III.
Since his undergraduate years Charles Dilke had entertained the project of writing on Russia, and perhaps the journey to his father's death-bed revived the plan.
While on the way to St. Petersburg in May, 1869, he chanced to share a railway carriage with a distinguished member of the Russian Diplomatic Service, Baron Jomini, son of the famous writer on strategy, and 'almost,' says Sir Charles, 'the cleverest man I ever met with, and to me always an excellent friend.' Jomini was useful even on that journey, when difficulties arose over an irregular passport; and in later years he rendered Sir Charles various services with officialdom—as, for example, when the Russian Customs officers, not unnaturally, objected to the English traveller's bringing in for his personal use 'books prohibited in Russia, the most extraordinary collection that was probably ever got together in that country unless in the office of the censorship of police.'
From the first Baron Jomini was at hand to introduce Sir Charles to society in Russia, but in other directions the traveller was not less well equipped. He learnt Russian; and before setting out on his second visit to St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1869 he had made a special journey to Geneva, with an introduction from Louis Blanc to Herzen, leader of the moderate Russian revolutionists. He knew Mazzini well, and through him had visited Baden to make a lasting acquaintance with Tourgenief. Tourgenief was then 'living with the Viardots, the sister and brother-in-law of Malibran.' Long years after Dilke spoke of him as one of the finest of talkers.
At St. Petersburg he met many of the advanced revolutionaries to whom Herzen had commended him, and he was also received by more orthodox Liberalism. The Political Economy Club gave a dinner in his honour, at which he made a speech in French on the Irish Land Question; and the Geographical Society held a reception in recognition of the author of Greater Britain, with Baron von der Osten Sacken in the chair, son of a comrade and colleague of the elder Jomini in days of Napoleonic war. [Footnote: Nicolas Dmitrivitch von der Osten Sacken, Chamberlain of the Imperial Court, afterwards Russian Ambassador at Berlin; born 1834, died 1912.] Osten Sacken's father was the Governor of Paris in 1815 after the entry of the Allies.
After a visit to Taganrog, at the eastern end of the Sea of Azof, he came back to St. Petersburg, and occupied by chance the next rooms to the great singer Mario—"an embarrassing neighbour, as he used to come in about 2 a.m., and give me far too much of the quality of his voice." Here also Sir Charles made friends with Governor Curtin, the American Minister, 'formerly Lincoln's Governor of Pennsylvania during the war, and the best story-teller in the world.' 'I went about a good deal with Baron Jomini and Baron von der Osten Sacken, and saw much of the Emperor's aunt, the Grande Duchesse Hélène. My chief friends were at this time Princess Galitzin, Prince Orlof Davydof, leader of the high Tory party, and the old Princess Kotchubey, afterwards Grand Mistress of the Robes.'
Later in the year he pushed across into Siberia; and in the Christmas vacation Ashton Dilke came out to join his brother. They met at Kazan, whither Charles had returned from his Siberian wanderings, and went down the Volga together to Astrakan, and thence travelled across the Don Cossack Steppe. Sir Charles returned in the last days of 1869. He notes that Ashton showed at this time the beginnings of consumption—symptoms which led him to give up rowing, and became more grave in the years of his travels in Central Asia.
Russia exercised from the first for Charles Dilke a fascination which it never lost. A picture by Vladimir Makofsky, which he bought about this time, hung in the breakfast-room at Sloane Street; 'it represents a scene from one of Tourgenief's early stories, a summer's night in the government of Toula: boys telling ghost stories while they watch horses grazing on the lammas land.'
A chapter in Greater Britain had set out the opinion which, after travel in the East, he formed of Russia, from talk both with Englishmen and with Orientals. The great power, which he then guessed at from the other side of the Himalayan barrier, seemed to him essentially Asiatic, not European, and not a civilizing power. He quoted with approval the saying of an Egyptian under Ismail's rule: "Why, Russia is an organized barbarism,— why—the Russians are—why, they are—why, nearly as bad as we are."
This was his view of the Russian Government. The opinion which he formed of the Russian people as a whole was in itself 'contradictory because they are a contradictory people.' He found them 'avid of new ideas.' Yet, 'however fond half-educated Russians may be of professing a knowledge of things they do not understand, I never doubted for one moment the greatness of the future that lies before Russia, nor the essential patriotism and strength of the Russian race; and it was these last considerations that took me so often to their country.'