My Yea was Russia; my Nay, England; the straight line, the nearest way, my Goal, the new life to be paid for with all the old.
In London I had made a Russian acquaintance, the son of a deacon of the Orthodox Church, and just before my departure I received an invitation to spend Christmas at Lisitchansk, a village some way north of the Sea of Azov, some miles south of Kharkov. Russia had seemed dark, enigmatical, terrible, but here at the last minute arms stretched out of the darkness, welcoming me, alluring me.
On what was Old Year’s Night in England, though in Russia only the eighteenth of December, I was at Dover. The lights of the harbour shone on the placid water. The stars looked down upon my starting, the same stars that were at that moment looking down upon my destination also, my stars, the stars that through all my wanderings have shone down. One Friend bade me farewell. At Dover, on the ship in the harbour in the night, we embraced and parted. England herself grasped my hand and bade me farewell. For a moment, in the stillness, the sea ceased to exist and space was gone—Two hands were clasped between the lands.
My life as a wanderer began. I might say my life as a tramp began, for I never worked again. I became, as the philosopher says, “full of malice against the seductions of dependency that lie concealed in houses, money or positions.” Whereas I had sold myself to work, I had now bought myself back, I had exchanged dependence upon man for dependence upon God, and had given up my respectable West-End home in “Berkeley Square,” so that I might take up my abode in the West End of this Universe.
Perhaps not then, but now I ask: “Could anything be more amusing than the modern cry of the Right to Work? The English are an industrious, restless nation. And the prophets are very censorious of our respectable, though not respected, class. “It is not enough to be industrious,” says Thoreau; “so are the ants. The question is, What are you industrious about?” No one questions the use of industry of one kind or another. Dear Carlyle, my guide, philosopher and friend, I wonder if he, in other realms, has learned the value of idleness. Perhaps now, after a life-time of Nirvana in some Eden planet, he has smoothed out his ruffled soul. Oh, friends, there are depths of calm and happiness to be found even here, and not autumn stillness but spring calm, the joyful peace of the dove brooding on the waters. I have learned to smooth and compose a rough, tumbled mind until it was like a broad, unsullied mirror reflecting the beauty of the world.
Two thousand miles from London there are new silences, pregnant stillness, on the steppes, in the country places, on the skirts of the old forests. No word of the hubbub of democracy need come through; not a hoarding poster flaunts the eye; no burning question of the hour torments the mind. A man is master of himself and may see or hear or consider just what he chooses. That is, if the man be like me.
“You look up at the sky, as you lie under a bush, and it keeps descending, descending to you, as though it wanted to embrace you.... Your soul is warm and quietly joyful, you desire nothing, you envy no one.”
“... And so it seems as though on all the earth there were only you and God....”
“All around is silence: only the birds are singing, and this silence is so marvellous that it seems as though the birds were singing in your own breast.” So wrote Gorky, the tramp. I almost wish he would write the story of his vagabondage instead of being so serious over his revolutionary propaganda.
I have shown how I came to be a wanderer. I will now add to this prologue a word of dedication. The prose of this book is the story of my travels; the poetry, when the reader may discern it, is the story of my heart.