“No, I dressed much better. I wore my best Paris gown, and drove down in my victoria. While I was in the line half a dozen gentlemen, who attended my receptions, came up and chatted with me, showed me how to fold my ballot, and attended me as if we were at a concert. When I came away, I took a street-car home, and sent my carriage for several ladies who otherwise would not have come.”
“And you,” said the countess, turning to Mrs. Jimmie.
“It was in a barber shop,” she said, laughing. “When I went in, the men had their feet on the table, their hats on their heads, and they were all smoking, but at my entrance all these things changed. Hats came off, cigars were laid down, and feet disappeared. I was politely treated, and enjoyed it immensely.”
“How very interesting,” said Tolstoy. “But are there not societies for and against suffrage? Why do your women combine against it?”
“Because American women have not awakened to the meaning of good citizenship, and they prefer chivalry to justice, regardless of the love of country. I never belonged to any suffrage society, never wrote or spoke or talked about it. I think the responsibility of voting would be heavy and often disagreeable, but, if the women were enfranchised, I would vote from a sense of duty, just as I think many others would; and, as to the good which might accrue, I think you will agree with me that women’s standards are higher than men’s. There would be far less bribery in politics than there is now.”
“Is there much bribery?” asked Tolstoy.
“Unfortunately, I suppose there is. Have you heard how the ex-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tom Reed, defines an honest man in politics? ‘An honest man is a man that will stay bought!'”
There is no use in denying the truth. Tolstoy is always the teacher and the author. I could not imagine him the husband and the father. He seemed in the act of getting copy, and had a way of asking a question, and then scrutinising both the question and the answer as one who had set a mechanical toy in motion by winding it up. Tolstoy would make an excellent reporter for an American newspaper. He could obtain an interview with the most reticent politician. But I had a feeling that his methods were as the methods of Goethe.
His wife evidently does not share his own opinion of himself. She listened with obvious impatience to the conversation, then she drew Bee and Mrs. Jimmie aside, and they were soon in the midst of an animated discussion of the Rue de la Paix.
Tolstoy overheard snatches of their talk without a sign of disapproval. I have seen a big Newfoundland watch the graceful antics of a kitten with the same air of indifference with which Tolstoy regarded his wife’s humanity and naturalness. Tolstoy takes himself with profound seriousness, but, in spite of his influence on Russia and the outside world, the great teacher has been unable to cure his wife’s interest in millinery.
Nordau told me in Paris that Tolstoy was a combination of genius and insanity. Undoubtedly Tolstoy is actuated by a genuine desire to free Russia, but the idea was unmistakably imbedded in my mind that his Christianity was like Napoleon’s description of a Russian. Scratch it and you would find Tartar fanaticism under it,—the fanaticism of the ascetic who would drive his own flesh and blood into the flames to save the soul of his domestics.
This impression grew as I watched the attitude of the countess toward her husband. What must a wife think of such a husband’s views of marriage when she is the mother of thirteen of his children? What must she think of insincerity when he refuses to copyright his books because he thinks it wrong to take money for teaching, yet permits her to copyright them and draw the royalties for the support of the family?
Her opinion of her famous husband lies beneath her manner, covered lightly by a charming and graceful impatience,—the impatience of a spoiled child.
When we got into the carriage I said:
“Well?”
“Well,” said our friend the consul, who had not spoken during the interview, “he is the queerest man I ever met. But how he pumped you!”
“We are all ‘copy’ to him,” said Jimmie. “He wanted information at first hand.”
“Sometime he may succeed in convincing his daughter,” said Mrs. Jimmie, “but never his wife. She knows him too well.”
“Yet he seemed interested in you and Jimmie,” said Bee, ruefully. Then more cheerfully, “but we’re asked to come again!”
“We are living documents; that’s why.”
“What do you think of him?” said Jimmie to me with a grin of comradeship.
“I don’t know. My impressions have got to settle and be skimmed and drained off before I know.”
“Well, we’ll go to their reception anyway,” said Bee, comfortably, with the air of one who had no problems to wrestle with.
“What are you going to wear?”
To be sure! That was the main question after all. What were we going to wear?
At One of the Tolstoy Receptions
When we arrived the next evening, it was to find a curious situation. The Countess Tolstoy and her daughter and young son, in European costume,—the countess in velvet and lace, and the little countess in a pretty taffeta silk,—were receiving their guests in the main salon, and later served them to a magnificent supper with champagne. The count, we were told, was elsewhere receiving his guests, who would not join us. Later he came in, still in his peasant’s costume, and refused all refreshment. He was exceedingly civil to all his guests, but signalled out the Americans in a manner truly flattering.
It was a charming evening, and we met agreeable people, but, although they stayed late, we remained, at Tolstoy’s request, still later, and when the last guest had departed, we sat down, drawing our chairs quite close together after the manner of a cheerful family party.
After inquiring how we had spent our day, and giving us some valuable hints about different points of interest for the morrow, Tolstoy plunged at once into the conversation which had been broken off the day before. It was evident that he had been thinking about our country, and was eager for more information.
“I became very well acquainted with your ambassador, Mr. White, while he was in this country,” he began. “I found him a man of wide experience, of great culture, and of much originality in thought. I learned a great deal about America from him. It must be wonderful to live in a country where there is no Orthodox Church, where one can worship as one pleases, and where every one’s vote is counted.”
Jimmie coughed politely, and looked at me.
“It encourages individuality,” he added. “Do you not find your own countrymen more individual than those of any other nation?” he added, addressing Jimmie directly for the first time.
“I think I do,” said Jimmie, carefully weighing out his words as if on invisible scales. Jimmie is largely imbued with that absurd fear of a man who has written books, which is to me so inexplicable.
“Your country appeals to Russians, strongly,” pursued the count, evidently bent upon drawing Jimmie out.
“I have often wondered why,” said Jimmie. “It couldn’t have been the wheat?”
“No, not entirely the wheat, although the news of your generosity spread like wildfire through all classes of society, and served to open the hearts of the peasants toward America as they are opened toward no other country in the world. The word ‘Amerikanski’ is an open sesame all through Russia. Have you noticed it?”
“Often,” said Jimmie. “And often wondered at it. But that wheat was a small enterprise to gain a nation’s gratitude. It is the more surprising to us because it was not a national gift, but the result of the generosity and large-mindedness of a handful of men, who pushed it through so quietly and unostentatiously that millions of people in America to this day do not know that it was ever done, but over here we have not met a single Russian who has not spoken of it immediately.”
“The Russians are a grateful people,” observed Mrs. Jimmie, “but it seems a little strange to me to discover such ardent gratitude among the nobility for assistance which reached people hundreds of miles away from them, and in whose welfare they could have only a general interest, prompted by humanity.”
“Ah! but madame, Russians are more keenly alive to the problem of our serfs than any other. Many of our wealthy people are doing all that they can to assist them, and, when a crisis like the famine comes, it is heart-breaking not to be able to relieve their suffering. Consequently, the sending of that wheat touched every heart.”
“Then, too, we are not divided,—the North against the South, as you were on your negro question,” said the little countess. “The peasant problem stretches from one end of Russia to the other.”
“We are a diffuse people,” I said. “Perhaps that is the result of our mixed blood and the individuality that you spoke of, but your books are so widely read in America that I believe people in the North are quite as well informed and quite as much interested in the problem of the Russian serf as in our own negro problem.”
Bee gave me a look which in sign language meant, “And that isn’t saying half as much as it sounds.”
“Undoubtedly there is a strong point of sympathy between
