In its customs and its daily habits the aristocracy was struggling to
become more 'Russian', too. The men of 1812 gave up feasts of haute cuisine for spartan Russian lunches, as they strived to simplify and Russianize their opulent lifestyle. Noblemen took peasant 'wives' with growing frequency and openness (what was good for a Sheremetev was also good for them) and there were even cases of noblewomen living with or marrying serfs." Even Arakcheev, the Minister of War who became so detested for his brutal regime in the army, kept an unofficial peasant wife by whom he had two sons who were educated in the Corps des Pages.100 Native crafts were suddenly in vogue. Russian china with scenes from rural life was increasingly preferred to the classical designs of imported eighteenth-century porcelain. Karelian birch and other Russian woods, especially in the more rustic stylings of serf craftsmen, began to compete with the fine imported furniture of the classical palace, and even to displace it in those private living spaces where the nobleman relaxed. Count Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy, a military hero of 1812, was the owner of a magnificent mansion on the English Embankment in St Petersburg. The reception rooms had marble walls and mirrors with sumptuous decorations in the French Empire style, but after 1812 he had his bedroom lined with rough wooden logs to give it the appearance of a peasant hut.101
Recreations were going Russian, too. At balls in Petersburg, where European dances had always reigned supreme, it became the fashion to perform the pliaska and other Russian dances after 1812. Countess Orlova was renowned for these peasant dances, which she studied and performed at Moscow balls.102 But there were other noblewomen who, like Natasha Rostov, had somehow taken in the spirit of the dance, as if they had breathed it 'from the Russian air'. Princess Elena Golitsyn danced her first pliaska at a New Year's Ball in Petersburg in 1817. 'Nobody had taught me how to dance the pliaska. It was simply that I was a "Russian girl". I had grown up in the country, and when I heard the refrain of our village song, "The Maid Went to Fetch the Water", I could not stop myself from the opening hand movements of the dance.'103
Rural recreations were another indication of this newfound Russian-ness. It was at this time that the dacha first emerged as a national institution, although the country or suburban summer house did not become a mass phenomenon until the final decades of the nineteenth
century (Chekhov's Cherry Orchard was famously cut down for dacha building land). The high aristocracy of Petersburg was renting dachas in the eighteenth century. Pavlovsk and Peterhof were their preferred resorts, where they could escape the city's heat and take in the fresh air of the pinewood forests or the sea. The Tsars had elaborate summer palaces with immense pleasure gardens in both of these resorts. During the early nineteenth century the dacha fashion spread to the minor gentry, who built more modest houses in the countryside.
In contrast to the formal classicism of the urban palace, the dacha was constructed in a simple Russian style. It was usually a double-storeyed wooden building with a mezzanine verandah that ran all round the house with ornate window and door-frame carvings seen more commonly on peasant huts, although some of the grander dachas might incongruously add a Roman arch and columns to the front. The dacha was a place for Russian relaxations and pursuits: picking mushrooms in the woods, making jams, drinking tea from the samovar, fishing, hunting, visiting the bath house, or spending the whole day, like Goncharov's Oblomov, in an oriental khalat. A month in the country allowed the nobleman to throw off the pressures of the court and official life, to become more himself in a Russian milieu. It was common to dispense with formal uniforms and to dress in casual Russian clothes. Simple Russian food took the place of haute cuisine, and some dishes, such as summer soup with kvas (okroshka), fish in aspic and pickled mushrooms, tea with jam, or cherry brandy, became practically synonymous with the dacha way of life.104
Of all the countryside pursuits, hunting was the one that came the closest to a national institution, in the sense that it united nobleman and serf as fellow sportsmen and fellow countrymen. The early nineteenth century was the heyday of the hunt - a fact that was connected to the gentry's rediscovery of 'the good life on the estate' after 1812. There were noblemen who gave up their careers in the civil service and retired to the country for a life of sport. The Rostovs' 'Uncle' in War and Peace was typicaclass="underline"
'Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?'
'I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it…I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you- I haven't brains enough. Now hunting is another matter…
There were two kinds of hunting in Russia - the formal chase with hounds, which was very grand, and the simple type of hunting by a man on foot with a solitary hound and a serf companion, as immortalized in Turgenev's Sketches from a Hunter's Album (1852). The formal chase was conducted in the manner of a military campaign, sometimes lasting several weeks, with hundreds of riders, huge packs of dogs and a vast retinue of hunting serfs camping out on the estates of the nobility. Lev Izmailov, Marshal of the Riazan Nobility, took 3,000 hunters and 2,000 hounds on his 'campaigns'.106 Baron Mengden kept an elite caste of hunting serfs with their own scarlet livery and special Arab horses for the hunt. When they left, with the baron at their head, they took several hundred carts with hay and oats, a hospital on wheels for wounded dogs, a mobile kitchen and so many servants that the baron's house was emptied, leaving his wife and daughters with only a bartender and a boy.107 This type of hunting was dependent on the gentry's ownership of vast serf armies and virtually all the land - conditions which persisted until the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Like the English hunt, it was serious and stuffy, rigidly observing the social hierarchy, with the hunting serfs, if not running with the hounds, then clearly in a subservient role.
By contrast, Turgenev's type of hunting was relatively egalitarian -and it was so in a distinctly Russian way. When the nobleman went hunting with his serf companion he left behind the civilization of his palace and entered the world of the peasantry. Squire and serf were brought together by this type of sport. They dressed much the same; they shared their food and drink when they stopped along the way; they slept side by side in peasant huts and barns; and, as described in Turgenev's Sketches, they talked about their lives in a spirit of companionship that often made them close and lasting friends.108 There was much more to this than the usual 'male bonding' around sport. As far as the squire was concerned, the hunt on foot was a rural odyssey, an encounter with an undiscovered peasant land; it was almost incidental how many birds or beasts were shot. In the final lyrical episode of the Sketches, where the narrator sums up all the joys of hunting, there is barely mention of the sport itself. What emerges from this perfect piece of writing is the hunter's intense love of the Russian countryside and its changing beauty through the different seasons of the year: