CREATURES THAT ONE DAY SHALL BE MEN.
I OUGHT to like Russia better than I do, if only for the sake of the manygood friends I am proud to possess amongst the Russians. A large squarephotograph I keep always on my mantel-piece; it helps me to maintain myhead at that degree of distention necessary for the performance of allliterary work. It presents in the centre a neatly-written address inexcellent English that I frankly confess I am never tired of reading,around which are ranged some hundreds of names I am quite unable to read,but which, in spite of their strange lettering, I know to be the names ofgood Russian men and women to whom, a year or two ago, occurred thekindly idea of sending me as a Christmas card this message ofencouragement. The individual Russian is one of the most charmingcreatures living. If he like you he does not hesitate to let you knowit; not only by every action possible, but, by what perhaps is just asuseful in this grey old world, by generous, impulsive speech.
We Anglo-Saxons are apt to pride ourselves upon being undemonstrative.Max Adeler tells the tale of a boy who was sent out by his father tofetch wood. The boy took the opportunity of disappearing and did notshow his face again beneath the paternal roof for over twenty years.Then one evening, a smiling, well-dressed stranger entered to the oldcouple, and announced himself as their long-lost child, returned at last.
“Well, you haven’t hurried yourself,” grumbled the old man, “and blarm meif now you haven’t forgotten the wood.”
I was lunching with an Englishman in a London restaurant one day. A manentered and took his seat at a table near by. Glancing round, andmeeting my friend’s eyes, he smiled and nodded.
“Excuse me a minute,” said my friend, “I must just speak to mybrother—haven’t seen him for over five years.”
He finished his soup and leisurely wiped his moustache before strollingacross and shaking hands. They talked for a while. Then my friendreturned to me.
“Never thought to see him again,” observed my friend, “he was one of thegarrison of that place in Africa—what’s the name of it?—that the Mahdiattacked. Only three of them escaped. Always was a lucky beggar, Jim.”
“But wouldn’t you like to talk to him some more?” I suggested; “I can seeyou any time about this little business of ours.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he answered, “we have just fixed it up—shall beseeing him again to-morrow.”
I thought of this scene one evening while dining with some Russianfriends in a St. Petersburg Hotel. One of the party had not seen hissecond cousin, a mining engineer, for nearly eighteen months. They satopposite to one another, and a dozen times at least during the course ofthe dinner one of them would jump up from his chair, and run round toembrace the other. They would throw their arms about one another,kissing one another on both cheeks, and then sit down again, with moisteyes. Their behaviour among their fellow countrymen excited noastonishment whatever.
But the Russians’s anger is as quick and vehement as his love. Onanother occasion I was supping with friends in one of the chiefrestaurants on the Nevsky. Two gentlemen at an adjoining table, who uptill the previous moment had been engaged in amicable conversation,suddenly sprang to their feet, and “went for” one another. One mansecured the water-bottle, which he promptly broke over the other’s head.His opponent chose for his weapon a heavy mahogany chair, and leapingback for the purpose of securing a good swing, lurched against myhostess.
“Do please be careful,” said the lady.
“A thousand pardons, madame,” returned the stranger, from whom blood andwater were streaming in equal copiousness; and taking the utmost care toavoid interfering with our comfort, he succeeded adroitly in flooring hisantagonist by a well-directed blow.
A policeman appeared upon the scene. He did not attempt to interfere,but running out into the street communicated the glad tidings to anotherpoliceman.
“This is going to cost them a pretty penny,” observed my host, who wascalmly continuing his supper; “why couldn’t they wait?”
It did cost them a pretty penny. Some half a dozen policemen were roundabout before as many minutes had elapsed, and each one claimed his bribe.Then they wished both combatants good-night, and trooped out evidently ingreat good humour and the two gentlemen, with wet napkins round theirheads, sat down again, and laughter and amicable conversation flowedfreely as before.
They strike the stranger as a childlike people, but you are possessedwith a haunting sense of ugly traits beneath. The workers—slaves itwould be almost more correct to call them—allow themselves to beexploited with the uncomplaining patience of intelligent animals. Yetevery educated Russian you talk to on the subject knows that revolutionis coming.
But he talks to you about it with the door shut, for no man in Russia canbe sure that his own servants are not police spies. I was discussingpolitics with a Russian official one evening in his study when his oldhousekeeper entered the room—a soft-eyed grey-haired woman who had beenin his service over eight years, and whose position in the household wasalmost that of a friend. He stopped abruptly and changed theconversation. So soon as the door was closed behind her again, heexplained himself.
“It is better to chat upon such matters when one is quite alone,” helaughed.
“But surely you can trust her,” I said, “She appears to be devoted to youall.”
“It is safer to trust no one,” he answered. And then he continued fromthe point where we had been interrupted.
“It is gathering,” he said; “there are times when I almost smell blood inthe air. I am an old man and may escape it, but my children will have tosuffer—suffer as children must for the sins of their fathers. We havemade brute beasts of the people, and as brute beasts they will come uponus, cruel, and undiscriminating; right and wrong indifferently going downbefore them. But it has to be. It is needed.”
It is a mistake to speak of the Russian classes opposing to all progressa dead wall of selfishness. The history of Russia will be the history ofthe French Revolution over again, but with this difference: that theeducated classes, the thinkers, who are pushing forward the dumb massesare doing so with their eyes open. There will be no Maribeau, no Dantonto be appalled at a people’s ingratitude. The men who are to-day workingfor revolution in Russia number among their ranks statesmen, soldiers,delicately-nurtured women, rich landowners, prosperous tradesmen,students familiar with the lessons of history. They have nomisconceptions concerning the blind Monster into which they are breathinglife. He will crush them, they know it; but with them he will crush theinjustice and stupidity they have grown to hate more than they lovethemselves.
The Russian peasant, when he rises, will prove more terrible, morepitiless than were the men of 1790. He is less intelligent, more brutal.They sing a wild, sad song, these Russian cattle, the while they work.They sing it in chorus on the quays while hauling the cargo, they sing itin the factory, they chant on the weary, endless steppes, reaping thecorn they may not eat. It is of the good time their masters are having,of the feastings and the merrymakings, of the laughter of the children,of the kisses of the lovers.
But the last line of every verse is the same. When you ask a Russian totranslate it for you he shrugs his shoulders.
“Oh, it means,” he says, “that their time will also come—some day.”
It is a pathetic, haunting refrain. They sing it in the drawing-rooms ofMoscow and St. Petersburg, and somehow the light talk and laughter dieaway, and a hush, like a chill breath, enters by the closed door andpasses through. It is a curious song, like the wailing of a tired wind,and one day it will sweep over the land heralding terror.
A Scotsman I met in Russia told me that when he first came out to act asmanager of a large factory in St. Petersburg, belonging to his Scottishemployers, he unwittingly made a mistake the first week when paying hisworkpeople. By a miscalculation of the Russian money he paid the men,each one, nearly a rouble short. He discovered his error before thefollowing Saturday, and then put the matter right.
The men accepted hisexplanation with perfect composure and without any comment whatever. Thething astonished him.
“But you must have known I was paying you short,” he said to one of them.“Why didn’t you tell me of it?”
“Oh,” answered the man, “we thought you were putting it in your ownpocket and then if we had complained it would have meant dismissal forus. No one would have taken our word against yours.”
Corruption appears to be so general throughout the whole of Russia thatall classes have come to accept it as part of the established order ofthings. A friend gave me a little dog to bring away with me. It was avaluable animal, and I wished to keep it with me. It is strictlyforbidden to take dogs into railway carriages. The list of the pains andpenalties for doing so frightened me considerably.
“Oh, that will be all right,” my friend assured me; “have a few roublesloose in your pocket.”
I tipped the station master and I tipped the guard, and started pleasedwith myself. But I had not anticipated what was in store for me. Thenews that an Englishman with a dog in a basket and roubles in his pocketwas coming must have been telegraphed all down the line. At almost everystopping-place some enormous official, wearing generally a sword and ahelmet, boarded the train. At first these fellows terrified me. I tookthem for field-marshals at least.
Visions of Siberia crossed my mind. Anxious and trembling, I gave thefirst one a gold piece. He shook me warmly by the hand—I thought he wasgoing to kiss me. If I had offered him my cheek I am sure he would havedone so. With the next one I felt less apprehensive. For a couple ofroubles he blessed me, so I gathered; and, commending me to the care ofthe Almighty, departed. Before I had reached the German frontier, I wasgiving away the equivalent of English sixpences to men with the dress andcarriage of major-generals; and to see their faces brighten up and toreceive their heartfelt benediction was well worth the money.
But to the man without roubles in his pocket, Russian officialdom is notso gracious. By the expenditure of a few more coins I got my dog throughthe Customs without trouble, and had leisure to look about me. Amiserable object was being badgered by half a dozen men in uniform, andhe—his lean face puckered up into a snarl—was returning them snappishanswers; the whole scene suggested some half-starved mongrel beingworried by school-boys. A slight informality had been discovered in hispassport, so a fellow traveller with whom I had made friends informed me.He had no roubles in his pocket, and in consequence they were sending himback to St. Petersburg—some eighteen hours’ journey—in a wagon that inEngland would not be employed for the transport of oxen.
It seemed a good joke to Russian officialdom; they would drop in everynow and then, look at him as he sat crouched in a corner of thewaiting-room, and pass out again, laughing. The snarl had died from hisface; a dull, listless indifference had taken its place—the look one seeson the face of a beaten dog, after the beating is over, when it is lyingvery still, its great eyes staring into nothingness, and one wonderswhether it is thinking.
The Russian worker reads no newspaper, has no club, yet all things seemto be known to him. There is a prison on the banks of the Neva, in St.Petersburg. They say such things are done with now, but up till veryrecently there existed a small cell therein, below the level of the ice,and prisoners placed there would be found missing a day or twoafterwards, nothing ever again known of them, except, perhaps, to thefishes of the Baltic. They talk of such like things among themselves:the sleigh-drivers round their charcoal fire, the field-workers going andcoming in the grey dawn, the factory workers, their whispers deadened bythe rattle of the looms.
I was searching for a house in Brussels some winters ago, and there wasone I was sent to in a small street leading out of the Avenue Louise. Itwas poorly furnished, but rich in pictures, large and small. Theycovered the walls of every room.
“These pictures,” explained to me the landlady, an old, haggard-lookingwoman, “will not be left, I am taking them with me to London. They areall the work of my husband. He is arranging an exhibition.”
The friend who had sent me had told me the woman was a widow, who hadbeen living in Brussels eking out a precarious existence as alodging-house keeper for the last ten years.
“You have married again?” I questioned her.
The woman smiled.
“Not again. I was married eighteen years ago in Russia. My husband wastransported to Siberia a few days after we were married, and I have neverseen him since.”
“I should have followed him,” she added, “only every year we thought hewas going to be set free.”
“He is really free now?” I asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “They set him free last week. He will join me inLondon. We shall be able to finish our honeymoon.”
She smiled, revealing to me that once she had been a girl.
I read in the English papers of the exhibition in London. It was saidthe artist showed much promise. So possibly a career may at last beopening out for him.
Nature has made life hard to Russian rich and poor alike. To the banksof the Neva, with its ague and influenza-bestowing fogs and mists, oneimagines that the Devil himself must have guided Peter the Great.
“Show me in all my dominions the most hopelessly unattractive site onwhich to build a city,” Peter must have prayed; and the Devil havingdiscovered the site on which St. Petersburg now stands, must havereturned to his master in high good feather.
“I think, my dear Peter, I have found you something really unique. It isa pestilent swamp to which a mighty river brings bitter blasts andmarrow-chilling fogs, while during the brief summer time the wind willbring you sand. In this way you will combine the disadvantages of theNorth Pole with those of the desert of Sahara.”
In the winter time the Russians light their great stoves, and doublybarricade their doors and windows; and in this atmosphere, like to thatof a greenhouse, many of their women will pass six months, neverventuring out of doors. Even the men only go out at intervals. Everyoffice, every shop is an oven. Men of forty have white hair andparchment faces; and the women are old at thirty. The farm labourers,during the few summer months, work almost entirely without sleep. Theyleave that for the winter, when they shut themselves up like dormice intheir hovels, their store of food and vodka buried underneath the floor.For days together they sleep, then wake and dig, then sleep again.
The Russian party lasts all night. In an adjoining room are beds andcouches; half a dozen guests are always sleeping. An hour contents them,then they rejoin the company, and other guests take their places. TheRussian eats when he feels so disposed; the table is always spread, theguests come and go. Once a year there is a great feast in Moscow. TheRussian merchant and his friends sit down early in the day, and a sort ofthick, sweet pancake is served up hot. The feast continues for manyhours, and the ambition of the Russian merchant is to eat more than hisneighbour. Fifty or sixty of these hot cakes a man will consume at asitting, and a dozen funerals in Moscow is often the result.
An uncivilised people, we call them in our lordly way, but they areyoung. Russian history is not yet three hundred years old. They willsee us out, I am inclined to think. Their energy, theirintelligence—when these show above the groundwork—are monstrous. I haveknown a Russian learn Chinese within six months. English! they learn itwhile you are talking to them. The children play at chess and study theviolin for their own amusement.
The world will be glad of Russia—when she has put her house in order.