Scan 49
Musical Courier 1897-11-03: Vol 35 Iss 922, 1897
64 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1of the hospital, where it would not be so much in sight; whether one of our party should post himself there or the driver should remain alone.
3"I proposed the most simple and natural plan, which was finally adopted. No one should enter the courtyard. The vehicle should await me at the gate, because I felt too weak to run as far as the corner. An intimate friend proposed to post himself there to assist me, if necessary, in getting in more quickly, and especially in dressing me directly afterward, as I should be compelled to escape with scarcely anything on except my trousers and shirt.
5"All we had to cover us in the hospital was an invalid's dressing gown. It was so large, so inconvenient and so long that in walking I was obliged to carry my train upon my arm. To run in such a garb was absolutely impossible. It must be thrown off at all hazards, before I could take to my heels. But this must be done with the rapidity of lightning, for a single moment lost might ruin all. For many days in succession I practiced this performance in my cell. I found that, to do it with the utmost possible celerity, the operation must be divided into three elementary movements like the musketry exercise of soldiers—one, two, three.
7The greatest difficulty remained—the selection of the moment. This depended upon the condition of the streets through which we had to pass. A string of woodcarts, a detachment of passing soldiers, a mounted Cossack, might upset the attempt, especially as the streets through which we had to pass were very narrow and winding. They must, therefore, be watched and I must be informed when they were free from all obstacles. For this purpose sentinels had to be placed at four different points. The fifth sentinel, receiving the sign from the four others, had to give me the decisive signal at the proper moment. The signal was to be a toy balloon, which should ascend at a given spot, behind the high wall of the courtyard in which I took exercise.
9"On the day fixed I went to take my exercise, full of hope and excitement. I looked again and again toward the part of the wall where the red air ball was to ascend. Nothing was to be seen. My time was drawing to an end. Still nothing. It ended and with it my hopes. With the impressionable imagination of a prisoner, I gave way to the gloomiest conjectures. I felt convinced everything had broken down.
11"Nothing much, however, had happened. By a singular chance a red air ball could not be found anywhere in the Gostini Drov, and my friends did not dare to change the signal and use one of a different color. A new plan was arranged.
13"One of our party hired a room on the third story directly opposite the hospital. From the window could be seen not only all the five sentinels, but the courtyard also, where I took exercise. The signal was to be given to me by means of a violin which my friend was to play whenever all the signals were favorable, and the music was to cease when any of them became unfavorable. This mode also presented the great advantage of indicating to me repeatedly the favorable time for flight, leaving to me the selection of the proper moment.
15"The first day, when everything was ready and the vehicle already awaited me at the gate, it was I who caused my friends some cruel moments; my illness increased, and I felt so weak that I did not dare to make the attempt. I did not even go down, therefore, into the courtyard, and they thought that the suspicions of the police had been aroused, and that I was no longer to be allowed to take exercise.
17"I recovered in two days and resolved to profit by the interval which my illness had given me.
19"I prepared everything; the shoes, the dressing gown, which required a little ripping up in order to be thrown off more quickly—everything.
21"I went to take my exercise. No sooner had I entered the courtyard than I heard the violin. The music lasted for five minutes, but I did not care to profit by it immediately, for at first the surveillance instinctively is always somewhat greater. But lo! the violin stopped. Two minutes afterward some carts with wood entered the courtyard. The violin recommenced.
23"This time I was determined to turn it to account. I looked at the sentinel; he was walking along his usual line, some five paces distant, between me and the gate. I looked at his musket. It was loaded; I knew it. Would he fire or not? Probably not, because I, being so near, he would rather wish to seize hold of me. His bayonet was more dangerous, in case, during this long run, my strength failed me. I had, however, already made my calculations even upon this point. If I remained in prison I was certain to die. 'Now or never,' I said to myself. I seized my dressing-gown. * * * One!
25"But lo! the violin ceased.
27"I felt as though I should drop.
29"A moment afterward, however, the music recommenced; a patrol at that very moment had passed through one of the lanes.
31"Directly the sentinel reached the extremity of his line, without a moment's pause I threw off my dressing gown with three well practiced movements, and—I was off like an arrow. The sentinel, with a howl, rushed at me to seize me, instead of running straight to the gate to prevent my escape, and thus described his two sides of the triangle, as I foresaw. I was so weak, however, that those who saw our desperate race from above said that the soldier was within three paces of me, and that his bayonet, which he thrust forward, was within an ace of touching me. This, however, I did not see. I only heard his howling and that of the carters who were unloading the wood at the bottom of the courtyard.
33"On reaching the gate I saw a vehicle; but for a moment I was in doubt whether it was the right one for I could not recognize my friend in the officer who was on the alert in the street. To make him turn round I clapped my hands—to the astonishment of my friends who were observing the scene. It was taken by them as a sign of joy. The officer turned round. I recognized him, and in less time than it takes to say these words I was inside the vehicle—disguised in an officer's cloak and cap—and we drove away to safety."
35This is Krapotkine's story of his escape as he told it to "Stepniak"—a better reporter than I shall ever be,
37IV.
39After Krapotkine escaped he went to Switzerland—to France, where he was imprisoned as an Anarchist and freed at the demand of the scholars of Europe—to England, where he became sub-editor of the most conservative of all the English reviews. This strange, learned, gentle, fiery, old Anarchist!
41"You are an Anarchist," I said the other night—for we were sitting over two cups of Second avenue coffee—"you are an Anarchist, or should I say a Nihilist!"
43"Nihilism, anarchy," he said, "the difference is one of words. It is all revolt. For twenty years I have had nothing to do with the hand to hand battle. The refugees are neither trusted nor burdened with participation in the knowledge of overt acts. But I bear my part in the war of ideas."
45"And anarchy is——"
47"Anarchy is individualism," he said. "Yes, that is the fundamental principle of it all—absolute individualism. It is a protest against everything which fetters the individual. It is the negation in the name of individual liberty of all obligations imposed on the individual by society and by the family and by religion. It is a revolt not only against political despotism and social and industrial despotism, but as well against that moral despotism which weighs upon the private and intimate life of the individual."
49Many other things he said, but I do not think that there is any reason why THE COURIER should voice his opinions.
51Only this:
53Here is a brave old gentleman, who stands for individualism in social life—for absolute personal freedom. And for many years—two decades, is it not?—THE MUSICAL COURIER has stood for the same thing in art. It has believed that in art there is no rank nor station—there is neither Paris nor Berlin, Milan nor London—there is only individual effort and the magnificent successes of individual genius. No one is great merely because he is an American, or a dago or a chink. He is great solely and wholly because there is in him something of the elemental genius of mankind. Race, family, kind—all these are of extreme insignificance. The sky under which one is born is of no account. The musician may come from out of Leipsic as of Bonn; the poet out of Stratford-on-Avon as out of Ayrshire. There is only one aristocracy—the aristocracy of talent.
55And if anarchy be no more than a "protest against everything which fetters the individual," then, I fancy, you and I and Prince Krapotkine and the editor of THE MUSICAL COURIER are quite agreed. We are all fighting the same fight. We all believe in ourselves. All of us—we are carrying the flag of the Great Individual Idea.
57I mean, if we take ourselves seriously.
59VANCE THOMPSON.
61TWO foreign dramatic critics have lately expressed opinions significant of a change from the views that began to be popular a few years ago. In his summary of the Victorian stage William Archer said that the plays of Shakespeare would never recover their theatrical vogue until an actor with something of the qualities of the older school made his appearance. He spoke of Edwin Booth as the best type of this school, and said that with him the 'ast had died. Mr. Archer, who is an enthusiastic admirer and translator of Ibsen and a radical realist, but at the same time a liberal expert, is known to like naturalism as much in actors as in dramatists. So an opinion of this kind is significant. Neither Irving, Tree, Alexander nor Robertson possesses any of the qualities to which Mr. Archer referred, and as Shakespeare, so far as England is concerned, is entirely in their hands, he can have little hope of any immediate renaissance in his works. Almost simultaneously Francisque Sarcey expressed an opinion of the same nature in reference to the romantic plays of the French stage. An actor previously little known appeared in Paris last winter and the critics praised his diction. They dwelt on that insistently, and the man got fame within a short time. What Sarcey is fighting for is a return to the old manner of delivering the verse of Racine, Corneille, Hugo and other poetic dramatists. He never had much toleration for the realistic elocution which began to be heard in Paris three seasons ago, and now he is fighting its influence as applied to the actors of romantic roles. It has spoiled them, he says, for the speech of verse, and he has gathered with him a small contingent which is demanding that the French players return to the diction which has always been recognized as proper in giving expression to the beauties of French verse.
63The point of view is not the same in both cases, although the English critic, as well as the Frenchman, is looking for the same result. The fault with the Englishmen seems to be that they are physically unequal to the demands of the Shakespearian roles. They have not the voices, the grace, the fire or the spirit of the actors who used to be the recognized interpreters of the old plays, and Mr. Archer refuses to be satisfied because they are scholarly and thoughtful. He will not be comforted with the naturalness of their methods or the intelligence of their views. Mr. Archer did not say all this, for his article was brief, but he seemed to mean it. As to M. Sarcey, if the actors have ceased to declaim French verse as well as they did, and if the tragedies suffer in consequence, he blames them alone. They have been led away, he thinks, into the false roads toward which M. Antoine in Paris first pointed the way. To an American there would seem to be little danger of a loss of conventional methods in acting the old plays. The company of the Comédie Française plays them to-day with a deference to the old standards that is proof against change. The later pieces, such as Hugo's "Hernani" and "Ruy Blas," are chanted with inflections and tones that never vary. The older tragedies are played with more simplicity, but with as much adherence to precedents, and to a foreigner there does not appear any liability of an injury to these plays from the innovations of the actors. M. Sarcey has found, however, that the new school has had it influence, and a bad one. So he consistently raises a protest. But Mr. Archer, who refuses to find that the new school is any substitute for the old, or that the acquirements of the new actors atone for their physical deficiencies, seems a little less plausible.—The Sun.
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