This manner repels the neighbouring proprietors--a fact that he does not at all regret, for they do not belong to his monde, and they have in their manners and habits a free-and-easy rusticity which is positively disagreeable to him. His relations with them are therefore confined to formal calls. The greater part of the day he spends in listless loitering, frequently yawning, regretting the routine of St. Petersburg life--the pleasant chats with his colleagues, the opera, the ballet, the French theatre, and the quiet rubber at the Club Anglais. His spirits rise as the day of his departure approaches, and when he drives off to the station he looks bright and cheerful. If he consulted merely his own tastes he would never visit his estates at all, and would spend his summer holidays in Germany, France, or Switzerland, as he did in his bachelor days; but as a large landowner he considers it right to sacrifice his personal inclinations to the duties of his position.
There is, by the way, another princely magnate in the district, and I ought perhaps to introduce him to my readers, because he represents worthily a new type. Like Prince S----, of whom I have just spoken, he is a great land-owner and a descendant of the half-
mythical Rurik; but he has no official rank, and does not possess a single grand cordon. In that respect he has followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had something of the frondeur spirit, and preferred the position of a grand seigneur and a country gentleman to that of a tchinovnik and a courtier. In the Liberal camp he is regarded as a Conservative, but he has little in common with the Krepostnik, who declares that the reforms of the last half-century were a mistake, that everything is going to the bad, that the emancipated serfs are all sluggards, drunkards, and thieves, that the local self-government is an ingenious machine for wasting money, and that the reformed law-courts have conferred benefits only on the lawyers. On the contrary, he recognises the necessity and beneficent results of the reforms, and with regard to the future he has none of the despairing pessimism of the incorrigible old Tory.
But in order that real progress should be made, he thinks that certain current and fashionable errors must be avoided, and among these errors he places, in the first rank, the views and principles of the advanced Liberals, who have a blind admiration for Western Europe, and for what they are pleased to call the results of science. Like the Liberals of the West, these gentlemen assume that the best form of government is constitutionalism, monarchical or republican, on a broad democratic basis, and towards the realisation of this ideal all their efforts are directed. Not so our Conservative friend. While admitting that democratic Parliamentary institutions may be the best form of government for the more advanced nations of the West, he maintains that the only firm foundation for the Russian Empire, and the only solid guarantee of its future prosperity, is the Autocratic Power, which is the sole genuine representative of the national spirit. Looking at the past from this point of view, he perceives that the Tsars have ever identified themselves with the nation, and have always understood, in part instinctively and in part by reflection, what the nation really required. Whenever the infiltration of Western ideas threatened to swamp the national individuality, the Autocratic Power intervened and averted the danger by timely precautions. Something of the kind may be observed, he believes, at present, when the Liberals are clamouring for a Parliament and a Constitution; but the Autocratic Power is on the alert, and is making itself acquainted with the needs of the people by means far more effectual than could be supplied by oratorical politicians.
With the efforts of the Zemstvo in this direction, and with the activity of the Zemstvo generally, the Prince has little sympathy, partly because the institution is in the hands of the Liberals and is guided by their unpractical ideas, and partly because it enables some ambitious outsiders to acquire the influence in local affairs which ought to be exercised by the old-established noble families of the neighbourhood. What he would like to see is an enlightened, influential gentry working in conjunction with the Autocratic Power for the good of the country. If Russia could produce a few hundred thousand men like himself, his ideal might perhaps be realised.
For the present, such men are extremely rare--I should have difficulty in naming a dozen of them--and aristocratic ideas are extremely unpopular among the great majority of the educated classes. When a Russian indulges in political speculation, he is pretty sure to show himself thoroughly democratic, with a strong leaning to socialism.
The Prince belongs to the highest rank of the Russian Noblesse. If we wish to get an idea of the lowest rank, we can find in the neighbourhood a number of poor, uneducated men, who live in small, squalid houses, and are not easily to be distinguished from peasants. They are nobles, like his Highness; but, unlike him, they enjoy no social consideration, and their landed property consists of a few acres of land which barely supply them with the first necessaries of life. If we went to other parts of the country we might find men in this condition bearing the title of Prince! This is the natural result of the Russian law of inheritance, which does not recognise the principle of primogeniture with regard to titles and estates. All the sons of a Prince are Princes, and at his death his property, movable and immovable, is divided amongst them.