Chapter II: Part 2

"I go to the dispensaire every morning. I have got so much into it that I cannot get out. I enjoy it so much that I only remember once in a great while that I am be doing a little good in it as well. This war makes me feel terribly unhappy for many reasons, I cannot explain. I have an unreasoning longing to be in Russia and doing something. It seems such a useless ridiculous war and so much loss. I cannot understand the way people view things. The loss of life and suffering just make me sick. I see no dignity or sense in anything but quiet and peace. The more importance one attaches to a question, the more pitiful and absurd it seems. What matters externally?"

Paris 1904.

"I feel old and addled. I am still dispensing with rage and interest. I was given a number of girls to give an illustration lesson in bandaging this morning. We have had a number of interesting cases lately. I shall be sorry to leave them."

(She was 26 years old, working at the French dispensary.)

Paris 1904.

"I have always before undertaken too much and accomplished less. I do not think it is what one studies but the way one studies anything which amounts to anything. As I have often said before, I have more faith in what I think in spite of myself, in the preferences that I discover in myself, than in those things which I consciously investigate. About the affections, I don't know. The affections I have seem stable enough to me and I feel an ultimate capacity for a larger order."

After completing her Red Cross studies in Paris and receiving a diploma which granted her the status of an apprentice nurse, Nelka made arrangements to go to Russia. This was not an easy undertaking. Nelka had few connections in Russia; her knowledge of the language was limited, her knowledge as a nurse likewise limited, and it took a great deal of determination to carry her plan through.

The war at the moment was coming to an end with the defeat of Russia and a revolutionary movement was afoot. The front thousands of miles away made transportation of the wounded lengthy and difficult, and, long after the hostilities had come to an end, a steady stream of wounded continued to arrive in the capital.

It was a trying and difficult time for Nelka. She was deeply upset by the tragic events of the lost war and the grumblings of the revolution.

She got in touch with some friends in Russia to help make necessary arrangements. A friend of her mother's, Mr. Pletnioff, made all preliminary arrangements to have her accepted in the Kaufman community of sisters under the leadership of Baroness Ixkull, a very cultivated and capable person.

Also the Bakhmeteffs were at that time in St. Petersburg and they too helped make arrangements. Despite the fact that Nelka was then 26 years old, she did not feel that she should travel alone and was trying to find someone who was going to Russia from Paris. A friend who was to go had to put off her trip and so recommended Nelka to a friend of hers, a Madame Sivers, with whom she went and with whom later she became quite a friend.

When she arrived she went at first to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Bakhmeteff.

Early in 1905 she wrote from St. Petersburg, upon her arrival:

"Yesterday already I saw Madame Hitrovo, Veta, Rurik and Veta's son" (my grandmother, my mother and my uncle).

This was the first time that I saw Nelka. The Bakhmeteffs gave a luncheon at the Hotel de France where they were staying to meet Nelka. As it was a family affair with no outsiders, my mother took me along. I was then about seven years old. A child of seven is not generally impressed by a grown up person, but Nelka made a tremendous impression on me when I first saw her: an impression which never left me throughout life. From that day on she meant something to me, and that something grew and grew in my feelings for her with time and years.

The Russian Red Cross had a number of sister "Communities" who were managed by ladies of the Russian society. The one Nelka joined was the Kaufman community under the able management of Baroness Ixkull.

Nelka wrote from St. Petersburg in 1905:

"Baroness Ixkull seems an awfully clever, energetic and altogether charming person. I think although the Bakhmeteffs highly approve, they are afraid she is just on the edge of being a little 'advanced,' which to such arch conservatives as they, seems all wrong. The extremes are very great. You see Pletnioff is somewhat liberal, but nothing in the sense that the word is used abroad and Mr. Bakhmeteff is for the strictest adherence to middle age regime. Between the two I must find the just milieu. Anyway everyone is in a certain sense conservative just now. For the moment I can only tell you of my delight at being here. I suppose the Constitution had to come but surely autocracy is the only ideal Government and I am sorry that the nation was not equal to it."

Here we see this very distinct adherence to the principles of the Russian government of the autocratic regime, the adherence to which seemed only natural and acceptable to Nelka in her idea of a patriotic Russian.

St. Petersburg 1905.

"Tomorrow it will be one week that I am in the hospital and I am getting quite accustomed to it. It is certainly a very complete change of habits in every way, but the essentials are all right. Over and above everything is the joy of at last being able to do, if only a little, for the poor soldiers who have suffered so much and who are so good and patient. I shall never cease to regret that I did not get here at the beginning of the war. This is a perfectly beautiful hospital, quite large and everything perfect. The soldiers are so well provided for that I should think that some of them would almost hate to leave; but oh, Poodie, it is so terrible to see them, many so young, without arms or legs and one whose head was almost blown off, so grateful to have a new glass eye put in him the other day. Soon they are going to make him a nose. On Thursday there was the opening of a new ward and the service and benediction were very impressive. The Queen of Greece came and I was presented to her."

"There are four sisters in a room but the rooms are large with two big windows and they are very nice. Sister Belskaya speaks every language and has helped me a great deal. I am managing to get on somehow with Russian but the other night when I had a conversation with a Sister Swetlova on subjects that were not absolutely elementary it was awfully funny. While the ward is being settled, 5 of us are being sent to the big city hospital where all the sisters have been for a time to learn all kinds of things, but it is to be, I think, only for a few days. O, Poodie, I cannot describe it to you. The hospital itself is all right enough, but the poor people! There are 3,000 there. We are in the surgical section for women. It is very various and valuable experience as you learn everything in a short while, but I would not care to prolong it."

During the summer of 1906 Nelka went with some of the wounded to Finland where the convalescents were sent to recuperate in the country. She was then in her second year working with the wounded and was hoping to be able to return to America before too long.

Politics were very much of importance at that time in Russia which had just emerged from an attempted revolution and certain political changes had taken place. A new parliamentary system had been formed but did not last and was breaking up. Nelka wrote in 1906 from Finland:

"I cannot say what a feeling of relief and thankfulness I had when the Duma (Parliament) was dispersed. I cannot see that any solution is anywhere in view. No one seems to have the least assurance of what will happen. I feel so stirred up I really almost wish I was a man and could enter into the question and do something."

"Poodie, Poodie, do you realize that I am almost an old lady of 28. It seems so funny for that is really honorable--60 is young beside it. I wish you could see the sky here. Such sunsets I have never seen--every day different and the colors on the lake unimaginable. I simply go flying to the roof, I don't know how many times and look and look and look."

Finland 1906.

"But believe me liberalism abroad is quite different from here and there is so much bad in it here. I don't think there is much hope for Russia. I don't believe we have that in the character to maintain a nation."

"What a terrible thing the attempt to kill Stolypin. The people here really are out of their minds. The ones that think that these murders are for an 'idea.' O, Poodie, I have learned so much since I have been here."

"One sister, Sister Pavlova, is very nice--an aristocrat of correct views and a great satisfaction. She was two years at the War in a contagious hospital."

Finland 1906.

"I have the apothecary now and put up ten or fifteen prescriptions a day. I find it quite agitating for a novice and am simply calculating and recalculating over and over again. I am also in charge now of the operating room and surgical dressings, and do massage and night duty as before. This is just while we are here. When we go back to Petersburg I will have the ward duty alone as before."

"I am on night duty after a very strenuous day--assisted the doctor with the instruments and material for 25 dressings, put up eight prescriptions myself, dressed the wounds of five Finns, spent some time in the ward, went over the soldier's money accounts, did an hour massage, slept one hour and tomorrow morning I am going to take the temperatures at 6 A.M., at seven put up a bottle of digitalis, at eight get into clean clothes, prepare the surgical dressing room for two dressings, give the instruments and material, and at half past eight or quarter to nine start with two soldiers for Petersburg--one who is to be operated and the other who has been so ill for a week that they think it best to take him back as quickly as possible. Neither of them can sit up. Don't you think that is an undertaking? I am going to take the train back immediately after delivering them at the hospital and hope to get back by 5 or 6 o'clock and have a grand rest up for Monday."

"Is life so full of resource or is the resource all in one's imagination and state of mind. It seems to me there is so much, so much, and yet the most sometimes seems just to suffer being 'suffered out' by the effect of certain moral efforts."

Finland 1906.

"This whole life is something so complete and so different and I feel now so much at home in it. Had I been different I might not have needed what this experience has given me, but as it is, you will find a great deal more of me and have a great deal more of me than before I left. I know myself too well and know too well the unstableness of my moral interior to say that I may not need again some time."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I often wonder now, since this life here in the hospital is so different from everything which has opened such new vistas, if there are an indefinite number of experiences which each would offer new points of view. For there it would seem that one must abstain from any general conclusions upon the things of the world, owing to one's limited experience. I am awfully glad to be thrown in this association with the soldiers. This is quite a revelation. They are in comparison with other people just like charts for little children to read, as compared with some hazy book. Then there are all degrees of awakening. It is most interesting. I sometimes think that human beings are as different from each other as things of a different species."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I told her (Baroness Ixkull) that I thought of leaving in August, if possible. She is so urgent about my staying altogether in the community that it makes it very hard to leave. At last I seem to have found something where I am thought to be very useful and I have fitting qualities, but alas so far from Poodie and Pats that it is not possible. At least it is a thing I know I am prepared for now and that is always open to me as a vent for energy, an occasion for helping and regulator of the nervous system. If there is war again I think nothing will hold me, but otherwise I am going to try to make my character a possible one so that it will be a more peaceful member of the family with you and Pats."

"No matter what I do later this year will have a lasting benefit. I don't know what it is. I never seem to get enough of life. I know the feeling that satisfies for I have had it a few times. Perhaps it is youth, perhaps it is egotism, but anyway it is something that makes one wish one had five lives to live at once. I am laboring through a very interesting book on the Evolution of matter which demands a great deal of concentration of a brain as uninformed in matters of science as mine. I refuse to think and accept things in 'terms' which when it gets to the point of the disassociation of atoms becomes difficult not to do. I wish I had a really active brain that would give me the results I want without requiring such an immense amount of will which I can't command."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"My plans seem unable to take any definite shape for the moment. I cannot leave my soldiers that I have had from the beginning and it is uncertain yet when they will be in a condition to leave. I wish I were a few years younger. I want to do so much."

(She was then 28 years old.)

St. Petersburg 1906.

"It is now seven A.M. I am just finishing night service but I feel quite lively just because I know it is ending. Yesterday the 'sidelkas' (apprentices) received the cross. After they graduate they can take cases and be paid about $20 a month. This course is only one year. The sisters' course is two years but of course their work is always free."

In Russia all nursing was considered to be a vocation and as such could therefore not be paid. All sisters received their maintenance and clothing from the community but no pay.

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I have just received your letter telling me of Trenar's death." (Trenar was a borsoi dog which Nelka had and left in Cazenovia. This was before she had her poodle Tibi.) "Mrs. Lockman wrote me some time ago that he was very sick with distemper but had not written me since. Useless to say how I feel. Everyone does not feel the appeal of a dog's affection in the same degree, and with me it is as strong as anything I know. Trenar in his devotion was exceptional, and not to have been with him when he was sick--I simply can't think of it. I didn't do anything that I should have with him. It was wrong to leave him. I love dogs and Trenar was something very special. I didn't do what I should with him and in every way I am perfectly miserable about it, but it is useless of it--that is all. I know you feel sorry for the way I feel, but how I feel you can't know and it must seem out of place to you. Anyway I feel it and I reproach myself. I just wish I could have been with him. I will never forget his attachment--dear little Trenar."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"But I don't suppose you can conceive how I feel the autocracy, the Emperor. I don't care what I think; I feel autocracy and the Emperor simply not a human being to me. I read this and thought you would like it: 'Sow an act and you reap habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.'"

St. Petersburg 1906.

"For the last two weeks I have been all the time on duty with the operated cases. This last week I was on night duty every night except last night when I had to sleep to be on duty today. I am so tired of fussing with myself; it makes me so angry not to be a perfect machine. The things to do are all the same--the way to be is the same, and yet there is so much thinking, choosing, deciding, worrying. So few things matter, and so much should not have a moment's consideration. Nine tenths of all the shackling considerations should simply never rise to consciousness."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"On Xmas there was a big tree for all the soldiers who could walk and then there were a lot of little trees all arranged with presents for each room where the soldiers could not leave their beds. It was said in the morning that nothing would be done on Xmas--no dressings, nothing, and I never worked so hard! As there were no dressings in the operating room I had to do quite a number somehow or other in bed, and then it was my day to keep the ward in the afternoon."

St. Petersburg 1906.

"I am beginning to think that the 'esprit' of the sisters here, that is most of them, is far too liberal. I get perfectly outdone with the papers some of the sisters bring into the ward, and I quickly lay hands upon everyone I find. There is no stemming the tide but I shall do what I can wherever I am, for it is too stupid. The soldiers are too uneducated."

"You say in your letter that you understand that my father's country should be dear to me and yet you think that my mother's country might also mean something. What I feel, understand and see in America does not mean anything. I cannot feel as they do. What I care for most in the world is you and Pats--that does not need to be said. As a country, for ideas, general point of view, etc. etc., Russia and Russians are more sympathetic and comprehensible. It is so different. But that is as far as country goes. The real tie, as I said before, is you and Pats."

Finally after a stay of over two years in Russia, Nelka started back for America. But she took a round about way this time traveling first through Russia to the Crimea and from there by boat.

Written on the train between Kharkoff and Sebastopol 1907.

"I am on my way to the Crimea--and then continue by boat to Naples. I expect to get to Paris by the 12th or 15th and to sail at the end of the month. What a place Moscow is. O, it is so beautiful--so old and real Russia, so solid and so unforeign. It was fearfully cold but I was out all the time and only had my nose frozen once. I hate, loath and detest every foreign influence in Russia and every evidence that there is a world outside. The Kremlin is certainly thorough in itself and I love it. I am palpitating at the thought of seeing you so soon. It seems to me I am just living in gulps. I feel somehow that the privileges I have had ought to be put to something now. How will I even put my whole self into one thing? Everything has splendid possibilities but it is always the fearful alternative and its possibilities. Anyway I have stopped waiting. I know there is nothing to wait for. I can hardly believe that I have had this year--that I have been in Russia and that it is done. Baroness Ixkull tried to keep me to send me to the famine--but the famine will have to wait. I shall be so glad to get to Yalta. My head is so tired and I shall be able to clear up my thoughts--I can hardly write. My head is popping off and my hand is cold and the train shakes. Always your old Nelka."

(29 years old)

But back in America she once again was restless. Social life had no appeal for her. There was something much more genuine in Russia or even in Europe--something much more alive, much less artificial. Her aunt Martha Wadsworth tried to interest her in other things, take her mind off the brooding dissatisfaction which Nelka was showing.

In 1910 General Oliver, then Secretary of War, and a personal friend of Mrs. Wadsworth, decided to undertake a reconnaissance trip through New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, partly to do some surveying and mapping of the area and partly to test a compressed fodder for horses invented by Captain Shiverick, also a friend of Mrs. Wadsworth.

General Oliver invited Mrs. Wadsworth to take the trip with him and she in turn asked Nelka to come along.

This was a most unusual, interesting and difficult trip, especially for women. It lasted six weeks. The first three weeks General Oliver took part in the trip with a whole squadron of cavalry. Then he left and the rest of the three weeks only a small party continued through the Navajo Indian Reservation to the Rainbow Bridge in Utah. This party consisted of only two officers, several enlisted men, one Indian guide, Nelka and her aunt. All on horseback and pack mules carrying supplies. They covered unmapped territory over the most rough and difficult terrain, which often was dangerous. Even one horse was lost when it fell over a cliff and had to be shot because of injuries. They slept on the ground, froze during the cold nights while the heat of the day was always around a hundred, and on one occasion reached 139 degrees. A great many very interesting pictures were taken during this trip. Nelka always remained under the spell of this trip and the beauty of the untouched wilderness, but at the same time had some unpleasant impressions of the awesome country. Also it lasted longer than she had expected and she was anxious to get home. Only that year her aunt Martha had given Nelka a poodle puppy, Tibi, which Nelka left with her aunt Susie in Cazenovia. She was worried about the puppy all during her trip.

Incidentally, this Tibi played a very important, and sad role in the life of Nelka. The dog, because she was always with Nelka and because of this close relationship, developed a very high degree of understanding and companionship with Nelka. This mutual understanding resulted in a very deep attachment between Nelka and Tibi, and Nelka certainly developed a very unusual love for this Tibi, whom she always took with her back and forth between Europe and America and kept always with her--except on the occasions when she was obliged to leave her for short periods. I knew Tibi for she also had been left by Nelka with me and my mother in the country on one or two occasions when I took care of her.

Here are some of the impressions that Nelka gathered from this western trip and which she gave in her letters to her aunt Susie:

Utah 1910.

"The Navajo Mountains and the Natural Bridge were, to me, terrible. I can never give you a complete description of it, but, aside from the other difficulties and trials, it impressed one as the most godless place conceivable. I don't see how anyone can keep any religion in the canyon in which the bridge is--such a mass of turbulent, ruthless rock, all dark red--hopeless, shapeless chaos. It all looked just as if there had been a smash up yesterday. No beyond, no nothing, nothing alive, nothing dead, every step of the way almost impassable and the feeling that every minute more rock could come smashing down. On the way there Mr. Whiterill, our guide, fell over with his horse when it was impossible to keep balance. He got loose, the horse fell over backwards several times, broke its neck, slid down sheer rock and fell about 50 feet over a cliff, the sound was awful."

"Mr. Heidekooper and I went down to the bottom of the canyon and lay back on the rocks with our feet in a pool. I closed my eyes and tried to forget these crushing walls."

"There was a question of moving the sleeping blankets to get out of a scorpion patch, but we finally stayed where we were. I refused to mount my horse firmly and flatly until we got out of the worst part of the canyon, so I walked 12 miles when I had to pick every step on sharp stones. On the way back, Pat's horse went head over heels down another steep place but was not killed. Still a few miles further my horse slipped going over a huge mass of rock as smooth as an egg and about the same shape and everyone thought he was about to be hurled to instant death, when by a miracle he screwed around, got himself up and caught his footing again. My mental agony had been so great that I had not a bodily sensation. I took my blanket, rolled up in it and went to sleep by some trees under some branches and a log. We came over the rocks where one misstep would have sent the horses to the bottom. No place even to spread his four feet before the next step. My heart was in my mouth most of the time. I don't know what impression you might get from my letter. I have seen the most beautiful sunsets, but there are more essential elements than these to live in peace and the limits of what I can do now are very marked. I am wound up to the last degree. There are lovely Indians here."

Kianis Canyon 1910.

"We arrived here in the rain; the pack train with the lunch miles behind and a waste of thistles to sit on, but it cleared up soon after and everything got settled. There are two very nice dogs along--Kobis and Terry. Terry belongs to Mr. S. and has his ears cut to the roots. I need not insist upon what I feel for both the dog and the man."

Canion de Chelley, August 1910.

"This country is too wonderful for words. It is the place--the only way to live. I wish you could see it and I wish you loved it as I do. Won't you bring Tibi and the boys and stay here? Oh, Oh, there is nothing to say."

Gonado 1910.

"I get up at 5 and see the sunrise and generally take the things in before everything gets astir. We have breakfast at 6, 6:30 and start our marches at 7. It was so cold one night I got up at 4:30 and made up the camp fire. My face is dark brick and painful but I think I had too much cold cream fry and I have stopped. The heat of the sun is great. Wednesday we crossed the 'Painted Desert' which was even more beautiful than the canion and camped at a kind of oasis on a little lake and were able to have a swim--though the desert was full of rattle snakes and the lake full of lizards."

"I walked off and got lost almost 4 hours. They had the whole troop out looking for me, and the trumpeters blowing for over an hour. There was no moon and I had decided to spend the night where I was by a cactus, when I saw a light in the dim distance and finally Captain McCoy found me. It gave me a vivid sense of how misleading the flatness of the desert can be. When Captain McCoy found me he could not see me ten feet away and I think it was chiefly the white dog he had with him that found me. I had had to take off both shoes and stockings about two hours before as the mud was so heavy I could not raise my feet and it was raining part of the time. Every place where the Indians live in their natural mud huts it is clean and inoffensive. As soon as there is a sign of a real house, or what you call civilization, there is dirt, smells, refuse heaps and flies--and of all the sights in my life, bar none, the washstand in Mr. Hubble's store, with wet newspaper, stagnant slop jar, dirty tooth brush, filthy basin, sloppy soap--all humming with flies--is the worst I have ever seen and the most stomach turning. There is some freak from Boston in a checkered suit and goggles who walks around with some ideas for Indian betterment. I think they have reached the highest pitch in the fact that they do not scalp him! I had coffee, oatmeal and bacon all out of one bowl. I drink water that looks like bean soup and never use a fork and a spoon at the same meal. Sand and cinders or charcoal flavor everything, and I have fished olives out of the sand where they had fallen and eaten them with perfect satisfaction. Materially this certainly is the way to live. Spiritually some shifting might improve it."

Back from the trip and into civilization, Nelka again was restless and discontented with her surroundings. Again she longed for Europe and especially Russia.

Her little dog Tibi became of primary importance in Nelka's life. Despite her love for animals, Nelka admits that up to that time she had no special attachment or deep affection for dogs. Dogs were just something you had around you; they were part of everyday life, but that was about all. But with Tibi, Nelka's affection for her grew and grew, and they became unusually attached to each other. Like all dogs who are constantly with a person, they develop a great maturity and intelligence. Tibi did just that. She was a very highly developed animal, as I remember her well.

The winter of 1910-1911 Nelka spent again with her aunt Martha in Washington. Her aunt had a large house and was in the social whirl of the capital. Dinners, balls, the White House, the Embassies--but all this meant little to Nelka and she felt the futility of all that activity, its artificiality and uselessness. Irritated and longing for a change she once again returned to Russia, and once again went back to the Kaufman community.

Her feeling for dogs and animals in general was becoming more and more pronounced--thanks in part to her close association with Tibi. In one of her letters to her aunt Susie written in 1911, she writes:

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I do not love humanity in the mass. I don't admire it. I feel sorry for the unenlightened and suffering but I think there are only a few in the world who 'vindicate,' as Uncle Herbert says, their right to exist. If there was for one moment in my heart what I feel for dogs, cats, horses and animals in general, I would be a real sister of charity. It is a perfectly distinct expansion and impulse and a real longing to help and joy in it that I do not feel in the face of suffering humanity. You can explain it any way. If all these crippled numberless that I have seen all these days had been maimed dogs, I don't know what I would have done. There is something in human nature that is so contemptible and poor that I can't feel the same way."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"How can you keep your faith in humanity? I think it is all so weak and not beautiful, and life as it goes somehow such an outrageous fizzle. Why are there such beautiful things, conceptions, possibilities only to be ruined by fatal microbes this human nature puts into it? Life only in yearning; Death to crown realization; peace only in oblivion. What for? And even the power of renounciation has to be fought for."

She was working at that time in the Kaufman community but was to go to Montenegro for a hospital reorganization. This did not come about. She wrote:

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I am undergoing the greatest disappointment at this moment. I was to be sent to Montenegro to establish a Red Cross sisterhood and overhaul the hospital, and to be given five sisters to take with me I as the head--so interesting--and in the part of the world which has always attracted me to the utmost, ever since I was in Sofia. And after it was all arranged and I was simply reveling in every detail, Baroness Ixkull decided that it was simply impossible to take Tibi."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"One doesn't love anything any more, religion, country, art. The only thing is to have one's interest outside of oneself--and to be very busy. I can hardly believe, at least I wonder, at myself being able to do so many things I dislike--getting up every day so early, no walks with Tibi, sleeping between five and six hours, often only four, and yet I enjoy everything--ice cream is a festival, a moment to sew a treat, and bed heaven."

"But oh, all these sick people--so depressing and gives one such an impression of superfluity of the human species. Everything, everything so beautiful except humanity--and not only man himself--dirty and unenchanting--but the instrument of hideousness all around."

Again Nelka was showing the restlessness because of the attachments to the two sides of the ocean--Russia and America--and the impossibility to satisfy entirely one or the other, or both. From Russia she wrote:

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I wish I could be in America and eliminate from my personal horizon the people and things which make me boil over in spite of myself. Dear Poodie, I wish you could really know what I feel and mean. I think if in recent years you had been in contact with the peace and simplicity of Europe in general, you would see what makes me shrivel with most Americans, because I am not above and beyond it as you are. America may stand for freedom, but it has an unimancipated soul and there is a perpetual affectation, a caution, a suspicion, a lack of independence that does simply petrify life and crush feeling. You may say it is a small world, I don't know, but it is everywhere I meet."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I have at last decided that my life must remain unsettled, undecided; it is too late to settle it except by sheer will, and that is too stupid. Real ties exist in different centers--one must obey both; it is utterly indifferent to me what external aspect my life takes, because it is also too late."

(She was then 32 years old)

St. Petersburg 1911.

"I hope to be in America at intervals and often. You and Pats are more to me than anything else and I have the greatest love for Poodihaven (Cazenovia), but I cannot associate with outsiders sufficiently to fill my life. I want to beat them all and I don't want to hear them talk."

At this time, I think, she was going through a very difficult period of uncertainty in her life, which is reflected in her letters written at that time:

"If I did not care for Americans and if I did not have a great deal of sentiment and associations, ties and memories in America, it would be so easy to leave it alone and not think about it. But I know I am both. I know how strongly attached I am to both sides and I only deplore the difference among people in the world. But when I think of even those others that I care for, I know that we are strangers. My heart does not beat with any puritanical sentiment--so there. If I am attracted to some puritanical offspring--some representative of the progressing (?) new world, it is like being in love with a marble statue."

"I don't know why I write all this, but how impossible life is. I think it really is a most devilish arrangement. No peace except in utter renounciation. And must one struggle through a peppery sequence of years just to know this?"

"Baroness Ixkull is going to give me perfectly new sisters to train and I am going to make them march like pokers, copy every record each time they make a spot and count all the linen every two weeks. As they will not have been in any other ward, they cannot make any comparisons or complain."

"I know, Poodie, that you would like some things here very much--the simplicity of everything and the independence of people. I think it is only possible with a recognized aristocracy when people do not have to explain themselves and are established. I have met a few such nice people, of course to hardly know them, but one feels one knows them at once because there is a recognition of being of one world and one knows beforehand that one shares the same feelings towards most things. For instance, they may not know me personally but the fact that Papa was in the service, was Gentillomme de la Chambre (Court title), was educated at the Lycee, defines a type, defines in a certain manner his daughter, if only externally. Then knowing that Mama was American, the whole thing is clear in a natural way. My wanting to be here is understood--my attachment to America is understood."

St. Petersburg 1911.

"My life here is so full in one sense that it seems much more than a few months since I was in America. Life seems very, very short in comparison with the wide conception of possibilities which gives the zest to youth. Everything seems so partial and the total is so hard to realize. To keep tranquility with the increase of perception and understanding means renounciation as far as I can see. It must be a great privilege to work and pursue one's greatest convictions--to act what one feels sure of--this is in many ways adjustment to circumstances. Please God that there may be some good in it."

"The spirit is everything--nothing else matters. I can never leave the ward on their hands (new sisters) and I mean every day from 8 until 9 at night and often part of the night, if it is very serious. I am very well, sleep little, eat little and am flourishing."

So after this additional stage in Russia at the Community, Nelka returned once again to America, but not for very long. Early in 1912 she was again getting ready to go back to Europe. Writing from Ashantee in 1912 she said:

"I know it is unrest--I know it all--yet the true picture is that of going thousands of miles to where I am not needed, and leaving my two best friends. I long for the work and can't wait. Between now and it, just think what bumps and jolts and frights and moans. Oh, what is it all about?"

Nelka spent that winter with her aunt Martha in Washington. It had been a winter entirely filled with social activities--balls, dinners, the White House, the Embassies--and Nelka could not stand it any longer and was seeking some contrast. She certainly achieved the contrast all right, for as soon as she returned to Russia she was sent to the outskirts of the Oural Mountains. In that region a famine had been quite severe and the Government sent out feeding stations and Red Cross units to take care of the stricken people. Sisters were established in different villages, sometimes entirely isolated, where they issued provisions and gave medical care to the peasants. Nelka spent a whole winter in one of these villages, living in a one-room hut with a peasant family and sleeping on a wooden bench. What a contrast after the social life of Washington!

Here is a descriptive letter written from Kalakshinovka, District of Samara, in 1912:

"I am in a desert of snow, in quiet and peace, and feeding three villages. I lie on my bed which consists of two wooden benches side by side--one a little higher than the other. Only thing is that it is almost inaccessible. Even with the snow it is more roily and bumpy than the worst sea ever dreamed of being, and all one can do is to lie with one's eyes closed on some straw in the kind of low sleigh that bumps along hour after hour over these steppes. I first went to Sapieva, a tartar village in the District of Bougulma. Now I am settled and hope to stay here. I was busy last night late giving out provisions and weighing flour and today I have been trying to straighten out grievances and see that all receive justly--sometimes very complicated. Some brother of the official writer of the village, quarreled with the son of a poor woman when that woman's cow came too near his premises, and he made his son beat her off. My position in the matter is whatever the pro's and con's--how dare anyone hurt a poor famished cow and I am settling it on that line."

"I don't know what I would not do to feed all the poor cows and horses and sheep that are left. A number of friends in Petersburg gave me some money to distribute--a little over a hundred dollars. I gave about 50 in Sapieva and the rest I am going to use to save the animals. Aside from my pity for them, it will be terrible for the peasants not to have a horse to work in the fields as soon as the warm weather comes. Where will they be next year? I can help at least two or three families. One poor woman when I bought some feed for her horse and cow simply fell on her knees on the ground. Poodie, really how far people live from each other and how little one can dream of this life if one has not been in it. Perhaps other people understand things more or realize more, but with all I have seen and heard and read, that is simply being born to something entirely unknown--besides all the feelings one experiences oneself in being thus shut off from everything. I have at last attained my own bowl and spoon. I drink coffee and eat a piece of black bread in the morning. At 12 a bowl of buckwheat or some kind of grain with a wooden spoon--a glass of tea and at night a glass of cocoa and black bread, or as a treat a dish of sour milk. I cook and iron and do everything myself, but it is very simple."

"This is part of 'Little Russia' and is much cleaner than 'Great Russia.' I brought with me a few fleas from Great Russia and have the greatest sympathy for Tibi for the time she was exposed to flea companionship. How they bite and jump."

"The Tartars were so clean--the very poorest and none of the disorder that one sees in Great Russia. There is something absolutely distinctive about the Tartars and one feels a certain civilization and settledness that is different from all the other villages I have seen. Did I tell you how we all slept in a row with the old tartar and his wife and child?"

"Though I was doing my best to master the tartar tongue, I can converse more readily here. The Little Russian dialect is very different from Russian but one can get a long. The Red Cross will probably be stationed here throughout the famine--until the 'New Bread,' that is about the end of July--but Baroness Ixkull promised to replace me as soon as she could get another sister. I hope to get back to America in July."

Kalakshinovka 1912.

"A peasant walked in today and brought me a present--an apple about the size of a plum. I wanted to keep it until Easter but we consulted and decided it would dry up, so I ate it. It is getting late--8 o'clock and the candle is burning low."

Kalakshinovka 1912.

"The days have fallen into a routine. I distribute provisions, go to see the peasants and they come to see me--sew, mend, scrape mud off of boots and at last have a little time to write a few letters. In about a week I hope to go to Alekseievka, a village about 9 miles off, which is quite a center. There is a fair there every week and I shall buy some sugar and a little white flour and perhaps if it can be found, a piece of ham. I am getting awfully hungry. People will never get anywhere while taste is undeveloped and perception so dull and imagination so weak. I don't think all people can be taught to understand, but I do believe that the eye can be trained and the imagination led into paths which will make them revolt from ugliness, and that is a tremendous step towards salvation. It seems to me that 'conditional immortality' is the only possible and plausible doctrine. So much of humanity, whatever it looks like or however cannily it has devised to exist, has not begun, and why have such a respect for numbers? I should like to weed out acquaintances just as I attack occasionally the linen closet--with fire, and have a chance to breathe. It is all the unborn who sit around and choke the atmosphere."

Kalakshinovka 1912.

"All the horror of the famine is being realized right now. I will not write you about it for it is too terrible and heartbreaking--it is the horses, camels, cows and sheep--worst of all the horses. I will never forget yesterday as long as I live. I cried all day, I could not sleep all night. It is simply horrible. I have never so much realized the problem of existence as here. Everything is so foreign and so striking, one is simply faced by the question of how to live and to what end. What I feel more strongly than anything is that the product of the best education and civilization should be good and zealous--more near the saint--than that the masses should read or write. I have faith enough that all will attain in the end if the type that leads is worthwhile, but the type that leads is not."

Kalaskshinovka 1912.

"I have a whole little house now. The owner comes and cleans up; I bolt my door and I have a place to keep provisions for almost 900 people. The whole thing is just as interesting as it can be. I went not long ago to a village of Bashkirs to verify scorbutous and typhoid--about 15 miles from here; it is strange how entirely different they are. The Tartars seem the most settled and grown up and independent, and the Little Russians have more traditions. The Great Russians are more individual and less distinctive. You can't imagine the nice feeling of riding right out over the steppes, no fuss, no get up, with a purpose. The feeling that at the same time with the wild freedom of it that one is accomplishing something and working. I can't wait to see you. When I get my Tibi and start again across the seas, I shall be even glad to see that awful Liberty lady!"

Kalaskshinovka 1912.

"Your letter enclosing Pata's and the picture of Lutie was the reward of a walk of six to seven miles with a ton of mud on each boot, a night on the floor and a return at dawn on a rickety horse horseback. Everything is flourishing here, plenty of occasion for meditation and consideration. I enjoy tremendously the peasants' bath house. One can climb higher and higher and lie on shelves in different stages of heat. I got so steamed up I wanted at one moment to open the door and just fly out into the field without a stitch. When I look out on the plains here and then think of New York and the subway, my brain simply stops. This is about as small and poor a village as exists, yet there is a teacher and all the younger generation read and write, and the Tartars are really wise owls. I have no more desire to go to Persia. I am afraid that country is done for. I think Arizona is as safe as anywhere if they don't irrigate. Still those mission teachers are a pest. There is something fundamentally wrong with everything I know!"

Hardly had this episode of the famine finished, that the Red Cross sent units to Belgorod in the Ukrania where there was a great concentration of pilgrims for the canonization of St. Josephat. The Government once again set up feeding stations and hospital units to take care of the sick and aged and all emergencies arising from the concentration of many thousands of pilgrims. Once again Nelka was there and it was of great interest to her.

During all of these absences Nelka kept her little dog Tibi either with us in the country or with friends in Kasan, the Krapotkins. She went to pick up Tibi in Kasan from where she wrote in 1913.

"I caught some horrible microbe just before I arrived and had a terrible grippy cold which kept me in the house and in bed--but it is over now. I feel rejuvenated 15 years and full of energy. I almost believe it is climatic. The feeling is so different. Isn't it awful about the priest being hung in Adrianople? I don't see how the whole of Europe doesn't stand together to drive the Turks out of Christian countries."

(This was written just before the start of the Balkan war.)

Nelka returned to St. Petersburg and made preparations to leave for the Balkans. The Russian Red Cross was sending out units to the Bulgarian Army. After returning from Kasan, Nelka stayed for a while at my mother's place in the country. This was a time when I was preparing for my entry examinations to the Lycee and she wrote about that to her aunt, who was interested in everything pertaining to education.

Writing from Poustinka (our country estate) in 1913:

"I am very much hopped up and stirred up and feel very full of life. I had a very pleasant short stay in Kasan. Enjoyed seeing people very much--so much youth I have not seen for ages--young people, young officers, young marriages, and then such delightful old people. The young officers were just simply waiting for mobilization. About war, everything is most uncertain. Half the people say it will be immediately, the other half that it will be avoided--no one can tell anything. I am going to Adrianople Tuesday. Baroness Ixkull is there with a large division and I think that just now there will be more to do than ever. I go first to Sofia."

"Yesterday I went with Veta (my mother) and Max to town. We came back in the evening and after dinner I had a most delicious sleep on the sofa by the fire--Max waking me up every few minutes."

"This afternoon I had a fine nap and then gave Max an English dictation. He is preparing for his examinations for the Lycee. Really it seems a great deal. Besides all the usual subjects, he has to take Grammar and Composition in Russian, Latin, German, French, and English. Ancient History, European History and Russian History separately, besides Religion. An awful lot, and all the other things. None of the languages are optional and in two years he has to be examined in the literature of each."

"He is such a nice boy, 15 years, so boyish and yet so developed and such a lot of casual culture, just from association with cultured people--and yet a real country boy, loving the affairs of the estate and everything to do with the place, and full of fun and mischief. I am all for education at home until the final years for boys, and altogether for girls--I think it is more developing."

After this stay with us, she left for Sofia and the war.

Sofia 1913.