20 THE BEGINNINGS
Director of the Chancery of the Procurator of the Senate. This is how
Speransky later described his first meeting with Mrs. Stephens and one
of her daughters: one evening, as Speransky was dining at Samborskii's,
the seat across the table from his had remained empty as the guests
sat down. Engrossed in some interesting conversation or busy with the
food, Speran~ky did not take notice that somebody had eventually sat
down in the empty chair. When a few minutes later he glanced to
the opposite side, he was pleasantly surprised to see the pretty, modest,
and pleasing figure of a young girl whose whole being appeared to
radiate "spiritual purity". Speransky was delighted, and the sound
of the girl's voice completely enchanted him. He had no rest until he
had learned the name and identity of the young person. They were
introduced to each other, and it was love at first sight for both.
Frequently meeting at Samborskii's house, the two young people
became better acquainted and after a brief courtship, announced their
engagement. The courtship must have been somewhat unusual, for at
first Speransky and his fiancee had no language in common: he knew
no English, and Miss Elizabeth Stephens. did not speak Russian; they
communicated in an imperfect and stilted French. But love easily
disregards linguistic barriers, and communication became easier as
each tried to learn the other's mother tongue. We have a few of the
letters Elizabeth Stephens wrote in Russian to her future husband, and
while their spelling and grammar leave much to be desired, their
meaning and sentiment are clear enough. Speransky learned languages
rapidly and well, and soon he had a very good command of English,
a rather unusual accomplishment even among the best educated men
of his time and class; for all their anglomania, few Russians bothered
to learn the language of the country they admired so much, and
received their ideas about England through second-hand French reports
and translations.^1
Married in 1798, the Speransky couple settled in a modest apartment
for a quiet and somewhat withdrawn life. Most of their friends were
either SperallSky's former fellow students from the Aleksandro-Nevskii
Seminary, who, like P. Slovtsov and I. Martynov, had also become
government servants, or else young officials like V. N. Karazin. Through
Samborskii and the English colony of St. Petersburg, the Speranskys
were also close to some foreigners; among these their best friends were
the English pastor Pitt, Dr. Weickardt (a nephew of Catherine's
physician) and his wife, the daughter of the prominent banker
1 For example. the English Literary Journal of Moscow was printed in English
with a French translation on opposite pages.