The Irrational Journey, Signed by Pauline de Rothschild to Ingrid Bergman
[Signed by Pauline de Rothschild to Ingrid Bergman] Rothschild, Pauline de. The Irrational Journey. First English Edition. 1967. Book is in very good minus condition; dust jacket is in good plus condition—the blank page following the dedication has been neatly clipped from the book; jacket shows rubbing and minor edge tears. Book is inscribed on the half title, "To the beautiful Ingrid and Lars [Schmidt], this winter book for this summer island, with the love of Pauline."
“Perhaps the most important part of a journey is what it discovers in you,” writes Pauline de Rothschild in this travel memoir. It is an account of the three months she and her husband, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, spent exploring 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 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