The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (15 page)

In July the Empress celebrated peace with Sweden in Moscow, and on this occasion a court was formed for me as the betrothed Grand Duchess of Russia, and immediately after this celebration, the Empress made us leave for Kiev.
²⁰
She herself left a few days after us. We proceeded by small stages, my mother and I, Countess Rumiantseva and one of my mother’s ladies in one carriage, the Grand Duke, Brümmer, Bergholz, and Ducker in another. One afternoon, the Grand Duke, bored with his teachers, wanted to ride with my mother and me; once there, he refused to budge from our carriage. Then my mother, tired of traveling with him and me every day, decided to enlarge the company. She shared her idea with the young members of our group, among whom were Prince Golitsyn, since named Marshal, and Count Zakhar Chernyshev. They took one of the carts carrying our beds, arranged benches all around it, and the next day, my mother, the Grand Duke, and I, Prince Golitsyn, Count Chernyshev, and one or two of the youngest of our suite sat there, and in this way we completed the rest of the journey quite gaily as far as we were concerned; but those who were not in our carriage rebelled against this arrangement, which greatly displeased Grand Marshal Brümmer, Grand Chamberlain Bergholz, Countess Rumiantseva, my mother’s lady-in-waiting, and the rest of the company, because they could not sit with us, and while we laughed during the trip, they cursed and were bored. Thus things stood when we arrived after three weeks in Kozelets, where for three more weeks we awaited the Empress, whose journey had been delayed en route by several incidents.
²¹
We heard in Kozelets that during the trip there had been several people dismissed from the Empress’s entourage and that she was in a very bad mood.

Finally in the middle of August she arrived in Kozelets; we stayed there with her until the end of August. We played faro for high stakes from morning to night in a large hall in the middle of the house, and the rest of the time everyone was packed in tightly; my mother and I slept in the same room, Countess Rumiantseva and my mother’s lady in the antechamber, and so forth. One day the Grand Duke entered our room while my mother was writing and had her writing case open next to her, and he wanted to rummage in it out of curiosity. My mother told him not to touch it, and he actually went jumping across the room away from her, but in jumping here and there to make me laugh, he caught the lid of the open case and knocked it over. At this my mother grew angry and there were heated words between them. My mother reproached him for having upset the case deliberately, while he decried her injustice, and both appealed to me, demanding my corroboration. Knowing my mother’s temper, I was afraid of being slapped if I did not agree with her, and wanting neither to lie nor offend the Grand Duke, I found myself caught in the cross fire. Nevertheless, I told my mother that I did not think that the Grand Duke had done it intentionally, but that his robe had caught the cover of the case, which had been placed on a very small stool. Then my mother took me to task because when she was upset, she needed someone to quarrel with. I fell silent and began to cry. The Grand Duke, seeing that all my mother’s anger fell on me because I had spoken in his favor and because I cried, accused my mother of injustice and excessive fury, while she told him that he was an ill-bred little boy. In a word, it would have been impossible to take the quarrel further without coming to blows, which neither of them did, however. From this moment, the Grand Duke took a great dislike to my mother and never forgot this quarrel; for her part, my mother also held a grudge against him, and their interactions with each other became awkward and distrustful with a tendency toward bitterness. Both of them could barely hide this from me. As hard as I worked to mollify them both, I succeeded only for brief moments. Each always had some sarcastic barb ready to sting the other. My situation grew thornier each day as a result. I strove to obey the one and to please the other, and in truth, at that time the Grand Duke bared his heart to me more than to anyone else, and he saw that my mother often scolded me when she could not quarrel with him. This did not hurt me in his esteem, because he felt he could trust me. Finally, on August 29, we entered Kiev. We stayed there for ten days, after which we returned to Moscow in exactly the same manner that we had come.

Back in Moscow, autumn passed by with plays, balls, and masquerades at court.
²²
Despite this, we saw that the Empress was often in bad humor. One day when my mother and I were at the theater with the Grand Duke in a loge across from that of Her Imperial Majesty, I noticed that the Empress was speaking quite heatedly and angrily with Count Lestocq. When she had finished, Monsieur Lestocq left her and came to our loge. He approached me and said, “Did you see how the Empress was speaking to me?” I said yes. “Well,” he said, “she is quite angry with you.” “With me? Why?” was my response. “Because,” he said, “you have many debts. She says that one can empty wells and that when she was a Princess, she had no more support than you have and an entire household to maintain and that she was careful not to indebt herself because she knew that no one would pay for her.”
²³
He said all this dryly and with irritation, apparently so that she could see from her loge how he acquitted himself of his errand. Tears came to my eyes and I fell silent. After he had said his piece, he left. The Grand Duke, who was next to me and who had heard almost the entire conversation, after asking me about what he had not heard, by his expression rather than by his words gave me to understand that he agreed with his aunt and that he was not upset that I had been scolded. This was indeed his method, and by this he hoped to please the Empress by imitating her opinion when she was angry with someone. As for my mother, when she learned of the situation she said that this was only one more attempt to loosen her hold on me, and since I had been encouraged to act without consulting her, she washed her hands of the affair; thus both lined up against me. As for me, I wanted to put my affairs in order immediately, and the next day I requested my accounts. They showed that I owed seventeen thousand rubles; before leaving Moscow for Kiev, the Empress had sent me fifteen thousand rubles and a large coffer of simple cloths, but I had to be richly dressed. In sum, then, I owed two thousand rubles; this did not seem to me an excessive amount. A variety of causes had forced these expenditures upon me.
Primo,
I had arrived in Russia very poorly outfitted; though I had three or four outfits, I was at the end of the world, and at a court where one changed outfits three times a day. A dozen chemises made up all my lingerie; I used my mother’s bed linens.
Secondo,
I had been told that they liked presents in Russia and that with generosity one made friends and became likable.
Tertio,
the most spendthrift woman in Russia, Countess Rumiantseva, had been placed in my company. Always surrounded by merchants, she presented me daily with piles of things that she encouraged me to purchase from these vendors, things I often only bought to give to her because she craved them. The Grand Duke as well cost me a great deal because he was greedy for presents. My mother’s ill humor was also easily pacified by things that pleased her, and as she was then often angry and especially with me, I did not fail to use this method once I had discovered it.

My mother’s ill humor derived in part from the fact that she was thoroughly in the bad graces of the Empress, who often mortified and humiliated her. Moreover, my mother, whom I had always obeyed, did not see without displeasure that I preceded her, which I avoided everywhere that I could, but which was impossible in public.
²⁴
In general I had made it a rule to show her the greatest respect and deference possible, but all this did not help me much, and on every occasion some bitter remark escaped her, which neither did her much good nor disposed people in her favor. With her repeated comments and much gossiping, Countess Rumiantseva along with many others contributed enormously to putting my mother in the Empress’s bad graces. The eight-seat carriage on the journey to Kiev played an important role in all this. All the older people had been excluded from it, all the young ones invited. God knows what meaning had been ascribed to this arrangement, which was at heart innocent. What was apparent was that it had upset all those who should have been invited because of their rank and had seen preference shown to the most amusing. The basic reason for all these complaints against my mother derived from the fact that Betskoi, whom she had decided to trust, and the Trubetskois had not been invited on the journey to Kiev, and Brümmer and Countess Rumiantseva surely had a hand in this. The carriage for eight, into which they had not been invited by my mother, was a kind of revenge.

In November the Grand Duke came down with measles; as I had not had them, precautions were taken to prevent my infection. The prince’s entourage did not come to our rooms, and all entertainment ceased. As soon as the illness had passed and winter set in, we left Moscow for Petersburg in sleds, my mother and I in one, the Grand Duke and Count Brümmer in another.
²⁵
On December 18, we celebrated the Empress’s birthday at Tver, from which we departed the following day. Halfway through our journey, in the town of Shotilova, the Grand Duke fell ill one evening while in my room. They took him to his own room and put him to bed; he had a high fever during the night. The following day at noon my mother and I went to his room to see him, but hardly had I passed the threshold, when Count Brümmer came toward me and told me to go no farther. I wanted to know the reason and he told me that smallpox sores had just appeared on the Grand Duke. As I had not had it, my mother led me quickly from the room, and it was decided that my mother and I would leave the same day for Petersburg, leaving the Grand Duke and his entourage at Shotilova. Countess Rumiantseva and my mother’s lady-in-waiting would stay there as well to care for the patient. A message had been sent to the Empress, who had gone ahead of us and was already in Petersburg. At some distance from Novgorod we met the Empress, who, having learned that the Grand Duke had come down with smallpox, was returning from Petersburg to go meet him in Shotilova, where she lodged for the duration of his illness. As soon as the Empress saw us, although it was the middle of the night, she had her sled and ours stopped and asked us for news about the Grand Duke’s state.

My mother told her everything that she knew about it, after which the Empress ordered her driver to go, and we too continued our journey and arrived in Novgorod around morning. It was a Sunday. I went to mass, after which we had lunch, and when we were going to leave, Chamberlain Prince Golitsyn and gentleman of the bedchamber Count Zakhar Chernyshev, who were coming from Moscow and going to Petersburg, arrived; my mother became angry with Prince Golitsyn, as he was traveling with Count Chernyshev, who had committed I know not what treachery. She claimed he was a dangerous man whom we should avoid and who fabricated stories at will. She gave both the cold shoulder, but since this rejection caused us deadly boredom, and since we had no choice as they were more educated and better conversationalists than the others, I did not participate in this sulking, which brought me several angry reproaches from my mother.

Finally we arrived in Petersburg, where we were lodged in one of the houses adjoining the court.
²⁶
The palace at that time not being large enough for even the Grand Duke to stay there, he occupied a house located between the palace and ours. My apartment was to the left of the stairs, my mother’s to the right. As soon as my mother saw this arrangement, she became angry,
primo,
because it seemed to her that my apartment was better furnished than hers;
secondo,
because hers was separated from mine by an adjoining room. In fact each of us had four rooms, two in front and two on the courtyard. Thus the rooms were equal, identically furnished in blue and red cloth, but here is what upset her the most. In Moscow, Countess Rumiantseva had brought me the plan of this house on the part of the Empress, forbidding me to speak of it and counseling me on where we should reside. There was no choice to make, as the two apartments were the same. I said this to the Countess, who made me understand that the Empress would prefer that I have my own apartment rather than lodging, as in Moscow, in the same one as my mother. This arrangement pleased me as well because I was quite uncomfortable in my mother’s apartment and in truth, the intimate company that she had assembled pleased me all the less when I saw as clear as day that no one liked these people. My mother caught wind of the plan that I had been shown; she spoke to me about it and I told her the whole truth about how it had happened. She scolded me for having kept it secret from her. I told her that I had been forbidden to speak about it, but she did not find this reason satisfactory, and in general I saw that day by day she grew more irritated with me and that she had fallen out with just about everyone, so that she hardly ever came to lunch or dinner, but was served in her apartment. For my part, I visited her three or four times a day.

1745

Catherine’s education; her mother’s continued political di ficulties;
Catherine’s personal entourage; her wedding; her mother’s
departure; dismissal of Mlle. Zhukova from her court

I used the rest of the time to learn Russian and play the harpsichord, and I bought myself books, so that at fifteen years of age I was isolated in my room and rather studious for my age. At the end of our stay in Moscow, a Swedish embassy arrived, led by Senator Cederkreutz.
²⁷
A short time later, Count Gyllenborg arrived as well, to announce to the Empress the marriage of the Royal Prince of Sweden, my mother’s brother, with a Prussian princess.
²⁸
We knew Count Gyllenborg. We had seen him in Hamburg, where he had come with many other Swedes upon the departure of the Royal Prince for Sweden. He was a man of great intelligence who was no longer young and whom my mother esteemed greatly. For my part, I was somewhat in his debt because in Hamburg, seeing that my mother paid little or no attention to me, he had told her that she was wrong and that I was certainly a child far beyond my years. Once in Petersburg, he came to visit us, and as in Hamburg, where he had always told me that I had a very philosophical turn of mind, he asked me how my philosophy was faring in the whirlwind in which I had landed. I told him what I was doing in my room. He told me that a philosopher of fifteen could not yet know herself and that I was surrounded by so many pitfalls that it was greatly to be feared that I would stumble unless my soul was of an utterly superior mettle, that I had to nourish it with the best readings possible, and to this end he recommended to me: Plutarch’s lives of illustrious men, the life of Cicero (by Middleton) and
The Cause of the
Grandeur and Decline of the Roman Republic
by Montesquieu.
²⁹
I immediately sent for these books, which were difficult to find in Petersburg at that time, and I told him that I was going to compose my portrait such as I knew myself so that he could see whether or not I knew myself.
³⁰
I actually did put in writing my portrait, which I entitled “Portrait of the Philosopher at Age Fifteen,” and I gave it to him. Many years later, namely in the year 1758, I found this work and was astonished by the depth of self-knowledge that it contained. Unfortunately I burned it that same year along with all my other papers, fearing to keep a single one in my apartment during the unfortunate affair of Count Bestuzhev. Count Gyllenborg returned my work to me a few days later; I do not know if he had a copy made. He joined to it a dozen pages of reflections concerning me, in which he attempted to fortify in me spiritual strength and firm will as well as other qualities of heart and mind. I read and reread his words a number of times, I absorbed them and resolved quite seriously to follow his advice. I promised this to myself, and when I have promised myself something I cannot recall ever having failed to do it. Later I returned Count Gyllenborg’s pages to him as he had asked me, and I swear that they greatly aided in forming and fortifying the mettle of my mind and my soul.

At the beginning of February the Empress returned with the Grand Duke from Shotilova. As soon as we were told that she had arrived, we went to greet her and met her in the great hall between four and five in the evening, more or less in darkness. Despite this I was almost frightened to see the Grand Duke, who had grown a great deal but whose physiognomy was unrecognizable. All of his features were enlarged, his face was still completely swollen, and one saw that he would doubtless be quite scarred. As his hair had been cut, he wore an immense wig that disfigured him all the more. He approached me and asked if I found it hard to recognize him. I stammered my congratulations on his recovery, but in truth he had become hideous.

The ninth of February marked a year since my arrival at the Russian court. On February 10, 1745, the Empress celebrated the Grand Duke’s birthday; he began his seventeenth year. She dined with me alone on the throne; the Grand Duke did not appear in public that day nor for a long time thereafter. There was no hurry to exhibit him in the state in which smallpox had left him. The Empress complimented me a great deal during this dinner.
³¹
She told me that the letters that I had written in Russian to her in Shotilova had brought her great pleasure (in truth, they were composed by Monsieur Adadurov, but I had copied them in my hand) and that she knew I was studying hard to learn the language of the country. She spoke to me in Russian and wanted me to respond in this language, which I did, and then she was happy to praise my good pronunciation. She let me know that I had become prettier since my illness in Moscow. In a word, during the entire meal she only sought to show me signs of her generosity and affection. I returned to my apartment from my dinner very gay and very happy, and everyone congratulated me on this meal. The Empress had brought to her apartment the portrait of me that the painter Caravaque had begun, and she kept it in her room. It is the same one that the sculptor Falconet brought with him to France; it was a vivid likeness of me at that time.
³²
To go to mass or the Empress’s apartment, my mother and I had to pass through the Grand Duke’s apartment, which was near my own; consequently, we saw him often. He would also come to my apartment in the evening to pass the time, but without any eagerness. On the contrary, he was quite happy to find some pretext to avoid this and stay in his apartment, left to his usual childishness, of which I have already spoken.

Shortly after the arrival of the Empress and the Grand Duke in Petersburg, my mother suffered a violent disappointment that she could not hide. Here is what happened. Prince August, my mother’s brother, had written to her in Kiev to communicate his desire to come to Russia. My mother had been informed that the only objective of this journey was to have Prince August receive the administration of Holstein when the Grand Duke attained his majority, the date of which some sought to move up. In other words, in the name of the Grand Duke, now of age, they wished to remove guardianship from the elder brother, who had become Royal Prince of Sweden, in order to transfer the administration of Holstein to Prince August, the younger brother of my mother and of the Royal Prince of Sweden. This plot had been hatched by the Holstein party, allied with the Danes, in opposition to the Royal Prince of Sweden, because the Danes could not pardon this Prince for having gained Sweden at the expense of the Royal Prince of Denmark, whom the Dalecarlians had wanted to elect as the successor to the Swedish throne. My mother responded to her brother Prince August from Kozelets that instead of joining in these plots, which pushed him to act against his brother, he would do better to act in the service of Holland, where he was, and to be killed with honor, than to conspire against his brother and join his sister’s enemies in Russia. My mother meant by enemies Count Bestuzhev, who supported this plot in order to undermine Brümmer and all the other friends of the Royal Prince of Sweden, guardian of Holstein for the Grand Duke.
³³
This letter was opened and read by Count Bestuzhev and by the Empress, who were not at all happy with my mother and already very upset with the Royal Prince of Sweden who, led by his wife, the King of Prussia’s sister, had let himself be ruled by all the interests of the French party, which were completely contrary to those of Russia. They condemned his ingratitude and accused my mother of lacking love for her younger brother for having written that he should get himself killed, an expression they found harsh and inhumane, while with her friends, my mother boasted of having used a firm and well-turned expression. The result of all this was that with no regard for my mother’s wishes, or rather, to hurt her and spite the entire Holstein-Swedish party, Count Bestuzhev obtained permission for Prince August of Holstein to come to Petersburg unbeknownst to my mother.
³⁴
When she learned that he was on his way, my mother was extremely angry and distressed, and received him coldly, but he, pushed by Bestuzhev, went his own way. The Empress was persuaded to receive him well, which she did in public; however, this did not last and could not last, as Prince August was by himself not a distinguished person. His appearance alone did not speak well for him. He was very small and badly proportioned, with little intelligence, hot tempered, and in addition, was ruled by his entourage, who were themselves nothing at all. Her brother’s stupidity, to put it frankly, greatly upset my mother; in a word, she was almost desperate over his arrival. Count Bestuzhev killed many birds with one stone when he took hold of this Prince’s mind with the help of his entourage. He could not fail to see that the Grand Duke hated Brümmer as much as he did; Prince August did not like him either, because he was devoted to the Prince of Sweden. Under the pretext of a family relationship and as a Holsteinian, the Prince ingratiated himself with the Grand Duke by continually talking to him about Holstein and discussing his approaching majority with him, so that the Prince brought him to the point where he pressed his aunt and Count Bestuzhev to move forward the declaration of his majority. To do this required the consent of the Roman Emperor, who was at that time Charles VII of the House of Bavaria, but he died while all this was going on, and the affair dragged on until the election of Francis I.
³⁵
Having received Prince August rather badly and having shown little consideration for him, my mother thereby diminished the little respect that the Grand Duke had retained for her.

At the same time, Prince August as well as the old chamber valets, favorites of the Grand Duke, apparently so feared my future influence that they often discussed with this Prince the manner in which he should treat his wife. Romberg, a former Swedish dragoon, told him that his wife didn’t dare breathe in front of him or meddle in his affairs, and that if she simply wanted to open her mouth he ordered her to be quiet, that it was he who was the master of the house, and that it was shameful for a husband to let himself be dominated by his wife like a ninny. The Grand Duke was naturally as discreet as a cannon blast, and when he had a heavy heart and something on his mind, he could not wait to recount it to those with whom he was accustomed to speak, without considering to whom he spoke. Indeed, His Imperial Highness himself recounted all these remarks to me with complete openness the first moment he saw me. He always innocently believed that everyone was of his opinion and that there was nothing more natural. I took good care not to share his remarks with anyone, but I did not fail to reflect seriously on the destiny that awaited me. I resolved to show great consideration for the Grand Duke’s confidence so that he would at least view me as someone he could trust, to whom he could say everything without any consequences. I succeeded in this for a long time.

Otherwise, I treated everyone as best I could and made it my task to earn the friendship or at least to lessen the enmity of those whom I suspected of being evilly disposed toward me. I showed no preference for any side, did not meddle in anything, always had a serene air, much kindness, attentiveness, and politeness for everyone, and because I was naturally quite cheerful, I saw with pleasure that from day to day I gained the affections of the public, who regarded me as an interesting child who was not without intelligence. I showed great respect to my mother and unlimited obedience to the Empress, the greatest consideration for the Grand Duke, and I sought with the greatest earnestness the public’s affection.
³⁶

Upon my arrival in Moscow, the Empress had given me ladies- and men-in-waiting, who made up my court. Shortly after her arrival in Petersburg, she gave me Russian ladies-in-waiting so as to facilitate, she said, my active use of the Russian language. This suited me greatly. They were all young, the oldest being around twenty. These girls were all lively, so that from that moment on, I did nothing but sing, dance, and frolick in my room from the moment I awoke until I fell asleep. In the evening after dinner, I would call my three ladies, the two Princesses Gagarina and Mademoiselle Kosheleva, into my room, where we would play blindman’s bluff and all sorts of other games suitable to our age. All these girls were mortally afraid of Countess Rumiantseva, but since she played cards either in the antechamber or her residence from morning until night, leaving her chair only to relieve herself, she hardly ever came to my apartment. Amid all these pleasures, I had a whim to assign the care of my effects to my ladies. I put my money, my expenses, and my laundry in the hands of Mademoiselle Schenk, the chambermaid whom I had brought from Germany. She was a grumpy and silly spinster who was greatly displeased by our gaiety. Moreover, she was jealous of all her young companions, who were going to share her functions and my affection. I gave the keys to my jewels to Maria Petrovna Zhukova. Having more intelligence and being more joyous and frank than the others, she began to enter into my favor. I entrusted my clothing to my chamber valet, Timofei Evreinov, and my lace to Mademoiselle Balk, who later married the poet Sumarokov. My ribbons were put in the care of Mademoiselle Skorokhodova the elder, since married to Aristarque Kashkin. Her younger sister Anna was given nothing because she was only thirteen or fourteen. The day after I made this nice arrangement, in which I had exerted my rightful authority in my chambers without consulting a single person, there was a play in the evening. To get there it was necessary to pass through my mother’s apartment. The Empress, the Grand Duke, and the entire court came. A small theater had been built in a manège that had been used during the time of the Empress Anna by the Duke of Courland, whose apartment I occupied.
³⁷
After the play, when the Empress had returned to her residence, Countess Rumiantseva came into my room and told me that the Empress disapproved of the arrangement I had made in distributing the care of my effects between my ladies, and that she was ordered to take the keys from Mademoiselle Zhukova and give them to Mademoiselle Schenk, which she did in my presence, after which she departed and left Mademoiselle Zhukova and me with long faces, and Mademoiselle Schenk gloating over the confidence that the Empress had shown her. She began to comport herself arrogantly with me, which made her more foolish than ever and less likeable than she already was.