Let’s go for a virtual walk round St Petersburg.
Jean-François Thomas de Thomon is a French neo-classical architect who designed the Stock Exchange in St Petersburg. Come over to Alexander Park and look at this fine bronze group, The Architects, installed in 2011. Do you recognise Thomas de Thomon?
No you don’t because the sculptor made a monumental cock-up and depicted Thomas Thomson, an English chemist. Very Tintin; Thomson and Thompson. Easy to make mistakes and we are in the wrong park. We should be in The Alexander Garden looking at Nikolai Przhevalsky.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I think there is only one dromedarian sculpture in London, a memorial to those who died in The Imperial Camel Corps, in Victoria Embankment Gardens, and maybe this is the only one in St P? But we must crack on. Przhevalsky played the Great Game and it cost him his life; he died of typhus in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, in 1888. Great Gamers carried a lot of baggage, including rampant racism and prejudice. How about this?
“Here you can penetrate anywhere, only not with the Gospels under your arm, but with money in your pocket, a carbine in one hand and a whip in the other. Europeans must use these to come and bear away in the name of civilisation all these dregs of the human race. A thousand of our soldiers would be enough to subdue all Asia from Lake Baykal to the Himalayas….Here the exploits of Cortez can still be repeated.” (Nikolai Przhevalsky on Asia.)
I went to Karakol and a museum about his life in 2002 but left it out of my diary; not because of disapproval, simply because it wasn’t interesting enough. I went to Gori in Georgia in 2009 and went to a museum celebrating Stalin, born there in 1878. The collection of Stalin memorabilia, displayed with reverence, quickly palled. A walk through his armour-plated train was much more interesting. It has been said that Przhevalsky sired Stalin because of their facial resemblance. There is no other evidence.
It was thought a bit off (Uncle Henty said “orf”) to sing hymns in chapel but an exception was made for Jerusalem at the last Service of the half. You can continue this virtual tour by looking round a deserted Eton College Chapel, noticing the Evie Hone window, listening to the Eton College Community singing, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Jerusalem.
Talking of virtual tours can I direct you to this website. In my attempt to become a baking maestro I have been watching the one on sourdough. Fascinating. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/7-libraries-you-can-visit-from-home
An interesting website. I nominate the Pierpont Morgan and the Barmeath libraries for inclusion.
At the risk of being pedantic, camels sporting two humps are bactrians. Dromedarys have only one.