memorial service for the dead Tsar, held at a mosque .close to the Nevskoi-the Russians tolerate every religion except the Jewish one-which service was attended by many officers and soldiers of the Tartar regiments of the Guard, and by half the hotel and restaurant waiters in the capital, who are Mahometan Tartars, and whom the landlords preferred to Christians, as the Tartars are all teetotallers.

401

CHAPTER LXIII.

CORONATION OF ALEXANDER III.

Permission to Wear Court Dress-An Offer of Free Quarters Declined—

Entrance of Alexander III. into Moscow-A Brilliant Scene-The Coronation-The Tsar at Dinner-A Run for the Telegraph Office-A Bit of Journalistic Smartness.

It was a very different Russia that I paid a flying visit to in May, 1883. The Tsar Alexander III. was to be crowned with the utmost pomp and magnificence at Moscow. I received my usual instructions to go " Due North;" but on this very special occasion I was to be accompanied by Mr. J. M. Le Sage, who was to undertake the onerous duty of despatching a number of telegrams which would certainly fill a formidable array of columns in the Daily Telegraph. We had some few difficulties to surmount ere we started. We were politely but firmly informed that all newspaper correspondents who proposed to be present at the Imperial Coronation would be expected, as a preliminary, to forward their cartes de visite to the Chancellerie of the Russian Embassy

-a very sensible precaution-and I improved on the idea by gumming on to my passport half a dozen little portraits of myself, of the exact size of a postage-stamp, which had been taken by a friendly photographer in San Francisco. Again, it was conveyed to us that we could not possibly be permitted to enter the Kremlin on

a a

the eventful 27th of May unless we were in uniform or in court dress. Fortunately for Mr. Le Sage, he had long been a member of the Court of Lieutenancy of the City of London; a proud position which entitled him to assume a scarlet tunic with silver epaulettes, a sword with a gilt scabbard, and a cocked hat and plumes.

But I had never been to Court; and as regards uniform I was not even a member of the Ancient Order of Foresters. The obstacle, I am glad to say, soon vanished; the then Lord ChamberlainLord Sydney, I think-permitted me to wear levée dress, with the understanding that I was to be presented at Court directly on my return home; and it was consequently in the highest spirits that, about five o'clock one sunny May afternoon, we started for the Continent by London, Chatham and Dover Railway. At Berlin we found our resident correspondent, who made much of us; and without any obstacle we reached the Russian frontier. The tin cases containing our gala costumes proved of considerable service to us at the Custom House; the sight of Mr. Le Sage's scarlet panoply and plumed cocked hat apparently induced in the mind of the douaniers the impression that he was not a deputy-lieutenant but a major-general at the very least; while an equally favourable opinion of myself was entertained by the officer who examined my paraphernalia. “I can see what you are," he remarked, turning over quite gingerly my levée dress, "captain of an English gunboat going to join your ship at Cronstadt." I did not precisely own

the soft impeachment, but I bowed, and, of course accidentally, placed three or four choice Havanas on the lid of the tin case, which-the cigars, not the case-the officer as accidentally pocketed.

I found Russia considerably altered from the country that I had visited in 1856 and 1881. The most notable change that I observed was what I may call the "Sclavonification" of military costume. In the days of the Emperor Nicolas and of his successor, German uniforms, both in the Russian army and in the police, were almost slavishly copied. In 1883 the German helmet or Pickelhaube had entirely disappeared, and the cocked hat had almost as completely vanished; the substitute for this head-gear being the Circassian bonnet or busby of black astrachan wool. Another curious innovation was visible in the general discarding of metal buttons; in place of which you now saw only hooks-and-eyes; and the third remarkable social revolution was visible when we reached Moscow. The hotel-keepers professed not to understand a word either of French or German; and although I had not quite forgotten my Russ, we had hard work to do before we could find the hotel to which we had been directed.

I must here mention that the Russian Government behaved with the greatest liberality towards the foreign representatives of the Press, who had free quarters assigned to them at a splendid and exclusively Muscovite hostelry. Nay; the Imperial generosity went so far as to offer each Special Correspondent

a considerable sum of money to defray his travelling expenses; and, finally, after the Coronation we were each presented with a decoration of silver and gold enamel, embellished with the Imperial crown, the double-headed eagle, and two crossed pens. I thought, however, that my proprietors might think it rather undignified on my part if I played the role of a "dead-head; so, while gratefully accepting the decoration-which, of course, I never wore-we politely declined the free quarters and the travelling expenses ; and, thanks to the assistance of a Dutch gentleman to whom we had been recommended for business purposes, we obtained a billet at a very comfortable German hotel in the heart of the city. I could never correctly gather the name of our Batavian friend, but it was something like "Oysterbank," by which appellation we usually called him. He was, I believe, in some way connected with a department of the Imperial Master of the Ceremonies; at all events, I know that for a consideration he obtained for us, four clear days before the coronation, an exhaustive programme of the ceremonial; which schedule enabled me to despatch to London at least three columns of readable matter before the pageant itself took place.

Readers inexperienced in the ways of the great newspaper-world might open their eyes with astonishment, or smile the smile of incredulity, if I told them the amount of pounds sterling which we disbursed every day at the telegraph office. I know that my frequent recourse to the bank on which I had a letter