The slander grew and was quickl-,.- caught up by the press and spread over the whole of Russia. It was only then that the denunciatory era of our journalism began. I remember vividly the amazement of people who were �imple and honourab!e, not
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in the least revolutionaries, before the printed denunciations--it was something quite new to them. The l iterature of disclosures quickly shifted its weapon and was twisted a t once into a literature of police perquisitions and calumniation by informers.
There was a revolution in society itself. Some were sobered by the emancipation of the peasants; others were simply tired by political agitation; they wished for the former repose ; they were satiated before a meal which had cost them so much trouble.
It cannot be denied: our breath is short and our endurance is long!
Seven years of liberalism had exhausted the whole reserve of radical aspirations. All that had been amassed and compressed i n the mind since 1 825 was expended in raptures of joy, in the foretaste of the good things to come. After the truncated emancipation of the peasants people with weak nerves thought that Russia had gone too far, was going too quickly.
At the same time the radical party, young, and for that very reason full of theories, began to announce its intentions more and more impulsively, frightening a society that was already frightened even before this. It set forth as its ostensible aim such extreme outcomes, that liberals and the champions of gradual progress crossed themselves and spat, and ran away stopping their ears, to hide under the old, filthy but familiar blanket of the police. The headlong haste of the students and the landowners' want of practice in listening to other people could not help bringing them to blows.
The force of public opinion, hardly called to life, manifested itself as a savage conservatism. It declared its participation in public affairs by elbowing the government into the debauchery of terror and persecution.
Our position became more and more difficult. We could not stand up for the filth of reaction, but our locus standi outside it was lost. Like the knights-errant in the stories who have lost their way, we were hesitating at a cross-roads. Go to the right, and you will lose your horse, but you will be safe yourself; go to the left, and your horse will be safe but you will perish ; go forward, and everyone will abandon you ; go back-that was impossible: for us the road in that direction was overgrown with grass. If only a sorcerer or hermit would appear and relieve us of the burden of irresolution . . . .
Our acquaintances, and the Russian ones especially, used to meet at our house on Sunday evenings. In 1 862 the number of the latter greatly increased: merchants and tourists, journalists and officials of all the departments, and of the Third Division
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[ the Secret Police] in particular, were arriving for the Exhibition. It was impossible to make a strict selection ; we \varned our more intimate friends to come or a different day. The pious boredom of a London Sunday \vas· too much for their discretion, and these Sundays did to some extent lead to disaster. But before I tell the story of that I must describe two or three specimens of our native fauna vvho made their appearance in the modest drawing-room of Orsett House.12 Our gallery of living curiosities from Russia was, beyond all doubt, more remarkable and more interesting than the Russian Section at the Great Exhibition.
In 1 860 I received from a hotel in the Haymarket a Russian letter in which some unknown persons informed me that they were Russians and were in the service of Prince Yury Nikolayevich Golitsyn, who had secretly left Russia : 'The prince himself has gone to Constantinople, but has sent us by another route.
The prince bade us wait for him and gave us money enough for a few days. More than a fortnight has passed ; there is no news of the prince; our money is spent, the hotel-keeper is angry. \Ve do not know what to do. Not one of us speaks English.' Finding themselves in this helpless situation, they asked me to rescue them.
I went to them and arranged things. The hotel-keeper knew me, and consented to wait another \veek.
Five days later a sumptuous carriage with a pair of dapplegrey horses drove up to my front door. However much I explained to my servants that no one was to be admitted in the morning-even though he should arrive in a coach and six and call himself a duke-! could never overcome their respect for an aristocratic turn-out and title. On this occasion both these temptations to transgression were present, and so a moment later a huge man, stout and with the handsome face of an Assyrian bullgod, was embracing me and thanking me for my visit to his servants.
This was Prince Yury Nikolayevich Golitsyn. It was a long time since I had seen so solid and characteristic a fragment of All Russia, so choice a specimen from our fatherland.
He at once began telling me some incredible story, which all turned out to be true, of how he had given a pensioner's son an article from The Bell to copy, and how he had parted from his 1 2 The house in London where Herzen liYed from NoYember 1 860 'til June 1 863. (A.S.)
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wife; how the pensioner's son had informed against him, and how his wife did not send him money; how the Tsar had �ent him into perpetual banishment at Kozlov, in consequence of which he had made up his mind to escape abroad, and therefore had brought off with him over the Moldavian frontier some young lady, a governess, a steward, a precentor and a maidservant.
At Galatz he had picked up also a valet who spoke five languages after a fashion, and had proved to be a spy. Then he explained to me that he was passionately fond of music and was going to giYe concerts in London; and that therefore he wanted to make the acquaintance of Ogarev.
'They d-do make you p-pay here in England at the C-Customs,'
he said with a slight stammer, as he completed his course of universal history.
'For commercial goods, perhaps, they do,' I observed, 'but the Custom-house is very lenient to travellers.'
'I should not say so. I paid fifteen shillings for a c-crocodile.'
'\Vhy, what do you meanJ'
'What do I meanJ Why, simply a c-crocodile.'
I opened my eyes wide and asked him:
'But what is the meaning of this, Prince? Do you take a crocodile about with you instead of a passport, in order to frighten the police on the frontier?'
'It happened like this. I was taking a walk in Alexandria, and I saw a little Arab offering a crocodile for sale. I liked it, so I bought it.'
'Oh, did you buy the little Arab too?'
'Ha-ha !-no.'
A week later the prince was already installed in Porchester Terrace, that is, in a large house in a very expensive part of the town. He began by ordering his gates to be for ever wide open, which is not the English custom, and a pair of dapple-grey horses to be for ever waiting in readiness at the door. He set up living in London as though he had been at Kozlov or Tambov.