Arthur Toulmin Smith: A British Engineer in 19th Century Russia

This collection of letters tells the story of Arthur Toulmin Smith, a British engineer who spent his working life in Russia in the years leading up to the First World War.  As a young man he rides horseback in the snow in the Caucasus installing the new technology of the time, the telegraph. After a spell managing the Moscow gas works he goes into business with a Russo-German colleague, manufacturing weighing equipment and pipework for fire brigades.

His first wife dies young in childbirth.  His daughter, Alice, survives and is happily brought up by second wife, Mina.  Through Arthur’s letters home to his scholar sister Lucy, we watch Alice grow up and become independent.  Staying with Aunt Lucy in Oxford she meets a young trainee church minister.  Will Arthur allow his one daughter to marry on only £200 a year?

The letters throw light on a lesser-known British community abroad, the role the church served as a key centre, even to a non-churchman as Arthur, their comfortable life as ex-pats among, but separate from, Russian society.  Arthur’s great grand-daughter, Bessie White, provides a fascinating broader context to his life abroad.