Russian Rambles

by Isabel F. Hapgood

  She remarked, one day, that there was no crying need for the Russian nobility to follow her husband's teachings and give away all their goods in order to be on a level with the peasants. Plenty of them would soon attain that blissful state of poverty in the natural course of things, since they were not only growing poorer every year, but the distribution of inheritances among the numerous children was completing the work, and very many would be reduced to laboring with their hands for a living. This is perfectly true. There is no law of primogeniture in Russia. The one established by Peter the Great having produced divers and grievous evils, besides being out of harmony with the Russian character, it was withdrawn. All the male children share equally in the father's estate as in title. The female children receive by law only an extremely small portion of the inheritance, but their dowry is not limited.

  Among the count's most ardent followers is one of his daughters. She does everything for herself, according to his teachings, in a manner which American girls, in even moderately well-to-do families, would never dream of. She works for the peasants in various ways, and carries out her father's ideas in other matters as far as possible. Her Spartan (or Tolstoyan) treatment of herself may be of value in character-building, as mortification of the flesh is supposed to be in general. Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles render her sacrifices unavailing. For example: one of the peasant women having been taken ill,-there was a good deal of sickness in the village,-she went to the hayfield to do the woman's work and prevent the forfeit of fifteen or twenty cents, the price of the day's labor. We strolled out to find her. The thermometer must have stood at 100 degrees F., and although the dry inland heat can be better borne than the same amount of damp heat, it was far from being comfortable weather even for indolent persons. We found her under a tree, resting and drinking cold tea, while she awaited the return, from some errand of their devising, of the peasant women who had been at work with her. She looked wretchedly ill, and we tried to prevail on her to go back to the house with us. But the count (who was not well enough to work) happened along, and as he said nothing she decided to stay and to resume labor at once, since the women seemed to have been detained.

  As we beat a retreat homeward under that burning sun, we discovered the nature of the peasant women's urgent business. They were engaged in stripping the count's bushes of their fruit and devouring it by the handful. We could not persuade him to interfere. "They want it, or they would not take it," he said. It was none of our business, to be sure, but those strong, muscular women offered such a contrast, in physique and conduct, to the fair, delicate young girl whom we had just left that we felt indignant enough to attack them ourselves, if it would have done any good. The next day his daughter was more seriously ill than the peasant woman whose place she had taken. I should not have felt unhappy to learn that those women had been uncomfortably ill in consequence of their greediness.

  The count has no longer a school for the peasant children, by the way. The necessity for that is past. But he must have been an original professor. A friend of mine in St. Petersburg, who was interested, during the sixties, in the secular Sunday-schools for workingmen who could not attend on week days, repeated to me the count's method as imparted to her by himself while visiting the capital. He objected to the rules which compelled the men to be regular in attendance, on the ground that learning must not be acquired thus mechanically, under compulsion, but when the scholar feels an inward impulse. He would not listen to the suggestion that this method would hardly answer when study must be prosecuted on specified days under penalty of eternal ignorance. He said that when he found his peasant pupils indisposed to learn he dismissed the school, went home, and occupied himself in his own affairs. After an interval, more or less long, a scuffling of feet and a rapping would become audible at the door, and small voices would plead: "Please, Lyeff Nikola'itch, we want to study. Please, come and teach us." He went, and they made rapid progress because all was purely voluntary.

  One of the whitened stone wings of the old manor house stands unchanged. It is occupied in summer by the countess's sister and her family. She is a handsome and clever woman, who translates, and who has written some strong short stories. The wing used by the count has been enlarged to meet the requirements of the large family, and yet it is not a great or imposing house. At one end a stone addition, like the original building, contains, on the ground floor, the count's two rooms, which open on an uncovered stone terrace facing the hedge-inclosed lawn, with beds of bright flowers bordering it, and the stately lindens of the grand avenues waving their crests beyond in the direction of the ponds. Over these rooms and the vestibule is the hall, indispensable as a dining-room and a play-room for the small children in wet weather and in winter. A wooden addition at the other end furnishes half a dozen rooms for members of the family, the tutor and the maids. Near by stand several log cottages,-the bakehouse, the servants' dining-room, and other necessary offices.

  The count's study is very plain. The walls are in part lined with bookcases; in part they are covered with portraits of relatives and of distinguished persons whom he admires. There are more bookcases in the vestibule, for people are constantly sending him books of every conceivable sort. I imagine that the first copies of every book, pamphlet, and journal on any hobby or "ism," especially from America, find their way to the address of Count Tolstoy. He showed me some very wild products of the human brain. The hall upstairs has a polished wood floor, as is usual with such rooms, and a set of very simple wicker furniture. Portraits of ancestors, some of whom figure in "War and Peace," hang upon the walls. A piano, on which the count sometimes plays, and a large table complete the furniture. Everything in the house is severely simple. If I take the liberty of going into these details, it is in the interest of justice. The house has been described in print-from imagination, it would seem-as "a castle luxuriously furnished," and the count has been reproached with it. Cheap as the furniture is, he grumbled at it when it was purchased; he grumbles at it still, and to me spoke of it as "sinful luxury." But then he cannot be regarded a fair judge of what constitutes luxury.

  The whole house, outside and in, is modest in the extreme. The park with its avenues of lindens, which were in full bloom during our visit, the ponds and lawns and forest, must have been superb in the time of his grandfather, and even of his mother, from whom he inherited it. A grove and thicket now occupy the site of the former manor, and screen the view of each wing from the other. Vegetable gardens and berry patches lie near at hand, and beds of brilliant but not rare flowers enliven the immediate vicinity of the house.

  The estate is large and fertile, though it does not lie in the famous "black-earth zone." This begins a few miles south of it.

  Plain wholesome food, simple dress, an open-air life without fixed programme, were what we found. In the morning, after drinking tea or coffee, with bread and butter, in the hall, we usually strolled through the lovely forest, filled with flowers and perfumes, to the little river about a mile distant, for a bath. The unpainted board bath-house had seats running along the walls, and steps leading down into the water. A framework supporting thick screens of golden rye straw extended far out over the stream. A door upstream swung open at will for ambitious swimmers. It was a solitary spot. The peasant girls pitching hay in the meadows beyond with three-pronged boughs stripped of their leaves were the only persons we ever saw. Clad in their best scarlet cotton sarafani and head kerchiefs, they added greatly to the beauty of the landscape. Haying is such easy work compared to the rest of the summer labors, that the best gowns are donned as for a festival.

  If the boys got ahead of us on those hot mornings, when we had dispensed with every article of clothing not absolutely necessary, we lay in the shadow of the fragrant birches at the top of the hill on the soft, short sward, which seems in Russia to grow as thick in dense forests as in open glades, and waited until they could tear themselves from the cool embrace of the stream. Then we went in, great and small, but
with no bathing-dress. The use of such a garment on such an occasion would be regarded as a sign that one was afflicted with some bodily defect which one was anxious to conceal. By the time we had refreshed ourselves and rambled back, searching for early mushrooms through the forest or the great plantation of birches set out by the count's own hands a quarter of a century before, and grown now to stout and serviceable giants, the twelve o'clock breakfast was ready under the trees. At this informal meal every one sat where he pleased, and helped himself. At dinner, on the contrary, my place was always at the count's left hand. We sat on whatever offered itself. Sometimes I had a wooden chair, sometimes a bit of the long bench like a plasterer's horse. Once, when some one rose suddenly from the other end of this, I tumbled over on the count and narrowly escaped wrecking his dinner.

  At no meal did the count ever eat a mouthful of meat, despite urgent persuasion. Boiled buckwheat groats, salted cucumbers, black bread, eggs with spinach, tea and coffee, sour kvas (beer made from black bread), and cabbage soup formed the staple of his diet, even when ill, and when most people would have avoided the cucumbers and kvas, at least.

  The family generally met as a whole for the first time at breakfast. The count had been busy at work in the fields, in writing or reading in his study; the boys with their tutor; the countess copying her husband's manuscript and ordering the household. After breakfast every one did what he pleased until dinner. There was riding, driving,-anything that the heat permitted. A second bath, late in the afternoon, was indulged in when it was very hot. The afternoon bathing party generally drove down in a lineika, a sort of long jaunting-car with a central bench, not too wide, on which the passengers sit back to back, their feet resting on a narrow footboard which curves over the wheels as a shield. This lineika had also cross-seats at each end, and with judicious packing could be made to hold sixteen persons. As it was upholstered in leather and had no springs, there was some art in keeping one's seat when the three horses were going at full speed over the uneven forest road.

  After breakfast I sometimes sat under the trees with the countess, and helped her sew on baby Ivan's clothes, for the pleasure of her conversation. Nothing could be more fascinating. This beautiful woman has not rusted during her long residence in the country. There are few better informed women than she, few better women of business, few women who are so clever and practical.

  One day, as I was sitting, armed with thimble and needle, waiting for her, the count discovered a hole in his pocket, and asked his niece to mend it for him. She had not her implements. I volunteered,-to do the mending, not to lend the wherewithal. The pocket was of black silk, my thread of white cotton, but that was of no consequence. I seated myself comfortably on the sand, and speedily discovered not one hole, but a row of holes such as wear along the seams of pockets. The count was greatly annoyed at the trouble he was giving me, protested as I began on each new hole, and was very restless. I was finally obliged to speak.

  "Lyeff Nikola'itch," I said, "do me the favor to sit still. Your reputation as well as mine is involved in this work. It must be done thoroughly and neatly quite as much for your sake as for mine."

  "How so?" he asked in surprise.

  "My woman's reputation for neat mending trembles in the balance; and do not you advocate the theory that we should help our fellow-men? You have helped others; it is your turn now to be experimented on. And besides, if the fellow-man obstinately refuses to be helped by others, how are we to do our duty by him? How could you work for others, if they persisted in following out the other half of your doctrine and doing everything for themselves? 'Tis plain that you understand how to render services far better than to receive them. Reform. Submit."

  The count laughed, with a sort of grim bewilderment in his eye, and behaved in an exemplary manner for the few remaining moments. I mentally thanked Fate for providing me with an opportunity for suggesting an object lesson on a point which had puzzled me not a little, and which I had been pining to attack in some form. He did not explain away my difficulties, it is true, but I was satisfied with having presented the other side of the shield to his attention.

  On another occasion, as we sat under the trees, a peasant came, scythe on shoulder, to complain to the countess of his wrongs. No one ever went to the count, knowing that his wife had full management. Peasants who came in a deputation to parley about hiring or buying extra land, and so on, applied directly to her. The comrades of this Vasily Alexei'itch had got two buckets of vodka, and had forced him, who detested liquor, to drink of it. Then they had become quarrelsome (he was peaceable), and they had torn his shirt-so! Hereupon he flung back his coat, worn in Russian fashion with the sleeves hanging, and let his faded red cotton shirt fall from his muscular shoulders, leaving him nude to the waist, save for the cheap little baptismal cross suspended round his neck by a cord. The small boys set up a shout of laughter at his story and his action. The countess rebuked him sharply for such conduct before the children, and refused to interfere in the quarrel. The man pulled his torn shirt over his body and slouched off. That evening, after tea, the count happened to hit upon a couple of Mr. Rider Haggard's books for discussion, and, for the benefit of those in the company who had not read it, gave the chief points of "She" in particularly lively style, which kept us all in laughter. In describing the heroine, he said that "she was clothed in an airy garment, like Vasily Alexei'itch;" and again that "she dropped her garment, and stood like Vasily Alexei'itch." He pronounced "She" and other works of Haggard "the lowest type of literature," and said that "it was astonishing how so many English people could go wild over them." He seemed to read everything, good and bad, and to possess not only an omnivorous literary appetite, but a wonderful memory for books, even in small details.

  Among the innumerable things which he read were Mormon publications, sent him regularly from headquarters. I cannot explain the object of the Mormons in making him the point of attack. He thought very highly of the doctrines of the Mormons as set forth by themselves, and could not understand why they were "persecuted" in America. No one had ever sent him documents on the other side of the question, and he seemed as ignorant of it as I was of the Mormon arguments. In answer to his queries, I told him that the problems involved were too numerous, serious, and complicated for me to enter upon; that the best way, under such circumstances, was for him to read statements set down in black and white by recognized authorities on the subject; and that I would cause books on the matter to be forwarded to him, which I did. But he persisted that our government is in the wrong.

  "It is a shame," said he, "that in a great and free country like America a community of people should be so oppressed, and not allowed that liberty of which you boast."

  "You know your Dickens well," I answered. "Have you any recollection of Martin Chuzzlewit? You will remember that when Martin was in America with Mark Tapley he saw a slave being sold. Mark Tapley observed that 'the Americans were so fond of Liberty that they took liberties with her.' That is, in brief, what ails the Mormons. The only argument in favor of them which can possibly be made is that their practice, not their preaching, offers the only solution of your own theory that all women should be married. But that theory has never been advanced in extenuation of their behavior. I offer it to you brand new, as a slight illustration of a very unpleasant subject."

  One day, during a chat in his study, he had praised Dickens.

  "There are three requisites which go to make a perfect writer," he remarked. "First, he must have something worth saying. Second, he must have a proper way of saying it. Third, he must have sincerity. Dickens had all three of these qualities. Thackeray had not much to say; he had a great deal of art in saying it; but he had not enough sincerity. Dostoevsky possessed all three requisites. Nekrasoff knew well how to express himself, but he did not possess the first quality; he forced himself to say something, whatever would catch the public at the moment, of which he was a very keen judge. As he wrote to suit the popular taste, believing not at all in wha
t he said, he had none of the third requisite." He declared that America had not as yet produced any first-class woman writer, like George Eliot and George Sand.

  Count Tolstoy's latest book at that time was "What to Do?" It was much discussed, though not very new. It will be remembered that in the final chapter of that work he argues that woman's whole duty consists in marrying and having as large a family as possible. But, in speaking of Mr. Howells's "The Undiscovered Country," which he had just discovered,-it was odd to think he had never heard of Mr. Howells before,-he remarked, in connection with the Shakers, that "it was a good thing that they did not marry."

  He said this more than once and at some length. I did not like to enter on the subject lest he should go too far, in his earnestness, before the assembled company. Therefore I seized an opportunity to ask his wife how he reconciled that remark with his creed that all women should marry.

  She answered that it certainly was not consistent, but that her husband changed his opinion every two years; and, to my consternation, she instantly appealed to him. He did not go into details, however. He pulled out a letter which he had received from a Russian woman, a stranger to him. The writer said: "While acknowledging the justice of your views, I must remark that marriage is a fate which is not possible to every woman. What, then, in your opinion, should a woman who has missed that fate do?"

  I was interested in his reply, because six months earlier he had advised me to marry. I inquired what answer he intended to send,-that is, if he meant to reply at all. He said that he considered the letter of sufficient importance to merit an answer, and that he should tell her that "every woman who had not married, whatever the reason, ought to impose upon herself the hardest cross which she could devise, and bear it."