CHAPTER XXI. GRAND-DUKE ALEXIS—THE AMERICAN MINISTER AND HIS CHASSEUR—RUSSIAN PRESS CENSORSHIP—AN INDIGNANT BRITON—UNDISCOVERABLE NIHILISTS.
As I was shuffling some card-photographs at Daziaro’s (print-shop on the Nevskoi Prospekt), I noticed three or four costume-portraits of the same fine-looking man. They were all full-lengths and very effective. The intelligent face seemed familiar to me; but in vain I tried to recall its owner. Neither the front nor the back of the photograph gave any clew to his name. Where had I seen that open brow with the curling hair, and those large, expressive eyes? I sought light from Daziaro. “The Grand-Duke Alexis,” said he.
That sent my memory back over quite a gap of years to the time when a youthful scion of the house of Romanoff visited America and carried the hearts of my countrywomen by storm. They unanimously declared that he perfectly realized their ideal of a prince. That ideal was a most exacting one; for it was founded on fairy-stories, and the Arthurian legends. They knew nothing of princes in real life, or they would never have made their standard so impossibly high. But here at last was a prince who came up to it, with his stature of six feet two inches, his winning face, and his dignified yet cordial manner. I have heard that there are American ladies who sacredly preserve to this day the gloves they wore when they danced in the same quadrille with the Grand-Duke Alexis.
With my countrymen he also made himself a great favorite by his desire to please and readiness to be pleased. For these reasons—and because of the sincere friendship which has always existed between the United States and Russia—the Grand-Duke Alexis, wherever he went in America, had a heartier popular reception than any other prince of any stock who ever visited us.
I could not help feeling a desire to see him again in the flesh, after noticing how like his former self (except for the lapsed years) he looked in the pictures. The Grand-Duke Alexis had become the admiral of the Russian navy. I thought how fine he must look in the full-dress uniform of his rank. I had more curiosity to see him than the Tsar himself, who is the rarest spectacle now vouchsafed to the eyes of the stranger, as he sticks close to his palaces and private shooting-grounds. I found myself unconsciously on the watch for the sailor-prince as I rode about the city. Sometimes I would see an officer of commanding stature approaching us in a barouche at a dashing gait, and would say, on the impulse, “I do believe that’s our friend.” “Who? Who?” “Why, Alexis, to be sure!” “Oh, no, it’s somebody else.” This happened very often, for showy officers in stylish turnouts are not uncommon sights on the Nevskoi Prospekt.
One day while standing in the spacious vestibule of the Hôtel d’Europe, I noticed the people about me taking off their hats. Looking up, I observed before me the Grand-Duke Alexis himself. The well-remembered features were there, minus the high, open brow which was concealed by a great cocked hat loftily plumed with green. Tall as he was in America, he seemed to be two or three inches taller now. His dark-green uniform—probably an admiral’s—fitted him well. He looked more princely than ever. I took off my hat to him, but he did not notice it, and, in fact, he returned nobody’s salute as far as I could see. “He used to be more democratic in America,” I said to myself. “But that was to please us. He is in Russia now, and the case is different.”
At that moment the excellent head-porter, who was always rendering these delicate attentions to the guests, whispered in my ear—“Voilà l’embassadeur Américain!”
Never was pleasing illusion more rudely dispelled to make room for profound wonderment. So this resplendent being was the American minister to Russia. What was his name? Oh, yes, I remember—Lothrop, of Michigan. And that magnificent uniform? He must have been a general of volunteers at home, and so is entitled by act of Congress to wear it on ceremonial occasions abroad. A good idea, though some Americans who have no uniforms to wear may ridicule it as pompous and fussy. I have no doubt that the Russians are a great deal more impressed by all those buttons, feathers, and gold lace, than they would be by the plain black suit which I had supposed that Mr. Lothrop always wore. By-the-way, I wonder to what arm of the service Mr. Lothrop belonged? I don’t remember about that dark-green and that particular shape of hat.
Just then a gentleman in complete black who had been following the American minister, drew up alongside of him, and I could contrast the two styles of dress to great advantage. Prejudice apart, there could be no doubt that Mr. Lothrop looked more like a Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the United States of America in his military garb than he would have done in civilian’s clothes.
Can I believe my eyes? The minister is actually taking off his hat and bowing very respectfully to the somber-coated person by his side. Do my ears deceive me? He calls him “Your Excellency,” and seems to be receiving an order from him like a servant. The next instant a gentleman approaches the less conspicuous of the two figures and says to him with a Chicago accent, “The American minister, I believe?”
“Yes, sir! What can I do for you?” he kindly asks.
And then I know that this gorgeous person is attached to our quiet American minister as chasseur, and that it is his business to herald the approach of that functionary. It is a practice found to be very useful by our highest grade of representatives abroad; and that American must be a ferociously uncompromising republican who would object to this inexpensive but effective display of rank and dignity on their part.
One afternoon while sitting in the reading-room of the Hôtel d’Europe, looking over the last number of “Punch,” and trying to extract a laugh from it, I became aware that a gentleman near me was desirous to open conversation. Out of my side-eye I could see a monocle glaring at me, with suppressed feeling behind it, and I knew by the fidgety motion of a pair of hands, holding a newspaper aloft, that the owner had something to say if I would lend him an ear. I laid down “Punch,” and turning toward the stranger saw at once what was the matter. He was exposing to my gaze a newspaper—the London “Saturday Review,” I think it was—several pages of which had been badly mutilated by scissors. Bits of various lengths had been snipped out of its reading-columns. I immediately recognized the work of the Russian censor, specimens of which I had seen before. The man who displayed this mangled “Saturday Review” for my inspection was English. Seeing that he was somewhat excited, I resolved to tease him a little for fun, though the indignation which blazed from his face was honest, and certainly not without cause.
“I know that this is a land of tyranny,” said he, “but I’m an Englishman and not afraid to speak my mind. Isn’t that an outrage?”
“I beg your pardon,” said I; “what is the trouble?”
“This paper sent me by a friend; see the holes in it!”
“Ah! yes, he has picked out the plums for his scrap-book, and sent you the leavings.”
“My dear sir,” said the Englishman, dropping his single eye-glass in his emotion, “you don’t understand; this is the beastly work of the Russian Government. See!” and he handed me the paper. I glanced at the damaged pages, and observed that the cuttings had been made in articles about Russia. The job had been neatly done. The censor had evidently read everything in the paper concerning Russia, and had scissored out all the passages that were uncomplimentary. The rest of the context was allowed to stand.
“And, to make it worse,” said the Englishman, “the paper was detained in the post-office here five days at least. There’s the original wrapper with the London post-mark.”
“Yes, I see. The censor wanted to do his work thoroughly. He is more conscientious than most public officials, I should say.”
“Conscientious, indeed! It was done for the express purpose of annoying an Englishman.”
I was about to reply that perhaps the parts of the articles cut away had been written for the express purpose of annoying the Russians, but I forbore.
“And here is another style of mutilation,” he continued, handing me a copy of another London paper. “What do you say to that?”
He opened a sheet which showed at intervals large square or oblong patches, apparently a mixture of lampblack and oil applied by a coarse handstamp. The reading-matter beneath was effectually obliterated. These daubs looked like woodcuts badly printed.
“An illustrated paper?” I said, playfully. “Anyhow, this kind of cuts is better than the other; you get your paper whole, you see,” and I smiled.
The Englishman felt hurt by my frivolous treatment of his grievance. “It doesn’t seem to strike you exactly as it does me,” said he; “and yet, I should think that, being an American, you—”
“I know what you are about to say,” I interrupted. “Of course, I uphold the liberty of the press as much as you do, and equally detest this tampering with the mails; but then I don’t expect to find the same measure of freedom here that I find in the United States or England. The Russian Government maintains a strict censorship of the Russian press. And, in order to be consistent, the Government also pretends to take great pains to keep out of the country all printed matter that it does not like.”
“Pretends, my good sir?” cried my English friend. “But it does keep out all such matter—as you have seen from these two specimens.”
“How about this?” said I, taking up the clean and whole copy of “Punch” from the table. “This contains two or three jokes at the expense of Russia. And there are the ‘Illustrated News’ and ‘Graphic,’ ‘Figaro,’ ‘Charivari,’ ‘Indépendance Belge,’ ‘Fliegende Blätter,’ ‘Kladderdatsch,’ and—can I believe my eyes?—the great London ‘Times’ itself! All regularly taken here and filed. You will find plenty of hits at Russia in these papers, and not one of them has been cut or blackened with a stamp. I can swear to that, as I have been looking all through them.”
“Yes, I know,” he answered. “But these all come that way, because they are addressed to the Russian proprietor of the Hôtel d’Europe. The outrage—for so I must still call it—is inflicted on me because I am an Englishman.”
It still gave him so much pleasure to imagine that he was a martyr because of his race that I hesitated to undeceive him. But I thought it better to correct his erroneous opinion by saying that, if he would ask the head-porter, through whose hands all the mail-matter came, he would find out that the newspapers addressed to all the transient guests of every nationality at the hotel were treated in exactly the same way. The letters, he would ascertain, came through straight enough, and showed no signs of tampering.
“That last is true,” said he.
“And, as for the papers,” I continued, “I am told that a line from your embassador or your consul-general addressed to the Russian Post-Office Department, or even a call at headquarters from yourself, will cause their prompt delivery undisturbed. Why not try it?”
“I would not condescend to ask the favor!” was the haughty reply.
“Well, then,” said I, shrugging my shoulders to imply a desire of closing the somewhat unprofitable conversation—“then I am afraid you will be obliged to put up with it. For my own part, I am free to say that, while I am in a foreign country, I will not hurriedly condemn laws and usages which happen to be unlike those in America. When I don’t like it, I will leave it.”
“I fancy you Americans think better of Russia than we Englishmen do.”
“Perhaps so,” was my reply, as I buried myself once more in the pages of “Punch,” and resumed silence.
Our English friends can not at least complain that they are denied freedom of speech in Russia. On the railroad-trains, in shops, in the hotels, and in the public streets, I have heard them talk as boldly and freely against the Tsar and his system as if they were at home. I have sometimes thought it would be only becoming in them to speak a little lower, or else tone down the severity of their criticisms while experiencing in their own persons the actual toleration of the government they so fiercely denounce.
Before entering Russia, I had stuffed myself—my mind, not pockets—with books, magazine articles, and newspaper letters about the Nihilists. From such sources of information I had learned that the Nihilists represent all classes of Russian society—peasants, priests, soldiers and officers, noblemen, and even the imperial family. It was said that ladies of rank, wealth, and refinement were among the most active propagandists of Nihilism. These reports had taken so strong a hold of me that, on striking Russian soil, I began at once to look about for some signs of the presence of this widely spread and terrible doctrine.
Among our fellow-passengers from Berlin to St. Petersburg was a lady accompanied by her maid. She had a coupé lit for her exclusive use, through the window of which I could see her from the platform of stations where we alighted for refreshments. She always shrank into a corner of her carriage, as if to escape scrutiny. I noticed that her chin was disproportionately large, and that her lips were firmly pressed together. Some one told me that she was of high rank in Russia. Whereupon the whimsical thought possessed me that here, perhaps, was one of those aristocratic female Nihilists of whom I had read so much. The absurdity of the idea did not prevent me from keeping an eye on her.
At the frontier station this lady’s actions were so strange that I watched her with a “fearful joy.” She was profoundly agitated. Her face was pale—even her resolute lips sharing in the ashen hue—and she strode up and down the salle d’attente unceasingly, as if to walk off her nervousness. She had three large, black, strongly bound trunks, marked with Russian initials in white paint. I knew they were her trunks by the anxious glances which she threw at them from time to time. Once, when the porter let the corner of one of them fall heavily to the floor, I observed her start. “Perhaps it contains dynamite,” I said to myself, half-laughingly.
When her turn came for the formalities of the douane, she stepped forward with a boldness which was well assumed. She and her maid assisted the Government officers in unlocking, unstrapping, and unpacking. Her apparent anxiety to have the search made thorough did not deceive me. The men went to the bottom of two of the trunks—either removing the contents or probing them with their long arms, or peering among them with trained eyes and smelling hard for tobacco and spirits all the time. They found nothing contraband. When they proceeded to explore the third trunk, the lady made a strong visible effort to conceal her emotion. “Now for bombs,” I thought, “or Nihilists’ tracts at the very least!”
It was fortunate for her that the custom-house myrmidons had not noticed her feverish anxiety. But they were busy at their work, not over-suspicious, and glad to be through with a midnight job which paid them nothing. So they slighted number three, simply removing and putting back a top layer of clothes. Then they closed the lid, and chalked all the trunks. I could see the mysterious lady heave a sigh of relief, which I could not help sharing with her, though it left unanswered the interesting question, What did she have in that third trunk?
Was it dynamite? Or revolutionary pamphlets and circulars? Or some innocent but dutiable stuff which the lady carried into her country free? I have seen the sex equally agitated on the docks of New York, when the goods which had been hid away were nothing more dangerous than smoking-jackets or meerschaum pipes or uncut velvet. So let us give the fair unknown Russian the benefit of the doubt, and imagine that the extent of her offense, if any, was smuggling in a costly French dinner-dress or articles de Paris dear to the female heart.
Perhaps there never was a more harmless fellow than the mujik who made our beds and blacked our shoes on the Russian sleeping-car which bore us to St. Petersburg. But that man had the high cheek bones, the long, unkempt hair, and the generally wild look which I had once noticed in the portrait of a notorious Nihilist printed in the “Illustrated London News.” I did not then know that these were the characteristic Tartar features, seen all over Russia. On account of his resemblance to that portrait I found myself suspecting the mujik of Nihilistic tendencies. I once came upon him suddenly while he was sitting on a stool in a little recess, at the rear end of the car. He was muttering to himself, and pounding his knee with his brawny fist. How could I help thinking that he was heaping curses on the existing order of things universal, and that that self-inflicted blow of his clinched hand expressed, in a feeble way, his long-pent hatred of all human society? And yet it is possible that the poor man was only cursing his ill-luck in taking a counterfeit ruble for good money.
During our visit to Tsarkoé Selo, while making the tour of the palace, I noticed from a window a gentleman in uniform walking slowly through the grounds. He had in his hand a letter which he was anxiously scanning. Attracted by his soldierly bearing, I asked the guide who he was. “Le Prince” (something unintelligible ending in sky), “monsieur,” was the response. Now, here was a prince at home, in the private garden of an imperial palace, his hair white, his port manly, his breast bearing decorations—the man of all men, one would say, least likely to risk the assured good things of this life by linking his fortunate self to the Nihilists. And yet the book-writers and the newspaper correspondents had told me that the head and front of the awful conspiracy was to be found among the palaces of the empire. I owe an apology to a presumably loyal and devoted subject of the Tsar for permitting myself to suppose, for one second, that the prince, whose name I deeply regret my inability to spell, was perhaps “boss” of the Nihilists, and that the letter in his hand was written by some fellow-conspirator in Warsaw or Moscow. Thus unjustly suspicious does one become, after reading so many real or pretended revelations about high-life Nihilists in Russia.
Next day at the Hôtel d’Europe, while I was looking over the bill of fare for luncheon, I observed that my waiter—a typical Russian in aspect—hovered near me more closely than usual, and his appearance indicated that he had something to say to me privately, in the French which he spoke with some difficulty. He had heard us talk about America, and he doubtless knew my nationality. Now, it is to Americans that the revolutionists in all parts of Europe turn with full confidence for sympathy. They make no mystery of their hatred of kings and emperors when they get hold of an American ear. I have thus become the repository of several confidential opinions about crowned heads, which, if they had been known to the police, would have caused the arrest and punishment of the speakers. Therefore, when I saw this quiet-looking Russian waiter edging up, I said to myself: “He is going to whisper his longings for republican institutions. It will do him good to relieve his feelings. I am afraid he is a Nihilist. He looks like one. I must condemn him for that, of course, but I will not deny my sympathy for the oppressed, even in the heart of Russia.”
As these thoughts floated through my brain, the waiter stooped down to make his mysterious communication. I cocked up my ear to hear him more distinctly. He said, in a half-whisper, “Monsieur, il y a des fish-balls aujourdhui.” And that was the whole of his tremendous secret. Well, I was glad it was nothing more serious and laughed heartily at my groundless misgivings.
It seems that the accomplished manager of the restaurant had lately added “fish-balls” to the extensive list of his special dishes for particular days. It was a flattering concession to American tastes, made, I presume, at the original suggestion of some Bostonian visiting St. Petersburg. In due time, probably pork and beans and brown bread will be introduced there through the same reforming agency. Supposing that I was an American, the waiter illogically inferred that I was fond of fish-balls. His hesitation in making the announcement arose from his imperfect acquaintance with French, and his still deeper uncertainty as to the exact pronunciation of “fish-balls.”
This amusing incident cured me of my propensity for surmising that this or that Russian man or woman might possibly be a disciple of Nihilism. There may be a great many Nihilists in Russia, and they may belong to all classes of society; but, if the secret police can not find them out, we may be sure that strangers making hasty visits to the country are not likely to be more successful in the search.