THE
ENGLISHWOMAN IN RUSSIA;
IMPRESSIONS OF THE SOCIETY AND MANNERS
OF THE
RUSSIANS AT HOME.
BY A LADY,
TEN YEARS RESIDENT IN THAT COUNTRY.
Peter the Great’s Statue, and the Office of the Senate.
With Illustrations.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1855.
The Proprietor of the Copyright of this Work reserves to himself the right
of Translation in Foreign Countries.
TO
HER BROTHER,
THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY
PREFACE.
Without troubling the reader with any account of asea voyage from England to Archangel, as all travels onthe “vasty deep” present pretty much the same featureswhich have been so frequently and so well described byothers, I will only observe that circumstances induced meto reside for more than ten years in Russia, which Ihave only recently quitted.
The following pages contain a simple account of themanners, customs, and genre de vie chez eux of a peoplewhose domestic habits are comparatively but little knownto the English nation.
Of the truth of many of the anecdotes I can assure thereader; others I have had from good authority, and Ihave every reason to believe that they are veracious.
The names of persons that are inserted in the text arenot those of Russian families: the Russians, like theancient Greeks, have a termination denoting parentage;the syllables vitch for the masculine, and ovna for thefeminine, are merely equivalent to the classic ides.Thus, Dmitri Ivanovitch, means Demetrius the son ofIvan; Cleopatra Ivanovna, Cleopatra the daughter of[vi]Ivan, &c. I have therefore betrayed none, because thesurname is omitted; I have also taken the further precautionto change one of the names in every instance, lestmy friends should incur any evil consequences from theirgovernment, which is at the present time so exceedinglysuspicious, that, for the most harmless expression, theoffender who made use of it would be liable to be banishedto Siberia.
I trust that I have done full justice to all the amiableand social excellences of the Russians. Of their otherqualities I beg the reader to form his own judgment.“Une nation de barbares polis,” said a French gentleman,in speaking of them; but one cannot deny that theypossess the good qualities of savages, as well as their badones. P