Museum letters

The archive of the Academy of Sciences for a hundred years has been stored large volumes with letters of the Geological Museum. They were written at the beginning of the 20th century in German, French, Russian. All of them without beginning and endlessly: answers to unheated questions, no answers. Like scraps of conversations accidentally overheard on the street, pieces of dialogs.

They are like casts of a long -gone era. They have incredible politeness and delicacy. Featers, thick ink were written out appeals: “Grace Sovereign”, “I have the honor to ask”, “We ask you not to refuse”. They don’t say and do not think so.

The meaning of the letters is unimportant, it is a boring, but an unusual manner of writing fascinates. In it, the atmosphere of the old time was caught as a bubble of air in a piece of amber.

“To the chemical laboratory
Nikolaev Marine Academy.

Dear Sir
Mikhail Pavlovich,
The Pyotr Great Geological Museum converts you five boxes at this place, which contain 160 bottles of water samples, mainly from the Caspian Sea, rivers, flowing into it or generally taken on its shores ... ”

In volume, dozens of requests for replenishment of the library, on the allocation of funds are filed. “We ask you to notify”, “please do not refuse”, “we ask you very much”, “do not refuse, please”, “I ask you not to refuse to honor the answer”.

And here are sheets with the ordered property. If you do not know the customer, you will never guess that this is a geological museum.

- Five thousand pieces of cylinders for drugs, with low (8 mm) traffic jams.
- Karborunum.
- rubber stamps.
- Watching glass.
- A bank with a dull lid.
- GIPS of the first grade.
- Three tables for a binocular magnifier.
- weights.
- The light bulb is yellow and tap tap.
- 19 thousand boxes.
- Uspur material.
- Boops for rinsing.

And another order for Kirki - to the Petrograd office of the Russian Society of Valuable and anchor Plants.

But letters to different people at all ends of the empire. Polite, fulfilled by genuine dignity. The request to help with the rental of a deep ravine near the village of Tarakli, where the museum wants to dig fossil bones. In the Stavropol province - the local historian and banker of the peasant land bank Stopnevich: "Gracious sovereign Andrei Dionisovich, will you find the opportunity to send your valuable work" soil waters "?"

Letters breathe with the mind and culture.

In the reading room of the archive of the Academy, pages rustling with a quiet, soft rustle. In the glasses of visitors, the ancient calligraphy and long -standing fonts are reflected.

Here is a pile of letters with answers to the donors that they sent fossilly beetles, fossil trees, mammoth bones to the museum and, by mistake, dried fish intended for the zoological museum.

In the village of Globochka Oryol province:

"Dear Sir,
If you want to sacrifice your bone to the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, you can send it to the address indicated on the form. ”

Requests and complaints.

The board of the Imperial Academy of Sciences:

“The cataloging of the geological department of the geological and mineralogical museum Alexander Silanthevna Ivanova, suffering from a serious and systematic treatment recently, needs proper and systematic treatment ... In view of the fact that Madame Ivanova’s vision was injured during the performance of the museum’s collections, I appeal not to refuse to represent the benefits in the amount of the reign to which the board will find possible to give out.
The systematic treatment of Mrs. Ivanova requires, at the insistence of doctors, about three months with an approximate cost of a hundred rubles. ”

And the signature is Academician Vernadsky.

“In view of the fact that I have to have firearms with me during my scientific business trips, I ask the board of the Imperial Academy of Sciences to issue permission for the widespread storage of one rifle and one pistol.”

And the signature is Academician Andrusov.

Notes, pieces of paper, reports, reports - kaleidoscope, random picture of boiling work. On one sheet, a request for the purchase of Gummiarabik.

The following: "I ask you to send to the geological museum it is possible as soon as workers for the gaps of the sexes in the entire museum." Then the complaint: "The gas grain in photographic will not be deposited."

Or: "You, a lot of Viktor Alexandrovich, is very obligatory if we can use an academic horse on Tuesday at 3 p.m.."

Steep leisurely negotiations. A marvelous strict language.

Anton Nelikhov