



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: The Empress of Russia and Queen Alexandra]




RUSSIAN MEMORIES

BY

MADAME OLGA NOVIKOFF "O.K."


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY STEPHEN GRAHAM


AND FIFTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS


HERBERT JENKINS LIMITED 12 ARUNDEL PLACE HAYMARKET LONDON S.W. MCMXVII




WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND




{1}

INTRODUCTION

BY STEPHEN GRAHAM

It is perhaps a little superfluous for one of my years to write an
introduction for one so well known and so much esteemed and admired as
Madame Novikoff.  And yet it may seem just, if it does not seem vain,
that a full-hearted tribute should come to her from this generation
which profits by the result of her life and her work--the great new
friendship between England and Russia.

She is one of the most interesting women in European diplomatic
circles.  She is a picturesque personality, but more than that she is
one who has really done a great deal in her life.  You cannot say of
her, as of so many brilliant women, "She was born, she was admired, she
passed!"  Destiny used her to accomplish great ends.

For many in our society life, she stood for Russia, was Russia.  For
the poor people of England Russia was represented by the filth of the
Ghetto and the crimes of the so-called "political" refugees; for the
middle classes who read Seton Merriman, Russia was a fantastic country
of revolutionaries and bloodthirsty police; but fortunately the ruling
and upper classes always have had some better vision, they have had the
means of travel, they have seen real representative Russians in their
midst.  {2} "They are barbarians, these Russians!" says someone to his
friend.  But the friend turns a deaf ear.  "I happen to know one of
them," says he.

A beautiful and clever woman always charms, whatever her nationality
may be, and it is possible for her to make conquests that predicate
nothing of the nation to which she belongs.  That is true, and therein
lay the true grace and genius of Madame Novikoff.  She was not merely a
clever and charming woman, she was Russia herself.  Russia lent her
charm.  Thus her friends were drawn from serious and vital England.

Gladstone learned from her what Russia was.  The great Liberal, the man
who, whatever his virtues, and despite his high religious fervour, yet
committed Liberalism to anti-clericalism and secularism, learned from
her to pronounce the phrase, "Holy Russia."  He esteemed her.  With his
whole spiritual nature he exalted her.  She was his Beatrice, and to
her more than to anyone in his life he brought flowers.  Morley has
somehow omitted this in his biography of Gladstone.  Like so many
intellectual Radicals he is afraid of idealism.  But in truth the key
to the more beautiful side of Gladstone's character might have been
found in his relationship to Madame Novikoff.  And possibly that
friendship laid the real foundation of the understanding between the
two nations.

Incidentally let me remark the growing friendliness towards Russia
which is noticeable in the work of Carlyle at that time.  A tendency
towards friendship came thus into the air far back in the Victorian era.

{3}

Another most intimate friendship was that of Kinglake and Madame
Novikoff, where again was real appreciation of a fine woman.  Anthony
Froude worshipped at the same shrine, and W. T. Stead with many another
in whose heart and hand was the making of modern England.

A marvellously generous and unselfish nature, incapacity to be dull or
feel dull or think that life is dull--a delicious sense of the
humorous, an ingenious mind, a courtliness, and with all this something
of the goddess.  She had a presence into which people came.  And then
she had a visible Russian soul.  There was in her features that
unfamiliar gleam which we are all pursuing now, through opera,
literature and art--the Russian genius.

Madame Novikoff was useful to Russia, it has been reproachfully said.
Yes, she was useful in promoting peace between the two Empires, she was
worth an army in the field to Russia.  Yes, and now it may be said she
has been worth an army in the field to us.

When Stead went down on the _Titanic_ one of the last of the great men
who worshipped at her shrine had died.  Be it remarked how great was
Stead's faith in Russia, and especially in the Russia of the Tsar and
the Church.  And it is well to remember that Madame Novikoff belongs to
orthodox Russia and has never had any sympathy whatever with
revolutionary Russia.  This has obtained for her not a few enemies.
There are many Russians with strong political views, estimable but
misguided men, who have issued in the past such harmful rubbish as
_Darkest Russia_, journals and pamphlets wherein {4} systematically
everything to the discredit of the Tsar and his Government, every ugly
scandal or enigmatical happening in Russian contemporary life was
written up and then sent post free to our clergy, etc.  To them Madame
Novikoff is naturally distasteful.  But as English people we ask, who
has helped us to understand "Brightest Russia"--the Russia in arms
to-day?  And the praise and the thanks are to her.

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

  Moscow,
  27_th August_, 1916.




{5}

EDITOR'S PREFACE

The late W. T. Stead in saying to Madame Novikoff, "When you die, what
an obituary I will write of you," was paying her a great compliment;
just as was Disraeli, although unconsciously, in referring to her as
"the M.P. for Russia in England."  With that consummate tact which
never fails her, Madame Novikoff has evaded the compliment and
justified the sarcasm.  Disraeli might with justice have added that she
was also "M.P. for England in Russia"; for if she has appeared
pro-Russian in England, she has many times been reproached in Russia as
pro-English.

Of few women have such contradictory things been said and written,
things that clearly show the gradual change in the political barometer;
but her most severe critics indirectly paid tribute to her remarkable
personality by fearing the influence she possessed.  In the dark days
when Great Britain and Russia were thinking of each other only as
potential antagonists, she was regarded in this country as a Russian
agent, whose every action was a subject for suspicious speculation, a
national danger, a syren whose object it was to entice British {6}
politicians from their allegiance.  Wherever she went it was, according
to public opinion, with some fell purpose in view.  If she came to
London for the simple purpose of improving her English, it meant to a
certain section of the Press Russian "diplomatic activity."  The Tsar
was told by an English journalist that he ought to "be very proud of
her," as she succeeded where "Russian papers, Ambassadors and Envoys
failed"; another said that she was "worth an army of 100,000 men to her
country"; a third that she was a "stormy petrel."  She was, in fact,
everything from a Russian agent to a national danger, everything in
short but the one thing she professed to be, a Russian woman anxious
for her country's peace and progress.

In Serbia there is a little village whose name commemorates the death
of a Russian hero, Nicolas Kiréef, Madame Novikoff's brother.  In his
death lay the seed of the Anglo-Russian Alliance.  Distraught with
grief, Madame Novikoff blamed Great Britain for her loss.  She argued
that, had this country refused to countenance the unspeakableness of
the Turk in 1876, there would have been no atrocities, no Russian
Volunteers, and no war.  From that date she determined to do everything
that lay in her power to bring about a better understanding between
Great Britain and Russia.  For years she has never relaxed her efforts,
and she has lived to see what is perhaps the greatest monument ever
erected by a sister to a brother's memory--the Anglo-Russian Alliance.

{7}

Nothing discouraged her, and at times, when war seemed inevitable, she
redoubled her efforts.  In all her work, she had chiefly to depend on
her own ardour and sincerity.  It