The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

At the station-house we were reminded at once that we were in a strange land, by the peculiar costume of the porters and drivers, who were as numerous and noisy as at home. They wore low-crown hats, with bevelled rims; long coats reaching to the feet, and a belt about their loins. They were as clamorous for hire as in more civilized countries, but they pulled and hauled less. It was easy to see that the hand of government was upon this most ungovernable class of men. We found the same kind of omnibuses that run in our own streets, and on the one inscribed with the name of the hotel to which we were bound we took our seats, and were soon riding over the roughest paved streets that ever disgraced a city. For a long series of years St. Petersburg was unpaved. At length an imperial decree was issued that every vehicle coming into the city should bring a certain number of stones to be left for paving. If each carriage had dumped its load, without regard to size or order, just where it happened, the result would have been about the same as we found and felt the state of the streets to be, as we were bounced and tumbled on our way to the Hôtel de France.

SCENE AT RAILWAY STATION.

The manager of the hotel bade us welcome in good English. We were grimed with the dust of thirty hours’ steady railroad travel, and the luxury of a bath was more enjoyable than bed or board. The Russian is a very different bath from the Turkish, where to the preliminaries of warm air to set the system into a perspiration is added the thorough and plentiful scrubbing with hot water, poured on mercilessly. The Russian is the vapor bath only, and its effect is to open all the pores of the skin, to empty them completely as the streams of perspiration gush from every little mouth, and to incite a pleasurable languor, when all sense of weariness, soreness, or stiffness is gradually steamed away. The Russian dinner that followed was of the best: soup, fish, cutlet, roast beef, partridges, vegetables, and varied dessert. Wines or not, as you choose to order.

To see a city whose language is not one of your accomplishments, you must have a guide, a commissionaire, a valet de place. Now we knew precious little of the Russ. We had picked up a little Polish—mark, I do not say polish—at Warsaw, and had startled the natives by sudden outbreaks in what we supposed to be perfectly proper language, but which only served to awaken their pity or make them laugh; but the Russian is another thing, and not expecting to spend a winter here, nor to study the literature of the country, we had given no time to the language. We must have some one to be our mouth to the people, somebody who could answer a thousand questions out of his own stores of information, or serve as our interpreter when we attempted to get it out of others.

In the city of St. Petersburg resides an old Englishman whose name is Russel. He has an understanding with the hotel men that whenever a guide is wanted by travellers, he is to be sent for, and at our intimation he made his appearance, and very respectfully offered his services to make us familiar with the lions of the town. Mr. Russel is a venerable man in years, having completed his threescore and ten some time since. Half a century of these years he has dwelt in this capital of the Russian empire, and toiled in this interesting service of expounding its wonders to the visitors from other countries. Mr. Russel has become so familiar with the objects of interest in his adopted city, that he imagines his strangers to be equally familiar with them, and in no need of being enlightened. He is so far gone in the loss of his faculties, if he ever had any great quantity to lose, that a question must be proposed to him often and in many forms, before he comprehends it, and when he answers, you are not sure that he understood you, or that he knows any thing about the matter. He never speaks except when he is spoken to, unless to tell you something you knew before, or that was not worth knowing. He would pass the most important and interesting buildings or monuments or historic places in the city, and not mention them, unless you asked him,—“What’s that?” Yet he was very English. He dropped the H invariably. He exaspirated his vowels most unmercifully. Pointing to the tombs of the kings and royal family, he said: “That’s the hare to the throne; that’s his haunt, and there’s his huncle.” In a picture-gallery we came to Danae, and he was kind enough to say, “That’s a woman, I believe,” and there was not much room for doubt on the subject; and in a group of mythological sculpture he remarked for our information, “That’s Jupiter,—these is all gods.”

This was the intelligent man who was to make us acquainted with the city of St. Petersburg. If you are to be told only what he could tell me, it would not be worth while to read any further. But we have eyes and ears of our own, and already the barbaric splendor of this northern capital is breaking upon us. You shall have our first impressions and our last, for we have made two visits here, and have become familiar with the city, if not in love with it. It is not a city to go into raptures over. Perhaps it will become beautiful one day. But nothing in it is finished. Streets with palaces on them are still disfigured with insignificant and miserable dwellings. Palaces are not completed. Wealth has been lavished, but nothing is done. It resembles our own capital in this, that its public buildings are far apart, and the city is not half built up.

In the year 1703, Peter the Great began to build a city, to be called after his own name. He selected a miserable site on the banks of the Neva, and here he gathered a host of Russians, Tartars, Kalmucks, and Fins, and set them at this stupendous work. We expect to grow as the people want houses to live in. Peter built a city, and then looked for people to come and find it. The little cottage that he built for himself on the shore is still standing where he placed it, and the tools with which he worked, with his own industrious and skilful hands. For several successive years, 40,000 men were annually raised by draft, as for an army, to come from distant parts of the empire and build. The nobility of Russia came and caused residences to be reared for them, when they saw that Moscow was no longer to be the capital. Peter died, and Catharine I. did not push on the work with energy. Her successor, Peter II., loved Moscow more, and died there. Anne, the empress, adopted Petersburg as her residence, and it flourished under her reign. Catharine strove hard to defend it from the inroads of the river, but it lies so low that no art can avert inundations. It lies in the midst of waters, a vast morass. Canals easily traverse its bosom. Bridges and islands and quays are part of the streets and squares of the city. The houses are too many for the inhabitants. The thoroughfares are never thronged. You may walk long streets and scarcely meet a person. Half a million is the number of its inhabitants, but there is room for many more.

The contrasts are more sudden and striking than in other capitals. The rich are very rich; the poor are very poor. Society is rigid in its laws. The nobles have no sympathies with the serf, though a serf no longer. Caste is stronger in Russia than in England.

But I am impatient to be out in the town, sight-seeing. It is a very hot day, and I asked Russel if they often had such hot weather in June. “Well,” he said, “sometimes it is ’ot as this, and sometimes not so ’ot: it depends very much on the weather;” and with this profound observation he led the way into the city.