Durnovo, Pavel Dmitrievich

The son of Privy Councilor Dmitry Nikolayevich Durnovo (1769-1834) from his marriage with Maria Nikitichnaya Demidova (1776-1847). In 1820, he was enlisted as a junker in the 2nd Infantry (Carabinier) Regiment in the Mogilev Province. Since 1822 - officer of the Life Guards Pavlovsky Regiment ; On January 12, 1826, he was dismissed, but in July 1827 he was again enrolled in the Pavlovsky Regiment as adjutant to the infantry general F. F. Dovre .

He participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1828-1829 . After the death near Varna, the elder brother Nikolai remained the only heir to a significant condition. At the request of his mother, he was transferred to St. Petersburg, but soon, in December 1829, left the military service and decided to become an official of special assignments under the Minister of the Interior ^[2] . In 1830, he was a junk chamber .

In June 1831 he married a rich bride - the daughter of the Minister of the Court, Field Marshal P. M. Volkonsky ^[3] . In the house on Promenade des Anglais, Pavel Dmitrievich was located on the second floor; in the mezzanine, twelve rooms were given to his wife ^[4] .

In 1835 - chamberlain . In October 1836 he transferred to the Ministry of War; in 1841 he was appointed corrective of the post of vice director of the Provincial Department; at the end of 1844 he transferred to the State Audit Office - he corrected the position of Inspector General of the Department of Maritime Reports.

He met with Pushkin in court circles and secular society: on January 23, 1834 - in the Anichkov Palace , on August 26, 1836 - at E.I. Zagryazhskaya , on January 21, 1837 - at the ball at the Fikelmonov , on January 23, 1837 - at the Vorontsov-Dashkovs and January 26, 1837 - at M. G. Razumovskaya ^{[1] [5]} .

In his diary, he constantly notes all the promotions, all the awards to his friends and is offended when he is bypassed; complains that the sovereign does not love him ^[2] . In the years 1843-1844 he was in the position of Shtalmeister at the Grand Duchesses Elizabeth and Ekaterina Mikhailovna. In 1847 he was promoted to acting state councilor and no later than 1851 was granted the court rank of "in the post of clerk of the master" ^[6] . In 1856 he was awarded the rank of Hoffmeister.

Since 1857, Pavel Dmitrievich and Alexandra Petrovna were mainly abroad ^[4] . He was the largest Vyatka landowner ^[7] : in 1861 in the Yaran district he owned 24 villages and 2 villages - Uspenskoye and Velikorechye with a population of 2036 people. After his death on September 28, 1864, the Main Redemption Department approved five redemption agreements of Pavel Durnovo “with peasants temporarily indebted to him” ^[8] . In total, Pavel Durnovo had more than eight thousand souls in the Vyatka, Nizhny Novgorod, Kostroma, Kaluga and Oryol provinces.

• Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree (1846).
• Order of St. Stanislav 1st degree (1849).
• Order of St. Anne 1st degree (1849).
• Order of St. Vladimir, 2nd degree (1855).

Wife (since June 1831) - Princess Alexandra Petrovna Volkonskaya (06/07/804 - 06/01/1885), daughter of Princess Sophia Grigoryevna and Peter Mikhailovich Volkonsky . In May 1829, as the maid of honor of the court, she accompanied the Empress to the coronation of Nicholas I in Warsaw . According to contemporaries, Alexandra Petrovna was a woman highly intelligent and educated, but like her mother, was subject to eccentricities and was original, often shocking the light with her manner of dressing. Gogol and Zhukovsky were friends with her, who wrote about her in 1827 ^[9] :

Prior to her marriage, she experienced several sad experiences of matchmaking. “The unfortunate Alina,” A. A. Olenin observed in 1829, “was read for all; for Lopukhin , he himself refused her, although he managed to turn her head. Then my father almost simply imposed it on Vorontsov , last winter they offered her Panin , also unsuccessfully. A few years ago she was in Italy and there she met Kossakovsky , he got married, but his father did not allow her. This winter, her wedding with Kushelev-Bezborodko began to get along, Alina was in love with him, but he left Petersburg without opening up in love ” ^[10] .

Finally, at the age of 26, to reassure her father, she became the wife of Pavel Durnovo. “When Princess Volkonskaya came from abroad,” wrote memoirist AO Smirnova, “she could not come to terms with the idea that Alina, who knows Latin, studied Greek from Raupakh, came in with seven idiots and endures it with Christian humility ” ^[11] . D. Fikilmon, who saw her after her marriage, noted that “in the role of a married lady, she looked more impressive than in girlhood. Her husband is ugly and unprepossessing, she is witty and educated ” ^[12] . This marriage, based on a great fortune and a "great multitude of diamonds" was very unsuccessful. Madame Durnovo died of breast cancer in 1859 in Geneva ^[13] and was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra . I had children in marriage:

• Nikolai Pavlovich (10.26.1833-1835)
• Pyotr Pavlovich (1835-1919), infantry general , Moscow Governor-General in 1905.

• Durnovo Pavel Dmitrievich // List of civil ranks of the first IV classes. Corrected on December 20, 1848 - St. Petersburg. : Printing house of the II branch of His Imperial Majesty's own Chancellery , 1848. - S. 623.
• Durnovo Pavel Dmitrievich // List of civil ranks of the first III classes. Corrected on July 1, 1863. - St. Petersburg. : Printing House of the Governing Senate , 1863. - S. 196.

• Afanasyeva Z. From the Demidov clan // Tagil worker. - 09/28/1989.
• Durnovo, Pavel Dmitrievich at the Rodovod . Tree of ancestors and descendants