The young Princess Radzivill was also especially attractive. In one of her rooms hung a portrait of Balzac, taken just after death, and it was most striking. This led her to give me very interesting accounts of her aunt, Madame de Hanska, to whom Balzac wrote his famous letters, and whom he finally married. I met at her house another lady of high degree, to whom my original introduction had been somewhat curious. Dropping in one afternoon at the house of Henry Howard, the British first secretary, I met in the crowd a large lady, simply dressed, whom I had never seen before. Being presented to her, and not happening to catch her name, I still talked on, and found that she had traveled, first in Australia, then in California, thence across our continent to New York; and her accounts of what she had seen interested me greatly. But some little time afterward I met her again at the house of Princess Radzivill, and then found that she was the English Duchess of Buckingham. One day I had been talking with the Princess and her guest on the treasures of the Imperial Library, and especially the wonderful collection of autographs, among them the copy-book of Louis XIV when a child, which showed the pains taken to make him understand, even in his boyhood, that he was an irresponsible autocrat. On one of its pages the line to be copied ran as follows:
L'hommage est du aux Roys, ils font ce qu'il leur plaist.—LOUIS.
Under this the budding monarch had written the same words six times, with childish care to keep the strokes straight and the spaces regular. My account of this having led the princess to ask me to take her and her friend to the library and to show them some of these things, I gladly agreed, wrote the director, secured an appointment for a certain afternoon, and when the time came called for the ladies. But a curious contretemps arose. I had met, the day before, two bright American ladies, and on their asking me about the things best worth seeing, I had especially recommended them to visit the Imperial Library. On arriving at the door with the princess and the duchess, I was surprised to find that no preparations had been made to meet us,—in fact, that our coming seemed to be a matter of surprise; and a considerable time elapsed before the director and other officials came to us. Then I learned what the difficulty was. The two American ladies, in perfectly good faith, had visited the library a few hours before; and, on their saying that the American minister had recommended them to come, it had been taken for granted at once that THEY were the princess and the duchess, and they had been shown everything with almost regal honors, the officials never discovering the mistake until our arrival.
The American colony at St. Petersburg was very small. Interesting compatriots came from time to time on various errands, and I was glad to see them; but one whose visits were most heartily welcomed was a former consul, Mr. Prince, an original, shrewd "down-easter," and his reminiscences of some of my predecessors were full of interest to me.
One especially dwells in my mind. It had reference to a former senator of the United States who, about the year 1840, was sent to Russia as minister. There were various evidences in the archives of the legation that sobriety was not this gentleman's especial virtue, and among them very many copies of notes in which the minister, through the secretary of legation, excused himself from keeping engagements at the Foreign Office on the ground of "sudden indisposition."
Mr. Prince told me that one day this minister's valet, who was an Irishman, came to the consulate and said: "Oi 'll not stay wid his igsillincy anny longer; Oi 've done wid him."
"What's the trouble now?' said Mr. Prince.
"Well," said the man, "this morning Oi thought it was toime to get his igsillincy out of bed, for he had been dhrunk about a week and in bed most of the toime; and so Oi went to him, and says Oi, gentle-loike, 'Would your igsillincy have a cup of coffee?' whin he rose up and shtruck me in the face. On that Oi took him by the collar, lifted him out of bed, took him acrass the room, showed him his ugly face in the glass, and Oi said to him, says Oi, 'Is thim the eyes of an invoy extraorr-rrdinarry and ministher plinipotentiarry?'"
Among interesting reminders of my predecessors was a letter in the archives, written about the year 1832 by Mr. Buchanan, afterward senator, minister in London, Secretary of State, and President of the United States. It was a friendly missive to an official personage in our country, and went on somewhat as follows: "I feel almost ashamed to tell you that your letters to me, mine to you, and, indeed, everything that has come and gone between us by mail, has been read by other eyes than ours. This was true of your last letter to me, and, without doubt, it will be true of this letter. Can you imagine it? Think of the moral turpitude of a creature employed to break open private letters and to read them! Can you imagine work more degrading? What a dirty dog he must be! how despicable, indeed, he must seem to himself!" And so Mr. Buchanan went on until he wound up as follows: "Not only does this person read private letters, but he is a forger: he forges seals, and I regret to say that his imitation of the eagle on our legation seal is a VERY SORRY BIRD." Whether this dose had any salutary effect on the official concerned I never learned.
The troubles of an American representative at St. Petersburg are many, and they generally begin with the search for an apartment. It is very difficult indeed in that capital to find a properly furnished suite of rooms for a minister, and since the American representative has been made an ambassador this difficulty is greater than ever. In my own case, by especial luck and large outlay, I was able to surmount it; but many others had not been so fortunate, and the result had generally been that, whereas nearly every other power owned or held on long lease a house or apartment for its representative,—simple, decent, dignified, and known to the entire city,—the American representative had lived wherever circumstances compelled him:—sometimes on the ground-floor and sometimes in a sky-parlor, with the natural result that Russians could hardly regard the American Legation as on the same footing with that of other countries.