Dr. ——, in spite of being Indian by blood, spoke most correct and finished Spanish, and had all the courtesy which those who use that beautiful language seem somehow to acquire instinctively. It is to be regretted that the same cannot be said of all those using the English language. Not to be outdone by this polite Paraguayan, I responded in the same vein, and we mutually smothered each other with the choicest flowers of Castilian courtesy. These little amenities, though doubtless tending to smooth down the asperities of life, are apt to consume a good deal of time.
Once at Kyoto in Japan, I had occasion for the services of a dentist. As the dentist only spoke Japanese, I took my interpreter with me. After removing my shoes at the door—an unusual preliminary to a visit to a dentist—we went upstairs, where we found a dapper little individual in kimono and white socks, surrounded by the most modern and up-to-date dental paraphernalia, sucking his breath, and rubbing his knees with true Japanese politeness. Eager to show that a foreigner could also have delightful manners, I sucked my breath, if anything, rather louder, and rubbed my knees a trifle harder. "Dentist says," came from the interpreter, "will you honourably deign to explain where trouble lies in honourable tooth?"
"If the dentist will honourably deign to examine my left-hand lower molar," I responded with charming courtesy, "he will find it requires stopping, but for Heaven's sake, Mr. Nakimura, ask him to be careful how he uses his honourable drill, for I am terrified to death at that invention of the Evil One." Soon the Satanic drill got well into its stride, and began boring into every nerve of my head. I jumped out of the chair. "Tell the dentist, Mr. Nakimura, that he is honourably deigning to hurt me like the very devil with his honourable but wholly damnable drill." "Dentist says if you honourably deign to reseat yourself in chair, he soon conquer difficulties in your honourable tooth." "Certainly. But dentist must not give me honourable hell any more," and so on, and so on. I am bound to admit that the little Jap's workmanship was so good that it has remained intact up to the present days. I wonder if Japs, when annoyed, can ever relieve themselves by the use of really strong language, or whether the crust of conventional politeness is too thick to admit of it. In that case they must feel like a lobster afflicted with acute eczema, unable to obtain relief by scratching himself, owing to the impervious shell in which Nature has encased him.
I dined with the British Consul at Asuncion, after my interview with Dr. ——. The Consul lived three miles out of town, and the coffee we drank after dinner, the sugar we put into the coffee, and the cigars we smoked with it, had all been grown in his garden, within sight of the windows. I had ridden out to the Quinta in company with a young Australian, who will reappear later on in these pages in his proper place; one Dick Howard. It was the first but by no means the last time in my life that I ever got on a horse in evening clothes. Dick Howard, having no evening clothes with him, had arrayed himself in one of his favourite cricket blazers, a pleasantly vivid garment. On our way out, my horse shied violently at a snake in the road. The girths slipped on the grass-fed animal, and my saddle rolled gently round and deposited me, tail-coat, white tie and all, in some four feet of dust. The snake, however, probably panic-stricken at the sight of Howard's blazer, had tactfully withdrawn; otherwise, as it happened to be a deadly Jararaca, it is highly unlikely that I should have been writing these lines at the present moment. The ineradicable love of Dick Howard, the cheery, laughing young Antipodean, for brilliant-hued blazers of various athletic clubs will be enlarged on later. In Indian hill stations all men habitually ride out to dinner-parties, whilst ladies are carried in litters. During the rains, men put a suit of pyjamas over their evening clothes to protect them, before drawing on rubber boots and rubber coats and venturing into the pelting downpour. The Syce trots behind, carrying his master's pumps in a rubber sponge-bag.
All this, however, is far afield from Russia. Alexander III preferred Gatchina to any of his other palaces as a residence, as it was so much smaller, Gatchina being a cosy little house of 600 rooms only. I never saw it except once in mid-winter, when the Emperor summoned the Ambassador there, and I was also invited. As the far-famed beauties of Gatchina Park were covered with four feet of snow, it would be difficult to pronounce an opinion upon them. The rivers and lakes, the haunts of the celebrated Gatchina trout, were, of course, also deep-buried.
Alexander III was a man of very simple tastes, and nothing could be plainer than the large study in which he received us. Alexander III, a Colossus of a man, had great dignity, combined with a geniality of manner very different from the glacial hauteur of his father, Alexander II. The Emperor was in fact rather partial to a humorous anecdote, and some I recalled seemed to divert his Majesty. Outside his study-door stood two gigantic negroes on guard, in Eastern dresses of green and scarlet. The Empress Marie, though she did not share her sister Queen Alexandra's wonderful beauty, had all of her subtle and indescribable charm of manner, and she was very gracious to a stupid young Secretary-of-Embassy.
The bedroom given to me at Gatchina could hardly be described by the standardised epithets for Russian interiors "bare, gaunt, and whitewashed," as it had light blue silk walls embroidered with large silver wreaths. The mirrors were silvered, and the bed stood in a species of chancel, up four steps, and surrounded by a balustrade of silvered carved wood. Both the Ambassador and I agreed that the Imperial cellar fully maintained its high reputation. We were given in particular some very wonderful old Tokay, a present from the Emperor of Austria, a wine that was not on the market.
We were taken all over the palace, which contained, amongst other things, a large riding-school and a full-sized theatre. The really enchanting room was a large hall on the ground floor where many generations of little Grand-Dukes and Grand-Duchesses had played. As, owing to the severe winter climate, it is difficult for Russian children to amuse themselves much out-of-doors, these large play-rooms are almost a necessity in that frozen land. The Gatchina play-room was a vast low hall, a place of many whitewashed arches. In this delightful room was every possible thing that could attract a child. At one end were two wooden Montagnes Busses, the descent of which could be negotiated in little wheeled trollies. In another corner was a fully-equipped gymnasium. There were "giants' strides," swings, swing-boats and a merry-go-round. There was a toy railway with switches and signal-posts complete, the locomotives of which were worked by treadles, like a tricycle. There were dolls' houses galore, and larger houses into which the children could get, with real cooking-stoves in the little kitchens, and little parlours in which to eat the results of their primitive culinary experiments. There were mechanical orchestras, self-playing pianos and barrel-organs, and masses and masses of toys. On seeing this delectable spot, I regretted for the first time that I had not been born a Russian Grand-Duke, between the ages though of five and twelve only.
I believe that there is a similar room at Tsarskoe although I never saw it.