Madame Lubinoff is a gay and beautiful woman, who hovers always between tears and laughter. The tears are real, but the laughter is forced. One marvels at the courage of her tremendous acting. It all started, this work that she is conducting, she told us, with the sale of a ring. When she discovered how many lives one ring could save, she sold more. She had been luckier than most of her Russian friends who, when the Bolshevist regime set in, had lost everything; whereas she, inasmuch as Warsaw was Polish, had managed to preserve many of her personal belongings, though of course her Russian estates were confiscated. The present building in which she has established her soup-kitchen had been a Russian Church. She gained permission from the priest to use it by means of flattery; she kissed his hand, which is an honour paid only to a bishop. She laughed. For the money with which to run it she sold her jewels and kept on selling them, till the Russian Red Cross in Paris got to hear about her. For a time they helped with contributions, but last October they notified her that they could help no longer. Then the American Relief had come to the rescue with a donation from the fund left by Mr. Harkness to be expended on the Intelligencia of Europe. And now that was exhausted. What was she going to do next? Ah, that was the question! If she did not do something the seven thousand men, women and children whom she was feeding would play leading rtles in the daily funerals. She laughed and blinked the tears out of her eyes. They did things better in the French Revolution; the guillotine was so very much quicker. Perhaps we would like her to show us round.
Outside the door, doing clerking at a ricketty table, a grubby yet distinguished man was sitting. She introduced him as Prince Ouhtomsky. He shook our hands with a manner of extreme courtliness; when we were out of earshot, she revealed his story. When Warsaw was a part of Russian Poland he had been one of the richest men in the country. He had belonged to the hereditary land-owning class, his grants having been made directly to his family by the Tsar. He was now working for his dinner and two dollars and a half a week. When she found him, he and his princess had been living in a room which they shared with other people. He had been trying to keep the wolf from the door by manufacturing cigarettes. They were not good cigarettes—cigarette making was not his profession. Besides, it was illegal in Poland; it was a Government monopoly. So she had rescued him and given him the job of sealing; envelopes. By allowing him to believe that he was earning his keep, she prevented him from being too unhappy.
As we passed out through the crowd of be-shawled women, various of them tried to attract Madame Lubinoff's attention. Some she embraced, addressing them as “My dear Princess,” “My dear Baroness,” “My dear Countess.” Despite their sodden appearance, their display of etiquette was magnificent and exacting. They drew themselves up with a flash of haughtiness as though their Cinderella appearance of poverty were no more than fancy-dress. One was reminded that they had once belonged to the most polished caste of Europe. The effect was pitiful and fantastic. Eight years ago it would have been madness to have proposed that they could ever have sunk to this depth. We no longer wondered that Madame Lubinoff wept while she laughed.
At the top of the stairs she pointed out a haggard fellow, attired in what was left of a uniform. He had been one of the smartest officers in the crack regiment of the Russian Guards. He had come to Warsaw a beggar. She had been puzzled by a familiar resemblance. Then she had remembered—she had been his partner, when things were in their heyday, at an Imperial Ball.
As we crossed the courtyard to the dining-room we were accosted—at every step we were accosted—by a bullet-headed old soldier who wore the highest military decoration that the Tsar could bestow. It was pinned against his greasy collar. He was General Rogovich. His request was humble. He was hungry; he would like to split kindling in exchange for food. “My General, it is very unfortunate,” our hostess told him, “but I have more than enough kindling split already.” He kissed her hand, submitting to her authority and yet, like an unwanted dog, he followed.
In a booth, at the entrance to the room where meals were served, the most brilliant comedy actor of the old Petrograd was collecting tickets. Inside wilted women of exalted nobility were pouring soup and piling dishes for a pittance as waitresses.
The curious point was that they no longer looked noble; they looked their part. The utensils were mostly make-shift; the cups were condensed-milk cans, with ragged metal edges which had been presented when empty by the American Relief Administration. At the tables sat a large part of what Mr. Gorlof, the Russian attachi, calls “the spiritual wealth of Russia.” They were professors, musicians, actors, writers, financiers, doctors, engineers—the kind of people whose brain value never figures in a budget, but who constitute the realest asset of any nation. These were the few who were left from the great mass who had been tortured and shot.
At this point an old white-bearded man came up to us; he was General Prigorowsky, who had been one of the most brilliant of strategists when Russia was fighting on the side of the Allies. His face was intensely sad and his eyes were deep with unfathomable melancholy. At sixty years of age he was alone in the world, unloved, unprotected and almost unloveable. He had no idea what had become of his wife or children. For a time he and one son had been imprisoned together. Every day they had been led out and told they would be shot. One day only his son had been taken; after that he had remained alone in his cell. Having escaped, here he was, penniless in a foreign land which would rather be without him.
From the eating-room we were conducted to the kitchen. Again we were invited to shake hands with students, army officers and princesses. I had never realized that there were so many princesses in the world. In a miserable outhouse four women, who were professors' wives and resembled rag-pickers, huddled on a bench peeling beets into a basket.
We had climbed a stair and were pausing on a landing, when I happened to look out of the window. Shambling aimlessly round a wood-pile in the yard below was a forlorn little figure. He wore a dingy velvet hat—a girl's—made like a tam-o'-shanter, a girl's coat which trailed about his ankles, and hoots which were a mere pretence. Upon enquiry I was informed that he was the Baron Hael Von Holdstein. His father had been a millionaire. His mother was the daughter of a Lord Mayor of Petrograd and was working in the soup-kitchen as a waitress. The little Baron, having nowhere else to go, came with her in the early morning and waited all day for her.