Théophile Gautier
Travels in Russia (Voyage en Russie, 1858-59, 1861)
Part III: Winter, and The Neva
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
Chapter 7: Winter – The Neva
For several days the weather had been noticeably cooler; every night saw a white frost, and a north-east wind swept the last of the reddened leaves across Admiralty Square. Winter, though late for that latitude, had set out from the polar regions, and amidst Nature’s frissons, I felt it approaching. Nervous people experienced the vague uneasiness that a whiff of snow in the air causes those of delicate constitution, and the isvochtchiks (cabbies) who wholly lack nerves, it is true, yet, on the other hand possess an infallible instinct for atmospheric conditions akin to that of wild creatures, raised their noses towards the sky, blurred by an immense grey-yellow cloud, and joyfully readied their sleighs.
However, the snow failed to fall, and we assailed each other with critical observations regarding the drop in temperature, but of a completely different kind from those in which the philistines of other countries frame their meteorological commonplaces. In St. Petersburg people complain that the weather is not severe enough, and checking the thermometer they say: ‘Well, it’s still only minus two or three degrees! Definitely the climate is changing.’ And older people will tell you about those beautiful winters, in which they enjoyed a temperature of twenty-five or thirty degrees below, from October till May.
One morning, however, on raising my window blind, I saw, through its double panes wet with nocturnal mist, a roof of a sparkling whiteness standing out against a light-blue sky, in which the rising sun gilded a few pink clouds and a few plumes of pale smoke; the architectural projections of the palace which faced the hotel were enhanced by silvery lines, like those drawings on coloured paper which are highlighted with white touches of gouache, and a thick layer of virgin snow lay on the ground, like a cotton-wool mantle, on which were still visible starred imprints from the feet of the pigeons, as numerous in St. Petersburg as in Constantinople and Venice. The whole flock, staining this background of immaculate whiteness with grey-blue, leapt about, flapped their wings, and seemed to await, with a more than usual impatience, in front of the food merchant’s underground store, the scattering of seed that he granted them every morning with a Brahminical charity. Indeed, though the snow was akin to a white tablecloth, the birds failed to find their covers set, and those pigeons were hungry. So, imagine the joy when the merchant opened his door! The winged band swept familiarly upon him, and he vanished for a moment or two amidst a feathered cloud. A few handfuls of grain thrown to some distance gave him a little freedom, and he smiled, as he stood on the threshold, to see his little friends eating with joyful greed, making snow fly to right and left. As you might expect, a few uninvited sparrows were enjoying the windfall, those shameless parasites, and left not a crumb from the feast on the ground; everyone must live.
The city was waking. Moujiks on their way with provisions, their korzinas made of fir-strips on their heads, dug the soles of their big boots into the untrodden snow, leaving footprints like elephant-tracks; a few women, handkerchiefs tied under their chins, wrapped in overcoats stitched like quilts, crossed the street with a lighter step, embroidering with silver flakes the hems of their skirts. Gentlemen in long coats, collars raised above their ears, passed blithely, on their way to their offices, and suddenly the first sleigh appeared driven by Winter himself, in the guise of an isvochtchik wearing a square cap in red velvet with a border of fur, dressed in a blue kaftan lined with sheepskin, his knees covered by an old bearskin. Waiting for trade, he lounged on the back seat of his sleigh, and guided, the reins spanning the folding seat in front, his hands in large mittens with only the thumbs separated, a little Kazan horse whose long mane almost swept the snow. Not since my arrival in St. Petersburg, had I felt the reality of Russia so keenly; it was like a sudden revelation, and I understood, instantly, a host of things which, until then, had seemed obscure to me.
On seeing the snow, I had dressed in haste; at the sight of the sleigh, I donned my long coat (pelisse), put on my galoshes, and a moment later was in the street shouting the customary: ‘Isvochtchik! Isvochtchik!’
The sleigh drew up close to the pavement, the isvochtchik clambered over into his seat, and I inserted myself into the body, stuffed with hay, of the vehicle, while drawing the sides of my sheepskin pelisse tight, and covering myself well from the cold. The structure of these sleighs is very simple. Picture two bars, or polished iron runners, whose front-ends curve at the tip like Chinese shoes. Onto these two bars a light iron frame is fixed, supporting the coachman’s seat, and the box in which the passenger sits; this box is usually painted a mahogany colour.
A sort of apron, rounded and curving backward like a swan’s breast, graces the sled and protects the isvochtchik from the flecks of snow that fly up, like silver foam, in front of the swift and frail equipage. The stretchers are attached to the horse’s collar, in the same manner as the droshky with wheels, and apply traction to the runners. The whole affair weighs little or nothing, and goes like the wind, especially when frost has hardened the snow, and the surface is firm.
We set out for the Anichkov Bridge, at the end of Nevsky Prospekt. This declared goal only came to mind because the street was a goodly length, because I was not required to speak, so early in the day, to the four bronze horses which adorn the bridge’s corners, and was more than happy to view the Prospekt, powdered with snow, in its full winter dress.
I could scarcely believe how much it had gained by the weather: an immense strip of silver, it stretched into the distance between the double line of palaces, hotels, and churches, themselves enhanced with touches of white, producing a truly magical effect. The colours of the buildings, pink, yellow, and buff-grey, which can seem odd at times, had taken on a most harmonious tone, transformed thus with sparkling nets and glittering patches. The Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, which we passed, had metamorphosed to its advantage; it had covered its Italian dome in a cap of Russian snow, traced out its cornices and Corinthian capitals in purest white, and placed on the terrace of its semi-circular colonnade a balustrade of solid silver similar to that which adorns its iconostasis within; the steps which lead to its portal were covered with a fine, soft ermine carpet, splendid enough for the golden shoe of a Tsarina to set foot upon it.
The statues of Barclay de Tolly (Mikhail Bogdanovich, who commanded the right-wing and centre at Borodino, in 1812) and Mikhail Kutuzov (commander-in-chief in the war against Napoleon) seemed to rejoice on their pedestals, heroes whom the sculptor Boris Orlovsky, knowing the climate, should not have costumed in the Roman style, but, on the contrary, should have gratified with thick bronze overcoats. Unfortunately, the artist failed to grant them hats, and the snow had dusted their skulls with its chill martial powder.
Near Our Lady of Kazan, the Catherine (Griboedov) canal passes beneath the Prospekt, spanned by a bridge, which was completely covered, snow piling up at the edges of the quay, and on the steps of the stairway; a single night had proved sufficient to freeze everything. The ice-floes which the Neva had been carrying for several days had been brought to a halt, surrounding with a transparent sheet the hulls of boats at their moorings.
In front of doorways, the dvorniks, armed with large shovels, cleared the pavement and tossed the piles of snow onto the road, like heaps of stones onto tarmac. From all sides the sleds, appeared, and, strangely enough, in one night, the wheeled droshkys, so numerous the day before, had totally vanished. One would have found not a single instance of such on the whole street; it seemed that from one day to another Russia, reverting to the most primitive stage of civilisation, had not yet invented the use of the wheel. The rospouskys (carts), the telegas (wains), all the instruments of transport were sliding by on skates; the moujiks, harnessed by a rope, pulled their korzinas (baskets) on minute sleds. Small flared hats had disappeared to make way for velvet bonnets.
When the road is well made, and ice has consolidated the snow, one cannot imagine the immense economy of effort in dragging a load along: the horse moves, without difficulty and at twice the speed, triple the weight which it could move in normal conditions. In Russia, the snow acts, for six months of the year, as a universal railway whose white tracks extend in all directions and allow one to go wherever one wishes. This silvery railway has the advantage of costing nothing at all per verst or kilometre, a very economical cost which the most skilful engineers can never achieve; perhaps that is the reason why iron railway tracks have only ploughed two or three furrows across Russia’s immense territory.
I returned home quite satisfied with my trip. After eating lunch, and transforming a cigar to ashes, a delicious sensation in St. Petersburg where smoking is prohibited in the street, under penalty of a fine of one rouble, I went for a walk along the banks of the Neva, to enjoy the change of scene.
The Neva River - Karl Petrovich Beggrov, 1799 - 1875
Rijksmuseum
The great river which, the day before had been seen to extend in a vast tablecloth, wrinkled by perpetual fluctuations, shimmering with ever-new plays of light, criss-crossed by the restless motions of ships, steamboats, sailing boats, and canoes as it streamed towards the Gulf of Finland, the river itself being vast as a gulf, had completely changed in appearance; to the liveliest animation had succeeded the immobility of death. The snow lay thick on the welded ice-floes and, between the granite docks, as far as the eye could see, stretched a white sunken plain from which black mastheads rose, here and there, above half buried boats — stakes and fir branches marked holes made in the ice from which to draw water, and indicated the risk-free course to follow from one bank to the other, since pedestrians were already crossing the ice, and people were preparing ramps for sleds and carriages, though barriers still blocked them, the ice not yet being sufficiently thick.
To better appreciate the view, I took up position on the Annunciation Bridge (Blagoveshchensky Most, later the Nikolaevsky, and later still the Lieutenant Schmidt), more commonly referred to as the Nicolai Bridge, which I have already mentioned on my arrival in St. Petersburg. On this fresh occasion, I had the leisure to examine, in detail, the charming chapel (not extant, due to the remodelling of the bridge) built, in honour of Saint Nicholas the Thaumaturge (The Miracle-Worker), at the point where the two mobile sections of the bridge meet. It is a small but delightful building in the Muscovite-Byzantine style which so well suits Greek Orthodox worship, and which I would like to see adopted more widely in Russia. It consists of a sort of pavilion in bluish granite, flanked at each corner by a column with a composite-style capital, circled in the middle by a band and streaked with grooves, not straight, but broken at the top and bottom. The base is double-height, supporting the pillars of an arch on each face, and is faceted in low-relief. There are hollow bays beneath the arches on three sides of the monument, bays whose background walls gleam with mosaics of precious stones depicting the chapel’s patron saint, draped in a dalmatic, a golden nimbus behind his head and an open book in his hand, surrounded by celestial figures in attitudes of adoration. Elaborate ironwork railings enclose the two side-arches; that on the front facade borders a staircase giving access to the chapel. The cornice is decorated with inscriptions in Slavonic characters, punctuated with stars, and has as acroteria (roof decorations) a series of ornaments in the shape of hearts with their points in the air, alternating with saw-toothed features. The roof, a four-sided pyramidion, is covered with gilded scales. It has one of those little Muscovite bell-towers with a bulge on top that one might best compare to a tulip bulb, all starred in gold, and ending with a Greek cross its foot set on a crescent supported by a globe. I particularly like these golden roofs, especially when the snow sprinkles them with its silver filings and gives them the look of old vermeil whose layer of gold occupies half the visible surface, granting them subtle and incredibly rare tones, effects absolutely unknown elsewhere. A lamp burns night and day in front of the icon.
Passing the chapel, the isvochtchiks gather the reins together in one hand, raise their caps, and make the sign of the cross. The moujiks prostrate themselves on the snow. Soldiers and officers say a prayer with an ecstatic air, motionless, bareheaded, a meritorious devotion in twelve or thirteen degrees of cold; women ascend the steps and kiss the feet of the icon after many genuflections. These are not all, as you might believe, common folk, for well-dressed people do the same; no one crosses the bridge without showing a like sign of respect, a salute at least to the saint who protects them, and the kopeks rain into the two chests, placed one each side of the chapel; but let us return to the Neva.
On the right, looking from the bridge towards the city with one’s back to the sea, one sees, a little beyond the English Embankment the five, pointed bell-towers of the Church of the Horse-Guards (the Cathedral of the Annunciation, not extant), their gold lightly glazed with white; further away, the dome of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, like the mitre, studded with diamonds, of some mage, the gleaming needle of the Admiralty, and a corner of the Winter Palace; in the background, and more to the left, rising from an island in the river, the bold and slender spire of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, whose golden angel (the Archangel Gabriel) glitters in a turquoise sky veined in pink, above the low walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress.
On the left (with one’s back always to the sea), the shore fails to offer the horizon a like golden richness; there are fewer churches on that side and they are more remote, being sited within the island of Vasilyevsky Ostrov — the name for that district of the city. However, the palaces and hotels that border the long stretch of its embankment present monumental lines, happily accentuated by the snow. Before the Exchange Bridge (Birzhevoy Most), the Academy, a grand palace classical in its architecture, containing a round courtyard within its square enclosure, descends to the river by means of a colossal staircase decorated with two great Egyptian sphinxes with human heads, surprised and shivering at bearing on their pink granite rumps caparisons of frost; the Rumyantsev Obelisk rises from the centre of the square.
If, by crossing the Exchange bridge, you return to the other bank and, passing the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, walk upriver to the Marble Palace, a little before the Troitsky bridge, and then turn around, you discover a fresh view that is worth contemplating: the river divides into two arms which form the Great and Little Neva, either side of a point (the Strelka) opposite the flow of water — when the water is flowing — which is decorated architecturally in grandiose manner.
At each corner of the Esplanade in which Vasilyevsky Ostrov island terminates on this side, stands a sort of lighthouse or rather a rostral column in pink granite, with bronze ship’s bows and anchors, surmounted by a tripod or brass lantern, rising from a base on which seated statues lean. Between these two columns placed to beautiful effect one sees the Stock Exchange which is, like the Paris Bourse, a rectangle surrounded by columns, in vague imitation of the Parthenon. Only here they are Doric instead of Corinthian, and the body of the building exceeds the attic of the colonnade which frames it, presenting a triangular gable like a Greek pediment, where a large arched bay is half-obstructed by a sculptural group set on the cornice of the portico. To right and left, in symmetry, are the University and Customs buildings, regular and simple in their architecture. The two rostral columns, with their gigantic monumental lines, suitably relieve the somewhat cold and classical lines of the buildings.
In the arm of the Little Neva, are massed, for over-wintering, ships and boats whose unrigged masts break the uniformity of background with their slender lines. Now, to this summarised sketch on pearl-grey paper, add a few bright white highlights, and you will have a pretty drawing to paste in your album.
Today, I will advance no further; it is far from warm on these quays and bridges, where the wind blows straight from the pole. Everyone walks at a faster pace here. Each of the two bronze lions placed on the landing stage (Dvortsovaya Pier) of the Imperial Palace (The Winter Palace) seems numbed, and barely keeps a grasp on the globe beneath its paw.
Next day, on the English Embankment and the Prospekt, there is a veritable Longchamp of gentleman’s sleighs and open carriages. It seems strange in a city where nineteen or twenty degrees below is not rare, that closed vehicles are so little employed. It is only at the last extremity that Russians ride in a carreta (covered carriage), however chilled they are. But the fur coat is a defence against the cold, one which they know how to manage so well that they laugh at weather cold enough to freeze the mercury. They only fill one sleeve moreover, and hold the coat tightly closed by inserting their hand in the small pocket at the front. There is an art to wearing the pelisse, and one cannot master it immediately; a Russian, with an imperceptible movement, gives it some play, crosses it over the body, and folds it and wraps it around himself like a child’s jersey, or a mummy’s bindings. The fur retains, for a few hours at least, the temperature of the antechamber where it was hanging, and isolates you completely from the outside air; in such a coat you are as warm outdoors as in, and if, renouncing the idle elegance of a hat, you don a wool or beaver-pelt cap, you are no longer prevented by an unwelcome brim from raising your coat-collar so that the cloth or fur is then inside. Your neck, your occiput, your ears are protected. Your nose alone, pointing outwards between the two cloth or furred flaps, is exposed to the season’s intemperance; but if it turns white, I advise you, in all charity, to rub it with a handful of snow, upon which it will quickly return to its natural red. Such minor accidents only occur in exceptionally rigorous winters. Old dandies, rigid observers of London and Paris fashions, not being able to resign themselves to a cap, have hats made without a brim at the back but only a simple flap, since it is unthinkable to go about with one’s collar down. The breeze would make your exposed nape feel the edge of its icy blade, as unpleasant as the steel’s contact with a patient’s neck.
The most delicate of women do not fear to ride in a carriage, and for an hour breathe the air, icy but healthy and invigorating, which refreshes lungs oppressed by the hothouse temperature of the houses. I could see no more than their faces turned rosy by the cold; the rest of them is no more than a pile of pelisses and muffs, among which it would be difficult to discover a human form; over their knees stretches a large black or white bearskin patterned in scarlet. The carriage resembles a kind of boat full of furs from which a few smiling faces emerge.
Confusing the Dutch sleds with the Russian sort, I had imagined other than the reality. It is over the frozen canals of Holland that those sleds slide, wrought in the fanciful forms of a swan, a dragon, or a conch-shell, elaborately-shaped, gilded, and painted in the manner of Melchior d’Hondekoeter or Joost Cornelisz Droochsloot, of whom we have carefully preserved panels, sleds harnessed to horses with pompoms, plumes and bells, but more often pushed by hand by a skater.
The Russian sled is not a toy, an object of luxury and fun, enjoyed for a few weeks, but a tool for daily use and primary employment. Nothing has been changed as to its essential form, and the gentleman’s sleigh is similar at all points, in its structural principles, to the sled of the isvochtchik. Only the iron runners are more highly polished and display a more graceful curve; the body is made of mahogany or cane latticework, the seat adorned with padded Morocco; the apron is patent leather; a footmuff replaces the hay: a precious fur the old worn moth-eaten body-covering; the details are more carefully-done and more refined, that is all; luxury is displayed via the coachman’s outfit, the beauty of the horse, and the fleetness of its gait. As with the droshky, a second trace-horse is often harnessed to the sled. But the sublime example of the genre is the troika, a vehicle eminently Russian, full of local colour and most picturesque. The troika is a large sleigh which can hold two pairs of passengers, facing each other not the coachman; it is harnessed to three horses.
The horse in the middle to whose collar the shafts are fastened, also displays the rounded wooden arch (douga) above the collar itself; each of the other two horses is only hitched to the sled by an external trace; a loose strap attaches them to the shaft-horse’s collar. Four guide reins are enough to guide the three, because the two outer horses are only guided by a single one; nothing is more charming than to see a troika pass, on the Prospekt or Admiralty Square, at walking pace.
The shaft-horse trots, stepping straight, the two other horses prance and pull ahead in a fan shape. One should look fierce, passionate, indomitable, borne on the wind, leaping sideways and kicking: he is the furious one. The other should shake his mane, bow his head to his chest, looking so arched as to almost touch his mouth to his knees, dance on the spot, throw himself to right and left, according to his whims and caprices: he is the flirtatious one. These three noble steeds, in headpieces with metal chains, their harnesses light as threads, on which delicate golden trimmings shine here and there, recall those ancient teams on triumphal arches, drawing bronze chariots to which they seem barely attached. Troika horses appear to play and frolic in front of the sleigh, according to their impulses and whims. The lead horse alone looks a little serious, like a wiser friend between two playful companions.
You will credit, without being told, that it is not at all easy to maintain a high speed amidst this apparent disorder, with each horse pulling in a different manner. Sometimes moreover the furious one plays his role all too well, and the coquettish one rolls in the snow. To drive a troika, it is necessary for the coachman to possess consummate skill. What a fine sport! I’m surprised no equestrian gentleman of London or Paris has the imagination to imitate it. Though it’s true the snow fails to last long enough in England and France.
Russian Sled
From Voyage pittoresque en Russie by Charles de Saint-Julien, 1853
Internet Archive
After a few days, as the conditions continued, coupés, sedans, and horse-drawn carriages on runners appeared. These carriages, with their wheels removed, possess a strange appearance. They look like the bodies of incomplete vehicles set on trestles; the sleigh possesses infinitely more grace and cachet.
Seeing the fur-coats, the sleds, the troikas, the carriages on skates, and finding the thermometer lower every morning by one or two degrees, I thought winter definitively established; but old prudent heads, accustomed to the climate, nodded sceptically, and said: ‘No, it’s not winter yet.’ — And, in truth, it was not winter, real winter, a Russian winter, an Arctic winter, as I later discovered!
Chapter 8: The City in Winter
Indeed, the winter this year was not the traditional Russian one, and was capricious like a Parisian winter. Sometimes the polar wind blew with frozen nose and cheeks the colour of wax, sometimes a southwesterly melted the coating of ice, and dripped rain; to sparkling snow succeeded grey snow; to the road like powdery marble under the screeching sled-runners a muddy mush worse than the tarmac boulevards; or else, in the night, the vein of mercury in the thermometer at the crossroads fell ten or twelve degrees, a fresh white cloth covered the roofs, and the droshkys became troikas again.
Between fifteen and twenty degrees below, winter acquires character and poetry; and is richer in effects than the most splendid of summers. But as yet the painters and poets have failed to convey this.
We have just had for a few days of real Russian cold and I shall note a few of its aspects, because, at this temperature, the cold is visible, and one sees it perfectly, without yet feeling it, from the double windows of a well-heated bedroom.
The sky becomes clear and of a blue that is unconnected to the southern azure, a steely blue, an icy blue of a rare and charming tone that no palette, even that of Ivan Aivazovsky, has yet reproduced. The light gleams without warmth, and the frosty sun makes the cheeks of a few little pink clouds blush. The diamantine snow sparkles, borrows the mica from Paros marble and, hardened by the frost, redoubles its whiteness; the crystallised coating of the trees makes them resemble immense ramifications of quicksilver, or metallic blooms in a fay’s garden.
Don your pelisse, raise the collar, pull your fur-lined cap down to your eyebrows and hail the first isvochtchik who passes: he will race towards you and park his sled by the pavement. However young he may be, he’ll be sure to have a white beard. His breath, condensed to icicles around his purple mask of cold, lends him a patriarch’s beard. Its stiffened hairs scourge his cheekbones like frozen snakes, and the pelt stretched across your knees is strewn with a million little white pearls.
Away you go; the lively, penetrating, icy but healthy air, whips your face; the horse, heated by the speed he creates, blows jets of smoke like a dragon from some fable, and his sweating flanks release a fog which accompanies him as he goes. As you pass by you see the horses of other isvochtchiks standing in front of their mangers; the perspiration has frozen on their bodies: they are all glazed, as if coated in a crust of ice similar to glass-paste. When they move again, the coating breaks, detaches, and melts to form again whenever they stop. This alternation, which would kill an English horse in a week, in no way compromises the health of these little horses, inured to the elements — despite the rigours of the season, only valuable horses are caparisoned; instead of those leather coverings, emblazoned at the corners, with which purebred animals are blanketed in France and England, onto the steaming rump of such horses a carpet from Persia or Smyrna in dazzling colours is thrown.
The carrettas mounted on runners display windows tinted with an opaque layer of ice, a quicksilver blind lowered by winter, preventing one seeing, not only from being seen. If Amor did not shiver in such temperatures, he would find as much mystery in the carrettas of Saint Petersburg as in the gondolas of Venice.
One crosses the Neva by carriage; the ice, two or three feet thick despite some temporary melting sufficient to liquefy snow, will only break up in spring, at the great thaw; it is strong enough to withstand heavy carts, even artillery. Pine poles designate the routes to follow and the places to avoid. In certain areas the ice is deliberately pierced so that it is easy to draw water from the river which continues to flow beneath the crystalline floor. The water, warmer than the outside air, steams through these openings like a fired-up boiler, but everything is only relative, and one should place no trust in it lukewarm offering.
You witness a curious spectacle as you pass on the English Embankment, or travel on foot over the Neva’s frozen surface, viewing the fish the fishmongers take for the city’s consumption. When they are scooped from the bottom of the boxes and thrown, palpitating, on the deck of the boat, they twist and cavort two or three times, but as soon they stop doing so, they stiffen, as if imprisoned in a transparent case: the water which wets them suddenly freezes round their bodies.
In such bitter cold, liquids freeze with surprising speed. Place a bottle of champagne between the double windows of your room, and it will shatter in a few minutes more readily than if it were struck by a heavy boot. Allow me a little personal anecdote; I will try not to abuse the opportunity. Following my old Parisian habit, at the moment of exiting the hotel, I had lit an excellent Havana cigar. On the threshold, the prohibition against smoking on the streets of St. Petersburg, and the penalty of a ruble fine incurred by delinquents, came to mind; to throw away an exquisite cigar of which one has only taken a few puffs is a serious thing for a smoker; as I was only going a few steps, I hid mine in the palm of my hand. Carrying a cigar is not in itself a violation of the law. When, beneath the padiezda (awning) of the house I was visiting, I retrieved it, the chewed end, a little damp, had become a piece of ice, but at the other end the generous puro (a cigar where the wrapper, binder, and tobacco come from a single country) was still burning.
However, more than seventeen or eighteen degrees of cold currently apply, and not the true cold, the great chill that usually commences at Epiphany. The Russians complain about the mild weather, and say that conditions are awry. As of yet, they have not deigned to light the braziers set up beneath the tinplate roofs near the Grand Imperial Theatre and the Winter Palace, where the coachmen warm themselves while waiting for their masters — the weather is far too clement! — Yet a chilly Parisian cannot help but experience a certain arctic, polar feeling, when, on leaving the opera or ballet, he sees, by the moonlight of a sparkling coldness, on the great square white with snow, the line of carriages whose coachmen are powdered with frost, their horses fringed with silver, the pale lights flickering from their frozen lanterns; and be full of the fear of being stranded en route as he directs the driver of his sled. But his coat retains the heat, and preserves around him a beneficial atmosphere. If he is lodging on Malaya Morskaya Street or Nevsky Prospekt, and must travel in a direction that obliges him to pass near Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, let him not forget to take a look at that church. Pure white lines highlight the various aspects of its grandiose architecture, and on the dome, half-obscured by shadow, a single bright patch shines, gleaming from the height of the convex surface that faces the moon, who seems to gaze at herself in that golden mirror. The patch of light is so intensely bright one would think it a glittering lamp. All the brilliance of the shadowy dome is concentrated in the one place. It creates a truly magical effect. Nothing is as beautiful as that great golden temple of gold, bronze and granite, placed on an untouched ermine carpet, beneath the blue rays of a winter moon!
Are they building, as in the famous winter of 1740, a palace of ice (commissioned in 1740 by the Empress Anna Ivanovna), given those long lines of sleds transporting huge blocks of frozen water cut like stone, and of diamantine transparency, suitable for forming the diaphanous walls of a temple dedicated to the mysterious spirit of the polar regions? Not at all; these are for storage; the need for adequate summer supplies requires that they cut from the Neva, at the most favorable moment, these immense glassy slabs, with tints of sapphire, each cart bearing a single one. The drivers are seated on the blocks, or lean against them as if they were cushions, and when the line halts, delayed by some mishap, the horses bite, with northern greed, at the ice cube set before them.
Despite all this wintry weather, if someone suggest a trip to the islands, accept it without fear of losing your nose or ears — if you are so weak as to wish to hold on to those cartilages, is there not your fur coat which answers for everything?
A troika, or a larger five-seater sleigh, with three horses, is there in front of the door. Hasten to descend. Feet in a bearskin footwarmer, wrapped to the chin in a satin pelisse lined with sable, clasping a wadded muff to her breast, her veil down and coated already with a thousand brilliant diamantine points, someone is only waiting for you to appear, before fastening the fur cover to the four tholes of the sleigh, and setting forth. You will not be cold: two beautiful eyes will raise the most glacial of temperatures.
In summer, the islands are the Bois de Boulogne, the Auteuil, the Folie-Saint-James (the garden and park at Neuilly-sur-Seine) of Petersburg; in winter, they less deserve the name of islands. Frost solidifies the channels which the snow covers, thereby connecting the isles to the mainland. In the cold months, only one element remains, that of ice.
You cross the Neva, and relinquish a last view of Vasilyevsky Island. The character of the buildings changes; the houses, with fewer storeys, are more widely spaced, and separated by gardens with plank fences set transversely as in Holland; everywhere wood replaces stone or rather brick; the streets become roads, and you travel over a sheet of immaculate, and perfectly level, snow; it is a canal. At the edge of the road, the small bollards intended to prevent carriages losing their way amidst this universal whiteness, appear, from a distance, like kobolds or gnomes wearing tall white felt caps, and dressed in tight brown simarres (short fur-lined jackets). Some culverts with wooden sides, vaguely outlined beneath the snow piled up by the wind, alone indicate that we are crossing completely frozen and covered waterways.
Soon a large fir wood succeeds, at the edge of which stand a few tratkirs (taverns) and tea-houses, since people visit the islands for entertainment, and often at night, in temperatures that send the mercury falling to the bottom of the thermometer. Nothing is as beautiful as these immense white alleys between curtains of black fir where the sled’s track, barely perceptible, seems like a diamond-cut line on frosted glass. The wind has shaken the snow, that fell several days ago, from the branches and there are only a few gleaming traces left here on the dark greenery like highlights set there by a skilful painter. The trunks of the fir trees rise like columnar barrels and justify the title of ‘cathedrals of nature’ granted to forests by the Romantics.
In one or two feet of snow the pedestrian is impossibly hampered and, in the long avenue, there are only a few male or female moujiks bundled up in their tulups stamping with their leather or felt boots in the thick white powder. A number of more or less black dogs, or at least appearing so by contrast with the snow, run in circles like Faust’s poodle, or approach each other with those signs of canine Freemasonry which are the same throughout the world. I note this detail, puerile no doubt, which demonstrates the rarity of dogs in Saint Petersburg, since they are noticed when present.
Here I am on the island of Krestovsky, which contains a charming village of chalets or small country-houses, inhabited during the warm season by a colony of mostly German families. Russians excel in creating constructions of wood and cut-timber, displaying at least as much skill as the Tyroleans or Swiss. They make fretwork, tracery, crosiers, flower-shaped decorations, all kinds of inspired ornaments executed with axe or saw. The cottages of Krestovsky, worked in this Swiss-Muscovite style, must be delightful summer dwellings. A large balcony, or rather a lower terrace forming something like an open room, occupies the entire facade on the ground floor. That is where one dwells during the endless days of June and July, in the midst of flowers and shrubs. There one arranges a piano, tables, sofas, so as to enjoy the good life in the open air after eight months of seclusion in a warm glasshouse. In the first sunny days after the break-up of the Neva’s ice, the move is generally made. Long caravans of wagons, carrying furniture from St. Petersburg, appear at the island’s villas. As soon as the days grow shorter and the evenings colder, one returns to the city, and the cottages are shuttered until the following year, though they remain no less picturesque beneath the snow which covers their wooden latticework with silver filigree.
Continuing on my way, I soon find myself in a large clearing, where are sited those entertainments which in France are called Montagnes Russes (roller-coasters), and in Russia Ice-Mountains. Montagnes Russes were all the rage in Paris at the start of the Restoration period. There were some in Belleville and in other public gardens; but the difference in climate necessitated differences in construction: wheeled-carts rolled down a steeply sloping grooved track, and rose again to a platform lower than the point of departure, driven by the force of gravity.
Accidents were not uncommon, because the carts were sometimes derailed; which is what led to the abandonment of this dangerous form of amusement. The Ice-Mountains of St. Petersburg consist of a lightweight pavilion ending in a platform. One ascends by means of wooden stairs. The descent is fashioned from planks bordered by a barrier, and supported by posts, falling in a steep arc at first, the slope decreasing later, on which water is poured in several stages, which freezes to produce the slide of polished ice. The corresponding platform starts one on a separate track, thereby preventing any dangerous encounter. Three or four people descend together on a sled, with a skater as guide holding the sled from behind, or one person is dropped, alone, onto a small seat that he or she directs with their foot, hand, or the end of a stick.
A few intrepid people descend head first, lying on their stomach, or in some other position that may look dangerous but entails little true risk. Russians are very skilled at this amusement, of an eminently national nature, which they practice from childhood; therein they find the pleasure of extreme speed in a sharp frost; a completely northern sensation, which the foreigner from warmer regions can scarcely comprehend at first, but soon understands.
Often, on leaving a theatre, or a soirée, when the snow gleams like crushed marble and the moon is shining cold or clear, or when, in the absence of the moon, the stars possess those lively scintillations that the frosty air produces, instead of choosing to return to their bright, warm residences, a group of men and women, well wrapped in their furs, will form a party and travel to the islands for dinner: one climbs into a troika, and the swift carriage, with its trio of horses fanned out, departs amidst a ringing of bells while raising a spray of silver. The sleeping inn is woken, the lamps are lit, the samovar is heated, the Veuve Clicquot champagne is opened, the plates of caviar, ham, herring fillets, jellied grouse, and little cakes, are arranged on the table. One eats a little, one wets one’s lips with many a glass, there is conversation, laughter, one smokes a cigar, and for dessert one slides from the summits of the Ice-Mountains, illuminated by moujiks holding lanterns; then one returns to town around two or three in the morning, savouring, as one hurtles along midst a whirlwind, in the crisp, raw, but healthy night air, the pleasure of the cold.
How Joseph Méry’s teeth would chatter as he donned an extra overcoat, he who will not allow one to say ‘a beautiful frost,’ claiming that frost is always ugly, on reading this text that bristles with frost! Yes, the cold air is a pleasure, a fresh intoxication, a vertigo of whiteness that I, most sensitive to cold, have begun to appreciate like a true Northerner.
If your fingertips are not frostbitten after this description of the Russian winter, and you have yet the courage to brave the rigours of the ice, come with me after a large glass of hot tea and take a walk on the Neva, and visit the Samoyeds’ encampment, established in the centre of the river, as if this is the only place cool enough for them. They are like polar bears, these people. A temperature of four or five degrees above zero is like Spring to them, and sees them panting from the heat. Their migrations are irregular, following some unknown logic or mere caprice. They had failed to appear for several years running, and I judge it one of the happiest events of my travels that they arrived before I had left the city of the Tsars.
Let us descend to the river by the Admiralty slope, over the beaten path through slippery snow, but not without casting a glance at Étienne Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the Great, whom the frost has granted a white wig, and whose bronze steed would need sharp hooves to keep his balance on the block of Finnish granite that serves as his pedestal. The inquisitive group that has gathered round the tent of the Samoyeds (nomadic herders) forms a black circle on the white of the snow-covered Neva. I slide between a moujik in a tulup and a soldier in a grey greatcoat and gaze, over a woman’s shoulder, at a tent made of pelts stretched on stakes driven into the ice, like a large paper cone placed with its tip in the air. A low opening through which one can only enter by crawling on all fours, allows one to glimpse, vaguely, in the shadows, parcels of fur which perhaps are men or women, one can’t really tell which... outside, pelts are hanging from ropes, skates litter the ice, and a Samoyed standing near a sled seems to be lending himself, willingly, to ethnographic investigation by the crowd. He is dressed in a fur sack, the hairy side within, to which a hood is attached with a hole for the face akin to those knitted hats that we call passe-montagnes (balaclavas), or a helmet without a visor. Large gloves with only the thumb separate cover the ends of the sleeves so as to deny the air passage, and thick white felt boots tightened with straps complete this doubtless not over-elegant costume, but one that is hermetically closed against the cold, and moreover not lacking in character; the colour is that of the leather itself, weathered and softened by primitive processes — the face framed by this hood, tanned by the sunlight and reddened by the air, reveals high cheekbones, a flat nose, wide mouth, and steel-grey eyes with blond eyelashes, but is far from ugly, offering a sad, intelligent, and gentle expression.
The industry these Samoyeds indulge in consists of paid rides costing a few kopeks, on the Neva, in sleighs drawn by reindeer. These exceedingly light sleds, have only a single seat trimmed with a flap of fur, on which the traveller sits. The Samoyed, standing alongside on one of the wooden skids, guides it by means of a pole with which he touches the reindeer to slow their pace, or when he wishes to change direction. Each team consists of three reindeer abreast or four in two pairs. It seems strange and curious to see these beasts so lean and frail in appearance, with thin legs and pointed antlers, running along, obediently, dragging a burden. The reindeer travel quickly, or rather they seem to do so, because their movements are of an extreme rapidity and alacrity; but they are small, and I think a horse of the Orloff breed would easily overtake them, especially if the course was a lengthy one.
Nothing is more graceful than these lightweight teams describing large circles on the Neva, then breaking off and returning to their point of departure, having barely marked the surface of the river. Connoisseurs said that the reindeer were by no means enjoying the task, because the weather was too warm for them (nine or ten degrees below zero). Indeed, one of the wretched animals that had been unhitched seemed to be suffocating, and snow was piled on top of her, to revive her.
These sleighs and reindeer drew my thoughts towards their icy homeland, in a mood of whimsical nostalgic longing. I whose life has been spent seeking the sun, felt overcome by a strange love of the cold. The vertigo of the North exerted its magical influence, and if important labours had not kept me in St. Petersburg, I would have left with the Samoyeds. What a pleasure it would have been to fly full speed, mounting towards the pole crowned with the aurora borealis, at first through fir woods laden with frost, then through half-buried birch woods, then over an immaculate white immensity of sparkling snow, a strange landscape which might make one believe, by its silver tint, that one was journeying across the moon, though through a sharp, and piercing atmosphere, icy as steel, beneath which nothing rots, not even the dead! I would have liked to spend a few days beneath the frost-varnished cave, half buried in the snow, that the reindeer scrape out with their hooves to find some scarce and meagre patch of moss. Fortunately for me, the Samoyeds left one fine day at dawn, and on visiting the Neva to view them once more, I only found a greyish circle marking the place where their tent had been. My obsession departed with them.
Since I am speaking of the Neva, let me note the singular appearance granted to it by the blocks of ice, cut from the thick frozen crust which covers the river, that are thrown here and there like lumps of stone waiting to be carted away. The Neva is akin to a crystalline or diamantine quarry. The transparent cubes, take on strange prismatic hues according to how the light falls on them, displaying all the colours of the solar spectrum; in some places where they are crowded together one might think them the ruins of a collapsed faery palace, especially in the evening when the sun sets beneath a green-gold sky, painting bands of carmine across the horizon; these are effects that astonish the eye, effects which artists dare not attempt to render, for fear of their work being deemed implausible or deceitful. Imagine a long vale of snow formed by the bed of the river, with pink highlights and blue shadows, dotted with huge diamonds glittering like candelabra, and bordered like a giant culvert to divert some boat, off-course and embedded in ice, some pedestrian, or some sleigh crossing from one embankment to another.
When night falls, if you turn with your back to the Peter and Paul Fortress, you see two parallel streaks of light illuminating the river: they are gas-lamps mounted on the ice, to the height of the Troitsky boat bridge, which are borrowed from the streets in winter, since the Neva, as soon as it is solid, becomes St. Petersburg’s second Nevsky Prospect; it is then a main artery of the city. We people of temperate regions, among which, in the harshest seasons the rivers scarcely bear one’s weight, find it difficult not to feel a slight apprehension when we cross an immense river whose deep water flows silently beneath a crystalline floor that could shatter and close over you like a trappe Anglaise (a form of stage trapdoor devised in England). But soon the perfectly tranquil air of the Russians reassures you; it would need, moreover, an enormous weight to make the two-or-three feet thick layer of ice give way, while the snow which covers it grants it the appearance of a flat plain. Nothing distinguishes the river from solid land, except, here and there, beside the quays like walls, some boats that winter surprised with its cold. The Neva is one of the powers that be, in St. Petersburg; the Russians honour it, and bless its waters with a great fanfare. This ceremony, named the Baptism of the Neva, takes place on the sixth of January (according to the old style, O.S., Julian calendar or, in 1858, the eighteenth of January according to the new style, N.S., Gregorian calendar). I witnessed it from a window of the Winter Palace, to which I had graciously been permitted access. Though the weather that day was very mild for the season which is usually one of extreme cold, it would have been painful for me, still not being thoroughly acclimatised, to stand for an hour or two, bareheaded, on the icy quay where the wind always blows with bitter force. The vast rooms of the palace were filled with an elite crowd: high dignitaries, ministers, the diplomatic corps, generals embroidered with gold, all of them decorated with stars and medals, came and went between rows of soldiers in full uniform, waiting for the ceremony to begin. Divine Mass was first celebrated in the palace chapel. Hidden at the back of the platform, I followed, with respectful curiosity, the rites of this cult, new to me and imbued with the mysterious majesty of the East. From time to time, at prescribed moments, the priest, a venerable old man with a long beard and long hair, in a mitre like a mage, dressed in a stiff dalmatic of silver and gold, supported by two acolytes, came from the sanctuary as its doors opened, and recited the sacred formulae in a senile but still clearly-accentuated voice. While he chanted his psalmody, I glimpsed, amidst the scintillating gilding and candlelight of the sanctuary, the Emperor and the Imperial Family; then the doors closed and the service continued behind the sparkling veil of the iconostasis.
The chapel choir, in full orange-red velvet habits laced with gold, accompanied and supported the anthems, with the marvellous precision of Russian choirs, anthems in which may be found more than one ancient theme from the lost music of Greece.
After the Mass, the procession paraded through the halls of the palace to further the baptism or rather the blessing of the Neva; the Emperor and the Grand Dukes, in uniform, the clergy with their gold and silver brocaded copes, their priestly costumes in the Byzantine style, the colourful crowd of generals and senior officers traversing the compact mass of troops lined up in the rooms, formed a spectacle as magnificent as it was imposing.
On the Neva, opposite the Winter Palace, near the quay, to which ran a carpeted ramp, a pavilion had been raised or rather a chapel on slender columns supporting a trellised dome, painted green and from which hung an icon of the Holy Spirit surrounded by rays.
In the centre of the platform beneath the dome, the mouth of a well opened, surrounded by a railing and communicating with the waters of the Neva, the ice having been broken at that place. A line of widely-spaced soldiers maintained an open space on the river, out to a fairly large distance from the chapel; they remained there bareheaded, their helmets placed next to them, their feet in the snow, so perfectly still that one might have taken them for signposts.
Under the very windows of the palace, the horses of the Circassians, the Lezgins and Karachai, and the Cossacks, restrained by their riders who constitute the Imperial escort, were pawing the ground: it is a strange sensation to see, in the midst of civilisation, and elsewhere than at the Hippodrome or the Opéra, warriors clad like those of the Middle Ages, in helmets and chain-mail, and armed with bows and arrows, or dressed in the Oriental style, with Persian carpets for saddles, a curved Damascene blade as a sabre decorated with verses from the Koran, as if ready to ride in the cavalcade of some Emir or Caliph.
What proud martial faces, what savage purity of type, what slim, supple, nervous bodies, what elegance of posture beneath those uniforms, so characteristic in style, of so happy a colour, and so well-calculated to highlight human beauty. It is truly singular that the so-called barbarous nations alone know how to dress. The civilised ones have completely lost all sense of costume.
The procession left the palace, and from my window, through the double panes of glass I saw the emperor (Alexander II), the Grand Dukes, and the priests enter the pavilion, which was soon so full as to barely accommodate the gestures of the officiants around the well’s rim. The cannons ranged along the far side of the river, on the Strelka, fired in succession at the supreme moment. A big ball of bluish smoke, interspersed with flame, rose between the river’s carpet of snow, and the pale-grey sky; then the sound of their detonation made the window-panes tremble. The peals of the cannons followed one another with perfect regularity, supporting one another. Cannon-fire has something solemn and dreadful about it, yet at the same time a measure of exhilaration like everything that is powerful; its voice, roaring in battle, suits ceremony equally: it adds a kind of jubilation unknown to the ancients, who had neither bell-towers nor artillery... A sound that, alone, can speak amidst great multitudes and to be heard in the midst of immensities.
The ceremony was over; the troops departed, and the spectators withdrew peacefully, without embarrassment, without tumult, according to the custom of Russian crowds, the quietest of all.
Chapter 9: Racing on the Neva
— What now! Shall we return to our lodgings already? It is truly conscientious of me to stand outside for so long in such weather! Are you determined to freeze my nose and ears so? — I promised you ‘a winter in Russia’ and will hold to that same — indeed, the thermometer scarcely reads more than seven or eight degrees of cold today, an almost Spring-like temperature, and the Samoyeds who camped on the icy river were forced to leave, because it was so warm — so worry not, and follow me, bravely. The troika’s horses are pawing the ground before the door, and seem impatient.
— There is racing on the Neva today, so let us not neglect the opportunity to learn more of this northern sport, which has its own elegance, rules, and oddities, and arouses passions as lively as those created by English or French sport. Nevsky Prospekt and the streets leading to Palace Square, on which the Alexandrine Column stands, that gigantic monolith of pink granite which exceeds the Egyptian enormities in height, present a spectacle of extraordinary animation, almost like our Avenue de Champs-Élysées, when some steeple-chase at La Marche (between Ville d’Avray and Marnes-la-Coquette, held from 1851) makes the whole fashionable world set forth.
The troikas pass with a frisson of bells, drawn by their three horses spread like a fan and each of a different appearance; the sleighs glide on their steel runners, harnessed to magnificent high-stepping creatures that their coachmen wearing their four-sided velvet caps, and dressed in their blue or green kaftans, have difficulty mastering. Other four-seater sleds drawn by a pair, berlines and calèches their wheels removed and resting on iron runners curved upwards at the ends, head in the same direction, forming an increasingly crowded host of carriages. Sometimes a sleigh of the old Russian type, with a leather snow-guard stretched like a bowsprit, and a little horse with straggling mane galloping alongside, slips through the inextricable maze, twisting rapidly, splashing its neighbours with lumps of snow.
Such a concourse in Paris would produce a mighty noise, a prodigious din; but in St. Petersburg the picture is only noisy on the eye, if I can express it so. The snow, which interposes its mat of cottonwool between the pavement and the vehicles, muffles the sound. On these well-padded tracks in winter, the sound of the steel runners barely rises to the level of a diamond scratching a tile. The little whips of the moujiks fail to crack; their masters, wrapped in their furs, neglect to speak, since if they did, their words would soon freeze like those barbarous words that Panurge encountered near the pole (see Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 4, Chapter 56’), and all move with silent activity amidst a muted whirlwind — though nothing resembles it less, it has the same effect on one that Venice does.
Pedestrians are rare, because no one in Russia walks, except the moujiks whose felt boots allow them to keep their footing on pavements cleared of snow but often gleaming with ice, which are especially dangerous when wearing the essential pair of galoshes.
Between the Admiralty and the Winter Palace, one encounters the wooden ramp that descends from the quay to the Neva; at this place the sleighs and carriages progressing in several lines are forced to slow their pace, and even halt altogether, awaiting their turn to descend.
Let us profit from the moment’s delay to examine our neighbours whom chance has brought together. The men are in fur coats, with military caps or fur caps with a beaver lining; hats are scarce. Apart from the fact that it is not in itself warming, the edges of a hat would prevent one raising the collar of one’s overcoat, and the base of one’s skull would thus remain exposed to icy gusts of wind. Yet the women are less warmly dressed. They appear to feel the cold less than the men do. A black satin pelisse lined with sable, or Siberian blue-fox fur, a muff of the same, is all that they add to their city dress, in every way similar to that of the most elegant Parisians. Their pale necks, which the cold fails to redden, rise bare and unencumbered from their shoulders, and their heads are protected only by some pretty French hat the rim of which reveals the hair, and the flap of which barely covers the nape of the neck. I thought with concern of the colds, neuralgia, and rheumatism these intrepid beauties risked, for the pleasure of being fashionable and showing their expensive headgear, in a country and at a temperature where a mere greeting is sometimes a perilous action; animated by the heat of their coquetry, they seem scarcely to suffer from the chill.
Russia, within its immense extent, houses many diverse peoples, and the type of feminine beauty varies greatly. However, I consider the characteristic Russian features to be an extremely pale skin, grey-blue eyes, blonde or brown hair, and an excess of weight due to the lack of exercise and the seclusion that seven or eight months of winter imposes. I would term the Russian beauties, on viewing them, odalisques, whom the Spirit of the North keeps imprisoned in a hothouse. They have a complexion with tints of cold-cream and snow, with shades of camellia at the cleavage, like those women of the seraglio, always veiled, whose skin has never been touched by the sun.
Into the whiteness of their faces, their delicate features part-merge, like the markings on the face of the moon, and those faint lines form physiognomies of hyperborean gentleness and polar grace.
As if to contradict my description, a lady in the sleigh halted near to my troika radiates a southern beauty, her eyebrows velvety black, possessing an oval, aquiline nose, a long, tanned face, lips red as pomegranate; she is of the pure Caucasian type, a Circassian, perhaps until yesterday still a Muslim. Here and there, a few eyes slightly slanted, rising towards the external angle of the temples, recall the fact that, on its eastern border, Russia touches on China — charming Finnish girls, with turquoise eyes, pale golden hair, and a pink and white complexion, display a northern variation which contrasts with a few beautiful Greek women from Odessa, recognisable by the straight line of their noses, and large black eyes, like those of Byzantine Madonnas — all this forms a delightful whole, as these pretty heads emerge, like winter flowers, from piles of furs covered, themselves, by black or white bear-skins thrown over the sleighs and carriages.
We descend to the Neva via the wide wooden ramp, which is quite similar to those which, in the past linked the theatre to the arena in the Circus of ancient Olympia, and between the quay’s bronze lions whose pedestals mark the landing stage when the river, free of ice, is ploughed by a host of boats.
Today the sky lacks the bright azure that it displays when the cold reaches nineteen or twenty degrees below. An immense canopy of pearl-grey mist, very soft and fine, holding snow in suspense, rests on the city and seems supported by its bell-towers and spires as if on pillars of gold. The calm and neutral shade gives their true value to the buildings with their bright nuances of colour highlighted by silver threads. Before me, on the far side of the river, whose appearance is that of a valley half-filled by an avalanche, I can see the rostral columns of pink granite which rise near the classical edifice of the Stock Exchange. Opposite the tip of the Strelka, where the Neva parts in two, the needle of the Peter and Paul Fortress raises its bold golden pinnacle on high, rendered more vivid by the grey tone of the sky.
The racetrack, with its wooden stands, its track demarcated by ropes attached to stakes planted in the ice, and its artificial hedges of fir-branches, extends across the river. The influx of carriages and people is vast. The privileged folk occupy the stands, if it be a privilege to stand motionless in the cold in an open gallery. Around the race-track crowd two or more lines of sleighs, troikas, carriages and even simple telegas and other more or less primitive vehicles, because no restrictions appear to hinder this popular pleasure; the river-bed belongs to all. Men and women, displacing their coachmen, climb onto his seat, and the folding seats to see better. Closer to the barriers stand the moujiks in sheepskin tulups and felt boots, soldiers in grey greatcoats, and the other folk who can find no better a place. All these people form a dark seething mass on the icy floor of the Neva, disturbing, at least to me, since no one seems to consider the fact that a deep river, as great as the Thames at London Bridge (the new London Bridge was opened in 1831), flows under this frozen crust, two or three feet thick at most, burdened at this one point by thousands of spectators and a considerable number of horses, not counting the vehicles of all kinds. But the Russian winter is faithful, and plays no tricks on the crowd of opening trapdoors beneath them and swallowing them whole.
Beyond the racecourse, the jockeys restrain the runners who have not yet competed, or walk the noble animals that had proved themselves, to cool them down, gradually, beneath their Persian caparisons.
The track forms a kind of elongated ellipse; the sleighs are not started abreast: they are placed at equal intervals, which the greater or lesser of speed of the runners decreases. So, two sleds are parked in front of the stands; two others at the ends of the ellipse, awaiting the starting signal. Sometimes a man on horseback gallops alongside a runner to excite it, and make it exert itself to the full, in emulation. The runner should only trot, but sometimes its pace is so fast that the attendant horse has difficulty matching its speed, and, once launched, abandons it to its own devices. Many coachmen, wholly sure of their charges, disdain to use this resource and race alone. Any runner which gets carried away and takes more than six strides at the gallop is retired from the race.
It is wondrous to see these magnificent creatures, often costing mad sums, speed by on the smooth ice which, cleared of snow, appears like a strip of black glass. Steam issues in lengthy jets from their scarlet nostrils; a mist bathes their sides, and their tails seem powdered with diamantine dust. The nails of their shoes bite into the smooth and slippery surface, and they devour space with the same proud security as if they were trotting down the most well-trodden alley of some park. The coachmen, leaning backwards, hold the reins in tight fists, since horses as strong as these, pulling an insignificant weight, and not allowed to gallop, have more need of being restrained than urged on. They also find in the tension a means of support which allows them to let themselves go to the fullest extent. What prodigious strides these runners make, seeming to touch their heads to their knees!
No specific age or weight requirements seem to be imposed on the competitors: they are only required to achieve a set speed in a given time measured on a chronometer: at least so it seemed to me. Often troikas compete against one-horse or two-horse sleds. Each driver chooses the vehicle or team which he considers most suitable. Sometimes he even takes a spectator into his sleigh who fancies taking a turn, and the latter enters the race.
At the event I speak of a rather picturesque incident occurred. A moujik, who came, it was said from Vladimir (the town, east of Moscow), bringing a load of wood or frozen food to the city, looked at the course, from the seat of his rustic troika, as he manoeuvred amidst the crowd. He was dressed in a tulup shiny with grease, wore an old frayed fur cap, and was shod in crumpled white felt boots; a dirty untrimmed and curling beard graced his chin.
His team consisted of three small horses dishevelled, haggard, hairy as bears, dreadfully dirty, and bristling with icicles beneath their bellies, lowering their heads to bite the snow piled in heaps on the ice. A douga (harness-bow) as tall as a Gothic arch, variegated with bright colours in stripes and zigzags, was the finest part of the equipage, doubtless fashioned with strokes of his axe by the moujik himself.
This savage and primitive sled presented the strangest of contrasts alongside the luxurious sleighs, the triumphant troikas, and the elegant teams pacing around the racecourse. More than one ironic look mocked the humble vehicle — to tell the truth, he produced, on this rich field, the effect of a grease stain on an ermine coat.
However, the little horses, hair stiff with frozen sweat, glanced covertly, through the stiff locks of their manes, at the purebred creatures, who seemed to shun them in disdain, since animals, too, scorn poverty. Fiery gleams shone in their dark eyes, and they struck the ice with their small hooves, attached to slender stringy legs barbed like eagle feathers.
The moujik, standing on his seat, contemplated the race without appearing surprised by the runners’ feats. Sometimes a smile was seen to form vaguely beneath the icicles on his moustache, and his grey eyes, sparkling with mischief, seemed to be saying: ‘We could do as well.’
Making a sudden decision, he entered the competition and ventured his team. The three little badly-groomed bears shook their heads with pride as if they understood that they were required to maintain the honour of the humble horses of the steppes, and, without being urged, they trotted so swiftly that the other competitors were alarmed; on their little legs they flew like the wind, and surpassed the thoroughbreds, the English stock, the Barbary horses, the Orloff breed, by a minute and some few seconds. The moujik had not presumed too much in entering his rustic team.
And he was awarded the prize— a magnificent piece, cast and chased by Jean-Baptiste Vaillant, the silversmith then in vogue in St. Petersburg — this triumph excited among the crowd, ordinarily silent and calm, a noisy bout of enthusiasm.
At the end of the lists, the onlookers surrounded the winner, and sought to buy his three horses; he was offered up to three thousand rubles apiece, an enormous sum for the animals, and to the man. To the moujik’s honour, it must be said, he stubbornly refused. Wrapping his silverware trophy in a fragment of old cloth, he remounted his troika, and returned to Vladimir as he had come, not wanting to part, at any price, with the charming creatures which had made him the lion of St. Petersburg, for a while.
The racing was done, and the carriages left the river-bed to return to their various city districts; their ascent of the wooden ramps which united the Neva to the quay would provide a painter of horses, Nikolai Sverchkov for example, with the subject of an interesting and characteristic composition. To climb the steep slope, the noble creatures bowed their necks, gripped the boards slippery from their hooves and sat back nervously on their hocks; it was a scene of confusion full of picturesque effects, and which might have proved dangerous without the skills exercised by the Russian coachmen. The sleds mounted, four or five abreast, in irregular lines, and more than once we felt the hot breath of an impatient horse on our necks, who would have gladly stomped on our heads if he had not been vigorously restrained; often a flake of foam, fallen from a silver bit, froze on the hat of some frightened woman who uttered a little cry. The carriages looked like an army of chariots assaulting the granite quays of the Neva, like the parapets of a fortress. Despite the tumult, there was not a single accident — the absence of wheels makes it more difficult to be caught up with one — and the vehicles scattered in all directions, at a speed that would alarm the cautious Parisian.
It is a great pleasure indeed, after two or three hours spent in the open air exposed to a wind blowing from the polar snowfields, to return to one’s lodgings, remove one’s coat and galoshes, wipe one’s moustache from which icicles melt, and light a cigar, since one is not permitted to smoke outside, in St. Petersburg. The warm atmosphere before the stove envelops one’s numbed body like a caress, and restores flexibility to one’s limbs. A glass of hot tea — in Russia one does not take tea in cups — renders one ‘quite comfortable’, as the English say. One’s circulation, suspended by one’s previous immobility, is re-established, and you savour a pleasure in being inside that the South, all exterior, knows not — but already daylight is fading, for night descends swiftly on St. Petersburg, and from three in the afternoon the lamps must be lit — the rooftop chimneys send up smoke, disgorging culinary fumes; everywhere the stoves are blazing, since one dines earlier in the city of the Tsars than in Paris. Six o’clock is the latest time when one eats, even among those Russians who have travelled abroad and adopted English or French habits — in fact, I am invited to dine in town; one has to tidy oneself, don a dinner-jacket, and fur overcoat, and plunge one’s thin little boots again into heavy fur-lined galoshes.
Night falls, the temperature drops; a wholly arctic wind blows snow like smoke over the pavements. The roadway screeches beneath the sled runners. Deep in the sky, swept of its mist, large pale stars shine brightly and, through the darkness, from the golden dome of Saint Isaac’s, gleams a similar luminous spangle, like a sanctuary lamp that is never extinguished.
I raise the collar of my overcoat, wrap my knees in the bear-skin sleigh-cover, and, scarcely suffering from the thirty-degrees difference between the heat of my apartment and the cold of the street, soon find myself, thanks to the sacramental cries of Na prava! Na leva! (To the right! To the left!), before the peristyle of the house at which I am expected. From the bottom of the stairs onwards, the hothouse atmosphere seizes and melts the frost on my beard, and, in the anteroom, the servant, an old retired soldier who has retained his military uniform, rids me of my furs which he hangs among those of the guests who have already arrived — for punctuality is a Russian quality — in Russia, Louis XIV would not have needed to say: ‘I was almost obliged to wait!’
The End of Part III of Gautier’s ‘Travels in Russia’