Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

by Astolphe De Custine

  The Russian coachmen sit upright on their seats ; they always drive at great speed, but with safety. The precision and quickness of their eye is admirable. Whether with two or four horses, they have always two reins to each horse, which they hold with the arms much extended. No impediment stops them in their course; men and horses, both half wild, scour the city at full speed : but nature has rendered them quick and adroit, consequently, notwithstanding the reckless daring of these coachmen, accidents are of rare occurrence in the streets of Petersburg. They have often no whip, or when they have one, it is so short that they can make no use of it. Neither do they have recourse to the voice: the reins and the bit are their only instruments. One may traverse Petersburg for hours without hearing a single shout. If the pedestrians do not get out of the way sufficiently quickly, the fîilleiter, or postillion, utters a little yelp, like the sharp cry of a marmot roused in his nest, on hearing which every one gives way, and the carriage rushes past without having once slackened its speed.

  The carriages are in general void of all taste, badly furnished, and badly kept. If brought from England they do not long resist the wear and tear of the

  RUSSIAN COACHMEN AND POSTILLIONS. 297

  pavement of Petersburg. The harness is strong, and at the same time lm`ht and elegant: it is made of ex-cellent leather ; in short, notwithstanding the want of taste, and the negligence of the servants, the tout ensemble of these equipages is original, and, to a certain degree, picturesque.

  They only harness four horses abreast for long journeys. In Petersburg they are placed two and two; the traces by which they are attached are long beyond all proportion. The child who guides them is, like the coachman, dressed in the Persian robe called the armiac. However well it may suit the man who is seated, it is not convenient on horseback ; notwithstanding which the Russian postillion is bold and dextrous.

  I do not know how to describe the gravity, the haughty silence, the address, and the imperturbable temerity of these little Slavonian monkeys. Their pertness and dexterity are my delight every time that I go in the city, and they have, which is less often seen here than elsewhere, the appearance of being happy. It is the nature of man to experience satisfaction when what he does is done well. The Russian coachmen and postillions being the most skilful in the world, are perhaps content with their lot, however hard it may be in some respects.

  It must also be observed that those in the service of the nobles pique themselves on their personal appearance, and take pains with it; but those who ply on hire, excite, as do also their unfortunate horses, my sincere pity. They remain in the street from morning till evening, at the door of the person who lets them out, or on the stands assigned by the police. о 5

  298the emperor's bed.

  The horses eat always in harness, and the men always on their scat. I pity the former more than the latter, for the Russians have a taste for servitude.

  The coachmen live, however, in this manner only during the summer. In the winter, sheds are built in the midst of the most frequented squares, and near the theatres, and the palaces where fetes are most frequently given. Around this shelter, large fires are lighted, where the servants warm themselves ; nevertheless, in ¦the month of January, scarcely a night passes on which there is a ball, without a man or two dying of cold in the streets.

  A lady, more sincere than others to whom I addressed questions on this subject, replied, " It is possible, bit I have never heard it talked about." A denial which involved a strange avowal. It is necessary to visit this city in order to learn the extent to which the rich man will carry his contempt for the life of the poor, and the slight value which life in general has in the eyes of men condemned to live under absolutism.

  In Russia existence is painful to every body. The Emperor is scarcely less inured to fatigue than the lowest of his serfs. I have been shown his bed, the hardness of which would astonish our common labourers. Here every one is obliged to repeat to himself the stern truth, that the object of life is not to be found on earth, and that the means of attaining it is not pleasure. The inexorable image of duty and of submission appears at each instant, and makes it impossible to forget the hard condition of human existence — labour and sorrow !

  If for a moment, in the midst of a public prome-

  POETICAL ASPECT OF THE LAND.299

  nade, the appearance of a few idlers should inspire the illusive idea that there may be in Russia, as elsewhere, men who amuse themselves for the sake of amusement, men who make pleasure a business, I am soon undeceived by the sight of some feldjäger, passing rapidly in his telega. The feldjäger is the representative of power — he is the word of the sovereign : a living telegraph, he proceeds to bear an order to another similar automaton, who awaits him, perhaps, a thousand leagues off, and who is as ignorant as himself of the thoughts that put them both in motion. The telega, in which the man of iron travels, is of all travelling vehicles the most uncomfortable. It consists of a little cart with two leather seats, without springs or back. No other kind of carriage could stand the roads of this savage empire. The first seat is that of the coachman, who is changed at each stage ; the second is reserved for the courier, who travels till he dies; and among men devoted to such a life this happens early.

  Those whom I see rapidly traversing in every direction the fine streets of this city, seem to represent the solitudes in which they are about to plunge. I follow them in imagination, and at the end of their course appears to me Siberia, Kamtschatka, the Salt Desert, theAVall of China, Lapland, the Frozen Ocean, Nova Zembla, Persia, or the Caucasus. These historical or, almost, fabulous names, produce on my imagination the effect of a dim and vapoury distance in a vast landscape, and engender a species of reverie which oppresses my spirits. Nevertheless, the apparition of such blind, deaf, and dumb couriers is a poetical aliment, constantly presented to the mind О 6

  300POETICAL ASPECT OF THE LAND.

  of the stranger. This man, born to live and die in his telega, imparts of himself a melancholy interest to the humblest scene of life. Nothing prosaic can subsist in the mind when in the presence of so much suffering and so much grandeur. It must be owned

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  that if despotism renders unhappy the people that it oppresses, it is conducive to the amusement of travellers, whom it fills with an astonishment ever new. Where there is liberty, every thing is published and speedily forgotten, for every thing is seen at a glance , but, under an absolute government, every thing is concealed, and therefore every thing is conjectured : the greater the mystery, the greater the curiosity, which is enhanced even by the necessary absence of apparent interest.

  Russia has no past history, say the lovers of antiquity. True, but the immense field she occupies, and the prospect of the future, might serve as a pasture for the most ardent imaginations. The jiliilo-sopher in Russia is to be pitied, the poet there may and ought to be gratified.

  The only poets really unhappy, are those condemned to languish under a system of publicity. When all the world may say what they please, the poet must hold his peace. Poetry is a mystery which serves to express more than words; it cannot subsist among a people who have lost the modesty of thought. Vision, allegory, apologue, are the truth of poetry ; and in a country where publicity pervades every thing this truth is destroyed by reality, which is always coarse and repulsive to the eye of fancy.

  Nature must have implanted a sentiment profoundly poetical in the souls of this satirical and me-

  ARCHITECTS OF PETERSBURG. 301

  lancholy people, or they could never have found the means of giving an original and picturesque aspect to cities built by men entirely destitute of imagination: and this in the most flat, dull, naked and monotonous region in the earth. Nevertheless, if I eoiúd describe Petersburg as I see it, I should draw a picture in every line ; so strikingly has the genius of the Slavonian race reacted against the sterile mania of its government. This anti-national government advances only by military evolutions : it reminds one of Prussia unde
r its first king.

  I have been describing a city without character, rather pompous than imposing, more vast than beautiful, and full of edifices without style, taste, or historic interest. But to make the picture complete, that is, faithful, I should have inserted the figures of men naturally graceful, and who, with their oriental genius, have adapted themselves to a city built by a people which exist no where, for Petersburg has been constructed by wealthy men, whose minds were formed by comparing, without deep study, the different countries of Europe. This legion of travellers, more or less refined, and rather skilful than learned, formed an artificial nation, a community of intelligent and clever characters, recruited from among all the nations of the world. They did not constitute the Russian people. These are roguish as the slave, who consoles himself by privately ridiculing his master ; superstitious, boastful, brave and idle as the soldier; poetical, musical, and contemplative as the shepherd; for the habits of a nomade people for a long time prevailed among the Slavonians. All this is in keeping neither with the style of the architecture nor

  302 CHURCH ARCHITECTURE IN RUSSIA.

  with the plan of the streets in Petersburg: there has been evidently no connection between the architect and the inhabitant. Peter the Great built the city against the Swedes rather than for the Russians ; but the natural character of its popiúation betrays itself, notwithstanding their respect for the caprices of their master; and it is to this inyohmtary disobedience that Russia owes its stamp of originality. Nothing can efface the primitive character of its people; and this triumph of innate faculties over an ill-directed education is an interesting spectacle to every traveller capable of appreciating it.

  Happily for the painter and the poet, the Russians possess an essentially religious sentiment. Their churches, at least, are their own. The unchangeable form of these pious edifices is a part of their religion, and superstition defends her sacred fortresses against the mania for mathematical figures in freestone, oblongs, planes and straight lines ; in short, against the military, rather than classic architecture, which imparts to each of the cities of this land the air of a camp destined to remain for a few weeks during the performance of some grand manoeuvres.

  The genius of a nomade race is equally recognised in the various vehicles and harness, the carriages and the drowska already described. The latter is so small as quite to disappear under those who occupy it. Its singular appearance, as it passes rapidly between long straight lines of very low houses, over which are seen the steeples of a multitude of churches and other buildings, may be easily imagined.

  These gilded or painted spires break the monotonous line of roofs, and rise in the air with shafts so tapered,

  GENERAL VIEW OF PETERSBURG.303

  that the eye can scarcely distinguish the point where their gilding is lost in the mists of a polar sky. They are of Asiatic origin, and appear to be of a height which, for their diameter, is truly extraordinary. It is impossible to conceive how they maintain themselves in air.

  Let the reader picture to himself an assemblage of domes, to which are attached the four belfries necessary to constitute a church among the modern Greeks; a multitude of cupolas covered with gold, silver, or azure ; palace roofs of emerald green, or ultra-marine; srpiares ornamented with bronze statues.: an immense river bordering and serving as a mirror to the picture — let him add to it the bridge of boats thrown across the river's broadest part — the citadel, where sleep in their unornamented tombs Peter the Great and his family*, and an island covered with edifices built after the model of Grecian temples — let him embrace in one view the whole of these varied parts, and he will understand how Petersburg may be infinitely picturesque, notwithstanding the bad taste of its borrowed architecture, the marshes which surround it, the unbroken flatness of its site, and the pale dimness of its finest summer days.

  Let me not be reproached for my contradictions : í have myself perceived them without wishing to avoid them, for they lie in the things which I contemplate. I could not give a true idea of objects that I describe, if I did not often seem to contradict myself. If I were less sincere, I should appear more consistent;. but in physical as in moral order, truth

  * The Greek rite forbids sculpture in churches.

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  is only an assemblage of contrasts — contrasts so glaring, that it might be said nature and society have been created only in order to hold together elements which would otherwise oppose and repel each other.

  Nothing can be more dull than the sky of Petersburg at midday ; but the evenings and mornings, whose twilight occupies three quarters of the whole period of life, are admirable. The summer sun, which is submerged for a moment about midnight, continues for a long time to float along the horizon on a level with the Neva and the lowlands through which it flows. It sheds over the waste, streams of light brilliant enough to beautify nature in her most cheerless aspect. But it is not the enthusiasm produced by the deep colouring of tropic landscapes which this beauty inspires, it is the attraction of a dream, the irresistible influence of a sleep full of memories and of hopes. The promenade of the islands at this hour is the image of a real idyll. No doubt there are many things wanting in these scenes to constitute pictures good as compositions, but nature has more power than art on the imagination of man; her simple aspect suffices under every zone to supply that necessity for admiring which exists in the soul. God has reduced the earth in the vicinity of the pole to the extreme of flatness and nudity; but notwithstanding this poverty, the spectacle of creation will always, in the eye of man, be the most eloquent interpreter of the designs of the Creator. May there not be beauty in the bald head ? For my part, I find the environs of Petersburg more than beautiful: they have a sad and sombre dulness about them which is sublime, and which, in the depth of its

  OF ST. PETERSBURG.305

  impression, rivals the richness and variety of the most celebrated landscapes of the earth. They present no pompous, artificial work, nor agreeable invention, but a profound solitude, a solitude terrible and beautiful as death. From one end of her plains, from one shore of her seas to the other, Russia hears that voice of God which nothing can silence, and which says to man, puffed up with the contemptible magnificence of his miserable cities, " Your labour is vain, I am still the greatest! " Often a countenance devoid of beauty has more expression, and engraves itself on our memory in a manner more ineffaceable than those regular traits which display neither passion nor sentiment. Such is the effect of our instinct of immortality, that the things which most highly interest an inhabitant of eai`th are those which speak to him of something unearthly.

  Нолу admirable is the power of the primitive endowment of nations ! For more than a hundred years the higher classes of Russians, the nobles, the learned, and the powerful of the land, have been begging ideas and copying models from all the communities of Europe; and yet this absurd phantasy of princes and courtiers has not prevented the people from remaining; original.*

  The finely endowed Slavonic race has too delicate a touch to mingle indiscriminately with the Teutonic people. The German character has even at this day a less affinity with the Russian than has the Spanish, with its cross of Arab blood. Slowness, heaviness,

  * This reproach, which applies to Peter I. and his immediate successors, completes the eulogy of the Emperor Nicholas, who has begun to stem the torrent of the mania.

  Л06RUSSIANS AND SPANIARDS.

  coarseness, timidity and awkwardness have nothing in common with the genius of the Slavonians. They would rather endure vengeance and tyranny. Even the German virtues are odious to the Russians ; thus, in a few years the latter, notwithstanding their religious and political atrocities, have made greater progress in public opinion at Warsaw* than the Prussians, notwithstanding the rare and solid qualities which distinguish the German people. I do not speak of this as desirable, I only note it as an existing fact: it is not all brothers who love, but all understand each other.

  As to the ana
logy which I imagine I can in certain points discover between the Russians and the Spaniards, it is accounted for by the relations which may have originally existed between some of the Arab tribes and some of the hordes which passed from Asia into Muscovy. The Moresque architecture bears an affinity to the Byzantine, which is the model of the real Muscovite. The genius of the Asiatic wanderers in Africa could not be contrary to that of other eastern nations but recently established in Europe. History is explained by the progressive influence of races.

  But for the difference in religion and the variety of manners among the people, I coidd fancy myself here on one of the most elevated and barren plains of Castile. In fact we are enduring at present the heat of Africa; for twenty years Petersburg has not known so burning a summer.

  Notwithstanding the tropical heats, I see the Rus-

  * The Poles are of Slavonic race. — Tratis.

  FUEL IN PETERSBURG.307

  sians already preparing their provision of winter fuel. Boats loaded with billets of birch Mrood, the only fuel used here (for the oak is a tree of luxury), obstruct the large and numerous canals which intersect the city in every direction. It is built on the model of Amsterdam : an arm of the Neva flows through the principal streets, which in winter is filled up by the ice and snow, and in summer by the innumerable boats. The wood is conveyed from the boats in narrow carts of a primitive simplicity of construction, on which it is piled to a height which makes it resemble a moving wall. I have never once seen any of these tottering edifices fall.