Sex with the Queen (31 page)

Anna Leopoldovna was not a very good regent. Though mar-ried to a German prince, she spent most of her time rolling in bed with her lover, the Saxon ambassador. To the great amuse-ment of courtiers, the regent’s husband was often seen banging angrily on her bedroom door.

Numerous powerful families tried to persuade Elizabeth to stage a coup and proclaim herself empress. Afraid of bloodshed, Elizabeth hesitated until she heard rumors that Anna Leopoldovna was planning on claiming the imperial crown for herself and having her inconvenient cousin shut up in a convent.

Elizabeth shuddered at the thought of religious life because, as one contemporary wrote, there was “not an ounce of nun’s flesh about her.”13

On November 25, 1741, hours before she was to be arrested, Elizabeth rallied loyal troops and invaded the palace. The coup was ridiculously easy; the people wanted the daughter of Peter the Great to rule. Anna was imprisoned in one fortress and her infant son in another. Elizabeth was gentle with her former ene-1 4 0

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mies who now swarmed to proclaim their loyalty. She swore never to sentence anyone to death for political crimes. She outlawed the torture of children under seventeen and the cutting off of women’s noses. Even the humblest subjects were encouraged to hand Elizabeth petitions for redressing injustice.

Unlike her three female predecessors—her mother, Catherine I; Empress Anna; and the regent Anna Leopoldovna—Elizabeth took her governmental responsibilities quite seriously, working most of the day, reading reports, presiding over meetings, forc-ing rival ministers to make peace. Mercurial and temperamen-tal, Elizabeth had an arsenal of tactics to get her way—flashing a brilliant smile, stamping her foot in impatience, swearing like a fishwife, complimenting and cajoling.

Not only had Russian politics declined in recent years, so had Russian court manners. Forty years earlier Elizabeth’s father had beaten French courtesy into his unruly courtiers. Now Elizabeth was forced to issue an edict that courtiers were to appear in

“good and not in verminous dress.”14

When Elizabeth mounted the throne, her lover of several years was Alexei Razumovsky, a Cossack village shepherd whose exquisite singing voice had procured him a job in the royal chapel. His voice, clear and achingly sweet, pierced the smoke of incense and burning tapers, danced about the glinting icons, and rose into the vaulted arches. Curious to see the owner of this voice, Elizabeth prowled around the church until she found a tall, dark, and muscular young man with flashing black eyes.

Elizabeth was smitten and began the greatest love affair of her life.

As the lover of the empress, Razumovsky became a patron of Russian drama and opera and made Russia a leading European center for the study and performance of music. Unlike Eliza-beth, who was convinced that too much reading could prove fa-tal, Razumovsky loved books and encouraged literature.

The new empress made no secret of her love affair; she openly held hands with Razumovsky and kissed him in public. Razu-movsky served the empress every night with such devotion that court wags called him the “Night Emperor.”15 The church e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 4 1

bleated its disapproval, suggesting the empress make the union a moral one. And Elizabeth, superstitious almost to paranoia, most likely married the singing shepherd secretly in 1742. That year she made him a count and appointed him court chamber-lain. She bestowed on him a palace in Moscow and another in St.

Petersburg.

Unlike most royal lovers, Razumovsky loved his imperial mis-tress deeply and remained unspoiled by the wealth and honors heaped on him. In a court of vicious self-seekers, it seemed that Razumovsky alone was gentle and kind. He made no efforts to hide his humble origins and invited his family to court. His ter-rified mother was plucked off her dirt farm and dolled up in a white wig and satin gown to meet the empress. When she caught a glimpse of a splendid-looking female in a full-length mirror, she assumed it was Empress Elizabeth herself who stood before her and curtsied deeply.

Having decided never to marry officially and bear legitimate children, Elizabeth summoned the fourteen-year-old German son of her dead older sister to Russia to be her heir. Elizabeth, who liked swaggering red-blooded men, tried to hide her disap-pointment when she met this narrow-shouldered, twitching boy with an annoying high-pitched voice.

When Elizabeth set about choosing a bride for the unpromis-ing Grand Duke Peter in 1744, she wanted a princess who was at-tractive but would not eclipse her own beauty at court. As she entered her late thirties she found herself in the position of Em-press Anna fifteen years earlier, who had looked on the radiant youth of Elizabeth with thinly veiled hostility. She covered her graying hair with yellow tint, rouged her sagging cheeks, and wore increasingly elaborate gowns to hide her heavy hips. She alone was permitted to wear the largest hoopskirts at court and changed her gown six times a day.

Having studied portraits of all suitable brides, Elizabeth chose for her sixteen-year-old nephew the humble fourteen-year-old Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a tiny German prin-cipality. The empress was pleased with her choice; the bride’s impoverished family would not demand privileges or treaties 1 4 2

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from Russia. Though the girl was attractive, she was no raving beauty. Slim as a twig, her figure would not rival the baroque curves of the empress.

The princess’s features were too strong to be considered beautiful; her blue eyes were heavily hooded and her chin jutted out to a stubborn point. Her mouth, a narrow line when at rest, could flash a winning smile. But Catherine—the name she took upon converting to Russian Orthodoxy—boasted rich chestnut hair and a fresh prettiness. Though only five foot three, the girl had such excellent posture that she was often thought to be much taller.

In her memoirs, Catherine recalled her introduction to the empress. “No one could see Elizabeth for the first time without being overwhelmed by her beauty and her majesty,” she wrote.

“She was very tall and very stout, without it being in the least bit disfiguring or in any way impeding the grace of her movements.

Her hooped dress was of glittering cloth of silver trimmed with gold. Her unpowdered hair glistened with diamonds and one black feather curled against her rosy cheek.”16

It occurred to Elizabeth that her tall, heavy frame would look better in men’s clothing. Her thick muscular legs looked hand-some in white silk stockings and knee breeches. Her expanding abdomen and hips were covered by a flaring coat. The empress began to hold “metamorphosis” balls, in which all the men were required to come dressed as women, and the women as men.

Generals and ministers alike were required to wear corsets and hoopskirts and put powder and patches over a five o’clock shadow. Holding dainty fans in clumsy hairy fingers, the men stumbled about awkwardly on high heels. At one such ball, a fat major general tripped on his hoopskirt and fell on top of Grand Duchess Catherine, nearly breaking her arm. But on the whole, Catherine and the other women were delighted to find them-selves liberated from corsets, hoops, and high heels, and they had a wonderful time romping about the ball dressed as men.

But Elizabeth’s mounting distress at aging was not limited to metamorphosis balls. Once she dyed her hair black and, displeased with the result, found she could not get the dye out. She had to e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y r u s s i a 1 4 3

shave her head and as a matter of course made all the ladies at court do the same. They cried pitifully as their long coveted locks were shaved. As her father, Peter the Great, had taken shears to the beards of his courtiers, so did Elizabeth stalk palace corri-dors wielding a large pair of scissors to despoil the tresses of pretty young women, crying that she did not like their hairstyles.

Catherine wrote, “These young ladies claimed that Her Majesty had taken off a little of their skin along with their hair.”17

Despite the advancing hand of time, the daughter of Peter the Great did not need such stratagems. Age and weight gain did not rob her of her magnificent height, blazing energy, beguil-ing smile, and firm stride. Nor did she have any problem find-ing lovers. Unburdened by fidelity to Razumovsky, Elizabeth would often call another favorite to make love to her after her ladies had retired. She still cooked for Razumovsky, and babied him when he was sick, and gave him splendid diamond buttons and shoe buckles and epaulettes glittering with gems. Grateful for the attention, gentle Razumovsky did not mind the compe-tition from other men. In 1749 she took a new lover, her gen-tleman of the bedchamber, Ivan Shuvalov, and moved him into an adjoining apartment. Handsome Shuvalov was in his early twenties when Elizabeth was about to celebrate her fortieth birthday.

Like Razumovsky, Shuvalov became the patron of theater, music, literature, and the arts. He established the Academy of Fine Arts and Russia’s first university. He brought French plays to the Russian stage. At one of these plays Elizabeth fell in love with the young man in the lead role, a cadet named Nikita Beke-tov, whom she promoted to colonel and invited to live in the palace.

But Beketov was no actor. Her chancellor Alexei Bestuzhev had resented the influence of her lover Shuvalov and decided to replace him with a man of his own. He handpicked Beketov as a youth likely to appeal to the empress’s prurient interest and arranged for him to take the lead role in the play. Bestuzhev then dressed the young man in a way that would attract the empress—1 4 4

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