25 chapters
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25 chapters
NOTE
NOTE
My thanks are due to Messrs. Methuen for allowing me to use in Chapters XVI.-XIX. some matter which has already appeared in A Year in Russia and Russian Essays , two books published by them; to Mr. Leo Maxse for allowing me to use an article on Sarah Bernhardt which appeared in the National Review , and has been re-written for this book; to Father C. C. Martindale and Mr. Desmond MacCarthy for kindly correcting the proofs. M. B. TO J....
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CHAPTER I THE NURSERY
CHAPTER I THE NURSERY
When people sit down to write their recollections they exclaim with regret, “If only I had kept a diary, what a rich store of material I should now have at my disposal!” I remember one of the masters at Eton telling me, when I was a boy, that if I wished to make a fortune when I was grown up, I had only to keep a detailed diary of every day of my life at Eton. He said the same thing to all the boys he knew, but I do not remember any boy of my generation taking his wise advice. On the other hand,
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CHAPTER II THE NURSERY AND THE SCHOOLROOM
CHAPTER II THE NURSERY AND THE SCHOOLROOM
Life was divided between London from January to August, then Devonshire till after Christmas. In the nursery and the early part of the schoolroom period we used to go to Coombe in the summer. Coombe seemed to be inextricably interwoven with London and parallel to it; and I remember dinner-parties happening, and a Hungarian band playing on the lawn, unless I have dreamt that. But there came a time, I think I must have been six or seven, when Coombe was sold, and we went there no more, and life wa
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CHAPTER III MEMBLAND
CHAPTER III MEMBLAND
To mention any of the other people of the outside world at once brings me to Membland, because the outside world was intimately connected with that place. Membland was a large, square, Jacobean house, white brick, green shutters and ivy, with some modern gabled rough-cast additions and a tower, about twelve miles from Plymouth and ten miles from the station Ivy Bridge. On the north side of the house there was a gravel yard, on the south side a long, sweeping, sloping lawn, then a ha-ha, a field
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CHAPTER IV MEMBLAND
CHAPTER IV MEMBLAND
In the summer holidays of 1883 Mr. Warre came to stay with us. John, Cecil, and Everard were at his house at Eton. Cecil was to read with him during the holidays. Cecil was far the cleverest one of the family and a classical scholar. Mr. Warre was pleased to find I was interested in the stories of the Greek heroes, but pained because I only knew their names in French, speaking of Thesée, Medée, and Egée. The truth being that I did not know how to pronounce their names in English, as I had learnt
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CHAPTER V SCHOOL
CHAPTER V SCHOOL
I went to school in September 1884. On the 7th of September John came of age, and we had a large party in the house and a banquet for the tenants in the tennis court, at which I had to stand up on a chair and make a speech returning thanks for the younger members of the family. I travelled up to London with my mother and Mr. Walter Durnford, and was given Frank Fairleigh to read in the train, but it was too grown-up for me, and I only pretended to read it. We stayed a night in Charles Street. I
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CHAPTER VI ETON
CHAPTER VI ETON
I enjoyed Eton from the first moment I arrived. The surprise and the relief at finding one was treated like a grown-up person, that nobody minded if one had a sister called Susan or not, that all the ridiculous petty conventions of private-school life counted for nothing, were inexpressibly great. Directly I arrived I was taken up to my tutor in his study, which was full of delightful books. He took me to the matron, Miss Copeman, whom we called MeDame. I was then shown my room, a tiny room on t
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CHAPTER VII GERMANY
CHAPTER VII GERMANY
I spent the Christmas holidays, after leaving Eton, at Membland. I had had another little book of poems printed privately as a Christmas present for my mother, and I was still making discoveries in English literature, and of these the most important of all: Shakespeare and Milton’s Paradise Lost . We travelled up in January to London, and it was settled that I was to go to Germany to learn German. My father heard of a family in Hanover where English boys were taken, but there was no room there.
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CHAPTER VIII ITALY, CAMBRIDGE, GERMANY, LONDON
CHAPTER VIII ITALY, CAMBRIDGE, GERMANY, LONDON
After Christmas I stayed a few days with Chérie at her house at Cosham and with the Ponsonbys at the Isle of Wight. Uncle Henry Ponsonby said he had taken one book with him in the Crimean War, and he had read it through. This was Paradise Lost . The conversation arose from his quoting the lines: and I happened to know where the quotation came from. I stayed for a few days with the Bensons at Addington. Arthur and Fred Benson were there, but none of the rest of the family. Fred Benson had just fi
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CHAPTER IX OXFORD AND GERMANY
CHAPTER IX OXFORD AND GERMANY
The time soon came when I had to go up for my first examination, and before it there was a period of intensive cramming. I had scores of teachers, and spent hour after hour taking private lessons in Latin, German, shorthand, and arithmetic. A great deal of this cramming was quite unnecessary, as it did not really touch the vital necessities of the examination. I read a great deal of German; all Mommsen, a great deal of French, and all Renan; but literary French and German were not what was neede
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CHAPTER X PARIS
CHAPTER X PARIS
I had rooms at the Embassy, a bedroom above the Chancery, and a little sitting-room on the same floor as the Chancery. The Ambassador was Sir Edmund Monson; the Councillor, Michael Herbert; the head of the Chancery, Reggie Lister. Both of these had rooms to themselves where they worked. The other secretaries worked in the Chancery. In the morning, the bag used to arrive from the Foreign Office. It used to be fetched from Calais every night, and twice a week a King’s Messenger would bring it. The
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CHAPTER XI COPENHAGEN
CHAPTER XI COPENHAGEN
I arrived at Copenhagen in August. I went there direct from Paris and crossed whatever intervening seas lie between Denmark and Germany via Hamburg and Kiel. I had been given an ointment made of tar by a French hair specialist to check my rapidly increasing baldness, and I applied it before I went to bed in my cabin, which contained three other berths. When the other passengers, who had intended to share my cabin, put their heads into it, they were appalled by the smell of tar, and thought that
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CHAPTER XII SARAH BERNHARDT
CHAPTER XII SARAH BERNHARDT
I said that Sarah Bernhardt should have a chapter to herself. “Les Comédiens,” said Jules Lemaître, “tiennent beaucoup de place dans nos conversations et dans nos journaux parce qu’ils en tiennent beaucoup dans nos plaisirs.” Amongst all the many pleasures I have experienced in the theatre, the acutest and greatest have been due to the art and genius of Sarah Bernhardt. Providence has always been generous and yet economical in the allotment of men and women of genius to a gaping world. Economica
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CHAPTER XIII ROME
CHAPTER XIII ROME
I arrived in Rome, after staying a few days on the way in London and in Florence. In the Drury Lane Pantomime that year, I think it was Mother Goose , Dan Leno played a harp solo, which I think is the funniest thing I ever saw on the stage. He had a subtle, early Victorian, Byronic way of playing, refined and panic-stricken, and he played with a keepsake expression, and with sensibility, as though he might suddenly have the vapours; he became confused and entangled with the pedals, and at one mo
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CHAPTER XIV RUSSIA AND MANCHURIA
CHAPTER XIV RUSSIA AND MANCHURIA
When I arrived at St. Petersburg, the situation was regarded as grave, but people still did not believe in war. Sir Charles Scott, our Ambassador, had just left, or was just leaving; and Cecil Spring Rice was in charge at the Embassy. The large Court functions which were held at the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg, just after Christmas, were to take place: the Court concert and the State ball. The concert was held, and Chaliapine sang at it, but the State ball was put off. And never again was a
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CHAPTER XV BATTLES
CHAPTER XV BATTLES
We established ourselves in a small village about two miles from the town of Liaoyang. Everything was calm. This was on 29th August, and a battle was expected on the next day. Kuropatkin was rumoured to have said that he would offer a tall candle to Our Lady at Moscow if the Japanese fought at Liaoyang. A little to the south of us was a large hill called So-shan-tse; to the east a circle of hills; to the north, the town of Liaoyang. A captive balloon soared slowly up in the twilight. It did not
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CHAPTER XVI LONDON, MANCHURIA, RUSSIA
CHAPTER XVI LONDON, MANCHURIA, RUSSIA
During the summer of 1905 I did a certain amount of dramatic criticism for the Morning Post . I wrote notices on some of the foreign plays that were being given in London during that summer. Several foreign companies were with us. Duse had a season at the Waldorf Theatre; Coquelin played in L’Abbé Constantin , rather a tiresome, goody-goody play; Sarah Bernhardt produced Victor Hugo’s Angelo , l’Aiglon , Pelléas et Mélisande (with Mrs. Patrick Campbell), Phèdre , and Adrienne Lecouvreur , not Sc
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CHAPTER XVII RUSSIA: THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION
CHAPTER XVII RUSSIA: THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION
I spent all the winter of 1905-6 at Moscow with occasional visits to St. Petersburg and to the country. The strikes were over, but it was in a seething, restless state. Count Witte was Prime Minister. When he took office after making peace with the Japanese he was idolised as a hero, but he soon lost his popularity and his prestige. He satisfied neither the revolutionaries nor the reactionaries, and he was neither King Log nor King Stork. Elections were held in the spring for the convening of th
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CHAPTER XVIII ST. PETERSBURG
CHAPTER XVIII ST. PETERSBURG
In October 1906 I took up my duties as correspondent to the Morning Post at St. Petersburg. I took an apartment on the ground floor of a little street running out of the Bolshaya Konioushnaya. The situation which was created by the dissolution of the Duma was aptly summed up by a Japanese, who said that in Russia an incompetent Government was being opposed by an ineffectual revolution. Although no active revolution followed the dissolution of the Duma, a sporadic civil war spread all over the co
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CHAPTER XIX TRAVEL IN RUSSIA
CHAPTER XIX TRAVEL IN RUSSIA
After Christmas, the second Duma was convened and opened. Its doings were not interesting. It was not a representative body, as the elections had been carefully arranged; still it was better than nothing, and the very existence of a Duma of any kind exercised a negative effect on matters in general. The Government could be interpellated. Questions could be asked. The officials in the country knew that their doings could be discussed in the Duma, and this acted as a check. In April 1907, I had an
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CHAPTER XX SOUTH RUSSIA, JOURNALISM, LONDON
CHAPTER XX SOUTH RUSSIA, JOURNALISM, LONDON
In the autumn of 1907 I went for the first time to South Russia. To Kharkov, and then to Gievko, a small village in the neighbourhood, where I stayed with Prince Mirski in his country house. This was the first time I had visited Little Russia, that is to say, Southern Russia. The contrast between Central and Southern Russia is, I noted at the time, not unlike that between Cambridgeshire and South Devon. The vegetation was more or less the same in both places, and in both places the season was ma
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CHAPTER XXI CONSTANTINOPLE (1909)
CHAPTER XXI CONSTANTINOPLE (1909)
I arrived at Constantinople in May 1909, on the same day that the Sultan Abdul Hamid left the city. A revolution had just occurred. The Young Turk party had dethroned the Sultan. The revolution was a military one. When I arrived, the surface life of Constantinople was unchanged. The only traces of the crisis were a few marks, and some slight damage done by shells and bullets on the walls of the houses. The streets were crowded with soldiers. The tram-cars and the cabs were full of dusty men, sta
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CHAPTER XXII THE BALKAN WAR, 1912
CHAPTER XXII THE BALKAN WAR, 1912
“On arrive novice à toutes les guerres,” wrote the French philosopher; or if he did not, he said something like it. I have never known a place where being on the spot made so sharp a difference in one’s point of view as the Near East, and where one’s ignorance, and the ignorance of the great mass of one’s fellow-countrymen, was so keenly brought home to one. The change in the point of view happened with surprising abruptness the moment one crossed the Austrian frontier. There are other changes o
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CHAPTER XXIII CONSTANTINOPLE ONCE MORE (1912)
CHAPTER XXIII CONSTANTINOPLE ONCE MORE (1912)
As soon as I got back to Sofia I found that there would be nothing of interest for me to do or see there, and no chance of getting to the Bulgarian front. I might perhaps have got to Headquarters, but that would have been of little use, and the Times , for whom I was writing, already had one correspondent with the Bulgarian army. So I settled to go to Constantinople via Bucharest. I spent a night at Bucharest, and I arrived at Constantinople on a drizzly, damp, autumn day in November. Many peopl
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CHAPTER XXIV THE FASCINATION OF RUSSIA
CHAPTER XXIV THE FASCINATION OF RUSSIA
From 1912 until the summer of 1914 I spent the greater part of the year in Russia. I was no longer doing journalistic work, but I was still writing books on Russian life and literature. The longer I stayed in Russia, the more deeply I felt the fascination of the country and the people. In one of his books Gogol has a passage apostrophising his country from exile, and asking her the secret of her fascination. “What is,” he says, “the inscrutable power which lies hidden in you? Why does your achin
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