47

AN AMBASSADOR REPORTS

When Peter moved his court, his government and his noblemen from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the foreign ambassadors accredited to the Tsar were also forced to settle along the Neva. Many of these diplomats left accounts of their service, among them Whitworth of England, Campredon of France, Juel of Denmark and Bergholz of Holstein. But the richest eyewitness picture of the later years at Peter’s court comes from Friedrich Christian Weber, the ambassador of Hanover, whose description of life at court in St. Petersburg complements the description of life at court in Moscow presented by the Austrian Johann Korb twenty years before. Weber arrived in Russia in 1714 and spent seven years in St. Petersburg before returning to his homeland and publishing his lengthy memoir. He was a dignified, relatively open-minded man who admired Peter and was interested in everything he saw, although he saw some things of which he did not approve.

At his very first public function, the stolid Hanoverian envoy received an indication of the talents required of an ambassador to the court of the Tsar. “I had hardly arrived,” Weber begins, “when Admiral Apraxin gave a magnificent entertainment to the whole court and, by His Tsarish Majesty’s order, caused me to be invited.” At the door, however, the new Ambassador had trouble with the guards: “They used foul language to me, they kept putting their halberds across the door, then, with greater rudeness, they turned me down the stairs.” Finally, through the intervention of a friend, Weber was admitted. He had learned his first lesson about life in Russia. It was:

that I ran great hazard of exposing myself to the like treatment in the future unless I changed my plain, though clean, dress and appeared all trimmed with gold and silver, and with a couple of footmen walking before me and bawling out “Clear the way!” I was soon made more sensible that I had a great many more things to learn. After having gulped down at dinner a dozen bumpers of Hungary wine, I received from the hands of the Vice Tsar Romodanovsky a full quart of brandy, and being forced to empty it in two draughts, I soon lost my senses, though I had the comfort to observe that the rest of the guests lying asleep on the floor were in no condition to make reflections on my little skill at drinking.

In his first days, Weber’s dignity was subjected to other strains:

I went, according to the custom of all polite countries, to pay my respects to the chief nobility of the Russian court in order to get acquainted with them. As it was not the custom to send word ahead … I was obliged to wait in the cold until his lordship came out. Having made my compliments to him, he asked whether I had anything else to say; upon my answering in the negative, he dismissed me with this reply: “I have nothing to say to you either.” I ventured to go a second time to visit another Russian. But as soon as he heard me mentioning my own country, he cut me short and flatly told me, “I know nothing of that country. You may go and apply to those to whom you are directed.” This put an end to my desire of making visits and I firmly resolved never to go any more to any Russians without being invited except to the ministers with whom I had business, who indeed showed me all imaginable civility. A week after, I met those impolite courtiers at court and as they had observed His Tsarish Majesty discoursing with me for a considerable while and treating me with a great deal of favor, and besides that he had given Admiral Apraxin to see me well entertained, they now both came up to me and in a very mean and abject manner asked my pardon for their fault, almost falling down to the ground, and very liberally offering me all their brandy to oblige me.

During Peter’s absence with his fleet, his sister, Princess Natalya, gave a banquet which provided Weber with another opportunity to observe Russian customs:

The toasts are begun at the very beginning of the meal, in large cups and glasses in the form of bells. At the entertainment of people of distinction no other wine is given but that of Hungary.… All the beauties of Petersburg appeared at this entertainment, they were already at that time in the French dress, but it seemed to fit very uneasy upon them, particularly the hoop petticoats, and their black teeth were a sufficient proof that they had not yet weaned themselves from the notion so fast riveted in the minds of the old Russians, that white teeth only become blackamoors and monkeys.

The custom of blackening the teeth faded quickly, and by 1721, when he was writing his account, Weber assured his readers that this and other primitive habits “have since been so far removed that a stranger who comes into a polite assembly at Petersburg will hardly believe he is in Russia, but rather, as long as he enters into no discourse, think himself in the midst of London or Paris.”

Among his fellow ambassadors in St. Petersburg, Weber was especially intrigued by the representatives of the Kalmuck and Uzbeki khans. One morning, Weber recalled,

I had the honor to meet an ambassador of the Khan of Kalmucks at the Chancery Office for Foreign Affairs. He was a man of frightful and fierce aspect. His head was shaved all over except a lock of hair which hung from the crown down to the neck according to the custom of that nation. He delivered on the part of his master, who is the Tsar’s vassal, a roll of paper. Then he threw himself down to the ground, muttering for a long while something between his teeth. Which compliment, being interpreted to the Grand Chancellor Golovkin, he had this short answer: that it was very well. This ceremony over, the ambassador resumed his fierce air.

Later that year, another ambassador arrived from the Kalmuck Khan bearing an odd commission. Some time before, Weber wrote, Prince Menshikov had “made a present of a handsome coach of English make to the Khan. Now, one of the wheels being broken, this ambassador was sent to ask the Prince to let him have another wheel. The ambassador told us that his master gave audience to the envoys of his neighbors in this coach and that on solemn days he dined in it.”

On May 17, 1714, an ambassador of the Khan of Uzbek arrived in St. Petersburg. Among the ambassador’s commissions was an offer from his master to the Tsar of

a passage through his dominions for the Tsar’s yearly caravans to China, an incredible advantage, considering that the caravans were at that time obliged to make their journey to Peking with great inconvenience and in a year’s time, through the whole extent of Siberia, following the windings and turnings of the rivers, there being no beaten road, whereas they might go thither through his master’s dominions on a good road in four months.

He afterward laid many silks and other Chinese and Persian goods together with rare furs at the Tsar’s feet as a present from his master, adding that he left some Persian horses and beasts behind at Moscow and expressing his concern that a fine leopard and an ape had died on the road. In this speech, he never styled the Tsar other than the Wise Emperor, which with them is the highest title of honor. The ambassador was … about fifty years of age, of a lively and venerable aspect. He wore a long beard and on his turban he wore an ostrich feather, which he reported only princes and lords of the first rank were allowed to wear in his country.

Weber described Easter, the greatest of all Russian religious holidays.

The festival of Easter was celebrated with particular pomp, when large amends were made for the severe and pinching abstinence to which the Russians are kept during the preceding Lent. Their mirth, or rather madness in those days, is inexpressible, it being their opinion that he who has not been drunk at least a dozen times has shown but little of Easter devotion. Their singers in church are so extravagant as any of them, and it was little surprise to me to see two parties of them who fell out among themselves at a public house come to blows and beat each other with great poles so furiously that several of them were carried off for dead. The most remarkable ceremony in the said holidays is that the Russians of both sexes present each other with painted eggs, giving the Kiss of Peace, the one saying “Christos voskres, Christ is risen,” and the other answering “Voistino voskres, verily He is risen,” whereupon they exchange eggs, and so part. For this reason many persons, particularly foreigners, who delight in that way of kissing the women, are seen rambling up and down with their eggs the whole day long.

In Peter’s time, dwarfs and giants were much valued throughout Europe as exotic decorations in royal and noble households. King Frederick William of Prussia had collected most of the giants on the continent, although Peter kept Nicholas Bourgeois, the seven-foot-two-inch giant he had found in Calais. For years, Nicholas stood behind Peter’s table, and in 1720 the Tsar married him to a Finnish giantess in hopes of producing oversized offspring. Peter was disappointed; the couple remained childless.

Dwarfs were more evenly distributed. Every Infanta of Spain was accompanied by a court dwarf to underscore whatever beauty she possessed. In Vienna, the Emperor Charles VI kept a famous Jewish dwarf, Jacob Ris, as a kind of ex-officio counselor at the Imperial court. More often, dwarfs were kept as human pets whose antics and droll appearance were even more amusing and diverting than talking parrots or dogs that could stand on their hind legs. In Russia, dwarfs were especially prized. Every great noble wanted a dwarf as a symbol of status or to please his wife, and competition among the nobility for their possession became intense. The birth of a dwarf was considered good luck and dwarfs born as serfs were often granted their freedom. To encourage the largest possible population of dwarfs, Russians took special care to marry them together in hopes that a dwarf couple would produce dwarf children.

It was a lavish gift when a dwarf or, even more, a pair of dwarfs was given away. In 1708, Prince Menshikov, a particularly keen collector of dwarfs, wrote to his wife: “I send you a present of two girls, one of whom is very small and can serve as a parrot. She is more talkative than is usual among such little people and can make you gayer than if she were a real parrot.” In 1716, Menshikov appealed to Peter: “Since one of my daughters possesses a dwarf girl and the other does not, therefore I beg you kindly to ask Her Majesty the Tsaritsa to allow me to take one of the dwarfs which were left after the death of the Tsaritsa Martha.”

Peter was enormously fond of dwarfs. They had been around him all his life. As a child, he went to church walking between two rows of dwarfs carrying red silken curtains; as tsar, he kept at court a large population of dwarfs to amuse him and to play prominent roles on special occasions. At banquets, they were placed inside huge pies; when Peter cut into the pastry, a dwarf popped out. He liked to combine their strange shapes with the mock ceremonies in which he reveled. Dwarf weddings and even dwarf funerals, closely aping the ceremonies his own court performed, set Peter to laughing so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.

In 1710, two days after the marriage of Peter’s niece Anne to Duke Frederick William of Courland, a marriage of two dwarfs was celebrated with exactly the same ceremony and pomp as the marriage of the royal couple. On the basis of accounts from others, Weber described this festivity, which was attended by seventy-two dwarfs:

A very little dwarf marched at the head of the procession, as being the marshal … conductor and master of the ceremony. He was followed by the bride and bridegroom neatly dressed. Then came the Tsar attended by his ministers, princes, boyars, officers and others; next marched all the dwarfs of both sexes in couples. They were in all seventy-two, some in the service of the Tsar, the Tsarina Dowager, the Prince and Princess Menshikov, and other persons of distinction, but others had been sent for from all parts of Russia, however remote. At the church, the priest asked the bridegroom whether he would take his bride to be his wife in a loud voice. He answered in a loud voice, addressing himself to his beloved, “You and no other.” The bride being asked whether she had not made any promise of marriage to another than her bridegroom, she answered, “That would be very pretty, indeed.” However, when the main question came to be asked, whether she would have the bridegroom for her husband, she uttered her “Yes” with such a low voice as could hardly be heard, which occasioned a good deal of laughter to the company. The Tsar, in token of his favor, was pleased to hold the garland over the bride’s head according to the Russian custom. The ceremony being over, the company went by water to the Prince Menshikov’s palace. Dinner was prepared in a spacious hall, where two days before the Tsar had entertained the guests invited to the Duke’s marriage. Several small tables were placed in the middle of the hall for the new-married couple and the rest of the dwarfs, who were all splendidly dressed after the German fashion.… After dinner the dwarfs began to dance after the Russian way, which lasted till eleven at night. It is easy to imagine how much the Tsar and the rest of the company were delighted at the comical capers, strange grimaces, and odd postures of that medley of pygmies, most of whom were of a size the mere sight of which was enough to provoke laughter. One had a high bunch on his back, and very short legs, another was remarkable by a monstrous big belly; a third came waddling along on a little pair of crooked legs like a badger; a fourth had a head of prodigious size; some had wry mouths and long ears, little pig eyes, and chubby cheeks and many such comical figures more. When these diversions were ended, the newly married couple were carried to the Tsar’s house and bedded in his own bedchamber.

Perhaps the Tsar’s own abnormal height fed this taste for reveling with the physically deformed; in any case, it included not only giants and dwarfs, but all who were handicapped or afflicted by age or illness. On January 27 and 28, 1715, for example, the whole court joined in a two-day masquerade, preparations for which had been under way for three months. The occasion was the wedding of Nikita Zotov, who forty years before had been Peter’s tutor and now, having served as Mock-Pope, was in his eighty-fourth year. The bride was a buxom widow of thirty-four.

“The nuptials of this extraordinary couple were solemnized by the court in masks,” reported Weber.

The four persons appointed to invite the guests were the greatest stammerers that could be found in all Russia. Old decrepit men who were not able to walk or stand had been picked out to serve for bridesmen, stewards and waiters. There were four running footmen, the most unwieldy fellows, who had been troubled with gout most of their lifetime, and were so fat and bulky they needed others to lead them. The Mock-Tsar of Moscow, who represented King David in his dress, instead of a harp had a lyre covered with a bearskin to play upon. He was carried on a sort of pageant [float], placed on a sled, to the four corners of which were tied as many bears, which, being pricked with goads by fellows purposely appointed for it, made such a frightful roaring as well suited the confused and horrible din raised by the disagreeing instruments of the rest of the company. The Tsar himself was dressed like a Boor of Frizeland, and skillfully beat a drum in company with three generals. In this manner, bells ringing everywhere, the ill-matched couple were attended by the maskers to the altar of the great church, where they were joined in matrimony by a priest a hundred years old who had lost his eyesight and memory, to supply which defect a pair of spectacles were put on his nose, two candles held before his eyes, and the words sounded into his ears so that he was able to pronounce them. From the church the procession went to the Tsar’s palace, where the diversions lasted some days.

Weber’s memoir, of course, ranges wider than his descriptions of the people and activities of Peter’s court. He was fascinated by Russia and the Russian people. He admired the calm endurance of the average man and woman, while at the same time he was often appalled by what he described as their “barbarous customs.” In the following description of Russian baths, for example, amazement is mingled with a touch of admiration. (Weber fails to mention, however, that the Russian custom of a weekly bath kept the Russian people far cleaner than most Europeans, who sometimes went weeks or months without taking a bath.)

The Russian way of bathing, which they make use of for a universal medicine against any indisposition, includes four different sorts of baths out of which they choose one which they think to be proper against their particular distemper.

Some sit naked in a boat, and having brought themselves by violent rowing into a great sweat, suddenly throw themselves into the river and after having swum for some time, they get out and dry themselves either by the sun or with their shirts. Others leap cold into the river and afterward lie close to a fire which they make on the shore, rubbing themselves over the whole body with oil or grease, and then turn themselves so long about the fire till it is chafed in; which in their opinion renders their limbs supple and nimble.

The third sort is the most common: along a little river are built upwards of thirty bagnios, one half for men and the other half for women. Those who have a mind to bathe, undress under the open sky, and run into the bagnio; after having sufficiently sweated and got cold water poured upon them, they go to bask and air themselves, and run up and down through the bushes sporting with one another. It is astonishing to see not only the men, but also the women unmarried as well as married … running about to the number of forty or fifty, and more together, stark naked, without any sort of shame or decency, so far from shunning the strangers who are walking thereabouts that they even laugh at them. The Russians in general both men and women use this sort of bathing both winter and summer twice a week at least; they pay one kopek a head, the bagnios belonging to the Tsar. Those that have bagnios in their houses pay yearly something for it; which universal bathing throughout Russia brings considerable revenue into the Tsar’s coffers.

There is a fourth sort of bathing which is their most powerful remedy to the greatest distempers. They cause an oven to be heated as usual, and when the heat is somewhat abated (yet still so hot that I was not able to hold my hand on the bottom a quarter of a minute), five or six Russians, more or less, creep into it and having stretched themselves out at their full length, their companion who waits without shuts the hole so fast that they can hardly breathe within. When they can endure it no longer they call, upon which he that is upon the watch lets the sick come out again, who after having breathed some fresh air, creep into the oven again and repeat this operation till they are almost roasted, and coming out, their bodies being ruddy like a piece of red cloth, throw themselves in the summertime into the water, or in winter, which they love best, into the snow, with which they are covered all over, leaving only the nose and eyes open, and so they lie buried for two or three hours according to the state of their distemper; this they count an excellent method for the recovery of their health.

Weber also witnessed Russians at sports and recreation. In a large, grassy field on the south side of the Neva, peasants, laborers and common people of all sorts gathered on Sunday afternoons after drinking in the taverns. Men and boys divided into groups to box and fight for fun, screaming and shouting. Foreigners were appalled by these dusty, drunken melees, reporting that when the combat was over “the ground lies full of blood and hair, and many had to be carried away.”

In the height of summer, the heat in St. Petersburg was almost intolerable; not even during the few hours of night when the sun disappeared below the horizon did the air become really cool. For some Russians, beer was a solution. But one visit to a Russian taphouse to see how the beer was dispensed was enough to put most foreigners off Russian beer forever. As Weber described this scene:

The liquor stands there in an open tub or cooler to which the common people crowd, taking it out with a wooden dipper and drinking it, holding their mouths over the tub that nothing may be spilled, so that if by any chance any of it misses their mouths, it runs down their beards and falls again into the tub. If a customer happens to have no money, he leaves his old fur coat, a shirt, a pair of stockings or some other part of his wearing apparel, to pawn until the evening when he receives his wages. In the meantime, those filthy pledges [the clothing] hang on the brim round the tub, nor does it matter much whether they are pushed in and float there for some time.

While his people were brawling in the fields and cooling themselves with beer, Peter’s favorite summer relaxation was to sail on the Gulf of Finland. Sometimes, when he sailed to Kronstadt or Peterhof, he invited foreign ambassadors to accompany him. Weber’s account of one such excursion presents a graphic picture of what it was like to spend a weekend in the country as a guest of Peter the Great:

On June 9, 1715, the Tsar went to Kronstadt, where we also followed in a galley, but in consequence of a great storm, we were obliged to remain at anchor in this open boat for two days and two nights without lights, without beds, without food and drink. When at last we arrived at Kronstadt, the Tsar invited us to his villa at Peterhof. We went with a fair wind, and at dinner warmed ourselves to such a degree with old Hungarian wine, although His Majesty spared himself, that on rising from the table, we could scarcely keep our legs, and when we had been obliged to empty a bowl holding a quart apiece from the hands of the Tsaritsa, we lost our senses, and in that condition they carried us out to different places, some to the garden, some to the woods, while the rest lay on the ground here and there.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, they woke us up and again invited us to the summer house, where the Tsar gave us each an axe and bade us follow him. He led us into a young wood, where he pointed out trees which it was necessary to fell in order to make an allée straight to the sea about a hundred paces long, and told us to cut down the trees. He himself began to work on the spot (there were seven of us besides the Tsar) and although this unaccustomed work, especially when we had not half recovered our senses, was not at all to our liking, we nevertheless cut boldly and diligently, so that in about three hours the allée was ready and the fumes of wine had entirely evaporated. None of us did himself any harm except a certain ambassador who hacked at the trees with such fury that by the fall of one, he was hit, knocked down, bruised, and badly scratched. After verbal thanks, we received our real recompense after supper in a second drink, which was so strong that we were taken to our beds unconscious.

We had hardly succeeded in sleeping an hour and a half before the Tsar’s favorite appeared at midnight, pulled us out of our beds and dragged us willing or unwilling to the bedroom of a Circassian prince, asleep there with his wife, where by their bedside they plied us with so much wine and vodka that on the following day none of us could remember how we got home.

At eight o’clock in the morning we were invited to the palace for breakfast, which instead of coffee or tea as we expected, consisted of a good glass of vodka. Afterward we were taken to the foot of a little hill and made to mount eight wretched country nags without saddles or stirrups and ride about in review for an hour in the sight of Their Majesties, who leaned out the window. A certain Russian of distinction led the vanguard, and by the help of switches or sticks we made our jades mount uphill as best we could. After having taken a turn for an hour in the wood and refreshed ourselves with hearty draughts of water, we had a fourth drinking bout at dinner.

As the wind was strong we were put in the Tsar’s covered boat, in which the Tsaritsa with her maid of honor had occupied the cabin, while the Tsar stood with us on the open deck and assured us that in spite of the strong wind we should arrive at Kronstadt at four o’clock. But after we had been tacking back and forth for two hours, we were caught by such a frightful squall that the Tsar, leaving aside all his jokes, himself took hold of the rudder, and in that danger displayed not only his great skill in working a ship, but an uncommon strength of body and undauntedness of mind. The Tsaritsa was laid on high benches in the cabin, which was full of water, the waves beating over the vessel, and violent rains falling, in which dangerous condition she also showed a great deal of courage and resolution.

We all gave ourselves up wholly to the will of God, and consoled ourselves with the thought that we should drown in such noble company. All effects of the drink disappeared very quickly, and we were filled with thoughts of repentance. Four smaller boats on which were the court of the Tsaritsa and our servants were tossed about on the waves and driven ashore. Our boat, which was strongly built and crewed with experienced sailors, after seven dangerous hours reached the harbor of Kronstadt, where the Tsar left us saying: “Good night to you, gentlemen. This was carrying the jest too far.”

Next morning, the Tsar was seized with a fever. We on our part, being thoroughly soaked, having for so many hours sat in water up to the middle, made haste to get ashore on the island. But not being able to get either clothes or beds, our own baggage being gone another way, we made a fire, stripped stark naked, and wrapped our bodies up again in the coarse covers of sleds which we had borrowed from the peasants. In this condition we passed the night, warming ourselves at the fire, moralizing and making grave reflections on the miseries and uncertainties of human life.

On the 16th of July, the Tsar put to sea with his fleet, which we had not the good fortune to see, being all of us ill with fevers and other indispositions.