The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-21 00:00:00

802 wrinkles, partly by constant exposure to wind and weather, torrid heat and iron frost; partly from the immoderate use of his beloved vapour•bath His hands an, feet are of tremendous size : he is strong, active, agile; and his capacity for endurance of hardships is almost incredible. He wears invariably a long eaten or coat, tight in the waist and loose in the skirts, of dark blue or grass green cloth or serge, not by any means of coarse materials, and, if he be a well-to-do Ischrostchik edged with two narrow rows of black velvet. This garment is neither single breasted nor double breasted—it is rather back breasted, the right lappel extending obliquely across the left breast tol beneath the armpit. Under these arms, too, and again, if his Ischvostchikship be prosperous, lie has a row of sugar•loaf buttons, sometimes silvery, more frequently coppery, but never buttening anything, and serving no earthly purpose that I am aware of. This caftan is in winter replaced by the touloupe, or sheepskin coat, to which I have previously alluded, and to which I give warning I shall have to call attention, many a time and oft, in the progress of these papers. Under the caftan or touloupe exists, perhaps, a shirt (but that is not by any means to be assumed as an invariable fact), and certainly, suspended by a ribbon, a little cross in brass, or a medal of St. Nicolai, St. George, St. Serge', St. Alex ander Nevsky, or some other equally revered and tho roughly Russian saint. " Few sorrows hail she of her own—my hope, my joy, my Genevieve," and few other garments of his own (though he has sorrows enough) has my lschvostchik. A pair of baggy galligaskins, blue or pink striped, heavy bucket boots well greased, and he. is nearly complete. Nay, let me not omit ono little orna• anent wherewith he sacrifices to the Graces. This is his sash or girdle, which is twisted tightly round his waist. It always hap been, in the beginning, dyed in the brightest and most staring hues; sometimes it has been of gold and silver brocade, and silk of scarlet an•i of blue; but it is most frequently, and when offered to the view of you, the fare, encircling the loins of the lschvostchik, a rag—a mere discoloured rag, greasy, dirty, frayed, and crumpled. The lschvostchik has a brass badge with the number of his vehicle, and an intolerable quantity of Sclavonic ver biage in relief; and this badge is placed on his back, so that you may study it, and make sure of your lschvostchik, if you have a spite against him. The next sketch is of a Russian peasant-girl : There is a Baba, a peasant girl, who is sitting listlessly on a rough-hewn bench at the door of one of the homoge neous hovels. She is not quite unoccupied, for she has the head of a gawky girl of ten on her knee, and is —well, I need not describe the universal pastime with which un cleanly nations fill up their leisure time. The Baba is of middle size : a strong, well-hung, likely wench enough. Her face and arms are burnt to a most disagreeable tawny, tan brown: the colour of the pigskin of a second-hand saddle that has been hanging for months— exposed to every weather—outside a broker's shop in Vinegar-yard, Drury-lane, London, is, perhaps, the closest image I can give of her face's hue. Nay ; there is a wood, or rather preparation of wood, used by upholsterers—not rosewood, ebony, mahogany, walnut, oak, but a fictitiously browned, ligneous substance, called Pembroke. I !Ave seen it, at sales, go in the guise of a round table for one pound nine. I mind it in catalogues : pembroke chest of drawers—pemoroke work-table. I know its unwholesome colour, and dully, blinking sheen, which no beeswax, no household-stuff, no wash-leather can raise to a generous polish. Pembroke is the Russian peasant complexion. The forehead low and receding. The roots of the hair of a dirty straw-colour ( growing in alarmingly close proximity to the eyebrows, as if they were originally the " same con cern," and the low forehead a bone of contention which had grown up between them and dissolved the partner ship). Set very close together, in this brown face, are two eyes—respectable as to size—and light blue in colour, which, as the orbs themselves are quite lustreless and void of speculation, has a very weird, not to say horrifying, effect. The nose broad, thick, unsbapely, as if the os-nisi hid been suddenly covered up with a lump of clay, but that no refinements of moulding, no hesitating compromises between the Roman, the pug, and the snub had been gone tbrough. It is as though Nature had done some million of these noses by contract, and they had been clapped indis criminately on as many million moujik faces. Not to grow Slawkenbergian on the subject of noses, I may conclude, nasally, by remarking that the nostrils are wide apart — quite circular—and seemingly punched, rather than per. forated, with a violent contempt of reference to the require ments of symmetry of position. The mouth is not. bad, —lips red enough—teeth remarkably sound and white— and the entire features would be pleasant, but that the mouth•corners are drawn down, and that the under lip is pendulous—not sensuously, but senselessly. The chin has a curious triangular dimple in the centre; for all the organs of hearing visible, the I3aba might be as earless— she is certainly as unbashed—as Defoe ; the neck is the unmitigated bull pattern: short, clumsy, thick-set, and not, 1 am afraid, very graceful in a young female ; the shoulders broad and rounded (that back is well accustomed to car • rying burdens, and prodigious burdens the Russian women do carry sometimes); the feet are large, long, and flat, the hands not very large, but terribly corrugated as to their visible venous economy The Baba's dress is not pretty. To do her justice, though, there cannot be the slightest doubt as to her possession of--well, not a shirt—that is a masculine gar ment, hut a--but it is unpardonable to mention in English what every English lady will name in the French language without a shadow of hesitation—well : a white cotton or very coarse linen under-garment. And this ordi narily innermost garment is very liberally displayed ; for the gown-sleeves are very scanty —mere shoulder-straps, in fact: and the real sleeves are those of the under-garment, to name which is to run in peril of deportation to that Cayenne of conversaziones—Coventry. There is an equally generous display of body linen, more or less dazzlingly I. THE PRESS, AUGUST 21,1858. white in front—the garment forming an ample gorget from the neck to the waist, the bust of the gown being cut square, of the antique form, with which you are familiar in the portraits of Anne Boleyn, but very much 10wer.... The Russian peasant women have a moat bewildering custom of wearing a very tight waist at mid-neck, and a very full bust at the waist. Their corsage presents the aspect of the section of a very ripe, full pear, resting on its base. Beneath the clavicles all is as flat as a pancake ; where we expect to profit by the triumphs of tight-lacing as productive of a genteel and wasp-like waist, we find this astonishing protuberance. The waist is upside down. How they manage to accomplish this astonishing feat; whether they hicteally nourish dumb-hells or babies made of pig -lead; whether it be physical malformation, or some cunning sub-camicial str tpping and bandaging; whether it be the effect of one or all of these, I am not aware ; but there is that effect in the Baba—baffling, puzzling, and to me as irritating as though the girl wore a shoe on her head, or broad-brimmed hats on her feet. The following is curious : Every social observance in Russia is franche—peculiar to one of the two great classes ; it is a noble's custom, or a moujik's custom, but is never common to both. Russian gentlemen, within doors, ate incessant smokers ; the common people use very little tobacco. You never see a monjik smoking a cigar, and very rarely even enjoying his pipe. In some of the low vodki shops I have seen a group of tnoujiks with one blackened pipe among them, with a shattered bowl and scarcely any stem, charged with this same mahorka. The pipe was passed from hand to hand, each smoker taking a solemn whiff, and giving a placid grunt, exactly as you may see a party of Irish bogtrotters doing in a Connemara allebeen. Down south in Russia — I mean in the governments of Koursk and Worensch— there is a more Oriental fashion of smoking in vogue. Some mahorka, with more or less dirt, is put into a pipkin, in whose sides a few odd holes have been knocked ; and the smokers crouch over it with hollow sticks, reeds, or tin tubes, each man to a hole, and puff away at the common bowl. It is not that the Russian peasant does not care for his pipe, but he has an uneasy consciousness that the luxurious narcotic is not for the likes of him. For him to fill the pipe of his lord and master, and roll the paper cigarettes ; that should surely be sufficient. Haven't our British matrons somewhat similar feelings concerning their housemaids' ringlets ? Mr. Sala's descriptions of the Russian hotel, the Russian village, &c., are all well done, though somewhat overloaded by the prevailing condi ment. But we are sorry he has given us no ac count of that Russian country-house in which he says he stayed with the aunts of a Russian who was one of the Emperor's pages. Mr. Sala's delicacy has, we presume, deterred him from vio lating the privacy of the domestic hearth, or other wise seeking his own advantage by impertinent behaviour towards other people. Mr. Sala's ideas of Russian institutions are all of the stereotyped John Bull order. That ab stract personage ought, indeed, henceforward to be celebrated for his power of divining, rather than for his ignorance of; the character of his neighbours. }or it appears that, while strutting about his own island with his cudgel under his arm and his hands in his pockets, he has arrived at a perfectly correct estimate of the most remote European people. The Russian police, the Rus sian religion, the Russian laws, and the Russian Czar, are all, according to Mr. Sala, what every Sunday penny-a-liner delights to represent them —respectively hopelessly corrupt, hideously gross, thoroughly iniquitous, and cruelly despotic. How much of this picture was due to the necessity of squaring his descriptions with the well-known sentiments of the journal in which they were to appear, we cannot presume to say ; but Mr. Sala, who would have us believe him a thorough citizen of the world, and above all local preju dices, has entirely precluded us from believing him by the publication of these notes. All we can say is, that, if this be the Russian despotism, Mr. Sala deserves a pension from Austria and Naples. Novels and Novelist; from Elizabeth to Victoria. By J. Gordy Jeaffreson. Two Vols. London : Hurst and Blackett. (Second Notice.) FURTHER examination of this work only reveals its great defects. We shall allow Mr. Jeaffreson to exhibit under his own hand the class of authors to which he belongs. In the opening passages of his notice of Sir Bulwer Lytton he says : One of the great drawbacks of the present age of " action " to the young man is, that he is compelled by it to impudence and assumption, is forced to throw aside that habit of reverence which is really congenial to generous youth, and to jostle, scan, measure, end judge his superiors, as though he were at last their equal. The young author may not rest content with admiring the great masters of his art, with feebly imitating them, and gratefully ac knowledging the benefit oftheir instructions ; other conduct is required of him—the pen is put in his hand and he is commanded to criticize. Nor is he allowed to use the to tell the deeper and more honourable feelings of his h emotions of love, wonder, even of genial Sympathy restrain, and in thei r pl ace must foster h arrogant and flippant self-s u ffi c i ency ; by turns he censure with a gibe and pr a i se w i t h a sneer, affect r cold contempt and now an insulting pity, It is for hi point out not the author's beauties but his defects, not patient research and general truthfulness, but his sup er , foist foist errors and occasional faili ngs . B ut it must be done The bookseller cries f n copy, and h unger cries for dinner " The bookseller cries for copy, and hunger for dinner" ! This is i n d ee d very like plaintive utterance of a voice from Grubb•sti The young authors of the present age will not , likely to accept this writer as a trustwonh, witness ; nor will literary men desire to judged by a scribe who can indite the following most absurd rant about the transcendent merits of the modern English novels : Sneer at it as we like in our moments of savage disdain for the respectable and the genteel, still the modern fashionable novels of Marlborough street manufacture must be allowed a high place in our critical esteem• best of them abound with vivid descriptions of whet i.. dazzling, perchance, also, most vicious in European capitals ; with subtle delineations of character, the a cacy of which is often not surpassed in the conceptinni Shakespeare ; and with complicated and astoundingly genious plots, epigrammatic wit, poetic language, a• wealth of scholarly allusion that proves their writers students of deep and varied research. And the worst them are pleasant, lively narratives of love and folly, I as would have turned the fifteenth century mad excitement. These books have refined the manners, the tastes, of the generation ; and mainly to them it be attributed that a simple yeoman, who has passed on his paternal acres, is often found to possess the self-possession, dignified bearing, and polished address, which, in the last century, were never attained to by men who had not profited by foreign travel, and a prolonged residence in courts. After this absurd and overstrained puff collective for " the modern fashionable novels of borough-street," the reader might be tempted cry, " The bookseller cries for copy, and hunger cries for dinner." Still, under the exigencies any cries for more copy, or any sighs after dinr another style of writing should have been shown this work than that which is presented to us; " Subtle delineations of character not surpassed by Shakespeare." " Astoundingly ingenious plots." " Epigrammatic wit." Such a stnng r superlatives takes away the breath ! And serve the absurdity of stating that many . a yeoman has now " the dignified bearing polished address " which was attained in the century only by " a prolonged residence foreign foreign Courts." A trip to a circulating-l='now-a days achieves what the "grand tour' formerly. " Wonderful, if true," as the American editors say. This author's panegyric on novels of the Marlborough-street manufacture more disagreeable when we observe how - he disparages the character and genius Walter Scott. There never was a novelist who raised literary value of the Novel to so high a pit Sir Walter Scott. Great as were the exhibited by Fielding and Smollett, the ad. of public taste revolted against the coarseness their writings, and the women of the generation rarely examine " Tom Jones " Roderick Random." In blending history . fiction, Scott effected a great advance. Ibierry confesses that his mind derived new ideas urn the art of writing history after the perusal " Ivanhoe " ; and the style of Lord Macaula y obviously influenced by the famous novelist. Recollecting the splendid triural achieved by this illustrious writer, it would , absurd to attempt decrying his position. wealth of knowledge, his personal resources, his extraordinary literary faculty place the first class of the select few of geniuses. No country ever owed more single man of letters than Scotland and Scotch owe to the author of "The I.ll' " Marmion," and " Waverley," and " Guy nering," and "Rob Roy," and " Old Mortalit. and " The Heart of Mid Lothian," and --but the list of his achievements is too long to - In a party of eight at Holland-house, one the question was proposed, " Which was of Scott's novels ?" It was left to a ballot, on each slip the name of a different no s ' written. " Scott," said Byron, "is thi " wonderful writer of the day ; his novels " new literature in themselves. I kno ,„ " reading on which I fall with such alacril "on a work of his. I love him, too, for the " liness of his character," &c. And in le Pen 11 nein ; by he tint ()f ti tong nor s to iOt hi s super. done honer . ' cries ! the dreet. tot b e 'ortby to b e owin g nerits disdain modem 'lecture C. The , is most llTOpelle le deli. alone of ngly in. and a rs to be worst of y, such id with rs, if not it is to *nis life he quiet address, by men !olonged Ilective Marl- pted to hunger ides of dinner, 'own in IS here. rpassed genious ring of nd oh- , simple ig and the last nce in -library ur " did nerican on the cture is grossly of Sir red the pitch as talents advance eness of s er r u ; sri ie se pyoipt r r c ton hoi h hn• rt ssf a ould be n. His ces, and him in modern re to a and the ty," and iy Man: or talit V. abut D quote. to night' the best Mot, and vet was he most !Is arc a ow of nn aclitY as the man - 4 , Childs 1