Natalya Alexandrovna Zakharina and Alexander Ivanovich Herzen got married under the most unusual circumstances. In 1834, Alexander Herzen was arrested on false charges. He was accused of singing libelous songs, defamatory to the emperor’s family. At first, he was exiled to Perm and later to Vyatka where he was accepted for a job at the governor’s office. Upon the petition of Vasily Zhukovsky, the writer was transferred to Vladimir. Throughout most of this time, from 1835 to 1837, Alexander Herzen corresponded with Natalya Zakharina. Finally, in May 1837, they were able to get married after a series of adventures. The writer even had to “steal” the bride. Marya Alexeyevna Khovanskaya, Natalya’s relative who was responsible for her upbringing, was unwilling to see her married to Alexander Herzen.

However, Natalya Zakharina managed to run away from home to her future husband. Accompanied by his friend, Nikolay Ketscher, she switched carriages several times. Herzen and Zakharina met at the Rogozhsky Gate and celebrated her “release from captivity” with a glass of champagne. Later, Herzen recalled, “[Natalie] came in all in white, dazzlingly lovely; three years of separation and the struggles she had been through had given the finishing touches to her features and her expression. ‘It is you, ’ she said in her soft, gentle voice. We sat down on the sofa and remained silent. The expression of joy in her eyes resembled one of suffering. I suppose that when the feeling of gladness reaches its highest pitch it is mingled with an expression of pain, for she said to me, ‘How tormented you look! ’”

From the Rogozhsky Gate, the couple went to Vladimir where they got married in the Church of Our Lady of Kazan on May 9, 1838. Alexander Herzen wrote about the beginning of their married life in his diary, “The end of our correspondence.”

In July 1841, the writer was exiled to Novgorod where he lived with his family for a year. There, Alexander Herzen and Natalya Zakharina became close friends with the artist Carl Reichel. The artist drew two pencil portraits of Alexander Herzen and painted the large portrait of his wife that is displayed at the museum. When the Herzen family left Russia, they took this portrait with them. Later, it was kept by their French descendants. In 1982, the painting was donated to the museum by Natalya Petrovna Herzen and Léonard Rist, the writer’s great-grandchildren.