Roundabout to Moscow: An Epicurean Journey

by John Bell Bouton

At the station we were received by a man wearing a long blue robe girded at the waist, trousers tucked into his boots, and a sort of smoking-cap with a band of peacock’s feathers. If he could have spoken a word of English or French or German, the charm of this splendid apparition would have vanished instantly. He was delightfully Russian from top to toe. When we said “Slaviansky Bazaar” (name of the principal hotel here), he knew what was meant. He conducted us to a carriage, to which were harnessed four white horses abreast, all decorated with bells and tassels. It was obvious that this sort of thing was not universal in Moscow, for we saw no other men in the streets dressed in that way, and few other horses thus caparisoned. All the more were we obliged to the proprietor of the Slaviansky Bazaar for treating his guests to the revival of old Russian hospitalities. At the hotel we were sorry to see waiters in the claw-hammer coats and white neck-ties of Delmonico’s. But then, again, it was a pleasure to find a smooth-faced boy with his long hair parted in the middle and a tunic of such a cut and length that he looked externally just like a girl. When one finds these things at Moscow after traveling thousands of miles for them, he begins to feel rewarded.

We have been in pursuit of good, genuine Russian dinners in and out of the hotel, and are prepared to say that they fully equal the best French combinations in appetizing and nourishing qualities. At some of the restaurants you must read or speak Russian or starve, unless you can make the waiter understand that you will take a dinner at a fixed price. It is delightful to find a race with the moral courage to invent dishes of its own, with names which a Frenchman can not understand. The soup, to begin with, would be incomprehensible to a Parisian chef. Two portions of it would make a square meal. It is hot, slab broth, with a large chunk of meat (not a knuckle-bone) in the middle of it, inviting the knife to cut and come again. With this succulent dish is served pastry, looking like Yankee “turn-overs,” stuffed to the bursting-point with meat hash. Croquettes and balls of meat—with delicious sauces—figure in almost every dinner. The conventional “joint” of other countries—beef, mutton, or veal—is not wanting, and the Russians so far accommodate themselves to our prejudices as to give us chicken and salad—but the latter in the disappointing form of pickled cucumber, while we are sighing for a little crisp lettuce. I had almost forgotten the fish, but then the fish is served out of place. Here it comes, third on the list, following a meat dish. For dessert, one has the fruit of the season. Just now the strawberry is in its zenith. They bring us a rosy pile, which we are expected to eat out of soup-plates with table-spoons. Cream is plenty, but powdered sugar scarce. I send for more. The waiter is polite, and goes for it.

When he returns, I am conscious that he is looking me hard in the face. He wants to see what manner of man it is who requires to qualify his sour berries with so much of sweet. He had previously been looking just as hard at my blue gaiters. I am beginning to discover that gaiters are as rare here as fez caps in Broadway. In fact, I have the only pair in Moscow, and should be glad to believe that the universal gaze directed at them is not one of secret derision in this land of boots. As we are now through with our dinner, we will dismiss that subject, only adding that, if one must have wine, he can get something pure, light, and nice, the product of the Crimea or Caucasus. In settling my score, I give something to the waiter, as a reward for his spotlessness; for, at the first-class restaurant where we have just dined (Moskovskia Traktir), he is dressed in complete white, relieved only by a little red cord about his waist. This shining habit is unstained by a single drop of soup or gravy, although he has been whisking plates and tureens off the table the moment we were through with them.

On Sunday we were wakened early by a grand crash of bells. As almost every one of the hundreds of churches has a set of four or five bells, you will understand that, when all ring together, they compel a hearing. None of them are very near us, and the sound of the harshest was mellowed by distance. They were of all pitches, from the deepest bass to the shrillest treble. I could not make out a tune in all the noise. The bells are not rung as chimes. Each one seems to work “on its own hook,” and to be striking a continuous fire-alarm. After listening to the clamor for half an hour, one feels like turning over for another nap. But the attempt is useless. The bell-ringers are as punctilious in their performances as if these were the most essential part of religion. They will not shorten the prescribed hours of this labor by a single second. Among the profound notes that come booming over all the green roofs, I fancy I hear the voice of a monstrous brazen-throated creature whom I patted on the back the other day. He is kept in the stronghold of a tower within the Kremlin about one hundred and fifty feet from the ground. Without vouching for measurements, I should say he is twelve feet wide at the flare or rim and fourteen feet high. His tongue weighs about two tons. Sounded with the ferule of my umbrella, he gave a little muffled roar. The man in charge offered to tap him gently with the ponderous clapper swinging there. But I did not care to hear him more clearly at short range, and declined.

But one would willingly pay a number of rubles to hear the Tsar Kolokol struck, if that dethroned monarch of all the bells could be set up again. But there he remains, mutilated and silent forever. The pictures of the great bell of Moscow had not prepared me to see how neatly it had been broken. The detached fragment, which now stands by the side of the ruined bell, might have been cut from it with a knife, so straight and clean are the lines of breakage. One would think that it might be put back again and the last trace of a scar be obliterated with solder. But that would not restore its voice to the bell. For it has ten or a dozen cracks, some of them many feet long, and each one has spoiled it. If there is any considerable percentage of silver in this bell—as seems likely on inspection, and if it weighs two hundred tons, as we are told—it would be very valuable as old metal. But it is still more precious to Moscow as her unique and most interesting treasure.

The ordinary bass voice is often little better than a growl or huskiness of the throat. No one thinks of calling it musical. But I never heard tenors that thrilled and charmed me more than the basses at the Temple of the Saviour. This is the costliest and most splendid church in all the Russias. Its outside is marble and gold. Its inside is a lavish display of the precious metals thickly set with gems. Every fine quarry in the empire has contributed its best to compose the tesselated floor, the wainscoting, and the columns of the marvelous structure. It was built to commemorate the defeat of the French invasion of 1812, and was only recently completed, after forty-six years of consecutive work. As one walks about this stupendous church, and transfers his admiration from one object of beauty and richness to another, his attention is suddenly called off from everything by a burst of musical thunder. It floods the interior like the crash of a great organ. He looks all around, and can not see what causes it. Somewhere in an elevated and hidden choir, or behind the massive gold altar-piece, are the singers. The voices are all basses. There are three or four distinct “parts,” some pitched so much higher than others that they seem relatively to be tenors. Each note—even the lowest—is clear and firm. It has the sweetness of a flute with the sonorous volume of a bassoon. The concealed performers are uttering responses to the gorgeously attired priests, whose own voices are deep and melodious, and worthy to take part in this noble choral service. I wait for half an hour, hoping that the singers will execute some long and formal piece. But they do not, and I retire, having learned for the first time of what a bass voice is capable in sacred music.

Although the Russians spend so much money to celebrate the failure of Napoleon, they really admire the audacious genius of the man, and make no secret of it. In every palace and museum I have visited at St. Petersburg and Moscow I have seen full-lengths or busts of him in marble, bronze, or oil. Some are originals, others are copies. One painting, entirely new to me, represents him with brown hair, banged. In the Treasury of the Kremlin the guide shows you two camp-beds which Napoleon left behind when he evacuated Moscow. He is always indicating to you the street by which Napoleon entered or withdrew from the city, the steps up which he walked, the doors through which he passed, the chairs in which he sat. You would think that he was a Russian hero. The people still point with a certain pride to the marks of cannon-shot and bullets, and say, “Napoleon!”

Of all the Russian sovereigns, next to Peter the Great, Catharine the Second seems to have been the most extraordinary. The tourist is continually running across her statues, her portraits, her crowns, her jewelry, her silverware. There is more of her personal property and reminders of her of one kind and another on show than of any other Romanoff, man or woman. The best things in all the palaces, the treasuries, and the sacristies were hers. If you see a string of pearls, each perfect and as large as a hazel-nut, even before you have pointed it out, your guide says, “Catharine the Second.” If there is a scepter with a particularly large diamond in the top, and the handle knobby with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, you know who wielded it without being told. To the physical courage of a man she added the delicate æsthetic tastes of a woman. Other rulers may have been more extravagant than she, but Catharine the Second understood how to make boundless wealth contribute to the production of artworks that still live to be admired. The goldsmiths, the silversmiths, the lapidaries, the sculptors, and the painters found in her their most intelligent patroness. In their turn they did their utmost to perpetuate her memory. Stone and canvas, metal and ivory agree in representing her as tall and stout, with ample brain-power, a full lower face, and a most imperial port. She was one born to command, and she would have reduced men to vassalage by her indomitable will if she had not gentler arts for managing them. In St. Petersburg stands a magnificent bronze image of the Empress, of heroic size. Seated at the base of this lofty figure, on a pedestal running all about it, are nine gentlemen, also in bronze. Their postures are sentimental or statesmanlike or warlike. The guide-book tells us they were favorites of Catharine the Second. In that capacity, perhaps, they thought they could manage her. But they were mistaken. A woman who, when in full army uniform, looked like the most gallant of generals, was not putty in the hands of any favorite. In that amazing collection of odds and ends known as the Treasury, inside the Kremlin, there is an equestrian portrait of Catharine. She bestrides her horse like a man. In front of the picture are two saddles, made for her use and presented to her by some tributary princes or neighboring potentates, who wanted to keep on good terms with her. Her horse, already burdened with her generous weight, could not have shared her admiration of the saddles, for they are heavy with all kinds of precious stones, numbered by the hundreds; and the stirrups and the shoes which the poor beast must wear in her honor are of solid silver.