Later Life
At the height of the theatre's flowering in the late 1790s Praskovia became ill, possibly with consumption (tuberculosis), and was forced to retire. In late 1796, Nikolai was appointed to the court of Paul I and Praskovia moved with him to St. Petersburg.
Although they lived as man and wife, Nikolai and Praskovia had to keep the nature of their relationship secret from polite society. It was taboo for an aristocrat like Sheremetev to move about in society with a serf as his social equal. Finally, in 1798 Sheremetev emancipated Praskova and later the entire Kovalyov family from serfdom. Understanding that her health would not allow her to return to the stage, he closed the theatre.
In 1801 Nikolai and Praskovia married in Moscow in the strictest secrecy. As part of the arrangements, Nikolai had created a phony genealogy for Praskovia claiming that she was the long-lost descendant of a Polish nobleman by the name of Kovalevskii. Around the time of the wedding he sent a forger to Poland with a purse full of money to purchase a patent of nobility from a willing noble family.
Within months of their wedding Praskovia became pregnant. On February 3, 1803 she gave birth to a son, Dmitry, but pregnancy and childbirth destroyed her poor health and she died on February 23 at the Sheremetev palace in St. Petersburg. Just before she died Nikolai informed Emperor Alexander I of his marriage and requested official recognition, which he granted. News of the marriage scandalized society and angered Nikolai's family. Nikolai's two nephews, the Razumovsky brothers, had planned to inherit their uncle's vast fortune, and upon hearing that they were to lose it all to the son of serf they contemplated murdering the infant.
Praskovia was buried in an elaborate ceremony at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery attended by clergy and servants from the Sheremetev household. Nikolai was too overcome with grief to attend, and the nobility stayed away to signal its disapproval of Nikolai's marriage.
In memory of Praskovia Nikolai built in Moscow on Sukharevskaya square a large almshouse that tended to the sick, poor, and orphaned up until the revolution of 1917. Under the Soviets the almshouse was shut down and replaced by a scientific research institute named after N. Sklifosovsky.
Read more about this topic: Praskovia Kovalyova-Zhemchugova
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