Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (19 page)

Reluctantly accepting these disappointments, Elizabeth decided on another means of presenting her new dynasty to the public eye. In August 1744 she set out on a pilgrimage to Kiev, the oldest and holiest of Russian cities, where Christianity was first introduced by Grand Prince Vladimir in
A.D
. 800. The journey of almost six hundred miles between Moscow and Kiev had been suggested by Elizabeth’s Ukrainian lover, Razumovsky, and the trek included Peter, Catherine, and Johanna and their respective retainers, along with two hundred and thirty courtiers and hundreds of servants. Once under way, the cavalcade of carriages and wagons loaded with baggage jolted and swayed day after day over the endless roads, inflicting weariness, boredom, hunger, and thirst on the passengers. The horses were frequently exchanged; at every relay station, eight hundred fresh animals awaited the arrival of the imperial caravan.

While the grandees of the Russian court rode in velvet-cushioned carriages, one figure made most of the journey on foot. Elizabeth took penance and pilgrimages seriously. Walking along the hot, shadeless Russian roads, sweating in the heat and murmuring prayers, Elizabeth stopped to pray at every village church and wayside shrine. Meanwhile, Razumovsky, as practical and modest in his heavenly as in his earthly expectations, preferred to ride behind her in his comfortable carriage.

Catherine and Johanna began the journey riding in a carriage with two ladies-in-waiting; Peter was in a separate carriage with Brümmer and two of his tutors. One afternoon, Peter tired of his “
pedagogues,” as Catherine called them, and decided to join the two German princesses, whose company he thought would be more lively. He abandoned his carriage, “
got into ours and refused to leave,” bringing with him one of the spirited young men of his entourage. Very soon, Johanna, irritated by the company of the young people, reshuffled the arrangements. She had one of the carts that was loaded with beds rearranged with boards and pillows so that as many as ten people could sit in it. To Johanna’s annoyance, Peter and Catherine insisted on filling the cart with other young people. “
We allowed only the most amusing and entertaining of the entourage to join us,” she said. “From morning till night, we did nothing but laugh, play and make merry.” Brümmer, Peter’s tutors, and Johanna’s ladies-in waiting were insulted by this reshuffle, which ignored court precedence. “
While we were enjoying ourselves, they were, all four of them, in one carriage where they sulked, scolded, condemned, and made sour remarks at our expense. In our carriage we knew this, but we just laughed at them.”

For Catherine, Peter, and their friends, this journey became not a religious pilgrimage but an excursion, a lark. There was no need to hurry; Elizabeth walked no more than a few hours a day. At the end of three weeks, the main cavalcade arrived at Alexis Razumovsky’s large mansion in Koseletz, where they waited three additional weeks for the empress to appear. When she finally arrived on August 15, the religious complexion of the pilgrimage was temporarily suspended; for two weeks, the “pilgrims” joined in a succession of balls, concerts, and, from morning to night, card games so feverish that sometimes forty or fifty thousand rubles lay on the tables.

While they were staying in Koseletz, an incident occurred that drove a permanent wedge between Johanna and Peter. It began when the grand duke entered a room where Johanna was writing. On a low stool beside her, she had placed her jewel case, in which she kept the small things that were important to her, including her letters. Peter, romping and frisking in an attempt to make Catherine laugh, made as if to rummage through the case and snatch the letters. Johanna fiercely told him not to touch it. The grand duke, still prancing, started across the room, but in pirouetting away from Johanna, his coat caught the open lid of the little case and tipped it and its contents onto the floor. Johanna, thinking he had done it intentionally, flew into a rage. Peter tried at first
to apologize, but when she refused to believe that it had been an accident, he, too, became angry. The two began to shout at each other, and Peter, turning to Catherine, appealed to her to verify his innocence.

Catherine was caught in the middle.

“
Knowing how easily excited my mother was and that her first impulses were always very violent, I feared she would slap me if I disagreed with her. Wanting neither to lie to her nor to offend the grand duke, I kept silent. Nevertheless, I did tell my mother that I did not think the grand duke had done it intentionally.”

Johanna then turned on Catherine:

Catherine was torn, but her mother’s bad temper and her sympathy for the grand duke had an effect: “
In truth, at that time, the grand duke opened his heart to me more than to anyone else. He could see that my mother often attacked and scolded me when she was unable to find fault with him. This placed me high in his estimation; he believed he could rely on me.”

At the climax of the pilgrimage, the empress and the court spent ten days in Kiev. Catherine first saw the magnificent city in panorama, its
golden domes rising from a bluff on the western bank of the Dnieper River. Elizabeth, Peter, and Catherine entered the city on foot, walking with a crowd of priests and monks behind a large cross. Everywhere in this holiest of Russian cities, in a period when the church was immensely rich and the people devoutly pious, the empress was welcomed with extravagant pomp. At the famous Pecharsky Monastery Church of the Assumption, Catherine was awed by the majesty of the religious processions, the beauty of the religious ceremonies, the incomparable splendor of the church themselves. “
Never in my whole life,” she wrote later, “have I been so impressed as by the extraordinary magnificence of this church. Every icon was covered with solid gold, silver, pearls and encrusted with precious stones.”

Impressed though she was by this visual display, Catherine never in
her lifetime was devoutly religious. Neither the strict Lutheran beliefs of her father nor the passionate Orthodox faith of Empress Elizabeth ever took possession of her mind. What she saw and admired in the Russian church was the majesty of architecture, art, and music merged into a splendid unity of inspired—but still man-made—beauty.

No sooner had Elizabeth and the court returned from Kiev than another round of operas, balls, and masquerades began in Moscow. Every evening, Catherine appeared in a new dress and was told how well she looked. She was shrewd enough to recognize that flattery was the lubricating oil of court life, and she was also aware that some people still disapproved of her: Bestuzhev and his followers; jealous court ladies who envied a rising star; parasites who kept careful count of the distribution of favors. Catherine worked hard to disarm her critics. “
I was afraid of not being liked and did everything in my power to win those with whom I was to spend my life,” she wrote later. Above all, she never forgot to whom she owed primary allegiance. “
My respect for the empress and my gratitude to her were extreme,” she said. “And she used to say that she loved me almost more than the grand duke.”

A sure way to please the empress was to dance. For Catherine, this was easy; she, like Elizabeth, was passionately fond of dancing. Every morning at seven, Monsieur Landé, the French ballet master of the court, arrived with his violin and, for two hours, taught her the latest steps from Paris. From four to six in the afternoon, he returned to teach again. And then, in the evenings, Catherine would impress the court with her graceful dancing.

Some of these evening balls were bizarre. Every Tuesday by decree of the
empress, men would attend dressed as women and women would dance dressed as men. Catherine, then fifteen, was delighted by this change of costume: “
I must say that there was nothing more hideous and at the same time more comical than to see most men dressed this way and nothing more miserable than to see women in men’s clothes.” Most of the court roundly detested these evenings, but Elizabeth had a reason for this caprice: she looked superb in male clothing. Though she was far from slender, her full-bosomed figure was set off by a pair of slim, splendidly shaped legs. Her vanity demanded that these elegant limbs should not remain hidden, and the only way to display them was in a pair of tight male trousers.

Catherine described the hazards she encountered on one of these evenings:

That autumn, however, Catherine saw and felt the darker side of Elizabeth’s personality. The empress’s vanity demanded that she should be not only the most powerful woman in the empire but the most beautiful. She could not tolerate hearing another woman’s beauty praised. Catherine’s triumphs had not escaped her notice, and her annoyance found an outlet. One evening at the opera, the empress was sitting with Lestocq in the royal box opposite the box in which Catherine, Johanna, and Peter were seated. During the intermission, the empress noticed Catherine talking gaily to Peter. Could this young woman, a picture of glowing health and confidence, now so popular at court, be the same
shy girl who had come to Russia less than a year ago? Suddenly, the empress’s jealousy flared. Staring at the younger woman, she seized on the first grievance that popped into her head. As if the matter were something that could not wait, Elizabeth dispatched Lestocq to Catherine’s box to tell Catherine that the empress was furious with her because she had run up unacceptable debts. Elizabeth had given her thirty thousand rubles; where had it all gone? In delivering this message, Lestocq made certain that Peter and everyone else within earshot could hear. Tears sprang to Catherine’s eyes and, even as she wept, more humiliation was added. Peter, instead of consoling her, said that he agreed with his aunt and thought it appropriate that his betrothed had been reprimanded. Johanna then declared that as Catherine no longer consulted her as to how a daughter should behave, she “
washed her hands” of the matter.

The fall was sudden and steep. What had happened? What crime had the fifteen-year-old girl whose one thought was to please everyone, particularly the empress, committed? Catherine checked and found that she was in debt for two thousand rubles. The sum was absurd, in view of Elizabeth’s own extravagance and generosity, and the reprimand was an obvious excuse to cloak another grievance. It was true that Catherine had spent freely. She had sent money to her father to help pay expenses for her brother. She had spent money on herself. Arriving in Russia with only four dresses and a dozen chemises in her trunk, and taking her place at a court where women changed clothes three times a day, she had used some of her allowance to create a wardrobe. But the greater part had been spent showering presents on her mother, her ladies-in-waiting, and even on Peter himself. She had discovered that the most effective way of pacifying her mother’s temper and of stopping the constant bickering between Johanna and Peter was to give them both presents. She had realized that in this court, gifts could win her friends. She had noticed, too, that most of the people around her did not object to receiving gifts. Accordingly, eager to find favor, she saw no reason to scorn this simple, blatant method. In a few months, she had learned not only the language but also the customs of Russia.

This sudden blow from the empress was difficult for her to understand and accept. It revealed to her the two faces of the empress, a woman who, alternately and with no warning, charmed and intimidated. Afterward, when Catherine remembered that evening, she also remembered the lesson it had taught: that in dealing with a massive ego such as Elizabeth’s, all other women at court had to beware of succeeding
too well. She worked hard to reingratiate herself with her patron. And Elizabeth, when her fit of jealousy subsided, relented and eventually forgot the incident.

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Smallpox