Nelka Part 4

Here we see this very distinct adherence to the principles of the Russian government of the autocratic regime, the adherence to which seemed only natural and acceptable to Nelka in her idea of a patriotic Russian.

St. Petersburg 1905.

"Tomorrow it will be one week that I am in the hospital and I am getting quite accustomed to it. It is certainly a very complete change of habits in every way, but the essentials are all right.

Over and above everything is the joy of at last being able to do, if only a little, for the poor soldiers who have suffered so much and who are so good and patient. I shall never cease to regret that I did not get here at the beginning of the war. This is a perfectly beautiful hospital, quite large and everything perfect. The soldiers are so well provided for that I should think that some of them would almost hate to leave; but oh, Poodie, it is so terrible to see them, many so young, without arms or legs and one whose head was almost blown off, so grateful to have a new gla.s.s eye put in him the other day. Soon they are going to make him a nose. On Thursday there was the opening of a new ward and the service and benediction were very impressive. The Queen of Greece came and I was presented to her."

"There are four sisters in a room but the rooms are large with two big windows and they are very nice. Sister Belskaya speaks every language and has helped me a great deal. I am managing to get on somehow with Russian but the other night when I had a conversation with a Sister Swetlova on subjects that were not absolutely elementary it was awfully funny. While the ward is being settled, 5 of us are being sent to the big city hospital where all the sisters have been for a time to learn all kinds of things, but it is to be, I think, only for a few days. O, Poodie, I cannot describe it to you.

The hospital itself is all right enough, but the poor people! There are 3,000 there. We are in the surgical section for women. It is very various and valuable experience as you learn everything in a short while, but I would not care to prolong it."

During the summer of 1906 Nelka went with some of the wounded to Finland where the convalescents were sent to recuperate in the country. She was then in her second year working with the wounded and was hoping to be able to return to America before too long.

Politics were very much of importance at that time in Russia which had just emerged from an attempted revolution and certain political changes had taken place. A new parliamentary system had been formed but did not last and was breaking up. Nelka wrote in 1906 from Finland:

"I cannot say what a feeling of relief and thankfulness I had when the Duma (Parliament) was dispersed. I cannot see that any solution is anywhere in view. No one seems to have the least a.s.surance of what will happen. I feel so stirred up I really almost wish I was a man and could enter into the question and do something."

"Poodie, Poodie, do you realize that I am almost an old lady of 28.

It seems so funny for that is really honorable--60 is young beside it. I wish you could see the sky here. Such sunsets I have never seen--every day different and the colors on the lake unimaginable. I simply go flying to the roof, I don't know how many times and look and look and look."

Finland 1906.

"But believe me liberalism abroad is quite different from here and there is so much bad in it here. I don't think there is much hope for Russia. I don't believe we have that in the character to maintain a nation."

"What a terrible thing the attempt to kill Stolypin. The people here really are out of their minds. The ones that think that these murders are for an 'idea.' O, Poodie, I have learned so much since I have been here."

"One sister, Sister Pavlova, is very nice--an aristocrat of correct views and a great satisfaction. She was two years at the War in a contagious hospital."

Finland 1906.

"I have the apothecary now and put up ten or fifteen prescriptions a day. I find it quite agitating for a novice and am simply calculating and recalculating over and over again. I am also in charge now of the operating room and surgical dressings, and do ma.s.sage and night duty as before. This is just while we are here. When we go back to Petersburg I will have the ward duty alone as before."

"I am on night duty after a very strenuous day--a.s.sisted the doctor with the instruments and material for 25 dressings, put up eight prescriptions myself, dressed the wounds of five Finns, spent some time in the ward, went over the soldier's money accounts, did an hour ma.s.sage, slept one hour and tomorrow morning I am going to take the temperatures at 6 A.M., at seven put up a bottle of digitalis, at eight get into clean clothes, prepare the surgical dressing room for two dressings, give the instruments and material, and at half past eight or quarter to nine start with two soldiers for Petersburg--one who is to be operated and the other who has been so ill for a week that they think it best to take him back as quickly as possible.

Neither of them can sit up. Don't you think that is an undertaking? I am going to take the train back immediately after delivering them at the hospital and hope to get back by 5 or 6 o'clock and have a grand rest up for Monday."

"Is life so full of resource or is the resource all in one's imagination and state of mind. It seems to me there is so much, so much, and yet the most sometimes seems just to suffer being 'suffered out' by the effect of certain moral efforts."

Finland 1906.

"This whole life is something so complete and so different and I feel now so much at home in it. Had I been different I might not have needed what this experience has given me, but as it is, you will find a great deal more of me and have a great deal more of me than before I left. I know myself too well and know too well the unstableness of my moral interior to say that I may not need again some time."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I often wonder now, since this life here in the hospital is so different from everything which has opened such new vistas, if there are an indefinite number of experiences which each would offer new points of view. For there it would seem that one must abstain from any general conclusions upon the things of the world, owing to one's limited experience. I am awfully glad to be thrown in this a.s.sociation with the soldiers. This is quite a revelation. They are in comparison with other people just like charts for little children to read, as compared with some hazy book. Then there are all degrees of awakening. It is most interesting. I sometimes think that human beings are as different from each other as things of a different species."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I told her (Baroness Ixkull) that I thought of leaving in August, if possible. She is so urgent about my staying altogether in the community that it makes it very hard to leave. At last I seem to have found something where I am thought to be very useful and I have fitting qualities, but alas so far from Poodie and Pats that it is not possible. At least it is a thing I know I am prepared for now and that is always open to me as a vent for energy, an occasion for helping and regulator of the nervous system. If there is war again I think nothing will hold me, but otherwise I am going to try to make my character a possible one so that it will be a more peaceful member of the family with you and Pats."

"No matter what I do later this year will have a lasting benefit. I don't know what it is. I never seem to get enough of life. I know the feeling that satisfies for I have had it a few times. Perhaps it is youth, perhaps it is egotism, but anyway it is something that makes one wish one had five lives to live at once. I am laboring through a very interesting book on the Evolution of matter which demands a great deal of concentration of a brain as uninformed in matters of science as mine. I refuse to think and accept things in 'terms' which when it gets to the point of the disa.s.sociation of atoms becomes difficult not to do. I wish I had a really active brain that would give me the results I want without requiring such an immense amount of will which I can't command."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"My plans seem unable to take any definite shape for the moment. I cannot leave my soldiers that I have had from the beginning and it is uncertain yet when they will be in a condition to leave. I wish I were a few years younger. I want to do so much."

(She was then 28 years old.)

St. Petersburg 1906.

"It is now seven A.M. I am just finishing night service but I feel quite lively just because I know it is ending. Yesterday the 'sidelkas' (apprentices) received the cross. After they graduate they can take cases and be paid about $20 a month. This course is only one year. The sisters' course is two years but of course their work is always free."

In Russia all nursing was considered to be a vocation and as such could therefore not be paid. All sisters received their maintenance and clothing from the community but no pay.

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I have just received your letter telling me of Trenar's death."

(Trenar was a borsoi dog which Nelka had and left in Cazenovia. This was before she had her poodle Tibi.) "Mrs. Lockman wrote me some time ago that he was very sick with distemper but had not written me since. Useless to say how I feel. Everyone does not feel the appeal of a dog's affection in the same degree, and with me it is as strong as anything I know. Trenar in his devotion was exceptional, and not to have been with him when he was sick--I simply can't think of it. I didn't do anything that I should have with him. It was wrong to leave him. I love dogs and Trenar was something very special. I didn't do what I should with him and in every way I am perfectly miserable about it, but it is useless of it--that is all. I know you feel sorry for the way I feel, but how I feel you can't know and it must seem out of place to you. Anyway I feel it and I reproach myself. I just wish I could have been with him. I will never forget his attachment--dear little Trenar."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"But I don't suppose you can conceive how I feel the autocracy, the Emperor. I don't care what I think; I feel autocracy and the Emperor simply not a human being to me. I read this and thought you would like it: 'Sow an act and you reap habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.'"

St. Petersburg 1906.

"For the last two weeks I have been all the time on duty with the operated cases. This last week I was on night duty every night except last night when I had to sleep to be on duty today. I am so tired of fussing with myself; it makes me so angry not to be a perfect machine. The things to do are all the same--the way to be is the same, and yet there is so much thinking, choosing, deciding, worrying. So few things matter, and so much should not have a moment's consideration. Nine tenths of all the shackling considerations should simply never rise to consciousness."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"On Xmas there was a big tree for all the soldiers who could walk and then there were a lot of little trees all arranged with presents for each room where the soldiers could not leave their beds. It was said in the morning that nothing would be done on Xmas--no dressings, nothing, and I never worked so hard! As there were no dressings in the operating room I had to do quite a number somehow or other in bed, and then it was my day to keep the ward in the afternoon."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I am beginning to think that the 'esprit' of the sisters here, that is most of them, is far too liberal. I get perfectly outdone with the papers some of the sisters bring into the ward, and I quickly lay hands upon everyone I find. There is no stemming the tide but I shall do what I can wherever I am, for it is too stupid. The soldiers are too uneducated."

"You say in your letter that you understand that my father's country should be dear to me and yet you think that my mother's country might also mean something. What I feel, understand and see in America does not mean anything. I cannot feel as they do. What I care for most in the world is you and Pats--that does not need to be said. As a country, for ideas, general point of view, etc. etc., Russia and Russians are more sympathetic and comprehensible. It is so different.

But that is as far as country goes. The real tie, as I said before, is you and Pats."

Finally after a stay of over two years in Russia, Nelka started back for America. But she took a round about way this time traveling first through Russia to the Crimea and from there by boat.

Written on the train between Kharkoff and Sebastopol 1907.

"I am on my way to the Crimea--and then continue by boat to Naples. I expect to get to Paris by the 12th or 15th and to sail at the end of the month. What a place Moscow is. O, it is so beautiful--so old and real Russia, so solid and so unforeign. It was fearfully cold but I was out all the time and only had my nose frozen once. I hate, loath and detest every foreign influence in Russia and every evidence that there is a world outside. The Kremlin is certainly thorough in itself and I love it. I am palpitating at the thought of seeing you so soon.

It seems to me I am just living in gulps. I feel somehow that the privileges I have had ought to be put to something now. How will I even put my whole self into one thing? Everything has splendid possibilities but it is always the fearful alternative and its possibilities. Anyway I have stopped waiting. I know there is nothing to wait for. I can hardly believe that I have had this year--that I have been in Russia and that it is done. Baroness Ixkull tried to keep me to send me to the famine--but the famine will have to wait. I shall be so glad to get to Yalta. My head is so tired and I shall be able to clear up my thoughts--I can hardly write. My head is popping off and my hand is cold and the train shakes. Always your old Nelka."

(29 years old)

But back in America she once again was restless. Social life had no appeal for her. There was something much more genuine in Russia or even in Europe--something much more alive, much less artificial. Her aunt Martha Wadsworth tried to interest her in other things, take her mind off the brooding dissatisfaction which Nelka was showing.

In 1910 General Oliver, then Secretary of War, and a personal friend of Mrs. Wadsworth, decided to undertake a reconnaissance trip through New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, partly to do some surveying and mapping of the area and partly to test a compressed fodder for horses invented by Captain Shiverick, also a friend of Mrs. Wadsworth.