THE FRIENDS THE Atkinsons made in Kopal in 1848 and 1849 were all amused – and doubtless amazed – at the names the couple gave their new-born son. The baby was big and the petite Lucy was told later that the fable was now reversed: instead of ‘a mountain bringing forth a mouse’ it was a mouse that had brought forth a mountain. Lucy had too keen a sense of humour to be offended, and indeed included the episode in her subsequent book. When first asked what Alatau should be wrapped in she opted for his father’s shirt, which made her friends laugh and tell her she could not have done better or wiser, as a child enveloped in its father’s shirt was, according to the superstition, ‘sure to be lucky’. Friends had arranged, she discovered later, to make him a little trousseau, knowing she would be able to find nothing in Kopal. But they considered the infant could not possibly survive, so they desisted, feeling that such items would only be a source of pain, ‘but, thanks to the Giver of all good! I have carried him safely. He is a hardy little fellow, and a more healthy one it would be hard to find.’
Two days after the birth Madame Techinskaya asked if she would like a bath. Lucy was delighted and accepted readily. The next morning she was awaiting a hip bath’s arrival when her friend arrived in ‘a kind of railway porter’s truck, drawn by a bull [i.e. ox]’ and announced that all was ready. ‘“What do you mean?” I enquired. “Why, the bath! Will you not go to it?” “Go to the bath!” I said, quite aghast at the proposal. The snow lay thick on the ground and, moreover, it was piercingly cold.’ Lucy had once been to the bath so knew she would have to take off her clothes in a shed where one side was quite open to the steppe. They both laughed at the misunderstanding, but Lucy gathered that it was considered quite normal for a new mother to have a bath three days after the birth – ‘and many, I hear, take cold from doing so, and die’.
Lucy began a fixed timetable for Alatau: a bath and clean clothes between 6 and 7 a.m. every day and another bath at 4.30 p.m., then bed at 5 p.m. She turned laundress too.
In Kopal they considered me very silly for washing so often, saying once in two days was often enough … but the maxims of a mother are not easily forgotten; and mine had so instilled into my mind the necessity of cleanliness in my youth, that I determined to follow her injunctions. And, believe me, I am well repaid for my trouble, by the health of my child; he has never given me one day’s uneasiness, or one restless night, since his birth.
She also made Alatau a ‘travelling dress’ well ahead of their departure from Kopal, from a piece of Chinese silk bought from a Tatar merchant. She lined it with dabi or unspun cotton, but it got covered in dye from the silk. Never at a loss, to her husband’s astonishment she plunged the silk into a vessel of water some fifteen times, changing the water each time, and the silk ‘came out far prettier than when I bought it; true, it was flimsy, but it was now clean and glossy, and certainly most serviceable has it been’.
Inevitably, Lucy’s new friends in Kopal urged her to swaddle her child – the Russian custom to this day. Lucy assured them it was not the practice in England but, after one friend urged its necessity, Lucy agreed in order to satisfy her. Her friend began first to stroke down the baby’s arms and legs and then to bind him, ‘but he very shortly showed her that he was a true Briton, and was not going to stand any such treatment, for he fought bravely’ and the procedure was abandoned. ‘How very odd!’, exclaimed her friend, ‘I could not have believed it had I not seen it; what a difference there is between English and Russian children!’
Baron Wrangel one day complimented Lucy on Alatau’s good qualities. She reported,
‘When first I heard there was a child [he said], I actually swore, such a hatred have I to screaming children; but I will do Alatau the justice to say I have never yet heard his voice’, and thereupon made him a very handsome present of a Chinese silk of a most exquisite blue. If such a reward is merited by silence, I am afraid I should never get it.
One day when Alatau was about two months old he was very restless (which Lucy knew indicated a storm – ‘he was as good as a barometer’) and her visitor at the time ‘proposed he should be ‘baked’.
‘Baked!’ I shrieked. ‘Yes!’ Explanations were entered into, when I learned that it was quite a common custom to do so; but if I did not like to have him placed in an oven, I could cover him with a crust and put him on the hot stove, when hairs would come out on the back: these plucked out, the child would be perfectly easy.
Lucy discovered later that ‘it is quite true that Siberian peasants bake their children’ – the only way, they claimed, that they could be cured of a particular (unfortunately unspecified) disease. They would make a crust of rye flour, enclose the child inside like ‘a fowl in a pasty’, leaving a small hole to breathe through, then place it in the oven with the door closed for a few seconds ‘and it is said that it proves a sure remedy’.
One disease ‘fearfully prevalent’ among the Kazakhs at that time was smallpox, and the Atkinsons found many badly disfigured by it, so they were anxious to have Alatau vaccinated.1 Surprisingly, Baron Wrangel was able to offer them some vaccine, which he had received from Omsk, but after three attempts that did not take – a torment for Alatau – they had to give up, ‘so, trusting in Providence, we went forth amongst those very Kazakh where the disease was raging dreadfully. I felt no fear, and only on our arrival [again] in Zmeinogorsk did we have him vaccinated.’
Between them, Thomas and Lucy have left a very remarkable, possibly unique account of life in an isolated Cossack fort on the Russian Empire’s expanding Central Asian frontier in the mid-nineteenth century. Thomas identifies briefly their chief companions: besides Wrangel, there was Captain Abakumov, head of the artillery, and the engineer, Captain Loginov. Thomas came to have a high regard for both: ‘clever and intelligent men, who did honour to their profession’, while he regarded the commander of the Cossacks, Ivan Ivanovich Izmailov, as thoroughly efficient, ‘an excellent officer and a good man, though [like himself] not highly educated’. He mentions also two young lieutenants, sons of Cossack officers, educated in Omsk and on their first service. A third lieutenant had just arrived with fifty soldiers, accompanied by a young doctor, newly qualified, ‘sent to cure, kill, and practice on His Imperial Majesty’s subjects’ and no use for Lucy’s accouchement. There was also a topographer from Omsk – ‘a very good fellow’ – and a store-keeper. These, with the five wives of the officers, were to be the Atkinsons’ close companions for what was to prove six months, and Thomas was conscious that ‘to induce your companions to be agreeable to you, you must be amiable to them’. In addition there was a former Orthodox priest who, for unknown reasons, had been made a soldier and had recently arrived with his comrades.
Then there were the domestic servants. It was curious to find them there at all, but normal for the nineteenth century, even in such a remote place. Female servants, however, were not to be had and Lucy found it very difficult to find anyone to wash the floors. Although Madame Techinskaya had a female Kazakh servant and Wrangel a Cossack’s daughter, the work was otherwise done by men, and from Lucy’s knowledge of the female sex in that part of the world she was ‘rather thankful … that they are not to be had; they are a strange as well as a dangerous set to have anything to do with’. Baron Wrangel, she wrote, was nearly poisoned by his Cossack help, who had developed a deep passion for him and, being a proud Cossack, thought herself sufficiently noble and worthy to be his bride. Her feelings were unrequited, however, so she prepared a distinctly dubious love-potion for him. Fortunately, the plan was discovered in time and she was severely reprimanded and banished from the house. In addition, Lucy says, Yarolae, Wrangel’s Kazakh bodyguard, gave her a good thrashing and threatened to repeat it if she ever came again.
Rather more sinister was the case of Wrangel’s laundress. Her Cossack husband had been a good-looking and very healthy young man but suddenly sickened, and his friends, who were particularly fond of him, feared he might die like so many before him because of the harsh conditions. One day, a workman who had fallen asleep in a building under construction was woken by the sound of voices and overheard the laundress plotting with a Cossack ‘a most diabolical scheme for ridding herself of her husband, the poison she was giving being too slow’. The workman watched them depart and went off at once to inform Wrangel. The laundress was tried, convicted and sentenced to fifty strokes of the birch from her husband, who had been present at the trial. Her punishment was promptly carried out in the prison with two Cossacks holding her, then she was placed on an ox and drummed out of the fort in the care (or otherwise) of her husband. What displeased Lucy about the affair was that her accomplice was neither tried nor punished: ‘it was not even-handed justice’. ‘Thus’, she added, ‘I am fortunate in being surrounded by the male sex alone; indeed, I am the only female who sleeps within the fortress’ – indicating that the bulk of the population lived outside its walls.
The only other female domestic servant was Madame Techinskaya’s maid, Sunduk, the beloved of a Kazakh youth, Adiyol, in Wrangel’s service. His feelings were requited, unlike Wrangel’s Cossack help, but a major quarrel blew up about Adiyol’s chimbar or wide trousers. One day they could not be found and, as he was dressed at Wrangel’s own expense, a thorough search was made. Adiyol protested he knew nothing about his missing trousers, and Yarolae feared being implicated himself as he was the first to have discovered the loss. Some days later Yarolae saw Sunduk in the lost trousers, leaped from his horse and seized her. She struggled violently, but being a powerful man, ‘and apparently without scruples, [he] laid her on the ground, and, divesting her of [the trousers] … carried them home in triumph’. It turned out that Adiyol himself was to blame, having presented them to Sunduk as a temporary love-token and intending to replace them later with something else. It was a compound mistake on Adiyol’s part for, apart from her public humiliation, Sunduk was convinced that Adiyol had been mean enough to bribe Yarolae to reclaim his present. Regrettably, Lucy deprives us of any further dénouement, so whether the path of true love was smoothed out we do not know.
Apart from their human companions at Kopal, the Atkinsons had considerable canine company. They had been followed by a ‘very fine’ large dog with a brown coat marked like a tiger and beautiful long black ears. Evidently he had been ill-treated, for he had a bad wound all round his muzzle as if it had been tightly bound. After many attempts, the dog at last allowed Thomas to apply some ointment, which was repeated daily for some time. ‘It was shortly cured’, wrote Lucy, ‘and the poor beast’s gratitude was unbounded; I never saw any animal love its master so much.’ Amazingly, they called this dog Alatau too, and their Cossack attendant distinguished him from their baby by calling the latter ‘Gospodin (Mr) Alatau’. One day someone stole the dog and tied him up with a thick rope, but he broke loose and came back with the rope round his neck. Another time he set off to the mountains and, unusually, did not return at night. Three days passed and the Atkinsons became increasingly concerned. On the third night there was a noise at the door, which woke Lucy, and in came the dog, ‘making a most tremendous rattle and clatter’. He had been stolen again but had escaped once more, this time dragging an extremely thick long chain behind him: ‘even iron is not enough to keep him from his master’.
But the dog was only one of five the Atkinsons had at this time. ‘Madame Jatier’, whom we first saw in Chapter 2, was the favourite. She was always the first to be fed and only she was allowed in and out of the yurt, their first home in Kopal, where she had her own corner to sleep in. One day when Thomas was away hunting, the four-legged Alatau with him, it was for Lucy to feed the dogs. Jatier ignored Lucy’s call to be fed first, so Lucy began to feed Appoleck. Jatier arrived on the scene and tried to drive off her supplanter, but Lucy was firm and there was ‘a grand scuffle’. When Lucy then offered Jatier her dinner, she sulked and would have none, so Lucy called Ashara to eat and there was another battle, with Lucy just as firm. Again Lucy offered Jatier her food but she would not approach, so Lucy now fed Actigoon, which made Jatier even more furious. With all others fed, Lucy again offered Jatier her dinner, but she would not come near and only when indulged with a clean plate did she consent to eat.
Shortly afterwards, Lucy was sitting on the carpet in the yurt, sewing, when Jatier came in. As she did not come to lie at Lucy’s feet as usual, Lucy looked round to see if it was one of the other dogs that had dared to enter. But, as Lucy tells us, it was indeed Jatier, a mass of mud and scarcely recognisable, not a speck of her glossy black coat visible, wagging her tail and looking as impertinent as possible. Angrily, Lucy got up, seized her whip and cried, ‘You dirty creature, how dare you come here!’ at which Jatier was ‘off like a shot … racing away over the steppe’. A little later she reappeared, ‘as clean and glossy as ever’, and silently resumed her accustomed place. Lucy was sure Jatier was fully aware of her horror of dirt and had rolled in the mud on purpose to annoy her for not allowing her to eat first. It was the first time Lucy had ever seen a speck of dirt on her coat and she must have gone some distance to find any mud, as there was certainly none near.
Earlier, Thomas had been lent another dog, Calypso. Jatier would sit in any balagan by the side of her master with Calypso at a respectable distance without. One day, however, Jatier had gravely offended Thomas so ‘he gave her a thrashing, whereupon she deemed it prudent not to come too near’. Calypso now cautiously approached her master and sat in Jatier’s place. Lucy
saw Calypso screwing up her nose and making grimaces at Jatier; I make no doubt but they thoroughly understand each other. Poor Calypso’s reign was of short duration, for Mr Atkinson, never long angry with any animal, once more caressed his favourite. No sooner had he done so, than she entered the balagan and gave Calypso a thorough thrashing, as if she had been the cause of her disgrace, and then drove her out, and reinstated herself in her former position.
At the time of the Atkinsons’ arrival, Kopal was still a very new fort. Four years earlier, as Thomas describes, a battery of artillery – six guns and 100 men – had been sent into the Alatau mountains in order to found a military outpost and established themselves in a pass eight miles south of the later site of Kopal. But winter brought an eleven-day buran reaching hurricane force through the gorge where they had encamped, and by mid-February thirteen men and fifty-seven horses were dead.
With this disastrous buran a new site for a fort was chosen just east of the river Kopal on a treeless, tumuli-dotted plain covered with coarse gravel and sand: a host of flowers in early spring perhaps, but the rest of the year an arid waste where furious storms would sweep up the gravel, producing a shower of stones and sand. Such was the spot, rather than a fertile, sheltered valley, chosen by two irresponsible (Thomas’s adjective) generals,2 where 500 Cossacks with their families had arrived on 20 August, a month before the Atkinsons, to form a permanent settlement with 200 others to remain three years to help construction. They had been told they were going to ‘a warm and rich country where all kinds of produce grew in abundance, and their horror and dismay on reaching their destination’ can be imagined, continues Thomas, particularly after a journey of great hardship; ‘from comfortable homes … in a region of plenty’ they had been sent to ‘a dreary waste on which nothing would grow’.
Faced with an early first winter for them, Captain Abakumov, the head of artillery, located a forest of large pines in the nearby Alatau mountains, and set 150 men to work felling trees; the Kazakhs supplied a great many bullocks to drag the timber. The official buildings including the hospital were to be built straight away, but each Cossack had to cut his own wood, get it to Kopal and construct his own home. Many were built only twelve feet square, in which two families of ten were glad to take shelter, for many others had to make do in dug-outs.
By mid-October (1848) the whole chain of the Alatau was white and, with the Kazakhs predicting that the snow would reach Kopal in a few days, every effort was made to complete at least the wooden hospital. The beams were already in place, part of the planking done and each room made warm and watertight with a nine-inch layer of earth over the planks. The unfinished warehouse too was hurried on. Meanwhile, however, the flour and other provisions were exposed to storms of rain, wind and snow through which the unfortunate Cossacks (‘poor fellows’, empathised Thomas) had to work. In a fortnight both hospital and warehouse were waterproof, but their own dwellings were in a very different state. ‘It was truly heartrending’, wrote an appalled Thomas,
to look upon their miserable families when the storms were raging; some were seen trying to shelter themselves under strips of voilok, and others were lying down to sleep in corners of the half roofed rooms. Elsewhere groups of women and children with haggard looks and shivering limbs were huddled round fires, cooking their scanty meal; and watching for the return of their fathers – wet and exhausted from excessive toil. These were not the scenes of one day – they were continued for weeks – and soon the fatal effects were visible. First, the children sunk under this severity, and were carried in numbers to the graves; the poor miserable mothers, worn out by anxiety, fatigue, and bad food, next fell victims to the fatal maladies which assailed them. I have often watched the mournful processions wending their way to the hill selected for the cemetery, about two miles distant from the fort, and when they have passed have turned away with gloomy forebodings for the future. The endurance of the Cossacks lasted a little longer, but their turn was approaching.
Much has been said and written about the misery of our men in the Crimea; but what was theirs in comparison with the sufferings which these poor women and children endured? They had been torn from comfortable homes, where they lived in plenty, and transported to this desolate spot. Here they were reduced to black bread, salt and brick tea; vegetables there were none, and the Cossacks had no time to spare for hunting.
‘Falls on the River Kopal, Chinese Tartary’
In late October a great buran began and for seven days snow fell, covering the steppe four feet deep and making it impossible for the Atkinsons to leave until winter was over. But bright sunny days followed, with the thermometer ranging from about –12°C to –19°C of frost, during which Thomas and a few others often went out in search of game, usually with success. By November, which brought ‘fearful storms and greater cold’, the Atkinsons had fortunately been moved before Alatau’s birth.
On 10 November the thermometer fell most unusually to –25°C, and those poorly housed suffered particularly badly. Before the arrival of the doctor, Andrei Ivanovich, typhus had taken a great toll, so his arrival was very greatly welcomed, although at that stage the hospital, directly opposite Thomas and Lucy’s new abode, was still without a roof and no medicine had been sent. After much effort the doctor was housed, ‘a few boards were nailed together for bedsteads, and skins spread on them formed the beds and covering’.
At first [wrote Thomas], when sickness seized the men, they deemed themselves fortunate if taken into the hospital…. This illusion was, however, speedily dispelled…. Before the end of a month, twenty-eight men were taken to their last resting place on the hill. Bad food, miserable dwellings, and crowded rooms brought on typhus fever, which carried off many women and children; the Cossacks also caught the disease, which quickly proved fatal. It was painful to see the men carry one, two, and sometimes three of their comrades from the hospital; and this happened daily.
Not unnaturally, Kopal’s population came to the conclusion ‘that if a man entered the hospital, he would not leave it alive’. When Lucy herself needed medical attention she refused to enter it and indeed no ill person would enter it willingly, so several people died in their own homes. Abakumov then ordered that at the first signs of fever everyone should be sent to the hospital, but all then tried to conceal their symptoms. Finally the epidemic became so bad that an officer and guard were sent round every home and any sick man found was at once taken to the hospital. This created such feeling that one Cossack left his dwelling as the inspection party neared, ‘walked out on to the steppe and shot himself, to avoid being carried into the ill-fated building’. This one suicide apart, Thomas observed that ‘men were constantly taken to the hospital by the guard, and were speedily carried from it to the grave’.
Some time in November Thomas managed to obtain a rough, unfinished door and propped it up with four logs to form a table, enabling him to use his pencil and paints.
My first work was a large water-colour painting, now in the possession of Prince Gortchikoff, and, I believe, the first water-colour picture ever painted in this part of Asia. While dabbling in my colour-box, discomfort, and even hunger, were forgotten, and the occupation enabled me to smile at the disasters of a stormy winter, and to enjoy the amusements of my companions.
He finished the painting on 19 November as a present for Prince Gorchakov and wrote the same day:
When I had the pleasure of seeing you in Omsk in March last I then promised to make you a large drawing of one of my views taken on the River Irtisch. This has been my first work painted since I ceased sketching and now I beg you will accept of it and give it a place in your collection. I trust it may not be the less acceptable as being the first work ever painted in the Town of Kopal founded by yourself.
He then explains that since he had to sketch Altin-Kul and the Katun river in July and August, the best months to do so, he arrived very late in Kopal (on 22 September), since when he had made eleven sketches of the Kora river and several others near Kopal. Nonetheless, he continued, there still remained much fine scenery to sketch, but since it could not be done before the following April, he sought the Prince’s permission to winter in Ayaguz and then sketch along the mountains as far as the River Lepsy (he calls it Lepsou) and other rivers where he had heard there were many beautiful views. He calculated it would take him five or six weeks and ‘four or five Cossacks would be ample’ for him.
He concluded by saying, ‘I must not forget to tell you that on the 4th November Mrs Atkinson presented me with a Son. The first and perhaps the only Englishman that will ever be born in Kopal.’3 Thomas, who unrealistically thought ‘this circumstance’ would delay them another three weeks, found the winter stranded them in Kopal until the following May.
The day after his letter all the officers came to see the painting (not yet in a frame and glass) and it ‘astonished them greatly. The Baron was greatly delighted with [it]’ and it was packed in an iron case and sent ‘by the Post’ to Omsk. Gorchakov’s reply to the letter does not survive but presumably was either a refusal or failed to find Thomas in Ayaguz, fortuitously allowing the Atkinsons a much more interesting time based on this new Cossack fort than on the older one of Ayaguz further north. Two days later Thomas was hard at work on a drawing (sic) of his beloved lake, Altin-Kul in the Altai.
The burans continued through November, and the snowstorms were so bad that visibility was reduced to only three or four paces and the inhabitants were effectively all prisoners, reduced to almost entirely ‘bad black bread, salt and tea’. Fortunately, however – and surprisingly – the ebi responsible for the burans was a warm wind which actually raised the temperature to –6°C, but when the storms ceased it immediately dropped to –25°C, ‘unpleasantly cold’ in the inadequate dwellings.
In a lull between burans, Thomas and Abakumov decided to escape from their prison and visit a Tatar merchant, Minda-boi, who had encamped with his yurts forty miles away in a sheltered, wooded valley, Kizil-a-gash, with abundant pheasants. The two therefore hoped, in Thomas’s words, ‘to improve the condition of our larder’. They set off at daybreak across the deep snow and arrived at dusk to a warm welcome from their host and ‘snug berths in his own yourt. The cold ride had sharpened our appetites; his mutton and rice required no other sauce, and we quenched our thirst with tumblers of tea.’
Immediately after our meal an opium pipe with its apparatus was brought in and prepared by a Tatar. After spreading a large tiger skin and placing a cushion upon it, Minda-boi stretched his limbs, and the man handed him the pipe, which he commenced smoking with evident pleasure. In about ten minutes he seemed to pass from the ills of mortal life into Elysium, or into a state that appeared to afford him the highest pleasure…. Minda-boi still remained in his region of bliss, and I was left to my own musings.
Opium smoking has become prevalent among the wealthy Kazakh, more especially with the sons of the sultans and chiefs: this is deeply to be regretted…. In a country where caravans have to make such long journeys, it is a great advantage to them, the article being of small bulk and of considerable value, as they sell it for its weight in silver…. The caravans … are met by Chinese, who purchase their whole stock, paying for it in silver, and these men smuggle the opium into the towns; then the merchant enters with his caravan of wares and silver ambas unmolested.
Thomas had seen that even after only a little opium smoking there was ‘little chance of a man leaving it off’ and when used often it produces a ‘sunken eye and emaciated features’.
Early the next morning the party rode off after the pheasants; it was bright and sunny, ‘though piercingly cold, and the trees covered with hoar frost, causing them to sparkle like brilliants’. But the pheasants had found shelter under the snow, up to five feet of the white mantle made the hunters’ task difficult if not impossible, and they had to return without firing a shot. Opium and tobacco were repeated a second night, while Thomas, furs thrown over him by a Cossack, ‘slept soundly without the aid of either opiate’.
Next day they left early again, having learned that two large wild boar had been seen along the valley. They found them, pursued them and killed one after ‘narrow escape[s] from his formidable tusks.… He was a magnificent animal, and had received nine balls before he fell.’ After one more night with their host ‘in a state of [induced] bliss’, wrote Thomas, ‘we left him, taking one of his camels to carry our spoil’.
Abakumov, after entertaining all his friends, invited Thomas for a moonlight ride in his peasant-style wickerwork sledge. Three wild horses being broken in were harnessed in troika fashion on the edge of a great open plain with a deep ravine some 500 yards away. The horses suddenly plunged forward, leaving Thomas in but throwing the driver out, and dashed off at full speed straight for the ravine. Fifty yards from it they turned and the impetus swung the sledge over the edge. They rushed on to a rough timber track which tossed the sledge from side to side, nearly throwing Thomas out, bruising his right hand badly and breaking a finger.4 The horses galloped on until the reins got caught on a pile of timber, when those in pursuit secured them. Thomas leaped out of the sledge, unable to stand the next day, but was given ‘a good steaming in a Russian bath’.
Inevitably, Lucy found life at Kopal very different from that in Barnaul or Ekaterinburg. There they had not only the necessaries of life but some luxuries also. Yet it would be difficult to find ‘a happier or a merrier party than we form’, wrote Lucy, and she must have made a major contribution herself. In the autumn they went riding and in the evening assembled in the drawing-room (Lucy’s italics) where sometimes they had serious conversations and sometimes merry ones, for Wrangel knew many entertaining anecdotes ‘and sometimes made us laugh immoderately’.
Then we have musical soirées, vocal and instrumental, Mr Loigonoff, Captain Abakamoff, and myself, are the audience, and the performers the Baron and my husband; the latter plays the flute and the former the guitar. The evening usually concludes with the English and the Russian anthem. And now I must tell you of a ball we have had, decidedly the first that ever took place in this part of the world.
It took place during the Christmas holidays when each officer who had managed to make his dwelling habitable gave a ball – or the best possible semblance of one in the circumstances – and Lucy’s description is worth quoting extensively.
‘A dangerous ride’
Having but one dress besides my travelling one, I drew it forth and looked with dismay at its tumbled appearance. I had a small iron with me fortunately, the only one in Kopal, so I dispatched our Cossack to and fro to the kitchen to have it heated … I managed to make it decent, and forthwith I commenced my toilet…. In the midst of my dressing a bouran arose; I was obliged to rush to one side of the tent to hold it down, my candle was blown out, leaving me in total darkness. Mr Atkinson ran outside to call the men, who were heard screaming and running in all directions, as the kitchen, with all the delicacies for the coming feast, was being nearly swept away; at last, with ropes and beams of wood, it, as well as our tent, was secured….
Having smartened myself to the best of my ability, we started; it was only three paces, for all our tents had been bodily removed to the vicinity of the house. We found our host in full uniform; he was scarcely recognizable; indeed, he laughed to see himself. Then there was his body-guard, a Kazakh, by name Yarolae, the grandest man in the place; he wore a magnificent new dressing-gown, a splendid shawl round his waist, and a tall-pointed silk cap, and red boots; altogether he looked and felt superb.
The room had wooden stools placed round; the carpenter had been several days busy preparing them, and at one end of it a few planks were raised from the ground; these were covered over with a carpet, and served for a sofa. This being the place of honour, I was seated here to await the coming guests….
Yarolae’s bearing was usually calm and dignified, but hearing the wail of the camel he became quite excited … and made a rush downstairs. He shortly returned, followed by two ladies; and … announced, in a voice like thunder, ‘Madame Ismaeloff [wife of the Cossack commander] and Madame Tetchinskoy.’ The contrast between them and the gaily-attired Kazakh was too striking. The former lady was a soncy-faced old body, with a bright shining skin, a clean dark-coloured cotton dress, a white collar which reached to her shoulders, a white cap with a very full border, a lilac silk shawl, and brown worsted gloves, completed her attire; her companion, a small person, had a similar dress, but instead of the shawl she wore a pink satin mantle, trimmed with white lace. They came up to me, each giving me three kisses, and took a seat on either side of me, without uttering a word. Yarolae was again off; the next visitor was proclaimed by the roaring of a bull [ox]. The door was thrown open very wide, and ‘Anna Pavlovna’ was announced. My gravity was this time sorely tried, and more so as I glanced at the Baron; his face was irresistible, he went forward to shake Anna by the hand; her deep-tone, sonorous voice resounded through the room.
She was a tall stout woman, dressed in the Russian sarafan [peasant’s dress], a cotton, of the brightest and most variegated colours, very short, and round the bottom it was edged with pink; a pair of good strong shoes, with nails, and no stockings, and … round her head … a red cotton handkerchief; as you may imagine, she was gloveless; but what an arm and hand she had! big enough to knock down anyone who approached her ungraciously. But her face was beaming with smiles and good nature; she, too, came forward like the others and bowing down low, saluted my cheeks three times, and then took her seat.
I certainly did not expect to see ladies of the first fashion; but I was not at all prepared for what I did see, as the husbands were gentlemen. Again the moaning of the camel was heard, and another announcement, which was the last, of the ladies. These two … had more pretensions than the others. Madame Serabrikoff had on a woolen dress, and the other a faded green silk, with a patch in the skirt, of another colour; this latter visitor found means during the evening of telling me that she had not expected the ball to take place so soon, otherwise she would have had her polka ready to wear; it was a beautiful blue satin….
Tea, coffee, and chocolate were handed round by Yarolae. The gentlemen assembled, and then came the musicians. We had a drum, two violins, and a fife; for the past fortnight they had been daily drilled by the Baron, in an attempt to teach them a polka. The ball opened by a polka danced by our host and myself. Afterwards we had quadrilles, in which my friend Anna Pavlovna was delicious, but in the Russian national dance she shone. Her great joy was to induce my husband to dance with her; his doing so certainly added to the merriment of the evening, and in spite of her strange costume, she was, with the exception of Yarolae, decidedly the most graceful person in the room.
At the commencement of the entertainment the ladies sat bolt upright, each trying to look more stately than her neighbour; voices were scarcely heard above a whisper, until the spirit, which at first they were rather coy of touching, had enlivened them; then their tongues were loosened and oh! how they did run on. I reproved the Baron for offering it to the ladies; his reply was, ‘I know my company.’ The gentlemen were not backward in imbibing their potations; those who did not dance played cards, and at each shuffle all but the dealer rose to do honour to the abominable spirit. Supper was placed on the tables at eight, and a little after ten all had taken their departure, unable to stay longer. We remarked that it was our host’s own fault for pressing them to drink; he answered, ‘You do not understand society in this part of the world, but I will enlighten you. To-morrow if you could enter the abodes of these people, and listen to their private conversation, you would hear them say what a delightful evening they had passed; whereas, if I treated them as in more polished society, they would be dissatisfied. And the sooner I render them in the state they like to be, the quicker I am rid of them; and now,’ said he, ‘let us have our supper.’ He then resumed his Kazakh costume, and perching himself on his stool commenced a merry air on his guitar, delighted at having rid himself of his guests so quickly.
Then there were the New Year festivities of 1849. Thomas confided to his journal on 1 January:5
The people in Kopal seemed determined to enjoy themselves and usher in the New Year with mirth and jollity so far as it can be got out of Wodky. which is drunk in Large quantities so long as they can obtain [it] even some of the Ladies make themselves mellow with this delightful tipple. [Lucy, just quoted, calls it ‘the abominable spirit’.] This gives a pleasing variety to their evening parties which are conducted with much state and ceremony. at the commencement. The Ladies … [have] one virtue they seldom speak that is untill the wodky has passed and then Oh! Heavens how Their tongues do run…. Their Lords are not idle as soon as a cup of Tea has been drunk they assemble round a Table on which wodky and meat has been placed and now begins the serious part of their Evening pleasure namly to get drunk in as short a time as possible I have seen this accomplished in half an hour but some take a longer time….
Since the pages in his journal for 2 January to 5 February are totally blank, one must wonder if Thomas had also succumbed to the pleasures of ‘the wodky’.
Beginning the third year of his travels, he had learnt his lesson on keeping a journal. No longer did he divide the pages of his new notebook into three and so run out of space. On the title page he has now inscribed ‘Rough Notes for my journal 1849’, which poses the question: did he envisage writing up a much longer journal (he doesn’t mention a prospective book) and if the long entries are only ‘rough notes’ what more could he have had in mind?
By now, Lucy calculated, since leaving St Petersburg in February she had travelled 6,267 versts in a carriage, 2,040 on horseback and 760 in boats or on a raft. But the total of 9,067 versts (about 6,800 miles) comprised only the direct routes with horseback excursions accounting for much more, including, surprisingly, a 17-verst ride the very evening after their arrival in Kopal – as if, heavily pregnant, she had not had enough riding on their near-disastrous journey. As for her husband, who had started his Russian travels a year before hers, Lucy calculated his total at considerably more, a total of 14,485 versts (about 10,800 miles), quite apart from his many sketching trips of 40 or 50 versts apiece.
Lucy was long accustomed to ‘a hard couch and hard fare’ and when a friend in a letter suggested they send to an adjoining town for a bed, she and Thomas were much amused, as the nearest Russian town, Semipalatinsk, was at least 500 versts away. She readily admitted that she had learnt many a good lesson on their journey, one being ‘how little is required to nourish our bodies’. On their arrival she may have been dainty, ‘but all this has passed. The only thing I cannot bring myself to eat is horseflesh, though we have eaten it many a time unknowingly. One of the things I enjoy more than anything else is rice’, which she invariably refused on their arrival as it looked dirty, ‘but now after scraping off the outside, I really enjoy it, as you would also, were you deprived of every kind of vegetable’.
One day Baron Wrangel found her busy removing the dirt from the rice and presumed she must have encountered what he had found in the kitchen that day: ‘beautifully white, well-washed rice’ and beside it ‘a horrible-looking cloth’. On questioning, Georgii, the soldier-cook, admitted that this cloth to boil the rice in was a ‘foot-binder’ – ‘literally, the rag which the peasantry and soldiers wrap round their feet instead of stockings!’
Thereafter the rice on offer was distinctly more hygienic, for Georgii had to submit the cloth daily for inspection on pain of the birch. ‘Scarcely a day passes’, wrote Lucy, ‘without the poor fellow receiving some two dozen strokes’ for some offence.
If winter had made the Atkinsons complete prisoners and February produced two minor earthquakes – ‘great shaking … [and] rumbling underground’ – by the end of the month they were walking or riding each day on the steppe, now covered by ‘a carpet of grass and flowers’. The fine weather brought them Kazakh visitors, and all those coming to see the foreigners were announced by Yarolae. With any new arrival he would march into ‘the apartment’ (sic) with great state, motion for them to take a seat on the floor, and hand Thomas his flute, ordering him to play in a commanding tone. ‘He imagines he is doing him a great service in making his talent known,’ confessed Lucy.
One frequent visitor was old Sultan Souk, who would spend long periods in the Atkinsons’ rooms (rooms, be it noted), particularly attracted by their small travelling mirror, which hung on Lucy’s bedroom wall (amazing that she had a bedroom!), before which he would stand ‘for an hour or more, making all kinds of grimaces and laughing loudly … probably the first time he ever saw his own face’. He tried to persuade Lucy to give the mirror to him but got instead a pair of scissors which his armourer then copied – the first ever made in the steppe, Lucy believed. Alatau, too, proved a great attraction. ‘Kazakhs came from far and near to see him; one sultan sent a follower of his … 200 versts for some smoked mutton for the child to eat when he was six weeks old’ (Lucy’s italics). Many visitors would examine the Atkinsons’ possessions and one sultan was so struck by a pair of Thomas’s gloves that ‘he ran out of the room with them on to show his followers’. On his return Thomas signed to him to keep them, but the sultan retired, then returned with Yarolae who translated that, if Lucy wished to give him anything, a towel would be more acceptable. Lucy gave him one, took back the gloves and left the room for a moment, returning to find towel, gloves and sultan all gone.
All nature was now looking ‘smiling and lovely’, which added greatly to everyone’s determination to enjoy the oncoming Maslenitsa or Shrovetide, ‘a holiday that every good Russian deems necessary to keep, and in doing so makes himself ill by eating “blinneys” [blinis or pancakes], preparatory to the forty days of Lenten fast’. Although there were no vegetables and the rye-bread was ‘horrible’,
a good supply of pheasants … and rice boiled with dried apricots afforded us delicious fare [considered Thomas]…. The officers had sent a party of Cossacks to Kulja [Kuldja, across the Chinese border, three days’ journey] for Chinese brandy [to supply all Kopal] as without that there could be no feast … abominable stuff, strong, fiery, and stinking.… Two days before the festival six camels were seen wending their way into Kopal, heavily laden with the spirits.
A high spot of the festivities was supplied by the soldier who had been a priest, indeed ‘a distinguished member of the “Church Militant”’. In early life he had been studious and respected for his learning, but his tastes had grown both expensive and criminal, ‘and to gratify them he used the power of his sacred office to screw all the roubles possible out of his flock’, as well as, it was said, to strip icons of their jewels and replace them with paste. Expelled from his office, he had ended in Kopal, ‘more suited for the musket than the crosier’ in Thomas’s words.
‘Sultan Souk and family’
Thomas considered the eighty-year-old Sultan Souk ‘one of the greatest robbers of the steppe’ and, although too old for barantas, the plundering expeditions to other tribes, he still planned many. When some Kazakhs came to beg him to release their wives and children, his slaves from one baranta, he refused. He posed here for Thomas in a scarlet coat, gold medal and sabre from Alexander I ‘of which he was wonderfully proud’.
At Christmas time he had put on a comedy, drilling a number of his companions so well in their parts that it was performed every evening, sometimes even twice nightly. This brought him great popularity, and he took the lead in all revels and carouses, while his previous career gave him a certain authority among his colleagues who called him ‘Proto-Pope’ or Arch-Priest. Now at the Maslenitsa festival he devised another entertainment for Kopal, which was awaited with great anticipation. Carpenters erected for him a railed platform at the top of a strong pole, the whole attached by axles to four gun wheels (by Abakumov’s permission). Twelve artillery horses were then attached with their drivers and, before a crowd of spectators, the Proto-Pope, dressed as a priest in mock vestments, mounted the high platform to ‘lusty cheers’ and ‘began solemnly chanting’ from a book in a deep-toned voice which resulted in ‘thundering applause’.
Religious sensibilities certainly existed. On Easter eve a Cossack came to Lucy, begging her to lend him her watch so that he and his colleagues could know exactly when midnight struck, marking Christ’s resurrection. She did so willingly but did not know until Easter Day itself that the Cossacks, with Izmailov, their commander, in charge, had built a little shed to serve as a church for the most important festival in the Orthodox Church, and she regretted missing the service.
On the Sunday morning Easter’s festivities began, and for many days it was to be ‘one round of pleasure’, Lucy found. At nine o’clock that morning the Atkinsons were visited by all the officers and the younger ladies for the first of the balls which each officer was to give. Each man carried a stool with him, knowing the two foreigners had only two chairs, and brought as well ‘the mover of the fun … (viz., the brandy), as that was another article they were sure of not finding with us’. Musicians assembled, the room was cleared and, despite the morning hour, a dance commenced and ‘all joined right merrily’. They then sat down and the brandy was passed round. After a second dance all went off to Baron Wrangel’s where Lucy was amused to be asked if she knew how to dance the ‘rococo’.
The watch that Lucy had lent the Cossack to time the arrival of Easter was returned with enormous gratitude. ‘It afforded us pleasure to be of the slightest service to these men, they were always so good-natured and willing. Scarcely a day passed without one or the other coming, as our medicine chest was in great demand; they had more faith in us than in their doctor.’
One unusual medicine they had was a gallon of spirit and cayenne, given them in Zmeinogorsk by Colonel Gerngross. It had been prepared in large quantities for distribution at Nicholas I’s order in case of cholera and was to be rubbed on the patient. The Atkinsons’ gallon remained sealed until one day the Baron’s laundress (of whom we have heard already) told Lucy that her husband’s legs were very painful. After consulting Thomas, Lucy told the laundress that the patient should go to the banya (Russian bath-house) and when very warm rub his legs with the spirit, which Lucy then gave her. ‘After this there was no end of symptoms; indeed this medicine was more in request than any other.’ On one occasion Lucy heard that Mr Techenskoi was ill and found him ‘moaning and groaning fearfully from inward suffering’. She proposed sending him some peppermint but he asked if she had nothing else. No, she said, and after much further talk he told her he had heard she had spirit and cayenne and believed it would cure him. ‘What?’ said Lucy. ‘Drink it! Why, it will kill you to swallow it.’ Oh, no, he replied, he had taken it already several times without harm, and Lucy now saw very clearly why the medicine had been quite so popular.
Easter in Kopal was followed by a congress to settle the boundary between the Greater and Middle Hordes of the Kazakhs. The marauding warfare between them had kept much of the area between Lake Balkhash and the Alatau Mountains in a very unsettled state, making it dangerous for caravans, which were often plundered by one or the other Horde – or both. After much negotiation, Gorchakov as Governor-General succeeded in persuading the Kazakh sultans and chiefs to meet in order to resolve the matter.
In the early 1830s, before the Atkinsons’ arrival, a chief Sultan of the Greater Horde such as Souk who had agreed to Russian sovereignty would be elected every three years, with two Russian and two Kazakh magistrates assigned to him as well as one secretary, two translators, three interpreters and two doctors. Under him would have been twenty smaller sultans governing regions (volosti) each with a secretary and an interpreter. And, since the steppe was divided into eight regions (okrugs), this new addition to the Russian Empire was costing around a quarter of a million roubles a year. Inevitably the Kazakhs were taxed: at the rate of one horse, cow or sheep for every hundred they possessed.6
Before the appointed day of the congress, 1 March 1849, many of the nomad chiefs arrived together with their mullahs and elders. The chief magistrate from Ayaguz (with whom the Atkinsons had stayed on their way south and who had given Lucy the prized water-melon for her parched journey) was to act as arbitrator or broker of the peace and attended with his staff, while several other Russian officials came from the tribes of the Middle Horde. On the day of the congress, the heads and representatives of the great tribes and families were assembled, ‘many of whom had never met except in deadly strife when on their plundering expeditions. As each had wrongs to avenge, it was doubtful if they could be kept under control.’
Abakumov, in charge of the artillery, had been ordered to fire a salute on the first day of the congress, and the chiefs were delighted when they saw the horses gallop round with the guns and go through their rapid manoeuvres. At length the guns were placed in position a hundred yards or so from them and Thomas described how many Kazakhs rushed forward for a better view.
Before they had gone half the distance the first gun belched forth its flame, smoke, and thunder, instantly checking their ardour, and causing a rapid retreat. As one gun after another echoed in the mountains, they gazed with perfect horror … and the display produced a great effect on their minds, forming a subject of conversation more interesting than that for which they had met; indeed they could not be induced to enter on the boundary question that day.
‘Marauders at the Aoul’
Since more than a hundred people had assembled, a large flock of sheep had been rounded up from the nearest tribes to feed them and, as of course there was no room large enough within the fort, the deliberations had to be held in the open air. The magistrate and his assistants sat in the centre,
their laps forming their desks, and ink horns … suspended on their kalats. Such a display of writing materials appeared to produce great astonishment. Sultan Souk and his Mullah took their places in front of this formidable array, and the other Chiefs arranged themselves around it, forming their House of Peers – the outward circle being the House of Commons.
The magistrate opened the congress by stating that his Excellency the Governor-General Prince Gorchakov had sent a dispatch (which he thereupon handed to Sultan Souk, ‘whose ancient descent and distinguished position gave him precedence’) authorising him (the magistrate) to act as mediator and recommending that the sultans and chiefs establish an agreed boundary between the two Hordes that would stop any future feuds or plundering. Once Souk’s mullah had explained all this to the assembly, the magistrate expressed the wish that the deliberations should be held amicably, the only means of reaching a fair decision on such an important matter.
All eyes then turned on Sultan Souk, representing the Greater Horde. He had, he declared, considered the Prince’s suggestions and was willing to adopt them, but the line of demarcation must, he said, be made according to his views which he believed his Greater Horde would approve. ‘The boundary to which I shall consent’, he said, ‘is the Ac-sou, including the shores of the Balkhash. If the Middle Horde agree to this, it is well, if not the Chiefs will maintain their right, and seize every man and animal found on the pastures.’ The Middle Horde’s reaction is unrecorded but can be imagined, and the chief magistrate himself stressed that most of the pasture Souk was claiming belonged instead to the Middle Horde south to the river Bean. In confirmation he produced a map showing the boundary there as stipulated by the Russian authorities. Souk studied the map for some minutes apparently without comprehension, and then said:
I cannot understand this paper, nor why you have marked the Bean and call it the boundary; it may remain so on the paper, but I will have the pastures to the Ac-sou. The prince has ordered the Lep-sou, the Ac-sou, and the Bean, to be placed where he pleased on this paper. He may have them so, but I order the boundary to be on the Ac-sou, nor shall it be changed. If the Middle Horde do not consent … they shall soon see some of my people on the Lep-sou.
Several other chiefs of the Greater Horde followed, supporting Souk’s proposal ‘and expressed a determination to carry it out to the letter by plundering every tribe that crossed the Ac-sou’. This not unnaturally caused a sensation and, though the chief magistrate remonstrated with Souk, the sultan remained totally immovable.
A chief of the Middle Horde then spoke. They had consented, he said, to meet the sultans of the Greater Horde to settle the boundary between them and were now told by Sultan Souk that it must be at the Ac-sou, not the Bean, though the latter had bounded their pastures for many generations. He would therefore follow in the same spirit as Souk: if any tribes of the Middle Horde crossed either the Bean or even the Kok-sou ‘they would never return [and] his tribe would be ready to meet Souk and his marauders whenever they dared to enter the pastures’. On this acerbic note ended the first day’s deliberations, and day after day passed with similar results. No arguments, no persuasion could bring any concession by either side. After a month the chief magistrate, tired out, broke up the congress without a single step forward, and the tribes separated more embittered than ever. The Russians had at least tried to promote peace, but there is no doubt they were the imperial masters, and Atkinson was exercised by their cynical and calculated methods in the Kazakh steppe.
When it was time to leave Kopal the Atkinsons had farewell visits from many of their Kazakh friends. ‘Amongst the foremost’, Lucy inevitably found, ‘was the old Sultan Souk, with whom I was a great favourite who bade me tell my husband not to fatigue me so much by taking me with him the next time he visited the steppe, as he would give him any number of wives he liked; at the same time, he should always be pleased to see me.’ The reason she had gained such favour with him was that ‘the Kazakhs always think highly of a woman who can use her needle, and Yarolae had trumpeted forth my fame’.
Lucy had been making a little hat out of a small piece of red merino for Alatau to wear on their forthcoming journey and embroidered it with a little silk from her work-box, placing an eagle’s feather in the front. When completed
it did not look ugly. Yarolae was enchanted, particularly with the broad brim; I presumed because he was fond of the child whom he often used to take for a promenade, or to show to any newcomer, holding him as gently as I would myself; but what was my astonishment when this great big man begged of me to give the hat to him! I refused.
Several days in succession he came to plead, and at last Lucy asked Thomas to cut her another piece of pasteboard so she could make him one, assuming she could find enough cloth.
When Yarolae heard this his joy was unbounded, he scarcely left my side. I made it perfectly grand by decorating it with beads and earrings, and when it was finished he walked off to the Baron, begging for permission to wear it. His master told me I had done him an ill service, as Yarolae was now never at home; for he had procured a horse, and was riding through the town every day displaying the magnificent acquisition to his toilette.
After many forays into the steppe and the mountains, the Atkinsons were to leave Kopal for good only in late May of 1849, and both Thomas and Lucy were glad to depart from this strange outpost after so long – the place certainly of Alatau’s birth and first year of life, but of so much deprivation and death too. When they finally left, Thomas ‘visited the cemetery on the hill, and counted 107 graves, proving how active death had been during eight months’. They, particularly the young Alatau, had been lucky to survive smallpox and the typhus epidemic, and as it was, Lucy was ‘nothing but skin and bone; scarcely a pound of flesh left on me, nor is my husband one whit better’.
Later, in 1853, in Barnaul the Atkinsons met a young man who had been on government service in Kopal. He told them what had happened since their departure. Izmailov, the head of the Cossacks and to the Atkinsons ‘a most worthy man’, caring for his men, had rejected all the rye flour and grain delivered in the autumn by caravan as unfit for consumption and reported this to the authorities in Omsk, urging that a replacement consignment be sent. A reply told him that ‘his conduct had already been complained of’ and he was rejecting flour ‘of a superior quality’ to what had been agreed, that the supervising general was quite satisfied and that Izmailov should not meddle with his superiors. Thenceforth his fate was sealed. Lucy says he was regarded as ‘too dangerous to be left in a position where he could communicate with the prince [i.e. Gorchakov, the Governor-General], and measures were instantly adopted to prevent it’.
Up to then all official papers at Kopal were sealed in bags by Izmailov and sent off to Omsk. The unknowing prince now ordered that the bags henceforth were to be sealed by the civil authorities, who would forward them. Thus every letter or report from Izmailov could be intercepted, and his enemies produced certain charges against him, shown to the Prince, who summoned Izmailov to Tomsk to answer them. Aware that his enemies ‘would stop at nothing to effect his ruin and that his bare assertions of innocence would have no weight … he placed two cartridges in his mouth [and] ignited them’, leaving a wife and son.
The Atkinsons must have wondered what lay ahead of them, although the two were made of intrepid stuff and a sense of adventure seems to have been their lifeblood. Many adventures indeed were yet to come for parents and child.