Letter 8

_Be a man, stop and make answer?_

‘_Halte-là! Stop!_’ was said to me this time, not by a lunatic, but, quite the contrary, by a very sane gentleman who walked into my room with a number of the _Bell._ in his hand. ‘I have come,’ he said, ‘to have it out with you. Your “Ends and Beginnings” have passed every limit; it is high time to take leave and put an end to them, with regrets for having begun them.’

‘Has it really come to that?’

‘It has. You know I love you, I respect your talent....’

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘it’s a bad look-out; it is clear that he means to abuse me in earnest, or he wouldn’t have attacked me with such a flattering introduction.’

‘Here is my heart,’ I said; ‘strike.’

My resignation, together with the classical allusion, had a happy effect on my irritated friend, and with a more good-natured air he said: ‘Listen to me quietly, laying aside the vanity of the author and the narrow exclusiveness of the exile: with what object are you writing all this?’

‘There are many reasons for it; in the first place, I believe what I write to be the truth, and every man who is not indifferent to the truth has a weakness for spreading it abroad. Secondly ... but I imagine the first reason is sufficient.’

‘No. You ought to know the public whom you are addressing, the stage of development it has reached, and the circumstances in which it is placed. I’ll tell you plainly: you have the most fatal influence on our young people, who are learning from you to despise Europe and her civilisation, and consequently do not care to study it seriously, but are satisfied with a smattering of the newest ideas and think that the breadth of their own nature is enough.’

‘Ough! how elderly you have grown since I saw you last! you abuse the young and want to rear them on falsehoods, like nurses who tell children that the midwife brings the babies, and the difference between the boy and the girl is the cut of their clothes. You had better consider for how many centuries men have been lying shamelessly with a moral object, and morality has been none the better. Why not try speaking the truth? If the truth turns out to be bad, the example would be good. As to my bad influence on the young—I’ve long been resigned to that, remembering how all who have been of any use to the younger generation have invariably been accused of corrupting it, from Socrates to Voltaire, from Voltaire to Shelley and Byelinsky. Besides, I am comforted by the fact that it is very difficult to corrupt our young Russians. Brought up on the estates of slave-owners by Nicholas’ officials and officers, completing their studies in army barracks, government offices, or the houses of the gentry, they are either incapable of being corrupted, or their corruption is already so complete that it would be hard to add to it by any bitter truth about Western Europe.’

‘Truth!... But allow me to ask you whether your truth really is the truth?’

‘I can’t answer for that. You may rely on one thing, that I say conscientiously what I think. If I am mistaken, unaware of it, what can I do? It is more your job to open my eyes.’

‘There’s no convincing you—and you know why; it’s because you are partly right; you are a good dissector, as you say yourself, and a bad accoucheur.’

‘But you know I am not living in a maternity hospital, but in a clinic and an anatomical theatre.’

‘And you are writing for nursery-schools. Children must be taught that they may not snatch each other’s porridge and pull each other’s hair. But you regale them with the subtleties of your pathological anatomy, and keep on telling them besides: Look here, how nasty the entrails of these old Europeans are! What is more, you use two different measures and two different standards. If you do take up the scalpel, you should be fair in your dissection.’

‘What, am I dissecting the living too? How awful! And children too! You do make me out a Herod!’

‘You may joke as you like, you won’t put me off with that. With great insight you diagnose the malady of modern man, but when you have analysed every symptom of chronic disease, you say that it is all due to the patient’s being French or German. And our people at home actually imagine that they have youth and a future. Everything that is precious to us in the traditions, the civilisation, and the history of the Western nations you cut open relentlessly and unsparingly, exposing horrible sores, and in that you are performing your task as a demonstrator. But you are sick of messing about for ever with corpses. And so, abandoning every ideal in the world, you are setting up for yourself a new idol, not a golden calf, but a woolly sheepskin, and you set to bowing down to it and glorifying it as “The Absolute Sheepskin, the Sheepskin of the Future, the Sheepskin of Communism, of Socialism!” You who have made for yourself a duty and a profession of scepticism, expect from a people, which has done nothing so far, a new and original form of society in the future and every other blessing; and, in the excess of your fanatical ecstasy, you stuff up your ears and close your eyes that you may not see that your god is as crude and hideous as any Japanese idol, with its threefold belly and flattened nose and moustaches like the King of Sardinia. Whatever you are told, whatever facts are brought forward, you talk in “ardent ecstasy” of the freshness of spring, of rising crops, of beneficent tempests, of rainbows full of promise! It is no wonder that our young people, after drinking deep of your still fermenting brew of Slavophil socialism, are staggering, drunk and dizzy, till they break their necks or knock their noses against our _real_ reality. Of course, it is as hard to sober them as it is to sober you—history, philology, statistics, incontestable facts, go for nothing with both of you.’

‘But excuse me, I, too, must tell you to call a halt. What are these incontestable facts?’

‘There are masses of them.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as the fact that we Russians belong both by race and language to the European family, _genus europaeum_, and consequently by the most inevitable laws of physiology we are bound to follow the same line of development. I have never heard of a duck belonging to the genus of ducks breathing with gills....’

‘Only fancy, I haven’t either.’

I pause at this agreeable moment of complete agreement with my opponent to turn to you again and submit to your judgment such attacks on the honour and virtue of my epistles.

My whole sin lies in avoiding dogmatic statement and perhaps relying too much on my readers; this has led many into temptation and given my _practical_ opponents a weapon against me—not always of the same quality and equal purity. I will try to condense into a series of aphorisms the grounds of the theory on the basis of which I thought myself entitled to draw the conclusions, which I have passed on like apples without mentioning the ladder which I had put up to the tree, nor the pruner with which I picked them. But before I proceed to do this, I want to show you by one example that my stern judges cannot be said to be on very firm ground. The learned friend who came to trouble the peace of my retreat takes it as you see for an incontestable fact, for an invariable physiological law, that if the Russians belong to the European family the same line of development awaits them as that followed by the Latin and Germanic peoples. But there is no such paragraph in the laws of physiology. It reminds me of the typically Moscow invention of all sorts of institutions and regulations in which every one believes, which every one repeats, and which have never existed. One friend of mine and of yours used to call them the laws of the English Club.

The general plan of development admits of endless unforeseen deviations, such as the trunk of the elephant and the hump of the camel. There are any number of variations on the same theme: dogs, wolves, foxes, harriers, wolf-hounds, water-spaniels, and pugs.... A common origin by no means implies a similar biography. Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, were brothers, but what different careers they had! It is the same in all spiritual societies or communities. Every form of Christianity has similarities in the organisation of the family, of the Church, and so on, but it cannot be said that the history of the English Protestants has been very similar to that of the Abyssinian Christians, or that the most Catholic Austrian Army has much in common with the extremely orthodox monks of Mount Athos. That the duck does not breathe through gills is true; it is even truer that quartz does not fly like a humming-bird. You certainly know, however, though my learned friend does not, that there was a moment’s hesitation in the duck’s life when its aorta had not taken its downward turn, but branched out with pretensions to gills; but having a physiological tradition, the habit and possibility of development in the duck did not stop short at the inferior form of breathing, but passed on to lungs.

It only comes to this, that the fish has become adapted to the conditions of aquatic life and does not advance beyond gills, while the duck does. But why the fish’s breathing should blow out my theory, I do not understand. It seems to me, on the contrary, to illustrate it. In the _genus europaeum_ there are peoples that have grown old without fully developing a bourgeoisie (the Celts, some parts of Spain, of Southern Italy, and so on), while there are others whom the bourgeois system suits as water suits gills. So why should not there be a nation for whom the bourgeois system will be a transitory and unsatisfactory condition, like gills for a duck?

Why is it a wicked heresy, a desertion of my own principles, and a contradiction of the absolute laws of creation and rules and doctrines, human and divine, that I do not regard the bourgeois system as the final form of Russian society, the organisation towards which Russia is striving and to attain which she will probably pass through a bourgeois period? Possibly the European peoples will themselves pass to another order of life, perhaps Russia will not develop at all; but just as that is possible, there are other possibilities too. Especially as the order in which problems arise, the accidents of time and place and development, the conditions and habits of life and the permanent traits of character, may give endlessly varied direction to development.

The Russian people, covering such wide spaces between Europe and Asia, and standing to the general family of European peoples somewhat in the relationship of a cousin, has taken scarcely any part in the family history of Western Europe. Developing late and with difficulty, it must either show a complete incapacity for progress, or must produce something of its own under the influence of the past and of its neighbours’ examples and its own point of view.

Hitherto Russia has developed nothing of its own, but has preserved something; like a river, she has reflected things truly but superficially. The Byzantine influence has perhaps been the deepest; all the rest has passed like Peter’s innovations: beards have been shaved, heads have been cropped, the skirts of kaftans have been cut off, the people have been silent and given way, while the minority changed their costumes and went into the Service, while the State, after receiving the general European outline, grew and grew.... It is the usual history of childhood. It is over, that no one doubts, neither the Winter Palace nor Young Russia. It is time to stand on our own feet: why must we take to wooden legs because they are of foreign make? Why should we put on a European blouse, when we have our own shirt with the collar buttoning on one side?

We are vexed at the feebleness, at the narrow outlook of the Government, which in its impotence tries to improve our life by putting on the tricolor _camisole de force_ cut on the Parisian pattern, instead of the yellow and black _Zwangsjacke_, which it wore for a hundred and fifty years. But here we have not the Government, but the mandarins of literature, the senators of journalism, the university professors preaching to us that such is the inevitable law of physiology, that we belong to the _genus europaeum_, and must therefore cut all the old capers to a new tune, that we must stumble like sheep over the same ditch, fall into the same pit, and afterwards settle down as an everlasting shopkeeper selling greens to other sheep. A plague on their physiological law! And why is it Europe has been luckier, why has no one made her play the part of Greece and Rome over again? There are in life and nature no monopolies, no measures for preventing and suppressing new biological forms, new historical destinies and political systems—they are only limited by practical possibility. The future is a variation improvised on a theme of the past. Not only the phases of development and the forms of life vary, but new nations are created, new nationalities whose destinies are on other lines. Before our eyes, so to speak, a new race has been formed, a variety European by free choice and elemental composition. The manners, morals, and habits of the Americans have developed a peculiar character of their own; the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic physical types have so changed beyond the Atlantic that you can scarcely ever mistake an American. If a fresh soil is enough to make an individual characteristic nation out of old peoples, why should a nation that has developed in its own way under completely different conditions from those of the West European States, with different elements in its life, live through the European past, and that, too, when it knows perfectly well what that past leads to? Yes, but what are those elements?

I have said what they are many times, and not once have I heard a serious objection, but every time I receive again the same answers, and not from foreigners only, but from Russians.... There is no help for it; we must repeat our arguments again, too.

_January 15, 1863._

ANOTHER VARIATION ON AN OLD THEME

_A Letter to X_

No, dear friend, I am not going to keep the promise I made you to write an article in explanation of what I said of Western Europe and what I said of Russia.

After you had gone, under the influence of your criticisms and the criticisms made by our common friends, I looked through part of what I had written and found I had nothing to add. I had said all that was in my heart, what I understood, and how I understood it. If I have not succeeded in making my outlook clear in whole books, in a series of articles, and a series of letters, how can I succeed in doing so in a few pages? Even if my view were really simply morbid, partial, and personal when I wrote ‘From the Other Side’ eight years ago, time has so terribly confirmed it that it has become a more settled conviction, and has merely cooled without being changed in anything essential. I refuse to repeat coldly what I said then with warmth, and I write now rather to show you that I listened to you attentively and took our friends’ criticisms sincerely to heart. The chief points of their censure may be reduced to two: first, that my attitude to Western Europe weakens convictions which are still essential in Russia; secondly, that my attitude to Russia approximates to that of the Slavophils. These criticisms are themselves the proof that your feud with the Moscow Old Believers has not subsided; that is a pity.

Carried away by your polemics, you do not notice how tedious and boring your disputes have become. Your quarrel with the Slavophils has lost all interest, especially since the death of Nicholas. It is high time to apply the manifesto of August 26, 1856, to all these wretched wrangles, and to consign them to oblivion with the other transgressions of Nicholas’ reign.

A new life is unmistakably surging up in Russia; even the Government is carried away by it. Questions, each more pressing than the last, are arising on all sides; hopes crushed to the earth are reviving; one wants to know what is being thought in Russia about the Emancipation of the Serfs, about the abolition of spiritual and corporal punishment—the censorship and the stick—about the restraint of official plundering and the irresponsible tyranny of the police, and one reads instead scholastic controversies about the precedence of races and the nationality of truth. I have never denied that the Slavophils have a true sense of the _living soul_ in the people, that they ‘look for the world to come,’ but unhappily I must repeat that their instinct is clearer than their understanding, clearer, indeed, than their conscience. I have read with horror and repulsion some articles in Slavophil reviews; they stink of the torture chamber, of slit nostrils, penances, and the Solovetsky monastery. If power came into the hands of these gentry, they would be worse than the ‘Third Section,’ and am I supposed to be like these savages in sympathy and opinion and language? Why, then, did one of them not so long ago, under the protection of the irresponsible police, fling at me a handful of patriotic mud with the insolence of a flunkey protected from the stick by his safe perch behind the carriage, diffusing such a national stench of the servants’ hall, and such a flavour of orthodox lenten oil, that for several minutes I fancied myself in one of the remote quarters of Moscow?

But your controversy with them is of no use; leave them alone or beat them on their own ground. They do not know the real Russia, they are changelings and corpses; not one of them will take up your challenge; they have distorted their understanding by a false show of orthodoxy and a pretence of nationalism.

It would be difficult to confute them by holding up Western Europe as an example (here I am answering another criticism) when a single copy of any newspaper you like is enough to show the terrible malady from which Europe is suffering. To ignore her wounds and to preach reverence not only for the ideas which she has worked out and which are inconsistent with her life of to-day, but for her herself, is as impossible as to persuade us that the fanatically crazy lucubrations of the followers of Buddha, or the Carpathian Dissenters, are of more value and significance than all the problems that occupy us.

You love European ideas—I love them too; they are the ideas of all history, they are the monument on which is inscribed what has been bequeathed not only by the men of yesterday, but by Egypt and India, Greece and Rome, Catholicism and Protestantism, the Latin peoples and the Germanic peoples. Without them we should sink into Asiatic quietism or African blankness of mind. With those ideas, and only with them, can Russia be brought into possession of that great part of the heritage which comes to her share. About that we are completely in agreement. But you are unwilling to recognise that contemporary life in Europe is not in harmony with her ideas. You are alarmed for them; ideas which fail to find their realisation at home seem to you unrealisable anywhere. Historical embryology scarcely warrants such a conclusion. From the fact that the new social ideas are not applied in the contemporary life of the European peoples (even if this were completely proved) you cannot deduce that they are impossible of realisation, that they cannot be applied in practice anywhere. Has not the European ideal in one form, to wit, the Anglo-Saxon, found complete expression on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean?

The ways of development are very hard, and far from simple in nature and in history; they make use of a terrible number of forces and forms. That is not very obvious to us, because we are always confronted with the complete result, with what has been accomplished and successful. Numbers of unsuccessful forms were evolved by the way, did not attain a full life (in comparison with those that follow), and were replaced by others of which we know nothing. They were not sacrificed, for they lived for themselves, but when they passed away they handed on their heritage not to their own offspring, but to strangers, the mammoths and ichthyosaurians to the elephants and crocodiles, Egypt and India to Greece and Rome. It may very well be that the whole creative ability of the Western European peoples has been spent and is exhausted in evolving their social ideal, their science, in striving towards it, and in realising separate partial phases of it with all the passion and fervour of the struggle, in which men are ready to die because at every step they fancy they are attaining the whole of their ideal.

Will the down-trodden masses wrest out of the hands of the monopolists the powers evolved by science, and all the accumulation of technical improvements, and make of them the common weal? Or will the propertied classes, resting on the force of government and the ignorance of people, keep the masses down? In either case the ideas are saved, and that is what is of first importance for you. Science, independent of political systems and nationality, remains as the grand achievement of European life, ready to transform men’s hard existence of the past everywhere where it meets a suitable soil, understanding and, together with understanding, strength and freedom. The question of the future of Europe I do not regard as finally settled; but, looking at it conscientiously with the humble desire to see the truth and with prejudices rather in favour of Western Europe than opposed to it, studying it for ten years, not in theories and books, but in clubs and in market-places, in the centre of its political and social life, I am bound to say that I see neither a speedy nor a happy solution. Looking on the one hand at the feverish, one-sided development of industry, at the concentration of all riches, moral and material, in the hands of the minority of the middle class, at the way in which that minority has taken hold of the Church and the Government, the machines and the schools, at the fact that the army obeys it, that the judges interpret the law in its favour, and, looking on the other hand at the undeveloped state of the masses, the immaturity and instability of the revolutionary party, I cannot predict the speedy downfall of the bourgeoisie and the reform of the old political order without a most terrible and bloody struggle.

It is of no use to dream now of the ordinary revolutions of the past, made half in jest, with a song of Béranger and a cigar in the mouth; now there is no Charles X. ready to flee at the sight of danger, no Louis Philippe who would not bombard Paris; now there is no silly Austrian Emperor who would give a Constitution at the first musket-shot. Though the Prussian King is the same, he would not now take the cap off his drunken head at the sight of murdered revolutionaries; even Pius IX. has grown wiser. The June days of 1848 and Cavaignac have shown the world what massacres of St. Bartholomew, what September days, await the future conflict. Whether Europe will emerge rejuvenated from this ordeal, or be drowned like Seneca in her own blood, I do not know; but I fancy neither you nor I will live to see the day. Your hair is grey, while I am forty-four.

Is it not natural under these circumstances for an enlightened man to enlarge his horizon, to look about him, to enquire how other lands, not drawn into the death-struggle of Europe, stand in regard to the future, what can be expected from them, whither they are tending, and whether there is no inconspicuous preliminary work being done there. But outside Europe there are only two progressive countries, America and Russia, with possibly Australia just beginning. All the rest lie in unbroken slumber or struggle in convulsions which are alien to us and outside our comprehension, like the Chinese rebellion, with its piles of corpses and revolting butchery.

America is Europe colonised, the same race (predominantly Anglo-Saxon), but living under different conditions. Wave after wave carries the overflow to her shores further and further. Just as in Cromwell’s days England sailed across the ocean and was scattered over the northern plains and forests, so now crowds of European fugitives sail thither to escape from hunger, from the stifling atmosphere, from persecution, ‘from the future,’ foreseeing troubles at home. It is the continuation of the age-long movements to the West. Three millions of Irishmen have settled there since the days of Robert Peel; the German monarchs who, in the eighteenth century, traded in herds of their subjects for making war against independence, for settling Pennsylvania, and so on, pause when they see how the population is flowing away. The movement goes on in America itself: the newcomers make their way through the settled population, sometimes draw it with them, and keep pressing, crowding, and hurrying to the South; to-day to the equator, where there will be a new meeting and a new combination of the Anglo-Saxon element with the Latin-Spanish.

We see that all this is but the clearing of the ground, the marking out of the arena, and that no power can prevent the North Americans with their overflowing strength, plasticity, and untiring energy from reaching Central America and Cuba. While in Europe Venice is falling into ruins, Rome is reduced to beggary, the little towns of Italy and Spain are declining from lack of capital and labour, from indolence and lack of energy, in California, in Honduras and Nicaragua, deserts are in a few years being transformed into cultivated fields and clearings into towns, the plains are lined with railways, capital is abundant, and the restless vigour of the Republic absorbs more and more. What is growing is young.

The growth of Russia has been vigorous too, and it can hardly be over yet, it can hardly have reached its natural limits; that is evident, not only from its geographical physiology, but also from the unceasing aggression of the Government, from the perpetual striving to get hold of every morsel of land. But Russia is extending by a different law from America; because in its present state it is not a colony, not an overflow, not a migration, but an independent world advancing in all directions, yet sitting tight on its own soil. The United States, like an avalanche torn away from its mountain, carries everything before it; every step gained by it is a step lost by the American Indians. Russia saturates all about it like water, surrounds races on all sides, then covers them with the uniform layer of the ice of autocracy—and under it makes of the worshippers of the Grand Llama defenders of orthodoxy, of Germans uncompromising Russian patriots. There is the same youthful plasticity here. Why did Joseph II. laugh at laying the foundation of Ekaterinoslavl, saying that the Empress had laid the first stone of the city, and he the last? It was not a city that was founded then, but a State. The Novorossisk region is the best proof of the plastic power of Russia. And all Siberia? And the settlements on the banks of the Amur, where to-morrow the Stars and Stripes of the American Republics will be fluttering? And indeed the Eastern Provinces of European Russia themselves.

Reading the chronicle of the Bagrov family,[42] I was struck by the resemblance of the old man who migrated into the Province of Ufa to the settlers who migrate from New York to Wisconsin or Illinois. It is a completely new clearing of uninhabited places, and the turning of them to agriculture and civilised life. When Bagrov summons the people from all parts to dig the dam for the mill, when the neighbours come singing and bring the earth, and he triumphantly crosses the conquered river at their head, one fancies one is reading Fenimore Cooper or Washington Irving. And all that happened only a hundred years ago; it was the same thing in the Saratov province and in Perm. In Vyatka, in my day, it was hard to keep the peasants from migrating into the forests and there making new clearings; the land was still in their eyes common property, the _res nullius_ to which every man has a right.

America presents no new elements; it is a further development of Protestant Europe, set free from its historic past, and put under different conditions of life. The grand idea developed by the Northern States is purely Anglo-Saxon, the idea of self-government, that is of a strong people with a weak government, the home rule of every tract of land without centralisation, without bureaucracy, held together by an inner moral unity. What attitude America will take up to socialism is hard to say; the spirit of comradeship, of association, of enterprise in common is highly developed in her, but it has not common ownership nor our _artel_, nor the village community; the individual combines with others only for a definite task, apart from which he jealously guards his complete independence.

Russia, on the contrary, is a quite special world, with her own natural habit of life, with her own physiological character—not European, not Asiatic, but Slav. She takes her share in the destinies of Europe, though she has not its historical traditions and is free from its obligations to the past. ‘What good fortune for a Russian lawgiver,’ said Bentham to Alexander I., when the latter was in London after the Napoleonic Wars, ‘that he has not to contend with Roman law at every step!’ And we add, nor with feudalism, nor with Catholicism, nor with Protestantism. The Book of Church Law and the Civil Code do not cover every aspect of life, do not govern every action; other institutions have been introduced by force and are maintained by force. We have nowhere those hard-and-fast prejudices which, like a paralysis, deprive the Western European of the use of half his limbs. The village commune lies at the basis of our national life with the re-division of fields, with the common ownership of land, with an elective control, with the equality of duties laid on each workman (the _tyagla_). All this is in an oppressed, distorted state, but it is all living, and has outlived its worst period.

If there is any truth in all this, one need not be a Russian to turn special attention to Russia in these black days for Europe. And, as a matter of fact, many vigorous minds are occupied with Russia. I have myself chanced to speak of Russia with serious men like Proudhon and Mazzini ... and I assure you that the attitude of hatred and fear, fully deserved by the thirty years’ reign of Nicholas, is being replaced by hesitation and a desire to gain a closer knowledge of this newcomer, whose rights and power for the future they are neither able nor willing to deny.

Russia could not really be understood by Western Europeans so long as the latter had faith in themselves, and were advancing; but they are convinced of the impossibility of progressing by way of revolutions, having lost at one blow all the fruits of them, except the lesson of failure. ‘The equality of slavery’ has let them look more closely at each other, and this is why it is in England that there is least understanding of Russia; the English have not taken an equal share in the Continental revolutions, nor in the general downfall that has followed. Free after their own fashion, they look with indifference at the land of slavery and despotism. But other nations in their fetters feel instinctively that, though a temporary necessity may yesterday have forced the discipline of the barracks on a peaceful agricultural people and turned all Russia into military settlements, another necessity may to-morrow do away with all that, just as Alexander II. has done away with Araktcheyev’s settlements; the period of military despotism will pass, leaving behind a political unity indissolubly welded together and forces hardened in a harsh and bitter school. The stumbling-blocks over which Europe has tripped scarcely exist for us. In the natural simplicity of our peasant life, in our uncertain and unsettled economic and judicial conceptions, in our vague sense of property, in our lack of a strong middle class, and in our extraordinary capacity for assimilating foreign ideas, we have an advantage over nations that are fully organised and exhausted. The Russian State has been firmly established by terrible means; by slavery, the knout, and executions, the Russian people have been driven into making a vast empire, through torture they have moved to the achievement of their destinies. It is idle to waste anger on the past; it is the task of the living to take advantage of all forces alike, whether they have been won by good means or ill, by bloodshed or by the ways of peace. The military settlements, as I have said, are passing away, but the villages remain. In our shifting primitive soil there is nothing conservative but the village commune; that is, nothing but what ought to be preserved.

I have read your discussions about the commune; they are very interesting, but less to the point than appears on the surface. Whether the village commune is racial in origin or the work of the Government, whether the land belonged in the past to the commune, to the landowners, or to the princes, whether the institution of serfdom strengthened the commune or not, all that ought to be investigated; but what is most important for us is the present position of affairs. The fact, whether distorted or not, whether right or wrong, forces itself upon us. The Government and the institution of serfdom have, in their own fashion, maintained our native commune; the stable, permanent principle left in it from patriarchal days is not lost. The common ownership of land, the _mir_, and the village elections form a groundwork upon which a new social order may easily grow up, a groundwork which, like our black earth, scarcely exists in Europe.

That is why, dear friend, in the midst of the gloomy, heartrending requiem, in the midst of the dark night which is falling upon the sick and weary West, I turn away from the death agony of the mighty warrior whom I honour, but whom I cannot aid, and look with faith and hope to our native East, inwardly rejoicing that I am Russian.

The period upon which Russia is now entering is extraordinarily important; instead of small political reforms for which we are too old, not in experience, but in intelligence, we are confronted with a vast economic revolution, the emancipation of the peasants. And that is not all: our problems are so set that they can be solved by social and political measures without violent upheavals. We are called to overhaul the rights of land ownership and the relations of the workman to the means of production. Is this, perhaps, our solemn entry upon our future growth? The whole new programme of our historical activity is so simple that there is no need of genius for it, but merely eyes to see what to do. It is only the timidity, the clumsiness and bewilderment of the Government that hinder it from seeing the way, and it is letting the marvellous chance slip by. Good Lord! What might not be done in this spring sunshine after the winter of Nicholas! The blood is thawed in the veins and the oppressed heart beats more freely, and what profit might be made of it!

Few feelings are more painful and oppressive than the sense that one might make a dash forward now at once, that everything is in readiness, and that the only thing lacking is understanding and courage on the part of the leaders. The machine is stoked up and ready, the fuel is burning for nothing, energy is being wasted, and all because there is no bold hand to turn the key without fear of an explosion. Our leaders should know that nations pardon a great deal—the barbarism of Peter and the dissoluteness of Catherine; they pardon violence and wickedness, if only they are aware of strength and boldness of mind. But however good the heart may be, lack of understanding, colourless vacillation, incapacity to take hold of circumstances and turn them to account, in a ruler whose power is unlimited, is never forgiven, either by the people or by history.

My passionate impatience in this case is in no way a contradiction of my resigned acceptance of the tragic fate of Europe. In Russia I see the chance at hand. I feel I can touch it; there is no such possibility in Western Europe, at any rate, at this moment. If I were not a Russian, I should long ago have gone away to America. You know that I am not a fatalist, and do not believe in anything ordained beforehand, not even in the famous ‘Perfectibility of Humanity.’

Nature and history plod along from day to day and from age to age, stepping aside, making new ways, stumbling upon old ones, amazing us now by their swiftness, now by their slowness, now by their sense, now by their folly, pressing in all directions, but advancing only where the gates are open. When I talk of possible development I am not talking of its inevitability; what part of all that is possible will be accomplished I do not know, because very much in the life of nations depends on persons and will. I feel in my heart and in my mind that history is knocking at our door; if we have not the strength to open it, and those who have are unwilling or incapable, progress will find fitter means in America or in Australia, where political life is being formed on quite a different basis. Perhaps even Europe herself will be renewed, will rise up, will take up her bed and walk on her Holy Land, under which so many martyrs are buried, and on which so much sweat and blood has been spent. Perhaps!

But is it really possible that after setting one foot on the beaten track we shall sink back into the swamp, giving the world the spectacle of immense strength and complete incapacity to use it? Something forbids the heart to accept that!

How bitter are these doubts, how bitter this loss of time and strength!... When will the scales fall from their eyes? And why are they afraid to answer the loud summons of the future? ‘A new period has come for Russia,’ we said, when we heard of the death of Nicholas; now all the Russian journals are saying it, the Tsar himself is saying it in other words. Well, then let it be new.

Everything that is being done shows our unhappy passion for prefaces and introductions at which we love to stop short complacently. As though it were enough to decide to do something, for the thing to be done.

The Petersburg Government has but few traditions, yet those are like fetters on the legs of Alexander II. How slowly and indirectly he advances along the path of reform, of which he has himself said so much! In what shallow waters the boat of his autocracy floats! At this rate it will take us over two hundred years to catch up the Prussia of to-day. And it is all due to the Nicholas tradition, the Nicholas policy, and, what is perhaps worst of all, the Nicholas men.

It is high time to give up this stupid fear of free speech and daylight through dread of some phantom revolution, for which there are no elements ready. It is high time to abandon the futile meddling in every European squabble, always in support of despotism, of brute force, and of flagrant injustice. To the devil with this diplomatic influence which makes all the nations hate us. It is not the Russian, but the Holstein policy of Nicholas. Nicholas turned the sentimental Holy Alliance into a police compact. Why does Alexander go on playing the same part? The Russian Tsardom is not bound up in any way with the fate of the decrepit European thrones, so why will he needlessly share all their abominations and bring upon himself all the hatreds gained by them?

With the partition of Poland the attitude of the new Empire to old Europe was transformed. But the memory of that crime ought not to lead to mere dread of losing the ill-gotten gains, but to pangs of conscience and to repentance. What has Alexander II. done to show repentance? All that remains in our memory is the refrain of the song with which he concluded his speech at Warsaw—_Pas de rêveries! Pas de rêveries!_

_Pas de rhétorique! Pas de rhétorique!_ we say in our turn. We have no dreams! Crushed by authority, by injustice, by bribery, by the suppression of free speech and the contempt for personal freedom, we want to speak out fearlessly, to exchange ideas with each other and to unmask the abuses of which even the Government is ashamed and which it will never check without publicity. We want the peasants to be freed from the power of the landowners and all subject Russia to be freed from the stick; of course, that is not _rêverie_, but is something very practical and extremely little. Yes, it is very little, but it is just our youthfulness and our strength which makes us need so little in order to push ahead boldly and rapidly. We ask no help from the Government; all we ask of it is not to meddle. Western Europe, on the contrary, having so much, cannot make use of its riches; they have cost it so much that it is miserly over them; it is conservative, like every property-owner. We have nothing to preserve. Of course, poverty is not of itself a claim to a different future, nor are years of slavery a claim to freedom, but here, starting from the opposite principles to opposite ends, I meet not the Slavophils but some of their ideas.

I believe in the capacity of the Russian people; I see from the seedling crop what the harvest may be; I see in their life, poor and oppressed as it is, an unconscious fitness for the social ideal which European thought has consciously reached.

So that, dear friend, is why it is that you have found a similar strain in my views and in those—worse than false—mischievous and dangerous views of the Moscow literary Old Believers, those orthodox Jesuits who reduce every one to despondency. And that is why, warmly accepting the new social religion that is arising on the blood-soaked fields of reformation and revolution, repeating with throbbing heart the great legends of those days, I turn away from contemporary Europe and have little sympathy with the pitiful heirs of mighty fathers.

Do not let us dispute about methods, our aim is the same. Let us devote all our efforts, each according to his strength at his own post, to throw down every barrier that hinders the free development of the abilities of our people and maintains the present worthless _régime_, let us stir the minds of the people and the Government alike. And so I conclude my long letter to you with the words: to work, to toil, to toil for the Russian people, which has toiled enough for us!

LONDON, _February 3, 1857_.

THE SUPERFLUOUS AND THE EMBITTERED

_The Onyegins[43] and the Petchorins[44] were perfectly true to life, they expressed the real misery and dislocation of the Russian life of the period. The melancholy type of the superfluous man, lost merely because he had developed into a man, was to be seen in those days not only in poems and novels but in the streets and the villages, in the hotels and the towns.... But the days of the Onyegins and the Petchorins are over. There are no superfluous men now in Russia: on the contrary, now there are not hands enough to till the vast fields that need ploughing. One who does not find work now has no one else to blame for it. He must be really a frivolous person, a wastrel or a sluggard._—‘The Bell,’ 1859, p. 44.

These two classes of superfluous men, between whom Nature herself raised up a high mound of Oblomovs,[45] and History, marking out its boundaries, dug out a ditch—the one in which Nicholas is buried—are continually confounded. And so we want, with a partiality like that of Cato for the cause of the vanquished, to champion the elder generation. Superfluous men were in those days as essential, as it is now essential that there should be none.

Nothing is more lamentable than, in the midst of the growing activity as yet unorganised and awkward, but full of enterprise and initiative, to meet the flustered, nervously overwrought lads who lose their heads before the toughness of practical work, and hope and expect to arrive without effort at a solution of difficulties, and to find answers to problems, which they can never state clearly.

We will lay aside these voluntary superfluous men, and just as the French only recognise as real grenadiers _les vieux de la vieille_, so we will recognise as honourably and truly superfluous men only these of the reign of Nicholas. We ourselves belong to that unhappy generation, and, grasping very many years ago that we were superfluous on the banks of the Neva, very practically took our departure as soon as the rope was loosened.

There is no need for us to defend ourselves, but we are sorry for our former comrades and want to distinguish them from the batch of invalids that followed them from the hospital of Nicholas.

One cannot but share the healthy realistic attitude of one of the best Russian magazines, in attacking the effete moral point of view which in the French style seeks personal responsibility for public events. Historical formations can no more be judged by a criminal court than geological ones. And men who say that one ought not to direct one’s thunders and lightnings against bribe-takers and embezzlers of Government funds, but at the environment which makes bribes a characteristic symptom of a whole tribe, such as the whole race of _beardless_ Russians for instance, are perfectly right. All we desire is that the superfluous men of Nicholas’s reign should have the rights of bribe-takers and enjoy the privileges granted to the embezzlers of public funds. They deserve it the more, since they are not only superfluous, but almost all dead; while the bribe-takers and embezzlers are alive, and not only prosperous, but historically justified.

Whom have we here to attack, whom have we here to ridicule? On the one hand, men who have fallen from exhaustion; on the other, men crushed by the machine; to blame them for it is as ungenerous as to blame scrofulous and lymphatic children for the poorness of their parents’ blood.

There can be but one serious question about them: were these morbid phenomena really due to the conditions of their environment, to their circumstances?...

I think it can hardly be doubted.

There is no need to repeat how cramped, how painful, was the development of Russia.

We were kept in ignorance by the knout and the Tatars: we were civilised by the axe and by Germans: and in both cases our nostrils were slit and we were branded with irons. Peter the Great drove civilisation into us with such a wedge that Russia could not stand the shock and split into two layers. We are only just beginning now, after a hundred and fifty years, to understand how this split was made: there was nothing in common between the two parts; on the one hand, robbery and contempt; on the other, suffering and mistrust: on the one hand, the liveried lackey, proud of his social position and haughtily displaying it; on the other, the plundered peasant, hating him and concealing his hatred. Never did Turk, slaughtering men and carrying off women to his harem, oppress so systematically, nor disdain the Frank and the Greek so insolently, as did the Russia of the privileged class despise the Russia of the peasant. There is no instance in history of a caste of the same race getting the upper hand so thoroughly and becoming so completely alien as our military nobility.

A renegade always goes to the extreme, to the absurd and the revolting, to the point at last of clapping a literary man in prison for wearing the Russian dress, refusing to let him enter a restaurant because he is wearing a kaftan and has a sash tied round his waist. It is colossal, and reminds one of Indian Asia.

On the margins of these savagely opposed worlds strange figures appeared, whose very distortion points to latent forces, cramped and seeking something different. The Raskolniks and Decembrists stand foremost among them, and they are followed by all the Westerners and Easterners, the Onyegins and the Lenskys, superfluous and disillusioned people. All of them, like Old Testament prophets, were at once a protest and a hope. By them Russia was striving to escape from the Petersburg period, or to transform it to her real body and her healthy flesh. These pathological formations called forth by the conditions of the life of the period invariably pass away when the conditions are changed, just as superfluous people have passed away now; but it does not follow that they deserved judgment and condemnation unless from their younger comrades in the Service. And this is on the same principle on which one of the inmates of Bedlam pointed with indignation at another inmate who called himself the Apostle Paul, while he who was Christ himself knew that the other was not the Apostle Paul, but simply a shopkeeper from Fleet Street.

Let us recall how superfluous people were evolved.

The hangings of the 13th of July 1826 on the Kronverg Courtyard could not at once check the current of ideas, and as a fact the traditions of the reign of Alexander and the Decembrists persisted through the first half of Nicholas’s reign, though disappearing from sight and turning inwards. Children still at school dared to hold their heads erect, they did not yet know that they were the prisoners of education.

They were the same when they left school.

These were far different from the serene, self-confident, enthusiastic lads, open to every impression, that Pushkin and Pushtchin[46] were when they were leaving the Lyceum. They have neither the proud, unbending, overwhelming daring of a Lunin,[47] nor the dissipated recklessness of a Polezhaev,[48] nor the melancholy serenity of Venevitinov.[49] But yet they preserved the faith inherited from their fathers and elder brothers, the faith that ‘It is coming—the dawn of radiant happiness,’ the faith in Western liberalism in which all—Lafayette, Godefroi Cavaignac, Börne, and Heine—believed. Frightened and disconsolate, they dreamed of escaping from their false and unhappy position. This was like that last hope which every one of us has felt before the death of one we love. Only doctrinaires (whether red or parti-coloured, makes no difference) readily accept the most terrible deductions, because they really accept them _in effigy_, on paper.

Meanwhile every event, every year, confirmed for them the dreadful truth that not only the Government was against them, with gallows and spies, with the irons with which the torturer compressed Pestel’s head, and with Nicholas putting those irons on all Russia, but that the people, too, were not with them, or at least were completely alien. If the people were discontented, the objects of their discontent were different. Together with this crushing recognition they suffered, on the other hand, from growing doubt of the most fundamental principles of the Western European outlook. The ground was giving way under their feet; and in this perplexity they were forced either to enter the Service or to fold their hands and become superfluous, idle. We venture to assert that this is one of the most tragic positions in the world. Now these superfluous people are an anachronism, but, of course, Royer Collard or Benjamin Constant would be an anachronism now, too. But they cannot be blamed for that.

While men’s minds were kept in misery and painful hesitation, not knowing where to find an outlet, how to move, Nicholas went his way with dull elemental obstinacy, trampling down the tilled fields and every sign of growth. A master in his work, he began from the year 1831 his war upon children; he grasped that he must beat out everything human in the years of childhood, in order to make faithful subjects in his own image and semblance. The training of which he dreamed was organised. A simple word, a simple gesture was reckoned as much an insolence and a crime as an open neck, as an unbuttoned collar. And this torture of the souls of children went on for thirty years!

Nicholas—reflected in every inspector, every school director, every tutor—confronted the boy at school, in the street, in church, even to some extent in the parental home, stood and stared at him with pewtery unloving eyes, and the child’s heart ached and grew faint with fear that those eyes might detect some budding of free thought, some human feeling.

And who knows what chemical change in the composition of a child’s blood and nervous system is caused by intimidation, by the checking of speech, by the concealment of thought, by the repression of feeling?

The terrified parents helped Nicholas in his task; to save their children by ignorance, they concealed from them their one noble memory. The younger generation grew up without traditions, without a future, except a career in the Service. The Government office and the barracks gradually conquered the drawing-room and society, aristocrats turned gendarmes, Kleinmihels turned aristocrats; the stupid character of Nicholas was gradually imprinted on everything, vulgarising everything and giving everything a formal red-tape aspect.

Of course, in all this misery, not everything perished. No plague, not even the Thirty Years’ War, exterminated every one. Man is a tough creature. The craving for humane culture, the striving for independent initiative, survived, and most of all in the two Macedonian phalanxes of our culture, the Moscow University and the Tsarskoe Syelo Lyceum. On their youthful shoulders they carried across the whole kingdom of dead souls the Ark in which lay the Russia of the future, her living thought, her living faith in what was to come.

History will not forget them.

But in this conflict they lost, for the most part, the youthfulness of their early years: they were overstrained, grew up prematurely. Old age reached them before their legal coming of age. These were not idle, not superfluous people; these were embittered people, sick in body and soul, people who had been wrecked by the insults they had endured, who looked at everything askance, and were unable to shake off the bitterness and venom accumulated more than five years before. They unmistakably stand for a step in advance, but still it is a morbid step; it is no longer a heavy, chronic lethargy, but an acute suffering which must be followed by recovery or death.

The superfluous people have made their exit from the stage, and the embittered, who are more angry with the superfluous than any, will follow them. Indeed, they will be gone very soon. They are too forbidding, and they get too much on one’s nerves to last long. The world, in spite of eighteen centuries of Christian austerities, is in a very heathen fashion devoted to epicureanism and _à la longue_ cannot put up with the depressing faces of Nevsky Daniels, who gloomily reproach them for dining without gnashing their teeth, and for enjoying pictures or music without remembering the troubles of this life.

Others are coming to take their place; already we see men of quite a different stamp, with untried powers and stalwart muscles, coming from remote universities, from the sturdy Ukraine, from the sturdy North-east, and perhaps we old folks may yet have the luck to hold out a hand across a sickly generation to the newcomers, who will briefly bid us farewell and go on their wide road.

We have studied the type of embittered people, not on the spot, and not from books, we have studied it from specimens who have crossed the Nieman and sometimes even the Rhine since 1850.

The first thing that struck us in them was the ease with which they despaired of everything, the vindictive pleasure of their denial, and their terrible ruthlessness. After the events of 1848 they saw themselves at once in a superior position, from which they looked down on the defeat of the Republic and the Revolution, on the decay of civilisation, on the defilement of banners, and could feel no compassion for those who still struggled on. Where we stopped short, tried to restore animation, and looked to see if there were no spark of life, they went further into the desert of logical deduction, and easily arrived at those final, violent, abrupt conclusions, which are alarming in their radical audacity, but which, like the spirits of the dead, are but the essence gone out of life, not life itself. In these deductions the Russian enjoys a terrible advantage over the European; he has no traditions, no habits, nothing akin to him to lose. The man who has no wealth of his own or of others goes most safely along dangerous roads.

This emancipation from everything traditional fell to the lot not of healthy youthful characters, but of men whose heart and soul had been strained in every fibre. After 1848 there was no living in Petersburg. The autocracy had reached the Hercules’ Pillars of absurdity; they had reached the instructions issued to teachers at the military academies, Buterlin’s scheme for closing universities, the signature of the censor Yelagin on patterns for stencils. Can one wonder that the young men who broke out of this dungeon were nervous wrecks and invalids?

So they faded without ever blossoming, knowing nothing of space and freedom, nothing of frank speech. They bore on their countenances deep traces of a soul roughly handled and wounded. Every one of them had some special neurosis, and apart from that special neurosis they all had one in common, a sort of devouring, irritable, and distorted vanity. The denial of every right, the insults, the humiliations they had endured developed a secret craving for admiration; these undeveloped prodigies, these unsuccessful geniuses, concealed themselves under a mask of humility and modesty. All of them were hypochondriacs and physically ill, did not drink wine, and were afraid of open windows; all looked with studied despair at the present, and reminded one of monks who from love for their neighbour came to hating all humanity, and cursed everything in the world from desire to bless something.

One half of them were continually remorseful, the other half continually damning and denouncing.

Yes, the iron had entered deeply into their souls. The Petersburg world in which they had lived was imprinted on themselves; it was thence they took their restless tone, their language—_saccadé_, yet suddenly passing into bureaucratic vapidity—their elusive meekness and haughty fault-finding, their intentional frigidity and readiness on any occasion to break out into abuse, the insulting way in which they scorned to justify themselves, and the uneasy intolerance of the director of a department.

This tone of a director’s reprimand, uttered contemptuously with eyes screwed up, is more hateful to us than the husky shout of the general, like the deep bark of an old dog, who growls in deference to his social position rather than from spite.

Tone is not a matter of no importance.

_Das war innen—das ist draussen!_

Extremely kind at heart and noble in theory, they, I mean our embittered people, may drive an angel to fighting and a saint to cursing by their tone. Moreover, they exaggerate everything in the world with such _aplomb_—and not to amuse but to wound—that there is simply no bearing it. To every criticism, to every censure, they are always ready to add gloomier details. ‘Why do you defend these sluggards (an embittered friend, _sehr ausgezeichnet in seinem Fache_, said to us lately), drones, cumberers of the earth, white-handed laggards _à la Onyegin_?... They were formed differently, if you please, and the world surrounding them was too dirty for them, not polished enough; they will dirty their hands, they will dirty their feet. It was much nicer to go on moaning over their miserable position, at the same time eating and drinking in comfort.’

We put in a word for our classification of the superfluous people into those of the Old Dispensation and those of the New. But our Daniel would not hear of a distinction: he would have nothing to say to the Oblomovs nor to the fact that Nicholas cast in bronze had been gathered to his fathers, and just for that reason had been cast in bronze. On the contrary, he attacked us for our defence and, shrugging his shoulders, said that he looked upon us as on the fine skeleton of a mammoth, as at an interesting bone that had been dug up and belonged to a different world with a different sun and different trees.

‘Allow me on that ground and in the character of a _Homo Benkendorfii testis_ to defend our contemporaries. Surely you do not really imagine that these men did nothing, or did something silly of their own choice?’

‘Most certainly; they were romantics and aristocrats; they hated work, they would have thought themselves degraded if they had taken up an axe or an awl, and it is true they would not have known how to use them.’

‘In that case I will quote names: for instance, Tchaadayev. He did not know how to use an axe, but he knew how to write an article which thrilled all Russia, and was a turning-point in our understanding of ourselves. That article was his first step in the literary career. You know what came of it. The German Vigel took offence on behalf of Russia, the Protestant and future Catholic Benkendorf took offence on behalf of orthodoxy, and, by the falsehood of the Most High, Tchaadayev was declared mad and forced to sign an undertaking not to write. Nadyezhdin, who published the article in the _Telescope_, was sent to Ust Sysolsk; the old rector Boldyryev was dismissed: Tchaadayev was turned into an idle man. Granting that Ivan Kireyevsky could not make boots, yet he could publish a magazine; he published two numbers, the magazine was forbidden; he contributed an article to the _Dennitsa_, and the censor, Glinka, was put in custody: Kireyevsky was turned into a superfluous man. N. Polevoy cannot, of course, be charged with idleness; he was a resourceful man, and yet the wings of the _Telegraph_ were clipped, and, I confess in my weakness, when I read how Polevoy told Panayev that he, as a married man, handicapped by a family, was afraid of the police, I did not laugh, but almost cried.’

‘But Byelinsky could write and Granovsky could give lectures; they did not sit idle.’

‘If there were men of such energy that they could write and give lectures in sight of the police-chaise and the fortress, is it not clear that there were many others of less strength, who were paralysed and suffered deeply from it?’

‘Why did they not take to making boots or splitting logs—it would have been better than nothing?’

‘Probably because they had money enough not to be obliged to do such dull work; I have never heard of anyone taking to cobbling for pleasure. Louis XVI. is the only example of a king by trade and a carpenter by inclination. However, you are not the first to observe this lack of practical work in these superfluous men; to correct it, our watchful Government sent them to hard labour.’

‘My antediluvian friend, I see that you still look down upon work.’

‘As on a far from entertaining necessity.’

‘Why should they not have taken their share of the general necessity?’

‘No doubt they should, but in the first place they were born, not in North America, but in Russia, and unluckily were not brought up to it.’

‘Why were they not brought up to it?’

‘Because they were born, not in the tax-paying classes of Russia, but in the gentry; perhaps that really is reprehensible, but, being at that period in the inexperienced position of unborn infants, they cannot, owing to their tender years, be held responsible for their conduct. And having once made this mistake in the choice of their parents, they were bound to submit to the education of the day. And by the way, what right have you to demand of men that they should do one thing or another? This is some new compulsory organisation of labour; something in the style of socialism adapted to the methods of the Ministry of Crown Estates.’

‘I don’t compel any one to work; I simply state the fact that they were idle, worthless aristocrats, who led an easy and comfortable life, and I see no reason for sympathising with them.’

‘Whether they deserve sympathy or not, let every one decide for himself. Every human suffering, especially if it is inevitable, awakens our sympathy. And there is no sort of suffering to which one could refuse it. The martyrs of the early centuries of Christendom believed in redemption. They believed in a future life. The Roman Muhanovs, Timashevs, and Luzhins compelled the Christians to bow down in the dust before the august image of the Caesar; the Christians would not make this trivial concession, they were thrown to the beasts in the arena. They were mad, the Romans were half-witted, there is no place here for sympathy or admiration.... But if so, farewell, not only to Thermopylae and Golgotha, but also to Sophocles and Shakespeare, and incidentally the whole long and endless epic poem which is continually ending in frenzied tragedies and continually going on again under the title of history.’

As is usual in argument, our Daniel did not give in. I began to be tired of it and, taking advantage of my palaeontological importance, said to him: ‘Have it your own way, but you know it is a silly business pitching into people who are either dead or not far off dying, and to pitch into them in a society where almost all the living—military and civilian, landowners and priests—are worse than they are; I tell you what, if you are so particularly attracted by _censura morum_, are so fond of the harsh duty of a moralist, do pick out something original. If you like, I can pick you out types more pernicious than any superfluous persons, dead or living.’

‘What types?’

‘Well, the literary ruffian, for instance.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘In our pale literature, maltreated by the censorship, there have been numbers of queer fishes of all sorts, but until lately they were for the most part clean, honest men. If there were any of the mercenary, the disingenuous, the dealers in false coin and genuine police reports, they were either on the side of the Government, or they scuttled about underground and never crawled into conspicuous places, like the London black beetles, which confine themselves to the kitchen and do not appear in the drawing-room. And so we have preserved a naïve faith in the poet and the writer. We are not used to the thought that it is possible to lie in the spirit and trade in talents, as prostitutes delude with the body and sell their beauty. We are not used to the money-grubbers who make profit out of their tears over the people’s sufferings, or the traders who turn their sympathy for the proletariat into a well-paid article. And there is a great deal that is good in this confidence, which has not existed for years in Western Europe, and we ought all to try and maintain it. Believe me, that the man who denounces duplicity, crying shame and curses upon the disgrace and decay of to-day, and at the same time locks up in his cash-box money evidently stolen from his friends, is in the present ferment of ideas, with our looseness and impressionability, more pernicious and contaminating than all the idle and superfluous people, all the embittered and the lachrymose!’

I do not know whether my Daniel agreed.

PRINCESS EKATERINA ROMANOVNA DASHKOV

‘I very much wish,’ Miss Katharine Wilmot writes to her relations in Ireland, from the Princess Dashkov’s country estate, ‘that you could see the Princess herself. Everything about her—dress, language, everything—is original; whatever she does, she is absolutely unlike any one else. It is not only that I have never seen such a creature, I have never even heard of one. She teaches the masons how to build walls, helps make the paths, goes to feed the cows, composes music, writes articles for the Press, knows the Church ritual perfectly and corrects the priest if he makes a mistake in the prayers, understands the theatre perfectly and corrects her serf-actors when they go wrong in their parts; she is a doctor, a chemist, a sick-nurse, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a judge, a legislator; every day she does the most opposite things in the world, and carries on a correspondence with her brother, who holds one of the foremost posts in the Empire, with savants, with literary men, with Jews, with her son, and with all her relations. Her conversation, charming in its simplicity, sometimes borders upon childlike _naïveté_. Without stopping to think she speaks at once French, Italian, Russian, and English, mixing all the languages together.

‘She was born to be a minister or a general, her place is at the head of a State.’

All that is true, but Miss Wilmot forgets that, in addition to all that, Princess Dashkov was born a woman, and remained a woman all her life. She was exceptionally developed on the side of the heart, of tenderness, of feeling, of devotion.

For us that is particularly important. In Princess Dashkov the Russian woman, awakened by the revolution made by Peter the Great, emerges from her seclusion, displays her capacity, demands her share in politics, in science, in the civilisation of Russia, and boldly takes her stand beside Catherine the Great.

In Princess Dashkov we are conscious of that force, still formless, which was struggling into life and freedom from under the mildew of Moscow stagnation, something powerful, many-sided, active, something of Peter the Great and of Lomonossov, but softened by aristocratic breeding and womanliness.

Catherine II., in making her President of the Academy, recognised the political equality of the sexes, which is perfectly consistent in a country which accepted the civic equality of woman before the law, while in Western Europe they still remain bound to their husbands or in perpetual tutelage.

The memoirs of a woman who took a foremost part in the _coup d’état_ of 1762, and who was a close witness of all the events from the death of Elizabeth to the Peace of Tilsit, are exceedingly important in Russian history, so poor in striking individualities; they are the more so as we know very little of our eighteenth century. We like to go much further back in history. We see the Varangians, the men of Novgorod, and the men of Kiev, and they block out our view of yesterday; the turreted walls of the Kremlin screen the flat lines of the Peter-Paul fortress from us. Going carefully through the royal records, we know little of what was being written in bad Russian in the Government offices of Petersburg, while sedition and tumult were roaring under the windows of the Winter Palace, menacing its inhabitants with Siberia and death, and the throne had not yet the strength and security which it gained not more than seventy-five years ago. To repeat the story of that period is very profitable, both for the Government, that it may not forget, and for us, that we may not despair.

I should like, however briefly, to explain what I mean.

All Europe and, what is far worse, all Russians accept the power of the Tsar in its present form as an eternal and immutable element of Russian life, which has the right to jeer at all rash assaults on it and boldly withstands every onslaught, resting firmly and securely on roots that spread far into the earth.

The power of the Tsar has, on the contrary, been firmly established only very recently. Even to this day it carries the traces of its revolutionary origin; in it, as in the strata of the earth, the granite of ancient times, the alluvial sands, the fragments casually brought down from above, or thrust up from below, in places tightly compressed together, but not chemically united, are mingled chaotically to this day.

The Byzantine necklet of Monomah, the throne of the Tsar Ivan the Terrible, the Uspensky Cathedral, lead us astray. Did not Napoleon array himself in the mantle of Charlemagne and put the iron crown on his head at Milan? That is all forgery in the style of Chatterton; the venerated emblems of what is old and past are borrowed to invest the new with respect, and to persuade us of its durability, of its eternity, so to speak.

The Russian Imperial autocracy developed from the power of the Tsar in response to the acute need for a different manner of life. It is a military and civil dictatorship with far more resemblance to the Caesarism of Rome than to a feudal monarchy. A dictatorship may be very strong and may absorb every power, but it cannot be permanent. It exists so long as the circumstances that have called it forth remain unaltered and so long as it is true to its destiny.

Of course, when, on landing from a steamer, one meets a freshly pipe-clayed, spick-and-span regiment of Guards, an unquestioning bureaucracy, galloping couriers, motionless sentinels, Cossacks with whips, policemen with fists, half the town in uniform, half the town standing at attention, and the whole town hurriedly taking off its hat, and when one reflects that they are all deprived of every kind of independence, and simply acting as the fingers, teeth, and nails of one man who combines in his own person every form of authority—that of landowner, priest and executioner, mother and sergeant—one may turn giddy, be terrified, perhaps feel moved to take off one’s hat oneself, and to bow down while one’s head is still on one’s shoulders. And it may even more forcibly make one wish to return to the steamer and sail away elsewhere. All that is so, and all that (except the last item) was felt by the worthy Westphalian baron, Haxthausen.

The Tsardom acquired this grimly gloomy, oppressive aspect of brute force especially in the thirty years of the reign of Nicholas; terrorism was with him a principle. But here we cannot avoid asking why Nicholas could not, in the course of those thirty years, forget the ‘bad quarters of an hour’ he spent during the defence of the Winter Palace on the 14th of December 1825. Why was it that he remembered that day on his deathbed and sent his thanks to the Guards for it?

It was because from the very beginning of his reign he grasped that his throne was only strong through _force_. By force alone he maintained his position, but he felt that there was no lasting security in bayonets and physical oppression; and he was seeking other means of support. The allies to which he turned his attention could be relied upon; beside autocracy he set orthodoxy and nationalism. But this was a reaction against the movement inaugurated by Peter the Great, the whole gist of which lay in the secularisation of the Tsardom and the diffusion of European culture. Nicholas stood in direct contradiction to the living principle of the Tsardom as it had been from the time of Peter the Great, and so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the immediate result of his reign was a dumb breach between him and Russia. If he had lived another ten years, his throne would have collapsed of itself; everything was ceasing to work, everything had grown slack and begun to wilt; the spirit had gone out of everything, the irregularities of the administration had reached monstrous proportions. He understood that, had he followed Alexander’s lead, he would inevitably have had to replace the autocratic power by more humane forms of government, but this he would not do, and he imagined that he was so far independent of the principles of Peter the Great that he could be another Peter without them.

He would have succeeded perhaps if the revolution wrought by Peter had really been, as Moscow Old Believers hold, the consequence of personal will and the caprice of genius. But it was not at all a matter of chance, it came in response to the instinctive craving of Russia to develop its forces. How else can its success be explained?

The political development of Russia moved slowly and was very late in coming. Russia lived from hand to mouth and, harried by Tatars, with difficulty gathered herself together into the ikon-like Suzdal-Byzantine kingdom of Muscovy; its political forms were clumsy and coarse, everything moved awkwardly, apathetically. The power of the Tsar was insufficient even for the defence of the country, and in 1612 Russia was saved without the help of the Tsar. And meanwhile something, that speaks to this day in the heart of every one of us, whispered that there was an immense vigour and strength under the old-fashioned burdensome garments. That something is youth, self-confidence, consciousness of strength.

The abrupt break with the old order wounded—yet pleased; the people liked Peter the Great; they put him into their legends and their fairy tales. It was as though the Russians divined that at all costs our sloth must be broken up and our slackness be braced by a strong political order. The inhuman discipline of Peter the Great, and of such of his successors as Bühren, aroused, of course, horror and loathing, but all that was borne with for the sake of the wide horizons of the new life. It was just as the Terror was endured in France.

The period initiated by Peter the Great was from the first more national than the period of the Muscovite Tsars. It has entered deeply into our history, into our manners, into our flesh and blood; there is something in it youthful and extraordinarily akin to us; the revolting mixture of barrack-room insolence and Austrian red-tape is not its chief characteristic. With that period the precious memories of our mighty growth, our glory, and our misfortunes are bound up; it has kept its word and created a powerful State. The people love success and strength.

One side of its ideal was accomplished when, in Paris, Alexander dictated the laws for all Europe. What was the next step? To go back again to the period before 1700, and combine a military despotism with a Tsardom bereft of everything human. This was what was desired by Nicholas and a dozen crazy Slavophils—and nobody else.

If the people hate the alien German Government, which fully deserves it, it does not follow that it loved the Muscovite rule; it forgot it in one generation and knows absolutely nothing about it.

After Peter the Great what hindered the return to the period that was only just over? The whole Petersburg system was hanging on a thread. Drunken and dissolute women, dull-witted princes who could scarcely speak Russian, German women and children, ascended the throne, and descended from it; the palace became the nearest way to Siberia and prison; the Government was in the hands of a handful of intriguers and _condottieri_. Yet through all this chaos we see no special desire to return to the earlier period. On the contrary, what remains constant through all these convulsive changes, what develops in spite of them and gives them a striking unity, is precisely the fidelity to the ideas of Peter the Great. One party overthrows another, taking advantage of the fact that the new _régime_ is not yet in working order; but whoever gained the day, no one touched the principles of Peter the Great, but all accepted them—Menshikov and Bühren, Minih and even the Dolgorukys, who wanted to limit the Imperial power, though not by the old Boyar Duma.[50] Elizabeth and Catherine II. flatter orthodoxy, and flatter nationalism in order to possess the throne, but, once securely seated on it, they keep to the same way, Catherine II. more so than any one.

The only opposition to the new order of things after its cruel installation we see in the unorthodox _raskolniks_ and the passive lack of sympathy of the peasants. The obstinate grumblings of a few old men meant nothing. The crushed submission of all the ‘Old Believers’ was the admission of their impotence. If there had been anything living in their outlook there would certainly have been attempts, unsuccessful, impossible, impracticable perhaps, but they would have been made. All the Anna Leopoldovnas, the Anna Ivanovnas, the Elizabeth Petrovnas and Catherine Alexyevnas, found bold and devoted men ready to face the block and prison for their sakes. The Cossacks, faced with ruin, and the serfs, crushed under the heel of the nobility, had their Pugatchov, and Pugatchov his two hundred thousand fighting men; the Kirghiz-Kaisaks moved into China; the Crimean Tatars joined the Turks; Little Russia murmured loudly; everything injured or crushed by the Autocracy made its protest, but the Old Russian party in Russia never did. It had neither voice nor devoted followers, neither a Polubotok nor a Mazeppa![51]

And it was not until one hundred and fifty years after Peter the Great that it found a representative and a leader, and that representative and leader was Nicholas. It would have been a calamity if he had, with the support of Church intolerance and nationalistic sentiment, succeeded in transforming the Autocracy, and changing it from a dictatorship into a purely monarchical or imperial government; but that was impossible. As soon as Nicholas was dead, Russia broke again into the path traced out by Peter the Great—not in the conquering or martial direction he had given it, but towards the development of its material and moral powers.

Peter the Great was one of the first of the leading figures of the great eighteenth century, and he acted in its spirit, he was saturated through and through with it, like Frederick II. of Prussia, like Joseph II. of Austria. His revolutionary realism gets the upper hand of his royal dignity—he is a despot, but not a monarch.

We all know how Peter crushed the old order and how he built up the new. To the burdensome, immovable Byzantine decorum he opposed the manners of the pothouse, the tedious Granovitaya Palata was transformed under him into a palace of debauchery; instead of the legal succession to the throne he, on one occasion, endowed the Tsar with the right of appointing his successor; on another occasion, wrote to the Senators that they should themselves select the most suitable one in case he should perish in a Turkish prison, and thereupon took the crown from his own son to give it to the servant-girl who, after passing through many men’s hands, had come into his. He left vacant the post of the most holy Patriarch, forbade the display of holy relics, and wiped dry all the sorrowing tears of the wonder-working ikons. In the land of unalterable precedence, he placed above all the rest the plebeian Menshikov, he associated with foreigners, even with negroes, got drunk in the company of skippers and sailors, rioted in the streets—in fact, in every way outraged the rigid propriety of the Old Russian life and the dignified formality of a Tsar.

He set the tone. His successors maintained it, exaggerating and distorting it; for half a century after him, there was one unbroken orgy of drink, blood, and debauchery—_l’ultimo atto_, as an Italian writer expresses it, _d’una tragedia representata nel un lupanar_.

Where was orthodoxy, where was the principle of monarchy and chivalry, in all this?

If in the second half of the reign of Catherine the tragic character pales, the _locale_ remains the same; the history of Catherine II. cannot be read aloud before ladies. Versailles, corrupted in the monarchical style, looked with as much astonishment at the debauchery of the Russian court as at the philosophical liberalism of Catherine II., for the French court did not understand that the foundations of the Imperial power in Russia were utterly different from those on which the Royal power of France was founded.

When Alexander said at Tilsit to Napoleon that he did not agree with the significance which the latter ascribed to the hereditary character of the Tsardom, Napoleon thought that he was deceiving him. When he said to Madame de Staël that he was only a ‘happy accident,’ she took it for a phrase. But it was a profoundly true saying.

Moved to wrath by the cowardice of the German sovereigns, the Emperor Alexander said in his proclamation of 22nd February 1813 to their subjects: ‘Terror restrains your Governments, do not let that hold you back; if your sovereigns, under the influence of cowardice and servility, do nothing, then the voice of their subjects must be heard and must compel the rulers who are leading their peoples into slavery and misery to lead them into freedom and honour.’

The fact is, that Alexander retained a full understanding of the tradition of Peter the Great; he was too close to the first period of Imperial rule to pose as the military pope of all the reactions. Indeed, it was with obvious doubt and uncertainty that he read the police reports of Sherwood and Mayboroda.

With no doubt and no reflection, Nicholas sat down in his place and made of his power a machine which was to turn Russia back in her tracks. But the Tsardom ceased to be strong as soon as it became conservative. Russia had given up everything human, she had given up peace and freedom, and had gone into the German bondage only to escape from the cramped and stifling condition which she had outgrown. To turn her back by the same means was impossible.

It is only by going forward towards real objects, it is only by more and more actively promoting the development of the national forces with humane education, that the Tsardom can maintain itself. The oil with which the engines on the new railways are greased will be better for anointing the Tsars at their coronation than the holy unguents of the Uspensky Cathedral.

Whether our interpretation of the Imperial rule is correct will be clearly and vividly shown by the excellent memoirs of Princess Dashkov.

Our object will be fully attained if our brief sketch of its contents drives readers to open the book itself.

* * * * *

In the year 1744, the Empress Elizabeth and the Grand Duke Peter stood godfather and godmother to Ekaterina, the baby daughter of Count Roman Vorontsov, brother of the great Chancellor. The Vorontsovs belonged to that small number of oligarchic families which, together with the paramours of the Empresses, ruled Russia at that time as they liked, while the country passed abruptly from one reign to another. They played the master in the Empire, just as nowadays in the houses of wealthy landowners house-serfs govern districts far and near.

The Empress Elizabeth was loved, not at all because she deserved it, but because her predecessor, Anna Ivanovna, had kept Bühren, a German, as steward, and we Russians cannot endure German stewards. She was nearer to the people than Anna Ivanovna and Anna Leopoldovna; in addition to the blood of Peter, she had all the defects of the Russian character—that is, she sometimes had regular drinking bouts, and every evening drank till she could not wait for her maids to undress her, but ripped her laces and her dresses off. She used to go on pilgrimages, fasted, was superstitious and passionately fond of fine clothes—she left fifteen thousand dresses; above all, she loved precious stones, as our wealthy merchants’ wives do, and probably had just as much taste as they, of which we can judge by the fact that she had a whole room decorated with amber.

The gentry in those days lived on quite a different footing with their serfs from now; there was a certain intimacy and familiarity between them, and, in spite of outbursts of domineering, they felt the novelty of their power and the necessity of support.

All of a sudden, for instance, Elizabeth takes Shuvalov and drives with him to Count Vorontsov’s to drink tea, to try on his Hungarian jacket, to gossip with him a little, while if any one told lies too wildly she would clip or cut out his tongue according to the degree of his guilt; and all this in a motherly, homely way without fuss, while she refused from motives of humanity to sign a single death-warrant.

When the Empress’s god-daughter had reached the age of fourteen she had measles: measles and smallpox were no joke in those days, and almost reached the proportions of a political crime; measles or smallpox might attack Paul, that future hope of all Russia! A special Imperial decree forbade families in which there was this terrible illness to have any contact with the court. Our sick countess was hurriedly packed up and sent off into the country some fifty miles away; it must be assumed that the air there was not bad for the measles. With the countess were sent an old German lady and the rigidly decorous widow of a Russian major: the clever, plucky, and lively girl, on recovering from measles, almost died of boredom with her two companions; luckily, she found in the country a fairly good library. At fourteen our young countess knew four languages besides Russian, which she did not know, but after her marriage learnt thoroughly to please her mother-in-law. She did not attack novels but Voltaire, Bayle, and so on. Reading became a passion with her, yet books did not dispel her depression; she pined, and went back to Petersburg languid and unwell. The Empress sent her own doctor to her—and that doctor was Boerhaave; he said there was nothing wrong, that she was physically well, but that her imagination was ailing—in fact, that she was fourteen.

After Boerhaave, relations from all parts pounced on the poor girl, and with inexhaustible cruelty undertook to entertain her, to distract her mind, to feed her up; they tormented her with questions and advice. While she only asked for one thing, to be left in peace; she was at the time reading Hélvetius’ _De l’Entendement_.

The remedy soon arrived of itself.

One evening the young countess, who was fairly free to make her own arrangements, went to Madame Samarin’s and stayed to supper, ordering the carriage to be sent to fetch her home. At eleven o’clock the carriage drove round and she came out; but the night was so fine and there was no one in the streets, so she went home on foot, accompanied by Madame Samarin’s sister. At the corner they met a tall graceful, man, who was acquainted with her companion; he began talking to the latter, and addressed a few words to the young countess.

The countess arrived home and dreamed of the handsome officer. The officer arrived home in love with the handsome countess.

No need to lose precious time; the countess was no longer a child (it was 1759), and she was fifteen; the officer was young, handsome, brilliant, and very tall, he was in the Preobrazhensky regiment, and belonged to an old family. The relations blessed the match, the Empress sanctioned it, and they were married. And so our young countess became Princess Dashkov.

A year and a half after their wedding, being on the eve of her second confinement, she remained alone in Moscow, while her husband went to Petersburg. His furlough was over, and he was asking for an extension of leave. The Grand Duke was at that time in command of the Preobrazhensky regiment; he would have given Dashkov the extension of leave at once, but the position was serious, and he wanted to make friends with his officers. The Empress was almost breathing her last; the Shuvalovs, the Razumovskys, and the Panins were intriguing with and without the Grand Duchess in favour of Paul, even in favour of the luckless Ivan—and most of all in their own favour. The Grand Duke was not liked; he was not a bad man, but he had every quality that the Russian temperament detests in the German—_gaucherie_, a coarse heartiness, a vulgar tone, a pedantry and a haughty self-complacency bordering on contempt for everything Russian. Elizabeth, though herself perpetually tipsy, could not forgive him for being drunk every evening. Razumovsky hated him for wanting to make Gudovitch Hetman; Panin for his guard-room manners; the Horse Guards for preferring his Holstein soldiers to them; the ladies for his inviting actresses and German women of all sorts to sit down at his banquets beside them; while the clergy detested him for his undisguised contempt for the Orthodox Church. Seeing that Elizabeth’s end was near, and afraid of being deserted by every one, the tactless Peter attempted to make up to his officers and win their favour, and set about it with excessive clumsiness. Among others he wanted to make sure of Dashkov, who was in command of a company; and therefore, without refusing him his leave, he invited him to Oranienbaum.

Dashkov, after his interview with Peter, set off for Moscow; on the way he was taken ill with a sore throat and feverishness. Anxious not to worry his wife, he bade them take him to his aunt, Madame Novosiltsov, for he fancied that the pain in his throat was somewhat easier, and that his voice was coming back a little; instead of that, the illness turned out to be quinsy, and he was soon in a high fever.

At that very time, Prince Dashkov’s mother, with her sister, Princess Gagarin, was sitting in our young princess’s bedroom, together with a midwife, expecting the birth of the child in a few hours. The young mother was still able to move about, and she went to fetch something in another room, where her maid had long been awaiting her. The girl told her in secret of her sick husband’s return, saying that he was at his aunt’s, and begging her mistress not to betray her, as all were strictly forbidden to tell her the news. The young princess uttered a shriek at these unexpected tidings; recovering herself, she went upstairs to the bedroom, as though nothing had happened, assured them that they were all mistaken, that her confinement was not coming so soon, and persuaded them to go and rest, promising by all that was holy to send for them if anything should happen.

No sooner had the old ladies retired than the young princess flew with all the impetuosity of her character to entreat the midwife to take her to her husband. The kind-hearted German thought she had gone out of her mind, and began trying in her Silesian accent to dissuade her, continually adding: ‘No, no, I shall have to answer to God afterwards for the slaughter of the innocent.’ The princess told the midwife resolutely that, if she would not accompany her, she should go alone, and no force on earth should stop her. The old woman was worked upon by terror, but when the young lady told her that they must go on foot that her mother-in-law might not hear the crunch of the sledge-runners, she again resisted and stood motionless, ‘as though her legs had sent down roots into the floor.’ At last this difficulty, too, was overcome; but on the stairs the young princess’s pains returned, and so violently that the midwife tried to dissuade her, but, clutching on to the stair-rail, she was not to be turned from her resolution.

They walked out of the gate, and in spite of the pains reached the Novosiltsovs’ house. Of the interview with her husband she remembered only that she saw him pale, ill, lying unconscious, that she only had time to take one look at him, and fell in a swoon on the floor. In this condition the Novosiltsovs’ servants carried her on a stretcher home, where, however, no one had suspected her absence. Fresh and more acute pains restored her to consciousness, she sent for her husband’s mother and aunt, and an hour later gave birth to her son Mihail.

At six o’clock in the morning her husband was brought into the house; his mother put him in another room, forbidding any intercourse between the two sick-rooms on the pretext that the young mother might catch the quinsy, though in reality from a petty jealousy. The young couple at once began a sentimental correspondence, which was, of course, attended with much more risk for the young mother than quinsy, which is not in the least infectious, could be; they were writing notes to each other at all hours of the day and night, till the old lady found them out, scolded the maids, and threatened to take away pens, pencils, and paper.

A woman who was capable of such love and such determination in getting her own way in spite of danger, fear, and pain was bound to play a great part in the times in which she lived and in the circle to which she belonged.

On the 28th of July 1761, the Dashkovs moved to Petersburg. ‘The day,’ she said, ‘which twelve months later became so memorable and so glorious for my country.’

In Petersburg she found awaiting her an invitation from the Grand Duke to move to Oranienbaum. She did not want to go, and her father had difficulty in persuading her to take his summer villa not far from Oranienbaum. The fact is that by then she could not endure the Grand Duke, while she was sincerely devoted to his wife. Before she had left her father’s house she had been presented to the Grand Duchess; Catherine had been gracious to her, the clever and highly cultured girl had taken her fancy. With the smile, the _abandon_ with which Catherine for thirty years fascinated all Russia, and the diplomatists and learned men of all Europe, she won the devotion of Princess Dashkov for ever. From the first interview the young girl loved Catherine passionately, ‘adored her’ as schoolgirls adore their elder companions; she was in love with her as boys are in love with women of thirty.

On the other hand, she felt as genuine an aversion for her godfather, Peter. And a pleasant person he was, there is no denying. We shall see it directly.

Her own sister, Elizaveta Romanovna, was openly Peter’s mistress. He considered that Saltykov and Poniatowski, the fortunate predecessors of the Orlovs, Vassiltchikovs, Novosiltsovs, Potyomkins, Lanskys, Yermolevs, Korsakovs, Zoritches, Zavodovskys, Mamonovs, Zubovs, and a whole phalanx of stalwart _virorum obscurorum_ gave him the right not to be over-niggardly in his affairs of the heart, and not to conceal his preferences.

His attitude to his wife was already such that, on Princess Dashkov’s first being presented to him, he said to her: ‘Allow me to hope that you will bestow upon us no less time than upon the Grand Duchess.’

For her part the impetuous young princess did not dream of concealing her preference for Catherine. The Grand Duke observed it, and a few days later led the young princess aside, and said to her, ‘in the simplicity of his head and the kindness of his heart,’ as she puts it: ‘Remember that it is safer to have to do with simple, honest people like your sister and me than with great intellects who squeeze every drop out of you and then throw you out of window like the skin of an orange.’

Princess Dashkov evasively observed that the Empress had expressed her urgent desire that they should show respect equally to the Grand Duchess and to His Highness.

Nevertheless, she could not avoid sometimes attending the Grand Duke’s drinking-parties. These festivities were of a German barrack-room character, coarse and drunken. Peter, surrounded by his Holstein generals (that is, in her words, by corporals and sergeants of the Prussian army, sons of German artisans whose parents did not know what to do with them, and sent them for soldiers on account of their dissolute habits), with the pipe always between his lips, sometimes went on drinking till his flunkeys carried him out.

At one such supper-party in the presence of the Grand Duchess and numerous visitors, the conversation turned on Tchelishtchev, a sergeant of the Guards, and his supposed _liaison_ with the Countess Hendrikov, a niece of the Empress.

Peter, who was already very drunk, observed that Tchelishtchev ought to have his head cut off as a warning to other officers not to get up love affairs with the female relations of the royal family. The Holstein sycophants expressed their approval and sympathy by every possible token, while the young princess could not refrain from observing that it seemed to her very inhuman to inflict the death penalty for so trivial a crime.

‘You are still a child,’ answered the Grand Duke, ‘your words prove it; otherwise you would know that to be sparing with the death penalty means to encourage insubordination.’

‘Your Highness,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘you are trying to frighten us; with the exception of the old generals, all of us who have the honour to be sitting at your table belong to a generation which has never seen the death penalty in Russia.’

‘That does not signify,’ retorted the Grand Duke; ‘fine sort of order there has been in everything in consequence. I tell you, you are a child and know nothing about these things.’

All remained silent. ‘I am ready,’ the young princess replied, ‘to acknowledge that I am incapable of understanding you; but I cannot help rejoicing when I think that your aunt is still on the throne and is still well and strong.’

All eyes were turned upon the bold young woman. The Grand Duke did not answer in words; he confined himself to putting out his tongue—a charming trick to which he often resorted instead of a verbal reply, especially when he was in church.

This conversation, which was the beginning of Princess Dashkov’s political career, was the more remarkable for the fact that these Nero-like speeches were uttered by the mildest man in the world, who had never put any one to death. There were a large number of the officers of the Guards and of the cadets sitting at the table, and Princess Dashkov’s words were carried with lightning swiftness all over the town. They gave her a great notoriety, which at first she was far from appreciating, and which made of her one of the centres, and almost the principal one, round which discontented officers rallied. At first the young princess was delighted that the Grand Duchess was exceedingly pleased by her answer. ‘Time,’ she mournfully adds, ‘had not then taught me how dangerous it is to tell the truth to sovereigns; if they can sometimes forgive it, their courtiers never do.’

Her affection for Catherine increased. Elizabeth was then living at Peterhof, and there the Grand Duchess was permitted _once a week_ to see her son. On her way back from the Palace she usually drove to the Dashkovs’, took the princess with her, and kept her for a whole evening. When it was impossible to visit her, Catherine wrote a brief note to her; from this there sprang up the friendly, intimate correspondence between them which lasted even after the Dashkovs had left the summer villa. They write about literature, about their day-dreams, about Voltaire, and about Rousseau, in verse and in prose.

‘Such verse and such prose!’ writes Catherine, ‘and at seventeen! I entreat you not to neglect such a talent. Perhaps I am not altogether an impartial critic; your flattering attachment to me is to blame for your having chosen me for the subject of your poem. Blame me for pride if you like, but still I will say that it is long since I have read such correct and such poetical work.’

Catherine, too, sends her essays and very emphatically insists that they are to be shown to no one. ‘In the circumstances under which I am compelled to live, everything serves as a ground for unpleasant suppositions.’ She is so anxious that she begs Princess Dashkov to have letters addressed to her maid, Katerina Ivanovna, and burns them when she has read them. What she calls ‘trifling grounds’ may be surmised from one letter in which she again speaks of her manuscript. The young princess had returned it to her with much praise, assuring her that she had never let it go out of her own hands. Not a word is said of the contents of the manuscript, but it is evident from the following words (letter 21): ‘You relieve me of my duties in regard to my son; I see in that a fresh proof of the goodness of your heart. I was profoundly agitated by the tokens of devotion with which I was greeted by the people on that day. I have never been so happy.’

That letter was written soon after Elizabeth’s death, but we have not yet reached that stage of our narrative.

Towards the end of December 1761, there was a rumour that Elizabeth was very ill.

Princess Dashkov was lying in bed with a very bad cold when the news reached her. The thought of Catherine’s danger struck her; she could no more lie still in bed with it than with the thought of her husband’s illness; and so, wrapped in a fur coat, on the frosty night of the 20th of December, she set off for the wooden palace on the Moika, where the royal family lived at that time. Not wishing to be seen, she left the carriage at a little distance from the Palace, and walked towards the little entrance at the side of the Grand Duchess’s apartments, though she did not know the way to them. Fortunately she met Katerina Ivanovna, the Grand Duchess’s maid; the latter said that the Grand Duchess was in bed; but Princess Dashkov insisted on being announced, saying that she absolutely must see her at once. The maid, knowing her and her devotion to the Grand Duchess, obeyed. Catherine, who knew the Princess Dashkov was seriously ill, and so would not have come out at night in the frost without specially important reasons, ordered her to be shown up.

At first she showered reproaches on the princess for not taking care of herself, and, seeing that she was cold, said to her: ‘Dear princess, first of all you must get warm; come, get into my bed’; and only after tucking her up, she asked her at last what was the matter.

‘In the present position of affairs,’ said Princess Dashkov, ‘when the Empress has only a few days, perhaps a few hours, to live, you must, without loss of time, take measures against the danger with which you are threatened and steps to avert it. For God’s sake, trust me; I will show you that I am worthy of your trust. If you have any definite plan, make use of me, dispose of me, I am at your service.’

Catherine burst into tears and, pressing her friend’s hand to her heart, said: ‘I assure you that I have no plan whatever; there is nothing I can do, and I imagine that all that is left me is to await the course of events with fortitude. I resign myself to the will of God, and rest all my hopes on Him alone.’

‘In that case your friends must act for you. As for me, I feel I have strength and energy enough to carry them all with me; and believe me, there is no sacrifice which would hinder me.’

‘For God’s sake,’ Catherine interrupted, ‘do not expose yourself to danger in the hope of resisting evil which seems really inevitable. If you ruin yourself for my sake, you will only add an everlasting grief to my unhappy lot.’

‘All that I can tell you is that I will not take a step which could possibly involve you, or put you in danger. Whatever happens, may it come upon me, and, if my blind devotion to you leads me to the scaffold, you shall never be its victim.’

Catherine would have protested, but Princess Dashkov[52] interrupting her, took her hand, pressed it to her lips, and, saying that she was afraid to continue the conversation, asked leave to withdraw. Deeply touched, they remained for some minutes in each other’s arms, then the princess cautiously went out, leaving Catherine in great agitation.

We must add to this affecting scene that Catherine had all the same deceived the princess; she had not entrusted her fate to God alone, but also to Grigory Orlov, with whom she had thought out her plan, and Orlov was already secretly trying to enlist the co-operation of the officers.

At Christmas the Empress died. Petersburg received the news gloomily; and Princess Dashkov herself saw the Semyonovsky and Izmailovsky regiments march sullenly past her house with muffled murmurs.

Peter III., proclaimed Emperor, paid no regard to decorum; the drinking bouts went on. A few days after Elizabeth’s death he visited the father of Princess Dashkov, and through her sister announced his displeasure at not seeing her at court. There was no escaping it; she went. Peter III., dropping his voice, began telling her that she would end by drawing upon herself his anger, and might very bitterly repent of it later on, ‘because there may easily come a time when Romanovna’ (that was what he called his mistress) ‘will be in _that woman’s_ place.’

Princess Dashkov made a show of not understanding, and hurriedly took her place at Peter III.’s favourite game. In this game (_campis_) each player has several counters; the player who keeps one till the last wins the game. Every one put down ten imperials, which, considering Princess Dashkov’s income at that time, was not a trifling sum for her, particularly as, when Peter III. lost, he used to take a counter out of his pocket and lay it on the pool, so that he almost always won. As soon as the game was over, the Tsar proposed a second; she refused. He pestered her so much to play that, taking advantage of her ‘position as spoilt child,’ she told him that she was not rich enough to lose for certain, that if His Majesty played like other people she would, at any rate, have a chance of winning. Peter III. responded with his ‘usual buffooneries,’ and the princess made her bows and withdrew.

As she walked through the suite of rooms filled with courtiers and persons of various grades, she felt as though she were at a masquerade, there was no one she could recognise. She could not help laughing when she saw Prince Trubetskoy, who was seventy, for the first time in his life dressed up in a military uniform, standing at attention, in high boots with spurs, all ready, in fact, for the most desperate battle. ‘The pitiful little old man,’ she adds, ‘pretending to be ill and suffering, as beggars do, lay in bed while Elizabeth was dying; he felt a little better when Peter III. was proclaimed, and, learning that everything had gone off well, he leapt up at once, armed himself from head to foot, and showed himself like a hero in the Izmailovsky regiment to which he was attached.’

Apropos of uniforms, the fatal passion for them was handed down from Peter III. to Paul, from Paul to all his children, to all the generals, staff and higher officers; Panin, who supervised the education of Paul, complained that Peter III. was never present at his examinations. The Holstein princes, his uncles, persuaded Peter to attend one at least; he was very much pleased, and promoted Panin to be a general in the infantry. To perceive the full absurdity of this, one must picture the pale, sickly figure of Panin, who liked to be correctly dressed and scrupulously groomed, and was rather like a courtier of the days of Louis XIV. Panin detested Peter III.’s barrack-room tone, he hated uniforms and all that nonsense. When Melgunov brought him the joyful tidings that he was a general, Panin would have fled to Switzerland and lived there in preference to wearing the uniform. News of this reached Peter III.; he transferred him to the corresponding civilian grade. He never got over his surprise at Panin. ‘Why,’ he used to say, ‘I always thought Panin was a sensible man!’

While Peter III. was dressing his courtiers up as heroes, the usual funeral ceremonies were taking place. The Empress did not leave her rooms, and only appeared at the requiem service. Peter III., too, only rarely showed himself, and then always behaved improperly, whispering with the ladies, laughing with his adjutants, mocking at the clergy, scolding the officers, and even the common soldiers, over buttons or some such trifle. ‘The new Emperor,’ the English ambassador, Keith, said to Prince Golitsyn, ‘is beginning his reign imprudently; if he goes on like this he will come to be despised by his people and afterwards to be hated by them.’

Peter III. did everything as though on purpose to arouse this hatred. One evening, when Princess Dashkov was present, the Tsar was holding forth, as his habit was, on the subject of his respect for Frederick II., and suddenly turning to the Secretary of State, Volkov, who had been Chief Secretary of the Privy Council under Elizabeth, he asked him whether he remembered how they used to laugh over the perpetual failure of the secret instructions sent to the army in the field. Volkov, who together with Peter, then Grand Duke, had communicated to the Prussian King all the army orders, and so stultified them, was so taken aback by Peter III.’s words that he almost fainted. But the Tsar went on, jocosely describing how in time of war they had betrayed to the enemy the country in which he was heir to the throne.

At the conclusion of the peace with the Prussian King, in which he shamefully yielded everything that had been won by Russian blood, there was no end to the delight and rejoicing. There was festivity after festivity. Among others Peter III. gave a great dinner, to which all the ambassadors and members of the three first grades were invited. After dinner the Tsar proposed three toasts, which were drunk to the firing of cannon—to the health of the Imperial Family, to the health of the Prussian King, to the permanence of the peace that had been concluded.

When the Empress drank the toast to the Imperial Family, Peter III. sent his adjutant, Gudovitch, who was standing by his chair, to ask her why she did not stand up. Catherine answered that since the Imperial Family consisted only of her husband, her son, and herself, she had not supposed that it would be His Majesty’s pleasure that she should stand up. When Gudovitch repeated her answer, the Tsar bade him go back and tell the Empress that she was ‘a fool,’ and ought to know that his uncles, the Holstein princes, belonged to the Imperial Family too. This was not enough; afraid that Gudovitch would soften his rudeness, he repeated what he had said across the table, so that the greater number of the guests heard it. For the first minute the Empress could not refrain from shedding tears, but, anxious to end the scandal as quickly as possible, she turned to the _kammerherr_, Strogonov, who was standing behind her chair, and begged him to begin some conversation. Strogonov, who was himself deeply shocked, began babbling something with a show of liveliness. As he went out of the palace, he received the command to go to his country estate, and not to leave it without permission.

This incident was exceedingly prejudicial to Peter III. Every one pitied the unfortunate woman, who had been grossly insulted by a drunken boor. Princess Dashkov was naturally bound to take advantage of this state of public feeling. She became a desperate conspirator, persuading, sounding, enlisting sympathisers, and at the same time she went to balls and danced to avoid arousing suspicion. Prince Dashkov, insulted by Peter III., made him some answer on parade. The princess, afraid of the consequences, succeeded in procuring him a commission to Constantinople, and gave him the advice to ‘make haste slowly’ with it. Having sent him off, she surrounded herself with officers who put the fullest confidence in their eighteen-year-old leader.

There were other people about Peter III. who were dissatisfied, but owing to their age and position took no part in the conspiracy; they were glad to take advantage of a change, but the risk of losing their heads on the scaffold was too much for a Razumovsky or a Panin. The real conspirators were Princess Dashkov with her officers, and Orlov with his adherents.

Of Razumovsky Princess Dashkov says: ‘He loves his country as much as the apathetic man can love anything. Sunk in the bog of wealth, surrounded by marks of respect, well received at the new court, and liked by the officers, he has dropped into indifference and grown sluggish.’

Panin was a statesman and looked further ahead than the rest; his aim was to proclaim Paul Tsar and Catherine Regent. So doing he hoped to curtail the power of the Autocracy. Moreover, he thought to attain his object by legal means through the Senate.

All this was far from being approved by Princess Dashkov. Moreover, the dissatisfaction and murmuring among the soldiers were growing. The disgraceful peace, on the one hand, and the insane war with Denmark which with no serious object Peter III. wanted to wage over Holstein, exasperated men’s minds. This war became an insane obsession with him; even Frederick II. tried by letter to persuade him to defer it.

It is said that the young conspiratress used peculiarly eloquent weapons to induce stubborn Panin to co-operate with her party. Panin was so attracted by her intelligence, her energy, and, above all, her beauty, that, old as he was, he fell passionately in love with her. Princess Dashkov rejected his love with mirth, but finding no other means of persuading him she made up her mind to bribe him with herself. After this Panin was in her hands. It is only just to say that in two passages of her memoirs she denies this rumour with indignation.[53]

Although the conspirators could reckon on Razumovsky and Panin, and, what was more, on the Archbishop of Novgorod, and although a number of officers adhered to the conspiracy, they had no definite plan of action. Though at one in a common object, they could not agree on the steps to be taken; Princess Dashkov, devoured by burning energy, was angry with their deliberateness, did not know what to do, and at last went off to her summer villa at Krasny Kabak. This summer villa was the first possession she had entirely of her own: she at once set to work rebuilding, digging ditches, laying out gardens. ‘In spite,’ she said, ‘of the affection I had for that first bit of ground which was my own, I did not want to give it my name, as I wished to dedicate it to the name of the saint on whose day success crowns our great enterprise.’ ‘Make haste and give a name to my villa,’ she writes to the Empress, when laid up with a fever, which she had caught through riding up to her waist in a bog. Catherine could make nothing of it, and thought that her friend was delirious.

But it was Peter III. who was really delirious; while Princess Dashkov was planting acacias and clearing paths, he was moving rapidly on his downward path; one folly succeeded another, one unseemly vulgarity was followed by another twice as unseemly. Keith’s prophecy was coming true: public feeling was passing from contempt into hatred.

The Austrian persecution of the Greek Church in Serbia had driven many Serbs to appeal to the Empress Elizabeth, begging her to assign them lands in the south of Russia. In addition to lands, Elizabeth ordered a considerable sum of money to be given them for the expenses of their moving and resettlement. One of their agents, Horvat, a wily, intriguing fellow, took possession of the lands and money and, instead of carrying out the conditions on which the land was given, began to dispose of the emigrants as though they were his serfs. The Serbs presented a complaint, Elizabeth ordered an enquiry, but before it was over she died. Horvat, hearing of her death, went to Petersburg and began by giving two thousand gold pieces to each of the three persons who were in closest relations with Peter III.—L. Naryshkin, who was something in the way of a court buffoon, General Melgunov, and the Prosecutor-General Glyebov. The two latter went to the Tsar and told him straight out of the bribe. Peter III. was much pleased at their openness, he praised them for it, and added that if they would give him half he would go himself to the Senate and command them to decide the case in favour of Horvat. They divided the spoils, the Tsar kept his word, and for two thousand gold pieces lost hundreds of thousands of new settlers; seeing that their comrades had been cheated by the Government, those who had not yet started did not venture to move.

When the case was over, Peter III. heard that Naryshkin had concealed his bribe, and, to punish him for this lack of friendly confidence, took the whole sum from him. And for a long time afterwards he used to tease Naryshkin by asking him what he was doing with Horvat’s gold pieces.

Here is another charming anecdote of Peter III. One day the Tsar returned home with Razumovsky after parade, much pleased with the Izmailovsky regiment; suddenly he heard a noise a little way off; his favourite negro was fighting with the fencing-master. At first Peter III. was delighted with the spectacle, but all at once he pulled a solemn face and said: ‘Narcisse exists no longer for us.’ Razumovsky, who could make nothing of it, asked what had so suddenly distressed His Majesty. ‘Why, don’t you see,’ he cried, ‘that I cannot keep a man about me who has fought with a fencing-master? he is disgraced, disgraced for ever.’ Razumovsky, pretending to enter into these deep considerations, observed that the negro’s honour might be restored by passing him under the flag of the regiment. This idea delighted Peter III.; he at once called the negro, bade him pass under the flag, and, feeling this was not quite sufficient, ordered that he should be scratched with the lance of the flag that he might wash out his offence with his own blood. The poor negro almost died of fright, the generals and the officers could hardly restrain their indignation and laughter. Only Peter III. performed the whole ritual of the negro’s purification with perfect solemnity throughout.

And this buffoon was Tsar!... But not for long!

On the evening of the 27th of June Grigory Orlov came to Princess Dashkov to tell her that Captain Passek, one of the most desperate conspirators, was arrested. Orlov found Panin with her; to lose time, to procrastinate, was now impossible. Only the lymphatic, slow, and cautious Panin counselled waiting till the morrow, and first finding out how and why Passek was arrested. This did not please Orlov or her. The former said that he would go to find out about Passek. Princess Dashkov asked Panin to leave her, pretending that she was excessively tired. As soon as Panin had driven off, she threw on a man’s grey overcoat and set off on foot to see Roslavlev, one of the conspirators.

Not far from home she met a man on horseback galloping full speed. Although she had never seen Orlov’s brothers, she guessed that it was one of them; when she reached him, she called his name. He pulled up the horse, and she made herself known to him. ‘I was coming to you,’ he said. ‘Passek has been seized as a political criminal. There are four sentries at the doors and two at the window. My brother has gone to Panin, and I have been to Roslavlev.’

‘Is Roslavlev much alarmed?’

‘He is indeed.’

‘Send word to our men, Roslavlev, Lasunsky, Tchertkov, and Bredihin to gather at once to the Izmailovsky regiment, and to make ready to receive the Empress. Then say that I advise your brother or you to ride as fast as you can to Peterhof for the Empress; tell her that I have a carriage ready, tell her that I beseech her not to delay, but to drive full speed to Petersburg.’

On the previous evening Princess Dashkov, who had heard from Passek of the great discontent of the soldiers, and was afraid that something might happen, had by way of precaution written to the wife of Catherine’s _kammerdiener_, Shkurin, telling her to send a carriage with four post-horses to her husband at Peterhof, and to bid him await her in his yard. Panin laughed at this unnecessary fuss, supposing that the _coup d’état_ was not so imminent; events proved how necessary Princess Dashkov’s precautions were.

On parting from Orlov, she returned home. In the evening a tailor was to have brought her a man’s dress, but did not bring it, and she was not free enough dressed as a woman. To avoid rousing suspicion, she dismissed her maid and went to bed; but half an hour had not passed before she heard a knock at the outer door. It was the youngest Orlov, who had been sent by his elder brothers to ask her whether it was not too soon to disturb the Empress; Princess Dashkov was beside herself, and showered reproaches upon him and all his brothers: ‘As though it were a question,’ she said, ‘of disturbing the Empress; better bring her unconscious, fainting, to Petersburg than expose her to imprisonment or to sharing the scaffold with us. Tell your brothers that some one must go this very minute to Peterhof.’

The young man agreed with her.

Then followed agonising hours of solitude and suspense; she trembled for her Catherine, and pictured her pale, worn out, in prison, going to be beheaded, and all ‘through our fault.’ Exhausted and feverish, she waited for news from Peterhof. At four o’clock it came: the Empress had gone to Petersburg.

How Alexey Orlov went in the night to the pavilion to where Catherine was calmly asleep; how, though, like Princess Dashkov, she did not know the younger Orlov by sight, she instantly determined to set off in the carriage that was waiting for her at Shkurin’s; how Orlov sat on the box-seat as coachman, and knocked the horses up by his driving, so that the Empress was obliged to walk with her maid; how they afterwards met an empty cart; how Orlov hired it, and brought Catherine to Petersburg in democratic style—all that is well known.

The soldiers of the Izmailovsky regiment received Catherine with enthusiasm; they were told that Peter III. had tried that night to kill her and her son. With shouts and uproar the soldiers escorted her from the barracks to the Winter Palace, proclaiming her the reigning Empress as they passed through the streets; they met with no hindrance of any kind. The people flocked in crowds to the Palace, the leading noblemen gathered together in the Cathedral, and the Archbishop, surrounded by clergy, awaited the new sovereign with holy water.

When, after terrific efforts, Princess Dashkov succeeded in reaching Catherine, they rushed into each other’s arms, and could only say: ‘Well, thank God, thank God!’ Then Catherine told her how they had driven from Peterhof, then they fell to embracing each other again. ‘I do not know,’ writes Princess Dashkov, ‘whether a mortal has ever been happier than I was at that minute!’

‘And,’ she adds, ‘when I think by what extraordinarily small means this revolution was effected, with no thought-out plan, by men who were not agreed among themselves, who had different aims in view, and were not in the least alike either in breeding or character, it is clear to me that the finger of Providence was in it.’

The revolution, of course, was essential, but if the finger of Providence was so directly concerned in it, then the divine hands were far from being clean on that day.

After they had kissed each other to their hearts’ content, Princess Dashkov noticed that the Empress was wearing the Catherine and not the Andrew ribbon; she ran at once to Panin, took off his ribbon, put it on the Empress, and put the Catherine ribbon and star in her pocket.

The Empress expressed a desire to put herself at the head of the troops and to march to Peterhof. At the same time she ordered the princess to accompany her. The Empress took a uniform from Captain Talyzin, Princess Dashkov one from Sergeant Pushkin. Both uniforms were of the old Preobrazhensky pattern. As soon as the Empress had arrived in Petersburg, the soldiers had, of their own initiative, cast off their new uniforms and put on their old ones.

While Princess Dashkov was changing her dress, Catherine was presiding over an Extraordinary Council, consisting of the highest dignitaries and senators who happened to be on the spot. The sentinels stationed at the doors admitted to it a young officer with a bold carriage and reckless air. No one but the Empress recognised him as Princess Dashkov; she went up to Catherine and said that the guard was very inefficient, that they would perhaps admit Peter III. himself if he should suddenly appear (how little even she knew the buffoon!); the guard was immediately strengthened; meanwhile, the Empress, who was dictating a manifesto to Tyeplov, broke off to tell the members of the Council who this young officer was who had come up _sans façon_, and begun whispering to her. All the senators stood up to greet her. ‘I blushed to my ears at this honour,’ says the charming sergeant, ‘and indeed I was rather embarrassed by it.

‘Then, after taking the necessary measures to ensure the tranquillity of the capital, we mounted our horses, and on the road to Peterhof reviewed ten thousand men, who cheered the Empress with enthusiasm.’

At Krasny Kabak the insurrectionary army halted: the men, who had been on their legs for twelve hours, needed a rest. Catherine and Princess Dashkov, who had not slept at all the last few nights, were much exhausted. The princess took an overcoat from Colonel Kar, spread it over the solitary sofa in the little room they had taken at the inn, and stationed sentries; then she and Catherine stretched themselves on the sofa, not taking off their uniforms, but firmly resolved to get a little sleep; they could not sleep, however, but spent the whole time talking, making plans, and entirely forgetting the danger they were in.

There is no denying that there is something extraordinarily fascinating in this daring exploit of two women, who changed the destinies of an empire, in this revolution wrought by a handsome, clever woman, surrounded by young men in love with her, and with the leading figure among them a beauty of eighteen on horseback in the Preobrazhensky regiment, with a sabre in her hand.

The unlucky Peter was meanwhile driving from Oranienbaum to Peterhof, and from Peterhof to Oranienbaum, unable to think what to do or to decide upon anything. He looked for Catherine through all the rooms of the pavilion, behind doors and cupboards, as though she were playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with him, and, not without complacency, repeated to ‘Romanovna’: ‘There, you see I was right; I was sure she would do something; I always said that woman was capable of anything.’

The old champion, Minih, still stood by him, all Russia and part of Petersburg was still not against him, but he had already lost his head entirely. Displaying incredible cowardice at Cronstadt, he bade the Imperial yacht sail not to the fleet, but back to Oranienbaum; the ladies were afraid of sickness and the sea, he was afraid of everything. It was a calm moonlight night; the pitiful Tsar hid in the cabin with his courtiers, while the two heroes, Minih and Gudovitch, sat in gloomy brooding on deck, with shame and anger and sorrow in their hearts; they saw that there is no saving people against their will. At four o’clock in the morning they reached Oranienbaum again, and crestfallen stealthily returned to the Palace. Peter sat down to write a letter to Catherine.

At the same time two fiery steeds were being saddled, one for Catherine, the other for Princess Dashkov, and again, full of gaiety and energy, they were at the head of their soldiers, who set off on the march at five o’clock, and halted to rest at the Troitsky Monastery. Then Peter’s envoys began appearing one after another, bringing proposals each more foolish than the last; he abdicated from the throne, begged leave to go to Holstein, and owned himself to blame and unfit to rule. Catherine insisted on his unconditional surrender to avert greater troubles, and promised in return to arrange his life as comfortably as possible in whichever he preferred of the palaces away from the town.

Catherine’s troops calmly occupied Peterhof; Orlov, who had ridden on to reconnoitre, had found no one there. The Holsteiners, who were about Peter in Oranienbaum and were devoted to him, were ready to die for him, but he told them to make no defence; he meant to flee, ordered a horse to be brought, but did not mount it; instead, he got into a carriage with Romanovna and Gudovitch, and mournfully went to surrender to his guilty wife. He was led secretly into a remote room of the Palace. Gudovitch, who even then behaved with extraordinary dignity, was arrested, together with Romanovna; Peter was given food and drink, and taken to Ropsha in the escort of Alexey Orlov, Passek, Baryatinsky, and Baskakov. He selected Ropsha himself; it had belonged to him when he was Grand Duke. Other authorities state, however, that he did not go to Ropsha at all, but was on the estate of Razumovsky.

Princess Dashkov saw his letters to Catherine. In one he speaks of his abdication, in another of the persons he would like to keep about him, and enumerates everything he needed for his daily life, making special mention of a store of Burgundy and tobacco. He asked further, it is said, for a violin, a Bible, and various novels, adding that he meant to become a philosopher.

On the evening of the day when Peterhof was taken, Princess Dashkov, coming back from the Princess of Holstein’s to the Empress’s apartments, came upon Orlov, who was lying at full length on a sofa in one of the Empress’s inner rooms. He apologised for doing so, alleging that he had hurt his foot. He was opening a big envelope; Princess Dashkov had seen such envelopes in the hands of her uncle, the Vice-Chancellor; they were used for the most important affairs of state communicated from the Privy Council to the Tsar.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, with amazement.

‘The Empress told me to.’

‘Impossible,’ she answered. ‘You have no official status for doing it.’

At that moment word was brought that the soldiers had broken into the cellars, and were drinking Hungarian wine in their helmets, taking it for mead. Orlov did not stir. Princess Dashkov at once went downstairs, assumed a threatening air, and with her thin girlish voice restored discipline. Pleased with her success, she distributed among them all the money she had on her; then, turning her purse inside out, told them that her means were less than her goodwill, but that on their return to Petersburg they should have leave to drink at the Government’s expense; after this she went back.

Beside the sofa on which Orlov was lying she found a table laid for three. The Empress came in, took her seat, and invited the princess to sit down. All this so impressed the latter that she could not conceal her emotion. The Empress noticed it, and asked her what was the matter.

‘Nothing,’ she answered; ‘most likely I am tired from sleepless nights and excitement.’

Catherine, wishing to draw the princess into being civil to Orlov, told her that in spite of her urgent wishes he was giving up military service, and begged the princess to help her to dissuade him. ‘I shall be charged,’ she said, ‘with horrible ingratitude if he leaves the army.’ But Princess Dashkov, mortified by her discovery, answered that Her Majesty had so many means of rewarding his services that she had no need to constrain him.

‘It was only then,’ she adds, ‘that I was convinced there was _une liaison_ between them.’

It has been thought that she was mortified at this through jealousy, and it is not a mistake. Only, she was not jealous on Orlov’s account; she never liked and never respected either him or his brothers; she was jealous over the Empress; she liked neither the choice nor the tone; moreover, her dreams of exclusive confidence, of romantic friendship, of all-powerful influence, paled and vanished at her discovery. And as a fact, from that evening she had a rival and an enemy; she felt that the very day after the _coup d’état_.

Crazy Peter’s saying about the orange skin began coming true with extraordinary rapidity. The very day after ascending the throne the Empress began appraising and rewarding Princess Dashkov’s services, she began to be grateful—that is, ceased to be her friend.

After her triumphal entry into Petersburg, Princess Dashkov went away to see her father, her uncle, and, most of all, to have a look at her little one. It must not be forgotten that our Preobrazhensky sergeant had a little daughter Nastya, whom she passionately loved, and with whom she longed to play, after having played enough with the Tsar’s crown. Her father’s house was full of soldiers, stationed there partly for his protection, and partly because ‘Romanovna’ had been brought to his house. Vadkovsky sent to ask the officer on duty whether all the guard was needed; Princess Dashkov, speaking to him in French, told the officer that half of the soldiers were not needed, and that she was dismissing them.

When she went back to the Palace, Catherine received her with a look of displeasure; the officer of the guard was present and was talking to Orlov. The Empress reprimanded Princess Dashkov for acting on her own initiative, and even observed that she had spoken French before the soldiers. The princess, deeply wounded, listened to the reprimand, made no reply, and, to change the conversation, gave Catherine the ribbon and the order which she had put in her pocket the day before.

‘Not so fast, not so fast,’ said the Empress. ‘I had to reprimand you for your impetuosity—you had no right to dismiss the soldiers on your own authority; but I must also reward you for your services.’ With this she put around her neck the ribbon that had been restored.

Instead of kneeling down before the Empress, as is done on such occasions, Princess Dashkov said to her sorrowfully: ‘Your Majesty, forgive me for what I want to say; the time is coming when truth must be banished from your presence; before it comes, I beg you to take back that order: as a decoration I cannot sufficiently value it; if it is a reward—however great it might be, it could not reward my services, they cannot be paid by anything, for they were not to be bought.’

‘But,’ said the Empress, embracing her, and leaving the ribbon, ‘friendship has its claims; surely I am not deprived of them now?’

Princess Dashkov, pleased again, kissed her hand, and the spirits of a girl of eighteen got the upper hand; half a century later she does not forget to add with pleasure: ‘Fancy me in a uniform, with a spur on one high boot, looking like a boy of fifteen, with the red Catherine ribbon across my shoulder.’ The new cavalier galloped back again to Nastya, to show herself to the baby, to be present at her supper, and at last undressing flung herself into bed; but this time, too, sleep fled from her fretted nerves, or terrified her with dreams: the amazing scenes of the preceding days, which she had not merely lived through, but had partly brought about, passed incessantly before her imagination.

The Empress herself did not deny the important share Princess Dashkov had taken in the revolution of the 28th of June; on the contrary, when the wily old Bestuzhev was presented to her, she said to him: ‘Who could have imagined that the daughter of Roman Vorontsov would have helped me to ascend the throne!’

The news of the murder of Peter filled Princess Dashkov with horror and aversion; she was so distressed and revolted by this stain on the ‘revolution which has not cost one drop of blood,’ that she could not bring herself to go next day to the Palace. She omits in her memoirs all the details of the revolting proceeding, in which three officers, one of whom was of gigantic stature, were at work for half an hour stifling with a napkin the poisoned prisoner, as though they could not wait for a quarter of an hour. She assumed that Catherine did not know beforehand of Alexey Orlov’s design;[54] it is more probable that she simply had no idea of the connivance of Catherine, who could carefully conceal her wishes. Not only Panin and the other conspirators knew nothing of her intrigue with Grigory Orlov, but, as we have just seen, Princess Dashkov had not suspected it.

Catherine perceived what was in the latter’s heart, and when she saw her began to speak with horror of what had happened.

‘Yes, your Majesty,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘this death has come too quickly and too soon for your fame and for mine.’

As she walked through the drawing-room, she said in a loud voice before every one that, of course, Alexey Orlov would spare her his acquaintance. For over twenty-five years they did not bow nor say a word to each other.

It is very possible that Catherine had not given instructions to murder Peter. Alexander went further: he positively insisted that they should not _kill_ Paul, when he sent a gang of the rebel nobles to him. We know from Shakespeare how these orders are given by a glance, a hint, a silence. Why did Catherine entrust the care of the pusillanimous Peter to his worst enemies? Passek and Baskakov had meant to kill him several days before the 27th of June, and did not she know that? And why were the murderers so shamelessly rewarded?

Princess Dashkov quotes in Catherine’s defence a letter from Orlov, written immediately after the murder, which the Empress showed her. This letter, she says, bore unmistakable traces of uneasiness, distress, consternation, and tipsiness. It was preserved by the Empress in a special case, together with other important documents. After her death Paul ordered Prince Bezborodka to go through these papers in his presence; when they got to this letter, Paul read it aloud to the Tsarina in the presence of Madame Nelidov.[55] Then he ordered Rastoptchin to read it aloud to the Grand Dukes.

I have heard what the letter contained from a trustworthy man who had read it himself; it was in this style: ‘Little Mother, Empress, how am I to tell you what we have done! such a misfortune has happened! We came to see your husband, and were drinking with him; you know what he is like when he is drunk; word followed word. He so insulted us that we came to blows. All of a minute he dropped dead. What is to be done? Take our heads if you like, or, merciful Little Mother, think that what is done cannot be undone, and overlook our offence.’[56]

Princess Dashkov, carried away by her love for Catherine, believed, or professed to believe, that Mirovitch,[57] too, acted without her knowledge; and the worst, most disgraceful and loathsome story of her whole reign, the abduction by Alexey Orlov and De Ribasse of Princess Tarakanov,[58] she does not mention at all.

It was, among other things, because she believed and wanted to believe in the ideal Catherine that she could not maintain herself in favour. And she would have been a splendid minister. Though indisputably gifted with political insight, she had besides her enthusiastic temperament two great defects which hindered her from making a career: she could not be silent, her tongue was sharp and biting, and it spared no one except Catherine; moreover, she was too proud, and she could not, and would not, conceal her antipathies—in short, she could not ‘abase her personality,’ as the Moscow Old Believers express it.

As a matter of fact, a friendship between Catherine and Princess Dashkov was impossible. Catherine wanted not only to be sovereign by the Imperial power, but to rule over every one in the world by her genius and her beauty; she wanted to attract the attention of all to herself alone; she had an insatiable desire to please. She was still in the full flower of her beauty, but she was thirty. She could probably have borne to have about her a weak woman, lost in the radiance of her glory and adoring her, not very handsome and not very clever. But she could not endure at her side the vigorous Princess Dashkov, who spoke of _her own fame_, with her wit, her fire, and her nineteen years.

She withdrew herself from her with the rapidity of truly royal ingratitude. In Moscow, after the Coronation, the old sinner Bestuzhev proposed writing an address to the Empress, and begging her, in the name of all her subjects, to take another husband. Grigory Orlov, who had already been created a prince of the Empire, dreamed of being Tsar. This roused the indignation of all decent people. Chancellor Vorontsov asked for an audience, and warned Catherine, on the supposition that she did not know what was being done. Catherine was surprised, and wanted to reprimand Bestuzhev.

Hitrov, one of the devoted conspirators of the 27th of June, loudly declared that he would sooner kill Orlov, or go to the scaffold, than acknowledge him Emperor. It need hardly be said that Princess Dashkov’s voice, too, was heard in the general murmur of displeasure; her words were carried to Catherine. Suddenly one evening, Tyeplov, the secretary of the Empress, came to Prince Dashkov and demanded to see him. The Empress had written him the following note: ‘I sincerely desire not to be compelled to consign to oblivion the services of the Princess Dashkov on account of her imprudent behaviour. Tell her to remember this next time she permits herself an indiscreet freedom of language amounting to threats.’

Princess Dashkov did not answer a word to this letter; she held herself aloof, and after the death of her husband in 1768 asked leave to visit foreign lands. ‘I might very well go without question,’ she said (probably never dreaming that in another eighty years a stupid law would almost completely deprive Russians of the right of crossing the frontier, and still less, that the Government would force every traveller to pay ransom), ‘but my position as a lady of the court lays upon me the obligation to ask the sanction of the Most High.’

Receiving no answer, she went to Petersburg, and at her first reception asked Catherine to allow her to go abroad for the sake of her children’s health.

‘I am very sorry,’ answered Catherine, ‘that such a distressing cause obliges you to go. But, of course, Princess, you are perfectly free to make what arrangements you like.’

Where was the time when they had lain in one bed, under one quilt, and had wept and embraced each other, or, lying on Colonel Kar’s overcoat, had dreamed for a whole night of political reforms?

Abroad Princess Dashkov revived, and became again the same proud, indefatigable, indomitable, active woman, interested in every one and throwing herself into everything.

On the wall in the hotel at Dantzig there hung a big picture representing some battle between Prussians and Russians, in which, of course, the Russians were being beaten. In the foreground there was a group of our soldiers on their knees before the Prussians begging for mercy. Princess Dashkov could not stand this. She induced two Russians to creep by night into the room, with oil-paints and brushes, locked the door, and set to work with her companions to repaint the uniforms, so that by the morning the Prussians were on their knees begging the Russians to spare them. When she had finished the picture, she sent for post-horses, and before the hotel-keeper had grasped the situation, she was racing along the road to Berlin, laughing at the thought of his amazement.

In Hanover she went to the Opera alone with Mlle. Kamensky. They were so unlike the worthy German women that the Prince of Mecklenburg, who was the chief authority in the town, sent to find out who they were. His adjutant went unceremoniously into the box in which there were also two German ladies, and asked our Russians whether they were not foreigners. Princess Dashkov said ‘Yes.’

‘His Highness,’ added the adjutant, ‘wishes to know with whom I have the honour of speaking.’

‘Our name,’ answered Princess Dashkov, ‘can be of no interest either to you or to the Duke; as women we have the right not to say who we are, and not to answer your question.’

The adjutant went away in confusion. The German ladies, who had from the first felt involuntary respect for our ladies, gazed at them with awe when they heard Princess Dashkov’s valiant answer. Seeing that the Germans took them for very great ladies, Princess Dashkov, turning courteously to them, said that though she would not answer the Prince’s impudent question, she had no reason to conceal from them her identity. ‘I am an opera-singer, and my friend is a dancer; we are both out of a job, and on the look-out for a good engagement.’ The German ladies opened their eyes wide, blushed to their ears, and not only abandoned their polite attentions, but tried so far as the size of the box permitted to sit with their backs turned on them.

In Paris Princess Dashkov was surrounded by all the celebrities and made friends with all of them except Rousseau; him she would not go to see on account of his hypocritical humility and affected originality. Diderot, on the other hand, became an intimate friend, spent whole evenings _tête-à-tête_ with her, and discussed everything under the sun with her. Princess Dashkov proved to him that serfdom was not so bad as was supposed, trapped him into contradictory statements, and the susceptible Diderot was ready to agree with her instantly.

A servant came in and announced that Madame Necker[59] and Madame Geoffrin[60] had arrived. ‘Don’t receive them!’ cried Diderot, without asking Princess Dashkov’s wishes; ‘say that she is not at home.’

‘There is not a better woman in the world than Madame Geoffrin, but she is the greatest gossip in Paris; I positively won’t have her talking all sorts of nonsense about you before she has time to know you properly. I won’t have blasphemy against my idol.’ And Princess Dashkov sent word that she was unwell.

Rulhière,[61] who was writing about Russia and the year 1762, also urgently wished to see her. Diderot would not have him received either: he wanted to keep Princess Dashkov to himself.

In London Princess Dashkov made the acquaintance of Paoli, but she did not like his ‘Italian grimaces,’ which were unbecoming in a great man. In Geneva she visited Voltaire and marvelled at him, though she could not help laughing with some doctor over the way Voltaire lost his temper at losing a game of draughts, and at the killing faces he made. The doctor, observing that it was not only Voltaire who could make such faces, bade his dog lift up his head, and Princess Dashkov could not control her laughter at the extraordinary resemblance. From Geneva she went to Spa; there she made great friends with Mrs. Hamilton[62] and, when she parted from her, romantically swore to come again in five years to see her, if they did not meet before, and, what was even more romantic, actually came.

The feeling of the most ardent, most active affection was almost the strongest emotion in this proud and strong-willed woman. Deeply wounded by Catherine’s treatment of her,[63] she looked prematurely old. Diderot says that she looked nearly forty, though she was at that time twenty-seven. Whether she loved any man after her husband’s death, or was beloved by one, is not to be seen from her Memoirs; but it may be said for certain that no man played a significant part in her life. After Catherine she attached herself, with all the ardour of a hungry heart, to Mrs. Hamilton. And in her old age an infinitely tender motherly affection brought warmth into her life; I am speaking of Miss Wilmot, who edited her Memoirs.

From Spa she went back to Moscow to the house of her sister, Madame Polyansky; this sister, with her humble, prosaic name, was no other than the notorious ‘Romanovna,’ who, if she had not been Madame Polyansky, might easily have been Empress of all the Russias.

The clouds which had overcast Princess Dashkov’s sky were beginning to clear away. The influence of the Orlovs had waned. The Empress, hearing of her arrival, sent her sixty thousand roubles to buy an estate.

But the princess was utterly unable to get on with the favourites, and there was no real intimacy between her and the court. Now she began to be deeply absorbed in the education of her son; an ardent admirer of England and English institutions, she made up her mind to go with her son to Edinburgh. Moreover, she saw that she was completely superfluous in the Winter Palace.

While she was preparing for this journey she betrothed her daughter to Shtcherbinin. On the way to the estate of the young man’s brother, to which she was going with the whole party, a servant fell off the box, and three sledges passed over him; he was badly hurt and stunned; he had to be bled, but how? Princess Dashkov had with her a case of surgical instruments bought in London; she took out a lancet, but no one would undertake to use it; the injured man lay unaided until, overcoming an intense feeling of disgust, she opened his vein, and after successfully performing the operation, almost sank into a swoon herself.

In Edinburgh she was soon surrounded by the leading celebrities, Robertson, Blair, Adam Smith, Fergusson. She wrote long letters to Robertson, and explained to him in detail her plan of education; she wanted her son, who was at that time fourteen, to complete his studies in two years and a half, and then, after making a tour of the whole of Europe, to go into the Service.

Robertson presumed that he would need four years; the mother thought that was too much. She wrote out in detail what her son knew already, and what he must know.

‘_Languages_:

Latin.—The initial difficulties are overcome.

English.—The prince has a very good understanding of prose, and to some extent of verse.

German.—He understands it perfectly.

French.—He knows like his mother tongue.

‘_Literature_: He is familiar with the best classical works. His taste is more formed than is common at his age. He has an excessive tendency to be critical, which is perhaps his only defect.

‘_Mathematics_: A very important branch of study. He has been fairly successful in the solution of advanced problems, but I should like him to go further in algebra.

‘_Civil and Military Architecture_: I want him to make a particular study of these subjects.

‘_History and Political Institutions_: He has a knowledge of general history, and particularly of Germany, England, and France, but he ought to go through a course of history more in detail; he can study it at home with a tutor.

‘Now this is what I want him to study: 1. Logic and the Philosophy of Reasoning. 2. Experimental Physics. 3. A little Chemistry. 4. Philosophy and Natural History. 5. Natural Law, International Law, public and private Law in its application to the legal systems of European nations. 6. Ethics. 7. Politics.’

This extensive programme she divides into five sessions, and then, as always, carries it out exactly. Her son passed his M.A. examination in 1779; it is commonly said that she exhausted him, and, certainly, he never did anything; moreover, he died very young, but whether his education is to blame for that it is hard to say.

After the examination Princess Dashkov went at once to Ireland, queened it in Dublin society, and composed church music, which was sung in the Chapel of Magdalen in the presence of a vast concourse of people, ‘desirous,’ as she expresses it, ‘of hearing how the bears of the North compose.’ Probably it was a successful experiment, for later on she was busy negotiating with David Garrick for the performance on the stage of her musical works. She was also writing long instructions to her son in the style of the counsels of Polonius concerning the conduct of his travels....

From England she went to Holland; in Haarlem she went to see a doctor of her acquaintance, and there met Prince Orlov, by now married and out of favour. The same day Orlov came to call on her, and just at dinner-time. His visit was to Princess Dashkov ‘as unexpected as it was disagreeable.’

‘I have come to you not as an enemy, but as a friend and ally,’ said Orlov, sitting down in a low chair. Then followed a silence on both sides. He looked intently at young Dashkov, and observed: ‘Your son is enrolled in the Cuirassiers, and I am in command of a regiment of the Horse Guards; if you like, I will ask the Empress to transfer him to my regiment; that will give him promotion.’

Princess Dashkov thanked him for his kind suggestion, but said that she could not take advantage of his offer, because she had already written on his behalf to Prince Potyomkin, and did not want without good reason to do anything in opposition to him.

‘What could there be disagreeable to him in it?’ asked Orlov, feeling the sting of this. ‘However, as you please; you may rely on me; your son will make a great career; it would be hard to find a _handsomer_ young man.’

The mother flushed crimson with anger, and the conversation dropped. But at the next meeting Orlov, addressing young Dashkov, said: ‘What a pity that I shall not be in Petersburg when you arrive! I am certain that you will oust the present favourite as soon as you appear at court; I should be pleased to carry out my present duties—comforting the forsaken.’

Beside herself with indignation, Princess Dashkov sent her son out of the room, and told Orlov that she thought it extremely improper to speak to a boy of seventeen in that way, and that in so doing Orlov was compromising the Empress, whom she had brought her son up to respect; that, as for favourites, she begged him to remember that she had never known and never recognised one of them.

After that they parted. Orlov went to Switzerland, Princess Dashkov to Paris. Then we meet her inspecting the French fortresses with her son and Colonel Samoylov, by special permission of Maréchal de Biron.[64] From France she went to Italy, and there was completely absorbed in pictures and statues, cameos and antiques, bought a picture of Angelica Kauffmann’s as a present for the Empress, went to see the Pope and Abbé Galiani,[65] and finally returned to Russia through Vienna.

In Vienna she had a heated argument with Kaunitz, with whom she was dining. He called Peter the Great the political creator of Russia; Princess Dashkov observed that this was a European misconception. Kaunitz was not ready to yield his point; she was even less so. She admitted that Peter had done a very great deal for Russia, but thought that the material was ready, and that, together with his masterly use of it, he had inhumanly oppressed and distorted it.

‘If he had really been a great statesman, he would by his intercourse with other nations, and by trade, have gained without haste what he attained by violence and cruelty. The nobility and the serfs were both left worse off through his unbridled passion for innovations; from the latter he took the protective tribunal to which alone they could appeal in case of oppression, from the former he took all their privileges. And to what end was it all? To clear the way for a military despotism, that is, for the very worst of all existing forms of government. From simple vanity he was in such a hurry to build Petersburg that he sent thousands of workmen to die in the marshes. He not only forced the landowners to provide a certain number of peasants, but compelled them to build themselves houses according to his own plans, without asking whether they needed them. One of his principal buildings, the Admiralty and Docks, which cost immense sums, was constructed on the bank of a river which no human efforts could make navigable even for merchant vessels, much less for ships of the Navy.’

‘However,’ observed Kaunitz, ‘no one can help being touched at the sight of a monarch learning shipbuilding with the axe in his hand.’

The ruthless lady would not let this pass. ‘Your Excellency,’ she answered, ‘is doubtless joking. Who can know better than you how precious is a monarch’s time, and whether he has the leisure to practise a handicraft? Peter I. was in a position to command the services not only of shipbuilders, but even of admirals. To my mind, when he was wasting time in Saardam working with the axe and learning the slang of the Dutch market, and sailors’ words with which he distorted the Russian language, he was simply neglecting his duty.’

I foresee how the good Orthodox souls of our Moscow Slavophils will rejoice at reading these words; they certainly ought, on days for commemorating the dead, to keep the memory of our princess with pancakes and lenten oil.

Joseph II. was ill, and wanted Princess Dashkov to remain a few days longer, but she had received an invitation from Frederick II. for herself and her son to be present at his manœuvres. She had, however, an informal interview with Joseph II. in the study he devoted to natural history.

A week later Princess Dashkov was at the manœuvres at which Frederick II. drilled forty-two thousand men, and to which he had never before admitted women, but she was specially invited. The Prussian Princess herself drove to fetch her, brought her to the spot where the King was to meet her, and asked her to get out of the carriage, saying: ‘Dear Princess, as I have not the slightest desire to see the old grumbler, I will drive on,’ and Princess Dashkov was left to an innocent _tête-à-tête_ with Frederick II., who took her and her son with him to a military inspection of the provinces.

In July 1782 she returned to Petersburg. The Empress appointed her President of the Academy of Science. Princess Dashkov was apparently for the first time in her life disconcerted, and wanted to decline the honour. She wrote a sharp letter to the Empress, and at twelve o’clock at night drove with it to Potyomkin. Potyomkin had gone to bed; however, he received her. He read the letter, tore it up and threw it on the floor, but, seeing that she was angry, said to her: ‘Here are pen and paper, by all means write it again; only, it is all nonsense; why do you refuse? The Empress has been full of the idea for the last two days. In that position you will be frequently seeing her, and the fact is, to tell the truth, she is dying of boredom, perpetually surrounded by fools.’

Potyomkin’s eloquence overcame her opposition; she went to the Senate to take the oath for her new duties, and from that moment became a consummate president. She asked old Euler, the great mathematician, to introduce her at the assembled Academy; she wanted to appear under the aegis of learning before the academicians. She presented herself to them not in silence, as Russian presidents usually do, but with a speech, after which, seeing that the first place next the president was occupied by Stehlin,[66] she turned to Euler and said: ‘Sit where you prefer; whatever place you occupy will be the first.’

Then with her habitual energy she set to work to eradicate abuses, that is, thefts; she increased the number of the pupils, improved the printing-press, and finally proposed to the Empress the founding of a Russian Academy. Catherine appointed her president of this new academy too. Again Princess Dashkov made a speech. ‘You all know, gentlemen,’ she said, among other things, ‘the wealth and splendour of our language. The powerful eloquence of Cicero, the measured grandeur of Virgil, the fascinating charm of Demosthenes, and the light language of Ovid, translated into Russian, lose nothing of their beauties.... But we are without exact rules, the limits and meanings of words have not been defined, and many foreign phrases have crept into our language,’ and therefore she proposed that the Russian Academy should work at a grammar and dictionary of the language. She herself prepared to share the labours of the academicians, and did, in fact, work at the dictionary. The Empress seemed to be pleased with her. Her energy at this period was amazing. She undertook the publication of special geographical maps of the different provinces, and edited the periodical, _Lovers of the Russian Language_, to which the Empress herself, Von Vizin, Derzhavin, and others contributed.

Her relations with the Empress were unmistakably improved. A correspondence sprang up between them again; the letters deal with a review they were publishing and various literary subjects. These letters, which are of little general interest, are a striking proof of the degree to which good manners, culture, and humanity have since sunk in the Winter Palace. Catherine gives no orders, does not command in her notes, does not confine herself to set forms, is not afraid of jesting; she has confidence in herself, and the Empress often gives way to the woman of intelligence. The Prussian Gatchina tone, translated into official red tape by Nicholas, has replaced with brutal illiteracy the gentleness of cultured language.

All would have been well if only Princess Dashkov could have kept on good terms with the favourites; she got on better with Potyomkin than with any of the rest, perhaps because Potyomkin was the cleverest of them; with Lanskoy, and afterwards with Manonov, she was at daggers drawn. Zubov gossiped spitefully against her, and did her a great deal of mischief.

In the summer of 1783 she was in Finland with the Empress, who had an interview there with the King of Sweden. Lanskoy kept pestering her to know why in the news published under the auspices of the Academy her name was the only one mentioned of the persons who were with the Empress. Princess Dashkov explained to him that it was not her doing at all, that the Court news was sent and printed without alteration. Lanskoy went on sulking and grumbling till she was sick of it.

‘You ought to know,’ she said to him, ‘that, though it is always an honour and a happiness to me to dine with the Empress, I cannot really be so much overwhelmed by it as to publish it in the papers. I am too much accustomed to it; as a little child I used to dine on the Empress Elizabeth’s knee, as a little girl I sat at her table; it is so natural that it could not be a matter for boasting to me.’

Lanskoy grew heated, but Princess Dashkov, seeing that the room was beginning to fill up, raised her voice, and said: ‘Sir, people whose whole life has been devoted to the public welfare are not always particularly powerful or happy, but they always have the right to insist on being treated without insolence. They quietly go their own way and outlive those meteors of a day which burst and fall, leaving no trace.’

The doors were flung open and the Empress walked in. Her arrival put an end to the conversation. How could Lanskoy fail to hate her? It was as well for her that he died soon after.

On her return from Finland Princess Dashkov received her friend, Mrs. Hamilton, to stay with her. She took her to her new estate; there she kept a village holiday, met with bread and salt the peasants newly settled there, introduced them to the Englishwoman, and informed them that henceforth the new village would be called Hamiltonovo. After this she travelled with her to other estates in the provinces of Kaluga, Smolensk, Kiev, and Tambov.

The following year Princess Dashkov received a cruel blow in her personal life. Her son was in Rumyantsev’s army, and she was glad that he was not in Petersburg. Latterly even Potyomkin had designs upon him. He once sent Samoylov to fetch him late one evening, and Samoylov gave the mother a hint of their project. She refused to have anything to do with it, and said that if it happened she would take advantage of her son’s influence to obtain leave of absence abroad for many years. For this reason she was relieved that her son was away in Kiev. But there love had another arrow in store for him, aimed not from above, but from below.

One day, as she came out of the Empress’s bedroom, she met Rebinder, who warm-heartedly congratulated her on her son’s marriage. She was thunderstruck. Rebinder was disconcerted; he had had no idea that young Dashkov’s wedding was a secret. She was wounded in her motherly feelings and in her pride; on the one hand, the _mésalliance_, on the other, the lack of confidence. It was a heavy blow, it made her ill.

Two months later her son wrote her a letter, asking for her permission to marry; this was a fresh blow—falsity, cowardice, deceit. Moreover, he had so little understanding of his mother’s character that together with his own letter he sent one from Field-Marshal Rumyantsev obviously written at his request. Rumyantsev tried to persuade Princess Dashkov to sanction her son’s marriage, spoke of the prejudices of aristocratic birth and of the instability of fortune, and, in her words, ‘reached such a pitch of futility as to give advice in a matter of such gravity between mother and son, though nothing in their relations gave him a right to meddle.’

Wounded on two sides at once, she wrote a sarcastic letter to Rumyantsev, in which she explained to him that, ‘among the various foolish ideas with which her head was filled, there was happily no exaggerated respect for aristocratic birth; but that, if she had been endowed with such remarkable eloquence as the Count, she would have used it to show the superiority of good breeding over bad.’

To her son her letter was strikingly simple; here it is: ‘When your father intended to marry a Countess Vorontsov, he drove post-haste to Moscow to ask his mother’s sanction. You are married; I knew this before you wrote, and I know, too, that my mother-in-law had done no more to deserve to have a friend in her son than I have.’

The discussions that followed this and other family affairs must have cost her much mortification. Her daughter parted from her husband. Miss Wilmot has omitted several pages in the Memoirs, after which Princess Dashkov goes on like this: ‘All was black in the future and the present.... I was so worn out by suffering that I was at times visited by the thought of suicide.’

And so the demon of family troubles crushed her, as it has crushed many strong characters. Family misfortunes wound so deeply, because they steal upon one in silence and to combat them is almost impossible. Victory in the struggle makes it worse. They are like those poisons whose presence is only recognised when their effect is shown in pain, that is, when the man is already saturated with them.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution had come. Catherine, who was growing old, worn out by a life of vice, threw herself into reaction. This was no longer the conspirator of the 27th of June, who said to Betsky: ‘I reign by the will of God and the election of the people,’ not the Petersburg correspondent of Voltaire and the translator of Beccaria and Filangier,[67] who proclaimed in her famous _Nakaz_[68] the evils of the censorship and the advantage of an assembly of deputies from the whole realm of Russia. In 1792 we find her an old woman afraid of thought, a worthy mother of Paul.... And like a pledge that a savage reaction would crush for long years every branch of free development in Russia, Nicholas was born before her death. Catherine’s dying hand was still there to caress this awful monster who was destined to cry _Halt!_ to the epoch of Peter’s reforms, and to delay the progress of Russia for thirty years.

Princess Dashkov, an aristocrat and an admirer of English institutions, could not sympathise with the Revolution; but still less could she share the feverish terror of free speech and applaud the punishment of thought.

Catherine was alarmed by Radishtchyev’s pamphlet;[69] she saw in it the ‘signal of revolution.’ Radishtchyev was seized and sent without trial to Siberia. Princess Dashkov’s brother, Alexandr Vorontsov, who loved Radishtchyev, and had been a benefactor to him, retired from the Service and went to Moscow.

Her own turn came next. Knyazhnin’s[70] widow asked her, for the benefit of her children, to publish under the auspices of the Academy her husband’s last tragedy. The subject was taken from the history of the subjugation of Novgorod. Princess Dashkov directed that it should be published. Field-Marshal Saltykov, ‘who,’ as she says, ‘could not be charged with ever having read a book of any sort,’ read this one and talked to Zubov of its pernicious tendency. Zubov spoke to the Empress about it.

Next day the Petersburg police-master arrived at the Academy bookshop to seize the copies of the Jacobin Knyazhnin’s inflammatory tragedy; and in the evening the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, came himself to tell Princess Dashkov of the Empress’s displeasure at the publication of the dangerous play. Princess Dashkov answered coldly that probably no one had read the tragedy, and that it was certainly less pernicious than the French plays which were being performed at the Hermitage.

The ex-liberal Catherine met her with a frowning face. ‘What have I done,’ she asked her, ‘that you publish such dangerous books against me and my authority?’

‘And does your Majesty really think that?’ the princess asked.

‘That tragedy ought to have been burnt by the hand of the hangman.’

‘Whether it is burnt by the hand of the hangman or not is no concern of mine. I shall not have to blush for it. But for God’s sake, madam, before you decide on an action so opposed to your character, read the whole play.’

At that the conversation ended. Next day Princess Dashkov attended a great court reception, and made up her mind that if the Empress did not send for her to her dressing-room, as she always did, she would resign her post. Samoylov came out from the inner apartments. With a patronising air he went up to Princess Dashkov and told her not to be uneasy, that the Empress was not angry with her.

She could not brook this, and answered, as her habit was, in a loud voice: ‘I have no reason to be uneasy, my conscience is clear. It would greatly distress me if the Empress retained an unjust feeling towards me; but I should not be surprised even then: at my age injustice and misfortune have long ceased to surprise me.’

The Empress was reconciled with her, and tried once more to explain why she had acted as she did. Instead of answering her, Princess Dashkov replied: ‘A grey cat has run between us, madam: let us not awaken her again.’

But Petersburg was becoming distasteful to her; she was sick of it. She felt ‘utterly alone in these surroundings, which became every day more hateful to her.’ This feeling of repulsion was so great that she made up her mind to leave the court, Petersburg, her public activity, her Academy of Science, and her Russian Academy, and finally her Empress, and to go and live on her estate in the country.

‘With deep sorrow I thought of parting, perhaps for ever, from the Sovereign whom I loved passionately, and loved long before she was on her throne, when she had less means of bestowing benefits on me than I found occasions for serving her. I still loved her, although she did not always treat me as her own heart, her own brain, would have prompted her.’

That is all! Not one word of anger, of condemnation for complete lack of heart, for ingratitude; even here she gives us to understand that it was not Catherine’s fault, but other people’s.

The parting of these women was remarkable. The Empress said to her drily, and with an angry face: ‘I wish you a good journey.’ Princess Dashkov was amazed; she did not understand it, and went away after kissing her hand. Next morning Troshtchinsky, the Secretary of the Empress, arrived, and in her name handed the princess an unpaid bill, the unpaid bill of a tailor who had done work for Shtcherbinin. The Empress sent word that she was surprised that the princess should leave Petersburg without carrying out her promise to pay her daughter’s debts. Zubov, who hated Princess Dashkov, and was a patron of the tailor’s, had carried these paltry details to the Empress. To crown it all, it appeared that the bill had nothing to do with her daughter, but had been incurred by her husband, Shtcherbinin, who was living apart from her.

Princess Dashkov, utterly revolted at this humiliation, firmly resolved to leave Petersburg for ever.

But people of her temperament do not fold their hands at a little over fifty, in the full possession of their faculties. She became a capital manager of her estates; she built houses, drew maps, and laid out parks. There was not a tree nor a bush in her garden which she had not planted or to which she had not at least assigned its position. She built four houses, and says with pride that her peasants were among the most prosperous in the neighbourhood. While she was engaged in these rustic pursuits, Serpuhovsky, the Marshal of the Nobility, suddenly arrived, looking distressed.

‘What is the matter with you?’ she asked.

‘Don’t you know?’ answered the Marshal; ‘the Empress is dead.’

Princess Dashkov’s daughter rushed to her, thinking that she would faint. ‘No, no, don’t worry about me,’ said her mother; ‘I am quite well, though it would be happiness to die at this moment. My fate is worse; I am destined to see all the reforms that had been begun destroyed, and my country ruined and unhappy.’

With these words she fell into convulsions, and gave way to prolonged grief.

It was not long before she felt the heavy, weighty, autocratic hand of Peter’s crazy son.[71] First she received a decree discharging her from her post; she asked the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, to testify to the Tsar her gratitude for relieving her from the burden which had become too great for her strength.

A little later she went to Moscow, but the Governor-General of Moscow called on her at once and informed her that she should go back to the country immediately, and there think of the year 1762. She answered, ‘that she never forgot that year, but that in accordance with the Tsar’s will she would think of that time, which had left her neither stings of conscience nor remorse.’

Her brother Alexandr, anxious to soothe her, told her that Paul was doing all this now for the rehabilitation of his father’s memory, but that after his coronation things would go better. On reaching Troitskoye she wrote to him: ‘Dear brother, you write that Paul will leave me in peace after the coronation. Believe me, you are much mistaken in his character. When the tyrant has once struck his victim, he will repeat his blows until he has crushed the victim utterly. The consciousness of innocence and the feeling of indignation serve to give me courage to endure discomfort so long as his growing spite does not assail all of you, my relations, also. Of one thing you may rest assured, that no circumstances will compel me to do anything or say anything to demean myself.

‘Examining my past life,’ she adds, ‘I am not without inner consolation, aware in myself of sufficient strength of character, tested by many calamities, to feel certain that I shall find again strength to endure misfortune.’

She correctly gauged the character of the relentless, petty, frenzied tyrant. Only a few days after she had reached Troitskoye, a courier from the Governor-General arrived from Moscow. Paul commanded Princess Dashkov to go at once to her son’s estate in a remote district of the Novgorod Province, and there to await his further commands.

She answered that she was ready to obey the Sovereign’s will, and that it was a matter of complete indifference to her where she ended her days, but that she knew nothing of the estate nor of the roads thither, that she would have to write from Moscow either for her son’s steward or for a peasant from that village to guide her by the cross-country roads.

When she was ready and had obtained a guide, she drove off into her exile in the winter frost, travelling slowly with her own horses, surrounded by the spies of Arharov, and accompanied by her kind-hearted kinsman, Laptyev, whom she tried in vain to dissuade from coming and exposing himself to the persecution of the frenzied autocrat.

But as the foremost symptom of madness is inconsistency, she was here mistaken: when it was reported to Paul that Laptyev had accompanied her, he said: ‘He is not such a petticoat as our young men; he knows how to wear the breeches.’

As a rule far more value is attached to such momentary flashes of humane feeling in Paul and others than they deserve. What would Paul have done if all the young men had known ‘how to wear the breeches’ like Laptyev? he had plenty of Arharovs, Araktcheyevs, and Obolyaninovs to torture them, fetter them in chains, and send them into exile. (Pahlen and Bennigsen[72] did show him, however, that there was an even better way to ‘wear the breeches’!)

This approbation of the victim is the final outrage on him, the miscreant sets his conscience at rest with it. On one occasion, in the presence of Ségur, Potyomkin gave some colonel a blow, and, recollecting himself, said to the ambassador: ‘How is one to treat them differently when they put up with everything?’

And what would Potyomkin’s answer have been, if the colonel had given him a blow or a challenge?

Princess Dashkov settled in a peasant’s hut. She took another for her daughter, and a third as a kitchen. To add to the discomforts of this life in the wilds in winter, exiles from Petersburg to Siberia were brought by her windows. The figure of one young officer haunted her long afterwards; he was some distant relative of hers. Learning that she was here, he wanted to see her. Risky as such an interview was, she received him. She was shocked to see the convulsive twitching of his face, and how ill he looked; this was the result of the tortures in which his limbs had been twisted and dislocated. What had this criminal done? He had said something about Paul in the barracks, and some one had informed against him. Yet perhaps he, too, knew how to ‘wear the breeches,’ till his arms were wrenched out of their sockets.

Before the spring flooding of the rivers, which would have cut off Princess Dashkov from all communication for a long period, she wrote a letter to the Empress Marya Feodorovna, and enclosed in it a request for permission to move to her Kaluga estate. Paul could not have liked the tone of her letter; she said in it that it was as little to her honour to write this letter as it was to her Majesty’s to read it, but that religion and humanity compelled her to make a final effort to save all her people from this cruel exile.

Paul, as usual, flew into a fury, and gave orders that pen and paper should be taken from Princess Dashkov, that she should be forbidden all correspondence, be kept under stricter supervision, and I do not know what else. ‘It is not so easy,’ he said, ‘to turn me off the throne.’ With these orders a courier was despatched, but the Empress and Madame Nelidov induced the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovitch to beg his infuriated father for mercy, and the little boy, with the help of the wife and mistress, succeeded. Paul took up a pen and wrote: ‘Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, since you desire to return to your Kaluga estate, I give you permission for the same. I remain well disposed to you.—PAUL.’

Arharov had to despatch another courier: fortunately the second overtook the first.

In 1798 Paul suddenly took a fancy to Prince Dashkov, showered undeserved favours of all sorts upon him, and made him the present of an estate. Dashkov asked Kurakin to submit to Paul that, instead of an estate, he would prefer permission for his mother to live where she chose. Paul gave the permission with the proviso that she should never remain in the same town where he was.

The mother was forgiven. Now came the son’s turn. A certain Altesti was tried for misappropriation of public money, but really for being a friend of Zubov. Dashkov said to Lopuhin that Altesti was innocent. In the evening he received the following note: ‘Since you meddle in affairs that have nothing to do with you, I have dismissed you from your duties.—PAUL.’

Dashkov, afraid of worse to follow, went off to his Tambov estate.

At last, on the 12th of March 1801, Paul’s life ‘came to an end,’ as Princess Dashkov says. With deep emotion and intense joy she learned that this pernicious man had ceased to exist. ‘How many times,’ she goes on, ‘have I thanked Heaven that Paul exiled me! by so doing he saved me from the humiliating obligation of appearing at the court of such a sovereign.’

She breathed freely again in the reign of Alexander ... she could appear at his court without the loss of her human dignity, but she did not feel at home in the new surroundings. Many things had changed since Catherine had sent her the tailor’s bill. Princess Dashkov, now an old woman, is angry with the younger generation surrounding Alexander, and thinks that they are all Jacobins or martinets.

One pure presence arrested her, and with respectful love, with reverence, she looked upon her and attached herself to her; sorrowful and unappreciated, this melancholy being moved thoughtfully through the halls of the Winter Palace, and vanished like a shadow; she would have been forgotten, if we did not sometimes come across a well-known picture of the year 1815, in which the Emperor Alexander and the Empress Elizabeth are represented as the peacemakers of Europe.

Miss Wilmot has appended to Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs a well-drawn portrait of the Empress Elizabeth; the unhappy woman is standing with her arms folded, she looks out mournfully from the paper, a hidden grief and a sort of perplexity can be seen in her eyes, the whole figure expresses one thought: ‘I am a stranger here’; indeed, she is holding up her skirt and wraps as though on the point of departure.

How strange was her destiny, and that of Anna Pavlovna, the wife of the Tsarevitch!

After the coronation Princess Dashkov saw that there was really no place for her at the new court, and she began making plans for repose at Troitskoye. In her honoured seclusion she again became a power.

Friends and relations, celebrities whose fame was waning, and rising stars visited her.

‘Crossing your threshold I am back in Catherine’s days. Taking no share in the world’s hopes and fears, You at your window stand with mocking gaze To watch at times the flying wheel of change. E’en so, withdrawing from the busy whirl To court the Muses and their idle ease, In porphyry baths and marble palaces, Grandees in Rome endured their world’s decay. And to them from afar the young men came,— Dictator, consul, tribune, warrior chief— To rest in peace, to heave luxurious sighs, Then off at once upon the road again.’

She often visited Moscow. There she was held in the highest respect; active and inexhaustible, she was seen at balls and dinners, and arrived there indeed earlier than any. Young ladies trembled at her criticisms and observations, men sought the honour of being presented to her.

At the other end of Moscow, not far from the Donsky Monastery, another living monument of the reign of Catherine was passing his last days in a palace surrounded by gardens. He led a gloomy life, retaining in spite of his age his athletic frame and savage energy of character. In 1796, with a scowling brow but unrepentant, he carried all over Petersburg the crown of the man whom he had murdered; hundreds of thousands of people pointed the finger at him; his companion, Prince Baryatinsky, turned pale and nearly fainted; old Orlov merely complained of his gout.

But his sombre life was not to pass uncheered. At his side a gentle, tender little girl, exceptionally graceful and talented, was growing up. The haughty old man began to live for her; he became her nurse, petted her, cared for her, waited on her, and loved her beyond all measure, as no one but her dead mother could have loved her.

Sitting on his sofa, he made his daughter dance gipsy and Russian dances, watched her movements with fond tenderness and unspoken pride, sometimes wiping a tear from eyes which had, dry and cold, looked on so many horrors.

At last the time came for the old man to bring his treasure out into the world; but to whom was he to confide her, into what woman’s care was he to entrust this cherished flower? There was, indeed, one woman whom he could have trusted, who with her marvellous tact might have directed her first steps; but they were not on good terms. She had not forgiven him for the stain he had brought on her revolution forty-two years before.

And now the haughty Alexey Orlov, the Orlov of Chesme,[73] whom even Paul could not crush, sought the favour of an interview with Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, and, receiving permission to present his daughter to her, joyfully hastened to take advantage of it and went with his Annushka to see her.

Princess Dashkov came in to greet him; bowing, the old man kissed her hand; both were agitated; at last Princess Dashkov said to him: ‘So many years have passed since we have met, Count, and so many events have transformed the world in which we once lived that, indeed, I feel that we are meeting now as shades in the other world. The presence of this angel’ (she added, feelingly pressing to her bosom the daughter of her former enemy) ‘who has brought us together again makes that feeling even stronger.’ In his delight Orlov kissed the hand of Miss Wilmot, who was afraid of him, in spite of the fact that she calls him ‘a majestic old man,’ and saw with surprise the portrait of Catherine on his breast, framed in nothing but diamonds, and the _heiduks_ standing in the hall, and with them a dwarf dressed like a jester.

The Count invited Princess Dashkov, and gave one of those fabulous banquets of which we used to hear traditions in our childhood, feasts reminiscent of Versailles and the Golden Horde. The gardens were brilliantly lighted up, the house was thrown open, throngs of house-serfs in gorgeous masquerade costumes filled the rooms, an orchestra played, the tables groaned under the viands; in short, a royal banquet. He had some one now to whom to entrust his daughter!

At the height of the festivities, the father called her, the guests formed a circle, and she danced, danced with a shawl and danced with a tambourine in the Russian style. The old father beat time and watched Princess Dashkov’s face; the old lady was pleased, the crowd was silent through respect for the father’s rank and the daughter’s extraordinary grace. ‘She danced,’ says Miss Wilmot, ‘with such simplicity, such natural charm, such dignity and expression, that her movements seemed her language.’

After each dance, she ran to her father and kissed his hand. Princess Dashkov praised her; her father bade her kiss the princess’s hand too. But he fancied that she was overheated, and with his own hands wrapped her in a shawl that she might not take cold. At supper, with a blare of trumpets and kettledrums, the Count, standing, drank the health of Princess Dashkov. Then followed her favourite Russian songs accompanied by a full orchestra. Then the strains of the polka were heard, and Orlov led Princess Dashkov into the drawing-room, where the music of the wind instruments astonished our Irish girl, who had never before heard serfdom put to the service of art. At last Princess Dashkov got up to take leave, and the Count, bowing and kissing her hand, thanked her for honouring his poor house.

This was how Orlov of Chesme celebrated his reconciliation with old Princess Dashkov, and this was how the grim, harsh man loved his daughter.

I, too, like Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, am almost reconciled to him. Savage were the days in which he lived, and savage were his actions; the Russia of Peter’s creation was still in the melting-pot: let us not judge him more severely than Princess Dashkov did, and, if the prayers of parents can do much in the next world, let us forgive Orlov much in this for his love for his daughter.

Her fate, too, was a strange one.

As a boy I saw her once or twice, then I saw her again in 1841 at Novgorod; she was living near the Yurev Monastery. Her whole life was one prolonged, sorrowful penitence for a crime that she had not committed, one prayer for the remission of her father’s sins, one act of atonement for them. She could not overcome the horror inspired in her by the murder of Peter III., and was crushed at the thought of her father’s eternal punishment. All her mind, all her Orlov energy, she fixed on this one object, and little by little abandoned herself completely to gloomy mysticism and superstition. Called by birth, by wealth, and by talent to one of the foremost positions not only in Russia, but in Europe, she spent her days with tedious monks, with old bishops, with all sorts of paralytics, sanctimonious hypocrites, crazy saints. I am told that after 1815 German hereditary princes sought her hand; Alexander showed her marked attention; she withdrew from the court. Her palace grew emptier and emptier, and at last sank into complete silence; neither the clatter of old-fashioned goblets nor the choruses of singers were heard in it, and no one cared about the cherished racehorses. Only the black figures of bearded monks moved gloomily about the garden avenues and looked at the fountains, as though Count Alexey’s funeral were not yet over—and, indeed, the prayer for the repose of his soul still went on.

In the drawing-room, where she had spun and twirled in the gipsy dance in her girlish purity, innocent of the significance of the ardent movements of the Asiatic dance, where smoothly, with downcast eyes, she had danced with modestly raised hand our languid feminine dances, and where her terrible father had gazed at her with tears in his eyes, the bigoted fanatic, Foty,[74] sat now uttering incoherent speeches, and bringing even greater horror into her crushed soul; the daughter of the haughty conqueror of Chesme meekly listened to his sinister words, carefully covering his feet with a shawl, perhaps the very one in which her father had wrapped her!

‘Anna,’ Foty would say, ‘fetch me water,’ and she ran for water. ‘Now sit and listen,’ and she sat and listened. Poor woman!

Her palace and gardens in Moscow she presented to the Tsar. What for? I do not know. The immense estates, the stud-farms, all went to adorn the Yurev Monastery; thither she transferred, too, her father’s coffin; there in a special vault a lamp for ever burned, and a prayer was muttered over him, there her own sarcophagus, still empty when I saw it, was prepared. In the church twilight, the wealth of the Orlovs, transformed into rubies, pearls, and emeralds, glitters mournfully in the settings of ikons and the caps of archimandrites. With them the luckless daughter tried to bribe the Heavenly Judge.

Catherine had robbed the monasteries of their estates and distributed them among the Orlovs and her other lovers. What a nemesis!

Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs fail us about this time. The very details of her interview with Orlov we have taken from the letters of the two Wilmot sisters.

Miss Mary Wilmot, grieving for the loss of her brother and dull at home, received an invitation from Princess Dashkov to spend a year or two with her. Miss Mary did not know the princess personally, but (she was Mrs. Hamilton’s niece) she had from her childhood heard of this wonderful woman, had heard how at eighteen she had been at the head of a conspiracy, how she had dashed on horseback before revolting troops, how afterwards she had lived in England and stayed in Ireland, had been President of the Academy, and had written passionate letters to Mrs. Hamilton. The young girl imagined her something fantastic, ‘a fairy and partly a witch,’ and for that very reason decided, in 1803, to go to her.

When she reached Troitskoye, however, she felt so scared and homesick that she would have been glad to return if it had been possible.

A short old lady, in a long dark cloth dress with a star on the left side, and something like a peaked hat, came to meet her. Round her neck she had a shabby old kerchief—one damp evening, when out for a walk, twenty years earlier, Mrs. Hamilton had given her that kerchief, and from that time forward she had kept it as a holy relic. But if her attire really was suggestive of a witch, the noble features of her face and the expression of infinite tenderness in her eyes fascinated the Irish girl from the first moment. ‘There was so much truth, so much warmth, dignity, and simplicity in her manner, that I loved her before she said anything.’

Miss Mary was completely under her influence from the first day, was surprised at it, and angry with herself, but could not resist the attraction of the splendid old lady. She liked everything in her, even her broken English, which gave something childlike to her words. ‘Tears and life,’ she says, ‘have given serenity and softness to her features, and their expression of pride, of which slight traces still remain, has been replaced by indulgence.’

But how Princess Dashkov loved her! She loved her passionately, as she had once loved Catherine. Such freshness of feeling, such feminine tenderness, such craving for love, such youthfulness of heart, are astounding at sixty. The solicitude of a mother, the solicitude of a sister, a lover, are what Miss Mary found at Troitskoye; for her entertainment Princess Dashkov went to Moscow, took her to balls, showed her monasteries, presented her to Empresses, adorned her room with flowers, spent evenings with her reading the letters of Catherine and other celebrities.

Miss Wilmot begged and besought her to write her Memoirs. ‘And what I would never do for my relatives or my friends, I am doing for her.’

She wrote her Memoirs for her, and dedicated them to her.

In 1805 Princess Dashkov invited Miss Mary’s sister, Miss Katharine, who was then in France and was obliged to leave that country, being persecuted as an Englishwoman. The sisters were not in the least alike. Mary was a soft, tender creature, delighted to have some one to protect her, and to nestle under some one’s wing; she attached herself to Princess Dashkov, as the weak twig to a strong old tree; she calls her ‘my Russian mother’; she came to her from a little town, and had seen nothing before except her ‘Emerald Isle.’ Her sister, who had lived in Paris, was lively and hot-tempered, independent in her opinions, clever and ironical, not particularly loving or tolerant, and rather free in her speech. Moreover, there was a great deal in Russia that she positively disliked—and so her letters have for us a special interest of their own.

‘Russia,’ she says, ‘is like a girl of twelve—wild and awkward, who has been dressed up in a fashionable Parisian hat. We are living here in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.’[75]

She was far more shocked by serfdom than her kind-hearted sister. In vain Princess Dashkov pointed out to her the prosperity of her peasants.

‘They are well off,’ writes Miss Katharine, ‘while the princess lives, but what will happen to them afterwards?’ Every landowner seems to her an iron link in the fetters of Russia.

In the pitiful cringing, the shameless servility of our society she very correctly sees the reflection of slavery. With amazement she sees again in assembly halls and drawing-rooms slaves devoid of all moral feeling and personal dignity. She is astonished at visitors who dare not sit down, and stand for hours at a time at the door, shifting from one foot to the other, till they are dismissed with a nod. ‘The conceptions of good and evil are in Russia mixed up with the idea of being in favour or out of favour. A man’s worth is easily ascertained from the address calendar, and it depends on the Tsar whether a man is unreservedly taken for a snake or an ass.’

The Moscow grandees did not overawe her with the galaxy of their stars, with their ponderous dignity and boring dinners.

‘I feel,’ she writes after the festivities of 1806, ‘that I have been floating all this time among the shades and spirits of Catherine’s palace. Moscow is the imperial political Elysium of Russia. All the personages of power and authority in the reigns of Catherine and Paul, who have long ago been succeeded by others, retire into the luxurious idleness of this lazy city, maintaining a supposed consequence which is allowed them out of courtesy. Influence and power have passed years ago to another generation; nevertheless, the _oberkammerherr_ of the Empress Catherine, Prince Golitsyn, is still hung all over with orders and decorations under the burden of which his ninety years are weighed down to the ground; still, as in the palace of Catherine, a diamond key is tied to his skeleton, which is dressed in an embroidered kaftan, and he still majestically accepts tokens of respect from his companion shades who once shared power and honour with him.

‘By his side is another gaudy _revenant_, Count Osterman, once the great Chancellor; he is hung with ribbons of every possible colour, red, blue, and striped; eighty-three years are piled upon his head, but still he drives his skeleton about with the bones rattling behind a team of six horses, dines with _heiduks_ waiting at his table, and keeps up the solemn etiquette by which he was surrounded when he was in power.’ Among the shades she saw, too, Count Alexey Orlov.

‘The hand that murdered Peter III. is studded with diamonds, among his gifts from royalty the portrait of the Empress is particularly conspicuous; Catherine smiles from it in everlasting gratitude.’

Miss Wilmot mentions, too, Korsakov, ‘who might have been taken for a glittering vision of diamonds,’ Prince Baryatinsky and some other figures from this world of the past, ‘from which they have retained the habit of court gossip about important nonentities, haughtiness, vanity, and the empty bustle in which they find their joy and their sorrow.’

And she concludes with indignation: ‘And yet the open coffin stands at their tottering feet threatening to consign their paltry existences to speedy oblivion.’

‘All these old grandees are surrounded by wives, daughters, and granddaughters, dressed up to the nines, and sitting in gilded apartments, in patriarchal fashion making their maids dance for their amusement, and incessantly regaling one on jam. There is something French in their appearance, and, being brought up by Frenchwomen, they speak that language well and dress in the latest Parisian mode. But there is very little real politeness in these ladies; their education is absolutely superficial, and there is not a trace here of the charming lightness of French society. When a Moscow lady has scanned you from head to foot and kissed you five or six times (though twice, one would think, would be more than enough), has assured you of her everlasting affection, told you to your face that you are sweet and charming, asked you the price of everything you have got on, and babbled about the coming ball at the Hall of the Nobility, she has nothing more to say.’

Both sisters were greatly shocked by the vulgar habit of wearing other people’s diamonds at balls. Moreover, every one knew whose they were; thus a Princess Golitsyn used to lend her friends a girdle of diamonds and a headdress of marvellous beauty that was known to the whole town. On one occasion she adorned the shoulders of a niece of Princess Dashkov’s with her jewels; the young lady had completely forgotten that the princess was to be present; the stern and implacable old lady, it need hardly be said, detested these displays of other people’s wealth. The young lady was so terrified at the sight of Princess Dashkov that she kept out of sight all the evening. But the fatal hour of supper arrived; Miss Mary, feeling cold, put on her shawl; this struck the young lady as a way of salvation, and she took hers to conceal the rivers of diamonds from Princess Dashkov. They sat down, the aunt opposite; the soup tureen screened the niece a little, but her headdress burnt her like fire. Princess Dashkov stared at it. Red patches came out on the poor girl’s face and tears came into her eyes. The princess said not a word.

The sisters, who in many ways disagreed over people and incidents, are completely at one whenever Princess Dashkov is spoken of. Miss Katharine’s sarcastic pen loses all its venom when writing of the princess. We have put her description of her at the beginning of this account. In it she has shown least appreciation of the tender, womanly side, for which love was a necessity. This side of her nature was far better understood by Miss Mary, and yet she abandoned her.

In 1807 Miss Katharine went away. Mary meant to leave a little later. She was detained by a terrible blow which fell upon Princess Dashkov.

Though the latter loved her son devotedly, she had never quite forgiven his marriage, and would never receive his wife; she was in correspondence with her son, however, but did not see him. In spite of all entreaties, and in particular those of Miss Wilmot, whose influence was so immense, the mother’s wounded heart, which they had not known how to soften immediately after the marriage, could not do violence to itself and be fully reconciled. In 1807, immediately after Princess Dashkov had arrived in Moscow, her son was taken ill, and a few days later he died.

This was a terrible blow for her, it shortened her life; repentance too late laid all its irrevocable burden of regret upon her. She sent for her daughter-in-law. And these women, who had done each other so much harm, who had never met and had openly and senselessly hated each other, fell sobbing in each other’s arms, and were reconciled for ever beside the coffin of the man whom they had so much loved.

Life was shattered for the princess. One consolation was left her—that was her child, her friend, her ‘Irish daughter,’ and _she_ was preparing to leave her.

Why she went away I do not understand. It is hard to restrain a feeling of vexation, seeing how unnecessarily Miss Wilmot abandoned Princess Dashkov for the sake of her Irish relatives, who played an extremely limited part in her life, and with whom she must have been very dreary.

Princess Dashkov, frightened of her isolation, wanted to go with her to Ireland, there to end her existence, ‘which has no heirs and must die out.’ Miss Wilmot persuaded her not to go and promised to come back to her. The old woman felt it bitterly. Miss Mary, to spare her, set off secretly, but, detained in Petersburg by the departure of the ship and the incredibly stupid police measures taken against the English on account of the war which had then been declared, she made up her mind to go back for some months to Moscow; the figure of the old lady with tears in her eyes rent her heart; she wrote to her of her intention.

Princess Dashkov’s joy and gratitude knew no bounds, and how did she celebrate the news? She sent to the prison for five men who were there for debt to be released, and charged them to celebrate a thanksgiving service for her.

But the bitterness of separation was only deferred; the obstinate Miss Mary would have her way, and went after all. Princess Dashkov, heartbroken at parting from her friend, had gone to bed. At night Miss Wilmot stole quietly once more into her room. The princess, who had been weeping the whole day, had fallen asleep: ‘The expression of her face was serene as a child’s. I softly kissed her and went away.’ They never saw each other again.

The last days of our princess were passed in complete emptiness, through which those dreary ‘shades’ flitted from time to time, covered with stars and powder, and growing still more decrepit. Her thoughts were concentrated on the young girl with a sorrow and dreamy tenderness which makes the heartache; one has a distinct feeling that this grief must go uncomforted.

‘What am I to say to you, my beloved child, not to grieve you?’ she writes on the 25th of October 1809. ‘I am sad, very sad, tears are flowing from my eyes, and I cannot get used to our separation. I have built a few bridges. I have planted a few hundred trees, I am told successfully; all that distracts me for a minute, but my sadness comes back again.’

On the 29th of October she writes: ‘And how changed everything is in Troitskoye since you left! The theatre is shut up, there has not been a single performance, the pianos are mute, and even the maids do not sing. But why am I telling you this? you are surrounded by your kinsfolk, you are happy, contented....’

She writes her a few more lines on the 6th of November, and ends her letter with the English words: ‘God bless you!’ Did Mary know that that blessing came from a dying hand? Less than two months later, on the 9th of January 1810, Princess Ekaterina Romanovna was no more.

Five years before her death, on the 22nd of October 1806, she concluded her Memoirs with these words: ‘With an honest heart and pure intentions I have had to endure many calamities; I should have been crushed under them if my conscience had not been clear ... now I look forward without fear and uneasiness to my approaching dissolution.’

What a woman! What a rich and vigorous life!

BAZAROV