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)
Every Tiflisian—to coin a word—puts Amusement with a big "A" first, duty, with a small "d" next. Amusement is a fetish, an Ixion's wheel* to which everyone is chained.
There is very little of the morning left by the time the educated Russian rises. He is, like the eagle-owls, most alert at night. About 9 p.m. he rubs his eyes and wakens up, previous to repairing to the clubs which are so important a feature in the Caucasian capital. They are not clubs, as we understand the word. The peaceful gloom of the ponderously furnished mausoleum, lightened up in drifts, the sense of museum like stillness, which spells "club" to the Londoner, is not the Tiflis notion of the thing at all. Ladies are not admitted on sufferance. They are encouraged, welcomed, desired. Bright lights greet them, there are cards and supper for those who would play and are hungry, and a gay orchestra for the dancers. How exquisitely they all dance, too! With a spontaneity of harmonious grace rare in England.
In the summer months the club system is conducted alfresco, in beautiful gardens, where the band plays into the small hours.
The fashionable Georgian ladies dress very well, and have the reputation of possessing great good looks. For established beauties they really are nice looking, with what Du Maurier called "the ineffable forward shrug of a Clytie," but—such expressionless belles! Every casual observer is struck by the extraordinary lack of vivid life and spirit. Dumas pere's enthusiastic "La Grèce, c'est Galatée encore marbre; la Géorgie, c'est Galatée devenue femme," is the idealist's way of putting the case.
The most entrancing waltz fails to rouse even passing animation. Their feet "like little mice steal in and out," their lithe bodies swing languorously to the music, but the immobile faces remain doll-like in passivity.
Mr. Ruskin said that the ideal girl should prefer dancing to walking and have at least six lovers. All the "fayre ladyes" of Georgia qualified for this standard. They danced because dancing to them is as natural as walking, and they had six lovers each because in the Caucasus there are enough men to go round and a few over, very different from the chequered working overtime state of things existent in England.
The intense heat of summer drives most of the aristocratic residents of Tiflis to the numerous health resorts of the country, but just as it is with us when the newspapers tell us "London is empty," there were any number of people about. But, of course, July and August are not the time to form an opinion of local society. The notables do not return until late September; by November the season, with its unlimited gaieties, is in full swing.
This metropolis of Caucasia would have been a much less grilling spot in summer had the town planners of old time chosen a site a little farther up the Kura, a really ideal situation. I asked an Ossetian warrior the whys and wherefores of this palpable mistake, and he said that the city naturally would grow up about the hot sulphur springs, the springs now glorified into baths and run by the ubiquitous Armenians, who, like the Chinaman on the Pacific coast have " arrived " and no mistake about it. The Russians call the invaders " the Jews of the East," and have a frequently trotted-out saying to the effect that a Jew can out-bargain any two Russians, and an Armenian overreach the lot.
They are just everywhere, this most energetically pushing of peoples, who hold the trade of Transcaucasia in the hollow of their hands. The streets are full of them, dressed in European clothes, or an imitation of the cotton tunic of the Tatar, pad, pad, padding along, plantigrade fashion, on large flat feet. Tiflis is said to contain more Armenians than any other city on earth save Constantinople, though the casual passer-by might be inclined to rank Manchester ahead of both. But—a big But—we cannot get past statistics. The baths are in the Tatar quarter, and Kenneth, who sampled them, told us that you pay by the hour, and it is just as cheap for two people as one person— that is, if you get in together! Soap and towels are "extras." The water was very hot, and, after being parboiled, the bather is expected to lie on a table whilst an animated Tatar dances a war-dance all over him.
The name Tiflis, pronounced Tiflees, accent on the "ees," is derived from the Georgian word, Tbilisi, which means hot. Whether the comprehensive appellation refers to the intense heat of the ovenlike place in summer, to the warm sulphur baths, or to the character of what I will call the Soho areas is rather hard to determine. All three are of an equal torridity.
The amount of poor-class drinking shops in Tiflis almost outnumbers the myriad saloons in Butte City, U.S.A., surely the most thickly sprinkled town on earth. Here in these filthy cabaks, or duchans, the man in the street (I suppose this mysterious synonym finds his illustration in the Caucasus as elsewhere), drinks the native vodka, a bitter unsweetened gin, and a variety of beer which tastes like bad vinegar.
All the wine shops worthy of the name have the most grandiloquent titles, opulently eastern in tone. The patrons of "Rose of the World " kept us awake with the distant sound of revelry by night, and "Heart's Desire" ran a close second for popularity. Another cellar-hole, got at down earthen steps, had a long title emblazoned in blue letters across a rickety door, and this Cecily would only translate as " Bid me good-bye and go.”
The wines of the country are said to be very good, and Kenneth, who is one of those people who affect to "understand wine," and therefore spend a life of thraldom to a label and a cork, endorsed the general opinion. "Warmer than Bordeaux, but not so full bodied as Burgundy" is his description, whatever it may mean.
The making of the various brands is a great industry, but so much wine is got through in the country that the export trade is of little account. The conquerors and the conquered are very fond of "potations pottle deep," as Horace termed it. Which is, I think, such a nice way of putting the case, don't you?
Through the Tatar Bazaar a wander below the solemn Avlabar Prison leads on across the river to the old market-place of Turkish days, and hereabouts are the labyrinthine cellars where the wine supply of Tiflis is stored.
In an evil-smelling little cave room, airless and infinitely gloomy, we found a shaven-headed Tatar worthy converting the whole skin of a calf into a mammoth wine bottle. The hair had been left on the skin, and thickly coated with naphtha of the consistency of train-grease. Next, the industrious worker proceeded to sew the pathetic disembodied creature into a semblance of its former self.
The man left his task to take us down to his storage cellar—a rouble bribed him. Here was a catacomb of weird shapes! Contorted skins filled to bursting point, lay on shelves, animal wraiths made less fearsome by a rare weave of silver cobwebs. In and out the gossamer cables twisted, and amid the criss-cross of slender strands colossal spiders, striped like wasps, waited patiently for the sugar-loving flies who crept about in sated indolence.
Our guide, who had lived so long among his Noah's Ark of inflated animals that he had taken on to some extent their grim appearance, swept away the maze of enshrouding gauze that we might see the panorama better, gathering up the silver tissue in henna-stained hands. The cobwebs removed, the charm of the place vanished. It was ugly, bizarre. The light of day was what we wanted, not hideous Has-Beens, filled to repletion with Kakheti wine.
On the old market-place a great crowd gathered, and from the network of streets people hurried to an impromptu platform, where a group of long-coated figures fought for a foothold. We joined in the rush, pressing alongside a Georgian woman of the people, cocoon-like in an all-enveloping wrapper and a brilliantly embroidered tiara-cap, from which hung a long white veil, on her dark hair. She was so anxious to be in time, that, like the Mad Hatter, she wandered glass of tea in one hand, and a little hard circle of bread, which she called a " bublik," in the other.
Forcing our way to the edge of the rough dais, we looked up at the fierce frieze of Hebraic faces and waited for the show to begin. Cecily promised to translate as things progressed, but half the time the Russian eluded her, or it wasn't Russian, but a patois of Tatar, or something. But we caught a little, and in a political meeting all over the world enough is as good as a feast.
One stalwart, more pushing than the rest, began to harangue, punctuating his words with a long whip. Crack! We demand this! Crack! We demand that! For all the world like the familiar tub-thumper of Hyde Park. Then a great shout arose. Stephan would speak. Stephan! Stephan! Evidently the Lord Rosebery of the Caucasus.
"Stephan! Stephan!”
The words rolled away, a riot of resonant sound, over the Maidan, up and up to the hoary ruined fortress built by Mustapha Pacha in the sixteenth century. The harsh echoes woke the hallowed spell, and the towers flung back the name faintly, tersely, "Stephan! Stephan!”
The orator was hoisted aloft, a little weatherbeaten figure, but clean and well brushed-up looking. "Your politicians have evermore a taste of vanity." He looked at the crowd in an all-embracing smile of gay friendliness, shaking his head the while. At last he spoke.
"I will wait," translated Cecily, " I will wait until I have something to say."
If every orator followed Stephan's example, what on earth would become of our political meetings!
Some diplomatist—Talleyrand, I think—told us that in a political career it is just all the world to know how to quit the arena with a smiling grace. Stephan had learnt the lesson. He vanished as he had come, on the shoulders of the people, laughing and bowing as he sank submerged. And there we left him.
Perhaps Stephan found his subject later. I cannot tell.
Returning to our auberge we found Kenneth on the verandah, sitting in a bower of red geraniums, tired out after a hunt for a sort of dragoman-courier. He was taking a little rest, he said, reading of the misfortunes of Calandrino in the Decameron. Something like the old soldier who found peace in the pages of the first volume of the official history of the South African War.
The Caucasus has not as yet, luckily for its comfort, produced the species of dragoman peculiar to the East, and the local make-shift guides are not even a graft on the well-known type, being manufactured on the whilst-you-wait principle. Nomadic European travelers in the Caucasus are not plentiful enough to create a race of vampire traveling servants. Even the roads of the country in its wilder parts are constructed on the old Spanish principle of keeping people off them.
If you feel that you cannot do without a guide and express that desire, something will turn up. And from the recesses of old Tiflis came Ali Ghirik, a black-browed, extremely old stalwart from Daghestan. After a soaking in one of the famous baths, he seemed a really worth-having acquisition, notwithstanding his weight of years. Our requirements were extremely simple, for we sought no professed courier, but a hard as-nails fellow, willing to saddle and picket horses, fetch and carry, cook for us on occasion, talk for us, translate for us, and assist us in the carrying through of any project.
Our would-be servant spoke Avar, his own tongue, and claimed acquaintance with Tatar, Georgian, and Russian. Of English he knew a few words; one in particular, "Look!" pleased him mightily. An excellent stock-in-trade for a guide, too, and I wonder where he picked it up. He often used it when there was nothing to look at, and smiled as though realizing how often he sprung the allusion and how much he liked it.
He had a "character," a chit given him by a Russian officer. The worn old piece of paper set forth that Ali had many excellent qualities, counter-balanced by many failings. He was very truthful, a somewhat negligible point, the writer added, among the Eastern tribes. Ali Ghirik counted this as something to be proud of, and pointed out the words to us with a henna-stained forefinger. Well, he was right. A Washingtonian character is the most valuable asset to which a servant can aspire. It enables him to tell as many fibs as ever he pleases.
The lengthy credential went on to hint that had Ali been a Christian he would have been perfect morally. As it was, a half-hearted Mahommedanism demoralized him.
But Christianity, to my mind, is not comprised of morals as the world accepts the term. The worst man has some touch of divinity in him. Ali Ghirik wore his generously.
"We are going to shoot in the mountains of Daghestan!" I said, through the medium of Kenneth.
"Do you know that part of the country well?"
Our would-be henchman sniffed scornfully. “I! Ali Ghirik, who fought with Shamil!”
I felt abashed. It is a wise man who knows his own capacity. Shamil, the famous patriot-fanatic of the Caucasus, leader of the mountain tribes who for thirty years held at bay the mighty power of Russia, made his last stand at Guinib, in Daghestan. Ali Ghirik, therefore, was a find indeed. Though he was but a stripling in the stirring days of the fifties, he would be able to tell us of his chief, of the ambuscades and wild sorties in the grim ravines, of the schemes and plots and plans which made Schamyl what he was.
The best definition of the character of the remarkable chieftain that I ever heard, or read, came from our servant. "The greatness of Shamil was so great," he said proudly, "that it made his littlenesses less than nothing.”
NOTES
* In Greek mythology, Ixion was king of the Lapiths, the most ancient tribe of Thessaly. He was infamous for killing his father-in-law (reckoned the first man guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology) and trying to seduce Zeus' wife Hera, for which Zeus ordered Hermes to bind Ixion to a winged fiery wheel that was always spinning. Therefore, Ixion is bound to a burning solar wheel for all eternity.
