after christmas, the second duma was convened and opened. its doings were not interesting. it was not a representative body, as the elections had been carefully arranged; still it was better than nothing, and the very existence of a duma of any kind exercised a negative effect on matters in general. the government could be interpellated. questions could be asked. the officials in the country knew that their doings could be discussed in the duma, and this acted as a check. in april 1907, i had an interview with count witte. witte was a large, tall, burly figure, with slightly ravaged features, intelligent eyes, the facile opportunism and the deep-seated scepticism of those who have had a long experience of affairs, of the ruling of men, and the vicissitudes of political life. he received me abruptly, and with a manner that, far from being ingratiating, seemed to express the unspoken thought, “why have you come to bother me,” but as the conversation went on he melted and became charming.
the first question he asked me was why i stayed such a long time in russia, i said it was because it interested me. i then said: “things seem to be going better.” “do you think so?” he asked, with a look of amused scepticism. i asked him what he thought of the doings of the extreme right, the reactionaries, who were now playing a noisy and important part in political and social life.
he said they were a great danger. the government would never dare to touch them. he said both the right and the kadets had lost faith in him. the kadets because he had not given them the key of the fortress, and the reactionaries because he had not hung all the liberals. he talked of the jewish question, and said that the jews had begged him[368] not to give them full rights, as they dreaded the consequences of a sudden act of that kind. he said he had always thought it impossible to give the jews full rights all at once. he said the kadets were guilty of all that had happened in russia in the last year, because they had refused to support him when he was prime minister, and had been unwilling to help him. had they done so he might have done a great deal. he then talked of stolypin. he said stolypin was an honest man, with no foresight, and a fatalist. “you can’t govern if you are a fatalist,” he said, with a gesture of contempt. he said the present electoral law was a farce, and that the only alternative was to change it or to go back to the pre-duma state of affairs; and that would not last long. he said that the kadets recognised their mistakes now, and their failure, and he heard from all quarters they were willing to accept his leadership now, but it was too late. for a thousand reasons he would never take office again after what he had gone through. i asked him how the funds had been obtained for the great general strike. he said it had all been prepared when plehve was minister, and had been kept secret. he said he considered the situation in october to have been one of real revolution, as there were then no troops available to deal with the situation.
the impression he gave me was of disillusion, indifference, fatigue, and invincible pessimism. he evidently thought that whatever steps would be taken would be fatal, and he was perfectly right.
in may i went back to london and stayed there till the middle of july, when i came back to st. petersburg.
i then started for a journey down the volga. i went by train from st. petersburg to ribinsk. on the way to ribinsk my carriage was occupied by a party of workmen, including a carpenter and a wheelwright, who were going to work on somebody’s property in the government of tver; they did not know whose property, and they did not know whither they were going. they were under the authority of an old man who came and talked to me, because, he said, the company of the youths who were with him was tedious. he told me a great many things, but as he was hoarse, and the train made a rattling noise, i could not hear a word he said. there were also in the carriage two tartars and a small boy about thirteen years old, who had a domineering character and put[369] himself in charge of the carriage. the discomfort of travelling third-class in russia was not the accommodation, but the frequent awakenings during the night caused by passengers coming in and by the guard asking for one’s ticket. the small boy with the domineering character—he wore an old military cap on the back of his head as a sign of strength of purpose—contributed in no small degree to the general discomfort. he apparently was in no need of sleep. he went from passenger to passenger telling them where they would have to change and where they would have to get out, and offering to open the window if needed. i had a primitive candlestick made of a candle stuck into a bottle; it fell on my head just as i went to sleep, so i put it on the floor and went to sleep again. but the small boy came and waked me, and told me that my bottle was on the floor, and that he had put it back again. i thanked him, but directly he was out of sight i put it back again on the floor, and before long he came back, waked me a second time—and told me that my candlestick had again fallen down. this time i told him, not without emphasis, to leave it alone, and i went to sleep again. but the little boy was not defeated; he waked me again with the information that a printed advertisement had fallen out of the book i had been reading on to the floor. this time i told him that if he waked me again i should throw him out of the window.
later in the night a tidy-looking man of the middle-class entered the carriage with his wife. they began to chatter, and to complain of the length of the benches, the officious boy with the domineering character lending them his sympathy and advice. this went on till one of the tartars could bear it no longer, and he called out in a loud voice that if they wanted beds six yards long they had better not travel in a train, and that they were making everybody else’s sleep impossible. i blessed that tartar not unawares, and after that there was peace.
towards ten o’clock in the morning we arrived at ribinsk, and there i embarked on a steamer to go down the volga, as far as nijni-novgorod. i took a first-class ticket and received a clean deck cabin, containing a leather sofa (with no blankets or sheets) and a washing-stand with a fountain tap. we started at two o’clock in the afternoon. there were few[370] passengers on board. the volga was not what i had expected it would be like—what place is? i had imagined a vast expanse of water in an illimitable plain, instead of which there was a broad, brown river, with green, shelving though not steep banks, wooded with birch trees and fir trees and many kinds of shrubs; sometimes the banks consisted of sloping pastures and sometimes of cornfields. in the evening we arrived at yaroslav, a picturesque little city on the top of a steep bank. all day long the sky had been grey and heavy, with long, piled-up clouds, but the sun, as it set, made for itself a thin strip of gold beneath the grey masses, and when it had sunk, the masses themselves glinted like armour, and the strip beneath became a stretch of pure and luminous twilight. in the twilight the town was seen at its best. i went ashore and walked about the streets of the quiet city; a sleepy town, with trees and grass everywhere (the trees dark in the twilight); the houses low, two-storied, and painted white, with pale green roofs, ghostlike in the dusk, ornamented with pilasters, eighteenth-century and empire arches and arcades. every now and then one came across a church with gilt minarets glistening in what remained of the sunset. the whole was a symphony in dark green, white, and lilac (the sky was lilac by now). the shops were shut, the houses shuttered, the passers-by few. the grass grew thick on the cobble-stones. i wandered about thinking how well vernon lee would seize on the genius loci of this sleepy city, dreaming in the lilac july twilight, with its alternate vistas of luminous white houses and dark glooms of trees. how she would extract the spirit of the place, and find the exact note in other places which it corresponded with, whether in gascony, or tuscany, or bavaria; and i reflected that all i could do would be to say i had seen yaroslav—i had walked about in it—and that it was a picturesque city.
we left yaroslav at eleven at night. in the dining-room of the steamer i had left a tauchnitz volume called fr?ulein schmidt und mr. anstruther, by the author of elizabeth and her german garden. i was looking forward to reading this before going to sleep; but this was not to be. the volume had disappeared. the next morning the matter was explained. there was a family travelling in the steamer, consisting of a mother, a daughter, and a son. the mother was young[371] looking, although both the daughter and son were grown up; they had found the book, and thought (i suppose) it had been left behind, or that it belonged to the public library. the book occupied them for the rest of the journey. they talked of nothing else. the mother had read it before. the daughter must have sat up late reading it, because she handed it over to the son early in the morning. they all thought it interesting, but they evidently disagreed about it. these are the things which ought to please an author.
we reached nijni-novgorod the next morning at eight. i took a cab. “drive,” i said, “to the best hotel.” “there is the h?tel rossia at the top of the town, and the h?tel petersburg at the bottom,” the cabman answered. “which is the best?” i asked. “the h?tel rossia is the best at the top of the town,” he answered, “and the h?tel petersburg is the best at the bottom.” “which is the most central?” i asked. “the rossia is the most central at the top, and the petersburg is the most central at the bottom.” “which is nearest the fair?” “they are neither near the fair.” “are there no hotels near the fair?” “there are no hotels near the fair in the town.”
we drove to the rossia, a long way up a very steep hill, past the kremlin—a hill like windsor hill, only twice as long. the kremlin is like windsor, supposing the outside walls of windsor had never been restored and the castle were taken away. when we got to the hotel the cabman said: “this part of the town is deserted in summer; nobody lives here; everybody lives near the fair.” “but i said i wanted to be in the fair,” i answered. “oh!” he answered; “of course if you want to be in the fair there are plenty of hotels in the fair.” so we drove down again, right into the lower part of the town, and thence across a large wooden bridge into the fair.
nijni-novgorod occupies both sides of the volga. on one side there is a steep hill, a kremlin, and a town covering the hill till it reaches the quays and extending along them;—on the other side a huge plain and the fair. the hill part of the town is wooded and green; the fair was a town in itself, and during the fair period the whole business of life—shops, including hotels, theatres, banks, baths, post, exchange, restaurants—was transferred thither. the shops were one-storied and occupied square blocks, which they intersected in parallel lines. they[372] were of every description and quality, ranging from the supply of the needs of the extremely rich to those of the extremely poor. i found a room in an hotel. the hotels were crowded, although i was told that the fair had never been so empty. it had not been open long, and merchants were still arriving daily with their goods. the centre of the fair was a house called the “glavnii dom,” the principal house; here the post and the police were concentrated, and the most important shops—fabergé, for instance. there were many dealers in furs and skins; i bought nothing, in spite of great temptation, except a blanket and a clothes-brush. the blankets were dear. star sapphires, on the other hand, seemed to be as cheap as dirt. i never quite understood when the people had their meals at the fair. the restaurants, and there were many, seemed to be empty all day; they were certainly full all night. perhaps the people did not eat during the daytime. in every restaurant there was a theatrical performance, which began at nine o’clock in the evening and went on until four o’clock the next morning, with few interruptions; it consisted mostly of singing and dancing.
what surprised and struck me most about the fair was the great size of it. i had not guessed that the fair was a large town consisting entirely of shops, hotels, and restaurants. the most important merchandise that passed hands at the fair was furs. but there were goods of every variety: second-hand books, tea, and silks from china, gems from the urals, and art nouveau furniture. there were also old curiosity shops rich in church vestments, stiff copes and jewelled chasubles, which would be found most useful by those people who like to furnish their drawing-rooms entirely with objects diverted from their proper use; that is to say, teapots made out of musical instruments and old book bindings. nijni, during the fair, was almost entirely inhabited by merchants—merchants of every kind and description. the majority of them wore loose russian shirts and top-boots. i noticed that at nijni it did not in the least signify how untidily one was dressed; however untidy one looked, one was sure of being treated with respect, because slovenliness at nijni did not necessarily imply poverty, and the people of the place justly reasoned that however sordid our exterior appearance might be, there was no knowing but it might clothe a millionaire.[373] another thing which struck me here, a thing which has struck me in several other places, was the way in which people determined your nationality by your clothes. while they paid no attention to degree in the matter of clothes at nijni, as to whether they were shabby or new, they paid a great deal of attention to kind. for instance, the day i arrived i was wearing an ordinary english straw hat. this headgear caused quite a sensation amongst the sellers of astrakan fur. they crowded round me, crying out: “vairy nice, vairy cheap, engleesh.” i bought a different kind of hat, a white yachting cap, and loose silk russian shirt, such as the merchants wore.
that evening i went to a restaurant at which there was a musical performance. i fell into conversation with a young merchant sitting at the next table, and he said to me after we had had some conversation: “you are, i suppose, from the caucasus.” i said “no.” we talked of other things, the far east among other topics. he then exclaimed: “you are, i suppose, from the far east.” i again said “no,” and we again talked of other things. he had some friends with him who joined in the conversation, and they were consumed with curiosity as to whence i had come, and i told them they could guess. they guessed various places, such as archangel, irkutsk, warsaw, and saghalien, and at last one of them cried out with joy: “i know what place you belong to; you are a native of nijni.” they went away triumphant. their place was taken by a very old merchant, a rugged, grey-haired, bearded peasant. he looked on at the singing and dancing which was taking place on the stage for some time, and then he said to me: “don’t you wish you were twenty years younger?” i said i did, but i did not think that i should in that case be better equipped for this particular kind of entertainment, as i should be only twelve years old. “impossible!” said the old man indignantly. “you are quite bald, and bear every sign of old age.”
i left nijni on the wrong steamer—that is to say, by a line i did not mean to patronise, because i knew it was the worst. there was no help for it, because my passport was not ready in time. i took a first-class cabin on a big steamer full of children with their nurses and parents. the children ran about the cabin all day long without stopping. children, i noticed, are the same all over the world: they play the same games,[374] they make the same noise. in this case there were five sisters and a small brother. what reminded me much of all children in general, and of my own experience as a child in particular, was that the boy suddenly began to howl because his sisters wouldn’t let him play with them, and he cried out: “i want to play too”; and the sisters, when the matter was finally brought before an arbitration court of parents, who were playing cards, said that the boy made all games impossible. also there were three nurses in the cabin, who, whatever the children did, told them not to do it; and every now and then one heard familiar phrases such as “don’t sit on the oilcloth with your bare legs.” “don’t lean out of the window with that cold of yours.” the passengers on the boat were uninteresting.
there was a couple who spoke bad french to each other out of refinement, but who relapsed into russian when they had really something interesting to say. there was a student who played the pianoforte with astonishing facility and amazing execution; there were the elder sisters of the small children, who also played the pianoforte in exactly the same way as young people play it in england—that is to say, with convulsive jerks over the difficult passages, and uninterrupted insistence on the loud pedal, and a foolish bass. the grown-up members of the party played “vindt” all day.
when we arrived at kazan i got out to look at the town. it also possesses a kremlin with white walls and crenellated towers and old churches, a museum of uninteresting objects, and a large monastery. it was the most stagnant-looking city.
the volga beyond nijni is considerably broader. it is never less than 1200 yards in breadth, and from nijni onwards, on the right bank of the river, there is a range of lofty hills, mostly wooded, but sometimes rocky and grassy, which go sheer down into the river. the left bank is flat, and consists of green meadows. below kazan it is joined by the river kama, and becomes a mighty river, never less than three-quarters of a mile in breadth. in various parts of its course the volga reminded me of almost every river i had ever seen, from the dart to the liao-he, and from the neckar to the nile. below kazan its aspect was gloomy and sombre, a great stretch of broad brown waters, a wooded mountainous bank on one side, a monotonous plain on the other. but when the weather was fine—and it was gloriously fine after we reached[375] kazan—the effects of light on the great expanse of water were miraculous. it is at dawn that you feel the magic of these waters; at dawn and at sunset when the great broad expanse, turning to gold or to silver, according as the sky is crimson, mauve, or rosy and grey, has a mystery and majesty of its own. we met other steamers on the way, but during the whole voyage from nijni to astrakan we only passed two small sailing boats.
i got out at samara and spent the night at an hotel. the next day i embarked again for astrakan, after having explored the town, in which i failed to find an object of interest. from samara to saratov the hills on the right bank of the river diminish in size, and instead of descending sheer into the river, they slope away from it; and as the hills diminish, the vegetation grows more scanty. the left bank is flat and monotonous as before. from samara to saratov i travelled third-class, to see what it was like on board the steamer. there are on the steamer four official classes and an unofficial fifth-class. the third-class have a general cabin on the lower deck with two tiers of bunks. the fourth-class have a kind of enclosure, which contains one large broad board on which they encamp. the fourth-class contains the “steerage” passengers. it is indescribably dirty. the fifth-class is composed of still dirtier and still poorer people, who lie about on boxes, bales, or on whatever vacant space they can find on the lower deck. they lie, for the most part, like corpses, in a profound slumber, generally face downwards, flat upon the floor. the third-class is respectable and decently clean; it has, moreover, one immense advantage—some permanently open windows. in the first-class there was among the company a great aversion to draughts. they had not what someone once called “la passion des anglais pour les courants d’air.” in the third-class there was no such prejudice. the passengers were various. there were two students, some merchants, twenty cossacks going home on leave, a policeman, a public servant, several peasants, and a priest.
on the bunk just over mine sprawled a large bearded cossack, who at once asked me where i was going, my occupation, my country, and my name. i told him that i was a newspaper correspondent and an englishman. i then lay down on my bunk. another cossack from the other side of the cabin called out at the top of his voice to the man who was[376] over me: “who is that man?” “he is a foreigner.” “is he travelling with goods?” “no; he is just travelling, nothing more.” “where does he come from?” “i don’t know.” then, looking down at me from his bunk, the cossack who was above me said: “thou art quite bald, little father. is it illness that did it, or nature?” “nature,” i answered. “shouldst try an ointment,” he said. “i have tried many and strong ointments,” i said, “including onion, tar, and paraffin, none of which were of any avail. there is nothing to be done.” “no,” said the cossack, with a sigh. “there is nothing to be done. it is god’s business.”
there was no particular discomfort in travelling third-class in the steamer. the bunks, with the aid of blankets, were as comfortable as those in the first-class. one could obtain the same food, and there was plenty of fresh air. nevertheless, if one only travelled thus for a day and a night, it was indescribably fatiguing, because one had to change and readjust one’s hours. for at the first streak of dawn, the people began to talk, and by sunrise they had washed and were having tea. it is not as if they went to bed earlier. for all day long they talked, and they went to sleep quite late, about eleven. but they had the blessed gift, possessed by napoleon, of snatching half-hours or five minutes of sleep whenever they felt in need of it. if one travelled like this for several days running, one got used to it, of course, and one also acquired the habit of snatching sleep at odd moments during the daytime; but if one travelled like this for a day or two, it was, as i have said already, extremely tiring.
the public servant, who had a small post in some provincial town, came and talked to me. he asked me if chaliapine, the famous singer, had sung at nijni. chaliapine, he added, was his master. “i have,” he said, “a magnificent bass voice.” “are you fond of music?” i asked. “fond of music!” he cried. “when i hear music i am like a wild animal. i go mad.” “do you mean to go on the stage?” i asked. “yes,” he said, “when i have learnt enough. in the meantime i am a public servant—i am in the government service.” “that, i suppose, you find tedious?” i said. “it is more than tedious; it is disgusting,” and he began to abuse the government. i said: “there is a great difference between the russia of to-day and the russia of four years ago.” “there is no difference[377] at all,” he said; “we have obtained absolutely nothing except paper promises.” i said: “i am not talking of what the government has done or failed to do; i am talking of the general aspect of things, of russian life as it strikes a foreigner. i was here three or four years ago, and i am struck by the great difference between then and now. had i met you then, you would not have talked politics with me; there were no politics to talk.” “that is true,” he answered; “we have now a political life.”
here one of the cossacks asked him who he was. “i am a famous singer,” he answered. “i have sung at the merchants’ club at the district town of a?. i am a pupil of chaliapine, who is the king of basses and is well known throughout the whole civilised world, and who has sung in america. he is a russian. think of that.” the cossack seemed impressed. the singer got out at one of the stations.
the people in the cabin had their meals at different times of the day; the chief meal was tea, which took place twice a day. every time we stopped at a place a crowd of beggars invaded our cabin asking for alms. the interesting point is that they received them. they were never sent empty away, and were invariably given either some coppers, some bread, or some melon. i am sure there is no country in the world where people give so readily to the poor as in russia. one had only to walk about the streets in any russian town to notice this fact. here in the third-class saloon it especially struck me. i did not see one single beggar turned away without a gift of some kind. one little boy was given a piece of bread and a large slice of water-melon.
at the many small stations at which we called on the banks of the river there were crowds of itinerant vendors selling various descriptions of food—hot pies, fried fish, gigantic water-melons, apples, red currants, and cucumbers. the whole duration of each stop at any of these places was occupied by the unloading and loading of the steamer with goods. this was done by a horde of creatures in red and blue shirts called loaders, who had a kind of ledge strapped on to their backs which enabled them to support enormous loads. like big gnomes, during the whole of the stop, they scurried from the hold of the steamer to the wooden quay and back again to the steamer. on the quay itself, either placidly looking on and[378] munching sunflower seeds, or else wildly gesticulating over a bargain at a booth, a motley herd of passengers and inhabitants of the place swarmed: many-coloured, bright, ragged, and squalid, like the crowds depicted in a sacred picture waiting for a miracle or a parable under the burning sky of palestine.
samara and saratov have not the features which characterise the towns of the upper volga. they have no kremlin, no remains of a fortress dominating the town and enclosed in old walls. saratov is a collection of wooden houses which look as if they had been made by a swiss artisan for the earl’s court exhibition and exposed on the side of a steep hill.
between saratov and tzaritsin the character of the river changes altogether, the vegetation begins to dwindle; the great hills on the right bank of the river diminish, and the farther one travels south, the lower they become. the left bank is flat, monotonous, and green as before. the river itself broadens, and in some places it is several kilometres wide. you get the impression that you are travelling on a large lake or on a sea, rather than on a river. the farther south one travels, the greater is the beauty of the river. it is a solemn, majestic river; one understands its having been the mother and inspirer of a quantity of poetry, of folk-song and folk-lore; and one understands, too, how appropriate the deep octaves, the broad, slow-dying notes and echoes of the volga songs are to these great, melancholy spaces of shining water. every day on the steamer between saratov and astrakan i awoke at dawn and went out on to the deck to sniff the freshness and to watch the process of daybreak. the soft, grey sky trembled into a delicate tint of lilac, and over the far-off banks of the river, which were distant enough to have the appearance of a range of violet hills, came the first blush of dawn, and then a deeper rose, while the whole upper sky was washed with a clean daffodil colour, which was reflected in silver on the blue water. and then the sun rose—a huge red ball of fire, casting golden scales beneath him on to the water.
towards noon, perhaps, the sky would be piled with white clouds, and the river look like an immense hard glass, reflecting in unruffled detail every curve and shadow of the cloudland, and the small motionless trees of the banks which in the sunless heat are as unreal as a mirage. later in the afternoon the water seemed to grow more and more luminous; the sensation[379] of some kind of enchantment, of something wizard-like and unreal, increased, and one would not have been surprised to catch sight of the walls of tristram’s castle-in-the-air, the wizard walls, to which he promised to bring iseult—the castle built of the stuff which rainbows are made of, of fire, dew, and the colours of the morning. but with the sunset this feeling of unreality and enchantment ceased; the nearer bank stood out in sharp outline, intensely real, between purple skies and grey waters; and over the farther bank hung the intense blue of woody distances. between tzaritsin and astrakan the character of the river changes yet again. the hills on the right bank vanish altogether; both the banks were flat now—unlimited steppes with scant vegetation, culminating in steep banks of yellow sand. it was here that the river reminded me of the nile.
tzaritsin itself is a great trade centre; the best caviare and the best water-melons used to be obtained there. most of the third-class passengers got out at tzaritsin. i was amused by the process, which i watched on shore, of a huge block of stone being hauled up a hill by a gang of workmen. the spectacle was so utterly unlike anything in other countries. pieces of rock are also hauled up hills in other lands, but the manner in which it is done is different. seven men were hauling the rope; they were ragged, dirty, and dressed in red and blue shirts, stained and dusty, while their tufts of yellow hair stuck out of their tattered peaked caps. by the block of stone stood the leader of the gang. then suddenly, when he thought the time had come, he intoned a chant, a solo, about fifteen notes, which might have been written in the scotch scale (the scale of g major without the f sharp), plaintive and unexpected; then he beat time with a wave of his left hand, and at the fourth beat, the whole gang chimed in, imitating the melody in a rough counterpoint, and hauling as they sang, and then abruptly ending on the dominant. after a short pause, the leader again intoned his solo and the chorus again repeated and imitated the plaintive melody, and this was repeated till the block of stone was hauled up the hill.
the climate, when tzaritsin was passed, grew hotter and hotter, and the breeze made by the steamer only increased the heat. the moon rose, and for a while the sky was still tinged[380] with the stain of the sunset in the west, and the water was luminous with a living whiteness. then, rapidly, because the twilight did not last long here, came the darkness, and with it something strange and wonderful. we became conscious of an extraordinary fragrance in the air. it was not merely the sweetness of summer night. it was a pungent and aromatic incense which pervaded the atmosphere—warm and delicious and filled with the essence of summer. it was intoxicating; it came over you like a great wave, a breath of elysium. and the night with its web of stars, and the dark waters, and the thin line of the far-off banks, made you once more lose the sense of reality. you had reached another world—the nether-world, perhaps; you breathed “the scent of alien meadows far away,” and you felt as if you were sailing down the river of oblivion to the harbours of proserpine. this wonderful sweetness came, i learnt, from the new-mown hay, the mowing of which takes place late here. the hay lay in great masses over the steppes, embalming the midnight air and turning the world into paradise.
on reaching astrakan, you were plunged into the atmosphere of the east. on the quays there were many booths groaning with every kind of fruit, and a coloured herd of people living in the dust and the dirt; splendidly squalid, noisy as parrots, and busy doing nothing, like wasps. the railway to astrakan was not yet finished, so you were obliged to return to tzaritsin by steamer if you wished to get back to the centre of russia. i pursued this course, and from tzaritsin took the train for tambov. the train started from tzaritsin at two o’clock in the morning; i arrived at the station at midnight, and at this hour the station was crammed with people. imagine a huge high waiting-room with three tables d’h?te parallel to each other in the centre of it; at one end of the hall a buffet; on the sides of it, under the windows, tables and long seats padded with leather, partitioned off and forming open cubicles. these seats were always occupied, and the occupants went to bed on them, wrapped up in blankets, and propped up by pillows, bags, rugs, baskets, kettles, and other impedimenta. the whole of this refreshment hall was filled with sleeping figures. there were people lying asleep on the window-sills, and others on chairs placed together. some merely laid their heads on the table d’h?te, and fell into a[381] deep slumber. it was like the scene in the sleeping beauty in the wood, when sleep overtook the inhabitants of the castle. there was a bookstall and a newspaper kiosk. the bookstall contained—as usual—the works of jerome k. jerome and conan doyle, some translations of french novels, some political pamphlets, a translation of john morley’s compromise, and an essay on ruskin—a strange medley of literary food. at the newspaper kiosk, the newsvendor was so busily engrossed in reading out a story, which had just appeared in the newspapers, about a saintly peasant who killed a baby because he thought it was the antichrist, that it was impossible to attract his attention. his audience were the policeman, one of the porters, and a kind of sub-guard. the story was indeed a curious one, and caused a considerable stir. i wrote about it later on in the morning post. ’
the journey to tambov was long; in my carriage a railway official drank tea, ate apples, and sighed over the political condition of the country. everything was as bad as bad could be. “it is a sad business,” he said, “living in russia now.” then, after some reflection, he added: “but, perhaps in other countries—in england, for instance—people sometimes find fault with the government.” i told him they did little else. he then took a large roll out of a basket, and after he had been munching it for some time, he said: “after all, there is no country in the world where such good bread can be got as this.” this seemed to console him greatly.
the sunflower season had arrived. sunflowers used to be grown in great quantities in russia, not for ornamental but for utilitarian purposes. they were grown for the oil that is in them; but besides being useful in many ways they formed an article of food. you pick the head of the sunflower and eat the seeds. you bite the seed, spit out the husk, and eat the kernel, which is white and tastes of sunflower. considerable skill is needed when cracking the husk and spitting it out, to leave the kernel intact. this habit was universal among the lower classes in russia. it occupies a human being like smoking, and it is a pleasant adjunct to contemplation. it is also conducive to untidiness. nothing is so untidy in the world as a room or a platform littered with sunflower seeds. all platforms in russia were thus, littered at this time of year. when i was on the steamer at tzaritsin,[382] one of the cossacks approached me with this question, which seemed startling: “do you chew seeds?” at first i was at a loss to think what he meant, but i soon remembered the sunflower, and when i had answered in the affirmative, he produced a great handful of dried seeds and offered them to me. when i arrived at my destination, sosnofka, in the government of tambov, i found the country looking intensely green after a wet summer; the weather was hot, and the nights had the softness and the sweetness that should belong to the month of june.
i found a large crowd at the station gathered round a pillar of smoke and flame. at first i thought, of course, that a village fire was going on. fires in russian villages were common occurrences in the summer, and this was not surprising, as the majority of the houses were thatched with straw. the houses were so close one to another, and the ground was littered with straw. moreover, to set fire to one’s neighbour’s house used to be a common form of paying off a score. but it was not a fire that was in progress. it was the casting of a bell. the ceremony was fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, with due solemnity and with religious rites, and i was invited to be present.
“heute muss die glocke werden,”
wrote schiller in his famous poem, and here the words were appropriate. this day the bell was to be. it was a blazing hot day. the air was dry, the ground was dry, everything was dry, and the great column of smoke mixed with flame issuing from the furnace added to the heat. the furnace had been made exactly opposite to the church. the church was a stone building with a doric portico, four red columns, a white pediment, a circular pale green roof, and a byzantine minaret. the village of sosnofka had wooden log-built cottages thatched with straw dotted over the rolling plain. the plain was variegated with woods—oak trees and birch being the principal trees—and stretched out infinitely into the blue distance. before the bell was to be cast a te deum was to be sung.
it was wednesday, the day of the bazaar. the bazaar in the village of somotka was the mart, where the buying and selling of meat, provisions, fruit, melons, fish, hardware, iron-mongery, china, and books were conducted. it happened once[383] a week on wednesdays, and peasants flocked in from the neighbouring villages to buy their provisions. but that afternoon the bazaar was deserted. the whole population of the village had gathered together on the dry, brown, grassy square in front of the church to take part in the ceremony. at four o’clock two priests and a deacon, followed by a choir (two men in their sunday clothes), and by bearers of gilt banners, walked in procession out of the church. they were dressed in stiff robes of green and gold, and as they walked they intoned a plain-song. an old card-table, with a stained green cloth, was placed and opened on the ground opposite, and not far from the church, and on this two lighted tapers were set, together with a bowl of holy water. the peasants gathered round in a semicircle with bare heads, and joined in the service, making many genuflexions and signs of the cross, and joining in the song with their deep bass voices. when i said the peasants, i should have said half of them. the other half were gathered in a dense crowd round the furnace, which was built of bricks, and open on both sides to the east and to the west, and fed with wooden fuel. the men in charge of the furnace stood on both sides of it and stirred the molten metal it contained with two enormous poles.
on one side of the furnace a channel had been prepared through which the metal was to flow into the cast of the bell. the crowd assembled there was already struggling to have and to hold a good place for the spectacle of the release of the metal when the solemn moment should arrive. three policemen tried to restrain the crowd; that is to say, one police officer, one police sergeant, and one common policeman. they were trying with all their might to keep back the crowd, so that when the metal was released a disaster should not happen; but their efforts were in vain, because the crowd was large, and when they pressed back a small portion of it they made a dent in it which caused the remaining part of it to bulge out; and it was the kind of crowd—so intensely typical of russia—on which no words, whether of command, entreaty, or threat, made the smallest impression. the only way to keep it back was by pressing on it with the body and outstretched arms, and that only kept back a tiny portion of it. in the meantime the te deum went on and on; and many things and persons were prayed for[384] besides the bell which was about to be born. at one moment i obtained a place from which i had a commanding view of the furnace, but i was soon oozed out of it by the ever-increasing crowd of men, women, and children.
the whole thing was something between a sacred picture and a scene in a wagner opera. the tall peasants with red shirts, long hair, and beards, stirring the furnace with long poles, looked like the persons in the epic of the niebelungen as we see it performed on the stage to the strains of a complicated orchestration. there was wotan in a blue shirt, with a spear; and alberic, with a grimy face and a hammer, was meddling with the furnace; and siegfried, in leather boots and sheepskin, was smoking a cigarette and waving an enormous hammer; while mimi, whining and disagreeable as usual, was having his head smacked. on the other hand, the peasants who were listening and taking part in the te deum, were like the figures of a sacred picture—women with red-and-white eastern head-dresses, bearded men listening as though expecting a miracle, and barefooted children, with straw-coloured hair and blue eyes, running about everywhere. towards six o’clock the te deum at last came to an end, and the crowd moved and swayed around the furnace. the russian crowd reminded me of a large tough sponge. nothing seemed to make any effect on it. it absorbed the newcomers who dived into it, and you could pull it this way and press it that way, but there it remained; indissoluble, passive, and obstinate. perhaps the same is true of the russian nation; i think it is certainly true of the russian character, in which there is so much apparent weakness and softness, so much obvious elasticity and malleability, and so much hidden passive resistance.
i asked a peasant who was sitting by a railing under the church when the ceremony would begin. “ask them,” he answered; “they will tell you, but they won’t tell us.” with the help of the policeman, i managed to squeeze a way through the mass of struggling humanity to a place in the first row. i was told that the critical moment was approaching, and was asked to throw a piece of silver into the furnace, so that the bell might have a tuneful sound. i threw a silver rouble into the furnace, and the men who were in charge of the casting said that the critical moment had come. on each side of the[385] small channel they fixed metal screens and placed a large screen facing it. the man in charge said in a loud, matter-of-fact tone: “now, let us pray to god.” the peasants uncovered themselves and made the sign of the cross. a moment was spent in silent prayer. this prayer was especially for the success of the operation which was to take place immediately, namely, the release of the molten metal. two hours had already been spent in praying for the bell. at this moment the excitement of the crowd reached such a pitch that they pushed themselves right up to the channel, and the efforts of the policemen, who were pouring down with perspiration, and stretching out in vain their futile arms, like the ghosts in virgil, were pathetic. one man, however, not a policeman, waved a big stick and threatened to beat everybody back if they did not make way. then, at last, the culminating moment came; the metal was released, and it poured down the narrow channel which had been prepared for it, and over which two logs placed crosswise formed an arch, surmounted by a yachting cap, for ornament. a huge yellow sheet of flame flared up for a moment in front of the iron screen facing the channel. the women in the crowd shrieked. those who were in front made a desperate effort to get back, and those who were at the back made a desperate effort to get forward, and i was carried right through and beyond the crowd in the struggle.
the bell was born. i hoped the silver rouble which i threw into it, and which now formed a part of it, would sweeten its utterance, and that it might never have to sound the alarm which signifies battle, murder, and sudden death. a vain hope—an idle wish.
