Recollections Of St. Petersburg.
“To-morr punkt at 'leven wir schiff for St. Petersburg,” was the polyglot announcement by which all of us, Swedes, Germans, English, and one solitary American, were given to understand at what hour on the ensuing day we were to commence our voyage from Stockholm for the Russian capital. With praiseworthy punctuality the steam was up at the appointed hour of eleven, and as our steamer shot out into the Baltic we took our farewell view of Stockholm, the “City of Piles.” As we steamed northward we dashed through archipelago after archipelago of islands, some with bold and rocky shores, and others sloping greenly down to the tranquil sea. Having passed the Aland Islands, one of which, not thirty miles from the coast of Sweden, has been seized and strongly fortified by her powerful and unscrupulous neighbor, we turned into a narrow inlet, and touched Russian soil at Abo, the ancient capital of Finland.
Here we made our first acquaintance with those fascinating gentry, whom his Imperial Majesty deputes to watch that nothing treasonable or contraband finds entrance into his dominions. Our intercourse here was, however, brief, our passports merely being demanded, and permission granted us to go on shore while the steamer was detained. At Cronstadt and St. Petersburg we formed a more intimate if not more agreeable acquaintance with these functionaries. Setting out again we coasted eastward up the Gulf of Finland, passing the grim fortress of Sveaborg, with its eight hundred guns, and garrison of fifteen thousand men, and shot up the beautiful bay to Helsingfors, one of the great naval stations of Russia. Touching at Revel, on the opposite shore of the Gulf of Finland, we ran due east up the Gulf, encountering the great Russian summer fleet, which was performing its annual manœuvres, and on the morning after leaving Helsingfors came in sight of the shipping and fortifications of Cronstadt. As we crept slowly up the narrow and winding channel, by which alone the harbor can be reached, and passed successively the grim lines of batteries which command every portion of it, we were forced to confess that it formed a fitting outpost to a great military power.
Cronstadt is not only the chief naval dépôt of Russia, but is properly the port of St. Petersburg, as the capital is inaccessible to vessels drawing more than eight or nine feet of water. Hence Cronstadt is included in the St. Petersburg customs-district, and vessels clear indifferently for either, and are subject to only a single customs-house examination. It forms the key to the capital, which would be entirely at the mercy of any fleet which should once pass its batteries. It has therefore been fortified so strongly as to be apparently impregnable to all the navies of the world. We came to anchor under the guns of the fortress; and were soon put under the charge of our amiable friends of the custom-house, who took complete possession of the deck, while the passengers and officers of the vessel were directed to repair to the cabin to give an account of themselves, their occupations, pursuits, and designs to these rude and filthy representatives of the Czar. It was well for us that we had been in a measure hardened to these annoyances by our previous Continental experiences. Police and custom-house functionaries are nowhere famous for civility, but the rudest and most unendurable specimens of that class whom it has ever been my fortune to encounter are the lower orders of the Russian officials. We could, however, congratulate ourselves that the infliction was light in comparison to what it would have been had we proceeded by land from Abo. There trunks, pockets, and pocket-books are liable to repeated searches at different stations along the route. We were told of travelers who had their boxes of tooth-powder carefully emptied, and their soap-balls cut in two, in quest of something treasonable or contraband.
But there is an end to all things human, even to Russian police-examinations. Our passports were luckily all in order, and as our steamer was cleared for St. Petersburg we escaped the vexations attendant upon an inspection of luggage and a change of vessel. Every thing was put under seal, even to an ancient umbrella which [pg 448] had borne the brunt of many a shower in half the countries of Europe, to say nothing of storms it had weathered previous to its transatlantic voyage.
After our seven hours' detention, we found ourselves at last steaming up the transparent Neva, and straining our eyes to get a first view of the City of Peter. After something more than an hour's paddling against the rapid current of the river, the gilt dome of the Cathedral first caught the eye, followed by the sight of dome after dome, tower upon tower, spire after spire, gilt and spangled with azure stars, long before the flat roofs and walls of the city were visible.
No sooner had our steamer touched the granite quai than it was taken possession of by a horde of custom-house and police officers, a shade or two less filthy and disgusting than their Cronstadt brethren; for it is a noticeable fact, the higher you proceed in official grade, the more endurable do the Russian officials become, till you reach the heads of the departments, who are as civil and well-behaved a body of functionaries as ever clasped fingers upon a bribe. A few copecks or rubles, as the case may require, insinuated into the expectant palms of the searching officials have a wonderful tendency to abate the rigor of the examinations, which being completed, and a silver ruble paid to the officer in attendance, the traveler is at liberty to go on shore in search of a hotel or lodgings.
The instructed traveler will resist the seductions of the Russian hotels, with their magnificent fronts, and Russian, German, and French signboards; for once past the portals he will find that the noble staircases and broad passages are filthy beyond all western imagination; and the damask curtains and velvet sofas are perfect parks for all those “small deer” who make day and night hideous. If he be wise, he will make his way to some boarding-house upon the Quai Anglais, conducted by an emigrant from some country where the primitive faith in the virtues of dusters and soap and water is cherished.
No sooner is the stranger established than he must take an interpreter, and make the best of his way to the police office, to get a permit of residence. This he obtains after an interrogation from a very civil functionary, to whom must be paid a proportionate fee. But this permit is good only for the capital and its immediate vicinity. If the Russians are slow to welcome the coming, they are none the more ready to speed the parting guest. Mr. Smith and his friend Brown must not leave the capital till they have published an advertisement announcing their intention in three successive numbers of the Gazette, an operation which consumes a space of from a week to ten days.
These preliminaries duly attended to, we were at liberty to commence our examination of St. Petersburg. The traveler who first sees the city under a summer sun is always struck with amazement. Its public places are so vast, its monuments so numerous and imposing, its quays so magnificent, and its edifices, public and private, so enormous, and constructed apparently of materials so massive and enduring, that he is ready to pronounce it the most magnificent city upon earth.
A century and a half ago the low marshy shores of the Neva, and the islands formed by the branches into which it separates just before it empties itself into the Gulf of Finland were inhabited only by a few scattered Finnish fishermen. But commanding the entrance to Lake Ladoga, it was a military position of some importance, and the Swedes had long maintained there a fortress, the possession of which had been often unavailingly contested by the Russians, up to 1703, when Peter the Great made himself master of it. He determined to found upon this desolate spot the future capital of his vast empire, and at once commenced the task, without waiting for peace to confirm the possession of the site. He assembled a vast number of the peasantry from every quarter of his empire, and pushed forward the work with the energy of an iron will armed with absolute power. The surrounding country, ravaged by long years of war, could furnish no supplies for these enormous masses, and the convoys which brought them across Lake Ladoga were frequently detained by contrary winds. Ill fed and worse lodged, laboring in the cold and wet, multitudes yielded to the hardships, and the foundations of the new metropolis were laid at the cost of a hundred thousand lives, sacrificed in less than six months.
With Peter to will was to perform; he willed that a capital city should be built and inhabited, and built and inhabited it was. In April, 1714, a ukase was issued directing that all buildings should be erected in a particular manner; another, three months later, ordered a large number of nobles and merchants to erect dwellings in the new city. In a few months more another ukase prohibited the erection of any stone mansion in any other portion of the empire, while the enterprise of the capital was in progress; and that the lack of building materials should be no obstacle, every vessel, whether large or small, and every peasant's car which came to the city, was ordered to bring a certain specified number of building stones. The work undertaken with such rigid determination, and carried on with such remorseless vigor by Peter, was continued in the same unflinching spirit by his successors; and the result was the present St. Petersburg, with its aspect more imposing than that of any other city on the globe, but bearing in its bosom the elements of its own destruction, the moment it is freed from the control of the iron will, which created and now maintains it:—a fitting type and representative of the Russian Empire.
The whole enterprise of founding and maintaining St. Petersburg was and is a struggle against nature. The soil is a marsh so deep and spongy that a solid foundation can be attained only by constructing a subterranean scaffolding of piles. Were it not for these the city would sink into the marsh like a stage ghost through the trap-door. Every building of any magnitude [pg 449] rests on piles; the granite quays which line the Neva rest on piles. The very foot-pavements can not be laid upon the ground, but must be supported by piles. A great commercial city is maintained, the harbor of which is as inaccessible to ships, for six months in the year, as the centre of the desert of Sahara. In the neighboring country no part produces any thing for human sustenance save the Neva, which furnishes ice and fish. The severity of the climate is most destructive to the erections of human hands; and St. Petersburg, notwithstanding its gay summer appearance, when it emerges from the winter frosts, resembles a superannuated belle at the close of the fashionable season; and can only be put in proper visiting order by the assiduous services of hosts of painters and plasterers. Leave the capital for a half century to the unrepaired ravages of its wintry climate, and it would need a Layard to unearth its monuments.
But sure as are the wasting inroads of time and the climate, St Petersburg is in daily peril of an overthrow whose accomplishment would require but a few hours. The Gulf of Finland forms a vast funnel pointing eastward, at the extremity of which stands the city. No portion of the city is fifteen feet above the ordinary level of the water. A strong westerly wind, blowing directly into the mouth of the funnel, piles the water up so as to lay the lower part of the city under water. Water is as much dreaded here, and as many precautions are taken against it, as in the case of fire in other cities. In other cities alarm-signals announce a conflagration; here they give notice of an inundation. The firing of an alarm-gun from the Admiralty, at intervals of an hour, denotes that the lower extremes of the islands are under water, when flags are hung out from the steeples to give warning of danger. When the water reaches the streets, alarm-guns are fired every quarter of an hour. As the water rises the alarms grow more and more frequent, until minute-guns summon boats to the assistance of the drowning population.
So much for the lower jaw of the monster that lies in wait for the Russian capital; now for the upper:—Lake Ladoga, which discharges its waters through the Neva, is frozen over to an enormous thickness during the long winter. The rapid northern spring raises its waters and loosens the ice simultaneously; when the waters of the Gulf are at their usual level, the accumulated ice and water find an easy outlet down the broad and rapid Neva. But let a strong west wind heap up the waters of the Gulf just as the breaking up of Lake Ladoga takes place, and the waters from above and from below would suffice to inundate the whole city, while all its palaces, monuments, and temples would be crushed between the masses of ice, like “Captain Ahab's” boat in the ivory jaws of “Moby Dick.” Nothing is more probable than such a coincidence. It often blows from the west for days together in the spring; and it is almost a matter of certainty that the ice will break up between the middle and the end of April. Let but a westerly storm arise on the fatal day of that brief fortnight, and farewell to the City of the Czars. Any steamer that bridges the Atlantic may be freighted with the tidings that St. Petersburg has sunk deeper than plummet can sound in the Finnish marshes from which it has so magically risen.
The Inundation of 1824.
Nor is this merely a matter of theory and speculation. Terrible inundations, involving enormous destruction of life and property have occurred. The most destructive of these took place on the 17th of November, 1824. A strong west wind heaped the waters of the Gulf up into the narrow funnel of the Neva, and poured them, slowly at first, along the streets. As night began to close in the rise of the waters became more and more rapid. Cataracts poured into doors, windows, and cellars. The sewers spouted up columns, like whales in the death-agony. The streets were filled with abandoned equipages, and deserted horses struggling in the rising waters. The trees in the public squares were crowded with those who had climbed them for refuge. During the night the wind abated, and the waters receded. But the pecuniary damage of that one night is estimated at twenty millions of dollars, and the loss of lives at eight thousand. All through the city a painted line traced upon the walls designates the height to which the waters reached. Were ever house-painters before engaged upon a task so ghastly? But suppose that, instead of November, April had been written as the date of this inundation, when the waters from the Lake above had met those from the Gulf below; St. Petersburg would have been numbered among the things that were—Ilium fuit.
Nothing of the kind can be more imposing than the view of St. Petersburg from the tower of the Admiralty upon some bright June day, such as that on which I first beheld it from that post. Under foot, as it seemed, from the galleries, lay the Admiralty-yards, where great ships were in process of erection, destined for no nobler service than to perform their three months' summer cruise in the Baltic, and to be frozen immovably in the harbors for six months out of twelve. The will of the Czar can effect much, but it can not convert Russia into a naval power until he can secure a seacoast, and harbors which can not be shut up to him by a single hostile fortification. Russia can not be a maritime power till she is mistress of the entrance to the Baltic and the Black Sea.
To the right and the left of the Admiralty stretch the great squares upon which stand the principal public edifices and monuments of the capital; the Winter Palace, with its six thousand constant occupants; the Hotel de l'Etat Major, whence go forth orders to a million of soldiers, the Senate House, and the Palace of the Holy Synod, the centres of temporal and spiritual law for the hundred nations blended into the Russian Empire; the Church of St. Isaac, with its four porticoes, the lofty columns of which, sixty feet in height, are each of a single block of granite, and the walls of polished marble; its cupola covered with copper overlaid with gold, gleaming like another sun, surmounted by a golden cross, and forming the most conspicuous object to the approaching visitor, whether he comes up the Gulf, or across the dreary Finnish marshes; yet, high as it rises in the air, it sinks scarcely a less distance below the ground, so deep was it necessary to drive into the marsh the forest of piles upon which it rests, before a firm foundation could be secured. Here is the Statue of Peter—the finest equestrian statue in the world—reining his steed upon the brink of the precipice up which he has urged it, his hand stretched out in benediction toward the Neva, the pride of his new-founded city. Here is the triumphal column to Alexander, “the Restorer of Peace,” the whole elevation of which is 150 feet, measuring to the head of the angel who—the cross victorious over the crescent—bears the symbol of the Christian faith above the capital cast from cannon captured from the Turks. The shaft is a single block eighty-four feet in height—the largest single stone erected in modern times; and it would have been still loftier had it not been for the blind unreasoning obedience to orders, so characteristic of the Russian. When the column had been determined upon, orders were dispatched to the quarries to detach, if possible, a single block for the shaft of the length of eighty-four feet, though with scarcely a hope that the attempt would succeed. One day a dispatch was received by the Czar from the superintendent, with the tidings that a block had been detached, free from flaw, one hundred feet long; but that he was about to proceed to reduce it to the required length. The sovereign mounted in hot haste to save the block from mutilation, and to preserve a column so much exceeding his hopes. But he was too late; and arrived just in time to see the sixteen feet severed from the block, which would otherwise have been the noblest shaft in the world.
The length of these public places, open and in full view, right and left, from the Admiralty tower, is a full mile.
Stretching southward from the tower lies the “Great Side” of St. Petersburg, cut into three concentric semicircular divisions, of which the Admiralty is the centre, by three canals, and intersected by the three main avenues or Prospekts (Perspectives). These three Perspectives diverge like the spokes of a wheel from the Admiralty and run straight through the city, through the sumptuous quarters of the aristocracy, the domains of commerce, and the suburbs of the poor; while the view is closed by the mists rising from the swamps of Ingermanland.
Turning from the “Great Side,” and looking northward, the arms of the Neva diverge from near the foot of the Admiralty tower, as the Perspectives do from the southern side. The width of the Neva, its yielding bottom and shores, and the masses of ice which it sweeps down, make the erection of bridges so difficult that they are placed at very rare intervals, so that a person might be obliged to go miles before reaching one. But the stream is enlivened by boats and gondolas ready to convey passengers from one bank to the other. We were never weary of watching with a glass from the Admiralty tower, alternately, the river gay with boats and shipping, and the Perspectives thronged with their brilliant and motley crowd. With a somewhat different, but certainly no less absorbing interest, we gazed down from the same elevation into the works of the citadel, upon Petersburg Island, whose minutest details were clearly visible. This citadel is useless as a defense of the city against a hostile attack; but it furnishes a ready means of commanding the capital, and furnishes a refuge for the government in case of an insurrection. Like the fortifications of Paris, it is designed not so much to defend as to control the city.
St. Petersburg is certainly the most imposing city, and Russia is the most imposing nation in the world—at first sight. But the imposing aspect of both is to a great extent an imposition. The city tries to pass itself off for granite, when a great proportion is of wood or brick, covered with paint and stucco, which peels off in masses before the frosts of every winter, and needs a whole army of plasterers and painters every spring to put it in presentable order. You pass what appears a Grecian temple, and lo, it is only a screen of painted boards. A one-storied house assumes the airs of a loftier building, in virtue of a front of another story bolted and braced to its roof. And much even that is real is sadly out of place. Long lines of balconies and pillars and porticoes, which would be appropriate to Greece or Italy, are for the greater part of the year piled with snow-drifts. St. Petersburg and Russian civilization are both of a growth too hasty, and too much controlled from without, instead of proceeding from a law of inward development, to be enduring.
The capital to be seen to advantage must be viewed during the few weeks of early summer; or in the opening winter, when the snow forms a pavement better than art can produce, and when the cold has built a continuous bridge over the Neva, without having as yet become severe enough to drive every body from the streets.
The Neva is the main artery through which pours the life-blood of St. Petersburg. But the life-current is checked from the time when the ice is too far weakened by the returning sun to be passable, and not yet sufficiently broken up to float down to the Gulf. At that time all intercourse between portions of the city on its opposite batiks is suspended. Every body is anxious for the breaking-up of the ice. Luxuries from more genial climes are waiting in the Baltic for the river to be navigable. No sooner is the ice so far cleared as to afford a practicable passage for a boat, than the glad news is announced by the artillery of the citadel, and, no matter what the hour, the commandant and his suite hurry into a gondola and push over to the Imperial palace, directly opposite. The commandant fills a large goblet with the icy fluid, and presents it to the Emperor, informing him that his gondola, the first which has that year crossed the river, is the precursor of navigation. The Czar drains the cup to the health of the capital, and returns it, filled with ducats, to the commandant. Formerly it was observed, by some mysterious law of natural science, that this goblet grew larger and larger, year by year, so that the Czar who had swallowed Poland without flinching, and stood ready to perform the same operation upon Turkey, stood in danger of suffocation from his growing bumpers. Some wise man at last suggested that this tendency to the enlargement of the goblet might be counteracted, by limiting the number of ducats returned by way of acknowledgment. The suggestion was acted upon, and, greatly to the comfort of the Imperial purse and stomach, was found to be perfectly successful. The sum now given is two hundred ducats. This goblet of Neva water is surely the most costly draught ever quaffed since the time when brown-fronted Cleopatra dissolved the pearl in honor of mad Mark Antony.
The most striking winter spectacle of St. Petersburg, to a foreigner, is that of the ice mountains. They are in full glory during “Butter Week”—of which more anon—when Russia seems to forget her desire to be any thing but Russian. The great Place of the Admiralty is given up to the popular celebrations, and filled with refreshment-booths, swings, and slides. To form these ice mountains a narrow scaffold is raised to the height of some thirty or forty feet. This scaffold has on one side steps for the purpose of ascending it; on the other it slopes off, steeply at first, and then more gradually, until it finally terminates on a level. Upon this long slope blocks of ice are laid, over which water is poured, which by freezing unites the blocks, and furnishes a uniform surface, down which the merry crowd slide upon sledges, or more frequently upon blocks of smooth ice cut into an appropriate form.
Two of these mountains usually stand opposite and fronting each other, their tracks lying close together, side by side.
Ice Mountain.
This is a national amusement all over Russia. Ice mountains are raised in the court-yards of all the chief residents in the capital. And an imitation of them, for summer use, covered with some polished wood, instead of ice, is often found in the halls of private dwellings. In the Imperial palace is such a slide, built of mahogany.
Street-life in St. Petersburgh presents many aspects strange to one who comes fresh from the capitals of other countries. One of the first things which will strike him is the silence and desertion of most of the streets. The thronging, eager crowd of other cities is here unknown. There is room enough, and to spare here. Broad streets, lined with rows of palaces, are as silent and lonely as deserted Tadmor, and a solitary droshka breaking the uniformity of the loneliness, heightens the effect. Leaving these broad, still streets, and mingling in the throng that presses in and through the Admiralty Place, the Nevskoi Perspective, or the Place of St. Isaac, the most noticeable feature, at first glance, is the preponderance of the military. The ordinary garrison of the capital amounts to 60,000 men. The Russian army comprises an almost infinite variety of uniforms, and specimens of these, worn by [pg 453] the élite of every corps, are constantly in the capital.
There are the Tartar guards, and the Circassian guards, Cossacks from the Don, from the Ural, and from Crimea; guards with names ending with “off” and “ski,” unpronounceable by Western lips. The wild Circassian—enacting the double part of soldier and hostage—silver-harnessed and mail-coated, alternates with the skin-clad Cossack of the Ural, darting, lance in rest, over the parade-ground. There are regiments uniform not only in size of the men, color of the horses, and identity of equipments, but in the minutiæ of personal appearance. Of one, all the men are pug-nosed, blue-eyed, and red bearded; of another, every man has a nose like a hawk, with eyes, hair and beard as black as a raven's wing. Half the male population of St. Petersburg wear uniform; for, besides these 60,000 soldiers, it is worn by officers of every grade, by the police, and even by professors of the university, and by teachers and pupils in the public schools.
Turning from the military to the civil portion of the population, the same brilliant variety of costumes every where meets the eye. The sober-suited native of western and civilized Europe, jostles the brilliant silken robes of the Persian or Bokharian; the Chinaman flaunts his dangling pig-tail, ingeniously pieced out by artificial means, in the face of the smoothly-shorn Englishman; the white-toothed Arab meets the tobacco-stained German; Yankee sailors and adventurers, portly English merchants, canny Scotchmen, dwarfish Finlanders, stupid Lettes, diminutive Kamtschatkians, each in his own national costume, make up a lively picture; while underlying all, and more worthy of note than all, are the true Russian peasantry; the original stock out of which Peter and his successors have fashioned their mighty empire.
The Russian of the lower orders is any thing but an inviting personage, at first sight. The name by which they have been designated, in their own language, time out of mind, describes them precisely. It is tschornoi narod, “the dirty people,” or as we might more freely render it, “The Great Unwashed.” An individual of this class is called a mujik. He is usually of middle stature, with small light eyes, level cheeks, and flat nose, of which the tip is turned up so as to display the somewhat expanded nostril. His pride and glory is his beard, which he wears as long and shaggy as nature will allow. The back of the head is shaved closely; and as he wears nothing about his neck, his head stands distinctly away from his body. His ideal of the beauty of the human head, as seen from behind, seems to be to make it resemble, as nearly as may be, a turnip. He is always noisy and never clean; and when wrapped in his sheepskin mantle, or caftan of blue cloth reaching to his knees, might easily enough be taken for a bandit. As he seldom thinks of changing his inner garments more than once a week, and as his outer raiment lasts half his lifetime, and is never laid aside during the night, and never washed, he constantly affords evidence of his presence any thing but agreeable to the organs of smell. But a closer acquaintance will bring to light many traits of character which belie his rude exterior; and will show him to be at bottom a good-natured, merry, friendly fellow. His most striking characteristic is pliability and dexterity. If he does not possess the power of originating, he has a wonderful faculty of copying the ideas of others, and of yielding himself up to carry out the conceptions of any one who wishes to use him for the accomplishment of his ends. There is an old German myth which says that the Teutonic race was framed, in the depths of time, out of the hard, unyielding granite. The original material of the Russian race must have been Indian rubber, so easily are they compressed into any form, and so readily do they resume their own, when the pressure is removed. The raw, untrained mujik is drafted into the army, and in a few weeks attains a precision of movement more like an automaton than a human being. He becomes a trader, and the Jews themselves can not match him in cunning and artifice.
The mujik is a thoroughly good-tempered fellow. Address him kindly, and his face unbends at once, and you will find that he takes a sincere delight in doing you a kindness. In no capital of Europe are the temptations to crimes against the person so numerous as in St. Petersburg, with its broad lonely streets, unlighted at night, and scantily patrolled; but in no capital are such crimes of so rare occurrence.
But the mujik has two faults. He is a thorough rogue, and a great drunkard. He will cheat and guzzle from sheer love for the practices; and without the least apparent feeling that there is any thing out of the way in so doing. But in his cups he is the same good-natured fellow. The Irishman or Scotchman when drunk is quarrelsome and pugnacious; the German or the Englishman, stupid and brutal; the Spaniard or Italian, revengeful and treacherous. The first stages of drunkenness in the mujik are manifested by loquacity. The drunker he is the more gay and genial does he grow; till at last he is ready to throw himself upon the neck of his worst enemy and exchange embraces with him. When the last stage has been reached, and he starts for his home, he does not reel, but marches straight on, till some accidental obstruction trips him up into the mire, where he lies unnoticed and unmolested till a policeman takes charge of him. This misadventure is turned to public advantage, for by an old custom every person, male or female, of what grade soever, taken up drunk in the street by the police, is obliged the next day to sweep the streets for a certain number of hours. In our early rambles we often came across a woeful group thus improving the ways of others, in punishment for having taken too little heed of their own.
In vino veritas may perhaps be true of the juice of the grape; but it is not so of the bad brandy which is the favorite drink of the mujik. [pg 454] He is never too drunk to be a rogue, but yet you do not look upon his roguery as you do upon that of any other people. He never professes to be honest; and does not see any reason why he should be so. He seems so utterly unconscious of any thing reprehensible in roguery, that you unconsciously give him the benefit of his ignorance. If he victimizes you, you look upon him as upon a clever professor of legerdemain, who has cheated you in spite of your senses; but you hardly hold him morally responsible. Upon the whole, though you can not respect the mujik, you can hardly avoid having a sort of liking for him.
Punishment For Drunkenness.
Perhaps the most thoroughly Russian of all the tschornoi narod are the isvoshtshiks, or public drivers; at least they are the class with whom the traveler comes most immediately and necessarily into contact, and from whom he derives his idea of them. Such is the extent of St. Petersburg, that when the foreigner has sated his curiosity with the general aspect of the streets, he finds that he can not afford time to walk from one object of interest to another. Moreover, in winter—and here winter means fully six months in the year—the streets are spread with a thick covering of snow, which soon becomes beaten up into powdered crystals, through which locomotion is as difficult as through the deepest sands of Sahara; and the wind whirls these keen crystals about like the sand-clouds of the desert. Every body not to the manner born, whose pleasures or avocations call him abroad, is glad to draw his mantle over his face, and creeping into a sledge, wrap himself up as closely as he may in furs. In spring and summer, when the streets are usually either a marsh or choked with intolerable dust, pedestrianism is equally disagreeable. All this has called into requisition a host of Jehus, so that the stranger who has mastered enough Russian to call out Davai ishvoshtshik! “Here, driver!” or even lifts his hand by way of signal, has seldom need to repeat the summons.
Like his cart-borne kindred, the Tartars and Scythians, the ishvoshtshik makes his vehicle his home. In it he eats, drinks, and often sleeps, rolling himself up into a ball in the bottom, to [pg 455] present as little surface as possible to the action of the cold.—Russian-like, he always names a price for his services that will leave ample room for abatement. But once engaged, and he is for the time being your servant, and accepts any amount of abuse or beating as the natural condition of the bargain.
Ishvoshtshiks.
The mujik of every class seems indeed to be born ready bitted, for the use of anyone who has a hand steady enough to hold the reins. They are the best servants in the world for one who has the gift of command. It is this adaptation between the strong-willed autocrats who since Peter have swayed the destinies of Russia, and the serviceable nature of the people, that has raised the empire to its present position. A single weak ruler would change the whole destiny of Russia.
Notwithstanding the hardships of their lives, the isvoshtshiks are good-natured, merry, harmless, fellows, whether waiting for a fare or bantering a customer. But they have one thorn; and that is the pedestrian. Woe to the driver who runs against a foot-man; fine and flogging are his portion. If the pedestrian be thrown down, visions of Siberia float before the driver's eye; to say nothing of the pleasant foretaste of the policeman's cane and the confiscation of his vehicle.
Notwithstanding the general characteristic of laxity of principle, instances are by no means wanting of the most scrupulous and even romantic fidelity on the part of the Russians of the lower orders. It would be an interesting subject of investigation, how far this patent trait of national character is to be attributed to inherent constitutional defects in the race; and how far to the state of serfdom in which they have existed from generation to generation. But the investigation does not fall within the scope of our “Recollections.”
Our friends in the greasy sheepskins or woolen caftans have strong religious tendencies, though they may smack a little too much of those of the tight-fingered Smyrniote whom we detected purchasing candles to light before his patron saint, with the first-fruits of the purse of which he had not ten minutes before relieved our pocket. In all places where men congregate there are pictures of saints before which the mujik crosses himself on every occasion. In an inn or restaurant each visitor turns to the picture and crosses himself before he sits down to eat. If a mujik enters your room he crosses himself before saluting you. Every church is saluted with a sign of the cross. At frequent intervals in the streets little shrines are found, before which every body stops and makes the sacred sign, with bared head. The merchant in the gostunoi dvor or bazaar, every now and then walks up to his bog or saint, and with a devout inclination prays for success in trade.
No one has seen St. Petersburg who has not been there at Easter. The Greek Church finds great virtues in fasting; and a prolonged fast-time implies a subsequent carnival. The rigor of the Russian fasts strictly excludes every article of food containing the least particle of animal matter. Flesh and fowl are, of course, rigorously tabooed; so are milk, eggs, butter; and even sugar, on account of the animal matter used in refining it, of which a small portion might possibly remain. The fast preceding Easter, called, by way of eminence, “The Great Fast,” lasts seven full weeks, and is observed with a strictness unknown even in Catholic countries. The lower classes refrain even from fish during the first and last of these seven weeks, as well as on Wednesdays and Fridays in the remaining five. When we reflect how large a part some or all of these animal substances form of the cuisine of all northern nations, and in Russia most of all, we shall be ready to believe that this Great Fast is an important epoch in the Russian calendar, and is not to be encountered without a preparatory period of feasting, the recollection of which may serve to mitigate the enforced abstinence.
Among the upper classes in St. Petersburg balls, routs, and all carnival revelries begin to crowd thick and fast upon each other as early as the commencement of February. But the mass of the people compress these preparatory exercises into the week before the beginning of the fast. This is the famous Masslänitza or “Butter Week,” which contains the sum and substance [pg 456] of all Russian festivity. All the butter that should naturally have gone into the consumption of the succeeding seven weeks is concentrated into this. Whatever can be eaten with butter is buttered; what can not, is eschewed. The standard dish of the week is blinni, a kind of pancake, made with butter; fried in butter, and eaten with butter-sauce. For this one week the great national dish of shtshee or cabbage-soup is banished from the land.
Breakfast dispatched, then come the amusements. Formerly the swings, ice-mountains, and temporary theatres were erected upon the frozen plain of the Neva. But some years since, the ice gave way under the immense pressure, and a large number of the revelers were drowned. Since that time the great square of the Admiralty has been devoted to this purpose. For days previous, long trains of sledges are seen thronging to the spot, bearing timbers, poles, planks, huge blocks of ice, and all the materials necessary for the erection of booths, theatres, swings, and slides. These temporary structures are easily and speedily reared. A hole is dug in the frozen ground, into which the end of a post is placed. It is then filled with water, which under the influence of a Russian February binds it in its place as firmly as though it were leaded into a solid rock. The carnival commences on the first Sunday of the Butter Week, and all St. Petersburg gives itself up to sliding and swinging, or to watching the sliding and swinging of others. By a wise regulation eating and drinking shops are not allowed in the square, and the staple potable and comestibles are tea, cakes, and nuts. Few more animated and stirring sights are to be seen than the Admiralty square at noon, when the mirth is at the highest among the lower orders, and when all the higher classes make their appearance driving in regular line along a broad space, in front of the booths, reserved for the equipages. Every body in St. Petersburg of any pretensions to rank or wealth keeps a carriage of some kind; and every carriage, crowded with the family in their gayest attire, joins in the procession.
Butter Week, with its blinni and ice mountains passes away all too quickly, and is succeeded by the grim seven weeks' fast. The Admiralty square looks desolate enough, lumbered over with fragments of the late joyous paraphernalia, and strewed with nut-shells and orange-peel. Public amusements, of almost all kinds are prohibited, and time passes on with gloomy monotony, only broken by a stray saint's day, like a gleam of sunshine across a murky sky. It is worth while to be a saint, in Russia, if his day falls during the Great Fast, for it will be sure to be celebrated with most exemplary fervor.
As the fast draws near its close, preparation s on tiptoe for a change. The egg-market begins to rise, owing to the demand for “Easter-eggs,” for on that day it is customary to present an egg to every acquaintance on first greeting him. This has given rise to a very pretty custom of giving presents of artificial eggs of every variety of material, and frequently with the most elegant decorations. The Imperial glass manufactory furnishes an immense number of eggs of glass, with cut flowers and figures, designed as presents from the Czar and Czarina.
Saturday night before Easter at last comes and goes. As the midnight hour which is to usher in Easter-day approaches, the churches begin to fill. The court appears in the Imperial chapel in full dress; and the people, of all ages, ranks, and conditions, throng their respective places of worship. Not a priest, however, is to be seen until the midnight hour strikes, when the entrance to the sanctuary of the church is flung open, and the song peals forth—Christohs vosskress! Christohs vosskress ihs mortvui—“Christ is risen! Christ is risen from the dead!” The priests in their richest robes press through the throng, bowing and swinging their censers before the shrine of the saints, repeating the “Christ is risen!” The congregation grasp each other's hands, those acquainted, however distantly, embracing and kissing, repeating the same words. The churches are at once in a blaze of illumination within and without; and all over the city cannons boom, rockets hiss, and bells peal in token of joy. The Great Fast is over, and the Easter festival has begun.
In the churches the ceremony of blessing the food is going on. The whole pavement, unencumbered with pews or seats, is covered with dishes ranged in long rows, with passages between for the officiating priests, who pace along, sprinkling holy water to the right and left, and pronouncing the form of benediction; the owner of each dish all the while on a keen look-out that his food does not fail of receiving some drops of the sanctifying fluid. Before daylight all this is accomplished; and then come visitings and banquets, congratulations of the season, bowings, hand-shakings, and, above all, kissing.
All Russia breaks out now into an Oriental exuberance of kisses. What arithmetic shall undertake to compute the osculatory expenditure? Every member of a family salutes every other member with a kiss. All acquaintances, [pg 457] however slight, greet with a kiss and a Christohs vosskress. Long-robed mujiks mingle beards and kisses, or brush their hirsute honors over the faces of their female acquaintances. In the public offices all the employées salute each other and their superiors. So in the army. The general embraces and kisses all the officers of the corps; the colonel of a regiment those beneath him, besides a deputation of the soldiers; and the captain salutes all the men of his company. The Czar does duty at Easter. He must of course salute his family and retinue, his court and attendants. But this is not all. On parade he goes through the ceremony with his officers, and a selected body of privates, who stand as representatives of the rest, and even with the sentinels at the palace gates. So amid smiles and handshakings, and exclamations of “Christ has arisen!” pass on the days of the Easter festival. Ample amends are made for the long abstinence of the Great Fast, by unbounded indulgence in the coveted animal food, to say nothing of the copious libations of brandy—evidences of which are visible enough in groups of amateur street-sweepers who subsequently are seen plying their brooms in the early morning hours. Such is St. Petersburg, when most Russian.