LANDED PROPRIETORS OF THE OLD SCHOOL
Russian Hospitality--A Country-House--Its Owner Described--His Life, Past and Present--Winter Evenings--Books---Connection with the Outer World--The Crimean War and the Emancipation--A Drunken, Dissolute Proprietor--An Old General and his Wife--"Name Days"--A
Legendary Monster--A Retired Judge--A Clever Scribe--Social Leniency--Cause of Demoralisation.
Of all the foreign countries in which I have travelled, Russia certainly bears off the palm in the matter of hospitality. Every spring I found myself in possession of a large number of invitations from landed proprietors in different parts of the country--far more than I could possibly accept--and a great part of the summer was generally spent in wandering about from one country-
house to another. I have no intention of asking the reader to accompany me in all these expeditions--for though pleasant in reality, they might be tedious in description--but I wish to introduce him to some typical examples of the landed proprietors.
Among them are to be found nearly all ranks and conditions of men, from the rich magnate, surrounded with the refined luxury of West-
European civilisation, to the poor, ill-clad, ignorant owner of a few acres which barely supply him with the necessaries of life.
Let us take, first of all, a few specimens from the middle ranks.
In one of the central provinces, near the bank of a sluggish, meandering stream, stands an irregular group of wooden constructions--old, unpainted, blackened by time, and surmounted by high, sloping roofs of moss-covered planks. The principal building is a long, one-storied dwelling-house, constructed at right angles to the road. At the front of the house is a spacious, ill-kept yard, and at the back an equally spacious shady, garden, in which art carries on a feeble conflict with encroaching nature. At the other side of the yard, and facing the front door--or rather the front doors, for there are two--stand the stables, hay-shed, and granary, and near to that end of the house which is farthest from the road are two smaller houses, one of which is the kitchen, and the other the Lyudskaya, or servants' apartments. Beyond these we can perceive, through a single row of lime-trees, another group of time-blackened wooden constructions in a still more dilapidated condition. That is the farmyard.
There is certainly not much symmetry in the disposition of these buildings, but there is nevertheless a certain order and meaning in the apparent chaos. All the buildings which do not require stoves are built at a considerable distance from the dwelling-house and kitchen, which are more liable to take fire; and the kitchen stands by itself, because the odour of cookery where oil is used is by no means agreeable, even for those whose olfactory nerves are not very sensitive. The plan of the house is likewise not without a certain meaning. The rigorous separation of the sexes, which formed a characteristic trait of old Russian society, has long since disappeared, but its influence may still be traced in houses built on the old model. The house in question is one of these, and consequently it is composed of three sections--at the one end the male apartments, at the other the female apartments, and in the middle the neutral territory, comprising the dining-room and the salon. This arrangement has its conveniences, and explains the fact that the house has two front doors. At the back is a third door, which opens from the neutral territory into a spacious verandah overlooking the garden.
Here lives, and has lived for many years, Ivan Ivanovitch K----, a gentleman of the old school, and a very worthy man of his kind. If we look at him as he sits in his comfortable armchair, with his capacious dressing-gown hanging loosely about him, we shall be able to read at a glance something of his character. Nature endowed him with large bones and broad shoulders, and evidently intended him to be a man of great muscular power, but he has contrived to frustrate this benevolent intention, and has now more fat than muscle. His close-cropped head is round as a bullet, and his features are massive and heavy, but the heaviness is relieved by an expression of calm contentment and imperturbable good-nature, which occasionally blossoms into a broad grin. His face is one of those on which no amount of histrionic talent could produce a look of care and anxiety, and for this it is not to blame, for such an expression has never been demanded of it. Like other mortals, he sometimes experiences little annoyances, and on such occasions his small grey eyes sparkle and his face becomes suffused with a crimson glow that suggests apoplexy; but ill-fortune has never been able to get sufficiently firm hold of him to make him understand what such words as care and anxiety mean. Of struggle, disappointment, hope, and all the other feelings which give to human life a dramatic interest, he knows little by hearsay and nothing by experience. He has, in fact, always lived outside of that struggle for existence which modern philosophers declare to be the law of nature.
Somewhere about seventy years ago Ivan Ivan'itch was born in the house where he still lives. His first lessons he received from the parish priest, and afterwards he was taught by a deacon's son, who had studied in the ecclesiastical seminary to so little purpose that he was unable to pass the final examination. By both of these teachers he was treated with extreme leniency, and was allowed to learn as little as he chose. His father wished him to study hard, but his mother was afraid that study might injure his health, and accordingly gave him several holidays every week. Under these circumstances his progress was naturally not very rapid, and he was still very slightly acquainted with the elementary rules of arithmetic, when his father one day declared that he was already eighteen years of age, and must at once enter the service.