MAPS
A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
NOTE
Portions of Chapters VI., VII., IX., XI., XXVIII. appeared originally in articles contributed to Country Life, and Chapter XXII. and parts of II., X., XXXIII. in articles contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, to the Editors of which journals the author desires to make all due acknowledgment.
A VAGABOND IN
THE CAUCASUS
PROLOGUE
HOW I CAME TO BE A TRAMP
I BROUGHT myself up on Carlyle and found him the dearest, gentlest, bravest, noblest man. The Life by Froude was dearer to me than the Gospel of St Matthew, or Hamlet, or Macbeth, and that is saying much if the reader only knew me. Carlyle was so near that I saw him in dreams and spoke with him in words that were true, unquestionably. In the vision world of my dream he behaved exactly as he would have done in real life, I am sure of it. He was flesh and blood to me. Yet he died and was buried before I was born. How strange! This man who died three years before I was born was a friend closer to me than a lover, one to whom I longed to say caressing words, one whom I longed to embrace and fondle—to kiss even.
He made me work, the dear, irascible, eloquent old sage. I worked at his bidding and set myself impossible tasks—impossible! I became a puritan, serious, intolerant and heroic; and in moments of rapture, conscious of the silence of the stars and the graves, I would sing to the night the marching song:
“Here eyes do regard you
In Eternity’s stillness,
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you,
Work and despair not.”
Carlyle was a true friend to me, he was not content that he only should be my friend, I had to become the friend of his friends. Now, I am one of the Great Society of his friends. I belong to the fellowship of those that have seen The City. The Great Society has among its members many children and many jolly tramps. Has the reader ever been introduced personally to the Great Ones long since dead? I think these literary men the great Friends of Mankind. They allow themselves to be known and cherished—different from military heroes or scientists or explorers. One would as soon love a waxwork as Napoleon. Yet even the despised and rejected of the literary world are warm and smiling friends to their readers. I, for my part, adored Ruskin and Browning as a young girl in love with a new history mistress. I obeyed Ruskin, bought his works in purple calf and looked up the long words in the dictionary. Then Rabbi Ben Ezra entered into me so that I spoke with tongues. I learned the poem by heart and recited it to sunsets. I ask myself now how I reconciled “Work and despair not” with
“Not on the vulgar mass,
Called work must sentence pass.”
But of course both sentences are true; one is for one nature, the other for another; I think I must have really belonged to the second category, for have I not become a tramp!
I never felt so humanly close to Ruskin as to Carlyle. He had a way of stating the truth. He liked to perch on his truths and crow. No, I revered him, but decidedly didn’t like him. Browning made friends with me. Then came Ibsen; and both Browning and Ibsen confirmed me in the heroism of achieving impossible tasks. Has the reader seen the “Master Builder,” the man who did the impossible twice? “It’s—fearfully thrilling.” In these days I spouted: “Life is like the compound eye of the fly. It is full of lives. Momentarily we died, momentarily are born again. The old self dies, the new is born; the old life gives way to the new. The selfish man wishes to remain as he is; in his life are fewer lives, fewer changes. But the hero wishes to fulfil every promise written in his being. He dies gladly in each moment to arise the next moment more glorious, nearer to perfection. Oh, my friend, pay for the new life with all the old. The life that thou hast, was given thee for paying away so that thou mightest obtain something better.”
In myself I believed these words. I worked and read. I worked and threw myself at the impossible. What Swinburne wrote is true:
“A joy to the heart of a man
Is a goal that he may not reach.”
I wrote lectures in which my style was so infected by the rhetoric of the sage that listeners grumbled that they could not tell when I was quoting and when I was using my own language. That was their defect; they should have known Carlyle better! One lecture I specially remember. It was given to some Essex folk. It related to Hero-worship. All the artillery of Carlyle was in play. It was a subject supremely Carlylean. Work, I praised, and heroic valour. But my message was: “In each of you there is a Hero, let him out; in each man there is a Hero, see one there,” which is not what Carlyle meant when he said: “Recognise the Hero when you see him and obey.” This was, perhaps, a first divergency. Carlyle was looking for a means to govern a nation wisely. I was moving towards my tramp destiny.
That was in the year of the Russian Revolution and I had been learning Russian very sedulously for some time. A literary ambition had possession of me. I had said to myself—one must specialise to get on in the world of literature. Carlyle specialised German. German things did not interest me. I had long since learned to enjoy Turgeniev and Gorky and Gogol in English translations, and Russia had become to me the most interesting country in Europe. I determined to specialise on Russia.
Yes, and when, according to the newspapers, the bombs were flying thick and fast, I took a return ticket for Moscow and went out. For luggage I took a camera and a small hand-bag. The tramp has the soberest conscience about luggage. He feels he can always do without. But, of course, I wasn’t a tramp then. I may remark in passing that I lost none of that luggage and had no trouble whatever with it. Few travellers manage their first trip to Russia without vexatious misadventures. On one occasion, however, when I was taking a snap-shot of a prison, a soldier rushed up to me in terror and rage. He thought my Kodak was a bomb.
What an excitement this journey was! I had never even been abroad before. Now I went through Holland and across the whole of Germany and into Poland. Two days after I had left England I was in Russia. I arrived at Warsaw on the day the Governor was shot. I saw at once there were more soldiers than people in the streets. I took a droshky to a hotel, put down my things and strolled out to see the city. I was arrested at once. Fifty yards down Marzalkovsky, the Piccadilly of Warsaw, a soldier stopped me, searched me and handed me over to an officer and six armed guards. I was put in the middle and marched off; on each side of me a soldier held a drawn sword and was ready to slash at me if I should attempt to bolt. I am sure the angels wept. Internally I collapsed with laughter and at the same time I felt very rich. I was having an experience.
I was released and was arrested again, and a Circassian guard punched me in the stomach very hard, “for luck,” I think he said. They gave an account of my arrest in the Russ and said I had been nearly beaten to death, but they didn’t know who I was. Somehow it came to England as the arrest and flogging of Mr Foster Fraser, the well-known correspondent. Poor Mr Fraser, it must have been awkward explaining to his friends that it was not really he who was flogged.
HARBOUR, NIZHNI NOVGOROD
OUTSIDE A SLUM BEERHOUSE, MOSCOW
I was not a correspondent, but I wrote of my adventures, and it was very pleasant to see my words printed in London newspapers. It was very amusing to see myself styled “Our own Special Correspondent,” when, in truth, I was only a free lance and had not even seen the face of a London editor. Journalism is a cheap trade! At Warsaw I met correspondents of many papers and had surprising glimpses behind the scenes. There was a little American Jew there who knew almost every language in Europe, who had an eye for every nationality, and who knew the private history of all the women of the city. At one time he had been hotel tout, interpreter, guide, but now was correspondent, reporter, supplier of information. He was always hanging about the chief hotel and watching for journalists hard up for copy. There were crowds of English newspaper men who could not speak intelligibly in French, far less in Russian. To such the American was a god-send. And Lord, what stories they wrote home to England!
I left Warsaw for Moscow and Nizhni. When I left the American was a lonely bachelor. When I returned his wife had found him. She told me her story. She lost her man in New York and had chased him through the States, and through Europe. He was always giving her the slip. I think my trembling puritanism rose to the defence of my innocent soul. Life is of all colours, but there are some terrible reds and scarlets one doesn’t see in England. Warsaw to me was a wicked city. The wonderful beauty of Polish girls I had then no eyes for.
I returned to England and was a local lion.
The trip brought me pleasant glory, but it had given me powerful hopes and longings. I had been in the Kremlin and in the churches. I had been a vagabond at the Fair of Nizhni Novgorod. I had seen the peasants and their faces and eyes and lives. I learned many things from these peasant faces. I said to myself at Moscow: “These people are like what English people were when Edward the Third was king.” Of a face passing I would say to myself: “There are three or four hundred years behind that nose and mouth and eyes and chin.” The irresistible question came: “Are these peasants not better off than the English clerk or labourer?” As a question I left it.
England again! I returned, for I had an appointment there, comfortable though not literary. Life had good things in store for me there—more reading, new acquaintances, a new Friend even. I took up Russian more seriously and commenced a translation of a novel of Dostoievsky. I was learning to know others of that Great Society, and one day the Fates brought me to Zarathustra. I was an unruly candidate for a place in the society of the “free, very free spirits,” but a true candidate.
Puritanism and intolerance were now to be attacked. A thawing wind began to blow upon the winter of my discontent. “Convictions are prisons,” I read. And surely I was imprisoned behind many prison walls. I was in the centre of a labyrinth of convictions and principles. I believed in work and, at the same time, I believed in myself. Neitzsche reinforced the belief in myself. I was doing work that was not congenial. I was in work that imprisoned me and that prevented development. I was longing for the new. Still in my heart lived the sentences: “Do the impossible, pay for the New with all the Old.”
I wanted new life, broader horizons, deeper depths, higher heights. I knew these might be purchased by giving up my appointment in London and throwing myself into Russia. Yes, to go to Russia and live there, that was my next step. I came to that conclusion one Sunday in June. In one little moment I made that big decision. The tiniest seed was sown in Time. The Fates stood by, the seed lived. To-day that seed is bearing the finest blossoms. May each chapter here be a garland of its flowers exhaling their life perfume.
I shaped my plans to the end.
“‘A Yea, a Nay
A straight line
A Goal’—saith Zarathustra.”
My Yea was Russia; my Nay, England; the straight line, the nearest way, my Goal, the new life to be paid for with all the old.
In London I had made a Russian acquaintance, the son of a deacon of the Orthodox Church, and just before my departure I received an invitation to spend Christmas at Lisitchansk, a village some way north of the Sea of Azov, some miles south of Kharkov. Russia had seemed dark, enigmatical, terrible, but here at the last minute arms stretched out of the darkness, welcoming me, alluring me.
On what was Old Year’s Night in England, though in Russia only the eighteenth of December, I was at Dover. The lights of the harbour shone on the placid water. The stars looked down upon my starting, the same stars that were at that moment looking down upon my destination also, my stars, the stars that through all my wanderings have shone down. One Friend bade me farewell. At Dover, on the ship in the harbour in the night, we embraced and parted. England herself grasped my hand and bade me farewell. For a moment, in the stillness, the sea ceased to exist and space was gone—Two hands were clasped between the lands.
My life as a wanderer began. I might say my life as a tramp began, for I never worked again. I became, as the philosopher says, “full of malice against the seductions of dependency that lie concealed in houses, money or positions.” Whereas I had sold myself to work, I had now bought myself back, I had exchanged dependence upon man for dependence upon God, and had given up my respectable West-End home in “Berkeley Square,” so that I might take up my abode in the West End of this Universe.
Perhaps not then, but now I ask: “Could anything be more amusing than the modern cry of the Right to Work? The English are an industrious, restless nation. And the prophets are very censorious of our respectable, though not respected, class. “It is not enough to be industrious,” says Thoreau; “so are the ants. The question is, What are you industrious about?” No one questions the use of industry of one kind or another. Dear Carlyle, my guide, philosopher and friend, I wonder if he, in other realms, has learned the value of idleness. Perhaps now, after a life-time of Nirvana in some Eden planet, he has smoothed out his ruffled soul. Oh, friends, there are depths of calm and happiness to be found even here, and not autumn stillness but spring calm, the joyful peace of the dove brooding on the waters. I have learned to smooth and compose a rough, tumbled mind until it was like a broad, unsullied mirror reflecting the beauty of the world.
Two thousand miles from London there are new silences, pregnant stillness, on the steppes, in the country places, on the skirts of the old forests. No word of the hubbub of democracy need come through; not a hoarding poster flaunts the eye; no burning question of the hour torments the mind. A man is master of himself and may see or hear or consider just what he chooses. That is, if the man be like me.
“You look up at the sky, as you lie under a bush, and it keeps descending, descending to you, as though it wanted to embrace you.... Your soul is warm and quietly joyful, you desire nothing, you envy no one.”
“... And so it seems as though on all the earth there were only you and God....”
“All around is silence: only the birds are singing, and this silence is so marvellous that it seems as though the birds were singing in your own breast.” So wrote Gorky, the tramp. I almost wish he would write the story of his vagabondage instead of being so serious over his revolutionary propaganda.
I have shown how I came to be a wanderer. I will now add to this prologue a word of dedication. The prose of this book is the story of my travels; the poetry, when the reader may discern it, is the story of my heart.
CHAPTER I
ROBBED IN THE TRAIN
GERMANY is a safe country. One is not permitted to lose oneself there. I, for my part, knew not a word of German beyond nicht hinauslehnen, which means: don’t put your head out at the window; but I had no misadventures there. The trains leave punctually, the carriages are all clean, the porters know their duty. One contrast has particularly impressed me. In Russia, in second or even in first-class carriages, washing accommodation is very poor. Often there is no water, and there is seldom a stopper to the hand-basin. There is a murky mirror but no towel, indeed, no further convenience of any kind. In Germany, on the contrary, even third-class accommodation is superb. There is a fresh tablet of soap and a clean towel for each traveller; there is even a comb and brush, if one cares to use them after others. But in Russia third-class accommodation is unspeakably filthy, and I think that if one mentioned the idea of soap gratis to a Russian official he would frown as if overhearing revolutionary propaganda. Surely the Germans have the cleanest faces among all nations, and their free wash seems to say: “For God’s sake, don’t let a little piece of official soap stand between you and cleanliness.”
But though Russian accommodation is inferior in this respect, it has one great excellence: the trains run smoothly over the lines. One can make the whole trans-Siberian journey from Warsaw to Shanghai and be as fit at the end as when one started. The movement of the train is so pleasantly soothing that one slips easily into slumber. Indeed, if one wakes in the night and finds the train stopping in a station, one waits and longs for the train to move again; minutes seem eternities. Then one is entitled by one’s ticket to the whole length of a seat. No one objects if one undresses, and at least one can always remove collar, boots and overcoat. But German trains are noisy; they jerk and rattle and tear through the night. They compare with Russian trains as a motor omnibus might with a child’s cradle. One would stand more chance of sleeping in the Inner Circle.
I arrived at Alexandrovo, the frontier town, at ten o’clock at night, and took train on for Warsaw at 1 a.m. My luggage was registered through to Kharkov. The customs officer informed me that it had been forwarded and would be examined there. This was on the third day of my journey, and I had had two nights without sleep. It was with a great deal of gladness that I settled myself down in my Russian coupé and hoped to sleep a few hours. The third bell, the last bell, sounded, and the train moved slowly out of the station and ground itself away over the heavy, snow-covered track. The guards came and punched my ticket; then I lay back and fell fast asleep. The white train moved over the white fields, and the light wind blew the thick snow against the window panes, or wreathed it in the gangways between the corridors. The train moved very slowly, and every quarter of an hour or so stopped. The movement was very weak and gentle, like the pulsation of an old man’s heart. When it ceased, it seemed to have paused through utter exhaustion. I was suddenly awakened by a touch on the shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw a man bending over me. I could have sworn he had been picking my pockets. He smiled unamiably and asked a question in German. Getting no answer he tried Polish; I replied in Russian. He wanted to know where I was going to, and whether I was a German.
This man afterwards robbed me. Next time I woke up my heavy overcoat was gone. I had hung it on a peg beside me, and when I looked for it it had disappeared. And the smiling Pole who had been sitting opposite had also disappeared. New people were in the compartment. In fact, the moment I woke there were two men standing beside me and kissing one another frantically. The train had stopped at a station. I was dazed. I thought I was, perhaps, at Warsaw already. I was assured Warsaw was a long way off, and then I discovered the loss of my coat.
The chief guard assured me the coat would be recovered. If I would give him a rouble he would have the train searched. He took down notes of what I said and pocketed the money, but the thief got clear away. The flickering candle that illuminated the carriage was burning out. It was so dark that one could not be sure whether anything were lost or not. My astonishment was great when I looked under the seat and saw a man lying there—a man with a smell. The guard came in at that moment and we hauled the stowaway out. I thought it was the thief for certain. He was brought out and searched. He was a tatterdemalion, out at knees and out at elbows, thick with grease and dirt. His feet were wrapped up with sacking, tied round with rope, and the rest of his attire was uncured sheepskin. He hadn’t any ticket and was going to Warsaw. He offered the guard twopence as a bribe, but the latter frowned terribly and asked whether I would care to have him arrested. He whispered to me aside that he felt quite sure we had caught the thief or an accomplice. If I would give him two roubles he would make a declaration at the next station. I should get my coat in a week at least. But I dissented, for I felt quite sure such a disreputable-looking character as the moujik we had hauled out was incapable of stealing a handsome overcoat. So the guard accepted twopence from the man in lieu of a ticket, and was fain to disappear.
Russian trains are well heated. It is only when one steps out at a station that one realises how cold it is. I soon began to realise what the loss of my coat meant. At Kharkov there were forty degrees of frost. The further into Russia the colder it became. My only protection was a light summer overcoat and a plaid rug. My gloves, together with a voluminous silk muffler, had been left in the pockets of the coat that was stolen. When I went out at Kharkov the cold struck in on all sides, and my moustache and eyebrows froze to solid ice at once.
Calamity followed close upon calamity. My registered luggage was nowhere to be found. The customs officer was of opinion that it had been delayed on the line. If I would leave ten roubles with him he would look after it and forward it some time after Christmas.
The cup of misery seemed filled to the brim. For I was deprived of all my clothes but the rough travelling things I stood up in. I pictured to myself what a strange, shabby Christmas guest I should appear.
It was the 23rd of December, according to the old calendar; the morrow would be Christmas Eve, and all shops would be shut. I went out into the town and made good some of my deficiencies.
I had still a hundred-mile journey to make before I reached Lisitchansk. The train left at 9 p.m. I telegraphed to my friend, asking to be met, and then went off to buy a ticket. The booking-office clerk would not issue tickets until he could be sure that the train would be run. The last express from Sevastopol had arrived ten hours late.
I waited until midnight, and then at last a notice was put out intimating that the train would start. So I purchased my ticket and took my seat, and at two in the morning we moved slowly out. My impression of that train is that everyone, including passengers, guards and driver, was drunk. It was crowded with people going home for Christmas. It was so crowded that there seemed to be no intention on the part of anyone to sleep, and I could not get a seat to myself. At length, however, a very friendly, though tipsy, Little Russian made an arrangement with the occupants of a ladies’ compartment, and I got an upper shelf there to lie upon.
When I awakened it was broad day and the train had stopped finally. A lady on a shelf opposite was reading a novel. No one else seemed to be in the carriage. I learned from her that we were snowed up. All the men employed to keep the line clear were dead drunk. No further progress would be made until after dinner. There was a forest on the right-hand side, full of wolves, the girl said. I went along to the men’s compartment and found that everyone had adjourned to a farm-house near by to get dinner. Evidently thieves were not feared in that part of the country. I followed the others to the house and had a good hot dish of cabbage soup. It was a one-room cottage, and was packed with people. The clamour was deafening. I think the family must have had an unusually large supply of vodka, for the number of Christmas healths drunk was at least treble the number of guests.
At about three o’clock the engine-driver, who was so drunk that he could not stand up, was lifted into the engine and he set the train going. Scarcely anyone was in the train, neither people nor guards, and there was a rush to get on. But only about six were successful; the rest were all left behind. We, at the farm-house, had no chance whatever. Somebody said, “The train is starting,” and there was a stampede. Every vodka glass was drained, the singing stopped, and the shouting and the step-dancing, and everyone rushed out into the snow without, as far as I could see, paying a farthing to the good woman of the house. But no one stood any chance, and when I got out at the door the train had travelled a hundred yards. The snow was a foot deep, and nothing short of a pair of skis would have enabled anyone to cross it in the time.
Que faire!
I pictured to myself the train arriving at Sevastopol without passengers or guards, and I wondered what would happen to all the unclaimed wraps and bags, and how many roubles it would cost to get them out of the lost property office. I could afford to smile. Most of my property was already lost. Among the other passengers there was consternation. They were like a pack of frightened children, whispering in awe-stricken whispers. Two men insisted on telling me their fears—fears of missing their Christmas, fears of exhausting the vodka supply, fears of wolves, fears of freezing, and a fat man, who had fallen in the snow, kept punctuating their remarks with:
“Devil take me! Lord save us!”
There was nothing to be gained by remaining where we were, so I set out along the railway lines with six others who could walk. The next station proved to be about four miles distant, and after three quarters of an hour we came in sight of it. And in sight of the train! We had walked very seriously and solemnly, like convicts marching to the mines. I, for my part, felt like freezing to death. But at the sight of the train we all burst into exclamation. The Russians gesticulated and waved their handkerchiefs. Then suddenly we thought it might start out before we reached it. The Russians began to run in that peculiar way all foreigners run—as if someone were after them. We arrived in time, feeling pleasantly warm.
I thought when the engine-driver had been remonstrated with he would have backed the train to the wayside stopping-place. But no, he said there was no time, and in ten minutes he started us off again. I have never heard how they fared, these unfortunates who were left behind.
Late in the evening I arrived at Lisitchansk, and Nicholas, my London acquaintance, was actually there waiting for me. He had brought a large fur cloak and rugs. A little pony-sledge was at hand. We fitted ourselves in tightly and gave the word to the driver, who whisked us off through the keen air.
In twenty minutes we had climbed up the steep slope to the village and threaded our way through the broad streets to the cottage of my friend.