Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume Ii Part 4

It happened to me on one occasion to have an experience which I have related elsewhere, but which is repeated here as throwing light on the ideas of the Russian statesman.

On my arrival in St. Petersburg my attention was at once aroused by the portraits of Father Ivan. They ranged from photographs absolutely true to life, which revealed a plain, shrewd, kindly face, to those which were idealized until they bore a near resemblance to the conventional representations of Jesus of Nazareth.

One day, in one of the most brilliant reception-rooms of the Northern capital, the subject of Father Ivan's miracles having been introduced, a gentleman in very high social position, and entirely trustworthy, spoke as follows: "There is something very surprising about these miracles. I am slow to believe in them; but there is one of them which is overwhelming and absolutely true. The late Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Archbishop Isidore, loved quiet, and was very averse to anything which could possibly cause scandal. Hearing of the wonders wrought by Father Ivan, he summoned him to his presence and sternly commanded him to abstain from all the things which had given rise to these reported miracles, as sure to create scandal, and with this injunction dismissed him. Hardly had the priest left the room when the archbishop was struck with blindness, and he remained in this condition until the priest returned and restored his sight by intercessory prayer." When I asked the gentleman giving this account if he directly knew these facts, he replied that he was, of course, not present when the miracle was wrought; but that he had the facts immediately from persons who knew all the parties concerned, as well as all the circ.u.mstances of the case; and, indeed, that these circ.u.mstances were matter of general knowledge.

Sometime afterward, being at an afternoon reception in one of the greater emba.s.sies, I brought up the same subject, when an eminent general spoke as follows: "I am not inclined to believe in miracles,--in fact, am rather skeptical; but the proofs of those wrought by Father Ivan are overwhelming." He then went on to say that the late metropolitan archbishop was a man who loved quiet and disliked scandal; that on this account he had summoned Father Ivan to his palace, and ordered him to put an end to the conduct which had caused the reports concerning his miraculous powers; and then, with a wave of his arm, had dismissed him. The priest left the room, and from that moment the archbishop's arm was paralyzed; and it remained so until the penitent prelate summoned the priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored to its former usefulness. There was present at the time another person besides myself who had heard the previous statement as to the blindness of the archbishop; and, on our both asking the general if he was sure that the archbishop's arm was paralyzed as stated, he declared that he could not doubt it, as he had the account directly from persons entirely trustworthy who were cognizant of all the facts.

Sometime later, meeting Pobedonostzeff, I asked him which of these stories was correct. He answered immediately, "Neither: in the discharge of my duties I saw the Archbishop Isidore constantly down to the last hours of his life, and no such event ever occurred. He was never paralyzed and never blind." But the great statesman and churchman then went on to say that, although this story was untrue, there were a mult.i.tude of others quite as remarkable in which he believed; and he gave me a number of legends showing that Father Ivan possessed supernatural knowledge and miraculous powers. These he unfolded to me with much detail, and with such an accent of conviction that we seemed surrounded by a mediaeval atmosphere in which signs and wonders were the most natural things in the world.

As to his action on politics since my leaving Russia, the power which he exercised over Alexander III has evidently been continued during the reign of the young Nicholas II. In spite of his eighty years, he seems to be, to-day, the leader of the reactionary party.

During the early weeks of The Hague Conference, Count Munster, in his frequent diatribes against its whole purpose, and especially against arbitration, was wont to insist that the whole thing was a scheme prepared by Pobedonostzeff to embarra.s.s Germany; that, as Russia was always wretchedly unready with her army, The Hague Conference was simply a trick for gaining time against her rivals who kept up better military preparations. There may have been truth in part of this a.s.sertion; but the motive of the great Russian statesman in favoring the conference was probably not so much to gain time for the army as to gain money for the church.

With his intense desire to increase the stipends of the Russian orthodox clergy, and thus to raise them somewhat above their present low condition, he must have groaned over the enormous sums spent by his government in the frequent changes in almost every item of expenditure for its vast army--changes made in times of profound peace, simply to show that Russia was keeping her army abreast of those of her sister nations. Hence came the expressed Russian desire to "keep people from inventing things."

It has always seemed to me that, while the idea underlying the Peace Conference came originally from Jean de Bloch, there must have been powerful aid from Pobedonostzeff. So much of good--and, indeed, of great good--we may attribute to him as highly probable, if not certain.

But, on the other hand, there would seem to be equal reason for attributing to him, in these latter days, a fearful ma.s.s of evil.

To say nothing of the policy of Russia in Poland and elsewhere, her dealings with Finland thus far form one of the blackest spots on the history of the empire. Whether he originated this iniquity or not is uncertain; but when, in 1892, I first saw the new Russian cathedral rising on the heights above Helsingfors,--a structure vastly more imposing than any warranted by the small number of the "orthodox" in Finland,--with its architecture of the old Muscovite type, symbolical of fetis.h.i.+sm, I could not but recognize his hand in it. It seemed clear to me that here was the beginning of religious aggression on the Lutheran Finlanders, which must logically be followed by political and military aggression; and, in view of his agency in this as in everything reactionary, I did not wonder at the attempt to a.s.sa.s.sinate him not long afterward.

During my recent stay in Germany he visited me at the Berlin Emba.s.sy. He was, as of old, apparently gentle, kindly, interested in literature, not interested to any great extent in current Western politics. This gentle, kindly manner of his brought back forcibly to my mind a remark of one of the most cultivated women I met in Russia, a princess of ancient lineage, who ardently desired reasonable reforms, and who, when I mentioned to her a report that Pobedonostzeff was weary of political life, and was about to retire from office in order to devote himself to literary pursuits, said: "Don't, I beg of you, tell me that; for I have always noticed that whenever such a report is circulated, it is followed by some new scheme of his, even more infernal than those preceding it."

So much for the man who, during the present reign, seems one of the main agents in holding Russian policy on the road to ruin. He is indeed a study. The descriptive epithet which clings to him--"the Torquemada of the nineteenth century"--he once discussed with me in no unkindly spirit; indeed, in as gentle a spirit as can well be conceived. His life furnishes a most interesting study in churchmans.h.i.+p, in statesmans.h.i.+p, and in human nature, and shows how some of the men most severely condemned by modern historians--great persecutors, inquisitors, and the like--may have based their actions on theories the world has little understood, and may have had as little conscious ferocity as their more tolerant neighbors.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

WALKS AND TALES WITH TOLSTOI--MARCH, 1894

Revisiting Moscow after an absence of thirty-five years, the most surprising thing to me was that there had been so little change.

With the exception of the new gallery of Russian art, and the bazaar opposite the sacred gate of the Kremlin, things seemed as I had left them just after the accession of Alexander II. There were the same unkempt streets; the same peasantry clad in sheepskins; the same troops of beggars, st.u.r.dy and dirty; the same squalid crowds crossing themselves before the images at the street corners; the same throngs of wors.h.i.+pers knocking their heads against the pavements of churches; and above all loomed, now as then, the tower of Ivan and the domes of St. Basil, gloomy, gaudy, and barbaric. Only one change had taken place which interested me: for the first time in the history of Russia, a man of world-wide fame in literature and thought was abiding there--Count Leo Tolstoi.

On the evening of my arrival I went with my secretary to his weekly reception. As we entered his house on the outskirts of the city, two servants in evening dress came forward, removed our fur coats, and opened the doors into the reception-room of the master. Then came a surprise. His living-room seemed the cabin of a Russian peasant. It was wainscoted almost rudely and furnished very simply; and there approached us a tall, gaunt Russian, unmistakably born to command, yet clad as a peasant, his hair thrown back over his ears on either side, his flowing blouse kept together by a leathern girdle, his high jack-boots completing the costume. This was Tolstoi.

Nothing could be more kindly than his greeting. While his dress was that of a peasant, his bearing was the very opposite; for, instead of the depressed, demure, hangdog expression of the average muzhik, his manner, though cordial, was dignified and impressive. Having given us a hearty welcome, he made us acquainted with various other guests. It was a singular a.s.semblage. There were foreigners in evening dress, Moscow professors in any dress they liked, and a certain number of youth, evidently disciples, who, though clearly not of the peasant cla.s.s, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they seemed to show "the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration."

The professors were much more engaging. The University of Moscow has in its teaching body several strong men, and some of these were present. One of them, whose department was philosophy, especially interested and encouraged me by a.s.surances that the movement of Russian philosophy is "back to Kant." In the strange welter of whims and dreams which one finds in Russia, this was to me an unexpected evidence of healthful thought.

Naturally, I soon asked to be presented to the lady of the house, and the count escorted us through a series of rooms to a salon furnished much like any handsome apartment in Paris or St.

Petersburg, where the countess, with other ladies, all in full evening dress, received us cordially. This sudden transition from the peasant cabin of the master to these sumptuous rooms of the mistress was startling; it seemed like scene-s.h.i.+fting at a theater.

After some friendly talk, all returned to the rooms of the master of the house, where tea was served at a long table from the bubbling brazen urn--the samovar; and though there were some twenty or thirty guests, nothing could be more informal. All was simple, kindly, and unrestrained.

My first question was upon the condition of the people. Our American legation had corresponded with Count Tolstoi and his family as to distributing a portion of the famine fund sent from the United States, hence this subject naturally arose at the outset. He said that the condition of the peasants was still very bad; that they had very generally eaten their draught-animals, burned portions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies, and reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting that the new commercial treaty with Germany might help matters, he thought that it would have but little effect, since only a small portion of the total product of Russian agriculture is consumed abroad. This led him to speak of some Americans and Englishmen who had visited the famine-stricken districts, and, while he referred kindly to them all, he seemed especially attracted by the Quaker John Bellows of Gloucester, England, the author of the wonderful little French dictionary. This led him to say that he sympathized with the Quakers in everything save their belief in property; that in this they were utterly illogical; that property presupposes force to protect it. I remarked that most American Quakers knew nothing of such force; that none of them had ever seen an American soldier, save during our Civil War, and that probably not one in hundreds of them had ever seen a soldier at all. He answered, "But you forget the policeman." He evidently put policemen and soldiers in the same category--as using force to protect property, and therefore to be alike abhorred.

I found that to his disbelief in any right of owners.h.i.+p literary property formed no exception. He told me that, in his view, he had no right to receive money for the permission to print a book.

To this I naturally answered that by carrying out this doctrine he would simply lavish large sums upon publishers in every country of Europe and America, many of them rich and some of them piratical; and that in my opinion he would do a much better thing by taking the full value of his copyrights and bestowing the proceeds upon the peasantry starving about him. To which he answered that it was a question of duty. To this I agreed, but remarked that beneath this lay the question what this duty really was. It was a pleasure to learn from another source that the countess took a different view of it, and that she had in some way secured the proceeds of his copyrights for their very large and interesting family. Light was thus thrown on Tolstoi's remark, made afterward, that women are not so self-sacrificing as men; that a man would sometimes sacrifice his family for an idea, but that a woman would not.

He then went on to express an interest in the Shakers, and especially in Frederick Evans. He had evidently formed an idea of them very unlike the reality; in fact, the Shaker his imagination had developed was as different from a Lebanon Shaker as an eagle from a duck, and his notion of their influence on American society was comical.

He spoke at some length regarding religion in Russia, evidently believing that its present dominant form is soon to pa.s.s away. I asked him how then he could account for the fact that while in other countries women are greatly in the majority at church services, in every Russian church the majority are men; and that during the thirty-five years since my last visit to Moscow this tendency had apparently increased. He answered, "All this is on the surface; there is much deeper thought below, and the great want of Russia is liberty to utter it." He then gave some examples to show this, among them the case of a gentleman and lady in St. Petersburg, whose children had been taken from them and given to Princess ----, their grandmother, because the latter is of the Orthodox Church and the former are not. I answered that I had seen the children; that their grandmother had told me that their mother was a screaming atheist with nihilistic tendencies, who had left her husband and was bringing up the children in a scandalous way,--teaching them to abjure G.o.d and curse the Czar; that their father had thought it his duty to give all his property away and work as a laborer; that therefore she--the grandmother--had secured an order from the Emperor empowering her to take charge of the children; that I had seen the children at their grandmother's house, and that they had seemed very happy.

Tolstoi insisted that this statement by the grandmother was simply made to cover the fact that the children were taken from the mother because her belief was not of the orthodox pattern. My opinion is that Tolstoi was mistaken, at least as to the father; and that the father had been led to give away his property and work with his hands in obedience to the ideas so eloquently advocated by Tolstoi himself. Unlike his master, this gentleman appears not to have had the advantage of a wife who mitigated his ideas.

Tolstoi also referred to the difficulties which translators had found in securing publishers for his most recent book--"The Kingdom of G.o.d." On my a.s.suring him that American publishers of high standing would certainly be glad to take it, he said that he had supposed the ideas in it so contrary to opinions dominant in America as to prevent its publication there.

Returning to the subject of religion in Russia, he referred to some curious incongruities; as, for example, the portrait of Socrates forming part of a religious picture in the Annunciation Church at the Kremlin. He said that evidently some monk, who had dipped into Plato, had thus placed Socrates among the precursors of Christ. I cited the reason a.s.signed by Melanchthon for Christ's descent into h.e.l.l--namely, the desire of the Redeemer to make himself known to Socrates, Plato, and the best of the ancient philosophers; and I compared this with Luther's idea, so characteristic of him, that Christ descended into h.e.l.l in order to have a hand-to-hand grapple and wrestle with Satan. This led Tolstoi to give me a Russian legend of the descent into h.e.l.l, which was that, when Christ arrived there, he found Satan forging chains, but that, at the approach of the Saviour, the walls of h.e.l.l collapsed, and Satan found himself entangled in his own chains, and remained so for a thousand years.

In regard to the Jews, he said that he sympathized with them, but that the statements regarding the persecution of them were somewhat exaggerated. Kennan's statements regarding the treatment of prisoners in Siberia he thought overdrawn at times, but substantially true. He expressed his surprise that certain leading men in the empire, whom he named, could believe that persecution and the forcible repression of thought would have any permanent effect at the end of the nineteenth century.

He then dwelt upon sundry evil conditions in Russia, on which my comment was that every country, of course, had its own grievous shortcomings; and I cited, as to America, the proverb: "No one knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it." At this he asked me about lynch law in the United States, and expressed his horror of it. I showed him that it was the inevitable result of a wretched laxity and sham humanity in the administration of our criminal law, which had led great bodies of people, more especially in the Southern and extreme Western parts of the country, to revert to natural justice and take the law into their own hands; and I cited Goldwin Smith's profound remark that "some American lynchings are proofs not so much of lawlessness as of a respect for law."

He asked me where, besides this, the shoe pinched in the United States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury, not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited the case of the crowds whom I had seen some years before huddled together in New York tenement-houses, preyed upon by their liquor-selling landlords, their families peris.h.i.+ng of typhoid and smallpox on account of the negligence and maladministration of the local politicians, but who, as a rule, were almost if not quite ready to mob and murder those of us who brought in a new health board and a better order of things; showing him that for years the very cla.s.s of people who suffered most from the old, vile state of things did their best by their votes to keep in power the men who maintained it.

We then pa.s.sed to the subject of the trans-Siberian Railway. In this he seemed interested, but in a vague way which added nothing to my knowledge.

Asking me regarding my former visit to Moscow, and learning that it was during the Crimean War, he said, "At that time I was in Sebastopol, and continued there as a soldier during the siege."

As to his relations with the imperial government at present, he said that he had been recently elected to a learned society in Moscow, but that the St. Petersburg government had interfered to stop the election; and he added that every morning, when he awoke, he wondered that he was not on his way to Siberia.

On my leaving him, both he and the countess invited me to meet them next day at the Tretiakof Museum of Russian Pictures; and accordingly, on the following afternoon, I met them at that greatest of all galleries devoted purely to Russian art. They were accompanied by several friends, among them a little knot of disciples--young men clad in simple peasant costume like that worn by the master. It was evident that he was an acknowledged lion at the old Russian capital, for as he led me about to see the pictures which he liked best, he was followed and stared at by many.

Pointing out to me some modern religious pictures in Byzantine style painted for the Cathedral of Kieff, he said, "They represent an effort as futile as trying to persuade chickens to reenter the egg-sh.e.l.ls from which they have escaped." He next showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, "What is truth?" Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,--a peasant fanatic brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that famous question and its answer; the question coming from the mighty of the earth, and the answer from the poor and oppressed.

The other picture represented the Crucifixion. It was painted in the most realistic manner possible; nothing was idealized; it was even more vividly realistic than Gebhardt's picture of the Lord's Supper, at Berlin; so that it at first repelled me, though it afterward exercised a certain fascination. That Tolstoi was deeply interested was clear. He stood for a time in silence, as if musing upon all that the sacrifice on Calvary had brought to the world. Other representations of similar scenes, in the conventional style of the older masters, he had pa.s.sed without a glance; but this spectacle of the young Galilean peasant, with unattractive features, sordid garb, poverty-stricken companions, and repulsive surroundings, tortured to death for preaching the "kingdom of G.o.d" to the poor and down-trodden, seemed to hold him fast, and as he pointed out various features in the picture it became even more clear to me that sympathy with the peasant cla.s.s, and a yearning to enter into their cares and sorrows, form the real groundwork of his life.

He then took me to a small picture of Jesus and his disciples leaving the upper room at Jerusalem after the Last Supper. This, too, was painted in the most realistic manner. The disciples, simple-minded fishermen, rude in features and dress, were plodding homeward, while Christ himself gazed at the stars and drew the attention of his nearest companions to some of the brightest. Tolstoi expressed especial admiration for this picture, saying that at times it affected him like beautiful music,--like music which draws tears, one can hardly tell why. It was more and more evident, as he lingered before this and other pictures embodying similar ideas, that sympathy for those struggling through poverty and want toward a better life is his master pa.s.sion.

Among the pictures, not to be cla.s.sed as religious, before which he thus lingered were those representing the arrest of a nihilist and the return of an exile from Siberia. Both were well painted, and both revealed the same characteristic--sympathy with the poor, even with criminals.

Some of the more famous historical pictures in the collection he thought exaggerated; especially those representing the fury of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Sophia in her monastery prison, and the remorse of Ivan the Terrible after murdering his son.

To my surprise, he agreed with me, and even went beyond me, in rating landscape infinitely below religious and historical painting, saying that he cared for landscape-painting only as accessory to pictures revealing human life.

Among genre pictures, we halted before one representing a peasant family grouped about the mother, who, with a sacred picture laid upon her breast, after the Russian manner, was dying of famine.

This also seemed deeply to impress him.

We stopped next before a picture of a lady of high birth brought before the authorities in order to be sent, evidently against her will, to a convent. I cited the similar story from Manzoni's "Promessi Sposi"; but, to my surprise, he seemed to know little of that most fascinating of historical romances. This led to a discussion in which he said he had once liked Walter Scott, but had not read anything of his for many years; and he seemed interested in my statement that although always an especial admirer of Scott, I had found it almost impossible to induce the younger generation to read him.

Stopping before a picture of Peter the Great's fatal conference with his son Alexis, in reply to my remark upon the marvel that a prince of such genius as Peter should have appeared at Moscow in the seventeenth century, he said that he did not admire Peter, that he was too cruel,--administering torture and death at times with his own hands.

We next halted before a picture representing the horrible execution of the Strelitzes. I said that "such pictures prove that the world does, after all, progress slowly, in spite of what pessimists say, and that in order to refute pessimists one has only to refer to the improvements in criminal law." To this he agreed cordially, and declared the abolition of torture in procedure and penalty to be one great gain, at any rate.

We spoke of the present condition of things in Europe, and I told him that at St. Petersburg the opinion very general among the more thoughtful members of the diplomatic corps was that war was not imminent; that the Czar, having himself seen the cruelties of war during the late struggle in the Balkans, had acquired an invincible repugnance to it. He acquiesced in this, but said that it seemed monstrous to him that the peace of the empire and of Europe should depend upon so slender a thread as the will of any one man.

Our next walk was taken across the river Moskwa, on the ice, to and through the Kremlin, and as we walked the conversation fell upon literature. As to French literature, he thought Maupa.s.sant the man of greatest talent, by far, in recent days, but that he was depraved and centered all his fiction in women. For Balzac, Tolstoi evidently preserved admiration, but he cared little, apparently, for Daudet, Zola, and their compeers.

As to American literature, he said that Tourgueneff had once told him that there was nothing in it worth reading; nothing new or original; that it was simply a copy of English literature. To this I replied that such criticism seemed to me very shallow; that American literature was, of course, largely a growth out of the parent stock of English literature, and must mainly be judged as such; that to ask in the highest American literature something absolutely different from English literature in general was like looking for oranges upon an apple-tree; that there had come new varieties in this growth, many of them original, and some beautiful; but that there was the same sap, the same life-current running through it all; and I compared the treatment of woman in all Anglo-Saxon literature, whether on one side of the Atlantic or the other, from Chaucer to Mark Twain, with the treatment of the same subject by French writers from Rabelais to Zola. To this he answered that in his opinion the strength of American literature arises from the inherent Anglo-Saxon religious sentiment. He expressed a liking for Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whittier, but he seemed to have read at random, not knowing at all some of the best things. He spoke with admiration of Theodore Parker's writings, and seemed interested in my reminiscences of Parker and of his acquaintance with Russian affairs. He also revered and admired the character and work of William Lloyd Garrison. He had read Longfellow somewhat, but was evidently uncertain regarding Lowell,--confusing him, apparently, with some other author. Among contemporary writers he knew some of Howells's novels and liked them, but said: "Literature in the United States at present seems to be in the lowest trough of the sea between high waves." He dwelt on the flippant tone of American newspapers, and told me of an interviewer who came to him in behalf of an American journal, and wanted simply to know at what time he went to bed and rose, what he ate, and the like.

He thought that people who cared to read such trivialities must be very feeble-minded, but he said that the European press is, on the whole, just as futile. On my attempting to draw from him some statement as to what part of American literature pleased him most, he said that he had read some publications of the New York and Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, and that he knew and liked the writings of Felix Adler. I then asked who, in the whole range of American literature, he thought the foremost. To this he made an answer which amazed me, as it would have astonished my countrymen. Indeed, did the eternal salvation of all our eighty millions depend upon some one of them guessing the person he named, we should all go to perdition together. That greatest of American writers was--Adin Ballou! Evidently, some of the philanthropic writings of that excellent Ma.s.sachusetts country clergyman and religious communist had pleased him, and hence came the answer.