“I have just written the word Kattova, and what think you, Ladys and gentlemen the place is like?” (Martha Wilmot to her mother, 29 June 1804, Royal Irish Academy, Wilmot papers, MS 12L24, p. 216)

Today, Belarus is a country relatively few Irish people visit. In the early nineteenth century, however, the region was the westernmost portion of the Russian Empire. Positioned on the main highway between Vienna and Moscow, during lulls in the Napoleonic Wars the cities of Brest, Baranovichi and Minsk featured on the itineraries of some Irish travellers.

Two Anglo-Irish travellers recorded their experiences in the region in 1804 and 1806. Curiously, they would cross paths later in their journeys, meeting for the first time in Moscow in spring 1807.  This post will introduce these two travellers and experiences and impressions of present-day Belarus.

Martha Wilmot, 1775–1873

Martha Wilmot grew up in Glanmire, Co. Cork. The family was friendly with local landowners and aristocrats such as the Mount Cashells, with whom Martha’s sister Katherine made a grand tour of France and Italy in 1801–03. Through family connections, Martha came to spend five years in Russia, living with Princess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova in 1803–08.

Dashkova was one of the most distinguished women in Europe. In her youth, she was one of the closest friends of Catherine II (‘the Great’). She spoke English, French, German, Italian and Russian, was well-travelled, corresponded with the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith and Voltaire, and was the first European woman to hold public office as director of the Russian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dashkova also possessed considerable estates in western Russia, including property in present-day Belarus. She visited that estate only rarely, but in June 1804 she decided to show her young Anglo-Irish friend more of the Russian provinces. Martha was an assiduous diarist, and her detailed observations survive today in her journals in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. Travelling from Dashkova’s Troitskoe estate (approx. 100 km west of Moscow), Wilmot visited Smolensk and Orsha en route to Dashkova’s estate at Kruglo, a journey of 10 days.

John Ladeveze Adlercron (1782–1852)

John Ladeveze Adlercron of Moyglare, Co. Meath, was a barrister and maintained a house on the fashionable St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. In May 1805, he embarked on a two-year tour of central and eastern Europe. The cost of travelling continuously for two years was not lost on him, as he kept detailed notes of his expenditure in his diary: the cost of footmen and servants, of clothing, handkerchiefs and caps, of pistols and visits to the hairdresser. Some of his first expenses on this tour included a thoroughbred gelding, a dog, some new hats, a sword and belt.

Adlercron departed Gravesend on 7 May 1805 and arrived at Tonning in Denmark on 15 May. A less disciplined diarist than Wilmot, he left a fifteen-month gap in his diary, up to his departure from Vienna in August 1806. From that point he proceeded eastwards along the main route to Moscow, passing through Krakow and Minsk. He passed the winter of 1806–07 in Moscow, and left that city in March or April 1807.

Adlercron and Wilmot, two travellers who had never before met, crossed paths in Moscow in Spring 1807, both having previously travelled through present-day Belarus. Wilmot recorded the meeting in her diary, observing that Adlercron was well-travelled, had been to Constantinople, and had been shipwrecked in the Black Sea. This may account for the fifteen-month gap in his diary.

Attempted Murder & Child Impostors 

Adlercron’s time in rural Belarus was short but memorable. He and his companions were robbed by three different postilions, and were accused of attempted murder. He and his travelling companions gave the second thief, in Adlercron’s words, “a proper drubbing for his sake, our own, and future travellers, which he will not forget.” The man’s master later accused the party of beating him half to death. Their inability to communicate with those involved almost landed them in the courthouse, until they encountered a young man who could speak French and became their interpreter. While Adlercron was angry at the thefts, he had seen enough of the miserable wooden villages along the road to understand that they were the result of dire poverty.

Wilmot’s experiences were very different. She was treated to traditional dancing and music at a local fair, and she was fascinated by the thriving Jewish culture of the region. Wilmot’s record provides important snapshots of that unique heritage and the cultural richness of western Russia at the time. Despite Wilmot’s curiosity about Jewish culture, however, anti-Semitism features in her account. She attended the synagogue and the Jewish school, but wrote disparagingly of these occasions, as well as of many of the community’s traditions.

Wilmot’s experiences were overwhelmingly positive but, like Adlercron, she felt the desperation of the impoverished population. A child told her a “story of her woes that awaken’d our compassionmost feeling”, so Wilmot gave the child some money. Dashkova, on hearing the sorrowful tale, resolved to rescue the girl. Wilmot was indignant to later discover that the girl was in fact a “well practic’d impostor of 9 years old, whose mother was alive.”

In contrast to the poverty evident in the villages, Wilmot was delighted with “romantic scenery … one of the sweetest views I ever beheld – the country highly cultivated, corn of all sorts, abundant and clean, and flourishing …” She concluded that “a more happily gifted country is not easily to be met with.” Adlercron, on the other hand, pronounced it a “miserable country […] There is nothing worthy of the most curious traveller from Brest to this place [Minsk].” His disdain may have been aggravated by his displeasure with the food and his difficulty in finding lodgings.

The Wilmot-Dashkova travelling party was accustomed to such journeys and, as a result, was much better prepared than Adlercron. They carried their own beds, tents and bedclothes, and when available, they slept in the homes of peasants and, on one occasion, a parish priest. One nobleman had generously left his house open “for the convenience of any acquaintance who happens to be travelling the road.” Despite Wilmot’s fear of “robberys and murders”, the only attack that night was launched by bed bugs.

Sources

Adlercron, John Ladeveze. “Journal of a tour made … in Russia by way of Denmark and Poland.” 1805. MS. National Library of Ireland, MS 3756.

Wilmot, Martha. “Letters from Russia.” 1803–06. MS. Royal Irish Academy, Wilmot Papers, MS 12L24.