Krol, Lyubov Ivanovna

Born in a German family engineer-major-general Ivan Hristianovich Krol and his wife Natalia Andreevna, urod. Shredder Emperor Nicholas I , who knew her from a young age and admired her beauty, in 1849 had a short-term relationship with her. In 1853 her marriage with Major General Mikhail Penherzhevsky was arranged . Two years later, she was widowed, remaining in arms with her young son Alexander. A year later, she remarried - a collegiate adviser, Ivan Platonovich Golubtsov ^[3] (1827-1884), who "offered her his name and with him a comfortable existence for her and her beloved son" ^[4] .

Bored with life with a colorless husband in provincial Kiev , Mrs. Golubtsova left him for St. Petersburg, where she entered into a relationship with Count Grigory Kushelev-Bezborodko , a young millionaire who, due to a rare illness, lived as a recluse in her house on Gagarinskaya Embankment . She surprised all of Petersburg, not being ashamed to even live in his house. To get a divorce for his kept woman, the count paid her husband a fabulous compensation (according to some information - 40 thousand in gold, according to others - 80 thousand in silver ^[5] ). The count's family opposed the intention of the “adventurer” of half light to marry a timid and shy count on himself, exaggerating the liberty of her morals. His brother Nicholas wrote to the emperor:

The long-awaited wedding with Count Kushelev was held in 1857 quietly, without any celebration, in the estate near Korallovo near Moscow. To overcome the resistance of the church authorities, who forbade the priests to marry the count, Alexander II’s personal intervention was needed ^[5] . However, the legend that this issue was decided on Golubtsova’s personal audience with the emperor has no documentary evidence ^[5] . The story of her “ransom” from her legitimate husband received loud publicity, was described by J. Polonsky in the story “Dear Christmas Tree” and, according to a number of literary critics, was used by Dostoevsky while working on the novel “ Idiot ” ^[6] .

After the wedding, the couple went to Paris with their friends and hostels, where they were littered with money (the story about this is given by Alexandre Dumas at the beginning of his “Traveling impressions”). In addition to Dumas, they brought to Russia the "king of the spiritists" Hume , who at the same time at Kushelev's estate in Polostrovsky played a wedding with the Countess's younger sister, Alexandra. The countess tried to make social visits, but the doors of the living rooms and salons in front of her were still closed. Then she joined her husband to a bohemian raznochintsy group, grouped around her brother Nicholas , began to organize musical evenings in Polustrovo. The spouses helped the needy writers from the young version of the Moskvityanin with money, published the first collected works of A. N. Ostrovsky . Polustrovo turned, according to the sharp remark of F. I. Tyutchev , into “a kind of menagerie”. Once, for 200 rubles, a hairy Mexican was summoned to dinner and “was forced to walk in the evening with the gentlemen of this elegant society” ^[7] . Alexandra Sokolova recalled ^[8] :

In the spring of 1859, the couple went to Europe again, where their relationship went wrong. The count returned to Russia alone, and for the countess he bought the estate of Laroche in Annes-beaulieu for 300 thousand francs, for the restructuring of which 200 thousand rubles were spent. Kusheleva refused to return to her homeland, lived in a big way, made thousands of debts. At the beginning of 1861, the earl arrived in France to settle her relations with creditors, but nothing came of it. Finally, in 1862, four Parisian newspapers placed the announcement of the graph that he did not accept his wife’s new obligations and began selling off all the property pledged by her, including the Perigorsk chateau .

During Alexander II’s stay in France (1864), Countess Kusheleva handed him a letter, where she accused her husband of neglecting marital duty and asked the government to get her spouse to “act with his wife decently to the Russian Magnate and noble name”. She claimed that Kushelev “simply threw the poor woman abroad without means of livelihood, he himself made a lot of debts, for the payment of which he took diamonds from her, stopped paying the promised 12 thousand a year, sold the two estates in Finland she had been given she still has 250 thousand rubles with interest ” ^[5] .

The emperor wisely withdrew from settling relations between the Kushelevs. Negotiations on divorce went through chapter III of the division of V. A. Dolgorukov and the military governor-general of the capital A. A. Suvorov . The count promised to pay Lyubov Ivanovna 6 thousand a year and another 2 thousand for the maintenance of his stepson. It was officially announced that the countess could not live in Russia due to the poor health of her son from her first marriage.

After parting with Kushelev, the Countess never returned to Russia. There is evidence that abroad entered into a 4th marriage with a foreigner ^[10] . During her stay in Dresden in 1870, she introduced herself to the famous novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the Writer 's Diary , he recalls the case of the Russian Countess K., who in Dresden “mishandled” the Germans, when they began to criticize Russia ^[11] . She died in 1900 on the Riviera and was buried in Cannes ^[12] .