The Memoirs of Catherine the Great (21 page)

At Oranienbaum that year we lodged in the wings to the right and left of the small main building. The adventure at Gostilitsa had been so frightening that the ceilings and floors were examined in all the houses of the court, after which those in need of it were repaired. Here is the life that I led at that time at Oranienbaum. I arose at three in the morning and dressed myself from head to foot in a man’s outfit. An old huntsman in my service was already waiting for me with some rifles; there was a fishing skiff close by on the shore. We crossed the garden on foot, rifles on our shoulders, and he, I, a pointer, and the fisherman who guided us got in the skiff, and I went to shoot ducks in the reeds that bordered the sea on either side of the Oranienbaum canal, which stretches two versts into the sea. We often went out beyond the canal and consequently were sometimes caught in rough weather on the open sea in the skiff. The Grand Duke would come there an hour or two after us because he always needed breakfast, and God knows what else he dragged along with him. If he met us, we went along together, if not, then each went shooting and hunting on his own. At ten o’clock and sometimes later I returned and dressed for dinner; after dinner we rested and in the evening the Grand Duke had a concert or else we went horseback riding. After about a week of leading this life, I felt quite overheated and drowsy; I understood that I needed rest and fasting. For twenty-four hours I ate nothing and drank only cold water, and for two nights slept as much as I could, after which I again led the same life and felt quite well. I remember that at that time I read Brantôme’s memoirs, which I greatly enjoyed; before this I had read the life of Henry IV by Péréfixe.
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Toward autumn, we returned to the city and were told that we would go to Moscow during the winter. Madame Kruse came to tell me that I had to increase my stock of linen for this journey. I attended to the details of my linens, and Madame Kruse pretended to amuse me by having the linen cut in my room, to instruct me, she said, in how many chemises could be produced from one piece of cloth. This lesson or entertainment apparently displeased Madame Choglokova, who was in a worse mood than ever since the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. I do not know what she went to tell the Empress, but it happened that one afternoon she came to tell me that the Empress was dismissing Madame Kruse from my service, that she was going to retire to the house of Chamberlain Sievers, her son-in-law, and the next day she brought me Madame Vladislavova to take her place.

She was a big woman who appeared to have a nice figure and whose lively physiognomy pleased me at first sight. I consulted my oracle, Timofei Evreinov, on this choice, and he told me that this woman, whom I had never seen before, was the mother-in-law of Count Bestuzhev’s head clerk, the Counselor Pugovishnikov, that she lacked neither intelligence nor gaiety, but that she was said to be very crafty and that I should watch how she conducted herself and above all not show her too much trust. Her name was Praskovia Nikitichna. She got off to a very good start; she was sociable, loved to talk, spoke and told stories with intelligence, knew all the anecdotes of past and present times by heart, knew four or five generations of all the families, had the genealogies of everyone’s fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, and paternal and maternal great-grandparents fixed in her memory, and no one informed me more about what had happened in Russia over the past hundred years than she. This woman’s intelligence and appearance rather pleased me, and when I was bored, I got her talking, which she was always willing to do. I discovered without difficulty that she very often disapproved of the words and deeds of the Choglokovs, but as she also very often went to the Empress’s apartment and nobody knew at all why, everyone was suspicious of her to a certain extent, not knowing how the most innocent actions or remarks would be interpreted.

From the Summer Palace we moved to the Winter Palace. Here we were presented with Madame La Tour Launais, who had been in the Empress’s service since her early youth and had followed Princess Anna Petrovna, eldest daughter of Peter I, when she had left Russia with her husband, the Duke of Holstein, during the reign of Emperor Peter II.
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After the death of this Princess, Madame Launais had returned to France, and soon thereafter she had returned to Russia either to settle there or else to journey back after obtaining several favors from the Empress. Madame Launais hoped that because of her longstanding acquaintance she would return to the Empress’s favor and intimacy, but she was sorely mistaken. Everyone conspired together to exclude her. In the first days after her arrival, I foresaw what would happen and here is why. One evening there was gambling in the Empress’s apartment, with Her Imperial Majesty coming and going from one room to another and not settling anywhere, as was her custom. Madame Launais, apparently believing that she was showing her respect, followed everywhere she went. Seeing this, Madame Choglokova said to me, “Look at how this woman follows the Empress everywhere, but this will not last long. This habit of running after her will soon be broken.” I took her at her word, and in fact Madame Launais began to be excluded and then was sent back to France with some presents.

That winter, Count Lestocq and Mademoiselle Mengden, the Empress’s maid of honor, were married. Her Imperial Majesty and the entire court attended the wedding, and she did the newlyweds the honor of going to their home. One might have thought that they enjoyed the greatest favor, but one or two months later, their luck changed. One evening, while we were gambling in the Empress’s apartment, I saw Count Lestocq there. I approached him. He said to me in a low voice, “Do not come near me. I am a man under suspicion.” I thought he was joking; I asked him what he meant to say by this. He replied, “I repeat to you very seriously that you must not come near me, because I am a man under suspicion whom you should flee.” I saw that he looked completely different and was extremely flushed. I thought he was drunk, and I went off in the other direction. This happened on a Friday. On Sunday morning, while doing my hair, Timofei Evreinov said to me, “Do you know that last night Count Lestocq and his wife were arrested and taken to the fortress as state criminals?” No one knew why, but it was learned that General Stepan Apraksin and Alexander Shuvalov had been named as commissioners for this affair.
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The court’s departure for Moscow was fixed for December 16. The Chernyshevs had been transferred from the fortress to one of the Empress’s houses, called Smolny Dvorets. The eldest of the three brothers got his guards drunk on several occasions and then went around the city to his friends’ houses. One day a Finnish wardrobe girl of mine who was engaged to a court servant, a relative of Evreinov, brought me a letter from Andrei Chernyshev, in which he begged several things of me. This girl had seen him at her fiancé’s house, where they had spent the evening together. I did not know where to put this letter when I received it; I did not want to burn it, in order to remember what he asked me. For a long time I had been forbidden from writing even to my mother. Through this girl, I purchased a silver pen and a writing case. During the day, I had the letter in my pocket; when I undressed, I stuffed it under my garter into my stocking, and before going to bed, I pulled it from there and put it in my sleeve. Finally I responded, and I sent him what he had requested by the same channel to which he had entrusted his letter, and I chose a propitious moment to burn the letter that had given me such great worries.

Toward the middle of December, we left for Moscow. The Grand Duke and I were in a large sleigh, the gentlemen in our service riding in front. During the day, the Grand Duke would ride in a town sleigh with Choglokov and I would stay in the large sleigh that we never closed, and I conversed with those who were seated in front. I remember that Chamberlain Prince Alexander Iurievich Trubetskoi recounted to me at this time how Count Lestocq, a prisoner at the fortress, had wanted to let himself die of hunger the first eleven days of his detention, but had been forced to eat. He had been accused of taking ten thousand rubles from the King of Prussia to support his interests and of poisoning a certain Oettinger, who could have testified against him. He was tortured and then exiled to Siberia. On this journey, the Empress passed us at Tver, and since the horses and provisions that had been prepared for us were taken for her entourage, we spent twenty-four hours at Tver without horses and food. We were very hungry; toward evening, Choglokov got us a roasted sterlet, which we found delicious. We left during the night and arrived in Moscow two or three days before Christmas.

The first thing that we learned there was that the chamberlain of our court, Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn, had received at the moment of our departure from Petersburg the order to go to Hamburg as Russian minister with a salary of four thousand rubles. This was seen as yet another exile. His sister-in-law Princess Gagarina, who was in our service, cried a great deal about this, and we were all very sorry.

In Moscow, we occupied the apartment that I had had with my mother in 1744. To get to the large church from the court, we had to go around the house by carriage. On Christmas Day it was twenty-eight or twenty-nine degrees below zero; we were going to take the carriage to mass and were already on the staircase landing when we were told on behalf of the Empress that we were excused from going to mass that day because of the excessively cold weather. It is true that it nipped our noses. I was obliged to remain in my room during my first stay in Moscow because of the excessive number of pimples that had broken out on my face; I was scared to death of being scarred. I sent for Doctor Boerhave, who gave me sedatives and all kinds of things to clear up these pimples. Finally when nothing had worked, he said to me one day, “I am going to give you something that will really get rid of them.” Out of his pocket he drew a little flask of oil of talc and told me to put a drop in a cup of water and wash my face with this from time to time, every week, for example. The oil of talc did indeed clean my face, and after ten days I was able to appear in public.

1749

Elizabeth’s illness; Catherine’s reading and Peter’s hunting dogs;
summer trips around Moscow with Elizabeth; Catherine’s
toothache; Alexander Naryshkin’s wedding; Peter compromised in
coup plot by Baturin; Catherine’s tooth pulled

A short time after our arrival in Moscow, Madame Vladislavova came to tell me that the Empress had ordered that the marriage of my Finnish wardrobe girl take place as soon as possible. It seemed the only reason that this wedding was hastened was that I had apparently shown some predilection for this girl, who was a very delightful girl, who from time to time made me laugh by imitating everyone, and notably Madame Choglokova, in a very humorous manner. She was married off, and that was the end of the matter.

In the middle of carnival, during which there was no amusement or entertainment of any kind, the Empress suffered from a bad case of colic, which appeared to be getting very serious. Madame Vladislavova and Timofei Evreinov came to whisper this in my ear, immediately begging me not to tell anyone that they had told me. Without naming them I informed the Grand Duke, who was quite agitated. One morning Evreinov came to tell me that Chancellor Bestuzhev and General Apraksin had spent that night in Monsieur and Madame Choglokov’s apartment, which gave the impression that the Empress was seriously ill. Choglokov and his wife were more solemn than ever, and they came to our residence, had dinner and supper there, but did not let a word slip about the illness, and we did not speak of it either, nor consequently did we dare to ask how the Empress was doing, because they would have immediately asked how and where and from whom do you know she is ill, and those who would have been either named or suspected would have certainly been dismissed, exiled, or even sent to the Secret Chancery—the state inquisition—which was feared more than anything. Finally after ten days, when the Empress was feeling better, the marriage of one of her maids of honor was held at the court. At the banquet, I found myself sitting next to Countess Shuvalova, the Empress’s favorite. She told me that Her Imperial Majesty was still so weak from her terrible illness that she had crowned the bride with her diamonds (an honor she conferred on all her maids of honor) while seated on her bed, and that for this reason she had not appeared at the wedding banquet. As Countess Shuvalova was first to tell me of this illness, I shared with her the pain that Her Majesty’s state had caused me and the concern that I felt. She told me that the Empress would learn with satisfaction how I felt. Two days later Madame Choglokova came into my room in the morning and told me in the presence of Madame Vladislavova that the Empress was very annoyed with the Grand Duke and me because of the little concern that we had shown over her illness, because up until then, we had not even sent once to ask how she was feeling. I said to Madame Choglokova that I relied on her, that neither she nor her husband had said a single word to us about the Empress’s illness, that knowing nothing of it, we had not been able to show the concern that we felt. She replied to me, “How can you say that you knew nothing of it? Countess Shuvalova told the Empress that you spoke with her at table of her illness.” I responded, “It is true that I spoke to her about it, because she told me that Her Majesty was still weak and could not appear in public, and at that point I asked her for details about the illness.” Madame Choglokova left grumbling. And Madame Vladislavova said to me that it was quite strange to pick a quarrel with people over something they did not know about, that since the Choglokovs alone had the right to speak of it, if they had not spoken, it was their fault and not ours if out of ignorance we had failed to act. Sometime afterward, on a day when she held court, the Empress drew near me, and I found a favorable moment to tell her that neither Choglokov nor his wife had informed us of her illness and that because of this we had been unable to show her the concern that we had felt. She received this very well, and it seemed to me that their credibility had diminished.

One day the Empress went to dine at the home of General Stepan Apraksin; we took part in this meal. Afterward an old blind Prince Dolgoruky, who lived across from General Apraksin’s house, was brought to the Empress. This was Prince Mikhail Vladimirovich Dolgoruky, who formerly had been a senator, but knew neither how to read nor write anything except his name. Nevertheless he was said to have much more intelligence than his brother, Marshal Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, who had died in 1746. The following day I learned that the third daughter of General Stepan Apraksin, at whose home we had dined the day before, had died of smallpox that same day. I was terrified. All the ladies who had lunched with us at General Apraksin’s home had done nothing but go back and forth between the sick child’s room and the apartment where we were. However, once again I escaped with only a scare. That day I saw for the first time General Apraksin’s two daughters, the elder of which was becoming quite pretty. She may have been thirteen at the time; she has since married Prince Kurakin. The second one was only six years old; she was skinny at the time, spat blood, and was in truth only skin and bones. Certainly no one suspected that she would become as big, as colossal, as monstrously powerful, as all those who knew her found Madame Talyzin, because it was she herself, at that time still only a very small child.

The first week of Lent, Monsieur Choglokov wanted to make his devotions; he went to confession, but the Empress’s confessor forbade him from taking communion. The whole court said that this was on Her Imperial Majesty’s orders because of his adventure with Mademoiselle Kosheleva. During part of our stay in Moscow, Monsieur Choglokov appeared to be very intimately linked with Chancellor Count Bestuzhev-Riumin and with that man’s henchman, General Stepan Apraksin. He was constantly at their homes or with them, and to hear him talk, one would have thought that he was the intimate adviser of Count Bestuzhev, which, however, could not have been the case, because Bestuzhev had far too much intelligence to allow himself to be advised by such an arrogant ass as Choglokov. But toward the middle of our stay in Moscow this extreme intimacy suddenly ceased for reasons that I do not really know, and Choglokov became the mortal enemy of those whose intimacy he had enjoyed shortly before.

A little after my arrival in Moscow, out of boredom I began to read the
History of Germany
by Father Barre, a canon at the cathedral of St. Geneviève, which was eight or nine volumes in quarto.
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Every week I finished one, after which I read the works of Plato. My rooms looked out onto the street. The rooms opposite were occupied by the Grand Duke; his windows looked onto a little courtyard. I would read in my room. A chambermaid would usually come in and stand as long as she liked and then leave, and another would take her place when she judged it fitting. I made Madame Vladislavova understand that this only served to annoy me, and besides, I had to suffer a lot from my proximity to the Grand Duke’s apartment and to what was going on there, from which she herself suffered as much as I because she occupied a little room that was right at the end of my apartment, and she consented to excuse the chambermaids from this kind of etiquette.

Here is what made us suffer. Morning, afternoon, and far into the night, with a rare perseverance the Grand Duke would train a pack of hunting dogs, making them run from one end to the other of his two rooms (for he did not have more) with strong lashes of the whip and yelling as huntsmen yell. Those dogs that got tired or fell behind were rigorously punished, which made them cry out even more. When he finally got tired of this exercise, which offended the ears and disturbed the sleep of his neighbors, he picked up a violin that he sawed on very badly and with an extraordinary violence while walking around his room, after which he recommenced the training and punishment of the pack, which in truth seemed cruel to me. One day, hearing a poor dog cry terribly for a very long while, I opened the door of my bedroom, where I was sitting and which joined to the room where the scene was occurring. I saw that the Grand Duke had one of his dogs in the air by the collar and that a Kalmuck boy in his service held the same dog up by the tail. It was a poor little English King Charles spaniel, and the Grand Duke struck this dog with all his strength with the thick butt of a whip. I began to intercede on the poor beast’s behalf, but this only made him redouble his blows. Unable to endure this cruel spectacle, I returned to my room in tears. In general, tears and cries, instead of arousing the Grand Duke’s pity, made him angry; pity was a painful, even unbearable sentiment for his soul.

Around this time, my chamber valet, Timofei Evreinov, gave me a letter from his former comrade Andrei Chernyshev, who had finally been freed and was passing near Moscow to go to the regiment in which he had been placed as a lieutenant. I treated this letter as I had the last one, and I sent him everything that he asked of me, and said not a word about it to the Grand Duke or any living soul.

In the spring the Empress had us come to Perova, where we spent a few days with her at Count Razumovsky’s home.
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The Grand Duke and Monsieur Choglokov hunted almost daily in the woods with the master of the house. I read in my room, or else Madame Choglokova, when she was not playing cards, would keep me company out of boredom. She complained a great deal about the ennui that reigned in that house and about her husband’s continual hunts; he had become a passionate huntsman since he had been given a very beautiful English greyhound in Moscow. I learned from others that her husband was the laughingstock of all the other huntsmen and that he imagined and was made to believe that his Circe (this was his dog’s name) caught all the hares that were taken. In general, Monsieur Choglokov was quite ready to believe that everything that belonged to him was of a rare beauty and goodness. His wife, his children, his servants, his house, his food, his horses, his dogs—everything that he owned, though it was all very mediocre, was part of his self-love, and belonging to him, became incomparable in his eyes.

One day at Perova I was seized by a headache so violent that I do not remember having had a comparable one in my life. The extreme pain gave me violent nausea, I vomited several times, and even footsteps in my room increased my pain. I remained in this state almost twenty-four hours and finally fell asleep. The following day I felt only weakness. Madame Choglokova took all possible care of me during this violent attack; in general my attendants, though placed around me by surely the most marked wickedness, within a very short time felt an involuntary benevolence for me, and when they were neither prompted nor newly incited, they acted against the principles of those who had employed them, and allowed themselves to follow the inclination that drew them toward me, or rather, toward the sympathy that I inspired in them. They never found me either sulky or bad-tempered, but always ready to respond to their smallest overtures. In all this my joyful manner served me very well, for all these Arguses were often amused by the remarks I made to them and gradually cheered up despite themselves.

At Perova the Empress came down with a new attack of colic. She had herself transported to Moscow and we slowly proceeded to the palace that is only four versts from there. This attack did not last, and a short while later the Empress made a pilgrimage to Trinity Monastery.
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Her Imperial Majesty wanted to do these sixty versts on foot, and to this end she went to her house in Pokrovskoe. We took the road to the monastery and set up in a very small country house called Raiova that belonged to Madame Choglokova on that road, eleven versts from Moscow. The entire lodging consisted of a small salon in the middle of the house and two very small rooms to either side; our whole entourage was placed in tents pitched around the house. The Grand Duke had one tent there. I occupied one little room, Madame Vladislavova the other; the Choglokovs were in the other rooms. We took meals in the salon. The Empress did three or four versts on foot, then rested a few days. This trip lasted almost the entire summer. We went hunting every afternoon.

When the Empress arrived at Taininskoe, which almost faces Raiova on the other side of the main road to Trinity Monastery, the Hetman Count Razumovsky, the younger brother of the favorite, who was living in his country home Petrovskoe, which was on the Petersburg road on the other side of Moscow, decided to come every day to our residence at Raiova. He was quite cheerful and about our age. We liked him very much; since he was the brother of the favorite, the Choglokovs received him readily into their home. His regular visits continued the entire summer, and we always saw him with joy. He dined and supped with us and after supper returned again to his estate; consequently he covered forty or fifty versts every day. About twenty years later, I one day decided to ask him what could have made him come like that to share the boredom and insipidness of our stay at Raiova back then, while his own house teemed daily with the best company then in Moscow. He replied to me without hesitating, “Love.” “But my God,” I said, “with whom could you have been in love at our place?” “With whom?” he asked. “With you.” I burst out laughing because my whole life I had never suspected it. Besides, he had been married for many years to a rich heiress from the Naryshkin family, whom the Empress had made him marry somewhat against his will, but with whom he seemed to get along well. Besides, it was known that all the prettiest ladies of the court and city fought for his attention, and he truly was a handsome man, very pleasant and with an original mind, and he had incomparably more intelligence than his brother, who nevertheless equaled him in beauty, and surpassed him in generosity and kindness.
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These two brothers were the best-loved favorites that I ever saw.

Toward the feast of Saint Peter, the Empress told us to join her in Bratovshina. We went there immediately. Because I had spent all spring and part of the summer either hunting or else constantly outdoors, the house at Raiova being so small that we would spend most of the day in the surrounding woods, I arrived in Bratovshina overly sunburned and flushed. Upon seeing me, the Empress exclaimed at my redness and told me that she would send me a rinse to get rid of my sunburn. Indeed, she immediately sent me a vial with a liquid composed of lemon, egg white, and
eau de
vie
from France. She ordered my ladies to learn the ingredients and proportions needed to make it. After a few days my burn disappeared, and since then I have always used this rinse and have given it to several people for use in similar circumstances. When the skin is overheated, I know of no better remedy. It also works for what is called in Russian
лuшeŭ,
in German
flechten,
and I do not recall for the moment the name in French, and which is nothing but an inflammation that makes the skin crack.
^†