The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

  7. “White Eagle”: The Order of the White Eagle, founded in 1705, was the highest Polish decoration for military or civil service. In 1798, following the partition of Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, it was taken over by the Russian royal family. Abandoned after the Russian revolution, it was revived in Poland in 1921 and is still awarded. For the order of St. Vladimir, see note 25 to “Singlemind.”

  8. Taglioni … Bosio … Krestovsky Island: Maria Taglioni (1804–84), an Italian-Swedish ballet dancer, first came to Russia in 1827 on a three-year contract with the imperial ballet theater in Petersburg and last danced there in 1842. Angelina Bosio (1830–59) was an Italian soprano and prima donna who enjoyed great success in Europe, America, and Russia, where she first sang in 1853 and where she died of a cold while traveling from Moscow to Petersburg. Krestovsky Island, in the Neva delta in Petersburg, was home to various amusements in the nineteenth century, including open-air restaurants with Gypsy singers.

  9. Polycrates: Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in the sixth century BC, was extremely lucky in all his endeavors, which made people predict a bad end for him. The prediction came true when he was murdered by his ally, Oroetes, satrap of Sardis.

10. “Saul and the Witch of Endor”: See I Samuel 28:3–35. Saul, the first king of Israel, goes secretly to ask the witch of Endor to consult the shade of the late prophet Samuel. She does so, and Samuel predicts his fall and the kingship of David.

11. What philosophy never dreamt of: See note 2 above.

12. laid out on a table: It was customary in Russia to lay a dead person out on a table until the body could be put in a coffin.

Lefty

(1881)

  1. Alexander Pavlovich … the Congress of Vienna: Alexander Pavlovich is the emperor Alexander I. The Congress of Vienna was a conference of representatives of Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and France, held in Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815, to decide the future organization of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars and the breakup of the Holy Roman Empire.

  2. the Don Cossack Platov: Count Matvei Ivanovich Platov (1757–1818) was a distinguished Russian general and ataman (commander) of the Don Cossacks under Field Marshal Suvorov (see note 36 to “The Enchanted Wanderer”) and later during the Napoleonic Wars. At the conclusion of the peace, he indeed accompanied the emperor to England. However, Leskov’s narrator grants him a mythical longevity well into the reign of Nicholas I.

  3. two and ten nations: Napoleon’s army was referred to in Russia as “the army of twelve nations.”

  4. a Mortimer musket: Harvey Walklate Mortimer (1753–1819) and his brothers and descendants were well-known English gunsmiths for several generations.

  5. Tsarskoe Selo: The imperial country estate, fifteen miles south of Petersburg. The name means “Tsar’s Village.”

  6. molvo sugar … Bobrinsky factory: Y. N. Molvo ran a sugar refinery in Petersburg during the early nineteenth century. Count Alexei Alexeevich Bobrinsky (1800–68) was also one of the first sugar refiners in Russia. William B. Edgerton, in Satirical Stories of Nikolai Leskov (New York, 1969) suggests that “Molvo” was a Russified form of the French name Mollevaut and comments, “If this supposition is true, then the irony of Platov’s Russian defense of ‘Mollevaut’ sugar becomes all the sweeter.”

  7. Zhukov tobacco …: Vasily Zhukov produced pipe tobacco in his Petersburg factory from the 1820s to the 1850s.

  8. The emperor Nikolai Pavlovich … at his ascension: Nikolai Pavlovich is the emperor Nicholas I (1796–1855). The “disturbances at his ascension” were the events of the Decembrist uprising of December 14, 1825, when young officers in Petersburg mutinied during the confusion following the death of Alexander I and demanded democratic reforms in Russia.

  9. holy Athos: The mountain and peninsula of Athos is home to twenty Orthodox monasteries, among them the Russian Orthodox monastery of St. Panteleimon.

10. “Evening Bells”: “Evening Bells” is a song by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779–1852), published in 1818, with the subtitle “The Bells of St. Petersburg.” Moore claimed it was based on a Russian original, but the source is unknown. In 1828, the Russian poet Ivan Kozlov (1779–1840) translated Moore’s poem into Russian. His version became immensely popular and is still widely sung. The musical setting by Alexander Alyabyev (1787–1851) is indeed “painted out.”