Part 7

Fike’s mother sent an enthusiastic but discreet description of the ceremony to her spouse. It was a detail to her that her daughter’s name had been changed, but the girl’s father and her aunts would probably be hurt. The name Sophie was a good Russian name, none better, but it happened to be that of the rebellious sister whom Peter the Great had locked up in a convent. Therefore Elisabeth hated it. So Fike was baptized Catherine Alexeievna for Elisabeth’s mother and Sophie Auguste Friedrike ceased to exist. The Princess of Zerbst broke the news to her husband as tactfully as possible. “In order to seal publicly such a confirmation,” she wrote, “a name is added; our daughter will be Catherine and the Alexeievna follows the custom of the country and means daughter of August; for the name August, according to the dialect here, can not be rendered other than Alexei.” The Princess of Zerbst had taken lessons in the Russian language to please the Empress but her progress had not been so great. It is possible that she believed that August and Alexei were the same in Russian though probably she knew better. In any case her little fiction would scarcely be discovered by the German General. The rumblings from Zerbst and Stettin died down. The Prince was pleased because his daughter was a Grand Duchess and addressed her by this sonorous title. The Princess continued to call her daughter Fike and carped at her husband for adopting the title of Grand Duchess. “Fike will think that you no longer love her,” she wrote. But the Prince continued to be respectful. As his daughter had once trusted him to understand her weakness for beer he now trusted her to understand his weakness for etiquette. He was swaggering for them both.

After her confirmation, Catherine Alexeievna followed the Empress from cloister to cloister, for Elisabeth had come to spend more and more of her time as a pious pilgrim. She had apartments in the Troitsky Monastery where she sometimes lived with her court. The Abbot of Troitsky and the Bishops of Moscow and Petersburg accompanied her everywhere. With her three priests, she appeared in the box at the opera and even at masquerade balls. The young Grand Duchess could not imagine good Pastor Wagner in the rôle of polite escort and cavalier. Her new church had undreamed-of possibilities of romance. Kiev, which she visited with her aunt, seemed a kind of orthodox Arabian Nights. “Here as in all cities which we had touched since Moscow,” she wrote, “the clergy of Kiev came to meet us. As soon as the church banners were visible, we left the carriages and entered the city on foot behind the cross. The Empress betook herself to the Petchersky Cloister and entered the church containing the wonder-working portrait of the Holy Virgin said to have been painted by Saint Lukas. Never in my whole life have I been so impressed as by the magnificent splendor of the church, in which all the saints’ pictures were covered with gold, silver and jewels....”

“Toward the end of our stay in Kiev, the Empress visited with us a monastery where a comedy was to be played. The performance began at seven in the evening. We had to go through the church to reach the theatre. The play consisted really of several plays: there were prologues, ballets, a piece in which Marcus Aurelius had his favorite hanged, a battle in which Cossacks fought with the Poles, a fishing scene on the Dnieper, and choruses without number. The Empress held out until about two o’clock in the morning; then she sent to ask whether it would not end soon. The answer came back that only half of the performance had been given but if her Majesty so ordered they would stop at once. She replied that they should finish soon; they begged only for permission to burn some fire-works....”

Such was Christianity in Russia: images covered with gold and silver, pieces about a pagan named Marcus Aurelius, and outbursts of fire-works. As the pupil of Pastor Wagner, and the daughter of her father, Catherine could not fail to realize that these things proceeded from Satan and from Satan alone. She knew though she dared not admit it that they were idolatrous. And yet she reveled in them. Dr. Martin Luther had thrown an ink-stand at the Devil when he put his head through the window. Every true Christian knew the Evil One on sight and made short shrift of him. The Prince of Zerbst, her father, had once encountered him. It was during a visit of the Prince at Rome that the Pope had tempted him to become a Catholic. But the Prince had not yielded to the blandishments of anti-Christ because, like the heroic Doctor Luther, he recognized the Wicked One in spite of his pompous disguise. The Prince of Zerbst returned to his army and his church unharmed. As a matter of fact it is doubtful whether he had ever seen Rome and still more doubtful whether the Pope had paid any attention to an obscure German Protestant. But legend is as good as history if the legend is believed, and the Prince’s daughter had been brought up to admire this heroic steadfastness of her father’s. Of course the Russian Church was like the Lutheran and not the Roman, as Father Todorsky had explained to her and as she had explained to dear Papa. Catherine Alexeievna, however, rebaptized in the Greek faith, found it tactful to conceal a great deal from her father about her new faith and the things the Russians did in the name of their religion.

2

The Empress’s attachment to the young Princess had been strengthened by her illness, while the two elder women had been alienated from each other. When Catherine fell ill the Empress was sojourning in her Troitsky retreat. The court physician rushed to the sick girl’s aid and prepared to bleed her. To their astonishment the Princess of Zerbst forbade the operation. She had always been panicky about blood-letting, and she stubbornly refused to have her daughter bled. The doctors were outraged. They sent a messenger in haste to their Empress who could not believe her ears. She ordered her carriage and her favorite and posted to Moscow.

Arriving after candle-light, Elisabeth and Razumovsky entered the sick-room and found the patient unconscious. The Empress seated herself on the side of the bed, took the girl in her arms, and told the doctors to go ahead. The mother was summarily excluded from the room and Lestocq bolted the door. During her illness, Catherine was bled sixteen times, often as much as four times a day. Her mother’s opposition was set down by the court as showing a lack of natural maternal affection. The Empress praised the girl’s courage and presented her with a pair of ear-rings and a necklace worth twenty-five thousand rubles. She removed the Princess of Zerbst as head nurse and put the Countess Rumiantsov in her place. The chasm between the mother and daughter was broadening.

Though hurt by all these slights, the Princess of Zerbst could not learn by experience. The climax of her tactlessness came at Easter. Catherine had a piece of blue and silver brocade which Uncle Johann Ludwig had given to her in parting, a rich fabric woven by one of the looms of Zerbst. Her mother coveted the piece and at last sent a messenger to ask for it outright. Catherine resigned her treasure reluctantly, which the Countess Rumiantsov, who acted as spy as well as nurse, observed and reported to the Empress. Elisabeth forthwith sent two gorgeous lengths of stuff to the convalescent girl and openly expressed her opinion of this thoughtless mother. Before they had been in Russia two months, Catherine had won an ally in the Empress while her mother had created in her a bitter enemy.

In the meantime the foreign offices of Prussia, France and Sweden were leaning hard on the Princess of Zerbst to whom they looked for aid in forming an alliance with Russia. The Princess was fascinated by her political mission and did not realize that her mismanagement of her daughter’s affairs failed to help the cause of Prussia with the Empress. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bestushev, favored an alliance with Austria against Prussia. He called the King of Prussia “predatory” and the King of Prussia called Bestushev “corrupt.” History has shown that both gentlemen were correct.

Bestushev’s influence with Elisabeth was supreme because he had been a protégé of her father’s. At fifteen he had been sent abroad and educated by Peter the Great. He then entered the diplomatic service and lived for twenty years or more in western Europe. Bestushev was one of the most versatile and gifted Russians of his day. His name was known throughout Europe as the inventor of a medicine called Bestushev’s Drops, which was popularly regarded both as an elixir of life and also as a healing dose for hysterical ladies. When Catherine the Great ascended the throne, she bought the formula for Bestushev’s Drops and published it as a benefaction to the human race. With all her scorn of doctors she had great respect for Bestushev’s Drops. She used them always in her own family.

Bestushev’s researches in the black arts had other consequences. He employed in the department of foreign affairs a German by the name of Goldbach, who tampered scientifically with mail. In such matters the Russians supplied the will but they usually employed a German to do the deed. Goldbach opened the French Ambassador’s letters and read there a great deal that was not intended for the eyes of the Empress of Russia. He therefore laid the correspondence before Elisabeth who read that she was frivolous and indolent and that her chief interest in life was in changing her costume four or five times a day. She furthermore learned of the secret correspondence going on between the King of Prussia and the Princess of Zerbst and of the strong influence which the Princess was supposed to wield upon herself. It would be mild to say that the Empress was angry. Bestushev’s method of gaining his end was simple and successful.

The Empress struck at once. She ordered the French Ambassador to leave Moscow within twenty-four hours and to make for Riga without even touching Petersburg. It was the same Chetardie who had provided French money for her revolution, but he went at once. It was a famous exit. Bestushev continued quietly to mix the cards. He was now after the head of the meddling Princess of Zerbst.

At Troitsky the Empress and her train occupied a suite of pleasant chambers with low ceilings, English clocks, and Dutch stoves. She had domestic tastes and warm affections and satisfied in this retreat her desire for a quiet family life. Here and at Monplaisir, where she had a summer kitchen in which she cooked with her own hands, she lived her happiest moments. The cosy family atmosphere was interrupted by a painful explosion which took place between the Empress and the Princess of Zerbst after Bestushev had pulled the strings quietly to this end.

The Empress and her guests had just arrived from Moscow. The Empress had made the journey on foot, leaving the others to overtake her in carriages. The entire party entered the gates in the form of a procession, which first turned into the Cathedral for mass and afterward became a sort of English house-party in which affairs of state and sociability were indiscriminately mixed. “After the midday meal,” Catherine says, “when the Grand Duke had come to our chambers, the Empress entered unexpectedly and commanded my mother to follow her into the next room. Count Lestocq went in with them. Awaiting my mother’s return, I seated myself with the Grand Duke upon the window ledge, and we chatted. The conversation in the closed room lasted a long time.”

The first to appear was Count Lestocq who, assuming his best German manners, said to the young girl, “There is nothing left for you but to pack your things; you will start at once on your home-ward journey.” Lestocq did not waste courtesy on fallen favorites, but he was not always shrewd enough to know who had fallen and who had not. Then the Empress appeared at the door. For a moment her imposing figure towered beneath the low ceiling, her blue eyes flashing with anger. Behind her appeared the culprit, the Princess of Zerbst, her eyes red with weeping. The two young people hastily sprang down from the high window-seat and stood in attitudes of respect. The impulsive Elisabeth laughed, kissed the boy and girl who were to make up to her for the romantic marriage she had missed, and passed quickly out of the room. Lestocq’s prophecy was not fulfilled. The Princess and her daughter were not sent home.

Frederick the Great was to feel the effects of this family quarrel in the Seven Years War. Elisabeth’s dislike of the Prussian King was greatly strengthened by the explosion at Troitsky. The Princess of Zerbst she never forgave. Mardefeld, the Prussian minister, was allowed to linger for a time, but when the Princess of Zerbst returned to Germany, the Empress demanded Mardefeld’s recall. She hit upon the humiliating device of requiring the Princess herself to go to the King of Prussia and deliver the message requesting his minister’s recall. The Prussian Ambassador, who had survived twenty years at the Russian court and had landed on his feet after two palace revolutions, was finally wrecked by his alliance with the Princess of Zerbst. Frederick the Great lost substantially then and afterward by enlisting the diplomacy of Catherine’s mother. He did not forget it.

3

In all her difficulties, Catherine could look for no support from her natural protector and future consort. If she had been an average girl, the defective Peter would still have been a child beside her. But she was far from being an ordinary girl. The fifteen-year-old Princess was more than a match for the two adult women who fancied they were leading her. To steer her course between the Empress and her mother took all her attention at first. For a time she disregarded the Grand Duke as a factor in the situation.

Her account of their relationship shows that they met like children, without any thought of a more mature relationship. “The Grand Duke appeared to rejoice at my arrival. In the first days he was very complaisant toward me.” During her illness, his good will continued. “During my sickness the Grand Duke had shown me much attention. When I became better he continued this. I seemed to please him; but I can neither say that he pleased me nor displeased me. I only knew how to obey and my mother had to marry me.” The boy gave her his confidence, chattering like a child about everything that came into his head. He confided to her his former love for Princess Lapukin whom the Empress had banished from the court and whose place had been taken by Catherine herself. The girl, who was passionately proud, could not understand that these were the outpourings of a fragile sexless boy. She only saw that her lover was indifferent and pretended to the others that she did not see it.

“When the fair weather came we moved over into the Summer Palace. Here the visits of the Grand Duke grew less frequent. I must say this lack of attention and his coldness so to speak on the eve of our wedding did not exactly incline me in his favor. The nearer the time came, the less could I hide from myself the possibility that my marriage might be very unhappy. But I had too much pride and too much self-respect to allow the world to suspect that I thought myself unloved. I regarded myself too highly to believe that I was contemptible. The Grand Duke had a somewhat free manner with the ladies-in-waiting of the Empress which did not exactly please me, but I restrained myself from speaking about it and no one knew my deepest feelings. I tried to distract myself by romping in my chamber with my maidens.”

The Grand Duchess did not understand that the Grand Duke’s attachments to other ladies was as childish and unvirile as his attachment to herself. She says in her memoirs that at this time she scarcely knew the difference between the sexes. But jealousy was an old familiar feeling. Far back among the dim memories of her Stettin childhood was the shadow of a dreadful day when a baby brother had upset her world. She did not like those memories. “I should have been the most unhappy creature in the world if I had allowed myself to be carried away by feelings of tenderness for him,” she says of the Grand Duke. “He would have ill-repaid me and I should have died of jealousy, which would have done nobody any good. So I tried to control myself in order that I might not be jealous of a man that did not love me. But in order not to be jealous there was only one means: not to love him.”

The Grand Duchess grew high-strung and nervous. It was not the first time that she had failed to meet the requirements of an important situation. Born a girl, she had disappointed her parents’ hopes of the succession at Anhalt-Zerbst. Lacking beauty, she had not been attractive to suitors. And now that her future husband did not love her, she had to reassure herself that she was not “contemptible.” Under the stress of bruised self-feeling, she became capricious and masterful with her maidens. Covering the floor of her room with mattresses, she had all eight of them sleep in her room. Another time she led the damsels out for a midnight walk through the gardens of Peterhof for which they were all roundly scolded. Like a Sultana she divided the custody of her possessions among them, entrusting her jewels to one, her laces to another, her linen to another and so on. She cut her front hair short, wore it in a kind of frizzled bang and ordered her girls to do the same. Some of them wept and pleaded but the Grand Duchess had issued a ukas. She would not be moved. Peter the Great had not relented when old men wept and begged to be allowed to keep their beards. Let Maria Petrovna, the Skorodov sisters, and the two dwarfs dry their tears and order in the barber at once to cut off their hair exactly like the Grand Duchess.... In addition to her elaborate hair-dressing, Catherine had taken on the habit of painting her face.

4

The Empress arranged the marriage for her two adopted children as if they had been puppets or ballet dancers. No such marriage had ever been seen in Russia except perhaps the famous ice festival in the reign of Anna Ivanovna, when Prince Galitsin married his Lilliputian bride. To satisfy a whim of their Empress the couple had been escorted to an illuminated ice-palace on the Neva and put upon a bed made of ice. Fortunately for Catherine and Peter they were to be married in mid-summer. The date was originally set for July the first, but was postponed twice. Not until late in August was everything finally ready. All summer long the Empress was so taken up with preparations that she suspended all affairs of state. Her own ministers and the foreign ambassadors had nothing to do but play cards and drive in the Nevsky Prospect.

For months in advance the fashionable world was busy providing itself with “the richest clothes possible” since nothing less was specified by the ukas issued by the Empress. Bales of silk, velvet, and brocade were constantly arriving from England and Germany, for the Russians were no weavers. The English ambassador wrote home complaining of the Empress’s neglect of official business when he might have better congratulated his country on the increased importation of English goods in Russia. From German looms came the heavy cloth-of-silver from which Catherine’s wedding gown was made. It was a rigid structure with a bodice shaped over a wooden form, to which was suspended a train more than three yards long. The fabric was spun silver and the whole thing weighed upon her like a suit of armor.

Clad in this unyielding garment and bearing on her head a ponderous crown of jewels the Grand Duchess spent a miserable day. She held out bravely during the wedding ceremony in the church of Our Lady of Kazan and throughout the state repast in the Winter Palace afterwards. But just before the ball began, she humbled her pride and begged to have the crown removed for a few minutes. The Empress, who thought this might bring bad luck, reluctantly consented.

The wedding was a triumph for Elisabeth’s maternal pride. She ordered every detail of the ceremony with jealous tyranny, not omitting to command the bride to take a bath the evening before. Early next morning she sent for Catherine to come to her chamber to be robed in state. There ensued a heated argument between the Empress and the barber concerning the bride’s style of hair-dressing. Catherine sat before the mirror and seemed to take no part. There was not a rift on this day in her good relations with the Empress. A supreme satisfaction in the great event united them completely.

Although it was also the wedding day of the Grand Duke, he played a rather minor part. The ill-starred boy had managed to contract the smallpox recently and appeared at his nuptials with a dreadfully pockmarked face. His august aunt always dreaded his public appearances lest some piece of childish misbehaviour on his part should disgrace the Romanov family. Peter bore himself sufficiently well on his wedding day, however, to cause no comment among the on-lookers. His only caprice was to offend his bride. While the young couple were still kneeling opposite to each other, waiting the final words of the priest, one of the court ladies whispered in the Grand Duke’s ear. “I heard him say to her,” says Catherine, “‘Clear out! Such nonsense!’ Then he turned to me and told me that she had advised him not to turn his head while he stood before the priest, for whoever of us first turned our head would die first and she did not wish him to be that one. I thought this compliment not very friendly on our wedding day but I did not allow myself to notice it. She saw, however, that he had repeated to me her good advice. She grew red and made reproaches, which he again repeated to me.”