Part 39
To start a paper, subsidized by the police, with a police agent at its head, is an old plan, and the prefect of the Paris police, Andrieux, resorted to it in 1881. I was with Elisée Reclus in the mountains when we received a letter from a Frenchman, or rather a Belgian, who announced to us that he was going to start an anarchist paper at Paris and asked our collaboration. The letter, full of flatteries, produced upon us an unpleasant impression, and Reclus had moreover some vague reminiscence of having heard the name of the writer in some unfavourable connection. We decided to refuse collaboration, and I wrote to a Paris friend that we must first of all ascertain from whence the money came with which the paper was going to be started. ‘It may come from the Orleanists--an old trick of the family--and we must know its origin.’ My Paris friend, with a workman’s straightforwardness, read that letter at a meeting at which the would-be editor of the paper was present. He simulated offence, and I had to answer several letters on this subject; but I stuck to my words: ‘If the man is in earnest, he must show us the origin of the money.’
And so he did at last. Pressed by questions he said that the money came from his aunt--a rich lady of antiquated opinions who yielded, however, to his fancy of having a paper and had parted with the money. The lady was not in France; she was staying at London. We insisted nevertheless upon having her name and address, and our friend Malatesta volunteered to see her. He went with an Italian friend who was connected with the second-hand trade in furniture. They found the lady occupying a small flat, and while Malatesta spoke to her and was more and more convinced that she was simply playing the aunt’s part in the comedy, the furniture-friend, looking round at the chairs and tables, discovered that all of them had been taken the day before--probably hired--from a second-hand furniture dealer, his neighbour. The labels of the dealer were still fastened to the chairs and the tables. This did not prove much, but naturally reinforced our suspicions. I absolutely refused to have anything to do with the paper.
The paper was of an unheard-of violence. Burning, assassination, dynamite bombs--there was nothing but that in it. I met the man, the editor of the paper, as I went to the London congress, and the moment I saw his sullen face, and heard a bit of his talk, and caught a glance of the sort of women with whom he always went about, my opinions concerning him were settled. At the congress, during which he introduced all sorts of terrible resolutions, the delegates kept aloof from him; and when he insisted upon having the addresses of anarchists all over the world, the refusal was made in anything but a flattering manner.
To make a long story short, he was unmasked a couple of months later, and the paper was stopped for ever on the very next day. Then, a couple of years after that, the prefect of police, Andrieux, published his ‘Memoirs,’ and in this book he told all about the paper which he had started and the explosions which his agents had organized at Paris, by putting sardine boxes filled with ‘something’ under the statue of Thiers.
One can imagine the quantities of money all these things cost the French and every other nation.
* * * * *
I might write several chapters on this subject, but I will mention only one more story of two adventurers at Clairvaux.
My wife stayed in the only inn of the little village which has grown up under the shadow of the prison wall. One day the landlady entered her room with a message from two gentlemen, who came to the hotel and wanted to see my wife. The landlady interceded with all her eloquence in their favour. ‘Oh, I know the world,’ she said, ‘and I may assure you, madame, that they are the most correct gentlemen. Nothing could be more _comme-il-faut_. One of them gave the name of a German officer. He is surely a baron or a “milord,” and the other is his interpreter. They know you perfectly well. The baron is going now to Africa, perhaps never to return, and he wants to see you before he leaves.’
My wife looked at the address of the message, which was: ‘A Madame la Principesse Kropotkine,’ and needed no further proof of the _comme-el-faut_ of the two gentlemen. As to the contents of the message, they were even worse than the address. Against all rules of grammar and common-sense the ‘baron’ wrote about a mysterious communication which he had to make. She refused point-blank to receive the baron and his interpreter.
Thereupon the baron wrote to my wife letter upon letter, which she returned unopened. All the village soon became divided into two parties--one siding with the baron and led by the landlady, and the other against him, and headed, as a matter of fact, by the landlady’s husband. Quite a romance was circulated. ‘The baron had known my wife before her marriage. He had danced with her many times at the Russian embassy in Vienna. He was still in love with her, but she, the cruel one, refused even to allow him to cast a glance at her before he went upon his perilous expedition....’
Then came the mysterious story of a boy whom we were said to conceal. ‘Where is their boy?’ the baron wanted to know. ‘They have a son, six years old by this time--where is he?’ ‘She never would part with a boy if she had one,’ the one party said. ‘Yes, they have one, but they conceal him,’ the other party maintained.
For us two, this contest was a very interesting revelation. It proved that our letters were not only read by the prison authorities, but that their contents were made known to the Russian embassy as well. When I was at Lyons, and my wife went to see Elisée Reclus in Switzerland, she wrote to me once that ‘our boy’ was going on well; his health was excellent, and they all spent a very nice evening at the anniversary of his fifth birthday. I knew that she meant ‘Le Révolté,’ which we often used to name in conversation ‘our _gamin_’--our naughty boy. But now that these gentlemen were inquiring about ‘our _gamin_,’ and even designated so correctly his age, it was evident that the letter had passed through other hands than those of the governor. It was well to know such a thing.
Nothing escapes the attention of village folk in the country, and the baron soon awakened suspicions. He wrote a new letter to my wife, even more loquacious than the former ones. Now, he asked her pardon for having tried to introduce himself as an acquaintance. He owned that she did not know him; but nevertheless he was a well-wisher. He had to make to her a most important communication. My life was in danger and he wanted to warn her. The baron and his secretary took an outing in the fields to read together that letter and to consult about its tenor--the forest-guard following them at a distance--but they quarrelled about it, and the letter was torn to pieces and thrown in the fields. The forester waited till they were out of sight, gathered the pieces, connected them, and read the letter. In one hour’s time the village knew that the baron had never really been acquainted with my wife; the romance which was so sentimentally repeated by the baron’s party crumbled to pieces.
‘Ah, then, they are not what they pretended to be,’ the _brigadier de gendarmerie_ concluded in his turn; ‘then they must be German spies’--and he arrested them.
It must be said in his excuse that a German spy had really been at Clairvaux shortly before. In time of war the vast buildings of the prison might serve as depôts for provisions or barracks for the army, and the German General Staff was surely interested to know the inner capacity of the prison buildings. A jovial travelling photographer came accordingly to our village, made friends with everyone by photographing them for nothing, and was admitted to photograph, not only the inside of the prison yards, but also the dormitories. Having done this, he travelled to some other town on the eastern frontier, and was there arrested by the French authorities as a man found in possession of compromising military documents. The brigadier, fresh from the impression of the photographer’s visit, jumped to the conclusion that the baron and his secretary were also German spies, and took them in custody to the little town of Bar-sur-Aube. There they were released next morning, the local paper stating that they were not German spies but ‘persons commissioned by another more friendly power.’
Now public opinion turned entirely against the baron and his secretary, who had to live through more adventures. After their release they entered a small village café, and there ventilated their griefs in German in a friendly conversation over a bottle of wine. ‘You were stupid, you were a coward,’ the would-be interpreter said to the would-be baron. ‘If _I_ had been in your place, I would have shot that examining magistrate with this revolver. Let him only repeat that with _me_--he will have these bullets in his head!’ And so on.
A commercial traveller who quietly sat in the corner of the room, rushed at once to the brigadier to report the conversation which he had overheard. The brigadier made at once an official report, and once more arrested the secretary--a pharmacist from Strasburg. He was taken before a police court at the same town of Bar-sur-Aube, and got a full month’s imprisonment for ‘menaces uttered against a magistrate in a public place.’ At last the two adventurers left Clairvaux.
* * * * *
These spy adventures ended in a comical way. But how many tragedies--terrible tragedies--we owe to these villains! Precious lives lost, and whole families wrecked, simply to get an easy living for such swindlers. When one thinks of the thousands of spies going about the world in the pay of all governments; of the traps they lay for all sorts of artless people; of the lives they sometimes bring to a tragical end, and the sorrows they sow broadcast; of the vast sums of money thrown away in the maintenance of that army recruited from the scum of society; of the corruption of all sorts which they pour into society at large, nay, even into families, one cannot but be appalled at the immensity of the evil which is thus done. And this army of villains is not only limited to those who play the spy on revolutionists or to the military espionage system. In this country there are papers, especially in the watering towns, whose columns are covered with advertisements of private detective agencies which undertake to collect all sorts of information for divorce suits, to spy upon husbands for their wives and upon wives for their husbands, to penetrate into families and entrap simpletons, and who will undertake anything which may be asked of them, for a corresponding sum of money. And while people feel scandalized at the espionage villainies lately revealed in the highest military spheres of France, they do not notice that amongst themselves, perhaps under their own roofs, the same and even worse things are being committed by both the official and private detective agencies.
XV
Demands for our release were continually raised, both in the Press and in the Chamber of Deputies--the more so as about the same time that we were condemned Louise Michel was condemned, too--for robbery. Louise Michel, who always gives literally her last shawl or cloak to the woman who is in need of it, and who never could be compelled, during her imprisonment, to have better food, because she always gave her fellow prisoners what was sent to her, was condemned, together with another comrade, Pouget, to nine years’ imprisonment for highway robbery! That sounded too bad even for the middle-class opportunists. She marched one day at the head of a procession of the unemployed, and, entering a baker’s shop, took a few loaves from it and distributed them to the hungry column: this was her robbery. The release of the anarchists thus became a war-cry against the government, and in the autumn of 1885 all my comrades save three were set at liberty by a decree of President Grévy. Then the outcry on behalf of Louise Michel and myself became still louder. However, Alexander III. objected to it; and one day the prime minister, M. Freycinet, answering an interpellation in the Chamber, said that ‘diplomatic difficulties stood in the way of Kropótkin’s release.’ Strange words in the mouth of the prime minister of an independent country; but still stranger words have been heard since in connection with that ill-omened alliance of France with imperial Russia.
At last, in the middle of January 1886, both Louise Michel and Pouget, as well as the four of us who were still at Clairvaux, were set free.
We went to Paris and stayed there for a few weeks with our friend, Elie Reclus--a writer of great power in anthropology, who is often mistaken outside France for his younger brother, the geographer, Elisée. A close friendship has united the two brothers from early youth. When the time came for them to enter a university, they went from a small country place in the valley of the Gironde to Strasburg, making the journey on foot--accompanied, as true wandering students, by their dog; and when they stayed at some village it was the dog which got his bowl of soup, while the two brothers’ supper very often consisted of bread only, with a few apples. From Strasburg the younger brother went to Berlin, whereto he was attracted by the lectures of the great Ritter. Later on, in the forties, they were both at Paris. Elie Reclus became a convinced Fourierist, and both saw in the republic of 1848 the coming of a new era of social evolution. Consequently, after Napoleon III.’s _coup d’état_, they both had to leave France, and emigrated to England. When the amnesty was voted, and they returned to Paris, Elie edited there a Fourierist co-operative paper which was widely spread among the workers. It is not generally known, but may be interesting to note, that Napoleon III.--who played the part of a Cæsar, interested, as behoves a Cæsar, in the conditions of the working classes--used to send one of his aides-de-camp to the printing office of the paper, each time it was printed, to take to the Tuileries the first sheet issued from the press. He was, later on, even ready to patronize the International Workingmen’s Association, on the condition that it should put in one of its reports a few words of confidence in the great socialist plans of the Cæsar; and he ordered its prosecution when the Internationalists refused point-blank to do anything of the sort.
When the Commune was proclaimed, both brothers heartily joined it and Elie accepted the post of keeper of the National Library and the Louvre museum under Vaillant. It was, to a great extent, to his foresight and to his hard work that we owe the preservation of the invaluable treasures of human knowledge and art accumulated in these two institutions; otherwise they would have perished during the bombardment of Paris by the armies of Thiers, and the subsequent conflagration. A passionate lover of Greek art, and profoundly acquainted with it, he had had all the most precious statues and vases of the Louvre packed and stored in the caves, while the greatest precautions were taken to protect the building of the National Library from the conflagration which raged round it. His wife, a courageous, worthy companion of the philosopher, followed in the streets by her two little boys, organized in the meantime in her own quarter of the town the feeding of the population which had been reduced to sheer destitution by a second siege. During the final few weeks of its existence, the Commune at last realized that a supply of food to the population, which was deprived of the means of earning it for itself, ought to have been the Commune’s first duty, and volunteers organized the relief. It was by mere accident that Elie Reclus, who had kept to his post till the last moment, escaped being shot by the Versailles troops; and a sentence of deportation having been pronounced upon him--for having dared to accept so necessary a service under the Commune--he went with his family into exile. Now, on his return to Paris, he had resumed the work of his life--ethnology. What this work is may be judged from a few, very few, chapters of it published in book form under the title of ‘Primitive Folk’ and ‘The Australians,’ as well as from the history of the origin of religions, which he now lectures upon at the _École des Hautes Études_, at Brussels--a foundation of his brother. In the whole of the ethnological literature there are not many works imbued to the same extent with a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the true nature of primitive man. As to his ‘Origin of Religions’ (which is being published in the review, ‘Société Nouvelle,’ and its continuation ‘Humanité Nouvelle’), it is, I venture to say, the best work on the subject that has been published--undoubtedly superior to Herbert Spencer’s attempt in the same direction, because Herbert Spencer, with all his immense intellect, does not possess that understanding of the artless and simple nature of the primitive man which Elie Reclus possesses to a rare perfection, and to which he has added an extremely wide knowledge of a rather underrated branch of folk-psychology--the evolution and transformation of beliefs. It is needless to speak of Elie Reclus’s infinite good nature and modesty, or of his superior intelligence and vast knowledge of all subjects relating to humanity; it is all comprehended in his style. With his unbounded modesty, his calm manner and his deep philosophical insight, he is the type of the Greek philosopher of antiquity. In a society less fond of patented tuition and of piecemeal instruction, and more appreciative of the development of wide humanitarian conceptions, he would be surrounded by flocks of pupils, like one of his Greek prototypes.
A very animated socialist and anarchist movement was going on at Paris while we stayed there. Louise Michel lectured every night, and aroused the enthusiasm of her audiences, whether they consisted of working men or were made up of middle-class people. Her already great popularity became still greater and spread even amongst the university students, who might hate advanced ideas but worshipped in her the ideal woman; so much so that a riot, caused by someone speaking disrespectfully of Louise Michel in the presence of students, took place one day in a café. The young people took up her defence and made a fearful uproar, smashing all the tables and glasses in the café. I also lectured once on anarchism, before an audience of several thousand people, and left Paris immediately after that lecture, before the government could obey the injunctions of the reactionary and the pro-Russian press, which insisted upon my being expelled from France.
From Paris we went to London, where I found once more my two old friends, Stepniák and Tchaykóvsky. The socialist movement was in full swing, and life in London was no more the dull, vegetating existence that it had been for me four years before.
We settled in a small cottage at Harrow. We cared little about the furniture of our cottage, a good part of which I made myself with the aid of Tchaykóvsky--he had been in the meantime in the United States and had learned some carpentering--but we rejoiced immensely at having a small plot of heavy Middlesex clay in our garden. My wife and myself went with much enthusiasm into small culture, the admirable results of which I began to realize after having made acquaintance with the writings of Toubeau, and some Paris _maraîchers_ (gardeners), and after our own experiment in the prison garden at Clairvaux. As for my wife, who had typhoid fever soon after we settled at Harrow, the work in the garden during the period of convalescence was more completely restorative for her than a stay at the very best sanatorium.
* * * * *
By the end of the summer a heavy stroke fell upon us. We learned that my brother Alexander was no longer alive.
During the years that I had been abroad before my imprisonment in France, we had never corresponded with each other. In the eyes of the Russian government, to love a brother who is persecuted for his political opinions is in itself a sin. To maintain relations with him after he has become a refugee is a crime. A subject of the Tsar must hate all the rebels against the supreme ruler’s authority--and Alexander was in the clutches of the Russian police. I persistently refused therefore to write to him or to any of my relatives. After the Tsar had written on the petition of our sister Hélène, ‘Let him remain there,’ there was no hope of a speedy release for my brother. Two years after that, a committee was nominated to settle terms for those who had been exiled to Siberia without judgment for an undetermined time, and my brother got five years. That made seven with the two years he had already been kept there. Then a new committee was nominated under Lóris Mélikoff, and added another five years. My brother was thus to be liberated in October 1886. That made twelve years of exile, first in a tiny town of East Siberia, and afterwards at Tomsk--that is in the lowlands of West Siberia, where he had not even the dry and healthy climate of the high prairies farther East.
When I was imprisoned at Clairvaux, he wrote to me, and we exchanged a few letters. He wrote that as our letters would be read by the Russian police in Siberia and by the French prison authorities in France, we might as well write to each other under this double supervision. He spoke of his family life, of his three children whom he characterized admirably well, and of his work. He earnestly advised me to keep a watchful eye upon the development of science in Italy, where excellent and original researches are made, but remain unknown in the scientific world until they have been re-manufactured in Germany; and he gave me his opinions about the probable march of political life in Russia. He did not believe in the possibility with us in a near future, of constitutional rule on the pattern of the West European parliaments; but he looked forward--and found it quite sufficient for the moment--to the convocation of a sort of deliberative National Assembly (_Zémskiy Sobór_ or _Etats Généraux_). It would not vote new laws, but would only work out the schemes of laws to which the imperial power and the Council of State would give their definitive form and the final sanction.