Among the passengers on board our steamer there was a Norwegian professor, with whom I talked, trying to remember the little that I formerly had known of the Swedish language. He spoke German. ‘But as you speak some Norwegian,’ he said to me, ‘and are trying to learn it, let us both speak it.’
‘You mean Swedish?’ I ventured to ask, ‘I speak Swedish, don’t I?’
‘Well, I should rather say Norwegian; certainly not Swedish,’ was his reply.
Thus happened to me what happened to one of Jules Verne’s heroes, who had learned by mistake Portuguese instead of Spanish. At any rate, I talked a good deal with the professor—let it be Norwegian—and he gave me a Christiania paper, which contained the reports of the Norwegian North Atlantic deep-sea expedition, just returned home. As soon as I reached Edinburgh I wrote a note in English about these explorations, and sent it to ‘Nature,’ which my brother and I used regularly to read at St. Petersburg from its first appearance. The sub-editor acknowledged the note with thanks, remarking with an extreme leniency which I have often met with since in England, that my English was ‘all right’ and only required to be ‘a little more idiomatic.’ I may say that I had learned English in Russia, and, with my brother, had translated Page’s ‘Philosophy of Geology’ and Herbert Spencer’s ‘Principles of Biology.’ But I had learned it from books, and pronounced it very badly, so that I had the greatest difficulty in making myself understood by my Scotch landlady; her daughter and I used to write on scraps of paper what we had to say to each other; and as I had no idea of idiomatic English, I must have made the most amusing mistakes. I remember, at any rate, protesting once to her, in writing, that it was not a ‘cup of tea’ that I expected at tea time, but many cups. I am afraid my landlady took me for a glutton, but I must say, by way of apology, that neither in the geological books I had read in English nor in Spencer’s ‘Biology’ was there any allusion to such an important matter as tea-drinking.
I got from Russia the Journal of the Russian Geographical Society, and soon began to supply the ‘Times’ also with occasional paragraphs about Russian geographical explorations. Prjeválsky was at that time in Central Asia, and his progress was followed in England with interest.
However, the money I had brought with me was rapidly disappearing, and all my letters to Russia being intercepted, I could not succeed in making my address known to my relatives. So I moved in a few weeks to London, thinking I could find more regular work there. The old refugee, P. L. Lavróff, continued to edit at London his newspaper Forward; but as I hoped soon to return to Russia, and the editorial office of the Russian paper must have been closely watched by spies, I did not go there.
I went, very naturally, to the office of ‘Nature,’ where I was most cordially received by the sub-editor, Mr. J. Scott Keltie. The editor wanted to increase the column of Notes, and found that I wrote them exactly as they were required. A table was consequently assigned me in the office, and scientific reviews in all possible languages were piled upon it. ‘Come every Monday, Mr. Levashóff,’ I was told, ‘look over these reviews, and if there is any article that strikes you as worthy of notice, write a note, or mark the article: we will send it to a specialist.’ Mr. Keltie did not know, of course, that I used to rewrite each note three or four times before I dared to submit my English to him; but taking the scientific reviews home, I soon managed very nicely, with my ‘Nature’ notes and my ‘Times’ paragraphs, to get a living. I found that the weekly payment, on Thursday, of the paragraph contributors to the ‘Times’ was an excellent institution. To be sure, there were weeks when there was no interesting news from Prjeválsky, and news from other parts of Russia was not found interesting; in such cases my fare was bread and tea only.
One day, however, Mr. Keltie took from the shelves several Russian books, asking me to review them for ‘Nature.’ I looked at the books, and, to my embarrassment, saw that they were my own works on the Glacial Period and the Orography of Asia. My brother had not failed to send them to our favourite ‘Nature.’ I was in great perplexity, and, putting the books into my bag, took them home, to reflect upon the matter. ‘What shall I do with them?’ I asked myself. ‘I cannot praise them, because they are mine; and I cannot be too sharp on the author, as I hold the views expressed in them.’ I decided to take them back next day, and explain to Mr. Keltie that, although I had introduced myself under the name of Levashóff, I was the author of these books, and could not review them.
Mr. Keltie knew from the papers about Kropótkin’s escape, and was very much pleased to discover the refugee safe in England. As to my scruples, he remarked wisely that I need neither scold nor praise the author, but could simply tell the readers what the books were about. From that day a friendship, which still continues, grew up between us.
In November or December 1876, seeing in the letter box of P. L. Lavróff’s paper an invitation for ‘K.’ to call at the editorial office to receive a letter from Russia, and thinking that the invitation was for me, I called at the office, and soon established friendship with the editor and the younger people who printed the paper.