Among the items once belonging to the Boratynsky family is a wooden solitaire card box. Solitaire was a favorite pastime of the landowners in the 19th century. Solitaire (fr. patience) is a card game for one person. The player lays out the cards according to the rules and collects the cards in a certain sequence. The purpose of solitaire is to help pass the time; it is the same as playing cards but without partners.

Solitaire came to Russia in the early 19th century, after the war with Napoleon. The first known book describing solitaire was published in Moscow in 1826 and was called “Collection of card layouts known as Grand Solitaire, zealously recommended to all business people”. The Grand Solitaire was almost always played in two full decks (52 cards each). The box kept in the Kirsanov Museum, judging by its size, was intended for exactly this kind of solitaire. It was exactly the solitaire cards which were stored in it, because usual playing cards simply wouldn’t fit into it: playing cards were twice as big as solitaire ones.

A. M. Zhemchuzhnikov, one of the authors of Kozma Prutkov’s works, was a great solitaire lover. In his later years he spent much time in Ilyinovka, Kirsanov District, on the estate of his son-in-law M. A. Boratynsky. Mikhail Andreevich wrote in his memoirs about his father-in-law.

The Kirsanov Local History Museum has a photograph showing Aleksey Mikhailovich Zhemchuzhnikov and his youngest daughter Anastasia Alekseevna playing solitaire. Zhemchuzhnikov seems to be dealing a solitaire with ordinary playing cards. The card box is also on the table, but it is obviously much larger than the box in the collection of the Kirsanov museum.