The spring of 1855 was made interesting by the arrival of the blockading fleet before the mouth of the Neva, and shortly afterward I went down to look at it. It was a most imposing sight: long lines of mighty three- deckers of the old pattern, British and French,—one hundred in all,—stretched across the Gulf of Finland in front of the fortresses of Cronstadt. Behind the fortresses lay the Russian fleet, helpless and abject; and yet, as events showed during our own Civil War half a dozen years later, a very slight degree of inventive ability would have enabled the Russians to annihilate the hostile fleet, and to gain the most prodigious naval victory of modern times. Had they simply taken one or two of their own great ships to the Baird iron-works hard by, and plated them with railway iron, of which there was plenty, they could have paralleled the destruction of our old wooden frigates at Norfolk by the Merrimac, but on a vastly greater scale. Yet this simple expedient occurred to no one; and the allied fleet, under Sir Richard Dundas, bade defiance to the Russian power during the whole summer.
The Russians looked more philosophically upon the blockade than upon their reverses in the Crimea, but they acted much like the small boy who takes revenge on the big boy by making faces at him. Some of their caricatures on their enemies were very clever. Fortunately for such artistic efforts, the British had given them a fine opportunity during the previous year, when Sir Charles Napier, the commander of the Baltic fleet, having made a boastful speech at a public dinner in London, and invited his hearers to dine with him at St. Petersburg, had returned to England, after a summer before Cronstadt, without even a glimpse of the Russian capital.
I am the possessor of a very large collection of historical caricatures of all nations, and among them all there is hardly one more spirited and comical than that which represents Sir Charles at the masthead of one of his frigates, seeking, through a spy-glass, to get a sight at the domes and spires of St. Petersburg: not even the best efforts of Gillray or ``H. B.,'' or Gavarni or Daumier, or the brightest things in ``Punch'' or ``Kladderadatsch'' surpass it.
Some other Russian efforts at keeping up public spirit were less legitimate. Popular pictures of a rude sort were circulated in vast numbers among the peasants, representing British and French soldiers desecrating churches, plundering monasteries, and murdering priests.
Near the close of my stay I made a visit, in company with Mr. Erving, first secretary of the legation, to Moscow,—the journey, which now requires but twelve hours, then consuming twenty-four; and a trying journey it was, since there was no provision for sleeping.
The old Russian capital, and, above all, the Kremlin, interested me greatly; but, of all the vast collections in the Kremlin, two things especially arrested my attention. The first was a statue,—the only statue in all those vast halls,—and there seemed a wondrous poetic justice in the fact that it represented the first Napoleon. The other thing was an evidence of the feeling of the Emperor Nicholas toward Poland. In one of the large rooms was a full-length portrait of Nicholas's elder brother and immediate predecessor, Alexander I; flung on the floor at his feet was the constitution of Poland, which he had given, and which Nicholas, after fearful bloodshed, had taken away; and lying near was the Polish scepter broken in the middle.
A visit to the Sparrow Hills, from which Napoleon first saw Moscow and the Kremlin, was also interesting; but the city itself, though picturesque, disappointed me. Everywhere were filth, squalor, beggary, and fetishism. Evidences of official stupidity were many. In one of the Kremlin towers a catastrophe had occurred on the occasion of the Emperor's funeral, a day or two before our arrival: some thirty men had been ringing one of the enormous bells, when it broke loose from its rotten fastenings and crashed down into the midst of the ringers, killing several. Sad reminders of this slaughter were shown us; it was clearly the result of gross neglect.
Another revelation of Russian officialism was there vouchsafed us. Wishing to send a very simple message to our minister at St. Petersburg, we went to the telegraph office and handed it to the clerk in charge. Putting on an air of great importance, he began a long inquisitorial process, insisting on knowing our full names, whence we had come, where we were going, how long we were staying, why we were sending the message, etc., etc.; and when he had evidently asked all the questions he could think of, he gravely informed us that our message could not be sent until the head of the office had given his approval. On our asking where the head of the office was, he pointed out a stout gentleman in military uniform seated near the stove in the further corner of the room, reading a newspaper; and, on our requesting him to notify this superior being, he answered that he could not thus interrupt him; that we could see that he was busy. At this Erving lost his temper, caught up the paper, tore it in pieces, threw them into the face of the underling with a loud exclamation more vigorous than pious, and we marched out defiantly. Looking back when driving off in our droshky, we saw that he had aroused the entire establishment: at the door stood the whole personnel of the office,—the military commander at the head,—all gazing at us in a sort of stupefaction. We expected to hear from them afterward, but on reflection they evidently thought it best not to stir the matter.
In reviewing this first of my sojourns in Russia, my thoughts naturally dwell upon the two sovereigns Nicholas I and Alexander II. The first of these was a great man scared out of greatness by the ever recurring specter of the French Revolution. There had been much to make him a stern reactionary. He could not but remember that two Czars—his father and grandfather—had both been murdered in obedience to family necessities. At his proclamation as emperor he had been welcomed by a revolt which had forced him
``To wade through slaughter to a throne—''