Lord Dufferin, in common with most of the members of the Embassy, was filled with an intense desire to kill a bear. These animals, of course, hibernate, and certain peasants made a regular livelihood by discovering bears' lairs (the Russian term, a corruption from the German, is "bear-loge") and then coming to Petrograd and selling the beast at so much per "pood" of forty Russian pounds. The finder undertook to provide sledges and beaters for the sum agreed upon, but nothing was to be paid unless a shot at the bear was obtained. These expeditions involved a considerable amount of discomfort. There was invariably a long drive of from forty to eighty miles to be made in rough country sledges from the nearest available railway station; the accommodation in a peasant's house would consist of the bare floor with some hay laid on it, and every scrap of food, including bread, butter, tea, and sugar, would have to be carried from Petrograd, as European stomachs could not assimilate the sour, wet heavy black bread the peasants eat, and their brick-tea, which contained bullocks' blood, was undrinkable to those unaccustomed to it. It usually fell to my lot, as I spoke the language, to go on ahead to the particular village to which we were bound, and there to make the best arrangements possible for Lord and Lady Dufferin's comfort. My instructions were always to endeavour to get a room in the latest house built, as this was likely to be less infested with vermin than the others. After a four or five hours' run from Petrograd by train, one would find the vendor of the bear waiting at the station with a country sledge. These sledges were merely a few poles tied together, mounted on iron-shod wooden runners, and filled with hay. The sledges were so long that it was possible to lie at full length in them. The rifles, baggage, and food being packed under the hay, one lay down at full length, clad in long felt boots and heavy furs, an air-cushion under one's head, and a Persian "bashilik," or hood of fine camel's hair, drawn over it to prevent ears or nose from being frostbitten. Tucked into a thick fur rug, one composed oneself for an all-night drive through the endless forests. The two drivers sat on a plank in front, and one or other of them was continually dropping off to sleep, and tumbling backwards on to the occupants of the sledge. It was not a very comfortable experience, and sleep was very fickle to woo. In the first place, the sledge-tracks through the forest were very rough indeed, and the jolting was incessant; in the second place, should the actual driver go to sleep as well as his relieving colleague, the sledge would bump against the tree-trunks and overturn, and baggage, rifles and occupants would find themselves struggling in the deep snow. I always tied my baggage together with strings, so as to avoid losing anything in these upsets, but even then it took a considerable time retrieving the impedimenta from the deep snowdrifts.
It always gave me pleasure watching the black conical points of the fir trees outlined against the pale burnished steel of the sky, and in the intense cold the stars blazed like diamonds out of the clear grey vault above. The biting cold burnt like a hot iron against the cheeks, until prudence, and a regard for the preservation of one's ears, dictated the pulling of the "bashilik" over one's face again. The intense stillness, and the absolute silence, for there are no sleigh-bells in Northern Russia, except in the imagination of novelists, had some subtle attraction for me. The silence was occasionally—very occasionally only—broken by an ominous, long-drawn howl; then a spectral swift-trotting outline would appear, keeping pace easily with the sledge, but half-hidden amongst the tree-trunks. In that case the smooth-bore gun and the buckshot cartridges were quickly disinterred from the hay, and the driver urged his horses into a furious gallop. There was no need to use the whip; the horses knew. Everyone would give a sigh of relief as the silent grey swift-moving spectral figure, with its fox-like lope, vanished after a shot or two had been fired at it. The drivers would take off their caps and cross themselves, muttering "Thanks be to God! Oh! those cursed wolves!" and the horses slowed down of their own accord into an easy amble. There were compensations for a sleepless night in the beauty of the pictures in strong black and white, or in shadowy half-tones of grey which the endless forest displayed at every turn. When the earth is wrapped in its snow-mantle, it is never dark, and the gleams of light from the white carpet down the long-drawn aisles of the dark firs were like the pillared shadows of a great cathedral when the dusk is filling it with mystery and a vague sense of immense size.
All villages that I have seen in Northern Russia are alike, and when you have seen one peasant's house you have seen all.
The village consists of one long street, and in the winter the kindly snow covers much of its unspeakable untidiness. The "isbas," or wooden houses, are all of the same pattern; they are solidly built of rough logs, the projecting ends firmly morticed into each other. Their gable ends all front the street, each with two windows, and every "isba" has its courtyard, where the door is situated. There are no gardens, or attempts at gardens, and the houses are one and all roofed with grey shingles. Each house is raised some six feet from the ground, and they are all water-tight, and most of them air-tight as well. The houses are never painted, and their weathered logs stand out silver-grey against the white background. A good deal of imagination is shown in the fret-saw carving of the barg-boards, which are either ornamented in conventional patterns, or have roughly outlined grotesque animals clambering up their angles; very often too there are fretsaw ornaments round the window-frames as well. Prominent on the gate of every "isba" is the painting, in black on a white ground, of the particular implement each occupant is bound to supply in case of a fire, that dire and relentless foe to Russian wooden-built villages. On some houses a ladder will be depicted; on others an axe or a pail. The interior arrangement of every "isba" I have ever seen is also identical. They always consist of two fair-sized rooms; the "hot room," which the family inhabit in winter, facing the street; the "cold room," used only in summertime, looking into the courtyard. These houses are not uncomfortable, though, a Russian peasant's wants being but few, they are not overburdened with furniture. The disposition of the "hot room" is unvarying. Supposing it facing due south, the door will be in the north-west corner. The north-east corner is occupied by an immense brick stove, filling up one-eighth of the floor-space. These stoves are about five feet high, and their tops are covered with loose sheepskins. Here the entire family sleep in the stifling heat, their resting-place being shared with thousands of voracious, crawling, uninvited guests. In the south-east corner is the ikon shelf, where the family ikons are ranged in line, with a red lamp burning before them. There will be a table and benches in another corner, and a rough dresser, with a samovar, and a collection of those wooden bowls and receptacles, lacquered in scarlet, black, and gold, which Russian peasants make so beautifully; and that is all. The temperature of the "hot room" is overpowering, and the atmosphere fetid beyond the power of description. Every male, on entering takes off his cap and makes a bow before the ikons. I always conformed to this custom, for there is no use in gratuitously wounding people's religious susceptibilities. I invariably slept in the "cold room," for its temperature being probably five or six degrees below freezing point, it was free from vermin, and the atmosphere was purer. The master of the house laid a few armfuls of hay on the floor, and his wife would produce one of those towels Russian women embroider so skilfully in red and blue, and lay it down for the cheek to rest against. I slept in my clothes, with long felt boots on, and my furs thrown over me, and I could sleep there as well as in any bed.
The Russian peasant's idea as to the relation of Holy Russia to the rest of the world is curious. It is rather the point of view of the Chinaman, who thinks that beyond the confines of the "Middle Kingdom" there is only outer barbarism. Everything to the west of Russia is known as "Germania," an intelligible mistake enough when it is remembered that Germany marks Russia's Western frontier. "Slavs" (akin, I think, to "Slova," "a word") are the only people who can talk; "Germania" is inhabited by deaf and dumb people ("nyémski") who can only make inarticulate noises. On one of my shooting expeditions, I stopped for an hour at a tea-house to change horses and to get warmed up. The proprietor told me that his son was very much excited at hearing that there was a "deaf and dumb man" in the house, as he had never seen one. Would I speak to the young man. who was then putting on his Sunday clothes on the chance of the interview being granted?
In due course the son appeared; a handsome youth in glorified peasant's costume. The first outward sign of a Russian peasant's rise in the social scale is that he tucks his shirt into his trousers, instead of wearing it outside; the second stage is marked by his wearing his trousers over his boots, instead of thrusting the trousers into the boots. This young fellow had not reached this point of evolution, and wore his shirt outside, but it was a dark-blue silk shirt, secured by a girdle of rainbow-coloured Persian silk. He still wore his long boots outside too, but they had scarlet morocco tops, and the legs of them were elaborately embroidered with gold wire. In modern parlance, this gay young spark was a terrific village "nut." Never have I met a youth of such insatiable curiosity, or one so crassly and densely ignorant. He was one perpetual note of interrogation. "Were there roads and villages in Germania?" To the best of my belief there were. "There were no towns though as large as Petrograd." I rather fancied the contrary, and instanced a flourishing little community of some five million souls, situated on an island, with which I was very well acquainted.
The youth eyed me with deep suspicion. "Were there railways in Germania?" Only about a hundred times the mileage of the Russian railways. "There was no electric light though, because Jablochkoff, a Russian, had invented that." (I found this a fixed idea with all Russian peasants.) I had a vague impression of having seen one or two arc lights feebly glimmering in the streets of the benighted cities of Germania. "Could people read and write there, and could they really talk? It was easy to see that I had learned to talk since I had been in Russia." I showed him a copy of the London Times. "These were not real letters. Could anyone read these meaningless signs," and so on ad infinitum. I am persuaded that when I left that youth he was convinced that I was the nearest relative to Ananias that he had ever met.
No matter which hour of the twenty-four it might happen to be, ten minutes after my arrival in any of these remote villages the entire population assembled to gaze at the "nyemetz," the deaf and dumb man from remote "Germania," who had arrived in their midst. They crowded into the "hot room," men, women, and children, and gaped on the mysterious stranger from another world, who sat there drinking tea, as we should gaze on a visitor from Mars. I always carried with me on those occasions a small collapsible india-rubber bath and a rubber folding basin. On my first expedition, after my arrival in the village, I procured a bucket of hot water from the mistress of the house, carried it to the "cold room," and, having removed all my garments, proceeded to take a bath. Like wildfire the news spread through the village that the "deaf and dumb" man was washing himself, and they all flocked in to look. I succeeded in "shooing" away the first arrivals, but they returned with reinforcements, until half the population, men, women, and children, were standing in serried rows in my room, following my every movement with breathless interest. I have never suffered from agoraphobia, so I proceeded cheerfully with my ablutions. "Look at him! He is soaping himself!" would be murmured. "How dirty deaf and dumb people must be to want such a lot of washing!" "Why does he rub his teeth with little brushes?" These and similar observations fell from the eager crowd, only broken occasionally by a piercing yell from a child, as she wailed plaintively the Russian equivalent of "Mummy! Sonia not like ugly man!" It was distinctly an embarrassing situation, and only once in my life have I been placed in a more awkward position.
That was at Bahia, in Brazil, when I was at the Rio de Janeiro Legation. I went to call on the British Consul's wife there, and had to walk half a mile from the tram, through the gorgeous tropical vegetation of the charming suburb of Vittoria, amongst villas faced with cool-looking blue and white tiles; the pretty "azulejos" which the Portuguese adopted from the Moors. Oddly enough, a tram and a tramcar are always called "a Bond" in Brazil. The first tram-lines were built out of bonds guaranteed by the State. The people took this to mean the tram itself; so "Bond" it is, and "Bond" it will remain. Being the height of a sweltering Brazilian summer, I was clad in white from head to foot. Suddenly, as happens in the tropics, without any warning whatever, the heavens opened, and solid sheets of water fell on the earth. I reached the Consul's house with my clean white linen soaked through, and most woefully bedraggled. The West Indian butler (an old acquaintance) who opened the door informed me that the ladies were out. After a glance at my extraordinary disreputable garments, he added, "You gib me dem clothes, sar, I hab dem all cleaned and ironed in ten minutes, before de ladies come back." On the assurances of this swarthy servitor that he and I were the only souls in the house, I divested myself of every stitch of clothing, and going into the drawing-room, sat down to read a book in precisely the same attire as Adam adopted in the earlier days of his married life. Time went by, and my clothes did not reappear; I should have known that to a Jamaican coloured man measures of time are very elastic. Suddenly I heard voices, and, to my horror, I saw our Consul's wife approaching through the garden with her two daughters and some other ladies.