The South Russian peasant, as I knew him, was a poetical, simple soul. After dinner we often used to watch the men turning their horses into our meadows for safety, and securing the animals’ legs with chains, in order to prevent any inclination to roam. They invariably sang whilst making these nightly preparations, and they danced afterwards in the bright moonlight which flooded meadows and woodland with a white radiance. They had many quaint customs at Revovka, which may not be uninteresting to English readers who only know the Russia of to-day as a strange and poisonous growth, and not as the orchid which had its home in the eternal snows—a curious simile, perhaps, but in my mind a correct one. Our country, in many respects, was an exotic growth; super-refinement walked cheek by jowl with ignorance, and an almost oriental luxury brushed the skirts of poverty. It was a land of extreme contrasts, where emotions and passions either ran riot or else were suppressed to an undreamt-of extent.
It was almost inconceivable at one time that the family coachman, who obstinately turned his horses’ heads in the direction of home because he met a white dog in the road, could ever become the Bolshevik who would have murdered his employers instead of protecting them from the bad luck attendant on the unwelcome animal!
I must admit that my grandmother was as superstitious as her coachman. She believed implicitly in dreams, and an old woman from the village was always sent for to expound the more exciting ones. I remember that one of her dreams had a disastrous sequel, inasmuch as it involved the dismissal of a very devoted servant who, my grandmother dreamt, had attempted to kill her. She resolutely declined to see him again, and he was sent away to another estate. I supposed she was influenced in this by the knowledge that, on several occasions, she had “dreamed true.”
Our peasants confided all their joys and sorrows in my grandmother, and, when any of them married, we were always invited to the wedding. This invitation was issued on set lines; the bride-to-be, dressed in full national costume, plentifully bedecked with flowers and ribbons, came with her bridesmaid to the servants’ sitting-room, where she was received by my grandmother. The girl thereupon knelt, and bowed three times, informing my relation what an honour our presence would confer on her family, and, gratified by the assurance that we would promise to come, she withdrew, all smiles! After the ceremony, which always took place on a Sunday, the whole of the wedding party came back to our house and assembled on the terrace, where a village orchestra discoursed strange sweet sounds, and where unwearied dancing enlivened the music and singing. We always gave one kind of present—a cow! When I married, our employees surpassed themselves and gave me, not a cow, but two oxen!
We fasted on Christmas Eve until the first star appeared, when we partook of a heavy supper of which the fifteen courses always included fish. Hay was strewn under the tablecloth to remind us of the humility of the Manger, and it was customary for the children to carry the Christmas supper to their friends and relations. All the windows of the Chateau were darkened, but one was left open, and, when the first star appeared in the serene sky, this window was illuminated in honour of the Christ-Child. It was then that the children arrived “en masse,” carrying revolving paper transparencies adorned with pictures of Christ; it was one illuminated stream of little children, and one of the prettiest sights imaginable.
New Year’s Day was an occasion for general rejoicing, when the men of the village assembled on the terrace to congratulate us, throwing wheat in our pathway as a sign of prosperity. We then witnessed the procession of our servants, who filed past us, accompanied by their special charges. First, came the stablemen leading the horses, who, in addition to being superlatively well-groomed, were adorned with gilt crowns and many ribbons. Then came the herdsmen with their grave-eyed steers, whose horns were gilded in honour of the New Year; the sheep were accompanied by the shepherds, and the cortège was terminated by the poultry maid, who escorted a turkey smothered in ribbons.
On the first New Year’s Day after the Revolution, the crowd came to the Chateau as usual, but there was no procession of animals, no smiling faces, and no wheat-strewn pathway. We were confronted by scowling peasants, who roughly informed us that henceforth nothing belonged to us, since they were masters. But to do our own people justice, the better minded amongst them absented themselves, and only the worst characters were in evidence—and these, in their turn, were under the evil influences rampant in towns. I have no hesitation in stating that the motive power in the destruction of Russia emanated, and still emanates, from the Jews.
When the snows began to melt, the children and young people heralded the approach of Spring with song. Joining hands, they wandered singing in the twilight, a lovely, living chain of Youth in its Spring-time. They repeated these songs at Easter, that wonderful festival of Resurrection and the rebirth of Nature. On Holy Thursday the Gospels were read in the churches until midnight, and everyone carried a taper. My mother’s estates were situated in the mountains, and it was a picturesque sight when the peasants wended their way churchwards at Easter. The church was half-way up a steep ascent, and the procession of taper-bearers could be traced by hundreds of lights, as two villages participated in the ceremony.
Revovka was an entrancing home for a child blessed, as I was, with an imaginative temperament. We had our particular White Lady, a tragic phantom who haunted the Park, and who used to swing in the branches of the lime trees. She had been the mistress of one of my great-uncles, and she was buried in the Park. No one seemed to know her fate, but it was said that she was beautiful and unhappy. Her grave was marked with a flat stone, without any inscription, as the poor little creature had sought refuge from love and life in self-destruction. But Nature was kinder to her than Man, and an enormous bush of wild roses threw out caressing arms towards the cold stones, and showered pink petal-tears on the unhonoured dead.
There was a similar forgotten grave on my father’s property, formerly a hunting-box of the Kings of Poland. The occupant of this grave had been the mistress of a king, and, like the beauty of Revovka, she had killed herself; but she was a restless spirit, and she used to haunt the Park and the house in the summer, running swiftly across the greensward, wearing little scarlet slippers and darting up the staircase, her scarlet heels tap-tapping as she went her way, unsubstantial and fantastic as the morning mist.