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During the closing stages of the eighteenth century there lived in Vilnius, the capital of Russian Lithuania, a beautiful, wealthy, and recently widowed courtesan, Countess Maria Nagurska. Her numerous suitors found that in addition to her charms and assets, she also came with a rich and eventful history.
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Michal Kleofas Oginski
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She was born Maria Neri in Venice in 1777, the daughter of a local innkeeper of Florentine extraction, who claimed descent from the musiciaSt Philip Neri. Early in 1796 Maria watched with interest as her native city filled up with refugees from the Wars of the Final Partitions of Poland, many of them dashing and handsome young bloods, veterans of the campaigns against the invading forces of King Frederick of Prussia and Empress Catherine of Russia – both monarchs in the process of acquiring their later sobriquets of “the Great”. These young veterans included the already legendary piano-playing warrior Prince Michał Kleofas Ogiński, who had until only recently, under Stanislaw Kosciuszko, been leading his commando units in Northern Lithuania against the Russians. Now stateless, dispossessed and penniless, like all the other veterans of the campaigns, he could only hang around the calles and canals of La Serenissima, as the stunningly beautiful maritime capital of the Venetian Republic was affectionately known. Unless, that is, he could find a piano on which to play his already popular polonaises. |
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Among
Michał Kleofas’
fellow veterans were Count Kajetan Nagurski, and Tadeusz Wysogierd. They were
close friends and did everything together, including romancing the local girls
– specifically the voluptuous, nineteen-year-old Maria Neri, whose documented
accomplishments included singing barcarolles and practising the art of love.
Both young men noted these qualities, and were smitten by her, but Tadeusz was
the quicker off the mark, seduced her and took off with her to Florence. Kajetan,
not to be outdone, chased the fugitive couple to the Tuscan capital, and after a
showdown, won her from the much more dashing and handsome Tadeusz.. Kajetan
became besotted with her to the point of obsession, and in the lax atmosphere of
the Venetian emigré scene most society niceties went with the Adriatic
wind, and he could flaunt his new love with some degree of impunity.
Michał Kleofas
Ogiński would almost certainly have known her, although no
actual meeting has been documented. In
1796 Catherine of Russia died, and was succeeded by her son, Paul. Under the new
Tsar life was beginning to return to some semblance of normality in the
former Polish Commonwealth, and many refugees were accepting amnesties already
offered by Catherine, and returning to whatever might pass for a new homeland in
the former Polish and Lithuanian territories. Kajetan Nagurski
joined this re-immigration. Perhaps inspired by Rousseau’s recently mounted
play, “Pygmalion”, he took Maria
back with him to Warsaw, now the Prussian city of Warschau, where he installed
her with a governess-cum-companion and various tutors to educate and “finish
her off”, and thus render her acceptable in high society. Meanwhile he himself
returned to Russian Lithuania, to reclaim and sort out his estate. Diarist and
writer Stanislaw Morawski, in his autobiography “My Years of Youth in Vilnius”, described how Kajetan, unable then
to get a passport allowing him back into Prussia, and thus to Warsaw, asked
Morawski’s father, Apolinary, to visit Maria and see how she was getting on:
“My father promised, went and met the
young lady. On entering he naturally expected to see a tavern wench. Imagine his
unexpected surprise when he saw before him a lady of rare beauty, completely at
ease with drawing room etiquette, speaking perfect French, Italian without the
Venetian accent, writing fluently and without significant spelling mistakes, in
a word, a completely finished lady showing not the slightest hint of a tavern
upbringing.” Apolinary Morawski
was, like so many others before him, smitten by Maria, and, despite the age gap,
it was only a matter of time before they became lovers behind Kajetan’s back.
Their affair was discovered and broken up by the infuriated Kajetan himself. He
subsequently had her brought to his estate in Lithuania, where he married her.
However, Kajetan’s health, which had never been good, deteriorated further,
and he developed jaundice. He virtually took to his bed, so Maria began to be
seen in the company of the dashing young Count Ludwik Pac, whose father, Count
Michal Pac, owned Jezno, one of the finest palaces in Lithuania. The affair came
to an end when Kajetan decided to go to Vienna, where he hoped to find a cure
for his jaundice, and take Maria with him. Ultimately, he failed to find a cure,
and died there soon afterwards. His widow, now an independent lady of some
considerable means, returned to Vilnius, and life in that city’s highest
social echelons. She then sent for her
younger sister Cuchina (probably a nickname - her Christian name is not on
record) to give her a better life in Lithuanian society, and as a companion for
herself. Cuchina complied, and promptly became pregnant by Nicholas Morawski,
Maria’s former lover’s younger brother, and uncle of the writer. So Maria
sent Cuchina back to Florence, and arranged for her to marry Count Scotti – in
the end a satisfactory arrangement all round. The child was born in happy
circumstances a legitimate Scotti. In
1801, Countess Maria Nagurska’s life changed direction after she caught the
attention of General Bennigsen. General Count Levin
August von Bennigsen was born in Brunswick in 1745. His military career began in
the Hanoverian army, but in 1764 he was head-hunted and brought to Russia by
Catherine the Great. He fought in Russia’s Turkish wars and distinguished
himself against the Poles during the Wars of the Final Partitions. He became
friendly with the young Tsarevitch Alexander, the son of Tsar Paul. Alexander
was imbued with a dubious sense of divine mission, which led him to covet the
Russian throne without delay in order to impose his God-given destiny onto that
of Mother Russia. Together with a small coterie of like-minded idealists,
including Bennigsen, Alexander plotted the attempted assassination of his father
– ostensibly to frighten him into abdicating. At least, that was the theory.
However, the plot, referred to in the history books as the St Petersburg Ides
of March, did not go entirely to plan; Bennigsen, if Stanislaw Morawski’s
documentation is to be believed, was the man who actually did the deed by
personally strangling the Tsar to death in his bed. The idealistically-fired
Alexander duly succeeded his father to the throne, and, as a mark of gratitude,
promoted Bennigsen to the position of Governor of Vilnius. On his city’s
social circuit he met the beautiful Countess Nagurska, for whom he developed an
instant infatuation. Meanwhile, the
accession of the new Tsar had a direct effect on the fortunes of Michał Kleofas
Ogiński. At this time he was living with his wife Izabela and two infant sons,
Tadeusz and Xavier – not very happily ever after, as it happened – at his
wife’s family’s estate at Brzeziny, to the south west of Warsaw. He had
spent five penniless and peripatetic years trying to restore the Polish state by
diplomatic means. He now dreamed of just returning home to get his life and
estates, now in Russian territory, back. Catherine had offered him an olive
branch, which he knew to be a trap, and rejected: he had been sentenced to death
in his absence for his part in Kosciuszko’s campaigns against her forces, and
she did not forgive and forget readily. Her son, Tsar Paul, did not trust him,
and refused him permission to return. The new Tsar Alexander, however, not only
forgave him, but also praised him for being true to his convictions in fighting
for his homeland, and offered him an unconditional amnesty. Michał Kleofas,
whose marriage to Izabela had just ended in inevitable divorce, had nothing to
lose, and perhaps something to gain by returning home, so he accepted the
amnesty, and returned to Lithuania. He initially found
somewhere to live in Vilnius, where, on the social circuit, he again came across
Maria Nagurska, whom he still remembered as Maria Neri, nineteen-year-old
daughter of a Venetian innkeeper. Now he found a beautiful, 25-year-old
socialite with all the graces and apparent breeding of a princess, and the
mistress of Governor Bennigsen, who was obviously quite besotted with her, and
wanted to marry her. She had given him a key to the back door of her house, and
a specified time and day on which she would receive him. This was accepted
practice in the sexual social mores of the time. However, she kept him suspended
in a state of frustrated anticipation which he could ill endure. He was now
approaching sixty, and agonised long and thoroughly over his predicament.
Finally, he decided to take the bull by the horns, go to her there and then, and
propose marriage. Casting aside his allotted “slot”, he entered her house
and burst into her chambers to find her in flagrante delecto with
Prince Michał Kleofas
Ogiński. He immediately conceded a very embarrassing
defeat, and left without further ado. He never contacted her again. Like
Bennigsen, Michał Kleofas had fallen head over heels in love with Maria
Nagurska; the
feeling was reciprocated, and their passionate affair continued unabated until
it was discovered that she was pregnant. Michał Kleofas proposed, Maria
accepted, and they were married sometime during 1804, and settled at his estate
at Zalesie, nestled among the green meadows and birch forests close to the town
of Smorgon, half way between Vilnius and Minsk. By this time Michał Kleofas had
been appointed senator at the Court of the Petersburg, and was put in charge of
Education in Russia’s newly acquired lands. The new Princess Maria Oginska
took to her new role as Lady of the Manor perfectly. The Manor had been built
for comfort rather than as a luxurious residence, but Maria loved it. “Zalesie
is a delightful spot for us,” she wrote to her sister, Countess Cuchina
Scotti, in Florence. “We are surrounded
by snow and frost, but we scarcely notice them, because it is so true that one
finds happiness everywhere where one’s heart is without remorse and full of
affection.” The
idyll, however, was short-lived. Stanislaw Morawski, describing the open
nature of Michał Kleofas
Ogiński’s second marriage, wrote that “there was no man of consequence, no young Russian general, perhaps
even no broad-shouldered valet who was not her lover. Added to these were actors, singers, and ordinary soldiers. I do
her no injustice, as she herself does not attempt to hide the fact.”
The tower of Maria’s wing at the Manor later became covered in numerous mosaic
portraits of various men, to whom she would refer, with a wicked twinkle in her
eye, as “my friends”. Morawski continues to throw some light on the
ancestry of their four children: “Apart
from Zaluska [Amelia, born on December 10 1803, who later became Countess
Zaluska] conceived with Ogiński, every one of his daughters [Emma and Ida,
born in 1805 and 1813 respectively] had a
different father. Her son [Ireneusz, born in 1807] was conceived of the singer Paliani.” Italian Giuseppe Paliani was music tutor to the Oginski girls. Evidently, Princess
Maria Ogińska had not abandoned her early documented talent for “the art of
love.” |
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