A year in Russia

by Maurice Baring

I soar away to a world unknown to you.”

By means of a small piece of wood, a flower, and some water I made the Chinaman understand what poem I was alluding to, and he recited it for us. The Chinese asked me to tell them their fortunes by their hands. I said to one of them, at random, that I saw great riches in his hand, thinking it would please him. The Chinaman said nothing, but later, when this Chinaman, who was a visitor, had gone, the others said to me: “You spoke true words. That man is a ‘Koupeza’ (pidgin-Russian for merchant) and he is enormously rich.” These Chinamen take an acute interest in the result of the peace negotiations, and wish to be informed as to all sorts of details of which we are ignorant. The impression among the officers here is that it is a very good thing that peace has been concluded. “We ought to thank Heaven that our men have not been beaten again,” one of them said, and he added: “It is silly to say that the higher authorities are the only guilty ones; we are all equally guilty.”

September 16th.

We spend the time riding, reading, bathing, sleeping, and playing patiences.

Jen-tzen-tung is a large and most picturesque town. A constant stream of Mongols flows in and out of it. They wear the most picturesque clothes, silks and velvets of deep orange and luminous sea-green, glowing like jewels. We ride into the town to buy provisions, fish mostly. The wines sold at the shops are all sham and horribly nasty. At the corner of one of the streets there is a professional wizard, dressed in black silk embroidered with silver moons, and wearing the conical cap that wizards always do wear. You ask a question, pay a small sum and shake coins out of a cup three times, and according as the coins make an odd or even figure, the wizard writes down a sign on a piece of paper, and then he tells you the answer to your question. The Chinese consult him before striking a bargain or setting out on a journey. I asked him whether I should get back all right? He answered that I could go home either by the East or the West, and that the West would be better, though I should meet with obstacles.

He refused to prophesy for more than a hundred days ahead.

In the evening, after dinner, we discussed politics and the Duma (that is to say the Duma as originally planned by the decree of August 6th). The doctor said that unless there were to be a constitution in Russia, he would emigrate abroad, as he did not choose that his children should be brought up in a country which was politically inferior to Turkey. He is hopeful about the Duma; he says Witte will be a national hero; and that a constitution is a foregone conclusion. Somebody said the peasants were hopeless. He hotly contested this, and said there was far more political sense among the peasants than among the rest of the population. He has had great experience of the peasants.

September 19th.

I had a long talk with Kizlitzki this afternoon. He is like a round peg in a square hole in this army. Strict discipline and impeccable order seem to him the first essentials of military life. The others don’t understand this, although they are conscientious; but they like doing things in their own way, which is a happy-go-lucky way, and they think Kizlitzki is rather mad. Kizlitzki told me that at the battle of Ta-shichiae, where he was in command of the battery, when he had made all the necessary arrangements, placed his guns, &c., he received orders to go and speak to a general; before he went, he warned his subordinates to leave everything as it was. When he came back he found that the battery, owing to the fancy of one of the subordinates, had been moved two miles from where he had placed it. So he had to fetch it back and arrange everything over again. The result was that it did not open fire until two in the afternoon, a fact which I had noticed at the time, although I was not with the battery then. He said he had never made such an effort of self-control as not to lose his temper when he saw what had been done. In the French or German, and I trust also in our army, Kizlitzki’s methods would be taken as a matter of course. Here they are considered to be an unnecessary pose. On the other hand he is not in the least a formalist, a lover of red-tape, or a pedant; he merely considers elementary discipline to be necessary.

I had tea with a Chinese Mandarin. I do not know which was the more exquisite, his tea or his manners. In the evening we discussed writers of books. Hliebnikoff said he knew who was the greatest writer in the world, and when some one else asked who, he answered Dostoievski of course. The doctor vehemently disagreed with this. Hliebnikoff went out of the room in disgust. It is astonishing what a quantity of English novels these people have read in translations: Mrs. Humphry Ward, Rider Haggard, Stevenson, Kipling, Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Jerome K. Jerome. The doctor admires Jerome enormously. I think there is a human element in him which especially appeals to Russians.