Part 19 (2/2)

Black.' You go. First you get hold of the street in general, and discover that the special name applies only to one block or so, two or three versts away from the part where you chance to have landed. Moscow is even more a city of magnificent distances, you know, than St.

Petersburg. Next you discover that there is no 'house of Mr. Black.' Mr.

Black died, respected and beloved, G.o.d be with him! a hundred years ago or less, and the house has changed owners three times since. So far, it is tolerably plain sailing. Then it appears that the house you are in search of is not in the street at all, but tucked in behind it, on a parallel lane, round several corners and elbows.” (I will explain, in parenthesis, that the old system of designating a house by the name of the owner, which prevailed before the introduction of numbers, still survives extensively, even in Petersburg.)

”The next time you set out on a search expedition,” continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, ”you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes!

and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, ”Inquire of the Swiss,” or ”of the yard-porter.”] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered rather above the average in cleverness. But that is in Petersburg, and I may as well tell you at once that clever Petersburgers are fools compared to the Moscow men, in a good many points, such as driving a hard bargain. Well, suppose that the house you want is No. 29. You find No. 27 or No. 28, and begin to crow over your cleverness. But the next house on one side is No. 319, and the house on the other side is No. 15; the one opposite is No. 211, or No. 7, or something idiotic like that, and all because the city authorities permit people to retain the old district number of the house, to affix the new street number, or to post up both at their own sweet will! As you cannot find the laundress to question, under the circ.u.mstances, you interview every Swiss [hall-porter], yard-porter, policeman, and peasant for a verst round about; and all the satisfaction you get is, 'In whose house? That is Mr.

Green's and this is Mr. Bareboaster's, and yonder are Count Thingumbob's and Prince Whatyoumaycall's.' So you retreat once more, baffled.”

Fortifying himself with more tea and cigarettes, the victim of Moscow went on:--

”But there is still another plan. [A groan.] The favorite way to give an address is, 'In the parish of Saint So-and-So.' It does n't pin you down to any special house, street, or number, which is, of course, a decided advantage when you are hunting for a needle in a haystack. And the Moscow saints and parishes have such names!” Here the narrator's feelings overcame him, and when I asked for some of the parochial t.i.tles he was too limp to reply. I had already noticed the peculiar designations of many churches, and had begun to suspect myself of stupidity or my cabman and other informants of malicious jesting. Now, however, I investigated the subject, and made a collection of specimens.

These extraordinary names are all derived--with one or two exceptions for which I can find no explanation--from the peculiarities of the soil in the parish, the former use to which the site of the church was put, or the avocations of the inhabitants of its neighborhood in the olden times, when most of the s.p.a.ce outside of the Kremlin and China Town was devoted to the purveyors and servants of the Tzars of Muscovy.

St. Nicholas, a very popular saint, heads the list, as usual. ”St.

Nicholas on Chips” occupies the spot where a woodyard stood. ”St.

Nicholas on the Well,” ”St. Nicholas Fine Chime,” are easily understood.

”St. Nicholas White-Collar” is in the ancient district of the court laundresses. ”St. Nicholas in the Bell-Ringers” is comprehensible; but ”St. Nicholas the Blockhead” is so called because in this quarter dwelt the imperial hatmakers, who prepared ”blockheads” for shaping their wares. ”St. Nicholas Louse's Misery” is, probably, a corruption of two somewhat similar words meaning Muddy Hill. ”St. Nicholas on Chickens'

Legs” belonged to the poulterers, and was so named because it was raised from the ground on supports resembling stilts. ”St. Nicholas of the Interpreters” is in the quarter where the Court interpreters lived, and where the Tatar mosque now stands. Then we have: ”The Life-Giving Trinity in the Mud,” ”St. John the Warrior” and ”St. John the Theologian in the Armory,” ”The Birth of Christ on Broadswords,” ”St. George the Martyr in the Old Jails,” ”The Nine Holy Martyrs on Cabbage-Stalks,” on the site of a former market garden, and the inexplicable ”Church of the Resurrection on the Marmot,” besides many others, some of which, I was told, bear quite unrepeatable names, probably perverted, like the last and like ”St. Nicholas Louse's Misery,” from words having originally some slight resemblance in sound, but which are now unrecognizable.

Great stress is laid, in hasty books of travel, on the contrasts presented by the Moscow streets, the ”palace of a prince standing by the side of the squalid log hut of a peasant,” and so forth. That may, perhaps, have been true of the Moscow of twenty or thirty years ago. In very few quarters is there even a semblance of truth in that description at the present day. The cl.u.s.ters of Irish hovels in upper New York among the towering new buildings are much more picturesque and noticeable. The most characteristic part of the town, as to domestic architecture, the part to which the old statements are most applicable, lies between the two lines of boulevards, which are, in themselves, good places to study some Russian tastes. For example, a line of open horse-cars is run all winter on the outer boulevard, and appreciated. Another line has the centre of its cars inclosed, and uninclosed seats at the ends. The latter are the most popular, at the same price, and as for heating a street-car, the idea could never be got into a Russian brain. A certain section of the inner boulevard, which forms a sort of slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed. It is fas.h.i.+onable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfas.h.i.+onable to convert the grumbling into action. On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on the ice.

In the districts between the boulevards, one can get an idea of the town as it used to be. In this ”Earth Town” typical streets are still to be found, but the chances are greatly against a traveler finding them. They are alleys in width and irregularity, paved with cobblestones which seem to have been selected for their angles, and with intermittent sidewalks consisting of narrow, carelessly joined flagstones. The front steps of the more pretentious houses must be skirted or mounted, the street must be crossed when the family carriage stands at the door, like the most characteristic streets in Nantucket. Some of the doorplates--which are large squares of tin fastened over the _porte cochere_, or on the gate of the courtyard--bear t.i.tles. Next door, perhaps, stands a log house, flush with the sidewalk, its moss calking plainly visible between the huge ribs, its steeply sloping roof rising, almost within reach, above a single story; and its serpent-mouthed eave-spouts ingeniously arranged to pour a stream of water over the vulgar pedestrian. The windows, on a level with the eyes of the pa.s.ser-by, are draped with cheap lace curtains. The broad expanse of cotton wadding between the double windows is decorated, in middle-cla.s.s taste, with tufts of dyed gra.s.ses, colored paper, and other execrable ornaments. Here, as everywhere else in Moscow, one can never get out of eye-shot of several churches; white with brilliant external frescoes, or the favorite mixture of crushed strawberry and white, all with green roofs and surmounted with domes of ever-varying and original forms and colors, crowned with golden crosses of elaborate and beautiful designs. Ask a resident, whether prince or peasant, ”How many churches are there in 'Holy Moscow town'?” The answer invariably is, ”Who knows? A forty of forties,” which is the old equivalent, in the Epic Songs, of incalculable numbers. After a while one really begins to feel that sixteen hundred is not an exaggerated estimate.

Very few of the streets in any part of the town are broad; all of them seem like lanes to a Petersburger, and ”they are forever going up and down,” as a Petersburg cabman described the Moscow hills to me, in serious disapproval. He had found the ground too excitingly uneven and the inhabitants too evenly dull to live with for more than a fortnight, he confessed to me. Many of the old mansions in the centre of the town have been converted into shops, offices, and lodgings; and huge, modern business buildings have taken the places formerly occupied, I presume, by the picturesque ”hovels” of the travelers' tales.

One of the most interesting places in the White Town to me was the huge foundling asylum, established by Katherine II., immediately after her accession to the throne. There are other inst.i.tutions connected with it, such as a school for orphan girls. But the hospital for the babies is the centre of interest. There are about six hundred nurses always on hand. Very few of them have more than one nursling to care for, and a number of babies who enter life below par, so to speak, are accommodated with incubators. The nurses stand in battalions in the various large halls, all clad alike, with the exception of the woolen _kokoshnik_,-- the coronet-shaped headdress with its cap for the hair,--which is of a different color in each room. It requires cords of ”cartwheels”--the big round loaves of black bread--to feed this army of nurses. If they are not fed on their ordinary peasant food, cabbage soup and sour black bread, they fall ill and the babies suffer, as no bottles are used.

The fact that the babies are washed every day was impressed on my mind by the behavior of the little creatures while undergoing the operation.

They protested a little in gentle squeaks when the water touched them, but quieted down instantly when they were wiped. It is my belief that Russian children never cry except during their bath. I heard no infantile wailing except in this asylum, and very little there. Many Russian mothers of all ranks still tie up their babies tightly in swaddling clothes, on the old-fas.h.i.+oned theory that it makes their limbs straight. But these foundlings are not swaddled. After its bath, the baby is laid on a fresh, warm, linen cloth, which is then wrapped around it in a particular manner, so that it is securely fastened without the use of a single pin. Two other cloths, similarly wrapped, complete the simple, comfortable toilet. This and another Russian habit, that of allowing a baby to kick about in its crib clad only in its birthday suit, I commend to the consideration of American mothers.

The last thing in the asylum which is shown to visitors is the manner in which the babies are received, washed, weighed, and numbered. It was early in December when I was there, but the numbers on the ivory disks suspended from the new arrivals' necks were a good many hundred above seventeen thousand. As they begin each year with No. 1, I think the whole number of foundlings for that particular year must have been between eighteen and nineteen thousand. The children are put out to board, after a short stay at the asylum, in peasant families, which receive a small sum per month for taking care of them. When the boys grow up they count as members of the family in a question of army service, and the sons of the family can escape their turn, I was told, if matters are rightly managed. The girls become uniformed servants in the government inst.i.tutions for the education of girls of the higher cla.s.ses, or marry peasants.

The most famous of the gates which lead from the White Town through the white, machicolated walls into China Town* is the Iversky, or gate of the Iberian Virgin. The gate has two entrances, and between these tower-crowned openings stands a chapel of malachite and marble, gilded bronze and painting. The Iversky Virgin who inhabits the chapel, though ”wonder-working,” is only a copy of one in the monastery on Mount Athos.

She was brought to Russia in 1666, and this particular chapel was built for her by Katherine II. Her garment and crown of gold weigh between twenty-seven and twenty-eight pounds, and are studded with splendid jewels. But the Virgin whom one sees in the chapel is not even this copy, but a copy of the copy. The original Virgin, as we may call the first copy for convenience, is in such great demand for visits to convents and monasteries, to private houses and the shops of wealthy and devout merchants, that she is never at home from early morn till late at night, and the second copy represents her to the thousands of prayerful people of all cla.s.ses, literally, who stop to place a candle or utter a pet.i.tion. The original Virgin travels about the town, meanwhile, in a blue coach adorned with her special device, like a coat of arms, and drawn by six horses; and the persons whom she honors with a visit offer liberal gifts. The heads of her coachman, postilions, and footman are supposed to be respectfully bared in all weathers, but when it is very cold these men wind woolen shawls, of the nondescript, dirt color, which characterizes the hair of most peasants, adroitly round their heads, allowing the fringe to hang and simulate long locks. The large image of the Virgin, in its ma.s.sive frame, occupies the seat of honor. A priest and a deacon, clad in crimson velvet and gold vestments, their heads unprotected, even in the most severe weather, by anything but their own thick hair, sit respectfully with their backs to the horses. When the Virgin drives along, pa.s.sers-by pause, salute, and cross themselves.

Evidently, under these circ.u.mstances, it is difficult for a foreigner to get a view of the original Virgin. We were fortunate, however. Our first invitation in Moscow was from the Abbess of an important convent to be present at one of the services which I have mentioned,--a sort of invocation of the Virgin's blessing,--in her cell, and at the conclusion of the service we were asked if we would not like to ”salute the Virgin” and take a sip of the holy water ”for health.” Of course we did both, as courtesy demanded. Some time after that, as we were driving along the princ.i.p.al street of China Town, I saw an imposing equipage approaching, and remarked, ”Here comes the Iversky Virgin.”

* Ancient Moscow, lying in a walled semicircle just outside the walls of the Kremlin. All the trading was done on the ”Red Square,” where the Gostinny Dvor now stands, and all Oriental merchants were known by the common designation of ”Chinese.” At the present day ”Chinese” has been replaced by ”German,” to designate foreigners in general.

”Excuse me, madam,” said my cabman,--I had not addressed him, but as I had spoken involuntarily in Russian he thought I had,--”it is not the Virgin, it is only the Saviour. Don't you see that there are only four horses?”

”Very true; and St. Sergius drives with three, and St. Pantaleimon with two,--do they not? Tell me, which of them all would you ask to visit you, if you wished a blessing?”

”St. Pantaleimon is a good, all-round saint, who helps well in most cases,” he replied thoughtfully. This seemed a good opportunity to get a popular explanation of a point which had puzzled me.

”Which,” I asked, ”is the real miraculous Iversky Virgin?--the one in the chapel, the one who rides in the carriage, or the original on Mount Athos?”

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