Chapter XII: Through the Winter (1)

Happily our life at the Embassy was not all made up of political miscarriages and diplomatic rebuffs. On the 6th (18th) of January we all received a summons to attend the ceremony of the blessing of the waters.

For some days past a little shrine of green wood had been in process of construction on the side of the Neva opposite the Winter Palace; a picture of a saint surmounted it on each side, the place of honour being assigned to the image of St. John the Baptist. As soon as daylight broke on the 6th vast crowds of people of both sexes, soldiers in many uniforms, and, of course, as at all public ceremonies, dogs, were flocking to catch as near a sight as possible of the shrine.

We, the Corps Diplomatique, were bidden to the Winter Palace at noon. The drive through the streets was fascinating. The weather was glorious and the glistening city was at its brightest, the soldiers in all their bravery giving a kaleidoscopic glamour to the surging mob, mostly clad in sad-coloured sheepskins with the wool inside. The wild-looking Georgians in their native dress, Cossacks of the Don, fierce, swarthy horsemen from the Caucasus in their shirts of mail and shining armour, striking a medieval note in the concert of men. The Kurnos regiment of the Emperor Paul, every man with a snub nose, and wearing the old peaked brazen shako of our Guards in Queen Anne’s reign, each shako showing a bullet hole in it, a memorial of a bullet which, aimed at the Tsar, found its billet in the tall cap of one of his faithful, snub-nosed guardsmen, who dashed forward just in time to save the Tsar’s life at the expense of his own; in contrast to these were the grenadiers, with heavy bearskin caps and plumes. The _chevalier-gardes_ in white tunics, their helmets and cuirasses dazzling in the winter sun—all the panoply of war set in the flaming glory of ecclesiastical and imperial splendour. Could this be Europe in the nineteenth century?

From the room in the Palace in which we had assembled we were ushered off to a side entrance to see the priestly procession form to meet the Tsar. It was an imposing ceremony. The air was heavy with the penetrating fumes of incense, and in the distance we could hear the mysterious effect of the deep bass voices of the priests and deacons—those wonderful bass voices for which they are chosen—chanting the impressive litanies of the Greek Church. Nearer and nearer they came, the music becoming clearer and more distinct, but intensely reverential, until at last the great procession of Church dignitaries passed before us; it was stirringly solemn.

Priests in red, priests in purple, priests in white, and priests in violet, all as resplendent as a profusion of gold embroidery and jewels could make them—very imposing with their long white beards and hair. One deacon, a giant in stature, with hair and beard reaching half-way down to his waist, had a deep voice which, pealing through the corridors like the rolling[42] notes of a bass trombone, made the windows rattle again. Last of all came the Bishops and the Metropolitan, like the King’s daughter “all glorious within,” clad in raiment that made them seem like a vision out of the Apocalypse. Altogether a sight not to be forgotten.

We followed the procession through the great State apartments of the Palace, each room with a guard of honour from a different regiment, until the priests and bishops branched off to one of the principal staircases to go round the Palace; and when next we saw them they were accompanied by the Tsar, looking magnificent on a grey charger, followed by his brothers and sons, and a brilliantly mounted staff of the chief officials. Of the ceremony itself we could see nothing. It consists in the dipping of a cross by the Tsar into the water, through a hole made in the ice, and during the liturgy which follows, and lasts for a quarter of an hour, all the people, including the soldiers, remain uncovered. Even the Tsar must bare his head, so the late Emperor, who was bald, used to wear a wig for the occasion. It was luckily not very cold, but there was a keen wind blowing, and I am bound to say that the thermometer is a bad judge of temperature at St. Petersburg, for the wind is man’s worst enemy, and the days when the mercury is at its lowest are far more tolerable than those on which there are a few degrees of frost and biting blasts that race down the river. Happily we diplomatists had two stout glass windows between us and the weather, so we had no cause to complain.

As soon as the waters had been duly blessed, and the service was over, out burst a cannonade from the fortress and from guns placed at regular intervals on the opposite bank of the Neva; then the Emperor and his staff mounted their horses and wended their way back, the priests carrying the blessed water and sprinkling the troops with it as they passed in front of them. The Empress being ill and unable to attend the ceremony, a golden goblet was filled with the water and carried to her for her use.

We were all invited to luncheon, and after that there was a review of the Imperial Guards, thirty-four thousand men and eighty-four pieces of cannon; a quite magnificent display.

As soon as the blessing of the waters and the review were finished, the mujiks were all allowed access to the consecrated hole in the ice. Into this they dipped themselves, fully clothed, to the end that they might purify themselves from the excesses of their holidays—more particularly from the sin of wearing masks, which, being forbidden by their religion, is one in which the orthodox take a special delight. Dripping icicles, but pure, and of a contented conscience, the mujik rushes from his freezing bath to his poor home, there to work, and, as soon as Lent comes, starve, till Easter shall set him free once more.

If all that one hears be true, the Russia of to-day is very different from what it was at the time of which I am writing. The great hospitable houses are, so I am told, many of them shut up. The Winter Palace itself is no longer the setting of pageants and festivities of which the slaves of the ring and the lamp might have been the stage-managers and chamberlains. Misfortune, sorrow and cruel anxieties have racked the Imperial Family, and the gaiety of a nation has been eclipsed. One can but hope that it may be only a passing eclipse, only a temporary cloud, through which in years to come the sun may shine more brightly than before.[43] It was radiant in my day.

It would be difficult to imagine anything more sumptuous than a great Court ball. There were one thousand eight hundred guests, themselves all as brilliant as the glory of diamonds and rubies and pearls and the most magnificent uniforms could make them. The great white and gold ball-room, with an orchestra at each end, flanked by arches leading into a winter garden rich in palms and tree-ferns and flowers and all the wonders of tropical vegetation, was lighted by twenty-seven thousand candles arranged spirally round the pillars and in crystal chandeliers.

The Corps Diplomatique were ushered into the adjoining drawing-rooms, where they were received by old Count Ribeaupierre, the _grand maître de la Cour_, himself a notable link with the past, for he had been page of honour to the Empress Catherine. Presently the doors were thrown open and the Imperial family trooped in; the Emperor as usual very regal, half a head taller than any man in the room, wearing a white hussar uniform trimmed with gold and black sables; the Empress covered with the spoils of Ophir and Golconda. They went round our circle, stopping to speak to the chiefs of missions and their wives. It was a lesson to watch that gracious Lady and the winning way in which she made her guests welcome with a charm that could only come from the sweetest nature. When the little reception was over we followed Their Majesties into the ball-room. It really was a dazzling sight. At a given moment all the one thousand eight hundred guests sat down to supper at the same time; only the Emperor remained standing, himself looking after the comfort of his guests.

An entertainment even more wonderful, on account of its exquisite daintiness, was a smaller ball of only about three hundred and fifty guests; it led, moreover, to some amusing incidents. The order from the Court was that civilians were not to wear uniform, so with two brilliant exceptions, the diplomatic body arrived as black as rooks. The brilliant two were General Cassius Clay and the Duc d’Osuna, the Spanish Ambassador, who, conceiving themselves to be soldiers, took it for granted that the order did not apply to them; the General especially was full of military ardour as regarded his clothes, so he came in a nondescript blue coat, a yellow nankeen waistcoat, white trousers and something in his hand which he said was a forage-cap. The Duc d’Osuna, on the other hand, appeared in a gorgeous uniform, his breast plastered all over with stars and decorations (the only wonder being that he did not wear some on his back as well), his little legs incased in white leather breeches and jack-boots. He was a great character and really a very charming personality; fabulously rich, an ambassador without pay, he hospitably kept open house for his staff, even when he was on leave. His many châteaux were maintained in the same sumptuous way, whether he were in Spain or abroad, ready to receive him at any moment, and so, while his agents accumulated good fortunes, when his death came he was reputed to have well-nigh run through everything. The ship had too many leaks. He was several times over grandee of Spain, and so had the right to wear any number of hats in the presence of his sovereign. He is alluded to in Lord Beaconsfield’s letter to his sister, giving an account of Queen Victoria’s coronation. “He is a great dandy, and looks like Philip the Second, but though the only living descendant of the Borgias, he has the reputation of being very amiable. When he was last at Paris he attended a representation of Victor Hugo’s _Lucrezia Borgia_. She says in one of the scenes: ‘_Great crimes are in our blood_.’ All his friends looked at him with an expression of fear. ‘_But the blood has degenerated_,’ he said, ‘_for I have committed only weaknesses_.’”

The dear little man’s great foible was vanity, concentrated in the admiration of his own tiny Spanish feet. “Oh! moi,” said a little French actress one evening. “Quand j’ai besoin de deux ou trois cents roubles, je m’en vais trouver le Duc d’Osuna; je lui fais un doigt de cour et je lui dis, en regardant ses pieds: ‘Ah! comme ils sont jolis! Il n’y a que Monsieur le Duc d’Osuna pour avoir ces pieds-là—sont-ils assez mignons!’ Cela ne rate jamais.”

Another order that evening was, that there was to be no ceremony as to going in to supper. We were to go as we pleased and with whom we pleased. Precedence was abolished for the night. We danced in the white drawing-room; towards midnight the heavy folding doors were thrown open, and in what had been the great ball-room of a few nights before was laid out quite the most artistically perfect banquet that could be imagined—once more the Jins of the “Arabian Nights” had been at work. In the great hall and the _jardin d’hiver_ were thirty-five supper-tables, each to hold ten guests, each dressed round an orange tree in full fruit. The illumination, with the usual fabulous number of candles, was resplendent. It was an entrancing sight. As we went in everybody uttered a little exclamation of surprise! “Mon Dieu! que c’est joli!” “Mais c’est ravissant!” “Oui,” said Georges Du Luart, “c’est positivement féerique!” “Ah!” said the Duc d’Osuna, in his Spanish French, “n’est-ce pas que c’est zoli! C’est l’uniforme du réziment que zé commande.” The good Duke, who was rather deaf, had taken all the enthusiasm as a well-merited tribute to his own personal appearance.

Du Luart, now (1915) the Marquis du Luart, one of the greatest authorities in France on sport and _vénerie_, and I had arranged to sit together; but somehow we got separated and had to take our chance of places. After wandering about I found myself at a table where I knew no one, but as usual, the other guests were most kind and amiable in their welcome to the stranger.

The gentleman next me began asking me all manner of questions about England and English people; it turned out that he had known my father, Charles Greville (of the memoirs), and his brother Henry, Lord Granville, and many other people whom I knew well. He was Monsieur Jean Tolstoy, Postmaster-General, a member of the Cabinet, and a personal friend of the Emperor. Our acquaintance did not end there; for he took many opportunities of showing me civilities during the remainder of my stay in Russia. It was a curious accident, for I do not suppose that there was another Russian in the crowd who knew my father.

During the whole time that the supper lasted the Emperor kept walking round the different tables, with a kindly word of welcome for many of his guests, and anxious to see that all were well served. There was not a speck of condescension about him; just the anxiety and care of a most courteous host. The Emperor Alexander was certainly one of the greatest gentlemen that I ever saw in any rank of life.

A figure of mark at these Court functions was the Prussian Ambassador, Count Redern, who, with the help of his Countess and a very charming daughter, himself kept one of the pleasantest and best mounted houses in the town. His appointment to St. Petersburg was said to have been made for a unique reason. He had been named to one of the smallest European Courts. Now he possessed a service of silver plate of which he was passing proud, and it seemed to him to be utterly incongruous that its glory should be thrown away upon a very tiny Scandinavian capital. “Ich! Mit meiner Vaisselle!” he is said to have exclaimed with indignation when the appointment was notified to him. The objection was held to be unanswerable, so he and his service of plate were sent to cast lustre upon the capital of the Tsar. If, following upon Bismarck, he did not seem to be diplomatically an eagle, he was, at any rate, a great social success, and everybody liked him.

It seems as if I had no story to write but what relates to feasts and splendour and the glory of the Emperor. I may have been monotonous. But all this magnificence cannot forbid the door to sorrow. Even yet my readers are like the Queen of Sheba, “the half was not told them.” But in this great stately home of the Tsars there is a chamber of grief, a corner which no man can penetrate without emotion; it is the reverse of a brilliant medal.

One day I was taken by one of my friends about the Court to see the apartment which was occupied by the Emperor Nicholas. It was the eve of the anniversary of his death, just nine years ago. There was no magnificence, no luxury here; nothing but Spartan simplicity—the heroic simplicity of the man whom he took as his ideal, the Duke of Wellington—just two shabby little rooms on the ground floor of the Winter Palace, which elsewhere glittered with all the treasures of fairyland; the outer room was furnished with a wardrobe and decorated with a few drawings of fortifications. Here the mightiest ministers and generals waited for their audiences, which were granted in the Emperor’s sanctum—a room no bigger than the quarters of a subaltern in Chatham Barracks, which served as bedroom, dressing-room and study all in one. The furniture was to match; on the walls hung a few French prints, a portrait or two, and some bad sketches of reviews and sham fights; at the head of his bed the likeness of his beautiful and favourite daughter Olga, in the uniform of the regiment which he gave her. Books were represented by a collection of caricatures; a narrow camp bedstead, the mattress as hard as stone; spread upon the bed the military cloak which had served him—so it was said—for fifty years, a simple grey cloak with a red collar, no better than that of a common soldier; his tunic was out ready to put on, his casque and sword handy. His solitary brush and comb, his toothbrush and shaving tackle, were ready for use—it was as if the man who had died nine years ago had only left that morning and was expected back in the evening. At one side of the room stood the writing-table, with drawers on each side. Here he used to sit with his ministers facing him, and I fancy that some of our acquaintances could tell of awkward moments passed at that table. On it lay his notepaper, inkstand, pens, and the almanack for 1855!

_February 18th, 1855._]

Everything just as he left it—every single thing save one only—a small and beautiful pencil drawing of his head as it lay in death upon the pillow. Altogether a pathetic sight! and it all seemed so intimate, as if the handsome, dead giant might at any moment come stalking into the room, and resent the intrusion.

It was the fashion among Russians in 1864 to talk of Nicholas as a tyrant before whom in his lifetime they crouched in terror, and of Alexander’s accession to power as a release from bondage. No doubt in a measure that was true. At the same time it is no less true that those who knew him best loved him dearly. The fierceness of his will, no less than his personal beauty and his charm, appealed. Where he chose he was irresistible. He was one of those magnetic men whose power over the hearts and affections of others is almost superhuman—there are men, one or two in a century, who walk upon the earth as Gods to be worshipped.

One night there was a small dinner at Lord Napier’s, just the members of the Embassy and one Russian guest, Admiral Greig, the descendant of one of the many Scots who came over to Russia and took service there in the eighteenth century. His old Scottish connection put him on terms of very friendly intercourse with Lord Napier. That evening he told us the story of how he had carried the news of the battle of the Alma to the Emperor Nicholas.

Being soldier as well as sailor, General as well as Admiral, he had been aide-de-camp to Prince Gortchakoff (the brother of the Vice-Chancellor), who was commander-in-chief of the army in the Crimea. At the end of the day of the 20th of September, after the battle of the Alma, the Prince sent him to convey the intelligence of the disaster to the Tsar, with orders to tell no one what had happened till his Majesty should have received him. It was not a pleasant mission. He posted night and day till he reached the railroad, and at every halt for change of horses the people crowded round him, eager for news from the front; but he uttered not a word. At last, after a long, weary journey he reached the Palace, and was ushered into the Tsar’s presence. The Tsar, anticipating glorious news from the war, sprang forward smiling to embrace him. The Admiral started aside and put out both hands with the palms outward as though to push back the Emperor, saying: “No, your Majesty! no! I bring bad news.” The Emperor’s whole face changed. Nicholas gave him one of those steady looks with which he knew how to petrify the man who displeased him; deeply angered, he demanded to know the worst.

At this moment the Empress came in. That the heights of the Alma should have been stormed in the face of the Russian army was something that the Tsar would not, could not, believe. He strode about the room, furious; but the Empress pacified him and gave him comfort. At last, when he had collected himself, he dismissed the Admiral, telling him to keep strict silence, and to tell no human being what had happened. Admiral Greig very humbly pointed out that the aide-de-camp in waiting and other gentlemen were outside the door and would at once ply him with questions. “Tell them nothing,” said the Emperor. Here the Empress very quietly interposed: “On the contrary, tell them everything. There is no use in concealing the truth. I will be responsible.”

It was an evil moment for a soldier. He was sent back posthaste to the Crimea in disgrace; but when he was badly wounded afterwards, the Tsar was appeased and sent him a message to say that he “kissed his wound.” He was forgiven.

The reign of the Emperor Nicholas had not been a happy one. Indeed, during all his life he had been brought face to face with the dangers and troubles by which the kingly office is surrounded. He was but five years old when his father, the Emperor Paul, was murdered; on the rather mysterious death at Taganrog of his brother, Alexander the First—who had been ailing and had gone to the Crimea for a rest, but whose condition had not given rise to alarm—his next brother, Constantine, having previously renounced his claims, he was called to the throne in the last month of 1825.

As his very first act he was forced to put down the revolution of the Dekabrists, the Men of December, officers of the guards regiments and others, the chief of whom was one Pestel, who, under the pretence of putting Constantine on the throne, were plotting for the annihilation of the Imperial autocracy and the granting of a constitution—perhaps they had even wider views. The rising was quelled after feeding the gallows and Siberia. The moment was critical, and Nicholas was not the man to treat rebellion with rose-water. The reign ended, as it began, with a tragedy. Men said that the Emperor died of a broken heart; when the army which he loved was beaten, the ambition of a lifetime faded into thin air, and the proud spirit was humbled in despair.

In the country where no historian was at that time allowed to write that the Emperor Paul was murdered, but only that he died suddenly, it was obvious that the death of Nicholas could not openly be discussed. But there were whispers. It was said in secret by many men that the Emperor did not die a natural death. There was a story of a certain German physician who was ordered by the Tsar to give him a sure and painless poison. The physician of course refused and left St. Petersburg. On the following day it was given out that his Majesty was ailing; he had contracted a chill. Worse bulletins followed. After a few days, it was announced that he was dangerously ill; in a few more days that the end had come. Heart failure. The last ukase had been issued.

A Russian gentleman whom I knew well told me that as a youngster he was one of the pages of honour in waiting on the day when the death of the Emperor was made known to the public. It was his duty that night to watch with others over the dead Tsar. “Figurez-vous,” he said, “que quoique nous fussions en Février[44] le corps sentait déjà mauvais.” Taken in connection with the whisper to which I have alluded, this seemed to me not without significance. The mystery will in all probability never be cleared up; but at this distance of time there can be no indiscretion in alluding to a story which was widely believed, though it was only uttered in hushed tones and with bated breath.

In any case, for the death of the great Tsar England was largely responsible. When he paid his famous visit to Queen Victoria in the year 1844—a visit still commemorated at Newmarket by the Cesarewitch handicap—English statesmen were made thoroughly aware of what was his policy in the Eastern Question. He made no secret of it. His ambition was to drive the Turk, the “Sick Man” of Sir Hamilton’s Seymour’s despatches, out of Europe and to _occupy_ Constantinople, not, as he asserted, to _take_ it. In that, no doubt, he was speaking honestly as regarded his intentions at that time, for he was essentially a truthful man and, as he liked to say, using the English word which he loved, “a gentleman.”

He had another and, to him, a still higher and more cherished object—the freeing of the sacred places of Palestine from the hated presence of the Moslem. That, with him, was the pious dream of a devotee who carried religion almost to fanaticism. No Crusader was ever fired by a holier ardour. That shrines of such awe-inspiring sanctity as the Holy Sepulchre and Bethlehem should be under the domination of Islam; that disputes among the priests of the Christian creeds in the Holy Land should be subjected to the arbitration of some petty Turkish official, were to this chivalrous son of his Church—to this Christian gentleman—horrors too hideous for contemplation. To Lord Aberdeen, in these matters, he fully opened his heart, and though Lord Aberdeen was careful to avoid definitely committing himself to any “hypothetical engagement,” the Tsar believed firmly that he was receiving nothing but encouragement. So convinced was he on the subject that when Lord Aberdeen became Prime Minister he thought in his happiness that the tocsin of the Turk had sounded. But when the crucial time came, England failed him, and cast in her lot with Louis Napoléon, to whom an alliance with Great Britain gave a much-needed addition of prestige.

The “Sick Man” was once more bolstered up, and Nicholas, deceived as he believed himself to be—at any rate foiled in his hopes and crushed in his darling ambition—prostrated by the failure of the army whose invincibility was with him a creed, saw nothing in front of him but what, to his proud heart, seemed ruin and despair. Broken in spirit, the great Tsar laid himself down to die. That was the tragedy of the little camp bed.

* * * * *

Here is a wrinkle for the Criminal Investigation Department. Towards the end of December, 1863 (Old Style) St. Petersburg was stirred by a crime which touched all Russians to the quick. Murder and sacrilege. On the opposite bank of the Neva stands the little wooden house of Peter the Great, together with a boat built by his hands. To this is attached a small church of great sanctity; indeed, even to me, a stranger belonging to another school of faith, this humble shrine, for some mysterious reason felt but not explained, even to myself, seemed more an object of reverence than many a gorgeous place of worship decked out in all the lavish trappings furnished by the orthodox, who never grudge the spending of their treasure for the adornment of their temples. To this sacred place the pious have been in the habit of bringing votive offerings, reliquaries and jewels of great price.

When on the twenty-first of the month (Old Style) the church was broken into and robbed, and the two guardians murdered, their skulls being battered in, as it was thought, with iron or leaden weights, great indeed was the consternation amongst the faithful from the highest to the lowest. The Tsar himself went to visit the scene of the tragedy. To the _mujik_, intensely religious, not to say superstitious, the effect was stupefying. An ordinary murder leaves him calm and cold, and the death of the watchers was an affair of small account. What mattered a _mujik_ or two more or less? The violation of the holy shrine was quite another matter.

After long and painstaking inquiries, circumstantial evidence showed that one Gudzevitch, a soldier, was the murderer. As to that there could be no doubt. But the man’s confession was necessary, and this could not be obtained. Not all the cunning of judge and lawyers, not all the pious exhortations of the arch-priest, Polissador, of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, who visited him several times a day, were able to extract a word from him. He remained as hard as a flint, stiffly protesting his innocence in the face of every proof. Of repentance not a hint. As the _Journal de St. Pétersbourg_ put it, “There was nothing for it but to proceed to extreme measures.” There was at that time in prison another soldier named Baouschkin, belonging to the Kharkov regiment. It was determined to shut this man up in the same cell with Gudzevitch in the hope that he might be able to worm something out of him.

On the seventh (nineteenth) of January, Baouschkin made his report. He declared that Gudzevitch asked him for what crime he was in prison, and that, on hearing that it was for murder, theft and arson Gudzevitch tried to induce him to confess that he was the murderer of the two watchmen at Peter the Great’s house; he argued that, as he must suffer, it would put him in no worse position, and what a kindness he would be doing!

By degrees, playing upon the wretched man’s hopes and fears, Baouschkin obtained all the details—the instrument with which the murder was committed (an axe, with the hammer end of which the men had been brained, and not a heavy weight, as had been supposed) was found, together with a box in which the stolen offertory had been contained, and the prisoner was condemned to death. Penitent he was at the last, moved thereto by the contemplation of the photograph of one of the murdered men which had been placed in his cell, that the sight might haunt him into confession and repentance. For civilians the death penalty was abolished, except for high treason; for them flogging with rods and Siberia were the punishment; but Gudzevitch, being a soldier, must die. The night of his execution I met the officer who commanded the parade. He was shot, twelve conical bullets riddling his body, and even so he was not dead; it was a gruesome sight when the poor wretch fell and lifted himself slowly up—six more bullets and he was dead.

The criminal procedure, if successful, struck me as peculiar. It had something of the flavour of the Herodotean stories of the methods of ancient kings.

I do not believe that there was more crime in St. Petersburg fifty years ago than in any other city. The _mujik_ is good-natured, easy-going, rather dull and childish, and his tastes are distinctly bacchanalian. But one could not fancy so simple a creature vicious or criminal. In old days there were frequently, if reports be true, murders of a peculiarly ugly kind. In the dark winter nights robbers used to infest the frozen river, waylaying the unwary footpad who ventured across alone. A stunning blow on the head was quickly given, and a hole in the ice was ready to receive a victim, stripped of his clothes and valuables; the body would be carried down the river under the ice, past Kronstadt, into the Baltic, and all trace of the crime would be lost for ever.

In my time the river was well policed, and the brilliant lighting not only shed over the city the joy of beauty, but gave safety in place of danger. But stories used still to be told of a certain wicked old watchman (_Budotchnik_) who, posted near the Blue Bridge, was supposed to have sent out to sea in this way upwards of thirty of the very people over whose lives and property it was his duty to keep guard. _Quis custodiet custodes!_

Since man has fallen, wickedness there must be in all nations. Satan is ubiquitous. But in Russia the doctrines of the Faith are so infused into the blood of the people that even the criminals are religious—at any rate so far as the outer observances are concerned. It is said that a Russian thief will cross himself with one hand while he picks your pocket with the other, and I have no doubt that even that murderous old Budotchnik would have sacrificed his own life rather than take down the _ikon_, the sacred image of his patron saint, from its place of honour in the corner of his room.

The piety of the people is very real, very sincere. Of that there can be no doubt; the greatest proof lies in the spirit of self-sacrifice and in the submission to privations which are serious and often injurious to health. Take the great festivals of their Church. Christmas Day, Easter and the feast of the Trinity are observed in all Christian lands, but the fourth holy day, the day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, is, so far as I know, mostly passed over with inattention. Here it is different. So sacred is the occasion that no man who can possibly help it will do a turn of work, indeed, there is a popular saying that “even the birds rest from building their nests on that day.” The very _isvostchik_ (cabman) deserts the streets, unless it be for bread’s sake—the children must be fed, coin is scarce and food dear.

Lent, above all, is a sore trial to these poor people, but they bear it cheerfully. During those six cruel weeks they taste nothing but the poor and sordid food which is all that the Church allows them—an ugly soup made up of dried toad-stools, collected in summer and sold by the string, onions, pickled cucumbers, coarse cabbage, dry radishes, horse-radish and black bread; these ingredients are mixed up with an evil-smelling black oil made from hemp. The untempting mess of pottage is washed down by draughts of cheap _kvass_, a poor sort of beer brewed of rye and a little malt—a drink scarcely less nasty then the food. Upon this scanty diet the _mujik_ grows thin, but he tightens his belt and goes about his work, kept in heart by visions of drunken happiness as soon as the last stroke of twelve on Easter Eve shall have rung the knell of his misery.

During one whole week of Lent every man gives himself up entirely to his devotions. At four in the morning he goes fasting to his church. There he stays without bite or sup until noon, when he leaves, and breaks his long fast with a dish of the revolting food which I have described. At four, if he can manage it, he returns to his prayers, which last till six, and yet not satisfied, he must again go to church in the evening. Whatever may be the motive power of all this devotion and abnegation—be it superstition or be it religion—it is quite impossible not to respect it, for it is as honest as truth itself.

His religion, his country, and the Tsar. Those, fifty years ago, were the three sacred objects of the Russian’s worship, and their influence was so interwoven that it would be difficult to say which should be placed first. In no people could the feeling of nationality be more strongly developed; it was fed by a feeling of proprietorship absolutely unique. Every man, however humble his position in the world might be, conceived himself as having a share in the soil equal to that of the richest: it was a relic of the old nomad habits of the Aryan people, who wandered over Europe from the Pamirs: where they pitched their tent, there they were free to dwell, and from the ground which they tilled theirs was the harvest.

With the march of time the custom had long since faded away, but the idea, handed down by the remote ancestors, was still dimly alive in their posterity, and it was, moreover, a flicker which the recent emancipation of the serfs had in a measure rekindled. The Russian loves his country as something peculiarly his own, and he loves it, moreover, believing it to be the home of God and of the true religion. There is a country adage which says, “Our kingdom is invincible for God is in the midst of it.” It must not be supposed that this high and patriotic feeling is confined to the peasants. The mighty in the land are just as ardent in this passionate devotion to the fatherland as their humbler fellow-countrymen, nor are they less strict in their religious observances.

A very false impression is created abroad by a certain class of Russians who haunt the boulevards and any places where dissipation and gambling are fast and furious—only going home from time to time to collect more roubles to throw into the swine-yards of Europe. These are the men who cast a cloud upon their country and tarnish the good name of their fellows. So strong is the inborn love of home among the Slavonic races that it is a hard matter to persuade the _mujik_ to emigrate: and this is no misfortune, for in Russia the population has never been adequate to the vast area of its territory or to the wants of the country.

Emigration, as we understand it—this is to say, forming an establishment and founding a family in some new land for prosperity’s sake—must be an idea utterly foreign to the Russian character, which has been moulded for centuries in the idea that only one home is possible.

There is one form of superstition which the Russians share with the ancient Greeks. They delight in euphemisms and altogether object to the use of unlucky words. Brutally to announce the death even of a dog, a horse, a cow, or some favourite animal would be intolerable. The awkward corner is turned by a pretty phrase: “Sir, your dog bids you live a long life”—that is the orthodox announcement.

The strangest of all was told me by Prince Vassiltchikoff, an aide-de-camp attached to the War Office. He had been sent to Siberia on a special mission to report upon the prisons in that land of woe. Among other criminals he came upon a handsome woman, evidently of a superior class. Struck by her appearance, he asked her why she was there. Without hesitation the woman answered: “I made the sign of the cross upon my father.” She had murdered him! It appeared that her father had illtreated her child; mad with rage, she stabbed him in the back. She expressed neither sorrow nor repentance for what she had done, and to all further questions her only answer was: “I have done wrong and I suffer for it—the rest is with myself.” Could Æschylus himself have put more poignantly tragic words into that unhappy daughter’s mouth? What a saying to express parricide! “I made the sign of the cross upon him.”

Duels in Russia were very rare; all the more did they create a sensation when they did occur. There was a double duel which took place while I was there and which was much talked about. A young Polish officer of the Grodno Hussar regiment insulted two Russian officers. I never heard the rights of the story or what was the occasion of the quarrel. At any rate, the Pole had to fight both the men whom he had affronted. In the first duel, possibly from nervous excitement, he fired before the seconds gave the signal and broke his adversary’s leg. The second duel took place the next day, and this time it was _à la barrière_. The Pole immediately on the signal to advance being given fired in the air. His adversary let him come forward to the extreme limit allowed by the agreement—five paces—took deliberate aim and shot him in the head; he died a few hours afterwards. The officer who killed him was a rich man of good family, but none the less we were told that he would be broken, reduced to the ranks, and have to serve as a common soldier.

Duelling was strictly forbidden both by military and civil law. I suppose it is a crime, but none the less it does seem to me that there are certain cases in which it is a safeguard to society and more than permissible. The absurd journalistic duels of which we hear so much on the Continent are quite another matter.

The most famous duel in the history of Russian society was that in which the great poet Puschkin lost his life in the winter of 1837. The story is a curious one.

The poet had a very beautiful wife, whom he married at Moscow in 1831. He was very much in love with her, and proportionately jealous, especially of the attentions paid to her by an _attaché_ of the Dutch Legation, a certain Monsieur Dantès-Heckeren. Puschkin, who suspected his wife of being too much inclined to listen to this gentleman’s blandishments, was infuriated. Coming home one evening, he found the Dutchman as usual sitting at tea with his wife; as it was the fashion to pay visits after dinner, there was nothing to take umbrage at in that. Puschkin made no remark, but presently he turned out the lamp, throwing the room into darkness, and going to the fireplace, smeared some soot on his mouth, kissed his wife and went out of the room to get a fresh light. When he came back he found, as he expected, not only his wife’s lips but the Dutchman’s black with soot. Denial and excuses were out of the question, and Puschkin kicked the man out of the house. The next day they fought, and the poet received a mortal wound. He only lived three days and died in torture; he was but thirty-eight years old. The man who killed him married his widow. So much for the inexorable justice of the ordeal by battle.

Puschkin was the glory of Russian poetry. His was a chequered career, for he lived in a chronic state of being banished for treason and forgiven; he was the chartered libertine of politics, and a very signal example of the generosity of the Emperor Nicholas. Over and over again his violent principles, or no principles, brought him into disgrace; over and over again the Tsar forgave. The Tsar, meeting him one foggy day in the street, recognized him, and bade him, since he was a poet, to improvise something. With consummate audacity, pointing to a street lamp, he at once spouted this quatrain:

In the place of that lamp
Which shines in the gloomy weather,
I’d hang the head of the Tsar
And shout out Freedom![45]

In spite of his many escapades he died in high favour with the generous Tsar, who made him _Gentilhomme de la Chambre_ and gave him twenty thousand roubles towards publishing his last poem. And yet there were people who spoke of Nicholas as a cruel, unforgiving tyrant! I think that if I were a Russian, I should be at least as proud of the memory of the Emperor Nicholas as of that of the poet Puschkin. He was indeed a great “gentleman.”

The emancipation of the serfs in the month of March, 1861, was the greatest act of Alexander the Second’s life. Whether looked at from the point of view of its intrinsic difficulties, or from that of its consequences, it was one of the broadest social reforms ever undertaken by any monarch. There are perhaps few people in this country who understand what serfdom really meant; it is usually thought that the serfs were all of them poor, ignorant peasants, leading squalid and hungry lives in the tillage of the lands of their owners. In the vast majority of cases this, no doubt, was so, but there were many exceptions. There were not a few of these men who possessed better natural gifts than the rest, had more or less contrived to educate themselves, and had been allowed to push their fortunes in various capacities as tradesmen, domestic servants, etc., in the great towns. One man of whom I was told on undoubted authority throve in his trade and became the fashionable hatter of Moscow. None the less, he was a slave—the property, the chattel, of a certain landlord, to whom a portion of his profits was yearly due.

_From a sketch by Zichy._]

That such a state of things should endure through more than the half of the nineteenth century is at this time unthinkable, yet it was so; and perhaps it would be necessary to have lived in Russia in the pre-liberation days in order to realize how little public opinion was shocked thereby. It is only fair to say that, in spite of the strong opposition which inevitably meets a great social upheaval, the Tsar was loyally helped by the more enlightened members of the aristocracy, men who were ready to do what they knew to be right, even though their properties were seriously affected. He was, moreover, ably seconded by his Minister of the Interior, Monsieur Valouieff, to whom must be given the credit of initiating all those measures of reform which were rendered necessary by the great change—especially the creation of the Semstvos, elective bodies something like our county councils, to which was delegated the management of local affairs. The nobles who so generously accepted what was a great sacrifice were rewarded by the Tsar with a special commemorative decoration.

On the anniversary of his accession to the throne, February 18 (March 2), 1864, the Emperor published an ukase extending the liberation of the serfs to Poland. The measure provided for the handing over to the peasants in fee simple the land which up to that time they had cultivated on behalf of their lords. The scheme was in all respects save one the same as that which had been propounded by the so-called National Government; but whereas the latter had proposed to indemnify the proprietor from the general revenues of the country, the Russian Government undertook to buy the land at sixteen and two-thirds years’ purchase, and to recoup themselves by special taxation. The landlord was to retain his own domain, always the most fertile part of the property—corresponding to a sort of home farm on a gigantic scale, with its houses, farm buildings, etc. The Polish landlords were, of course, furious and declared that they would all be ruined. There were in rough numbers some five thousand principal owners, and there were in addition thirty Russian _majorats_ (properties entailed upon the eldest son) which were equally concerned in the change. One of the representatives of the latter properties said to me cynically: “Nous sommes tous ruinés. Eh bien! tant mieux, puisqu’il y aura plus de cinq mille de ces sacrés Polonais qui le seront bien plus que nous.” These Russian _majorats_ were the rewards of services rendered against the Poles.

One main principle which the Government had in view was to reward those peasants who did not join in the insurrection, at the expense of the landlords and the middle-class who were its heart and soul. The Polish peasant looked upon the landlord as his natural enemy—a tyrant of whom to be rid would be Paradise. He therefore was entirely pro-Russian, though he might not dare to declare himself. Keeping in mind this spirit, there were not lacking pessimists who declared that so soon as the ex-serf should find himself his own master, with nothing over him but the Russian Government, his views would be altered. With rebellion born in his blood, he would join the other camp, and be as bitter in enmity as he had been warm in a friendship which for him spelt hope. In time the benefactor would degenerate into the tax-gatherer, and the metamorphosis would be hateful and of ill omen.

The measure was framed upon a report by General Miliutin, who was sent on a special mission to gather information upon the spot; and the pamphleteering defence of the plan was entrusted to that very able penman and special pleader, M. Katakazy, to whom I have already alluded as the writer of Prince Gortchakoff’s three answers to Lord Russell. His work on this occasion was a masterpiece both in what it said and in what it held back.

However people might carp and cavil at a piece of legislation which was distasteful to them, there can be no doubt that there was joy in the poor hovels of Poland. Still there were many shoals ahead needing a skilful pilot. It was easy enough to decree the broad principle of the ukase, but the working out of the details was quite another matter. Neither the Emperor nor his ministers had the power of creating light out of darkness. There were many difficulties to be mastered, many riddles to be solved, taxing the acutest ingenuity of the Russian statesmen. Three of the chief of the puzzles were the right of succession, the power of the peasant to sell his land, and the eternal labour question.

As regarded the right of succession, the Government professed to attach great importance to the principle of large peasant holdings, but inasmuch as Poland was under the law of the Code Napoléon, it was obvious that at the death of a man with a family his property must be divided, and by degrees the holdings must become infinitesimally small. Crux No. 2.—If the peasant were allowed to sell or mortgage his land, the Jew usurer would soon be the owner of half Poland. Crux No. 3.—Where was labour to be found for the land left in the hands of the proprietors—as I have said before, the richest portion of the cultivated area? The freed peasant would have his hands full with the management of his own holding, and the class who formerly cultivated no land on their own account, and therefore did not come under the scope of the new law, would not suffice to till the domains of the nobles. Each of these three puzzles itself bristled with minor perplexities and embarrassments enough to break the heads of General Miliutin and his crew of experts.

A compensation at the rate of sixteen and two-thirds years’ purchase may seem to us very inadequate. But the conditions of land in Poland were not what they are in France or in England. It is needful to remember the vast tracts of land lying far away from all communication, the scarcity of labour, the difficulty of transport, the expense of exporting produce and importing agricultural implements and other necessaries, and then it will be plain that the value of land in Russia and in Poland did not stand in the same relation to money as it did in England, France or Belgium. I feel sure that, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the ukase was an honest attempt to benefit the peasant on the one hand, and fairly to recoup the landed proprietor on the other.

On the 17th of April a deputation of seventy-three Polish peasants from the government of Warsaw and Radom arrived in St. Petersburg to convey to the Emperor the thanks of the agricultural labourers in Poland for the benefits conferred upon them by the decree. The authorities made a great fuss with them; they were lionized over the town in great cross-seated brakes, and it was good to see their happiness and their unconcealed wonder at all the great sights of St. Petersburg. Most of them had probably never been outside the circuit of their own lonely villages. They created a great sensation, some dressed in Polish costume, but all wearing the square national cap—wild-looking fellows enough, but obviously quite tame and trustworthy, for only ten policemen were told off to look after them. The crowning point of their joy was reached when the Tsar received them in person, and gave them a dinner at the Winter Palace. What fairy tales they would have to tell when they should arrive at their farms and cottages hidden among the desolate swamps and forests of Poland!

The outing lasted for several days, and on the 23rd I went with Lord Napier to the banquet given to the deputation and to an equal number of specially selected Russian peasants from the district round the capital, who were told off to entertain the strangers and do the honours of the city. As they did not understand one word of one another’s language, their comradeship must have lacked gaiety. But the meeting symbolized the union of the two nations, and in spite of the dearth of conversation, it made a good appearance of fraternization, and that was held to be much. The banquet took place in the Gorodskaia Duma, a sort of extraordinarily shabby town hall, something like a second-class waiting-room at a railway station. However, the frame was a secondary consideration so long as the picture was all right.