Of all the courts, civilized or uncivilized, at which fools have been numbered on the household, the jester was never in so uncomfortable a purgatory as in the household of the Czars. The most savage, the most able, but it would be hard to say the most mendacious, of these potentates, was Ivan Vasilievitch IV., who reigned from 1533 to 1581. He might, for various reasons, be reckoned amongst the princes who were their own fools,—for some of his acts savoured greatly of the profession; at least, there was more folly than wit in some of this gloomy monster’s merry conceits; as, for instance, when he invited a number of guests to dinner, and set before them a repast of dog, cat, and even human flesh. His fools must have had a terrible time of it; and how they could ever be gamesome in presence of such a capricious savage is inconceivable. Occasionally, the unclean Czar was minded to be delicate, and then he would take offence at what he generally seemed most to delight in. Once, his favourite fool, not knowing the bent of his master’s humour, was indulging at table in very unsavory jests; and the gentle Ivan ordered him to leave the room. A few minutes later, the Czar commanded him to return, and to kneel before him. The jester obeyed, and his gracious master, taking up a kettle of scalding hot broth, poured the whole down the back of the fool, between his clothes and his skin. The wretched victim screamed in his agony, and writhed under the torture. Ivan had the grace to bid his doctor look to him, but Esculapius himself could not301 have saved him. The fool died; and all the requiem chanted over him by his imperious master was,—“Since the fool did not choose to live; why, let him be buried.” For many a long year, the Russian joculators that were the most highly prized were hideous, overfed, sleepy idiots, with nothing remarkable about them but their want of wit. Beyond the record of this fact, there is little worth noticing till we arrive at the reign of Peter the Great, who, according to Weber, quoted by Fl?gel, maintained about him not less than a hundred persons who might be classed under the head of court fools. They were of various qualities; some had been born imbecile, and these he entirely supported, making use of them occasionally as examples to his courtiers, comparing the natural condition of each, and drawing therefrom a moral teaching content. Others of the class were officials who, having committed some gross act of folly, he punished by compelling them to wear the dress of a fool, to take the name, and fulfil to the best of their small wit, the business of such profession. A third class, if two or three individuals may be so called, comprised persons who, having been guilty of some serious offence, thought to avoid the penalty by feigning madness, and were consequently seriously treated as such.
Among the second class noticed above, was a Captain Uschakow, who was promoted or degraded to the rank of court fool for the following exhibition of his quality. The Captain had been despatched by the commandant of Smolensko with an important letter addressed to the governor of Kiov, and requiring an immediate reply. He was ordered to traverse the sixty leagues which lie between those cities, as fast as his horse could carry him; and he obeyed the order faithfully, arriving at the gates of Kiov before break of day. On application for admission, some delay ensued, the officer on duty informing him that he must wait till the302 keys could be procured from the commandant, who was then asleep. Uschakow, in great rage, said his letter was of the utmost importance, and that if he were not immediately admitted, he would gallop back to Smolensko and lay a complaint before the commandant who had sent him. The officer thought he was joking; but his surprise was great to see the impatient captain turn his horse’s head and disappear, at full speed, through the morning mist. When Uschakow came in presence of his superior officer at Smolensko, carrying the letter instead of the expected reply, and stated what had occurred, the commandant, after showering upon him every invective he could think of, sent him to the Czar, with orders to tell his own story. Peter no sooner heard it, than he immediately ordered Uschakow to be cashiered, and enrolled among the court fools. So far from this being a punishment, it was the luckiest thing that could happen to a man of the mental calibre of the captain. He took to his new office with hearty good will; by his frolicsome humour he was welcomed to several European courts; and he very speedily saved not less than 20,000 thalers out of the presents made to him. He accompanied Peter in most of his visits to brother potentates; and on one of these occasions he was present, with the Czar and the King of Poland, at the theatre at Dresden. Some interruption occurred on the stage, previous to the appearance of a Scaramouch, who was announced to dance a buffoon pas seul, called “Les Follies d’Espagne.” Impatient at the delay, Uschakow jumped lightly from the royal box on to the stage, and to the astonishment and delight of the entire house, went through the whole dance himself, with additional quips, and cranks, and absurd follies, which kept the illustrious spectators in a roar of laughter.
There were two brothers of a princely family who did not enjoy the promotion to the rank of Witless so unreservedly as Uschakow had done. Fl?gel does not give their names,303 nor state whence he derives the story, which is to this effect. The brothers had joined a conspiracy, the object of which was to slay the Czar; but which, being discovered, and the principal plotters summarily hanged, the brothers found that their turn for responsibility had arrived. This they endeavoured to avoid by feigning a comic sort of madness; and when this was reported to Peter, he granted them their lives, but decreed that in every subsequent act of theirs they should be held to be as mad as they had pretended to be, and treated accordingly. This novel species of torture does not seem very intolerable, but as they were retained at court, the brothers found it past endurance. One of them sank into a deep melancholy, and the other drank himself into raging madness, in order to forget that men accounted him mad.
Peter, who judged so terribly of others, once submitted to judgment himself. In a fit of frolicsome humour, he one evening placed one of his jolly companions on the throne, before which the Czar stood to give an account of his actions. At the side of the throne stood Peter’s favourite fool, who made running comments on every phrase uttered by the real or the pseudo-Czar, in the style of the ancient Chorus, or rather in the merry fashion of Mr. Charles Mathews when representing the ancient Chorus in a burlesque at the Haymarket. Peter came indifferently off in presence of a judge and fool both of whom, having full license of speech, used their liberty to the utmost, amid the risibility of an ecstatic audience.
It is well known how Peter loved to play other parts besides that of Czar. When, in London, he went to a masked ball at the Temple, he appeared in the costume of a butcher. So he is described in Luttrell’s Diary. We find a trait still more illustrative of his character, in connection with a Christmas incident in his own country. Formerly, we are told, there was a ceremony in Russia called “Slaevens.”304 It consisted of a sledge procession which took place between Christmas and the New Year, in which the clergy, splendidly attended, stopped at certain houses, sang a Te Deum laudamus or an occasional carol, and received in return rich donations from those who wished to be considered peculiarly orthodox Christians. Peter the Great once witnessed this procession, and was so edified by the amount of the contributions, that he relieved the clergy of all further trouble, by a simple process. He placed himself, suitably attired, at the head of the sledges and the Church, sang his own carols, and pocketed the contributions of the loyal and the faithful, with the ecstasy of a man who has discovered a new sensation combining profit with pleasure.
The men whom Peter sent into foreign countries to study art or science, were all subjected by him, on their return, to strict examination. If he found that they had profited by their studies, their reward was certain; if they had come back almost as ignorant as when they had set out, the penalty was also inevitable. They were degraded, made menial servants, and placed on the list of fools. At the court of the Czarina Anne, there were several of these individuals, over whom the chief fool, Pedrillo, had absolute authority. They were employed in keeping the imperial stoves supplied with wood, or in looking after the hounds, and served as objects of ridicule to the Czarina and her whole court.
Often by Peter’s side at table, and in his cups, was to be seen an individual addressed as the “Patriarch of Russia,” and sometimes as the “King of Siberia.” He was attired in sacerdotal robes, and covered with loosely-hung gold and silver medals, which sounded musically as he moved. It was a favourite trick with Peter, when he and the Patriarch were equally drunk, to suddenly overturn him, chair and all, and exhibit the reverend gentleman with his heels in the air. There is record of a similar fool in the person of the “King of the Samoieds.” He305 was a Pole who was boarded, and who received a rouble monthly, for entertaining the Czar and court by the exercise of such small wit as was reckoned at such low worth. This title of “King of the Samoieds” was usually conferred by Peter on what may be styled his occasional fools. Thus, meeting among the patients at the “Water Cure,” at Alonaitz, in 1719, a Portuguese Jew, whose singularities and comic bearing delighted the Czar, the latter first promoted him to the equivocal distinction of “titular count,” and then conferred on him the fool’s royalty in the Kingship of the Samoieds. The most burlesque of coronations was subsequently performed in Peter’s presence. It was to some such rank that the Czar elevated his own old writing-master, Sotoff; and it may be observed that when the Russian priests remonstrated against his distinguishing his fools by the title of “patriarchs,” he changed the rank and addressed them as “priests.”
To the rank of court fool Peter also elevated the head cook of the Czarina. The cook’s wife had, by her conduct, brought dishonour on her husband, but Peter turned this to comic account. He would have the poor official up at his state dinners, and overwhelm him with coarse jests and gestures in presence of the guests. The cook, however, is said to have occasionally answered so smartly, touching the Czar’s own domestic matters, as to make his Majesty wince again. In exchange of gross jokes, it was “like master, like man.” Neither time nor place was ever thought of by Peter when his will or comfort was in question; and even at church, in winter, when he felt cold, he would take off the wig of the man nearest him, and clap it on his own head, returning it after the service.
Thus the Czar made fools of various members of his household, and different officers of his court, but he had one official court fool whom he favoured above all others,306 and whom he carried abroad with him to foreign courts,—among others to those of England and France. At the latter court the buffoon produced almost as much effect as his master. The period of Peter’s sudden arrival in Paris, was that of the boyhood of Louis XV. He had travelled so swiftly from Holland, that his appearance in the French capital was the first intimation received by the authorities there of his having left the “pays de canaux, canards, et canaille,” as Voltaire flippantly designated the Dutch territory.
Peter was accompanied by the Princes Kourakin and Dolgorouki, by Baron Schaffirofy, and by his ambassador, Tolstoi. But, distinguished above these was Sotoff, the buffoon. He had originally been employed by Peter to instruct him in the art of writing. In one respect, all the followers of the Czar were on an equality, for there was not one of them who had not, in his turn, suffered exile, imprisonment, or the knout. There was no opportunity, therefore, for any one to reproach his fellows.
How Peter looked, and walked, and talked, and danced, and tossed the little King in his arms, and sneered at the Regent Duke of Orleans, and uttered much nonsense, and drank bottles of beer in his box at the opera; all these matters are chronicled by Saint-Simon and Cardinal Dubois, according to the point of view of the individual chronicler. The Cardinal seems to have been more particularly struck with the buffoon. The court of France no longer possessed official jesters, and Sotoff was a marvel and a novelty to the Cardinal. The latter, or the writer who drew up the autobiographical memoirs, from the notes and papers of Dubois, speaks with evident surprise of the presence and duties of Sotoff, who was not only privileged but commanded to give expression to every form of folly, without being in fear of any application of the knout. What jests he uttered were incomprehensible to Dubois and the French court,307 for Sotoff could only speak his native Russian; and in that language he uttered comments on all around him which raised the hilarity of the Muscovites, and excited the surprise, curiosity, and perhaps the vexation of the French courtiers. Sotoff, too, was singular in his appearance. He was at this time an aged dwarf, with long snowy hair flowing over his shoulders. He was so ugly and so deformed, that, according to the Cardinal, the very sight of him was almost insupportable to the refined and handsome nobles and ladies of the French court. Dubois compares the sound of his voice to the harsh croaking of frogs. In spite of all this, his wit and humour were very much to the taste of Peter, who could listen to a comedy of Molière’s without once smiling, but who could never hear a remark from Sotoff, the court fool, without growing weak from mere excess of laughter.
Sotoff was a man of low birth, but Russia has been especially remarkable for her fools of high degree, among whom Princes have not only been reckoned, but proud to find themselves upon the motley register. The famous Ice Palace, erected by order of the Czarina Anne, is one of those wonders of which most persons have heard. It was erected for the celebration of the marriage of Prince Galitzin. It is not, however, generally known that the Prince, who was between forty and fifty, and already had a son, a lieutenant in the army, was on the register of pages and court fools. This registration was a punishment inflicted on him for having changed his religion, from orthodox Russo-Greek to Roman Catholic. It was at the Czarina’s bidding that the princely fool wedded with a girl of low birth, and it was in obedience to the same high authority that couples from every province in the empire came up to do honour to the nuptial festival. A procession of above three hundred persons started from the imperial palace and traversed the city. The bride and bridegroom were under a canopy, on an elephant; some of308 the guests followed on camels, and others rode in sled............