One year at the Russian court/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
The French Embassy welcomed me in the most charming way, and I retain the best remembrances of the moments spent in its salons. The Russians considered the Bompards bourgeois after the Montebellos, who had lived there en grands seigneurs, spending their large fortune, and dipping into it also a little. The Russians would have liked France to send them a marquis, a duke, a prince—considering that more flattering—but at least a "handle." And, as the people who made this remark to me were considered to have advanced ideas, I answered: "But that is democracy; what else do you make of it?" Upon which there was silence.
One evening Madame Bompard told us as a great secret that we must all say how we liked the quality of the tea served that evening, for it had been sent her by the Chinese Minister, who would be there. We therefore all exclaimed on the merits of the liquid—very pale, very scentless, very insipid—which was served to us; the most perfect mixture possible, as it appears, and into which is introduced a great quantity of rose leaves. And the little yellow man was all smiles, swinging more than ever his long pigtail, the antics of which testified to his gratitude.
All the winter that same pigtail, a sort of bellrope, inspired me with a wild desire to pull it; a desire that I repressed, as one of the secretaries, to whom I had confided my temptation, exclaimed breathlessly: "On no account do that, it would be a casus belli!"
This same little Minister always arrived dressed in the most beautifully embroidered robes imaginable. I have never considered the yellow race outwardly beautiful, but I grant one point of beauty to the Chinese soul, since this same little man told me that the Chinese always wore embroidered on their garments a flower of the season. A pretty idea, and I congratulate them on having retained the custom; it seems to belong to another age.
Among the Russians who attended assiduously at the Mondays of our Ambassadress was Princess X… She would never have discovered gunpowder, and her husband even less; but he at least was only to be seen when he dined there, and then he took his departure very early, to go no doubt to more amusing resorts. She, dark, tall and stout in proportion, immensely amused the men by her heavy stupidity, which caused her to say the silliest things. One evening, speaking in a mincing voice, and assuming the air ingénu which she particularly affected, she asked them in a foolish way what it meant to say to some one: "Vous êtes une tourte." The little circle began to laugh and wink at each other. She particularly addressed herself at the moment to a certain tall, young secretary of the Embassy, M. de C…, who confessed, laughing a trifle nervously, though really delighted, the unflattering suggestion concealed in this word—stupid—for no one doubted that she herself had been thus described; and she was rather sensitive, the dear Princess. He sauntered along gracefully to tell me what had passed, and we chuckled mischievously about it.
This evening, like all others, came at length to an end. Towards midnight every one dispersed like a long and elegant chaplet on the wide red-carpeted steps of the Embassy grand staircase.
At the foot of the last flight C…, all muffled up in his thick fur coat, his face half concealed behind his high turned-up collar, his eyes almost buried under his fur cap, found himself face to face with our Princess, still displaying her shoulders, which were always exposed to the fullest advantage.
"What are you carrying, C…? What a bundle!" she said in her loud drawling voice, displaying her pretty teeth and at the same time pointing to a voluminous parcel which the bearer was trying in vain to hide from the general gaze; and, so saying, she wriggled her back caressingly.
"C'est la tourte, c'est la tourte," he said with a feeble smile, and casting a significant glance at us as he disappeared.
In her subsequent conversations she never again referred to "tourtes."
That evening, in the privacy of her sanctum, she must have reflected that there were really too many "tourtes" in this world.
I had a feeling of well-being when from the great salons of the French Embassy, and from beneath their gilded panelling, I threw a glance from the great bay windows with double panes on the Quai Français and on that wide and beautiful Neva, so calm, so silent under its double mantle of snow and ice.
The soft warm temperature and the pretty rosy light, the cold whiteness down below formed the most delicious contrast.
Having read Jules Verne's descriptions of floating icebergs in the Arctic regions, for some reason or other one imagines that all very frozen water in very cold countries must convey icebergs, but I was cruelly disappointed at not having my expectations realized to the full on that point at the time of the débâcle in Russia and by seeing only huge agglomerations of ice being carried along, all as flat as vulgar pancakes. It seemed an interminable flow as it passed, as not only the Neva freed itself thus of its winter coat, but also the great lake Ladoga; and, watching, one could not help associating all this apparently aimless rush of the ice towards the great salt sea with the passage of life, with all its hurry and scurry—here to-day, gone to-morrow!
At Petrograd the water is—or rather was—undrinkable, and my aunts recommended me never to touch a drop; consequently one is obliged to buy the drinking water at the chemists, who get it at a certain special place.
A most virulent form of typhoid fever is rampant there, especially during the spring at the time of the melting of the ice, when all this frozen mass of winter snow has to be broken up by axes in many places, and on the removal of which many microbes are set in motion. Russia then becomes a veritable sea of mud, which state, however, is almost immediately succeeded by the sudden bursting forth of spring with all that season's richness and loveliness. I felt I actually saw the grass growing, so forcibly does Nature revenge herself. Very few diplomats really liked Petrograd, the cold climate, the expensive life, the absence of light in winter, the light nights in summer, were so many subjects of complaint. It is no doubt plus chic to show oneself dissatisfied; but I who found all delightful, thought this attitude of mind very tiresome.
Among the discontented ones was one of my friends, Marquis de M…, Secretary at the Embassy. His father had been in the army under the command of my grandfather. He had brought from France an old family dagger which had formerly been the weapon of a not less valiant ancestor, a Crusader, who had reddened it with the blood of infidels, and his dream was to hunt bears with it, being anxious himself to plunge it into the heart of so stout and dangerous an adversary; almost a profanation, it seemed to me. I tried, but in vain, to curb this dangerous ardour, being without confidence that my little Marquis, with his small stature and his somewhat flabby air, would emerge victorious from a hand-to-hand struggle with a majestic bear as ferocious as hungry. He stamped with rage and anxiety when explaining that he might, perhaps, not have the luck to find one even if he went to the enchanted spots from which others returned crowned with laurels.
I informed him then that there was a very flourishing industry where a victim was supplied you at the indicated time and place, out there in le pays des ours, and he could very easily acquire a skin for a rug; but my Marquis listened with horror to the suggestion of this subterfuge, asking only for the simple glory which he could honourably accept. How many there are less honest who supply themselves with the white skins so easy to achieve.
Nevertheless he dreamt delightful dreams, of hunting Bruin throughout the winter, which were never realized, for very soon he packed up his ancestral dagger and returned to his beautiful country. I saw him again a last time on the eve of his departure, dapper and spruce. "My servants have started, my horses also," he said, laughing, for he possessed neither. "To-morrow it is my turn."
I often teased him about his political opinions, and it was a real joy to see him pose as a republican fanatic.
At one of Madame Bompard's Wednesdays some of the ladies took it into their heads to ask the Marquis his Christian name, and each of us played at guessing it. The one who teased him the most was a young and pretty Rumanian—Madame Z… Impossible to obtain an answer; very strange, it must have been that name! The most extravagant names of saints flew about. "I know, I know," suddenly cried the young Rumanian lady in her fresh, gay voice. "His name is Joseph." And of course we all yelled out in unison, calling him Joseph. The more he protested, the more we insisted. It seemed to pain him singularly, when suddenly a defender arose. "Joseph, and why?" protested the Dutch Minister from behind his eyeglass. "He has nothing in common with him." None of the ladies dared to continue the subject.
Lord Hardinge, afterwards Viceroy of India, was then British Ambassador at Petrograd. I very much admired Lady Hardinge, who is now no more. His counsellor was Sir Cecil Spring Rice, now our Ambassador at Washington.[1]
The Dutch Minister was a shrewd, distinguished man; he always teased me very much. He had a biting wit and did not lack brains. One day when two of the gentlemen were telling in my hearing a story to which I preferred not to listen, he said to me: "You play the ingénue's part charmingly, you ought to be in the Comédie française. I shall remember that in thirty years' time. The conclusion one comes to is that one may tell you a little more," he said to me mischievously. And another time when I was going to skate, and his secretary had instituted himself my professor, he said: "You are on slippery ground, very slippery, Mademoiselle." This with a glance which he launched above his eyeglass, of which he seemed to have no need, as nothing ever escaped him even without its aid.
He was a good raconteur and I enjoyed talking with him. His wife, also, was charming.
An agreeable couple were Count and Countess Ruggieri-Laderchi, the Italian Military Attaché and his wife. They often entertained and were very pleasant. She was a Russian, née Staël-Holstein. She told complacently how a fortune teller had predicted that she would be an Ambassadress. May that happen to her if it is still her wish, as then she would be quite in her rôle; but on leaving Russia she settled down in a provincial town in Italy.
The evenings at General Gelinsky's were also charming; he was a friend of my aunt's, and one met at his house many officers of the Guards and some diplomats.
During nearly the whole of that winter, the German Ambassadress used to display on her head, and nearly as big as it, planted well in the middle of her coiffure, a yellow flower resembling an immense dandelion, the flower commonly called by us in France pissenlit. I told myself that this conception of the fashions must have originated on the banks of the Spree; but yet this headgear did not seem to clash with the rest of her tasteless get-up, for all bore the stamp of Berlin. The Embassy was not beautiful and not well arranged, a succession of little drawing-rooms, which I thought ugly.
My friend Mademoiselle Thecla de Grelle did the honours for her father at the Belgian Legation, and in a very charming manner too. I had some very good times there. She still sends me news of herself from Copenhagen, where she lives now with her brother, Secretary to the Legation.
At Petrograd the corps diplomatique formed one large family who met constantly, which was quite delightful.
A charming couple were the Count and Countess Wrangel, who succeeded the Gyldenstolpes at the Swedish Legation. The Count was the Minister; she was French by birth and very amiable. I have met them since in London, where they are still, and where I have always been touched by their kind welcome.
A great meeting place for our set was on the opposite side of the Neva, at the house of a certain lady of foreign nationality, who was very rich and who used to receive a great deal; but I heard lately that she had left her husband and her home for Germany in company with a young Hun who might easily be her son, as she was by no means a young woman twelve years ago, although a very well preserved one and always beautifully dressed. She could have easily been a grandmother even in those days. As in the fable, the deserted husband mounts to the tower to see if there is a cloud of dust on the road; but in vain! If there is any dust, the wind of the Neva is the only cause of it.
The Bulgarian Minister was then Monsieur Stancioff; his wife, French by birth, had been Maid of Honour of the Princess Clémentine, mother of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, and a daughter of Louis-Philippe, King of the French, who had been married to the Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as far back as 1843. Ferdinand of Bulgaria, thus being partly French and partly German, had always been considered to have adopted his mother's nationality in preference to his father's, but owing to his second marriage with a German Princess—Eleonora de Reuss—and the promise of great things from the Kaiser, the head of this mushroom Tzar was completely turned in the wrong direction.
Madame Stancioff was a very intelligent woman and certainly without any préjugés. One had heard that the Prince had taken a great fancy to her, and after her marriage with a cavalry officer he put him into the Diplomatic service, and so settled him in life. After Petrograd they came to Paris, where the Legation was maintained on a great scale by Ferdinand, who evidently remained faithful to his friends. About the beginning of the war they were appointed to Rome, and I saw in the papers that, being suspected of Francophile tendencies, the Kaiser had asked the renegade Ferdinand not to let them occupy that post any longer. At their house I also received a charming welcome.
- ↑ Since this was written Sir Cecil Spring Rice has died while on a visit to the Duke of Devonshire at Government House, Ottawa.