The scale of everything in the Winter Palace was so vast that it is difficult to compare the Court entertainments there with those elsewhere.
Certainly the Russian ladies looked well in their uniform costumes. The cut, shape, and style of these dresses never varied, be the fashions what they might. The dress, once made, lasted the owner for her lifetime, though with advancing years it might possibly require to be readjusted to an expanding figure. They were enormously expensive to start with—anything from £300 to £1,200. There was a complete under-dress of white satin, heavily embroidered. Over this was worn a velvet dress lavishly trimmed with dark fur. This velvet dress might be of dull red, dark blue, green, or brown, according to the taste of the wearer. It had to have a long train embroidered with gold or silver flowers, or both mixed, as the owner's fancy dictated. On the head was worn the "Kakoshnik," the traditional Russian head-dress, in the form of a crescent. In the case of married women the "Kakoshnik" might be of diamonds, or any gems they fancied, or could compass; for girls the "Kakoshnik" must be of white silk. Girls, too, had to wear white, without the velvet over-dress. The usual fault of Russian faces is their undue breadth across the cheek-bones, and the white "Kakoshnik" worn by the unmarried girls seemed to me to emphasize this defect, whereas a blazing semicircle of diamonds made a most becoming setting for an older face, although at times, as in other cases, the setting might be more ornamental than the object it enshrined. Though the Russian uniforms were mostly copied from German models, the national lack of attention to detail was probably to blame for the lack of effect they produced when compared with their Prussian originals.
There was always something a little slovenly in the way in which the Russian uniforms were worn, though an exception must be made in the case of the resplendent "Chevaliers Gardes," and of the "Gardes à Cheval." The uniforms of these two crack cavalry regiments was closely copied from that of the Prussian "Gardes du Corps" and was akin to that of our own Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards; the same leather breeches and long jack-boots, and the same cuirasses; the tunics, though were white, instead of the scarlet or blue of their English prototypes. The "Chevaliers Gardes" had silvered cuirasses and helmets surmounted with the Russian eagle, whereas those of the "Gardes à Cheval" were gilt. As we know, "all that glitters is not gold," and in spite of their gilding the "Gardes à Cheval" were considered very inferior socially to their rivals. The Emperor's fiercely-moustached Circassian bodyguard struck an agreeably exotic note with their grass-green trousers and long blue kaftans, covered with rows of Persian cartridge-holders in niello of black and silver. Others of the Circassians wore coats of chain mail over their kaftans, and these kaftans were always sleeveless, showing the bright green, red, or blue silk shirtsleeves of their wearers. Another pleasant barbaric touch.
To my mind, the smartest uniforms were those of the Cossack officers; baggy green knickerbockers thrust into high boots, a hooked-and-eyed green tunic without a single button or a scrap of gold lace on it, and a plain white silk belt. No one could complain of a lack of colour at a Petrograd Palace ball. The Russian civil and Court uniforms were ingeniously hideous with their white trousers and long frock-coats covered with broad transverse bars of gold lace. The wearers of these ugly garments always looked to me like walking embodiments of what are known in commercial circles as "gilt-edged securities." As at Berlin, there were hosts of pages at these entertainments. These lads were all attired like miniature "Chevalier Gardes," in leather breeches and jack-boots, and wore gold-laced green tunics; a singularly unpractical dress, I should have thought, for a growing boy. All Russians of a certain social position were expected to send their sons to be educated at the "School for Imperial Pages," which was housed in an immense and ornate building and counted four hundred pupils. Wise parents mistrusted the education "aux pages" for their sons, knowing that, however little else they might learn there, they would be certain to acquire habits of gross extravagance; the prominence, too, into which these boys were thrust at Court functions tended to make them unduly precocious.
The smaller Court balls were known as "Les Bals des Palmiers." On these occasions, a hundred large palm trees, specially grown for the purpose at Tsarskoe Selo, were brought by road from there in huge vans. Round the palm in its tub supper tables were built, each one accommodating fifteen people. It was really an extraordinarily pretty sight seeing these rows of broad-fronted palms down the great Nicholas Hall, and the knowledge that a few feet away there was an outside temperature of 5° below zero added piquancy to the sight of these exiles from the tropics waving their green plumes so far away in the frozen North. At the "Bals des Palmiers" it was Alexander II's custom to make the round of the tables as soon as his guests were seated. The Emperor would go up to a table, the occupants of which of course all rose at his approach, say a few words to one or two of them, and then eat either a small piece of bread or a little fruit, and just put his lips to a glass of champagne, in order that his guests might say that he had eaten and drank with them. A delicate and graceful attention!
As electric light had not then been introduced into the palace, the entire building was lighted with wax candles. I cannot remember the number I was told was required on these occasions, but I think it was over one hundred thousand. The candles were all lighted with a thread of gun-cotton, as in St. Isaac's Cathedral.
The Empress appeared but very rarely. It was a matter of common knowledge that she was suffering from an incurable disease. All the rooms in which she lived were artificially impregnated with oxygen, continuously released from cylinders in which the gas had been compressed. This, though it relieved the lungs of the sufferer, proved very trying to the Empress's ladies-in-waiting, as this artificial atmosphere with its excess of oxygen after an hour or so gave them all violent headaches and attacks of giddiness.
In spite of the characteristic Russian carelessness about details, these Petrograd Palace entertainments provided a splendid glittering pageant to the eye, for the stage was so vast and the number of performers so great. There was not the same blaze of diamonds as in London, but I should say that the individual jewels were far finer. A stone must be very perfect to satisfy the critical Russian eye, and, true to their Oriental blood, the ladies preferred unfaceted rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Occasional Emirs from Central Asia served, as do the Indian princes at Buckingham Palace, as a reminder that Russia's responsibilities, like those of Great Britain, did not cease with her European frontiers.
Once a year the diplomats had much the best of the situation. This was at the blessing of the waters of the Neva—"the Jordan," as Russians called it—on January 6, old style, or January 18, according to our reckoning. We saw the ceremonies through the double windows of the great steam-heated Nicholas Hall, whereas the Emperor and all the Grand Dukes had to stand bareheaded in the snow outside. A great hole was cut in the ice of the Neva, with a temporary chapel erected over it. At the conclusion of the religious service, the Metropolitan of Petrograd solemnly blessed the waters of the river, and dipped a great golden cross into them.