Agnes Elsie Diana Herbert (d. 1960) was a prominent British big game hunter and writer. Born into a prosperous British family, she was privately tutored on the Isle of Man and later actively took up writing, becoming a member of the Society of Women Journalists and publishing some dozen books on her travels and big game hunting, including her experiences in Georgia which she visited around 1911.
Source: Casuals in the Caucasus: The Diary of a Sporting Holiday (London: John Lane, 1912)
Picturesque Tiflis, surrounded by an amphitheater of barren, drab hills, lies on both sides of the swiftly rushing Kura river, and from the steep banks are flung connecting bridges which link together the several quarters into which the city is divided.
Our hotel was situated in the Erivansky Ploshad, or Square, a most lively centre, right in the heart of things, amid a variety of European shops, and not very far from the palace in the Golovinsky Prospekt, with its beautifully laid out gardens, of the Viceroy (Namiestnik) of the Caucasus. The longish drive from the station rather caused us to question the reputation Russians give themselves for superior road-making. The little phaeton, pneumatic-tyred, with two long tailed ponies going ventre-a-terre, bumped about like a coracle in a storm. It was not exactly an ideal conveyance, lacking the saving grace of polish and cleanliness. But what have I to do with idyllic carriages? I, who keep nothing more pretentious than a wheelbarrow. And did not Schiller tell us that—" No man should measure by a scale of perfection the meagre product of reality." I expect he meant "woman," also.
We lurched past some really beautiful turn-outs as we raced down the hill. Such a medley of conveyances! Carriages of Hyde Park variety, splendidly horsed, trotted past lethargic buffaloes drawing primitive native carts, made up of a mystery of tangled baulks tied together with knotted ropes, clattering wooden wheels, and a general air of abandon which called for the pencil of a Lawson Wood.
Imperturbable donkeys, moving beneath vast loads of charcoal, scarce made way for a great automobile— a pioneer, from the excitement it created—autocratically "Teuf-teufing" behind. A quartet of two-humped Bactrian camels, stately and aloof, carried mountainous burdens of bright-hued carpets, and behind, a little apart, as though to emphasize class difference, strode a majestic dromedary like a ship in full sail, loaded to the gunwale with embroidered cushions.
Down the centre of the wide roadway came the quaintest figure imaginable, a jester in motley, Touchstone to the whole. A little black tent, with a waving red pennon at its apex, trotted along on four slender legs, and as the perambulating structure neared us we saw that it disguised a Tatar, mounted on a donkey, wrapped about in the indispensable bourka, though Tiflis in summer is not, one would think, quite the moment for the wearing of it!
The good Caucasian loves his bourka — said to be the chlamys of the ancients — above all his possessions. It is a large cloak-like arrangement, and being enormously thick and of a felt texture, though light for its size, is waterproof to a surprising extent. A good one costs about thirty roubles, or roughly, three guineas. Now and again in mountain regions you see a white bourka, but the majority are very black and rough surfaced.
To the native his bourka is often tent, bedding, all; wrapped in one he defies the weather, and even holds at bay the predatory domestic chamois of the Caucasian post-houses, the most voracious and energetic insects in the world.
Our hotel was extraordinarily civilized. I don't quite know what we expected, but anyone who has studied the subject of hotels in Southern Russia may apprehend anything.
[...]
Tiflis is a trio of three distinct towns. The Russian, lying on the south-west bank of the Kura, where the fashionable world, the great officials, and the Armenian money-lenders live, where also you find the best hotels, fine shops, and electrically-lighted and tree-planted streets; old Tiflis, going eastward from the Muscovite centre, tucked away in a hollow; and, linked to the Russianized town by a fine bridge, the German quarter, where live the descendants of the Wurtemburg emigrants who accepted Russian hospitality some ninety years ago. Here they flourish, in stolid Swabian fashion, happy exiles in a community with whom they have nothing in common. Bordering their tree-lined principal street are the beer-gardens. Everything is German, language, shops, schools, people. Somehow or other, you have stepped into Hans Andersen's Magic Trunk, and, opening the lid, peep out on Tubingen.
Does everyone feel the mysterious allurements of an untracked town? Unexplored cities have an irresistible fascination for me. It is, I think, the cobwebby remnants of childhood's days clinging about one still. Memory is harking back to those fairy valleys and make-believes, which were for all of us.
Russian Tiflis is like many another European town, but old Tiflis is like nothing on earth but itself. The narrow streets and overhanging balconies were made for Caucasian Romeos and Juliets. Only there are no flowers. Plenty of colour, but no flowers.
We make for the Tatar Bazaar first, to the tortuous winding lanes where the airless air hangs heavy with the potent smell of the East. The congested ways would not pass muster with a sanitary engineer! We should have to remind him that it is easier for a native to rid himself of caste than of ingrained habits of insanitation. And the winter frost rids this country of most of its ills.
Each street, the narrowest of narrow lanes really, has its own speciality. The shops are not jumbled up heterogeneously as with us. Go down each unpaved alley, and you know just what to expect. The vegetable street provides only vegetables, that opening strewn with garbage leads to the furriers', that to the shoemakers' special section, and this uneven gully takes us to the one of all for us—the silversmiths'. We need courage to go down it! A foreign excursionist is hailed with the abandon of joy and delight which greets the first American visitor of summer in the Lake District of England, with the consequent rise of prices all round.
No sun shines here, and overhanging houses, built largely of wood, hide the light of day. From alcoved balconies above veiled houris peep down on us. At least, they are houris whilst they remain veiled, and just peep!
The scene is that of the old-time setting of a pantomime harlequinade, if you can remember when children were young enough to appreciate the now obsolete foolery. Every low door way seemed just the one for the clown to rush from, thrusting yards of stolen sausage into his capacious pockets as he ran; each window frame, innocent of glass, waited for the lithe, silver figure of harlequin. But for the dainty shoes of Columbine there was no resting-place. A Columbine in American gum-boots would not do at all, and nothing else would keep out the sea of dust, which after a rain-storm churns into banks of brown foam at the street comers, through which the mules, with bells a-j angle, wade knee-deep, and camels with disdainful heads level with the roofs, moving silently as grey wraiths, sink in philosophic calm.
Here is a medley of nations, and the tongue of every land. The familiar " Salaam Aleikum" of a stately Arab answers the gay "Bon Jour" of a smiling Frenchman, our awkward "How-do-you-do ?" replied to the dull " Gutenmorgen " of a ponderous German. Georgians, Mingrelians, wild mountaineers from Daghestan, in massive sheepskin papakhs and ragged tscherkesskas, Tatar shepherds, and Tatar traders in blue cotton tunics and white skull caps, Persians, longhaired Russian priests in cassocks of rusty purple and with conspicuous rosaries, graceful Arabs, with the lithe swinging walk which tells of the desert and the great silences, smartly uniformed Russians, stolid Armenians, and strange primitive people to whom I could give no name. We were rubbing shoulders with the remote centuries, and felt the subtle charm of antiquity charged with the vital force of a gripping modernism.
[...]
The Persian population of Tiflis is a very large one. Many are thriving merchants, descendants, perhaps, of the one-time Iranian rulers, who preside over cave-like dark rooms where you may see in shaded perfection the glorious glow of carpets from Tabriz and Khorasan, Shemakha and Kurdistan, or handle lumps of turquoise shot with the greeny-blue effects of a William Morris.
The saddlers are mostly Persians, too, and the craftsmen ply their trade in the open doors, which enables you to see Caucasian leather-work in every stage of transition. Bits of horse jewellery hang on pegs around the dirty little shops, stirrups which out-stirrup any ever invented, and saddles, from the prehistoric example to ornate specimens adorned with bosses of silver and tooled red leather.
Everywhere the wrought and inlaid silver-work of the country attracts the roving eye. Every Caucasian wears a kinjal [dagger] at his waist, and the beautiful scabbard in which the better-class native sheathes his weapon displays the art of the metal manipulator at his best. Often the dagger hangs from a belt of Orion-like splendour, traced and deeply cut into designs of extraordinary grace and freedom of line.
We were inveigled into a tiny shop by the attractions of a most alluring kinjal, and commenced a protracted haggle over its price with an old Armenian, whose cunning eyes, always the same and yet ever changing, kept glancing at his familiar, a tawny Persian—whose moustache and beard were dyed to the music-hall comedian shade of red—as though for encouragement to doughtier deeds in the way of extortion. Cecily, picking her words, for her Russian seemed to grow rustier, bargained Scotch-fashion for three quarters of an hour so successfully that, after a make believe to quit the shop for ever, a proceeding which sent both Shylocks after us to the door, she stood possessed of an elaborate kinjal, in an inlaid sheath, and a handsome belt, for a quarter the price asked. Our Armenian extortioner seemed quite unable of his own volition to count the amount due him, and flew in frenzied haste to a rickety frame, the abacus of the Chinese, with wooden balls set on wires, and had a tremendous game with this contraption, knocking the bobbins about hither and thither. Then, as he got weary of it, with a far-away smile he announced that we owed him so much, exactly what we had made it out to be before the fun commenced. We paid the bill in rouble notes, notes so dirty and worn that we were almost glad to be rid of them.
Luxuries are expensive in Caucasia. Fruit is cheap enough and food generally; the ubiquitous cucumber, most popular of eatables, may be had almost for the carrying away, but indulgences, the [...] "little comforts," are heavily charged for, or else it is that the transient Britisher is expected to keep up the traditional open-handedness of his nation. Some philosopher or other once observed that all things are dear in the Caucasus save human life...
The outstanding feature of the whole city is its militarism. A warlike atmosphere pervades everything. The very water-carriers walk with martial tread, and the cocks prisoned in long cylindrical baskets in the Caravanserai—a sort of general emporium—poor victims waiting to make a Roman holiday for someone, crow their requiem in clarion reveille
Almost every soul—that is the Russian method of taking the census—is in uniform. Here is a military community, if you like!...
"C'est magnifique, mats ce n'est pas la guerre!" At least, not entirely. In the Caucasus, as in so many places, all is not gold that glisters. These swaggering warriors are often gilded deceptions, for no self-respecting citizen, be his occupation what it may, wears mufti. If you can't be a soldier, then try and look like one, seems the obsession of all and sundry. Under that martial cuirass and row of medals, won Heaven knows how, beats the gentle heart of a life saver. No slaughterer he, a local medico, at your good service. That clanking sword, much too long for its little wearer, is every day put to the blush by the mightier pen of its overworked driver, a worthy telegraph clerk.
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