The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (30 page)

In the month of August, we again returned to the city to reside in the Summer Palace. For me it was an almost mortal blow when I learned that the apartment being prepared for my confinement connected to and was part of the Empress’s. Alexander Shuvalov took me to see it. I found two rooms like all those in the Summer Palace: sad, with only one exit, poorly decorated with crimson damask, and with almost no furniture or any kind of comfort. I saw that I would be isolated there without any company, very unhappy and absolutely alone. I told Sergei Saltykov and Princess Gagarina, who, although they did not like each other, nevertheless had their friendship for me in common. They saw what I saw, but it was impossible to remedy the situation. On Wednesday I was supposed to move into this apartment, which was very far from the Grand Duke’s. I went to bed Tuesday evening and awoke in the night with pains. I awakened Madame Vladislavova, who sent for the midwife, who confirmed that I was going into labor. The Grand Duke, who was sleeping in his room, was awakened, as was Count Alexander Shuvalov. At around two in the morning, he sent to the Empress’s residence, and she did not delay in coming. I was in a very bad way. Finally, toward noon of the following day, September 20, I bore a son.
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As soon as he was swaddled, the Empress had her confessor come in and he gave the child the name Paul, after which the Empress immediately had the child taken by the midwife and told the midwife to follow her. I stayed on my sickbed. Now, this bed was placed opposite a door through which I could see daylight. Behind me there were two large windows that closed poorly, and to the right and left of this bed, two doors, one of which opened onto my dressing room and the other onto that occupied by Madame Vladislavova. As soon as the Empress had left, the Grand Duke also went his way, as well as Monsieur and Madame Shuvalov, and I did not see anyone again until the stroke of three. I had perspired a great deal. I asked Madame Vladislavova to change my linen and put me to bed. She told me that she did not dare. Several times she sent someone to look for the midwife, but she did not come. I asked to drink, but again I received the same response. Finally, after three hours, Countess Shuvalova arrived in all her finery. When she saw me still lying in the same place where she had left me, she exclaimed that this could kill me. This was a great consolation for me, as I had already been in tears from the moment I gave birth, especially because of the negligent way in which I had been poorly and uncomfortably put to bed after a difficult and painful labor, between doors and windows that closed poorly, with no one daring to carry me to my bed, which was two steps away, and I had not the strength to drag myself to it. Madame Shuvalova left immediately, and I think that she sent for the midwife, because she came a half hour later and told us that the Empress was so occupied with the child that she had not let her go for a single moment.
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No one had a thought about me. I was hardly flattered by this forgetfulness and neglect. Meanwhile I was dying of fatigue and thirst. Finally I was put in my bed and I did not see a living soul the whole day, nor was anyone even sent to find out how I was. For his part, His Imperial Highness did nothing but drink with those whom he found around him, and the Empress busied herself with the child. In the city and in the empire, the joy over this event was great.

On the following day I began to feel an unbearable, rheumatic pain from the hip down along the thigh of my left leg. This pain kept me from sleeping, and I also came down with a high fever. Despite this, on the following day the consideration shown to me was about the same. I saw no one, and no one asked for news of me. However, the Grand Duke did come into my room for a moment and then left, saying that he did not have the time to stay. I did nothing but cry and moan in my bed, and only Madame Vladislavova was with me in my room. Deep down she felt sympathy for me but could not remedy the situation. Moreover I did not like to be pitied, nor to complain. I had too proud a soul, and the very idea of being unhappy was intolerable to me. Until now I had done everything I could not to appear so. I could have seen Alexander Shuvalov and his wife, but they were such insipid and boring creatures that I was always delighted when they were not there.

On the third day, someone came on behalf of the Empress to ask Madame Vladislavova if a blue satin cape that Her Imperial Majesty had worn the day that I gave birth, because it had been very cold in my room, had not been left behind in my apartment. Madame Vladislavova searched everywhere for this cape and finally found it in a corner of my dressing room, where it had not been noticed, because since my confinement few had entered this room. Having found it, she sent it back immediately. This cape, as we learned a little later, had given rise to a rather unusual incident. The Empress had no fixed hour for either going to bed, waking up, having dinner or supper, or dressing. One afternoon during the three days in question, she lay down on a sofa, where she had had a mattress and cushions placed. Lying down, she asked for this cape because she was cold. They looked everywhere and did not find it, because it had been left in my room. Then the Empress ordered them to look under the cushions at the head of her bed, believing that they would find it there. The sister of Madame Kruse, the Empress’s favorite lady-in-waiting, passed her hand under Her Imperial Majesty’s headboard and withdrew it, saying that the cape was not under the headboard but that there was a packet with hair or something like it. She did not know what it was. The Empress immediately got up, had the mattress and the cushions removed, and to their surprise, they saw a piece of paper in which some hairs were twisted around a few vegetable roots. The Empress’s ladies and she herself said that these were surely charms or amulets, and they all speculated about what this could mean, and who could have had the audacity to place this packet under the Empress’s headboard. One of the ladies whom Her Imperial Majesty liked best was suspected. She was known by the name of Anna Dmitrievna Domasheva, but not long before, this woman, having become a widow, had gotten remarried to one of the Empress’s chamber valets. The Shuvalovs did not like this woman, who opposed them, because thanks to her merit and the Empress’s trust, which she had enjoyed since her youth, she was quite capable of devising schemes to greatly diminish the Shuvalovs’ favor. As the Shuvalovs did not lack allies, they too began to view the affair as a criminal act. The Empress herself was quite receptive to this view because she believed in charms and amulets. Consequently she ordered Count Alexander Shuvalov to arrest this woman, her husband, and her two sons, one of whom was an officer in the guards, the other a chamber page for the Empress. Two days after being arrested, the husband asked for a razor to shave his beard, and he cut his throat with it. As for the wife and children, they were under arrest for a long time, and she confessed that she had used these charms so that the Empress’s favor toward her would continue, and that she had put a few grains of salt burned on Holy Thursday in a glass of Hungarian wine that she had presented to the Empress. This affair ended with the exile of the woman and her children to Moscow. Afterward, the rumor was circulated that a fainting spell, which the Empress had had shortly before my confinement, was the result of these drinks that the woman had given her. But the fact is that she had never given her more than two or three grains of salt burned on Holy Thursday, which certainly could not harm the Empress. In this matter, only this woman’s audacity and superstition were reprehensible.

Eventually the Grand Duke, who in the evening was bored without my maids of honor, toward whom he made advances, came to suggest spending evenings in my bedroom, whereupon he courted the absolutely ugliest of my ladies; she was Countess Elizabeth Vorontsova. On the sixth day, my son’s baptism took place; he had already almost died of thrush. I could get news of him only furtively because asking after him would have been seen as a lack of faith in the Empress’s care for him and would have been very badly received. Indeed, she had taken him into her room, and as soon as he would cry, she would run to him herself, and he was literally smothered by her care. He was kept in an extremely hot room, swaddled in flannel, and laid in a crib lined with black fox fur. He was covered with a satin quilt lined with cotton wadding, and over this was placed another of pink velvet lined with black fox. Later I myself saw him lying like this many times, sweat pouring from his face and whole body, the result being that when he was older the slightest draft chilled him and made him ill. Moreover, he was surrounded by a great number of old matrons, who thanks to their misguided care and lack of common sense inflicted infinitely more physical and mental harm than good.

On the same day as the baptism, the Empress came into my bedroom after the ceremony and brought me, on a gold plate, an order directing her cabinet to send me one hundred thousand rubles. To this she had added a little jewelry box, which I opened only when she had left. This money came to me at the right time, because I did not have a cent, and was overwhelmed by debts. As for the box, when I had opened it, it did not have much effect on my mood. It contained a very poor little necklace with earrings and two pitiful rings that I would have been ashamed to give to my ladies-in-waiting. In the entire box there was not a single stone worth a hundred rubles; the workmanship and taste did not stand out either. I was silent and had the imperial jewelry box locked. Apparently they were aware of the real stinginess of this present, because Count Alexander Shuvalov came to tell me that he had been ordered to find out how I liked the box. I replied to him that I was accustomed to regarding everything that came to me from Her Imperial Majesty’s hands as priceless. Hearing this compliment, he left with a pleased expression. He brought up the subject again when he saw that I never wore this lovely necklace and especially the miserable earrings, telling me to put them on. I replied that for the Empress’s celebrations I was accustomed to wearing my finest jewelry and that the necklace and earrings were not in this category. Four or five days after I had been brought the money that the Empress had given me, Baron Cherkasov, her cabinet secretary, asked me in the name of God to lend this money to the Empress’s cabinet because she wanted money and there was not a cent. I sent his money back to him, and he returned it to me in the month of January. Having learned of the present that the Empress had given me, the Grand Duke went into a terrible rage because she had not given him anything. He spoke vehemently to Count Alexander Shuvalov, who went to speak to the Empress. She immediately sent the Grand Duke a sum equal to what she had given me, and for this the money was borrowed from me. To tell the truth, in general the Shuvalovs were the most cowardly creatures, and it was by this defect that they could be manipulated; but at that time these wonderful qualities had not yet been fully discovered.

After the baptism of my son, there were parties, balls, illuminations, and fireworks at court, while I was still in bed, ill and suffering great boredom. To cap it all, the seventeenth day of my confinement was chosen to inform me of two very unpleasant pieces of news. The first was that Sergei Saltykov had been named to deliver the news of my son’s birth to Sweden. The second was that Princess Gagarina’s marriage had been set for the following week. That is, in plain language, I was immediately going to be separated from the two people I loved most in my entourage. I sank more than ever into my bed, where I did nothing but grieve. In order to stay there, I pretended to have new pains in my leg that prevented me from getting up, but the truth is that I neither could nor wanted to see anyone, because I was despondent.

During my confinement the Grand Duke also had a serious ordeal when Count Alexander Shuvalov came to tell him that an old huntsman of the Grand Duke, Bastian, whom the Empress had ordered several years before to marry Madame Schenk, my former chambermaid, had informed him that he had heard from someone that Bressan wanted to give something or other to the Grand Duke to drink. Now, this Bastian was a great rogue and a drunk who drank from time to time with His Imperial Highness, and having fallen out with Bressan, whom he believed more in the Grand Duke’s favor than himself, he thought to play a dirty trick on him. The Grand Duke loved them both. Bastian was put in the fortress; Bressan was almost put there as well, but he got off with a scare. The huntsman was banished from the country and sent back to Holstein with his wife, and Bressan kept his position because he spied on everyone.

After a few delays arising from the fact that the Empress signed her name neither often nor easily, Sergei Saltykov departed. In the meantime Princess Gagarina was married on the appointed day.
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When the forty days of my confinement had passed, the Empress came into my bedroom a second time for the churching ceremony.
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I had risen from the bed to receive her, but when she saw me so weak and haggard, she had me sit during the prayers that her confessor read. My son had been brought into my room. It was the first time I had seen him since his birth. I found him very beautiful, and the sight of him raised my spirits a little, but at the very moment that the prayers were over, the Empress had him taken out, and she left. The first of November was chosen by Her Imperial Majesty for me to receive the customary congratulations after the six weeks of confinement. For this purpose, very rich furnishings were put in the room next to mine, and there everyone came to kiss my hand while I was seated on a bed covered with pink velvet embroidered in silver.
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The Empress came too, and from my apartment she went to the Winter Palace, and we were ordered to follow her there two or three days later.

We were lodged in the apartment that my mother had occupied and that, to be precise, composed part of the Iaguzhinsky house and part of the Raguzinsky house; the other half of the latter was occupied by the College of Foreign Affairs. At that time they were building the Winter Palace toward the main square. I moved from the Summer Palace to the winter residence firmly resolved not to leave my room as long as I did not feel myself strong enough to overcome my melancholy. At the time, I was reading History of Germany and Voltaire’s L’Histoire universelle.
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After that, I read as many Russian books that winter as I could procure for myself, among others two immense volumes by Baronio, translated into Russian.
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Then I came across
The Spirit of the Laws
by Montesquieu, after which I read the annals of Tacitus, which produced a revolution in my thinking.
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Perhaps my despondent frame of mind at the time contributed in no small way to this. I began to see more things with a black outlook and to seek the causes that really underlay and truly shaped the different interests in the affairs that I observed.