During the winter months Yeniseisk is well provided with amusement. There is a capital club-house, which would pass muster anywhere, to which is attached a theatre and a ball-room, with a delightful “floor,” and performances or dances take place two or three times a week. I shall long remember my first evening at Yeniseisk, when I was taken to see the club; there was a dance on, and in the large, brilliantly lighted rooms, with an excellent band playing a familiar waltz, it was hard to believe one’s self nearly two thousand miles from a railroad, and in the very heart of Asia. Society in Yeniseisk, of course, consists principally of the wealthy mine-owners, or merchants, and their families, and the Government officials and theirs. These are sufficient pretty well to fill the club on big dance nights. Exiles, who naturally form an important contingent, are only allowed to enter subject to certain restrictions. For instance, the criminal ones are only permitted to come to the performances in the theatre, and are obliged to leave immediately after; while the political ones are permitted to remain after the performance, but on no account to dance. I learnt all this on inquiry, for to a casual observer nothing is noticeable of these arrangements, as the exiles fall in with them without demur, and everything is conducted in a manner which certainly reflects great credit on the management, and could not be excelled in any European club of the kind. Still, in spite of all this, I could not help feeling that Yeniseisk is a very democratic place. Everybody somehow seems to think himself as good as anybody else, and at a performance, during the entr’acte, when every one walks about, you become quite tired of the number of people who expect you to shake hands with them, from the rich mine-owner to the discharged convicted forger, in Siberia “for life.”
One of these latter gentlemen, a well-dressed man (who, I afterwards learnt, had not only committed a big forgery, but also several minor felonies, for which he would probably have been “doing” fifteen years in England), introduced himself to me one day, and in very good French, but with no end of “swagger,” asked me how I liked Yeniseisk, and on my replying that I liked it very much and thought it very pretty, he simply stared at me with amazement for a moment, and then said, “You have evidently not yet seen Moscow or St. Petersburg, or you would not think so. All I can say is, that it is a positive disgrace to send a gentleman like me to such a hole!” I had the greatest difficulty in preventing myself from telling him that he might consider himself lucky he had not committed the same offences in England, or he would probably be in a very different sort of “hole,” as he called it.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CITY OF YENISEISK—continued.
A visit to the prison—First impressions of the Siberian system.
A PRISON BEAUTY.
I was naturally anxious to see something of the prison system here. On hearing of my desire, the governor of Yeniseisk, with whom I had got on very friendly terms, courteously offered not only to let me accompany him on one of his weekly inspections of the prison, but also to let me make some sketches of what I should see, if I so desired. I naturally jumped at the offer, and on the appointed day I was punctual to the appointment, and we drove together in his sledge. It was an intensely cold day; in fact, the coldest I had yet experienced, there being no less than 28 deg. of frost (Réaumur), so one simply had to bury one’s self in one’s furs, and avoid talking as much as possible.
THE GOVERNOR VISITING THE MEN’S PRISON, YENISEISK.