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.