Elisabeth Bagréeff-Speransky

Mikhail Speransky, 1806 by Pavel Alexeyevich Ivanov[1]

Elizaveta Mikhailovna Speranskaya was born on 16 September 1799 (N.S.) in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, to Elizabeth Jane (née Stephens) and Mikhail Speransky.[2][Notes 1] Stephens was the daughter of the English woman, Eliza (née Planta) Stephens, and had moved with her mother to Russia around 1789, after the death of her father Rev. Henry Stephens.[10][11][12][Notes 2] Eliza served as a governess to Countess Catherine Shuvalova, who allowed the children Elizabeth, Marianne, and Francis to live with their mother. While studying with Andrew Samborski at his summer cottage, Stephens met Mikhail Speransky in 1797.[10] Speransky was a graduate of the Alexander Nevsky Seminary and had that year entered the civil service.[19] The couple married at the end of 1798, but Stephens died from tuberculosis in November 1799, two months after their daughter's birth.[4][20][Notes 3]

Speransky was distraught over his wife's death and buried himself in his work.[10][24] He sent his daughter to live with a former nurse of the Stephens family who lived along the Vyborgskaya Embankment, opposite Aptekarsky Island.[25] He requested his mother-in-law's help in 1801,[10][24] when he was promoted to serve as an "Assistant Minister of Justice, as Governor of Finland, as Privy Councillor, and as Secretary of State"[26] to Alexander, the new Tsar of Russia.[27] Eliza was in Vienna when her daughter died. Her charge, Alexandra Shuvalova, had married Franz Joseph, Prince of Dietrichstein in 1797, and relocated there.[10] In 1801, Eliza was able to return to Saint Petersburg and moved into Speransky's house to care for Speranskaya.[10][24] The following year when Speranskaya's aunt Marianne married Konstantin Zlobin, Eliza's family with Speranskaya all moved into the home of Marianne's father-in-law, Vasily Zlobin.[10]

Vasily Zlobin's home (Griboyedov Canal Embankment, #84 Bolshaya Podyachevskaya Street, Saint Petersburg

Within six months the couple were having difficulties and Vasily, who was fond of his daughter-in-law suggested a temporary separation, sending Marianne and her family to Baldone (now in Latvia) to enjoy the sulfur water spa there. By the time they returned in the autumn, Konstantin had abandoned the family. For more than a year, Vasily tried in vain to negotiate a reconciliation,[28] although the couple did not divorce until 1810.[15] The Stephens family moved back in with Speransky briefly, but because of Speranskaya's delicate health, they left Saint Petersburg for Kyiv (now in Ukraine), where they remained until 1809. That year Speransky bought a house in Saint Petersburg near the Tauride Garden and the family returned as Speranskaya's health had improved.[10][29][30] Marianne died in 1811, leaving her estate Velikopolye in the Novgorod Oblast to her niece Speranskaya.[10][31][Notes 4] In March 1812, after her father fell out of favor with the tsar, primarily because of his inability to cooperate or ingratiate himself with Russian nobility, he was sent into exile.[33][34] He left a note for Speranskaya that she and her grandmother were to join him in Nizhny Novgorod, as soon as it could be arranged.[33][35][36] Once they were reunited, Speransky developed an educational program for his daughter, teaching her history, composition, reading, literature, and various languages.[10][37][38] She learned German by reading the Bible and Friedrich Schiller's work on Joan of Arc and also studied the works of William Shakespeare.[39][40] She gained fluency in English, French, German, and Russian[41] and learned to read Latin and write in Italian.[42]

In late summer 1812, Speransky was separated from his daughter and sent to the Siberian border near Perm.[43] Despite their separation, he continued to supervise Speranskaya's education.[34] She and her grandmother were sent back to Saint Petersburg at the end of 1813,[44] although they visited him from time to time at Perm and later when he was moved to Speranskaya's estate Velikopolye near Novgorod.[34][45] Historian Marc Raeff stated that Eliza and Speranskaya brought money for him to live on in exile,[44] and both Raeff and William Blackwood noted that when Speransky had trouble getting missives delivered to Tsar Alexander describing his penury, Speranskaya was able to deliver a letter to the emperor, who allotted her father an annual stipend.[45][46] At the beginning of 1814, Speransky requested that his daughter, whom he called Lisa or Lise, should move back to Velikopolye, where he joined her later in the year.[47][48][49] That year, Speransky returned to government service in various provincial posts.[50] In 1815, Speransky sent Eliza to live in Kyiv, where she died at the end of the year.[45][51] Speranskaya returned to Saint Petersburg, where she resided with a family friend, Maria (née Amburger) Weikard, the wife of the Shuvalova family's physician.[5][52][53]

Speranskaya, 1820–1830

Speranskaya passed the state examination to be a home teacher in 1819 and began teaching children.[10][54] In 1821, Speransky returned to Saint Petersburg.[55] Blackwood states that it was because of an inappropriate love interest between his daughter and a military officer,[56] who historian Erik Amburger identifies as Georg Weikard.[57] The relationship was terminated but Speranskaya became despondent and attempted suicide.[56][58][59] Speransky began to draft plans to reorganize the provincial governments for more efficiency and took charge of finding Speranskaya a suitable husband, hosting numerous social events to allow her the opportunity to mix with society.[60] She became the companion of Maria Kochubey, who treated her as if she were a daughter and Speranskaya resigned herself to allow her father to choose her husband.[58] That year, she was appointed as a lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth Alexeievna, Empress of Russia.[61][62]

In August 1822, Speranskaya married Prince Alexander Frolov-Bagreev, the governor of the Chernigov Governorate.[10][34][63] Frolov-Bagreev was the nephew of Kochubey's husband, the brother of his mother, Agrafena Pavlovna Kochubey.[64] Initially, they lived in Chernihiv,[65] but in May 1824 the couple moved to Saint Petersburg when Frolov-Bagreev took a post in the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Empire.[34][66] The couple were not well-suited,[62] as Speranskaya's circle were intellectuals and artists while Frolov-Bagreev was a dull simpleton.[67][68] He was described by Speranskaya's biographer, Victor Duret, as "égoïste et méfiant" (selfish and distrustful), although he exhibited polite manners. He was often silent, behaving with an air of superiority and completely ignoring his wife.[69] Speranskaya was a charismatic and charming hostess whose salon was attended by Saint Petersburg's celebrated artists, scientists, and statesmen.[70][71] Among her frequent guests were Alexander and Karl Bryullov, Nikolay Karamzin, Adam Mickiewicz, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev, and Pyotr Vyazemsky.[71][72] Pushkin remained a close friend until his death.[72][73]

At the beginning of 1824, the couple had a son, whom they named Mikhail, and two years later, a daughter, Maria.[67][74][75] During this time, Frolov-Bagreev had mismanaged funds at the bank and lost a large sum of money, which Speranskaya rectified by selling her jewels.[67][76] In 1825, Tsar Alexander died and was succeeded after the Decembrist revolt by his brother, Nicholas.[77][78] Speranskaya brought an English governess to help her with the children[79] and in 1828 published her first book, Чтение для малолетних детей (Readings for Young Children) for them.[10][34][80] She wrote other children's stories and short plays for them[80] and began publishing stories anonymously in local newspapers.[81] Her second son, Alexander, was born around 1830 but died when two-years old.[82][Notes 5] In 1831, Speransky borrowed money and bought his daughter an estate, Velyka Burimka, where she raised her children.[80][84] The estate covered 92,000 acres (370 km²) and encompassed seven villages.[85] Devastated by her son's death, Speranskaya left the Russian Empire for the first time in 1833 and traveled to the Dutch seaside resort of Scheveningen, where she wrote poetry in English and Russian.[86]

Under the arrangement agreed upon by Speransky and his son-in-law, Frolov-Bagreev was to repay the amount which had been borrowed to purchase the estate, while also managing it.[84] Although Speranskaya created model farms, wood distribution facilities, dispensaries, and schools to ensure the welfare of her family and community,[80] her husband's mismanagement of the estate and failure to pay even the interest on the loans for three years found them facing foreclosure. With great difficulty, an agreement was reached by 1838 to ward off the loss of the estate,[84] but the relationship did not survive and the couple thereafter lived separately.[80][84] In early 1839, Tsar Nicholas made Speransky a count and granted him an income, but he died on 23 February (O.S.).[87] Speranskaya asked if her son could bear the name Speransky, keep the title, and as was customary, receive her father's pension for six years, but her request was denied.[88]

To prevent her estranged husband from seizing her father's estate, Speranskaya sent their son to a boarding school and in July traveled abroad with their daughter, on the pretext that she needed a spa cure. They went to Bavaria and stayed at Bad Kissingen and then Bad Gastein before wintering in Frankfurt. They returned to the Bavarian baths in the summer of 1840. She also took short trips to England to visit her family there and to Darmstadt in Germany.[89] Speranskaya and her daughter then visited the Duchy of Salzburg and traveled by steamboat down the Danube to Vienna. In May 1841, they left the Austrian capital and traveled to Styria, continuing through the Illyrian Provinces to Lucerne in Switzerland and on to northern Italy. During her travels, she wrote poetry in English.[90] They returned to Austria, staying first in Baden and then wintering in Vienna. In answer to a letter from her husband, she advised that they might return to Saint Petersburg in the summer of 1842.[91]

Bagréeff-Speransky died in Vienna on 4 April 1857[120][122] from an ear infection,[123] a severe headache,[120] or tuberculosis, and was buried in St. Marx Cemetery.[124] Her daughter Maria inherited the Velyka Burimka estate and lived there until her death in 1887.[125] Celebrations in honor of the centennial of Speransky's birth were held in Saint Petersburg in 1872, and Maria, over her husband's objection, successfully asked Tsar Alexander II to have Speransky's title granted to her son, Mikhail Rodionovich Cantacuzène (born 1847).[126][127] Mikhail married Elizabeth Sicard and their oldest son Mikhail became the husband of Julia Dent Grant, granddaughter of United States President Ulysses S. Grant in 1899.[128][129] The estate was burned and looted by the Bolsheviks during the Ukrainian–Soviet War in 1918.[130] When the area became Soviet Ukraine in 1919, the family fled, first to Kyiv and then abroad to Constantinople, Malta, and eventually Paris.[131]

At the time of her death, Bagréeff-Speransky was remembered for the memoirs she had published about Russia.[117][120] Both she and her father were discussed in Count Leo Tolstoy's classic novel War and Peace, (Volume II, Part III).[132][133] According to scholars Raeff and Sara Dickinson, Tolstoy made an unfavorable caricature of Speransky and depicted Bagréeff-Speransky as a lonely child, who lacked her father's attention.[34][134] Raeff maintained Tolstoy's depiction of Speransky was incorrect,[135] while Dickinson emphasized that letters exchanged between father and daughter showed that even during their periods of separation, they had a close and affectionate relationship.[34]

Dickinson noted that Bagréeff-Speransky was not included in the 1994 Dictionary of Russian Women Writers edited by Marina Ledkovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, and Mary Zirin, possibly because she lived abroad, wrote anonymously, published infrequently, and rarely produced work in Russian.[34] However, Bagréeff-Speransky is included in numerous earlier biographical dictionaries, such as the Biographical Encyclopedia of the Austrian Empire (1858),[72] Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (1902),[136] Nordisk familjebok (1904),[70] and the Russian Biographical Dictionary (1901).[41] Still earlier, Duret published Un portrait russe (A Russian Portrait, 1867) which gave a biographical account of her life and various writings, both published and unpublished.[34] Duret edited and posthumously published her reflections and diary, written between 1845 and her death, under the title "Le livre d'une femme" ("A Woman's Book") for the first time in 1867.[137] A review in the Magazin für die Literatur des Auslandes (Magazine for Foreign Literature, Berlin) published that year indicated that it was a work which would appeal to religious women who were self-reflective.[59] Daniil Mordovtsev included a chapter on her in his book Русские женщины Нового времени (Russian Women of Modern Times, 1874), which covered correspondence from Bagréeff-Speransky and her father.[138] According to Dickinson, modern scholarship is revisiting her life and works.[34]

• Bagréeff-Speransky, Mme E. de (1854). Les pèlerins russes à Jérusalem [Russian Pilgrims in Jerusalem] (in French). Vol. 1. Brussels, Belgium: Kiessling, Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 9534965.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1855). Les dernières Heures de sa Majeste l'Empereur Nicolas: Méditation par l'auteur des pélerins Russes à Jerusalem [The Last Hours of His Majesty the Emperor Nicholas: Meditation by the Author of Russian Pilgrims in Jerusalem] (in French). Leipzig, Germany: François Wagner. OCLC 644311421.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1857). Irène ou les influences de l'éducation suivi de la vieille et son corbeau [Irene or the Influences of Education Followed by the Old Woman and Her Crow] (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 300100867.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1857). La vie de château en Ukraine [Life in the Urkainian Chateau] (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 741482154.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1857). Le Starower et sa fille suivi de Xenia ou les deux rêves [The Starower and His Daughter Followed by Xenia or The Two Dreams] (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 300100469.
• Bagréeff-Speransky, Mme E. de (1857). Les pèlerins russes à Jérusalem [Russian Pilgrims in Jerusalem] (in French). Vol. 2 (2 ed.). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 17909992.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1857). Une Famille Toungouse: Esquisses de Moeurs Russes [A Tungus Family: Sketches of Russian Mores] (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 300100798.
• Bagréeff-Speranski, Mme E. de (1858). Les îles de la Néva à St. Pétersbourg [The Islands of the Neva in Saint Petersburg] (in French). Brussels, Belgium: Auguste Schnee et compagnie. OCLC 734052322.