Glinka [Hardcover]

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... PART I CAREER I. "I Was born," wrote Michael Ivanovich Glinka in his Memoirs, "at dawn on 20th May, 1804, in the village of Novospasskoi, the property of my father, Ivan Nikolayevich Glinka, who was a retired army captain." Having described the rustic surroundings of his birthplace, he continues: "Soon after my birth my mother, Evgenia Andreyevna, nee Glinka, was obliged to confide my upbringing to my maternal grandmother, Thyokla Aleksandrovna, who, having taken possession of me, removed me to her room where, together with my two nurses, I spent the next three or four years, seldom seeing my parents. As a child, I was delicate, and subject to nervous and other disorders; my grandmother, an aged lady, was almost always unwell, and her room, in which I was confined, was kept at a temperature never lower than 20 degrees Reaumur." His grandmother indulged him in every possible way, and but for his naturally amiable disposition would have wrought as great havoc with his character as she did with his constitution. The signature "Mimosa," to be found beneath some of the letters in his published correspondence, bears witness to the fact that he was fully aware of the source of the physical troubles with which throughout his life he was beset. His grandmother had made of him a sensitive plant. It is not to be wondered at that, with such an upbringing, the child should have become quite unlike the average youngster of his age; his first efforts to amuse himself were such as are rarely to be observed in a nursery. He was "piously inclined," drew pictures of churches in chalk on the floor, and appropriately followed this up, as soon as he could read--which was at a remarkably early age--by reciting passages from the Scriptures so impressively as to bring tears to th...