Ever read a
book that hacked you off so much that you were seriously tempted to throw it at
the wall in a towering rage?
Well, I have
just finished a classic of this sadly under-rated genre. Sadly I
can’t go ahead and smash it straight into the gob of the anaglypta like nature
never intended, mainly because I made the mistake of downloading the damn thing
onto my Kindle. It’s not exactly fair of me to blame the poor
contraption for a mistake on the part of my own pathetic powers of judgement,
so to save time and effort, I won’t.
Yeah, it was
me wot dun it, all by meself, no help and no messin.
All I will
say in my defence is that I wish the proprietors of those sites that you can
download free legal e-books from would make it easier for you to browse through
them first. If only they had, then perhaps all this stress and
strain on my poor, over-stretched nerves could have been avoided.
It’s called One
Year At The Russian Court: 1904-1905 and penned by an extremely
superficial and highly pretentious aristo named Renee Elton Maud (and no, she
can’t have the little accent floating above the second e in her
first name, the silly bint. I don’t care if she was originally
French, the bloody book’s in English and that’s one of those languages that do
without such dainty affectations.).
Like Jill
Tweedie’s first husband Count Istvan (he’s not getting one either, so tough),
she was naturally enough a member of Europe’s haut noblesse. In
other words, she insists she is closely related to just about every other
member of it going – and boy, is she determined not to let you forget it!
Just three
sentences in, and she’s already beefing up her ‘devoted’ grandma, giving name,
rank, serial number, together with a rather involved explanation to the effect
that although nan considers Russia to be ‘her’ country, she was actually born
in London while her dad was serving at the Russian embassy there. Dad’s
next posting was in Copenhagen, where he remained for the next 20 years,
refusing to move away from the company of all his besties (including the King
and Queen, naturally) to any other posting. Yet unlike today, he
didn’t get the sack or a demotion. Instead the Tsar decided to
indulge him in his little whim, presumably on the grounds that a man so well
thought of by the monarchs and everyone else who was anyone in Copenhagen
society must have the clout to do the job properly. This would tend
to suggest that much of his work must have consisted of socialising and
networking, rather than filling in forms and bailing out skint student
backpackers.
Then we hear
all about the Queen of Denmark giving a diamond bracelet to Renee’s grandma,
who just happened to be so exotically half-French on her mother’s side, nee
Princesse de Broglie-Revel (just the sort of name sported in previous centuries
by some raddled old rouge pot back in the 1770s who filled in for Madame du
Barry during the wrong time of the month, yet criticised Marie Antoinette for
falling off the back of her mule using the wrong etiquette).
Obviously
the name alone is meant to be conjured with. I, not being a society
woman (real or aspiring) of the late 19th and early 20th century,
haven’t a clue who she was. And I really couldn’t care less,
either. In the words of Figaro: “You just took the trouble to be
born – nothing more.”
It all
reminds me irresistibly of Jill Tweedie’s account of Istvan taking her on a
protracted honeymoon across Europe to stay with one of his relatives after
another. Like Istvan, Renee has rellies all over the bloody place –
and like his, none of them seem to belong to one single country or place. God
only knows whose side they fought on in the war. Jill accused her
husband’s relatives of lacking loyalty to country or cause. Their
only concern was themselves and all the traditional benefits accruing to their
class. Like Renee, Istvan regarded such a viewpoint as only right
and proper. When Jill declared that that sort of attitude made them
corrupt and decadent social parasites, he loftily informed her she shouldn’t be
‘so bourgeois’.
As the
perfect representative of the middle classes, Jill felt uncomfortable staying
with Istvan’s relatives for too long. She always used to worry that
she and her husband would prove a drain on his family’s resources, or distract
them away from their work, study and other pressing concerns and
obligations. Renee’s little mind is not at all troubled by such
frivolous concerns. Her family are happy to have her come to stay
with them in Russia for an entire year. And of course their
influence helps her to sail straight through customs without having her luggage
examined in any shape or form. She smugly congratulates herself on
the brilliant achievement of making the other travellers feel quite envious.
(How many rocks of top notch crack she may or may not have smuggled in
her vanity case goes sadly unrecorded.)
An ‘amusing
incident’ occurs when the train arrives at Gatchina. She and her
companions stared out of the window at the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaelovitch,
who was forced to dash into a side room at the station to change out of his
civilian mufti and into the uniform suitable to his exalted rank. A
number of such incidents occur during the course of the book, always to people
endowed with a splendid title and venerable old name. Many of these
incidents I cannot even understand, never mind laugh at, due to my total lack
of social training. Sorry, but I’m simply not comme au fait with all
the requisite nuances, so there was no point in her including them. When
Renee witters on about such exciting and vital topics as the way in which posh
Russkies should behave when people are presented to them, I immediately pass
into a heavy slumber.
People who
possess definite national and ethnic identities nearly always seem to hail from
a different social class to her. Therefore they do not matter in the
great scheme of things, and only occur as a means of quaint window dressing to
convey the expected ‘exotic’ flavour. Such ‘characters’ include the
Russian coachman who comes to collect them from the station when they first
arrive in the country, the Persian merchants who run shops in the middle of
Tblisi and a caravan of camel traders seen traipsing through the desert in the
environs of Baku.
Although
Istvan seemed to be equally fluent and at ease in the language of practically
every country where his relatives lived, Renee isn’t. Despite
managing to pick up a number of basic Russian terms for things, such as drozky,
she never even bothers to get round to trying to learn a bit of the actual
language. I suppose this would be because at this time Russian was
still to some extent regarded as the language of the ‘people’, rather than the
aristocracy. As a result, her aunt can speak ‘perfect’ French,
English and German, but not Russian. Her knowledge of it is so bad
that she prefers never to speak it in society, for fear she’ll be laughed at
(or possibly dismissed as ‘a bit common’). And as her aunt and
everyone else she mixes with in Russian society all speak the very best of
French, there’s no need for Renee to bother getting her pretty little head
round the Cyrillic alphabet, never mind the horrors of perfective and
imperfective forms of verbs and the glory that is the Russian case system. (So
how did Pushkin end up such a genius writer? Because his peasant Russian
nanny just happened to be a master storyteller who taught him that the Russian
language was something to be proud of.)
At one point
she takes a leisurely trip to Georgia. Georgia, for those of you who
don’t know, used to be a quaint little theme park attached to the Russian
empire for the express purpose of taking a holiday in. Or at least that
is the way Renee comes to think of it. Of course auntie is so rich and
well-connected that she owns more than one thumping great mansion in Georgia
alone. Not only does she boast the main one in Tblisi, she also has
a cute little weekend palace in the neighbourhood of Sukhumi. Unfortunately,
due to a teensy bit of civil unrest in the immediate vicinity, they are unable
to go and stay there. As the unrest does not seem to have involved
the participation of aristos in any shape or form, Renee considers it of no
further interest, so we don’t get to learn what it was all about and why.
During her
stay, Renee claims that she met everyone who was anyone (ie all the usual
suspects). All the eligible young men seem to be dashing young
officers in the army. They can’t be doing an awful lot of work,
though, as they are able and willing to engage in the full social round of
Tblisi every night of the week. A typical evening would involve
going out for a meal in a restaurant, followed by a trip to the theatre (plays
in French and Russian only, no Georgian, though they did exist at this time)
and then on to a dance at somebody or other’s house. In the daytime,
she and her aunt pay visits or receive them. Once their social
obligations are fufilled, they go and visit all the hackneyed old tourist sites
or do the odd bit of voluntary work.
Yes, it’s a
tough old life – but someone’s got to do it!
Now,
this is all very well - or not, depending on whether or not you happen to be a
decrepit aristo-wannabe who crooks out your little finger whenever you take a
dish of tea or a frankly cringe-making bourgieous upstart like me who attends a
radical-minded institute of further education that not only encourages women to
ride bicycles but obtain degrees and agitate for the vote - but what the hell
has it all got to do with Leon Trotsky?
According
t, o Renee's account, Rasputin and the Bolsheviks between them have done a
mighty fine job of screwing up the fantasy funland of the entire Russian
empire. Torn away from her fluffy little reminiscences by the great
sweeping panorama of history, she is forced to devote the last couple of
chapters of the book to a discussion of serious matters.
Some
of what she says about Rasputin is just plain bloody wrong. But then, to
be strictly fair, all sorts of lurid rumours seem to have been doing the rounds
in polite Russian society at this time - and either her relatives didn't know
or talk to anyone who did possess the most accurate and up-to-date
information about the Mad Monk, or maybe they thought the true story was far
too shocking and outrageous for a nice young lady like her to hear.
Meanwhile,
Trotsky gets it from both barrels. Not only is he bourgeoius,
intellectual AND a member of the Reds who've just emerged from under the beds -
he's JEWISH! And his real name just happens to be Bronstein!
(Kerensky is also a right pain in the arse, in her expert opinion, being
bourgeious, intellectual AND Jewish - but at least he's only a socialist who's
always gone by his original name.)
Renee,
of course, just like the late sainted Tsar Nick himself, is firmly of the
belief that your ordinary Russian peasant is far too stupid, childish and
politically inexperienced to be able to rule himself or make any healthy,
appropriate decisions about how he might like his country run. Being so
deeply religious and superstitious by nature, he needs a ruler from the same
faith as himself to keep him in line.
If
it wasn't for all these Bolshie Jewish eggheads running round fomenting trouble
in the ranks, the peasants and workers would never have even dreamed of kicking
off, no matter how unhappy they felt or how impossible life in the Russian
empire might have become.
It's
at times like these that you start wondering just what Renee would have made of
Stalin and his purges ...
