had been summoned to the court by the Emperor Paul. The count was an old friend of the Emperor. The Sheremetev household on Millionaia Street, where he had grown up, was a stone’s throw away from the Winter Palace and in his childhood the count used to visit Paul, who was three years his junior and very fond of him. In 1782 he had travelled incognito with the future Emperor and his wife abroad. Sheremetev was one of the few grandees to get along with Paul, whose outbursts of rage and disciplinarian attitudes had alienated most of the nobility. On his assumption of the throne in 1796 Paul appointed Sheremetev Senior Chamberlain, the chief administrator of the court. The count had little inclination towards court service - he was drawn to Moscow and the arts - but he had no choice. He moved back to Petersburg and
Fountain House. It was at this stage that the first signs of Praskovya’s illness became clear. The symptoms were unmistakable: it was tuberculosis. Her singing career was now at an end and she was confined to the Fountain House, where a secret set of rooms, entirely segregated from the reception and official areas, was specially constructed for her use.
Praskovya’s confinement to the Fountain House was not just the result of her illness. Rumours of the serf girl living in the palace had caused a scandal in society. Not that people of good taste talked of it - but everybody knew. When he first arrived in Petersburg, it was naturally assumed that the count would take a wife. ‘Judging by the rumours,’ his friend Prince Shcherbatov wrote to him, ‘the city here has married you a dozen times, so I think we will see you with a countess, which I am extremely glad about.’67 So when this most eligible of men was found to have wasted himself on a peasant girl, the disappointment of the aristocracy was compounded by a sense of anger and betrayal. It seemed almost treasonable that the count should be living with a serf as man and wife - especially considering the fact (which had since attained a legendary status) that he had once turned down an offer by the Empress Catherine the Great to arrange a marriage between him and her granddaughter, the Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna. The count was isolated by society. The Sheremetevs disowned him and descended into squabbles about what would happen to the legacy. The vast reception rooms of the Fountain House were devoid of guests - and the only people who remained as friends were loyal childhood comrades such as Prince Shcherbatov or artists, like the poet Derzhavin and the architect Quarenghi, who rose above the snobbish prejudices of society. The Emperor Paul also was in this category. Several times he arrived incognito at the back entrance of Fountain House - either to visit the count when he was sick or to hear Praskovya sing. In February 1797 she gave a recital in the concert hall of Fountain House attended by the Emperor and a few close friends. Paul was enchanted by Praskovya and presented her with his own personal diamond ring, which she wore for her portrait by Argunov.68
The moral support of the Emperor must have been a factor in the count’s decision to flout social conventions and to take Praskovya as his
legal wife. Nikolai Petrovich had always believed that the Sheremetev family was different from other aristocratic clans, a little bit above the social norm, and this arrogance undoubtedly provoked some of the hostile views held about him in society.69 In 1801 the count gave Praskovya her liberty and then at last, on 6 November, he married her in a secret ceremony at the small village church of Povarskaya on the outskirts of Moscow. Prince Shcherbatov and a few close friends and servants were the only witnesses. The wedding was kept so discreet that the marriage certificate remained buried in the local parish archives until 1905.70
One year later Praskovya gave birth to a son, Dmitry, who was christened, like his father, in the private chapel of the Fountain House. But she was weakened by the birth and, already suffering from advanced tuberculosis, she died after three weeks of painful suffering. Six years later, still struck down by grief, the count recalled her death in his testimony to his son:
The easy pregnancy of your mother heralded a happy resolution; she brought you into the world without pain, and I was overjoyed, seeing her good health did not falter after giving birth to you. But you must know, dearest son, that barely did I feel this joy, barely had I covered your tender infant face with my first father’s kisses when severe illness struck your mother, and then her death turned the sweet feelings of my heart into bitter grief. I sent urgent prayers to God about saving her life, summoned expert doctors to bring back her health, but the first doctor inhumanely refused to help, despite my repeated requests, and then the illness worsened; others applied all their efforts, all the knowledge of their art, but could not help her. My groans and sobbing almost took me to the grave as well.71
At this moment, the most desperate time in his life, the count was abandoned by the whole of Petersburg society. In preparation for the funeral he publicized the news of Praskovya’s death and, in accordance with the Orthodox ritual, gave the times for visitors to pay their last respects before her open coffin at Fountain House.72 Few people came - so few, in fact, that the time for viewing the coffin was reduced from the customary three days to just five hours. The same small group of mourners - small enough for them all to be listed by name - were at
the funeral and accompanied the coffin from the Fountain House to the Alexander Nevsky monastery, where it was buried next to the grave of the count’s father. Present were close friends of Praskovya, mainly serf performers from the opera; some domestic servants from the Fountain House who had been her only form of social contact in the final years; several of the count’s illegitimate offspring from previous serf lovers; one or two church clerks; Praskovya’s confessor; the architect Giacomo Quarenghi; and a couple of the Count’s aristocratic friends. There was no one from the court (Paul had been murdered in 1801); no one from the ancient noble families; and perhaps most shockingly of all, no one from the Sheremetev family.73 Six years later it was still a source of bitterness and sorrow to the count.
I thought I had friends who loved me, respected me and shared my pleasures, but when my wife’s death put me in an almost desperate state I found few people to comfort me and share my sorrow. I experienced cruelty. When her body was taken to be buried, few of those who called themselves my friends displayed any sensitivity to the sad event or performed the Christian duty of accompanying her coffin.74
Lost in grief, the count resigned from the court, turned his back on society and, retreating to the country, devoted his final years to religious study and charitable works in commemoration of his wife. It is tempting to conclude that there was an element of remorse and even guilt in this charity - perhaps an attempt to make amends to the enserfed ranks of people from which Praskovya came. He liberated dozens of his favourite domestic serfs, spent vast sums on building village schools and hospitals, set up trusts for the care of orphans, endowed monasteries to give the peasants food when the harvest failed, and reduced the payments levied from the serfs on his estates.75 But by far his most ambitious project was the alms house which he founded in Praskovya’s memory on the outskirts of Moscow - the Strannoprimnyi Dom, which at that time, in 1803, was by some way the largest public hospital in the Empire, with sixteen male and sixteen female wards. ‘My wife’s death,’ he wrote, ‘has shocked me to the point that the only way I know to calm my suffering spirit is to devote myself to fulfilling her behest of caring for the poor man and the sick.’76
For years the grief-stricken count would leave the Fountain House and walk incognito through the streets of Petersburg distributing money to the poor.77 He died in 1809, the richest nobleman in the whole of Russia, and no doubt the loneliest as well. In his testimony to his son he came close to rejecting root and branch the civilization embodied in his own life’s work. ‘My taste and passion for rare things,’ he wrote,
was a form of vanity, like my desire to charm and surprise people’s feelings with things they had never seen or heard… I came to realize that the brilliance of such work could only satisfy for a short time and vanished instantly in the eyes of my contemporaries. It did not leave the remotest impression on the soul. What is all this splendour for?78
On Praskovya’s death the count wrote to the new Emperor, Alexander I, to inform him of his marriage and appealed to him (successfully) to recognize the rights of Dmitry as his sole legitimate heir.79 He claimed that his wife had only been the ward of the blacksmith Kuznetsov and that she was really the daughter of an ancient Polish noble family called the Kovalevskys, from the western provinces.80 The fiction was in part to distinguish Dmitry’s claim from that of all the older sons he had begotten with various serf women (there were six in all, as far as one can tell from the many claims).81 But it was also uncannily like the denouement of a comic opera - it was in fact the ending of
Praskovya was blessed with a rare intelligence and strength of character. She was the finest singer in the Russia of her day, literate and conversant with several languages. Yet until a year before her death she remained a serf. What were her feelings? How did she respond to the prejudice she met? How did she reconcile her deep religious faith, her acceptance of
