Russian Rambles

by Isabel F. Hapgood

  Mass is over, and a funeral passes down the Nevsky Prospekt, on its way to the fashionable Alexander Nevsky monastery or Novo-Dyevitche convent cemeteries. The deceased may have been a minister of state, or a great officer of the Court, or a military man who is accompanied by warlike pageant. The choir chants a dirge. The priests, clad in vestments of black velvet and silver, seem to find their long thick hair sufficient protection to their bare heads. The professional mutes, with their silver-trimmed black baldrics and cocked hats, appear to have plucked up the street lanterns by their roots to serve as candles, out of respect to the deceased's greatness, and to illustrate how the city has been cast into darkness by the withdrawal of the light of his countenance. The dead man's orders and decorations are borne in imposing state, on velvet cushions, before the gorgeous funeral car, where the pall, of cloth of gold, which will be made into a priest's vestment once the funeral is over, droops low among artistic wreaths and palms, of natural flowers, or beautifully executed in silver. Behind come the mourners on foot, a few women, many men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be; the carriages follow; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of the train, cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to turn from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect to the stranger corpse. More touching are the funerals which pass up the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the Neva, on Vasily Ostroff; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of the bereaved parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bareheaded men, with one or two mourners walking slowly behind.

  From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases constantly in vivacity. The sidewalks are crowded, especially on Sundays and holidays, with a dense and varied throng, of so many nationalities and types that it is a valuable lesson in ethnography to sort them, and that a secret uttered is absolutely safe in no tongue,-unless, possibly, it be that of Patagonia. But the universal language of the eye conquers all difficulties, even for the remarkably fair Tatar women, whose national garb includes only the baldest and gauziest apology for the obligatory veil.

  The plain façades of the older buildings on this part of the Prospekt, which are but three or four stories in height,-elevators are rare luxuries in Petersburg, and few buildings exceed five stories,-are adorned, here and there, with gayly-colored pictorial representations of the wares for sale within. But little variety in architecture is furnished by the inconspicuous Armenian, and the uncharacteristic Dutch Reformed and Lutheran churches which break the severe line of this " Tolerance Street," as it has been called. Most fascinating of all the shops are those of the furriers and goldsmiths, with their surprises and fresh lessons for foreigners; the treasures of Caucasian and Asian art in the Eastern bazaars; the "Colonial wares" establishments, with their delicious game cheeses, and odd studena (fishes in jelly), their pineapples at five and ten dollars, their tiny oysters from the Black Sea at twelve and a half cents apiece.

  Enthralling as are the shop windows, the crowd on the sidewalk is more enthralling still. There are Kazaks, dragoons, cadets of the military schools, students, so varied, though their gay uniforms are hidden by their coats, that their heads resemble a bed of verbenas in the sun. There are officers of every sort: officers with rough gray overcoats and round lambskin caps; officers in large, flat, peaked caps, and smooth-surfaced voluminous cape-coats, wadded with eider-down and lined with gray silk, which trail on their spurs, and with collars of costly beaver or striped American raccoon, and long sleeves forever dangling unused. A snippet of orange and black ribbon worn in the buttonhole shows us that the wearer belongs to the much-coveted military Order of St. George. There are civilians in black cape-coats of the military pattern, topped off with cold, uncomfortable, but fashionable chimneypot hats, or, more sensibly, with high caps of beaver.

  It is curious to observe how many opinions exist as to the weather. The officers leave their ears unprotected; a passing troop of soldiers-fine, large, hardy fellows-wear the strip of black woolen over their ears, but leave their bashlyks hanging unused on their backs, with tabs tacked neatly under shoulder-straps and belts, for use on the Balkans or some other really cold spot. Most of the ladies, on foot or in sledges, wear bashlyks or Orenburg shawls, over wadded fur caps, well pulled down to the brows. We may be sure that the pretty woman who trusts to her bonnet only has also neglected to put on the necessary warm galoshes, and that when she reaches home, sympathizing friends will rub her vain little ears, feet, and brow with spirits of wine, to rescue her from the results of her folly. Only officers and soldiers possess the secret of going about in simple leather boots, or protected merely by a pair of stiff, slapping leather galoshes, accommodated to the spurs.

  For some mysterious reason, the picturesque nurses, with their pearl-embroidered, diadem-shaped caps, like the kokoshniki of the Empress and Court ladies, their silver-trimmed petticoats and jackets patterned after the ancient Russian "soul-warmers," and made of pink or blue cashmere, never have any children in their charge in winter. Indeed, if we were to go by the evidence offered by the Nevsky Prospekt, especially in cold weather, we should assert that there are no children in the city, and that the nurses are used as "sheep-dogs" by ladies long past the dangerous bloom of youth and beauty.

  The more fashionable people are driving, however, and that portion of the one hundred and fourteen feet of the Prospekt's width which is devoted to the roadway is, if possible, even more varied and entertaining in its kaleidoscopic features than the sidewalks. It is admirably kept at all seasons. With the exception of the cobblestone roadbed for the tramway in the centre, it is laid with hexagonal wooden blocks, well spiked together and tarred, resting upon tarred beams and planks, and forming a pavement which is both elastic and fairly resistant to the volcanic action of the frost. The snow is maintained at such a level that, while sledging is perfect, the closed carriages which are used for evening entertainments, calls, and shopping are never incommoded. Street sweepers, in red cotton blouses and clean white linen aprons, sweep on calmly in the icy chill. The police, with their bashlyks wrapped round their heads in a manner peculiar to themselves, stand always in the middle of the street and regulate the traffic.

  We will hire an izvostchik and join the throng. The process is simple; it consists in setting ourselves up at auction on the curbstone, among the numerous cabbies waiting for a job, and knocking ourselves down to the lowest bidder. If our Vanka (Johnny, the generic name for cabby) drives too slowly, obviously with the object of loitering away our money, a policeman will give him a hint to whip up, or we may effect the desired result by threatening to speak to the next guardian of the peace. If Vanka attempts to intrude upon the privileges of the private carriages, for whom is reserved the space next the tramway track and the row of high, silvered posts which bear aloft the electric lights, a sharp "Beregis!" (Look out for yourself!) will be heard from the first fashionable coachman who is impeded in his swift career, and he will be called to order promptly by the police. Ladies may not, unfortunately, drive in the smartest of the public carriages, but must content themselves with something more modest and more shabby. But Vanka is usually good-natured, patient, and quite unconscious of his shabbiness, at least in the light of a grievance or as affecting his dignity. It was one of these shabby, but democratic and self-possessed fellows who furnished us with a fine illustration of the peasant qualities. We encountered one of the Emperor's cousins on his way to his regimental barracks; the Grand Duke mistook us for acquaintances, and saluted. Our izvostchik returned the greeting.

  "Was that Vasily Dmitrich?" we asked in Russian form.

  "Yes, madam."

  "Whom was he saluting?"

  "Us," replied the man, with imperturbable gravity. Very different from our poor fellow, who remembers his duties to the saints and churches, and salutes Kazan Cathedral, as we pass, with cross and bared head, is the fashionable coachman, who sees nothing but his horses. Our man's cylindrical cap of imitation fur is old, his summer armyak of blue c
loth fits, as best it may, over his lean form and his sheepskin tulup, and is girt with a cheap cotton sash.

  The head of the fashionable coachman is crowned with a becoming gold-laced cap, in the shape of the ace of diamonds, well stuffed with down, and made of scarlet, sky-blue, sea-green, or other hue of velvet. His fur-lined armyak, reaching to his feet,-through whose silver buttons under the left arm he is bursting, with pads for fashion or with good living,-is secured about his portly waist by a silken girdle glowing with roses and butterflies. His legs are too fat to enter the sledge,-that is to say, if his master truly respects his own dignity,-and his feet are accommodated in iron stirrups outside. He leans well back, with arms outstretched to accord with the racing speed at which he drives. In the tiny sledge-the smaller it is, the more stylish, in inverse ratio to the coachman, who is expected to be as broad as it is-sits a lady hugging her crimson velvet shuba lined with curled white Thibetan goat, or feathery black fox fur, close about her ears. An officer holds her firmly with one arm around the waist, a very necessary precaution at all seasons, with the fast driving, where drozhkies and sledges are utterly devoid of back or side rail. The spans of huge Orloff stallions, black or dappled gray, display their full beauty of form in the harnesses of slender straps and silver chains; their beautiful eyes are unconcealed by blinders. They are covered with a coarse-meshed woolen net fastened to the winged dashboard, black, crimson, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, the wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the middle like a well-worn whisk broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs of the occupants of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each filament seems to have been turned into silver wire.

  There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire department passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand-engine, three water-barrels, pennons, and fine horses trained in the haute école, which does splendid work with apparently inadequate means. An officer in gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a pair of fine trotters. "Vot on sam!" mutters our izvostchik,-There he is himself! It is General Gresser [1] the prefect of the capital, who maintains perfect order, and demonstrates the possibilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinctive-as distinctive as the unique gray cap-that we can recognize it as they pass, cry like the izvostchik, "Vot on sam!" and fly to the window with the certainty that it will be "he himself."

  Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the latter wearing their chevrons on their backs; rude wooden sledges, whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous snow; grand ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse,-all mingle in the endless procession which flows on up the Nevsky Prospekt through the Bolshaya Morskaya,-Great Sea Street,-and out upon the Neva quays, and back again, to see and be seen, until long after the sun has set on the short days, at six minutes to three. A plain sledge approaches. The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary general, and there are thousands of generals! As he drives quietly along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary general; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak orderly. It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise. If we meet him near the gate of the Anitchkoff Palace, we may find him sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter.

  Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife-board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and gold (or with white in place of the green at Easter-tide). The lady whose large dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and the superb black fox shawl of her crimson velvet cloak is the Empress. The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting. Attendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Emperor.

  Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter. The dry, feathery snow descends, but no one heeds it. We turn up our coat collars and drive on. Umbrellas are unknown abominations. The permanent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of the entrances, are serviceable only to those who use closed carriages, and in the rainy autumn.

  Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin. Outside, on the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops. In the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic in size, of generals Kutuzoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard.

  Hither the Emperor and Empress come "to salute the Virgin," on their safe return from a journey. Hither are brought imperial brides in gorgeous state procession-when they are of the Greek faith-on their way to the altar in the Winter Palace. We can never step into this temple without finding some deeply interesting and characteristically Russian event in progress. After we have run the inevitable gauntlet of monks, nuns, and other beggars at the entrance, we may happen upon a baptism, just beyond, the naked, new-born infant sputtering gently after his thrice-repeated dip in the candle-decked font, with the priest's hand covering his eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils, and now undergoing the ceremony of anointment or confirmation. Or we may come upon a bridal couple, in front of the solid silver balustrade; or the exquisite liturgy, exquisitely chanted by the fine choir in their vestments of scarlet, blue, and silver, with the seraphic wings upon their shoulders, and intoned, with a finish of art unknown in other lands, by priests robed in rich brocade. Or it may be that a popular sermon by a well-known orator has attracted a throng of listeners among the lofty pillars of gray Finland granite, hung with battle-flags and the keys of conquered towns. What we shall assuredly find is votaries ascending the steps to salute with devotion the benignant brown-faced Byzantine Virgin and Christ-Child, incrusted with superb jewels, or kneeling in "ground reverences," with brow laid to the marble pavement, before the ikonostas, or rood-screen, of solid silver. Our Lady of Kazan has been the most popular of wonder-working Virgins ever since she was brought from Kazan to Moscow, in 1579, and transported to Petersburg, in 1721 (although her present cathedral dates only from 1811), and the scene here on Easter-night is second only to that at St. Isaac's when the porticoes are thronged by the lower classes waiting to have their flower and candle decked cakes and cream blessed at the close of the Easter matins.

  One of the few individual dwelling-houses which linger on the Nevsky Prospekt, and which presents us with a fine specimen of the rococo style which Rastrelli so persistently served up at the close of the eighteenth century, is that of the Counts Stroganoff, at the lower quay of the Moika. The Moika (literally, Washing) River is the last of the semicircular, concentric canals which intersect the Nevsky and its two radiating companion Prospekts, and impart to that portion of the city which is situated on the (comparative) mainland a resemblance to an outspread fan, whose palm-piece is formed by the Admiralty on the Neva quay.

  The stately pile, and the pompous air of the big, gold-laced Swiss lounging at the entrance on the Nevsky, remind us that the Stroganoff family has been a power in Russian history since the middle of the sixteenth century.

  It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofeevitch, who conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, while engaged in repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild Siberian tribes on the fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had been authorized to erect on the vast territory at the western foot of the Ural Mountains, conveyed to them by the ancient Tzars. Later on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the f
ather of Peter the Great, established a new code, grading punishments and fines by classes, the highest money tax assessed for insult and injury was fifty rubles; but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one hundred rubles.

  Opposite the Stroganoff house, on the upper Moika quay, rises the large, reddish-yellow Club of the Nobility, representing still another fashion in architecture, which was very popular during the last century for palaces and grand mansions,-the Corinthian peristyle upon a solid, lofty basement. It is not an old building, but was probably copied from the palace of the Empress Elizabeth, which stood on this spot. Elizaveta Petrovna, though she used this palace a great deal, had a habit of sleeping in a different place each night, the precise spot being never known beforehand. This practice is attributed, by some Russian historians, to her custom of turning night into day. She went to the theatre, for example, at eleven o'clock, and any courtier who failed to attend her was fined fifty rubles. It was here that the populace assembled to hurrah for Elizaveta Petrovna, on December 6, 1741, when she returned with little Ivan VI. in her arms from the Winter Palace, where she had made captive his father and his mother, the regent Anna Leopoldina. It may have been the recollection of the ease with which she had surprised indolent Anna Leopoldina in her bed-chamber which caused her to be so uncertain in her own movements, in view of the fact that there were persons so ill-advised as to wish the restoration of the slothful German regent and her infant son, disastrous as that would have been to the country.