During the course of my explorations, nothing struck me so forcibly in contrast to all this magnificence as the house of Peter the Great--which is so minute!
I thoroughly enjoyed going to the restaurants at The Islands, specially to Ernest’s, where one meets natives, diplomats, foreign visitors, in fact, every one, while listening to the strains of a gay Rumanian orchestra.
The Islands are the Bois de Boulogne of Petrograd. The place is lovely: very green; beautiful trees overshadowing paths which are well laid out; and from the end of the park a view of the sea is obtainable. There are many beautiful villas there occupied during the summer.
I never shall forget my impressions of Paris on my return from Russia, where there seems to be no limit to space, where everything is on a huge scale--from the luxury of life in general to the immense size of all the buildings and the great width of the noble Neva. Paris appeared to me a squalid town and the Seine a mere brook--and not too clean a one either--and altogether it struck me as being a very dismal place.
I only spent then a very short time at Petrograd as, at that period of the year, every one begins to flit away to their country places for the summer, so, after having become acquainted with a number of relations and made several friends, I, like the rest, took my departure from the capital, and accompanied my aunt to her beautiful home of Monrepos in Finland.
The country from Petrograd to Viborg is for the most part like one perpetual garden, the train passes between what is literally a long series of villas and gardens in the midst of silver birch and pine-trees, broken occasionally by an evident attempt to create a new place; then succeeds again a planted solitude; and at last, after a journey of four hours, Viborg--a town of 30,000 inhabitants--is reached.
That planted solitude has since those days become very much built over, I expect, as Finland is a very sought-after summer resort.
Finland--the country of the thousand lakes, or rather one ought to say of the five thousand lakes! My grandmother’s land won my heart at once. Monrepos was for me a touching souvenir of her.
It is a well-known show place, with its lovely and hilly woodlands reaching down to the Gulf of Finland, its gorgeous flower-beds and standard orange-trees, where the coast is indented with its pink coloured rocks and in the background are interminable forests of pine and silver beech, where wolves come in winter. In one of the kiosks in the park is a marble bust of the Empress Maria, given by her to my great-grandfather to whom she was much attached. In the park there stands also a column erected to the memory of two Princes de Broglie who fell, fighting for the Allies, against Napoleon--these two princes were brothers of my great-grandmother. Another column was presented to my great-grandfather by the town of Viborg in recognition of a gift of land and other bequests made by him. Every corner contains some souvenir; every bench is named after a member of the family.