Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume I Part 29

Not all of our troubles were due to our compatriots.

Household matters sometimes gave serious annoyance.

The minister had embraced a chance very rare in Russia, --one which, in fact, almost never occurs,--and had secured a large house fully furnished, with the servants, who, from the big cha.s.seur who stood at the back of the minister's sledge to the boy who blew the organ on which I practised, were serfs, and all, without exception, docile, gentle, and kindly. But there was one standing enemy --vodka. The feeling of the Russian peasant toward the rough corn-brandy of his own country is characteristic.

The Russian language is full of diminutives expressive of affection. The peasant addresses his superior as Batushka, the affectionate diminutive of the word which means father; he addresses the mistress of the house as Matushka, which is the affectionate diminutive of the Russian word for mother. To his favorite drink, brandy, he has given the name which is the affectionate diminutive of the word voda, water--namely, vodka, which really means ''dear little water.'' Vodka was indeed our most insidious foe, and gave many evidences of its power; but one of them made an unwonted stir among us.

One day the minister, returning in his carriage from making sundry official visits, summoned the housekeeper, a Baltic-province woman who had been admirably brought up in an English family, and said to her: '' Annette I insist that you discharge Ivan, the coachman, at once; I can't stand him any longer. This afternoon he raced, with me in the carriage, up and down the Nevsky, from end to end, with the carriages of grand dukes and ministers, and, do my best, I could not stop him. He simply looked back at me, grinned like an idiot, and drove on with all his might.

It is the third time he has done this. I have pardoned him twice on his solemn pledge that he would do better; but now he must go.'' Annette a.s.sented, and in the evening after dinner came in to tell the minister that Ivan was going, but wished to beg his pardon and say farewell.

The minister went out rather reluctantly, the rest of us following; but he had hardly reached the anteroom when Ivan, a great burly creature with a long flowing beard and caftan, rushed forward, groveled before him, embraced his ankles, laid his head upon his feet, and there remained mumbling and moaning. The minister was greatly embarra.s.sed and nervously e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed: ''Take him away!

Take him away!'' But all to no purpose. Ivan could not be induced to relax his hold. At last the minister relented and told Annette to inform Ivan that he would receive just one more trial, and that if he failed again he would be sent away to his owner without having any opportunity to apologize or to say good-bye.

Very interesting to me were the houses of some of the British residents, and especially that of Mr. Baird, the head of the iron-works which bore his name, and which, at that time, were considered among the wonders of Russia.

He was an interesting character. Noticing, among the three very large and handsome vases in his dining- room, the middle one made up of the bodies of three large eagles in oxidized silver with crowns of gold, I was told its history. When the Grand Duke Alexander --who afterward became the second emperor of that name--announced his intention of joining the St. Petersburg Yacht Club, a plan was immediately formed to provide a magnificent trophy and allow him to win it, and to this plan all the members of the club agreed except Baird. He at once said: ''No; if the grand duke's yacht can take it, let him have it; if not, let the best yacht win.

If I can take it, I shall.'' It was hoped that he would think better of it, but when the day arrived, the other yachts having gradually fallen back, Mr. Baird continued the race with the grand duke and won. As a result he was for some years in disfavor with the high officials surrounding the Emperor--a disfavor that no doubt cost him vast sums; but he always a.s.serted that he was glad he had insisted on his right.

On one occasion I was witness to a sad faux pas at his dinner-table. It was in the early days of the Crimean War, and an American gentleman who was present was so careless as to refer to Queen Victoria's proclamation against all who aided the enemy, which was clearly leveled at Mr. Baird and his iron-works. There was a scene at once. The ladies almost went into hysterics in deprecation of the position in which the proclamation had placed them. But Mr. Baird himself was quite equal to the occasion: in a very up-and-down way he said that he of course regretted being regarded as a traitor to his country, but that in the time of the alliance against the first Napoleon his father had been induced by the Russian government to establish works, and this not merely with the consent, but with the warm approval, of the British government; in consequence the establishment had taken contracts with the Russian government and now they must be executed; so far as he was concerned his conscience was entirely clear; his duty was plain, and he was going to do it.

On another occasion at his table there was a very good repartee. The subject of spiritualism having been brought up, some one told a story of a person who, having gone into an unfrequented garret of an old family residence, found that all the old clothing which had been stored there during many generations had descended from the shelves and hooks and had a.s.sumed kneeling postures about the floor. All of us heard the story with much solemnity, when good old Dr. Law, chaplain of the British church, broke the silence with the words, ''That must have been a family of very PIOUS HABITS.'' This of course broke the spell.

I should be sorry to have it thought that all my stay in the Russian capital was given up to official routine and social futilities. Fortunately for me, the social demands were not very heavy. The war in the Crimea, steadily going against Russia, threw a cloud over the court and city and reduced the number of entertainments to a minimum. This secured me, during the long winter evenings, much time for reading, and in addition to all the valuable treatises I could find on Russia, I went with care through an extensive course in modern history.

As to Russian matters, it was my good fortune to become intimately acquainted with Atkinson, the British traveler in Siberia. He had brought back many portfolios of sketches, and his charming wife had treasured up a great fund of anecdotes of people and adventure, so that I seemed for a time to know Siberia as if I had lived there.

Then it was that I learned of the beauties and capabilities of its southern provinces. The Atkinsons had also brought back their only child, a son born on the Siberian steppe, a wonderfully bright youngster, whom they destined for the British navy. He bore a name which I fear may at times have proved a burden to him, for his father and mother were so delighted with the place in which he was born that they called him, after it, ''Alatow-Tam Chiboulak.''[10]

[10] Since writing the above, I have had the pleasure of receiving a letter from this gentleman, who has for some time held the responsible and interesting position of superintendent of public instruction in the Hawaiian Islands, his son, a graduate of the University of Michigan, having been Secretary of the Territory.

The general Russian life, as I thus saw it, while intensely interesting in many respects, was certainly not cheerful.

Despite the frivolity dominant among the upper cla.s.s and the fetis.h.i.+sm controlling the lower cla.s.ses, there was, especially in that period of calamity, a deep undertone of melancholy. Melancholy, indeed, is a marked characteristic of Russia, and, above all, of the peasantry. They seem sad even in their sports; their songs, almost without exception, are in the minor key; the whole atmosphere is apparently charged with vague dread of some calamity.

Despite the suppression of most of the foreign journals, and the blotting out of page after page of the newspapers allowed to enter the empire, despite all that the secret police could do in repressing unfavorable comment, it became generally known that all was going wrong in the Crimea. News came of reverse after reverse: of the defeats of the Alma and Inkerman, and, as a climax, the loss of Sebastopol and the destruction of the Russian fleet. In the midst of it all, as is ever the case in Russian wars, came utter collapse in the commissariat department; everywhere one heard hints and finally detailed stories of scoundrelism in high places: of money which ought to have been appropriated to army supplies, but which had been expended at the gambling-tables of Homburg or in the Breda quarter at Paris.

Then it was that there was borne in upon me the conviction that Russia, powerful as she seems when viewed from the outside, is anything but strong when viewed from the inside. To say nothing of the thousand evident weaknesses resulting from autocracy,--the theory that one man, and he, generally, not one of the most highly endowed, can do the thinking for a hundred millions of people,--there was nowhere the slightest sign of any uprising of a great nation, as, for instance, of the French against Europe in 1792, of the Germans against France in 1813 and in 1870, of Italy against Austria in 1859 and afterward, and of the Americans in the Civil War of 1861. There were certainly many n.o.ble characters in Russia, and these must have felt deeply the condition of things; but there being no great middle cla.s.s, and the lower cla.s.s having been long kept in besotted ignorance, there seemed to be no force on which patriotism could take hold.

CHAPTER XXVII

AS ATTACH AND BEARER OF DESPATCHES IN WAR-TIME--1855

The spring of 1855 was made interesting by the arrival of the blockading fleet before the mouth of the Neva, and shortly afterward I went down to look at it.

It was a most imposing sight: long lines of mighty three- deckers of the old pattern, British and French,--one hundred in all,--stretched across the Gulf of Finland in front of the fortresses of Cronstadt. Behind the fortresses lay the Russian fleet, helpless and abject; and yet, as events showed during our own Civil War half a dozen years later, a very slight degree of inventive ability would have enabled the Russians to annihilate the hostile fleet, and to gain the most prodigious naval victory of modern times.

Had they simply taken one or two of their own great s.h.i.+ps to the Baird iron-works hard by, and plated them with railway iron, of which there was plenty, they could have paralleled the destruction of our old wooden frigates at Norfolk by the Merrimac, but on a vastly greater scale. Yet this simple expedient occurred to no one; and the allied fleet, under Sir Richard Dundas, bade defiance to the Russian power during the whole summer.

The Russians looked more philosophically upon the blockade than upon their reverses in the Crimea, but they acted much like the small boy who takes revenge on the big boy by making faces at him. Some of their caricatures on their enemies were very clever. Fortunately for such artistic efforts, the British had given them a fine opportunity during the previous year, when Sir Charles Napier, the commander of the Baltic fleet, having made a boastful speech at a public dinner in London, and invited his hearers to dine with him at St. Petersburg, had returned to England, after a summer before Cronstadt, without even a glimpse of the Russian capital.

I am the possessor of a very large collection of historical caricatures of all nations, and among them all there is hardly one more spirited and comical than that which represents Sir Charles at the masthead of one of his frigates, seeking, through a spy-gla.s.s, to get a sight at the domes and spires of St. Petersburg: not even the best efforts of Gillray or ''H. B.,'' or Gavarni or Daumier, or the brightest things in ''Punch'' or ''Kladderadatsch''

surpa.s.s it.

Some other Russian efforts at keeping up public spirit were less legitimate. Popular pictures of a rude sort were circulated in vast numbers among the peasants, representing British and French soldiers desecrating churches, plundering monasteries, and murdering priests.

Near the close of my stay I made a visit, in company with Mr. Erving, first secretary of the legation, to Moscow,--the journey, which now requires but twelve hours, then consuming twenty-four; and a trying journey it was, since there was no provision for sleeping.

The old Russian capital, and, above all, the Kremlin, interested me greatly; but, of all the vast collections in the Kremlin, two things especially arrested my attention.

The first was a statue,--the only statue in all those vast halls,--and there seemed a wondrous poetic justice in the fact that it represented the first Napoleon. The other thing was an evidence of the feeling of the Emperor Nicholas toward Poland. In one of the large rooms was a full-length portrait of Nicholas's elder brother and immediate predecessor, Alexander I; flung on the floor at his feet was the const.i.tution of Poland, which he had given, and which Nicholas, after fearful bloodshed, had taken away; and lying near was the Polish scepter broken in the middle.

A visit to the Sparrow Hills, from which Napoleon first saw Moscow and the Kremlin, was also interesting; but the city itself, though picturesque, disappointed me.

Everywhere were filth, squalor, beggary, and fetis.h.i.+sm.

Evidences of official stupidity were many. In one of the Kremlin towers a catastrophe had occurred on the occasion of the Emperor's funeral, a day or two before our arrival: some thirty men had been ringing one of the enormous bells, when it broke loose from its rotten fastenings and crashed down into the midst of the ringers, killing several. Sad reminders of this slaughter were shown us; it was clearly the result of gross neglect.

Another revelation of Russian officialism was there vouchsafed us. Wis.h.i.+ng to send a very simple message to our minister at St. Petersburg, we went to the telegraph office and handed it to the clerk in charge.

Putting on an air of great importance, he began a long inquisitorial process, insisting on knowing our full names, whence we had come, where we were going, how long we were staying, why we were sending the message, etc., etc.; and when he had evidently asked all the questions he could think of, he gravely informed us that our message could not be sent until the head of the office had given his approval. On our asking where the head of the office was, he pointed out a stout gentleman in military uniform seated near the stove in the further corner of the room, reading a newspaper; and, on our requesting him to notify this superior being, he answered that he could not thus interrupt him; that we could see that he was busy. At this Erving lost his temper, caught up the paper, tore it in pieces, threw them into the face of the underling with a loud exclamation more vigorous than pious, and we marched out defiantly. Looking back when driving off in our droshky, we saw that he had aroused the entire establishment: at the door stood the whole personnel of the office,--the military commander at the head,--all gazing at us in a sort of stupefaction. We expected to hear from them afterward, but on reflection they evidently thought it best not to stir the matter.

In reviewing this first of my sojourns in Russia, my thoughts naturally dwell upon the two sovereigns Nicholas I and Alexander II. The first of these was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever recurring specter of the French Revolution. There had been much to make him a stern reactionary. He could not but remember that two Czars--his father and grandfather--had both been murdered in obedience to family necessities. At his proclamation as emperor he had been welcomed by a revolt which had forced him

''To wade through slaughter to a throne--''

a revolt which had deluged the great parade-ground of St. Petersburg with the blood of his best soldiers, which had sent many coffles of the n.o.bility to Siberia, and which had obliged him to see the bodies of several men who might have made his reign ill.u.s.trious dangling from the fortress walls opposite the Winter Palace. He had been obliged to grapple with a fearful insurrection in Poland, caused partly by the brutality of his satraps, but mainly by religious hatreds; to suppress it with enormous carnage; and to subst.i.tute, for the moderate const.i.tutional liberty which his brother had granted, a cruel despotism.

He had thus become the fanatical apostle of reaction throughout Europe, and as such was everywhere the implacable enemy of any evolution of const.i.tutional liberty.

The despots of Europe adored him. As symbols of his ideals, he had given to the King of Prussia and to the Neapolitan Bourbon copies of two of the statues which adorned his Nevsky bridge--statues representing restive horses restrained by strong men; and the Berlin populace, with an unerring instinct, had given to one of these the name ''Progress checked,'' and to the other the name ''Retrogression encouraged.'' To this day one sees every- where in the palaces of Continental rulers, whether great or petty, his columns of Siberian porphyry, jasper bowls, or malachite vases--signs of his approval of reaction.

But, in justice to him, it should be said that there was one crime he did not commit--a crime, indeed, which he did not DARE commit: he did not violate his oath to maintain the liberties of Finland. THAT was reserved for the second Nicholas, now on the Russian throne.

Whether at the great a.s.semblages of the Winter Palace, or at the reviews, or simply driving in his sledge or walking in the street, he overawed all men by his presence. Whenever I saw him, and never more cogently than during that last drive of his just before his death, there was forced to my lips the thought: ''You are the most majestic being ever created.'' Colossal in stature; with a face such as one finds on a Greek coin, but overcast with a shadow of Muscovite melancholy; with a bearing dignified, but with a manner not unkind, he bore himself like a G.o.d. And yet no man could be more simple or affable, whether in his palace or in the street. Those were the days when a Russian Czar could drive or walk alone in every part of every city in his empire. He frequently took exercise in walking along the Neva quay, and enjoyed talking with any friends he met--especially with members of the diplomatic corps. The published letters of an American minister--Mr. Dallas--give accounts of many discussions thus held with him.

There seemed a most characteristic mingling of his better and worse qualities in the two promises which, according to tradition, he exacted on his death-bed from his son --namely, that he would free the serfs, and that he would never give a const.i.tution to Poland.

The accession of this son, Alexander II, brought a change at once: we all felt it. While he had the big Romanoff frame and beauty and dignity, he had less of the majesty and none of the implacable sternness of his father.

At the reception of the diplomatic corps on his accession he showed this abundantly; for, despite the strong declarations in his speech, his tears betrayed him. Reforms began at once--halting, indeed, but all tending in the right direction. How they were developed, and how so largely brought to naught, the world knows by heart. Of all the ghastly miscalculations ever made, of all the crimes which have cost the earth most dear, his murder was the worst.

The murders of William of Orange, of Lincoln, of Garfield, of Carnot, of Humbert I, did not stop the course of a beneficent evolution; but the murder of Alexander II threw Russia back into the hands of a reaction worse than any ever before known, which has now lasted nearly a generation, and which bids fair to continue for many more, unless the Russian reverses in the present war force on a better order of things. For me, looking back upon those days, it is hard to imagine even the craziest of nihilists or anarchists wild enough to commit such a crime against so attractive a man fully embarked on so blessed a career. He, too, in the days of my stay, was wont to mingle freely with his people; he even went to their places of public amus.e.m.e.nt, and he was frequently to be seen walking among them on the quays and elsewhere. In my reminiscences of the Hague Conference, I give from the lips of Prince Munster an account of a conversation under such circ.u.mstances: the Czar walking on the quay or resting on a seat by the roadside, while planning to right a wrong done by a petty Russian official to a German student. Therein appears not only a deep sense of justice and humanity, but that melancholy, so truly Russian, which was deepest in him and in his uncle, the first Alexander. There dwell also in my memory certain photographs of him in his last days, shown me not long before his death, during my first official stay at Berlin. His face was beautiful as of old, but the melancholy had deepened, and the eyes made a fearful revelation; for they were the eyes of a man who for years had known himself to be hunted. As I looked at them there came back to me the remembrance of the great, beautiful frightened eyes of a deer, hunted down and finally at my mercy, in the midst of a lake in the Adirondacks--eyes which haunted me long afterward. And there comes back the scene at the funeral ceremony in his honor at Berlin, coincident with that at St. Petersburg--his uncle, the Emperor William I, and all about him, in tears, and a depth of real feeling shown such as no monarch of a coa.r.s.er fiber could have inspired. When one reflects that he had given his countrymen, among a great ma.s.s of minor reforms, trial by jury; the emanc.i.p.ation of twenty millions of serfs, with provision for homesteads; and had at that moment--as his adviser, Loris Melikoff, confessed when dying--a const.i.tution ready for his people, one feels inclined to curse those who take the methods of revolution rather than those of evolution.

My departure from Russia embraces one or two incidents which may throw some light upon the Russian civilization of that period. On account of the blockade, I was obliged to take the post from St. Petersburg to Warsaw, giving to the journey seven days and seven nights of steady travel; and, as the pressure for places on the post was very great, I was obliged to secure mine several weeks beforehand, and then thought myself especially lucky in obtaining a sort of sentry-box on the roof of the second coach usually occupied by the guard. This good luck was due to the fact that, there being on that day two coaches, one guard served for both; and the place on the second was thus left vacant for me.

Day and night, then, during that whole week, we rumbled on through the interminable forests of Poland, and the distressingly dirty hamlets and towns scattered along the road. My first night out was trying, for it was very cold; but, having secured from a dealer in the first town where we stopped in the morning a large sheet of felt, I wrapped my legs in it, and thenceforward was comfortable. My companions in the two post-coaches were very lively, being mainly French actors and actresses who had just finished their winter campaign in Russia; and, when we changed horses at the post-houses, the scenes were of a sort which an American orator once characterized as ''halcyon and vociferous.''

Bearing a despatch-bag to our legation at Paris, I carried the pa.s.s, not only of an attach, but of a bearer of despatches, and on my departure our minister said to me:

''The Russian officials at the frontier have given much trouble to Americans of late; and I hope that if they trouble you, you will simply stop and inform me. You are traveling for pleasure and information, and a few days more or less will make little difference.'' On arriving at the frontier, I gave up my papers to the pa.s.sport officials, and was then approached by the officers of the custom- house. One of these, a tall personage in showy uniform, was very solemn, and presently asked: ''Are you carrying out any specie?'' I answered: ''None to speak of; only about twenty or thirty German dollars.'' Said he: ''That you must give up to me; the law of the empire does not permit you to take out coin.'' ''No,'' I said; ''you are mistaken. I have already had the money changed, and it is in German coin, not Russian.'' ''That makes no difference,'' said he; ''you must give it up or stay here.''

My answer was that I would not give it up, and on this he commanded his subordinates to take my baggage off the coach. My traveling companions now besought me to make a quiet compromise with him, to give him half the money, telling me that I might be detained there for weeks or months, or even be maltreated; but I steadily refused, and my baggage was removed. All were ready to start when the head of the police bureau came upon the scene to return our papers. His first proceeding was to call out my name in a most obsequious tone, and, bowing reverently, to tender me my pa.s.sport. I glanced at the custom-house official, and saw that he turned pale. The honor done my little brief authority by the pa.s.sport official revealed to him his mistake, and he immediately ordered his subordinates to replace my baggage on the coach; but this I instantly forbade. He then came up to me and insisted that a misunderstanding had occurred. ''No,'' I said; ''there is no misunderstanding; you have only treated me as you have treated other Americans. The American minister has ordered me to wait here and inform him, and all that I have now to ask you is that you give me the name of a hotel.'' At this be begged me to listen to him, and presently was pleading most piteously; indeed, he would have readily knelt and kissed my feet to secure my forgiveness. He became utterly abject. All were waiting, the coach stood open, the eyes of the whole party were fastened upon us. My comrades besought me to let the rascal go; and at last, after a most earnest warning to him, I gave my gracious permission to have the baggage placed on the coach. He was certainly at that moment one of the happiest men I have ever seen; and, as we drove off from the station, he lingered long, hat in hand, profuse with bows and good wishes.

One other occurrence during those seven days and nights of coaching may throw some light upon the feeling which has recently produced, in that same region, the Kis.h.i.+neff ma.s.sacres.

One pleasant Sat.u.r.day evening, at a Polish village, our coach pa.s.sed into the little green inclosure in front of the post-house, and there stopped for a change of horses.

While waiting, I noticed, from my sentry-box on the top of the coach, several well-dressed people--by the cut of their beards and hair, Jews--standing at some distance outside the inclosure, and looking at us. Presently two of them--clearly, by their bearing and dress, men of mark--entered the inclosure, came near the coach, and stood quietly and respectfully. In a few moments my attention was attracted by a movement on the other side of the coach: our coachman, a young serf, was skulking rapidly toward the stables, and presently emerged with his long horsewhip, skulked swiftly back again until he came suddenly on these two grave and reverend men, --each of them doubtless wealthy enough to have bought a dozen like him,--began las.h.i.+ng them, and finally drove them out of the inclosure like dogs, the a.s.sembled crowd jeering and hooting after them.

Few evenings linger more pleasantly in my memory than that on which I arrived in Breslau. I was once more outside of the Russian Empire; and, as I settled for the evening before a kindly fire upon a cheerful hearth, there rose under my windows, from a rollicking band of university students, the ''Gaudeamus igitur.'' I seemed to have arrived in another world--a world which held home and friends. Then, as never before, I realized the feeling which the Marquis de Custine had revealed, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Europe and the disgust of the Emperor Nicholas, nearly twenty years before. The brilliant marquis, on his way to St. Petersburg, had stopped at Stettin; and, on his leaving the inn to take s.h.i.+p for Cronstadt next day, the innkeeper said to him: ''Well, you are going into a very bad country.'' ''How so?'' said De Custine; ''when did you travel there?'' ''Never,'' answered the inn- keeper; ''but I have kept this inn for many years. All the leading Russians, going and coming by sea, have stopped with me; and I have always noticed that those coming from Russia are very glad, and those returning very sad.''

Throughout the remainder of my journey across the Continent, considerable attention was shown me at various stopping-places, since travelers from within the Russian lines at that time were rare indeed; but there was nothing worthy of note until my arrival at Strasburg.

There, in the railway station, I was presented by a young Austrian n.o.bleman to an American lady who was going on to Paris accompanied by her son; and, as she was very agreeable, I was glad when we all found ourselves together in the same railway compartment.