My Life

PART VIII: 1900 to 1901

PART VIII 1900 to 1901 985 1900 viii.1 Preface I have fewer and fewer materials available for my subsequent notes, since [my husband’s] diaries and all the papers from 1900 up to Lev Nikolaevich’s death are [now] with my daughter Sasha. It has been rumoured that they were all given to the Academy [of Arts] in Petersburg. In the meantime, all my papers are now in the Rumjantsev Museum1 in Moscow. I did not keep a diary in 1900. I shall jot down some fragmentary pieces of information. viii.2 Shaliapin — The shelter Lev Nikolaevich and I greeted the New Year after I returned with the children from Il’ja’s at Grinëvka. He wrote in his diary of 1 January: “I’m sitting here in my room, and everybody’s here with me, greeting the new year.” At that time there was a new young singer, a Fëdor Ivanovich Shaliapin,2 someone from the common folk, who was quickly making a name for himself in Moscow and Petersburg. He offered to sing for Lev Nikolaevich and came to see us on the 8th of January. A very likeable, cheerful and talented chap, he had a personality that left a most favourable impression on us all. Not only that, but we also found Shaliapin’s easy-going nature most attractive. I can’t recall what he sang back then. His voice, a bass, was much too loud for our parlour, and did not especially appeal to Lev Nikolaevich. But our young people were in ecstasy! I, too, could not help but appreciate Shaliapin’s enormous talent, but I was not in the happiest of moods back then, and so his singing had little effect on me that evening. I mentioned in a letter to my sister: All the joys of my life are falling away one by one… I have worked out within myself a judicious attitude to everything, namely: to live for today ,asbestIcan,inthemostcheerful,happyandmeaningfulwayIcan,andtohumblysubmit to God’s will and treat people’s manifestation of self-will with equanimity, and this has more or less worked out well for me. On the 1st of January, at long last, I was granted permission from the censorship board to have two copies of Resurrection in Chertkov’s edition [for my personal use], but I had already begun to lose interest in that format. There was so much there that I found alien and unpleasant — like the description of the mass, strange reviews of the communion service, and such like. On the 11th of January I received a letter from my good friend Countess Èmilija Alekseevna Kapnist,3 saying how happy she was that I had agreed to lend my patronage to a shelter for homeless children she had founded.4 She wrote: 1 Rumjantsev Museum — see Part ii, Note 67. At that time (1916) the Rumjantsev Museum housed documents relating to lnt’s life up to the mid 1880s, collected and donated by sat. But many other documents (especially those under censure from Russian authorities) had also been collected over the same period by Vladimir Grigor’evich Chertkov (see Part iv, Note 45), who had kept them for many years in England. In 1913 he handed these over to the Library of the Academy of Sciences in St-Petersburg. See Golinenko & Shumova 1998a: 173. 2 FëdorIvanovichShaliapin[Russian:Shaljapin](alsospeltinEnglish:Chaliapin,1873–1938)—oneofthemostprominent Russian opera singers (a bass) of the early 20th century, born into a peasant family in Kazan’. 3 Countess Èmilija Alekseevna Kapnist (née Lopukhina) — see Part iii, Note 595. 4 sat served as a trustee of the shelter from January 1900 to February 1902 (see Golinenko and Shumova 1998a: 173). my life 986 “I pray God that this holy venture will bring you as much heartfelt joy as the love you have put into it right from the very beginning…” No sooner had I become trustee than my requests for assistance were met by various donations :130arshinsofflannelfromGjubner,paperfromGovard,clothfromPopov,books,donated [admission vouchers to] banyas,5 and so forth. S.N. Fisher,6theHeadmistressof theGirls’ Classical Gymnasium, cameacrossavolunteer religious teacher and wrote for some reason: “Another wonder!” Countess Kapnist at first handed her shelter over to A. N. Unkovskaja, but neither one of them could continue their activity for health reasons. Since I had no activity in Moscow which I could consider charitable, I boldly took this entirely...