Once more she paused and looked out of the window.
‘It seemed to be,’ she said, ‘a wonderful opportunity. So much is said and written about Russia by people who have never been there, and so much by people who have their own secret motives for what they say. I was being given the chance to travel the Tzar’s kingdom from end to end and to report on it as freely as I wished. It should have been the chance of a lifetime, and of course I saw it as such and jumped at it.’
She looked back to us, and continued, in what struck me as a reflective tone.
‘I was the first Western woman, if not the first Western journalist, to traverse the whole length of Russia. My articles were a resounding success in the States and in Canada. The company that
commissioned my trip was so pleased that they offered me an editor’s post. I turned them down. You may wonder at that, as you may wonder that I never wrote a book about my experiences in Russia, but I turned down the offer of employment and I never wrote a book about Russia, because there were things which I wished never to recall and things which I had promised never to say.’
She braced her shoulders and a brisker tone entered her voice.
‘Russia,’ she said, ‘was everything I thought it might be and many things which I had not imagined.
Have either of you been there?’
We both nodded.
‘Then, perhaps, you will not need me to tell you of the splendours which the great cities of Russia display. London, Paris, New York, Vienna, all have their fame for the richness and quality of their society and their entertainments, but Moscow and Saint Petersburg are close to their match. I saw performances, I attended receptions, which might have been in any of the world’s great cities. I did not actually meet the then Tzar and Tzarina, but more than once I was at receptions which they attended.
Of the social, artistic and intellectual life of the country I soon had no doubt, but that was not what I had gone to Russia to see.
‘I was there,’ she said, ‘to see as much of the real Russia as I might, for the great cities are no more representative of Russia than London is of all England or New York of all America. Nevertheless, it was in the cities that I began first to see the shadowed side of Russian society. In the manufactories which were already beginning to spread and expand in those days, I saw the way in which men, and women, were forced to toil and the hardships which they had to bear. I am not unworldly, gentlemen. I pride myself that I know more of the realities of life than many of my sex. I know that life in the West End of London is separated from life in the East End by a great social and economic gulf, and I know that this circumstance pertains, on a greater or lesser scale, in every city everywhere in the world.
‘But I was not there to see just their great cities. As we travelled eastwards, I saw more of their smaller cities, their country towns, their villages. Wherever I went I tried to see things as they really were, and not as officials might like me to see them. I was present at feasts and funerals and even a birth. More and more I became aware that poverty and fear are the lot of millions of workers in Russia. In the country, perhaps even more so than in the cities, they live lives which no Briton would stand. In the cities there are signs of unrest, but any association which is deemed to be involved in any kind of politics is put down harshly and its leaders sent to prison or banished to Siberia. In the country they dare not even try. They live in fear of the whim of their landowners, who have absolute power over them.’
‘But I thought the system of serfdom had been abolished?’ I said.
‘So it has, Doctor, so it has. But it makes little difference. If you come of a former serf family, you may not leave your village without the permission of the village council. If you have land and wish to buy more or to improve what you have, you may not borrow money to do so unless the village council is prepared to guarantee your credit, which often they are not prepared to do. Serfdom has been abolished in name only.’
She had become more and more animated as she described the plight of Russia’s people.
‘You seem to have been deeply affected by what you saw,’ I commented.
‘I told you much of my own background - more than I have revealed to others - so that you should understand the impact which my journey through Russia made upon me. I have seen poverty and
misery in many parts of the world, gentlemen, but in most places - even in our snobbish old England - a poor man or woman may keep some pride and some hope. In Russia that is impossible. Its people live like farm animals, kept always under the eye, and often literally under the lash, of their lords.’
‘It sounds like the Middle Ages!’ I exclaimed.
‘That is exactly what it is like,’ she said. ‘Imagine a land as wide as or wider than America or Australia, with all the resources of such a land in agriculture and mineral wealth, with magnificent cities and a glittering upper society, and imagine that such a land has not advanced from medieval thoughts and systems. That is Russia.’
‘And you are sure,’ asked Holmes, ‘that the impression you brought back is the correct one?’
‘It cannot be other, Mr Holmes. It rests not only upon what I saw, but upon what many people
described to me. In addition, I had the assistance of Professor Gregorieff. He was only a student then, but he was already considerably skilled in Russian dialects and several continental languages. He was recommended to me as an interpreter, and he proved invaluable to me, not merely in assisting my journey and in making communication with the natives easier, but he has a very wide knowledge of his own country and was often able to confirm that what I had hoped might be some local aberration was, sadly, a widespread practice. Once he had joined me I found him so useful that I kept him with me all the way to Vladivostok. I could not know what it would mean.’
She gave no explanation of this comment. Instead she went on to describe the cumbersome lethargy of Russian administration and the many small difficulties which she had met on her journey. Like many countries which have a widespread and inefficient bureaucracy, it appears that often the only way to make progress was by bribery, and it appeared that Gregorieff had been adept at knowing exactly whom should be bribed and with how much.
‘I could, I suppose, have taken a carriage on the railway and kept it all the way across to Vladivostok, but it was my intention to discharge my commission properly, so we made many stops, sometimes for a day or two. This necessitated waiting for trains, which were frequently late, not by minutes, but sometimes by hours or even half a day. Mostly we travelled by larger trains, which compare very favourably with those in which I have crossed Australia, America and Canada, but sometimes my agenda or the vagaries of the railroad system necessitated using rackety little trains which shuttled along, stopping at every tiny village.
‘We had, despite these difficulties and our many stops, made a great distance into Russia and must have been nearly halfway across its entire length. Gregori had made clear that the train on which we were then travelling would stop at a number of small towns, virtually indistinguishable from many that we had visited. As a result I was looking forward to a fairly long, uninterrupted passage, during which I might catch up with my writing. We had a large and comfortable apartment on the train, with a sitting room and even its own kitchen, and Gregori told me that he had taken on a Russian woman to see to my comforts, so that I might get the maximum benefit from this part of our journey.’