Grigory Eliseev and Vera Fedorovna. The last love of the merchant Grigory Eliseev

06.03.2020

Already in Soviet time From whatever city guests came to Moscow and Leningrad, they certainly looked into the Eliseevsky grocery stores, which stood unshakably on Gorky Street and on Nevsky Prospekt. For these were standards of quality, samples of taste. Today, the authorities have changed twice, and the standards are worth themselves. The history of the Eliseevsky House began with one feast at Count Sheremetyev's.
Feasts in his estate near Yaroslavl went on every day, the count did not know how to surprise the guests. But once fresh strawberries were served at the table, so large that the guests were simply stunned, they began to praise the owner and ask questions. Sheremetiev ordered to call the gardener. It turned out to be Peter Eliseev.
- Surprised, brother, ask what you want! the Count was generous.
What can a serf ask a master? Free. The man of his word - Sheremetyev - gave freedom.
And by the summer of the same year, a Yaroslavl peasant came to St. Petersburg and began to trade from a stall. Looks like he was not only a master of strawberry affairs. Soon he set up a shop near the Police Bridge, calling it “Eliseevskaya”. And in 1818 he already had both a store and warehouses right in the building of the St. Petersburg customs.
Peter Eliseev knew how profitable it is to trade in Russia. Wine - for "drinking is the joy of Russia." With his arrival in the wine trade, life became much more fun. The batches of wines were brought from abroad. In 1825, Pyotr Eliseev died, but he managed the matter so skillfully that the heirs had no choice but to add zeros to the capital. Brother Gregory excelled especially here. Soon the Eliseev Brothers trading house was established with a capital of 8 million rubles, a grandiose sum for those times.

Eliseev wine cellars were built throughout Russia to store the "divine nectar". Only in St. Petersburg (Birzhevaya line, 12/14) cellars occupied 5 square kilometers. Appetite, as you know, comes with eating. In Russia, Madeira wine became fashionable, and the Eliseevs immediately bought vast warehouses on the island of Madeira. Then the French city of Bordeaux fell into the sphere of their interests, because fashion is changeable, and Russia switched from Madeira to Bordeaux.

In order not to spend money on transportation, they founded their own fleet along the way - three high-speed ships (because when a Russian person's "pipes are on fire", special speed is needed). The following fact speaks about the scope of the activities of the Eliseev trading house: from 1858 to 1877, the Eliseevs bought up the entire grape harvest in the main wine-growing regions of Europe. Know ours! Finally, the fatherland noticed its prophets and became generous: for "long-term useful trade" it awarded the Eliseevs the right to depict the State Emblem on their goods, which was tantamount to the title "Supplier of the Court of His Imperial Majesty." By that time, the “supplier” of taxes alone was paying 11 million to the treasury.

This was the time when the headship in the Eliseevs' house passed to Grigory Grigorievich, the grandson of the first Eliseev. But wealth is painted not only by zeros, but also by legends, and there were many of them around the Eliseev brothers.
On the main Moscow street, Tverskaya, corner of Kozitsky Lane, the Secretary of State of Catherine II for her wife E.I. Kozitskoy built a mansion, one of the best in Moscow. After the death of Kozitskaya, the house passed to her relative and began to live an absolutely amazing life. Even in verse, the house and its mistress were sung:
"Among scattered Moscow,
With the crowds of whist and boston,
With the ballroom babble of rumors You love the games of Apollo,
Queen of muses and beauty,
You hold with a tender hand
A magical scepter of inspiration…”
Beautiful, and familiar style?.. Yes, this is Pushkin about Zinaida Volkonskaya, who magnetically attracted inspired servants of the muses to her salon. Here they listened to A. Mickiewicz. From the steps of this house, relatives and friends escorted Maria Volkonskaya, who rushed to Siberia for her Decembrist husband.

When Z. Volkonskaya moved to Italy, her mansion, more like a palace, found a new mistress. A certain old countess, an exact copy of the legendary heroine of The Queen of Spades, settled here with a dream of finding peace. But it seems that she only dreamed of peace. A ghost settled in the palace after her. Horror gripped the servants. At night, in a white shroud, a ghost roamed the floors and howled with the voice of an old owl. Passers-by, sometimes running along Tverskaya at night, also heard a dreary howl sounding from somewhere under the roof of the accursed house and, crossing themselves, ran across to the other side of the street so that the unclean would not beguile them.

The police only shrugged their shoulders - "I won't save you from the devil." Until a miracle happened: the stingy countess opened her purse and took out five rubles, waving in front of the nose of the quarterly. The banknote disappeared in an instant, and the next night police and firemen appeared at the accursed house, surrounding it in a tight ring. And, of course, a gang of robbers was detained in the attic, who invented a ghost in order to free the house for their needs. A sheet was also found right there, in which the leader of the gang portrayed the “white lady”. And although the "ghosts" were excellently flogged, the queen of spades did not want to live in a marked house, and he had new owner— Grigory Eliseev.

Since then, strange things have been happening here. The imported foreign architect sewed up the house with boards, which was a novelty for Moscow. A gigantic wooden box stood up on Tverskaya, so dense that not even a crack was left. This immediately gave rise to an itch of curiosity. There were daredevils who, despite the guards with dogs, penetrated inside and instead of clarity brought only confusion into the minds of Muscovites: - There is an Indian pagoda being built ... No, no, a Moorish castle ... And not a castle at all, but a pagan temple of Bacchus ...
The funny thing is that each of them was right, which everyone was soon convinced of when the scaffolding was removed in one night. On that day, huge mirrored windows shone with thousands of lights on Tverskaya. And behind the glass, as eyewitness V. Gilyarovsky describes: “... like a pile of kernels, a pyramid of coconuts rises, each with the head of a child; tropical bananas hang in immense, pood-long tassels, and above all this, electric stars shine on batteries of expensive wine bottles, sparkle and shimmer in deep mirrors, the tops of which are lost in a foggy height ... ".

In the hall, guests were met by Grigory Eliseev with “Vladimir” around his neck and the French Order of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole (France did not forget, who turned its entire grape harvest into gold).
Everything inside the store was amazing. Eliseev merged the lower floor of the Volkonskaya salon with the mezzanine, creating space for Eliseev wines. All ceilings and walls were covered with stucco molding in oriental style. Red lobsters quivered on the tables, surrounded by galantines and fancy jellies. Lobsters hid in frozen sauces whipped up like clouds. The Westphalian hams, with the skin thrown back by the cloak, were reddened with pinkish fat. Fat Ostend oysters, figuratively laid out on a layer of snow, seemed to breathe. Here and there amber sturgeon
But now, the bishop's bass covered the noise and anticipation of gastric bliss:
- Many years to this house! Health and well-being!
And the crystal in the chandeliers rang like thin bells...

Thin was in the trading business of Eliseev. Like a magician, he knew a lot of tricks and tricks. He knew that a rich man would not send a helper to buy food, he would come, feel, choose. So, it is necessary to put carriages and carriages somewhere. Eliseev took into account that a lady in chinchillas or a gentleman in beavers would not carry a basket or package to the team. So, doormen with a thunderous voice are needed to call the coachmen.

But main secret, which Eliseev owned, consisted in the fact that the buyers knew the sellers by name and patronymic, for the sellers were respectable, aged.
"Ivan Fyodorovich, what would you like to eat?"
By age - equal to the buyer. Not today's long-legged girls who don't care, busy with their manicure, but equal to equal. Ivan Fedorovich remembered everyone, he knew to whom to put salmon tender as butter, and to whom a lobster, a monster blushing at the window. The buyer should not look at the legs, but salivate for another reason - from appetizing food - this is more profitable for the owner.

And Eliseev's profit grew. There wasn't enough room in the cellars for goods, and in bank vaults there wasn't enough room for cash receipts. I had to build the same "Temple of Bacchus" in St. Petersburg on Nevsky. Then the Eliseevsky manager showed up in Kiev and began to put something rustling into every bureaucratic pocket "for acquaintance." In Kiev, this has always been loved, and huge pockets were made.

And, finally, a simple and reasonable idea was born: why not cover the cities of America, from New York to Philadelphia, with a network of Eliseev's excellent stores. Moreover, the messengers who arrived from there reported: on the other side of the ocean, the pockets “for acquaintance” are smaller than on Nevsky or Khreshchatyk. Yes, here an unexpected misfortune looked into the windows of the Eliseevsky trading house.

On October 22, 1913, the board of the Eliseev Brothers Trade Association celebrated the centenary of trading activities. In the evening, more than three and a half thousand guests gathered at the house of the Nobility Assembly for the anniversary congress. The hero of the day, “slender blond in an impeccable tailcoat” Grigory Grigorievich Eliseev, addressed those present with a speech: “I had a lucky lot to transcend the centenary of the trading activities of the Eliseev family, and I, first of all, with particular joy should pay attention to the fact that the hallmark representatives of this kind had selfless devotion Orthodox faith, the Russian tsar and his homeland ... ". A year later, the company was gone.

The year 1914 has come. Everything was fine. Received the title of nobility. 5 sons grew up. The firm flourished. Grigory Grigorievich is already over 50 years old, but he is full of energy.

And it must happen that, being married, Eliseev fell in love with the wife of a St. Petersburg jeweler. I fell in love with impossibility. He came to ask his wife for consent to a divorce, offering any compensation money. Wife Maria Andreevna Durdina was from a wealthy family of the owner of breweries and, apparently, loved her husband very much. And so two unbending characters collided. The wife flatly refused: - I do not sell my love!
She threatened to kill herself, which she did. She rushed into the Neva, she was rescued. I cut my veins, they saved me again. And yet, in the end, she hanged herself on towels.

The people said that she hanged herself on her own spit and the reason for this was the news that Grigory Eliseev had been secretly cohabiting with Vera Fedorovna Vasilyeva, a married young lady (twenty years younger than Eliseev) for six months. And three weeks later, the rumor was confirmed, and in the most terrible way for the family: on October 26, less than a month after the funeral of Maria Andreevna, Grigory Grigorievich married Vera Fedorovna, who had just received a divorce.

It wasn't even a scandal. It was an explosion. The children immediately abandoned their father, left their father's house and broke off all relations with him. All except the youngest, fourteen-year-old daughter Maria. The father simply kept the last one locked up, and let her go out only with solid security, fearing that either Masha herself would run away from him, or her brothers would kidnap her. And so it happened.

In early 1915, the brothers developed a cunning plan to kidnap their sister from captivity. In accordance with it, when Masha and the guards were returning home from the gymnasium in a carriage, they were attacked by a careless scorcher. Security jumped out of the carriage in order to deal with the culprit of the accident. While the disassembly was going on, three young men ran out of the door of the house opposite, grabbed the young Maria Grigoryevna by the arms and, bringing her into the house, tightly closed the door behind them. When the police arrived at the scene, Masha, through the window, in the presence of a lawyer prudently prepared for this occasion, told the authorities: “I ran away myself. Because of my mother."

A couple of months later, Grigory Grigoryevich finally left the company and left with his young wife for France, from where he never returned until his death in 1949.

None of his sons ever followed in his father's footsteps.

The eldest, Grigory Grigoryevich, became a surgeon. After the revolution, he did not leave Russia, for which he paid with his life: after the story of the murder of Kirov, he, along with his brother Pyotr Grigorievich, who also remained in Russia, was exiled to Ufa in 1934, where they were arrested in December 1937 and convicted under Article 58 -10 and 58-11 (counter-revolutionary activities and agitation), were promptly shot.

Maria Grigoryevna remained in Russia. She lived a long life and passed away in the late sixties. Her first husband, Captain Gleb Nikolaevich Andreev-Tverdov, was shot by the Bolsheviks as a hostage in the second half of 1918.

After the revolution, Nikolai Grigorievich left for Paris, where he became a stock exchange journalist.

The most successful life of Sergei Grigorievich. Already by 1917, he was a well-known Japanese scholar, diplomat and Privatdozent at Petrograd University. In 1920, he managed to cross by boat from St. Petersburg to Finland, from where he moved first to France, and then to the USA. In France, he taught Japanese at the Sorbonne, and in the States he received a professorship at Harvard. Sergei Grigorievich is officially considered the founder of the American School of Japanese Studies and one of the leading Japanese scholars in the world. He died in 1975 in France, where he is buried next to his father in the cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois. One of his grandsons, Vadim Sergeevich Eliseev, now holds the post of chief curator of art and historical museums in Paris in France.

, St. Petersburg - January 11, Paris) - Russian businessman, horse breeder of Russian trotting breeds, honorary general consul of Denmark in St. Petersburg, real state adviser (1914).

Biography

He was educated at home, studied winemaking abroad. After returning to Russia in 1893, he headed the Eliseev family business. In 1896, he transformed the family firm into the Eliseev Brothers trading partnership (equity capital - 3 million rubles). Until 1914, along with A. M. Kobylin and N. E. Yakunchikov, he was a member of the Board.

Under him, the case reached its greatest extent: in 1913 in St. Petersburg. The Eliseevs owned a confectionery factory, 5 stores (the most famous - on Nevsky Prospekt) and two shops in Apraksin Dvor, where wines, fruits, gastronomy, confectionery and tobacco products were traded. In 1903, GG Eliseev was assistant to the General Commissar for organizing an international exhibition in San-Louis. In 1898-1914 he was a member of the St. Petersburg City Duma.

He was also the Chairman of the Board of the Partnership of the Peterhof Shipping Company, a member of the Board of the Society for the construction and operation of crews and vehicles Frese and Co., the director of the Board of the St. Petersburg Brewing Society New Bavaria (in 1909, 670 thousand buckets of beer were produced for 1 million rubles) , was a candidate member of the Board of the Society "St. Petersburg Chemical Laboratory" (founded in 1890). The society owned a perfume factory, opened in 1860. He owned houses on Birzhevaya line, 12, 14 and 16 (in house 14 - the administration of the t-va, cond. f-ka, etc., in house 16 - wine warehouses), in Birzhevoy per., 1 and 4, on emb. Makarova, 10, Nevsky prospect, 56, emb. Admiralteisky Canal, 17, emb. R. Fontanka, 64 and 66.

He was the owner of the Gavrilov stud farm in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province, had a large block of shares in the St. Petersburg Accounting and Loan Bank. In 1882 he founded in

Biography

Under him, the case reached its greatest extent: in 1913 in St. Petersburg. The Eliseevs owned a confectionery factory, 5 stores (the most famous - on Nevsky Prospekt) and two shops in Apraksin Dvor, where wines, fruits, gastronomy, confectionery and tobacco products were traded. GG Eliseev was in 1903 assistant to the General Commissar for the organization of the international. exhibitions in San Louis. In 1898-1914 he was a member of the Petersburg City Duma.

He was the owner of the Gavrilov stud farm in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province, had a large stake in the St. Petersburg Accounting and Loan Bank. In 1882 he founded in the Mogilev province. stud farm of trotting breeds "Privalions". V last years life in Russia made a great contribution to the breeding of trotter breeds of horses.

In 1910, he was elevated to hereditary nobility. In 1914, after a divorce, the suicide of his first wife and a new marriage, he left for

To be completely precise, the first of the Eliseevs was Elisey Kasatkin. It was under this surname that the serf of the Novoselki village of the Rodionov volost of the Yaroslavl district, which belonged to Count Sheremetev, was listed in the revision tale. And his son was recorded in the house book as the count's gardener Pyotr Kasatkin. The same Pyotr Kasatkin, the son of the Eliseevs, who on Christmas evening in 1812 surprised the count's guests with real fresh wild strawberries. This story is so famous that it hardly makes sense to tell it in detail. Well, the gardener grew strawberries in his greenhouse, well, treated them to those who came to the estate to celebrate Christmas, the count, his wife Praskovya Zhemchugova and his girlfriend Varya Dolgoruky. Well, the gentleman said foolishly: “Pleased! Ask for whatever you want!" As it turned out, 36-year-old Peter had long wanted one thing - freedom. For myself and for the family. About what he hastened to inform the master. And he did not dare to violate the nobleman's word, given in the presence of witnesses. Already at the beginning of 1813, Peter himself and his entire family (wife Maria Gavrilovna and three sons - 12-year-old Seryozha, 8-year-old Grisha and 6-year-old Styopa) received freedom and 100 rubles for lifting. After that they went to the capital, to rich St. Petersburg. Having settled down with old acquaintances, the very next morning Peter bought himself a tray, bought a bag of oranges from the merchants and, having filled the tray with unusual fruits, went out to Nevsky Prospekt. Oranges on Nevsky among the aristocrats who made the promenade went with a bang. By autumn, they managed to collect the amount needed to rent a shop in the house of Katomin (Nevsky, 18) for trading "on a modest basis ... raw products of the hot zones of the Earth." And in 1814, Peter became so rich that he bought his brother Gregory out of the fortress. The business was successful, and by the end of the second decade of the 19th century, the brothers had accumulated enough capital to enter the merchant class. They signed up, noting the good memory of their father, Yelisey Kasatkin, as the Eliseevs. And at the beginning of the third decade, Pyotr Eliseev, in order not to pay too much to resellers, decided to go to those very “hot belts” for goods himself. On the way, his ship landed on the island of Madeira. Loaded drinking water, food, seized the mail and "forgotten" on the island of Peter Eliseev. Tom liked the local wine so much that he decided to shift the responsibility for the purchase of Spanish fruits to the shoulders of the clerk who accompanied him, while he himself remained in Madeira, wanting to get to know the winemaking process better. The meeting went on for several months. During this time, Petr Eliseevich made friends with all the port loaders, learned to distinguish “early Madeira” from “early Madeira”, went around almost all the island wineries, squeezed out more than one bucket of grape juice with his feet and was taken aboard the ship returning home in a semi-conscious state. But the merchant remained a merchant - two dozen barrels of the best Madeiran wine were brought on board with him. Since the brothers' shop warehouse was small, a special wholesale warehouse had to be rented at the St. Petersburg customs for the new goods. Eliseevskaya "Madeira" came to the taste of the capital's public, and on the brothers' signboard, the word "food" was added "and wines." In the next two years, Petr Eliseevich made three more expeditions: to the French port of Bordeaux, the Portuguese Oporto and the Spanish Sherry. Soon the brothers' shop turned into the main wine trade center of St. Petersburg. The size of the premises did not allow fully satisfying the growing needs of the clientele, and in 1824 the brothers bought their first own house (Birzhevaya linija, 10), in which they opened their first own store of "colonial goods".

Cellars, cellars and ships

In 1825, after the death of Pyotr Eliseevich, according to his spiritual testament, the management of the company passed to the widow Maria Gavrilovna and the eldest son Sergei, who introduced the tradition of evening fruit eating by clerks in his shop. In his opinion, in the “brotherly” company, all products should be the freshest, and therefore, before putting the fruit on the window, they were carefully examined and, at any hint of marriage (a speck, a burst peel, a green barrel) were put aside. In the sale of such products did not go under any circumstances. But it was impossible to throw them away either (God forbid, whoever sees that the Elisevs' “product has gone bad”). And he was not given home to employees for the same reason. And therefore, after the store closed, the clerks, employees and loaders gathered together and ate oranges, peaches, passion fruit, papaya and other, other, other ... In 1841, Maria Gavrilovna died, and three brothers took over the reins of the company: Sergei, Grigory and Stepan Eliseev. However, equality was only on paper - everything in the company was led by the eldest of the brothers, Sergey, who did business according to the "father's method" and was not going to enlarge it. Only after his death in 1858, Stepan and Grigory managed to turn around with might and main. Within a couple of months after Sergei Petrovich left this mortal world, the brothers established the Eliseev Brothers Trading House with a fixed capital of almost 8,000,000 rubles, then bought giant warehouses in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiev, as well as in wineries. areas of Europe, brought their own fleet. All this allowed the brothers by the beginning of the 1860s to buy wine not just in large quantities, but in whole crops. For nearly twenty years in a row, the brothers have purchased the absolute best grapes from all of Europe's finest wine regions. As a result - gold medals received by Eliseev wines at the Vienna and London exhibitions. And in 1874, the company "for many years of useful work for the benefit of the Fatherland" was awarded the highest favor to be called "suppliers of the court of His Imperial Majesty" and place signs on their signs and labels state symbols Russian Empire. In addition to high prestige, such a privilege also gave good protection from a fake. The fact is that if simply for counterfeiting someone else's products, a dishonest merchant, according to the laws of that time, was punished with a fine, then for the illegal printing of the state emblem it was very realistic, having lost all means and rights, to go to hard labor. In 1879, Stepan Eliseev died, and his only son, Peter, took his place in the company. However, he directed family business not for long: the energetic and impudent uncle Grigory Petrovich quickly pushed him out of business, and already in 1881 Petr Stepanovich officially left the company.

Houses, banks and hypermarkets

He went to pre-prepared positions. From a young age, Peter showed more interest in financial affairs than in trade, and therefore in 1880 he took one of the leading positions in the management apparatus of the Russian Bank for Foreign Trade, created with the participation of the company back in 1871. In addition, after marrying Lyubov Dmitrievna Polezhaeva, he became one of the co-owners of the Moscow Polezhaev Brothers Trading House, the largest exporter of Russian wheat. And by inheritance, Peter received from his father in St. Petersburg three luxurious houses: on Bolshaya Morskaya, on St. Petersburg and on the Moika. All this allowed Pyotr Stepanovich to live quite well and even arrange balls in his house on the Moika (house 59), which the whole country later talked about. Here is such a report about one of the balls placed "Petersburg leaflet" ....

The ball attracted the "lion's share" of our St. Petersburg eminent merchants. Among those present were the families of the Smurovs, Polezhaevs, Menshutkins, Zhuravlevs, Shcherbakovs and many others. etc. Representatives of the financial world were also present, there were also many military men and young people who were especially zealous in dancing. The ladies, as befits the rich St. Petersburg merchants, flaunted luxurious dresses ... The diamonds sparkled. One of the ladies present even appeared wearing a corsage made entirely of diamonds. The value of this corsage, according to the calculations of one of those present, is equal to the value of the entire Volga province! The mistress of the house and her daughter-in-law wore an unusually luxurious toilet: the first was dressed in a dress of white lace with an orange train, a diamond diadem on her head, the second was in a white dress with embroidered flowers with a train of the color of the Nile River. During the cotillion, all the guests were given very valuable surprises: ladies - gold bracelets studded with stones (and blondes received bracelets with sapphires, brunettes - with rubies). Cavaliers were given gold monograms, key rings ...

The son of Pyotr Stepanovich, Stepan Petrovich Eliseev, followed in his father's footsteps and even surpassed him in his financial career, becoming vice president in the same "for foreign trade bank" and heading the board of the Russian Lloyd, the largest insurance company in the empire. He was the first of the Eliseevs to receive title of nobility: in 1908, Stepan Petrovich was elevated “to the hereditary nobility ... due to an exceptional donation of 1,104 thousand rubles. for the construction, equipment and provision of the Charity House for the Poor. S. P. Eliseev, with the extension of the rights of this state to children born before this award. After the death in 1892 of Grigory Petrovich, his sons Grigory and Alexander were actively involved in the business. The trading house was transformed into the Eliseev Brothers Share Partnership with a fixed capital of 3,000,000 rubles. In 1896, Alexander, having quarreled with Grigory, left the company and left, like his cousin Peter before, in finance. (He was a member of the board of the State Bank, a member of the board of the St. Petersburg Loan Bank and chairman of the board of the St. Petersburg Private Commercial Bank.) The elder brother did not suffer because of this, since he became the sole owner of the company. In 1903, he built a luxurious store with a theater in St. Petersburg on Nevsky. The cavaliers took the ladies to the theatre, escorted them along the way through the trading floors, lit by outlandish electric lights, and bought them sweets, fruits and wines. Then a similar store was built in Kiev. But, of course, the main event of Grigory Grigoryevich Eliseev was the opening of a superstore in Moscow on Tverskaya. The palace of Princess Beloselskaya-Belozerskaya at the intersection of Tverskaya Street and Kozitsky Lane was bought by Grigory Eliseev on August 5, 1898. A few days later, he asked a long-time friend of the family, architect Baranovsky, “to take on the task of managing all the construction work in the current premises as an architect ... draw up and sign plans, acquire necessary materials, hire and remove workers. The trading partnership believes you, it will not argue or contradict you ... "And on October 23 of the same year, Grigory Grigorievich informed the city authorities that he" wants to start repair work and alterations in my house. After permission was obtained for the "redistribution", the whole house was instantly and completely "sheathed" in a wooden shirt and "overlaid" with enhanced security. Workers received extra money for their silence about everything that happened at the construction site. However, some of the curious Muscovites sometimes managed to tear off a couple of boards from the fence and look at what was created in such secrecy. It was they who spread a terrible rumor around Moscow: Grigory Eliseev is building a Moorish pagan temple opposite the Passion Monastery ... Grand opening"Eliseev's shop and the cellar of Russian and foreign wines" on Tverskaya took place in the summer of 1901. If you want to read about how luxurious the store was and what a selection of goods it offered, then take the classic work of the famous Moscow reporter V. A. Gilyarovsky (Uncle Gilyai) “Moscow and Muscovites”. I can only say that in the three halls of this "temple of gluttony" (gilyarovsky's definition) there were six departments - gastronomic, colonial goods, groceries, confectionery, fruit and wine. An unexpected difficulty arose with the latter: as it turned out, from the entrance to the store to the gates of the Passion Monastery was about 95 meters, and according to the law, the distance from churches and schools to establishments selling alcohol should have been at least 100 meters. However, Grigory Grigoryevich Eliseev resolved the conflict in a very original way: he simply remade one of the service entrances, in Kozitsky Lane, into a separate entrance for the wine department. And about fresh truffles, about hot peyzan soup straight from France, about oysters caught in the morning and about all kinds of caviar, read from Gilyarovsky.

Another life

On October 22, 1913, the board of the Eliseev Brothers Trade Association celebrated the centenary of trading activities. A ceremonial dinner was held in the main office for several hundred employees. And in the evening, more than three and a half thousand guests came to the house of the Noble Assembly for the anniversary congress and converged. Grigory Grigorievich Eliseev, “a slender blond in an impeccable tailcoat,” addressed those present with a speech: “I had a lucky lot to cross the centenary of the trading activities of the Eliseev family, and first of all, with particular joy, I must pay attention to the fact that the hallmark of representatives of this family there was selfless devotion to the Orthodox faith, the Russian Tsar and his homeland ... " A year later, the company was gone. On October 1, 1914, the wife of Grigory Grigoryevich Maria Andreevna committed suicide. People said that she hanged herself on her own scythe. And they also said: she laid hands on herself when she found out that her husband had been secretly cohabiting with Vera Fedorovna Vasilyeva, a married but young lady (twenty years younger than Eliseev), for six months now. Three weeks later, the rumor was confirmed, and in the most terrible way for the family: on October 26, less than a month after the funeral of Maria Andreevna, Grigory Grigorievich married Vera Fedorovna, who had just received a divorce. It wasn't even a scandal. It was an explosion. The children immediately abandoned their father and, leaving their father's house, broke off all relations with him. Everyone except the youngest 14-year-old daughter Maria. Her father kept her locked up, and let her go out only with solid security, fearing that either Masha herself would run away from him, or her brothers would kidnap her. And so it happened. In early 1915, the brothers developed a cunning plan to kidnap their sister from captivity. In accordance with it, when Masha and the guards were returning home from the gymnasium in a carriage, they were attacked by a careless scorcher. Security jumped out of the carriage in order to deal with the culprit of the accident. While the disassembly was going on, three young men ran out of the door of the house opposite, grabbed the young Maria Grigoryevna by the arms and, bringing her into the house, tightly closed the door behind them. When the police arrived at the scene, Masha, through the window, in the presence of a lawyer hired in advance, told the authorities: “I ran away myself. Because of my mother." After a couple of months, Grigory Grigoryevich left the company and left with his young wife for France, where he remained until his death in 1942. None of his sons ever followed in his father's footsteps. The eldest, Grigory Grigoryevich, became a surgeon. After the murder of Kirov, he, along with his brother Pyotr Grigoryevich, who also remained in Russia, was exiled to Ufa in 1934, where in December 1937 he was arrested and convicted under Articles 58/10 and 58/11 (counter-revolutionary activities and agitation), shot. Maria Grigoryevna also remained in Russia. She lived a long life and passed away in the late 1960s. Her first husband, Staff Captain Gleb Nikolaevich Andreev-Tverdov, was shot by the Bolsheviks as a hostage in the second half of 1918. After the revolution, Nikolai Grigorievich left for Paris, where he became a stock exchange journalist. The life of Sergei Grigoryevich (who, by the way, organized the abduction of his sister) turned out to be the most successful. Already by 1917, he was a well-known Japanese scholar, diplomat and Privatdozent at Petrograd University. In 1920, he managed to cross by boat from St. Petersburg to Finland, from where he moved first to France, and then to the USA. While in France, he taught Japanese at the Sorbonne, and in the States he received a professorship at Harvard. Sergei Grigorievich is officially considered the founder of the American school of Japanese studies. He died in 1975 in France, where he is buried next to his father in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. One of his grandsons, Vadim Sergeevich Eliseev, now holds the position of chief curator of art and historical museums in Paris.

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And the store on Tverskaya remained Eliseevsky. Even in the official papers of the Soviet era, it was called "Gastronom No. 1 Eliseevsky". Such was the strength of the brand created by several generations of St. Petersburg merchants.

On the day of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Brothers Eliseev trading house, the St. Petersburg weather, gray and rainy, corresponded to the severity that was on the soul of the hero of the day Grigory Eliseev.
Yesterday a messenger brought him a letter from his wife from the house on Pesochnaya Embankment, where Maria Andreevna had been living separately from him for several months. "... so don't ask, this is our final decision. Neither me nor my sons will be at the celebrations. We don't want to look like a laughing stock in the eyes of people...."
He did not read further, threw the letter into the fireplace, and it quickly burned down there, like the whole past life of the famous and very successful merchant.
Gregory was born when his father was already sixty, his mother was over forty, and his older brother was twenty-five years old. The family lived prosperously. Even the grandfather of Gregory, the gardener Pyotr Alekseev, who once served under Count Sheremetyev, opened a shop on Nevsky Prospekt - he sold wine and colonial goods. The father continued and expanded the family business. So the children could be given an excellent education. Gregory was invited the best teachers gymnasium, taught him abroad, and he received practical skills in commerce from his father, Grigory Petrovich.
The father introduced the eighteen-year-old Grisha to the daughter of his old friend, the St. Petersburg merchant of the first guild Andrei Ivanovich Durdin. Durdin's daughter Masha, a shy girl with lush dark hair, the same age as Grisha, somewhat resembled him: the same purposeful, restrained, knowledgeable in the merchant's business. The younger Eliseev was often invited to the Durdins for evening tea parties. A year later, Grigory made an offer to Maria Andreevna.
The wedding was arranged beautifully and magnificently. After the wedding, the young people were given a whole floor in the Eliseev family nest - a house on the Birzhevaya line of Vasilyevsky Island. Upstairs, surrounded by lovely little things that create an atmosphere of celebration of life and refined bliss, Eliseev's young wife in a peignoir of silk ribbons and lace looked like a fairy fairy. But in the mornings, in a strict dress with a small white lace collar, she would go down to the first floor (the main office of the Eliseevs was located there) and get down to business: she checked accounts and answered business letters. Then she visited the extensive family cellars near the house, where they stored and poured wine.
In 1892, after the death of his father Grigory Petrovich, the younger Eliseev inherited most capital: four stone houses, shops, cellars and barns on Vasilyevsky Island, as well as plots of land in other parts of the city.
In 1896, Grigory became the sole head of the company, together with his wife, he established a trading partnership, which allowed a sharp increase in annual turnover.
Arriving in Moscow, Grigory Grigorievich chose the old mansion of the princes Beloselsky-Belozersky, finished it fabulously and already in 1901 announced the opening of Eliseev's store.
Buyers were waiting for "... overseas fruits rising in mountains, a variety of wine, gastronomic and colonial goods ..."

No less enthusiastic audience caused the decoration of the store, more reminiscent of the palace.

The ceiling decorations of the new store have been refined.

Eliseev's luxury store opened in St. Petersburg three years later created a no less sensation.

Very soon, the Eliseev shops in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and then in Kiev became the most famous in Russia. To buy from Eliseev meant to arrange a holiday for yourself.
And the merchants themselves usually also knew how to arrange a holiday out of their lives. The feasts were not only cheerful, but even extravagant - with shameless girls. Grigory Griroryevich practically did not take part in them, but he did not condemn the merchants for pranks either.
The Eliseevs had five sons and a daughter. Grigory Grigoryevich did not have complete mutual understanding with his sons. None of them wanted to learn their father's business. And Maria Andreevna knew that her husband was too busy to have a serious affair on the side.
But the meeting that changed the whole life of this large family still happened.
At the evening of the St. Petersburg Merchant Council on the occasion of the admission of new members, Vasiliev, a merchant of the second guild, was among the applicants.
Pleasant appearance, tastefully dressed, courteous Vasily Vasilyevich came with his wife - a young lady of about thirty of the type that Parisian artists call "Les elegantes". The charm of her white dress with delicate embroidery and light dreaminess in her eyes struck Eliseev at first sight. When she introduced herself as "Vera Fedorovna", he even became embarrassed and blushed. However, Vasily Vasilyevich did not notice this and even invited a merchant famous throughout Russia to somehow look into his modest jewelry store.
Eliseev visited literally the next day. But the owner of the house was not there and Vera Fedorovna received him, Grigory Grigoryevich invited her to dine together, then took her home. So they started dating.
Each time it seemed to Grigory that the presence of Vera Feodorovna, the smell of her perfume, the rustle of her dress, the barely audible ringing of two thin bracelets - this was some kind of dream, a fabulous mirage.
Soon, Maria Andreevna found out about their meeting and demanded that her husband stop his "shameful relationship with a married lady." But Grigory Grigoryevich categorically refused even to speak on this subject.
Relations between the spouses became even more aggravated when the head of the family, trying to break the stubbornness of his sons, who did not want to deal with the affairs of the Trade Association, deprived them of material support.
Maria Andreevna, who had her own capital in the company, began to help the children against the will of her husband. And so that he could not interfere, she transferred the money for storage to her brother-in-law, Alexander. Then Gregory sued his brother, arguing that the "children's capital" was his personal property.
Gregory lost the case in court. But this prompted him to explain to his wife about Vera.
- You see, Masha, I love this woman. Now the whole point of my life is not to worry about the prosperity of the company and not even in children, but simply to be with her. And I can't help myself. We need to get a divorce because I want... to marry her.
Then his wife gave him a scandal, promising that this would never happen. But Gregory said: "I will still be with her, even if not according to the law."
The next day, Eliseev took Vera Fedorovna to Toila, to his estate not far from Narva.
On the day of the celebration of the centenary of the Trading House, only his thirteen-year-old daughter Maria was with him, but neither his wife nor his sons came to the celebration.
After that, Grigory Grigorievich rented a twelve-room apartment for Vera Feodorovna and began to openly appear with her in society. In the summer of 1914, the two of them went to the south of France.
When the unfaithful husband returned to St. Petersburg, Maria Andreevna specially went to his office to warn him that if he did not stop the relationship that discredited them, she would commit suicide.
Soon, Eliseev found out that his wife really tried to commit suicide - she rushed into the Neva, but, fortunately, she was saved. A few days later, Maria Andreevna tried to open her veins. Now the sons were constantly near their mother, but still did not notice: one morning she was found dead - Maria Andreevna hanged herself on towels.
The sons, not wanting to communicate with the culprit of the mother's death, did not even inform him. He learned about the death of his wife from the servants.
Grigory Eliseev didn't come to his wife's funeral, he didn't even send a wreath...
On the same day, all five sons renounced their father's inheritance. And when it became known that just three weeks after the funeral of his wife, Grigory Grigoryevich married the culprit of the family tragedy, the sons publicly abandoned their father and hereditary nobility.
After the revolution, the entire trading enterprise of the Eliseevs, as well as the rest of the property new government confiscated and nationalized.
Thus ended the hundred-year history of the Eliseev Brothers Partnership.
Grigory Grigoryevich and his young wife went to France, where he spent a lot of time in the garden. He missed his sons very much. Rumors reached him that his two sons were shot as enemies of the people. And three went abroad, but did not want to communicate with their father.
Vera Feodorovna died in 1946, and Grigory Grigoryevich survived her by three years...