Nashchokinsky house. Nashchokin's house: once again about Pushkin and his friends

I came from St. Petersburg on the occasion of the anniversary of the Moscow Museum of A.S. Pushkin (60 years).

But what exactly are we talking about? You can say the same about a toy. It belonged to Pushkin’s friend Pavel Nashchokin.

Well, here it is: at some point (financially prosperous, which did not always happen to Pavel Voinovich), Pushkin’s friend came up with a strange whim: to make a copy of his house, with all the furniture and other things that were in it, the size of one seventh magnitude. And imagine, I actually ordered the entire furnishings - not external copies, but completely functional items. Only tiny ones.

The piano, by the way, was also real - according to the testimony of one of his contemporaries, Nashchokin’s wife even played it - with the help of knitting needles.

Miniature copies of paintings were made for the house. And also everything that was required for billiards (I wonder if you tried playing it?).

All household utensils were also made in miniatures. (From Pushkin’s letter to Natalya Nikolaevna, about his visit to Nashchokin: “His house (remember?) is being finished off; what kind of candlesticks, what kind of service! He ordered a piano that a spider could play on...")

And here you have Pushkin himself visiting the owner - clearly reading something new.

This figure was subsequently made into a copy at the Imperial Porcelain Factory.

The house gained considerable popularity in Moscow at that time; people went specially to see it. But what happened next to his fate?

Alas, alas. The frivolous owner, having once again lost, mortgaged the house but never bought it back. The curious toy passed from one antiquarian to another, gradually its parts became scattered. And most importantly, the house itself, which reproduced a two-story city mansion, disappeared.

By the way, which one exactly? Museum workers studied Nashchokin's Moscow addresses - and there were a lot of them. Here is a house in Gagarinsky Lane.

Here on Bolshaya Polyanka.

Here in Vorotnikovsky Lane. And all of them, mind you, are two-story - how can you tell?

Returning to the fate of the contents: the artist Sergei Galyashkin took up the matter at the beginning of the 20th century - he came across some of the items from an antique dealer, and he searched for another part (unfortunately, not all) on purpose. In 1910, the house he restored was demonstrated in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow and Tsarskoye Selo. Photographs of this reconstruction have been preserved.

After 1917, the house ended up in the Historical Museum. In 1937 it was demonstrated at the All-Union Pushkin Exhibition. During the war it was evacuated, and the architectural frame recreated by Galyashkin was lost. Well, now he lives in the All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg - from where he came to Moscow.

Moscow museum workers, of course, supplemented the exhibition with their own materials. Here is a portrait of Nashchokin’s wife Vera Alexandrovna.

There are a lot of different things from the Nashchokin family, among which is a fan depicting frescoes of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The furniture (this time full-size) is also from the Nashchokins’ Moscow apartment.

And this is an image of the living room in the Nashchokinsky house (the real one) by the artist Nikolai Podklyuchnikov. The inhabitants of the house themselves are also here.

Pay attention to this bust in the painting that came from St. Petersburg. Doesn't remind you of anyone?

So the Moscow museum people decided that it was reminiscent and placed their own bust by Ivan Vitali closer.

Well, the exhibition “Nashchokinsky House” opened in the main building of the A.S. Pushkin Museum on Prechistenka. 168 miniature objects were brought to it (initially there were up to six hundred of them, a little more than half have survived). The exhibition will last until December.

It’s quite possible to look into a house whose walls remember Pushkin and where the furnishings of the first half of the nineteenth century have been preserved. This is not a mansion or an apartment, and the atmosphere of antiquity here is not the result of the work of restorers and designers. “Nashchokinsky House” has preserved not only the spirit, but also household items of the century before last - albeit in miniature.

Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin - extravagant homeowner in a rented apartment

Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin was born in 1801 into a cheerful and extraordinary family - suffice it to mention that his father, Voin Vasilyevich, married his mother, as they said, a day after they met, accidentally ending up in the house where she lived and, with his pressure, convincing the bride’s parents agree to such a quick marriage. The noisy, hot, inventive disposition of the father could not help but be passed on to his son, and Nashchokin himself was known in his circle as an extravagant man, however, thanks to his charm, he always had many friends, including Denis Davydov, and Vasily Zhukovsky, and Pyotr Chaadaev, and dozens of other famous people of their time, including Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Nashchokin met the great poet in childhood, when both were studying in Tsarskoye Selo (Nashchokin was then educated at the Noble boarding school at the Lyceum). The friendship began much later, when Pushkin returned to Moscow after exile to Mikhailovskoye, and continued until the poet’s death in 1837.

Pushkin wrote to his wife about his visit to his friend: “Nashchokin is busy with business, and his house is so confused and jumbled that his head is spinning. From morning to evening he has different people: players, retired hussars, students, solicitors, gypsies, spies, especially lenders. Everyone has free entry; everyone cares about him need; everyone screams, smokes a pipe, dines, sings, dances; there is no free corner - what to do?.. Yesterday Nashchokin gave us a gypsy evening; I’m so unaccustomed to it that the screaming of the guests and the singing of the gypsies still gives me a headache.".
Pavel Voinovich really loved to entertain guests, and every now and then he came up with hobbies for himself. Contemporaries recalled how passionately Nashchokin was interested in buying various trinkets - he bought vases, candlesticks, even a candle stub in front of which the famous actress once rehearsed for the role of Asenkov for huge sums of money. Having become the owner of the purchased item, Nashchokin could well have given it to one of his acquaintances.

"The only thing missing is living people"

Things were different with the creation and filling of Nashchokin’s dollhouse, famous in both capitals and beyond.

The fashion for such houses came to Russia under Peter the Great, from German and Dutch collectors. Nashchokin came up with the idea of ​​​​creating a smaller copy of his apartment in Moscow on Vorotnikovsky Lane, not far from Triumfalnaya Square. The house consisted of all the rooms required for the residence of a nobleman of that time - from the living room to the pantry. Each of the rooms was furnished as it should be - carpets on the floor, chandeliers and candelabra on the ceiling and walls, furniture was made in the workshops of the Gumbs brothers, and porcelain service was made at the Popov factory.

Even the general's boots were entrusted to a real shoemaker, and not just an ordinary one, but the best - Master Paul. Nashchokin filled the house with objects that not only completely repeated the decoration of his apartment, but were also the most real, functional: in a small samovar you could boil water, a small pistol could shoot, and a piano could make sounds. Vera Alexandrovna, Nashchokin’s wife, played on it with knitting needles.

The paintings in gilded and silver frames were painted by real artists, and the dining table was fully set - including wine glasses, glasses and cutlery.

It is not difficult to guess that the house and its contents cost the owner a pretty penny - Nashchokin spent about forty thousand rubles on the whole undertaking, money with which it was quite possible to purchase a real house. At the same time, all his life he lived in rented apartments, and, being the youngest son, he was deprived of his parents’ inheritance, so he constantly lacked funds.

The instability of the financial situation, constant gambling debts, in which Pushkin, another incorrigible gambler, sometimes came to the rescue, led to the fact that in the late thirties the house had to be mortgaged. Nashchokin was never able to buy it back, and the rarity spent more than half a century in the storerooms of moneylenders.

No longer a toy: the Nashchokino house is a keeper of the memory of bygone times

Only at the beginning of the twentieth century, thanks to the collector and artist Sergei Aleksandrovich Galyashkin, the Nashchokino house was brought to light and finally received its well-deserved fame. His undeniable advantage was that he “remembered Pushkin” - after all, the poet was a big fan of Nashchokin’s hobby. In 1910, thanks to Galyashkin, an exhibition was organized at the Academy of Sciences, and later the house became part of the exhibition of the Historical Museum.

In 1937, on the anniversary of the poet’s death, the Nashchokinsky house was transferred to the A.S. Museum. Pushkin. In 1941, along with other exhibits, it was evacuated to Tashkent; after the end of the war, it returned and since 1967 has been in the church wing of the Catherine Palace in the city of Pushkin. For the last twenty years, you can examine the interior details and look into the rooms that preserve history in St. Petersburg, on Moika, 12, in one of the buildings of the All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin.

To date, 611 items that make up the collection of Nashchokin’s dollhouse have been preserved, including porcelain figurines of the owner himself, Pushkin and Gogol.

Nashchokin's hospitality survived him for more than a century and a half. You can still visit this hospitable and slightly extravagant Muscovite and take your time to look at the interiors of the apartment, where every item preserves the memory of an entire historical era and the people who glorified it.

The desire to look inside ancient buildings and examine their interiors often brings connoisseurs of history, who not only keep cultural monuments, but also become them.

The lanes between Arbat and Prechistenka, in the figurative expression of Prince Peter Kropotkin, the Saint-Germain suburb of Moscow, have always attracted creative and unusual people. Among the local inhabitants there were and still are many big names. The famous Moscow madcaps also lived here, giving life in old Moscow a unique and beloved style of cheerful recklessness.

Pavel Nashchokin

One of the famous Moscow madcaps, Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin, lived in Gagarinsky Lane, corner of Nashchokinsky Lane, house number 4. In fact, Nashchokin changed addresses several times, but this one is the most famous, since Nashchokin’s great friend A.S. Pushkin often visited this hospitable house and even lived here from December 6 to December 24, 1831.

Arriving in Moscow, Pushkin took a cab and said: “To Nashchokin!”; no further clarification was required - all the cab drivers knew where Pavel Voinovich’s house was. True, the bohemian atmosphere in Nashchokin’s house seemed too vain even to Alexander Sergeevich, who, as is known, was not a supporter of excessive decorum and stiffness. This is how he described his impressions of Nashchokin’s house in a letter to his wife: “I’m bored here; Nashchokin is busy with business, and his house is such a mess and chaos that my head is spinning. From morning to evening he has different people: players, retired hussars, students, solicitors, gypsies, spies, especially lenders. Everyone has free entry; everyone needs it; everyone shouts, smokes a pipe, dines, sings, dances; there is no free corner - what to do?.. Yesterday Nashchokin gave us a gypsy evening; I so I’ve lost the habit of this, and the screaming of the guests and the singing of the gypsies still gives me a headache.”But although Pushkin allowed himself to grumble at Nashchokin in a friendly manner, they were united by the most faithful and devoted friendship. Nashchokin even became the godfather of Pushkin’s eldest son. He would have baptized his second son, but due to illness he could not come to St. Petersburg for the christening.

Pushkin and Nashchokin met back in Tsarskoe Selo - Alexander Sergeevich studied at the Lyceum, and Nashchokin studied at the Noble boarding school at the Lyceum, where Levushka Pushkin, the poet’s younger brother, was brought up with Pavel. Subsequently, Pushkin and Nashchokin met in St. Petersburg, but they truly became friends in Moscow when Pushkin returned from exile.
An open, generous, sincere character, and a penchant for kind eccentricities attracted different people to Nashchokin. Among his friends were V.A. Zhukovsky, E.A. Baratynsky, N.V. Gogol, V.G. Belinsky, P.A. Vyazemsky, actor M.S. Shchepkin, composers M.Yu. Vilyegorsky and A.N. Verstovsky, artists K.P. Bryullov and P.F. Sokolov... Contemporaries said that half of Moscow was related to Nashchokin, and the other half were his closest friends. N.V. Gogol wrote to Nashchokin: “...You have never lost your soul, you have never betrayed its noble movements, you were able to acquire the involuntary respect of worthy and intelligent people and at the same time the most sincere friendship of Pushkin.”

“Only Nashchokin loves me”, “Nashchokin is my only joy here,” Pushkin wrote from Moscow in letters to his wife. “...I’m chatting with him,” Pushkin asserted. Indeed, many recall their “endless conversations.” A variety of topics were raised - Pushkin read drafts of new works to Nashchokin and listened to his friend’s opinion, talking about the most secret impressions of his life and the movements of his soul. For example, only Nashchokin could Pushkin trust his terrible childhood impressions of the death of his brother Nikolai in 1807. (This death shocked eight-year-old Alexander. He told Nashchokin how he and his brother “quarreled and played; and when the baby got sick, Pushkin felt sorry for him, he approached the crib with sympathy; the sick brother, to tease him, stuck out his tongue at him and soon then died").

Nashchokin’s unbridled, passionate, but at the same time artistic nature constantly pushed him to unusual adventures. Once, having fallen in love with the beautiful actress Asenkova, he dressed up as a girl and joined his idol as a maid. (Pushkin used this story for the plot of “The House in Kolomna”). Nashchokin was either interested in alchemy or became involved with card sharpers. Having become interested in the gypsy singer Olya, he bought her from the gypsy choir for a lot of money and settled her in his house as his wife. Later Nashchokin got married to another woman. He met the illegitimate daughter of his distant relative, born of a serf maid, and fell in love. Pushkin advised his friend to get married and was at his wedding.

P.V. Nashchokin with his family, 1839

Nashchokin was an extraordinary storyteller. Pushkin, who considered his friend capable of writing and used the plots of his stories (for example, Nashchokin’s story about the robber-nobleman Ostrovsky suggested the plot of “Dubrovsky”), persuaded Pavel Voinovich to write at least memoirs about his eventful life. “What are your memories?” Pushkin asked his friend in a letter. “I hope you won’t abandon them. Write them in the form of letters to me. It will be more pleasant for me, and it will be easier for you too.” Pushkin was going to publish these “memories”, subjecting them to literary processing. But Nashchokin’s “Memoirs” were never completed, although the sheets with Pushkin’s edits were preserved. But... “He was sick of persistent work. Nothing came of his pen.”
Pushkin, finding himself in difficult circumstances, often turned to Nashchokin for help, and it happened that he himself helped him out in financial matters. Actor N.I., who knew Nashchokin closely. Kulikov recalled that Nashchokin “lived precisely according to the broad Russian-lordly nature, and, wherever necessary, he did good, helping the poor, and gave loans to those who asked, never demanding repayment and being content only with voluntary return.” Friends were never afraid to lend money to Nashchokin himself. Pushkin, being in the most cramped circumstances before his marriage, was forced to mortgage 200 souls of serfs. However, from the amount received, he allocated 10,000 rubles to lend to Nashchokin. In a letter to Pletnev, talking about the distribution of his meager income for a nobleman getting married, he mentions: “10,000 to Nashchokin to help him out of bad circumstances: sure money.” The amount of the deposit received was quickly sold out; ordering a decent tailcoat for the wedding was expensive. Pushkin got married in the tailcoat of Pavel Nashchokin. Eyewitnesses mentioned that the poet was buried in the same wedding coat after the fatal duel.

"Little House" by Nashchokin

Nashchokin’s main eccentricity, not understood by his contemporaries, and only appreciated by his descendants, is the famous “little house”. Dreaming of preserving the memory of the interiors of his house, associated with the name of Pushkin and other great guests, Nashchokin ordered a model of the rooms of his mansion with all the furnishings. The house, measuring 2.5 by 2 meters, was made of mahogany. It housed two residential floors and a semi-basement. Exact copies of furnishings were ordered from the best factories and workshops of that time, only their proportions were greatly reduced in comparison with the originals.

Dining table and dishes from Nashchokin's house (compared to actual size tableware)

“Imagining people in the size of the average height of children’s dolls,” wrote N.I. Kulikov, “based on this scale, he ordered the first masters all the accessories for this house: the general’s boots on lasts were made by the best St. Petersburg shoemaker Paul; a piano of seven and a half octaves - Wirth; ... the furniture, the extendable dining table were made by Gumbs; tablecloths, napkins, everything that was needed for 24 kuverts - everything was made in the best factories."

Dining room from Nashchokin's house

The table in the dining room was set in the most exquisite way - slender purple glasses, green tulip-shaped wine glasses, silverware, samovars. The walls of the house were decorated with paintings in gilded frames. An elegant beaded cushion was thrown onto the living room sofa. A bronze chandelier with crystal, a card table with cards, billiards, candlesticks with candles - everything you need for life.

Small living room

Pushkin was delighted with this idea. In December 1831, he wrote to his wife: “His house (remember?) is being finished; what candlesticks, what service! He ordered a piano that a spider could play, and a ship that could only be used by a Spanish fly.” In another letter, Pushkin noted: “Nashchokin’s house has been brought to perfection - the only thing missing is living people!”

Pushkin visiting Nashchokin examines objects from a small house

Having listened to the opinion of his friend, Pavel Voinovich settled in the house also little men - miniature doubles of Pushkin, Gogol, himself, ordered from a porcelain factory in St. Petersburg...

Figurine of Pushkin in the Nashchokino house (this is no longer the original porcelain Pushkin, but a later plaster reconstruction)

This idea was very expensive for Nashchokin. According to rough estimates - 40 thousand rubles, because all the miniature items were unique and made to order. (For that kind of money you could buy a real house in Moscow, but Nashchokin still lived in rented mansions, changing his address from time to time). Contemporaries were surprised that he “spent tens of thousands of rubles to build a two-arshine toy - the Nashchokinsky house.” And for us now this toy is a priceless monument to Moscow life in Pushkin’s times. The Nashchokinsky house is located as an exhibit in the All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin in St. Petersburg.

Billiards in Nashchokin's house

It is great happiness that the house survived, although its fate was dramatic. Nashchokin’s financial situation, like everything in his life, flowed from one extreme to another - he was throwing away thousands, then he didn’t have a few rubles to buy firewood in the winter and he stoked the stoves with mahogany furniture. Once, “at a difficult moment in his life,” he was forced to mortgage his beloved house and... could not buy it back on time. The house disappeared for a long time, wandering through other people's hands and antique shops...

Desk from the Nashchokino house (in comparison with real medium-sized books)

The relic was found only at the beginning of the twentieth century. The artists Golyashkin brothers bought the house from the last owner. Sergei Aleksandrovich Golyashkin restored it, supplemented some of the lost items, and presented it to the public in 1910. The house was exhibited in St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. At that time, journalist S. Yablonovsky wrote: “The more you look at this house, at its furnishings, at its inhabitants, the more you begin to understand that this is not a toy, but magic, which at a time when there were no photographs, no cinema, it stopped the moment and gave us a piece of the past in such completeness and with such perfection that it becomes eerie.”

Office in the Nashchokino house

The same office with an unfolded desk and a screen by the bed

"You are happy: you are your own little house,
Keeping the custom of wisdom,
Sluggish from evil worries and laziness
Insured as if from fire," -
Which of the Nashchokino houses - real or toy - should these lines be attributed to?

The new facade (“case house”) made by S.A. Golyashkin for the Nashchokino house in 1910

So, Nashchokin had to change his Moscow addresses several times, where he rented apartments, and one of the most famous addresses of Pavel Voinovich was the house of the Ilyinsky sisters in Gagarinsky Lane. The house on the corner of Gagarinsky and Nashchokinsky lanes is now marked with a memorial plaque. But the fate of the mansion is mysterious - some guidebooks to Moscow and Pushkin's places claim that the house has been preserved and carefully restored, others are categorical - Nashchokin's house has not been preserved. However, in Gagarinsky Lane at the indicated address there is a two-story mansion, the architecture of which is clearly marked by the stamp of post-fire development of the mid-1810s...

The fact is that the real Nashchokino mansion had become so dilapidated by the 1970s that it was decided to dismantle it and build a new one, “following the model and likeness of the one that was on this site 160 years ago.” (S. Romanyuk “From the history of Moscow lanes”).

Mansion in the early 1970s before reconstruction

True, during the reconstruction the second, wooden floor was replaced with a brick one, but in general the restorers tried to adhere to the old project and even partially restored the interior design of the rooms, guided by the surviving details and the Nashchokin “model”. The reconstructed mansion first housed the Society for the Preservation of Monuments. Nowadays there is the Nashchokinsky Cultural Center - an exhibition and small concert hall.

And another Arbat address where Nashchokin lived - Bolshoy Nikolopeskovsky Lane, building No. 5 - remains only in memory. The old mansion where Pavel Voinovich Nashchokin had his apartment no longer exists.

By the way, Nashchokinsky Lane received its name not in memory of Pavel Voinovich, but because the estate of his ancestors, the Nashchokin boyars, was once located here. In Soviet times, Nashchokinsky Lane was called Furmanov Street - the author of "Chapaev" lived here in one of the houses.