The first days at Khabarovsk were hard to me. I thought nothing could make me like the country; nothing except duty would make one come here! My new home put me in mind of a gilt cage. For everybody I was the wife of the Governor-General, and treated, therefore with a deference which I abhor. A new life began for me. I had duties to perform: official dinners, official receptions—a duty which was not particularly enjoyable to me. I had to follow my husband everywhere with outward pleasure and inward rebellion—a martyr to politeness.
In my quality of President of the Committee of Benevolent Ladies, I had to send invitations to all the members asking them to attend a meeting in our house. It was for the first time in my life that I had assisted at a committee, and being new to my work, I began to get awfully shy, and stupidly got very red. The flush on my cheek was scarlet when I was called upon to make a little speech. I felt so shy that I seemed entirely to have lost the use of my tongue, and forgot all the words I had learnt by heart. It is terrible that feeling when people are expecting you to do something and you are sure to disappoint them. The committee lasted three hours at least. Colonel Alexandroff, the secretary of the Benevolent Society, began by reading aloud the account of the previous month. It is concerts, theatricals, and lotteries which form the essential income of the Society. The lady-patronesses were long in dividing the poor of the town by districts between themselves; differences of opinion arising, and the sitting lasted three hours at least. At the second one I was over my first fit of shyness, and even gave a short discourse when opening the meeting. I was chosen President of the “musical and dramatic circles” that day.
My husband works very hard from morning till night; he rarely had a moment he could call his own, and hadn’t a second for me, except at meal-times, and then there was always somebody present.
With what impatience we are awaiting the Nijni-Novgorod with all our household. In the meantime we are served by convicts who, at the end of their penal servitude in the Isle of Sakhalin, had been transferred to Khabarovsk, their place of exile. The head-gardener, who was sent to the galleys for having drowned his sweetheart, lives here as man and wife with our laundress, who has poisoned her husband (a pretty couple indeed!) The principal barber of the town, when shaving my husband one day, tried to raise his pity, calling himself a poor orphan bereaved of father and mother, and it turned out that it was the poor orphan who had sent both parents ad patres. The locksmith who had been called to mend my trunk, appeared to have been with Sergy at the military school. The man was deported to Siberia for having strangled his wife.
My husband happening to visit a prison, saw a man who had stolen a sturgeon. The law-suit had been going on for three years, and it is only now that he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. During this long lapse of time his wife had died, leaving him as legacy four little children who were wearing away in the close atmosphere of the gloomy prison cell, which they shared with their father, having no other shelter. In one of the sittings of the “Benevolent Society” we found means to give the poor brats a more comfortable home.
My husband has promulgated a new regulation. The soldiers who were sent here to serve terms of three years, have the right—after having ended their terms, to remain at Khabarovsk for another three years engaged in diverse works—to be sent, after the lapse of this time, to Russia, on account of the Government. By these means the convicts and Chinese servants can easily be supplanted.
The richest shop at Khabarovsk, situated in a street called “Straight,” which isn’t straight at all, belongs to a rich Chinese merchant named Tifountai, where you can buy everything necessary and desirable, beginning with clothes down to furniture, and all sort of provisions which are of a fabulous price here, milk products especially: a pint of cream costs two roubles (four shillings.) We had to buy three cows and grow vegetables ourselves in hot-houses, and have thus vegetables all the year round.
Settlers who went out to seek fortune in the Far East, were beginning to arrive at Khabarovsk. Thirty families of emigrants, coming from the south of Russia, are quartered in barracks a few miles from the town. My husband wants to stock with inhabitants the outskirts of Khabarovsk, flattering himself with the hope that they will supply the town with provisions. In spring portions of ground will be distributed to them. In Russia the peasants receive one acre of land and in this country they will get forty acres of good land.
There is a good dress-maker in Khabarovsk, the widow of an officer, who after the death of her husband was left absolutely destitute, and to support herself took in sewing, making dresses for Khabarovsk belles.
I lead a regular life: music and books fill up my time. In the evening I played duets with Mr. Shaniavski, who is an accomplished musician. A young officer of the garrison, playing the violin, comes frequently to make up a trio. Our performance lasted sometimes till after midnight, and Sergy assured me that my partners, thoroughly tired out, were visibly growing thinner and thinner, and became real spectres at the end of the performance. Mr. Shaniavski offered to teach me Italian and Spanish; he is a fine linguist, speaking fluently several languages. I need music and work to drive away my blue devils, and have decided to keep friends with Mr. Shaniavski without paying attention to evil tongues. People are so interested in what I do, that a hundred-eyed Argus would not be enough to look after me. Wicked things will be said of me, I am sure, but the calumnies of the world do not trouble me a bit. What are they really worth?