A lady

Government employÉs, their servility—Baseness, and its fruits—Duty of the senate—Dishonesty, bribery, and poverty—New way to pay old debts—Mistrust—Conduct of the ladies—Duties of those in office—The railway serfs—Police-masters in Russia—The military officers and the soldiers—The wretched fare of the army—Peculations of the colonel—Army regulation—A colonel in the Caucasus—Why the people are created.

The most detestably mean class in Russia are certainly the government employÉs. There is no baseness too base, no dishonesty too dishonest, no cringing too low, no lie too barefaced, no time-serving too vile for them. “Do you see those men in their gold-laced coats, cocked-hats, swords, and ribbons?” said a governor’s lady to me one day; “they are all coming to congratulate my husband. There is not one but would think it an honour to wipe the dust off his shoes.” I fear, although severe, she spoke the truth, and knew well how to appreciate the character of her countrymen. There are, as far as we could learn, few exceptions to this servility, and unfortunately it seems to run through the whole of the different official ranks in Russia. It begins at the beginning: the ministers cringe to the Emperor, the heads of the departments to the ministers, the employÉs to their chiefs, and so on down to the very lowest writer or clerk receiving pay from the government; and, what is worse, every one has his price according to his rank. When I was staying at the house of a provincial governor, the Emperor paid a visit to the place, and walked up and down in front of the station talking to his Excellency. His Majesty had no sooner left the town than the heads of the departments, the military officers, police, and employÉs rushed in full dress to the governor’s to offer their congratulations on the occasion. If he had been promised the inheritance of the imperial crown itself, they could scarcely have magnified the honour more, or proffered a greater amount of flattery and adulation than they did on this event.

There were two of the employÉs in the province of which I speak who were exceptions to this: the governor respected them accordingly; they were almost daily at his house, and he esteemed them highly; they were the two principal adjutants, and were honourable men. Neither of these gentlemen came to congratulate the governor upon the occasion to which I have referred. One of them came in the evening, as usual, to take tea. He sat almost in silence, and seemed much out of spirits: at last he arose, and, complaining of a headache, asked if we would like to take a walk round the garden. Madame declined, but I arose and accompanied him. As soon as we had reached the broad avenue, I said,—

“I fear it is more than a headache that you are suffering from; you have been annoyed by something.”

“You are right, Madame,” answered he; “I am vexed and ashamed when I think that I am obliged to be the witness of such degrading baseness in my own country-people as was shown to-day. What a dreadful thing it is that men should so lower themselves, and vilify the image in which they have been created!” He stopped suddenly, and he seemed overwhelmed with sorrow.

“They will behave more nobly,” I said, “when more enlightened.”

“Never, never!” he exclaimed, “until a dreadful revolution has swept over the land and destroyed every vestige of the government now existing and of the corruption throughout every rank.”

“Hush! you must not talk so, Dmitri Ivanowitch; suppose any one should hear you.”

“I am quite glad,” he replied, “that I have had an opportunity of telling my feelings to some one: I know I am safe in speaking to an English person. You can sympathize in our cause of grief, as yours is a free nation.”

Poor man! such noble sentiments were almost a misfortune to one condemned to serve in Russia.

“Without being base, it is impossible to get on,” was the remark of another Russian to me one day.

The general rule certainly seems to be, that every encouragement shall be given to slavishness, and none to nobility of soul. “Do you know,” said Dmitri Ivanowitch one day, “do you know why there are so many mean people? It is this: a young man, for example, enters the service with the determination to keep up a character for honour and integrity, and he does so for some time, and lives in poverty; in the mean while he sees those whose meanness he despises rise over his head in reward for their cringing; he gets no credit for being honourably poor; he wearies of the pursuit of honour, and so gradually becomes as debased as the others.”

There is a senate of the empire; the senators assemble at the ministerial department in St. Petersburg. Their duties cannot be very fatiguing, as they consist in saying, “Sa MajestÉ a parfaitement raison” to everything that is proposed. One would be apt to think, also, that the law must be an easy study, as on the first page of the statute-book it is announced that everything is according to the will of the Emperor.

I am certain that the dishonourable actions to which many of these employÉs are addicted, and which I myself have witnessed, would scarcely be credited in England, where officers and gentlemen are synonymous terms. One day we saw an officer boldly pocket some money belonging to his neighbour, at cards. Another slipped some concert tickets up his sleeve, that were the property of my friend. We both saw him do it, but neither of us could accuse him to his face. Many a time things were missing that could have been missing in no other way. One day a young officer called while the family were at dinner. The footman very carelessly had requested him to enter one of the drawing-rooms whilst he went and informed his master. He came back in a minute or two, and begged him to wait a little, but the officer politely said that he did not wish to derange the dinner-party, and, as he had to call elsewhere, he would shortly return. He then went away. No sooner had he done so than the servant discovered that his lady’s watch had disappeared. The police were not informed of it, out of respect to his uncle, who was of rank.

Bribery is everywhere practised. There are some honourable men among the employÉs undoubtedly, but they are generally so wretchedly poor, that really the temptation must be almost irresistible. Their pay from the government is so small that they can scarcely supply themselves with shoes and gloves out of it; so the money must be obtained somehow to enable them to make a genteel appearance. A few have perhaps private property, but the major part have only their appointment.

From all that is told concerning them, the Russo-Germans seem to be the most rapacious of any people in the country: they are the most cringing when in an inferior station, and the most tyrannical and merciless when in power.

“Immense numbers of our officers are Germans,” said a nobleman to me. “They enter the service, and, as they have their fortune to make, they will submit to all sorts of insults, cringe and curry favour with their superiors, and do anything to get on. Now, a Russian will not do that; he will throw up his commission and leave the service upon a very slight provocation.” My experience did not enable me to agree with him.

“Every man has his price,” is said to have been one of Sir Robert Walpole’s axioms; had he lived in Russia, he would have nearly hit the truth, and, he might have added, “every woman” too.

A lady in St. Petersburg, whose husband was indebted to the crown in the sum of about ten thousand silver roubles, and had not the means, or perhaps the will, to pay it, hit upon the following expedient:—It was the anniversary of the marriage of a personage of the most exalted rank, so she thought fit to address a letter of humble congratulations on the occasion. Humble enough! for it began thus:—“If a worm crawling upon the earth dare to offer,” &c. &c., through a couple of pages, all in the same style. The letter deserved to be kept, were it only as a curiosity of literature, and to preserve it as an existing proof to what grovelling meanness a human being can descend. It was not in this light, however, that it was regarded by the personage to whom it was sent, or by those who had the pleasure of perusing it. The entire household was in an extasy of admiration for three whole days concerning Madame K—ska’s beautiful address to the E——. The writer obtained what she so ardently desired; the debt was remitted. When I state that this was the person mentioned in a former chapter as having caused her poor servants’ hair to be cut off, her character can be justly appreciated.

One day we went to pay a visit to an old lady. As all the drawing-rooms were thrown open for the reception of visitors, I committed no solecism of etiquette in rising to take a nearer view of some beautiful English engravings of which I caught a glimpse in the next room. I was surprised and rather annoyed to find that I was followed step by step by the old lady herself, and that every movement of mine was closely watched by her. I was so vexed that I returned to my seat without having had the pleasure I expected. On going home I mentioned the circumstance to my friend. “You must not be surprised at it, ma chÈre,” answered she, “for really you do not know how many things are lost in such parties from the too great admiration of the visitors.” At a ball it is quite disgraceful to see the quantities of sweetmeats and fruit the ladies and gentlemen put into their pockets. The rush into the refreshment-room, when it is thrown open, is quite disgusting; it can be compared to nothing else than a swarm of locusts, and they leave the same desolation behind them. When the ladies go into the dressing-room they will often actually take the packet of white gloves or hair-pins which it is the custom to place on the toilette-table in case any of the visitors should require them. It would really be an insult to the lowest peasant in England to suspect him of such meanness as one meets with every day among the employÉs and soi-disant gentlemen and ladies in Russia. Dmitri Ivanowitch was perhaps right in saying that nothing but the hurricane of revolution could clear the social atmosphere of its corruption. Perhaps the figure of Justice on the outside of the ministerial department in St. Petersburg is an unintentional satire upon the state of affairs within.

Everybody seems to think that he is placed in an office for no other purpose than to fill his own pockets; and it is astonishing with what rapidity he manages to do so, especially if there be any public work on hand. We were staying in one of the provinces through which the railway from Moscow to St. Petersburg runs. While it was being constructed, the fortunes made by the engineers and employÉs were astonishing: from having nothing at all, they soon acquired estates, and became quite rich, and that at the expense of the crown and of the miserable serfs that laboured on the road. Once, when the trains began to run, we went to a picnic by one of them. When we stopped at the station we found about four hundred of the workmen assembled. They eagerly asked if the governor were of the party. Being told that he was not, but that his lady was among us, they earnestly begged to see her. She very kindly came at their request. We then heard a sad story, showing the way in which these poor people were treated: they had not been paid any wages for six weeks; their rations were bad; and, more than that, a dreadful fever, something like the plague, had broken out among them, which had not been reported, and they said that their companions had perished by scores, and had been buried, like so many dogs, in the morasses along the line. The wretched looks and half-clad bodies of these ill-used men bore witness to their unhappy state, and showed too plainly how they had been wronged by the rapacity of the government employÉs.

The police-master and the officer of gensdarmes, with some of the chief engineers, were of the party. They pretended utter ignorance of the whole affair, and wished to make every one believe that they were quite shocked to hear of it; but undoubtedly they knew well whither the money had gone. They made so plausible a tale, and put so fair a face on the matter, telling the poor serfs that they would see it all righted, that one would have deemed them their guardian angels, instead of their robbers: not so thought the unhappy peasants, if one might judge by the look of despair and hopelessness that they cast on each other. They too well knew that vengeance would fall on them for daring to make the complaints we had heard, and that they had only rendered their condition infinitely more wretched than before.

At another time a large body of the serfs from the railway came to the governor’s house, and made similar complaints; they waited and saw his excellency themselves, and he immediately caused their wages to be paid.

As for the police, they have been spoken of elsewhere, but I cannot avoid mentioning in what manner the chief master of the provincial police is regarded by the governor. He seems to be a kind of head lacquey, who is expected to run about as an errand-boy, and to perform all the dirty work of the government.

The police-master of a provincial capital in which we were residing was a colonel in the army, six feet high and stout in proportion; yet, when he used to come to make the daily reports, he stood with the humility of a servant before his master, and bore all the insulting speeches and all the opprobrious names that the governor chose to bestow upon him, without showing the least indignation at them. He looked just like a great overgrown schoolboy being scolded by a little old pedagogue.

In regard to the military, if they are gentlemen by education and fortune, they behave as such; but the major part, having nothing but their pay, resort to the same unjust means as the government officials, and the poor soldiers suffer dreadfully from the injustice of their superiors. I believe their lot is not quite so miserable in the capital as in the provinces, because by chance abuses may come to the Emperor’s knowledge; but it is a fact that sentinels on duty have frequently as we were passing begged in an under-tone a few copecks to buy themselves bread; they saw perhaps, poor men! that we were foreign ladies, and not likely to tell. One of them assured us (and from all that I know to be true there is no reason to think he spoke falsely) that he was really more than half-starved, and was so continually tormented by incessant craving, that it nearly drove him mad.

How many of the grand dinners given by the colonel are paid for by the hunger of the unhappy soldiers of his regiment, his conscience (if a Russian colonel have one) can best decide. Russians have often said in my hearing that they would prefer being colonels to having the rank of general, because the former have so many more advantages in a pecuniary view. It is true that there is an army regulation, that, when a general is sent down from St. Petersburg into the provinces (which takes place at certain intervals) to review the troops and to inspect military matters, he can call any man he pleases out of the ranks, and, taking him aside, ask him questions as to whether he has any cause for complaint regarding his rations, clothing, &c., against his colonel or commanding officer. It is supposed to be strictly confidential, and to be kept a great secret. The plan is certainly a good one, and was established for a humane purpose, to remove abuses as much as possible, and would doubtlessly act as a check if there were any trust to be reposed in the generals; but, from all that we have heard, that man must be a bold one who would dare to tell the truth: there would be too many opportunities to make him feel his commander’s vengeance in case it should be believed. I have heard Russians relate the most dreadful tales of the way in which the poor soldiers in the Caucasus are treated. Some years since the brother of a lady we knew in St. Petersburg (it was the same who suffered from the birch in Orloff’s office) was under judgment for his conduct in the Caucasus; he had so starved his miserable regiment, and given such bad food for the men’s use, that a pestilence broke out among them, and ils se mouraient comme des mouches, as it was said. It took half his fortune to bribe the authorities to hush the matter up. In fact, from all that is seen and heard in Russia, one would think that the lower classes are created expressly to become the prey of the upper, just as we see the smaller fish serve to support the larger, or to be regarded merely as a breed of sheep whose fleece the farmer takes whenever he pleases to do so.