To Katherine Mansfield...

There are few novelists nowadays, I suppose, who will not readily acknowledge that, in certain most intrinsic qualities of the art, the great Russians are what Henry James once called Balzac, the mast...

The “I” of this book is not me....

And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book. It is the classic way of treating life. For my ineffectual return to Vladivostok is the effectual conclusion of my them...

And then it struck me that the only thing to do was to fit all this into a book. It is the classic way of treating life. For my ineffectual return to Vladivostok is the effectual conclusion of my them...

It was somewhat in the manner of an Ibsen drama with retrospective revelations that I was initiated into the complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. I had been asked to call by the three sisters, ...

It was on one of those long, happy evenings which it had now become my custom to spend regularly at their large, luxurious flat in the Mohovaya in St. Petersburg, that I was further initiated into the...

I saw them off next morning in the desolating atmosphere of the Nicholas Station on a cold November morning. They were wrapped in heavy furs. The men had turned up the collars of their shubas against ...

I called on them one evening in Nina’s absence and chanced to find Fanny Ivanovna alone. Nikolai Vasilievich, as ever, was out. Sonia had gone to see a friend. “Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said. ...

She was silent for some time. “Andrei Andreiech, does she love him? Cannot live without him? ‘Don’t you believe it,’ I told Nikolai Vasilievich. ‘She will leave you as soon as she has robbed you of yo...

That evening I remember as an ever-deepening initiation into the very complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. It had been raining again, and the washed cobbles on either side of the street looked ...

This time there was a good deal of whispering between the maid on the one hand, and Sonia and Nina and Vera on the other. Then the three sisters vanished into the hall, and there was more whispering. ...

It was a day, I remember, of a peculiar warmth and fragrance, when you could feel that winter has become spring. I was strolling down the Nevski, and upon the wide, lighted splendour of this queen of ...

Now when I ask myself how I could have so hopelessly misgauged the situation, I find it difficult to give a clear account of it. I had wanted to help, to be a friend to all those helpless, charming an...

How often then I dreamed of those white nights of Petersburg, those white mysterious sleepless nights.⁠ ⁠… Fanny Ivanovna was alone, and we sat together on the open balcony and talked about her troubl...

Then I went to Oxford, and when the war broke out I joined the Navy. But just before the revolution, Admiral Butt, who had gone on a special mission to Russia, applied for my “Anglo-Russian” services....

Then I went to Oxford, and when the war broke out I joined the Navy. But just before the revolution, Admiral Butt, who had gone on a special mission to Russia, applied for my “Anglo-Russian” services....

I remember the excitement of it all. Uncle Kostia, it appeared, had risen earlier that day on account of the revolution; and after dinner, still in his dressing-gown and slippers, he paced the floor q...

The revolution dragged on through the winter and “deepened” as the months advanced. The forerunners of confusion became visible: food and commodities were being procured in an irregular manner. All we...

Petrograd looked thoroughly nasty on that cold November morning. There was the drizzling snow, and it was still dark as I walked home with Uncle Kostia. We had been at the Finland Station to see off t...

Certain fragments of scene and speech come back to me with a peculiar insistence, as I write this third portion of my book. I have no hesitation in setting them down as I do, I think accurately enough...

Certain fragments of scene and speech come back to me with a peculiar insistence, as I write this third portion of my book. I have no hesitation in setting them down as I do, I think accurately enough...

Nikolai Vasilievich was to call for me after lunch. At lunch there were many guests, and the conversation was necessarily political. I was impatient, for Nikolai Vasilievich might call at any moment; ...

My tangled memories of Siberia come to me today largely as a string of dances, dinners, concerts, garden-parties, modulated by the atmosphere of weather and the seasons of the year, with the gathering...

Much of my experiences must now appear in the nature of a farce. This is not my fault. A good deal of life is a hilarious farce, and yet, as in the case of the affiliation of Nikolai Vasilievich’s fam...

When the train arrived at Omsk, the new regime of Kolchak had been established. The Admiral was distinctly pleased with the change; for he no longer believed in granting the Russian people a Constitue...

The “affiliation” of Eisenstein into our “society” was a tribute to his own unflagging perseverance. It so happened that while in Vladivostok the Admiral had been in urgent need of a dentist, and quit...

It was the day after General Gaida’s unsuccessful rising. “They’ve gone out for a walk with those three American naval officers,” Fanny Ivanovna told me when I called. “Just the two of us, as usual,” ...

Who can convey at all adequately that sense of utter hopelessness that clings to a Siberian winter night? Wherever else is there to be found that brooding, thrilling sense of frozen space, of snow and...

She was going along quickly, wrapped in the familiar fur; and it was snowing merrily. “Nina!” She turned round and stopped, smiling. And the bright white winter day seemed to be smiling with her. It w...

Six weeks elapsed, and the snow was melting in the valley. When the sun appeared behind the trees the birches, steeped in water, had that silvery appearance which is beautiful beyond measure. Spring w...

That evening I called on them to say goodbye, for we were leaving on the morrow. The occasion coincided with the release of Nikolai Vasilievich from prison, following on the seizure of the fortress by...

“Would she come?” I thought, as next morning we drove off to the wharf. We passed a lonely square with a solitary Chink with a tin sword. That was the last we saw of Vladivostok. The family came to se...

And this now is the ending, the Liebestod of my theme. We had left so suddenly. Her last words, look, gesture had “settled it.” But now, in retrospect, the things that “settled it” were, in their very...

And this now is the ending, the Liebestod of my theme. We had left so suddenly. Her last words, look, gesture had “settled it.” But now, in retrospect, the things that “settled it” were, in their very...

I travelled with Sir Hugo and the Russian General, and we took the eastern route. I had recognized Sir Hugo’s gait as he came my way one day in crowded Piccadilly, but stopped in front of a shop windo...

Finally I arrived at Vladivostok. The moment I set my foot on the platform I flew by well-known streets and curves and turnings to their house. I remember I felt in the manner of Tristan at the end of...

We did not go home. She said, “I’m tired of seeing Papa, Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz. They always quarrel, always quarrel.⁠ ⁠… Kniaz is the best of the lot.” Instead we went to the Olenins who lived in a...

Such pitiful, heartrending scenes as this became a frequent occurrence. Each of the three sisters walked arm in arm with each of the “three brothers,” and I trailed alone behind them, a kind of tutor,...

And then I only wished that they would go, and that I could return at once to England. The date of sailing was put off from week to week because of passport difficulties and dearth of accommodation in...