Great Catherine

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  Finally things came to a head when Daria became pregnant. Mamonov confronted Catherine, and though his hands trembled and his voice shook, he asked in a rather roundabout fashion to be dismissed as her official favorite. She was indignant; he lost his temper. She brought up all their old quarrels, and his neglect of her. He accused her of being his jailer. Neither got what they wanted.

  Later, however, Catherine had a change of heart, and wrote Mamonov a letter. Knowing nothing of Mamonov's involvement with Daria, she proposed that he marry a wealthy young heiress, thus freeing him of his burden of service to herself while assuring his future prosperity. She would do all she could to further the match, she promised. "In that way," she added at the end of her letter, "you will be able to remain in attendance."

  Mamonov was dismayed. He did not want a great fortune—in part because the empress had already enriched him and his family. He wanted the plain, sour, pregnant Daria Scherbatov. With enormous trepidation he wrote to Catherine and told her so.

  "I kiss your little hands and feet, and I cannot see what I am writing," he concluded, still in the tone of a tender lover. Yet he confessed that he had promised to marry his beloved Daria six months earlier.

  When she read Mamonov's letter with its shocking avowal, Catherine fainted. Later, when she came to her senses again, she felt by turns astonished, bewildered, angry and deeply wounded. She had sensed that something was terribly wrong, she had known that sooner or later the hidden toxin would work its way to the surface. She had quarreled with Mamonov often over his flirtations with other women; indeed her jealous scenes had been a factor in their estrangement. (An even more powerful factor, according to Mamonov, was the corrosive effect of political intrigue. "Being surrounded by courtiers," he confided to an acquaintance, was like "being surrounded by wolves in a forest.") But to discover that he had been, in effect, cuckolding her behind her back, and with a much younger woman, was a huge blow to her pride.

  Khrapovitsky wrote in his diary that the empress wept a great deal after reading Mamonov's letter. She retreated to her private apartments and allowed no one but her old friend Anna Nar-yshkin to be with her. For several days, while she wrestled with her feelings, she did little but work at her desk and take her usual constitutional after supper. Then she came to a decision.

  Summoning Mamonov and Daria Scherbatov, Catherine formally announced their engagement and granted them a hundred thousand rubles and several rich estates. The young people knelt before their sovereign, both of them overcome by her forgiveness and generosity. When she wished them happiness and prosperity, one observer noted, everyone in the room wept along with the future bride and groom.

  Outwardly recovered from Mamonov's betrayal, Catherine nonetheless nursed her inner wounds.

  "I have received a bitter lesson," she wrote, predicting unhappi-ness for Mamonov and Daria and writing to Grimm that Mamonov was about to be "punished for life by the most idiotic of passions, which has made him a laughing-stock and has shown up his ingratitude."

  In truth, Catherine was the laughing-stock; jokes at her expense redoubled in the wake of her break with Mamonov, who was despised by the courtiers for his arrogance, spite and shrewd self-seeking. The empress who stood up so bravely to the armies of the Turks and the Swedes had been forced to concede defeat to a mere guardsman. She might triumph on the battlefield, but in Cupid's wars she was outmatched. But then, what could she expect, cruel onlookers sneered, a chronically ill old woman matched to a virile young man?

  Mamonov's wedding was barely out of the way when a new favorite was installed—Platon Zubov, a beautiful, physically slight boy of twenty who was an officer in the horse guards. Zubov was more grandson and apprentice clerk than lover; indeed it is possible that he and Catherine had no sexual intimacy at all. (Catherine called Zubov "the child" when referring to him to others.) She chose him more for his innocence, mild manner and lack of guile than for any of his other qualities. She could not afford to be hurt again as Mamonov had hurt her. Zubov, Catherine told Grimm, had "a very determined desire to do good." She felt certain that he would be loyal and devoted to her, and that he would stand by her, affectionate and supportive, through her days of fever and long nights of insomnia, gastric upset and stabbing back pain.

  "He takes such good care of me," she told Grimm, "that I don't know how to thank him." Gone were the days when the empress would succumb to the most idiotic of passions. From now on she would take a safer, saner course.

  The news from Paris that summer, the summer of 1789, was exciting to some, but to most, unnerving. Catherine received daily reports of startling upheavals in the French political landscape. The disappointing King Louis, yielding to the terrible pressures of an economy in collapse, had summoned representatives of the nobles, the clergy, and the Third Estate—in theory all other French men—to deliberate in Paris. The Third Estate had declared itself to be a separate body, and had begun proclaiming freedoms and rights in the name of humanity.

  Distempered Parisians, full of hatred for King Louis's Austrian Queen Marie Antoinette, and sensing that the monarchy had begun to totter, rampaged through the streets and tore down a despised symbol of royal absolutism, the old fortress of the Bastille. And in early August, in a single wild night of expansive republicanism, many aristocrats gave up their privileges and estates and aligned themselves with the popular delegates who had declared their intention to reform France.

  Catherine, convinced that France was, in her phrase, "going to ruin" and that the spineless, irresolute King Louis was responsible for the calamity, was on guard for signs of rebellion in her own kingdom and urged all her commanders to redouble their efforts to bring the Swedish and Turkish conflicts to a swift conclusion. The "French infection" was spreading, she thought; no government in Europe could rest easy. As for King Louis and his queen, Catherine was certain that, unless they managed to flee in secret to England or America, they were doomed.

  Despite both Russian and Austrian victories, the campaigning season ended without prospects of a swift peace. Catherine was anxious, gravely concerned about the future of Europe and dogged by the pains and inconveniences of her own declining health.

  "All the powers are in turmoil," she remarked, denouncing the perfidy of Prussia under Frederick the Great's successor Frederick William II. She anticipated a Prussian attack, and was both alarmed and angered when she learned, in March of 1790, that the Prussian emperor had made a secret pact with the Turkish sultan. News of losses on both war fronts sent her into seclusion, where she spent hours reading Plutarch with Zubov. They attempted a translation together, and Zubov's boyish, unassertive presence was balm to the empress's troubled mind.

  Once again the stink of gunpowder filled Petersburg streets in May and June. The thunder of cannon shook walls and broke hundreds of windows. King Gustavus's fleet menaced Kronstadt, and Catherine, ignoring the advice of those who implored her to escape to Moscow lest Petersburg be overrun, actually had herself driven to Kronstadt in the pouring rain in hopes of witnessing a great naval battle; of course she expected the Russian fleet to be victorious. She had grown very shortsighted, yet she held a spyglass to her best eye and watched the maneuverings of the ships as best she could, her nerves rattled by the continuous booming of cannon.

  "God is with us!" she exclaimed at supper, raising her glass in tribute to the sailors who, she hoped, would soon secure a major victory and then a lasting peace.

  Peace did come, and sooner than Catherine expected, but the treaty Russia signed with Sweden in August of 1790 did not end the empress's anxieties. The Baltic fleet had been diminished in numbers and weakened in effectiveness by Swedish fireships and incessant cannonades. Prussia continued to threaten, with British encouragement. The Turkish war dragged on, occasioning further loans and more conscription of peasants for the army—the last a worry to Catherine, for it led to unrest and, with the "French madness" in the air, could conceivably breed revolution.

  Hemmed in by difficulties, and wit
h the cold weather returning, the empress fell prey to yet another siege of debilitating illnesses. She may have had a stomach ulcer. Her entire digestive system was so erratic that she could only tolerate coffee, a few sips of wine, and hardened bread. After weeks of this austere diet she lost weight, her energy fell to a new low and she spent many unhappy days lying on her large Turkish sofa or in bed.

  The endless, icy winter was very hard on Catherine. Her fits of weeping, depression, and nights of severe pain were more frequent than in the past, and she felt blocked and frustrated. Zubov, "the child," was some comfort but the only man she could truly rely on, Potemkin, was far away and in danger. Catherine admitted to feeling as if there were "a stone lying on her heart." She steeled herself against age, pain and loss, refusing to let her doctors dose her with their medicines and seeking relief in home remedies and the therapeutic effects of heat.

  When at last she learned in February of 1791 that Potemkin was on his way to Petersburg, the empress roused herself and prepared to give him a hero's greeting. But Potemkin, as often in the past, took center stage on his own. He announced that he would give a grand ball at the Tauride Palace for three thousand guests, in honor of the empress, on the occasion of her sixty-second birthday.

  On the evening of April 23 Potemkin's sumptuous neoclassical mansion was grandly decorated, lit by thousands of wax candles—it was said he had bought every candle in Petersburg, and had sent to Moscow for more—and ornamented with glowing tapestries, thick carpets and costly works of art. All the servants had new liveries. The kitchens had been stocked with choice foodstuffs and the wine cellars filled with excellent vintages. Every sign of damage from the recent cannonades—the broken glass, fragments of plaster and broken ornaments—had been cleared away, leaving the magnificent house in polished, pristine splendor.

  A parade of carriages entered the courtyard and guests alighted, masked and in costume. The imperial coach, painted and gilded, its wheels gleaming with diamonds, swept up to the entrance and the small, portly empress was handed out. Simply dressed, her white hair bound on top of her head, her face deeply lined but her faded blue eyes amiable and alert, she waved off all attempts at ceremony and walked slowly into the marble entrance hall.

  The men bowed, the women curtseyed deeply to the old woman. Potemkin, his ample girth enclosed in vivid red, with a cloak of black lace hanging from his shoulders, came forward to kiss the empress's hand and lead her into the ballroom. An orchestra of three hundred musicians began to play, and Catherine, with all the guests following her, walked the length of the huge, high-ceilinged salon to take her seat on a raised platform and watch the dancing.

  Her handsome grandson Alexander, now fourteen years old, joined four dozen couples in dancing a quadrille. His tall, well-proportioned body was set off by the diamond-studded blue costume he wore. He was fair, with a face as beautiful as a girl's and a princely bearing. People had been saying for years that Alexander, and not Paul, would succeed the empress. On this night, as she watched the agile, graceful boy step and turn in time to the music, Catherine may have had the succession very much on her mind.

  The dancing over, all the guests strolled through a long colonnade into another vast room, as huge as a domed temple, bare save for tall vases of Carrara marble. Beyond this was another immense room full of trees and flowering shrubs. The April chill was forgotten here; the warm, humid air was fragrant with the scents of exotic blossoms and marble fountains played in the blazing candlelight. At the heart of the lovely garden was an expanse of grass, from which rose a transparent obelisk whose prism-like shape refracted the light in a thousand glowing colors.

  The guests marveled at the inventiveness of their host, and the ingenuity of his servants. For Potemkin had done what appeared to be the impossible: he had ordered an ice cave to be built right next to the tropical garden, so that the frigid walls of the cavern, sparkling with frost, would turn an aqueous pale green reflecting the green of the lush trees and the grass.

  At supper the empress charmed all those she chatted with. "Her extreme affability does not diminish at all her dignity," wrote Count Esterhazy, who visited Russia in 1791 and spent many evenings in Catherine's company, "and those she admits to greatest familiarity with her do not dare talk to her about business, unless she broaches the subject. Her conversation is very interesting, and quite varied. When she speaks of herself, or of the events of her reign, it is with a noble modesty, which puts her above any compliments which one might be tempted to make to her."

  Guests who had never before seen the empress, and who knew nothing of her beyond what they had read in European newspapers or in the growing body of satirical writings attacking her, were astonished to discover how gracious, natural and cultivated she was. Expecting a dissolute harridan, they found a voluble, intelligent old lady with an enchanting play of sweetness and shrewdness across her aging features. She was immensely impressive, all the more so for never being too impressed with herself.

  It was late in the evening when Potemkin clapped his beringed hands and the curtain rose on his private theater. The guests trooped in to watch two new ballets—the dancers brought from France and Italy—and two comedies, followed by a choral concert and folk dancing with performers from all corners of Russia.

  A never-ending banquet was spread on plates of silver and gold, wine and champagne ran freely, music played and the guests danced long into the night. Catherine became tired at around midnight, and began making her farewells. All at once a burst of choral music arrested all activity. It was a hymn of victory composed in the empress's honor.

  She stood in the large entrance hall to listen, and as the rich voices blended, rising together to end in a triumphant crescendo, she must have felt deeply moved. For once she may have allowed herself to reflect on all that she had achieved in her sixty-two years, and on the will and unbreakable spirit that had sustained her through adversity, the sturdy body that resurged each time illness struck, the fine, discriminating mind that had guided her empire to greatness. On that night, Catherine must, for a moment at least, have put her customary modesty aside and let herself feel very proud.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  CATHERINE SAT AT HER WORKTABLE IN HER BEDROOM, wearing her dressing gown of heavy white silk, a white crepe cap covering her hair. She was absorbed in writing a letter to Grimm, dipping her quill again and again into the pot of thick ink. It was cold in the room; outside the window the streets were hidden under deep piled snow and ice crusted thickly on the windowpanes. The snow and oppressive cold reminded Catherine of another February day long before, and she put her thoughts about it into her letter.

  "Fifty years ago today I arrived in Moscow," she told her correspondent. "I do not believe there are ten people here who remember that day." She listed those she recalled meeting as a girl of fifteen, newly arrived in Russia: Ivan Betsky, who had become her mother's lover, now worn out and nearly blind, his wits failing; Countess Matushkin, ten years older than Catherine, now a spry old woman who had recently remarried; the jokey Leon Naryshkin, master of silliness, who had been making Catherine laugh for half a century; one of the ancient, bent waiting-women. She ran out of names. "These, my friend, are the most convincing proof of old age."

  She would soon be sixty-five. Over and over again the European newspapers had announced her death. She herself had prepared a memorandum—a sort of will—to guide those around her in the event of her demise. It instructed them to lay out her corpse in a white gown, with a golden crown on her cold brow bearing the name Ekaterina. They were to mourn for only six months, "the shorter the better," and the mourning was not to interfere with festivals or other traditional observances. Catherine had no wish to cast a pall on anyone's good times.

  She continued her letter in a lighter vein. "In spite of everything," she told Grimm, "I am as eager as a five-year-old child to play blind man's buff, and the young people, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, say that their games are never so merry as when I pla
y with them. In a word, I am their merrymaker."

  Catherine had seven grandchildren, the youngest barely two years old, and she managed, despite a painful rheumatic knee and the increasing unwieldiness of her body, to romp with them and keep them running and laughing with excitement. Something young, warm and lively was always with her, either a grandchild or two or a dog or a pet squirrel. People noticed that she did not like to be alone. When Zubov was with her, he was often accompanied by his pet monkey—though unkind observers told one another that Zubov himself was the real monkey, the silly pet of the empress's old age.

  Catherine told Grimm about her current writing project, something she knew few people would ever care about but which kept her active mind stimulated during the long dark hours of winter. She was doing research on Russian medieval history, specifically on the later fourteenth century. She loved deciphering old documents, and in recent years her interests had become more and more antiquarian. And as she herself was now an antique, she had taken to writing and rewriting her memoirs. In all, she wrote the story of her early life seven times, always breaking off her account in the last years of the reign of Elizabeth. Telling and retelling the story of her early years was both satisfying and cathartic, though it entailed reliving, if only in memory, the horrors of her marriage to Peter and her years of fear and anguish under the capricious empress who had chosen her as Peter's wife and brought her to Russia.

  Catherine's scholarly bent served her well and even brought her comfort, for in the process of rewriting her memoirs she came across documents that helped her to understand why things had happened as they did. Once, searching through the palace archives, she came across an old trunk full of papers, covered with dust and half eaten by rats. Methodically she went through the contents. The papers had been written in the 1740s, and they concerned her, albeit peripherally. She read on and on, and the more she read the better able she was to perceive, with hindsight, why the empress had been so suspicious, what factions she feared and why the succession so preoccupied her. Catherine's newfound insights were incorporated into the last versions of her memoirs.