John Stephens - Incidents of Travel in Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland, Vol. 2 (of 2)

At five o'clock I went to dine with Mr. Wilkins. He had broken up his establishment and taken apartments at the house of an English lady, where he lived much in the same style as at home. He had been at St. Petersburgh but a short time, and, I believe, was not particularly well pleased with it, and was then making arrangements to return. I had never met with Mr. Wilkins in our own country, and I consider myself under obligations to him; for, not bringing him any letter, I stood an entire stranger in St. Petersburgh, with nothing but my passport to show that I was an American citizen, and he might have even avoided the dinner, or have given me the dinner and troubled himself no more about me. But the politeness which he had shown me as a stranger increased to kindness; and I was in the habit of calling upon him at all times, and certainly without any expectation of ever putting him in print. We had at table a parti quarré, consisting of Mr. Wilkins, Mr. Gibson, who has been our consul, I believe, for twenty years, if, he being still a bachelor, it be not unfriendly to carry him back so far, and Mr. Clay, the secretary of legation, who had been twice left as chargé d'affaires at the imperial court, and was then lately married to an English lady in St. Petersburgh. After dinner, three or four American merchants came in; and at eleven o'clock, having made an appointment to go with Mr. Wilkins and see a boatrace on the Neva, Mr. Clay and I walked home along the quay, under that enchanting twilight which I have already so often thrust upon the reader, and which I only regret that I cannot make him realize and enjoy.

CHAPTER VII.

A New Friend.—The Winter Palace.—Importance of a Hat.—An artificial Mine.—Remains of a huge Monster.—Peter the Great's Workshop.—The Greek Religion.—Tomb of a Hero.—A Saint Militant.—Another Love Affair.—The Hermitage.—The Winter and Summer Gardens.

Early in the morning, while at breakfast, I heard a loud knock at my door, which was opened without waiting for an answer, and in stalked a tall, stout, dashing-looking young man, with a blue frock, white pantaloons, and a vest of many colours, a heavy gold chain around his neck, an enormous Indian cane in his hand, and a broad-brimmed hat brought down on one side, over his right eye in particular. He had a terrible scowl on his face, which seemed to be put on to sustain the dignity of his amazing costume, and he bowed on his entrance with as much hauteur as if he meant to turn me out of my own room. I stared at him in unfeigned astonishment, when, putting his cane under his arm, and pulling off his hat, his intensely red head broke upon me with a blaze of beauty, and I recognised my friend and intended fellow-traveller, the French Belgian Pole, whom I had seen in an old morning-gown and slippers. I saw through my man at once; and speedily knocking in the head his overwhelming formality, came upon him with the old college salutation, asking him to pull off his clothes and stay a week; and he complied almost literally, for in less than ten minutes he had off his coat and waistcoat, cravat and boots, and was kicking up his heels on my bed. I soon discovered that he was a capital fellow, a great beau in his little town on the frontiers of Poland, and one of a class by no means uncommon, that of the very ugly men who imagine themselves very handsome. While he was kicking his heels over the footboard, he asked me what we thought of red hair in America; and I told him that I could not undertake to speak the public voice, but that, for myself, I did not admire it as much as some people did, though, as to his, there was something striking about it, which was strictly true, for it was such an enormous mop that, as his head lay on the pillow, it looked like a bust set in a large red frame. All the time he held in his hand a pocket looking-glass and a small brush, with which he kept brushing his mustaches, giving them a peculiar twirl toward the ears. I told him that he was wrong about the mustache; and, taking the brush, brought them out of their twist, and gave them an inclination à la Turque, recommending my own as a model; but he soon got them back to their place, and, rising, shook his gory locks and began to dress himself, or, as he said, to put himself in parchment for a walk.

My new friend was for no small game, and proposed visiting some of the palaces. On the way he confided to me a conquest he had already made since his arrival; a beautiful young lady, of course, the daughter of an Italian music-master, who resided directly opposite our hotel. He said he had applied for an apartment next to mine, which commanded a view of the window at which she sat, and asked me, as a friend, whether it would be interfering with me. Having received my assurance that I had no intentions in that quarter, he said he would order his effects to be removed the same day.

By this time we had arrived at the Winter Palace, presenting, as I have before remarked, a marble front on the Neva of more than seven hundred feet, or as long as the side of Washington Square, and larger and more imposing than that of the Tuileries or any other royal palace in Europe. We approached the large door of entrance to this stately pile, and, notwithstanding my modest application, backed by my companion's dashing exterior, we were turned away by the imperial footman because we had not on dresscoats. We went home and soon returned equipped as the law of etiquette requires, and were admitted to the imperial residence. We ascended the principal story by the great marble staircase, remarkable for its magnificence and the grandeur of its architecture. There are nearly a hundred principal rooms on the first floor, occupying an area of four hundred thousand square feet, and forming almost a labyrinth of splendour. The great banqueting-hall is one hundred and eighty-nine feet by one hundred and ten, incrusted with the finest marble, with a row of columns at each end, and the side decorated with attached columns, rich gilding, and splendid mirrors. The great Hall of St. George is one of the richest and most superb rooms on the Continent, not excepting the pride of the Tuileries or Versailles. It is a parallelogram of one hundred and forty feet by sixty, decorated with forty fluted Corinthian columns of porphyritic marble, with capitals and bases of bronze richly gilded, and supporting a gallery with a gilded bronze balustrade of exquisite workmanship. At one end, on a platform, is the throne, approached by a flight of eight steps, covered with the richest Genoa velvet, embroidered with gold, with the double-headed eagle expanding his wings above it. The large windows on both sides are hung with the richest drapery, and the room is embellished by magnificent mirrors and colossal candelabra profusely gilded.

We passed on to the salle blanche , which is nearly of the same dimensions, and beautifully chaste in design and finish. Its elevation is greater, and the sides are decorated with pilasters, columns, and bas-reliefs of a soft white tint, without the least admixture of gaudy colours. The space between the Hall of St. George and the salle blanche is occupied as a gallery of national portraits, where the Russians who distinguished themselves during the French invasion are exhibited in half-length portraits as rewards for their military services. The three field-marshals, Kutuzow, Barclay de Tolly, and the Duke of Wellington, are represented at full length. The symbol which accompanies the hero of Waterloo is that of imperishable strength, the British oak, "the triumpher of many storms."

I will not carry the reader through all the magnificent apartments, but I cannot help mentioning the Diamond Room, containing the crowns and jewels of the imperial family. Diamonds, rubies, and emeralds are arranged round the room in small cases, of such dazzling beauty that it is almost bewildering to look at them. I had already acquired almost a passion for gazing at precious stones. At Constantinople I had wandered through the bazars, under the guidance of a Jew, and seen all the diamonds collected and for sale in the capital of the East, but I was astonished at the brilliancy of this little chamber, and, in my strongly-awakened admiration, looked upon the miser who, before the degrading days of bonds and mortgages, converted his wealth into jewels and precious stones, as a man of elegant and refined taste. The crown of the emperor is adorned with a chaplet of oak-leaves made of diamonds of an extraordinary size, and the imperial sceptre contains one supposed to be the largest in the world, being the celebrated stone purchased by the Empress Catharine II. from a Greek slave for four hundred and fifty thousand rubles and a large pension for life. Eighty thousand persons were employed in the construction of this palace; upward of two thousand habitually reside in it, and even a larger number when the emperor is in St. Petersburgh. The imperial flag was then floating from the top of the palace, as an indication to his subjects of his majesty's presence in the capital; and about the time that his majesty sat down to his royal dinner we were working upon a cotelette de mouton, and drinking in vin ordinaire health and long life to Nicolas the First; and afterward, in talking of the splendour of the imperial palace and the courtesy of the imperial footmen, we added health and long life to the Lady Autocrat and all the little autocrats.[1]