I
I was born on 22 August, 1844, in the country, at the village of
Pokrovskoye in the Manor of Glyebov-Stryeshnev, and up to the time of my
marriage I spent every summer there. In the winter our family lived in
Moscow, in the Kremlin at the house near the Troizki Gate, which
belonged to the Crown, for my father was court physician{1} and also
principal physician to the Senate and Ordnance Office.{2}
My father was a Lutheran, but my mother belonged to the Orthodox Church.
The investigations of my sister, T. A. Kuzminskii, and of my brother, A.
A. Bers,{3} show, with regard to my father's origin, that it was his
grandfather who emigrated from Germany to Russia. During the reign of
the Empress Elisabeth Petrovna, regiments were raised in Russia for
which new instructors were required. At the request of the Empress, the
King of Prussia sent four officers of the Horse Guards to Petersburg;
among them was Captain Ivan Bers, who, after serving for several years
in Russia, was killed at the battle of Zorndorf. He left a widow and one
son, Evstafii. All that is known about her is that she was called Marie,
that she was a baroness, and that she died young, leaving a moderate
fortune to her son, Evstafii.
Evstafii Ivanovich lived in Moscow and married Elisabeth Ivanovna
Wulfert, belonging to an old, aristocratic, Westphalian family.{4} She
had two sons, Alexander and Andrey, my father. Both were medical men and
studied at the Moscow University.
In 1812 all the property of Evstafii Ivanovich was destroyed by fire,
including all his houses, documents, and his seal with his coat-of-arms,
a bee-hive with a swarm of bees attacking a bear, from which we derive
our family name, Bers (Baer in German means bear). The right to the
coat-of-arms was not restored to my father, though applications were
made by his descendants; permission was given only to use a bee-hive
and bees on the coat-of-arms.{5}
After the war of 1812 the government made a small grant of money to
Evstafii Ivanovich, and my grandmother, Elizabeth Ivanovna, when she
became a widow, managed with difficulty to educate her sons. After
finishing their studies at the medical schools of the university, the
brothers Bers began to earn their own living. The elder, Alexander
settled in Petersburg,{6} the younger lived with his mother in Moscow.
At the age of thirty-four Andrey married Lyubov Alexandrovna Islavin,
who was sixteen years old and the daughter of Alexander Mikhailovich
Islenev and of Princess Sophie Petrovna Kozlovskii, nee Countess
Zavadovskii.
My mother's descent was as follows: Count Peter Vasilevich Zavadovskii,
my mother's grandfather, was the well-known statesman and favourite of
the Empress Catherine II. Under Alexander I he became the first Minister
of Education in Russia. He was married to Countess Vera Nikolaevna
Apraxin, who was a maid-of-honour, a peeress in her own right, and a
remarkable beauty. The elder daughter, Countess Sophie Petrovna
Zavadovskii, at the age of sixteen was married against her will to
Prince Kozlovskii; she had one son by him, but, after a short and
unhappy married life, left him and had a liaison with Alexander
Mikhailovich Islenev, with whom she lived for the remainder of her life.
She died in childbirth, but had previously borne him three sons and
three daughters, of whom the youngest, Lyubov Alexandrovna, was my
mother.
Sophie Petrovna lived permanently on my grandfather's estate in the
village Krasnoye,{7} and there she was buried near the church. It was
said that she induced a priest to marry her to my grandfather. She used
to say: "I want to be the wife of Alexander Mikhailovich at any rate in
the sight of God, if not in the view of man."
My grandfather, Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev,{8} of an old
aristocratic family, took part in the battle of Borodino, after which he
was given a commission in the Preobrazhenskii Guards. Subsequently he
was aide-de-camp to Count Chernishov. The family name "Islenev" was not
given to his children by Sophie Petrovna; the marriage was not
considered legal, and the descendants now bear the name "Islavin." Many
of them rose to high rank.{9}