Catherine the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  To maintain her dazzling preeminence at court, Elizabeth made certain that no other woman present could shine as brightly. Sometimes, this required draconian coercive measures. During the winter of 1747, the empress decreed that all of her ladies-in-waiting must shave their heads and wear black wigs until their hair grew in again. The women wept but obeyed. Catherine assumed that her own turn would come, but to her surprise, she was spared; Elizabeth explained that Catherine’s hair was just growing back after an illness. Soon, the reason for the general pruning became known: after a previous festive occasion, Elizabeth and her maids had been unable to brush a heavy powder out of her hair, which became gray, coagulated, and gummy. The only remedy was to have her head shaved. And because she refused to be the only bald woman at court, bushels of hair were cropped.

  On St. Alexander’s Day in the winter of 1747, Elizabeth’s jealous eye fell specifically on Catherine. The grand duchess appeared at court in a white dress trimmed with Spanish lace. When she returned to her room, a lady-in-waiting appeared to tell her that the empress commanded her to take off the dress. Catherine apologized and put on a different gown, also white but decorated with silver braid and a fiery red jacket and cuffs. Catherine commented:

  As for the previous dress, it is possible that the empress found my dress more effective than her own and that this was the real reason she had ordered me to take mine off. My dear aunt was very prone to such petty jealousies, not only in relation to me, but to all the other ladies also. She had an eye particularly on those younger than herself, who were continually exposed to her outbursts. She carried this jealousy so far that once she called up Anna Naryshkina, sister-in-law of Lev Naryshkin, who, because of her beauty, her glorious figure, superb carriage, and exquisite taste in dress, had become the empress’s pet aversion. In the presence of the whole court, the empress took a pair of scissors and cut off a trimming of lovely ribbons under Madame Naryshkina’s neck. Another time, she cut off half of the front curls of two of her ladies-in-waiting on the pretext that she did not like their style of hair dressing. Afterwards, these young ladies said privately that, perhaps in her haste, or perhaps in her fierce determination to display the depth of her feelings, Her Imperial Majesty had cut off, along with their curls, some of their skin.

  Elizabeth went to bed reluctantly and late. When the festivities and official receptions were over and the crowd of courtiers and guests had retired, she would sit in her private apartment with a small group of friends. Even when these people had left her and she was exhausted, she allowed herself only to be undressed; she still refused to sleep. As long as it was dark—and in winter in St. Petersburg, dark could last until eight or nine o’clock in the morning—she continued to talk to a few of her women, who took turns rubbing and tickling the soles of her feet to keep her awake. Meanwhile, not far away behind the brocaded curtains of the royal alcove, a fully clothed man lay on a thin mattress. This was Chulkov, the empress’s faithful bodyguard, who had the strange ability to do without sleep and who for twenty years had not slept in a proper bed. At last, as the pale light of dawn came creeping through the windows, the women would leave, and Razumovsky, or whoever happened to be the favorite of the moment, would appear, and in his arms Elizabeth would finally fall asleep. Chulkov, the man behind the curtain, remained at his post as long as the empress slept, sometimes into the afternoon.

  The explanation for these unconventional hours was that Elizabeth feared the night; most of all she feared to sleep at night. The regent Anna Leopoldovna had been asleep when she was overthrown, and Elizabeth was afraid that a similar fate might overtake her. Her fears were exaggerated; she was popular with the public and only a palace coup, organized to elevate some new pretender, could mean loss of the throne. Only the dethroned boy tsar Ivan VI, a helpless child locked in a fortress, was a threat to Elizabeth. But it was the specter of this child that haunted Elizabeth and robbed her of her sleep. Potentially, of course, there was a remedy. Another child, a new baby heir, an offspring of Peter and Catherine, was what was needed. When such a child was born, and was surrounded, guarded, and loved by all of Elizabeth’s power, then Elizabeth could sleep.

  15

  Peepholes

  ELIZABETH’S INTERVENTIONS in the daily life of the young married couple were often trivial. One night, when Catherine and Peter were having supper with friends, Mme Krause appeared at midnight and announced, “on the empress’s behalf,” that they were to go to bed; the monarch considered it wrong “to stay up so late.” The party broke up, but Catherine said, “It seemed strange to us as we knew the irregular hours kept by our dear aunt … it seemed to us more ill-humor than reason.” On the other hand, Elizabeth was unusually friendly to Catherine when the younger woman was in difficulty and the empress could play the role of supportive mother. One morning, Peter had a high fever and severe headache and could not get out of bed. He remained in bed for a week and was bled repeatedly. Elizabeth came to visit him several times a day and, observing tears in Catherine’s eyes, “was satisfied and pleased with me.” Soon afterward, when Catherine was saying her evening prayers in a palace chapel, one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting came in to tell her that the empress, knowing that the grand duchess was upset by the grand duke’s illness, had sent her to say that Catherine should have faith in God and should not worry, because under no circumstances would the empress abandon her.

  Similarly, in the early months of Catherine’s marriage, the people leaving the young court were not always forced to do so by Elizabeth. Catherine’s chamberlain, Count Zakhar Chernyshev, suddenly disappeared. He had been one of the young courtiers invited by Catherine and Peter to join them in the large, pillowed cart in which they traveled to Kiev before their marriage. But Count Zakhar’s departure in the form of a diplomatic assignment had nothing to do with the empress. Instead, the initiative came from the young man’s mother, who had begged Elizabeth to send her son away. “I fear he may fall in love with the grand duchess,” the mother had said. “He never takes his eyes off her and when I see that, I tremble for fear that he might do something rash.” In fact, her intuitions were sound: Zakhar Chernyshev was indeed attracted to Catherine, as he would make clear a few years later.

  The next to go, lamented by no one, was Peter’s longtime tormentor, Otto Brümmer. In the spring before his marriage, seventeen-year-old Peter had been formally declared to be of age and had become, in title at least, the reigning Duke of Holstein. In matters concerning his duchy, he now was entitled to make certain decisions. The decision he most wanted to make was to get rid of Brümmer. After reading the document confirming his title, Peter turned to his nemesis and said, “At last my wish is fulfilled. You have dominated me long enough. I shall take steps to have you sent back to Holstein as soon as possible.” Brümmer struggled to save himself. To Catherine’s surprise, he turned to her, asking her to make more frequent visits to Elizabeth’s dressing room and speak to the empress. “I told Brümmer that his suggestion could not help him as the empress almost never appeared when I was there. He begged that I should persevere.” Catherine, understanding that “this might serve his purposes but could do me no good,” told Count Brümmer that she was reluctant. Desperate, he continued to try to persuade her—“without success.” In the spring of 1746, the empress sent Brümmer back to Germany with an annual pension of three thousand rubles.

  Living under the eye of Empress Elizabeth was difficult for Catherine, but with the early exception of her vigorous, and ultimately failed, attempt to help Maria Zhukova, the young grand duchess tried to accept her situation. Peter was less pliable. He had little desire to please his aunt; Instead, a belligerent rebelliousness often led him to do foolish things.

  The episode of the peepholes was an example: Around Easter in 1746, Peter created a puppet theater in his apartment and insisted that everyone in the young court attend performances. On one side of the room in which he had erected his theater, a door had been walled up because it led into the dining room of
the empress’s private apartment. One day while working with his puppets, Peter heard voices through the blocked door. Curious to see what was happening in the next room, he took a carpenter’s bore and drilled peepholes through the door. To his delight, he found himself witnessing a private, mid-day dinner party with the empress surrounded by a dozen of her friends. Next to his aunt sat Count Razumovsky, who, recovering from an illness, was dressed informally in a brocaded dressing gown.

  Then, having already trespassed beyond the limits of discretion, Peter went further. Excited by his discovery, he summoned everyone to come and peek through the holes. Servants placed chairs, footstools, and benches before the perforated door to form an impromptu amphitheater so all could enjoy the spectacle. When Peter and his entourage had finished staring, he invited Catherine and her ladies-in-waiting to come and see this remarkable sight.

  He did not tell us what it was, apparently to give us a pleasant surprise. I did not hurry quickly enough, so he carried off Madame Krause and my women. I arrived last and found them all sitting in front of the door. I asked what was going on. When he told me, I was horrified and frightened by his rashness and said that I wished neither to look nor to take part in this scandalous behavior which would surely upset his aunt if she learned about it. Which she could scarcely fail to do since he had shared his secret with at least twenty people.

  When the group that had been peeking through the door saw that Catherine refused to do so, they all began, one by one, to walk away. Peter himself became apprehensive and went back to arranging his puppets.

  Elizabeth soon learned what had happened, and on a Sunday morning after Mass, she suddenly burst into Catherine’s room and ordered that her nephew be summoned. Peter arrived wearing a dressing gown and carrying his nightcap in his hand. He appeared carefree and rushed to kiss his aunt’s hand. She accepted the gesture and then asked how he dared to behave as he had. She said that she had found the door riddled with holes, all of them immediately facing the spot where she sat. She could only suppose that he had forgotten what he owed her. She reminded him that her own father, Peter the Great, had had an ungrateful son whom he had punished by disinheriting. She said that the empress Anne had locked up in the fortress anyone who showed her disrespect. Her nephew, Elizabeth told him, was “no better than a disrespectful little boy who needed to be taught how to behave.”

  Peter stammered a few words of defense, but Elizabeth ordered him to be silent. Her temper rose; she “let fly at him with the most shocking insults and abuse, displaying as much contempt as anger,” Catherine reported. “We were dumbfounded, stupefied and speechless, both of us, and, though this scene had nothing to do with me, it brought tears to my eyes.” Elizabeth noticed this and said to Catherine, “What I am saying is not directed at you. I know that you took no part in what he did and that you neither looked nor wanted to look through that door.” Then the empress calmed down, stopped talking, and left the room. The couple stared at each other. Then Peter, mingling contrition and sarcasm, said, “She was like a Fury. She did not know what she was saying.”

  Later, when Peter had left, Madame Krause came in and said to Catherine, “One must admit that the empress behaved today like a real mother.” Unsure of her meaning, Catherine was silent. Madame Krause explained: “A mother gets angry and scolds her children and then it all blows over. You ought, both of you, to have said to her, ‘Vinovaty, Matushka’—‘We beg your pardon, Little Mother’—and she would have been disarmed.” Catherine replied that she had been so shaken by the empress’s anger that she could do nothing but keep silent. But she learned from the episode. Afterward, she wrote, “the phrase, ‘We beg your pardon, Mama,’ remained fixed in my memory as a way to disarm the empress’s wrath. Later, I used it successfully.”

  When Catherine first arrived, unmarried, in Russia, Peter’s intimate circle included three young noblemen—two brothers and a cousin—named Chernyshev. Peter was immensely fond of all three. It was the eldest of the brothers, Zakhar, who had so worried his own mother with his obvious affection for Catherine that she had arranged to have him sent away from court, out of reach. The cousin and the younger brother remained, however, and the cousin, Andrei, also harbored feelings for Catherine. He began by making himself useful. Catherine had discovered that Madame Krause “had a great liking for the bottle. Often my entourage managed to make her drunk, after which she went to bed, leaving the young court to frolic without being scolded.” Her “entourage” in this case was Andrei Chernyshev, who could persuade Madame Krause to drink as much as he chose.

  Before Catherine’s marriage to Peter, Andrei had fallen into a pattern of lighthearted flirtation with the bride-to-be. Far from opposing or feeling uncomfortable with this intimate but still innocent banter, Peter enjoyed and even encouraged it. For months, he talked to his wife of Chernyshev’s good looks and devotion. Several times a day, he would send Andrei to Catherine with trivial messages. Eventually, however, Andrei himself became uncomfortable with the situation. One day, he said to Peter, “Your Imperial Highness should bear in mind that the grand duchess is not Madame Chernyshev”—and, more bluntly—“She is not my fiancée, she’s yours.” Peter laughed and passed these remarks along to Catherine. To put an end to this uncomfortable joke after the couple was married, Andrei proposed to Peter that he redefine his relationship with Catherine by calling her Matushka (Little Mother) and that she call him synok (son). But as both Catherine and Peter continued to show great affection for the “son” and talked about him constantly, some of their servants became concerned.

  One day, Catherine’s valet, Timothy Evreinov, took her aside and warned her that the whole household was gossiping about her relationship with Andrei. Frankly, he said, he was frightened by the danger into which she was heading. Catherine asked what he meant. “You talk and think of nothing but Andrei Chernyshev,” he said.

  “What harm is there in that?” Catherine asked. “He is my son. My husband is fonder of him than I am and he is a loyal friend to both of us.”

  “That is true,” Evreinov replied, “and the grand duke can do as he wishes, but it is not the same with you. What you call loyalty and affection because this young man is faithful to you, your entourage believes is love.”

  When he spoke this word, “which I had not even imagined,” Catherine says, she was struck “as if by a thunderbolt.” Evreinov told her that, in order to avoid further gossip, he had already advised Chernyshev to plead illness and take a leave of absence from court. And, indeed, Andrei Chernyshev had already departed. Peter, who had been told nothing of this, was concerned about his friend’s “illness” and spoke of it worriedly to Catherine.

  Eventually, when Andrei Chernyshev reappeared at court a month later, he caused a moment of danger for Catherine. During one of Peter’s concerts in which he himself played the violin, Catherine, who hated music in general and her husband’s efforts in particular, retreated to her room just off the Great Hall of the Summer Palace. The ceiling of this hall was being repaired, and the space was filled with scaffolding and workmen. Opening the door of her apartment into the hall, she was surprised to see Andrei Chernyshev standing not far away. She beckoned to him. Apprehensively, he came to her door. She said something meaningless. He replied, “I cannot speak to you like this. There is too much noise in the hall. Let me come into your room.”

  “No,” Catherine said, “that is something I cannot do.” Nevertheless, she continued talking to him for five minutes through the half-opened door. Then, a premonition made her turn her head and she saw, standing and watching from inside her own room, Peter’s chamberlain, Count Devier.

  “The grand duke is asking for you, Madame,” Devier said. Catherine closed the door on Chernyshev and walked with Devier back to the concert. The following day, the two remaining Chernyshevs vanished from court. Catherine and Peter were told that they had been posted to distant regiments; subsequently they learned that, in fact, they had been placed under house arrest.

 
The Chernyshev affair had two immediate consequences for the young couple. The lesser was that the empress commanded Father Todorsky to question husband and wife separately about their relationship with the young men. Todorsky asked Catherine whether she had ever kissed one of the Chernyshevs.

  “No, my father,” she replied.

  “Then why has the empress been informed to the contrary?” he asked. “The empress has been told that you gave a kiss to Andrei Chernyshev.”

  “That is slander, my father. It is not true,” said Catherine. Her sincerity apparently convinced Todorsky, who muttered to himself, “What wicked people!” He reported this conversation to the empress, and Catherine heard no more about it.

  But the Andrei Chernyshev affair, although lacking in substance, had lodged in the empress’s mind, and it played a part in what happened next, something more significant and long-lasting. On the afternoon the Chernyshevs disappeared, a new chief governess, senior to Madame Krause, appeared. The arrival of this woman to rule over Catherine and her daily life marked the beginning of seven years of harassment, oppression, and misery.

  16

  A Watchdog

  ELIZABETH STILL NEEDED an heir, and she was perplexed, resentful, and angry that no child was on the way. By May 1746, eight months had passed since the marriage, and there were no signs of a pregnancy. Elizabeth suspected disrespect, unwillingness, even faithlessness. She blamed Catherine.