"If to come to this entrancing spot, young man, is your payment for pulling out of the slough that you once let yourself into, then your reward is indeed sweet."
For four most enjoyable months I lingered near that fascinating Piazza reluctant to leave it. Lord Curzon thinks that the Rhigistan in Samarcand, considering all things, is the most beautiful square in the world. Perhaps, had I seen the Rhigistan first, and at the time I saw the Piazza, I might have been similarly impressed. As it happened, when, in 1897, I first beheld the Rhigistan I thought inevitably of the Piazza, and then and there renewed my allegiance to her superior charm over me.
Of my life in and about this square there is much that I would like to tell if I could tell it to my satisfaction, for I believe that Venice is a mistress to whom all admirers, without distinction of color, race or previous incarnation, should offer some artistic tribute either in prose or verse.
My most intimate friend, while in Venice, was Horatio Brown, a gentleman who knows the city probably better than any other foreigner, and much more intimately than many of the Venetians themselves. His book, "Life on the Lagoons," is the best book about the town that I know, and I have rummaged through a number. Mr. Howell's "Venetian Life," like everything he writes, is very artistic and instructive, but I was never able to find the Venice that he knows.
I must thank Arthur Symons for persuading Brown to be kind to me, and I fancy that he told him the truth—that I was a youngWanderlustvictim. The result was that, although I had to live pretty scrimpingly, Brown's home on the Zattere became a magnificent retreat, where, at least once a week, I could brush up my manners a little, and enjoy an Anglo-Saxon atmosphere and undisguised comfort.
I think it was Monday evenings that Brown generally received his friends. There were many interesting persons to meet on these occasions, literary and otherwise, but a good illustration of the vagaries of fancy and memory is the fact that an Austrian admiral stands out strongest in my recollections of the Monday evenings that I recall. I suppose it was because he had been through a great many adventures out of my line, and was not quite my height. Any one smaller than I am who has projected his personality into more alluring wanderings than I have becomes immediately to me a person to look up to. Tall men and their achievements, fiendish or angelic, are so out of my range of vision that I havenever tried to wonder much about them. Napoleon I could have listened to by the month without a murmur; Bismarck would have made me look dreamily at the ceiling at times.
The admiral told me how Garibaldi once gave him a scare, when the Italians were freeing themselves of Austrian rule. It seems that Garibaldi kept the enemy guessing at sea quite as much as on shore, and the admiral received word, one day, that Garibaldi was coming up the coast toward Venice with a formidable force. As a matter of fact, he was doing nothing of the kind, being busy in very different quarters. "But how was I to know?" the admiral said to me. "He was jumping about from place to place like a frog, and I had no reason to believe that the rumor might not be true. I decided to take no chances, and commandeered two Austrian-Lloyd steamers and sunk them in the Malamocco Strait. I felt able to guard the other end of the Lido. But Garibaldi fooled me, as he did a great many others, and the two steamers were sunk for nothing."
During a part of my stay in and about Venice, I lived alone in an empty house at San Nicoletto on the Lido. Within a stone's throw was the military prison, dreaming about which, in the empty house, after a luxurious gratuitous dinner, sometimes made night life rather gloomy. I got my non-gratuitous meals at anosterianear-by. I wonder whether the asthmatic little steamer that used to run from the Riva to San Nicoletto is still afloat? It was owned and captained by aconte, who also collected the fares. I patronized his craft for a while, andthen in partnership with acorporale, stationed at the San Nicoletto marine signal station, invested in a canoe.
The adventures that we had with this canoe were many and varied. On one occasion, for instance, the canoe and I were suspected of being spies, and came very near being bombarded. I had spent the afternoon in Venice, leaving the canoe near the Giardino Pubblico. It was darker than usual when I was ready to return to the Lido, and I carried no light; but I set out for home undaunted. I had been paddling along serenely enough for fifteen minutes or so, when, on nearing the powder magazine island, or whatever it is between Venice and San Nicoletto that is guarded by a sentry, I was partly awakened from my dreaming by a strenuous "Chi va la?" on my left. I say partly awakened advisedly, because I paid no attention to the challenge, and paddled on. It seemed impossible that anybody could want to learn who I was out there on the water. Again the words rang out, clear and sharp, and again I failed to heed them. The third time the challenge was accompanied by an ominous click of a gun. I came out of my dream like a shot. Why I should be challenged was absolutely unintelligible to me, but that suggestive click jogged my work-a-day senses back into action.
"Amico! Amico!" I yelled.
"Well, draw up here to the landing and let me look at you."
I put about and paddled over to the island, where the sentry detained me nearly half an hour, making me explain how harmless and innocent I was. I must needstell him who my landlord was on the Lido, which room I occupied in the empty house, why in the name of Maria I lived on the Lido at all, and by whatmaladettoright I dared cruise in those waters without lights. He finally let me pass on, with the warning that my craft stood a good chance of being sent to the bottom if she passed that way again at night without the proper illumination.
One day this canoe foundered near the Giardino Pubblico, and the accident brought to light a typical Italian trait in thecorporale. I thought that it was an exhibition of simple stubbornness at the time, but Brown assured me later that I was mistaken. I was trying to manage things when the canoe put her nose into the mud bank, and thecorporalewas in the garden, I think, looking on. He was slicked up in his best uniform and looked very fine, but, as a sailor and part owner of the canoe, I thought he should come to her aid in such a case of signal distress. At first he also thought that he ought to bestir himself in the matter, and carefully looked about to see if anybody was watching. Then he picked his way more like a woman with fine lace skirts on than like a man, let alone a sailor, to a dry spot within perhaps thirty feet of the canoe. There he spent himself utterly in telling me how to do what he could do a hundred times better from the shore. All the canoe needed was a good, big shove, which he could have given her without any great inconvenience. I urged him in spotless Italian to get a real genuine move on and send me seaward.
"Ma non—ma non," he kept on whining, pointingto his highly polished shoes and the mud—with which there was no need for him to come in contact. At this juncture Brown and his gondolier hove in sight, and I gave them the shipwreck signal. While they were coming to my rescue, thecorporale, again, like a mincing woman, got back into the garden. The gondolier threw me a rope, and then towed me out of my predicament, thecorporalewatching the maneuvers, cat-like, from his vantage ground above. I waved him adieu, and would not speak to him all of the next day. Brown explained his conduct with the one word—critica. If there is anything that Italians dislike, he told me, it is to be surprised by their neighbors in predicaments that make them appear ludicrous. He said that thecorporalewould have let the canoe rot in her mud berth before he would have subjected himself to the scrutiny of the onlookers in an attempt to save her. The reason he retired to the garden so quickly when Brown appeared was because he sawcriticacoming his way.
I am afraid that a similar fright possessed him several weeks later, when the canoe was blown through the Nicoletto Strait and out into the billowy Adriatic, whence she never returned. I was not present when the accident occurred, but "they" say that thecorporalewas, and that all that was necessary to save the canoe was to swim a short distance from shore and tow her back. But the "public" was doubtless looking on, and thecorporalewas afraid of the critical comments and suggestions.
I had the most fun with the canoe, while she lasted, in the small, narrow canals in Venice proper. Day afterday, I cruised with her in different parts of the city, exploring new routes and sections, lunching where the hour overtook me, and in the evening paddled back to port on the Lido, feeling very nautical and picturesque. The principal fun came when I had to turn corners in the small canals. The gondoliers have regular calls, "To the right," and "To the left," and by rights I should have used them, too. But, somehow, all I could think of when surprised at a turn by an oncoming craft was to cry "Wa-hoo!" at the top of my voice, and then hug the side of some buildings till the danger had passed. The way the gondoliers scolded me was enough to have frightened a prizefighter, but I learned to expect scoldings and not to mind them. On the Riva, where I was wont to forgather with many of them, they finally got to calling me "Wa-hoo."
Of one of the Riva gondoliers I made quite an intimate, and when I moved back to Venice from the Lido we were almost daily together, either on the water or in hissandalo, or swapping yarns over a glass of wine andPolentain someosteria.
On one occasion he came to me and said: "Signor, will you not accompany me on a journey to the fine lace and glasshouses in Venice?"
I said: "Gladly."
He continued: "You will see many fine things in our lace houses and our glass houses."
I said: "Let us see these wonderful things."
So we proceeded up the Grand Canal; afterwards we went down the Grand Canal. Since Lord Byron's timeI believe there is a slight difference of opinion as to which is up or down in this canal. We got into Sambo'ssandalo, and Sambo took me to one of the great lace houses, where I had to expose all my ignorance of lace, and yet try to appear to be a specialist in this commodity; then, to a place where what I understand is called Venetian glass was sold; then to other places. During none of our calls did I make a purchase, much to the disgust of the attending clerks, but fully within the agreement with Sambo that I should not buy that which I did not want or did not have money enough to buy. I noticed that Sambo received either a brass check or a small amount in Italian currency on each call. Eventually this pilgrimage to places of Venetian commercialism was finished. I said to Sambo: "What in the world is the meaning of all this?"
He said: "Why,signor, did you not observe? We have been friendly together, have we not?"
I said: "Certainly, Sambo, but it strikes me as funny that you should take me to places where you know I have no idea of buying anything."
"Ah,signor, you do not understand the situation here in Venice. You see, these glass people, these lace people—and other people—give us gondoliers a commission. When we get so many brass checks, we go over and cash them in, and get a certain percentage for such business as we may have brought to the business houses. When we get money, of course that comes in the shape of tips such as you have seen, and we put that direct in our pockets.
"I want to say to you,signor, that although my story may offend you, and you may think I had no right to take you on the ride, which, as you will remember, I suggested should be on me, I have succeeded in accumulating ninelire. Signor, please do not take offense. I knew the game. Will you not come as my guest to-night at one of our gondolier's restaurants, where I will spend every one of those ninelireon a good dinner?"
I suppose that Sambo is still inviting other innocent people like myself to pilgrimages to the lace and glass houses of Venice.
Of Rome, which I visited after my experiences in Venice, there is also much that I should like to say literarily, if I felt that I could do it. Most writers dwell heavily on the ancient sadness of Rome. There was nothing in the ancient sadness of Rome, during the month that I spent in that city, in the spring of 1895, which compared with the sadness which came over me on going to the English cemetery and reading the names of certain great men known to all the world, and of certain young men known personally to me, Englishmen and Americans, who are buried in that picturesque but unwaveringly sad spot.
A friend of mine, who has since settled down and gone in for all the intricacies of what settling down means, was with me in Rome, on a certain night in 1895, when there was a discussion of what was the best thing for two students at a German university to do. It was decided that, first of all, Gambrinus, in the Corso, was the best place for considering things. I remember thatmy friend lost his umbrella. As it came time to leave the Gambrinus, he became very indignant over the disappearance of this umbrella, which he thought should be in his hands at any time that he wanted it. The umbrella was not to be found. The supposition was that one of the waiters had taken it. How could this be proved? We called our waiter and said to him: "Where is that umbrella?"
He replied: "Signor, I have no idea."
My friend said: "Well, suppose you get an idea just about as quickly as you know how."
The waiter said that he would do as suggested. He went to the proprietor's wife, and came back pretty soon and said that there was no record of any missing umbrella.
My friend, who was completely occupied with the determination that he was going to get that umbrella, got up, and, in his very abrupt way, said: "You bring me my 'bamberillo.' If you don't, there will be trouble."
On account of fear that there might be some other instruments used than those which would ordinarily go after this pronouncement of my friend, I suggested that we proceed up a certain stairway and ask the proprietor's wife whether she did not think that my friend should get his "bamberillo" back. She replied, with such pathos as a German woman is capable of: "I fear you do not understand the Italian mind. This Italian mind is strange and peculiar."
"Yes," my friend said in German, "it is so strange that I cannot find my 'bamberillo.'"
The goodHausfrausaid: "Well, you must excuse us down in this country of—Ja, Sie kennen das Vieh, nicht wahr?"
From Rome I went to Naples. My money gave out in this town with pronounced persistency. I received there fifty dollars a month to meet all bills—promissory notes and other financial engagements. My home during my residence in the city was a room which I shared unwillingly with two of the most marvelous cats that I have ever known. Some men say they like cats. It would please me to have any one of these men sentenced to ten days' imprisonment in my room in the Santa Lucia in Naples. The song called "Santa Lucia" is often heard in our streets. It is a pleasant song for those who have never had to live in the Santa Lucia with cats as I did. I honestly tried to increase my Italian vocabulary with the Neapolitan variations while in Naples. But I could never find any word, vituperative or otherwise, that would explain what those cats that prowled around in that strange room in the Santa Lucia meant to me. I make so much of them because they made so much of me during my fifty-dollar-a-month existence in Italy. I found it difficult to live within my bounds. My fifty dollars a month were generally all torn to pieces by the twentieth of the month, and not always on account of nonsense. At this time I was much engaged in buying books that interested me, and I think it fair to say that a good quarter of my monthly stipend went for their purchase.
On the twentieth, particularly in Naples, I was veryragged with my fifty dollars. I had a proprietor there in this catful Santa Lucia who was a North Italian. My fifty dollars did not reach me as quickly as I wanted it and I got worried. My rent was due. It was a problem how I was to make this plain to the landlord. In the end I went to him and said in all frankness: "I should like to say to you, signor, that I am very much disappointed that my money has not come. It will come. It must come. There seems to be some delay."
Again there was that fine Italian touch. He said: "My son, do not be worried. I understand your difficulty.Mio figlio," and he patted me on the back, "you will be taken care of." Is there anything in the English language that can beat that?
While I was stopping in the Santa Lucia I took my meals, such as I could get, in a restaurant one or two doors away. In this restaurant were all kinds of truckmen, cabmen and men in general who have to spend much of their time in the open air. I had learned in Venice that there was a strong bond of sympathy among Italian criminals.
It occurred to me that while I was among some of these people, it would be worth while to learn something about the Maffia Society and the Camorra. I had heard indirectly that these societies were working pretty well in their own interests at home.
How many Italians there are in the United States I do not know. It is questionable whether any one else knows exactly. We certainly know that there are several millions of them. My interest in inquiring in Naples,so far as I was able, into the workings of the Maffia and the Camorra, was to find out, if I could, what power they were alleged to have over their own countrymen.
In pursuance of these facts, I ran up against afacchino. Afacchinois a common porter in Italy.
I said to one of myfacchinofriends: "Can you not make me acquainted with some friend in the Maffia Society?"
He was a genuine lounger, a stevedore, a longshoreman—and a big man.
He said to me, in effect: "Are you not wise enough to go into that park, where you can meet anybody, and find out all you want to know about the Maffia or the Camorra?"
I said: "Yes, I suppose I am. But what will it cost?"
"Why, you just go over there. Perhaps you will find somebody of the stripe you want; perhaps you won't."
I made no discoveries that were of any value. But what is to be said about my friend, thefacchino, and the Maffia and the Camorra? I look at it this way. If these people have quarrels which so concern themselves, then let them proceed on their own lines. If they have quarrels in my country, and think that by any chance their secret societies can rule my country, they have terribly mistaken their calling. They are not so dangerous as the newspapers make them out to be. They believe, true enough, in their end of the game, to a finish, which can sometimes be disturbing.
I asked myfacchinofriend what he thought in general of the people who might be called Maffia or Camorra in the park which he suggested.
"Well," he said, "I no more know what the Maffia or the Camorra will do, than I know what will happen to me in the next five minutes."
"Then I must make my own conclusions," was my reply
In midsummer of 1896 I learned to know Tolstoy. It was at the time of the National Exhibition at Nijni-Novgorod. Cheap excursion tickets on the railroads and river boats were to be had throughout the summer, while correspondents for foreign newspapers were given first-class passes for three months in every rod of railroad trackage in the country. It was an opportunity for exercisingWanderlustin style such as had never before come my way. Baedeker's little book on the Russian language was bought, introductions to friends in St. Petersburg were secured, and away I went to spend preliminarily a week or so as a field-hand, or in any other capacity that I was equal to, on Tolstoy's farm, at Yasnaya Polyana, an estate about one hundred and fifty miles south of Moscow. At that time I was not sure about the railroad pass. In St. Petersburg, friends kindly put me in the way of getting it, and on I went to Moscow, and, before the summer was over, to hundreds of other towns and villages in different parts of the Empire. On two hundred and fifty Russian words, or thereabouts, my passport, free railroad transportation, and perhaps $75, I traveled, before I got back to Berlin,about twenty-five thousand miles. I kept my hotel expenses down by living on trains. First-class railroad accommodations include a bed. So when night came I calmly took my berth in a train bound in any direction long enough to secure me a good rest. In the morning I got out and looked about me, or rode on as I liked. This proceeding also saved me passport dues at hotels, an item of considerable expense in Russia if one does much traveling. My meals were found at the stations, which provide the best railroad restaurant service found anywhere. With all the saving, sight-seeing and riding, however, my vacation over, I was heartily glad to return to Germany, and for months afterwards myWanderlustwas delightfully under control.
By all odds the most interesting national feature that Russia allowed me to see was Count Tolstoy. The Tsar, the museums, the palaces, the large estates, the great unworkedNinghik—these men and things were entertaining, but they did not take my fancy as did the novelist and would-be philanthropist. And yet I had never read any of Tolstoy's novels before meeting him, and my notions of his altruism were vague, indeed—about what the ideas are of people who have never been in Russia or seen Tolstoy, and who, on learning that you have been there and met him ask immediately: "Say,on the level, is he a fakir or not?"
Once and for all, so far as my simple intercourse with him is concerned, it may be most boldly declared that he never was a fakir—no more of one when he was sampling all the vices he could hear of, than he is now inurging others not to follow his examples as an explorer of Vicedom. It is strange, but when a man, who has sampled everything that he could, in the way of deviltry, and then quits such sampling, says that he has enough, and attempts to steer others on a better tack than he took, there is a prodigious amount of doubt in thousands of minds as to whether the man sampled enough cussedness to know what the real article is, or whether others should fight shy of what he saw or not.
The man at Yasnaya Polyana in 1896 was a fairly well preserved old gentleman, with a white beard, sunken gray eyes, overhanging bushy eyebrows, a slight stoop in the shoulders, which were carrying, I think, pretty close to seventy years of age. He wore the simple peasant clothes about which there has been so much nonsensical talk. Every man who lives in the country in Russia, puts on, when summer comes, garments very similar in cut and shape to those worn by the Ninghik. The main difference during the warm months between the Ninghik's outfit and that of his employer's is that the latter's is clean and the Ninghik's isn't.
My purpose in going to Yasnaya Polyana was mainly journalistic, I fear. The entire trip in Russia, indeed, was to find "available" copy for the New York newspaper referred to. The free railroad transportation allowed me to cover "news" stories on very short notice, and also made it easy to get material for "space" articles. Or, rather, on first getting it, I thought that the pass would work wonders along these lines. In other hands it would very possibly have done so, but the"available" matter finally delivered by me proved only moderately successful. Putting aside all questions of ability, reputation and connections, it has been my experience that European "stuff" is not in such demand in the United States that the average writer can make it support him even on a vegetarian diet. Our editors, as a rule, want American "stuff." Only in very recent years have they given much attention even to the foreign news service, leaving the gathering, sifting, and distribution of the day's facts to newsmongers who have often been as unscrupulous as they were incapable.
Americans flock to Europe in thousands, going feverishly from place to place as if their very lives depended on seeing such trifles as the old snuff-boxes of ancient celebrities. Nothing must escape them. They want their money's worth at every turn. A few tarry longer than the rest and try to acquire some knowledge of the present condition of the countries and people they see. But the vast majority push on hurriedly, elbowing their way into nooks and crannies of alleged historical interest, until Europe becomes for many of them, probably most of them, a mere museum of things "starred" or not "starred" as the guidebook man saw fit to make them. The life of the people, their contemporaries, is looked into only incidentally; "anteeks" are what the mob is after and look for. This indifference to present-day Europe, its politics, social customs and institutions, has in the past been largely to blame for the inefficiency of our foreign news service. What was the use of going to heavy expense to inform Americans about thingsabroad which they would pay no attention to when they were abroad themselves? The publishers and editors reasoned that there was no use, and even at this late day many of them prefer a news item from Yankton, Dakota, to one from London. Their readers may know very little more about Yankton than about London, but that does not matter. Perhaps they have relatives in Dakota, or formerly loaned money to farmers out there at three per cent. a month. That settles the matter for the newsmongers. The Yankton dispatch is given prominence, although it refers to nothing of more importance than a divorce. Its provinciality is of greater cash value to the newspaper than the cosmopolitan significance of the message from London. This, and more that might be said, has made a foreign correspondent's life in Europe unattractive, to say the least. At one time, however, I seriously considered preparing myself for such a career. The trip to Russia was meant as a trying-out of my qualifications. It seemed to me then, and, if our newspapers, or, rather the newspaper readers, would take more interest in other things than massacres, notable suicides and fashionable scandals, it would seem to me now, that such a calling ought to be useful as well as profitable. Until our people care more, however, for a well-considered article from London or Berlin than they do for a hasty "wire" from Wilkesbarre concerning the mobbing of an Italian, the usefulness and commercial value of the foreign correspondent's efforts do not appear very evident. At any rate, the time came when I decided that my foreign "stuff" was not of the bread-winningkind, and I threw overboard the dream of becoming a writer on such lines. To this hour, however, I regret that some good opening in the foreign service did not show up at the time the dream was so present.
But to return to Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana. All told, I was in and about this place for ten days, seeing Tolstoy and his family practically every day; even when I did not stop in the house overnight I divided my time between Yasnaya Polyana and the home of a neighbor of the Tolstoys. When staying at Yasnaya Polyana I slept in what was called the Count's library, but it was evidently a bedroom as well. At the neighbor's home I had a cot in the barn where two young Russians, friends of the Count, also slept. They were helping Tolstoy "re-edit" the Four Gospels, omitting in their edition such verses as Tolstoy found confusing or non-essential. The life on the old estate at Yasnaya Polyana has been described so often by both English and American visitors, that there is very little that I can add to the known description of the grounds and daily routine. The place looks neglected and unkempt in many respects, but the two remaining wings of the old mansion are roomy and comfortable. Eight children of the original sixteen were living at the time of my visit, ranging in years from fourteen to thirty and over. The Countess was the "boss" of the establishment in and out of the house. What she said of a morning constituted the law for the day, so far as work was concerned. She had assistants, and I think a superintendent, to help her, but she was the final authority in matters of management. TheCount did not appear to take any active part in the direction of affairs. He spent his time writing, riding, walking and visiting with the guests, of whom there were a goodly number. At one time he may have worked in the fields with the peasants, but in July of 1896 he did not share any of their toil—at least I personally did not see him at work among them. His second daughter, Maria Lvovna, however, the one child that in those days was trying to put her father's theories to a practical test, was a field worker of no mean importance, certainly to the peasants, if not to her mother. Trained as a nurse she was also the neighborhood physician, having a little pharmacy in the straggling, dirty village outside the lodge gates. It was through her kindness that I was permitted to join the peasants in the hayfield, and to get acquainted with them in their dingy cabins. Although it was pleasanter to gather with the other children on the tennis court, the haying experience was at any rate healthy and, to some extent, instructive. I noticed, however, that my presence caused considerable merriment among the peasants. They had grown accustomed to Maria Lvovna, indeed she had grown up among them, whereas I was a stranger of whom they knew nothing beyond the little that Maria had told them. Some of them no doubt thought it very foolish of me to prefer haying to tennis and refreshments, while others probably doubted the sincerity of my purpose—viz.: to get acquainted with their conditions and to see what effect Maria Lvovna's would-be altruism was having upon them. I might as well state immediately that atno time did I succeed in finding out satisfactorily what this effect was, if it existed at all. That she was a very welcome companion in the fields and cabins there could be no doubt, but was this due to the peasant's correct interpretation of her intentions or to her commercial value to them as a voluntary, wageless helper? Maria herself thought that some of the peasants understood her position as well as her father's teachings. Not being able to converse with the peasants privately I cannot say whether she was deceived or not.
Some years previous she had also tried to conduct a village school independent of the priest's, but she was finally forced to give it up on account of clerical opposition. As neighborhood physician and nurse, however, she had ample opportunity to teach the peasants what she believed, and to reason with them about following the dictates of their own consciences rather than the behests of the clergy and the orders of the military. At the time of my visit I think she had made most headway among the men, unwilling taxpayers in Russia at all times. To be told that the priests and military should support themselves without assistance from the peasantry was sweet music indeed. "Think how much more money we can have for vodka!" many an Ivan must have whispered when Maria was exhorting them not to be soldiers, and to refuse their financial support of the church.
In one cabin we visited together Maria noticed several colored portraits of the Imperial family hanging on the wall. They were set in metal frames.
"How comes it," Maria exclaimed, "that I see so many emperors this morning?"
The big, burly peasant looked sheepishly at her, and then, mumbling that his wife was to blame, swept the pictures into his hands and threw them into a cupboard.
"The woman likes such things," the man explained. "I put them away, but she gets them out again."
Maria thought that the peasant was sincere in his renunciation of Tsar worship, and perhaps he was. I think, however, that, like many of the other peasants on the estate, he found it financially profitable rather than spiritually consoling to have Maria think him one of her converts.
Only two days before our call at this cabin, for instance, he had stolen some wood from the Countess. I believe that it was a log "which he thought the Countess would not need." The superintendent had discovered the theft, and the peasant had been, or was to be, reported.
"But, Maria," he said, when begging Maria to intercede for him with her mother, "tell the Countess how much more I could have taken. Just a log like that—that is no crime, is it?" Maria told him that she would do what she could, and we left the man happy, Maria's promise of intercession seeming to be as good to him as the forgiveness of the Countess. Nothing was said about the return of the log.
In this, as in many other cases, Maria was doubtless exploited by the cunning peasants—the Ninghik can be uncommonly cunning in small things—but she said inreply to my suspicion in this regard: "Even so. Who could expect such people to be upright in everything? Besides the man confessed his offense. He is a good fellow in his way. Seldom beats his wife and does not drink overmuch. I believe in building all that one can on such good qualities as he shows, and if I intercede for him it may increase my influence for good in his family."
"It may also confirm him in his pilfering habits," I interposed. "He will learn to expect friendly interference on your part on such occasions."
"Perhaps so, but I prefer to think not," and that ended Maria's argument in the matter, as it did in many other talks I had with her, the Count and those neighbors who could be called his "disciples."
Their principles and religious beliefs were never given prominence in general conversation unless they were directly asked about them. They chose by preference to live them as best they could, rather than polemicize about them. Only on two or three occasions did Maria, for instance, advance any of the ideas about how the world was to be made better, and then only because I had quizzed her point-blank. Day after day she went her quiet way, haying, nursing, doctoring, and when she could spare the time, enjoying herself on the tennis court.
Her older sister, Totyana, was by no means so active in her acceptation of her father's teachings. Indeed, in 1896 she was still very undecided about them. She told me, one day, laughingly, that for the present she was only half won over; "perhaps when I am as old as myfather I shall be wholly won over." In her way she seemed quite as happy as Maria; all of the children, in fact, saw life on its brighter side, even to one of the older boys, who was a soldier, and put much store on multi-colored uniforms and ornamented cigarette cases. What the Countess really thought about the whole business I never found out. We had one short conversation about the Count and his work, during which she delivered herself of these remarks: "You will hear many things here that I do not agree with—I believe it is better to be and do than to preach." I judged from these sentiments that Tolstoyism as a cult had not captured her. That she thought much of the Count as a man and husband was evident from her solicitous care of him.
The Count himself, although very approachable, was so busy with one thing and another during my stay, that only on two occasions did we have anything like a satisfactory conversation. And these two opportunities could be only partially improved by me because I honestly did not know what to talk about with the old gentleman—or rather there was so much that I wanted to ask him, but did not know how to formulate in the way that I fancied such a great man would expect questions to be put, that the time went by and I had done but little more than observe the man's manners, and listen to what he volunteered to say without being questioned. We spoke in English and German, as it happened to suit.
Now, that I look back over the experience and recall the old gentleman's willingness to talk on any subject,I regret exceedingly that I did not quiz him about literary contemporaries and affairs. The principal thing he said along these lines that comes to mind now concerned poetry and how it impressed him. We were sitting in the music room, and some one had said something about the relative values of prose and poetry as methods of expression. Tolstoy preferred prose.
"Poetry," he said, pointing to the parquet floor, "reminds me of a man trying to walk zigzag across the room on those squares. It twists and turns in all directions before it can arrive anywhere. Prose, on the other hand, is direct; it goes straight at the mark."
Talking about America and Americans, one afternoon, he was much interested in William Dean Howells, Henry George and the late Henry Demarest Lloyd. He told me that there were four men in the world that he was very anxious to bring together; he believed that a conference between them would throw much light on the world's needs. Two of the men, if my memory is correct, were Mr. Howells and Mr. Lloyd.
Only one strictly theological, or rather religious bit of conversation occurs to me now. We were walking in the fields, the Count having spent the day at his friend's house where the Four Gospels were being overhauled. The talk wandered along in a rather loose fashion until we came to the subject of miracles—we also tackled parables before we got through.
I had become a little mixed in understanding the Count, and said something like this: "And the miracles you consider so illuminating?"
"No, no, no," he returned, "anything but illuminating; they are befogging. It is the parables that I find so clear and instructive. The miracles will have to go, but the parables we could not possibly spare."
On no occasion did the Count ask me what I believed. The matter seemed to make very little difference to him, or, at any rate, if I believed anything and was made happy thereby, he did not see the use in taking it up in conversation.
In the dining room, one noon, he said to me: "I see that you like tobacco." There was no critical or reproachful accent in the remark; he merely noted what was a fact.
"I used to be fond of it," he went on, looking down at the floor, "and I used agood dealof it. I finally thought that it was doing me harm and let it go." Other things that had been "let go," liquor and meat, for instance, had apparently been given up on the same simple ground—they were injurious to his health. Religion, self-denial for self-denial's sake, "setting a good example," etc., these matters did not appear to have influenced him. At any rate, he did not speak of them when talking about his renunciations, and, in the case of tobacco, frankly said that if he were young again, "no doubt it would be pleasant to use it again." In a word, his vegetarianism and self-service, so far as anything that he said to me is concerned, were due as much to hygienic notions as to religious scruples. And yet I was told by a very trustworthy person that the old gentleman regrets very much that the simple life, as he sees it, cannot prevailthroughout his home. At table, for instance, he would prefer that all hands should help one another, and that the Countess' white-gloved servants be dispensed with. In his personal life he seemed to be trying to be his own servant as much as possible.
A good illustration of Tolstoy's irresponsibility on the estate, or what he meant to be such, is the way he invited me to stop one night at his house. I had gone swimming with the boys to a pool perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house, and it was getting to be time for me to know whether I was to sleep at the Tolstoy's or in the neighbor's barn. While we were drying and dressing ourselves, I heard a voice in the brushwood near-by saying: "Meester Fleent, my wife invites you to spend the night with us." It was the Count himself, who had come all that distance to tell me that hiswifehadtold himthathewas to seekmeout, and deliverherinvitation, nothis. I shall always remember his face as it appeared through the twigs, and the errand-boy accent in his voice and manner. I have never before seen greatness in such a humble posture. It was openly said to me by one of the Count's friends that this humility has given the old gentleman considerable trouble, in its acquirement as well as in its exercise. Probably we shall know much more about all this when the Count's Journal is published. I learned this much on the spot: Tolstoy feels very keenly the seeming inconsistency of his life, thefact that he cannot make his altruistic notions harmonize with his daily life. His chagrin has, on one or two occasions, nearly made a coward of him. At night, when no one was looking, he has slunk away toward Moscow, like a tramp, to be himself somewhere. But always, before he has got far, a voice has said to him: "Lyoff Nicolayevitch, you are afraid. You dread the remarks of the crowd. You shrink on hearing that you preach what you don't practice. You are trying to run away from it all, to be comfortable yourself whether others are or not.
"Think of your wife and children, of the home you have made. Is it your right to sneak away from all this just to make yourself look and sound consistent? Have you not duties toward your wife and children to observe? Do you think you can throw over all that you were to them and they to you merely to satisfy your vanity—vanity, Lyoff, and nothing more. You are vain in your very sneaking. You insist upon appearing all that you think you are.
"Back, back, back! Remember your wife and children. Remember that you have no right to make them think and live the way you would. Remember that to sneak away is cowardly. Back, Lyoff Nicolayevitch!" And back the old man has trudged, to take up his burden as a citizen.
One night he talked with me about my tramps. He asked me why I had made them, how the vagabonds lived, and why I had not continued to live among them. I told him the truth. He stroked his white beard and looked dreamily at the chess-board.
"If I were younger," he said at last, "I should like to make a tramp trip with you here in Russia. Years ago I used to wander about among them a good deal. Now, I am too old—too old," and he ran his hands rheumatically up and down his legs.
When leaving Yasnaya Polyana, I asked the Count's neighbor in whose house I had slept whether there was anything I could do for him or the Count during my travels. My railroad pass was good yet for a number of weeks, and it occurred to me that, perhaps, during my wanderings I could run some errand for Tolstoy. At the time, I had no thought that my proposition could get him, myself or anybody else into trouble. To be sure, Mr. Breckenridge, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, had given me, in addition to my passport, a general letter "To whom it may concern," recommending me to everybody as a bona fide American citizen and gentleman, and bespeaking for me in advance the friendly offices of all with whom I might be thrown. But I failed utterly to see how I was going back on this letter in offering to render a service that the Count, or rather his neighbor, asked me to render.
When it came time to go, the neighbor handed me a large sealed envelope, containing letters, which I was to deliver, if possible, into the hands of one Prince Chilkoff, a nephew I believe of the then Minister of Railways, who was temporarily banished to a rural community in the Baltic Provinces, about two hundred miles from St. Petersburg. I knew nothing about the Prince, or what he had done to offend the powers that be. What theletters contained, was, of course, a private matter into which I knew enough not to inquire. There was a promise in the undertaking which attracted me, and I willingly accepted the commission. Arriving in St. Petersburg I called on Mr. Breckenridge and happened to mention the errand that I was on. I told him that Chilkoff was banished in the sense that he had to live within given boundaries, but that I hardly thought he had done anything very serious, adding that his uncle was one of the Ministers of State. All that I know to-day about young Chilkoff's offense was that he was alleged to have been mixed up too intimately for his own good with the Donkhobors and other more or less tabooed religious sects in the Caucasus.
At first Mr. Breckenridge did not see anything out of the way in my errand, and very kindly offered to assist me officially in seeing the Prince,i.e., he suggested that we openly ask for governmental permission to proceed to the Prince's home. Then I mentioned the secret package of letters. The Minister's manner changed. "Suppose you dine with me to-night," he said, "and we will discuss those letters." I did so, and the upshot of the meeting was that the package of letters was ordered back to Yasnaya Polyana. At the time it seemed a pretty humiliating trip to be sent on, but I am glad now that I did not shirk it. "I have recommended you as a gentleman to the Russian government and people," said the Minister, "both in the letter I gave you to the Minister of Finance when you were getting the correspondent's pass and in the later one of a general character. Foryou to undertake secret missions of this character may very easily make the government wonder whether I knew what constitutes a gentleman when I gave you those letters."
I have had to eat a number of different kinds of humble pie in my day, and tramp life let me into some of the inner recesses of humiliation that no one but a tramp ever knows about; but no journey has ever made me feel quite so cheap and small as that return trip from St. Petersburg to Tula, the railway station where visitors to Yasnaya Polyana leave the train. I telegraphed ahead advising the Count's neighbor of my coming, and expected that he would meet me at the station. What was my surprise, on arriving at Tula, to find the old Count himself waiting for me.
"Ah! Meester Fleent," he exclaimed as I got off the train and greeted him, "have you brought me news from Prince Chilkoff?"
I wished at the time that I could sink out of sight under the platform, so pathetically eager was the Count's expectancy. There were only a few moments to spare, and I clumsily blurted out the truth, trying at the same time to explain how sorry I was. The Count calmly opened the envelope and glanced at the letters.
"Oh, it wouldn't have mattered," he said, and after shaking hands, went back to his house. He neither seemed vexed nor embarrassed. A suggestion of a tired look came into his face—he had ridden seventeen versts—that was all.
One of his "disciples," referring to this affair and myconnection with it, some weeks later, ventured the statement that I had "funked" in the matter. I hardly think the Count felt this way about it, whatever else he may have thought. At the time, however, as he rode away on his horse, the letters tucked carelessly under his blouse, I would have given a good deal to know exactly what was in his mind. I remember very accurately what was in mine—a resolution, that, whatever else I did or did not do in life, I would never accept an official letter to the effect that I was a gentleman and then proceed to do something which was likely to get the letter-writer into trouble. "Either leave such letters alone," I counseled myself, "and be your own interpreter of gentlemanliness, or know, before accepting them, what will be expected of you."
Tolstoy, no doubt, has long since forgotten this episode, but I never will. In a way it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I felt that I had spoiled my experience at Yasnaya Polyana. I outgrew this feeling, however, and often think now of my visit to the Count and his family as I did when I drove away to Tula in the two-wheeled cart. I likened myself at the time to a dog "caught with the goods on," so to speak, and slinking away with his tail between his legs, but with the "goods" held tight in his mouth. Something, I know not what, unless it was the sweet peace and kindliness of the Count and his surroundings, seemed such forbidden fruit for me of my tempestuous career to taste of, that I felt very much as I used to feel as a boy when caught trespassing in other people's orchards. It did not seem right that one whohad been through what I had should be allowed to enter into such an atmosphere of good cheer. Nevertheless, I was glad that entrance had not been denied me, and made many solemn resolutions to profit by the experience. Whether the resolutions have been kept with the fervor and determination that animated me in 1896, I would rather not say. But one remembrance is as vivid and dear to me to-day as when I rode away in the cart: the Count and his desire to do the right thing. "If to be like him," I have often caught myself saying, "makes one a fakir, then let us all be fakirs as quickly as possible." Unpractical, yes, in some things; a visionary, perhaps; a "literary" reformer, also perhaps. But my simple testimony about him and his is that I have yet to spend ten days in a gentler and sweeter neighborhood than those I enjoyed in and about Yasnaya Polyana.
It is a far cry from Count Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana to General Kuropatkin and Central Asia, but while dealing with men and things Russian I might as well tell here as elsewhere of my visit to Central Asia in the fall of 1897. Again the motive was journalistic, and again I was the proud holder of a pass over all the Russian State Railways, not over the private lines, however, as the year before. I have to thank Prince Chilkoff, the Minister of Railways, for this second pass. He had become considerably interested in my travels, and on learning that I contemplated excursions into remote parts of Russia he kindly offered to ask the Tsar to grant me free transportation for three months "in order that my investigations might be facilitated." When the transportation finally reached me, it read: "With Imperial Permission." I have always thought that there was an undue amount of red-tape in getting the pass, but Prince Chilkoff personally assured me that he must formally ask the Tsar for it before it could be issued. This being true, the poor Tsar has more to attend to, particularly in these later days, than ought tofall to the lot of one man. Truly, he is an overworked man, if he must give attention to such minor details. No wonder if some anarchist pots him. There is not a railroad manager in the United States that could do all that the Tsar is alleged to have his hand in on the railroads, and at the same time run a great nation, a national church, and the largest army in the world. Consequently the Imperial permission did not make the impression upon me that it would have, had I believed that the Tsar had done anything more than nod his head, or make a scratch of the pen, when Prince Chilkoff asked for the pass.
I had seen the Tsar the year before, just after his coronation in Moscow. The occasion was the Imperial return to St. Petersburg, following the terrible accident on the Chodyuka Field in Moscow where thousands of men, women and children were crushed to death in the mad scramble for the coronation mugs. Rumor darkly hinted at the time that the scramble was a forced affair, that certain officials charged with furnishing the crowd with mugs and refreshments, had made a deal with the purveyors of these things whereby a much smaller supply than was necessary should be furnished, the surplus money paid out for an adequate supply going to the crooked officials and dealers—that the scramble, in a word, was a preconcerted scheme to cover up their devilish machinations. Charges of graft and corruption are so numerous and haphazard in Russia that one can seldom find out the truth. Whether this particular deal was actual or not, however, the look on the Tsar's facewhen he rode down the Neffsky Prospect on his return from Moscow was dismal enough to make almost any rumor credible. I had a window on the Prospect directly opposite the Duma (City Hall), where the Tsar and Tsarina accept bread and salt from the city fathers on such occasions. A good shot could have picked off the Tsar at that moment with ease.
A more tired-out, disgusted, bilious-looking monarch than was Nicholas during that Neffsky ride I have never seen. The ceremony at the Duma over, he and his wife were whisked away toward the Winter Palace, bowing languidly to the right and left. "Insignificant" was the word I heard from those about me at my window, and it sums up the man's looks, and I am afraid his importance as well.
In 1897, the local Tsar of Russian Central Asia was General Kuropatkin, the soldier who seems at the present writing to have buried his reputation as a commander-in-chief in Manchuria. At the time in question he was looked upon as one of the ablest and most popular generals in the Russian army. He was also supreme "boss" in the district under his command. When the visit of the party of which I was a member was about over, and we were to leave Central Asia, two or three enthusiastic Britons thought that it would be worth while to wire our gratitude to the Tsar. Kuropatkin was asked about the advisability of such a proceeding. I was not present when the question was put to him, but one who was present told me that Kuropatkin replied: "What's theuse? I represent the Tsar here and will transmit your message to him." The telegram was sent nevertheless, via the British Embassy, and, as usual, in such cases, we eventually learned that the Tsar had, metaphorically speaking, spent his entire time wondering how he could make our visit in his dominions more entrancing.