Getting a Passport.--Parting with the Marquis.--The Language of
Signs.--A Loquacious Traveller.--From Moscow to St.
Petersburgh.--The Wolga.--Novogorod.--Newski Perspective.--An
unfortunate Mistake.--Northern Twilight.
UNABLE to remain longer in Moscow, I prepared for my journey for St.
Petersburgh. Several diligences run regularly between these two great
cities; one of which, the Velocifere, is superior to any public
conveyance on the Continent of Europe. I took my place in that, and two
days beforehand sent my passport to be _vised_. I sent for it the next
day, and it was not ready. I went myself, and could not get it. I knew
that nothing could be done at the Russian offices without paying for it,
and was ready and willing to do so, and time after time I called the
attention of the officer to my passport. He replied coolly, "_Dans un
instant_," and, turning to something else, kept me waiting two hours;
and when at length he took it up and arranged it, he led me down stairs
out of sight to receive the expected _douceur_. He was a well-dressed
man, with the large government button on his coat, and rather distingue
in his appearance and manners. I took the passport, folded it up, and
put it in my pocket with a coolness equal to his own, and with
malicious pleasure put into his hand a single ruble, equal to twenty
cents of our money; he expected at least twenty-five rubles, or about
five dollars, and his look of rage and disappointment amply repaid me
for all the vexation he had caused by his delay. I bade him farewell
with a smile that almost drove him mad.
Bribery is said to be almost universal among the inferior officers of
government, and there is a story of a Frenchman in Russia which
illustrates the system. He had an office, of which the salary was so
small that he could not live upon it. At first he would not take bribes,
but stern necessity drove him to it, and while he was about it he did
the thing handsomely. Having overreached the mark, and been guilty of
being detected, he was brought before the proper tribunal; and when
asked, "Why did you take a bribe?" his answer was original and
conclusive, "I take, thou takest, he takes, we take, you take, they
take!"
I told the marquis the story of my parting interview at the
police-office, which he said was capital, but startled me by suggesting
that, if there should happen to be any irregularity, I would have great
trouble in getting it rectified; even this, however, did not disturb my
immediate satisfaction, and, fortunately, all was right.
The morning of my departure, before I was out of bed, the marquis was in
my room. Meeting with me had revived in him feelings long since dead;
and at the moment of parting he told me, what his pride had till that
moment concealed, that his heart yearned once more to his kindred; and
that, if he had the means, old as he was, he would go to America. And
yet, though his frame trembled and his voice was broken, and his lamp
was almost burned out, his spirit was as high as when he fought the
battles of the empire; and he told me to say to them that he would not
come to be a dependant upon their bounty; that he could repay all they
should do for him by teaching their children. He gave me his last
painting, which he regarded with the pride of an artist, as a souvenir
for his sister; but having no means of carrying it safely, I was obliged
to return it to him. He remained with me till the moment of my
departure, clung to my hand after I had taken my place in the drosky,
and when we had started I looked back and saw him still standing in the
road. It seemed as if the last link that bound him to earth was broken.
He gave me a letter, which I forwarded to his friends at home; his
sister was still living, and had not forgotten her long-lost brother;
she had not heard from him in twenty years, and had long believed him
dead. Pecuniary assistance was immediately sent to him, and, unhappily,
since my return home, intelligence has been received that it arrived
only at the last moment when human aid could avail him; in time to
smooth the pillow of death by the assurance that his friends had not
forgotten him. And perhaps, in his dying moments, he remembered me. At
all events, it is some satisfaction, amid the recollections of an
unprofitable life, to think that, when his checkered career was drawing
to its close, I had been the means of gladdening for a moment the old
exile's heart.
I must not forget my host, the quondam exile to Siberia. In his old days
his spirit too was chafed at living under despotism, and, like the
marquis, he also hoped, before he died, to visit America. I gave him my
address, with the hope, but with very little expectation, of seeing him
again. A travelling companion once remarked, that if every vagabond to
whom I gave my address should find his way to America, I would have a
precious set to present to my friends. Be it so; there is not a vagabond
among them whom I would not be glad to see.
My English companion and myself had seen but little of each other at
Moscow. He intended to remain longer than I did, but changed his mind,
and took a place in the same diligence for St. Petersburgh. This
diligence was the best I ever rode in; and, for a journey of nearly five
hundred miles, we could not have been more comfortably arranged. It
started at the hour punctually, as from the Messagere in Paris. We
rolled for the last time through the streets of Moscow, and in a few
minutes passed out at the St. Petersburgh Gate. Our companions were a
man about thirty-five, a cattle-driver, with his trousers torn, and his
linen hanging out ostentatiously in different places, and an old man
about sixty-five, just so far civilized as to have cut off the long
beard and put on broadcloth clothes. It was the first time the old man
had ever been on a journey from home; everything was new to him, and he
seemed puzzled to know what to make of us; he could not comprehend how
we could look, and walk, and eat like Russians, and not talk like them.
My place was directly opposite his, and, as soon as we were seated, he
began to talk to me. I looked at him and made no answer; he began again,
and went on in an uninterrupted strain for several minutes, more and
more surprised that I did not answer, or answered only in unintelligible
sounds. After a while he seemed to come to the conclusion that I was
deaf and dumb and turned to my companion as to my keeper for an
explanation. Finding he could do nothing there, he appeared alarmed, and
it was some time before he could get a clear idea of the matter. When he
did, however, he pulled off an amazingly white glove, took my hand and
shook it, pointed to his head, shook it, and touched my head, then put
his hand to his heart, then to my heart; all which was to say, that
though our heads did not understand each other, our hearts did. But
though he saw we did not understand him, he did not on that account stop
talking; indeed, he talked incessantly, and the only way of stopping him
was to look directly in his face and talk back again; and I read him
long lectures, particularly upon the snares and temptations of the world
into which he was about to plunge, and wound up with stanzas of poetry
and scraps of Greek and Latin, all which the old man listened to without
ever interrupting me, bending his ear as if he expected every moment to
catch something he understood; and when I had finished, after a moment's
blank expression he whipped off his white glove, took my hand, and
touched significantly his head and heart. Indeed, a dozen times a day he
did this; and particularly whenever we got out, on resuming our seats,
as a sort of renewal of the compact of good fellowship, the glove
invariably came off, and the significant movement between the hand,
head, and heart was repeated. The second day a young seigneur named
Chickoff, who spoke French, joined the diligence, and through him we had
full explanations with the old Russian. He always called me the American
graff or noble, and said that, after being presented to the emperor, I
should go down with him into the country.
My worthy comrade appeared at first to be not a little bored by the old
man's garrulous humour; but at length, seized by a sudden whim, began,
as he said, to teach him English. But such English! He taught him, after
a fashion peculiarly his own, the manner of addressing a lady and
gentleman in English; and very soon, with the remarkable facility of the
Russians in acquiring languages, the old man, utterly unconscious of
their meaning, repeated the words with extraordinary distinctness; and
regularly, when he took his place in the diligence, he accompanied the
significant movements of his hand, head, and heart to me with the not
very elegant address taught him by my companion. Though compelled to
smile inwardly at the absurdity of the thing, I could not but feel the
inherent impropriety of the conduct of my eccentric fellow-traveller;
and ventured to suggest to him that, though he had an undoubted right to
do as he pleased in matters that could not implicate me, yet,
independent of the very questionable character of the joke itself (for
the words savoured more of Wapping than of St. James's), as we were known
to have travelled together, a portion of the credit of having taught the
old Russian English might fall upon me--an honour of which I was not
covetous, and, therefore, should tell the old man never to repeat the
words he had been taught, which I did without assigning any reason for
it, and before we arrived at St. Petersburgh he had forgotten them.
The road from Moscow to St. Petersburgh is now one of the best in
Europe. It is Macadamized nearly the whole way, and a great part is
bordered with trees; the posthouses are generally large and handsome,
under the direction of government, where soup, cutlets, &c., are always
ready at a moment's notice, at prices regulated by a tariff hanging up
in the room, which, however, being written in Russian, was of no
particular use to us. The country is comparatively thickly settled, and
villages are numerous. Even on this road, however, the villages are
forlorn things, being generally the property and occupied by the serfs
of the seigneurs, and consisting of a single long street, with houses on
both sides built of logs, the better sort squared, with the gable end to
the street, the roofs projecting two or three feet from the houses, and
sometimes ornamented with rude carving and small holes for windows. We
passed several chateaux, large, imposing buildings, with parks and
gardens, and a large church, painted white, with a green dome surmounted
by a cross.
In many places on the road are chapels with figures of the Panagia, or
all holy Virgin, or some of the saints; and our old Russian, constantly
on the lookout for them, never passed one without taking off his hat and
going through the whole formula of crosses; sometimes, in entering a
town, they came upon us in such quick succession, first on one side,
then on the other, that, if he had not been engaged in, to him, a sacred
ceremony, his hurry and perplexity would have been ludicrous. During the
night we saw fires ahead, and a little off the road were the bivouacs of
teamsters or wayfarers, who could not pay for lodging in a miserable
Russian hut. All the way we met the great caravan teams carrying tallow,
hides, hemp, and other merchandise to the cities, and bringing back
wrought fabrics, groceries, &c., into the interior. They were generally
thirty or forty together, one man or woman attending to three or four
carts, or, rather, neglecting them, as the driver was generally asleep
on the top of his load. The horses, however, seemed to know what they
were about; for as the diligence came rolling toward them, before the
postillion could reach them with his whip, they intuitively hurried out
of the way. The bridges over the streams and rivers are strong,
substantial structures, built of heavy hewn granite, with iron
balustrades, and ornamented in the centre with the double-headed eagle,
the arms of Russia.
At Tver we passed the Wolga on a bridge of boats. This noble river, the
longest in Europe, navigable almost from its source for an extent of
four thousand versts, dividing, for a great part of its course, Europe
and Asia, runs majestically through the city, and rolls on, bathing the
walls of the city of Astrachan, till it reaches the distant Caspian; its
banks still inhabited by the same tribes of warlike Cossacks who hovered
on the skirts of the French army during their invasion of Russia. By its
junction with the Tverza, a communication is made between the Wolga and
Neva, or, in other words, between the Caspian and Baltic. The impetus of
internal improvements has extended even to the north of Europe, and the
Emperor Nicolas is now actively engaged in directing surveys of the
great rivers of Russia for the purpose of connecting them by canals and
railroads, and opening steam communications throughout the whole
interior of his empire. A great number of boats of all sizes, for
carrying grain to the capital, were lying off the city. These boats are
generally provided with one mast, which, in the largest, may equal a
frigate's mainmast. "The weight of the matsail," an English officer
remarks, "must be prodigious, having no fewer than one hundred breadths
in it; yet the facility with which it is managed bears comparison with
that of the Yankees with their boom mainsail in their fore-and-aft
clippers." The rudder is a ponderous machine, being a broad piece of
timber floating astern twelve or fifteen feet, and fastened to the
tiller by a pole, which descends perpendicularly into the water; the
tiller is from thirty to forty feet long, and the pilot who turns it
stands upon a scaffold at that distance from the stern. Down the stream
a group of Cossacks were bathing, and I could not resist the temptation
to throw myself for a moment into this king of rivers. The diligence
hurried me, and, as it came along, I gathered up my clothes and dressed
myself inside.
About eighty versts from St. Petersburgh we came to the ancient city of
Novogorod. In the words of an old traveller, "Next unto Moscow, the city
of Novogorod is reputed the chiefest in Russia; for although it be in
majestie inferior to it, yet in greatness it goeth beyond it. It is the
chiefest and greatest mart-town of all Muscovy; and albeit the emperor's
seat is not there, but at Moscow, yet the commodiousness of the river,
falling into that gulf which is called Sinus Finnicus, whereby it is
well frequented by merchants, makes it more famous than Moscow itself."
Few of the ruined cities of the Old World present so striking an
appearance of fallen greatness as this comparatively unknown place.
There is an ancient saying, "Who can resist the gods and Novogorod the
Great?" Three centuries ago it covered an area of sixty-three versts in
circumference, and contained a population of more than four hundred
thousand inhabitants. Some parts of it are still in good condition, but
the larger portion has fallen to decay. Its streets present marks of
desolation, mouldering walls, and ruined churches, and its population
has dwindled to little more than seven thousand inhabitants. The
steeples in this ancient city bear the cross, unaccompanied by the
crescent, the proud token showing that the Tartars, in all their
invasions, never conquered it, while in the reconquered cities the
steeples all exhibit the crescent surmounted by the cross.
Late in the afternoon of the fourth day we were approaching St.
Petersburgh. The ground is low and flat, and I was disappointed in the
first view of the capital of Russia; but passing the barrier, and riding
up the Newski Perspective, the most magnificent street in that
magnificent city, I felt that the stories of its splendour were not
exaggerated, and that this was, indeed, entitled to the proud
appellation of the "Palmyra of the North." My English companion again
stopped at a house kept by an Englishwoman and frequented by his
countrymen, and I took an apartment at a hotel in a broad street with an
unpronounceable Russian name, a little off the Newski Perspective. I was
worn and fatigued with my journey, but I could not resist the
inclination to take a gentle promenade along the Newski Perspective.
While in the coffee-room refreshing myself with a cup of the best
Russian tea, I heard some one outside the door giving directions to a
tailor, and presently a man entered, whom, without looking at him, I
told he was just the person I wanted to see, as I had a pair of
pantaloons to be mended. He made no answer, and, without being able to
see distinctly, I told him to wait till I could go up stairs and change
them, and that he must mend them strongly and bring them back in the
morning. In all probability, the next moment I should have been
sprawling on the floor; but the landlady, a clever Frenchwoman, who saw
my error stepped up, and crying out, "Ah, Monsieur Colonel, attendez,
attendez," explained my mistake as clearly as I could have done myself,
and I followed closely with an apology, adding that my remark could not
be intended as disrespectful to him, inasmuch as even then, with the
windows closed, I could scarcely distinguish his person. He understood
the thing at once, accepted my apology with great frankness, and,
instead of knocking me down, or challenging me to fight with sabre or
some other diabolical thing, finding I was a stranger just arrived from
Moscow, sat down at the table, and before we rose offered to accompany
me in my walk.
There could be no mistake as to the caste of my new friend. The landlady
had called him colonel, and, in repelling the imputation of his being a
tailor, had spoken of him as a rich seigneur, who for ten years had
occupied the front apartments _au premier_ in her hotel. We walked out
into the Newski Perspective, and strolled along that magnificent street
down to the Admiralty, and along the noble quays of the Neva. I had
reached the terminus of my journey; for many months I had been moving
farther and farther away, and the next step I took would carry me toward
home. It was the eve of the fourth of July; and as I strolled through
the broad streets and looked up at the long ranges of magnificent
buildings, I poured into the ear of my companion the recollections
connected with this moment at home: in boyhood, crackers and fireworks
in readiness for the great jubilee of the morrow; and, latterly, the
excursion into the country to avoid the bustle and confusion of "the
glorious fourth."
At Moscow and during the journey I had admired the exceeding beauty of
the twilight in these northern latitudes but this night in St.
Petersburgh it was magnificent. I cannot describe the peculiar shades of
this northern twilight. It is as if the glare and brilliancy of the sun
were softened by the mellowing influence of the moon, and the city, with
its superb ranges of palaces, its statues, its bridges, and its clear
and rapid river, seemed, under the reflection of that northern light, of
a brilliant and almost unearthly beauty. I felt like rambling all night.
Even though worn with three days' travel, it was with me as with a young
lady at her first ball; the night was too short. I could not bear to
throw it away in sleep. My companion was tough, and by no means
sentimental, and the scene was familiar to him; but he told me that,
even in his eyes, it never lost its interest. Moonlight is something,
but this glorious twilight is a thing to enjoy and to remember; and, as
the colonel remarked when we sat down in his apartment to a comfortable
supper, it always gave him such an appetite. After supper I walked
through a long corridor to my apartment, threw myself upon my bed and
tried to sleep, but the mellow twilight poured through my window and
reproached me with the base attempt. I was not restless, but I could not
sleep; lest, however, the reader should find himself of a different
humour, I will consider myself asleep the first night in St.
Petersburgh.