Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

By this time, Turgenev was a rather well known poet—tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, and a dandy (multicolored vests, lorgnette). However, his domineering mother thought he was too flighty.

His personal life was confused: he was having an affair with a sister of Mikhail Bakunin, later a notorious anarchist (Bakunin had more than brotherly feelings for her as well), but had a child with a serf laundress of his mother. He did not renounce his daughter, Pelagia, which would have been unseemly, given her strong resemblance to him.

Turgenev’s life changed in an instant when Pauline Viardot came to perform in St. Petersburg in the fall of 1843. She came to the capital because Nicholas I wanted a court Italian opera—he sang and played flute and trombone and loved Italian music. On his orders, the best singers were brought to Russia for huge fees. It was a cultural revolution for St. Petersburg, and the public went wild with heated arguments and endless gossip.

Viardot, who came with her husband, immediately conquered St. Petersburg; audiences “groaned with delight.” Turgenev, who had not been a major music lover before, began an adroit campaign on the famous singer. First he arranged to be in a hunting party outside the capital with Louis Viardot, who was as passionate about hunting as Turgenev; then he attended a performance of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia with Viardot singing; and at last he was presented to the star—all in the course of a few days.

Many years later, Pauline Viardot recalled her first meeting with Turgenev with a laugh: “He was introduced as a young Russian landowner, a good hunter, splendid raconteur, and bad poet.”⁸ Turgenev was enchanted by her, but no one could have predicted that their relationship would last for forty years.

Avdotya Panaeva (Nekrasov’s outspoken common-law wife) disapproved: “He shouted about his love for Viardot everywhere, and among friends he talked of nothing but Viardot.” Even the critic Belinsky, who liked the writer, once reprimanded Turgenev: “Really, how can one believe in a love as voluble as yours?”⁹

Gradually, everyone believed in it, and most importantly, so did Pauline and her husband. A strange ménage à trois formed. Many assumed that it was purely platonic on Turgenev’s side, and that Louis Viardot had homoerotic feelings for the writer. The union turned out to be exceptionably stable, and wags hinted that it was fueled by Turgenev’s wealth (his mother died in 1850, leaving a large fortune) and fame.

Turgenev’s popularity increased rapidly. His A Sportsman’s Sketches, which attracted a lot of attention when published in 1852, was rumored to have hastened the abolition of serfdom in Russia. Rudin, Asya, First Love, Nest of Gentlefolk, On the Eve, and Fathers and Sons followed, each sparking a lively debate, and soon Turgenev was the recognized leader of Russian prose. But his life was forever tied to the Viardot family—he went wherever they did: France, then Baden-Baden, and then Paris, where Turgenev died in the Viardots’ summer villa in 1883, having outlived Louis Viardot briefly.

This union existed under the aegis of George Sand, who felt sincere amity for Turgenev, valuing him as a writer and human being: she thought him cheerful, simple, and modest (“He was extremely surprised when I told him he was a great artist and great poet”).

Leo Tolstoy’s opinion was rather different, as recorded in his diary in 1856: “His whole life is pretended simplicity.” Many other Russian observers described Turgenev as capricious, irresponsible, and vain. Foreigners, on the contrary, were all charmed by him: for them the gray-haired Russian giant was a fairy-tale character.

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Turgenev wanted to live a life that was free, elegant, comfortable, and situated in the center of European culture. Before him, no Russian writer lived that way—nor has any since. Turgenev managed to achieve all this in no small part thanks to his relationship with the Viardots, whose salon was a magnet for French celebrities. One starstruck Russian woman described an evening she spent at the Viardots’, when the other guests included Gustave Flaubert, the violinist Pablo Sarasate, and the composers Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns: “White lacquered furniture upholstered in pale silk left the center of the room open. To the left of the grand piano two steps led to the picture gallery, illuminated from above. There was an organ in there and a few, but very valuable, paintings … Mme Viardot came to the middle of the room … After the aria from Verdi’s opera, came Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig,’ accompanied by Saint-Saëns.”¹⁰