more curious than that relating to the second funeral of Peter III. He
had been buried by his wife, in 1762, with much simplicity, in one of
the many churches of the Lavra, which contains the family tombs and
monuments not only of members of the imperial family, but of the noble
families most illustrious in the eighteenth century. When Paul I. came
to the throne, in 1796, his first care was to give his long-deceased
father a more fitting burial. The body was exhumed. Surrounded by his
court, Pavel Petrovitch took the imperial crown from the altar, placed
it on his own head, then laid it reverently on his father's coffin. When
Peter III. was transferred immediately afterward, with magnificent
ceremonial, to the Winter Palace, there to lie in state by the side of
his wife, Katherine II., and to accompany her to his proper
resting-place among the sovereigns of Russia, in the cathedral of the
Peter-Paul fortress, Count Alexei Grigorevitch Orloff was appointed,
with fine irony, to carry the crown before his former master, whom he
had betrayed, and in the necessity for whose first funeral he had played
the part of Fate. It was with considerable difficulty that he was hunted
up, while Emperor and pageant waited, in the obscure corner where he was
sobbing and weeping; and with still greater difficulty was he finally
persuaded to perform the task assigned to him in the procession.
Outside the vast monastery, which, like most Russian monasteries,
resembles a fortress, though, unlike most of them, it has never served
as such, the scene is almost rural. Pigeons, those symbols of the Holy
Ghost, inviolable in Russia, attack with impunity the grain bags in the
acres of storehouses opposite, pick holes, and eat their fill
undisturbed.
From this spot to the slight curve in the Prospekt, at the Znamenskaya
Square, a distance of about a mile, where the Moscow railway station is
situated, and where the train of steam tram-cars is superseded by less
terrifying horse-cars, the whole aspect of the avenue is that of a
provincial town, in the character of the people and the buildings, even
to the favorite crushed strawberry and azure washes, and green iron
roofs on the countrified shops. Here and there, not very far away, a
log-house may even be espied.
During the next three quarters of a mile the houses and shops are more
city-like, and, being newer than those beyond, are more ornamented as to
the stucco of their windows and doors. Here, as elsewhere in this
stoneless land, with rare exceptions, the buildings are of brick or
rubble, stuccoed and washed, generally in light yellow, with walls three
feet or more apart, warmly filled in, and ventilated through the
hermetically sealed windows by ample panes in the centre of the sashes,
or by apertures in the string-courses between stories, which open into
each room. Shops below, apartments above, this is the nearly invariable
rule.
It is only when we reach the Anitchkoff Bridge, with its graceful
railing of sea-horses, adorned with four colossal bronze groups of
horse-tamers, from the hand of the Russian sculptor, Baron Klodt, that
the really characteristic part of the Nevsky begins.
It is difficult to believe that fifty years ago this spot was the end of
the Petersburg world. But at that epoch the Nevsky was decorated with
rows of fine large trees, which have now disappeared to the last twig.
The Fontanka River, or canal, over which we stand, offers the best of
the many illustrations of the manner in which Peter the Great, with his
ardent love of water and Dutch ways, and his worthy successors have
turned natural disadvantages into advantages and objects of beauty. The
Fontanka was the largest of the numerous marshy rivers in that Arctic
bog selected by Peter I. for his new capital, which have been deepened,
widened, faced with cut granite walls, and utilized as means of cheap
communication between distant parts of the city, and as relief channels
for the inundating waves of the Gulf of Finland, which rise, more or
less, every year, from August to November, at the behest of the
southwest gale. That this last precaution is not superfluous is shown by
the iron flood-mark set into the wall of the Anitchkoff Palace, on the
southern shore of the Fontanka, as on so many other public buildings in
the city, with "1824" appended,--the date of one celebrated and
disastrous inundation which attained in some places the height of
thirteen feet and seven inches. This particular river derived its name
from the fact that it was trained to carry water and feed the fountains
in Peter the Great's favorite Summer Garden, of which only one now
remains.
At the close of the last century, and even later, persons out of favor
at Court, or nobles who had committed misdemeanors, were banished to the
southern shores of the Fontanka, as to a foreign land. Among the
amusements at the _datchas_,--the wooden country houses,--in the
wilder recesses of the vast parks which studded both shores, the chase
after wild animals, and from bandits, played a prominent part.
The stretch which we have traversed on our way from the monastery, and
which is punctuated at the corner of the canal and the Prospekt by the
pleasing brick and granite palace of the Emperor's brother, Grand Duke
Sergiei Alexandrovitch, which formerly belonged to Prince
Byeloselsky-Byelozersky, was the suburb belonging to Lieutenant-Colonel
Anitchkoff, who built the first bridge, of wood, in 1715. As late as the
reign of Alexander I., all persons entering the town were required to
inscribe their names in the register kept at the barrier placed at this
bridge. Some roguish fellows having conspired to cast ridicule on this
custom, by writing absurd names, the guards were instructed to make an
example of the next jester whose name should strike them as suspicious.
Fate willed that the imperial comptroller, Baltazar Baltazarovitch
Kampenhausen, with his Russianized German name, should fall a victim to
this order, and he was detained until his fantastic cognomen, so harsh
to Slavic ears, could be investigated.
By day or by night, in winter or summer, it is a pure delight to stand
on the Anitchkoff Bridge and survey the scene on either hand. If we gaze
to the north toward what is one of the oldest parts settled on the
rivulet-riddled so-called "mainland," in this Northern Venice, we see
the long, plain facade of the Katherine Institute for the education of
the daughters of officers, originally built by Peter the Great for his
daughter Anna, as the "Italian Palace," but used only for the palace
servants, until it was built over and converted to its present purpose.
Beyond, we catch a glimpse of the yellow wings of Count Scheremetieff's
ancient house and its great iron railing, behind which, in a spacious
courtyard, after the Moscow fashion so rare in thrifty Petersburg, the
main building lies invisible to us. If we look to the south, we find the
long ochre mass of the Anitchkoff Palace, facing on the Nevsky, upon the
right shore; on the left, beyond the palace of Sergiei Alexandrovitch,
the branch of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in old Russian style, with
highly colored saints and heads of seraphim on the outer walls; and a
perspective of light, stuccoed building,--dwellings, markets,
churches,--until the eye halts with pleasure on the distant blue dome
of the Troitzky cathedral, studded with golden stars. Indeed, it is
difficult to discover a vista in St. Petersburg which does not charm us
with a glimpse of one or more of these cross-crowned domes, floating,
bubble-like, in the pale azure of the sky. Though they are far from
being as beautiful in form or coloring as those of Moscow, they satisfy
us at the moment.
If it is on a winter night that we take up our stand here, we may catch
a distant glimpse of the numerous "skating-gardens," laid out upon the
ice cleared on the snowy surface of the canal. The ice-hills will be
black with forms flitting swiftly down the shining roads on sledges or
skates, illuminated by the electric light; a band will be braying
blithely, regardless of the piercing cold, and the skaters will dance
on, in their fancy-dress ball or prize races, or otherwise, clad so
thinly as to amaze the shivering foreigner as he hugs his furs.
By day the teamsters stand upon the quay, with rough aprons over their
ballet-skirted sheepskin coats, waiting for a job. If we hire one of
them, we shall find that they all belong to the ancient Russian Artel,
or Labor Union, which prevents competition beyond a certain point. When
the price has been fixed, after due and inevitable chaffering, one
_lomovoi_ grasps his shapeless cap by its worn edge of fur, bites a
kopek, and drops it in. Each of the other men contributes a marked
copper likewise, and we are invited to draw lots, in full view, to
determine which of them shall have the job. The master of the Artel sees
to it that there is fair play on both sides. If an unruly member
presumes to intervene with a lower bid, with the object of monopolizing
the job out of turn, he is promptly squelched, and, though his bid may
be allowed to stand, the man whose kopek we have drawn must do the work.
The winner chee-ee-eeps to his little horse, whose shaggy mane has been
tangled by the loving hand of the _domovoi_ (house-sprite) and hangs to
his knees. The patient beast, which, like all Russian horses, is never
covered, no matter how severe the weather may be, or how hot he may be
from exercise, rouses himself from his real or simulated slumber, and
takes up the burden of life again, handicapped by the huge wooden arch,
gayly painted in flowers and initials, which joins his shafts, and does
stout service despite his sorry aspect.
But the early summer is the season when the Fontanka is to be seen in
its most characteristic state. The brilliant blue water sparkles under
the hot sun, or adds one more tint to the exquisite hues which make of
the sky one vast, gleaming fire-opal on those marvelous "white nights"
when darkness never descends to a depth beyond the point where it leaves
all objects with natural forms and colors, and only spiritualizes them
with the gentle vagueness of a translucent veil. Small steamers, manned
by wooden-faced, blond Finns, connect the unfashionable suburban
quarters, lying near the canal's entrance into the Neva on the west,
with the fashionable Court quarter on the northern quays at its other
entrance into the Neva, seven versts away. They dart about like
sea-gulls, picking their path, not unfraught with serious danger, among
the obstructions. The obstructions are many: washing-house boats (it is
a good old unexploded theory in Petersburg that clothes are clean only
when rinsed in running water, even though our eyes and noses inform us,
unaided by chart, where the drainage goes); little flotillas of dingy
flat-boats, anchored around the "Fish-Gardens," and containing the
latter's stock in trade, where persons of taste pick their second
dinner-course out of the flopping inmates of a temporary scoop-net;
huge, unwieldy, wood barks, put together with wooden pegs, and steered
with long, clumsy rudders, which the poor peasants have painfully poled
--tramp, tramp, tramp, along the sides--through four hundred miles of
tortuous waterways from that province of the former haughty republic,
"Lord Novgorod the Great," where Prince Rurik ruled and laid the
foundations of the present imperial empire, and whence came Prince-Saint
Alexander, to win his surname of Nevsky, as we have seen, at the spot
where his monastery stands, a couple of miles, at most, away.
The boatmen, who have trundled all day long their quaint little barrows
over the narrow iron rails into the spacious inner courtyards of the
houses on the quay, and have piled up their wood for winter fuel, or
loaded it into the carts for less accessible buildings, now sit on the
stern of their barks, over their coarse food,--sour black bread,
boiled buckwheat groats, and salted cucumbers,--doffing their hats and
crossing themselves reverently before and after their simple meal, and
chatting until the red glow of sunset in the north flickers up to the
zenith in waves of sea-green, lilac, and amber, and descends again in
the north, at the pearl pink of dawn. Sleep is a lost art with these
men, as with all classes of people, during those nerve-destroying "white
nights." When all the silvery satin of the birch logs has been removed
from their capacious holds, these primitive barks will be unpegged, and
the cheap "bark-wood," riddled with holes as by a _mitrailleuse_, will
be used for poor structures on the outskirts of the town.
On the upper shore of this river, second only to the Neva in its
perennial fascination, and facing on the Prospekt, stands the Anitchkoff
Palace, on the site of a former lumber-yard, which was purchased by the
Empress Elizabeth, when she commissioned her favorite architect,
Rastrelli, to erect for Count Razumovsky a palace in that rococo style
which he used in so many palaces and churches during her reign and that
of Katherine II.,--the rococo style being, by the way, quite the most
unsuited discoverable for Russian churches.
Count Alexei Grigorevitch Razumovsky was the Empress Elizabeth's
husband, the uneducated but handsome son of a plain Kazak from Little
Russia, who attracted the attention of Elizaveta Petrovna as his sweet
voice rang out in the imperial choir, at mass, in her palace church.
When the palace was completed, in 1757, it did not differ materially
from its present appearance, as a painting in the Winter Palace shows,
except that its colonnade, now inclosed for the Imperial Chancellery and
offices, then abutted directly on the Fontanka. It has had a very varied
ownership, with some curious features in that connection which remind
one of a gigantic game of ball between Katherine II. and Prince
Potemkin. Count Razumovsky did not live in it until after the Empress
Elizabeth's death, in 1762. After his own death, his brother sold it to
the state, and Katherine II. presented it to Prince Potemkin, who
promptly resold it to a wealthy merchant-contractor in the commissariat
department of the army, who in turn sold it to Katherine II., who gave
it once more to Potemkin. The prince never lived here, but gave
sumptuous garden parties in the vast park, which is now in great part
built over, and sold it back to the state again in 1794. It was first
occupied by royalty in 1809, when the Emperor Alexander I. settled his
sister here, with her first husband,--that Prince of Oldenburg whose
territory in Germany Napoleon I. so summarily annexed a few years later,
thereby converting the Oldenburgs permanently into Russian princes.
The Grand Duke Heir Nicholas used it from 1819 until he ascended the
throne, in 1825, and since that time it has been considered the palace
of the heir to the throne. But the present Emperor has continued to
occupy it since his accession, preferring its simplicity to the
magnificence of the Winter Palace.
The high walls, of that reddish-yellow hue, like the palace itself,
which is usually devoted to government buildings in Russia, continue the
line of offices along the Prospekt, and surround wooded gardens, where
the Emperor and his family coast, skate, and enjoy their winter
pleasures, invisible to the eyes of passers-by.
These woods and walls also form the eastern boundary of the Alexandra
Square, in whose centre rises Mikeshin and Opekushin's fine colossal
bronze statue of Katherine II., crowned, sceptred, in imperial robes,
and with the men who made her reign illustrious grouped about her feet.
Among these representatives of the army, navy, literature, science, art,
there is one woman,--that dashing Princess Elizaveta Romanovna
Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to her throne. As Empress, Katherine
appointed her to be first president of the newly founded Academy of
Sciences, but afterward withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both
polite and impolite exile,--because of her services, the princess
hints, in her celebrated and very lively "Memoirs."
In the Alexandra Theatre, for Russian and German drama, which rears its
new (1828) Corinthian peristyle and its bronze quadriga behind the great
Empress, forming the background of the Square, two of the Empress's
dramas still hold the stage, on occasion. For this busy and energetic
woman not only edited and published a newspaper, the greater part of
which she wrote with her own hand, but composed numerous comedies and
comic operas, where the moral, though sufficiently obvious all the way
through, one would have thought, in the good old style is neatly labeled
at the end. These were acted first in the private theatres of the
various palaces, by the dames and cavaliers of the Court, after which
professional actors presented them to the public in the ordinary
theatres.
It is in vain that we scrutinize the chubby-cheeked countenance of the
bronze Prince Potemkin, at Katherine II.'s feet, to discover the secret
of the charm which made the imperial lady who towers above him force
upon him so often the ground upon which they both now stand. He stares
stolidly at the Prospekt, ignoring not only the Theatre, but the vast
structures containing the Direction of Theatres and Prisons, the
Censor's Office, Theatrical School, and other government offices in the
background; the new building for shops and apartments, where ancient
Russian forms have been adapted to modern street purposes; and even the
wonderfully rich Imperial Public Library, begun in 1794, to contain the
books brought from Warsaw, with its Corinthian peristyle interspersed
with bronze statues of ancient sages, on the garden side,--all of
which stand upon the scene of his former garden parties, as the name of
the avenue beyond the plain end of the Library on the Prospekt--Great
Garden Street--reminds us. Not far away is the site of the tunnel dug
under the Prospekt by the revolutionists, which, however, was
fortunately discovered in time to prevent the destruction of one of the
fairest parts of the city, and its most valuable buildings. With the
next block we enter upon the liveliest, the most characteristic portion
of the Nevsky Prospekt, in that scant fraction over a mile which is left
to us above the Anitchkoff Bridge.
Here stands the vast bazaar known as the _Gostinny Dvor_,--"Guests'
Court,"--a name which dates from the epoch when a wealthy merchant
engaged in foreign trade, and owning his own ships, was distinguished
from the lesser sort by the title of "Guest," which we find in the
ancient epic songs of Russia. Its frontage of seven hundred feet on the
Prospekt, and one thousand and fifty on Great Garden and the next
parallel street, prepare us to believe that it may really contain more
than five hundred shops in the two stories, the lower surrounded by a
vaulted arcade supporting an open gallery, which is invaluable for
decorative purposes at Easter and on imperial festival days. Erected in
1735, very much in its present shape, the one common throughout the
country, on what had been an impassable morass a short time before, and
where the ground still quakes at dawn, it may not contain the largest
and best shops in town, and its merchants certainly are not "guests" in
the ancient acceptation of the word; but we may claim, nevertheless,
that it presents a compendium of most purchasable articles extant, from
_samovari_, furs, and military goods, to books, sacred images, and
Moscow imitations of Parisian novelties at remarkably low prices, as
well as the originals.
The nooks and spaces of the arcade, especially at the corners and
centre, are occupied by booths of cheap wares. The sacred image,
indispensable to a Russian shop, is painted on the vaulted ceiling; the
shrine lamp flickers in the open air, thus serving many aproned,
homespun and sheepskin clad dealers. The throng of promenaders here is
always varied and interesting. The practiced eye distinguishes infinite
shades of difference in wealth, social standing, and other conditions.
The lady in the velvet _shuba_, lined with sable or black fox, her soft
velvet cap edged with costly otter, her head wrapped in a fleecy knitted
shawl of goat's-down from the steppes of Orenburg, or pointed hood--
the _bashlyk_--of woven goat's-down from the Caucasus, has driven
hither in her sledge or carriage, and has alighted to gratify the
curiosity of her sons. We know at a glance whether the lads belong in
the aristocratic Pages' Corps, on Great Garden Street, hard by, in the
University, the Law School, the Lyceum, or the Gymnasium, and we can
make a shrewd guess at their future professions by their faces as well
as by their uniforms. The lady who comes to meet us in sleeved pelisse,
wadded with eider-down, and the one in a short jacket have arrived, and
must return, on foot; they could not drive far in the open air, so
thinly clad.
At Christmas-tide there is a great augmentation in the queer "Vyazemsky"
and other cakes, the peasant laces, sweet Vyborg cracknels, fruit
pastils, and other popular goods, on which these petty open-air dealers
appear to thrive, both in health and purse. The spacious area between
the bazaar and the sidewalk of the Nevsky is filled with
Christmas-trees, beautifully unadorned, or ruined with misplaced
gaudiness, brought in, in the majority of cases, by Finns from the
surrounding country. Again, in the week preceding Palm Sunday, the
_Verbnaya Yarmaraka_, or Pussy Willow Fair, takes place here. Nominally,
it is held for the purpose of providing the public with twigs of that
aesthetic plant (the only one which shows a vestige of life at that
season), which are used as palms, from the Emperor's palace to the
poorest church in the land. In reality, it is a most amusing fair for
toys and cheap goods suitable for Easter eggs; gay paper roses,
wherewith to adorn the Easter cake; and that combination of sour and
sweet cream and other forbidden delicacies, the _paskha_, with which the
long, severe fast is to be broken, after midnight matins on Easter. Here
are plump little red Finland parrots, green and red finches, and other
song-birds, which kindly people buy and set free, after a pretty custom.
The board and canvas booths, the sites for which are drawn by lot by
soldiers' widows, and sold or used as suits their convenience, are
locked at night by dropping the canvas flap, and are never guarded;
while the hint that thefts may be committed, or that watching is
necessary, is repelled with indignation by the stall-keepers.
There is always a popular toy of the hour. One year it consisted of
highly colored, beautifully made bottle-imps, which were loudly cried as
_Amerikanskiya zhiteli_,--inhabitants of America. We inquired the
reason for their name.
"They are made in the exact image of the Americans," explained the
peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue and a
phenomenal tail, for our admiration.
"We are inhabitants of America. Is the likeness very strong?" we asked.
The crowd tittered softly; the man looked frightened; but finding that
no dire fate threatened, he was soon vociferating again, with a roguish
grin:--
"_Kupiti, kupi-i-iti! Prevoskhodniya Amerikanskiya zhiteli! Sa-a-miya
nastoyashtschiya!_"--Buy, buy, splendid natives of America! the most
genuine sort!
Far behind this Gostinny Dvor extends a complex mass of other curious
"courts" and markets, all worthy of a visit for the popular types which
they afford of the lower classes. Among them all none is more steadily
and diversely interesting, at all seasons of the year, than the
_Syennaya Ploshtschad_,--the Haymarket,--so called from its use in
days long gone by. Here, in the Fish Market, is the great repository for
the frozen food which is so necessary in a land where the church exacts
a sum total of over four months' fasting out of the twelve. Here the
fish lie piled like cordwood, or overflow from casks, for economical
buyers. Merchants' wives, with heads enveloped in colored kerchiefs, in
the olden style, well tucked in at the neck of their _salopi_, or
sleeved fur coats, prowl in search of bargains. Here sit the fishermen
from the distant Murman coast, from Arkhangel, with weather-beaten but
intelligent faces, in their quaint skull-caps of reindeer hide, and
baggy, shapeless garments of mysterious skins, presiding over the wares
which they have risked their lives to catch in the stormy Arctic seas,
during the long days of the brief summer-time; codfish dried and curled
into gray unrecognizableness; yellow caviar which resists the teeth like
tiny balls of gutta-percha,--not the delicious gray "pearl" caviar of
the sturgeon,--and other marine food which is never seen on the rich
man's table.