Pr. Eugenie's French translation reads: "...Nic. Dem. semble coincé a O."
The Russian might say: "it seems that Nicholas Demenkov is stuck in O.[dessa]..." -- which, after all, was where he was then located, and it was his home town too.
Can the French be understood to say that?
Yes, your translation is exact. In French, it means that.
I believe the references to Demenkov may have been a code within the family...
Perhaps… but nevertheless, access to the original Russian texts of these letters would certainly help clarify many of these cryptic passages and references.
And with all due respect to N. N. Komstadius, as translator, and to Princess Eugenie, as editor, it does seem that at times they simply read too much into some of those passages of these letters which remain, obscure, enigmatic, or indecipherable to us after the passage of so many years. Although some of these letters from captivity
do, at times, contain allusions and veiled language, one must avoid the temptation to declare what is merely
unintelligible to be actually
conspiratorial. It should also be remembered that in the 1980s, Mr. Komstadius and Princess Eugenie did not possess the great wealth of documents and information now available. From our own experience of conducting research on the Imperial family over many years, we have often seen that what was once a defensible ‘educated guess’ turns out later to be simply no longer tenable. Some of our own earlier “logical” assumptions appear quite humorous now.
Many of the nicknames which occur in the Grand Duchesses letters from Tobolsk are just that — simple nicknames. The Grand Duchesses themselves comment in many of their letters that one of their favorite pastimes was to sit at the window and watch the passersby in the street. Obviously they would see the same people often, even daily. So, rather than describe them to one another each time, they quite naturally gave those people nicknames. “Pimy” was someone who wore such footwear — the equivalent of what are known as “mukluks” in American English. “Red Boots” was another passerby, as were “Fir Tree” (perhaps he had been seen carrying one?), and the intriguing “Amazon” — so named because she brazenly rode her horse down the main street of town while sitting astride it like a man, and not side-saddle like a “lady”! No doubt the Grand Duchesses also used to imagine to themselves the circumstances and lives of such passersby, whom they felt that they knew — if only fleetingly.
And that is also why, when Grand Duchess Maria Nicholaevna was already in Ekaterinburg with her parents, her sisters back in Tobolsk would report to her in their letters concerning whom of their ‘’acquaintances’ they had seen recently in the street and what they had been doing.
