the smoke's on me

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 7:22 PM

Subject: the smoke's on me

To the List,

Marina had me fooled. I was quite certain that at the age of 14 she had poisoned her governess with boric acid, which she certainly could have done. In the nineteenth century boric acid was taken medicinally for various stomach ailments, hence, I thought, Marina somehow made sure her governess got an overdose.

But I do think she did do away with her governess, Mlle. Stopchin, or "Stopchin" as she seems to have been known in the family. Stopchin, it turns out, was not Madame Segur (nee Rostopchina), as Vivian Darbloom would have us believe, but Evdokiya Rostopchina (nee Suchova, 1811-1858). The means, however, was fire:

A sort of hoary riddle (Les Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series): did the Burning Barn come before the Cockloft or the Cockloft come first. ... And we both were roused in our separate rooms by her crying au feu! July 28? August 4?

Who cried? Stopchin cried? Larivière cried? Larivière? Answer! Crying that the barn flambait?

No, she was fast ablaze ‹ I mean, asleep. I know, said Van....

(Part I, chapter 19)

The real (Terrestrial) Countess Rostopchina,* the poetess and friend of Pushkin,
Lermontov, Vyazemsky, and others, died in 1858 when Marina was 14, but she was nobody's governess, and though only 46, died of apparently natural causes on December 3, following a long illness. Presumably on Antiterra, she could have survived a few months after being burned on July 28 or August 4..

Marina had reason to think of "for example, Smoke...."

Carolyn Kunin

*Of special interest to readers of Ada: "Special'no dlya francuzskoi aktrisy Rashel' ona perevodit na francuzskii svoyu poeticheskuyu dramu Doch' Don Zhuana." (For the French actress Rachel, she translated her drama in verse, "Daughter of Don Juan" into French.)