Part I
Chapter 1
Who to thank for happy childhood?
The future English diplomat Archibald Kerr was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1882, in the suburbs of Sydney (South Wales, Australia). He was the penultimate child of eleven children born to John Kerr Clark (1838–1910) and Kat Louise Robertson (1846–1926). The Clarks lived on their ancestral Scottish estate, Inverchapel, and they had all been successful farmers for centuries. The name of our hero has changed many times: before becoming Lord Inverchapel, he tried several options, until in 1911 he stopped at the simplest. So he will be called below – Archibald Kerr.
Archie's paternal grandfather, James Clark, did not finish his studies at the University of Edinburgh, got a job in a trading firm, where he quickly married the owner's daughter Margaret Kerr. This short marriage ended with the birth of their only son, Margaret died in childbirth. The heartbroken grandfather returned to Inverchapel, and the child was named John Kerr Clark – he will be the father of the future diplomat.
After graduating from the local school, young John Kerr Clark traveled a lot in Europe. His father's wealth allowed it, though he had three other sons and several daughters by his second marriage. Of long-distance travel, John returned to the family, which every year became more and more strange. He was in his early twenties when he decided to seek his fortune abroad.
He went to Australia. Two hundred miles from Sydney, he and his uncle had bought property, and then they had acquired adjoining lots, so that in a few years they had more than two hundred thousand acres and forty thousand sheep. A few years later, the wealthy John Kerr Clark married Kat Louise, daughter of the neighboring landowner John Robertson, former Premier of New South Wales.
To say that his Scottish father – in-law was the head of the Australian state government is to say nothing of such a unique personality as John Robertson. In thirty years, this Australian grandfather of the future diplomat became Prime Minister five times. On the face of the terrible, he kept at bay the whole of the South-Eastern part of the Australian continent. There were two passions boiling inside him: for alcoholic beverages and to coarse language. By the end of his life, titled sir, he did not change these passions, and if someone loved more, it was his own numerous children, especially girls.
Kat's eldest daughter Louise was married to wealthy neighbor John Kerr Clark, and her youngest daughter to Robert Clark. Two families, so to speak, became related twice. But the youngest daughter's marriage was short-lived: at twenty-one, Margaret-Emma Robertson-Clark became a widow and returned to her father's house.
The house was gigantic. A wide wooden staircase led up to a huge veranda, where a long table on holidays gathered numerous relatives. On weekdays, the children were fed here, which every year became more and more. Children in the Robertson-Clark family were named after grandparents, so the names Margaret, James or John, for example, were answered by several people at once. Archibald in this sense was lucky.
He remembered his Australian grandfather John for life. And his Scottish grandfather James died before he was born. So Archie's childhood memories were the most vivid: a formidable grandfather, a huge house with many bedrooms on the second floor, a lawn in front of the main entrance and fun games with brothers and sisters in the Indians.
One day my grandfather brought with him a thin, bearded guest. He looked like an Egyptian, or even an Indian, but not a Scotsman or an Australian.
‘Here are my Penates, my dear Nicholas!’ Grandpa John said, trying to avoid strong language. ‘Come, women, we'll have a table in a jiffy! Do not make a mistake before the Russian scientist, and then I will…’
Guest – Russian! Wow! From that far and wide country where there are no roads at all, and bears easily approach doors, as if postmen. The kids immediately clung to the table, opening his mouth, looking at the strange guest. But grandfather drove them away:
‘All of you get out!’
The three of them remained: the owner himself, the Russian scientist from bear's corner, and Aunt Margaret-Emma. That's how it all started. Five minutes later the visitor had nothing to say to the chief Minister of state. He and Aunt Margaret looked at each other and asked and asked and told. She talked about what she had read recently, about wanting to study singing in Italy, about her last trip to London. He talked about the construction of a biological station not far from here, about traveling far from here, about what he had seen in distant countries and where he was going to go again.
Then they laughed that they had double surnames: she had Robertson-Clark, he had Miklukho-Maklay. Then they gasped that they had a mutual acquaintance in London- the eldest daughter of a famous Russian revolutionary. They did not know yet about the tragic fate of this delicate nature: Natalia Herzen will put an end to the intricate love triangles of her father and his faithful friend, confessing her love for Ogarev, and soon she will go mad.
There was much they did not know, young Margaret and Nicholas. Only six months later, leaving on business in St. Petersburg, he will leave her a letter with a proposal of marriage. And her answer would be waiting for Nicholas in the Russian capital before his ship docked in the Gulf of Finland. The answer was short:
‘I agree. I will wait for you from all your travels.’
He would return to Australia and they would marry. He will then return to the island of New Guinea, where only the Papuans lived, and Nicholas would describe their life in diaries and in detailed letters to his wife. She read them aloud in the evenings, sitting at the long table on the veranda. Sir John Robinson was not at home till late, and all the children sat down next to Aunt Margaret, and eagerly listened to every word from so far and wild a country.
‘The natives of the coast on which we landed had never before come in contact with a white race,’ Aunt Margaret read slowly. ‘These Papuans live in the stone age. They do not know how to make a fire and always keep the log burning, lit once from a tree that was struck by lightning. When they travel, they carry this burning log with them…’
Night was falling. The children were put to bed, but neither Archie nor his siblings could sleep for a long time. And the next morning in the bushes near the old Fig tree, the action began. The older ones whittled spears, the younger ones made new clothes out of burdocks and smeared their faces with soot and clay. An hour later, a band of bedraggled savages were whooping around the house. Archibald's brother Robin, as the eldest, pounded his chest with his fist:
‘I'm Maklay!’
No one argued with him. And each had to give his Indian name. Archie became Mikl-Ukho… And in the evening all, already washed, again, holding their breath, listened to the letters of Uncle Nicholas. They were so afraid that the savages would eat him, as they had done to cook, the traveler, a hundred years ago. Aunt Margaret was most afraid of it. But Nicholas reassured her in his letters:
‘They love me here; they call me the man from the moon. Nobody's going to eat me, don't worry. I was bitten by huge fish, bees and wasps, orangutans and monkeys, stung by poisonous plants and insects. But all is well, I am well, and I really missed you and the children.’
He and Aunt Margaret had two sons. But they were still small and could not play with all. And all made caches and secrets, hid in them matches, glass, beads, needles, knives- everything that could be useful in future battles.
‘No wars!’ the sisters, Margaret-Emma and Kat Louise, said sternly.
And they began to tell how once the Papuans gathered with spears, axes and bows to fight with a neighboring tribe. They did it every year – and there was no other reason. When Uncle Nicholas heard this, he silently filled a bowl with water, added a little kerosene, and set it on fire. He said: ‘I will set fire to the sea if you start a war.’ They threw down their spears and buried their axes in the sand. So-never any wars, children…
And