town hall and the Foreign Archives. In various parts of the town, even on the south side in the Kaloujskaya, will be found modern mansions, that is, erected or rebuilt since the great fire, in the style of the Moscow of the golden age. One of the best is the Dom Chukina near the Tverskaya Triumfalnia—a monument no visitor can escape seeing. But there is no long street without one or more buildings which attract the attention of the stranger by some idiosyncracy of form or colour. No matter in which direction one may go—in the bustling Kitai-Gorod, the quiet and aristocratic Ostogenka, or the bourgeois Zamoskvoretski—soon will be seen some interesting fane reaching above the buildings that flank the street, and a portal distinguished by its cross and ikon indicate the entrance to the sacred enclosure of some monastery, where, amidst leafy foliage and bright verdure, is quiet and seclusion like that of the oasis of the Temple amidst the dreary turmoil of London’s vastness. Take that very ordinary street, the Nikitskaya for example; it is wholly common place, wedged in between districts devoted to ordinary commerce, and the chilling respectability of moderate affluence, and leads nowhere in particular. Yet even its name is interesting; did it obtain it from the worthy founder of the Romanof dynasty? or from the religious fanatic who argued points of ritual with Sophia and the Patriarch? or from St Nikita, the saint who shut up Satan in a jar and released him only on stipulated and agreed conditions?
It starts from the Alexander Gardens, the old western bank of the stream Neglinnaia that once strengthened the defences of the Kremlin; passes the entrance to the riding school, one of the great things Moscow has produced since the fire of 1812. The length of this building is 360 feet, breadth 168, and its wooden roof, unsupported by perpendicular stanchions, was considered a wonder of the world, when Alexander first manœuvered 2000 infantry, and 1000 cavalry beneath it. Then come the Universities, the old and the new, one on each hand; beyond, on the left, is the Nikitsky Monastery, enclosing four churches, one dating from the founding of the monastery in 1682, at the end of the “golden age.” On the opposite side is the Academy of Science, on this the Conservatorium, facing it a quaint old church of primitive architecture and diminutive size; above its lowly belfry rears the square brick-built tower of an English Church. The house of a boyard here, of a prince there, bear names of note in Moscow’s history, as Gagarin, Galitzin, Chernichev, designate the owners of the houses on either side, and of the side streets to right and left. The further from the Kremlin, the centre, the more frequent and greater the inducement to turn aside to inspect more closely the glittering and gaudy domes of churches, old and new, which are thickly sprinkled over the whole district. Nor can the stranger easily do amiss whichever way he turns. If towards the left, a curious lofty belfry of open masonry will repay careful scrutiny, and reveal close by other domed and pinnacled temples, lost amidst this multitude of white walls and luxuriant verdure. If to the right, two churches in close proximity, of unique design and, probably, oppressive colouring, will encourage to further explorations in the same direction.
The oldest churches in the neighbourhood of the Arbat are, Boris and Gleb, 1527; Tikhon, the wonder-worker, 1689; but the Church of the Transfiguration is one of the most beautiful. In the Povarskaya, is that of St Simon Stylite, 1676, and near, another interesting church—Rojdestvenka.
Probably Moscow does not charm so strongly by reason of any particular building or style as by the great diversity of its houses and churches, both in design and colouring. More especially in those quarters where the wooden log-houses still linger in their gardens, and where the frame-houses are all made gay with white, cream, blue-gray, yellow and pink body colour, and the roofs of dark green or still darker crimson; there Moscow seems to belong to another world. It is, alas, disappearing fast, and the spacious courtyards, with their trees and the gardens gay with giant lilacs and golden-chain, are being built on, and houses that stand shoulder to shoulder in plain and hideous uniformity level up the largest village to the standard of a modern town made in Germany.
There is another aspect of Moscow which the summer visitor can never know. That comes when the thermometer falls from its summer average of 64.9° F. to its winter average of 14° F. This difference of 50° explains much that appears wanton in the architecture of buildings great and small; accounts for the galleries round the outside of the churches, for the extensive vestibules; for thick walls, still thicker roofs, and great spouts; for the plain surfaces and lack of projecting decorations, gargoyles and angular mouldings; for the distempered walls, which alone successfully stand the biting frosts of winter and the blistering summer sun.
With the change to winter temperature a great quiet comes over the town, wheeled traffic is stopped, sledges glide over the frozen roads, and from the windless sky the great snowflakes can ever be seen idly and slowly floating in their long and leisurely descent to earth. A reddened sun appears for a short time each day in a leaden sky, and Moscow lives, is more active, more itself, than when the light of summer decks its walls and pinnacles in holiday garb. But at whatever season studied, Moscow will reveal traces of the past; will show that she has long smiled under the summer sun of good fortune and been wrinkled by the winter of adversity; scorched, too, by the volcanic fire of her own excesses, but now staid, hoary, strenuous, and of surprising vitality in all—Это матушка Москва.
CHAPTER XI
Ancient Customs and Quaint Survivals
“The customs are so quainte
As if I would describe the whole
I feare my penne would fainte.”
G. Turberville (1568).