Memoirs of the Empress Catherine II. / Written by Herself

by Empress of Russia Catherine II

The Empress kept the new-year’s day of 1754 in this palace, and the Grand Duke and I had the honour of dining with her in public on the throne. At table, her majesty seemed very lively and talkative. Around the throne, tables were laid for several hundred persons of the highest rank. At dinner the Empress asked who was that thin and ugly woman, with a crane’s neck, whom she saw seated there (pointing to the place); she was told it was Mademoiselle Martha Schafiroff. She burst into a laugh, and, turning to me, remarked that this reminded her of a Russian proverb, which said, “A long neck is only good for hanging.” I could not but smile at the point of this imperial sarcasm, which did not fall unheeded, for the courtiers passed it on from mouth to mouth, so that on rising from table, I found several persons who already knew of it. Whether the Grand Duke heard it, I know not, but at all events he did not allude to it, and I took care not to mention it to him.

Never was a year more fertile in fires than that of 1753-54. I have several times seen, from the windows of my apartments in the Summer Palace, two, three, four, and even five fires at once in different parts of Moscow. During the Carnival, the Empress gave orders for several balls and masquerades to be given in her apartments, at one of which I saw her engaged in a long conversation with the wife of General Matiouchkine. This lady was unwilling that her son should marry the Princess Gagarine. But the Empress persuaded her, and the Princess Gagarine, who numbered a good thirty years, had permission to marry M. Dmitri Matiouchkine. She was much pleased at this, and so was I. It was a marriage of inclination. Matiouchkine was at this time very handsome. Madame Tchoglokoff did not come with us to our summer apartments. Under different pretexts she remained, with her children, in her own house, which was very near the court. But the truth is, that, virtuous and loving wife as she was, she had conceived a passion for Prince Peter Repnine, and a marked aversion for her husband. She thought she could not be happy without a confidant, and I appeared to her the most trustworthy person. She showed me all the letters she received from her lover. I kept her secret faithfully, with scrupulous exactitude and prudence. Her interviews with the Prince were very secret; yet in spite of this the husband had some suspicions. An officer of the horse-guards named Kaminine, had given rise to them. This man was jealousy and suspicion personified: it was his nature. He was an old friend of Tchoglokoff. The latter opened his mind to Serge Soltikoff, who endeavoured to tranquillize him. I was careful not to tell Soltikoff anything I knew, for fear of some involuntary indiscretion on his part. At last the husband also sounded me a little. I pretended ignorance and astonishment, and held my tongue.

In the month of February I had some signs of pregnancy. On Easter Sunday, during mass, Tchoglokoff fell ill of the dry cholic; they gave him various remedies, but his disease only grew worse. During Easter week, the Grand Duke, with the gentlemen of our court, went out riding. Serge Soltikoff was of the number. I remained at home, for they were afraid to let me go out in my present condition, especially as I had twice miscarried. I was alone in my room when M. Tchoglokoff sent me a request to come to him. I went, and found him in bed. He made a thousand complaints of his wife; told me she saw Prince Repnine; that he went to her house on foot; that, during the Carnival, he had gone there, one courtball day, dressed as a harlequin; that Kaminine had had him followed; in short, God only knows all the details he gave me.

Just as he was most excited, his wife arrived; whereupon he began, in my presence, to load her with reproaches, telling her that she deserted him in his sickness. They were both very suspicious and narrow-minded. I was nearly frightened to death lest his wife should suspect that it was I who had betrayed her, from the mass of details which he then went into relative to her interviews. His wife, on the other hand, told him that it was not strange if she punished him for his conduct towards her; that neither he, nor any one else, could reproach her with having ever until now failed in her duty towards him in any respect; and she ended with saying that it ill became him to complain. Both appealed continually to me as a witness of what they said. I held my tongue, fearing to offend the one or the other, or compromise myself: my face was burning from apprehension. I was alone with them. When the quarrel was at its highest, Madame Vladislava came in to tell me that the Empress had just entered my room. I ran back immediately. Madame Tchoglokoff left at the same time, but, instead of following me, she stopped in a corridor, where there was a staircase leading into the garden, and there, as I was afterwards told, she sat down. As for myself, I reached my room quite out of breath, and found the Empress there. As she saw that I was out of breath and rather red, she asked where I had been. I told her that I was just come from the apartments of M. Tchoglokoff, who was ill, and that I had run in order to get back as quickly as possible, having been informed that she had condescended to come to my rooms. She did not ask me any more questions, but seemed to me to be dwelling upon what I had said, as if it appeared strange to her. Nevertheless, she continued speaking to me. She did not ask where the Grand Duke was, for she knew he had gone out. Neither he nor I, during the whole of her reign, dared to go out in the city or leave the house, without first sending to ask her permission. Madame Vladislava was in the room: the Empress addressed her several times, then spoke to me, and always of indifferent matters: finally, after a visit of nearly half an hour, she went away, saying that, in consequence of my pregnancy, she would dispense with my appearing on the 21st and 25th of April. I was surprised that Madame Tchoglokoff had not followed. When the Empress had gone, I asked Madame Vladislava what had become of her. She informed me that she had sat down on the stairs, and burst into tears. Upon the return of the Grand Duke, I recounted to Serge Soltikoff what had occurred during their absence; how Tchoglokoff had sent for me; my alarm at what had been said between the husband and wife, and the visit which the Empress had paid me. His answer was: “If that be the case, I am of opinion that the Empress must have come to see what you do in the absence of your husband; and, in order that it may be seen that you are perfectly alone, both in your own apartments and in those of the Tchoglokoffs, I will be off, and take all my comrades to the house of Ivan Schouvaloff, just as we are, bespattered with mud up to our eyes.” And, in fact, when the Grand Duke retired, he went off with all those who had been riding with his Imperial Highness to Ivan Schouvaloff, who had apartments at the court. When they arrived there, Schouvaloff asked them questions about their ride, and Soltikoff told me afterwards that, from these questions, it seemed to him that he had been correct in his inference.

From this day the illness of Tchoglokoff grew worse and worse. On the 21st of April—my birth-day—the physicians pronounced him beyond hope of recovery. The Empress was informed of this, and gave orders (as she was accustomed to do) that he should be carried to his own house, in order that he might not die at court, for she was afraid of the dead. I was very much grieved on learning his condition. He died at the very time when, after many years of trouble and pain, we had succeeded in rendering him not only less ill-natured and mischievous, but even tractable, and when, by dint of studying his character, we had acquired the power of managing him as we pleased. As for his wife, she at this time loved me sincerely, and, from a harsh and spiteful Argus, had become a firm and attached friend. Tchoglokoff, after his removal to his own house, lived until the afternoon of the 25th of April, the day of the Empress’ coronation, when he died. I was immediately informed of the event, as I kept constantly sending to his house. I was truly sorry for him, and wept a good deal. His wife, too, was confined to her bed during the last days of her husband’s illness; he was at one side of the house, she in the other. Serge Soltikoff and Leon Narichkine happened to be in her room at the moment of her husband’s death; the windows being open, a bird flew into the room, and alighted on the cornice of the ceiling, right opposite to Madame Tchoglokoff’s bed. Upon seeing this, she said, “I am certain that my husband has just breathed his last; send and ask how he is.” She was informed that he was really dead. She said that that bird was the soul of her husband. They tried to prove to her that the bird was an ordinary bird; but then it could not be found. They said it had flown away, but as no one had seen it, she remained convinced that it was the soul of her husband who had come to find her.

As soon as the funeral was over, Madame Tchoglokoff wished to come to my rooms. The Empress seeing her passing along the Yaousa bridge, sent her word that she would dispense with her attendance on me, and that she might return to her own house. Her Imperial Majesty took it ill that, as a widow, she should have gone out so soon. The same day she named M. Alexander Ivanovitch Schouvaloff to discharge the duties of the late M. Tchoglokoff in the Grand Duke’s court. Now this M. Schouvaloff, not so much on his own account as from the place he held, was the terror of the court, the city, and the whole empire. He was the chief of the tribunal of the state inquisition, which was then called the Secret Chancery. His functions, it was said, had given him a sort of convulsive movement, which seized the whole of the right side of his face from the eye to the jaw, whenever he was affected either with joy, anger, fear, or anxiety. It was astonishing that such a man, with so hideous a grimace, should ever have been chosen for a post which placed him continually in the presence of a pregnant young woman. Had I been delivered of an infant having that same wretched twitch, I think the Empress would have been greatly vexed, and this might have happened, seeing him as I did constantly, never with my own wish, and, for the greater part of the time, with a shudder of involuntary repugnance, on account of his personal appearance, his connections, and his office, by which, as may easily be imagined, the pleasure of his society was not likely to be augmented. But this was only a beginning of the “good times” they were preparing for us, and especially for me. The next morning I was informed that the Empress was going to place with me again the Countess Roumianzoff. I knew that she was the sworn enemy of Serge Soltikoff, that she bore no love to the Princess Gagarine, and that she had greatly injured my mother in the estimation of the Empress. The moment I became aware of this arrangement, I lost all patience. I wept bitterly, and told Count Schouvaloff that if the Countess Roumianzoff was placed with me I should look upon it as a great misfortune; that this lady had already injured my mother, had blackened her in the eyes of the Empress, and that now she would do the same with me; that she was feared as a pest when she was formerly in our suite, and that there would be many rendered miserable by the arrangement if he could not find means to prevent it. He promised to do what he could, and tried to tranquillize me. As, in my situation, he dreaded the effect of such excitement, he went at once to the Empress, and on his return told me that he hoped the Countess Roumianzoff would not be placed about my person. And, in fact, I heard no more of the matter, and nothing was now thought of but our departure for St. Petersburg. It was settled that we should be twenty-nine days on the road; that is to say, that we should only travel one post-station each day. I was frightened to death lest Serge Soltikoff and Leon Narichkine should be left behind at Moscow; but I know not how it was, they had the condescension to inscribe their names in the list of our suite.

At last, on the 10th, or the 11th, we set out from the palace of Moscow. I was in a carriage with the wife of Count Alexander Schouvaloff, the most tiresome woman that it is possible to imagine. Madame Vladislava, and the midwife, whom, as I was pregnant, they said I could not do without, were with us. I was tired to death in that carriage, and did nothing but cry. At last, the Princess Gagarine, who personally disliked the Countess Schouvaloff, because her daughter, who was married to Golofkine, a cousin of the Princess, made herself disagreeable to the relatives of her husband, seized a moment when she could get near me to say that she was working hard to make Madame Vladislava favourable to me, as she feared, as did every one else, that the hypochondria which my condition produced might do me harm, as well as injure my child. Soltikoff, she said, dared not come near me, because of the restraint and constant presence of the Schouvaloffs, both husband and wife. She did, in fact, succeed in getting Madame Vladislava to listen to reason, and condescend so far as to mitigate a little the state of perpetual annoyance and restraint which gave rise to this hypochondria which I found it impossible to control. All I wanted was the merest trifle—only a few moments of conversation. At last she succeeded. After this tedious journey of twenty-nine days, we reached St. Petersburg and the Summer Palace. The Grand Duke at once re-established his concerts. This gave me sometimes the opportunity of a little conversation; but my hypochondria had become such that at every moment, and at every word, my eyes filled with tears, and my mind was disturbed with apprehensions; in a word, I could not get it out of my head that everything tended to the removal of Serge Soltikoff.

We went to Peterhoff. I walked a great deal, but in spite of this my melancholy followed me. In the month of August we returned to the city, to occupy again the Summer Palace. It was a death-blow to me when I learned that, for my accouchement, they were preparing apartments close to, and forming part of those belonging to the Empress. Alexander Schouvaloff took me to see them; I found two rooms, gloomy, and with only one issue, like all those of the Summer Palace; the hangings were of ugly crimson damask, there was scarcely any furniture, and no kind of convenience. I saw that I should be isolated there, without any sort of company, and thoroughly wretched. I said so to Soltikoff and to the Princess Gagarine, who, though they bore no love to each other, had nevertheless a point of union in their friendship for me. They saw the matter as I did, but it was impossible to remedy it. I was to go on the Wednesday to these apartments, which were far removed from those of the Grand Duke. I went to bed on Tuesday evening, and in the night awoke with labour-pains. I called Madame Vladislava, who went to fetch the midwife. She pronounced that I was in labour. The Grand Duke, who was sleeping in his own room, was awakened, as also Count Alexander Schouvaloff. The latter sent word to the Empress, who was not long in coming. It was about two o’clock in the morning. I was very ill. At last, towards noon the next day, the 20th September, I gave birth to a son. As soon as it was dressed the Empress called in her confessor, who gave the child the name of Paul, after which the Empress immediately bade the midwife take the child up and follow her. I remained on the bed on which I had been confined. Now this bed was placed opposite a door through which I could see the light; behind me were two large windows which did not close properly, and on the right and left of this bed were two doors, one of which opened into my dressing-room, and the other into the room in which Madame Vladislava slept. As soon as the Empress left, the Grand Duke also went away, as likewise did M. and Madame Schouvaloff, and I saw no one again until three o’clock in the afternoon. I had perspired a great deal, and begged Madame Vladislava to change my linen, and put me into my own bed, but she told me that she dared not. She sent several times to call the midwife, who, however, did not come. I asked for something to drink, but still received the same answer. At last, after three hours, the Countess Schouvaloff arrived, very elaborately dressed. When she saw me lying just where she had left me, she was very angry, and said it was enough to kill me. This was very consolatory, certainly. I had been in tears from the time of my delivery, pained by the neglect in which I was left, after a severe labour; uncomfortably accommodated, lying between doors and windows, which did not shut close, no one daring to lift me into my bed, which was not two paces off, and to which I had not the strength to crawl. Madame Schouvaloff departed immediately, and went, I think, to fetch the midwife; for the latter came in about half an hour afterwards, and told us that the Empress was so taken up with the child that she would not let her go away for a moment. As for me no one gave me a thought. This forgetfulness or neglect was not at all flattering. I was dying of thirst. At last they placed me on my bed, and I did not see a living soul for the rest of the day, nor did any one send even to ask after me. The Grand Duke, for his part, did nothing but drink with all he could find, and the Empress was taken up with the child. In the city and throughout the empire the joy at this event was great. The next day I began to feel an excruciating rheumatic pain, from the hip down the thigh and left leg. This pain prevented me from sleeping, and this brought on a violent fever. In spite of all this, the attentions I received next day were just of the same character. I saw no one, and no one inquired after me. The Grand Duke, indeed, did come into my room for a moment, and then went away, saying, that he had not time to stop. I did nothing but weep and moan in my bed. Nobody was in my room but Madame Vladislava; in her heart she was sorry for me, but she had not the power to remedy this state of things. Besides, I never liked to be pitied nor to complain. I had too proud a spirit for that, and the very idea of being unhappy, was insupportable to me. Hitherto I had done whatever I could not to appear so. I might have seen Count Alexander Schouvaloff and his wife, but they were such insipid and tiresome people that I was always delighted when they were not present. On the third day a messenger came from the Empress to Madame Vladislava to ask if a blue satin mantelet which her Imperial Majesty had worn on the day of my accouchement, had been left in my room. Madame Vladislava searched for it everywhere in my rooms, and it was at last found in a corner of my dressing-room, where it had not been noticed, as, since my confinement, that room had seldom been entered. Having found it, she sent it off immediately. This mantelet, as we afterwards learned, gave rise to a somewhat singular occurrence. The Empress had no fixed hours either for going to bed or getting up, for dinner, supper nor dressing. On one of those three days she was lying, after dinner on a sofa on which she had placed a mattress and pillows. While there, feeling cold, she asked for this mantelet. It was sought for everywhere, but could not be found, as it had been left in my room. The Empress then ordered that it should be looked for under the pillows of her bed, believing that it would be found there. The sister of Madame Krause, the Empress’ favourite lady’s maid, passed her hand under the bolster of her Majesty’s bed and drew it back, saying, that there was no mantle there, but there was a packet of hair there, or something like it, she did not know what. The Empress immediately rose from her place, and had the mattress and the pillows taken up, and under them was found, to their no small astonishment, a paper in which was some hair twisted round the roots of some herbs. Upon this her Majesty’s maids, and the Empress herself, said that assuredly it was some charm or witchcraft, and every one began guessing who it could be that had the hardihood to place the packet under the Empress’ pillow. Suspicion lighted on one of those most in the favour of her Imperial Majesty. She was known by the name of Anna Dmitrevna Doumacheva. Not long since she had become a widow, and had married a second time a valet de chambre in the service of the Empress. The Schouvaloffs did not like this woman, who was in their way, as well by the esteem in which she was held as by the confidence reposed in her by the Empress ever since her youth. She was quite capable of playing them some trick which might diminish their influence. As they were not without their partisans, these began to view the matter in a criminal light; to this view the Empress was of herself sufficiently disposed, since she believed in charms and sorcery. Consequently, she gave orders to Count Alexander Schouvaloff to have the woman arrested, together with her husband and her two sons, one of whom was an officer of the guards, and the other a page of the chamber to her Majesty. Her husband, two days after his arrest, asked for a razor to shave with, and cut his throat with it. As for the wife and her two children, they were a long time under arrest, and she confessed that, with a view to prolong the Empress’ favour, she had made use of charms, and had on Holy Thursday put some grains of burnt salt into a glass of Hungarian wine, which she had presented to the Empress. The affair was concluded by banishing the woman and her two sons to Moscow. A rumour was afterwards set afloat that a fainting fit, which the Empress had a little time before my accouchement, was caused by the drink which this woman had given to her. It is certain, however, that she never gave her more than two or three grains of burnt salt, which most assuredly could never have hurt her. In all this there was nothing reprehensible, but the woman’s rashness and superstition.

At last the Grand Duke, growing weary of his evenings passed without my ladies of honour, came and proposed to spend an evening in my room. At this time he was courting the very ugliest of these ladies, Elizabeth Voronzoff. On the sixth day my son’s baptism took place. He had already come near dying of the thrush. It was only by stealth that I could get any account of him; for to have inquired about him would have passed for a doubt of the Empress’ care, and would have been very ill received. Besides, she had taken him into her own room, and whenever he cried she herself would run to him, and, through excess of care, they were literally stifling him. He was kept in a room extremely warm, wrapped up in flannel, and laid in a cradle, lined with black fox furs; over him was a coverlet of quilted satin, lined with wadding, and above this one of rose-coloured velvet, lined with black fox skins. I saw him myself, many times afterwards, lying in this style, the perspiration running from his face and whole body, and hence it was that, when older, the least breath of air that reached him chilled him and made him ill. Besides, he had in attendance on him a great number of aged matrons who, by their ill-judged cares, and their want of common sense, did him infinitely more harm than good, both physically and morally.

On the day of his baptism, after the ceremony, the Empress came into my room, and brought me, on a golden salver, an order on her cabinet for 100,000 roubles. She had added to it a small casket, which I did not open until she was gone. This money came very seasonably, for I had not a sous, and was heavily in debt. As for the casket, when I opened it, I was not greatly dazzled; it contained only a very poor necklace, with ear-rings and two wretched rings, such as I should have been ashamed to give to my maids. In the whole case there was not a jewel worth 100 roubles; neither was the taste nor workmanship any better. I said nothing, but locked up the imperial casket. It would seem that the meanness of the present was felt, for Count Alexander Schouvaloff was ordered to inquire how I liked the jewel-case. I replied, that whatever came from the hands of the Empress was always of inestimable value in my eyes. With that compliment he went away apparently well pleased. He returned to the charge when he saw that I never wore this beautiful necklace, and especially those miserable ear-rings, telling me to put them on. I said that on the Empress’ fêtes I was accustomed to wear the most beautiful things I possessed, and that this necklace and ear-rings did not come within that category.