From 1887 he lived in Russia's capital Petersburg (after 1914 named Petrograd), where he taught English language and met Leo Tolstoy, for example.[1] As a correspondent for the London Daily Chronicle in Petersburg between 1892 and 1917 he authored a number of books, essays and articles about political, military, social, cultural, ethnological and historical aspects of Russia's situation on the eve of the First World War and the Russian Revolution.[2][2]