St. Petersburg and the Journey There

Invited to Russia by Nicholas I (see Images 420–423) in 1842 as consulting engineer to supervise the construction of the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway, Major George Washington Whistler (see Images 7–8, 21) proceeded to St. Petersburg in the summer of that year without his family: his wife, Anna (McNeill) Whistler (see Images 1–5); their four young sons, James Abbott, William McNeill, Kirk Boott, and Charles Donald (for James and Willie, see Images 24–30); and the two adult children from his first marriage, George William (see Images 12–13) and Deborah Delano (see Images 17–19, 21). Diminished in number by the death of Kirk Boott, who had died of scarlet fever in July 1842, while his father was on route to Russia,1 the remaining members of the family (except for George) moved in October from Springfield, Massachusetts, their home since 1838, to Stonington, Connecticut.2 George, who had been working in the machine shop of the Proprietors of Locks and Canals in Lowell, Massachusetts,3 where his father had at one time been superintendent, continued on there. In Stonington, the Whistler family lived with Anna Whistler’s younger sister, Catherine Jane (McNeill) Palmer; her husband, Dr. George E. Palmer (see Image 36), a physician and native of Stonington; their infant daughter, Julia McNeill; and two children from Dr. Palmer’s first marriage, Emma and Amos. In less than two months after his arrival in St. Petersburg, Major Whistler decided that he would “not stay another winter without his family.”4 On 16 August 1843, with George to act as their protector as far as England, and their servant, Mary Brennan, to take care of Charles Donald, they were on their way to join him. Except for the excitement of running down a barque just outside Halifax, Nova Scotia, and rescuing all its hands, their journey across the Atlantic, or “the brook,”5 from Boston to Liverpool on the Acadia (see Image 77) was uneventful.

Anna McNeill had spent the period from autumn of 1829 to April of 18316 in Preston, Lancashire, for her health’s sake, meeting for the first time her father’s daughters from his first marriage, her half-sisters, Alicia McNeill (see Image 39) and Eliza (McNeill) (Wellwood) Winstanley (see Image 40), and the latter’s husband, John, a solicitor.7 Some seven months after her return home, in November 1831, she and Lt. George Washington Whistler were married, and now she was returning to present their children, whom no one there had met, except for Alicia McNeill, who had traveled to the United States for the birth of both James and Willie. During her stay fourteen years before, Anna “Mac” had been introduced to many Winstanley friends and relatives in Preston, surrounding Lancashire towns, and London, whose acquaintance she now renewed: the Chapmans, Picards, Simpson sisters, Smiths of Chaddock Hall, Ormerods, Haslewoods, and Stevensons. She revisited as well Eliza Sandland of Liverpool, whom she had known in her childhood in Brooklyn until Eliza was widowed in 1820 and returned to England with her two children.

On 20 September, after “three or four weeks”8 with the Winstanleys and “four or five days in London,”9 the Whistlers set out for their final destination. It turned out there was no direct steamer from London to St. Petersburg, so George remained with them. They sailed instead for Hamburg on the John Bull (which they affectionately called the “Bullie”) and from Hamburg (see Images 81–82) went by coach via Lübeck to Travemünde (see Image 83). At Travemünde, they parted with George and boarded the Russian steamship Alexandra for the trip across the Baltic Sea to Cronstadt (see Image 84), potentially more dangerous at this time of year than at any other, because of storms.

On this leg of the journey, personal tragedy struck them: Charles Donald, who had just turned two, died in convulsions after a brief illness. Although the law forbade bringing a corpse into St. Petersburg, Anna Whistler was able to persuade the captain to keep the body on board and at Cronstadt, on the island of Kotlin, to deliver it to the English Church there for safekeeping until a ship could take it back to the United States (see Image 85).10 On 28 September, as was customary because the large Baltic steamers are “of too heavy a draught to pass over the bar at the entrance of the Neva,”11 all passengers were transferred to a smaller steamer for the trip of some twenty miles to St. Petersburg.

* * *

The most affecting first impression of the city is made on the visitor only from the expanse of the Neva. Soon after leaving Cronstadt, they saw on the right the gilded onion domes of the church at the Great Palace at Peterhof (see Image 400) and in the distance a panorama of spires and cupolas seeming to rise from the water: the immense gilded dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral (see Images 119–120) and the gilded tapered spire of the Admiralty (see Image 118); nearing the city, domes of gold, of silver, of azure, with gold or silver stars; the pastel façades of mansions and palaces; the massive granite embankments; finally, the English Embankment (see Images 101–104), where they disembarked; across the way the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (see Images 154–155), where James would one day take drawing lessons; and, further downstream, the gilded spire of the Peter and Paul Fortress church (see Image 130). Here, the Whistler party was met by John Stevenson Maxwell, secretary to the American Legation, who took care of seeing their belongings through customs, and Major Whistler, who took them to the mansion they would occupy for some eight months. They had arrived at the First Admiralty District, the most sumptuous and elegant of the thirteen districts of St. Petersburg,12 and the one in which they would live throughout their stay. Here was the pale yellow building of the Admiralty, from which the district took its name, bordered on three sides by linden trees and on its fourth by the Neva. Opposite Admiralty Boulevard lay Admiralty Square, flanked on one side by Palace Square (see Image 132), onto which the lime green and white Winter Palace (see Image 116) and golden yellow Main Staff Headquarters faced, and, on the other side, by the square generally called Isaac Square for the first St. Isaac’s Church built there,13 but also known as Peter’s Square for its equestrian statue of Peter the Great (see Image 100), or Senate Square for the Senate building facing onto it (see Image 99). The English Embankment, which received this name because so many of the English inhabitants of St. Petersburg lived on it, began at Isaac Square at the curving golden-yellow building of the Senate. Along the embankment, other buildings of note were the Laval mansion, with its echoes of literary salons and of Pushkin and its ties to the Decembrist rebellion; the Naval Ministry; the Military Academy, where officers were trained for service in the General Staff Headquarters;14 the Rumiantsev Museum, the interiors and collections of which were in a parlous physical state and which almost no one visited;15 the house of Liprandi, where for a time Kirton’s English bookstore was housed, conveniently for the Whistlers; the house of Strukov, headquarters of the British Embassy; the white building of the English Church (see Images 110–111), where the Whistlers became communicants; and the house of Baron Stieglitz, the banker, who in 1841 arranged the state loan to build the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway.16 The last house on the embankment, at the New Admiralty Canal, belonged to Sir James Wylie (see Image 298), who had been court physician to Alexander I (see Image 418), and was now chief medical inspector of the Army.

The buildings on the embankment consisted of contiguous façades; they had no spaces between them and no entrance gates. One drove in from the parallel street behind, called Galernaia (Galley) Street, where most of the houses had courtyards with stables, barns, and other service buildings.17 It was called Galernaia because of the Galernaia wharf on the nearby Moika River, so named in 1721, after the Admiralty had shifted over to the intensive building of gallies there.18 Many of the English and most of the small colony of Americans lived on these two streets, where they rented apartments in mansions belonging to both Russians and foreigners. The Whistlers rented an entire mansion on the other (south) side of Galernaia Street. For a year, until they actually moved to the English Embankment, its English Church was for them its most important building.19 Set up in a house bought from Count B.P. Sheremetiev in 1753 and converted, in 1815 changes were made to it according to plans by Giacomo Quarenghi (1744–1817) (see Image 110). On the Galernaia Street side, the ensemble of structures on the plot was enclosed by a stone fence with gates decorated with Ionic columns. The double-lighted church was located on the second floor and occupied almost the entire length of the building along the embankment. It was rectangular in shape, facing onto the Neva and onto the courtyard. Its only decoration, the altarpiece, was a copy of Rubens’s Deposition from the Cross (1617–1618) (see Image 112). On the first floor were the apartments of the pastor, Rev. Edward Law (see Image 253), and his family, as well as of the clerk and sexton.20 From the embankment, the building looked three stories high. Its façade was decorated with six columns that united the second-and-third-story windows and had on its pediment three statues, representing Faith, Hope, and Charity. At the center of the building, on pedestals near the entrance, were sculptures of two lions, personifying strength and might.21

The English Embankment and Galernaia Street were connected by a short street called Zamiatin Lane. On one of the corners of Zamiatin Lane, at the English Embankment, stood the building belonging to the Merchant, or Commercial Society,22 where, in addition to attending dances, charity bazaars, and concerts, one could order takeout dinners, as Maxwell did. Zamiatin Lane was one block long, prevented by the naval barracks on the south side of Galernaia Street from continuing on. Also along the south side of Galernaia Street were the buildings of the Post Office Administration, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of the Navy, interspersed with private mansions. One end of Galernaia Street emerged onto Isaac Square through the arch connecting the buildings of the Senate and the Synod, the civil and religious governing bodies of the Empire. Beyond the arch, you could see Falconet’s (1716–1791) bronze equestrian statue of Peter the Great in toga and wreath, his horse rearing, its back hooves trampling a writhing snake (see Image 100). The other end of Galernaia Street was closed off by the New Admiralty Canal, which joined the Moika River with the Neva. Here, across the street from the back of Dr. Wylie’s house, on the corner plot, stood the mansion (see Images 88–94) of Count Aleksei Alekseevich Bobrinskii (see Image 86), grandson of Catherine the Great and Prince Grigorii Grigorievich Orlov (see Images 414, 443). Bobrinskii was Major Whistler’s colleague on the Railway Commission and his landlord.

Entrance into the main courtyard of Bobrinskii’s house from Galernaia Street was through monumental gates with marble busts mounted on pylons (see Image 88). The courtyard was flanked on three sides by the front of the house and two stone service wings a single story high. Here, in the winter of 1843–1844, James and Willie had a skating pond and an ice hill for sledding, both carefully attended to and smoothed each day by the outdoor–indoor man (see Image 362)23 until the final thaw. The house had a small garden attached to it on the Moika River side of the property (see Images 92–93). A stone wall, also decorated with marble busts, separated the garden from the embankments and extended to the entrance gates. At the corner of the wall, where the New Admiralty Canal and the Moika met, was a small two-storied garden pavilion (see Image 90).24 On the street at that corner, as on many St. Petersburg streets, stood a sentry box, either gray or black-and-white-striped, wooden or stone, square or round, with a policeman on duty at the door, dressed in a clumsy, pathetic-looking uniform of coarse gray cloth (see Image 353).25

Major Whistler had had an apartment on the ground floor of the mansion since his arrival, at which time the premises housed the American Legation. When Colonel Charles Stewart Todd, the American envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary (see Image 278), decided to move to the Imperial town of Tsarskoe Selo in 1843, Major Whistler rented the entire mansion for his family and invited Maxwell to be their tenant in that same apartment. They all lived here until May 1844, when the Whistlers gave up the house and took a dacha on the Peterhof Road for the summer.

* * *

Much of the area of the First Admiralty District was filled with the sound and grit of construction throughout their stay. At the Winter Palace, the New Hermitage (see Image 113), which was to be a museum where the public could view the Imperial collections, was being built. Begun in 1840, it was not completed until 1852. In Isaac Square, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, begun in 1818 and taking forty years to build, was a work still in progress (see Image 119), and until the 1850s, the square here was cluttered with worksheds and barracks and a fence around the construction area.26 The outside was completed. Invited artists, such as Karl Briullov (see Image 173) and other Academy professors, were now engaged in painting the interior frescos (see Images 121–124). James’s future drawing teacher, Aleksandr Koritskii (see Images 167–168), worked in the cathedral as Briullov’s assistant (1843–1847). Opposite the back of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, far over on the other side of the large expanse of the square, the Maria Palace (see Image 136) was being built (1839–1844) for Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, Nicholas I’s eldest daughter, and her husband, Duke Maximilian Leuchtenberg (see Images 430–431). On each side of the square in 1844–1845, buildings were going up to house the Ministry of State Properties.27 Quarenghi’s indoor riding range for the Horse Guards (see Image 137), the main façade of which faced St. Isaac’s Cathedral, was going to be replaced with a new one, but was finally not torn down. Its sculptures of the naked Castor and Pollux, deemed by the Synod too indecent to stand opposite the cathedral, were taken off their pedestals and moved to the gates of the Horse Guard regimental barracks.28

Towards the other end of the English Embankment, near where the Whistlers lived as of September 1844, without Maxwell, work on Annunciation Bridge (see Images 140–142), the first permanent bridge across the Grand Neva (begun on 1/13 January 1843), continued throughout their stay. The driving of piles went on all winter day and night except for Sunday, until the spring of 1846.29 One end of the span lay between the Fifth and Sixth Lines,30 very near the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. In 1847–1848, a cupola was being erected over the Academy’s Church of St. Catherine.31 Because of the bridge, what was to become Annunciation Square was being created on their side of the Neva.32 This involved destroying a network of canals. In 1842, the Kriukov and Admiralty canals were channeled into the Neva through pipes, and the area covered over with earth. This work was finished in 1844, and in 1845–1846 Horse Guard Boulevard was built over Admiralty Canal.33 In 1844–1849, the Horse Guards Regimental Church of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God (see Image 131) was going up on the spot where grain had previously been stored;34 it was consecrated just before Major Whistler died.35 In 1847, quarters for the officers of the Horse Guard Regiment were built here between the newly made Annunciation Street and Horse Guard Lane.36

With no permanent bridge, one crossed the Grand Neva over the Isaac Bridge (see Image 99), a retractable pontoon structure made of planks placed over a string of large flat-bottomed boats (plashkouty) somewhat like barges, joined to one another with ropes, and anchored.37 Located at Isaac Square, it connected the center of the mainland with Vasilievskii Island,38 the biggest island in the Neva delta (also called in the diaries “the Island,” “Vassili Ostrow,” and “V.O.”). When the Neva froze and navigation closed, one could walk across the ice to the other side or go by horse-drawn sledge (see Image 353). Roads were demarcated on the ice “between artificial rows of trees” so carriages crossing in the dark could avoid impediments.39

Fettered or free, the river was honored with ceremonies. On the Feast of the Epiphany (6/18 January), the Blessing of the Waters took place on the frozen river. “A large hole was cut in the ice opposite the Palace … and … a little temple covered with purple and gold,” called “a Jordan,” was erected over it. The clergy, emperor, and members of the Imperial family would walk to this temple along “a scarlet carpet … spread from the portals of the Palace.” The clergy carried a huge silver cross, which was immersed after a mass had been celebrated. At that moment, the fortress guns were fired, and the huge crowds bared their heads as one man. “The Metropolitan enters the temple, and having blessed the water, takes a bucketful from the stream,” and sprinkles the emperor, who “then embraces and is kissed by the Metropolitan.” The Metropolitan sprinkles the Imperial family and then the nearby crowd with the holy water, and “the procession … returns to the Palace.”40 When the thaw began, access to Vasilievskii Island was again by means of the Isaac Bridge, but there were dangers. It had to be swung to one side against the bank, often with minimum warning, when the ice on Lake Ladoga broke up and passed down the Neva on its way to the sea. If the ice freed itself suddenly, it might carry off the bridge, at times with people still on it. As soon as the river was freed of ice, the ceremony marking the opening of navigation took place (see Image 349). This involved drinking the potable Neva water,41 but those unused to drinking it could suffer intestinal problems, as James and Willie did. The first boat to cross the Neva, a state barge, carried the governor of the Fortress to the Winter Palace with a goblet of Neva water for the emperor. After drinking some, the emperor had the emptied goblet returned to the governor filled to the brim with gold pieces.42 The barge was then rowed down the Neva “to show that the navigation was safe.”43 The ceremony over, traffic on the river commenced: pretty barges, gondolas with their gay awnings, beautiful yachts, sometimes a man-of-war, the Cronstadt steamers. In the heat of summer, the water shone “like a sheet of glass.”44 Mostly at the beginning of spring and before the end of autumn, fog covered the city and hung over the river.45

* * *

St. Petersburg weather was capricious and the inconstancy of the climate as the factor determining the characterless nature of its populace was almost proverbial. The sudden changes in atmospheric temperature were so varied and rapid that it was impossible to guarantee in the morning what the weather would be like at noon.46

Spring was hardly noticeable. Warm days in April were a rarity. More often, the thermometer in the first half of May, especially in the morning, registered below zero degrees Celsius, while the second half of May could be called summer because then the temperature rose from fifteen to twenty-two degrees Celsius. The earlier or later breaking up of the Neva ice powerfully affected the outcome of spring. If the ice broke up at the end of March, then in mid-April the ice coming down from Lake Ladoga heralded the end of winter, but if the Neva opened up at the end of April and the ice from Lake Ladoga appeared in May, the cold of winter continued. In such years, the frost was followed immediately by summer’s heat. In a day or two, buds would appear on the trees and, in a few days, everything was in full bloom.47

Perhaps a third of summer weather was warm and clear; most days were rainy and overcast. The start of summer, like that of spring, was unpredictable; sometimes it occurred in mid-May, sometimes in early June. Sometimes the intense heat was extreme; then suddenly the temperature would drop by ten degrees Celsius or more.

The nights were frequently marked by crimson summer lightning in the western sky. Best of all were the bright and quiet white nights (see Image 117), when sunset had not yet faded completely, while from the other edge of the horizon a weak, faint light would begin to break.48

Autumn was characterized by fog, rain, wind, and fine snow; short days when the sun rarely showed itself; long nights; gloom and moisture everywhere, plunging people into sadness and extreme laziness. Sometimes, but rarely, there were days resembling those of summer.49

When winter set in, the air became finer and thinner, and people began to feel more cheerful and energetic. This, however, did not last very long, as fog and thaws betrayed the clear weather, of which there were only ninety-nine days per year, and the bitterness of the frosts lessened and it seemed as though autumn were returning.50

* * *

There were many new and exciting things to get used to in St. Petersburg: for example, the lantern, flag, and cannon signals. Every day, a cannon shot from the fortress announced the noon hour. The red globe hung out on the fire tower on Bol’shaia Morskaia Street every evening was a signal for the lamplighters’ brigade quartered there to set out on its rounds.51

Floods were an ever-present threat, built as the city was at the mouth of a swift, wide river, which was at times kept by opposing winds from flowing into the sea (see Image 107). The usual level of water was considered to be seven-and-a-half feet from the bottom of the river. The usual flooding time was autumn, but occasionally – though rarely – it occurred in spring and summer. Scarcely a year or two passed without a flood, but not all of St. Petersburg suffered from it equally. The flood signals were very elaborate and difficult to remember by heart, becoming more and more complex and frenzied as the water rose. If the Neva rose three feet above normal, a signal of three cannon shots was given in Galernaia harbor, and red flags were hoisted on the spire of the main Admiralty building. If the water rose more than four feet, then, in addition to the red flags, four white ones were hung on shafts in the daytime and four red lanterns at night. When a height of five feet was reached, cannon fire was heard from the Admiralty every half hour, increasing at over six feet to every quarter hour. At seven feet beyond normal, two shots were fired every quarter hour and this same signal was repeated from the fortress.52 In this respect, the Whistlers’ stay was uneventful, although Anna Whistler recorded that water ran through Galernaia Street one day in October 1843,53 and that they had an unsettling evening in April 1844, until a servant went outside and brought back the reassuring explanation given by the sentry on duty.

There was the “strange, wild appearance”54 of “the queer looking carriages”55 called droshki (see Image 352), and of their drivers. The droshki was “a small four-wheel carriage, holding two persons, sitting together behind the driver, or sometimes back to back, with the fore-wheels about twelve inches high.”56 It was “a cross between a child’s go cart, and a fire engine, minus the engine, with wheels hardly bigger than that of a wheelbarrow.”57 The coachman’s dress was distinctive: “his long blue cloth kaftan, reaching to his feet, a red … sash around his waist, … a very low, bell crowned, hat upon his head”58 and “a tin plate between his shoulders with an identifying number on it.”59 The droshki was “drawn by one horse, sometimes by two, in which case the second … gallops with his head brought down quite low, while the guide horse carries his head high, and never quits a fast trot.”60 When Major Whistler drove their carriage to work, the rest of the family hired a droshki. Although it could hold no more than two people, a small boy could squeeze in, too, if he stood. The fast pace of the horses meant that sometimes passengers were pitched out. In winter, they generally landed softly in the snow. Otherwise, it could be serious, and droshki coachmen usually tried to flee after a mishap, because speeding was against the law and an accident meant confiscation of carriage and horses.

Coming home in the evening, one would see “in front of nearly every house, the porter, wrapped in his sheep skin, sleeping on a board, laid upon the pavement … his sleeping place even in winter.”61 The porter would “[run] out to open the gate, with only his shirt on, and with bare feet – he did not mind the snow and cold, apparently, more than a dog would have done.”62

Then there were the illuminations, celebrating Imperial marriages, births, and the return of Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna after a long, expensive absence in Palermo for her health (see Image 98), that Major Whistler said took money from the coffers for the building of the railroad and delayed his own return home. A full illumination was a dazzling and expensive spectacle: before the entire length of the façade of almost every house, especially on the Nevskii Prospekt and streets adjacent to it, sparkled thousands of fires in the shape of arches, pyramids, palms, and giant stars containing the initials of the Imperial personage being feted.63 Major Whistler “was obliged to illuminate before his door on a house 100 feet front.”64 On some occasions, however, there was only a partial illumination, consisting of saucers with a little lighted oil in them placed on the pavement in front of the houses,65 and not worth stepping out to see.

There were the ubiquitous pigeons, “flying in all directions, and frequently alighting in the most crowded parts of the city” and viewed by the populace “with the sacred feeling that they are emblems of the Holy Ghost.”66 Untouchable, they would have multiplied without restraint if not for the “foreigners and others less scrupulous, who … convey them quietly from their roosting quarters to form an important part in culinary operations.”67 James, in particular, was struck by the fact that Russians would not kill pigeons.

“Saints pictures [were] all over the city, and at all times ‘the faithful’ [were] bowing and crossing before them.”68 The cult of Mary and of the saints had no place in Anna Whistler’s beliefs, and these “shocking pictures” elicited caustic remarks from her (for icons of Russian holy days, see Images 375–382).

You might see the emperor moving about the city incognito, but “no one is expected to notice [him], unless he first gives the salute.”69 Sometimes distraught petitioners violated the tabu and poured their misery out to him, resulting in a turn in their fortune.70

Like most foreign visitors, the Whistlers found in the daytime the “noise and bustle of European capitals … wanting here – and this, although carriages, & droschis, are flying in all directions on the wooden pavements, and pedestrians are numerous.”71 They were struck by the silence and solemnity of the crowds in public spaces. Though the populace was “merry by rule and line, … it [was] prescribed to them by the police, in what way they are to rejoice.”72 There were, of course, the cries of the street hawkers and the silence of the night broken by “the occasional long wild yell of sentry upon the street”;73 a drunk singing, unheeded by a sleeping watchman; or a call from a landing for a boat and its answering approach;74 but no “[w]histling, shouting [or] hallooing [was] permitted,” except for the huzzas of the soldiers at the sight of the emperor.75 One of the Americans asked whether this was “only the calmness of despotism?”76 No wonder James and Willie made a spectacle of themselves in their noisy “ebullition of joy”77 during Carnival, oblivious to the “‘gendarmes’ stationed at every hundred yards.”78

Reviews took place frequently in at least a dozen military squares. The most inspiring was the annual four-hour Imperial inspection of the Guard Corps in May in the capacious Field of Mars before they left their winter barracks for summer camp in the environs of the city.79 “The polished steel and brass of helmets and breast plates glistened in the sun, the plumes, and embroidered coats of every man seemed newly taken from the band box, the horses pranced, the music played, the Circassians the Tartars, the Cossacks, and the Polish lancers, performed well their parts, and altogether it was an imposing and beautiful array,”80 with “each regiment distinguished by the color of its superb horses.”81 James and Willie watched the review in 1844 as Maxwell’s guests, pushing forward with excitement to the front of the crowd and refusing to let their servant, Alexander, take them home “until the very end.”82 To Maxwell’s replacement, Colin Ingersoll (see Image 280), who grasped as well the mechanicalness of many aspects of Nicholas’s Russia, the soldiers “moved like a machine – so perfect was their step, and the incline of their muskets.”83

Of great delight to them were the white nights. Anna Whistler and Debo experienced the white nights in their walks on the embankment and from within the house, amazed at the late hour at which they brought their reading or their sewing to a close without use of candles. More amazing still must it have been, especially to James, to witness that the “soft glassy stream reflects from its surface the buildings … situated on its banks, but the masses themselves form no shadow,” through “an absence of darkness, rather than the presence of light.”84

* * *

This then was the city and the district where they would live for some five years and eight months with their joys and sorrows and without financial cares for the last time in their lives, except for Debo, who would marry well.

Notes