MIMI'S MARRIAGE
MIMOTCHKA AT THE SPRINGS
MIMI'S MARRIAGE
V. MIKOULITCH
(LIDIA IVANOVNA VESELITSKAYA)
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
C. HAGBERG WRIGHT, LL.D.
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD.
ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON
1915
INTRODUCTION
The genius of Turgeniev and Tolstoy, of Dostoevsky and Gorky, has givenfame and distinction to the Russian novel, but while the principalworks of these great writers and their fellows are well known toEnglish readers, the women novelists of Russia have been left almostuntouched by the translator. Yet there are many authoresses of talentin the literary world of Russia at the present day; notably MadameDmitrieva, born 1859, of peasant parents. Her first novel was entitledFrom the Heart not from the Head. Two of her best-known books areMityukha, the Schoolmaster, and In Various Directions. She has saidthat "her first school was[Pg vi] the village street, and her teachers, thegrey old village folk and dire need."
Other writers of ability are Olga Chumina (born 1864), who hastranslated several poems by Francis Coppée, and also produced a playentitled The Flicker that Went Out; Madame Smirnov, author of thepowerful novel, The Salt of the Earth; M. V. Krestovskaya (born1862), whose stories of theatrical life have the charm of simplicityand truth, and whose Woman-Artist appeared in the Journal desDébats; Madame Verbitskaya, who attained an extraordinary popularitywith her daring novel The Keys of Happiness; and Madame LidiaIvanovna Veselitskaya, who, under the pseudonym of V. Mikoulitch, haswritten sketches of Russian society which are full of humour and clevercharacterisation. The best known are the series entitled[Pg vii] Mimi'sMarriage, Mimi (or Mimotchka) at the Springs, and Mimi PoisonsHerself, which have been translated into no less than six Europeanlanguages.
The writer of these genial satires on the weaknesses of her sex wasborn in 1857. She belonged to a noble family with estates in SouthernRussia, and was educated at the Pavlovsk Institute, one of the greatschools for women in Russia. Soon after her debut in society, shemarried an officer in the Russian army.
She began her literary career with some simple tales intended foryoung people; Family Evenings, In the Family and in the School,and Of Children's Reading, but in 1883 she struck a bolder notewith Mimotchka, the Bride, or Mimi's Marriage, which made itsfirst appearance in the Vestnik Evropy, a leading Russian monthlyreview. But it was not until the second[Pg viii] of the series, Mimotchka atthe Springs, was published seven years later that "V. Mikoulitch"sprang to her present position of widespread popularity. The wittysuperficiality of the chapters descriptive of Mimi's girlhood developsin Mimi at the Springs into a brilliant, incisive study of a selfish,empty-headed, and exceedingly pretty young woman. The analysis of hercharacter is so penetrating and pitiless that Tolstoy, who admired thebook, remarked that "the author must be a man, as no woman