T. Binyon - Pushkin

Half an English lord, half a merchant

Half a sage, half an ignoramus,

Half a scoundrel, but there is the hope,

That he’ll be a whole one in the end 75

– a verse hardly calculated to endear him to Vorontsov; more likely, indeed, to strengthen the latter’s opinion formed earlier that year that, from the point of view of his own career, he had acted unwisely in taking over responsibility for Pushkin from Inzov. ‘Should there be foul weather, Vorontsov will not stand up for you and will not defend you, if it is true that he himself is suspected of suspiciousness,’ Vyazemsky warned. ‘In addition I openly confess: I put no firm trust in Vorontsov’s chivalry. He is a pleasant, well-meaning man, but will not take a quixotic line against the government in respect of a person or an idea , no matter who or what these are, if the government forces him to declare either for them or for it.’ 76

Vorontsov was indeed beginning to feel that he was ‘suspected of suspiciousness’ and had fallen into disfavour in St Petersburg. The tsar had ignored him during a visit to Tulchin to inspect the Second Army in October 1823, and had passed him over in the annual round of promotions at the end of that year; furthermore, he had recently been reprimanded for recommending as governor of Ekaterinoslav a general who had been involved in ‘intrigues and disturbances’ in the army. 77 Was he not, he thought, perhaps suspicious because of his association with Pushkin, whose name was anathema in conservative circles? Here the poet was automatically assumed to be the author of any new seditious verses: in January 1824, for example, Major-General Skobelev, provost-marshal of the First Army, in a report to the army’s commander, attributed to Pushkin a poem entitled ‘Thoughts on Freedom’ – of whose composition the poet was wholly innocent – and wrote, ‘would it not be better to forbid this Pushkin, who has employed his reasonable talents for obvious evil, to publish his perverted verse? […] It would be better if the author of these harmful libels were to be, as a reward, immediately deprived of a few strips of skin. Why should there be leniency towards a man on whom the general voice of well-thinking citizens has pronounced a strict sentence?’ 78 Vorontsov therefore took pains to distance himself from the poet, at the same time keeping him under close surveillance. ‘As for Pushkin, I have exchanged only four words with him in the last fortnight,’ he wrote to Kiselev in March; ‘he is afraid of me because he is well aware that at the first rumour I hear of him I will dismiss him and that then no one will wish to take him on, and I am sure that he is now behaving much better and is more reserved in his conversations than he was with the good General Inzov […] From everything that I learn of him through Gurev [the mayor of Odessa], through Kaznacheev [the head of his chancellery] and through the police, he is being very sensible and restrained at the moment, if he were the contrary I would dismiss him, and personally would be enchanted to do so for I do not love his manners and am no enthusiast of his talent – one cannot be a real poet without study and he has undertaken none.’ 79 A few days later Kaznacheev wrote to the Kishinev police chief: ‘Our young poet Pushkin with the permission of Count Mikhail Semenovich [Vorontsov] has been given several days leave in Kishinev. He is a fine noble young fellow; but often harms himself by saying too much, loves consorting with Ultra-liberals and is sometimes incautious. The count writes to me from the Crimea to instruct you to keep a surreptitious eye on this ardent youth: note where he makes dangerous remarks, with whom he consorts, and how he occupies himself or spends his time. If you find out anything, give him a tactful hint to be careful and write to me about it in detail.’ 80

Just before his departure for Kishinev Pushkin had received the first instalment of the proceeds from the sale of The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. Experiencing an unaccustomed, exhilarating feeling of independence, and cock-a-hoop with his success, he became even more outrageous in his behaviour. Unfortunately for Vorontsov, Pushkin had been attached to his bureau by imperial fiat, and the governor-general could not, therefore, sack him or transfer him – as he could his other civil servants – without the express permission of the emperor. He now resolved to take this step: at the end of March he told Kiselev that he had decided to ask the Foreign Minister, Nesselrode, to transfer Pushkin elsewhere. ‘Here there are too many people and especially ones who flatter his conceit,’ he wrote. 81 He made the same point to Nesselrode: ‘There are many flatterers who praise his work; this arouses in him a harmful delusion and turns his head with the belief that he is a remarkable writer, whereas he is only the weak imitator of a writer on whose behalf very little can be said (Lord Byron) […] If Pushkin were to live in another province he would find more encouragement to work and would avoid the dangerous company here.’ He had only Pushkin’s best interests in mind in making this request for his transfer, which he begged Nesselrode to bring to the emperor’s attention. 82 A month later, having had no reply, he concluded a letter to Nesselrode about the Greek refugees in Moldavia with the words: ‘By the by I repeat my prayer – deliver me from Pushkin; he may be an excellent fellow and a good poet, but I don’t want to have him any longer, either in Odessa or Kishinev.’ 83 On 16 May he finally received a reply, but one which was unsatisfactorily inconclusive: ‘I have put your letter on Pushkin before the emperor,’ Nesselrode wrote. ‘He is completely satisfied with your judgement of this young man, and orders me to inform you of this officially. He has reserved his instructions on what should be finally undertaken with regard to him until a later date.’ 84 Vorontsov’s patience was running out. He had intended to leave Odessa for the Crimea in the middle of May, to spend the summer there with his family and a large number of guests. However, his daughter fell ill, and the departure had to be postponed. Constrained to remain in Odessa, and waiting vainly for the emperor’s permission to transfer Pushkin, he found that circumstances had provided an opportunity to rid himself for some time at least of the poet’s presence.

‘The neighbourhood of Odessa is very bleak and much infested by locusts, which come in immense bodies and in an hour after they have alighted, every vestige of verdure is effaced,’ an English visitor wrote. 85 In fact, the whole of New Russia, including the Crimea, was subject to these plagues. At the end of 1823 the Ministry of Internal Affairs had allocated 100,000 roubles to Vorontsov for a campaign against the infestations expected the following year. From the beginning of May 1824 reports that the insects had begun to hatch flooded in to Odessa. In July the swarms took wing, with catastrophic results, especially in Kherson province and in the Crimea. ‘Locusts have spread in terrible quantities,’ ran an official report. ‘The river Salgir was arrested in its flow by a swarm of these harmful insects, which had fallen into it, and 150 men worked for several days and nights to clear the stream. […] Some houses near Simferopol were so filled with the insects that the inhabitants had to abandon them.’ 86

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