Frederick’s descendants live in France to this day. Mikhail had two children, and his son, Bruce, was married to a prominent French designer known for her upscale and playfully sensual lingerie—Chantal Thomass. She adopted and then kept his—and Frederick’s—surname, albeit modified for French pronunciation. It now survives in the name of her flagship store on the rue Saint-Honoré, one of the most famous shopping streets in Paris, as well as her boutiques in many other fashionable locations and cities around the world.
Frederick Bruce Thomas would have been pleased and amused.
Illustrations
The old jail (L) and the old Coahoma County Courthouse, Friars Point, Mississippi, where Lewis Thomas successfully bid on a farm in 1869, and where he and his wife, India, pursued numerous legal actions in subsequent years. (Courtesy Flo Larson, North Delta Museum, Friars Point)
The Auditorium Hotel, Michigan Avenue, Chicago, where Frederick Thomas first worked as a waiter, c. 1892, now Roosevelt University. (Auditorium)
Frederick Bruce Thomas, c. 1896, probably in Paris. (L, NARA II. R, courtesy Bruce Thomass)
Frederick Bruce Thomas, c. 1896, probably in Paris. (L, NARA II. R, courtesy Bruce Thomass)
The Kremlin and Saint Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square, Moscow, as Frederick Thomas saw them, c. 1900. (Library of Congress)
View of Tverskaya Street, Moscow, c. 1900, one of the main streets in the center, showing the preponderance of low buildings and horse-drawn transportation.
Yar Restaurant in Moscow, one of the most famous in Russia, where Frederick Thomas worked as a maître d’hôtel and assistant to the owner, after its reconstruction in 1910.
Grand Entrance to Aquarium Garden, Moscow, c. 1912, when “Thomas & Co.” took it over. (author’s collection)
Frederick Thomas shortly after his marriage on January 5, 1913, to his second wife, “Valli,” with his children by his first wife, Hedwig—Irma, 4 years old, Olga, 11, and Mikhail, 6½. The other men may be his new wife’s relatives. (NARA II)
Frederick Thomas (1st row, 2nd from R) with actors in Moscow’s Aquarium Garden. (Stsena i arena, May 29, 1914)
“F. F. Tomas” on the eve of opening Maxim in Moscow, October 1912. (Var’ete i tsirk, October 1, 1912)
Elvira Jungmann, c. 1910, a German performer who became Frederick Thomas’s mistress in Moscow and later his wife. (author’s collection)
Elvira Jungmann, c. 1910, a German performer who became Frederick Thomas’s mistress in Moscow and later his wife. (author’s collection)
Advertisement for Maxim with “Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas” as part of the attraction, and a list of domestic and foreign variety acts, including an “Original American Negro Trio Philadelphy [sic].” (Stsena i arena, November 4, 1915)
Advertisement for American heavy-weight boxing champion Jack Johnson’s exhibition fights in Moscow two weeks before the start of World War I: “‘Aquarium’ Directors F. F. Tomas and M. P. Tsarev, Appearances Beginning July 15 [O. S., July 28 N. S.], The World’s Invincible Boxer, JOHNSON.” (Stsena i arena, July 15, 1914)
View of the historic Stambul quarter of Constantinople, much as Frederick Thomas saw it when he arrived in 1919.
Galata Bridge, Constantinople, view from Stambul toward Galata and Pera, the European quarters of the city. (Library of Congress)
Illustration of what Frederick Thomas’s first venture in Constantinople in 1919—the Anglo-American Villa, also known as the Stella Club—looked like: an open air stage with a dancer, a bandstand to the left, and civilian and Allied military clients at tables. (Al’manakh nashi dni/Almanach nos jours, no. 10, c. 1920.)
Advertisement for the famous nightclub Maxim in Constantinople in the British military newspaper Orient News (April 2, 1922), announcing an American jazz band and the special status that the establishment had been granted by the British occupational forces. Frederick Thomas temporarily included the name of his older entertainment garden to ensure that his former clients would make the connection with Maxim.
Frederick Thomas’s third wife, Elvira; his oldest son Mikhail; and his sons by Elvira, Frederick Jr. and Bruce, c. 1920, Constantinople. (NARA II)
Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to express my heartfelt thanks to a number of people who helped me greatly while I worked on this book: Eugene A. Alexandrov for his remarkable recall of myriad details from the distant past and for deciphering pages of old German handwriting; David Bethea, Paul Bushkovitch, and Glenda Gilmore for taking time from their busy schedules to answer my questions, to read drafts, and to give me their expert advice; Judith Flowers and Flo Larson for their hospitality and their crucial help with research in Coahoma County, Mississippi; Tatjana Lorkovic for securing microfiche collections of old Russian journals for Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library that proved essential for my work; Vera Prasolova and Leonid Vaintraub for important assistance in Russian archives that yeilded remarkable documents; Bruce Thomass, Frederick Bruce Thomas’s grandson, for his hospitality, for sharing his family’s history with me, and for his generosity in allowing me to include a handsome photograph of his grandfather in this book. I owe a unique debt of gratitude to András J. Riedlmayer for suggesting sources, for helping me search collections in the Fine Arts Library at Harvard University, for fielding questions and reading a draft, for identifying several vivid Turkish recollections of Frederick Thomas, and especially for his great kindness in translating them for me.
I am also very grateful for advice and suggestions about a wide range of subjects that I received from Allison Blakely, Lenny Borger, James C. Cobb, Allegra di Bonaventura, Edward Kasinec, Konstantin Kazansky, Philip Mansel, Christine Philliou, Norman Saul, Boris Savchenko, David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Mary Schwartz, Vadim Staklo, and Elena Uvarova. Many people assisted me with research in locations both near and far, and I owe debts to them all: Aylin Besiryan, Vincent L. Clark, Andrei Dubinsky, Padre Felice, Katherine Foshko, Edip Golbasi, Camille Jove, Diana Lachatanere, Angela Locatelli, Soeur Maria, Shannon M. Martinez, Kevin Pacelli, Andrew Ross, Charles Nicholas Saenz, and William and Alicia Van Altena.
My search for information about Frederick Thomas took me to numerous archives, libraries, and other repositories, and the staffs of the following were especially helpful (even when what seemed like promising leads turned out to be dead ends, as happened more than once): Bakhmeteff Archive (Columbia University); Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale et Contemporaine (Nanterre, France); Coahoma County Courthouse (Clarksdale, MS); Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (France); the Filson Historical Society (Louisville, KY); Fundación IWO (Buenos Aires, Argentina); Gemeentearchief Rotterdam (the Netherlands); Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow); Hoover Institution Library (Stanford University); Immigration History Research Center (University of Minnesota); Imperial War Museum (London); Mandeville Special Collections Library (University of California, San Diego); Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston); Moorland-Spingarn Research Center (Howard University); Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library (Princeton University); National Archives (England); National Archives and Records Administration II (College Park, MD); Rauner Special Collections Library (Dartmouth College); Saint-Esprit Cathedral (Istanbul); Shelby County Archives (Memphis, TN); Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (New York); Sterling Memorial Library (Yale University).
For believing in this book, for sage advice on how to present it, and for skillfully guiding it to a hospitable port, I would like to thank my literary agent, Michael V. Carlisle of InkWell Management, and his able assistant, Lauren Smythe. I am deeply grateful to Joan Bingham, my editor at Grove/Atlantic, for her enthusiastic embrace of The Black Russian and for her wisdom and skill in shaping its final version.
Finally, thanks to my wife, Sybil, my children, Nicholas and Sophia, my father, Eugene A. Alexandrov, and my late mother, Natalia Alexandrov, for their support and their patience during the years that I worked on “FT.”
Sources
ARC
HIVES AND UNPUBLISHED MATERIALS
CADN — Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes, France.
CC — Coahoma County Courthouse, Chancery Court Records, Clarksdale, MS.
CCD — Chancery Dockets Books (plus volume).
CCI — Index Land Deeds Books (plus volume).
CCM — Chancery Court Minutes Books (plus volume).
CCR — Deed Record Books (plus volume).
Cemetery — “Cherry Hill Cemetery, Coahoma County, MS,” and “Cheairs Cemetery,” typed registers of burials compiled by Judy Flowers and Graydon Flowers, Dublin, MS.
CP — Consular Post Records (plus city and box or volume number), Department of State, Record Group 84, NARA II.
CPI — Consular Post Records Istanbul (plus volume number), Turkey, Department of State, Record Group 84, NARA II.
DF — Frederick Thomas Dossier, Passport Correspondence (Cutter File), 1910–1925, box 322, file 130 T 3675, RG 59.
DP — Diplomatic Post Records (plus country or city and volume number), Department of State, Record Group 84, NARA II.
DPT — Diplomatic Post Records Turkey (plus volume number), Department of State, Record Group 84, NARA II.
DV — Valentine Thomas Dossier, Passport Correspondence (Cutter File), 1910–1925, box 321, file 130 T 3671, RG 59.
FC — Farikeuy Catholic Cemetery, Record Books, Istanbul.
FO — Foreign Office Records, National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England.
GARF — Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow.
Hoover — Hoover Institution Library, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. Fisher: Edgar J. Fisher Papers.
Interviews — Bruce Thomass, November 8, 2006; June 16, 18, 2009; November 15, 2010; Paris.
LC — Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Mabry — Mabry Malcolm, editor, “Hopson Bayou Neighborhood,” 1996. Compilation of articles by Olive Edwards from Here’s Clarksdale, 1980–1983, and others; plus additional materials. North Delta Museum, Friars Point, MS.
MLB — Mark Lambert Bristol Papers, War Diary, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
NARA — National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.
NARA II — National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park, MD.
North — North Delta Museum, Friars Point, MS.
Pence — Harry Pence Papers, Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego.
RG 59 — Record Group 59, Department of State, NARA II.
RG 84 — Record Group 84, Department of State, NARA II.
RGIA — Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv, St. Petersburg.
SE — Saint Esprit Catholic Cathedral, Record Books, Istanbul.
Serpoletti — A. Z. Serpoletti, “Moskovskie uveselitel’nye sady. Ocherk, 1928, okt. 4.” F. 533. Sobranie vospominanii i dnevnikov. Gosudarstvennyi tsentral’nyi teatral’nyi muzei imeni A. A. Bakhrushina, Moscow.
TsANTDM — Tsentral’nyi Arkhiv Nauchno-Tekhnicheskoi Dokumentatsii Moskvy, Moscow.
TsIAM — Tsentral’nyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv Moskvy, Moscow F. 1476: Records of the Saints Peter and Paul Lutheran Evangelical Church, Moscow.
TT — Edgar Turlington’s transcript of Frederick Bruce Thomas’s autobiographical statement; in Turlington to George L. Brist, 8 February 1924, 7 pages, Passport Correspondence (Cutter File), box 322, 130 T 3675, DF, RG 59.
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