Théophile Gautier
Travels in Russia (Voyage en Russie, 1858-59, 1861)
Part X: The Volga - Tver to Nizhny Novgorod
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
Chapter 22: Summer in Russia – The Volga, from Tver to Nizhny Novgorod (1861)
(Gautier was in Russia, on a second trip, from the third of August to the twenty-eighth of September 1861, including a visit to Moscow and to Nizhny Novgorod from the twentieth of August to the second of September. He travelled with his eldest son, Charles-Marie Théophile, called Toto, whose mother was Eugénie Fort, and with Olivier Gourjault, a family friend. The journey was ostensibly to gather notes for Gautier’s publication of ‘Trésors d’art de la Russie ancienne et moderne’.)
After my long trip to Russia, I found some difficulty in returning to Parisian life. My thoughts often returned to the banks of the Neva and fluttered around the domes of Vasiliya Blazhennogo (Saint-Isaac’s Cathedral). I had only viewed the empire of the Tsars during the winter months, and wished to traverse it in the summer in the light of those long days when the sun sets for no more than a few minutes. I now knew St. Petersburg and Moscow, but had ignored Nizhny Novgorod. And how can one live without having visited Nizhny Novgorod?
Where do the names of certain cities come from, names that ineradicably occupy the imagination and hum in one’s ears for many a year, with a mysterious harmony like those musical phrases met with by chance which one cannot chase from one’s mind? — Such names are a well-known and bizarre obsession that overtakes all those whom sudden decision apparently drives beyond the limits of their homeland, towards the strangest of places. The demon of travel lurks beside you and whispers incantatory syllables amidst your writing and reading, your pleasures and sorrows, until you obey. The wisest thing is to offer the least resistance possible to temptation, so as to be more swiftly delivered from it. Once you have agreed internally, your worries are over. Let the Spirit who suggested the thought to you do its work. Under its magical influence, obstacles are removed, knots are undone, permissions granted; the funds you could not obtain for the most honourable and legitimate of needs race towards you, joyfully, ready to serve you as a viaticum; your passport will visit, of itself, all the legations and embassies, so as to be officially stamped, your clothes will fold themselves away in the depths of your trunk, and it will appear that you have, quite correctly, acquired a dozen brand new shirts, a complete dress suit, and an overcoat with which to brave the most diverse weather conditions.
Nizhny Novgorod had long been exercising its ineluctable influence on me. No melody resonated more delightfully on my hearing than that vague, far-off name; I repeated it like a litany, almost unaware of doing so; I gazed at it on the map with a feeling of inexplicable pleasure; its very configuration pleased me like an arabesque in some curious drawing. The uniting of the i and z, the alliteration produced by the final y, the point which topped the i like a note one needed to accentuate, charmed me in a manner both childish and cabalistic. The v and g of the second word also had their attraction, but the od had something compelling, decisive, and conclusive about it, which it was impossible to ignore — thus, after a few months of struggling with the matter, I felt obliged to depart.
A serious and well-justified motive, namely the necessity to visit and take notes for my large work about the art treasures of Russia, on which I had been working for the last two years, led me, without it seeming implausible in the eyes of rational people, to that original and singular city of Moscow I had seen before, crowned by winter with a silver diadem, its shoulders covered by an ermine cloak of snow. Three-quarters of the journey over, a few more wing-beats towards the east and I would reach my goal — the travel-demon had arranged things in the most natural way possible. So that nothing would restrain me, he had sent abroad, or to the deepest interior of the earth, the people I should have been with. Thus, no obstacle, no pretext, no remorse could prevent me from fulfilling my fantasy. I compiled notes, hastily; but, while revisiting the wonders of the Kremlin, the name Nizhny Novgorod, traced, temptingly, by the finger of fate, gleamed in capricious Slavonic characters, intertwined with flowers, on the sparkling backgrounds of the goldsmiths’ work and the iconostases.
The simplest and shortest route was to travel by rail from Moscow to Vladimir and then by post-chaise to Nizhny; but the fear of being unable to obtain a relay of horses, for it was the time of the famous fair which draws three or four hundred thousand folk from every country to the place, led me to prefer the longer errant schoolboy’s path so rarely chosen today. The Anglo-American maxim ‘Time is money’ is not mine, and I am not one of those tourists who hasten to arrive. The journey itself is what interests me most.
Contrary to received wisdom, I started by travelling north-west to Tver to join the Volga almost at its source, entrust myself to its placid course, and let it carry me indolently towards my goal. The reader may be surprised by this lack of eagerness in pursuing so lively a desire. Certain of reaching Nizhny Novgorod, I chose not to hurry the journey. That vague apprehension ‘which makes one fear one’s desire being fulfilled’ (see Victor Hugo’s ‘À Mes Amis L. B. et S. B.’ poem XXVII in ‘Les Feuilles d’Automne’) tormented me, no doubt, without my realising it, and tempered my impatience. Might not the city I had dreamed of vanish as I approach its reality, like those masses of cloud on the horizon that present their domes, towers, and necropolises, and that a wind deforms or sweeps away?
More than faithful to the railway’s motto: linea recta brevissima (the shortest path is a straight line), the all-too-correct track from St. Petersburg to Moscow by-passes Tver, which we reached with the aid of one of those speedy-looking droshkys that, in Russia, never fail the traveller, and seem to spring from the ground, summoned by one’s will.
The Post House Hotel, in which we stayed, had the dimensions of a palace — it could have served as the caravanserai for an entire migrating tribe. Attendants dressed in black with white ties received us and led us, with English gravity, to a huge room within which some Parisian architect might easily have set a complete apartment, by a corridor whose length reminded me of the monastic corridors of the Escorial Palace (in Madrid) — the dining room could have seated a thousand for dinner most hospitably. While eating dinner in a window-corner, I read on the border of my napkin the hyperbolic and fabulous number ‘three thousand two hundred’! — despite this, without the laughter, loud voices, and scraping of sabres of a few young soldiers seated at a table in the neighbouring office, the hotel would have seemed absolutely deserted. Large dogs, as bored as those of Aix la-Chapelle (Aachen) of which Heinrich Heine speaks (see his satirical poem ‘Deutschland Ein Wintermärchen III,3’) padded about there, seemingly as melancholy as those in the street, begging for a bone, or a pat on the head. Arriving from some distant kitchen, the exhausted servants set down the half-cold dishes on the tablecloth with a sigh.
From the balcony, we could see Tver’s main square on which the radiating streets converged. In a corner, the sign for an acrobat’s booth was displayed, from which brassy music squealed, a sound that the onlookers, whichever country they came from, found almost irresistible. In the background, a church (the Cathedral of the Ascension) was silhouetted against the sky, with its bulbous dome, and pinnacles with chained gold crosses; the sides of the square were lined with the facades of fine houses, and the droshkys of the wealthy filed past, drawn by purebred horses, while public carriages stood in lines, and moujiks, already clad in their overcoats ready for sleep, adorned the lower steps.
Tver, 1838
Picryl
The season of long days had already passed, in which the sun vanishes only to re-appear a moment later, well-nigh combining sunset with dawn, but night did not fall fully before ten in the evening. It is difficult to give westerners an idea of the hues which tint the sky during this long twilight; our painters’ pallets have not foreseen them; Eugène Delacroix, Narcisse Diaz, and Félix Ziem would be surprised, ignorant of what daring mixture of pigments might reflect those colours; if they succeeded, their paintings would be treated as untrue to life. It seems as if one is on another planet, and the light reaching one refracted through the prism of an alien atmosphere. Shades of turquoise and apple-green fade into areas of pink which turn to pale-lilac, mother-of-pearl, and steely blue, in tints of inconceivable finesse; at other times, they are of a milky, opaline, iridescent whiteness as we imagine the immaterial daylight of Elysium which derives neither from the sun, moon, or stars but from the ether, luminous of itself, and yet veiled.
Across this enchanted sky, as if to highlight its ideal and tender hues, passed swarms of ravens and crows returning to their nests with regular wingbeats, and a strange ceremoniousness, accompanied by a croaking to which it is hard not to attribute some mysterious meaning. Those hoarse screams, interrupted by sudden silences intermingled with choral repetitions, seemed like an anthem or a prayer to Night. The pigeons, respected in Russia as symbols of the Holy Spirit, were already in bed and adorned all the ribs and ledges of the church — there were an incredible number of these birds, since the faithful scatter seeds, piously, for them.
We descended to the square, heading for the river, without a guide and lacking information but trusting to that instinct for the layout of major towns which rarely deceives seasoned travellers. Taking a street at right angles to the fine main street of Tver (Ekaterininskaya, now Sovetskaya), we soon arrived on the banks of the Volga. The main street attempted to resemble one in St. Petersburg, but less frequented and further from the centre possessed a truly Russian character. Wooden houses, pricked out in various colours, topped by green roofs, and with fences of made of painted planks, bordered it, revealing the crowns of trees adorned with fresh foliage. Through the panes of the low windows, one could glimpse hothouse plants intended to help the owners forget the bleakness of a six-month long winter. Bare-footed women were returning from the river with bundles of laundry on their heads; peasants standing on their telegas urged on their little dishevelled horses, returning with a few logs from the construction sites on the river-bank.
At the foot of the fairly steep embankment, which the droshkys and carts climbed with an impetuosity that would frighten Parisian drivers and the horses, the flotilla of the Samolett company displayed the funnels of its trim steamboats. The river, still shallow as yet, does not allow the passage of vessels with a deep draught in this part of its course. Our places booked, since the boat had to leaving early next morning, we continued our walk along the bank of the river, whose dark waters reflected the splendour of twilight like a black mirror, granting them a magical intensity and vigour. The opposite bank, bathed in shadow, projected like a long headland into an ocean of light where it was difficult to disentangle sky from water.
Two or three small boats, their oars moving like a drowning insect’s articulated legs, scored, here and there, the clear but sombre mirror. They seemed to float on an indefinite fluid mass, and sometimes it seemed as if they were about to founder on the inverted reflection of a dome or a house.
Further away, a dark bar crossed the river at water level like a land-bridge, an isthmus which, in approaching, we found to be a long raft serving to communicate between the banks. A section of this raft, raised at will, gave passage to boats. It was a bridge reduced to the simplest expression. Frosts, floods, and thaws make it difficult to employ permanent bridges on Russian rivers. They are almost always carried away. On the edge of this raft, women were washing clothes. Not satisfied with using their hands to clean them, they trampled them in the Arab manner. This little detail made my mind leap to the Moorish bathhouses of Algiers, where I recalled having seen young yaouleds (street urchins) dancing around on bath towels amidst the soap suds. The quay, the view from which is very fine, serves as a promenade. Crinolines, worthy in their amplitude of the Boulevard des Italiens, are ostentatiously displayed there, while little girls walk three or four steps from their mothers, the width of the latter’s skirts denying a closer approach, in short flared dresses, like the male ballet-costumes of the days of Louis XIV. When a moujik, in his sleeveless homespun jacket, with esparto-reed sandals on his feet, dressed almost like a peasant from the Danube standing before the Roman senate, passed these fashionable ladies, one could not help but be struck by the sharp contrast. Never did the highest civilisation and primitive barbarism conflict in a more clear-cut way.
It was time to return to the hotel and do as the crows do. The light was slowly fading. A transparent darkness enveloped the objects around us, removing the details of their forms without quite erasing them, as in Gustave Doré’s wonderful illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, vignettes in which the artist renders the poetry of twilight so well.
Before retiring to bed, I went and leant on the balcony rail for a moment to light a cigar — in Russia, it is forbidden to smoke in the street — and gaze for a moment at the magnificent heavens whose intense scintillations reminded me of the skies of the Orient.
Never had the blue of night owned to such a host of stars: in its immeasurable depth, the abyss was riddled with them; it was like a dusting of suns. The Milky Way displayed its silver meanders, astounding in their clarity. The eye sought to distinguish, amidst this flow of cosmic matter, stellar birth-pangs and the emergence of new worlds; one could readily conceive the nebulae as struggling to resolve themselves and condense into starry masses.
Dazzled by this sublime spectacle, which I was perhaps alone in contemplating at that moment, since human beings only exercise in moderation the privilege which, according to Ovid, was given to them ‘to look towards the skies, and, upright, raise their face to the stars,’ (see Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses Book I: 85-86’), I let hours of darkness pass, forgetting that we had to depart at dawn. At last, I returned to my room.
Despite the luxury as regards linen which the formidable number marked on my serviette had seemed to portend, there was only one sheet, as big as a placemat, on my bed, and the agitation caused by the slightest dream had me sliding or flying about — I am not among those who sigh forth elegies on the shortcomings of hotels, so I merely wrapped myself, philosophically, in my overcoat, on one of those large leather sofas that are found everywhere in Russia, and which, by the degree of comfort they offer, explain and compensate for the inadequacy of the beds. This also saved me from having to dress with those somnambulistic gestures and half-awake stumbles which may be counted amongst the greatest inconveniences of travel.
As soon as we appeared at the hotel door, a droshky raced towards us at full speed, followed by several others trying to overtake it —the Russian coachmen barely miss an opportunity to perform this little display. Arriving almost at the same moment, they disputed the result, with amusing volubility yet without violence or brutality. The customer having made his choice, the rest galloped off again, dispersing in all directions.
A few minutes were enough to take us and our trunk to the banks of the Volga. A wooden ramp led to the landing-stage, beside which a little steamboat, the Nixie (Water-Sprite), fired up and emitting puffs of white smoke, seemed impatient to shake off its moorings. Latecomers, followed by their luggage and dragging their night-bags, hastily crossed the gangway which was about to be withdrawn. The bell rang for the last time, and the Nixie, her paddles rotating, gracefully embraced the current.
At Tver, the Volga is far from possessing as yet the vast dimensions which near its mouth on the Caspian Sea make it resemble the gigantic rivers of America. Certain of its future greatness, it begins its course modestly, without a swell or a wild hurling of foam, and flows on between two fairly low-lying banks — the colour of its waters surprises when you look closely, ignoring the bright mirrored reflections of sky and various objects; it is brown, like that of dark tea.
No doubt the Volga owes its hue to the nature of the sand it holds in suspension and stirs incessantly, changing its channel as constantly as does the Loire, which renders navigation, if not perilous, difficult at least, above all in that part of its course where the water level is low. The Rhine is green, the Rhône is blue, the Volga is bistre (a dark greyish brown, with a yellowish cast) — the former two seem the colour of the seas to which they flow — does that analogy hold true for the Volga? I pass, since I have not yet been granted sight of the Caspian Sea, that enormous pool of water left amidst the land by the retreat of the primitive ocean.
While the Nixie advances peacefully, its wake foaming like the head on a glass of beer, let me take a look at our travelling companions. Let me cross, without fear of impropriety, the boundary, which for that matter is little observed, which separates first class from second and third — fashionable folk are the same in every country, and while in their personal habits they offer nuances that can be grasped by the observer, they fail to present those clear-cut characteristics the tourist can swiftly sketch, with a stroke of a pencil, on a page of their notebook.
In Russia, until now, there has been no middle class. No doubt one will soon be formed, thanks to her new institutions; but these are still too recent for their effect to be visible: appearances remain much the same — the gentleman and the chinovnik (minor government official) are clearly distinguished from the common man by a tailcoat or uniform. The merchant retains his Asian kaftan, and large beard; the moujik his overflowing pink shirt, his broad trousers ending in boots, or, for fear the temperature might drop, his greasy tulup; for Russians, of whatever class, generally feel the cold, though in the West we imagine them braving the harshest weather without a qualm.
This part of the boat’s bridge was cluttered with trunks and packages, and one could scarcely move without stepping over a sleeping form. Russians, like Orientals, lie down wherever they are. A bench, a piece of board, a step on some staircase, a chest, a coil of rope, anything will do. They will even lean against a wall. Sleep overcomes them in the most inconvenient places.
The third-class accommodation, aboard the Nixie, recalled the deck of a steamship in some Levantine port when taking on Turkish passengers. Everyone stood in their own corner amidst their luggage and provisions – families were grouped together, because there were women and children present. It resembled a floating encampment.
Some men wore a long blue or green robe, fastened at the side with three buttons, clinched at the waist with a narrow belt: they were the most elegant or the wealthiest; others wore a red shirt, a brown felt suit, or a sheepskin tunic even though it was seventeen degrees or so in the shade — as for the women, their costume consisted of a printed cotton dress, a kind of fitted jacket or shirt descending to mid-thigh, and a coloured headscarf covering the head and tied under the chin. The youngest wore stockings and shoes, but the older women, proudly disdaining these concessions to Western fashion, immersed their feet in big boots coated with tallow.
To grant this sketch the right tone, it would have to be soiled, dirtied, glazed with bitumen, marked and scratched, because the costumes it seeks to depict were old, unclean, dilapidated, falling to rags. Their owners guard them night and day, and only quit them when they finally abandon them — their cost, which is relatively high, explains the level of constancy — however, these moujiks, so neglectful in their mode of dress, bathe once a week, and the contents are cleaner than the envelope. Moreover, it would be unwise to trust to appearances — often one of the dirtiest and most ragged was pointed out to me and, in my ears, I heard whispered: ‘You’d give him a kopeck if he held out his hand? Well, he’s worth more than a hundred thousand silver rubles,’ — though this was said to me with the most serious air in the world, and with the respectful admiration that the utterance of a large sum always inspires, I found it hard to believe in the wealth of these rag-tag Rothschilds, these Pereires in worn boots (the Pereire brothers, Émile and Isaac, were competitors of the Rothschilds during the Second French Empire).
There was nothing very characteristic about the facial types; but sometimes pale blond hair, a straw-coloured beard and steely-grey eyes clearly indicated a northerner. A summer tan had masked the flesh and lent it almost the same tone as the hair and beard. The women were not very pretty, but their gentle, resigned lack of beauty had nothing disagreeable about it. Their vague smiles gave a glimpse of beautiful teeth, and their eyes, although slightly slanted, displayed no lack of expression. The attitudes they took in arranging themselves on the benches still evidenced beneath their heavy clothing some vestige of feminine grace.
Meanwhile, the Nixie progressed at a cautious pace. The wheel, sited so that the pilot might look out over the far reaches of the river and foresee any obstacle, was bolted to the bridge between the arcs of the paddle-wheel drums, and communicated with the rudder at the stern by a system of chains which transmitted its movements. At the bow stood men armed with measuring poles who took soundings constantly, and announced the depth of water with a rhythmic cry. Buoys, painted red and white, and stakes and branches planted in the bed of the river, indicated the channel to be followed, and it really required extreme familiarity with the river’s course to guide one’s vessel through its capricious meanders. In some places, the sandy shoals almost showed on the surface, and the Nixie more than once scraped its keel on the gravel; but a single stronger beat of the paddle-wheels refloated her, and she slid back into the current, without knowing the humiliation of resorting to those rescuers who, standing on a floating board and leaning on long grappling-poles, awaited boats at risk in the shallows — the greatest danger is an encounter with one of the large boulders lodged, here and there, in the Volga’ mud, which are extracted and placed on the bank, whenever an accident betrays their presence. Sometimes the vessel splits open, and its load is submerged.
The banks, the gullied, liassic terrain of which attests to the river’s flooding from snow-melt in the thaw, are not very picturesque, at least in the upper part. They present a series of undulations which follow one another without sudden changes in elevation, or incidental character. Sometimes a fir-wood’s dark greenery breaks their long yellow lines, or else a village of log-houses interrupts their horizontal run with its angled roofs whose gables are carved into horns. A church with whitewashed walls and a green dome is attached to every village.
Every time the Nixie passed a building dedicated to worship, even if our backs were turned, we were warned by inclinations of the head, a swaying of the body, and signs of the cross performed by the moujiks, the women, and the crew — one of the moujiks even served as an early indicator of such places. Gifted with keen eyesight, he would discover, on the distant horizon, the well-nigh imperceptible tip of a bell-tower and cross himself with precision and the speed of an automaton. I would extend my telescope, ready to examine the church or monastery when it appeared in the lens. In the West even piety is sober in its demonstrations and religious feeling is concealed in the soul, while these external practices surprise the foreigner. However, what could be more natural than to salute the house of God!
The vessels navigating the Volga created a lively scene, and the interesting spectacle found me, for many an hour, leaning on the Nixie’s rail. Boats descended the river, their huge unfurled sails suspended from high masts to collect the slightest breath of air — others were returning, hauled by horses — these have neither the size nor the strength of our robust draught horses, but their numbers make up for their lack of power. The teams generally consisted of nine animals, and here and there relays, tethered on the sandy shore, were attached to encampments where Nikolai Sverchkov, the Russian Horace Vernet, might find happy motifs for his paintings — some barges of lower tonnage were advanced by hand-poling: hard work for their crews, marching ceaselessly the length of the waterway, pushing on a solid pole with all their strength, and exhausting all their wind-power — and these poor wretches have brief lives; it is rare, I was told, for their age to exceed forty (see Ilya Repin’s painting ‘Barge-Haulers’, 1870-73).
Some of these barges are immense, though drawing little water. An apple-green stripe sometimes brightens the beautiful silver-grey of the wood used in their construction. At the bow, painted eyes are often displayed, beneath disproportionately large open eyelids, or a crudely-smeared Russian eagle arches its double neck and spreads its black wings. Crenelations carved with an axe, with a precision unsurpassable by a chisel, ornament the stern-castle. Most of these boats were loaded with wheat worth some enormous amount.
Other steamboats owned by the Samolett company or a rival of theirs, crossed paths with ours, and the company flag was hoisted on both decks with scrupulous nautical politeness. I also noted canoes, made from a single tree-trunk like those of the American Indians, from which, after approaching us and despite the rocking of the narrow vessels, letters, from the smaller towns at which the Nixie was not scheduled stop, were thrown, and which in turn caught the dispatches that were addressed to them.
Aboard the Nixie, there was a perpetual arrival and departure of passengers. At each landing stage, we left some behind, or took some on deck. The landing-stations were sometimes quite far apart. Wood was loaded there to fuel the boiler, since coal was not burnt, being either too rare or too expensive. The large piles of logs lined up on the bank doubtless inform the old backward-looking peasants that if the railway and steamboat companies carry on this way, they must die of cold in Holy Russia.
These landing-stages, all on the same model, consisted of a square pontoon supporting a two-roomed building, one room serving as an office, the other as a store or waiting-room, and the pair separated by a wide corridor intended for travellers and luggage. Since the height of the river varies, a bridge of planks, at a steeper or shallower angle, connects the landing stage to the shore. At the sides of this bridge, the small traders whom the passage of the steamboat attracts display their frail booths, grouped together in a picturesque way. Little girls offer you half a dozen sour green apples in a basket, or small cakes which are crudely stamped with amusing shapes, as are our slabs of butter, including chimerical lions which, if cast in bronze and covered by an archaic patina, might pass for specimens of primitive Ninevite art. Women, each equipped with a bucket and a glass, sell kvass, a type of fermented drink made from rye and aromatic herbs, with a very pleasant taste when one is accustomed to it. As the price is minimal, fashionable people disdain it, and only the common folk consume it. These women present a singularity of dress that is worth noting. French Empire fashions once placed the waist as high as the throat, but our eyes, accustomed to low waists, are surprised by this oddity when viewing the portraits of the time, even when rescued by the spiritedness of François Gérard, or the gracefulness of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon. The Russian peasant women tighten their skirts to above the breast, so that they appear as if buried in a sack up to the armpits. It is easy to imagine the less than graceful effects of that constant pressure, which ends by weighing-down the firmest of contours. The rest of their costume consists of a chemise with puffed-out sleeves, and a square handkerchief tied under the chin — there were also booths selling wheat-bread and rye-bread, the former very white the latter very brown; but the most active trade was that in ogourets, a variety of cucumber eaten fresh in summer and pickled in winter, without which it seems the Russians could not live. They are served at every meal, and form the obligatory accompaniment to all dishes; one nibbles a slice as one would a slice of orange, elsewhere. To me this treat seemed tasteless. It’s true that the Russians, for some health reason which escapes me, avoid seasoning their cuisine; bland food pleases them.
Is there any real point in my noting the Samolett company’s itinerary, and transcribing, difficult as they are to replicate in our language, the names of the little towns at which we touched? Their appearance was almost always the same: a gangway of logs, beams and planks descending to the shore; atop the embankment, a gostiny-dvor (indoor market), a government building, and the houses of the wealthier locals, their window-frames in olive or red trimmed with white; then a church, with four pinnacles bristling around its dome sometimes painted in green, sometimes revealing leaves of hammered copper or pewter, the walls of its cloister’s enclosure displaying colourful frescoes in the Byzantine style of Mount Athos; and further away the izbas made of logs notched at the corners. Add to this, to liven the picture, a few droshkys waiting for travellers, and groups of idlers whose interest in the arrival and departure of a steamboat never tires.
Kimry (previously Kimra), however, had a surprising air of celebration; the whole population, or well-nigh all, were ranged in tiers from the edge of the river to the top of the embankment. A rumour had spread that the Nixie was carrying the hereditary Grand Duke on his way to Nizhni-Novgorod; it was erroneous. The Grand Duke did pass by later, on another boat, but I enjoyed, unscrupulously, the excellent opportunity the announcement of his presence had granted of observing this gathering of representative types. Some elegant clothing in the French fashion, slightly out of date due to the distance between Paris and Kimry, stood out from the national backcloth of sack-shaped skirts and printed cottons of traditional design. Three young girls wearing little Andalusian hats, Zouave jackets, and bloated crinolines, were really charming, despite a minor affectation of western casualness. They laughed together, seemingly disdaining the luxury of boots which the other residents, men and women, wore. Kimry is famous for its boots as Ronda, in Spain, is for its leggings.
It was at Kimry, perhaps, that Bastien bought that fine pair of boots that the popular song attributes to him (‘Ah! Il a des bottes, il a des bottes Bastien’, is a traditional folk song from Normandy. The refrain, on which Mozart based the Menuetto of his Flute Quartet in A Major, K.298, became immensely and irritatingly popular around 1859).
The shallowness of the river, and the need to observe the buoys, prevent one risking nocturnal navigation. So, the Nixie, emitting steam and dropping anchor, moored as soon as the last embers of sunset, cooled by a somewhat chilly wind, died on the horizon. Evening tea was served to all passengers, and the samovars, heated to excess, poured constantly boiling water over the concentrated infusion. It was an interesting spectacle to see the lowest class of people, whose exteriors resembled that of our beggars, savour that delicate and fragrant drink which is still a novelty with us, and which white hands pour at social gatherings. The way in which they drink tea is to let it cool for a moment in the saucer, and then swallow it, while holding a small piece of sugar between the teeth which sufficiently sweetens the beverage for Russian taste, and in this manner approaches that of the Chinese.
When I awoke, on the cabin’s narrow couch, the Nixie was under way again. The day was dawning, and we were skirting an embankment the crest of which was denticulated by the izbas of a village, reflected in the calm water of the river as in a mirror — it looked like that landscape by Charles-François Daubigny (‘The Banks of the Oise’, 1859) shown at the last but one Salon, but translated into Russian.
We stopped at Pokrovskoe, a sixteenth century monastery, crenelated like a fortress. Most of the passengers went ashore to pray in the church there, and have their journey blessed. Through the semi-daylight of a mysterious chapel all painted colourfully and dripping with gold, a priest or monk of oriental appearance and an acolyte chanted one of those beautiful melodies of the Greek rite whose effect is irresistible, even when one does not share the belief that inspired them. He had a magnificent bass voice — powerful, deep, and sweet — which he employed wonderfully.
Uglich, which we passed towards the end of the day, is quite a considerable town. It has no less than thirteen thousand inhabitants, and the bell towers, domes and pinnacles of its thirty-six churches render its profile superb. The river, widened at this point, had the look of the Bosphorus, and it would not have taken a massive effort of imagination to transform Uglich and its bulbous spiers and minarets into a Turkish city — a small and ancient Russian style pavilion on the bank, was pointed out to me, where Dimitry (the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible, and heir apparent to his brother Feodor) aged ten years old, is said to have been slain by Boris Godunov.
On the sandy beaches at the confluence of the Mologa and the Volga, countless swarms of crows and rooks indulged in those bizarre frolics that precede their bedtime. Seagulls, which accompany great bodies of water, began appearing. Higher up, we had seen white-tailed eagles (sea eagles) fishing for their supper, and catching sterlets that Western gourmets would pay their weight in gold for.
Bluish moonlight, silvery and dreamlike, had replaced the fieriest of strange sunset hues by the time we arrived in Rybinsk — a flotilla of large vessels almost blocked the river. Amidst the black cross-hatching of their masts and rigging, a few lights glittered, and, the church bell-tower rose like a silvery rocket in the nocturnal azure.
Rybinsk has an air of importance. It is a city of commerce and pleasure. The Volga, widened and deepened by the tribute the waters of the Mologa bring, allows large vessels to ascend as far as its port and to descend the river again. Thus, the sedentary population is augmented in certain seasons by a considerable number of people travelling simply for their own amusement, who attain a fine and generous mood for their efforts. One of Russia’s favourite forms of entertainment is to listen to Bohemian choirs singing Gypsy airs. You cannot imagine the passion with which the audience receives them, a passion only matched by the energy of their virtuosos. The enthusiasm shown by our dilettantes for Italian Opera gives only a feeble idea of their reception, and in this there is nothing which is merely conventional, nothing simulated, nothing false; fashion and fine manners are forgotten; it is the intimate fibres of primitive humanity that respond to these alien sounds.
This liking does not surprise me, I share it, and as it was said aboard that Rybinsk was hosting a celebrated troupe of Bohemians, I accepted the proposal of paying them a visit, suggested by a kind, spirited, and cordial nobleman who was a passenger on the Nixie, and with whom I would gladly have sailed to the ends of the earth.
The Count was first to go ashore, so as to make the arrangements, indicating to us the name of the hotel where the concert was to take place — I gained the quay at length, delighted by the spectacle of a wondrous night sky. Beneath the heavens whose stars paled before the brightness of the moon, the river extended, as vast as a lake or an arm of the sea and marked by a sombre line of boats. Luminous streaks of light and the dark reflections of masts spread over the water in ribbons of silver and velvety black, while tremors of the flowing current denoted the shore.
The houses on the banks, bathed in shadow, displayed only lines of bluish light on the ridges of their green roofs; but a few reddish spangles of light, pricked out here and there, indicated some occupant as yet not asleep. Set on a wide square, the main church (the Transfiguration Cathedral) shone like a block of silver, with intense and fabulous brightness; one would have thought it illuminated by Bengal lights (Bengal lights were bright blue flares packed with nitre, sulphur, and the black sulphide of antimony). Its dome, surrounded by a diadem of columns, sparkled like a tiara studded with diamonds; phosphorescent metallic reflections played over the tinplate or copper of the pinnacles, and the bell-tower, whose style of architecture was reminiscent of the spire of Dresden Castle, seemed to have skewered two or three stars on its golden needle — it produced a magical, a supernatural effect, as in some enchanted apotheosis, whereby the azure perspective reveals, in opening, the palace of the Sylph or the happy temple of Hymen.
Illuminated in this manner, Rybinsk Cathedral seemed to have been carved from some fragment of the moon fallen to earth. It acquired, beneath her rays, a silvery and snowy light.
I had barely reached the quay formed of large stones that the Volga uproots and rolls along in its flood, when, above the vague music rising from the tea-houses, the lugubrious cry: ‘Karaul!’ (‘Help!’) tore at my ears, screamed, and then groaned forth, in the voice of one with a knife at their throat. I leapt forward: two or three shadows fled. A door opened and closed, the house-lights were extinguished, all returned to darkness. To that despairing wail succeeded the silence of the dead.
Twice or thrice, I passed before the door, but the house had become dark, mute and deaf, like Saltabadil’s tavern in act five of Le Roi S’Amuse (see the play by Victor Hugo, 1856). How to deal with this incident, alone, a stranger, unarmed, and ignorant of the language, in a country where no one will help in the event of an accident or murder for fear of the police and the witness statement involved? All was quiet however; whoever the human being was who had called so pitifully for help, they no longer needed it.
Our entry into Rybinsk was as you see, not lacking in dramatic colour, and I am only sorry I am unable to relate the tale of this assassination in detail, for the cry I heard was surely a cry of agony; but I know no more. The night had hidden all in shadow.
Still very moved, I entered a traktir (tavern) where portraits of Emperor Alexander II and of Empress Alexandrovna, in magnificent frames and painted like inn-signs, formed a counterpart to the holy images plastered with silver and gold leaf which a small hanging lamp illuminated with its flickering glow. Tea was served and, while I savoured the national beverage strengthened with a little cognac, a Cremona organ in the next room played an aria by Verdi.
Shortly, the Samolett company’s engineer, and the chief mechanic of the Nixie arrived and joined me, and we set off together to search Rybinsk for the inn where the Bohemians gathered, and where the Count had arranged to meet us.
This building, which belonged to a wealthy wheat-merchant whom I had met on the boat, was located at the far end of town. Further from the shore, the houses sprawled more, and were scattered over a larger space. Long garden fences separated them; the streets ended in vacant lots, while boardwalks helped in navigating the quagmires. A few lean-looking dogs sat on their hind legs and barked at the moon and, once we had passed, started to follow us, either from mistrust, a feeling of sociability, or in hopes of being fed. Due to the moon’s influence, slender white vapours rose from the ground and interposed their gaseous mists between my eyes and the surrounding objects, clothing them in a poetic light, of which dawn would surely rob them. At last, amidst the azure mist in which the shapes of the furthest houses were outlined in lilac-grey, I saw the red, illuminated embrasures of windows; we had arrived — the low strumming of a guitar, which had been buzzing in my ears for some time like the stubborn stridulating of a cricket, and whose notes sounded increasingly lively as they reached me, soon led us to the door.
A moujik conducted us through long corridors to the room where the Gypsy girls were. The audience was comprised of the Count, the wheat-merchant, and a young officer. On a table, amidst drinking glasses and bottles of Champagne, stood two long candle-like tapers in makeshift candlesticks. Yellow haloes surrounded their wicks, barely dissipating the dense smoke from cigars and cigarettes. We were handed full glasses on condition of emptying them immediately so they could be refilled. The Champagne was a Roederer of superior quality, such as one finds only in Russia. The libation having been offered, we sat down to wait in silence.
The Gypsy girls stood about, or leant against the walls, in indolent Oriental poses, without the slightest concern for the eyes gazing upon them — nothing could be more inert than their attitudes, or gloomier than their faces. They seemed weary or half-asleep. Savage natures, when passion does not agitate them, possess an indescribable animal calm — free of thoughts, those possessed of them dream like woodland creatures; no civilised person can attain that mysterious absence of expression, more annoying than all the grimaces of coquetry. Oh, to give birth to a blush of longing, on such dead faces: a fantasy which grips the coldest, the least of poets, and soon becomes a passion!
‘Were they at least beautiful, then, these Bohemian girls? Not in the usual sense of the word. Our Parisian ladies would certainly have thought them ugly, with the exception of one alone who was closer to the European type than her companions. Olive complexions, masses of black hair, seemingly slight bodies, and small brown hands, formed the main features of their appearance. There was nothing distinctive about their costumes. No amber or bead necklaces, no skirts studded with spangles and bordered with frills, no mantles striped in bizarre colours; merely a variation on the Paris fashions, including a few barbarisms justified by that city’s remoteness; dresses with ruffles, taffeta mantles, crinoline, hairnets: they looked like badly-dressed housemaids.
Thus far, you may think, the experience offered nothing very extraordinary. But, like us, be patient, and despair not of Bohemia, though it has renounced, at least in the towns, its rags and picturesque trappings; judge not the thoroughbred in its stable, covered by a blanket; it is on the turf, the course, that action reveals its beauty.
One of the Gypsy girls, as if shaking off her weariness and torpor in response to the stubborn summons of the guitar strummed by a tall, droll fellow with the air of a bandit, chose at last to advance to the centre of the circle — she raised her long eyelids fringed by black eyelashes, and the room seemed full of light. From her half-open mouth, in a vague smile, a flash of white teeth sparkled; an indistinct murmur like those voices we hear in dream escaped her lips. Posed thus, the Bohemian girl seemed like a sleepwalker unaware of her actions. She saw neither the room nor her companions. She seemed inwardly transfigured. Her features, ennobled, no longer bore any mark of the commonplace. Her stature had increased; her garments flowed like the draperies of antiquity.
Gradually, the sound intensified, a singing melody that was slow at first, then more rapid, and strangely intoxicating. The tune was like a captive bird whose cage has been opened. Still doubtful of freedom, the bird takes a few indecisive steps in front of her prison, then hops away, and when she is sure that no trap threatens, fluffs herself out, raises herself, emits a joyous cry and, wings beating, soars towards the forest where her former companions are now singing.
Such was the vision which filled my thoughts, listening to that tune, of which no other music could give the slightest idea. Another girl joined the first, and soon a whole flight of voices began to follow the winged theme, in rising scales like ascending rockets, trilling loudly, embroidering notes like an organ, sustaining modulations, while offering sudden turns, and unexpected repeats — the music chirped, whistled, murmured, chattered with a volubility full of ardour, in a friendly and joyful tumult, as if a savage tribe were celebrating their escape from the city. Then the choir fell silent, and a single voice continued to sing the joys of freedom and solitude, the refrain accentuating the last phrase with frenzied energy.
It is very difficult, if not impossible, to render a musical effect in words, but one can at least describe the dreams it gives birth to. Gypsy songs have a singularly evocative power. They awaken primitive instincts obliterated by civilised life, memories of a previous existence that one thought eclipsed, feelings of independence and secret wanderings enclosed deep in the heart; they inspire in one a strange nostalgia for a country one can never have known and yet which seems one’s true homeland. Some melodies ring in your ear like a distant summons, morbidly irresistible, such that you want to throw away your weapon, abandon your post, and swim to the far bank where one is subject to no discipline, needs obey no commands, or law, or moral code, but simply follows one’s caprice. A thousand brilliant, confused scenes pass before your eyes: you see an encampment in a clearing, a bivouac fire over which pots suspended from a trio of stakes boil, colourful clothes dry on ropes, and further away, squatting on the ground, an old woman reads the future from her tarot cards, while a young Romani girl, with tawny complexion, and blue-black hair, dances, accompanying herself on the tambourine. This first picture fades, and in the troubled light of some past century, a distant and indistinct caravan descends from the uplands of Asia, some group undoubtedly expelled from their native country due to a spirit of revolt impatient of all restraint. White draperies fiercely streaked with red and orange float in the wind, copper rings and bracelets gleam against brown skin, and the rods of their sistra jingle with metallic tremors.
These are not, believe me, merely the daydreams of poets — Bohemian music acts violently on the most prosaic of human beings, and its summons is heard even by philistines drowned in their habitual somnolence.
The song is not, as one might think, musically crude. It is the product, on the contrary, of a highly complex art, though one different from our own, and those who execute it are true virtuosos, though they know not the names of the notes, or how to transcribe on paper a single one of the tunes they sing so well — the frequent use of quarter-tones troubles the ear at first; but one soon grows accustomed to it, and finds an odd charm therein. Here is a whole new range of sounds, strange timbres, unfamiliar variations on the customary musical scales, employed in expressing feelings wholly outside the bounds of civilisation.
The Romani own to neither homeland nor a single religion, and are bound neither by the structure, nor morality, nor laws of our society. They accept no human yoke, and rub shoulders with civilisation without ever accepting it — they who brave or evade other laws, no longer submit to the pedantic restrictions of harmony or counterpoint: the free caprice of a free nature, the individual abandoning himself or herself to natural feeling without remorse for past actions, or anxiety for the future, the intoxication of liberty, the love of change and a like wild desire for independence, these are the general impressions that emerge from Romani songs — their melodies resemble birdsong, the rustling of leaves, the sighs of an Aeolian harp; their rhythms the far-off galloping of horses in the steppe. They beat out the measure, but in flight.
The prima donna of the troupe was undoubtedly Sascha (a diminutive of Alexandra), she who had initially broken the silence and inflamed her companions’ slumbering ardour. Now the wild spirit of the music had been unleashed, it was no longer for us that the Bohemians sang, but, in truth, for themselves.
An imperceptible pink blush coloured Sascha’s cheeks. Her eyes gleamed with intermittent flashes. Like the dancer La Petra Cámara (a ballet and flamenco dancer, the prima ballerina of the Madrid Theatre, who performed ‘La Gitana’, ‘The Gypsy’, composed expressly for her; dancing in Paris, London, Brussels and other European cities), she lowered and raised her eyelids as one, like a fan being opened and closed, producing, alternately, light and shade— the effect of their movement, natural or intended, was irresistibly seductive.
Sascha approached the table — she was offered a glass of Champagne — she refused; the Romani girls are a model of sobriety — but asked for tea for herself and her friends. The guitarist, apparently unafraid of spoiling his voice, swallowed glasses of brandy one after another to rouse his spirits, and, indeed, stamping his foot on the flooring, and slapping the palm of his hand against the belly of the guitar, he sang and danced, worked away like the Devil himself, and grimaced by way of grotesque interlude, with dazzling liveliness — he was, the rom (Romani for ‘husband’) of the blonde Bohemian girl. Never did a couple conform less to the maxim: ‘Spouses should agree’.
I have said Bohemian girls are a model of sobriety; if I add that they are also models of chastity, few will believe me; and yet it is the case. Their virtue is considered unassailable in Russia — no art of seduction can overcome it, and noblemen, young and old, spend fabulous sums on Gypsy girls without advancing one iota. Her virtue, however, had nothing fierce about it. She let her hand be taken and patted, and sometimes returned the kiss stealthily bestowed upon it. If there was no chair free, she sat, familiarly, on your knee, and when the singing began, you were permitted to place her cigarette between your lips so she might reclaim it later. Sure of herself, she attached not the slightest importance to the endowment of these small ‘privileges’, as our ancestors had it, which, from other women, would seem like favours or promises.
For more than two hours, song followed song, in dizzying and voluble succession. What capriciousness, verve, brilliance, what difficulties overcome while playing! Sascha performed flourishes a thousand times more difficult than Eduard Rhode’s variations, while joining in the conversation, and demanding a silk dress in moire antique, the only two words of French she knew, from one of our young travelling companions. Finally, the rhythm became so captivating, so imperious, that the dance merged with the song, as in an ancient choir. All were involved, from the old woman, as weathered as a mummy, shaking her skeleton about, to the little girl of eight, ardent, febrile, and mature in an unhealthily precocious way, striving to flex her limbs so as not to lag behind the adults. The beanpole of a guitarist vanished in a whirling tornado from which arpeggios, and high-pitched screeches emerged.
For a moment, I admit, I feared lest the French can-can, spreading round the world, had entered Rybinsk, and the evening might end with a performance out of the Variétés or the Palais-Royal; nothing of the sort. The choreography embraced by the Bohemian girls resembles that of the Bayadères (the temple-dancers of India). Sascha, her arms waving, her torso undulating, her feet stamping the floor, recalled Amany (a member of a group of Bayadères who toured Europe in 1838), not ‘Rigolboche’ (Amelia Marguerite Badel, credited with inventing the can-can). It was as if she and her companions were performing Amany’s dance Malapou (the Dance of Delight) on the banks of the Ganges, in front of the altar of Shiva, the blue-skinned deity. Never had the Asiatic origin of the Romani seemed to me more visible or more indisputable.
It was time to return to the boat; but the excitement of the virtuosos and their assistants was such that the concert continued in the street; the Bohemians, taking our arms when offered them, walked in such a way as to separate into groups spaced apart, and sang a choral piece with echoes and responses, and decrescendos notable for their dazzling repeats, to magical and supernatural effect; the horn of Oberon, even when it is Carl Maria von Weber (cf. his opera ‘Oberon, or the Elf-King’s Oath’, of 1825/6) who blows the notes on that ivory trumpet, was never more suave, silvery, velvety or dreamlike.
After traversing the boat’s gangway, we turned to view the shore; on the edge of the quay, in a shaft of moonlight, the Bohemians, grouped together, saluted us with a wave of the hand; a sparkling shower of notes, a last jet of silver rain from those musical fireworks, rose to an inaccessible height, spread its glitter against the dark and silent backcloth, and then faded away.
The Nixie, adequate for navigating the upper reaches of the Volga, was not of sufficient tonnage to descend the widened river with an addition of passengers and goods to its cargo — we therefore transferred to the Provornii (‘Swift’, or ‘Speedy’), a steamboat of the same Samolett company, with an engine capable of a hundred and fifty horse-power when under steam. Buckets each marked with a letter, composing her name in Russian characters, swung beside each other beneath the gangway, from which they were suspended — an exterior kiosk forming a cabin rose from the bridge, above the staircase leading to the passengers’ salon, and provided a shelter for observing the river, in fine or poor weather — it was there I spent the greater part of each day.
Before the Provornii departed, I took a look at Rybinsk to view its appearance in broad daylight, though not without some apprehension, since the sun does not flatter as does the moon; he cruelly reveals what the nocturnal orb veils behind her azure and silver gauze. Well! Rybinsk lost little to the light; its houses, pink, green, and yellow, made of bricks and timber, cheerfully crowned its quay built of large randomly-shaped stones, akin to a ruined Cyclopean wall, though the church, which in the moonlight had looked snowy-white, was in fact painted apple- green, and while polychromy pleases me as regards architecture, yet the play of colour surprised. The cathedral, moreover, was full of character, its dome flanked by pinnacles, and its four porticos oriented like those of Saint Isaac’s. The bell-tower offered those odd bulges and hollows one finds in the bell-towers of Belgium and Germany, but its final needle rises to a great height, and if it failed to satisfy my taste, it entertained the eye, and its profile against the horizon aroused interest.
The boats at anchor in front of Rybinsk were mostly large, and of a particular form that I will have more than one opportunity to describe, since the river between that city and Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Saratov, Astrakhan and the other towns of the lower Volga, is a hive of activity at that time of year. Some were setting out to travel downriver, others were arriving or moored, and the spectacle was most interesting. The Provornii slipped skilfully through this flotilla, and took the current. Slightly higher banks, especially on the left, embraced the flow. The landscape had not changed appreciably in character. There were endless fir trees, in lines like colonnades, greyish shafts against a background of dark greenery; villages of log izbas scattered about their green-domed churches; sometimes a stately mansion turning its intriguing façade towards the river, or at the least presenting, at a corner of the park, a belvedere or a brightly painted summer-house; ramps of timber ascending the bank and leading to some dwelling; land ravished by the ebb and flow of floodwater; sandy beaches, trampled by flocks of geese, where herds of cows and oxen came to drink: a thousand variations on the same motifs which the pencil would better convey than the pen.
Soon, the Romanov monastery came in sight (the Ipatiev monastery, at Kostroma, where in 1613 the Moscow boyars invited Mikhail Romanov to become the new ruler). Crenellated and whitewashed walls granted its enclosure the air of a fortress, and had more than once defended it from assault, for in troubled times the treasures heaped in the monasteries aroused the greed of the plundering hordes. Above the walls rose tall cedars, extending robust horizontal branches covered with dark greenery. The cedars are cultivated with a care peculiar to the Romanovs, since it was under a cedar that the miraculous image, venerated there (the Theodore icon of the mother of God, in the Assumption Cathedral) was found.
At Yuryevets, the firewood for the boiler was delivered by women. Each load arrived on a stretcher supported by two poles; its pile of logs was spilled into the steamboat’s hold by the two who bore it. The peasant women were alert, robust, and some were pretty. Their animated activity had coloured their complexions with a healthy blush, and the slight shortness of breath that parted their lips revealed teeth as white as peeled almonds. Sadly, the faces of some were pitted and scarred by smallpox, since vaccination is not universal in Russia, where doubtless popular prejudice resists its advent. Their costume was very simple. A skirt of Indian cotton, printed with old-fashioned designs like those still sometimes met with adorning bed curtains or quilt in old provincial inns; a heavy linen shirt; a scarf tied under the chin — nothing more. The absence of stockings and shoes allowed one to appreciate their fine and delicate extremities — some of those bare feet were worthy of Cinderella’s glass slipper. I saw with pleasure that the dreadful fashion of a tight garment held by a clasp above the breast was adopted only by the older and less pretty ones. On the younger, the waistline of their skirts was above the hip as anatomy, hygiene and, common sense, dictate.
It was somewhat contrary to my French idea of gallantry to see women carrying such heavy loads and performing the task of beasts of burden; but at least this work, which they accomplish with an alacrity which seems not to weary, pays them a few kopeks and increases their well-being, or that of their family.
Travelling downriver, we encountered a large number of boats similar to those we had seen moored in front of Rybinsk. These (belyanas) are of shallow draught, but their size is hardly inferior to that of a three-masted merchant ship. Their construction presents special characteristics not encountered elsewhere. Like Chinese junks, the bow and stern are upturned like the tip of a shoe — the pilot occupies a kind of platform adorned with ornate open balustrades, hand-carved with an axe — from the deck rise cabins with the appearance of log-houses, and painted and gilded towers with weathervanes and flags; but what is most singular is the windlass and its platform: the twin decks are supported by columns; the lower deck contains stabling for the horses; the upper level, the windlass itself. Through the fence of columns, one can see horses harnessed in threes or fours, winding or unwinding onto or from the barrel, the towing cable ending in an anchor which a boat, rowed by eight or ten oarsmen, drops and fixes in the riverbed upstream. The number of horses on board varies from a hundred to a hundred and fifty. They relieve each other, so to speak, after executing their shift. While some work, others rest, and the boat progresses, albeit slowly — the mast of each of these boats, of disproportionate height, is made of five or six fir trunks coupled together, and recalls the ribbed pillars in Gothic cathedrals; the rungs of the rope ladders suspended from it are linked together by ropes ‘in saltire’. We have described in some detail these vast Volga boats and their unique layout because they are doomed to vanish. In a few years the horse power will be provided by a tugboat, and the living force by a mechanical one. This whole picturesque system will seem too complex, slow and expensive. It is ever the useful, durable form that prevails. The sailors who crew these boats, wear peculiar hats. The hats, tall and brimless, look like measuring cylinders or stovepipes; I was surprised smoke was not issuing from them.
These boats reminded us of the huge rafts of logs on the Rhine, that carry villages of huts, enough provisions to supply Gargantua’s table, and even herds of oxen. The last pilot able to steer them died a few years ago, and steam navigation has overtaken that naïve and primitive form of inland transport.
Yaroslav, at which we had briefly touched, communicates with Moscow by a diligence which deserves description. The vehicle harnessed to a team of little horses awaits the traveller at the landing stage. It is what in Russia is known as a tarantass, that is to say a carriage body set on two long beams which connect the front and rear axles, and whose innate flexibility takes the place of springs. This arrangement has the advantage that, in the event of a breakdown, it is easily repairable, while it resists the bumpiness of the hardest of roads — the body, quite similar in form to an ancient litter, is lined with leather curtains, and the passengers sit side by side as in our omnibuses —after considering, with the respect it deserved, an example of this antediluvian vehicle, we climbed the ramp and visited the city. The quay, planted with trees, forms a promenade, and, in some places, continues on arches which allows tunnels and outflows below to reach the river.
The view enjoyed from there is very beautiful. As we gazed, a young man approached, and offered, in adequate French, to serve as our guide to the city’s sights; he seemed not to be Russian, and his clothes, threadbare but clean, exhibited the poverty of a well-born man whom his education elevates above manual work. His pale face, lean and sad, breathed intelligence. The steamboat was scheduled to leave in a quarter of an hour, and we could not risk an excursion around Yaroslav without running the risk of being left behind on shore. To our great regret, we had to refuse the services of the poor fellow who walked away with a resigned sigh, as if accustomed to such disappointments — a shameful feeling, which occasioned some remorse, prevented me from slipping a silver ruble into his hand; but he seemed so gentlemanly, I feared I might offend him.
Yaroslav has the character of the older Russian towns, if the world old can be assigned to anything in Russia, where whitewash and paint stubbornly cover all traces of obsolescence. The church porches reveal paintings in the archaic style of Mount Athos, but the designs alone are ancient; every time they fade, the colours of flesh and drapery are repainted — and their halos restored.
Kostroma, where we also halted, presented nothing of special note, at least to a traveller who had time only to glance at it swiftly. Small Russian towns are strikingly uniform in character. They are laid out according to certain rules and necessities, fatal to individuality, so to speak, against which imaginativeness can make no headway. The absence or scarcity of stone dictates the use of brick and timbering, and their architectural lines cannot, with such materials, achieve a clarity of definition that interests the artist. As for the churches, the Greek Orthodox religion imposes its hieratic forms, and they fail to present the variety of styles adopted for our Western churches. Any description would be doomed to repetition. Let me return then to the Volga, monotonous in itself but nevertheless varied within its extent, like any great natural spectacle.
A host of birds fluttered about the river, without counting the ravens and crows so common in Russia. At every moment, the passage of our steamboat raised a flock of wild ducks from the shore of some islet or sandbank in the shallows. Grebes and teal skimmed over the water. In the sky, seagulls with white undersides and pearl-grey backs performed their capricious antics; hawks, kestrels, and buzzards traced their arcs, on the watch for prey. Sometimes sea-eagles let themselves fall, with a vigorous beat of their wings, to land on the far bank.
Then the long twilight of those summer days again deployed its magic — shades of pale orange, lemon, and chrysoprase tinted the sunset. Against this splendid background, the banks of the river displayed, in black silhouette, the chance outlines of trees, hills, houses, and distant churches, like the forms on the gilded backgrounds of Byzantine icons; small shoals of blue-black cloud, combed by the wind, scattered in flakes over the wide expanse of sky; the sun, half submerged behind a wood which masked it, made a million scintillations glimmer among the leaves — the river reflected this admirable spectacle, dimmed a little by its brown waters. Rendered brighter by the deepening darkness, sparks rolled like serpents through the steamboat’s vapour, while in the shadows along the banks the lanterns of fishermen off to raise their traps shone like glow worms or shooting stars.
As the water was shallow, and as we dared not approach the shore, the darkness not allowing the buoys to be seen, we dropped anchor in the middle of the river, which was very wide at that point. One might have thought oneself at the centre of a vast lake, because the shoreline’s curves, and the tips of its promontories, closed off the horizon on all sides.
The following day I spent in that state of occupied indolence which is one of the charms of travel. While smoking my cigar, I watched, endlessly, as the banks of the river, two or three times wider than the Thames at London Bridge, fled further and further apart. Boats with paddles or under sail brushed past us, descending or ascending the flow. The number of vessels increased, and foreshadowed the approach of an important town. But though the day was peaceful, the evening offered a highly dramatic incident.
Our steamboat had anchored for the night, before a village or small town whose Russian name escapes me, alongside a kind of pontoon-boat moored to the shore. Soon our attention was attracted by an outburst of voices, and the sound of a tumultuous argument. On the platform of this pontoon, two men were quarrelling, gesticulating like madmen. Their insults they deemed injuries. After a few punches, and blows to the face, had been exchanged, one of the combatants seized the other in his arms, and, with an action as rapid as thought, hurled him into the river. The fall of the vanquished splashed water almost over our heads, as he fell between the pontoon and the steamboat, where the gap was barely three feet or so wide. The whirlpool subsided, and nothing was to be seen. There was a moment of dreadful anxiety, all thinking that the unfortunate man was drowning, with no way to fish him out from under the keel of the boat, where the current undoubtedly had already driven him, when suddenly, in the moonlight, we saw the water bubbling near the shore, and a human form emerging and climbing the bank at pace.
The fellow, an excellent swimmer, had dived beneath the paddle-wheel whose drum was almost touching the neighbouring boat; he could boast of having made a narrow escape. However, his murderous opponent, instead of fleeing, having flailing his arms wildly while ranting away, came and sat on a bench by the cabin door, then rose and recommenced his gestures. Charles III of France claimed that behind every crime there is a woman, and, in judicial interrogations, always asked: ‘Is she present?’ The philosophical accuracy of this axiom was now demonstrated to us. A trapdoor rose and, from the depths of the pontoon-boat, a woman emerged, the probable cause of the quarrel. Was she young and pretty? The moon’s feeble light moon prevented me judging from a distance, and the singular oscillations, moreover, which she indulged in, prevented my distinguishing her features. Summoning to her aid all the saints of the Greek Orthodox calendar, she prostrated herself and then rose, only to prostrate herself again, executing the sign of the cross repeatedly in the Russian manner at unparalleled speed, and muttering prayers interspersed with cries and sobs — nothing could be stranger. One might have thought her an Aïssaoua (one of a Moroccan religious sect known for snake-charming, and dancing while in a trance) in training. The police official, whom the victim had gone to find, arrived at last and, after lengthy discussion, two soldiers in grey greatcoats led the culprit away. For a while we were able follow with our eyes, passing along the crest of the bank, in silhouette, the prisoner and the soldiers, who did not dare brutalise the recalcitrant, as he was a chinovnik (a minor government official).
We weighed anchor early in the morning. The Provornii’s paddles stirring the water with the assurance that dawn brings, it was not long before Nizhny Novgorod was in sight. It was one of those pearl-white, milky mornings in which it seems that objects appear through a silvery gauze; the sky colourless, but penetrated by a veiled sun, stretched above the greyish hills and the river’s flow like molten tin — Richard Parkes Bonington’s watercolours often feature like effects that one might believe beyond the resources of any painter, and which a born colourist alone could realise.
Nizhny-Novgorod
From Voyage pittoresque en Russie by Charles de Saint-Julien, 1853
Internet Archive
A vast flotilla of all kinds of boats covered the Volga, barely leaving room, in the centre of the river, for the passage of steamboats and other vessels. The host of tall masts was like a forest of debranched fir-trees, their straight lines scoring a background of all-embracing whiteness. The fresh dawn breeze set the brightly-striped ensigns at their summits flapping, accompanied by the squeaking of the gilded weather vanes at their tips. Some of these boats, bearing sacks of flour, were powdered white like millers. Others, on the contrary, displayed bows brightly painted in Veronese green, with salmon-coloured planking.
We arrived at the company landing-stage without accident and without sustaining damage accident, which seemed an astonishing thing, for though the river is almost as wide there as an arm of the sea, the river traffic is so great, and the numbers so large, that it seems impossible to navigate such chaos; but the rudders flick their tails, and the boats sail past each other with the alacrity of fish.
Nizhny Novgorod is aloft an eminence which, after the endless succession of plains we had just traversed, produced the effect on the eye of a serious mountain. The escarpment descends in a series of slopes to the quay brightened with vegetation, its steep zigzag bordered by brick ramparts showing a few remnants of plaster here and there, and similarly crenelated walls form the enclosure of the citadel, or Kremlin, to use the Russian word; a large square tower stands at the summit, while bulbous bell-towers, with gilded crosses protruding above the wall, witness to the presence of a church within the fortress.
Further down, wooden houses are scattered, and on the quay itself large red buildings with windows framed in white display their symmetrical lines. Their bright tone gives a cheerfulness and vigour to the foreground, and prevents the strictly regular architecture from seeming dull on the eye.
Near the landing stage was a riot of droshkys and telegas disputing their right to the passengers and their luggage. Ridding ourselves, not without some difficulty, of the isvochtchiks who surrounded us, we hoisted ourselves into a droshky, and set off in search of lodgings, which are not easy to obtain at the time of the fair. While following the quay, we passed improvised stalls from which tradesmen sell bread, ogourets, sausages, smoked-fish, cakes, watermelons, apples, and other such victuals to the populace. Soon our vehicle turned and began to climb a steep open track between two immense grassy embankments, for Nizhny Novgorod, much like Oran in the past before military genius filled its picturesque depths, is intersected by a deep ravine.
The Kremlin walls, and an avenue of trees serving as a promenade, crown the left ridge; a few houses line the slope, but soon weary of climbing this slope down which they seem to slide. After an ascent shortened by the impetuosity of the Russians horses, who can never keep to a moderate pace, we reached the summit of the plateau where a large square reveals a church at its centre, the green domes surmounted by gold crosses, and a cast-iron fountain in rather a poor style.
As we had asked to be taken to some hotel furthest from the field where the fair is held, in the hopes of finding lodgings more easily, our coachman halted in front of the hostelry at the corner of the square, on the side where the Kremlin stands. After a few moments wait, while a discussion took place, Smirnov, the owner, was kind enough to admit us, and a moujik came to collect our trunk.
My room was large, bright, and clean. It contained everything essential for the civilised traveller, except that the bed was furnished with a single sheet, and a mattress with the thickness of a slim pancake; but, in Russia, they profess an Asian indifference to where they sleep, an indifference which I share moreover, and the bed in Smirnov’s hotel was equal all one meets with elsewhere in Russia.
While waiting for lunch, of which we were much in need, since the provisions aboard the steamboat were diminishing rapidly, I gazed vaguely at the square, and my eyes chose to focus on the fountain, not to admire its architecture, which is, as I have said, in the poorest possible taste, but because of the interesting scenes of which a public fountain is necessarily the centre.
Water carriers obtained their supply here, and achieved it by plunging a little barrel on a long stick into the basin, dipping the mouth therein, repeatedly, with singular speed, though not without spilling half the contents. There were also prisoners of war dressed in old grey overcoats, who came to fetch water, guarded by two soldiers carrying rifles with fixed bayonets; and moujiks filling wooden containers wide at the bottom, narrow at the top, to supply the houses. However, I saw no women. The German fountain had attracted a whole collection of Gretchens, Nannerls, and Lottes, gossiping at its rim. In Russia, women, even of the lowest class, rarely emerge from their houses, and it is the men who perform most of the domestic labour.
After a fortifying lunch, served by waiters, Muslims perhaps, in black dress and white tie, whose English mode of dress formed a perfect contrast with their characteristically Tartar physiognomies, we had nothing more urgent to do than visit the fair, located at the end of the town, on a kind of beach, at the confluence of the Oka and the Volga. We had no need of a guide, since all the passers-by were headed in the same direction, and one only needed to ‘follow the crowd,’ so to speak, as the barkers invite you to do from the tops of their trestles.
At the foot of the hill, a small chapel attracted my attention. On the porch steps, with a mechanical salute similar to that of those wooden birds whose neck a mechanism lowers and raises, wretched and squalid beggars bowed to us, real human rags that some funereal rag-picker had chosen not to catch with his hook and toss into his basket; and a few nuns wearing a high hood of black velvet, and encased in a narrow sheath of serge, who shake a container in front of you in which previous donations of kopeks jingle, and who are found wherever an influx of the public offers hopes of a good return. Five or six old women completed the picture, who would have made the Sibyl of Panzoust (see Rabelais’ ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel: Book 3, Chapter XVII’) appear young and pretty.
A large quantity of little candles blazed away within, like a mass of goldsmith’s work, the vermeil plaques of the iconostasis being further lit by lamps — I entered, with some difficulty, the narrow enclosure which was obstructed by the faithful crossing themselves, arms swinging like dervishes — a stream of water, doubtless gifted with some miraculous property, filtering into a stone conch like a font leaning against the wall, seemed to be the particular attraction of the place.
The local droshkys and telegas, spun by, scoring the mud with deep ruts, and splashing the pedestrians at the side of the road. Sometimes a more elegant droshky held two women in showy attire, crinolines spread, painted and adorned like idols, smiling in order to display their teeth and sending right and left that errant gaze of the courtesan which resembles a net in which lust is caught — the Nizhny Novgorod fair attracts such birds of prey from their evil haunts in Russia, and even further afield. Boats brought cargo-loads; a special area was reserved for them. The ogre of lust desires its fleshy victims more or less fresh.
By one of those contrasts created by chance, that excellent former of antitheses, their speedy equipage often brushed against a peaceable chariot drawn by a little shaggy horse, bending its head beneath its colourful douga (the decorative wooden arch attached to the harness), and dragging about an entire patriarchal group, including the grandfather, the father, and the mother nursing an infant.
On that day, without counting all the others, the brandy-sellers made a fine profit. A number of ‘sots’, as the vulgar expression has it, festooned the boards of the sidewalk, or swayed about in the mud in the centre of the road. A few, even more inebriated, unable to walk unaided, staggered forward with a pair of friends for crutches. Some had livid, earthy faces, others were apoplectic, with bloodshot eyes, ‘crimsoned in the cooking’, as Master Alcofribas Nasier (Francois Rabelais’ anagram of his own name, and the pseudonym under which he published his first book, ‘Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes’) would say, according to their nature or their degree of intoxication — a young man, overcome by over-frequent libations of vodka (a liquor made from grain), had rolled from the sidewalk onto the embankment bank, among the piles of wood, bales, and heaps of rubbish; he fell and rose again, only to fall once more, laughing foolishly, and screaming inarticulately like an Indonesian Teriak or a Hashshashin in armed combat. Hands full of earth, face soiled with mud, clothes torn and stained, he crawled on all fours, sometimes regaining the crest of the embankment, sometimes tumbling down towards the river, into which he plunged halfway, without acknowledging the coldness of the water, or the risk of drowning — a death more unpleasant to a drunkard than any other! — There is a Russian saying with regard to glasses of vodka: ‘The first enters like a stake, the second swoops like a hawk, the rest flutter about like little birds.’ The fellow whose tumbles I describe must have contained a whole flight of them in his chest. However, it is not enjoyment the moujik demands of his drink, it is intoxication and forgetfulness — he swallows one glass after another until he falls as if struck by lightning, and nothing is more common than to encounter bodies stretched out on the pavements that one might take for corpses.
The dense crowd, ever more compacted, detained us for a while in front of a pretty church in which German rococo was joined, in the most bizarre manner, to the Byzantine style. From a red background, projected white ovals, volutes, chicory-leaves, capitals curled like cabbages, scrolled consoles, flower-vases, flambeaux, and other equally flamboyant fantasies, the whole surmounted by bulbous bell-towers of wholly Oriental appearance. It was as if the roof of a mosque had been added to a Jesuit church.
A few paces further on, tossed about amidst an unimaginable tumult of people and carriages, as if we were at an evening fireworks-display on the Champs-Elysées, we reached the head of the bridge which led to the fairground — committing to it held difficulties and perils. Happily, true travellers are like great captains — they pass everywhere, not with banner but with telescope in hand!
At the bridgehead, stood tall poles, like those Venetian standards we plant at our festivities, bearing every colour of flag, and emblazoned by extravagant fantasy. On some a well-intentioned brush had attempted a poorly executed representation of the Emperor and Empress; others were decorated with a double-headed eagle, Saint George brandishing his spear, Chinese dragons, leopards, unicorns, griffins and all the chimerical menagerie of the bestiaries. A slight breeze made them flutter, distorting in odd ways, as their folds chanced to fall, the images that they represented.
The bridge over the Oka was a boat-bridge floored with planks, and edged with boards to form sidewalks. The crowd filled the latter completely, while in the centre the carriages sped by at that pace which, in Russia, is never lessened, yet which never leads to an accident, thanks to the extreme skill of the coachmen, aided by the docility of the pedestrians they pass. The sound produced was akin to that made by the chariot of Salmoneus on his brazen bridge (Salmoneus, King of Elis, who aspired to be a god, drove his chariot over a brazen bridge so as to imitate Jupiter’s thunder and was struck by a thunderbolt).
On either side, the river was covered by an immense crowd of boats, and an inextricable jumble of gear. Perched on the high saddles of their little horses, the Cossacks in charge of policing the fair plodded gravely, announced from afar by their great spears, amidst the droshkys, telegas, carts of every kind, and passers-by of every gender. However, there was little or no human noise. Anywhere else, a vast murmur, a tumultuous thrumming like that of the sea, would have emerged from such a gathering; a veil of sound would have floated above that prodigious mass of individuals; but crowds composed of Russian elements are silent.
At the other end of the bridge were signs, painted in the wildest way, advertising acrobats, and pictures of natural phenomena; boa-constrictors, bearded women, giants, dwarves, strongmen, and triple-headed calves; to which their large inscriptions in Russian lettering granted a particularly exotic flavour.
Little booths selling crude trinkets, pieces of haberdashery, images of saints minimally priced, cakes and green apples, soured milk, beer, and kvass, rose to right and left of the boardwalks, presenting on their rear facade the ends of the beams which their builders had neglected to trim with the saw, and which made them resemble baskets whose ribs had not yet been fully added by the basket-maker.
A stall selling boots, felt slippers, and shoes struck me as an offering unique to the country. The latter were mostly neat women’s shoes in white felt, trimmed with pink or blue decorations, quite similar to those shoes that we deem suitable for evening-wear, thin shoes which ladies attending a ball clothe in satin so as to reach the carriage waiting for them at the foot of the hotel steps — the slippers would have fitted Cinderella alone.
The Nizhny Novgorod fairground is a complete town in itself. Its long streets intersect at right angles and lead to squares each with a fountain at the centre. The wooden houses that border them consist of a ground floor, a shop-front and store, and an overhanging floor above, supported on columns, where the merchant and his clerks sleep. These upper floors, and the pillars on which they rest, form a continuous covered gallery, fronting the windows and displays. In the event of rain, this provides temporary shelter for the goods on sale, while passers-by, freed from their carriages, can meditate on their choices, or satisfy their curiosity without risk, other than that of being struck by some stray elbow.
These streets occasionally offer a view of the bordering plain, and nothing is more curious than to see, beyond the fairground, groups of unharnessed carriages, with their half-wild horses tethered to the sides, their drivers asleep on some piece of cloth or coarse fur. The latter’s clothes are, unfortunately, more worn-out than picturesque, though not lacking a certain fierce character — and are dull in colour, except that here and there one sees a pink shirt — to paint these second-hand clothes stores, Siena and Cassel earth pigments, ochre, and bitumen would suffice — however, one could take advantage of those sleeveless jackets, fur coats, cords laced around the legs, esparto shoes, yellow-bearded heads and skinny little horses whose intelligent eyes gaze at you through long strands of their dishevelled manes. Adolphe Yvon has proved this, in beautiful charcoal-drawings enhanced with a few flakes of gouache.
A camp of this sort was occupied by Siberian fur-traders. Animal pelts, which had only received a summary treatment essential to their conservation, were heaped there on mats, pell-mell, the hair inside, without the slightest attempt at display. To the layman, they looked like piles of rabbit-skins. The merchants looked little better than the merchandise, and yet some of their wares sold for immense sums. The beaver-skins from the Arctic Circle, the sables, and Siberian blue-fox pelts, reach staggering prices that exceed those of Western luxuries; a blue-fox fur coat cost ten thousand rubles (forty thousand francs); a beaver collar with white hairs flecking the brown fur, a thousand rubles. I own a little cap of this kind, for which one would not give fifteen francs in Paris, yet which earned me some esteem in Russia where people know something about fur; it cost seventy-five silver rubles. A thousand little details imperceptible to our eyes augment or decrease the value of a pelt. If the animal was killed during the chilly months, while clad in its winter coat, the price is greater; the pelt will be warmer, allowing one to endure the intense cold; and the closer the creature’s origin to the Arctic latitudes the more sought after is its fur; the furs from temperate regions prove inadequate when the thermometer drops to more than ten degrees Réaumur below zero; they soon lose the warmth with which they were imbued in one’s room.
A characteristic industry in Russia is that of the luggage-maker — imitation of the West yields wholly to Asian taste in the manufacture of travelling-trunks; there are many stores selling such goods in Nizhni Novgorod, and these were where I made my longest stays. Nothing is more charming than those chests of all sizes, painted in bright colours, with ornamentation in silver and gold veneer, plated in blue, green or red giving off metallic reflections, decorated symmetrically with gilded nails, crisscrossed with straps in white or fawn leather, reinforced with steel or copper corner-pieces, and closed by means of locks of naive complexity; such as we imagine the trunks borne behind some Emir or Sultana on their journey.
When travelling, these chests are wrapped in strong canvas covers from which they are stripped on arrival; they then serve as chests of drawers, no doubt to the great regret of their owners, who would prefer civilised mahogany to such charming yet barbarous luxury. I am filled with remorse for not having purchased a certain box coloured and varnished like the mirror of an Indian princess. But I would have been ashamed to put my miserable clothes in a case destined for cashmere and brocades.
Apart from this, the Nizhni-Novgorod fair above all displays what the trade calls ‘articles from Paris’. This flatters our country, but is tedious from the point of view of the picturesque. One hopes to find, after travelling two thousand miles, something other than the offerings on the stalls of a Parisian market — such trivialities, in all their variety, are much admired, but that however is not the serious side of the fair; there, enormous trade deals are concluded, involving a cargo of ten thousand bricks of tea, for example, or half a dozen shiploads of grain worth several million, or even a number of pelts, deliverable at such and such a rate, sight unseen. Thus, the major part of the commercial activity is invisible, so to speak. Tea houses, provided with a fount for Muslim ablutions, serve as a meeting place and trading exchange for the contracting parties. The samovar whistles as it emits its jets of steam; moujiks, dressed in red or white shirts, carry trays about loaded with glasses of tea; merchants with broad beards, in blue kaftans, seated opposite Asians wearing black Astrakhan lambskin hats, imbibe saucerfuls of the hot infusion, a small piece of sugar placed between their teeth, perfectly phlegmatically, as if, these seemingly casual utterances did not involve immense matters. Despite the diversity of origin and language of the interlocutors, Russian is the only language spoken when transacting business; and, above the vague whisper of conversation, float, perceptible even to the foreigner, the sacramental words: roubli cerebrom! (silver rubles!).
The varied types among the crowd excited my curiosity more than my viewing the stalls. Tartars abounded, with their high cheekbones, slanted eyes, broad concave noses shaped like a half-moon, thick lips, yellow complexions shading to green about their clean-shaven temples, small hand-stitched Indian-cotton skullcaps placed on the summits of their craniums, brown kaftans, and metal-plated belts.
The Persians were easily distinguishable by the elongated ovals of their faces, their large hooked noses, bright eyes, black bushy beards, and noble Oriental physiognomies. They would have been recognisable, even if their conical lambskin hats, striped silk robes, and cashmere belts had not caught my attention. Armenians, dressed in narrow tunics with hanging sleeves; Circassians, thin-waisted as wasps, and wearing sheepskin hats shaped like a baby bearskin, stood out against the backcloth of the crowd; but the folk my eyes eagerly sought, especially on arriving at the particular area where tea is sold, were the Chinese —my hopes revived on seeing shops with curved roofs and trellis-work carved in an almost-Greek pattern, whose acroteria bore smiling Oriental figures, and which led one to imagine one had been transported, by a wave of the wand, to a city of the Celestial Empire. But on the threshold of stores, behind the counters, I saw none but honest Russian faces. Not a single braided pigtail, not a single head with slanted eyes, and eyebrows shaped like circumflexes; not a single lid-like hat, not one blue or purple silk robe — not a Chinaman in sight! — I know not what had persuaded me of the idea, but I had counted on meeting a certain number of these exotic figures in Nizhny Novgorod, figures which exist for us only on silk screens or porcelain vases. Without reflecting on the enormous distance between Nizhny Novgorod and the Chinese border, I had believed, like a true foreigner, that merchants of the Middle Kingdom themselves brought tea to the fair. The well-known repugnance Chinese people feel towards leaving their country and mingling with the barbarians, should have kept me on guard against such a chimera; but it was so deeply embedded in my mind that, despite the testimony of my own eyes, I enquired about the absence of the Chinese on several occasions. For three years none had visited, and again that year only a single merchant had arrived, who, however, to escape unwelcome curiosity, had borrowed European clothing. One was expected at the next fair; but the matter was uncertain. These comments were kindly offered to me by a tradesman from whose stall I wished to buy some tea; but on learning that I was a French author, he forced me to accept some pekoe (black tea, composed of leaf buds and the two youngest leaves) into which he mixed a handful or two of white-tipped flowers, and made me the gift, moreover, of a brick or tablet of tea bearing on one side a label in Chinese characters, and on the other the red wax stamp of the Kyakhta customs, the last Russian outpost before the border (now the Mongolian border; the Treaty of Kyakhta, in 1727, confirmed the border and regulated trade between Russia and China). This brick contained a huge quantity of leaves compressed and reduced to the smallest volume; it looked like a bronze or green porphyry plaque. This is the tea that the Manchus (often then referred to as Tartars, though a distinct people) drink during their journeys across the steppes, and of which they make a kind of soup with butter (cf. Tibetan butter tea, ‘bho ja’ or ‘po cha’ traditionally made by churning black tea, water, salt, and yak-butter made from the milk of the female yak or ‘dri’) which Abbé Huc (Évariste Régis Huc, author of ‘Souvenirs d’un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet, et la Chine’, 1850) describes in his interesting account.
Not far from the Chinese quarter — as it is called in Nizhny Novgorod — are found the shops where Oriental goods are sold. One cannot imagine the elegance and the majesty of these effendis (Turkish for a lord or master) in silk kaftans, their cashmere belts bristling with daggers who, with the most phlegmatic disdain, sit enthroned on their couches in the middle of a spread of brocades, velvets, silks, flowered fabrics, gauzes laminated with gold or silver, Persian carpets, scarlet sheets doubtless embroidered by the fingers of captives now perished, pipe-stems, steel hookahs from Khorasan, amber rosaries, bottles of essence, seats inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and slippers decorated with gold, fit to send a colourist into transports of ecstasy.
I scarcely know how to lead into what I now have to say, and yet if this detail is omitted, the picture of the fair would be incomplete. For some time, I had been aware of, without being able to divine their use, whitewashed turrets, here and there, with a kind of vent closed by an open grille or grating. The open doors of each of these turrets revealed a spiral staircase descending into the earth. Were these guardhouses, underground-warehouses, passageways to shorten some route? It was impossible to guess. Finally, I ventured, without opposition, onto one of the staircases, and having descended the spiral to its end I saw an immense paved and vaulted corridor extending beyond my sight; along one of the walls was a row of doorless cells. In some, reserved for Muslim ablutions, gourds were suspended. Air and daylight came through the vents I mentioned. Each turret had a valve that when opened, flooded the underground space, and purified it, by a copious flow of water — this gigantic and unusual construction, perhaps without example elsewhere, has avoided more than one cholera and plague outbreak, on a site where every year, for six weeks, more than four hundred thousand people are encamped; it is due to a Spanish engineer, educated in Madrid and Paris, Augustín de Bethencourt.
We were beginning to tire of wandering these endless streets, lined with stalls and shops and, feeling in need of food, we yielded to the invitation addressed to us by the restaurant-signs of Nikita, Le Collot, and Le Véfour de Nizhny on the far side of the river.
Moujiks, standing on the wheel-axles which had served to transport long pieces of timber, crossed the bridge at full speed, trying to overtake each other. What confidence! What boldness! What grace! The speed of their vehicles made their shirts flutter like chlamydes (the chlamys was a sleeveless cloak, in ancient Greece); firmly rooted, arms outstretched, hair in the wind, they had the air of Greek heroes — it looked like a chariot race in the games at Olympia.
Nikita’s restaurant is a wooden house with large windows, behind which can be seen the broad leaves of hothouse plants, which every establishment in the least fashionable must display. The Russians love greenery.
Waiters in English dress served us sterlet soup, beef-steaks on a bed of horseradish, a ragout of grouse in a rich sauce (the presence of grouse on the menu was inevitable!), a chicken chasseur of which Modeste Magny (owner of the Restaurant Magny in Paris, which hosted the ‘Magny dinners’ at which writers gathered) would not have approved, a jelly set somewhat too firmly in isinglass, pine nuts with ice-cream, of exquisite delicacy, washed down with chilled seltzer water, and a Bordeaux wine much like a Lafite. But what gave me the greatest pleasure was being able to light a cigar, since it is expressly forbidden to smoke inside the grounds of the fair, and no one tolerates a flame other than those of the night lights burning in front of the sacred icons with which each shop is decorated.
Our dinner over, we returned to the fair, seeking some further novelty. Despite the heat, dust, and tedium, a feeling similar to that which obtains at an Opéra ball prevented us from returning to the hotel. After traversing a few streets, we arrived at a square with a church on one side a mosque on the other — the church was surmounted by a cross, the mosque by a crescent, and the two symbols glowed peacefully in the pure evening air, gilded by a ray of sunlight, with impartiality, or indifference which is perhaps the same thing. The two religions seem to maintain good and neighbourly relations, since religious tolerance is widespread in this Russia which counts even idolaters and fire-worshipping Parsees among its subjects.
The door of the Orthodox church was open, and evening prayers were being said; it was not easy to gain access; a compact crowd filled the interior as liquid fills a vase; however, with a few taps on the shoulder we managed to make our way through. The interior of the church looked like a furnace of gold; forests of candles and constellations of chandeliers made the gilding of the iconostases blaze, whose metallic reflections mingled with shafts of light, in sudden flashes, to create a dazzling phosphorescence. All these lights contributed to a dense red mist at the summit of the dome, to which mounted the chants of the Greek liturgy, uttered by the priests, and repeated in a low voice by their attendants. The inclinations of their heads required by the rite, caused the crowd of believers to bow and un-bow at the prescribed times, with a degree of unity similar to that displayed during a well-executed military manoeuvre.
After a few minutes we left, feeling sweat already beading our bodies as in a steam bath. I would have liked to visit the mosque as well, but it was not the hour of Allah. How to spend the rest of the evening? A droshky passed; we hailed the driver, we boarded, and, without asking our destination, he galloped on. It is ever the way with the isvochtchiks, who rarely seek to know where they should take the traveller. A na leva, or a na prava sets them straight if necessary. This fellow, after crossing the bridge which leads to Nikita’s restaurant, began to speed over fields, along vague tracks indicated only by ruts filled with mud. We allowed him to do so, thinking they must eventually lead somewhere. Indeed, our intelligent coachman had decided for himself that noblemen of our sort, at that hour of the evening, would seek no other place than that reserved for tea-houses, music, and pleasure.
Night was beginning to fall. We were crossing, at frightening speed, a bumpy terrain, pitted with pools of water, in a twilight through which the skeletons of rudimentary wooden constructions displayed only their outlines. Finally, lights began to prick the darkness as reddish dots; brassy sounds reached our ears, betraying the presence of an orchestra or two: we had arrived — from houses with open doors, their windows alight, came the strumming of balalaikas interspersed with guttural screams; while strange silhouettes filled the windows. On the narrow, boarded pavements, drunken shapes staggered, or extravagant costumes alternately drowned in shadow or struck by light passed. If ancient Cythera (the island of Venus-Aphrodite, modern Kythira) was bathed by the azure waves of the Mediterranean, this Muscovite Cythera was girded with a belt of mud which we did not wish to give ourselves the trouble of untying.
At every crossroad, the waters, in the absence of drainage, flowed together and formed deep cesspools, into which carriage-wheels, stirring the foul miasma, sank to their hubs. Fearful of falling into such a quagmire amidst an embarrassment of half-submerged droshkys, we ordered our isvochtchik to turn around and drive us back to the Smirnov Hotel. From his astonished look, we understood that he considered us mediocre, and ridiculously cautious, companions. He obeyed, however, and we finished our evening strolling through the lanes surrounding the Kremlin. The moon had risen, and sometimes a silver ray betrayed amidst the shadows of the trees a furtive couple embracing, or walking slowly hand in hand — there, lust had revealed itself; here, love.
The next day, we devoted our day to visiting the upper levels of Nizhny Novgorod. From a belvedere, situated at the outer corner of the Kremlin, and overlooking a beautiful public garden, spreading across the back of the hill in masses of fresh vegetation bordering winding alleys of yellow sand, we discovered a prodigious view, a limitless panorama. Across gently undulating plains, taking on, in the distance, lilac, pearl-grey, and steel-blue tones, the Volga unfolded in broad curves, now dull, now bright, depending on whether it reflected the azure of the sky or was darkened by the shadow of a cloud. On the near bank of the river, I could scarcely distinguish the handful of houses, seeming to the eye as small as those of the toy villages manufactured and boxed in Nuremberg. The vessels at anchor beside the shore looked like the Lilliputian fleet. All was lost, erased, drowned in a serene, azure, yet somehow sad immensity, which made me think of the infinite ocean — it was a truly Russian view, from there to the far horizon.
There was nothing left for me to see, and I took the road to Moscow, free at last of the obsession which had forced me to undertake my lengthy peregrination. No longer would the demon of travel whisper in my ear: ‘Nizhny Novgorod!’
The End of Part X, and of Gautier’s ‘Travels in Russia’