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A Russian “Yankee Doodle”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Norman E. Saul
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Enclosed in a letter, written in September 1815 by William David Lewis (1792-1881) to the United States minister in Sweden, Jonathan Russell (1771-1832), is an interesting and unique example of an American's effort to compose verse in the Russian language. Though only a curiosity of Russian literature, “Yankee Doodle” illustrates the degree of facility gained by one of the first American students of Russian after more than a year of study. Of additional interest is the pronunciation guide which Lewis furnished Russell—rare evidence on how Russian was actually spoken in the early nineteenth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 46 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974

References

1. W. D. Lewis to Russell, Sept. 28, 1815, Russell Papers, Special Collections, John Hay Library, Brown University. I am indebted to the staffs of the John Hay Library and of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for their assistance in the use of the Russell and Lewis-Neilson manuscripts, respectively. Research was supported by the American Philosophical Society and the General Research Fund of the University of Kansas.

2. For additional background information on Lewis and Russell see my articles, “America's First Student of Russian : William David Lewis of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 96, no. 4 (October 1972) : 469-79, and “Jonathan Russell, President Adams, and Europe in 1810,” American Neptune, 30, no. 4 (October 1970) : 279-94.

3. William David Lewis autobiography (1870), pp. 34-37, box 54, Lewis-Neilson Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter L-N, HSP). Strahl, also a young man at the time, later published several books on Russian history and the Orthodox Church.

4. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Dec. 24, 1814, Letterbook, 1814-15, L-N, HSP.

5. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Sept. 21, 1814, ibid.

6. “Russian Notebooks,” box 65, L-N, HSP.

7. Ibid. Golovnin's travelogue was published separately as Zapiski flota kapitana Golovnina o prekliucheniiakh ego v plenu u Iapontsev v 1811, 1812 i 1813 godokh in 1816, and was followed by English, French, and German editions.

8. “Notes on the Russian Language,” Literature Section, L-N, HSP. Lewis had already studied French and Italian and had published some poetry in the Philadelphia Repertory. A continuing literary ambition is evident from a large number of manuscript verses, including several written in Russian (e.g., “In Novgorod City Great” and “Description of a Petersburg Beauty“), in the Lewis-Neilson Papers.

9. Matthews, W. K., Russian Historical Grammar (London, 1960), p. 313 Google Scholar.

10. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Nov. 25, 1814, and to Jonathan Hughes, Dec. 7, 1814, Letterbook, 1814-15, L-N, HSP. Svinin's articles were published in a separate volume the next year. See Svin'in, Pavel, Opyt zhivopisnago puteshestiia po Severnoi Amerike (St. Petersburg, 1815)Google Scholar.

11. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Mar. 4, 1815, Letterbook, 1814-15, L-N, HSP. Lewis recollected in his autobiography : “The difficulty I experienced during all that time in finding opportunities to speak the native language of the country can hardly be overstated. With my teacher whom I paid for so doing, my servants, and the shopkeepers who spoke nothing else, I could get some practice, but among the educated class, my almost constant and only fit companions, whose language of society with each other was almost exclusively French, it was only by way of favor that they would converse with me in their native tongue, the ladies invariably evincing the most consideration in that respect” P. 50, box 54, L-N, HSP.

12. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Mar. 18, 1815, ibid.

13. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Mar. 4, 1815, ibid.

14. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Mar. 25, 1815, ibid.

15. W. D. Lewis to Russell, Mar. 30, 1815, ibid.

16. W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Apr. 22, 1815, Letterbook, 1814-15, L-N, HSP.

17. Russell to W. D. Lewis, June 25, 1815, Misc. Letters, L-N, HSP.

18. W. D. Lewis to Russell, Aug. 17, 1815, Russell Papers, Brown University.

19. W. D. Lewis to Russell, Sept. 28, 1815, ibid.

20. Russell to W. D. Lewis, Oct. 26, 1815, Misc. Letters, L-N, HSP.

21. W. D. Lewis to Russell, Sept 13, 1817, Russell Papers, Brown University.

22. The Bakchesarian Fountain, by Alexander Pooshkeen, and Other Poems, by Various Authors, Translated from the Original Russian by William D. Lewis (Philadelphia, 1849).

23. Cross, Samuel H. and Simmons, Ernest J., Alexander Pushkin, 1799-1837 : His Life and Literary Heritage (with an English Bibliography) (New York : American Russian Institute, 1937), p. 76 Google Scholar.

24. Matthews, ,Russian Historical Grammar, p. 175 Google Scholar; W. D. Lewis to J. D. Lewis, Apr. 25, 1815, Letterbook, 1814-15, L-N, HSP.

25. I wish to thank Professor Sam Anderson of the University of Kansas for assistance in analyzing Lewis's transliteration.