| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 10 November 1876 |
MARX TO COLLET DOBSON COLLET
IN LONDON
London, 10 November 1876
41 Maitland Park Road, N. W.
My dear Sir,
In communicating to you some éclaircissements[1] on the last movements of Mr Gladstone, I do so on the express under- standing:
1) that until January next they be kept secret (this refers of course not to Mr Urquhart);
2) that if made use of in the January number of the Diplomatic Review, it be done in the form of a correspondence, dated from Rome, Naples or Vienna. Regard to the security of third persons renders these precautions necessary.
Since some time a Russian lady, Madame Nowikoff, has established her autumn and winter quarters in London; during the remainder of the year she travels on the continent or sojourns at Moscow. She is the wife—practically divorced, if not legally—of Mr Nowikoff,[2] Russian dragoman at Constantinople,[3] who is himself the brother of the Russian ambassador at Vienna[4] (the latter has, I believe, been recently removed from Vienna to Constantinople).
Excluded in Russia from la bonne compagnie because of her matrimonial embarrassments, Madame Nowikoff plays neverthe- less a certain part at Moscow where her saloon is frequented by Frondeurs, at the same time that other compatriots suspect her of being a subaltern agent of the Third Division. (The Third Division means the secret State police, a Star Chamber on a colossal scale, the main lever of the Russian governmental machine.)
A busybody, she intrudes everywhere, on scientific congresses at Brussels, old Catholic meetings in Germany, etc. Once very handsome, she has now reached a certain age between 45 and 50, and pretends only to intellectual charms. Very amiable and adroit, she possesses indeed the qualities which, as the French say, 'distinguent la tripoteuse russe'.[5] Still it would be a mistake to range her with the higher order of that species; her mind is of a very superficial cast.
At London Englishmen (professors of science, literary men, politicians), Frenchmen, Slavs and Russians meet in her saloon. One of its principal attractions is the cavalier servant of the lady, 'son ami intime', as she calls him—Count Beust, the Austrian ambassador.
Some London papers having met the 'Bulgarian atrocities',[6] ushered in by Mr Schuyler, with the 'Turkestan atrocities',[7] told by the same Mr Schuyler, Madame Nowikoff (in collusion with General Gorloff, the military attaché to the Russian Embassy at London) addressed a letter to Mr Gladstone, till then a perfect stranger to her—a letter, set off with an enthusiastic eulogy of his chivalrous exploits on behalf of the downtrodden Slavs, but really intended to give him lessons on the Turkestan events and to protest indignantly against the alleged foul slanders of some London prints. In answer to this missive she received a friendly reply, written and signed by Madame Gladstone.
Since then, Mr Gladstone has paid several visits to Madame Nowikoff who improved her opportunities so well that a literary campaign against the shameless revilers of Russian humanitarian- ism was at once resolved upon.
Two letters, the one by Madame Nowikoff, but anonymous, the other written by Gorloff and signed with his name (the which letter Mad. Nowikoff communicated to Mr Gladstone), were to be published in the Daily News as forerunners to an article of Mr Gladstone himself (in the Contemporary Review), so that he might refer to Gorloff's letter as a 'document justificatif. The gist of Gorloff's letter was the denial of General Kaufmann's atrocious order to General Golowatscheff,[8] as published by Mr Schuyler. The public denial of the authenticity of that order with Gorloff's signature would have derived a certain value from the cir- cumstance that Gorloff occupies a double position; he is an attaché of the Embassy, but depends at the same time on the Russian war ministry, and might therefore have been considered its authorised spokesman.
However, at an interview of Mr Gladstone with Madame Nowikoff, she received, and communicated to him, a letter from Gorloff to the effect, that Schuwaloff, the ambassador, had forbidden him (Gorloff) to sign his letter with his name, as it might compromise the embassy. (Schuwaloff, of course, would not have cared a pin to see a lie publicly signed by Gorloff; but, as the Russian war minister, Miljutin, is the enemy both of Schuwaloff and Kaufmann, and a man not to be trifled with, Schuwaloff stood on his guard.)
Thereupon, by request of Mr Gladstone, Gorloff's letter was amended and abridged, that is to say, its invectives against the English revilers were suppressed, Mr Gladstone considering it more becoming to reserve that part of the business for himself; it was, moreover, agreed that Gorloff's letter should be signed 'A Russian'[9] and that of Madame Nowikoff 'Another Russian'.[10] As to Mr Gladstone's article for the November number of the Contemporary Review,[11] he had not only read it in manuscript to Madame Nowikoff; it was in fact but a summary of the lessons taught by the Muscovite Egeria to the English Numa.
In this article (see Contemporary pp. 883, 884) Mr Gladstone speaks of Gorloff's letter in the following terms:
'The defence so far as I find it supplied by a letter recently published in the Daily News, with the signature of "A Russian", which, as I learn from a friend, has the sanction of General Gorloff, military attaché at London.'
The passage is so worded as to make the public believe that 'A Russian', the writer to the Daily News, and General Gorloff are two different persons, the one having written and published the letter, the other sanctioned it after its publication; that Mr Gladstone became first acquainted with the letter of 'A Russian' through the columns of the Daily News; that only after having read it in that paper he 'learned from a friend' that 'Gorloff has sanctioned it'. The most admirable trait is certainly the discreet introduction of Gorloff's name and the hiding of Madame Nowikoff under cover of 'a friend'.
When Madame Nowikoff, borne up by Gorloff's written testimony, had succeeded to impress Mr Gladstone with the conviction, that General Kaufmann's 'authentic' order to Golowatscheff was a myth,[12] she gave, amidst her Russian friends, rather freely vent to by no means flattering animadversions upon English ignorance and credulity. Having been appointed (some time after the last Polish insurrection, and in succession to the hangman Muravieff) governor of Wilna,[13] Kaufmann contrived to overact even his part, so that General Berg, the commander of Warsaw, addressed a letter to the Czar[14] showing the impolicy to continue that man in his office, from which he was indeed at last removed. Such were the dispair and the disgust which his ferociously infamous treatment of the Poles had evoked at Wilna, that its inhabitants actually welcomed as a saviour General Potapoff, his successor, one of the most notorious villains in the Russian service. (This same Potapoff was put at the head of the Third Division, when Schuwaloff exchanged this honourable post of spy-in-chief at home for that of Ambassador abroad.)
Muravieff was a Muscovite patriot who, in his merciless execution of the Czar's orders, was convinced to apply the only method sure to save the Empire from dismemberment. Kauf- mann, on the contrary, is an intriguer, eager to outdo in atrocity even the common run of Russian generals, in order to make the Muscovites forget his foreign origin, to ingratiate himself with the Czar, and to oust Mr Miljutin from the war ministry which he covets.
Before the publication of the letters in the Daily News and Mr Gladstone's article in the Contemporary Review, I had been kept au courant of the incidents told in this letter. I had every reason to be convinced of the authentic character of my information, but if I had entertained the least doubt, it must have vanished after I saw in print what I knew beforehand.
Meanwhile the company of Madame Nowikoff has been enriched by a hopeful newcomer, Mr Mackenzie Wallace, a young man who, during his five years' residence in Russia, has learned the language of that country and become more or less familiar with its social state. He is now, like a true Briton of the 19th century, on the look out for 'realizing' his acquirements on the best market.
Yours truly,
Karl Marx