But though I learned a good deal in the war, I'm not here to compete with the professional historian. I want to picture Skobelef, who was, with Roberts, the best general I ever met; and the contrast between the two makes them both more interesting. Neither of them was highly intelligent. In the Boer War, Roberts went to church every Sunday and observed all ordinary customs. He was a sincere Christian and followed the lead of his wife in all social affairs.
At first he took Kitchener at his face value, and even when at Paardeberg he was forced to realise his nonentity as a soldier, he kept his knowledge to himself for so long that he gave some support to the Kitchener myth.
Skobelef, on the other hand, was altogether free of every form of snobbism; indeed, he had a certain sympathy with contempt of discipline and all social observances; some part of "the return to truth" of the nihilists had got into his blood; he hated all insincerities and in so far seemed to me a bigger man than Roberts. In insight and speed of stroke they were very much alike.
In the days of inaction that followed the taking and abandonment of the fort, I won Skobelef to tell me of his early life. With huge amusement he confessed that at fourteen or fifteen he was after every pretty girl he came near. One day an uncle found him trying to embrace a young servant in the house; she had just pushed the boy away when the uncle came on the scene. He said quietly, "You ought to be proud to be kissed, my girl, by the young baron."
"I had no more difficulty," Skobelef said simply, "the news spread through the house like wildfire, and I had no more refusals."
Nothing ever brought the true meaning of serfdom more clearly before me than this little incident. It was as illuminating as a phrase of Kropotkin later, when in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist he tells of the "Oriental practices" in the corps of pages and the countless immoralities and devilish cruelties that reigned during serfdom. Some facts tell volumes. When a soldier or servant was punished by flogging, if he died under the knout, the full tale of lashes was inflicted on his insentient corpse. And marriage among the serfs was often arranged by the master without any regard for love or individual preference.
"Did you go often with your pretty maid?" I asked.
"Continually," Skobelef laughed, "and when it wasn't that one, it was one of the others. I had them all, every girl and woman in the place from thirteen to fifty, but I liked the older ones best," he added meditatively. "If I had not had to go to school, I'd have killed myself with them; as it was I weakened myself so that now, at about forty, I'm practically impotent. Since I was five and twenty it takes some extraordinary circumstance, such as a drinking bout, to bring me up to the scratch!"
"Good God!" I cried. "What a dreadful fate!" Till then I had no idea that the patrimony of sex-pleasure was so limited. "You must have been angry with yourself and regretted your early indulgences terribly?" I probed.
"No," he replied, "No! I've had a pretty good time on the whole; and if I took double mouthfuls as a boy, as the French say, I have now many sweet memories. Oh, in Petersburg as a young man I had golden hours; there I met veritable passion, desire to match my own, and an understanding of life, a resolve to do great things and not be hampered by conventions-I remember my love let me have her, one day, in her dressing room, when everyone was ready to go driving; and they called and called her- Ah, life's victorious moments are all we get!"
The whole confession was out of my very heart, only I was resolved to be wiser and make the pleasure last longer.
Two little scenes of this campaign made an impression on me. It was after the capture of a town called Lovtcha, I think: Skobelef and his staff came upon a lot of wounded Turks who had been dumped on the wayside by their comrades days before, men dying and dead, the wounded curled up in a hundred attitudes. Skobelef told the interpreter to ask them what they'd like before being taken to the field hospital; they all asked for food, but one big Turk with head all bandaged up asked for a cigarette. At once Skobelef leant down from his horse and offered his own cigarette case. The Turk took it, an officer gave him a match, and he puffed out the smoke with an air of ineffable content. And then by way of return he undid the knot of his bandage and began to unwind the dirty linen that covered his head. In spite of Skobelef's gesture and prayer not to do it, he went on, and as the last fold was plucked loose, in spite of the sticky blood, the man's half-jaw fell on his chest. The other half had evidently been taken off by a shell-a most horrible sight-but the Turk smiled, held his half-jaw up and began winding on the linen bandage again. When he had secured it, in went the cigarette again into his mouth and he smiled up at us his liveliest gratitude. "Fine men," said Skobelef, "great soldiers!" And they were-and are!
One more scene. As an Englishman I managed to get down to Adrianople long before the Russian troops. I wanted to see Constantinople and the Turks before resuming work. At one station, I forget its name, I had to stay a day or two. The caravanserai was a miserable makeshift: one morning I heard that some Russian prisoners had been brought in and I went out and found a line of them outside the station sitting on benches and guarded by half a dozen Turks; one gigantic Turk marched up and down in front of the poor captives, scowling and muttering. I told the interpreter who was with me to go off and find a Turkish officer or the Russians would be murdered; he ran off at once.
Suddenly the big Turk stopped in front of a bearded Russian at one end of the line, seized him by the beard and hair, wrenched his mouth open, and spat down his throat-I never saw such a gesture of hate and savage rage. My blood boiled, but I could do nothing except pray for the coming of some officer. Fortunately one came in time, and the poor Russians were saved.
I never saw Skobelef after that fall, but he remains to me as a splendid memory and I shall tell now of his end. I was praising him one day in London when a Russian officer who was in the Russian embassy told me how he died.
"You know he was our hero," he began. "There are more photographs of Skobelef in our peasant homes throughout Russia than even of the Tzar. And his end was wonderfuclass="underline" he had come to Moscow to review a couple of army corps; as usual, after the review, when he was very severe on some officers, he asked a lot of us junior ones to dine with him in the Slavianski Bazaar; to take away the sting of his sharp criticism, I fancy. Of course we all turned up, proud as peacocks at being asked, and we had a great feast. "Afterwards someone suggested that we should adjourn to Madame X's, who had a house in a neighboring street. Nothing loath, Skobelef, to our astonishment, consented and we all went round, picked our girls and disappeared into bedrooms. After midnight I heard a mad screaming, and just as I was I opened
my door and found in the passage the girl Skobelef had chosen. "The General is dead!' she cried.
"'Dead!' I yelled. 'What do you mean? Lead the way,' and back she took me, sobbing hysterically, to her bedroom. There lay Skobelef, motionless, with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling; I called him, put my hand and then my ear on his heart. It had stopped. I looked at the girl. 'It wasn't my fault' she cried. 'Really, it wasn't!' "I hastened back to my bedroom and dressed myself hurriedly; already every officer was up; we went to the keeper of the brothel and said we must take the general at once back to the Slaviansky Bazaar, his hotel. But the keeper said, 'It's forbidden: the police regulation prevents it; you must first get permission!' At once a couple of us rushed downstairs and drove to the police headquarters, but even there we could do nothing. Only the governor of Moscow, it seemed, could give us the permission. So off we raced to the palace. As ill-luck would have it, the governor was at his villa outside the town, so we had to take a droshky and drive like mad. At about three in the morning we knocked him up, got the necessary permission, and hurried back to the brothel.