LITMIR.BIZ

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is no use attempting to describe it; but Moscow is the Kremlin, and to feel the Kremlin is to know Moscow.

      Upon entering the Spassky Gate, or Gate of the Redeemer, every hat has to be removed in honour of the ikon of the Saviour which is placed above it. The picture was placed there, by the Tsar Alexis, in 1647, to be regarded as the “palladium of the Kremlin,” and the order was given then that hats should be removed when passing through. The law is rigorously enforced still, and though it is sometimes a trial – I had frostbite in consequence when I last went through a year ago – yet the act is almost an instinctive one when entering or leaving the Kremlin.

      Warsaw, again – for no one in this generation can dissociate it from Russia and call it Polish only – with its glorious position on the Vistula in the midst of its great plain, though not so ancient and inspiring as Cracow, in Galicia, is full of moving appeal to the national and historic sense for those who visit it for the first time, and especially, as in my own case, when entering the empire by that route. I have seen Warsaw in spring, summer, and winter, and always felt its charm; and I have not felt more deeply moved for a long time than by the Emperor’s proclamation that he intended the Poles once more to be a nation and – there can be but little doubt about it – with Warsaw as its capital.

      Riga also, the great shipping-port on the Baltic, which I have entered by sea and by land, and when coming in by sea have had the pleasure of seeing our beautiful English church on the shore with its graceful spire standing out conspicuously, yet blending in with other towers and pinnacles. How very characteristic of the Baltic and attractive the city is, with its blending of the Teuton and Slav populations! But how essentially Russian it is in all its leading features, while different from all other Russian cities! It is so wherever one goes both on this and on the other side of the Urals. There always seems to be something specially characteristic in these great centres of population; and they all seem as if, unlike other towns, they had each their own interesting story to tell for those who have ears to hear.

      Town or city life in Russia is not very representative of the true life of the country and its people, though it undoubtedly exerts a widespread influence upon their general social life; for Russia’s vast population is not gathered together in either towns or cities, but in hamlets and villages. Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace tells us that when he wrote his first book on Russia, in 1877, there were only eleven towns with a population of over 50,000 in European Russia, and that, in 1905, they had only increased to thirty-four. The increase of the future will no doubt be more rapid when the war is over.

      The great cities will probably, as practically all the cities of Europe have done of late years, follow the lead of Paris under Baron Hausmann in the character of their imposing blocks of houses and wide boulevards, and one capital will be much the same as any other in Europe in its general appearance and social life.

      Russian cities, however, even the capital, though ever becoming more cosmopolitan, still possess their many distinctive and interesting features, costumes, and customs, and are most picturesque and interesting, of course, during the long winter. It gives one a shock almost to go for the first time to Warsaw or Petrograd – at Moscow there is always the Kremlin – in the middle of the summer. There is little to distinguish them then, apart from the ever-glorious beauty of the churches, from Buda-Pest or Vienna.

      But in the winter! Then it is everywhere still characteristic Russia. The sledges, for instance, with their troikas! They are the same carriages or droschkes as in summer, but with runners instead of wheels. Horses are harnessed in the same way in both seasons, and even the coachmen seem to wear exactly the same dress all the year round, edged with fur like their caps, though the padding inside the coat must be less in summer, one would think. The sledges of nobles and other wealthy people, used in the winter only, are painted and decorated most attractively. To drive out on a winter night, under a sky brilliant with stars, the air extraordinarily keen, bracing, and stimulating, the bells tinkling from the high and graceful yoke which rises from the central horse of the three, wrapped in furs, and with no sounds but the bells and the crack of whips and the subdued crunching of the snow, is to taste one of the joys of life, and feel to the full, with happiness in the feeling, “This is Russia!”

      The coachmen pad up their robes of blue to an enormous extent, so that they seem to bulge out over their seat. It is said to be a custom dating from Catherine’s days and from her requirements that there should be at least twelve inches of good stuff between her coachman’s skin and her nose! But the present reason for the custom, which prevails, as far as I know, in no other country, is that there is an objection to a thin coachman. When I was speaking of the absurdity of these grotesque padded-out figures to a lady whom I had taken into dinner one night in Moscow, she at once said: —

      “Well, I must say I like my coachman to look comfortable and well fed, I should hate a thin one.”

      Dickens’s fat boy in Pickwick must commend himself to Russia, for they love Dickens and read him in translation and the original all through the empire, as just what a driver ought to be. I should think coachmen in Russia, however, ought to be fat without any padding-up, for they are all merry and good-tempered, their blue eyes and pleasant faces under their furry caps giving the impression of perfect health. They sit on their boxes all day without any violent exercise, and probably have good and abundant food, and above all they sleep. However long you keep your coachman, even in the depth of winter, he does not mind, for he invariably seems to go to sleep while waiting, and to have an absolutely unlimited capacity for gentle and peaceful slumber. I am not at all sure whether my driver on the steppes has not usually been asleep even when we have been going at full speed, the centre horse trotting swiftly, the other two, according to custom, at the gallop.

      The dvornik is another institution in town life. He is an indoor servant in great houses, usually about the front hall, to open the door for those who go out, ready for all sorts of odd things; or he may be a head out-of-doors servant; or he may give general help for three or four or more smaller establishments; but he has to be there, and cannot be dismissed, for he is ex officio a member of the police and has to make his report from time to time. It must give a little sense of espionage, but still, as with the passport, it is only the evil-minded or evil-living who need to be afraid of the dvornik’s report, and it must be remembered also that the Russian Government has long had cause to dread the revolutionary spirit, and has had to fight for its very life against it.

      This is the darker side of life in Russia; and as far as my experience goes it is the only dark side, for it must be evident that a designing dvornik may do untold harm, and specially – as I have known to be the case – in official and diplomatic establishments. The custom opens out possibilities of blackmail also, and one can only hope that it will pass away in what so many of us feel are to be for Russia the better days to come.

      Russians are very hospitable, not only lavish in its exercise where ample means allow, but naturally and by custom thoroughly and truly ready, even in the homes of the very poor, to welcome the coming guest.

      This is brought out in every book one reads of Russia, but by no one more touchingly than by Mr. Stephen Graham in his Tramp’s Sketches, when he journeyed constantly amongst the very poor and found them always ready to “share their crusts.” Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace says the same about the wealthier classes: “Of all the foreign countries in which I have travelled Russia certainly bears off the palm in the matter of hospitality.”

      An interesting feature of a Russian meal, luncheon, or dinner, is its preliminary, the zakouska. It probably dates from the time when guests came from long distances, as they do still in the country, and would be hungry upon their arrival, and yet would have to wait until all the guests had come. It would be, and indeed in some houses to which I have been is still, understood, that if you were asked for a certain time the dinner would follow in the course of an hour or two; and so the “snack” was provided, and laid out upon the sideboard. The great dinners or banquets in London are “7 for 7-30,” to give time for guests to assemble.

      The zakouska, however, remains the custom still at every meal, and consists of caviare sandwiches, pâté de foie gras, and various kinds of deliciously cured fish. Strangers to the country, not understanding this particular custom, for it is provided in the drawing-room,

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