XIX
TIFLIS
Another summer in Gordi · Business projects · Removal to Tiflis · Princess Tamara of Georgia · Our manner of life · Double position · Continued authorship · Illness
In the summer of 1878 we were again guests at the Mingrelian summer residence.
The two sons for whom the Dedopali had trembled had now come to Gordi also, decorated with various orders; likewise Prince Niko’s wife Mary. And, in addition to these, Achille Murat with his wife and their two boys. It afforded me great pleasure to see my friend Salomé once more, and we had again a delightful time in this dear and merry circle. Count Rosmorduc contributed not a little to the entertainment. This old Frenchman had the gift of relating endless anecdotes from his life, exciting, witty, and touching, and of never repeating himself.
We still found that nothing came of the position for My Own. There was all the more of making plans and building castles in Spain. Businesses were to be taken over, colonists to be imported, a trade in wood to be started. Niko and Rosmorduc were especially inventive of such projects, in which my husband was always to have lucrative functions. Various things were actually entered upon: negotiations were begun, extended correspondence was carried on, but in the end nothing came of it.
So winter approached again, the colony at Gordi separated, and this time we decided to try our fortune at Tiflis; it was there that we could avail ourselves of the best recommendations. Here was the home of Princess Tamara, the widow of Heraclius of Georgia. He had died after a long illness, during which he is said to have been unendurably capricious, and his beautiful young widow had the most important house in Tiflis next to the grand-duke-governor’s. There we were received with the greatest kindness.
Tiflis is a city half Oriental, half West-European. In the European quarter the same sort of life prevails as in our great cities: European toilets, European manners, French cooks, English governesses, jours, soirées, conversation in Russian and French. Princess Tamara had her own palais, furnished with exquisite taste, and in her salons met the cream of the local society, consisting of dignitaries of the grand-ducal court,—the grand duke himself often used to come there,—of various governors and generals, and the great people of the city. Tamara’s younger sister, as beautiful as she herself, had married a general and also lived in Tiflis.
Our social position there was something quite peculiar. We had to be earning something, so that we might live,—hence in the forenoons I went to several houses giving music lessons, for which I was well paid; my husband had a place under a French wall-paper manufacturer and builder, as bookkeeper and especially as designer of new patterns. For this service he received a salary of one hundred and fifty rubles a month, and moreover we had board and lodging in the pretty private house of the manufacturer, Monsieur Bernex of Marseilles. The bell for work rang at five o’clock in the morning. Then My Own, My Own who at home had been so spoiled and in truth shamefully lazy, had to get up. He did it right gayly; then he went to the press-room to oversee the workmen. At eight o’clock he sat down with the owner and the bosses to the early breakfast, consisting of a pail of weak coffee with milk, and black bread—it tasted good to him!—then he had to go to the office and figure and design till one. Meantime I had given a few lessons, and we all ate dinner together at the Bernex table. In the afternoon My Own had to go on business errands, to customers, to the customhouse, to the railway station, all long distances; he did it with pleasure. But after six o’clock in the evening we were free, put on full dress, and almost every evening dined en ville, now with the Princess of Georgia, now with her sister, and with all the great families of the city. Our romance was generally known, also our close relations with the Dadiani family; and in society we were not treated as the factory employee and the music teacher, but as a sort of aristocratic emigrants, not only on a footing of equality but with that peculiar courtesy which is usually shown to illustrious foreigners. We could not help laughing about it.
I kept up my literary labors as far as my time permitted. I wrote novels,—Doras Bekenntnisse, Ketten und Verkettungen,—and carried about with me the scheme of a larger work, Inventarium einer Seele. My husband got very little opportunity for writing, for now his employer had set him to work also at designing architectural plans. And he did it. How he made a success of it I do not understand to this day; but it is a fact that several houses and castles in the vicinity of Tiflis were built from his plans. As he played the piano without having taken music lessons, so he made architectural designs without having studied architecture. He had already picked up enough of the Georgian language to be able to get along with the native workmen and contractors. In the meantime I was perfecting myself in Russian, which I had already begun to study in Vienna with a view to the prospect of residing in Zugdidi as the Dedopali had planned for me. That castle, by the way, was not even then finished; nor was it finished during the lifetime of its mistress.
During our sojourn in Tiflis I underwent an illness, the only one in my whole life. The period of this illness is among my sweetest, dearest recollections. I could not eat: my stomach refused everything that I took. I could not walk: if I tried to take a few steps, I fell down. Certainly that does not sound as if one were bringing up sweet, dear recollections; and yet God knows it was a happy time. I was in a state of half-stupefied faintness, lying down gave me a comfortable sense of rest, and My Own’s care and assiduity and tenderness cradled me into a deep quiet consciousness of bliss. This lasted about six weeks; then I was well again, and we two were a good bit more in love with each other than ever.