Leonia-Sharlotta DAntes Youngest daughter of Georges Charles D'Anthes, Baron Heckern Date of Birth: 04.04.1840 Country: France

Biography of Leonie-Charlotte D'Antes

Leonie-Charlotte D'Antes was the youngest daughter of Georges-Charles D'Antes, Baron of Heckern. She was deeply in love with the works, era, and life of Pushkin to the point of obsession. One evening, she dared to express her true opinion of her father's disgraceful actions, and in response to his feeble justifications, she refused to speak to him and called him a murderer of Pushkin. Her life was so strange and there is so little evidence about it that I contemplated whether it was worth writing about her fate at all, whether it was worth delving into the veil that so securely hid her existence from the superficial and proud world, leaving not even a trace of her image. There was not a single portrait, miniature, profile, watercolor, or even a pencil sketch of her throughout her forty-eight years of strange and wandering, bitter and captivating journey on this Earth. But who, you may ask, who cares about the daughter of someone whose name in Russia is almost like a curse – a curse visible and invisible, anathema of consciousness and subconsciousness, roots and blood, soul and memory, heart and feelings?!

Her name has been pronounced with carefully concealed contempt on Russian soil for almost two hundred years. The daughter of Baron Georges Heckern D'Antes... Why should we meticulously study her biography, read old letters, flip through albums and books in search of a portrait? Why? Not just to convince ourselves that the heavenly punishment did indeed befall the "cotillon prince," the "playful regicide," the Juan Georges-Charles D'Antes, senator of the Second Empire, mayor of the city of Sultz, near the vineyards of Ambuas? It struck him far from the palace halls of St. Petersburg and the military parade grounds, far from the luxurious chambers of Vienna's diplomatic residences, far from the gazes and mocking smiles of that very fashionable society he despised from the depths of his soul and which he was fervently despised by in return... It struck and completely engulfed him in its suffocating embrace not somewhere else, but in his own home, or more precisely, in the ancient castle of the D'Antes, the ancestral family nest with its pink-violet tiles, pointed turrets, spiraled staircase railings, tiled fireplaces, and living rooms adorned with family portraits and paintings in gilded frames. Only one room in the house had no family portraits, paintings, or delicate trinkets. Rows of books with incomprehensible Slavic letters lined the shelves, and portraits of a man with a high forehead, dark curls on his temples, and sharply defined African lips hung everywhere. A lamp burned before the largest portrait, as if it were an icon. Leonie-Charlotte D'Antes, the third and youngest daughter of Baron Georges D'Antes de Heckern, a true Catholic and Christian, refused to pray to the Cross of the Lord. But she did not embrace her mother's Russian faith, Baroness Catherine, either. She poured all her desires, wishes, and hopes into the portrait of a distant uncle with a melodious, victorious Greek name, "Alexander," and an unpronounceable patronymic: "Sergeevich."

This uncle, whom her father killed in a distant Petersburg on a dark January day in 1837. She was fluent in the Russian language. The poetry and prose of Alexander Pushkin became her second Bible, and he himself was almost like a God to her. Almost... Little Baroness Charlotte-Leonie D'Antes de Heckern was born on April 4, 1840 (new style), in Sultz, near Colmar, in the ancestral estate of the D'Antes. According to the testimony of a historian-enthusiast, a biographer of the family, Louis Metman: "a house with a high roof, according to local custom, crowned with a stork's nest, spacious rooms furnished without excessive luxury, a staircase made of Vosges pink stone - all had the character of an Alsatian house of the wealthy class. More like a manor house than a rural castle, it was connected to a spacious courtyard, later transformed into a garden, and a farm... The side wing, built in the 18th century, was immediately assigned to the young couple upon their arrival. They could live there completely separately, away from political disputes and local quarrels (read between the lines: away from the family, which did not greet the foreign bride very warmly, almost ruining her son's career, and away from society). These disputes occasionally occupied, without deeply affecting, the small, provincial world that revolved around the respectable head of the family..." "Little Leonie" was received quite coldly by her mother, who passionately desired to please her beloved husband and expected only a son and heir. Less than a month after the birth of the baby, the baroness left with the servants and children to recuperate at the "castle-palace of Shimmel" on top of the mountain. What prompted such seclusion? Was it only the need for mountain air and rural tranquility for Catherine Nikolaevna, who was still recovering from frequent childbirths? Unlikely... Baron Georges, who married her out of desperation to a woman he did not love, not a beauty or in her prime, ensnared him with her displays of passionate and blind adoration, probably ardently desired to free himself from the suffocating bonds of his wife's love, even if only temporarily and fleetingly! Not yet recovered from childbirth, Catherine Nikolaevna was banished to such a place by her husband's "vengeful care," where she could not even write to her family properly. Countess Anastasia de Circour, nee Klustina, a compatriot of Catherine Nikolaevna and wife of the French writer and publicist, Count de Circour, who lived in Paris and expressed a desire to become Leonie's godmother, was forced to agree to baptize her in absentia. The baroness could not accept her only friend into the grand mountain castle; Baron Georges would not have liked it at all... How did he react to the birth of his third daughter is not known for certain. In public, he was cautionary, excessively gallant, and kind, but in private, he constantly and persistently criticized his wife and made mocking remarks about her habits, sympathies, her futile expectation of letters from Russia, and even her, as he saw it, "awkward ability to produce only girls, breeding poverty." All of this can be read between the lines of the few letters the baroness wrote to her family, which she wrote behind closed doors, hiding from her husband and delicately referring to him as a "persistent visitor."

The same letters, which she did not hide, were meticulously read by her husband, and therefore, they literally shone with the apparent happiness of a woman spoiled by everyone's attention, contented with marriage and children. This unintentional "collection of D'Antes girls," which the former Petersburg cavalryman deliberately turned away his paternal, capricious face and curled his lips at, was very pleasing to the eye, as even from childhood, all three girls of the noble Alsatian family were distinguished by the "genuine charm of the women of the Goncharov clan" (a line from a genuine letter from E.N. D'Antes de Heckern to her brother, D.N. Goncharov - the author). This somehow softened the eternal discontent of the bitter and frugal baron and his own father, Joseph-Louis D'Antes, because unwanted daughters and granddaughters could still be advantageously married off... How did the D'Antes girls, Mathilde, Berta-Josephine, and Leonie-Charlotte, grow up? Very little is known about that. Here are just a few lines from a letter from "Baroness Catherine" to her family in Polotnyany Zavod. These lines, sparingly painting a picture of their early childhood: "My children are as beautiful as they are dear, and what is especially remarkable about them is their health: never any illnesses, their teeth grew in without any suffering, and if you saw my little Alsatians, you would say that it is hard to imagine that they would ever become thin, fragile women... In any weather, winter or summer, they go for walks; at home, they always wear open dresses with bare arms and legs, no stockings, only very short socks and shoes, that's their attire in any season. Everyone is surprised and delighted when they see them. They have the appetites of young wolves; they eat everything they like, except sweets and jam." The lines clearly show the maternal pride in her children, adorned with strict care for their health and character. Catherine Nikolaevna took great care of her little girls: her constant seclusion greatly contributed to this. Matilda and Berta started speaking early and, along with their wit, were unusually gentle in character; they obeyed adults, to use Catherine Nikolaevna's expression, "at first sight." However, such obedience was also greatly influenced by the tense atmosphere in the family: the father was always irritated and dissatisfied, disappearing for weeks on hunting trips or on the farm they acquired in 1839 together with the adoptive father (or lover?), Baron Louis de Heckern. It was located several leagues from the castle. What happened on the farm, what kind of order prevailed there, what conversations and disputes took place, the baroness did not know, as she was never allowed to cross its threshold. The baron and his adoptive "son of joy," Georges D'Antes, often went hunting together... And it was during one such "secluded" hunt that a mysterious event occurred, which Catherine Nikolaevna recounted with a trembling heart in a letter to her brother, Dmitry Nikolaevich:

"January 28, 1841. Sultz.
While I wrote to you about all sorts of trifles in the letter, my dear friend, I had no idea what a terrible misfortune could befall me: my husband was almost killed while hunting by a forester, whose rifle fired four steps away from him, and the bullet hit his left arm, shattering the bone. He suffered terribly, and still suffers; thank God, his wound, though very painful, does not inspire concern about the consequences; the doctor says it will take about six months... It is terrible when I think that I could have lost my poor husband, I don't know how to thank heaven for only limiting this terrible ordeal to what it sends me!" This small hastily written sheet, with illegible pearl-like letters, conceals much unsaid, many secrets and unspoken words. Were the circumstances of this mysterious injury to D'Antes actually as he described them to his wife? What could he have hidden? Who knows? In her next letter, Catherine Nikolaevna, thanking her brother for promising to send her 5,000 rubles, reveals: "My husband's prolonged illness, as you well understand, cost a lot... Paying three bills from the doctors who attended him day and night is not a trifle, and now there is also a course of treatment at the waters. If you had not come to our aid, we would have been in a very difficult situation..." The wound of D'Antes was likely much more serious than Catherine Nikolaevna described it in her first, frightened letter.

All the quoted letters of Baroness Heckern are filled not only with fear but also with hidden, veiled longing for her family, despair of deep internal loneliness: "Sometimes I mentally transport myself to you, and I can easily imagine how you spend your time, I think that only the inhabitants of the Factory have changed... Write to me about everything, about the changes you make in your possessions because, I assure you, dear friend, all this interests me very much, perhaps more than you think, I still love the Factory very much, after all, I got used to it from an early age..." Sometimes, locked in her room and sitting her children on her lap, Catherine Nikolaevna tearfully showed them a miniature in an oval frame: the face of a young man of extraordinary beauty, with delicate, spiritual features and deep sad eyes - it was a portrait of her father, Nikolai Afanasevich, to whom she did not write due to the fear of possible (and inevitable!) moral reproaches - he was a very religious man... The portrait of their father was sent to her sister by the obligatory head of the Goncharov family, Dmitry Nikolayevich Goncharov, who, due to his duty and family affairs, calculations, and circumstances, corresponded with the banished baroness, albeit reluctantly. The grieving baroness told her little girls - daughters and about "ananma Natalie," once an astonishing beauty of the Alexandrian era, a maid of honor to Empress Elizaveta Alekseyevna; now faded, aged, walking with a hazel stick, but still retaining the majesty of manner and proud, unyielding posture. She showed them a copy of her portrait - in pale blue tones, painted by Natalie Ivanovna herself in her distant youth. The children, captivated by the beauty of the old elegant miniatures, often asked permission to kiss them. Catherine Nikolaevna gladly allowed it. And she wrote to her brother with a wrenching pride that she was immensely happy to have instilled in the children a love for distant relatives. Presumably, she told Matilda and Berta a lot about Russia, about distant Kaluga, the once magnificent estate of the Goncharovs in Yaropoltsy, and the now dilapidated palace of "great-grandfather Doroshenko"* (*A.P. Pushkin), which had over forty rooms, huge collections of paintings, porcelain, and antique furniture with an old library. She often flipped through her handwritten albums of verses by Zhukovsky, Kozlov, Griboedov, Vyazemsky, and Pushkin, and then her voice became even softer and sadder, and the children, enchanted by the strange, incomprehensible, melodious words in an unfamiliar language, fell asleep on her lap. She never taught them Russian. She dared not... She could not... She did not want to? Simply - she did not have time?.. Neither the graceful "grimasnitsa and intellectual" Matilda nor the beauty Berta-Josephine, later could understand how their youngest sister, Leonie-Charlotte, who was only three years old at the time of their mother's death, managed to absorb such a thirst for knowledge of the unfamiliar language, on which their mother almost did not speak?! Moreover, to absorb it to such an extent that Leonie was able to master it perfectly, freely writing and attempting to speak! Catherine Nikolaevna, despite her best intentions, could not have intentionally instilled such a passionate love for everything Russian and for the poetry of her husband's slain son-in-law in the little girl! And not only for moral and psychological reasons. Even simply because in her last years of life, alas, she had no time for the little girl! After giving birth in 1842 (*at the end of January - beginning of February - the author) to her fourth stillborn son, whom her strict and bilious handsome husband so eagerly desired, Catherine Nikolaevna fell seriously and desperately ill, suffering not so much from physical ailments as from her husband's reproaches and hopeless longing. She completely despaired of evoking any reciprocal feeling in his heart, and the bitter hopelessness of a life that did not warm his heart finally undermined her fragile