The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (19 page)

On the day following our arrival in Catherinenthal, the usual rhythm of the court recommenced; that is to say that from morning to evening and very late into the night, we played for rather high stakes in the Empress’s antechamber, which was a hall that divided the house and the three stories of this building in two. Madame Choglokova was a gambler. She urged me to play faro like all the others. All of the Empress’s favorites usually participated when they were not in Her Imperial Majesty’s apartment, or rather in her tent, because she had had a very large and magnificent one set up next to her chambers, which were on the ground floor and very small, in the manner that Peter I had normally had them constructed. He had built this country house and planted the garden. The Prince and Princess Repnin, who were on this trip and who knew that Madame Choglokova had conducted herself with arrogance and without common sense during the journey, urged me to speak about her with Countess Shuvalova and Madame Izmailova, the ladies highest in the Empress’s affections.
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These women did not like Madame Choglokova and they were already informed of what had happened; the little Countess Shuvalova, who was indiscretion itself, did not wait for me to talk with her about it, but sitting next to me during a card game, she herself began to speak of it, and since she had a very mocking tone, she so ridiculed Madame Choglokova’s conduct that the latter soon became everyone’s laughingstock. She went further. She recounted to the Empress all that had happened. Apparently Madame Choglokova was scolded, because she softened her tone toward me a great deal.

To tell the truth, I was in great need of this change because I began to feel a strong inclination toward melancholy. I felt completely isolated. At Revel, the Grand Duke took a passing fancy to a Madame Cedersparre; as was his usual custom, he did not fail to tell me about it immediately. I had frequent chest pains and began to spit up blood at Catherinenthal, for which I was bled. In the afternoon of that same day, Madame Choglokova entered my room and found me with tears in my eyes, and with an extremely gentle look on her face, she asked me what was wrong, and proposed to me on behalf of the Empress that to dispel my depression, so she said, I should take a walk in the garden. That same day the Grand Duke had gone hunting with the Grand Master of the Hunt Count Razumovsky. Besides this, also on behalf of Her Imperial Majesty, she gave me three thousand rubles to play faro. The ladies had noticed that I was short of money and had told the Empress. I asked her to thank Her Imperial Majesty for her generosity, and I went with Madame Choglokova to walk in the garden and take some air.

A few days after our arrival at Catherinenthal, we saw Grand Chancellor Count Bestuzhev arrive, accompanied by the Imperial Ambassador Baron von Bretlach, and we learned from the greetings he gave us that the two imperial courts had just been united by a treaty of alliance.
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Following this, the Empress went to see the fleet exercises, but except for the cannon smoke, we saw nothing; the day was excessively hot and the air perfectly calm. Upon our return from these maneuvers there was a ball in the Empress’s tents, which were set up on a terrace; dinner was served outside around the pool, in which there was supposed to be a fountain. But hardly had the Empress sat down at the table when a downpour came, drenching the whole company, which withdrew as best it could into the house and the tents; thus ended this banquet.

A few days later the Empress left for Rogervik. The fleet again performed maneuvers there, and again we saw only smoke. This trip bruised everyone’s feet in a singular way. The ground there is rock, covered with such a thick layer of pebbles that when one stands for some time in the same place, one’s feet sink and the pebbles cover them. We camped on that terrain in our tents for several days and were obliged to go from one tent to the other; afterward my feet hurt for more than four months. The galley slaves who worked on the breakwater wore wooden shoes, and these shoes hardly lasted more than eight to ten days. The Imperial Ambassador had followed Her Imperial Majesty to this port, where he dined and supped with her. Halfway between Rogervik and Revel, an old woman who looked like a walking skeleton, aged 130 years, was brought to the Empress during dinner. She gave the woman plates from her table and silverware and we continued on our way. Back in Catherinenthal, Madame Choglokova had the pleasure of finding her husband back from his mission to Vienna.

Many carriages from the court were already on the road to Riga, where the Empress wanted to visit, but back from Rogervik, she suddenly changed her mind. Many people racked their brains trying to divine the reason for this change in plan; several years later the reason for it was discovered. When Monsieur Choglokov had passed through Riga, a Lutheran pastor who was either crazy or fanatical gave him a letter and a memorandum for the Empress in which he exhorted her not to undertake this journey, telling her that she ran the greatest risks and that there were people placed by the Empire’s neighboring enemies to kill her, and other nonsense of that sort. These documents, handed to Her Imperial Majesty, quenched her desire to go any farther; as for the pastor, he was discovered to be crazy, but the journey did not take place. We returned in small stages from Revel to Petersburg; during this trip I came down with a very sore throat and had to stay in bed for several days.
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Afterward we went to Peterhof, and from there we made weekly excursions to Oranienbaum.

At the beginning of August the Empress had the Grand Duke and me informed that we should make our devotions; we both obeyed her wishes, and we immediately began to have matins and vespers sung in our residence, and we went to mass every day. One Friday, when it was time to go to confession, the reason for this order to make our devotions became very clear. Simeon Theodorsky, the Bishop of Pskov, questioned us both a great deal, each one separately, about what had happened between the Chernyshevs and us. But as nothing at all had happened, he was a bit contrite when he saw that with the candor of innocence we told him that there was not even the shadow of what they had dared to suppose. To me he let slip this question: “But then whence is the Empress informed to the contrary?” At this, I told him that I did not know. I suppose that our confessor transmitted our confession to the Empress’s confessor, and that he informed Her Imperial Majesty of what had happened, which certainly could not damn us. We received communion on Saturday, and on Monday we went to Oranienbaum for a week, while the Empress made an excursion to Tsarskoe Selo.

Upon arriving at Oranienbaum, the Grand Duke enlisted his entire entourage, the chamberlains, the gentlemen of the bedchamber, the courtiers, Prince Repnin’s adjutants and even his son, the court servants, the huntsmen, the gardeners. All had muskets on their shoulders. His Imperial Highness drilled them daily, and put them on guard duty. The hallway of the house served as their guardroom, where they spent the day. For meals the gentlemen went upstairs, and in the evening they came into the hall to dance in gaiters. The only women were myself, Madame Choglokova, Princess Repnina, my three maids of honor, and my three ladies-in-waiting. As a result, the ball was meager and poorly arranged, the men exhausted and in bad humor from their continuous military exercise, which was hardly to the taste of courtiers. After the ball they were allowed to go sleep in their apartments. In general I and everyone else were overcome by the boring life that we led at Oranienbaum, where we were five or six women isolated and in each other’s company from morning until night, while for their part, the men drilled against their will.

I found solace in the books that I had brought. Since my marriage, all I did was read. The first book that I read as a newlywed was a novel entitled
Tiran the Fair,
and for an entire year I read only novels.
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But as these began to bore me, I came by chance upon the letters of Madame de Sévigné; this reading greatly entertained me.
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When I had devoured them, the works of Voltaire fell into my hands; after reading them, I sought books with more discrimination.
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We returned to Peterhof, and after two or three round trips between Peterhof and Oranienbaum, always with the same pastimes, we returned to Petersburg and the Summer Palace.

At the end of autumn, the Empress moved to the Winter Palace, where she resided in the apartments that we had lived in the preceding winter, and we were lodged in those that the Grand Duke had occupied before our marriage. We liked these apartments very much and they were truly very comfortable; they had been Empress Anna’s. Every evening our entire court would assemble in our apartments. We played all kinds of little games or had concerts. Twice a week there was a production in the large theater, which was at that time across from the Kazan cathedral. In a word, that winter was one of the most joyous and best planned that I have spent in my life. We literally did nothing but laugh and play all day long.

1747

Chernyshevs imprisoned; father’s death; boredom; various pastimes

Around the middle of winter the Empress told us to follow her to Tikhvin, where she meant to go. This was a pilgrimage, but at the moment that we were climbing into the sleighs, we learned that the trip had been delayed. We were quietly informed that Grand Master of the Hunt Count Razumovsky had come down with gout and that the Empress did not want to leave without him.

During this time, while he was arranging my hair one morning, my chamber valet, Evreinov, said to me that by a great stroke of luck he had discovered that Andrei Chernyshev and his brothers were in Ribacha Sloboda under arrest in a country house that belonged to the Empress herself and that she had inherited from her mother. Here is how this was discovered. During carnival, my servant with his wife, her sister, and the sister’s husband had made a little excursion in a sleigh. The sister’s husband was a secretary to the magistrate of St. Petersburg. This man had a sister married to an undersecretary of the Secret Chancery. One day they went around Ribacha Sloboda
and visited the home of the man charged with the administration of this domain
belonging to the Empress. They had an argument about what day Easter fell on;
their host said to them that he would quickly put an end to this dispute, that
they had only to ask one of the prisoners for a book entitled
in Russian, in which one finds all the feast days and the calendar for several years. A few moments later the book was brought; Evreinov’s brother-in-law took the book, and upon opening it, the first thing he saw was that Andrei Chernyshev had written his name in it and the date on which the Grand Duke had given him this book, after which he looked up the date for Easter. This dispute over, the book was sent back, and they returned to Petersburg, where a few days later Evreinov’s brother-in-law shared this discovery with him. He immediately begged me not to speak of this with the Grand Duke, because he did not at all trust his discretion; I promised and I kept my word to him.

Two or three weeks later, we left for Tikhvin. This journey lasted only five days and then we returned, passing on the way there and back through Ribacha Sloboda, and in front of the house in which I knew the Chernyshevs were being held, I tried to see them through the windows, but I saw nothing. Prince Repnin was not with us on this journey; we were told that he had kidney stones. Madame Choglokova’s husband fulfilled Prince Repnin’s functions during this journey, which did not much please everyone: he was an arrogant and brutal fool. Everyone feared both this man and his wife dreadfully, and to tell the truth, they were truly wicked. However, there were ways, as became clear later, not only to put these Arguses to sleep but even to win them over; at that time we were just discovering these ways. One of the surest was to play faro with them; they were both gamblers and very intense ones at that. This weakness was the first discovery; others came later.

That winter Princess Gagarina, my maid of honor, died from a severe fever at the moment she was going to marry Chamberlain Prince Golitsyn, who later married her younger sister. I missed her greatly, and during her illness I went to see her several times despite Madame Choglokova’s protests. The Empress had her older sister, since married to Count Matiushkin, come from Moscow and take her place.

Toward the middle of Lent, we went with the Empress to Gostilitsa for the birthday of Grand Master of the Hunt Count Razumovsky. There we danced and amused ourselves quite well, after which we returned to the city. A few days later I was informed of the death of my father, which deeply grieved me.
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For a week I was allowed to cry as much as I wanted, but at the end of the week Madame Choglokova came to tell me that I had cried enough, that the Empress ordered me to stop crying, that my father had not been a King. I replied to her that it was true that he had not been a King, but that he was my father. At this she retorted that it was not fitting for a Grand Duchess to mourn any longer for a father who was not a King. Finally it was decided that I would appear in public the following Sunday and wear mourning clothes for six weeks. The first time I left my room, I found Count Santi, the Empress’s Grand Master of Ceremonies, in Her Imperial Majesty’s antechamber. I addressed a few quite ordinary remarks to him and continued on my way. A few days later, Madame Choglokova came to tell me that the Empress had learned from Count Bestuzhev, to whom Santi had given it in writing, that I had said to him, Santi, that I found it very strange that the ambassadors had not expressed their condolences to me on the death of my father, that the Empress had found my remark to Count Santi ill-advised, that I was too proud and that I should remember that my father was not a King, and that for this reason, I should not and could not expect condolences from foreign ministers. I almost fell off my chair listening to Madame Choglokova. I told her that if Count Santi had said or written that I had said to him a single word even barely touching on that subject, he was a remarkable liar, that nothing of the sort had ever entered my mind and that I therefore had neither made to him nor to anyone else any remarks on the subject. This was the strictest truth because I had made it an immutable rule to expect nothing, no matter what, and to conform to the Empress’s will in all things and do what I was told to do. Apparently the candor with which I responded to Madame Choglokova convinced her; she told me that she would not fail to tell the Empress that I made a formal denial of Count Santi’s story. And indeed, she went to Her Imperial Majesty’s apartment and came back to tell me that the Empress was very angry with Count Santi for having told such a lie and that she had ordered that he be reprimanded. A few days later, Count Santi sent forth several people, among them Chamberlain Nikita Panin and the Vice Chancellor Vorontsov, to tell me that Count Bestuzhev had forced him to tell this lie and that he was very upset that because of it, he found himself in disgrace with me. I said to these gentlemen that a liar is a liar, whatever his reasons for lying, and that fearing that this gentleman would involve me in his lies, I would speak to him no more. I kept my word; I spoke to him no more.

Here is what I believe about this story. Santi was an Italian; he loved to negotiate and was very preoccupied with his position as Grand Master of Ceremonies. I had always spoken to him as I spoke to everyone; perhaps he believed that condolences from the diplomatic corps on the subject of my father’s death might be in order and given this, hoped to do me a service. He therefore went to see Count Bestuzhev, the Grand Chancellor, his superior, and told him that I had appeared in public for the first time and that I had seemed deeply affected by my father’s death, and perhaps on this occasion he added that the lack of condolences had contributed to my suffering. Count Bestuzhev, ever vicious and happy to humiliate me, immediately had put in writing what Santi had just said or insinuated to him and had attributed to me, and made him sign this document. The other, fearing his superior’s wrath and above all the possibility of losing his position, did not hesitate to sign this lie rather than sacrifice his existence. The Grand Chancellor sent the note to the Empress; she was angered to see my pretentiousness and sent Madame Choglokova as I have just recounted. But after she heard my response, which was based on the perfect truth, the only result was the embarrassment of the Grand Master of Ceremonies.

In the spring we went to live in the Summer Palace, and from there we went to the country. Under the pretext of his ill health, Prince Repnin obtained permission to withdraw to his house, and Monsieur Choglokov continued to be charged with Prince Repnin’s duties in our service in the interim. Choglokov’s influence first became apparent with the dismissal from our court of Chamberlain Count Devier, who was placed in the army as a brigadier, and with that of Gentleman of the Bedchamber Villebois, who was sent to be a colonel because of the protests of Monsieur Choglokov, who disliked them both because the Grand Duke and I both esteemed them. Similar dismissals had already occurred, for example, that of Count Zakhar Chernyshev in 1745 at the behest of his mother, but nevertheless these dismissals were seen as disgraces by the court and were very deeply felt by the individuals who suffered them. The Grand Duke and I were very sensitive to all this. Prince August, having obtained all that he had sought, was told on behalf of the Empress to depart. This too was a plot of the Choglokovs, who wished to utterly isolate the Grand Duke and me; in this they were following the instructions of Count Bestuzhev, who was suspicious of everyone and loved to cause and sustain divisions everywhere, fearing conspiracies against him. Despite this, all minds joined together in hatred of him, but he hardly worried about this as long as he was feared.

That summer, with nothing better to do and the boredom increasing at our residence and court, my dominant passion became horseback riding; the rest of the time I read in my room everything that fell into my hands. As for the Grand Duke, since the servants he loved best had been taken from him, he chose new ones from the court servants. In the country, he acquired a pack of hunting dogs and began to train them himself; when he was tired of tormenting them, he began to saw away on his violin. He knew not a note, but he had a good ear and made the beauty of the music consist of the force and violence with which he drew sounds from his instrument. Those who heard him, however, often would have willingly plugged their ears if they had dared because he grated on them terribly. This life continued both in the country and in the city.

Back in the Summer Palace, Madame Kruse, who had not ceased to be an Argus and recognized as such, became sweeter to such an extent that very often she was willing to deceive the Choglokovs, who had become everyone’s bête noires. She did more. She procured for the Grand Duke toys, dolls, and other childish things that he loved madly; during the day they were hidden in and under my bed. The Grand Duke went to bed first after supper, and as soon as we were in bed, Madame Kruse locked the door with a key and then the Grand Duke played until one or two in the morning. Like it or not, I was obliged to take part in this fine pastime, as was Madame Kruse. Often I laughed about it, but even more often I was irritated and inconvenienced, as the bed was covered with and full of dolls and toys, which were sometimes quite heavy. I do not know if Madame Choglokova caught wind of these nocturnal amusements, but one evening toward midnight, she knocked at the bedroom door. We did not open it for her immediately, because the Grand Duke, Madame Kruse, and I were in such a hurry to hide and clear the bed of these toys, and to this end the bedcover served us well because we stuffed them underneath it. This done, we opened the door, but she took this occasion to speak angrily of the fact that we had made her wait and told us that the Empress would be very upset when she learned that we were not yet asleep at such an hour. Then she went away growling, having made no other discovery. After she had departed, the Grand Duke continued as before until he grew sleepy.

At the beginning of autumn, we moved once again into the apartments that we had first occupied in the Winter Palace after our wedding. Here the Empress declared a very strict prohibition, communicated by Madame Choglokova, that no one was to enter my or the Grand Duke’s apartment without the express permission of Monsieur or Madame Choglokova, with an order to the ladies and gentlemen of our court to remain in the antechamber, not to go beyond the threshold and only to speak to us aloud; the same order was given to servants upon pain of dismissal. The Grand Duke and I thus reduced to being face-to-face, we complained and shared with each other our thoughts about this seeming prison, which neither of us deserved.

To have more amusement during the winter, the Grand Duke ordered eight or ten hunting dogs from the country and placed them behind a wooden partition, which separated the alcove of my bedroom from an immense vestibule located behind our apartments. As the alcove was made only of wood boards, the odor from the kennel penetrated into the alcove, and it was in this stench that we both slept. When I complained about it, he replied that there was no other way; because the kennel was a huge secret, I endured this inconvenience without betraying His Imperial Highness’s secret.