Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (34 page)

It was in this atmosphere of camaraderie and jolly skullduggery that Sergei Saltykov began his campaign. One evening, he began whispering to Catherine about love. She listened with a mixture of alarm and delight. She did not reply but did not discourage him. He persisted, and the next time she asked him tentatively what he wanted from her. He described the state of bliss he wanted to share with her. She interrupted:
“
And your wife, whom you married for love only two years ago? What will she say?” With a shrug, Saltykov tossed Matriona overboard. “
All that glitters is not gold,” he replied, saying that he was paying a high price now for a moment of infatuation. His feelings for Catherine, he assured her, were deeper, more permanent, cast in a more precious metal.

Later, Catherine described the path along which she was being led:

At first, she fended him off. She told herself that the emotion she was feeling was pity. How sad it was that this handsome young man, caught up in a bad marriage, now was offering to risk everything for her, knowing that she was inaccessible, that she was a grand duchess and the wife of the heir to the throne.

She saw him every day. She suggested that he was wasting his time. “How do you know that my heart does not belong to someone else?” she asked. She was a poor actress, and Saltykov, knowing the dialogue of lovemaking, took none of her objections seriously. Later, all Catherine could say was, “I held out all of the spring and part of the summer.”

On a summer day in 1752, Choglokov invited Catherine, Peter, and their young court to a hunting party on his island in the Neva River. On arriving, most of the party mounted horses and rode off after the dogs in pursuit of hares. Saltykov waited until the others were out of sight and then rode up alongside Catherine, and, as she put it, “began again on
his favorite subject.” Here, now without having to lower his voice, he
described the pleasures of a secret love affair. Catherine remained silent. He begged her to allow him at least to hope that he had a chance. She managed to retort that he could hope whatever he pleased; she could not control his thoughts. He compared himself to other young men at court and asked whether he was not the one she preferred. Or, if not, who was it? She shook her head wordlessly but said later, “
I had to admit that he pleased me.” After an hour and a half of this minuet, an old routine for Saltykov, Catherine told him to leave because such a lengthy private conversation would arouse suspicions. Saltykov said he would not go until she consented. “
Yes, yes, but go away,” she replied. “It is settled, then. I have your word,” he said and spurred his horse. She called after him, “No, no!” “Yes, yes!” he shouted and galloped away.

That evening, the hunting party returned to Choglokov’s house on the island for supper. During the meal, a strong westerly gale pushed the sea from the Gulf of Finland into the Neva River delta and soon the entire, low-lying island was covered by several feet of water. Choglokov’s guests were marooned in his house until three in the morning. Saltykov used this time to repeat to Catherine that heaven itself was favoring his suit because the storm was permitting him to go on seeing her for a longer time. “
He already believed himself triumphant,” she wrote later. “But it was not at all the same for me. A thousand worries troubled me. I had thought that I would be able to govern both his passion and mine, but now I realized that this was going to be difficult and perhaps impossible.” It was impossible. Soon after—sometime in August or September 1752—Sergei Saltykov achieved his goal.

No one knew of their affair, but Peter made an accurate guess. “
Sergei Saltykov and my wife are deceiving Choglokov,” he told the lady-in-waiting he was pursuing at the moment. “They make him believe anything they want and laugh behind his back.” Peter himself did not mind being cuckolded; he saw it as a joke on the foolish Choglokov. More important, neither the empress nor Madame Choglokova was aware of Catherine’s new relationship. That summer at Peterhof and Oranienbaum, Catherine went riding every day. Now worrying less about appearances, she had stopped trying to deceive the empress and always rode astride like a man. Watching her one day, Elizabeth had said to Madame Choglokova that it was riding this way that prevented the grand duchess from conceiving children. Boldly, Madame Choglokova replied that riding had nothing to do with the fact that Catherine had no children; that children, after all, could not appear “
without something happening first,” and that although the grand ducal couple had
been married for seven years, “nothing had happened yet.” Confronted by this statement—which she still refused entirely to believe—Elizabeth burst out angrily at Madame Choglokova for not persuading the couple to do their duty.

Alarmed,
Madame Choglokova began a determined effort to see that the empress’s wishes were obeyed. First, the governess conferred with one of the grand duke’s valets, a Frenchman named Bressan. Bressan recommended that Peter be placed in the intimate company of an attractive, sexually experienced woman who was also his social inferior. Madame Choglokova agreed, and Bressan located a young widow, Madame Groot, whose late husband, a Stuttgart painter named L. F. Groot, was one of the Western artists brought to Russia by Elizabeth. It took time to explain to Madame Groot what was desired of her and to persuade her to comply. Once the teacher had accepted this assignment, Bressan introduced her to her pupil. And thereafter, in an atmosphere of music, wine, pleasantries—and, on her part, perseverance—Peter’s sexual initiation was managed.

Peter’s success with Madame Groot meant that the widow had managed to overcome any inhibitions he might have felt regarding his own appearance. If, in fact, he had also been afflicted by phimosis, this problem, too, must have been resolved by the passage of time. Or there is another story, told by the French diplomat Jean-Henri Castéra, who first presented the phimosis theory in his biography of Catherine. According to Castéra, once Saltykov had succeeded in his seduction of Catherine, he became uneasy about the potential danger of being the lover of a woman known to be a virgin and whose husband was the heir to the throne. Suppose the wife became pregnant; where would that put him? He decided to protect himself. During an all-male dinner at which the grand duke was the guest of honor, Saltykov steered the conversation around to the pleasures of sex. Peter, thoroughly drunk, admitted that he had never enjoyed these sensations. Whereupon—the story goes—Saltykov, Lev Naryshkin, and others present begged the grand duke to submit, then and there, to corrective surgery. His head spinning, Peter stammered consent. A doctor and a surgeon, already standing by, were brought in, and the operation was performed immediately. Once the incisions had healed, and after Madame Groot had finished her private lessons, the grand duke was ready to become a complete husband. And thereafter, if Peter’s wife became pregnant, who could say that Sergei Saltykov was responsible?

As it happened, Saltykov’s worries were unnecessary. Madame
Choglokova, having carried out the empress’s command with respect to Peter, was already turning to the problem of Catherine, whom the governess supposed still to be a virgin. There was no certainty that Peter’s success in embracing Madame Groot would ensure the same success with Catherine. And even if he managed the physical act, there was no guarantee that this would result in a conception. More certainty was required. Perhaps, even, a more reliable male.

Understanding the wide latitude of the imperial command she had been given, Madame Choglokova took Catherine aside one day and said, “
I must speak to you very seriously.” The conversation that followed astonished Catherine.

Catherine remained silent, and the governess continued, “
You will see that I shall not put difficulties in your way.” Madame Choglokova was as good as her word. Thereafter she and her husband stood aside when Sergei Saltykov entered Catherine’s bedroom.

The three principals—Catherine, Peter, and Sergei—found themselves in a complicated situation. She loved a man who had sworn he loved her, and who, thrusting aside seven years of virginal marriage, was teaching her about physical love. She had a husband who had not
touched her since their marriage, who still did not desire her, who was aware of her lover, and thought it was all a titillating joke. Sergei considered Peter’s inclusion a necessary alibi.

Catherine should have been happy, but something in Sergei Saltykov’s attitude was changing. In the autumn, when the court moved back to the Winter Palace, he seemed restless; his passion seemed to be waning. When she reproached him, he emphasized the need for caution, explaining that, if she gave it more thought, she would understand the wisdom and prudence of his behavior.

Catherine and Peter departed from St. Petersburg in December 1752 and followed the empress and the court to Moscow. Catherine was already feeling signs of pregnancy. The sleigh traveled night and day, and at the last relay station before Moscow, Catherine suffered violent contractions and heavy bleeding. It was a miscarriage. Soon after, Sergei Saltykov arrived in Moscow, but his attitude remained distant. Nevertheless, he repeated the reasons for his behavior: the need to be discreet and avoid arousing suspicion. She still believed him. “
As soon as I had seen and spoken to him,” she said, “my worries vanished.”

Reassured and hoping to please, Catherine agreed to a political proposal from Saltykov. He asked that she reach out on his behalf and request Chancellor Bestuzhev to help him advance his career. It was not easy for Catherine to agree. For seven years, she had considered the chancellor her most powerful enemy in Russia. He had subjected her to provocation and humiliation; he was behind the campaign against her mother; it was he who had assigned the watchdog Choglokovs; he was the author of the ban on her writing or receiving personal letters. Catherine had never publicly protested; she had carefully avoided alignment with any faction at court; she believed that her own uncertain position dictated that her best course was to cultivate friendships in all directions; she had not seemed interested in political maneuvering. Her priority had been to erase her Prussian identity by enthusiastically adopting every characteristically Russian trait. Now, influenced by her love for the man who had made her pregnant, and frightened by her fear of losing him, she put these considerations aside and did what he asked.

Her first step was to send Count Bestuzhev “
a few words that would allow him to believe that I was less hostile to him than before.”
She was surprised by the chancellor’s reaction. He was delighted by her overture and declared that he was at the grand duchess’s disposal. He asked that she indicate a safe channel by which they might communicate. On hearing this news, Saltykov, impatient, decided to visit the chancellor immediately under the pretext of a social call. The old man received him warmly, took him aside, and spoke to him of the inner world of the court, stressing particularly the stupidity of the Choglokovs. “
I know that you can see through them as well as I do because you are a sensible young man,” Bestuzhev said. Then he spoke of Catherine: “In gratitude for the good will that the grand duchess has shown me, I am going to do her a little service for which I think she will thank me. I will make Madame Vladislavova as gentle as a lamb for her and the grand duchess will be able to do as she pleases. She will see that I am not the ogre she thinks I am.” At a stroke, Catherine had transformed the enemy she had feared for many years. This powerful man was now offering to support her and, in the bargain, Saltykov. “
He gave him [Saltykov] a good deal of advice which was as useful as it was wise,” she said. “All this made him very intimate with us, without any living soul being the wiser.”

The new alliance offered advantages to both sides. Despite the humiliations Bestuzhev had heaped on her and her family, Catherine recognized the chancellor’s intelligence and administrative skill. This could be useful to her as well as to Saltykov. From Bestuzhev’s perspective, Catherine’s offer of reconciliation came at an unusually opportune time. The rise of Elizabeth’s new favorite, Ivan Shuvalov, was undermining the chancellor’s position. The new favorite was not simply amiable and indolent, as Razumovsky had been. Shuvalov was intelligent, ambitious, and strongly pro-French, and he was actively securing influential positions in government for his uncles and cousins. In addition, Bestuzhev worried about Elizabeth’s health. Her illnesses had become more frequent and required ever-lengthening periods of recovery. If—or rather, when—the empress died, Peter would inherit the throne. This was Peter who worshipped Frederick of Prussia; Peter who hated the Austrian alliance, the bedrock of the chancellor’s diplomacy; and Peter who was quite prepared to sacrifice the interests of the Russian empire to those of tiny, insignificant Holstein. Bestuzhev had long realized that Catherine was far more intelligent than her husband and that she was as sympathetic to Russian interests as Peter was indifferent or hostile. To have Catherine as an ally would mean buttressing his position
at the moment and perhaps adding greater strength for the future. When Catherine suggested that they work together, he was quick to agree.