1. This statement of Chateaubriand's is quoted as follows by Prince Peter Viazemsky in his “Staraia zapisnaia knizhka“ : “M-r le comte Tourgueneff, ci-devant ministre de l'instruction publique en Russie, homme de toute sorte de savior.” Viazemsky adds that Turgenev's former friend, Count Bludov, noted that Chateaubriand had managed to commit “three mistakes and three absurdities” in his brief statement : “Turgenev was not a count, had never been minister of education, and was not omniscient.” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 12 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1878-96), 8 : 274 (hereafter cited as PSS).

2. PSS, 8 : 282. In an entry in his “Notebook” for 1838, when he was living in Brighton, Viazemsky wrote that Turgenev had given up the idea of going to Ireland for fear of seasickness and did not go to Scotland because there was no one he could write to from there : his brother Nikolai had lived in Scotland and knew all about it, while he, Viazemsky, was then not in Moscow. Two days later Viazemsky noted that Turgenev had gone to London “to pick up letters that no one writes to him,” adding, “C'est un sujet de comddie.” See Zapisnye knizhki (1813-1848) (Moscow, 1963), pp. 244, 247. This partial reissue of the notebooks, in the Literary Monuments series, edited by V. S. Nechaeva, contains only those notebooks that were published during Viazemsky's lifetime. Otherwise this edition is a great improvement on the earlier publications, including the one in PSS, which was full of misprints and errors, was poorly edited, and lacked all commentary. It is to be regretted that the rest of the notebooks have not been similarly published.

3. Sochineniia i pis'ma P. la. Chaadaeva, ed. M. O. Gershenzon, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1913-14), 1 : 170-71.

4. On Turgenev's “dilettantism” see PSS, 8 : 276-80. In speaking of Turgenev's “political dilettantism” and in characterizing his “liberalism,” Viazemsky does not seem to me to do full justice to his friend.

5. Mme, Ancelot, Un Salon de Paris : 1824 d 1864 (Paris, 1866), p. 96–97.Google Scholar

6. Arkhiv brafev Turgenevykh, in 6 parts (St. Petersburg-Petrograd, 1911-21), 6 : 283-84 (see note 11).

7. In one of his published letters from abroad Turgenev mentioned meeting in Paris Wilberforce's friend and collaborator Zachary Macaulay, who told him about Wilberforce's last days. Turgenev added : “Wilberforce had always been my heart's hero and I always rejoiced seeing his portrait in Prince G[olitsyn]'s office. I still had a chance to hear him when he was perorating, bent already by old age but eloquently, in various Bible, missionary, and philanthropic societies in London.” Turgenev, A. I., Khronika russkogo : Dnevniki (1825-1826 gg.), ed. Gillelson, M. I. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1964), p. Leningrad.Google Scholar

8. PSS, 8 : 280-82. In characterizing Alexander Turgenev as “a dilettante” Viazemsky made one exception : there was one area, he said, in which Turgenev was “a virtuoso, “ and that was the area of “good deeds.“

9. Arkhiv brafev Turgenevykh, 6 : 221.

10. Ostaf'evskii arkhiv kniasei Viasemskikh (St. Petersburg, 1899), 4 : 290.

11. Four volumes of Ostaf'evskii arkhiv were published in 1899 under the editorship of V. I. Saitov. Another volume was added later. Arkhiv brat'ev Turgenevykh appeared in six installments between 1911 and 1921. Each installment ran to several hundred pages. Alexander Turgenev's letters to his brother Nikolai were published in 1872 in Leipzig. Unlike the others, this is not a scholarly edition, and there is no commentary. It is surprising that it was never reissued. A great deal of previously unpublished material about Alexander Turgenev is to be found in Shebunin, A. N., Dekabrist N. I. Turgenev : Pis'ma k bratu S. I. Turgenevu (Moscow and Leningrad, 1936).Google Scholar

12. Khronika russkogo (cited in note 7). This fine edition, published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences in its Literary Monuments series, reproduces twenty-one pieces of Turgenev's, his “letters from abroad,” published during his lifetime in various periodicals, to which are added his diaries for the years 1825 and 1826, never previously published in full. The title, The Chronicle of a Russian, was suggested by Pushkin, who had a very high opinion of the literary and journalistic worth of Turgenev's epistolary contributions to his Sovremennik. In the new edition the texts, which were often censored, have been checked with the originals and, where necessary, emended in footnotes. An appendix contains an interesting article by the editor on Alexander Turgenev and his literary legacy (pp. 441-504), as well as a detailed and very informative commentary (pp. 506-72) that makes use of rich, still unpublished material. There is also a concise chronology of Turgenev's “wanderings.” A welcome feature of this volume, not always found in similar scholarly Soviet publications, is an index of names.

13. Turgenev was in close contact with the French Protestant journal Le Semeur and its editor, Henri Lutteroth (1802-?). This journal devoted a great deal of space and attention to Russian religious and ecclesiastical problems (Lutteroth himself was the author of a book about the Jesuits in Russia), and it is likely that much of its information on this subject was supplied by Turgenev. After Turgenev's death Le Semeur published an obituary of him (1846, no. 2, pp. 13-15). At the end of it we read : ”… bien peu d'hommes eminents ont vecu en meme temps que lui dans une region quelconque de l'Europe sans lui appartenir par les liens d'une estime solide, et souvent encore par ceux d'une fidele affection. M. de Tourgueneff laisse dans le cceur de ses proches des regrets dont aucun effort ne sera tente pour ecarter la salutaire amertume. II laisse dans son pays une place vide, grande et bien difficile a remplir… .” This unsigned obituary was probably written by Lutteroth. That Turgenev also counted among his friends the publisher of the ultra- Catholic Le Correspondant, M. Wilks, is a testimony to his broadmindedness.

14. Quoted in Khronika russkogo, pp. 267-77.

15. The two volumes of documents collected by Turgenev were published in 1841-42 under the title Akty istoricheskie, otnosiashchiesia do Rossii, isvlechennye is inostrannykh arkhivov i bibliotek A. I. Turgenevym. This Russian title was followed by one in Latin : Historica Russiae monumenta, etc. A later publication, based on documents gathered by Turgenev, appeared abroad in 1858 under the title La Cour de Russie il y a cent ans : 1725-1783.

16. The suggestion about Turgenev being unofficially in the service of the Russian government even after 1825 was made by George Kennan in his 1968 Oxford lectures (so far unpublished) on Marquis de Custine, the author of the notorious book about Russia under Nicholas I. Mr. Kennan later kindly allowed me to read the manuscript version of the lectures which he had prepared for the press. This is not the place to discuss in detail Turgenev's attitude toward Custine. It was certainly not one of unreserved hostility. In a letter to Viazemsky from Marienbad, dated August 12, 1843, Turgenev asked about his friend's reaction to the book, which he said was being read by all of Europe, and wrote : “Give me your opinion, please, not about the facts qu'il faut mepriser comme tels, but about the principles, about the frankly conveyed impressions” (Ostaf'evskii arkhiv, 3 : 256). Not long before that, Turgenev was summoned from Moscow to St. Petersburg by Count Benckendorff, the head of the Third Department of His Majesty's Own Chancery. He was expected “to present some explanations.” He mentioned this summons in a letter to Viazemsky, but seems never to have given an account of his interview with Benckendorff or some subordinate of his, unless it is still to be found in his unpublished diaries. In his “Notebook” Viazemsky also mentioned a much earlier case of police watch on Turgenev, and even quoted an amusing police Teport on his movements (PSS, 8 : 280).

17. Quoted in Khronika russkogo, pp. 478-79, from an unpublished diary.

18. In his memoir of Turgenev, Viazemsky illustrated the superficiality of his reading with the following story : On the way to Abbotsford, whither he had been invited by Sir Walter Scott, Turgenev suddenly remembered that he had not read a single line of Scott's. In the very next town he hastened to buy the first Scott novel that caught his eye and rapidly perused it in order to be able to refer to it or quote it in conversation with his host. Although Viazemsky said that he had heard this story from Turgenev himself, it is difficult to believe that the latter had not read any Scott before 1828. In any case, a “speedwriter,” Turgenev must also have been an exceptionally fast reader. And what he read he seemed to assimilate well. On Turgenev's visit to Scott see my article, “A Russian Traveller in Scotland in 1828 : Alexander Turgenev,” Blackzvood's Magazine, November 1945, pp. 1-8.

19. Gillelson, in Khronika russkogo, mentions that it was Turgenev who initiated a bibliography of foreign publications in the magazine Moskovskii Telegraf (see p. 462).

20. Viazemsky, who, as I have said, tended to play down Turgenev's liberalism, described his stance in the controversy between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles as more or less “neutral” (PSS, 8 : 280-84). It is, of course, true that Turgenev had many close friends in both camps and was, in a way, “accepted” by both factions, but so was Viazemsky himself in later years. In a letter to Viazemsky from Moscow, dated March 29, 1840, Turgenev wrote : “Willy-nilly, I belong to Russia, to her history, to her inner life, to her gossip [Turgenev used here one of his frequent Gallicisms : kommerazhi, that is, commerages—G.S.], to her vices and calamities, to her glory and valor. I am as Russian as they make them, but….” This last sentence remained unfinished, Turgenev adding, “I cannot go on with the letter” (see Ostaf'evskii arkhiv, 4 : 105). This is how Turgenev himself gave expression to his essential Russianness. This does not, however, invalidate Chaadaev's verdict : “Vous etes essentiellement homme de l'Europe.“