The tedium to which these Russian formalities condemned us, gave me also an opportunity of remarking that the great lords of the country were little inclined to bear patiently the inconveniences of public regulations, when those regulations proved inconvenient to themselves.
" Russia is the land of useless formalities," they murmured among themselves — but in French, that they might not be overheard by the subaltern em-G 2
124MORE CUSTOM-HOUSE ANNOYANCES.
ployés. I have retained the remark, with the justice of which my own experience has only too deeply impressed me. As far as I have been hitherto able to observe, a work that should be entitled The Russians judged by Themselves, would be severe. The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of every tiling with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.
The cause of all our delay was at length revealed. The chief of chiefs, the director of the directors of the custom-house again presented himself: it was this visit we had been awaiting so long, without knowing it. At first it appeared as if the only business of the great functionary was to play the part of the man of fashion among the Russian ladies. He
reminded the Princess Dof their rencontre in a
house where the Princess had never been ; he spoke to her of court balls she had never seen : but while continuing to dispense these courtly airs, our drawing-room offieer of the customs would now and then gracefully confiscate a parasol, stop a portmanteau, or recommence, with an imperturbable sang froid, the researches already conscientiously made by his subordinates.
In Russian administration, minuteness does not exclude disorder. Much trouble is taken to attain unimportant ends, and those employed believe they can never do enough to show their zeal. The result of this emulation among clerks and commissioners is, that the having passed through one formality does not secure the stranger from another. It is like a pil-
CHANGE IN FELLOW-TRAVELLEKS.12ü
lage, in which, after the unfortunate wight has escaped from the first troop, he may yet fall into the hands of a second and a third.
The chief turnkey of the empire proceeded slowly to examine the vessel. At length this perfumed Cerberus, for he scented of musk at the distance of a league, released us from the ceremonies attending an entree into Russia, and we were soon under weigh, to the great joy of the princes and princesses, who were going to rejoin their families. Their pleasure belied the observation of my host in Lübeck ; as for me, I could not partake in it: on the contrary, I regretted quitting their delightful society to go and lose myself in a city whose vicinity was so uninviting. But the charm of that society was already broken : as we drew towards the end of our journey the ties which had united us became severed—fragile ties, formed only by the passing requirements of the voyage.
The women of the North know wonderfully well how to make us believe that they would have desired to meet with that which destiny has brought in their way. This is not falsehood, it is refined coquetry, a species of complaisance towards fate, and a supreme grace. Grace is always natural, though that does not prevent its being often used to hide a lie. The rude shocks and uncomfortably constraining influences of life disappear among graceful women and poetical men ; they are the most deceptive beings in creation; distrust and doubt cannot stand before them; they create what they imagine ; if they do not lie to others, they do to their own hearts ; for illusion is their element, fiction their vocation, and G 3
126CHARACTER OF WORLDLY PLEASURE.
pleasures in appearance their happiness. Beware of grace in woman, and poetry in man — weapons the more dangerous because the least dreaded !
Such were my thoughts on leaving the Avails of Kronstadt: Ave were still all together, but Ave Avere no longer united. That circle, animated, but the previous evening, by a secret harmony Avhich rarely exists in society, now lacked its vital principle. Few things had ever appeared to me more melancholy than this sudden change. I acknowledged it as the condition attached to the pleasures of the world, I had foreseen it, I had submitted a hundred times to the same experience; but never before did it enlighten me in so abrupt a manner. Besides, what annoyances are more painful than those of which we cannot complain ? I saw each individual about to re-enter his oavu path ; the free interchange of feeling Avhich unites those travelling together to the same goal no longer existed among them; they Avere returning into real life, Avhilst I Avas left alone to wander from place to place. To be ever Avandering is scarcely to live. I felt myself abandoned, and I compared the cheerlessness of my isolation to their domestic pleasures. Isolation may be voluntary, but is it on this account any the more sweet ? At the moment, everything appeared to me preferable to my independence, and I regretted even the cares of domestic life. I could read in the eyes of the Avomen the thoughts of husband, children, milliners, hairdressers, the ball, and the court; and I could ec¿ually read there, that, notwithstanding the protestations of yesterday, I was no longer an object of concern to them. The people of the North have changeable
FICKLENESS OF NORTHERN PEOPLE. 127
hearts ; their affections, like the faint rays of their sun, are always dying. Remaining fixedly attached neither to persons nor to things—willingly quitting the land of their birth—born for invasions—these people appear as though merely destined to sweep down from the pole, at the times and epochs appointed by God, in order to temper and refresh the races of the South, scorched by the fires of heaven and of their passions.
On arriving at Petersburg, my friends, favoured by their rank, were speedily liberated from their floating prison, in which they left me bound by the irons of the police and the eustom-house, without so much as bidding me adieu. Where would have been the use of adieus ? I was as dead to them. AYhat are travellers to mothers of families ? Not one cordial word, not one look, not one thought was bestowed on me. It was the white curtain of the magie lantern, after the shadows have passed. I repeat that I had expected this denouement, but I had not expected the pain which it caused me ; so true it is that within ourselves exists the source of all our unforeseen emotions.
Only three days before landing, two of our fair and amiable travellers had made me promise to visit them in Petersburg, where the court is now assembled.
G 4
128APPROACH TO PETERSBURG
CHAP. VIII.
APPROACH TO PETERSBURG BY THE NEVA.INCONGRUITY BETWEEN
THE CLIMATE AND ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY AND THE STYLE OF
ARCHITECTURE.ABSURD IMITATION OF THE MONUMENTS OF
GREECE. — THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POLICE. INQUISITORIAL
EXAMINATION. DIFFICULTIES OF LANDING. APPEARANCE OF
THE STREETS. STATUE OF PETER THE GREAT. THE WINTER
PALACE REBUILT IN ONE YEARTHE MEANS EMPLOYED.
RUSSIAN DESPOTISM. CITATION FROM HERBERSTEIN. KA-
RAMSIN.— THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE ACCORDS WITH THAT OF THE GOVERNMENT.
The streets of Petersburg present a strange appearance to the eyes of a Frenchman. I will endeavour to describe them; but I must first notice the approach to the city by the Neva. It is much celebrated, and the Russians are justly proud of it, though I did not find it equal to its reputation. When, at a considerable distance, the steeples begin to appear, the effect produced is more singular than imposing. The hazy outline of land, which may be perceived far off between the sky and the sea, becomes, as you advance, a little more unequal at some points than at others: these scarcely perceptible irregularities are found on nearer approach to be the gigantic architectural monuments of the new capital of Russia. We first begin to recognise the Greek steeples and the gilded cupolas of convents ; then some modern public buildings — the front of the Exchange, and the white colonnades of the colleges, museums, barracks, and palaces which border the quays of granite, become discernible. On
BY THE NEVA.129
entering the city, you pass some sphinxes
, also of granite. Their dimensions are colossal and their appearance imposing; nevertheless these copies of the antique have no merit as works of art. A city of palaces is always magnificent, but the imitation of classic monuments shocks the taste when the climate under which these models are so inappropriately placed is considered. Soon, however, the stranger is struck with the form and multitude of turrets and metallic spires which rise in every direction : this at least is national architecture. ' Petersburg is flanked with numbers of large convents, surmounted by steeples ; pious edifices, which serve as a rampart to the profane city. The Russian churches have preserved their primitive appearance ; but it is not the Russians who invented that clumsy and capricious Byzantine style, by which they are distinguished. The Greek religion of this people, their character, education, and history, alike justify their borrowing from the Lower Empire ; they may be permitted to seek for models at Constantinople, but not at Athens. Viewed from the Neva, the parapets of the quays of Petersburg are striking and magnificent; but the first step after landing discovers them to be badly and unevenly paved with flints, which are as disagreeable to the eye as inconvenient to the feet and ruinous to the wheels. The prevailing taste here is the brilliant and the striking: spires, gilded and tapering like electric conductors ; porticoes, the bases of which almost disappear under the water; squares, ornamented with columns which seem lost in the immense space that surrounds them; antique statues, the character and attire of which so ill accord with the G 5
130 INCONGRUITY BETWEEN ТПЕ CLIMATE, ETC.
aspect of the country, the tint of the sky, the costume and manners of the inhabitants, as to suggest the idea of being captive heroes in a hostile land ; expatriated edifices, temples that might have fallen from the summit of the Grecian mountains into the marshes of Lapland ; — such were the objects that most struck me at the first sight of St. Petersburg. The magnificent temples of the pagan Gods, which so admirably crown, with their horizontal lines and severely chaste contours, the promontories of the Ionian shores, and whose marbles, gilded by the sunshine amid the rocks of the Peloponnesus, here become mere heaps of plaster and mortar; the incomparable ornaments of Grecian sculpture, the wonderful minutiæ of classic art, have all given place to an indescribably burlesque style of modern decoration, which substitution passes among the Finlanders as proof of a pure taste in the arts. Partially to imitate that winch is perfect is to spoil it. We should either strictly copy the model, or invent altogether. But the re-production of the monuments of Athens, however faithfully executed, would be lost in a miry plain, continually in danger of being overflowed by water whose level is nearly that of the land. Here nature suggests to man the very opposite of that which he has imagined. Instead of imitations of pagan temples, it demands bold projecting forms and perpendicular lines, in order to pierce the mists of a polar sky, and to break the monotonous surface of the moist grey steppes which form, farther than the eye or the imagination can stretch, the territory of Petersburg. I begin to understand why the Russians urge us with so much earnestness to
AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE COUNTRY. 131
visit them during winter: six feet of snow conceals all this dreariness, but in summer we see the country. Explore the territory of Petersburg and the neighbouring provinces, and you will find, I am told, for hundreds of leagues, nothing but ponds and morasses, stunted firs and dark-leaved birch. To this sombre vegetation the white shroud of winter is assuredly preferable. Every where the same plains and bushes seem to compose the same landscape ; at least, until the traveller approaches Finland and Sweden. There he finds a succession of little granite rocks covered with pines, which change the appearance of the soil, though without giving much variety to the landscape. It will be easily believed that the gloom of such a country is scarcely lessened by the lines of columns which men have raised on its even and naked surface. The proper bases of Greek peristyles are mountains: there is here no harmony between the inventions of man and the gifts of nature; in short, a taste for edifices without taste has presided over the building of St. Petersburg.
But, however shocked our perceptions of the beau tiful may be by the foolish imitations which spoil its appearance, it is impossible to contemplate without a species of admiration, an immense city which has sprung from the sea at the bidding of one man, and which has to defend itself against a periodical inundation of ice, and a perpetual one of water.
The Kronstadt steam-boat dropped her anchor before the English quay opposite the Custom-house, and not far from the famous square where the statue of Peter the Great stands mounted on its rock.
I would gladly spare my reader the detail of the G б
132THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AND POLICE.
new persecutions, which, under the name of si?nple formalities, I had to undergo at the hand of the police, and its faithful ally the custom-house; but it is a duty to give a just idea of the difficulties which attend the stranger on the maritime frontier of Russia: the entrance by land is, I am told, more easy.
For three days in the year the sun of Petersburg is insupportable. I arrived on one of these days. Our persecutors commenced by impounding us (not the Russians, but myself and the other foreigners) on the deck of our vessel. ^We were there, for a long time, exposed without any shelter to the powerful heat of the morning sun. It was eight o'clock, and had been daylight ever since one hour after midnight. They spoke of thirty degrees of Reaumur *, which temperature, be it remembered, i¡` much more inconvenient in the North, where the air is surcharged with vapour, than in hot climates.
At length I was summoned to appear before a new tribunal, assembled, like that of Kronstadt, in the cabin of our vessel. The same questions were addressed to me, with the same politeness, and my answers were recorded with the same formalities.
" What is your object in Russia ?"
" To see the country."
" That is not here a motive for travelling."
(What humility in this objection !)
•* I have no other."
" Whom do you expect to see in Petersburg?"
" Every one with whom I may have an opportunity of making acquaintance."
* Nearly 100° Fahrenheit. — Trans.
INQUISITORIAL EXAMINATION.133
" How long do you think of remaining in Russia ?"
" I do not know."
" But, about how long?"
" A few months."
" Have you a public diplomatic mission ?
" No."
" A secret one ? "
" No."
" Any scientific object ? "
" No."
" Are you employed by your government to examine the social and political state of this country ? "
" No."
" By any commercial association ? "
" No."
" You travel, then, from mere curiosity ? "
" Yes."
" What was it that induced you, under this motive, to select Russia ? "
" I do not know," &c. &c. &c,
" Have you letters of introduction to any people of this country ? "
I had been forewarned of the inconvenience of replying too frankly to this question; I therefore spoke only of my banker.
At the termination of the session of this court of assize I encountered several of my accomplices. These strangers had been sadly perplexed, owing to some irregularities that had been discovered in their passports. The blood-hounds of the Russian police are quick-scented, and have a very different manner of treating different individuals. An Italian mer-
О
134DIFFICULTIES OF LANDING.
chant, who was among our passengers, was searched unmercifully, not omitting even the clothes on his person, and his pocket-book. Had such a search been made upon me, I should have been pronounced a very suspicious character. My pockets were full of letters of introduction, and though the greater number had been given me by the Russian ambassador himself, and by others equally well known, they were sealed; a circumstance which made m
e afraid of leaving them in my writing-case. The police permitted me to pass without searching my person ; but when my baggage came to be unpacked before the custom-house officers, these new enemies instituted a most minute examination of my effects, more especially my books. These were seized en masse, and without any attention to my protestations, but an extraordinary politeness of manner was all the while maintained. A pair of pistols and an old portable clock were also taken from me, without my being able to ascertain the reason of the confiscation. All that I could get was the promise that they would be returned.
I have now been more than twenty-four hours on shore without having been able to recover any thing, and to crown my embarrassment, my carriage has, by mistake, been forwarded from Kronstadt to the address of a Russian prince. It will require trouble, and explanations without end, to prove tins error to the custom-house agents; for the prince of my carriage is from home.
Between nine and ten o'clock I found myself, personally, released from the fangs of the custom-house, and entered Petersburg under the kind care of a German traveller, whom I met by chance on the quay.
Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia Page 14
