In Russia, when a blind beggar is laid to rest even the Emperor knows for whom the bell tolls.
Olga Novikova came to London in 1868. In 1916, when she published Russian Memories, the Russians were our allies in the Great War, and our pro-German, anti-Russian politics of the last fifty years was looking a little stale. Novikova told us a touching anecdote of the late Emperor Nicholas I, whom we knew only as the Russian leader we had fought in the Crimean War of 1854-56.