The Commissioner's Daughter: The Story of Elizabeth Proby and Admiral Chichagov by Joanna Woods (review)

Abstract

I48 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 temporal or semantic 'authenticity'.As he writes in his last letter to his aunt, dated I 758, and thus only severalyears before his own death, 'Foryou must know that of those that came to this countrywith old Raik6cziI alone remain. Those that are with me now are newcomers. What a world!... When I wrote my firstletterto my Aunt I was twenty-sevenyears of age and this one I write at the age of sixty-nine. With the exception of I 7 years the remainderI have spentin fruitlessexile. I ought not to have said"fruitless",forin the ordinances of God thereis no fruitlessness;forHe ordainsallthingsto His glory.We must therefore beware that we too turn everything to that end, and thus all His ordinancesconcerning uswillbe to our salvation.Let us then wish fornothing but the will of God. Let us askfor an edifyinglife, a good death and salvation. And then we shallcease from asking,from sin, from exile and from insatiable desiresalike.Amen' (Letter207, p. 258). In his introduction, Bernard Adams errs in one important respect. It is misleading to suggest that Mikes had the opportunity to return to Hungary and that his exile abroadwas to a certain extent self-imposed(pp. xi, xiii). In fact, no such chance was given him. When in I74I Mikes petitioned the Empress to be allowed to come home to Transylvania,he received only the tersereply,Ex Turkia nullaredemptio. School ofSlavonic andEastEuropean Studies MARTYN RADY University College London Woods, Joanna. The Commissioner's Daughter.7he Stogyof ElizabethProbyand AdmiralChichagov. The Stonesfield Press, Stonesfield, Witney, Oxfordshire , 2000. XV+ 255 pp. Genealogical table. Map. Illustrations.Notes. Biographicalnotes. Bibliography.Index. fI 7.95 (hardback). THEfame or notoriety of Admiral Pavel Vasil'evichChichagov (I767-I849) has turned almost exclusively on the question whether he was 'the man who let Napoleon get away'. Readers of the recentlyrepublishedmemoirsof Filipp FilippovichVigel'willhave been remindedof the extent to which the admiral's tactical decisions on the west bank of the river Berezina in I812 gave rise to heated debate among his contemporaries (Vigel', Zapiski,Moscow, 2000, PP. 3I3-I4). Obliged to refer to Chichagov in passing, a mid-twentiethcentury textbook brought him to mind merely by referringto the Berezina issue (N. P. Eroshkin, Ocherki istorii gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii,Moscow, i960, p. 220).Joanna Woods'sdualbiographypermitsa more rounded assessment.Although it gives due weight to Chichagov'sbriefperiod of service as a 'land admiral', it is principallyconcerned with the earlier and much longer part of his life when he was a naval officerin realityas well as by rank.His wife, Elizabeth Proby,was the daughterof the Commissionerof the Royal Dockyardat Chatham. The couple fell in love therein I796, when, as a young captain, Chichagov was waiting for his ship to be refitted. Marriage had to await the death of Proby'sxenophobic fatherin I799, but then proved to be idyllically happy. Because Chichagov was not only gifted but also the son of Russia's principal naval commander in the war with Sweden of I788-90, his prospects were excellent. After some setbacks under Paul, he REVIEWS I49 became navy minister under Alexander I at the end of i802 and remained one of the tsar'smost intimate associatesuntil about I 807. His enthusiasmfor navalreform,however,made him many enemies. Over-scrupulous,incorruptible , prickly,and solipsistic(except in the family home on Vasil'evskiiIsland), he eventuallyfound bureaucraticpoliticstoo much forhim and took indefinite leave from his ministry in I809. Conservatives in St Petersburg were not inclined to change theirview of him when he proceeded to spendthe next two years in Napoleonic France.Woods'sstudyconveys the clear impressionthat, but for the calming influence of Elizabeth Proby, Chichagov would. have antagonized many more people in St Petersburga good deal sooner than he did. He certainly fell apart when his wife died in Paris in July I8I I (in childbirth).Although he earnedplauditsin St Petersburgforgoing backthere, and although he and the tsar re-establishedtheir close relationship,the blow on the Berezina proved too much for him and in I814 he moved from Russia to Francefor good. Woods narratesall this with verve and insight, providing along the way many vignettes of life in the upper echelons of Russian...