The Winter Palace--Its interior--Alexander II--A Russian Court
Ball--The "Bals des Palmiers"--The Empress--The blessing of the
Neva--Some curiosities of the Winter Palace--The great Orloff
diamond--My friend the Lady-in-Waiting--Sugared Compensations--The
attempt on the Emperor's life of 1880--Some unexpected finds in the
Palace--A most hilarious funeral--Sporting expeditions--Night drives
through the forest in mid-winter--Wolves--A typical Russian
village--A peasant's house--"Deaf and dumb people"--The inquisitive
peasant youth--Curiosity about strangers--An embarrassing
situation--A still more awkward one--Food difficulties--A bear
hunt--My first bear--Alcoholic consequences--My liking for the
Russian peasant--The beneficent india-rubber Ikon--Two curious
sporting incidents--Village habits--The great gulf fixed between
Russian nobility and peasants.
The Winter Palace drags its lengthy, uninteresting façade for some
five hundred feet along the quays of the Neva. It presents a mere
wearisome iteration of the same architectural features repeated again
and again, and any effect it might produce is marred by the hideous
shade of that crude red, called by the Russians "raspberry colour,"
with which it is daubed, and for which they have so misplaced an
affection.
{115}
The interior of the Winter Palace was burned out in 1837, and only a
few of the original State rooms survive. These surviving rooms are
the only ones of any artistic interest, as the other innumerable and
stupendous halls were all reconstructed during the "period of bad
taste," and bear ample witness to that fact in every detail of their
ornamentation.
The Ambassadors' staircase, part of the original building, is very
dignified and imposing with its groups of statuary, painted ceiling,
and lavish decoration, as is Peter the Great's Throne room, with
jasper columns, and walls hung with red velvet worked in gold with
great Russian two-headed eagles. All the tables, chairs, and
chandeliers in this room were of solid silver.
St. George's Hall, another of the old rooms, I thought splendid, with
its pure white marble walls and columns and rich adornments of gilt
bronze, and there was also an agreeably barbaric hall with entirely
gilt columns, many banners, and gigantic effigies of ancient Russian
warriors. All these rooms were full of collections of the gold and
silver-gilt trays on which the symbolical "bread and salt" had been
offered to different Emperors in the various towns of their dominions.
The fifty or so other modern rooms were only remarkable for their
immense size, the Nicholas Hall, for instance, being 200 feet long
and 65 feet wide, though the so-called "Golden Hall" positively
dazzled one with its acre or so of gilding. It would have been a
happy idea for the Emperor to {116} assemble all the leading
financiers of Europe to dine together in the "Golden Hall." The
sight of so much of the metal which they had spent their whole lives
in amassing would have gratified the financiers, and would probably
have stimulated them to fresh exertions.
The Emperor Alexander II always received the diplomats in Peter the
Great's Throne room, seated on Peter's throne. He was a wonderfully
handsome man even in his old age, with a most commanding manner, and
an air of freezing hauteur. When addressing junior members of the
Diplomatic Body there was something in his voice and a look in his
eye reminiscent of the Great Mogul addressing an earthworm.
I have only seen three Sovereigns who looked their parts quite
unmistakably: Alexander II of Russia, William I of Germany, and Queen
Victoria. In Queen Victoria's case it was the more remarkable, as
she was very short. Yet this little old lady in her plain dress, had
the most inimitable dignity, and no one could have mistaken her for
anything but a Queen. I remember Queen Victoria attending a concert
at the Albert Hall in 1887, two months before the Jubilee
celebrations. The vast building was packed to the roof, and the
Queen received a tremendous ovation. No one who saw it can ever
forget how the little old lady advanced to the front of her box and
made two very low sweeping curtsies to the right and to the left of
her with incomparable dignity and grace, as she smiled {117} through
her tears on the audience in acknowledgment of the thunders of
applause that greeted her. Queen Victoria was always moved to tears
when she received an unusually cordial ovation from her people, for
they loved her, and she loved them.
The scale of everything in the Winter Palace was so vast that it is
difficult to compare the Court entertainments there with those
elsewhere.
Certainly the Russian ladies looked well in their uniform costumes.
The cut, shape, and style of these dresses never varied, be the
fashions what they might. The dress, once made, lasted the owner for
her lifetime, though with advancing years it might possibly require
to be readjusted to an expanding figure. They were enormously
expensive to start with--anything from £300 to £1,200. There was a
complete under-dress of white satin, heavily embroidered. Over this
was worn a velvet dress lavishly trimmed with dark fur. This velvet
dress might be of dull red, dark blue, green, or brown, according to
the taste of the wearer. It had to have a long train embroidered
with gold or silver flowers, or both mixed, as the owner's fancy
dictated. On the head was worn the "Kakoshnik," the traditional
Russian head-dress, in the form of a crescent. In the case of
married women the "Kakoshnik" might be of diamonds, or any gems they
fancied, or could compass; for girls the "Kakoshnik" must be of white
silk. Girls, too, had to wear white, without the velvet over-dress.
The usual fault of Russian faces is their undue breadth across the
cheek-bones, {118} and the white "Kakoshnik" worn by the unmarried
girls seemed to me to emphasize this defect, whereas a blazing
semicircle of diamonds made a most becoming setting for an older
face, although at times, as in other cases, the setting might be more
ornamental than the object it enshrined. Though the Russian uniforms
were mostly copied from German models, the national lack of attention
to detail was probably to blame for the lack of effect they produced
when compared with their Prussian originals.
There was always something a little slovenly in the way in which the
Russian uniforms were worn, though an exception must be made in the
case of the resplendent "Chevaliers Gardes," and of the "Gardes à
Cheval." The uniforms of these two crack cavalry regiments was
closely copied from that of the Prussian "Gardes du Corps" and was
akin to that of our own Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards; the same
leather breeches and long jack-boots, and the same cuirasses; the
tunics, though were white, instead of the scarlet or blue of their
English prototypes. The "Chevaliers Gardes" had silvered cuirasses
and helmets surmounted with the Russian eagle, whereas those of the
"Gardes à Cheval" were gilt. As we know, "all that glitters is not
gold," and in spite of their gilding the "Gardes à Cheval" were
considered very inferior socially to their rivals. The Emperor's
fiercely-moustached Circassian bodyguard struck an agreeably exotic
note with their grass-green trousers and long blue kaftans, covered
with rows of Persian {119} cartridge-holders in _niello_ of black and
silver. Others of the Circassians wore coats of chain mail over
their kaftans, and these kaftans were always sleeveless, showing the
bright green, red, or blue silk shirtsleeves of their wearers.
Another pleasant barbaric touch.
To my mind, the smartest uniforms were those of the Cossack officers;
baggy green knickerbockers thrust into high boots, a hooked-and-eyed
green tunic without a single button or a scrap of gold lace on it,
and a plain white silk belt. No one could complain of a lack of
colour at a Petrograd Palace ball. The Russian civil and Court
uniforms were ingeniously hideous with their white trousers and long
frock-coats covered with broad transverse bars of gold lace. The
wearers of these ugly garments always looked to me like walking
embodiments of what are known in commercial circles as "gilt-edged
securities." As at Berlin, there were hosts of pages at these
entertainments. These lads were all attired like miniature
"Chevalier Gardes," in leather breeches and jack-boots, and wore
gold-laced green tunics; a singularly unpractical dress, I should
have thought, for a growing boy. All Russians of a certain social
position were expected to send their sons to be educated at the
"School for Imperial Pages," which was housed in an immense and
ornate building and counted four hundred pupils. Wise parents
mistrusted the education "aux pages" for their sons, knowing that,
however little else they might learn there, they would be certain to
acquire {120} habits of gross extravagance; the prominence, too, into
which these boys were thrust at Court functions tended to make them
unduly precocious.
The smaller Court balls were known as "Les Bals des Palmiers." On
these occasions, a hundred large palm trees, specially grown for the
purpose at Tsarskoe Selo, were brought by road from there in huge
vans. Round the palm in its tub supper tables were built, each one
accommodating fifteen people. It was really an extraordinarily
pretty sight seeing these rows of broad-fronted palms down the great
Nicholas Hall, and the knowledge that a few feet away there was an
outside temperature of 5° below zero added piquancy to the sight of
these exiles from the tropics waving their green plumes so far away
in the frozen North. At the "Bals des Palmiers" it was Alexander
II's custom to make the round of the tables as soon as his guests
were seated. The Emperor would go up to a table, the occupants of
which of course all rose at his approach, say a few words to one or
two of them, and then eat either a small piece of bread or a little
fruit, and just put his lips to a glass of champagne, in order that
his guests might say that he had eaten and drank with them. A
delicate and graceful attention!
As electric light had not then been introduced into the palace, the
entire building was lighted with wax candles. I cannot remember the
number I was told was required on these occasions, but I think it was
over one hundred thousand. The candles were all lighted with a
thread of gun-cotton, as in St. Isaac's Cathedral.
{121}
The Empress appeared but very rarely. It was a matter of common
knowledge that she was suffering from an incurable disease. All the
rooms in which she lived were artificially impregnated with oxygen,
continuously released from cylinders in which the gas had been
compressed. This, though it relieved the lungs of the sufferer,
proved very trying to the Empress's ladies-in-waiting, as this
artificial atmosphere with its excess of oxygen after an hour or so
gave them all violent headaches and attacks of giddiness.
In spite of the characteristic Russian carelessness about details,
these Petrograd Palace entertainments provided a splendid glittering
pageant to the eye, for the stage was so vast and the number of
performers so great. There was not the same blaze of diamonds as in
London, but I should say that the individual jewels were far finer.
A stone must be very perfect to satisfy the critical Russian eye,
and, true to their Oriental blood, the ladies preferred unfaceted
rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. Occasional Emirs from Central Asia
served, as do the Indian princes at Buckingham Palace, as a reminder
that Russia's responsibilities, like those of Great Britain, did not
cease with her European frontiers.
Once a year the diplomats had much the best of the situation. This
was at the blessing of the waters of the Neva--"the Jordan," as
Russians called it--on January 6, old style, or January 18, according
to our reckoning. We saw the ceremonies through the double windows
of the great steam-heated Nicholas {122} Hall, whereas the Emperor
and all the Grand Dukes had to stand bareheaded in the snow outside.
A great hole was cut in the ice of the Neva, with a temporary chapel
erected over it. At the conclusion of the religious service, the
Metropolitan of Petrograd solemnly blessed the waters of the river,
and dipped a great golden cross into them.
A cordon of soldiers had to guard the opening in the ice until it
froze over again, in order to prevent fanatical peasants from bathing
in the newly-consecrated waters. Many had lost their lives in this
way.
A friend of mine, the Director of the Hermitage Gallery, offered to
take me all over the Winter Palace, and the visit occupied nearly an
entire day. The maze of rooms was so endless that the mind got a
little bewildered and surfeited with the sight of so many splendours.
A detail that amused me was a small library on the second floor,
opening on to an avenue of lime trees. One of the Empresses had
chosen for her private library this room on the second floor, looking
into a courtyard. She had selected it on account of its quiet, but
expressed a wish to have an avenue of trees, under which to walk in
the intervals of her studies. The room being on the second floor,
and looking into a yard, the wish appeared to be difficult to
execute, but in those days the word "impossible" did not exist for an
Empress of Russia. The entire courtyard was filled in with earth,
and full-grown lime trees transplanted there. When I saw this aerial
grove eighty years afterwards, {123} there was quite a respectable
avenue of limes on the second floor of the building, with a gravel
walk bordered by grass-plots beneath them. Another Empress wished to
have a place to walk in during the winter months, so a very ingenious
hanging winter-garden was contrived for her, following all the
exterior angles of the building. It was not in the least like an
ordinary conservatory, but really did recall an outdoor garden.
There were gravel walks, and lawns of lycopodium simulating grass;
there were growing orange trees, and quite large palms. For some
reason the creepers on the walls of this pseudo-garden were all
artificial, being very cleverly made out of painted sheet-iron.
I had an opportunity later of seeing the entire Winter Palace
collection of silver plate, and all the Crown jewels, when they were
arranged for the inspection of the late Duke of Edinburgh, who was
good enough to invite me to come. There were enormous quantities of
plate, of Russian, French, and English make, sufficient to stock
every silversmith's shop in London. Some of the English plate was of
William and Mary's and Queen Anne's date, and there were some fine
early Georgian pieces. They, would, I confess, have appeared to
greater advantage had they conveyed the idea that they had been
occasionally cleaned. As it was, they looked like dull pewter that
had been neglected for twenty years. Of the jewels, the only things
I remember were a superb "corsage" of diamonds and aquamarines--not
the pale green stones we {124} associate with the name, but immense
stones of that bright blue tint, so highly prized in Russia--and
especially the great Orloff diamond. The "corsage" was big enough to
make a very ample cuirass for the most stalwart of lifeguardsmen, and
the Orloff diamond formed the head of the Russian Imperial sceptre.
The history of the Orloff, or Lazareff, diamond is quite interesting.
Though by no means the largest, it is considered the most perfect
diamond in the world, albeit it has a slight flaw in it. Originally
stolen from India, it came into the hands of an Armenian called
Lazareff in some unknown manner about A.D. 1750. Lazareff, so the
story goes, devised a novel hiding-place for the great stone. Making
a deep incision into the calf of his leg, he placed the diamond in
the cavity, and lay in bed for three months till the wound was
completely healed over. He then started for Amsterdam, and though
stripped and searched several times during his journey, for he was
strongly suspected of having the stone concealed about his person,
its hiding-place was never discovered. At Amsterdam Lazareff had the
wound reopened by a surgeon, and the diamond extracted. He then sold
it to Count Orloff for 450,000 roubles, or roughly £45,000, and
Orloff in his turn made a present of the great stone to Catherine the
Great. The diamond is set under a jewelled Russian eagle at the
extremity of the sceptre, where it probably shows to greater
advantage than it did when concealed for six months in the calf of an
Armenian's leg.
{125}
The accommodation provided for the suites of the Imperial family is
hardly on a par with the magnificence of the rest of the palace. The
Duchess of Edinburgh, daughter of Alexander II, made a yearly visit
to Petrograd, as long as her mother the Empress was alive. As the
Duchess's lady-in-waiting happened to be one of my oldest friends,
during her stay I was at the palace at least three days a week, and I
retain vivid recollections of the dreary, bare, whitewashed vault
assigned to her as a sitting-room. The only redeeming feature of
this room was a five-storied glass tray packed with some fifty
varieties of the most delicious _bon-bons_ the mind of man could
conceive. These were all fresh-baked every day by the palace
confectioner, and the tray was renewed every morning. There were
some sixty of these trays prepared daily, and their arrangement was
always absolutely identical, precisely the same number of caramels
and _fondants_ being placed on each shelf of the tray. Everyone knew
that the palace confectioner owned a fashionable sweet shop on the
Nevsky, where he traded under a French name, and I imagine that his
shop was entirely stocked from the remains of the palace trays.
In the spring of 1880 an attempt was made on Alexander's II's life by
a bomb which completely wrecked the white marble private dining-room.
The Emperor's dinner hour was 7, and the bomb was timed to explode at
7.20 p.m. The Emperor happened at the time to be overwhelmed with
work, and at the last moment he postponed dinner until 7.30. {126}
The bomb exploded at the minute it had been timed for, killing many
of the servants. My poor friend the lady-in-waiting was passing
along the corridor as the explosion occurred. She fell unhurt
amongst the wreckage, but the shock and the sight of the horribly
mangled bodies of the servants were too much for her. She never
recovered from their effects, and died in England within a year.
After this crime, the Winter Palace was thoroughly searched from
cellars to attics, and some curious discoveries were made.
Some of the countless moujiks employed in the palace had vast
unauthorized colonies of their relatives living with them on the top
floor of the building. In one bedroom a full-grown cow was found,
placidly chewing the cud. One of the moujiks had smuggled it in as a
new-born calf, had brought it up by hand, and afterwards fed it on
hay purloined from the stables. Though it may have kept his family
well provided with milk, stabling a cow in a bedroom unprovided with
proper drainage, on the top floor of a building, is not a proceeding
to be unduly encouraged; nor does it tend to add to the sanitary
amenities of a palace.
Russians are fond of calling the Nevsky "the street of toleration,"
for within a third of a mile of its length a Dutch Calvinist, a
German Lutheran, a Roman Catholic, and an Armenian church rise almost
side by side. "Nevsky" is, of course, only the adjective of "Neva,"
and the street is termed "Perspective" in French and "Prospect" in
Russian.
{127}
Close to the Armenian church lived M. Delyanoff, who was the Minister
of Education in those days. Both M. and Madame Delyanoff were
exceedingly hospitable and kind to the Diplomatic Body, so, when M.
Delyanoff died, most of the diplomats attended his funeral,
appearing, according to Russian custom, in full uniform. The
Delyanoffs being Armenians, the funeral took place in the Armenian
church, and none of us had had any previous experience of the
extraordinary noises which pass for singing amongst Armenians. When
six individuals appeared and began bleating like sheep, and followed
this by an excellent imitation of hungry wolves howling, it was too
much for us. We hastily composed our features into the decorum the
occasion demanded, amid furtive little snorts of semi-suppressed
laughter. After three grey-bearded priests had stepped from behind
the ikonostas, and, putting their chins up in the air, proceeded to
yelp together in unison, exactly like dogs baying the moon, the
entire Corps Diplomatique broke down utterly. Never have I seen men
laugh so unrestrainedly. As we had each been given a large lighted
candle, the movements of our swaying bodies were communicated to the
tapers, and showers of melted wax began flying in all directions.
With the prudence of the land of my birth, I placed myself against a
pillar, so as to have no one behind me, but each time the three
grey-beards recommenced their comical howling, I must have scattered
perfect Niagaras of wax on to the embroidered coat-tails {128} and
extensive back of the Swedish Minister in front of me. I should
think that I must have expended the combined labours of several hives
of bees on his garments, congratulating myself the while that that
genial personage, not being a peacock, did not enjoy the advantage of
having eyes in his tail. The Swedish Minister, M. Dué, his massive
frame quivering with laughter, was meanwhile engaged in performing a
like kindly office on to the back of his Roumanian colleague, Prince
Ghika, who in his turn was anointing the uniform of M. van der
Hooven, the Netherlands Minister. Providentially, the Delyanoff
family were all grouped together before the altar, and the farmyard
imitations of the Armenian choir so effectually drowned our unseemly
merriment that any faint echoes which reached the family were
ascribed by them to our very natural emotions in the circumstances.
I heard, indeed, afterwards that the family were much touched by our
attendance and by our sympathetic behaviour, but never, before or
since, have I attended so hilarious a funeral.
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 {129} 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
{130} 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 {131} 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
{132} 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 {133} 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.
{134}
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, {135} 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 {136} 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 {137} 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 {138} 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.
There was not a moment to lose! In that tropical drawing-room the
only available scrap of drapery was a red plush table-cover.
Bundling everything on the table ruthlessly to the ground, I had just
time to snatch up the table-cloth and drape myself in it (I trust
gracefully) when the ladies entered the room. I explained my
predicament and lamented my inability to rise, and so we had tea
together. It is the only occasion in the course of a long life in
which I ever remember taking tea with six ladies, clad only in a red
plush table-cloth with bead fringes.
Returning to Russia, the peasants fingered everything I possessed
with the insatiable curiosity of children; socks, ties, and shirts.
I am bound to say that I never had the smallest thing stolen. As our
shooting expeditions were always during Lent, I felt great
compunction at shocking the peasants' religious scruples by eating
beef, ham, and butter, all forbidden things at that season. I tried
hard to persuade one woman that my cold sirloin of roast beef was
part of a rare English fish, specially {139} imported, but she was, I
fear, of a naturally sceptical bent of mind.
Lady Dufferin had one curious gift. She could spend the night in a
rough country sledge, or sleep in her clothes on a truss of hay, and
yet appear in the morning as fresh and neat, and spick and span, as
though she had had the most elaborate toilet appliances at her
disposal. On these occasions she usually wore a Canadian
blanket-suit of dark blue and scarlet, with a scarlet belt and hood,
and a jaunty little sealskin cap. She always went out to the forest
with us.
The procedure on these occasions was invariably the same. An army of
beaters was assembled, about two-thirds of them women. This made me
uneasy at first, until I learnt that the beaters run no danger
whatever from the bear. The beaters form five-sixths, or perhaps
less, of a circle round the bear's sleeping place, and the guns are
placed in the intervening open space. I may add that, personally, I
always used for bear an ordinary smooth-bore sporting gun, with a
leaden bullet. I passed every one of these bullets down the barrels
of my gun myself to avoid the risk of the gun bursting, before they
were loaded into cartridges, and I had them secured with melted
tallow. The advantages of a smooth-bore is that at close quarters,
as with bear, where you must kill your beast to avoid disagreeable
consequences, you lose no time in getting your sights on a
rapidly-moving object. You shoot as you would a rabbit; and you can
make {140} absolutely sure of your animal, _if you keep your head_.
A leaden bullet at close quarters has tremendous stopping power. Of
course you want a rifle as well for longer shots. I found this
method most successful with tiger, later in India, only you must
remain quite cool.
At a given signal, the beaters begin yelling, beating iron pans with
sticks, blowing horns, shouting, and generally making enough
pandemonium to awaken the Seven Sleepers. It effectually awakes the
bear, who emerges from his bedroom in an exceedingly evil temper, to
see what all this fearful din is about. As he is surrounded with
noise on three sides, he naturally makes for the only quiet spot,
where the guns are posted. By this time he is in a distinctly
unamiable mood.
I always took off my ski, and stood nearly waist-deep in the snow so
as to get a firm footing. Then you can make quite certain of your
shot. Ski or no ski, if it came to running away, the bear would
always have the pull on you. The first time I was very lucky. The
bear came straight to me. When he was within fifteen feet, and I
felt absolutely certain of getting him, I fired. He reared himself
on his hind legs to an unbelievable height, and fell stone dead at
Lady Dufferin's very feet. That bear's skin is within three feet of
me as I write these lines. We went back to the village in orthodox
fashion, all with fir-branches in our hands, as a sign of rejoicing;
I seated on the dead bear.
As a small boy of nine I had been tossed in a {141} blanket at
school, up to the ceiling, caught again, then up a second time and
third time. It was not, and was not intended to be, a pleasant
experience, but in my day all little boys had to submit to it. The
unhappy little brats stuck their teeth together, and tried hard to
grin as they were being hurled skywards. These curious Russians,
though, appeared to consider it a delightful exercise.
Arrived at the village again, I was captured by some thirty buxom,
stalwart women, and sent spinning up and up, again and again, till I
was absolutely giddy. Not only had one to thank them profusely for
this honour, but also to disburse a considerable amount of roubles in
acknowledgement of it. Poor Lady Dufferin was then caught, in spite
of her protests, and sent hurtling skywards through the air half a
dozen times. Needless to say that she alighted with not one hair of
her head out of place or one fold of her garments disarranged. Being
young and inexperienced then, I was foolish enough to follow the
Russian custom, and to present the village with a small cask of
vodka. I regretted it bitterly. Two hours later not a male in the
place was sober. Old grey-beards and young men lay dead drunk in the
snow; and quite little boys reeled about hopelessly intoxicated. I
could have kicked myself for being so thoughtless. During all the
years I was in Russia, I never saw a peasant woman drink spirits, or
under the influence of liquor. In my house at Petrograd I had a
young peasant as house-boy. He was quite a {142} nice lad of
sixteen; clean, willing, and capable, but, young as he was, he had
already fallen a victim to the national failing, in which he indulged
regularly once a month, when his wages were paid him, and nothing
could break him of this habit. I could always tell when Ephim, the
boy, had gone out with the deliberate intention of getting drunk, by
glancing into his bedroom. He always took the precaution of turning
the ikons over his bed, with their faces to the wall, before leaving,
and invariably blew out the little red lamp, in order that ikons
might not see him reeling into the room upon his return, or deposited
unconscious upon his bed. Being a singularly neat boy in his habits,
he always put on his very oldest clothes on these occasions, in order
not to damage his better ones, should he fall down in the street
after losing control of his limbs. This drunkenness spreads like a
cancer from top to bottom of Russian society. A friend of mine, who
afterwards occupied one of the highest administrative posts, told me
quite casually that, on the occasion of his youngest brother's
seventeenth birthday, the boy had been allowed to invite six young
friends of his own age to dinner; my friend thought it quite amusing
that every one of these lads had been carried to bed dead drunk. I
attribute the dry-rot which ate into the whole structure of the
mighty Empire, and brought it crashing to the ground, in a very large
degree to the intemperate habits prevailing amongst all classes of
Russian men, which in justice one must add, may be due to climatic
reasons.
{143}
In the villages our imported food was a constant source of
difficulty. We were all averse to shocking the peasants by eating
meat openly during Lent, but what were we to do? Out of deference to
their scruples, we refrained from buying eggs and milk, which could
have been procured in abundance, and furtively devoured ham, cold
beef, and pickles behind cunningly contrived ramparts of newspaper,
in the hope that it might pass unnoticed. Remembering how meagre at
the best of times the diet of these peasants is, it is impossible to
help admiring them for the conscientious manner in which they obey
the rules of their Church during Lent. I once gave a pretty peasant
child a piece of plum cake. Her mother snatched it from her, and
asked me whether the cake contained butter or eggs. On my
acknowledgement that it contained both, she threw it into the stove,
and asked me indignantly how I dared to imperil her child's immortal
soul by giving her forbidden food in Lent. Even my sixteen-year-old
house-boy in Petrograd, the bibulous Ephim, although he regularly
succumbed to the charms of vodka, lived entirely on porridge and dry
bread during Lent, and would not touch meat, butter, or eggs on any
consideration whatever. The more I saw of the peasants the more I
liked them. The men all drank, and were not particularly truthful,
but they were like great simple, bearded, unkempt children, with
(drunkenness apart) all a child's faults, and all a nice child's
power of attraction. I liked the {144} great, stalwart, big-framed
women too. They were seldom good-looking, but their broad faces
glowed with health and good nature, and they had as a rule very good
skins, nice teeth, and beautiful complexions. I found that I could
get on with these villagers like a house on fire. However cold the
weather, no village girl or woman wears anything on her head but a
gaudy folded cotton handkerchief.
I never shared the resentment of my Russian friends at being
addressed with the familiar "thou" by the peasants. They intended no
discourtesy; it was their natural form of address, and they could not
be expected to know that beyond the narrow confines of their village
there was another world where the ceremonious "you" was habitually
employed. I rather fancy that anyone bred in the country, and
accustomed from his earliest childhood to mix with farmers,
cottagers, and farm-labourers, can get on with other country-bred
people, whether at home, or in Russia, India, or Canada--a town-bred
man would not know what to talk about. In spite of the peasants'
reputation for pilfering, not one of us ever had the smallest thing
stolen. I did indeed lose a rubber air-cushion in the snow, but that
was owing to the overturning of a sledge. A colleague of mine, whom
I had hitherto always regarded as a truthful man, assured me a year
afterwards that he had seen my air-cushion ranged on the ikon shelf
in a peasant's house, with two red lamps burning before it. The
owner of the house declared, according {145} to my friend, that my
air-cushion was an ikon of peculiar sanctity, though the painting had
in some mysterious manner become obliterated from it. My colleague
further assured me that my air-cushion was building up a very
gratifying little local connection as a miracle-working ikon of quite
unusual efficiency, and that, under its kindly tutelage, crops
prospered and flocks and herds increased; of course within reasonable
limits only, for the new ikon held essentially moderate views, and
was temperamentally opposed to anything in the way of undue optimism.
I wished that I could have credited this, for it would have been
satisfactory to imagine oneself, through the agency of the
air-cushion, a vicarious yet untiring benefactor of a whole
countryside.
On one of our shooting expeditions a curious incident occurred. Lord
Dufferin had taken a long shot at a bear, and had wounded without
killing him. For some reason, the animal stopped, and climbed to the
top of a high fir tree. Lord Dufferin approached, fired again, and
the bear dropped dead to the ground. It is but seldom that one sees
a dead bear fall from the top of a tree. I witnessed an equally
strange sporting incident once in India. It was just over the
borders of Assam, and we were returning to camp on elephants, after a
day's big game shooting. As we approached a hollow clothed with
thick jungle, the elephants all commenced trumpeting. Knowing how
wonderfully keen the elephant's sense of smell is, that told us that
some beast lay concealed in the hollow. Thinking it {146} would
prove to be a bear, I took up my favourite smooth-bore charged with
leaden bullets, when with a great crashing and rending of boughs the
jungle parted, and a galloping rhinoceros charged out, his head well
down, making straight for the elephant that was carrying a nephew of
mine. My nephew had just time to snatch up a heavy 4-bore elephant
rifle. He fired, and by an extraordinary piece of luck succeeded in
hitting the huge beast in his one vulnerable spot, just behind the
shoulder. The rhinoceros rolled right over like a shot rabbit and
lay stone dead. It was a thousand to one chance, and if I live to a
hundred I shall never see anything of the sort again. It was also
very fortunate, for had he missed his shot, nothing on earth could
have saved my nephew's life.
We found that the most acceptable presents in the villages were
packets of sugar and tins of sardines. Sugar is costly and difficult
to procure in Russian villages. The usual way of employing it, when
friends are gathered round the table of some "isba" with the samovar
in the middle and steaming glasses of tea before each guest, is for
No. 1 to take a piece of sugar, place it between his teeth, and then
suck his tea through it. No. 1 quickly passes the piece of sugar to
his neighbor, who uses it in the same way, and transfers it to the
next person, and so on, till the sugar is all dissolved. This method
of using sugar, though doubtless economical, always struck me as
being of dubious cleanliness. A gift of a pound of lump sugar was
always welcomed with {147} grateful thanks. Sardines were even more
acceptable, as they could be eaten in Lent. The grown-ups devoured
the fish, lifting them out of the tin with their fingers; and the
children were given the oil to smear on their bread, in place of
forbidden butter.
After days in the keen fresh air, and in the limitless expanse of
forest and snow, life in Petrograd seemed terribly artificial. I
used to marvel that my cultured, omniscient, polygot friends were
fellow-countrymen of the bearded, red-shirted, illiterate peasants we
had just left. The gulf seemed so unbridgable between them, and
apart from a common language and a common religion (both, I
acknowledge, very potent bonds of union) there seemed no link between
them, or any possible community of ideas. Now in England there is
that community of ideas. All classes, from the highest to the
lowest, share to some extent the same tastes and the same prejudices.
There is too that most powerful of connecting links, a common love of
sport. The cricket ground and the football field are witnesses to
this, and it shows in a hundred little ways beside. The freemasonry
of sport is very real.
It was perfectly delightful to live with and to mix so much amongst
charming people of such wide culture and education, but they seemed
to me to bear the same relation to the world outside their own that a
rare orchid in its glass shelter bears to a wild flower growing in
the open air. The one is {148} indigenous to the soil; the other was
originally imported, and can only thrive in an artificial atmosphere,
and under artificial conditions. If the glass gets broken, or the
fire goes out, the orchid dies, but the wild flower is not affected.
After all, man made the towns, but God made the country.
{149}