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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2020
How did the reading material enjoyed by Nicholas I differ from that of one of his stokers? This article focuses on the novels enjoyed by a broad spectrum of readers at the court of Nicholas I, from the tsar himself and the members of the imperial family to their servants, shedding new light on certain mechanisms of court culture. Based on archival sources such as the loan registers and the correspondence of the tsar's and the palace staff's libraries, this paper shows how, despite social and cultural differences, these two communities of readers actually often ended up reading the same authors and novels. What distinguished them was less their consumption of different texts than the way in which they read and interpreted the same books and, more generally, the different purpose that they attributed to reading. Based on their position at court and what they experienced in the Winter Palace—a political cabinet in which state ideology was discussed, a place in which courtiers felt suffocated by hierarchies and etiquette, or a place where servants could find otherwise unobtainable books—reading novels could constitute either a form of social control, escapism, or a school of good taste and proper behavior.
1 Wortman, Richard S., Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy (Princeton, 1995, 2000)Google Scholar; Zorin, Andrei Leonidovich, Kormia dvuglavogo orla: literatura i gosudarstvennaia ideologiia v Rossii v poslednei treti VXIII.-pervoi treti XIX veka (Moscow, 2001)Google Scholar; Wortman, Richard S., Russian Monarchy: Representation and Rule (Boston, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wortman, Richard S., Visual Texts, Ceremonial Texts, Texts of Exploration: Collected Articles on the Representation of Russian Monarchy (Boston, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ospovat, Kirill A., Terror and Pity: Aleksandr Sumarokov and the Theater of Power in Elizabethan Russia (Boston, 2016)Google Scholar, McCaffray, Susan P., The Winter Palace and the People: Staging and Consuming Russia’s Monarchy, 1754–1917 (Dekalb, 2018)Google Scholar.
2 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, 4.
3 Bourdieu, Pierre, La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement (Paris, 1979), 59, 109–12Google Scholar, 249–58.
4 On the book collections at the Winter Palace and the Hermitage, cf. Shcheglov, V.V., Sobstvennye ego Imperatorskago Velichestva biblioteki i arsenaly. Kratkii istoricheskii ocherk, 1715–1915 (Petrograd, 1917)Google Scholar; Pavlova, Zh., Imperatorskaia biblioteka Ermitazha: 1762–1917 (St. Petersburg, 1988)Google Scholar; Durov, V., Kniga v sem΄e Romanovykh (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar.
5 As well as Catherine II’s personal collection, they included those of the Berlin booksellers Nicolai and Zimmerman, Voltaire’s library collections, those of the Galliani brothers, and of Diderot. See Shcheglov, Sobstvennye imperatorskie biblioteki, 16–18. A description of the catalogues of the Hermitage library may be found in Arkhiv Gosudarstvennogo Ermitazha (AGE), fond 1, opis’ 1, 1837, delo 1 (Liste des catalogues de la Bibliothèque Imperiale de l’Hermitage).
6 On Paul I’s library, see AGE, f. 1, op.VIt, d. 6 (Catalogue des livres étrangers de la bibliothèque de S.M.I. Empereur Paul I). On novels, see in particular ll. 112–16.
7 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1 (Kopii pisem), l. 28. On Alexander I’s large collection of novels, see AGE, f. 1, op. VIt, d. 10, ll. 791–823 (Catalogue systematique et raisonné des livres de la bibliothèque privée de S.M. l’Empereur Alexandre I).
8 On the absence of censorship on foreign books at court, see the letter of the Court librarian Florian Gille to T.A. Brockhaus of May 18, 1840 in AGE, f. 2, op. XIVzh, d. 22, part 1 (Bibliothèque de S.A.I. Monseigneur le Grand Duc Héritier. Copies de lettres).
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10 “Imperatritsa Aleksandra Fedorovna v svoikh vospominaniiakh,” Russkaia Starina 88, no. 10 (October 1896): 36–37Google Scholar. Among her papers, Charlotte kept passages from de Staël’s novel that her mother had copied. See in particular a passage on marital love (Anne Louise Germaine De Staël, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2 [Paris, 1838], 623) in Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 728, op. 1, d. 1329, l. 1 (Neskol΄ko nemetskikh stikhotvorenii, skopirovanny korolevoi Luizoi Prusskoi).
11 Vyskochkov, L. V., Nikolai I (Moscow, 2003), 41Google Scholar.
12 “Imperatritsa Aleksandra Fedorovna v svoikh vospominaniiakh,” 59. Reading Walter Scott’s novels continued at least until the summer of 1822 when the couple read Kenilworth together. See Sidorova, M.N. and Silaeva, M.N., eds., Zapisnye knizhki velikogo kniazia Nikolaia Pavlovicha, 1822–1825 (Moscow, 2013), 80, 83Google Scholar.
13 On the aesthetic ideals of the court of Nicholas I, Cf. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, 262–63. On the influence of Zhukovskii’s poetry on the tsar and the empress, see Vinitskii, Il΄ia, Dom tolkovatelia: Poeticheskaia semantika i istoricheskoe voobrazhenie V.A. Zhukovskogo (Moscow, 2006), 197–98Google Scholar.
14 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol 1, 262–64 ; Johannsen, Rolf and Polaschegg, Andrea, “Indien preussischblau—Das Hoffest Lalla Rookh im Schloss Berlin,” Macht und Freundschaft: Berlin—St. Petersburg, 1800–1860 (Berlin, 2008), 97–111Google Scholar.
15 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1: 334.
16 Ibid., 261
17 Elias, Norbert, The Court Society (London, 1983), 215–25Google Scholar.
18 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1; 1839, d. 1.
19 For example, in February 1837 the tsar decided that, except for the members of the imperial family, everyone else at court could only borrow those books by submitting a specific request to the Minister of the Court. Those readers’ choices were thus subjected to an initial check. See AGE f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1, l. 28ob. (Letter from Gille to the Minister of the Court P.M. Volkonskii of February 16, 1837).
20 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1, l. 35. See also letter of April 5, 1839. Ibid., l. 119ob. (Letter from Sayger to Volkonskii of April 2, 1837).
21 Paris naturally enjoyed the lion’s share of orders, but the booksellers of Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and Vienna periodically received sizeable orders too, albeit with some restrictions on the subjects dealt with. See AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1, l. 172ob. No books, however, came from London: any English books came via Paris.
22 See, for example, AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1, ll. 3, 23.
23 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, ll. 134, 136.
24 Remnek, Miranda Beaven, “‘A Larger Portion of the Public’: Female Readers, Fiction, and the Periodical Press in the Reign of Nicholas I,” in Norton, Barbara T., Gheith, Jehanne M. (eds), An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in late Imperial Russia (Durham, 2001), 35Google Scholar.
25 AGE f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 86ob. (Letter from Gille to Volkonskii of August 23, 1841).
26 AGE f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 99ob. (Letter from Gille to Schnitzler of September 13, 1841).
27 On Jean-Henri Schnitzler Cf. Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel (Paris 1875).
28 AGE f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 96 (Letter from Gille to Spies of September 13, 1841). See also AGE, f. 2, op. XIVzh, d. 22, part 1 (Letter from Gille to Schnitzler of June 9, 1841); Johann Heinrich Schnitzler, Essai d’une statistique générale de l’Empire de Russie (Paris, 1829); Schnitzler, La Pologne et la Russie (Paris, 1831); Schnitzler, La Russie, la Pologne et la Finlande (Paris, 1835).
29 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 135.
30 Ibid., l. 86ob, 87.
31 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 100 (Letter from Gille to Schnitzler of September 13, 1841).
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid. l. 100ob.
34 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 173 (Letter from Gille to Violliet of August 22, 1842).
35 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, ll. 99–100ob. (Letter from Gille to Schnitzler of September 13, 1841).
36 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 137 (Letter of January 31, 1842).
37 Derek P. Scales, Alphonse Karr, sa vie et son œuvre, 1808–1890 (Geneva, 1959).
38 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 136 (Letter from Gille to Schnizler of January 31, 1842).
39 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 136ob.
40 On the reception in France and in Russia of the “immoral” frénétique literature cf. Anthony Glinoer, La littérature frénétique (Paris, 2009); Nikita Alekseevich Drozdov, Frantsuzskaia ‘neistovaia slovesnost’’ v russkoi retseptsii 1830kh godov (PhD diss., Saint Petersburg State University [СПбГУ], 2013).
41 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 136 (Letter from Gille to Schnizler of January 31, 1842).
42 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1, l. 136.
43 Ibid., l. 136ob. Elisabeth Meyendorff was the daughter of the Dutch Ambassador to Petersburg Wilhelm d’Hogger and wife of Baron Aleksandr Meyendorff, a senior official at the Russian Ministry of Commerce serving in Paris in the second half of the 1830s. In her Petersburg years, in the mid-1830s, she had been in contact with Grand Duchess Elizaveta Pavlovna, but also with Viazemskii and Pushkin.
44 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1836, d. 1; AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, 1839, d. 1.
45 See Nicholas’s letter to the empress dated October 20, 1827 in GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1460, l. 56ob (Pis’ma Nikolaia I k imp. Aleksandre Fedorovne, 1826–1828).
46 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVv, d. 130, ll. 1–5 (Opis΄ materialam eroticheskogo soderzhaniia iz biblioteki Zimnego dvortsa). For testimony of Nicholas’s purchase of these erotic books, see AGE, f. 2, op. XIV B, 1836, d. 1, l. 33ob., 65 ob., 88ob.
47 Darnton, Robert, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York, 1996), 85–114Google Scholar.
48 Georges Touchard-Lafosse, Chroniques de l’Oeil-de-Boeuf, 8 vols., Paris, 1829–1833. See the letter of Nicholas I to the Empress of October 12, 1830 and October 15, 1830 in GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1555, part 1, ll. 96, 108 (Pis’ma Nikolaia I k imp. Aleksandre Fedorovne).
49 Ibid., l. 103ob.
50 On the reactions of Russian critics to the novels of the French “frénétique” school see Drozdov, Frantsuzskaia ‘neistovaia slovesnost΄ v russkoi retseptsii, 31–126.
51 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVzh, d. 22, part 1 (Letter from Gille to Warée of June 6, 1831).
52 On Sue’s Plick et Plock, see A.S. Pushkin’s strongly negative opinion in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1941), vol. 14, 166.
53 Here Nikitenko means the publication of a Russian translation of Victor Hugo’s novel. Aleksandr V. Nikitenko, Dnevnik (Leningrad, 1955), vol. 1, 140.
54 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVzh, d. 22, part 1 (Letter from Gille to Waréé of March 9, 1834). Bertrand et Raton, ou l’art de conspirer (1833) by Scribe is a comedy that “satirizes the stupidity of political conspiracy, the vanity and greed of the French middle class” during the 1830 revolution, see Stanton, Stephen S., “Scribe’s ‘Bertrand et Raton’: A Well-Made Play,” The Tulane Drama Review 2, no. 1 (November 1957), 58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
55 GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1555, part 7 (1836), l. 64ob. (Letter from Nicholas to the Empress of August 30, 1836).
56 AGE, f.2, op.XIVzh, d.22, part 1 (Letter from Gille to Warée of March 9, 1834).
57 About the ‘danger’ of Dumas’s novels for Russian society, see Nikitendo’s diary (April 1836): “Pavlov, a civil servant, killed, or almost killed, Actual State Councillor Aprelev as the latter was returning from church with his young bride . . . . The public rose in wrath against Pavlov as a ‘base murderer,’ and the minister of education imposed an embargo on all French novels and stories, particularly on the works of Dumas, considering them the real culprits.” Aleksandr V. Nikitenko, Dnevnik v trekh tomakh, vol. 1 (Leningrad, 1955), 183.
58 AGE, f. 2, op. XIVb, d. 1, l. 19 ob. (Letter from Sayger to Labenskii of January 17, 1840).
59 On the bourgeois artistic taste of the tsar see Rebecchini, Damiano, “An Influential Collector, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia,” Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 22, no. 1 (2010), 57–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 GARF, f. 728, d. 1904, part III, l. 35ob (Pis΄ma Nikolaia I k imperatritse Aleksandre Fedorovne, 1842). And yet the tsar did not indiscriminately praise Kock’s novels. On the subject of Un tourlourou, for example, he wrote: “I find it the worst, because in addition to the usual dullness, it is all rather implausible and features low-life characters who are too exaggerated to be natural.” GARF, f. 728, d. 1555, part VIII, l. 56ob. (Letter from Nicholas to the Empress of September 25, 1837).
61 Between 1844 and 1847, at least two novels by Sue circulated in Aleksandra Fedorovna’s apartments; three by Countess Dash, by Joseph Méry, and by Théodore Foudras; four by Bernard, five novels by Soulié, Lacroix, Féval and Sand; nine Balzac novels and twenty by Dumas. AGE, f. 2, op. XIVe, d. 12 (Livres rendus à Monsieur le conseiller d’état Gille).
62 For a description of how the empress hid her reading of a forbidden novel by Dumas from her husband, see Durylin, S., “Aleksandr Diuma-otets i Rossiia,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow, 1937), XXXI–XXXII, 514–16Google Scholar.
63 Letter from Gille to Warée of May 14, 1836, in AGE, f. 2, op. XIVzh, d. 22, part 1. On the censors’ attitude to Musset’s novel, see Aizenshtok, I., “Frantsuzskie pisateli v otsenkakh tsarskoi tsenzury,” Literaturnoe nasledstvo 33–34 (Moscow, 1939), 818–19Google Scholar.
64 GARF, f. 728, op. 1, ed. 1555, part V, l. 74ob. (Letter from Nicholas to the Empress of October 3, 1834).
65 See the following order from the Tsar of June 25, 1848: “His Majesty the Emperor ordered that all books imported from abroad into the Russian Empire should be subjected by Customs to a 5 silver kopek duty for each individual volume . . . Novels and povesti are subject to an extra 5 silver kopek duty.” AGE, f. 2, op. XIVa, 1848, d. 19, ll.1–1ob (Po predpisaniiu g. ministra imperatorskago dvora).
66 On the formation of this library Rebekkini, D., “V.A. Zhukovskii i biblioteka prestolonaslednika Aleksandra Nikolaevicha (1828–1837),” Zhukovskii. Issledovaniia i materialy, vol. 2, (Tomsk, 2013), 77–89Google Scholar.
67 AGE, f. 2, op. XIV ZH, d. 21 (Bibliothèque de son Altesse Impériale Monseigneur le Grand Duc Héritier. Livre de notes. Sortie et rentrée des ouvrages prêtés). On this see also Rebecchini, Damiano, “Letture al Palazzo d’Inverno (1829–1855). La lettura come fatto sociale,” in D’Amelia, Antonella, ed., Pietroburgo capitale della cultura russa (Salerno, 2004), 291–334Google Scholar.
68 Elias, The Court Society, 105–6.
69 Particularly on the reading of court memories, see Rebekkini, D., “V.A. Zhukovskii i frantsuzskie memuary pri dvore Nikolaia I (1828–1837). Kontekst chteniia i ego interpretatsiia,” in Kiseleva, L., ed., Pushkinskie chteniia v Tartu, 3: Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 220-letiiu V.A. Zhukovskogo 200-letiiu F.I. Tiutcheva (Tartu, 2004), 229–53Google Scholar.
70 See, for example, the following opinion of Nicholas I in a letter to the empress on Constant’s memoirs: “I have almost finished Constant, the fourth volume is of great interest and you will enjoy it; it also talks about the moment of the emperor’s separation from Josephine,” GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1555, l. 73 (Nicholas’s letter dated October 5, 1830). Wairy, Louis Constant, Mémoires de Constant, premier valet de chambre de l’Empereur, sur la vie privée de Napoléon, sa famille et sa cour (Paris, 1830)Google Scholar
71 Wortman, Scenarios of Power, vol. 1, 321–32.
72 On the influence of chivalric ideals and “court-romantic tendencies” on the European courtiers, see Elias, The Court Society, 216–21.
73 On the free time that St. Petersburg officials and provincial landowners enjoyed in the 1830s, see Lincoln, W. Bruce, “The Daily Life of St. Petersburg Officials in the Mid Nineteenth Century,” Oxford Slavonic Papers 8 (1975): 87–88Google Scholar; Antonova, Katherine Pickering, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (Oxford, 2013), 105–18Google Scholar.
74 Tiutcheva, A.F., Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 1, (Moscow, 1928), 95, 166Google Scholar.
75 See, apart from the classic works of Aronson, M., Reiser, S. and Brodskii, N., also Murav΄eva, I., Salony pushkinskoi pory: Ocherki literaturnoi i svetskoi zhizni Sankt-Peterburga (St. Petersburg, 2008)Google Scholar.
76 Tiutcheva, Pri dvore dvukh imperatorov, vol. 2: 76–77.
77 Smirnova-Rosset, Aleksandra O., Dnevnik, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1989), 14Google Scholar.
78 Smirnova-Rosset, Dnevnik, 235–36.
79 Ibid.
80 Tiutcheva, Pri dvore, vol. 2: 180–81.
81 See AGE, op. XIV B, d. 10 (Bibliothèque privée de de Sa Majesté l’Empereur. Livre d’Entrée). For example, in 1842, a total of 437 works (1157 volumes) joined Nicholas’s personal library, but only a few dozens of these were Russian, and their number did not rise in the following years either.
82 “Je lis Onegin par Pouchkine, chose délicate comme peinture du monde de Petersburg.” GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 2390 (Pis΄ma imeratritsy Aleksandry Fedorovny k Nikolaiu I, 1826–1828), part I, l. 118 (Letter from the Empress to Nicholas I of June 13, 1828).
83 Letter from Nicholas I to Aleksandra Fedorovna of March 7,1830, GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1555, part II (1830), l. 8ob. On the reading of Zagoskin’s Kuzma Miroshev, see in GARF, f. 728, op. 1, d. 1904, part III, l. 35ob (Letter from Nicholas to Aleksandra Fedorovna of September 18, 1842).
84 Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 7: 415.
85 Tarle, E.V., “Tedor Shimen (1847–1921),” Dela i dni: Istoricheskii Zhurnal 2 (1921): 189Google Scholar. See also Eikhenbaum, Boris M., “Nikolai I o Lermontove,” in O proze: Sbornik statei (Leningrad, 1969), 423–26Google Scholar.
86 Ibid.
87 On the servants as readers in eighteenth-century Russia and Europe, see Shklovskii, Viktor, Matvei Komarov, zhitel΄ goroda Moskvy (Leningrad, 1929), 78Google Scholar; Watt, Ian, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London, 1957), 52Google Scholar; Roche, Daniel, Le Peuple de Paris (Paris, 1981), 207–9, 218–19Google Scholar.
88 AGE, f. 1, op. VIt, d. 24, ll. 1–5 (Katalog podnesennykh knig).
89 AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1836, d. 25, ll. 1–4ob (Kopii pisem Rossiiskoi Ermitazhnoi Biblioteki).
90 On the “pridvornosluzhitel΄skaia biblioteka” or “rossiiskaia biblioteka” of the Hermitage, see Shcheglov, Sobstvennye ego imperatorskago Velichestva Biblioteki, 18–20; Pavlova, Imperatorskaia biblioteka Ermitazha, 61–62, 66; E.V. Dianova, ed.,“Vysochaishego dvora sluzhiteli:” Livreinyi kostium kontsa XIX-nachala XX veka v sobranii Ermitazha (St. Petersburg, 2014), 74–77.
91 Dianova, ed.,“Vysochaishego dvora sluzhiteli,” 74.
92 Ibid., 75.
93 AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1838, d. 25.
94 According to the 1833 revision, more than 70 novels had already gone missing from the section that featured Russian works published between 1766 and the 1830s, lost or stolen by their readers. See AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1838, d. 25, ll. 32–45.
95 AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1838, d. 25, l. 18ob (Letter from N. Dolgorukii to Sayger of November 11, 1838).
96 AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1838, d. 25, l. 75.
97 Ibid., l. 15.
98 AGE, f. 1, op. I, 1839, d. 39 (Kniga dlia zapisyvaniia knig, vydavaemykh iz Ermitazhnoi biblioteki). The number of readers is an estimate based on the 1836 loan register. According to Pavlova, in 1848 the library numbered 680 readers, Pavlova, Imperatorskaia biblioteka Ermitazha, 74.
99 According to an edict issued by Catherine II in 1794, although servants were not free people but serfs, they did not have to pay taxes (podati); they had no obligations (for example, military service); and, under particular conditions, they could aspire to the lower ranks of a courtier’s career. See Dianova, ed.,“Vysochaishego dvora sluzhiteli,” 26–27.
100 Sometimes, however, there were exceptions to this rule I. V. Zimin, Detskii mir imperatorskikh rezidentsii: Byt monarchov i ikh okruzhenie (Moscow, 2014), 437; McCaffray, The Winter Palace and the People, 126–27.
101 Dianova, ed.,“Vysochaishego dvora sluzhiteli,” 28
102 Nicholas himself left dispositions in his will in favor of his waiters and coachman. See Filin, M.D., ed., “Zaveshchanie Imperatora Nikolaia I,” in Imperator Nikolai Pervyi (Moscow, 2002), 257Google Scholar.
103 Dianova, ed.,“Vysochaishego dvora sluzhiteli,” 61–69.
104 McCaffray, The Winter Palace and the People, 131–33.
105 AGE, f. 1, op. 1, 1839, d. 39.
106 AGE, f. 1, op. 1, 1839, d. 39, l. 26.
107 Ibid., l. 64.
108 Ibid.
109 Ibid., l. 34.
110 See the readings of the stoker Vasilii Ivanov, AGE, f. 1, op. 1, 1839, d. 39, l. 83.
