The curious international families which seemed to abound in Vienna always puzzled me. Thus the princes d'Aremberg are Belgians, but there was one Prince d'Aremberg in the Austrian service, whilst his brother was in the Prussian Diplomatic Service, the remainder of the family being Belgians. There were, in the same way, many German-speaking Pourtales in Berlin in the German service, and more French-speaking ones in Paris in the French service. The Duc de Croy was both a Belgian and an Austrian subject. The Croys are one of the oldest families in Europe, and are ebenbürtig ("born on an equality") with all the German Royalties. They therefore show no signs of respect to Archdukes and Archduchesses when they meet them. Although I cannot vouch personally for them, never having myself seen them, I am told that there are two pictures in the Croy Palace at Brussels which reach the apogee of family pride. The first depicts Noah embarking on his ark. Although presumably anxious about the comfort of the extensive live-stock he has on board, Noah finds time to give a few parting instructions to his sons. On what is technically called a "bladder" issuing from his mouth are the words, "And whatever you do, don't forget to bring with you the family papers of the Croys." ("Et surtout ayez soin de ne pas oublier les papiers de la Maison de Croy!") The other picture represents the Madonna and Child, with the then Duke of Croy kneeling in adoration before them. Out of the Virgin Mary's mouth comes a "bladder" with the words "But please put on your hat, dear cousin." ("Mais couvrez vous donc, cher cousin.")
The whole of Viennese life is regulated by one exceedingly tiresome custom. After 10 or 10.15 p.m. the hall porter (known in Vienna as the "House-master") of every house in the city has the right of levying a small toll of threepence on each person entering or leaving the house. The whole life of the Vienna bourgeois is spent in trying to escape this tax, known as "Schlüssel-Geld." The theatres commence accordingly at 6 p.m. or 6.30, which entails dining about 5 p.m. A typical Viennese middle-class family will hurry out in the middle of the last act and scurry home breathlessly, as the fatal hour approaches. Arrived safely in their flat, in the last stages of exhaustion, they say triumphantly to each other. "We have missed the end of the play, and we are rather out of breath, but never mind, we have escaped the 'Schlüssel-Geld,' and as we are four, that makes a whole shilling saved!"
An equally irritating custom is the one that ordains that in restaurants three waiters must be tipped in certain fixed proportions. The "Piccolo," who brings the wine and bread, receives one quarter of the tip; the "Speisetrager," who brings the actual food, gets one half; the "Zahlkellner," who brings the bill, gets one quarter. All these must be given separately, so not only does it entail a hideous amount of mental arithmetic, but it also necessitates the perpetual carrying about of pocketfuls of small change.
The Vienna restaurants were quite excellent, with a local cuisine of extraordinary succulence, and more extraordinary names. A universal Austrian custom, not only in restaurants but in private houses as well, is to serve a glass of the delicious light Vienna beer with the soup. Even at State dinners at the Hof-Burg, a glass of beer was always offered with the soup. The red wine, Voslauer, grown in the immediate vicinity of the city, is so good, and has such a distinctive flavour, that I wonder it has never been exported. The restaurants naturally suggest the matchless Viennese orchestras. They were a source of never-ending delight to me. The distinction they manage to give to quite commonplace little airs is extraordinary. The popular songs, "Wiener-Couplets," melodious, airy nothings, little light soap-bubbles of tunes, are one of the distinctive features of Vienna. Played by an Austrian band as only an Austrian band can play them, with astonishing vim and fire, and supremely dainty execution, these little fragile melodies are quite charming and irresistibly attractive. We live in a progressive age. In the place of these Austrian bands with their finished execution and consummately musicianly feeling, the twentieth century has invented the Jazz band with its ear-splitting, chaotic din.
There is a place in Vienna known as the Heiden-Schuss, or "Shooting of the heathens." The origin of this is quite interesting.
In 1683 the Turks invaded Hungary, and, completely overrunning the country, reached Vienna, to which they laid siege, for the second time in its history. Incidentally, they nearly succeeded in capturing it. During the siege bakers' apprentices were at work one night in underground bakehouses, preparing the bread for next day's consumption. The lads heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump," and were much puzzled by it. Two of the apprentices, more intelligent than the rest, guessed that the Turks were driving a mine, and ran off to the Commandant of Vienna with their news. They saw the principal engineer officer and told him of their discovery. He accompanied them back to the underground bakehouse, and at once determined that the boys were right. Having got the direction from the sound, the Austrians drove a second tunnel, and exploded a powerful counter-mine. Great numbers of Turks were killed, and the siege was temporarily raised. On September 12 of the same year (1683) John Sobieski, King of Poland, utterly routed the Turks, drove them back into their own country, and Vienna was saved. As a reward for the intelligence shown by the baker-boys, they were granted the privilege of making and selling a rich kind of roll (into the composition of which butter entered largely) in the shape of the Turkish emblem, the crescent. These rolls became enormously popular amongst the Viennese, who called them Kipfeln. When Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI of France, she missed her Kipfel, and sent to Vienna for an Austrian baker to teach his Paris confrères the art of making them. These rolls, which retained their original shape, became as popular in Paris as they had been in Vienna, and were known as Croissants, and that is the reason why one of the rolls which are brought you with your morning coffee in Paris will be baked in the form of a crescent.
The extraordinary number of good-looking women, of all classes to be seen in the streets of Vienna was most striking, especially after Berlin, where a lower standard of feminine beauty prevailed. Particularly noticeable were the admirable figures with which most Austrian women are endowed. In the far-off "'seventies" ladies did not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments of material—they dressed, and their clothes fitted them; and a woman on whom Nature (or Art) had bestowed a good figure was able to display her gifts to the world. In the same way, Fashion did not compel a pretty girl to smother up her features in unbecoming tangles of tortured hair. The usual fault of Austrian faces is their breadth across the cheek-bones; the Viennese too have a decided tendency to embonpoint, but in youth these defects are not accentuated. Amongst the Austrian aristocracy the great beauty of the girls was very noticeable, as was their height, in marked contrast to the short stature of most of the men. I have always heard that one of the first outward signs of the decadence of a race is that the girls grow taller, whilst the men get shorter.
The Vienna theatres are justly celebrated. At the Hof-Burg Theatre may be seen the most finished acting on the German stage. The Burg varied its programme almost nightly, and it was an amusing sight to see the troops of liveried footmen inquiring at the box-office, on behalf of their mistresses, whether the play to be given that night was or was not a Comtessen-Stück, i.e., a play fit for young girls to see. The box-keeper always gave a plain "Yes" or "No" in reply. After Charles Garnier's super-ornate pile in Paris, the Vienna Opera-house is the finest in Europe, and the musical standard reaches the highest possible level, completely eclipsing Paris in that respect. In the "'seventies" Johann Strauss's delightful comic operas still retained their vogue. Bubbling over with merriment, full of delicious ear-tickling melodies, and with a "go" and an irresistible intoxication about them that no French composer has ever succeeded in emulating, these operettas, "Die Fledermaus," "Prinz Methusalem," and "La Reine Indigo," would well stand revival. When the "Fledermaus" was revived in London some ten years ago it ran, if my memory serves me right, for nearly a year. Occasionally Strauss himself conducted one of his own operettas; then the orchestra, responding to his magical baton, played like very demons. Strauss had one peculiarity. Should he be dissatisfied with the vim the orchestra put into one of his favourite numbers, he would snatch the instrument from the first violin and play it himself. Then the orchestra answered like one man, and one left the theatre with the entrancing strains still tingling in one's ears.
The family houses of most of the Austrian nobility were in the Inner Town, the old walled city, where space was very limited. These fine old houses, built for the greater part in the Italian baroque style, though splendid for entertaining, were almost pitch dark and very airless in the daytime. Judging, too, from the awful smells in them, they must have been singularly insanitary dwellings. The Lobkowitz Palace, afterwards the French Embassy, was so dark by day that artificial light had always to be used. In the great seventeenth century ball-room of the Lobkowitz Palace there was a railed off oak-panelled alcove containing a bust of Beethoven, an oak table, and three chairs. It was in that alcove, and at that table, that Beethoven, when librarian to Prince Lobkowitz, composed some of his greatest works.
Our own Embassy in the Metternichgasse, built by the British Government, was rather cramped and could in no way compare with the Berlin house.
I remember well a ball given by Prince S——, head of one of the greatest Austrian families, in his fine but extremely dark house in the Inner Town. It was Prince S——'s custom on these occasions to have three hundred young peasants sent up from his country estates, and to have them all thrust into the family livery. These bucolic youths, looking very sheepish in their unfamiliar plush breeches and stockings, with their unkempt heads powdered, and with swords at their sides, stood motionless on every step of the staircase. I counted one hundred of these rustic retainers on the staircase alone. They would have looked better had their liveries occasionally fitted them. The ball-room at Prince S——'s was hung with splendid Brussels seventeenth century tapestry framed in mahogany panels, heavily carved and gilt. I have never seen this combination of mahogany, gilding, and tapestry anywhere else. It was wonderfully decorative, and with the elaborate painted ceiling made a fine setting for an entertainment. It was a real pleasure to see how whole-heartedly the Austrians threw themselves into the dancing. I think they all managed to retain a child's power of enjoyment, and they never detracted from this by any unnecessary brainwork. Still they were delightfully friendly, easy-going people. A distinctive feature of every Vienna ball was the "Comtessen-Zimmer," or room reserved for girls. At the end of every dance they all trooped in there, giggling and gossiping, and remained there till the music for the next dance struck up. No married woman dared intrude into the "Comtessen-Zimmer," and I shudder to think of what would have befallen the rash male who ventured to cross that jealously-guarded threshold. I imagine that the charming and beautifully-dressed Austrian married women welcomed this custom, for between the dances at all events they could still hold the field, free from the competition of a younger and fresher generation.
At Prince S——'s, at midnight, armies of rustic retainers, in their temporary disguise, brought battalions of supper tables into the ball-room, and all the guests sat down to a hot supper at the same time. As an instance of how Austrians blended simplicity with a great love of externals, I see from my diary that the supper consisted of bouillon, of plain-boiled carp with horse-radish, of thick slices of hot roast beef, and a lemon ice—and nothing else whatever. A sufficiently substantial repast, but hardly in accordance with modern ideas as to what a ball-supper should consist of. The young peasants, considering that it was their first attempt at waiting, did not break an undue number of plates; they tripped at times, though, over their unaccustomed swords, and gaped vacantly, or would get hitched up with each other, when more dishes crashed to their doom.
In Vienna there was a great distinction drawn between a "Court Ball" (Hof-Ball) and a "Ball at the Court" (Ball bei Hof). To the former everyone on the Palace list was invited, to the latter only a few people; and the one was just as crowded and disagreeable as the other was the reverse. The great rambling pile of the Hof-Burg contains some very fine rooms and a marvellous collection of works of art, and the so-called "Ceremonial Apartments" are of quite Imperial magnificence, but the general effect was far less striking than in Berlin.
In spite of the beauty of the women, the coup d'oeil was spoilt by the ugly Austrian uniforms. After the disastrous campaign of 1866, the traditional white of the Austrian Army was abolished, and the uniforms were shorn of all unnecessary trappings. The military tailors had evolved hideous garments, ugly in colour, unbecoming in cut. One can only trust that they proved very economical, but the contrast with the splendid and admirably made uniforms of the Prussian Army was very marked. The Hungarian magnates in their traditional family costumes (from which all Hussar uniforms are derived) added a note of gorgeous colour, with their gold-laced tunics and their many-hued velvet slung-jackets. I remember, on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887, the astonishment caused by a youthful and exceedingly good-looking Hungarian who appeared at Buckingham Palace in skin-tight blue breeches lavishly embroidered with gold over the thighs, entirely gilt Hessian boots to the knee, and a tight-fitting tunic cut out of a real tiger-skin, fastened with some two dozen turquoise buttons the size of five-shilling pieces. When this resplendent youth reappeared in London ten years later at the Diamond Jubilee, it was with a tonsured head, and he was wearing the violet robes of a prelate of the Roman Church.
As an instance of the inflexibility of the cast-iron rules of the Hapsburg Court: I may mention that the beautiful Countess Karolyi, Austrian Ambassadress in Berlin, was never asked to Court in Vienna, as she lacked the necessary "sixteen quarterings." To a non-Austrian mind it seems illogical that the lovely lady representing Austria in Berlin should have been thought unfitted for an invitation from her own Sovereign.
The immense deference paid to the Austrian Archdukes and Archduchesses was very striking after the comparatively unceremonious fashion in which minor German royalties (always excepting the Emperor and the Crown Prince) were treated in Berlin. The Archduchesses especially were very tenacious of their privileges. They never could forget that they were Hapsburgs, and exacted all the traditional signs of respect.
The unfortunate Empress Elisabeth, destined years after to fall under the dagger of an assassin at Geneva, made but seldom a public appearance in her husband's dominions. She had an almost morbid horror of fulfilling any of the duties of her position. During my stay in the Austrian capital I only caught one glimpse of her, driving through the streets. She was astonishingly handsome, with coiled masses of dark hair, and a very youthful and graceful figure, but the face was so impassive that it produced the effect of a beautiful, listless mask. The Empress was a superb horse-woman, and every single time she rode she was literally sewn into her habit by a tailor, in order to ensure a perfect fit.
The innumerable cafés of Vienna were crowded from morning to night. Seeing them crammed with men in the forenoon, one naturally wondered how the business of the city was transacted. Probably, in typical Austrian fashion, these worthy Viennese left their businesses to take care of themselves whilst they enjoyed themselves in the cafés. The super-excellence of the Vienna coffee would afford a more or less legitimate excuse for this. Nowhere in the world is such coffee made, and a "Capuziner," or a "Melange," the latter with thick whipped cream on the top of it, were indeed things of joy.
Few capitals are more fortunate in their environs than Vienna. The beautiful gardens and park of Schönbrunn Palace have a sort of intimate charm which is wholly lacking at Versailles. They are stately, yet do not overwhelm you with a sense of vast spaces. They are crowned by a sort of temple, known as the Gloriette, from which a splendid view is obtained.
In less than three hours from the capital, the railway climbs 3,000 feet to the Semmering, where the mountain scenery is really grand. During the summer months the whole of Vienna empties itself on to the Semmering and the innumerable other hill-resorts within easy distance from the city.
When the time came for my departure, I felt genuinely sorry at leaving this merry, careless, music and laughter-loving town, and these genial, friendly, hospitable incompetents. I feel some compunction in using this word, as people had been very good to me. I cannot help feeling, though, that it is amply warranted. A bracing climate is doubtless wholesome; but a relaxing one can be very pleasant for a time. I went back to Berlin feeling like a boy returning to school after his holidays.
The Viennese had but little love for their upstart rival on the Spree. They had invented the name "Parvenupopolis" for Berlin, and a little popular song, which I may be forgiven for quoting in the original German, expressed their sentiments fairly accurately:
Es gibt nur eine Kaiserstadt,
Es gibt nur ein Wien;
Es gibt nur ein Raubernest,
Und das heisst Berlin.
I had a Bavarian friend in Berlin. We talked over the amazing difference in temperament there was between the Austrians and the Prussians, and the curious charm there was about the former, lacking in intellect though they might be, a charm wholly lacking in the pushful, practical Prussians. My friend agreed, but claimed the same attractive qualities for his own beloved Bavarians; "but," he added impressively, "mark my words, in twenty years from now the whole of Germany will be Prussianised!" ("Ganz Deutschland wird verpreussert werden") Events have shown how absolutely correct my Bavarian friend was in his forecast.
In June, 1878, the great Congress for the settlement of the terms of peace between Russia and Turkey assembled in Berlin. It was an extraordinarily interesting occasion, for almost every single European notability was to be seen in the German capital. The Russian plenipotentiaries were the veteran Prince Gortchakoff and Count Peter Schouvaloff, that most genial faux-bonhomme; the Turks were championed by Ali Pasha and by Katheodory Pasha. Great Britain was represented by Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury; Austria by Count Andrassy, the Prime Minister; France by M. Waddington. In spite of the very large staff brought out from London by the British plenipotentiaries, an enormous amount of work fell upon us at the Embassy.
To a youngster there is something very fascinating in being regarded as so worthy of confidence that the most secret details of the great game of diplomacy were all known to him from day to day. A boy of twenty-one feels very proud of the trust reposed in him, and at being the repository of such weighty and important secrets. That is the traditional method of the British Diplomatic Service.
As all the Embassies gave receptions in honour of their own plenipotentiaries, we met almost nightly all the great men of Europe, and had occasional opportunities for a few words with them. Prince Gortchakoff, who fancied himself Bismarck's only rival, was a little, short, tubby man in spectacles; wholly undistinguished in appearance, and looking for all the world like an average French provincial notaire. Count Andrassy, the Hungarian, was a tall, strikingly handsome man, with an immense head of hair. To me, he always recalled the leader of a "Tzigane" orchestra. M. Waddington talked English like an Englishman, and was so typically British in appearance that it was almost impossible to realise that he was a Frenchman. Our admiration for him was increased when we learnt that he had rowed in the Cambridge Eight. But without any question whatever, the personality which excited the greatest interest at the Berlin Congress was that of Lord Beaconsfield, the Jew who by sheer force of intellect had raised himself from nothing into his present commanding position. His peculiar, colourless, inscrutable face, with its sphinx-like impassiveness; the air of mystery which somehow clung about him; the romantic story of his career; even the remnants of dandyism which he still retained in his old age—all these seemed to whet the insatiable public curiosity about him. Some enterprising Berlin tradesmen had brought out fans, with leaves composed of plain white vellum, designed expressly for the Congress. Armed with one of these fans, and with pen and ink, indefatigable feminine autograph-hunters moved about at these evening receptions, securing the signatures of the plenipotentiaries on the white vellum leaves. Many of those fans must still be in existence, and should prove very interesting to-day. Bismarck alone invariably refused his autograph.
At all these gatherings, M. de Blowitz, the then Paris correspondent of the Times, was much to the fore. In the "'seventies" the prestige of the Times on the Continent of Europe was enormous. In reality the influence of the Times was very much overrated, since all Continentals persisted in regarding it as the inspired mouthpiece of the British Government. Great was the Times, but greater still was de Blowitz, its prophet. This most remarkable man was a veritable prince of newspaper correspondents. There was no move on the European chess-board of which he was not cognisant, and as to which he did not keep his paper well informed, and his information was always accurate. De Blowitz knew no English, and his lengthy daily telegrams to the Times were always written in French and were translated in London. He was really a Bohemian Jew of the name of Oppen, and he had bestowed the higher-sounding name of de Blowitz on himself. He was a very short, fat little man, with immensely long grey side-whiskers, and a most consequential manner. He was a very great personage indeed in official circles. De Blowitz has in his Memoirs given a full account of the trick by which he learnt of the daily proceedings of the Congress and so transmitted them to his paper. I need not, therefore, go into details about this; it is enough to say that a daily exchange of hats, in the lining of the second of which a summary of the day's deliberations was concealed, played a great part in it.
When the Treaty had been drawn up in French, Lord Salisbury rather startled us by saying that he wished it translated into English and cyphered to London that very evening in extenso. This was done to obviate the possibility of the news-paper correspondents getting a version of the Treaty through to London before the British Government had received the actual text. As the Treaty was what I, in the light of later experiences, would now describe as of fifteen thousand words length, this was a sufficiently formidable undertaking. Fifteen of us sat down to the task about 6 p.m., and by working at high pressure we got the translation finished and the last cyphered sheet sent off to the telegraph office by 5 a.m. The translation done at such breakneck speed was possibly a little crude in places. One clause in the Treaty provided that ships in ballast were to have free passage through the Dardanelles. Now the French for "ships in ballast," is "navires en lest." The person translating this (who was not a member of the British Diplomatic Service) rendered "navires en lest" as "ships in the East," and in this form it was cyphered to London. As, owing to the geographical position of the Dardanelles, any ship approaching them would be, in one sense of the term, a "ship in the East," there was considerable perturbation in Downing Street over this clause, until the mistake was discovered.
Berlin has wonderful natural advantages, considering that it is situated in a featureless, sandy plain. In my day it was quite possible to walk from the Embassy into a real, wild pine-forest, the Grünewald. The Grünewald, being a Royal forest, was unbuilt on, and quite unspoilt. It extended for miles, enclosing many pretty little lakelets. Now I understand that it has been invaded by "villa colonies," so its old charm of wildness must have vanished. The Tiergarten, too, the park of Berlin, retains in places the look of a real country wood. It is inadvisable to venture into the Tiergarten after nightfall, should you wish to retain possession of your watch, purse, and other portable property. The sandy nature of the soil makes it excellent for riding. Within quite a short distance of the city you can find tracts of heathery moor, and can get a good gallop almost anywhere.
There is quite fair partridge-shooting, too, within a few miles of Berlin, in the immense potato fields, though the entire absence of cover in this hedgeless land makes it very difficult at times to approach the birds. It is pre-eminently a country for "driving" partridges, though most Germans prefer the comparatively easy shots afforded by "walking the birds up."
Potsdam has had but scant justice done it by foreigners. The town is almost surrounded by the river Havel, which here broadens out into a series of winding, wooded lakes, surrounded by tree-clad hills. The Potsdam lakes are really charmingly pretty, and afford an admirable place for rowing or sailing. Neither of these pursuits seems to make the least appeal to Germans. The Embassy kept a small yacht at Potsdam, but she was practically the only craft then on the lakes. As on all narrow waters enclosed by wooded hills, the sailing was very tricky, owing to the constant shifting of the wind. Should it be blowing fresh, it was advisable to sail under very light canvas; and it was always dangerous to haul up the centre-board, even when "running," as on rounding some wooded point you would get "taken aback" to a certainty. Once in the fine open stretch of water between Wansee and Spandau, you could hoist every stitch of canvas available, and indulge with impunity in the most complicated nautical manoeuvres. Possibly my extreme fondness for the Potsdam lakes may be due to their extraordinary resemblance to the lakes at my own Northern country home.
The Embassy also owned a light Thames-built four-oar. At times a short, thick-set young man of nineteen pulled bow in our four. The short young man had a withered arm, and the doctors hoped that the exercise of rowing might put some strength into it. He seemed quite a commonplace young man, yet this short, thick-set youth was destined less than forty years after to plunge the world into the greatest calamity it has ever known; to sacrifice millions and millions of human lives to his own inordinate ambition; and to descend to posterity as one of the most sinister characters in the pages of history.
Moored in the "Jungfernsee," one of the Potsdam lakes, lay a miniature sailing frigate, a complete model of a larger craft down to the smallest details. This toy frigate had been a present from King William IV of England to the then King of Prussia. The little frigate had been built in London, and though of only 30-tons burden, had been sailed down the Thames, across the North Sea, and up the Elbe and Havel to Potsdam, by a British naval officer. A pretty bit of seamanship! I have always heard that it was the sight of this toy frigate, lying on the placid lake at Potsdam, that first inspired William of Hohenzollern with the idea of building a gigantic navy.
The whole history of the world might have been changed by an incident which occurred on these same Potsdam lakes in 1880. I have already said that William of Hohenzollern, then only Prince William, pulled at times in our Embassy four, in the hope that it might strengthen his withered arm. He was very anxious to see if he could learn to scull, in spite of his physical defect, and asked the Ambassadress, Lady Ampthill, whether she would herself undertake to coach him. Lady Ampthill consented, and met Prince William next day at the landing-stage with a light Thames-built skiff, belonging to the Embassy. Lady Ampthill, with the caution of one used to light boats, got in carefully, made her way aft, and grasped the yoke-lines. She then explained to Prince William that this was not a heavy boat such as he had been accustomed to, that he must exercise extreme care, and in getting in must tread exactly in the centre of the boat. William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew best, responded by jumping into the boat from the landing-stage, capsizing it immediately, and throwing himself and Lady Ampthill into the water. Prince William, owing to his malformation, was unable to swim one stroke, but help was at hand. Two of the Secretaries of the British Embassy had witnessed the accident, and rushed up to aid. The so-called "Naval Station" was close by, where the Emperor's Potsdam yacht lay, a most singularly shabby old paddle-boat. Some German sailors from the "Naval Post" heard the shouting and ran up, and a moist, and we will trust a chastened William and a dripping Ambassadress were eventually rescued from the lake. Otherwise William of Hohenzollern might have ended his life in the "Jungfernsee" at Potsdam that day, and millions of other men would have been permitted to live out their allotted span of existence.
Potsdam itself is quite a pleasing town, with a half-Dutch, half-Italian physiognomy. Both were deliberately borrowed; the first by Frederick William I, who constructed the tree-lined canals which give Potsdam its half-Batavian aspect; the second by Frederick the Great, who fronted Teutonic dwellings with façades copied from Italy to add dignity to the town. It must in justice be added that both are quite successful, though Potsdam, like most other things connected with the Hohenzollerns, has only a couple of hundred years' tradition behind it. The square opposite the railway really does recall Italy. The collection of palaces at Potsdam is bewildering. Of these, three are of the first rank: the Town Palace, Sans-souci, and the great pile of the "New Palace." Either Frederick the Great was very fortunate in his architects, or else he chose them with great discrimination. The Town Palace, even in my time but seldom inhabited, is very fine in the finished details of its decoration. Sans-souci is an absolute gem; its rococo style may be a little over-elaborate, but it produces the effect of a finished, complete whole, in the most admirable taste; even though the exuberant imagination of the eighteenth century has been allowed to run riot in it. The gardens of Sans-souci, too, are most attractive. The immense red-brick building of the New Palace was erected by Frederick the Great during the Seven Years' War, out of sheer bravado. He was anxious to impress on his enemies the fact that his financial resources were not yet exhausted. Considering that he already possessed two stately palaces within a mile of it, the New Palace may be looked upon as distinctly a work of supererogation, also as an appalling waste of money. As a piece of architecture, it is distinctly a success. This list does not, however, nearly exhaust the palatial resources of Potsdam. The eighteenth century had contributed its successes; it remained for the nineteenth to add its failures. Babelsberg, the old Emperor William's favourite residence, was an awful example of a ginger-bread pseudo-Gothic castle. The Marble Palace on the so-called "Holy Lake" was a dull, unimaginative building; and the "Red Prince's" house at Glienicke was frankly terrible. The main features of this place was an avenue of huge cast-iron gilded lions. These golden lions were such a blot on an otherwise charming landscape that one felt relieved by recalling that the apparently ineradicable tendency of the children of Israel to erect Golden Calves at various places in olden days had always been severely discountenanced.
In spite of the carpenter-Gothic of Babelsberg, and of the pinchbeck golden lions of Glienicke, Potsdam will remain in my mind, to the end of my life, associated with memories of fresh breezes and bellying sails; of placid lakes and swift-gliding keels responding to the straining muscles of back and legs; a place of verdant hills dipping into clear waters; of limbs joyously cleaving those clear waters with all the exultation of the swimmer; a place of rest and peace, with every fibre in one's being rejoicing in being away, for the time being, from crowded cities and stifling streets, in the free air amidst woods, waters, and gently-swelling, tree-clad heights.
A year later, I was notified that I was transferred to Petrograd, then of course still known as St. Petersburg. This was in accordance with the dearest wish of my heart. Ever since my childhood's days I had been filled with an intense desire to go to Russia. Like most people unacquainted with the country, I had formed the most grotesquely incorrect mental pictures of Russia. I imagined it a vast Empire of undreamed of magnificence, pleasantly tempered with relics of barbarism; and all these glittering splendours were enveloped in the snow and ice of a semi-Arctic climate, which gave additional piquancy to their glories. I pictured huge tractless forests, their dark expanse only broken by the shimmering golden domes of the Russian churches. I fancied this glamour-land peopled by a species of transported French, full of culture, and all of them polyglot, more brilliant and infinitely more intellectual than their West European prototypes. I imagined this hyperborean paradise served by a race of super-astute diplomatists and officials, with whom we poor Westerners could not hope to contend, and by Generals whom no one could withstand. The evident awe with which Germans envisaged their Eastern neighbours strengthened this idea, and both in England and in France I had heard quite responsible persons gloomily predict, after contemplating the map, that the Northern Colossus was fatally destined at some time to absorb the whole of the rest of Europe.
Apart then from its own intrinsic attraction, I used to gaze at the map of Russia with some such feelings as, I imagine, the early Christians experienced when, on their Sunday walks in Rome, they went to look at the lions in their dens in the circus, and speculated as to their own sensations when, as seemed but too probable, they might have to meet these interesting quadrupeds on the floor of the arena, in a brief, exciting, but definitely final encounter.
Everything I had seen or heard about this mysterious land had enhanced its glamour. The hair-raising rumours which reached Berlin as to revolutionary plots and counter-plots; the appalling stories one heard about the terrible secret police; the atmosphere of intrigue which seemed indigenous to the place—all added to its fascinations. Even the externals were attractive. I had attended weddings and funeral services at the chapel of the Russian Embassy. Here every detail was exotic, and utterly dissimilar to anything in one's previous experience. The absence of seats, organ, or pulpit in the chapel itself; the elaborate Byzantine decorations of the building; the exquisitely beautiful but quite unfamiliar singing; the long-bearded priests in their archaic vestments of unaccustomed golden brocades—everything struck a novel note. It all came from a world apart, centuries removed from the prosaic routine of Western Europe.
Even quite minor details, such as the curiously sumptuous Russian national dresses of the ladies of the Embassy at Court functions, the visits to Berlin of the Russian ballets and troupes of Russian singing gipsies, had all the same stamp of strong racial individuality, of something temperamentally different from all we had been accustomed to.
I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing for myself at last this land of mingled splendour and barbarism, this country which had retained its traditional racial characteristics in spite of the influences of nineteenth century drab uniformity of type.
As the Petrograd Embassy was short-handed at the time, it was settled that I should postpone my leave for some months and proceed to Russia without delay.
The Crown Prince and Crown Princess, who had been exceedingly kind to me during my stay in Berlin, were good enough to ask me to the New Palace at Potsdam for one night, to take leave of them.
I had never before had an opportunity of going all over the New Palace. I thought it wonderfully fine, though quite French in feeling. The rather faded appearance of some of the rooms increased their look of dignity. It was not of yesterday. The great "Shell Hall," or "Muschel-Saal," much admired of Prussians, is frankly horrible; one of the unfortunate aberrations of eighteenth century taste of which several examples occur in English country-houses of the same date.
My own bedroom was charming; of the purest Louis XV, with apple-green polished panelling and heavily silvered mouldings and mirrors.
Nothing could be more delightful than the Crown Prince's manner on occasions such as this. The short-lived Emperor Frederick had the knack of blending absolute simplicity with great dignity, as had the Empress Frederick. For the curious in such matters, and as an instance of the traditional frugality of the Prussian Court, I may add that supper that evening, at which only the Crown Prince and Princess, the equerry and lady-in-waiting, and myself were present, consisted solely of curds and whey, veal cutlets, and a rice pudding. Nothing else whatever. We sat afterwards in a very stately, lofty, thoroughly French room. The Crown Prince, the equerry, and myself drank beer, whilst the Prince smoked his long pipe. It seemed incongruous to drink beer amid such absolutely French surroundings. I noticed that the Crown Princess always laid down her needlework to refill her husband's pipe and to bring him a fresh tankard of beer. The "Kronprinzliches Paar," as a German would have described them, were both perfectly charming in their conversation with a dull, uninteresting youth of twenty-one. They each had marvellous memories, and recalled many trivial half-forgotten details about my own family. That evening in the friendly atmosphere of the great, dimly-lit room in the New Palace at Potsdam will always live in my memory.
Two days afterwards I drove through the trim, prosaic, well-ordered, stuccoed streets of Berlin to the Eastern Station; for me, the gateway to the land of my desires, vast, mysterious Russia.
The Russian frontier—Frontier police—Disappointment at aspect of Petrograd—Lord and Lady Dufferin—The British Embassy—St. Isaac's Cathedral—Beauty of Russian Church-music—The Russian language—The delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd—Princess Chateau—Pleasant Russian Society—The Secret Police—The Countess's hurried journey—The Yacht Club—Russians really Orientals—Their limitations—The "Intelligenzia"—My Nihilist friends—Their lack of constructive power—Easter Mass at St. Isaac's—Two comical incidents—The Easter supper—The red-bearded young priest—An Empire built on shifting sand.
Petrograd is 1,050 miles from Berlin, and forty years ago the fastest trains took forty-five hours to cover the distance between the two capitals. In later years the "Nord-Express" accomplishing the journey in twenty-nine hours.
Rolling through the flat fertile plains of East Prussia, with their neat, prosperous villages and picturesque black-and-white farms, the surroundings had such a commonplace air that it was difficult to realise that one was approaching the very threshold of the great, mysterious Northern Empire.
Eydkuhnen, the last Prussian station, was as other Prussian stations, built of trim red brick, neat, practical, and very ugly; with crowds of red-faced, amply-paunched officials, buttoned into the tightest of uniforms, perpetually saluting each other.
Wierjbolovo, or Wirballen Station as the Germans call it, a huge white building, was plainly visible only a third of a mile away. At Wirballen the German train would stop, for whereas the German railways are built to the standard European gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches, the Russian lines were laid to a gauge of 5 feet 1 inch.
This gauge had been deliberately chosen to prevent the invasion of Russia by her Western neighbour. This was to prove an absolutely illusory safeguard, for, as events have shown, nothing is easier than to narrow a railway track. To broaden it is often quite impossible. The cunning little Japs found this out during the Russo-Japanese War. They narrowed the broad Russian lines to their own gauge of 3 feet 6 inches, and then sawed off the ends of the sleepers with portable circular saws, thus making it impossible for the Russians to relay the rails on the broad gauge. I believe that the Germans adopted the same device more recently.
I think at only one other spot in the world does a short quarter of a mile result in such amazing differences in externals as does that little piece of line between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen; and that is at Linea, the first Spanish village out of Gibraltar.
Leaving the prim and starched orderliness of Gibraltar, with its thick coating of British veneer, its tidy streets and buildings enlivened with the scarlet tunics of Mr. Thomas Atkins and his brethren, you traverse the "Neutral Ground" to an iron railing, and literally pass into Spain through an iron gate. The contrast is extraordinary. It would be unfair to select Linea as a typical Spanish village; it is ugly, and lacks the picturesque features of the ordinary Andalusian village; it is also unquestionably very dirty, and very tumble-down. Between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen the contrast is just as marked. As the German train stopped, hosts of bearded, shaggy-headed individuals in high boots and long white aprons (surely a curious article of equipment for a railway porter) swooped down upon the hand-baggage; I handed my passport to a gendarme (a term confined in Russia to frontier and railway police) and passed through an iron gate into Russia.
Russia in this case was represented by a gigantic whitewashed hall, ambitious originally in design and decoration, but, like most things in Russia, showing traces of neglect and lack of cleanliness. The first exotic note was struck by a full-length, life-size ikon of the Saviour, in a solid silver frame, at the end of the hall. All my Russian fellow-travellers devoutly crossed themselves before this ikon, purchased candles at an adjoining stall, and fixed them in the silver holders before the ikon.
Behind the line of tables serving for the Customs examinations was a railed-off space, containing many desks under green-shaded lamps. Here some fifteen green-coated men whispered mysteriously to each other, referring continually to huge registers. I felt a thrill creep down my back; here I found myself at last face to face with the omnipotent Russian police. The bespectacled green-coated men scrutinised passports intently, conferred amongst themselves in whispers under the green-shaded lamps, and hunted ominously through the big registers. For the first time I became unpleasantly conscious of the existence of such places as the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of a country called Siberia. I speculated as to whether the drawbacks of the Siberian climate had not been exaggerated, should one be compelled to make a possibly prolonged sojourn in that genial land. Above all, I was immensely impressed with the lynx-eyed vigilance and feverish activity of these green-coated guardians of the Russian frontier. From my subsequent knowledge of the ways of Russian officials, I should gather that all this feverish activity began one minute after the whistle announced the approach of the Berlin train, and ceased precisely one minute after the Petrograd train had pulled out, and that never, by any chance, did the frontier police succeed in stopping the entry of any really dangerous conspirator.
Diplomats with official passports are exempt from Customs formalities, so I passed on to the platform, thick with pungent wood-smoke, where the huge blue-painted Russian carriages smoked like volcanoes from their heating apparatus, and the gigantic wood-burning engine (built in Germany) vomited dense clouds from its funnel, crowned with a spark-arrester shaped like a mammoth tea urn, or a giant's soup tureen. Everything in this country seemed on a large scale.
In the gaunt, bare, whitewashed restaurant (these three epithets are applicable to almost every public room in Russia) with its great porcelain stove, and red lamps burning before gilded ikons, I first made the acquaintance of fresh caviar and raw herrings, of the national cabbage soup, or "shtchee," of roast ryabehiks and salted cucumbers, all destined to become very familiar. Railway restaurants in Russia are almost invariably quite excellent.
And so the train clanked out through the night, into the depths of this mysterious glamour-land.
The railway from the frontier to Petrograd runs for 550 miles through an unbroken stretch of interminable dreary swamp and forest, such as would in Canada be termed "muskag," with here and there a poor attempt at cultivation in some clearing, set about with wretched little wooden huts. After a twenty-four hours' run, without any preliminary warning whatever in the shape of suburbs, the train emerges from the forest into a huge city, with tramcars rolling in all directions, and the great golden dome of St. Isaac's blazing like a sun against the murky sky.
I had pictured Petrograd to myself as a second Paris; a city glittering with light and colour, but conceived on an infinitely more grandiose scale than the French capital.
We emerged from the station into an immensely broad street bordered by shabbily-pretentious buildings all showing signs of neglect. The atrociously uneven pavements, the general untidiness, the broad thoroughfare empty except for a lumbering cart or two, the absence of foot-passengers, and the low cotton-wool sky, all gave an effect of unutterable dreariness. And this was the golden city of my dreams! this place of leprous-fronted houses, of vast open spaces full of drifting snowflakes, and of an immense emptiness. I never was so disappointed in my life. The gilt and coloured domes of the Orthodox churches, the sheepskin-clad, red-shirted moujiks, the occasional swift-trotting Russian carriages, with their bearded and padded coachmen, were the only local touches that redeemed the streets from the absolute commonplace. The Russian lettering over the shops, which then conveyed nothing whatever to me, suggested that the alphabet, having followed the national custom and got drunk, had hastily re-affixed itself to the houses upside down. Although as the years went on I grew quite attached to Petrograd, I could never rid myself of this impression of its immense dreariness. This was due to several causes. There are hardly any stone buildings in the city, everything is of brick plastered over. Owing to climatic reasons the houses are not painted, but are daubed with colour-wash. The successive coats of colour-wash clog all the architectural features, and give the buildings a shabby look, added to which the wash flakes off under the winter snows. There is a natural craving in human nature for colour, and in a country wrapped in snow for at least four months in the year this craving finds expression in painting the roofs red, and in besmearing the houses with crude shades of red, blue, green, and yellow. The result is not a happy one. Again, owing to the intense cold, the shop-windows are all very small, and there is but little display in them. Streets and shops were alike very dimly lighted in my day, and as there is an entire absence of cafés in Petrograd, there is none of the usual glitter and glare of these places to brighten up the streets. The theatres make no display of lights, so it is not surprising that the general effect of the city is one of intense gloom. The very low, murky winter sky added to this effect of depression. Peter the Great had planned his new capital on such a gigantic scale that there were not enough inhabitants to fill its vast spaces. The conceptions were magnificent; the results disappointing. Nothing grander could be imagined than the design of the immense place opposite the Winter Palace, with Alexander I's great granite monolith towering in the midst of it, and the imposing semicircular sweep of Government Offices of uniform design enclosing it, pierced in the centre by a monumental triumphal arch crowned with a bronze quadriga. The whole effect of this was spoilt by the hideous crude shade of red with which the buildings were daubed, by the general untidiness, and by the broken, uneven pavement; added to which this huge area was usually untenanted, except by a lumbering cart or two, by a solitary stray "istvoschik," and an occasional muffled-up pedestrian. The Petrograd of reality was indeed very different from the sumptuous city of my dreams.
For the second time I was extraordinarily lucky in my Chief. Our relations with Russia had, during the "'seventies," been strained almost to the breaking point. War had on several occasions seemed almost inevitable between the two countries.
Russians, naturally enough, had shown their feelings of hostility to their potential enemies by practically boycotting the entire British Embassy. The English Government had then made a very wise choice, and had appointed to the Petrograd Embassy the one man capable of smoothing these troubled relations. The late Lord Dufferin was not then a diplomat by profession. He had just completed his term of office as Governor-General of Canada, where, as in every position he had previously occupied, he had been extraordinarily successful. Lord Dufferin had an inexhaustible fund of patience, blended with the most perfect tact; he had a charm of manner no human being could resist; but under it all lay an inflexible will. No man ever understood better the use of the iron hand under the velvet glove, and in a twelvemonth from the date of his arrival in Petrograd he had succeeded not only in gaining the confidence of official Russia, but also in re-establishing the most cordial relations with Russian society. In this he was very ably seconded by Lady Dufferin, who combined a perfectly natural manner with quiet dignity and a curious individual charm. Both Lord and Lady Dufferin enjoyed dancing, skating, and tobagganing as wholeheartedly as though they were children.
Our Petrograd Embassy was a fine old house, with a pleasant intimate character about it lacking in the more ornate building at Berlin. It contained a really beautiful snow-white ball-room, and all the windows fronted the broad, swift-flowing Neva, with the exquisitely graceful slender gilded spire of the Fortress Church, towering three hundred feet aloft, opposite them. We had a very fine collection of silver plate at the Embassy. This plate, valued at £30,000, was the property of our Government, and had been sent out sixty years previously by George IV, who understood the importance attached by Russians to externals. We had also a small set, just sufficient for two persons, of real gold plates. These solid gold plates were only used by the Emperor and Empress on the very rare occasions when they honoured the Embassy with their presence. I wonder what has happened to that gold service now!
Owing to the constant tension of the relations between Great Britain and Russia, our work at the Petrograd Embassy was very heavy indeed at that time. We were frequently kept up till 2 a.m. in the Chancery, cyphering telegrams. All important written despatches between London and Petrograd either way were sent by Queen's Messenger open to Berlin, "under Flying Seal," as it is termed. The Berlin Embassy was thus kept constantly posted as to Russian affairs. After reading our open despatches, both to and from London, the Berlin Embassy would seal them up in a special way. We also got duplicates, in cypher, of all telegrams received in London the previous day from the Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Constantinople Embassies which bore in any way on Russia or the Eastern Question. This gave us two or three hours' work decyphering every day. Both cyphering and decyphering require the closest concentration, as one single mistake may make nonsense of the whole thing; it is consequently exhausting work. We were perfectly well aware that the Russian Government had somehow obtained possession of one of our codes. This particular "compromised code" was only used by us for transmitting intelligence which the Russians were intended to know. They could hardly blame us should they derive false impressions from a telegram of ours which they had decyphered with a stolen code, nor could they well admit that they had done this.
As winter came on, I understood why Russians are so fond of gilding the domes and spires of their churches. It must be remembered that Petrograd lies on parallel 60° N. In December it only gets four hours of very uncertain daylight, and the sun is so low on the horizon that its rays do not reach the streets of the city. It is then that the gilded domes flash and glitter, as they catch the beams of the unseen sun. When the long golden needle of the Fortress Church blazed like a flaming torch or a gleaming spear of fire against the murky sky, I thought it a splendid sight, as was the great golden dome of St. Isaac's scintillating like a second sun over the snow-clad roofs of the houses.
Soon after my arrival I went to the vast church under the gilded dome to hear the singing of the far-famed choir of St. Isaac's.
Here were none of the accessories to which I had been accustomed; no seats; no organ; no pulpit; no side-chapels. A blue haze of incense drifted through the twilight of the vague spaces of the great building; a haze glowing rosily where the red lamps burning before the jewelled ikons gave a faint-dawnlike effect in the semi-darkness. Before me the great screen of the "ikonostas" towered to the roof, with its eight malachite columns forty feet high, and its two smaller columns of precious lapis lazuli flanking the "Royal doors" into the sanctuary. Surely Montferrand, the Frenchman, had designedly steeped the cathedral he had built in perpetual twilight. In broad daylight the juxtaposition of these costly materials, with their discordant colours, would have been garish, even vulgar. Now, barely visible in the shadows, they, the rich mosaics, the masses of heavily-gilt bronze work in the ikonostas, gave an impression of barbaric magnificence and immense splendour. The jasper and polychrome Siberian marbles with which the cathedral was lined, the gold and silver of the jewelled ikons, gleaming faintly in the candle-light, strengthened this impression of sumptuous opulence. Then the choir, standing before the ikonostas, burst into song. The exquisitely beautiful singing of the Russian Church was a perfect revelation to me. I would not have believed it possible that unaccompanied human voices could have produced so entrancing an effect. As the "Cherubic Hymn" died away in softest pianissimo, its echoes floating into the misty vastness of the dome, a deacon thundered out prayers in a ringing bass, four tones deeper than those a Western European could compass. The higher clergy, with their long flowing white beards, jewelled crowns, and stiffly-archaic vestments of cloth of gold and silver, seemed to have stepped bodily out of the frame of an ikon; and the stately ritual of the Eastern Church gave me an impression as of something of immemorial age, something separated by the gap of countless centuries from our own prosaic epoch; and through it all rose again and again the plaintive response of the choir, "Gospodi pomiloi," "Lord have mercy," exquisitely sung with all the tenderness and pathos of muted strings.
This was at last the real Russia of my dreams. It was all as I had vaguely pictured it to myself; the densely-packed congregation, with sheepskin-clad peasant and sable-coated noble standing side by side, all alike joining in the prescribed genuflections and prostrations of the ritual; the singing-boys, with their close-cropped heads and curious long blue dressing-gowns; the rolling consonants of the Old Slavonic chanted by the priests; all this was really Russia, and not a bastard imitation of an exotic Western civilisation like the pseudo-classic city outside.
Two years later, Arthur Sullivan, the composer, happened to be in Petrograd, and I took him to the practice of the Emperor's private church choir. Sullivan was passionately devoted to unaccompanied part-singing, and those familiar with his delightful light operas will remember how he introduced into almost every one of them an unaccompanied madrigal, or a sextet. Sullivan told me that he would not have believed it possible for human voices to obtain the string-like effect of these Russian choirs. He added that although six English singing-boys would probably evolve a greater body of sound than twelve Russian boys, no English choir-boy could achieve the silvery tone these musical little Muscovites produced.
People ignorant of the country have a foolish idea that all Russians can speak French. That may be true of one person in two thousand of the whole population. The remainder only speak their native Russ. Not one cabman in Petrograd could understand a syllable of any foreign language, and though in shops, very occasionally, someone with a slight knowledge of German might be found, it was rare. All the waiters in Petrograd restaurants were yellow-faced little Mohammedan Tartars, speaking only Russian and their own language. I determined therefore to learn Russian at once, and was fortunate in finding a very clever teacher. All men should learn a foreign language from a lady, for natural courtesy makes one listen to what she is saying; whereas with a male teacher one's attention is apt to wander. The patient elderly lady who taught me knew neither English nor French, so we used German as a means of communication. Thanks to Madame Kumin's intelligence, and a considerable amount of hard work on my own part, I was able to pass an examination in Russian in eleven months, and to qualify as Interpreter to the Embassy. The difficulties of the Russian language are enormously exaggerated. The pronunciation is hard, as are the terminations; and the appalling length of Russian words is disconcerting. In Russian, great emphasis is laid on one syllable of a word, and the rest is slurred over. It is therefore vitally important (should you wish to be understood) to get the emphasis on the right syllable, and for some mysterious reason no foreigner, even by accident, ever succeeds in pronouncing a Russian name right. It is Schouvaloff, not Schòuvaloff; Brusìl-off, not Brùsiloff; Demìd-off, not Dèmidoff. The charming dancer's name is Pàv-Lova, not Pavlòva; her equally fascinating rival is Karsàv-ina, not Karsavìna. I could continue the list indefinitely. Be sure of one thing; however the name is pronounced by a foreigner, it is absolutely certain to be wrong.
What a wise man he was who first said that for every fresh language you learn you acquire a new pair of eyes and a new pair of ears; I felt immensely elated when I found that I could read the cabalistic signs over the shops as easily as English lettering.
A relation of mine had given me a letter of introduction to Princess B——. Now this old lady, though she but seldom left her own house, was a very great power indeed in Petrograd, and was universally known as the "Princesse Château." For some reason or another, I was lucky enough to find favour in this dignified old lady's eyes. She asked me to call on her again, and at our second meeting invited me to her Sunday evenings. The Princesse Château's Sunday evenings were a thing quite apart. They were a survival in Petrograd of the French eighteenth century literary "salons," but devoid of the faintest flavour of pedantry or priggism. Never in my life, before or since, have I heard such wonderfully brilliant conversation, for, with the one exception of myself, the Princesse Château tolerated no dull people at her Sundays. She belonged to a generation that always spoke French amongst themselves, and imported their entire culture from France. Peter the Great had designed St. Petersburg as a window through which to look on Europe, and the tradition of this amongst the educated classes was long in dying out. The Princess assembled some thirty people every Sunday, all Russians, with the exception of myself. These people discussed any and every subject—literature, art, music, and philosophy—with sparkling wit, keen critical instinct, and extraordinary felicity of phrase, usually in French, sometimes in English, and occasionally in Russian. Their knowledge seemed encyclopædic, and they appeared equally at home in any of the three languages. They greatly appreciated a neatly-turned epigram, or a novel, crisply-coined definition. Any topic, however, touching directly or indirectly on the external or internal policy of Russia was always tacitly avoided. My rôle was perforce reduced to that of a listener, but it was a perfectly delightful society. Princesse Château had a very fine suite of rooms on the first floor of her house, decorated "at the period" in Louis XVI style by imported French artists; these rooms still retained their original furniture and fittings, and were a museum of works of art; but her Sunday evenings were always held in the charming but plainly-furnished rooms which she herself inhabited on the ground floor. We had one distinct advantage over the old French salons, for Princesse Château entertained her guests every Sunday to suppers which were justly celebrated in the gastronomic world of Petrograd. During supper the conversation proceeded just as brilliantly as before. There were always two or three Grand Duchesses present, for to attend Princesse Château's Sundays was a sort of certificate of culture. The Grand Duchesses were treated quite unceremoniously, beyond receiving a perfunctory "Madame" in each sentence addressed to them. How curious that, both in English and French, the highest title of respect should be plain "Madame"! As the Russian equivalent is "Vashoe Imperatorskoe Vuisochestvo," a considerable expenditure of time and breath was saved by using the terser French term. And through it all moved the mistress of the house, the stately little smiling old lady, in her plain black woollen dress and lace cap, dropping here a quaint criticism, there an apt bon-mot. Perfectly charming people!
The relatives and friends of Princesse Château whom I met at her house, when they discovered that I had a genuine liking for their country, and that I did not criticise details of Russian administration, were good enough to open their houses to me in their turn. Though most of these people owned large and very fine houses, they opened them but rarely to foreigners. They gave, very occasionally, large entertainments to which they invited half Petrograd, including the Diplomatic Body, but there they stopped. They did not care, as a rule, to invite foreigners to share the intimacy of their family life. I was very fortunate therefore in having an opportunity of seeing a phase of Russian life which few foreigners have enjoyed. Russians seldom do things by halves. I do not believe that in any other country in the world could a stranger have been made to feel himself so thoroughly at home amongst people of a different nationality, and with such totally different racial ideals; or have been treated with such constant and uniform kindness. There was no ceremony whatever on either side, and on the Russian side, at times, an outspokenness approaching bluntness. As I got to know these cultivated, delightful people well, I grew very fond of them. They formed a clique, possibly a narrow clique, amongst themselves, and had that complete disregard for outside criticism which is often found associated with persons of established position. They met almost nightly at each others' houses, and I could not but regret that such beautiful and vast houses should be seen by so few people. One house, in particular, contained a staircase an exact replica of a Grecian temple in white statuary Carrara marble, a thing of exquisite beauty. In their perpetual sets of intellectual lawn tennis, if I may coin the term, the superiority of the feminine over the male intellects was very marked. This is, I believe, a characteristic of all Slavonic countries, and I recalled Bismarck's dictum that the Slav peoples were essentially feminine, and I wondered whether there could be any connection between the two points. Living so much with Russians, it was impossible not to fall into the Russian custom of addressing them by their Christian names and patronymics; such as "Maria Vladimirovna" (Mary daughter of Vladimir) or "Olga Andreèvna" (Olga daughter of Andrew) or "Pavel Alexandrovitch" (Paul son of Alexander). I myself became Feòdor Yàkovlevitch, (Frederic son of James, those being the nearest Russian equivalents). On arriving at a house, the proper form of inquiry to the hall porter was, "Ask Mary daughter of Vladimir if she will receive Frederic son of James." In due time the answer came, "Mary daughter of Vladimir begs Frederic son of James to go upstairs." My own servants always addressed me punctiliously as Feòdor Yàkovlevitch. On giving them an order they would answer in Moscovite fashion, "I hear you, Frederic son of James," the equivalent to our prosaic, "Very good, sir." Amongst my new friends, as at the Princesse Château's, no allusions whatever, direct or indirect, were made to internal conditions in Russia. Apart from the fact that one of these new friends was himself Minister of the Interior at the time, it would not have been safe. In those days the Secret Police, or "Third Section," as they were called, were very active, and their ramifications extended everywhere. One night at a supper party a certain Countess B—— criticised in very open and most unflattering terms a lady to whom the Emperor Alexander II was known to be devotedly attached. Next morning at 8 a.m. the Countess was awakened by her terrified maid, who told her that the "Third Section" were there and demanded instant admittance. Two men came into the Countess's bedroom and informed her that their orders were that she was to take the 12.30 train to Europe that morning. They would remain with her till then, and would accompany her to the frontier. As she would not be allowed to return to Russia for twelve months, they begged her to order her maid to pack what was necessary; and no one knew better than Countess B—— how useless any attempted resistance would be.
This episode made a great stir at the time. As the words complained of had been uttered about 3 a.m., the police action had been remarkably prompt. The informant must have driven straight from the supper party to the "Third Section," and everyone in Petrograd had a very distinct idea who the informant was. Is it necessary to add that she was a lady?
Some of my new friends volunteered to propose and second me for the Imperial Yacht Club. This was not the club that the diplomats usually joined; it was a purely Russian club, and, in spite of its name, had no connection with yachting. It had also the reputation of being extremely exclusive, but thanks to my Russian sponsors, I got duly elected to it. This was, I am sure, the most delightful club in Europe. It was limited to 150 members of whom only two, besides myself, were foreigners, and the most perfect camaraderie existed between the members. The atmosphere of the place was excessively friendly and intimate, and the building looked more like a private house than a club, as deceased members had bequeathed to it pictures, a fine collection of old engravings, some splendid old Beauvais tapestry, and a great deal of Oriental porcelain. Above all, we commanded the services of the great Armand, prince of French chefs. Associating so much with Russians, it was possible to see things from their points of view. They all had an unshakable belief in the absolute invincibility of Russia, and in her complete invulnerability, for it must not be forgotten that in 1880 Russia had never yet been defeated in any campaign, except partially in the Crimean War of 1854-50. My friends did not hide their convictions that it was Russia's manifest destiny to absorb in time the whole of the Asiatic Continent, including India, China, and Turkey. There were grounds for this article of faith, for in 1880 Russia's bloodless absorption of vast territories in Central Asia had been astounding. It was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 that the friable clay feet of the Northern Colossus were revealed to the outside world, though those with a fairly intimate knowledge of the country quite realised how insecure were the foundations on which the stupendous structure of modern Russia had been erected.
I am deeply thankful that the great majority of my old friends had passed away in the ordinary course of nature before the Great Catastrophe overwhelmed the mighty Empire in which they took such deep pride; and that they were spared the sight and knowledge of the awful orgy of blood, murder, and spoliation which followed the ruin of the land they loved so well. Were they not now at rest, it would be difficult for me to write of those old days.
To grasp the Russian mentality, it must be remembered that they are essentially Orientals. Russia is not the most Eastern outpost of Western civilisation; it is the most Western outpost of the East. Russians have all the qualities of the Oriental, his fatalism, his inertness, and, I fear, his innate pecuniary corruption. Their fatalism makes them accept their destiny blindly. What has been ordained from the beginning of things is useless to fight against; it must be accepted. The same inertness characterises every Eastern nation, and the habit of "baksheesh" is ingrained in the Oriental blood. If the truth were known, we should probably find that the real reason why Cain killed Abel was that the latter had refused him a commission on some transaction or other. The fatalism and lack of initiative are not the only Oriental traits in the Russian character. In a hundred little ways they show their origin: in their love of uncut jewels; in their lack of sense of time (the Russian for "at once" is "si chas," which means "this hour"; an instructive commentary); in the reluctance South Russians show in introducing strangers to the ladies of their household, the Oriental peeps out everywhere. Peter the Great could order his Boyards to abandon their fur-trimmed velvet robes, to shave off their beards, powder their heads, and array themselves in the satins and brocades of Versailles. He could not alter the men and women inside the French imported finery. He could abandon his old capital, matchless, many-pinnacled Moscow, vibrant with every instinct of Russian nationality; he could create a new pseudo-Western, sham-classical city in the frozen marshes of the Neva; but even the Autocrat could not change the souls of his people. Easterns they were, Easterns they remained, and that is the secret of Russia, they are not Europeans. Peter himself was so fully aware of the racial limitations of his countrymen that he imported numbers of foreigners to run the country; Germans as Civil and Military administrators; Dutchmen as builders and town-planners; and Englishmen to foster its budding commerce. To the latter he granted special privileges, and even in my time there was a very large English commercial community in Petrograd; a few of them descendants of Peter the Great's pioneers; the majority of them with hereditary business connections with Russia. Their special privileges had gradually been withdrawn, but the official name of the English Church in Petrograd was still "British Factory in St. Petersburg," surely a curious title for a place of worship. The various German-Russian families from the Baltic Provinces, the Adlerbergs, the Benckendorffs, and the Stackelbergs, had served Russia well. Under their strong guidance she became a mighty Power, but when under Alexander III the reins of government were confided to purely Russian hands, rapid deterioration set in. This dreamy nation lacks driving power. In my time, the very able Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. de Giers, was of German origin, and his real name was Hirsch. His extremely wily and astute second in command, Baron Jomini, was a Swiss. Modern Russia was largely the creation of the foreigner.