Whether it be Nero constructing his hydraulic clocks, or Prince Rupert experimenting in his laboratory, or Philip of Burgundy contriving houses full of diableries, such as hidden trap-doors, undermined floors, and the like, we find the same habit illustrated among rulers of every age and country. When it was suggested to Dr. Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-formed notion. “Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The King of Prussia, the only great king at present”—this was the Great Frederick—“is very social; Charles the Second, the last King of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henries and Edwards were all social.”
And this is specially the case with the amusements of royalty, which have oftentimes been of the most rough and arduous nature. But, as Lord Brougham once remarked, “Blessed is the man who has a hobby-horse;” and Cæsar wrote, “Under my tent, in the fiercest struggles of war, I have always found time to think of many other things”—a habit which has been recognised as a secret of strength.
A hobby which was destined to have an unforeseen result was that of Peter the Great for boat-building, which manifested itself when he was sixteen years of age, and was accidental. When wandering one day about one of his country estates near the village of Ismaílovo with his companion Timmermann, he espied an old storehouse, on ransacking which with boyish curiosity his eye fell on a boat that lay in a corner, turned bottom upward.
“What is that?” he inquired.
“That is an English boat,” replied Timmermann; “and if you had sails in it, it would go not only with the wind, but against the wind.”
But the boat was too rotten for use, and some time necessarily had to elapse before the little craft was put in working order with a mast and sails. The difficulty, however, was soon overcome by Carsten Brandt, who some years previously had been brought from Holland by the Tsar Alexis for the purpose of constructing vessels on the Caspian Sea, and under his superintendence it was launched on the river Yaúza; “And mighty pleasant it was to me,” writes Peter in the preface to the “Maritime Regulations,” where he describes the beginning of the Russian navy. Henceforth his mind was intent upon boat-building and navigation, and in the year 1691 he went to Lake Plestcheief, where he remained for a fortnight in a small palace built for him on the shore of the lake. “It was,” according to Eugene Schuyler,[56] “a small, one-storey wooden house, with windows of mica, engraved with different ornaments, the doors covered for warmth with white felt;” and here he occupied himself with building a ship, and worked so zealously that he was “unwilling to return to Moscow for the reception of the Persian ambassador, and it was necessary for Leo Naŕyshkin and Prince Boris Golitsyn to go expressly to Pereyaslávl to show him the importance of returning for the reception, in order not to offend the Shah.” The boat which he found at Ismaílovo has ever since borne the name of the “Grandsire of the Russian Fleet,” and is preserved with the greatest care in a small brick building near the cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul within the fortress of St. Petersburg. In the year 1870, on the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, it was one of the chief objects of interest in the great parade of St. Petersburg; and in 1872 it was conveyed with much pomp and ceremony to Moscow, where for a time it formed a part of the Polytechnic Exposition.
But, as it has been observed, “perhaps one of the most interesting and extraordinary circumstances in the history of mankind is that the despotic monarch of a mighty dominion should descend from his throne and travel as a private person in the train of his own ambassador sent to Holland. On arriving there, he first took up his abode in the Admiralty at Amsterdam, and afterwards enrolled himself among the ship-carpenters, and went to the village of Sardam, where he wrought as a common carpenter and blacksmith with unusual assiduity, under the name of Master Peter. He was clad and fed as his fellow-workmen, for he would not allow of vain distinctions.”
In the following year he passed over to England, where, in the space of four months, he completed his knowledge of shipbuilding. After receiving every mark of respect from William III., he left this country accompanied by several English shipbuilders and carpenters, whom he treated with great liberality in his naval dockyards, and subsequently he is said to have written several essays on naval matters.
John Evelyn, in his Diary, alludes to the Emperor’s visit, and under January 1698 makes this entry: “The Czar of Muscovy being come to England, and having a mind to see the building of ships, hired my house at Say’s Court, and made it his Court and palace, new furnished for him by the King.”
And while the Emperor was in his house one of Evelyn’s servants thus wrote to him: “There is a house full of people, and right nasty. The Czar lies next your library and dines in the parlour next your study. He dines at ten o’clock and six at night, is very seldom at home a whole day, very often in the King’s yard or by water, dressed in several dresses. The King is expected here this day; the best parlour is pretty clean for him to be entertained in. The King pays for all he has.”