Part 22

Catherine the Great loved to write. She rose at six o’clock every morning and occupied herself with literary work during the three hours or so which intervened before her Russian servants began to rub their sleepy eyes. She had Spartan methods of awakening herself. First she washed her face and ears with ice; then she drank five cups of the strongest coffee ever brewed. She sat down beside her candle with her pen and wrote in a large free flowing hand, instructions, correspondence, memoirs, fables, histories, comedies. Her output was voluminous. She did not wait to finish one piece before she began another, and the first remained forever unfinished. Everything she wrote is a fragment. She wrote her memoirs in the 70’s, and then wrote them all over again in the 90’s. She set down a fragment of autobiography for Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, another for Poniatovsky, and another for Potiomkin. She was not meticulous as to the kind of paper and such things, as may be seen from her notes in the Russian archives which are scribbled literally on scraps of paper, anything which came to hand. Her mind shook itself out loosely in the track of a swiftly moving pen.

Whatever she wrote was closely related to the affairs of the day. It was addressed to some particular person or based on some concrete experience. The evolution of her literary expression can be roughly traced like this: during her thirties, she wrote on political subjects and matters of state; during her forties, she wrote her memoirs and corresponded with Voltaire and Grimm; during her fifties, she wrote allegories, chronicles, and comedies; and in her sixties, she turned to reminiscences again, producing the version of her life which she wanted posterity to read. She grew less and less abstract as the years went by.

After the birth of her two grandsons, the Empress had an outburst of imaginative writing. For several years she addressed all her writings to the little Grand Dukes. “The Legend of the Czarevich Chlor” was written for Alexander when he was five years old. Her Russian history, which fills two volumes, pictures a primitive age with appropriate simplicity. She moralizes scarcely at all, for the lives of the Knazia Veliki do not point the right kind of moral.

Catherine’s little histories are a narrative of constant wars between the Russians and the Greeks; swift and vivid sketches of nomadic princes and large families of brothers warring against each other for a heritage. The story of Princess Olga who went to Constantinople and was there baptized is told enthusiastically and at length. Olga tried to convert her son but he would not be converted because he said the other men would not like it. She had to wait until her grandson, whom she reared, grew to manhood before she could make her influence felt. It was her grandson who Christianized Russia.

This legend was very popular with Catherine and her grandson Alexander. With her globes, the Empress showed the little boy how the hordes of the Genghis Khan had passed across the lands of Russia and where the Scythians had met the Greeks. These lessons made her intimacy with little Alexander the happiest of her life. She collected her writings into a so-called Library for the Grand Dukes. To be sure, the projected Library was never completed; nor was the history of Russia brought down beyond the thirteenth century. So far as her Russian history was concerned, it was a pity that the author left only a fragment. She had a gift for lively compact narrative and the reader feels a distinct disappointment when the story breaks off suddenly before the arrival of the Tartars.

Her faithfulness to history is easy to explain. The artist had found a new love. She had suddenly discovered comedy. The Empress had taken to writing plays in the manner of Molière. An anecdote often told to show the affection existing between Alexander and his grandmother tells how the boy, at the age of eight, gave a performance of a five-act comedy composed by Catherine. In the deeper layers of her memory the works of Molière had been lying long unnoticed. Suddenly the latent memories so long bedded there in forgetfulness and silence began to germinate. At about the same age which Monsieur Alexander had now grown to be, Catherine had once fed upon the plays of Molière because her governess, Babet Cardel, had known them all by heart. As she sat teaching her eight-year-old grandson, the tastes and interests of that age in her own life began to stir and assert themselves within her. Catherine was not content as Babet had been to give her pupil ready-made comedies however masterly. She preferred to compose comedies herself for Alexander. Promptly she fell to work and swiftly were her plays completed. This time there were no fragments; the brevity of the product was exactly suited to her temperament. She wrote seven pieces in one year, and then abandoned the field altogether, perhaps because the Turkish Wars became too engrossing.

Her comedies all deal with one subject in the same manner. They are satires on the sentimental and superstitious traits of human nature. Her titles show how faithfully she adhered to her theme. The Charlatan, The Dupe, The Siberian Shaman, Family Discord Through False Suspicions, No Good Without Evil were the most popular. Their plots and characters show that the author is something of a psychologist and a good deal of a satirist. It is noticeable that the weaknesses which she especially satirizes are characteristic of the behavior of her son Paul.

At the time when Catherine wrote her comedies there was no longer any pretense of sympathy between the mother and son. The disintegration of Paul’s character had progressed so far that he had withdrawn himself from all the world except those whom his mother called charlatans and shamans. The Empress identified her son with all superstitious folk and castigated the whole tribe in her comedies. She rarely mentioned Paul directly in her memoirs and her correspondence. In the intimate family history which fills her letters to Grimm, his name never occurs. Her hatred found an outlet in her satirical comedies. Here she indirectly exposed his notorious weaknesses and held them up to ridicule. She despised his character as she despised his looks. Paul resembled the Calmuck type in physique and countenance. Short of stature and snub-nosed as he was, his mother could not look at him without being reminded of the Saltikov side of his heredity. Anyone who reads through her literary works will be struck by the number of times the Empress refers to the ghastly ugliness of the Calmuck type. She could not get away from it.

The comedies of Catherine the Great were regarded as a great contribution to the campaign against obscurantism. She stepped forth as the Saint George of enlightenment striking down the dragon of superstition. Her satire was leveled against the Martinists, the Freemasons, and the Alchemists; she battered at all groups and organizations that had a secret understanding and talked mysteriously about the problems of life and death. Fortunately for her interest, which had no great tolerance for abstractions, a flesh-and-blood antagonist was raised up to stimulate and increase her energies. The famous Cagliostro decided to make a visit to Petersburg, believing that Catherine the Great would favor his cult. But he had reckoned without his Empress. Catherine was never tired of abusing him, both during and after his sojourn in Russia. When he was imprisoned in France in connection with the affair of the diamond necklace, she exulted in the most unbecoming manner. Some of her strongest and least lady-like language was poured out on the head of the talented magician, whom, by the way, she had never even seen. To Grimm, she wrote, “I have read the memoir of Cagliostro which you have sent me and if I had not been already persuaded that he was a French charlatan, his memoir would have convinced me. He is a rogue and blackguard and he ought to be hanged.”

She was so greatly interested in this man that it must have cost her a great effort to deny him an audience during his stay in Russia. “M. Cagliostro,” she wrote, “arrived here at a very favorable moment for him, at a time when many lodges of Freemasons, infatuated with the principles of Swedenborg, desired with all their power to see spirits. They therefore ran to Cagliostro who said that he was in possession of all the secrets of Doctor Falk, intimate friend of Duke Richelieu, who had once sacrificed to him in the very midst of Vienna a black goat.... M. Cagliostro then produced his marvellous secrets of healing. He pretended to draw quick-silver from a gouty foot and was caught in the act of pouring a teaspoonful of mercury into the water into which he was going to put the gouty member....

“Later on, racked by debts, he took refuge in the cellar of Monsieur Yelagin ... where he drank all the wine, champagne, and English beer that he could get.... Monsieur Yelagin, annoyed by his brother rat in the cellar and by the thought of all the wine, and beer ... gave him an old _invalide_ to accompany him as far as Milan. This is the history of Cagliostro in which there is nothing exceptionally marvellous. I have never seen him near or far,--nor have I had any temptation to do so, for I do not love charlatans. I assure you that Rogerson thinks of Cagliostro as much or less than Noah’s Ark. Prince Orlov, contrary to his custom, has not made much of Cagliostro. He makes fun of him as of those who from mere curiosity run to see him, and he has contributed but little to change into wine the water of the shameless partisans of this poor devil. But since the more stupid and ignorant the charlatans are the more impression they create in the great cities, it is to be supposed that Cagliostro will be in his element in Paris....”

From the vehemence of the Empress’s condemnation, one suspects that she did not state a fact when she declared that she had no temptation to see him. And she was far from having finished with the subject. Two of her comedies, The Liar and The Dupe, were based on Cagliostro’s visit, and The Siberian Shaman was inspired, though not avowedly, by the same theme. Several of her plays were a great success when produced in Petersburg, and The Liar and The Dupe took in more than twenty thousand roubles. The public was titivated by the Empress’s satire and intrigued by the timeliness of her literary attack on the most notorious character in Europe.

No one asked the Grand Duke Paul and his consort, the Gartenlaube lady of Pavlovsk, what they thought of the Empress’s dramatic efforts. No one asked Paul and Marie about anything. The Empress overlooked them completely. Whenever she referred to her successor, the reference was to her grandson. “Monsieur Alexander will finish this and that,” she would write. “Not in my time, but in that of Monsieur Alexander.” She tried to forget the existence of the Grand Duke Paul.

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XII

SHE GROWS OLD

Up to the death of Potiomkin, the Empress had been associated with old friends, who had shared with her the experiences of 1762. Orlov and Potiomkin had both stood over the warm body of Peter, stabbed to death by Alexei and Bariatinsky. Although neither of them had lifted a hand against the Czar, they shared with her the memory of a crime which had to be made good. This was not such a bad thing, said Voltaire, since it made the Empress one of the best monarchs of the century. To redeem herself in the eyes of Europe, she was obliged to accomplish miracles. In a lesser degree the same obligation rested on Orlov and Potiomkin. Although they were both selfish and extravagant, they were good patriots and did their utmost for the glory of Russia. A mysterious force sustained Gregory Orlov, a very ordinary man, through a very remarkable career. Potiomkin, a man of greater ability than Orlov, was correspondingly more effective and more distinguished. The moody Ukrainian must have been surprised to find himself regarded as a great General and a great statesman and to realize that at times he actually was all that he was supposed to be.

For nearly thirty years, the Empress had had the companionship of these two men. After the death of Potiomkin, she was for the first time alone. All at once she became uncertain, inadequate, unsuccessful, and the inglorious years of her reign began. Her claim to the title of Catherine the Great would have been stronger had she died with Potiomkin. The last decade of her life diminished that claim considerably, which has often been construed as showing the strength of Potiomkin’s influence and the importance of his ideas. But Potiomkin was merely the staff on which she leaned and which she had broken without foreseeing the consequences to herself.

Young Plato Zubov had no realization of the crime at Ropsha. His conscience was virgin and his youth made him irresponsible and selfish. He was a man without a past, he had nothing to make good. Fortune had suddenly rained treasure upon him out of a clear sky and he accepted her bounty like a child who forgets to say “thank you.” He was arrogant, arbitrary, and grasping, and he became ruthless after his triumph over the redoubtable Potiomkin. The death of his rival left him invincible and he knew it.

Zubov was not simply youthful; he was youth. The two brothers, Plato and Valerian, were just emerging from the adolescent period which the Empress’s grandsons, Alexander and Constantine, were just entering. The difference in age and maturity between the two pairs of brothers was not great. The Empress was in love with Alexander but she adopted Plato Zubov instead and began casting about for a wife for Alexander who had reached the age at which she had come to Russia to be married. “Monsieur Alexander,” she had spoken of from infancy as if he were a man and Zubov she now referred to always as “the child.” At the age of sixty, the Empress had no eyes for anything but youth. Her lovers had been growing younger and younger until all the world expected her to end her life in the arms of a boy. So consistently had she lowered the age of consent, this seemed the only logical outcome.

It was assumed by those about the court that only striplings need apply for the post of favorite. There was a moment when it seemed as if the seventeen-year-old son of Princess Dashkov might seriously compete. His mother, who had ridden beside the Empress as a sist