A Gentleman in Moscow

Moscow, 1922.

I have just read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, recommended by my elder daughter. It has proved to be an absorbing, elegantly-written and sophisticated narrative which I have loved. It is a beautifully-observed novel, written with an eighteenth century delicacy of phrase and nuance despite being set in Bolshevik Moscow in 1922.

It tells the story of a Russian aristocrat, deemed to be a totally unrepentant representative of his class by a Bolshevik tribunal and therefore sentenced to house arrest and demoted to the status of Former Person. He has lived for years in the best suite in the Hotel Metropol in Theatre Square, containing 'a grand salon with eight foot windows overlooking the lindens of Theatre Square' but he is summarily moved to the mountaineering heights of the dusty, unloved attics and given a tiny former storeroom
without space, views or beauty, reminiscent of a monastic cell, for his house arrest. Allowed to take only a few items to the Great Upstairs, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov chooses to take all his books and a few iconic possessions, and somehow sails on for the next thirty years, indomitable, erudite, witty, admired, working as Head Waiter, extending his experiences to family and to a web of emotionally-important friendships and memories. Throughout, the Count remains calmly accepting of his fate; apparently wholly compliant with the will of his Soviet masters while quietly, subversively, pursuing his own agenda and enjoying, in many ways, a most enviable way of life.

The Count's world: the Hotel Metropol in

Theatre Square, Moscow.

Of course I recommend this superb book but I am including it in my blog simply to give me the excuse to quote Montaigne, or put more precisely, to enable me to lift a quote in the Amor Towles book from Montaigne. In a list of two important pieces of parental advice, the Count quotes Montaigne's maxim:

“that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness”.

And his story demonstrates the exemplary power of such positive good humour in the face of a total loss of liberty and possessions, and reminds us of its virtues.

This Montaigne quote appealed to me because, almost entirely and certainly effortlessly, I enjoy the benefits of a sunny disposition. I would be flattered to hear that described as wisdom; it is a wisdom, if so, of a totally accidental kind acquired by the unwitting random harvest of birth rather than the more sober and disciplined acquisition of knowledge and the gradual development of enlightenment. Constant cheerfulness seems to be more down to chance; good luck; beneficent fortune and perhaps the determination not to let the bastards grind one down. And none the worse for that!

Currently, the physical demands of travelling twice a week to and from the Nederlands classes plus the unseemly length of each lesson resulting in a real weariness which impacts on my week, reducing the daily pleasures in many small ways, have challenged my normal bonhomie! It is still there, chiefly buoyant though, to mix the metaphors, maintained through gritted teeth! My constant cheerfulness seems therefore sensitive to undue external weight and therefore lacking in Montaigne’s sureness and wisdom. And I am trying to remember which of my friends once remarked that constant cheerfulness was a drag for others; something to be borne rather than admired.

Well-heeled ladies playing

Mah Jong, probably around the time that 

Count Rostov became a Former Person.

But there ARE many reasons to be cheerful.

Part One: See right. A reminder of the joys of weekly Mah Jong sessions with other mature females of similar ability [low] and spirits [high]