Journey Into the Mind's Eye

by Lesley Blanch

  He saw very clearly that the Russia he had known had vanished, but that another would one day emerge triumphantly he did not seem to doubt. While he knew it would in no way resemble the world he had known, he believed profoundly in the strength of the Russian people, in their great destiny. Waxing mystical he would sometimes pace up and down the school-room, quoting Dostoievsky, who claimed that on the brow of each moujik the Archangel of the Apocalypse had inscribed the destiny of the world. And then, forgetting his condemnation of writers who involved themselves in politics, he would strike attitudes worthy of André Chenier, to thunder out Dostoievsky’s visionary speech at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial:

  ‘Beyond all doubt the destiny of a Russian is pan-European and universal. To become a true Russian, to become a Russian fully, means only to become, if you will, a universal man . . . our destiny is universality, not by the sword, but by our fraternal aspiration to unite mankind . . .’

  Swept along by such fervour, I acquired Pages from the Journal of an Author, in which Dostoievsky’s tribute is included; heady reading for the school-room, but naturally I absorbed my politics, like all my tastes, via the Traveller. I think the habits of a self-indulgent life had caused him to remain faithful to the outward patterns of a vanished world; but I had the impression that each time he reappeared from one of his unexplained absences, or disappearances, he was further from that easy way of life he had first known, and nearer to the newer one then forming far beyond our own periphery.

  •

  Returning to the gentle ambiance of my mother’s hearth, so far from politics and worldly preoccupations, he would speak contemptuously of ‘the decaying remnants of a corrupt Byzantine Court’, meaning the handful of sad Romanov relatives and their suites, gathered round the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, then staying with her sister, Queen Alexandra, the Queen Mother, at Marlborough House. The doings of the more princely Russian refugees were much discussed in London at that time, on account of the British Royal family’s ties with the Romanovs, and I would pore over photographs of them, in The Tatler. After the Dowager Empress and her daughter, the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna and her brother the Grand Duke Dimitri headed the Imperial circle, while the Yussoupovs and many others close to the Imperial family had not yet transplanted themselves to Paris.

  Those Russian Charity Bazaars which plunged me in such acquisitive frenzies were also in the nature of elaborate social functions, for now increasing numbers of the Russian nobility were to be seen there conspiring with their British peers to raise money for needy compatriots. While spending my pocket-money recklessly, borrowing far ahead to acquire any Russian trifle, I would stare hungrily at the bearers of historic names – names that were bound up with their country. A little piroshki, or pie, and a glass of syrupy kvass from the refreshment stall presided over by one of the several Galitzin Princesses seemed sacred – to me, a sort of Communion bread and wine: although, for the sake of historic continuity, I could have wished it had been a Menshikov, rather than a Galitzin hand from which I took my piroshki. Had not the first Prince Menshikov begun as a pie-seller, and risen to glory as Peter the Great’s statesman? From my piroshki, to those faraway ones, by way of a descendant’s hand would have held an especial meaning for me.

  So, steeped in Russia’s past, I ignored its stupendous present, concerning myself little with history then in the making, with Rasputin, the Ipatiev house at Ekaterinburg, the Cruiser Aurora, Admiral Kolchak’s betrayal by the Czech and French Commanders, famines, Five Year Plans, Lenin’s rule, or any other landmark of Russia’s fall and rise.

  I moved in an imagined limbo-land, chasing souvenirs – memento mori.

  PART TWO

  GALLANTRY BOWER

  In matters of affection the Russians are the gentlest wild beasts that are to be seen on earth, and their well-concealed claws unfortunately divest them of none of their charms.

  de Custine

  CHAPTER IV

  I was seventeen when I first saw Paris, owing this, like so many other perspectives, to the Traveller. It seemed that he owned an apartment there, filled with his furniture and the accumulation of many years’ wandering. It was generally let, but now he was inhabiting it himself and, having briefly come to a standstill, he wrote to my mother saying it would be good for me to spend my Easter holidays there; and so, rather in the manner of the chattel which I was to him, my family duly dispatched me, with Mademoiselle Lavisse, the small beetle-black figure who had coached me so inadequately and who still sniffed incessantly. Except for some years in London she had never left Dieppe and knew no more of Paris than I, but she had stipulated we should stay at a small hotel in the Rue de l’Arcade run by an old friend of hers. To this, the Traveller had been obliged to agree.

  When our train steamed to a standstill at the Gare du Nord he was waiting for us at the barrier with two bouquets. Mademoiselle had resisted the whole project, being profoundly suspicious of the Traveller, but now appeared mollified. The Traveller was one of those rewarding men who can, on occasions, display deep emotions in public. Now his usually inscrutable Tartar face betrayed him. He was flatteringly, touchingly delighted to see me; I thought there were tears in his narrowed eyes as we embraced.

  ‘Pussinka moyia!’ he said. ‘At last!’ But almost at once, those same narrowed eyes fixed coldly on my hat, a rather pretty straw – hats were still worn, then. Tearing it from my head he flung it on the ground, kicking it down on to the rails as a passing porter attempted to return it to me.

  ‘Never let me see you in a hat again!’ he said, stroking my ruffled hair which he admired. Mademoiselle glared, the softening effect of the bouquet considerably lessened. Eschewing a taxi, the Traveller piled us into a fiacre, the kind that still existed in Paris at that time.

  ‘I knew you’d want to ride in a fiacre,’ he said, and began whistling Yvette Guilbert’s song of that name which so enchanted my parents when she gave her rare recitals in London. He launched into the words, eying Mademoiselle mischievously. They were not the sort of thing she cared to hear and, in retaliation, she declined his invitation to stop for an apéritif at a café under the chestnut trees. At which the Traveller, getting into his stride for the battle that these two were to wage for the rest of the holiday, countered by ordering the coachman to draw up just short of a small mysterious-looking iron-work structure into which most of him now disappeared.

  ‘Toutes mes excuses, Mesdemoiselles,’ he said politely, on rejoining us. ‘Nature is so inconsiderate.’

  Outrage was expressed by every angle of Mademoiselle’s rigid form; it gathered on her face, and was to remain there for the rest of our stay in Paris.

  Her real reason for selecting the meek-looking little hotel in the Rue de l’Arcade was soon apparent. Not only was it kept by an old friend, but it was within sight of the Chapelle Expiatoire, a dank-looking building in the Greco-Roman style, quite unsuited to its surroundings, but which commemorates the first burial place of the unfortunate King Louis XVI and his Queen. As an ardent Royalist, this melancholy monument was an object of special veneration to Mademoiselle and her friend, the proprietress of the hotel. My first outing, next morning, was to accompany them when they laid a hideous wreath at this shrine: however, I managed, with the Traveller’s connivance, to insist on a counter-outing to the cemetery at Montparnasse to lay a much prettier bunch of flowers on the grave of Muraviev – Count Muraviev-Amursky, Governor General of Siberia; he who acquired the Amur provinces from China, and whose name is for ever linked with the development of Siberia.

  ‘A nice mark of respect,’ said the Traveller, lingering purposefully when Mademoiselle fretted. ‘We were always given to such gestures in Russia. I remember old-fashioned people in Irkutsk used to take off their hats, or bow, when passing Muraviev’s statue. And in an earlier generation schoolboys were taught to speak of Great Novgorod, one of our most historic towns, as “Sir Great Novgorod.” ’ But Mademoiselle was not charmed by such snippets of nationalism. Russia wa
s an anathema to her, every manifestation an aspect of the Devil, barbarism incarnate, the Red Peril.

  Although she was a stranger to Paris, she had drawn up a formidable programme for us. Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Jardin des Plantes, Versailles, the Invalides (in spite of her Royalist views) and the Panthéon were only a beginning. The Conciergerie was a harrowing outing, from the Salle des Pas Perdus to a hushed vigil in the cell occupied by Marie-Antoinette prior to her execution. Then there was the Sainte Chapelle and the Chambre des Députés, the Madeleine, and the Sacré Coeur, at Montmartre, where the Traveller suggested we should also visit the cemetery.

  ‘What about Heine’s grave? You might lay another wreath there too. You seem to be getting the habit. He’s someone worth remembering, German or no. While you’re about it why not take a picnic lunch? The Turks spend whole days in their cemeteries, eating, sleeping, making love . . .’

  I was kicking him under the table, fearful he would go on to recount how, in earlier times, the prostitutes of Constantinople used the cemeteries of Khassim-Pacha as a place of assignation and business . . . It was one of his more lurid tales and frowned-on by my parents. But for once, he was discreet and returned to safer topics.

  •

  In drawing up her programme, Mademoiselle had not reckoned with the Traveller, who instantly imposed or irradiated an Asiatic ambiance wherever he went. He knew Paris very well and it was not his fault, but rather his force, that I could only see the city as a frame for his compatriots, those strange and fascinating Russian exiles who were then centred there in their thousands, bringing with them their own special climate of inertia and violence, their legends and way of life, all with far more colour, it seemed, than in London, where they appeared damped-down. In Paris they adapted more easily, but they were not truly absorbed. No Slav, I think, can be truly integrated outside the Slav perimeter. Basically they remained untouched – uncorrupted, perhaps, by Western civilization, which they simulate, superimposing this simulation like a carapace, on their more vulnerable Slav selves. This was something I had not analyzed at the time, but I was aware of it subconsciously in the Traveller, and now I sensed it in his friends. There is an unaccountable element which lies below the surface in all Russians; it is a darkness or depth peculiarly their own. Perhaps it is the Asiatic in their blood; in any case, it remains mysterious to the west, and it is the Russians’ especial strength; another dimension into which they retreat at will.

  Everything about them fascinated me; the lives they lived in Paris; the lives they had lived in Russia, the dramatic stories of their escapes, and the stories of other, earlier Russians who had known Paris under other circumstances; Turgeniev, for ever sighing over Pauline Viardot, installed as a cuckoo in the Viardot nest; Tolstoy, fleeing from the seductions of a street-walker; Herzen and Bakunin deep in revolutionary ideology.

  It was useless for Mademoiselle to tell me about Clovis, and his victories: I wanted to hear about the Tzar Alexander I and his generals meeting with Wellington and Blücher – Allied conquerors, in a conquered city. I could only see the city subjectively – in relation to the Russia of which the Traveller told me. Therefore, the expeditions I most enjoyed, were those which took us about the streets, tracing scenes associated with the triumphant sojourn of the Russian armies there in 1814. Under Blücher, Barclay de Tolly, the Baltic Russian, and numerous princes of the allied staff, Paris was stormed. Montmartre fell to the Generals Kaptsievitch and Batsievitch who drove off 40,000 French and 150 cannon under Marmont and Mortier. On March 31st – ‘Today is the anniversary,’ the Traveller reminded me – the city capitulated.

  When the victors entered Paris the curious-looking Russian army came by way of the Bonne Nouvelle Boulevard and the Porte St. Denis, the Tzar Alexander I at their head. And now, standing below the massive Porte, I listened to the Traveller describing the little shaggy horses of the steppes pulling supply wagons and gun-carriages, and the cavalry – some of the riders equally shaggy, in their fur caps and sheepskin paddings, with the flat-nosed, narrow-eyed countenance of the north, so that to the French crowds watching apprehensively, they seemed some barbarian horde come from the Great Wall of China or beyond.

  There were men from all the Russias; Ukrainians, Kalmucks, Kirghiz, and Tungus tribes from Siberia carrying bows and arrows; Circassian chieftains with pointed helmets and chain mail, and Cossacks with fur caps and long lances such as the guard of honour which escorted General Osten-Sacken, the newly appointed Military Governor of Paris. He took little heed of appearances, and rode proudly enough in an equipage harnessed with ropes. But some of the young officers were dandiprat figures, with jewelled swords and sumptuous furs lining their cloaks; most of them wore their hair long, on to their epauletted shoulders, in a manner which seemed medieval to the fashion-conscious French. Among these exotic figures were not only the nucleus of those idealistic hotheads who eleven years later, were to become known as the Dekabristi (or Decembrists), making their heroic, if muddle-headed stand for a Constitution, but another, most remarkable figure, a Kalmuck prince who raised his own regiment to fight beside the Russians, and who commanded his Kalmuck hordes when they bivouacked along the Champs Elysées beside the Cossack regiments. The Asiatic prince had created quite a sensation in Paris, especially among the ton, and was a change from the blackamoor pages of the ancien régime. He had been painted by Isabey. The Traveller told me that, to the French portraitist, all Kalmucks were indistinguishable; the Prince or his orderly were both flat-faced, slant-eyed, with wide mouths and an impassive expression. When the Prince became restive at sittings, Isabey suggested his orderly should be substituted; and, on completion, the Prince’s portrait was pronounced a striking likeness.

  At that moment, to the 800,000 Parisians, there were 150,000 foreign troops about the capital, so that it appeared some huge military encampment, set down among the grandiose or the frivolous. Along the Champs Elysées, Russian army tents and Asiatic kibitkas were side by side under the budding chestnut trees, and this vast throng spread as far as the Porte Maillot. At Passy some of them had invaded a decorator’s shop, for on seeing a screen of papier peint with a most lifelike representation of a forest glade, they were about to seize it for firewood, when the proprietor was able to turn their attention to the near-by Bois de Boulogne, which suited their purpose better.

  ‘Father Paris, you shall now pay for Mother Moscow,’ said the troops; but they were good-natured in their victory, and proved themselves easy-going conquerors. The French soon forgot their dread, dubbing them bons enfants, preferring them to the German and English troops. Many women found them irresistible, and the young officers (generally a most cultivated lot, lusty for Museums, picture galleries and new ideas) also led rackety lives, snatching at the proverbial pleasures of Paris. Between easy duties at their Grenelle headquarters, and the seductions of the Palais Royal, the opera, tête-à-tête suppers at Tortoni’s, or even more generously expressed hospitality in the alcoves of the Faubourg, they savoured the pleasures of conquest while the ranks made as merry with the maidservants. But then, said the Traveller, all women like to be conquered.

  At which Mademoiselle Lavisse snorted. She insisted on accompanying us everywhere, but rather in the spirit of a captive, attached to our chariot wheels, I told the Traveller.

  ‘Precisely. She enjoys being conquered too – in another way. Such women make the happiest martyrs. Misery becomes quite a hobby with them.’

  Rubbing salt in her wounds (or indulging her?), the Traveller now dwelt on the Tzar Alexander I’s magnanimities. He had not wished to impose himself on Paris as a tyrant.

  ‘Fear nothing,’ ran his Proclamation to the citizens. ‘Fear not for your money, nor your public buildings, your private houses or families.’ (‘Showing the proper order of things for the French,’ muttered the Traveller, in an audible aside.) ‘I take the capital under my protection,’ ran the Tzar’s words. ‘I have no enemies in France – or only one, Napoleon – and he no longer reigns . . . I
come to bring you peace.’

  ‘After which, no one called us barbarians,’ concluded the Traveller, and Mademoiselle appeared too stricken to argue.

  •

  Wherever we went, whatever we saw in Paris, the unfortunate Frenchwoman fought a losing battle to wean me from my Russian preoccupation, for walking along the noblest streets, confronted by the most grandiose vistas, my inner ear still listened to the sound of horses’ hooves . . . those shaggy little blunt-nosed horses of the Tzar Alexander’s army: men and horses from the steppes . . . the longed-for, unattainable steppes.

  ‘You remind me of the bird that flew backwards to see where it was coming from,’ said the Traveller fondly.

  It was Russia, Russia all the way. The Pont Neuf paled beside the Pont Alexandre III, while a matinée at the Comédie Française, Phèdre, I believe, was completely spoiled for me, by hearing that the Pitóievs had just opened in a Chekhov play. However, both Diaghilev and Rachmaninov were among the Traveller’s circle, and once or twice Diaghilev, or Sergei Pavlovitch as he was to the Traveller, allowed us, O rapture! O rare privilege! to attend a rehearsal, flattened in the wings. But Mademoiselle Lavisse was never allowed beyond the stage door, and would be compelled to sit there for hours, not unnaturally sulking. The Sakharovs, Alexandre and Clotilde too, sketched out their stylized dances for the Traveller’s opinion, dancing to Fauré and Bach. Komisarjevsky presently joined this eclectic band, with projects for a production of an Ostrovsky play; and when Chaliapin appeared, and none of these lofty personalities seemed to object to the presence of a gaping school-girl in their midst, I was able to savour, first-hand, some of the greatest aspects of Russian theatrical genius. It was transplanted in its full bloom and, for a while, it did not wither.