The main estate of the Nabokovs - the Batovo manor

The village of Batovo on the bank of the Oredezh River was granted by Paul I to Major General P.F. Malyutin, a former officer of the Gatchina troops. In 1800, Malyutin gifted Batovo to the mother of the poet-Decembrist Ryleev, Anastasia Matveevna. After her death in 1824, Ryleev became the owner of Batovo; his comrades from the Northern Society visited him here. While imprisoned awaiting his sentence, Ryleev arranged to sell the estate (900 desyatinas and 60 serfs) to pay off debts, which was only done in 1827. From 1854, the estate belonged to the Korf barons, under whom a new wooden house with a belvedere was built and the park was significantly expanded. Batovo is reflected in the works of Nabokov, who visited the estate of his grandmother Maria Ferdinandovna, née Korf.

The main nest of the Nabokovs was the Batovo estate. Since 1800, the estate belonged to the Ryleev family; the famous poet and revolutionary Kondraty Ryleev and his friends often visited here. It is known for certain that Ryleev was here in 1824, together with his friend Alexander Bestuzhev. There is a quote from Alexander describing Batovo: “The location there is wonderful… A quiet river winds between steep wooded banks, where it widens into a pool, where it undercuts rocks from which clear streams run down. Silence and wildlife all around, and I spent five days outdoors, in the forest, by the river.”

In Nabokov’s time, the house even had a “ghost room” — a former study where the shadow of the executed poet supposedly appeared, and the main alley of the park was called the “Hanged Man’s Alley” — also in memory of the former owner.

Batovo was acquired in the mid-19th century by the writer’s great-grandmother, Baroness Nina Alexandrovna Korf, who in her old age moved back to her homeland, Samara, selling the estate to her daughter Maria Ferdinandovna Korf and her husband Dmitry Nikolaevich Nabokov. They had several children, including Vladimir, the writer’s father.

Vladimir Nabokov in Batovo. Summer 1909

In 1904, Dmitry Nikolaevich died, and only the grandmother remained in Batovo, to whom numerous grandchildren came for the summer. Sergey Nabokov, the writer’s cousin, recalled: “Maria Ferdinandovna built herself a separate small house diagonally from the entrance, where she lived as a matriarch among her beloved furniture, porcelain, and dogs, only visiting the offspring in the old house…”

Peasants wove legends about the mistress of the estate: how the baroness bathed in the Oredezh until the ice formed, how she slept with the windows open all year round, how she shot at wolves that came too close to the house.

In 1914, Batovo was sold to the joint-stock company “Stroitel,” which established a sawmill here.

Besides the main manor house and the separate house added for M.F. Korf, the park had numerous outbuildings and services, a stable, a carriage house, and a shed with a refrigerator.

After the revolution, a local club was set up in the Batovo estate; in 1925, the house burned down.

Part of the park has survived to the present day, where in 1970 a stele with a bas-relief of Ryleev was installed.

Sources:

http://nabokov.gatchina3000.ru/museum/rojdestveno_batovo_vyra.htm

http://enclo.lenobl.ru/object/1803554286?lc=ru

https://lubelia.livejournal.com/1551173.html