Due North or Glimpses of Scandinavia and Russia by Maturin Murray Ballou (best books to read for self improvement TXT) 📖

will discourse a score or more of popular waltzes, airs, and mazurkas. These remarkable musical instruments are manufactured especially for this region, and frequently cost, as we were told, a thousand pounds sterling each. The habitues are from all classes of the populace, soldiers, civilians, priests, and peasants,--these last, slow, slouching, and shabby, with no coverings to their heads, except such an abundant growth of coarse sun-bleached hair as to suggest a weather-beaten hay-stack, "redundant locks, robustious to no purpose." These peasants, mechanics, and common laborers, though they drink tumbler after tumbler of nearly boiling hot tea, are only too apt to wind up their idle occupation by getting disgracefully tipsy on that fiery liquor corn-brandy, as colorless as water, but as pungent as _aqua-fortis_. To the tea-gardens in the immediate environs both sexes resort, and here one sees a very pleasant phase of Russian life,--tea-drinking _en famille_ among the middle classes. The article itself is of a superior quality, much more delicate in flavor than that which is used in England or America; but it is never made so strong as we are accustomed to take it. Happy family groups may be seen gathered about the burnished urns in retired nooks, and even love-episodes are now and then to be witnessed, occurring over the steaming beverage. These gardens are decorated in the summer evenings with the gayest of colored paper lanterns,--the flickering, airy lamps festooned among the tall trees and the low shrubbery, as they sway hither and thither, resembling clouds of huge fire-flies, floating at evening over a tropical plantation. There are also exhibitions nightly of fancy fire-works, minor theatricals, and comic song-singing. Tramways lead from the centre of the town to these popular resorts, or a drosky will take one thither at a mere trifling charge. The drosky drivers of Moscow appear to be one degree more stupid than those of St. Petersburg, impossible as that may seem. Like the cocher of Paris they all expect and ask for a _pourboire_. In the capital on the Neva the driver suggests "Na tchai" (tea), as you hand him his fare,--that is, he desires a few pennies to procure a drink of tea; but in Moscow the driver says more honestly, "Na vodka" (brandy). And yet there are many who are satisfied with the milder decoction, and will sit and sip it as long as any one will pay for it,--recalling the jinrikisha men of Yokohama, who seemed to have no desire for any stimulant but boiling hot tea, and plenty of it. The drosky drivers of Moscow dress all alike, and precisely like their brethren in the capital, in long blue padded pelisses, summer and winter, with a low bell-crowned hat, from beneath which protrudes an abundance of carrot-colored hair, of the consistency of dried meadow-grass.

It will interest the traveller to visit briefly the great National Riding-School of Moscow, a building embracing an area of five hundred and sixty feet long by one hundred and fifty-eight feet wide. It is covered with what appears to be a flat roof, but is without supporting pillars of any sort on the inside. A full regiment of cavalry can be exercised here with perfect convenience. This was the largest building in the world unsupported by prop of any kind, until the St. Pancras railway station was built in London. The interior is ornamented with bas-reliefs of men in armor and with ancient trophies. By ascending a winding staircase one can see the net-work of massive beams which sustain the roof, a perfect forest of stays and rafters. In a climate such as prevails here at least two thirds of the year, it is impossible to manoeuvre troops in the open air with any degree of comfort, not to say safety; hence this structure was raised and supplied with huge stoves to afford the means of exercising the troops even in mid-winter.

Moscow has four theatres, two only of which are worthy of the traveller's notice. These are the Botshoi and the Italian Opera, where only entertainments of a high order of merit are permitted to be given. In many of the gay cafes young girls of free manners and lax morals dance in national costumes, among whom one easily recognizes those coming from Circassia, Poland, Lithuania, and the country of the Cossacks. In their dances and grouping they present scenes that do not lack for picturesqueness of effect. Most of the melodies one hears at these places are quaint and of local origin, quite new to the ear; though now and again a familiar strain will occur, indicating from whence Chopin and others have borrowed. Some of the performers were so strikingly handsome as to show that their personal charms had been the fatal cause which had brought them into so exposed a connection as these public resorts of evil repute. The Bohemian or gypsy girls were the most attractive,--poor creatures coming from no one knows where, wanderers from their birth, and with lives ever enveloped in mystery. One could not but recall the Latin Quarter of Paris and the gay, dissipated night-resorts of London and Vienna. None of the European capitals are without these dark spots upon the escutcheon of civilization.

The author's observation in Cuba and continental Spain had led him to believe the dishonesty of Spanish officials to be quite unequalled; but the Russians far exceed the Spaniards in the matter of venality. The last war between Russia and Turkey brought to light official fraud and briberies, connected especially with the commissary department of the army, which disgraced the whole nation in the eyes of the world. Experiences of so outrageous and startling a character were related to us, illustrative of these facts, as to almost challenge belief, had they not been sustained by reliable authority. So extensive and universal is the system of bribery in Russia, that the question of right in ordinary matters, even when brought before the courts for decision, scarcely enters into the consideration. It is first and last purely a question of roubles. Counterfeit justice is as plentifully disbursed as counterfeit money, and that does much abound. To prove that this system of official bribery is no new thing here, and that it is perfectly well known at headquarters, we have only to relate a well-authenticated anecdote. A chief officer of police, who was one day dashing along the Nevsky Prospect in a handsome drosky drawn by a fine pair of horses, was met by the Emperor Nicholas. His Majesty by a sign stopped the officer, and inquired of him what salary he received from the government treasury. "Two thousand roubles, your Majesty," was the reply. Whereupon the Tzar asked how he contrived to own and keep such a smart equipage upon that sum. "By presents, your Majesty, that I receive from the people of my district," was the frank rejoinder. The Emperor laughed at so straightforward an answer, adding: "I believe that I live in your quarter, and have neglected sending you my present," at the same time handing him his purse. The existence of a system of bribery among the officials of the various departments was only too well known to the Tzar; but such plain speaking was a novelty.

A love, not to say pride, of country seems to be universal among the people at large, in spite of all that may be said or inferred to the contrary. No matter how poor the land may seem to the stranger, to the native-born it is beautiful, or at all events it is well beloved; no disparagement will be permitted for a moment. It was amusing to observe the local rivalry existing between the citizens of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The latter are regarded by the former as parvenus, lacking the odor of sanctity that adheres to the citizens of "holy Moscow." The more ancient metropolis has ever had a quasi official recognition as the capital, though it is not so politically. It will be remembered that in 1724, but a few months before his death, even Peter the Great celebrated the coronation of his wife Catherine at Moscow, not at St. Petersburg; and to this day it has been the crowning place of all his successors. So far as the hearts of the people are concerned, Moscow is their capital.

We often hear surprise expressed that Russians who visit other countries are generally such accomplished linguists; but this is very easily accounted for when we remember that in every noble or wealthy family of St. Petersburg or Moscow there is a German nurse for the young children, an English governess for the young ladies, and a French tutor for them all. Emulating those of more pretension and wealth, the same custom extends to the class of successful merchants' families; so that the average Russian grows up speaking two or three languages besides his native tongue. Life is much less cosmopolitan here than in St. Petersburg. Few emigrants from the far East stop in Moscow; they press on to the more European, and commercial city, where Tartars from Kazan, Adighes from the Caucasus, Swedes and Norwegians from Scandinavia, Finlanders from the North, and Germans from the South mingle together. In polite society French is the language of St. Petersburg, while German is much in use among the mercantile community; but in Moscow it is the native tongue which prevails, as well as Oriental manners and customs.

A drive of about three miles from the city over a wretchedly kept road, where the ruts are positively terrible, brings one to Sparrow Hill, the point from whence Napoleon first looked upon the devoted city. "There is the famous city at last, and it is high time," said Napoleon. He had left the battlefield of Borodino covered with corpses forty miles behind. But what cared the ravaging warrior for the eighty thousand lives there sacrificed? It was this terrible encounter which caused him to say emphatically, "One more such victory would be utter ruin!" From this elevation the invading host pressed forward and entered the Muscovite capital, to find the streets deserted, the public buildings stripped of all valuables, and the national archives removed. There were no officials with whom to treat; it was like a city of the dead. This unnatural solitude gave birth to gloomy forebodings in the hearts of the invaders,--forebodings which were more than justified by the final result of that wholly unwarranted campaign. Soon at various points the conflagration of the city began. If subdued here and there by the French it broke out elsewhere, and at last became uncontrollable. Napoleon entered Moscow on the fifteenth of September and left it in ashes on the nineteenth of October, when there began a retreat which was undoubtedly one of the greatest tragedies of modern times. Half a million men in the flower of their youth had in a brief six months been sacrificed to the mad ambition of one individual.

At Sparrow Hill are many cafes where the native population come to drink tea, and where foreigners partake of cheap, flat Moscow beer and other simple refreshments. From here a notable view is to be enjoyed, embracing the ancient capital in the distance; and it is this charming picture which most attracts strangers to the spot. The broad river forms the foreground, flowing through fertile meadows and highly cultivated fields. When we saw it vegetation was at its prime, a soft bright green carpeting the banks of the Moskva, while the plain was wooded with thriving groves up to the convent walls and outlying buildings of the town. Just back of the tea-houses, crowning the hill, is an ancient birch forest which was planted by Peter the Great, the practical old man having occupied many days in consummating this purpose, during which he worked laboriously among his people, setting out and arranging the birches. The local guides never fail to take all