Monsieur L’Abbé: A Citizen of the Russian Empire

Abstract

This article contains a previously unpublished biography of Gabriel (Gavriil/Gavrila) L’Abbé Deslondes (1773–1830), a well-known teacher of French and Latin who served in various educational institutions of St Petersburg. The information found in the Russian State Historical Archive and the Central State Historical Archive makes it possible to clarify the facts of life and the motives behind the actions of a French teacher. L’Abbé Deslondes lived in the Russian Empire of the early nineteenth century; the material helps discover some details of professional competition in this field, mechanisms of promotion, and vicissitudes of relations within the professional community of teachers and French expatriates. These reasons make the published documents a valuable historical source that helps put forward the hypothesis that Gabriel L’Abbé Deslondes, whose life was intertwined with the lives of many St Petersburg aristocrats, was Pushkin’s inspiration for Monsieur l’Abbé, “француз убогой” (a starving Gaul (Spalding), a threadbare Frenchman (Mitchell), a poor wretch of a Frenchman (Nabokov)) that has traditionally been considered a purely fictional character of Eugene Onegin. An account of L’Abbé Deslondes’s life gives reasons to disprove the school’s interpretation of the Russian epithet “убогий” interpreted as “заурядный” (mediocre).