IN THE MONASTERY April 17, 1840. The next day, early in the morning, the girls were taken to receive communion at the nunnery. Throughout the mass, Vera looked at the nuns with great curiosity. The abbess of the monastery was a small, thin woman, who wore long cloth robes, a cowl with a cloth cap, and was covered with fur around her forehead and her cheeks. Vera felt very sorry for her, as it must have been terribly hot.... Read more
CONFESSION April 16, 1840. Vera sat on the window and watched, mesmerized, as the hard white snow fell silently to the ground. She found it interesting when it fell under the wheels of their wagon and turned into mud, or “coffee jelly” as Vera would say. But Winter passed quickly. But soon the frosty creaking and squealing had ceased. The icicles, like translucent glass rods, were no longer in sight! Everything loosened, and melted, and water flowed through the... Read more
NANNY’S FAIRYTALE Winter 1840. The next evening the family ate their dinner in the winter candlelight. As soon as their meal was finished, Lelya, Vera, Dasha, Dunya, and Aunt Nadya got up from the table and rushed to ask Nanny Nastya to fulfill her promise and tell them a fairytale. The old woman, sitting peacefully in the nursery while looking at the crackling fire in the stove, shuddered from fright when the girls ran in at once, and pounced... Read more
NANNY NASTYA Winter 1840. “Baba Kapka” was the nickname in the household for the fat little housekeeper named Varvara. She was a good and honest woman, but an absurd woman; a big grumbler, and a terror for all the young maids and courtyard children. During prayer, she stood in front of the icons in the morning and evening and often interrupted herself with grumbling and attacks on the maids, which only caused them to laugh at her not fear... Read more
GRUNYA Winter 1840. Vera and Baba Lena got out of the troika (three-horse sleigh) and entered a one-story wooden, house. The matron of the orphanage, an old woman named Anna Ivanovna, met them in a small hallway. Everything was so quiet that Vera thought the house was empty. She was very surprised when, upon entering the next room, she saw more than twenty girls, all neatly dressed in gray dresses, quietly sitting at work at long black tables. They... Read more
DASHA & DUNYA Winter 1840. Vera was playing with two “yard girls” her age, Dasha and Dunya. From remote antiquity, since the origin of the servitude of the peasants, Russian nobility divided the serfs on their estates into two classes—into cultivators and the dwornije ljudi (court-yard people) whom they selected as fittest for their family’s personal service.[1] (It was the latter class to which Dasha and Dunya belonged.) They began by placing a wicker chair in a sunny place... Read more
THE CHRISTENING OF THE DOLL Winter, 1840. Baba Lena and Dede Andrushka spared nothing to amuse the children, and they always had a lot of toys and dolls. They constantly took them for rides and walks and gave them picture books. Lelya and Vera also met a lot of girls, and some of them even studied with them. One of the girls, Claudia Grechinskaya, became Vera’s close friend. She had many sisters who always gave Vera a ton of... Read more
This series, “Mothers & Daughters,” is something of a continuation of “Novorossiya.” A closer look at three generations of women of the princely Dolgorukuy family in the late 1830s/early 1840s. A LANTERN Winter, 1839. The night was dark, and the closed wagon rolled gently from side to side. Helena Andreevna held Vera on her lap; one hand holding her head, one hand holding her chest. Lulled by the crawling ride through the snowdrifts, the hushed howls... Read more
FIRE AND ICE From the beginning of the year 1839, Andrei Mikhailovich had many troubles and worries about two positions and clashes with the kind but stormy Governor Timiryazev. He was also very saddened by the premature release of Rostya from the Artillery School. It was for some insignificant prank as a cadet in the battery stationed in Bendery and seemed far too trivial to result in expulsion; a punishment that effectively deprived the boy the opportunity to complete... Read more
LETTER TO NATALYA Helena Andreevna was with the regiment in the village of Kamenskoye when she learned that her old nanny, Alexandra Andreevna was sick and at the point of death. When she went to see her, she found the poor old woman in a cold hut, under a tattered blanket, suffering in unspeakable pain. Her daughter, whom she lived with, would not send for the doctor (who was 50 miles away.) It was not out of cruelty, it... Read more
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