Théophile Gautier
Travels in Russia (Voyage en Russie, 1858-59, 1861)
Part IV: Life Indoors, A Ball, The Theatres
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
Chapter 10: Life Indoors
The antechambers, in Russia, have a very singular appearance. The overcoats hanging on racks, with their loose sleeves and straight folds, are vaguely like human bodies dangling there; the galoshes placed below simulate feet, and the effect of these furs, beneath the meagre light from the small lamp hanging from the ceiling, is quite fantastic.
Achim von Arnim with his visionary eye, would see there the cast-off garment of some visiting Bearskin (see The Brothers Grimm, ‘tale 101, Der Bärenhäuter’. Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim’s folk-poetry collection ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ influenced the brothers to collect their tales). Ernst Hoffmann would house the strange ghosts of archivists or courtly advisors within their mysterious folds. I, being French, and limited to Charles Perrault’s stories, see Bluebeard’s seven wives in the darkened cupboard. Thus, suspended near the stove, the furs are impregnated with a warmth that they will retain outside for an hour or more. The servants are marvellously skilled at memorising which garments belong to whom; even when the number of guests makes the anteroom look like those of Michel’s or Zimmermann’s stores, they never make a mistake, and clothe each person’s shoulders with the coat that belongs to them.
A comfortable Russian apartment brings together all the refinements of English and French civilisation; at first glance, one might believe oneself in the West End or on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré; but soon local character betrays itself in a host of interesting details. First, a Byzantine Madonna and Child, the faces and brown hands revealed amidst silverplate or vermeil traceries representing draperies, shimmers in the light of a perpetual lamp, and warns you that you are neither in Paris nor London, but in Orthodox Russia, holy Russia. Sometimes an image of the Saviour replaces that of the Virgin — one finds saints depicted too, usually patronymic saints of the master or mistress of the house, clothed in silverwork carapaces, haloed with golden haloes. And then the climate makes demands that cannot be evaded. Everywhere, the windows have double frames, and the space left free between the two is covered with a layer of fine sand intended to prevent misting, and to stop the frost from decorating the panes with its quicksilver traceries. Cones of salt are set there, and sometimes the sand is hidden by a border of moss. Because of the double-glazing, windows, in Russia, have no shutters, panels or blinds; one cannot open or close them, since the frames are fixed for the whole winter, and carefully sealed. A narrow skylight serves to refresh the air, a disagreeable and even dangerous measure due to the sharp contrast between the external and internal temperature. Thick curtains of rich fabric further suppress the traces that frost produces on glass, which is much more permeable than we think.
The rooms are larger and taller than those in Paris. Our architects, so ingenious in modelling cells for human bees, would carve out entire apartments, and often on two floors, from a St. Petersburg salon. Since all the rooms are hermetically sealed and the doors open onto a heated staircase, the temperature is fifteen or sixteen degrees at least, which allows the women to dress in muslins with arms and shoulders bare. The copper mouths of water-heaters emit warm air without interruption, night and day; the hot casings of stoves of monumental proportions, fashioned of beautiful white or painted earthenware, rise to the ceiling, and spread their warmth where the water-heaters cannot. Chimneys are rare; they are only useful, when present, in Spring and Autumn. In winter they would lose heat and cool the room. They are closed off and filled with flowers. Flowers are truly a Russian luxury! The houses are filled with them! Flowers receive you at the door and ascend the staircase with you; Irish ivy festoons the balustrades; planters on the landings front the wall-seating. In the window corners, banana trees spread their large silken leaves; talipot-palms, magnolias, and arborescent camellias mingle their flowers with the gilded cornices’ volutes; orchids flutter in the air around lamp bases of curiously-worked crystal, porcelain, or terracotta. Sprays of exotic flowers spring from Japanese cones or Bohemian glass-vases, placed in the centre of tables, or on the corner of sideboards. They live there as if in a hothouse, and, in truth, every Russian apartment is a hothouse. In the street one is at the North Pole, indoors one can imagine oneself in the tropics.
It is as if, through this profusion of greenery, the eye seeks to console itself for the implacable whiteness of winter: the desire to see something which is anything but white is a nostalgic longing in this country where snow covers the ground for more than six months of the year. One even lacks the satisfaction of gazing at green-painted roofs, since they only change their white covering in spring. If the apartments were not transformed to gardens, one would think the colour green had disappeared forever from Nature.
As for the furniture, it is the same as ours, but bigger, ampler, as needed to suit the rooms’ dimensions; but what is truly Russian, is the panelled booth, of frail and precious wood carved like the blades of a fan, which occupies a corner of the living-room and which is festooned with the rarest of climbing plants, a sort of confessional for intimate conversation, adorned within with couches, in which the mistress of the house, isolating herself from the gathering while remaining nearby, can accommodate three or four guests of distinction. Sometimes this cabinet is resplendent with ornate mirrors, decorated with engravings traced by hydrofluoric acid and mounted in gilded copper panels. It is also not uncommon to see, amidst cushioned footstools, back-to-back seats, armchairs, and capitonné-stitched sofas, some gigantic stuffed white bear padded in similar style, offering visitors a completely Polar seat; sometimes little black bear-cubs serve as stools, reminding one, amidst all the elegance of modern life, of ice floes in the North Sea, immense steppes covered with snow, and deep fir-forests: the real Russia that one is tempted to forget about in St. Petersburg!
The bedrooms generally lack the luxury and inventiveness that we bring to them in France. Behind a screen or one of those openwork partitions that I spoke of earlier, resides a small low bed, similar to a camp-bed or a couch — the Russians are of Eastern origin, and even the upper classes care little for the comfort of a good bed; they sleep where they find themselves, almost anywhere, like the Turks, often in their overcoats, on those large green leather sofas one sees in every corner. The idea of making the bedroom a sort of sanctuary does not appeal to them; the old habits of tent life seem to have followed them into the heart of civilisation, though they are acquainted with all its traits of elegance and decadence.
Rich hangings line the walls, and if the master of the house prides himself on being a connoisseur, then doubtless red damask from the Indies, or dark embroidered brocatelle will appear, illuminated by powerful reflectors, framing, with the richest of borders, a painting by Horace Vernet, Théodore Gudin, Alexandre Calame, or Barend Koekkoek, or a work by Jan Leys, Jean-Baptiste Madou, or Herman ten Kate, or, if he wishes to display his patriotism, by Karl Bryullov or Ivan Aivazovsky — those are the painters most in fashion: our modern schools have not yet reached there. However, I encountered a few by Ernest Meissonier and a similar number by Constant Troyon. Our artists’ style does not seem finished enough to the Russians. The interior I describe is not that of some palace, but that of a house, not a bourgeois house — that word has little meaning in Russia — but of a fashionable home. St. Petersburg is full of mansions and immense palaces some of which we will make known to the reader.
Now that I have given a rough description of the decor, it is time to dine. Before seating oneself at the table the guest approaches an oval table on which are placed caviar (sturgeon’s eggs), marinated herring-fillets, anchovies, cheese, olives, slices of sausage, smoked beef from Hamburg, and other hors-d’oeuvres eaten with bread rolls to whet the appetite. These appetisers are eaten while standing, and washed down with vermouth, madeira, Danzig brandy, Cognac, and Kummel, a kind of anisette which recalls the raki of Constantinople and the Greek isles. Imprudent or timid travellers who cannot resist the pressure of polite insistence, end by tasting everything, not realising that this is only the prologue to the whole affair, and they sit down, replete, to face the actual dinner.
In all the fashionable houses, one eats in the French manner; however, the national style is present in a few characteristic details. Thus, alongside the white they serve a slice of very dark rye-bread, which Russian guests nibble at with visible sensuality. They also appear to enjoy a very tasty species of cucumber marinated in salt water, called ogurtsy, which, from the first taste, seemed to us none other than delicious. During the dinner, after having drunk grands crus of Bordeaux and Veuve Clicquot Champagne, only to be found in Russia, one partakes of porter, ale, and especially kvass, a type of local beer made from fermented rye-bread, an acquired taste, which seems to foreigners unworthy of the magnificent Bohemian glasses and embossed silverware in which its brown liquor foams. However, after a stay of a few months, I ended by taking a liking to ogurtsy, kvass, and shchi, the Russian national soup.
Shchi is a kind of stew made with mutton, fennel, onions, carrots, cabbage, soaked barley and prunes! These ingredients, strangely enough, when brought together, have an original flavour to which you become quickly accustomed, especially when experience of travel has rendered you cosmopolitan as regards cuisine and has prepared your taste buds for everything new. Another widely-made soup contains kenepfles (dumplings): it is a consommé into which, at the end, one drops dough mixed with eggs and spices, piece by piece, which on meeting the hot liquid forms small round or oval balls, somewhat like poached eggs in our Parisian consommés. With shchi one serves pastry dumplings.
All who have read Alexandre Dumas’ Le Comte de Monte-Cristo remember the dinner at which that former prisoner of the Château d’If performs his faery magic as if with a golden wand and serves a Volga sterlet, a gastronomic phenomenon unknown to the most sought-after tables outside of Russia. Indeed, the sterlet deserves its reputation: it is an exquisite fish, with fine white flesh, a little fatty perhaps, which in taste is half-way between smelt and lamprey. It can grow to large dimensions, but those of medium size are the best. Without disdaining the kitchen, I am no Grimod de la Reynière, nor a Baron de Cussy or Brillat-Savarin, and thus am unable to speak of sterlet in a sufficiently lyrical manner, and that I regret, because it is a dish worthy of the most precious of gourmets. For a diner of refined taste, Volga sterlet is worth the journey.
Grouse, whose flesh, perfumed by the juniper berries on which they feed, emits an odour of terebinth which initially surprises, appear frequently on Russian tables. They also serve enormous capercaillie. Their fabled bear ham sometimes replaces our classic York ham, and elk-fillets our commonplace roast beef. These are dishes that cannot be found on any Western menu.
Every nation, even when invaded by civilisation’s uniformity, retains its particular tastes, and preserves some local dishes whose flavour foreigners have difficulty in appreciating. Thus, cold soup in which, among lumps of fish, ice crystals swim in a flavoured broth both sweet and vinegary at the same time, surprises exotic palates in the same way as Andalusian gazpacho does. This soup, however, is only served in summer; it is, they say, most refreshing and the Russians love it.
As most vegetables are grown in hothouses, they are always in season, and the early crop no longer features or rather is ever-present: in St. Petersburg one can eat fresh petit-pois in any month of the year. Asparagus knows no winter, there — the shoots are large, tender, moist and completely white; one never sees the green tips that we prize, and one can attack them, equally, from either end. In England one devours salmon steaks, in Russia chicken croquettes (Pozharsky cutlets) — the dish became become fashionable there after the emperor, Nicholas I, tasted it in a small inn near Torzhok (the town, north-west of Moscow, near Tver, a nineteenth-century waystation on the route from St. Petersburg to Moscow,) and found them good. The recipe had been given to the hostess (Daria Pozharskya, the late innkeeper’s daughter) by an unfortunate Frenchman, who had no other means of paying his bill, and thus made the woman’s fortune. I share the emperor’s taste — croquettes made of minced chicken breasts are truly delicious! Allow me to mention cutlets à la Preobrazhensky also, which deserve to appear on the menu in all the finest restaurants.
I have only noted the particularities and dissimilarities; because in the great houses the cuisine is entirely French, and produced by French cooks. France supplies the world with chefs!
The greatest problem in Saint Petersburg is to find fresh oysters; since they come from afar, the summer heat spoils them; and the winter cold freezes them; one sometimes pays a ruble for a single one. Oysters priced so highly are rarely good. It is even said that a moujik who had become rich, received his freedom, for which he had offered enormous sums in vain — fifty or a hundred thousand rubles — for a barrel of fresh oysters gifted to his lord at a time when they were nowhere to be found. I cannot guarantee the authenticity of the story, but, if an invention, it at least demonstrates the rarity of oysters in St. Petersburg, at certain times.
For the same reason, there is always a basket of fruit for dessert; oranges, pineapples, grapes, pears, and apples are grouped in elegant pyramids; the grapes, usually come from Portugal; but sometimes their pale amber ovals have ripened in the warmth emitted by heaters, in the soil of a hothouse half-buried in snow. In January, in St. Petersburg, I ate strawberries matured among green leaves in a miniature pot of earth. Fruit is one of the passions of Northerners; they obtain them at great expense from abroad, or force the rebellious nature of their climate to give them the appearance at least of ripeness, if taste and scent are lacking. Stoves, however hot they may be, are always an imperfect substitute for the sun.
I hope to be forgiven these gastronomic details — it is always interesting to learn how a nation dines: ‘Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.’ The proverb, thus modified, is no less true. While imitating French cuisine, Russians retain the taste of certain national dishes, and those are the ones that, deep down, please them the most. The same is true of their characters; although they conform to the latest refinements of Western civilisation, they nonetheless retain certain primitive instincts, and it would not take much for even the most elegant, to go and dwell in the steppe.
When you are seated at the table, a servant in black clothes, white tie, and gloves, as impeccably dressed as an English diplomat, stands behind you, imperturbably serious in his appearance, ready to satisfy your slightest whim — you might well think yourself in Paris; but if you chance to look attentively at this servant, you will notice that he has a yellow complexion with a hint of gold, small black slanted eyes sloping upwards towards the temples, high cheekbones, a turned-up nose, and thick lips — the host, who has noted your gaze, says nonchalantly, as if it is the most natural thing in the world — ‘He is a Mongolian Tartar from the borders of China.’
This Islamic, or perhaps idolatrous, Tartar accomplishes his function with an automated regularity, and the most meticulous butler in the world would find nothing to reproach him for. He achieves the effect of a true domestic; but I would prefer it if he wore the costume of his tribe, a tunic with a metal belt buckled at the waist, and a lambskin cap; that would be more picturesque, though less European, while the Russians always wish to avoid the Asian look.
The whole dinner-service, porcelain, glass, silverware, and tiered centre-piece, leaves nothing to be desired, though lacking in specific character, except for the charming little platinum spoon with golden niello with which one tastes the desserts, and stirs one’s coffee, or tea.
The bowls of fruit, on platforms are mounted alternately with baskets of flowers and often a cordon of bouquets of violets surrounds the nougats, bombes and petit fours. The hostess graciously distributes these bouquets to her guests. As for conversation, it always takes place in French, especially if the host is a foreigner. Russians of any distinction readily speak our language, littered with all the idiocies of the day and fashionable turns of phrase, as if they had learned the language on the Boulevard des Italians. They even know the French employed by our playwright Felix-Auguste Duvert and Augustin de Lauzanne (his son-in-law), so particularly and profoundly Parisian that many a provincial fails to understand it. The Russians speak without a trace of accent, but are recognised by a slight cantilena not lacking in grace which I ended by imitating myself; they also rely on certain formulaic phrases, national no doubt, familiar even in those who are well-nigh fluent in an idiom which is not their mother-tongue: thus, they apply the word absolument (absolutely) in a strange way. One asks, for example: — ‘Is so-and-so dead?’ — They reply with an ‘absolument’ possessing the sense of the French ‘oui’ and Italian ‘si’. The words donc (so) and déjà (already) are often used, out of place, with an interrogative meaning— for example, ‘Have you ‘donc déjà’ seen St. Petersburg, or Madame Angiolina Bosio (the Italian opera-singer)?’
Russian manners are polished, warm, and of a perfect urbanity — I was surprised to find them familiar with the smallest details of our literature; they read a great deal, and such and such author little known in France is better appreciated in St. Petersburg. Our backstage gossip, the scandalous chronicle of the demi-monde, reaches the banks of the Neva, and I learned many a spicy detail regarding Parisian matters of which I was ignorant.
The women also have well-cultivated minds; they speak and read several languages with the ease which characterises the Slavic nations. Many have devoured Byron, Goethe, and Heinrich Heine in the original, and if some writer is presented to them, they know, by a skilfully-introduced quote, how to reveal that they have read and recall the author. As for their mode of dress, it is of the last elegance — more fashionable than fashion itself. Crinolines are as vast in St. Petersburg as in Paris, balloons of magnificent fabric. Numerous diamonds sparkle on beautiful shoulders, above very low necklines, and the bracelets at their wrists, gold chains from Circassia or the Caucasus, alone bear witness, through their Eastern style, that one is in Russia.
After dinner, the guests disperse among the salons. On the tables sit albums, art books, keepsakes, and landscape-prints that serve to maintain appearances for those who are embarrassed or shy. Stereoscopes, when rotated, provide entertainment with their moving pictures; sometimes, a woman rises, having yielded to a guest’s request, seats herself at the piano and, accompanying her own singing, plays some Russian national air or gypsy melody, in whose unfamiliar accents the melancholy of the North mingles with the ardour of the South, and which resembles an Andalusian cachucha danced in the moonlight, in the snow.
Chapter 11: A Ball at the Winter Palace
I am about to tell you of a festive occasion which I attended without being present, from which my person was absent though I was invited to witness it — a ball at court! — Invisible, I saw everything, yet without wearing Gyges’ ring on my finger, or a Kobold’s green-felt hat on my head, or possessing a talisman.
On Palace Square, covered with its carpet of snow, many a carriage was stationed, in a cold that would have frozen Parisian drivers and horses, but which to the Russians seemed not sufficiently rigorous to merit the lighting of the braziers beneath the kiosks with sheet-metal Chinese roofs neighbouring the Winter Palace. The trees in the Admiralty grounds, frosted with diamonds, looked like large white plumes planted in the earth, and the pink granite of the triumphal column was coated as if with a layer of icing-sugar; the moon, which rose clear and bright, poured its stark light on the nocturnal whiteness, turning the shadows blue, and gave a fantastical appearance to the immobile silhouettes of the carriages, whose frozen lanterns, like arctic fireflies, punctuated the immense expanse with yellowish dots. In the background, light blazed from every window of the colossal Winter Palace, which seemed like a mountain pierced by caverns, illuminated by an interior fire.
The Winter Palace, 1800 - 1900
Picryl
A perfect silence reigned in the square; the rigors of the climate kept the curious away, who among us would not fail to have gathered to the signs of a celebration, even one viewed from afar and from the outside; and though there was a crowd, the surroundings of the palace are so vast that the onlookers were scattered and lost in that enormous space that an army alone could fill.
A sleigh crossed, in a diagonal, the vast white tablecloth over which the shadow of the Alexander column stretched, to be lost in the dark street which separates the Winter Palace from the Hermitage, whose aerial bridge bears some resemblance to the one (the Bridge of Sighs) over the Rio de Palazzo in Venice.
A few minutes later, an eye, which we need not suppose joined to a body, fluttered along the cornice which was supported by the portico of a gallery of the palace; lines of candles attached to the mouldings of the entablature concealed it behind a barrier of flame and allowed no sight of its faint gleam from below. The light hid it more effectively than shadow would have done; it vanished into the brightness within.
Seen from there, the long deep gallery extended in polished columns, its shimmering parquet floor, reflecting the gilding and candles, shining, its paintings filling the intercolumns, foreshortening making it impossible to discern their subjects. Already glittering uniforms were walking there, full court dresses trailed their waves of fabric. Little by little the crowd swelled and filled, like some variegated and sparkling river, the bed of the gallery, which seemed too narrow despite its ample dimensions.
The eyes of the whole crowd were turned towards the door through which the emperor was to enter. The doors opened: the emperor, the empress, the grand dukes crossed the gallery between the two lines of guests which had suddenly formed, addressing as they went, a few words, with a gracious and noble familiarity, to the distinguished personages on either side. Then the whole imperial group disappeared, silently, through the door which faced the first, followed, at a respectful distance, by the great dignitaries of state, the diplomatic corps, the generals and courtiers.
The procession had barely entered the ballroom before the eye was installed there, this time equipped with a powerful lorgnette. The room was a veritable furnace of heat and light, a glow that might make one think it on fire. Lines of light ran along the cornices; between the windows, thousand-armed candelabras flared like burning bushes; hundreds of chandeliers descended from the ceiling in fiery constellations amidst a phosphorescent mist. And all these lights, their rays mingling, formed the most dazzling illumination a giorno (bright as day) that ever shone, like the sun itself, upon a festivity.
The initial sensation, especially at this height, caused by leaning into the abyss of light, was a feeling of vertigo; at first, amidst the effluvia, rays, irradiation, reflections, and the bluish glitter of the candles from the mirrors, gilding, diamonds, gems, and fabrics, nothing could be distinguished. The swarm of scintillations prevented the eye from grasping the least form; but soon the eye’s pupil became accustomed to the dazzling light and chased away the black butterflies that fluttered before it as they do when one gazes at the sun; from one end to the other it scanned the gigantic dimensions of that room, all in marble and white stucco, whose polished walls shimmered, like the jaspers and porphyries of Babylonian architecture in those mezzotints by John Martin, vaguely reflecting the lights and the objects they illuminated.
The kaleidoscope, with its congregation of colourful pieces constantly recomposed, forming new designs; the chromatrope, whose pattern, through the seeming expansions and contractions of its rotating discs, becomes a flower, then changes its petals for the points of a crown, and eventually a swirling sun, passing from ruby to emerald, from topaz to amethyst around a diamantine centre, enhanced millions of times, they alone can give some idea of that mobile sea of gold, precious stones, and flowers, renewing its sparkling arabesques in perpetual agitation.
On the entrance of the imperial family this mobile radiance stilled, and the eye could untangle physiognomies and forms amidst the muted scintillations.
In Russia, court balls open with what is termed a polonaise: not a dance, but a sort of parade, procession, or torchlit march, which possesses a great deal of character. The participants separate so as to leave free a sort of path, to which they form the borders, in the middle of the ballroom. When everyone is in place, the orchestra plays a tune, in a majestic and slow rhythm, and the parade begins; it is led by the emperor giving his hand to the princess or lady he wishes to honour.
That evening the emperor, Alexander II, wore an elegant military costume which displayed his tall, slender, form; open at the waist, it was a kind of white jacket or vest reaching to mid-thigh, with gold frogging trimmed with Siberian blue-fox fur on the collar, cuffs, and around the borders, and starred at the side by medals of the grand orders. His sky-blue trousers, worn tight to the legs, ended in thin ankle-boots. The emperor’s hair was cut short and showed his smooth brow, full and well-formed. His features, of a perfect regularity, seemed perfect as models for some gold or bronze medallion; the blue of his eyes gave a particular quality to the brown tones of his face, darker than his brow through travel and outdoor exercise. The outlines of the mouth had a sharpness of outline completely Greek and sculptural in nature; the expression of the physiognomy was one of majestic but gentle firmness, illuminated, at times, by a gracious smile.
Following the imperial family came the high officers of the army and the palace, the great dignitaries each giving their hand to a lady. Here was a veritable host of uniforms adorned with gold, epaulettes starry with diamonds, rows of decorations, enamelled plaques, and precious stones forming a centre of light on each chest. Some, the highest in rank and favour, had round their necks, more in friendship than as an honour if such is possible, a portrait of the emperor surrounded by gems, rare and valuable in nature.
The procession marches on and gathers recruits in its passage: a nobleman breaks from the ranks and tenders his hand to the lady before him, and the new couple, added to the rest, take their place in the parade, spacing their steps, slowing and accelerating according to the speed of the van; it is no easy thing to progress like that, holding the tips of one’s partner’s fingers, beneath the glare of ironic mocking glances: the slightest awkwardness in composure, the slightest stumble of the feet, the most imperceptible error in distancing oneself, is noticed.
Military habit saves many a man, but how difficult it is for the women! Most perform admirably well, and of more than one it might have been said: Et vera incessu patuit dea! (A goddess was truly revealed in her step! Virgil’s Aeneid: Book I, 405) They pass by lightly, beneath feathers, their flowers, their diamonds, modestly lowering their gaze or allowing it to wander with an air of perfect innocence, manoeuvring, with an inflection of body or with a little kick of the heel, their flowing silks and lace, cooling themselves with a flickering fan, as much at ease as if they were walking alone on some path in the park: stepping forth in a nobler, more graceful, and simpler manner, before the onlookers, than any great actress ever achieved!
What renders the Russian court original is that, from time to time, some young Circassian prince joined the procession, flaunting his wasp-waist and puffed-out chest in an elegant and sumptuous oriental costume, a commander of the Lezghin guards, or a Mongolian officer whose soldiers’ weapons are even now, the bow, the quiver, and the shield. Beneath the white glove of civilisation was hiding, while offering itself to the hand of a princess or a countess, a slender Asian hand accustomed to gripping the narrow handle of a kindjal (the double-edged Caucasian dagger) between its brown and agile fingers. This seemed to surprise no one, indeed, what could be more natural than a Mingrelian (Western Georgian) or Muslim prince, treading the polonaise with a great lady from St. Petersburg, of Greek Orthodox persuasion! Were they not both subjects of the emperor of all the Russias?
The men’s uniforms or formal garments are so bright, so rich, so varied, so charged with gold, embroidery and decorations, that the women, with their modern elegance, in the light and graceful current fashions, find difficulty in competing with their massive brilliance; but though unable to display richer apparel, they prove more beautiful; their bared shoulders and chests worth all the gold breastplates present. To support this splendour, they are obliged, like Byzantine Madonnas, to wear dresses heavy with gold and silver, jewelled pectorals, and radiant diamond nimbuses; and then dance, with those gilded shrines on their bodies! Do not believe in this all too primitive affection of simplicity though! Those simple dresses are, in point of fact, from England, and the two or three tunics superimposed, are worth more than any dalmatic with its gold or silver brocade; those bouquets on that tarlatan (muslin) or gauze dress are attached with diamond knots; that velvet ribbon has for a buckle or fastening a gem that one might believe detached from a tsar’s crown. What is simpler than a white dress, of taffeta, tulle, or moire, with some clusters of pearls and a matching headdress: the hair in two or three folds of netting! But the pearls are worth a hundred thousand rubles, and no fisherman will ever draw ones rounder in shape, or of purer lustre, from the depths of the Ocean! Besides, by affecting simplicity they pay court to the empress, who prefers elegance to pomp; yet be sure that Mammon loses nothing by the adoption of such a fashion. Only at first glance, in swift review, could one imagine that the Russian women dress less luxuriantly than the men: that would be an error. Like all women, they know how to make gauze seem more expensive than gold.
When the polonaise has traversed the salon and gallery, the ball begins. The dances are not especially characteristic of Russia: there are quadrilles, waltzes, redowas (a dance from Bohemia akin to the waltz), as in Paris, London, Madrid, and Vienna, as in every place in the sphere of high society: an exception however is the mazurka which is danced in Saint Petersburg with a perfection and elegance unknown elsewhere. Local colour tends to vanish everywhere, but deserts the upper classes of society first. To find it, one must depart the centres of civilisation and descend deep amongst the people!
The spectacle, however, was charming: the participants, as they danced, formed symmetrical patterns amidst the splendid crowd who lined up to make way for them; in the whirlwinds of the waltz, dresses flared like the skirts of whirling dervishes, and, in the rapidity of their progress, the diamond knots, the silver and gold adornments flickered, like lightning, in serpentine flashes; while the slender gloved hands, placed on the gleaming epaulettes of the waltzers, looked like white camellias in vessels of solid gold.
Amidst the gathering, the first secretary of the Austrian embassy was evident, dressed in his magnificent Hungarian nobleman’s costume, as was the Greek ambassador wearing the Greek cap, jacket trimmed with soutache (flat braiding), fustanella (kilt), and knemides (leggings) of the palikari.
After enjoying a bird’s-eye view during its hour or two of observation, the eye was transported, via mysterious and labyrinthine corridors where the distant sound of the orchestra and the festivities expired in vague murmurs, beneath the portal of another salon. A relative darkness reigned in this room, of vast dimensions: it was where supper was to be taken. Many a cathedral is less immense. In the depths, amidst the shadows, were lines of tables with white tablecloths; in the corners, gigantic blocks of confused gilding shimmered, throwing out sudden rays, returning, in lightning-flashes, reflections originating who knows where: they were the sideboards. A velvet-covered platform’s steps led to a horseshoe-shaped table. Lackeys in full livery, butlers, and head-waiters, giving a final touch to the table-dressings, moved to and fro in silent activity. A few scattered lights flickered on this dark backcloth, like sparks on scorched paper.
However, the candelabras were charged with innumerable candles, which traced out the surrounds to the friezes and the outlines of the arches. They showed palely in their many-branched holders, like pistils from the calyxes of flowers, but not the smallest flame trembled at their tips. One might have thought them frozen stalactites.
The dull noise of the approaching crowd could now be heard, like the sound of overflowing water — the emperor appeared on the threshold: it was like a cry of fiat lux (‘let there be light!’). A subtle flame ran from one candle to another, as swiftly as lightning: all was suddenly illuminated, and torrents of light suddenly filled the immense room set ablaze as if by magic. The abrupt passage from twilight to the most dazzling radiance was truly magical. In our prosaic century every miracle requires a scientific explanation: threads of flammable gun-cotton (cotton soaked in nitric acid then dried) connected the wicks of the candles to one another, and the flames, kindled in seven or eight different places, spread instantly. The same method is employed in lighting the great chandeliers of Saint Isaac’s Cathedral, where a thread of gun-cotton is hung like the strand of a spider’s web, above the heads of the faithful. A gas light, lowered, lit, and then raised, could perform a like task; but gas, as far as I know, is not employed in the Winter Palace. Real wax candles alone burn there. Only in Russia do bees still contribute to the lighting.
The empress, along with a few distinguished guests, took her place, on the platform where the horseshoe table stood. Behind her chair, there blossomed, like a gigantic vegetal artefact, an immense sheaf of pink and white camellias trellised against the marble wall. Twelve large black servants, chosen from among the most handsome specimens of the African people, and dressed in the Mameluke style, white turbans neatly twisted, green jackets with gilded corners, wide red trousers held in place by a cashmere belt, the whole stitched and embroidered at all the seams, ascended and descended the steps of the platform, returning plates to the lackeys, or receiving them in their hands with those movements full of grace and dignity, even when engaged in servile employment, particular to Orientals. These Orientals, forsaking Desdemona (see Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’) were majestically doing their duty, and granted the wholly European celebration an Asian stamp, though refined in its nature.
Without places having been designated, the guests seated themselves as they chose at the tables arranged for them. Rich, gilded, or silver ornaments, representing groups of figures or flowers, mythological or decorative and fanciful, garnished the board; candelabras alternated with pyramids of fruit and tiered cakes. Contemplated from above, the symmetrical arrangements of sparkling crystals, porcelain, silverware and bouquets of flowers, was even more readily comprehended than from below. A double row of women’s forms, sparkling with diamonds, set with lace, reigned along the tablecloths, betraying their charms to the invisible eye, whose glance could also follow the parting line of their blonde or dark hair, amidst the flowers, foliage, feathers and gems.
The emperor circulated among the tables, addressing a few words to those he wished to distinguish, and occasionally seated himself, dipped his lips in a glass of Champagne, then walked away to do the same thing further on. These attentions, of a few minutes’ duration, are considered a great favour. After supper, the dancing resumed; but night was falling. It was time to depart; the spectacle could do no more than repeat itself and, for a witness only ocular in nature, it no longer offered the same degree of interest. The sleigh, which had crossed the square to halt at a small door, in the alley separating the Winter Palace from the Hermitage, reappeared alongside Saint Isaac’s cathedral, bearing a pelisse and a fur cap which failed to reveal a face. As if the heavens wished to compete with the splendours of Earth, the polar fireworks of an aurora borealis lit the night with flames of silver, gold, purple and mother-of-pearl, extinguishing the stars with its phosphorescent rays.
Chapter 12: The Theatres
The theatres in St. Petersburg have an appearance both monumental and classic. In general, they remind one, by their architecture, of the Paris Odéon or the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux. Isolated in the midst of wide spaces, they provide ready access and departure. For my part, I would prefer a more original style, and it seems to me that it would have been possible to create such, with forms specific to the country, from which new effects might be drawn. But this reproach is not particular to Russia. The results of a casual admiration for antiquity adorn all capital cities with more or less exact copies of the Parthenon and the Maison Carrée (in Nîmes), reinforced with rubble, bricks, and plaster. Yet, nowhere are those Greek architectural orders more sadly out-of-place and inappropriate than in Saint Petersburg: suited to azure skies and the sun, they shiver beneath the snow which covers their flat roofs during the lengthy winter. Indeed, the roofs have to be swept, thoroughly, after every new fall of snow, which is a most telling criticism of the style chosen. Icy stalactites on the acanthus leaves of a Corinthian capital! What can one say? There is now a movement, in reaction to such things, in favour of the more Romantic Byzantine architecture of Moscow, a movement which I wish every success. Every country, when its spirit is not violated in the name of so-called good taste, produces its buildings as it produces its people, animal species, and vegetation, according that is to the demands of climate, religion, and history; and what Russia demands is the Greek architecture of Byzantium, not that of Athens.
Given that reservation, it remains only to praise what is there. The Grand Theatre, or Italian Opera-house (the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, not extant), is magnificent, of colossal size, competing in dimensions with La Scala (Milan) or the Teatro San Carlo (Naples): the carriages park in a vast square, gaining access without difficulty or disorder. A few vestibules with glass doors keep the chilly air outside from bursting into the room and allow a transition from ten to fifteen degrees of cold to twenty to twenty-five degrees of warmth — former soldiers in veterans’ uniforms wait at the entrance to take your furs, overcoat, and galoshes; they return them to you later, without ever making a mistake: this ability to recall the ownership of each set of apparel seems to be a Russian speciality. As in Her Majesty’s Theatre, in London, one attends the Italian Opera in St. Petersburg dressed in a black coat, white cravat, and straw or light-coloured gloves, unless one has donned the uniform of some rank or function, which is most often the case; the women, coiffured, are in evening wear, with low necklines and bared arms. This rule of etiquette, of which I approve, contributes a lot to the glamour of the spectacle.
The floor of the Grand Theatre is divided in two by a wide aisle. A semi-circular corridor surrounds it, bordering the row of ground-floor boxes, allowing one to converse during the intermission with people of one’s acquaintance who occupy them. This convenient provision, employed in all the principal theatres of all the capital cities except Paris, should be imitated there when the Opéra is rebuilt in definitive fashion. One can thus leave and return to one’s place without disturbing anyone.
What strikes one at first, on entry, is the Imperial box; it is not installed, as with us, between the proscenium columns, but in the centre, in front of the stage. Its height takes up two levels of boxes; huge gilded shafts, overloaded with sculpture, support the velvet curtains raised by ropes with golden tassels, and a gigantic blazon of the Russia coat of arms, of the proudest and most fanciful heraldic form. It offers a beautiful ornamental motif, a double-headed crowned eagle, with outstretched wings and fan-shaped tail, whose feathers occupy the centre ground between crest and fleuron, and which grips in its outstretched claws a globe and a sceptre, with an inescutcheon of Saint George, and, about the inner shield like a necklace of medals of the various orders, coats of arms of kingdoms, duchies and provinces. No Graeco-Pompeian decoration could produce so satisfactory and appropriate an effect.
Instead of curtains with wide folds and noble fringes, the proscenium arch frames a view of the Peterhof Palace with its arcades, porticos, and statues, and its roofs, painted green in the Russian fashion. The fronts of the boxes, in regular alignment, in the Italian fashion, are decorated with white medallions, with elaborate gold frames containing figures and emblems, in a light and delicate tone approaching pastel, standing proud of the pink background. There are no galleries or balconies; the prosceniums, instead of being flanked by columns, are bordered by the same kind of large ornate and gilded poles as provide support for oriental pavilions; this arrangement possesses both grace and novelty.
It is not easy to define the auditorium’s style, unless one borrows the word plateresco from Spanish which, properly applied, means ‘in the manner of a silversmith’, and designates a kind of architecture where ornamentation without constraint or rules is executed in a thousand whimsical ways, with an exuberant and disordered richness. Here one sees rocaille work, interlaced garlands, chicory leaves, and florets, on whose multiple gilded surfaces the reflection of the lights play in a thousand brilliant gleams; but the general effect is cheerful, splendid, and happy, and the luxury of the room frames that of the spectators most effectively. In a theatre, this ornamental madness pleases me better than a sombre and correct mode of architecture. In such cases, a little extravagance suits the scene better than mere pedantry — velvet, gold, light in abundance, what more does one need?
The first row of boxes above the ground-floor ones is deemed the bel étage (the main row), and, without there being a formal ruling on the matter, the bel étage is reserved for the aristocracy, and the great dignitaries of the court — no untitled woman, whatever her wealth or respectability, would dare to be seen there; her presence amidst these privileged ranks would surprise everyone, and above all herself — here millions are not enough to erase the boundary.
The first rows of the orchestra stalls are reserved, by custom, for people of distinction; on the row which faces the musicians one sees only ministers, high officials, ambassadors, first secretaries of the embassies, and other notable and noted people — a foreigner who is famous in any capacity may sit there — the next two rows are reserved for the aristocracy — the fourth row receives bankers, sundry foreigners, civil servants of a lower order, and artists; but a merchant would not dare venture closer than the fifth or sixth row. It is a sort of tacit convention that no one has to invoke and which everyone obeys.
The familiar custom whereby people of such high rank seat themselves in the orchestra stalls surprised me at first; I saw the leading personages of the empire there. Having one’s own stall seat, does not prevent one, however, from also taking a box for the family, but it is the preferred place, and this custom undoubtedly gave rise to the sense of reserve which ensures the ordinary public sit a few rows further back — this separation of orders should not surprise one, apropos of a Russia in which the tchin (the military system applied to the general administration of the empire) divides society into fourteen very distinct categories, the first class of which often contains only two or three people.
Opera and ballet are not performed on the same evening in St. Petersburg’s Italian Opera house. They are wholly separate attractions to each of which its own day is allocated. The ticket prices for the ballet are less expensive than those for the opera. As dance alone must sustain the whole performance, the ballets are more extensive than ours: they extend to four or five acts with many changes of scene and costume, or two ballets are performed on the same evening.
The most celebrated names of opera and ballet have appeared at the Grand Theatre. Each star has appeared in turn, and shone beneath that polar sky, with brilliance undiminished. The power of rubles and a warm reception, overcame in them the imaginary fear of losing their voice or suffering from rheumatism. No throat, not a single knee has suffered in this land of snow where one sees the cold without feeling it. The tenor Giovanni Rubini, the baritone Antonion Tamburini, the bass Luigi Lablache, the tenor ‘Mario’ (Giovanni Matteo de Candia), the dancers Carlotta Grisi, Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, and Fanny Cerrito, have visited, in turn, and been admired and acknowledged; Rubini himself was even awarded a medal; such august approval animates artistic spirits, and shows them that they are properly appreciated here, though they often choose to make the journey somewhat late in their respective careers.
This year, the tenors Enrico Tamberlik and Enrico Calzolari, the baritone Giorgio Ronconi, the sopranos Angiolina Bosio and Marcella Lotti, the mezzo-soprano Madame de Bernardi, and the soprano Sofia Dottini, played leading operatic roles; Amalia Ferraris, the most perfect ballerina of them all since Carlotta Grisi’s retirement, performed a ballet composed for her by Jules-Joseph Perrot, a choreographer without rival (and master of the Imperial ballet in St. Petersburgh from 1850 to 1858). To be applauded for a ballet move in St. Petersburg, is no easy thing to achieve. The Russians are very knowledgeable as regards dance, and the concentrated gleam of their lorgnettes is formidable. Whoever has endured it and proved victorious may be assured of his or her technique. Their Conservatoire produces remarkable students and a corps de ballet which is unequalled in ensemble work, precision, and rapidity of movement. It is a pleasure to see the straight lines, the clear groupings which never lapse except at the right moment so as to re-form in a further arrangement; all those little steps keeping measure, all those choreographed battalions never disconcerted or confused in their manoeuvring! Here there is no chatter, no snickering, no glancing at the audience or the orchestra. It is truly a world of pantomime, from which speech is absent; the action never exceeds its boundaries. The corps de ballet is carefully chosen from among the students of the Conservatoire: many are good-looking, all are young and well-formed, and take their roles seriously, or their art, if you prefer.
The stage sets, richly worked, numerous, and most carefully done, are painted by German scenery-artists. The compositions are often ingenious, poetic, and skilled in execution, but sometimes overloaded with unnecessary detail which distract the eye and spoils the effect. They are generally pale and cold in colour; the German school, as we know, are not colourists, and this defect is more noticeable when you arrive from Paris, where we take the magic of decorative scenery to its extremes. As for the stage effects, they are admirably contrived; flight, trapdoors, visual transformations, lighting, all the theatrical tricks that complex staging requires are promptly and surely achieved.
As I have said, the auditorium is brightly lit; the women’s dresses are highlighted, delightfully, by the purple velvet background of the boxes, and for a foreigner, the interval is no less interesting that the performance; one can, without impropriety, with one’s back turned to the stage, view for a few moments, through one’s opera glasses, these feminine types so varied and so new; some accommodating neighbour, with knowledge of the aristocracy at their fingertips, grants the correct title of princess, countess, or baroness to those fair or dark heads that unite the dreaminess of the north to an Oriental placidity, mingling diamonds and flowers.
In the shadows of the ground-floor boxes, a few theatrical celebrities, two or three Moscow bohemians in bizarre clothing, and a certain number of Baronesses d’Ange (courtesans, a reference to the character Baronne d’Ange created by Alexandre Dumas fils, in his five-act comedy’ Le Demi-Monde, 1855’) imported from the Parisian underworld, of whom I need not name the more notorious, intermittently sparkled.
The Théâtre-Français, also called the Mikhailovsky is located on the square of this name (Mikhailovskaya Square, later the Arts Square). The interior is conveniently organised, but rather poorly decorated; the front rows of the orchestra stalls as in the Grand Theatre are occupied by Russians and foreigners of distinction. The performances are very popular, and the composition of the troupe leaves nothing to be desired: it includes Volnys, Naptal-Arnaut, Théric, Mila, Berton, Deschamps, H. Varlet, Vernet, Leménil, Pechena, and Tetard, who perform comedy, vaudeville, and drama, displaying their many talents of which my French readers are well aware. The actors compete for new works for their paid performances, on a Saturday or Sunday, and the results determine the week’s offerings. Such pieces achieve their first performance in St. Petersburg at almost the same time as in Paris.
I cannot forego a certain pride on finding, thirteen or fourteen hundred miles from Paris, and on the sixtieth parallel north as regards latitude, that our language is widespread enough to supply an audience for an exclusively French theatre. What is termed la colonie (the French colony) in St. Petersburg scarcely fills half the auditorium; the Mikhailovsky theatre was rebuilt not very long ago (in 1833), to a richer and vaster plan; the opening was inaugurated by a speech in very well-turned verses, by H. Varlet, which Berton (the actor Charles François Montan Berton) spoke with great art, feeling and verve.
During my stay in the city of the Tsars, the famous black, American-born, English actor Ira Aldridge visited; he gave performances at the Circus Theatre, not far from the Grand Theatre. He was lionised in St. Petersburg, and one needed to book several days in advance to obtain a seat in the stalls of any consequence at one of his performances. Above all he played Othello. His natural skin-colour exempted him from the need for any make-up, either with liquorice-juice or coffee grounds; he had no need to sleeve himself in dark-coloured vestments. The role was his, and he needed no effort to enter into it. Thus, his entrance onto the stage was magnificent: here was Othello himself as Shakespeare created him, with his eyes half-closed as if dazzled by the African sun, and a relaxed and unconstrained Oriental attitude no European can imitate. As there were no English actors in Saint Petersburg, only a German troupe, Aldridge recited Shakespeare’s original text, and his interlocutors, Iago, Cassio, Desdemona, replied to him in the German of August Schlegel’s translation. The two languages, both of Saxon origin, did not clash overmuch, especially as far as I was concerned, who understand little English or German. I spent my time observing the play of facial expression, and the pantomimic and plastic aspects of the role.
But this mixture of languages must have seemed very strange to those who knew both. I expected an energetic, and tempestuous manner, fiery and somewhat wildly barbaric in the style of Edmund Kean; but this great tragedian, of African descent, doubtless to appear every bit as civilised as an actor of paler skin, adopts a thoughtful, restrained, classical, and majestic approach, reminiscent of William Macready. In the final scene, his fury is not excessive; he suffocates Desdemona methodically, and rages appropriately. In sum, as much as one can judge an actor in such a role, he seemed to me to display talent rather than genius, science rather than inspiration. However, let me hasten to say that it produced an immense effect and elicited endless applause. A fiercer, more savage Othello might have proved less successful. After all, Othello had lived among Christians for a considerable time, and the lion of Saint Mark had tamed the lion of the desert.
The repertoire open to a black actor might seem to limit him to similar roles; but when one thinks about it, if a white actor can smear himself with brown pigment to play a black-skinned man, why should a black actor not coat himself with white-lead pigment to play a pale-skinned role? This indeed was the case, since Ira Aldridge played King Lear the following week, while producing the required effect in doing so. A flesh-coloured skull-cap, from which hung a few silvery strands of hair, covered his head down to the eyebrows like a helmet; added wax filled out the curve of his nose. Thick makeup coated his dark cheeks, and a large white beard enveloped the rest of his face, down to his chest. The transformation was complete; Cordelia would not have thought her father black; never was the art of makeup demonstrated to greater effect. By a sort of well-conceived coquetry, Ira Aldridge had not whitened his hands, and they appeared, at the end of his tunic sleeves, like brown paws. I found his performance in the role of the old king superior to his efforts as the Moor of Venice. In the former role he acted; in Othello he was merely himself. He made superb moves suggestive of indignation and anger, alongside displays of weakness, senile tremors, and a kind of somnolent repetitiveness, appropriate to a man who is almost a hundred years old, and who passes from folly to madness, under the weight of intolerable misfortune. An astonishing thing, and one which shows how controlled his performance was: for he is of robust and mature strength. Ira Aldridge did not allow himself a single youthful movement all evening: his voice, step, gesture, everything signified the octogenarian.
The success of the black tragedian spurred Vasily Samoylov, the great Russian actor to attempt to emulate his achievement; he too played Othello and King Lear, at the Alexandrinsky Theatre, with a verve and power wholly Shakespearean. Samoylov is an actor of genius, in the style of Frédérick Lemaître: his performances are uneven, imaginative, often sublime, displaying flashes of inspiration. He delivers performances which are, at one and the same time, both tragic and comedic; and if he plays heroes admirably, his drunkards are no less well executed. He is, moreover, a man of the world, with an excellent manner. An artist to his fingertips, he paints himself in costume, and sketches caricatures as spirited in style as in intention. His performances were well-attended, but not as fully as those of Aldridge —it appears that Samoylov, in all conscience, could not bring himself to imitate an authentically black actor in the role!
The End of Part IV of Gautier’s ‘Travels in Russia’