Aristocracy · Archive · Moscow · Mores

A Moscow grandee, poet and celebrated writer, Yury Alexandrovich Neledinsky-Meletsky, found a touching and ingenious way of calming the anxieties of his ailing wife over the fate of their only son Sergei, who served in the years of the Patriotic War…

Yekaterina Khovanskaya, like many mothers, suffered greatly when no word came from her son, especially during the chief and bloodiest battles, which only aggravated her already very frail condition. The son was a notorious carouser and simply forgot to write home, so his papa devised a stratagem: he asked him,