“Lobachevsky” is definitely one of Lehrer’s best songs, especially if one knows anything about mathematics. However, it’s scarcely the only example of a wag poking fun at Russians, or obscure branches of mathematics, or pretentious academics. Not even close

Tonight I bring you one of the all-time greats. Originally a private joke aimed at a stuffy, condescending academic, it quickly mushroomed into a grand conspiracy that involved an entire social club and culminated in a very convincing tribute volume to someone who was as real as, say, Ephraim Tutt:

Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch: An Appreciation of His Life and Works, “edited” by William George Jordan and Richardson Wright — New York has ever been a magnet for authors, publishers, and book lovers of all sorts. This was even more the case a century ago, when not only did the city have multiple newspapers and hundreds of publishers, but several fine, comfortable, beautifully appointed clubs tasked with seeing to the needs of literary figures, book lovers, and publishers of all levels of fame and talent. The best known of these was the legendary Grolier Club, with its fine collection of first editions, incunabula, and the like, but there were plenty of others. One, now all but forgotten, was The Authors Club of New York.

The name might suggest that only the cream of New York literary society was welcome, but the Author’s Club, which had been founded in 1883 and boasted the likes of Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and President Roosevelt’s nephew-in-law Franklin as members, was also home to less august figures such as William George Jordan (author of voter handbooks and biographies such as Charles Waldo Haskins, An American Pioneer in Accountancy), Gustave Simonson, AM, MD (author of several Greek textbooks and a few books on politics), and Richardson Wright (landscape architect and editor of House and Garden).

Obscure they might have been, and their works ephemeral, but this did not prevent these members of the Authors Club from enjoying good books, good company, and the comfortable atmosphere of their headquarters. There was only problem: Gustave Simonson’s alleged expertise in Russian literature.

This may not sound like much of a problem, especially during a time when anyone with pretentions to intellectual prowess and a great of leisure time had waded through the entirety of War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Chekov’s plays and short stories, and many, many other books where every character had at least three nicknames. However, Simonson, who prided himself on his photographic memory, was so much of a know it all, and so eager to share his precious knowledge with any and all comers, that by early in 1917 William George Jordan had had enough. He was tired of Simonson pontificating on Russian books, he was tired of his comfortable club becoming the home base of a textbook writer with delusions of omniscience, he was tired of Simonson, period.

And so it was that the next time Gustave Simonson, AM, MD, began his usual peroration on Russian literature, Jordan stopped him dead in his tracks by asking, “What about Larrovitch’s book Vyvodne?”

“Larrovitch? Never heard of him,” Simonson snapped briskly, and then changed the subject.

Well! That would never do. Simonson prided himself on his encyclopedia knowledge of Russian literature (and the pedagogical methods required to teach Greek to less than eager schoolboys, and chess moves, and lots of other stuff), and for him to admit that there was someone he’d never even heard of, let alone hadn’t read, was rare opportunity to bring him down a peg. The fact that Larrovitch and Vyvodne, his 1860’s masterwork about something deep, psychologically penetrating, and very, very Slavic, were entirely fictitious was beside the point.

And so, over the next few weeks (and months), Jordan and his buddy Richardson Wright decided that they would correct this manifest deficiency in their colleague’s knowledge.

Thus it was that they quietly approached other members of the Authors Club, let them in on the joke, and invited them to participate. Soon Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch, his life, his writings (particularly his great novel Crasny Baba, which may or may not actually mean anything in Russian but who cares, it sure sounds Eastern European!), and the sad lack of critical and public attention paid to this neglected genius were the talk of the Authors Club and literary New York.

Alas for Jordan and Wright, Gustave Simonson refused to take the bait. After all, Russians don’t have actual middle names like Americans, so wouldn’t it actually be “Feodor Vladimirovitch Larrovitch”? And what was up with that surname? Surely it would something suitably Russian or Ukrainian like “Larovitsky” or “Larochenkuk” or “Larionov”?

And wouldn’t an expert like Gustave Simonson, AM, MD, have actually heard of him????

And so it was that Richardson Wright, mild-mannered gardening writer, and William George Jordan, master of the potted biography, decided to go all in by organizing a testimonial dinner in honor of the Russian genius who existed only in their vivid and somewhat fervent imaginations.

This glorious event, which took place on April 26, 1917, must have been something else. The dining room was festooned with alleged Larrovitch relics such as a page from the manuscript of Crasny Baba, an embroidered shirt once worn by the great author himself, and photographs of Larrovitch, his ink pot, his death bed, the pen he’d dipped into the said ink pot, even a pressed flower allegedly from a bouquet laid upon his grave in that creative hotbed, Yalta. Best of all, there were photos of Larrovitch himself, and if any of the 300 guests noticed that the emaciated Russian looked just a bit, ahem, too American to be convincing as a son of Holy Mother Russia, well, they were far too polite to say so.

Gustave Simonson, who may have been pretentious but was far from stupid, admitted to being amused by all the fuss. He still refused to admit that Larrovitch had ever existed, however.

And so it was that Wright and Jordan decided that there was only one way to convince Simonson that Larrovitch was real: they would edit a serious, scholarly tribute volume to Larrovitch, complete with “translations” from his prose and poetry, overviews of his life and work, and even a memoir of Larrovitch’s visit to the American Legation in Paris by the eminently respectable Titus Munson Coan, M.D.

This nicely produced volume, which begins with a dedication to “the quickly kindled and lasting sympathy between the great peoples of AMERICA and RUSSIA,” came out in 1918. Highlights included a “painting of Larrovitch as a young man” that bore a startling resemblance to Richardson Wright, a page from the original manuscript of Crasny Baba in all but unreadable handwriting, a prologemenon to his works by statistician Franklin Giddings, and Richardson Wright’s own contribution to this slim but invaluable volume, “The True and the False About Larrovitch,” and how Wright kept from expiring with laughter while he wrote it I have no idea.

Then there are numerous translations from Larrovitch’s works, such as this glorious lyric:

Dearest, I fling you a rose, Red as the blood of my heart. Look without. See how it snows; How reckless the wind doth dart. Cutting and biting he goes. Dearest, I fling you a rose. As melt the winter’s snows, So shall its fragrance depart. Drink deep, while love’s fountain flows, Hand to hand, lips to lips, heart to herat. For e’en love dies away, O my rose, As melt the winter’s snows.

Then there’s this masterful selection from Vyvodne:

Sonia awoke with a start. She glanced around the room, her eyes half opened. Gradually the memory of the night came to her – the ghastly memory of that bacchanale. With a weary hand she brushed the hair back from her temples, letting its thick black curls cascade down her snowy white shoulders and over the lace of her nightgown. In a cot bed on the other side of the room by the stove lay Peter Ivanovitch. Loose and limp like a damp rag his arm hung over the side. His face was still purples from the drinking of the night before. He lay as he had fallen into bed – with half his clothes on, although in compassion for him Sonia had removed his boots which were soiling the sheets.

Best of all, though, are the two pages of references to Larrovitch in 19th and early 20th century that begins on page 125. For this list, which includes selections such as A. Aretz’s 1896 Die wahren Freunde der Slawen and Eduardo Pasco’s 1890 Commentario Sobre Novelas Rusas, was compiled by none other than Gustave Simonson, AM, MD, himself!

For it seems that in the end someone — who, no one ever said — finally let Simonson in on the fun. And far from being annoyed, he was so thrilled to be proven right that he decided that the joke was too good to let die, and lent his photographic memory and his stunning erudition to producing a page and a half of utterly convincing, thoroughly non-existent references to the Russian genius no one had ever heard of.

Yes. Really.

It was probably just as well, since by 1918 almost everyone in the Authors Club was well aware of the hoax. Titus Munson Coan seemed to be the only exception, but he could be forgiven because he was in his early 80’s and his memory was starting to go. Most of the literary world had figured it out by then, too, although the Boston Transcript gave Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch: An Appreciation of His Life and Works a respectful and entirely serious review.

So the matter might have rested forever, or at least until the Authors Club folded and its archives were deposited at the New York Public Library in early 1970’s. Aside from a reference in a somewhat arch memoir/critical volume by Edmund Lester Pearson to the Larrovitch craze, the once celebrated author had been entirely forgotten by the early 1920’s. Then, sometime in 1932, a sports writer from, my hand to God, the Stockholm-Tidningen in Stockholm, Sweden, read the tribute volume, realized that a genuine Russian surname would only have one “r” in “Larrovitch,” and revealed his suspicions to the world.

William George Jordan and Gustave Simonson, AM, MD, were long gone by 1932, but Richardson Wright was very much alive, still writing, and still editing House and Garden. He cheerfully admitted the hoax — there was absolutely no reason to keep the secret fifteen years later — and made a brave attempt at explaining its success:

One of the reasons why the book was taken seriously is that the Authors Club is [sic] an organization of tremendous age and dignity. The membership at that time consisted largely of college professors and literary gentlemen…. Consequently when this society put out the Larrovitch book no one in literary circles in New York dared question its sincerity and truth at first glance. It was too much like imagining your great-grandmother getting drunk.

I never knew my great-grandmothers, but I did know my grandmothers, and the mere idea that either of these venerable ladies ever indulged in a single drop of Demon Rum is enough to make me reach for the smelling salts.

And then I recall that my maternal grandmother swore by a patent medicine called “Peruna” that was 28% alcohol, and suddenly it all becomes as clear as those melting Russian snows….

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Have you ever heard of Feodor Vladimir Larrovitch? Gustave Simonson, AM, MD? Read an issue of House and Garden? Glugged down a couple of teaspoons of Peruna? Read Crasny Baba? Would you admit to any of this if you had? It’s Saturday night, so confess your sins and gather ‘round the fire to share….

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