In a conversation with Boborykin, Alexandre Dumas
fils said: "Pauline [Viardot] always had a reputation of a lover of the
female, rather than male, sex, d'une..."
"And he used a cynical word of the Parisian
slang (циническое слово парижского арго)."*
One wonders what that word was? Not
tribadka, anyway. Any ideas?
Turgenev, who had been living with Mme
Viardot-Garcia's family ever since 1850s, moved to a new-built chalet
at their villa Les
Frênes ("The Ash-Trees") in Bougival on September 20,
1875.** All the hundred floramors (Villa Venus) built by Eric Veen's
grandfather all over Antiterra (Earth's twin planet), except
Tartary, opened on this very day (Ada, Part Two,
3).
Moreover, "the old Russian word for September,
ryuen'... might have spelled 'ruin'..." Boborykin's Family
Chronicle (1908) is entitled "Великая разруха" ("The Great
Ruin").
Not that it matters much, the name of Turgenev's
only daughter (whose mother was a Russian serf girl) was also Pauline. I guess,
she sued her famous namesake after her father's death in 1883 but lost her
case.
*P. D. Boborykin, "Za polveka. Moi
vospominaniya" (In the Half-a-Century Time-Span: My
Reminiscences), Chapter IX, p. 45 of the 1965 edition.
**see Turgenev's letter of September 19, 1875, to
N. V. Khanykov.
Alexey Sklyarenko