Trembles beneath the rim of the dark hills,”
and listen in the thick dark night, while the peasants in the village stamped their rhythmical dances to the accompaniment of bleating accordions or three-stringed balalaikas; some watchman’s rattle beat time; the frogs croaked, and sometimes a voice—a rather hoarse, high, slightly sharp voice—began a long-drawn-out, high wail, and other voices chimed in, singing the same melody in a rough counterpoint. We sat at a little green garden-table drinking our coffee, and our nalivka, the delicious clean liqueur distilled from cherries. There seemed to be no time in Russia. People slept when they felt inclined, not necessarily because it was night. Once when I went to stay with a friend near Kirsanof he advised me to arrive at four o’clock in the morning, if possible, as the servants would enjoy the bustle of someone arriving when it was still dark.
One evening we went out riding through the woods, and over the plains, and no sooner had we left the front door than my pony, altogether out of control, galloped away into space. One morning we were called at one, and went out to the marshes to shoot wild duck before the dawn. It was quite dark when we started, and after the shooting was over, and I shot two wild duck dead, we drove home in the dawn across the dewy plains, when the whole country was awakening, the cocks crowing and the birds singing, and the plains were bathed in lemon-coloured light, and faint pink and grey clouds hung like shreds from Aurora’s scarf across the horizon.
One night we camped out in the woods. We took bottles of beer and water-melons, and playing-cards, and a camera, and many rugs. We slept little; the wood was full of flies and mosquitoes, but we enjoyed ourselves much all the same, and came back with that pleasant headache which is the result of sleeping on straw in the open air on a hot August night, and covered with bites. The morning after, we had a wolf-shoot, but it was too early in the year for wolves, and nobody saw one. But there was a great display, nevertheless; a man rode on a white horse and blew a trumpet, and there were a multitude of beaters. I remember a short dialogue bawled slowly, quietly, and sonorously in prolonged accents across a whole field between André, the night-watchman, and Wassili, the keeper. “Who is that man yonder?” asked Wassili. “He is a shepherd,” said André; “he feeds sheep.” “On pastukh, on past korov.” It was so dignified, so slow, like a fragment of dialogue from the Old Testament. In the morning we used to have breakfast out of doors, in the garden, under a tree, with a pleasant after-breakfast interlude of smoking and conversation; then Alexander and the gardener would stroll into the garden, and there would be endless discussion about the pulling down of some paling, or the repairing of some fence or chair, or the painting of some room or gate; Alexander’s volubility had no limit, and the gardener was extraordinarily ingenious in twisting the meaning of anything into the opposite of what had been said. We had luncheon at half-past twelve, and sat afterwards on the terrace, till the great heat was over, and then we would go out in the troika, and take tea and a samovar with us, or find a samovar somewhere, and perhaps bathe in the river. After dinner, when it was too cold to stay out, we would sit indoors and play cards at the green table, marking the score in chalk on the table; and Pierre Benckendorff, who was not yet an officer, but still at the cadet college, used to read out Mark Twain in German, or draw pictures, or make me draw pictures, while he gave advice, or played the treble of tunes on the pianoforte.
There were three little rooms on the ground floor of the first house, which was built of wood. The first room into which the small front hall led was Count Benckendorff’s sitting-room. It had a writing-table; a table where there was an array of long pipes, neatly arranged; a round table with a green cloth on it, and a wooden cup and ball on a plate; a bookcase full of books of reference, which were constantly consulted, whenever, as so often occurred, there was a family argument. In this room, near one of the windows, there was a deal drawing-table. There were prints on the wall. The next room had some old French wooden furniture painted with little flowers, and a large grand pianoforte, and a comfortable corner round the fireplace; in front of a window, which went down to the ground and opened like a door, there was a stone terrace with orange trees in pots on it and agapanthus plants (later there were rose trees as well). Beyond this there was a third room full of books, old books, the library of Count Benckendorff’s grandfather—the books that had been modern in the eighteenth century, in their dark brown calf bindings, and old marbled papers; here was the newest edition of Byron in French, the poems of Pope and Corneille and Voltaire and Gresset, the letters of Madame de Sévigné, the memoirs of Madame de Caylus, Napoleonic memoirs and the poems of Ossian, Schiller’s plays, and an early edition of Gogol. Upstairs on the landing, there was a cupboard full of every imaginable kind of novel: the Tauchnitz novels of many ages, and French novels of every description, the early Zolas, the early Feuillets, and Maupassant’s first stories. Before going to bed, we would dive into that cupboard, and one was always sure, even in the dark, of finding something one could read. I have always thought since then, the ideal bookcase would be that in which you could plunge a hand into in the dark and be sure of extracting something readable. In the stone-house, the boys had each of them a sitting-room on the ground floor, and I had a bedroom and sitting-room upstairs. Next to the school library at Eton, that sitting-room proved to be my favourite room in all the world and in all my life; and at its big table I painted innumerable water-colours, and wrote four plays in verse, two plays in prose, three long books in prose, besides translating a book of Leonardo da Vinci and writing endless letters and newspaper articles. In this room, one had the feeling of the world forgetting by the world forgot, and one was recalled to reality by a bell, or by Alexander coming up to the room, as he always did, to say that tea was ready or dinner, or that the horses were at the door.
I felt the charm of Russia directly I crossed the frontier; and after a three weeks’ stay there I was so bitten by it that I resolved firstly to learn Russian, and, secondly, to go back there as soon as I could.
I went back to Copenhagen, and stopped some hours at Moscow on the way, and saw the Kremlin, and had some amusing adventures at Testoff’s restaurant. Pierre Benckendorff had written down for me a list of things to ask for; one of which was caviare, which in Russian is ikra. But when I said ikra the waiters thought I said igra, which means play, and merely turned on the great mechanical organ which that restaurant then boasted of, and I could not get any caviare.
When I got back to Copenhagen, I at once had lessons in Russian from the psalomtchtchik at the Russian Church.
On the 19th of September, King Edward VII. arrived in Denmark to pay his first visit to Denmark as King of England. The King was to arrive at Elsinore in the Osborne. The Staff of the Legation had received orders to go to Elsinore and meet His Majesty on board the yacht. His Majesty was to land in time to meet the King of Denmark, the Crown Prince and all the Danish Royal Family, the King of Greece, Queen Alexandra, the Emperor and Empress of Russia, the Dowager Empress of Russia, Prince and Princess Charles of Denmark, and other members of the various Royal Families. We were to go in uniform. The train started at eight. I have already said I was living at the Legation, but my rooms were completely isolated from Sir Edward’s house, and had no connection with them. I had a Danish servant called Peter. He had been told to call me punctually at seven. He forgot, or overslept himself. I woke up by accident, and automatically, and found to my horror it was twenty-five minutes to eight, and the station was far off, and I had to dress in uniform. I dressed like lightning, but it is not easy to dress like lightning in a diplomatic uniform; the tight boots are a special difficulty. I had no time to shave. I got a cab, and we drove at full gallop to the station, and I got into Sir Edward’s carriage as the train was moving out of the station. At Elsinore, we had fortunately some time to spare before going on board the Osborne, and I was able to get shaved in the village. Then we went on board and were presented to the King, and kissed his hand on his accession.
That same night there was a banquet at the Palace of Fredensborg for the King, to which the staff of the Legation were invited. I remember only one thing about this dinner, and that is that we were given 1600 hock to drink. It was quite bitter, and had to be drunk with about five lumps of sugar in a glass.