All these amiable weaknesses are to be met with in a still coarser form in officials who stand below the fourteenth grade,2
and in gentlefolk who are dependent not on the Tsar but on the landowners. But in what way they are worse than others as a class, I do not know.
Going over my recollections, not only of the serfs in our house and in the Senator's, but also of two or three households with which we were intimate for twenty-five years, I do not remember anything particularly vicious in their behaviour. Petty thefts, perhaps, . . . but on that matter all ideas are so dulled by the serfs' position, that it is difficult to judge; human property does not stand on much ceremony with its kith and kin, and is pretty cavalier with the master's goods. It would be only fair to exclude from this generalisation the confidential servants, the favourites of both sexes, masters' mistresses and tale-bearers; but in the first place they are an exception-these Kleinmikhels of the stable3 and Benckendorfs4 from the cellar, Perekusikhins5 in striped linen gowns, and barefoot Pompadours; moreover, they do behave better than any of the rest: they only get drunk at night and do not pawn their clothes at the gin-shop.
The simple-minded immorality of the rest revolves round a glass of vodka and a bottle of beer, a merry talk and a pipe, absences from home without leave, quarrels which sometimes end in fights, and cunning tricks played on masters who expect of them something inhuman and impossible. Of course, the lack of all education on the one hand, and on the other the simplicity 2 Peter I's Table of Ranks. 24th January, 1 722, was drawn up in three parallel columns. civil. military a nd court. each divided into fourteen ranks or classes, most of which were given Latin or German names. It established a bureaucratic hierarchy based on ability rather than birth.
(R.)
3 Kleinmikhel, Petr Andrcye\'ich, :\linister of :\1cans of Communication under Nicholas I. ( Tr.)
4Bcnckcndorf, Alexander Khristoforovich, Chief of Gendarmes, and fa\'ouritc of Nicholas I. ( Tr.)
;. Perekusikhin, Marya Sav\'ishna, favourite of Catherine II. ( Tr.)
Nursery and University
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of the peasant serfs have introduced into their manners much that is ugly and distorted, but for all that, like the negroes in America, they have remained half infantile; trifles amuse them, trifles distress them ; their desires are limited, and are rather naive and human than vicious.
Alcohol and tea, the tavern and the eating-house, are the two permanent passions of the Russian servant; for their sake he steals, for their sake he is poor, on their account he endures persecution and punishmen t and leaves his family in poverty.
Nothing is easier than for a Father Mathew,6 from the height of his teetotal intoxication, to condemn drunkenness and, while sitting at the tea-table, to wonder why it is that se1·vants go for their tea to the eating-house, instead of drinking it at home, although at home it is cheaper.
Alcohol stupefies a man, it enables him to forget himself, stimulates him and induces an artificial gaiety; this stupefaction and stimulation are the more agreeable the less the man is developed and the more he is bound to a narrow, empty life.
How can a servant not drink when he is condemned to the everlasting waiting in the hall, to perpetual poverty, to being a slave, to being sold? He drinks to excess-when he can-because he cannot drink every day. In Italy and the South of France there are no drunkards, because there is plenty of wine. The savage drunkenness of the English working man is to be explained in exactly thf' same way. These men are broken in the helpless and unequal conflict with hunger and poverty; however hard they have struggled they have met everywhere a leaden legal code and harsh resistance that has flung them back into the dark depths of common life, and condemned them to the neve··ending, aimless toil that eats away mind and body alike. It is not surprising that a man who spends six days as a lever, a cog, a spring, a screw, on Saturday afternoon breaks savagely out of the penal servitude of factory work, and drinks himself silly in half an hour, the more so since his exhau�tion cannot stand much.
The moralists would do better to drink Irish or Scotch whisky themselves and hold their tongues, or their inhuman philanthropy may call down terrible retribution on them.
Drinking tea at the eating-house means something quite different to servants. Tea at home is not the same thing for the 6 Father Mathew ( 1 790-1856), an ! cish priPst. "-ho had remarkable success in a gn•at temperance campaign based on the r<'ligious appeal.
( Tr.)
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house-serf; at home everything reminds him that he is a servant; at home he is in the dirty servants' room, he must get the samovar himself; at home he has a cup with a broken handle, and any minute his master may ring for him. At the eatinghouse he is a free man, he is a gentleman; for him the table is laid and the lamps are lit; for him the waiter nms with the tray; the cup shines, the tea-pot glitters, he gives orders and is obeyed, he enjoys himself and gaily calls for pressed caviare or a turnover with his tea.
In all this there is more childish simplicity than dissoluteness.
Impressions quickly take possession of them but do not send down roots; their minds are continually occupied, or rather distracted, by casual subjects, small desires, trivial aims. A childish belief in everything marvellous turns a grown-up man into a coward, and the same childish belief comforts him at the most difficult moments. I was filled with wonder when I was present at the death of two or three of my father's servants; it was then that one could judge of the simple-hearted carelessness with which their lives had passed, of the absence of great sins upon their conscience ; if there \"•as anything, it had all been settled at confession with the priest.
This resemblance between servants and children accounts for their mutual attraction. Children hate the aristocratic ideas of the
and their benevolently condescending manners, because they are clever and understand that in the eyes of grownup people they are children, while in the eyes of servants they are people. Consequently they are much fonder of playing cards or lotto with the maids than with visitors. Visitors play for the children's benefit with condescension, give way to them, tease them and stop playing whenever they feel like it; the maids, as a rule, play as much for their own sakes as for the children's; and that gives the game interest.
Servants are extremely devoted to children, and this is not the devotion of a slave, but the mutual affection of the weak and the simple.
In old days there used to be a patriarchal dynastic affection between landowners and their house-servants, such as exists now in Turkey. To-day there are in Russia no more of those devoted servants, attached to the line and the family of their masters.