The Northern Light
By Andrei Vorobei
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
The St. Petersburg Times was not the first English-language newspaper in St. Petersburg. Before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, when the city was a flourishing Imperial capital, a range of publications were printed in English. In the third of a series of articles, art historian Andrei Vorobei looks at The Northern Light published in St Petersburg in 1882-1883.
It took 20 years after the demise of The Nevsky Magazine 1863 for Englishmen to revive the idea of an English-language periodical in St. Petersburg.
The Northern Light, which was modestly advertised as “an extraordinary production,” “the best and cheapest publication of the world,” “for sale at all respectable chemists,” and “recommend all who suffers from nervous irritability” or “sleeplessness.”
In many respects, The Northern Light really was unparalled.
“The first rays of this new luminary appeared above the horizon” during the second year of the reign of Tsar Alexander III, labelled as “a sovereign of the retrograde type.” This comment aside, the journal was indifferent to local matters.
On August 1882 “it entered the brains of some ‘juvenile amateurs’ among the English in St Petersburg to have a “literary outburst.’”
“It began with seventeen members, but not two months passed before the promoters became ambitious, raised the circulation to 50 numbers and had the magazine lithographed,” the editor, G. F. Field, explained later.
Due to the limited number of subscribers the first eight monthlies were handwritten and then mechanically reproduced. It was, indeed, the “cheapest publication of the world.”
Instead of being paid, the authors were offered with vast possibilities “to shine in print”: “every subscriber of the ridiculously small sum of Ro. 3 – a year is not only entitled to twelve numbers of that entirely unique and unparalleled periodical ‘The Northern Light’, but is likewise free to send in to the editor as many cartloads of essays, stories, poetry, contributions of all kinds, as he pleases. Only, the editor cannot undertake to print everything sent in to him. He reserves the usual right of selection and rejection”.
Another of the editor’s prerogatives was proposal of the subject for each month. The subjects as well as deadlines for contributions were announced one or two months before the publication. Approximately half of the 30 pages in each issue was, a collection of amateur compositions in prose or poetry on the subject that was diverse in content, form and style. For instance, the “Hero” issue featured such contributions as a semi-philosophical sketch, “What is the hero?,” (“the picturesque, handsome and strong – or the plain, homely and feeble?”), a poem, “A Legendary Hero of Ireland,” a children’s story, “Two Little Heroines,” an amorous sketch “Her Hero,” as well as a number of autobiographical accounts.
Predictably, the theme of “Beauty” was one of the the most stimulating to contributors. The journal featured both earnest theoretical meditations and frivolous stuff. The following anonymous contribution is particularly appealing:
“I was a beautiful boy from the very first, so I am told, and I have been very beautiful ever since. My fine rolling eye is the palest and blue, not mild blue, mind you, but bold honest deeply-tender love-inspiring blue, such as melted from the eyes of the young Olympian Gods. My hair is of that light brown, so dear to maidens… My forehead is of course low… I don’t like high foreheads, besides they are quite old fashioned… I am proud of my nose. Of course I never blow it in the cold weather, that is a most suicidal thing to do, for if you want to show me an absurdity let it be a red nose! … My mouth is a very pretty mouth is very poetical and ‘mobile’ and sensitive and all that sort of thing…Let me advise any one who wishes to study the beauty seriously, to buy my photograph and study that.”
Serializations of amateur novels and other trash occupied the rest of the journal. One of the most appreciated of them was “Eugenius Trafford” by Trefoil; another inventive idea was “The Loving Legend of Sir Ludovic,” where each chapter was continued “by someone else.”
Along with “a few historical facts not generally known,” ghost stories, remarks on Buddhism, anecdotes, the widespread genre was the “letter to the editor and its readers,” which was usually composed of marvellous, naÕve or idiotic stories, complaints or remarks.
For instance, one of the contributors came to the journal’s community of readers for sympathy: “My wife possesses a magnificent cat... This cat is very black, very huge… and has great influence over my wife. Now I’m nominal master of this house… Things are come to such a pass, that unless you can recommend something or other, I’m going to tell my wife plainly – ‘the cat or me’.” The author of another letter, titled “Our Rat,” informed readers that “a rat has died under the floor of our drawing-room” and offered detailed evidence of the event.
“In consequence of numerous applications for membership,” the editor announced the following year, “the only St. Petersburg English periodical will be printed” (as opposed to handmade).
There were twelve printed issues of The Northern Light in total. In its printed format as a respectable paper, it was obliged to have more severe selection and formal texts. The journal had none of the creative, unconstrained and intimate climate of its first numbers. Still dependent on amateur contributions, the print version lacked the ingenuous, stormy, lively atmosphere of its handwritten predecessor. A year later, due a falling number of subscribers, the magazine was discontinued. However, this physical ending was long preceded by the symbolic one.
The author and The St. Petersburg Times thank the staff of the Rossika, the Newspaper Department, and Russian and Foreign Magazines Funds of the Russian National Library for assistance in providing the material for this article.
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