A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS

TOMB OF A CAUCASIAN CHIEF, SHOWING WHAT HE DIED POSSESSED
OF INCLUDING THE ACTUAL NUMBER OF HIS CARTRIDGES

A VAGABOND IN

THE CAUCASUS

WITH SOME NOTES OF HIS EXPERIENCES

AMONG THE RUSSIANS

BY STEPHEN GRAHAM ❦ ❦ ❦

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

AND TWO MAPS ❦ ❦ ❦ ❦

LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD

NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXI

Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

A VAGABOND IN

THE CAUCASUS

NOTE

Portions of Chapters VI., VII., IX., XI., XXVIII. appeared originally in articles contributed to Country Life, and Chapter XXII. and parts of II., X., XXXIII. in articles contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, to the Editors of which journals the author desires to make all due acknowledgment.

A VAGABOND IN

THE CAUCASUS

PROLOGUE
HOW I CAME TO BE A TRAMP

I BROUGHT myself up on Carlyle and found him the dearest, gentlest, bravest, noblest man. The Life by Froude was dearer to me than the Gospel of St Matthew, or Hamlet, or Macbeth, and that is saying much if the reader only knew me. Carlyle was so near that I saw him in dreams and spoke with him in words that were true, unquestionably. In the vision world of my dream he behaved exactly as he would have done in real life, I am sure of it. He was flesh and blood to me. Yet he died and was buried before I was born. How strange! This man who died three years before I was born was a friend closer to me than a lover, one to whom I longed to say caressing words, one whom I longed to embrace and fondle—to kiss even.

He made me work, the dear, irascible, eloquent old sage. I worked at his bidding and set myself impossible tasks—impossible! I became a puritan, serious, intolerant and heroic; and in moments of rapture, conscious of the silence of the stars and the graves, I would sing to the night the marching song:

“Here eyes do regard you

In Eternity’s stillness,

Here is all fulness,

Ye brave, to reward you,

Work and despair not.”

Carlyle was a true friend to me, he was not content that he only should be my friend, I had to become the friend of his friends. Now, I am one of the Great Society of his friends. I belong to the fellowship of those that have seen The City. The Great Society has among its members many children and many jolly tramps. Has the reader ever been introduced personally to the Great Ones long since dead? I think these literary men the great Friends of Mankind. They allow themselves to be known and cherished—different from military heroes or scientists or explorers. One would as soon love a waxwork as Napoleon. Yet even the despised and rejected of the literary world are warm and smiling friends to their readers. I, for my part, adored Ruskin and Browning as a young girl in love with a new history mistress. I obeyed Ruskin, bought his works in purple calf and looked up the long words in the dictionary. Then Rabbi Ben Ezra entered into me so that I spoke with tongues. I learned the poem by heart and recited it to sunsets. I ask myself now how I reconciled “Work and despair not” with

“Not on the vulgar mass,

Called work must sentence pass.”

But of course both sentences are true; one is for one nature, the other for another; I think I must have really belonged to the second category, for have I not become a tramp!

I never felt so humanly close to Ruskin as to Carlyle. He had a way of stating the truth. He liked to perch on his truths and crow. No, I revered him, but decidedly didn’t like him. Browning made friends with me. Then came Ibsen; and both Browning and Ibsen confirmed me in the heroism of achieving impossible tasks. Has the reader seen the “Master Builder,” the man who did the impossible twice? “It’s—fearfully thrilling.” In these days I spouted: “Life is like the compound eye of the fly. It is full of lives. Momentarily we died, momentarily are born again. The old self dies, the new is born; the old life gives way to the new. The selfish man wishes to remain as he is; in his life are fewer lives, fewer changes. But the hero wishes to fulfil every promise written in his being. He dies gladly in each moment to arise the next moment more glorious, nearer to perfection. Oh, my friend, pay for the new life with all the old. The life that thou hast, was given thee for paying away so that thou mightest obtain something better.”

In myself I believed these words. I worked and read. I worked and threw myself at the impossible. What Swinburne wrote is true:

“A joy to the heart of a man

Is a goal that he may not reach.”

I wrote lectures in which my style was so infected by the rhetoric of the sage that listeners grumbled that they could not tell when I was quoting and when I was using my own language. That was their defect; they should have known Carlyle better! One lecture I specially remember. It was given to some Essex folk. It related to Hero-worship. All the artillery of Carlyle was in play. It was a subject supremely Carlylean. Work, I praised, and heroic valour. But my message was: “In each of you there is a Hero, let him out; in each man there is a Hero, see one there,” which is not what Carlyle meant when he said: “Recognise the Hero when you see him and obey.” This was, perhaps, a first divergency. Carlyle was looking for a means to govern a nation wisely. I was moving towards my tramp destiny.

That was in the year of the Russian Revolution and I had been learning Russian very sedulously for some time. A literary ambition had possession of me. I had said to myself—one must specialise to get on in the world of literature. Carlyle specialised German. German things did not interest me. I had long since learned to enjoy Turgeniev and Gorky and Gogol in English translations, and Russia had become to me the most interesting country in Europe. I determined to specialise on Russia.

Yes, and when, according to the newspapers, the bombs were flying thick and fast, I took a return ticket for Moscow and went out. For luggage I took a camera and a small hand-bag. The tramp has the soberest conscience about luggage. He feels he can always do without. But, of course, I wasn’t a tramp then. I may remark in passing that I lost none of that luggage and had no trouble whatever with it. Few travellers manage their first trip to Russia without vexatious misadventures. On one occasion, however, when I was taking a snap-shot of a prison, a soldier rushed up to me in terror and rage. He thought my Kodak was a bomb.

What an excitement this journey was! I had never even been abroad before. Now I went through Holland and across the whole of Germany and into Poland. Two days after I had left England I was in Russia. I arrived at Warsaw on the day the Governor was shot. I saw at once there were more soldiers than people in the streets. I took a droshky to a hotel, put down my things and strolled out to see the city. I was arrested at once. Fifty yards down Marzalkovsky, the Piccadilly of Warsaw, a soldier stopped me, searched me and handed me over to an officer and six armed guards. I was put in the middle and marched off; on each side of me a soldier held a drawn sword and was ready to slash at me if I should attempt to bolt. I am sure the angels wept. Internally I collapsed with laughter and at the same time I felt very rich. I was having an experience.

I was released and was arrested again, and a Circassian guard punched me in the stomach very hard, “for luck,” I think he said. They gave an account of my arrest in the Russ and said I had been nearly beaten to death, but they didn’t know who I was. Somehow it came to England as the arrest and flogging of Mr Foster Fraser, the well-known correspondent. Poor Mr Fraser, it must have been awkward explaining to his friends that it was not really he who was flogged.

HARBOUR, NIZHNI NOVGOROD

OUTSIDE A SLUM BEERHOUSE, MOSCOW

I was not a correspondent, but I wrote of my adventures, and it was very pleasant to see my words printed in London newspapers. It was very amusing to see myself styled “Our own Special Correspondent,” when, in truth, I was only a free lance and had not even seen the face of a London editor. Journalism is a cheap trade! At Warsaw I met correspondents of many papers and had surprising glimpses behind the scenes. There was a little American Jew there who knew almost every language in Europe, who had an eye for every nationality, and who knew the private history of all the women of the city. At one time he had been hotel tout, interpreter, guide, but now was correspondent, reporter, supplier of information. He was always hanging about the chief hotel and watching for journalists hard up for copy. There were crowds of English newspaper men who could not speak intelligibly in French, far less in Russian. To such the American was a god-send. And Lord, what stories they wrote home to England!

I left Warsaw for Moscow and Nizhni. When I left the American was a lonely bachelor. When I returned his wife had found him. She told me her story. She lost her man in New York and had chased him through the States, and through Europe. He was always giving her the slip. I think my trembling puritanism rose to the defence of my innocent soul. Life is of all colours, but there are some terrible reds and scarlets one doesn’t see in England. Warsaw to me was a wicked city. The wonderful beauty of Polish girls I had then no eyes for.

I returned to England and was a local lion.

The trip brought me pleasant glory, but it had given me powerful hopes and longings. I had been in the Kremlin and in the churches. I had been a vagabond at the Fair of Nizhni Novgorod. I had seen the peasants and their faces and eyes and lives. I learned many things from these peasant faces. I said to myself at Moscow: “These people are like what English people were when Edward the Third was king.” Of a face passing I would say to myself: “There are three or four hundred years behind that nose and mouth and eyes and chin.” The irresistible question came: “Are these peasants not better off than the English clerk or labourer?” As a question I left it.

England again! I returned, for I had an appointment there, comfortable though not literary. Life had good things in store for me there—more reading, new acquaintances, a new Friend even. I took up Russian more seriously and commenced a translation of a novel of Dostoievsky. I was learning to know others of that Great Society, and one day the Fates brought me to Zarathustra. I was an unruly candidate for a place in the society of the “free, very free spirits,” but a true candidate.

Puritanism and intolerance were now to be attacked. A thawing wind began to blow upon the winter of my discontent. “Convictions are prisons,” I read. And surely I was imprisoned behind many prison walls. I was in the centre of a labyrinth of convictions and principles. I believed in work and, at the same time, I believed in myself. Neitzsche reinforced the belief in myself. I was doing work that was not congenial. I was in work that imprisoned me and that prevented development. I was longing for the new. Still in my heart lived the sentences: “Do the impossible, pay for the New with all the Old.”

I wanted new life, broader horizons, deeper depths, higher heights. I knew these might be purchased by giving up my appointment in London and throwing myself into Russia. Yes, to go to Russia and live there, that was my next step. I came to that conclusion one Sunday in June. In one little moment I made that big decision. The tiniest seed was sown in Time. The Fates stood by, the seed lived. To-day that seed is bearing the finest blossoms. May each chapter here be a garland of its flowers exhaling their life perfume.

I shaped my plans to the end.

“‘A Yea, a Nay

A straight line

A Goal’—saith Zarathustra.”

My Yea was Russia; my Nay, England; the straight line, the nearest way, my Goal, the new life to be paid for with all the old.

In London I had made a Russian acquaintance, the son of a deacon of the Orthodox Church, and just before my departure I received an invitation to spend Christmas at Lisitchansk, a village some way north of the Sea of Azov, some miles south of Kharkov. Russia had seemed dark, enigmatical, terrible, but here at the last minute arms stretched out of the darkness, welcoming me, alluring me.

On what was Old Year’s Night in England, though in Russia only the eighteenth of December, I was at Dover. The lights of the harbour shone on the placid water. The stars looked down upon my starting, the same stars that were at that moment looking down upon my destination also, my stars, the stars that through all my wanderings have shone down. One Friend bade me farewell. At Dover, on the ship in the harbour in the night, we embraced and parted. England herself grasped my hand and bade me farewell. For a moment, in the stillness, the sea ceased to exist and space was gone—Two hands were clasped between the lands.

My life as a wanderer began. I might say my life as a tramp began, for I never worked again. I became, as the philosopher says, “full of malice against the seductions of dependency that lie concealed in houses, money or positions.” Whereas I had sold myself to work, I had now bought myself back, I had exchanged dependence upon man for dependence upon God, and had given up my respectable West-End home in “Berkeley Square,” so that I might take up my abode in the West End of this Universe.

Perhaps not then, but now I ask: “Could anything be more amusing than the modern cry of the Right to Work? The English are an industrious, restless nation. And the prophets are very censorious of our respectable, though not respected, class. “It is not enough to be industrious,” says Thoreau; “so are the ants. The question is, What are you industrious about?” No one questions the use of industry of one kind or another. Dear Carlyle, my guide, philosopher and friend, I wonder if he, in other realms, has learned the value of idleness. Perhaps now, after a life-time of Nirvana in some Eden planet, he has smoothed out his ruffled soul. Oh, friends, there are depths of calm and happiness to be found even here, and not autumn stillness but spring calm, the joyful peace of the dove brooding on the waters. I have learned to smooth and compose a rough, tumbled mind until it was like a broad, unsullied mirror reflecting the beauty of the world.

Two thousand miles from London there are new silences, pregnant stillness, on the steppes, in the country places, on the skirts of the old forests. No word of the hubbub of democracy need come through; not a hoarding poster flaunts the eye; no burning question of the hour torments the mind. A man is master of himself and may see or hear or consider just what he chooses. That is, if the man be like me.

“You look up at the sky, as you lie under a bush, and it keeps descending, descending to you, as though it wanted to embrace you.... Your soul is warm and quietly joyful, you desire nothing, you envy no one.”

“... And so it seems as though on all the earth there were only you and God....”

“All around is silence: only the birds are singing, and this silence is so marvellous that it seems as though the birds were singing in your own breast.” So wrote Gorky, the tramp. I almost wish he would write the story of his vagabondage instead of being so serious over his revolutionary propaganda.

I have shown how I came to be a wanderer. I will now add to this prologue a word of dedication. The prose of this book is the story of my travels; the poetry, when the reader may discern it, is the story of my heart.

CHAPTER I
ROBBED IN THE TRAIN

GERMANY is a safe country. One is not permitted to lose oneself there. I, for my part, knew not a word of German beyond nicht hinauslehnen, which means: don’t put your head out at the window; but I had no misadventures there. The trains leave punctually, the carriages are all clean, the porters know their duty. One contrast has particularly impressed me. In Russia, in second or even in first-class carriages, washing accommodation is very poor. Often there is no water, and there is seldom a stopper to the hand-basin. There is a murky mirror but no towel, indeed, no further convenience of any kind. In Germany, on the contrary, even third-class accommodation is superb. There is a fresh tablet of soap and a clean towel for each traveller; there is even a comb and brush, if one cares to use them after others. But in Russia third-class accommodation is unspeakably filthy, and I think that if one mentioned the idea of soap gratis to a Russian official he would frown as if overhearing revolutionary propaganda. Surely the Germans have the cleanest faces among all nations, and their free wash seems to say: “For God’s sake, don’t let a little piece of official soap stand between you and cleanliness.”

But though Russian accommodation is inferior in this respect, it has one great excellence: the trains run smoothly over the lines. One can make the whole trans-Siberian journey from Warsaw to Shanghai and be as fit at the end as when one started. The movement of the train is so pleasantly soothing that one slips easily into slumber. Indeed, if one wakes in the night and finds the train stopping in a station, one waits and longs for the train to move again; minutes seem eternities. Then one is entitled by one’s ticket to the whole length of a seat. No one objects if one undresses, and at least one can always remove collar, boots and overcoat. But German trains are noisy; they jerk and rattle and tear through the night. They compare with Russian trains as a motor omnibus might with a child’s cradle. One would stand more chance of sleeping in the Inner Circle.

I arrived at Alexandrovo, the frontier town, at ten o’clock at night, and took train on for Warsaw at 1 a.m. My luggage was registered through to Kharkov. The customs officer informed me that it had been forwarded and would be examined there. This was on the third day of my journey, and I had had two nights without sleep. It was with a great deal of gladness that I settled myself down in my Russian coupé and hoped to sleep a few hours. The third bell, the last bell, sounded, and the train moved slowly out of the station and ground itself away over the heavy, snow-covered track. The guards came and punched my ticket; then I lay back and fell fast asleep. The white train moved over the white fields, and the light wind blew the thick snow against the window panes, or wreathed it in the gangways between the corridors. The train moved very slowly, and every quarter of an hour or so stopped. The movement was very weak and gentle, like the pulsation of an old man’s heart. When it ceased, it seemed to have paused through utter exhaustion. I was suddenly awakened by a touch on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a man bending over me. I could have sworn he had been picking my pockets. He smiled unamiably and asked a question in German. Getting no answer he tried Polish; I replied in Russian. He wanted to know where I was going to, and whether I was a German.

This man afterwards robbed me. Next time I woke up my heavy overcoat was gone. I had hung it on a peg beside me, and when I looked for it it had disappeared. And the smiling Pole who had been sitting opposite had also disappeared. New people were in the compartment. In fact, the moment I woke there were two men standing beside me and kissing one another frantically. The train had stopped at a station. I was dazed. I thought I was, perhaps, at Warsaw already. I was assured Warsaw was a long way off, and then I discovered the loss of my coat.

The chief guard assured me the coat would be recovered. If I would give him a rouble he would have the train searched. He took down notes of what I said and pocketed the money, but the thief got clear away. The flickering candle that illuminated the carriage was burning out. It was so dark that one could not be sure whether anything were lost or not. My astonishment was great when I looked under the seat and saw a man lying there—a man with a smell. The guard came in at that moment and we hauled the stowaway out. I thought it was the thief for certain. He was brought out and searched. He was a tatterdemalion, out at knees and out at elbows, thick with grease and dirt. His feet were wrapped up with sacking, tied round with rope, and the rest of his attire was uncured sheepskin. He hadn’t any ticket and was going to Warsaw. He offered the guard twopence as a bribe, but the latter frowned terribly and asked whether I would care to have him arrested. He whispered to me aside that he felt quite sure we had caught the thief or an accomplice. If I would give him two roubles he would make a declaration at the next station. I should get my coat in a week at least. But I dissented, for I felt quite sure such a disreputable-looking character as the moujik we had hauled out was incapable of stealing a handsome overcoat. So the guard accepted twopence from the man in lieu of a ticket, and was fain to disappear.

Russian trains are well heated. It is only when one steps out at a station that one realises how cold it is. I soon began to realise what the loss of my coat meant. At Kharkov there were forty degrees of frost. The further into Russia the colder it became. My only protection was a light summer overcoat and a plaid rug. My gloves, together with a voluminous silk muffler, had been left in the pockets of the coat that was stolen. When I went out at Kharkov the cold struck in on all sides, and my moustache and eyebrows froze to solid ice at once.

Calamity followed close upon calamity. My registered luggage was nowhere to be found. The customs officer was of opinion that it had been delayed on the line. If I would leave ten roubles with him he would look after it and forward it some time after Christmas.

The cup of misery seemed filled to the brim. For I was deprived of all my clothes but the rough travelling things I stood up in. I pictured to myself what a strange, shabby Christmas guest I should appear.

It was the 23rd of December, according to the old calendar; the morrow would be Christmas Eve, and all shops would be shut. I went out into the town and made good some of my deficiencies.

I had still a hundred-mile journey to make before I reached Lisitchansk. The train left at 9 p.m. I telegraphed to my friend, asking to be met, and then went off to buy a ticket. The booking-office clerk would not issue tickets until he could be sure that the train would be run. The last express from Sevastopol had arrived ten hours late.

I waited until midnight, and then at last a notice was put out intimating that the train would start. So I purchased my ticket and took my seat, and at two in the morning we moved slowly out. My impression of that train is that everyone, including passengers, guards and driver, was drunk. It was crowded with people going home for Christmas. It was so crowded that there seemed to be no intention on the part of anyone to sleep, and I could not get a seat to myself. At length, however, a very friendly, though tipsy, Little Russian made an arrangement with the occupants of a ladies’ compartment, and I got an upper shelf there to lie upon.

When I awakened it was broad day and the train had stopped finally. A lady on a shelf opposite was reading a novel. No one else seemed to be in the carriage. I learned from her that we were snowed up. All the men employed to keep the line clear were dead drunk. No further progress would be made until after dinner. There was a forest on the right-hand side, full of wolves, the girl said. I went along to the men’s compartment and found that everyone had adjourned to a farm-house near by to get dinner. Evidently thieves were not feared in that part of the country. I followed the others to the house and had a good hot dish of cabbage soup. It was a one-room cottage, and was packed with people. The clamour was deafening. I think the family must have had an unusually large supply of vodka, for the number of Christmas healths drunk was at least treble the number of guests.

At about three o’clock the engine-driver, who was so drunk that he could not stand up, was lifted into the engine and he set the train going. Scarcely anyone was in the train, neither people nor guards, and there was a rush to get on. But only about six were successful; the rest were all left behind. We, at the farm-house, had no chance whatever. Somebody said, “The train is starting,” and there was a stampede. Every vodka glass was drained, the singing stopped, and the shouting and the step-dancing, and everyone rushed out into the snow without, as far as I could see, paying a farthing to the good woman of the house. But no one stood any chance, and when I got out at the door the train had travelled a hundred yards. The snow was a foot deep, and nothing short of a pair of skis would have enabled anyone to cross it in the time.

Que faire!

I pictured to myself the train arriving at Sevastopol without passengers or guards, and I wondered what would happen to all the unclaimed wraps and bags, and how many roubles it would cost to get them out of the lost property office. I could afford to smile. Most of my property was already lost. Among the other passengers there was consternation. They were like a pack of frightened children, whispering in awe-stricken whispers. Two men insisted on telling me their fears—fears of missing their Christmas, fears of exhausting the vodka supply, fears of wolves, fears of freezing, and a fat man, who had fallen in the snow, kept punctuating their remarks with:

“Devil take me! Lord save us!”

There was nothing to be gained by remaining where we were, so I set out along the railway lines with six others who could walk. The next station proved to be about four miles distant, and after three quarters of an hour we came in sight of it. And in sight of the train! We had walked very seriously and solemnly, like convicts marching to the mines. I, for my part, felt like freezing to death. But at the sight of the train we all burst into exclamation. The Russians gesticulated and waved their handkerchiefs. Then suddenly we thought it might start out before we reached it. The Russians began to run in that peculiar way all foreigners run—as if someone were after them. We arrived in time, feeling pleasantly warm.

I thought when the engine-driver had been remonstrated with he would have backed the train to the wayside stopping-place. But no, he said there was no time, and in ten minutes he started us off again. I have never heard how they fared, these unfortunates who were left behind.

Late in the evening I arrived at Lisitchansk, and Nicholas, my London acquaintance, was actually there waiting for me. He had brought a large fur cloak and rugs. A little pony-sledge was at hand. We fitted ourselves in tightly and gave the word to the driver, who whisked us off through the keen air.

In twenty minutes we had climbed up the steep slope to the village and threaded our way through the broad streets to the cottage of my friend.

CHAPTER II
CHRISTMAS IN LITTLE RUSSIA

I

NICHOLAS was twenty-one years of age and was the eldest child. His father, who was the village deacon, was in his prime. Six feet high, broad-shouldered, he was a proper figure of a man. Thick black hair hung down his back. His high-domed forehead and well-formed aquiline nose reminded one of Tennyson. His wife was a short, dear woman, who moved about in little steps—the sort of woman that never wears out, tender and gentle, but, at the same time, strong-bodied and hardy.

The two of them welcomed me to their home, and I felt thrilled with gratitude. Only he who has been out in the wilds, in distress, in strange parts, among alien people, can know the full joy of a return to home. After long travail, after isolation and privation, one’s heart is very sensitive to loving, human hands. It was very sweet for me to realise that in the terrible cold, in the wild night, there was a sheltering roof for me, a little sanctuary where accident and misfortune could no further pursue me, a home where a new father and mother awaited me.

The cottage was a very simple one. It was built of pine trunks placed one across another, reticulated at the comers in the style that children build with firewood. It contained three rooms. The partitions were of bright new wood and unadorned. We sat on straight-back wooden chairs at a wooden table, on which no cloth was spread. The sacred picture, the symbol of God in the home, looked down from a cleft in the pine wall.

The family had lately been at prayers, for Christmas Day begins at six o’clock on the 24th of December. Before us, on the table, stood the allegorical dish of dry porridge, eaten in memory of the hay and straw that lay in the manger in which the Child Jesus was laid. Nicholas’s little sister, Zhenia, was helping Masha, the servant, to bring in plates and spoons. A huge bowl, full of boiled honey and stewed fruit, was set in the middle of the table, and then mother and father and son and daughter bowed to the sacred picture and crossed themselves, and sat down to the meal.

The inhabitants of Lisitchansk are Little Russians, and all Little Russians sit down to honey and porridge on Christmas Eve. They call the custom koutia, and they cherish it as something distinguishing them from Great Russians or White Russians. The deacon explained its significance to me. What he said sounded rather naïve in my ears. The Communion is a death feast; Koutia is in memory of His birth. “It is just a special Communion service,” said he, “and it is held only once a year.” He explained how each dish represented the manger: First we put porridge in the dish, which was like putting straw in the manger. The mother helped each of us to porridge; she stood for Mary, who would, of course, see that there was plenty of straw, so that it might be soft and warm. Then we each helped ourselves to honey and fruit and that symbolised The Babe. We made a place in the porridge and then poured the honey and fruit in. The fruit stood for the body; the honey stood for the spirit or the blood. “Blood means spirit, when one is speaking of Christ,” said the deacon, whom I perceived to be somewhat of a mystic.

Outside the cottage the wind roared and the snow sifted against the window panes. We were all present at the birth of Christ, and had been transported as if by magic to Bethlehem of Christmas night over nineteen centuries ago.

“It was the winter wild

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.”

The brightness of the cottage faded into the half light of a stable, where a child lay in a manger among the horses and the oxen. Joseph and Mary were near and I had just arrived, having followed a particular bright star that for two thousand miles had led me here. Time itself had given birth to a child. My own new tender life lay in a cradle before me.

RUSSIA

Koutia remained on the table and guests came and partook of the meal. They might have been the Wise Men, the Kings with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Nicholas told me that the guests would return home by a different way from that by which they came—in order to escape Herod. Then the deacon took up a guitar and played carols, typifying, whether he intended it or not, the music of the angel hosts.

I think we spent too little of this night in bed. Much was to happen yet. Nicholas proposed a walk. We bowed to the sacred picture and took our leave. The deacon also had to go out. He curled up his long hair and put it under a high fur hat, and then wrapped himself in a purple cloak.

We stepped out along a narrow trench between two banks of snow, waist-high. There were no lights in the village. The snow fell no longer, but a strong wind blew the drift top in our faces. A heaven, distant and black, but radiant with stars, looked down upon us, and upon the white roofs of the village houses and upon the crosses and domes of the church. All was utterly silent.

At the church the deacon left us, and we went on beyond the village. There is an exposed path that leads up to the crest of the ridge, above the River Donetz. The wind had swept every loose particle of snow away, so that it was smooth as glass and hard as steel, like a well-used toboggan track. The wind behind us fairly took us up by itself, without any effort on our part, and when we reached the summit it began to blow us down on the other side. It blew us off our feet so that we both went rolling down the steep slope to the river, and we did not gain a foothold till we plunged into a huge bank of snow formed by a rock beside the river bed. It was a very amusing experience and we sat down in the snow and laughed. The wind blew as if it considered our mirth ill-timed. We gathered our cloaks about us and cowered from it.

It was a stiff walk home and the wind was appalling. The sound of music came to us as we came round a bend in sight of the village, and presently we saw a group of carol singers carrying what appeared to be a lantern. When we came nearer we found them to be a group of boys carrying a pasteboard star. The centre of the star was clear and a candle was fixed so that the light shone through; I thought at first it was a turnip lantern. When we looked closer we found that there was a picture of Christ in the centre, so that the light shone through the face. The chief boy carried the star and the next to him twirled the points. It was an interesting point that they made no collection; though, I am told, they all got a few coppers on the morrow. It was a very charming representation of the Star of Bethlehem. It made its whole journey whilst we were getting home, for we saw it finally enter the church, which, it may be supposed, they considered the most fitting place for the star to rest. They were all boys, and on an English Christmas Eve they would doubtless have been asleep, dreaming of Father Christmas and the car of toys drawn by the reindeer. And that reminds me—Father Christmas knows Russia also. We saw stockings hung outside several cottage doors. It apparently is the custom to hang them outside, so Santa Claus has not to solve the problem of coming down the chimney.

Every cottage window had a light and, looking through, we saw abundance of Christmas fare spread upon the tables. At some there were already guests eating and drinking. The three days’ feast had commenced. Nicholas and I went indoors and made a meal and went to bed.

II

The succeeding week was an orgy of eating and drinking. I had already spent one Christmas in England and had eaten not less than a big man’s share of turkey and plum-pudding, but I was destined to out-do in Russia every table feat that our homely English board had witnessed. On Christmas Day alone I ate and drank, for courtesy, at eight different houses. Nicholas accomplished prodigious feats, and the worthy deacon was as much beyond Nicholas as the latter was beyond me. Let me describe the spread. There were, of course, chicken, turkey and vodka; there was sucking-pig, roasted with little slices of lemon. There were joints of venison and of beef, roast goose, wild duck, fried sturgeon and carp, fat and sweet, but full of bones; caviare, tinned herrings, mushrooms, melons, infusion of fruit and Caucasian wines. The steaming samovar was always on the sideboard, and likewise tumblers of tea, sweetened with jam or sharpened by lemon slices. There were huge loaves of home-baked bread, but no cakes or biscuits, and no puddings. At peasants’ houses the fare was commoner, but not less abundant, than at the squires’, and it was very difficult to escape from either without making a meal equal to an English lunch.

The Russians are a hospitable nation and, above all things, like to keep open house. On the great feast days everyone is at home—and everyone is also out visiting. That is, the women stay at home and superintend the hospitalities and the men go the rounds. At Moscow it is a full-dress function; one drives about the city all day. At Lisitchansk it is less polite and more hearty than in the old capital and one makes no distinction of persons. Nicholas and I went out to the postman, and together with the postman we went to a poor peasant’s dwelling, a one-room cottage where a man and his wife and ten children lived and slept. There was a glorious fire and a pot of soup hanging from a hook over it. Very poor people they were, and the children were thin and wretched, but friends had given them extra coal and food and vodka, and it was as gaily Christmas there as anywhere else. We took a snack of their food and detached the man from his family and went away to the oilman’s home. We were four now, and it seemed as if we were going to increase like a ball of snow, but we dropped the postman with the oilman. Just at the door, as we left, we met the deacon, who arranged to meet us at the soap factory in the afternoon, and whilst we were talking the farmer of the vodka monopoly came up and insisted on all of us coming to his house at night. He forcibly reminded me of my train adventure, for he was the first very drunk man I had seen in Lisitchansk. From the moment he appeared on the scene to his actual parting he kept up a grotesque step-dance, the Kamarinsky Moujik, the deacon said. It seemed to consist chiefly in doing the splitz. After leaving him we went home and were just in time to meet the village police, who had come for Christmas drinks. I think they were all at the fifteenth glass of vodka. It was a matter of speculation to me how far they would get before they finally collapsed. I should think the remoter districts of the village were unvisited by these worthies. One of them had been in Siberia. “Ah, brother, you get vodka out there.” Klick, he smacked his lips. “There was an Englishman took a glass of Siberian vodka and for two days he was drunk. On the third day he drank a glass of water and that made him drunk again.” Klick, he smacked his lips again. “That’s what.” And he blinked his eyes at me with peculiar assurance.

When the police had tottered out the village musicians came in playing carols. The leader played the violin; he was the choir-master, an elderly man with flashing eyes and long black hair. Behind him were four young men with guitars or balalaikas. Then came a group of boys, perhaps the same as those who had followed the Star of Bethlehem the night before. They played some hymns and then received coppers all round. The elders drank a glass of vodka each, and then their leader, by way of thanks, gave the Ukrainsky National Dance on the violin, and stamped his feet and danced to the music. Nearly everyone in the room was moving legs or body to the music, and when the musicians made a move to go the scene was so lively that one might have thought the fairy fiddler had been present. The music ceased and the choir hurried away. They had to visit every house in the village, and so time was precious to them; they certainly couldn’t linger in the deacon’s house. I heard afterwards there was one family they didn’t visit; these were Baptists, and had celebrated their Christmas a fortnight earlier with the rest of Europe.

We met the deacon at the soap factory and there made a great feast off sucking-pig. A Little-Russian girl induced me to drink half a glass of vodka on condition that she drank the other half. I insisted that her half should be the first, and then I did not resist the bribe. But I don’t think her lips allayed the fire. She had the best of the bargain, and the company collapsed with laughter at my expense.

A number of us left the factory to go to the Squire’s, and as we tramped through the snow there was a lively discussion as to the grandeur of the spread and the merits of sucking-pig. The Chief of Police was with us, and he was of opinion that Pavel Ivanovitch was getting too deep in debt.

“What of that,” said a military officer, “everyone is in debt. ‘Not in debt, not decent.’ Don’t you know the proverb?”

“How fond you seem to be of getting together and eating and singing and dancing,” said I. “In England all the people are huddled up close to one another and yet one seldom takes tea with the next-door neighbour even.”

The deacon replied:

“You are all like the people of Moscow or Kiev or St Petersburg, I expect. You have forgotten that you are brothers. Money has come between you and money has made you work. You are all gathered together, not out of love, but out of hate. In England gregariousness, in Russia conviviality.”

“Yes, we live together,” said the Chief of Police; “you die together.”

“You have your pogroms,” I retorted, and everyone looked very grave, for they were all staunch supporters of the Tsar.

“The vine is better for the cutting,” said the deacon, softly.

“But surely you do not approve of shedding blood, you do not think it Christian to fight your enemies?”

“We do not strike them. They are cursed by God, and when they are struck it is by Him. But it is not a matter for argument. You have come to see Russia, you look about, and you will find happiness wherever you go. We are all happy, even the Jews, who are only here to make money out of us. Then, if we are happy you must not object to our Government.”

“But are you really happy? In nine out of every ten provinces you will have famine before the winter is over, and yet you are all wasting your stores by Christmas luxuriance. All these poor people who are gorging themselves to-day will be pinched with hunger to-morrow.”

“He who taketh thought for the morrow is a Jew,” said the officer, and so ended the conversation by flooding it with laughter. Everyone laughed, and I think everyone thought we had been getting too serious.

The Squire was the occupant of a grand old house with many spacious rooms and walls a yard thick. His dining-table, about twenty feet long, was heaped up with cold meats and bottles of wine. We were fortunate enough to escape with a plate of turkey and a glass of port each.

As we came home in the dusk we saw a lover and his lass who had just plighted their troth. The deacon insisted on their coming with us. “How was it done?” I asked.

“Oh, she says ‘What is your name?’; he replies, ‘Foma’; she rejoins, ‘Foma is my husband’s name.’ They are very fond of one another and arranged it of course. It is a custom to plight troth on Christmas Day.”

A few days later I was at the girl’s house and part of the betrothal ritual was concluded. There were about fourteen of us in one room awaiting the ceremony. Presently a knock came at the door, and the starosta, the old man of the village, entered, and with him the bridegroom. They carried loaves of bread in their hands. The starosta commenced a recitation in a sing-song voice. It ran something like this:

“We are German people, come from Turkey. We are hunters, good fellows. There was a time once in our country when we saw strange foot-prints in the snow, and my friend the prince here saw them, and we thought they might be a fox’s or a marten’s foot-prints, or it might be those of a beautiful girl. We hunters, we good fellows, are determined not to rest till we have found the animal. We have been in all cities from Germany to Turkey, and have sought for this fox, this marten or this princess, and at last we have seen the same strange foot-prints in the snow again, here by your court. And we have come in. Come, let us take her, the beautiful princess, for we see her in front of us—or can it be you would keep her till she grows a little older?”

Then the father made a speech in the same style, asking the name and lineage of the proud prince who sued for his daughter’s hand. Then, after considerable hesitation, both parties came to agreement, and the starosta leading the young man forward, and the father bringing the girl to him, the hands of the loving pair were joined and blessing was given. The rest of the evening was given over to carouse.

But to return to Christmas Day. We spent the night at the house of the farmer of the vodka monopoly. When we met the host he was dancing, and when we said good-night he was still dancing, and he had been dancing all the time. Beyond food there was no real entertainment. A young man played the guitar for four or five hours, and played the same tune the whole time. We had two dinners and two teas. At the second dinner the fifth course was roast sturgeon. I protested that I couldn’t eat any more.

“Don’t you think you could make all the other things squeeze up just a little and make room?” said the hostess.

“It’s the Chief of Police,” said the deacon.

“What is?”

“Why, the sturgeon! Don’t you know the story of Gogol? The church was packed full of people, so that not a single person more could find room. Then the Chief of Police came and couldn’t get in. But the priest called out to the people to make room, and then everyone moved up just a little bit closer. So they managed to squeeze the Chief of Police in. Now this sturgeon is the Chief of Police, and you must make the other things move up.”

CHAPTER III
MUMMERS AT A COUNTRY HOUSE

ON St Stephen’s Day we drove in sledges to a country house. I feasted my eyes on a wonderful sight—high trees standing between the white ground and the great sun, and casting strange shadows on the whitest snow, and between the shadows a thousand living sparkles literally shot flames from the glistening snow. I had never seen anything like it before; it was very beautiful. We left the forest and passed over a vast plain of tumbled snow. There was snow everywhere as far as the eye could see. The sky above was deep glowing blue; the horizon lines a nascent grey darkness. One looked out upon an enchanted ocean of snow; the wind had wreathed it fantastically in crested waves, or left it gently dimpled like the sands of the seashore. Wave behind wave glistened and sparkled to the horizon, and a gentle breeze raised a snow spray from a thousand crests. The snow scud fled from wave to wave. Yes, it was very beautiful and new, and the world seemed very broad and full of peace. I felt it a privilege to exist in the presence of such beauty. It was my nameday, and it seemed as if there were a special significance in all the beauty which lay about me. Pure flame colours were about me as the glistening white robe of a candidate, to whom new mysteries are to be revealed.

The road was hard-beaten snow, a series of frozen cart ruts. The horses scampered ahead and the sledges shot after them. The sledge slipped over the snow like a boat over the reeds of a river. The red-faced driver sat immobile in his seat. We lay back in the sledges and took advantage of every inch of fur and rug. The runners were very low, and we could have touched the snow as we passed. Sometimes we rushed into a drift, and the snow would rise in a splash over us. And wasn’t it cold! My feet became like ice.

Our new host was a Count Yamschin, owner of a large estate in the Government of Ekaterinoslav. We arrived at his house in the afternoon, and I heard the deacon give orders to the sledge-drivers to return for us at midnight.

The house was a large one, the rooms spacious. Like Russian houses in general, it was simply and meagrely furnished. But for the people in them the rooms would have seemed empty. There were no carpets on the floor; only here and there a soft Persian rug. The firelight from the logs blazing on the broad hearth was the only illumination until late in the twilight. One watched the shadows about the high ceiling and in the recesses; animated faces moved into the bright gleam of light or passed into the shade. In a corner darker than the others stood the precious Ikons, the sacred pictures.

There were ten or fifteen people in the room, and we chatted in groups for half an hour. The principal topic of conversation was about a mystery play which was going to be performed in the evening. It was called the Life of Man, and everyone had evidently heard much about it before the performance. “You will see,” said the deacon, “it is an Ikon play. The Ikon speaks.” Presently the eldest son came striding in in jack-boots and besought us to go into the concert-hall. This was apparently part of a separate building, and we had all to wrap ourselves up and step into our goloshes, so as to trip through the shrubbery with no discomfort. It was a large hall and would have easily held all the people of the village. There was a stage curtained off, and in the body of the hall a grand piano. We held an impromptu concert, made up for the most part of songs and recitations in the Little Russian language. Little Russian is to Russian what broad Scotch is to English. I met a student who knew many long speeches from Shakespeare by heart, but Shakespeare in Russian translation. Shakespeare is a compulsory subject in most Russian colleges, and students have, on the whole, as good a knowledge of it as English people have. The young man professed to be extremely enthusiastic over the Life of Man, which was an expansion of Shakespeare’s thought:

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”

“Do you believe in God?” asked the student, abruptly.

“Yes,” I said. “I use the word God and mean something by it.”

“You are old-fashioned.” He laughed. “We don’t believe in God, we students; we are all atheists. You’re coming to Moscow, you’ll see. We don’t believe in anything except Man. We have given too much time to God already; it’s high time we turned our attention to Man. Is it possible you have not yet heard that God is dead? Why, where have you been?”

“I see you have been reading Nietzsche,” I remarked with a smile.

He looked at me with annoyance. “The English also read Nietzsche?”

I assented.

“Well,” he went on, “we’ve got God on the stage, you’ll see. We don’t call him God, but it’s God all the same. We call him the old man in grey. We had to do that so as to smuggle him past the censor. The censor, you know, has just stopped Oscar Wilde’s Salome, not because it’s indecent, but because it deals with a biblical subject. I think we’ve got a better censor than yours, however; he has licensed Ghosts and Mrs Warren’s Profession, and it’s perfectly easy to manage him.”

“What did the deacon mean when he said the Ikon speaks?”

“Oh, that is his way of looking at it. The huge figure in grey, which you will see, is really meant for God. God gives the play for the benefit of mankind. God speaks the opening words. He shows the life of one man and says it is a typical life, and that is man’s life upon this earth, that and neither more nor less. During all the five acts God stands in a dark corner like an Ikon; he is visible to the audience as a God, but the actors on the stage behave, for the most part, as if it were only a sacred picture. God holds a candle, and as the play gets older the candle gradually burns lower and lower until, when Man dies, it finally expires. To Man on the stage this candle is only visible as the little lamp burning before the Ikon. He makes plans, he succeeds, he fails, he prays or curses, he is trivial or serious, and all the while the candle representing his life burns lower and nothing can stop the wasting of the wax.”

At this point Miss Yamschin came and called us all back to dinner. So we all trooped back to the room where the log fire gleamed. Three or four paraffin lamps were now lit, and a pleasant light was diffused through their green shades. An uncle of Nicholas’s had arrived, a station-master from a village ten versts away on a by-line. He waited impatiently while the deacon explained who I was, and then transfixed me with this question:

“Who lost the Japanese War—the Russian Government or the people?”

“The Government, of course,” I replied. Whereupon he unexpectedly flung his arms round my neck and kissed me on both cheeks.

“If I had had charge of the war, whew!” he whistled. “D’you see the palm of my hand there; now, there’s the Japanese Army.” Puff, he puffed out his cheeks with air and blew the Japanese Army off his palm and off the face of the earth. He winked at me with assurance. “That’s what I’d do.” He tapped his head and his chest and said knowingly: “Do you see these, ah-ha, pure Russian, they are.”

“Speak to me in English,” he went on. “I learned English at school, but I’ve forgotten—‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note’—eh? D’ye know that?”

When we got to table the uncle made a long speech, wishing prosperity and happiness to the young Englishman who had come out to Russia to make his fortune. England was the greatest country in the world, next to Russia. If the English soldiers would give up rum and take to vodka they would be the greatest soldiers in the world. When we had all drunk that toast he proposed another, hoping I might find a beautiful Russian girl to love. The count was what we should call a good sort in England. He let everyone do exactly as he pleased, except in the matter of wine, to which no refusals were accepted. It was an uproarious dinner-table; not only the young men, but the girls joined in the conviviality. I was lionised. They drank eleven healths to me all round; it was a matter of wonder what the next plea would be, but the uncle’s brain was very fertile. I counted that in all I drank twenty-six glasses of wine that day, and yet when I had been in England I was not quite sure whether I was a teetotaller or not. I was finally persuaded to make a speech in Russian, in which my Russian gave way, and I was forced to conclude in English. I managed to propose the host’s health, and that was the best thing I could have done. Approbation was uproarious.

When, at last, the dinner was over, we filed into the concert-hall to see the Life of Man performed. My student companion was evidently one of the actors, since I looked to resume our conversation, but he was nowhere to be found. The drama was one of Leonid Andrief’s, a new Russian author, whose works have been making him a great name in Russia during the last five years. The Life of Man was produced in the Theatre of Art, Moscow, said to be the greatest theatre in the world. It has made a great impression in Russia; I have come across it everywhere in my wanderings, even in the most unlikely places. Its words and its characters have become so familiar to the public that one scarcely opens a paper without finding references to it. It has been the inspiration of thousands of cartoonists.

It was true, as the student had said, God, as it were, gave the play. The words of the prologue were among the most impressive I have ever heard, and spoken as they were in dreadful sepulchral tones by a figure who, at least, stood for God, they are fixed indelibly in my memory. My programme said, “Prologue: Someone in the greyness speaks of the life of a Man.” As the Prologue is a summary of the play, I shall give it. Picture a perfectly dark stage, and in the darkness a figure darker than the darkness itself, enigmatical, immense.

“Behold and listen,” it said, “ye people, come hither for amusement and laughter. There passes before you the life of a Man—darkness in the beginning, darkness at the end of it. Hitherto not existent, buried in the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none; he secretly oversteps the bounds of nonentity, and with a cry announces the beginning of his little life. In the night of nothingness, a lamp casts a gleam, lit by an unseen hand—it is the life of Man. Look upon the flame of it—the life of a Man.

“When he is born he takes the form and name of man and in all things becomes like other people already living upon the earth. And the cruel destiny of these becomes his destiny, and his cruel destiny the destiny of all people. Irresistibly yoked to time he unfailingly approaches all the steps of Man’s life, from the lower to the higher, from the higher to the lower. By sight limited, he will never foresee the next steps for which he raises his tender feet; by knowledge limited, he will never know what the coming day will bring him, the coming hour—minute. And in his blind ignorance, languishing through foreboding, agitated by hopes, he submissively completes the circle of an iron decree.

“Behold him—a happy young man. Look how brightly the candle burns! The icy wind of the limitless sky cannot disturb, or in the slightest deflect the movement of the flame. Radiantly and brightly burns the candle. But the wax diminishes with the burning. The wax diminishes.

“Behold him—a happy husband and father. But, look how dully and strangely the candle-light glimmers, as if its yellowed flame were withering, trembling from the cold and hiding itself. And the wax is wasting, following the burning. The wax is wasting.

“Behold him—an old man, sickly and weak. Already the steps of life are ending, and a black chasm is in the place of them—but, spite of that, his trembling feet are drawn forwards. Bending towards the earth, the flame, now blue, droops powerlessly, trembles and falls, trembles and falls—and slowly expires.

“So Man will die. Coming out of the night he will return to the night and vanish without traces into the boundless time, unthought of, unfelt, known by none. And I, then, named by all He, remain the true fellow-traveller of Man in all the days of his life, in all his ways. Unseen by Man and near him, I shall be unfailingly beside him when he wakes and when he sleeps, when he prays or when he curses. In the hours of pleasure when he breathes freely and bravely, in the hours of despondency and grief, when the languor of death darkens his soul and the blood grows cold about his heart, in the hours of victory and of defeat, in the hours of the great struggle with the inevitable, I shall be with him. I shall be with him.

“And you come hither for amusement, you, the devoted of death, behold and listen. With this far-off and phantasmal figure there unfolds itself to your gaze, with its sorrows and its joys, the quickly passing life of Man.”

The voice from the grey figure ceased, and in the dark a curtain came down over the scene.

The play was as foreshadowed. In the first act a Man is born, in the second he is a struggling young man, in the third he is a successful man, in the fourth he is in decline, and in the fifth he dies. The figure in grey appears at the birth of Man, and is visible to the audience throughout the five acts. He holds a burning candle, which is radiantly bright in Act iii., but which gutters out at the end of Act v. Fates, old women, nornas, are in attendance at the birth, and they are again in attendance at death.

The story is delicately told and affecting. Man is young and happy and the obstacles in his life are only means of happiness; he succeeds and all the world does homage to him; he passes the prime of life and new obstacles appear, and these serve only to bring him unhappiness; he is brought low and he dies.

The actor who played Man’s part was a robust, handsome man with flashing eyes and long hair. Whilst he played the young Man he was careless, brave, free, and when he became old he was dignified, proud and obstinate. His destiny, it seemed to me, was comprised between a challenge and a curse. In his despair in Act ii., when life seemed a feast to which he was not bidden, he was stung to anger and defiance against Fate. He turned to where the ikon stood and flung a challenge at the Unknown.

“—Hi you! you there! what d’you call yourself? Fate, devil or life, there’s my glove; I’ll fight you! Wretched, poor-spirited folk curse themselves before your enigmatical power: thy stone face moves them to terror, in thy silence they hear the beginning of calamities and their own terrible ruin. But I am brave and strong and I challenge you to battle. With bright swords, with sounding shields, we will fall at one another’s heads with blows at which the earth will tremble. Hi! Come out and fight.

“To thy ominous slow movement I shall oppose my living, vigilant strength; to thy gloom my gay sounding laugh! Hi! Take that blow, ward it off if you can! Your brow is stone, your reason lost. I throw into it the red-hot shot of my bright sense; you have a heart of stone that has lost all pity, give way! I shall pour into it the burning poison of my rebellious cries! By the black cloud of thy fierce anger the sun is obscured; we shall light up the gloom with dreams! Hi! Take that!

“Conquering, I will sing songs which all the world will cheer; silently falling under thy blow, my only thought shall be of rising again to battle! There is a weak place in my armour, I know it. But, covered with wounds, the ruby blood flowing, I shall yet gather strength to cry—and even then, thou evil enemy of Man, I shall overcome Thee. And, dying on the field of battle, as the brave die, with one loud amen I shall annul thy blind pleasure! I have conquered, I have conquered my wicked enemy; not even in my last breath do I acknowledge his power. Hi, there! Hi! Come out and fight! With bright swords, with sounding shields, we shall fall at one another with blows at which the earth will tremble! Hi! Come out and fight!”

The deacon, the count, his daughters, the tenants and guests all looked on with breathless interest. We of the audience knew that which Man on the stage knew not. We knew that even whilst he was raging against Fate his fortune was being achieved and his success assured by two men in a motor-car who were driving about the town, unable to find Man’s wretched dwelling.

Success came and it vanished. “Vanity of vanities,” saith the preacher; so I thought, but Man cursed. He pointed with outstretched arm as if in delirium at the stone face of the ikon and shrieked:

“I curse Thee and all Thou gavest me. I curse the day on which I was born and the day when I shall die. I curse all my life, its pleasures and pains, I curse myself! I curse my eyes, my hearing, my tongue, I curse my heart, my head—and everything I throw again into Thy stern face, senseless Fate. Cursed, cursed for ever! And with the curse I overcome Thee. What remains that Thou canst do with me? Hurl me to the ground, hurl, I shall laugh and shout ‘I curse Thee!’ With the pincers of Death stop my mouth; with my last sense I shall cry into Thy ass’s ears, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Take my dead body, nibble it, like a dog, carry it away into the darkness—I am not in it, I am vanished away, but vanished, repeating, ‘I curse Thee, I curse Thee.’ Through the head of the woman thou hast insulted, through the body of the child thou hast killed—I send to Thee the Curse of Man.”

The dreadful grey figure stood unmoved, silent as the Sphinx. Only the flame of the candle in its hand wavered as if the wind blew it. All of us in the audience shuddered, and the uncle who had become very solemn suddenly began to sob.

Act v. was a dance of drunkards and fates in a cellar tavern, dark, dirty, fearful. The dreadful, implacable figure in grey stood far in the darkest corner, and near him, on a bench, sat Man breathing out his last. The uncle astonished me, and for the moment almost terrified me by crying out in English:

“Out, out, brief candle.”

Truly, it is strange what quantities of English literature one finds in even remote places in Russia.

But to return, Man died, and none too soon, and the candle went out. There was no cheering of the actors, though they were warmly congratulated by the count later on. We all left the little theatre and went back to supper.

At midnight the sledges came. The uncle insisted on our going home with him. So we went to his railway station. Thus ended our night with the mummers at Count Yamschin’s country house.

CHAPTER IV
AT UNCLE’S

UNCLE was station-master of a little place called Rubezhniya, a village of ten families. Rubezhniya is on the edge of a great forest, though, I think, that in Russia they call it a little wood. It extends a few hundred miles, but then there is a forest in Russia where a squirrel might travel straight on eastward four thousand miles, going from branch to branch and never touching earth once. Rubezhniya is also on the black land, and its peasants have money in the autumn, though, it may be remarked, there is never any left by the time winter approaches. Surplus money, unfortunately, finds its way quickly to the exchequer of an unthrifty Government and to the pockets of the farmer of the vodka monopoly.

There are no savings banks in Russia and no wives’ stockings. Ivan Ivanovitch lives hand to mouth; what he earns he spends, and when he earns nothing he gets food from the man next door, or rather next field—for, except in towns, there is no next door, and in the villages there is seldom anything so regular as a road. Rubezhniya was supposed to be suffering from famine and the whole district to be in want of relief; I was therefore interested to see whether Christmas fare was less plentiful there than in Lisitchansk.

Uncle locked us in the first-class waiting-room and bade us undress and be comfortable as if at home. The mother and Zhenia he took to his own small lodging. Once in later days, when I begged hospitality of a “pope,” he put me in the church, and on another occasion, when I went to see a police-officer, he asked me if I would mind sleeping in a cell as he was full up at home. In some respects Russians are Spartans.

We did undress a little and turned out the lamp. The room was dark save for the little light that burned before the Ikon, and there was silence. We composed ourselves to sleep, but after about half an hour came the heavy rumble of a train. We heard steps on the platform, the soft crunching sound of someone walking through crisp snow. Two bells sounded. “The train waits five minutes here,” whispered the deacon, gruffly.

Suddenly a key turned in our door and a hoarse voice exclaimed:

“Devil take it, where’s the light? I’ve brought a little friend.”

It was Uncle again. I am sure we all cursed a little inwardly. But he found his way to the lamp and lit it. The first thing I noticed was a red parcel on the table. The parcel turned out to be a baby.

“A little friend I’ve brought,” said Uncle, apologetically.

“Where’d ye find it?” asked Nicholas.

It was a baby in a sack of red quilted flannel. Uncle picked it up by the flap of the sack and let it dangle from his thumb and forefinger in a way to cause a mother’s heart to tremble.

“Mine,” he said.

“A girl or a boy?” I asked.

“His name is Tarass, Tarass Bulba, eh?” He brought the baby to me and sat down on my legs, for I had not got up from the park seat on which I was resting.

“Where is his mother?” I asked. He put his finger to his lips.

“Asleep; say nothing. My little cossack, there’s an arm for you,” said he, taking a chubby little limb from its cosy resting-place, whereupon he proceeded to undress the child for our edification. But just as he was concluding that delicate operation a man in a goat-skin hat and jacket burst into the waiting-room, and a couple of porters and three third-class passengers.

“Outside, cut-throats,” said Uncle, pulling out a pistol from his belt. The porters and the passengers fled. But the man in the goat-skin jacket held up his arms as if Uncle had cried “Hands up!” and from the moment he burst in he had kept saying “Water!” as if he was demented or the train was on fire.

“Water, water, water!” Uncle put up his pistol in his belt again.

“More softly,” he whispered. “You want water? You’ll get no water here; vodka plenty, but water none.”

I came to the conclusion it must be another comic engine-driver. He protested by Mary in heaven that they could not go on without water.

“Won’t vodka do?”

The engine-driver smiled evasively as much as to say, “You are pleased to be funny, but this is a serious matter.” Then the baby began to scream.

“Devil take it,” said Uncle. “Clear out. There is no water I tell you. Wait for a luggage train to push you to the next station or go to the devil.” At this point a passenger came in, an aged moujik with long white hair.

“God bless all here,” said the moujik.

“What is the matter?”

“The devil is in our midst!” He crossed himself and bowed to the Ikon. “Lord have mercy upon us, for an unclean spirit has come out of the forest!”

“Colour of his eyes?” asked Nicholas, maliciously.

“Red, like fire, your Excellency. An unclean spirit has come out of the forest and entered into the body of Pavel Fedoritch.”

“He means a man in the train has gone mad,” said Nicholas. “That comes of running your trains so fearfully fast and using up all your water.”

The engine-driver protested mildly and then stared at the baby, who was yelling as if Satan had entered into it as well as into Pavel Fedoritch.

“Lord God, preserve us,” said the engine-driver, and crossed himself feverishly.

“A man has gone mad,” said Uncle. “Very well, take him to the police station and ask them to cut his head off; and now outside all those who haven’t got first-class tickets!”

He rose to push them all out but suddenly gave way to one mightier than he. A burly woman in a red petticoat pushed through the little crowd assembled at the doorway, and levelled abuse to right and to left till she got right in and snatched up the baby. It was Auntie. It was Uncle’s wife, and Uncle subsided and Auntie scolded them all for disturbing our rest and cleared the room. Then she sat on the table and quieted the child and told us what a good-for-nothing her husband was. Poor Uncle! He sat meekly by and listened. He evidently felt very sorrowful.

Then she left us and the train went out, without water and without discharging the unclean spirit, I believe, and we were left with Uncle, who insisted on our coming to the bar and making a meal. After that, at about 5.30 a.m., we retired to the waiting-room, there to glean what sleep we might in the three hours that were left to us.

From utter weariness I could have slept all day, but Uncle had no mercy. We were obliged to wake up at seven. The door opened again, and a very ragged and dirty young man lit the gas. He sprinkled some water on the floor and swished a mop over it. He had no boots or stockings on, but there were pieces of hard sheepskin on the soles of his feet, and with these he polished the floor, dancing and stamping, rubbing and smoothing. Russian floors are generally of tessellated wood and are polished in this manner. At eight we had to wash and dress and go up to Uncle’s for breakfast.

The deacon proposed to go to Lisitchansk directly after breakfast. Uncle said we must have dinner first, and then he would come also. I wanted to stay and look around, so I proposed that Nicholas and I remain with Uncle, and that the old folks and Zhenia might go back if they wanted to and we would come on in the afternoon. They agreed. Father, mother and daughter went off in one sledge, Zhenia sitting on her father’s knee, and we strolled away to the forest—“to shoot wolves,” Uncle said.

We passed through the village, a collection of mud huts and pine izbas, all much poorer than Lisitchansk.

“Come and spend the summer here,” said Uncle.

“No, he’s coming to Lisitchansk,” said Nicholas.

“It doesn’t look very tempting,” I replied.

“Oh, don’t judge by the present,” said Uncle, “we are all sleeping like bears in their holes. We don’t really wake up till the spring.”

“Yes, like bears,” said Nicholas. “Every nation tends to take the characteristics of the animals amongst which it lives; the Russians are like bears, the Indians are like snakes, the Irish like pigs, the Australians like kangaroos, the English like cows.”

“Nonsense,” said Uncle; “the Russians are like eagles, the English like lions—eh?”

I agreed—the Russians were as much like eagles as the English like lions.

“There aren’t any eagles in Russia except in the Caucasus,” said Nicholas.

“Yes, that’s the place to go to, the Caucasus, full of bears,” said Uncle.

I laughed and pointed out that I was going to Moscow first, there to finish the winter. The summer was a long way off and I could foresee nothing. But it was probably during this talk that it first occurred to me to go to the Caucasus and tramp the mountains there. Moscow, however, was the idea that forced itself upon my consideration, for as soon as this Little-Russian visit was completed I intended to go thither.

In the forest we met the village moujiks, all engaged in cutting timber and loading sledges, and Uncle amused himself and us by feats of log-lifting. He was very proud of his strength.

A RUSSIAN STREET SCENE

A CAUCASIAN CHIEF

At dinner-time his wife forbade him to go to Lisitchansk, and he, after some protest about his promises, obeyed her. The Christmas festival was evidently ending. The feasting and revelry of the past three days was like a gay dream from which we were awaking, awaking into a grey, ordinary world.

“If you go to the Caucasus come via Rubezhniya,” said Uncle, as he kissed us in the sledge and bade us good-bye.

CHAPTER V
AMONG MOSCOW STUDENTS

AT Kharkov, on my return journey, I recovered half of my lost luggage; the other half, a box full of books and papers, had not turned up: neither by bribes nor by words could it be found. We spent a whole day searching the Customs House, but failed to find any trace of it. I learned afterwards that it had been left behind at Ostend, through the negligence of a porter there. The loss of this box was a matter of sorrow. All through the winter I felt the loss of it. It was only in April, after immense correspondence, that I recovered it, and then it was no use since I had made up my mind to spend the summer on the mountains.

The loss of my overcoat and of my box had evidently made a deep impression on Nicholas. He was determined he should lose none of his things. We were travelling together all the way to Moscow. He was going to be a student at the University, and he hoped to share lodgings with me. Our journey took three days. Nicholas’s luggage consisted of nine heavy portmanteaux and boxes. This luggage was a matter of amazement to myself, my fellow-travellers and the porters. Surely no one ever before started from a pine cottage with such an accumulation. How Nicholas came by it all will always be an interesting page in his life history.

A year ago, Nicholas had been studying in Moscow and supporting himself by giving lessons in English, music and mathematics. Of all his studies the favourite was English; and in English he excelled. His professor regarded him as a lad of promise, and advised him to go for a season to England and learn to speak the language. Nicholas was of an adventurous spirit and the advice pleased him. He saved a few pounds and set off for England. First he went home and told the deacon and his mother. They were astonished beyond words. They did not, however, forbid the journey; they blessed him and bade him farewell, commending him to the saints. His mother kissed the little Ikon which hung round his neck, and looked her son in the eyes with that peculiar expression of faith which is part of the In-itself of life. Zhenia kissed him good-bye, and the young adventurer went out into the wide world into the new lands. His route was interesting, being the route which so many poor emigrants were taking at that time, lured by the stories of fabulous wages in England, America and Canada. He took steamer at Ekaterinoslav and came leisurely up the Dneiper to Kiev, the busy city generally spoken of as ancient, though new as Paris and swirling with electric cars. From Kiev he went by train; third-class to the Konigsberg frontier and thence across Germany, fourth-class to Hamburg. Does the reader know a fourth-class emigrant train? It is a series of cattle-trucks for human beings, and indeed the occupants behave more like animals than human beings. Anything more filthy, indecent and odious than the condition of a Jews’ train can scarcely be imagined. I think Nicholas felt very sick and weary before he got to Hamburg. But it was cheap travelling. I think his whole fare, from Lisitchansk to London, cost less than two pounds ten.

He was a brave boy. I imagine his arrival in London at the dreary docks, his first view of our appallingly large, dreary city. He did not see the fairy-tale which it is the fashion to see in London. It was a friendless desert, a place where everyone was so poor that it took all one’s time to look after oneself. He wandered about and lost himself, if, indeed, it were possible to lose himself, since he was already lost when he arrived that early May morning. There was one thing to do: he had a Russian’s address in his pocket, the address of a Russian in London. By dint of asking a new policeman at each turning he found his way to Russell Square.

Lucky boy! He fell on his feet in Bloomsbury in the Russian colony there. Russians are very kind to one another, and it would be difficult not to be kind to Nicholas; he is handsome, witty, musical. One introduced him to another all the way round, and he found occupation easily, giving lessons once more in English, music and mathematics. It was in this first period that he met me. I had written to the Russian Consul asking if he would recommend me a Russian who would be willing to give me lessons in the Russian language. He indicated a certain M. Voronofsky, who referred me to Nicholas. So I came to know him. He was surely the most affectionate teacher I ever had, and most prodigal he was in Russian conversation. He gave me hours beyond the stipulated time of my lesson, and would walk arm-in-arm with me up and down the Strand, protesting his affection and heaping endearments upon me in a way that made me fancy what it is like to be a girl. I was, however, in some respects unlucky in my teachers; as fast as I got one he disappeared and was next heard of in Barrow-in-Furness. The reason for this lay in the fact that Messrs Vickers Maxim had obtained a contract to build a portion of the new Russian fleet. Besides an immense amount of correspondence with the Russian Admiralty, all plans, specifications and directions were in Russian, and in technical Russian at that. Consequently a large Russian staff was required at Barrow, and almost anyone who applied was accepted at once. I told Nicholas of this, he applied and was accepted. So for the time I lost him. He worked three months, literally grinding, doing twelve hours’ work a day. He found out what it was to be utilised in the English machine. I think he did not like it, and it was only the joy of earning a pile of money that kept him at it. He made eighty pounds in three months, which wasn’t bad for a youngster. But at the end of that time a wave of home-sickness overtook him. A letter from home said his father was unwell; he interpreted it to mean his father was dying, packed up his things and left the country. He had arrived in London with one black box, he went away with—nine heavy portmanteaux and trunks. He said to me, when he came back from Barrow, “I want to buy all sorts of things; if I don’t buy them now I shall never buy them again; I shall never have the money.” Now, to a Russian, England is a paradise of cheap clothes. Living is dear but clothes are dirt cheap. In Russia only my lord wears a collar or uses a handkerchief; an English suit costs five pounds at least, English shirts cost six or seven shillings each. Nicholas bought a wardrobe of suits and fancy waistcoats, hats, boots, umbrellas, ties. Such ties he bought that at several Lisitchansk parties he had to undress partially so as to satisfy the curiosity of his friends. He bought patent Mikado braces, the like had never been seen in Little Russia. He bought Zhenia a hat, and his father a smoking jacket, and his mother a shawl. He bought reams of delicately-tinted notepaper and envelopes, at which, since those days, numberless fair Russian girls have gazed; though “fairer than the paper writ on was the fair hand that writ.” I took him into Straker’s one day to help him to make some purchases; we spent half an hour selecting shades of sealing-wax. Well, you can be sure that by the time he finished his packing there was not much space left in those nine boxes and bags. I saw him off at Liverpool Street Station. He went home via the Hook of Holland and in grand style. It was a strange contrast to his arrival five months before.

Of course he found his father very well when he came to Lisitchansk, and he spent a very gay autumn there. He was the prodigal come home, but with the fatted calf under his arm. It was very glorious for him. Yet from the point of view of material prosperity his return was a mistake. The tide which leads to fortune had been at the full for him in London. He had wilfully neglected it.

Success turned his head a little. He lived on glory for a month or two, and then he heard that I was coming to Russia and he invited me to his home. His mind became full of plans: he would go to Canada, he would go to England again, or to Chicago. The first step, however, towards the realisation of these or any other schemes was to obtain money. He had spent all his English earnings.

I came and stated my intention of going to Moscow. Nicholas discovered that Moscow was the best place for him. He would come with me and learn more English, and he would study for his degree and pay for his living and his fees by giving lessons.

He ought to have gone straight to Moscow in the autumn, for the University year commences in September, and the person who starts in January finds himself hardly circumstanced in many ways. For one thing, it is very difficult to earn money by teaching. It is a custom in Russian families of the middle and upper classes to employ what are known as repetitors. A repetitor is a University student who comes each night to hear the lessons in the family. The boys and girls go to school in the morning, they prepare their home-lessons in the afternoon, and in the evening and at night they say them over to repetitors. A student of ability has a fair chance of earning eight or ten pounds a month by this, and there is scarcely a student in Moscow who does not glean two or three pounds at least by it. But practically the whole of this teaching is arranged in September or October, at the commencement of the session, for all schools work in harmony with the University and have the same terms and vacations. So Nicholas was coming out of time. In truth, neither his prospect nor mine would have tempted an investor. But neither of us understood the position, and each relied a little on the other. Nicholas thought my journalism would bring me in untold wealth, and I thought I might be able to get some teaching through him. So the blind led the blind.

At Moscow we were met by Shura, a Little-Russian friend of Nicholas; Alexander Sergayef was his name in full, though he was called Shura or Sasha for short. He was a philological student and shared rooms with a Greek in the Kislovka. The three of us drove to a lodging-house at Candlemas Gate (Sretinka Vorota), and the portmanteaux and boxes followed behind on a dray.

The lodging-house goes by the name of “Samarkand,” which is printed on a disreputable blue board which hangs outside. It is a dirty establishment like five hundred of its kind in the city. The lodgers are chiefly clerks and students, and, before the Governor stepped in with new regulations, card-sharpers and gamblers. One commonly collided with queer characters on the stairs—beggars, spies, touts; girls in gay hats hung on the banisters, smoked cigarettes, flirted with the doorkeeper and the students. In front the building looked down upon a beer-tavern; behind it stood the Candlemas Monastery, a church of cheese-yellow and bottle-green, surrounded by seven purple domes. On each dome was a gilt cross, and on the cross fat crows often perched. We took a room on the third floor; it cost two pounds a month—a very cheap price for Moscow. It was an advantage to us to be nearer the sky than the street; we had light and air and view. We had more cold, perhaps, but that was a minor matter. No town houses have fire-places except rich mansions built in the English style, but there is excellent steam-heating, and even on the coldest days we never felt a chill, though we were high up and exposed to the wind. For me, indeed, it was a most pleasant experience to be able to turn out of bed in the morning and feel the room as warm as it was when I went to bed. Russian houses, even the poorest, are more comfortable in winter than the English.

Our room was a large one, having five chairs and three rickety little tables, besides a couple of couches and two beds. In a grey corner an Ikon of the Virgin hung. I, for my part, had my own Ikon, a print of Millet’s “Angelus,” which I placed in front of my table. It made even this poor room a living, breathing home. It was my reminder of England. Since those days when I lived at Samarkand it has become very sacred to me.

We were very poor. I think when I had bought an overcoat and Nicholas had paid his fees we had just three pounds between us. We lived on black bread, milk and fried pork. I wrote my articles, he went and hawked about the town for lessons.

Among the precious things in the capacious pockets of that overcoat which was stolen was a book on the Russian Peasant. This had been given me by a London editor who let me have “a shot at reviewing it.” I grieved not a little that this had been lost before I had read it thoroughly. I had only glanced through it in the train. My loss did not deter me from writing the article, however. What was my surprise when in the second week of my stay at Moscow, almost by return of post, the editor wrote, “Review excellent, fire away, try something else.” I felt very cheerful and reflected that by mid-February at the latest I should receive my first cheque.

But meanwhile it became apparent that we stood a chance to starve. We were living on an average of less than fourpence a day each. In a note-book, which I kept at that time, I see that on January 14th I spent 5d. on food, on the 15th, 4d. The figures are interesting:—

and so on.

On the 28th Shura came round to see us, told us his Greek companion had left him, and invited us to come and live with him. Forthwith the three of us, the nine boxes and bags and my luggage, proceeded in sledges to the Kislovka, and we took up our abode in the students’ quarter.

The district known as the Kislovka lies at the back of the University. It is an ugly aggregation of lodging-houses. Each lodging-house is composed of students’ dens. Some students have rooms to themselves, but for the most part a single one is let to two or three students. Three young men, like ourselves, will sleep, eat, study and receive company in the same room. We had to pay about fourteen shillings a month each, so the arrangement seemed more economical. Then Shura earned about four pounds a month giving lessons, so the financial position was much improved. Then, on the second night after we had been there, Nicholas won fifteen shillings off a Frenchman at cards. Then on February 5th there came a letter to me from a London newspaper enclosing a cheque in respect of a Christmas article I had sent in. It was too late for this Christmas, they would use it next. It was evident we should not starve.

On Saturday Shura had an “At Home” day. We always stayed up all night on Saturdays. In the afternoons we bought rolls and sausage and caviare and tinned herring and cheese to make a spread. About five or six o’clock the guests would arrive—five or six girl students and the same number of men. There were not chairs to go round, so many of them sat on the beds. Then we talked in the way that only Russians can. On the floor lay cigarette-ends, volumes on law and philosophy, dust of past ages, vodka droppings from the last gathering, old clothes, newspapers, picture postcards. The walls were plastered with prints, portraits of members of the Duma, a large newspaper picture of Tolstoy, cartoons from European papers, etc. My “Angelus” Ikon looked almost sorrowfully upon the scene. There was no real Russian Ikon there. Shura told me he had pitched it out of the window when he came. He didn’t believe in God. In the course of the evening one of the students present would read a tale from Tchekhof or Andrief, another would read a few verses from Nadson, their favourite poet. Nicholas would play on the guitar and sing little Russian songs. I would get through a game at chess with someone. Then we would all play some games at forfeit with the girls. The time passed very quickly. One samovar would succeed another until after midnight, and glasses of weak tea circulated till dawn. At last we would take the girls home, and then come back and sleep an hour or two before breakfast. It was a godless way of beginning the Sunday.

Shortly after the first “At Home” I discovered a way in which an Englishman can make a small fortune in Moscow. I put an advertisement in the Russian Word to this effect:—

“Young Englishman from London, well-educated, seeks lessons, speaks French and Russian.”

The answers to this soon made me the richest of the three in the little room. My lowest price was four shillings a lesson of one hour. An Englishman can get that easily in Moscow. I became a repetitor. First I had a French girl to teach, the daughter of a cotton manufacturer. She didn’t like me and I lost that lesson after a fortnight, but I got lessons with an engineer, with two German boys and a Russian boy; and a woman engaged me to give a series of lectures on English literature at a girls’ college. For the last named I received six shillings a lecture.

Then Nicholas got three pounds a month to coach a boy for his matriculation; we were all thriving.

CHAPTER VI
“LOVE US WHEN WE ARE DIRTY FOR EVERYONE WILL LOVE US WHEN WE ARE CLEAN!”

IN February Moscow was overrun by an epidemic of typhus. It did not spring from the frozen drains so much as from the indigestible black bread which is sold in the poorer parts of the city. On 10th February I gave up black bread for ever; I have not eaten it since—at least not Moscow black bread; Caucasian black bread is another matter. The bread diet had become too much for me. I lay in bed all one day feeling more dead than alive, and the prospect of typhus seemed very real. I recovered, and then substituted porridge and milk for the old diet. I showed Shura and Nicholas how to make this in the Scotch way, and they got very keen on it and showed other students. So I might almost claim to have introduced Scotch porridge to Moscow University. The Russian peasants and poor people in general make a porridge of buck-wheat, Kasha they call it, but I am quite sure it is less cheap, less wholesome, and less tasty than oatmeal porridge.

Moscow in winter is remarkable for its poor people, its labourers, its beggars, its students. Cab-drivers in Moscow take twopence-halfpenny a mile, and I have frequently taken a sledge from Sukareva Tower to the Vindavsky Station for fifteen copecks—4d., a distance of two miles. At the Khitry market one may often see men and women with only one cotton garment between their bodies and the cruel cold. How they live is incomprehensible; they are certainly a different order of being from anything in England. And the beggars! They say there are 50,000 of them. The city belongs to them; if the city rats own the drains, they own the streets. They are, moreover, an essential part of the city; they are in perfect harmony with it; take away the beggars and you would destroy something vital. Some are so old and weather-battered that they make the Kremlin itself look older, and those who lie at the monastery doors are so fearfully pitiable in their decrepitude that they lend power to the churches. Moscow would be a different place without the gaunt giants who hang down upon one and moan for bread; without the little cripples who squirm upon the pavement and scream their wants at the passer-by. To me, though I found them a plague at first, they were a perpetual interest. There were among them some of the strangest people one could expect to meet anywhere: worn-out, yellow-whiskered men with icicles in their beards, limbless trunks of men, abortions of men and women. I saw many nationalities; Letts, Poles, Jews, Tartars, Tatars, Bohemians, Caucasians, Chinese, Bokharese, specimens of all the peoples who exist under the Russian Eagle. Rich Russians allege that they collect five shillings a day, which is on a par with the tales of wealth amassed by organ-grinders in London. The daily task of each is to obtain twopence—a penny for a pound of black bread, a penny for a bed in a night house. They just about manage this, sometimes getting a little more, sometimes a little less. The surplus goes in vodka.

The question has to be faced by the traveller—What are you going to do with the beggars? I felt the need of a definite policy. At first, when we ourselves were near starving, I said “No” consistently, for I hadn’t any money. Then when money came I hardened my heart and said, “It is better to be a thief than a beggar: it is more manly. If I give to beggars I make it more profitable to be a beggar; I attract other people to beggary. If I withhold my money I drive some beggars to robbery, and then the police have to deal with them.” If the people were properly looked after there would be no need to rob or beg. This was a clear decision, and I held by it rigorously for a long time, till at last I came to the conclusion that it was more unpleasant to refuse some beggars than to give alms. Truly, whether an Englishman gives or gives not he feels he does wrong. Eventually I abandoned my principle and gave when I felt inclined. The Russian has no mental scruples. He is generally, providentially, ignorant of the science of economics. One fact is evident to him: the beggar is cold and hungry and it is Christian to help him. And the Socialists are too busy over bigger things to define their attitude to the poor wretch whom they deem to be a victim of tyranny. It is a common happening to see a crowd of unfortunate creatures being driven to the police-station by a couple of soldiers. To the democrat that is sufficient evidence of tyranny. Still, I have been told the beggars have nothing to fear from the authorities. The beggar is a holy institution; he keeps down the rate of wages in the factories; he is the pillar of the church, for he continually suggests charity; he is necessary to the Secret Police; where else could they hide their spies?

The beggars have the most extraordinary licence and think nothing of walking in at a back-door and staring at you for a quarter of an hour. It is this licensed insolence that makes him a terror to the nervous Russian, who always considers himself watched by spies. Nicholas appeared to be continually suspecting and dreading spies. On the second day after we arrived at the Samarkand lodging-house he discovered a spy on the same floor, so he said. Often when I was walking with him in the town he would say to me in a whisper, “Slow down and let the man behind us get past.” Once we slowed down in vain, and then put on speed in vain; we could not rid ourselves of a beggar who persisted in following us. Nicholas suddenly turned round in terror at a dark corner and clutched hold of the beggar with both hands and shook him. Then it was the beggar’s turn to have a fright, but he only asked meekly:

“Why did you do that to me, barin?”

The word “barin,” “bar,” means a master; it is interesting that the word spelt backwards, rab, means a slave. Russians say this is not merely a coincidence.

The different way in which beggars address one would make an interesting study. I remember one night a dreadful amorphous remnant of a man, lying in a currant box outside the Cathedral of St Saviour, addressed me in this fashion:

“Imagine that I am God!”

One seldom, however, hears such a dramatic utterance. Much commoner is lighter banter. I remember a cheeky boy came up to me smiling and certain.

“A copeck, dear count!”

“Haven’t got one, your Majesty,” I replied.

Many of the beggars have a selection of tales of woe carefully worked up to suit the susceptibilities of different passers-by. Of this kind was an old stalwart whom we, of the Kislovka room, used to patronise. His usual style was:

“I was a soldier at the Turkish War and astonished three generals by my bravery, but now devil a penny will my country give me to keep my old bones together.”

But the two girl students who occupied the room next to ours always averred that he told them a yarn about his daughter dying from want of food and his wife in consumption, but never said a word about his exploits.

Nicholas and I dressed ourselves in our worst and went to a night-house one night. At five o’clock in the evening there was a queue like a first night pit-crowd at His Majesty’s Theatre in London, a street full of beggars pushing, jostling, shouting and singing. Next door to the doss-house was a tavern, to which every now and then someone unable to oppose temptation would dash to get a glass of vodka. Admission to this house cost one penny. It was rather a fearsome den to go into, and I wonder at ourselves now. I thought we should be too far down the line to get in, but I was mistaken. Everyone was admitted. We passed through a turnstile, and, strange to say, showed no passports. I fancy most of the beggars are passport-less. A policeman stood at the door and scrutinised the face of each who passed in. He had had too much vodka to do this to any great effect, and he let us through without demur, probably taking us for famished students, if he thought about us at all. Directly we got in we were confronted by a huge bar stocked with basins. A boy was serving out cabbage soup at a farthing a basinful. Another boy was serving out kasha, also at a farthing a basin. On a green noticeboard, among an array of vodka bottles, I read the following queer price-list:

The doss-house was owned by a merchant who made a handsome profit out of it, I am told. So well he might! The accommodation was nil. Straw to sleep upon. No chairs beyond three park seats. Two rooms lit by two jets of gas each. A small lavatory that might even make a beggar faint. Men and women slept in the same room, though they were, for the most part, so degraded that it scarcely occurred to one that they were of different sex.