In 1858, Alexandre Dumas was invited to accompany the family of an
immensely wealthy Russian noble, Count Kouchelef-Bezborodko, on a trip to
Russia. Making up his mind on the spot, Dumas departed within the week on
a trip lasting, in all nine months, from which came two books of travels
En Russie and
Le Caucase, and at least two works of fiction:
Sultanetta and
La Boule de Neige,
the latter set in Baku and written
while Dumas was there. En Russie was an immense book of four volumes, totaling some 300 pages of
text, and reportedly has never been completely translated into English.
Dumas filled the book not only with an account of his travels, but with
sketches of Russian history and literature, translations of Russian
poetry, and mini-biographies of some of the people he met. The most
common English translation available, the 1960 "Chilton" edition,
translated by Alma Murch, is heavily abridged and contains mostly the
travelogue segments. There is also a free-standing 1905 translation of
some of the historical sketches published under the title "Celebrated
Crimes of the Russian Court."
Dumas traveled with the Kouchelefs and his acquaintance, Daniel
Douglas-Home, the celebrated psychic and spirtualist, who was to marry a
Kouchelef daughter in St. Petersburg. They traveled by train to Stettin,
and by boat to St. Petersburg. Dumas records, with barely disguised glee,
that Douglas-Home's psychic powers vanished under the onslaught of severe
seasickness. From St. Petersburg, Dumas took an excursion into Finland,
and thence by train to Moscow, by coach to the Volga, and by boat to
Nizhni-Novgorod, Kazan and ultimately Astrakhan, on the shores of the
Caspian Sea, where En Russie ends and Le Caucase begins.
Dumas' most trenchant observations (to a modern reader) were of the
corruption and injustice of the Czarist regime, the brutality of the nobles,
and the alienation of the population from their rulers.
