Authors: Mary McGrigor
During the month of September 1825, the whole population of the Crimea between the mountains and the sea, all the inhabitants of this ‘terrestrial paradise’, were in a very sickly condition, and in the villages along the coast between Yoursouff and Simeiz, I saw and treated more than a hundred cases of intermittent and remittent fever. Many who had been suffering for months had enlargement of the liver and spleen, with jaundice and dropsy . . . There could be little doubt that the fever which then prevailed on the coast and in the interior of the Crimea was produced by noxious exhalations from the earth.
Alexander reached Taganrog on 14 September 1825 (Julian calendar). Elizabeth had travelled more slowly over mainly country roads and Alexander met her carriage at the last coaching station before Taganrog. The house, so carefully prepared for her, filled her immediately with joy. The terrace, the small garden, the apricot trees in the garden, the changing colours of the sea, all seemed perfect in her eyes. Moreover, away from his family, she now had Alexander to herself. Together they drove in a carriage, exploring the roads by the sea and the surrounding country with its plantations and cornfields which lay near the sea below the great stretches of the steppes. In the town itself, an estimated population of 7,600 people, of which two-thirds were Greek, nearly doubled as ships arrived during the summer months. The broad streets were unpaved, and the houses with their brightly painted walls were built of both stone and wood. Here they spoke to local people, and bought trinkets in the shops run by the Tartars and the Jews who comprised most of the population of the little town.
Doctor Lee, describing Taganrog, wrote that the streets were wide and clean, and the pavements high and paved with hard stones brought from the seashore, and lit by lamps at night. Each house had a courtyard, surrounded by a number of huts for servants and labourers. The courts, however,
Usually presented a scene of filth and confusion which baffles all description; only surpassed by some of the trackers in Poland. Here are seen standing a number of old droshkies, caleches, carts and barrels upon wheels for bringing water, all up to the axletrees in mud, and exposed to the general influence of this rude climate. Before the Emperor came here I was informed that the town was as dirty and neglected as any town in Russia. A law was then passed by the town council, imposing a tax of thirty kopeks on each cart that goes with corn, or any kind of commodity, to the port, or in lieu of this, the cart must return loaded with stones from the sea-shore for the streets. This law has had the effect of rendering the streets very good – much superior to those in Odessa.
Wylie’s diary, written in Taganrog, continues to describe how there followed several days of good weather until, as it began to change, a comet, thought to presage disaster, appeared in the night sky.
September 17th. The horizon has grown darker, the air has become fresher, the wind has changed and blows from the north-east, the water is ebbing and some vessels here and there have gone aground. Driving rain follows, lasting all night long.
22nd. A comet above the horizon in the south-west at the distance of several degrees, its tail is at the top.
23rd. The quarantine, as it seems, is useless here, the more so as there is also one in Kerch where the ships have to stay for a week.
24th. The feud about fishing for sturgeon and beluga is strong between the local people and the Illyrians, Yaninians and Donets Kirgizest.
25th. The export of grain is quite considerable here, but the way they load ships using carts (charettes) which go into the water, often as far as a whole verst, could be improved by using several steamboats with rafts; steamboats are also required in order to go up and down to Kerch which should be regarded as an advanced port before Taganrog, where the traders will, in the course of time, have bread shops for buyers who can come at any season, because the Bosphorus near Kerch knows no winter that could prevent ships from coming or leaving; equally the Don will also be in need of steamboats.
29th.The grapes are very good here, but they cannot make proper wine from them; the grapes are very cheap. Every year they ship 200,000 buckets of grape juice to be made into Champagne. Caiffa, the harbour in Feodosia, will never be important except for shipping products from the Crimea.
Elizabeth had never been so happy, and to Alexander’s delight, her health visibly improved. Even the fact that delicacies were hard to come by in such a remote area did little to worry either of them. Relying on local provisions they ate barley soup, fish and lemon jelly nearly every day. Together they spent four peaceful weeks in the mild late-autumn days.
As for Alexander himself, for a time at least, he was as happy as the proverbial sand boy. Mr Hare, whom Lee described as ‘a most respectable merchant’ in Taganrog, told him that during his visit there, ‘he slept upon a straw palliasse, with a small hard pillow of leather’.
The Emperor rose early and breakfasted upon green tea and a small bit of bread. He then walked out and noticed all that came his way. He was frequently up to his knees in mud . . . and took great pleasure in superintending the workmen who were employed in making the public garden, which he had ordered to be formed here. He dined at 2 p.m. and did not appear again on foot, but sometimes afterwards with the Empress in a droshky . . . At the public ball given, he danced with several of the ladies, and remained at least an hour and a half looking at the dances. He was fond of the Polonaise and Scotch dances, and requested that they should be exhibited before him.
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Elizabeth was blissfully happy. Nothing in her life had ever equalled the happiness of that time in the little town by the sea. But, as she probably knew in her heart, the idyll was too good to last. Alexander grew restless. He wanted to see the Crimea, the southern part of his enormous empire, hitherto always mysterious, heard of only in travellers’ tales until this chance to explore it had suddenly come his way.
‘As soon as the Emperor got into the carriage to depart for the Crimea, the sun appeared on the horizon again’, wrote Wylie on 20 September 1825.
21st September. The weather is fine, the roads have become better . . . a lot of bustards at the first station.
25th. We are in Perekop. The distance between the Sivash (Rotten Sea) and the lagoon is from 8 to 9 versts.
3rd October. The day is cold and dry. The quails are ready to fly away.
Doctor Lee, meanwhile, having visited all the most interesting places in the Crimea, returned from Sevastopol to Odessa on Admiral Greig’s yacht. Count Pahlen nearly died of fever on the voyage and Lee wrote that nearly everyone he knew at that time suffered from some form of malaria that year. He himself, having survived a slight attack, reached Odessa on 1 October, just as his employer, Count Vorontsov, set off to meet the Emperor Alexander.
Lee had been back in Odessa for a fortnight when, on 14 October, a letter came from his employer, Count Vorontsov, by then at Taganrog, telling him of the emperor’s determination to visit the Crimea and asking him to meet him at Breslau on the Dnieper. Lee set off immediately. ‘It was a clear, beautiful night, the road was excellent’, and he reached Breslau the following morning at seven o’clock.
In the town, typical of those in the south of Russia, where the shops and bazaars were full of every kind of merchandise, they saw great numbers of wagons laden with salt from the Crimea being dragged through the streets. The country around had been ravaged by the locusts, so that, with little enough for the local people, there was virtually nothing left for the large bodies of troops marching to join the army on the Turkish frontiers.
Leaving Breslau, Lee, with Count Vorontsov, travelled on over an extensive plain of sand to the Perekop Isthmus, the strip of land connecting the vast area of Russia to the small entity of the Crimea. Heading south they reached Simferopol, capital of the Crimea, an ancient Scythian city, but Russian since captured by Catherine the Great in 1784. There they stayed for two nights with Count Fyodor Rostopchin, the general and statesman appointed by Tsar Alexander as governor-general of Moscow, who, accused of responsibility for the fire which had devastated the city on the entry of Napoleon in 1812, had been exiled to the Crimea. A famous breeder of horses based on the Arab and English thoroughbreds, now known as the Russian Saddle Horse or the Russian Riding Horse of the USA, he was at that time mostly concerned with the health of his daughter whom Lee, to his great satisfaction, had treated successfully.
On reaching Yoursouff, Lee’s medical skill was again required. This time it was the principal Tartar of the village who had been suffering from intermittent fever, or malaria, for several weeks. Lee gave him calomel and sulphate of quinine, remedies hitherto unknown in the Crimea, which proved so instantly effective that the Tartars believed them to come from a supernatural source.
Driving along the Sea of Azov, Alexander reached the Perekop Isthmus. In the town of Perekop he stayed in the Tartar cottage which Doctor Lee had seen being prepared. Two days later he set out on horseback, riding south over the same unfinished road so recently travelled by Lee, to Simferopol, a distance of about twenty-five miles.
The weather was still warm and the beauty of this newly discovered part of his kingdom was something he could scarcely believe. A few leaves had fallen but most of the trees, particularly the walnuts and figs, were still as green as in summer. Against them, vivid in contrast, were the crimson leaves of wild Russian vines, entwining through branches, climbing to the tops of even the highest trees.
The Emperor arrived at Simferopol on 25 October. Next morning he went to the service in the cathedral before reaching Yoursouff at about four o’clock in the afternoon. With him were General Die-bitsch, Sir James Wylie and a few attendants. Lee, in attendance on Count Vorontsov, was part of the reception party waiting to greet the royal guest. Describing the event in his journal he wrote how:
When he dismounted from his horse in front of the house at Yoursouff, Count Vorontsov, his aide-de-camp, secretaries and myself, were standing in line to receive him. Though apparently active, and in the prime and vigour of life, the Emperor stooped a little in walking, and seemed rather inclined to corpulence. He was dressed in a blue military surtout, with epaulettes, and had nothing to distinguish him from an army general officer. He shook Count Vorontsov by the hand, and afterwards warmly saluted him, first on one cheek and then on the other. He afterwards shook hands with all of us, and then enquired of me particularly about the health of the Count’s children at Bial-a Cerkiew, whom I had seen not long before. He then enquired if I had visited the south coast of the Crimea during the autumn, and if so, how was I pleased with it. Looking up to the mountains above Yoursouff, and then to the calm sea, upon which the sun was shining, His Majesty exclaimed, ‘Was there ever such magnificent scenery!’
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Alexander, like so many others, had fallen beneath the spell of this country, so beautiful, so seductive, yet dangerous as the sirens luring sailors to their doom. Little did he or either of his attendant doctors recognize that within this captivating country lay the source of a deadly disease. ‘The noxious odours’ which rose from swamps and were believed to be the source of infection were certainly unpleasant, but no one at that time realized that the anopheles mosquitoes breeding in the damp ground were actually the carriers of the malaria which, in that late warm autumn, was claiming so many lives.
Lee set off, in advance of Alexander, to ride along the coast to Alupka. All along the road he found Tartars, magnificent, dark-skinned men who had come from all parts of the Crimea to see the emperor pass by. The emperor acknowledged them, enchanted by all that he saw, riding slowly along the coast to the botanical gardens at Nikita, founded some twelve years before.
Later the tsar visited Princess Anna Golitsyn, who lived nearby.
Staying with her were Julie von Krüdner’s daughter and son-in-law and some of their religious friends, all of whom, so General Diebitsch noticed, were suffering from what he called ‘the ague’ – most probably malarial fever.
Alexander then stayed the night with Count Vorontsov, whose estate at Alupka was a short way along the coast from Oreinda. His house, the summer residence of the Governor of Odessa, was at that time one of the most luxurious villas on the south coast of the Crimea, so favoured by Alexander’s courtiers in preference to the humbler house at Taganrog.
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The same evening, as the count himself, his doctor Robert Lee and James Wylie dined with the honoured guest, the conversation was carried on in a mixture of French and English.
It was noticed that Alexander ate very little. He had stopped, so he explained, to eat fruit along the road. Then as oysters were served it was seen that a small worm clung to one placed before him on his plate. Wylie, however, assured him that it was quite harmless.
He then reminded the emperor of an incident at the conference of Verona, when someone from Venice had sent a message imploring him not to eat oysters as there was a poisonous marine worm or insect inside them. This led to a discussion on the insects of the Crimea and the Ukraine, of which Lee had made a large collection. Alexander asked him if there were any scorpions, scolopendras and tarantulas in the Crimea, to which Lee replied that there were in fact large scorpions. Scolopendras, of great length, he had seen in Odessa but there were none in the Crimea, nor were there any tarantulas. The tsar then talked about the dance which was supposed to cure the bite of the tarantula whereupon Wylie humorously reminded him of how, after a scorpion had been found in his bed in Verona, he had written a prescription for the cure of the bite of the Carbonari!
Then followed a long discussion on homeopathy. Wylie said that he favoured the views of the physicist Samuel Hahnemann, then much in vogue both in Germany and in Russia. He believed that his method of administering extremely small doses of medicines was just as effective as large ones if the patients were kept on a strict diet. Count Vorontsov, anxious to know if this would apply to the fevers of the Crimea, turned to Lee who answered emphatically, and as it proved prophetically, ‘that large doses of quinine almost instantly cured these fevers, when small doses proved ineffectual’.