IIITHE NEW ARCHANGEL
WhenI last visited Archangel, six years ago, it was a dreamy, lifeless, melancholy port. One felt that, like its sister city, Kholmagora, it had once been great, but its greatness had finally set. You could feel the melancholy of Russia there, the sadness of material failure so characteristic of the Russian soul. But to-day! To-day the vision has fled, thetempohas changed. All the ships of the world find anchorage in her harbour, and motley crowds throng her streets. That the war has brought about. A year before the war fifty vessels entered Archangel port. During the last twelve months something like 5000 have entered. Great liners and transports and weather-beatentramps and three-deck river boats stand in majestic pride. Their smoke and steam make a dome over the city of Archangel when you approach it from the north.
There are Norwegians and Yankees, with their colours flamboyantly painted on their bows to warn the submarine off; Russians and French, with their tricolours streaming; but most of all English ships, with their proud rain-washed Union Jacks lolling in the wind. I was taken through the whole harbour in a little, arrow-like steam launch—from the Thames! How often it had shot under the arches of our little bridges, and now it was puffing and panting on the vast brown Dvina, be-dwarfed by huge ships, driven by a Lett from Riga, and constantly going short of steam and getting becalmed far from either shore.[1]Besidestroops, the French are taking great quantities of alcohol used in the manufacture of high explosives, and I saw many barges heaped up with barrels of spirit and wondered if there were many leaks. The Russian manufacture of alcohol has probably not diminished as a result of the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating liquors in Russia, but has proved to be a valuable war export. This fact is especially important to take into consideration with regard to Russian temperance reform. When the war is over and the market for this alcohol is partially lost, will there not be another movement of resistance on the part of the manufacturers?
I saw all manner of crates with machinery, parts of aeroplanes, and the like, and British vessels discharging these things, and I saw grain and flax and timber going on for us from Russia.
Go into the chief restaurant of Archangel,and as like as not all the customers are English captains, and they are reading back numbers of theDaily Mailand talking “ship.” At the Café Paris there is a “skippers’ table,” where they are also captains all, and the waitresses quarrel as to who shall serve there, though none of them knows two words of English. In the Alexandrovsky Gardens you see English sailors with Russian girls, and neither can say a word to the other. Their only language is that of looks. One of our men showed me a card with poetry written and violets painted and asked me to translate the words for him and write an answer. It ran something like this—
What need for words when without them you are soeloquent?Why should the lips moveWhen the eyes speak so well?
What need for words when without them you are soeloquent?Why should the lips moveWhen the eyes speak so well?
What need for words when without them you are so
eloquent?
Why should the lips move
When the eyes speak so well?
Sailors tell wonderful stories of feminineconquests, and it is evident the Russian girls are partial to them. Even at the theatre, in front of you are sitting such unlikely persons as a fireman and a stoker, and one says to the other with disgust, “I can’t understand a blooming word. Can you?” Some Englishmen have exercise books with Russian words and phrases laboriously copied out—an impossible language!
All is going well in Archangel. The Russians, in spite of their inexperience, are handling the immense quantities of materials well, and the “stuff” is all steadily proceeding to the places where it is most needed. New quays have been built, and loops of railway run along them, and some ships, carrying nothing weighing less than three tons, yet discharge all their immense articles of cargo in considerably less time than it took to put them on at Liverpoolor Dundee or Newcastle as the case may be.
The Russians earn unheard-of wages in the docks, and the rumour attracts thousands of workers from all parts of Russia. A journalist writing in theRusskoe Slovoin July called it the Russian Klondike. All Russians who go there are pleased with it. The port in its present grandeur is a sort of promise for Russia, and it flatters her commercial future.
I was warned I should not find a room anywhere in the city, and that people paid five roubles a night for the privilege of sleeping in a passage. But I obtained a clean room at the Troitsky Hotel for 2 roubles 75 copecks, which was not dear. Notices in the room were printed both in English and Russian, indicating how many English visitors they have now.
I called on my friend Alexander Alexandrovitch Beekof, the hunter and draperwhom I described in “Undiscovered Russia.” He had now opened a boot shop and was rich, selling his wares at three or four pounds the pair. He was proud of his business success and rejoiced in the independence which it gave him. He is now a member of the Gorodskaya Duma, and when a representative of the city was wanted to carry an emblem to the Archangel troops at the front, Beekof was thought to be the best.[2]He shared the hardships of the common soldiers, and was fain to stay at the front, but was mixed up in the great retreat from Austria and felt very sick of everything before he got back to his native city and the boot shop.
Since I was in Archangel last the young revolutionary exile Alexey Sergeitch, now pardoned and married and teaching history in Moscow, has brought out a little book onthe Monastery of Ci. I saw him later when I got to Moscow.
I was invited by the town council to partake of a glass of tea on the occasion of the opening of the electric tramway. All the notables of the town were accommodated on board a special steamer, and went slowly along the Cathedral pier a mile or so to the new electric power station. Here priests met us with banners and ikons and holy water. A service was held in the power station, and the smell of burning incense mingled strangely with the smell of new paint and oil and machinery. Holy water was flung in all corners and over our heads, and then the dynamos were set in motion and the whole place buzzed and groaned. I think Repin, the engineer, proud of having constructed the most northern tramway in the world, was a little anxious lest the holy water should spoil his engines.
But all went well, and we took our seats in the virgin trams to make the first journey, all the notables of the town and with them every beggar and labourer and tatterdemalion dock-hand that could get a footing. In Germany I can imagine how swiftly these gentlemen would have been dealt with. But in Russia “all is permitted” and we had a joy-ride. We went cheerfully along on our parade journey. The conductresses in brand new uniforms and shining metal clips and punches stood with their money bags and their full rolls of tickets. Directly following our trip to the Town Hall the cars were open to the public, and fares would be collected. Car after car drew up and we stepped out and walked up the stone stairs to the long tables and the glasses of tea and the proud speeches of the great men of Archangel.
Now the trams are in full operation, andbring in about £1,000 a week. Archangel is united, and friends within the city have become nearer. All day the trams carry passengers, and all night they carry goods, so I am told.
As I write of this now in the winter after I have come back to London, I imagine that probably now all is frozen over again. The brown river became white, and within twenty-four hours you could drive a horse and cart over it. It did not melt again till the spring. Captains and their crews thinking of leaving in a few days and grumbling because of small delays as they always do grumble, were suddenly condemned to remain idle for months; their ships, dotted here, there, and everywhere in the ice, had a processional aspect, and looked as if they were sailing out and yet never getting forward. The men cut pine branches and made avenues from their ships to the shores,well-trodden roads with names. There was “Broadway” leading to a big American ship, and K—— Avenue leading to theK——, andR—— Avenue leading to theR——. I may not mention the name of any British ship, but the detail has a picturesqueness which is worth noting. The Russian Government paid the owners of these boats hundreds of thousands of roubles damages for this unexpected incursion of Jack Frost. It was highly unprofitable to Russia, but every one made the best of it and no one grumbled.
The happy co-operation of the Russians and the English shows to advantage in Archangel. Russians and English like one another and get on well together there, though the souls of the common people are so different and Russian ways so different from our own.