Vielgorsky, Yuri Mikhailovich

Representative of the Polish gentry clan of the Wielgorsky coat of arms " Kerdea ". The eldest son of the great Lithuanian kitchen expert Count Michael Vielgorsky (1728-1794) from his first marriage with Princess Elizabeth (Elzbieta) Oginski (1731-1771). He served as a clerk of the full Lithuanian ( lat. Notarius campestris ). Belonging to the party of opponents of the Polish Constitution of 1791 , after its adoption, it became part of the opposition delegation, which went to St. Petersburg to meet with Catherine II ; then he was one of the prominent figures of the Targovitsa Confederation .

In 1792 he was appointed confederation ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Poland to St. Petersburg. During the Uprising, Kosciuszko in 1794 was sentenced in absentia, along with seven other prominent figures of the pro-Russian party, to the death penalty, which was carried out in effigie on September 29 . After the Third Partition of Poland , in May 1794 he switched to Russian service and was granted the status of full chamberlain on July 18 of that year. A week before Vielgorsky was confined to the chamberlain, in the Tsarskoye Selo court church, the rite of Orthodoxy was adopted by the four young sons of the count, and the empress herself was the recipient.

Emperor Paul I granted Vielgorsky the day of his accession to the throne to the marshal of marshals, in 1797 - to the chief marshal of marshals, and soon elevated his young sons to the rank of knights of the Order of Malta . On August 6, 1798 he was fired by the emperor from the court service and left for Vilna , where he remained until the accession to the throne of Emperor Alexander I. He was granted the Senators , with an appointment to attend the Surveying Department; in February 1804, Vielgorsky was granted the position of Actual Privy Councilor, but soon, due to illness, was dismissed from service.

Count Vielgorsky was one of the educated people of his time, was known as an art lover and amateur musician, one of the founders of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society. He wrote several plays, of which Olympie enjoyed the greatest success, worked on the essay On the Education of the Russian Noble Youth, but did not manage to publish it. The musical inclinations of Vielgorsky were inherited by his sons.

He was married twice and had eight children:

1. wife, from January 9, 1788, Countess Sofya Dmitrievna Matyushkina (02/11/755 - 03/26/1796), daughter of Count Dmitry Mikhailovich Matyushkin (1725-1800), secret adviser and chamberlain, from marriage to Princess Anna Alekseevna Gagarina (1722-1804), stats Dama and Ober-Hofmeisterina. It was said that the empress herself arranged Vielgorsky’s marriage and chose Matyushkina, the famous beauty and one of her close maids of honor, as his wife, which strengthened his position at court. In his diary, Secretary of State A. Khrapovitsky wrote on November 24, 1787, that “ Vielgorsky, who was wooing for Matyushkina, was an idler and took it only for money; he wrote to his mistress, and even to another, on which he was engaged. He deceives three at one time ” ^[1] . According to the recall of the French diplomat Marie de Corberon , in her youth Countess Matyushkina was very pretty, amiable and cheerful. Being incorrigibly frivolous and possessing romantic inclinations, she was always in love with someone, and she very lively talked about love, coquetry and lovers, like a fashionable Parisian lady ^[2] . She died in St. Petersburg three weeks after giving birth from a fever and was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra ^[3] . She had seven children in marriage, who remained in the care of the grandmother of Countess Matyushkina, all of them were nice and very friendly with each other ^[4] .
   • Mikhail Yuryevich (1788-1856), philanthropist, bibliophile, freemason, singer and musician.
   • Yuri Yuryevich (1789-1808)
   • Joseph Yurievich (1790-1816), died of consumption .
   • Alexander Yurievich (1792-179.)
   • Matvey Yuryevich (1794-1866), shtalmeister, cellist and composer.
   • Elizaveta Yurievna (1795-1809), died of consumption.
   • Daria (Dorothea) Yuryevna (1796 - after 1818), married to Sergei Apollonovich Volkov (1788-1854) from 1812.
2. wife Elizaveta Stanislavovna Sivers (177? - 1806), Polish-born, daughter of Marshal of Polotsk governorship Stanislav Snarsky, widow of Sievers; famous in St. Petersburg for its beauty. Her sister Antoinette (1779–1855) was married to General P. H. Wittgenstein . In marriage, she had one son.
   • Alexander Yuryevich (Eduard-George) (1802-1821), official of the archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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  Sofya Dmitrievna,
  1st wife

•  

  Elizabeth of Snars,
  2nd wife

•  

  Mikhail Yurievich,
  a son

•  

  Matvey Yuryevich,
  a son

• Russian portraits of the XVIII — XIX centuries . Ed. Led. Prince Nikolai Mikhailovich . - SPb. , 1906. - V. 4. - Issue. 4. - No. 182.