Sometimes you come across a book that would have been really useful when working on a project years ago!
My talk ‘Russian Roads’ was developed in the early 2000’s. It is a rather eclectic mix that examines travelling in Russia through the ages. It also illustrates the work of the Peredvizhniki, the group of Russian artists who in the 19th Century broke away from the constraints of the conservative Imperial Academy of Arts. They not only often painted landscapes but also took their pictures on travelling exhibitions around the country. The talk concludes with a discussion of the idea of travelling forward (вперед!) embraced by communist propagandists in the 20th Century.
Mrs Adams in Winter, a Journey in the last days of Napoleon by Michael O’Brien tells the story of a journey undertaken by Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams who subsequently became the sixth President of the United States. In the early months of 1815, Mrs Adams, with her seven year old son, travelled from Saint Petersburg to Paris to be reunited with her husband. Quincy Adams had been the American plenipotentiary to the Court of Alexander 1st for several years. He left his wife behind in Russia for almost a year when he was obliged to travel to Ghent to join the commission negotiating the treaty that concluded the 1812 war between the United States and Britain. Catherine kept a diary of the journey, which forms the basis of the book.
While details of the journey itself are fascinating, containing many facts about travel at the time, of some of which I was unaware, the book is supplemented by all sorts of information about history and personalities that are equally interesting.
In my book, Fortune’s Price, which is set a little later in 1830, one of my characters undertakes a journey from St Petersburg to Warsaw, which covers some of the same route. I was pleased to read that the same hair-raising river bridges, snow, mud, bears and wolves were encountered by Mrs Quincy Adams as she traversed the forests of Estland and Livonia!