Khitrovo, Alexey Zakharovich (1848)

Representative of the Kursk branch of the ancient noble family Khitrovo . Born on March 21 ( April 12 ), 1848 ^[2] (according to other sources - March 23 ^[3] ). The son of the master-ceremonies of Master Zakhar Alekseevich (1807-1876) and Praskovya Egorovna. His mother, nee Nencini, was an Orthodox Christian who adopted Orthodoxy from a wealthy and noble Florentine family of counts Pandolfini ^[4] .

In St. Petersburg, the family lived in a mansion on Sergievskaya Street , house 53.

Count C. D. Sheremetev later recalled :

Near the house of the Muravyovs was a small house of the Khitrovs. Every week they danced in it without any special undertakings. The landlady, the wife of Chief Police Officer ^[5] Zakhar Khitrovo, was an Italian Nencini, she foolishly loved and spoiled her son Alexei Khitrovo. At a few evenings, the Khitrovs danced a lot and for a long time, the food was rather weak ... There were many foreigners. Evenings these were plentiful debutantes. The Danzas girls danced here and the Lansky sisters appeared with their mother, Natalya Nikolaevna, the widow of Pushkin.

- ^[6]

In 1865 he entered the Page Corps , from where on August 8, 1866 he was released as a cornet to the Kiev Hussar Regiment . On September 9 of the same year he was seconded to the Cavalier Guard regiment , where he was transferred on October 21, 1867. In 1872 he was made a lieutenant , in 1874 - the staff captain , and in 1876 - the captain . April 16, 1877 resigned from service due to illness (in fact, due to scandal and divorce from his wife). Since 1887, he was an honorary member of the Okhtensky vocational school, and since 1893 - reckoned with the Ministry of Education . In 1896 he was granted the post of Jägermeister . From December 21, 1896 to February 24, 1901 he was in charge of the gofmeister part of the courtyard of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich . In 1898 he was promoted to acting state councilor and in 1904 to jägermeister.

The heir to the richest state from both parents, Aleksei Zakharovich Khitrovo, could afford to engage in personal hobbies, among which the family love for collecting was central.

Alexandre Benois wrote with some mockery about him :

This sweet man wasn’t at all tactful, and his piercing voice, trying to imitate the manner in which the actors of Comédie Française or our Mikhailovsky Theater represented the Moliere marquises, gave his speeches a surprisingly amusing character. This did not prevent him from having very pleasant meetings in St. Petersburg - pleasant mainly because his apartments (on Sergievskaya ? On Furshtadskaya?) ^[7] were full of beautiful French furniture, bronze, porcelain, portraits of Gopner looked from the walls, Gainsborough , Romney , Reburn and Lawrence , who he donated to the Hermitage.

- ^[4]

Inheriting estates in the Tula and Orel provinces, as well as property abroad, Khitrovo lived between St. Petersburg, where he usually spent the winter, in the spring he lived in Florence in the family palace Pandolfini, in the summer in his apartment on in Paris .

Toward the end of his life, his attachment to Florence increased and he began to spend almost all the time ^[4] . In particular, he became a member of the Construction Committee, which oversaw the construction of the Orthodox Church of the Nativity of Christ and Nicholas the Wonderworker in Florence. Later, he left the church a capital of ten thousand rubles for the maintenance of the church choir ^[8] . He died in Florence on November 21, 1912 (according to other sources - October 4, 1913 ^{[3] [9]} ).

Wife (from 07/07/1871) - Princess Maria Pavlovna Golitsyna (1852-1944 ^{[3] [9]} ), maid of honor of the court (07/22/1870), daughter of the Stalmeister Prince P.V. Golitsyn and granddaughter of Count A. G. Stroganov . Married in St. Petersburg in the Court Cathedral in the Winter Palace. According to the memoir of E.V. Diaghileva , Princess Golitsyna was not beautiful, but in the world she was famous along with them. Her big blue eyes under her thick black eyebrows, a sweet, sometimes fervent, or a humorous smile, a flexible, delicate figure and soft grace gave her the right to do so. From the first days of her marriage to Khitrovo, she had an abyss of fans, especially since no one took her husband seriously. He seemed like a toy soldier when he flaunted in a golden helmet with an eagle and rattled with a broadsword or spurs. The rumor was that he was a toy husband, but did not call him rivals. In 1875, Maria Pavlovna began an affair with the cavalry guard Pavel Rodzianko , and the whole of Petersburg was occupied by him. Nevertheless, outwardly, everything was quiet until, in 1877, the scandal caused by the birth of a child took place. It was said that A. Khitrovo had nothing against to pass for the father of the child, but one fine morning his wife left him, taking her daughter with her ^[10] . The marriage was dissolved. Having received a divorce, Maria Pavlovna married Rodzianko. However, her marriage was not particularly happy.

• O.R. von Freiman Pages for 183 (1711-1894). Biographies of former pages with portraits. - Friedrichshamn, 1894-1897. - S. 604.
• Collection of biographies of the Cavalry Guard: 1826-1908. - St. Petersburg, 1908. - S. 262.
• Weiner P.P. Collection of Alexei Zakharovich Khitrovo // Old Years . —1912. - December. - S. 3-36.