Samara and Saratov have not the features which characterise the towns of the Upper Volga. They have no Kremlin, no remains of a fortress dominating the town and enclosed in old walls. Saratov is a collection of wooden houses which look as if they had been made by a Swiss artisan for the Earl’s Court Exhibition and exposed on the side of a steep hill.
Between Saratov and Tzaritsin the character of the river changes altogether, the vegetation begins to dwindle; the great hills on the right bank of the river diminish, and the farther one travels south, the lower they become. The left bank is flat, monotonous, and green as before. The river itself broadens, and in some places it is several kilometres wide. You get the impression that you are travelling on a large lake or on a sea, rather than on a river. The farther south one travels, the greater is the beauty of the river. It is a solemn, majestic river; one understands its having been the mother and inspirer of a quantity of poetry, of folk-song and folk-lore; and one understands, too, how appropriate the deep octaves, the broad, slow-dying notes and echoes of the Volga songs are to these great, melancholy spaces of shining water. Every day on the steamer between Saratov and Astrakan I awoke at dawn and went out on to the deck to sniff the freshness and to watch the process of daybreak. The soft, grey sky trembled into a delicate tint of lilac, and over the far-off banks of the river, which were distant enough to have the appearance of a range of violet hills, came the first blush of dawn, and then a deeper rose, while the whole upper sky was washed with a clean daffodil colour, which was reflected in silver on the blue water. And then the sun rose—a huge red ball of fire, casting golden scales beneath him on to the water.
Towards noon, perhaps, the sky would be piled with white clouds, and the river look like an immense hard glass, reflecting in unruffled detail every curve and shadow of the cloudland, and the small motionless trees of the banks which in the sunless heat are as unreal as a mirage. Later in the afternoon the water seemed to grow more and more luminous; the sensation of some kind of enchantment, of something wizard-like and unreal, increased, and one would not have been surprised to catch sight of the walls of Tristram’s Castle-in-the-air, the wizard walls, to which he promised to bring Iseult—the castle built of the stuff which rainbows are made of, of fire, dew, and the colours of the morning. But with the sunset this feeling of unreality and enchantment ceased; the nearer bank stood out in sharp outline, intensely real, between purple skies and grey waters; and over the farther bank hung the intense blue of woody distances. Between Tzaritsin and Astrakan the character of the river changes yet again. The hills on the right bank vanish altogether; both the banks were flat now—unlimited steppes with scant vegetation, culminating in steep banks of yellow sand. It was here that the river reminded me of the Nile.
Tzaritsin itself is a great trade centre; the best caviare and the best water-melons used to be obtained there. Most of the third-class passengers got out at Tzaritsin. I was amused by the process, which I watched on shore, of a huge block of stone being hauled up a hill by a gang of workmen. The spectacle was so utterly unlike anything in other countries. Pieces of rock are also hauled up hills in other lands, but the manner in which it is done is different. Seven men were hauling the rope; they were ragged, dirty, and dressed in red and blue shirts, stained and dusty, while their tufts of yellow hair stuck out of their tattered peaked caps. By the block of stone stood the leader of the gang. Then suddenly, when he thought the time had come, he intoned a chant, a solo, about fifteen notes, which might have been written in the Scotch scale (the scale of G major without the F sharp), plaintive and unexpected; then he beat time with a wave of his left hand, and at the fourth beat, the whole gang chimed in, imitating the melody in a rough counterpoint, and hauling as they sang, and then abruptly ending on the dominant. After a short pause, the leader again intoned his solo and the chorus again repeated and imitated the plaintive melody, and this was repeated till the block of stone was hauled up the hill.
The climate, when Tzaritsin was passed, grew hotter and hotter, and the breeze made by the steamer only increased the heat. The moon rose, and for a while the sky was still tinged with the stain of the sunset in the west, and the water was luminous with a living whiteness. Then, rapidly, because the twilight did not last long here, came the darkness, and with it something strange and wonderful. We became conscious of an extraordinary fragrance in the air. It was not merely the sweetness of summer night. It was a pungent and aromatic incense which pervaded the atmosphere—warm and delicious and filled with the essence of summer. It was intoxicating; it came over you like a great wave, a breath of Elysium. And the night with its web of stars, and the dark waters, and the thin line of the far-off banks, made you once more lose the sense of reality. You had reached another world—the nether-world, perhaps; you breathed “the scent of alien meadows far away,” and you felt as if you were sailing down the river of oblivion to the harbours of Proserpine. This wonderful sweetness came, I learnt, from the new-mown hay, the mowing of which takes place late here. The hay lay in great masses over the steppes, embalming the midnight air and turning the world into paradise.
On reaching Astrakan, you were plunged into the atmosphere of the East. On the quays there were many booths groaning with every kind of fruit, and a coloured herd of people living in the dust and the dirt; splendidly squalid, noisy as parrots, and busy doing nothing, like wasps. The railway to Astrakan was not yet finished, so you were obliged to return to Tzaritsin by steamer if you wished to get back to the centre of Russia. I pursued this course, and from Tzaritsin took the train for Tambov. The train started from Tzaritsin at two o’clock in the morning; I arrived at the station at midnight, and at this hour the station was crammed with people. Imagine a huge high waiting-room with three tables d’hôte parallel to each other in the centre of it; at one end of the hall a buffet; on the sides of it, under the windows, tables and long seats padded with leather, partitioned off and forming open cubicles. These seats were always occupied, and the occupants went to bed on them, wrapped up in blankets, and propped up by pillows, bags, rugs, baskets, kettles, and other impedimenta. The whole of this refreshment hall was filled with sleeping figures. There were people lying asleep on the window-sills, and others on chairs placed together. Some merely laid their heads on the table d’hôte, and fell into a deep slumber. It was like the scene in The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, when sleep overtook the inhabitants of the castle. There was a bookstall and a newspaper kiosk. The bookstall contained—as usual—the works of Jerome K. Jerome and Conan Doyle, some translations of French novels, some political pamphlets, a translation of John Morley’s Compromise, and an essay on Ruskin—a strange medley of literary food. At the newspaper kiosk, the newsvendor was so busily engrossed in reading out a story, which had just appeared in the newspapers, about a saintly peasant who killed a baby because he thought it was the Antichrist, that it was impossible to attract his attention. His audience were the policeman, one of the porters, and a kind of sub-guard. The story was indeed a curious one, and caused a considerable stir. I wrote about it later on in the Morning Post. ’
The journey to Tambov was long; in my carriage a railway official drank tea, ate apples, and sighed over the political condition of the country. Everything was as bad as bad could be. “It is a sad business,” he said, “living in Russia now.” Then, after some reflection, he added: “But, perhaps in other countries—in England, for instance—people sometimes find fault with the Government.” I told him they did little else. He then took a large roll out of a basket, and after he had been munching it for some time, he said: “After all, there is no country in the world where such good bread can be got as this.” This seemed to console him greatly.
The sunflower season had arrived. Sunflowers used to be grown in great quantities in Russia, not for ornamental but for utilitarian purposes. They were grown for the oil that is in them; but besides being useful in many ways they formed an article of food. You pick the head of the sunflower and eat the seeds. You bite the seed, spit out the husk, and eat the kernel, which is white and tastes of sunflower. Considerable skill is needed when cracking the husk and spitting it out, to leave the kernel intact. This habit was universal among the lower classes in Russia. It occupies a human being like smoking, and it is a pleasant adjunct to contemplation. It is also conducive to untidiness. Nothing is so untidy in the world as a room or a platform littered with sunflower seeds. All platforms in Russia were thus, littered at this time of year. When I was on the steamer at Tzaritsin, one of the Cossacks approached me with this question, which seemed startling: “Do you chew seeds?” At first I was at a loss to think what he meant, but I soon remembered the sunflower, and when I had answered in the affirmative, he produced a great handful of dried seeds and offered them to me. When I arrived at my destination, Sosnofka, in the government of Tambov, I found the country looking intensely green after a wet summer; the weather was hot, and the nights had the softness and the sweetness that should belong to the month of June.
I found a large crowd at the station gathered round a pillar of smoke and flame. At first I thought, of course, that a village fire was going on. Fires in Russian villages were common occurrences in the summer, and this was not surprising, as the majority of the houses were thatched with straw. The houses were so close one to another, and the ground was littered with straw. Moreover, to set fire to one’s neighbour’s house used to be a common form of paying off a score. But it was not a fire that was in progress. It was the casting of a bell. The ceremony was fixed for four o’clock in the afternoon, with due solemnity and with religious rites, and I was invited to be present.
“Heute muss die Glocke werden,”