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1. A Victorian Home in Siberia
- University of Washington Press
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5 CHAPTER 1 A Victorian Home in Siberia THE FAMILY CALLED THEIR VLADIVOSTOK HOME “DOM SMITH.”1 A mixture of Russian and English, this name reflects the two cultures that the Smiths and the Prays not only inhabited but also wished to bridge. They were foreigners in Russia, brought up in the Victorian traditions of Europe and the Americas. Charles Smith had followed his brother Oscar to Siberia in the late 1850s, and after Charles and his wife, the former Sarah Pray, settled in Vladivostok in 1886, their American Store on Sodom Lane had sustained them well.2 Russia, too, had begun to favor its growing entrepreneurial class, and Vladivostok’s leaders offered privileges such as inexpensive land and a dutyfree port to those who came and helped develop the city’s commerce.3 With his straightforward honesty, crisp intelligence, and warm humor, Charles Smith became a respected colleague among Vladivostok’s merchants. When Sarah’s brother Frederick Pray and his wife Eleanor started their life in Vladivostok in mid-1894, its European colony was small, lively, and spread across several cultures. Some of its members, including German-born Adolph Dattan, had become Russian subjects, whereas most of the foreigners kept their native citizenships. Still, they all attempted to fit into Russian life, and the examples of cross-national contacts were well established. The Danes and the Swedes engaged in concerts and theatricals at the German-run singing club, the Gesangverein, and they often attended the annual “Blessing of the Waters” on 19 January. In respectable Victorian tradition, the merchant wives—whether Russian, European, or American—announced a jour fixe, the specific weekly hours when they kept an open house, and everyone participated in the “mannered domestic drama” of paying ceremonial visits to 6 ✴ Chapter 1 new acquaintances.4 These ladies’ get-togethers constituted an international marketplace where not only friendship but also useful information was shared: fashion tips from English and French magazines, ideas for home improvements involving Japanese furniture or the Chinese principles of feng shui, and health cures from both Europe and Asia. That many of the foreigners simultaneously used the Julian and Gregorian calendars created an annual swirl of double festivities: two sets of Christmas and New Year’s celebrations, two Easters, and special holidays honoring both Russia and other countries. These families’ social status, economic class, and openness to diverse cultures—rather than a single focus on their own geographic or national backgrounds—shaped their tastes and the everyday reality of their lives. Indeed, class united them more significantly than nationality. The primary stage for Eleanor Pray and the women of her circle was the home, which they considered a sanctuary from evil. It was a private refuge of amenities and cozy relaxation that contrasted with the public sphere, that boisterous, noisy, and often dangerous world outside. With its beauty and well-ordered management, the Victorian home was supposed to offer an antidote to illness and stress, where men could engage in what we, today, would call networking, and avoid the temptations about town.5 Mrs. Pray noted that “to entertain single men is a mission. They have no home here and if no one invites them, or if there is no house open to them so they can drop in any time, they are almost sure to get into very bad company. . . . Vladivostok has a continually changing population, so there are very few real homes here, and a much larger proportion of men than women” (14 August 1895 to Home). The home that Eleanor Pray came to love is on a large hillside lot above the Post and Telegraph Office in the center of Vladivostok. Here Charles Smith constructed several buildings: the main house, a smaller brick building (where the Prays lived for the first four years), the servants’ quarters, and the American Store and its warehouse, along with walkways, lawns, and flower beds that for decades grew increasingly lush. Visitors would enter this world by a gate on Sodom Lane, approach the main door of Dom Smith—stylish with a wrought-iron portico and, later, a brass sign engraved “SMITH”—and then proceed into the drawing-room and sitting-rooms. Altogether, the property offered a soothing, pleasurable environment. Far from fashionably idle, Sarah Smith planned and participated in all of the household chores, such as meals, gardening, and the massive semiannual housecleanings, together with her staff of servants, many of whom lived on the premises. Chinese men, known (in the language of the...