Illuminations in St. Petersburg are paid for by a kind of tax which the police demand of each house; and as the Russians illuminate for everything, they must form a good source of profit to these “honourable men.” Not a single baby belonging in the fiftieth degree to the imperial family can either be born or christened without a round of five hundred cannon and an illumination; not a score of Turks can be killed, or half a dozen guns taken, without a similar demonstration of public rejoicing. The latter may be a “make-believe,” very convenient in the time of defeats and retreats to blind the nation’s eyes to the truth, especially as no authentic accounts are ever published for the people. The manner of illuminating in Russia is different from ours. Little grease-pots are placed at intervals along the kerbstone of the pavement, at about the same distance apart as are our lamp-posts in London. The effect is not at all imposing; besides which, they are at the mercy of the wind and rain, which generally cause an ugly hiatus here and there.
Whilst speaking of illuminations I must not omit to mention one that we saw in Archangel; it was certainly not to be compared to the two already described, but it had a very beautiful effect from the lamps being placed in holes made in the snow. The weather was very cold, and the damp had frozen in crystals on the trees, so that it looked like a scene in northern fairy-land, or as if some silver grotto of the gnomes had been suddenly thrown up on the surface of the earth.
The night on which the news reached St. Petersburg that the Russian army had crossed the Danube, there was a great illumination by order of the authorities. The weather was fearful; the high wind and beating storm soon effaced all traces of the lights, and the streets shortly became as dark and as desolate as before—an evil augury of the misfortunes so soon to follow.
CHAPTER XVI.
Travelling in Russia—Monotony of scene—Want of animation—Style of dwellings of the nobles, the gentry, and the peasantry—Poor gentry—Pride and poverty—Peasants’ isbas, the furniture they contain—Vermin—The breaking up of the ice—The Dwina—Distressing occurrences—The peasant and his dog—The aged peasant—The commandant’s gold cup—Native barks: the peasants on board of them—Neva boats—Concerts al fresco—Numerous imperial palaces.
I have given no account of our various journeys in Russia, as it would be merely a repetition of the same terms, in which forest, sand, and morass would figure as the leading objects, and would indeed be only wearisome to the reader. Not but that there are some pretty places here and there, but they are very wide apart, and the trouble of wading through two or three hundred versts of monotonous travels over the unchanging post-roads would be but ill repaid by being told that on such a spot stands such a town or such a village, the name of which is never heard beyond the frontiers of the province in which it is situated, and which possesses no interest whatever for any one but the traveller himself, who in journeying through the country is apt to hail the sight of an inhabited place with much the same feeling as he who in making a voyage across the ocean welcomes the appearance of a strange ship in the offing: so inconceivably wearying is the constant view of the endless tracts of forest-land and waste. Descriptions of provincial towns would be almost as tiresome as those of pine-woods and marshes; the same style of houses, the same kind of churches with green roofs and gilt domes; the streets badly paved, or rather unpaved; the same unvarying background of firs and sky—in fact “sameness all.” Besides all these objections to a detailed account, so many descriptions have already been published, that the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow must be almost as well known as that from London to York. Nothing perhaps is more striking to a foreigner travelling through Russia than the utter want of animation in the people; there are no merry laughs ringing joyously on the ear from some light-hearted maiden; no lively bustle at the post-stations when the diligence stops to change horses, such as was seen on similar occasions when stage-coaches ran on the level roads of England, when the arrival of the London mail caused quite an excitement in the village. The sound of songs may be everywhere heard, it is true; but they can scarcely be called joyful ones—they are almost always sad and mournful, being in the minor key; their melancholy cadences, as a French writer remarks, “might be said each to contain a tear.” The peasants’ downcast looks and inexpressive faces—their cowed manner, as if they were shrinking from an uplifted lash—the want of intelligence which the absence of civilization causes in their countenance, give them an almost brutish appearance, and cause a painful sensation in the stranger’s heart. Even the cattle seem to want that air of life which makes our fields and meadows so gay; there are no snowy flocks and frisking lambs, no shepherd’s dog with joyous bark, no robin on the flowery thorn: it is, as my friend remarked, not the “repose of the living,” but the “slumber of the dead,” that reigns over the land of Muscovy.
A nobleman’s mansion contains as much beautiful furniture, as many articles of taste and luxury, as we could see anywhere else; the apartments are, generally speaking, much larger and loftier than with us; the whole of them are thrown open for the reception of guests and for the free circulation of the air; and a long suite of rooms thus disclosed has a very pretty perspective effect. The floors are not covered with carpets, but are composed of parquet, or inlaid oak; very often each room has a floor of a different design; the doors are shaded by rich portières, matching the window-curtains of each room; splendid chandeliers are everywhere suspended from above; many of the ceilings are richly painted in fresco, and a great deal of gilding adds to the effect; the chairs and sofas are covered with velvet or flowered silk of the most beautiful and delicate colours; marble statues and elegant vases are placed here and there, with objects of virtù, &c. The lady of the house has a boudoir which is often a complete gem; the splendid furniture, covered with light blue or rose-coloured satin or brocade; the inlaid floor partly covered with a Persian carpet; the tables in marqueterie, enamel, and ormolu, on which elegant trifles of the most exquisite taste are placed; fine and valuable pictures decorate the walls, which are probably covered with flowered silk or satin, instead of paper. The gentleman’s cabinet is but plainly furnished in comparison. I do not know where I read, some time since, ‘A Description of the Sties of the Russian Nobility.’ It was certainly with indignation that I did so: whoever wrote the description could never have seen or entered the house of a nobleman either in St. Petersburg or Moscow; nor is it fair or just to speak so of a people, merely because our nation is at war with them; the truth ought not to be affected by any sentiment of hostility we might feel to the government. The above description may serve to give a slight idea of what really exists. The less wealthy of the nobility take a suite of apartments (flats as they are called in Scotland) in some large hotel, built on the plan of those in France. Some of the extremely poor gentry do, it is true, live in a very comfortless state, of which an anecdote has already been given in these pages; their pride of birth preventing them from gaining a livelihood by following any profession, for fear of losing caste; and their natural indolence making them prefer a life of poverty, and almost of want, to the doing anything to increase, by their own labour, the slender means furnished by the serfs of some insignificant estate, who generally are doubly miserable from the pressing indigence of their owners. To these people and their dwellings the names of sties and their usual occupants may be justly applied, for they live in dirt and discomfort, in the midst of filth and vermin that could only find their equal in an Irish lodging-house; they sleep on the sofa, which is so dirty that the silk with which it is covered is almost invisible; their clothing is so abominably unclean, that it is quite offensive; and they live “littéralement de pommes de terre,” as we were often assured. Yet when these people go out their filthy underclothing is hidden by a showy silk gown and cloak à la mode. They pay visits in their own carriages, which are wormeaten and worn, with four horses half-starved—a coachman, footman, and postilion in miserably soiled and tarnished liveries; they look down with contempt upon respectable merchants and shopkeepers, and, to use a vulgar expression, they turn up their nose at the industrious, “parce que leur naissance est noble.” I shall never forget the disdain with which one of these second-rate people mentioned one day at dinner that an English merchant in St. Petersburg had made her daughter an offer; “but how was it possible?” she said, “un homme qui n’est pas noble!”
The sleeping apartments in the houses of very rich people are elegantly arranged and separate from the drawing-rooms; but in many they form a part of the suite of salons. They are divided by an ornamental screen from the other part of the room, so that a stranger may frequently have been in them without having had the least idea that they were the sleeping-rooms. Each room is heated by a kind of oven, which, when the wood is burned to ashes, is shut down so as to confine all the warm air and prevent it from escaping, and thus an equal temperature is ensured. If this stove happen to be closed too soon, the vapour diffused through the apartment is extremely injurious, being the fumes of charcoal, which find no egress from the double windows, and produce a terrible headache, and a sensation as if water were running over the brain: it is soon cured by being a short time in the open air.