My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 22

Before I left England I had a very strange, almost an overwhelming presentiment that I had better not come to Russia. I had by that time promised Mrs. Wynne that I would come, and I couldn't see that it would be the right thing to chuck her. I thought the work would suffer if I stayed at home, as she might find it impossible to get any other woman who would pay her own way and consent to be away for so long a time. Our prayers are always such childish things--prayer itself is only a cry--and I remember praying that if I was "meant to stay at home" some subst.i.tute might be found for me. This all seems too absurd when one views it in the light of what afterwards happened. My vision of "honour"

and "work" seem for the moment ridiculous, and yet I know that I was not so foolish as I seem, for I got a written statement from Mr. Hume Williams (Mrs. Wynne's trustee), saying, "A unit has been formed, consisting of Mrs. Wynne, Miss Macnaughtan, etc., and it has been accepted by the Russian Red Cross." The idea of being in Russia and having to look for work never in my wildest moments entered my head--and this is the end of the "vision," I suppose.

_Russian Christmas Day._--Took a car and went for a short run into the country. Weather fine and bright.

There is severe fighting in Galicia, and the rumour is that Urumiyah--the place to which I am going--has been evacuated.

My impression of Russia deepens--that it is run by beautiful women and rich men; and yet how charming everyone is to meet! Hardly anyone is uninteresting, and half the men are good-looking. The Cossack-dress is very handsome, and nearly everyone wears it. When the colour is dark red and the ornaments are of silver the effect is unusually good. They all walk well. One is amongst a primitive people, but a remarkably fine one!

_10 January._--I am taking French lessons. This would appear to be a simple matter, even in Russia, but it has taken me three weeks to get a teacher. The first to come required a rest, and must decline; the second was recalled by an old employer; the third had too many engagements; the fourth came and then holidays began, as they always do! First our Christmas, then the Russian Christmas, then the Armenian Christmas, leading on to three New Year Days! After that the Baptism, with its holidays and its vigils.

There is only one sort of breakfast-roll in this hotel which is soft enough to eat; it is not made on festivals, nor on the day after a festival. I can honestly say we hardly ever see one.

With much fear and trembling I have bought a motor-car. No work seems possible without it. The price is heavy, but everyone says I shall be able to get it back when I leave. All the same I shake in my shoes--a chauffeur, tyres, petrol, mean money all the time. One can't stop spending out here. It is like some fate from which one can't escape.

Still the car is bought, and I suppose now I shall get work.

[Page Heading: DIFFICULTIES]

We are all in the same boat. Mrs. Wynne has waited for her ambulances for three months, and I hear that even the Anglo-Russian hospital, with every name from Queen Alexandra's downwards on the list of its patrons, is in "one long difficulty." It is Russia, and nothing but Russia, that breaks us all. Everything is promised, nothing is done. The only _hope_ of getting a move on is by bribery, and one may bribe the wrong people till one finds one's way about.

_13 January._--The car took us up the Kajour road, and behaved well; but the chauffeur drove us into a bridge on the way down, and had to be dismissed. Tried to go to Erivan, but the new chauffeur mistook the road, so we had to return to Tiflis. N.B.--Another holiday was coming on, and he wanted to be at home. _I actually used to like difficulties!_

_15 January._--Started again for Erivan. All went well, and we had a lovely drive till about 6 p.m. The dusk was gathering and we were up in the hills, when "bang!" went something, and nothing on earth would make the car move. We unscrewed nuts, we lighted matches, we got out the "jack," but we could not discover what was wrong. So where were we to spend the night?

In a fold of the grey hills was a little grey village--just a few huts belonging to Mahomedan shepherds, but there was nothing for it but to ask them for shelter. Fortunately, Dr. Wilson knew the language, and he persuaded the "head man" to turn out for us. His family consisted of about sixteen persons, all sleeping on the floor. They gave us the clay-daubed little place, and fortunately it contained a stove, but nothing else. The snow was all round us, but we made up the fire and got some tea, which we carried with us, and finally slept in the little place while the chauffeur guarded the car.

In the morning nothing would make the car budge an inch, and, seeing our difficulty, the Mahomedans made us pay a good deal for horses to tow the thing to the next village, where we heard there was a blacksmith. We followed in a hay-cart. We got to a Malokand settlement about 5 o'clock, and found ourselves in an extraordinarily pretty little village, and were given shelter in the very cleanest house I ever saw. The woman was a perfect treasure, and made us soup and gave us clean beds, and honey for breakfast. The chauffeur found that our shaft was broken, and the whole piece had to go back to Tiflis.

It was a real blow, our trip knocked on the head again, and now how were we to get on? The railway was 48 versts away, and the railway had to be reached. We hired one of those painful little carts, which are made of rough poles on wheels, and, clinging on by our eyelids, we drove as far as an Armenian village, where a snowstorm came on, and we took shelter with a "well-to-do" Armenian family, who gave us lunch and displayed their wool-work and were very friendly. From there we got into another "deelyjahns" of the painful variety, and jolted off for about 25 miles, till, as night fell, we struck the railway, and were given two wooden benches to sleep on in a small waiting-room. People came and went all night, and we slept with one eye open till 2 a.m., when the chauffeur took a train to Tiflis. We sat up till 6 a.m., when the train, two hours late, started for Erivan, where we arrived pretty well "cooked" at 11 p.m.

[Page Heading: ERIVAN]

_Erivan. 20 January._--Last night's experiences were certainly very "Russian." We had wired for rooms, but although the message had been received nothing was prepared. The miserable rooms were an inch thick in dust, there were no fires, and no sheets on the beds! We went to a restaurant--fortunately no Russian goes to bed early--and found the queerest place, empty save for a band and a lady. The lady and the band were having supper. She, poor soul, was painted and dyed, but she offered her services to translate my French for me when the waiters could understand nothing but Russian. I was thankful to eat something and go to bed under my fur coat.

To-day we have been busy seeing the Armenian refugees. There are 17,000 of them in this city of 30,000 inhabitants. We went from one place to another, and always one saw the same things and heard the same tales.

Since the war broke out I think I have seen the actual breaking of the wave of anguish which has swept over the world (I often wonder if I can "feel" much more!). There was Dunkirk and its shambles, there was ruined Belgium, and there was, above all, the field hospital at Furnes, with its horrible courtyard, the burning heap of bandages, and the mattresses set on edge to drip the blood off them and then laid on some bed again.

I can never forget it. I was helping a nurse once, and all the time I was sitting on a dead man and never knew it!

And now I am hearing of one million Armenians slaughtered in cold blood.

The pitiful women in the shelters were saying, "We are safe because we are old and ugly; all the young ones went to the harems." Nearly all the men were ma.s.sacred. The surplus children and unwanted women were put into houses and burned alive. Everywhere one heard, "We were 4,000 in one village, and only 143 escaped;" "There were 30 of us, and now only a few children remain;" "All the men are killed." These were things one saw for oneself, heard for oneself. There was nothing sensational in the way the women told their stories.

Russia does what she can in the way of "relief." She gives 4-1/2 Rs. per month to each person. This gives them bread, and there might be fires, for stoves are there, but no one seems to have the gumption to put them up. Here and there men and women are sleeping on valuable rugs, which look strange in the bare shelters. Most of the women knitted, and some wove on little "fegir" looms. The dullness of their existence matches the tragedy of it. The food is so plain that it doesn't want cooking--being mostly bread and water; but sometimes a few rags are washed, and there is an attempt to try and keep warm. Yet I have heard an English officer say that nothing pleases a Russian more than to ask, "When is there to be another Armenian ma.s.sacre?"

The Armenians are hated. I wonder Christ doesn't do more for them considering they were the first nation in the world to embrace Christianity; but then, one wonders about so many things during this war. Oh, if we could stamp out the madness that seems to accompany religion, and just live sober, kind, sensible lives, how good it would be; but the Turks must burn women and children, alive, because, poor souls, they think one thing and the Turks think another! And men and women are hating and killing each other because Christ, says one, had a nature both human and divine, and, says another, the two were merged in one. And a third says that Christ was equal to the Father, while a whole Church separated itself on the question of Sabellianism, or "The Procession of the Son."

Poor Christ, once crucified, and now dismembered by your own disciples, are you glad you came to earth, or do you still think G.o.d forsook you, and did you, too, die an unbeliever? The crucifixion will never be understood until men know that its worst agony consisted in the disbelief which first of all doubts G.o.d and then must, by all reason, doubt itself. The resurrection comes when we discover that we are G.o.d and He is us.

[Page Heading: ETCHMIADZIN]

_21 January._--To-day, I drove out to Etchmiadzin with Mr. Lazarienne, an Armenian, to see that curious little place. It is the ecclesiastical city of Armenia--its little Rome, where the Catholicus lives. He was ill, but a charming Bishop--Wardepett by name--with a flowing brown beard and long black silk hood, made us welcome and gave us lunch, and then showed us the hospital--which had no open windows, and smelt horrible--and the lovely little third-century "temple." Then he took us round the strange, quiet little place, with its peaceful park and its three old brown churches, which mark what must once have been a great city and the first seat of a national Christianity. Now there are perhaps 300 inhabitants, but Mount Ararat dominates it, and Mount Ararat is not a hill. It is a great white jewel set up against a sheet of dazzling blue.

Hills and ships always seem to me to be alive, and I think they have a personality of their own. Ararat stands for the una.s.sailable. It is like some great fact, such as that what is beautiful must be true. It is grand and pure and lovely, and when the sun sets it is more than this, for then its top is one sheet of rose, and it melts into a mystic hill, and one knows that whatever else may "go to Heaven" Ararat goes there every night.

We visited the old Persian palace built on the river's cliff, and looked out over the gardens to the hills beyond, and saw the mosque, with its blue roof against the blue sky, and its wonderful covering of old tiles, which drop like leaves and are left to crumble.

_Tiflis. 24 January._--I left Erivan on Sunday, January 23rd. It was cold and sharp, and the train was crowded. People were standing all down the corridors, as usual. Nothing goes quicker than eight miles an hour, nothing is punctual, nothing arrives. The stations are filthy, and the food is quite uneatable. I often despair of this country, and if the Russians were not our Allies I should feel inclined to say that nothing would do them so much good as a year or two of German conquest. No one, after the first six months, has been enthusiastic over the war, and the soldiers want to get home. One young officer, 26 years old, has been loafing in Tiflis for six months, and has at last been arrested. Another took his ticket on eight successive nights to leave the place and never moved. At last he was locked in his room, and a motor-car ordered to take him to the station. He got into it, and was not heard of for three days, when his wife appeared, and found her husband somewhere in the town.

Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan have gone on ahead to Baku, but I must wait for my damaged car. A young officer in this hotel shot himself dead this morning. No one seems to mind much.

[Page Heading: RUSSIAN SOCIETY]

_25 January._--Last night I was invited to play bridge by one of the richest women in Russia. Her room was just a converted bedroom, with a dirty wall-paper. The packs of cards were such as one might see railway-men playing with in a lamp-room. Our stakes were a few kopeks, and the refreshments consisted of one tepid cup of tea, without either milk or lemon, and not a biscuit to eat. We all sat with shawls on, as our hostess said it wasn't worth while to light a fire so late at night.

A nice little Princess Musaloff and Prince Napoleon Murat played with me. We were rich in t.i.tles, but our shoulders were cold.

I have not seen a single nice or even comfortable room since I left England, and although some women dress well, and have pretty cigarette-boxes from the renowned Faberje, other things about them are all wrong. The furniture in their rooms is covered with plush, and the ornaments (to me) suggest a head-gardener's house at home with "an enlargement of mother" over the mantelpiece; or a Clapham drawing-room, furnished during some happy year when cotton rose, or copper was cornered. In this hotel the carpets are in holes in the pa.s.sages, and there are few servants; but I don't fancy that the people here notice things very much.

I went to see Mme. ---- one day in her new house. The rooms were large and handsome. There was a picture of a cow at one end of the drawing-room, and a mirror framed in plush at the other!

I must draw a "character" one day of the very charming woman who is absolutely indifferent to people's feelings. The fact that some humble soul has prepared something for her, or that a sacrifice has been made, or that one kind speech would satisfy, does not occur to her. These are the people who chuck engagements when they get better invitations, and always I seem to see them with expensive little bags and chains and Faberje enamels. Men will slave for such women--will carry things for them, and serve them. They have "success" until they are quite old, and after they have taken to rouge and paint. A tired woman hardly ever gets anything carried for her.

_26 January._--A day's march nearer home! This is the Feast of St. Nina.

There is always a feast or a fete here. People walk about the streets, they give each other rich cakes, and work a little less than usual.

This hotel still keeps its cripples. Prince Murat sits on his little chair on the landing. Prince Tschelikoff has his heart all wrong; there is the man with one leg.

Now Mlle. Lepnakoff, the singer, Musaloff, in his red coat, and some heavy Generals are here. We have the same food every day.

[Page Heading: ENFORCED IDLENESS]

Perhaps I was pretty near having a breakdown when I came abroad, and the enforced idleness of this life may have been Providential (all my hair was falling out, and my eyes were very bad, and the war was wearing me down rather); but to sit in an hotel bedroom or to potter over trifles in sitting-rooms seems a poor sort of way of pa.s.sing one's time. To rest has always seemed to me very hard work. I can't even go to bed without a pile of papers beside me to work at during the night or in the early morning!

When the power of writing leaves me, as it does fitfully and without warning, I have a feeling of loneliness, which helps to convince me of what I have always felt, that this power comes from outside, and can only be explained psychically. I asked a great writer once if he ever experienced the feeling I had of being "left," and he told me that sometimes during the time of desolation he had seriously contemplated suicide.

_30 January._--I got a telephone message from Mr. Bevan last night. He says Baku is too horrible, and there is no news of the cars. People are telling me now that if instead of cars we had given money, we should have been feted and decorated and extolled to the skies; but then, where would the money have gone? Last week the two richest Armenian merchants in this town were arrested for cheating the soldiers out of thousands of yards of stuff for their coats. A Government official could easily be found to say that the cloth had been received, and meanwhile what has the soldier to cover him in the trenches?

Armenians are certainly an odious set of people, and their ingrat.i.tude is equalled by their meanness and greed. Mr. Hills, who is doing the Armenian relief work here, pays all his own expenses, and he can't get a truck to take his things to the refugees without paying for it, while he is often asked the question, "Why can't you leave these things alone?"

Now that Mrs. Wynne has left I am asked the same question about her.

Russia can "break" one very successfully.

The weather has turned cold, and there is tearing wind and snow.

_1 February._--"No," says I to myself, in a supremely virtuous manner, "I shall not be beaten by this enervating existence here. I'll do _something_--if it's only sewing a seam."

So out came needles and cotton and mending and hemming, but, would it be believed, I am afflicted with two "doigts blancs" (festered fingers), and have to wear bandages, which prevent my doing even the mildest seam.

Oddly enough, this "maladie" is a sort of epidemic here. The fact is, the dust is full of microbes, and no one is too well nourished.

[Page Heading: SOME "MALADES IMAGINAIRES"]