The Land of Thor

CHAPTER VI.
THE PETERSKOI GARDENS

This draws me insensibly toward the beautiful gardens of the Peterskoi – a favorite place of resort for the Moskovites, and famous for its chateau built by the Empress Elizabeth, in which Napoleon sought refuge during the burning of Moscow. It is here the rank and fashion of the city may be seen to the greatest advantage of a fine summer afternoon. In these gardens all that is brilliant, beautiful, and poetical in Russian life finds a congenial atmosphere.

I spent an evening at the Peterskoi which I shall long remember as one of the most interesting I ever spent at any place of popular amusement. The weather was charming – neither too warm nor too cold, but of that peculiarly soft and dreamy temperature which predisposes one for the enjoyment of music, flowers, the prattle of children, the fascinations of female loveliness, the luxuries of idleness. In such an atmosphere no man of sentiment can rack his brain with troublesome problems. These witching hours, when the sun lingers dreamily on the horizon; when the long twilight weaves a web of purple and gold that covers the transition from night to morning; when nature, wearied of the dazzling glare of day, puts on her silver-spangled robes, and receives her worshipers with celestial smiles, are surely enough to soften the most stubborn heart. We must make love, sweet ladies, or die. There is no help for it. Resistance is an abstract impossibility. The best man in the world could not justly be censured for practicing a little with his eyes, when away from home, merely as I do, you know, to keep up the expression.

The gardens of the Peterskoi are still a dream to me. For a distance of three versts from the gate of St. Petersburg the road was thronged with carriages and droskies, and crowds of gayly-dressed citizens, all wending their way toward the scene of entertainment. The pressure for tickets at the porter’s lodge was so great that it required considerable patience and good-humor to get through at all. Officers in dashing uniforms rode on spirited chargers up and down the long rows of vehicles, and with drawn swords made way for the foot-passengers. Guards in imperial livery, glittering from head to foot with embroidery, stood at the grand portals of the gate, and with many profound and elegant bows ushered in the company. Policeman with cocked hats and shining epaulets were stationed at intervals along the leading thoroughfares to preserve order.

The scene inside the gates was wonderfully imposing. Nothing could be more fanciful. In every aspect it presented some striking combination of natural and artificial beauties, admirably calculated to fascinate the imagination. I have a vague recollection of shady and undulating walks, winding over sweeping lawns dotted with masses of flowers and copses of shrubbery, and overhung by wide-spreading trees, sometimes gradually rising over gentle acclivities or points of rock overhung with moss and fern. Rustic cottages, half hidden by the luxuriant foliage, crowned each prominent eminence, and little by-ways branched off into cool, umbrageous recesses, where caves, glittering with sea-shells and illuminated stalactites, invited the wayfarer to linger a while and rest. Far down in deep glens and grottoes were retired nooks, where lovers, hidden from the busy throng, might mingle their vows to the harmony of falling waters; where the very flowers seemed whispering love to each other, and the lights and shadows fell, by some intuitive sense of fitness, into the form of bridal wreaths. Marble statues representing the Graces, winged Mercuries and Cupids, are so cunningly displayed in relief against the green banks of foliage that they seem the natural inhabitants of the place. Snow-spirits, too, with outspread wings, hover in the air, as if to waft cooling zephyrs through the soft summer night. In the open spaces fountains dash their sparkling waters high into the moonlight, spreading a mystic spray over the sward. Through vistas of shrubbery gleam the bright waters of a lake, on the far side of which the embattled towers of a castle rise in bold relief over the intervening groups of trees.

On an elevated plateau, near the centre of the garden, stands a series of Asiatic temples and pagodas, in which the chief entertainments are held. The approaching avenues are illuminated with many-colored lights suspended from the branches of the trees, and wind under triumphal archways, festooned with flowers. The theatres present open fronts, and abound in all the tinsel of the stage, both inside and out. The grounds are crowded to their utmost capacity with the rank and fashion of the city, in all the glory of jeweled head-dresses and decorations of order. Festoons of variegated lights swing from the trees over the audience, and painted figures of dragons and genii are dimly seen in the background.

Attracted by sounds of applause at one of these theatres, I edged my way through the crowd, and succeeded, after many apologies, in securing a favorable position. Amid a motley gathering of Russians, Poles, Germans, and French – for here all nations and classes are represented – my ears were stunned by the clapping of hands and vociferous cries Bis! Bis! The curtain was down, but in answer to the call for a repetition of the last scene it soon rose again, and afforded me an opportunity of witnessing a characteristic performance. A wild Mujik has the impudence to make love to the maid-servant of his master, who appears to be rather a crusty old gentleman, not disposed to favor matrimonial alliances of that kind. Love gets the better of the lover’s discretion, and he is surprised in the kitchen. The bull-dog is let loose upon him; master and mistress and subordinate members of the family rush after him, armed with saucepans, tongs, shovels, and broomsticks. The affrighted Mujik runs all round the stage bellowing fearfully; the bull-dog seizes him by the nether extremities and hangs on with the tenacity of a vice. Round and round they run, Mujik roaring for help, bull-dog swinging out horizontally. The audience applauds; the master flings down his broomstick and seizes the dog by the tail; the old woman seizes master by the skirts of his coat; and all three are dragged around the stage at a terrific rate, while the younger members of the family shower down miscellaneous blows with their sticks and cudgels, which always happen to fall on the old people, to the great satisfaction of the audience. Shouts, and shrieks, and clapping of hands but faintly express the popular appreciation of the joke. Finally the faithful maid, taking advantage of the confusion, flings a bunch of fire-crackers at her oppressors and blows them up, and the Mujik, relieved of their weight, makes a brilliant dash through the door, carrying with him the tenacious bull-dog, which it is reasonable to suppose he subsequently takes to market and sells for a good price. The curtain falls, the music strikes up, and the whole performance is greeted with the most enthusiastic applause. Such are the entertainments that delight these humorous people – a little broad to be sure, but not deficient in grotesque spirit.

From the theatre I wandered to the pavilion of Zingalee gipsies, where a band of these wild sons of Hagar were creating a perfect furor by the shrillness and discord of their voices. Never was such terrific music inflicted upon mortal ears. It went through and through you, quivering and vibrating like a rapier; but the common classes of Russians delight in it above all earthly sounds. They deem it the very finest kind of music. It is only the dilettante who have visited Paris who profess to hold it in contempt.

Very soon surfeited with these piercing strains, I rambled away till I came upon a party of rope-dancers, and after seeing a dozen or so of stout fellows hang themselves by the chins, turn back somersaults in the air, and swing by one foot at a dizzy height from the ground, left them standing upon each other’s heads to the depth of six or eight, and turned aside into a grotto to enjoy a few glasses of tea. Here were German girls singing and buffoons reciting humorous stories between the pauses, and thirsty Russians pouring down whole oceans of their favorite beverage.

Again I wandered forth through the leafy mazes of the garden. The gorgeous profusion of lights and glittering ornaments, the endless variety of colors, the novel and Asiatic appearance of the temples, the tropical luxuriance of the foliage, the gleaming white statuary, the gay company, the wild strains of music, all combined to form a scene of peculiar interest. High overhead, dimly visible through the tops of the trees, the sky wears an almost supernatural aspect during these long summer nights. A soft golden glow flushes upward from the horizon, and, lying outspread over the firmament, gives a spectral effect to the gentler and more delicate sheen of the moon; the stars seem to shrink back into the dim infinity, as if unable to contend with the grosser effulgence of the great orbs that rule the day and the night. Unconscious whether the day is waning into the night, or the night into the morning, the rapt spectator gazes and dreams till lost in the strange enchantment of the scene.

At a late hour a signal was given, and the company wandered down to the lake, along the shores of which rustic seats and divans, overshadowed by shrubbery, afforded the weary an opportunity of resting. Here we were to witness the crowning entertainment of the evening – a grand display of fire-works. A miniature steam-boat, gayly decorated with flags, swept to and fro, carrying passengers to the different landing-places. Gondolas, with peaked prows and variegated canopies, lay floating upon the still water, that lovers might quench their flames in the contemplation of its crystal depths, or draw fresh inspiration from the blaze of artificial fires. Soon a wild outburst of music was heard; then from the opposite shore the whole heavens were lighted up with a flood of rockets, and the ears were stunned by their explosions. Down through the depths of ether came showers of colored balls, illuminating the waters of the lake with inverted streams of light scarcely less bright and glowing. Anon all was dark; then from out the darkness flashed whirling and seething fires, gradually assuming the grotesque forms of monsters and genii, till with a deafening explosion they were scattered to the winds. From the blackened mass of ruins stood forth illuminated statues of the imperial family, in all the paraphernalia of royalty, their crowns glittering with jewels, their robes of light resplendent with precious gems and tracery of gold. A murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. The imperial figures vanished as if by magic, and suddenly a stream of fire flashed from a mass of dark undefined objects on the opposite shore, and lo! the waters were covered with fiery swans, sailing majestically among the gondolas, their necks moving slowly as if inspired by life. Hither and thither they swept, propelled by streams of fire, till, wearied with their sport, they gradually lay motionless, yet glowing with an augmented brilliancy. While the eyes of all were fixed in amazement and admiration upon these beautiful swans, they exploded with a series of deafening reports, and were scattered in confused volumes of smoke. Out of the chaos swept innumerable hosts of whirling little monsters, whizzing and boring through the water like infernal spirits of the deep. These again burst with a rattle of explosions like an irregular fire of musketry, and shot high into the air in a perfect maze of scintillating stars of every imaginable color. When the shower of stars was over, and silence and darkness once more reigned, a magnificent barge, that might well have represented that of the Egyptian queen – its gay canopies resplendent with the glow of many-colored lamps – swept out into the middle of the lake, and

“Like a burnished throne

Burn’d on the water.”

And when the rowers had ceased, and the barge lay motionless, soft strains of music arose from its curtained recesses, swelling up gradually till the air was filled with the floods of rich, wild harmony, and the senses were ravished with their sweetness.

Was it a wild Oriental dream? Could it all be real – the glittering fires, the gayly-costumed crowds, the illuminated barge, the voluptuous strains of music? Might it not be some gorgeous freak of the emperor, such as the sultan in the Arabian Nights enjoyed at the expense of the poor traveler? Surely there could be nothing real like it since the days of the califs of Bagdad!

A single night’s entertainment such as this must cost many thousand rubles. When it is considered that there are but few months in the year when such things can be enjoyed, some idea may be formed of the characteristic passion of the Russians for luxurious amusements. It is worthy of mention, too, that the decorations, the lamps, the actors and operators, the material of nearly every description, are imported from various parts of the world, and very little is contributed in any way by the native Russians, save the means by which these costly luxuries are obtained.

CHAPTER VII.
THE “LITTLE WATER.”

On the fundamental principles of association the intelligent reader will at once comprehend how it came to pass that, of all the traits I discovered in the Russian people, none impressed me so favorably as their love of vodka, or native brandy, signifying the “little water.” I admired their long and filthy beards and matted heads of hair, because there was much in them to remind me of my beloved Washoe; but in nothing did I experience a greater fellowship with them than in their constitutional thirst for intoxicating liquors. It was absolutely refreshing, after a year’s travel over the Continent of Europe, to come across a genuine lover of the “tarantula” – to meet at every corner of the street a great bearded fellow staggering along blind drunk, or attempting to steady the town by hugging a post. Rarely had I enjoyed such a sight since my arrival in the Old World. In Germany I had seen a few cases of stupefaction arising from overdoses of beer; in France the red nose of the bon vivant is not uncommon; in England some muddled heads are to be found; and in Scotland there are temperance societies enough to give rise to the suspicion that there is a cause for them; but, generally speaking, the sight of an intoxicated man is somewhat rare in the principal cities of the Continent. It will, therefore, be conceded that there was something very congenial in the spectacle that greeted me on the very first day of my arrival in Moscow. A great giant of a Mujik, with a ferocious beard and the general aspect of a wild beast, came toward me with a heel and a lurch to port that was very expressive of his condition. As he staggered up and tried to balance himself, he blurted out some unmeaning twaddle in his native language which I took to be a species of greeting. His expression was absolutely inspiring – the great blear eyes rolling foolishly in his head; his tongue lolling helplessly from his mouth; his under jaw hanging down; his greasy cap hung on one side on a tuft of dirty hair – all so familiar, so characteristic of something I had seen before! Where could it have been? What potent spell was there about this fellow to attract me? In what was it that I, an embassador from Washoe, a citizen of California, a resident of Oakland, could thus be drawn toward this hideous wretch? A word in your ear, reader. It was all the effect of association! The unbidden tears flowed to my eyes as I caught a whiff of the fellow’s breath. It was so like the free-lunch breaths of San Francisco, and even suggested thoughts of the Legislative Assembly in Sacramento. Only think what a genuine Californian must suffer in being a whole year without a glass of whisky – nay, without as much as a smell of it! How delightful it is to see a brother human downright soggy drunk; drunk all over; drunk in the eyes, in the mouth, in the small of his back, in his knees, in his boots, clear down to his toes! How one’s heart is drawn toward him by this common bond of human infirmity! How it recalls the camp, the one-horse mining town, the social gathering of the “boys” at Dan’s, or Jim’s, or Jack’s; and the clink of dimes and glasses at the bar; how distances are annihilated and time set back! Of a verity, when I saw that man, with reason dethroned and the garb of self-respect thrown aside, I was once again in my own beloved state!

 
“What a beauty dwelt in each familiar face,
What music hung on every voice!”
 

Since reading is not a very general accomplishment among the lower classes, a system of signs answers in some degree as a substitute. The irregularity of the streets would of itself present no very remarkable feature but for the wonderful variety of small shops and the oddity of the signs upon which their contents are pictured. What these symbols of trade lack in artistic style they make up in grotesque effects. Thus, the tobacco shops are ornamented outside with various highly-colored pictures, drawn by artists of the most florid genius, representing cigar-boxes, pipes, meerschaums, narghillas, bunches of cigars, snuffboxes, plugs and twists of tobacco, and all that the most fastidious smoker, chewer, or snuffer can expect to find in any tobacco shop, besides a good many things that he never will find in any of these shops. Prominent among these symbolical displays is the counterfeit presentment of a jet-black Indian of African descent – his woolly head adorned with a crown of pearls and feathers; in his right hand an uplifted tomahawk, with which he is about to kill some invisible enemy; in his left a meerschaum, supposed to be the pipe of peace; a tobacco plantation in the background, and a group of warriors smoking profusely around a camp-fire, located under one of the tobacco plants; the whole having a very fine allegorical effect, fully understood, no doubt, by the artist, but very difficult to explain upon any known principle of art. The butchers’ shops are equally prolific in external adornments. On the sign-boards you see every animal fit to be eaten, and many of questionable aspect, denuded of their skins and reduced to every conceivable degree of butchery; so that if you want a veal cutlet of any particular pattern, all you have to do is to select your pattern, and the cutlet will be chopped accordingly. The bakeries excel in their artistic displays. Here you have painted bread from black-moon down to double-knotted twist; cakes, biscuit, rolls, and crackers, and as many other varieties as the genius of the artist may be capable of suggesting. The bakers of Moscow are mostly French or German; and it is a notable fact that the bread is quite equal to any made in France or Germany. The wine-stores, of which there are many, are decorated with pictures of bottles, and bas-reliefs of gilded grapes – a great improvement upon the ordinary grape produced by nature.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE MARKETS OF MOSCOW

If there is nothing new under the sun, there are certainly a good many old things to interest a stranger in Moscow. A favorite resort of mine during my sojourn in that strange old city of the Czars was in the markets of the Katai Gorod. Those of the Riadi and Gostovini Dvor present the greatest attractions, perhaps, in the way of shops and merchandise; for there, by the aid of time, patience, and money, you can get any thing you want, from saints’ armlets and devils down to candlesticks and cucumbers. Singing-birds, Kazan-work, and Siberian diamonds are its most attractive features. But if you have a passion for human oddities rather than curiosities of merchandise, you must visit the second-hand markets extending along the walls of the Katai Gorod, where you will find not only every conceivable variety of old clothes, clocks, cooking utensils, and rubbish of all sorts, but the queerest imaginable conglomeration of human beings from the far East to the far West. It would be a fruitless task to attempt a description of the motley assemblage. Pick out all the strangest, most ragged, most uncouth figures you ever saw in old pictures, from childhood up to the present day; select from every theatrical representation within the range of your experience the most monstrous and absurd caricatures upon humanity; bring to your aid all the masquerades and burlesque fancy-balls you ever visited, tumble them together in the great bag of your imagination, and pour them out over a vague wilderness of open spaces, dirty streets, high walls, and rickety little booths, and you have no idea at all of the queer old markets of the Katai Gorod. You will be just as much puzzled to make any thing of the scene as when you started, if not more so.

No mortal man can picture to another all these shaggy-faced Russians, booted up to the knees, their long, loose robes flaunting idly around their legs, their red sashes twisted around their waists; brawny fellows with a reckless, independent swagger about them, stalking like grim savages of the North through the crowd. Then there are the sallow and cadaverous Jew peddlers, covered all over with piles of ragged old clothes, and mountains of old hats and caps; and leathery-faced old women – witches of Endor – dealing out horrible mixtures of quass (the national drink); and dirty, dingy-looking soldiers, belonging to the imperial service, peddling off old boots and cast-off shirts; and Zingalee gipsies, dark, lean, and wiry, offering strings of beads and armlets for sale with shrill cries; and so on without limit.

Here you see the rich and the poor in all the extremes of affluence and poverty; the robust and the decrepit; the strong, the lame, and the blind; the noble, with his star and orders of office; the Mujik in his shaggy sheepskin capote or tattered blouse; the Mongolian, the Persian, and the Caucasian; the Greek and the Turk; the Armenian and the Californian, all intent upon something, buying, selling, or looking on.

Being the only representative from the Golden State, I was anxious to offer some Washoe stock for sale – twenty or thirty feet in the Gone Case; but Dominico, my interpreter, informed me that these traders had never heard of Washoe, and were mostly involved in Russian securities – old breeches, boots, stockings, and the like. He did not think my “Gone Case” would bring an old hat; and as for my “Sorrowful Countenance” and “Ragged End,” he was persuaded I could not dispose of my entire interest in them for a pint of grease.

I was very much taken with the soldiers who infested these old markets. It was something new in military economy to see the representatives of an imperial army supporting themselves in this way; dark, lazy fellows in uniform, lounging about with old boots, and suspenders hanging all over them, crying out the merits of their wares in stentorian voices, thus, as it were, patriotically relieving the national treasury of a small fraction of its burden. They have much the appearance, in the crowd, of raisins in a plum-pudding.

The peasant women, who flock in from the country with immense burdens of vegetables and other products of the farms, are a very striking, if not a very pleasing feature in the markets. Owing to the hard labor imposed upon them, they are exceedingly rough and brawny, and have a hard, dreary, and unfeminine expression of countenance, rather inconsistent with one’s notions of the delicacy and tenderness of woman. Few of them are even passably well-looking. All the natural playfulness of the gentler sex seems to be crushed out of them; and while their manners are uncouth, their voices are the wildest and most unmusical that ever fell upon the ear from a feminine source. When dressed in their best attire they usually wear a profusion of red handkerchiefs about their heads and shoulders; and from an unpicturesque habit they have of making an upper waist immediately under their arms by a ligature of some sort, and tying their apron-strings about a foot below, they have the singular appearance of being double-waisted or three-story women. They carry their children on their backs, much after the fashion of Digger Indians, and suckle them through an opening in the second or middle story. Doubtless this is a convenient arrangement, but it presents the curious anomaly of a poor peasant living in a one-story house with a three-story wife. According to the prevailing style of architecture in well-wooded countries, these women ought to wear their hair shingled; but they generally tie it up in a knot behind, or cover it with a fancy-colored handkerchief, on the presumption, I suppose, that they look less barbarous in that way than they would with shingled heads. You may suspect me of story-telling, but upon my word I think three-story women are extravagant enough without adding another to them. I only hope their garrets contain a better quality of furniture than that which afflicts the male members of the Mujik community. No wonder those poor women have families of children like steps of stairs! It is said that their husbands are often very cruel to them, and think nothing of knocking them down and beating them; but even that does not surprise me. How can a man be expected to get along with a three-story wife unless he floors her occasionally?

Ragged little boys, prematurely arrested in their growth, you see too, in myriads – shovel-nosed and bare-legged urchins of hideously eccentric manners, carrying around big bottles of sbiteen (a kind of mead), which they are continually pouring out into glasses, to appease the chronic thirst with which the public seem to be afflicted; and groups of the natives gathered around a cucumber stand, devouring great piles of unwholesome-looking cucumbers, which skinny old women are dipping up out of wooden buckets. The voracity with which all classes stow away these vicious edibles in their stomachs is amazing, and suggests a melancholy train of reflections on the subject of cholera morbus. It was a continual matter of wonder to me how the lower classes of Russians survived the horrid messes with which they tortured their digestive apparatus. Only think of thousands of men dining every day on black bread, heavy enough for bullets, a pound or two of grease, and half a peck of raw cucumbers per man, and then expecting to live until next morning! And yet they do live, and grow fat, and generally die at a good old age, in case they are not killed in battle, or frozen up in the wilds of Siberia.

Outside the walls of the Katai Gorod, in an open square, or plaza, are rows of wooden booths, in which innumerable varieties of living stock are offered for sale – geese, ducks, chickens, rabbits, pigeons, and birds of various sorts. I sometimes went down here and bargained for an hour or so over a fat goose or a Muscovy duck, not with any ultimate idea of purchasing it, but merely because it was offered to me at a reduced price. It was amusing, also, to study the manners and customs of the dealer, and enjoy their amazement when, after causing them so much loss of time, I would hand over five kopeks and walk off. Some of them, I verily believe, will long entertain serious doubts as to the sanity of the Californian public; for Dominico, my guide, always took particular pride in announcing that I was from that great country, and was the richest man in it, being, to the best of his knowledge, the only one who had money enough to spare to travel all the way to Moscow, merely for the fun of the thing.

I may as well mention, parenthetically, that Dominico was rather an original in his way. His father was an Italian and his mother a Russian. I believe he was born in Moscow. How he came to adopt the profession of guide I don’t know, unless it was on account of some natural proclivity for an easy life. A grave, lean, saturnine man was Dominico – something of a cross between Machiavelli and Paganini. If he knew any thing about the wonders and curiosities of Moscow he kept it a profound secret. It was only by the most rigid inquiry and an adroit system of cross-examination that I could get any thing out of him, and then his information was vague and laconic, sometimes a little sarcastic, but never beyond what I knew myself. Yet he was polite, dignified, and gentlemanly – never refused to drink a glass of beer with me, and always knew the way to a traktir. To the public functionaries with whom we came in contact during the course of our rambles his air was grand and imposing; and on the subject of money he was sublimely nonchalant, caring no more for rubles than I did for kopeks. Once or twice he hinted to me that he was of noble blood, but laid no particular stress upon that, since it was his misfortune at present to be in rather reduced circumstances. Some time or other he would go to Italy and resume his proper position there. In justice to Dominico, I must add that he never neglected an opportunity of praying for me before any of the public shrines; and at the close of our acquaintance he let me off pretty easily, all things considered. Upon my explaining to him that a draft for five hundred thousand rubles, which ought to be on the way, had failed to reach me, owing, doubtless, to some irregularity in the mail service, or some sudden depression in my Washoe stocks, he merely shrugged his shoulders, took a pinch of snuff, and accepted with profound indifference a fee amounting to three times the value of his services.

I was particularly interested in the dog-market. The display of living dog-flesh here must be very tempting to one who has a taste for poodle soup or fricasseed pup. Dominico repudiated the idea that the Russians are addicted to this article of diet; but the very expression of his eye as he took up a fat little innocent, smoothed down its skin, squeezed its ribs, pinched its loins, and smelled it, satisfied me that a litter of pups would stand but a poor chance of ever arriving at maturity if they depended upon forbearance upon his part as a national virtue. The Chinese quarter of San Francisco affords some curious examples of the art of compounding sustenance for man out of odd materials – rats, snails, dried frogs, star-fish, polypi, and the like; but any person who wishes to indulge a morbid appetite for the most disgusting dishes over devised by human ingenuity must visit Moscow. I adhere to it that the dog-market supplies a large portion of the population with fancy meats. No other use could possibly be made of the numberless squads of fat, hairless dogs tied together and hawked about by the traders in this article of traffic. I saw one man – he had the teeth of an ogre and a fearfully carnivorous expression of eye – carry around a bunch of pups on each arm, and cry aloud something in his native tongue, which I am confident had reference to the tenderness and juiciness of their flesh. Dominico declared the man was only talking about the breed – that they were fine rat-dogs; but I know that was a miserable subterfuge. Such dogs never caught a rat in this world; and if they did, it must have been with a view to the manufacture of sausages.