Read Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman Online
Authors: Robert K. Massie
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #History, #Biography, #Politics
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (108 page)
After Potemkin’s death,
Catherine wrote an epitaph for herself:
H
ERE
L
IES
C
ATHERINE THE
S
ECOND
Born in Stettin on April 21, 1729.
In the year 1744, she went to Russia to marry Peter III. At the age of fourteen, she made the threefold resolution to please her husband, Elizabeth, and the nation. She neglected nothing in trying to achieve this. Eighteen years of boredom and loneliness gave her the opportunity to read many books.
When she came to the throne of Russia she wished to do what was good for her country and tried to bring happiness, liberty, and prosperity to her subjects.
She forgave easily and hated no one. She was good-natured, easy-going, tolerant, understanding, and of a happy disposition. She had a republican spirit and a kind heart.
She was sociable by nature.
She made many friends.
She took pleasure in her work.
She loved the arts.
This description is, of course, both idealized and excessively modest. She always refused extravagant titles, whether from the Legislative Assembly in 1764, which wished to name her Catherine the Great; from Voltaire, who filled his letters with flowery tributes; or from Grimm, who called her Catherine the Great in a letter in 1788. Replying to Grimm, she wrote, “I beg you no longer to call me Catherine the Great, because …
my name is Catherine II.” It was after her death that Russians began speaking of her as “Catherine the Great.”
She was a majestic figure in the age of monarchy; the only woman
to equal her on a European throne was Elizabeth I of England. In the history of Russia, she and Peter the Great tower in ability and achievement over the other fourteen tsars and empresses of the three-hundred-year Romanov dynasty. Catherine carried Peter’s legacy forward. He had given Russia a “window on the West” on the Baltic coast, building there a city that he made his capital. Catherine opened another window, this one on the Black Sea; Sebastopol and Odessa were its jewels. Peter imported technology and governing institutions to Russia; Catherine brought European moral, political, and judicial philosophy, literature, art, architecture, sculpture, medicine, and education. Peter created a Russian navy and organized an army that defeated one of the finest soldiers in Europe; Catherine assembled the greatest art gallery in Europe, hospitals, schools, and orphanages. Peter shaved off the beards and truncated the long robes of his leading noblemen; Catherine persuaded them to be inoculated against smallpox. Peter made Russia a great power; Catherine magnified this power, and advanced the nation toward a culture that, during the century that followed, produced, among others, Derzhavin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekov, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Petipa, and Diaghilev. These artists and their work were a part of Catherine’s legacy to Russia.
In 1794, when she was sixty-four, she wrote to Grimm:
Day before yesterday, on February ninth, it was fifty years since I arrived with my mother in Moscow. I doubt if there are ten people living today in St. Petersburg who remember. There is still Betskoy, blind, decrepit, gaga, asking young couples whether they remember Peter the Great.… There is one of my old maids, whom I still keep, though she forgets everything. These are proofs of old age and I am one of them. But in spite of this, I love as much as a five-year-old child to play blindman’s buff, and the young people, including my grandchildren, say that their games are never so merry as when I play with them. And I still love to laugh.
It was a long and remarkable journey that no one, not even she, could have imagined when, at fourteen, she set off for Russia across the snow.
*
Jones wrote this letter in a mixture of French and English, and it was he who chose the French word
badiner
. This can mean “played with,” “bantered with,” “joked with,” “toyed with,” or “trifled with.” In today’s vernacular, it could mean “fooled around with.” No one will ever know now how intimate this encounter became. Jones, however, was not denying that something had happened. He was insisting that he did not have sexual intercourse with a ten- or twelve-year-old girl.
*
Pitt had perhaps forgotten that in 1588, England had beheaded Mary Stuart, a former queen of France and, subsequently, of Scotland. And that in 1649, the English, after overthrowing their monarchy, had beheaded King Charles I.
For Deborah
And for Bob Loomis
.
Twenty-four years, four books
.
Thank you
.
In writing this book, I drew heavily from the rich collections of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Thanks to the library’s Privileges Office, I was able to spend days in the stacks, gather the books I wanted to bring home, and withdraw them for a reasonable period. I am grateful to the library for this generous policy and for the members of its staff who were always helpful. I also used the New York Public Library extensively and I thank the staff of this crown jewel of New York’s cultural life.
Among those who by word and deed gave me steady encouragement during the years of working on this book were Andre Bernard, Donald Bitsberger, Kenneth Burrows, Janet Byrne, Georgina Capel and Anthony Cheetham, Robert and Ina Caro, Patricia Civale, Robert and Aline Crumb, Donald Holden, Melanie Jackson and Thomas Pynchon, James Marlas and Marie Nugent-Head, Kim, Lorna, and Miranda Massie, Jack and Lynn May, Lawrence and Margaret McQuade, Gilbert Merritt, Eunice Meyer, David Michaelis and Nancy Steiner, Edmund and Sylvia Morris, Mary Mulligan, Sara Nelson, Sydney Offit, George Paine, Heather Previn, David Remnick and Esther B. Fein, Peter and Masha Sarandinaki, Richard Weiss, and Brenda Wineapple. Douglas Smith generously allowed me to use his translations of the Catherine-Potemkin correspondence. Doug Smith also permitted me to draw heavily on his book
The Pearl
and its descriptions of the institution of Russian serfdom, particularly in the areas of serf opera, ballet companies, theatrical companies, symphony orchestras, and other forms of the performing arts.
I have again been fortunate to have Random House, a gathering of extraordinary talents, as my book’s publisher. The members of this family who have worked to help me this time are Avideh Bashirrad, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Jonathan Jao, Susan Kamil, London King, Carole Lowenstein, Jynne Martin, Sally Marvin, Tom Perry, Robbin Schiff, Ben Steinberg, and Jessica Waters. I have also been helped by Dolores Karl, Lane Trippe, and Alex Remnick.
For many years, my essential friend, counselor, and supporter at Random House has been Bob Loomis, who, in the summer of 2011, retired after fifty-four years of sustained effort and brilliant achievement at the same publishing house. I am one of hundreds of authors whose work has been guided and improved by his wisdom, enthusiasm, kindness, and firm but gentle admonitions, usually beginning, “Let’s see if we can find a way to make this even better.” There are no others like him.
Manuscript in hand, Deborah Karl, my wife, literary agent, and the best-read person I know, made many suggestions; every one is now in the book. Three of my children, Bob, Jr., Elizabeth, and Christopher, also read the manuscript and asked good questions. My daughter Susanna keeps track from far away, and at home, my daughters Sophia and Nora have sustained me with their love, unfailing optimism, and soaring artistic talent.
Finally, I must acknowledge the extraordinary pleasure I have had in the company of the remarkable woman who has been my subject. After eight years of having her a constant presence in my life, I shall miss her.
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