were the acting minister, Shishkin, who had formerly been at Washington, and the head of the Asiatic department, Count Kapnist. They were agreeable in manner; but it soon became clear that, regarding the question of the Behring seal-fisheries, they were pursuing a policy of their own, totally distinct from the interests of the empire. Peter the Great would have beheaded both of them.
The strongest man among the Czar’s immediate advisers was understood to be the finance minister, De Witte. There always seemed in him a certain sullen force. The story usually told of his rise in the world is curious. It is, in effect, that when the Emperor Alexander II and his family were wrecked in their special train at Borki, many of their attendants were killed; and the world generally, including the immediate survivors of the catastrophe, believed for some time that it was the result of a nihilist plot. There was, therefore, a general sweeping into prison of subordinat’e railway officials; and among these was De Witte, then in charge of a railway station. During the examinations which ensued he showed himself so clear-headed and straightforward that he attracted attention was promoted, put into the finance ministry, and finally advanced to the first place in it. His dealings with Russian finances have since shown great capacity: he has brought the empire out of the slough of depreciated currency and placed it firmly on a gold basis. I came especially to know him when he offered, through me, to the United States a loan of gold to enable us to tide over our difficulties with the currency question. He informed me that Russia had in her treasury many millions of rubles in American gold eagles, and that the Russian gold reserve then in the treasury was about six hundred millions of rubles.
The only result was that I was instructed to convey the thanks of the President to him, there being no law enabling us to take advantage of his offer. What he wished to do was to make a call loan, whereas our Washington Government could obtain gold only by issuing bonds.
I also met him in a very interesting way when I presented to him Rabbi Krauskopf of Philadelphia, who discussed the question of allowing sundry Israelites who were crowded into the western districts of the empire to be transferred to some of the less congested districts, on condition that funds for that purpose be furnished from their coreligionists in America. De Witte’s discussion of the whole subject was liberal and statesmanlike. Unfortunately, there was, as I believe, a fundamental error in his general theory, which is the old Russian idea at the bottom of the autocracy–namely, that the State should own everything. More and more he went on extending government ownership to the railways, until the whole direction and management of them virtually centered in his office.
On this point he differed widely from his predecessor in the finance ministry, Wischniegradsky. I had met the latter years before, at the Paris Exposition, when he was at the head of the great technical school in Moscow, and found him instructive and interesting. Now I met him after his retirement from the finance ministry. Calling on him one day, I said: “You will probably build your trans-Siberian railway at a much less cost than we were able to build our first trans-continental railway; you will do it directly, by government funds, and so will probably not have to make so many rich men as we did.” His answer impressed me strongly. He said: “As to a government building a railway more cheaply than private individuals, I decidedly doubt; but I would favor private individuals building it, even if the cost were greater. I like to see rich men made; they are what Russia most needs at this moment. What can capitalists do with their money? They can’t eat it or drink it: they have to invest it in other enterprises; and such enterprises, to be remunerative, must meet the needs of the people. Capitalists are far more likely to invest their money in useful enterprises, and to manage these investments well, than any finance minister can be, no matter how gifted.”
That he was right the history of Russia is showing more and more every day. To return to M. de Witte, it seemed strange to most onlookers that the present Emperor threw him out of the finance ministry, in which he had so greatly distinguished himself, and shelved him in one of those bodies, such as the council of state or the senate, which exist mainly as harbors or shelters for dismissed functionaries. But really there was nothing singular about it. As regards the main body at court, from the grand dukes, the women, etc., down, he had committed the sin of which Turgot and Necker were guilty when they sought to save France but found that the women, princes, and favorites of poor Louis XVI’s family were determined to dip their hands into the state treasury, and were too strong to be controlled. Ruin followed the dismissal of Turgot and Necker then, and seems to be following the dismissal of De Witte now: though as I revise this chapter word comes that the Emperor has recalled him.
No doubt Prince Khilkoff, who has come in as minister of internal communications since my departure from Russia, is also a strong man; but no functionary can take the place of a great body of individuals who invest their own money in public works throughout an entire nation.
There was also another statesman in a very different field whom I found exceedingly interesting,–a statesman who had gained a power in the empire second to no other save the Emperor himself, and had centered in himself more hatred than any other Russian of recent times,–the former Emperor’s tutor and virtual minister as regards ecclesiastical affairs, Pobedonostzeff. His theories are the most reactionary of all developed in modern times; and his hand was then felt, and is still felt, in every part of the empire, enforcing those theories. Whatever may be thought of his wisdom, his patriotism is not to be doubted. Though I differ from him almost totally, few men have so greatly interested me, and one of the following chapters will be devoted to him.
But there were some other so-called statesmen toward whom I had a very different feeling. One of these was the minister of the interior. Nothing could be more delusive than his manner. He always seemed about to accede to the ideas of his interlocutor, but he had one fundamental idea of his own, and only one; and that was, evidently, never to do anything which he could possibly avoid. He always seemed to me a sort of great jellyfish, looking as if he had a mission to accomplish, but, on closer examination, proving to be without consistency, and slippery. His theory apparently was, “No act, no responsibility”; and throughout the Russian Empire this principle of action, or, rather, of inaction, appears to be very widely diffused.
I had one experience with this functionary, who, I am happy to say, has since been relieved of his position and shelved among the do-nothings of the Russian senate, which showed me what he was. Two American ladies of the best breeding and culture, and bearing the most satisfactory letters of introduction, had been staying in St. Petersburg, and had met, at my table and elsewhere, some of the most interesting people in Russian society. From St. Petersburg they had gone to Moscow; and, after a pleasant stay there, had left for Vienna by way of Warsaw. Returning home late at night, about a week afterward, I found an agonizing telegram from them, stating that they had been stopped at the Austrian frontier and sent back fifty miles to a dirty little Russian village; that their baggage had all gone on to Vienna; that, there being no banker in the little hamlet where they were, their letter of credit was good for nothing; that all this was due to the want of the most trivial of formalities in a passport; that they had obtained all the vises supposed to be needed at St. Petersburg and at Moscow; and that, though the American consul at Warsaw had declared these to be sufficient to take them out of the empire, they had been stopped by a petty Russian official because they had no vise from the Warsaw police.
Early next morning I went to the minister of the interior, presented the case to him, told him all about these ladies,–their high standing, the letters they had brought, the people they had met,–assured him that nothing could be further from possibility than the slightest tendency on their part toward any interference with the Russian Government, and asked him to send a telegram authorizing their departure. He was most profuse in his declarations of his willingness to help. Nothing in the world, apparently, would give him more pleasure; and, though there was a kind of atmosphere enveloping his talk which I did not quite like, I believed that the proper order would be given. But precious time went on, and again came telegrams from the ladies that nothing was done. Again I went to the minister to urge the matter upon his attention; again he assumed the same jellyfish condition, pleasing but evasive. Then I realized the situation; went at once to the prefect of St. Petersburg, General von Wahl, although it was not strictly within his domain; and he, a man of character and vigor, took the necessary measures and the ladies were released.
Like so many other persons whom I have known who came into Russia and were delighted with it during their whole stay, these ladies returned to America most bitter haters of the empire and of everything within it.
As to Von Wahl, who seemed to me one of the very best Russian officials I met, he has since met reward for his qualities: from the Czar a transfer to a provincial governorship, and from the anarchists a bullet which, though intended to kill him, only wounded him.
Many were the sufferers from this feature in Russian administration–this shirking of labor and responsibility. Among these was a gentleman belonging to one of the most honored Russian families, who was greatly devoted to fruit-culture, and sought to bring the products of his large estates in the south of Russia into Moscow and St. Petersburg. He told me that he had tried again and again, but the officials shrugged their shoulders and would not take the trouble; that finally he had induced them to give him a freight-car and to bring a load of fruit to St. Petersburg as soon as possible; but, though the journey ought to have taken only three or four days, it actually took several weeks; and, of course, all the fruit was spoiled. As I told him of the fruit-trains which bring the products of California across our continent and distribute them to the Atlantic ports, even enabling them to be found fresh in the markets of London, he almost shed tears. This was another result of state control of railways. As a matter of fact, there is far more and better fruit to be seen on the tables of artisans in most American towns, however small, than in the lordliest houses of Moscow and St. Petersburg; and this solely because in our country energetic men conduct transportation with some little ambition to win public approval and patronage, while in Russia a horde of state officials shirk labor and care as much as possible.
Still another sufferer was a very energetic man who had held sundry high positions, but was evidently much discouraged. He showed me specimens of various rich ores from different parts of the empire, but lamented that there was no one to take hold of the work of bringing out these riches. It was perfectly clear that with the minister of the interior at that time, as in sundry other departments, the great question was “how not to do it.” Evidently this minister and functionaries like him felt that if great enterprises and industries were encouraged, they would become so large as to be difficult to manage; hence, that it would be more comfortable to keep things within as moderate compass as possible.
To this easy-going view of public duty there were a few notable exceptions. While De Witte was the most eminent of these, there was one who has since become sadly renowned, and who, as I revise these lines, has just perished by the hand of an assassin. This official was De Plehve, who, during my acquaintance with him, was only an undersecretary in the interior department, but was taking, apparently, all the important duties from his superior, M. Dournovo. At various times I met him to discuss the status of sundry American insurance companies in Russia, and was favorably impressed by his insight, vigor, and courtesy. It was, therefore, a surprise to me when, on becoming a full minister, he bloomed out as a most bitter, cruel, and evidently short-sighted reactionary. The world stood amazed at the murderous cruelties against the Jews at Kishineff, which he might easily have prevented; and nothing more cruel or short-sighted than his dealings with Finland has been known since Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. I can only explain his course by supposing that he sought to win the favor of the reactionary faction which, up to the present time, has controlled the Czar, and thus to fight his way toward the highest power. He made of the most loyal and happy part of the empire the most disloyal and wretched; he pitted himself against the patriotism, the sense of justice, and all the highest interests and sentiments of the Finnish people; and he met his death at the hands of an avenger, who, in destroying the enemy of his country, has struck a fearful blow at his country’s happiness.
While a thoughtful American must condemn much which he sees in Russia, there is one thing which he cannot but admire and contrast to the disadvantage of his own country; and this is the fact that Russia sets a high value upon its citizenship. Its value, whatever it may be, is the result of centuries of struggles, of long outpourings of blood and treasure; and Russians believe that it has been bought at too great a price and is in every way too precious to be lavished and hawked about as a thing of no value. On the other hand, when one sees how the citizenship of the United States, which ought to be a millionfold more precious than that of Russia, is conferred loosely upon tens of thousands of men absolutely unfit to exercise it,–whose exercise of it seems, at times, likely to destroy republican government; when one sees the power of conferring it granted to the least respectable class of officials at the behest of ward politicians, without proper safeguards and at times without any regard to the laws; when one sees it prostituted by men of the most unfit class,–and, indeed, of the predatory class,–who have left Europe just long enough to obtain it, and then left America in order to escape the duties both of their native and their adopted country, and to avail themselves of the privileges of both citizenships without one thought of the duties of either, using them often in careers of scoundrelism,–one feels that Russia is nearer the true ideal in this respect than we are.
As a matter of fact, there is with us no petty joint-stock company in which an interest is not virtually held to be superior to this citizenship of ours for which such sacrifices have been made, and for which so many of our best men have laid down their lives. No stockholder in the pettiest manufacturing company dreams of admitting men to share in it unless they show their real fitness to be thus admitted; but admission to American citizenship is surrounded by no such safeguards: it has been cheapened and prostituted until many who formerly revered it have come to scoff at it. From this evil, at least, Russia is free.
CHAPTER XXXV
“ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN” IN RUSSIA–1892-1894
Still another department which interested me was that known as the “Ministry of Public Enlightenment,” its head being Count Delyanoff. He was certainly a man of culture; but the title of his department was a misnomer, for its duty was clearly to prevent enlightenment in the public at large. The Russian theory is, evidently, that a certain small number should be educated up to a certain point for the discharge of their special duties; but that, beyond this, anything like the general education of the people is to be discouraged; hence the Russian peasant is the most ignorant and helpless in Christendom.
There was evidently a disposition among very many of the most ardent Russians to make a merit of this imperfect civilization, and to cultivate hatred for any people whom they clearly saw possessing anything better: hence it came that, just as so many Frenchmen hate Great Britain, and so many in the backward, slipshod regions of our country hate New England, it was quite the fashion among large classes of Russians to hate everything German, and especially to detest the Baltic provinces.
One evening during my stay a young Russian at a social gathering of military and other officials voiced this feeling by saying, “I hope the time will soon come when we shall have cleared out all these Germans from the Russian service; they are the curse of the country.” Thereupon a young American present, who was especially noted for his plain speaking, immediately answered, “How are you going to do it? I notice that, as a rule, you rarely give a position which really involves high responsibility to a Russian; you generally give it to a German. When the Emperor goes to the manoeuvers, does he dare trust his immediate surroundings to a Russian? Never; he intrusts them to General Richter, who is a Baltic-Province German. And when his Majesty is here in town does he dare trust his personal safety to a Russian? Not at all; he relies on Von Wahl, prefect of St. Petersburg, another German.” And so this plain-spoken American youth went on with a full catalogue of leading Baltic-Province Germans in positions of the highest responsibility, finally saying, “You know as well as I that if the salvation of the Emperor depended on any one of you, and you should catch sight of a pretty woman, you would instantly forget your sovereign and run after her.”
Richter and Von Wahl I knew, and they were certainly men whom one could respect,–thoughtful, earnest, devoted to duty. Whenever one saw the Emperor at a review, Richter was close at hand; whenever their Majesties were at the opera, or in any public place, there was Von Wahl with his eyes fastened upon them.
The young American might now add that when a man was needed to defend Port Arthur another German was chosen–Stoessel, whose heroism the whole world is now applauding, as it once applauded Todleben, the general of German birth who carried off the Russian laurels of the Crimean War.
One Russian official for whom there seemed to be deep and wide respect was Count Woronzoff-Daschkoff; and I think that our irrepressible American would have made an exception in his favor. Calling upon him one day regarding the distribution of American relief to famine-stricken peasants, I was much impressed by his straightforward honesty: he was generally credited with stopping the time-honored pilfering and plundering at the Winter Palace.
One of the most interesting of all the Russians I met was General Annenkoff. His brother-in-law, Struve, Russian minister at Washington, having given me a letter to him, our relations became somewhat close. He had greatly distinguished himself by building the trans-Caucasian railway, but his main feat had been the annexation of Bokhara. The story, as told me by a member of his family, is curious. While superintending his great force of men and pushing on the laying of the rails through the desert, his attention was suddenly called to some horsemen in the distance, riding toward him with all their might. On their arrival their leader was discovered to be a son of the Ameer of Bokhara. That potentate having just died, the other sons were trying to make their way to the throne by cutting each other’s throats, but this one had thought it wise to flee to the Russians for safety. Annenkoff saw the point at once: with a large body of his cavalry he started immediately for Bokhara, his guest by his side; pushed his way through all obstacles; seated the young prince on the throne; and so made him a Russian satrap. I shall speak later of the visit of this prince to St. Petersburg. It was evident that Annenkoff, during my stay, was not in favor. It was said that he had been intrusted with large irrigation-works in order to give employment to peasants during the famine, and that he had not managed them well; but it was clear that this was not the main difficulty: he was evidently thought too progressive and liberal, and in that seething caldron of intrigue which centers at the Winter Palace his ambitions had come to grief.
Another Russian who interested me was Glalkin Wraskoy. He was devoted, night and day, to improving the Russian prison system. That there was much need of such work was certain; but the fact that this personage in government employ was so devoted to improvements, and had called together in Russia a convention of men interested in the amelioration of prison systems, led me to think that the Russian Government is not so utterly and wilfully cruel in its prison arrangements as the Western world has been led to think.
Another interesting Russian was Count Orloff Davidoff; and on my meeting him, just after his return from the Chicago Exposition, at General Annenkoff’s table, he entertained me with his experiences. On my asking him what was the most amusing thing he had seen in America, he answered that it was a “sacred concert,” on Sunday, at a church in Colorado Springs, in which the music of Strauss’s waltzes and Offenbach’s comic songs were leading features, the audience taking them all very solemnly.
In the literary direction I found Prince John Galitzin’s readings from French dramas delightful. As to historical studies, the most interesting man I found was Professor Demetrieff, who was brought to my house by Pobedonostzeff. I had been reading Billbassoff’s “Life of the Empress Catherine”; and, on my asking some questions regarding it, the professor said that at the death of the Empress, her son, the Emperor Paul, intrusted the examination of her papers to Rostopchine, who, on going through them, found a casket containing letters and the like, which she had evidently considered especially precious, and among these a letter from Orloff, giving the details of the murder of her husband, Peter III, at Ropscha. The letter, in substance, stated that Orloff and his associates, having attempted to seize Peter, who was evidently on his way to St. Petersburg to imprison the Empress Catherine,–if not to put her to death,–the Emperor had resisted; and that finally, in the struggle, he had been killed. Professor Demetrieff then said that the Emperor Paul showed these papers to his sons Alexander and Nicholas, who afterward succeeded him on the throne, and expressed his devout thankfulness that the killing of Peter III was not intentional, and therefore that their grandmother was not a murderess.
This reminds me that, at my first visit to St. Petersburg, I often passed, during my walks, the old palace of Paul, and that there was one series of windows carefully barred: these belonging to the rooms in which the Emperor Paul himself was assassinated in order to protect the life of his son Alexander and of the family generally.
Another Russian, Prince Serge Wolkonsky, was certainly the most versatile man I have ever known: a playwright, an actor, an essayist, an orator, a lecturer, and admirable in each of these capacities. At a dinner given me, just before my departure from St. Petersburg, by the Russians who had taken part in the Chicago Exposition, I was somewhat troubled by the fact that the speeches of the various officials were in Russian, and that, as I so imperfectly understood them, I could not know what line to take when my own speech came; but presently the chairman, Minister Delyanoff, called upon young Prince Serge, who came forward very modestly and, in admirable English, gave a summary of the whole series of Russian speeches for my benefit, concluding with an excellent speech of his own. His speeches and addresses at Chicago were really remarkable; and, when he revisited America, his lectures on Russian literature at Cornell University, at Washington, and elsewhere, were worthy of the College de France. This young man could speak fluently and idiomatically, not only his own language, but English, French, German, Italian, and I know not how many other tongues.
To meet scientific men of note my wont was to visit the Latin Quarter; and there, at the house of Professor Woeikoff of St. Petersburg University, I met, at various times, a considerable body of those best worth knowing. One of those who made an especially strong impression upon me was Admiral Makharoff. Recently has come news of his death while commanding the Russian fleet at Port Arthur–his flag-ship, with nearly all on board, sunk by a torpedo. At court, in the university quarter, and later at Washington, I met him often, and rated him among the half-dozen best Russians I ever knew. Having won fame as a vigorous and skilful commander in the Turkish war, he was devoting himself to the scientific side of his profession. He had made a success of his colossal ice-breaker in various northern waters, and was now giving his main thoughts to the mapping out, on an immense scale, of all the oceans, as regards winds and currents. As explained by him, with quiet enthusiasm, it seemed likely to be one of the greatest triumphs of the inductive method since Lord Bacon. With Senator Semenoff and Prince Gregory Galitzin I had very interesting talks on their Asiatic travels, and was greatly impressed by the simplicity and strength of Mendeleieff, who is certainly to-day one of two or three foremost living authorities in chemistry. Although men of science, unless they hold high official positions, are not to be seen at court, I was glad to find that there were some Russian nobles who appreciated them; and an admirable example of this was once shown at my own house. It was at a dinner, when there was present a young Russian of very high lineage; and I was in great doubt as to the question of precedence, this being a matter of grave import under the circumstances. At last my wife went to the nobleman himself and asked him frankly regarding it. His answer did him credit: he said, “I should be ashamed to take precedence here of a man like Mendeleieff, who is an honor to Russia in the eyes of the whole world; and I earnestly hope that he may be given the first place.”
There were also various interesting women in St. Petersburg society, the reception afternoons of two of them being especially attractive: they were, indeed, in the nature of the French salons under the old regime.
One of these ladies–the Princess Wolkonsky–seemed to interest all men not absorbed in futilities; and the result was that one heard at her house the best men in St. Petersburg discussing the most interesting questions.
The other was the Austrian ambassadress, Countess Wolkenstein, whom I had slightly known, years before, as Countess Schleinitz, wife of the minister of the royal household at Berlin. On her afternoons one heard the best talk by the most interesting men; and it was at the salons of these two ladies that there took place the conversations which I have recorded in my “History of the Warfare of Science,” showing the development of a legend regarding the miraculous cure of the Archbishop of St. Petersburg by Father Ivan of Cronstadt.
Another place which especially attracted me was the house of General Ignatieff, formerly ambassador at Constantinople, where, on account of his alleged want of scruples in bringing on the war with Russia, he received the nickname “Mentir Pasha.” His wife was the daughter of Koutousoff, the main Russian opponent of Napoleon in 1812; and her accounts of Russia in her earlier days and of her life in Constantinople were at times fascinating.
I remember meeting at her house, on one occasion, the Princess Ourousoff, who told me that the Emperor Alexander had said to her, “I wish that every one could see Sardou’s play ‘Thermidor’ and discover what revolution really is”; and that she had answered, “Revolutions are prepared long before they break out.” That struck me as a very salutary bit of philosophy, which every Russian monarch would do well to ponder.
The young Princess Radzivill was also especially attractive. In one of her rooms hung a portrait of Balzac, taken just after death, and it was most striking. This led her to give me very interesting accounts of her aunt, Madame de Hanska, to whom Balzac wrote his famous letters, and whom he finally married. I met at her house another lady of high degree, to whom my original introduction had been somewhat curious. Dropping in one afternoon at the house of Henry Howard, the British first secretary, I met in the crowd a large lady, simply dressed, whom I had never seen before. Being presented to her, and not happening to catch her name, I still talked on, and found that she had traveled, first in Australia, then in California, thence across our continent to New York; and her accounts of what she had seen interested me greatly. But some little time afterward I met her again at the house of Princess Radzivill, and then found that she was the English Duchess of Buckingham. One day I had been talking with the Princess and her guest on the treasures of the Imperial Library, and especially the wonderful collection of autographs, among them the copy-book of Louis XIV when a child, which showed the pains taken to make him understand, even in his boyhood, that he was an irresponsible autocrat. On one of its pages the line to be copied ran as follows:
L’hommage est du aux Roys, ils font ce qu’il leur plaist.–LOUIS.
Under this the budding monarch had written the same words six times, with childish care to keep the strokes straight and the spaces regular. My account of this having led the princess to ask me to take her and her friend to the library and to show them some of these things, I gladly agreed, wrote the director, secured an appointment for a certain afternoon, and when the time came called for the ladies. But a curious contretemps arose. I had met, the day before, two bright American ladies, and on their asking me about the things best worth seeing, I had especially recommended them to visit the Imperial Library. On arriving at the door with the princess and the duchess, I was surprised to find that no preparations had been made to meet us,–in fact, that our coming seemed to be a matter of surprise; and a considerable time elapsed before the director and other officials came to us. Then I learned what the difficulty was. The two American ladies, in perfectly good faith, had visited the library a few hours before; and, on their saying that the American minister had recommended them to come, it had been taken for granted at once that THEY were the princess and the duchess, and they had been shown everything with almost regal honors, the officials never discovering the mistake until our arrival.
The American colony at St. Petersburg was very small. Interesting compatriots came from time to time on various errands, and I was glad to see them; but one whose visits were most heartily welcomed was a former consul, Mr. Prince, an original, shrewd “down-easter,” and his reminiscences of some of my predecessors were full of interest to me.
One especially dwells in my mind. It had reference to a former senator of the United States who, about the year 1840, was sent to Russia as minister. There were various evidences in the archives of the legation that sobriety was not this gentleman’s especial virtue, and among them very many copies of notes in which the minister, through the secretary of legation, excused himself from keeping engagements at the Foreign Office on the ground of “sudden indisposition.”
Mr. Prince told me that one day this minister’s valet, who was an Irishman, came to the consulate and said: “Oi ‘ll not stay wid his igsillincy anny longer; Oi ‘ve done wid him.”
“What’s the trouble now?’ said Mr. Prince.
“Well,” said the man, “this morning Oi thought it was toime to get his igsillincy out of bed, for he had been dhrunk about a week and in bed most of the toime; and so Oi went to him, and says Oi, gentle-loike, ‘Would your igsillincy have a cup of coffee?’ whin he rose up and shtruck me in the face. On that Oi took him by the collar, lifted him out of bed, took him acrass the room, showed him his ugly face in the glass, and Oi said to him, says Oi, ‘Is thim the eyes of an invoy extraorr-rrdinarry and ministher plinipotentiarry?'”
Among interesting reminders of my predecessors was a letter in the archives, written about the year 1832 by Mr. Buchanan, afterward senator, minister in London, Secretary of State, and President of the United States. It was a friendly missive to an official personage in our country, and went on somewhat as follows: “I feel almost ashamed to tell you that your letters to me, mine to you, and, indeed, everything that has come and gone between us by mail, has been read by other eyes than ours. This was true of your last letter to me, and, without doubt, it will be true of this letter. Can you imagine it? Think of the moral turpitude of a creature employed to break open private letters and to read them! Can you imagine work more degrading? What a dirty dog he must be! how despicable, indeed, he must seem to himself!” And so Mr. Buchanan went on until he wound up as follows: “Not only does this person read private letters, but he is a forger: he forges seals, and I regret to say that his imitation of the eagle on our legation seal is a VERY SORRY BIRD.” Whether this dose had any salutary effect on the official concerned I never learned.
The troubles of an American representative at St. Petersburg are many, and they generally begin with the search for an apartment. It is very difficult indeed in that capital to find a properly furnished suite of rooms for a minister, and since the American representative has been made an ambassador this difficulty is greater than ever. In my own case, by especial luck and large outlay, I was able to surmount it; but many others had not been so fortunate, and the result had generally been that, whereas nearly every other power owned or held on long lease a house or apartment for its representative,–simple, decent, dignified, and known to the entire city,–the American representative had lived wherever circumstances compelled him:–sometimes on the ground-floor and sometimes in a sky-parlor, with the natural result that Russians could hardly regard the American Legation as on the same footing with that of other countries.
As I write, word comes that the present ambassador has been unable to find suitable quarters save at a rent higher than his entire salary; that the proprietors have combined, and agreed to stand by each other in holding their apartments at an enormous figure, their understanding being that Americans are rich and can be made to pay any price demanded. Nothing can be more short-sighted than the policy of our government in this respect, and I shall touch upon it again.
The diplomatic questions between the United States and Russia were many and troublesome; for, in addition to that regarding the Behring Sea fisheries, there were required additional interpretations of the Buchanan treaty as to the rights of Americans to hold real estate and to do business in Russia; arrangements for the participation of Russians in the Chicago Exposition; the protection of various American citizens of Russian birth, and especially of Israelites who had returned to Russia; care for the great American life-insurance interests in the empire; the adjustment of questions arising out of Russian religious relations with Alaska and the islands of the Northern Pacific; and last, but not least, the completion of the extradition treaty between the two nations by the incorporation of safeguards which would prevent its use against purely political offenders.
Especial attention to Israelite cases was also required. Some of these excited my deep sympathy; and, having made a very careful study of the subject, I wrote to Secretary Gresham a despatch upon it in obedience to his special request. It was the longest despatch I have ever written; and, in my apology to the secretary for its length I stated that it was prepared with no expectation that he would find time to read it, but with the idea that it might be of use at the State Department for reference. In due time I received a very kind answer stating that he had read every word of it, and thanked me most heartily for–it. The whole subject is exceedingly difficult; but it is clear that Russia has made, and is making, a fearful mistake in her way of dealing with it. There are more Israelites in Russia than in all the remainder of the world; and they are crowded together, under most exasperating regulations, in a narrow district just inside her western frontier, mainly extending through what was formerly Poland, with the result that fanaticism–Christian on one side and Jewish on the other–has developed enormously. The Talmudic rabbis are there at their worst; and the consequences are evil, not only for Russia, but for our own country. The immigration which comes to us from these regions is among the very worst that we receive from any part of the world. It is, in fact, an immigration of the unfittest; and, although noble efforts have been made by patriotic Israelites in the United States to meet the difficulty, the results have been far from satisfactory.
There were, of course, the usual adventurous Americans in political difficulties, enterprising Americans in business difficulties, and pretended Americans attempting to secure immunity under the Stars and Stripes. The same ingenious efforts to prostitute American citizenship which I had seen during my former stay in Germany were just as constant in Russia. It was the same old story. Emigrants from the Russian Empire, most of them extremely undesirable, had gone to the United States; stayed just long enough to secure naturalization,–had, indeed, in some cases secured it fraudulently before they had stayed the full time; and then, having returned to Russia, were trying to exercise the rights and evade the duties of both countries.
Many of these cases were exceedingly vexatious; and so, indeed, were some which were better founded. The great difficulty of a representative of the United States in Russia is, first, that the law of the empire is so complicated that,–to use the words of King James regarding Bacon’s “Novum Organum,”–“Like the Peace of God, it passeth all understanding.” It is made up of codes in part obsolete or obsolescent; ukases and counter-ukases; imperial directions and counter-directions; ministerial orders and counter-orders; police regulations and counter-regulations; with no end of suspensions, modifications, and exceptions.
The second difficulty is the fact that the Buchanan treaty of 1832, which guaranteed, apparently, everything desirable to American citizens sojourning in the empire, has been gradually construed away until its tattered remnants are practically worthless. As the world has discovered, Russia’s strong point is not adherence to her treaty promises.
In this respect there is a great difference between Russia and Germany. With the latter we have made careful treaties, the laws are well known, and the American representative feels solid ground beneath his feet; but in Russia there is practically nothing of the kind, and the representative must rely on the main principles of international law, common sense, and his own powers of persuasion.
A peculiar duty during my last stay in St. Petersburg was to watch the approach of cholera, especially on the Persian frontier. Admirable precautions had been taken for securing telegraphic information; and every day I received notices from the Foreign Office as a result, which I communicated to Washington. For ages Russia had relied on fetishes of various kinds to preserve her from great epidemics; but at last her leading officials had come to realize the necessity of applying modern science to the problem, and they did this well. In the city “sanitary columns” were established, made up of small squads of officials representing the medical and engineering professions and the police; these visited every nook and corner of the town, and, having extraordinary powers for the emergency, compelled even the most dirty people to keep their premises clean. Excellent hospitals and laboratories were established, and of these I learned much from a former Cornell student who held an important position in one of them. Coming to town three or four times a week from my summer cottage in Finland, I was struck by the precautions on the Finnish and other railways: notices of what was to be done to prevent cholera and to meet it were posted, in six different languages; disinfectants were made easily accessible; the seats and hangings in the railway-cars were covered with leather cloth frequently washed with disinfectants; and to the main trains a hospital-car was attached, while a temporary hospital, well equipped, was established at each main station. In spite of this, the number of cholera patients at St. Petersburg in the middle of July rose to a very high figure, and the number of deaths each day from cholera was about one hundred.
Of these victims the most eminent was Tschaikovsky, the composer, a man of genius and a most charming character, to whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie had introduced me at New York. One evening at a dinner-party he poured out a goblet of water from a decanter on the table, drank it down, and next day was dead from Asiatic cholera. But, with this exception, the patients were, so far as I learned, almost entirely from the peasant class. Although boiled water was supplied for drinking purposes, and some public-spirited individuals went so far as to set out samovars and the means of supplying hot tea to peasant workmen, the answer of one of the muzhiks, when told that he ought to drink boiled water, indicated the peasant view: “If God had wished us to drink hot water, he would have heated the Neva.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
MY RECOLLECTIONS OF POBEDONOSTZEFF–1892-1894
On arriving at St. Petersburg in 1892 to take charge of the American legation, there was one Russian whom I more desired to meet than any other–Constantine Pobedonostzeff. For some years various English and American reviews had been charging him with bigotry, cruelty, hypocrisy, and, indeed, with nearly every hateful form of political crime; but the fact remained that under Alexander III he was the most influential personage in the empire, and that, though bearing the title of “procurator-general of the Most Holy Synod,” he was evidently no less powerful in civil than in ecclesiastical affairs.
As to his history, it was understood to be as follows: When the Grand Duke Nicholas, the eldest son of Alexander II,–a young man of gentle characteristics, greatly resembling his father,–died upon the Riviera, the next heir to the throne was his brother Alexander, a stalwart, taciturn guardsman, respected by all who knew him for honesty and directness, but who, having never looked forward to the throne, had been brought up simply as a soldier, with few of the gifts and graces traditional among the heirs of the Russian monarchy since the days of Catherine.
Therefore it was that it became necessary to extemporize for this soldier a training which should fit him for the duties of the position so unexpectedly opened to him; and the man chosen as his tutor was a professor at Moscow, distinguished as a jurist and theologian,–a man of remarkable force of character, and devoted to Russian ideas as distinguished from those of Western Europe: Constantine Pobedonostzeff.
During the dark and stormy days toward the end of his career, Alexander II had called in as his main adviser General Loris-Melikoff, a man of Armenian descent, in whom was mingled with the shrewd characteristics of his race a sincere desire to give to Russia a policy and development in accordance with modern ideas.
The result the world knows well. The Emperor, having taken the advice of this and other councilors,–deeply patriotic men like Miloutine, Samarine, and Tcherkassky,–had freed the serfs within his empire (twenty millions in all); had sanctioned a vast scheme by which they were to arrive at the possession of landed property; had established local self-government in the various provinces of his empire; had improved the courts of law; had introduced Western ideas into legal procedure; had greatly mitigated the severities formerly exercised toward the Jews; and had made all ready to promulgate a constitution on his approaching birthday.
But this did not satisfy the nihilistic sect. What more they wanted it is hard to say. It is more than doubtful whether Russia even then had arrived at a stage of civilization when the institutions which Alexander II had already conceded could be adopted with profit; but the leaders of the anarchic movement, with their vague longings for fruit on the day the tree was planted, decreed the Emperor’s death–the assassination of the greatest benefactor that Russia has ever known, one of the greatest that humanity has known. It was, perhaps, the most fearful crime ever committed against liberty and freedom; for it blasted the hopes and aspirations of over a hundred millions of people, and doubtless for many generations.
On this the sturdy young guardsman became the Emperor Alexander III. It is related by men conversant with Russian affairs that, at the first meeting of the imperial councilors, Loris-Melikoff, believing that the young sovereign would be led by filial reverence to continue the liberal policy to which the father had devoted his life, made a speech taking this for granted, and that the majority of those present, including the Emperor, seemed in accord with him; when suddenly there arose a tall, gaunt, scholarly man, who at first very simply, but finally very eloquently, presented a different view. According to the chroniclers of the period, Pobedonostzeff told the Emperor that all so-called liberal measures, including the constitution, were a delusion; that, though such things might be suited to Western Europe, they were not suited to Russia; that the constitution of that empire had been, from time immemorial, the will of the autocrat, directed by his own sense of responsibility to the Almighty; that no other constitution was possible in Russia; that this alone was fitted to the traditions, the laws, the ideas of the hundred and twenty millions of various races under the Russian scepter; that in other parts of the world constitutional liberty, so called, had already shown itself an absurdity; that socialism, anarchism, and nihilism, with their plots and bombs, were appearing in all quarters; that murder was plotted against rulers of nations everywhere, the best of presidents having been assassinated in the very country where free institutions were supposed to have taken the most complete hold; that the principle of authority in human government was to be saved; and that this principle existed as an effective force only in Russia.
This speech is said to have carried all before it. As its immediate result came the retirement of Loris-Melikoff, followed by his death not long afterward; the entrance of Pobedonostzeff among the most cherished councilors of the Emperor; the suppression of the constitution; the discouragement of every liberal tendency; and that fanatical reaction which has been in full force ever since.
This was the man whom I especially desired to see and to understand; and therefore it was that I was very glad to receive from the State Department instructions to consult with him regarding some rather delicate matters needing adjustment between the Greek Church and our authorities in Alaska, and also in relation to the representation of Russia at the Chicago Exposition.
I found him, as one of the great ministers of the crown, residing in a ministerial palace, but still retaining, in large measure, his old quality of professor. About him was a beautiful library, with every evidence of a love for art and literature. I had gone into his presence with many feelings of doubt. Against no one in Russia had charges so bitter been made in my hearing: it was universally insisted that he was responsible for the persecution of the Roman Catholics in Poland, of the Lutherans in the Baltic provinces and in Finland, of the Stundists in Central Russia, and of the dissenting sects everywhere. He had been spoken of in the English reviews as the “Torquemada of the nineteenth century,” and this epithet seemed to be generally accepted as fitting.
I found him a scholarly, kindly man, ready to discuss the business which I brought before him, and showing a wide interest in public affairs. There were few, if any, doctrines, either political or theological, which we held in common, but he seemed inclined to meet the wishes of our government as fully and fairly as he could; and thus was begun one of the most interesting acquaintances I have ever made.
His usual time of receiving his friends was on Sunday evening between nine and twelve; and very many such evenings I passed in his study, discussing with him, over glasses of fragrant Russian tea, every sort of question with the utmost freedom.
I soon found that his reasons for that course of action to which the world so generally objects are not so superficial as they are usually thought. The repressive policy which he has so earnestly adopted is based not merely upon his views as a theologian, but upon his convictions as a statesman. While, as a Russo-Greek churchman, he regards the established church of the empire as the form of Christianity most primitive and pure; and while he sees in its ritual, in its art, and in all the characteristics of its worship the nearest approach to his ideals, he looks at it also from the point of view of a statesman–as the greatest cementing power of the vast empire through which it is spread.
This being the case, he naturally opposes all other religious bodies in Russia as not merely inflicting injury upon Christianity, but as tending to the political disintegration of the empire. Never, in any of our conversations, did I hear him speak a harsh word of any other church or of any religious ideas opposed to his own; but it was clear that he regarded Protestants and dissident sects generally as but agents in the progress of disintegration which, in Western Europe, seemed approaching a crisis, and that he considered the Roman Catholic Church in Poland as practically a political machine managed by a hierarchy in deadly hostility to the Russian Empire and to Russian influence everywhere.
In discussing his own church, he never hesitated to speak plainly of its evident shortcomings. Unquestionably, one of the wishes nearest his heart is to reform the abuses which have grown up among its clergy, especially in their personal habits. Here, too, is a reason for any repressive policy which he may have exercised against other religious bodies. Everything that detracts from the established Russo-Greek Church detracts from the revenues of its clergy, and, as these are pitifully small, aids to keep the priests and their families in the low condition from which he is so earnestly endeavoring to raise them. As regards the severe policy inaugurated by Alexander III against the Jews of the empire, which Pobedonostzeff, more than any other man, is supposed to have inspired, he seemed to have no harsh feelings against Israelites as such; but his conduct seemed based upon a theory which, in various conversations, he presented with much force: namely, that Russia, having within its borders more Jews than exist in all the world besides, and having suffered greatly from these as from an organization really incapable of assimilation with the body politic, must pursue a repressive policy toward them and isolate them in order to protect its rural population.
While he was very civil in his expressions regarding the United States, he clearly considered all Western civilization a failure. He seemed to anticipate, before long, a collapse in the systems and institutions of Western Europe. To him socialism and anarchism, with all they imply, were but symptoms of a wide-spread political and social disease–indications of an approaching catastrophe destined to end a civilization which, having rejected orthodoxy, had cast aside authority, given the force of law to the whimsies of illiterate majorities, and accepted, as the voice of God, the voice of unthinking mobs, blind to their own interests and utterly incapable of working out their own good. It was evident that he regarded Russia as representing among the nations the idea of Heaven-given and church-anointed authority, as the empire destined to save the principle of divine right and the rule of the fittest.
Revolutionary efforts in Russia he discussed calmly. Referring to Loris-Melikoff, the representative of the principles most strongly opposed to his own, no word of censure escaped him. The only evidence of deep feeling on this subject he ever showed in my presence was when he referred to the writings of a well-known Russian refugee in London, and said, “He is a murderer.”
As to public instruction, he evidently held to the idea so thoroughly carried out in Russia: namely, that the upper class, which is to conduct the business of the state, should be highly educated, but that the mass of the people need no education beyond what will keep them contented in the humble station to which it has pleased God to call them. A very curious example of his conservatism I noted in his remarks regarding the droshkies of St. Petersburg. The droshky-drivers are Russian peasants, simple and, as a rule, pious; rarely failing to make the sign of the cross on passing a church or shrine, or at any other moment which seems to them solemn. They are possibly picturesque, but certainly dirty, in their clothing and in all their surroundings. A conveyance more wretched than the ordinary street-droshky of a Russian city could hardly be conceived, and measures had been proposed for improving this system; but he could see no use in them. The existing system was thoroughly Russian, and that was enough. It appealed to his conservatism. The droshky-drivers, with their Russian caps, their long hair and beards, their picturesque caftans, and their deferential demeanor, satisfied his esthetic sense.
What seemed to me a clash between his orthodox conservatism on one side, and his Russian pride on the other, I discovered on my return from a visit to Moscow, in which I had sundry walks and talks with Tolstoi. On my alluding to this, he showed some interest. It was clear that he was separated by a whole orb of thought from the great novelist, yet it was none the less evident that he took pride in him. He naturally considered Tolstoi as hopelessly wrong in all his fundamental ideas, and yet was himself too much of a man of letters not to recognize in his brilliant countryman one of the glories of Russia.
But the most curious–indeed, the most amazing–revelation of the man I found in his love for American literature. He is a wide reader; and, in the whole breadth of his reading, American authors were evidently among those he preferred. Of these his favorites were Hawthorne, Lowell, and, above all, Emerson. Curious, indeed, was it to learn that this “arch-persecutor,” this “Torquemada of the nineteenth century,” this man whose hand is especially heavy upon Catholics and Protestants and dissenters throughout the empire, whose name is spoken with abhorrence by millions within the empire and without it, still reads, as his favorite author, the philosopher of Concord. He told me that the first book which he ever translated into Russian was Thomas a Kempis’s “Imitation of Christ”; and of that he gave me the Latin original from which he made his translation, with a copy of the translation itself. But he also told me that the next book he translated was a volume of Emerson’s “Essays,” and he added that for years there had always lain open upon his study table a volume of Emerson’s writings.
There is, thus clearly, a relation of his mind to the literature of the Western world very foreign to his feelings regarding Western religious ideas. This can be accounted for perhaps by his own character as a man of letters. That he has a distinct literary gift is certain. I have in my possession sundry articles of his, and especially a poem in manuscript, which show real poetic feeling and a marked power of expression. It is a curious fact that, though so addicted to English and American literature, he utterly refuses to converse in our language. His medium of communication with foreigners is always French. On my asking him why he would not use our language in conversation, he answered that he had learned it from books, and that his pronunciation of it would expose him to ridicule.
In various circles in St. Petersburg I heard him spoken of as a hypocrite, but a simple sense of justice compels me to declare this accusation unjust. He indeed retires into a convent for a portion of every year to join the monks in their austerities; but this practice is, I believe, the outgrowth of a deep religious feeling. On returning from one of these visits, he brought to my wife a large Easter egg of lacquered work, exquisitely illuminated. I have examined, in various parts of Europe, beautiful specimens of the best periods of mediaeval art; but in no one of them have I found anything in the way of illumination more perfect than this which he brought from his monkish brethren. In nothing did he seem to unbend more than in his unfeigned love for religious art as it exists in Russia. He discussed with me one evening sundry photographs of the new religious paintings in the cathedral of Kieff in a spirit which revealed this feeling for religious art as one of the deepest characteristics of his nature.
He was evidently equally sensitive to the beauties of religious literature. Giving me various books containing the services of the Orthodox Church, he dwelt upon the beauty of the Slavonic version of the Psalms and upon the church hymnology.
The same esthetic side of his nature was evident at various great church ceremonies. It has happened to me to see Pius IX celebrate mass, both at the high altar of St. Peter’s and in the Sistine Chapel, and to witness the ceremonies of Holy Week and of Easter at the Roman basilicas, and at the time it was hard to conceive anything of the kind more impressive; but I have never seen any church functions, on the whole, more imposing than the funeral service of the Emperor Nicholas during my first visit to Russia, and various imperial weddings, funerals, name-days, and the like, during my second visit. On such occasions Pobedonostzeff frequently came over from his position among the ministers of the crown to explain to us the significance of this or that feature in the ritual of music. It was plain that these things touched what was deepest in him; it must be confessed that his attachment to the church is sincere.
Nor were these impressions made upon me alone. It fell to my lot to present to him one of the most eminent journalists our country has produced–Charles A. Dana, a man who could discuss on even terms with any European statesman all the leading modern questions. Dana had been brought into close contact with many great men; but it was plain to see–what he afterward acknowledged to me–that he was very deeply impressed by this eminent Russian. The talk of two such men threw new light upon the characteristics of Pobedonostzeff, and strengthened my impression of his intellectual sincerity.
In regard to the relation of the Russo-Greek Church to other churches I spoke to him at various times, and found in him no personal feeling of dislike to them. The nearest approach to such a feeling appeared, greatly to my surprise, in sundry references to the Greek Church as it exists in Greece. In these he showed a spirit much like that which used to be common among High-church Episcopalians in speaking of Low-church “Evangelicals.” Mindful of the earnest efforts made by the Anglican communion to come into closer relations with the Russian branch of the Eastern Church, I at various times broached that subject, and the glimpses I obtained of his feeling regarding it surprised me. Previously to these interviews I had supposed that the main difficulty in the way to friendly relations between these two branches of the church universal had its origin in the “filioque” clause of the Nicene Creed. As is well known, the Eastern Church adheres to that creed in its original form,–the form in which the Holy Ghost is represented as “proceeding from the Father,”–whereas the Western Church adopts the additional words, “and from the Son.” That the Russo-Greek Church is very tenacious of its position in this respect, and considers the position of the Western Church–Catholic and Protestant–as savoring of blasphemy, is well known; and there was a curious evidence of this during my second stay in Russia. Twice during that time I heard the “Missa Solennis” of Beethoven. It was first given by a splendid choir in the great hall of the University of Helsingfors. That being in Finland, which is mainly Lutheran, the Creed was sung in its Western form. Naturally, on going to hear it given by a great choir at St. Petersburg, I was curious to know how this famous clause would be dealt with. In various parts of the audience were priests of the Russo-Greek faith, yet there were very many Lutherans and Calvinists, and I watched with some interest the approach of the passage containing the disputed words; but when we reached this it was wholly omitted. Any allusion to the “procession” was evidently forbidden. Great, therefore, was my surprise when, on my asking Pobedonostzeff,[5] as the representative of the Emperor in the Synod of the empire,–the highest assemblage in the church, and he the most influential man in it, really controlling archbishops and bishops throughout the empire,–whether the “filioque” clause is an insurmountable obstacle to union, he replied, “Not at all; that is simply a question of dialectics. But with whom are we to unite? Shall it be with the High-churchmen, the Broad-churchmen, or the Low-churchmen? These are three different bodies of men with distinctly different ideas of church order; indeed, with distinctly different creeds. Which of these is the Orthodox Church to regard as the representative of the Anglican communion?” I endeavored to show him that the union, if it took place at all, must be based on ideas and beliefs that underlie all these distinctions; but he still returned to his original proposition, which was that union is impossible until a more distinct basis than any now attainable can be arrived at.
[5] I find, in a letter from Pobedonostzeff, that he spells his name as here printed.
I suggested to him a visit to Great Britain and his making the acquaintance of leading Englishmen; but to this he answered that at his time of life he had no leisure for such a recreation; that his duties absolutely forbade it.
In regard to relations with the Russo-Greek Church on our own continent, he seemed to speak with great pleasure of the treatment that sundry Russian bishops had received among us. He read me letters from a member of the Russo-Greek hierarchy, full of the kindliest expressions toward Americans, and especially acknowledging their friendly reception of him and of his ministrations. Both the archbishop in his letter, and Pobedonostzeff in his talk, were very much amused over the fact that the Americans, after extending various other courtesies to the archbishop, offered him cigars.
He discussed the possibility of introducing the “Holy Orthodox Church” into the United States, but always disclaimed all zeal in religious propagandism, saying that the church authorities had quite enough work to do in extending and fortifying the church throughout the Russian Empire. He said that the pagan tribes of the imperial dominions in Asia seemed more inclined to Mohammedanism than to Christianity, and gave as the probable reason the fact that the former faith is much the simpler of the two. He was evidently unable to grasp the idea of the Congress of Religions at the Chicago Exposition, and seemed inclined to take a mildly humorous view of it as one of the droll inventions of the time.
He appeared to hold our nation as a problem apart, and was, perhaps, too civil in his conversations with me to include it in the same condemnation with the nations of Western Europe which had, in his opinion, gone hopelessly wrong. He also seemed drawn to us by his admiration for Emerson, Hawthorne, and Lowell. When Professor Norton’s edition of Lowell’s “Letters” came out, I at once took it to him. It evidently gave him great pleasure–perhaps because it revealed to him a very different civilization, life, and personality from anything to which he had been accustomed. Still, America seemed to be to him a sort of dreamland. He constantly returned to Russian affairs as to the great realities of the world. Discussing, as we often did, the condition and future of the wild tribes and nations within the Asiatic limits of the empire, he betrayed no desire either for crusades or for intrigues to convert them; he simply spoke of the legitimate influence of the church in civilizing them.
I recall a brilliant but denunciatory article, published in one of the English reviews some time since by a well-known nihilist, which contained, in the midst of various charges against the Russian statesman, a description of his smile, which was characterized as forbidding, and even ghastly. I watched for this smile with much interest, but it never came. A smile upon his face I have often seen; but it was a kindly smile, with no trace of anything ghastly or cruel in it.
He seemed to take pleasure in the society of his old professorial friends, and one of them he once brought to my table. This was a professor of history, deeply conversant with the affairs of the empire; and we discussed the character and career of Catherine II. The two men together brought out a mass of curious information, throwing a strange light into transactions which only the most recent historians are beginning to understand, among these the assassination of Czar Peter III, Catherine’s husband. On one occasion when Pobedonostzeff was visiting me I tested his knowledge in regard to a matter of special interest, and obtained a new side-light upon his theory of the universe. There is at present on the island of Cronstadt, at the mouth of the Neva, a Russo-Greek priest, Father Ivan, who enjoys throughout the empire a vast reputation as a saintly worker of miracles. This priest has a very spiritual and kindly face; is known to receive vast sums for the poor, which he distributes among them while he himself remains in poverty; and is supposed not merely by members of the Russo-Greek Church, but by those of other religious bodies, to work frequent miracles of healing. I was assured by persons of the highest character–and those not only Russo-Greek churchmen, but Roman Catholics and Anglicans–that there could be no doubt as to the reality of these miracles, and various examples were given me. So great is Father Ivan’s reputation in this respect that he is in constant demand in all parts of the empire, and was even summoned to Livadia during the last illness of the late Emperor. Whenever he appears in public great crowds surround him, seeking to touch the hem of his garment. His picture is to be seen with the portraits of the saints in vast numbers of Russian homes, from the palaces of the highest nobles to the cottages of the humblest peasants.
It happened to me on one occasion to have an experience which I have related elsewhere, but which is repeated here as throwing light on the ideas of the Russian statesman.
On my arrival in St. Petersburg my attention was at once aroused by the portraits of Father Ivan. They ranged from photographs absolutely true to life, which revealed a plain, shrewd, kindly face, to those which were idealized until they bore a near resemblance to the conventional representations of Jesus of Nazareth.
One day, in one of the most brilliant reception-rooms of the Northern capital, the subject of Father Ivan’s miracles having been introduced, a gentleman in very high social position, and entirely trustworthy, spoke as follows: “There is something very surprising about these miracles. I am slow to believe in them; but there is one of them which is overwhelming and absolutely true. The late Metropolitan of St. Petersburg, Archbishop Isidore, loved quiet, and was very averse to anything which could possibly cause scandal. Hearing of the wonders wrought by Father Ivan, he summoned him to his presence and sternly commanded him to abstain from all the things which had given rise to these reported miracles, as sure to create scandal, and with this injunction dismissed him. Hardly had the priest left the room when the archbishop was struck with blindness, and he remained in this condition until the priest returned and restored his sight by intercessory prayer.” When I asked the gentleman giving this account if he directly knew these facts, he replied that he was, of course, not present when the miracle was wrought; but that he had the facts immediately from persons who knew all the parties concerned, as well as all the circumstances of the case; and, indeed, that these circumstances were matter of general knowledge.
Sometime afterward, being at an afternoon reception in one of the greater embassies, I brought up the same subject, when an eminent general spoke as follows: “I am not inclined to believe in miracles,–in fact, am rather skeptical; but the proofs of those wrought by Father Ivan are overwhelming.” He then went on to say that the late metropolitan archbishop was a man who loved quiet and disliked scandal; that on this account he had summoned Father Ivan to his palace, and ordered him to put an end to the conduct which had caused the reports concerning his miraculous powers; and then, with a wave of his arm, had dismissed him. The priest left the room, and from that moment the archbishop’s arm was paralyzed; and it remained so until the penitent prelate summoned the priest again, by whose prayers the arm was restored to its former usefulness. There was present at the time another person besides myself who had heard the previous statement as to the blindness of the archbishop; and, on our both asking the general if he was sure that the archbishop’s arm was paralyzed as stated, he declared that he could not doubt it, as he had the account directly from persons entirely trustworthy who were cognizant of all the facts.
Sometime later, meeting Pobedonostzeff, I asked him which of these stories was correct. He answered immediately, “Neither: in the discharge of my duties I saw the Archbishop Isidore constantly down to the last hours of his life, and no such event ever occurred. He was never paralyzed and never blind.” But the great statesman and churchman then went on to say that, although this story was untrue, there were a multitude of others quite as remarkable in which he believed; and he gave me a number of legends showing that Father Ivan possessed supernatural knowledge and miraculous powers. These he unfolded to me with much detail, and with such an accent of conviction that we seemed surrounded by a mediaeval atmosphere in which signs and wonders were the most natural things in the world.
As to his action on politics since my leaving Russia, the power which he exercised over Alexander III has evidently been continued during the reign of the young Nicholas II. In spite of his eighty years, he seems to be, to-day, the leader of the reactionary party.
During the early weeks of The Hague Conference, Count Munster, in his frequent diatribes against its whole purpose, and especially against arbitration, was wont to insist that the whole thing was a scheme prepared by Pobedonostzeff to embarrass Germany; that, as Russia was always wretchedly unready with her army, The Hague Conference was simply a trick for gaining time against her rivals who kept up better military preparations. There may have been truth in part of this assertion; but the motive of the great Russian statesman in favoring the conference was probably not so much to gain time for the army as to gain money for the church. With his intense desire to increase the stipends of the Russian orthodox clergy, and thus to raise them somewhat above their present low condition, he must have groaned over the enormous sums spent by his government in the frequent changes in almost every item of expenditure for its vast army–changes made in times of profound peace, simply to show that Russia was keeping her army abreast of those of her sister nations. Hence came the expressed Russian desire to “keep people from inventing things.” It has always seemed to me that, while the idea underlying the Peace Conference came originally from Jean de Bloch, there must have been powerful aid from Pobedonostzeff. So much of good–and, indeed, of great good–we may attribute to him as highly probable, if not certain.
But, on the other hand, there would seem to be equal reason for attributing to him, in these latter days, a fearful mass of evil. To say nothing of the policy of Russia in Poland and elsewhere, her dealings with Finland thus far form one of the blackest spots on the history of the empire. Whether he originated this iniquity or not is uncertain; but when, in 1892, I first saw the new Russian cathedral rising on the heights above Helsingfors,–a structure vastly more imposing than any warranted by the small number of the “orthodox” in Finland,–with its architecture of the old Muscovite type, symbolical of fetishism, I could not but recognize his hand in it. It seemed clear to me that here was the beginning of religious aggression on the Lutheran Finlanders, which must logically be followed by political and military aggression; and, in view of his agency in this as in everything reactionary, I did not wonder at the attempt to assassinate him not long afterward.
During my recent stay in Germany he visited me at the Berlin Embassy. He was, as of old, apparently gentle, kindly, interested in literature, not interested to any great extent in current Western politics. This gentle, kindly manner of his brought back forcibly to my mind a remark of one of the most cultivated women I met in Russia, a princess of ancient lineage, who ardently desired reasonable reforms, and who, when I mentioned to her a report that Pobedonostzeff was weary of political life, and was about to retire from office in order to devote himself to literary pursuits, said: “Don’t, I beg of you, tell me that; for I have always noticed that whenever such a report is circulated, it is followed by some new scheme of his, even more infernal than those preceding it.”
So much for the man who, during the present reign, seems one of the main agents in holding Russian policy on the road to ruin. He is indeed a study. The descriptive epithet which clings to him–“the Torquemada of the nineteenth century”–he once discussed with me in no unkindly spirit; indeed, in as gentle a spirit as can well be conceived. His life furnishes a most interesting study in churchmanship, in statesmanship, and in human nature, and shows how some of the men most severely condemned by modern historians–great persecutors, inquisitors, and the like–may have based their actions on theories the world has little understood, and may have had as little conscious ferocity as their more tolerant neighbors.
CHAPTER XXXVII
WALKS AND TALES WITH TOLSTOI–MARCH, 1894
Revisiting Moscow after an absence of thirty-five years, the most surprising thing to me was that there had been so little change. With the exception of the new gallery of Russian art, and the bazaar opposite the sacred gate of the Kremlin, things seemed as I had left them just after the accession of Alexander II. There were the same unkempt streets; the same peasantry clad in sheepskins; the same troops of beggars, sturdy and dirty; the same squalid crowds crossing themselves before the images at the street corners; the same throngs of worshipers knocking their heads against the pavements of churches; and above all loomed, now as then, the tower of Ivan and the domes of St. Basil, gloomy, gaudy, and barbaric. Only one change had taken place which interested me: for the first time in the history of Russia, a man of world-wide fame in literature and thought was abiding there–Count Leo Tolstoi.
On the evening of my arrival I went with my secretary to his weekly reception. As we entered his house on the outskirts of the city, two servants in evening dress came forward, removed our fur coats, and opened the doors into the reception-room of the master. Then came a surprise. His living-room seemed the cabin of a Russian peasant. It was wainscoted almost rudely and furnished very simply; and there approached us a tall, gaunt Russian, unmistakably born to command, yet clad as a peasant, his hair thrown back over his ears on either side, his flowing blouse kept together by a leathern girdle, his high jack-boots completing the costume. This was Tolstoi.
Nothing could be more kindly than his greeting. While his dress was that of a peasant, his bearing was the very opposite; for, instead of the depressed, demure, hangdog expression of the average muzhik, his manner, though cordial, was dignified and impressive. Having given us a hearty welcome, he made us acquainted with various other guests. It was a singular assemblage. There were foreigners in evening dress, Moscow professors in any dress they liked, and a certain number of youth, evidently disciples, who, though clearly not of the peasant class, wore the peasant costume. I observed these with interest but certainly as long as they were under the spell of the master they communicated nothing worth preserving; they seemed to show “the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration.”
The professors were much more engaging. The University of Moscow has in its teaching body several strong men, and some of these were present. One of them, whose department was philosophy, especially interested and encouraged me by assurances that the movement of Russian philosophy is “back to Kant.” In the strange welter of whims and dreams which one finds in Russia, this was to me an unexpected evidence of healthful thought.
Naturally, I soon asked to be presented to the lady of the house, and the count escorted us through a series of rooms to a salon furnished much like any handsome apartment in Paris or St. Petersburg, where the countess, with other ladies, all in full evening dress, received us cordially. This sudden transition from the peasant cabin of the master to these sumptuous rooms of the mistress was startling; it seemed like scene-shifting at a theater.
After some friendly talk, all returned to the rooms of the master of the house, where tea was served at a long table from the bubbling brazen urn–the samovar; and though there were some twenty or thirty guests, nothing could be more informal. All was simple, kindly, and unrestrained.
My first question was upon the condition of the people. Our American legation had corresponded with Count Tolstoi and his family as to distributing a portion of the famine fund sent from the United States, hence this subject naturally arose at the outset. He said that the condition of the peasants was still very bad; that they had very generally eaten their draught-animals, burned portions of their buildings to keep life in their bodies, and reduced themselves to hopeless want. On my suggesting that the new commercial treaty with Germany might help matters, he thought that it would have but little effect, since only a small portion of the total product of Russian agriculture is consumed abroad. This led him to speak of some Americans and Englishmen who had visited the famine-stricken districts, and, while he referred kindly to them all, he seemed especially attracted by the Quaker John Bellows of Gloucester, England, the author of the wonderful little French dictionary. This led him to say that he sympathized with the Quakers in everything save their belief in property; that in this they were utterly illogical; that property presupposes force to protect it. I remarked that most American Quakers knew nothing of such force; that none of them had ever seen an American soldier, save during our Civil War, and that probably not one in hundreds of them had ever seen a soldier at all. He answered, “But you forget the policeman.” He evidently put policemen and soldiers in the same category–as using force to protect property, and therefore to be alike abhorred.
I found that to his disbelief in any right of ownership literary property formed no exception. He told me that, in his view, he had no right to receive money for the permission to print a book. To this I naturally answered that by carrying out this doctrine he would simply lavish large sums upon publishers in every country of Europe and America, many of them rich and some of them piratical; and that in my opinion he would do a much better thing by taking the full value of his copyrights and bestowing the proceeds upon the peasantry starving about him. To which he answered that it was a question of duty. To this I agreed, but remarked that beneath this lay the question what this duty really was. It was a pleasure to learn from another source that the countess took a different view of it, and that she had in some way secured the proceeds of his copyrights for their very large and interesting family. Light was thus thrown on Tolstoi’s remark, made afterward, that women are not so self-sacrificing as men; that a man would sometimes sacrifice his family for an idea, but that a woman would not.
He then went on to express an interest in the Shakers, and especially in Frederick Evans. He had evidently formed an idea of them very unlike the reality; in fact, the Shaker his imagination had developed was as different from a Lebanon Shaker as an eagle from a duck, and his notion of their influence on American society was comical.
He spoke at some length regarding religion in Russia, evidently believing that its present dominant form is soon to pass away. I asked him how then he could account for the fact that while in other countries women are greatly in the majority at church services, in every Russian church the majority are men; and that during the thirty-five years since my last visit to Moscow this tendency had apparently increased. He answered, “All this is on the surface; there is much deeper thought below, and the great want of Russia is liberty to utter it.” He then gave some examples to show this, among them the case of a gentleman and lady in St. Petersburg, whose children had been taken from them and given to Princess —-, their grandmother, because the latter is of the Orthodox Church and the former are not. I answered that I had seen the children; that their grandmother had told me that their mother was a screaming atheist with nihilistic tendencies, who had left her husband and was bringing up the children in a scandalous way,–teaching them to abjure God and curse the Czar; that their father had thought it his duty to give all his property away and work as a laborer; that therefore she–the grandmother–had secured an order from the Emperor empowering her to take charge of the children; that I had seen the children at their grandmother’s house, and that they had seemed very happy. Tolstoi insisted that this statement by the grandmother was simply made to cover the fact that the children were taken from the mother because her belief was not of the orthodox pattern. My opinion is that Tolstoi was mistaken, at least as to the father; and that the father had been led to give away his property and work with his hands in obedience to the ideas so eloquently advocated by Tolstoi himself. Unlike his master, this gentleman appears not to have had the advantage of a wife who mitigated his ideas.
Tolstoi also referred to the difficulties which translators had found in securing publishers for his most recent book–“The Kingdom of God.” On my assuring him that American publishers of high standing would certainly be glad to take it, he said that he had supposed the ideas in it so contrary to opinions dominant in America as to prevent its publication there.
Returning to the subject of religion in Russia, he referred to some curious incongruities; as, for example, the portrait of Socrates forming part of a religious picture in the Annunciation Church at the Kremlin. He said that evidently some monk, who had dipped into Plato, had thus placed Socrates among the precursors of Christ. I cited the reason assigned by Melanchthon for Christ’s descent into hell–namely, the desire of the Redeemer to make himself known to Socrates, Plato, and the best of the ancient philosophers; and I compared this with Luther’s idea, so characteristic of him, that Christ descended into hell in order to have a hand-to-hand grapple and wrestle with Satan. This led Tolstoi to give me a Russian legend of the descent into hell, which was that, when Christ arrived there, he found Satan forging chains, but that, at the approach of the Saviour, the walls of hell collapsed, and Satan found himself entangled in his own chains, and remained so for a thousand years.
In regard to the Jews, he said that he sympathized with them, but that the statements regarding the persecution of them were somewhat exaggerated. Kennan’s statements regarding the treatment of prisoners in Siberia he thought overdrawn at times, but substantially true. He expressed his surprise that certain leading men in the empire, whom he named, could believe that persecution and the forcible repression of thought would have any permanent effect at the end of the nineteenth century.
He then dwelt upon sundry evil conditions in Russia, on which my comment was that every country, of course, had its own grievous shortcomings; and I cited, as to America, the proverb: “No one knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it.” At this he asked me about lynch law in the United States, and expressed his horror of it. I showed him that it was the inevitable result of a wretched laxity and sham humanity in the administration of our criminal law, which had led great bodies of people, more especially in the Southern and extreme Western parts of the country, to revert to natural justice and take the law into their own hands; and I cited Goldwin Smith’s profound remark that “some American lynchings are proofs not so much of lawlessness as of a respect for law.”
He asked me where, besides this, the shoe pinched in the United States. I told him that it pinched in various places, but that perhaps the worst pinch arises from the premature admission to full political rights of men who have been so benumbed and stunted intellectually and morally in other countries that their exercise of political rights in America is frequently an injury, not only to others, but to themselves. In proof of this I cited the case of the crowds whom I had seen some years before huddled together in New York tenement-houses, preyed upon by their liquor-selling landlords, their families perishing of typhoid and smallpox on account of the negligence and maladministration of the local politicians, but who, as a rule, were almost if not quite ready to mob and murder those of us who brought in a new health board and a better order of things; showing him that for years the very class of people who suffered most from the old, vile state of things did their best by their votes to keep in power the men who maintained it.
We then passed to the subject of the trans-Siberian Railway. In this he seemed interested, but in a vague way which added nothing to my knowledge.
Asking me regarding my former visit to Moscow, and learning that it was during the Crimean War, he said, “At that time I was in Sebastopol, and continued there as a soldier during the siege.”
As to his relations with the imperial government at present, he said that he had been recently elected to a learned society in Moscow, but that the St. Petersburg government had interfered to stop the election; and he added that every morning, when he awoke, he wondered that he was not on his way to Siberia.
On my leaving him, both he and the countess invited me to meet them next day at the Tretiakof Museum of Russian Pictures; and accordingly, on the following afternoon, I met them at that greatest of all galleries devoted purely to Russian art. They were accompanied by several friends, among them a little knot of disciples–young men clad in simple peasant costume like that worn by the master. It was evident that he was an acknowledged lion at the old Russian capital, for as he led me about to see the pictures which he liked best, he was followed and stared at by many.
Pointing out to me some modern religious pictures in Byzantine style painted for the Cathedral of Kieff, he said, “They represent an effort as futile as trying to persuade chickens to reenter the egg-shells from which they have escaped.” He next showed me two religious pictures; the first representing the meeting of Jesus and Pilate, when the latter asked, “What is truth?” Pilate was depicted as a rotund, jocose, cynical man of the world; Jesus, as a street preacher in sordid garments, with unkempt hair flowing over his haggard face,–a peasant fanatic brought in by the police. Tolstoi showed an especial interest in this picture; it seemed to reveal to him the real secret of that famous question and its answer; the question coming from the mighty of the earth, and the answer from the poor and oppressed.
The other picture represented the Crucifixion. It was painted in the most realistic manner possible; nothing was idealized; it was even more vividly realistic than Gebhardt’s picture of the Lord’s Supper, at Berlin; so that it at first repelled me, though it afterward exercised a certain fascination. That Tolstoi was deeply interested was clear. He stood for a time in silence, as if musing upon all that the sacrifice on Calvary had brought to the world. Other representations of similar scenes, in the conventional style of the older masters, he had passed without a glance; but this spectacle of the young Galilean peasant, with unattractive features, sordid garb, poverty-stricken companions, and repulsive surroundings, tortured to death for preaching the “kingdom of God” to the poor and down-trodden, seemed to hold him fast, and as he pointed out various features in the picture it became even more clear to me that sympathy with the peasant class, and a yearning to enter into their cares and sorrows, form the real groundwork of his life.
He then took me to a small picture of Jesus and his disciples leaving the upper room at Jerusalem after the Last Supper. This, too, was painted in the most realistic manner. The disciples, simple-minded fishermen, rude in features and dress, were plodding homeward, while Christ himself gazed at the stars and drew the attention of his nearest companions to some of the brightest. Tolstoi expressed especial admiration for this picture, saying that at times it affected him like beautiful music,–like music which draws tears, one can hardly tell why. It was more and more evident, as he lingered before this and other pictures embodying similar ideas, that sympathy for those struggling through poverty and want toward a better life is his master passion.
Among the pictures, not to be classed as religious, before which he thus lingered were those representing the arrest of a nihilist and the return of an exile from Siberia. Both were well painted, and both revealed the same characteristic–sympathy with the poor, even with criminals.
Some of the more famous historical pictures in the collection he thought exaggerated; especially those representing the fury of the Grand Duchess Sophia in her monastery prison, and the remorse of Ivan the Terrible after murdering his son.
To my surprise, he agreed with me, and even went beyond me, in rating landscape infinitely below religious and historical painting, saying that he cared for landscape-painting only as accessory to pictures revealing human life.
Among genre pictures, we halted before one representing a peasant family grouped about the mother, who, with a sacred picture laid upon her breast, after the Russian manner, was dying of famine. This also seemed deeply to impress him.
We stopped next before a picture of a lady of high birth brought before the authorities in order to be sent, evidently against her will, to a convent. I cited the similar story from Manzoni’s “Promessi Sposi”; but, to my surprise, he seemed to know little of that most fascinating of historical romances. This led to a discussion in which he said he had once liked Walter Scott, but had not read anything of his for many years; and he seemed interested in my statement that although always an especial admirer of Scott, I had found it almost impossible to induce the younger generation to read him.
Stopping before a picture of Peter the Great’s fatal conference with his son Alexis, in reply to my remark upon the marvel that a prince of such genius as Peter should have appeared at Moscow in the seventeenth century, he said that he did not admire Peter, that he was too cruel,–administering torture and death at times with his own hands.
We next halted before a picture representing the horrible execution of the Strelitzes. I said that “such pictures prove that the world does, after all, progress slowly, in spite of what pessimists say, and that in order to refute pessimists one has only to refer to the improvements in criminal law.” To this he agreed cordially, and declared the abolition of torture in procedure and penalty to be one great gain, at any rate.
We spoke of the present condition of things in Europe, and I told him that at St. Petersburg the opinion very general among the more thoughtful members of the diplomatic corps was that war was not imminent; that the Czar, having himself seen the cruelties of war during the late struggle in the Balkans, had acquired an invincible repugnance to it. He acquiesced in this, but said that it seemed monstrous to him that the peace of the empire and of Europe should depend upon so slender a thread as the will of any one man.
Our next walk was taken across the river Moskwa, on the ice, to and through the Kremlin, and as we walked the conversation fell upon literature. As to French literature, he thought Maupassant the man of greatest talent, by far, in recent days, but that he was depraved and centered all his fiction in women. For Balzac, Tolstoi evidently preserved admiration, but he cared little, apparently, for Daudet, Zola, and their compeers.
As to American literature, he said that Tourgueneff had once told him that there was nothing in it worth reading; nothing new or original; that it was simply a copy of English literature. To this I replied that such criticism seemed to me very shallow; that American literature was, of course, largely a growth out of the parent stock of English literature, and must mainly be judged as such; that to ask in the highest American literature something absolutely different from English literature in general was like looking for oranges upon an apple-tree; that there had come new varieties in this growth, many of them original, and some beautiful; but that there was the same sap, the same life-current running through it all; and I compared the treatment of woman in all Anglo-Saxon literature, whether on one side of the Atlantic or the other, from Chaucer to Mark Twain, with the treatment of the same subject by French writers from Rabelais to Zola. To this he answered that in his opinion the strength of American literature arises from the inherent Anglo-Saxon religious sentiment. He expressed a liking for Emerson, Hawthorne, and Whittier, but he seemed to have read at random, not knowing at all some of the best things. He spoke with admiration of Theodore Parker’s writings, and seemed interested in my reminiscences of Parker and of his acquaintance with Russian affairs. He also revered and admired the character and work of William Lloyd Garrison. He had read Longfellow somewhat, but was evidently uncertain regarding Lowell,–confusing him, apparently, with some other author. Among contemporary writers he knew some of Howells’s novels and liked them, but said: “Literature in the United States at present seems to be in the lowest trough of the sea between high waves.” He dwelt on the flippant tone of American newspapers, and told me of an interviewer who came to him in behalf of an American journal, and wanted simply to know at what time he went to bed and rose, what he ate, and the like. He thought that people who cared to read such trivialities must be very feeble-minded, but he said that the European press is, on the whole, just as futile. On my attempting to draw from him some statement as to what part of American literature pleased him most, he said that he had read some publications of the New York and Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, and that he knew and liked the writings of Felix Adler. I then asked who, in the whole range of American literature, he thought the foremost. To this he made an answer which amazed me, as it would have astonished my countrymen. Indeed, did the eternal salvation of all our eighty millions depend upon some one of them guessing the person he named, we should all go to perdition together. That greatest of American writers was–Adin Ballou! Evidently, some of the philanthropic writings of that excellent Massachusetts country clergyman and religious communist had pleased him, and hence came the answer.
The next day he came over to my hotel and we went out for a stroll. As we passed along the streets I noticed especially what I had remarked during our previous walks, that Tolstoi had a large quantity of small Russian coins in his pockets; that this was evidently known to the swarms of beggars who infest the Kremlin and the public places generally; and that he always gave to them.
On my speaking of this, he said he thought that any one, when asked for money, ought to give it. Arguing against this doctrine, I said that in the United States there are virtually no beggars, and I might have gone on to discuss the subject from the politico-economical point of view, showing how such indiscriminate almsgiving in perpetual driblets is sure to create the absurd and immoral system which one sees throughout Russia,–hordes of men and women who are able to take care of themselves, and who ought to be far above beggary, cringing and whining to the passers-by for alms; but I had come to know the man well enough to feel sure that a politico-economical argument would slide off him like water from a duck’s back, so I attempted to take him upon another side, and said: “In the United States there are virtually no beggars, though my countrymen are, I really believe, among the most charitable in the world.” To this last statement he assented, referring in a general way to our shipments of provisions to aid the famine-stricken in Russia. “But,” I added, “it is not our custom to give to beggars save in special emergencies.” I then gave him an account of certain American church organizations which had established piles of fire-wood and therefore enabled any able-bodied tramp, by sawing or cutting some of it, to earn a good breakfast, a good dinner, and, if needed, a good bed, and showed him that Americans considered beggary not only a great source of pauperism, but as absolutely debasing to the beggar himself, in that it puts him in the attitude of a suppliant for that which, if he works as he ought, he can claim as his right; that to me the spectacle of Count Tolstoi virtually posing as a superior being, while his fellow-Russians came crouching and whining to him, was not at all edifying. To this view of the case he listened very civilly.
Incidentally I expressed wonder that he had not traveled more. He then spoke with some disapprobation of travel. He had lived abroad for a time, he said, and in St. Petersburg a few years, but the rest of his life had been spent mainly in Moscow and the interior of Russia. The more we talked together, the more it became clear that this last statement explained some of his main defects. Of all distinguished men that I have ever met, Tolstoi seems to me most in need of that enlargement of view and healthful modification of opinion which come from meeting men and comparing views with them in different lands and under different conditions. This need is all the greater because in Russia there is no opportunity to discuss really important questions. Among the whole one hundred and twenty millions of people there is no public body in which the discussion of large public questions is allowed; the press affords no real opportunity for discussion; indeed, it is more than doubtful whether such discussion would be allowed to any effective extent even in private correspondence or at one’s own fireside.
I remember well that during my former stay in St. Petersburg, people who could talk English at their tables generally did so in order that they might not betray themselves to any spy who might happen to be among their servants.
Still worse, no one, unless a member of the diplomatic corps or specially privileged, is allowed to read such books or newspapers as he chooses, so that even this access to the thoughts of others is denied to the very men who most need it.
Like so many other men of genius in Russia, then,–and Russia is fertile in such,–Tolstoi has had little opportunity to take part in any real discussion of leading topics; and the result is that his opinions have been developed without modification by any rational interchange of thought with other men. Under such circumstances any man, no matter how noble or gifted, having given birth to striking ideas, coddles and pets them until they become the full-grown, spoiled children of his brain. He can at last see neither spot nor blemish in them, and comes virtually to believe himself infallible. This characteristic I found in several other Russians of marked ability. Each had developed his theories for himself until he had become infatuated with them, and despised everything differing from them.
This is a main cause why sundry ghastly creeds, doctrines, and sects–religious, social, political, and philosophic–have been developed in Russia. One of these religious creeds favors the murder of new-born children in order to save their souls; another enjoins ghastly bodily mutilations for a similar purpose; others still would plunge the world in flames and blood for the difference of a phrase in a creed, or a vowel in a name, or a finger more or less in making the sign of the cross, or for this garment in a ritual, or that gesture in a ceremony.
In social creeds they have developed nihilism, which virtually assumes the right of an individual to sit in judgment upon the whole human race and condemn to death every other human being who may differ in opinion or position from this self-constituted judge.
In political creeds they have conceived the monarch as the all-powerful and irresponsible vicegerent of God, and all the world outside Russia as given over to Satan, for the reason that it has “rejected the divine principle of authority.”
In various branches of philosophy they have developed doctrines which involve the rejection of the best to which man has attained in science, literature, and art, and a return to barbarism.
In the theory of life and duty they have devised a pessimistic process under which the human race would cease to exist.
Every one of these theories is the outcome of some original mind of more or less strength, discouraged, disheartened, and overwhelmed by the sorrows of Russian life; developing its ideas logically and without any possibility of adequate discussion with other men. This alone explains a fact which struck me forcibly–the fact that all Tolstoi’s love of humanity, real though it certainly is, seems accompanied by a depreciation of the ideas, statements, and proposals of almost every other human being, and by virtual intolerance of all thought which seems in the slightest degree different from his own.
Arriving in the Kremlin, he took me to the Church of the Annunciation to see the portrait of Socrates in the religious picture of which he had spoken; but we were too late to enter, and so went to the Palace of the Synod, where we looked at the picture of the Trinity, which, by a device frequently used in street signs, represents, when looked at from one side, the suffering Christ, from the other the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove, and from the front the Almighty as an old man with a white beard. What Tolstoi thought of the doctrine thus illustrated came out in a subsequent conversation.
The next day he came again to my rooms and at once began speaking upon religion. He said that every man is religious and has in him a religion of his own; that religion results from the conception which a man forms of his relations to his fellow-men, and to the principle which in his opinion controls the universe; that there are three stages in religious development: first, the childhood of nations, when man thinks of the whole universe as created for him and centering in him; secondly, the maturity of nations, the time of national religions, when each nation believes that all true religion centers in it,–the Jews and the English, he said, being striking examples; and, finally, the perfected conception of nations, when man has the idea of fulfilling the will of the Supreme Power and considers himself an instrument for that purpose. He went on to say that in every religion there are two main elements, one of deception and one of devotion, and he asked me about the Mormons, some of whose books had interested him. He thought two thirds of their religion deception, but said that on the whole he preferred a religion which professed to have dug its sacred books out of the earth to one which pretended that they were let down from heaven. On learning that I had visited Salt Lake City two years before, he spoke of the good reputation of the Mormons for chastity, and asked me to explain the hold of their religion upon women. I answered that Mormonism could hardly be judged by its results at present; that, as a whole, the Mormons are, no doubt, the most laborious and decent people in the State of Utah; but that this is their heroic period, when outside pressure keeps them firmly together and arouses their devotion; that the true test will come later, when there is less pressure and more knowledge, and when the young men who are now arising begin to ask questions, quarrel with each other, and split the whole body into sects and parties.
This led to questions in regard to American women generally, and he wished to know something of their condition and prospects. I explained some features of woman’s condition among us, showing its evolution, first through the betterment of her legal status, and next through provision for her advanced education; but told him that so far as political rights are concerned, there had been very little practical advance in the entire East and South of the country during the last fifty years, and that even in the extreme Western States, where women have been given political rights and duties to some extent, the concessions have been wavering and doubtful.
At this, he took up his parable and said that women ought to have all other rights except political; that they are unfit to discharge political duties; that, indeed, one of the great difficulties of the world at present lies in their possession of far more consideration and control than they ought to have. “Go into the streets and bazaars,” he said, “and you will see the vast majority of shops devoted to their necessities. In France everything centers in women, and women have complete control of life: all contemporary French literature shows this. Woman is not man’s equal in the highest qualities; she is not so self-sacrificing as man. Men will, at times, sacrifice their families for an idea; women will not.” On my demurring to this latter statement, he asked me if I ever knew a woman who loved other people’s children as much as her own. I gladly answered in the negative, but cited Florence Nightingale, Sister Dora, and others, expressing my surprise at his assertion that women are incapable of making as complete sacrifices for any good cause as men. I pointed to the persecutions in the early church, when women showed themselves superior to men in suffering torture, degradation, and death in behalf of the new religion, and added similar instances from the history of witchcraft. To this he answered that in spite of all such history, women will not make sacrifices of their own interest for a good cause which does not strikingly appeal to their feelings, while men will do so; that he had known but two or three really self-sacrificing women in his life; and that these were unmarried. On my saying that observation had led me to a very different conclusion, his indictment took another form. He insisted that woman hangs upon the past; that public opinion progresses, but that women are prone to act on the opinion of yesterday or of last year; that women and womanish men take naturally to old absurdities, among which he mentioned the doctrines of the Trinity, “spiritism,” and homeopathy. At this I expressed a belief that if, instead of educating women, as Bishop Dupanloup expressed it, “in the lap of the church (sur les genoux de l’eglise),” we educate them in the highest sense, in universities, they will develop more and more intellectually, and so become a controlling element in the formation of a better race; that, as strong men generally have strong mothers, the better education of woman physically, intellectually, and morally is the true way of bettering the race in general. In this idea he expressed his disbelief, and said that education would not change women; that women are illogical by nature. At this I cited an example showing that women can be exceedingly logical and close in argument, but he still adhered to his opinion. On my mentioning the name of George Eliot, he expressed a liking for her.
On our next walk, he took me to the funeral of one of his friends. He said that to look upon the dead should rather give pleasure than pain; that memento mori is a wise maxim, and looking upon the faces of the dead a good way of putting it in