Henry Norman, All the Russias (1903)

Sir Henry Norman (1858 – 1939) was a prominent British journalist and Member of the Parliament. Born into a well-to-do family, he was received education in France and at Harvard University, before starting a career in journalism. He worked for several major publications, including the New York Times, and earned a name for his reporting on the Dreyfuss Affair in the 1890s. After retiring from journalism, he became a Liberal Member of the British Parliament in 1900 and served for the next twenty-three years. He travelled widely, visiting Canada, the United States, Japan, China, Siam, Malaya and Central Asia. He spent some fifteen years studying Russian history and society and frequently visited Russia, traversing the Russian empire from east to west. In 1903 he published his travelogue "All the Russias: Travels and Studies in Contemporary European Russia" that included his impressions of Georgia.

The German philologist, Professor Brugsch, has calculated that seventy languages are spoken in Tiflis. That simple statement, pondered long enough, might almost suffice to describe the city. It is the modern Babel, the meeting-place of Europe and Asia, the crossroads of the great routes north and south, and east and west, the focus of a score of keenly trading peoples, the conglomerate deposit of two thousand years of busy history. Over this complication Russia rules easily and well. It is an excellent example of how she carries civilisation to Eastern peoples.

Externally, half of Tiflis is a little Paris, or a prettier Bucharest. A mass of tin roofs, painted in pale green and Indian red, makes a pleasant colour impression as you approach the city from the mountains, but to see it in its real and remarkable picturesqueness, as shown in my illustration, it must be viewed from the remains of the old fortress, or the Botanical Garden beside it, at the other end of the town. It lies at the bottom of a brown, treeless valley, between steep hills, on either side of the river Kura. This may not sound very attractive, but there is an abruptness about the contours and a serpentine twist about the river that make it one of the most strikingly placed towns I know. In summer, as might be guessed from its position and from the additional fact that it has a phenomenally small rainfall, Tiflis is stifling and intolerably hot, but in winter the same conditions render it a delightful residence, perfectly sheltered from the cold winds that sweep from the mountains and the plain to the southeast, and by its dry atmosphere admirably suited to people with weak lungs.

It is a place of great importance to modern Russia. It forms, to begin with, the end of the military road across the Caucasus, which, though the railway now goes round the eastern coast to Baku, is still the quickest way to Europe, and all the mails come over it by fast coach. It is midway between Baku and Batum; that is, between the Caspian and the Black Sea, be- Tiflis. tween Europe and Asia when you go east and west, as well as when you go north and south. The railway is now open to Kars, that frontier fortress which, not long ago the Russian objective, will some day be her base for an advance into Armenia and far beyond. Tiflis, in fact, is thinking of the future, as you are reminded when you go to the topographical department of the General Staff to buy the magnificent maps they sell, and see a dozen officers working busily over their drawing-boards.

And Russia has developed her Caucasian capital in a manner worthy of its importance. In the modern town the streets are wide and paved and lighted by electricity, the shops are large and handsome, there is a public garden with winding walks and fine trees, excellent tramways run in all directions, and the public carriages, leather-upholstered and rubber-tyred, are far superior to those of St. Petersburg or Moscow—in fact, the best I have seen anywhere. The official buildings are numerous and imposing—Russia always takes care of this. The cathedral is a magnificent edifice, the Governor-General's palace dignified without and splendid within, there is a new and elaborate operahouse, and of course a number of military buildings. The museum is extremely interesting for its collections of all the animals and birds of the Caucasus, all the geological products, and a fascinating series of figures and domestic implements illustrating the ethnology of all the local races. While I was there an agricultural exhibition was held, and the quality and variety of products shown were astonishing. Some of the vegetables were so remarkable that I wrote and asked for seeds, which were sent promptly by official post and are now germinating under the surprised eyes of a Hampshire gardener. In matters like this, let me remark once for all, the Russian authorities are courtesy itself to foreigners who approach them courteously and are genuinely interested in what they are doing. 

Finally, the Hotel de Londres is the first really civilised and comfortable hotel I have found in Russia—and this is in Asia! I dwell upon these matters because the striking fact about Tiflis is that Russian rule has made a handsome, clean, safe, civilized, and merry little town out of a jumble of dirty, jarring Eastern races, outside her European frontier, and far from anywhere. But one does not go to Asia to see Europe, and Rostom, the guide, in Circassian costume, with long poniard and war-medal, haunts the hall of the hotel. To test the German philologist, I ask him how many languages he speaks. He does not remember, but proceeds to count them upon his fingers. Russian, Mingrelian—his native tongue—Georgian, Armenian, Persian, Lesghian, Gruznian—I can't remember them, and I don't know how to spell them, but it is an extraordinary list. And he needs them all in an hour's stroll through the bazaar.

[...]

If one half of Tiflis is like Europe, the other half is purely Oriental. Narrow, steep, ill-paved streets; mysterious houses hiding the life within behind closed doors and shuttered windows; the merchant sitting among his wares—the silversmiths in one street, the arms-makers in another, the shoemakers, the carpet-dealers, the fruit-sellers, the perfume-venders, each trade in its own quarter. And what things to buy, if one has money and time—the two equally essential components of an Eastern bargain! Through this low door-way and behind this commonplace shop is a dark warehouse piled high with carpets in mountainous profusion. Here is every fraud ready for the unwary or unknowing purchaser, but here, also, if your eye is sharp and your tongue smooth and your experience trustworthy and your time and patience without limits, is a brocade from the palace of one of the old Khans of Nukha, vassals of Persia in time gone by; this is a silken carpet from Isfahan, in the golden days of Shah Abbas, two hundred years old, priceless; that rug was woven by Tekke girls in the tent of nomad Turkomans, a pattern never copied but preserved in memory from the times of Tamerlane; this drugget issued long ago from the loom of Kurdish women of Erivan; the roll of rainbow-coloured silk came slowly to light, like a dragon-fly above a reeking pond, in a mud hovel of the torture-town of Bokhara, fieriest hot-bed of Mussulman fanaticism. The merchant will show you, too, turquoises —handfuls of them, all small or of the worthless greenish hue. Many times you ask him if he has not bigger turquoises and he shakes his head. At the back of his iron strong-box, wrapped in a dozen crumpled papers, he has a great one, of that marvellous and indescribable blue which nature has produced only in this stone. Will much persuasion wheedle it into sight for a moment, or much money secure its possession forever? Maybe, but I have my doubts, and they are based upon the unchanging truth that at last,between East and West, pride of race is stronger than greed of gold. To console you, however, for the unattainable azure, you may find and carry off a blue scimetar from Daghestan, a wrought-iron staff surmounted by an ox-head with which some old Persian officer has led his men to battle, a Georgian pistol inlaid with silver niello work, and a choice bit of gold-encrusted ivory from Kazi-Kumyk. 

But Tiflis, this "precipitate of history," these cross-roads between Europe and Asia, excites your wonder and enchains your recollection chiefly for its human conglomerate. Most of the speakers of its many tongues have their distinctive costume, and indeed their own well - marked faces. There is no mistaking the Tatars with their hats in the shape of a truncated cone, the aquiline-featured Lesghians, the swarthy Persians with their long-pointed hats of astrakhan fur, the Armenians with their flat caps, the Turkomans in huge shaggy hats of sheepskin, the Wiirtembergers of the German colony in the old Swabian costume, and most marked of all, the Georgians in the tcherkess, with the khazir, the row of cartridge cases, across the breast. The native gentleman, an officer of high rank and long service in war, who strides into the hotel dining-room in his uniform of chestnut and Indian red, jingling with small-arms and hung with medals even as a Zulu is strung with cowries, is certainly one of the most striking figures I have ever seen. In fact, I do not remember to have been in the society of so many distinguished-looking people in my life before; a group of princes of the blood, ambassadors, and commanders-in-chief would have everything to learn from them in the matter of deportment [behavior/manners]  No matter who they may be—the Smiths and Joneses, possibly, of Georgia and Daghestan—their manners and their clothes hit off the choicest expressions of dignity and distinction. That full-skirted woollen coat, flying round the fine riding-boots, and hiding trousers of carmine silk; that tight-fitting body-part, open at the breast to show a shirt of richest cream-colour, hooked smartly over the ribs and narrowly girdled at the waist by a belt of chased metal, worn very tight, from which hang silver-worked poniard, sabre, pistol-holster and other strange fittings, combine to form a costume of infinite spirit, to which the row of cartridges, sewn on a cunning slant on each side of the breast, are a splendid finish, even though the cartridges are but dummy bits of wood, with gold or silver heads. Added to all this, the port of the head in its black sheepskin hat, and the whole martial bearing, make every man a field-marshal and the hero of a hundred fights—to look at.

Are the women of Georgia as beautiful as we have always been told? When they become matrons, which is at an early age, they are too stout and broad in the beam for beauty, but in their youth, I should judge from glimpses at windows and passing faces, there may well be extraordinary loveliness among them— the loveliness of perfectly chiseled features true to the racial type, large calm dark eyes, firm, full mouth, alabaster skin, indigo-black hair—the precise antithesis of the piquancy of irregular features and nervous temperament which generally passes for beauty among ourselves. These are women, you feel, whose lips would whisper passionate love or, if times allowed, sing high the song that sends their men to battle—whose fingers would grasp the dagger or fall lightly across the strings of the lute, with equal aptness. Dagger and war-song, however, are out of date in the Caucasus to-day.

[...]

Before the Russo-Turkish War [of 1877-1878] the Georgians stood high in Russian favour; they held important public offices, and the social relations between them and Russian officials were cordial. During the war doubts arose as to their loyalty, and the Armenians took advantage of this to push their own interests. Their well-known trading and financial gifts were of much use to the Russians and very profitable to themselves. But the Armenians have shared the fate of the Georgians, for the Armenian troubles in Turkey [in 1894-1896] bred a certain amount of real political agitation, and evoked fears of a great deal more, with the not unnatural result that the Russian authorities now cry a plague on both their houses, and exclude Georgians and Armenians alike from office and influence. 

This action, again, is naturally being followed by a recrudescence of national feeling, especially among the Georgians. The national costume,once almost abandoned, is now the fashion; the national literature is being fostered; and Georgian women talk less gossip and more politics. But all this has no serious significance. Mr. Oliver Wardrop, in his "Kingdom of Georgia" (1888), wrote: "Should Russia ever become involved in a great war, Georgia would undoubtedly declare her independence and endeavour to seize the Dariel Road; the Armenians and Lesghians would also revolt, each in their own way." My own opinion is that any enemy of Russia that counted upon this would be disappointed; the time is past for a Georgian political nationality, unless, indeed, Russia should be already so hopelessly defeated as to break up of her own weight. I doubt much whether, in spite of their good looks and their martial clothes, the Georgians possess capacity for any struggle or for the organisation which it would necessitate if successful. Sporadic risings there might be if Russia were defeated once or twice, but they would be crushed without the slightest difficulty, and the only chance of success they might have would be when Russia was too exhausted even to attempt to put them down. Moreover, I saw no reason why the Georgians should wish to revolt, for they are not oppressed in any way, they have practically all the chances that Russians themselves enjoy, they are treated very gently as regards military service, and it is perfectly certain that if for any cause Russia should cease to protect them, some other Power would have to do so, for they are now incapable of taking care of themselves or standing sword in hand, as they once did, between Europe and the pressing hordes of Asia. In a word, the little nationalities of the Caucasus present no political problem.