Ekaterina Semyonovna Vorontsova

Ekaterina Semyonovna Voronzowa, Catherine Herbert Countess of Pembroke ( Henry Raeburn , 1810s, Pushkin Museum )

Countess Yekaterina Semyonovna Vorontsova ( Russian Екатерина Семёновна Воронцова ; born October 13 ^{. Jul} / 24. October  1783 ^greg. In St. Petersburg ; † 27. March 1856 in London ) was a Russian - British aristocrat and maid of honor .

Life

Vorontsova's father was the diplomat Count Semjon Romanowitsch Voronzow . Her mother Ekaterina Alexejewna Voronzowa née Senjawina, daughter of Admiral Alexei Naumowitsch Senjawin , died 10 months after her birth of consumption . Her aunt Ekaterina Romanovna Voronzowa-Daschkowa was a confidante of Catherine II. Voronzowa's father became Russian ambassador in London in 1784 , so she grew up in London. She was often sick and weak in her youth. She received an excellent upbringing under the direction of her father and the Smolny Institute graduate Schardin, which she did not leave until her marriage. Languages, classics, music and singing were part of their education. At the age of 12 she translated Klopstock's tragedy The Death of Adam from French into Russian . She sang in a duet with the poet Thomas Moore , to whom she gave some Russian melodies for his album .

Vorontsova worked as her father's secretary. Thanks to her father's efforts, she was appointed Russian court lady in 1797. In 1800 her father was given leave of absence as ambassador due to the tense Russian relations with the United Kingdom and the rapprochement with France . But he was allowed to continue living in London. She spent the summer of 1802 with her father in St. Petersburg and did court service with the Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna in Pavlovsk . On her return to London, her father began to look for an appropriate marriage opportunity for his daughter, given his confused financial situation and uncertain prospects.

George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke ( Pompeo Batoni , 1779)

Vorontsova had long been friends with Elizabeth Herbert, Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery , whose 48-year-old widowed son and two children George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke Vorontsova, proposed marriage. The marriage took place on January 25, 1808. Her father had finally obtained permission for this marriage to a foreigner from the dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in order to spare his daughter difficulties. Thanks to this marriage, Vorontsova now played a prominent role as Catherine Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, in London society, which she had known well from her youth. She and her husband had an even marriage at the Pembroke family estate Wilton House , near which her father had settled. In 1817 they received Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich there .

Vorontsova had a son and four daughters. Elizabeth (1809-1858) married Richard Meade, 3rd Earl of Clanwilliam . Sidney (1810–1861) married Mary Elizabeth Ashe à Court . Mary (1813-1892) married George Brudenell-Bruce, 2nd Marquess of Ailesbury . Catherine (1814–1886) married Alexander Murray, 6th Earl of Dunmore . Georgiana (1817–1841) married Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 4th Marquess of Lansdowne . Emma (1819–1884) married Thomas Vesey, 3rd Viscount de Vesci .

After her husband's death in 1827, Vorontsova devoted himself entirely to the children and care of her father, who died in 1832.

Vorontsova's older brother was the governor general of New Russia and Bessarabia and governor of the Caucasus Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Оксана Захарова: Жизнь и дипломатическая деятельность графа С. Р. Воронцова . Litres, September 5, 2017.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Humphrys Family Tree: Voronzow (accessed February 25, 2020).
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Графиня Екатерина Семёновна Воронцова, в замужестве леди Пе́мбрук (accessed February 25, 2020).
4. ↑ Архив князя Воронцова. Кн. 9 . Moscow 1876.
5. ↑ Mosley, Charles (Eds.): Burke's Peerage , Baronetage & Knighthood . 107th edition. Burke's Peerage & Gentry, ISBN 0-9711966-2-1 , pp. 3095 .