in all directions, and the great golden dome of St. Isaac's blazing like a sun against the murky sky.
I had pictured Petrograd to myself as a second Paris; a city glittering with light and colour, but conceived on an infinitely more grandiose scale than the French capital.
We emerged from the station into an immensely broad street bordered by shabbily-pretentious buildings all showing signs of neglect. The atrociously uneven pavements, the general untidiness, the broad thoroughfare empty except for a lumbering cart or two, the absence of foot-passengers, and the low cotton-wool sky, all gave an effect of unutterable dreariness. And this was the golden city of my dreams! this place of leprous-fronted houses, of vast open spaces full of drifting snowflakes, and of an immense emptiness. I never was so disappointed in my life. The gilt and coloured domes of the Orthodox churches, the sheepskin-clad, red-shirted moujiks, the occasional swift-trotting Russian carriages, with their bearded and padded coachmen, were the only local touches that redeemed the streets from the absolute commonplace. The Russian lettering over the shops, which then conveyed nothing whatever to me, suggested that the alphabet, having followed the national custom and got drunk, had hastily re-affixed itself to the houses upside down. Although as the years went on I grew quite attached to Petrograd, I could never rid myself of this impression of its immense dreariness. This was due to several causes. There are hardly any stone buildings in the city, everything is of brick plastered over. Owing to climatic reasons the houses are not painted, but are daubed with colour-wash. The successive coats of colour-wash clog all the architectural features, and give the buildings a shabby look, added to which the wash flakes off under the winter snows. There is a natural craving in human nature for colour, and in a country wrapped in snow for at least four months in the year this craving finds expression in painting the roofs red, and in besmearing the houses with crude shades of red, blue, green, and yellow. The result is not a happy one. Again, owing to the intense cold, the shop-windows are all very small, and there is but little display in them. Streets and shops were alike very dimly lighted in my day, and as there is an entire absence of cafés in Petrograd, there is none of the usual glitter and glare of these places to brighten up the streets. The theatres make no display of lights, so it is not surprising that the general effect of the city is one of intense gloom. The very low, murky winter sky added to this effect of depression. Peter the Great had planned his new capital on such a gigantic scale that there were not enough inhabitants to fill its vast spaces. The conceptions were magnificent; the results disappointing. Nothing grander could be imagined than the design of the immense place opposite the Winter Palace, with Alexander I's great granite monolith towering in the midst of it, and the imposing semicircular sweep of Government Offices of uniform design enclosing it, pierced in the centre by a monumental triumphal arch crowned with a bronze quadriga. The whole effect of this was spoilt by the hideous crude shade of red with which the buildings were daubed, by the general untidiness, and by the broken, uneven pavement; added to which this huge area was usually untenanted, except by a lumbering cart or two, by a solitary stray "istvoschik," and an occasional muffled-up pedestrian. The Petrograd of reality was indeed very different from the sumptuous city of my dreams.
For the second time I was extraordinarily lucky in my Chief. Our relations with Russia had, during the "'seventies," been strained almost to the breaking point. War had on several occasions seemed almost inevitable between the two countries.
Russians, naturally enough, had shown their feelings of hostility to their potential enemies by practically boycotting the entire British Embassy. The English Government had then made a very wise choice, and had appointed to the Petrograd Embassy the one man capable of smoothing these troubled relations. The late Lord Dufferin was not then a diplomat by profession. He had just completed his term of office as Governor-General of Canada, where, as in every position he had previously occupied, he had been extraordinarily successful. Lord Dufferin had an inexhaustible fund of patience, blended with the most perfect tact; he had a charm of manner no human being could resist; but under it all lay an inflexible will. No man ever understood better the use of the iron hand under the velvet glove, and in a twelvemonth from the date of his arrival in Petrograd he had succeeded not only in gaining the confidence of official Russia, but also in re-establishing the most cordial relations with Russian society. In this he was very ably seconded by Lady Dufferin, who combined a perfectly natural manner with quiet dignity and a curious individual charm. Both Lord and Lady Dufferin enjoyed dancing, skating, and tobagganing as wholeheartedly as though they were children.
Our Petrograd Embassy was a fine old house, with a pleasant intimate character about it lacking in the more ornate building at Berlin. It contained a really beautiful snow-white ball-room, and all the windows fronted the broad, swift-flowing Neva, with the exquisitely graceful slender gilded spire of the Fortress Church, towering three hundred feet aloft, opposite them. We had a very fine collection of silver plate at the Embassy. This plate, valued at £30,000, was the property of our Government, and had been sent out sixty years previously by George IV, who understood the importance attached by Russians to externals. We had also a small set, just sufficient for two persons, of real gold plates. These solid gold plates were only used by the Emperor and Empress on the very rare occasions when they honoured the Embassy with their presence. I wonder what has happened to that gold service now!
Owing to the constant tension of the relations between Great Britain and Russia, our work at the Petrograd Embassy was very heavy indeed at that time. We were frequently kept up till 2 a.m. in the Chancery, cyphering telegrams. All important written despatches between London and Petrograd either way were sent by Queen's Messenger open to Berlin, "under Flying Seal," as it is termed. The Berlin Embassy was thus kept constantly posted as to Russian affairs. After reading our open despatches, both to and from London, the Berlin Embassy would seal them up in a special way. We also got duplicates, in cypher, of all telegrams received in London the previous day from the Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Constantinople Embassies which bore in any way on Russia or the Eastern Question. This gave us two or three hours' work decyphering every day. Both cyphering and decyphering require the closest concentration, as one single mistake may make nonsense of the whole thing; it is consequently exhausting work. We were perfectly well aware that the Russian Government had somehow obtained possession of one of our codes. This particular "compromised code" was only used by us for transmitting intelligence which the Russians were intended to know. They could hardly blame us should they derive false impressions from a telegram of ours which they had decyphered with a stolen code, nor could they well admit that they had done this.
As winter came on, I understood why Russians are so fond of gilding the domes and spires of their churches. It must be remembered that Petrograd lies on parallel 60° N. In December it only gets four hours of very uncertain daylight, and the sun is so low on the horizon that its rays do not reach the streets of the city. It is then that the gilded domes flash and glitter, as they catch the beams of the unseen sun. When the long golden needle of the Fortress Church blazed like a flaming torch or a gleaming spear of fire against the murky sky, I thought it a splendid sight, as was the great golden dome of St. Isaac's scintillating like a second sun over the snow-clad roofs of the houses.
Soon after my arrival I went to the vast church under the gilded dome to hear the singing of the far-famed choir of St. Isaac's.
Here were none of the accessories to which I had been accustomed; no seats; no organ; no pulpit; no side-chapels. A blue haze of incense drifted through the twilight of the vague spaces of the great building; a haze glowing rosily where the red lamps burning before the jewelled ikons gave a faint-dawnlike effect in the semi-darkness. Before me the great screen of the "ikonostas" towered to the roof, with its eight malachite columns forty feet high, and its two smaller columns of precious lapis lazuli flanking the "Royal doors" into the sanctuary. Surely Montferrand, the Frenchman, had designedly steeped the cathedral he had built in perpetual twilight. In broad daylight the juxtaposition of these costly materials, with their discordant colours, would have been garish, even vulgar. Now, barely visible in the shadows, they, the rich mosaics, the masses of heavily-gilt bronze work in the ikonostas, gave an impression of barbaric magnificence and immense splendour. The jasper and polychrome Siberian marbles with which the cathedral was lined, the gold and silver of the jewelled ikons, gleaming faintly in the candle-light, strengthened this impression of sumptuous opulence. Then the choir, standing before the ikonostas, burst into song. The exquisitely beautiful singing of the Russian Church was a perfect revelation to me. I would not have believed it possible that unaccompanied human voices could have produced so entrancing an effect. As the "Cherubic Hymn" died away in softest pianissimo, its echoes floating into the misty vastness of the dome, a deacon thundered out prayers in a ringing bass, four tones deeper than those a Western European could compass. The higher clergy, with their long flowing white beards, jewelled crowns, and stiffly-archaic vestments of cloth of gold and silver, seemed to have stepped bodily out of the frame of an ikon; and the stately ritual of the Eastern Church gave me an impression as of something of immemorial age, something separated by the gap of countless centuries from our own prosaic epoch; and through it all rose again and again the plaintive response of the choir, "Gospodi pomiloi," "Lord have mercy," exquisitely sung with all the tenderness and pathos of muted strings.
This was at last the real Russia of my dreams. It was all as I had vaguely pictured it to myself; the densely-packed congregation, with sheepskin-clad peasant and sable-coated noble standing side by side, all alike joining in the prescribed genuflections and prostrations of the ritual; the singing-boys, with their close-cropped heads and curious long blue dressing-gowns; the rolling consonants of the Old Slavonic chanted by the priests; all this was really Russia, and not a bastard imitation of an exotic Western civilisation like the pseudo-classic city outside.
Two years later, Arthur Sullivan, the composer, happened to be in Petrograd, and I took him to the practice of the Emperor's private church choir. Sullivan was passionately devoted to unaccompanied part-singing, and those familiar with his delightful light operas will remember how he introduced into almost every one of them an unaccompanied madrigal, or a sextet. Sullivan told me that he would not have believed it possible for human voices to obtain the string-like effect of these Russian choirs. He added that although six English singing-boys would probably evolve a greater body of sound than twelve Russian boys, no English choir-boy could achieve the silvery tone these musical little Muscovites produced.
People ignorant of the country have a foolish idea that all Russians can speak French. That may be true of one person in two thousand of the whole population. The remainder only speak their native Russ. Not one cabman in Petrograd could understand a syllable of any foreign language, and though in shops, very occasionally, someone with a slight knowledge of German might be found, it was rare. All the waiters in Petrograd restaurants were yellow-faced little Mohammedan Tartars, speaking only Russian and their own language. I determined therefore to learn Russian at once, and was fortunate in finding a very clever teacher. All men should learn a foreign language from a lady, for natural courtesy makes one listen to what she is saying; whereas with a male teacher one's attention is apt to wander. The patient elderly lady who taught me knew neither English nor French, so we used German as a means of communication. Thanks to Madame Kumin's intelligence, and a considerable amount of hard work on my own part, I was able to pass an examination in Russian in eleven months, and to qualify as Interpreter to the Embassy. The difficulties of the Russian language are enormously exaggerated. The pronunciation is hard, as are the terminations; and the appalling length of Russian words is disconcerting. In Russian, great emphasis is laid on one syllable of a word, and the rest is slurred over. It is therefore vitally important (should you wish to be understood) to get the emphasis on the right syllable, and for some mysterious reason no foreigner, even by accident, ever succeeds in pronouncing a Russian name right. It is Schouvaloff, not Schòuvaloff; Brusìl-off, not Brùsiloff; Demìd-off, not Dèmidoff. The charming dancer's name is Pàv-Lova, not Pavlòva; her equally fascinating rival is Karsàv-ina, not Karsavìna. I could continue the list indefinitely. Be sure of one thing; however the name is pronounced by a foreigner, it is absolutely certain to be wrong.
What a wise man he was who first said that for every fresh language you learn you acquire a new pair of eyes and a new pair of ears; I felt immensely elated when I found that I could read the cabalistic signs over the shops as easily as English lettering.
A relation of mine had given me a letter of introduction to Princess B——. Now this old lady, though she but seldom left her own house, was a very great power indeed in Petrograd, and was universally known as the "Princesse Château." For some reason or another, I was lucky enough to find favour in this dignified old lady's eyes. She asked me to call on her again, and at our second meeting invited me to her Sunday evenings. The Princesse Château's Sunday evenings were a thing quite apart. They were a survival in Petrograd of the French eighteenth century literary "salons," but devoid of the faintest flavour of pedantry or priggism. Never in my life, before or since, have I heard such wonderfully brilliant conversation, for, with the one exception of myself, the Princesse Château tolerated no dull people at her Sundays. She belonged to a generation that always spoke French amongst themselves, and imported their entire culture from France. Peter the Great had designed St. Petersburg as a window through which to look on Europe, and the tradition of this amongst the educated classes was long in dying out. The Princess assembled some thirty people every Sunday, all Russians, with the exception of myself. These people discussed any and every subject—literature, art, music, and philosophy—with sparkling wit, keen critical instinct, and extraordinary felicity of phrase, usually in French, sometimes in English, and occasionally in Russian. Their knowledge seemed encyclopædic, and they appeared equally at home in any of the three languages. They greatly appreciated a neatly-turned epigram, or a novel, crisply-coined definition. Any topic, however, touching directly or indirectly on the external or internal policy of Russia was always tacitly avoided. My rôle was perforce reduced to that of a listener, but it was a perfectly delightful society. Princesse Château had a very fine suite of rooms on the first floor of her house, decorated "at the period" in Louis XVI style by imported French artists; these rooms still retained their original furniture and fittings, and were a museum of works of art; but her Sunday evenings were always held in the charming but plainly-furnished rooms which she herself inhabited on the ground floor. We had one distinct advantage over the old French salons, for Princesse Château entertained her guests every Sunday to suppers which were justly celebrated in the gastronomic world of Petrograd. During supper the conversation proceeded just as brilliantly as before. There were always two or three Grand Duchesses present, for to attend Princesse Château's Sundays was a sort of certificate of culture. The Grand Duchesses were treated quite unceremoniously, beyond receiving a perfunctory "Madame" in each sentence addressed to them. How curious that, both in English and French, the highest title of respect should be plain "Madame"! As the Russian equivalent is "Vashoe Imperatorskoe Vuisochestvo," a considerable expenditure of time and breath was saved by using the terser French term. And through it all moved the mistress of the house, the stately little smiling old lady, in her plain black woollen dress and lace cap, dropping here a quaint criticism, there an apt bon-mot. Perfectly charming people!
The relatives and friends of Princesse Château whom I met at her house, when they discovered that I had a genuine liking for their country, and that I did not criticise details of Russian administration, were good enough to open their houses to me in their turn. Though most of these people owned large and very fine houses, they opened them but rarely to foreigners. They gave, very occasionally, large entertainments to which they invited half Petrograd, including the Diplomatic Body, but there they stopped. They did not care, as a rule, to invite foreigners to share the intimacy of their family life. I was very fortunate therefore in having an opportunity of seeing a phase of Russian life which few foreigners have enjoyed. Russians seldom do things by halves. I do not believe that in any other country in the world could a stranger have been made to feel himself so thoroughly at home amongst people of a different nationality, and with such totally different racial ideals; or have been treated with such constant and uniform kindness. There was no ceremony whatever on either side, and on the Russian side, at times, an outspokenness approaching bluntness. As I got to know these cultivated, delightful people well, I grew very fond of them. They formed a clique, possibly a narrow clique, amongst themselves, and had that complete disregard for outside criticism which is often found associated with persons of established position. They met almost nightly at each others' houses, and I could not but regret that such beautiful and vast houses should be seen by so few people. One house, in particular, contained a staircase an exact replica of a Grecian temple in white statuary Carrara marble, a thing of exquisite beauty. In their perpetual sets of intellectual lawn tennis, if I may coin the term, the superiority of the feminine over the male intellects was very marked. This is, I believe, a characteristic of all Slavonic countries, and I recalled Bismarck's dictum that the Slav peoples were essentially feminine, and I wondered whether there could be any connection between the two points. Living so much with Russians, it was impossible not to fall into the Russian custom of addressing them by their Christian names and patronymics; such as "Maria Vladimirovna" (Mary daughter of Vladimir) or "Olga Andreèvna" (Olga daughter of Andrew) or "Pavel Alexandrovitch" (Paul son of Alexander). I myself became Feòdor Yàkovlevitch, (Frederic son of James, those being the nearest Russian equivalents). On arriving at a house, the proper form of inquiry to the hall porter was, "Ask Mary daughter of Vladimir if she will receive Frederic son of James." In due time the answer came, "Mary daughter of Vladimir begs Frederic son of James to go upstairs." My own servants always addressed me punctiliously as Feòdor Yàkovlevitch. On giving them an order they would answer in Moscovite fashion, "I hear you, Frederic son of James," the equivalent to our prosaic, "Very good, sir." Amongst my new friends, as at the Princesse Château's, no allusions whatever, direct or indirect, were made to internal conditions in Russia. Apart from the fact that one of these new friends was himself Minister of the Interior at the time, it would not have been safe. In those days the Secret Police, or "Third Section," as they were called, were very active, and their ramifications extended everywhere. One night at a supper party a certain Countess B—— criticised in very open and most unflattering terms a lady to whom the Emperor Alexander II was known to be devotedly attached. Next morning at 8 a.m. the Countess was awakened by her terrified maid, who told her that the "Third Section" were there and demanded instant admittance. Two men came into the Countess's bedroom and informed her that their orders were that she was to take the 12.30 train to Europe that morning. They would remain with her till then, and would accompany her to the frontier. As she would not be allowed to return to Russia for twelve months, they begged her to order her maid to pack what was necessary; and no one knew better than Countess B—— how useless any attempted resistance would be.
This episode made a great stir at the time. As the words complained of had been uttered about 3 a.m., the police action had been remarkably prompt. The informant must have driven straight from the supper party to the "Third Section," and everyone in Petrograd had a very distinct idea who the informant was. Is it necessary to add that she was a lady?
Some of my new friends volunteered to propose and second me for the Imperial Yacht Club. This was not the club that the diplomats usually joined; it was a purely Russian club, and, in spite of its name, had no connection with yachting. It had also the reputation of being extremely exclusive, but thanks to my Russian sponsors, I got duly elected to it. This was, I am sure, the most delightful club in Europe. It was limited to 150 members of whom only two, besides myself, were foreigners, and the most perfect camaraderie existed between the members. The atmosphere of the place was excessively friendly and intimate, and the building looked more like a private house than a club, as deceased members had bequeathed to it pictures, a fine collection of old engravings, some splendid old Beauvais tapestry, and a great deal of Oriental porcelain. Above all, we commanded the services of the great Armand, prince of French chefs. Associating so much with Russians, it was possible to see things from their points of view. They all had an unshakable belief in the absolute invincibility of Russia, and in her complete invulnerability, for it must not be forgotten that in 1880 Russia had never yet been defeated in any campaign, except partially in the Crimean War of 1854-50. My friends did not hide their convictions that it was Russia's manifest destiny to absorb in time the whole of the Asiatic Continent, including India, China, and Turkey. There were grounds for this article of faith, for in 1880 Russia's bloodless absorption of vast territories in Central Asia had been astounding. It was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 that the friable clay feet of the Northern Colossus were revealed to the outside world, though those with a fairly intimate knowledge of the country quite realised how insecure were the foundations on which the stupendous structure of modern Russia had been erected.
I am deeply thankful that the great majority of my old friends had passed away in the ordinary course of nature before the Great Catastrophe overwhelmed the mighty Empire in which they took such deep pride; and that they were spared the sight and knowledge of the awful orgy of blood, murder, and spoliation which followed the ruin of the land they loved so well. Were they not now at rest, it would be difficult for me to write of those old days.
To grasp the Russian mentality, it must be remembered that they are essentially Orientals. Russia is not the most Eastern outpost of Western civilisation; it is the most Western outpost of the East. Russians have all the qualities of the Oriental, his fatalism, his inertness, and, I fear, his innate pecuniary corruption. Their fatalism makes them accept their destiny blindly. What has been ordained from the beginning of things is useless to fight against; it must be accepted. The same inertness characterises every Eastern nation, and the habit of "baksheesh" is ingrained in the Oriental blood. If the truth were known, we should probably find that the real reason why Cain killed Abel was that the latter had refused him a commission on some transaction or other. The fatalism and lack of initiative are not the only Oriental traits in the Russian character. In a hundred little ways they show their origin: in their love of uncut jewels; in their lack of sense of time (the Russian for "at once" is "si chas," which means "this hour"; an instructive commentary); in the reluctance South Russians show in introducing strangers to the ladies of their household, the Oriental peeps out everywhere. Peter the Great could order his Boyards to abandon their fur-trimmed velvet robes, to shave off their beards, powder their heads, and array themselves in the satins and brocades of Versailles. He could not alter the men and women inside the French imported finery. He could abandon his old capital, matchless, many-pinnacled Moscow, vibrant with every instinct of Russian nationality; he could create a new pseudo-Western, sham-classical city in the frozen marshes of the Neva; but even the Autocrat could not change the souls of his people. Easterns they were, Easterns they remained, and that is the secret of Russia, they are not Europeans. Peter himself was so fully aware of the racial limitations of his countrymen that he imported numbers of foreigners to run the country; Germans as Civil and Military administrators; Dutchmen as builders and town-planners; and Englishmen to foster its budding commerce. To the latter he granted special privileges, and even in my time there was a very large English commercial community in Petrograd; a few of them descendants of Peter the Great's pioneers; the majority of them with hereditary business connections with Russia. Their special privileges had gradually been withdrawn, but the official name of the English Church in Petrograd was still "British Factory in St. Petersburg," surely a curious title for a place of worship. The various German-Russian families from the Baltic Provinces, the Adlerbergs, the Benckendorffs, and the Stackelbergs, had served Russia well. Under their strong guidance she became a mighty Power, but when under Alexander III the reins of government were confided to purely Russian hands, rapid deterioration set in. This dreamy nation lacks driving power. In my time, the very able Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. de Giers, was of German origin, and his real name was Hirsch. His extremely wily and astute second in command, Baron Jomini, was a Swiss. Modern Russia was largely the creation of the foreigner.
I saw a great deal, too, of a totally different stratum of Russian society. Mr. X., the head of a large exporting house, was of British origin, the descendant of one of Peter's commercial pioneers. He himself, like his father and grandfather, had been born in Russia, and though he retained his English speech, he had adopted all the points of view of the country of his birth. Madame X. came of a family of the so-called "Intelligenzia." Most of her relatives seemed to have undertaken compulsory journeys to Siberia, not as prisoners, but for a given term of exile. Madame X.'s brother-in-law owned and edited a paper of advanced views, which was being continually suppressed, and had been the cause of two long trips eastward for its editor and proprietor. Neither Mr. nor Madame X. shared their relatives' extreme views. What struck me was that behind the floods of vehement invective of Madame O—— (the editor's wife) there was never the smallest practical suggestion. "You say, Madame O——," I would hazard, "that the existing state of things is intolerable. What remedy do you suggest?" "I am not the Government," would retort Madame O—— with great heat. "It is for the Government to make suggestions. I only denounce an abominable injustice." "Quite so, Madame O——, but how can these conditions be improved. What is your programme of reform?" "We have nothing to do with reforms. Our mission is to destroy utterly. Out of the ruins a better state of things must necessarily arise; as nothing could possibly be worse than present conditions." And so we travelled round and round in a circle. Mr. O——, when appealed to, would blink through his spectacles with his kindly old eyes, and emit a torrent of admirable moral aphorisms, which might serve as unimpeachable copy-book headings, but had no bearing whatever on the subject we were discussing. Never once amidst these floods of bitter invective and cataracts of fierce denunciation did I hear one single practical suggestion made or any outline traced of a scheme to better existing conditions. "We must destroy," shouted Madame O——, and there her ideas stopped. I think the Slavonic bent of mind, like the Celtic, is purely destructive, and has little or no constructive power in it. This may be due to the ineradicable element of the child in both races. They are "Peter Pans," and a child loves destruction.
Poor dreamy, emotional, hopelessly unpractical Russia! Madame O——'s theories have been put into effect now, and we all know how appalling the result has been.
These conversations were always carried on in French for greater safety in order that the servants might not overhear, but when Mr. and Madame O—— found difficulties in expressing themselves in that language, they both broke into torrents of rapid Russian, to poor Madame X.'s unconcealed terror. The danger was a real one, for the O——'s were well known in police circles as revolutionists, and it must have gone hard with the X.'s had their servants reported to the police the violent opinions that had been expressed in their house.
Many of the Diplomatic Body were in the habit of attending the midnight Mass at St. Isaac's on Easter Day, on account of the wonderfully impressive character of the service. We were always requested to come in full uniform, with decorations and we stood inside the rails of the ikonostas, behind the choir. The time to arrive was about 11.30 p.m., when the great church, packed to its doors by a vast throng, was wrapped in almost total darkness. Under the dome stood a catafalque bearing a gilt coffin. This open coffin contained a strip of silk, on which was painted an effigy of the dead Christ, for it will be remembered that no carved or graven image is allowed in a church of the Eastern rite. There was an arrangement by which a species of blind could be drawn over the painted figure, thus concealing it. As the eye grew accustomed to the shadows, tens of thousands of unlighted candles, outlining the arches, cornices, and other architectural features of the cathedral, were just visible. These candles each had their wick touched with kerosine and then surrounded with a thread of guncotton, which ran continuously from candle to candle right round the building. When the hanging end of the thread of gun-cotton was lighted, the flame ran swiftly round the church, kindling each candle in turn; a very fascinating sight. At half-past eleven, the only light was from the candles surrounding the bier, where black-robed priests were chanting the mournful Russian Office for the Dead. At about twenty minutes to twelve the blind was drawn over the dead Christ, and the priests, feigning surprise, advanced to the rails of the ikonostas, and announced to an Archimandrite that the coffin was empty. The Archimandrite ordered them to search round the church, and the priests perambulated the church with gilt lanterns, during which time the catafalque, bier, and its accessories were all removed. The priests announced to the Archimandrite that their search had been unsuccessful, whereupon he ordered them to make a further search outside the church. They went out, and so timed their return as to arrive before the ikonostas at three minutes before midnight. They again reported that they had been unsuccessful; when, as the first stroke of midnight pealed from the great clock, the Metropolitan of Petrograd announced in a loud voice, "Christ is risen!" At an electric signal given from the cathedral, the great guns of the fortress boomed out in a salute of one hundred and one guns; the gun-cotton was touched off, and the swift flash kindled the tens of thousands of candles running round the building; the enormous congregation lit the tapers they carried; the "Royal doors" of the ikonostas were thrown open, and the clergy appeared in their festival vestments of cloth of gold, as the choir burst into the beautiful Russian Easter anthem, and so the Easter Mass began. Nothing more poignantly dramatic, more magnificently impressive, could possibly be imagined than this almost instantaneous change from intense gloom to blazing light; from the plaintive dirges of the Funeral Service to the jubilant strains of the Easter Mass. I never tired of witnessing this splendid piece of symbolism.
It sounds almost irreverent to talk of comical incidents in connection with so solemn an occasion, but there are two little episodes I must mention. About 1880 the first tentative efforts were made by France to establish a Franco-Russian alliance. Ideas on the subject were very nebulous at first, but slowly they began to crystallise into concrete shape. A new French Ambassador was appointed to Petrograd in the hope of fanning the faint spark into further life. He, wishing to show his sympathy for the nation amie, attended the Easter Mass at St. Isaac's, but unfortunately he was quite unversed in the ritual of the Orthodox Church. In every ikonostas there are two ikons on either side of the "Royal doors"; the Saviour on one side, the Madonna and Child on the other. The new Ambassador was standing in front of the ikon of the Saviour, and in the course of the Mass the Metropolitan came out, and made the three prescribed low bows before the ikon, previous to censing it. The Ambassador, taking this as a personal compliment to France, as represented in his own person, acknowledged the attention with three equally low bows, laying his hand on his heart and ejaculating with all the innate politeness of his nation, "Monsieur! Monsieur! Monsieur!" This little incident caused much amusement, as did a newly-arrived German diplomat, who when greeted by a Russian friend with the customary Easter salutation of "Christ is risen!" ("Kristos voskress!") wished to respond, but, being ignorant of the traditional answer, "He is verily risen," merely made a low bow and said, "Ich auch," which may be vulgarly Englished into "The same here."
The universal Easter suppers at the conclusion of the Mass play an important part in Russian life, for they mean the breaking of the long and rigorous Lenten fast of the Eastern Church, during which all meat, butter, milk, and eggs are prohibited. The peasants adhere rigidly to these rules, so the Easter supper assumes great importance in their eyes. The ingredients of this supper are invariable for high and low, for rich and poor—cold ham, hard-boiled eggs dyed red, a sort of light cake akin to the French brioche, and a sour cream-cheese shaped into a pyramid and decorated with little crosses of dried currants. I think that this cake and cream cheese (known as "Paskva") are prepared only at Easter-time. Even at the Yacht Club during Holy Week, meat, butter, milk, and eggs were prohibited, and still Armand, our incomparable French chef, managed to produce plats of the most succulent description. Loud praises were lavished upon his skill in preparing such excellent dishes out of oil, fish, flour, and vegetables, the only materials allowed him. I met Armand in the passage one day and asked him how he managed to do it. Looking round to see that no Russians could overhear, Armand replied with a wink, "Voyez-vous Monsieur, le bon Dieu ne regarde pas d'aussi près." Of course he had gone on using cream, butter, and eggs, just as usual, but as the members of the Club did not know this, and thought that they were strictly obeying the rules of their Church, I imagine that no blame could attach to them.
On Easter Eve the two-mile-long Nevsky Perspective was lined with humble folks standing by white napkins on which the materials for their Easter supper were arranged. On every napkin glimmered a lighted taper, and the long line of these twinkling lights produced a very charming effect, as of myriads of glow-worms. Priests would pass swiftly down the line, each attended by an acolyte carrying a pail of holy water. The priest would mutter a rapid blessing, sprinkle the food and its owner with holy water, pocket an infinitesimally small fee, and pass on again.
A friend of mine was once down in the fruit-growing districts of the Crimea. Passing through one of the villages of that pleasing peninsula, he found it decorated in honour of a religious festival. The village priest was going to bless the first-fruits of the orchards. The peasants stood in a row down the village street, each one with the first crop of his orchard arranged on a clean napkin before him. The red-bearded priest, quite a young man, passed down the street, sprinkling fruit and grower alike with holy water, and repeating a blessing to each one. The young priest approached, and my friend could hear quite plainly the words of his blessing. No. —— it was quite impossible! It was incredible! and yet he could not doubt the evidence of his own ears! The young priest was speaking in good Scots, and the words of the blessing he bestowed on each parishioner were, "Here, man! tak' it. If it does ye nae guid, it canna possibly dae ye any hairm." The men addressed, probably taking this for a quotation from Scripture in some unknown tongue, bowed reverently as the words were pronounced over them. That a Russian village priest in a remote district of the Crimea should talk broad Scots was a sufficiently unusual circumstance to cause my friend to make some further inquiries. It then appeared that when the Government dockyard at Sebastopol was reopened, several Scottish foremen from the Clyde shipbuilding yards were imported to supervise the Russian workmen. Amongst others came a Glasgow foreman with his wife and a son who was destined for the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland. Once arrived in Russia, they found that facilities for training a youth for the Presbyterian ministry were somewhat lacking in Sebastopol. Sooner than sacrifice their dearest wish, the parents, with commendable broadmindedness, decided that their offspring should enter the Russian Church. He was accordingly sent to a seminary and in due course was ordained a priest and appointed to a parish, but he apparently still retained his Scottish speech and his characteristically Scottish independence of view.
After a year in Petrograd I used to attempt to analyse to myself the complex Russian character. "We are a 'jelly-folk,'" had said one of my friends to me. The Russian term was "Kiselnui narod," and I think there is truth in that. They are an invertebrate folk. I cannot help thinking that Peter the Great was one of the worst enemies of his own country. Instead of allowing Russia to develop naturally on lines suited to the racial instincts of her people, he attempted to run the whole country into a West European mould, and to superimpose upon it a veneer imported from the France of Louis Quatorze. With the very few this could perhaps succeed, with the many it was a foregone failure. He tried in one short lifetime to do what it had taken other countries centuries to accomplish. He built a vast and imposing edifice on shifting sand, without any foundations. It might stand for a time; its ultimate doom was certain.
From the windows of our Embassy we looked upon the broad Neva. When fast bound in the grip of winter, sledge-roads were made across the ice, bordered with lamp-posts and marked out with sawn-off fir trees. Little wooden taverns and tea-houses were built on the river, and as soon as the ice was of sufficient thickness the tramcar lines were laid across it. A colony of Laps came yearly and encamped on the river with their reindeer, for the temperature of Petrograd rarely falling more than ten degrees below zero, it was looked upon as a genial winter climate for invalids from Lapland. A stranger from another planet might have imagined that these buildings were permanent, that the fir trees were really growing, and that all the life on the frozen river would last indefinitely. Everyone knew, though, with absolute certainty that by the middle of April the ice would break up, and that these little houses, if not removed in time, would be carried away and engulfed in the liberated stream. By May the river would be running again as freely as though these temporary edifices had never been built on it.
I think these houses built on the ice were very typical of Russia.
CHAPTER IV
The Winter Palace—Its interior—Alexander II—A Russian Court Ball—The "Bals des Palmiers"—The Empress—The blessing of the Neva—Some curiosities of the Winter Palace—The great Orloff diamond—My friend the Lady-in-Waiting—Sugared Compensations—The attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880—Some unexpected finds in the Palace—A most hilarious funeral—Sporting expeditions—Night drives through the forest in mid-winter—Wolves—A typical Russian village—A peasant's house—"Deaf and dumb people"—The inquisitive peasant youth—Curiosity about strangers—An embarrassing situation—A still more awkward one—Food difficulties—A bear hunt—My first bear—Alcoholic consequences—My liking for the Russian peasant—The beneficent india-rubber Ikon—Two curious sporting incidents—Village habits—The great gulf fixed between Russian nobility and peasants.
The Winter Palace drags its lengthy, uninteresting façade for some five hundred feet along the quays of the Neva. It presents a mere wearisome iteration of the same architectural features repeated again and again, and any effect it might produce is marred by the hideous shade of that crude red, called by the Russians "raspberry colour," with which it is daubed, and for which they have so misplaced an affection.
The interior of the Winter Palace was burned out in 1837, and only a few of the original State rooms survive. These surviving rooms are the only ones of any artistic interest, as the other innumerable and stupendous halls were all reconstructed during the "period of bad taste," and bear ample witness to that fact in every detail of their ornamentation.
The Ambassadors' staircase, part of the original building, is very dignified and imposing with its groups of statuary, painted ceiling, and lavish decoration, as is Peter the Great's Throne room, with jasper columns, and walls hung with red velvet worked in gold with great Russian two-headed eagles. All the tables, chairs, and chandeliers in this room were of solid silver.
St. George's Hall, another of the old rooms, I thought splendid, with its pure white marble walls and columns and rich adornments of gilt bronze, and there was also an agreeably barbaric hall with entirely gilt columns, many banners, and gigantic effigies of ancient Russian warriors. All these rooms were full of collections of the gold and silver-gilt trays on which the symbolical "bread and salt" had been offered to different Emperors in the various towns of their dominions.
The fifty or so other modern rooms were only remarkable for their immense size, the Nicholas Hall, for instance, being 200 feet long and 65 feet wide, though the so-called "Golden Hall" positively dazzled one with its acre or so of gilding. It would have been a happy idea for the Emperor to assemble all the leading financiers of Europe to dine together in the "Golden Hall." The sight of so much of the metal which they had spent their whole lives in amassing would have gratified the financiers, and would probably have stimulated them to fresh exertions.
The Emperor Alexander II always received the diplomats in Peter the Great's Throne room, seated on Peter's throne. He was a wonderfully handsome man even in his old age, with a most commanding manner, and an air of freezing hauteur. When addressing junior members of the Diplomatic Body there was something in his voice and a look in his eye reminiscent of the Great Mogul addressing an earthworm.
I have only seen three Sovereigns who looked their parts quite unmistakably: Alexander II of Russia, William I of Germany, and Queen Victoria. In Queen Victoria's case it was the more remarkable, as she was very short. Yet this little old lady in her plain dress, had the most inimitable dignity, and no one could have mistaken her for anything but a Queen. I remember Queen Victoria attending a concert at the Albert Hall in 1887, two months before the Jubilee celebrations. The vast building was packed to the roof, and the Queen received a tremendous ovation. No one who saw it can ever forget how the little old lady advanced to the front of her box and made two very low sweeping curtsies to the right and to the left of her with incomparable dignity and grace, as she smiled through her tears on the audience in acknowledgment of the thunders of applause that greeted her. Queen Victoria was always moved to tears when she received an unusually cordial ovation from her people, for they loved her, and she loved them.
The scale of everything in the Winter Palace was so vast that it is difficult to compare the Court entertainments there with those elsewhere.
Certainly the Russian ladies looked well in their uniform costumes. The cut, shape, and style of these dresses never varied, be the fashions what they might. The dress, once made, lasted the owner for her lifetime, though with advancing years it might possibly require to be readjusted to an expanding figure. They were enormously expensive to start with—anything from £300 to £1,200. There was a complete under-dress of white satin, heavily embroidered. Over this was worn a velvet dress lavishly trimmed with dark fur. This velvet dress might be of dull red, dark blue, green, or brown, according to the taste of the wearer. It had to have a long train embroidered with gold or silver flowers, or both mixed, as the owner's fancy dictated. On the head was worn the "Kakoshnik," the traditional Russian head-dress, in the form of a crescent. In the case of married women the "Kakoshnik" might be of diamonds, or any gems they fancied, or could compass; for girls the "Kakoshnik" must be of white silk. Girls, too, had to wear white, without the velvet over-dress. The usual fault of Russian faces is their undue breadth across the cheek-bones, and the white "Kakoshnik" worn by the unmarried girls seemed to me to emphasize this defect, whereas a blazing semicircle of diamonds made a most becoming setting for an older face, although at times, as in other cases, the setting might be more ornamental than the object it enshrined. Though the Russian uniforms were mostly copied from German models, the national lack of attention to detail was probably to blame for the lack of effect they produced when compared with their Prussian originals.
There was always something a little slovenly in the way in which the Russian uniforms were worn, though an exception must be made in the case of the resplendent "Chevaliers Gardes," and of the "Gardes à Cheval." The uniforms of these two crack cavalry regiments was closely copied from that of the Prussian "Gardes du Corps" and was akin to that of our own Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards; the same leather breeches and long jack-boots, and the same cuirasses; the tunics, though were white, instead of the scarlet or blue of their English prototypes. The "Chevaliers Gardes" had silvered cuirasses and helmets surmounted with the Russian eagle, whereas those of the "Gardes à Cheval" were gilt. As we know, "all that glitters is not gold," and in spite of their gilding the "Gardes à Cheval" were considered very inferior socially to their rivals. The Emperor's fiercely-moustached Circassian bodyguard struck an agreeably exotic note with their grass-green trousers and long blue kaftans, covered with rows of Persian cartridge-holders in niello of black and silver. Others of the Circassians wore coats of chain mail over their kaftans, and these kaftans were always sleeveless, showing the bright green, red, or blue silk shirtsleeves of their wearers. Another pleasant barbaric touch.
To my mind, the smartest uniforms were those of the Cossack officers; baggy green knickerbockers thrust into high boots, a hooked-and-eyed green tunic without a single button or a scrap of gold lace on it, and a plain white silk belt. No one could complain of a lack of colour at a Petrograd Palace ball. The Russian civil and Court uniforms were ingeniously hideous with their white trousers and long frock-coats covered with broad transverse bars of gold lace. The wearers of these ugly garments always looked to me like walking embodiments of what are known in commercial circles as "gilt-edged securities." As at Berlin, there were hosts of pages at these entertainments. These lads were all attired like miniature "Chevalier Gardes," in leather breeches and jack-boots, and wore gold-laced green tunics; a singularly unpractical dress, I should have thought, for a growing boy. All Russians of a certain social position were expected to send their sons to be educated at the "School for Imperial Pages," which was housed in an immense and ornate building and counted four hundred pupils. Wise parents mistrusted the education "aux pages" for their sons, knowing that, however little else they might learn there, they would be certain to acquire habits of gross extravagance; the prominence, too, into which these boys were thrust at Court functions tended to make them unduly precocious.
The smaller Court balls were known as "Les Bals des Palmiers." On these occasions, a hundred large palm trees, specially grown for the purpose at Tsarskoe Selo, were brought by road from there in huge vans. Round the palm in its tub supper tables were built, each one accommodating fifteen people. It was really an extraordinarily pretty sight seeing these rows of broad-fronted palms down the great Nicholas Hall, and the knowledge that a few feet away there was an outside temperature of 5° below zero added piquancy to the sight of these exiles from the tropics waving their green plumes so far away in the frozen North. At the "Bals des Palmiers" it was Alexander II's custom to make the round of the tables as soon as his guests were seated. The Emperor would go up to a table, the occupants of which of course all rose at his approach, say a few words to one or two of them, and then eat either a small piece of bread or a little fruit, and just put his lips to a glass of champagne, in order that his guests might say that he had eaten and drank with them. A delicate and graceful attention!
As electric light had not then been introduced into the palace, the entire building was lighted with wax candles. I cannot remember the number I was told was required on these occasions, but I think it was over one hundred thousand. The candles were all lighted with a thread of gun-cotton, as in St. Isaac's Cathedral.
The Empress appeared but very rarely. It was a matter of common knowledge that she was suffering from an incurable disease. All the rooms in which she lived were artificially impregnated with oxygen, continuously released from cylinders in which the gas had been compressed. This, though it relieved the lungs of the sufferer, proved very trying to the Empress's ladies-in-waiting, as this artificial atmosphere with its excess of oxygen after an hour or so gave them all violent headaches and attacks of giddiness.
In spite of the characteristic Russian carelessness about details, these Petrograd Palace entertainments provided a splendid glittering pageant to the eye, for the stage was so vast and the number of performers so great. There was not the same blaze of diamonds as in London, but I should say that the individual jewels were far finer. A stone must be very perfect to satisfy the critical Russian eye, and, true to their Oriental blood, the ladies preferred unfaceted rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Occasional Emirs from Central Asia served, as do the Indian princes at Buckingham Palace, as a reminder that Russia's responsibilities, like those of Great Britain, did not cease with her European frontiers.
Once a year the diplomats had much the best of the situation. This was at the blessing of the waters of the Neva—"the Jordan," as Russians called it—on January 6, old style, or January 18, according to our reckoning. We saw the ceremonies through the double windows of the great steam-heated Nicholas Hall, whereas the Emperor and all the Grand Dukes had to stand bareheaded in the snow outside. A great hole was cut in the ice of the Neva, with a temporary chapel erected over it. At the conclusion of the religious service, the Metropolitan of Petrograd solemnly blessed the waters of the river, and dipped a great golden cross into them.
A cordon of soldiers had to guard the opening in the ice until it froze over again, in order to prevent fanatical peasants from bathing in the newly-consecrated waters. Many had lost their lives in this way.
A friend of mine, the Director of the Hermitage Gallery, offered to take me all over the Winter Palace, and the visit occupied nearly an entire day. The maze of rooms was so endless that the mind got a little bewildered and surfeited with the sight of so many splendours. A detail that amused me was a small library on the second floor, opening on to an avenue of lime trees. One of the Empresses had chosen for her private library this room on the second floor, looking into a courtyard. She had selected it on account of its quiet, but expressed a wish to have an avenue of trees, under which to walk in the intervals of her studies. The room being on the second floor, and looking into a yard, the wish appeared to be difficult to execute, but in those days the word "impossible" did not exist for an Empress of Russia. The entire courtyard was filled in with earth, and full-grown lime trees transplanted there. When I saw this aerial grove eighty years afterwards, there was quite a respectable avenue of limes on the second floor of the building, with a gravel walk bordered by grass-plots beneath them. Another Empress wished to have a place to walk in during the winter months, so a very ingenious hanging winter-garden was contrived for her, following all the exterior angles of the building. It was not in the least like an ordinary conservatory, but really did recall an outdoor garden. There were gravel walks, and lawns of lycopodium simulating grass; there were growing orange trees, and quite large palms. For some reason the creepers on the walls of this pseudo-garden were all artificial, being very cleverly made out of painted sheet-iron.
I had an opportunity later of seeing the entire Winter Palace collection of silver plate, and all the Crown jewels, when they were arranged for the inspection of the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was good enough to invite me to come. There were enormous quantities of plate, of Russian, French, and English make, sufficient to stock every silversmith's shop in London. Some of the English plate was of William and Mary's and Queen Anne's date, and there were some fine early Georgian pieces. They, would, I confess, have appeared to greater advantage had they conveyed the idea that they had been occasionally cleaned. As it was, they looked like dull pewter that had been neglected for twenty years. Of the jewels, the only things I remember were a superb "corsage" of diamonds and aquamarines—not the pale green stones we associate with the name, but immense stones of that bright blue tint, so highly prized in Russia—and especially the great Orloff diamond. The "corsage" was big enough to make a very ample cuirass for the most stalwart of lifeguardsmen, and the Orloff diamond formed the head of the Russian Imperial sceptre. The history of the Orloff, or Lazareff, diamond is quite interesting. Though by no means the largest, it is considered the most perfect diamond in the world, albeit it has a slight flaw in it. Originally stolen from India, it came into the hands of an Armenian called Lazareff in some unknown manner about A.D. 1750. Lazareff, so the story goes, devised a novel hiding-place for the great stone. Making a deep incision into the calf of his leg, he placed the diamond in the cavity, and lay in bed for three months till the wound was completely healed over. He then started for Amsterdam, and though stripped and searched several times during his journey, for he was strongly suspected of having the stone concealed about his person, its hiding-place was never discovered. At Amsterdam Lazareff had the wound reopened by a surgeon, and the diamond extracted. He then sold it to Count Orloff for 450,000 roubles, or roughly £45,000, and Orloff in his turn made a present of the great stone to Catherine the Great. The diamond is set under a jewelled Russian eagle at the extremity of the sceptre, where it probably shows to greater advantage than it did when concealed for six months in the calf of an Armenian's leg.
The accommodation provided for the suites of the Imperial family is hardly on a par with the magnificence of the rest of the palace. The Duchess of Edinburgh, daughter of Alexander II, made a yearly visit to Petrograd, as long as her mother the Empress was alive. As the Duchess's lady-in-waiting happened to be one of my oldest friends, during her stay I was at the palace at least three days a week, and I retain vivid recollections of the dreary, bare, whitewashed vault assigned to her as a sitting-room. The only redeeming feature of this room was a five-storied glass tray packed with some fifty varieties of the most delicious bon-bons the mind of man could conceive. These were all fresh-baked every day by the palace confectioner, and the tray was renewed every morning. There were some sixty of these trays prepared daily, and their arrangement was always absolutely identical, precisely the same number of caramels and fondants being placed on each shelf of the tray. Everyone knew that the palace confectioner owned a fashionable sweet shop on the Nevsky, where he traded under a French name, and I imagine that his shop was entirely stocked from the remains of the palace trays.
In the spring of 1880 an attempt was made on Alexander's II's life by a bomb which completely wrecked the white marble private dining-room. The Emperor's dinner hour was 7, and the bomb was timed to explode at 7.20 p.m. The Emperor happened at the time to be overwhelmed with work, and at the last moment he postponed dinner until 7.30. The bomb exploded at the minute it had been timed for, killing many of the servants. My poor friend the lady-in-waiting was passing along the corridor as the explosion occurred. She fell unhurt amongst the wreckage, but the shock and the sight of the horribly mangled bodies of the servants were too much for her. She never recovered from their effects, and died in England within a year. After this crime, the Winter Palace was thoroughly searched from cellars to attics, and some curious discoveries were made.
Some of the countless moujiks employed in the palace had vast unauthorized colonies of their relatives living with them on the top floor of the building. In one bedroom a full-grown cow was found, placidly chewing the cud. One of the moujiks had smuggled it in as a new-born calf, had brought it up by hand, and afterwards fed it on hay purloined from the stables. Though it may have kept his family well provided with milk, stabling a cow in a bedroom unprovided with proper drainage, on the top floor of a building, is not a proceeding to be unduly encouraged; nor does it tend to add to the sanitary amenities of a palace.
Russians are fond of calling the Nevsky "the street of toleration," for within a third of a mile of its length a Dutch Calvinist, a German Lutheran, a Roman Catholic, and an Armenian church rise almost side by side. "Nevsky" is, of course, only the adjective of "Neva," and the street is termed "Perspective" in French and "Prospect" in Russian.
Close to the Armenian church lived M. Delyanoff, who was the Minister of Education in those days. Both M. and Madame Delyanoff were exceedingly hospitable and kind to the Diplomatic Body, so, when M. Delyanoff died, most of the diplomats attended his funeral, appearing, according to Russian custom, in full uniform. The Delyanoffs being Armenians, the funeral took place in the Armenian church, and none of us had had any previous experience of the extraordinary noises which pass for singing amongst Armenians. When six individuals appeared and began bleating like sheep, and followed this by an excellent imitation of hungry wolves howling, it was too much for us. We hastily composed our features into the decorum the occasion demanded, amid furtive little snorts of semi-suppressed laughter. After three grey-bearded priests had stepped from behind the ikonostas, and, putting their chins up in the air, proceeded to yelp together in unison, exactly like dogs baying the moon, the entire Corps Diplomatique broke down utterly. Never have I seen men laugh so unrestrainedly. As we had each been given a large lighted candle, the movements of our swaying bodies were communicated to the tapers, and showers of melted wax began flying in all directions. With the prudence of the land of my birth, I placed myself against a pillar, so as to have no one behind me, but each time the three grey-beards recommenced their comical howling, I must have scattered perfect Niagaras of wax on to the embroidered coat-tails and extensive back of the Swedish Minister in front of me. I should think that I must have expended the combined labours of several hives of bees on his garments, congratulating myself the while that that genial personage, not being a peacock, did not enjoy the advantage of having eyes in his tail. The Swedish Minister, M. Dué, his massive frame quivering with laughter, was meanwhile engaged in performing a like kindly office on to the back of his Roumanian colleague, Prince Ghika, who in his turn was anointing the uniform of M. van der Hooven, the Netherlands Minister. Providentially, the Delyanoff family were all grouped together before the altar, and the farmyard imitations of the Armenian choir so effectually drowned our unseemly merriment that any faint echoes which reached the family were ascribed by them to our very natural emotions in the circumstances. I heard, indeed, afterwards that the family were much touched by our attendance and by our sympathetic behaviour, but never, before or since, have I attended so hilarious a funeral.
Lord Dufferin, in common with most of the members of the Embassy, was filled with an intense desire to kill a bear. These animals, of course, hibernate, and certain peasants made a regular livelihood by discovering bears' lairs (the Russian term, a corruption from the German, is "bear-loge") and then coming to Petrograd and selling the beast at so much per "pood" of forty Russian pounds. The finder undertook to provide sledges and beaters for the sum agreed upon, but nothing was to be paid unless a shot at the bear was obtained. These expeditions involved a considerable amount of discomfort. There was invariably a long drive of from forty to eighty miles to be made in rough country sledges from the nearest available railway station; the accommodation in a peasant's house would consist of the bare floor with some hay laid on it, and every scrap of food, including bread, butter, tea, and sugar, would have to be carried from Petrograd, as European stomachs could not assimilate the sour, wet heavy black bread the peasants eat, and their brick-tea, which contained bullocks' blood, was undrinkable to those unaccustomed to it. It usually fell to my lot, as I spoke the language, to go on ahead to the particular village to which we were bound, and there to make the best arrangements possible for Lord and Lady Dufferin's comfort. My instructions were always to endeavour to get a room in the latest house built, as this was likely to be less infested with vermin than the others. After a four or five hours' run from Petrograd by train, one would find the vendor of the bear waiting at the station with a country sledge. These sledges were merely a few poles tied together, mounted on iron-shod wooden runners, and filled with hay. The sledges were so long that it was possible to lie at full length in them. The rifles, baggage, and food being packed under the hay, one lay down at full length, clad in long felt boots and heavy furs, an air-cushion under one's head, and a Persian "bashilik," or hood of fine camel's hair, drawn over it to prevent ears or nose from being frostbitten. Tucked into a thick fur rug, one composed oneself for an all-night drive through the endless forests. The two drivers sat on a plank in front, and one or other of them was continually dropping off to sleep, and tumbling backwards on to the occupants of the sledge. It was not a very comfortable experience, and sleep was very fickle to woo. In the first place, the sledge-tracks through the forest were very rough indeed, and the jolting was incessant; in the second place, should the actual driver go to sleep as well as his relieving colleague, the sledge would bump against the tree-trunks and overturn, and baggage, rifles and occupants would find themselves struggling in the deep snow. I always tied my baggage together with strings, so as to avoid losing anything in these upsets, but even then it took a considerable time retrieving the impedimenta from the deep snowdrifts.
It always gave me pleasure watching the black conical points of the fir trees outlined against the pale burnished steel of the sky, and in the intense cold the stars blazed like diamonds out of the clear grey vault above. The biting cold burnt like a hot iron against the cheeks, until prudence, and a regard for the preservation of one's ears, dictated the pulling of the "bashilik" over one's face again. The intense stillness, and the absolute silence, for there are no sleigh-bells in Northern Russia, except in the imagination of novelists, had some subtle attraction for me. The silence was occasionally—very occasionally only—broken by an ominous, long-drawn howl; then a spectral swift-trotting outline would appear, keeping pace easily with the sledge, but half-hidden amongst the tree-trunks. In that case the smooth-bore gun and the buckshot cartridges were quickly disinterred from the hay, and the driver urged his horses into a furious gallop. There was no need to use the whip; the horses knew. Everyone would give a sigh of relief as the silent grey swift-moving spectral figure, with its fox-like lope, vanished after a shot or two had been fired at it. The drivers would take off their caps and cross themselves, muttering "Thanks be to God! Oh! those cursed wolves!" and the horses slowed down of their own accord into an easy amble. There were compensations for a sleepless night in the beauty of the pictures in strong black and white, or in shadowy half-tones of grey which the endless forest displayed at every turn. When the earth is wrapped in its snow-mantle, it is never dark, and the gleams of light from the white carpet down the long-drawn aisles of the dark firs were like the pillared shadows of a great cathedral when the dusk is filling it with mystery and a vague sense of immense size.
All villages that I have seen in Northern Russia are alike, and when you have seen one peasant's house you have seen all.
The village consists of one long street, and in the winter the kindly snow covers much of its unspeakable untidiness. The "isbas," or wooden houses, are all of the same pattern; they are solidly built of rough logs, the projecting ends firmly morticed into each other. Their gable ends all front the street, each with two windows, and every "isba" has its courtyard, where the door is situated. There are no gardens, or attempts at gardens, and the houses are one and all roofed with grey shingles. Each house is raised some six feet from the ground, and they are all water-tight, and most of them air-tight as well. The houses are never painted, and their weathered logs stand out silver-grey against the white background. A good deal of imagination is shown in the fret-saw carving of the barg-boards, which are either ornamented in conventional patterns, or have roughly outlined grotesque animals clambering up their angles; very often too there are fretsaw ornaments round the window-frames as well. Prominent on the gate of every "isba" is the painting, in black on a white ground, of the particular implement each occupant is bound to supply in case of a fire, that dire and relentless foe to Russian wooden-built villages. On some houses a ladder will be depicted; on others an axe or a pail. The interior arrangement of every "isba" I have ever seen is also identical. They always consist of two fair-sized rooms; the "hot room," which the family inhabit in winter, facing the street; the "cold room," used only in summertime, looking into the courtyard. These houses are not uncomfortable, though, a Russian peasant's wants being but few, they are not overburdened with furniture. The disposition of the "hot room" is unvarying. Supposing it facing due south, the door will be in the north-west corner. The north-east corner is occupied by an immense brick stove, filling up one-eighth of the floor-space. These stoves are about five feet high, and their tops are covered with loose sheepskins. Here the entire family sleep in the stifling heat, their resting-place being shared with thousands of voracious, crawling, uninvited guests. In the south-east corner is the ikon shelf, where the family ikons are ranged in line, with a red lamp burning before them. There will be a table and benches in another corner, and a rough dresser, with a samovar, and a collection of those wooden bowls and receptacles, lacquered in scarlet, black, and gold, which Russian peasants make so beautifully; and that is all. The temperature of the "hot room" is overpowering, and the atmosphere fetid beyond the power of description. Every male, on entering takes off his cap and makes a bow before the ikons. I always conformed to this custom, for there is no use in gratuitously wounding people's religious susceptibilities. I invariably slept in the "cold room," for its temperature being probably five or six degrees below freezing point, it was free from vermin, and the atmosphere was purer. The master of the house laid a few armfuls of hay on the floor, and his wife would produce one of those towels Russian women embroider so skilfully in red and blue, and lay it down for the cheek to rest against. I slept in my clothes, with long felt boots on, and my furs thrown over me, and I could sleep there as well as in any bed.
The Russian peasant's idea as to the relation of Holy Russia to the rest of the world is curious. It is rather the point of view of the Chinaman, who thinks that beyond the confines of the "Middle Kingdom" there is only outer barbarism. Everything to the west of Russia is known as "Germania," an intelligible mistake enough when it is remembered that Germany marks Russia's Western frontier. "Slavs" (akin, I think, to "Slova," "a word") are the only people who can talk; "Germania" is inhabited by deaf and dumb people ("nyémski") who can only make inarticulate noises. On one of my shooting expeditions, I stopped for an hour at a tea-house to change horses and to get warmed up. The proprietor told me that his son was very much excited at hearing that there was a "deaf and dumb man" in the house, as he had never seen one. Would I speak to the young man. who was then putting on his Sunday clothes on the chance of the interview being granted?
In due course the son appeared; a handsome youth in glorified peasant's costume. The first outward sign of a Russian peasant's rise in the social scale is that he tucks his shirt into his trousers, instead of wearing it outside; the second stage is marked by his wearing his trousers over his boots, instead of thrusting the trousers into the boots. This young fellow had not reached this point of evolution, and wore his shirt outside, but it was a dark-blue silk shirt, secured by a girdle of rainbow-coloured Persian silk. He still wore his long boots outside too, but they had scarlet morocco tops, and the legs of them were elaborately embroidered with gold wire. In modern parlance, this gay young spark was a terrific village "nut." Never have I met a youth of such insatiable curiosity, or one so crassly and densely ignorant. He was one perpetual note of interrogation. "Were there roads and villages in Germania?" To the best of my belief there were. "There were no towns though as large as Petrograd." I rather fancied the contrary, and instanced a flourishing little community of some five million souls, situated on an island, with which I was very well acquainted.
The youth eyed me with deep suspicion. "Were there railways in Germania?" Only about a hundred times the mileage of the Russian railways. "There was no electric light though, because Jablochkoff, a Russian, had invented that." (I found this a fixed idea with all Russian peasants.) I had a vague impression of having seen one or two arc lights feebly glimmering in the streets of the benighted cities of Germania. "Could people read and write there, and could they really talk? It was easy to see that I had learned to talk since I had been in Russia." I showed him a copy of the London Times. "These were not real letters. Could anyone read these meaningless signs," and so on ad infinitum. I am persuaded that when I left that youth he was convinced that I was the nearest relative to Ananias that he had ever met.
No matter which hour of the twenty-four it might happen to be, ten minutes after my arrival in any of these remote villages the entire population assembled to gaze at the "nyemetz," the deaf and dumb man from remote "Germania," who had arrived in their midst. They crowded into the "hot room," men, women, and children, and gaped on the mysterious stranger from another world, who sat there drinking tea, as we should gaze on a visitor from Mars. I always carried with me on those occasions a small collapsible india-rubber bath and a rubber folding basin. On my first expedition, after my arrival in the village, I procured a bucket of hot water from the mistress of the house, carried it to the "cold room," and, having removed all my garments, proceeded to take a bath. Like wildfire the news spread through the village that the "deaf and dumb" man was washing himself, and they all flocked in to look. I succeeded in "shooing" away the first arrivals, but they returned with reinforcements, until half the population, men, women, and children, were standing in serried rows in my room, following my every movement with breathless interest. I have never suffered from agoraphobia, so I proceeded cheerfully with my ablutions. "Look at him! He is soaping himself!" would be murmured. "How dirty deaf and dumb people must be to want such a lot of washing!" "Why does he rub his teeth with little brushes?" These and similar observations fell from the eager crowd, only broken occasionally by a piercing yell from a child, as she wailed plaintively the Russian equivalent of "Mummy! Sonia not like ugly man!" It was distinctly an embarrassing situation, and only once in my life have I been placed in a more awkward position.
That was at Bahia, in Brazil, when I was at the Rio de Janeiro Legation. I went to call on the British Consul's wife there, and had to walk half a mile from the tram, through the gorgeous tropical vegetation of the charming suburb of Vittoria, amongst villas faced with cool-looking blue and white tiles; the pretty "azulejos" which the Portuguese adopted from the Moors. Oddly enough, a tram and a tramcar are always called "a Bond" in Brazil. The first tram-lines were built out of bonds guaranteed by the State. The people took this to mean the tram itself; so "Bond" it is, and "Bond" it will remain. Being the height of a sweltering Brazilian summer, I was clad in white from head to foot. Suddenly, as happens in the tropics, without any warning whatever, the heavens opened, and solid sheets of water fell on the earth. I reached the Consul's house with my clean white linen soaked through, and most woefully bedraggled. The West Indian butler (an old acquaintance) who opened the door informed me that the ladies were out. After a glance at my extraordinary disreputable garments, he added, "You gib me dem clothes, sar, I hab dem all cleaned and ironed in ten minutes, before de ladies come back." On the assurances of this swarthy servitor that he and I were the only souls in the house, I divested myself of every stitch of clothing, and going into the drawing-room, sat down to read a book in precisely the same attire as Adam adopted in the earlier days of his married life. Time went by, and my clothes did not reappear; I should have known that to a Jamaican coloured man measures of time are very elastic. Suddenly I heard voices, and, to my horror, I saw our Consul's wife approaching through the garden with her two daughters and some other ladies.
There was not a moment to lose! In that tropical drawing-room the only available scrap of drapery was a red plush table-cover. Bundling everything on the table ruthlessly to the ground, I had just time to snatch up the table-cloth and drape myself in it (I trust gracefully) when the ladies entered the room. I explained my predicament and lamented my inability to rise, and so we had tea together. It is the only occasion in the course of a long life in which I ever remember taking tea with six ladies, clad only in a red plush table-cloth with bead fringes.
Returning to Russia, the peasants fingered everything I possessed with the insatiable curiosity of children; socks, ties, and shirts. I am bound to say that I never had the smallest thing stolen. As our shooting expeditions were always during Lent, I felt great compunction at shocking the peasants' religious scruples by eating beef, ham, and butter, all forbidden things at that season. I tried hard to persuade one woman that my cold sirloin of roast beef was part of a rare English fish, specially imported, but she was, I fear, of a naturally sceptical bent of mind.
Lady Dufferin had one curious gift. She could spend the night in a rough country sledge, or sleep in her clothes on a truss of hay, and yet appear in the morning as fresh and neat, and spick and span, as though she had had the most elaborate toilet appliances at her disposal. On these occasions she usually wore a Canadian blanket-suit of dark blue and scarlet, with a scarlet belt and hood, and a jaunty little sealskin cap. She always went out to the forest with us.
The procedure on these occasions was invariably the same. An army of beaters was assembled, about two-thirds of them women. This made me uneasy at first, until I learnt that the beaters run no danger whatever from the bear. The beaters form five-sixths, or perhaps less, of a circle round the bear's sleeping place, and the guns are placed in the intervening open space. I may add that, personally, I always used for bear an ordinary smooth-bore sporting gun, with a leaden bullet. I passed every one of these bullets down the barrels of my gun myself to avoid the risk of the gun bursting, before they were loaded into cartridges, and I had them secured with melted tallow. The advantages of a smooth-bore is that at close quarters, as with bear, where you must kill your beast to avoid disagreeable consequences, you lose no time in getting your sights on a rapidly-moving object. You shoot as you would a rabbit; and you can make absolutely sure of your animal, if you keep your head. A leaden bullet at close quarters has tremendous stopping power. Of course you want a rifle as well for longer shots. I found this method most successful with tiger, later in India, only you must remain quite cool.
At a given signal, the beaters begin yelling, beating iron pans with sticks, blowing horns, shouting, and generally making enough pandemonium to awaken the Seven Sleepers. It effectually awakes the bear, who emerges from his bedroom in an exceedingly evil temper, to see what all this fearful din is about. As he is surrounded with noise on three sides, he naturally makes for the only quiet spot, where the guns are posted. By this time he is in a distinctly unamiable mood.
I always took off my ski, and stood nearly waist-deep in the snow so as to get a firm footing. Then you can make quite certain of your shot. Ski or no ski, if it came to running away, the bear would always have the pull on you. The first time I was very lucky. The bear came straight to me. When he was within fifteen feet, and I felt absolutely certain of getting him, I fired. He reared himself on his hind legs to an unbelievable height, and fell stone dead at Lady Dufferin's very feet. That bear's skin is within three feet of me as I write these lines. We went back to the village in orthodox fashion, all with fir-branches in our hands, as a sign of rejoicing; I seated on the dead bear.
As a small boy of nine I had been tossed in a blanket at school, up to the ceiling, caught again, then up a second time and third time. It was not, and was not intended to be, a pleasant experience, but in my day all little boys had to submit to it. The unhappy little brats stuck their teeth together, and tried hard to grin as they were being hurled skywards. These curious Russians, though, appeared to consider it a delightful exercise.
Arrived at the village again, I was captured by some thirty buxom, stalwart women, and sent spinning up and up, again and again, till I was absolutely giddy. Not only had one to thank them profusely for this honour, but also to disburse a considerable amount of roubles in acknowledgement of it. Poor Lady Dufferin was then caught, in spite of her protests, and sent hurtling skywards through the air half a dozen times. Needless to say that she alighted with not one hair of her head out of place or one fold of her garments disarranged. Being young and inexperienced then, I was foolish enough to follow the Russian custom, and to present the village with a small cask of vodka. I regretted it bitterly. Two hours later not a male in the place was sober. Old grey-beards and young men lay dead drunk in the snow; and quite little boys reeled about hopelessly intoxicated. I could have kicked myself for being so thoughtless. During all the years I was in Russia, I never saw a peasant woman drink spirits, or under the influence of liquor. In my house at Petrograd I had a young peasant as house-boy. He was quite a nice lad of sixteen; clean, willing, and capable, but, young as he was, he had already fallen a victim to the national failing, in which he indulged regularly once a month, when his wages were paid him, and nothing could break him of this habit. I could always tell when Ephim, the boy, had gone out with the deliberate intention of getting drunk, by glancing into his bedroom. He always took the precaution of turning the ikons over his bed, with their faces to the wall, before leaving, and invariably blew out the little red lamp, in order that ikons might not see him reeling into the room upon his return, or deposited unconscious upon his bed. Being a singularly neat boy in his habits, he always put on his very oldest clothes on these occasions, in order not to damage his better ones, should he fall down in the street after losing control of his limbs. This drunkenness spreads like a cancer from top to bottom of Russian society. A friend of mine, who afterwards occupied one of the highest administrative posts, told me quite casually that, on the occasion of his youngest brother's seventeenth birthday, the boy had been allowed to invite six young friends of his own age to dinner; my friend thought it quite amusing that every one of these lads had been carried to bed dead drunk. I attribute the dry-rot which ate into the whole structure of the mighty Empire, and brought it crashing to the ground, in a very large degree to the intemperate habits prevailing amongst all classes of Russian men, which in justice one must add, may be due to climatic reasons.
In the villages our imported food was a constant source of difficulty. We were all averse to shocking the peasants by eating meat openly during Lent, but what were we to do? Out of deference to their scruples, we refrained from buying eggs and milk, which could have been procured in abundance, and furtively devoured ham, cold beef, and pickles behind cunningly contrived ramparts of newspaper, in the hope that it might pass unnoticed. Remembering how meagre at the best of times the diet of these peasants is, it is impossible to help admiring them for the conscientious manner in which they obey the rules of their Church during Lent. I once gave a pretty peasant child a piece of plum cake. Her mother snatched it from her, and asked me whether the cake contained butter or eggs. On my acknowledgement that it contained both, she threw it into the stove, and asked me indignantly how I dared to imperil her child's immortal soul by giving her forbidden food in Lent. Even my sixteen-year-old house-boy in Petrograd, the bibulous Ephim, although he regularly succumbed to the charms of vodka, lived entirely on porridge and dry bread during Lent, and would not touch meat, butter, or eggs on any consideration whatever. The more I saw of the peasants the more I liked them. The men all drank, and were not particularly truthful, but they were like great simple, bearded, unkempt children, with (drunkenness apart) all a child's faults, and all a nice child's power of attraction. I liked the great, stalwart, big-framed women too. They were seldom good-looking, but their broad faces glowed with health and good nature, and they had as a rule very good skins, nice teeth, and beautiful complexions. I found that I could get on with these villagers like a house on fire. However cold the weather, no village girl or woman wears anything on her head but a gaudy folded cotton handkerchief.
I never shared the resentment of my Russian friends at being addressed with the familiar "thou" by the peasants. They intended no discourtesy; it was their natural form of address, and they could not be expected to know that beyond the narrow confines of their village there was another world where the ceremonious "you" was habitually employed. I rather fancy that anyone bred in the country, and accustomed from his earliest childhood to mix with farmers, cottagers, and farm-labourers, can get on with other country-bred people, whether at home, or in Russia, India, or Canada—a town-bred man would not know what to talk about. In spite of the peasants' reputation for pilfering, not one of us ever had the smallest thing stolen. I did indeed lose a rubber air-cushion in the snow, but that was owing to the overturning of a sledge. A colleague of mine, whom I had hitherto always regarded as a truthful man, assured me a year afterwards that he had seen my air-cushion ranged on the ikon shelf in a peasant's house, with two red lamps burning before it. The owner of the house declared, according to my friend, that my air-cushion was an ikon of peculiar sanctity, though the painting had in some mysterious manner become obliterated from it. My colleague further assured me that my air-cushion was building up a very gratifying little local connection as a miracle-working ikon of quite unusual efficiency, and that, under its kindly tutelage, crops prospered and flocks and herds increased; of course within reasonable limits only, for the new ikon held essentially moderate views, and was temperamentally opposed to anything in the way of undue optimism. I wished that I could have credited this, for it would have been satisfactory to imagine oneself, through the agency of the air-cushion, a vicarious yet untiring benefactor of a whole countryside.
On one of our shooting expeditions a curious incident occurred. Lord Dufferin had taken a long shot at a bear, and had wounded without killing him. For some reason, the animal stopped, and climbed to the top of a high fir tree. Lord Dufferin approached, fired again, and the bear dropped dead to the ground. It is but seldom that one sees a dead bear fall from the top of a tree. I witnessed an equally strange sporting incident once in India. It was just over the borders of Assam, and we were returning to camp on elephants, after a day's big game shooting. As we approached a hollow clothed with thick jungle, the elephants all commenced trumpeting. Knowing how wonderfully keen the elephant's sense of smell is, that told us that some beast lay concealed in the hollow. Thinking it would prove to be a bear, I took up my favourite smooth-bore charged with leaden bullets, when with a great crashing and rending of boughs the jungle parted, and a galloping rhinoceros charged out, his head well down, making straight for the elephant that was carrying a nephew of mine. My nephew had just time to snatch up a heavy 4-bore elephant rifle. He fired, and by an extraordinary piece of luck succeeded in hitting the huge beast in his one vulnerable spot, just behind the shoulder. The rhinoceros rolled right over like a shot rabbit and lay stone dead. It was a thousand to one chance, and if I live to a hundred I shall never see anything of the sort again. It was also very fortunate, for had he missed his shot, nothing on earth could have saved my nephew's life.
We found that the most acceptable presents in the villages were packets of sugar and tins of sardines. Sugar is costly and difficult to procure in Russian villages. The usual way of employing it, when friends are gathered round the table of some "isba" with the samovar in the middle and steaming glasses of tea before each guest, is for No. 1 to take a piece of sugar, place it between his teeth, and then suck his tea through it. No. 1 quickly passes the piece of sugar to his neighbor, who uses it in the same way, and transfers it to the next person, and so on, till the sugar is all dissolved. This method of using sugar, though doubtless economical, always struck me as being of dubious cleanliness. A gift of a pound of lump sugar was always welcomed with grateful thanks. Sardines were even more acceptable, as they could be eaten in Lent. The grown-ups devoured the fish, lifting them out of the tin with their fingers; and the children were given the oil to smear on their bread, in place of forbidden butter.
After days in the keen fresh air, and in the limitless expanse of forest and snow, life in Petrograd seemed terribly artificial. I used to marvel that my cultured, omniscient, polygot friends were fellow-countrymen of the bearded, red-shirted, illiterate peasants we had just left. The gulf seemed so unbridgable between them, and apart from a common language and a common religion (both, I acknowledge, very potent bonds of union) there seemed no link between them, or any possible community of ideas. Now in England there is that community of ideas. All classes, from the highest to the lowest, share to some extent the same tastes and the same prejudices. There is too that most powerful of connecting links, a common love of sport. The cricket ground and the football field are witnesses to this, and it shows in a hundred little ways beside. The freemasonry of sport is very real.
It was perfectly delightful to live with and to mix so much amongst charming people of such wide culture and education, but they seemed to me to bear the same relation to the world outside their own that a rare orchid in its glass shelter bears to a wild flower growing in the open air. The one is indigenous to the soil; the other was originally imported, and can only thrive in an artificial atmosphere, and under artificial conditions. If the glass gets broken, or the fire goes out, the orchid dies, but the wild flower is not affected. After all, man made the towns, but God made the country.
CHAPTER V
The Russian Gipsies—Midnight drives—Gipsy singing—Its fascination—The consequences of a late night—An unconventional luncheon—Lord Dufferin's methods—Assassination of Alexander II—Stürmer—Pathetic incidents in connection with the murder of the Emperor—The funeral procession and service—Details concerning—The Votive Church—The Order of the Garter—Unusual incidents at the Investiture—Precautions taken for Emperor's safety—The Imperial train—Finland—Exciting salmon-fishing there—Harraka Niska—Koltesha—Excellent shooting there—Ski-running—"Ringing the game in"—A wolf-shooting party—The obese General—Some incidents—A novel form of sport—Black game and capercailzie—At dawn in a Finnish forest—Immense charm of it—Ice-hilling or "Montagnes Russes"—Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland.
In my day there were two or three restaurants on the islands formed by the delta of the Neva, with troupes of singing gipsies attached to them. These restaurants did a roaring trade in consequence, for the singing of the gipsy choirs seems to produce on Russians the same maddening, almost intoxicating effect that the "skirl o' the pipes" does on those with Scottish blood in their veins.
Personally, I thought that one soon tired of this gipsy singing; not so my Russian friends—it appeared to have an irresistible attraction for them. I always dreaded the consequences when some foolish person, usually at 1 or even 2 a.m., proposed a visit to the gipsies, for all the ladies present would instantly jump at the suggestion, and I knew full well that it entailed a forcible separation from bed until six or possibly seven next morning.
Troikas would at once be sent for. A troika is a thing quite apart. Its horses are harnessed as are no other horses in the world, since the centre horse trots in shafts, whilst the two outside horses, the "pristashkui" loose save for long traces, gallop. Driving a troika is a special art. The driver stands; he has a special badge, peacock's feathers set in a round cap; he has a special name, "yamshchik," and he charges quite a special price.
To my mind, the drive out to the islands was the one redeeming feature of these expeditions. Within the confines of the city, the pace of the troikas was moderate enough, but as the last scattered houses of the suburbs merged into the forest, the driver would call to his horses, and the two loose horses broke into a furious gallop, the centre horse in shafts moving as swiftly as any American trotter. Smoothly and silently under the burnished steel of the starlit sky, they tore over the snow, the vague outlines of the fir trees whizzing past. Faster and faster, until the wild excitement of it made one's blood tingle within one, even as the bitter cold made one's cheeks tingle, as we raced through the keen pure air. That wild gallop through the forest was perfectly glorious. I believe that on us sons of the North real cold has the same exhilarating effect that warmth and sunshine have on the Lotos-eating dwellers by the blue Mediterranean.
The troika would draw up at the door of a long, low, wooden building, hidden away amongst the fir trees of the forest. After repeated bangings at the door, a sleepy-eyed Tartar appeared, who ushered one into a great gaunt, bare, whitewashed room, where other little yellow, flat-faced, Tartar waiters were lighting countless wax candles, bringing in many slim-shouldered, gold foil-covered bottles of champagne, and a samovar or two, and arranging seats. Then the gipsy troupe strolled in, some twenty-five strong; the younger members passably good-looking, with fine dark eyes, abundant eyelashes, and extremely indifferent complexions. The older members of the company made no attempt at coquetry. They came muffled in woollen shawls, probably to conceal toilet deficiencies, yawning openly and undisguisedly; not concealing their disgust at being robbed of their sleep in order to sing to a pack of uninteresting strangers, to whom, incidentally, they owed their entire means of livelihood. Some ten swarthy, evil-faced, indeterminate males with guitars filled up the background.
One of the younger members of the troupe would begin a song in waltz time, in a curious metallic voice, with a ring in it of something Eastern, barbaric, and utterly strange to European ears, to the thrum of the guitars of the swarthy males in the background. The elderly females looked inexpressibly bored, and hugged their woollen shawls a little closer over their heads. Then the chorus took up the refrain. A tempest of wild, nasal melody arose, in the most perfect harmony. It was metallic, and the din was incredible, but the effect it produced on the listeners was astounding. The old women, dropping their cherished shawls, awoke to life. Their dull eyes sparkled again, they sang madly, frenetically; like people possessed. The un-European timbre of the voices conduced doubtless to the effect, but the fact remains that this clamour of nasal, metallic voices, singing in exquisite harmony, had about it something so novel and fresh—or was it something so immemorially old?—that the listeners felt absolutely intoxicated.
On the Russians it acted like hypnotism. After the first song, they all joined in, and even I, the dour and unemotional son of a Northern land, found myself, as words and music grew familiar, shouting the bass parts of the songs with all the strength of my lungs. The Russian language lends itself admirably to song, and the excess of sibilants in it is not noticeable in singing.
These Russian gipsies, like the Austrian bands, produced their effects by very simple means. They harmonised their songs themselves, and they always introduced a succession of "sixths" or "thirds"; emphasising the "sixth" in the tenor part.
One can, however, have too much of a good thing. I used to think longingly of my far-off couch, but there was no tearing Russians away from the gipsies. The clock ticked on; they refused to move. The absorption of much champagne has never afforded me the smallest amusement. The consumption of tea has also its limits, and my longed-for bed was so far away! The really staggering figure one had to disburse as one's share for these gipsy entertainments seemed to me to be a very long price to pay for a sleepless night.
Once a fortnight the "Queen's Messenger" left Petrograd at noon, on his return journey to London. On "Messenger mornings" we had all to be at the Embassy at 9 a.m. punctually. One morning, after a compulsory vigil with the gipsies, I was awakened by my servant with the news that it was close on nine, and that my sledge was already at the door. It was impossible to dress in the time, so after some rapid ablutions, I drew the long felt boots the Russians call "Valinki" over my pyjamas, put on some heavy furs, and jumped into my sledge. Lord Dufferin found me writing hard in the steam-heated Chancery, clad only in silk pyjamas, and with my bare feet in slippers. He made no remark, but I knew that nothing ever escaped his notice. By noon we had the despatches finished, the bags sealed up, the "waybill" made out, various precautionary measures taken as to which it is unnecessary to enlarge, and the Messenger left for London. I called to the hall porter to bring me my furs, and told him to order my sledge round. "His Excellency has sent your sledge home," said the porter, with a smile lurking round the corners of his mouth. "Then call me a hack sledge." "His Excellency hopes that you will give him the pleasure of your company at luncheon." "But I must go home and dress first." "His Excellency's orders were that you are to go as you are," answered the grinning porter. Then I understood. Nothing is ever gained by being shy or self-conscious, so after a hasty toilet, I sent for my heavy fur "shuba." Furs in Russia are intended for use, not ornament, and this "shuba" was an extremely weighty and voluminous garment, designed to withstand the rigours of the North Pole itself. A glance at the mirror convinced me that I was most indelicately décolleté about the neck, so I hooked the big collar of the "shuba" together, and strode upstairs. The heat of this fur garment was unendurable, but there was nothing else for it. Certainly the legs of my pyjamas protruded below it, so I congratulated myself on the fact that they were a brand-new pair of very smart striped mauve silk. My bare feet too were encased in remarkably neat Persian slippers of green morocco. Lady Dufferin received me exactly as though I had been dressed in the most immaculate of frock-coats. Her children though, gazed at my huge fur coat, round-eyed with astonishment, for neither man nor woman ever comes into a Russian house with furs on—an arrangement which would not at all suit some of my London friends, who seem to think that furs are designed for being shown off in hot rooms. The governess, an elderly lady, catching sight of my unfortunate pyjama legs below the fur coat, assumed a highly scandalised attitude, as though she could scarcely credit the evidence of her eyes. (I repeat that they were exceptionally smart pyjamas.)