During the sunny evenings and the never-ending twilights of mid-summer, all St. Petersburg pours itself upon these islands. A league-long wall of dust rises from the carriages and droschkies in the main highway; and the branching Neva-arms are crowded with skiffs and diminutive steamers bound for pleasure-gardens where gypsies sing and Tyrolese yodel and jugglers toss their knives and balls, and private rooms may be had for gambling and other cryptic diversions. Although with shortened days and cool evenings the tide suddenly took a reflux and the Nevskoi became a suggestion of Broadway, (which, of all individual streets, it most nearly resembles,) we found an indescribable charm in the solitude of the fading groves and the waves whose lamenting murmur foretold their speedy imprisonment. We had the whole superb drive to ourselves. It is true that Ivan, upon the box, lifted his brows in amazement, and sighed that his jaunty cap of green velvet should be wasted upon the desert air, whenever I said, "Na Ostrowa," but he was too genuine a Russian to utter a word of remonstrance.
Thus, day by day, unfashionable, but highly satisfied, we repeated the lonely drive, until the last day came, as it always will. I don't think I shall ever forget it. It was the first day of November. For a fortnight the temperature had been a little below the freezing-point, and the leaves of the alder-thickets, frozen suddenly and preserved as in a great out-door refrigerator, maintained their green. A pale-blue mist rose from the Gulf and hung over the islands, the low sun showing an orange disk, which touched the shores with the loveliest color, but gave no warmth to the windless air. The parks and gardens were wholly deserted, and came and went, on either side, phantom-like in their soft, gray, faded tints. Under every bridge flashed and foamed the clear beryl-green waters. And nobody in St. Petersburg, except ourselves, saw this last and sunniest flicker of the dying season!
The very next day was cold and dark, and so the weather remained, with brief interruptions, for months. On the evening of the 6th, as we drove over the Nikolai Bridge to dine with a friend on Vassili Ostrow, we noticed fragments of ice floating down the Neva. Looking up the stream, we were struck by the fact that the remaining bridges had been detached from the St. Petersburg side, floated over, and anchored along the opposite shore. This seemed a needless precaution, for the pieces of drift-ice were hardly large enough to have crushed a skiff. How surprised were we, then, on returning home, four hours later, to find the noble river gone, not a green wave to be seen, and, as far as the eye could reach, a solid floor of ice, over which people were already crossing to and fro!
Winter, having thus suddenly taken possession of the world, lost no time in setting up the signs of his rule. The leaves, whether green or brown, disappeared at one swoop; snow-gusts obscured the little remaining sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings; oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the physiognomy of the capital was completely changed. All its life and stir withdrew from the extremities and gathered into a few central thoroughfares, as if huddling together for mutual warmth and encouragement in the cold air and under the gloomy sky.
For darkness, rather than cold, is the characteristic of the St. Petersburg winter. The temperature, which at Montreal or St. Paul would not be thought remarkably low, seems to be more severely felt here, owing to the absence of pure daylight. Although both Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland are frozen, the air always retains a damp, raw, penetrating quality, and the snow is more frequently sticky and clammy than dry and crystalline. Few, indeed, are the days which are not cheerless and depressing. In December, when the sky is overcast for weeks together, the sun, rising after nine o'clock, and sliding along just above the horizon, enables you to dispense with lamplight somewhere between ten and eleven; but by two in the afternoon you must call for lights again. Even when a clear day comes, the yellow, level sunshine is a combination of sunrise and sunset, and neither tempers the air nor mitigates the general expression of gloom, almost of despair, upon the face of Nature.
The preparations for the season, of course, have been made long before. In most houses the double windows are allowed to remain through the summer, but they must be carefully examined, the layer of cotton between them, at the bottom, replenished, a small vessel of salt added to absorb the moisture and prevent it from freezing on the panes, and strips of paper pasted over every possible crack. The outer doors are covered with wadded leather, overlapping the frames on all sides. The habitations being thus almost hermetically sealed, they are easily warmed by the huge porcelain stoves, which retain warmth so tenaciously that one fire per day is sufficient for the most sensitive constitutions. In my own room, I found that one armful of birch-wood reduced to coal, every alternate morning, created a steady temperature of 64°. Although the rooms are always spacious, and arranged in suites of from three to a dozen, according to the extent and splendor of the residence, the atmosphere soon becomes close and characterized by an unpleasant odor, suggesting its diminished vitality; for which reason pastilles are burned, or eau de Cologne reduced to vapor in a heated censer, whenever visits are anticipated. It was a question with me, whether or not the advantage of a thoroughly equable temperature was counterbalanced by the lack of circulation. The physical depression we all felt seemed to result chiefly from the absence of daylight.
One winter picture remains clearly outlined upon my memory. In the beginning of December we happened once to drive across the Admiralty Square in the early evening twilight,—three o'clock in the afternoon. The temperature was about 10° below zero, the sky a low roof of moveless clouds, which seemed to be frozen in their places. The pillars of St. Isaac's Cathedral—splendid monoliths of granite, sixty feet high—had precipitated the moisture of the air, and stood, silvered with rime from base to capital. The Column of Alexander, the bronze statue of Peter, with his horse poised in air on the edge of the rock, and the trees on the long esplanade in front of the Admiralty, were all similarly coated, every twig rising as rigid as iron in the dark air. Only the huge golden hemisphere of the Cathedral dome, and the tall, pointed golden spire of the Admiralty, rose above the gloom, and half shone with a muffled, sullen glare. A few people, swaddled from head to foot, passed rapidly to and fro, or a droschky, drawn by a frosted horse, sped away to the entrance of the Nevskoi Prospekt. Even these appeared rather like wintry phantoms than creatures filled with warm blood and breathing the breath of life. The vast spaces of the capital, the magnitude of its principal edifices, and the display of gold and colors strengthened the general aspect of unreality, by introducing so many inharmonious elements into the picture. A bleak moor, with the light of a single cottage-window shining across it, would have been less cold, dead, and desolate.
The temperature, I may here mention, was never very severe. There were three days when the mercury fluctuated between 15° and 20° below zero, five days when it reached 10° below, and perhaps twenty when it fell to zero, or a degree or two on either side. The mean of the five winter months was certainly not lower than +12°. Quite as much rain fell as snow. After two or three days of sharp cold, there was almost invariably a day of rain or fog, and for many weeks walking was so difficult that we were obliged to give up all out-door exercise except skating or sliding. The streets were either coated with glassy ice or they were a foot deep in slush. There was more and better sleighing in the vicinity of Boston last winter than in St. Petersburg during the winter of 1862-3. In our trips to the Observatory of Pulkova, twelve miles distant, we were frequently obliged to leave the highway and put our sled-runners upon the frosted grass of the meadows. The rapid and continual changes of temperature were more trying than any amount of steady cold. Grippe became prevalent, and therefore fashionable, and all the endemic diseases of St. Petersburg showed themselves in force. The city, it is well known, is built upon piles, and most of the inhabitants suffer from them. Children look pale and wilted, in the absence of the sun, and special care must be taken of those under five years of age. Some little relatives of mine, living in the country, had their daily tumble in the snow, and thus kept ruddy; but in the city this is not possible, and we had many anxious days before the long darkness was over.
As soon as snow had fallen and freezing weather set in, the rough, broken ice of the Neva was flooded in various places for skating-ponds, and the work of erecting ice-hills commenced. There were speedily a number of the latter in full play, in the various suburbs,—a space of level ground, at least a furlong in length, being necessary. They are supported by subscription, and I had paid ten rubles for permission to use a very fine one on the farther island, when an obliging card of admission came for the gardens of the Taurida Palace, where the younger members of the Imperial family skate and slide. My initiation, however, took place at the first-named locality, whither we were conducted by an old American resident of St. Petersburg.
The construction of these ice-hills is very simple. They are rude towers of timber, twenty to thirty feet in height, the summit of which is reached by a staircase at the back, while in front descends a steep concave of planking upon which water is poured until it is covered with a six-inch coating of solid ice. Raised planks at the side keep the sled in its place until it reaches the foot, where it enters upon an icy plain two to four hundred yards in length, (in proportion to the height of the hill,) at the extremity of which rises a similar hill, facing towards the first, but a little on one side, so that the sleds from the opposite ends may pass without collision.