quented balls, dinners, salons, and receptions, despite their access to
other public venues, without being accused of superficiality by their
biographers.^21
For Rostopchina, one can imagine, success and popularity in Moscowsociety as a young woman seemed a solace and a recompense for an un-
happy childhood. In a society where the only “career” open to women was
an advantageous marriage, a proposal from Andrei Rostopchin, a rich
count, represented a social triumph over spiteful relatives as well as a
way to leave an unpleasant home. Rostopchina enjoyed even more so-
cial success in Saint Petersburg, where she lived from 1836–38and from
1840 –45. Here, according to her brother Sergei, she hosted dinners for
Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Viazemsky, Pletnev, Lizst, and Glinka, received the
attentions of Nicholas I at balls, and attended the Empress Aleksandra Fe-
dorovna’s intimate social gatherings. Rostopchina gave a copy of her first
poetry collection ( 1841 ) to the empress with a long personal dedication.^22
In this context we may surmise that Rostopchina experienced thepublication of her protest poem, “Nasil’nyi brak,” and its consequences
as a fatal watershed in her life. By all accounts Nicholas I never forgave
her for it. When, almost a year after the poem appeared, the Rostopchins
returned from Europe to Saint Petersburg in the fall of 1846 , not only did
Nicholas not receive Rostopchina at court, but he also made it clear that
she was no longer welcome to live in Saint Petersburg. Rostopchina was
forced to return to Moscow, where she had spent her unhappy childhood.
She wrote to Viazemsky in 1848 “Moscow is hell for me.... [M]ore and
more, more sincerely, more often, more keenly do I regret the sweet past,
the enlightened lands and country, and my friends on the shores of the
Neva” (Ranchin, editor’s introduction, 6 ). She wrote to Odoevsky the
same year, “[I]f I am not completely deceased, I am definitely interred
in the filth, arguing, and desolation of what they dare to call ‘Moscow
life.’ A fine life! It is the same as death, but it does not have its advan-
tages—solitude and silence!”^23
Rostopchina experienced additional public humiliation in beingturned away from a ball to honor Nicholas’s visit to Moscow. Even after
Nicholas’s death, Alexander II refused Rostopchina’s request to have her
daughters presented to him at his coronation on the grounds that he
could not receive the daughters of an individual who had displeased
his father. Although Rostopchina tried to make the best of her life in
Moscow by establishing a literary salon, her letters suggest that she felt
exiled there.^24
Taking these and other factors into account would allow critics to cre-94 Evdokiia Rostopchina