it in Dublin society, and composed church music, which was sung in
the Chapel of Magdalen in the presence of a vast concourse of people,
‘desirous,’ as she expresses it, ‘of hearing how the bears of the North
compose.’ Probably it was a successful experiment, for later on she was
busy negotiating with David Garrick for the performance on the stage of
her musical works. She was also writing long instructions to her son
in the style of the counsels of Polonius concerning the conduct of his
travels....
From England she went to Holland; in Haarlem she went to see a doctor of
her acquaintance, and there met Prince Orlov, by now married and out of
favour. The same day Orlov came to call on her, and just at dinner-time.
His visit was to Princess Dashkov ‘as unexpected as it was disagreeable.’
‘I have come to you not as an enemy, but as a friend and ally,’ said
Orlov, sitting down in a low chair. Then followed a silence on both
sides. He looked intently at young Dashkov, and observed: ‘Your son is
enrolled in the Cuirassiers, and I am in command of a regiment of the
Horse Guards; if you like, I will ask the Empress to transfer him to my
regiment; that will give him promotion.’
Princess Dashkov thanked him for his kind suggestion, but said that she
could not take advantage of his offer, because she had already written on
his behalf to Prince Potyomkin, and did not want without good reason to
do anything in opposition to him.
‘What could there be disagreeable to him in it?’ asked Orlov, feeling the
sting of this. ‘However, as you please; you may rely on me; your son will
make a great career; it would be hard to find a _handsomer_ young man.’
The mother flushed crimson with anger, and the conversation dropped. But
at the next meeting Orlov, addressing young Dashkov, said: ‘What a pity
that I shall not be in Petersburg when you arrive! I am certain that you
will oust the present favourite as soon as you appear at court; I should
be pleased to carry out my present duties—comforting the forsaken.’
Beside herself with indignation, Princess Dashkov sent her son out of the
room, and told Orlov that she thought it extremely improper to speak to a
boy of seventeen in that way, and that in so doing Orlov was compromising
the Empress, whom she had brought her son up to respect; that, as for
favourites, she begged him to remember that she had never known and
never recognised one of them.
After that they parted. Orlov went to Switzerland, Princess Dashkov to
Paris. Then we meet her inspecting the French fortresses with her son
and Colonel Samoylov, by special permission of Maréchal de Biron.[64]
From France she went to Italy, and there was completely absorbed in
pictures and statues, cameos and antiques, bought a picture of Angelica
Kauffmann’s as a present for the Empress, went to see the Pope and Abbé
Galiani,[65] and finally returned to Russia through Vienna.
In Vienna she had a heated argument with Kaunitz, with whom she was
dining. He called Peter the Great the political creator of Russia;
Princess Dashkov observed that this was a European misconception. Kaunitz
was not ready to yield his point; she was even less so. She admitted
that Peter had done a very great deal for Russia, but thought that the
material was ready, and that, together with his masterly use of it, he
had inhumanly oppressed and distorted it.
‘If he had really been a great statesman, he would by his intercourse
with other nations, and by trade, have gained without haste what he
attained by violence and cruelty. The nobility and the serfs were both
left worse off through his unbridled passion for innovations; from the
latter he took the protective tribunal to which alone they could appeal
in case of oppression, from the former he took all their privileges. And
to what end was it all? To clear the way for a military despotism, that
is, for the very worst of all existing forms of government. From simple
vanity he was in such a hurry to build Petersburg that he sent thousands
of workmen to die in the marshes. He not only forced the landowners
to provide a certain number of peasants, but compelled them to build
themselves houses according to his own plans, without asking whether they
needed them. One of his principal buildings, the Admiralty and Docks,
which cost immense sums, was constructed on the bank of a river which no
human efforts could make navigable even for merchant vessels, much less
for ships of the Navy.’
‘However,’ observed Kaunitz, ‘no one can help being touched at the sight
of a monarch learning shipbuilding with the axe in his hand.’
The ruthless lady would not let this pass. ‘Your Excellency,’ she
answered, ‘is doubtless joking. Who can know better than you how precious
is a monarch’s time, and whether he has the leisure to practise a
handicraft? Peter I. was in a position to command the services not only
of shipbuilders, but even of admirals. To my mind, when he was wasting
time in Saardam working with the axe and learning the slang of the Dutch
market, and sailors’ words with which he distorted the Russian language,
he was simply neglecting his duty.’
I foresee how the good Orthodox souls of our Moscow Slavophils will
rejoice at reading these words; they certainly ought, on days for
commemorating the dead, to keep the memory of our princess with pancakes
and lenten oil.
Joseph II. was ill, and wanted Princess Dashkov to remain a few days
longer, but she had received an invitation from Frederick II. for herself
and her son to be present at his manœuvres. She had, however, an informal
interview with Joseph II. in the study he devoted to natural history.
A week later Princess Dashkov was at the manœuvres at which Frederick II.
drilled forty-two thousand men, and to which he had never before admitted
women, but she was specially invited. The Prussian Princess herself
drove to fetch her, brought her to the spot where the King was to meet
her, and asked her to get out of the carriage, saying: ‘Dear Princess,
as I have not the slightest desire to see the old grumbler, I will drive
on,’ and Princess Dashkov was left to an innocent _tête-à-tête_ with
Frederick II., who took her and her son with him to a military inspection
of the provinces.
In July 1782 she returned to Petersburg. The Empress appointed her
President of the Academy of Science. Princess Dashkov was apparently
for the first time in her life disconcerted, and wanted to decline the
honour. She wrote a sharp letter to the Empress, and at twelve o’clock at
night drove with it to Potyomkin. Potyomkin had gone to bed; however, he
received her. He read the letter, tore it up and threw it on the floor,
but, seeing that she was angry, said to her: ‘Here are pen and paper, by
all means write it again; only, it is all nonsense; why do you refuse?
The Empress has been full of the idea for the last two days. In that
position you will be frequently seeing her, and the fact is, to tell the
truth, she is dying of boredom, perpetually surrounded by fools.’
Potyomkin’s eloquence overcame her opposition; she went to the Senate
to take the oath for her new duties, and from that moment became a
consummate president. She asked old Euler, the great mathematician, to
introduce her at the assembled Academy; she wanted to appear under the
aegis of learning before the academicians. She presented herself to them
not in silence, as Russian presidents usually do, but with a speech,
after which, seeing that the first place next the president was occupied
by Stehlin,[66] she turned to Euler and said: ‘Sit where you prefer;
whatever place you occupy will be the first.’
Then with her habitual energy she set to work to eradicate abuses,
that is, thefts; she increased the number of the pupils, improved the
printing-press, and finally proposed to the Empress the founding of a
Russian Academy. Catherine appointed her president of this new academy
too. Again Princess Dashkov made a speech. ‘You all know, gentlemen,’
she said, among other things, ‘the wealth and splendour of our language.
The powerful eloquence of Cicero, the measured grandeur of Virgil,
the fascinating charm of Demosthenes, and the light language of Ovid,
translated into Russian, lose nothing of their beauties.... But we are
without exact rules, the limits and meanings of words have not been
defined, and many foreign phrases have crept into our language,’ and
therefore she proposed that the Russian Academy should work at a grammar
and dictionary of the language. She herself prepared to share the
labours of the academicians, and did, in fact, work at the dictionary.
The Empress seemed to be pleased with her. Her energy at this period
was amazing. She undertook the publication of special geographical maps
of the different provinces, and edited the periodical, _Lovers of the
Russian Language_, to which the Empress herself, Von Vizin, Derzhavin,
and others contributed.
Her relations with the Empress were unmistakably improved. A
correspondence sprang up between them again; the letters deal with a
review they were publishing and various literary subjects. These letters,
which are of little general interest, are a striking proof of the degree
to which good manners, culture, and humanity have since sunk in the
Winter Palace. Catherine gives no orders, does not command in her notes,
does not confine herself to set forms, is not afraid of jesting; she has
confidence in herself, and the Empress often gives way to the woman of
intelligence. The Prussian Gatchina tone, translated into official red
tape by Nicholas, has replaced with brutal illiteracy the gentleness of
cultured language.
All would have been well if only Princess Dashkov could have kept on good
terms with the favourites; she got on better with Potyomkin than with any
of the rest, perhaps because Potyomkin was the cleverest of them; with
Lanskoy, and afterwards with Manonov, she was at daggers drawn. Zubov
gossiped spitefully against her, and did her a great deal of mischief.
In the summer of 1783 she was in Finland with the Empress, who had an
interview there with the King of Sweden. Lanskoy kept pestering her to
know why in the news published under the auspices of the Academy her name
was the only one mentioned of the persons who were with the Empress.
Princess Dashkov explained to him that it was not her doing at all, that
the Court news was sent and printed without alteration. Lanskoy went on
sulking and grumbling till she was sick of it.
‘You ought to know,’ she said to him, ‘that, though it is always an
honour and a happiness to me to dine with the Empress, I cannot really
be so much overwhelmed by it as to publish it in the papers. I am too
much accustomed to it; as a little child I used to dine on the Empress
Elizabeth’s knee, as a little girl I sat at her table; it is so natural
that it could not be a matter for boasting to me.’
Lanskoy grew heated, but Princess Dashkov, seeing that the room was
beginning to fill up, raised her voice, and said: ‘Sir, people whose
whole life has been devoted to the public welfare are not always
particularly powerful or happy, but they always have the right to insist
on being treated without insolence. They quietly go their own way and
outlive those meteors of a day which burst and fall, leaving no trace.’
The doors were flung open and the Empress walked in. Her arrival put an
end to the conversation. How could Lanskoy fail to hate her? It was as
well for her that he died soon after.
On her return from Finland Princess Dashkov received her friend, Mrs.
Hamilton, to stay with her. She took her to her new estate; there she
kept a village holiday, met with bread and salt the peasants newly
settled there, introduced them to the Englishwoman, and informed them
that henceforth the new village would be called Hamiltonovo. After this
she travelled with her to other estates in the provinces of Kaluga,
Smolensk, Kiev, and Tambov.
The following year Princess Dashkov received a cruel blow in her personal
life. Her son was in Rumyantsev’s army, and she was glad that he was not
in Petersburg. Latterly even Potyomkin had designs upon him. He once sent
Samoylov to fetch him late one evening, and Samoylov gave the mother a
hint of their project. She refused to have anything to do with it, and
said that if it happened she would take advantage of her son’s influence
to obtain leave of absence abroad for many years. For this reason she was
relieved that her son was away in Kiev. But there love had another arrow
in store for him, aimed not from above, but from below.
One day, as she came out of the Empress’s bedroom, she met Rebinder,
who warm-heartedly congratulated her on her son’s marriage. She was
thunderstruck. Rebinder was disconcerted; he had had no idea that young
Dashkov’s wedding was a secret. She was wounded in her motherly feelings
and in her pride; on the one hand, the _mésalliance_, on the other, the
lack of confidence. It was a heavy blow, it made her ill.
Two months later her son wrote her a letter, asking for her permission to
marry; this was a fresh blow—falsity, cowardice, deceit. Moreover, he had
so little understanding of his mother’s character that together with his
own letter he sent one from Field-Marshal Rumyantsev obviously written
at his request. Rumyantsev tried to persuade Princess Dashkov to sanction
her son’s marriage, spoke of the prejudices of aristocratic birth and of
the instability of fortune, and, in her words, ‘reached such a pitch of
futility as to give advice in a matter of such gravity between mother and
son, though nothing in their relations gave him a right to meddle.’
Wounded on two sides at once, she wrote a sarcastic letter to Rumyantsev,
in which she explained to him that, ‘among the various foolish ideas
with which her head was filled, there was happily no exaggerated respect
for aristocratic birth; but that, if she had been endowed with such
remarkable eloquence as the Count, she would have used it to show the
superiority of good breeding over bad.’
To her son her letter was strikingly simple; here it is: ‘When your
father intended to marry a Countess Vorontsov, he drove post-haste to
Moscow to ask his mother’s sanction. You are married; I knew this before
you wrote, and I know, too, that my mother-in-law had done no more to
deserve to have a friend in her son than I have.’
The discussions that followed this and other family affairs must have
cost her much mortification. Her daughter parted from her husband.
Miss Wilmot has omitted several pages in the Memoirs, after which
Princess Dashkov goes on like this: ‘All was black in the future and the
present.... I was so worn out by suffering that I was at times visited by
the thought of suicide.’
And so the demon of family troubles crushed her, as it has crushed many
strong characters. Family misfortunes wound so deeply, because they steal
upon one in silence and to combat them is almost impossible. Victory in
the struggle makes it worse. They are like those poisons whose presence
is only recognised when their effect is shown in pain, that is, when the
man is already saturated with them.
Meanwhile, the French Revolution had come. Catherine, who was growing
old, worn out by a life of vice, threw herself into reaction. This was
no longer the conspirator of the 27th of June, who said to Betsky:
‘I reign by the will of God and the election of the people,’ not the
Petersburg correspondent of Voltaire and the translator of Beccaria and
Filangier,[67] who proclaimed in her famous _Nakaz_[68] the evils of the
censorship and the advantage of an assembly of deputies from the whole
realm of Russia. In 1792 we find her an old woman afraid of thought, a
worthy mother of Paul.... And like a pledge that a savage reaction would
crush for long years every branch of free development in Russia, Nicholas
was born before her death. Catherine’s dying hand was still there to
caress this awful monster who was destined to cry _Halt!_ to the epoch of
Peter’s reforms, and to delay the progress of Russia for thirty years.
Princess Dashkov, an aristocrat and an admirer of English institutions,
could not sympathise with the Revolution; but still less could she share
the feverish terror of free speech and applaud the punishment of thought.
Catherine was alarmed by Radishtchyev’s pamphlet;[69] she saw in it the
‘signal of revolution.’ Radishtchyev was seized and sent without trial
to Siberia. Princess Dashkov’s brother, Alexandr Vorontsov, who loved
Radishtchyev, and had been a benefactor to him, retired from the Service
and went to Moscow.
Her own turn came next. Knyazhnin’s[70] widow asked her, for the benefit
of her children, to publish under the auspices of the Academy her
husband’s last tragedy. The subject was taken from the history of the
subjugation of Novgorod. Princess Dashkov directed that it should be
published. Field-Marshal Saltykov, ‘who,’ as she says, ‘could not be
charged with ever having read a book of any sort,’ read this one and
talked to Zubov of its pernicious tendency. Zubov spoke to the Empress
about it.
Next day the Petersburg police-master arrived at the Academy bookshop to
seize the copies of the Jacobin Knyazhnin’s inflammatory tragedy; and
in the evening the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, came himself to tell
Princess Dashkov of the Empress’s displeasure at the publication of the
dangerous play. Princess Dashkov answered coldly that probably no one
had read the tragedy, and that it was certainly less pernicious than the
French plays which were being performed at the Hermitage.
The ex-liberal Catherine met her with a frowning face. ‘What have I
done,’ she asked her, ‘that you publish such dangerous books against me
and my authority?’
‘And does your Majesty really think that?’ the princess asked.
‘That tragedy ought to have been burnt by the hand of the hangman.’
‘Whether it is burnt by the hand of the hangman or not is no concern of
mine. I shall not have to blush for it. But for God’s sake, madam, before
you decide on an action so opposed to your character, read the whole
play.’
At that the conversation ended. Next day Princess Dashkov attended a
great court reception, and made up her mind that if the Empress did
not send for her to her dressing-room, as she always did, she would
resign her post. Samoylov came out from the inner apartments. With a
patronising air he went up to Princess Dashkov and told her not to be
uneasy, that the Empress was not angry with her.
She could not brook this, and answered, as her habit was, in a loud
voice: ‘I have no reason to be uneasy, my conscience is clear. It would
greatly distress me if the Empress retained an unjust feeling towards
me; but I should not be surprised even then: at my age injustice and
misfortune have long ceased to surprise me.’
The Empress was reconciled with her, and tried once more to explain why
she had acted as she did. Instead of answering her, Princess Dashkov
replied: ‘A grey cat has run between us, madam: let us not awaken her
again.’
But Petersburg was becoming distasteful to her; she was sick of it. She
felt ‘utterly alone in these surroundings, which became every day more
hateful to her.’ This feeling of repulsion was so great that she made up
her mind to leave the court, Petersburg, her public activity, her Academy
of Science, and her Russian Academy, and finally her Empress, and to go
and live on her estate in the country.
‘With deep sorrow I thought of parting, perhaps for ever, from the
Sovereign whom I loved passionately, and loved long before she was on her
throne, when she had less means of bestowing benefits on me than I found
occasions for serving her. I still loved her, although she did not always
treat me as her own heart, her own brain, would have prompted her.’
That is all! Not one word of anger, of condemnation for complete lack of
heart, for ingratitude; even here she gives us to understand that it was
not Catherine’s fault, but other people’s.
The parting of these women was remarkable. The Empress said to her drily,
and with an angry face: ‘I wish you a good journey.’ Princess Dashkov
was amazed; she did not understand it, and went away after kissing her
hand. Next morning Troshtchinsky, the Secretary of the Empress, arrived,
and in her name handed the princess an unpaid bill, the unpaid bill of a
tailor who had done work for Shtcherbinin. The Empress sent word that she
was surprised that the princess should leave Petersburg without carrying
out her promise to pay her daughter’s debts. Zubov, who hated Princess
Dashkov, and was a patron of the tailor’s, had carried these paltry
details to the Empress. To crown it all, it appeared that the bill had
nothing to do with her daughter, but had been incurred by her husband,
Shtcherbinin, who was living apart from her.
Princess Dashkov, utterly revolted at this humiliation, firmly resolved
to leave Petersburg for ever.
But people of her temperament do not fold their hands at a little over
fifty, in the full possession of their faculties. She became a capital
manager of her estates; she built houses, drew maps, and laid out parks.
There was not a tree nor a bush in her garden which she had not planted
or to which she had not at least assigned its position. She built four
houses, and says with pride that her peasants were among the most
prosperous in the neighbourhood. While she was engaged in these rustic
pursuits, Serpuhovsky, the Marshal of the Nobility, suddenly arrived,
looking distressed.
‘What is the matter with you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you know?’ answered the Marshal; ‘the Empress is dead.’
Princess Dashkov’s daughter rushed to her, thinking that she would faint.
‘No, no, don’t worry about me,’ said her mother; ‘I am quite well, though
it would be happiness to die at this moment. My fate is worse; I am
destined to see all the reforms that had been begun destroyed, and my
country ruined and unhappy.’
With these words she fell into convulsions, and gave way to prolonged
grief.
It was not long before she felt the heavy, weighty, autocratic hand of
Peter’s crazy son.[71] First she received a decree discharging her from
her post; she asked the Prosecutor-General, Samoylov, to testify to the
Tsar her gratitude for relieving her from the burden which had become too
great for her strength.
A little later she went to Moscow, but the Governor-General of Moscow
called on her at once and informed her that she should go back to the
country immediately, and there think of the year 1762. She answered,
‘that she never forgot that year, but that in accordance with the Tsar’s
will she would think of that time, which had left her neither stings of
conscience nor remorse.’
Her brother Alexandr, anxious to soothe her, told her that Paul was doing
all this now for the rehabilitation of his father’s memory, but that
after his coronation things would go better. On reaching Troitskoye she
wrote to him: ‘Dear brother, you write that Paul will leave me in peace
after the coronation. Believe me, you are much mistaken in his character.
When the tyrant has once struck his victim, he will repeat his blows
until he has crushed the victim utterly. The consciousness of innocence
and the feeling of indignation serve to give me courage to endure
discomfort so long as his growing spite does not assail all of you, my
relations, also. Of one thing you may rest assured, that no circumstances
will compel me to do anything or say anything to demean myself.
‘Examining my past life,’ she adds, ‘I am not without inner consolation,
aware in myself of sufficient strength of character, tested by many
calamities, to feel certain that I shall find again strength to endure
misfortune.’
She correctly gauged the character of the relentless, petty, frenzied
tyrant. Only a few days after she had reached Troitskoye, a courier from
the Governor-General arrived from Moscow. Paul commanded Princess Dashkov
to go at once to her son’s estate in a remote district of the Novgorod
Province, and there to await his further commands.
She answered that she was ready to obey the Sovereign’s will, and that it
was a matter of complete indifference to her where she ended her days,
but that she knew nothing of the estate nor of the roads thither, that
she would have to write from Moscow either for her son’s steward or for a
peasant from that village to guide her by the cross-country roads.
When she was ready and had obtained a guide, she drove off into her exile
in the winter frost, travelling slowly with her own horses, surrounded
by the spies of Arharov, and accompanied by her kind-hearted kinsman,
Laptyev, whom she tried in vain to dissuade from coming and exposing
himself to the persecution of the frenzied autocrat.