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Lermontov and His Friends

HELEN MICHAILOFF

IN HER time Alexandrina Vereshchagina (1810-1873) would
have laughed her pretty head off had some one predicted that
her poetry albums—books filled with artistic contributions
from friends each girl kept in those days—«'ould find a place of
honor among the rarities of tiie Rare Book and Manuscript Li¬
brary at Columbia Uni\ersity, in, of all places on earth. New York
City. Yet on the second thought she would have agreed that the
honor was well deserved since she had always firmly believed in
the future greatness of a distant relative of hers, Mikhail Lermon¬
tov (1814-1841).

Although Alexandrina's education was typical for a Russian
girl of an aristocratic family, it left a deeper imprint on her mind
than was usually the case, directing her interests toward litera¬
ture and arts. Her character combined a natural gravity and a deep
sense of duty with a bent for sarcastic humor and even mischief,
and it must have been that latter propensity that drew her to the
future poet aged fifteen or sixteen when they met in Moscow some
time after 1827. The clumsy bow-legged boy with the head too
big for his body, whose swarthy face was redeemed from ugliness
only by a pair of large expressive eyes, and whose sarcastic tongue
served to protect his sensitivity and shyness, attracted Alexan¬
drina's sympathetic interest, and she became a companion in social
amusements, a guide in his pursuits of literary success and a con-