Finding Kathleen ffrench continued...
Simbirsk or Ulyanovsk, besides being the home of Kathleen ffrench and her family property Kindiakovka, was also the birthplace of Lenin. Lenin’s family name was Ulyanovsk and the town was renamed in his honour. After the end of the cold war it reverted to its original name Simbirsk.
This visit to Simbirsk was an extraordinary experience for me. The town lies about 600 kilometres east of Moscow on the mighty Volga, where at that point the river is a couple of kilometres wide. We had been told that the Kindiakov family had connections with the poet and writer Goncharov, so we first of all visited the Goncharov museum. We had a meeting with the Director of the museum and told her the reason why we were there. The excitement was terrific, the museum staff told us that the Kindiakov family was more important in that area than Lenin’s family. They showed me photographs hanging in the museum of former members of the Kindiakov family. They dipped into their archives and found all sorts of papers and information about the family. We were taken by car to the spot where the grand house of Kindiakovka had stood, high on the banks of the River Volga. We toured the former gardens, now overgrown with weeds, and they were described in detail to us, as they had been in all their original glory. The village where the serfs lived was pointed out. According to the archivist they were well looked after by the Kindiakov family. We were shown the mausoleum where family members were buried, from where Kathleen ffrench had to snatch her beloved nanny’s body away, before it was desecrated by the Bolsheviks who destroyed everything; the house, stables, vineyards, church and even the mausoleum.
The only building on the site now is a memorial to Goncharov , built in 1912 by Kathleen.
19 August 1915 from a friend of hers:
…I really admire the wonderful Goncharov mausoleum (memorial?) built by you at Kindiakovka. It is very successful both in thought and location. Bravo, the architecture is wonderful. But on the steps its not the shadow of Vera, nor Raisky, nor Mark. It must just be the custodian of this wonderful shrine (temple) - in the moonlight the shadows join together and marvel at the wonderful Vera.
After a long tiring day of concentration and excitement and back in our hotel room, I managed to get a call through to my mother-in-law in Ireland to tell her that I had stood on the site of Kathlen ffrench’s home.
The next day, when we went back to the museum, the Director had arranged for the local press to come and interview me - I was only there by default and because I was married to Kathleen ffrench’s cousin’s son!!! I brought some photographs and letters I had with me, to show the people in the museum who were very excited to have news of her. I was able to tell them about the latter part of her life of which they knew nothing. They did not know where she had gone and where she died.
Our next port of call was the Simbirsk archives....a much harder place to crack! After some presents and chat, we managed to have a look at the catalogues of the papers they had in the archives from Kindiakovka. We were stunned when we looked through the lists and realised that there were 1200 letters and family papers being kept in these archives. The deputy director brought out one letter for us to look at, I immediately recognised the writing - what excitement - it was unmistakably Kathleen ffrench - wow!!!
Previous pageNext page
An Irish Woman in Czarist Russia
by Jean Lombard