One normally addresses a person one does not know by the surname, preceded by an honorific, for example, ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr’, and the formal form of the verb, second personal plural (vy – very much like the French vous). Some knowledge of the person, even with a great difference in age and rank, entitles one to use the first name and patronymic only, though the vy form of the verb is usually preserved.
Appendix II
Table of Ranks
Established by Peter the Great in 1722, the Table of Ranks classified all civil servants, military officers and court officials into fourteen classes (no. I is the highest rank). Only the civil and military classes appear in this volume. It was not uncommon for a civil servant to make use of the military equivalent of his rank. Thus the three generals in ‘A Nasty Business’ are, in fact, civil servants of the third and fourth classes (privy councillor and actual state councillor).
Until 1843, rank VIII conferred hereditary nobility to a civil servant, and rank X personal, or nonhereditary nobility; the lowest rank conferred nobility in the military. The Table of Ranks remained in force until 1918.
Rank Civil Service Army Form of Address
I Chancellor Field Marshal Your High
Excellency
II Actual Privy Councillor General ''
III Privy Councillor Lieutenant
General Your Excellency
IV Actual State Councillor Major-General
V State Councillor * Your High-Born
VI Collegiate Councillor Colonel Your High Honour
VII Court Councillor Lieutenant
Colonel ''
VIII Collegiate Assessor Major ''
IX Titular Councillor Staff-Captain Your Honour
X Collegiate Secretary * ''
XI Naval Secretary * ''
XII Secretary of Province Second ''
Lieutenant ''
XIII Provincial Secretary Ensign ''
XIV Collegiate Registrar * ''
* An asterisk indicates those ranks with no precise army equivalent.
Appendix III
A Note about Money in The Gambler
Money plays a prominent role from the very first page of the novel, when the general gives Alexey Ivanovich two thousand-franc notes to be changed. As befits the international scene in Roulettenburg, apart from the hotel and the casino, the only institution mentioned is the exchange bureau. Sums of money are referred to throughout The Gambler, in currencies and amounts that have meaning for the narrator, but not necessarily for the twenty-first-century reader.
FRANCS, FLORINS AND GULDEN
A uniform German currency, the deutschemark, was not established until after the creation of the German Empire in 1871. Wiesbaden, the model for Roulettenburg, was the capital of the duchy of Nassau from 1806 to 1866, when it became part of Prussia. The Latin Monetary Union was established in 1856 by Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland to set standards and equivalents for their currencies: 4 gulden was the equivalent of 10 francs or 4 florins, all currencies which circulated widely throughout Europe and which are mentioned in The Gambler. (The exchange rates of the Latin Union were observed informally by many other states throughout Europe.) In the 1860s the French franc was the equivalent of US $0.20 (UK £1.00 was equal to 25 francs1); thus the 2,000 francs that Alexey Ivanovich changes in the opening of Chapter 1 corresponded to approximately $400, estimated to have the purchasing power of $5,500 in 2008 US dollars (£80, i.e. £5,800) using the retail price index.2 The 200,000 francs that Alexey Ivanovich and Blanche spend in Paris under three weeks’ time is indeed a fortune: $40,000 in 1865 had the equivalent purchasing power of over half a million US dollars in 2008 (£8,250 in 1865), with a purchasing power of almost £600,000 now).
ROUBLES AND THALERS
Also in Chapter 1, the general gives Alexey Ivanovich an advance of 100 thalers against the 120 roubles he is owed (approximately $95 dollars; the rouble was valued at US $0.80). The thaler, a silver coin that circulated throughout Europe for almost four centuries, had been adopted by most of the German states in the 1860s with a value of 1 gulden equals 1.75 thalers. (In Chapter 6 Alexey has some fried eggs and wine for a thaler and a half.) The 100 thalers equals 60 gulden or 150 francs ($30; £6); in other words, far less than he was due.
Potapych reckons that Grandmother lost ‘as much as 90,000 roubles in all that day’, or $72,000, which in 2008 would have the purchasing power of close to a million dollars (£690,370) – a fortune, indeed! Finally, the 3,000 roubles (approximately $2,400) that Dostoyevsky received from Stellovsky, the amount that keeps reappearing in Dostoyevsky’s works, is by no means a fortune, particularly when you consider he was supporting six people and paying off debts – its purchasing power would come to about $32,700 (£36,000) now.
FRIEDRICHS D’OR AND LOUIS D’OR
The friedrich d’or was a Prussian gold coin in circulation from the mid-eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth. In Chapter 2, Alexey Ivanovich begins his career at the roulette table with a stake of 5 friedrichs d’or, which he mentions is the equivalent of 500 gulden, putting the value of his first stake at 1,250 francs, i.e. $250 (£50), a purchasing power in 2008 of $3,400 (£3,600).
The louis d’or (gold Louis), a gold coin first minted under Louis XIII in 1640, depicted on one side the French king and the royal coat of arms on the reverse. Subsequent monarchs continued the practice, as did Napoleon. The value was set at 20 francs. In Chapter 2, when Alexey Ivanovich is describing his first visit to the roulette tables, he writes that a ‘gentleman … may stake 5 or 10 louis d’or, rarely more than that’; in other words all of 100 or 200 francs, i.e. $20 or $40 (£4 or £8); the lower figures come to a respectable $275 (£290) in terms of purchasing power in 2008.
NOTES
1. For the sake of convenience I have rounded off amounts throughout; the British pound was actually valued at 25.22 francs.
2. I quote the figures for current (i.e. 2008) ‘purchasing power’ in US dollars and UK pounds, converted from their value in 1865, according to the conversion calculator on the website Measuring Worth: http://www.measuringworth.com. The website of the UK National Archive also has a currency converter for British pounds, which gives somewhat different but similar amounts: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default.asp#mid.
* Dates are Old Style (see p. 359).
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 48