Chapter 6 (1)

ORDINARY MISFORTUNES AND POLITICAL MISFORTUNES—TEACHERS AND COMMISSIONAIRES—AGENTS AND SALESMEN—ORATORS AND LETTER-WRITERS—DO-NOTHING FACTOTUMS AND EVER-BUSY DRONES—RUSSIANS—THIEVES—SPIES

(_Written in 1856 and 1857_)

... From the _sulphurous gang_, as the Germans themselves called the Marxists, it is an easy and natural transition to the muddy slime, to the lowest dregs which drift from continental shocks and commotions to the shores of Britain, and most of all to London.

It may well be imagined what incongruous elements are caught up from the Continent and deposited in England by those ebbs and flows of revolution and reaction which exhaust the constitution of Europe like an intermittent fever; and what amazing types of people are cast down by these waves and stray about in the damp swamps of London. What must be the chaos of ideas and theories in these specimens of every kind of moral formation and reformation, of every protest, every Utopia, every disillusionment, and every hope, who meet in the alleys, eating-houses and beer-shops of Leicester Square and the adjoining back streets? ‘There,’ as _The Times_ puts it, ‘lives a wretched population of foreigners wearing hats such as no one wears, and hair where none should be, a miserable, poverty-stricken, harassed population who set all the powerful monarchs of Europe trembling except the Queen of England.’

Yes indeed, there in the public-houses and beer-shops sit these foreign visitors over their gin with hot or cold water or without water at all, or with a mug of bitter porter, and still bitterer words on their lips, waiting for a revolution, for which they are no longer adapted, and money from relations, which they will never get.

What original, what odd figures I have studied among them! Here, side by side with the Communist of the old faith, hating every man of property in the name of universal brotherhood, is the old Carlist who had shot at his own brothers in the name of patriotism from devotion to a Montemolin[2] or a Don Juan, of whom he knew nothing and knows nothing. There, side by side with the Hungarian who describes how with five _honveds_[3] he sent a squadron of Austrian cavalry flying, and to make himself look more martial buttons his Hungarian coat up to the throat, though its proportions betray that its youth belonged to another wearer, sit the German who gives lessons in music, Latin, every literature and every art, for his daily beer; the cosmopolitan and atheist who despises every nationality except Kur-Hesse or Hesse-Cassel, according to which of the Hessen he happens to have been born in; the Pole of the old-fashioned pattern who loves independence as a Catholic may; and the Italian for whom independence means hatred of Catholicism.

Beside the revolutionary _émigrés_ are the _conservative émigrés_: the business man or the notary who has absconded _sans adieux_ from his fatherland, creditors and guarantors, and who also reckons himself unjustly persecuted; the _honest_ bankrupt convinced that he will soon clear his character and obtain fresh credit and capital; just as his neighbour on the right knows for certain that in a day or two ‘La Rouge’ will be proclaimed by ‘Marianne’ in person; while his neighbour on the left is equally certain that the Orleans family is packing up in Claremont and the princesses are ordering splendid dresses for a triumphal entry into Paris.

To the _conservative_ group of the ‘guilty but not convicted through absence of the accused’ belong also more thorough-going persons than bankrupts or notaries of too ardent imagination; these were persons who had had _great misfortunes_ in their native land and were trying with all their might to pass off their _ordinary misfortunes_ for _political misfortunes_. This peculiar nomenclature calls for explanation.

One of our friends went as a joke to a matrimonial agency. He was asked for ten francs and questioned as to what kind of bride he desired, whether fair or dark, how much dowry she must have, and so on. The sleek little old man, after noting down his answers, began with apologies and circumlocutions to question him about his origin and was greatly rejoiced on learning that he was of noble rank; then, redoubling his apologies and observing that the silence of the grave was their rule, asked him: ‘_Have you not had misfortunes?_’

‘I am a Pole and in exile, that is without country, without rights, without property.’

‘The last item is unfortunate, but excuse me, for what reason did you leave your _belle patrie_?’

‘By reason of the last rebellion.’ (This happened in 1848.)

‘That is of no consequence. _Political misfortunes we do not count_, they are rather to the good, _c’est une attraction_. But allow me, can you assure me that you have had no _other misfortunes_?’

‘I should think I have had; why, my father and mother are dead.’

‘Oh, no, no....’

‘What then do you mean by the words, _other misfortunes_?’

‘You see, you might have left your lovely fatherland for _private_ reasons and not for political ones. Sometimes in youth imprudence, bad example, the temptations of great cities—you know how it is.... An I.O.U. thoughtlessly given, a sum of money not your own spent somewhat irregularly—a signature or something....’

‘I understand, I understand,’ said my friend. ‘No, I assure you I have not been tried either for theft or forgery.’

... In the year 1855 a Frenchman, _exilé de sa patrie_, went from one to another of his comrades in misfortune, proposing they should assist him to publish a poem after the style of Balzac’s ‘Comédie du Diable,’ which he had written in prose and verse with new orthography and newly invented syntax. Among the characters in the poem were Louis-Philippe, Jesus Christ, Robespierre, Maréchal Bugeaud, and God Himself.

Among others he approached with this request Schoelcher, the most honest and rigid of mortals.

‘Have you been in exile long?’ the champion of the negroes asked him.

‘Since 1847.’

‘Since 1847? And you came here?’

‘From Brest, from penal servitude.’

‘What affair was that? I don’t remember it at all.’

‘Oh, well, the case was very famous at the time! Of course, it was more of an individual case.’

‘What was it, though?’ ... Schoelcher asked, somewhat perturbed.

‘_Ah, bah, si vous y tenez_, I protested in my own way against the rights of property, _j’ai protesté à ma manière_.’

‘And you ... you have been in Brest?’

‘_Parbleu oui_, seven years of penal servitude for _burglary_ (_vol avec effraction_),’ and Schoelcher, with the voice of the chaste Susannah dismissing the indiscreet old men, bade the independent protester leave him.

The persons, whose misfortunes were fortunately _general_ and whose protests were collective, whom we have left in grimy public-houses and black cook-shops at unpainted tables with gin or porter before them, had their fill of suffering, and, what was most distressing, without the faintest idea what they suffered for.

Time passed with terrible leisureliness, but it passed; revolution was nowhere in sight, except in their imaginations, while poverty, actual and merciless, mowed closer and closer the pastures on which they grazed, and all this mass of people, for the most part good people, went hungrier and hungrier. They had no habit of work; their thoughts, bent on the political arena, could not concentrate on the practical; they caught at anything, but with exasperation, with annoyance, with impatience, without perseverance, and everything slipped through their fingers; those who had the strength and manliness for work were gradually detached and swam up out of the bog, but the others!

And what an endless number there were of those others! Since those days the French amnesty and the amnesty of death has carried off many, but in the early ’fifties I came upon the great tide.

The German refugees, especially those not of the working class, were very poor, not less so than the French. They were rarely successful. Doctors who had studied medicine thoroughly, and in any case knew their work a hundred times better than the English sawbones who were called surgeons, could hardly get together a meagre practice. Painters and sculptors, with pure and platonic dreams of art and its sacred service, but without productive talent, without intensity and persistence, without unerring instinct, perished in the crowd of competing rivals. In the simple conditions of their little native town, on the cheap German food, they might have led long and tranquil lives, preserving their virginal worship of their ideals and their faith in their sacred vocation. There they would have lived and died, suspected of talent. Torn up from their little native gardens by the French upheaval, they were lost in the forest jungles of London life.

If one is not to be crushed and stifled in London, one must do a great deal of work, and do it smartly, at once, and do what comes first, what is in demand. One must fix the distracted attention of the blasé crowd by intensity, impudence, mass or variety. Ornaments, patterns for embroidery, arabesques, models, sketches, portraits, frames, water-colours, cameos, flowers—anything, so long as it is done quickly, so long as it is done in the nick of time and in immense quantity. Twenty-four hours after the news of Havelock’s victory in India, Julien, _le grand Julien_,[4] had composed a musical performance with the cries of African birds and the tramp of elephants, with Indian chants and firing of cannon, so that London read the news in the newspapers and listened to its presentation at the concert simultaneously. He made immense sums out of this composition, which ran for a month. Meanwhile the dreamers from beyond the Rhine fell by the roadside in this inhuman race for money and success; exhausted, they folded their hands in despair, or worse still, raised them against themselves to put an end to the unequal and humiliating struggle.

Apropos of concerts, those of the Germans who were musical were better off altogether; the number of such employed every day by London and its suburbs is colossal. Theatres and private lessons, modest working-class balls and immodest ones at the Argyle Rooms, at Cremorne and the Casino, _cafés chantants_ with dancing, _cafés chantants_ with living pictures in tights, Her Majesty’s, Covent Garden, Exeter Hall, the Crystal Palace, St. James’s at the top and the corners of all the main streets at the bottom occupy and maintain the whole population of two or three German duchies. A poor fellow will dream of the Music of the Future and of Rossini doing homage to Wagner, will read Tannhäuser at home from the score with no instrument, and then, sitting behind a retired tambour-major and a mummer with an ivory stick, play some Mary Anne polka or Flower and Butterfly _redowa_ for four hours in succession and be given two shillings to four-and-sixpence for his evening. Then he will go out into the dark night, through the rain to an underground beer-shop, chiefly frequented by Germans, and there find my old friends Kraut and Müller: Kraut, who has been working for six years at a bust, which keeps growing worse and worse; and Müller, who has been for twenty-six years writing a tragedy called ‘Eric,’ which he read to me ten years ago and again five years ago, and would be reading to me again now if we had not quarrelled. And we quarrelled about General Urban,[5] but of that another time....

... And what did not the Germans do to win the favourable notice of the English, and all without success?

Germans, who all their lives have smoked in every corner of their dwellings, at dinner and at tea, in bed and at their work, do not in London smoke in their smutty, smoke-begrimed drawing-room, and will not allow their guests to do so. Men who have always in their own country been in the habit of going to a tavern to drink and sit over a pipe in good company will pass the London public-houses without looking at them, and send a maid there for beer with a mug or a milk-jug.

I once happened in the presence of a German _émigré_ to fold up a letter addressed to an Englishwoman. ‘What are you about?’ he cried in excitement. I started, and involuntarily dropped the letter, supposing that there was a scorpion in it at least. ‘In England,’ he said, ‘a letter is always folded in three and not in four, and you writing to a lady too! and such a lady!’

On my first arrival in London I went to look up a German doctor of my acquaintance. I did not find him at home, and wrote on a sheet of paper that was lying on the table something of this kind: ‘_Cher docteur_, I am in London and should very much like to see you. Won’t you come this evening to such-and-such a tavern to have a bottle of wine as in old days, and to have a good talk?’ The doctor did not come, and next day I received a note from him to this effect: ‘M. Herzen, I am very sorry that I could not take advantage of your kind invitation. My duties do not leave me much leisure. I will try, however, to visit you in a day or two, etc....’

‘... Why, it seems the doctor has got a practice then?’ I inquired of the German patriot to whom I was indebted for the information that the English fold their letters in three. ‘Not at all; _der Kerl hat Pech gehabt_ in London, _es geht ihm zu ominös_.’ ‘Then what is he doing?’ and I handed my friend the note. He smiled, but observed that I should not have left on any doctor’s table an open letter in which I invited him to have a bottle of wine: ‘And besides, why ask him to such a tavern, where there is always a crowd? Here people drink at home.’ ‘It is a pity,’ I observed, ‘that knowledge always comes too late; now I know how to invite the doctor and where to bid him come, but I certainly shall not ask him.’

Now we will go back to our exiles dreaming of revolution, of remittances from relations, and of earning without working.

For a man who has not been a workman to begin working is not so easy as it seems; many people imagine that if need has arisen, if there is work, if there are tools, the workman too is ready. Work requires not only its special education and training but also self-sacrifice. The exiles, for the most part, came from second-rate drawing-rooms and literary circles, and were journalistic hacks or budding lawyers. They could not live in England by the work they were accustomed to, and any other was unnatural to them; moreover, they felt it not worth while to begin anything new, they were always listening for the bugle-call: ten years passed, fifteen years passed, no call to battle came.

In despair, in vexation, without clothes, without a secure prospect for the morrow, surrounded by growing families, they shut their eyes and fling themselves headlong into schemes and speculations. Their schemes do not succeed, their speculations come to grief, both because the schemes they hatch are nonsensical and because instead of capital all they bring to them is a sort of helpless clumsiness, an excessive irritability, an incapacity to find their bearings in the simplest position, and again an incapacity for sustained labour and for enduring the first thorny steps. When they fail they find their solace in blaming their poverty: ‘With two or three hundred pounds everything would have gone splendidly!’ The lack of capital really is of course a drawback, but that is the common lot of working people. There is no scheme too wild for them, from a joint-stock society for procuring eggs from Havre to the invention of special inks for trade-marks and of some sort of essences by which the vilest spirits can be transformed into excellent liqueurs. But while the societies are being formed and capital is being collected for all these marvels, they must have food to eat and some sort of clothing to shield them from the north-east wind and the modest eyes of the daughters of Albion.

Two palliative measures were undertaken with this view: one very tiresome and very unprofitable, the other also unprofitable, but attended with more entertainment. Quiet people with _Sitzfleisch_ took to giving lessons in spite of the fact that they had not only given no lessons before, but had very probably never received any. The fees were terribly lowered by competition.

Here is a specimen of the advertisement published by an old man of seventy, who, I fancy, belonged rather to the class of _independent_ than of _collective_ protestors:—

MONSIEUR N. N.
Teaches the French Language
on a new and easy System of rapid proficiency;
has attended members of the British Parliament
and many other persons of respectability,
as vouchers certify; translates and interprets
that universal continental language,
and English,
In a Masterly Manner.
Terms Moderate:
Namely, Three Lessons per week for Six Shillings.

Giving lessons to English people is not a particularly pleasant task; an Englishman does not stand upon ceremony with any one whom he employs for payment.

One of my old friends received a letter from an Englishman asking him to give French lessons to his daughter. My friend went at the hour fixed to arrange terms. The father was having an after-dinner nap, but the daughter greeted him rather civilly; then the old man came out, looked B. up and down and asked: ‘_Vous être le_ French teacher?’ B. admitted it. ‘_Vous pas convenir a moa._’ With this the British ass pointed to his visitor’s moustache and beard. ‘Why didn’t you give him a punch?’ I asked B. ‘Well, I thought of it, but when the bull had turned away, the daughter with tears in her eyes mutely begged my forgiveness.’

Another resource is simpler and not so tedious; it consists in a spasmodic and artistic selling of things on commission, pressing all sorts of goods on people regardless of whether they want them. The French for the most part dealt in wines and spirits. One Legitimist used to offer his acquaintances and co-religionists brandy which he obtained in an exceptional way through connections, of which in the present state of France he could not and ought not to speak, and, moreover, through a ship’s captain whom it would be a _calamité publique_ to compromise. The brandy was nothing special and cost sixpence more than at the shops. The Legitimist, accustomed to plead ‘with declamation,’ would add insult to his insistence: he would take a wine-glass in two fingers by the foot, would slowly describe circles with it, splash a few drops, sniff them in the air and invariably be astonished at the extraordinarily fine aroma of the brandy.

Another comrade in affliction who had once been a provincial professor of literature had recourse to the seductions of wine. He obtained his wine straight from the Côte d’Or, from Burgundy, from his old pupils, and was extraordinarily successful in his choice of it.

‘_Citoyen_,’ he wrote to me, ‘ask your brotherly heart (_votre cœur fraternel_) and it will tell you that you ought to grant me the agreeable privilege of furnishing you with French wine. And in so doing your heart will be at one with taste and with economy. While you drink excellent wine at the very lowest price you will have the happiness of thinking that in purchasing it you are alleviating the lot of a man who has sacrificed all to the cause of his country and of freedom.

‘_Salut et fraternité!_ P.S.—I have taken the liberty of despatching you with this a few samples.’

These samples were in half-bottles on which he had with his own hand inscribed not only the name of the wine but various incidents from its biography: ‘Chambertin (_Gr. vin et très rare!_), Côte Rôtie (_Comète_), Pommard (1823!), Nuits (_provision Aguado!_).’

Two or three weeks later the professor of literature would send a fresh set of samples. A day or two after sending them he would usually appear himself and sit on for two or three hours until I had consented to keep almost all the samples and paid for them. As he was relentless and this was repeated several times, I used in the end to praise some of the samples, pay him for them, and give him back the rest as soon as he opened the door. ‘I do not want to encroach on your valuable time, _citoyen_,’ he would say to me, and spare me for a fortnight from the sour Burgundy born under the comet and the sugary Côte Rôtie from the cellars of Aguado.

The Germans and Hungarians applied themselves to other branches of industry.

One day at Richmond I was lying down with a terrible attack of headache. François came up with a visiting-card saying that a gentleman urgently desired to see me, that he was an Hungarian, _ajutante del generale_ (all the Hungarian exiles who had no honest calling dubbed themselves Kossuth’s adjutants). I glanced at the card—it was an absolutely unknown name adorned with the title of captain.

‘Why have you admitted him? How many thousand times have I told you of it?’

‘This is the third time he has called to-day.’

‘Well, ask him into the drawing-room.’ I went down like a raging lion, fortifying myself with a dose of a sedative.

‘Allow me to introduce myself, Captain So-and-so. I was for a long time a prisoner of the Russians with Rüdiger after Vilagosz. The Russians treated us extremely well. I was particularly favoured by General Glazenap and Colonel ... What was it...? Russian surnames are very difficult ... itch ... itch....’

‘Please don’t trouble. I do not know any colonel. Very glad that you were comfortable. Won’t you sit down?’

‘Very, very comfortable ... we used to play every day with the officers _shtoss_ and _bank_ ... very fine fellows and they can’t endure the Austrians. I even remember a few words of Russian—_gleba_, _sheverdak_, _une pièce de vingt-cinq sous_.’

‘Allow me to inquire to what I am indebted...?’

‘You must excuse me, baron ... I was taking a walk in Richmond ... lovely weather, only it’s a pity it has come on to rain. I have heard so much about you from the _old man himself_ and from Count Sandor—Sandor Téléki—and also from the Countess Teresa Pulszky[6] ... What a woman the Countess Teresa!’

‘Quite so, _hors ligne_!’

Silence.

‘Ye—es, and Sandor ... we were in the _honveds_ together.... I particularly wanted to show you ...’ and he drew out from under his chair a portfolio, untied it, and took out portraits of the armless Raglan,[7] the revolting countenance of St.-Arnaud,[8] and Omer Pasha[9] in a fez. ‘A remarkable likeness, baron. I have been in Turkey myself. I was at Kutais in 1849,’ he added, as though to guarantee the likeness in spite of the fact that neither Raglan nor St.-Arnaud were there in 1849. ‘Have you seen this collection before?’

‘Of course I have,’ I answered, moistening my head with lotion. ‘These portraits are hung up everywhere in Cheapside, along the Strand, and in the West End.’

‘Yes, you are right, but I have the whole collection, and those are not on Chinese paper. In the shops you would pay a guinea for them, and I can let you have them for fifteen shillings.’

‘I am really very much obliged to you, but tell me, captain, what do I want with the portraits of St.-Arnaud and all this crew?’

‘Baron, I will be open with you. I am a soldier and not one of Metternich’s diplomats. Having lost my estates near Temesvar, I am temporarily in straitened circumstances and am therefore selling _objets d’art_ on commission (and also cigars—Havanna cigars and Turkish tobacco—Russians and we Hungarians know what is good in that line!), and so I make the poor halfpence with which to buy the bitter bread of exile, _wie der Schiller sagt_.’

‘Captain, be completely open and tell me what will you make off each collection?’ I asked (though I doubt whether Schiller did utter that line of Dante).

‘Half a crown.’

‘Then let us settle the matter like this: I will offer you a whole crown if you will let me off buying the portraits.’

‘Really, baron, I am ashamed, but my position ... but you know it all, you feel it all.... I have so long cherished a respect for you ... the Countess Pulszky ... and the Count Sandor, Sandor Téléki....’

‘Excuse me, Captain, I have such a headache that I can hardly sit up.’

‘Our governor (namely Kossuth), our old man, often has a headache too,’ the _honved_ observed by way of encouragement and consolation; then he hurriedly tied up his portfolio, and together with the striking likenesses of Raglan and company carried off a fairly good portrait of Queen Victoria on a coin.

Among these pedlars of exile who offer profitable purchases and the _émigrés_ who have been for the last ten years stopping every man wearing a beard in the streets and squares, begging for two shillings to make up their fare to America or sixpence to pay for the coffin of a baby who has died of scarlet fever, there are the exiles who write letters, sometimes on the grounds of acquaintance, sometimes of non-acquaintance, expatiating on extreme straits of all kinds and temporary money difficulties, often with prospects of growing wealthy in the far future and always with an original taste in epistolary composition.

I have a portfolio of such letters. I will quote two or three particularly characteristic.

‘_Herr Graf!_ I was a lieutenant in the Austrian army, but fought for the freedom of the Magyars, was forced to flee, and have worn out all my clothes; if you have any old trousers to spare, you will confer an unspeakable obligation on me.

‘_P.S._—To-morrow at nine o’clock I will wait upon your _courier_.’

That is an example of the naïve style, but there are letters that are classical both in language and in their clear-cut incisiveness: ‘_Domine, ego sum Gallus, ex patriâ meâ profugus pro causâ libertatis populi. Nihil habeo ad manducandum, si aliquod pro me facere potes, gaudeo, gaudebit cor meum._

‘_Mercuris dies 1859._’

Other letters neither laconic nor classical in form are distinguished by a peculiar method of reckoning.

‘_Citoyen_, you were so kind as to send me three pounds last February (you may not remember it, but I remember it). For a long time past I have been meaning to repay you, but have received no money at all from my relations; I am expecting a rather considerable sum in a few days. If I were not ashamed, I would ask you to send me another two pounds, and then I could repay you the five pounds in a _round sum_.’

I preferred the sum to remain triangular. The gentleman who was so set upon round sums began to spread it abroad that I was in touch with the Russian Embassy.

Then come business letters and oratorical letters, and both kinds lose a great deal in translation.

‘_Mon cher Monsieur!_ No doubt you know of my discovery. It should bring glory to our century and a crust of bread to me. And this discovery remains buried in obscurity because I have not the credit for a paltry two hundred pounds, and instead of working at it am obliged to _courir le cachet_ for wretched pay. Every time that permanent and profitable work presents itself an ironical destiny breathes upon it (I am translating word for word), it flies away—I pursue it, its obstinate insolence baffles my projects (_son opiniâtre insolence bafoue mes projets_), again my hopes are raised and I fly after it—after it. I am flying after it now. Shall I catch it? I almost believe so—if you have confidence in my talent, are willing to _embarquer votre confiance en compagnie de mon esprit et la livrer au souffle peu aventureux de mon destin_.’

Further on he explains that he has eighty pounds, even eighty-five pounds in prospect; the remaining hundred and fifteen pounds the inventor seeks to borrow, promising thirteen or at least eleven per cent. in case of success. ‘Could capital be better, more safely invested in our day when the finances of the whole world are unstable and states are tottering, propped on the bayonets of our foes?’

I did not give the hundred and fifteen. The inventor began to admit that there was something a little dubious in my behaviour, ‘_il y a du louche_,’ and that it would be as well to be on one’s guard with me.

In conclusion here is a purely oratorical letter:—

‘Generous fellow-citizen of the future republic of the world! How many times have you and your distinguished friend Louis Blanc assisted me, and again I am writing to you and to _citoyen_ Blanc to beg for a few shillings. My heart-rending position has not changed for the better, far from my Lares and Penates, on the inhospitable island of egoism and greed. With what profound truth have you said in your works (I am continually re-reading them), “The talent dies out without money like a lamp without oil”——’ and so on.

I need hardly say that I never did write such bosh, and my fellow-citizen of the _république future et universelle_ had never once opened my works.

After the orators by letter come the orators by word of mouth who ‘work the pavement and the street corner.’ For the most part they only pretend to be exiles, but are in reality foreign workmen who have sunk from drink or men who have had _misfortunes_ at home. Taking advantage of the immense size of London, they work thoroughly through one quarter after another and then return to the Via Sacra—that is to Regent Street, with the Haymarket and Leicester Square.

Five years ago a young man rather neatly dressed and of a sentimental appearance approached me on several occasions in the dusk with a question in French spoken with a German accent: ‘Could you tell me where such-and-such a part is?’ and he handed me an address half a dozen miles from the West End, somewhere in Holloway or Hackney. Everybody tried, as I did, to explain where it was. He was overwhelmed with horror. ‘It is nine o’clock in the evening already. I have had nothing to eat yet ... when shall I get there?... Not a penny for an omnibus.... I did not expect this. I do not like to ask you, but if you could lend me ... one shilling would be enough....’

I met him twice more. At last he disappeared, and not without satisfaction I came upon him some months later in his old pitch with a different beard and wearing a different cap. Raising the latter with feeling, he asked me: ‘No doubt you know French?’ ‘I do,’ I answered, ‘but I know also that you have an address, that you have to go a long distance, that the hour is late, that you have had nothing to eat, that you have no money for an omnibus and that you need a shilling ... but this time I will give you sixpence because I have told you all that instead of your telling me.’

‘I can’t help it,’ he answered, smiling, without the slightest resentment, ‘of course you won’t believe me again, but I am going to America. You might add something for my fare.’

I could not resist that, and gave him another sixpence.

There were Russians, too, among these gentry—for instance, Stremouhov, a former officer from the Caucasus who had been begging in Paris as long ago as 1847, telling a very plausible tale of some duel, an escape, and so on, and carrying off to the intense exasperation of the servants everything he could get: old clothes and slippers, winter vests in summer and cotton trousers in the winter, children’s clothes, ladies’ frippery. The Russians got up a subscription for him and sent him off to the Foreign Legion in Algiers. He served there for five years, brought away a testimonial and again went begging from house to house, telling about the duel and the escape and adding various Arab adventures. Stremouhov was growing old and people were both sorry for him and terribly sick of him. The Russian priest attached to the London Embassy got up a subscription to send him to Australia. He was given introductions in Melbourne, and he himself and, what was more important, his fare were put in the captain’s special care. Stremouhov came to say good-bye to us. We gave him a complete outfit. I provided him with a warm overcoat, Haug with shirts and so on. Stremouhov shed tears at parting and said: ‘Say what you like, gentlemen, but it is no easy thing to go so far away. To break with all one’s habits, but it must be ...’ and he kissed us and thanked us most warmly.

I thought that Stremouhov had been for long ages on the banks of the Victoria River when suddenly I read in _The Times_ that a Russian officer called Stremouhov had been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for disorderly behaviour and fighting some one in a tavern after mutual accusations of theft and so on. Four months after that I was walking along Oxford Street when it began to rain heavily, and as I had no umbrella I stood under a gateway. At the very moment when I stopped, a lanky figure under a wreck of an umbrella whisked hurriedly under another gateway. I recognised Stremouhov. ‘What, have you come back from Australia?’ I asked him, looking him straight in the face.

‘Ah, it’s you, and I didn’t recognise you,’ he answered in a faint and sinking voice, ‘no, not from Australia, but from the hospital where I have been lying for three months between life and death ... and I don’t know why I recovered.’

‘In which hospital have you been—St. George’s?’

‘No, not here, in Southampton.’

‘How was it you fell ill and did not let any one know, and how was it you did not go?’

‘I missed the first train. I went by the next, but the steamer had left. I stood on the quay. I stood there and almost threw myself into the briny depths; I went to the Reverend to whom our priest had recommended me. “The captain,” he said, “has gone; he would not wait an hour.”’

‘And the money?’

‘He left the money with the Reverend.’

‘You took it, of course?’

‘I did, but I got no good out of it. While I was ill they stole everything from under my pillow, wretches that they are. If only you can help me!’

‘And here in your absence another Stremouhov has been clapped into prison, and for three months too, for fighting with a courier. Didn’t you hear of it?’

‘How could I hear of it, lying between life and death? I believe the rain is giving over. Good-bye.’

‘You must be careful how you go out in the damp or you will be getting into hospital again.’

After the Crimean War several prisoners of war, both sailors and soldiers, were left in London, though they could not themselves say why. For the most part given to drink, it was some time before they realised their position. Some of them asked the Embassy to intercede for them, to take up their cause, _aber was macht es denn dem Herrn Baron von Brunow!_

They were an extremely melancholy spectacle, tattered and emaciated; they would sometimes cringingly, sometimes with insolence (rather unpleasant in a narrow street after ten o’clock at night), ask for money.

In 1853 several sailors ran away from a man-of-war at Portsmouth. Some of them were brought back in accordance with the absurd law which applies exclusively to sailors. Several of them escaped and walked on foot from Portsmouth to London. One of them, a young man of two-and-twenty with a good-natured and open face, was a shoemaker and could make _schlippers_ as he called them. I bought him tools and gave him money, but he could not get work.

It was just then that Garibaldi was sailing with his ship, _The Commonwealth_, to Genoa, and I asked him to take the young man with him. Garibaldi engaged him at a wage of £1 a month, promising to raise it to £2 a month in a year’s time if he should behave well. The sailor of course agreed, took £2 in advance from Garibaldi and brought his belongings on to the ship.

The day after Garibaldi had left, the sailor came to me, red in the face, drowsy and bloated-looking.

‘What has happened?’ I asked him.

‘A misfortune, your honour. I was too late for the ship.’

‘How did you come to be late?’

The sailor fell on his knees and whimpered unnaturally. The position was not hopeless. The boat had gone to Newcastle-on-Tyne for coal. ‘I will send you there by rail,’ I said to him, ‘but if you are too late again this time, remember that I will do nothing for you even if you are starving. And as the fare to Newcastle is over £1, and I would not trust you with a shilling, I shall send for a friend and ask him to take charge of you all night and put you into the train.’

‘I will pray for your honour all my life long!’

The friend who undertook to despatch him came to me and reported that he had seen the sailor off.

Imagine my amazement when three days later the sailor appeared with a Pole.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ I shouted at him, shaking with genuine fury. But before the sailor could open his lips, his companion proceeded to defend him in broken Russian, bathing his words in an atmosphere of tobacco, wine and spirits.

‘Who are you?’

‘A Polish nobleman.’

‘Every one is a nobleman in Poland. Why have you come to me with this scoundrel?’

The nobleman was cheeky. I observed dryly that I was not acquainted with him, and that his presence in my room was so strange that I might call a policeman and have him removed.

I looked at the sailor. Three days of the aristocratic company of a nobleman had greatly advanced his education. He was not crying, but was looking at me with drunken insolence.

‘I was taken very ill, your honour, I thought I should give up my soul to God, but I got a little better when the train had gone.’

‘Where were you taken ill, then?’

‘On the way, that is, at the railway station.’

‘Why didn’t you go by the next train?’

‘I never thought of it, and besides, not knowing the language....’

‘Where is your ticket?’

‘Why, I have no ticket.’

‘How is that?’

‘I gave it up to a man.’

‘Well, now you can look out for other people; only be sure of one thing, I will never help you in any case.’

‘But excuse me,’ the nobleman interposed.

‘Sir, I have nothing to say to you and desire to hear nothing from you.’

Swearing at me through his teeth, he went off with his Telemachus, probably to the nearest public-house.

Another step downward....

Perhaps many people will ask me wonderingly what further step downward there can be. But there _is_ a rather _great_ one—only here things are obscure and one must step warily. I had not the _pruderie_ of Schoelcher, and the author of the poem in which Christ converses with Marshal Bugeaud seemed to me even more amusing after his heroic sufferings _pour un vol avec effraction_. Even if he did steal something and break a lock, goodness knows what he had suffered for it, and then he had toiled for some years, perhaps with a cannon-ball chained to his legs. He had ranged against him not only the man he had robbed but the whole State and society, the church, the army, the police, the law, all honest men who do not need to rob, as well as all dishonest ones who have not been caught and tried. There are thieves of another kind, rewarded by the Government, cherished by the authorities, blessed by the Church, protected by the army, and not persecuted by the police, because they themselves belong to it; these men do not filch handkerchiefs, but conversations, letters, glances. Exile-spies are doubly spies.... With them the utmost limit of vice and depravity is reached; below them, as below Dante’s ‘Lucifer,’ there is nothing, every step from that lowest depth is upward.

The French are great artists in this line. They are capable of adroitly combining the externals of culture, enthusiastic phrases, the _aplomb_ of a man whose conscience is clear and whose _point d’honneur_ is sensitive, with the duties of a spy. Begin to suspect him, and he will challenge you to a duel; he will fight, and fight bravely too.

The memoirs of Delahodde,[10] of Chenu,[11] and of Schnepf are a treasure-house for the study of the filth to which civilisation leads its vicious children. Delahodde naïvely prints that in betraying his friends he was obliged to be as artful with them ‘as a sportsman is with game.’

Delahodde is the Alcibiades of espionage.

A young man of literary education and radical views, he came from the provinces to Paris, poor as Job, and asked for work at the offices of La Réforme. He was given work of some sort and did it well; little by little he got on to friendly terms with the staff. He obtained an entry into political circles, learnt a great deal of what was being done in the Republican party, and continued working for several years, still on the most friendly terms with his colleagues.

When, after the revolution of February, Caussidière went through the papers at the Prefecture, he found that Delahodde had all this time with the greatest accuracy furnished reports to the police of what was being done at the office of La Réforme. Caussidière sent for Delahodde to come to Albert’s; there witnesses awaited him. Delahodde came, suspecting nothing, tried to defend himself, but then, seeing the impossibility, admitted that he had written letters to the Prefect. The question arose what was to be done with him. Some thought, and they were perfectly right, that he should be shot on the spot like a dog. Albert opposed this more than any one, and did not want to have a man killed _in his flat_. Caussidière offered him a loaded pistol to shoot himself. Delahodde refused. Some one asked him whether he would like poison. Poison, too, he refused, but on his way to prison, like a sensible person, asked for a mug of beer. This is a fact told me by the deputy-mayor of the twelfth arrondissement, who accompanied him.

When the reaction began to get the upper hand and Delahodde was let out of prison, he went away to England, but when the reaction was completely triumphant he returned to Paris, and was a prominent figure at the theatre and at public gatherings as a lion of a peculiar species; after that, he published his memoirs.

Spies are invariably to be found in all groups of exiles; they are recognised, discovered, beaten, but they do their job with complete success. In Paris the police know all the secrets of London; the day of Delescluze’s,[12] and afterwards of Boichot’s,[13] secret arrival in France was so well known that they were seized at Calais as soon as they stepped off the boat. At the trial of the Communists at Cologne, documents and letters were read that had been ‘bought in London,’ as the Prussian commissioner of police naïvely admitted at the trial.

In 1849 I made the acquaintance of an exiled Austrian journalist called Engländer. He was very clever and very sarcastic, and later on published a series of lively articles on the historical development of Socialism in Kolatchek’s _Jahrbücher_. This Engländer had been imprisoned in Paris in connection with the case called the ‘Case of the Correspondents.’

All sorts of rumours were current about him; at last he turned up himself in London. Here another Austrian exile, Dr. Hefner, who was greatly respected by his fellow-countrymen, said that Engländer had been in the pay of the Prefect in Paris, and that he had been put in prison for infidelity to the French police, who were jealous of the Austrian embassy in whose service he was also employed. Engländer led a dissipated life, which needs plenty of money, and the Prefect alone apparently did not provide enough.

The German exiles discussed it and discussed it, and sent for Engländer to answer these charges. Engländer tried to turn it off with a joke, but Hefner was relentless. Then the unfaithful consort of the two polices leapt up with a flushed face and tears in his eyes, and said: ‘Well, then, I _am_ guilty to a great extent, but it is not for him to accuse me’; and he flung on the table a letter from the Prefect which made it clear that Hefner, too, was receiving payment from him.

There was living in Paris a certain N., also an Austrian refugee. I made his acquaintance at the end of 1848. His comrades used to describe an extraordinarily valiant action performed by him during the revolution in Vienna. The insurgents were short of gunpowder. N. undertook to bring it by rail, and brought it. A married man with children, he was in great poverty in Paris. In 1853 I found him in London in great straits; he was living with his family in two small rooms in one of the poorest back-streets of Soho. Nothing succeeded that he undertook. He set up a laundry in which his wife and another exile washed the linen, while N. delivered it; but the comrade went away to America and the laundry failed.

He wanted to get a job in a commercial office, and being a very intelligent fellow and well educated, he might have earned a good salary but for references; without references you cannot take a step in England.

I gave him my name as one: and in connection with this introduction a German refugee, O., observed to me that it was a mistake on my part to do so, that the man did not enjoy a good reputation and was supposed to be in relations with the French police.

About that time Reihel brought my children to London. He took great interest in N. I told him what was said about the latter.

Reihel laughed heartily; he was ready to answer for N. as for himself, and pointed to his poverty as the best refutation of the charge. This last consideration to some extent convinced me, too. In the evening Reihel went out for a walk and came back late, looking pale and upset. He came in to me for a minute, and complaining of a violent sick headache was about to go to bed. I looked at him and said:—

‘You have something on your mind. _Heraus damit!_’

‘Yes, you have guessed right ... but first give me your word of honour that you will tell no one.’

‘I daresay, but what nonsense! Leave it to my conscience.’

‘I could not rest after hearing from you about N., and in spite of the promise I had given to you I made up my mind to question him, and have been to see him. His wife is going to be confined in a day or two, their poverty is awful.... What it cost me to begin to speak! I called him out into the street, and at last, plucking up all my courage, said to him: “Do you know that Herzen was warned of this and that? I am convinced that it is a calumny. Do let me clear up the business.” “I thank you,” he answered me gloomily, “but that is not necessary; I know where the story comes from. In a moment of despair, starving, I offered the Prefect in Paris my services to keep him _au courant_ with news of the exiles. He sent me three hundred francs and I have never written to him since.”’

Reihel was almost weeping.

‘Listen,’ I said: ‘until his wife has been confined and is recovered, I give you my word not to speak. Let him get a job in an office and leave political circles, but if I hear fresh evidence and he is still in relations with the exiles I will show him up. Damn the fellow!’

Reihel went away. Ten days later at dinner-time N. came in to see me, pale and in distress. ‘You can imagine,’ he said, ‘how hard it is for me to take this step; but look where I will, I can see no hope of help except from you. My wife will be brought to bed within a few hours, we have neither coal nor tea nor a cup of milk in the house, not a farthing, nor one woman who will help, nor means to send for a doctor.’ Utterly exhausted, he sank on to a chair, and hiding his face in his hands said: ‘The only thing left for me is to blow out my brains, anyway I shall not see this misery.’

I sent at once to kind-hearted Paul Darasz, gave N. some money, and soothed him as far as I could. Next day Darasz came to tell me that the birth had gone off well.

Meanwhile the rumour, which had probably originated in personal enmity, of N.’s connections with the French police was more and more widely circulated, and at last T., a well-known Vienna _clubiste_ and agitator, whose speech led the populace to hang Latour,[14] asserted right and left that he had himself read a letter from the Prefect accompanying a despatch of money. Evidently N.’s exposure was of great moment to T. He came himself to me to confirm N.’s guilt.

My position was becoming difficult. Haug was living with me; hitherto I had said no word to him, but now this reticence was becoming indelicate and dangerous. I told him about it, making no mention of Reihel, as I did not want to mix him up in the drama, which seemed to offer every possibility of a fifth act in a police court or at the Old Bailey. What I had dreaded beforehand was just what happened, ‘the Bouillon boiled over.’[15] I could scarcely pacify Haug and restrain him from marching off to N.’s garret. I knew that N. must come to us with some manuscripts he had been copying, and advised him to await his arrival. Haug agreed, and one morning ran in to me, pale with fury, and announced that N. was below. I made haste to throw my papers into the table drawer and go down. Haug was shouting and N. was shouting. The interchange was already rather violent. The strength of the bad language was increasing and increasing. The expression of N.’s face, contorted by resentment and shame, was sinister. Haug was intensely excited and confused. As things were going, it was far easier to come to splitting skulls than reaching the truth.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said suddenly in the midst of their talk, ‘allow me to stop you for a moment.’

They stopped.

‘It seems to me that you are spoiling your case by overheat; before abusing each other you ought to put the question quite clearly——’

‘Whether I am a spy or not?’ shouted N. ‘I will allow no man on earth to put such a question to me.’

‘No, that is not the question I meant; you are accused by a certain person, and not by him alone, of having received money from the Prefect of Police at Paris.’

‘Who is that person?’

‘T.’

‘He is a blackguard.’

‘That is not the point. Have you received money or not?’

‘I have,’ said N. with strained composure, looking Haug and me in the face. Haug made a convulsive grimace and uttered a sort of moan of impatience to begin reviling N. again. I took Haug by the hand and said: ‘Well, that is all we want.’

‘No, it is not all,’ answered N. ‘You ought to know that I have never compromised any one by a single line.’

‘That fact can only be confirmed by your correspondent Pietri, and he is not an acquaintance of ours.’

‘Well, am I a criminal and you my judges or what? What makes you imagine that I am bound to justify myself to you? I think too highly of my own dignity to let it depend on the opinion of any one like Haug or you. I will never set my foot again within this house,’ added N., proudly putting on his hat and opening the door. ‘You may be perfectly sure of that,’ I said after him. He slammed the door and went out. Haug was for plunging after him, but, laughing, I held him back and paraphrased the words of Siéyès: ‘_Nous sommes aujourd’hui ce que nous avons été hier—déjeunons!_’

N. went straight off to T. The bulky, shiny Silenus of whom Mazzini once said, ‘I always think that he has been fried in olive oil and not wiped afterwards,’ had not yet left his bed. The door opened, and before him stood N. with drowsy and puffy eyes.

‘You told Herzen that I received money from the Prefect?’

‘I did.’

‘What for?’

‘Because you have.’