Pushkin. T. Binyon J.

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literary salons, the theatre, balls, gambling, liaisons, romances and flirtations.

      Rising late, Eugene dons his ‘wide Bolivar’ to saunter up and down ‘the boulevard’ – the shaded walk, lined by two rows of lime trees, which ran down the middle of the Nevsky from the Fontanka canal to the Moika. Warned by his watch that it is around four in the afternoon, he hurries to Talon’s French restaurant on the Nevsky, where Petr Kaverin, the hard-drinking hussar officer who considers cold champagne the best cure for the clap, is waiting. On 27 May 1819 Kaverin noted in his diary: ‘Shcherbinin, Olsufev, Pushkin – supped with me in Petersburg – champagne had been put on ice the day before – by chance my beauty at that time (for the satisfaction of carnal desires) passed by – we called her in – the heat was insupportable – we asked Pushkin to prolong the memory of the evening in verse – here is the result:

      A joyful evening in our life

      Let us remember, youthful friends;

      In the glass goblet champagne’s

      Cold stream hissed.

      We drank – and Venus with us

      Sat sweating at the table.

      When shall we four sit again

      With whores, wine and pipes?’²

      Pushkin had not lost his taste for military company, though now he was as apt to mingle with generals as with subalterns, much to Pushchin’s disapproval. ‘Though liberal in his views, Pushkin had a kind of pathetic habit of betraying his noble character and often angered me and all of us by, for example, loving to consort in the orchestra-pit with Orlov, Chernyshev, Kiselev and others: with patronizing smiles they listened to his jokes and witticisms. If you made him a sign from the stalls, he would run over immediately. You would say to him: “Why do you want, dear chap, to spend your time with that lot; not one of them is sympathetic to you, and so on.” He would listen patiently, begin to tickle you, embrace you, which he usually did when he was slightly flustered. A moment later you would see Pushkin again with the lions of that time!’³ However, something was to be gained from their company. When in 1819 he resurrected the idea of joining the hussars – ‘I’m sorry for poor Pushkin!’ Batyushkov wrote from Naples. ‘He won’t be a good officer, and there will be one good poet less. A terrible loss for poetry! Perchè? Tell me, for God’s sake.’⁴ – General Kiselev promised him a commission. However, Major-General Aleksey Orlov – brother of Mikhail, he had ‘the face of Eros, the figure of the Apollo Belvedere and Herculean muscles’⁵ – dissuaded him from the idea, a service for which Pushkin, on second thoughts, was grateful: ‘Orlov, you are right: I forgo/My hussar dreams/And with Solomon exclaim:/Uniform and sabre – all is vanity!’⁶ Orlov was either extraordinarily magnanimous, or had no knowledge of the epigram Pushkin had devoted to him and his mistress, the ballet-dancer Istomina, in 1817:

      Orlov in bed with Istomina

      Lay in squalid nudity.

      In the heated affair the inconstant general

      Had not distinguished himself.

      Not intending to insult her dear one,

      Laïs took a microscope

      And says: ‘Let me see,

      My sweet, what you fucked me with.’⁷

      Among other new acquaintances a colleague at the Foreign Ministry, Nikolay Krivtsov, was a congenial companion. An officer in the Life Guards Jägers, Krivtsov had lost a leg at the battle of Kulm in 1813, but in England had acquired a cork replacement, so well fashioned as to allow him to dance. Pushkin saw much of him before he was posted to London in March 1818. Bidding him farewell, he gave him a copy of Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orléans – one of his own favourite works – inscribed ‘To a friend from a friend’,⁸ accompanied by a poem:

      When wilt thou press again the hand

      Which bestows on thee

      For the dull journey and on parting

The Holy Bible of the Charites?^{* 9}

      The two shared anti-religious, humanist views: ‘Krivtsov continues to corrupt Pushkin even from London,’ Turgenev told Vyazemsky, who had been posted to Warsaw, ‘and has sent him atheistic verses from pious England.’¹⁰

      At this time he got to know two of Lev’s friends: Pavel Nashchokin and Sergey Sobolevsky, the illegitimate son of a well-to-do landowner. Nashchokin was extremely rich, and was an inveterate gambler. His addiction later reduced him to poverty. Though he lived with his mother, he also kept a bachelor apartment in a house on the Fontanka, where his friends, either alone or with a companion, could spend the night. Sobolevsky, tall, and inclined to portliness due to a fondness for good food and drink, was a cynical and witty companion with a flair for turning epigrams. They were to be Pushkin’s closest non-literary friends; perhaps, indeed, his most intimate and trusted friends during the last decade of his life.

      Of his fellows at the Lycée Delvig had taken lodgings in Troitsky Lane, which he shared with Yakovlev and the latter’s brother Pavel. Pushkin called here almost daily; together they frequented common eating-houses, or, like the London Mohocks, assaulted the capital’s policemen. Küchelbecker, like Pushkin, had joined the Foreign Ministry, eking out the meagre stipend by teaching at the school for sons of the nobility where Lev and Sobolevsky were pupils. He religiously attended Zhukovsky’s Saturday literary soirées in the latter’s apartment on Ekateringofsky Prospect – Pushkin and Delvig were less regular – and often called at other times to read Zhukovsky his verse. Zhukovsky proffered an original excuse for not attending one social function: ‘My stomach had been upset since the previous evening; in addition Küchelbecker came, so I remained at home,’ he explained.¹¹ Vastly amused by this combination of accidents, Pushkin composed a short verse:

      I over-ate at supper,

      And Yakov mistakenly locked the door, –

      So, my friends, I felt

      Both küchelbeckerish and sick!¹²

      Insulted, Küchelbecker issued a challenge. They met in the Volkovo cemetery, to the south-east of the city. Delvig, as Küchelbecker’s second, stood to the left of his principal. Küchelbecker was to have the first shot. When he began to aim, Pushkin shouted: ‘Delvig! Stand where I am, it’s safer here.’ Incensed, Küchelbecker made a half-turn, his pistol went off and blew a hole in Delvig’s hat. Pushkin refused to fire, and the quarrel was made up.¹³

      He seemed determined to acquire a reputation for belligerence equal to that of his acquaintance Rufin Dorokhov – the model for Dolokhov in War and Peace – an ensign in a carabinier regiment noted for his uncontrolled temper and violent behaviour. At a performance of the opera The Swiss Family at the Bolshoy Theatre on 20 December 1818 he began to hiss one of the actresses. His neighbour, who admired her performance, objected; words were spoken, with Pushkin using ‘indecent language’. Ivan Gorgoli, the head of the St Petersburg police, who was present,

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