Russian Rambles

I >> Isabel F. Hapgood >> Russian Rambles

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

RUSSIAN RAMBLES

BY

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

AUTHOR OF "THE EPIC SONGS OF RUSSIA"

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1895

TO RUSSIA AND MY RUSSIAN FRIENDS

I DEDICATE THESE NOTES OF MY SOJOURN WITH THEM. THEY MAY REST ASSURED
THAT, THOUGH MANY OF MY MOST CHERISHED EXPERIENCES ARE NOT RECORDED IN
THESE PAGES, THEY REMAIN UNFORGOTTEN, DEEPLY IMPRINTED ON MY HEART.

PREFACE.

The innumerable questions which have been put to me since my return to
America have called to my attention the fact that, in spite of all that
has been written about Russia, the common incidents of everyday life are
not known, or are known so imperfectly that any statement of them is a
travesty. I may cite, as an example, a book published within the past
two years, and much praised in America by the indiscriminating as a
truthful picture of life. The whole story hung upon the great musical
talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the
streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled
(presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu
solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured
organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a
great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through
the book, I will criticise this crucial point. There are no organs or
organists in Russia; there are no pews, or aisles, or galleries for the
choir, and there are never any trills or embellishments in the church
music. A boy could skate to church in New York more readily than in
Moscow, where such a thing was never seen, and where they are not
educated up to roller skates. Lastly, as the church specified, St.
Vasily, consists of a nest of small churches connected by narrow,
labyrinthine corridors, and is approached from the street up two flights
of low-ceiled stairs, it is an impossibility that the boy should have
viewed the "aisle" and assembled congregation from his skates at the
door. That is a fair specimen of the distortions of facts which I am
constantly encountering.

It has seemed to me that there is room for a book which shall impart an
idea of a few of the ordinary conditions of life and of the characters
of the inhabitants, illustrated by apposite anecdotes from my personal
experience. For this purpose, a collection of detached pictures is
better than a continuous narrative of travel.

I am told that I must abuse Russia, if I wish to be popular in America.
Why, is more than I or my Russian friends can understand. Perhaps it
arises from the peculiar fact that people find it more interesting to
hear bad things of their neighbors than good, and the person who
furnishes startling tales is considered better company than the humdrum
truth-teller or the charitably disposed.

The truth is, that people too frequently go to Russia with the
deliberate expectation and intention of seeing queer things. That they
do frequently contrive to see queer things, I admit. Countess X. Z., who
in appearance and command of the language could not have been
distinguished from an Englishwoman, related to me a pertinent anecdote
when we were discussing this subject. She chanced to travel from St.
Petersburg to Moscow in a compartment of the railway carriage with two
Americans. The latter told her that they had been much shocked to meet a
peasant on the Nevsky Prospekt, holding in his hand a live chicken, from
which he was taking occasional bites, feathers and all. That they saw
nothing of the sort is positive; but what they did see which could have
been so ingeniously distorted was more than the combined powers of the
countess and myself were equal to guessing.

The general idea of foreign visitors seems to be that they shall find
the Russia of the seventeenth century. I am sure that the Russia of Ivan
the Terrible's time, a century earlier, would precisely meet their
views. They find the reality decidedly tame in comparison, and feel
bound to supply the missing spice. A trip to the heart of Africa would,
I am convinced, approach much nearer to the ideal of "adventure"
generally cherished. The traveler to Africa and to Russia is equally
bound to narrate marvels of his "experiences" and of the customs of the
natives.

But, in order to do justice to any foreign country, the traveler must
see people and customs not with the eyes of his body only, but with the
eyes of his heart, if he would really understand them. Above all things,
he must not deliberately buckle on blinders. Of no country is this axiom
more true than of Russia. A man who would see Russia clearly must strip
himself of all preconceived prejudices of religion, race, and language,
and study the people from their own point of view. If he goes about
repeating Napoleon I.'s famous saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will
find a Tatar," he will simply betray his own ignorance of history and
facts.

In order to understand matters, a knowledge of the language is
indispensable in any country. Naturally, very few possess this knowledge
in Russia, where it is most indispensable of all. There are guides, but
they are a lottery at best: Russians who know very little English,
English who know very little Russian, or Germans who are impartially
ignorant of both, and earn their fees by relating fables about the
imperial family and things in general, when they are not candidly
saying, "I don't know." I saw more or less of that in the case of other
people's guides; I had none of my own, though they came to me and begged
the privilege of taking me about gratuitously if I would recommend them.
I heard of it from Russians. An ideal cicerone, one of the attendants in
the Moscow Historical Museum, complained to me on this subject, and
rewarded me for sparing him the infliction by getting permission to take
us to rooms which were not open to the public, where the director
himself did the honors for us. Sometimes travelers dispense with the
guides, as well as with a knowledge of the language, but if they have a
talent for pronouncing what are called, I believe, "snap judgments,"
that does not prevent their fulfilling, on their return home, their
tacitly implied duty of uttering in print a final verdict on everything
from soup to government.

If the traveler be unusually lucky, he may make acquaintance on a
steamer with a Russian who can talk English, and who can and will give
him authentic information. These three conditions are not always united
in one person. Moreover, a stranger cannot judge whether his Russian is
a representative man or not, what is his position in the social
hierarchy, and what are his opportunities for knowing whereof he speaks.
"Do you suppose that God, who knows all things, does not know our table
of ranks?" asks an arrogant General in one of the old Russian comedies.
I have no doubt that the Lord does know that remarkable Jacob's ladder
which conducts to the heaven of high public place and the good things of
life, and whose every rung is labeled with some appetizing title and
privilege. But a newly arrived foreigner cannot know it, or the
traditions of the three greater, distinct classes into which the people
are divided.

Russians have become so used to hearing and reading remarkable
statements about themselves that they only smile indulgently at each
fresh specimen of ill-will or ignorance. They keep themselves posted on
what is said of them, and frequently quote choice passages for the
amusement of foreigners who know better, but never when they would be
forced to condescend to explanation. Alexander Dumas, Senior, once wrote
a book on Russia, which is a fruitful source of hilarity in that country
yet, and a fair sample of such performances. To quote but one
illustration,--he described halting to rest under the shade of a great
_kliukva_ tree. The _kliukva_ is the tiny Russian cranberry,
and grows accordingly. Another French author quite recently contributed
an item of information which Russians have adopted as a characteristic
bit of ignorance and erected into a standard jest. He asserted that
every village in Russia has its own gallows, on which it hangs its own
criminals off-hand. As the death penalty is practically abolished in
Russia, except for high treason, which is not tried in villages, the
Russians are at a loss to explain what the writer can have mistaken for
a gallows. There are two "guesses" current as to his meaning: the two
uprights and cross-beam of the village swing; or the upright, surmounted
by a cross-board, on which is inscribed the number of inhabitants in the
village. Most people favor the former theory, but consider it a pity
that he has not distinctly pointed to the latter by stating that the
figures there inscribed represent the number of persons hanged. That
would have rendered the tale bloodthirsty, interesting, absolutely
perfect,--from a foreign point of view.

I have not attempted to analyze the "complicated" national character.
Indeed, I am not sure that it is complicated. Russians of all classes,
from the peasant up, possess a naturally simple, sympathetic disposition
and manner, as a rule, tinged with a friendly warmth whose influence is
felt as soon as one crosses the frontier. Shall I be believed if I say
that I found it in custom-house officers and gendarmes? For the rest,
characters vary quite as much as they do elsewhere. It is a question of
individuals, in character and morals, and it is dangerous to indulge in
generalizations. My one generalization is that they are, as a nation,
too long-suffering and lenient in certain directions, that they allow
too much personal independence in certain things.

If I succeed in dispelling some of the absurd ideas which are now
current about Russia, I shall be content. If I win a little
comprehension and kindly sympathy for them, I shall be more than
content.

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD. New York, January 1, 1895.

CONTENTS

I. PASSPORTS, POLICE, AND POST-OFFICE IN RUSSIA.

II. THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT

III. MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE RUSSIAN CENSOR

IV. BARGAINING IN RUSSIA

V. EXPERIENCES

VI. A RUSSIAN SUMMER RESORT

VII. A STROLL IN MOSCOW WITH COUNT TOLSTOY

VIII. COUNT TOLSTOY AT HOME

IX. A RUSSIAN HOLY CITY

X. A JOURNEY ON THE VOLGA

XI. THE RUSSIAN KUMYS CURE

XII. MOSCOW MEMORIES

XIII. THE NIZHNI-NOVGOROD FAIR AND THE VOLGA

RUSSIAN RAMBLES.

I.

PASSPORTS, POLICE, AND POST-OFFICE IN RUSSIA.

We imported into Russia, untaxed, undiscovered by the custom-house
officials, a goodly stock of misadvice, misinformation, apprehensions,
and prejudices, like most foreigners, albeit we were unusually well
informed, and confident that we were correctly posted on the grand
outlines of Russian life, at least. We were forced to begin very
promptly the involuntary process of getting rid of them. Our anxiety
began in Berlin. We visited the Russian consul-general there to get our
passports _vised_. He said, "You should have got the signature of the
American consul. Do that, and return here."

At that moment, the door leading from his office to his drawing-room
opened, and his wife made her appearance on the threshold, with the
emphatic query, "_When_ are you coming?"

"Immediately, my dear," he replied. "Just wait a moment, until I get rid
of these Americans."

Then he decided to rid himself of us for good. "I will assume the
responsibility for you," he said, affixed his signature on the spot, to
spare himself a second visit, and, collecting his fees, bowed us out. I
suppose he argued that we should have known the ropes and attended to
all details accurately, in order to ward off suspicion, had we been
suspicious characters. How could he know that the Americans understood
Russian, and that this plain act of "getting rid" of us would weigh on
our minds all the way to the Russian frontier?

At Wirballen the police evoked a throb of gratitude from our relieved
hearts. No one seemed to suspect that the American government owned a
consul in Berlin who could write his name on our huge parchments, which
contrasted so strongly with the compact little documents from other
lands.

"Which are your passports?" asked the tall gendarme who guarded the door
of the restaurant, as we passed out to take our seats in the Russian
train.

"The biggest," I replied, without mentioning names, and he handed them
over with a grin. No fuss over passports or custom-house, though we had
carefully provided cause! This was beginning badly, and we were
disappointed at our tame experience.

On our arrival in St. Petersburg, we were not even asked for our
passports. Curiosity became restless within us. Was there some sinister
motive in this neglect, after the harrowing tales we had heard from a
woman lecturer, and read in books which had actually got themselves
printed, about gendarmes forcing themselves into people's rooms while
they were dressing, demanding their passports, and setting a guard at
their doors; after which, gendarmes in disguises (which they were clever
enough to penetrate) followed them all over the country? Why was it thus
with them, and not with us? The _why_ ripened gradually. We inquired if
the passports were not wanted.

"No; if you intend to remain only a few days, it is not worth while to
register them," was the startling reply; and those wretched, unwieldy
parchments remained in our possession, even after we had announced that
we did not meditate departing for some time. I hesitate to set down the
whole truth about the anxiety they cost us for a while. How many
innocent officers, in crack regiments (as we discovered when we learned
the uniforms), in search of a breakfast or a dinner, did we not take for
the police upon our tracks, in search of those concealed documents! Our
excitement was ministered to by the Tatar waiters, who, not having
knowledge of our nationality, mistook us for English people, and wrecked
our nerves by making our tea as strong and black as beer, with a view to
large "tea-money" for this delicate attention to our insular tastes.

If no one wanted those documents, what were _we_ to do with them? Wear
them as breastplates (folded), or as garments (full size)? No pocket of
any sex would tolerate them, and we had been given to understand by
veracious (?) travelers that it was as much as our lives were worth to
be separated from them for a single moment. At the end of a week we
forced the hotel to take charge of them. They were registered, and
immediately thrown back on our hands. Then we built lean-tos on our
petticoats to hold them, and carried them about until they looked aged
and crumpled and almost frayed, like ancestral parchments. We even slept
with them under our pillows. At last we also were nearly worn out, and
we tossed those Sindbad passports into a drawer, then into a trunk.
There they remained for three months; and when they were demanded, we
had to undertake a serious search, so completely had their existence and
whereabouts been lost to our lightened spirits. In the mean time we had
grasped the elementary fact that they would be required only on a change
of domicile. By dint of experience we learned various other facts, which
I may as well summarize at once.

The legal price of registration is twenty kopeks (about ten cents), the
value of the stamp. But hotel and lodging-house keepers never set it
down in one's bill at less than double that amount. It often rises to
four or five times the legal charge, according to the elegance of the
rooms which one occupies, and also according to the daring of the
landlord. In one house in Moscow, they even tried to make us pay again
on leaving. We refused, and as we already had possession of the
passports, which, they pretended, required a second registry, they could
do nothing. This abuse of overcharging for passport registration on the
part of landlords seems to have been general. It became so serious that
the Argus-eyed prefect of St. Petersburg, General Gresser (now
deceased), issued an order that no more than the law allowed should be
exacted from lodgers. I presume, however, that all persons who could not
read Russian, or who did not chance to notice this regulation, continued
to contribute to the pockets of landlords, since human nature is very
much alike everywhere, in certain professions. I had no occasion to test
the point personally, as the law was issued just previous to my
departure from the country.

The passport law seems to be interpreted by each man for himself in
other respects, also. In some places, we found that we could stay
overnight quite informally; at others, our passports were required. Once
we spent an entire month incognito. At Kazan, our balcony commanded a
full view of the police department of registry, directly opposite. The
landlord sniffed disdainfully at the mention of our passports, and I am
sure that we should not have been asked for them at all, had not one of
the officials, who chanced to be less wilted by the intense heat than
his fellows,--they had been gazing lazily at us, singly and in
battalions, in the intervals of their rigorous idleness, for the last
four and twenty hours,--suddenly taken a languid interest in us about
one hour before our departure. The landlord said he was "simply
ridiculous." On another occasion, a waiter in a hotel recognized the
Russians who were with us as neighbors of his former master in the days
of serfdom. He suggested that he would arrange not to have our passports
called for at all, since they might be kept overtime, and our departure
would thus be delayed, and we be incommoded. Only one of our friends had
even taken the trouble to bring a "document;" but the whole party spent
three days under the protection of this ex-serf. Of course, we bespoke
his attendance for ourselves, and remembered that little circumstance in
his "tea-money." This practice of detaining passports arbitrarily, from
which the ex-serf was protecting us, prevails in some localities,
judging from the uproar about it in the Russian newspapers. It is
contrary to the law, and can be resisted by travelers who have time,
courage, and determination. It appears to be a device of the landlords
at watering places and summer resorts generally, who desire to detain
guests. I doubt whether the police have anything to do with it. What we
paid the ex-serf for was, practically, protection against his employer.

Our one experience of this device was coupled with a good deal of
amusement, and initiated us into some of the laws of the Russian
post-office as well. To begin my story intelligibly, I must premise that
no Russian could ever pronounce or spell our name correctly unaided. A
worse name to put on a Russian official document, with its _H_ and its
double _o_, never was invented! There is no letter _h_ in the Russian
alphabet, and it is customary to supply the deficiency with the letter
_g_, leaving the utterer to his fate as to which of the two legitimate
sounds--the foreign or the native--he is to produce. It affords a
test of cultivation parallel to that involved in giving a man a knife
and fork with a piece of pie, and observing which he uses. That is the
American shibboleth. Lomonosoff, the famous founder of Russian literary
language in the last century, wrote a long rhymed strophe, containing a
mass of words in which the _g_ occurs legitimately and illegitimately,
and wound up by wailing out the query, "Who can emerge from the crucial
test of pronouncing all these correctly, unimpeached?" That is the
Russian shibboleth.

As a result of this peculiarity, our passports came back from each trip
to the police office indorsed with a brand-new version of our name. We
figured under Gepgud, Gapgod, Gabgot, and a number of other disguises,
all because they persisted in spelling by the eye, and would not accept
my perfect phonetic version. The same process applied to the English
name Wylie has resulted in the manufacture of Villie. And the pleasant
jest of it all was that we never troubled ourselves to sort our
passports, because, although there existed not the slightest family
resemblance even between my mother and myself, we looked exactly alike
in those veracious mirrors. This explained to our dull comprehension how
the stories of people using stolen passports could be true. However, the
Russians were not to blame for this particular absurdity. It was the
fault of the officials in America.

On the occasion to which I refer, we had gone out of St. Petersburg, and
had left a written order for the post-office authorities to forward our
mail to our new address. The bank officials, who should certainly have
known better, had said that this would be sufficient, and had even
prepared the form, on their stamped paper, for our signature. Ten days
elapsed; no letters came. Then the form was returned, with orders to get
our signatures certified to by the chief of police or the police captain
of our district! When we recovered from our momentary vexation, we
perceived that this was an excellent safeguard. I set out for the house
of the chief of police.

His orderly said he was not at home, but would be there at eleven
o'clock. I took a little look into the church,--my infallible receipt
for employing spare moments profitably, which has taught me many things.
At eleven o'clock the chief was still "not at home." I decided that this
was in an "official" sense only, when I caught sight of a woman
surveying me cautiously through the crack of the opposite door to the
antechamber. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that a woman calling
upon a chief of police was regarded as a suspicious character; and
rightly, after various shooting incidents in St. Petersburg. My
suspicions were confirmed by my memory of the fact that I had been told
that the prefect of St. Petersburg was "not at home" in business hours,
though his gray lambskin cap--the only one in town--was lying before
me at the time. But I also recollected that when I had made use of that
cap as a desk, on which to write my request, to the horror of the
orderly, and had gone home, the prefect had sent a gendarme to do what I
wanted. Accordingly, I told this orderly my business in a loud, clear
voice. The crack of the door widened as I proceeded, and at my last word
I was invited into the chief's study by the orderly, who had been
signaled to.

The chief turned out to be a polished and amiable baron, with a German
name, who was eager to render any service, but who had never come into
collision with that post-office regulation before. I remarked that I
regretted not being able to certify to ourselves with our passports, as
they had not been returned to us. He declared that the passports were
quite unnecessary as a means of identification; my word was sufficient.
But he flew into a rage over the detention of the passports. That
something decidedly vigorous took place over those papers, and that the
landlord of our hotel was to blame, it was easy enough to gather from
the meek air and the apologies with which they were handed to us, a
couple of hours later. The chief dispatched his orderly on the spot with
my post-office petition. During the man's absence, the chief brought in
and introduced to me his wife, his children, and his dogs, and showed me
over his house and garden. We were on very good terms by the time the
orderly returned with the signature of the prefect (who had never seen
us) certifying to our signatures, on faith. The baron sealed the
petition for me with his biggest coat of arms, and posted it, and the
letters came promptly and regularly. Thereafter, for the space of our
four months' stay in the place, the baron and I saluted when we met. We
even exchanged "shakehands," as foreigners call the operation, and the
compliments of the day, in church, when the baron escorted royalty. I
think he was a Lutheran, and went to that church when etiquette did not
require his presence at the Russian services, where I was always to be
found.

As, during those four months, I obtained several very special privileges
which required the prefect's signature,--as foreigners were by no
means common residents there,--and as I had become so well known by
sight to most of the police force of the town that they saluted me when
I passed, and their dogs wagged their tails at me and begged for a
caress, I imagined that I was properly introduced to the authorities,
and that they could lay hands upon me at any moment when the necessity
for so doing should become apparent. Nevertheless, one friend, having
applied to the police for my address, spent two whole days in finding
me, at haphazard. After a residence of three months, other friends
appealed in vain to the police; then obtained from the prefect, who had
certified to us, the information that no such persons lived in the town,
the only foreigners there being two sisters named Genrut! With this
lucid clue our friends cleverly found us. Those who understand Russian
script will be able to unravel the process by which we were thus
disguised and lost. We had been lost before that in St. Petersburg, and
we recognized the situation, with variations, at a glance. There is no
such thing as a real practical directory in Russian cities. When one's
passport is _vised_ by the police, the name and information therein set
forth are copied on a large sheet of paper, and this document takes its
place among many thousand others, on the thick wire files of the Address
Office. I went there once. That was enough in every way. It lingers in
my mind as the darkest, dirtiest, worst-ventilated, most depressing
place I saw in Russia.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24