Part 6
Pereplotchikof the painter is not very well. Heart weakness deprived him of the use of his legs this summer. He was confined to his bed and felt very wretched. I spent many mornings and evenings sitting and talking to him. The doctors say that vegetarianism has been too much for his constitution. One evening I brought him a quantity of rich honey I had come across in a little shop in Moscow. He was delighted as a child, and honey he said was ideal food for him. In exchange for this gift he gave me an old cross which he had once picked up on a market stall.
Alexey Sergeitch came with me to visit Pereplotchikof one evening and was much touched to see the change in him. But we had a very lively talk of old days on the Dwina. Alexey Sergeitch is now a teacher of history in several secondary schools in Moscow. He has just published his first book, the fruit of some historical research, and he looks forward to writing other books of like character, so making a career in history. He has the directly opposite view to mine regarding Russia and we had many long and inconclusive debates on Church and State. His sister, Varvara Sergevna, is nurse in an immense military hospital on the Volhonka. I spent an evening up till midnight with her, helping to cut rolls of linen for bandages with atrociously blunt scissors. Russia has few machines for this work. Every night thousands of Russian girls are arduously cutting linen as we did with Varvara.
Nicholas, my first Russian friend, whom I met in London ten years ago and tried to learn Russian from, the boy who invited me to spend my first Christmas in Russia at his father the deacon’s in Lisitchansk, is now settled down and married, and has a family at Kishtim in the Urals, where his knowledge of English has found him a place in the office of an Anglo-Russian mining company.
Nicholas and I lived with another poor student, three in a room, in Moscow--that was after the Christmas in the country. Our most intimate friend was a certain Sasha, a gaunt but happy student of philology. He used to bring stories and read them aloud to our weekly student parties on Saturday evening. From him I heard first some of the stories of Kuprin and also Chekhof’s Dushetchka or “Little Soul,” which Mrs. Garnett has lately translated under the title of “The Darling”[6]--a famous story. Sasha has grown cold to Nicholas now, and I had lost sight of him, but the many references to my work in the Russian Press brought to his mind the idea that the Englishman he once knew was the same as the one now so well known. So he wrote to me, and I tried to see him this summer--married now and in good circumstances, working in the Russian Foreign Office.
[6] “The Darling” by Anton Chekhof tr. by Constance Garnett.
Julia, of whom I wrote in “The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary,” as a type of a Martha, has had a year of pain, caught erysipelas from a servant, and this developed into a sort of blood-poisoning. Sores appeared all over her body, and then one big sore threatening her with death; she has been, as it were, vivisected through the open wound all the summer, and felt that she herself must have cut up live animals for science’s sake in some previous existence, and is now living through the animals’ experience that her soul may really know what it means. She has been in terror lest her sisters should be infected from her and she has been afraid lest she should die and they be left without her motherly protection. Poor Julia! But I left her on a fair way to recovery. Little Lena is very well. The old lady, the Queen of Spades, is more frail and is suffering from the effects of a bad fall.
Varvara Ilyinitchna is much older, has lost a son, has had heart attacks, and is bound to take things more easily. Alexander Fedotch looks extremely well. The daughter is matron of a small hospital, and has a wonderful time with her men.
Amelia Vasschevina, the old grandmother, has sold the white house, has paid her debts and has a large margin over. I fear, however, high prices will whittle her little fortune of ready money away. Her daughter Masha, the despair of all doctors, suffering from an incurable internal complaint which has been diagnosed as cancer, appendicitis, neuritis, inflammation of the solar plexus and what not, and for which she has had all manner of treatment and swallowed all sorts of medicine, has recommenced her work as a dentist. And though suffering agonies of pain she has the nerve to doctor teeth and smile at the lugubrious and fearful faces of her patients. Poor Masha, she has been cut open and examined and sewn up again, mesmerised, prayed into, and this last spring a miracle worker was brought to consider her. He always carried about with him an Indian sword.
He said: “Don’t tell me what you think is the matter with her or what the symptoms are. That would only make it more difficult for me.” He came into her room took out a bit of glass from a waistcoat pocket, and looked at her face through it.
“You will live,” said he, and he dropped his glass and went away. “But I charge you nothing,” he added, and he brandished his sword as he went out at the door.
Loosha, of whom I have sometimes written, feels more happy than she has ever done before. What the secret is I do not know. But she has begun to write poetry.
Katia of Kief married the young lawyer. He was taken for the war, but the family used influence to bring him back to a safe job in the rear. I do not know what happened to discarded Boris.
Mme. Odintsefa is still keen on her evangelicals, and reads Spurgeon’s sermons with the same enthusiasm as in old days she read Mrs. Besant.
XIV
RUSSIA’S NEW WAR PICTURE
RUSSIA has now a popular war-picture done by one of the most famous of her artists, Nesterof. It appeared during the past winter, and prints of it are now exposed in every city, postcard reproductions on every book-stall in Russia. It shows a wounded Russian officer standing beside a Russian sister of mercy. He is in khaki, and is decorated with the Order of St. George; she in white hospital dress. Both faces are marvellously expressive of suffering--the woman seems drowned in past suffering, and yet aware of the immensity of suffering that yet must come. The man has the vision in his eyes that makes it all worth while.
Her face is one of faith, his of vision. Together they express the ideal relationship of a man and a woman, he fighting the great fight, living life as it ought to be lived, she supporting him with her faith and her love.
Nesterof when he was yet a boy began to paint frescoes in churches, and has painted in his time many a wonderful Madonna and Child. In this picture where he has descended to paint just a woman and a man in the midst of daily life you may see a sort of suggestion of the Mother and Child, a reflection of some other composition, of some Russian Madonna and leaping Babe. Here also the man is really a child, though his eyes have the knowledge of the ideal and the quest, and the woman’s face has purity and love and foreknowledge of the suffering that must come.
The background of the picture is Russia, the green forest of pines and firs, the melancholy placid lake, the wan white church with its swelling coloured dome. Russia is in the background. Russia bore them, and their hearts yearn towards her.
So it can be a popular Russian war picture and be hung on many walls and looked into and loved in this strange year of grace 1916.
The words printed below are the famous lines of the poet Khomiakoff:
The _podvig_ is in battle: The _podvig_ is in struggle: The highest _podvig_ is in patience, Love and prayer.
I leave the word _podvig_ because, as I wrote in my chapter explaining the word in “Martha and Mary,” it is difficult to render it by any one word in English. But it is one of the most important words in the Russian language. Here possibly the nearest word is “trial.” It means a noble deed, an act of faith, a noble battle against fearful odds, a great sacrifice or act of renunciation, a shaming of the devil, a bold religious affirmation. Volumes might be written on it. The acts of the anchorites and hermits are _podvigs_. St. George killing the dragon performed a _podvig_. The seven champions of Christendom would in Russia be the seven _podvizhniks_ and their heroic exploits _podvigs_, but there we have not a word. For performing _podvigs_ Russian soldiers are decorated. But, as Nesterof tells us in his picture, there are the greatest for which there is no decoration.
The greatest _podvig_ is in patience, Love and prayer.
The sound of these Russian words is so beautiful in the original tongue that inevitably after you have read them you go on murmuring them till they are yours--a possession of the heart:
_Podvig yest ee f srazhenie: Podvig yest ee f borbay: Veeshy podvig f terpenie, Liubvy i molbay._
This is not absolutely correct transliteration, but I have written in the hope that it maybe easier to say.
This picture is true for Russia and will be valuable long after peace has come as a historical witness of the spirit of the time. In the war, despite all its ugliness and accidentoriness, human nature is revealed as more beautiful, more daring, also more tender. The Russians have this picture, and we also have the reality. There is a strong spiritual life manifest among us. It is manifest in the faces of the soldiers and in the life of their anxious and loving women they leave behind. Will not some one paint it for us?
XV
IN THE HOSPITAL
I VISITED several hospitals in Moscow, Rostov, and Petrograd. Those in the north had not many wounded, those in the south had the men who had been hurt in Brusilof’s advance. Russia looks her best in hospital where the men are suffering not only for Russia but for us, where the appearance of the men has the idealisation of hospital dress, and the transfiguration of care. There is no more sweet possession for a woman than a hospital where tenderness and love may be lavished and patience given without end.
Russia has had generally more wounded than any other nation, and the arrangements for the receipt of the wounded have been wonderful all the time. Despite a national incapacity for organisation, the wounded have not died for want of care and forethought. In that speaks the Russian compassion and love for suffering humanity. The nursing of the wounded is an endless tale of personal devotion.
Several of my Russian women friends are in hospitals, and I visited them and talked to the soldiers, heard all the tales of their prowess. Surprising what a number of boys there are among the wounded, young fellows of thirteen or fourteen who have managed somehow to get into the Army. It was difficult to know how to address them--as boys or as men.
I visited the Anglo-Russian Hospital at Petrograd one evening, and saw how our English sisters have become friends with the simple Russian lads, sit at their bedside with dictionary and notebook, and carry on delightful and pathetic conversations. The Russian authorities will not allow a wounded man to leave until he is well enough to return to his unit. The consequence is that the wounded man remains longer in a hospital in Russia than he would in a similar hospital in England. And the longer they stay the better are they known to those who tend them. The English in the hospital on the Nevsky at Petrograd obtain a fair notion of the character and temperament of the Russian soldier. My impression was that they admired and loved him greatly. He was all that had been written of him and said of him, and something more--religious, simple, brave, patient, cheerful, and sociable. Jolly boys these Russian wounded, not dour like Cromwell’s soldiers although they are as religious as his, not Puritans, not intolerant. No one asks suspiciously of the sister nursing him, “Are you not perhaps a Protestant?” And then feels suddenly, “I am saved and she is damned,” but a general feeling that God’s mercy is needed more for the poor suffering soldier than for the bright angel who is nursing him.
When our women were on the point of going out to Russia to work in this Anglo-Russian Hospital I confess I felt a doubt as to whether they would not find fault when they got to Russia and dislike the Russian Tommy because he was unlike his British brother. But I was wrong. The Russian peasant is convincing when you see him day after day, and it is your lot to tend him whilst he is suffering. Singing their national songs and their national Church music in those good choruses which without selection any hospital affords, you hear the voice of Russia with your ears be they keen or dull, and dressing wounds and watching you see character. Undoubtedly if the same party of British nurses and doctors were thrown simply into the midst of ordinary educated men and women in Petrograd or Moscow instead of being given to the wounded they might easily come away with a less true impression.
But here amongst the men suffering for you and me and all of us is Holy Russia, which was and which is.
A considerable amount of spiteful nonsense is written against the notion of Russia conveyed by the term Holy Russia, and I among others am blamed for idealising Russia, or as Mr. Zangwill puts it, of Ruskinising her. And another Hebrew writing under an assumed name finds fault with me because I said at the National Liberal Club, “Love Russia, and do not distrust her as you have done in the past.” Another Russian Jew, who has been embittered by political treatment writing also under a pseudonym, pursues a violently misrepresentative campaign in Russia against the conception of Russia as a country that can be spiritually helpful to us.
How bitter these other friends of Russia are! They are those who have suffered through political disabilities; they are those, who not being Christian cannot be expected to be touched as we are; they are those who would prefer to see in Russia a free but non-Christian democracy as in France; for that end they are political revolutionaries.
Holy Russia is a living fact. And if it had ceased to be, study of Russia would be merely history and archæology. Nietszche said to German women, “Hope that your child may be the superman--the antichrist--hope that he may be a Napoleon.” The covenant to Russian women and to our women is “Hope that your child may be the Christ-child.” It is the Christian thing which Russia has to give, and may God help the Christian background of Russia to shine clear to Europe. If Russia were merely Sturmer, Protopopof, Gorky, Rubinstein (the finance manipulator), Reinbot (who organised the police graft of Moscow), Rasputin (the debauched Siberian), Sukhomlinof (who is at rest in the fortress of Peter and Paul), Masoyedof (who was hanged for betraying Russia), Azef, Milyukof, Kerensky, Count Benckendorf, etc., etc., how little interest she would have for us!
If the crassly selfish, materialistic, middle-class of the Russian towns were Russia, who would stir one little finger to be friendly with her, except simply our commercial people who see that money can be made in Russia?
No one has shown more unsparingly the dark side of the Russian life than I have in my books. In describing the pilgrimage to Jerusalem I described the exploitation that I saw. I have perhaps even gone too far in describing the uglinesses of modern Russia (in “Changing Russia”). But I do believe in Holy Russia, and as far as Russia is concerned do not care for anything else. I hate to see her being commercialised and exploited, and to see her vulgar rich increasing at the expense of the life-blood of the nation. Without any question the new class of middle-rich coming into being through Russia’s industrial prosperity is the worst of its kind in Europe. They are worse than anything in Germany, and it is they who are beginning to have the power in Russia. It is the green and inexperienced who think that power wrested from the Tsar and his Court is grasped by the idealists of Russia. It is grasped by the capitalists and often by the foreign capitalists.
Poor Russia, she has not many faults, she has only many misfortunes. I am asked to discount Holy Russia and set off various things against it. The Russians steal--well, they did not steal in the villages till the railway came, bringing the thieves. And where there are no railways now there are no thieves. They lie--that is a matter for psychological inquiry. They do not lie as we lie. They are cruel. So are we all, but the Russians are tender also. Tenderness is their characteristic. What else is there to say against the Russian peasant? He does not work enough.
Well, grant everything, admit all that can be said against him, and subtract all from Holy Russia. I am not afraid to do it. I have had to do it long ago for myself. And there still remains Holy Russia, the beautiful, spiritual individuality of the nation.
XVI
THE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE
THE year 1916 closes in peace discussion. There has always seemed to me to be a likelihood that the war, the khaki and the guns, the gallant men and the sacred graves alike would be snowed over with papers and eventually almost lost sight of. Some eloquent German pastor cried out in a war sermon--
_“White snow, white snow, fall, fall for seven weeks; all may’st thou cover, far and wide, but never England’s shame; white snow, white snow, never the sins of England.”_
Our attitude would be rather: Never the sins of Germany. But even they must be covered at last. And the snow which the pastor asked for has begun to fall, blown by a somewhat gusty westerly wind.
It is America that is sending it across and I imagine that Americans would be specially interested what Russians think of the prospects for peace.
The problem of peace as it affects Russia differs somewhat from the problem as it affects France and Britain. It is well to keep in view the central facts.
Germany made war on Russia and showed herself ready to sacrifice Russia on the altar of her own greatness. The Kaiser so far from being on friendly terms with the Tsar, set out to despoil the Tsar of tracts of territory. Russia being an autocracy much more depended on the Tsar and his ministers than on the Duma or the voice of the people manifested in the press. He answered War with War. As far as can be ascertained no attempt was made by so-called “Germans at court” to stave off war or make a pact with Germany and sacrifice France. Several large German landowners sold their estates and returned to the Fatherland before the war broke out, for they knew the cash was coming. Germany did not wish to come to an understanding with Russia before July, 1914. Germany thought it more profitable to sacrifice the Russians than to share with them power in Europe.
The German people confident in the possession of an enormous armament and of a genius for organisation which put them first and the rest nowhere, despised Russia. Russia’s friendship was not worth striving to obtain. There were admirable foundations for building a German-Russian friendship of a most lucrative kind, deep German roots in finance, commerce, government and administration and blood ties and inter-marriages amongst important German and Russian families, but it was thought to be more profitable to fight than to be friends.
Doubtless a German victory would have increased the profits of many pseudo-Russian merchant houses. But from the Imperial point of view it should be borne in mind that there is probably not the slightest doubt or vagueness in the Tsar’s mind, and there has not been since the outbreak of war. The Kaiser has not only injured but has insulted Russia. There is a quarrel which can only be happily settled by the Germans being beaten utterly in the field.
The Russian people ratified the decision of the Tsar. There was a very great unanimity, doubtless revolutionary Russia was glad to be fighting for the same cause as republican France and free England. The war has been called all manner of things pleasing from a liberal point of view, a war to protect small nations, a war against militarism, a war of progress against reaction. But fundamentally it is a quarrel. The press can say what it likes and theorists may theorise in terms interesting or not interesting to those at the head of affairs. But they for their part know one thing clearly, that it is a quarrel--it does not matter how people justify it to their consciences as long as they co-operate heartily in the great task of defeating the enemy.
The war, however, goes on a long time and there have been many blunders and scandals. The political extremists care for one thing more than for defeating Germany and that is for their political game at home whatever it may be. It has occurred to them--cannot the war be made the means of overthrowing the autocracy as such, by making ministers responsible to the Duma instead of to the Emperor as heretofore. And since the Russian retreat of 1915 a large political game with important possibilities has developed. Political war of a kind has raged unceasingly and rages now.
This has played a little into German hands and had it not been for the complete, steadfast and unwavering hostility of the Tsar towards Germany, Russia would have succumbed to the seductions of internal strife. Germany as it is, hopes steadily for revolution in Russia--for a nation divided against itself cannot stand.
All through 1916 a rumour, however, has been persistently spread by word of mouth that the Tsar was likely to sign a separate peace. Every scandal that could damage the name of the Tsar has been repeated and magnified--the object being to obtain a transference of French and British sympathies from the Tsar and his ministers to the Duma and the progressive parties in the nation. Such a transference of sympathy would naturally endanger the stability of Russia and play into the German hands--quite apart from the question of the future of Russian internal government and control.
I cannot record here the gossip about Rasputin, Sturmer, the Empress, the falls of ministers. An immense amount of random rubbish is talked in Russia. Talking political scandal is one way of passing the time. The influence of Rasputin (a Siberian peasant and not a monk, not a priest, though he called himself Father and gave blessings) was greatly exaggerated. Some ladies took him up, as miracle-workers and magicians are taken up when they can be found. But he never had any influence with the Tsar. He seems to have been a curious character but he is now dead and the gossip about him will cease. I do not believe he was working for Germany--as he had very little notion of what Germany was and could not even pronounce three consecutive words of his own language correctly. He was an obscure being and degraded even so. He prophesied that the Tsarevitch would lose his health if he, Rasputin, should cease to support him. I should say the boy’s health would improve, now that the black arts have been removed.
Sturmer, the ex-Premier, was the most unpopular prime-minister Russia has had. He, happily, has gone. And in Russia they never come back.
The fall of Sazonof was a shock. The motive for his retirement is said to be the Japanese agreement which he arranged. It was also said to be due to disagreement over Poland. The British diplomatic body has undoubtedly leaned on Sazonof and would like to bring him back. Our diplomacy in Russia during 1916 has, however, been in no way inspired. Its object seems to have been to play a political game, as at Salonika so at Petrograd, and to back the Duma at any cost. Buchanan has turned out to be an extraordinary speech maker; a contrast to the silent Russian Ambassador in London.