Rasputin the Nicknamer

Dan Carlin recently released another episode, the fifth, of Blueprint for Armageddon, his account of World War I for his Hardcore History podcast. This one runs more than four hours and takes the war through the end of 1916, by which time things have gotten really complicated: it's clear that the United States will likely enter the war soon, Russia is teetering, and Germany and France have both nearly been bled dry.

The best part, though, is the arrival of Rasputin. Can anyone with a pulse not find him fascinating? There's not much new in Carlin's telling of the story of Rasputin for anyone who has read up on the Mad Monk, but there was one moment that really amused me. As part of his explanation of how Rasputin was able to worm his way into the royal family, and thereby the lives of the Russian nobility, Carlin points out that contemporary accounts describe him as being entertaining, his wild ways and unbuttoned approach a hit at parties. Carlin quotes from a book on Rasputin by Joseph Furhmann on the topic of the acute, funny, even cutting nicknames he would give to members of the Tsar's circle. To wit:

Rasputin was fun. It was a pleasure to be in his company He gave people nicknames, and they were often cutting and quite appropriate. He might dub a woman "Hot Stuff," "Boss Lady," "Sexy Girl," or "Good-Looking"; while a man would be called "Fancy Pants," "Big Breeches," "Long Hair," or "Fella." People accepted this as a charming characteristic, the humor of a peasant, who meant no disrespect.

Seriously? That's how respectful, hidebound, and stultifying noble life in pre-revolutionary Russia was, that nicknames as bland and innocuous as these could be seen as clever? Could be seen as clever enough to be remembered and quoted later? Good lord. I know there were a lot of valid reasons for the Tsar to be overthrown, but--horrors of the revolution of course aside--that might in itself be enough reason to rally to the barricades.

If you're interested in WWI or are simply a history buff, you should definitely check out Carlin's podcast. Twenty or so hours in, with a lot of the war to go, it already stands as a very impressive achievement, a telling of history that is fully alive, energetic, and thought-provoking.

The King . . . and the Mad Monk

Pressed for time, today I'm simply going to share a single sentence that blew my mind and that, while not representative of the book it came from, could at least stand for some of the pleasures to be found in its pages. Herewith, from Craig Brown's One on One:

Elvis is staying in a Frank Lloyd Wright house he rents from the Shah of Iran.

Reading that sentence, all I can think is, if only there were more parts to it! Couldn't the house have a garden designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, surrounding the tomb of Howard Carter, and its tenancy be shared with Edna St. Vincent Millay and Adlai Stevenson? (Then there's the mind-boggling attempt to imagine Elvis's over-the-top aesthetic crammed into a Wright house. It's probably good for Wright to roll over in his grave every once in a while, and I suspect when the King started gold-plating everything and stacking TVs in every room, he surely took some righteous spins.)

Brown's book, which daisy-chains casual encounters between 101 writers, artists, and cultural and historical figures, building anecdotes from memoirs and biographies, really is a lot of fun. I'm finding it well suited to the kind of reading I've been giving it since I brought it home from London in January: two stories at a time every once in a while. That method allows you to always carry one figure forward--P. L. Travers, for example, worships Gurdjieff, who then briefly controls the aforementioned Frank Lloyd Wright--then close the book knowing you'll start back up with one of the people you ended your last reading with.

And now that I've mentioned semi-mystical control, I don't think I can end this post without drawing on another of Brown's chapters, this one on a meeting between Noel Coward and Prince Felix Youssoupoff. Youssoupoff, a Russian exile, comes across as a character that Anthony Powell would have had great fun with: his claim to fame, and--title aside--ticket to society, is that he is one of the assassins of Rasputin, and, even more, was the person who lured him to his death. Brown writes,

Until his death at the age of eighty in 1967, Youssoupoff knows full well that his murder of Rasputin is the signature tune that accompanies his entrance into any gathering. He embraces his notoriety. In his Knightsbridge home in the 1920s he regularly entertains guests with increasingly melodramatic renditions of that fateful night in 1916. He even submits paintings of bearded men with evil grimaces to an art exhibition. So identified are he and his wife Irina with the death of Rasputin that a New York hostess mistakenly introduces them as the Prince and Princess Rasputin. Around the same time, Helen Izvolsky, the daughter of the Tsar's former ambassador to France, visits Youssoupoff and notices "something Satanic about his twisted smile. He talked for several hours about the assassination, and seemed quite pleased to reminisce, going over all the horrifying details. In conclusion, he showed me a ring he was wearing, with a bullet mounted in silver. He explained that this was the bullet that had killed Rasputin."

Now, we've all got stories we break out in certain company, old favorites with a track record as proven crowd pleasers. But good god--re-enacting the murder of Rasputin in your parlor? Who could possibly hope to top that?