When we were both about seventeen I went on a short trip with my cousin, who is almost exactly my age. She drove us to visit our grandmother in Bournemouth and then to stay with her uncle and aunt near Salisbury.
In the fullness of time her uncle predeceased his wife. She continued to live in the same old, probably 18th century, red brick house with its large gardens that she tended with devotion and pleasure. A story of widowhood only unusual in that she became a recluse. She never left her own grounds. The hair dresser, doctor and vicar called when required. Her children, grandchildren and friends visited her. The only exception was when she took a taxi to visit the dentist in Salisbury.
My same cousin gave me A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and, if you have read it, you will see where we are going. The titular gentleman is Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt, born in St Petersburg in 1889. Summoned before the Emergency Committee of The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in 1922 he is sentenced to return to the Hotel Metropol in Moscow, where he had been living (like my great uncle in the Hyde Park Hotel in London) and never leave the hotel upon pain of death.
It’s an intriguing MacGuffin. The novel depicts Russian history from the turn of the century until 1954 through the eyes of the Count. A grand hotel like the Metropol can supply most of the Count’s requirements. There are two good restaurants, a florist, a seamstress, a barber, a well-stocked cellar, an actress to solve the sex issue; and he has ample funds. The matter of his dentistry is not mentioned.
It reminds me of Troubles by JG Farrell in which the Majestic Hotel symbolises Ireland in the Troubles. It also is a fairy tale for grown-ups. I am utterly beguiled by this imaginative novel; for once “charming” is the mot juste. Sometimes an Americanism grates but the overall effect is too engaging for me to care. The story is as light and sweet as the mille-feuille that the Count relished at Filippov’s on his way to luncheon at the Jockey Club before the Revolution; before his confinement to the Metropol; before Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev.
An absolute plum pudding of a post – thank you. Whats more the author concluded with some proper music; how refreshing.
It has always perplexed me as to why someone, who so utterly rejects so much of popular culture, should expose his cultivated followers to a barrage of noise in the form of a ‘light’ musical tailpiece. I should have thought that readers here would, like me, have a serious aversion to mass entertainment. The refined pleasure the author provides aught to be augmented with music which is rather more decorous, ad modum hodie.
It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to read my posts and classical pieces are really a bit long to append. Also, another reader has told me that the 60s pop is better than the posts.