french emigrés in russia after the french revolution. french tutors

Canadian Slavonic Papers

French Emigrés in Russia after The French Revolution. French TutorsAuthor(s): LEONID IGNATIEFFSource: Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 8 (1966), pp. 125-131Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40866000 .

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French Emigres in Russia after The French Revolution.

French Tutors

LEONID IGNATIEFF

By the beginning of the eighteenth century French culture was para- mount in Europe. Even Peter the Great, though more interested in Northern Europe, realized that French culture was too important to be ignored. His second and last European journey, in 1717, was to France.

Peter had made a beginning of a system of schools that would teach the elements of literacy and calculation and prepare technical per- sonnel. But the period of weak rulers that followed him saw the ascendancy of the nobility, and the views of that class on education differed substantially from those of Peter. Most of them required for their children courses of study that would open the way to important government employment and positions of social prestige. Knowledge of French and a training in social accomplishments came first in their eyes. They preferred to have their children taught by French tutors than to send them into the government school systems which had been initiated by Peter I and expanded by Catherine II. The result was a shortage of students, particularly in the new secondary schools insti- tuted by Catherine, that seriously interfered with their expansion.1

The demand for French tutors was high, especially after the enthronement of Elizabeth in 1741. Demand was so high and desired qualifications were so slight that foreign adventurers with a minimum of education found it possible to gravitate towards this profession. It was not unusual for foreigners (not always French) who came to Russia as domestic servants to hire themselves out as French teachers at a greater profit, even though their knowledge of the language was of the slightest. The position was somewhat remedied by an edict of Elizabeth in 1757, requiring that all foreigners desiring to teach

i Johnson, William H. E., Russia's Educational Heritage (Pittsburgh, 1950), 56-57.



126 CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS

children should be examined as to their qualifications.2 As knowledge of the French language improved in Russia and became more wide- spread through increased contacts between French and Russians, the standard of French teaching rose, particularly after the arrival of educated laymen and priests as a result of the French Revolution.

In the period before the Revolution, however, Russian satire con- cerned itself to a very large degree with those foreign adventurers who became French teachers because they could find nothing better to do, and with their pupils. It was not the study of French or other

languages that these Russian writers attacked but a superficial knowl-

edge that left their fellow-countrymen knowing neither French nor Russian, neither Russia nor France.

The émigrés who sought employment as teachers in Russia follow-

ing the Revolution were usually better qualified than the earlier

applicants. Most of them came from the clergy, the nobility, and sometimes from the bourgeois class. As well as being educated, many of the priests had some experience in teaching. Even if they lacked

experience, the nobles and bourgeois were rarely as ignorant as tutors of an earlier day had sometimes been. On the other hand, many of the Russian landowners who engaged them had acquired a good knowledge of the French language by the end of the eighteenth cen-

tury and they could not so easily be deceived by an ignorant candidate. The difference between the French tutor of 1760 and that of the

early nineteenth century is clearly reflected in some works of A. S. Pushkin. Monsieur Beaupré in The Captains Daughter (a tale of the sixties and seventies of the eighteenth century) had been a hairdresser in France who came to Russia in order to be an outchitel without

clearly understanding the meaning of the word. Instead of teaching his

pupil French, German, and other subjects, he preferred to pick up some Russian from him. His spare time was spent with the maids in the kitchen or drinking.3 Monsieur l'Abbé, the tutor of Eugene Onegin (a young man of the early nineteenth century) was both more polished and more competent. He had taught Eugene to speak and write polite French and given him a smattering of other knowledge even though he taught his pupil lightly and without urging him to effort.4 In spite of the difference between the two men, the second is not regarded with much greater respect than the first.

2Pokrovskii, Vladimir I., Ekaterina II: sbornik statei (Moscow, 1910), 147. 3Yarmolinsky, Avrahm (ed.), The Poems, Prose and Plays of A. J. Pushkin

(New York, 1936), pp. 600. mid., "Eugene Onegin," I, iii-vii, 113-15.



FRENCH EMIGRES IN RUSSIA 127

M. Yu. Lermontov, who like Pushkin and many other Russian writers had French tutors, uses the same sarcastic tone in his poem Sashka in describing the Marquis de Tess, an émigré who had become the hero's tutor. The marquis taught with much more determination and seriousness than did Monsieur l'Abbé, for mention is made of the long time that his pupil spent among notebooks, histories, geographies, grammars, and theories on all the philosophies of the world. But the tutor also composed sonnets in honor of the local ladies and had a pocketful of puns which he used in and out of season.5 It is these latter activities that somehow impressed the reader more than his teaching.

In spite of the prevalence of French culture in Russia, writers such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Griboyedov, Gogol, and later Turgenev and Tolstoi have all presented French governesses and tutors with the same sarcasm and absence of respect "as an alien and unreal influence in Russian life."6

It would help us to explain this phenomenon if we looked from fiction into fact and examined the type of education that young Russians actually received from these émigrés. Pushkin's father had a complete mastery of French and considered that a knowledge of modern languages was the essential basis of education. Since he possessed a large library, principally of French books, the boy began to read French at an early age. After being subjected to the tutelage of German, French, and English governnesses, young Pushkin passed into the hands of the Comte de Montfort who was chosen for the position because he was not only well educated but also a musician and an artist. He was later replaced by another Frenchman who dis- tinguished himself even in the Pushkin family, several of whom were poets, by his poetical ability.7 At the age of twelve young Pushkin entered the new lycée at Tsarskoye Selo where the standard of teaching was, generally speaking, of high quality. The French instructor, de Boudry, was nevertheless considered one of the better teachers. He was also brother to Marat.

Lermontov's French tutors were chosen with less care although, like Pushkin, he had already learned much French before their arrival. The first one, named Capet, had been a guards officer in the Napoleonic army and had remained in Russia as a prisoner. Lermontov apparently treated him with consideration and respect on account of his military

^Lermontov, M. Yu., Sobraniie sochinenii, 4 vols. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1959), II, 380-84.

«Manning, Clarence, ine frenen lutor in nussian literature, nomante Review, XXVII (June, 1936), 28-32.

^Grossman, Leonid, Pushkin, 6th ed. (Moscow, lyöö;, 41-4Z.




past and his stories about Napoleonic battles, but there is no evidence that he had any great influence on the boy as a teacher. After Capet's death he was replaced by an émigré named Gendroz who had a large supply of puns and stories and who entertained his pupil with tales about the Revolution to which he was bitterly opposed. He apparently treated his tutorial duties seriously and passed on to Lermontov his own love for André Chénier.8 He seems to have borne a certain resem- blance to Lermontov's fictional Marquis de Tess.

It is hardly surprising that émigrés who had experienced a revolution and sometimes the wars that followed should have sought to capture the interest of their pupils by stories about their experiences. If they were conscientious teachers, and often they were, this did not detract from their teaching. Occasionally the boys found it hard to elicit these stories. Herzen's tutor, Bouchot, who had been in Paris during the Revolution, was a man who never indulged in superfluous conversation but kept his pupil at work. But one day, after Herzen had read a book written by a royalist who was so partial that the boy could not believe his account even at fourteen, he asked Bouchot why Louis XVI had been executed. The tutor's immediate answer was that the King had been a traitor to his country. He then told the boy that he had previously considered him empty-headed because he did not prepare his lessons properly. After this he became more friendly and used to tell stories about the days of 1793. According to his words he had left France only when the "dissolute and dishonest" had gained the upper hand.9

The memoirist Vigel spent some months at a French boarding school with which he was dissatisfied. His parents were then invited by a Princess Golitsyn to have their son educated with her children. Their tutor was the Chevalier Rollin de Belleville, a lieutenant-colonel in the French army before the Revolution. He was pleasant to everybody, even to the servants, and at first captivated Vigel by his friendly manner and witty conversation. The wit soon turned to downright indecency. His teaching was, according to Vigel, quite superficial, for he acquainted his charges with the names of Racine, Molière, and Boileau rather than with the contents of these authors. But even Vigel, whose opinions are very often biased, admits the qualities of the Chevalier de Kerlerault, a former officer of engineers, who suc-

STroyat, H., L'Etrange destin de Lermontov (Paris, 1952), 17-21. 9Herzen, Alexander, My Past and Thoughts, ó vols., trans. Constance Lrarnett

(New York, 1924), I, 66-68.




cessfully taught the young Golitsyns mathematics and who overcame Vigel's antipathy to the subject "with goodnatured insistence."10

Another French tutor mentioned by Vigel was a certain Magier who taught the famous Decembrist, Nikita Muraviev, and his brother Alexander. Vigel met him at Penza where he had been sent by the authorities during the Napoleonic advance in 1812 since he was not considered trustworthy. The Russian was horrified by Magier's "insolence, immorality and lack of religious faith" and considered that his ideas were those of a Jacobin. He attributed the liberal views which were later revealed by Nikita Muraviev to the lessons learned from his tutor.

In spite of these ideas Magier assured Vigel that he had always remained faithful to the King in secret and that he had written a letter to the Duc d'Angoulême (son of the Comte d'Artois) offering his services.11 There is an inconsistency here that was also true of other émigrés. The Comte de Fantin, tutor to Count D. N. Bludov (1785- 1864), combined veneration for the ideas of the French Enlighten- ment with detestation of the French Revolution. Their experiences in Russia probably had much to do with returning them to the liberalism of their youth which they had abjured during the Terror. In the words of Langeron: "Democracy with all its disadvantages could have appeared attractive to anyone after leaving Zubov/'12

The poet, Prince P. A. Vyazemski (1792-1878), was another writer who had an émigré tutor. From the autobiographical introduction to his collected works we learn that he had many French, German, and English tutors but that none of them had been able to train him to study. He asserts that one had to take one's chance with a foreigner since Russian tutors did not then exist. One tutor, however, is mentioned as possessing some good qualities. That was a Frenchman called d'Andilly who was good-natured, amusing, and liked by everybody. He was not, however, a satisfactory teacher, so Vyazemski was sent to the school run by French Jesuits in St. Petersburgh which he found to be very good. With d'Andilly, who afterwards opened a bookstore, he always remained on friendly terms.13 In spite of Vyazemskfs dissatisfaction with the French instruction that he had

loVigel, F. F., Zapiski, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1928), I, 81-83. lUbid., II, 15-10, Î3y-41. i2Haumant, Emile, La culture française en Russie, 17UU-WUU (rans, lyu;,

P. 196- . . ... . i3Vyazemskii, P. A., Polnoye sobranite sochtnenii, 2 vols. ( bt. Petersburg, 1Ö7Ö-

79), I, pp. xiv-xvi.




received at home, he was able to write a poem in French, at the age of thirteen, on the death of Admiral Nelson.14

From an analysis of these French tutors of whom we have some record we see that the facts often do not seem to justify the consis- tently disrespectful attitude to them that is found in Russian literature. This impression is heightened when we examine some of the schools that were opened by émigrés. The truth, of course, is that these teachers varied in their abilities and attention to their duties just as they did in social origin and political views. However, even the worst of the teachers and tutors found in Russia at the end of the

eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries were better than the earlier type of French instructor who was well symbolized by Pushkin's Monsieur Beaupré. The better of them must have been in

part, at least, responsible for the considerable knowledge of the French language and literature which writers and other educated Russians then possessed. If that is so, how could these writers have treated them so slightingly?

Several possible reasons suggest themselves. It is by no means unusual for children to feel a certain hostility towards their teachers and even in retrospect as adults, to speak of them with little indul-

gence. In the case of a tutor living in the same house this hostility would probably be increased. At the same time such proximity would

give the child an opportunity to observe and ridicule the tutor's every failing and idiosyncracy. Even a well-trained native teacher might not find the position easy, but a French émigré would experience even

greater hardship. His work would be rendered more difficult by lack of instruction and experience in teaching methods and his Ufe by difference from Russian manners and tastes that could make him the

subject of ridicule on the part of his pupils. In most Russian criticisms of the French we find allusions to then-

lightness of manner which is attributed to superficiality. Russians were used to more gravity and solidity and were often reluctant to admit that wit, grace, and imperturbable good humor could accom-

pany seriousness of thought and purpose. A Monsieur TAbbé was

rightly criticized for teaching lightly because his instruction was superficial. But it is sometimes forgotten that a de Kerlerault, who taught insistently and successfully, was also good humored about it. In other

words, much of the sarcasm and lack of respect with which French tutors are treated in Russian literature can be attributed to a difference

"Ibid., p. xi.




in national characteristics and attitudes which sometimes resulted in lack of understanding. In actual fact, the influence of these tutors was stronger and more positive than the rather slighting references to them in Russian literature would seem to indicate. It would be difficult not to agree that through them the French language penetrated more deeply into Russia and was better spoken, French literature was better understood, a number of writers were educated and new points of view, ideas, and interests supplied.15

ißHaumant, op. cit., 195.



french emigrés in russia after the french revolution. french tutors

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