I was familiar with none of these English books then. Of course I had seen reference to them in my set of Pearson’s. The English were inclined to take a tolerant attitude to Jews. One of their most honoured writers, in those days, was Israel Zangwill, and they had, as we all know, a Jew as their Prime Minister. My friend continued in praise of the English poet Shelley, whose character Ahaseurus in Hellas inspired Kolya a great deal, he said, if only for the single speech he was fond of quoting:
Politeness made me refrain from telling Kolya what I thought of such high-sounding rubbish. The English have many virtues. They are excellent engineers and practical scientists. As story-tellers they give their novels good, strong, exciting plots. But as poets they have done more damage to the world than any others. The ideas of Byron and Shelley have probably caused more young men to lose their lives in hopeless, idiotic, romantic causes than the ideas of Karl Marx. Romanticism is the disease of the Modern Age. It is the direct result of increased leisure amongst a certain class. If one does not believe me, one has only to look around at the so-called hippies and ‘drop-outs’ who always complain of poverty yet find time to bargain with me for coats worth twice the price I am charging, and pay in the end with money donated to them by the State!
Perhaps, as some say, the world is no more decadent now than it always was. But what the so-called decadents of my days in St Petersburg had was a sense of style; of taste, of social position and, indeed, a good education.
Education, of course, can also confuse. Nicholai Feodorovitch was a great Slav, a true Slav, a believer in the Slavic Renaissance, but his love of romantic verse was also his blind-spot, for he was morbidly philosemitic, as so many of his heroes had been. Even as we left the apartment, on our way to The Scarlet Tango, he put an arm around my uniformed shoulder and quoted some nonsense from Byron about ‘tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast’. I owe the lines (for I would not otherwise remember them) to Miss Cornelius, who was educated at the Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, where only the very best pupils are accepted.
A sentimental streak of this sort is often the attribute of a dandy. It is as if they allow themselves one weakness. With some it is a liking for dogs or horses to whom they are inordinately kind. Nicholai Feodorovitch had a weakness for Jews: the very people who were at that moment scheming the destruction of him and all his caste. That was one of the ironic tragedies of life. I have noticed similar ironies wherever I have gone about the world. Even the Wandering Jew himself could not have witnessed as much as I have witnessed in my day.
The Scarlet Tango was not far from St Catherine’s Catholic Church. It was in a sidestreet mainly occupied by little jewellers and confectioners. It was part beer-hall, part bohemian café of the kind one used to find in Montmartre, full of dazzling mirrors and crystal lamps, crowded with circular tables and gilded metal chairs on which sat young men and women chiefly distinguished by their bright clothes, their pale faces and their intensely glittering eyes; make-up was in use with both sexes. Both sexes smoked cigarettes, often of European brands, in long holders. Upon a stage at one side, a negro four-piece orchestra played the latest syncopated jungle-tunes: the rag, the cake-walk, the coon-dance and the slow-drag. Was there a war in progress? Were there bread-shortages? Was light becoming as scarce a commodity as fresh meat or hope? H. G. Wells’s time-traveller visiting The Scarlet Tango might have believed that the world was at its happiest and most prosperous. Copies of outrageous revolutionary and artistic journals were being openly read: Truth, Freedom, New Worlds, Apolion and Cosmic Manifesto. The place had much of the atmosphere of Esau’s, though on a larger, grander and more elegant scale. Its atmosphere of friendliness, laughter and argument attracted me as I had been attracted before. There were famous names to be found here. Names associated with all that was called ‘the Russian explosion’ in the arts. It was an explosion as welcome to me as the bombs which fell on Notting Hill during the Second World War.
At the time, helped by Kolya’s absinthe and his enthusiasm for what he called Modern Experience, I developed at least an ability to parrot the names of their pantheon: Stanislavski, Diaghileff, Kandinski, Malevitch and Chagall, Blok, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Rabinovitch and others. Kolya, of course, could quote them all, could name pictures, even hum tunes if tunes they were. He had enjoyed the company of Sergei Andreyovitch largely because of the latter’s ability to interpret modern music. ‘But like most ballet-dancers he had only a limited imagination. You will find that a dancer has about six things he or she can do welclass="underline" a good leap, perhaps, or a pas-de-deux or perhaps one of those writhing movements they favour so much. And they do them over and over again, in every ballet, whether “free” or choreographed with rigid discipline.’ I had to take his word for it. Ballet is another art which has never much attracted me. My experience of ballet-dancers has not been particularly happy. Their egos are such that they are quickly gratified with praise. Their talent becomes as stultified as their muscles if they do not exercise. There were a good many dancers to be found at The Scarlet Tango.
Later, we went on, full of absinthe, arm-in-arm, to another, less impressive place called The Wandering Dog, where Kolya had friends with whom he seemed more intimate and relaxed. My own recollections are vague. I had become almost incapably drunk. Doubtless I made a horrible fool of myself. I recall a small, not very pleasant young Jew lisping lines about Ossian and Scotland, moon and blood. Though in Russian, they might as well have been English, they were so derivative. A few lines remain with me, for they are the lines which always come out whenever I am inebriated (which is rarely, these days):
If ever I was going to develop a taste for modern poetry, I would have done so in Kolya’s company. Very late into the first night I found myself on the doorstep of my lodgings watching a carriage jogging off back towards the twinkle of the city while I fumbled for the bell. I was admitted by a desolate Madame Zinovieff who exclaimed about the state of my uniform and then, realising I was drunk, cried out that she had betrayed me and let me fall into bad company. I explained to her I had been dining with a famous Count and this, of course, mollified her a little. When I could not recall his name, she began to mutter and complain. She was not angry with me, but she had promised Mr Parrot I would come to no harm. She was responsible for my moral welfare. I assured her this was a unique occasion. I had had to accept the Count’s invitation. It would have been bad manners to have done otherwise.