Out of Doors in Tsarland. A record of the seeings and doings of a wanderer in Russia

Preface

. In offering this little volume to the public, I in dulge myself with the hope that a book on Russia, in whose pages, from beginning to end, no reference is made to Russia's Mission in the East, or Peter the Great's Will, no allusion to Nihilists, and no mention whatever of Siberia, may possibly be esteemed a novelty by readers. As for the actual contents of the volume, I would ask my readers to regard these indulgently as the untutored record of impressions left upon the mind of an unscientific observer, after a residence of some years' duration in a country to which he owes a deep debt of grati tude for many happy days spent within its moors and forests, its towns and villages. Should I be so fortunate as to incline any of my readers to believe that, in spite of all that has been b

PREFACE.

. VI written upon the seamy side of Russia and the Russians, there exists nevertheless much which is admirable in that well-abused country, both indoors and out, and much which is interesting and lovable in its people, I should feel that I had discharged at least a fractional portion of that debt. F. J. W. London. Christmas 1892. CONTENTS. PACE I. A RUSSIAN VILLAGE — I. I II. DO. II. 24 III. IN THE STREETS OF ST. PETERSBURG 44 IV. BUTTER-TIME AND FASTING 68 V. A BLACKCOCK TOURNAMENT 92 VI. KING CAPERCAILZIE ■ "9 VII. RUSSIAN WOODCOCK AND FINN PONIES . 149 VIII. SOLITARY SNIPE J7' IX. A WEEK AMONG THE SNOW -TRACKS— I. . . I98 X. DO. DO. II. • ■ 220 XL DO. DO. III. . 239 XII. DO. DO. IV. . . 259 XIII. BRUIN 277 XIV. A WOLF BATTUE 301 XV. THE ANGLER IN RUSSIAN WATERS . . 324 XVI. THE TYRO ON SNOWSHOES 34 ' XVII.

AT THE ICE-HILLS A RUSSIAN V1LLAGE-I Any one journeying through Russia must be struck by the exact similarity of each village to its fellows. He will see the same tumbledown wooden huts extending for a quarter of a mile on each side of the road, with the same solitary two-storied edifice in the centre of the village — the abode of the trades man of the place ; the same lean dogs will come out of the houses as he passes, to contest his right of way ; the same herd of cows, at the same hour of the afternoon, will crowd down the street, mono polising every inch of the muddy road (there is no footpath), to his extreme discomfort and no slight alarm ; and the same pastuch, or cowherd, will wait until the stranger's ear is exactly opposite the end of his long pipe, and will then emit a nondescript sound which will make that stranger wish he had never been born, or at all events that he had been born deaf.

It is this sound which brings the cows A s4 RUSSIAN VILLAGE 2 out of he wonders what biding-ptaces behind the huts. As the herd moves wading slowly through the deep mud stlong the road, each house or yard seems to shoot out its contribution of one cow, or two cows, or six, according to the wealth of the owner, until the last hut is passed, when the whole herd turns abruptly to the side, gets over the ditch as best it can, and distributes itself over the com munal pasture-land. The casual passer-by will not see much of the in habitants of the village unless he happens to wander through it late in the evening of a summer's day. Then indeed he will find it full of life and sound. A band of girls, all dressed in picturesque colours, are to be seen sitting upon a bench outside one of the houses, singing at the top of their voices, not in unison, but taking at least two and sometimes three parts, the first voice singing about an octave higher than ordinary sopranos can conveniently manage.

Further on a band of men will be found standing or lounging about and enjoying similar vocal exercise, their higher tones being exceedingly nasal, but the basses excellent. All these good people are endowed by nature with the gift of harmony. A man with a bass voice can always improvise a bass or sing a second to a higher voice. As for the children of the village, they will have been hounded away to bed at this time of night ; but earlier in the day they may be seen playing out in the road, generally with a species of knucklebones, or with a kind of ninepins or skittles played with clubs, which are thrown at the uprights, instead of a ball. The boys make marvellously good shots with these clubs, knocking over a small ninepin with certainty at a distance of twenty or thirty yards. The rival singing bands occasionally leave their seats and parade the village street, never mixing with one another, but occasionally indulging in loud personalities of a humorous but somewhat unrefined nature as they meet or pass.

Let us pay a visit, reader, you and I, to a typical vill.Tge : let us choose Ruchee, which is not far from St. Petersburg. I shall prove an excellent guide here, for I have visited this hamlet many and many a time, and know it well. In one of yonder huts dwells a gamekeeper, one Ivan, who looks after the shooting interests of the district. Ivan is a great friend of mine, and is employed by an English gentle man, therefore you must not be surprised to find one moujik dressed differently from his fellows in this village of Ruchee. He will turn out when we reach his hut, for one of the children whose noses are for ever glued to the window-pane will cry out " Get up, father, here are the English Barins ! " and when he appears you will see something like a costume ! But we have not reached the village yet.

Yonder it lies ; a long straight road, you see, as usual, with the houses built at uneven distances along each side. In the middle of the village the road takes a dip, down and up again, the lowest point being an ex tremely rickety bridge, consisting of wooden planks insecurely nailed to piles driven into the bed of the tiny stream which it spans. Beyond this village we can just see the first houses of another, Mourino. Mourino possesses a church, and is a selo, or chief of a group of villages. About Mourino I shall have more to say by-and-by. Here is Ruchee. A few yards before we reach the first hut is a post with a notice-board upon it. Let us read the legend if we can ■ it is rather indistinct : RUCHEE, 46 souls. That is all. We knew it was Ruchee; but what does 46 souls mean ? A soul is a man, not a woman.

Women have no souls, according to the code of the Russian official district tax-collectors, for whose benefit the post and its information exist. I hope my reader, if I have one, is not a lady ; for I feel that I shall incur her odium as the purveyor of this shocking evidence of the ungallant quality of the official Russian mind. But alas ! it is too true. In Russia, so the proverb says, there is but one soul to seven women. The tax-gatherer, however, does not credit the ladies with even one seventh of a soul apiece, he ignores their claims altogether ; in his eyes they do not exist, they are nonentities. The men have all the souls, for they pay all the taxes. Those who pay no taxes have no souls. But whether they have no souls because they pay no taxes, or whether they pay no taxes because they have no souls, I have not yet found a tax-gatherer sufficiently well-informed to tell me.

Well, then, Ruchee claims to contain 46 souls within its limits. A man-child, so soon as born, is a soul ; so that some of these 46 souls may be infants. On the other hand, Ruchee may be teeming with a population of hundreds of girls and women, but it can only boast of 46 souls, for the poor girls do not count. I ought to explain, however, that the above estimate of the population of Ruchee dates from the last Government revision, perhaps ten years since. Therefore other souls may have been born to the village, which may of course contain more or less souls by this time, according to the balance of male births and deaths for the period. It is necessary to set up these official statistical posts because the total amount of tax imposed upon the village, as its pay ment for the use of the communal land, depends upon the number of " souls " alive in the village at the date of revision.

The distribution of the land among the souls is looked after within the village itself, as I shall presently explain, without official interference from outside, and is guided by considerations of equity rather than by strict rule. For it is evident that to saddle a family of small male babies with the actual share of land and concomitant taxes for which as "souls" they are responsible, would be as unfiiir as to expect a widow with one son and five strapping daughters to live on the single share of land to which alone, as possessing but one soul among them, they are entitled. But let us enter the village. What a barking of dogs greets us as we do so ! Every hut seems to have contributed a cur, and every cur looks as if he would eat us up if he had time for anything besides barking. s\ stone deftly aimed produces a wonderful effect upon these Russian village dogs.

They are not brave. Only one is struck, but his sorrow is pitiful to witness as he disappears full gallop down the street, going very much faster and farther than the occasion demands — the sight, and the pathetic sound of his yelps, quickly discouraging the rest, who accept the inevitable and trot home again with a mourning aspect about the tail. Three small children rush shrieking and shouting from the first hut as we pass it, but stop dead on seeing us. They stare in silence until we have proceeded ten yards or so, when they set up a chorus of "Barin, dai kopaykoo " (Give us a kopeck, Mister). Between the houses we can catch glimpses of the fields, which seem to be divided with mathematical accuracy into long strips. Upon these strips of land red-shirted peasants and women are hard at work, for, strange to say, it is not a holiday, and the villagers are actually up and about.

At least half the week in Russia is " holiday " of so pronounced a kind that it is considered wicked to do work of any sort. As it generally takes a day or so to recover from a Russian holiday, which is spent brawling over vodka, in the village traklir, little time remains for work. The hay is just ready for cutting, and we may observe that out of yonder huge field of waving grasses an occasional strip is already cut, one patch here and another there. For this is one of the communal fields, and is divided in strips among the "souls" of the village, each soul possessing one, which he may generally cultivate how he pleases. The village owns three or four of these large fields, each subdivided as this one ; but one is probably devoted to the growing of oats, another to a crop of rye, this one, as we have seen, is hay, and the fourth is probably lying fallow.

The peasants will generally prefer to grow one crop over the entire field, each cutting his own portion when he thinks fit, or when he is not drunk, if he can find a day under the latter category. But if he prefers it he may grow a patch of oats in the middle of the hay-field, or a patch of potatoes amid the rye strips of his neighbours. Shall we enter one of these houses in order to see what ideas the moujiks and their families have as to making themselves comfortable at home? Very well, let us choose my friend Ivan's, then. Here it is, no better than its neighbours, though Ivan receives his wages of ten roubles per month regularly, and is therefore richer than his fellows by about a year. This consideration has not apparently induced him to mend his broken window, however, for the hole is stopped up with a piece of one of his wife's old dresses (I remember seeing her dressed in that very print a year or two ago).

One of the children is of course staring out of the window — there! she has seen us. Now Ivan will appear in propriii persona. Here he is, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand, and yawning cavernously. (Ivan ! you have been drink ing, little father ! I shall think twice about presenting you with a rouble " for tea " next time you carry my game-bag after the ptarmigan.) What an object the man is ! On his shaggy head, which is covered with long yellow hair, he wears a soft English hat, the gift of his British employer. Over his broad shoulders is a Norfolk jacket, derived from the same source. So far he is an Englishman, though a disreputable one ! From the coat down wards he is a moujik. His feet are encased in a pair of long boots, into which are tucked the ends of a pair of baggy cotton trousers.

From beneath the Norfolk jacket protrude the tails of a red shirt, which tails are not tucked into the trousers, but are worn outside. There is a saying in Russia that so long as a Russian wears his shirt outside he remains honest ; but when he begins to tuck it in, like a civilised * Christian, he is no longer to be trusted. There may be some truth in this. The chinovntks (officials) and their tribe, being higher up the social ladder, have learned, among other arts, that of dressing themselves according to the usages of modern society. Whether the ancestors of these gentlemen ever were honest in their red-shirted days I am not in a position to state ; but this I know, that their descendants are very far from it now. On the other hand, Ivan, who wears his red shirt in a manner which should have ensured his strict adherence to the paths of truth and righteousness, is a very considerable liar.

I may say that I have known other moujiks not altogether immaculate. What then becomes of the proverb ? Ivan graciously permits us to enter and explore his domain. In the porch, reached by falling over three decayed steps into a pit, and then getting out of it and climbing, by a gymnastic effort, upon the platform which the steps originally led to — in this porch, hanging from a hook at the top, is a kind of earthen vessel something like a teapot, with two handles and a short spout. This is the family lavatory. When s4 RUSSIAN VILLAGE 11 a member of the family desires to wash — which happens on very rare occasions — he stands under neath the water-vessel and tilts a very small quantity of the liquid into one hand. He then divides the water impartially between his two hands and applies both to his face.

Part of his countenance thus re ceives a little attention from one or other of the damp hands, and lo ! he is clean — a misleading expression signifying that his ablutions are over for several days. There is another method of washing, but my pen revolts from a description of it. Enough to mention that the mouth is applied to the spout of the teapot, and all further washing is done with the water thus procured. In a word, the Russian moujik considers his weekly or fortnightly steam-bath quite as much in the way of personal cleansing as is good for him. I shall describe the village bath in its proper place, but meanwhile we are keeping Ivan standing outside his door, ready to show us in. As we enter the house three dogs rush out and nearly knock us over, whin ing and jumping on us with every demonstration of delight.

You may see at once that these are English dogs. They belong to Ivan's employer, my old friend A., and are under the impression that we have come to take them out shooting. They know at a glance — perhaps I should say at a sniff — that we are Britons, and are looking about for our guns. Lie down, Bruce and York ! we have come to see your house, there is no shooting to be done to-day. These dogs live with Ivan on terms of equality, and feed rather better than he does; but then Ivan gets plenty of vodka, and they do not. Ivan's is a one-roomed house — that is, there is but one room for general use. There is indeed a sort of black hole, opposite, quite dark and very small, where Ivan keeps his poultry, snowshoes, and other articles out of place in a drawing-room. The living roonj is a good size, per haps fifteen feet by thirteen.

It has two small windows, with four panes in each. Of these eight panes six are intact or nearly so, the seventh is half gone, the eighth entirely so — the latter being stopped up with a por tion of Mrs. Ivan's old print skirt, as I have already mentioned. Round two sides of the room runs a narrow bench, about a foot in width. In front of this, at the corner, is the table. In another corner of the room is the stove, a huge brick structure reach ing almost to the ceiling, five feet in breadth and four feet deep, and having a lower portion jutting out from the side to a length of six feet or so. This branch establishment is used by the family to sleep upon, and a nice warm bed it makes. As for the stove itself, a description of its working may be of interest to the reader. The door of the stove is a foot or so from the ground, and opens into a huge empty cavern formed by the whole of the inside of the stove.

Into this logs of wood are thrust, in quantities, and ignited. This is only the beginning, and the heat of the wood while burning is a mere trifle. When the logs are reduced to red embers the door of the stove is shut up tight and the chimney securely closed. By this means all the heat is kept in the stove, which soon becomes a veritable "scorcher," and retains its heat for nearly twenty-four hours. But woe to the inhabi tants of the house if the chimney be closed before the wood shall have been properly consumed, for speedy suffocation is their certain fate — death if they happen to be asleep, terrible nausea and sickness if awake and able to whisk off the iron covering which closes the chimney, in time to save their lives. I have spoken to an English gentleman who once nearly fell a victim to suffocation through the carelessness of a Russian servant.

He was passing the night at a shooting-box near St. Petersburg, and, the cold being intense, had instructed the keeper, on retiring, to enter his room at six in the morning and relight the stove, in case it should have cooled down by that time. The keeper obeyed these instructions to the letter, but closed the chimney before the wood had been sufficiently reduced. At half past seven my friend was awakened by the most violent head-ache he had ever experienced, accompanied by terrible sickness. He barely had strength to crawl out of bed and stagger into the fresh air — thus saving his life — when he fell insensible in the snow. There he was found shortly afterwards half-frozen and very ill, but alive enough to address remarks to that offending keeper which were almost sufficiently strong to thaw the snow in which he found himself outstretched.

Three small children climb down from the top of the stove as we enter Ivan's room, and stand staring up at us. On the table there is a samovar, or Russian urn, hissing comfortably, and Mrs. Ivan smiles and bows over it. She has been cutting hunks from a large round loaf of black bread, for this is dinner-time. There is also a smoked herring lying on the table, half wrapped in a truly horrible scrap of newspaper. Probably Ivan will get the whole of this dainty morsel, for he is a " soul " and must be fed up ; black bread will do excellently well for the women, who have no souls to support. No, thank you, Mrs. Ivan, we won't take any tea, though it is very kind of you to offer it. As far as I can see, you only possess one tumbler, and that a remarkably unclean one. What would the Soul do, if we used his only tumbler?

You suggest, reader, that Ivan would go to the kabak and drink vodka, and so he would ; but he will do this anyhow, for we shall probably give him twenty kopecks for his services in showing us over his establishment, and Ivan's money all goes one way. There are small lumps of sugar lying promiscuously about the table. These are not placed in the tea, but are nibbled at before drinking in order to sweeten each mouthful as taken. A few coppers will make those small children very happy ; the money will be spent upon prianniki, or biscuits, and will go a long way. Ivan's room is not too clean, and as for the scent thereof, well, if it were not for the h;ilf-broken pane of glass it would be still worse, and that is all we can say for it. There is no second story, but there is a cherdak, or garret, under the roof.

This is reached by a ladder from outside, and is used by Ivan for drying his clothes, on the rare occasion of a wash ; for hiding away a store of grain, if he has managed to accumulate such ; and for putting away sundry house hold rubbish. Behind the house is a yard, knee deep in mud, and at the end of the yard a shed Half of this shed is used as a receptacle for Ivan's cart, plough, and sledge ; the other half is the dwelling-place of the cows and horses, when these are at home ; but the cows ave out most of the day and night in the summer-time, on the pasture-lands, while the horses, at work during the day, herd with the cows at night. So much for Ivan's establishment, which is the facsimile of every other moujik-home in the village, with the exception of that of the koopyets, or trader, whose house is much larger, and is built in two stories, towering thus over its poorer neighbours like a big policeman among a crowd of urchins.

It will repay us to look in for a moment upon Abram Timofeyevitch Kapustyin, the powerful and wealthy individual who dispenses bread, vodka, herrings, calico prints, red shirts, and prianniki to the peasant folk of Ruchee. This gentleman is seated at a small table in his shop ; he is drinking tea with lemon in it, and is engaged in conversation with a moujik, who turns out to be the Starost, or elder, of the village. Of the latter, and of his office, I shall speak presently. s<\s for the trader, he is a sleek, well-to-do, comfortable-looking personage. His power in the place is enormous, for every moujik owes him money, and depends upon him, not only for his daily supply of black bread (when the home-grown stock of rye comes to an end), but for his vodka, his clothes, everything he needs. This individual is often a large landholder, though a stranger to the place ; for peasants who have fallen heavily into his debt, thanks, generally, to the national partiality for vodka, are glad to wipe off a portion of their indebtedness, and by so doing become qualified to consume further vedra of vodka on " tick," by letting their allotments of land.

We will take a cup of tea at Abram Timofeye vitch's invitation, and buy a red shirt and a startlingly coloured handkerchief or two to show our friends at home. The tea is good tea before it is drowned by Abram Timofeyevitch. How long he has been drinking from this one decoction in the small teapot I know not ; but this I know, that his tea is the colour of the very palest sherry. We drink it out of tumblers and bite our sugar dry. The tea, or rather the very slightly bewitched water, is frightfully hot, and the bit of lemon floating in it gets terribly in the B way as we try to dodge it in order to drink the scorching fluid. Abram will continue to replenish your tumbler until you sigh, turn the tumbler upside down, rise from your place, and shake hands with him as a sign that you have had enough.

You must also shake hands with every other individual who has assisted in emptying Abram's huge samovar, thanking them "for their company." There are several groups of peasants drinking tea at other tables ; some are taking vodka and are rather noisy, but there is not much consumption of strong liquor at this time of day. At night the apartment will present a very different aspect. There will be such a babel of sound — singing and dancing and general uproar on the part of the Souls of the place — that were we to pass the house at a distance of half a mile we should conclude that this village must be the veritable home of Bacchus and his satellites. The shop itself is filthy, the counter being covered with a disorderly array of small bottles containing vodka, piles of black bread, many of the loaves being half cut, a keg of herrings whose odour is making a good fight for supremacy with that of the all-pervad ing vodka, some dishes of black-looking biscuits, which were once white but have lost their youth and good looks waiting for a purchaser among the chil dren, who have evidently had no harvest of coppers lately, and a tub of Finnish butter.

The handker chiefs and calico prints are not displayed for sale in this room, but are sold in a similar shop adjoining ; if you peep in, reader, you will see several women handling these articles and haggling over the price. Nothing, no article of commerce, ever changes hands in Russia without a bargain. Let me describe how a purchase is effected at the Gostinnoy Dvor (a sort of permanent market) in St. Petersburg. We will imagine that the buyer wishes to become the pos sessor of a yard or two of velvet. He finds a shop (or magazine, as it is styled in Russia) likely to have for sale the article required and enters it, ask ing to be allowed to see velvet of the colour needed. The shopman is delighted to serve him, and says so. " How much ? " inquires the would-be purchaser, as he fingers the material brought for his inspection.

Shopman — " Ah, Barin, I can see you know all about velvets ! That is the best piece in my shop : will you pay seven roubles the arshine ? " Buyer (contemptuously) — " You take me for a fool. I'll give you four ! " Slwpman — "Ach, Barin, you have come to laugh at me ! By my honest word it cost me six and a half." Buyer — " Nonsense ! Will you accept four roubles, or " (here the buyer slowly takes his hat from the counter, having doffed it upon entering the shop, in deference to the universal custom). Shopman — " No, Barin, have mercy ! give me six roubles and I'll wrap it up for you ! " The would-be buyer stamps his foot in assumed wrath, but does not in the least deceive the shopman thereby. He puts on his hat, however, and makes slowly for the door. This looks a little more serious. "Well, five seventy-five — five and a half!"

The buyer has reached the door. " Come ! " says the shopman, in a cordial, confident tone. " You shall have it for five." The would-be buyer slowly returns towards the counter. " No," he says, " I have said four roubles. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give you four twenty-five, take it or leave it ! " The shop man now puts on an injured air, and commences to replace the velvet. " The Barin is not a bona-fide customer," he says sadly. " I thought you meant busi ness, Barin ! " The buyer, who wants the stuff rather badly, for it is just the colour and quality he needs, returns slowly once more towards the door, puts his hat on, fumbles with the door — he is anxious to give the seller every chance to " climb down " — at last he turns the handle and passes regretfully down the street. Before he has gone ten yards, however, he is arrested by the voice of the vendor.