Julie Barbe (Juliane Barbara) de Vietinghof was born in 1764 at Riga, in Livonia. Her education was conducted half on French, half on German lines. Her father was a distinguished, sagacious man of the world, a philosopher and Freemason, an art-lover and a Mæcenas; her mother, a sensible, conscientious woman, had been brought up on strict, old-fashioned Lutheran principles. Both parents belonged to the highest class of the old German-Russian aristocracy of the Baltic Provinces, and were connected with the Russian court.
The first teacher who made a real impression upon their young daughter, and whose instructions powerfully influenced her future, was the famous Parisian ballet-dancer, Vestris. At the age of eighteen Julie married Baron de Krüdener, a Russian diplomatist, a man fifteen years her senior, who had already been married twice, and had been divorced from both his wives. Her heart had no share in this union; the match was considered an excellent one, her vanity was gratified, and she had no manner of objection to her husband. He seems to have been a sensible, worthy, well-educated man, cultivated and calm, by no means devoid of feeling, but both by nature and from his position wedded to all the conventions of society. The Graces had not stood by his cradle.
It was into the most brilliant society of the eighteenth century that Baron de Krüdener introduced his wife. At the time of his marriage he was Russian envoy in Kurland, and immediately after the honeymoon the couple proceeded to Mitau, where Krüdener negotiated the incorporation of the Duchy with Russia, and where they were honoured with a visit from the Czar (Paul I.). Amateur theatricals provided the young wife with her chief occupation and interest. She went on acting until almost immediately before the birth of her only son. A few weeks after this event the young mother was presented to the Empress Catherine at St. Petersburg. Thence Krüdener was sent as Russian ambassador to Venice; the most dissipated town of the day, where his wife lived in a whirl of gaiety.
In Venice a gifted young enthusiast, Alexander Stakjev, her husband's private secretary, fell violently in love with Madame de Krüdener, but so great was his esteem for Krüdener and for the object of his attachment that not a syllable crossed his lips. So well did he preserve his secret that Krüdener took him with him when he was transferred to Copenhagen in 1784. In the woods of Frederiksborg Juliane and her adorer roved about admiring the beauties of nature in company. It was to the husband that Stakjev at last naïvely confessed his passion. Krüdener was imprudent enough to show the letter to his wife, who now for the first time became certain of the nature of Stakjev's feeling for her, a feeling which she did not return, but which, with innate coquetry, she had encouraged. The knowledge that it was in her power to call forth such a passion had an extraordinary effect upon her. From this moment it was the one dream of her life to be adored. Stakjev took his departure, but all that had been fermenting in Julie's young heart now forced its way to the surface. Possessed by an ardent desire to love and be loved, she had first attempted to find the ideal of her dreams in her husband. When he, more the father than the lover, only tried to keep her extravagant feeling in check, she fell back upon herself, and grieved at being what is now called misunderstood, but what she called "not felt." Stakjev's passion rushed past her like a breath of fire and thawed the inward cold which, as it were, held her emotions ice-bound. They now demanded an outlet. In Copenhagen, which, of all the places she had lived in, seemed to her the most unbearable—it is to be remembered that this was a hundred years ago—she threw herself into a whirl of trivial social amusements, which engrossed her time and mind, and brought in their train much indiscriminate and reckless coquetry. Shattered nerves and an affection of the lungs were the result of all the balls and theatricals, and she was ordered to spend the winter of 1789 in the South.
Instead of making her way to some quiet sunny spot on the shores of the Mediterranean, the lady whose health had completely broken down under the strain of town life hastened to Paris and there revived. In this intellectual city she is suddenly struck by her own ignorance, acquires a taste for reading, or rather for writers, and procures introductions to the great authors of the day—Barthélémy, the author of Le jeune Anarcharse, at whose reception into the Academy she was present, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, for whose Paul et Virginie she had always had the greatest admiration. She makes a cult of Saint-Pierre and nature, witnesses the fall of the Bastille, but at the same time runs up an account of some 20,000 francs at her milliner's. When she is in the south of France, a young officer, M. de Frègeville, falls in love with her. Less inexperienced now than she had been in Copenhagen, she yields, after a struggle, to his persuasions. He induces her to spend another winter in France, in spite of a promise given to her husband, and to return to Paris instead of to Copenhagen in the following year (1791).
After Louis XVI's unsuccessful attempt at flight, Paris was no longer a safe place of residence for Madame de Krüdener. She made her escape from France with M. de Frègeville, who was disguised as her lackey, spent some weeks at Brussels, and then travelled by way of Cassel and Hanover to Hamburg, still accompanied and protected by her lover in his character of lackey. At Hamburg she was met by her husband, but as she even there refused to part from her favourite servant, there was a violent scene. Krüdener advised her to go for a time to her mother at Riga, and thither too she was accompanied by the disguised French officer. Her mother received her most cordially. In 1792, when she and her mother went to St. Petersburg to see her dying father, she again met her husband, who had come there to raise the money he required to procure a divorce. She threw herself at his feet, was forgiven, and made promises which she did not keep. For the next few years she wandered about Europe, separated from her husband and from De Frègeville, but living the life of the dissolute, gay lady of the last decade of the eighteenth century. Even in his most private letters of this year her husband never mentions her name.
After meeting her old adorer, Stakjev, at St. Petersburg, Madame de Krüdener went to Riga, where she remained for some time, then to Berlin, and thence to Leipzig, where she spent great part of 1793. From Leipzig she returned to Riga, but almost at once finding that town unbearable, retired to the family property of Kosse. Here she formed great plans; it was her intention to become the benefactress of her serfs, "to educate the Esthonian people and make them happy." In 1795 she stayed for a few months at Riga, and then went to Berlin. In 1796 she lived first at Lausanne, then at Geneva with her friend, Abbé Becker. She frequented the society of the French émigrés, was perfectly idolised, and went from fête to fête dancing the shawl-dance, which for a time was the great passion of her now mature womanhood. When young girls began to dance the shawl-dance too, she went off with her friend, the émigré De Vallin, to Munich. After De Vallin's compulsory return to France, and Becker's death, Madame de Krüdener suddenly began to long for her husband and her step-child, but all that came of this was a flying visit to Munich, where she had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of this step-child, now a grown woman. After a stay at Teplitz, she returned to Munich, but was presently at Teplitz again, and thence went to Berlin, where, in 1800, M. de Krüdener took up his residence as Russian ambassador. During these years of wandering she had probably changed her lovers even more frequently than her place of residence.
The winter of 1800-1801 she spent in Berlin as Russian ambassadress; but her unpunctuality and general eccentricity made her anything but a favourite at the well-ordered court of William III. Social success being her one desire, she tried, now that she was no longer young, to attract attention by the audacity of her toilettes. She had never been a beauty, but her expressive features and her gracefulness had always been much admired. The simplicity which had made her so irresistible ten years earlier, had now given place to a desire to create a sensation by a daring style of dress, or rather undress. She covered her still beautiful hair with a wig, according to the fashion of the day. Her features and complexion had lost the freshness of youth.
It was at this time that her restless heart, which still craved for strong emotions, began to open itself to the influence of religious fanaticism. In a letter to her most intimate friend she writes: "Shall I confess something to you? It is in all humility of heart I write it. You know that I am not arrogant—how can a Christian be? But I believe that God has deigned to bless my husband ever since my return. There is no imaginable benefit or favour that is not bestowed on him. Why should I not believe that the prayer of a pious heart which simply and trustingly beseeches God to help it to contribute to another's happiness is certain to be answered?"
Why not, indeed? We should willingly believe that it was the presence of Madame de Krüdener which induced Providence to shower orders and distinctions upon the Baron if we did not happen to know for a fact that it was another, less romantic reason which led the Emperor Paul thus to favour him. The facts of the case are as follows: In the middle of an entertainment which the Baron was giving in Berlin to the Prussian royal family and the Grand Duchess Helena, a despatch arrived from the autocrat of all the Russias, commanding Krüdener instantly to declare war with Prussia. Their Majesties were still in the house. Instead of breaking up the fête by displaying this Gorgon's head to his guests, the Russian ambassador calmly let them dance on; and knowing, like the sagacious politician he was, how imprudent and how fatal for Russia such a war would be, he wrote a dissuasive letter to his Emperor, though well aware that, in all human probability, life-long exile in Siberia would be his reward. Naturally he mentioned nothing of all this to his wife. The improbable happened. Paul allowed himself to be dissuaded, and, full of admiration for his minister's courage and wisdom, overwhelmed him with proofs of his favour.—So we see there is a different explanation from Madame de Krüdener's.