The Irrational Journey, Signed by Pauline de Rothschild,
[Signed by Pauline de Rothschild] Rothschild, Pauline de. The Irrational Journey. First American Edition. 1967. Book is in very good condition; dust jacket is in very good minus condition---jacket shows rubbing and minor edge tears. Book is inscribed on the flyleaf, “Pour François, une bonne anniversaire avec beaucoup de remercies, P.”
“Perhaps the most important part of a journey is what it discovers in you,” writes Pauline de Rothschild in this book. It is an account of the three months she and her husband, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, spent traveling through Russia in the dead of winter in the mid 1960s. In it, she muses on the complexity of the Russian soul, how great Russian writers flourish despite a climate of censorship and totalitarianism, the beauty and brutality of Russian winters, the state of religion in the supposedly atheist Soviet Union, and the country’s strengths and weakness vis-à-vis the West. She concludes, “What we have and they have not as yet—cars, amusing gadgets, space to live in according to one’s own rules of taste and not one’s needs—one day they will have. Liberty, tolerance, these are luxuries.” It’s a slight but deeply personal book, an insight into not only Russia but the sensitivity and character of one of the 20th Century’s most admired tastemakers.
“Russian servants do not differ from any other servants except by the amount they leave undone. Once you accept the fact that it is boring to give the same service every day, and, worse still, to the same people, relationships are most pleasant, even affectionate.”
-- Pauline de Rothschild