(Model of the “Nashchokinsky house”, presented at an exhibition in the conference hall of the Academy of Sciences in 1910. The model was commissioned by S.A. Galyashkin.)
One girl fascinated me with the history and present of doll houses. Finally captivated. And the beginning was laid in St. Petersburg in the fall of 2007, when my husband and I spent the whole day!!! in Peter and Paul Fortress where I have been before. There is the Museum of the History of St. Petersburg there, and its exposition presents a model of an apartment building, which amazed me!!! But today we are not talking about that. It turned out that there is in St. Petersburg, or rather, in Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin), another doll house called Nashchokinsky. Here's more about him
The tradition of creating miniature houses, palaces and even cities filled with copies of objects has existed in Europe since the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century. Wonderful dollhouses are still kept in museums in Holland and Germany.
In Russia, the first such miniature copy was the so-called Nashchokinsky house. In terms of the number of surviving items (611), it does not exceed many similar models, but it contains such a number of items from Pushkin's time, which is not found in any historical, everyday or literary-memorial museum of the first third of the 19th century. Among Russian analogues, we can compare with it the Rural Prikaznaya House, created later, donated in 1848 by Emperor Nicholas I to his wife Alexandra Feodorovna on her birthday and now stored in Peterhof.
During the life of Pushkin, his friend, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, came up with a happy idea to copy his apartment in a reduced form with all the furnishings in it.
It is not known what kind of apartment Nashchokin recreated - over the years of work on the model, he moved several times. It is possible that Nashchokin's original idea grew into a desire to reproduce a rich noble mansion typical of the era of the 1820s - 1830s. According to Nikolai Ivanovich Kulikov, an actor, a close friend of Pushkin and Nashchokin, "assuming people in the size of the average height of children's dolls, he (Nashchokin - G.N.) ordered all the accessories for this house from this scale to the first masters." So the famous Nashchokinsky house was born.
Many paintings and drawings depicting the interiors of Pushkin's time have come down to us. But they do not give a complete, exhaustive idea of a particular apartment in the house. After all, it is impossible to fix volumetrically and simultaneously all the rooms and things that fill them on paper or canvas. Having carried out his plan, Nashchokin did something that is beyond the control of the artist in three dimensions and, as we would say, now he immediately captured it in such a way. original way for posterity, the atmosphere of the house, in which Pushkin repeatedly visited.
The house is a whole world of small things: a table set for dinner, chairs with wicker seats, sofas and armchairs, paintings on the walls, gilded bronze chandeliers descend from the ceiling, a deck of cards lies on the card table - everything is like in a real house. The only difference is that almost every item fits in the palm of your hand. However, these are not just toys or props. Executed by order of Nashchokin by skilful cabinet makers, bronzers, jewelers and other craftsmen, Domik's things can be used for their intended purpose. You can fire a pistol 4.4 centimeters long, boil water in a samovar that is easy to hold with two fingers, light an oil lamp with a round matte lampshade the size of a walnut, you can ... but you never know what other miracles can be performed in this created by will and whimsical blessed for us by the desire of the poet's friend in an extraordinary microcosm.
Some memoirists wrote that Nashchokin built the House in order to perpetuate the memory of his friend and poet in it. It's most likely a legend. But, nevertheless, the model eventually acquired a Pushkin halo. Years and decades later, it became, as it were, a materialized memory of the poet. “Of course, this thing is precious as a monument of antiquity and painstaking art,” he wrote. A. I. Kuprin, - but it is incomparably more dear to us, as almost living evidence of the situation ... in which Pushkin simply and so willingly lived. And it seems to me that the life of this man, who has gone more than history - into a legend - can be followed much more accurately and lovingly by Nashchokin's house than by contemporary portraits, busts and even his death mask. Miniature things Domik "remember" Pushkin and can tell us a lot of funny and sad stories about him and his friend in their own way.
The poet saw the House and admired him. It is interesting that it was he, the only one of his contemporaries, who wrote about this rare work of applied art. Pushkin mentioned Domik three times in letters to his wife from Moscow. For the first time on December 8, 1831: “His house (Nashchokin. - G, N.) ... is getting off; what candlesticks, what service! he ordered a piano on which a spider could play, and a ship on which only a spanish fly would pee. The following letter was written no later than September 30, 1832: “I see Nashchokin every day. He had a feast in his house: they served a mouse in sour cream under horseradish in the form of a pig. Too bad there were no guests. And the last - from May 4, 1836: “Nashchokin's house has been brought to perfection - only living little men are missing. How would Masha (daughter of A.S. Pushkin. - G.N.) rejoice at them.
It is known that the Pushkins saw the Domik in 1830 while in Moscow, shortly after their wedding. Thus, the birth of the Nashchokinsky house can be dated no later than 1830. From the letter dated December 8, 1831, it is clear that by that time it contained a pianoforte, a service, candlesticks and, undoubtedly, many other things, new items were being made, i.e. “finishing” took place. This allows us to think that the construction of the Little House, as Pavel Voinovich called a miniature copy of his apartment, began much earlier, in the 1820s, possibly at the time when Nashchokin lived in St. Petersburg, as evidenced by one of the contemporaries of Nashchokin and Pushkin in his memoirs: "This house ... all the best Petersburg society then came to admire, however, there was something to admire."
In 1830, Pushkin wrote the poem "Housewarming", no doubt addressed to Nashchokin:
I bless the housewarming
Where is your home idol
You endured - and with it fun,
Free labor and sweet peace.
You are happy: you are your small house,
Keeping the custom of wisdom,
From evil worries and sluggish laziness
Insured, as from fire.
A friend of Pushkin and Nashchokin, the writer A.F., wrote about how the model was filled with things. Veltman. In his story "Not a house, but a toy!" a scene is presented when the hero - the "master", that is, Nashchokin - distributes orders to the masters. A "piano player" comes to him, followed by a furniture master, then a clerk from a "crystal" store. “The master ordered luxurious Rococo furniture to one of them in the seventh measure against the real one, to the other in the same measure - all the dishes, the whole service, decanters, glasses, shaped bottles for all kinds of wines.
Thus, the construction and furnishing of the toy, and not the house, began. A familiar painter undertook to put up an art gallery of works by the best artists. Appliances were ordered at the knife factory, table linen for linen, kitchen utensils for the coppersmith, in a word, all artists and artisans, manufacturers and breeders received orders from the master for equipment and furnishings for a rich boyar house in a seventh share against the usual measure.
"The master did not spare and did not spare money. So not a house is ready, but a toy. It costs, almost more than the real one ...".
Probably, Veltman knew from the words of Pavel Voinovich himself that the Little House cost him 40 thousand rubles. Note that at that time it was possible to purchase a real mansion for this amount.
The architectural shell of the Nashchokinsky house has not reached us. No images or descriptions of its appearance before 1866 have survived, while later descriptions are contradictory and not always accurate. The most reliable, although also not devoid of memory errors, have to be considered the testimonies of P. V. Nashchokin's contemporaries - N. I. Kulikov and V. V. Tolbin. The latter recalled “This house ... was an oblong regular quadrangle, framed by Bohemian mirror glass, and formed two compartments, upper and lower. In the upper one there was a continuous dance hall with a table in the middle, served for sixty couverts. The lower floor represented living quarters and was filled with everything that was only required for some grand ducal palace.
The artist Sergei Alexandrovich Galyashkin, organizer of the exhibition of the Nashchokinsky House in St. Petersburg and Moscow (1910-1911), made an attempt to recreate the model. Obviously, following the above description of Tolbin, he built wooden house one and a half human height, in the rooms of which: the living room, dining room, study and others - he placed the things of the Little House that had survived by that time. After 1917, the Nashchokinsky house was exhibited in Moscow at the State Historical Museum (until 1937), at the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition of 1937 and at the State Pushkin Museum (1938-1941). During the Great Patriotic War he was evacuated to Tashkent. From 1952 to 1964, the model was in the exposition of the All-Union Museum of A. S. Pushkin in Leningrad, located in the halls of the Hermitage. The house was presented without an architectural frame, only in the form of interiors made up of things that have come down to us. In them, which had the character of theatrical scenery, the painting of the walls, the molding of the ceilings, and the parquet floors were made as close as possible to the style of the 1830s.
The layout, exhibited in the church wing of the Catherine Palace in the city of Pushkin (1967-1988), was fundamentally different from the previous ones with a conditionally neutral finish; the walls, ceilings, floors, doors, etc. were painted in White color, which deliberately emphasized the non-involvement of such decoration with the original one, and thus, the attention of museum visitors was focused on the genuine things of the Nashchokinsky house.
Now the layout of the Nashchokinsky house is on display at the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg.
Judging by the set of surviving miniature objects, one can definitely say that the House had rooms typical of a noble apartment: a living room or a hall, a dining room, a pantry, an office, a billiard room, a bedroom, a boudoir, a nursery, a kitchen, utility rooms. It is very possible that this list also included the so-called Pushkin Room - a copy of the one that Vera Alexandrovna Nashchokina spoke about in her memoirs: “I had the good fortune to receive Alexander Sergeevich at home. There was even a special room for him on the top floor, next to the study Husband She was called Pushkinskaya. There is an opinion that the furniture for Nashchokin's House was "worked by Gumbs". The furniture of the Nashchokinsky house is distinguished by technical perfection, excellent craftsmanship, testifies to the impeccable taste of the customer.
Exhibition halls on the 1st floor
State Museum of A.S. Pushkin
st. Prechistenka, 12/2 (metro station "Kropotkinskaya")
Exhibition
"Nashchokinsky house - a trip to Moscow"
To the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State Museum of A.S. Pushkin"
With the participation of the All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin
Exhibition time:
October 4 to December 3, 2017
"My little house" - this is how Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin called a miniature copy of his Moscow house. His friends who have been abroad spoke with admiration of the long European tradition of building dollhouses. Perhaps the works of the German romanticE. T. A. Hoffmann prompted Nashchokin to order copies of all the objects around him from famous masters. Furniture for the house was made in the famous workshop of the Gambs brothers, porcelain service - at the A. Popov factory. The special value of these items is that they are working models of real things: you can boil water in a samovar, play the Fisher piano with knitting needles, play a game of “pyramid” on billiards.
A. S. Pushkin, a friend of Nashchokin, witnessed the creation of the house. In letters to his wife from Moscow, the poet spoke about a friend's whim. On December 8, 1831, he wrote: “His house (remember?) is getting off; what candlesticks, what service! he ordered a piano on which a spider could play, and a ship on which only a spanish fly would pee. A year later, Pushkin informed Natalya Nikolaevna: “I see Nashchokin every day. He had a feast in his house: they served a mouse in sour cream under horseradish in the form of a pig. Too bad there were no guests. According to his spiritual house, he refuses you. And on May 4, 1836: “Nashchokin's house has been brought to perfection - only living little men are missing. How would Masha (daughter of A.S. Pushkin) rejoice at them.
But the house was never handed over to the Pushkin family. Soon after the death of the poet, Nashchokin was forced to lay it down. The fate of this relic, which passed from one antiquary to another, was difficult. Only half a century later it was discovered and restored by the artist and collector S. A. Galyashkin. They organized exhibitions: at the Academy of Sciences in 1910, then in the Moscow Literary and Art Circle and in Tsarskoye Selo for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov family in 1913.
In 1919, the house was requisitioned, brought to the building of the English Club, which housed the State Museum Fund, from where it was transferred to the Museum of Old Moscow in 1922. After the merger of this museum with the Historical Museum in 1926, the relic became part of the collections of the Historical Museum.
In the year of the 100th anniversary of the death of Pushkin, the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition was opened, the materials of which became the basis of the newly formed Pushkin Museum. Having survived the evacuation, the house again appeared in the museum's exposition, located in 17 halls of the State Hermitage.
The next milestone in the life of the house was the move to the church wing of the Catherine Palace in Pushkin in 1967. For 20 years, the Nashchokinsky house was in one of the 27 halls of the exposition “A. S. Pushkin. Personality, life and creativity.
By the 200th anniversary of the poet, a new opportunity arose to present the house to the public in all its splendor in the literary exposition of the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin, on Moika, 12.
In the 21st century, the house left St. Petersburg only once to find itself in Moscow on Vorotnikovsky Lane, where Nashchokin lived in the 19th century (in 2001 it housed the Nashchokin's House gallery).
After a 16-year break, the house again traveled to Moscow, and for two months it will be exhibited in the exhibition halls of the State Museum of A.S. Pushkin, on Prechistenka, 12.
The tradition of creating miniature houses, palaces and even cities filled with copies of objects has existed in Europe since the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th century. Wonderful dollhouses are still kept in museums in Holland and Germany. One of the earliest, dating from 1690, is located in Amsterdam. It is a collection of reduced objects of a rich house, not only with living rooms, but also with an art cabinet, collections of paintings, a library made up of miniature books, and much more. In our country, interest in the art of creating miniature things-toys first manifested itself in the reign of Peter I. Unique in its scale is the doll house of Princess Augusta Dorothea von Schwarzburg (1666-1751), called "Monplaisir", which is located in Arnstadt, in Thuringia. It reproduced 26 houses, 84 rooms, 411 dolls.
In Russia, the first such miniature copy was the so-called Nashchokinsky house. In terms of the number of surviving items (611), it does not exceed many similar models, but it contains such a number of items from Pushkin's time, which is not found in any historical, everyday or literary-memorial museum of the first third of the 19th century. Among Russian analogues, we can compare with it the Rural Prikaznaya House, created later, donated in 1848 by Emperor Nicholas I to his wife Alexandra Feodorovna on her birthday and now stored in Peterhof.
During the life of Pushkin, his friend, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, came up with a happy idea to copy his apartment in a reduced form with all the furnishings in it.
It is not known what kind of apartment Nashchokin recreated - over the years of work on the model, he moved several times. It is possible that Nashchokin's original idea grew into a desire to reproduce a rich noble mansion typical of the era of the 1820s - 1830s. According to Nikolai Ivanovich Kulikov, an actor, a close friend of Pushkin and Nashchokin, "assuming people in the size of the average height of children's dolls, he (Nashchokin - G.N.) ordered all the accessories for this house from this scale to the first masters." So the famous Nashchokinsky house was born.
Many paintings and drawings depicting the interiors of Pushkin's time have come down to us. But they do not give a complete, exhaustive idea of a particular apartment in the house. After all, it is impossible to fix volumetrically and simultaneously all the rooms and things that fill them on paper or canvas. Having carried out his plan, Nashchokin did something that is beyond the control of the artist in three dimensions and, as we would say, now immediately captured in such an original way for posterity the atmosphere of the house, which Pushkin repeatedly visited.
In the museum hall, behind glass, we see the world of small things: a table set for dinner, chairs with wicker seats, sofas and armchairs, paintings on the walls, gilded bronze chandeliers descend from the ceiling, a deck of cards lies on the card table - everything is like in the present home. The only difference is that almost every item fits in the palm of your hand. However, these are not just toys or props. Executed by order of Nashchokin by skilful cabinet makers, bronzers, jewelers and other craftsmen, Domik's things can be used for their intended purpose. You can fire a pistol 4.4 centimeters long, boil water in a samovar that is easy to hold with two fingers, light an oil lamp with a round matte lampshade the size of a walnut, you can ... but you never know what other miracles can be performed in this created by will and whimsical blessed for us by the desire of the poet's friend in an extraordinary microcosm.
Some memoirists wrote that Nashchokin built the House in order to perpetuate the memory of his friend and poet in it. It's most likely a legend. Nevertheless, the model eventually acquired a Pushkin halo. Years and decades later, it became, as it were, a materialized memory of the poet. “Of course, this thing is precious as a monument of antiquity and painstaking art,” wrote A. I. Kuprin, “but it is incomparably more dear to us, as almost living evidence of the situation ... in which Pushkin simply and so willingly lived. And it seems to me that the life of this man, who has gone more than history - into a legend - can be followed much more accurately and lovingly by Nashchokin's house than by contemporary portraits, busts and even his death mask. Miniature things Domik "remember" Pushkin and can tell us a lot of funny and sad stories about him and his friend in their own way. Let's talk about the person whose name is an unusual house.
An outstanding personality who surprised his contemporaries with a lively mind, extensive knowledge and an "excellent heart", Nashchokin did not find his path in life. “It was an inexhaustibly kind, talented Russian soul, of which many have died and are dying in our country.”
Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin was born on December 8, 1801. He came from an old noble family, which originates from the boyar Dmitry Dmitrievich Nashchoka, who received "this name ... because he had a wound from the Tatars on his cheek." His other ancestor, the boyar Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordyn-Nashchokin, a diplomat under Ivan the Terrible, is known as "the royal great seal and saver of great state affairs." Pavel Voinovich, like Pushkin, was proud of his noble ancestors and could, like him, say: "The name of my ancestors is found every minute in our history ...".
Their friendship began in Tsarskoye Selo, where Pushkin studied at the Lyceum, and Nashchokin at the Noble Lyceum boarding school. Not having completed the course, the seventeen-year-old Pavel entered the military service, and in 1823 he retired with the rank of lieutenant.
The acquaintance, which began in the lyceum years, was interrupted by the expulsion of Pushkin from St. Petersburg to the south and resumed only in 1826, after his return to Moscow. At that time, all of Moscow knew the eccentric gentleman, famous for his immense generosity, wastefulness and hospitality. This was Nashchokin. As the memoirists wrote, he lent money without fail, never demanding a return, and his house became a haven for many invited and uninvited guests. Several times he skipped and lost everything he had, but did not lose heart, hoping for a happy chance, which invariably presented itself: either he received an unexpected inheritance, or someone returned to him a long-standing debt. N.I. Kulikov told how once Nashchokin, who fell in love with an actress, paid a lot of money for a small candle end, in front of which she learned the role. women's dress, he even managed to hire an artist as a maid. It is believed that this incident served as the plot for Pushkin's poem "The House in Kolomna".
A rake, a gambler, an empty man? Yes, this, and sometimes only this, seemed to Nashchokin to many contemporaries. But those who knew him closely, like Pushkin, thought and wrote about him differently: What could Nashchokin attract to himself ... Mind. Yes, with an extraordinary mind, overflowing not with scientific, but with innate natural logic and common sense, and reason, despite the reckless passion or passion for the game, reason reigned in his smart head and was even useful to other people who turned to his advice or court .. ".
A cheerful, open, unrestrained disposition, kindness of heart, fidelity and devotion in friendship - that's what captivated Pushkin in the character of a friend.
The heyday of their friendship falls on the most difficult, last years the life of the poet, when clouds were gathering over his head, knots were tied in the chain of circumstances that led to the fatal duel. These were the years of the poet's loneliness. He did not find understanding among friends. And only one Nashchokin (“only Nashchokin loves me”) understood the poet, was tolerant of all the costs of his character. Pushkin was especially touched by the tenderness towards his friend, which he lacked ... More than once Nashchokin rescued Pushkin in difficult financial circumstances. It was he who helped him pay off a large card debt, made even before his marriage, to get out of the networks of the card player V. S. Ogon-Doganovsky.
Nashchokin enjoyed the complete trust and respect of all who knew him. N. I. Kulikov said: “husbands and wives, parents and children, tired of family strife, not wanting to go to court, went to Nashchokin and asked him to judge them. After listening to the smart and fair decision of Pavel Voinovich, they accepted it unquestioningly and usually put up with it.
All these properties of Nashchokin's mind and nature attracted to him many famous writers and people of art of that time N.V. Gogol, V. A. Zhukovsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, E.A. Baratynsky, M.S. Shchepkina, A.N. Verstovsky, M.Yu. Vielgorsky, K.P. Bryullov. It is noteworthy that Gogol first read "Dead Souls" in Nashchokin's house.
Pushkin appreciated in him a strict criticism of his works, listened to his remarks and judgments, and shared his plans. It was Nashchokin who told the poet the story of the impoverished Belarusian nobleman Ostrovsky, which became the plot basis of the novel Dubrovsky. After finishing the first eight chapters, Pushkin wrote to a friend: "... I have the honor to announce to you that the first volume of Ostrovsky is finished and will be sent to Moscow in a few days for your consideration."
The colorful figure of Nashchokin also aroused the interest of Pushkin the writer. He served as a prototype for the image of Pelymov, a life-burner, who, despite the circumstances, retained a living soul, did not waste himself, in the unfinished novel Russian Pelam. This similarity was noted by the first biographer of Pushkin, P.V. Annenkov. In his opinion, Nashchokin "... responded to Pushkin's intention - to personify the idea of a person morally, so to speak, from pure gold, which does not lose value, wherever it goes, wherever it ends up. Few were able to preserve human dignity, straightforwardness of soul, nobility of character, a clear conscience and unfailing kindness of heart like this friend of Pushkin ... on the verge of death, in the whirlpool of blind passions and hobbies and under the blows of fate ... ". Following Pushkin, Gogol gave the features of Nashchokin to the positive hero of the second volume of Dead Souls - Khlobuev.
In the 1840s, when Nashchokin went bankrupt, Gogol took the most active part in his fate, fussed about getting a teacher in the family of a merchant D.E. Benardaki. “I have been thinking about your fate for a long time,” wrote Gogol, referring to Nashchokin. - You spent, following the example of many, furiously and noisily your first youth, leaving behind you in the world the name of a rake. Light remains forever when the name is once established from it. He does not need that the rake had a beautiful soul, that in the moments of the most hangings her noble movements showed through, that not a single dishonorable deed was done to him ... I told him [Benardaki. - G.N.] told everything, without hiding anything, that you squandered all your estate, that you spent your youth without calculation and noisy, that you were in the company of noble rake and players, and that among all this you never lost your soul, did not change not once by her noble movements, were able to acquire the involuntary respect of worthy and intelligent people and at the same time the most sincere friendship of Pushkin, who nourished her to you primarily over others until the end of his life.
Pushkin's death shocked Nashchokin. Hearing the terrible news, he fainted and could not recover from this blow for a long time. He was tormented by the fact that he did not save his friend from death. V.A. speaks about this in his memoirs. Nashchokin: “... I am sure that if my husband found out ... about the upcoming duel between Pushkin and Dantes, he would never have allowed it for anything and Russia would not have lost its great poet so early ... After all, Pavel Voinovich settled the quarrel him with Sollogub, having prevented a duel, would have settled this story too.
N.I. wrote about the same. Kulikov: "Pavel Voinovich proved to us, and we agreed with his evidence, that if he had lived in St. Petersburg in the fateful year 1836-1837, Pushkin's duel would not have taken place: he would have managed to upset it without damaging the honor of both opponents."
Nashchokin died before reaching the age of 54. He died on his knees while praying.
The image of Pushkin's friend would be incomplete without a story about his famous creation - the Nashchokinsky house.
Nashchokinsky house - a priceless relic of Pushkin's time. The poet saw the House and admired him. It is interesting that it was he, the only one of his contemporaries, who wrote about this rare work of applied art. Pushkin mentioned Domik three times in letters to his wife from Moscow. First time December 8, 1831: “His house (Nashchokin. - G, N.) ... is getting off; what candlesticks, what service! he ordered a piano on which a spider could play, and a ship on which only a spanish fly would pee. The following letter was written no later than September 30, 1832: “I see Nashchokin every day. He had a feast in his house." And the last - from May 4, 1836: “Nashchokin's house has been brought to perfection - only living little men are missing. How would Masha (daughter of A.S. Pushkin. - G.N.) rejoice at them.
It is known that the Pushkins saw the Domik in 1830 while in Moscow, shortly after their wedding. Thus, the birth of the Nashchokinsky house can be dated no later than 1830. From the letter dated December 8, 1831, it is clear that by that time it contained a pianoforte, a service, candlesticks and, undoubtedly, many other things, new items were being made, i.e. “finishing” took place. This allows us to think that the construction of the Little House, as Pavel Voinovich called a miniature copy of his apartment, began much earlier, in the 1820s, possibly at the time when Nashchokin lived in St. Petersburg, as evidenced by one of the contemporaries of Nashchokin and Pushkin in his memoirs: "This house ... gathered to admire all the then best St. Petersburg society, however, there was something to admire."
In 1830, Pushkin wrote the poem "Housewarming", no doubt addressed to Nashchokin:
I bless the housewarming
Where is your home idol
You endured - and with it fun,
Free labor and sweet peace.
You are happy: you are your small house,
Keeping the custom of wisdom,
From evil worries and sluggish laziness
Insured, as from fire.
A friend of Pushkin and Nashchokin, the writer A.F., wrote about how the model was filled with things. Veltman. In his story "Not a house, but a toy!" a scene is presented when the hero - the "master", that is, Nashchokin - distributes orders to the masters. A "piano player" comes to him, followed by a furniture master, then a clerk from a "crystal" store. “The master ordered luxurious Rococo furniture to one of them in the seventh measure against the real one, to the other in the same measure - all the dishes, the whole service, decanters, glasses, shaped bottles for all kinds of wines.
Thus, the construction and furnishing of the toy, and not the house, began. A familiar painter undertook to put up an art gallery of works by the best artists. Appliances were ordered at the knife factory, table linen for linen, kitchen utensils for the coppersmith, in a word, all artists and artisans, manufacturers and breeders received orders from the master for equipment and furnishings for a rich boyar house in a seventh share against the usual measure.
"The master did not spare and did not spare money. So not a house is ready, but a toy. It costs almost more than a real one ...".
Probably, Veltman knew from the words of Pavel Voinovich himself that the Little House cost him 40 thousand rubles. Note that at that time it was possible to purchase a real mansion for this amount.
The architectural shell of the Nashchokinsky house has not reached us. No images or descriptions of its appearance before 1866 have survived, while later descriptions are contradictory and not always accurate. The most reliable, although also not devoid of memory errors, have to be considered the testimonies of P. V. Nashchokin's contemporaries - N. I. Kulikov and V. V. Tolbin. The last one remembered “This house ... was an oblong regular quadrangle, framed by Bohemian mirror glass, and formed two compartments, upper and lower. In the upper one there was a continuous dance hall with a table in the middle, served for sixty couverts. the lower floor represented living quarters and was filled with everything that was only required for some grand ducal palace.
The artist Sergei Alexandrovich Galyashkin, organizer of the exhibition of the Nashchokinsky House in St. Petersburg and Moscow (1910-1911), made an attempt to recreate the model. Obviously, following Tolbin's description, he built a wooden house one and a half human height, in the rooms of which - the living room, dining room, study and others - he placed the things of the Little House that had survived by that time. After 1917, the Nashchokinsky house was exhibited in Moscow at the State Historical Museum (until 1937), at the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition of 1937 and at the State Pushkin Museum (1938-1941). During the Great Patriotic War, he was evacuated to Tashkent. From 1952 to 1964, the model was in the exposition of the All-Union Museum of A. S. Pushkin in Leningrad, located in the halls of the Hermitage. The house was presented without an architectural frame, only in the form of interiors made up of things that have come down to us. In them, which had the character of theatrical scenery, the painting of the walls, the molding of the ceilings, and the parquet floors were made as close as possible to the style of the 1830s.
The layout, exhibited in the church wing of the Catherine Palace in the city of Pushkin (1967-1988), was fundamentally different from the previous ones with a conditionally neutral finish. The walls, ceilings, floors, doors, etc. were painted white, which deliberately emphasized the innocence of such a finish. to the original, and thus, the attention of museum visitors was focused on the authentic things of the Nashchokinsky house.
Now the layout of the Nashchokinsky house is on display at the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg.
Judging by the set of surviving miniature objects, one can definitely say that the House had rooms typical of a noble apartment: a living room or a hall, a dining room, a pantry, an office, a billiard room, a bedroom, a boudoir, a nursery, a kitchen, utility rooms. It is very possible that this list also included the so-called Pushkin Room - a copy of the one that Vera Alexandrovna Nashchokina spoke about in her memoirs: “I had the good fortune to receive Alexander Sergeevich at home. There was even a special room for him on the top floor, next to her husband’s office. She was called Pushkinskaya.” There is an opinion that the furniture for Nashchokin's House was "worked by Gumbs". The furniture of the Nashchokinsky house is distinguished by technical perfection, excellent craftsmanship, testifies to the impeccable taste of the customer.
Let's start with the living room. It accommodates tables, a sofa, a couch, armchairs, banquettes, footstools, candelabra, floor lamps, sconces, mirrors. It is difficult to decide which thing is made better. a chiseled vase made of white bone, or a light but stable chair of typical Russian design, with the so-called side frame. Its smooth surface is devoid of decorations, but how graceful is the smooth silhouette of slightly curved legs and a cut-out back. Armchairs decorated with carvings are not inferior in beauty and subtlety to slender floor lamps, screens, elegant mirrors. The polishing has not faded from time to time, the polishing has not faded on the outside and inside the objects you will open the drawer of the table or sideboard and admire the finish - the fingers caress the mirror surface of the lovingly processed wood.
In those years when the House was created, Nashchokin changed apartments several times and, obviously, the situation. There were even cases when, according to the memoirist, in the house of the ruined Nashchokin, stoves were heated with mahogany furniture. But, having become rich once again, Pavel Voinovich acquired new things for his apartment.<…>
The tastes of Nashchokin, a connoisseur of painting, were reflected in the selection of works from the art gallery of the Little House. The living room, office and other rooms were decorated with small copies of paintings by Western European artists. Their names remained unknown for a long time. Hermitage employees Maria Illarionovna Shcherbacheva, a specialist in Dutch painting, and Anna Grigorievna Barskaya, an expert on the art of French painters, helped in the search for information about them. Now there are eleven paintings in the House, but there were, of course, much more. Mounted in gilded frames, they give the impression of real works of art.
The objects that filled the interiors organically combined expediency and convenience, rationalism and utility with beauty. A large three-tiered gilded bronze chandelier hung in the living room.
The other two, paired bronze chandeliers with 18 candles (each 9 in diameter), apparently hung in the dining room or living room. In addition, the decoration of the front rooms was complemented by graceful bronze candelabra (height 15) in the form of columns topped with torches, with four horns for candles, as well as wall lights, or sconces - typical lighting fixtures of that time.
There is no reliable information, but judging by the brilliance and perfection of the bronze items, it is quite possible to assume that among the craftsmen who worked on Nashchokin's order was the famous French bronzer Pierre Philippe Thomire.
From the memoirs of Tolbin, we learn that silver chandeliers hung in the living room of the Nashchokinsky house. Their fate is unknown, but, fortunately, the silver candlesticks that Pushkin admired survived. Several pairs of silver candlesticks traditional in shape (in the form of balusters) have been preserved. different sizes. The height of the smallest is 2 centimeters. Especially for these candlesticks, chandeliers, sconces, and candelabra, wax candles were cast (diameter 0.3, length 2).
In the 1830s came into use oil lamps. They were called kenkets, or kenkets, by the name of the inventor, the Frenchman Kenke. They consist of two parts of an oil tank and a burner with gas outlets. Oil was poured into the burner through a narrow brass tube. As in modern kerosene lamps, the wick was covered with cylindrical glass, on which a lampshade was put on - a matte ball with a pattern around the circumference. Depending on the need, the lighting was increased or decreased, but not by weakening the fire (such a device was not yet known), but by moving the lamp, which hung on a special bar, put on the floor lamp rod. With the help of a screw, the bar, together with the lamp, was raised or lowered closer to the place where a brighter light was needed. There are several such lamps in the House. Kenket lamps are made of gilded bronze. One of them is desktop, the rest are suspended: double and single, with one horn.
In the Little House of Nashchokin there is a rare thing that is inseparable from candles - the so-called Tula steel tongs for cutting off the burnt wick and removing wax.
Nashchokin was famous as a generous person and hospitable person. “He (Nashchokin. - G.N.) was a great hunter to order dinners and talk about food, they regaled his guests to the point of falling ... he invited for dinners a few days in advance, and on the day of dinner he sent the butler to remind, so as not to forget” .
The dining room and pantry are by no means secondary rooms in the Little House. The main piece of furniture of the first is the centipede dining table. Although not forty, but twenty slender, baluster-shaped legs, shod with brass shoes with wheels instead of soles, support a dining board with rounded edges. According to N. I. Kulikov, "... the sliding dining table was made by Gumbs."
In the apartments of Pushkin's time, next to the dining room there was usually a pantry, or buffet, as they said at that time, prepared food was brought here from the kitchen.
Two simple rectangular serving tables (height 14), covered with tablecloths, presumably ordered in Holland, and a cupboard, which housed a variety of dishes, have survived from the pantry in the Domik. There was a napkin press in the pantry or linen room. Pushkin, in a letter to his wife, described a comic lunch in the dining room of the Nashchokinsky house “they served a mouse in sour cream under horseradish in the form of a pig. Too bad there were no guests. And probably, on that day, the table was decorated with a dinner service of white porcelain with gilding, a soup bowl, a dish for pies, a gravy boat, deep and small plates made at the porcelain factory of A. G. Popov in the village of Gorbunovo near Moscow. On the bottoms of each item there is a blue underglaze mark of the manufactory .
The silverware of the House was stored in the cellar. The word "cellar" is purely Russian, from the verb - to bury, hide. In such a chest, silver appliances were placed, which were taken on the road along with a road samovar, dishes for dinner and tea. The cellar housed spoons, forks, knives, pie spatulas, a ladle, napkin rings and even candlesticks.
The dinner table setting included bottles, decanters for vinegar, oil, etc. They were inserted into the clips of silver vessels with a figured handle that was convenient for carrying. In the Little House miraculously survived tiny glasses (height 2.3), glasses of white and purple glass (height 3.3), green glass in the form of a lily of the valley flower with a twisted stem (height 3).
According to the memoirist, “the vaulted cellar under the house contained a cellar in which< ..>all sorts of expensive wines were stored, corked abroad.
The decor of the house, even dilapidated, was often cherished as a treasure of a bygone era, and kitchen utensils were thrown away when they fell into disrepair. The surviving kitchen utensils of the Domik are enough to cook a whole dinner! That is why it is of particular interest for the study of the economic life of Pushkin's time, especially since many of the objects have long been out of use.
Numerous kitchen utensils have been preserved in the Domik: several copper pans of various sizes, tinned inside (diameter of one of them 7.8; height 2), deep and shallow frying pans (diameter of one of them 5; height 3.5), a fish bowl with a slotted bottom for steaming (height 2.8; length 12.2); waffle iron, similar to tongs with long handles, so that it is convenient to insert it into the oven; a stewpan - a cast-iron for stewing meat on three high legs so that it does not burn, with a narrow spout for draining the sauce; pots - they cooked porridge, potatoes, steamed vegetables, drowned milk; korchaga - a larger, compared to others, pot for cabbage soup, kvass or beer; bowls, basins, mortars with pestles, a leaf for kulebyaki, a box for spices, colanders, tongs for cracking nuts, molds for cake and ice cream.
As you know, in Pushkin's time, in order to cook food, make tea, it was necessary to heat the oven or stove and, as they used to say in the old days, "put a samovar".
V. I. Dal explains the word samovar as "a water-heating vessel for tea, a vessel with a pipe and a brazier inside." At that time, this ingenious "vessel" was used everywhere, and it became almost an essential item in the household. Is it possible to imagine a noble estate of Pushkin's time, an official's apartment, a craftsman, a wealthy peasant's hut, a post station, a tavern without a samovar? He was a symbol of home comfort and hospitality. They seldom drank tea alone. After all, setting up a samovar was a slow and troublesome business: bring water (sometimes a whole bucket), store coals, prick a torch, put it into the chimney, set it on fire to heat the coals, fan the fire ... And now he makes noise, grumbles, puffs - calls to him for a meal. “The samovar is boiling - it doesn’t tell you to leave,” the proverb says.
From the memoirs of Vera Alexandrovna Nashchokina, it is known that the poet himself liked to drink tea, drank a lot of tea. Contemporaries tell how, while passing through Torzhok, Pushkin saw a samovar with a crane in the shape of an eagle's head. The poet asked the hostess for permission to fill the glass himself in order to turn this fancy tap. One must think that the samovars of the Nashchokinsky house also aroused the keen interest of Pushkin, who was attentive to things.
Among the household utensils of the Little House, five samovars have been preserved: one copper and four silver. The biggest one is especially good. Traces of scale are visible on the inner walls: once water was boiled in it!
The tea is ready, next to the samovar there is a beautiful silver and porcelain dish. The characteristic finish of silverware is gilding. Domik's large tea set can be called a wonderful piece of jewelry without exaggeration.
Porcelain cups and saucers from the tea service, which, unfortunately, has not completely reached us, are also trimmed with gilding. Delicate, pale-yellow color of porcelain is shaded with gold, which covers the inner surface of cups, handles, saucers.
Speaking of the silverware of the Nashchokinsky house, one cannot fail to mention one more tea set. Wealthy houses had several samovars. So in the Nashchokin House, in addition to those that we have described, three more very similar silver samovars have been preserved. All of them have an ovoid shape typical of the 1820s - 1930s. In all likelihood, each of them had its own service, but only one set of tea utensils has come down to us - the Small Service. It has only one cup and saucer. If there were no losses here, then we can assume that this service is for one person. The composition of the Small Service should include another item that has almost completely disappeared from our life - a plateau for pies - a kind of tray on high legs in the form of curls. In the Nashchokinsky house there are several silver and copper trays for various purposes. The largest of the silver trays (length 17) is bordered along the board with a chased floral ornament made up of flowers and leaves; along the edge of the smaller one there is a smooth, wavy line of the ornament, which is called the “wave”. Among Domik's utensils, a gilded silver spoon-strainer survived. The tea leaves were shaken out into a rinse bowl, and the spoon was placed on a bronze tray specially designed for it. At that time, coffee was not as widespread as it is in our time, but, of course, there was always coffee at the table at Nashchokin, Pushkin, Onegin. Nashchokin ordered for his Domik a cone-shaped silver coffee pot (height 4.5) with a handle in the form of stems and leaves, a taganchik with a tripod in the middle (height 2.8) and a spirit lamp (diameter 1).
Note that Domik's kitchen facilities have a special frying pan (diameter 7.5) for roasting coffee beans. On top, it has an almost solid metal cover with a small hole, designed to prevent the grains heated on fire from jumping out. Inside the pan there is a spatula, which, with the help of a handle that goes up, mixes the grains for their even frying. There is no doubt that there was a tiny coffee grinder in the Little House, but apparently it disappeared along with other priceless little things during the years of the model's wanderings.
Understanding the device of a samovar or spirit stove, admiring the beauty of dishes and household utensils, you see how much skill, ingenuity, taste invested by silversmiths, tinsmiths, coppersmiths, skilled artisans in these miniature items. There is nothing superfluous or intrusive in their decoration, ornaments, patterns.
Almost all silver items were made for Domik by Moscow jewelers. Evidence of this is the brand with the coat of arms of Moscow, depicting George the Victorious. With the help of a magnifying glass, one can detect nominal and annual hallmarks on darkened silver samovars, trays, and plateaus covered with the patina of time. One of them looks like this: N.D. 1834.
In 1969, Marina Mikhailovna Postnikova-Loseva, a well-known expert in the field of applied arts, established that these letters mean the name and surname of the master of the Moscow Assay Office, Nikolai Dubrovin. Let's not lose hope that other secrets will be revealed over time, we will find out the names of other miracle craftsmen who "shoeed" more than one "flea" in Nashchokin's Little House.
It is difficult to imagine the house or apartment of a nobleman, landowner, rich official of the Pushkin era without a piano or his less perfect counterparts - the harpsichord and clavichord. Domik's piano is a truly royal instrument in all respects.
According to the stories of contemporaries, Vera Alexandrovna Nashchokina, the wife of Pavel Voinovich, played this "Lilliputian" piano with the help of knitting needles, since even her thin fingers did not fit on the keys. A skilled musician, a student of the famous composer John Field, she recalled how Pushkin often asked her to play the piano and "... listened to her play for hours ...".
Both friends, Pushkin and Nashchokin, loved music. There is evidence that Pavel Voinovich, being an admirer of Franz Liszt, not only attended his concerts in Moscow, but also specially traveled to St. Petersburg so as not to miss the evening arranged in honor of the composer.
Of course, there was a guitar in the Little House. Her presence in the Nashchokinsky house also reflects the life of the 1830s. The sounds of the guitar, as well as the piano, invariably enlivened the living room of a city or landowner's house, where they listened to chamber music, romances and folk songs, which were so popular at that time. Such associations are born when you see the piano or guitar of the Nashchokinsky house. According to the memoirists, there was also a harp in the Domik - a product of the well-known Parisian factory Erara at that time. Unfortunately, it did not reach us.
In May 1836, on his last visit to Moscow, Pushkin wrote to his wife, “Only Nashchokin loves me, but my rival is Tinter.” The poet called the card game Nashchokin's "greatest passion", Pushkin and the heroes of his works experienced the power of this, sometimes "disastrous" passion.
In Nashchokin's Little House, of course, there are cards and card tables, which are an integral part of the furniture. During the game of cards in Nashchokin's House, on the green cloth of the card table, bribes were recorded with crayons in beaded cases so that the fingers would not get dirty, and then these records were erased with brushes, unfortunately, like the crayons, they are lost. Sometimes an open card table was used as a regular one. An example of this is the already mentioned painting by N. I. Podklyuchnikov “The Living Room in the Nashchokins’ House”, where a card table with a tea cup and saucer standing on it is clearly visible.
In Pushkin's time, billiards was widespread and loved, since, unlike board games, contributed to the warm-up, relaxation with a sedentary lifestyle. The billiards of the Nashchokinsky house escaped the losses that went to the share of some other miniature things. A slate board (16.4 x 8.7) hanging on the wall of the billiard room for notes, with semicircular cups for crayons and a sponge, has been preserved.
According to the memoirist, Nashchokin was a big fan of billiards. "He traveled almost daily to an English club, ordered himself an expensive cue from Paris, which was kept under the savings of the marker." Pushkin also loved this game. I. I. Pushchin in his “Notes” recalls Pushkin’s disgraced house in Mikhailovsky: “There was billiards in the hall, this could serve as entertainment for him (Pushkin - G. N.). There are attributes of another outdoor game in the House - shuttlecock. The shuttlecock of the Nashchokinsky house (2.5 x 1) has a cork covered with blue velvet. With him - two rackets, reminiscent of tennis. The dictionary of V. I. Dahl gives a description of the shuttlecock "a cork rounded at one end with a feather crown at the other end of the notch, fly, it is beaten by throwing up a racket, bast shoes." The game of shuttlecock is the prototype of modern badminton, the notch of which is made of plastic and has no feathers. In our time, it is unlikely that even in museums you can find objects used in this ancient game.
Memoirists say that in the Nashchokinsky house there was a whole arsenal of weapons. Only one "combat box" with a pair of pistols has come down to us. You press the white bone button of the lock - and the lid of the ebony box opens. Unlike the flintlock pistols of the French master Lepage, described in Eugene Onegin, the design of the Nashchokin pistols is somewhat different, more perfect. These are the so-called capsule pistols. In flint weapons, gunpowder was ignited by a spark struck from a flint strike against a steel plate - a steel plate. In the pistols made by order of Nashchokin for Domik, a primer was used - a cap (or tube) with an explosive mixture inside. When the trigger hit the primer, a shot followed. The capsule pistol (also called a cap pistol) resembles modern toy pistols that fire from a hammer strike on the piston. If the Onegin ones were loaded from the muzzle, then the Nashchokin ones were loaded from the treasury located inside the barrel, where the bullet and charge were injected. Having unscrewed the barrel, a bullet wrapped in a plaster (cloth cloth soaked in lard) was put into the “treasury” so that the powder gases would not seep through the barrel. Then they inserted a chamber (the prototype of a modern cartridge) - a powder charge placed in a cylinder like a cartridge case - and hammered it with a wad so that the gunpowder did not crumble. Having loaded the pistol in this way, they screwed the barrel back by hand, and then turned it with a screwdriver. After that, they pulled the trigger to the safety platoon and put the primer on the seed bar - a ledge with a hole from which, when the trigger hit the primer and the explosive mixture in it exploded, the fire fell into the pistol. To secure the primer, a second screwdriver was used - the handle of a bullet gun. Now you need to take the trigger to failure. At the same time, the lower trigger (trigger) automatically pops up; with a slight pressure on it, the mechanism will work: the upper trigger will hit the primer, the explosive mixture will explode, the fire will enter the chamber through the seeding hole, the gunpowder will ignite, and the bullet will fly out of the barrel. So the gun is loaded. The index finger is on the trigger, the arm is stretched forward... Now let's aim... However, our pistol does not have a front sight. What's this? Master's omission? No. The work was done flawlessly. And the “mistake” is explained by the fact that we have a road pistol in front of us - unlike the dueling pistol, it does not have it, since it was intended for point-blank shooting. In those days, travel was often unsafe. Sometimes the traveler was attacked by wolves, robbers. For this case, loaded pistols were taken on the road. They were taken out of the box in advance and kept ready in their pockets to shoot almost without aiming.
Compared to furniture, decorations, crockery and other things, there are few items of clothing and footwear left in the Nashchokinsky house - in total, if we speak in museum language, there are four units: a top hat, two cocked hats and over the knee boots. In his early youth, living in St. Petersburg, Nashchokin at one time served in the Cavalier Guard Regiment. He was probably reminded of that time by miniature over the knee boots - high cavalry boots with hard tops, with a wide bell at the top and a thigh-high notch, made according to his whim.
The felt cocked hat from the Nashchokinsky house suggests Pushkin, about the sad episodes of his life. By the new year, 1834, at the behest of Emperor Nicholas I, the poet received the title of chamber junker, which obliged him to attend palace ceremonies and attend balls. The poet did not like to wear the uniform of a chamber junker. The words of the writer V. A. Sollogub are imbued with sympathy: “I saw Pushkin in uniform only once, at the Peterhof holiday .. From under the triangular hat, his face seemed mournful, stern and pale. He was seen by tens of thousands of people not in the glory of the first folk poet, but in the category of novice courtiers.
A well-preserved plush top hat with margins slightly turned up, fashionable in the 1830s, has survived to this day. In the painting by G. G. Chernetsov "Parade on the Tsaritsyn Meadow" you can see many of Pushkin's contemporaries, and he himself is represented in the center of a group of writers: I. A. Krylov, N. I. Gnedich, V. A. Zhukovsky, N. I. Grech, cylinder - an indispensable detail of the costume of each of them.
It is known that Pushkin liked to walk. While living in St. Petersburg, he took walks to Tsarskoye Selo, and the stick was always his constant companion. Expressive self-portrait of Pushkin, where he imagined himself with a heavy iron stick. Now it is in the Museum-Reserve of A.S. Pushkin in the village of Mikhailovskoye. Three canes are also stored in the Nashchokinsky house. You don’t know which of the canes of the Nashchokinsky house to give preference to: a stick of cherry wood, an elegant cane of ebony with flutes, or a third one with an amber knob. We do not know whether Nashchokin liked horseback riding. But Pushkin was an excellent rider. Horse riding was always a need and a pleasure for Pushkin: it saved him from the boredom and monotony of rural life in Mikhailov or Boldino solitude.
One of the unique items of the House is an English racing saddle on a goat stand with a hanger for a harness. The master's study was one of the main rooms in the nobleman's house. Nashchokin also felt the need to have a secluded office, especially since his house was always open to invited and uninvited guests.
Being in Moscow in December 1831 with Nashchokin, who was still single at that time, Pushkin wrote with some irritation to Natalya Nikolaevna about the careless life of a friend: “.. his house (Nashchokin. - G.N.) is such a goofball and jumble that his head is spinning. From morning to evening he different nations: players, retired hussars, students, lawyers, gypsies, spies, especially moneylenders. All free entry; everyone before him needs; everyone shouts, smokes a pipe, dines, sings, dances; there is no free corner ... ".
N. I. Kulikov recalled how the guests of Pavel Voinovich often stayed up late at his place and his servant Karl the tadpole was obliged to put everyone to bed, and the owner himself, having come home, quietly made his way between the sleeping people in his office. Sometimes Nashchokin was weary of such a life, but, weak-willed, weak-willed, he was unable to change it. Solitude was necessary for him, and the office was the only refuge where bed-stayers were not allowed, where he could take a break from the guests, indulge in his favorite pastime - reading.
Many contemporaries noted Nashchokin's extraordinary mind, his broad knowledge, and impeccable taste. He was ahead of many in understanding and evaluating literature and art. At a time when everyone was reading the works of A. A. Marlinsky, he ridiculed the splendor and pretentiousness of his prose and in every possible way promoted the works of Balzac, still little known in Russia.
What was the office of Pavel Voinovich, helps to imagine the Nashchokinsky house. In any office, a desk is first of all important. There are three of them in the house. One of them stood, in all likelihood, in the Pushkin room. The couch is a typical study piece. In the House there are two identical mahogany couches (length 33.5) with a curved back and legs, one of them is in the office.
Books were usually in the study, but, in all likelihood, in the apartment of Pavel Voinovich, as in many noble houses, there was a library. The famous Soviet bibliophile Fyodor Grigoryevich Shilov wrote: “I managed to accidentally acquire a very valuable library of Pushkin's friend, P.V. Nashchokin. The books were excellent .. mainly from the library of grandfather Nashchokin. There is information in the literature about miniature books of the Nashchokinsky house, printed using a specially made font. The unique books and font have disappeared without a trace. This is one of the biggest losses of Domik.
In the office of the Nashchokinsky house there is a shelf for books (height 9.5, length 15.5). At one time, when Pushkin's office in Mikhailovsky was recreated after the war, a new one, modeled after Nashchokin's, was made to replace the lost bookshelf. When reading, they usually kept at hand special knife because the books came out of the printers with uncut pages. In the study of the Little House, on the desk, there is a similar ivory knife (length 5.9). There were several screens in the miniature house. Usually a screen was placed near a bed or a couch; it not only blocked drafts, but also created a cozy intimate corner. There was also a screen - also a typical item for that time. It was placed in front of a blazing fireplace, if the fire gave too much heat, or in front of a cold one, so that its "vent" could not be seen. As a rule, the screen was a square wooden frame on legs with drapery made of fabric or beadwork stretched over it, similar to the one in the Nashchokinsky house. Judging by the surviving miniature screen (height 21.5), there was a real fireplace in the House.
The bedroom was often adjacent to the office. She was also in the Nashchokinsky house. Of particular interest are the mahogany bed and the carved bone wash basin. The design of the bed (height 29, length 41) is convenient, it can be easily disassembled (the backrests are removed, the parts connecting them are separated, and it falls apart like a house of cards), it is easily transferred to a new place and is just as easy and quick to assemble. Like clothes, blankets, pillows, featherbeds, bed linen have not been preserved, but the mattress pad is intact, also made collapsible - from two parts, easily and tightly inserted into the bed frame. The mattress pad is stuffed with sea grass and upholstered with a "thread".
A common use in the bedroom and office, where they also sometimes slept, was a washing set. Usually it consisted of a jug of water and a basin, which were placed on a table covered with marble. A similar device is also found in the Little House (7.7 height, 6.2 width).
Memoirists wrote that there were copies of Pavel Voinovich's things in Nashchokin's House: glasses in a case, slippers and even a chamber pot. The tiny vessel, “on which only a Spanish fly will pee,” has not survived, but two spittoons are in excellent condition, which “little, lively men” could use. The mechanism of action of spittoons is similar to the modern one: as soon as you press the handle of the rod, a polished semicircular lid automatically opens over a brass basin inside a walnut wooden case standing on three ball-shaped legs. As needed, the basin was taken out of the case, washed and put back in.
But let's go back to the study... On a special ebony stand, in sockets trimmed with bone, tiny pipes rest, which are put on long chibouks made of different breeds tree. An article devoted to the exhibition of the Nashchokinsky house of 1911 in Moscow reports an interesting detail: “... a pipe stand is curious, the model of which was diligently and unsuccessfully sought by the Art Theater for its productions. Only now can we become familiar with this detail of the past.”
Long intimate conversations between Nashchokin and Pushkin were usually accompanied by smoking. “When we see you, I would tell you a lot; a lot has accumulated for me this year that it would not be bad to talk about. On your couch, with a pipe in your mouth.
The name of Nashchokin is associated with another thing that belonged to Pushkin - an ink device. It is based on a book. In the center is the figure of a black and gilded bronze sailor naked to the waist, leaning on an anchor. By the new year, 1832, Nashchokin sent this device to Pushkin. The original inkwell is now one of the attractions of Pushkin's office in his last apartment.
And on the desk of the Nashchokinsky house there is an ink device - silver. In the middle between the sandbox and the inkpot is a column with a hook on which hangs a bell to call a servant. In the House there is another inkwell, oval-shaped, carved from bone, with figures of a hare and a dog chasing him.
But what is an office without a clock? Typical for that era, a gilded bronze mantel clock with a figure of Napoleon is a landmark of the Little House. Many in Russia were under the spell of the personality of the legendary conqueror. Pushkin in his poetry paid tribute to the greatness of the commander. The cult of Napoleon was reflected in many of his images, including objects of applied art. An example of this is the clock from Nashchokin's House.
Among the things of the poet was an inkwell in the form of Napoleon's tomb. Now this relic is kept in the funds of the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin.
The gothic fireplace clock located in Pushkin's office, stopped by V. A. Zhukovsky at the time of the poet's death - at 2 hours 45 minutes in the afternoon on January 29, 1837, has come down to us. After his death, Natalya Nikolaevna presented the other, pocket silver watch that belonged to Pushkin to Nashchokin. He, in turn, presented them to N.V. Gogol - the most worthy successor of A. S. Pushkin. After the death of Gogol, Pavel Voinovich, at the request of the students, donated the watch to Moscow University. Further paths brought the relic to the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin. Vera Alexandrovna Nashchokina claimed that Pushkin had this watch during the duel. But, going to the duel, the poet did not put on the ring given to him by Nashchokin ... Once, "Voynych" ordered two identical rings with turquoise. He wore one himself, the other, worrying about the life of his friend, handed it to Pushkin when he saw him off to St. Petersburg from Moscow in the spring of 1836. This was their last meeting. The poet had to live a little more than eight months. V. A. Nashchokina recalled the fate of the ring: “When Pushkin, after a fatal duel, was lying on his deathbed and his second Danzas came to him, the patient asked him to give him some small box. He took out a turquoise ring from it and, passing it to Danzas, said:
- Take and wear this ring. It was given to me by our mutual friend, Nashchokin. It is a talisman against violent death." So, on the day of the duel with Dantes, Pushkin did not have this ring on his hand. Why? Maybe he did not want to argue with fate? Was he looking for a duel of death as a way out of his painful situation?
In the Nashchokinsky house there are two small caskets-caskets. One is mother-of-pearl, with cut-out ornament, trimmed with gold, the other - covered with leather, with a constipation-hook. In all likelihood, they kept very tiny jewels for the little inhabitants of Nashchokin's House.
But perhaps the greatest treasure of the Little House is the English grandfather clock (height 30.5). You can object by saying that such clocks were often found in the interiors of noble houses. Here and in the Pushkin Museum-Apartment on Moika, 12, there are similar ones in the dining room. But the value of the miniature clock from Domik lies in its memoriality. During the years of Domik's wanderings, after Nashchokin pawned it and could not redeem it, the clock was silent for a long time, the mechanism broke, the key for the winding was lost. But, when in 1953 the Domik found its place in the museum, the author of these lines, at that time the keeper of the unique model, managed to find a master - Mikhail Afanasyevich Lapkin, who managed to repair this rare watch and made a new key. The miracle happened, the clock came to life, they started talking. Since then, for 47 years, they have been running regularly, without requiring repairs. The plant is enough for a day and a half. And then a small hook is folded back, the top door of the case with convex glass opens, covering the dial, the key is inserted into a tiny hole in the silver disk. Then the lower door opens, behind which the pendulum is visible. A few turns of the key, a slight push, giving acceleration to the arrows, - and they begin to move, making their measured circle, a quiet but distinct sound is heard, which Pushkin listened to. "Nashchokin's house has been brought to perfection - only living little men are missing."
Arrived on the occasion of the anniversary of the Moscow Museum of A. S. Pushkin (60 years old) from St. Petersburg.
But what, exactly, are we talking about? We can say that about the toy. Belonging to Pushkin's friend Pavel Nashchokin.
Well, so: at some point (financially prosperous, which did not always happen with Pavel Voinovich), Pushkin's friend came up with a strange whim: to make a copy of his house, with all the furniture and other things that were in it, the size of one seventh magnitude. And imagine, he really ordered the whole situation - and not external copies, but quite functional items. Only tiny ones.
The piano, by the way, was also real - according to one of the contemporaries, Nashchokin's wife even played it - with the help of knitting needles.
Miniature copies of paintings were made for the house. And also everything that was required for billiards (I wonder if they tried to play it?).
All household utensils were also made in miniatures. (From a letter from Pushkin to Natalya Nikolaevna, about visiting Nashchokin: “His house (remember?) Is getting off; what kind of candlesticks, what kind of service! He ordered a piano on which a spider can play ...”)
And here you have Pushkin himself visiting the owner - obviously reading something from the new one.
A copy was later made of this figurine at the Imperial Porcelain Factory.
The house gained considerable popularity in Moscow at that time, they specially went to look at it. But how did his fate develop further?
Alas, alas. The frivolous owner, once again losing, mortgaged the house - but never redeemed it. A curious toy passed from one antiquary to another, gradually its parts were scattered. And most importantly, the house itself disappeared, reproducing a two-story city mansion.
By the way, which one exactly? Museum workers studied Nashchokin's Moscow addresses, and there were quite a few of them. Here is a house in Gagarinsky Lane.
Here at Bolshaya Polyanka.
Here in Vorotnikovsky Lane. And all, mind you, are two-story - how can you define it here?
Returning to the fate of the contents: at the beginning of the 20th century, the artist Sergey Galyashkin was engaged in them - he came across some of the items from an antiquary, and he purposefully searched for some more (unfortunately, by no means all). In 1910, the house restored by him was demonstrated in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow and in Tsarskoye Selo. Photographs of this reconstruction have been preserved.
After 1917, the house ended up in the Historical Museum. In 1937 it was demonstrated at the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition. During the war, it was evacuated, while the architectural frame recreated by Galyashkin was lost. Well, now he lives in the All-Russian Museum of A. S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg - from where he arrived in Moscow.
Moscow museum workers, of course, supplemented the exposition with their own materials. Here is a portrait of Nashchokin's wife, Vera Alexandrovna.
There are many different things from the Nashchokin family, among which is a fan with the image of the frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The furniture (full size this time) is also from the Nashchokins' Moscow apartment.
And this is an image of the living room in the Nashchokinsky house (present) by the artist Nikolai Podklyuchnikov. Here are the inhabitants of the house.
Pay attention to this bust in the picture that came from St. Petersburg. Reminds no one?
So the Moscow museum workers decided that it reminded them, and attached their own bust by Ivan Vitali closer.
Well, the Nashchokinsky House exhibition opened in the main building of the Pushkin Museum on Prechistenka. 168 miniature items were brought to it (initially there were up to six hundred of them, a little more than half have survived). The exhibition will last until December.
The alleys between the Arbat and Prechistenka, in the figurative expression of Prince Peter Kropotkin, the Saint-Germain suburb of Moscow, have always attracted creative and unusual people. Among the local inhabitants there were still many big names. The famous Moscow extravaganzas also lived here, who gave the life of old Moscow a unique and beloved style of cheerful recklessness.
Pavel Nashchokin
One of the famous Moscow madcaps, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, lived in Gagarinsky lane, corner of Nashchokinsky lane, house number 4. In fact, Nashchokin changed addresses several times, but this one is the most famous, since Nashchokin's great friend A.S. Pushkin often visited this hospitable house and even lived here from December 6 to 24, 1831.
Arriving in Moscow, Pushkin took a cab and said: "To Nashchokin!"; no further clarification was required - all the drivers knew where Pavel Voinovich's house was. True, the bohemian atmosphere in Nashchokin's house seemed too vain even to Alexander Sergeevich, who, as you know, was not a supporter of excessive decency and stiffness. This is how he described his impressions of Nashchokin's house in a letter to his wife: "I'm bored here; Nashchokin is busy with business, and his house is so stupid and jumbled that his head is spinning. From morning to evening he has different peoples: players, retired hussars, students, solicitors, gypsies, spies, especially lenders. Everyone has a free entrance; everyone needs him; everyone shouts, smokes a pipe, dine, sings, dances; there is no free corner - what to do? .. Yesterday Nashchokin gave us a gypsy evening; I I’ve lost the habit of this, that my head still hurts from the cry of guests and the singing of gypsies.But although Pushkin allowed himself to grumble in a friendly way at Nashchokin, they were united by the most faithful and devoted friendship. Nashchokin even became the godfather of Pushkin's eldest son. He would have baptized his second son, but due to illness he could not come to St. Petersburg for the christening.
Pushkin and Nashchokin met back in Tsarskoe Selo - Alexander Sergeevich studied at the Lyceum, and Nashchokin at the Noble Boarding School at the Lyceum, where Levushka Pushkin, the poet's younger brother, was brought up with Pavel. Subsequently, Pushkin and Nashchokin met in St. Petersburg, but really became friends in Moscow when Pushkin returned from exile.
An open, generous, sincere character, a penchant for good eccentricities attracted Nashchokin different people. Among his friends were V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, N.V. Gogol, V.G. Belinsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, actor M.S. Shchepkin, composers M.Yu. Vilegorsky and A.N. Verstovsky, artists K.P. Bryullov and P.F. Sokolov ... Contemporaries said that half of Moscow was related to Nashchokin, and the other half were his closest friends. N.V. Gogol wrote to Nashchokin: "... You have never lost your soul, you have never betrayed its noble movements, you were able to gain the involuntary respect of worthy and intelligent people and at the same time the most sincere friendship of Pushkin."
"Only Nashchokin loves me" ..., "Nashchokin is my only joy here," Pushkin wrote from Moscow in letters to his wife. "... I am talking with him," Pushkin asserted. Indeed, many remember their "endless conversations." The topics raised were very different - Pushkin read drafts of new works to Nashchokin and listened to the opinion of a friend, talked about the most hidden impressions of his life and the movements of the soul. For example, only Nashchokin could be entrusted by Pushkin with his terrible childhood impressions of the death of his brother Nikolai in 1807. (This death shocked eight-year-old Alexander. He told Nashchokin how he and his brother "quarreled, played; and when the baby fell ill, Pushkin felt sorry for him, he went to the bed with participation; the sick brother, to tease him, showed him his tongue and soon after died").
The unbridled, passionate, but at the same time artistic nature of Nashchokin pushed him on unusual adventures all the time. Once, having fallen in love with the beautiful actress Asenkova, he dressed up as a girl and joined his idol as a maid. (Pushkin used this story for the plot of "The House in Kolomna"). Nashchokin was fond of alchemy, then converged with card cheats. Having become interested in the gypsy singer Olya, he bought her for a lot of money from the gypsy choir and settled her in his house as a wife. Later, Nashchokin got married after all with another woman. He met the illegitimate daughter of a distant relative, born of a serf servant, and fell in love. Pushkin advised a friend to marry and was at his wedding.
P.V. Nashchokin with his family, 1839
Nashchokin was an outstanding storyteller. Pushkin, who considered his friend capable of writing and used the plots of his stories (for example, Nashchokin's story about the nobleman Ostrovsky suggested the plot of "Dubrovsky"), persuaded Pavel Voinovich to write at least memories of his eventful life. "What are your memoirs?" Pushkin asked his friend in a letter. "I hope you don't leave them. Write them in the form of letters to me. It will be more pleasant for me, and it will be easier for you." Pushkin was going to publish these "memories", subjecting them to literary processing. But Nashchokin's "Memoirs" were never completed, although the sheets with Pushkin's edits were preserved. But... "Hard work was sickening to him. Nothing came out of his pen."
Pushkin, getting into difficult circumstances, often turned to Nashchokin for help, and it happened that he himself helped him out in money matters. The actor N.I., who knew Nashchokin closely. Kulikov recalled that Nashchokin "was already living exactly according to the broad Russian-lordly nature, and, where necessary, did good, helping the poor, and lending money to those who asked - never demanding a return and being content only with a voluntary return." Friends were never afraid to lend to Nashchokin himself. Pushkin, being in the most difficult circumstances before his marriage, was forced to pawn 200 souls of serfs. However, from the amount received, he allocated 10,000 rubles to lend to Nashchokin. In a letter to Pletnev, talking about the distribution of his meager income for a nobleman entering into marriage, he mentions: "10,000 to Nashchokin to rescue him from bad circumstances: the money is right." The amount of the deposit received quickly dispersed, it was expensive to order a decent tailcoat for the wedding. Pushkin was married in the tailcoat of Pavel Nashchokin. Eyewitnesses mentioned that the poet was buried in the same wedding dress after the fatal duel.
"Little House" Nashchokin
The main eccentricity of Nashchokin, not understood by contemporaries, and appreciated only by descendants, is the famous "little house". Dreaming of preserving the memory of the interiors of his house, associated with the name of Pushkin and other great guests, Nashchokin ordered a model of the rooms of his mansion with all the furnishings. The house measuring 2.5 by 2 meters was made of mahogany. It housed two residential floors and a semi-basement. Exact copies of furnishings were ordered from the best factories and workshops of the time, only their proportions were greatly reduced in comparison with the originals.
Dining table and crockery from Nashchokin's house (compared to real-sized tableware)
“Assuming people in the size of the average height of children's dolls,” wrote N.I. Kulikov, “on this scale he ordered all the accessories for this house from the first masters: the general’s over the knee boots on the stocks were made by the best St. Wirth; ... furniture, a sliding dining table worked by Gumbs; tablecloths, napkins, everything that is needed for 24 couverts - everything was done in the best factories.
Dining room from Nashchokin's house
The table in the dining room was set in the most exquisite way - slender purple glasses, green tulip-shaped wine glasses, silverware, samovars. The walls of the house were decorated with paintings in gilded frames. An elegant, beaded cushion was thrown on the sofa in the living room. A bronze chandelier with crystal, a card table with cards, billiards, candlesticks with candles - everything that is necessary for life.
Little living room
Pushkin was delighted with this undertaking. In December 1831, he wrote to his wife: "His house (remember?) Is getting off; what kind of candlesticks, what kind of service! He ordered a piano on which it will be possible for a spider to play, and a ship on which only a Spanish fly will be corrected." In another letter, Pushkin remarked: "Nashchokin's house has been brought to perfection - only living little men are missing!"
Pushkin visiting Nashchokin examines items from a small house
Having listened to the opinion of a friend, Pavel Voinovich settled in the house and little men - miniature twins of Pushkin, Gogol, himself ordered at a porcelain factory in St. Petersburg ...
Figurine of Pushkin in Nashchokin's house (this is no longer the original porcelain Pushkin, but a later plaster reconstruction)
This idea cost Nashchokin very expensive. According to approximate estimates - 40 thousand rubles, because all the miniature items were unique and made to order. (For that kind of money in Moscow, you could buy a real house, and Nashchokin lived in rented mansions, changing his address from time to time). Contemporaries were surprised that he "had spent tens of thousands of rubles to build a two-arshin toy - Nashchokin's house." And for us now this toy is a priceless monument of the Moscow life of Pushkin's times. The Nashchokinsky house is on display at the All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin in Saint Petersburg.
Billiards in Nashchokin's house
It is a great happiness that the house survived, although its fate was dramatic. Nashchokin's financial situation, like everything else in his life, flowed from one extreme to another - either he threw thousands, or he did not have a few rubles to buy firewood in winter and heated stoves with mahogany furniture. Once, "at a difficult moment in his life", he was forced to mortgage his beloved house and ... could not buy it out in time. The house disappeared for a long time, wandering through strange hands and antique shops...
Desk from Nashchokin's house (compared to real medium-sized books)
The relic was found only at the beginning of the 20th century. The artists Golyashkin brothers bought the house from the last owner. Sergei Alexandrovich Golyashkin restored it, supplemented some of the lost items, and in 1910 presented it to the public. The house was exhibited in St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo. At that time, journalist S. Yablonovsky wrote: “The more you peer into this house, into its furnishings, into its inhabitants, the more you begin to understand that this is not a toy, but magic, which at a time when there was no photograph, no cinema, stopped the moment and gave us a particle of the past in such completeness and with such perfection that it becomes creepy.
An office in the Nashchokinsky house
The same office with expanded desk and a screen by the bed
"You are happy: you are your small house,
Keeping the custom of wisdom,
From evil worries and sluggish laziness
Insured, as from fire, "-
To which of Nashchokin's houses - real or toy - should these lines be attributed?
The new facade ("house-case") made by S.A. Golyashkin for the Nashchokinsky house in 1910
So, Nashchokin several times had to change his Moscow addresses, where he rented apartments, and one of the most famous addresses of Pavel Voinovich is the house of the Ilyinsky sisters in Gagarinsky Lane. The house at the corner of Gagarinsky and Nashchokinsky lanes is now marked with a memorial plaque. But the fate of the mansion is mysterious - some guides to Moscow and Pushkin's places claim that the house has been preserved and carefully restored, others are categorical - Nashchokin's house has not been preserved. However, in Gagarinsky Lane, at the indicated address, there is a two-story mansion, the architecture of which is clearly marked with the seal of the post-fire building of the mid-1810s ...
The fact is that the real Nashchokinsky mansion by the 1970s had become so dilapidated that it was decided to dismantle it and build a new one, "in the model and likeness of the one that was in this place 160 years ago." (S. Romanyuk "From the history of Moscow lanes").
Mansion in the early 1970s before renovation
True, during the reconstruction, the second, wooden floor was replaced with a brick one, but in general, the restorers tried to stick to the old project and even partially restored the interior design of the rooms, guided by the surviving details and Nashchokin's "layout". The reconstructed mansion first housed the Society for the Preservation of Monuments. Now there is the Nashchokino cultural center - an exhibition and a small concert hall.
And another Arbat address, where Nashchokin lived - Bolshoy Nikolopeskovsky lane, house number 5 - remained only in memory. The old mansion, where Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin's apartment used to be, no longer exists.
By the way, Nashchokinsky Lane got its name not in memory of Pavel Voinovich, but because the estate of his ancestors, the Nashchokin boyars, was once located here. In Soviet times, Nashchokinsky Lane was called Furmanov Street - the author of "Chapaev" lived here in one of the houses.
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