The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (34 page)

The advice I gave the Grand Duke was generally sound and beneficial, but he who advises can do so only according to his own mind and own manner of conceiving and handling matters. Now the great defect of my advice to the Grand Duke was that his way of acting and managing was entirely different from mine, and as we grew older, it became more so. Always and in all matters I tried to get as close as possible to the truth, while he distanced himself from it daily, to the point that he became an inveterate liar. As the manner in which this happened was quite singular, I am going to speak about it. Perhaps this will advance human understanding of this phenomenon and in that way serve to prevent this vice or correct it in whoever has a penchant for lying. The first lie that the Grand Duke dreamed up came in order to make himself appealing to some young woman or girl. Counting on her ignorance, he told her that while he was still at his father’s house in Holstein, his father had placed him in charge of a squad of his guards and had sent him to capture a troop of Egyptians who prowled in the environs of Kiel and committed, so he said, ghastly acts of robbery. He recounted these acts in detail, as well as the ruses that he had employed to pursue, surround, and combat them once or several times, during which he claimed to have accomplished great feats of skill and valor, and then to have captured the Egyptians and taken them to Kiel. At first he took the precaution of recounting all this only to people who knew nothing about the matter. Little by little he grew bold enough to recount his tale before those whose discretion he could trust would keep them from refuting him. But when he began to try this tale out in my presence, I asked him how long before his father’s death it had taken place. Without hesitating, he replied, “Three or four years.” Well then, I said, you began to accomplish your feats of arms very young, because three or four years before the death of your father the Duke you were only six or seven, since at age eleven you were left by your father in the guardianship of my uncle, the Royal Prince of Sweden. What astonishes me equally, I said, is that your father, having you as his only son and your health having always been delicate in your youth, as I have been told, sent you to fight these robbers, and what is more, at the age of six or seven. The Grand Duke got terribly angry with me for what I had just said and told me that I wanted to make him look like a liar in front of everyone and that I was discrediting him. I told him that it was not I but the almanac that discredited what he was recounting, that I would let him judge for himself if it was humanly possible to send a little child of six or seven, an only son and hereditary Prince, his father’s entire hope, to capture Egyptians. He fell silent and I did too, and he was angry with me for a very long time, but when he had forgotten my reproach, even in my presence he did not stop spinning this tale, which he varied endlessly. After this he made up another one, infinitely more shameful and harmful to him, which I will relate when the time comes. It would be impossible for me to tell at present of all the fantasies he often imagined and presented as facts and which did not have a shadow of truth. I think this example suffices.

One Thursday toward the end of carnival, when there was a ball at our residence, while I was sitting between Lev Naryshkin’s sister-in-law and her sister, Madame Seniavina, we watched Marina Osipovna Zakrevskaia, the Empress’s maid of honor and a niece of the Counts Razumovsky, dance the minuet. She was graceful and light-footed then, and it was said that Count Horn was very much in love with her, but as he was always in love with three women at the same time, he was also courting Countess Maria Romanovna Vorontsova and Anna Alekseevna Khitrova, also a maid of honor to Her Imperial Majesty. We found that Countess Vorontsova danced well and was rather pretty; she danced with Lev Naryshkin. As for Lev Naryshkin, his sister-in-law and sister told me that his mother spoke of marrying him to Mademoiselle Khitrova, a niece of the Shuvalovs by her mother, who was a sister of Peter and Alexander and had been married to Mademoiselle Khitrova’s father. This man often came to the Naryshkins’ house and managed to plant the idea of this marriage in the mind of Lev Naryshkin’s mother. Neither Madame Seniavina nor her sister-in-law cared at all to be related to the Shuvalovs, whom they did not like, as I have said. As for Lev, he did not even know that his mother was thinking about marrying him off. He was in love with Countess Maria Vorontsova, of whom I have just spoken. Hearing this, I said to Mesdames Seniavina and Naryshkina that we had to prevent this marriage with Mademoiselle Khitrova that the mother was negotiating. No one could tolerate her, because she was scheming, gossipy, and slanderous, and I said that to dispel such notions, we had to give Lev a woman to our liking and for this purpose choose the aforementioned niece of the Counts Razumovsky, who were also friends and allies of the house of Naryshkin. Moreover, Count Kirill Razumovsky was much loved by these two ladies and always in their house when they were not at his. The ladies strongly approved my idea. As there was a masquerade at the court the following day, I spoke to Marshal Razumovsky, who at the time was Hetman of Ukraine, and I told him clearly that he made a mistake in letting a match like Lev Naryshkin get away from his niece, that Lev’s mother wanted to marry him to Mademoiselle Khitrova, but that Madame Seniavina, her sister-in-law Madame Naryshkina, and I agreed that his niece would be a more suitable match and that without wasting any time, he should go make the proposal to the interested parties. The Marshal approved of our plan and spoke about it with Teplov, his factotum at the time, who immediately went to discuss it with the elder Count Razumovsky, who consented. The following day, Teplov went to the Bishop of Petersburg’s residence to purchase the permission or dispensation for fifty rubles. Having obtained this, Marshal Razumovsky and his wife went to the house of their aunt, Lev’s mother, and there they handled things so deftly that they got the mother to consent to what she did not want. They came at exactly the right time, because that very day, she was supposed to give her word to Monsieur Khitrov. This done, Marshal Razumovsky, Mesdames Seniavina and her sister-in-law Naryshkina buttonholed Lev and persuaded him to marry the one whom he had not even considered. He consented though he loved another woman, but she was practically promised to Count Buturlin. As for Mademoiselle Khitrova, he did not care for her at all. Having obtained this agreement, the Marshal had his niece come to his house, and she found the marriage too advantageous to refuse. On the following day, Sunday, the two Counts Razumovsky requested the Empress’s consent for this marriage, which she gave immediately. Messieurs Shuvalov were astonished by the way in which Khitrov and they too had been thwarted, learning of the affair only after the Empress’s consent had been obtained. The affair resolved, no one could get over how Lev, who was in love with one maiden, and whose mother wanted him to marry another, married a third, about whom neither he nor anyone else had been thinking three days earlier. Lev Naryshkin’s marriage linked me more strongly than ever in friendship with the Counts Razumovsky, who were truly grateful to me for having procured such a good and advantageous match for their niece, nor were they at all upset to have gotten the upper hand over the Shuvalovs, who were not even able to complain about it and were obliged to conceal their humiliation. This was yet one more advantage that I had obtained for them.

The Grand Duke’s affair with Madame Teplova was on its last legs. One of the greatest obstacles to this affair was the difficulty they had in seeing each other. It was always furtively, and this annoyed His Imperial Highness, who liked these difficulties no more than he liked responding to the letters he received. At the end of carnival, their love affair became a matter of factional politics. The Princess of Courland informed me one day that Count Roman Vorontsov, the father of two young maidens at the court, and who I should say in passing was the bête noire of the Grand Duke and also of his own five children, was making immoderate remarks about the Grand Duke. Among other things, he was saying that if he so desired, he could easily put an end to the hatred that the Grand Duke bore him and change it into favor; he had only to offer a meal to Brockdorff, give him English beer to drink, and, when he left, put six bottles in his pocket for His Imperial Highness, and then he and his youngest daughter would rank first in the Grand Duke’s favor. At the ball this same evening I noticed much whispering between His Imperial Highness and Countess Maria Vorontsova, the youngest daughter of Count Roman, and since this family was on very intimate terms with the Shuvalovs, at whose house Brockdorff was always quite welcome, I was not pleased to see that Mademoiselle Elizabeth Vorontsova might return to a position of favor. To help prevent this, I told the Grand Duke about her father’s remark, which I have just described. He almost flew into a rage and asked me with great anger from whom I had heard this. I refrained from telling him for a long moment. He told me that since I could not name anyone, he supposed that it was I who had invented this story to undermine the father and his daughters. No matter how much I told him that I had never in my life made up such stories, I was obliged in the end to name the Princess of Courland. He told me that he was going to write her a note immediately to find out if I was telling the truth and that if there was the slightest variation between what she replied and what I had just told him, he would complain to the Empress about our schemes and lies. After this he left my room. Apprehensive about what the Princess of Courland would say to him and fearing that she would equivocate, I wrote a note to her and said, “In the name of God, tell the pure and simple truth about what you will be asked.” My note was delivered immediately and arrived in time, because it preceded that of the Grand Duke. The Princess of Courland responded to His Imperial Highness with truthfulness and he found that I had not lied. For some time this restrained his liaisons with the two daughters of a man who had so little respect for him and whom he disliked anyway. But in order to put up yet one more obstacle, Lev Naryshkin persuaded Marshal Razumovsky to invite the Grand Duke very secretly to his house one or two evenings a week. It was almost a couples gathering because only the Marshal, Maria Pavlovna Naryshkina, the Grand Duke, Madame Teplova, and Lev Naryshkin were there. This lasted for part of Lent and gave rise to another idea. At the time, the Marshal’s house was made of wood. The group assembled in his wife’s apartment, and as both the Marshal and his wife loved to play cards, there was always a game going. The Marshal came and went and had his coterie in his own apartment when the Grand Duke did not come. But since the Marshal had been to my residence with my secret little coterie several times, he wanted this group to come to his house. For this purpose, what he called his hermitage, which comprised two or three apartments on the ground floor, was assigned to us. We all hid from one another because we did not dare go out, as I have said, without permission. So by this arrangement there were three or four groups in the house and the Marshal went from one to the other, and only mine knew everything that was happening in the house, while no one knew that we were there.

Toward spring, Monsieur Pechlin, the Grand Duke’s Minister for Holstein, died.
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Grand Chancellor Count Bestuzhev, foreseeing his death, had advised that I ask the Grand Duke to name a certain Monsieur de Stambke, who was sent for to replace Monsieur Pechlin. The Grand Duke gave him signed permission to work with me, which he did. By this arrangement I had unfettered communication with Count Bestuzhev, who trusted Stambke. At the beginning of spring we went to Oranienbaum.
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Here our lifestyle was as it had been in previous years, except that the number of soldiers from Holstein and fortune hunters who were stationed there as officers increased from year to year, and as lodging could not be found for this crowd in the little village of Oranienbaum, where at first there had been only twenty-eight huts, these troops were made to set up camp, their number never exceeding thirteen hundred men. The officers ate dinner and supper at the court. But as the number of women from the court and of gentlemen’s wives did not exceed fifteen or sixteen, and as His Imperial Highness passionately loved grand meals, which he frequently gave both in his camp and in all the nooks and crannies at Oranienbaum, he invited not only the female singers and dancers from his opera to these meals, but many very vulgar, bourgeois women, who were brought to him from Petersburg. As soon as I learned that the singers etc. would be invited to these meals, I refrained from going, at first under the pretext that I was taking the waters, and most of the time I ate in my room with two or three people. Later I said to the Grand Duke that I was afraid that the Empress would find it improper for me to appear in such mixed company, and in truth, I never went when I knew that the hospitality was indiscriminate, so that when the Grand Duke wanted me to come, only the ladies from the court were invited. I went to the masquerades that the Grand Duke gave at Oranienbaum only in very simple outfits, without jewelry or finery. This made a very good impression on the Empress, who neither liked nor approved of these parties at Oranienbaum, where the meals became veritable bacchanalia, but nevertheless she tolerated them or at least did not forbid them. I learned that Her Imperial Majesty said, “These parties please the Grand Duchess no more than they do me. She goes there dressed as simply as she can and never has supper with all who come.” At the time, I busied myself at Oranienbaum with building and planting what was called my garden, and the rest of the time I took walks, went riding, or drove in a cabriolet, and when I was in my room, I read.

In the month of July we learned that Memel had agreed to surrender to Russian troops on June 24. And in the month of August we received the news of the battle of Gross Jägerndorf, won by the Russian army on August 19. The day of the Te Deum
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I gave a large banquet in my garden for the Grand Duke and all of the most important people at Oranienbaum, and at it the Grand Duke and the entire company seemed as joyful as they were satisfied. This momentarily diminished the pain that the Grand Duke felt over the war that had just been declared between Russia and the King of Prussia, of whom he had been extremely fond since childhood. What was at first in no way excessive degenerated into mania later on.
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The public joy over the Russian military’s success at that time forced the Grand Duke to dissimulate his true thoughts, because he regretted the defeat of the Prussian troops, whom he had regarded as invincible. I had a roast ox given to the masons and workers at Oranienbaum on that day.