CHAPTER IV
The Winter Palace—Its interior—Alexander II—A Russian Court Ball—The "Bals des Palmiers"—The Empress—The blessing of the Neva—Some curiosities of the Winter Palace—The great Orloff diamond—My friend the Lady-in-Waiting—Sugared Compensations—The attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880—Some unexpected finds in the Palace—A most hilarious funeral—Sporting expeditions—Night drives through the forest in mid-winter—Wolves—A typical Russian village—A peasant's house—"Deaf and dumb people"—The inquisitive peasant youth—Curiosity about strangers—An embarrassing situation—A still more awkward one—Food difficulties—A bear hunt—My first bear—Alcoholic consequences—My liking for the Russian peasant—The beneficent india-rubber Ikon—Two curious sporting incidents—Village habits—The great gulf fixed between Russian nobility and peasants.
The Winter Palace drags its lengthy, uninteresting façade for some five hundred feet along the quays of the Neva. It presents a mere wearisome iteration of the same architectural features repeated again and again, and any effect it might produce is marred by the hideous shade of that crude red, called by the Russians "raspberry colour," with which it is daubed, and for which they have so misplaced an affection.
The interior of the Winter Palace was burned out in 1837, and only a few of the original State rooms survive. These surviving rooms are the only ones of any artistic interest, as the other innumerable and stupendous halls were all reconstructed during the "period of bad taste," and bear ample witness to that fact in every detail of their ornamentation.
The Ambassadors' staircase, part of the original building, is very dignified and imposing with its groups of statuary, painted ceiling, and lavish decoration, as is Peter the Great's Throne room, with jasper columns, and walls hung with red velvet worked in gold with great Russian two-headed eagles. All the tables, chairs, and chandeliers in this room were of solid silver.
St. George's Hall, another of the old rooms, I thought splendid, with its pure white marble walls and columns and rich adornments of gilt bronze, and there was also an agreeably barbaric hall with entirely gilt columns, many banners, and gigantic effigies of ancient Russian warriors. All these rooms were full of collections of the gold and silver-gilt trays on which the symbolical "bread and salt" had been offered to different Emperors in the various towns of their dominions.
The fifty or so other modern rooms were only remarkable for their immense size, the Nicholas Hall, for instance, being 200 feet long and 65 feet wide, though the so-called "Golden Hall" positively dazzled one with its acre or so of gilding. It would have been a happy idea for the Emperor to assemble all the leading financiers of Europe to dine together in the "Golden Hall." The sight of so much of the metal which they had spent their whole lives in amassing would have gratified the financiers, and would probably have stimulated them to fresh exertions.
The Emperor Alexander II always received the diplomats in Peter the Great's Throne room, seated on Peter's throne. He was a wonderfully handsome man even in his old age, with a most commanding manner, and an air of freezing hauteur. When addressing junior members of the Diplomatic Body there was something in his voice and a look in his eye reminiscent of the Great Mogul addressing an earthworm.
I have only seen three Sovereigns who looked their parts quite unmistakably: Alexander II of Russia, William I of Germany, and Queen Victoria. In Queen Victoria's case it was the more remarkable, as she was very short. Yet this little old lady in her plain dress, had the most inimitable dignity, and no one could have mistaken her for anything but a Queen. I remember Queen Victoria attending a concert at the Albert Hall in 1887, two months before the Jubilee celebrations. The vast building was packed to the roof, and the Queen received a tremendous ovation. No one who saw it can ever forget how the little old lady advanced to the front of her box and made two very low sweeping curtsies to the right and to the left of her with incomparable dignity and grace, as she smiled through her tears on the audience in acknowledgment of the thunders of applause that greeted her. Queen Victoria was always moved to tears when she received an unusually cordial ovation from her people, for they loved her, and she loved them.