The Memoirs of Catherine the Great

by Catherine the Great

  As soon as I learned that Brockdorff ’s machinations had prevailed in such an unjust cause over me and all that I had argued to the Grand Duke, I firmly resolved to make Monsieur Brockdorff feel the brunt of my indignation. I said to Zeitz and I had it reported to Pechlin that from this moment I regarded Brockdorff as a plague that we must avoid and remove from the Grand Duke’s presence if possible. I myself would go to any lengths to see this through. Indeed, I made a point of showing on every occasion, both public and private, the disgust and horror that this man’s conduct had inspired in me. There was no kind of ridicule to which he was not subjected, and when the occasion presented itself, I left no one unaware of what I thought of him. Lev Naryshkin and other young people of our court assisted me in this. When Monsieur Brockdorff passed through the room, everyone cried out after him, which was his epithet,126 since this bird was the most hideous known, and Monsieur Brockdorff was as hideous on the outside as on the inside. He was tall, with a long neck and a thick, flat head. He had red hair and wore a wig of brass wire. His eyes were small, set back in his head and almost without lids or brows. The corners of his mouth drooped toward his chin, which always gave him a miserable, nasty look. As for his inner qualities, I refer to what I have already said. But I will also add that he was so full of vice that he took money from whoever wanted to give it to him. To keep his august master from ever reprimanding him for his misappropriations, he persuaded the Grand Duke, who he knew was always in need of money, to do the same. He acquired as much money as he could for him by selling Holstein orders and titles to whoever wanted to pay for them, or by having the Grand Duke make appeals, or by promoting all kinds of deals in the different regions of the empire and in the senate. These deals were often unjust and sometimes even onerous for the empire, such as the monopolies and other grants that otherwise would never have passed because they broke Peter I’s laws. In addition, Monsieur Brockdorff immersed the Grand Duke more than ever in drink and villainy, having surrounded him with a pack of fortune hunters and people drawn from the guard corps and taverns of both Germany and Petersburg, who had no morals, and did nothing but drink, eat, smoke, and speak coarsely about nonsense. Seeing that despite all I said and did against Monsieur Brockdorff to weaken his standing he maintained himself in the Grand Duke’s favor and was more in favor than ever, I resolved to tell Count Alexander Shuvalov what I thought about him, adding that I regarded this man as one of the most dangerous creatures one could possibly place with a young Prince, heir to a great empire, and that in good conscience I found myself obliged to speak to him in confidence so that he could warn the Empress or take such measures as he saw fit. He asked if he might quote me. I said yes, and that if the Empress asked me herself, I would not mince words but say what I knew and saw. Count Alexander Shuvalov twitched his eye, listening to me very seriously, but he was not a man to act without the advice of his brother Peter and cousin Ivan. For quite a while he did not contact me. Then he let me know that the Empress might want to speak with me.

  Meanwhile, one fine morning I saw the Grand Duke skip into my room and his secretary Zeitz run after him with a paper in his hand. The Grand Duke said to me, “Take a look at this devil of a man. I drank too much yesterday. I am still completely hung over today, and here he is bringing me a sheet of paper and it is only the accounts register that he wants me to finish. He even follows me into your room.” Zeitz said to me, “Everything I have here is only a simple matter of yes or no. It will only take fifteen minutes.” I said, “But let us see now, perhaps you will finish sooner than you think.” Zeitz began to read, and as he spoke, I myself said yes or no. This pleased the Grand Duke, and Zeitz said to him, “You see, my lord, if you consented twice a week to do this, your affairs would not come to a halt. These are only trifles, but they must be taken care of, and the Grand Duchess has finished this with six yes’s and as many no’s, more or less.” From that day on, His Imperial Highness decided to send Zeitz to me every time that he had yes’s or no’s to ask about. After some time, I told him to give me a signed order concerning what I could or could not decide without his permission, which he did. Only Pechlin, Zeitz, the Grand Duke, and I knew of this arrangement, which delighted Pechlin and Zeitz. When it came to signing, the Grand Duke signed according to what I had decided. The d’Elendsheim affair remained under Brockdorff ’s supervision. But as d’Elendsheim had been arrested, Monsieur Brockdorff was in no rush to conclude the affair, because this was more or less what he had wanted, that is, to distance this man from governmental affairs and to show those in Holstein his standing with his master.

  I chose a day on which I found the occasion, or moment, favorable to tell the Grand Duke that though he found the affairs of Holstein so boring to manage and regarded them as a burden, nevertheless they were only a small sample of what he would one day have to manage when the Russian empire passed to him. I thought that he ought to envisage that moment as a much greater weight. He again repeated what he had said to me many times. He felt that he had not been born for Russia, that he did not suit the Russians nor the Russians him, and that he was convinced that he would die in Russia. On this subject I too told him what I had told him many times before, to wit, that he must not give in to this fatalistic idea, but do his best to make himself loved by every Russian and ask the Empress to put him in a position where he could learn about the Empire’s affairs. I even urged him to request a place in the conferences that served as the Empress’s council.127 He did speak about this to the Shuvalovs, who urged the Empress to admit him to this conference every time she herself attended. This was the same as saying he would not be admitted, because she went with him two or three times and then neither of them went anymore.

  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 discred
iting 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 thi
s 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.