marrying the prince. Nikolai Petrovich was not handsome or dashing, it is true. Nearly twenty years Praskovya’s senior, he was rather short and stout and suffered from poor health, which brought on melancholia and hypochondria.56 But he was a romantic, with fine artistic sensibilities, and he shared a love of music with Praskovya. Having watched her grow up as a girl on the estate, then blossom as a singer in his opera, he recognized her spiritual qualities as much as her physical beauty. Eventually he fell in love with her. ‘I felt the most tender and passionate feelings for her,’ he wrote in 1809,
but I examined my heart to know whether it was seeking pleasures of the flesh or other pleasures to sweeten the mind and soul apart from beauty. Seeing it sought bodily and spiritual pleasures rather than friendship, I observed the qualities of the subject of my love for a long time, and found a virtuous mind, sincerity, love of mankind, constancy and fidelity. I found an attachment to the holy faith and a sincere respect for God. These qualities charmed me more than her beauty, for they are stronger than all external delights and they are extremely rare.57
Not that it started out that way. The young count was fond of hunting and of chasing girls; and until his father died in 1788, when he took up the running of the family estates, Nikolai Petrovich spent most of his time in these sensual pursuits. The young squire often claimed his ‘rights’ over the serf girls. During the day, while they were at work, he would go round the rooms of the girls on the estates and drop a handkerchief through the window of his chosen one. That night he would visit her and, before he left, would ask her to return his handkerchief. One summer evening in 1784 Praskovya was driving her father’s two cows down to the stream when some dogs began to chase her. The count, who was riding home after a day’s hunting, called the dogs away and approached Praskovya. He had heard that her father was intending to marry her off to a local forester. She was sixteen years of age - relatively old for a serf girl to marry. The count asked her if this was so and, when she replied that it was, he said he would forbid any such marriage. ‘You weren’t born for this! Today you are a peasant but tomorrow you will become a lady!’ The count then turned and rode away.58
It is not exactly clear when the count and Praskovya became
Serf harems were extremely fashionable in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Among Russian noblemen the possession of a large harem was ironically seen as a mark of European manners and civilization. Some harems, like Sheremetev’s, were sustained by gifts and patronage; but others were maintained by the squire’s total power over his own serfs. Sergei Aksakov, in his
among his female serfs: anyone who tried to oppose it, including his own wife, was physically beaten or locked up.61 Examples of such behaviour abound in the memoir literature of the nineteenth century.62 The most detailed and interesting such memoir was written by Maria Neverova, a former serf from the harem of an octogenarian nobleman called Pyotr Koshkarov. Twelve to fifteen of his prettiest young serf girls were strictly segregated in a special female quarter of his house and placed under the control of the main housekeeper, a sadistic woman called Natalia Ivanovna, who was fiercely devoted to Koshkarov. Within the harem was the master’s room. When he went to bed he was joined by all his girls, who said their prayers with him and placed their mattresses around his bed. Natalia Ivanovna would undress the master and help him into bed and tell them all a fairy tale. Then she would leave them together for the night. In the morning Koshkarov would dress and say his prayers, drink a cup of tea and smoke his pipe, and then he would begin ‘the punishments’. Disobedient girls, or the ones it simply pleased him to punish, would be birched or slapped across the face; others would be made to crawl like dogs along the floor. Such sadistic violence was partly sexual ‘play’ for Koshkarov. But it also served to discipline and terrorize. One girl, accused of secret liaisons with a male servant, was locked for a whole month in the stocks. Then, before the whole serf community, the girl and her lover were flogged by several men until each collapsed from exhaustion and the two poor wretches were left as bloody heaps upon the floor. Yet alongside such brutality Koshkarov took great care to educate and improve his girls. All of them could read and write, some of them in French; Neverova even knew by heart Pushkin’s
By the beginning of the 1790s Praskovya had become Sheremetev’s unofficial wife. It was no longer just the pleasures of the flesh that attracted him to her but, as he said, the beauty of her mind and soul as well. For the next ten years the count would remain torn between his love for her and his own high position in society. He felt that it was morally wrong not to marry Praskovya but his aristocratic pride would
not allow him to do so. Marriages to serfs were extremely rare in the status-obsessed culture of the eighteenth-century Russian aristocracy - although they would become relatively common in the nineteenth century - and unthinkable for a nobleman as rich and grand as him. It was not even clear, if he married Praskovya, whether he would have a legitimate heir.
The count’s dilemma was one faced by noblemen in numerous comic operas. Nikolai Petrovich was a man susceptible to the cult of sentimentalism that swept over Russia in the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Many of the works which he produced were variations on the conflict between social convention and natural sentiment. One was a production of Voltaire’s
Praskovya’s secret relationship with the count placed her in an almost impossible position. For the first few years of their liaison she remained his serf and lived among the other serfs at Kuskovo. But the truth could not be concealed from her fellow serfs, who became resentful of her privileged position and called her spiteful names. Her own family tried to take advantage of the situation and cursed her when she failed to make their petty requests to the count. The count, meanwhile, was entertaining thoughts of leaving her. He would tell her of his duties to his family, of how he had to marry someone equal in status, while she would try to conceal her torment, listening silently and bursting into tears only after he had gone. To protect Praskovya and himself from malicious gossip, the count built a special house, a simple wooden
the gossip of the serfs from spreading to the public in Moscow: visitors would come to snoop around her house and sometimes even taunt the ‘peasant bride’.65 For the count this was reason good enough to abandon Kuskovo. Sometime during 1794-5 he moved to the new palace at Ostankino, where he could accommodate Praskovya in more luxurious and secluded apartments.
Yet even at Ostankino Prasvovya’s situation remained extremely difficult. Resented by the serfs, she was also shunned by society. It was only through her strength of character that she managed to retain her dignity. It is symbolic that her greatest roles were always those of tragic heroines. Her most celebrated performance was as Eliane in
Shortly before
