Translation. Region: Russian Federal
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
The chamber exhibition “Gossip. What Muscovites talked about 200 years ago” is dedicated to the citizens of the first half of the 19th century, their everyday life and conversations. Moscow of that time was very different from today, representing a mixture of urban development, gardens, vegetable gardens and estates. In the crowded and diverse city one could find both European sophistication and the simplicity dear to the Russian heart. This was the Moscow of Pushkin, Griboyedov and Tropinin.
Especially for “Moscow Culture”, the exhibition curator Ekaterina Arkhipova conducted a tour and shared the stories of the heroes.
Prologue
What did they talk about in the English Club, the Noble Assembly, the Bolshoi Theatre and the drawing rooms? These places served as centres of social life and exchange of opinions. Here they discussed the latest events, literary novelties and, most importantly, personal stories. Aristocrats, military men, artists and writers, adventurers, gamblers, duelists and just eccentrics – who were they, the heroes of the society columns, whose lives occupied the attention of Muscovites at the end of the 18th – first half of the 19th century?
Monk Pimen – Dmitry Blagovo
Belonging to an ancient noble family, Dmitry Blagovo, a man of unusual destiny, lived through the reign of four emperors: Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II. Having lost his father early, he remained in the care of his grandmother Elizaveta Yankova, née Rimskaya-Korsakova, who gave him an excellent home education.
Dmitry Dmitrievich moved in high society, was a regular at the salon of the famous poetess Evdokia Petrovna Rostopchina. He was going to marry one of her daughters, Lydia, but literally on the eve of the wedding, to everyone’s amazement, he married 18-year-old Nina Uslar, a girl from the family of a Russified German professor. All of Moscow was gossiping about this event. Lydia Rostopchina was inconsolable and never married again.
After several years of a cloudless family life, misfortunes rained down on Blagovo. First, in 1861, his little son and heir died, and in the same year, his beloved grandmother passed away. A year later, his wife fell in love with another man and left her husband with their daughter, and soon Dmitry Dmitrievich’s mother died. All these events shocked Blagovo so much that he decided to do something that shocked secular Moscow no less than his marriage had done: he gave his wife a document in which he took all the blame on himself, so that she could divorce him and remarry (however, the Holy Synod allowed the dissolution of the marriage only after 20 years). Blagovo retired to the Nikolo-Ugreshsky Monastery near Moscow as a novice, which again shocked the Moscow and St. Petersburg aristocracy. In 1880, he transferred to the Tolga Monastery and took monastic vows under the name Pimen. Four years later, he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite and appointed rector of the Russian Embassy Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Rome. He served there until his death in 1897.
Poor Lisa
The story of the main character of Nikolai Karamzin’s sentimental tale is usually considered fictional, but poor Liza’s contemporaries, the then residents of Moscow, perceived her as a real person. The tale was read by very different women – from refined aristocrats to poor bourgeois women.
Karamzin’s Liza lived near the Simonov Monastery, which at that time was not within the city limits. The place was very secluded. But after the publication of the story in 1792 and its resounding success, the pond near the monastery began to be called Liza’s. Secular pilgrimages began to be made to it, dates began to be arranged near it, and numerous inscriptions appeared on the trees around it. One of the most famous reads: “Here Erastov’s bride threw herself into the pond. Drown yourself, girls: there is enough room in the pond!” The area around was also given the girl’s name, Liza’s Slobodka, Liza’s Street and Liza’s Dead End appeared. Kiprensky painted her famous portrait as if he really knew her. Poor Liza was on the lips of Muscovites for many years – so the story became not just a literary event, but also a cultural and social phenomenon, and its heroine moved from the pages of the book into real life. Now on this site there is a modern residential complex with a park and a pond, which immediately received the popular name Lizin Pond – in honor of the old “literary” pond.
American – Count Fyodor Tolstoy
Another incredible personality is Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy, nicknamed the American, Leo Tolstoy’s cousin. He was a living legend not only of old Moscow, but of all Russian literature of the 19th century. In Alexander Griboyedov’s comedy Woe from Wit, the high society public easily recognized the extravagant count in the “night robber and duelist” who returned from Kamchatka as an Aleut.
His life was full of jokes and adventures. A desperate gambler and even a sharper, a womanizer, a brawler and a duelist, he was always distinguished by excellent health and endurance, but at the same time by a tendency to violence, fights and recklessness. The desire for adventure prompted Fyodor Ivanovich to take part in a round-the-world voyage on the sloop Nadezhda in 1803 under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern. This was the first round-the-world voyage under the Russian flag. On board, Tolstoy behaved defiantly: he provoked quarrels, threw parties with card games, and in one of the ports he bought a tame monkey and taught it various tricks, which caused him to seriously quarrel with the commander of the expedition. He was forced to arrest his subordinate several times and eventually landed the uncontrollable Tolstoy on Kamchatka. From there, the Count reached the Aleutian Islands, where he spent several months among the natives. At that time, he decorated himself with numerous tattoos, which he later proudly showed off. Upon returning from the trip, he received his nickname.
The affairs of the heart of Tolstoy the American were also unusual. Despite numerous affairs with socialite ladies, he married a simple gypsy – a camp singer Avdotya Tugaeva. The family had 12 children, 10 of whom died in infancy. Every time one of the children died, Tolstoy put a note in his diary “quits”, believing that God punished him with the death of his children for each of the 11 people he killed in duels. The greatest blow to him was the death of his beloved daughter Sarah. The girl was incredibly beautiful and talented, but did not live to see 18. Fyodor Ivanovich spent most of his last years in Moscow, living alone with his daughter Praskovia, the only surviving of all his children. In old age, he became devout and prayed a lot, atoning for the sins of his youth.
“Moscow Grannies” – Opinion Leaders
Some of the most colorful figures in Griboyedov’s Moscow, whose opinions were highly respected in the first half of the 19th century, were, as Alexander Pushkin called them, “Moscow grandmothers.” Probably the most famous, authoritative and eccentric of them was Nastasya Dmitrievna Ofrosimova. A lady of iron character and iron will, she had an incredible gift of persuasion, knew everything about everyone, expressed herself with sharp directness and belonged to the type of people who endlessly give value judgments, numerous pieces of advice and always know how to do the right thing. This “grandmother” had a colossal influence in society. In fact, she ruled it, in some ways even decided destinies. Mothers of noble families introduced their daughters to her and asked for her blessing and assistance in society for them.
Contemporaries described her as a very rude old woman of masculine build, tall, with a stern dark face, black eyes and even a moustache. The general’s wife Nastasya Dmitrievna was herself a general in a skirt both in her own home and in all of Moscow. Evil tongues claimed that she personally “kidnapped” her husband from his house in order to get married. Despite numerous jokes, everyone without exception respected her and trembled before her. She became the prototype of two minor literary characters. Griboyedov presented Nastasya Dmitrievna in the image of the quarrelsome old woman Anfisa Nilovna Khlestova, the sister of Famusov’s late wife. And Leo Tolstoy in “War and Peace” depicted her almost under her real name – as Maria Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, an imperious and straightforward, but fair Moscow lady and godmother of Natasha Rostova.
Love and Death on the Battlefield. Margarita Naryshkina and Alexander Tuchkov
A poignant romantic story is connected with the youngest of the five Tuchkov brothers, Alexander Alexeevich. When they met Margarita Naryshkina, she was married to a certain Pavel Lasunsky, a despot and tyrant who abused his wife in every possible way. Once he brought her to a nervous breakdown, after which the Naryshkin family obtained a divorce for their daughter in the Holy Synod. Having met the handsome officer Alexander Tuchkov, Margarita fell in love at first sight. Having learned about the divorce, he proposed, but her parents were afraid of another unsuccessful marriage. Only several years later did they manage to get married.
Margarita loved her chosen one so much that, probably sensing the imminent tragedy, she obtained the monarch’s permission to be with her husband in the active army. During the Battle of Borodino, he was mortally wounded, and they couldn’t even carry him off the battlefield. Alexander Tuchkov’s body was never found, although Margarita personally searched for it. Later, at her own expense, she built the Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands on the site of her husband’s presumed death. Soon their little son died, after which Tuchkova took monastic vows and in 1840 became the abbess of the Spaso-Borodino Monastery. This romantic story struck the young Marina Tsvetaeva at the time, and she wrote the famous poem “To the Generals of the Twelfth Year”, which became a popular romance at the end of the 20th century.
Epilogue
Although Moscow was different and time was slower, without television and the Internet, people, their customs and passion for gossip remain very similar after centuries. You can easily see this by coming toexcursion on the exhibition “Gossip. What Muscovites talked about 200 years ago.” Tickets to the V.A. Tropinin Museum and Moscow artists of his time can be purchased at mos.ru.
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