Memoirs of a British Agent

by R. H. Bruce Lockhart

  That first night in Moscow, however, he was a king in a palace of his own, and it was with praiseworthy resolution (alas! I make vain resolutions every time I make a change of surroundings) but with natural reluctance that I dragged myself to bed at eleven o’clock. I was well pleased with Moscow. The clear star-lit snow, the crisp, dry cold, the jingle of the sleigh bells, and the strange silence of the snow-banked streets, had stirred my pulses. Now Konchik’s music had provided me with a new sensation, blinding me to the defects of a life, which was to put both my health and my character to an impossible test. To be strictly truthful, my early departure from the restaurant was not entirely due to a newly acquired sense of duty. Knowing nothing of Russia, I had assumed that thick clothes would be necessary to protect me from the cold. I had, therefore, invested in the thickest of woollen underwear. As in winter the temperature of the average Russian room approaches that of a Turkish bath, I suffered acute discomfort. After that first night I put these offences away from me and have never worn them since.

  For the next three days I lived in a turmoil of entertainment. I did not even see the Consulate. Instead, I followed modestly at the heels of the delegation, lunching now with this corporation, now with that, visiting monasteries and race-courses, attending gala performances at the theatre, shaking hands with long-bearded generals and exchanging stilted compliments in French with the wives of the Moscow merchants.

  On the third day this fierce round of festivities was wound up with an immense dinner given by the Haritonenkos, the sugar kings of Moscow. I describe it in some detail because it gives an amazing picture of the Moscow which existed before the war and which will never come again.

  The Haritonenko’s house was an immense palace on the far side of the river just opposite the Kremlin.

  To meet the British delegates every official, every notable, every millionaire, in Moscow had been invited, and when I arrived I found a throng like a theatre queue struggling on the staircases. The whole house was a fairyland of flowers brought all the way from Nice. Orchestras seemed to be playing in every ante-chamber.

  When finally I made my way upstairs, I was lost in a crowd in which I knew no one. I doubt even if I shook hands with my host and hostess. But at long narrow tables vodka and the most delicious “zakuski,” both hot and cold, were being served by scores of waiters to the standing guests. I took a glass of vodka and tried several of the unknown dishes. They were excellent. Then an English-speaking Russian took pity on my loneliness, and I had more vodka and more “zakuski.” It was long past the appointed hour for dinner, but no one seemed to be moving, and presently it struck me that perhaps in this strange country the people dined standing up. I had another vodka and a second portion of reindeer tongue. Then, when my appetite was sated, a footman came along and handed me a card with a plan of the table and my own particular place, and a few minutes later a huge procession made its way to the dining-room. I do not wish to exaggerate. I say truthfully that I cannot remember the number of courses or the different varieties of wine which accompanied them. But the meal lasted till eleven o’clock and would have taxed the intestines of a giant. My immediate neighbours were a Miss von Meck, the daughter of a railway magnate, and Commander Kahovsky, the Russian flag-lieutenant, who had been attached to Lord Charles Beresford.

  Miss von Meck spoke excellent English, and under the warm glow of her unaffected volubility my shyness soon melted. Before the meal was half-way through she had given me a lightning survey of Anglo-Russian relations, a summary of the English and Russian characters, a thumb-nail sketch of everyone in the room, and a detailed account of all her own realised and unrealised desires and ambitions.

  Kahovsky, however, seemed nervous and ill-at-ease. I was soon to discover why. During dinner he was called away from the room and never returned. The next day I learnt that he had gone to the telephone to speak to his mistress, the wife of a Russian Governor, who lived in St. Petersburg. They had been on bad terms for some time, and with dramatic instinct she had chosen this moment to tell him that all was over. Kahovsky had then pulled out his revolver and, still holding the receiver, had put a bullet through his brain. It was very sad, very Russian, very hard on Lord Charles Beresford, and by way of example a little dangerous for a young and highly impressionable Vice-Consul.

  Dinner having dragged itself to an end, we again went upstairs to another vast room, where a stage had been erected. Here for over an hour Geltzer, Mordkin and Balashova provided us with a delightful ballet divertissement, and Sibor, the leading violinist of the “Big Theatre” orchestra, played Chopin nocturnes to us.

  What the evening must have cost I do not know. For me it was not to finish until the early morning. After the musical entertainment we danced. As far as I was concerned, it was not a successful experiment, and, strangely enough, in those days the Russians were poor ball-room dancers. Clinging firmly to the friendly von Meck girl, I repaired once more to the dining-room, where a continuous supper was in progress. Here I met my host’s son, a young chubby-faced boy, who was still in his ’teens and who even at that age showed signs of the corpulence of good living. With flushed cheeks he informed us that, after the guests had gone, we were going on to hear the gipsies. We formed a minor conspiracy, collected half a dozen kindred spirits, and at four in the morning set out in “troikas”—private “troikas” drawn by magnificent Arabs—on the long drive to “Streilna,” the kingdom of Maria Nikolaievna.

  I can still visualise those “troikas” standing before the house: the fur rugs; the drivers, with tiny fur-capped heads protruding from the immense folds of their “shubas,” for all the world like Gargantuan golliwogs; the beautiful horses straining at their bits; below us, the ice-bound river lit up like a silver thread by the moon, and immediately before us the ghostly towers of the Kremlin standing out like white sentinels before the starry camp of night.

  We took our place—two of us to each troika. The drivers purred to their horses, and in a second we were off. For four glorious miles we tore at breakneck speed through the deserted streets, up the Tverskaia, past the Brest Station, past the famous night establishment of Yar, out into the Petrovsky Park, until with stinging cheeks and icicles on the drivers’ beards we drew up before the miniature crystal palace which is “Streilna.”

  As in a dream I followed the others through the Palm Court, which is the main part of the building, into a large pine-walled “kabinet,” with a roaring wood fire burning in an open fire-place. The proprietor rubbed his hands and bowed. The head-waiter bowed without rubbing his hands. A host of waiters in white uniforms bowed still lower and moved silently to their various tasks. In a few seconds the room was prepared for the great ritual. We guests sat at a large table near the fire. Before us was an open space and behind it a semi-circle of chairs for the gipsies. The wine waiter brought the champagne, and then Maria Nikolaievna came in followed by eight gipsies, four men with guitars, and four girls, with eyes like sloes and sinuous graceful bodies. Both men and women were dressed in the traditional gipsy costume, the men with white-brocaded Russian shirts and coloured trousers, the girls in coloured silks with a red silk kerchief round their heads.

  When I met her that night for the first time, Maria Nikolaievna was a plump, heavy woman of forty. Her face was lined, and there was a wistful sadness in her large, grey eyes. In repose she looked an old and lonely woman, but when she spoke the lines in her face vanished into smiles, and one realised the immense reserves of strength which she could call upon at will. The cynic will say that her task in life was to collect foolish and preferably rich young men, to sing to them, and to make them drink oceans of champagne until their wealth or their father’s wealth was transferred from their pockets to her own. Commonsense may seem to be on the cynic’s side, but there was nothing cynical in Maria Nikolaievna’s attitude towards life. She was an artist—in her own way, a great artist—who gave full value for her money, and her kindness and generosity to those who were her friends came straight from the hear
t.

  That night I heard her sing for the first time, and the memory of those great deep notes, which are the secret of the best women gipsy singers, will remain with me until I die. That night, too, I drank my first “charochka” to her singing. For a novice it is rather a trying ordeal. A large champagne glass is filled to the brim. The gipsy singer places it on a plate and, facing the guest who is to drink the “charochka,” sings the following verse:

  “Like a scented flower

  Breathing out perfume,

  Bring the brimming glass;

  Let us drink a toast.

  Drink a toast to Román,

  Román our beloved,

  And until he drinks it down

  Pour him out no more.”

  The last four lines are a chorus, which is taken up with increasing frenzy by the whole troupe. The singer then advances towards the guest whom she is honouring, and holds out the plate to him. He takes the glass, bows low, stands erect, and then drinks the bumper in one draught, replacing the glass upside down on the plate to show that he has not left a drop.

  It is an intimate ritual. Only the guest’s Christian name is used, and, as there is no Robert in Russian, there and then Maria Nikolaievna christened me “Román,” which is the Russian equivalent, and Román or Rómochka I have remained to my Russian friends ever since.

  Maria Nikolaievna’s art, however, was, as I discovered even then, on a far higher plane than the singing of mere drinking songs. When she sang alone, her voice now passionate, now appealing, then sinking to an infinite sadness, my heart melted. This gipsy music, in fact, is more intoxicating, more dangerous, than opium, or women, or drink, and, although champagne is a necessary adjunct to the enjoyment, there is a plaintiveness in its appeal which to the Slav and Celtic races is almost irresistible. Far better than words it expresses the pent-up and stifled desires of mankind. It induces a delicious melancholy which is half-lyrical, half-sensuous. Something there is in it of the boundless width of the Russian steppe. It is the uttermost antithesis of anything that is Anglo-Saxon. It breaks down all reserves of restraint. It will drive a man to the moneylenders and even to crime. Doubtless, it is the most primitive of all forms of music, somewhat similar in its appeal (may the spirit of Maria Nikolaievna forgive me for this sacrilegious comparison) to the negro spirituals. And it is very costly. It has been responsible for the bulk of my debts. Yet to-morrow, if I had thousands and the desire to squander them, there is no entertainment in New York, Paris, Berlin or London or, indeed, anywhere in the world, which I should choose in preference to a gipsy evening at “Streilna” in Moscow or at the Villa Rhode in St. Petersburg. It is the only form of entertainment which has never bored me and which, if I yielded to the temptation, I know would never fail to charm.

  It would be foolish of me to pretend that my appreciation of gipsy music began on that first evening, or, rather early morning at “Streilna.” Knowing not a word of Russian, I was, in truth, a little bewildered. I did not know my companions well enough to allow a loose rein to my Celtic temperament, and the heat of the room and the sweet champagne made my head ache. I was, therefore, not sorry when at six in the morning the party broke up, and we made our way home. Then it was that I discovered the innate subtlety of the Russian. Both in St. Petersburg and in Moscow he has his places of amusement far outside the town—not for any sinister or licentious purpose but merely in order that the drive back may cure him of the after-effects of his carouse. There is no such thing as a pick-me-up in Russia. The crisp, dry winter air is all the tonic that is necessary. By the time I had reached my hotel, I was fit enough to begin the evening all over again.

  The Russia of those first three days of my Moscow life is gone for ever. I do not know what has happend to Miss von Meck. In 1930 her father—an old man of nearly seventy—was shot by the Bolsheviks as a dangerous counter-revolutionary. The Haritonenkos are dead. Their son is dead. Their elder daughter now lives in a two-roomed servantless flat in Munich. In 1930 she came over to England to protest to Lord Thomson, whom she had entertained in Russia, against the purchase of her father’s house by the British Government. The house to-day is the headquarters of the British Embassy in Moscow. It was first confiscated by the Bolsheviks and then sold by them to His Majesty’s Government.

  The next afternoon, much to its own and everybody else’s relief, the delegation left for England. It was to have one more adventure before it quitted Russian soil. As the train, which bore them back to sanity, drew into Smolensk late in the evening, a delegation of Russian clergy, headed by the local Bishop, stood on the platform to welcome them. They had come with bread and salt to greet the English Bishops. They found drawn blinds and darkened carriages. The unfortunate English were sleeping off the effects of ten days’ incessant feasting. The Russians, however, were insistent. They had faced the cold to see an English Bishop, and an English Bishop they would see even in his nightshirt. At last the train conductor, more terrified by his own clergy than by the prospective wrath of the foreign strangers, woke up Maurice Baring. That great man was equal to the occasion, and the dénouement was swift. Poking his head out of the window, he addressed the clergy in his best Russian:

  “Go in peace,” he shouted. “The bishops are asleep.” And then, to clinch the matter, he added confidentially but firmly: “They’re all drunk.”

  1 Kalatch: a wann roll with a handle like a basket

  CHAPTER TWO

  IF THE EXOTIC gaiety of these first three days was enough to turn the head of any young man, the departure of the British delegation soon brought me to my senses. The first sight of the British Consulate was a shattering blow. It was in the Consul’s flat in a shabby side-street and consisted of a single room. There was no messenger, no door-keeper. The Consul’s maid opened the door and, if she were out, I took her place. Montgomery Grove was a kind and tolerant chief, but he was married, had three children, was without private means, and in an extremely expensive post was shamefully underpaid. He was far poorer than the majority of the local British colony, which was composed mainly of Lancashiremen engaged in the cotton industry. Fortunately, the work was not very arduous. Every morning from ten to one I sat in the little ante-room, which was the Consular office. Its sole furniture consisted of two desks, a bookcase, a safe, a map of Russia and three chairs. If there was more than one visitor, Montgomery Grove fetched another chair from his drawing-room. I sat with my back to my chief, licked stamps, and whacked a typewriter. For the first few weeks I spent most of my time in translating commercial reports from the local German newspaper and in typing out copies of a stereotyped application in Russian for the renewal of the “permis de séjour,” which was required by every foreigner in Russia and which was furnished by the local Russian Passport Department. We had, of course, no clerk. Such Russian correspondence as was necessary was done by Montgomery Grove. Before I had been six weeks in the Consulate I was tipped by a fat Russian merchant for opening the outside door for him. Fear of hurting his feelings made me pocket the twenty copecks.

  I had seen much of official life in the Malay States. Even the young cadets had their punkah-wallahs, their clerks, their uniformed messengers. They sat, too, in luxurious offices and maintained a dignity which was respected by the whole business community. In Moscow the representative of the British Empire was housed in surroundings of which a Malayan Sanitary Board inspector would have been ashamed. Montgomery Grove, who had been a dashing and good-looking officer in an Indian cavalry regiment, must have felt his position keenly. He was not in a position to entertain the rich Muscovite merchants and made no attempt to do so. He carried out his duties without complaint, was a pillar of the local English church, and steered a careful and on the whole skilful course through the rough waters of local British sectional interests and jealousies.

  To myself the complete insignificance of my own position was a salutary lesson in humility, and, once I had recovered from the first shock, I accepted the situation with resignation and even managed to der
ive amusement from it. I had, of course, to leave my hotel. In those days a Vice-Consul with a salary of £300 a year could not afford to live at the Metropole, and the week I spent there cost me more than my first month’s salary. Moreover, it was essential for me to learn Russian. Indeed, in the absence of an interpreter, Montgomery Grove could not go on leave until I did. I therefore transferred myself, body and baggage, to the bosom of a Russian family. Here, I must confess, I had an extraordinary stroke of luck. Every year half a dozen English officers came to Moscow to study Russian for their interpreter’s examination. To meet their needs a certain number of Russian families specialised in teaching Russian. Most of them were squalid middle-class homes with nothing to recommend them in the way either of comfort or of intellectual uplift. By good fortune, the one family which had a vacancy at the time of my arrival, was the Ertels, and to the Ertels by the grace of God I went.

  Madame Ertel, the head of the house, was the widow of Alexander Ertel, the well-known Russian novelist and a friend of Tolstoy. She was a plump and rather delicate little woman of about fifty, very intellectual, with a keen interest both in literature and in politics, fussy in a crisis, but a born teacher. She had a large flat with an excellent library on the Vozdvizenka. The other inmates of my new home were her daughter, a dark-eyed temperamental young girl more like an Italian than a Russian, her niece, tall, good-looking and English in appearance, an Armenian student called Reuben Ivanovitch (his surname, like Michael Arlen’s, I can never remember), and a wondrously old lady, who was known as “babushka,”1 who rarely spoke, and who appeared only at meal times. Into this new and modest existence I plunged myself with my usual enthusiasm and my genius for adaptability. My afternoons were my own, except on rare occasions, and I devoted them exclusively to the study of Russian. Every day I had a lesson from Madame Ertel and her daughter, and under their skilful tuition I made rapid progress. They did their best, too, to make me one of the family, and, although I feel that at times I must have been a sore trial to them, we never exchanged an unpleasant word.