CHAPTER VII
"AS OTHERS SEE US"
"A Russian Agent"—"To Lure British Statesmen"—A Charming Tribute—The Press at Sea—Wild Stories—A Musical Political Agitator—"An Unofficial Ambassador"—Baron de Staal's Indifference—Prince Lobanoff's Kindness—Count Shouvaloff's Dislike of My Work—Prince Gortschakoff and the Slavs—Baron Brunow and the French Ambassador—English Sportsmanship—A Shakespeare Banquet
How people talked about me in those days! asking each other who and what I was, what I was doing, or intended doing. "Oh! Madame Novikoff," said some, "she is a Russian agent," and their significant nods and glances conveyed all sorts of terrible things. I had come to England, some thought, to lure British statesmen to betray their country into Russian hands. In short, quite a number of amiable things were said about poor, simple me, who tried so hard to say exactly the truth about what I well knew.
In later years, Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett at a public meeting paid a tribute to my work which I quote, not from vanity, but as an unexpected exaggeration. Sir Ellis said, "As for Madame Novikoff, it is simply impossible to estimate the services she has rendered her country. Not all the diplomatic corps of the Empire and all the Grand Dukes have done as much for Russia as that lady, who since 1877 has directed the Russian campaign in England with consummate ability. She has been worth more to Russia than an army of 100,000 men. Nothing that the Tsar could bestow upon her could adequately repay her peerless services."
But there was the other side of the picture. The London correspondent of a provincial paper described me as "one of the most masculine and accomplished women of her time—she has come to be looked upon as the Czar's agent, as a sort of unofficial Ambassador." Imagine my being described as "masculine," a thing I execrate in women. I became too accustomed to the term "unofficial ambassador" to take any notice of it, but "masculine!" Ugh!
Then, said another paper, "Think of the women who have achieved a reputation in diplomacy—such women as Madame de Novikoff, Princess Lise Troubetskoi, Madame Nubar Pasha, Princess Metternich, and the late Princess Leopold Croy. What other characteristic is common to them all? Only this, that one and all they have been inveterate consumers of cigarettes, and each has availed herself with signal advantage of the opportunity afforded by toying with a fragrant papiletto to reflect before speaking, which women, as a rule, are said not always to do."
ST. OLGA'S SCHOOL FOR GIRL TEACHERS AT NOVO-ALEXANDROFKA