At the end of July Russian art suffered a great loss in the death of the connoisseur and wealthy patron, S. M. Tretiakov, who had been Nicholas Rubinstein’s right hand in the founding of the Moscow Conservatoire. To Tchaikovsky, Tretiakov’s somewhat sudden end came as a severe blow, and he immediately travelled to Moscow to be present at the funeral of his friend.

A pleasanter incident during this summer of hard work came in the form of an invitation to conduct a concert at the Vienna Exhibition. “It is an advantage,” he wrote to his brother Modeste, “because so far—on account of Hanslick—Vienna has been hostile to me. I should like to overcome this unfriendly opinion.”

At last, at the very end of August, the vast accumulation of proof-correcting was finished, which, as he himself said, would have almost driven him out of his mind, but for his regular and healthy way of life. “Even in dreams,” he wrote to Vladimir Davidov, “I see corrections, and flats and sharps that refuse to do what they are ordered.... I should like to see you at Verbovka after Vienna, but Sophie Menter, who is coming to my concert there, has given me a pressing invitation to her castle. Three times already I have broken my promise to go to Itter. I am really interested to see this ‘marvel,’ as everyone calls the castle.”

In the course of this year, at the suggestion of the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich, President of the Academy of Sciences, Tchaikovsky was invited by the academician Y. K. Grote to contribute to the new Dictionary of the Russian Language, then appearing in a second edition. Tchaikovsky’s duties were limited to the superintendence of musical words, but he was flattered by his connection with such an important scientific work.

XVI
1892-1893

Tchaikovsky never travelled so much as during the foregoing season. It is true he was always fond of moving about. He could not remain long in one spot; but this was chiefly because it always seemed to him that “every place is better than the one in which we are.” Paris, Kamenka, Clarens, Rome, Brailov, Simaki, Tiflis—all in turn were his favourite resorts, which he was delighted to visit and equally pleased to quit. But apart from the ultimate goal, travelling in itself was an enjoyment rather than a dread to Tchaikovsky.

From 1885, when he resolved “no longer to avoid mankind, but to keep myself before the world so long as it needs me,” his journeys became more frequent. When he began to conduct his own compositions in 1887, his journeys were undertaken with a fresh object: the propagation of his works abroad. As his fame increased, so also did the number of those who wished to hear him interpret his own music, and thus it was natural that by 1892 the number of his journeys was far greater than it had been ten years earlier.

When Tchaikovsky started upon his first concert tour he undoubtedly did violence to his “actual self,” and did not look forward with pleasure, but rather with dread, to what lay before him. At the same time he was full of the expectation of happy impressions and brilliant results, and was firmly convinced of the importance of his undertaking, both for his own fame and for the cause of Russian art in general.

The events of his first tour would not have disappointed even a man less modest than Tchaikovsky. He had many consoling experiences, beginning with the discovery that he was better known abroad than he had hitherto suspected. His reception in Prague, with its “moment of absolute happiness,” the sensation in Paris, the attention and respect with which he was received in Germany, all far surpassed his expectations. Nevertheless, he returned disillusioned, not by what had taken place, but by the price he had paid for his happiness.

But no sooner home again, than he forgot all he had gone through, and was planning his second tour with evident enjoyment.