The Land of Thor

CHAPTER X.

THE EMPEROR’S BEAR-HUNT

The present emperor, Alexander III., is more distinguished for his liberal views respecting the rights of his subjects than for his military proclivities. In private life he is much beloved, and is said to be a man of very genial social qualities. His predominating passion in this relation is a love of hunting. I have been told that he is especially great on bears. With all your experience of this manly pastime in America, I doubt if you can form any conception of the bear-hunts in which the Autocrat of all the Russias has distinguished himself. Any body with nerve enough can kill a grizzly, but it requires both nerve and money to kill bears of any kind in the genuine autocratic style. By an imperial ukase it has been ordered that when any of the peasants or serfs discover a bear within twenty versts of the Moscow and St. Petersburg Railway, they must make known the fact to the proprietor of the estate, whose duty it is to communicate official information of the discovery to the corresponding secretary of the Czar. With becoming humility the secretary announces the tidings to his royal master, who directs him to advise the distant party that his majesty is much pleased, and will avail himself of his earliest leisure to proceed to the scene of action. In the mean time the entire available force of the estate is set to work to watch the bear, and from three to five hundred men, armed with cudgels, tin pans, old kettles, drums, etc., are stationed in a circle around him. Dogs also are employed upon this important service. The advance trains, under the direction of the master hunter, having deposited their stores of wines, cordials, and provisions, and telegraphic communications being transmitted to head-quarters from time to time, it is at length privately announced that his imperial majesty has condescended to honor the place with his presence, and, should the saints not prove averse, will be there with his royal party at the hour and on the day specified in the imperial dispatch. The grand convoy is then put upon the track; dispatches are transmitted to all the stations; officers, soldiers, and guards are required to be in attendance to do honor to their sovereign master – privately, of course, as this is simply an unofficial affair which nobody is supposed to know any thing about. The emperor, having selected his chosen few – that is to say, half a dozen princes, a dozen dukes, a score or two of counts and barons – all fine fellows and genuine bloods – proceeds unostentatiously to the dépôt in his hunting-carriage (a simple little affair, manufactured at a cost of only forty thousand rubles or so), where he is astonished to see a large concourse of admiring subjects, gayly interspersed with soldiers, all accidentally gathered there to see him off. Now hats are removed, bows are made, suppressed murmurs of delight run through the crowd; the locomotive whizzes and fizzes with impatience; bells are rung, arms are grounded; the princes, dukes, and barons – jolly fellows as they are – laugh and joke just like common people; bells ring again and whistles blow; a signal is made, and the Autocrat of all the Russias is off on his bear-hunt!

In an hour, or two or three hours, as the case may be, the royal hunters arrive at the destined station. Should the public business be pressing, it is not improbable the emperor, availing himself of the conveniences provided for him by Winans and Co., in whose magnificent present of a railway carriage he travels, has in the mean time dispatched a fleet of vessels to Finland, ten or a dozen extra regiments of Cossacks to Warsaw, closed upon terms for a loan of fifty millions, banished various objectionable parties to the deserts of Siberia, and partaken of a game or two of whist with his camarilla.

But now the important affair of the day is at hand – the bear – the terrible black bear, which every body is fully armed and equipped to kill, but which every body knows by instinct is going to be killed by the emperor, because of his majesty’s superior skill and courage on trying occasions of this sort. What a blessing it is to possess such steadiness of nerve! I would not hesitate one moment to attack the most ferocious grizzly in existence if I felt half as much confidence in my ability to kill it. But the carriages are waiting; the horses are prancing; the hunters are blowing their bugles; the royal party are mounting on horseback or in their carriages, as best may suit their taste, and the signal is given! A salute is fired by the Guard, huzzas ring through the air, and the Czar of all the Russias is fairly off on his hunt. Trees fly by; desert patches of ground whirl from under; versts are as nothing to these spirited steeds and their spirited masters, and in an hour or so the grand scene of action is reached. Here couriers stand ready to conduct the imperial hunters into the very jaws of death. The noble proprietor himself, bareheaded, greets the royal pageant; the serfs bow down in Oriental fashion; the dashing young Czar touches his hunting-cap in military style and waves his hand gallantly to the ladies of the household, who are peeping at him from their carriages in the distance. Once more the bugle is sounded, and away they dash – knights, nobles, and all – the handsome and gallant Czar leading the way by several lengths. Soon the terrific cry is heard – “Halt! the bear! the bear! Halt!” Shut your eyes, reader, for you never can stand such a sight as that – a full-grown black bear, not two hundred yards off, in the middle of an open space, surrounded by five hundred men hidden behind trees and driving him back from every point where he attempts to escape. You don’t see the men, but you hear them shouting and banging upon their pots, pans, and kettles. Now just open one eye and see the emperor dismount from his famous charger, and deliver the rein to a dozen domestics, deliberately cock his rifle, and fearlessly get behind the nearest tree within the range of the bear. By this time you perceive that Bruin is dancing a pas seul on his hind legs, utterly confounded with the noises around him. Shut your eyes again, for the emperor is taking his royal aim, and will presently crack away with his royal rifle. Hist! triggers are clicking around you in every direction, but you needn’t be the least afraid, for, although the bear is covered by a reserve of forty rifles, not one of the hunters has nerve enough to shoot unless officially authorized or personally desirous of visiting the silver-mines of Siberia. Crack! thug! The smoke clears away. By Jove! his imperial majesty has done it cleverly; hit the brute plumb on the os frontis, or through the heart, it makes no difference which. Down drops Bruin, kicking and tearing up the earth at a dreadful rate; cheers rend the welkin; pots, pans, and kettles are banged. High above all rises the stern voice of the autocrat, calling for another rifle, which is immediately handed to him. Humanity requires that he should at once put an end to the poor animal’s sufferings, and he does it with his accustomed skill.

Now the bear having kicked his last, an intrepid hunter charges up to the spot on horseback, whirls around it two or three times, carefully examines the body with an opera-glass, returns, and, approaching the royal presence with uncovered head, delivers himself according to this formula: “May it please your most gallant and imperial majesty, THE BEAR IS DEAD!” The emperor sometimes responds, “Is he?” but usually contents himself by waving his hand in an indifferent manner, puffing his cigar, and calling for his horse. Sixteen grooms immediately rush forward with his majesty’s horse; and, being still young and vigorous, he mounts without difficulty, unaided except by Master of Stirrups. Next he draws an ivory-handled revolver – a present from Colt, of New York – and, dashing fearlessly upon the bear, fires six shots into the dead body; upon which he coolly dismounts, and pulling forth from the breast of his hunting-coat an Arkansas bowie-knife – a present from the poet Albert Pike, of Little Rock – plunges that dangerous weapon into the bowels of the dead bear; then rising to his full height, with a dark and stern countenance, he holds the blood-dripping blade high in the air, so that all may see it, and utters one wild stentorian and terrific shout, “Harasho! harasho!” signifying in English, “Good! very well!” The cry is caught up by the princes and nobles, who, with uncovered heads, now crowd around their gallant emperor, and waving their hats, likewise shout “Harasho! harasho!” – “Good! very well!” Then the five hundred peasants rush in with their tin pans, kettles, and drums, and amid the most amazing din catch up the inspiring strain, and deafen every ear with their wild shouts of “Harasho! harasho!” – “Good! very well!” Upon which the emperor, rapidly mounting, places a finger in each ear, and, still puffing his cigar, rides triumphantly away.

The bear is hastily gutted and dressed with flowers. When all is ready the royal party return to the railroad dépôt in a long procession, headed by his majesty, and brought up in the rear by the dead body of Bruin borne on poles by six-and-twenty powerful serfs. Refreshments in the mean time have been administered to every body of high and low degree, and by the time they reach the dépôt there are but two sober individuals in the entire procession – his royal majesty and the bear. Farther refreshments are administered all round during the journey back to St. Petersburg, and, notwithstanding he is rigidly prohibited by his physician from the use of stimulating beverages, it is supposed that a reaction has now taken place, which renders necessary a modification of the medical ukase. At all events, I am told the bear is sometimes the only really steady member of the party by the time the imperial pageant reaches the palace. When the usual ceremonies of congratulation are over, a merry dance winds up the evening. After this the company disperses to prayer and slumber, and thus ends the great bear-hunt of his majesty the Autocrat of all the Russias.

CHAPTER XI.

RUSSIAN HUMOR

The Russians have little or no humor, though they are not deficient in a certain grotesque savagery bordering on the humorous. There is something fearfully vicious in the royal freaks of fancy of which Russian history furnishes us so many examples. We read with a shudder of the facetious compliment paid to the Italian architect by Ivan the Terrible, who caused the poor man’s eyes to be put out that he might never see to build another church so beautiful as that of St. Basil. We can not but smile at the grim humor of Peter the Great, who, upon seeing a crowd of men with wigs and gowns at Westminster Hall, and being informed that they were lawyers, observed that he had but two in his whole empire, and he believed he would hang one of them as soon as he got home. A still more striking though less ghastly freak of fancy was that perpetrated by the Empress Anne of Courland, who, on the occasion of the marriage of her favorite buffoon, Galitzin, caused a palace of ice to be built, with a bed of the same material, in which she compelled the happy pair to pass their wedding night. The Empress Catharine II., a Pomeranian by birth, but thoroughly Russian in her morals, possessed a more ardent temperament. What time she did not spend in gratifying her ambition by slaughtering men, she spent in loving them:

“For, though she would widow all

Nations, she liked man as an individual.”

She never dismissed an old admirer until she had secured several new ones, and generally consoled those who had served her by a present of twenty or thirty thousand serfs. On the death of Lanskoi, it is recorded of her that “she gave herself up to the most poignant grief, and remained three months without going out of her palace of Czarsko Selo,” thus perpetrating a very curious practical satire upon the holiest of human affections. Her grenadier lover Potemkin, according to the character given of him by the Count Ségur, was little better than a gigantic and savage buffoon – licentious and superstitious, bold and timid by turns – sometimes desiring to be King of Poland, at others a bishop or a monk. Of him we read that “he put out an eye to free it from a blemish which diminished his beauty. Banished by his rival, he ran to meet death in battle, and returned with glory.” Another pleasant little jest was that perpetrated by Suwarrow, who, after the bloody battle of Tourtourskaya, announced the result to his mistress in an epigram of two doggerel lines. This was the terrible warrior who used to sleep almost naked in a room of suffocating heat, and rush out to review his troops in a linen jacket, with the thermometer of Reaumur ten degrees below freezing point. Of the Emperor Paul, the son of Catharine, we read that he issued a ukase against the use of shoe-strings and round hats; caused all the watch-boxes, gates, and bridges throughout the empire to be painted in the most glaring and fantastic colors, and passed a considerable portion of his time riding on a wooden rocking-horse – a degenerate practice for a scion of the bold Catharine, who used to dress herself in men’s clothes, and ride a-straddle on the back of a live horse to review her troops. Alexander I., in his ukase of September, 1827, perpetrated a very fine piece of Russian humor. The period of military service for serfs is fixed at twenty years in the Imperial Guard, and twenty-two in other branches of the service. It is stated in express terms that the moment a serf becomes enrolled in the ranks of the army he is free! But he must not desert, for if he does he becomes a slave again. This idea of freedom is really refreshing. Only twenty or twenty-two years of the gentle restraints of Russian military discipline to be enjoyed after becoming a free agent! Then he may go off (at the age of fifty or sixty, say), unless disease or gunpowder has carried him off long before, to enjoy the sweets of hard labor in some agreeable desert, or the position of a watchman on the frontiers of Siberia, where the climate is probably considered salubrious.

These may be considered royal or princely vagaries, in which great people are privileged to indulge; but I think it will be found that the same capricious savagery of humor – if I may so call it – prevails to some extent among all classes of Russians. In some instances it can scarcely be associated with any idea of mirthfulness, yet in the love of strange, startling, and incongruous ideas there is something bordering on the humorous. On Recollection Monday, for example, the mass of the people go out into the grave-yards, and, spreading table-cloths on the mounds that cover the dead bodies of their relatives, drink quass and vodka to the health of the deceased, saying, “Since the dead are unable to drink, the living must drink for them!” Rather a grave excuse, one must think, for intoxication.

In the museum of Peter the Great at St. Petersburg stands the stuffed skin of his favorite servant – a gigantic Holsteiner – one of the most ghastly of all the grotesque and ghastly relics in that remarkable institution. It is not a very agreeable subject for the pencil of an artist, yet there is something so original in the idea of stuffing a human being and putting him up for exhibition before the public that I am constrained to introduce the following sketch of this strange spectacle.

In one of the arsenals is an eagle made of gun-flints, with swords for wings, daggers for feathers, and the mouths of cannons for eyes. A painting of the Strelitzes, in another, represents heaven as containing the Russian priests and all the faithful; while the other place – a region of fire and brimstone – contains Jews, Tartars, Germans, and negroes!

The winter markets of Moscow and St. Petersburg present some of the most cadaverous specimens of the startling humor in which the Russians delight. Here you find frozen oxen, calves, sheep, rabbits, geese, ducks, and all manner of animals and birds, once animate with life, now stiff and stark in death. The oxen stand staring at you with their fixed eyes and gory carcasses; the calves are jumping or frisking in skinless innocence; the sheep ba-a at you with open mouths, or cast sheep’s-eyes at the by-passers; the rabbits, having traveled hundreds of miles, are jumping, or running, or turning somersaults in frozen tableaux to keep themselves warm, and so on with every variety of flesh, fowl, and even fish. The butchers cut short these expressive practical witticisms by means of saws, as one might saw a block of wood; and the saw-dust, which is really frozen flesh and blood in a powdered state, is gathered up in baskets and carried away by the children and ragamuffins to be made into soup.

I can conceive of nothing humorous in these people which is not associated in some way with the cruel and the grotesque. They have many noble and generous traits, but lack delicacy of feeling. Where the range of the thermometer is from a hundred to a hundred and fifty degrees of Fahrenheit, their character must partake in some sort of the qualities of the climate – fierce, rigorous, and pitiless in its wintry aspect, and without the compensating and genial tenderness of spring; fitful and passionate as the scorching heats of summer, and dark, stormy, and dreary as the desolation of autumn.

I could not but marvel, as I sat in some of the common traktirs, at the extraordinary affection manifested by the Russians for cats. It appeared to me that the proprietors must keep a feline corps expressly for the amusement of their customers. At one of these places I saw at least forty cats, of various breeds, from the confines of Tartary to the city of Paris. They were up on the tables, on the benches, on the floor, under the benches, on the backs of the tea-drinkers, in their laps, in their arms – every where. I strongly suspected that they answered the purpose of waiters, and that the owner relied upon them to keep the plates clean. Possibly, too, they were made available as musicians. I have a notion the Russians entertain the same superstitious devotion to cats that the Banyans of India do to cows, and the French and Germans to nasty little poodles. To see a great shaggy boor, his face dripping with grease, his eyes swimming in vodka, sit all doubled up, fondling and caressing these feline pets; holding them in his hands; pressing their velvety fur to his eyes, cheeks, even his lips; listening with delight to their screams and squalls, is indeed a curious spectacle.

Now I have no unchristian feeling toward any of the brute creation, but I don’t affect cats. Nor can I say that I greatly enjoy their music. I heard the very best bands of tom-cats every night during my sojourn in Moscow, and consider them utterly deficient in style and execution. It belongs, I think, to the Music of Futurity, so much discussed by the critics of Europe during the past few years – a peculiar school of anti-melody that requires people yet to be born to appreciate it thoroughly. The discords may be very fine, and the passion very striking and tempestuous, but it is worse than thrown away on an uncultivated ear like mine.

CHAPTER XII.

A MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURE

The police of Moscow are not an attractive class of men, considering them in the light of guardians of the law. With a good deal of pomposity and laziness, they mingle much filth and rascality. The emperor may have great confidence in them, based upon some knowledge of their talents and virtues not shared by casual tourists; but if he would trust one of them with ten kopeks, or agree to place the life of any intimate personal friend in their keeping, in any of the dark alleys of Moscow, his faith in their integrity and humanity must be greater than mine. Indeed, upon casting around me in search of a parallel, I am not quite sure that I ever saw such a scurvy set of vagabonds employed to preserve the public peace in any other country, except, perhaps, in Spain. The guardians of the law in Cadiz and Seville are dark and forbidding enough in all conscience, and unscrupulous enough to turn a penny in any way not requiring the exercise of personal energy; and the police of Barcelona are not inferior in all that constitutes moral turpitude, but they can not surpass the Moscovites in filthiness of person or any of the essential attributes of villainy.

I have it upon good authority that they are the very worst set of thieves in the place, and that they will not hesitate to unite with any midnight prowler for the purpose of robbing a stranger. True, they did not rob me, but the reason of that is obvious. I gave them to understand at the start that I was connected with the press. You seldom hear of a writer for newspapers being robbed; and if such a thing ever does happen, the amount taken is never large.

As a consequence of this proclivity for ill-gotten gains on the part of the guardians of the law, it is unsafe for a stranger to go through the less frequented streets of Moscow at night. Should he chance to be stopped by two or three footpads and call for help, he will doubtless wake up some drowsy guardian of the law, but the help will be all against him. Instances have been related to me of robberies in which the police were the most active assailants, the robbers merely standing by for their share of the plunder. Should the unfortunate victim knock down a footpad or two in self-defense, it is good ground for an arrest, and both robbers and policemen become witnesses against him. A man had better get involved in a question of title to his property before the courts of California than be arrested for assault and battery, and carried before any of the civil tribunals in Russia. There is no end of the law’s delays in these institutions, and his only chance of justice is to get his case before the emperor, who is practically the Supreme Court of the empire. Otherwise the really aggrieved party must pay a fine for defending himself, and support the assaulted man, whose nose he may have battered, during an unlimited period at the hospital, together with physician’s fees for all the real or imaginary injuries inflicted. I met with a young American who was followed by a stalwart ruffian one night in returning from one of the public gardens. The man dogged his footsteps for some time. At length, there being nobody near to render aid, the robber mustered courage enough to seize hold and attempt to intimidate his supposed victim by brandishing a knife. He came from a country where they were not uncommon, and, besides, was an adept on the shoulder. With a sudden jerk he freed himself, and, hauling off a little, gave his assailant a note of hand that knocked him down. I am not versed in the classics of the ring, or I would make something out of this fight. The pad dropped like a stricken ox, his knife flying picturesquely through the silvery rays of the moon. Next moment he was on his feet again, the claret shining beautifully on his cheeks and beard. Throwing out his claws like a huge grizzly, he rushed in, gnashing his teeth and swearing horribly. This time our friend was fairly aroused, and the wretch promptly measured his length on the ground. Thinking he had scattered it on rather heavy, the American stooped down to see how matters stood, when the fellow grasped him by the coat and commenced shouting with all his might for the police – “Help! help! murder! murder!” There was no remedy but to silence him, which our friend dexterously accomplished by a blow on the os frontis. Hearing the approaching footsteps of the police, he then concluded it was best to make his escape, and accordingly took to his heels. Chase was given, but he was as good at running as he was at the noble art of self-defense, and soon distanced his pursuers. Fortunately, he reached his quarters without being recognised. This was all that saved him from arrest and imprisonment, or the payment of a fine for the assault.

A common practice, as I was informed, is to arrest a stranger for some alleged breach of the law, such as smoking a cigar in the streets, or using disrespectful language toward the constituted authorities. Not being accustomed to the intricacies of a Russian judiciary, it is difficult, when once the matter comes before a tribunal of justice, for a foreigner to rebut the testimony brought against him; and if he be in a hurry to get away, his only course is to bribe the parties interested in his detention. It would be unjust to say that this system prevails universally throughout Russia. There is a small circle around the imperial presence said to be exempt from corruption; and there may possibly be a few dignitaries of the government, in remote parts of the empire, who will not tell an untruth unless in their official correspondence, or steal except to make up what they consider due to them for public services; but the circle of immaculate ones is very small, and commences very near the Czar, and the other exceptions referred to are exceedingly rare. Thieving may be said to begin within gunshot of the capital, and to attain its culminating excellences on the confines of Tartary. The difference is only in degree between the higher and the lower grades of officers. Hence, although it is quite possible to obtain full reparation for an injury before the Czar, through the intervention of a consul or a minister, it is a vexatious and expensive mode of proceeding, and would only result at last in the transportation of some miserable wretch to the mines of Siberia. Of course no man with a spark of feeling would like to see a poor fellow-creature go there. For my part, I would rather suffer any amount of injustice than be the cause of sending a fellow-mortal on so long and dreary a journey.