Great Catherine

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  The real Catherine grieved, while the Catherine of legend, unrepentant and ever more sexually voracious, called for more young men and got on with her unsavory career.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  HUNDREDS OF BLAZING TORCHES LIT THE IMMENSE COURTYARD of Empress Catherine's palace of Tsarskoe Selo in the pre-dawn hours of January 7, 1787. Deep snow covered the ground, frost rimed the elaborate wrought iron gates and the four classical statues that presided over the entryway to the imposing palace were waist-deep in white drifts.

  The torches sputtered in the cold, clear air, their hissing and crackling audible over the creaking of carriage wheels and the clatter of horses' hooves, the shouting of servants and the scraping of wooden crates. Fourteen huge traveling carriages, mounted on wooden runners, were being made ready to receive their distinguished occupants. Their wheels were newly gilded and their painted panels retouched. In the empress's carriage, largest and most splendid of all, were stored fuel for the stove, baskets of food and drink, warm rugs, extra clothing, toilet articles and— just in case—needed medicines.

  Despite the bitter cold that stiffened the beards of the men and reddened the hands of the shivering serving girls, preparations for the great imperial journey proceeded. Nearly two hundred sledges were being loaded with trunks and coffers, barrels of beer and wine and honey, sacks of grain, chests full of cheeses, fruit, and other provisions, linens and napery, warm fur-lined blankets and braziers—all the supplies necessary for an extended journey.

  Grooms and stable-boys attended to the thousand horses that would pull the hundreds of vehicles, while pages and footmen, maids and kitchen servants scrambled to find their own places in the grand procession.

  Empress Catherine was about to undertake the longest and most ambitious tour of her reign, to visit the southern reaches of her realm and display her magnificence and military power there to afright the Turk. Planning for the long journey had begun nearly a year earlier, and for many months household officials had been preoccupied with arrangements, under the exacting supervision of their imperial mistress.

  The journey was one of Catherine's principal enthusiasms. It would further her aims of conquest while advertising what she, and especially her sometime consort and deputy Potemkin, had done so far. It would give her an opportunity to show off her wealth and power. She could hardly wait to start on her travels.

  There were many at her court who had tried to dissuade her. She was, after all, nearly fifty-eight years old, they told her, reminding her that she suffered from the accumulating aches and pains of advancing years and could no longer expect to summon the stamina for travel that she had once enjoyed.

  "I was assured on all sides that my progress would be bristling with obstacles and unpleasantness," Catherine told Grimm in a letter. 'They wished to frighten me with stories of the fatigue of the journey, the aridity of the deserts and the unhealthiness of the climate. Those people had a very poor knowledge of me," she added. "They do not know that to oppose me is to encourage me; and that every difficulty that they put in my way is an additional spur that they give me."

  At fifty-eight, no less than at any earlier point in her life, Catherine was stubborn and headstrong, determined to have her way. It had become her outstanding quality, this obstinate determination to follow through and bring to pass what she desired. ("God, grant us our desires, and grant them quickly," had become her favorite toast.) Nearly all those who encountered her remarked on this characteristic: Ambassador Harris called her "a vain, arrant, spoiled woman" who would not be denied anything; Emperor Joseph thought that it was Catherine's misfortune that there was no one in her entourage who dared to restrain her. ("Be on guard against the force and impetuosity of her opinions," Joseph confided to the English ambassador in Vienna.)

  All her secretaries felt the heavy weight of her insistent desires; though in the past they had always found her to be the kindest of mistresses, she could now on occasion be irascible, difficult and disagreeable. ("Swell-headed with her own power to a singular degree," the sour Harris wrote, "and obstinately attached to her own views, she is jealous or dissatisfied with nearly all those who approach her.") Even Potemkin told Harris that the empress "has become suspicious, timid and narrow-minded"—though the ever-shrewd Potemkin may have been echoing the ambassador's opinion merely for political reasons.

  For every report of the empress's irascibility there were two praising her warmth and unaffected simplicity; though her temper may not have been as even as it once was, she could still show a degree of consideration and genuineness that visitors to her court found stunning, and it gave her particular pleasure to extend herself personally to help members of her household and others who came to her in need.

  She was more egocentric than ever when it came to politics. "I am firmly decided," she told Potemkin, "to count on no one but to trust entirely to my own resources." So far, her resources, personal and material, had proven to be more than adequate.

  At last all was in readiness and the huge, sprawling procession of carriages and sledges started off on the first phase of its long journey. By three in the afternoon the light was failing. Darkness enveloped the entourage by four. But the way ahead was lit by huge bonfires, on both sides of the road. For weeks gangs of imperial timber cutters had been at work cutting down trees and piling them in high mounds along the roadway. Now they were set alight, turning night into day and making several more hours of travel possible.

  With the empress in the principal carriage were a trusted waiting maid and her new favorite, Alexander Dmitriev-Mamonov, a tall, black-eyed, free-spirited officer, nearly thirty years her junior, who was a cheerful and amusing companion. She called him "Red Coat" and relied on him to keep her from being bored as the miles crawled by. Like Catherine herself, Mamonov was a "chatterer," as she liked to say; he had "an inexhaustible fund of gaiety" and could match wits, as well as literary and historical references, with his imperial mistress. He drew on his exceptionally good Jesuit education and excellent memory to recite poetry— Catherine was especially fond of Corneille ("he elevates my soul," she liked to say)—and could invent impromptu verses and draw clever likenesses of people on demand.

  Mamonov was no substitute for Lanskoy, whom Catherine continued to mourn, but he was far superior to Lanskoy's immediate successor, Alexander Yermolov, a nonentity whose period of favor lasted less than a year and a half. Yermolov was sent away after he managed to offend Potemkin—as usual Catherine was reluctant to retain a lover who could not manage to stay on good terms with the formidable, increasingly erratic Prince of Tauris.

  Along with her female attendant and Mamonov, the empress had room in her carriage for three others; she made these seats available on a rotating basis to the favored guests she had invited to join her on her expedition. The most important guests were the Prince de Ligne, Catherine's peer in age and her superior in sophistication and creative intelligence, the younger Count Louis-Philippe de Segur, who kept a journal of the trip full of penetrating observations, and Alleyne Fitzherbert, British ambassador, who had to make the best of an awkward diplomatic situation, as Catherine was becoming colder toward Britain with each passing year. The lively, portly Austrian Count Cobentzl rounded out the diplomatic contingent. The Grand Equerry and unofficial court jester Leon Naryshkin frequently sat in the imperial carriage, telling jokes, making faces, imitating other members of the traveling party and in general keeping Catherine laughing. There were no women guests; the empress had had few women friends in the course of her life, and liked male company.

  No one was surprised that Grand Duke Paul was not invited on the empress's tour—it was rumored that she no longer intended leaving her throne to him, and that she had made up her mind to confer the honor of the succession on her grandson Alexander. Yet neither Alexander nor his younger brother Constantine was with Catherine as she left on her journey; both were recovering from illnesses and were not thought to be strong enough to travel, particularly in the dead of winter.
Catherine was chagrined. ("I am quite angry that Alexander and Constantine didn't come with me on the voyage and they are quite disappointed too," the empress wrote to Grimm.) They were promising children, attractive and precocious, affectionate and full of charm. Alexander was nine, Constantine seven. Paul and Maria had had three more children, all girls; Catherine was fond of the lively, three-year-old Alexandra and her beautiful sister, whom her grandmother dubbed "la belle Helene." Tiny Maria was still an infant in her cradle. Catherine hoped for more grandsons.

  Day after day the sledges were dragged along the icy roads by tired horses whose breath froze as soon as it left their nostrils. Nearly six hundred horses had to be assembled at each posting station, and the work of hitching and unhitching was made more difficult by the fierce cold and the crowds of villagers who came to see the fairytale coaches and their highborn occupants. Each of Catherine's guests had been supplied with a thick black coat lined with warm fur; fur hats, fur-lined gloves and thick fur booties completed their attire. Though the cold was severe, the empress noted in one of her long letters to Grimm, none of her guests lost noses or ears to frostbite. She herself was in surprisingly good health, untroubled by digestive problems or headaches or leg pains. She spent the long hours of travel conversing with Mamonov—who was just then interested in reading Buffon and wanted his own copy of the complete works—and with her other guests.

  On their best days the array of sledges managed to cover forty miles, over enormous undulating snowfields, through dense stands of fir and birch, the dark trunks of the trees stark against the intense whiteness of the high-piled snow, their branches sparkling with ice crystals. At midday they halted, sometimes at a village, sometimes at a nobleman's house, for a meal, then, as the afternoon light began to wane, they took to the road again, their way lit as ever by blazing bonfires.

  After a month on the road the empress's train reached Kiev, where it halted for many weeks. Here delegations from all parts of the empire met to greet the empress and make petitions to her. They came, Tatars and Kalmuks, Georgians and Khirghiz, all the non-Russian peoples who had followed Pugachev and who had resisted the armies of Potemkin. There were Polish nobles as well, paying tribute to the powerful woman who had seized a large part of their homeland and, they feared, was poised to seize more.

  When Potemkin joined the party, traveling to Kiev from his semi-kingdom of Tauris, all was changed, according to Segur. He acted as host to the empress and her entourage, staging splendid balls and firework exhibitions, sponsoring concerts and banquets, entertaining guests at the venerable convent of Petchersky, where he took up residence. He cut a brilliant figure. On public occasions he appeared in a grand marshal's uniform, "smothered in decorations and diamonds," Segur wrote, "covered with lace and embroidery, and with his hair all powdered and curled." At Petchersky, however, he appeared more in the guise of a Turkish vizier, his hair uncombed, his legs and feet bare, swathed in a silk dressing-gown, lying languorously on a huge sofa surrounded by his female relatives (several of whom were known to be his mistresses) and assorted officers and foreign envoys.

  He appeared to be lost in an Asiatic dream, yet the shrewd Segur perceived that behind the air of languor Potemkin was wide awake and working. He conferred with officials, sent and received intricate messages, played chess while conducting unofficial negotiations with ambassadors and generally furthering the aims he shared with his sovereign. According to Segur, Potemkin was able to work on dozen of projects at once without seeming to be very busy at all, overseeing progress on buildings and agricultural experiments and sending orders to civil and military officials about an endless array of separate undertakings.

  Memoirs of the empress's stay in Kiev do not record that Catherine spent private time with Potemkin, and perhaps she did not. Yet their old bond cannot have withered away completely; certainly they cared for each other, and it is possible that they still slept together occasionally. Catherine professed to miss Potemkin terribly when they were apart. Both the empress and her beloved Potemkin had acquired reputations for dissolute living and unquenchable sexual desire; in his case there was some foundation for the ill repute. Potemkin had a virtual harem of mistresses. Besides his nieces, and the series of noblewomen with whom he fell passionately—if briefly—in love, Potemkin was said to frequent brothels and to take advantage of the offers he received from courtiers to share their wives with him in return for political favors.

  In April cannon boomed to announce that the ice on the river had begun to break up. The empress and her party had been in Kiev for three months, waiting for the long winter to loose its grip on the waters. By May 1 the Dnieper was navigable, and Catherine and her favored guests went aboard seven brand-new galleys built under Potemkin's supervision and fitted out like miniature mansions.

  Each of the large, ornately painted vessels in what de Ligne christened "Cleopatra's fleet" had its own staff of uniformed servants and its own small orchestra with twelve musicians. Each had elegantly appointed bedrooms fitted out with comfortable beds and taffeta bedcovers and mahogany writing desks. Dressing rooms and sitting rooms had divans upholstered in rich Chinese fabric. Gold and silk gleamed everywhere. Meals were eaten in a special galley designed around a large dining room. With only a few guests to each galley, socializing became a feat of balance and daring, for the travelers were forced to go back and forth between each other's vessels in tiny rowboats and with the river in flood accidents were unavoidable. Every day people and goods were spilled out of the small boats into the river, and during one severe storm, several galleys went aground on sandbars.

  Catherine noted in a letter to Grimm that navigation on the flooding river was difficult. In all there were some eighty boats in the imperial flotilla, and collisions could not be avoided. The current was swift and treacherous, there were many sharp bends and many tiny islands; conditions were so unpredictable that it was impossible to raise the sails on the galleys. Catherine, as always, worked at her desk and sent and received several large and heavy dispatch-bags each day sent by courier from Petersburg. In the intervals between work, however, the empress and her guests played word games, had lively conversations, and competed in contests of literary skill. "If you knew all that is said each day on my galley," the empress told her correspondent in Paris, "you would die laughing."

  The Count de Segur, who knew the empress well as he had been in attendance at her court in Petersburg for several years, thought that she was in exceptionally good spirits during the spring days on the river.

  "I never saw the Empress in better humor than on the first day of our journey," he wrote. "The dinner was very cheerful, we were all delighted to leave the town of Kiev, where we had been shut in by ice for three months. Spring rejuvenated our thoughts; the beauty of the weather, the magnificence of our fleet, the majesty of the river, the movement, the joy of the crowds of onlookers who ran along the banks, wearing an odd mix of costumes from thirty nations, our certainty of awakening each day to fresh curiosities sharpened and stimulated our imaginations."

  Mentally the guests were in superb form. De Ligne extemporized verses in classic alexandrine meter, with Segur supplying him with end rhymes. Fitzherbert displayed his gifts as an entertaining and amiable raconteur. Naryshkin capered and contributed his usual inspired silliness. Cobentzl, who liked to act in his spare time, proposed that the company act out proverbs with him in Catherine's bedchamber. The empress too came up with verses and matched wits with the others, though the brilliant and mercurial de Ligne found her to be somewhat heavy-footed and literal. She had not his agile mind (though to be fair to her, she was preoccupied), in truth she had begun to slow down mentally. In the games of wits, she was outclassed, but by competitors of rare caliber.

  Catherine's letters to Grimm reveal the distractions that beset her as the great golden galleys sped down the wide river toward Kherson. Persistent rumors reached her that another usurper, bent on succeeding where Pugachev had failed, had appeared near Orenburg. Other rep
orts from the countryside told of stories kept alive among the peasants that Pugachev himself had not died (he had in fact been executed in January of 1775) but was in hiding, and would soon emerge to lead another revolt. Catherine had been hearing such things for years, yet she did not dismiss them; knowing that her subjects were as unpredictable as the spring floods and the strong currents in the swollen river, she took note of when and where each upwelling of rumor appeared, and remained alert.

  During her working hours she sat on the deck of her golden galley, wearing a long, loose gown, enjoying the warmth of the sun, reading the papers her secretaries brought her and composing replies. She had found a young Greek dressmaker who was "adroit as a monkey," in her phrase, at dressing her, "always according to her fantasy." And her fantasy ran to youthfulness at times. While socializing aboard her galley one evening, the empress appeared in an orange taffeta gown with blue ribbons, her gray hair loose like that of a young girl. Knowing that she was among friends, she allowed herself a touch of girlish coquetry and charm. And despite her years, it still suited her.

  Like Potemkin, Catherine had two wardrobes: European-style gowns (costly but never extreme in style) for public occasions and for work and relaxation, draping Muscovite robes that spilled out in comfortable folds over her expanding belly and jutting hips. Her non-Russian subjects applauded her Muscovite attire; from where she sat she could see them, clustered at the river's edge, calling out and waving. She smiled at them, then turned once again to her papers.

  That there would be war with the Turks, and soon, seemed to her inevitable. Indeed, her journey was meant to goad the Turkish enemy into action, so that she could have an excuse to declare war. The outcome was not certain, yet she felt optimistic in her daring. The Austrians were with her, though she was uncertain whether Emperor Joseph would be able to meet her as originally planned along the southern route of her journey, as he was ill with erisypelas. The British and French would oppose her, but they were far away, and the French, at least, were not likely to interfere as they were coping badly with an increasingly severe political crisis.