I never shared the resentment of my Russian friends at being addressed with the familiar "thou" by the peasants. They intended no discourtesy; it was their natural form of address, and they could not be expected to know that beyond the narrow confines of their village there was another world where the ceremonious "you" was habitually employed. I rather fancy that anyone bred in the country, and accustomed from his earliest childhood to mix with farmers, cottagers, and farm-labourers, can get on with other country-bred people, whether at home, or in Russia, India, or Canada—a town-bred man would not know what to talk about. In spite of the peasants' reputation for pilfering, not one of us ever had the smallest thing stolen. I did indeed lose a rubber air-cushion in the snow, but that was owing to the overturning of a sledge. A colleague of mine, whom I had hitherto always regarded as a truthful man, assured me a year afterwards that he had seen my air-cushion ranged on the ikon shelf in a peasant's house, with two red lamps burning before it. The owner of the house declared, according to my friend, that my air-cushion was an ikon of peculiar sanctity, though the painting had in some mysterious manner become obliterated from it. My colleague further assured me that my air-cushion was building up a very gratifying little local connection as a miracle-working ikon of quite unusual efficiency, and that, under its kindly tutelage, crops prospered and flocks and herds increased; of course within reasonable limits only, for the new ikon held essentially moderate views, and was temperamentally opposed to anything in the way of undue optimism. I wished that I could have credited this, for it would have been satisfactory to imagine oneself, through the agency of the air-cushion, a vicarious yet untiring benefactor of a whole countryside.
On one of our shooting expeditions a curious incident occurred. Lord Dufferin had taken a long shot at a bear, and had wounded without killing him. For some reason, the animal stopped, and climbed to the top of a high fir tree. Lord Dufferin approached, fired again, and the bear dropped dead to the ground. It is but seldom that one sees a dead bear fall from the top of a tree. I witnessed an equally strange sporting incident once in India. It was just over the borders of Assam, and we were returning to camp on elephants, after a day's big game shooting. As we approached a hollow clothed with thick jungle, the elephants all commenced trumpeting. Knowing how wonderfully keen the elephant's sense of smell is, that told us that some beast lay concealed in the hollow. Thinking it would prove to be a bear, I took up my favourite smooth-bore charged with leaden bullets, when with a great crashing and rending of boughs the jungle parted, and a galloping rhinoceros charged out, his head well down, making straight for the elephant that was carrying a nephew of mine. My nephew had just time to snatch up a heavy 4-bore elephant rifle. He fired, and by an extraordinary piece of luck succeeded in hitting the huge beast in his one vulnerable spot, just behind the shoulder. The rhinoceros rolled right over like a shot rabbit and lay stone dead. It was a thousand to one chance, and if I live to a hundred I shall never see anything of the sort again. It was also very fortunate, for had he missed his shot, nothing on earth could have saved my nephew's life.
We found that the most acceptable presents in the villages were packets of sugar and tins of sardines. Sugar is costly and difficult to procure in Russian villages. The usual way of employing it, when friends are gathered round the table of some "isba" with the samovar in the middle and steaming glasses of tea before each guest, is for No. 1 to take a piece of sugar, place it between his teeth, and then suck his tea through it. No. 1 quickly passes the piece of sugar to his neighbor, who uses it in the same way, and transfers it to the next person, and so on, till the sugar is all dissolved. This method of using sugar, though doubtless economical, always struck me as being of dubious cleanliness. A gift of a pound of lump sugar was always welcomed with grateful thanks. Sardines were even more acceptable, as they could be eaten in Lent. The grown-ups devoured the fish, lifting them out of the tin with their fingers; and the children were given the oil to smear on their bread, in place of forbidden butter.
After days in the keen fresh air, and in the limitless expanse of forest and snow, life in Petrograd seemed terribly artificial. I used to marvel that my cultured, omniscient, polygot friends were fellow-countrymen of the bearded, red-shirted, illiterate peasants we had just left. The gulf seemed so unbridgable between them, and apart from a common language and a common religion (both, I acknowledge, very potent bonds of union) there seemed no link between them, or any possible community of ideas. Now in England there is that community of ideas. All classes, from the highest to the lowest, share to some extent the same tastes and the same prejudices. There is too that most powerful of connecting links, a common love of sport. The cricket ground and the football field are witnesses to this, and it shows in a hundred little ways beside. The freemasonry of sport is very real.
It was perfectly delightful to live with and to mix so much amongst charming people of such wide culture and education, but they seemed to me to bear the same relation to the world outside their own that a rare orchid in its glass shelter bears to a wild flower growing in the open air. The one is indigenous to the soil; the other was originally imported, and can only thrive in an artificial atmosphere, and under artificial conditions. If the glass gets broken, or the fire goes out, the orchid dies, but the wild flower is not affected. After all, man made the towns, but God made the country.
CHAPTER V
The Russian Gipsies—Midnight drives—Gipsy singing—Its fascination—The consequences of a late night—An unconventional luncheon—Lord Dufferin's methods—Assassination of Alexander II—Stürmer—Pathetic incidents in connection with the murder of the Emperor—The funeral procession and service—Details concerning—The Votive Church—The Order of the Garter—Unusual incidents at the Investiture—Precautions taken for Emperor's safety—The Imperial train—Finland—Exciting salmon-fishing there—Harraka Niska—Koltesha—Excellent shooting there—Ski-running—"Ringing the game in"—A wolf-shooting party—The obese General—Some incidents—A novel form of sport—Black game and capercailzie—At dawn in a Finnish forest—Immense charm of it—Ice-hilling or "Montagnes Russes"—Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland.
In my day there were two or three restaurants on the islands formed by the delta of the Neva, with troupes of singing gipsies attached to them. These restaurants did a roaring trade in consequence, for the singing of the gipsy choirs seems to produce on Russians the same maddening, almost intoxicating effect that the "skirl o' the pipes" does on those with Scottish blood in their veins.