(29 years old)
But back in America she once again was restless. Social life had no appeal for her. There was something much more genuine in Russia or even in Europe—something much more alive, much less artificial. Her aunt Martha Wadsworth tried to interest her in other things, take her mind off the brooding dissatisfaction which Nelka was showing.
In 1910 General Oliver, then Secretary of War, and a personal friend of Mrs. Wadsworth, decided to undertake a reconnaissance trip through New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, partly to do some surveying and mapping of the area and partly to test a compressed fodder for horses invented by Captain Shiverick, also a friend of Mrs. Wadsworth.
General Oliver invited Mrs. Wadsworth to take the trip with him and she in turn asked Nelka to come along.
This was a most unusual, interesting and difficult trip, especially for women. It lasted six weeks. The first three weeks General Oliver took part in the trip with a whole squadron of cavalry. Then he left and the rest of the three weeks only a small party continued through the Navajo Indian Reservation to the Rainbow Bridge in Utah. This party consisted of only two officers, several enlisted men, one Indian guide, Nelka and her aunt. All on horseback and pack mules carrying supplies. They covered unmapped territory over the most rough and difficult terrain, which often was dangerous. Even one horse was lost when it fell over a cliff and had to be shot because of injuries. They slept on the ground, froze during the cold nights while the heat of the day was always around a hundred, and on one occasion reached 139 degrees. A great many very interesting pictures were taken during this trip. Nelka always remained under the spell of this trip and the beauty of the untouched wilderness, but at the same time had some unpleasant impressions of the awesome country. Also it lasted longer than she had expected and she was anxious to get home. Only that year her aunt Martha had given Nelka a poodle puppy, Tibi, which Nelka left with her aunt Susie in Cazenovia. She was worried about the puppy all during her trip.
Incidentally, this Tibi played a very important, and sad role in the life of Nelka. The dog, because she was always with Nelka and because of this close relationship, developed a very high degree of understanding and companionship with Nelka. This mutual understanding resulted in a very deep attachment between Nelka and Tibi, and Nelka certainly developed a very unusual love for this Tibi, whom she always took with her back and forth between Europe and America and kept always with her—except on the occasions when she was obliged to leave her for short periods. I knew Tibi for she also had been left by Nelka with me and my mother in the country on one or two occasions when I took care of her.
Here are some of the impressions that Nelka gathered from this western trip and which she gave in her letters to her aunt Susie:
Utah 1910.
"The Navajo Mountains and the Natural Bridge were, to me, terrible. I can never give you a complete description of it, but, aside from the other difficulties and trials, it impressed one as the most godless place conceivable. I don't see how anyone can keep any religion in the canyon in which the bridge is—such a mass of turbulent, ruthless rock, all dark red—hopeless, shapeless chaos. It all looked just as if there had been a smash up yesterday. No beyond, no nothing, nothing alive, nothing dead, every step of the way almost impassable and the feeling that every minute more rock could come smashing down. On the way there Mr. Whiterill, our guide, fell over with his horse when it was impossible to keep balance. He got loose, the horse fell over backwards several times, broke its neck, slid down sheer rock and fell about 50 feet over a cliff, the sound was awful."
"Mr. Heidekooper and I went down to the bottom of the canyon and lay back on the rocks with our feet in a pool. I closed my eyes and tried to forget these crushing walls."
"There was a question of moving the sleeping blankets to get out of a scorpion patch, but we finally stayed where we were. I refused to mount my horse firmly and flatly until we got out of the worst part of the canyon, so I walked 12 miles when I had to pick every step on sharp stones. On the way back, Pat's horse went head over heels down another steep place but was not killed. Still a few miles further my horse slipped going over a huge mass of rock as smooth as an egg and about the same shape and everyone thought he was about to be hurled to instant death, when by a miracle he screwed around, got himself up and caught his footing again. My mental agony had been so great that I had not a bodily sensation. I took my blanket, rolled up in it and went to sleep by some trees under some branches and a log. We came over the rocks where one misstep would have sent the horses to the bottom. No place even to spread his four feet before the next step. My heart was in my mouth most of the time. I don't know what impression you might get from my letter. I have seen the most beautiful sunsets, but there are more essential elements than these to live in peace and the limits of what I can do now are very marked. I am wound up to the last degree. There are lovely Indians here."
Kianis Canyon 1910.
"We arrived here in the rain; the pack train with the lunch miles behind and a waste of thistles to sit on, but it cleared up soon after and everything got settled. There are two very nice dogs along—Kobis and Terry. Terry belongs to Mr. S. and has his ears cut to the roots. I need not insist upon what I feel for both the dog and the man."
Canion de Chelley, August 1910.
"This country is too wonderful for words. It is the place—the only way to live. I wish you could see it and I wish you loved it as I do. Won't you bring Tibi and the boys and stay here? Oh, Oh, there is nothing to say."
Gonado 1910.
"I get up at 5 and see the sunrise and generally take the things in before everything gets astir. We have breakfast at 6, 6:30 and start our marches at 7. It was so cold one night I got up at 4:30 and made up the camp fire. My face is dark brick and painful but I think I had too much cold cream fry and I have stopped. The heat of the sun is great. Wednesday we crossed the 'Painted Desert' which was even more beautiful than the canion and camped at a kind of oasis on a little lake and were able to have a swim—though the desert was full of rattle snakes and the lake full of lizards."
"I walked off and got lost almost 4 hours. They had the whole troop out looking for me, and the trumpeters blowing for over an hour. There was no moon and I had decided to spend the night where I was by a cactus, when I saw a light in the dim distance and finally Captain McCoy found me. It gave me a vivid sense of how misleading the flatness of the desert can be. When Captain McCoy found me he could not see me ten feet away and I think it was chiefly the white dog he had with him that found me. I had had to take off both shoes and stockings about two hours before as the mud was so heavy I could not raise my feet and it was raining part of the time. Every place where the Indians live in their natural mud huts it is clean and inoffensive. As soon as there is a sign of a real house, or what you call civilization, there is dirt, smells, refuse heaps and flies—and of all the sights in my life, bar none, the washstand in Mr. Hubble's store, with wet newspaper, stagnant slop jar, dirty tooth brush, filthy basin, sloppy soap—all humming with flies—is the worst I have ever seen and the most stomach turning. There is some freak from Boston in a checkered suit and goggles who walks around with some ideas for Indian betterment. I think they have reached the highest pitch in the fact that they do not scalp him! I had coffee, oatmeal and bacon all out of one bowl. I drink water that looks like bean soup and never use a fork and a spoon at the same meal. Sand and cinders or charcoal flavor everything, and I have fished olives out of the sand where they had fallen and eaten them with perfect satisfaction. Materially this certainly is the way to live. Spiritually some shifting might improve it."
Back from the trip and into civilization, Nelka again was restless and discontented with her surroundings. Again she longed for Europe and especially Russia.
Her little dog Tibi became of primary importance in Nelka's life. Despite her love for animals, Nelka admits that up to that time she had no special attachment or deep affection for dogs. Dogs were just something you had around you; they were part of everyday life, but that was about all. But with Tibi, Nelka's affection for her grew and grew, and they became unusually attached to each other. Like all dogs who are constantly with a person, they develop a great maturity and intelligence. Tibi did just that. She was a very highly developed animal, as I remember her well.
The winter of 1910-1911 Nelka spent again with her aunt Martha in Washington. Her aunt had a large house and was in the social whirl of the capital. Dinners, balls, the White House, the Embassies—but all this meant little to Nelka and she felt the futility of all that activity, its artificiality and uselessness. Irritated and longing for a change she once again returned to Russia, and once again went back to the Kaufman community.
Her feeling for dogs and animals in general was becoming more and more pronounced—thanks in part to her close association with Tibi. In one of her letters to her aunt Susie written in 1911, she writes:
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I do not love humanity in the mass. I don't admire it. I feel sorry for the unenlightened and suffering but I think there are only a few in the world who 'vindicate,' as Uncle Herbert says, their right to exist. If there was for one moment in my heart what I feel for dogs, cats, horses and animals in general, I would be a real sister of charity. It is a perfectly distinct expansion and impulse and a real longing to help and joy in it that I do not feel in the face of suffering humanity. You can explain it any way. If all these crippled numberless that I have seen all these days had been maimed dogs, I don't know what I would have done. There is something in human nature that is so contemptible and poor that I can't feel the same way."
St. Petersburg 1911.
"How can you keep your faith in humanity? I think it is all so weak and not beautiful, and life as it goes somehow such an outrageous fizzle. Why are there such beautiful things, conceptions, possibilities only to be ruined by fatal microbes this human nature puts into it? Life only in yearning; Death to crown realization; peace only in oblivion. What for? And even the power of renounciation has to be fought for."
She was working at that time in the Kaufman community but was to go to Montenegro for a hospital reorganization. This did not come about. She wrote:
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I am undergoing the greatest disappointment at this moment. I was to be sent to Montenegro to establish a Red Cross sisterhood and overhaul the hospital, and to be given five sisters to take with me I as the head—so interesting—and in the part of the world which has always attracted me to the utmost, ever since I was in Sofia. And after it was all arranged and I was simply reveling in every detail, Baroness Ixkull decided that it was simply impossible to take Tibi."
St. Petersburg 1911.
"One doesn't love anything any more, religion, country, art. The only thing is to have one's interest outside of oneself—and to be very busy. I can hardly believe, at least I wonder, at myself being able to do so many things I dislike—getting up every day so early, no walks with Tibi, sleeping between five and six hours, often only four, and yet I enjoy everything—ice cream is a festival, a moment to sew a treat, and bed heaven."
"But oh, all these sick people—so depressing and gives one such an impression of superfluity of the human species. Everything, everything so beautiful except humanity—and not only man himself—dirty and unenchanting—but the instrument of hideousness all around."
Again Nelka was showing the restlessness because of the attachments to the two sides of the ocean—Russia and America—and the impossibility to satisfy entirely one or the other, or both. From Russia she wrote:
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I wish I could be in America and eliminate from my personal horizon the people and things which make me boil over in spite of myself. Dear Poodie, I wish you could really know what I feel and mean. I think if in recent years you had been in contact with the peace and simplicity of Europe in general, you would see what makes me shrivel with most Americans, because I am not above and beyond it as you are. America may stand for freedom, but it has an unimancipated soul and there is a perpetual affectation, a caution, a suspicion, a lack of independence that does simply petrify life and crush feeling. You may say it is a small world, I don't know, but it is everywhere I meet."
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I have at last decided that my life must remain unsettled, undecided; it is too late to settle it except by sheer will, and that is too stupid. Real ties exist in different centers—one must obey both; it is utterly indifferent to me what external aspect my life takes, because it is also too late."
(She was then 32 years old)
St. Petersburg 1911.
"I hope to be in America at intervals and often. You and Pats are more to me than anything else and I have the greatest love for Poodihaven (Cazenovia), but I cannot associate with outsiders sufficiently to fill my life. I want to beat them all and I don't want to hear them talk."
At this time, I think, she was going through a very difficult period of uncertainty in her life, which is reflected in her letters written at that time:
"If I did not care for Americans and if I did not have a great deal of sentiment and associations, ties and memories in America, it would be so easy to leave it alone and not think about it. But I know I am both. I know how strongly attached I am to both sides and I only deplore the difference among people in the world. But when I think of even those others that I care for, I know that we are strangers. My heart does not beat with any puritanical sentiment—so there. If I am attracted to some puritanical offspring—some representative of the progressing (?) new world, it is like being in love with a marble statue."
"I don't know why I write all this, but how impossible life is. I think it really is a most devilish arrangement. No peace except in utter renounciation. And must one struggle through a peppery sequence of years just to know this?"
"Baroness Ixkull is going to give me perfectly new sisters to train and I am going to make them march like pokers, copy every record each time they make a spot and count all the linen every two weeks. As they will not have been in any other ward, they cannot make any comparisons or complain."
"I know, Poodie, that you would like some things here very much—the simplicity of everything and the independence of people. I think it is only possible with a recognized aristocracy when people do not have to explain themselves and are established. I have met a few such nice people, of course to hardly know them, but one feels one knows them at once because there is a recognition of being of one world and one knows beforehand that one shares the same feelings towards most things. For instance, they may not know me personally but the fact that Papa was in the service, was Gentillomme de la Chambre (Court title), was educated at the Lycee, defines a type, defines in a certain manner his daughter, if only externally. Then knowing that Mama was American, the whole thing is clear in a natural way. My wanting to be here is understood—my attachment to America is understood."
St. Petersburg 1911.
"My life here is so full in one sense that it seems much more than a few months since I was in America. Life seems very, very short in comparison with the wide conception of possibilities which gives the zest to youth. Everything seems so partial and the total is so hard to realize. To keep tranquility with the increase of perception and understanding means renounciation as far as I can see. It must be a great privilege to work and pursue one's greatest convictions—to act what one feels sure of—this is in many ways adjustment to circumstances. Please God that there may be some good in it."
"The spirit is everything—nothing else matters. I can never leave the ward on their hands (new sisters) and I mean every day from 8 until 9 at night and often part of the night, if it is very serious. I am very well, sleep little, eat little and am flourishing."
So after this additional stage in Russia at the Community, Nelka returned once again to America, but not for very long. Early in 1912 she was again getting ready to go back to Europe. Writing from Ashantee in 1912 she said:
"I know it is unrest—I know it all—yet the true picture is that of going thousands of miles to where I am not needed, and leaving my two best friends. I long for the work and can't wait. Between now and it, just think what bumps and jolts and frights and moans. Oh, what is it all about?"
Nelka spent that winter with her aunt Martha in Washington. It had been a winter entirely filled with social activities—balls, dinners, the White House, the Embassies—and Nelka could not stand it any longer and was seeking some contrast. She certainly achieved the contrast all right, for as soon as she returned to Russia she was sent to the outskirts of the Oural Mountains. In that region a famine had been quite severe and the Government sent out feeding stations and Red Cross units to take care of the stricken people. Sisters were established in different villages, sometimes entirely isolated, where they issued provisions and gave medical care to the peasants. Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington!
Here is a descriptive letter written from Kalakshinovka, District ofSamara, in 1912:
"I am in a desert of snow, in quiet and peace, and feeding three villages. I lie on my bed which consists of two wooden benches side by side—one a little higher than the other. Only thing is that it is almost inaccessible. Even with the snow it is more roily and bumpy than the worst sea ever dreamed of being, and all one can do is to lie with one's eyes closed on some straw in the kind of low sleigh that bumps along hour after hour over these steppes. I first went to Sapieva, a tartar village in the District of Bougulma. Now I am settled and hope to stay here. I was busy last night late giving out provisions and weighing flour and today I have been trying to straighten out grievances and see that all receive justly—sometimes very complicated. Some brother of the official writer of the village, quarreled with the son of a poor woman when that woman's cow came too near his premises, and he made his son beat her off. My position in the matter is whatever the pro's and con's—how dare anyone hurt a poor famished cow and I am settling it on that line."
"I don't know what I would not do to feed all the poor cows and horses and sheep that are left. A number of friends in Petersburg gave me some money to distribute—a little over a hundred dollars. I gave about 50 in Sapieva and the rest I am going to use to save the animals. Aside from my pity for them, it will be terrible for the peasants not to have a horse to work in the fields as soon as the warm weather comes. Where will they be next year? I can help at least two or three families. One poor woman when I bought some feed for her horse and cow simply fell on her knees on the ground. Poodie, really how far people live from each other and how little one can dream of this life if one has not been in it. Perhaps other people understand things more or realize more, but with all I have seen and heard and read, that is simply being born to something entirely unknown—besides all the feelings one experiences oneself in being thus shut off from everything. I have at last attained my own bowl and spoon. I drink coffee and eat a piece of black bread in the morning. At 12 a bowl of buckwheat or some kind of grain with a wooden spoon—a glass of tea and at night a glass of cocoa and black bread, or as a treat a dish of sour milk. I cook and iron and do everything myself, but it is very simple."
"This is part of 'Little Russia' and is much cleaner than 'Great Russia.' I brought with me a few fleas from Great Russia and have the greatest sympathy for Tibi for the time she was exposed to flea companionship. How they bite and jump."
"The Tartars were so clean—the very poorest and none of the disorder that one sees in Great Russia. There is something absolutely distinctive about the Tartars and one feels a certain civilization and settledness that is different from all the other villages I have seen. Did I tell you how we all slept in a row with the old tartar and his wife and child?"
"Though I was doing my best to master the tartar tongue, I can converse more readily here. The Little Russian dialect is very different from Russian but one can get a long. The Red Cross will probably be stationed here throughout the famine—until the 'New Bread,' that is about the end of July—but Baroness Ixkull promised to replace me as soon as she could get another sister. I hope to get back to America in July."
Kalakshinovka 1912.
"A peasant walked in today and brought me a present—an apple about the size of a plum. I wanted to keep it until Easter but we consulted and decided it would dry up, so I ate it. It is getting late—8 o'clock and the candle is burning low."
Kalakshinovka 1912.
"The days have fallen into a routine. I distribute provisions, go to see the peasants and they come to see me—sew, mend, scrape mud off of boots and at last have a little time to write a few letters. In about a week I hope to go to Alekseievka, a village about 9 miles off, which is quite a center. There is a fair there every week and I shall buy some sugar and a little white flour and perhaps if it can be found, a piece of ham. I am getting awfully hungry. People will never get anywhere while taste is undeveloped and perception so dull and imagination so weak. I don't think all people can be taught to understand, but I do believe that the eye can be trained and the imagination led into paths which will make them revolt from ugliness, and that is a tremendous step towards salvation. It seems to me that 'conditional immortality' is the only possible and plausible doctrine. So much of humanity, whatever it looks like or however cannily it has devised to exist, has not begun, and why have such a respect for numbers? I should like to weed out acquaintances just as I attack occasionally the linen closet—with fire, and have a chance to breathe. It is all the unborn who sit around and choke the atmosphere."
Kalakshinovka 1912.
"All the horror of the famine is being realized right now. I will not write you about it for it is too terrible and heartbreaking—it is the horses, camels, cows and sheep—worst of all the horses. I will never forget yesterday as long as I live. I cried all day, I could not sleep all night. It is simply horrible. I have never so much realized the problem of existence as here. Everything is so foreign and so striking, one is simply faced by the question of how to live and to what end. What I feel more strongly than anything is that the product of the best education and civilization should be good and zealous—more near the saint—than that the masses should read or write. I have faith enough that all will attain in the end if the type that leads is worthwhile, but the type that leads is not."
Kalaskshinovka 1912.
"I have a whole little house now. The owner comes and cleans up; I bolt my door and I have a place to keep provisions for almost 900 people. The whole thing is just as interesting as it can be. I went not long ago to a village of Bashkirs to verify scorbutous and typhoid—about 15 miles from here; it is strange how entirely different they are. The Tartars seem the most settled and grown up and independent, and the Little Russians have more traditions. The Great Russians are more individual and less distinctive. You can't imagine the nice feeling of riding right out over the steppes, no fuss, no get up, with a purpose. The feeling that at the same time with the wild freedom of it that one is accomplishing something and working. I can't wait to see you. When I get my Tibi and start again across the seas, I shall be even glad to see that awful Liberty lady!"
Kalaskshinovka 1912.
"Your letter enclosing Pata's and the picture of Lutie was the reward of a walk of six to seven miles with a ton of mud on each boot, a night on the floor and a return at dawn on a rickety horse horseback. Everything is flourishing here, plenty of occasion for meditation and consideration. I enjoy tremendously the peasants' bath house. One can climb higher and higher and lie on shelves in different stages of heat. I got so steamed up I wanted at one moment to open the door and just fly out into the field without a stitch. When I look out on the plains here and then think of New York and the subway, my brain simply stops. This is about as small and poor a village as exists, yet there is a teacher and all the younger generation read and write, and the Tartars are really wise owls. I have no more desire to go to Persia. I am afraid that country is done for. I think Arizona is as safe as anywhere if they don't irrigate. Still those mission teachers are a pest. There is something fundamentally wrong with everything I know!"
Hardly had this episode of the famine finished, that the Red Cross sent units to Belgorod in the Ukrania where there was a great concentration of pilgrims for the canonization of St. Josephat. The Government once again set up feeding stations and hospital units to take care of the sick and aged and all emergencies arising from the concentration of many thousands of pilgrims. Once again Nelka was there and it was of great interest to her.
During all of these absences Nelka kept her little dog Tibi either with us in the country or with friends in Kasan, the Krapotkins. She went to pick up Tibi in Kasan from where she wrote in 1913.
"I caught some horrible microbe just before I arrived and had a terrible grippy cold which kept me in the house and in bed—but it is over now. I feel rejuvenated 15 years and full of energy. I almost believe it is climatic. The feeling is so different. Isn't it awful about the priest being hung in Adrianople? I don't see how the whole of Europe doesn't stand together to drive the Turks out of Christian countries."
(This was written just before the start of the Balkan war.)
Nelka returned to St. Petersburg and made preparations to leave for the Balkans. The Russian Red Cross was sending out units to the Bulgarian Army. After returning from Kasan, Nelka stayed for a while at my mother's place in the country. This was a time when I was preparing for my entry examinations to the Lycee and she wrote about that to her aunt, who was interested in everything pertaining to education.
Writing from Poustinka (our country estate) in 1913:
"I am very much hopped up and stirred up and feel very full of life. I had a very pleasant short stay in Kasan. Enjoyed seeing people very much—so much youth I have not seen for ages—young people, young officers, young marriages, and then such delightful old people. The young officers were just simply waiting for mobilization. About war, everything is most uncertain. Half the people say it will be immediately, the other half that it will be avoided—no one can tell anything. I am going to Adrianople Tuesday. Baroness Ixkull is there with a large division and I think that just now there will be more to do than ever. I go first to Sofia."
"Yesterday I went with Veta (my mother) and Max to town. We came back in the evening and after dinner I had a most delicious sleep on the sofa by the fire—Max waking me up every few minutes."
"This afternoon I had a fine nap and then gave Max an English dictation. He is preparing for his examinations for the Lycee. Really it seems a great deal. Besides all the usual subjects, he has to take Grammar and Composition in Russian, Latin, German, French, and English. Ancient History, European History and Russian History separately, besides Religion. An awful lot, and all the other things. None of the languages are optional and in two years he has to be examined in the literature of each."
"He is such a nice boy, 15 years, so boyish and yet so developed and such a lot of casual culture, just from association with cultured people—and yet a real country boy, loving the affairs of the estate and everything to do with the place, and full of fun and mischief. I am all for education at home until the final years for boys, and altogether for girls—I think it is more developing."
After this stay with us, she left for Sofia and the war.
Sofia 1913.
"General Tirtoff sent me a 'laisser passee' and a certificate so that I can't be taken prisoner, and I expect to arrive to where we have the tents in 2 or 3 days. General Tirtoff, under whose orders I am, proposed yesterday to send me as head of a hospital which is now stationed in Servia, but which has to be sent to Duratzo where there has been a big battle. It will be a tremendous lot of transportation and, though very interesting, I don't know if I should like it as much as a small field hospital like Adrianople. Any way it all depends on what happens at Adrianople."
Sofia 1912.
"I have just come from the Queen. She was ill and could not receive me before. She was very, very nice—much nicer than I expected and better looking than her pictures. It is now 3 A.M., and I am to get up at six."
Nelka joined the division of sisters at Adrianople and took part in the fighting to take that city. This probably was much the most difficult and dangerous time she ever encountered. They were working in the very front lines, in the mud and dirt and under heavy shell fire. At one time when the shells were falling both in front and behind their tents, and it was impossible to move the wounded, Nelka realized that perhaps she would not come out alive. She wrote several short goodbye notes, one of which was written to my mother, which I reproduce here. I am grateful to think that at that critical moment she remembered me.
Kara Youssouff. 29 February 1913.
"Dearest Veta: We are under fire—the projectiles are going over our heads, one just fell on the other side of our tents, and the ground is torn up before our eyes. Perhaps we may miraculously escape—if not, goodbye. Perhaps some one may pick this up and send it. I send you much, much love—give my love to my friends in Petersburg, it is terrible for the poor wounded. Love to Max. Nelka."
Here is a letter from Aunt Susie Blow to Nelka in 1913:
"Nothing I can say suggests what I feel. The picture of you with those awful bombs bursting above you, before you, to right and left of you and the other picture of you plunging knee deep in mud and battling with mud and rain, as you made your way from tent to tent will never leave me. And what pictures of horror must move in ghastly procession in your mind. You have always wanted first hand experience. Now you have had such experience of famine, of war, of religious enthusiasm, of patriotic devotion. How will it all affect the necessary routine of life?"
Sofia 1913.
"I know I have written since the fall of Adrianople and I think I sent you a word from there. Did I tell you that the Consulate was in several places shattered by shells? What I noticed the most was the air of proprietorship of the soldiers in the town and how one felt the immediate transformation of the Turkish town into a Bulgarian one."
Sofia 1913.
"I do not know what I think about the Turks. I only know that I abhor the 'Young Turks' (political party). In general I suppose they are more civilized than the Bulgars. I do not care for them as a nation, but I wish nevertheless that the war would continue until they get to the very door of Constantinople. About occupying the city itself I do not know, because it is so complicated. Of course I wish it might belong to one of the Balkan states and I simply can't endure the mixing in of 'powers.' Powers—by what I would like to know, except size and force alone. I wish they would fight it out and take Constantinople and be done with it and the whole Balkan peninsula as well. I hate threats and tyranny based on the power to destroy if they want. Either gobble it up or leave it alone, but not dictate!!!"
"It is very strange, but it seems to me that everything that makes for terrestrial power makes for spiritual defeat."
"I am crazy to go to Tchatalja but a definite attack does not seem imminent."
"I am well and, as result of feeding on air and no sleep, had to move the buttons of my apron which had become tight. I can speak quite a little Bulgarian."
"I understand fully what is meant by 'A la Guerre, comme a La Guerre.' It is extraordinary how every preconceived notion and habit is thrown to the winds. I like it very much. Everyone acts as the immediate occasion seems to necessitate and it is so much more simple. Everything is changed and I see that it is just so everywhere in time of war because one thing is so very much more important than all the rest. It is when nothing is supremely important that life is simply impossible and that you are baffled at every step."
"It was terrible in many ways. Those first days at Kara Youssouff, but I feel it was the greatest privilege to be there. One felt helpless before such a demand but it was all so real and every breath meant so much."
Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned to America and joined her aunts.
Before leaving she spent several days with my mother and me in our country place. After she left my mother wrote to Nelka:
"Max and I miss you very much. I was so happy to have you with us for a time; your visits are always so nice and cheerful. I always remember them with so much pleasure. We had a long talk with Max about you and decided you were a real friend for us and Max said: 'we must always be real friends to her.' He is very fond of you."
(I was then 16 years old and very much in love with Nelka.)
Once finished with the Balkan war, Nelka returned again to America and joined her aunt Martha in Washington.
She brought Tibi back with her and here a tragic event took place which had a decisive influence on both Nelka's and my life.
While in Washington Tibi somehow got hold of rat poison and despite the help of the best veterinarian and also the help of two human doctors who were friends of Nelka, Tibi died.
Nelka took the death of her mother in a most tragic and painful way, but the death of Tibi affected her to a much greater degree. Her grief was beyond all comprehension and she went into a state of utter despair, verging on the frantic. Her Aunt Susie and a few friends tried to help her as much as they could but absolutely nothing seemed to help.
Just before she had left Russia, Princess Wasilchikoff had asked her to assume the reorganization of a sister community and hospital in Kovno, a fortress-town near the German border. Nelka did not accept the offer though it was of considerable interest to her, because she was then returning to America and had plans to stay with her aunts. But when her little dog died, she quickly changed her mind and telegraphed Princess Wasilchikoff that she was ready to accept her proposition. This she did primarily to try and get her mind focused on something and to get it off the brooding about Tibi. Her grief and despair can be judged from the various letters which she wrote to her aunt at that time, and for a long time to come.
Ashantee 1913.
"If that cannot be done I want to be buried in unconsecrated ground with Tibi and shall arrange for it. I cannot leave Tibi where she is buried and not know what will happen later."
"I hope when I die to know that it will be alright but I cannot get any nearer to being reconciled now, and it just comes over me with a fresh feeling all the time, that I cannot accept it. I have never felt so about anything. I am glad that you miss darling little Tibi. I feel estranged from everyone except those who knew and cared for Tibi."
During her trip back to Europe, she wrote from Rotterdam 1913.
"It just seems some times more than I can bear. I don't know how to get reconciled—that is the worst. I don't accept it and I have an outraged sense all the time of the fearful crime to that happy little life, and so many constant torments come up afresh all the time, that I just feel crazy. I tried to face it all and wear it out of my head in the beginning, but that did not work and now this willful keeping from thinking as much as I can does not help either. Why couldn't anything have happened to me that would not have hurt Tibi? I suffer because that little face is just always before me. If I could just have her for an hour and know that she was all right, I would die the happiest person in the world."
Paris 1913.
"I can't keep up my spirits all the time. I am terribly tired, look a perfect sight, but I don't care. Paris has not changed much. It will always be the most beautiful city in the world, I think, and the most civilized. Church was such a delight this morning. I like this Paris one better than anyone I know, but it all now seems simply a past and I know it will always be so."
Poustinka 1913.
"It seems to me almost superfluous to comment any more on the sadness and pain of what occurred—it is also just more and more and everywhere. The more one sees of life, the more frightened one is of being happy. I think life is just totally and absolutely inexplicable."
"Veta has got a little apartment opposite the Lycee and Max hopes to get in January. I am giving him English dictations and he is studying all day. Veta thinks of nothing else and wants to get him safely married at 21, which she thinks is the best thing for Russian men."
Well, I was safely married at 21 but not with the approval of my mother who opposed my marriage to Nelka because of our age difference.
Poustinka 1913.
"I have not yet seen about the cemetery here but I think I will arrange to be buried there if it is allowed, or else to find some piece of land somewhere. I just hope, hope, hope in something beyond as I never have before. I simply can't stand the injustice of Tibi, of her death and I can never get reconciled to it for a minute."
And a year later she wrote from Kovno in 1914:
"The approach of this anniversary has been taking me, despite of myself, over every minute of those dreadful, dreadful days a year ago. I don't want to speak of it all to you or make you feel any more than I have already the weight of a grief that will never leave me—but I do want to tell you that I shall also never forget how good you were to me and how you helped me through that simply fearful night. I don't know how anything could be any worse but still if you had not been there I don't know what I would have done—and I shall always remember and be glad that Tibi died not far from you."
I think unquestionably the loss of Tibi was the greatest suffering that Nelka ever experienced in her life, even though the loss of her mother and of her aunts was a great shock each time and deep grief which held on for a long time. But there was something about the death of this little dog which hurt Nelka more than anything else. While in later years she never hardly spoke about it, I think the pain always remained.
Nelka was a great believer in 'circumstances' in life. The death of Tibi was a 'circumstance' which affected Nelka's life and mine as well. Had Tibi not died as she did then, Nelka would not have returned that year to Russia. By returning to Russia in 1913 and then the war breaking out the next year, she was prevented from returning to America and thus never again saw her Aunt Susie, who died without her in 1916, while Nelka was at the front. She then stayed on through the war and then the Revolution, and we were married in 1918. Had Tibi not died, all the conditions would have been different and very likely we would not have been married, at least this is possible. I think both she and I have been believers in 'circumstances.' I know that I am. Circumstances which affect all our life. Sometimes one small event, something so insignificant that it is hardly noticed, can bring about a chain of events which entirely and basically change the whole course of one's life. This is what I think the death of Tibi did to the lives of both Nelka and me.
When Nelka came back to Russia in 1913 she undertook the reorganization job offered by Princess Wasilchikoff. Nelka felt it would help her forget and would act as a relief valve for her feelings. Princess Wasilchikoff offered Nelka complete freedom and independence of action and decision in all concerning the sister community and the hospital. She could act and do as she wished and desired. So Nelka agreed with the stipulation that she would undertake this job for one year, and having made her arrangements left for Kovno. The whole picture of the Kovno enterprise is very vividly seen from a number of letters written by Nelka during 1914.
Kovno 1913.
"I think life is a great mystery and thus far renounciation seems to me the only achievement."
Kovno 1914.
"Kovno is a little different from what I expected. It is much more of a hospital than I thought but it is to be completely made over. It is now for 50 beds and a separate house for eye illnesses with two wards in it. There are 40 sisters and 18 servants."
"Two hours after I arrived I attacked their hair (the sisters), and now it is as flat as paper on the wall. I also berated a doctor within the first 24 hours for not appearing for his lecture. I thought I better acquire the habit of discipline at once for the position is rather appalling and I am trying my best to impose terror. When I feel the terror getting rooted, I will try for a little affection and good will."
"I am now racking my brains how to get 180 dresses and aprons made byEaster and keep within the limit for cost."
"I am preparing different and complete charts for all the wards and a laboratory is to be opened in a month. The planning is not the most difficult; it is arranging things within given conditions and in a certain sense in a margin, and appeasing demands and complaints from all sides. The new division of the work was very complicated, too. In one ward, every sister, who was ordered to it either wept, flatly refused or prepared to lose everything and leave on account of the nature of the sister at the head of it. Of course I had to insist on acceptance of the distribution of service, on principle, but I am glad to have found good reason to get rid of the said sister, in time. Finally the young sister who has to go there now, and who reiterated for days that she would rather wash dishes for the rest of her days than go there, after a frank talk of half an hour, said she would, and that I wouldn't hear another word from her. I was reduced to real tears of gratitude and admiration for the effort."
Kovno 1914.
"My head I know is not as strong and clear as it was."
"I have a very nice room which is in the most immaculate order imaginable—I am never in it. Next to it I have what is called my 'chancellery' which has an immense big writing table, another table, three chairs, bells and excellent light and telephone. I spend most of the time in it when I am not going the rounds on a rampage. I like to know that my food costs only 15 cents a day."
During some time in 1914 I was very ill in Petersburg. My mother was at the same time in bed with the flu and unable to take care of me, so in desperation she telegraphed to Nelka in Kovno and Nelka arrived immediately.
Kovno 1914.
"I spent three days in Petersburg, arriving there finding both Veta and Max very ill. Max with fever of 104 or more. Max had all kinds of complications afterwards ending in an abscess in the ear. I looked after him for three days and nights and then Veta got up."
Kovno 1914.
"Every day I live the more insoluble everything seems and the more convinced I am of the insolubility of everything. There are lovely things and tracks in life and humanity, but as a whole the latter is so loathsome and life so sad and dreadful. I feel a terrible fatigue of life and it seems to me that all my energy is simply restless, except the energy to denounce. If I live a hundred years ten times over I think my feeling of indignation for some things will never diminish."
Always still feeling the loss of Tibi, Nelka did not seem to be able to get reconciled. She wrote to her aunt:
Kovno 1914.
"I have just the interest of having begun the thing and wishing to see it permanently established, as I have started it, but at bottom I don't care what happens to anything, and I am only thankful I have had my thoughts arrested momentarily. I had no right to complain of anything or wish for anything as long as Tibi was alive, and what torments me most is not my grief but that Tibi should have suffered. I don't understand anything and I only live in hope and helplessness. I can bear the grief of Tibi's death but I cannot get reconciled to the conditions of it."
During that winter my mother moved from the country where we were living to Petersburg, and Nelka happened to be with us when this took place and took part in the moving. Here is some of the description of the event:
Kovno 1914.
"We followed the next day with a dog and a cat. Veta, Max and I with all the baggage, a parrot 'Tommy' and two small birds in separate cages. I tried to look out for all three and froze my fingers off holding one cage and another that I wrapped up in my shawl. And so we started off in immediate danger of upsetting every minute. A day or two before the sleigh with Veta and Max and her sister-in-law and the driver upset completely in a ditch, horse on his back and toes in the air."
"Max's examinations were to be in two days so of course we tried to beat him into a cold corner to study in the midst of the confusion."
"Of course I took a sympathetic part in all this and did my share by scolding Max almost unremittantly from morning till night. He is a very bright and attractive boy, but easy going."
(Exactly four years later Nelka married the "easy going boy.")
Kovno 1914.
"I would give anything to spend a few hours with you and see how you are and have a nice talk. You don't know how much I realize what a rock you are of effective support and comprehension."
(Nelka never again saw her aunt who died in 1916 while Nelka was at the front.)
Kovno 1914.
"I ought never to move from Cazenovia if I had any character. I shall have learned a lot of things when I die—and all for what?"
Kovno 1914.
"I suppose I shall die a hopeless procrastinator but if I make small progress I also have no peace. It torments me dreadfully to have things undone. I wish I had passed beyond this world, in my soul."
Kovno 1914.
"I realize tremendously how an institution of this kind depends on the managing head. So much has to be looked after and such constant questions come up that no system or plan suffices by itself. It is very hard to get things done quickly without being somewhat impetuous and one cannot preserve control over everything without a great deal of calm. I think more than ever that institutional life is perfectly anti-human. It cannot be run without a certain amount of injustice—that is the innocent suffering for the guilty, that is if one attempts to have rules. It would be far more just to have no rules and exact of each one according to my own judgment. I think that regulations are only made in support of idiotic administrations."
Kovno 1914.
"Max wrote me such a nice, vivid letter."
"Politics are certainly very interesting now. I feel dreadfully sorry for Servia and I hope if there is war with Austria that the last Servian will die on the battlefield."
In May, June and early July of 1914, Nelka was writing to her Aunt Susie about her plans of returning to America. Finally she had made arrangements to sail the first week of August. But then the war broke out and she never got off.
Kovno 1914.
"I have written to the Russian Line and got special permission to sail from Copenhagen. If nothing unforeseen happens, I will leave here on the 4th of August for Stockholm. I had hardly finished this when the town was put under martial law. Everything is upside down. The inhabitants are all ordered to leave. The bank is packing up, people streaming all day there. Everyone ordered off the streets at night. The streets are occupied with soldiers and cannons moving to the front, and the aspect seems serious. No one can tell anything. I have already signed a paper not to leave without the permission of the fort. If we have war I am ready to stay to the end. I have the greatest sympathy for Servia and would like to work in the Red Cross there if not here. I shall try to write you again before being shut up for good, if the town is besieged. We are only a few hours from the frontier."
Kovno 1914.
"Since last night the town is under martial law. Everything is upside down. Cannons hustling to the front. Cavalry going off. All the inhabitants are ordered to leave. We are in the very seat of war. If we have war I am ready to stay to the end if need be. I only hope you won't feel too terribly uneasy. The lack of communications will be the worst. I feel great sympathy for Servia and hope this war will help them. All the big buildings are to be turned into hospitals. The new bank will be splendid—tile floors and water. It can hold at least a thousand, I think. All kinds of specimens are turning up to be enrolled as sisters, but I am relentless and shall take no adventuresses if I can help it."
Kovno 1914.
"I am glad it is for Servia, but O what a horror. I had none of this impression at Adrianople—the panic of a whole town before the war. Mobilization was begun last night, but the inhabitants were ordered to leave six days ago. I cannot describe it. It is just everything that one has ever read about war and a great deal besides. I am glad I have a good lot of sisters. I hope they will all do their duty. Communication will be cut off any minute. I shall be so anxious about my family if we are shut up for long. Well, goodbye. I pray for the best. One must be ready for anything."
Kovno 1914.
"Everything is cut off from Europe and I am dreadfully worried and unhappy to have no news from you and all the family. The whole fortress was put in a state of defense in no time, and the whole town has been ordered out from one station. You can't imagine the scenes. Prince Wasilchikoff has helped me very much in the place of his wife who had to go to Petersburg, and now he is going to join his regiment. I hope he can take this letter to send through Sweden. My consolation is that the war was started in behalf of Servia—it alleviates the horror of all that is going on. Prince Wasilchikoff came in for a moment and said that the political situation was very good and that England has declared war. Everyone is going to the war with enthusiasm. Don't worry too much. This section of the Army will not give in till the last. The Commander Grigorieff is splendid and General Rennenkamph is a real fighting man. I have 56 sisters ready in Kovno. My heart and head are full of anxiety and love for you, for you all. I may be able to get letters to you still, but if not, look out for Tibi's little grave whatever happens."
The absorbing work in Kovno, the excitement and the patriotic fervor were all beneficial to Nelka's state of mind in that it took it off her constant thinking about the death of her little dog.
While Nelka had her own sisters and hospital, the Army decided to consolidate the services under their jurisdiction and turned their own Army sisters over to Nelka and she found herself at the head of some 300 sisters. This was a large complicated administrative job but she handled it with great efficiency. Most of the time the fortress was under fire and it soon became obvious that it would not hold out.
The commanding general did not prove to be as good and efficient as Nelka supposed and he also lost his nerve. Under the increasing pressure of the Germans, he ordered the complete evacuation of the fortress, of the troops and material, while this was still possible. However, this was accomplished in a very poor manner and the commander himself left the fortress 17 hours before Nelka did. He also lost a great deal of his equipment.
Nelka in turn completed a full evacuation of her whole hospital and saved all of her material. Everything in the hospital building which could not be moved was destroyed and she went even that far to have all brass knobs removed from the doors and thrown into the river so that the Germans would not get the metal.
So Kovno fell, but the war went on and Nelka's hospital was reestablished some 40 or 50 miles to the rear as a rear unit taking care of the evacuated wounded. They were settled in a large agricultural school building in very fine surroundings. I managed to visit Nelka at that hospital for a few days.
Soon, however, the fighting resumed and the Germans resumed their advance. The hospital once again had to be moved. At that moment Nelka came down with a very severe case of scarlet fever. The doctor said that she could not be moved, just as the hospital was getting under way. The head doctor had her arranged in bed in a tent, leaving her one nurse. At the last moment when leaving, he slipped a revolver under her pillow! But Nelka recovered. The Germans did not reach that point and ultimately she was able to rejoin her unit.
Soon after that she was sent to the rear to a town called Novgorod, to organize a new unit. There she spent most of the winter and once again I managed to visit her there, as it was not very far from Petersburg.
All during the war, at different intervals, Nelka came back to Petersburg, mostly for just a few days and because of some business for her hospital or unit. Each time when she came to Petersburg she stayed at my mother's and thus I was able to see her occasionally.
The impression she had made on me when I first saw her as a small boy never changed. The only difference was that growing up I came more and more under her spell and was more and more deeply attached and devoted to her. I was then 17 years old and very much in love with her. But she was fully grown and I was but a boy yet, so that any hopes would seem rather futile for me. Futile because of the difference of age and because I could hardly expect that she could be interested in me. Also because of her great charm and personality she always had great success with men everywhere and it was more than possible that some fortunate man would be able to win her.
Both in Russia and in America and also while she was in Bulgaria and in Paris she had a great number of admirers and had over thirty proposals from men of different nationalities. She even had a Japanese suitor. But she never was interested in any of these suitors and once told my mother that she would never marry unless she had a complete and all consuming feeling for the man she chose.
But for the moment the war was on and everyone had other thoughts and jobs on hand than romance.
But I was growing up and so was my feelings for her. Every time Nelka would come to Petersburg, I would see her off to the train, taking her back to the front. On one such an occasion I gave her a box of white cream caramels. It was nothing, but for some reason or other it touched her very much and she always said that to her it was measure of my devotion.
On these departures to the front, she was always in a hurry—having so much to do and attend to. On these occasions the determination of her character manifested itself at different times. Once she failed to secure the necessary permit to board a train going to the front—there just wasn't the time for it. At the entrance to the platforms armed guards stood and one had to show one's pass to get through. I warned Nelka that she probably would have trouble, but she said there was no time for this now and that she would find a way to get through. Of course we arrived just about the time the train was pulling out and dashed towards the platform. A soldier stood at the entrance with his rifle and when Nelka plunged headlong towards him, he thrust his rifle horizontally in front of her to stop her. Without a moments hesitation she ducked low and slipped under the extended rifle, and was on the moving train before the sentry knew what it was all about!
On another occasion we arrived at the station just a little too late, even though she had her pass. When we dashed out on the platform we just could see the two receding red lights of the departing train. To this day I do not know what happened, but Nelka raised such fireworks that that train backed into the station. Nelka got on and the train pulled out again!
I have often said that it took courage to be in love with a woman of such determination!
After her winter in Novgorod, Nelka decided to form and organize a unit of her own to serve with the cavalry. She proceeded to raise the necessary money and to select the personnel. As the head of the unit she chose my uncle, my mother's brother, and as assistant a friend of his. She also chose some of the doctors she knew in Kovno as well as some of the sisters. The regular men orderlies and the horses were being supplied by the Red Cross. This unit was attached to the First Guard Cavalry Division. The doctors, the orderlies, the nurses were all on horseback; the stretchers for the wounded likewise were on long poles between two horses. When the whole unit was strung out Indian file it was a very long unit.
Once attached to the Cavalry Division, the unit moved right along with it. Often this was very rough going. Often they would be called out at night, had to saddle and be on the move. Nelka rode a horse named 'Vive la France.' If they were to move any distance they were loaded into trains. She always remembered a dark autumn night unloading the horses from the train in the dark, in the woods, and right next to the position of artillery batteries, firing steadily—the difficulty of controlling and trying to keep the horses reasonably quiet. She had a great deal of trouble with her frightened horse, trembling and scared, because of the noise and flashing guns. The fighting was going on a short distance ahead and hardly had they unloaded as the wounded started to be brought in. They worked on them in muddy dugouts. Between moments of respite Nelka would run out into the dark and try to soothe her horse which was tied in the woods. The guns kept on firing all night.
This was the kind of life which went on. In July 1916 my uncle, the head of the unit, was killed by shell fire, at a moment of some very heavy fighting. The work they were carrying on was right near the firing lines.
At one time, during 1916 Nelka came for a few days to our country estate and one day I went with her to Petrograd. There she received a letter from her Aunt Martha Wadsworth. I was coming back to the country with Nelka on the train. She had the letter in her hand but would not open it for she said she felt it was bad news and she was afraid. She had a premonition of something wrong. We traveled all the way in silence and I could see how very anxious and upset she was. Feeling as I did for her, it was painful for me to see her in that state but there was nothing I could do. She did not open the letter until we reached home and she went alone into her room. It was what she had expected—the news that her beloved Aunt Susie Blow had died in New York.
Another terrible, painful shock, Nelka took it in a very hard way but with great calm and fortitude. She felt that she had failed her aunt, that she should have been with her, instead of at the war. She blames herself. She felt that being at the war was a form of selfishness of self-indulgence, when her duty should have been to remain with her aunt.
Once again a tragic and very hard blow, a blow so hard to accept because of her special devotion to that aunt.
But the war was on—she could not even indulge in her sorrow and she had to return to the front. Fighting was heavy that summer and her cavalry division was engaged and on the move. The unit was always up front, close to the fighting lines and the work was hard.
That summer I entered Officers Training School and did not see Nelka for a very long time.
On the first of February 1917, I received my commission as second lieutenant in the First Infantry Guard Regiment. This was the last promotion done by the Emperor. I was assigned to the Reserve Battalion stationed in Petrograd.
Less than a month later the Revolution broke out and I had a week of street fighting. Then chaos ensued.
Through most of the summer of 1917, I was at the front in Galicia. Nelka was somewhere at the front near the Rumanian border. We did not know where each of us was and had no communications.
Gradually the discipline in the Army, under the impact of theRevolution, broke down and the front started to disintegrate.
While my regiment was coming apart on the Galician front, Nelka's unit was doing the same on the Rumanian border. Some time towards the end of the summer the remnants of her unit were in Rumania and finally came apart. She was left with but a few sisters and her assistant chief, a friend of hers, a Finnish gentleman, Baron Wrede.
At a certain moment she sent him with some of the personnel and equipment from Rumania over the border back into Russia. However, she herself remained behind to take care of the local priest who was desperately ill. A few days later, the priest died and she was ready to follow the unit back over the border. Just before leaving she found and picked up a poor, small abandoned kitten. Tying the kitten up in her shawl and hanging it from her neck, she rode away from Rumania back to Russia. One soldier was riding back with her. At night time they arrived at a small village and for some reason or other, the soldier disappeared. After waiting for a while, there was nothing to do but to continue. And so in the night, Nelka rode alone through the woods and over the mountains over the border from Rumania into Russia. A woman, riding alone, in the night in the midst of the Revolution! She rode all night, the kitten dangling in front of her. By morning she reached a Russian village and soon located the unit. She said she would never forget that ride in the night. The next day the lost soldier turned up very much upset at having lost her on the way.
The revolution was taking its toll and everything was rapidly coming apart, disintegrating and in a state of anarchy. There was no choice but to drop everything and try to get back to Petrograd if possible. But this was not easy to do. Everything was in complete turmoil, no regular train service and the revolutionary soldiers in complete control of everything. The greatest danger was for the Finnish Baron who as an officer was in danger from the soldiers. So a stratagem had to be invented. Nelka went and declared that the Baron was desperately ill and had to be sent to Petrograd without delay, and that for that she needed a special permit. This she managed to secure and was assigned a compartment in the overfilled train. The perfectly healthy Baron was brought in and arranged lying down all the trip of several days, while Nelka had to take care of him, bring him food and look after the 'invalide.' He said afterwards that he had a 'very pleasant trip.' While lying in his berth he kept with him the kitten. Finally they arrived in Petrograd. The Baron then returned to Finland taking with him the kitten where it lived on their estate to a ripe old age.
Nelka, upon her arrival, stopped as usual at my mother's. Soon after that I returned from the front. Now we were all together once more and all together tried to survive in the Revolution, which was not an easy matter. I then joined the British Military Mission with the offices at the British Embassy.
About that time the Kerensky Government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks and a lot of fighting took place in the city. Nelka used to say how pretty the city looked with the streets completely empty, when she would be returning home, sometimes skirting the walls of the buildings when some shooting would start along the street. We all soon got used to that kind of existence, which became a normal way of life.
But the Revolution was going on and things were getting worse from day to day. The Bolsheviks were killing right and left and the Red terror was in full swing. My work with the British Mission was at that time of some protection for the Bolsheviks were not yet sure of themselves to the extent of daring to molest the foreign missions. My work with the Mission took me away on various trips accompanying British officers.
In the spring of 1918, one of these trips took me to Mourmansk on theArctic Ocean and where fighting was in progress between WhiteRussians and other foreign units and the Bolsheviks.
All that area was not exactly a very healthy place to be in and after quite a few adventures I managed to return to Petrograd. I brought back with me 75 cases of what the British call 'Iron Rations,' a mixture of all kinds of food to be used in emergencies.
Food was more than scarce by that time and I was given a couple of cases. It was a God send for all of us. We all subsisted on it.
But the Bolsheviks were getting bolder by the day and were raiding houses, arresting former officers and executing them every night.
One evening about ten, a knock came on the door. I opened. Three men with rifles came in with a commissar. They asked for me by name and said they had an order to search the place. They asked if I had any arms and I said I had a service revolver, which had been given to me by the British. I also had another revolver of mine which lay on the mantelpiece. Nelka, who was there in the room, did at that moment a most risky thing. Unobtrusively she slipped my revolver into the pocket of her dress. I noticed this, but the men did not. I produced the other gun which they dutifully registered and took. They then proceeded to search the place and after examining my papers, announced that I would not be arrested in view of my service with the British. Upon that they left. Nelka had done a most risky thing, for had the pistol been discovered in her pocket, it probably would have been the end of all of us.
However, things were getting very acute and very dangerous. It was obvious that a similar raid might happen again any day and might not finish as well. Should I be arrested and taken away the chances would be of my being shot. So far my service with the British had served as a protection, but with the relations with the foreigners fast getting worse, this could mean just the opposite for me and the connection would be detrimental instead of helpful. So it soon proved to be.
We all had a general consultation and decided to try and get out of the country if only possible. My father went to Moscow where he knew a prominent Jew who was procuring exit permits, for a price, and was helping that way people to get abroad. Then we all began to move about trying to stay in different places, different nights.
In the midst of all this, I declared my love to Nelka and asked her to marry me. She refused because she said she did not think it was fair to me on account of our age difference. I was then twenty-one and she was forty. I kept insisting. She admitted that she loved me and would not hesitate had it not been because of the age difference.
On a certain Friday morning something kept me from going as usual to the British Embassy where our offices were located. This proved to be my salvation for that same morning the Embassy was raided by the Bolsheviks. They invaded the Embassy, arrested all the British officers and killed Commander Crombie right on the entrance steps when he tried to stop them from entering. They hung his body head down out of one of the windows.
All the Russian officers who worked with the Mission were also arrested and promptly shot. Of 16 such officers, only three including myself ultimately got away. Thirteen were shot.
After the Embassy raid my position became extremely precarious, for I was now on the black list and being searched for. While previously my connection with the Mission had been a protection, now it was just the opposite. I could not very well remain in our apartment and we all scattered, except my mother who remained. My father was still in Moscow. Nelka went to some friends. I spent some time in the country where I hid for some time in our empty house.
It is to be noted that food was practically unavailable and that there was no money to buy it with if there was any. So we all had a pretty desperate time, but so did everyone else.