Rezanov, by Gertrude Atherton
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Gertrude Atherton >> Rezanov, by Gertrude Atherton
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15 REZANOV
BY GERTRUDE ATHERTON
With an Introduction by
WILLIAM MARION REEDY
INTRODUCTION
A long list of works Gertrude Atherton has to
her credit as a writer. She is indisputably a woman
of genius. Not that her genius is distinctively
feminine, though she is in matters historical a pas-
sionate partisan. Most of the critics who approve
her work agree that in the main she views life with
somewhat of the masculine spirit of liberality. She
is as much the realist as one can be who is saturated
with the romance that is California, her birthplace
and her home, if such a true cosmopolite as she can
be said to have a home. In all she has written there
is abounding life; her grasp of character is firm;
her style has a warm, glowing plasticity, frequently
a rhythm variously expressive of all the wide range
of feeling which a writer must have to make his
or her books living things. She does no less well
in the depiction of men than in the portraiture of
women. All stand out of their vivid environment
distinctly and they are all personalities of power--
even, occasionally, of "that strong power called
weakness." And they all wear something of a glory
imparted to them by the sympathy of their creator
and interpreter. High upon any roster of our best
American writers we must enroll the name of Mrs.
Atherton.
Of all her books I like best this "Rezanov,"
though I have not found many to agree with me.
It is not so pretentious as others more frequently
commended. It is a simple story, almost one might
say an incident or an anecdote. It is not literally
sophisticated. For me that is its unfailing charm.
I find in it not a little of the strange, primeval
quality that makes me think of "Aucassin and Nico-
lette." For it is not so much a novel as an his-
torical idyl, not to be read without a persisting
suffusion of sympathy and never to be remembered
without a recurring tenderness. Remembered, did
I say? It is unforgettable. There are few books
of American origin that resist so well the passing
of the years, that take on more steadily the glam-
our of "the unimaginable touch of time." "Rez-
anov" is a classic, or I miss my guess. This, though
it was first published so recently as 1906.
The story has the merit of being, to some extent
historically, and wholly artistically, true. For the
matter-of-facts Mrs. Atherton provides a bibliog-
raphy of her authorities. Those authorities I
have not read, nor should others. Sufficient unto
me is the authority of the novel itself splendidly
demonstrated and established in the high court of
the reader's head and heart by the author's visu-
alizing veritism. Not twenty pages have you turned
before you know this Rezanov, privy councilor,
grand chamberlain, plenipotentiary of the Russo-
American company, imperial inspector of the ex-
treme eastern and northwestern dominions of his
imperial majesty Alexander the First, emperor of
Russia--all this and more, a man. He comes out of
mystery into the softly bright light of California,
in strength and shrewdness and dignity and per-
sonal splendor. And there is amidst it all a pathos
upon him. He commands your affection even while
suggesting a doubt whether the man may not be
overwhelmed in the diplomat, the intriguer. The
year is 1806. The monstrous apparition of Napo-
leon has loomed an omen of the doom of ancient
authority and the shattering of nations in Europe.
That faithless, incalculable idealist Alexander,
plans he knows not what of imperial glory in the
Eastern and Western world. Rezanov is his ser-
vant, a man of ambition, perhaps in all favor at
court, desirous of doing some great service for his
master. He dreams of dominion in this sun-soaked
land so lazily held in the lax grasp of Spain. He
has come from failure. He had been to Japan
with presents to the emperor, was received by minor
officials with a hospitality that poorly concealed the
fact that he was virtually a prisoner, and then dis-
missed without admission to the audience he sought
with the mikado. He had gone then to bleak, in-
hospitable Sitka, to find the settlement there in a
plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly miti-
gated by vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to
the Spanish settlement for food for the settlement.
He comes to that place where in his vision he sees
arise that city of the future which we know now
as San Francisco. Masterful man that he is, he
feels that here some great thing awaits him. The
Spaniards are wary of him. They will not trade
with him, but they receive him courteously and they
are fascinated by his self-possessed, well-poised but
withal so gracious personality. The life there at
the time is a sort of lotus-eating existence. It is
a piece of Spain translated to a more luscious, a
lovelier land, overlooking beautiful seas and peril-
ous. Into the dolce far niente Rezanov enters with
some surrender to its softening spell, but with the
courtier's prudence.
And he meets the girl, Concha Arguello. He
sees her in the setting of burning and sweet Cas-
tilian roses--a girl who has had the benefit of edu-
cation, who keeps the graces of old Madrid in this
realm beyond sea, a burgeoning bud of womanhood,
daughter of the commandante. The doom of both
is upon them at once. They have drunk the pois-
oned cup. Rezanov resists the first approaches of
the delightful delirium, remembering Russia, his
duty, his ambition, the poor starving men of the
Sitka factory. At a party he dances with Concha
and they both know that for each there is none
other. So in that setting so wild, so strange, so
remote, so lovely for the old world grace that is
made native there by this bright, deep, fond girl,
the high gods proceed to have their will upon the
two. The little community life pulses around them
the faster because they are there. Their love be-
comes a motive in the diplomatic drama which has
for end, first, the securing of food for those fam-
ishing folk at Sitka, and beyond that, possibly the
seizing of the region for Russia, lest that new
young power of the West, the United States, pre-
empt the rich domain. Concha would help the Rus-
sian to those ends immediate which he reveals to
her, and succeeds. He tells her of Russia and his
mighty position there. He would have her for his
wife, his helper in the vast imperial affairs at the
Russian capitol, his princess in his palace, augment-
ing his official and personal distinction. She shares
his vision, rising to all the heights it unfolds in a
splendid future. Child she is, but she is transformed
into a woman by the prospect not of her own pleas-
ure, but of participation in splendid achievement
with this man so keen, so supple, yet so firm in
high purpose. And as the prospect opens to her
desire and his there looms the obstacle. They can-
not marry, for Rezanov is a heretic. And now the
passion flames. This child woman will go with him.
Ah, but the church, the king of Spain, will they per-
mit? And the Czar! Rezanov will see to it that the
Czar will clear the way for them through power
exercised at Rome and at Madrid. Conditioned
upon this, the girl's parents consent.
These lovers prate very little of love. Their
desire runs too deep for mere speech. It is a desire
made up of as much spiritual as carnal fire. It is
fierce but steady in ecstacy and agony, indistinguish-
able the one from the other. Rezanov, man of the
great world, it purifies. Concha it strengthens and
makes indomitable. They will abide delay. They
will endure in faith and hope--the faith and hope
both dimmed by the vague and unshakable intui-
tion or premonition that fate has marked them for
derision. Nevertheless, they will endure.
There is a meeting on a path that overlooks where
the white seas strike their tents. It is a meeting of
little action, of few words. It is tense with the
almost inexpressible, but at its end, confronting the
doubtful future, realizing that when Rezanov goes
he may not return, this girl tells him: "I will give
myself to you forever, how much or little that may
mean here on earth. Forever!" And then that
scene in the moonlight amid the scent of the Cas-
tilian roses, when Concha, as signal of her trust in
her lover, lifts the little wisps of hair that conceal
her ears and shows them to him--it throbs with
passionate purity in memory yet.
Rezanov sails away to Sitka with provisions,
thence to Siberia, and then begins the long ride over
endless versts of land, across streams in icy flood,
in rain and cold and snow towards the capitol and
the Czar. Delays, disasters to vehicles and horses
and the maddening lengthening of time. From
drenchings and freezing comes the fever that calls
for more speed. Krasnoiarsk is reached. The fever
mounts, the traveler must stop and rest and be
cared for. His visions commingle his objective
and his memories . . . CONCHA! . . . The snowy
steppes and the inky rivers. . . . His servant en-
ters the room in the inn . . . Why . . . "Where
has Jon found Castilian roses in this barren land?"
. . . "and his unconquerably sanguine spirit flared
high before a vision of eternal and unthinkable
happiness" . . . Castilian roses! Concha Arguello
waits among them, immortal, sainted in her purity
and fidelity, ministering to her poor Indians, her
face alight with unquenchable memory and with
surety of an eventual everlasting tryst. Those Cas-
tilian roses! They perfume forever one's mem-
ories of this pair, puissant in faith, in this novel
that is a poem and a shrine of that love which lives
when death itself is dead.
WILLIAM MARION REEDY
REZANOV
I
As the little ship that had three times raced with
death sailed past the gray headlands and into the
straits of San Francisco on that brilliant April
morning of 1806, Rezanov forgot the bitter hu-
miliations, the mental and physical torments, the
deprivations and dangers of the past three years;
forgot those harrowing months in the harbor of
Nagasaki when the Russian bear had caged his tail
in the presence of eyes aslant; his dismay at Kam-
chatka when he had been forced to send home an-
other to vindicate his failure, and to remain in the
Tsar's incontiguous and barbarous northeastern
possessions as representative of his Imperial
Majesty, and plenipotentiary of the Company his
own genius had created; forgot the year of loneli-
ness and hardship and peril in whose jaws the
bravest was impotent; forgot even his pitiable crew,
diseased when he left Sitka, that had filled the Juno
with their groans and laments; and the bells of
youth, long still, rang in his soul once more.
"It is the spring in California," he thought, with
a sigh that curled at the edge. "However," life
had made him philosophical; "the moments of un-
reasonable happiness are the most enviable no doubt,
for there is neither gall nor satiety in the reaction.
All this is as enchanting as--well, as a woman's
promise. What lies beyond? Illiterate and mer-
cenary Spaniards, vicious natives, and boundless
ennui, one may safely wager. But if all California
is as beautiful as this, no man that has spent a
winter in Sitka should ask for more."
In the extent and variety of his travels Rezanov
had seen Nature more awesome of feature but
never more fair. On his immediate right as he
sailed down the straits toward the narrow entrance
to be known as the Golden Gate, there was little to
interest save the surf and the masses of outlying
rocks where the seals leapt and barked; the shore
beyond was sandy and low. But on his left the last
of the northern mountains rose straight from the
water, the warm red of its deeply indented cliffs
rich in harmony with the green of slope and height.
There was not a tree; the mountains, the promon-
tories, the hills far down on the right beyond the
sand dunes, looked like stupendous waves of lava
that had cooled into every gracious line and fold
within the art of relenting Nature; granted ages
after, a light coat of verdure to clothe the terrible
mystery of birth. The great bay, as blue and tran-
quil as a high mountain lake, as silent as if the
planet still slept after the agonies of labor, looked
to be broken by a number of promontories, rising
from their points far out in the water to the high
back of the land; but as the Juno pursued her slant-
ing way down the channel Rezanov saw that the
most imposing of these was but the end of a large
island, and that scattered near were other islands,
masses of rock like the castellated heights that rise
abruptly from the plains of Italy and Spain; far
away, narrow straits, with a glittering expanse be-
yond; while bounding the whole eastern rim of this
splendid sheet of water was a chain of violet hills,
with the pale green mist of new grass here and
there, and purple hollows that might mean groves
of trees crouching low against the cold winds of
summer; in the soft pale blue haze above and be-
yond, the lofty volcanic peak of a mountain range.
Not a human being, not a boat, not even a herd of
cattle was to be seen, and Rezanov, for a moment
forgetting to exult in the length of Russia's arm,
yielded himself to the subtle influence abroad in
the air, and felt that he could dream as he had
dreamed in a youth when the courts of Europe to
the boy were as fabulous as El Dorado in the im-
mensity of ancestral seclusions.
"It is like the approach to paradise, is it not,
Excellency?" a deferential voice murmured at his
elbow.
The plenipotentiary frowned without turning his
head. Dr. Langsdorff, surgeon and naturalist, had
accompanied the Embassy to Japan, and although
Rezanov had never found any man more of a bore
and would willingly have seen the last of him at
Kamchatka, a skilful dispenser of drugs and mender
of bones was necessary in his hazardous voy-
ages, and he retained him in his suite. Langsdorff
returned his polite tolerance with all the hidden re-
sources of his spleen; but his curiosity and scientific
enthusiasm would have sustained him through
greater trials than the exactions of an autocrat,
whom at least he had never ceased to respect in the
most trying moments at Nagasaki.
"Yes," said Rezanov. "But I wonder you find
anything to admire in such unportable objects as
mountains and water. I have not seen a living
thing but gulls and seal, and God knows we had
enough of both at Sitka."
"Ah, your excellency, in a land as fertile as this,
and caressed by a climate that would coax life
from a stone, there must be an infinite number of
aquatic and aerial treasures that will add materially
to the scientific lore of Europe."
"Humph!" said Rezanov, and moved his shoulder
in an uncontrollable gesture of dismissal. But the
spell of the April morning was broken, although
the learned doctor was not to be the only offender.
The Golden Gate is but a mile in width and the
swift current carried the Juno toward a low prom-
ontory from the base of which a shrill cry suddenly
ascended. Rezanov, raising his glass, saw that what
he had taken to be a pile of fallen rocks was a fort,
and that a group of excited men stood at its gates.
Once more the plenipotentiary on a delicate mission,
he ordered the two naval officers sailing the ship
to come forward, and retired to the dignified isola-
tion of the cabin.
The high-spirited young officers, who would have
raised a gay hurrah at the sight of civilized man
had it not been for the awe in which they held
their chief, saluted the Spaniards formally, then
stood in an attitude of extreme respect; the Juno
was directly under the guns of the fort.
One of the Spaniards raised a speaking trumpet
and shouted:
"Who are you?"
No one on the Juno, save Rezanov, could speak a
word of Spanish, but the tone of the query was its
own interpreter. The oldest of the lieutenants,
through the ship's trumpet, shouted back:
"The Juno--Sitka--Russian."
The Spanish officer made a peremptory gesture
that the ship come to anchor in the shelter given by
an immense angle of the mainland, of which the
fort's point was the western extreme. The Rus-
sians, as befitted the peaceful nature of their mis-
sion, obeyed without delay. Before their resting
place, and among the sand hills a mile from the
beach, was a quadrangle of buildings some two hun-
dred feet square and surrounded by a wall about
fourteen feet high and seven feet thick. This they
knew to be the Presidio. They saw the officers that
had hailed them gallop over the hill behind the fort
to the more ambitious enclosure, and, in the square,
confer with another group that seemed to be in a
corresponding state of excitement. A few moments
later a deputation of officers, accompanied by a
priest in the brown habit of the Franciscan order,
started on horseback for the beach. Rezanov or-
dered Lieutenant Davidov and Dr. Langsdorff to
the shore as his representatives.
The Spaniards wore the undress uniform of
black and scarlet in which they had been surprised,
but their peaked straw hats were decorated with
cords of gold or silver, the tassels hanging low on
the broad brim; their high deer-skin boots were
gaily embroidered, and bristled with immense silver
spurs. The commanding officer alone had invested
himself with a gala serape, a square of red cloth
with a bound and embroidered slit for the head.
Leading the rapid procession, his left hand resting
significantly on his sword, he was a fine specimen
of the young California grandee, dark and dashing
and reckless, lithe of figure, thoroughbred, ardent.
His eyes were sparkling at the prospect of excite-
ment; not only had the Russians, by their nefarious
appropriation of the northwestern corner of the
continent and a recent piratical excursion in pursuit
of otter, inspired the Spanish Government with a
profound disapproval and mistrust, but a rumor
had run up the coast that made every sea-gull look
like the herald of a hostile fleet. This was young
Arguello's first taste of command, and life was dull
on the northern peninsula; he would have wel-
comed a declaration of war.
Davidov and Langsdorff had come to shore in
one of the JUNO'S canoes. The conversation was
held in Latin between the two men of learning.
"Who are you and whence come you?" asked the
priest.
Langsdorff, who had been severely drilled by the
plenipotentiary as to text, replied with a profound
bow: "We are Russians engaged in completing the
circumnavigation of the globe. It was our inten-
tion to go directly to Monterey and present our offi-
cial documents, as well as our respects, to your illus-
trious Governor, but owing to contrary winds and
a resultant scarcity of provisions, we were under
the necessity of putting into the nearest harbor.
The Juno is navigated by Lieutenant Davidov and
Lieutenant Khovstov, of the Imperial Navy of Rus-
sia; by gracious permission associated with the Ma-
rine of the Russo-American Company." He paused
a moment, and then swept out his trump card with
a magnificent flourish: "Our expedition is in com-
mand of His Excellency, Privy Counsellor and
Grand Chamberlain Baron Rezanov, late Ambas-
sador to the Court of Japan, Plenipotentiary of the
Russo-American Company, Imperial Inspector of
the extreme eastern and northwestern American
dominions of His Imperial Majesty, Alexander the
First, Emperor of all the Russias, whose representa-
tives in these waters he is."
The Spaniards were properly impressed as the
priest translated with the glibness of the original;
but Arguello, who announced himself as Com-
mandante ad interim of the Presidio of San Fran-
cisco during the absence of his father at Monterey,
nodded sagely several times, and then held a short
conference in Spanish with the interpreter. The
priest turned to the Russians with a smile as diplo-
matic as that which Rezanov had drilled upon the
ugly ingenuous countenance of his medicine man.
"Our illustrious Governor, Don Jose Arrillaga,
received word from the court of Spain, now quite
two years ago, of the sailing in 1803 from Kron-
stadt of the ships Nadeshda and Neva, in command
of Captain Krusenstern and Captain Lisiansky, the
former having on board the illustrious Ambassador
to Japan, the Privy Counsellor and Chamberlain de
Rezanov. It was expected that these ships would
touch at more than one of His Most Holy Catholic
Majesty's vast dominions, and all viceroys and
gobernador proprietarios were alike instructed to re-
ceive the exalted representatives of the mighty Em-
peror of Russia with hospitality and respect. But
we cannot understand why his excellency comes to
us so late and in so small a ship, rather than in the
state with which he sailed from Europe."
"The explanation is simple, my father. The
original ships, from a variety of circumstances,
were, upon our arrival at Kamchatka, at the con-
clusion of the embassy to Japan, under the neces-
sity of returning at once to Europe. His Imperial
Majesty, Alexander the First, ordered the Cham-
berlain and plenipotentiary, the representative of
imperial power in the Russo-American possessions,
to remove to the Juno for the purpose of visiting
the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, Kadiak and the
northwestern coast of America." The Tsar had
never heard of the Juno, but as Rezanov was prac-
tically his august self in these far-away waters,
there was enough of truth in this statement to ap-
pease the conscience of a subordinate.
The Spaniards were satisfied. Lieutenant Ar-
guello begged that the emissaries would return to
the ship and invite the Chamberlain and his party
to come at once to the Presidio and do it the honor
to partake of the poor hospitality it afforded. An
officer galloped furiously for horses.
A few moments later they were still more deeply
impressed by the appearance of their distinguished
visitor as he stood erect in the boat that brought
him to shore. In full uniform of dark green and
gold lace, with cocked hat and the splendid order of
St. Ann on his breast, Rezanov was by far the finest
specimen of a man the Californians, themselves of
ampler build than their European ancestors, had
ever beheld. Of commanding stature and physique,
with an air of highest breeding and repose, he
looked both a man of the great world and an intol-
erant leader of men. His long oval face was thin
and somewhat lined, the mouth heavily moulded
and closely set, suggestive of sarcasm and humor;
the nose long, with arching and flexible nostrils.
His eyes, seldom widely opened, were light blue,
very keen, usually cold. Like many other men of
his position in Europe, he had discarded wig and
queue and wore his short fair hair unpowdered.
It was a singularly imposing but hardly attractive
presence, thought young Arguello, until Rezanov,
after stepping on shore and bowing formally, sud-
denly smiled and held out his hand. Then the im-
pressionable Spaniard "melted like a woman," as
he told his sister, Concha, and would have embraced
the stranger on either cheek had not awe lingered
to temper his enthusiasm. But Rezanov never made
a stauncher friend than Louis Arguello, who vowed
to the last of his days that the one man who had
fulfilled his ideal of the grand seigneur was he that
sailed in from the North on that fateful April
morning of 1806.
II
As Rezanov, heading the procession with young
Arguello, entered the wide gates of the Presidio, he
received an impression memorably different from
that which led earlier travelers to describe it in-
clemently as a large square surrounded by mud
houses, thatched with reeds. It is true that the walls
were of adobe and the roofs of tule, nor was there
a tree on the sand hills encircling the stronghold.
But in this early springtime--the summer of the
peninsula--the hills showed patches of verdure, and
all the low white buildings were covered by a net-
work of soft dull green and archaic pink. The Cas-
tilian rose, full and fluted, and of a chaste and pene-
trating fragrance, hung singly and in clusters on the
pillars of the dwellings, on the barracks and chapel,
from the very roofs; bloomed upon bushes as high
as young trees. The Presidio was as delicately per-
fumed as a lady's bower, and its cannon faced the
ever-changing hues of water and island and hill.
As the party approached, heads of all ages ap-
peared between the vines, and there was a low mur-
mur of irrepressible curiosity and delight.
"We do not see many strangers in this lonely
land," said Arguello apologetically. "And never
before have we had so distinguished a guest as your
excellency. It was always a gala day when ever a
Boston skipper came in with a few bales of goods
and a complexion like the hides we sold him. Now,
alas! they are no longer permitted to enter our
ports. Governor Arrillaga will have none of contra-
band trade and slaying of our otter. And as for
Europeans other than Spaniards, save for an Eng-
lish sea captain now and then, they know naught of
our existence."
But Rezanov had not come to California on the
impulse of a moment. He replied suavely: "There
you are mistaken. Your illustrious father, Don
Jose Mario de Arguello, is well known to us as the
most respected, eminent and influential character in
the Californias. It was my intention, after paying
a visit of ceremony to his excellency, Governor Ar-
rillaga, to come to San Francisco for the sole pur-
pose of meeting a man whose record has inspired
me with the deepest interest. And we have all
heard such wonderful tales of your California, of
its beauty, its fertility, of the beneficent lives of
your missionaries--so different from ours--and of
the hospitality and elegance of the Spaniards, that
it has been the objective point of my travels, and I
have found it difficult to curb my impatience while
attending to imperative duties elsewhere."
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