Produced by Al Haines








THE VANISHED POMPS OF YESTERDAY




  _By
  Lord Frederic Hamilton_

  THE VANISHED POMPS OF YESTERDAY
  THE DAYS BEFORE YESTERDAY
  HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE

  _George H. Doran Company
  New York_




  THE VANISHED POMPS
  OF YESTERDAY

  BEING

  _Some Random Reminiscences of a
  British Diplomat_


  BY
  LORD FREDERIC HAMILTON

  Author of "Here, There and Everywhere," "The Days
  Before Yesterday," etc., etc.



  A New and Revised Edition



  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  COPYRIGHT, 1921
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY



  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  TO
  EMILY LADY AMPTHILL
  MY FIRST CHEFESSE
  WITH EVER-GRATEFUL RECOLLECTIONS
  OF HER KINDNESS




FOREWORD

TO THE SECOND EDITION

The account of the boating accident at Potsdam on page 75, differs in
several particulars from the story as given in the original edition.
These alterations have been made at the special request of the lady
concerned, who tells me that my recollections of her story were at
fault as regards several important details.  There are also a few
verbal alterations in the present edition.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Special Mission to Rome--Berlin in process of transformation--Causes
of Prussian militarism--Lord and Lady Ampthill--Berlin
Society--Music-lovers--Evenings with Wagner--Aristocratic
Waitresses--Rubinstein's rag-time--Liszt's
opinions--Bismarck--Bismarck's classification of
nationalities--Bismarck's sons--Gustav Richter--The Austrian
diplomat--The old Emperor--His defective articulation--Other
Royalties--Beauty of Berlin Palace--Description of interior--The
Luxembourg--"Napoleon III"--Three Court beauties--The pugnacious
Pages--"Making the Circle"--Conversational difficulties--An
ecclesiastical gourmet--The Maharajah's mother


CHAPTER II

Easy-going Austria--Vienna--Charm of town--A little piece of
history--International families--Family
pride--"Schlüssel-Geld"--Excellence of Vienna restaurants--The origin
of "_Croissants_"--Good looks of Viennese women--Strauss's
operettas--A ball in an old Vienna house--Court entertainments--The
Empress Elisabeth--Delightful environs of Vienna--The Berlin Congress
of 1878--Lord Beaconsfield--M. de Blowitz--Treaty telegraphed to
London--Environs of Berlin--Potsdam and its lakes--The bow-oar of the
Embassy "four"--Narrow escape of ex-Kaiser--The Potsdam
palaces--Transfer to Petrograd--Glamour of Russia--An evening with
the Crown Prince at Potsdam


CHAPTER III

The Russian frontier--Frontier police--Disappointment at aspect of
Petrograd--Lord and Lady Dufferin--The British Embassy--St. Isaac's
Cathedral--Beauty of Russian Church-music--The Russian language--The
delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd--Princess Chateau--Pleasant
Russian Society--The Secret Police--The Countess's hurried
journey--The Yacht Club--Russians really Orientals--Their
limitations--The "Intelligenzia"--My Nihilist friends--Their lack of
constructive power--Easter Mass at St. Isaac's--Two comical
incidents--The Easter supper--The red-bearded young Priest--An Empire
built on shifting sand


CHAPTER IV

The Winter Palace--Its interior--Alexander II--A Russian Court
Ball--The "Bals des Palmiers"--The Empress--The blessing of the
Neva--Some curiosities of the Winter Palace--The great Orloff
diamond--My friend the Lady-in-Waiting--Sugared Compensations--The
attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880--Some unexpected finds in the
Palace--A most hilarious funeral--Sporting expeditions--Night drives
through the forest in mid-winter--Wolves--A typical Russian
village--A peasant's house--"Deaf and dumb people"--The inquisitive
peasant youth--Curiosity about strangers--An embarrassing
situation--A still more awkward one--Food difficulties--A bear
hunt--My first bear--Alcoholic consequences--My liking for the
Russian peasant--The beneficent india-rubber Ikon--Two curious
sporting incidents--Village habits--The great gulf between Russian
nobility and peasants


CHAPTER V

The Russian Gipsies--Midnight drives--Gipsy singing--Its
fascination--The consequences of a late night--An unconventional
luncheon--Lord Dufferin's methods--Assassination of Alexander
II--Stürmer--Pathetic incidents in connection with the murder of the
Emperor--The funeral procession and service--Details concerning--The
Votive Church--The Order of the Garter--Unusual incidents at the
Investiture--Precautions taken for Emperor's safety--The Imperial
train--Finland--Exciting salmon-fishing there--Harraka
Niska--Koltesha--Excellent shooting there--Ski-running--"Ringing the
game in"--A wolf-shooting party--The obese General--Some incidents--A
novel form of sport--Black game and capercailzie--At dawn in a
Finnish forest--Immense charm of it--Ice-hilling or "Montagnes
Russes"--Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland


CHAPTER VI

Love of Russians for children's games--Peculiarities of Petrograd
balls--Some famous beauties of Petrograd Society--The varying garb of
hired waiters--Moscow--Its wonderful beauty--The forest of domes--The
Kremlin--The three famous "Cathedrals"--The Imperial Treasury--The
Sacristy--The Palace--Its splendour--The Terem--A Gargantuan Russian
dinner--An unusual episode at the French Ambassador's
ball--Bombs--Tsarskoe Selo--Its interior--Extraordinary collection of
curiosities in Tsarskoe Park--Origin of term "Vauxhall" for railway
station in Russia--Peterhof--Charm of park there--Two Russian
illusions--A young man of twenty-five delivers an Ultimatum to
Russia--How it came about--M. de Giers--Other Foreign
Ministers--Paraguay--The polite Japanese dentist--A visit to
Gatchina--Description of the Palace--Delights of the children's
playroom there


CHAPTER VII

Lisbon--The two Kings of Portugal, and of Barataria--King Fernando
and the Countess--A Lisbon bull-fight--The "hat-trick"--Courtship
window-parade--The spurred youth of Lisbon--Portuguese
politeness--The De Reszke family--The Opera--Terrible personal
experiences in a circus--The bounding Bishop--Ecclesiastical
possibilities--Portuguese coinage--Beauty of Lisbon--Visits of the
British Fleet--Misguided midshipman--The Legation Whale-boat--"Good
wine needs no bush"--A delightful orange-farm--Cintra--Contrast
between the Past and Present of Portugal


CHAPTER VIII

Brazil--Contrast between Portuguese and Spanish South
America--Moorish traditions--Amazing beauty of Rio de Janeiro--Yellow
fever--The commercial Court Chamberlain--The Emperor Pedro--The
Botanical Gardens of Rio--The quaint diversions of Petropolis--The
liveried young entomologist--Buenos Ayres--The charm of the
"Camp"--Water throwing--A British Minister in Carnival-time--Some
Buenos Ayres peculiarities--Masked balls--Climatic
conditions--Theatres--Restaurants--Wonderful bird-life of the
"Camp"--Estancia Negrete--Duck-shooting--My one flamingo--An
exploring expedition in the Gran Chaco--Hardships--Alligators and
fish--Currency difficulties


CHAPTER IX

Paraguay--Journey up the river--A primitive Capital--Dick the
Australian--His polychrome garb--A Paraguayan Race Meeting--Beautiful
figures of native women--The "Falcon" adventurers--A quaint
railway--Patiño Cué--An extraordinary household--The capable
Australian boy--Wild life in the swamps--"Bushed"--A literary
evening--A railway record--The Tigre midnight
swims--Canada--Maddening flies--A grand salmon-river--The Canadian
backwoods--Skunks and bears--Different views as to industrial progress


CHAPTER X

Former colleagues who have risen to
eminence--Kiderlin-Waechter--Aehrenthal--Colonel Klepsch--The
discomfiture of an inquisitive journalist--Origin of certain Russian
scares--Tokyo--Dulness of Geisha dinners--Japanese culinary
curiosities--"Musical Chairs"--Lack of colour in Japan--The Tokugawa
dynasty--Japanese Gardens--The transplanted suburban Embassy
house--Cherry-blossom--Japanese politeness--An unfortunate incident
in Rome--Eastern courtesy--The country in Japan--An Imperial
duck-catching party--An up-to-date Tokyo house--A Shinto
Temple--Linguistic difficulties at a dinner-party--The economical
colleague--Japan defaced by advertisements


CHAPTER XI

Petrograd through middle-aged eyes--Russians very constant
friends--Russia an Empire of shams--Over-centralisation in
administration--The system hopeless--A complete change of scene--The
West Indies--Trinidad--Personal character of Nicholas II--The weak
point in an Autocracy--The Empress--An opportunity missed--The Great
Collapse--Terrible stories--Love of human beings for ceremonial--Some
personal apologies--Conclusion


Index




  THE VANISHED POMPS OF
  YESTERDAY




  "Lo, all our Pomp of Yesterday
  Is one with Ninevah and Tyre!"
                  --RUDYARD KIPLING




{13}

  THE VANISHED POMPS
  OF YESTERDAY


CHAPTER I

Special Mission to Rome--Berlin in process of transformation--Causes
of Prussian militarism--Lord and Lady Ampthill--Berlin
Society--Music-lovers--Evenings with Wagner--Aristocratic
Waitresses--Rubinstein's rag-time--Liszt's
opinions--Bismarck--Bismarck's classification of
nationalists--Bismarck's sons--Gustav Richter--The Austrian
diplomat--The old Emperor--His defective articulation--Other
Royalties--Beauty of Berlin Palace--Description of interior--The
Luxembourg--"Napoleon III"--Three Court beauties--The pugnacious
Pages--"Making the Circle"--Conversational difficulties--An
ecclesiastical gourmet--The Maharajah's mother.


The tremendous series of events which has changed the face of Europe
since 1914 is so vast in its future possibilities, that certain minor
consequences of the great upheaval have received but scant notice.

Amongst these minor consequences must be included the disappearance
of the Courts of the three Empires of Eastern Europe, Russia,
Germany, and Austria, with all their glitter and pageantry, their
pomp and brilliant _mise-en-scène_.  I will hazard no opinion as to
whether the world is the better for their loss or not; I cannot,
though, help {14} experiencing a feeling of regret that this prosaic,
drab-coloured twentieth century should have definitely lost so strong
an element of the picturesque, and should have permanently severed a
link which bound it to the traditions of the mediæval days of
chivalry and romance, with their glowing colour, their splendid
spectacular displays, and the feeling of continuity with a vanished
past which they inspired.

A tweed suit and a bowler hat are doubtless more practical for
everyday wear than a doublet and trunk-hose.  They are, however,
possibly less picturesque.

Since, owing to various circumstances, I happen from my very early
days to have seen more of this brave show than has fallen to the lot
of most people, some extracts from my diaries, and a few personal
reminiscences of the three great Courts of Eastern Europe, may prove
of interest.

Up to my twentieth year I was familiar only with our own Court.  I
was then sent to Rome with a Special Mission.  As King Victor
Emmanuel had but recently died, there were naturally no Court
entertainments.

The Quirinal is a fine palace with great stately rooms, but it struck
me then, no doubt erroneously, that the Italian Court did not yet
seem quite at home in their new surroundings, and that there was a
subtle feeling in the air of a lack of continuity somewhere.  In the
"'seventies" the House of Savoy had only been established for a very
few years in their new capital.  The conditions in Rome {15} had
changed radically, and somehow one felt conscious of this.

Some ten months later, the ordeal of a competitive examination being
successfully surmounted, I was sent to Berlin as Attaché, at the age
of twenty.

The Berlin of the "'seventies" was still in a state of transition.
The well-built, prim, dull and somewhat provincial _Residenz_ was
endeavouring with feverish energy to transform itself into a
World-City, a _Welt-Stadt_.  The people were still flushed and
intoxicated with victory after victory.  In the seven years between
1864 and 1871 Prussia had waged three successful campaigns.  The
first, in conjunction with Austria, against unhappy little Denmark in
1864; then followed, in 1866, the "Seven Weeks' War," in which
Austria was speedily brought to her knees by the crushing defeat of
Königgrätz, or Sadowa, as it is variously called, by which Prussia
not only wrested the hegemony of the German Confederation from her
hundred-year-old rival, but definitely excluded Austria from the
Confederation itself.  The Hohenzollerns had at length supplanted the
proud House of Hapsburg.  Prussia had further virtually conquered
France in the first six weeks of the 1870 campaign, and on the
conclusion of peace found herself the richer by Alsace, half of
Lorraine, and the gigantic war indemnity wrung from France.  As a
climax the King of Prussia had, with the consent of the feudatory
princes, been proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles on January 18,
1871, for Bismarck, with all {16} his diplomacy, was unable to
persuade the feudatory kings and princes to acquiesce in the title of
Emperor _of_ Germany for the Prussian King.

The new Emperor was nominally only _primus Inter Pares_; he was not
to be over-lord.  Theoretically the crown of Charlemagne was merely
revived, but the result was that henceforth Prussia would dominate
Germany.  This was a sufficient rise for the little State which had
started so modestly in the sandy Mark of Brandenburg (the "sand-box,"
as South Germans contemptuously termed it) in the fifteenth century.
To understand the mentality of Prussians, one must realise that
Prussia is the only country _that always made war pay_.  She had
risen with marvellous rapidity from her humble beginnings entirely by
the power of the sword.  Every campaign had increased her territory,
her wealth, and her influence, and the entire energies of the
Hohenzollern dynasty had been centred on increasing the might of her
army.  The Teutonic Knights had wrested East Prussia from the Wends
by the Power of the sword only.  They had converted the Wends to
Christianity by annihilating them, and the Prussians inherited the
traditions of the Teutonic Knights.  Napoleon, it is true, had
crushed Prussia at Jena, but the latter half of the nineteenth
century was one uninterrupted triumphal progress for her.  No wonder
then that every Prussian looked upon warfare as a business
proposition, and an exceedingly paying one at that.  Everything about
them had been carefully {17} arranged to foster the same idea.  All
the monuments in the Berlin streets were to military heroes.  The
marble groups on the Schloss-Brücke represented episodes in the life
of a warrior.  The very songs taught the children in the schools were
all militarist in tone: "The Good Comrade," "The Soldier," "The Young
Recruit," "The Prayer during Battle," all familiar to every German
child.  When William II, ex-Emperor, found the stately "White Hall"
of the Palace insufficiently gorgeous to accord with his megalomania,
he called in the architect Ihne, and gave directions for a new frieze
round the hall representing "victorious warfare fostering art,
science, trade and industry."  I imagine that William in his Dutch
retreat at Amerongen may occasionally reflect on the consequences of
warfare when it is _not_ victorious.  Trained in such an atmosphere
from their childhood, drinking in militarism with their earliest
breath, can it be wondered at that Prussians worshipped brute-force,
and brute-force alone?

Such a nation of heroes must clearly have a capital worthy of them, a
capital second to none, a capital eclipsing Paris and Vienna.
Berliners had always been jealous of Vienna, the traditional
"Kaiser-Stadt."  Now Berlin was also a "Kaiser-Stadt," and by the
magnificence of its buildings must throw its older rival completely
into the shade.  Paris, too, was the acknowledged centre of European
art, literature, and fashion.  Why?  The French had proved themselves
a nation of decadents, utterly {18} unable to cope with German might.
The sceptre of Paris should be transferred to Berlin.  So building
and renovation began at a feverish rate.

The open drains which formerly ran down every street in Berlin,
screaming aloud to Heaven during the summer months, were abolished,
and an admirable system of main drainage inaugurated.  The appalling
rough cobble-stones, which made it painful even to cross a Berlin
street, were torn up and hastily replaced with asphalte.  A French
colleague of mine used to pretend that the cobble-stones had been
designedly chosen as pavement.  Berliners were somewhat touchy about
the very sparse traffic in their wide streets.  Now one solitary
_droschke_, rumbling heavily over these cobble-stones, produced such
a deafening din that the foreigner was deluded into thinking that the
Berlin traffic rivalled that of London or Paris in its density.

Berlin is of too recent growth to have any elements of the
picturesque about it.  It stands on perfectly flat ground, and its
long, straight streets are terribly wearisome to the eye.  Miles and
miles of ornate stucco are apt to become monotonous, even if
decorated with porcelain plaques, glass mosaics, and other
incongruous details dear to the garish soul of the Berliner.  In
their rage for modernity, the Municipality destroyed the one
architectural feature of the town.  Some remaining eighteenth century
houses had a local peculiarity.  The front doors were on the first
floor, and were approached by two steeply inclined planes, locally
known as _die {19} Rampe_.  A carriage (with, I imagine, infinite
discomfort to the horses) could just struggle up one of these
_Rampe_, deposit its load, and crawl down again to the street-level.
These inclined planes were nearly all swept away.  The _Rampe_ may
have been inconvenient, but they were individual, local and
picturesque.

I arrived at the age of twenty at this Berlin in active process of
ultra-modernising itself, and in one respect I was most fortunate.

The then British Ambassador, one of the very ablest men the English
Diplomatic Service has ever possessed, and his wife, Lady Ampthill,
occupied a quite exceptional position.  Lord Ampthill was a really
close and trusted friend of Bismarck, who had great faith in his
prescience and in his ability to gauge the probable trend of events,
and he was also immensely liked by the old Emperor William, who had
implicit confidence in him.  Under a light and debonair manner the
Ambassador concealed a tremendous reserve of dignity.  He was a man,
too, of quick decisions and great strength of character.  Lady
Ampthill was a woman of exceptional charm and quick intelligence,
with the social gift developed to its highest point in her.  Both the
Ambassador and his wife spoke French, German, and Italian as easily
and as correctly as they did English.  The Ambassador was the
_doyen_, or senior member, of the Diplomatic Body, and Lady Ampthill
was the most intimate friend of the Crown Princess, afterwards the
Empress Frederick.

{20}

From these varied circumstances, and also from sheer force of
character, Lady Ampthill had become the unchallenged social arbitress
of Berlin, a position never before conceded to any foreigner.  As the
French phrase runs, "_Elle faisait la pluie et le beau temps à
Berlin._"

To a boy of twenty life is very pleasant, and the novel surroundings
and new faces amused me.  People were most kind to me, but I soon
made the discovery that many others had made before me, that at the
end of two years one knows Prussians no better than one did at the
end of the first fortnight; that there was some indefinable,
intangible barrier between them and the foreigner that nothing could
surmount.  It was not long, too, before I became conscious of the
under-current of intense hostility to my own country prevailing
amongst the "Court Party," or what would now be termed the "Junker"
Party.  These people looked upon Russia as their ideal of a Monarchy.
The Emperor of Russia was an acknowledged autocrat; the British
Sovereign a constitutional monarch, or, if the term be preferred,
more or less a figure-head.  Tempering their admiration of Russia was
a barely-concealed dread of the potential resources of that mighty
Empire, whose military power was at that period absurdly
overestimated.  England did not claim to be a military State, and in
the "'seventies" the vital importance of sea-power was not yet
understood.  British statesmen, too, had an unfortunate habit of
indulging in sloppy sentimentalities {21} in their speeches, and the
convinced believers in "Practical Politics" (_Real Politik_) had a
profound contempt (I guard myself from saying an unfounded one) for
sloppiness as well as for sentimentality.

The Berliners of the "'seventies" had not acquired what the French
term _l'art de vivre_.  Prussia, during her rapid evolution from an
insignificant sandy little principality into the leading military
State of Europe, had to practise the most rigid economy.  From the
Royal Family downwards, everyone had perforce to live with the
greatest frugality, and the traces of this remained.  The "art of
living" as practised in France, England, and even in Austria during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was impossible in Prussia
under the straitened conditions prevailing there, and it is not an
art to be learnt in a day.  The small dinner-party, the gathering
together of a few congenial friends, was unknown in Berlin.  Local
magnates gave occasionally great dinner-parties of thirty guests or
so, at the grotesque hour of 5 p.m.  It seemed almost immoral to
array oneself in a white tie and swallow-tail coat at four in the
afternoon.  The dinners on these occasions were all sent in from the
big restaurants, and there was no display of plate, and never a
single flower.  As a German friend (probably a fervent believer in
"Practical Politics") said to me, "The best ornament of a
dinner-table is also good food"; nor did the conversation atone by
its brilliancy for the lack of the dainty trimmings which {22} the
taste of Western Europe expects on these occasions.  A never-failing
topic of conversation was to guess the particular restaurant which
had furnished the banquet.  One connoisseur would pretend to detect
"Hiller" in the soup; another was convinced that the fish could only
have been dressed by "Poppenberg."  As soon as we had swallowed our
coffee, we were expected to make our bows and take our leave without
any post-prandial conversation whatever, and at 7 p.m. too!

Thirty people were gathered together to eat, _weiter nichts_, and, to
do them justice, most of them fulfilled admirably the object with
which they had been invited.  The houses, too, were so ugly.  No
_objets d'art_, no personal belongings whatever, and no flowers.  The
rooms might have been in an hotel, and the occupant of the rooms
might have arrived overnight with one small modest suit-case as his,
or her, sole baggage.  There was no individuality whatever about the
ordinary Berlin house, or _appartement_.

I can never remember having heard literature discussed in any form
whatever at Berlin.  For some reason the novelist has never taken
root in Germany.  The number of good German novelists could be
counted on the fingers of both hands, and no one seemed interested in
literary topics.  It was otherwise with music.  Every German is a
genuine music-lover, and the greatest music-lover of them all was
Baroness von Schleinitz, wife of the Minister of the Royal Household.
Hers was {23} a charming house, the stately eighteenth century
_Haus-Ministerium_, with its ornate rococo _Fest-Saal_.  In that
somewhat over-decorated hall every great musician in Europe must have
played at some time or other.  Baron von Schleinitz was, I think, the
handsomest old man I have ever seen, with delightful old-world
manners.  It was a privilege to be asked to Madame de Schleinitz's
musical evenings.  She seldom asked more than forty people, and the
most rigid silence was insisted upon; still every noted musician
passing through Berlin went to her house as a matter of course.  At
the time of my arrival from England, Madame de Schleinitz had struck
up a great alliance with Wagner, and gave two musical evenings a week
as a sort of propaganda, in order to familiarise Berlin amateurs with
the music of the "Ring."  At that time the stupendous Tetralogy had
only been given at Bayreuth and in Munich; indeed I am not sure that
it had then been performed in its entirety in the Bavarian capital.

In the _Fest-Saal_, with its involved and tortured rococo curves, two
grand pianos were placed side by side, a point Wagner insisted upon,
and here the Master played us his gigantic work.  The way Wagner
managed to make the piano suggest brass, strings, or wood-wind at
will was really wonderful.  I think that we were all a little puzzled
by the music of the "Ring"; possibly our ears had not then been
sufficiently trained to grasp the amazing beauty of such a subtle web
of harmonies.  His {24} playing finished, a small, very
plainly-appointed supper-table was placed in the middle of the
_Fest-Saal_, at which Wagner seated himself alone in state.  Then the
long-wished-for moment began for his feminine adorers.  The great
ladies of Berlin would allow no one to wait on the Master but
themselves, and the bearers of the oldest and proudest names in
Prussia bustled about with prodigious fussing, carrying plates of
sauerkraut, liver sausage, black puddings, and herring-salad,
colliding with each other, but in spite of that managing to heap the
supper-table with more Teutonic delicacies than even Wagner's very
ample appetite could assimilate.

I fear that not one of these great ladies would have found it easy to
obtain a permanent engagement as waitress in a restaurant, for their
skill in handling dishes and plates was hardly commensurate with
their zeal.  In justice it must be added that the professional
waitress would not be encumbered with the long and heavy train of
evening dresses in the "'seventies."  These great ladies, anxious to
display their intimate knowledge of the Master's tastes, bickered
considerably amongst themselves.  "Surely, dear Countess, you know by
now that the Master never touches white bread."

"Dearest Princess, Limburger cheese is the only sort the Master cares
for.  You had better take that Gruyère cheese away"; whilst an
extremely attractive little Countess, the bearer of a great German
name, would trip vaguely about, announcing to the world that "The
Master thinks that he could {25} eat two more black puddings.  Where
do you imagine that I could find them?"

Meanwhile from another quarter one would hear an eager "Dearest
Princess, could you manage to get some raw ham?  The Master thinks
that he would like some, or else some raw smoked goose-breast."
"_Aber, allerliebste Gräfin, wissen Sie nicht dass der Meister trinkt
nur dunkles Bier?_" would come as a pathetic protest from some
slighted worshipper who had been herself reproved for ignorance of
the Master's gastronomic tastes.

It must regretfully be confessed that these tastes were rather gross.
Meanwhile Wagner, dressed in a frock-coat and trousers of shiny black
cloth, his head covered with his invariable black velvet skull-cap,
would munch steadily away, taking no notice whatever of those around
him.

The rest of us stood at a respectful distance, watching with a
certain awe this marvellous weaver of harmonies assimilating copious
nourishment.  For us it was a sort of Barmecide's feast, for beyond
the sight of Wagner at supper, we had no refreshments of any sort
offered to us.

Soon afterwards Rubinstein, on his way to St. Petersburg, played at
Madame de Schleinitz's house.  Having learnt that Wagner always made
a point of having two grand pianos side by side when he played,
Rubinstein also insisted on having two.  To my mind, Rubinstein
absolutely ruined the effect of all his own compositions by the
tremendous pace at which he played them.  It was as {26} though he
were longing to be through with the whole thing.  His "Melody in F,"
familiar to every school-girl, he took at such a pace that I really
believe the virulent germ which forty years afterwards was to develop
into Rag-time, and to conquer the whole world with its maddening
syncopated strains, came into being that very night, and was evoked
by Rubinstein himself out of his own long-suffering "Melody in F."

Our Ambassador, himself an excellent musician, was an almost lifelong
friend of Liszt.  Wagner's wife, by the way, was Lizst's daughter,
and had been previously married to Hans von Bulow, the pianist.
Liszt, when passing through Berlin, always dined at our Embassy and
played to us afterwards.  I remember well Lord Ampthill asking Liszt
where he placed Rubinstein as a pianist.  "Rubinstein is, without any
question whatever, the first pianist in the world," answered Liszt
without hesitation.  "But you are forgetting yourself, Abbé,"
suggested the Ambassador.  "Ich," said Liszt, striking his chest,
"Ich bin der einzige Pianist der Welt" ("I; I am the only pianist in
the world").  There was a superb arrogance about this perfectly
justifiable assertion which pleased me enormously at the time, and
pleases me still after the lapse of so many years.

Bismarck was a frequent visitor at our Embassy, and was fond of
dropping in informally in the evening.  Apart from his liking for our
Ambassador, he had a great belief in his judgment and {27}
discretion.  Lady Ampthill, too, was one of the few women Bismarck
respected and really liked.  I think he had a great admiration for
her intellectual powers and quick sense of intuition.

It is perhaps superfluous to state that no man living now occupies
the position Bismarck filled in the "'seventies."  The maker of
Modern Germany was the unchallenged dictator of Europe.  He was
always very civil to the junior members of the Embassy.  I think it
pleased him that we all spoke German fluently, for the acknowledged
supremacy of the French language as a means of communication between
educated persons of different nationalities was always a very sore
point with him.  It must be remembered that Prussia herself had only
comparatively recently been released from the thraldom of the French
language.  Frederick the Great always addressed his _entourage_ in
French.  After 1870-71, Bismarck ordered the German Foreign Office to
reply in the German language to all communications from the French
Embassy.  He followed the same procedure with the Russian Embassy;
whereupon the Russian Ambassador countered with a long despatch
written in Russian to the Wilhelmstrasse.  He received no reply to
this, and mentioned that fact to Bismarck about a fortnight later.
"Ah!" said Bismarck reflectively, "now that your Excellency mentions
it, I think we did receive a despatch in some unknown tongue.  I
ordered it to be put carefully away until we could procure the
services of an expert to decipher {28} it.  I hope to be able to find
such an expert in the course of the next three or four months, and
can only trust that the matter was not a very pressing one."

The Ambassador took the hint, and that was the last note in Russian
that reached the Wilhelmstrasse.

We ourselves always wrote in English, receiving replies in German,
written in the third person, in the curiously cumbrous Prussian
official style.

Bismarck was very fond of enlarging on his favourite theory of the
male and female European nations.  The Germans themselves, the three
Scandinavian peoples, the Dutch, the English proper, the Scotch, the
Hungarians and the Turks, he declared to be essentially male races.
The Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and indeed every Slavonic
people, and all Celts, he maintained, just as emphatically, to be
female races.  A female race he ungallantly defined as one given to
immense verbosity, to fickleness, and to lack of tenacity.  He
conceded to these feminine races some of the advantages of their sex,
and acknowledged that they had great powers of attraction and charm,
when they chose to exert them, and also a fluency of speech denied to
the more virile nations.  He maintained stoutly that it was quite
useless to expect efficiency in any form from one of the female
races, and he was full of contempt for the Celt and the Slav.  He
contended that the most interesting nations were the epicene ones,
partaking, that is, {29} of the characteristics of both sexes, and he
instanced France and Italy, intensely virile in the North, absolutely
female in the South; maintaining that the Northern French had saved
their country times out of number from the follies of the
"Méridionaux."  He attributed the efficiency of the Frenchmen of the
North to the fact that they had so large a proportion of Frankish and
Norman blood in their veins, the Franks being a Germanic tribe, and
the Normans, as their name implied, Northmen of Scandinavian,
therefore also of Teutonic, origin.  He declared that the fair-haired
Piedmontese were the driving power of Italy, and that they owed their
initiative to their descent from the Germanic hordes who invaded
Italy under Alaric in the fifth century.  Bismarck stoutly maintained
that efficiency, wherever it was found, was due to Teutonic blood; a
statement with which I will not quarrel.

As the inventor of "Practical Politics" (_Real-Politik_), Bismarck
had a supreme contempt for fluent talkers and for words, saying that
only fools could imagine that facts could be talked away.  He
cynically added that words were sometimes useful for "papering over
structural cracks" when they had to be concealed for a time.

With his intensely overbearing disposition, Bismarck could not brook
the smallest contradiction, or any criticism whatever.  I have often
watched him in the Reichstag--then housed in a very modest
building--whilst being attacked, especially by Liebknecht the
Socialist.  He made no effort to {30} conceal his anger, and would
stab the blotting-pad before him viciously with a metal paper-cutter,
his face purple with rage.

Bismarck himself was a very clear and forcible speaker, with a happy
knack of coining felicitous phrases.

His eldest son, Herbert Bismarck, inherited all his father's
arrogance and intensely overweening disposition, without one spark of
his father's genius.  He was not a popular man.

The second son, William, universally known as "Bill," was a genial,
fair-headed giant of a man, as generally popular as his elder brother
was the reverse.  Bill Bismarck (the juxtaposition of these two names
always struck me as being comically incongruous) drank so much beer
that his hands were always wet and clammy.  He told me himself that
he always had three bottles of beer placed by his bedside lest he
should be thirsty in the night.  He did not live long.

Moltke, the silent, clean-shaved, spare old man with the sphinx-like
face, who had himself worked out every detail of the Franco-Prussian
War long before it materialised, was an occasional visitor at our
Embassy, as was Gustav Richter, the fashionable Jewish artist.
Richter's paintings, though now sneered at as _Chocolade-Malerei_
(chocolate-box painting), had an enormous vogue in the "'seventies,"
and were reproduced by the hundred thousand.  His picture of Queen
Louise of Prussia, engravings of which are scattered all over the
world, {31} is only a fancy portrait, as Queen Louise had died before
Richter was born.  He had Rauch's beautiful effigy of the Queen in
the mausoleum at Charlottenburg to guide him, but the actual model
was, I believe, a member of the _corps de ballet_ at the Opera.
Madame Richter was the daughter of Mendelssohn the composer, and
there was much speculation in Berlin as to the wonderful artistic
temperament the children of such a union would inherit.  As a matter
of fact, I fancy that none of the young Richters showed any artistic
gifts whatever.

Our Embassy was a very fine building.  The German railway magnate
Strousberg had erected it as his own residence, but as he most
tactfully went bankrupt just as the house was completed, the British
Government was able to buy it at a very low figure indeed, and to
convert it into an Embassy.  Though a little ornate, it was admirably
adapted for this purpose, having nine reception rooms, including a
huge ball-room, all communicating with each other, on the ground
floor.  The "Chancery," as the offices of an Embassy are termed, was
in another building on the Pariser Platz.  This was done to avoid the
constant stream of people on business, of applicants of various
sorts, including "D.B.S.'s" (Distressed British Subjects),
continually passing through the Embassy.  Immediately opposite our
"Chancery," in the same building, and only separated from it by a
_porte-cochère_, was the Chancery of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy.

{32}

Count W----, the Councillor of the Austrian Embassy, was very deaf,
and had entirely lost the power of regulating his voice.  He
habitually shouted in a quarter-deck voice, audible several hundred
yards away.

I was at work in the Chancery one day when I heard a stupendous din
arising from the Austrian Chancery.  "The Imperial Chancellor told
me," thundered this megaphone voice in stentorian German tones, every
word of which must have been distinctly heard in the street, "that
under no circumstances whatever would Germany consent to this
arrangement.  If the proposal is pressed, Germany will resist it to
the utmost, if necessary by force of arms.  The Chancellor, in giving
me this information," went on the strident voice, "impressed upon me
how absolutely secret the matter must be kept.  I need hardly inform
your Excellency that this telegram is confidential to the highest
degree."

"What is that appalling noise in the Austrian Chancery?" I asked our
white-headed old Chancery servant.

"That is Count W---- dictating a cypher telegram to Vienna," answered
the old man with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes.

This little episode has always seemed to me curiously typical of
Austro-Hungarian methods.

The central figure of Berlin was of course the old Emperor William.
This splendid-looking old man may not have been an intellectual
giant, but he {33} certainly looked an Emperor, every inch of him.
There was something, too, very taking in his kindly old face and
genial manner.  The Crown Princess, afterwards the Empress Frederick,
being a British Princess, we were what is known in diplomatic
parlance as "une ambassade de famille."  The entire staff of the
Embassy was asked to dine at the Palace on the birthdays both of
Queen Victoria and of the Crown Princess.  These dinners took place
at the unholy hour of 5 p.m., in full uniform, at the Emperor's ugly
palace on the Linden, the Old Schloss being only used for more formal
entertainments.  On these occasions the sole table decoration
consisted, quaintly enough, of rows of gigantic silver dish-covers,
each surmounted by the Prussian eagle, with nothing under them,
running down the middle of the table.  The old Emperor had been but
indifferently handled by his dentist.  It had become necessary to
supplement Nature's handiwork by art, but so unskilfully had these,
what are euphemistically termed, additions to the Emperor's mouth
been contrived, that his articulation was very defective.  It was
almost impossible to hear what he said, or indeed to make out in what
language he was addressing you.  When the Emperor "made the circle,"
one strained one's ears to the utmost to obtain a glimmering of what
he was saying.  If one detected an unmistakably Teutonic guttural,
one drew a bow at a venture, and murmured "_Zu Befehl Majestät_,"
trusting that it might fit in.  Should one catch, on the other hand,
a slight {34} suspicion of a nasal "n," one imagined that the
language must be French, and interpolated a tentative "_Parfaitement,
Sire_," trusting blindly to a kind Providence.  Still the impression
remains of a kindly and very dignified old gentleman, filling his
part admirably.  The Empress Augusta, who had been beautiful in her
youth, could not resign herself to growing old gracefully.  She would
have made a most charming old lady, but though well over seventy
then, she was ill-advised enough to attempt to rejuvenate herself
with a chestnut wig and an elaborate make-up, with deplorable
results.  The Empress, in addition, was afflicted with a slight palsy
of the head.

The really magnificent figure was the Crown Prince, afterwards the
Emperor Frederick.  Immensely tall, with a full golden beard, he
looked in his white Cuirassier uniform the living embodiment of a
German legendary hero; a Lohengrin in real life.

Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia was a strikingly handsome woman
too, though unfortunately nearly stone deaf.

Though the palace on the Linden may have been commonplace and ugly,
the Old Schloss has to my mind the finest interior in Europe.  It may
lack the endless, bare, gigantic halls of the Winter Palace in
Petrograd, and it may contain fewer rooms than the great rambling
Hofburg in Vienna, but I maintain that, with the possible exception
of the Palace in Madrid, no building in Europe {35} can compare
internally with the Old Schloss in Berlin.  I think the effect the
Berlin palace produces on the stranger is due to the series of rooms
which must be traversed before the State apartments proper are
reached.  These rooms, of moderate dimensions, are very richly
decorated.  Their painted ceilings, encased in richly-gilt "coffered"
work in high relief, have a Venetian effect, recalling some of the
rooms in the Doge's Palace in the sea-girt city of the Adriatic.
Their silk-hung walls, their pictures, and the splendid pieces of old
furniture they contain, redeem these rooms from the soulless,
impersonal look most palaces wear.  They recall the rooms in some of
the finer English or French country-houses, although no private house
would have them in the same number.  The rooms that dwell in my
memory out of the dozen or so that formed the _enfilade_ are, first,
the "Drap d'Or Kammer," with its droll hybrid appellation, the walls
of which were hung, as its name implies, with cloth of gold; then the
"Red Eagle Room," with its furniture and mirrors of carved wood,
covered with thin plates of beaten silver, producing an indescribably
rich effect, and the "Red Velvet" room.  This latter had its walls
hung with red velvet bordered by broad bands of silver lace, and
contained some splendid old gilt furniture.

The Throne room was one of the most sumptuous in the world.  It had
an arched painted ceiling, from which depended some beautiful old
chandeliers of cut rock crystal, and the walls, which framed {36}
great panels of Gobelin tapestry of the best period, were highly
decorated, in florid rococo style, with pilasters and carved groups
representing the four quarters of the world.  The whole of the wall
surface was gilded; carvings, mouldings, and pilasters forming one
unbroken sheet of gold.  We were always told that the musicians'
gallery was of solid silver, and that it formed part of Frederick the
Great's war-chest.  As a matter of fact, Frederick had himself melted
the original gallery down and converted it into cash for one of his
campaigns.  By his orders, a facsimile gallery was carved of wood
heavily silvered over.  The effect produced, however, was the same,
as we were hardly in a position to scrutinise the hall-mark.  The
room contained four semi-circular buffets, rising in diminishing
tiers, loaded with the finest specimens the Prussian Crown possessed
of old German silver-gilt drinking-cups of Nuremberg and Augsburg
workmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

When the Throne room was lighted up at night the glowing colours of
the Gobelin tapestry and the sheen of the great expanses of gold and
silver produced an effect of immense splendour.  With the possible
exception of the Salle des Fêtes in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris,
it was certainly the finest Throne room in Europe.

The first time I saw the Luxembourg hall was as a child of seven,
under the Second Empire, when I was absolutely awe-struck by its
magnificence.  It then contained Napoleon the Third's throne, and
{37} was known as the "Salle du Trône."  A relation pointed out to me
that the covering and curtains of the throne, instead of being of the
stereotyped crimson velvet, were of purple velvet, all spangled with
the golden bees of the Bonapartes.  The Luxembourg hall had then in
the four corners of the coved ceiling an ornament very dear to the
meretricious but effective taste of the Second Empire.  Four immense
globes of sky-blue enamel supported four huge gilt Napoleonic eagles
with outspread wings.  To the crude taste of a child the purple
velvet of the throne, powdered with golden bees, and the gilt eagles
on their turquoise globes, appeared splendidly sumptuous.  Of course
after 1870 all traces of throne and eagles were removed, as well as
the countless "N. III's" with which the walls were plentifully
besprinkled.

What an astute move of Louis Napoleon's it was to term himself the
"Third," counting the poor little "Aiglon," the King of Rome, as the
second of the line, and thus giving a look of continuity and
stability to a brand-new dynasty!  Some people say that the
assumption of this title was due to an accident, arising out of a
printer's error.  After his _coup d'état_, Louis Napoleon issued a
proclamation to the French people, ending "Vive Napoleon!!!"  The
printer, mistaking the three notes of exclamation for the numeral
III, set up "Vive Napoleon III."  The proclamation appeared in this
form, and Louis Napoleon, at once recognising the advantages of it,
adhered to the style.  {38} Whether this is true or not I cannot say.
I was then too young to be able to judge for myself, but older people
have told me that the mushroom Court of the Tuileries eclipsed all
others in Europe in splendour.  The _parvenu_ dynasty needed all the
aid it could derive from gorgeous ceremonial pomp to maintain its
position successfully.

To return to Berlin, beyond the Throne room lay the fine picture
gallery, nearly 200 feet long.  At Court entertainments all the
German officers gathered in this picture gallery and made a living
hedge, between the ranks of which the guests passed on their way to
the famous "White Hall."  These long ranks of men in their
resplendent _Hofballanzug_ were really a magnificent sight, and
whoever first devised this most effective bit of stage-management
deserves great credit.

The White Hall as I knew it was a splendidly dignified room.  As its
name implies, it was entirely white, the mouldings all being silvered
instead of gilt.  Both Germans and Russians are fond of substituting
silvering for gilding.  Personally I think it most effective, but as
the French with their impeccable good taste never employ silvering,
there must be some sound artistic reason against its use.

It must be reluctantly confessed that the show of feminine beauty at
Berlin was hardly on a level with the perfect _mise-en-scène_.  There
were three or four very beautiful women.  Countess Karolyi, the
Austrian Ambassadress, herself a Hungarian, was a tall, graceful
blonde with beautiful hair; she {39} was full of infinite attraction.
Princess William Radziwill, a Russian, was, I think, the loveliest
human being I have ever seen; she was, however, much dreaded on
account of her mordant tongue.  Princess Carolath-Beuthen, a
Prussian, had first seen the light some years earlier than these two
ladies.  She was still a very beautiful woman, and eventually married
as her second husband Count Herbert Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor's
eldest son.

There was, unfortunately, a very wide gap between the looks of these
"stars" and those of the rest of the company.

The interior of the Berlin Schloss put Buckingham Palace completely
in the shade.  The London palace was unfortunately decorated in the
"fifties," during the _époque de mauvais goût_, as the French
comprehensively term the whole period between 1820 and 1880, and it
bears the date written on every unfortunate detail of its decoration.
It is beyond any question whatever the product of the "period of bad
taste."  I missed, though, in Berlin the wealth of flowers which
turns Buckingham Palace into a garden on Court Ball nights.
Civilians too in London have to appear at Court in knee-breeches and
stockings; in Berlin trousers were worn, thus destroying the
_habillé_ look.  As regards the display of jewels and the beauty of
the women at the two Courts, Berlin was simply nowhere.  German
uniforms were of every colour of the rainbow; with us there is an
undue predominance of scarlet, so that the kaleidoscopic effect of
Berlin was never {40} attained in London, added to which too much
scarlet and gold tends to kill the effect of the ladies' dresses.

At the Prussian Court on these State occasions an immense number of
pages made their appearance.  I myself had been a Court page in my
youth, but whereas in England little boys were always chosen for this
part, in Berlin the tallest and biggest lads were selected from the
Cadet School at Lichterfelde.  A great lanky gawk six feet high, with
an incipient moustache, does not show up to advantage in lace
ruffles, with his thin spindle-shanks encased in silk stockings; a
page's trappings being only suitable for little boys.  I remember
well the day when I and my fellow-novice were summoned to try on our
new page's uniforms.  Our white satin knee-breeches and
gold-embroidered white satin waistcoats left us quite cold, but we
were both enchanted with the little pages' swords, in their
white-enamelled scabbards, which the tailor had brought with him.  We
had neither of us ever possessed a real sword of our own before, and
the steel blades were of the most inviting sharpness.  We agreed that
the opportunity was too good a one to be lost, so we determined to
slip out into the garden in our new finery and there engage in a
deadly duel.  It was further agreed to thrust really hard with the
keen little blades, "just to see what would happen."  Fortunately for
us, we had been overheard.  We reached the garden, and, having found
a conveniently secluded spot, had just {41} commenced to make those
vague flourishes with our unaccustomed weapons which our experience,
derived from pictures, led us to believe formed the orthodox
preliminaries to a duel, when the combat was sternly interrupted.
Otherwise there would probably have been vacancies for one if not two
fresh Pages of Honour before nightfall.  What a pity there were no
"movies" in those days!  What a splendid film could have been made of
two small boys, arrayed in all the bravery of silk stockings, white
satin breeches, and lace ruffles, their red tunics heavy with bullion
embroidery, engaged in a furious duel in a big garden.  When the news
of our escapade reached the ears of the highest quarters, preemptory
orders were issued to have the steel blades removed from our swords
and replaced with innocuous pieces of shaped wood.  It was very
ignominious; still the little swords made a brave show, and no one by
looking at them could guess that the white scabbards shielded nothing
more deadly than an inoffensive piece of oak.  A page's sword, by the
way, is not worn at the left side in the ordinary manner, but is
passed through two slits in the tunic, and is carried in the small of
the back, so that the boy can keep his hands entirely free.

The "White Hall" has a splendid inlaid parquet floor, with a crowned
Prussian eagle in the centre of it.  This eagle was a source of
immense pride to the palace attendants, who kept it in a high state
of polish.  As a result the eagle was as slippery as ice, and woe
betide the unfortunate dancer {42} who set his foot on it.  He was
almost certain to fall; and to fall down at a Berlin State ball was
an unpardonable offence.  If a German officer, the delinquent had his
name struck off the list of those invited for a whole year.  If a
member of the Corps Diplomatique, he received strong hints to avoid
dancing again.  Certainly the diplomats were sumptuously entertained
at supper at the Berlin Palace; whether the general public fared as
well I do not know.

Urbain, the old Emperor William's French chef, who was responsible
for these admirable suppers, had published several cookery books in
French, on the title-page of which he described himself as "Urbain,
premier officier de bouche de S.M. l'Empereur d'Allemagne."  This
quaint-sounding title was historically quite correct, it being the
official appellation of the head cooks of the old French kings.  A
feature of the Berlin State balls was the stirrup-cup of hot punch
given to departing guests.  Knowing people hurried to the grand
staircase at the conclusion of the entertainment; here servants
proffered trays of this delectable compound.  It was concocted, I
believe, of equal parts of arrack and rum, with various other unknown
ingredients.  In the same way, at Buckingham Palace in Queen
Victoria's time, wise persons always asked for hock cup.  This was
compounded of very old hock and curious liqueurs, from a
hundred-year-old recipe.  A truly admirable beverage!  Now, alas!
since Queen Victoria's day, only a memory.

{43}

The Princesses of the House of Prussia had one ordeal to face should
they become betrothed to a member of the Royal Family of any other
country.  They took leave formally of the diplomats at the Palace,
"making the circle" by themselves.  I have always understood that
Prussian princesses were trained for this from their childhood by
being placed in the centre of a circle of twenty chairs, and being
made to address some non-committal remark to each chair in turn, in
German, French, and English.  I remember well Princess Louise
Margaret of Prussia, afterwards our own Duchess of Connaught, who was
to become so extraordinarily popular not only in England but in India
and Canada as well, making her farewell at Berlin on her betrothal.
She "made the circle" of some forty people, addressing a remark or
two to each, entirely alone, save for two of the great long, gawky
Prussian pages in attendance on her, looking in their red tunics for
all the world like London-grown geraniums--all stalk and no leaves.
It is a terribly trying ordeal for a girl of eighteen, and the
Duchess once told me that she nearly fainted from sheer nervousness
at the time, although she did not show it in the least.

If I may be permitted a somewhat lengthy digression, I would say that
it is at times extremely difficult to find topics of conversation.
Years afterwards, when I was stationed at our Lisbon Legation, the
Papal Nuncio was very tenacious of his dignity.  In Catholic
countries the Nuncio is _ex officio_ head {44} of the Diplomatic
Body, and the Nuncio at Lisbon expected every diplomat to call on him
at least six times a year.  On his reception days the Nuncio always
arrayed himself in his purple robes and a lace cotta, with his great
pectoral emerald cross over it.  He then seated himself in state in a
huge carved chair, with a young priest as aide-de-camp, standing
motionless behind him.  It was always my ill-fortune to find the
Nuncio alone.  Now what possible topic of conversation could I, a
Protestant, find with which to fill the necessary ten minutes with an
Italian Archbishop _in partibus_.  We could not well discuss the
latest fashions in copes, or any impending changes in the College of
Cardinals.  Most providentally, I learnt that this admirable
ecclesiastic, so far from despising the pleasures of the table, made
them his principal interest in life.  I know no more of the
intricacies of the Italian _cuisine_ than Melchizedek knew about
frying sausages, but I had a friend, the wife of an Italian
colleague, deeply versed in the mysteries of Tuscan cooking.  This
kindly lady wrote me out in French some of the choicest recipes in
her extensive _répertoire_, and I learnt them all off by heart.
After that I was the Nuncio's most welcome visitor.  We argued hotly
over the respective merits of _risotto alia Milanese_ and _risotto al
Salto_.  We discussed _gnocchi_, _pasta asciutta_, and novel methods
of preparing _minestra_, I trust without undue partisan heat, until
the excellent prelate's eyes gleamed and his mouth began to water.
Donna Maria, my Italian friend, proved an {45} inexhaustible mine of
recipes.  She always produced new ones, which I memorised, and
occasionally wrote out for the Nuncio, sometimes, with all the valour
of ignorance, adding a fancy ingredient or two on my own account.  On
one occasion, after I had detailed the constituent parts of an
extraordinarily succulent composition of rice, cheese, oil,
mushrooms, chestnuts, and tomatoes, the Nuncio nearly burst into
tears with emotion, and I feel convinced that, heretic though I might
be, he was fully intending to give me his Apostolic benediction, had
not the watchful young priest checked him.  I felt rewarded for my
trouble when my chief, the British Minister, informed me that the
Nuncio considered me the most intelligent young man he knew.  He
added further that he enjoyed my visits, as my conversation was so
interesting.

The other occasion on which I experienced great conversational
difficulties was in Northern India at the house of a most popular and
sporting Maharajah.  His mother, the old Maharani, having just
completed her seventy-first year, had emerged from the seclusion of
the zenana, where she had spent fifty-five years of her life, or, in
Eastern parlance, had "come from behind the curtain."  We paid short
ceremonial visits at intervals to the old lady, who sat amid piles of
cushions, a little brown, shrivelled, mummy-like figure, so swathed
in brocades and gold tissue as to be almost invisible.  The Maharajah
was most anxious that I should talk to his mother, but what possible
subject of conversation {46} could I find with an old lady who had
spent fifty-five years in the pillared (and somewhat uncleanly)
seclusions of the zenana?  Added to which the Maharani knew no Urdu,
but only spoke Bengali, a language of which I am ignorant.  This
entailed the services of an interpreter, always an embarrassing
appendage.  On occasions of this sort Morier's delightful book _Hadji
Baba_ is invaluable, for the author gives literal English
translations of all the most flowery Persian compliments.  Had the
Maharani been a Mohammedan, I could have addressed her as "Oh
moon-faced ravisher of hearts!  I trust that you are reposing under
the canopy of a sound brain!"  Being a Hindoo, however, she would not
be familiar with Persian forms of politeness.  A few remarks on lawn
tennis, or the increasing price of polo ponies, would obviously fail
to interest her.  You could not well discuss fashions with an old
lady who had found one single garment sufficient for her needs all
her days, and any questions as to details of her life in the zenana,
or that of the other inmates of that retreat, would have been
indecorous in the highest degree.  Nothing then remained but to
remark that the Maharajah was looking remarkably well, but that he
had unquestionably put on a great deal of weight since I had last
seen him.  I received the startling reply from the interpreter
(delivered in the clipped, staccato tones most natives of India
assume when they speak English), "Her Highness says that, thanks to
God, and to his mother's cooking, her son's belly is increasing
indeed to vast size."

{47}

Bearing in mind these later conversational difficulties, I cannot but
admire the ease with which Royal personages, from long practice,
manage to address appropriate and varied remarks to perhaps forty
people of different nationalities, whilst "making the circle."




{48}

CHAPTER II

Easy-going Austria--Vienna--Charm of town--A little piece of
history---International families--Family
pride--"Schlüssel-Geld"--Excellence of Vienna restaurants--The origin
of "_Croissants_"--Good looks of Viennese women--Strauss's
operettas--A ball in an old Vienna house--Court entertainments--The
Empress Elisabeth--Delightful environs of Vienna--The Berlin Congress
of 1878--Lord Beaconsfield--M. de Blowitz--Treaty telegraphed to
London--Environs of Berlin--Potsdam and its lakes--The bow-oar of the
Embassy "four"--Narrow escape of ex-Kaiser--The Potsdam
palaces--Transfer to Petrograd--Glamour of Russia--An evening with
the Crown Prince at Potsdam.


Our Embassy at Vienna was greatly overworked at this time, owing to
the illness of two of the staff, and some fresh developments of the
perennial "Eastern Question."  I was accordingly "lent" to the Vienna
Embassy for as long as was necessary, and left at once for the
Austrian capital.

At the frontier station of Tetschen the transition from cast-iron,
dictatorial, overbearing Prussian efficiency to the good-natured,
easy-going, slipshod methods of the "ramshackle Empire" was
immediately apparent.

The change from Berlin to Vienna was refreshing.  The straight,
monotonous, well-kept streets of the Northern capital lacked life and
animation.  It was a very fine frame enclosing no picture.  The
Vienna {49} streets were as gay as those of Paris, and one was
conscious of being in a city with centuries of traditions.  The Inner
Town of Vienna with its narrow winding streets is extraordinarily
picturesque.  The demolisher has not been given the free hand he has
been allowed in Paris, and the fine _baroque_ houses still remaining
give an air of great distinction to this part of the town, with its
many highly-decorative, if somewhat florid, fountains and columns.
One was no longer in the "pushful" atmosphere of Prussia.  These
cheery, easy-going Viennese loved music and dancing, eating and
drinking, laughter and fun.  They were quite content to drift lazily
down the stream of life, with as much enjoyment and as little trouble
as possible.  They might be a decadent race, but they were
essentially _gemüthliche Leute_.  The untranslatable epithet
_gemüthlich_ implies something at once "comfortable," "sociable,"
"cosy," and "pleasant."

The Austrian aristocracy were most charming people.  They had all
intermarried for centuries, and if they did not trouble their
intellect much, there may have been physical difficulties connected
with the process for which they were not responsible.  The degree of
warmth of their reception of foreigners was largely dependent upon
whether he, or she, could show the indispensable _sechzehn Ahnen_
(the "sixteen quarterings").  Once satisfied (or the reverse) as to
this point, to which they attach immense importance, the situation
became easier.  As the whole of these people were interrelated, they
{50} were all on Christian names terms, and the various "Mitzis,"
"Kitzis," "Fritzis," and other characteristically Austrian
abbreviations were a little difficult to place at times.

It was impossible not to realise that the whole nation was living on
the traditions of their splendid past.  It must be remembered that in
the sixteenth century the Hapsburgs ruled the whole of Europe with
the exception of France, England, Russia, and the Scandinavian
countries.  For centuries after Charlemagne assumed the Imperial
Crown there had been only one Emperor in Europe, the "Holy Roman
Emperor," the "Heiliger Römischer Kaiser," the fiction being, of
course, that he was the descendant of the Cæsars.  The word "Kaiser"
is only the German variant of Cæsar.  France and England had always
consistently refused to acknowledge the overlordship of the Emperor,
but the prestige of the title in German-speaking lands was immense,
though the Holy Roman Empire itself was a mere simulacrum of power.
In theory the Emperor was elected; in practice the title came to be a
hereditary appanage of the proud Hapsburgs.  It was, I think,
Talleyrand who said "L'Autrice a la Fächeuse habitude d'être toujours
battue," and this was absolutely true.  Austria was defeated with
unfailing regularity in almost every campaign, and the Hapsburgs saw
their immense dominions gradually slipping from their grasp.  It was
on May 14, 1804, that Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French in
Paris, and Francis II, the last of {51} the Holy Roman Emperors, was
fully aware that Napoleon's next move would be to supplant him and
get himself elected as "Roman Emperor."  This Napoleon would have
been able to achieve, as he had bribed the Electors of Bavaria,
Württemberg, and Saxony by creating them kings.  For once a Hapsburg
acted with promptitude.  On August 11, 1804, Francis proclaimed
himself hereditary Emperor of Austria, and two years later he
abolished the title of Holy Roman Emperor.  The Empire, after a
thousand years of existence, flickered out ingloriously in 1806.  The
pride of the Hapsburgs had received a hundred years previously a rude
shock.  Peter the Great, after consolidating Russia, abolished the
title of Tsar of Muscovy, and proclaimed himself Emperor of All the
Russias; purposely using the same term "Imperator" as that employed
by the Roman Emperor, and thus putting himself on an equality with
him.

I know by experience that it is impossible to din into the heads of
those unfamiliar with Russia that since Peter the Great's time there
has never been a Tsar.  The words "Tsar," "Tsarina," "Cesarevitch,"
beloved of journalists, exist only in their imagination; they are
never heard in Russia.  The Russians termed their Emperor "Gosudar
Imperator," using either or both of the words.  Empress is
"Imperatritza"; Heir Apparent "Nadslyédnik."  If you mentioned the
words "Tsar" or "Tsarina" to any ordinary Russian peasant, I doubt if
he would understand you, but I am well {52} aware that it is no use
repeating this, the other idea is too firmly ingrained.  The
Hapsburgs had yet another bitter pill to swallow.  Down to the middle
of the nineteenth century the ancient prestige of the title Kaiser
and the glamour attached to it were maintained throughout the
Germanic Confederation, but in 1871 a second brand-new Kaiser arose
on the banks of the Spree, and the Hapsburgs were shorn of their long
monopoly.

Franz Josef of Austria must have rued the day when Sigismund sold the
sandy Mark of Brandenburg to Frederick Count of Hohenzollern in 1415,
and regretted the acquiescence in 1701 of his direct ancestor, the
Emperor Leopold I, in the Elector of Brandenburg's request that he
might assume the title of King of Prussia.  The Hohenzollerns were
ever a grasping race.  I think that it was Louis XIV of France who,
whilst officially recognising the new King of Prussia, refused to
speak of him as such, and always alluded to him as "Monsieur le
Marquis de Brandenbourg."

No wonder that the feeling of bitterness against Prussia amongst the
upper classes of Austria was very acute in the "'seventies."  The
events of 1866 were still too recent to have been forgotten.  In my
time the great Austrian ladies affected the broadest Vienna popular
dialect, probably to emphasise the fact that they were not Prussians.
Thus the sentence "ein Glas Wasser, bitte," became, written in
phonetic English, "a' Glawss Vawsser beet."  I myself was much
rallied on my pedantic {53} North-German pronunciation, and had in
self-defence to adopt unfamiliar Austrian equivalents for many words.

The curious international families which seemed to abound in Vienna
always puzzled me.  Thus the princes d'Aremberg are Belgians, but
there was one Prince d'Aremberg in the Austrian service, whilst his
brother was in the Prussian Diplomatic Service, the remainder of the
family being Belgians.  There were, in the same way, many
German-speaking Pourtales in Berlin in the German service, and more
French-speaking ones in Paris in the French service.  The Duc de Croy
was both a Belgian and an Austrian subject.  The Croys are one of the
oldest families in Europe, and are _ebenbürtig_ ("born on an
equality") with all the German Royalties.  They therefore show no
signs of respect to Archdukes and Archduchesses when they meet them.
Although I cannot vouch personally for them, never having myself seen
them, I am told that there are two pictures in the Croy Palace at
Brussels which reach the apogee of family pride.  The first depicts
Noah embarking on his ark.  Although presumably anxious about the
comfort of the extensive live-stock he has on board, Noah finds time
to give a few parting instructions to his sons.  On what is
technically called a "bladder" issuing from his mouth are the words,
"And whatever you do, don't forget to bring with you the family
papers of the Croys."  ("Et surtout ayez soin de ne pas oublier les
papiers de la Maison de Croy!")  The {54} other picture represents
the Madonna and Child, with the then Duke of Croy kneeling in
adoration before them.  Out of the Virgin Mary's mouth comes a
"bladder" with the words "But please put on your hat, dear cousin."
("Mais couvrez vous donc, cher cousin.")

The whole of Viennese life is regulated by one exceedingly tiresome
custom.  After 10 or 10.15 p.m. the hall porter (known in Vienna as
the "House-master") of every house in the city has the right of
levying a small toll of threepence on each person entering or leaving
the house.  The whole life of the Vienna bourgeois is spent in trying
to escape this tax, known as "Schlüssel-Geld."  The theatres commence
accordingly at 6 p.m. or 6.30, which entails dining about 5 p.m.  A
typical Viennese middle-class family will hurry out in the middle of
the last act and scurry home breathlessly, as the fatal hour
approaches.  Arrived safely in their flat, in the last stages of
exhaustion, they say triumphantly to each other.  "We have missed the
end of the play, and we are rather out of breath, but never mind, we
have escaped the 'Schlüssel-Geld,' and as we are four, that makes a
whole shilling saved!"

An equally irritating custom is the one that ordains that in
restaurants three waiters must be tipped in certain fixed
proportions.  The "Piccolo," who brings the wine and bread, receives
one quarter of the tip; the "Speisetrager," who brings the actual
food, gets one half; the "Zahlkellner," {55} who brings the bill,
gets one quarter.  All these must be given separately, so not only
does it entail a hideous amount of mental arithmetic, but it also
necessitates the perpetual carrying about of pocketfuls of small
change.

The Vienna restaurants were quite excellent, with a local cuisine of
extraordinary succulence, and more extraordinary names.  A universal
Austrian custom, not only in restaurants but in private houses as
well, is to serve a glass of the delicious light Vienna beer with the
soup.  Even at State dinners at the Hof-Burg, a glass of beer was
always offered with the soup.  The red wine, Voslauer, grown in the
immediate vicinity of the city, is so good, and has such a
distinctive flavour, that I wonder it has never been exported.  The
restaurants naturally suggest the matchless Viennese orchestras.
They were a source of never-ending delight to me.  The distinction
they manage to give to quite commonplace little airs is
extraordinary.  The popular songs, "Wiener-Couplets," melodious, airy
nothings, little light soap-bubbles of tunes, are one of the
distinctive features of Vienna.  Played by an Austrian band as only
an Austrian band can play them, with astonishing vim and fire, and
supremely dainty execution, these little fragile melodies are quite
charming and irresistibly attractive.  We live in a progressive age.
In the place of these Austrian bands with their finished execution
and consummately musicianly feeling, the twentieth century {56} has
invented the Jazz band with its ear-splitting, chaotic din.

There is a place in Vienna known as the Heiden-Schuss, or "Shooting
of the heathens." The origin of this is quite interesting.

In 1683 the Turks invaded Hungary, and, completely overrunning the
country, reached Vienna, to which they laid siege, for the second
time in its history.  Incidentally, they nearly succeeded in
capturing it.  During the siege bakers' apprentices were at work one
night in underground bakehouses, preparing the bread for next day's
consumption.  The lads heard a rhythmic "thump, thump, thump," and
were much puzzled by it.  Two of the apprentices, more intelligent
than the rest, guessed that the Turks were driving a mine, and ran
off to the Commandant of Vienna with their news.  They saw the
principal engineer officer and told him of their discovery.  He
accompanied them back to the underground bakehouse, and at once
determined that the boys were right.  Having got the direction from
the sound, the Austrians drove a second tunnel, and exploded a
powerful counter-mine.  Great numbers of Turks were killed, and the
siege was temporarily raised.  On September 12 of the same year
(1683) John Sobieski, King of Poland, utterly routed the Turks, drove
them back into their own country, and Vienna was saved.  As a reward
for the intelligence shown by the baker-boys, they were granted the
privilege of making and selling a rich kind of roll (into the {57}
composition of which butter entered largely) in the shape of the
Turkish emblem, the crescent.  These rolls became enormously popular
amongst the Viennese, who called them _Kipfeln_.  When Marie
Antoinette married Louis XVI of France, she missed her Kipfel, and
sent to Vienna for an Austrian baker to teach his Paris _confrères_
the art of making them.  These rolls, which retained their original
shape, became as popular in Paris as they had been in Vienna, and
were known as _Croissants_, and that is the reason why one of the
rolls which are brought you with your morning coffee in Paris will be
baked in the form of a crescent.

The extraordinary number of good-looking women, of all classes to be
seen in the streets of Vienna was most striking, especially after
Berlin, where a lower standard of feminine beauty prevailed.
Particularly noticeable were the admirable figures with which most
Austrian women are endowed.  In the far-off "'seventies" ladies did
not huddle themselves into a shapeless mass of abbreviated oddments
of material--they dressed, and their clothes fitted them; and a woman
on whom Nature (or Art) had bestowed a good figure was able to
display her gifts to the world.  In the same way, Fashion did not
compel a pretty girl to smother up her features in unbecoming tangles
of tortured hair.  The usual fault of Austrian faces is their breadth
across the cheek-bones; the Viennese too have a decided tendency {58}
to _embonpoint_, but in youth these defects are not accentuated.
Amongst the Austrian aristocracy the great beauty of the girls was
very noticeable, as was their height, in marked contrast to the short
stature of most of the men.  I have always heard that one of the
first outward signs of the decadence of a race is that the girls grow
taller, whilst the men get shorter.

The Vienna theatres are justly celebrated.  At the Hof-Burg Theatre
may be seen the most finished acting on the German stage.  The Burg
varied its programme almost nightly, and it was an amusing sight to
see the troops of liveried footmen inquiring at the box-office, on
behalf of their mistresses, whether the play to be given that night
was or was not a _Comtessen-Stück_, _i.e._, a play fit for young
girls to see.  The box-keeper always gave a plain "Yes" or "No" in
reply.  After Charles Garnier's super-ornate pile in Paris, the
Vienna Opera-house is the finest in Europe, and the musical standard
reaches the highest possible level, completely eclipsing Paris in
that respect.  In the "'seventies" Johann Strauss's delightful comic
operas still retained their vogue.  Bubbling over with merriment,
full of delicious ear-tickling melodies, and with a "go" and an
irresistible intoxication about them that no French composer has ever
succeeded in emulating, these operettas, "Die Fledermaus," "Prinz
Methusalem," and "La Reine Indigo," would well stand revival.  When
the "Fledermaus" {59} was revived in London some ten years ago it
ran, if my memory serves me right, for nearly a year.  Occasionally
Strauss himself conducted one of his own operettas; then the
orchestra, responding to his magical baton, played like very demons.
Strauss had one peculiarity.  Should he be dissatisfied with the vim
the orchestra put into one of his favourite numbers, he would snatch
the instrument from the first violin and play it himself.  Then the
orchestra answered like one man, and one left the theatre with the
entrancing strains still tingling in one's ears.

The family houses of most of the Austrian nobility were in the Inner
Town, the old walled city, where space was very limited.  These fine
old houses, built for the greater part in the Italian baroque style,
though splendid for entertaining, were almost pitch dark and very
airless in the daytime.  Judging, too, from the awful smells in them,
they must have been singularly insanitary dwellings.  The Lobkowitz
Palace, afterwards the French Embassy, was so dark by day that
artificial light had always to be used.  In the great seventeenth
century ball-room of the Lobkowitz Palace there was a railed off
oak-panelled alcove containing a bust of Beethoven, an oak table, and
three chairs.  It was in that alcove, and at that table, that
Beethoven, when librarian to Prince Lobkowitz, composed some of his
greatest works.

Our own Embassy in the Metternichgasse, built {60} by the British
Government, was rather cramped and could in no way compare with the
Berlin house.

I remember well a ball given by Prince S----, head of one of the
greatest Austrian families, in his fine but extremely dark house in
the Inner Town.  It was Prince S----'s custom on these occasions to
have three hundred young peasants sent up from his country estates,
and to have them all thrust into the family livery.  These bucolic
youths, looking very sheepish in their unfamiliar plush breeches and
stockings, with their unkempt heads powdered, and with swords at
their sides, stood motionless on every step of the staircase.  I
counted one hundred of these rustic retainers on the staircase alone.
They would have looked better had their liveries occasionally fitted
them.  The ball-room at Prince S----'s was hung with splendid
Brussels seventeenth century tapestry framed in mahogany panels,
heavily carved and gilt.  I have never seen this combination of
mahogany, gilding, and tapestry anywhere else.  It was wonderfully
decorative, and with the elaborate painted ceiling made a fine
setting for an entertainment.  It was a real pleasure to see how
whole-heartedly the Austrians threw themselves into the dancing.  I
think they all managed to retain a child's power of enjoyment, and
they never detracted from this by any unnecessary brainwork.  Still
they were delightfully friendly, easy-going people.  A distinctive
feature of every Vienna ball {61} was the "Comtessen-Zimmer," or room
reserved for girls.  At the end of every dance they all trooped in
there, giggling and gossiping, and remained there till the music for
the next dance struck up.  No married woman dared intrude into the
"Comtessen-Zimmer," and I shudder to think of what would have
befallen the rash male who ventured to cross that jealously-guarded
threshold.  I imagine that the charming and beautifully-dressed
Austrian married women welcomed this custom, for between the dances
at all events they could still hold the field, free from the
competition of a younger and fresher generation.

At Prince S----'s, at midnight, armies of rustic retainers, in their
temporary disguise, brought battalions of supper tables into the
ball-room, and all the guests sat down to a hot supper at the same
time.  As an instance of how Austrians blended simplicity with a
great love of externals, I see from my diary that the supper
consisted of bouillon, of plain-boiled carp with horse-radish, of
thick slices of hot roast beef, and a lemon ice--and nothing else
whatever.  A sufficiently substantial repast, but hardly in
accordance with modern ideas as to what a ball-supper should consist
of.  The young peasants, considering that it was their first attempt
at waiting, did not break an undue number of plates; they tripped at
times, though, over their unaccustomed swords, and gaped vacantly, or
would get hitched up with each other, when more dishes crashed to
their doom.

{62}

In Vienna there was a great distinction drawn between a "Court Ball"
(Hof-Ball) and a "Ball at the Court" (Ball bei Hof).  To the former
everyone on the Palace list was invited, to the latter only a few
people; and the one was just as crowded and disagreeable as the other
was the reverse.  The great rambling pile of the Hof-Burg contains
some very fine rooms and a marvellous collection of works of art, and
the so-called "Ceremonial Apartments" are of quite Imperial
magnificence, but the general effect was far less striking than in
Berlin.

In spite of the beauty of the women, the _coup d'oeil_ was spoilt by
the ugly Austrian uniforms.  After the disastrous campaign of 1866,
the traditional white of the Austrian Army was abolished, and the
uniforms were shorn of all unnecessary trappings.  The military
tailors had evolved hideous garments, ugly in colour, unbecoming in
cut.  One can only trust that they proved very economical, but the
contrast with the splendid and admirably made uniforms of the
Prussian Army was very marked.  The Hungarian magnates in their
traditional family costumes (from which all Hussar uniforms are
derived) added a note of gorgeous colour, with their gold-laced
tunics and their many-hued velvet slung-jackets.  I remember, on the
occasion of Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887, the astonishment caused
by a youthful and exceedingly good-looking Hungarian who appeared at
Buckingham Palace in skin-tight blue breeches {63} lavishly
embroidered with gold over the thighs, entirely gilt Hessian boots to
the knee, and a tight-fitting tunic cut out of a real tiger-skin,
fastened with some two dozen turquoise buttons the size of
five-shilling pieces.  When this resplendent youth reappeared in
London ten years later at the Diamond Jubilee, it was with a tonsured
head, and he was wearing the violet robes of a prelate of the Roman
Church.

As an instance of the inflexibility of the cast-iron rules of the
Hapsburg Court: I may mention that the beautiful Countess Karolyi,
Austrian Ambassadress in Berlin, was never asked to Court in Vienna,
as she lacked the necessary "sixteen quarterings."  To a non-Austrian
mind it seems illogical that the lovely lady representing Austria in
Berlin should have been thought unfitted for an invitation from her
own Sovereign.

The immense deference paid to the Austrian Archdukes and
Archduchesses was very striking after the comparatively unceremonious
fashion in which minor German royalties (always excepting the Emperor
and the Crown Prince) were treated in Berlin.  The Archduchesses
especially were very tenacious of their privileges.  They never could
forget that they were Hapsburgs, and exacted all the traditional
signs of respect.

The unfortunate Empress Elisabeth, destined years after to fall under
the dagger of an assassin at Geneva, made but seldom a public
appearance in her husband's dominions.  She had an almost {64} morbid
horror of fulfilling any of the duties of her position.  During my
stay in the Austrian capital I only caught one glimpse of her,
driving through the streets.  She was astonishingly handsome, with
coiled masses of dark hair, and a very youthful and graceful figure,
but the face was so impassive that it produced the effect of a
beautiful, listless mask.  The Empress was a superb horse-woman, and
every single time she rode she was literally sewn into her habit by a
tailor, in order to ensure a perfect fit.

The innumerable cafés of Vienna were crowded from morning to night.
Seeing them crammed with men in the forenoon, one naturally wondered
how the business of the city was transacted.  Probably, in typical
Austrian fashion, these worthy Viennese left their businesses to take
care of themselves whilst they enjoyed themselves in the cafés.  The
super-excellence of the Vienna coffee would afford a more or less
legitimate excuse for this.  Nowhere in the world is such coffee
made, and a "Capuziner," or a "Melange," the latter with thick
whipped cream on the top of it, were indeed things of joy.

Few capitals are more fortunate in their environs than Vienna.  The
beautiful gardens and park of Schönbrunn Palace have a sort of
intimate charm which is wholly lacking at Versailles.  They are
stately, yet do not overwhelm you with a sense of vast spaces.  They
are crowned by a sort of temple, known as the Gloriette, {65} from
which a splendid view is obtained.

In less than three hours from the capital, the railway climbs 3,000
feet to the Semmering, where the mountain scenery is really grand.
During the summer months the whole of Vienna empties itself on to the
Semmering and the innumerable other hill-resorts within easy distance
from the city.

When the time came for my departure, I felt genuinely sorry at
leaving this merry, careless, music and laughter-loving town, and
these genial, friendly, hospitable incompetents.  I feel some
compunction in using this word, as people had been very good to me.
I cannot help feeling, though, that it is amply warranted.  A bracing
climate is doubtless wholesome; but a relaxing one can be very
pleasant for a time.  I went back to Berlin feeling like a boy
returning to school after his holidays.

The Viennese had but little love for their upstart rival on the
Spree.  They had invented the name "Parvenupopolis" for Berlin, and a
little popular song, which I may be forgiven for quoting in the
original German, expressed their sentiments fairly accurately:

  Es gibt nur eine Kaiserstadt,
  Es gibt nur ein Wien;
  Es gibt nur ein Raubernest,
  Und das heisst Berlin.


I had a Bavarian friend in Berlin.  We talked over the amazing
difference in temperament there {66} was between the Austrians and
the Prussians, and the curious charm there was about the former,
lacking in intellect though they might be, a charm wholly lacking in
the pushful, practical Prussians.  My friend agreed, but claimed the
same attractive qualities for his own beloved Bavarians; "but," he
added impressively, "mark my words, in twenty years from now the
whole of Germany will be Prussianised!" ("_Ganz Deutschland wird
verpreussert werden_") Events have shown how absolutely correct my
Bavarian friend was in his forecast.

In June, 1878, the great Congress for the settlement of the terms of
peace between Russia and Turkey assembled in Berlin.  It was an
extraordinarily interesting occasion, for almost every single
European notability was to be seen in the German capital.  The
Russian plenipotentiaries were the veteran Prince Gortchakoff and
Count Peter Schouvaloff, that most genial _faux-bonhomme_; the Turks
were championed by Ali Pasha and by Katheodory Pasha.  Great Britain
was represented by Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury; Austria by Count
Andrassy, the Prime Minister; France by M. Waddington.  In spite of
the very large staff brought out from London by the British
plenipotentiaries, an enormous amount of work fell upon us at the
Embassy.

To a youngster there is something very fascinating in being regarded
as so worthy of confidence that the most secret details of the great
game of diplomacy were all known to him from {67} day to day.  A boy
of twenty-one feels very proud of the trust reposed in him, and at
being the repository of such weighty and important secrets.  That is
the traditional method of the British Diplomatic Service.

As all the Embassies gave receptions in honour of their own
plenipotentiaries, we met almost nightly all the great men of Europe,
and had occasional opportunities for a few words with them.  Prince
Gortchakoff, who fancied himself Bismarck's only rival, was a little,
short, tubby man in spectacles; wholly undistinguished in appearance,
and looking for all the world like an average French provincial
notaire.  Count Andrassy, the Hungarian, was a tall, strikingly
handsome man, with an immense head of hair.  To me, he always
recalled the leader of a "Tzigane" orchestra.  M. Waddington talked
English like an Englishman, and was so typically British in
appearance that it was almost impossible to realise that he was a
Frenchman.  Our admiration for him was increased when we learnt that
he had rowed in the Cambridge Eight.  But without any question
whatever, the personality which excited the greatest interest at the
Berlin Congress was that of Lord Beaconsfield, the Jew who by sheer
force of intellect had raised himself from nothing into his present
commanding position.  His peculiar, colourless, inscrutable face,
with its sphinx-like impassiveness; the air of mystery which somehow
clung about him; the romantic story of his career; even the remnants
of {68} dandyism which he still retained in his old age--all these
seemed to whet the insatiable public curiosity about him.  Some
enterprising Berlin tradesmen had brought out fans, with leaves
composed of plain white vellum, designed expressly for the Congress.
Armed with one of these fans, and with pen and ink, indefatigable
feminine autograph-hunters moved about at these evening receptions,
securing the signatures of the plenipotentiaries on the white vellum
leaves.  Many of those fans must still be in existence, and should
prove very interesting to-day.  Bismarck alone invariably refused his
autograph.

At all these gatherings, M. de Blowitz, the then Paris correspondent
of the _Times_, was much to the fore.  In the "'seventies" the
prestige of the _Times_ on the Continent of Europe was enormous.  In
reality the influence of the _Times_ was very much overrated, since
all Continentals persisted in regarding it as the inspired mouthpiece
of the British Government.  Great was the _Times_, but greater still
was de Blowitz, its prophet.  This most remarkable man was a
veritable prince of newspaper correspondents.  There was no move on
the European chess-board of which he was not cognisant, and as to
which he did not keep his paper well informed, and his information
was always accurate.  De Blowitz knew no English, and his lengthy
daily telegrams to the _Times_ were always written in French and were
translated in London.  He was really a Bohemian Jew of the name of
{69} Oppen, and he had bestowed the higher-sounding name of de
Blowitz on himself.  He was a very short, fat little man, with
immensely long grey side-whiskers, and a most consequential manner.
He was a very great personage indeed in official circles.  De Blowitz
has in his Memoirs given a full account of the trick by which he
learnt of the daily proceedings of the Congress and so transmitted
them to his paper.  I need not, therefore, go into details about
this; it is enough to say that a daily exchange of hats, in the
lining of the second of which a summary of the day's deliberations
was concealed, played a great part in it.

When the Treaty had been drawn up in French, Lord Salisbury rather
startled us by saying that he wished it translated into English and
cyphered to London that very evening _in extenso_.  This was done to
obviate the possibility of the news-paper correspondents getting a
version of the Treaty through to London before the British Government
had received the actual text.  As the Treaty was what I, in the light
of later experiences, would now describe as of fifteen thousand words
length, this was a sufficiently formidable undertaking.  Fifteen of
us sat down to the task about 6 p.m., and by working at high pressure
we got the translation finished and the last cyphered sheet sent off
to the telegraph office by 5 a.m.  The translation done at such
breakneck speed was possibly a little crude in places.  One clause in
the Treaty provided that ships in ballast were to have {70} free
passage through the Dardanelles.  Now the French for "ships in
ballast," is "_navires en lest_."  The person translating this (who
was not a member of the British Diplomatic Service) rendered
"_navires en lest_" as "ships in the East," and in this form it was
cyphered to London.  As, owing to the geographical position of the
Dardanelles, any ship approaching them would be, in one sense of the
term, a "ship in the East," there was considerable perturbation in
Downing Street over this clause, until the mistake was discovered.

Berlin has wonderful natural advantages, considering that it is
situated in a featureless, sandy plain.  In my day it was quite
possible to walk from the Embassy into a real, wild pine-forest, the
Grünewald.  The Grünewald, being a Royal forest, was unbuilt on, and
quite unspoilt.  It extended for miles, enclosing many pretty little
lakelets.  Now I understand that it has been invaded by "villa
colonies," so its old charm of wildness must have vanished.  The
Tiergarten, too, the park of Berlin, retains in places the look of a
real country wood.  It is inadvisable to venture into the Tiergarten
after nightfall, should you wish to retain possession of your watch,
purse, and other portable property.  The sandy nature of the soil
makes it excellent for riding.  Within quite a short distance of the
city you can find tracts of heathery moor, and can get a good gallop
almost anywhere.

There is quite fair partridge-shooting, too, within {71} a few miles
of Berlin, in the immense potato fields, though the entire absence of
cover in this hedgeless land makes it very difficult at times to
approach the birds.  It is pre-eminently a country for "driving"
partridges, though most Germans prefer the comparatively easy shots
afforded by "walking the birds up."

Potsdam has had but scant justice done it by foreigners.  The town is
almost surrounded by the river Havel, which here broadens out into a
series of winding, wooded lakes, surrounded by tree-clad hills.  The
Potsdam lakes are really charmingly pretty, and afford an admirable
place for rowing or sailing.  Neither of these pursuits seems to make
the least appeal to Germans.  The Embassy kept a small yacht at
Potsdam, but she was practically the only craft then on the lakes.
As on all narrow waters enclosed by wooded hills, the sailing was
very tricky, owing to the constant shifting of the wind.  Should it
be blowing fresh, it was advisable to sail under very light canvas;
and it was always dangerous to haul up the centre-board, even when
"running," as on rounding some wooded point you would get "taken
aback" to a certainty.  Once in the fine open stretch of water
between Wansee and Spandau, you could hoist every stitch of canvas
available, and indulge with impunity in the most complicated nautical
manoeuvres.  Possibly my extreme fondness for the Potsdam lakes may
be due to their extraordinary resemblance to the lakes at my own
Northern country home.

{72}

The Embassy also owned a light Thames-built four-oar.  At times a
short, thick-set young man of nineteen pulled bow in our four.  The
short young man had a withered arm, and the doctors hoped that the
exercise of rowing might put some strength into it.  He seemed quite
a commonplace young man, yet this short, thick-set youth was destined
less than forty years after to plunge the world into the greatest
calamity it has ever known; to sacrifice millions and millions of
human lives to his own inordinate ambition; and to descend to
posterity as one of the most sinister characters in the pages of
history.

Moored in the "Jungfernsee," one of the Potsdam lakes, lay a
miniature sailing frigate, a complete model of a larger craft down to
the smallest details.  This toy frigate had been a present from King
William IV of England to the then King of Prussia.  The little
frigate had been built in London, and though of only 30-tons burden,
had been sailed down the Thames, across the North Sea, and up the
Elbe and Havel to Potsdam, by a British naval officer.  A pretty bit
of seamanship!  I have always heard that it was the sight of this toy
frigate, lying on the placid lake at Potsdam, that first inspired
William of Hohenzollern with the idea of building a gigantic navy.

The whole history of the world might have been changed by an incident
which occurred on these same Potsdam lakes in 1880.  I have already
said that William of Hohenzollern, then only Prince {73} William,
pulled at times in our Embassy four, in the hope that it might
strengthen his withered arm.  He was very anxious to see if he could
learn to scull, in spite of his physical defect, and asked the
Ambassadress, Lady Ampthill, whether she would herself undertake to
coach him.  Lady Ampthill consented, and met Prince William next day
at the landing-stage with a light Thames-built skiff, belonging to
the Embassy.  Lady Ampthill, with the caution of one used to light
boats, got in carefully, made her way aft, and grasped the
yoke-lines.  She then explained to Prince William that this was not a
heavy boat such as he had been accustomed to, that he must exercise
extreme care, and in getting in must tread exactly in the centre of
the boat.  William of Hohenzollern, who had never taken advice from
anyone in his life, and was always convinced that he himself knew
best, responded by jumping into the boat from the landing-stage,
capsizing it immediately, and throwing himself and Lady Ampthill into
the water.  Prince William, owing to his malformation, was unable to
swim one stroke, but help was at hand.  Two of the Secretaries of the
British Embassy had witnessed the accident, and rushed up to aid.
The so-called "Naval Station" was close by, where the Emperor's
Potsdam yacht lay, a most singularly shabby old paddle-boat.  Some
German sailors from the "Naval Post" heard the shouting and ran up,
and a moist, and we will trust a chastened William and a dripping
Ambassadress were {74} eventually rescued from the lake.  Otherwise
William of Hohenzollern might have ended his life in the
"Jungfernsee" at Potsdam that day, and millions of other men would
have been permitted to live out their allotted span of existence.

Potsdam itself is quite a pleasing town, with a half-Dutch,
half-Italian physiognomy.  Both were deliberately borrowed; the first
by Frederick William I, who constructed the tree-lined canals which
give Potsdam its half-Batavian aspect; the second by Frederick the
Great, who fronted Teutonic dwellings with façades copied from Italy
to add dignity to the town.  It must in justice be added that both
are quite successful, though Potsdam, like most other things
connected with the Hohenzollerns, has only a couple of hundred years'
tradition behind it.  The square opposite the railway really does
recall Italy.  The collection of palaces at Potsdam is bewildering.
Of these, three are of the first rank: the Town Palace, Sans-souci,
and the great pile of the "New Palace."  Either Frederick the Great
was very fortunate in his architects, or else he chose them with
great discrimination.  The Town Palace, even in my time but seldom
inhabited, is very fine in the finished details of its decoration.
Sans-souci is an absolute gem; its rococo style may be a little
over-elaborate, but it produces the effect of a finished, complete
whole, in the most admirable taste; even though the exuberant
imagination of the eighteenth century has been allowed to run riot in
it.  The gardens of Sans-souci, too, {75} are most attractive.  The
immense red-brick building of the New Palace was erected by Frederick
the Great during the Seven Years' War, out of sheer bravado.  He was
anxious to impress on his enemies the fact that his financial
resources were not yet exhausted.  Considering that he already
possessed two stately palaces within a mile of it, the New Palace may
be looked upon as distinctly a work of supererogation, also as an
appalling waste of money.  As a piece of architecture, it is
distinctly a success.  This list does not, however, nearly exhaust
the palatial resources of Potsdam.  The eighteenth century had
contributed its successes; it remained for the nineteenth to add its
failures.  Babelsberg, the old Emperor William's favourite residence,
was an awful example of a ginger-bread pseudo-Gothic castle.  The
Marble Palace on the so-called "Holy Lake" was a dull, unimaginative
building; and the "Red Prince's" house at Glienicke was frankly
terrible.  The main features of this place was an avenue of huge
cast-iron gilded lions.  These golden lions were such a blot on an
otherwise charming landscape that one felt relieved by recalling that
the apparently ineradicable tendency of the children of Israel to
erect Golden Calves at various places in olden days had always been
severely discountenanced.

In spite of the carpenter-Gothic of Babelsberg, and of the pinchbeck
golden lions of Glienicke, Potsdam will remain in my mind, to the end
of my life, associated with memories of fresh breezes {76} and
bellying sails; of placid lakes and swift-gliding keels responding to
the straining muscles of back and legs; a place of verdant hills
dipping into clear waters; of limbs joyously cleaving those clear
waters with all the exultation of the swimmer; a place of rest and
peace, with every fibre in one's being rejoicing in being away, for
the time being, from crowded cities and stifling streets, in the free
air amidst woods, waters, and gently-swelling, tree-clad heights.

A year later, I was notified that I was transferred to Petrograd,
then of course still known as St. Petersburg.  This was in accordance
with the dearest wish of my heart.  Ever since my childhood's days I
had been filled with an intense desire to go to Russia.  Like most
people unacquainted with the country, I had formed the most
grotesquely incorrect mental pictures of Russia.  I imagined it a
vast Empire of undreamed of magnificence, pleasantly tempered with
relics of barbarism; and all these glittering splendours were
enveloped in the snow and ice of a semi-Arctic climate, which gave
additional piquancy to their glories.  I pictured huge tractless
forests, their dark expanse only broken by the shimmering golden
domes of the Russian churches.  I fancied this glamour-land peopled
by a species of transported French, full of culture, and all of them
polyglot, more brilliant and infinitely more intellectual than their
West European prototypes.  I imagined this hyperborean paradise
served by a race of super-astute {77} diplomatists and officials,
with whom we poor Westerners could not hope to contend, and by
Generals whom no one could withstand.  The evident awe with which
Germans envisaged their Eastern neighbours strengthened this idea,
and both in England and in France I had heard quite responsible
persons gloomily predict, after contemplating the map, that the
Northern Colossus was fatally destined at some time to absorb the
whole of the rest of Europe.

Apart then from its own intrinsic attraction, I used to gaze at the
map of Russia with some such feelings as, I imagine, the early
Christians experienced when, on their Sunday walks in Rome, they went
to look at the lions in their dens in the circus, and speculated as
to their own sensations when, as seemed but too probable, they might
have to meet these interesting quadrupeds on the floor of the arena,
in a brief, exciting, but definitely final encounter.

Everything I had seen or heard about this mysterious land had
enhanced its glamour.  The hair-raising rumours which reached Berlin
as to revolutionary plots and counter-plots; the appalling stories
one heard about the terrible secret police; the atmosphere of
intrigue which seemed indigenous to the place--all added to its
fascinations.  Even the externals were attractive.  I had attended
weddings and funeral services at the chapel of the Russian Embassy.
Here every detail was exotic, and utterly dissimilar to anything in
one's previous {78} experience.  The absence of seats, organ, or
pulpit in the chapel itself; the elaborate Byzantine decorations of
the building; the exquisitely beautiful but quite unfamiliar singing;
the long-bearded priests in their archaic vestments of unaccustomed
golden brocades--everything struck a novel note.  It all came from a
world apart, centuries removed from the prosaic routine of Western
Europe.

Even quite minor details, such as the curiously sumptuous Russian
national dresses of the ladies of the Embassy at Court functions, the
visits to Berlin of the Russian ballets and troupes of Russian
singing gipsies, had all the same stamp of strong racial
individuality, of something temperamentally different from all we had
been accustomed to.

I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing for myself at last this
land of mingled splendour and barbarism, this country which had
retained its traditional racial characteristics in spite of the
influences of nineteenth century drab uniformity of type.

As the Petrograd Embassy was short-handed at the time, it was settled
that I should postpone my leave for some months and proceed to Russia
without delay.

The Crown Prince and Crown Princess, who had been exceedingly kind to
me during my stay in Berlin, were good enough to ask me to the New
Palace at Potsdam for one night, to take leave of them.

{79}

I had never before had an opportunity of going all over the New
Palace.  I thought it wonderfully fine, though quite French in
feeling.  The rather faded appearance of some of the rooms increased
their look of dignity.  It was not of yesterday.  The great "Shell
Hall," or "Muschel-Saal," much admired of Prussians, is frankly
horrible; one of the unfortunate aberrations of eighteenth century
taste of which several examples occur in English country-houses of
the same date.

My own bedroom was charming; of the purest Louis XV, with apple-green
polished panelling and heavily silvered mouldings and mirrors.

Nothing could be more delightful than the Crown Prince's manner on
occasions such as this.  The short-lived Emperor Frederick had the
knack of blending absolute simplicity with great dignity, as had the
Empress Frederick.  For the curious in such matters, and as an
instance of the traditional frugality of the Prussian Court, I may
add that supper that evening, at which only the Crown Prince and
Princess, the equerry and lady-in-waiting, and myself were present,
consisted solely of curds and whey, veal cutlets, and a rice pudding.
Nothing else whatever.  We sat afterwards in a very stately, lofty,
thoroughly French room.  The Crown Prince, the equerry, and myself
drank beer, whilst the Prince smoked his long pipe.  It seemed
incongruous to drink beer amid such absolutely French surroundings.
I noticed that the Crown Princess always laid down her needlework to
refill {80} her husband's pipe and to bring him a fresh tankard of
beer.  The "Kronprinzliches Paar," as a German would have described
them, were both perfectly charming in their conversation with a dull,
uninteresting youth of twenty-one.  They each had marvellous
memories, and recalled many trivial half-forgotten details about my
own family.  That evening in the friendly atmosphere of the great,
dimly-lit room in the New Palace at Potsdam will always live in my
memory.

Two days afterwards I drove through the trim, prosaic, well-ordered,
stuccoed streets of Berlin to the Eastern Station; for me, the
gateway to the land of my desires, vast, mysterious Russia.




{81}

CHAPTER III

The Russian frontier--Frontier police--Disappointment at aspect of
Petrograd--Lord and Lady Dufferin--The British Embassy--St. Isaac's
Cathedral--Beauty of Russian Church-music--The Russian language--The
delightful "Blue-stockings" of Petrograd--Princess Chateau--Pleasant
Russian Society--The Secret Police--The Countess's hurried
journey--The Yacht Club--Russians really Orientals--Their
limitations--The "Intelligenzia"--My Nihilist friends--Their lack of
constructive power--Easter Mass at St. Isaac's--Two comical
incidents--The Easter supper--The red-bearded young priest--An Empire
built on shifting sand.


Petrograd is 1,050 miles from Berlin, and forty years ago the fastest
trains took forty-five hours to cover the distance between the two
capitals.  In later years the "Nord-Express" accomplishing the
journey in twenty-nine hours.

Rolling through the flat fertile plains of East Prussia, with their
neat, prosperous villages and picturesque black-and-white farms, the
surroundings had such a commonplace air that it was difficult to
realise that one was approaching the very threshold of the great,
mysterious Northern Empire.

Eydkuhnen, the last Prussian station, was as other Prussian stations,
built of trim red brick, neat, practical, and very ugly; with crowds
of red-faced, amply-paunched officials, buttoned into the tightest of
uniforms, perpetually saluting each other.

{82}

Wierjbolovo, or Wirballen Station as the Germans call it, a huge
white building, was plainly visible only a third of a mile away.  At
Wirballen the German train would stop, for whereas the German
railways are built to the standard European gauge of 4 feet 8½
inches, the Russian lines were laid to a gauge of 5 feet 1 inch.

This gauge had been deliberately chosen to prevent the invasion of
Russia by her Western neighbour.  This was to prove an absolutely
illusory safeguard, for, as events have shown, nothing is easier than
to _narrow_ a railway track.  To broaden it is often quite
impossible.  The cunning little Japs found this out during the
Russo-Japanese War.  They narrowed the broad Russian lines to their
own gauge of 3 feet 6 inches, _and then sawed off the ends of the
sleepers_ with portable circular saws, thus making it impossible for
the Russians to relay the rails on the broad gauge.  I believe that
the Germans adopted the same device more recently.

I think at only one other spot in the world does a short quarter of a
mile result in such amazing differences in externals as does that
little piece of line between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen; and that is at
Linea, the first Spanish village out of Gibraltar.

Leaving the prim and starched orderliness of Gibraltar, with its
thick coating of British veneer, its tidy streets and buildings
enlivened with the scarlet tunics of Mr. Thomas Atkins and his
brethren, {83} you traverse the "Neutral Ground" to an iron railing,
and literally pass into Spain through an iron gate.  The contrast is
extraordinary.  It would be unfair to select Linea as a typical
Spanish village; it is ugly, and lacks the picturesque features of
the ordinary Andalusian village; it is also unquestionably very
dirty, and very tumble-down.  Between Eydkuhnen and Wirballen the
contrast is just as marked.  As the German train stopped, hosts of
bearded, shaggy-headed individuals in high boots and long white
aprons (surely a curious article of equipment for a railway porter)
swooped down upon the hand-baggage; I handed my passport to a
gendarme (a term confined in Russia to frontier and railway police)
and passed through an iron gate into Russia.

Russia in this case was represented by a gigantic whitewashed hall,
ambitious originally in design and decoration, but, like most things
in Russia, showing traces of neglect and lack of cleanliness.  The
first exotic note was struck by a full-length, life-size ikon of the
Saviour, in a solid silver frame, at the end of the hall.  All my
Russian fellow-travellers devoutly crossed themselves before this
ikon, purchased candles at an adjoining stall, and fixed them in the
silver holders before the ikon.

Behind the line of tables serving for the Customs examinations was a
railed-off space, containing many desks under green-shaded lamps.
Here some fifteen green-coated men whispered mysteriously to each
other, referring continually to huge registers.  {84} I felt a thrill
creep down my back; here I found myself at last face to face with the
omnipotent Russian police.  The bespectacled green-coated men
scrutinised passports intently, conferred amongst themselves in
whispers under the green-shaded lamps, and hunted ominously through
the big registers.  For the first time I became unpleasantly
conscious of the existence of such places as the Fortress of St.
Peter and St. Paul, and of a country called Siberia.  I speculated as
to whether the drawbacks of the Siberian climate had not been
exaggerated, should one be compelled to make a possibly prolonged
sojourn in that genial land.  Above all, I was immensely impressed
with the lynx-eyed vigilance and feverish activity of these
green-coated guardians of the Russian frontier.  From my subsequent
knowledge of the ways of Russian officials, I should gather that all
this feverish activity began one minute after the whistle announced
the approach of the Berlin train, and ceased precisely one minute
after the Petrograd train had pulled out, and that never, by any
chance, did the frontier police succeed in stopping the entry of any
really dangerous conspirator.

Diplomats with official passports are exempt from Customs
formalities, so I passed on to the platform, thick with pungent
wood-smoke, where the huge blue-painted Russian carriages smoked like
volcanoes from their heating apparatus, and the gigantic wood-burning
engine (built in Germany) vomited dense clouds from its funnel,
crowned with {85} a spark-arrester shaped like a mammoth tea urn, or
a giant's soup tureen.  Everything in this country seemed on a large
scale.

In the gaunt, bare, whitewashed restaurant (these three epithets are
applicable to almost every public room in Russia) with its great
porcelain stove, and red lamps burning before gilded ikons, I first
made the acquaintance of fresh caviar and raw herrings, of the
national cabbage soup, or "shtchee," of roast ryabehiks and salted
cucumbers, all destined to become very familiar.  Railway restaurants
in Russia are almost invariably quite excellent.

And so the train clanked out through the night, into the depths of
this mysterious glamour-land.

The railway from the frontier to Petrograd runs for 550 miles through
an unbroken stretch of interminable dreary swamp and forest, such as
would in Canada be termed "muskag," with here and there a poor
attempt at cultivation in some clearing, set about with wretched
little wooden huts.  After a twenty-four hours' run, without any
preliminary warning whatever in the shape of suburbs, the train
emerges from the forest into a huge city, with tramcars rolling in
all directions, and the great golden dome of St. Isaac's blazing like
a sun against the murky sky.

I had pictured Petrograd to myself as a second Paris; a city
glittering with light and colour, but conceived on an infinitely more
grandiose scale than the French capital.

We emerged from the station into an immensely {86} broad street
bordered by shabbily-pretentious buildings all showing signs of
neglect.  The atrociously uneven pavements, the general untidiness,
the broad thoroughfare empty except for a lumbering cart or two, the
absence of foot-passengers, and the low cotton-wool sky, all gave an
effect of unutterable dreariness.  And this was the golden city of my
dreams! this place of leprous-fronted houses, of vast open spaces
full of drifting snowflakes, and of an immense emptiness.  I never
was so disappointed in my life.  The gilt and coloured domes of the
Orthodox churches, the sheepskin-clad, red-shirted moujiks, the
occasional swift-trotting Russian carriages, with their bearded and
padded coachmen, were the only local touches that redeemed the
streets from the absolute commonplace.  The Russian lettering over
the shops, which then conveyed nothing whatever to me, suggested that
the alphabet, having followed the national custom and got drunk, had
hastily re-affixed itself to the houses upside down.  Although as the
years went on I grew quite attached to Petrograd, I could never rid
myself of this impression of its immense dreariness.  This was due to
several causes.  There are hardly any stone buildings in the city,
everything is of brick plastered over.  Owing to climatic reasons the
houses are not painted, but are daubed with colour-wash.  The
successive coats of colour-wash clog all the architectural features,
and give the buildings a shabby look, added to which the wash flakes
off under the winter snows.  There is a natural craving {87} in human
nature for colour, and in a country wrapped in snow for at least four
months in the year this craving finds expression in painting the
roofs red, and in besmearing the houses with crude shades of red,
blue, green, and yellow.  The result is not a happy one.  Again,
owing to the intense cold, the shop-windows are all very small, and
there is but little display in them.  Streets and shops were alike
very dimly lighted in my day, and as there is an entire absence of
cafés in Petrograd, there is none of the usual glitter and glare of
these places to brighten up the streets.  The theatres make no
display of lights, so it is not surprising that the general effect of
the city is one of intense gloom.  The very low, murky winter sky
added to this effect of depression.  Peter the Great had planned his
new capital on such a gigantic scale that there were not enough
inhabitants to fill its vast spaces.  The conceptions were
magnificent; the results disappointing.  Nothing grander could be
imagined than the design of the immense _place_ opposite the Winter
Palace, with Alexander I's great granite monolith towering in the
midst of it, and the imposing semicircular sweep of Government
Offices of uniform design enclosing it, pierced in the centre by a
monumental triumphal arch crowned with a bronze quadriga.  The whole
effect of this was spoilt by the hideous crude shade of red with
which the buildings were daubed, by the general untidiness, and by
the broken, uneven pavement; added to which this huge area was
usually untenanted, except by a {88} lumbering cart or two, by a
solitary stray "istvoschik," and an occasional muffled-up pedestrian.
The Petrograd of reality was indeed very different from the sumptuous
city of my dreams.

For the second time I was extraordinarily lucky in my Chief.  Our
relations with Russia had, during the "'seventies," been strained
almost to the breaking point.  War had on several occasions seemed
almost inevitable between the two countries.

Russians, naturally enough, had shown their feelings of hostility to
their potential enemies by practically boycotting the entire British
Embassy.  The English Government had then made a very wise choice,
and had appointed to the Petrograd Embassy the one man capable of
smoothing these troubled relations.  The late Lord Dufferin was not
then a diplomat by profession.  He had just completed his term of
office as Governor-General of Canada, where, as in every position he
had previously occupied, he had been extraordinarily successful.
Lord Dufferin had an inexhaustible fund of patience, blended with the
most perfect tact; he had a charm of manner no human being could
resist; but under it all lay an inflexible will.  No man ever
understood better the use of the iron hand under the velvet glove,
and in a twelvemonth from the date of his arrival in Petrograd he had
succeeded not only in gaining the confidence of official Russia, but
also in re-establishing the most cordial relations with Russian
society.  In this he was very ably seconded by Lady Dufferin, who
combined a perfectly natural manner with {89} quiet dignity and a
curious individual charm.  Both Lord and Lady Dufferin enjoyed
dancing, skating, and tobagganing as wholeheartedly as though they
were children.

Our Petrograd Embassy was a fine old house, with a pleasant intimate
character about it lacking in the more ornate building at Berlin.  It
contained a really beautiful snow-white ball-room, and all the
windows fronted the broad, swift-flowing Neva, with the exquisitely
graceful slender gilded spire of the Fortress Church, towering three
hundred feet aloft, opposite them.  We had a very fine collection of
silver plate at the Embassy.  This plate, valued at £30,000, was the
property of our Government, and had been sent out sixty years
previously by George IV, who understood the importance attached by
Russians to externals.  We had also a small set, just sufficient for
two persons, of real gold plates.  These solid gold plates were only
used by the Emperor and Empress on the very rare occasions when they
honoured the Embassy with their presence.  I wonder what has happened
to that gold service now!

Owing to the constant tension of the relations between Great Britain
and Russia, our work at the Petrograd Embassy was very heavy indeed
at that time.  We were frequently kept up till 2 a.m. in the
Chancery, cyphering telegrams.  All important written despatches
between London and Petrograd either way were sent by Queen's
Messenger open to Berlin, "under Flying Seal," as it is termed.  The
Berlin Embassy was thus kept constantly posted as {90} to Russian
affairs.  After reading our open despatches, both to and from London,
the Berlin Embassy would seal them up in a special way.  We also got
duplicates, in cypher, of all telegrams received in London the
previous day from the Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Constantinople
Embassies which bore in any way on Russia or the Eastern Question.
This gave us two or three hours' work decyphering every day.  Both
cyphering and decyphering require the closest concentration, as one
single mistake may make nonsense of the whole thing; it is
consequently exhausting work.  We were perfectly well aware that the
Russian Government had somehow obtained possession of one of our
codes.  This particular "compromised code" was only used by us for
transmitting intelligence which the Russians were intended to know.
They could hardly blame us should they derive false impressions from
a telegram of ours which they had decyphered with a stolen code, nor
could they well admit that they had done this.

As winter came on, I understood why Russians are so fond of gilding
the domes and spires of their churches.  It must be remembered that
Petrograd lies on parallel 60° N.  In December it only gets four
hours of very uncertain daylight, and the sun is so low on the
horizon that its rays do not reach the streets of the city.  It is
then that the gilded domes flash and glitter, as they catch the beams
of the unseen sun.  When the long golden needle of the Fortress
Church blazed like a flaming torch {91} or a gleaming spear of fire
against the murky sky, I thought it a splendid sight, as was the
great golden dome of St. Isaac's scintillating like a second sun over
the snow-clad roofs of the houses.

Soon after my arrival I went to the vast church under the gilded dome
to hear the singing of the far-famed choir of St. Isaac's.

Here were none of the accessories to which I had been accustomed; no
seats; no organ; no pulpit; no side-chapels.  A blue haze of incense
drifted through the twilight of the vague spaces of the great
building; a haze glowing rosily where the red lamps burning before
the jewelled ikons gave a faint-dawnlike effect in the semi-darkness.
Before me the great screen of the "ikonostas" towered to the roof,
with its eight malachite columns forty feet high, and its two smaller
columns of precious lapis lazuli flanking the "Royal doors" into the
sanctuary.  Surely Montferrand, the Frenchman, had designedly steeped
the cathedral he had built in perpetual twilight.  In broad daylight
the juxtaposition of these costly materials, with their discordant
colours, would have been garish, even vulgar.  Now, barely visible in
the shadows, they, the rich mosaics, the masses of heavily-gilt
bronze work in the ikonostas, gave an impression of barbaric
magnificence and immense splendour.  The jasper and polychrome
Siberian marbles with which the cathedral was lined, the gold and
silver of the jewelled ikons, gleaming faintly in the candle-light,
strengthened this impression of sumptuous opulence.  Then the choir,
standing {92} before the ikonostas, burst into song.  The exquisitely
beautiful singing of the Russian Church was a perfect revelation to
me.  I would not have believed it possible that unaccompanied human
voices could have produced so entrancing an effect.  As the "Cherubic
Hymn" died away in softest _pianissimo_, its echoes floating into the
misty vastness of the dome, a deacon thundered out prayers in a
ringing bass, four tones deeper than those a Western European could
compass.  The higher clergy, with their long flowing white beards,
jewelled crowns, and stiffly-archaic vestments of cloth of gold and
silver, seemed to have stepped bodily out of the frame of an ikon;
and the stately ritual of the Eastern Church gave me an impression as
of something of immemorial age, something separated by the gap of
countless centuries from our own prosaic epoch; and through it all
rose again and again the plaintive response of the choir, "Gospodi
pomiloi," "Lord have mercy," exquisitely sung with all the tenderness
and pathos of muted strings.

This was at last the real Russia of my dreams.  It was all as I had
vaguely pictured it to myself; the densely-packed congregation, with
sheepskin-clad peasant and sable-coated noble standing side by side,
all alike joining in the prescribed genuflections and prostrations of
the ritual; the singing-boys, with their close-cropped heads and
curious long blue dressing-gowns; the rolling consonants of the Old
Slavonic chanted by the priests; all this was really Russia, and not
a bastard imitation of an exotic {93} Western civilisation like the
pseudo-classic city outside.

Two years later, Arthur Sullivan, the composer, happened to be in
Petrograd, and I took him to the practice of the Emperor's private
church choir.  Sullivan was passionately devoted to unaccompanied
part-singing, and those familiar with his delightful light operas
will remember how he introduced into almost every one of them an
unaccompanied madrigal, or a sextet.  Sullivan told me that he would
not have believed it possible for human voices to obtain the
string-like effect of these Russian choirs.  He added that although
six English singing-boys would probably evolve a greater body of
sound than twelve Russian boys, no English choir-boy could achieve
the silvery tone these musical little Muscovites produced.

People ignorant of the country have a foolish idea that all Russians
can speak French.  That may be true of one person in two thousand of
the whole population.  The remainder only speak their native Russ.
Not one cabman in Petrograd could understand a syllable of any
foreign language, and though in shops, very occasionally, someone
with a slight knowledge of German might be found, it was rare.  All
the waiters in Petrograd restaurants were yellow-faced little
Mohammedan Tartars, speaking only Russian and their own language.  I
determined therefore to learn Russian at once, and was fortunate in
finding a very clever teacher.  All men should learn a foreign
language from a lady, {94} for natural courtesy makes one listen to
what she is saying; whereas with a male teacher one's attention is
apt to wander.  The patient elderly lady who taught me knew neither
English nor French, so we used German as a means of communication.
Thanks to Madame Kumin's intelligence, and a considerable amount of
hard work on my own part, I was able to pass an examination in
Russian in eleven months, and to qualify as Interpreter to the
Embassy.  The difficulties of the Russian language are enormously
exaggerated.  The pronunciation is hard, as are the terminations; and
the appalling length of Russian words is disconcerting.  In Russian,
great emphasis is laid on one syllable of a word, and the rest is
slurred over.  It is therefore vitally important (should you wish to
be understood) to get the emphasis on the right syllable, and for
some mysterious reason no foreigner, even by accident, _ever succeeds
in pronouncing a Russian name right_.  It is Schouvaloff, not
Schòuvaloff; Brusìl-off, not Brùsiloff; Demìd-off, not Dèmidoff.  The
charming dancer's name is Pàv-Lova, not Pavlòva; her equally
fascinating rival is Karsàv-ina, not Karsavìna.  I could continue the
list indefinitely.  Be sure of one thing; however the name is
pronounced by a foreigner, it is absolutely certain to be wrong.

What a wise man he was who first said that for every fresh language
you learn you acquire a new pair of eyes and a new pair of ears; I
felt immensely elated when I found that I could read the cabalistic
signs over the shops as easily as English lettering.

{95}

A relation of mine had given me a letter of introduction to Princess
B----.  Now this old lady, though she but seldom left her own house,
was a very great power indeed in Petrograd, and was universally known
as the "Princesse Château."  For some reason or another, I was lucky
enough to find favour in this dignified old lady's eyes.  She asked
me to call on her again, and at our second meeting invited me to her
Sunday evenings.  The Princesse Château's Sunday evenings were a
thing quite apart.  They were a survival in Petrograd of the French
eighteenth century literary "salons," but devoid of the faintest
flavour of pedantry or priggism.  Never in my life, before or since,
have I heard such wonderfully brilliant conversation, for, with the
one exception of myself, the Princesse Château tolerated no dull
people at her Sundays.  She belonged to a generation that always
spoke French amongst themselves, and imported their entire culture
from France.  Peter the Great had designed St. Petersburg as a window
through which to look on Europe, and the tradition of this amongst
the educated classes was long in dying out.  The Princess assembled
some thirty people every Sunday, all Russians, with the exception of
myself.  These people discussed any and every subject--literature,
art, music, and philosophy--with sparkling wit, keen critical
instinct, and extraordinary felicity of phrase, usually in French,
sometimes in English, and occasionally in Russian.  Their knowledge
seemed encyclopædic, and they appeared equally at home in any of the
three {96} languages.  They greatly appreciated a neatly-turned
epigram, or a novel, crisply-coined definition.  Any topic, however,
touching directly or indirectly on the external or internal policy of
Russia was always tacitly avoided.  My _rôle_ was perforce reduced to
that of a listener, but it was a perfectly delightful society.
Princesse Château had a very fine suite of rooms on the first floor
of her house, decorated "at the period" in Louis XVI style by
imported French artists; these rooms still retained their original
furniture and fittings, and were a museum of works of art; but her
Sunday evenings were always held in the charming but
plainly-furnished rooms which she herself inhabited on the ground
floor.  We had one distinct advantage over the old French _salons_,
for Princesse Château entertained her guests every Sunday to suppers
which were justly celebrated in the gastronomic world of Petrograd.
During supper the conversation proceeded just as brilliantly as
before.  There were always two or three Grand Duchesses present, for
to attend Princesse Château's Sundays was a sort of certificate of
culture.  The Grand Duchesses were treated quite unceremoniously,
beyond receiving a perfunctory "Madame" in each sentence addressed to
them.  How curious that, both in English and French, the highest
title of respect should be plain "Madame"!  As the Russian equivalent
is "Vashoe Imperatorskoe Vuisochestvo," a considerable expenditure of
time and breath was saved by using the terser French term.  And
through it all moved the mistress of the house, the stately {97}
little smiling old lady, in her plain black woollen dress and lace
cap, dropping here a quaint criticism, there an apt _bon-mot_.
Perfectly charming people!

The relatives and friends of Princesse Château whom I met at her
house, when they discovered that I had a genuine liking for their
country, and that I did not criticise details of Russian
administration, were good enough to open their houses to me in their
turn.  Though most of these people owned large and very fine houses,
they opened them but rarely to foreigners.  They gave, very
occasionally, large entertainments to which they invited half
Petrograd, including the Diplomatic Body, but there they stopped.
They did not care, as a rule, to invite foreigners to share the
intimacy of their family life.  I was very fortunate therefore in
having an opportunity of seeing a phase of Russian life which few
foreigners have enjoyed.  Russians seldom do things by halves.  I do
not believe that in any other country in the world could a stranger
have been made to feel himself so thoroughly at home amongst people
of a different nationality, and with such totally different racial
ideals; or have been treated with such constant and uniform kindness.
There was no ceremony whatever on either side, and on the Russian
side, at times, an outspokenness approaching bluntness.  As I got to
know these cultivated, delightful people well, I grew very fond of
them.  They formed a clique, possibly a narrow clique, amongst
themselves, and had that complete disregard for outside criticism
which is often found associated with {98} persons of established
position.  They met almost nightly at each others' houses, and I
could not but regret that such beautiful and vast houses should be
seen by so few people.  One house, in particular, contained a
staircase an exact replica of a Grecian temple in white statuary
Carrara marble, a thing of exquisite beauty.  In their perpetual sets
of intellectual lawn tennis, if I may coin the term, the superiority
of the feminine over the male intellects was very marked.  This is, I
believe, a characteristic of all Slavonic countries, and I recalled
Bismarck's dictum that the Slav peoples were essentially feminine,
and I wondered whether there could be any connection between the two
points.  Living so much with Russians, it was impossible not to fall
into the Russian custom of addressing them by their Christian names
and patronymics; such as "Maria Vladimirovna" (Mary daughter of
Vladimir) or "Olga Andreèvna" (Olga daughter of Andrew) or "Pavel
Alexandrovitch" (Paul son of Alexander).  I myself became Feòdor
Yàkovlevitch, (Frederic son of James, those being the nearest Russian
equivalents).  On arriving at a house, the proper form of inquiry to
the hall porter was, "Ask Mary daughter of Vladimir if she will
receive Frederic son of James."  In due time the answer came, "Mary
daughter of Vladimir begs Frederic son of James to go upstairs."  My
own servants always addressed me punctiliously as Feòdor
Yàkovlevitch.  On giving them an order they would answer in Moscovite
fashion, "I hear you, Frederic son of James," {99} the equivalent to
our prosaic, "Very good, sir." Amongst my new friends, as at the
Princesse Château's, no allusions whatever, direct or indirect, were
made to internal conditions in Russia.  Apart from the fact that one
of these new friends was himself Minister of the Interior at the
time, it would not have been safe.  In those days the Secret Police,
or "Third Section," as they were called, were very active, and their
ramifications extended everywhere.  One night at a supper party a
certain Countess B---- criticised in very open and most unflattering
terms a lady to whom the Emperor Alexander II was known to be
devotedly attached.  Next morning at 8 a.m. the Countess was awakened
by her terrified maid, who told her that the "Third Section" were
there and demanded instant admittance.  Two men came into the
Countess's bedroom and informed her that their orders were that she
was to take the 12.30 train to Europe that morning.  They would
remain with her till then, and would accompany her to the frontier.
As she would not be allowed to return to Russia for twelve months,
they begged her to order her maid to pack what was necessary; and no
one knew better than Countess B---- how useless any attempted
resistance would be.

This episode made a great stir at the time.  As the words complained
of had been uttered about 3 a.m., the police action had been
remarkably prompt.  The informant must have driven straight from the
supper party to the "Third Section," and {100} everyone in Petrograd
had a very distinct idea who the informant was.  Is it necessary to
add that she was a lady?

Some of my new friends volunteered to propose and second me for the
Imperial Yacht Club.  This was not the club that the diplomats
usually joined; it was a purely Russian club, and, in spite of its
name, had no connection with yachting.  It had also the reputation of
being extremely exclusive, but thanks to my Russian sponsors, I got
duly elected to it.  This was, I am sure, the most delightful club in
Europe.  It was limited to 150 members of whom only two, besides
myself, were foreigners, and the most perfect _camaraderie_ existed
between the members.  The atmosphere of the place was excessively
friendly and intimate, and the building looked more like a private
house than a club, as deceased members had bequeathed to it pictures,
a fine collection of old engravings, some splendid old Beauvais
tapestry, and a great deal of Oriental porcelain.  Above all, we
commanded the services of the great Armand, prince of French chefs.
Associating so much with Russians, it was possible to see things from
their points of view.  They all had an unshakable belief in the
absolute invincibility of Russia, and in her complete
invulnerability, for it must not be forgotten that in 1880 Russia had
never yet been defeated in any campaign, except partially in the
Crimean War of 1854-50.  My friends did not hide their convictions
that it was Russia's manifest destiny to absorb in {101} time the
whole of the Asiatic Continent, including India, China, and Turkey.
There were grounds for this article of faith, for in 1880 Russia's
bloodless absorption of vast territories in Central Asia had been
astounding.  It was not until the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905
that the friable clay feet of the Northern Colossus were revealed to
the outside world, though those with a fairly intimate knowledge of
the country quite realised how insecure were the foundations on which
the stupendous structure of modern Russia had been erected.

I am deeply thankful that the great majority of my old friends had
passed away in the ordinary course of nature before the Great
Catastrophe overwhelmed the mighty Empire in which they took such
deep pride; and that they were spared the sight and knowledge of the
awful orgy of blood, murder, and spoliation which followed the ruin
of the land they loved so well.  Were they not now at rest, it would
be difficult for me to write of those old days.

To grasp the Russian mentality, it must be remembered that they are
essentially Orientals.  Russia is not the most Eastern outpost of
Western civilisation; it is the most Western outpost of the East.
Russians have all the qualities of the Oriental, his fatalism, his
inertness, and, I fear, his innate pecuniary corruption.  Their
fatalism makes them accept their destiny blindly.  What has been
ordained from the beginning of things is useless to fight against; it
must be accepted.  The same {102} inertness characterises every
Eastern nation, and the habit of "baksheesh" is ingrained in the
Oriental blood.  If the truth were known, we should probably find
that the real reason why Cain killed Abel was that the latter had
refused him a commission on some transaction or other.  The fatalism
and lack of initiative are not the only Oriental traits in the
Russian character.  In a hundred little ways they show their origin:
in their love of uncut jewels; in their lack of sense of time (the
Russian for "at once" is "si chas," which means "this hour"; an
instructive commentary); in the reluctance South Russians show in
introducing strangers to the ladies of their household, the Oriental
peeps out everywhere.  Peter the Great could order his Boyards to
abandon their fur-trimmed velvet robes, to shave off their beards,
powder their heads, and array themselves in the satins and brocades
of Versailles.  He could not alter the men and women inside the
French imported finery.  He could abandon his old capital, matchless,
many-pinnacled Moscow, vibrant with every instinct of Russian
nationality; he could create a new pseudo-Western, sham-classical
city in the frozen marshes of the Neva; but even the Autocrat could
not change the souls of his people.  Easterns they were, Easterns
they remained, and that is the secret of Russia, they are not
Europeans.  Peter himself was so fully aware of the racial
limitations of his countrymen that he imported numbers of foreigners
to run the country; Germans as Civil and Military administrators;
{103} Dutchmen as builders and town-planners; and Englishmen to
foster its budding commerce.  To the latter he granted special
privileges, and even in my time there was a very large English
commercial community in Petrograd; a few of them descendants of Peter
the Great's pioneers; the majority of them with hereditary business
connections with Russia.  Their special privileges had gradually been
withdrawn, but the official name of the English Church in Petrograd
was still "British Factory in St. Petersburg," surely a curious title
for a place of worship.  The various German-Russian families from the
Baltic Provinces, the Adlerbergs, the Benckendorffs, and the
Stackelbergs, had served Russia well.  Under their strong guidance
she became a mighty Power, but when under Alexander III the reins of
government were confided to purely Russian hands, rapid deterioration
set in.  This dreamy nation lacks driving power.  In my time, the
very able Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. de Giers, was of German
origin, and his real name was Hirsch.  His extremely wily and astute
second in command, Baron Jomini, was a Swiss.  Modern Russia was
largely the creation of the foreigner.

I saw a great deal, too, of a totally different stratum of Russian
society.  Mr. X., the head of a large exporting house, was of British
origin, the descendant of one of Peter's commercial pioneers.  He
himself, like his father and grandfather, had been born in Russia,
and though he retained his English speech, he had adopted all the
points of {104} view of the country of his birth.  Madame X. came of
a family of the so-called "Intelligenzia."  Most of her relatives
seemed to have undertaken compulsory journeys to Siberia, not as
prisoners, but for a given term of exile.  Madame X.'s brother-in-law
owned and edited a paper of advanced views, which was being
continually suppressed, and had been the cause of two long trips
eastward for its editor and proprietor.  Neither Mr. nor Madame X.
shared their relatives' extreme views.  What struck me was that
behind the floods of vehement invective of Madame O---- (the editor's
wife) there was never the smallest practical suggestion.  "You say,
Madame O----," I would hazard, "that the existing state of things is
intolerable.  What remedy do you suggest?"  "I am not the
Government," would retort Madame O---- with great heat.  "It is for
the Government to make suggestions.  I only denounce an abominable
injustice."  "Quite so, Madame O----, but how can these conditions be
improved.  What is your programme of reform?"  "We have nothing to do
with reforms.  Our mission is to destroy utterly.  Out of the ruins a
better state of things must necessarily arise; as nothing could
possibly be worse than present conditions."  And so we travelled
round and round in a circle.  Mr. O----, when appealed to, would
blink through his spectacles with his kindly old eyes, and emit a
torrent of admirable moral aphorisms, which might serve as
unimpeachable copy-book headings, but had no bearing whatever {105}
on the subject we were discussing.  Never once amidst these floods of
bitter invective and cataracts of fierce denunciation did I hear one
single practical suggestion made or any outline traced of a scheme to
better existing conditions.  "We must destroy," shouted Madame O----,
and there her ideas stopped.  I think the Slavonic bent of mind, like
the Celtic, is purely _des_tructive, and has little or no
_con_structive power in it.  This may be due to the ineradicable
element of the child in both races.  They are "Peter Pans," and a
child loves destruction.

Poor dreamy, emotional, hopelessly unpractical Russia!  Madame
O----'s theories have been put into effect now, and we all know how
appalling the result has been.

These conversations were always carried on in French for greater
safety in order that the servants might not overhear, but when Mr.
and Madame O---- found difficulties in expressing themselves in that
language, they both broke into torrents of rapid Russian, to poor
Madame X.'s unconcealed terror.  The danger was a real one, for the
O----'s were well known in police circles as revolutionists, and it
must have gone hard with the X.'s had their servants reported to the
police the violent opinions that had been expressed in their house.

Many of the Diplomatic Body were in the habit of attending the
midnight Mass at St. Isaac's on Easter Day, on account of the
wonderfully impressive character of the service.  We were always
{106} requested to come in full uniform, with decorations and we
stood inside the rails of the ikonostas, behind the choir.  The time
to arrive was about 11.30 p.m., when the great church, packed to its
doors by a vast throng, was wrapped in almost total darkness.  Under
the dome stood a catafalque bearing a gilt coffin.  This open coffin
contained a strip of silk, on which was painted an effigy of the dead
Christ, for it will be remembered that no carved or graven image is
allowed in a church of the Eastern rite.  There was an arrangement by
which a species of blind could be drawn over the painted figure, thus
concealing it.  As the eye grew accustomed to the shadows, tens of
thousands of unlighted candles, outlining the arches, cornices, and
other architectural features of the cathedral, were just visible.
These candles each had their wick touched with kerosine and then
surrounded with a thread of guncotton, which ran continuously from
candle to candle right round the building.  When the hanging end of
the thread of gun-cotton was lighted, the flame ran swiftly round the
church, kindling each candle in turn; a very fascinating sight.  At
half-past eleven, the only light was from the candles surrounding the
bier, where black-robed priests were chanting the mournful Russian
Office for the Dead.  At about twenty minutes to twelve the blind was
drawn over the dead Christ, and the priests, feigning surprise,
advanced to the rails of the ikonostas, and announced to an
Archimandrite that the coffin was empty.  The Archimandrite ordered
them {107} to search round the church, and the priests perambulated
the church with gilt lanterns, during which time the catafalque,
bier, and its accessories were all removed.  The priests announced to
the Archimandrite that their search had been unsuccessful, whereupon
he ordered them to make a further search outside the church.  They
went out, and so timed their return as to arrive before the ikonostas
at three minutes before midnight.  They again reported that they had
been unsuccessful; when, as the first stroke of midnight pealed from
the great clock, the Metropolitan of Petrograd announced in a loud
voice, "Christ is risen!"  At an electric signal given from the
cathedral, the great guns of the fortress boomed out in a salute of
one hundred and one guns; the gun-cotton was touched off, and the
swift flash kindled the tens of thousands of candles running round
the building; the enormous congregation lit the tapers they carried;
the "Royal doors" of the ikonostas were thrown open, and the clergy
appeared in their festival vestments of cloth of gold, as the choir
burst into the beautiful Russian Easter anthem, and so the Easter
Mass began.  Nothing more poignantly dramatic, more magnificently
impressive, could possibly be imagined than this almost instantaneous
change from intense gloom to blazing light; from the plaintive dirges
of the Funeral Service to the jubilant strains of the Easter Mass.  I
never tired of witnessing this splendid piece of symbolism.

It sounds almost irreverent to talk of comical {108} incidents in
connection with so solemn an occasion, but there are two little
episodes I must mention.  About 1880 the first tentative efforts were
made by France to establish a Franco-Russian alliance.  Ideas on the
subject were very nebulous at first, but slowly they began to
crystallise into concrete shape.  A new French Ambassador was
appointed to Petrograd in the hope of fanning the faint spark into
further life.  He, wishing to show his sympathy for the _nation
amie_, attended the Easter Mass at St. Isaac's, but unfortunately he
was quite unversed in the ritual of the Orthodox Church.  In every
ikonostas there are two ikons on either side of the "Royal doors";
the Saviour on one side, the Madonna and Child on the other.  The new
Ambassador was standing in front of the ikon of the Saviour, and in
the course of the Mass the Metropolitan came out, and made the three
prescribed low bows before the ikon, previous to censing it.  The
Ambassador, taking this as a personal compliment to France, as
represented in his own person, acknowledged the attention with three
equally low bows, laying his hand on his heart and ejaculating with
all the innate politeness of his nation, "Monsieur!  Monsieur!
Monsieur!"  This little incident caused much amusement, as did a
newly-arrived German diplomat, who when greeted by a Russian friend
with the customary Easter salutation of "Christ is risen!" ("Kristos
voskress!") wished to respond, but, being ignorant of the traditional
answer, "He is verily risen," merely made {109} a low bow and said,
"Ich auch," which may be vulgarly Englished into "The same here."

The universal Easter suppers at the conclusion of the Mass play an
important part in Russian life, for they mean the breaking of the
long and rigorous Lenten fast of the Eastern Church, during which all
meat, butter, milk, and eggs are prohibited.  The peasants adhere
rigidly to these rules, so the Easter supper assumes great importance
in their eyes.  The ingredients of this supper are invariable for
high and low, for rich and poor--cold ham, hard-boiled eggs dyed red,
a sort of light cake akin to the French _brioche_, and a sour
cream-cheese shaped into a pyramid and decorated with little crosses
of dried currants.  I think that this cake and cream cheese (known as
"Paskva") are prepared only at Easter-time.  Even at the Yacht Club
during Holy Week, meat, butter, milk, and eggs were prohibited, and
still Armand, our incomparable French chef, managed to produce
_plats_ of the most succulent description.  Loud praises were
lavished upon his skill in preparing such excellent dishes out of
oil, fish, flour, and vegetables, the only materials allowed him.  I
met Armand in the passage one day and asked him how he managed to do
it.  Looking round to see that no Russians could overhear, Armand
replied with a wink, "Voyez-vous Monsieur, le bon Dieu ne regarde pas
d'aussi près."  Of course he had gone on using cream, butter, and
eggs, just as usual, but as the members of the Club did not know
this, and thought {110} that they were strictly obeying the rules of
their Church, I imagine that no blame could attach to them.

On Easter Eve the two-mile-long Nevsky Perspective was lined with
humble folks standing by white napkins on which the materials for
their Easter supper were arranged.  On every napkin glimmered a
lighted taper, and the long line of these twinkling lights produced a
very charming effect, as of myriads of glow-worms.  Priests would
pass swiftly down the line, each attended by an acolyte carrying a
pail of holy water.  The priest would mutter a rapid blessing,
sprinkle the food and its owner with holy water, pocket an
infinitesimally small fee, and pass on again.

A friend of mine was once down in the fruit-growing districts of the
Crimea.  Passing through one of the villages of that pleasing
peninsula, he found it decorated in honour of a religious festival.
The village priest was going to bless the first-fruits of the
orchards.  The peasants stood in a row down the village street, each
one with the first crop of his orchard arranged on a clean napkin
before him.  The red-bearded priest, quite a young man, passed down
the street, sprinkling fruit and grower alike with holy water, and
repeating a blessing to each one.  The young priest approached, and
my friend could hear quite plainly the words of his blessing.  No.
---- it was quite impossible!  It was incredible!  and yet he could
not doubt the evidence of his own ears!  The young priest was
speaking in good Scots, {111} and the words of the blessing he
bestowed on each parishioner were, "Here, man! tak' it.  If it does
ye nae guid, it canna possibly dae ye any hairm."  The men addressed,
probably taking this for a quotation from Scripture in some unknown
tongue, bowed reverently as the words were pronounced over them.
That a Russian village priest in a remote district of the Crimea
should talk broad Scots was a sufficiently unusual circumstance to
cause my friend to make some further inquiries.  It then appeared
that when the Government dockyard at Sebastopol was reopened, several
Scottish foremen from the Clyde shipbuilding yards were imported to
supervise the Russian workmen.  Amongst others came a Glasgow foreman
with his wife and a son who was destined for the ministry of the Free
Church of Scotland.  Once arrived in Russia, they found that
facilities for training a youth for the Presbyterian ministry were
somewhat lacking in Sebastopol.  Sooner than sacrifice their dearest
wish, the parents, with commendable broadmindedness, decided that
their offspring should enter the Russian Church.  He was accordingly
sent to a seminary and in due course was ordained a priest and
appointed to a parish, but he apparently still retained his Scottish
speech and his characteristically Scottish independence of view.

After a year in Petrograd I used to attempt to analyse to myself the
complex Russian character.  "We are a 'jelly-folk,'" had said one of
my friends to me.  The Russian term was "Kiselnui {112} narod," and I
think there is truth in that.  They _are_ an invertebrate folk.  I
cannot help thinking that Peter the Great was one of the worst
enemies of his own country.  Instead of allowing Russia to develop
naturally on lines suited to the racial instincts of her people, he
attempted to run the whole country into a West European mould, and to
superimpose upon it a veneer imported from the France of Louis
Quatorze.  With the very few this could perhaps succeed, with the
many it was a foregone failure.  He tried in one short lifetime to do
what it had taken other countries centuries to accomplish.  He built
a vast and imposing edifice on shifting sand, without any
foundations.  It might stand for a time; its ultimate doom was
certain.

From the windows of our Embassy we looked upon the broad Neva.  When
fast bound in the grip of winter, sledge-roads were made across the
ice, bordered with lamp-posts and marked out with sawn-off fir trees.
Little wooden taverns and tea-houses were built on the river, and as
soon as the ice was of sufficient thickness the tramcar lines were
laid across it.  A colony of Laps came yearly and encamped on the
river with their reindeer, for the temperature of Petrograd rarely
falling more than ten degrees below zero, it was looked upon as a
genial winter climate for invalids from Lapland.  A stranger from
another planet might have imagined that these buildings were
permanent, that the fir trees were really growing, and that all the
life {113} on the frozen river would last indefinitely.  Everyone
knew, though, with absolute certainty that by the middle of April the
ice would break up, and that these little houses, if not removed in
time, would be carried away and engulfed in the liberated stream.  By
May the river would be running again as freely as though these
temporary edifices had never been built on it.

I think these houses built on the ice were very typical of Russia.




{114}

CHAPTER IV

The Winter Palace--Its interior--Alexander II--A Russian Court
Ball--The "Bals des Palmiers"--The Empress--The blessing of the
Neva--Some curiosities of the Winter Palace--The great Orloff
diamond--My friend the Lady-in-Waiting--Sugared Compensations--The
attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880--Some unexpected finds in the
Palace--A most hilarious funeral--Sporting expeditions--Night drives
through the forest in mid-winter--Wolves--A typical Russian
village--A peasant's house--"Deaf and dumb people"--The inquisitive
peasant youth--Curiosity about strangers--An embarrassing
situation--A still more awkward one--Food difficulties--A bear
hunt--My first bear--Alcoholic consequences--My liking for the
Russian peasant--The beneficent india-rubber Ikon--Two curious
sporting incidents--Village habits--The great gulf fixed between
Russian nobility and peasants.


The Winter Palace drags its lengthy, uninteresting façade for some
five hundred feet along the quays of the Neva.  It presents a mere
wearisome iteration of the same architectural features repeated again
and again, and any effect it might produce is marred by the hideous
shade of that crude red, called by the Russians "raspberry colour,"
with which it is daubed, and for which they have so misplaced an
affection.

{115}

The interior of the Winter Palace was burned out in 1837, and only a
few of the original State rooms survive.  These surviving rooms are
the only ones of any artistic interest, as the other innumerable and
stupendous halls were all reconstructed during the "period of bad
taste," and bear ample witness to that fact in every detail of their
ornamentation.

The Ambassadors' staircase, part of the original building, is very
dignified and imposing with its groups of statuary, painted ceiling,
and lavish decoration, as is Peter the Great's Throne room, with
jasper columns, and walls hung with red velvet worked in gold with
great Russian two-headed eagles.  All the tables, chairs, and
chandeliers in this room were of solid silver.

St. George's Hall, another of the old rooms, I thought splendid, with
its pure white marble walls and columns and rich adornments of gilt
bronze, and there was also an agreeably barbaric hall with entirely
gilt columns, many banners, and gigantic effigies of ancient Russian
warriors.  All these rooms were full of collections of the gold and
silver-gilt trays on which the symbolical "bread and salt" had been
offered to different Emperors in the various towns of their dominions.

The fifty or so other modern rooms were only remarkable for their
immense size, the Nicholas Hall, for instance, being 200 feet long
and 65 feet wide, though the so-called "Golden Hall" positively
dazzled one with its acre or so of gilding.  It would have been a
happy idea for the Emperor to {116} assemble all the leading
financiers of Europe to dine together in the "Golden Hall."  The
sight of so much of the metal which they had spent their whole lives
in amassing would have gratified the financiers, and would probably
have stimulated them to fresh exertions.

The Emperor Alexander II always received the diplomats in Peter the
Great's Throne room, seated on Peter's throne.  He was a wonderfully
handsome man even in his old age, with a most commanding manner, and
an air of freezing hauteur.  When addressing junior members of the
Diplomatic Body there was something in his voice and a look in his
eye reminiscent of the Great Mogul addressing an earthworm.

I have only seen three Sovereigns who looked their parts quite
unmistakably: Alexander II of Russia, William I of Germany, and Queen
Victoria.  In Queen Victoria's case it was the more remarkable, as
she was very short.  Yet this little old lady in her plain dress, had
the most inimitable dignity, and no one could have mistaken her for
anything but a Queen.  I remember Queen Victoria attending a concert
at the Albert Hall in 1887, two months before the Jubilee
celebrations.  The vast building was packed to the roof, and the
Queen received a tremendous ovation.  No one who saw it can ever
forget how the little old lady advanced to the front of her box and
made two very low sweeping curtsies to the right and to the left of
her with incomparable dignity and grace, as she smiled {117} through
her tears on the audience in acknowledgment of the thunders of
applause that greeted her.  Queen Victoria was always moved to tears
when she received an unusually cordial ovation from her people, for
they loved her, and she loved them.

The scale of everything in the Winter Palace was so vast that it is
difficult to compare the Court entertainments there with those
elsewhere.

Certainly the Russian ladies looked well in their uniform costumes.
The cut, shape, and style of these dresses never varied, be the
fashions what they might.  The dress, once made, lasted the owner for
her lifetime, though with advancing years it might possibly require
to be readjusted to an expanding figure.  They were enormously
expensive to start with--anything from £300 to £1,200.  There was a
complete under-dress of white satin, heavily embroidered.  Over this
was worn a velvet dress lavishly trimmed with dark fur.  This velvet
dress might be of dull red, dark blue, green, or brown, according to
the taste of the wearer.  It had to have a long train embroidered
with gold or silver flowers, or both mixed, as the owner's fancy
dictated.  On the head was worn the "Kakoshnik," the traditional
Russian head-dress, in the form of a crescent.  In the case of
married women the "Kakoshnik" might be of diamonds, or any gems they
fancied, or could compass; for girls the "Kakoshnik" must be of white
silk.  Girls, too, had to wear white, without the velvet over-dress.
The usual fault of Russian faces is their undue breadth across the
cheek-bones, {118} and the white "Kakoshnik" worn by the unmarried
girls seemed to me to emphasize this defect, whereas a blazing
semicircle of diamonds made a most becoming setting for an older
face, although at times, as in other cases, the setting might be more
ornamental than the object it enshrined.  Though the Russian uniforms
were mostly copied from German models, the national lack of attention
to detail was probably to blame for the lack of effect they produced
when compared with their Prussian originals.

There was always something a little slovenly in the way in which the
Russian uniforms were worn, though an exception must be made in the
case of the resplendent "Chevaliers Gardes," and of the "Gardes à
Cheval."  The uniforms of these two crack cavalry regiments was
closely copied from that of the Prussian "Gardes du Corps" and was
akin to that of our own Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards; the same
leather breeches and long jack-boots, and the same cuirasses; the
tunics, though were white, instead of the scarlet or blue of their
English prototypes.  The "Chevaliers Gardes" had silvered cuirasses
and helmets surmounted with the Russian eagle, whereas those of the
"Gardes à Cheval" were gilt.  As we know, "all that glitters is not
gold," and in spite of their gilding the "Gardes à Cheval" were
considered very inferior socially to their rivals.  The Emperor's
fiercely-moustached Circassian bodyguard struck an agreeably exotic
note with their grass-green trousers and long blue kaftans, covered
with rows of Persian {119} cartridge-holders in _niello_ of black and
silver.  Others of the Circassians wore coats of chain mail over
their kaftans, and these kaftans were always sleeveless, showing the
bright green, red, or blue silk shirtsleeves of their wearers.
Another pleasant barbaric touch.

To my mind, the smartest uniforms were those of the Cossack officers;
baggy green knickerbockers thrust into high boots, a hooked-and-eyed
green tunic without a single button or a scrap of gold lace on it,
and a plain white silk belt.  No one could complain of a lack of
colour at a Petrograd Palace ball.  The Russian civil and Court
uniforms were ingeniously hideous with their white trousers and long
frock-coats covered with broad transverse bars of gold lace.  The
wearers of these ugly garments always looked to me like walking
embodiments of what are known in commercial circles as "gilt-edged
securities."  As at Berlin, there were hosts of pages at these
entertainments.  These lads were all attired like miniature
"Chevalier Gardes," in leather breeches and jack-boots, and wore
gold-laced green tunics; a singularly unpractical dress, I should
have thought, for a growing boy.  All Russians of a certain social
position were expected to send their sons to be educated at the
"School for Imperial Pages," which was housed in an immense and
ornate building and counted four hundred pupils.  Wise parents
mistrusted the education "aux pages" for their sons, knowing that,
however little else they might learn there, they would be certain to
acquire {120} habits of gross extravagance; the prominence, too, into
which these boys were thrust at Court functions tended to make them
unduly precocious.

The smaller Court balls were known as "Les Bals des Palmiers."  On
these occasions, a hundred large palm trees, specially grown for the
purpose at Tsarskoe Selo, were brought by road from there in huge
vans.  Round the palm in its tub supper tables were built, each one
accommodating fifteen people.  It was really an extraordinarily
pretty sight seeing these rows of broad-fronted palms down the great
Nicholas Hall, and the knowledge that a few feet away there was an
outside temperature of 5° below zero added piquancy to the sight of
these exiles from the tropics waving their green plumes so far away
in the frozen North.  At the "Bals des Palmiers" it was Alexander
II's custom to make the round of the tables as soon as his guests
were seated.  The Emperor would go up to a table, the occupants of
which of course all rose at his approach, say a few words to one or
two of them, and then eat either a small piece of bread or a little
fruit, and just put his lips to a glass of champagne, in order that
his guests might say that he had eaten and drank with them.  A
delicate and graceful attention!

As electric light had not then been introduced into the palace, the
entire building was lighted with wax candles.  I cannot remember the
number I was told was required on these occasions, but I think it was
over one hundred thousand.  The candles were all lighted with a
thread of gun-cotton, as in St. Isaac's Cathedral.

{121}

The Empress appeared but very rarely.  It was a matter of common
knowledge that she was suffering from an incurable disease.  All the
rooms in which she lived were artificially impregnated with oxygen,
continuously released from cylinders in which the gas had been
compressed.  This, though it relieved the lungs of the sufferer,
proved very trying to the Empress's ladies-in-waiting, as this
artificial atmosphere with its excess of oxygen after an hour or so
gave them all violent headaches and attacks of giddiness.

In spite of the characteristic Russian carelessness about details,
these Petrograd Palace entertainments provided a splendid glittering
pageant to the eye, for the stage was so vast and the number of
performers so great.  There was not the same blaze of diamonds as in
London, but I should say that the individual jewels were far finer.
A stone must be very perfect to satisfy the critical Russian eye,
and, true to their Oriental blood, the ladies preferred unfaceted
rubies, sapphires, and emeralds.  Occasional Emirs from Central Asia
served, as do the Indian princes at Buckingham Palace, as a reminder
that Russia's responsibilities, like those of Great Britain, did not
cease with her European frontiers.

Once a year the diplomats had much the best of the situation.  This
was at the blessing of the waters of the Neva--"the Jordan," as
Russians called it--on January 6, old style, or January 18, according
to our reckoning.  We saw the ceremonies through the double windows
of the great steam-heated Nicholas {122} Hall, whereas the Emperor
and all the Grand Dukes had to stand bareheaded in the snow outside.
A great hole was cut in the ice of the Neva, with a temporary chapel
erected over it.  At the conclusion of the religious service, the
Metropolitan of Petrograd solemnly blessed the waters of the river,
and dipped a great golden cross into them.

A cordon of soldiers had to guard the opening in the ice until it
froze over again, in order to prevent fanatical peasants from bathing
in the newly-consecrated waters.  Many had lost their lives in this
way.

A friend of mine, the Director of the Hermitage Gallery, offered to
take me all over the Winter Palace, and the visit occupied nearly an
entire day.  The maze of rooms was so endless that the mind got a
little bewildered and surfeited with the sight of so many splendours.
A detail that amused me was a small library on the second floor,
opening on to an avenue of lime trees.  One of the Empresses had
chosen for her private library this room on the second floor, looking
into a courtyard.  She had selected it on account of its quiet, but
expressed a wish to have an avenue of trees, under which to walk in
the intervals of her studies.  The room being on the second floor,
and looking into a yard, the wish appeared to be difficult to
execute, but in those days the word "impossible" did not exist for an
Empress of Russia.  The entire courtyard was filled in with earth,
and full-grown lime trees transplanted there.  When I saw this aerial
grove eighty years afterwards, {123} there was quite a respectable
avenue of limes on the second floor of the building, with a gravel
walk bordered by grass-plots beneath them.  Another Empress wished to
have a place to walk in during the winter months, so a very ingenious
hanging winter-garden was contrived for her, following all the
exterior angles of the building.  It was not in the least like an
ordinary conservatory, but really did recall an outdoor garden.
There were gravel walks, and lawns of lycopodium simulating grass;
there were growing orange trees, and quite large palms.  For some
reason the creepers on the walls of this pseudo-garden were all
artificial, being very cleverly made out of painted sheet-iron.

I had an opportunity later of seeing the entire Winter Palace
collection of silver plate, and all the Crown jewels, when they were
arranged for the inspection of the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was
good enough to invite me to come.  There were enormous quantities of
plate, of Russian, French, and English make, sufficient to stock
every silversmith's shop in London.  Some of the English plate was of
William and Mary's and Queen Anne's date, and there were some fine
early Georgian pieces.  They, would, I confess, have appeared to
greater advantage had they conveyed the idea that they had been
occasionally cleaned.  As it was, they looked like dull pewter that
had been neglected for twenty years.  Of the jewels, the only things
I remember were a superb "corsage" of diamonds and aquamarines--not
the pale green stones we {124} associate with the name, but immense
stones of that bright blue tint, so highly prized in Russia--and
especially the great Orloff diamond.  The "corsage" was big enough to
make a very ample cuirass for the most stalwart of lifeguardsmen, and
the Orloff diamond formed the head of the Russian Imperial sceptre.
The history of the Orloff, or Lazareff, diamond is quite interesting.
Though by no means the largest, it is considered the most perfect
diamond in the world, albeit it has a slight flaw in it.  Originally
stolen from India, it came into the hands of an Armenian called
Lazareff in some unknown manner about A.D. 1750.  Lazareff, so the
story goes, devised a novel hiding-place for the great stone.  Making
a deep incision into the calf of his leg, he placed the diamond in
the cavity, and lay in bed for three months till the wound was
completely healed over.  He then started for Amsterdam, and though
stripped and searched several times during his journey, for he was
strongly suspected of having the stone concealed about his person,
its hiding-place was never discovered.  At Amsterdam Lazareff had the
wound reopened by a surgeon, and the diamond extracted.  He then sold
it to Count Orloff for 450,000 roubles, or roughly £45,000, and
Orloff in his turn made a present of the great stone to Catherine the
Great.  The diamond is set under a jewelled Russian eagle at the
extremity of the sceptre, where it probably shows to greater
advantage than it did when concealed for six months in the calf of an
Armenian's leg.

{125}

The accommodation provided for the suites of the Imperial family is
hardly on a par with the magnificence of the rest of the palace.  The
Duchess of Edinburgh, daughter of Alexander II, made a yearly visit
to Petrograd, as long as her mother the Empress was alive.  As the
Duchess's lady-in-waiting happened to be one of my oldest friends,
during her stay I was at the palace at least three days a week, and I
retain vivid recollections of the dreary, bare, whitewashed vault
assigned to her as a sitting-room.  The only redeeming feature of
this room was a five-storied glass tray packed with some fifty
varieties of the most delicious _bon-bons_ the mind of man could
conceive.  These were all fresh-baked every day by the palace
confectioner, and the tray was renewed every morning.  There were
some sixty of these trays prepared daily, and their arrangement was
always absolutely identical, precisely the same number of caramels
and _fondants_ being placed on each shelf of the tray.  Everyone knew
that the palace confectioner owned a fashionable sweet shop on the
Nevsky, where he traded under a French name, and I imagine that his
shop was entirely stocked from the remains of the palace trays.

In the spring of 1880 an attempt was made on Alexander's II's life by
a bomb which completely wrecked the white marble private dining-room.
The Emperor's dinner hour was 7, and the bomb was timed to explode at
7.20 p.m.  The Emperor happened at the time to be overwhelmed with
work, and at the last moment he postponed dinner until 7.30.  {126}
The bomb exploded at the minute it had been timed for, killing many
of the servants.  My poor friend the lady-in-waiting was passing
along the corridor as the explosion occurred.  She fell unhurt
amongst the wreckage, but the shock and the sight of the horribly
mangled bodies of the servants were too much for her.  She never
recovered from their effects, and died in England within a year.
After this crime, the Winter Palace was thoroughly searched from
cellars to attics, and some curious discoveries were made.

Some of the countless moujiks employed in the palace had vast
unauthorized colonies of their relatives living with them on the top
floor of the building.  In one bedroom a full-grown cow was found,
placidly chewing the cud.  One of the moujiks had smuggled it in as a
new-born calf, had brought it up by hand, and afterwards fed it on
hay purloined from the stables.  Though it may have kept his family
well provided with milk, stabling a cow in a bedroom unprovided with
proper drainage, on the top floor of a building, is not a proceeding
to be unduly encouraged; nor does it tend to add to the sanitary
amenities of a palace.

Russians are fond of calling the Nevsky "the street of toleration,"
for within a third of a mile of its length a Dutch Calvinist, a
German Lutheran, a Roman Catholic, and an Armenian church rise almost
side by side.  "Nevsky" is, of course, only the adjective of "Neva,"
and the street is termed "Perspective" in French and "Prospect" in
Russian.

{127}

Close to the Armenian church lived M. Delyanoff, who was the Minister
of Education in those days.  Both M. and Madame Delyanoff were
exceedingly hospitable and kind to the Diplomatic Body, so, when M.
Delyanoff died, most of the diplomats attended his funeral,
appearing, according to Russian custom, in full uniform.  The
Delyanoffs being Armenians, the funeral took place in the Armenian
church, and none of us had had any previous experience of the
extraordinary noises which pass for singing amongst Armenians.  When
six individuals appeared and began bleating like sheep, and followed
this by an excellent imitation of hungry wolves howling, it was too
much for us.  We hastily composed our features into the decorum the
occasion demanded, amid furtive little snorts of semi-suppressed
laughter.  After three grey-bearded priests had stepped from behind
the ikonostas, and, putting their chins up in the air, proceeded to
yelp together in unison, exactly like dogs baying the moon, the
entire Corps Diplomatique broke down utterly.  Never have I seen men
laugh so unrestrainedly.  As we had each been given a large lighted
candle, the movements of our swaying bodies were communicated to the
tapers, and showers of melted wax began flying in all directions.
With the prudence of the land of my birth, I placed myself against a
pillar, so as to have no one behind me, but each time the three
grey-beards recommenced their comical howling, I must have scattered
perfect Niagaras of wax on to the embroidered coat-tails {128} and
extensive back of the Swedish Minister in front of me.  I should
think that I must have expended the combined labours of several hives
of bees on his garments, congratulating myself the while that that
genial personage, not being a peacock, did not enjoy the advantage of
having eyes in his tail.  The Swedish Minister, M. Dué, his massive
frame quivering with laughter, was meanwhile engaged in performing a
like kindly office on to the back of his Roumanian colleague, Prince
Ghika, who in his turn was anointing the uniform of M. van der
Hooven, the Netherlands Minister.  Providentially, the Delyanoff
family were all grouped together before the altar, and the farmyard
imitations of the Armenian choir so effectually drowned our unseemly
merriment that any faint echoes which reached the family were
ascribed by them to our very natural emotions in the circumstances.
I heard, indeed, afterwards that the family were much touched by our
attendance and by our sympathetic behaviour, but never, before or
since, have I attended so hilarious a funeral.

Lord Dufferin, in common with most of the members of the Embassy, was
filled with an intense desire to kill a bear.  These animals, of
course, hibernate, and certain peasants made a regular livelihood by
discovering bears' lairs (the Russian term, a corruption from the
German, is "bear-loge") and then coming to Petrograd and selling the
beast at so much per "pood" of forty Russian pounds.  The finder
undertook to provide sledges and beaters for the sum {129} agreed
upon, but nothing was to be paid unless a shot at the bear was
obtained.  These expeditions involved a considerable amount of
discomfort.  There was invariably a long drive of from forty to
eighty miles to be made in rough country sledges from the nearest
available railway station; the accommodation in a peasant's house
would consist of the bare floor with some hay laid on it, and every
scrap of food, including bread, butter, tea, and sugar, would have to
be carried from Petrograd, as European stomachs could not assimilate
the sour, wet heavy black bread the peasants eat, and their
brick-tea, which contained bullocks' blood, was undrinkable to those
unaccustomed to it.  It usually fell to my lot, as I spoke the
language, to go on ahead to the particular village to which we were
bound, and there to make the best arrangements possible for Lord and
Lady Dufferin's comfort.  My instructions were always to endeavour to
get a room in the latest house built, as this was likely to be less
infested with vermin than the others.  After a four or five hours'
run from Petrograd by train, one would find the vendor of the bear
waiting at the station with a country sledge.  These sledges were
merely a few poles tied together, mounted on iron-shod wooden
runners, and filled with hay.  The sledges were so long that it was
possible to lie at full length in them.  The rifles, baggage, and
food being packed under the hay, one lay down at full length, clad in
long felt boots and heavy furs, an air-cushion under one's head, and
a Persian "bashilik," or hood of fine camel's hair, drawn over it to
{130} prevent ears or nose from being frostbitten.  Tucked into a
thick fur rug, one composed oneself for an all-night drive through
the endless forests.  The two drivers sat on a plank in front, and
one or other of them was continually dropping off to sleep, and
tumbling backwards on to the occupants of the sledge.  It was not a
very comfortable experience, and sleep was very fickle to woo.  In
the first place, the sledge-tracks through the forest were very rough
indeed, and the jolting was incessant; in the second place, should
the actual driver go to sleep as well as his relieving colleague, the
sledge would bump against the tree-trunks and overturn, and baggage,
rifles and occupants would find themselves struggling in the deep
snow.  I always tied my baggage together with strings, so as to avoid
losing anything in these upsets, but even then it took a considerable
time retrieving the impedimenta from the deep snowdrifts.

It always gave me pleasure watching the black conical points of the
fir trees outlined against the pale burnished steel of the sky, and
in the intense cold the stars blazed like diamonds out of the clear
grey vault above.  The biting cold burnt like a hot iron against the
cheeks, until prudence, and a regard for the preservation of one's
ears, dictated the pulling of the "bashilik" over one's face again.
The intense stillness, and the absolute silence, for there are no
sleigh-bells in Northern Russia, except in the imagination of
novelists, had some subtle attraction for me.  The silence was
occasionally--very {131} occasionally only--broken by an ominous,
long-drawn howl; then a spectral swift-trotting outline would appear,
keeping pace easily with the sledge, but half-hidden amongst the
tree-trunks.  In that case the smooth-bore gun and the buckshot
cartridges were quickly disinterred from the hay, and the driver
urged his horses into a furious gallop.  There was no need to use the
whip; the horses knew.  Everyone would give a sigh of relief as the
silent grey swift-moving spectral figure, with its fox-like lope,
vanished after a shot or two had been fired at it.  The drivers would
take off their caps and cross themselves, muttering "Thanks be to
God!  Oh! those cursed wolves!" and the horses slowed down of their
own accord into an easy amble.  There were compensations for a
sleepless night in the beauty of the pictures in strong black and
white, or in shadowy half-tones of grey which the endless forest
displayed at every turn.  When the earth is wrapped in its
snow-mantle, it is never dark, and the gleams of light from the white
carpet down the long-drawn aisles of the dark firs were like the
pillared shadows of a great cathedral when the dusk is filling it
with mystery and a vague sense of immense size.

All villages that I have seen in Northern Russia are alike, and when
you have seen one peasant's house you have seen all.

The village consists of one long street, and in the winter the kindly
snow covers much of its unspeakable untidiness.  The "isbas," or
wooden houses, are all of the same pattern; they are solidly built of
{132} rough logs, the projecting ends firmly morticed into each
other.  Their gable ends all front the street, each with two windows,
and every "isba" has its courtyard, where the door is situated.
There are no gardens, or attempts at gardens, and the houses are one
and all roofed with grey shingles.  Each house is raised some six
feet from the ground, and they are all water-tight, and most of them
air-tight as well.  The houses are never painted, and their weathered
logs stand out silver-grey against the white background.  A good deal
of imagination is shown in the fret-saw carving of the barg-boards,
which are either ornamented in conventional patterns, or have roughly
outlined grotesque animals clambering up their angles; very often too
there are fretsaw ornaments round the window-frames as well.
Prominent on the gate of every "isba" is the painting, in black on a
white ground, of the particular implement each occupant is bound to
supply in case of a fire, that dire and relentless foe to Russian
wooden-built villages.  On some houses a ladder will be depicted; on
others an axe or a pail.  The interior arrangement of every "isba" I
have ever seen is also identical.  They always consist of two
fair-sized rooms; the "hot room," which the family inhabit in winter,
facing the street; the "cold room," used only in summertime, looking
into the courtyard.  These houses are not uncomfortable, though, a
Russian peasant's wants being but few, they are not overburdened with
furniture.  The disposition of the "hot room" is unvarying.
Supposing it facing {133} due south, the door will be in the
north-west corner.  The north-east corner is occupied by an immense
brick stove, filling up one-eighth of the floor-space.  These stoves
are about five feet high, and their tops are covered with loose
sheepskins.  Here the entire family sleep in the stifling heat, their
resting-place being shared with thousands of voracious, crawling,
uninvited guests.  In the south-east corner is the ikon shelf, where
the family ikons are ranged in line, with a red lamp burning before
them.  There will be a table and benches in another corner, and a
rough dresser, with a samovar, and a collection of those wooden bowls
and receptacles, lacquered in scarlet, black, and gold, which Russian
peasants make so beautifully; and that is all.  The temperature of
the "hot room" is overpowering, and the atmosphere fetid beyond the
power of description.  Every male, on entering takes off his cap and
makes a bow before the ikons.  I always conformed to this custom, for
there is no use in gratuitously wounding people's religious
susceptibilities.  I invariably slept in the "cold room," for its
temperature being probably five or six degrees below freezing point,
it was free from vermin, and the atmosphere was purer.  The master of
the house laid a few armfuls of hay on the floor, and his wife would
produce one of those towels Russian women embroider so skilfully in
red and blue, and lay it down for the cheek to rest against.  I slept
in my clothes, with long felt boots on, and my furs thrown over me,
and I could sleep there as well as in any bed.

{134}

The Russian peasant's idea as to the relation of Holy Russia to the
rest of the world is curious.  It is rather the point of view of the
Chinaman, who thinks that beyond the confines of the "Middle Kingdom"
there is only outer barbarism.  Everything to the west of Russia is
known as "Germania," an intelligible mistake enough when it is
remembered that Germany marks Russia's Western frontier.  "Slavs"
(akin, I think, to "Slova," "a word") are the only people who can
talk; "Germania" is inhabited by deaf and dumb people ("nyémski") who
can only make inarticulate noises.  On one of my shooting
expeditions, I stopped for an hour at a tea-house to change horses
and to get warmed up.  The proprietor told me that his son was very
much excited at hearing that there was a "deaf and dumb man" in the
house, as he had never seen one.  Would I speak to the young man.
who was then putting on his Sunday clothes on the chance of the
interview being granted?

In due course the son appeared; a handsome youth in glorified
peasant's costume.  The first outward sign of a Russian peasant's
rise in the social scale is that he tucks his shirt _into_ his
trousers, instead of wearing it outside; the second stage is marked
by his wearing his trousers _over_ his boots, instead of thrusting
the trousers into the boots.  This young fellow had not reached this
point of evolution, and wore his shirt outside, but it was a
dark-blue silk shirt, secured by a girdle of rainbow-coloured Persian
silk.  He still wore his long boots outside too, {135} but they had
scarlet morocco tops, and the legs of them were elaborately
embroidered with gold wire.  In modern parlance, this gay young spark
was a terrific village "nut."  Never have I met a youth of such
insatiable curiosity, or one so crassly and densely ignorant.  He was
one perpetual note of interrogation.  "Were there roads and villages
in Germania?"  To the best of my belief there were.  "There were no
towns though as large as Petrograd."  I rather fancied the contrary,
and instanced a flourishing little community of some five million
souls, situated on an island, with which I was very well acquainted.

The youth eyed me with deep suspicion.  "Were there railways in
Germania?"  Only about a hundred times the mileage of the Russian
railways.  "There was no electric light though, because Jablochkoff,
a Russian, had invented that."  (I found this a fixed idea with all
Russian peasants.)  I had a vague impression of having seen one or
two arc lights feebly glimmering in the streets of the benighted
cities of Germania.  "Could people read and write there, and could
they really talk?  It was easy to see that I had learned to talk
since I had been in Russia."  I showed him a copy of the London
_Times_.  "These were not real letters.  Could anyone read these
meaningless signs," and so on _ad infinitum_.  I am persuaded that
when I left that youth he was convinced that I was the nearest
relative to Ananias that he had ever met.

No matter which hour of the twenty-four it might {136} happen to be,
ten minutes after my arrival in any of these remote villages the
entire population assembled to gaze at the "nyemetz," the deaf and
dumb man from remote "Germania," who had arrived in their midst.
They crowded into the "hot room," men, women, and children, and gaped
on the mysterious stranger from another world, who sat there drinking
tea, as we should gaze on a visitor from Mars.  I always carried with
me on those occasions a small collapsible india-rubber bath and a
rubber folding basin.  On my first expedition, after my arrival in
the village, I procured a bucket of hot water from the mistress of
the house, carried it to the "cold room," and, having removed all my
garments, proceeded to take a bath.  Like wildfire the news spread
through the village that the "deaf and dumb" man was washing himself,
and they all flocked in to look.  I succeeded in "shooing" away the
first arrivals, but they returned with reinforcements, until half the
population, men, women, and children, were standing in serried rows
in my room, following my every movement with breathless interest.  I
have never suffered from agoraphobia, so I proceeded cheerfully with
my ablutions.  "Look at him!  He is soaping himself!" would be
murmured.  "How dirty deaf and dumb people must be to want such a lot
of washing!"  "Why does he rub his teeth with little brushes?"  These
and similar observations fell from the eager crowd, only broken
occasionally by a piercing yell from a child, as she wailed
plaintively the Russian {137} equivalent of "Mummy!  Sonia not like
ugly man!"  It was distinctly an embarrassing situation, and only
once in my life have I been placed in a more awkward position.

That was at Bahia, in Brazil, when I was at the Rio de Janeiro
Legation.  I went to call on the British Consul's wife there, and had
to walk half a mile from the tram, through the gorgeous tropical
vegetation of the charming suburb of Vittoria, amongst villas faced
with cool-looking blue and white tiles; the pretty "azulejos" which
the Portuguese adopted from the Moors.  Oddly enough, a tram and a
tramcar are always called "a Bond" in Brazil.  The first tram-lines
were built out of bonds guaranteed by the State.  The people took
this to mean the tram itself; so "Bond" it is, and "Bond" it will
remain.  Being the height of a sweltering Brazilian summer, I was
clad in white from head to foot.  Suddenly, as happens in the
tropics, without any warning whatever, the heavens opened, and solid
sheets of water fell on the earth.  I reached the Consul's house with
my clean white linen soaked through, and most woefully bedraggled.
The West Indian butler (an old acquaintance) who opened the door
informed me that the ladies were out.  After a glance at my
extraordinary disreputable garments, he added, "You gib me dem
clothes, sar, I hab dem all cleaned and ironed in ten minutes, before
de ladies come back."  On the assurances of this swarthy servitor
that he and I were the only souls in the house, I divested myself of
every stitch {138} of clothing, and going into the drawing-room, sat
down to read a book in precisely the same attire as Adam adopted in
the earlier days of his married life.  Time went by, and my clothes
did not reappear; I should have known that to a Jamaican coloured man
measures of time are very elastic.  Suddenly I heard voices, and, to
my horror, I saw our Consul's wife approaching through the garden
with her two daughters and some other ladies.

There was not a moment to lose!  In that tropical drawing-room the
only available scrap of drapery was a red plush table-cover.
Bundling everything on the table ruthlessly to the ground, I had just
time to snatch up the table-cloth and drape myself in it (I trust
gracefully) when the ladies entered the room.  I explained my
predicament and lamented my inability to rise, and so we had tea
together.  It is the only occasion in the course of a long life in
which I ever remember taking tea with six ladies, clad only in a red
plush table-cloth with bead fringes.

Returning to Russia, the peasants fingered everything I possessed
with the insatiable curiosity of children; socks, ties, and shirts.
I am bound to say that I never had the smallest thing stolen.  As our
shooting expeditions were always during Lent, I felt great
compunction at shocking the peasants' religious scruples by eating
beef, ham, and butter, all forbidden things at that season.  I tried
hard to persuade one woman that my cold sirloin of roast beef was
part of a rare English fish, specially {139} imported, but she was, I
fear, of a naturally sceptical bent of mind.

Lady Dufferin had one curious gift.  She could spend the night in a
rough country sledge, or sleep in her clothes on a truss of hay, and
yet appear in the morning as fresh and neat, and spick and span, as
though she had had the most elaborate toilet appliances at her
disposal.  On these occasions she usually wore a Canadian
blanket-suit of dark blue and scarlet, with a scarlet belt and hood,
and a jaunty little sealskin cap.  She always went out to the forest
with us.

The procedure on these occasions was invariably the same.  An army of
beaters was assembled, about two-thirds of them women.  This made me
uneasy at first, until I learnt that the beaters run no danger
whatever from the bear.  The beaters form five-sixths, or perhaps
less, of a circle round the bear's sleeping place, and the guns are
placed in the intervening open space.  I may add that, personally, I
always used for bear an ordinary smooth-bore sporting gun, with a
leaden bullet.  I passed every one of these bullets down the barrels
of my gun myself to avoid the risk of the gun bursting, before they
were loaded into cartridges, and I had them secured with melted
tallow.  The advantages of a smooth-bore is that at close quarters,
as with bear, where you must kill your beast to avoid disagreeable
consequences, you lose no time in getting your sights on a
rapidly-moving object.  You shoot as you would a rabbit; and you can
make {140} absolutely sure of your animal, _if you keep your head_.
A leaden bullet at close quarters has tremendous stopping power.  Of
course you want a rifle as well for longer shots.  I found this
method most successful with tiger, later in India, only you must
remain quite cool.

At a given signal, the beaters begin yelling, beating iron pans with
sticks, blowing horns, shouting, and generally making enough
pandemonium to awaken the Seven Sleepers.  It effectually awakes the
bear, who emerges from his bedroom in an exceedingly evil temper, to
see what all this fearful din is about.  As he is surrounded with
noise on three sides, he naturally makes for the only quiet spot,
where the guns are posted.  By this time he is in a distinctly
unamiable mood.

I always took off my ski, and stood nearly waist-deep in the snow so
as to get a firm footing.  Then you can make quite certain of your
shot.  Ski or no ski, if it came to running away, the bear would
always have the pull on you.  The first time I was very lucky.  The
bear came straight to me.  When he was within fifteen feet, and I
felt absolutely certain of getting him, I fired.  He reared himself
on his hind legs to an unbelievable height, and fell stone dead at
Lady Dufferin's very feet.  That bear's skin is within three feet of
me as I write these lines.  We went back to the village in orthodox
fashion, all with fir-branches in our hands, as a sign of rejoicing;
I seated on the dead bear.

As a small boy of nine I had been tossed in a {141} blanket at
school, up to the ceiling, caught again, then up a second time and
third time.  It was not, and was not intended to be, a pleasant
experience, but in my day all little boys had to submit to it.  The
unhappy little brats stuck their teeth together, and tried hard to
grin as they were being hurled skywards.  These curious Russians,
though, appeared to consider it a delightful exercise.

Arrived at the village again, I was captured by some thirty buxom,
stalwart women, and sent spinning up and up, again and again, till I
was absolutely giddy.  Not only had one to thank them profusely for
this honour, but also to disburse a considerable amount of roubles in
acknowledgement of it.  Poor Lady Dufferin was then caught, in spite
of her protests, and sent hurtling skywards through the air half a
dozen times.  Needless to say that she alighted with not one hair of
her head out of place or one fold of her garments disarranged.  Being
young and inexperienced then, I was foolish enough to follow the
Russian custom, and to present the village with a small cask of
vodka.  I regretted it bitterly.  Two hours later not a male in the
place was sober.  Old grey-beards and young men lay dead drunk in the
snow; and quite little boys reeled about hopelessly intoxicated.  I
could have kicked myself for being so thoughtless.  During all the
years I was in Russia, I never saw a peasant woman drink spirits, or
under the influence of liquor.  In my house at Petrograd I had a
young peasant as house-boy.  He was quite a {142} nice lad of
sixteen; clean, willing, and capable, but, young as he was, he had
already fallen a victim to the national failing, in which he indulged
regularly once a month, when his wages were paid him, and nothing
could break him of this habit.  I could always tell when Ephim, the
boy, had gone out with the deliberate intention of getting drunk, by
glancing into his bedroom.  He always took the precaution of turning
the ikons over his bed, with their faces to the wall, before leaving,
and invariably blew out the little red lamp, in order that ikons
might not see him reeling into the room upon his return, or deposited
unconscious upon his bed.  Being a singularly neat boy in his habits,
he always put on his very oldest clothes on these occasions, in order
not to damage his better ones, should he fall down in the street
after losing control of his limbs.  This drunkenness spreads like a
cancer from top to bottom of Russian society.  A friend of mine, who
afterwards occupied one of the highest administrative posts, told me
quite casually that, on the occasion of his youngest brother's
seventeenth birthday, the boy had been allowed to invite six young
friends of his own age to dinner; my friend thought it quite amusing
that every one of these lads had been carried to bed dead drunk.  I
attribute the dry-rot which ate into the whole structure of the
mighty Empire, and brought it crashing to the ground, in a very large
degree to the intemperate habits prevailing amongst all classes of
Russian men, which in justice one must add, may be due to climatic
reasons.

{143}

In the villages our imported food was a constant source of
difficulty.  We were all averse to shocking the peasants by eating
meat openly during Lent, but what were we to do?  Out of deference to
their scruples, we refrained from buying eggs and milk, which could
have been procured in abundance, and furtively devoured ham, cold
beef, and pickles behind cunningly contrived ramparts of newspaper,
in the hope that it might pass unnoticed.  Remembering how meagre at
the best of times the diet of these peasants is, it is impossible to
help admiring them for the conscientious manner in which they obey
the rules of their Church during Lent.  I once gave a pretty peasant
child a piece of plum cake.  Her mother snatched it from her, and
asked me whether the cake contained butter or eggs.  On my
acknowledgement that it contained both, she threw it into the stove,
and asked me indignantly how I dared to imperil her child's immortal
soul by giving her forbidden food in Lent.  Even my sixteen-year-old
house-boy in Petrograd, the bibulous Ephim, although he regularly
succumbed to the charms of vodka, lived entirely on porridge and dry
bread during Lent, and would not touch meat, butter, or eggs on any
consideration whatever.  The more I saw of the peasants the more I
liked them.  The men all drank, and were not particularly truthful,
but they were like great simple, bearded, unkempt children, with
(drunkenness apart) all a child's faults, and all a nice child's
power of attraction.  I liked the {144} great, stalwart, big-framed
women too.  They were seldom good-looking, but their broad faces
glowed with health and good nature, and they had as a rule very good
skins, nice teeth, and beautiful complexions.  I found that I could
get on with these villagers like a house on fire.  However cold the
weather, no village girl or woman wears anything on her head but a
gaudy folded cotton handkerchief.

I never shared the resentment of my Russian friends at being
addressed with the familiar "thou" by the peasants.  They intended no
discourtesy; it was their natural form of address, and they could not
be expected to know that beyond the narrow confines of their village
there was another world where the ceremonious "you" was habitually
employed.  I rather fancy that anyone bred in the country, and
accustomed from his earliest childhood to mix with farmers,
cottagers, and farm-labourers, can get on with other country-bred
people, whether at home, or in Russia, India, or Canada--a town-bred
man would not know what to talk about.  In spite of the peasants'
reputation for pilfering, not one of us ever had the smallest thing
stolen.  I did indeed lose a rubber air-cushion in the snow, but that
was owing to the overturning of a sledge.  A colleague of mine, whom
I had hitherto always regarded as a truthful man, assured me a year
afterwards that he had seen my air-cushion ranged on the ikon shelf
in a peasant's house, with two red lamps burning before it.  The
owner of the house declared, according {145} to my friend, that my
air-cushion was an ikon of peculiar sanctity, though the painting had
in some mysterious manner become obliterated from it.  My colleague
further assured me that my air-cushion was building up a very
gratifying little local connection as a miracle-working ikon of quite
unusual efficiency, and that, under its kindly tutelage, crops
prospered and flocks and herds increased; of course within reasonable
limits only, for the new ikon held essentially moderate views, and
was temperamentally opposed to anything in the way of undue optimism.
I wished that I could have credited this, for it would have been
satisfactory to imagine oneself, through the agency of the
air-cushion, a vicarious yet untiring benefactor of a whole
countryside.

On one of our shooting expeditions a curious incident occurred.  Lord
Dufferin had taken a long shot at a bear, and had wounded without
killing him.  For some reason, the animal stopped, and climbed to the
top of a high fir tree.  Lord Dufferin approached, fired again, and
the bear dropped dead to the ground.  It is but seldom that one sees
a dead bear fall from the top of a tree.  I witnessed an equally
strange sporting incident once in India.  It was just over the
borders of Assam, and we were returning to camp on elephants, after a
day's big game shooting.  As we approached a hollow clothed with
thick jungle, the elephants all commenced trumpeting.  Knowing how
wonderfully keen the elephant's sense of smell is, that told us that
some beast lay concealed in the hollow.  Thinking it {146} would
prove to be a bear, I took up my favourite smooth-bore charged with
leaden bullets, when with a great crashing and rending of boughs the
jungle parted, and a galloping rhinoceros charged out, his head well
down, making straight for the elephant that was carrying a nephew of
mine.  My nephew had just time to snatch up a heavy 4-bore elephant
rifle.  He fired, and by an extraordinary piece of luck succeeded in
hitting the huge beast in his one vulnerable spot, just behind the
shoulder.  The rhinoceros rolled right over like a shot rabbit and
lay stone dead.  It was a thousand to one chance, and if I live to a
hundred I shall never see anything of the sort again.  It was also
very fortunate, for had he missed his shot, nothing on earth could
have saved my nephew's life.

We found that the most acceptable presents in the villages were
packets of sugar and tins of sardines.  Sugar is costly and difficult
to procure in Russian villages.  The usual way of employing it, when
friends are gathered round the table of some "isba" with the samovar
in the middle and steaming glasses of tea before each guest, is for
No. 1 to take a piece of sugar, place it between his teeth, and then
suck his tea through it.  No. 1 quickly passes the piece of sugar to
his neighbor, who uses it in the same way, and transfers it to the
next person, and so on, till the sugar is all dissolved.  This method
of using sugar, though doubtless economical, always struck me as
being of dubious cleanliness.  A gift of a pound of lump sugar was
always welcomed with {147} grateful thanks.  Sardines were even more
acceptable, as they could be eaten in Lent.  The grown-ups devoured
the fish, lifting them out of the tin with their fingers; and the
children were given the oil to smear on their bread, in place of
forbidden butter.

After days in the keen fresh air, and in the limitless expanse of
forest and snow, life in Petrograd seemed terribly artificial.  I
used to marvel that my cultured, omniscient, polygot friends were
fellow-countrymen of the bearded, red-shirted, illiterate peasants we
had just left.  The gulf seemed so unbridgable between them, and
apart from a common language and a common religion (both, I
acknowledge, very potent bonds of union) there seemed no link between
them, or any possible community of ideas.  Now in England there is
that community of ideas.  All classes, from the highest to the
lowest, share to some extent the same tastes and the same prejudices.
There is too that most powerful of connecting links, a common love of
sport.  The cricket ground and the football field are witnesses to
this, and it shows in a hundred little ways beside.  The freemasonry
of sport is very real.

It was perfectly delightful to live with and to mix so much amongst
charming people of such wide culture and education, but they seemed
to me to bear the same relation to the world outside their own that a
rare orchid in its glass shelter bears to a wild flower growing in
the open air.  The one is {148} indigenous to the soil; the other was
originally imported, and can only thrive in an artificial atmosphere,
and under artificial conditions.  If the glass gets broken, or the
fire goes out, the orchid dies, but the wild flower is not affected.
After all, man made the towns, but God made the country.




{149}

CHAPTER V

The Russian Gipsies--Midnight drives--Gipsy singing--Its
fascination--The consequences of a late night--An unconventional
luncheon--Lord Dufferin's methods--Assassination of Alexander
II--Stürmer--Pathetic incidents in connection with the murder of the
Emperor--The funeral procession and service--Details concerning--The
Votive Church--The Order of the Garter--Unusual incidents at the
Investiture--Precautions taken for Emperor's safety--The Imperial
train--Finland--Exciting salmon-fishing there--Harraka
Niska--Koltesha--Excellent shooting there--Ski-running--"Ringing the
game in"--A wolf-shooting party--The obese General--Some incidents--A
novel form of sport--Black game and capercailzie--At dawn in a
Finnish forest--Immense charm of it--Ice-hilling or "Montagnes
Russes"--Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland.


In my day there were two or three restaurants on the islands formed
by the delta of the Neva, with troupes of singing gipsies attached to
them.  These restaurants did a roaring trade in consequence, for the
singing of the gipsy choirs seems to produce on Russians the same
maddening, almost intoxicating effect that the "skirl o' the pipes"
does on those with Scottish blood in their veins.

Personally, I thought that one soon tired of this {150} gipsy
singing; not so my Russian friends--it appeared to have an
irresistible attraction for them.  I always dreaded the consequences
when some foolish person, usually at 1 or even 2 a.m., proposed a
visit to the gipsies, for all the ladies present would instantly jump
at the suggestion, and I knew full well that it entailed a forcible
separation from bed until six or possibly seven next morning.

Troikas would at once be sent for.  A troika is a thing quite apart.
Its horses are harnessed as are no other horses in the world, since
the centre horse trots in shafts, whilst the two outside horses, the
"_pristashkui_" loose save for long traces, gallop.  Driving a troika
is a special art.  The driver stands; he has a special badge,
peacock's feathers set in a round cap; he has a special name,
"_yamshchik_," and he charges quite a special price.

To my mind, the drive out to the islands was the one redeeming
feature of these expeditions.  Within the confines of the city, the
pace of the troikas was moderate enough, but as the last scattered
houses of the suburbs merged into the forest, the driver would call
to his horses, and the two loose horses broke into a furious gallop,
the centre horse in shafts moving as swiftly as any American trotter.
Smoothly and silently under the burnished steel of the starlit sky,
they tore over the snow, the vague outlines of the fir trees whizzing
past.  Faster and faster, until the wild excitement of it made one's
blood tingle within one, even as the bitter cold made one's cheeks
tingle, as we raced through the {151} keen pure air.  That wild
gallop through the forest was perfectly glorious.  I believe that on
us sons of the North real cold has the same exhilarating effect that
warmth and sunshine have on the Lotos-eating dwellers by the blue
Mediterranean.

The troika would draw up at the door of a long, low, wooden building,
hidden away amongst the fir trees of the forest.  After repeated
bangings at the door, a sleepy-eyed Tartar appeared, who ushered one
into a great gaunt, bare, whitewashed room, where other little
yellow, flat-faced, Tartar waiters were lighting countless wax
candles, bringing in many slim-shouldered, gold foil-covered bottles
of champagne, and a samovar or two, and arranging seats.  Then the
gipsy troupe strolled in, some twenty-five strong; the younger
members passably good-looking, with fine dark eyes, abundant
eyelashes, and extremely indifferent complexions.  The older members
of the company made no attempt at coquetry.  They came muffled in
woollen shawls, probably to conceal toilet deficiencies, yawning
openly and undisguisedly; not concealing their disgust at being
robbed of their sleep in order to sing to a pack of uninteresting
strangers, to whom, incidentally, they owed their entire means of
livelihood.  Some ten swarthy, evil-faced, indeterminate males with
guitars filled up the background.

One of the younger members of the troupe would begin a song in waltz
time, in a curious metallic voice, with a ring in it of something
Eastern, {152} barbaric, and utterly strange to European ears, to the
thrum of the guitars of the swarthy males in the background.  The
elderly females looked inexpressibly bored, and hugged their woollen
shawls a little closer over their heads.  Then the chorus took up the
refrain.  A tempest of wild, nasal melody arose, in the most perfect
harmony.  It was metallic, and the din was incredible, but the effect
it produced on the listeners was astounding.  The old women, dropping
their cherished shawls, awoke to life.  Their dull eyes sparkled
again, they sang madly, frenetically; like people possessed.  The
un-European _timbre_ of the voices conduced doubtless to the effect,
but the fact remains that this clamour of nasal, metallic voices,
singing in exquisite harmony, had about it something so novel and
fresh--or was it something so immemorially old?--that the listeners
felt absolutely intoxicated.

On the Russians it acted like hypnotism.  After the first song, they
all joined in, and even I, the dour and unemotional son of a Northern
land, found myself, as words and music grew familiar, shouting the
bass parts of the songs with all the strength of my lungs.  The
Russian language lends itself admirably to song, and the excess of
sibilants in it is not noticeable in singing.

These Russian gipsies, like the Austrian bands, produced their
effects by very simple means.  They harmonised their songs
themselves, and they always introduced a succession of "sixths" or
"thirds"; emphasising the "sixth" in the tenor part.

{153}

One can, however, have too much of a good thing.  I used to think
longingly of my far-off couch, but there was no tearing Russians away
from the gipsies.  The clock ticked on; they refused to move.  The
absorption of much champagne has never afforded me the smallest
amusement.  The consumption of tea has also its limits, and my
longed-for bed was so far away!  The really staggering figure one had
to disburse as one's share for these gipsy entertainments seemed to
me to be a very long price to pay for a sleepless night.

Once a fortnight the "Queen's Messenger" left Petrograd at noon, on
his return journey to London.  On "Messenger mornings" we had all to
be at the Embassy at 9 a.m. punctually.  One morning, after a
compulsory vigil with the gipsies, I was awakened by my servant with
the news that it was close on nine, and that my sledge was already at
the door.  It was impossible to dress in the time, so after some
rapid ablutions, I drew the long felt boots the Russians call
"Valinki" over my pyjamas, put on some heavy furs, and jumped into my
sledge.  Lord Dufferin found me writing hard in the steam-heated
Chancery, clad only in silk pyjamas, and with my bare feet in
slippers.  He made no remark, but I knew that nothing ever escaped
his notice.  By noon we had the despatches finished, the bags sealed
up, the "waybill" made out, various precautionary measures taken as
to which it is unnecessary to enlarge, and the Messenger left for
London.  I called to the {154} hall porter to bring me my furs, and
told him to order my sledge round.  "His Excellency has sent your
sledge home," said the porter, with a smile lurking round the corners
of his mouth.  "Then call me a hack sledge."  "His Excellency hopes
that you will give him the pleasure of your company at luncheon."
"But I must go home and dress first."  "His Excellency's orders were
that you are to go as you are," answered the grinning porter.  Then I
understood.  Nothing is ever gained by being shy or self-conscious,
so after a hasty toilet, I sent for my heavy fur "shuba."  Furs in
Russia are intended for use, not ornament, and this "shuba" was an
extremely weighty and voluminous garment, designed to withstand the
rigours of the North Pole itself.  A glance at the mirror convinced
me that I was most indelicately _décolleté_ about the neck, so I
hooked the big collar of the "shuba" together, and strode upstairs.
The heat of this fur garment was unendurable, but there was nothing
else for it.  Certainly the legs of my pyjamas protruded below it, so
I congratulated myself on the fact that they were a brand-new pair of
very smart striped mauve silk.  My bare feet too were encased in
remarkably neat Persian slippers of green morocco.  Lady Dufferin
received me exactly as though I had been dressed in the most
immaculate of frock-coats.  Her children though, gazed at my huge fur
coat, round-eyed with astonishment, for neither man nor woman ever
comes into a Russian house with furs on--an {155} arrangement which
would not at all suit some of my London friends, who seem to think
that furs are designed for being shown off in hot rooms.  The
governess, an elderly lady, catching sight of my unfortunate pyjama
legs below the fur coat, assumed a highly scandalised attitude, as
though she could scarcely credit the evidence of her eyes.  (I repeat
that they were exceptionally smart pyjamas.)

During luncheon Lord Dufferin made himself perfectly charming, and I
did my best to act as though it were quite normal to sit down to
one's repasts in an immense fur coat.

The Ambassador was very susceptible to cold, and liked the house
heated to a great temperature.  That day the furnace-man must have
been quite unusually active, for the steam hissed and sizzled in the
radiators, until the heat of that dining-room was suffocating.
Conscious of my extreme _décolletage_, I did not dare unhook the
collar of my "shuba," being naturally of a modest disposition, and
never, even in later years at Colombo or Singapore, have I suffered
so terribly from heat as in that Petrograd dining-room in the depths
of a Russian winter.  The only cool thing in the room was the
governess, who, when she caught sight of my bare feet, froze into an
arctic iceberg of disdain, in spite of my really very ornamental
Persian slippers.  The poor lady had obviously never even caught a
glimpse of pajamas before.  After that episode I always came to the
Embassy fully dressed.

{156}

Another instance of Lord Dufferin's methods occurs to me.  We had a
large evening party at the Embassy, and a certain very pushing and
pertinacious English newspaper correspondent did everything in his
power to get asked to this reception.  For very excellent reasons,
his request was refused.  In spite of this, on the night of the party
the journalist appeared.  I informed Lord Dufferin, and asked what he
wished me to do about it.  "Let me deal with him myself," answered
the Ambassador, and going up to the unbidden guest, he made him a
little bow, and said with a bland smile, "May I inquire, sir, to what
I owe this most unexpected honour?"  Then as the unhappy
newspaper-man stuttered out something, Lord Dufferin continued with
an even blander smile, "Do not allow me, my dear sir, I beg of you,
to detain you from your other doubtless numerous engagements"; then
calling me, he added, "Will you kindly accompany this gentleman to
the front door, and see that on a cold night like this he gets all
his warm clothing."  It was really impossible to turn a man out of
your house in a more courteous fashion.

There was another plan Lord Dufferin used at times.  All despatches,
and most of our private letters, were sent home by hand, in charge of
the Queen's Messenger.  We knew perfectly well that anything sent
from the Embassy through the ordinary mails would be opened at the
Censor's office, and copies taken.  Ministries of Foreign Affairs
{157} give at times "diplomatic" answers, and occasionally it was
advisable to let the Russian Government know that the Ambassador was
quite aware that the assurances given him did not quite tally with
the actual facts.  He would then write a despatch to London to that
effect, and send it by mail, being well aware that it would be opened
and a copy sent to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  In this
indirect fashion, he delicately conveyed to the Russian Government
that he had not been hoodwinked by the rather fanciful statements
made to him.

I was sitting at luncheon with some friends at a colleague's house on
Sunday, the fateful 1st of March, 1881 (March 13, new style).
Suddenly our white-headed old Chancery messenger burst
unceremoniously into the room, and called out, "The Emperor has been
assassinated!"  We all jumped up; the old man, a German-speaking
Russian from the Baltic Provinces, kept on wringing his hands, and
moaning, "Unser arme gute Kaiser! unser arme gute Kaiser!" ("Our poor
dear Emperor!") We hurried to the Embassy as fast as we could go, and
found the Ambassador just stepping into his carriage to get the
latest news from the Winter Palace.  Lady Dufferin had not seen the
actual crime committed, but she had heard the explosion of the bomb,
and had seen the wounded horses led past, and was terribly upset in
consequence.  She was walking along the Catherine Canal with her
youngest daughter when the Emperor's carriage {158} passed and the
first bomb was thrown.  The carriage was one of Napoleon III's
special armoured coaches, bought after the fall of the Second French
Empire.  The bomb shattered the wheels of the carriage, but the
Emperor was untouched.  He stepped out into the snow, when the second
bomb was thrown, which blew his legs to pieces, and the Emperor was
taken in a private sledge, in a dying condition, to the Winter
Palace.  The bombs had been painted white, to look like snowballs.

Ten minutes later one of the Court Chamberlains arrived.  I met him
in the hall, and he informed me, with the tears streaming down his
face, that all was over.

That Chamberlain was a German-Russian named Stürmer, and he was the
very same man who thirty-four years later was destined, by his gross
incompetence, or worse, as Prime Minister, to bring the mighty
Russian Empire crashing in ruins to the ground, and to drive the
well-intentioned, irresolute Nicholas II, the grandson of the
Sovereign for whom he professed so great an affection, to his
abdication, imprisonment, and ignominious death.

There was a Queen's Messenger due in Petrograd from London that same
afternoon, and Lord Dufferin, thinking that the police might give
trouble, desired me to meet him at the station.

The Messenger refused to believe my news.  He persisted in treating
the whole thing as a joke, so I ordered my coachman to drive through
the great {159} semi-circular place in front of the Winter Palace.
That place presented a wonderful sight.  There were tens of thousands
of people, all kneeling bare-headed in the snow, in close-packed
ranks.  I thought the sight of those serried thousands kneeling
bare-headed, praying for the soul of their dead Emperor, a strangely
moving and beautiful spectacle.  When the Messenger saw this, and
noted the black and yellow Imperial flag waving at half-mast over the
Palace, he no longer doubted.

The Grand Duke Vladimir had announced the Emperor's death to the vast
crowds in the traditional Russian fashion.  The words "death" or
"die" being considered ill-omened by old-fashioned Russians, the
actual sentence used by the Grand Duke was, "The Emperor has bidden
you to live long."  ("Gosudar Imperator vam prikazal dolga jit!")
The words conveyed their message.

The body of the Emperor having been embalmed, the funeral did not
take place for a fortnight.  As the crow flies, the distance between
the Winter Palace and the Fortress Church is only about half a mile;
it was, however, still winter-time, the Neva was frozen over, and the
floating bridges had been removed.  It being contrary to tradition to
take the body of a dead Emperor of Russia across ice, the funeral
procession had to pass over the permanent bridges to the Fortress, a
distance of about six miles.

Lady Dufferin and I saw the procession from the corner windows of a
house on the quays.  On {160} paper it sounded very grand, but like
so many things in Russia, it was spoilt by lack of attention to
details.  The distances were kept irregularly, and many of the
officials wore ordinary civilian great-coats over their uniforms,
which did not enhance the effect of the _cortège_.  The most striking
feature of the procession was the "Black Knight" on foot, followed
immediately by the "Golden Knight" on horseback.  These were, I
believe, meant to typify "The Angel of Death" and "The Angel of the
Resurrection."  Both Knights were clad in armour from head to foot,
with the vizors of their helmets down.  The "Black Knight's" armour
was dull sooty-black all over; he had a long black plume waving from
his helmet.  The "Golden Knight," mounted on a white horse, with a
white plume in his helmet, wore gilded and burnished armour, which
blazed like a torch in the sunlight.  The weight of the black armour
being very great, there had been considerable difficulty in finding a
man sufficiently strong to walk six miles, carrying this tremendous
burden.  A gigantic young private of the Preobrajensky Guards
undertook the task for a fee of one hundred roubles, but though he
managed to accomplish the distance, he fainted from exhaustion on
reaching the Fortress Church, and was, I heard, two months in
hospital from the effects of his effort.

We were able to get Lady Dufferin into her place in the Fortress
Church, long before the procession arrived, by driving across the ice
of the {161} river.  The absence of seats in a Russian church, and
the extreme length of the Orthodox liturgy, rendered these services
very trying for ladies.  The Fortress Church had been built by a
Dutch architect, and was the most un-Eastern-looking Orthodox church
I ever saw.  It actually contained a pulpit!  In the north aisle of
the church all the Emperors since Peter the Great's time lie in
uniform plain white marble tombs, with gilt-bronze Russian eagles at
their four corners.  The Tsars mostly rest in the Cathedral of the
Archangel, in the Moscow Kremlin.  I have before explained that Peter
was the last of the Tsars and the first of the Emperors.  The
regulations for Court mourning in Petrograd were most stringent.  All
ladies had to appear in perfectly plain black, lustreless woollen
dresses, made high to the throat.  On their heads they wore a sort of
Mary Queen of Scots pointed cap of black crape, with a long black
crape veil falling to their feet.  The only detail of the funeral
which struck me was the perfectly splendid pall of cloth of gold.
This pall had been specially woven in Moscow, of threads of real
gold.  When folded back during the ceremony it looked exactly like
gleaming waves of liquid gold.

A memorial church in old-Russian style has been erected on the
Catherine Canal on the spot where Alexander II was assassinated.  The
five onion-shaped domes of this church, of copper enamelled in
stripes and spirals of crude blue and white, green and yellow, and
scarlet and white, may possibly {162} look less garish in two hundred
years' time than they do at present.  The severely plain Byzantine
interior, covered with archaic-looking frescoes on a gold ground, is
effective.  The ikonostas is entirely of that vivid pink and
enormously costly Siberian marble that Russians term "heavy stone."
Personally I should consider the huge sum it cost as spent in vain.

Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, in those days, of course, Prince and
Princess of Wales, represented Great Britain at Alexander II's
funeral, and remained in Petrograd a month after it.

A week after the funeral, the Prince of Wales, by Queen Victoria's
command, invested Alexander III with the Order of the Garter.  As the
Garter is the oldest Order of Chivalry in Europe, the ceremonies at
its investiture have 570 years of tradition behind them.  The
insignia, the star, the ribbon, the collar, the sword, and the actual
garter itself, are all carried on separate, long, narrow cushions of
red velvet, heavily trimmed with gold bullion.  Owing to the deep
Court mourning, it was decided that the investiture should be
private.  No one was to be present except the new Emperor and
Empress, Queen Alexandra, the Grand Master and Grand Mistress of the
Russian Court, the members of the British Embassy, and the Prince of
Wales and his staff.  This, as it turned out, was very fortunate.
The ceremony was to take place at the Anitchkoff Palace on the
Nevsky, which Alexander III inhabited throughout his reign, as {163}
he preferred it to the huge rambling Winter Palace.  On the appointed
day, we all marched into the great Throne room of the Anitchkoff
Palace, the Prince of Wales leading the way, with five members of his
staff carrying the insignia on the traditional long narrow velvet
cushions.  I carried nothing, but we made, I thought, a very
dignified and effective entrance.  As we entered the Throne room, a
perfectly audible feminine voice cried out in English, "Oh, my dear!
Do look at them.  They look exactly like a row of wet-nurses carrying
babies!"  Nothing will induce me to say from whom the remark
proceeded.  The two sisters, Empress and Queen, looked at each other
for a minute, and then exploded with laughter.  The Emperor fought
manfully for a while to keep his face, until, catching sight of the
member of the Prince of Wales's staff who was carrying his cushion in
the peculiarly maternal fashion that had so excited the risibility of
the Royal sisters, he too succumbed, and his colossal frame quivered
with mirth.  Never, I imagine, since its institution in 1349, has the
Order of the Garter been conferred amid such general hilarity, but as
no spectators were present, this lapse from the ordinary decorum of
the ceremonial did not much matter.  The general public never heard
of it, nor, I trust, did Queen Victoria.

The Emperor Alexander III was a man of great personal courage, but he
gave way, under protest, to the wishes of those responsible for his
personal safety.  They insisted on his always using {164} the
armour-plated carriages bought from Napoleon III.  These coaches were
so immensely heavy that they soon killed the horses dragging them.
Again, on railway journeys, the actual time-table and route of the
Imperial train between two points was always different from the
published time-table and route.  Napoleon III's private train had
been purchased at the same time as his steel-plated carriages.  This
train had been greatly enlarged and fitted to the Russian gauge.  I
do not suppose that any more sumptuous palace on wheels has ever been
built than this train of nine vestibuled cars.  It was fitted with
every imaginable convenience.  Alexander III sent it to the frontier
to meet his brother-in-law the Prince of Wales, which was the
occasion on which I saw it.

During the six months following Alexander II's assassination all
social life in Petrograd stopped.  We of the Embassy had many other
resources, for in those days the British business colony in Petrograd
was still large, and flourished exceedingly.  They had various
sporting clubs, of some of which we were members.  There was in
particular the Fishing Club at Harraka Niska in Finland, where the
river Vuoksi issues from the hundred-mile-long Lake Saima.

It was a curious experience driving to the Finnish railway station in
Petrograd.  In the city outside, the date would be June 1, Russian
style.  Inside the station, the date became June 13, European style.
In place of the baggy knickerbockers, {165} high boots, and fur caps
of the Russian railwaymen, the employees of the Finnish railway wore
the ordinary uniforms customary on European railways.  The tickets
were printed in European, not Russian characters, and the fares were
given in marks and pennies, instead of in roubles and kopecks.  The
notices on the railway were all printed in six languages, Finnish,
Swedish, Russian, French, English, and German, and my patriotic
feelings were gratified at noting that all the locomotives had been
built in Glasgow.  I was astonished to find that although Finland
formed an integral part of the Russian Empire, there was a Custom
House and Customs examination at the Finnish frontier.

Finland is a country of endless little hills, and endless forests,
all alike bestrewn with huge granite boulders; it is also a land of
endless rivers and lakes.  It is pretty in a monotonous fashion, and
looks wonderfully tidy after Russia proper.  The wooden houses and
villages are all neatly painted a chocolate brown, and in spite of
its sparse population it seems very prosperous.  The Finns are all
Protestants; the educated classes are mostly Swedish-speaking, the
others talking their own impossible Ural-Altaic language.  At the
extremely comfortable club-house at Harraka Niska none of the
fishermen or boatmen could talk anything but Finnish.  We all had
little conversation books printed in Russian and Finnish, but we
usually found the language of signs more {166} convenient.  In later
years, in South America, it became my duty to interview daily the
Legation cook, an accomplished but extremely adipose female from Old
Spain.  I had not then learnt Spanish, and she understood no other
tongue, so we conversed by signs.  It is extremely derogatory to
one's personal dignity to be forced to imitate in succession a hen
laying an egg, a sheep bleating, or a duck quacking, and yet this was
the only way in which I could order dinner.  No one who has not tried
it can believe how difficult it is to indicate in pantomime certain
comestibles, such, for instance, as kidneys, liver and bacon, or a
Welsh rarebit.

The fish at Harraka would not look at a fly, and could only be hooked
on a phantom-minnow.  The fishing there was very exciting.  The big
fish all lay where Lake Saima debouched into the turbulent Vuoksi
river.  There was a terrific rapid there, and the boatmen, who knew
every inch of the ground, would head the boat straight for that
seething white caldron of raging waves, lashing and roaring down the
rocky gorge, as they dashed up angry spurts of white spray.  Just as
it seemed that nothing could save one from being hurled into that mad
turmoil of leaping waters, where no human being could hope to live
for a minute, a back-current shot the boat swiftly across to the
other bank.  That was the moment when the fish were hooked.  They
were splendid fighters, and played magnificently.  These Harraka fish
were curiously {167} uniform in size, always running from 18 to 22
lb.  Though everyone called them salmon, I think myself that they
were really bull-trout, or _Salmo ferox_.  A salmon would have had to
travel at least 400 miles from salt water, and I do not believe that
any fish living could have got up the tremendous Imatra waterfall,
some six miles lower down the Vuoksi.  These fish invariably had lice
on them.  In Great Britain sea-lice on a salmon are taken as a
certain indication that the fish is fresh-run.  These fish cannot
possibly have been fresh-run, so I think it probable that in these
great lakes there may be a fresh-water variety of the parasite.
Another peculiarity of the Harraka fish was that, though they were
excellent eating, they would not keep above two days.  I have myself
caught eleven of these big fellows in one day.  During June there was
capital grayling fishing in the lower Vuoksi, the fish running large,
and taking the fly readily, though in that heavy water they were apt
to break off.  There were plenty of small trout too in the Vuoksi,
but the densely-wooded banks made fishing difficult, and the water
was always crystal-clear, and needed the finest of tackle.

I spent some most enjoyable days at Koltesha, a small English
shooting-club of ten members, about twenty miles out of Petrograd.
During September, for one fortnight, the marshes round Koltesha were
alive with "double-snipe."  This bird migrates in thousands from the
Arctic regions to {168} the far South, at the approach of autumn.
They alighted in the Koltesha marshes to recruit themselves after
their journey from the North Pole, and owing to circumstances beyond
their control, few of them continued their journey southward.  This
confiding fowl has never learnt to zig-zag like the other members of
the snipe family, and they paid the penalty for this omission by
usually proceeding to the kitchen.  A "double-snipe" is most
delicious eating.  The winter shooting at Koltesha was most
delightful.  The art of "ski-walking" had first to be learnt, and on
commencing this unaccustomed method of locomotion, various muscles,
which its use called into play for the first time, showed their
resentment by aching furiously.  The ground round Koltesha being
hilly was admirably adapted for coasting on ski.  It was difficult at
first to shoot from the insecure footing of ski, and the unusual
amount of clothing between one's shoulder and the stock of one's gun
did not facilitate matters.  Everything, however, can be learnt in
time.  I can claim to be the pioneer of ski on the American
Continent, for in January, 1887, I brought over to Canada the very
first pair of ski ever seen in America.  I used to coast down the
toboggan slides at Ottawa on them, amidst universal derision.  I was
told that, however useful ski might be in Russia, they were quite
unsuited to Canadian conditions, and would never be popular there, as
the old-fashioned "raquettes" were infinitely superior.  Humph!  _Qui
vivra verra!_

{169}

Koltesha abounded in black game, "ryabchiks," or hazel-grouse, and
ptarmigan.  Russian hares turn snow-white in winter, and are very
difficult to see against a snowy background in consequence.  It is
almost impossible to convey on paper any idea of the intense delight
of those days in the sun and the cold, when the air had that
delicious clean smell that always goes with intense frost, the dark
fir woods, with their purple shadows, stood out in sharp contrast to
the dazzling sheet of white snow, and the sunlight gilded the patches
of oak and birch scrub that climbed down the hollows of the low
hills.  One returned home glowing from head to foot.  We got larger
game too by "ringing them."  The process of "ringing" is as follows.
No four-footed creature can travel over the snow without leaving his
tracks behind him.  Let us suppose a small wood, one mile in
circumference.  If a man travels round this on ski, and if the track
of any animal crosses his trail, going _into_ the wood, and this
track does not again come _out_ of the wood, it is obvious that that
particular animal is still taking cover there.  Measures to drive him
out are taken accordingly.  We got in this way at Koltesha quite a
number of elks, lynxes, and wolves.

The best wolf-shooting I ever got was at the invitation of the
Russian Minister of Finance.  Great packs of these ravenous brutes
were playing havoc on his estate, two hundred miles from Petrograd,
so he invited a large shooting party to his {170} country house.  We
travelled down in a private sleeping-car, and had over twenty miles
to drive in rough country sledges from the station.  One of the
guests was an enormously fat Russian General, a perfect mammoth of a
man.  As I was very slim in those days, I was told off as this
gigantic warrior's fellow-passenger.  Although he took up nine-tenths
of the sledge, I just managed to creep in, but every time we
jolted--and as the track was very rough, this was pretty
frequently--I got 250 lb. of Russian General on the top of me,
squeezing the life out of me.  He was a good-natured Colossus, and
apologised profusely for his own obesity, and for his instability,
but I was black and blue all over, and since that day I have felt
profound sympathy for the little princes in the Tower, for I know
what being smothered with a feather-bed feels like.

The Minister's country house was, as are most other Russian country
houses, a modest wooden building with whitewashed rooms very scantily
furnished.  The Minister had, however, thoughtfully brought down his
famous Petrograd chef, and I should judge about three-quarters of the
contents of his wine-cellar.  We had to proceed to our places in the
forest in absolute silence, and the wolf being an exceedingly wary
animal with a a very keen sense of smell, all smoking was rigorously
prohibited.

It was nice open scrubland, undulating gently.  The beaters were
skilful and we were very lucky, {171} for after an interminable wait,
the entire pack of wolves rushed down on us.  A wolf is killed with
slugs from a smooth-bore.  I personally was fortunate, for I got
shots at eight wolves, and six of them felt disinclined for further
exertions.  I still have a carriage-rug made of the skins of the
wolves I killed that day.  The banging all round meanwhile was
terrific.  In two days we accounted for fifty-two of these pests.  It
gave me the utmost pleasure killing these murderous, bloodthirsty
brutes; far more than slaying an inoffensive bear.  Should a bear
encounter a human being in the course of his daily walks, he is
certainly apt to hug him to death, as a precautionary measure.  He is
also addicted to smashing to a jelly, with one blow of his powerful
paws, the head of a chance stranger.  These peculiarities apart, the
bear may be regarded as practically harmless.  It is otherwise with
the wolf.

Some of the British Colony were fond of going to Finland for a
peculiar form of sport.  I use the last word dubiously, for to kill
any game birds during the breeding season seems a curiously
unsportsmanlike act.  Circumstances rather excused this.  It is well
known that black game do not pair, but that they are polygamous.
During the breeding season the male birds meet every morning at dawn
on regular fighting grounds, and there battle for the attentions of
the fairer sex.  These fighting grounds are well known to the
keepers, who erect there in early autumn conical shelters of fir
{172} branches.  The birds become familiar with these shelters
(called in Russian "shagashki") and pay no attention to them.  The
"gun" introduces himself into the shelter not later than midnight,
and there waits patiently for the first gleam of dawn.  He must on no
account smoke.  With the first grey streak of dawn in the sky there
is a great rushing of wings in the air, and dozens of male birds
appear from nowhere; strutting up and down, puffing out their
feathers, and hissing furiously at each other in challenge.  The grey
hens meanwhile sit in the surrounding trees, watching, as did the
ladies of old at a tournament, the prowess of their men-folk in the
lists.  The grey hens never show themselves, and make no sound; two
things, one would imagine, contrary to every instinct of their sex.
A challenge once accepted, two males begin fighting furiously with
wings, claws, and beaks.  So absorbed are the birds in their combat,
that they neither see nor hear anything, and pay no attention to a
gun-shot.  Should they be within reach of the "shagashka," that is
the time to fire.  It sounds horribly unsportsmanlike, but it must be
remembered that the birds are only just visible in the uncertain
dawn.  As dawn matures into daylight, the birds suddenly stop
fighting, and all fly away simultaneously, followed by the grey hens.
I never would kill more than two as specimens, for this splendid bird
is such a thing of joy in his breeding plumage, with his glossy dark
blue satin coat, and white velvet waistcoat, that there {173} is some
excuse for wanting to examine him closer.  Ladies, too, loved a
blackcock's tail or wings for their hats.  It was also the only way
in which this curious and little-known phase of bird life could be
witnessed.

The capercailzie is called in Russian "the deaf one."  Why this name
should be given to a bird of abnormally acute hearing seems at first
sight puzzling.  The explanation is that the male capercailzie in the
breeding season concludes his love-song with a peculiar "tchuck,
tchuck," impossible to reproduce on paper, moving his head rapidly to
and fro the while.  During this "tchuck, tchuck," the bird is deaf
and blind to the world.  The capercailzie hunter goes out into the
forest at about 1 a.m. and listens intently.  As soon as he hears a
capercailzie's song, he moves towards the sound very, very
cautiously.  When within half a mile of the bird, he must wait for
the "tchuck, tchuck," which lasts about two minutes, before daring to
advance.  The "tchuck" over, he must remain absolutely motionless
until it recommences.  The snapping of a twig will be enough to
silence the bird and to make it fly away.  It will be seen then that
to approach a capercailzie is a difficult task, and one requiring
infinite patience.  Once within shot, there is no particular fun in
shooting a sitting bird the size of a turkey, up at the top of a
tree, even though it only appears as a dusky mass against the faint
beginnings of dawn.

The real charm of this blackcock and capercailzie shooting was that
one would not otherwise have {174} been out in the great forest at
break of day.

To me there was always an infinite fascination in seeing these great
Northern tracts of woodland awakening from their long winter sleep.
The sweetness of the dawn, the delicious smell of growing things, the
fresh young life springing up under one's feet, all these appealed to
every fibre in my being.  Nature always restores the balance of
things.  In Russia, as in Canada, after the rigours of the winter,
once the snow has disappeared, flowers carpet the ground with a
rapidity of growth unknown in more temperate climates.  These Finland
woods were covered with a low creeping plant with masses of small,
white, waxy flowers.  It was, I think, one of the smaller
cranberries.  There was an orange-flowering nettle, too, the leaves
of which changed from green to vivid purple as they climbed the
stalk, making gorgeous patches of colour, and great drifts of blue
hepaticas on the higher ground.  To appreciate Nature properly, she
must be seen at unaccustomed times, as she bestirs herself after her
night's rest whilst the sky brightens.

In Petrograd itself the British Colony found plenty of amusement.  We
had an English ice-hill club to which all the Embassy belonged.  The
elevation of a Russian ice-hill, some forty feet only, may seem tame
after the imposing heights of Canadian toboggan slides, but I fancy
that the pace travelled is greater in Russia.  The ice-hills were
always built in pairs, about three hundred yards apart, with two
parallel runs.  Both hills {175} and runs were built of solid blocks
of ice, watered every day, and the pitch of the actual hill was very
steep.  In the place of a toboggan we used little sleds two feet
long, mounted on skate-runners, which were kept constantly sharpened.
These travelled over the ice at a tremendous pace, and at the end of
the straight run, the corresponding hill had only to be mounted to
bring you home again to the starting-point.  The art of steering
these sleds was soon learnt, once the elementary principle was
grasped that after a turn to the left, a corresponding turn to the
right must be made to straighten up the machine, exactly as is done
instinctively on a bicycle.  A wave of the hand or of the foot was
enough to change the direction, the ice-hiller going down head
foremost, with the sled under his chest.

Longer sleds were used for taking ladies down.  The man sat
cross-legged in front, whilst the lady knelt behind him with both her
arms round his neck.  Possibly the enforced familiarity of this
attitude was what made the amusement so popular.

We gave at times evening parties at the ice-hills, when the woods
were lit up with rows of Chinese lanterns, making a charming effect
against the snow, and electric arcs blazed from the summits of the
slides.  To those curious in such matters, I may say that as
secondary batteries had not then been invented, and we had no dynamo,
power was furnished direct by powerful Grove two-cell batteries.  One
night our amateur electrician was {176} nearly killed by the brown
fumes of nitrous acid these batteries give off from their negative
cells.

We had an ice-boat on the Gulf of Finland as well.  It is only in
early spring, and very seldom then, that this amusement can be
indulged in.  The necessary conditions are (1) a heavy thaw to melt
all the snow from the surface of the ice, followed by a sharp frost;
(2) a strong breeze.  Nature is not often obliging enough to arrange
matters in this sequence.  We had some good sailing, though, and
could get forty miles an hour out of our craft with a decent breeze.
Our boat was of the Dutch, not the Canadian type.  I was astonished
to find how close an ice-boat could lay to the wind, for obviously
anything in the nature of leeway is impossible with a boat on
runners.  Ice-sailing was bitterly cold work, and the navigation of
the Gulf of Finland required great caution, for in early spring great
cracks appeared in the ice.  On one occasion, in avoiding a large
crack, we ran into the omnibus plying on runners between Kronstadt
and the mainland.  The driver of the coach was drunk, and lost his
head, to the terror of his passengers, but very little damage was
done.  It may be worth while recording this, as it is but seldom that
a boat collides with an omnibus.

It will be seen that in one way and another there was no lack of
amusement to be found round Petrograd, even during the entire
cessation of Court and social entertainments.




{177}

CHAPTER VI

Love of Russians for children's games--Peculiarities of Petrograd
balls--Some famous beauties of Petrograd Society--The varying garb of
hired waiters--Moscow--Its wonderful beauty--The forest of domes--The
Kremlin--The three famous "Cathedrals"--The Imperial Treasury--The
Sacristy--The Palace--Its splendour--The Terem--A Gargantuan Russian
dinner--An unusual episode at the French Ambassador's
ball--Bombs--Tsarskoe Selo--Its interior--Extraordinary collection of
curiosities in Tsarskoe Park--Origin of term "Vauxhall" for railway
station in Russia--Peterhof--Charm of park there--Two Russian
illusions--A young man of 25 delivers an Ultimatum to Russia--How it
came about--M. de Giers--Other Foreign Ministers--Paraguay--The
polite Japanese dentist--A visit to Gatchina--Description of the
Palace--Delights of the children's play-room there.


The lingering traces of the child which are found in most Russian
natures account probably for their curious love of indoor games.
Lady Dufferin had weekly evening parties during Lent, when dancing
was rigidly prohibited.  Quite invariably, some lady would go up to
her and beg that they might be allowed to play what she would term
"English running games."  So it came about that bald-headed Generals,
covered with Orders, and quite elderly ladies, would with immense
glee play "Blind-man's buff," "Musical chairs," "Hunt the slipper,"
and "General post."  I believe that they would have joined cheerfully
in "Ring a ring of roses," had we only thought of it.

{178}

I think it is this remnant of the child in them which, coupled with
their quick-working brains, wonderful receptivity, and absolute
naturalness, makes Russians of the upper class so curiously
attractive.

At balls in my time, oddly enough, quadrilles were the most popular
dances.  There was always a "leader" for these quadrilles, whose
function it was to invent new and startling figures.  The "leader"
shouted out his directions from the centre of the room, and however
involved the figures he devised, however complicated the manoeuvres
he evolved, he could rely on being implicitly obeyed by the dancers,
who were used to these intricate entanglements, and enjoyed them.
Woe betide the "leader" should he lose his head, or give a wrong
direction!  He would find two hundred people inextricably tangled up.
I calculate that many years have been taken off my own life by the
responsibilities thrust upon me by being frequently made to officiate
in this capacity.  Balls in Petrograd in the "'eighties" invariably
concluded with the "Danse Anglaise," our own familiar "Sir Roger de
Coverley."

I never saw an orchestra at a ball in Petrograd, except at the Winter
Palace.  All Russians preferred a pianist, but a pianist of a quite
special brand.  These men, locally known as "tappeurs," cultivated a
peculiar style of playing, and could get wonderful effects out of an
ordinary grand piano.  There was in particular one absolute genius
{179} called Altkein.  Under his superlatively skilled fingers the
piano took on all the resonance and varied colour of a full
orchestra.  Altkein told me that he always played what he called
"four-handed," that is doubling the parts of each hand.  By the end
of the evening he was absolutely exhausted.

The most beautiful woman in Petrograd Society was unquestionably
Countess Zena Beauharnais, afterwards Duchess of Leuchtenberg; a
tall, queenly blonde with a superb figure.  Nature had been very
generous to her, for in addition to her wonderful beauty, she had a
glorious soprano voice.  I could not but regret that she and her
sister, Princess Bieloselskava, had not been forced by circumstances
to earn their living on the operatic stage, for the two sisters,
soprano and contralto, would certainly have achieved a European
reputation with their magnificent voices.  How they would have played
Amneris and the title-rôle in "Aïda"!  The famous General Skobeleff
was their brother.

Two other strikingly beautiful women were Princess Kitty Dolgorouki,
a piquant little brunette, and her sister-in-law, winning,
golden-haired Princess Mary Dolgorouki.  After a lapse of nearly
forty years, I may perhaps be permitted to express my gratitude to
these two charming ladies for the consistent kindness they showered
on a peculiarly uninteresting young man, and I should like to add to
their names that of Countess Betsy Schouvaloff.  I may remark that
the somewhat {180} homely British forms of their baptismal names
which these _grandes dames_ were fond of adopting always amused me.
Our two countries were in theory deadly enemies, yet they borrowed
little details from us whenever they could.  I think that the racial
animosity was only skin-deep.  This custom of employing English
diminutives for Russian names extended to the men too, for Prince
Alexander Dolgorouki, Princess Kitty's husband, was always known as
"Sandy," whilst Countess Betsy's husband was invariably spoken of as
"Bobby" Schouvaloff.  Countess Betsy, mistress of one of the
stateliest houses in Petrograd, was acknowledged to be the
best-dressed woman in Russia.  I never noticed whether she were
really good-looking or not, for such was the charm of her animation,
and the sparkle of her vivacity and quick wit, that one remarked the
outer envelope less than the nimble intellect and extraordinary
attractiveness that underlay it.  She was a daughter of that
"Princesse Château" to whom I referred earlier in these reminiscences.

In the great Russian houses there were far fewer liveried servants
than is customary in other European countries.  This was due to the
difficulty of finding sufficiently trained men.  The actual work of
the house was done by hordes of bearded, red-shirted shaggy-headed
moujiks, who their household duties over, retired to their
underground fastnesses.  Consequently when dinners or other
entertainments were given recourse was had {181} to hired waiters,
mostly elderly Germans.  It was the curious custom to dress these
waiters up in the liveries of the family giving the entertainment.
The liveries seldom fitted, and the features of the old waiters were
quite familiar to most of us, yet politeness dictated that we should
pretend to consider them as servants of the house.  Though perfectly
conscious of having seen the same individual who, arrayed in orange
and white, was standing behind one's chair, dressed in sky-blue only
two evenings before, and equally aware of the probability of meeting
him the next evening in a different house, clad in crimson, it was
considered polite to compliment the mistress of the house on the
admirable manner in which her servants were turned out.

There is in all Russian houses a terrible place known as the
"buffetnaya."  This is a combination of pantry, larder, and
serving-room.  People at all particular about the cleanliness of
their food, or the nicety with which it is served, should avoid this
awful spot as they would the plague.  A sensitive nose can easily
locate the whereabouts of the "buffetnaya" from a considerable
distance.

From Petrograd to Moscow is only a twelve hours' run, but in those
twelve hours the traveller is transported into a different world.
After the soulless regularity of Peter the Great's sham classical
creation on the banks of the Neva, the beauty of the semi-Oriental
ancient capital comes as a perfect revelation.  Moscow, glowing with
colour, {182} is seated like Rome on gentle hills, and numbers over
three hundred churches.  These churches have each the orthodox five
domes, and this forest of domes, many of them gilt, others silvered,
some blue and gold, or striped with bands and spirals of vivid
colour, when seen amongst the tender greenery of May, forms a
wonderful picture, unlike anything else in the world.  The winding,
irregular streets lined with buildings in every imaginable style of
architecture, and of every possible shade of colour; the remains of
the ancient city walls with their lofty watch-towers crowned with
curious conical roofs of grass-green tiles; the great irregular bulk
of the Kremlin, towering over all; make a whole of incomparable
beauty.  There is in the world but one Moscow, as there is but one
Venice, and one Oxford.

The great sea of gilded and silvered domes is best seen from the
terrace of the Kremlin overlooking the river, though the wealth of
detail nearer at hand is apt to distract the eye.  The soaring
snow-white shaft of Ivan Veliki's tower with its golden pinnacles
dominates everything, though the three "Cathedrals," standing almost
side by side, hallowed by centuries of tradition, are very sacred
places to a Russian, who would consider them the heart of Moscow, and
of the Muscovite world.  "Mother Moscow," they call her
affectionately, and I understand it.

The Russian word "Sobor" is wrongly translated as "Cathedral."  A
"sobor" is merely a {183} church of peculiar sanctity or of special
dignity.  The three gleaming white, gold-domed churches of the
Kremlin are of quite modest dimensions, yet their venerable walls are
rich with the associations of centuries.  In the Church of the
Assumption the Tsars, and later the Emperors, were all crowned; in
the Church of the Archangel the Tsars were buried, though the
Emperors lie in Petrograd.  The dim Byzantine interior of the
Assumption Church, with its faded frescoes on a gold ground, and its
walls shimmering with gold, silver, and jewels, is immensely
impressive.  Here is the real Russia, not the Petrograd stuccoed
veneered Russia of yesterday, but ancient Muscovy, sending its roots
deep down into the past.

Surely Peter prepared the way for the destruction of his country by
uprooting this tree of ancient growth, and by trying to create in one
short lifetime a new pseudo-European Empire, with a new capital.

The city should be seen from the Kremlin terrace as the light is
fading from the sky and the thousands of church-bells clash out their
melodious evening hymn.  The Russians have always been master
bell-founders, and their bells have a silvery tone unknown in Western
Europe.  In the gloaming, the Eastern character of the city is much
more apparent.  The blaze of colour has vanished, and the dusky
silhouettes of the church domes take on the onion-shaped forms of the
Orient.  Delhi, as seen in later years from the fort at {184} sunset
was curiously reminiscent of Moscow.

I do not suppose that more precious things have ever been gathered
together under one roof than the Imperial Treasury at Moscow
contained in those days.  The eye got surfeited with the sight of so
many splendours, and I can only recall the great collection of crowns
and thrones of the various Tsars.  One throne of Persian workmanship
was studded with two thousand diamonds and rubies; another, also from
Persia, contained over two thousand large turquoises.  There must
have been at least a dozen of these glittering thrones, but the most
interesting of all was the original ivory throne of the Emperors of
Byzantium, brought to Moscow in 1472 by Sophia Palaeologus, wife of
Ivan III.  Constantine the Great may have sat on that identical
throne.  It seems curious that the finest collection in the world of
English silver-ware of Elizabeth's, James I's, and Charles I's time
should be found in the Kremlin at Moscow, till it is remembered that
nearly all the plate of that date in England was melted down during
the Civil War of 1642-1646.  I wonder what has become of all these
precious things now!

The sacristy contains an equally wonderful collection of Church
plate.  I was taken over this by an Archimandrite, and I had been
previously warned that he would expect a substantial tip for his
services.  The Archimandrite's feelings were, however, to be spared
by my representing this tip as my contribution to the poor of his
parish.  The Archimandrite {185} was so immensely imposing, with his
violet robes, diamond cross, and long flowing beard, that I felt
quite shy of offering him the modest five roubles which I was told
would be sufficient.  So I doubled it.  The Archimandrite pocketed it
joyfully, and so moved was he by my unexpected _largesse_, that the
excellent ecclesiastic at once motioned me to my knees, and gave me a
most fervent blessing, which I am persuaded was well worth the extra
five roubles.

The Great Palace of the Kremlin was rebuilt by Nicholas I about 1840.
It consequently belongs to the "period of bad taste"; in spite of
that it is extraordinarily sumptuous.  The St. George's Hall is 200
feet long and 60 feet high; the other great halls, named after the
Russian Orders of Chivalry, are nearly as large.  Each of these is
hung with silk of the same colour as the ribbon of the Order; St.
George's Hall, orange and black; St. Andrew's Hall, sky-blue; St.
Alexander Nevsky's, pink; St. Catherine's, red and white.  I imagine
that every silkworm in the world must have been kept busy for months
in order to prepare sufficient material for these acres of silk-hung
walls.  The Kremlin Palace may not be in the best of taste, but these
huge halls, with their jasper and malachite columns and profuse
gilding, are wonderfully gorgeous, and exactly correspond with one's
preconceived ideas of what an Emperor of Russia's palace ought to be
like.  There is a chapel in the Kremlin Palace with the quaint title
of {186} "The Church of the Redeemer behind the Golden Railing."

The really interesting portion of the Palace is the sixteenth century
part, known as the "Terem."  These small, dim, vaulted halls with
their half-effaced frescoes on walls and ceilings are most
fascinating.  It is all mediæval, but not with the mediævalism of
Western Europe; neither is it Oriental; it is pure Russian; simple,
dignified, and delightfully archaic.  One could not imagine the old
Tsars in a more appropriate setting.  Compared with the strident
splendours of the modern palace, the vaulted rooms of the old Terem
seem to typify the difference between Petrograd and Moscow.

It so happened that later in life I was destined to become very
familiar with the deserted palace at Agra, in India, begun by Akbar,
finished by Shah Jehan.  How different the Oriental conception of a
palace is from the Western!  The Agra Palace is a place of shady
courts and gardens, dotted with exquisitely graceful pavilions of
transparent white marble roofed with gilded copper.  No two of these
pavilions are similar, and in their varied decorations an
inexhaustible invention is shown.  The white marble is so placed that
it is seen everywhere in strong contrast to Akbar's massive buildings
of red sandstone.  During the Coronation ceremonies, King-Emperor
George V seated himself, of right, on the Emperor Akbar's throne in
the great Hall of Audience in Agra Palace.

{187}

Though Moscow may appear a dream-city when viewed from the Kremlin,
it is an eminently practical city as well.  It was, in my time, the
chief manufacturing centre of Russia, and Moscow business-men had
earned the reputation of being well able to look after themselves.

Another side of the life of the great city could be seen in the
immense Ermitage restaurant, where Moscow people assured you with
pride that the French cooking was only second to Paris.  The little
Tartar waiters at the Ermitage were, drolly enough, dressed like
hospital orderlies, in white linen from head to foot.  There might
possibly be money in an antiseptic restaurant, should some
enterprising person start one.  The idea would be novel, and this is
an age when new ideas seem attractive.

A Russian merchant in Moscow, a partner in an English firm, imagined
himself to be under a great debt of gratitude to the British Embassy
in Petrograd, on account of a heavy fine imposed upon him, which we
had succeeded in getting remitted.  This gentleman was good enough to
invite a colleague and myself to dine at a certain "Traktir,"
celebrated for its Russian cooking.  I was very slim in those days,
but had I had any idea of the Gargantuan repast we were supposed to
assimilate, I should have borrowed a suit of clothes from the most
adipose person of my acquaintance, in order to secure additional
cargo-space.

In the quaint little "Traktir" decorated in {188} old-Russian style,
after the usual fresh caviar, raw herrings, pickled mushrooms, and
smoked sturgeon of the "zakuska," we commenced with cold sucking-pig
eaten with horse-radish.  Then followed a plain little soup, composed
of herrings and cucumbers stewed in sour beer.  Slices of boiled
salmon and horse-radish were then added, and the soup was served
iced.  This soup is distinctly an acquired taste.  This was succeeded
by a simple dish of sterlets, boiled in wine, with truffles,
crayfish, and mushrooms.  After that came mutton stuffed with
buckwheat porridge, pies of the flesh and isinglass of the sturgeon,
and Heaven only knows what else.  All this accompanied by red and
white Crimean wines, Kvass, and mead.  I had always imagined that
mead was an obsolete beverage, indulged in principally by ancient
Britons, and drunk for choice out of their enemies' skulls, but here
it was, foaming in beautiful old silver tankards; and perfectly
delicious it was!  Oddly enough, the Russian name for it, "meod," is
almost identical with ours.

Only once in my life have I suffered so terribly from repletion, and
that was in the island of Barbados, at the house of a hospitable
planter.  We sat down to luncheon at one, and rose at five.  The
sable serving-maids looked on the refusal of a dish as a terrible
slur on the cookery of the house, and would take no denial.  "No, you
like dis, sar, it real West India dish.  I gib you lilly piece."
What with turtle, and flying-fish, and calipash and calipee, and
pepper-pot, and devilled land-crabs, I {189} felt like the
boa-constrictor in the Zoological Gardens after his monthly meal.

I was not fortunate enough to witness the coronation of either
Alexander III or that of Nicholas II.  In the perfect setting of "the
Red Staircase," of the ancient stone-built hall known as the
"Granovitaya Palata," and of the "Gold Court," the ceremonial must be
deeply impressive.  On no stage could more picturesque surroundings
possibly be devised.  During the coronation festivities, most of the
Ambassadors hired large houses in Moscow, and transferred their
Embassies to the old capital for three weeks.  At the coronation of
Nicholas II, of unfortunate memory, the French Ambassador, the Comte
de Montebello, took a particularly fine house in Moscow, the
Shérémaitieff Palace, and it was arranged that he should give a great
ball the night after the coronation, at which the newly-crowned
Emperor and Empress would be present.  The French Government own a
wonderful collection of splendid old French furniture, tapestries,
and works of art, known as the "Garde Meubles."  Under the Monarchy
and Empire, these all adorned the interiors of the various palaces.
To do full honour to the occasion, the French Government dispatched
vanloads of the choicest treasures of the "Garde Meubles" to Moscow,
and the Shérémaitieff Palace became a thing of beauty, with Louis
Quatorze Gobelins, and furniture made for Marie-Antoinette.  To
enhance the effect, the Comte and Comtesse de Montebello {190}
arranged the most elaborate floral decorations, and took immense
pains over them.  On the night of the ball, two hours before their
guests were due, the Ambassador was informed that the Chief of Police
was outside and begged for permission to enter the temporary Embassy.
Embassies enjoying what is known as "exterritoriality," none of the
police can enter except on the invitation of the Ambassador; much as
vampires, according to the legend, could only secure entrance to a
house at the personal invitation of the owner.  It will be remembered
that these unpleasing creatures displayed great ingenuity in securing
this permission; indeed the really expert vampires prided themselves
on the dexterity with which they could inveigle their selected victim
into welcoming them joyfully into his domicile.  The Chief of Police
informed the French Ambassador that he had absolutely certain
information that a powerful bomb had been introduced into the
Embassy, concealed in a flower-pot.  M. de Montebello was in a
difficult position.  On the previous day the Ambassador had
discovered that every single electric wire in the house had been
deliberately severed by some unknown hand.  French electricians had
repaired the damage, but it was a disquieting incident in the
circumstances.  The policeman was positive that his information was
correct, and the consequences of a terrific bomb exploding in one's
house are eminently disagreeable, so he gave his reluctant permission
to have the Embassy searched, though his earlier {191} guests might
be expected within an hour.  Armies of police myrmidons appeared, and
at once proceeded to unpot between two and three thousand growing
plants, and to pick all the floral decorations to pieces.  Nothing
whatever was found, but it would be unreasonable to expect secret
police, however zealous, to exhibit much skill as trained florists.
They made a frightful hash of things, and not only ruined the
elaborate decorations, but so managed to cover the polished floors
with earth that the rooms looked like ploughed fields, dancing was
rendered impossible, and poor Madame de Montebello was in tears.  As
the guests arrived, the police had to be smuggled out through back
passages.  This was one of the little amenities of life in a
bomb-ridden land.

During the summer months I was much at Tsarskoe Selo.  Tsarskoe is
only fourteen miles from Petrograd, and some of my Russian friends
had villas there.  The gigantic Old Palace of Tsarskoe is merely an
enlarged Winter Palace, and though its garden façade is nearly a
quarter of a mile long, it is uninteresting and unimpressive, being
merely an endless repetition of the same details.  I was taken over
the interior several times, but such a vast quantity of rooms leaves
only a confused impression of magnificence.  I only recall the really
splendid staircase and the famous lapis-lazuli and amber rooms.  The
lapis-lazuli room is a blaze of blue and gold, with walls, furniture,
and chandeliers encrusted with that precious substance.  {192} The
amber room is perfectly beautiful.  All the walls, cabinets, and
tables are made of amber of every possible shade, from straw-colour
to deep orange.  There are also great groups of figures carved
entirely out of amber.  Both the lapis and the amber room have
curious floors of black ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, forming a
very effective colour scheme.  I have vague memories of the "gold"
and "silver" rooms, but very distinct recollections of the bedroom of
one of the Empresses, who a hundred years before the late Lord Lister
had discovered the benefits of antiseptic surgery had with some
curious prophetic instinct had her sleeping-room constructed on the
lines of a glorified modern operating theatre.  The walls of this
quaint apartment were of translucent opal glass, decorated with
columns of bright purple glass, with a floor of inlaid
mother-of-pearl.  Personally, I should always have fancied a faint
smell of chloroform lingering about the room.

Catherine the Great had her monogram placed everywhere at Tsarskoe
Selo, on doors, walls, and ceilings.  It was difficult to connect her
with the interlaced "E's," until one remembered that the Russian form
of the name is "Ekaterina."  How wise the Russians have been in
retaining the so-called Cyrillian alphabet in writing their tongue!

In other Slavonic languages, such as Polish and Czech, where the
Roman alphabet has been adopted, unholy combinations of "cz," "zh,"
and "sz" have to be resorted to to reproduce sounds which the {193}
Cyrillian alphabet could express with a single letter; and the tragic
thing is that, be the letters piled together never so thickly, they
invariably fail to give the foreigner the faintest idea of how the
word should really be pronounced.  Take the much-talked-of town of
Przemysl, for instance.

The park of Tsarskoe is eighteen miles in circumference, and every
portion of it is thrown open freely to the public.  In spite of being
quite flat, it is very pretty with its lake and woods, and was most
beautifully kept.  To an English eye its trees seemed stunted, for in
these far Northern regions no forest trees attain great size.  Limes
and oaks flourish moderately well, but the climate is too cold for
beeches.  At the latitude of Petrograd neither apples, pears, nor any
kind of fruit tree can be grown; raspberries and strawberries are the
only things that can be produced, and they are both superlatively
good.  The park at Tsarskoe was full of a jumble of the most
extraordinarily incongruous buildings and monuments; it would have
taken a fortnight to see them all properly.  There was a Chinese
village, a Chinese theatre, a Dutch dairy, an English Gothic castle,
temples, hanging gardens, ruins, grottoes, fountains, and numbers of
columns, triumphal arches, and statues.  On the lake there was a
collection of boats of all nations, varying from a Chinese sampan to
an English light four-oar; from a Venetian gondola to a Brazilian
catamaran.  There was also a fleet of miniature men-of-war, and three
of Catherine's great {194} gilt state-barges on the lake.  One arm of
the lake was spanned by a bridge of an extremely rare blue Siberian
marble.  Anyone seeing the effect of this blue marble bridge must
have congratulated himself on the fact that it was extremely
improbable that any similar bridge would ever be erected elsewhere,
so rare was the material of which it was constructed.

I never succeeded in finding the spot in Tsarskoe Park where a sentry
stands on guard over a violet which Catherine the Great once found
there.  Catherine, finding the first violet of spring, ordered a
sentry to be placed over it, to protect the flower from being
plucked.  She forgot to rescind the order, and the sentry continued
to be posted there.  It developed at last into a regular tradition of
Tsarskoe, and so, day and night, winter and summer, a sentry stood in
Tsarskoe Park over a spot where, 150 years before, a violet once grew.

The Russian name for a railway station is "Vauxhall," and the origin
of this is rather curious.  The first railway in Europe opened for
passenger traffic was the Liverpool and Manchester, inaugurated in
1830.  Five years later, Nicholas I, eager to show that Russia was
well abreast of the times, determined to have a railway of his own,
and ordered one to be built between Petrograd and Tsarskoe Selo, a
distance of fourteen miles.  The railway was opened in 1837, without
any intermediate stations.  Unfortunately, with the exception of a
few Court officials, no one ever wanted to go to Tsarskoe, so the
line could hardly be called a commercial {195} success.  Then someone
had a brilliant idea!  Vauxhall Gardens in South London were then at
the height of their popularity.  The Tsarskoe line should be extended
two miles to a place called Pavlosk, where the railway company would
be given fifty acres of ground on which to construct a "Vauxhall
Gardens," outbidding its London prototype in attractions.  No sooner
said than done!  The Pavlosk "Vauxhall" became enormously popular
amongst Petrogradians in summer-time; the trains were crowded and the
railway became a paying proposition.  As the Tsarskoe station was the
only one then in existence in Petrograd, the worthy citizens got into
the habit of directing their own coachmen or cabdrivers simply to go
"to Vauxhall."  So the name got gradually applied to the actual
station building in Petrograd.  When the Nicholas railway to Moscow
was completed, the station got to be known as the "Moscow Vauxhall."
And so it spread, until it came about that every railway station in
the Russian Empire, from the Baltic to the Pacific, derived its name
from a long-vanished and half-forgotten pleasure-garden in South
London, the memory of which is only commemorated to-day by a bridge
and a railway station on its site.  The name "Vauxhall" itself is, I
believe, a corruption of "Folks-Hall," or of its Dutch variant
"Volks-hall."  Even in my day the Pavlosk Vauxhall was a most
attractive spot, with an excellent orchestra, myriads of coloured
lamps, and a great semicircle of restaurants and refreshment booths.
When I {196} knew it, the Tsarskoe railway still retained its
original rolling-stock of 1837; little queer over-upholstered
carriages, and quaint archaic-looking engines.  It had, I think, been
built to a different gauge to the standard Russian one; anyhow it had
no physical connection with the other railways.  It was subsequently
modernised.

Peterhof is far more attractive than Tsarskoe as it stands on the
Gulf of Finland, and the coast, rising a hundred feet from the sea,
redeems the place from the uniform dead flat of the other environs of
Petrograd.  As its name implies, Peterhof is the creation of Peter
himself, who did his best to eclipse Versailles.  His fountains and
waterworks certainly run Versailles very close.  The Oriental in
Peter peeped out when he constructed staircases of gilt copper, and
of coloured marbles for the water to flow over, precisely as Shah
Jehan did in his palaces at Delhi and Agra.  As the temperature both
at Delhi and Agra often touches 120° during the summer months, these
decorative cascades would appear more appropriate there than at
Peterhof, where the summer temperature seldom rises to 70°.

The palace stands on a lofty terrace facing the sea.  A broad
straight vista has been cut through the fir-woods opposite it, down
to the waters of the Gulf.  Down the middle of this avenue runs a
canal flanked on either side by twelve fountains.  When _les grandes
eaux_ are playing, the effect of this perspective of fountains and of
Peter's gilded water-chutes is really very fine indeed.  I think that
the {197} Oriental in Peter showed itself again here.  There is a
long single row of almost precisely similar fountains in front of the
Taj at Agra.

As at Tsarskoe, the public have free access to every portion of the
park, which stretches for four miles along the sea, with many
gardens, countless fountains, temples and statues.  There was in
particular a beautiful Ionic colonnade of pink marble, from the
summit of which cataracts of water spouted when the fountains played.
The effect of this pink marble temple seen through the film of
falling water was remarkably pretty.  What pleased me were the two
small Dutch châteaux in the grounds, "Marly" and "Monplaisir," where
Peter had lived during the building of his great palace.  These two
houses had been built by imported Dutch craftsmen, and the sight of a
severe seventeenth-century Dutch interior with its tiles and sober
oak-panelling was so unexpected in Russia.  It was almost as much of
a surprise as is Groote Constantia, some sixteen miles south of Cape
Town.  To drive down a mile-long avenue of the finest oaks in the
world, and to find at the end of it, amidst hedges of clipped pink
oleander and blue plumbago, a most perfect Dutch château, exactly as
Governor Van der Stell left it in 1667, is so utterly unexpected at
the southern extremity of the African Continent!  Groote Constantia,
the property of the Cape Government, still contains all its original
furniture and pictures of 1667.  It is the typical
seventeenth-century Continental château, the main building with its
façade {198} elaborately decorated in plaster, flanked by two wings
at right angles to it, but the last place in the world where you
would look for such a finished whole is South Africa.  To add to the
unexpectedness, the vines for which Constantia is famous are grown in
fields enclosed with hedges, with huge oaks as hedgerow timber.  This
gives such a thoroughly English look to the landscape that I never
could realise that the sea seen through the trees was the Indian
Ocean, and that the Cape of Good Hope was only ten miles away.
Macao, the ancient Portuguese colony forty-five miles from Hong-Kong,
is another "surprise-town."  It is as though Aladdin's Slave of the
Lamp had dumped a seventeenth-century Southern European town down in
the middle of China, with churches, plazas, and fountains complete.

There is really a plethora of palaces round Peterhof.  They grow as
thick as quills on a porcupine's back.  One of them, I cannot recall
which, had a really beautiful dining-room, built entirely of pink
marble.  In niches in the four angles of the room were solid silver
fountains six feet high, where Naiads and Tritons spouted water fed
by a running stream.  I should have thought this room more
appropriate to India than to Northern Russia, but one of the fondest
illusions Russians cherish is that they dwell in a semi-tropical
climate.

In Petrograd, as soon as the temperature reached 60°, old gentlemen
would appear on the Nevsky dressed in white linen, with Panama hats,
and white {199} umbrellas, but still wearing the thickest of
overcoats.  Should the sun's rays become just perceptible, iced Kvass
and lemonade were at once on sale in all the streets.  On these
occasions I made myself quite popular at the Yacht Club by observing,
as I buttoned up my overcoat tightly before venturing into the open
air, that this tropical heat was almost unendurable.  This invariably
provoked gratified smiles of assent.

Another point as to which Russians were for some reason touchy was
the fact that the water of the Gulf of Finland is perfectly fresh.
Ships can fill their tanks from the water alongside for ten miles
below Kronstadt, and the catches of the fishing-boats that came in to
Peterhof consisted entirely of pike, perch, eels, roach, and other
fresh-water fish.  Still Russians disliked intensely hearing their
sea alluded to as fresh-water.  I tactfully pretended to ignore the
fringe of fresh-water reeds lining the shore at Peterhof, and after
bathing in the Gulf would enlarge on the bracing effect a swim in
real salt-water had on the human organism.  This, and a few happy
suggestions that after the intense brine of the Gulf the waters of
the Dead Sea would appear insipidly brackish, conduced towards making
me amazingly popular.

In my younger days I was never really happy without a daily swim
during the summer months.

The woods sloping down to the Gulf are delightful in summer-time, and
are absolutely carpeted with flowers.  The flowers seem to realise
how short the {200} span of life allotted to them is, and endeavour
to make the most of it.  So do the mosquitoes.

I have very vivid recollections of one especial visit to Peterhof.
In the summer of 1882, the Ambassador and two other members of the
Embassy were away in England on leave.  The Chargé d'Affaires, who
replaced the Ambassador, was laid up with an epidemic that was
working great havoc then in Petrograd, as was the Second Secretary.
This epidemic was probably due to the extremely unsatisfactory
sanitary condition of the city.  Consequently no one was left to
carry on the work of the Embassy but myself and the new Attaché, a
mere lad.

The relations of Great Britain and France in the "'eighties" were
widely different from those cordial ones at present prevailing
between the two countries.  Far from being trusted friends and
allies, the tension between England and France was often strained
almost to the breaking-point, especially with regard to Egyptian
affairs.  This was due in a great measure to Bismarck's traditional
foreign policy of attempting to embroil her neighbours, to the
greater advantage of Germany.  In old-fashioned surgery, doctors
frequently introduced a foreign body into an open wound in order to
irritate it, and prevent its healing unduly quickly.  This was termed
a seton.  Bismarck's whole policy was founded on the introduction of
setons into open wounds, to prevent their healing.  His successors in
office endeavoured to continue this policy, but did {201} not
succeed, for though they might share Bismarck's entire want of
scruples, they lacked his commanding genius.

Ismail, Khedive of Egypt since 1863, had brought his country to the
verge of bankruptcy by his gross extravagance.  Great Britain and
France had established in 1877 a Dual Control of Egyptian affairs in
the interest of the foreign bondholders, but the two countries did
not pull well together.  In 1879 the incorrigible Ismail was deposed
in favour of Tewfik, and two years later a military revolt was
instigated by Arabi Pasha.  Very unwisely, attempts were made to
propitiate Arabi by making him a member of the Egyptian Cabinet, and
matters went from bad to worse.  In May, 1882, the French and British
fleets appeared before Alexandria and threatened it, and on June 11,
1882, the Arab population massacred large numbers of the foreign
residents of Alexandria.  Still the French Government refused to take
any definite action, and systematically opposed every proposal made
by the British Government.  We were perfectly well aware that the
opposition of the French to the British policy was consistently
backed up by Russia, Russia being in its turn prompted from Berlin.
All this we knew.  After the massacre of June 11, the French fleet,
instead of acting, sailed away from Alexandria.

Amongst the usual daily sheaf of telegrams from London which the
Attaché and I decyphered on July 12, 1882, was one announcing that
the {202} British Mediterranean Squadron had on the previous day
bombarded and destroyed the forts of Alexandria, and that in two
days' time British marines would be landed and the city of Alexandria
occupied.  There were also details of further steps that would be
taken, should circumstances render them necessary.  All these facts
were to be communicated to the Russian Government at once.  I went
off with this weighty telegram to the house of the Chargé d'Affaires,
whom I found very weak and feverish, and quite unable to rise from
his bed.  He directed me to go forthwith to Peterhof, to see M. de
Giers, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, who was there in
attendance on the Emperor, and to make my statement to him.  I placed
the Attaché in charge of the Chancery, and had time admitted of it, I
should certainly have smeared that youth's cheeks and lips with some
burnt cork, to add a few years to his apparent age, and to delude
people into the belief that he had already begun to shave.  The
dignity of the British Embassy had to be considered.  I begged of him
to refrain from puerile levity in any business interviews he might
have, and I implored him to try to conceal the schoolboy under the
mask of the zealous official.  I then started for Peterhof.  It is
not often that a young man of twenty-five is called upon to deliver
what was virtually an Ultimatum to the mighty Russian Empire, and I
had no illusions whatever as to the manner in which my communication
would be received.

{203}

I saw M. de Giers at Peterhof, and read him my message.  I have never
in my life seen a man so astonished; he was absolutely flabbergasted.
The Gladstone Government of 1880-85 was then in power in England, and
it was a fixed axiom with every Continental statesman (and not, I am
bound to admit, an altogether unfounded one) that under no
circumstances whatever would the Gladstone Cabinet ever take definite
action.  They would talk eternally; they would never act.  M. de
Giers at length said to me, "I have heard your communication with
great regret.  I have noted what you have said with even deeper
regret."  He paused for a while, and then added very gravely, "The
Emperor's regret will be even more profound than my own, and I will
not conceal from you that his Majesty will be highly displeased when
he learns the news you have brought me."  I inquired of M. de Giers
whether he wished me to see the Emperor, and to make my communication
in person to His Imperial Majesty, and felt relieved when he told me
that it was unnecessary, as I was not feeling particularly anxious to
face an angry Autocrat alone.  I left a transcript I had myself made
of the telegram I had decyphered with M. de Giers, and left.  A
moment's reflection will show that to leave a copy of decoded
telegram with anyone would be to render the code useless.  The
original cypher telegram would be always accessible, and a decypher
of it would be tantamount to giving away the code.  It was our
practice to make transcripts, giving the {204} sense in totally
different language, and with the position of every sentence altered.

After that, as events in Egypt developed, and until the Chargé
d'Affaires was about again, I journeyed to Peterhof almost daily to
see M. de Giers.  We always seemed to get on very well together, in
spite of racial animosities.

The clouds in Egypt rolled away, and with them the very serious
menace to which I have alluded.  Events fortunately shaped themselves
propitiously, On September 13, 1882, Sir Garnet Wolseley utterly
routed Arabi's forces at Tel-el-Kebir; Arabi was deported to Ceylon,
and the revolt came to an end.

A diplomat naturally meets Ministers of Foreign Affairs of many
types.  There was a strong contrast between the polished and courtly
M. de Giers, who in spite of his urbanity could manage to infuse a
very strong sub-acid flavour into his suavity when he chose, and some
other Ministers with whom I have come in contact.  A few years later,
when at Buenos Ayres, preliminary steps were taken for drawing up an
Extradition Treaty between Great Britain and Paraguay, and as there
were details which required adjusting, I was sent 1,100 miles up the
river to Asuncion, the unsophisticated capital of the Inland
Republic.  Dr. ----, at that time Paraguayan Foreign Minister, was a
Guarani, of pure Indian blood.  He did not receive me at the Ministry
for Foreign Affairs, for the excellent reason that there was no such
place in that primitive {205} republic, but in his own extremely
modest residence.  When his Excellency welcomed me in the whitewashed
sala of that house, sumptuously furnished with four wooden chairs,
and nothing else whatever, he had on neither shoes, stockings, nor
shirt, and wore merely a pair of canvas trousers, and an unbuttoned
coat of the same material, affording ample glimpses of his somewhat
dusky skin.  In the suffocating heat of Asuncion such a costume has
its obvious advantages; still I cannot imagine, let us say, the
French Minister for Foreign Affairs receiving the humblest member of
a Foreign Legation at the Quai d'Orsay with bare feet, shirtless, and
clad only in two garments.

Dr. ----, in spite of being Indian by blood, spoke most correct and
finished Spanish, and had all the courtesy which those who use that
beautiful language seem somehow to acquire instinctively.  It is to
be regretted that the same cannot be said of all those using the
English language.  Not to be outdone by this polite Paraguayan, I
responded in the same vein, and we mutually smothered each other with
the choicest flowers of Castilian courtesy.  These little amenities,
though doubtless tending to smooth down the asperities of life, are
apt to consume a good deal of time.

Once at Kyoto in Japan, I had occasion for the services of a dentist.
As the dentist only spoke Japanese, I took my interpreter with me.
After removing my shoes at the door--an unusual preliminary to a
visit to a dentist--we went upstairs, where {206} we found a dapper
little individual in kimono and white socks, surrounded by the most
modern and up-to-date dental paraphernalia, sucking his breath, and
rubbing his knees with true Japanese politeness.  Eager to show that
a foreigner could also have delightful manners, I sucked my breath,
if anything, rather louder, and rubbed my knees a trifle harder.
"Dentist says," came from the interpreter, "will you honourably deign
to explain where trouble lies in honourable tooth?"

"If the dentist will honourably deign to examine my left-hand lower
molar," I responded with charming courtesy, "he will find it requires
stopping, but for Heaven's sake, Mr. Nakimura, ask him to be careful
how he uses his honourable drill, for I am terrified to death at that
invention of the Evil One."  Soon the Satanic drill got well into its
stride, and began boring into every nerve of my head.  I jumped out
of the chair.  "Tell the dentist, Mr. Nakimura, that he is honourably
deigning to hurt me like the very devil with his honourable but
wholly damnable drill."  "Dentist says if you honourably deign to
reseat yourself in chair, he soon conquer difficulties in your
honourable tooth."  "Certainly.  But dentist must not give me
honourable hell any more," and so on, and so on.  I am bound to admit
that the little Jap's workmanship was so good that it has remained
intact up to the present days.  I wonder if Japs, when annoyed, can
ever relieve themselves by the use of really strong language, or
whether the crust of conventional politeness is too thick to {207}
admit of it.  In that case they must feel like a lobster afflicted
with acute eczema, unable to obtain relief by scratching himself,
owing to the impervious shell in which Nature has encased him.

I dined with the British Consul at Asuncion, after my interview with
Dr. ----.  The Consul lived three miles out of town, and the coffee
we drank after dinner, the sugar we put into the coffee, and the
cigars we smoked with it, had all been grown in his garden, within
sight of the windows.  I had ridden out to the Quinta in company with
a young Australian, who will reappear later on in these pages in his
proper place; one Dick Howard.  It was the first but by no means the
last time in my life that I ever got on a horse in evening clothes.
Dick Howard, having no evening clothes with him, had arrayed himself
in one of his favourite cricket blazers, a pleasantly vivid garment.
On our way out, my horse shied violently at a snake in the road.  The
girths slipped on the grass-fed animal, and my saddle rolled gently
round and deposited me, tail-coat, white tie and all, in some four
feet of dust.  The snake, however, probably panic-stricken at the
sight of Howard's blazer, had tactfully withdrawn; otherwise, as it
happened to be a deadly Jararaca, it is highly unlikely that I should
have been writing these lines at the present moment.  The
ineradicable love of Dick Howard, the cheery, laughing young
Antipodean, for brilliant-hued blazers of various athletic clubs will
be enlarged on later.  In Indian hill stations all men habitually
ride out to dinner-parties, {208} whilst ladies are carried in
litters.  During the rains, men put a suit of pyjamas over their
evening clothes to protect them, before drawing on rubber boots and
rubber coats and venturing into the pelting downpour.  The Syce trots
behind, carrying his master's pumps in a rubber sponge-bag.

All this, however, is far afield from Russia.  Alexander III
preferred Gatchina to any of his other palaces as a residence, as it
was so much smaller, Gatchina being a cosy little house of 600 rooms
only.  I never saw it except once in mid-winter, when the Emperor
summoned the Ambassador there, and I was also invited.  As the
far-famed beauties of Gatchina Park were covered with four feet of
snow, it would be difficult to pronounce an opinion upon them.  The
rivers and lakes, the haunts of the celebrated Gatchina trout, were,
of course, also deep-buried.

Alexander III was a man of very simple tastes, and nothing could be
plainer than the large study in which he received us.  Alexander III,
a Colossus of a man, had great dignity, combined with a geniality of
manner very different from the glacial hauteur of his father,
Alexander II.  The Emperor was in fact rather partial to a humorous
anecdote, and some I recalled seemed to divert his Majesty.  Outside
his study-door stood two gigantic negroes on guard, in Eastern
dresses of green and scarlet.  The Empress Marie, though she did not
share her sister Queen Alexandra's wonderful beauty, had all of her
subtle and indescribable charm of manner, {209} and she was very
gracious to a stupid young Secretary-of-Embassy.

The bedroom given to me at Gatchina could hardly be described by the
standardised epithets for Russian interiors "bare, gaunt, and
whitewashed," as it had light blue silk walls embroidered with large
silver wreaths.  The mirrors were silvered, and the bed stood in a
species of chancel, up four steps, and surrounded by a balustrade of
silvered carved wood.  Both the Ambassador and I agreed that the
Imperial cellar fully maintained its high reputation.  We were given
in particular some very wonderful old Tokay, a present from the
Emperor of Austria, a wine that was not on the market.

We were taken all over the palace, which contained, amongst other
things, a large riding-school and a full-sized theatre.  The really
enchanting room was a large hall on the ground floor where many
generations of little Grand-Dukes and Grand-Duchesses had played.
As, owing to the severe winter climate, it is difficult for Russian
children to amuse themselves much out-of-doors, these large
play-rooms are almost a necessity in that frozen land.  The Gatchina
play-room was a vast low hall, a place of many whitewashed arches.
In this delightful room was every possible thing that could attract a
child.  At one end were two wooden Montagnes Busses, the descent of
which could be negotiated in little wheeled trollies.  In another
corner was a fully-equipped gymnasium.  There were "giants' strides,"
swings, swing-boats and a {210} merry-go-round.  There was a toy
railway with switches and signal-posts complete, the locomotives of
which were worked by treadles, like a tricycle.  There were dolls'
houses galore, and larger houses into which the children could get,
with real cooking-stoves in the little kitchens, and little parlours
in which to eat the results of their primitive culinary experiments.
There were mechanical orchestras, self-playing pianos and
barrel-organs, and masses and masses of toys.  On seeing this
delectable spot, I regretted for the first time that I had not been
born a Russian Grand-Duke, between the ages though of five and twelve
only.

I believe that there is a similar room at Tsarskoe although I never
saw it.




{211}

CHAPTER VII

Lisbon--The two Kings of Portugal, and of Barataria--King Fernando
and the Countess--A Lisbon bull-fight--The "hat-trick"--Courtship
window-parade--The spurred youth of Lisbon--Portuguese
politeness--The De Reszke family--The Opera--Terrible personal
experiences in a circus--The bounding Bishop--Ecclesiastical
possibilities--Portuguese coinage--Beauty of Lisbon--Visits of the
British Fleet--Misguided midshipmen--The Legation Whaleboat--"Good
wine needs no bush"--A delightful orange-farm--Cintra--Contrast
between the Past and Present of Portugal.


A professional diplomat becomes used to rapid changes in his
environment.  He has also to learn to readjust his monetary
standards, for after calculating everything in roubles for, let us
say, four years, he may find himself in a country where the peseta or
the dollar are the units.  At every fresh post he has to start again
from the beginning, as he endeavours to learn the customs and above
all the mentality of the new country.  He has to form a brand-new
acquaintance, to get to know the points of view of those amongst whom
he is living, and in general to shape himself to totally new
surroundings.  A diplomat in this way insensibly acquires
adaptability.

It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast to Petrograd than
Lisbon, which was my next post.  {212} After the rather hectic gaiety
of Petrograd, with its persistent flavour of an exotic and artificial
civilisation, the placid, uneventful flow of life at Lisbon was
restful, possibly even dull.

Curiously enough, in those days there were two Kings of Portugal at
the same time.  This state of things (which always reminded me
irresistibly of the two Kings of Barataria in Gilbert and Sullivan's
"Gondoliers") had come about quite naturally.  Queen Maria II (Maria
da Gloria) had married in 1836 Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who
was raised next year to the title of King Consort.  Maria II died in
1853 and was succeeded by Pedro V.  During his son's minority King
Ferdinand acted as Regent, and Pedro, dying unmarried eight years
after, was succeeded in turn by his brother Luiz, also a son of King
Ferdinand.

When the Corps Diplomatique were received at the Ajuda Palace on New
Year's Day, the scene always struck me as being intensely comical.
The two Kings (universally known as Dom Fernando and Dom Luiz)
entered simultaneously by different doors.  When they met Dom Luiz
made a low bow to Dom Fernando, and then kissed his father's hand.
Dom Fernando responded with an equally low bow, and kissed his son's
hand.  The two Kings then ascended the throne together.  Had "The
Gondoliers" been already composed then, I should have expected the
two Monarchs to break into the duet from the second act, "Rising
early in the Morning," in which the two Kings of Barataria {213}
explain their multitudinous duties.  As King Luiz had a fine tenor
voice, His Majesty could also in that case have brightened up the
proceedings by singing us "Take a pair of sparkling eyes."

Dom Fernando was a perfectly delightful old gentleman, very highly
cultured, full of humour, and with a charming natural courtesy of
manner.  The drolly-named Necessidades Palace which he inhabited was
an unpretentious house full of beautiful old Portuguese furniture.
Most of the rooms were wainscoted with the finest "azulejos" I ever
saw; blue and white tiles which the Portuguese adopted originally
from the Moors, but learnt later to make for themselves under the
tuition of Dutch craftsmen from Delft.  These "azulejos" form the
most decorative background to a room that can be imagined.  A bold
pictorial design, a complete and elaborate picture in blue on white,
runs along their whole length.  It is thus very difficult to remove
and re-erect "azulejos," for one broken tile will spoil the whole
design.  The Portuguese use these everywhere, both for the exteriors
and interiors of their houses, and also as garden ornaments, and they
are wonderfully effective.

Dom Fernando had married morganatically, as his second wife, a dancer
of American origin.  This lady had a remarkably strident voice, and
was much to the fore on the fortnightly afternoons when Dom Fernando
received the men of the Corps Diplomatique.  For some reason or
other, the ladies of the Diplomatic Body always found themselves
{214} unable to attend these gatherings.  The courteous, genial old
King would move about, smilingly dispensing his truly admirable
cigars, and brimful of anecdotes and jokelets.  The nasal raucaus
tones of the ex-dancer, always known as "the Countess," would summon
him in English.  "Say, King! you just hurry up with those cigars.
They are badly wanted here."

I imagine that in the days of her successes on the stage the lady's
outline must have been less voluminous than it was when I made her
acquaintance.  The only other occasion when I heard a monarch
addressed as "King" _tout court_ was when a small relation of my own,
aged five, at a children's garden-party at Buckingham Palace insisted
on answering King Edward VII's questions with a "Yes, O King," or
"No, O King"; a form of address which had a pleasant Biblical flavour
about it.

The Portuguese are a very humane race, and are extraordinarily kind
to animals.  They are also devoted to bull-fights.  These two
tendencies seem irreconcilable, till the fact is grasped that a
Portuguese bull-fight is absolutely bloodless.  Neither bulls nor
horses are killed; the whole spectacle resolves itself into an
exhibition of horsemanship and skill.

The bulls' horns are padded and covered with leather thongs.  The
_picador_ rides a really good and highly-trained horse.  Should he
allow the bull even to touch his horse with his padded horns, the
unfortunate _picador_ will get mercilessly hissed.  {215} These
_picadores_ do not wear the showy Spanish dresses, but Louis Quinze
costumes of purple velvet with large white wigs.  The _espada_ is
armed with a wooden sword only, which he plants innocuously on the
neck of the bull, and woe betide him should those tens of thousands
of eager eyes watching him detect a deviation of even one inch from
the death-dealing spot.  He will be hissed out of the ring.  On the
other hand, should he succeed in touching the fatal place with his
harmless weapon, his skill would be rewarded with thunders of
applause, and all the occupants of the upper galleries would shower
small change and cigarettes into the ring, and would also hurl their
hats into the arena, which always struck me as a peculiarly comical
way of expressing their appreciation.

The _espada_ would gaze at the hundreds of shabby battered bowler
hats reposing on the sand of the arena with the same expression of
simulated rapture that a _prima donna_ assumes as floral tributes are
handed to her across the footlights.  The _espada_, his hand on his
heart, would bow again and again, as though saying, "Are these lovely
hats really for me?"  But after a second glance at the dilapidated
head-gear, covering the entire floor-space of the arena with little
sub-fuse hummocks, he would apparently change his mind.  "It is
really amazingly good of you, and I do appreciate it, but I think on
the whole that I will not deprive you of them," and then an
exhibition of real skill occurred.  The _espada_, taking up a hat,
would {216} glance at the galleries.  Up went a hand, and the hat
hurtled aloft to its owner with unfailing accuracy; and this
performance was repeated perhaps a hundred times.  I always
considered the _espada's_ hat-returning act far more extraordinary
than his futile manipulation of the inoffensive wooden sword.  During
the aerial flights of the hats, two small acolytes of the _espada_,
his miniature facsimiles in dress, picked up the small change and
cigarettes, and, I trust, duly handed them over intact to their
master.  The bull meanwhile, after his imaginary slaughter, had
trotted home contentedly to his underground quarters, surrounded by
some twenty gaily-caparisoned tame bullocks.  To my mind Spanish
bull-fighting is revolting and horrible to the last degree.  I have
seen it once, and nothing will induce me to assist a second time at
so disgusting a spectacle; but the most squeamish person can view a
Portuguese bull-fight with impunity.  Even though the bull has his
horns bandaged, considerable skill and great acrobatic agility come
into play.  Few of us would care to stand in the path of a charging
polled Angus bull, hornless though he be.  The _bandarilheros_ who
plant paper-decorated darts in the neck of the charging bull are as
nimble as trained acrobats, and vault lightly out of the ring when
hard pressed.  Conspicuous at a Lisbon bull-fight are a number of
sturdy peasants, tricked out in showy clothes of scarlet and orange.
These are "the men of strength."  Should a bull prove cowardly in the
ring, and decline to fight, the public {217} clamour for him to be
caught and expelled ignomiously from the ring by "the men of
strength."  Eight of the stalwart peasants will then hurl themselves
on to the bull and literally hustle him out of the arena; no mean
feat.  Take it all round, a Portuguese bull-fight was picturesque and
full of life and colour, though the neighbouring Spaniards affected
an immense contempt for them on account of their bloodlessness and
make-belief.

A curious Portuguese custom is one which ordains that a youth before
proposing formally for a maiden's hand must do "window parade" for
two months (in Portuguese "fazer a janella").  Nature has not
allotted good looks to the majority of the Portuguese race, and she
has been especially niggardly in this respect to the feminine element
of the population.  The taste for olives and for caviar is usually
supposed to be an acquired one, and so may be the taste for
Lusitanian loveliness.  Somewhat to the surprise of the foreigner,
Portuguese maidens seemed to inspire the same sentiments in the
breasts of the youthful male as do their more-favoured sisters in
other lands, but in _bourgeois_ circles the "window-parade" was an
indispensable preliminary to courtship.  The youth had to pass
backwards and forwards along the street where the dwelling of his
_innamorata_ was situated, casting up glances of passionate appeal to
a window, where, as he knew, the form of his enchantress would
presently appear.  The maiden, when she judged that she might at
length reveal herself {218} without unduly encouraging her suitor,
moved to the open window and stood fanning herself, laboriously
unconscious of her ardent swain in the street below.  The youth would
then express his consuming passion in pantomime, making frantic
gestures in testimony of his mad adoration.  The senhorita in return
might favour him with a coy glance, and in token of dismissal would
perhaps drop him a rose, which the young man would press to his lips
and then place over his heart, and so the performance came to an end,
to be renewed again the next evening.  The lovesick swain would
almost certainly be wearing spurs.  At first I could not make out why
the young men of Lisbon, who had probably never been on a horse in
their whole lives, should habitually walk about the town with spurs
on their heels.  It was, I think, a survival of the old Peninsular
tradition, and was intended to prove to the world that they were
"cavalleiros."  In Spain an immense distinction was formerly made
between the "caballero" and the "peon"; the mounted man, or
gentleman, and the man on foot, or day-labourer.  The little
box-spurs were the only means these Lisbon youths had of proving
their quality to the world.  They had no horses, but they _had_
spurs, which was obviously the next best thing.

Fortunes in Portugal being small, and strict economy having to be
observed amongst all classes, I have heard that these damsels of the
window-sill only dressed down to the waist.  They would assume a
_corsage_ of scarlet or crimson plush, and, {219} their nether
garments being invisible from below, would study both economy and
comfort by wearing a flannel petticoat below it.  It is unnecessary
for me to add that I never verified this detail from personal
observation.

Some of the old Portuguese families occupied very fine, if sparsely
furnished, houses, with _enfilades_ of great, lofty bare rooms.
After calling at one of these houses, the master of it would in
Continental fashion "reconduct" his visitor towards the front door.
At every single doorway the Portuguese code of politeness dictated
that the visitor should protest energetically against his host
accompanying him one step further.  With equal insistence the host
expressed his resolve to escort his visitor a little longer.  The
master of the house had previously settled in his own mind exactly
how far he was going towards the entrance, the distance depending on
the rank of the visitor, but the accepted code of manners insisted
upon these protests and counter-protests at every single doorway.

In Germany "door-politeness" plays a great part.  In one of
Kotzebue's comedies two provincial notabilities of equal rank are
engaged in a duel of "door-politeness."  "But I must really insist on
your Excellency passing first."  "I could not dream of it, your
Excellency.  I will follow you."  "Your Excellency knows that I could
never allow that," and so on.  The curtain falls on these two ladies
each declining to precede the other, and when it rises on the second
act the doorway is still there, {220} and the two ladies are still
disputing.  Quite an effective stage-situation, and one which a
modern dramatist might utilise.

In paying visits in Lisbon one was often pressed to remain to dinner,
but the invitation was a mere form of politeness, and was not
intended to be accepted.  You invariably replied that you deeply
regretted that you were already engaged.  The more you were urged to
throw over your engagement, the deeper became your regret that this
particular engagement must be fulfilled.  The engagement probably
consisted in dining alone at the club, but under no circumstances
must the invitation be accepted.  In view of the straitened
circumstances of most Portuguese families, the evening meal would
probably consist of one single dish of _bacalhao_ or salt cod, and
you would have put your hosts to the greatest inconvenience.

With the exception of the Opera, the Lisbon theatres were most
indifferent.  When I first arrived there the Lisbon Opera had been
fortunate enough to secure the services of a very gifted Polish
family, a sister and two brothers, the latter of whom were destined
later to become the idols of the London public.  They were Mlle. de
Reszke and Jean and Edouard de Reszke, all three of them then
comparatively unknown.  Mlle. de Reszke had the most glorious voice.
To hear her singing with her brother Jean in "Faust" was a perfect
revelation.  Mlle. de Reszke appeared to the best advantage when the
stalwart Jean sang with her, for she was {221} immensely tall, and
towered over the average portly, stumpy, little operatic tenor.  The
French say, cruelly enough, "bête comme un ténor."  This may or may
not be true, but the fact remains that the usual stage tenor is
short, bull-necked, and conspicuously inclined to adipose tissue.
When her brother Jean was out of the cast, it required an immense
effort of the imagination to picture this splendid creature as being
really desperately enamoured of the little paunchy, swarthy
individual who, reaching to her shoulder only, was hurling his high
notes at the public over the footlights.

At afternoon parties these three consummate artists occasionally sang
unaccompanied trios.  I have never heard anything so perfectly done.
I am convinced that had Mlle. de Reszke lived, she would have
established as great a European reputation as did her two brothers.
The Lisbon musical public were terribly critical.  They had one most
disconcerting habit.  Instead of hissing, should an artist have been
unfortunate enough to incur their displeasure, the audience stood up
and began banging the movable wooden seats of the stalls and dress
circle up and down.  This produced a deafening din, effectually
drowning the orchestra and singers.  The effect on the unhappy artist
against whom all this pandemonium was directed may be imagined.  On
gala nights the Lisbon Opera was decorated in a very simple but
effective manner.  Most Portuguese families own a number of
"colchas," or embroidered bed-quilts.  These are of satin, silk,
{222} or linen, beautifully worked in colours.  On a gala night,
hundreds of these "colchas" were hung over the fronts of the boxes
and galleries, with a wonderfully decorative effect.  In the same
way, on Church festivals, when religious processions made their way
through the streets, many-lined "colchas" were thrown over the
balconies of the houses, giving an extraordinarily festive appearance
to the town.

As at Berlin and Petrograd, there was a really good circus at Lisbon.
I, for one, am sorry that this particular form of entertainment is
now obsolete in England, for it has always appealed to me, in spite
of some painful memories connected with a circus which, if I may be
permitted a long digression, I will relate.

Nearly thirty years ago I left London on a visit to one of the
historic châteaux of France, in company with a friend who is now a
well-known member of Parliament, and also churchwarden of a famous
West-end church.  We travelled over by night, and reached our
destination about eleven next morning.  We noticed a huge circular
tent in the park of the château, but paid no particular attention to
it.  The first words with which our hostess, the bearer of a great
French name, greeted us were, "I feel sure that I can rely upon you,
_mes amis_.  You have to help us out of a difficulty.  My son and his
friends have been practising for four months for their amateur
circus.  Our first performance is to-day at two o'clock.  We have
sold eight hundred tickets for the benefit of the French Red Cross,
{223} and yesterday, only yesterday, our two clowns were telegraphed
for.  They have both been ordered to the autumn manoeuvres, and you
two must take their places, or our performance is ruined.  _Je sais
que vous n'allez pas me manquer_."  In vain we both protested that we
had had no experience whatever as clowns, that branch of our
education having been culpably neglected.  Our hostess insisted, and
would take no denial.  "Go and wash; go and eat; and then put on the
dresses you will find in your rooms."  I never felt so miserable in
my life as I did whilst making up my face the orthodox dead white,
with scarlet triangles on the cheeks, big mouth, and blackened nose.
The clown's kit was complete in every detail, with wig, conical hat,
patterned stockings and queer white felt shoes.  As far as externals
went, I was orthodoxy itself, but the "business," and the "wheezes"!
The future church-warden had been taken in hand by some young
Frenchmen.  As he was to play "Chocolat," the black clown, they
commenced by stripping him and blacking him from head to foot with
boot-blacking.  They then polished him.

I entered the ring with a sinking heart.  I was to remain there two
hours, and endeavour to amuse a French audience for that period
without any preparation whatever.  "Business," "gag," and "patter"
had all to be improvised, and the "patter," of course, had to be in
French.  Luckily, I could then throw "cart-wheels" and turn
somersaults to an indefinite extent.  So I made my entrance in {224}
that fashion.  Fortunately I got on good terms with my audience
almost at once, and with confidence came inspiration; and with
inspiration additional confidence, and a judicious recollection of
the stock-tricks of clowns in various Continental capitals.  Far
greater liberties can be taken with a French audience than would be
possible in England, but if anyone thinks it an easy task to go into
a circus ring and to clown for two hours on end in a foreign
language, without one minute's preparation, let him try it.  The
ring-master always pretends to flick the clown; it is part of the
traditional "business"; but this amateur ring-master (most
beautifully got up) handled his long whip so unskilfully that he not
only really flicked my legs, but cut pieces out of them.  When I
jumped and yelled with genuine pain, the audience roared with
laughter, so of course the ring-master plied his whip again.  At the
end of the performance my legs were absolutely raw.  The clown came
off badly too in some of the "roughs-and-tumbles," for the clown is
always fair game.  The French amateurs gave a really astonishingly
good performance.  They had borrowed trained horses from a real
circus, and the same young Hungarian to whom I have alluded at the
beginning of these reminiscences as having created a mild sensation
by appearing at Buckingham Palace in a tiger-skin tunic trimmed with
large turquoises, rode round the ring on a pad in sky-blue tights,
bounding through paper hoops and over garlands of artificial flowers
as easily and {225} gracefully as though he had done nothing else all
his life.  Later on in the afternoon this versatile Hungarian
reappeared in flowing Oriental robes and a false beard as "Ali Ben
Hassan, the Bedouin Chief."  Riding round the ring at full gallop,
and firing from the saddle with a shot-gun, he broke glass balls with
all the dexterity of a trained professional.  That young Hungarian is
now a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.  Before 1914 I had
occasion to meet him frequently.  Whenever I thought that on the
strength of his purple robes he was assuming undue airs of
ecclesiastical superiority (to use the word "swanking" would be an
unpardonable vulgarism, especially in the case of a bishop), I
invariably reminded his lordship of the afternoon, many years ago,
when, arrayed in sky-blue silk tights, he had dashed through paper
hoops in a French amateur circus.  My remarks were usually met with
the deprecatory smile and little gesture of protest of the hand so
characteristic of the Roman ecclesiastic, as the bishop murmured,
"_Cher ami, tout cela est oublié depuis longtemps,_" I assured the
prelate that for my own part I should never forget it, if only for
the unexpected skill he had displayed; though I recognise that
bishops may dislike being reminded of their past, especially when
they have performed in circuses in their youth.

In addition to the Hungarian's "act," there was another beautiful
exhibition of horsemanship.  A boy of sixteen, a member of an
historic French family, by dint of long, patient, and painful {226}
practice, was able to give an admirable performance of the familiar
circus "turn" known as "The Courier of St. Petersburg," in which the
rider, standing a-straddle on two barebacked ponies, drives four
other ponies in front of him; an extraordinary feat for an amateur to
have mastered.  My friend the agile ecclesiastic is portrayed,
perhaps a little maliciously, in Abel Hermant's most amusing book
"Trains de Luxe," under the name of "Monseigneur Granita de Caffe
Nero."  It may interest ladies to learn that this fastidious prelate
always had his purple robes made by Doucet, the famous Paris
dressmaking firm, to ensure that they should "sit" properly.  On the
whole, our circus was really a very creditable effort for amateurs.

The entertainment was, I believe, pronounced a tremendous success,
and at its conclusion the only person who was the worse for it was
the poor clown.  He had not only lost his voice entirely, from
shouting for two hours on end, but he was black and blue from head to
foot.  Added to which, his legs were raw and bleeding from the
ring-master's pitiless whip.  I am thankful to say that in the course
of a long life that was my one and only appearance in the ring of a
circus.  My fellow-clown, "Chocolat," the future member of Parliament
and churchwarden, had been so liberally coated with boot-blacking by
his French friends that it refused to come off, and for days
afterwards his face was artistically decorated with swarthy patches.

Before 1914, I had frequently pointed out to my {227} friend the
bishop that should he wish to raise any funds in his Hungarian
diocese he could not do better than repeat his performance in the
French circus.  As a concession to his exalted rank, he might wear
tights of episcopal purple.  Should he have retained any of the
nimbleness of his youth, his flock could not fail to be enormously
gratified at witnessing their chief pastor bounding through paper
hoops and leaping over obstacles with incredible agility for his age.
The knowledge that they had so gifted and supple a prelate would
probably greatly increase his moral influence over them and could
scarcely fail to render him amazingly popular.  Could his lordship
have convinced his flock that he could demolish the arguments of any
religious opponent with the same ease that he displayed in
penetrating the paper obstacles to his equestrian progress, he would
certainly be acclaimed as a theological controversialist of the first
rank.  In the same way, I have endeavoured to persuade my friend the
member of Parliament that he might brighten up the proceedings in the
House of Commons were he to appear there occasionally in the clown's
dress he wore thirty years ago in France.  Failing that, his
attendance at the Easter Vestry Meeting of his West-end church with a
blackened face might introduce that note of hilarity which is often
so markedly lacking at these gatherings.

All this has led me far away from Lisbon in the "'eighties."  Mark
Twain has described, in "A Tramp Abroad," the terror with which a
foreigner {228} is overwhelmed on being presented with his first
hotel bill on Portuguese territory.  The total will certainly run
into thousands of reis, and the unhappy stranger sees bankruptcy
staring him in the face.

As a matter of fact, one thousand reis equal at par exactly four and
twopence.  It follows that a hundred reis are the equivalent of
fivepence, and that one rei is the twentieth of a penny.

A French colleague of mine insisted that the Portuguese were actuated
by national pride in selecting so small a monetary unit.  An
elementary calculation will show that the proud possessor of £222
10_s._ can claim to be a millionaire in Portugal.  According to my
French friend, Portugal was anxious to show the world that though a
small country, a larger proportion of her subjects were millionaires
than any other European country could boast of.  In the same way the
Frenchman explained the curious Lisbon habit of writing a number over
every opening on the ground floor of a house, whether door or window.
As a result the numbers of the houses crept up rapidly to the most
imposing figures.  It was not uncommon to find a house inscribed No.
2000 in a comparatively short street.  Accordingly, Lisbon, though a
small capital, was able to gain a spurious reputation for immense
size.

A peculiarity of Lisbon was the double set of names of the principal
streets and squares: the official name, and the popular one.  I have
never known this custom prevail anywhere else.  Thus the {229}
principal street was officially known as Rua Garrett, and that name
was duly written up.  Everyone, though, spoke of it as the "Chiada."
In the same way the splendid square facing the Tagus which English
people call "Black Horse Square" had its official designation written
up as "Praça do Comercio."  It was, however, invariably called
"Terreiro do Paço."  The list could be extended indefinitely.  Street
names in Lisbon did not err in the matter of shortness.  "Rua do
Sacramento a Lapa de Baixio" strikes me as quite a sufficiently
lengthy name for a street of six houses.

Lisbon is certainly a handsome town.  It has been so frequently
wrecked by earthquakes that there is very little mediæval
architecture remaining, in spite of its great age.  Two notable
exceptions are the Tower of Belem and the exquisitely beautiful
cloisters of the Hieronymite Convent, also at Belem.  The tower
stands on a promontory jutting into the Tagus, and the convent was
built in the late fifteen-hundreds to commemorate the discovery of
the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama.  These two buildings are
both in the "Manoeline" style, a variety of highly ornate late Gothic
peculiar to Portugal.  It is the fashion to sneer at Manoeline
architecture, with its profuse decoration, as being a decadent style.
To my mind the cloisters of Belem (the Portuguese variant of
Bethlehem) rank as one of the architectural masterpieces of Europe.
Its arches are draped, as it were, with a lace-work of intricate and
minute stone carving, as delicate {230} almost as jewellers' work.
The warm brown colour of the stone adds to the effect, and anyone but
an architectural pedant must admit the amazing beauty of the place.
The finest example of Manoeline in Portugal is the great Abbey of
Batalha, in my day far away from any railway, and very difficult of
access.

At the time of the great earthquake of 1755 which laid Lisbon in
ruins, Portugal was fortunate enough to have a man of real genius at
the head of affairs, the Marquis de Pombal.  Pombal not only
re-established the national finances on a sound basis, but rebuilt
the capital from his own designs.  The stately "Black Horse Square"
fronting the Tagus and the streets surrounding it were all designed
by Pombal.  I suppose that there is no hillier capital in the world
than Lisbon.  Many of the streets are too steep for the tramcars to
climb.  The Portuguese fashion of coating the exteriors of the houses
with bright-coloured tiles of blue and white, or orange and white,
gives a cheerful air to the town,--the French word "riant" would be
more appropriate--and the numerous public gardens, where the
palm-trees apparently grow as contentedly as in their native tropics,
add to this effect of sunlit brightness.  As in Brazil and other
Portuguese-speaking countries, the houses are all very tall, and
sash-windows are universal, as in England, contrary to the custom of
other Continental countries.

House rent could not be called excessive in Portugal.  In my day
quite a large house, totally lacking {231} in every description of
modern convenience, but with a fine staircase and plenty of lofty
rooms, could be hired for £30 a year, a price which may make the
Londoner think seriously of transferring himself to the banks of the
Tagus.

In the "'eighties" Lisbon was the winter headquarters of our Channel
Squadron.  I once saw the late Admiral Dowdeswell bring his entire
fleet up the Tagus under sail; a most wonderful sight!  The two
five-masted flagships, the _Minotaur_ and the _Agincourt_, had very
graceful lines, and with every stitch of their canvas set, they were
things of exquisite beauty.  The _Northumberland_ had also been
designed as a sister ship, but for some reason had had two of her
masts removed.  The old _Minotaur,_ now alas! a shapeless hulk known
as _Ganges II_, is still, I believe, doing useful work at Harwich.

As may be imagined, the arrival of the British Fleet infused a
certain element of liveliness into the sleepy city.  Gambling-rooms
were opened all over Lisbon, and as the bluejackets had a habit of
wrecking any place where they suspected the proprietor of cheating
them, the Legation had its work cut out for it in endeavouring to
placate the local authorities and smooth down their wounded
susceptibilities.  One gambling-house, known as "Portuguese Joe's,"
was frequented mainly by midshipmen.  They were strictly forbidden to
go there, but the place was crammed every night with them, in spite
of official prohibition.  The British midshipman being a creature of
impulse, the {232} moment these youths (every one of whom thought it
incumbent on his dignity to have a huge cigar in his mouth, even
though he might still be of very tender years) suspected any foul
play, they would proceed very systematically and methodically to
smash the whole place up to matchwood.  There was consequently a good
deal of trouble, and the Legation quietly put strong pressure on the
Portuguese Government to close these gambling-houses down
permanently.  This was accordingly done, much to the wrath of the
midshipmen, who were, I believe, supplied with free drinks and cigars
by the proprietors of these places.  It is just possible that the
Admiral's wishes may have been consulted before this drastic action
was taken.  Midshipmen in those days went to sea at fourteen and
fifteen years of age, and consequently needed some shepherding.

As our Minister had constantly to pay official visits to the Fleet,
the British Government kept a whale-boat at Lisbon for the use of the
Legation.  The coxswain, an ex-naval petty officer who spoke
Portuguese, acted as Chancery servant when not afloat.  When the boat
was wanted, the coxswain went down to the quay with two bagfuls of
bluejackets' uniforms, and engaged a dozen chance Tagus boatmen.  The
Lisbon boatman, though skilful, is extraordinarily unclean in his
person and his attire.  I wish the people who lavished praises on the
smart appearance of the Legation whaleboat and of its scratch crew
could have seen, as I {233} often did, the revoltingly filthy
garments of these longshoremen before they drew the snowy naval white
duck trousers and jumpers over them.  Their persons were even
dirtier, and--for reasons into which I need not enter--it was
advisable to smoke a strong cigar whilst they were pulling.  The
tides in the Tagus run very strong; at spring-tides they will run
seven or eight knots, so considerable skill is required in handling a
boat.  To do our odoriferous whited sepulchres of boatmen justice,
they could pull, and the real workmanlike man-of-war fashion in which
our coxswain always brought the boat alongside a ship, in spite of
wind and tremendous tide, did credit to himself, and shed a mild
reflected glory on the Legation.

The country round Lisbon is very arid.  It produces, however, most
excellent wines, both red and white, and in my time really good wine
could be bought for fourpence a bottle.  At the time of the vintage,
all the country taverns and wine shops displayed a bush tied to a
pole at their doors, as a sign that they had new wine, "green wine,"
as the Portuguese call it, for sale.  Let the stranger beware of that
new wine!  Though pleasant to the palate and apparently innocuous, it
is in reality hideously intoxicating, as a reference to the 13th
verse of the second chapter of the Acts will show.  I think that the
custom of tying a bush to the door of a tavern where new wine is on
sale must be the origin of the expression "good wine needs no bush."

{234}

The capabilities of this apparently intractable and arid soil when
scientifically irrigated were convincingly shown on a farm some
sixteen miles from Lisbon, belonging to a Colonel Campbell, an
Englishman.  Colonel Campbell, who had permanently settled in
Portugal, had bought from the Government a derelict monastery and the
lands attached to it at Torres Vedras, where Wellington entrenched
himself in his famous lines in 1809-10.  A good stream of water ran
through the property, and Colonel Campbell diverted it, and literally
caused the desert to blossom like the rose.  Here were acres and
acres of orange groves, and it was one of the few places in Europe
where bananas would ripen.  Colonel Campbell supplied the whole of
Lisbon with butter, and the only mutton worth eating came also from
his farm.  It was a place flowing, if not with milk and honey, at all
events with oil and wine.  Here were huge tanks brimful of
amber-coloured olive oil; whilst in vast dim cellars hundreds of
barrels of red and white wine were slowly maturing in the mysterious
shadows.  Outside the sunlight fell on crates of ripe oranges and
bananas, ready packed for the Lisbon market, and in the gardens
tropical and sub-tropical flowering trees had not only thoroughly
acclimatised themselves, but had expanded to prima-donna-like
dimensions.  The great rambling tiled monastery made a delightful
dwelling-house, and to me it will be always a place of pleasant
memories--a place of sunshine and golden orange groves; of {235}
rustling palms and cool blue and white tiles; of splashing fountains
and old stonework smothered in a tangle of wine-coloured
Bougainvillea.

The environs of all Portuguese towns are made dreary by the miles and
miles of high walls which line the roads.  These people must surely
have some dark secrets in their lives to require these huge barriers
between themselves and the rest of the world.  Behind the wall were
pleasant old _quintas_, or villas, faced with my favourite "azulejos"
of blue and white, and surrounded with attractive, ill-kept gardens,
where roses and oleanders ran riot amidst groves of orange and lemon
trees.

Cintra would be a beautiful spot anywhere, but in this sun-scorched
land it comes as a surprising revelation; a green oasis in a desolate
expanse of aridity.

Here are great shady oak woods and tinkling fern-fringed brooks,
pleasant leafy valleys, and a grateful sense of moist coolness.  On
the very summit of the rocky hill of Pena, King Fernando had built a
fantastic dream-castle, all domes and pinnacles.  It was exactly like
the "enchanted castle" of one of Gustave Doré's illustrations, and
had, I believe, been partly designed by Doré himself.  Some of the
details may have been a little too flamboyant for sober British
tastes, but, perched on its lofty rock, this castle was surprisingly
effective from below with its gilded turrets and Moorish tiles.  As
the castle occupied every inch of the summit of the Pena hill, the
only approach to it {236} was by a broad winding roadway tunnelled
through the solid rock.  Openings had been cut in the sides of the
tunnel giving wonderful views over the valleys far down below.  This
approach was for all the world like the rocky ways up which Parsifal
is led to the temple of the Grail in the first act of Wagner's great
mystery drama.  The finest feature about Pena, to my mind, was the
wood of camellias on its southern face.  These camellias had grown to
a great size, and when in flower in March they were a most beautiful
sight.

There was a great deal of work at the Lisbon Legation, principally of
a commercial character.  There were never-ending disputes between
British shippers and the Custom House authorities, and the extremely
dilatory methods of the Portuguese Government were most trying to the
temper at times.

I shall always cherish mildly agreeable recollections of Lisbon.  It
was a placid, sunlit, soporific existence, very different from the
turmoil of Petrograd life.  The people were friendly, and as
hospitable as their very limited financial resources enabled them to
be.  They could mostly speak French in a fashion, still their limited
vocabulary was quite sufficient for expressing their more limited
ideas.

I never could help contrasting the splendid past of this little
nation with its somewhat inadequate present, for it must be
remembered that Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was
the leading maritime Power of Europe.  Portugal had {237} planted her
colonies and her language (surely the most hideous of all spoken
idioms!) in Asia, Africa, and South America long before Great Britain
or France had even dreamed of a Colonial Empire.

They were a race of hardy and fearless seamen.  Prince Henry the
Navigator, the son of John of Portugal and of John of Gaunt's
daughter, discovered Madeira, the Azores, and the Cape Verde islands
in the early fourteen-hundreds.

In the same century Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and Vasco da
Gama succeeded in reaching India by sea, whilst Albuquerque founded
Portuguese colonies in Brazil and at Goa in India.  This race of
intrepid navigators and explorers held the command of the sea long
before the Dutch or British, and by the middle of the sixteenth
century little Portugal ranked as one of the most powerful monarchies
in Europe.

Portugal, too, is England's oldest ally, for the Treaty of Windsor
establishing an alliance between the two countries was signed as far
back as 1386.

This is not the place in which to enter into the causes which led to
the gradual decadence of this wonderful little nation, sapped her
energies and atrophied her enterprise.  To the historian those causes
are sufficiently familiar.

Let us only trust that Lusitania's star may some day rise again.




{238}

CHAPTER VIII

Brazil--Contrast between Portuguese and Spanish South
America--Moorish traditions--Amazing beauty of Rio de Janeiro--Yellow
fever--The Commercial Court Chamberlain--The Emperor Pedro--The
Botanic Gardens of Rio--The quaint diversions of Petropolis--The
liveried young entomologist--Buenos Ayres--The charm of the
"Camp"--Water-throwing--A British Minister in Carnival time--Some
Buenos Ayres peculiarities--Masked balls--Climatic
conditions--Theatres--Restaurants--Wonderful bird-life of the
"Camp"--Estancis Negrete--Duck-shooting--My one flamingo--An
exploring expedition in the Gran Chaco--Hardships--Alligators and
fish--Currency difficulties.


My first impression of Brazil was that it was a mere transplanted
Portugal, but a Portugal set amidst the most glorious vegetation and
some of the finest scenery on the face of the globe.  It is also
unquestionably suffocatingly hot.

There is a great outward difference in the appearances of the towns
of Portuguese and Spanish South America.  In Brazil the Portuguese
built their houses and towns precisely as they had done at home.
There are the same winding irregular streets; the same tall houses
faced with the decorative "azulejos"; the same shutterless
sash-windows.  A type of house less suited to the burning climate of
Brazil can hardly be imagined.  There being no outside shutters, it
is impossible to keep the heat {239} out, and the small rooms become
so many ovens.  The sinuosities of the irregular streets give a
curiously old-world look to a Brazilian town, so much so that it is
difficult for a European to realise that he is on the American
Continent, associated as the latter is in our minds with unending
straight lines.

In all Spanish-American countries the towns are laid out on the
chess-board principle, with long dreary perspectives stretching
themselves endlessly.  The Spanish-American type of house too is
mostly one-storied and flat-roofed, with two iron-barred windows only
looking on to the street.  The Moorish conquerors left their impress
on Spain, and the Spanish pioneers carried across the Atlantic with
them the Moorish conception of a house.  The "patio" or enclosed
court in the centre of the house is a heritage from the Moors, as is
the flat roof or "azotea," and the decorated rainwater cistern in the
centre of the "patio."

The very name of this tank in Spanish, "aljibe," is of Arabic origin,
and it becomes obvious that this type of house was evolved by
Mohammedans who kept their womenkind in jealous and strict seclusion.
No indiscreet eyes from outside can penetrate into the "patio," and
after nightfall the women could be allowed on to the flat roof to
take the air.  Those familiar with the East know the great part the
roof of a house plays in the life of an Oriental.  It is their
parlour, particularly after dark.  As the inhabitants of South
America are not Mohammedans, I cannot conceive why they {240}
obstinately adhere to this inconvenient type of dwelling.  The
"patio" renders the house very dark and airless, becomes a well of
damp in winter, and an oven in summer.  To my mind unquestionably the
best form of house for a hot climate is the Anglo-Indian bungalow,
with its broad verandahs, thatched roof, and lofty rooms.  In a
bungalow some of the heat can be shut out.

On my first arrival in Brazil, the tropics and tropical vegetation
were an unopened book to me, and I was fairly intoxicated with their
beauty.

There is a short English-owned railway running from Pernambuco to
some unknown spot in the interior.  The manager of this railway came
out on the steamer with us, and he was good enough to take me for a
run on an engine into the heart of the virgin forest.  I shall never
forget the impression this made on me.  It was like a peep into a
wholly unimagined fairyland.

Had the calls of the mail steamer been deliberately designed to give
the stranger a cumulative impression of the beauties of Brazil, they
could not have been more happily arranged.  First of Pernambuco in
flat country, redeemed by its splendid vegetation; then Bahia with
its fine bay and gentle hills, and lastly Rio the incomparable.

I have seen most of the surface of this globe, and I say
deliberately, without any fear of contradiction, that nowhere is
there anything approaching Rio in beauty.  The glorious bay, two
hundred miles in circumference, dotted with islands, and {241}
surrounded by mountains of almost grotesquely fantastic outlines, the
whole clothed with exuberantly luxurious tropical vegetation, makes
the most lovely picture that can be conceived.

The straggling town in my day had not yet blossomed into those
vagaries of ultra-ornate architecture which at present characterise
it.  It was quaint and picturesque, and fitted its surroundings
admirably, the narrow crowded Ruado Ouvidor being the centre of the
fashionable life of the place.

It will be remembered that when Gonçalves discovered the great bay on
January 1st, 1502, he imagined that it must be the estuary of some
mighty river, and christened it accordingly "the River of January,"
"Rio de Janeiro."  Oddly enough, only a few insignificant streams
empty themselves into this vast landlocked harbour.

During my first fortnight in Rio, I thought the view over the bay
more beautiful with every fresh standpoint I saw it from; whether
from Botofogo, or from Nichteroy on the further shore, the view
seemed more entrancingly lovely every time; and yet over this, the
fairest spot on earth, the Angel of Death was perpetually hovering
with outstretched wings; for yellow fever was endemic at Rio then,
and yellow fever slays swiftly and surely.

One must have lived in countries where the disease is prevalent to
realise the insane terror those two words "yellow fever" strike into
most people.  On my third visit to Rio, I was destined to contract
the disease myself, but it dealt mercifully with me, {242} so
henceforth I am immune to yellow fever for the remainder of my life.
The ravages this fell disease wrought in the West Indies a hundred
years ago cannot be exaggerated.  Those familiar with Michael Scott's
delightful "Tom Cringle's Log" will remember the gruesome details he
gives of a severe outbreak of the epidemic in Jamaica.  In those days
"Yellow Jack" took toll of nearly fifty per cent. of the white civil
and military inhabitants of the British West Indies, as the countless
memorial tablets in the older West Indian churches silently testify.
Before my arrival in Rio, a new German Minister had, in spite of
serious warnings, insisted on taking a beautiful little villa on a
rocky promontory jutting into the bay.  The house with its white
marble colonnades, its lovely gardens, and the wonderful view over
the mountains, was a thing of exquisite beauty, but it bore a very
evil reputation.  Within eight months the German Minister, his
secretary, and his two white German servants were all dead of yellow
fever.  The Brazilians declare that the fever is never contracted
during the daytime, but that sunset is the dangerous hour.  They also
warn the foreigner to avoid fruit and acid drinks.

Conditions have changed since then.  The cause of the unhealthiness
of Rio was a very simple one.  All the sewage of the city was
discharged into the landlocked, tideless bay, where it lay festering
under the scorching sun.  An English company tunnelled a way through
the mountains direct to {243} the Atlantic, and all the sewage is now
discharged there, with the result that Rio is practically free from
the dreaded disease.

The customs of a monarchial country are like a deep-rooted oak, they
do not stand transplanting.  Where they are the result of the slow
growth of many centuries, they have adapted themselves, so to speak,
to the soil of the country of their origin, have evolved national
characteristics, and have fitted themselves into the national life.
When transplanted into a new country, they cannot fail to appear
anachronisms, and have always a certain element of the grotesque
about them.  In my time Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, had
surrounded himself with a modified edition of the externals of a
European Court.  A colleague of mine had recently been presented to
the Emperor at the Palace of São Christovão.  As is customary on such
occasions, my colleague called on the two Court Chamberlains who were
on duty at São Christovão, and they duly returned the visit.  One of
these Chamberlains, whom we will call Baron de Feijão e Farinha,
seemed reluctant to take his departure.  He finally produced a bundle
of price lists from his pocket, and assured my colleague that he
would get far better value for his money at his (the Baron's)
ready-made clothing store than at any other similar establishment in
South America.  From another pocket he then extracted a tape measure,
and in spite of my colleague's protest passed the tape over his
unwilling body to note the {244} stock size, in the event of an
order.  The Baron de Feijão especially recommended one of his models,
"the Pall Mall," a complete suit of which could be obtained for the
nominal sum of 80,000 reis.  This appalling sum looks less alarming
when reduced to British currency, 80,000 Brazilian reis being equal
to about £7 7_s_.  I am not sure that he did not promise my colleague
a commission on any orders he could extract from other members of the
Legation.  My colleague, a remarkably well-dressed man, did not
recover his equanimity for some days, after picturing his
neatly-garbed form arrayed in the appallingly flashy, ill-cut,
ready-made garments in which the youth of Rio de Janeiro were wont to
disport themselves.  To European ideas, it was a little unusual to
find a Court Chamberlain engaged in the ready-made clothing line.

On State occasions Dom Pedro assumed the most splendid Imperial
mantle any sovereign has ever possessed.  It was composed entirely of
feathers, being made of the breasts of toucans, shaded from pale pink
to deep rose-colour, and was the most gorgeous bit of colour
imaginable.  In the sweltering climate of Brazil, the heat of this
mantle must have been unendurable, and I always wondered how Dom
Pedro managed to bear it with a smiling face, but it certainly looked
magnificent.

One of the industries of Rio was the manufacture of artificial
flowers from the feathers of humming-birds.  These feather flowers
were wonderfully faithful reproductions of Nature, and were {245}
practically indestructible, besides being most artistically made.
They were very expensive.

The famous avenue of royal palms in the Botanic Gardens would almost
repay anyone for the voyage from Europe.  These are, I believe, the
tallest palms known, and the long avenue is strikingly impressive.
The _Oreodoxa regia_, one of the cabbage-palms, has a huge trunk,
perfectly symmetrical, and growing absolutely straight.  This
perspective of giant boles recalls the columns of an immense Gothic
cathedral, whilst the fronds uniting in a green arch two hundred feet
overhead complete the illusion.  The Botanic Gardens have some most
attractive ponds of pink and sky-blue water lilies, and the view of
the bay from the gardens is usually considered the finest in Rio.

Owing to the unhealthiness of Rio, most of the Foreign Legations had
established themselves permanently at Petropolis, in the Organ
Mountains, Petropolis being well above the yellow fever zone.  On my
third visit to Rio, such a terrible epidemic of yellow fever was
raging in the capital that the British Minister very kindly invited
me to go up straight to the Legation at Petropolis.  The latter is
three hours' distance from Rio by mountain railway.  People with
business in the city leave for Rio by the 7 a.m. train, and reach
Petropolis again at 7 p.m.  The old Emperor, Dom Pedro, made a point
of attending the departure and arrival of the train every single day,
and a military band played regularly in the station, morning and
{246} evening.  This struck me as a very unusual form of amusement.
The Emperor (who ten months later was quietly deposed) was a tall,
handsome old gentleman, of very distinguished appearance, and with
charming manners.  He had also encyclopædic knowledge on most points.
That a sovereign should take pleasure in seeing the daily train
depart and arrive seemed to point to a certain lack of resources in
Petropolis, and to hint at moments of deadly dulness in the Imperial
villa there.  Dom Pedro never appeared in public except in evening
dress, and it was a novelty to see the head of a State in full
evening dress and high hat at half-past six in the morning, listening
to an extremely indifferent brass band braying in the waiting-room of
a shabby railway station.

Nature seems to have lavished all the most brilliant hues of her
palette on Brazil; the plumage of the birds, the flowers, and foliage
all glow with vivid colour.  Even a Brazilian toad has bright
emerald-green spots all over him.  The gorgeous butterflies of this
highly-coloured land are well known in Europe, especially those
lovely creatures of shimmering, iridescent blue.

These butterflies were the cause of a considerable variation in the
hours of meals at the British Legation.

The Minister had recently brought out to Brazil an English boy to act
as young footman.  Henry was a most willing, obliging lad, but these
great Brazilian butterflies exercised a quite irresistible {247}
fascination over him, and small blame to him.  He kept a
butterfly-net in the pantry, and the instant one of the brilliant,
glittering creatures appeared in the garden, Henry forgot everything.
Clang the front-door bell so loudly, he paid no heed to it; the cook
might be yelling for him to carry the luncheon into the dining-room,
Henry turned a deaf ear to her entreaties.  Snatching up his
butterfly-net, he would dart through the window in hot pursuit.  As
these great butterflies fly like Handley Pages, he had his work cut
out for him, and running is exhausting in a temperature of 90
degrees.  The usual hour for luncheon would be long past, and the
table would still exhibit a virgin expanse of white cloth.  Somewhere
in the dim distance we could descry a slim young figure bounding
along hot-foot, with butterfly-net poised aloft, so we possessed our
souls in patience.  Eventually Henry would reappear, moist but
triumphant, or dripping and despondent, according to his success or
failure with his shimmering quarry.  After such violent exercise,
Henry had to have a plunge in the swimming-bath and a complete change
of clothing before he could resume his duties, all of which
occasioned some little further delay.  And this would happen every
day, so our repasts may be legitimately described as "movable
feasts."  It was no use speaking to Henry.  He would promise to be
less forgetful, but the next butterfly that came flitting along drove
all good resolves out of this ardent young entomologist's head, and
off he would {248} go on flying feet in eager pursuit.  I recommended
Henry when he returned to England to take up cross-country running
seriously.  He seemed to have unmistakable aptitudes for it.

The streets of Petropolis were planted with avenues of a flowering
tree imported from the Southern Pacific.  When in bloom, this tree
was so covered with vivid pink blossoms that all its leaves were
hidden.  These rows of bright pink trees gave the dull little town a
curious resemblance to a Japanese fan.

There are some lovely little nooks and corners in the Organ
Mountains.  One ravine in particular was most beautiful, with a
cascade dashing down the cliff, and the clear brook below it fringed
with eucharis lilies, and the tropical begonias which we laboriously
cultivate in stove-houses.  Unfortunately, these beauty spots seemed
as attractive to snakes as they were to human beings.  This entailed
keeping a watchful eye on the ground, for Brazilian snakes are very
venomous.

No greater contrast can be imagined than that between the forests and
mountains of steamy Brazil and the endless, treeless, dead-flat
levels of the Argentine Republic, twelve hundred miles south of them.

When I first knew Buenos Ayres in the early "'eighties," it still
retained an old-world air of distinction.  The narrow streets were
lined with sombre, dignified old buildings of a markedly Spanish
type, and the modern riot of over-ornate ginger-bread {249}
architecture had not yet transformed the city into a glittering,
garish trans-Atlantic pseudo-Paris.  In the same way newly-acquired
wealth had not begun to assert itself as blatantly as it has since
done.

I confess that I was astonished to find two daily English newspapers
in Buenos Ayres, for I had not realised the size and importance of
the British commercial colony there.

The "Camp" (from the Spanish _campo_, country) outside the city is
undeniably ugly and featureless, as it stretches its unending
khaki-coloured, treeless flatness to the horizon, but the sense of
immense space has something exhilarating about it, and the air is
perfectly glorious.  In time these vast dun-coloured levels exercise
a sort of a fascination over one; to me the "Camp" will always be
associated with the raucous cries of the thousands of spurred
Argentine plovers, as they wheel over the horsemen with their
never-ending scream of "téro, téro."

As in most countries of Spanish origin, the Carnival was kept at
Buenos Ayres in the old-fashioned style.  In my time, on the last day
of the Carnival, Shrove Tuesday, the traditional water-throwing was
still allowed in the streets.  Everyone going into the streets must
be prepared for being drenched with water from head to foot.  My new
Chief, whom I will call Sir Edward (though he happened to have a
totally different name), had just arrived in Buenos Ayres.  He was
quite {250} unused to South American ways.  On Shrove Tuesday I came
down to breakfast in an old suit of flannels and a soft shirt and
collar, for from my experiences of the previous year I knew what was
to be expected in the streets.  Sir Edward, a remarkably neat
dresser, appeared beautifully arrayed in a new suit, the smartest of
bow-ties, and a yellow jean waistcoat.  I pointed out to my Chief
that it was water-throwing day, and suggested the advisability of his
wearing his oldest clothes.  Sir Edward gave me to understand that he
imagined that few people would venture to throw water over her
Britannic Majesty's representative.  Off we started on foot for the
Chancery of the Legation, which was situated a good mile from our
house.  I knew what was coming.  In the first five minutes we got a
bucket of water from the top of a house, plumb all over us, soaking
us both to the skin.  Sir Edward was speechless with rage for a
minute or so, after which I will not attempt to reproduce his
language.  Men were selling everywhere in the streets the large
squirts ("_pomitos_" in Spanish) which are used on these occasions.
I equipped myself with a perfect Woolwich Arsenal of _pomitos_, but
Sir Edward waved them all disdainfully away.  Soon two girls darted
out of an open doorway, armed with _pomitos_, and caught us each
fairly in the face, after which they giggled and ran into their
house, leaving the front door open.  Sir Edward fairly danced with
rage on the pavement, shouting out the most uncomplimentary opinions
as to the {251} Argentine Republic and its inhabitants.  The front
door having been left open, I was entitled by all the laws of
Carnival time to pursue our two fair assailants into their house, and
I did so, in spite of Sir Edward's remonstrances.  I chased the two
girls into the drawing-room, where we experienced some little
difficulty in clambering over sofas and tables, and I finally caught
them in the dining-room, where a venerable lady, probably their
grandmother, was reposing in an armchair.  I gave the two girls a
thorough good soaking from my _pomitos_, and bestowed the mildest
sprinkling on their aged relative, who was immensely gratified by the
attention.  "Oh! my dears," she cried in Spanish to the girls, "you
both consider me so old.  You can see that I am not too old for this
young man to enjoy paying me a little compliment."

_Autres pays, autres moeurs_!  Just conceive the feelings of an
ordinary British middle-class householder, residing, let us say, at
Balham or Wandsworth, at learning that the sanctity of "The Laurels"
or "Ferndale" had been invaded by a total stranger; that his
daughters had been pursued round the house, and then soaked with
water in his own dining-room, and that even his aged mother's revered
white hairs had not preserved her from a like indignity.  I cannot
imagine him accepting it as a humorous everyday incident.  Our
progress to the Chancery was punctuated by several more interludes of
a similar character, and I was really pained on reaching the shelter
of our official {252} sanctuary to note how Sir Edward's spotless
garments had suffered.  Personally, on a broiling February day
(corresponding with August in the northern hemisphere) I thought the
cool water most refreshing.  Our Chancery looked on to the
fashionable Calle Florida, and a highly respectable German widow who
had lived for thirty years in South America acted as our housekeeper.
Sir Edward, considerably ruffled in his temper, sat down to continue
a very elaborate memorandum he was drawing up on the new Argentine
Customs tariff.  The subject was a complicated one, there were masses
of figures to deal with, and the work required the closest
concentration.  Presently our housekeeper, Fran Bauer, entered the
room demurely, and made her way to Sir Edward's table,

"Wenn Excellenz so gut sein werden um zu entschuldigen," began Frau
Bauer with downcast eyes, and then suddenly with a discreet titter
she produced a large _pomito_ from under her apron and, secure in the
license of Carnival time, she thrust it into Sir Edward's collar, and
proceeded to squirt half a pint of cold water down his back, retiring
swiftly with elderly coyness amid an explosion of giggles.  I think
that I have seldom seen a man in such a furious rage.  I will not
attempt to reproduce Sir Edward's language, for the printer would
have exhausted his entire stock of "blanks" before I had got halfway
through.  The Minister, when he had eased his mind sufficiently,
snapped out, "It is obvious that with all {253} this condemned (that
was not quite the word he used) foolery going on, it is impossible to
do any serious work to-day.  Where ... where ... can one buy the
infernal squirts these condemned idiots vise?"  "Anywhere in the
streets.  Shall I buy you some, Sir Edward?"  "Yes, get me a lot of
them, and the biggest you can find."  So we parted.

Returning home after a moist but enjoyable afternoon, I saw a great
crowd gathered at the junction of two streets, engaged in a furious
water-fight.  The central figure was a most disreputable-looking
individual with a sodden wisp of linen where his collar should have
been; remnants of a tie trailed dankly down, his soaked garments were
shapeless, and his head was crowned with a sort of dripping poultice.
He was spouting water in all directions like the Crystal Palace
fountains in their heyday, with shouts of "Take that, you foolish
female; and that, you fat feminine Argentine!"  With grief I
recognised in this damp reveller her Britannic Majesty's Minister
Plenipotentiary.

Upon returning home, we found that our two English servants had been
having the time of their lives.  They had stood all day on the roof
of the house, dashing pails of water over passers-by until they had
completely emptied the cistern.  There was not one drop of water in
the house, and we had to borrow three pailfuls from a complaisant
neighbour.

A few years later the police prohibited water-throwing altogether, so
this feature of a Buenos {254} Ayres Carnival is now a thing of the
past.

As time went on I grew very fond of Sir Edward.  His temper may have
flared up quickly, but it died down just as rapidly.  He was a man
with an extraordinarily varied fund of information, and possessed a
very original and subtle sense of humour.  He was also a great
stylist in writing English, and the drafts I wrote for despatches
were but seldom fortunate enough to meet with his approval.  A split
infinitive brought him to the verge of tears.  The Argentine
authorities were by no means easy to deal with, and Sir Edward
handled them in a masterly fashion.  His quiet persistence usually
achieved its object.  It was a real joy to see him dealing with
anyone rash enough to attempt to bully or browbeat him.  His tongue
could sting like a lash on occasions, whilst he preserved an outward
air of imperturbable calm.  Sir Edward both spoke and wrote the most
beautifully finished Spanish.

A ball in a private house at Buenos Ayres had its peculiar features
in the "'eighties."  In the first place, none of the furniture was
removed from the rooms, and so far from taking up carpets, carpets
were actually laid down, should the rooms be unprovided with them.
This rendered dancing somewhat difficult; in fact a ball resolved
itself into a leisurely arm-in-arm promenade to music through the
rooms, steering an erratic course between the articles of furniture,
"drawing the port," as a Scottish curler would put it.  Occasionally
a {255} space behind a sofa could be found sufficiently large to
attempt a few mild gyrations, but that was all.  The golden youth of
Buenos Ayres, in the place of the conventional white evening tie, all
affected the most deplorable bows of pale pink or pale green satin.
A wedding, too, differed from the European routine.  The parents of
the bride gave a ball.  At twelve o'clock dancing, or promenading
amidst the furniture, ceased.  A portable altar was brought into the
room; a priest made his unexpected entry, and the young couple were
married at breakneck speed.  At the conclusion of the ceremony, all
the young men darted at the bride and tore her marriage-veil to
shreds.  Priest, altar, and the newly-married couple then
disappeared; the band struck up again, and dancing, or rather a
leisurely progress round the sofas and ottomans, recommenced.

A form of entertainment that appeals immensely to people of Spanish
blood is a masked ball.  In Buenos Ayres the ladies only were masked,
which gave them a distinct advantage over the men.  To enjoy a
masquerade a good knowledge of Spanish is necessary.  All masked
women are addressed indiscriminately as "mascarita" and can be
"tutoyée'd."  Convention permits, too, anything within reasonable
limits to be said by a man to "mascaritas," who one and all assume a
little high-pitched head-voice to conceal their identities.  I fancy
that the real attractions masquerades had for most women lay in the
opportunity they afforded every {256} "mascarita" of saying with
impunity abominably rude things to some other woman whom she
detested.  I remember one "mascarita," an acquaintance of mine, whose
identity I pierced at once, giving another veiled form accurate
details not only as to the date when the pearly range of teeth she
was exhibiting to the world had come into her possession, but also
the exact price she had paid for them.

It takes a stranger from the North some little time to accustom
himself to the inversion of seasons and of the points of the compass
in the southern hemisphere.  For instance, "a lovely spring day in
_October_," or "a chilly autumn evening in _May_," rings curiously to
our ears; as it does to hear of a room with a cool _southern_ aspect,
or to hear complaints about the hot _north_ wind.  Personally I did
not dislike the north wind; it was certainly moist and warm, but it
smelt deliciously fragrant with a faint spicy odour after its journey
over the great Brazilian forests on its way from the Equator.  All
Argentines seemed to feel the north wind terribly; it gave them
headaches, and appeared to dislocate their entire nervous system.  In
the Law Courts it was held to be a mitigating circumstance should it
be proved that a murder, or other crime of violence, had been
committed after a long spell of north wind.  Many women went about
during a north wind with split beans on their temples to soothe their
headaches, a comical sight till one grew accustomed to it.  The old
German {257} housekeeper of the Chancery, Frau Bauer, invariably had
split beans adhering to her temples when the north wind blew.

The icy _pampero_, the south wind direct from the Pole, was the great
doctor of Buenos Ayres.  Darwin used to consider the River Plate the
electrical centre of the world.  Nowhere have I experienced such
terrific thunderstorms as in the Argentine.  Sometimes on a stifling
summer night, with the thermometer standing at nearly a hundred
degrees, one of these stupendous storms would break over the city
with floods of rain.  Following on the storm would come the
_pampero_, gently at first, but increasing in violence until a
blustering, ice-cold gale went roaring through the sweltering city,
bringing the temperature down in four hours with a run from 100
degrees to 60 degrees.  Extremely pleasant for those like myself with
sound lungs; very dangerous to those with delicate chests.

The old-fashioned Argentine house had no protection over the _patio_.
In bad weather the occupants had to make their way through the rain
from one room to another.  Some of the newer houses were built in a
style which I have seen nowhere else except on the stage.  Everyone
is familiar with those airy dwellings composed principally of open
colonnades one sees on stage back-cloths.  These houses were very
similar in design, with open halls of columns and arches, and
open-air staircases.  On the stage it rains but seldom, and the style
may be suited to the climatic conditions prevailing there.  {258} In
real life it must be horribly inconvenient.  The Italian Minister at
Buenos Ayres lived in a house of this description.  In fine weather
it looked extremely picturesque, but I imagine that his Excellency's
progress to bed must have been attended with some difficulties when,
during a thunderstorm, the rain poured in cataracts down his open-air
staircase, and the _pampero_ howled through his open arcades and
galleries.

The theatres at Buenos Ayres were quite excellent.  At the Opera all
the celebrated singers of Europe could be heard, although one could
almost have purchased a nice little freehold property near London for
the price asked for a seat.  There were two French theatres, one
devoted to light opera, the other to Palais Royal farces, both
admirably given; and, astonishingly enough, during part of my stay,
there was actually an English theatre with an English stock company.
A peculiarly Spanish form of entertainment is the "Zarzuela," a sort
of musical farce.  It requires a fairly intimate knowledge of the
language to follow these pieces with their many topical allusions.

The Spanish-American temperament seems to dislike instinctively any
gloomy or morbid dramas, differing widely from the Russians in this
respect.  At Petrograd, on the Russian stage, the plays, in addition
to the usual marital difficulties, were brightened up by allusions to
such cheerful topics as inherited tendencies to kleptomania or
suicide, or an intense desire for self-mutilation.  What {259}
appeals to the morbid frost-bound North apparently fails to attract
the light-hearted sons of the southern hemisphere.

Buenos Ayres was also a city of admirable restaurants.  In the
fashionable places, resplendent with mirrors, coloured marbles and
gilding, the cooking rivals Paris, and the bill, when tendered, makes
one inclined to rush to the telegraph office to cable for further and
largely increased remittances from Europe.  There were a number,
however, of unpretending French restaurants of the most meritorious
description.  Never shall I forget Sir Edward's face when, in answer
to his questions as to a light supper, the waiter suggested a cold
armadillo; a most excellent dish, by the way, though after seeing the
creature in the Zoological Gardens one would hardly credit it with
gastronomic possibilities.  The soil of the Argentine is marvellously
fertile, and some day it will become a great wine-growing country.
In the meantime vast quantities of inferior wine are imported from
Europe.  After sampling a thin Spanish red wine, and a heavy sweet
black wine known as Priorato, and having tested their effects on his
digestion, Sir Edward christened them "The red wine of Our Lady of
Pain" and "The black wine of Death."

When the President of the Republic appeared in public on great
occasions, he was always preceded by a man carrying a large blue
velvet bolster embroidered with the Argentine arms.  This was {260}
clearly an emblem of national sovereignty, but what this blue bolster
was intended to typify I never could find out.  Did it indicate that
it was the duty of the President to bolster up the Republic, or did
it signify that the Republic was always ready to bolster up its
President?  None of my Argentine friends could throw any light upon
the subject further than by saying that this bolster was always
carried in front of the President; a sufficiently self-evident fact.
It will always remain an enigma to me.  A bolster seems a curiously
soporific emblem for a young, enterprising, and progressive Republic
to select as its symbol.

It would be ungallant to pass over without remark the wonderful
beauty of the Argentine girls.  This beauty is very shortlived
indeed, and owing to their obstinate refusal to take any exercise
whatever, feminine outlines increase in bulk at an absurdly early
age, but between seventeen and twenty-one many of them are really
lovely.  Lolling in hammocks and perpetual chocolate-eating bring
about their own penalties, and sad to say, bring them about very
quickly.  I must add that the attractiveness of these girls is rather
physical than intellectual.

The house Sir Edward and I rented had been originally built for a
stage favourite by one of her many warm-hearted admirers.  It had
been furnished according to the lady's own markedly florid tastes.  I
reposed nightly in a room entirely draped in sky-blue satin.  The
house had a charming garden, {261} and Sir Edward and I expended a
great deal of trouble and a considerable amount of money on it.  That
garden was the pride of our hearts, but we had reckoned without the
leaf-cutting ant, the great foe of the horticulturist in South
America.  At Rio, and in other places in Brazil, they had a special
apparatus for pumping the fumes of burning sulphur into the
ant-holes, and so were enabled to keep these pests in check.  In
private gardens in Brazil every single specially cherished plant had
to have its stem surrounded with unsightly circular troughs of
paraffin and water.  In front of our windows we had a large bed of
gardenias backed by a splendid border of many-hued cannas which were
the apple of Sir Edward's eye, He gazed daily on them with an air not
only of pride, but of quasi-paternity.  The leaf-cutting ants found
their way into our garden, and in four days nothing remained of our
beautiful gardenias and cannas but some black, leafless stalks.
These abominable insects swept our garden as bare of every green
thing as a flight of locusts would have done; they even killed the
grass where their serried processions had passed.

For me, the great charm of the Argentine lay in the endless expanses
of the "Camp," far away from the noisy city.  The show _estancia_ of
the Argentine was in those days "Negrete," the property of Mr. David
Shennan, kindest and most hospitable of Scotsmen.  Most English
residents and visitors out in the Plate cherish grateful {262}
recollections of that pleasant spot, encircled by peach orchards,
where the genial proprietor, like a patriarch of old, welcomed his
guests, surrounded by his vast herds and flocks.  I happen to know
the exact number of head of cattle Mr. Shennan had on his estancia on
January 1, 1884, for I was one of the counters at the stocktaking on
the last day of the year.  The number was 18,731 head.

Counting cattle is rather laborious work, and needs close
concentration.  Six of us were in the saddle from daybreak to dusk,
with short intervals for meals, and December 31 is at the height of
the summer in the southern hemisphere, so the heat was considerable.

This is the method employed in a "count."  The cattle are driven into
"mobs" of some eight hundred ("Rodeo" is the Spanish term for mob) by
the "peons."  Some twenty tame bullocks are driven a quarter of a
mile from the "mob," and the counters line up on their horses between
the two, with their pockets full of beans.  The "peons" use their
whips, and one or two of the cattle break away from the herd to the
tame bullocks.  They are followed by more and more at an
ever-increasing pace.  Each one is counted, and when one hundred is
reached, a bean is silently transferred from the left pocket to the
right.  So the process is continued until the entire herd has passed
by.  Should the numbers given by the six counters tally within
reason, the count is accepted.  Should it differ materially, there is
a recount; then the {263} counters pass on to another "mob" some two
miles away.  Under a very hot sun, the strain of continual attention
is exhausting, and those six counters found their beds unusually
welcome that night.

The dwelling-house of Negrete, which was to become very familiar to
me, was over a hundred years old, and stretched itself one-storied
round a large _patio_, blue and white tiled, with an elaborate
well-head in the centre decorated with good iron-work.  The _patio_
was fragrant with orange and lemon trees, and great bushes of the
lovely sky-blue Paraguayan jasmine.  I can never understand why this
shrub, the "Jasmin del Paraguay," with its deliciously sweet perfume
and showy blue flowers, has never been introduced into England.  It
would have to be grown under glass, but only requires sufficient heat
to keep the frost out.

I had never felt the _joie de vivre_--the sheer joy at being
alive--thrill through one's veins so exultantly as when riding over
the "Camp" in early morning.  I have had the same feeling on the High
Veldt in South Africa, where there is the same marvellous air, and,
in spite of the undulations of the ground, the same sense of vast
space.  The glorious air, the sunlight, the limitless, treeless
expanse of neutral-tinted grass stretching endlessly to the horizon,
and the vast hemisphere of blue sky above had something absolutely
intoxicating in them.  It may have been the delight of forgetting
that there were such things as towns, and streets, {264} and
tramways.  And then the teeming bird-life of the camp!  Ibis and
egrets flashed bronze-green or snowy-white through the sunlight; the
beautiful pink spoon-bills flapped noisily overhead in single file, a
lengthy rosy trail of long legs and necks and brilliant colour; the
quaint little ground owls blinked from the entrances of their
burrows, and dozens of spurred plovers wheeled in incessant
gyrations, keeping up their endless, wearying scream of "téro-téro."
I always wanted to shout and sing from sheer delight at being part of
it all.

The tinamou, the South American partridge, surprisingly stupid birds,
rose almost under the horses' feet, and dozens of cheery little
sandpipers darted about in all directions.  Birds, birds everywhere!
Should one pass near one of the great shallow lagoons, which are such
a feature of the country, its surface would be black with ducks, with
perhaps a regiment of flamingoes in the centre of it, a dazzling
patch of sunlit scarlet, against the turquoise blue the water
reflected from the sky.

In springtime the "Camp" is covered with the trailing verbena which
in my young days was such a favourite bedding-out plant in England,
its flowers making a brilliant league-long carpet of scarlet or
purple.

There are endless opportunities for shooting on the "Camp" in the
Province of Buenos Ayres, only limited by the difficulties in
obtaining cartridges, and the fact that in places where it is
impossible to dispose of the game the amount shot must depend {265}
on what can be eaten locally.  Otherwise it is not sport, but becomes
wanton slaughter.

The foolish tinamou are easily shot, but are exceedingly difficult to
retrieve out of the knee-high grass, and if only winged, they can run
like hares.  There is also a large black and white migratory bird of
the snipe family, the "batitou," which appears from the frozen
regions of the Far South, as winter comes on, and is immensely prized
for the table.  He is unquestionably a delicious bird to eat, but is
very hard to approach owing to his wariness.  The duck-shooting was
absolutely unequalled.  I had never before known that there were so
many ducks in the world, nor were there the same complicated
preliminaries, as with us; no keepers, no beaters, no dogs were
required.  One simply put twenty cartridges in a bandolier, took
one's gun, jumped on a horse, and rode six miles or so to a selected
lagoon.  Here the horse was tied up to the nearest fence, and one
just walked into the lagoon.  So warm was the water in these lagoons
that I have stood waist-high in it for hours without feeling the
least chilly, or suffering from any ill effects whatever.  With the
first step came a mighty and stupendous roar of wings, and a
prodigious quacking, then the air became black with countless
thousands of ducks.  Mallards, shovellers, and speckled ducks; black
ducks with crimson feet and bills; the great black and white birds
Argentines call "Royal" ducks, and we "Muscovy" ducks, though with us
they are uninteresting inhabitants of a {266} farm-yard.  Ducks,
ducks everywhere!  As these confiding fowl never thought of flying
away, but kept circling over the lagoon again and again, I am sure
that anyone, given sufficient cartridges, and the inclination to do
so, could easily have killed five hundred of them to his own gun in
one day.  We limited ourselves to ten apiece.  Splashing about in the
lagoon, it was easy to pick up the dead birds without a dog, but no
one who has not carried them can have any idea of the weight of eight
ducks in a gamebag pressing on one's back, or can conceive how
difficult it is to get into the saddle on a half-broken horse with
this weight dragging you backwards.  In any other country but the
Argentine, to canter home six miles dripping wet would have resulted
in a severe chill.  No one ever seemed the worse for it out there.

At times I went into the lagoons without a gun, just to observe at
close quarters the teeming water-life there.  The raucous screams of
the vigilant "téro-téros" warned the water-birds of a hostile
approach, but it was easy to sit down in the shallow warm water
amongst the reeds until the alarm had died down, and one was amply
repaid for it, though the enforced lengthy abstention from tobacco
was trying.

The "Camp" is a great educator.  One learnt there to recap empty
cartridge-cases with a machine, and to reload them.  One learnt too
to clean guns and saddlery.  When a thing remains undone, unless you
take it in hand yourself, you begin wondering {267} why you should
ever have left these things to be done for you by others.  The novice
finds out that a bridle and bit are surprisingly difficult objects to
clean, even given unlimited oil and sandpaper.  The "Camp" certainly
educates, and teaches the neophyte independence.

I shot several pink spoonbills, one of which in a glass case is not
far from me as I write, but I simply longed to get a scarlet
flamingo.  Owing to the spoonbills' habit of flitting from lagoon to
lagoon, they are not difficult to shoot, but a flamingo is a very
wary bird.  Perched on one leg, they stand in the very middle of a
lagoon, and allow no one within gunshot.  The officious "téro-téros"
effectually notify them of the approach of man, and possibly the
flamingoes have learnt from "Alice in Wonderland" that the Queen of
Hearts is in the habit of utilising them as croquet-mallets.  The
natural anxiety to escape so ignominious a fate would tend to make
them additionally cautious.  Anyhow, I found it impossible to
approach them.  The idea occurred to me of trying to shoot one with a
rifle.  So I crawled prostrate on my anatomy up to the lagoon.  I
failed at least six times, but finally succeeded in killing a
flamingo.  Wading into the lagoon, I triumphantly retrieved my
scarlet victim, and took him by train to Buenos Ayres, intending to
hand him over to a taxidermist next day.  When I awoke next morning,
the blue satin bower in which I slept (originally fitted up, as I
have explained, as the bedroom of a minor light of {268} the operatic
stage) was filled with a pestilential smell of decayed fish.  I
inquired the reason of my English servant, who informed me that the
cook was afraid that there was something wrong about "the queer duck"
I had brought home last night, as its odour was not agreeable.  (The
real expression he used was "smelling something cruel.")  Full of
horrible forebodings, I jumped out of bed and ran down to the
kitchen, to find a little heap of brilliant scarlet feathers reposing
on the table, and Paquita, our fat Andalusian cook, regarding with
doubtful eyes a carcase slowly roasting before the fire, and filling
the place with unbelievably poisonous effluvia.  And that was the end
of the only flamingo I ever succeeded in shooting.

A London financial house had, by foreclosing a mortgage, come into
possession of a great tract of land in the unsurveyed and uncharted
Indian Reserve, the Gran Chaco.  Anxious to ascertain whether their
newly-acquired property was suited for white settlers, the financial
house sent out two representatives to Buenos Ayres with orders to fit
out a little expedition to survey and explore it.  I was invited to
join this expedition, and as work was slack at the time, Sir Edward
did not require my services and gave me leave to go.  I had been
warned that conditions would be very rough indeed, but the
opportunity seemed one of those that only occur once in a lifetime,
and too good to be lost.  I do not think the invitation was quite a
disinterested one.  The leaders of the expedition probably {269}
thought that the presence of a member of the British Legation might
be useful in case of difficulties with the Argentine authorities.  I
travelled by steamer six hundred miles up the mighty Paraná, and
joined the other members of the expedition at the Alexandra Colony, a
little English settlement belonging to the London firm hundreds of
miles from anywhere, and surrounded by vast swamps.  The Alexandra
Colony was a most prosperous little community, but was unfortunately
infested with snakes and every imaginable noxious stinging insect.
As we should have to cross deep swamps perpetually, we took no wagons
with us, but our baggage was loaded on pack-horses.  For provisions
we took jerked sun-dried beef (very similar to the South African
"biltong"), hard biscuit, flour, coffee, sugar, and salt, as well as
several bottles of rum, guns, rifles, plenty of ammunition, and two
blankets apiece.  We had some thirty horses in all; the loose horses
trotting obediently behind a bell-mare, according to their convenient
Argentine custom.  In Argentina mares are never ridden, and a
bell-mare serves the same purpose in keeping the "tropilla" of horses
together as does a bellwether in keeping sheep together with us.  At
night only the bell-mare need be securely picketed; the horses will
not stray far from the sound of her tinkling bell.  Should the
bell-mare break loose, there is the very devil to pay; all the others
will follow her.  It will thus be seen that the bell-mare plays a
very important part.  In French families the {270} _belle-mère_ fills
an equally important position.  We were four Englishmen in all; the
two leaders, the doctor, and myself.  The doctor was quite a
youngster, taking a final outing before settling down to serious
practice in Bristol.  A nice, cheery youth!  The first night I
discovered how very hard the ground is to sleep upon, but our
troubles did not begin till the second day.  We were close up to the
tropics, and got into great swamps where millions and millions of
mosquitoes attacked us day and night, giving us no rest.  Our hands
got so swollen with bites that we could hardly hold our reins, and
sleep outside our blankets was impossible with these humming, buzzing
tormentors devouring us.  If one attempted to baffle them by putting
one's head under the blanket, the stifling heat made sleep equally
difficult.  In four days we reached a waterless land; that is to say,
there were clear streams in abundance, but they were all of salt,
bitter, alkaline water, undrinkable by man or beast.  Oddly enough,
all the clear streams were of bitter water, whereas the few muddy
ones were of excellent drinking water.  I think these alkaline
streams are peculiar to the interior of South America.  Our horses
suffered terribly; so did we.  We had three Argentine gauchos with
us, to look after the horses and baggage, besides two pure Indians.
One of these Indians, known by the pretty name of Chinche, or "The
Bug," could usually find water-holes by watching the flight of the
birds.  The water in these holes was often black and fetid, {271} yet
we drank it greedily.  Chinche could also get a little water out of
some kinds of aloes by cutting the heart out of the plant.  In the
resulting cavity about half a glassful of water, very bitter to the
taste, but acceptable all the same, collected in time.  Prolonged
thirst under a hot sun is very difficult to bear.  We nearly murdered
the doctor, for he insisted on recalling the memories of great cool
tankards of shandy-gaff in Thames-side hostelries, and at our worst
times of drought had a maddening trick of imitating (exceedingly well
too) the tinkling of ice against the sides of a long tumbler.

In spite of thirst and the accursed mosquitoes it was an interesting
trip.  We were where few, if any, white men had been before us; the
scenery was pretty; and game was very plentiful.  The open rolling,
down-like country, with its little copses and single trees, was like
a gigantic edition of some English park in the southern counties.  In
the early morning certain trees, belonging to the cactus family, I
imagine, were covered with brilliant clusters of flowers, crimson,
pink, and white.  As the sun increased in heat all these flowers
closed up like sea anemones, to reopen again after sunset.  The place
crawled with deer, and so tame and unsophisticated were they that it
seemed cruel to take advantage of them and to shoot them.  We had to
do so for food, for we lived almost entirely on venison, and venison
is a meat I absolutely detest.  When food is unpalatable, one is
surprised to find how very little is necessary to sustain life; an
{272} experience most of us have repeated during these last two
years, not entirely voluntarily.  Chinche, the Indian, could see the
tracks of any beasts in the dew at dawn, where my eyes could detect
nothing whatever.  In this way I was enabled to shoot a fine jaguar,
whose skin has reposed for thirty years in my dining-room.  One
night, too, an ant-eater blundered into our camp, and by some
extraordinary fluke I shot him in the dark.  His skin now keeps his
compatriot company.  An ant-eating bear is a very shy and wary
animal, and as he is nocturnal in his habits, he is but rarely met
with, so this was a wonderful bit of luck.  We encountered large
herds of peccaries, the South American wild boar.  These little
beasts are very fierce and extremely pugnacious, and the horses
seemed frightened of them.  The flesh of the peccary is excellent and
formed a most welcome variation to the eternal venison.  I never
could learn to shoot from the saddle as Argentines do, but had to
slip off my horse to fire.  I was told afterwards that it was very
dangerous to do this with these savage little peccaries.

There are always compensations to be found everywhere.  Had not the
abominable mosquitoes prevented sleep, one would not have gazed up
for hours at the glorious constellations of the Southern sky,
including that arch-impostor the Southern Cross, glittering in the
dark-blue bowl of the clear tropical night sky.  Had we not suffered
so from thirst, we should have appreciated less the unlimited {273}
foaming beer we found awaiting us on our return to the Alexandra
Colony.  By the way, all South Americans believe firmly in
moon-strokes, and will never let the moon's rays fall on their faces
whilst sleeping.

I judged the country we traversed quite unfitted for white settlers,
owing to the lack of good water, and the evil-smelling swamps that
cut the land up so.  That exploring trip was doubtless pleasanter in
retrospect than in actual experience.  I would not have missed it,
though, for anything, for it gave one an idea of stern realities.

On returning to the Alexandra Colony, both I and the doctor, a
remarkably fair-skinned young man, found, after copious ablutions,
that our faces and hands had been burnt so black by the sun that we
could easily have taken our places with the now defunct Moore and
Burgess minstrels in the vanished St. James's Hall in Piccadilly
without having to use any burnt-cork whatever.

On the evening of our arrival at Alexandra, I was reading in the
sitting-room in an armchair against the wall.  The doctor called out
to me to keep perfectly still, and not to move on any account until
he returned.  He came back with a pickle-jar and a bottle.  I smelt
the unmistakable odour of chloroform, and next minute the doctor
triumphantly exhibited an immense tarantula spider in the pickle-jar.
He had cleverly chloroformed the venomous insect within half an inch
of my head, otherwise I should certainly have been bitten.  The {274}
bite of these great spiders, though not necessarily fatal, is
intensely painful.

The doctor had brought out with him a complete anti-snake-bite
equipment, and was always longing for an occasion to use it.  He was
constantly imploring us to go and get bitten by some highly venomous
snake, in order to give him an opportunity of testing the efficacy of
his drugs, hypodermic syringes, and lancets.  At Alexandra a dog did
get bitten by a dangerous snake, and was at once brought to the
doctor, who injected his snake-bite antidote, with the result that
the dog died on the spot.

A river ran through Alexandra which was simply alive with fish, also
with alligators.  In the upper reaches of the Paraná and its
tributaries, bathing is dangerous not only because of the alligators,
but on account of an abominable little biting-fish.  These
biting-fish, which go about in shoals, are not unlike a flounder in
appearance and size.  They have very sharp teeth and attack
voraciously everything that ventures into the water.  In that climate
their bites are very liable to bring on lockjaw.  The doctor and I
spent most of our time along this river with fishing lines and
rifles, for alligators had still the charm of novelty to us both, and
we both delighted in shooting these revolting saurians.  I advise no
one to try to skin a dead alligator.  There are thousands of sinews
to be cut through, and the pestilential smell of the brute would
sicken a Chinaman.  We caught some extraordinary-looking {275} fish
on hand lines, including a great golden carp of over 50 lb. ("dorado"
in Spanish).  It took us nearly an hour to land this big fellow, who
proved truly excellent when cooked.

When I first reached the Argentine, travel was complicated by the
fact that each province issued its own notes, which were only current
within the province itself except at a heavy discount.  The value of
the dollar fluctuated enormously in the different provinces.  In
Buenos Ayres the dollar was depreciated to four cents, or twopence,
and was treated as such, the ordinary tram fare being one depreciated
dollar.  In other provinces the dollar stood as high as three
shillings.  In passing from one province to another all paper money
had to be changed, and this entailed the most intricate calculations.
It is unnecessary to add that the stranger was fleeced quite
mercilessly.  The currency has since been placed on a more rational
basis.  National notes, issued against a gold reserve, have
superseded the provincial currency, and pass from one end of the
Republic to the other.

Upon returning to Buenos Ayres, my blue-satin bedroom looked
strangely artificial and effeminate, after sleeping on the ground
under the stars for so long.




{276}

CHAPTER IX

Paraguay--Journey up the river--A primitive Capital--Dick the
Australian--His polychrome garb--A Paraguayan Race Meeting--Beautiful
figures of native women--The "Falcon" adventurers--a quaint
railway--Patiño Cué--An extraordinary household--The capable
Australian boy--Wild life in the swamps--"Bushed"--A literary
evening--A railway record--The Tigre midnight
swims--Canada--Maddening flies--A grand salmon river--The Canadian
backwoods--Skunks and bears--Different views as to industrial
progress.


As negotiations had commenced in the "'eighties" for a new Treaty,
including an Extradition clause, between the British and Paraguayan
Governments, several minor points connected with it required clearing
up.

I accordingly went up the river to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital,
five days distant from Buenos Ayres by steamer.  A short account of
that primitive little inland Republic in the days before it was
linked up with Argentina by railway may prove of interest, for it was
unlike anything else, with its stately two hundred-year-old relics of
the old Spanish civilisation mixed up with the roughest of modern
makeshifts.  The vast majority of the people were Guaranis, of pure
Indian blood and speech.  The little State was so isolated from the
rest of the world that the nineteenth century {277} had touched it
very lightly.  Since its independence Paraguay had suffered under the
rule of a succession of Dictator Presidents, the worst of whom was
Francisco Lopez, usually known as Tyrant Lopez.  This ignorant savage
aspired to be the Napoleon of South America, and in 1864 declared war
simultaneously on Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic.  The
war continued till 1870, when, fortunately, Lopez was killed, but the
population of Paraguay had diminished from one and a quarter million
to four hundred thousand people, nearly all the males being killed.
In my time there were seven women to every male of the population.

The journey up the mighty Paraná is very uninteresting, for these
huge rivers are too broad for the details on either shore to be seen
clearly.  After the steamer had turned up the Paraguay river on the
verge of the tropics, it became less monotonous.  The last Argentine
town is Formosa, a little place of thatched shanties clustered under
groves of palms.  We arrived there at night, and remained three
hours.  I shall never forget the eerie, uncanny effect of seeing for
the first time Paraguayan women, with a white petticoat, and a white
sheet over their heads as their sole garments, flitting noiselessly
along on bare feet under the palms in the brilliant moonlight.  They
looked like hooded silent ghosts, and reminded me irresistibly of the
fourth act of "Robert le Diable," when the ghosts of the nuns arise
out of their cloister graves at Bertram's command.  They did not
though as {278} in the opera, break into a glittering ballet.

On board the steamer there was a young globe-trotting Australian.  He
was a nice, cheery lad, and, like most Australians, absolutely
natural and unaffected.  As he spoke no Spanish, he was rather at a
loose end, and we agreed to foregather.

Asuncion was really a curiosity in the way of capitals.  Lopez the
Tyrant suffered from megalomania, as others rulers have done since
his day.  He began to construct many imposing buildings, but finished
none of them.  He had built a huge palace on the model of the
Tuileries on a bluff over the river.  It looked very imposing, but
had no roof and no inside.  He had also begun a great mausoleum for
members of the Lopez family, but that again had only a façade, and
was already crumbling to ruin.  The rest of the town consisted
principally of mud and bamboo shanties, thatched with palm.  The
streets were unpaved, and in the main street a strong spring gushed
up.  Everyone rode; there was but one wheeled vehicle in Asuncion,
and that was only used for weddings and funerals.  The inhabitants
spoke of their one carriage as we should speak of something
absolutely unique of its kind, say the statue of the Venus de Milo,
or of some rare curiosity, such as a great auk's egg, or a twopenny
blue Mauritius postage stamp, or a real live specimen of the dodo.

Nothing could be rougher than the accommodation Howard, the young
Australian, and I found at the hotel.  We were shown into a very
dirty brick-paved {279} room containing eight beds.  We washed
unabashed at the fountain in the _patio_, as there were no other
facilities for ablutions at all, and the bare-footed, shirtless
waiter addressed us each by our Christian names _tout court_, at
once, omitting the customary "Don."  The Spanish forms of Christian
names are more melodious than ours, and Howard failed to recognize
his homely name of "Dick" in "Ricardo."

As South American men become moustached and bearded very early in
life, I think that our clean-shaved faces, to which they were not
accustomed, led the people to imagine us both much younger than we
really were, for I was then twenty-seven, and the long-legged Dick
was twenty-one.  Never have I known anyone laugh so much as that
light-hearted Australian boy.  He was such a happy, merry, careless
creature, brimful of sheer joy at being alive, and if he had never
cultivated his brains much, he atoned for it by being able to do
anything he liked with his hands and feet.  He could mend and repair
anything, from a gun to a fence; he could cook, and use a needle and
thread as skilfully as he could a stock-whip.  I took a great liking
to this lean, sun-browned, pleasant-faced lad with the merry laugh
and the perfectly natural manner; we got on together as though we had
known each other all our lives, in fact we were addressing one
another by our Christian names on the third day of our acquaintance.

Dick was a most ardent cricketer, and his {280} baggage seemed to
consist principally of a large and varied assortment of blazers of
various Australian athletic clubs.  He insisted on wearing one of
these, a quiet little affair of mauve, blue, and pink stripes, and
our first stroll through Asuncion became a sort of triumphal
progress.  The inhabitants flocked out of their houses, loud in their
admiration of the "Gringo's" (all foreigners are "Gringos" in South
America) tasteful raiment.  So much so that I began to grow jealous,
and returning to the hotel, I borrowed another of Howard's blazers
(if my memory serves me right, that of the "Wonga-Wonga Wallabies"),
an artistic little garment of magenta, orange, and green stripes.  We
then sauntered about Asuncion, arm-in-arm, to the delirious joy of
the populace.  We soon had half the town at our heels, enthusiastic
over these walking rainbows from the mysterious lands outside
Paraguay.  These people were as inquisitive as children, and plied us
with perpetual questions.  Since Howard could not speak Spanish, all
the burden of conversation fell on me.  As I occupied an official
position, albeit a modest one, I thought it best to sink my identity,
and became temporarily a citizen of the United States, Mr. Dwight P.
Curtis, of Hicksville, Pa., and I gave my hearers the most glowing
and rose-coloured accounts of the enterprise and nascent industries
of this progressive but, I fear, wholly imaginary spot.  I can only
trust that no Paraguayan left his native land to seek his fortune in
Hicksville, Pa., for he might {281} have had to search the State of
Pennsylvania for some time before finding it.

I have already recounted, earlier in these reminiscences, how the
Paraguayan Minister for Foreign Affairs received me, and that his
Excellency on that occasion dispensed not only with shoes and
stockings, but with a shirt as well.  He was, however, like most
people in Spanish-speaking lands, courtesy itself.

Dick Howard having heard that there was some races in a country town
six miles away, was, like a true Australian, wild to go to them.
Encouraged by our phenomenal success of the previous day, we arrayed
ourselves in two new Australian blazers, and rode out to the races,
Howard imploring me all the way to use my influence to let him have a
mount there.

The races were very peculiar.  The course was short, only about three
furlongs, and perfectly straight.  Only two horses ran at once, so
the races were virtually a succession of "heats," but the excitement
and betting were tremendous.  The jockeys were little Indian boys,
and their "colours" consisted of red, blue, or green bathing drawers.
Otherwise they were stark naked, and, of course, bare-legged.  The
jockey's principal preoccupation seemed to be either to kick the
opposing jockey in the face, or to crack him over the head with the
heavy butts of their raw-hide whips.  Howard still wanted to ride.  I
pointed out to him the impossibility of exhibiting to the public
{282} his six feet of lean young Australian in nothing but a pair of
green bathing drawers.  He answered that if he could only get a mount
he would be quite willing to dispense with the drawers even.  Howard
also had a few remarks to offer about the Melbourne Cup, and
Flemington Racecourse, and was not wholly complimentary to this
Paraguayan country meeting.  The ladies present were nearly all
bare-foot, and clad in the invariable white petticoat and sheet.  It
was not in the least like the Royal enclosure at Ascot, yet they had
far more on, and appeared more becomingly dressed than many of the
ladies parading in that sacrosanct spot in this year of grace 1919.
Every single woman, and every child, even infants of the tenderest
age, had a green Paraguayan cigar in their mouths.

These Paraguayan women were as beautifully built as classical
statues; with exquisitely moulded little hands and feet.  Their
"attaches," as the French term the wrist and ankles, were equally
delicately formed.  They were "tea with plenty of milk in it" colour,
and though their faces were not pretty, they moved with such graceful
dignity that the general impression they left was a very pleasing one.

Our blazers aroused rapturous enthusiasm.  I am sure that the members
of the "St. Kilda Wanderers" would have forgiven me for masquerading
in their colours, could they have witnessed the terrific success I
achieved in my tasteful, if brilliant, borrowed plumage.

{283}

Asuncion pleased me.  This quaint little capital, stranded in its
backwater in the very heart of the South American Continent, was so
remote from all the interests and movements of the modern world.  The
big three-hundred-year cathedral bore the unmistakable dignified
stamp of the old Spanish "Conquistadores."  It contained an
altar-piece of solid silver reaching from floor to roof.  How Lopez
must have longed to melt that altar-piece down for his own use!
Round the cathedral were some old houses with verandahs supported on
palm trunks, beautifully carved in native patterns by Indians under
the direction of the Jesuits.  The Jesuits had also originally
introduced the orange tree into Paraguay, where it had run wild all
over the country, producing delicious fruit, which for some reason
was often green, instead of being of the familiar golden colour.

Everyone envies what they do not possess.  On the Continent cafés are
sometimes decorated with pictures of palms and luxuriant tropical
vegetation, in order to give people of the frozen North an illusion
of warmth.

In steaming Asuncion, on the other hand, the fashionable café was
named, "The North Pole."  Here an imaginative Italian artist with a
deficient sense of perspective and curious ideas of colour had
decorated the walls with pictures of icebergs, snow, and Polar bears,
thus affording the inhabitants of this stew-pan of a town a delicious
sense of arctic coolness.  The "North Pole" was the {284} only place
in Paraguay where ice and iced drinks were to be procured.

Being the height of the summer, the heat was almost unbearable, and
bathing in the river was risky on account of those hateful
biting-fish.  There was a spot two miles away, however, where a
stream had been brought to the edge of the cliff overhanging the
river, down which it dropped in a feathery cascade, forming a large
pool below it.  Howard and I rode out every morning there to bathe
and luxuriate in the cool water.  The river made a great bend here,
forming a bay half a mile wide.  This bay was literally choked with
_Victoria regia_, the giant water-lily, with leaves as big as
tea-trays, and great pink flowers the size of cabbages.  The lilies
were in full bloom then, quite half a mile of them, and they were
really a splendid sight.  I seem somehow in this description of the
_Victoria regia_ to have been plagiarising the immortal Mrs. O'Dowd,
of "Vanity Fair," in her account of the glories of the hot-houses at
her "fawther's" seat of Glenmalony.

Few people now remember a fascinating book of the "'eighties," "The
Cruise of the Falcon," recounting how six amateurs sailed a
twenty-ton yacht from Southampton to Asuncion in Paraguay.  Three of
her crew got so bitten with Paraguay that they determined to remain
there.  We met one of these adventurers by chance in Asuncion,
Captain Jardine, late of the P. and O. service, an elderly man.  He
invited us to visit them at {285} Patiño Cué, the place where they
had settled down, some twenty-five miles from the capital, though he
warned us that we should find things extremely rough there, and that
there was not one single stick of furniture in the house.  He asked
us to bring out our own hammocks and blankets, as well as our guns
and saddles, the saddle being in my time an invariable item of a
traveller's baggage.

Dick and I accordingly bought grass-plaited hammocks and blankets,
and started two days later, "humping our swags," as the Australian
picturesquely expressed the act of carrying our own possessions.
That colour-loving youth had donned a different blazer, probably that
of the "Coolgardie Cockatoos."  It would have put Joseph's coat of
many colours completely in the shade any day of the week, and
attracted a great deal of flattering attention.

The ambitious Lopez had insisted on having a railway in his State, to
show how progressive he was, so a railway was built.  It ran sixty
miles from Asuncion to nowhere in particular, and no one ever wanted
to travel by it; still it was unquestionably a railway.  To give a
finishing touch to this, Lopez had constructed a railway station big
enough to accommodate the traffic of Paddington.  It was, of course,
not finished, but was quite large enough for its one train a day.
The completed portion was imposing with columns and statues, the rest
tailed off to nothing.  Here, to our amazement, we found a train
composed of {286} English rolling-stock, with an ancient engine built
in Manchester, and, more wonderful to say, with an Englishman as
engine-driver.  The engine not having been designed for burning wood,
the fire-box was too small, and the driver found it difficult to keep
up steam with wood, as we found out during our journey.  We travelled
in a real English first-class carriage of immense antiquity, blue
cloth and all.  So decrepit was it that when the speed of the train
exceeded five miles an hour (which was but seldom) the roof and sides
parted company, and gaped inches apart.  We seldom got up the
gradients at the first or second try, but of course allowances must
be made for a Paraguayan railway.  Lopez had built Patiño Cué, for
which we were bound, as a country-house for himself.  He had not, of
course, finished it, but had insisted on his new railway running
within a quarter of a mile of his house, which we found very
convenient.

I could never have imagined such a curious establishment as the one
at Patiño Cué.  The large stone house, for which Jardine paid the
huge rent of £5 per annum, was tumbling to ruin.  Three rooms only
were fairly water-tight, but these had gaping holes in their roofs
and sides, and the window frames had long since been removed.  The
fittings consisted of a few enamelled iron plates and mugs, and of
one tin basin.  Packing cases served as seats and tables, and
hammocks were slung on hooks.  Captain Jardine did all the cooking
and ran the establishment; his two companions (Howard {287} and I,
for convenience's sake, simply termed them "the wasters") lay smoking
in their hammocks all day, and did nothing whatever.  I may add that
"the wasters" supplied the whole financial backing.  Jardine wore
native dress, with bare legs and sandals, a poncho round his waist,
and another over his shoulders.  A poncho is merely a fringed brown
blanket with hole cut in it for the head to pass through.  With his
long grey beard streaming over his flowing garments, Jardine looked
like a neutral-tinted saint in a stained-glass window.  It must be a
matter for congratulation that, owing to the very circumstances of
the case, saints in stained-glass windows are seldom called on to
take violent exercise, otherwise their voluminous draperies would
infallibly all fall off at the second step.  Jardine was a highly
educated and an interesting man, with a love for books on metaphysics
and other abstruse subjects.  He carried a large library about with
him, all of which lay in untidy heaps on the floor.  He was
unquestionably more than a little eccentric.  The "wasters" did not
count in any way, unless cheques had to be written.  The other
members of the establishment were an old Indian woman who smoked
perpetual cigars, and her grandson, a boy known as Lazarus, from a
physical defect which he shared with a Biblical personage, on the
testimony of the latter's sisters--you could have run a drag with
that boy.

The settlers had started as ranchers; but the {288} "wasters" had
allowed the cattle to break loose and scatter all over the country.
They had been too lazy to collect them, or to repair the broken
fences, so just lay in their hammocks and smoked.  There were some
fifty acres of orange groves behind the house.  The energetic Jardine
had fenced these in, and, having bought a number of pigs, turned pork
butcher.  There was an abundance of fallen fruit for these pigs to
fatten on, and Jardine had built a smoke-house, where he cured his
orange-fed pork, and smoked it with lemon wood.  His bacon and hams
were super-excellent, and fetched good prices in Asuncion, where they
were establishing quite a reputation.

Meanwhile, the "wasters" lay in their hammocks in the verandah and
smoked.  Jardine told me that one of them had not undressed or
changed his clothes for six weeks, as it was far too much trouble.
Judging from his appearance, he had not made use of soap and water
either during that period.

Dick Howard proved a real "handy man."  In two days this lengthy,
lean, sunburnt youth had rounded up and driven home the scattered
cattle, and then set to work to mend and repair all the broken
fences.  He caught the horses daily, and milked the cows, an art I
was never able myself to acquire, and made tea for himself in a
"billy."

Patiño Cué was a wonderful site for a house.  It stood high up on
rolling open ground, surrounded by intensely green wooded knolls.
The {289} virgin tropical forest extended almost up to the
dilapidated building on one side, whilst in front of it the ground
fell away to a great lake, three miles away.  A long range of green
hills rose the other side of the water, and everywhere clear little
brooks gurgled down to the lake.

I liked the place, in spite of its intense heat, and stayed there
over a fortnight, helping with the cattle, and making myself as
useful as I could in repairing what the "wasters" had allowed to go
to ruin.  They reposed meanwhile in their hammocks.

It was very pretty country, and had the immense advantage of being
free from mosquitoes.  As there are disadvantages everywhere, to make
up for this it crawled with snakes.

Jardine's culinary operations were simplicity itself.  He had some
immense earthen jars four feet high, own brothers to those seen on
the stage in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" at pantomime time.
These must have been the identical jars in which the Forty Thieves
concealed themselves, to be smothered with boiling oil by the crafty
Morgiana.  By the way, I never could understand until I had seen
fields of growing sesame in India why Ali Baba's brother should have
mistaken the talisman words "Open Sesame" for "Open Barley."  The two
grains are very similar in appearance whilst growing, which explains
it.

Jardine placed a layer of beef at the bottom of his jar.  On that he
put a layer of mandioca (the {290} root from which tapioca is
prepared), another layer of his own bacon, and a stratum of green
vegetables.  Then more beef, and so on till the jar was half full.
In went a handful of salt, two handfuls of red peppers, and two
gallons of water, and then a wood fire was built round the pot, which
simmered away day and night till all its contents were eaten.  The
old Indian woman baked delicious bread from the root of the mandioca
mixed with milk and cheese, and that constituted our entire dietary.
There were no fixed meals.  Should you require food, you took a hunch
of mandioca bread and a tin dipper, and went to the big earthen jar
simmering amongst its embers in the yard.  Should you wish for soup,
you put the dipper in at the top; if you preferred stew, you pushed
it to the bottom.  Nothing could be simpler.  As a rough and ready
way of feeding a household it had its advantages, though there was
unquestionably a certain element of monotony about it.

As a variation from the eternal beef and mandioca, Jardine begged
Dick and myself to shoot him as many snipe as possible, in the swamps
near the big lake.  Those swamps were most attractive, and were
simply alive with snipe and every sort of living creature.  Dick was
an excellent shot, and we got from five to fifteen couple of snipe
daily.  The tree-crowned hillocks in the swamp were the haunts of
macaws, great gaudy, screaming, winged rainbows of green and scarlet,
and orange and blue, like some of Dick's blazers endowed with
feathers {291} and motion.  We had neither of us ever seen wild
macaws before, and I am afraid that we shot a good many for the sheer
pleasure of examining these garish parrots at close quarters, though
they are quite uneatable.  I shall carry all my life marks on my left
hand where a macaw bit me to the bone.  There were great
brilliant-plumaged toucans too, droll freaks of nature, with huge
horny bills nearly as large as their bodies, given them to crack the
nuts on which they feed.  They flashed swiftly pink through the air,
but we never succeeded in getting one.  Then there were coypus, the
great web-footed South American water-rat, called "nutria" in
Spanish, and much prized for his fur.  That marsh was one of the most
interesting places I have ever been in.  The old Indian woman warned
us that we should both infallibly die of fever were we to go into the
swamps at nightfall, but though Dick and I were there every evening
for a fortnight, up to our middles in water, we neither of us took
the smallest harm, probably owing to the temporary absence of
mosquitoes.  The teeming hidden wild-life of the place appealed to us
both irresistibly.  The water-hog, or capincho, is a quaint beast,
peculiar to South America.  They are just like gigantic varnished
glossy-black guinea pigs, with the most idiotically stupid expression
on their faces.  They are quite defenceless, and are the constant
prey of alligators and jaguars.  Consequently they are very timid.
These creatures live in the water all day, but come out in the
evenings {292} to feed on the reeds and water-herbage.  By concealing
ourselves amongst the reeds, and keeping perfectly still, we were
able to see these uncouth, shy things emerging from their day
hiding-places and begin browsing on the marsh plants.  To see a very
wary animal at close quarters, knowing that he is unconscious of your
presence, is perfectly fascinating.  We never attempted to shoot or
hurt these capinchos; the pleasure of seeing the clumsy gambols of
one of the most timid animals living, in its fancied security, was
quite enough.  The capincho if caught very young makes a delightful
pet, for he becomes quite tame, and, being an affectionate animal,
trots everywhere after his master, with a sort of idiotic simper on
his face.

One evening, on our return from the marsh, we were ill-advised enough
to attempt a short cut home through the forest.  The swift tropical
night fell as we entered the forest, and in half an hour we were
hopelessly lost, "fairly bushed," as Dick put it.  There is a feeling
of complete and utter helplessness in finding oneself on a pitch-dark
night in a virgin tropical forest that is difficult to express in
words.  The impenetrable tangles of jungle; the great lianes hanging
from the trees, which trip you up at every step; the masses of thorny
and spiky things that hold you prisoner; and, as regards myself
personally, the knowledge that the forest was full of snakes, all
make one realise that electric-lighted Piccadilly has its distinct
advantages.  Dick had the true Australian's indifference to snakes.
He never {293} could understand my openly-avowed terror of these
evil, death-dealing creatures, nor could he explain to himself the
physical repugnance I have to these loathsome reptiles.  This
instinctive horror of snakes is, I think, born in some people.  It
can hardly be due to atavism, for the episode of the Garden of Eden
is too remote to account of an inherited antipathy to these gliding,
crawling abominations.  We settled that we should have to sleep in
the forest till daylight came, though, dripping wet as we both were
from the swamp, it was a fairly direct invitation to malarial fever.
The resourceful Dick got an inspiration, and dragging his
interminable length (he was like Euclid's definition of a straight
line) up a high tree, he took a good look at the familiar stars of
his own Southern hemisphere.  Getting his bearings from these, he
also got our direction, and after a little more tree-climbing we
reached our dilapidated temporary home in safety.  I fear that I
shall never really conquer my dislike to snakes, sharks, and
earthquakes.

Jardine was a great and an omnivorous reader.  Dick too was very fond
of reading.  Like the hero of "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour" he carried
his own library with him.  As in Mr. Sponge's case, it consisted of
one book only, but in the place of being "Mogg's Cab Fares," it was a
guide to the Australian Turf, a sort of Southern Cross "Ruff's
Guide," with a number of pedigrees of Australian horses thrown in.
Dick's great intellectual amusement was learning these pedigrees by
heart.  I used {294} to hear them for him, and, having a naturally
retentive memory, could in the "'eighties" have passed a very
creditable examination in the pedigrees of the luminaries of the
Australian Turf.

Our evenings at Patiño Cué would have amused a spectator, had there
been one.  In the tumble-down, untidy apology for a room, Jardine,
seated on a packing-case under the one wall light, was immersed in
his favourite Herbert Spencer; looking, in his flowing ponchos, long
grey beard, and bare legs, like a bespectacled apostle.  He always
seemed to me to require an eagle, or a lion or some other apostolic
adjunct, in order to look complete.  I, on another packing-case, was
chuckling loudly over "Monsieur et Madame Cardinal," though Paris
seemed remote from Paraguay.  Dick, pulling at a green cigar, a
far-off look in his young eyes, was improving his mind by learning
some further pedigrees of Australian horses, at full length on the
floor, where he found more room for his thin, endless legs; whilst
the two "wasters" dozed placidly in their hammocks on the verandah.
The "wasters," I should imagine, attended church but seldom.
Otherwise they ought to have ejaculated "We have left undone those
things which we ought to have done" with immense fervour, for they
never did anything at all.

"Lotos-eaters" might be a more poetic name than "wasters," for if
ever there was a land "in which it seemed always afternoon," that
land is Paraguay.  Could one conceive of the "wasters" displaying
{295} such unwonted energy, it is possible that--

  "And all at once they sang 'Our island home
  Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam'."

They had eaten of the Lotos-fruit abundantly, and in the golden
sunshine of Paraguay, and amidst its waving green palms, they only
wished--

  "In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined."


I should perhaps add that "cafia," or sugar-cane spirit, is distilled
in large quantities in Paraguay, and that one at least of the
Lotos-eaters took a marked interest in this national product.

There were some beautiful nooks in the forest, more especially one
deep blue rocky pool into which a foaming cascade pattered through a
thick encircling fringe of wild orange trees.  This little hollow was
brimful of loveliness, with the golden balls of the fruit, and the
brilliant purple tangles of some unknown creeper reflected in the
blue pool.  Dick and I spent hours there swimming, and basking _puris
naturalibus_ on the rocks, until the whole place was spoilt for me by
a rustling in the grass, as a hateful ochre-coloured creature
wriggled away in sinuous coils from my bare feet.

I accompanied Jardine once or twice to a little village some five
miles away, where he got the few household stores he required.  This
tiny village was a piece of seventeenth-century Spain, dumped bodily
down amid the riotous greenery of Paraguay.  Round {296} a tall white
church in the florid Jesuit style, a few beautiful Spanish stone
houses clustered, each with its tangle of tropical garden.  There was
not one single modern erection to spoil the place.  Here foaming
bowls of chocolate were to be had, and delicious mandioca bread.  It
was a picturesque, restful little spot, so utterly unexpected in the
very heart of the South American Continent.  I should like to put on
the stage that tall white church tower cutting into the intense blue
of the sky above, with the vivid green of the feathery palms reaching
to its belfry, and the time-worn houses round it peeping out from
thickets of scarlet poinsettias and hibiscus flowers.  It would make
a lovely setting for "Cavalleria Rusticana," for instance.

I never regretted my stay at Patiño Cué.  It gave one a glimpse of
life brought down to conditions of bed-rock simplicity, and of types
of character I had never come across before.

We travelled back to Asuncion on the engine of the train; I seated in
front on the cow-catcher, Dick, his coat off and his shirt-sleeves
rolled back, on the footplate, officiating as amateur fireman.

This vigorous young Antipodean hurled logs into the fire-box of the
venerable "Vesuvius" as fast as though he were pitching in balls when
practising his bowling at the nets, with the result that the crazy
old engine attained a speed that must have fairly amazed her.  When
we stopped at stations, "Vesuvius" had developed such a head of steam
that she nearly blew her safety-valve off, {297} and steam hissed
from twenty places in her leaky joints.  One ought never to be
astonished at misplaced affections.  I have seen old ladies lavish a
wealth of tenderness on fat, asthmatical, and wholly repellent pugs,
so I ought not to have been surprised at the immense pride the
English driver took in his antique engine.  I am bound to say that he
kept her beautifully cleaned and burnished.  His face beamed at her
present performance, and he assured me that with a little coaxing he
could knock sixty miles an hour out of "Vesuvius."  I fear that this
statement "werged on the poetical," as Mr. Weller senior remarked on
another occasion.  I should much like to have known this man's
history, and to have learnt how he had drifted into driving an engine
of this futile, forlorn little Paraguayan railway.  I suspect, from
certain expressions he used, that he was a deserter from the Royal
Navy, probably an ex-naval stoker.  As Dick had ridden ten miles that
morning to say good-bye to a lady, to whom he imagined himself
devotedly attached, he was still very smart in white polo-breeches,
brown butcher-boots and spurs, an unusual garb for a railway fireman.
For the first time in the memory of the oldest living inhabitant, the
train reached Asuncion an hour before her time.

The river steamers' cargo in their downstream trip consisted of
cigars, "Yerba mate," and oranges.  These last were shipped in bulk,
and I should like a clever artist to have drawn our steamer, with
tons and tons of fruit, golden, {298} lemon-yellow, and green, piled
on her decks.  It made a glowing bit of colour.  The oranges were the
only things in that steamer that smelt pleasantly.

I can never understand why "Yerba mate," or Paraguayan tea, has never
become popular in England.  It is prepared from the leaves of the
ilex, and is strongly aromatic and very stimulating.  I am myself
exceedingly fond of it.  Its lack of popularity may be due to the
fact that it cannot be drunk in a cup, but must be sucked from a
gourd through a perforated tube.  It can (like most other things) be
bought in London, if you know where to go to.

At Buenos Ayres I was quite sorry to part with the laughing, lanky
Australian lad who had been such a pleasant travelling companion, and
who seemed able to do anything he liked with his arms and legs.  I
expect that he could have done most things with his brains too, had
he ever given them a chance.  Howard's great merit was that he took
things as they came, and never grumbled at the discomforts and minor
hardships one must expect in a primitive country like Paraguay.  Our
tastes as regards wild things (with the possible exception of snakes)
rather seemed to coincide, and, neither of us being town-bred, we did
not object to rather elementary conditions.

I will own that I was immensely gratified at receiving an overseas
letter some eight years later from Dick, telling me that he was
married and had a little daughter, and asking {299} me to stand
godfather for his first child.

My blue satin bedroom looked more ridiculously incongruous than ever
after the conditions to which I had been used at Patiño Cué.

The River Plate is over twenty miles broad at Buenos Ayres, and it is
not easy to realise that this great expansive is all fresh water.
The "Great Silver River" is, however, very shallow, except in
mid-channel.  Some twenty-five miles from the city it forms on its
southern bank a great archipelago of wooded islands interspersed with
hundreds of winding channels, some of them deep enough to carry
ocean-going steamers.  This is known as the Tigre, and its shady
tree-lined waterways are a great resort during the sweltering heat of
an Argentine summer.  It is the most ideal place for boating, and
boasts a very flourishing English Rowing Club, with a large fleet of
light Thames-built boats.  Here during the summer months I took the
roughest of rough bungalows, with two English friends.  The
three-roomed shanty was raised on high piles, out of reach of floods,
and looked exactly like the fishermen's houses one sees lining the
rivers in native villages in the Malay States.  During the intense
heat of January the great delight of life at the Tigre was the
midnight swim in the river before turning in.  The Tigre is too far
south for the alligators, biting-fish, electric rays (I allude to
fish; not to beams of light), or other water-pests which Nature has
lavished on the tropics in order to counteract their irresistible
charm--and to prevent the whole world from {300} settling down there.
The water of the Tigre was so warm that one could remain in it over
an hour.  One mental picture I am always able to conjure up, and I
can at will imagine myself at midnight paddling lazily down-stream on
my back through the milk-warm water, in the scented dusk, looking up
at the pattern formed by the leaves of the overhanging trees against
the night sky; a pattern of black lace-work against the polished
silver of the Southern moonlight, whilst the water lapped gently
against the banks, and an immense joy at being alive filled one's
heart.

I went straight from Buenos Ayres to Canada on a tramp steamer, and a
month after leaving the Plate found myself in the backwoods of the
Province of Quebec, on a short but very famous river running into the
Bay of Chaleurs, probably the finest salmon river in the world, and I
was fortunate enough to hook and to land a 28 lb. salmon before I had
been there one hour.  No greater contrast in surroundings can be
imagined.  In the place of the dead-flat, treeless levels of Southern
Argentina, there were dense woods of spruce, cedar, and var, climbing
the hills as far as the eye could see.  Instead of the superficially
courteous Argentine gaucho, with his air of half-concealed contempt
for the "Gringo," and the ever-ready knife, prepared to leap from his
waist-belt at the slightest provocation, there were the blunt,
outspoken, hearty Canadian canoe-men, all of them lumbermen during
the winter months.  The fishing was ideal, and the {301} fish ran
uniformly large and fought like Trojans in the heavy water, but,
unfortunately, every single winged insect on the North American
Continent had arranged for a summer holiday on this same river at the
same time.  There they all were in their myriads; black-flies,
sand-flies, and mosquitoes, all enjoying themselves tremendously.  By
day one was devoured by black-flies, who drew blood every time they
bit.  At nightfall the black-flies very considerately retired to
rest, and the little sand-flies took their place.  The mosquitoes
took no rest whatever.  These rollicking insects were always ready to
turn night into day, or day into night, indiscriminately, provided
there were some succulent humans to feed on.  A net will baffle the
mosquito, but for the sand-flies the only effective remedy was a
"smudge" burning in an iron pail.  A "smudge" is a fire of damp fir
bark, which smoulders but does not blaze.  It also emits huge volumes
of smoke.  We dined every night in an atmosphere denser than a thick
London fog, and the coughing was such that a chance visitor would
have imagined that he had strayed into a sanatorium for tuberculosis.

Things are done expeditiously in Canada.  The ground had been
cleared, the wooden house in which we lived erected, and the rough
track through the forest made, all in eight weeks.

No one who has not tried it can have any idea of the intense cold of
the water in these short Canadian rivers.  Their course is so short,
and they {302} are so overhung with fir trees, that the fierce rays
of a Canadian summer sun hardly touch them, so the water remains
about ten degrees above freezing point.  It would have been
impossible to swim our river.  Even a short dip of half a minute left
one with gasping breath and chattering teeth.

I was surprised to find, too, that a Canadian forest is far more
impenetrable than a tropical one.  Here, the fallen trees and decay
of countless centuries have formed a thick crust some two or three
feet above the real soil.  This moss-grown crust yields to the weight
of a man and lets him through, so walking becomes infinitely
difficult, and practically impossible.  To extricate yourself at
every step from three feet of decaying rubbish is very exhausting.
In the tropics, that great forcing-house, this decaying vegetable
matter would have given life to new and exuberant growths; but not so
in Canada, frost-bound for four months of the twelve.  Two-foot-wide
tracks had been cut through the forest along the river, and the trees
there were "blazed" (_i.e._, notched, so as to show up white where
the bark had been hacked off), to indicate the direction of the
trails; otherwise it would have been impossible to make one's way
through the _débris_ of a thousand years for more than a few yards.

I never saw such a wealth of wild fruit as on the banks of this
Canadian stream.  Wild strawberries and raspberries grew in such
profusion that a bucketful of each could be filled in half an hour.

{303}

There was plenty of animal life too.  A certain pretty little black
and white striped beast was quite disagreeably common.  This
attractive cat-like little creature was armed with stupendous
offensive powers, as all who have experienced a skunk's unspeakably
disgusting odour will acknowledge.  Unless molested, they did not
make use of the terrible possibilities they had at their command.
There were also plenty of wandering black bears.  These animals live
for choice on grain and berries, and are not hostile to man without
provocation, but they have enormous strength, and it is a good
working rule to remember that it is unwise ever to vex a bear
unnecessarily, even a mild-tempered black bear.

Our tumbling, roaring Canadian river cutting its way through rounded,
densely-wooded hills was wonderfully pretty, and one could not but
marvel at the infinitely varied beauty with which Providence has
clothed this world of ours, wherever man has not defaced Nature's
perfect craftsmanship.

The point of view of the country-bred differs widely from that of the
town dweller in this respect.

Here is a splendid waterfall, churning itself into whirling cataracts
of foam down the face of a jagged cliff.  The townsman cries, "What
tremendous power is running to waste here!  Let us harness it
quickly.  We will divert the falls into hideous water-pipes, and
bring them to our turbines.  We will build a power-house cheaply of
corrugated iron, and in time we shall so develop {304} this sleepy
countryside that no one will recognise it."

Here is a great forest; a joy to the eyes.  "The price of timber is
rising; let us quickly raze it to the ground."

"Our expert tells us that under this lovely valley there runs a thick
seam of coal.  We will sink shafts, and build blatantly hideous towns
and factories, pollute this clear air with smoke and mephitic
vapours, and then fall down and worship the great god Progress.  We
will also pocket fat dividends."

The stupid, unprogressive son of woods and green fields shudders at
such things; the son of asphalte, stuffy streets, tramways, and arc
lights glories in them.

Like many other things, it all depends on the point of view.




{305}

CHAPTER X

Former colleagues who have risen to
eminence--Kiderlin-Waechter--Aehrenthal--Colonel Klepsch--The
discomfiture of an inquisitive journalist--Origin of certain Russian
scares--Tokyo--Dulness of Geisha dinners--Japanese culinary
curiosities--"Musical Chairs"--Lack of colour in Japan--The Tokugawa
dynasty--Japanese Gardens--The transplanted suburban Embassy
house--Cherry-blossom--Japanese Politeness--An unfortunate incident
in Rome--Eastern courtesy--The country in Japan--An Imperial duck
catching party--An up-to-date Tokyo house--A Shinto
Temple--Linguistic difficulties at a dinner-party--The economical
colleague--Japan defaced by advertisements.


Petrograd was the only capital at which I was stationed in which
there was a diplomatic _table d'hôte_.  In one of the French
restaurants there, a room was specially set apart for the diplomats,
and here the "chers collègues" foregathered nightly, when they had no
other engagements.  When a Spaniard and a Dane, a Roumanian and a
Dutchman, a Hungarian and an Englishman dine together frequently, it
becomes a subject of thankfulness that the universal use of the
French language as a means of international communication has
mitigated the linguistic difficulties brought about by the ambitious
tower-builders of Babel.

Two men whom I met frequently at that diplomatic _table d'hôte_ rose
afterwards to important {306} positions in their own countries.  They
were Baron von Kiderlin-Waechter, the German, and Baron von
Aehrenthal, the Austrian, both of whom became Ministers for Foreign
Affairs in their respective countries, and both of whom are now dead.
Kiderlin-Waechter arrived in Petrograd as quite a young man with the
reputation of being Bismarck's favourite and most promising pupil.
Though a South German by birth, Kiderlin-Waechter had acquired an
overbearing and dictatorial manner of the most approved Prussian
type.  When a number of young men, all of whom are on very friendly
terms with each other, constantly meet, there is naturally a good
deal of fun and chaff passed to and fro between them.  Diplomats are
no exception to this rule, and the fact that the ten young men
talking together may be of ten different nationalities is no bar to
the interchange of humorous personalities, thanks to the convenient
French language, which lends itself peculiarly to "persiflage."

Germans can never understand the form of friendly banter which we
term chaff, and always resent it deeply.  I have known German
diplomats so offended at a harmless joke that they have threatened to
challenge the author of it to a duel.  I should like to pay a belated
tribute to the memory of the late Count Lovendal, Danish Minister in
Petrograd; peace to his ashes!  This kindly, tactful, middle-aged man
must during my time in Petrograd have stopped at least eight duels.
People in trouble went straight to Count Lovendal, and this {307}
shrewd, kind-hearted, experienced man of the world heard them with
infinite patience, and then always gave them sound advice.  As years
went on, Count Lovendal came to be a sort of recognised Court of
Honour, to whom all knotty and delicate points were referred.  He, if
anyone, should have "Blessed are the peacemakers" inscribed on his
tomb.  At least four of the duels he averted were due to the
inability of Germans to stand chaff.  Kiderlin-Waechter, for
instance, was for ever taking offence at harmless jokes, and
threatening swords and pistols in answer to them.  He was a very big,
gross-looking, fair-haired man; with exactly the type of face that a
caricaturist associates with the average Prussian.

His face was slashed with a generous allowance of the scars of which
Germans are so proud, as testifying to their prowess in their
student-duelling days.  I think that it was the late Sir Wilfrid
Lawson who, referring to the beer-drinking habits of German students
and their passionate love of face-slashing, described them as living
in a perpetual atmosphere of "scars and swipes."  Though from South
Germany, Kiderlin snapped out his words with true "Preussische
Grobheit" in speaking German.  Fortunately, it is impossible to
obtain this bullying effect in the French language.  It does not lend
itself to it.  I should be guilty of exaggeration were I to say that
Kiderlin-Waechter was wildly adored by his foreign colleagues.  He
became Minister for Foreign Affairs of the German {308} Empire, but
made the same mistake as some of his predecessors, notably Count
Herbert Bismarck, had done.  They attributed Bismarck's phenomenal
success to his habitual dictatorial, bullying manner.  This was
easily copied; they forgot the genius behind the bully, which could
not be copied, and did not realise that Bismarck's tremendous brain
had not fallen to their portion.  Kiderlin-Waechter's tenure of
office was a short one; he died very suddenly in 1912.  He was a
violent Anglophobe.

Baron von Aehrenthal was a very different stamp of man.  He was of
Semitic origin, and in appearance was a good-looking, tall, slim,
dark young fellow with very pleasing manners.  Some people indeed
thought his manners too pleasant, and termed them subservient.  I
knew Aehrenthal very well indeed, and liked him, but I never
suspected that under that very quiet exterior there lay the most
intense personal ambition.  He became Austro-Hungarian Minister for
Foreign Affairs in 1907, being raised to the rank of Count next year.
This quiet, sleepy-mannered man began embarking on a recklessly bold
foreign policy, and, to the surprise of those who fancied that they
knew him well, exhibited a most domineering spirit.  The old Emperor
Francis Joseph's mental powers were failing, and it was Aehrenthal
who persuaded him to put an end to the understanding with Russia
under which the _status quo_ in the Balkan States was guaranteed, and
to astonish Europe in 1908 by proclaiming the annexation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina {309} to the Austrian Empire.  This step, owing to
the seething discontent it aroused in Bosnia, led directly to the
catastrophe of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and plunged Europe into the
most terrible war of history.  Aehrenthal, whether intentionally or
not, played directly into the hands of the Pan-Germanic party, and
succeeded in tying his own country, a pliant vassal, to the
chariot-wheels of Berlin.  It was Aehrenthal who brought the
immemorially old Hapsburg Monarchy crashing to the ground and by his
foreign policy caused the proud Austrian Empire to collapse like a
house of cards.  He did not live to see the final results of his
work, for he died in 1912.

Colonel Klepsch, the Austro-Hungarian Military Attaché at Petrograd,
another _habitué_ of the diplomatic _table d'hôte_, was a most
remarkable man.  He knew more of the real state of affairs in Russia,
and of the inner workings and intentions of the Russian Government,
than any other foreigner in the country, _and his information was
invariably correct_.  Nearly all the foreign Ambassadors consulted
Colonel Klepsch as to the probable trend of affairs in Russia, and at
times he called on them and volunteered pieces of information.  It
was well known that his source of intelligence was a feminine one,
and experience had proved that it was always to be relied upon.  To
this day I do not know whether this mysterious, taciturn man was at
times used as a convenient mouthpiece by the Russian Government, at
the instigation of a {310} certain person to whom he was devotedly
attached; whether he acted on instructions from his own Ambassador,
or if he took the steps he did on his own initiative.  This tall,
red-haired, silent man, with his uncanny knowledge of every detail of
what was happening in the country, will always remain an enigma to me.

I mentioned earlier in these reminiscences that Lord Dufferin on one
occasion accomplished the difficult feat of turning an English
newspaper correspondent out of his house with the most charming
courtesy.

After an interval of nearly forty years, I can without indiscretion
say how this came about.  The person in question, whom we will call
Mr. Q., was an exceedingly enterprising journalist, the correspondent
of a big London daily.  He was also pretty unscrupulous as to the
methods he employed in gathering information.  It is quite obviously
the duty of a newspaper correspondent to collect information for his
paper.  It is equally clearly the duty of those to whom official
secrets are entrusted to prevent their becoming public property; so
here we have conflicting interests.  At times it happens that an
"incident" arises between two Governments apparently trivial in
itself, but capable of being fanned into such a fierce flame by
popular opinion as to make it difficult for either Government to
recede from the position they had originally taken up.  The Press
screams loudly on both sides, and every Government shrinks from {311}
incurring the unpopularity which a charge of betraying the national
interests would bring upon it.  Experience has shown that in these
cases the difficulties can usually be smoothed down, provided the
whole matter be kept secret, and that neither the public nor the
Press of either of the two countries concerned have an inkling of the
awkward situation that has arisen.  An indiscreet or hysterical Press
can blow a tiny spark into a roaring conflagration and work up
popular feeling to fever-pitch.  It may surprise people to learn that
barely twenty years ago such a situation arose between our own
country and another European Power (_not_ Germany).  Those in charge
of the negotiations on both sides very wisely determined that the
matter should be concealed absolutely from the public and the Press
of both countries, and not one word about it was allowed to leak out.
Otherwise the situation might have been one of extreme gravity, for
it was again one of those cases where neither Government could give
way without being accused of pusillanimity.  As it was, the matter
was settled amicably in a week, and to this day very few people know
that this very serious difficulty ever occurred.

Nearly forty years ago, just such a situation had arisen between us
and the Russian Government; but the Ambassador was convinced that he
could smooth it away provided that the whole thing were kept secret.

Mr. Q. was a first-rate journalist, and his _flair_ {312} as a
newspaperman told him that _something_ was wrong.  From the Russians
he could learn nothing; they were as close as wax; so Mr. Q. turned
his attention to the Chancery of the British Embassy.  His methods
were simple.  He gained admission to the Chancery on some pretext or
another, and then walking about the room, and talking most volubly,
he cast a roving eye over any papers that might be lying about on the
tables.  In all Chanceries a book called the Register is kept in
which every document received or sent out is entered, with, of
course, its date, and a short summary of its contents.  It is a large
book, and reposes on its own high desk.  Ours stood in a window
overlooking the Neva.  Mr. Q. was not troubled with false delicacy.
Under pretence of admiring the view over the river, he attempted to
throw a rapid eye over the Register.  A colleague of mine, as a
gentle hint, removed the Register from under Mr. Q.'s very nose, and
locked it up in the archive press.  Mr. Q., however, was not
thin-skinned.  He came back again and again, till the man became a
positive nuisance.  We always cleared away every paper before he was
allowed admittance.  I was only twenty-two or twenty-three then, and
I devised a strictly private scheme of my own for Mr. Q.'s
discomfiture.  All despatches received from the Foreign Office in
those days were kept folded in packets of ten, with a docket on each,
giving a summary of its contents.  I prepared two despatches for Mr.
Q.'s private eye and, after much {313} cogitation, settled that they
should be about Afghanistan, which did not happen to be the
particular point in dispute between the two Governments at that time.
I also decided on a rhyming docket.  It struck me as a pleasing
novelty, and I thought the jingle would impress itself on Mr. Q.'s
memory, for he was meant to see this bogus despatch.  I took eight
sheets of foolscap, virgin, spotless, unblackened, folded them in the
orthodox fashion, and docketed them in a way I remember to this day.
It ran: first the particular year, then "Foreign Office No. 3527.
Secret and Confidential.  Dated March 3.  Received March 11."  Then
came the rhyming docket,

  "General Kaufman's rumoured plan
    To make Abdurrahman Khan
      Ruler of Afghanistan."

Under that I wrote in red ink in a different hand, with a fine pen,

"_Urgent_.  Instructions already acted on.  See further instructions
re Afghanistan in No. 3534."


I was only twenty-two then, and my sense of responsibility was not
fully developed, or I should not have acted so flightily.  It still
strikes me though as an irresistibly attractive baited hook to offer
to an inquisitive newspaperman.  I grieve to say that I also wrote a
"fake" decypher of a purely apocryphal code telegram purporting to
have come from London.  This was also on the subject of {314}
Afghanistan.  It struck me at the time as a perfectly legitimate
thing to do, in order to throw this Paul Pry off the scent, for the
Ambassador had impressed on us all the vital importance of not
disclosing the real matter in dispute.  I put these flagrant
forgeries in a drawer of my table and waited.  I had not to wait
long.  My colleagues having all gone out to luncheon, I was alone in
the Chancery one day, when Mr. Q.'s card was brought in to me.  I
kept him waiting until I had cleared every single despatch from the
tables and had locked them up.  I also locked up the Register, but
put an eight-year-old one, exactly similar in appearance, in its
place, opening it at a date two days earlier than the actual date, in
order that Mr. Q. might not notice that the page (and "to-morrow's"
page as well) was already filled up, and the bogus despatch and fake
telegram from my drawer were duly laid on the centre table.  At
twenty-two I was a smooth-faced youth, in appearance, I believe, much
younger than my real age.  Mr. Q. came in.  He had the "Well, old
man" style, accompanied by a thump on the back, which I peculiarly
detest.  He must have blessed his luck in finding such a simple youth
in sole charge of the Chancery.  Mr. Q. pursued his usual tactics.
He talked volubly in a loud voice, walking about the room meanwhile.
The idiotic boy smoked cigarettes, and gaped inanely.  Mr. Q. went as
usual to the window where the Register lay in order to admire the
view, and the pudding-brained youth noticed nothing, but lit {315} a
fresh cigarette.  That young fool never saw that Mr. Paul Pry read
unblushingly half a column of the eight-year-old Register (How it
must have puzzled him!) under his very eyes.  Mr. Q. then went to the
centre table, where he had, of course, noticed the two papers lying,
and proceeded to light a cigar.  That cigar must have drawn very
badly, for Mr. Q. had occasion to light it again and again, bending
well over the table as he did so.  He kept the unsuspicious youth
engaged in incessant conversation meanwhile.  So careless and stupid
a boy ought never to have been left in charge of important documents.
Finally Mr. Q., having gained all the information for which he had
been thirsting so long, left in a jubilant frame of mind, perfectly
unconscious that he had been subjected to the slightest crural
tension.

When the Councillor of Embassy returned, I made a clean breast of
what I had done, and showed him the bogus despatch and telegram I had
contrived.  Quite rightly, I received a very severe reprimand.  I was
warned against ever acting in such an irregular fashion again, under
the direst penalties.  In extenuation, I pointed out to the
Councillor that the inquisitive Mr. Q. was now convinced that our
difficulty with Russia was over Afghanistan.

I further added that should anyone be dishonourable enough to come
into the Chancery and deliberately read confidential documents which
he knew were not intended for his eye, I clearly could not {316} be
held responsible for any false impressions he might derive from
reading them.  That, I was told sharply, was no excuse for my
conduct.  After this "official wigging," the Councillor invited me to
dine with him that night, when we laughed loudly over Mr. Q.'s
discomfiture.  That person became at length such a nuisance that "his
name was put on the gate," and he was refused admission to the
Embassy.

The great London daily which Mr. Q. represented at Petrograd
published some strong articles on the grave menace to the Empire
which a change of rulers in Afghanistan might bring about; coupled
with Cassandra-like wails over the purblind British statesmen who
were wilfully shutting their eyes to this impending danger, as well
as to baneful Russian machinations on our Indian frontier.  There
were also some unflattering allusions to Abdurrahman Khan.  I,
knowing that the whole story had originated in my own brain, could
not restrain a chuckle whilst perusing these jeremiads.  After
reading some particularly violent screed, the Councillor of Embassy
would shake his head at me.  "This is more of your work, you wretched
boy!"  After an interval of forty years this little episode can be
recounted without harm.

Talking of newspaper enterprise, many years later, when the Emperor
Alexander III died, the editor of a well-known London evening paper,
a great friend of mine, told me in confidence of a journalistic
"scoop" he was meditating.  Alexander III {317} had died at Livadia
in the Crimea, and his body was to make a sort of triumphal progress
through Russia.  The editor (he is no longer with us, but when I term
him "Harry" I shall be revealing his identity to the few) was sending
out a Frenchman as special correspondent, armed with a goodly store
of roubles, and instructions to get himself engaged as temporary
assistant to the undertaker in charge of the Emperor's funeral.  This
cost, I believe, a considerable sum, but the Frenchman, having
entered on his gruesome duties, was enabled to furnish the London
evening paper with the fullest details of all the funeral ceremonies.

The reason the younger diplomats foregathered so in Petrograd was
that, as I said before, Petrograd was to all intents and purposes
extra-European.  Apart from its charming society, the town, qua town,
offered but few resources.  The younger Continental diplomats felt
the entire absence of cafés, of music-halls, and of places of light
entertainment very acutely; so they were thrown on each other's
society.  In Far Eastern posts such as Pekin or Tokyo, the diplomats
live entirely amongst themselves.  For a European, there are
practically no resources whatever in Tokyo.  No one could possibly
wish to frequent a Japanese theatre, or a Japanese restaurant, when
once the novelty had worn off, and even Geisha entertainments are
deadly dull to one who cannot understand a word of the language.  Let
us imagine a party of Europeans arriving at some fashionable {318}
Japanese restaurant for a Geisha entertainment.  They will, of
course, remove their shoes before proceeding upstairs.  I was always
unfortunate enough to find on these occasions one or more holes in my
socks gaping blatantly.  In time one learns in Japan to subject one's
socks to a close scrutiny in order to make sure that they are intact,
for everyone must be prepared to remove his shoes at all hours of the
day.  We will follow the Europeans up to a room on the upper floor,
tastefully arranged in Japanese fashion, and spotlessly neat and
clean.  The temperature in this room in the winter months would be
Arctic, with three or four "fire-pots" containing a few specks of
mildly-glowing charcoal waging a futile contest against the
penetrating cold.

The room is apparently empty, but from behind the sliding-panels
giggles and titters begin, gradually increasing in volume until the
panels slide back, and a number of self-conscious overdressed
children step into the room, one taking her place beside each guest.
These are "Micos"; little girls being trained as professional
Geishas.  The European conception of a Geisha is a totally wrong one.
They are simply entertainers; trained singers, dancers, and
story-tellers.  The guests seat themselves clumsily and uncomfortably
on the floor and the dinner begins.  Japanese dishes are meant to
please the eye, which is fortunate, for they certainly do not appeal
to the palate.  I invariably drew one of the big pots of flowers
which always {319} decorate these places close up to me, and
consigned to its kindly keeping all the delicacies of the Japanese
_cuisine_ which were beyond my assimilative powers, such as slices of
raw fish sprinkled with sugar, and seasoned with salted ginger.  The
tiresome little Micos kept up an incessant chatter.  Their stories
were doubtless extraordinarily humorous to anyone understanding
Japanese, but were apt to lose their point for those ignorant of the
language.  The abortive attempts of the Europeans to eat with
chopsticks afforded endless amusement to these bedizened children;
they shook with laughter at seeing all the food slide away from these
unaccustomed table implements.  Not till the dinner was over did the
Geishas proper make their appearance.  In Japan the amount of bright
colour in a woman's dress varies in inverse ratio to her moral
rectitude.  As our Geishas were all habited in sober mouse-colour, or
dull neutral-blue, I can only infer that they were ladies of the very
highest respectability.  They were certainly wonderfully attractive
little people.  They were not pretty according to our standards, but
there was a vivacity and a sort of air of dainty grace about them
that were very captivating.  Their singing is frankly awful.  I have
heard four-footed musicians on the London tiles produce sweeter
sounds, but their dancing is graceful to a degree.  Unfortunately,
one of the favourite amusements of these charming and vivacious
little people is to play "Musical Chairs"--without any chairs!  They
made all the {320} European men follow them round and round the room
whilst two Geishas thrummed on a sort of guitar.  As soon as the
music stopped everyone was expected to sit down with a bang on the
floor, To these little Japs five feet high, the process was easy, and
may have seemed good fun; to a middle-aged gentleman, "vir pietate
gravis," these violent shocks were more than painful, and I failed to
derive the smallest amusement from them.  No Japanese dinner would be
complete without copious miniature cups of sake.  This rice-spirit is
always drunken hot; it is not disagreeable to the taste, being like
warm sherry with a dash of methylated spirit thrown in, but the
little sake bottles and cups are a joy to the eye.  This innately
artistic people delight to lavish loving care in fashioning minute
objects; many English drawing-rooms contain sake bottles in enamel or
porcelain ranged in cabinets as works of art.  Their form would be
more familiar to most people than their use.  Japanese always seem to
look on a love of colour as showing rather vulgar tastes.  The more
refined the individual, the more will he adhere to sober black and
white and neutral tints in his house and personal belongings.  The
Emperor's palace in Kyoto is decorated entirely in black and white,
with unpainted, unlacquered woodwork, and no colour anywhere.  The
Kyoto palace of the great Tokugawa family, on the other hand, a place
of astounding beauty, blazes with gilding, enamels, and lacquer, as
do all the tombs and temples erected by this dynasty.  The Tokugawas
usurped power as {321} Shoguns in 1603, reducing the Mikado to a mere
figure-head as spiritual Ruler, and the Shoguns ruled Japan
absolutely until 1868, when they were overthrown, and Shogun and
Mikado were merged into one under the title of Emperor.  I fancy that
the Japanese look upon the polychrome splendour of all the buildings
erected by the Tokugawas as proof that they were very inferior to the
ancient dynasty, who contented themselves with plain buildings
severely decorated in black and white.  The lack of colour in Japan
is very noticeable on arriving from untidy, picturesque China.  The
beautiful neatness and cleanliness of Japan are very refreshing after
slovenly China, but the endless rows of little brown, unpainted, tidy
houses, looking like so many rabbit hutches, are depressing to a
degree.  The perpetual earthquakes are responsible for the low
elevation of these houses and also for their being invariably built
of wood, as is indeed everything else in the country.  I was
immensely disappointed at the sight of the first temples I visited in
Japan.  The forms were beautiful enough, but they were all of
unpainted wood, without any colour whatever, and looked horribly
neutral-tinted.  All the famous temples of Kyoto are of plain,
unpainted, unvarnished wood.  The splendid group of temples at Nikko
are the last word in Japanese art.  They glow with colour; with
scarlet and black lacquer, gilding, enamels, and bronzes, every
detail finished like jewellers' work with exquisite craftmanship, and
they are amongst the most {322} beautiful things in the world; but
they were all erected by the Tokugawa dynasty, as were the equally
superb temples in the Shiba Park at Tokyo.  This family seemed
determined to leave Japan less colourless than they found it; in
their great love for scarlet lacquer they must have been the first
people who thought of painting a town red.

The same lack of colour is found in the gardens.  I had pictured a
Japanese garden as a dream of beauty, so when I was shewn a heap of
stones interspersed with little green shrubs and dwarf trees, without
one single flower, I was naturally disappointed, nor had I sufficient
imagination to picture a streak of whitewash daubed down a rock as a
quivering cascade of foaming water.  "Our gardens, sir," said my
host, "are not intended to inspire hilarit .. ee, but rather to
create a gentle melanchol .. ee."  As regards myself, his certainly
succeeded in its object.

A friend of mine, whose gardens, not a hundred miles from London, are
justly famous, takes immense pride in her Japanese garden, as she
fondly imagines it to be.  At the time of King George's Coronation
she invited the special Japanese Envoys to luncheon, for the express
purpose of showing them her gardens afterwards.  She kept the
Japanese garden to the last as a _bonne-bouche_, half-expecting these
children of the Land of the Rising Sun to burst into happy tears at
this reminder of their distant island home.  The special Envoys
thanked her with true Japanese politeness, and loudly {323} expressed
their delight at seeing a real English garden.  They added that they
had never even imagined anything like this in Japan, and begged for a
design of it, in order that they might create a real English garden
in their native land on their return home.

As I have said, no Japanese woman can wear bright colours without
sacrificing her moral reputation, but little girls may wear all the
colours of the rainbow until they are eight years old or so.  These
little girls, with their hair cut straight across their forehead, are
very attractive-looking creatures, whereas a Japanese boy, with his
cropped head, round face, and projecting teeth, is the most comically
hideous little object imaginable.  These children's appearance is
spoilt by an objectionable superstition which decrees it unlucky to
use a pocket-handkerchief on a child until he, or she, is nine years
old.  The result is unspeakably deplorable.

The interior of our Embassy at Tokyo was rather a surprise.  Owing to
the constant earthquakes in Tokyo and Yokohama, all the buildings
have to be of wood.  The British Embassy was built in London (I
believe by a very well-known firm in Tottenham Court Road), and was
shipped out to Japan complete down to its last detail.  The architect
who designed it unhappily took a glorified suburban villa as his
model.  So the Tokyo Embassy house is an enlarged "Belmont," or "The
Cedars," or "Tokyo Towers."  Every {324} familiar detail is there;
the tiled hall, the glazed door into the garden, and the heavy
mahogany chimneypieces and overmantels.  In the library with its
mahogany book-cases, green morocco chairs, and green plush curtains,
it was difficult to realise that one was not in Hampstead or Upper
Tooting.  I always felt that I was quite out of the picture unless I
sallied forth at 9 a.m. with a little black bag in my hand, and
returned at 6 p.m. with some fish in a bass-basket.  In spite of
being common-place, the house was undeniably comfortable.  Everything
Japanese was rigidly excluded from it.  That in far-off lands is very
natural.  People do not care to be reminded perpetually of the
distance they are away from home.  In Calcutta the Maidan, the local
Hyde Park, has nothing Eastern about it.  Except in the Eden Gardens
in one corner of it, where there is a splendid tangle of tropical
vegetation, there is not one single palm tree on the Maidan.  The
broad sweeps of turf, clumps of trees, and winding roads make an
excellent imitation of Hyde Park transferred to the banks of the
Hooghly, and this is intentional.  There is one spot in particular,
where the tall Gothic spire of St. Paul's Cathedral rises out of a
clump of trees beyond a great tank (it may be pointed out that "tank"
in India does not refer to a clumsy, mobile engine of destruction,
but is the word used for a pool or pond), which might be in
Kensington Gardens but for the temperature.  The average Briton likes
to be reminded of his home, and generally manages to carry {325} it
about with him somehow.  The Russian Embassy at Tokyo had been built
in the same way in Paris and sent out, and was a perfect reproduction
of a French Louis XV house.  The garden of the British Embassy had
one striking feature which I have seen nowhere else; hedges of
clipped camellias, four feet high.  When these blossomed in the
spring, they looked like solid walls of pink, crimson, or white
flowers, a really beautiful sight!

Some former British Minister had planted the public roads round the
Embassy with avenues of the pink-flowering cherry, as a present to
the city of Tokyo.  The Japanese affect to look down on the pink
cherry, when compared to their adored white cherry-blossom, I suppose
because there is colour in it.  Certainly the acres of white
cherry-blossom in the Uyeno Park at Tokyo are one of the sights of
Japan.  In no other country in the world would the railways run
special trains to enable the country-people to see the cherries in
full bloom in this Uyeno Park.  The blossom is only supposed to be at
its best for three days.  In no other country either would people
flock by hundreds to a temple, as they did at Kyoto, to look at a
locally-famed contrast of red plum-blossom against dark-brown maple
leaves.  I liked these Japanese country-people.  The scrupulously
neat old peasant women, with their grey hair combed carefully back,
and their rosy faces, were quite attractive.  Their intense
ceremonious politeness to each other always amused me.  Whole family
parties would continue {326} bowing to each other for ten minutes on
end at railway stations, sucking their breath, and rubbing their
knees.  When they had finished, someone would recommence, and the
whole process would have to be gone through again, the children
sucking their breath louder even than their elders.  Anybody who has
lived in a warm climate must be familiar with the curious sound of
thousands of frogs croaking at once in a pond or marsh at night-time.
The sound of hundreds of Japanese wooden clogs clattering against the
tiles of a railway platform is exactly like that.  In the big
Shimbashi station at Tokyo, as the clogs pattered over the tiles, by
shutting my eyes I could imagine that I was listening to a frogs'
orchestra in some large marsh.

Excessive politeness brings at times its own penalty.  At the
beginning of these reminiscences I have related how I went with a
Special Embassy to Rome in my extreme youth.  The day before our
departure from Rome, King Humbert gave a farewell luncheon party at
the Quirinal to the Special British Ambassador and his suite,
including of course myself.  At this luncheon a somewhat comical
incident occurred.

When we took our leave, Queen Margherita, then still radiantly
beautiful, offered her hand first to the Special British Ambassador.
He, a courtly and gallant gentleman of the old school, at once
dropped on one knee, in spite of his age, and kissed the Queen's hand
"in the grand manner."  The permanent British Ambassador, the late
Sir Augustus Paget, {327} most courteous and genial of men, followed
his temporary colleague's example, and also dropped on one knee.  The
Italian Ministers present could not do less than follow the lead of
the foreigners, or show themselves less courteous than the
_forestieri_, so they too had perforce to drop on one knee whilst
kissing the Queen's hand.  A hugely obese Minister, buttoned into the
tightest of frockcoats, approached the Queen.  With immense
difficulty he lowered himself on to one knee, and kissed the Royal
hand; but no power on earth seemed equal to raising him to his feet
again.  The corpulent Minister grew purple in the face; the most
ominous sounds of the rending of cloth and linen re-echoed through
the room; but still he could not manage to rise.  The Queen held out
her hand to assist her husband's adipose adviser to regain his feet,
but he was too dignified, or too polite, to accept it.  The rending
of the statesman's most intimate garments became more audible than
ever; the portly Minister seemed on the verge of an attack of
apoplexy.  It must be understood that the Queen was standing alone
before the throne, with this unfortunate dignitary kneeling before
her; the remainder of the guests were standing in a semi-circle some
twenty feet away.  The Queen's mouth began to twitch ominously,
until, in spite of her self-control, after a few preliminary
splutters of involuntary merriment, she broke down, and absolutely
shook with laughter.  Sir Augustus Paget and a Roman Prince came up
and saved the situation by raising, with infinite difficulty, the
unfortunate {328} Italian statesman to his feet.  As he resumed a
standing position, a perfect Niagara of oddments of apparel, of tags
and scraps of his most private under-garments, rained upon the floor,
and we all experienced a feeling of intense relief when this capable,
if corpulent, Cabinet Minister was enabled to regain the background
with all his clothing outwardly intact.

And all this came about from an excess of politeness.  The East has
always been the land of flowery compliments, also the land of
hyperbole.  I once saw the answer the Viceroy of India had received
from a certain tributary Prince, who had been reprimanded in the
sharpest fashion by the Government of India.  The native Prince had
been warned in the bluntest of language that unless he mended his
ways at once he would be forthwith deposed, and another ruler put in
his place.  A list of his recent enormities was added, in order to
refresh his memory, and the warning as to the future was again
emphasized.  The Prince's answer, addressed direct to the Viceroy,
began as follows:

"Your Excellency's gracious message has reached me.  It was more
precious to the eyes than a casket of rubies; sweeter to the taste
than a honeycomb; more delightful to the ears than the song of ten
thousand nightingales.  I spread it out before me, and read it
repeatedly: each time with renewed pleasure."

Considering the nature of the communication, that native Prince must
have been of a touchingly grateful disposition.

{329}

The late Duke of Edinburgh was once presented with an address at Hong
Kong from the Corporation of Chinese Merchants, in which he was told,
amongst other things, that he "was more glorious than a phoenix
sitting in a crimson nest with fourteen golden tails streaming behind
him."  Surely a charming flight of fancy!

True politeness in China demands that you should depreciate
everything of your own and exalt everything belonging to your
correspondent.  Thus, should you be asking a friend to dinner, you
would entreat him "to leave for one evening the silver and alabaster
palace in which you habitually dwell, and to condescend to honour the
tumble-down vermin-ridden hovel in which I drag out a wretched
existence.  Furthermore, could you forget for one evening the
bird's-nest soup, the delicious sea-slugs, and the plump puppy-dogs
on which you habitually feast, and deign to poke your head into my
swill-trough, and there devour such loathsome garbage as a starving
dog would reject, I shall feel unspeakably honoured."  The answer
will probably come in some such form as this: "With rapturous delight
have I learnt that, thanks to your courtesy, I may escape from the
pestilential shanty I inhabit, and pass one unworthy evening in a
glorious palace of crystal and gold in your company.  After starving
for months on putrid offal, I shall at length banquet on unimagined
delicacies, etc."  Should it be a large dinner-party, it must tax the
host's ingenuity to vary the self-depreciatory epithets sufficiently.

{330}

The mention of food reminds me that it is an acute difficulty to the
stranger in Japan, should he wander off the beaten track and away
from European hotels.  Japanese use neither bread, butter, nor milk,
and these things, as well as meat, are unprocurable in country
districts.  Europeans miss bread terribly, and the Japanese
substitute of cold rice is frankly horrible.  Instead of the snowy
piles of smoking-hot, beautifully cooked rice of India, rice in Japan
means a cold, clammy, gelatinous mass, hideously distasteful to a
European interior.  That, eggs, and tea like a decoction of hay
constitute the standard menu of a Japanese country inn.  I never saw
either a sheep or cow in Japan, as there is no pasture.  The
universal bamboo-grass, with its sharp edges, pierces the intestines
of any animal feeding on it, and so is worse than useless as fodder
for cattle or sheep.  All milk and butter are imported in a frozen
state from Australia, but do not, of course, penetrate beyond
Europe-fashion hotels, as the people of the country do not care for
them.

The exquisite neatness of Japanese farm houses, with their black and
white walls, thatched roofs, and trim little bamboo fences and gates,
is a real joy to the eye of one who has grown accustomed to the
slipshod untidy East, or even to the happy-go-lucky methods of the
American Continent.  I never remember a Japanese village unequipped
with either electric light or telephones.  I really think geographers
must have placed the 180th degree in the wrong place, and that Japs
are really {331} the most Western of Westerns, instead of being the
most Eastern of Easterns.  Pretty and attractive as the Japanese
country is, its charm was spoilt for me by the almost total absence
of bird and animal life.  There are hardly any wild flowers either,
except deliciously fragrant wild violets.  Being in Japan, it is
hardly necessary to say that these violets, instead of being of the
orthodox colour, are bright yellow.  They would be in Japan.  This
quaint people who only like trees when they are contorted, who love
flowerless gardens, whose grass kills cattle, who have evolved peach,
plum and cherry trees which flower gloriously but never bear any
fruit, would naturally have yellow violets.  They are certainly a
wonderfully hardy race.  I was at beautiful Nikko in the early spring
when they were building a dam across the Nikko river.  The stream has
a tremendous current, and is ice-cold.  Men were working at the dam
up to their waists in the icy river, and little boys kept bringing
them baskets of building stones, up to their necks in the swift
current.  Both men and boys issued from the river as scarlet as
lobsters from the intense cold, and yet they stood about quite
unconcernedly in their dripping thin cotton clothes in the keen wind.
Had they been Europeans, they would all have died of pneumonia in two
days' time.  A race must have great powers of endurance that live in
houses with paper walls without any heating appliances during the
sharp cold of a Japanese winter, and that find thin cotton clothing
sufficient for their wants.

{332}

The outlines and pleasing details of those black and white country
dwellings with the graceful curves of their roofs are a relief to the
eye after the endless miles of ugly little brown rabbit hutches of
the towns.  At Tokyo the enclosure and park of the Emperor's palace
lay just outside the gates of our Embassy, surrounded by a moat so
broad that it could be almost called a lake.  It was curious in the
heart of a town to see this moat covered with innumerable wild duck.
Although I have been in the Imperial palace at Kyoto, I was never
inside the one at Tokyo, so I cannot give any details about it.  The
glimpses one obtained from outside of its severe black and white
outlines recalled a European mediæval castle, and had something
strangely familiar about them.  I was never fortunate enough either
to be invited to an Imperial duck-catching party, which I would have
given anything to witness.  The idea of catching wild duck in
butterfly nets would never occur to anyone but the Japanese.  The
place where this quaint amusement was indulged in was an extensive
tract of flat ground intersected by countless reed-fringed little
canals and waterways, much on the lines of a marsh in the Norfolk
Broad district.  I saw the Ambassador on his return from a
duck-catching party.  With superhuman efforts, and a vast amount of
exercise, he had managed to capture three ducks, and he told me that
he had had to run like a hare to achieve even this modest success.
All the guests were expected to appear in high hats and frock-coats
{333} on these occasions, and I should have dearly loved to see the
Ambassador arrayed in frock-coat and high hat bounding hot-foot over
the marshes, his butterfly net poised aloft, in pursuit of his
quacking quarry.  The newspapers informed us the next day that the
Crown Prince had headed the list as usual with a bag of twenty-seven
ducks, and I always believe what I see in print.  Really Europeans
start heavily handicapped at this peculiar diversion.  I have known
many families in England where the sons of the house are instructed
from a very early age in riding, and in the art of handling a gun and
a trout rod, but even in the most sport-loving British families the
science of catching wild duck in butterfly nets forms but seldom part
of the sporting curriculum of the rising generation.  Though the
Imperial family are Shintoists, I expect that the Buddhist horror of
taking animal life is at the bottom of this idea of duck-catching,
for the ducks are, I believe, all set free again after their capture.

We always heard that the Emperor and his family lived entirely on
rice and fish in the frugal Japanese fashion, and that they never
tasted meat.

I had the opportunity of seeing a very fine house of sixty rooms,
built in strict Japanese style, and just completed.  Count Mitsu is
one of the few very wealthy men in Japan; he can also trace his
pedigree back for three thousand years.  He had built this house in
Tokyo, and as it was supposed to be the last word in purity of style
("Itchi-Ban," or "Number One," as the Japanese express it), he very
{334} kindly invited the ambassador and myself to go all over it with
him.  We had, of course, to remove our shoes on entering, and my
pleasure was somewhat marred by the discovery of a large hole in one
sock, on which I fancied the gaze of the entire Mitsu family was
riveted.  Nothing can equal the high-bred courtesy and politeness of
Japanese of really ancient lineage.  Countess Mitsu, of a family as
old as her husband's, had a type of face which we do not usually
associate with Japan, and is only found in ladies of the Imperial
family and some others equally old.  In place of the large head, full
cheeks, and flat features of the ordinary Japanese woman, Countess
Mitsu and her daughters had thin faces with high aquiline features,
giving them an extraordinarily high-bred and distinguished
appearance.  This great house consisted of a vast number of perfectly
empty rooms, destitute of one single scrap of furniture.  There was
fine matting on the floor, a niche with one kakemono hanging in it,
one bronze or other work of art, and a vase with one single flower,
and nothing else whatever.  The Mitsus being a very high caste
family, there was no colour anywhere.  The decoration was confined to
black and white and beautifully-finished, unpainted, unvarnished
woodwork, except for the exquisitely chased bronze door-grips
(door-handles would be an incorrect term for these grips to open and
close the sliding panels).  I must confess that I never saw a more
supremely uncomfortable-looking dwelling in my life.  The children's
nurseries upstairs {335} were a real joy.  The panels had been
painted by a Japanese artist with everything calculated to amuse a
child.  There were pictures of pink and blue rabbits, purple frogs,
scarlet porcupines, and grass-green guinea-pigs, all with the most
comical expressions imaginable on their faces.  The lamps were of
fish-skin shaped over thin strips of bamboo into the form of the
living fish, then highly coloured, and fitted with electric globes
inside them; weird, luminous marine monsters!  Each child had a
little Chinese dressing-table of mother-of-pearl eighteen inches
high, and a tub of real Chinese "powder-blue" porcelain as a bath.
The windows looked on to a fascinating dwarf garden ten feet square,
with real waterfalls, tiny rivers of real water, miniature mountains
and dwarf trees, all in perfect proportion.  It was like looking at
an extensive landscape through the wrong end of a telescope.

The polite infants who inhabited this child's paradise received us
with immense courtesy, lying at full length on the floor on their
little tummies, and wagging their little heads in salutation, till I
really thought they would come off.

The most interesting thing in Count Mitsu's house was a beautiful
little Shinto temple of bronze-gold lacquer, where all the names of
his many ancestors were inscribed on gilt tablets.  Here he and all
his sons (women take no part in ancestor worship) came nightly, and
made a full confession before the tablets of their ancestors of all
they had done during the day; craving for pardon should {336} they
have acted in a fashion unworthy of their family and of Japan.  The
Count and his sons then lighted the little red lamps before the
tablets of their forebears to show that they were not forgotten, and
placed the exquisitely carved little ivory "ghost-ship" two inches
long in its place, should any of their ancestors wish to return that
night from the Land of Spirits to their old home.

The underlying idea of undying family affection is rather a beautiful
one.

That same evening I went to a very interesting dinner-party at the
house of Prince Arisugawa, a son-in-law of the Emperor's.  Both the
dinner and the house were on European lines, but the main point of
interest was that it was a gathering of all the Generals and Admirals
who had taken a prominent part in the Russo-Japanese war.  I was
placed between an Admiral and a General, but found it difficult to
communicate with them, Japanese being conspicuously bad linguists.
The General could speak a little fairly unintelligible German; the
Admiral could stutter a very little Russian.  It was a pity that the
roads of communication were so blocked for us, for I shall probably
never again sit between two men who had had such thrilling
experiences.  I cursed the builders of the Tower of Babel for
erecting this linguistic barrier between us.

I found that I was a full head taller than all the Japanese in the
room.  Princess Arisugawa appeared later.  This tiny, dainty,
graceful little lady {337} had the same strongly aquiline type of
features as Countess Mitsu, and the same high-bred look of
distinction.  She was beautifully dressed in European style, and had
Rue de la Paix written all over her clothes and her jewels.  I have
seldom seen anyone with such taking graceful dignity as this daughter
of the Imperial house, in spite of her diminutive stature.

The old families in Japan have a pretty custom of presenting every
European guest with a little black-and-gold lacquer box, two inches
high, full of sweetmeats, of the sort we called in my youth "hundreds
and thousands."  These little boxes bear on their tops in gold
lacquer the badge or crest of the family, thus serving as permanent
souvenirs.

In a small community such as the European diplomats formed at Tokyo,
the peculiarities and foibles of the "chers collègues" formed
naturally an unending topic of conversation.  There was one foreign
representative who was determined to avoid bankruptcy, could the most
rigorously careful regulation of his expenditure avert such a
catastrophe.  His official position forced him to give occasional
dinner-parties, much, I imagine, against his inclinations.  He
always, in the winter months, borrowed all the available oil-stoves
from his colleagues and friends, when one of these festivities was
contemplated, in order to warm his official residence without having
to go to the expense of fires.  He had in some mad fit of
extravagance bought two dozen of {338} a really fine claret some
years before.  The wine had long since been drunk; the bottles he
still retained _with their labels_.  It was his custom to buy the
cheapest and roughest red wine he could find, and then enshrine it in
these old bottles with their mendacious labels.  At his
dinner-parties these time-worn bottles were always ranged down the
tables.  The evidence of palate and eye was conflicting.  The palate
(as far as it could discriminate through the awful reek with which
the oil-stoves filled the room), pronounced it sour, immature _vin
ordinaire_.  The label on the bottle proclaimed it Château Margaux of
1874, actually bottled at the Château itself.  Politeness dictated
that we should compliment our host on this exquisite vintage, which
had, perhaps, begun to feel (as we all do) the effects of extreme old
age.  A cynical Dutch colleague might possibly hazard a few remarks,
lamenting the effects of the Japanese climate on "les premiers crus
de Bordeaux."

Life at any post would be dull were it not for the little failings of
the "chers collègues," which always give one something to talk of.

The Japanese are ruining the beauty of their country by their insane
mania for advertising.  The railways are lined with advertisements; a
beautiful hillside is desecrated by a giant advertisement, cut in the
turf, and filled in with white concrete.  Even the ugly little
streets of brown packing-cases are plastered with advertisements.
The fact that these advertisements are all in Chinese characters
{339} give them a rather pleasing exotic flavour at first; that soon
wears off, and then one is only too thankful not to be able to read
them.  They remain a hideous disfigurement of a fair land.

One large Japanese-owned department store in Tokyo had a brass band
playing in front of it all day, producing an ear-splitting din.  The
bandsmen were little Japanese boys dressed, of all things in the
world, as Highlanders.  No one who has not seen it can imagine the
intensely grotesque effect of a little stumpy, bandy-legged Jap boy
in a red tartan kilt, bare knees, and a Glengarry bonnet.  No one who
has not heard them can conceive the appalling sounds they produced
from their brass instruments, or can form any conception of the
Japanese idea of "rag-time."

We have in this country some very competent amateurs who, to judge
from the picture papers, have reduced the gentle art of
self-advertisement to a science.

I think these ladies would be repaid for the trouble of a voyage to
Japan by the new ideas in advertisement they would pick up from that
enterprising people.  They need not blow their own trumpets, like the
little Jap Highlander bandsmen; they can get it done for them as they
know, by the Press.




{340}

CHAPTER XI

Petrograd through middle-aged eyes--Russians very constant
friends--Russia an Empire of shams--Over-centralisation in
administration--The system hopeless--A complete change of scene--The
West Indies--Trinidad--Personal Character of Nicholas II--The weak
point in an Autocracy--The Empress--An opportunity missed--The Great
Collapse--Terrible stories--Love of human beings for ceremonial--Some
personal apologies--Conclusion.


I returned twice to Petrograd in later years, the last occasion being
in 1912.  A young man is generally content with the surface of
things, and accepts them at their face value, without attempting to
probe deeper.  With advancing years comes the desire to test beneath
the surface.  To the eye, there is but little difference between
electro-plate and solid silver, though one deep scratch on the
burnished expanse of the former is sufficient to reveal the baser
metal underlying it.

Things Russian have for some reason always had a strange attraction
for me, and their glamour had not departed even after so many years.
It was pleasant, too, to hear the soft, sibilant Russian tongue
again.  My first return visit was at mid-summer, and seeing Peter's
City wreathed in the tender vivid greenery of Northern foliage, and
bathed in sunshine, I wondered how I could ever {341} have mentally
labelled it with the epithet "dreary."  Rising from the clear
swift-rushing waters of the many-channelled Neva, its stately
pillared classical buildings outlined through the soft golden haze in
half-tones of faintest cobalt and rose-madder, this Northern Venice
appeared a dream-city, almost unreal in its setting of blue waters
and golden domes, lightly veiled in opal mist.

Russians are not as a rule long-lived, and the great majority of my
old friends had passed away.  I could not help being affected by the
manner in which the survivors amongst them welcomed me back.  "Cher
ami," said the bearer of a great Russian name to me, "thirty-three
years ago we adopted you as a Russian.  You were a mere boy then, you
are now getting an old man, but as long as any of your friends of old
days are alive, our houses are always open to you, and you will
always find a place for you at our tables, without an invitation.  We
Russians do not change, and we never forget our old friends.  We know
that you like us and our country, and my husband and I offer you all
we have."  No one could fail to be touched by such steadfast
friendship, so characteristic of these warm-hearted people.

The great charm of Russians with three or four hundred years of
tradition behind them is their entire lack of pretence and their
hatred of shams.  They are absolutely natural.  They often gave me as
their reason for disliking foreigners the artificiality of
non-Russians, though they expressly {342} exempted our own
nationality from this charge.  That is, I think, the reason why most
Englishmen get on so well with educated Russians.

Seeing Petrograd with the wearied eyes of experienced middle age, I
quite realised that the imposing palaces that front the line of the
quays and seem almost to float on the Neva, are every one of them
built on piles, driven deep into the marshy subsoil.  Every single
house in the city rests on the same artificial base.  Montferrand the
Frenchman's great cathedral of St. Isaac has had its north front
shored up by scaffolding for thirty years.  Otherwise it would have
collapsed, as the unstable subsoil is unable to bear so great a
burden.  On the Highest Authority we know that only a house built on
the rock can endure.  This city of Petrograd was built on a quagmire,
and was typical, in that respect, of the vast Empire of which it was
the capital: an Empire erected by Peter on shifting sand.  The whole
fabric of this Empire struck my maturer senses as being one gigantic
piece of "camouflage."

For instance, a building close to St. Isaac's bears on its stately
front the inscription "Governing Senate" (I may add that the terse,
crisp Russian for this is "Pravitelsvouyuschui Senat").  To an
ordinary individual the term would seem to indicate what it says; he
would be surprised to learn that, so far from "governing," the Senate
had neither legislative nor administrative powers of its own.  It was
merely a consultative body without {343} any delegate initiative;
only empowered to recommend steps for carrying into effect the orders
it received.

And so with many other things.  There were imposing façades, with
awe-inspiring inscriptions, but I had a curious feeling that
everything stopped at the façade, and there was nothing behind it.

Students of history will remember how, on the occasion of Catherine
the Great's visit to the Crimea, her favourite, Potemkin, had
"camouflage" villages erected along the line of her progress, so that
wherever she went she found merry peasants (specially selected from
the Imperial theatres) singing and dancing amidst flower-wreathed
cottages.  These villages were then taken down, and re-erected some
fifty miles further along the Empress's way, with the same
inhabitants.  It was really a triumph of "camouflage," and did great
credit to Potemkin's inventive faculty.  Catherine returned North
with most agreeable recollections of the teeming population of the
Crimea; of its delightfully picturesque villages, and of the ideal
conditions of life prevailing there.

The whole Russian Empire appeared to my middle-aged eyes to be like
Potemkin's toy villages.

My second later visit to Petrograd was in 1912, in midwinter, when I
came to the unmistakable conclusion that the epithet "dreary" was not
misplaced.  The vast open spaces and broad streets with their scanty
traffic were unutterably depressing during the short hours of
uncertain daylight, {344} whilst the whirling snowflakes fell
incessantly, and the low, leaden sky pressed like a heavy pall over
this lifeless city of perpetual twilight.

The particular business on which I had gone to Petrograd took me
daily to the various Ministries, and their gloomy interiors became
very familiar to me.

I then saw that in these Ministries the impossible had been attempted
in the way of centralisation.  The principle of the Autocracy had
been carried into the administrative domain, and every trivial detail
affecting the government of an Empire stretching from the Pacific to
the Baltic was in theory controlled by one man, the Minister of the
Department concerned.  Russians are conspicuously lacking in
initiative and in organising power.  The lack of initiative is
perhaps the necessary corollary of an Autocracy, for under an
Autocracy it would be unsafe for any private individual to show much
original driving power: and organisation surely means successful
delegation.  A born organiser chooses his subordinates with great
care; having chosen them, he delegates certain duties to them, and as
long as they perform these duties to his satisfaction he does not
interfere with them.  The Russian system was just the reverse:
everything was nominally concentrated in the hands of one man.  A
really able and zealous Minister might possibly have settled a
hundredth part of the questions daily submitted for his personal
decision.  It required no great political foresight to understand
{345} that, were this administrative machine subjected to any unusual
strain, it would collapse into hopeless confusion.

Being no longer young, I found the penetrating damp cold of Petrograd
very trying.  The airlessness too of the steam-heated and
hermetically sealed houses affected me.  I had, in any case, intended
to proceed to the West Indies as soon as my task in Petrograd was
concluded.  As my business occupied a far longer time than I had
anticipated, I determined to go direct to London from Petrograd, stay
two nights there, and then join the mail steamer for the West Indies.

Thus it came about that I was drinking my morning coffee in a room of
the British Embassy at Petrograd, looking through the double windows
at the driving snowflakes falling on the Troitsky Square, at the
frozen hummocks of the Neva, and at the sheepskin-clothed peasants
plodding through the fresh-fallen snowdrifts, whilst the grey
cotton-wool sky seemed to press down almost on to the roofs of the
houses, and the golden needle of the Fortress Church gleamed dully
through the murky atmosphere.  Three weeks afterwards to a day, I was
sitting in the early morning on a balcony on the upper floor of
Government House, Trinidad, clad in the lightest of pyjamas, enjoying
the only approach to coolness to be found in that sultry island.  The
balcony overlooked the famous Botanic Gardens which so enraptured
Charles Kingsley.  In front of me rose a gigantic Saman tree, larger
than {346} any oak, one mass of tenderest green, and of tassels of
silky pink blossoms.  At dawn, the dew still lay on those blossoms,
and swarms of hummingbirds, flashing living jewels of ruby, sapphire,
and emerald, were darting to and fro taking their toll of the nectar.
The nutmeg trees were in flower, perfuming the whole air, and the
fragrance of a yellow tree-gardenia, an importation from West Africa,
was almost overpowering.  The chatter of the West Indian negroes, and
of the East Indian coolies employed in the Botanic Gardens, replaced
the soft, hissing Russian language, and over the gorgeous tropical
tangle of the gardens the Venezulean mountains of the mainland rose
mistily blue across the waters of the Gulf of Paria.  I do not
believe that in three short weeks it would be possible to find a
greater change in climatic, geographical, or social conditions.  From
a temperature of 5° below zero to 94° in the shade; from the Gulf of
Finland to the Spanish Main; from snow and ice to the exuberant
tropical vegetation of one of the hottest islands in the world!  The
change, too, from the lifeless, snow-swept streets of Petrograd,
monotonously grey in the sad-coloured Northern winter daylight, to
the gaily painted bungalows of the white inhabitants of the
Port-of-Spain, standing in gardens blazing with impossibly brilliant
flowers of scarlet, orange, and vivid blue, quivering under the
fierce rays of the sun, was sufficiently startling.  The only flowers
I have ever seen to rival the garish rainbow brilliance of the
gardens of Port-of-Spain {347} were the painted ones in the
"Zauber-Garten" in the second act of "Parsifal," as given at Bayreuth.

It so happened that when Nicholas II visited India in 1890 as
Heir-Apparent, I stayed in the same house with him for ten days, and
consequently saw a great deal of him.  He was, I am convinced, a most
conscientious man, intensely anxious to fulfill his duty to the
people he would one day rule; but he was inconstant of purpose, and
his intellectual equipment was insufficient for his responsibilities.
The fatal flaw in an Autocracy is that everything obviously hinges on
the personal character of the Autocrat.  It would be absurd to expect
an unbroken series of rulers of first-class ability.  It is, I
suppose, for this reason that the succession to the Russian throne
was, in theory at all events, not hereditary.  The Tsars of old
nominated their successors, and I think I am right in saying that the
Emperors still claimed the privilege.  In fact, to set any
limitations to the power of an Autocrat would be a contradiction in
terms.

Nicholas II was always influenced by those surrounding him, and it
cannot be said that he chose his associates with much discretion.
There was, in particular, one fatal influence very near indeed to
him.  From those well qualified to judge, I hear that it is unjust to
accuse the Empress of being a Germanophile, or of being in any way a
traitor to the interests of her adopted country.  She was obsessed
with one idea: to hand on the Autocracy intact to her idolised little
son, and she had, in addition, a {348} great love of power.  When the
love of power takes possession of a woman, it seems to change her
whole character, and my own experience is that no woman will ever
voluntarily surrender one scrap of that power, be the consequences
what they may.  When to a naturally imperious nature there is joined
a neurotic, hysterical temperament, the consequences can be
disastrous.  The baneful influence of the obscene illiterate monk
Rasputin over the Empress is a matter of common knowledge, and she,
poor woman, paid dearly enough for her faults.  I always think that
Nicholas II missed the great opportunity of his life on that fateful
Sunday, January 22, 1905, when thousands of workmen, headed by Father
Gapon (who subsequently proved to be an agent provocateur in the pay
of the police), marched to the Winter Palace and clamoured for an
interview with their Emperor.  Had Nicholas II gone out entirely
alone to meet the deputations, as I feel sure his father and
grandfather would have done, I firmly believe that it would have
changed the whole course of events; but his courage failed him.  A
timid Autocrat is self-condemned.  Instead of meeting their
Sovereign, the crowd were met by machine-guns.  In 1912, Nicholas II
had only slept one night in Petrograd since his accession, and the
Empress had only made day visits.  Not even the Ambassadresses had
seen the Empress for six years, and there had been no Court
entertainments at all.

{349}

The Imperial couple remained in perpetual seclusion at Tsarskoe Selo.

In my days, Alexander II was constantly to be seen driving in the
streets of Petrograd entirely alone and unattended, without any
escort whatever.  The only things that marked out his sledge were the
two splendid horses (the one in shafts, the loose "pristashka"
galloping alongside in long traces), and the kaftan of his coachman,
which was green instead of the universal blue of public and private
carriages alike.

The low mutterings of the coming storm were very audible in 1912.
Personally, I thought the change would take the form of a "Palace
Revolution," so common in Russian history; _i.e._, that the existing
Sovereign would be dethroned and another installed in his place.

I cannot say how thankful I am that so few of my old friends lived to
see the final collapse, and that they were spared the agonies of
witnessing the subsequent orgies of murder, spoliation, and lust that
overwhelmed the unhappy land and deluged it in blood.

Horrible stories have reached us of a kindly, white-headed old couple
being imprisoned for months in a narrow cell of the Fortress, and
then being taken out at dawn, and butchered without trial; of a
highly cultivated old lady of seventy-six being driven from her bed
by the mob, and thrust into the bitter cold of a Petrograd street in
January, in her night-dress, and there clubbed to death in {350} the
snow.  God grant that these stories may be untrue; the evidence,
though, is terribly circumstantial, and from Russia comes only an
ominous silence.

If I am asked what will be the eventual outcome in Russia, I hazard
no prophecies.  The strong vein of fatalism in the Russian character
must be taken into consideration, also the curious lack of
initiative.  They are a people who revel in endless futile talk, and
love to get drunk on words and phrases.  Eighty per cent. of the
population are grossly ignorant peasants, living in isolated
communities, and I fail to see how they can take any combined action.
It must be remembered that, with the exception of Lenin, the men who
have grasped the reins of power are not Russians, but Jews, mainly of
German or Polish origin.  They do not, therefore, share the fatal
inertness of the Russian temperament.

I started with the idea of giving some description of a state of
things which has, perhaps, vanished for all time from what were five
years ago the three great Empires of Eastern Europe.

There is, I think, inherent in all human beings a love of ceremonial.
The great influence the Roman and Eastern Churches exercise over
their adherents is due, I venture to say, in a great measure to their
gorgeous ceremonial.  In proof of this, I would instance lands where
a severer form of religion prevails, and where this innate love of
ceremonial finds its rest in the elaborate ritual of Masonic and
kindred bodies, since it is denied it in ecclesiastical matters.  The
reason that Buddhism, {351} imported from China into Japan in the
sixth century, succeeded so largely in ousting Shintoism, the ancient
national religion, was that there is neither ritual nor ceremonial in
a Shinto temple, and the complicated ceremonies of Buddhism supplied
this curious craving in human nature, until eventually Buddhism and
Shintoism entered into a sort of ecclesiastical partnership together.

I have far exceeded the limits which I started by assigning to myself
and, in extenuation, can only plead that old age is proverbially
garrulous.  I am also fully conscious that I have at times strayed
far from my subject, but in excuse I can urge that but few people
have seen, in five different continents, as much of the surface of
this globe and of its inhabitants as it has fallen to my lot to do.
Half-forgotten incidents, irrelevant it may be to the subject in
hand, crowd back to the mind, and tempt one far afield.  It is quite
possible that these bypaths of reminiscence, though interesting to
the writer, may prove wearisome to the reader, so for them I tender
my apologies.

I have endeavoured to transfer to others pictures which remain very
clear-cut and vivid in my own mind.  I cannot tell whether I have
succeeded in doing this, and I hazard no opinion as to whether the
world is a gainer or a loser by the disappearance of the pomp and
circumstance, the glitter and glamour of the three great Courts of
Eastern Europe.

The curtain has been rung down, perhaps {352} definitely, on the
brave show.  The play is played; the scenery set for the great
spectacle is either ruined or else wantonly destroyed; the puppets
who took part in the brilliant pageant are many of them (God help
them!) broken beyond power of repair.--_Finita la commedia!_




{355}

INDEX

A

Abdurrahman Khan, 316

A deaf diplomat, 32

Aehrenthal, Baron von, 306, 308, 309

Agra Palace, India, 186

A journalist outwitted, 310

Akbar, 186

Albuquerque, 237

Alexander II, 116; attempted assassination of, in 1880, 125,
assassination of, 157 _sqq._; sorrow of the people for, 159; funeral
of, 159 _sqq._; King Edward and Queen Alexandra at, 162, 208, 349.

Alexander III, Order of the Garter conferred on, 162 _sqq._;
precautions for safety of, 164, 189.

Alexandra Colony, 269 _sqq._

Ali Pasha and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66.

Alsace, 15

Ampthill, Lady, 27; saves the life of William II, 73

Ampthill, Lord, 26

Andrassy, Count, and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66

An embarrassing situation, 114

An exclusive Court, 63

Arabi Pasha, 201, 204

Argentine girls, beauty of, 260

Aristocratic waitresses, 24-25

Arisugawa, Prince, 336

Arisugawa, Princess, 336

Asuncion, 276 _sqq._

Augusta, Empress, 34

Austria, disappearance of the Court, 13

Austrian aristocracy, characteristics of, 49; interrelationship of, 50

Austrian diplomat, a deaf, 32

Awkward predicament, an, 137-138



B

Bahia, 240

Barmecides' feast, a, 25

Bay of Chaleurs, 300

Beaconsfield, Lord, and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66, 67

Bear hunt in Russia, a, 139-141

Beauharnais, Countess Zena, 179

Beethoven, 59

Bieloselskaya, Princess, 179

Bismarck, 16 _sqq._, 27, 28; on male and female nations, 28

Bismarck, Count Herbert, 30, 39, 308

Biting-fish in South America, 274

Blessing of the Neva, the, 122

Blowitz, M. de, 68, 69

Botanic Gardens at Rio de Janeiro, the, 245

Brazil, 238

British Minister, a, in Carnival time, 250 _sqq._

Broadminded Scots parents, 111

Buckingham Palace and Berlin Schloss compared, 39-40

Buenos Ayres, 248 _sqq._; carnival at, 250; masked balls in, 255;
sport in, 264 _sqq._

Bulow, Hans von, 26



C

Calcutta, the Maidan at, 321

"Camp," the, Buenos Ayres, 249

Campbell, Colonel, 234

Canada, 300 _sqq._

Carnival at Buenos Ayres, the, 249

Cathedrals, three famous Moscow, 183

Carolath-Beuthen, Princess, 39

Catherine the Great, 192; and the violet in Tsarskoe Park, 194

Charlemagne, 50

Cintra, 235

Circus in Lisbon, 221

Circus performer who became a Bishop, 225-226

Classification of nationalities, Bismarck's, 28

Clown, the author's personal experience as a, 223

Commercial Court Chamberlain, a, 243

Congress of 1878, the, in Berlin, 66

Connaught, Duchess of, 43

Conversational difficulties, 43-47, 166

Court beauties, 39, 179

Courting in Portugal, a curious custom, 217

"Croissants"--Viennese roll, origin of, 57

Crown Prince, 79

Culinary curiosities in Japan, 318-319

Curious sporting incidents, 145 _sq._



D

Darwin, 257

Dawn in a Finnish forest, 174 _sq._

"Deaf and dumb people," 134

Deference paid to Austrian Archdukes, 63

Delyanoff, M., Minister of Education, 127; curious obsequies of,
127-129

Delyanoff, Mme., 127

Dentist, a polite, 205-206

Depreciated currency in the Argentine, 275

De Reszke, Edouard, 220

De Reszke, Jean, 220

De Reszke, Mlle., 220

Diaz, 237

Dolgorouki, Prince Alexander, 180

Dolgorouki, Princess Kitty, 179

Dolgorouki, Princess Mary, 179, 180

Dom Fernando, 212, 213, 235

Dom Luiz, 212-213

Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, 243-244-245-246

Doré, Gustave, 234-235

Dowdeswell, Admiral, 231

Drunkenness in Russia, 141-142

Duc de Croy, the, a Belgian and an Austrian subject, 53

Dué, M., Swedish Minister to Russia, 128

Dufferin, Marchioness of, 88-89, 129, 139, 154, 159, 160

Dufferin, Marquis of, Ambassador to Petrograd, 88 _sqq._, 128, 129,
153; his diplomatic methods, 156-157-310



E

Easter Supper in Russia, the, 109

Easy-going Austria, 49

Edinburgh, Duchess of, 125

Edinburgh, Duke of, 123

Elector of Brandenburg, 52

Emperor Frederick, 34, 79

Emperor William I, 32-33

Empress Marie, 208

Empress Elisabeth, 63-64

Empress Frederick, 33, 79

England, "Junker" Party's hostility to, 20

Environs of Berlin, 70 _sqq._

European Courts, disappearance of, 13

Exciting salmon fishing, 166-167

Expensive entertainment, an, 153

Exquisite Russian church music, 92

Extradition Treaty between Great Britain and Paraguay, 204



F

Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, Prince, 212

Finland, 164-165 _sqq._

Footman as entomologist, the, 246-247

Formosa, 277

Fortress Church, Petrograd, 89, 90

Francis II, last of the Holy Roman Emperors, 50-51

Franz Josef of Austria, 52, 308

Frederick Charles of Prussia, Princess, 34

Frederick Count of Hohenzollern, 52

Frederick the Great, 27, 36, 74-75

Frederick William I, 74

French Ambassador's ball at Moscow, unusual incident at, 190-191



G

Gapon, Father, 348

Gargantuan dinner, a, 187-188

Gatchina Palace, 208; children's play-room at, 209-210

George V, 186

German "door-politeness," 219

Germany, disappearance of the Court, 13

Germany, music in, 22-23

Ghika, Prince, Roumanian Minister to Russia, 128

Giers, M. de, Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 103, 202, 203, 204

Gigantic Court Pages, 40

Gonçalves, 241

Gortchakoff, Prince, and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66, 67

Gourmet, an ecclesiastical, 41-45

Gran Chaco, the, 268

Groote Constantia, 197

Gulf between Russian nobility and peasants, 147



H

Harraka Niska, 164 _sqq._

Henry the Navigator, Prince, 237

Hilarious funeral, a, 127-128

Hohenzollerns ever a grasping race, 52

"Holy Roman Emperor," the, 50

Hooveny M. van der, Netherlands Minister to Russia, 128

Howard, Dick, 207, 281, 285

Humbert, King, 326

Hungary, invasion of, by the Turks in 1683, 56



I

Ice-boating on the Gulf of Finland, 176

India, 186

Indoor games, Russians' love for, 177

Inelegant palaces, 75

Inquisitive peasant, an, 135

"Intelligenzia," the, 104

Irritating customs in Vienna, 54-55

Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, 201

Ivan III, 184



J

Japan, 317-330, 343 _sqq._

Japanese advertising, 338

Japanese politeness, 334

Jardine, Captain, 284 _sqq._

Jena, 16

Jomini, Baron, 103

"Junker" Party, hostility of, towards England, 20



K

Karolyi, Countess, Austrian Ambassadress in Berlin, 38, 63

Katheodory Pasha and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66

Kiderlin-Waechter, Baron von, 306-307

King Edward attends Alexander II's funeral, 162

King of Prussia proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles, 15

Kingsley, Charles, 345

Klepsch, Colonel, 309

Koltesha, 167-168-169

Koltesba, shooting at, 168 _sqq._

Königgrätz, 15

Kremlin, the, 182 _sqq._; the Great Palace, 185

Kyoto, the Emperor's palace, 321



L

Ladies' unchangeable Court fashions in Russia, 117

Lapp encampment on the Neva, 112-113

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 307

Lazareff and the great Orloff diamond, 124

Leopold I, 52

"Les Bals des Palmiers," 120

Leuchtenberg, Duchess of, _see_ Beauharnais

Liebknecht, Herr, 29

Lisbon, 211

Lisbon, beauty of, 229

Lister, Lord, 192

Liszt, 26

Lobkowitz Palace, 59

Lobkowitz, Prince, 59

Lopez, Francisco, 277

Lorraine, 15

Louis XIV, 52

Louis XVI, 57

Louise Margaret of Prussia, Princess, 43

Louise, Queen, of Prussia, 30-31

Lovendal, Count, Danish Minister in Petrograd, 306-307

Luncheon in pyjamas, 154

Luxembourg Palace, the, 36



M

"Making the Circle," trying ordeal of Prussian Princesses, 43

Margherita, Queen, 326

Maria II, Queen, 212

Marie Antoinette, 57

Mendelssohn, 31

Midnight drive, an exciting, 150-151

Militarism in Germany, 15 _sqq._

Misguided midshipmen, 231-232

Mitsu, Count, 333

Mitsu, Countess, 334, 337

Moltke, Field-Marshal von, 30

Montebello, Comte de, French Ambassador, 189-190

Montebello, Comtesse de, 189

Montferrand, M., Architect of St. Isaac's, Petrograd, 91

Moscow, beauty of, 181-182 _sqq._

Moscow cathedrals, three famous, 183

Moscow, Imperial Treasury at, splendour of, 184

Music, Germans as lovers of, 22

"Musical chairs" in Japan, 319



N

Napoleon I, 16; coronation of, 50-51; bribes electors of Bavaria,
Württemberg, and Saxony, 51

"Napoleon III," 36-37

Narrow escape from drowning of William II, 73

Natural beauties of Brazil, 246

Neva, blessing of the, 121

Newspaper enterprise, 316

Nicholas I, 185-194

Nicholas II, 158, 189, 347 _sqq._

Nihilist friends, 104 _sqq._

Nikko river, Japan, 331

Nondescript waiters, 184

Novel form of sport, a, 171-172 _sq._



O

Old Schloss, Berlin, 34-35; comparison with Buckingham Palace, 39-40

Opera in Lisbon, 221

Organ Mountains, the, 245, 248

Oriental traits in Russian character, 101

Orloff diamond, the, 124



P

Paget, Sir Augustus, 327

Palaeologus, Sophia, wife of Ivan III, 184

Paraguay, 276 _sqq._; Extradition Treaty between Great Britain and,
204

Paraguayan race meeting, a, 281

Paraguayan women, attractive, 282

Paraná river, the, 277

Patiño Cué, 285 _sqq._

Peace Congress between Russia and Turkey in Berlin, 1878, 66 _sqq._

Peasant's house in Russia, a, 131-132 _sqq._

Pernambuco, 240

Peter the Great, 51, 95, 102-103 _sq._

Peterhof, 196; its charming park, 197; a plethora of palaces round,
198

Petrograd, transference to, 76; a disappointing capital, 86; English
Embassy at, 89; Palace ball, 119; balls at, peculiarities of, 178;
famous Society beauties of, 179; inclement climate of, 193;
revisited, 340 _sqq._

Petropolis, diversions at, 245-246, 248

Pombal, Marquis de, 230

Portugal, two Kings of, 212

Portuguese bull-fights, bloodless, 214 _sqq._; comparison of with
Spanish, 216

Portuguese coinage, 228

Portuguese politeness, 220

Potemkin, 343

Potsdam, 71-72 _sqq._

Potsdam Palaces, 74-75

Prussian militarism, 15 _sqq._

Prussian Princesses, a trying ordeal, 43

"Princesse Château," 95 _sqq._, 180

Pugnacious Court Pages, 40-41



Q

Quebec, 300

Queen Alexandra attends Alexander II's funeral, 162

Queen Victoria, queenly dignity of, 116

Queen Victoria confers Order of the Garter on Alexander III, 162
_sqq._

Quirinal at Rome, the, 14



R

Radziwill, Princess William, 39

"Rag-time" and Rubinstein, 25-26

Rasputin, 348

Rauch, 31

Red-bearded priest, the, 110

Richter, Gustav, 30

Richter, Mme., 31

River Plate, the, 299

"Ring," the, in Berlin, 23

Rio de Janeiro, beauty of, 240

Rome, the Quirinal, 14

Rubinstein and "Rag-time," 25-26

Russia, disappearance of the Court, 13

Russia and Turkey, Peace Congress in Berlin, 66

Russian frontier police, 84

Russian gipsies, 149-150; their fascinating singing, 151-152

Russian illusions, 198-199

Russian Imperial Yacht Club, the, 100

Russian ladies' unchangeable Court fashions, 117

Russian language, difficulties exaggerated, 94

Russian limitations, 102

Russian police, 77

Russian village habits, 146

Russians really Orientals, 101



S

Sadowa, 15

St. Isaac's church, Petrograd, 91; midnight Easter Mass at, 105 _sqq._

Salisbury, Lord, and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 66-69

Scandalized governess, a, 155

Schleinitz, Mme. de, 25

"Schlüssel-Geld," an unpopular tax, 55

Schouvaloff, Count Peter, and the Peace Congress in Berlin, 1878, 66;
180

Schouvaloff, Countess Betsy, 179-180

Secret Police in Russia, the, 99

Seven Weeks' War, the, 15

Shah Jehan, 186-196

Shennan, Mr. David, 261-262

Sigismund, 52

Ski-ing, 168 _sq._

Skobeleff, General, 179

Slovenly Russian uniforms, 118

Sobieski, John, King of Poland, routs the Turks, 56

Spanish and Portuguese bull-fights, difference between, 216

Sport in Russia, 128-129

Strauss, Johann, 58; an exacting conductor, 59

"Street of toleration," the, 126

Strousberg, Herr, railway magnate, 31

Stürmer, M., destroyer of the Russian Empire, 158

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, in Petrograd, 93



T

Talleyrand, 50

Tel-el-Kebir, 204

Tetschen, 48

Teutonic Knights, the, 16

Tewfik, 201

Tigre, the, 299

Toboganning in Finland, 174-175 _sq._

Tokugawa dynasty, 320

Tokyo, 317

Tokyo, Uyeno Park at, 325; 332

Trinidad, 345

Tsarskoe Park, curiosities in, 193

Tsarskoe Selo, 191 _sqq._

Turkey and Russia, Peace Congress in Berlin, 66

Turks, invasion of Hungary, by, in 1683, 56

Turks routed by John Sobieski in 1683, 56



U

Ultimatum to Russia, a young man's, 202

Unusual occupants of a palace, 126

Urbain, the cook, 42



V

Van der Stell, Governor, 197

Vasco de Gama, 237

Victoria, Queen, 42

Victor Emmanuel, 14

Vienna, 48 _sqq._

Vienna, delightful environs of, 64

Viennese Court entertainments, 62

Viennese orchestras, 55 _sq._

Viennese restaurants and orchestras, excellence of, 55

Viennese women, comeliness of, 57

Villages in Russia, similarity of, 131-132

Vladimir, Grand Duke and death of Alexander II, 159



W

Waddington, M., and the Congress of Berlin, 1878, 67

Wagner, the "Ring" in Berlin, 23-24, 25

Waitresses, aristocratic, 24-25

Water-throwing at Buenos Ayres Carnival, 249

Wends, the, 16

William IV, 72

Winter Palace, Petrograd, the, 114-122 _sqq._

Wolseley, Sir Garnet, 204

Wolves as fellow travelers, 131



Y

Yellow fever at Rio de Janeiro, 241-242-243