Great Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia

256 Pages·1995·1.52 MB·English

by  Erickson Carolly

This book made available by the Internet Archive.

Catherine, miserable and alone, often in tears, followed his orders, outwardly
submitting to his newfound authority. She still found it hard to look at him.
Though the swelling in his face had gone down, he was marked for life with the
scars of the pox, his skin was a mass of slowly healing sores and his small eyes
seemed even smaller now behind his pale lashes. Narrow-shouldered, with thin
arms and legs and a fleshy belly, Peter was a poor specimen of manhood.
Expensive jackets, fine lace and diamond buttons did nothing to improve him,
and even in the German uniforms he loved to wear he looked puny and boyish,
as if dressed for a role that did not suit him.
To imagine him as a husband must have made Catherine
cringe. Lacking experience, completely innocent of instruction about sex,
Catherine brought up the subject of the difference between men and women in
the privacy of her chamber, among her ladies. The wedding was only weeks
away, and she was full of curiosity and dread. Not surprisingly, her attendants
claimed to be as ignorant as she was. All of them had observed the coupling of
animals, yet when it came to human anatomy and to that mysterious and sacred
union between husband and wife, their imaginations could only take them so far.
Catherine approached Johanna, and asked her bluntly about what happened on
the wedding night. With her question she evidently touched a nerve—probably
the sensitive nerve of marital fidelity—and instead of answering her Johanna
scolded her severely. Far from recognizing any duty to dispel Catherine's
ignorance, Johanna became suspicious, and on another occasion accused
Catherine of having gone in search of sexual adventures one night when she
stayed out late in the palace gardens with her women. Catherine protested; the
accusation was unjust, she said, there had been no men present, not even a valet.
But Johanna castigated her more harshly than ever before, leaving Catherine
wounded and resentful—and as ignorant as before.
At last the final, definitive date for the wedding was named: August 21.
Catherine's wedding gown, made of thickly embroidered cloth of silver with
patterns of leaves and flowers on the slender, low-cut bodice and yards of gold
trimming the hem of the wide skirt, received its final fitting. The streets of
Petersburg rang with the trumpeting and shouting of heralds, announcing the
coming festivities. Drums beat, calling the populace to attention. The route the
wedding procession was to take, from the Winter Palace to Kazan Cathedral,
was cleaned and swept. In the palace kitchens, the baking and stewing, roasting
was cleaned and swept. In the palace kitchens, the baking and stewing, roasting
and frying went on day and night. Barrels of wine were emptied into the
fountains, bells rang, horses were groomed and carriage wheels polished.
On the night before the wedding, Johanna softened and attempted to offer
Catherine her advice and help. The two had "a
long and friendly talk." "She exhorted me concerning my future duties,"
Catherine recalled in her memoirs, "we cried a little together and parted very
tenderly." Love triumphed over injured feelings, mother and daughter prepared
themselves for the momentous change that the morrow would bring.
Elizabeth, resplendent in a gown of rich brown silk and glittering with jewels,
came to dress Catherine very early on the wedding morning. One by one the
layers of undergarments and petticoats were put on and tied in place, then the
shimmering silver wedding gown, thick and stiff with metallic embroidery,
drawn so tight at the waist that Catherine could hardly breathe. On a whim
Catherine had had her bangs cut short and her valet Timofei Ievrenef brought out
a hot iron to curl them. The empress became enraged, and shouted at Ievrenef,
insisting that Catherine could not wear her crown over a puffy mound of curls.
She stomped out of the room, and it took all the tact of the valet and of
Catherine's household mistress Maria Rumyantsev to bring her back. In the end
Catherine's curly brown hair, left unpowdered, was gathered back off her face
and the diamond crown secured in place. Having created a scene, Elizabeth grew
calmer, and surveyed the attractive, slim-waisted sixteen-year-old bride with
approval.
The empress was a great believer in cosmetics, and Catherine may have been
understandably pale that morning; pots of rouge were brought out and artfully
applied to Catherine's long face with its broad jaw and strong chin. Finally
Elizabeth offered Catherine all her jewels, letting her choose for herself strands
of diamonds for her throat, sparkling earrings, bracelets and rings. A long cloak
of silver lace floated over her shoulders.
Tall and graceful, smiling yet virginal, Catherine was an enchanting sight, and as
she walked toward the waiting coach beside the empress and Peter she did her
best to conceal her discomfort. The magnificent silver gown weighed nearly half
as much as she did; in it she felt more like a knight in armor than a carefree
young bride, and each step cost her an effort. And in any
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case she was far from carefree. Peter, never comfortable at public functions,
walked stiffly beside her in his silver doublet, no doubt wishing that the whole
distastefully Russian ceremony were over so that he could go back to his
Holsteiners. She sensed his unease, and was acutely aware of her own
misgivings. But there was no turning back. Fate had chosen her, and she had
accepted the challenge, blindly but courageously. She would see it through, even
though she could hardly bear to glance at the odd, disfigured boy she was about
to marry.
The new painted carriage Elizabeth had ordered, with panels that were works of
art and wheels that gleamed with gold foil, pulled by six fine horses wearing
jewel-studded harnesses, led the long procession of one hundred and twenty
coaches that took three hours to wind its way from the Winter Palace to the
cathedral. An immense crowd had formed to ogle the splendid parade. People
stared open-mouthed at the gorgeous carriages with their gilded cherubs and
flashing mirrored wheels, and did their best to catch sight of their resplendent
occupants, for the lords and ladies inside each sumptuous coach were nearly as
beautifully dressed as the empress and the bridal pair. The delicate pale silks and
gems of the women, their pearl-studded gowns and waving plumes, the men in
suits of embroidered brocade or rich caftans trimmed in gold, silver and
diamonds, were a feast for the eyes to rival any in recent memory. "Of all the
pompous shows in Russia," wrote an English traveler who was present, "the
appearance made upon the great duke's marriage, in clothes and equipage, was
the most magnificent."
The religious ceremony in the huge echoing cathedral took three hours, and long
before its end Catherine, weighed down by her tight and bothersome dress, must
have been weary. The Archbishop of Novgorod droned on and on, exhorting the
couple to love and cherish one another, exhorting the deity to grant them long
life and many children, while delicate openwork crowns were held over their
heads and the rich resonance of the choral voices filled the dimness. At one point
one of the court ladies,
Countess Chernyshev, whispered something in Peter's ear, and Peter in turn
whispered to Catherine that the countess had cautioned him not to turn his head
while standing before the archbishop. According to an old superstition, when the
bridal couple stood before the priest, whichever of them turned his or her head
first would be the first to die. Catherine thought this a rather ghoulish sentiment
for a wedding, but let it pass. (Later she learned that what the countess had really