Pushkin (Text Only) by T. J. Binyon

Author:T. J. Binyon [Binyon, T. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007390793
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-06-27T23:00:00+00:00

By the winter of 1831 it had become clear to Pushkin that the tangle of his and Nashchokin’s financial affairs could only be resolved if he intervened personally. He left St Petersburg for Moscow on 3 December, hoping that settling the business would also enable him to redeem Natalya’s diamonds. ‘Aleksandr galloped off to Moscow before St Nicholas’s day, and as usual, completely unexpectedly, telling only Natasha and declaring that he absolutely had to see Nashchokin and not at all on poetic business, but on far more material business – prosaic,’ Olga wrote to her husband. ‘Just what the financial affairs are, on account of which he absconded from here, I cannot learn from him, and will not ask his wife.’75 Writing to Natalya, Pushkin made a joke of the discomfort of the journey in the diligence with two companions. One was ‘a Riga merchant, a good German, who was choked with phlegm every morning, and hawked it up for a good hour in a corner of the post-station. The other was a Memel Jew, travelling at the other’s expense. You can imagine what jolly company. The German was religiously drunk three times a day and twice a night. The Jew amused him during the journey with pleasant conversation, for example narrating Iwan Wijiguin* to him (ganz charmant!).’76

He stayed with Nashchokin, though he had some difficulty on arrival in discovering the latter’s new apartment – he had moved to a single-storey wooden house in Gagarinsky Lane (now Ryleev Street), off the Prechistenka. Here Pushkin found his friend living in his usual manner: ‘His home is such a jumble and confusion that one’s head spins,’ he told Natalya. ‘He has all kinds of people with him from morning till evening: gamblers, retired hussars, students, attorneys, gypsies, spies, especially money-lenders. Everyone is admitted; everyone has to see him; they all shout, smoke pipes, eat, sing, dance.’77 More civilized company was provided by Vyazemsky and Aleksandr Turgenev. ‘Evening with Pushkin at Vyazemsky’s,’ the latter noted in his diary. ‘Conversation with him and Vyazemsky about England, France, their authors, their intellectual life etc.’78 Turgenev wisely refused an invitation to a party at Nashchokin’s, which Pushkin himself found not wholly enjoyable: ‘Yesterday Nashchokin gave us a gypsy evening,’ he wrote to Natalya. ‘I have become so unused to this, that my head is still aching from the shouting of the guests and the singing of the gypsy girls.’79 While in Moscow he carefully avoided the Goncharovs: he had no desire, he told Natalya, to have the obligatory scene with her mother, who was still telling all Moscow how mercenary he was.

Pushkin’s financial dealings – the business which had brought him to Moscow – were only partially successful; Nashchokin’s affairs were in such a tangle that little could be done about them. But he did pay back the money he had borrowed in January, enabling Pushkin to come to an accommodation with one of his principal creditors, Luka Zhemchuzhnikov. In July 1830 he had given Zhemchuzhnikov a bill for 12,500 roubles to cover his card losses.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.