I used to dream all kinds of dreams, but I never anticipated what Destiny held in store for me. I was, by nature, timid; I was to become courageous through force of another’s shining example. I was to see and experience the real meaning of selfless love, and I was to know the comfort and beauty of religion. I do not say that I was irreligious—few Russians are really irreligious—our Belief is too deeply rooted—but I did not yet understand the meaning of the word Faith.
I always looked forward to our yearly pilgrimage to the Convent of Tchigrin, twenty-five miles away from Revovka. Custom ordained that we should proceed thither on foot, but the carriage invariably went with us! The convent contained a miraculous Virgin which, when the Turks pillaged Tchigrin, had been taken away by them. One day a disconsolate nun walking on the river’s bank saw something floating on the surface of the water. The Virgin had returned to her convent, and from that time it became the scene of wonderful miracles, and many pilgrimages. I liked Tchigrin; it breathed an atmosphere of calm, standing alone in the midst of dense pine woods. But the wind, which respects neither convents nor humanity, was occasionally unkind to Tchigrin, as it swept away the sand which filled the crevices of the walls, almost like natural mortar, and the nuns daily brought bags of sand wherewith to repair the damage. This sand-carrying was an especial duty connected with Tchigrin, and occasionally it was a penance—but I think those simple creatures rarely deserved punishment.
I have perhaps devoted too much time to the festivals, ghosts and unexciting incidents of a country life. But I have done this in order to explain many subsequent happenings which would be otherwise incomprehensible to an English public. These events cannot, and must not, be judged entirely from an English standpoint. We are a race apart, our country is one of extreme mysticism and superstition. It is a land of miracles, where the holy pictures are believed to shed tears, and where every village possesses its seer and its saint. It would be possible to cover the length and breadth of England in a week’s motoring tour, thus England is of necessity more circumscribed. One could not see Russia in such a manner. It is a country of vast distances, of densely populated cities, and lonely tracts which extend for thousands of miles. You cannot contrast the mode of life prevalent at Tooting with that of Tobolsk, or compare the customs of Moscow with those of Manchester. Our upbringing is entirely un-English. True, we are citizens of the world, we are indeed cosmopolitan, but—once a Russian, always a Russian. The Tsaritsa told me that, when she first came to Russia, she was greatly surprised to find that Russian servants did not understand the art of blackleading grates. She had always been accustomed to see shining grates in England when she stayed with her grandmother at Windsor—in Petrograd, shining grates were non-existent. We are miles apart from English ways in little things like these, and no Englishwoman worthy of the name has ever been known to be ignorant of the use of blacklead. But we ought not to be condemned for the non-recognition of its virtue. It is merely a question of outlook. In connection with these differences of outlook, I cannot do better than quote the words of a contributor to the “Daily Mail”; they will plead for my opinions, as the writer possesses the peculiar gift of racial and temperamental understanding:
“We have,” he writes, “in England a cold fish-minded way of affecting to laugh at what we are prone to call local superstition. Let me tell you that this point of view will not work in Africa.” (He is dealing, I fancy, with Morocco.) “What is obviously a childish hallucination in Hampstead or Newcastle is sober reality under this immense blue sky. You can disbelieve a lot of truths you do not understand as you strap-hang homewards, but you will learn to believe everything in Africa.”
Might not this also apply to Russia?
CHAPTER II
My childhood and early girlhood were passed quietly at Revovka and the Crimea. But I loved Revovka, and, whenever I went to stay with my uncle at Livadia, I took with me a little earth from the place which, to me, represented home. The great event at Revovka was the visit of my uncle Horvat, who came from Siberia to see my grandmother once a year. He was head of the Siberian railways, and occupied a political position which corresponded with that of a Viceroy of Ireland. He was a typical Horvat, tall, with deep, kind eyes, and he was also a very clever man. On the night of his arrival I never went to bed, and I remember that we saw the dawn together; he did not reach Revovka until 3 a.m. It was touching to witness his meeting with my grandmother. They were entirely “en rapport,” and he was my greatest friend as well as my much loved uncle.
I never went to school. My first tutor was a priest, but, as I hardly knew Russian (we always spoke French at home) and he knew no French, I made little progress; afterwards Miss Ripe, an English governess, took me in hand, but I think she looked upon us as very much behind the times. The old house was protected at night by a watchman, and I regarded his intermittent coughing and his heavy tread somewhat as a lullaby. Whenever he went to the next town by boat, the watchman “called” my grandmother’s maid in a very curious manner. He was an illiterate peasant, and time, as time, conveyed no meaning to him, so he would occasionally tap on the maid’s window and tell her that such and such a star was in the sky. By this simple calculation she was enabled to judge how much longer it was permissible for her to remain in bed.
Winter was a delightful season at Revovka, and I always wanted to be decorative, and drive out in the antique sledges which were painted with trails of flowers, and magnificently gilded. The modern sledges, covered with carpet, and piled up with bear skins, were not nearly so pretty. English people always associate sledges with wolves, and imagine that a winter’s drive in Russia is fraught with desperate danger. The wolf terror is fast becoming a legend; wolves are now only found in districts far from the haunts of men, although an old custom at Revovka ordained that lanterns were hung outside the stables at night to scare away the wolves! But I met a wolf unawares one evening when I was crossing the park. I had never seen one of our national animals face to face, so I thought that the big grey creature was a dog. I called it, and ran towards it, desirous of its better acquaintance, but it merely regarded me with furtive, unfriendly, green eyes, and then turned and trotted away in the opposite direction. When I reached the house, I described my encounter with the strange dog, but, greatly to my surprise, my story produced general excitement, and a search-party set forth to look for the foot-prints in the snow. These proved to be typical wolf marks, exactly like the print of a thumb, but our visitor had, by this time, completely disappeared.
When I was a young girl the disaffection in Russia was already well on the way to Revolution. In 1905, when I was staying with one of my uncles in Livadia who had charge of the Emperor’s estates at Yalta, we were not left long in ignorance as to the methods which were employed by the Revolutionary Agents. It is now well known that most of the seeds of Revolution were sown at Yalta, but it was dreadful to see the boats smothered in red flags and to hear the Marseillaise sung defiantly from the water, since my uncle had prohibited all political meetings on land. One day, it was discovered that the golden eagles which marked the boundaries of the Emperor’s estate had been broken and overthrown, but this act of vandalism was always attributed to the Jews and the more hot-headed of the students. There was general excitement in the Crimea at this time, and a few of the Revolutionary printing presses were secretly set up at the Grand Duke Constantine’s Castle of Orianda, which for some reason had fallen into decay. It had always been my ambition to visit the ruins of Orianda, so one day I persuaded my cousins to accompany me thither. It was a forbidden expedition, but we considered the possible results of our disobedience would be amply compensated for by the mysteries of the underground passages, which we at once began to explore. As we neared the end of one of these the sound of distant voices broke the stillness, and, terrified out of our wits, we did not know whether to beat a retreat or to dare all and discover whence the sound proceeded. Curiosity eventually conquered cowardice, and we crept cautiously along until the darkness was lit up by a glow of a large fire. Thinking that we had now reached the entrance to the infernal regions we turned and fled precipitately, and, risking punishment, described the whereabouts of Hell to my uncle. And Hell, in a way, it proved to be, as it was discovered that secret printing presses existed underground, and that most of the evil propaganda had emanated from Orianda.