... The _Krivoye Zerkalo_ staged a sumptuous version
of Schnitzler's "Reigen."
Although the Hermitage and other picture galleries had been evacuated
to Moscow, there were weekly exhibitions of paintings. Hordes of the
female _intelligentzia_ went to hear lectures on Art, Literature and
the Easy Philosophies. It was a particularly active season for
Theosophists. And the Salvation Army, admitted to Russia for the
first time in history, plastered the walls with announcements of
gospel meetings, which amused and astounded Russian audiences....
As in all such times, the petty conventional life of the city went
on, ignoring the Revolution as much as possible. The poets made
verses-but not about the Revolution. The realistic painters painted
scenes from medi?val Russian history-anything but the Revolution.
Young ladies from the provinces came up to the capital to learn
French and cultivate their voices, and the gay young beautiful
officers wore their gold-trimmed crimson _bashliki_ and their
elaborate Caucasian swords around the hotel lobbies. The ladies of
the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the afternoon,
carrying each her little gold or silver or jewelled sugar-box, and
half a loaf of bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back,
or that the Germans would come, or anything that would solve the
servant problem.... The daughter of a friend of mine came home one
afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had
called her "Comrade!"
All around them great Russia was in travail, bearing a new world.
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