Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 2

by Andrew Dickson White

He asked me where, besides this, the shoe pinched in the United States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury, not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited the case of the crowds whom I had seen some years before huddled together in New York tenement-houses, preyed upon by their liquor-selling landlords, their families perishing of typhoid and smallpox on account of the negligence and maladministration of the local politicians, but who, as a rule, were almost if not quite ready to mob and murder those of us who brought in a new health board and a better order of things; showing him that for years the very class of people who suffered most from the old, vile state of things did their best by their votes to keep in power the men who maintained it.

We then passed to the subject of the trans-Siberian Railway. In this he seemed interested, but in a vague way which added nothing to my knowledge.

Asking me regarding my former visit to Moscow, and learning that it was during the Crimean War, he said, "At that time I was in Sebastopol, and continued there as a soldier during the siege."

As to his relations with the imperial government at present, he said that he had been recently elected to a learned society in Moscow, but that the St. Petersburg government had interfered to stop the election; and he added that every morning, when he awoke, he wondered that he was not on his way to Siberia.

On my leaving him, both he and the countess invited me to meet them next day at the Tretiakof Museum of Russian Pictures; and accordingly, on the following afternoon, I met them at that greatest of all galleries devoted purely to Russian art. They were accompanied by several friends, among them a little knot of disciples—young men clad in simple peasant costume like that worn by the master. It was evident that he was an acknowledged lion at the old Russian capital, for as he led me about to see the pictures which he liked best, he was followed and stared at by many.

Pointing out to me some modern religious pictures in Byzantine style painted for the Cathedral of Kieff, he said, "They represent an effort as futile as trying to persuade chickens to reenter the egg-shells from which they have escaped." He next showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, "What is truth?" Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,—a peasant fanatic brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that famous question and its answer; the question coming from the mighty of the earth, and the answer from the poor and oppressed.

The other picture represented the Crucifixion. It was painted in the most realistic manner possible; nothing was idealized; it was even more vividly realistic than Gebhardt's picture of the Lord's Supper, at Berlin; so that it at first repelled me, though it afterward exercised a certain fascination. That Tolstoi was deeply interested was clear. He stood for a time in silence, as if musing upon all that the sacrifice on Calvary had brought to the world. Other representations of similar scenes, in the conventional style of the older masters, he had passed without a glance; but this spectacle of the young Galilean peasant, with unattractive features, sordid garb, poverty-stricken companions, and repulsive surroundings, tortured to death for preaching the "kingdom of God" to the poor and down-trodden, seemed to hold him fast, and as he pointed out various features in the picture it became even more clear to me that sympathy with the peasant class, and a yearning to enter into their cares and sorrows, form the real groundwork of his life.

He then took me to a small picture of Jesus and his disciples leaving the upper room at Jerusalem after the Last Supper. This, too, was painted in the most realistic manner. The disciples, simple-minded fishermen, rude in features and dress, were plodding homeward, while Christ himself gazed at the stars and drew the attention of his nearest companions to some of the brightest. Tolstoi expressed especial admiration for this picture, saying that at times it affected him like beautiful music,—like music which draws tears, one can hardly tell why. It was more and more evident, as he lingered before this and other pictures embodying similar ideas, that sympathy for those struggling through poverty and want toward a better life is his master passion.

Among the pictures, not to be classed as religious, before which he thus lingered were those representing the arrest of a nihilist and the return of an exile from Siberia. Both were well painted, and both revealed the same characteristic—sympathy with the poor, even with criminals.

Some of the more famous historical pictures in the collection he thought exaggerated; especially those representing the fury of the Grand Duchess Sophia in her monastery prison, and the remorse of Ivan the Terrible after murdering his son.