Petersburg

“ Isaac's Church.—Russian Bells.—Famous Equestrian Statue.—The Admiralty.—Architecture.
St. Petersburg is a city of sumptuous distances. There are no blind alleys, no narrow lanes, no rag-fair in the imperial capital. The streets are broad, the open squares vast in size, the avenues interminable, the river wide and rapid, and the lines of architecture seemingly endless, while the whole is as level as a chess-board. One instinctively desires to reach a spot whence to overlook this broad area peopled by more than eight hundred thousand souls. ”

“ Saint Petersburg, as it stands on its millions of wooden piles, the liquid, rapidly-flowing Neva, the moving, living crowd of uniform-clad inhabitants—men, women, and children, coaches, droskies, and horses, infantry and cavalry, Cossacks of the Don on their ragged ponies, and skeleton-looking guards with their glittering halberds at every corner. ”

“ Petersburg is a fine city, and when you see how the sun glitters on all the ice palaces, and how the Russians, wrapped in their bearskins, drive furiously through the streets in their sleighs with four reindeers abreast, you feel as if your heart was laughing within you with delight, and you must go into the nearest shop to take a good glass of gin. ”

“ This tall spire, shooting upwards like a lance, is the crowning glory of Russia's great State prison, and Russia's Imperial tomb of kings, the grim fortress of Petropavlovsk. It is a familiar sight to Petersburg's populace, as they pass to and fro across the Troitski Bridge, or linger in the spacious Boulevard-park, which is never empty, and through which the dwellers on the Petersburg side go in and out to their homes. ”

“ Petersburg under snow is the most picturesque city in the world. The town is at its best when a high wind has come from the north to blow all the snow from the cupola of St. Isaac’s, leaving that golden dome, in all its brilliancy, to gleam and flash over the whitened sepulchre of a city.
In winter the Neva is a broad, silent thoroughfare between the Vassili Ostrow and the Admiralty Gardens. In the winter the pestilential rattle of the cobble-stones in the side streets is at last silent, and the merry music of sleigh-bells takes its place. ”

“ At first sight this city did not strike me as so very much different from New York or London, and meeting, as I did, so many refined gentlemen in high places, I had come to think St. Petersburg was after all very much like Paris, or Berlin, or Rome. But it is different, and the difference makes itself subtly felt, just as the air in some coast towns of Britain is relaxing, and in others bracing. In these towns a man doesn’t notice the effect at first, but later on he begins to feel it, and so it is here in St. Petersburg. Great numbers of workmen pass down our street. ”

“ Petersburg. The traveler who first sees the city under a summer sun is always struck with amazement. Its public places are so vast, its monuments so numerous and imposing, its quays so magnificent, and its edifices, public and private, so enormous, and constructed apparently of materials so massive and enduring, that he is ready to pronounce it the most magnificent city upon earth. ”

“ Yes, Russia was a hell upon earth; and Petersburg was the centre and epitome of it, I said in my soul, as I loitered on one of the bridges that afternoon, and looked on the swift flowing river, on the splendid buildings, gleaming white, as the gilded cupolas and spires of the churches gleamed fire red, under the brilliant sunshine. A fair city outwardly, a whited sepulchre raised over a charnel-house. A city of terror, wherein every man is an Ishmael, knowing—or suspecting—that every other man’s hand is against him. ”

“ All the stoves on earth cannot make a St Petersburg winter endurable by any thing but a fish or a marmozet; while Moscow offered a glorious climate, unlimited space for a capital city, a fertile country, a fine landscape, a central position for the head of an empire, with Europe in its front, and Asia at its back.
The choice of St Petersburg has probably cramped the growth of Russian power. Even Poland has only given her a desert, a kingdom scantily cultivated, scantily peopled, discontented serfdom and a broken frontier. Yet all may be for the best. ”

“ Petersburg he must go, the capital of talent, of aspiration, of hope, where are published the magazines so eagerly devoured in the days gone by,—to the capital, where dwell Zhukofsky and Pushkin. There his talents shall be recognized, and an appreciating world shall receive the new-comer with open arms. The arms of the world do indeed open on his arrival at St. Petersburg, but it is the cold embrace of want, of friendlessness. In St. Petersburg begins for him a struggle for existence which well-nigh ruins him forever. Bread is not easily earned. ”

“ Petersburg is the finest city in the world; neither London nor Paris nor any other European capital which I have visited has sufficient pretensions to enter into comparison with it in respect to beauty and grandeur. Many of the streets are miles in length, as straight as an arrow and adorned with the most superb edifices. ”

“ Whoever has seen our Metropolitan City only under the balmy atmosphere of a soft May-day, or under the smoky sultriness of a tropic August—who has known our encompassing rivers only as green arms of sparkling water, laughing under the shadows of the banks, and of shipping—would never have known the Petersburg of a place into which our passing winter has transformed the whole. ”

“ Petersburg, on the southern shores of the bay of Cronstadt. It is now the St. Cloud of Russia, the favorite rural retreat of the Russian tzars. This palace, which has been the slow growth of ages, consists of a pile of buildings of every conceivable order of architecture. It is furnished with all the appliances of luxury which Europe or Asia can produce. The pleasure grounds, in their artistic embellishments, are perhaps unsurpassed by any others in the world. Fountains, groves, lawns, lakes, cascades and statues, bewilder and delight the spectator. ”

“ Petersburg, with its aspect more imposing than that of any other city on the globe, but bearing in its bosom the elements of its own destruction, the moment it is freed from the control of the iron will, which created and now maintains it:—a fitting type and representative of the Russian Empire.
The whole enterprise of founding and maintaining St. Petersburg was and is a struggle against nature. The soil is a marsh so deep and spongy that a solid foundation can be attained only by constructing a subterranean scaffolding of piles. ”

“ Petersburg, without being onerous or vexatious, are quite as good as those of any large city in Europe. When men are deprived of their political liberties, the least that can be done for them is to let them enjoy as much municipal freedom as may be consistent with public peace. I should never have suspected, from any thing I saw in the city or neighborhood of St. Petersburg, that I was within the limits of an absolute despotism. If one desires to satisfy himself on this point he must visit the interior. ”

“ Petersburg, all was logical, conservative, Christian and anarchic. Russia had nothing in common with any ancient or modern world that history knew; she had been the oldest source of all civilisation in Europe, and had kept none for herself; neither Europe nor Asia had ever known such a phase, which seemed to fall into no line of evolution whatever, and was as wonderful to the student of Gothic architecture in the twelfth century, as to the student of the dynamo in the twentieth. ”

“ No other man—one is almost tempted to say, no sane man—would have ventured to erect a capital city in such an impossible place and on the very frontier of his dominions. That Peter not only dared, but succeeded, though at an almost immeasurable cost, makes the creation of the great metropolis, St. Petersburg, one of the most remarkable events of history.
It was the chances of the great northern war that led Peter to St. Petersburg. When he first threw down the gauntlet to Sweden he turned his eyes on Livonia—on Narva and Riga. ”

“ Petersburg is on a colossal scale. The streets, the squares, the palaces, the public buildings, the churches, whatever may be their defects, have at least the attribute of greatness, and seem to have been designed for the countless generations to come, rather than for the practical wants of the present inhabitants. In this respect the city well represents the Empire of which it is the capital. Even the private houses are built in enormous blocks and divided into many separate apartments. Those built for the working classes sometimes contain, I am assured, more than a thousand inhabitants. ”

“ Petersburg was so different from any to be found in Western Europe, that during the few days I awaited the arrival of the man to whom I was to deliver the jewels, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
In the daytime, perhaps the place which has most attraction for the foreigner is the Nevskoi Prospekt. It is the principal thoroughfare, a fine broad street four versts long, with imposing houses and handsome shops, the favourite promenade of the haut ton. ”

“ RUSSIAN AND FINN.
The best streets of St. Petersburg resemble on an inferior scale the best parts of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Nothing in the architecture conveys any idea of national taste except the glittering cupolas of the churches, the showy colors of the houses, and the vast extent and ornamentation of the palaces. The general aspect of the city is that of immense level space. ”

“ Petersburg, though sometimes decried as a city of shams, is certainly not surpassed in the way of show by any capital in Europe. As to natural situation she may be said to be at once fortunate and infelicitous: the flatness of the land is not redeemed by fertility, the monotony of the panorama is not broken by mountains; the city rides as a raft upon the waters, so heavily freighted as to run the risk of sinking. And yet I know of no capital more imposing when taken from the strong points of view. ”

“ Petersburg took me back to the times of Agamemnon, partly through the grandeur of the buildings and partly through the popular garb, which reminded me of the dress of antiquity.
Though I have just spoken of moonlight, I was unable to enjoy it at the time of my arrival, for in the month of July there is not a single hour of actual darkness in St. Petersburg. The sun sets at about half-past ten, and it is merely dusk until twilight, which begins half an hour after midnight, so that one can always see plainly. I have often supped at eleven o'clock by daylight. ”

“ Later, our officers began to return from foreign service to Moscow. Men who had served in former days with my father in the Guards and had taken a glorious part in the fierce contest of the immediate past, were often at our house; and to them it was a relief from their toils and dangers to tell them over again. That was indeed the most brilliant epoch in the history of Petersburg: the consciousness of power breathed new life into Russia; business and care were, so to speak, put off till the sober morrow, and all the world was determined to make merry to-day and celebrate the victory. ”

“ Petersburg are for the most part only of brick and stucco. That this assemblage of all that is splendid in the city gives it at first sight a magnificent ensemble, I do not deny; but, like everything Russian, the showy [52] façade only hides what is mean behind. In the same tableau we see the Admiralty, on a line with which is the Winter Palace itself, facing the War-office; in the intermediate space stands the Alexander Column, with the bronze angel on the top, whose head is bowed in adoration, and who bears a golden cross in his arms. ”

“ Petersburg will not long exist, and that evil will befal it. Perhaps they feel that the myriads whose clay has long ere this mingled with the morasses into which they were thrown, still cry for vengeance unto Heaven, and that they will be heard at last.
When I was on the road to Warsaw, I saw the large army that Russia was sending through Poland to the south and the Principalities; as nearly as I could calculate there were about sixty thousand men, chiefly infantry of the line, in three divisions, perhaps at the distance of fifty versts apart. ”

“ The artificiality of St Petersburg, founded in 1703, is quite different in kind from the artificiality of—shall we say, Karlsruhe, founded in 1715—quite apart from the impossibility of drawing comparisons in point of size between the Duchy of Baden and the Empire of Russia. Petrograd, considered both historically and economically, is a town colony on a gigantic scale, deliberately set down "on the banks of the desolate waters"—so run the words of Pushkin, the greatest of Russian poets, who sang the praises of the mighty founder of the Empire. ”

“ Petersburg has always been famed for its gossiping propensities, and in no place in the whole world do the most incomprehensible rumours start and flourish108 with the rapidity that they do in the Russian capital. What the newspapers are forbidden to mention is told by one person to another, whispered from one ear to another and discussed everywhere, in clubs, drawing rooms, restaurants, in the houses of the proudest aristocrats as well as in the dwellings of the humblest citizens. ”

“ Petersburg is dreary enough; long wastes of ground stretching far away—straight roads without hedges or ditches—clumps of trees here and there—savage-looking dens, and as savage-looking men—rude hovels not fit for pigs to stop in—women not half so clean as the pigs in Mr. Bendall’s styes—and rough old chaps, with beards so rough, hard, and bristly, that you might make shoe-brushes of them. These are the characteristics of the Russian peasantry, and when, therefore, we talk of bears, we [93] talk of gentlemen—polite, generous but determined, and not very ceremonious gentlemen ”