FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Rod
writes:
Geographical
News - From Russia with Love
We recently received a postcard from our Secretary, Paul Hayes, who
has recently travelled through Russia (Siberia) to Moscow and then through
Spain and Italy. Paul noticed a building in Irkutsk that was a part of the East
Siberian Branch of the Russian Geographical Society. During the Communist
putsches of the 1930’s and 40’s the Branch probably closed. At that time the
Communist Party seemed to think the Geographical Society was too concerned with
‘environmental’ issues and not collective farming issues. ( http://int.rgo.ru/about/ )
Through Wikipedia we read that the Siberian branch of the Russian
Geographical Society was founded in the 1850’s in Irkutsk, and afterwards
became a permanent centre for the exploration of Siberia; while the opening of
the Amur and Sakhalin attracted Richard Maack, Schmidt, Glehn, Gustav Radde,
and Leopold von Schrenck, who created works on the flora, fauna, and
inhabitants of Siberia.
The scientific exploration of Siberia, commenced in the period of
1720 to 1742 by Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt, Johann Georg Gmelin, and Louis
de l'Isle de la Croyere, was followed up by Gerhardt Friedrich Müller, Fischer,
and Johann Gottlieb Georgi. Peter Simon Pallas, with several Russian students,
laid the first foundation of a thorough exploration of the topography, fauna,
flora, and inhabitants of the country. The journeys of Christopher Hansteen and
Georg Adolf Erman were the most important step in the exploration of the
territory. Alexander von Humboldt, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, and Gustav
Rose also paid short visits to Siberia.
The Russian Geographical Society is the oldest scientific
organization in Russia that has been uniting professional geographers and other
scientists, public figures and geography buffs since 1845. See more through http://int.rgo.ru/about/
Our Society has around 90 references to Russia through its
collections dating from 1699, including 11 titles by A von Humboldt dating from
1850.
The pictures
show the ornate building in Irkutsk and an 1886 scene crossing the Angara river
at Irkutsk.
Rod's
notes have inspired me to have a look in the catalogue, so here is just a
sampling of the Russia-related titles, some expectable but some rather
surprising, in the library of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia.
A very early
English experience of Russia is chronicled in the "English reprints"
edition of this little 1590 work:
Webbe, Edward, b. 1553 or 4
Edward Webbe, chief master gunner, his trauailes. 1590. London
: A. Murray & Son, 1868.
In a time when
Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne and England did not rule the waves of the
so-called known world, but Spain and the Turkish Ottoman Empire did, the
12-year-old Edward Webbe's father placed him in the service of Captain Anthony
Jenkinson, England's ambassador to Russia, who sailed from England in 1566.
Webbe's little book recounts in simple, direct, everyday language the story of
his adventures abroad, his observations of how the foreigners he saw lived and
behaved, and his long years as a galley slave: as he puts it, the "extreme
slavery sustained many years together, in the galleys and wars of the Great
Turk against the lands of Persia, Tartaria, Spain, and Portugal." The
reprint edition reproduces the Elizabethan spelling of the original, but it is
still quite readable.
Another venture to Russia, a century
later, is one of the most mysterious works in the collection:
Foy de la Neuville.
An
account of Muscovy : as it was in the year 1689. In which the troubles that
happen'd in that empire from the present Czar Peter's election to the throne,
to his being firmly settled in it, are particularly related. With a character
of him, and his people. By Monsieur de la Neuville, then residing at Moscow. London :
printed for Edward Castle, 1699.
"Foy
de la Neuville is the mysterious author of 'Relation curieuse de la Moscovie',
a late seventeen-hundreds account of a foreign traveler's trek to Russia.
Almost nothing is known about this author, not even his real name. His reasons
for traveling to Muscovy are also not known with certainty. It is speculated
that he may have been a Polish diplomat assigned to Russia." His book decribes
Foy de la Neuville's "visit to Russia in the Winter months of 1689. The
writing shows that he clearly had access to the Russian government and its
officials at high levels. It has been at times suggested that he never actually
visited Russia..." Some of his stories may be taken from other writers or
simply made up, but "it is clear that even more are not. His travels to
Russia in service of the king of Poland are well documented." He has been
identified as another writer, Adrien Baillet, but this has been disproved.
(Source: "Foy de la Neuville", Wikipedia)
Direct from
Russia, 1823, is the catalogue of maps, nautical charts and manuscripts from
the library of Prince Aleksandr Lobanov-Rostovskii (variously known in the
literature as Prince Alexandre/Alexander Labanoff, Prince Alexandre Labanoff de
Rostoff, Fürst Alexander Lobanow
Rostowsky, or, as here, le prince Alexandre
Labanoff de Rostoff):
Lobanov-Rostovskii,
Aleksandr IAkovlevich, kniaz, 1788-1866.
Catalogue
des cartes géographiques, topographiques & marines, de la bibliothèque du
prince Alexandre Labanoff de Rostoff, à Saint
Pétersbourg : Suivi d'une notice
de manuscripts. Paris : Typ. de Firmin Didot, 1823.
Look out! A
Russian spy is out and about at RGSSA!
Nikolaevskii,
Boris Ivanovich.
Aseff
: the Russian Judas / by Boris Nicolaievsky ;
translated from the Russian by George Reavey ; with 16 illustrations.
London : Hurst & Blackett, [1934.
Evno (or
Yevno) Fishelevich Azef (variously Aseff, Azev), 1869-1918, was "a Russian
socialist revolutionary who was also a double agent working both as an
organizer of assassinations for the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (also known
as SRs or Esers) and a police spy for the Okhrana, the Imperial secret
police." One might have expected him to meet a horrid fate, as his whole
adult life seems to have been one of trickery and deception interspersed with
assassination (including that of the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke Sergius
Alexandrovich, in 1905). However, though he was in prison during the First
World War it was merely as an enemy alien, in Germany, and far from being put
against a wall as he richly deserved, he died of kidney disease shortly
thereafter. (Source: "Yevno Azef", Wikipedia)
Craven,
Elizabeth Craven, Baroness, 1750-1828
A
journey through the Crimea to Constantinople. : In a series of letters from the Right Honourable Elizabeth
Lady Craven, to His Serene Highnesse the Margrave of Brandebourg, Anspach, and Bareith. Written in
the year MDCCLXXXVI. Dublin :
printed for H. Chamberlaine, R. Moncrieffe, W. Colles, G. Burnet, W. Wilson, L.
White, P. Byrne, P. Wogan, H. Colbert, J. Moore, J. Jones, and B. Dornin, 1789.
Elizabeth,
Lady Craven, was later the Margravine of Ansbach, so the letters are that much
more interesting on account of it!
 |
| Portrait of Lady Craven by George Romney |
Elizabeth
Craven, a daughter of the Earl of Berkeley, was born to the purple, but her
life was certainly not the conventional one of a proper English lady of the
18th century. She was a talented woman who wrote, in addition to her letters
and travel works, a number of musical works and light works for the stage. In
her day she was not best known for her talents, however. "Her life was
full of scandal". She was married for thirteen years to William Craven,
6th Baron Craven. They had six children, but after "affairs reported on
both sides," separated in 1780. In those days divorce was extremely
difficult in Britain, one had to get an Act of Parliament passed, which
apparently was a very expensive business. The Cravens did not divorce: instead
Elizabeth went abroad, where "she maintained a romantic relationship with
Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach and Bayreuth" - yes, the
addressee of her letters. In 1791 both his wife and Lady Craven's husband died,
and Elizabeth was able to marry the Margrave. They then settled in England,
where she was generally known as the Margravine, in spite of the fact that
Germanic law in fact forbade her the title - which also meant she could not be
received at Court by her husband's cousin, King George III. Many proper persons
shunned her, but this did not stop her and the Margrave living "a full and
opulent life". They had a house in Hammersmith, London, and a country
place, Benham Park, at Speen in Berkshire. He died in 1806, and Elizabeth
returned to the Continent, to live in Naples at the lovely Craven Villa in Posillipo.
She died there in 1828 and was buried in the English Cemetery. (Source:
"Elizabeth Craven", Wikipedia)
Marsden,
Kate, 1859-1931
On
sledge and horseback to outcast Siberian lepers / by Kate Marsden ; Illustrated
from photographs and drawings. London : Record Press, [1892?]
"While
serving as a nurse in Bulgaria, Kate Marsden saw firsthand the horrors of
leprosy--and determined to journey to the leper colonies of Yakutsk, 2,000
miles across the Siberian wastes. Armed with the patronage of both Queen
Victoria and the Russian Czarina, she strode forth. With passion and wit, this
extraordinary Victorian lady recounts the amazing story of her search for the
lepers and for an elusive remedial herb." (Publisher's description,
"On sledge and horseback to outcast Siberian lepers / Kate Marsden ; with
an introduction by Eric Newby", London, Phoenix, 2001)
Siberia is
well represented in the collection. British relations with Russia were hardly
at their peak during the 19th century but nevertheless we have a range of British
publications that were written by travellers to Siberia throughout the century;
these are just a couple:
A trip taken
in the 1820s:
Cochrane, John Dundas, 1780-1825.
Narrative
of a pedestrian journey through Russia and
Siberian Tartary, from the frontiers of China to the frozen sea and
Kamtchatka; performed during the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 1823 by Capt. John
Dundas Cochrane. London : John Murray, 1824.
Another trip,
thirty years later:
Atkinson, Thomas Witlam, 1799-1861.
Oriental and western Siberia : a narrative of seven years'
explorations and adventures in Siberia, Mongolia, the Kirghis Steppes, Chinese
Tartary, and part of central Asia Oriental and western Siberia and Chinese
Tartary. London : Hurst and Blackett, 1858.
And to
return to the subject of Irkutsk, which the Trans-Siberian Railway reached in
1898, in the pamphlet collection we have:
The Great Siberian Railway / edited by the Chancery
of the Committee of Members. St. Petersburg : Govt. Printing Office 1901.
Above, a train on the Trans-Siberian
Railway, between Perm and
Ekaterinburg, circa 1910. (A very early coloured photograph; the original is in the Library of Congress.) Below, map of section of the railway showing position of
Irkutsk, far right:
--
This post was researched and created by Kathy Boyes
