mistaken: when it was reported to Paul that Laptyev had accompanied her,
he said: ‘He is not such a petticoat as our young men; he knows how to
wear the breeches.’
As a rule far more value is attached to such momentary flashes of humane
feeling in Paul and others than they deserve. What would Paul have done
if all the young men had known ‘how to wear the breeches’ like Laptyev?
he had plenty of Arharovs, Araktcheyevs, and Obolyaninovs to torture
them, fetter them in chains, and send them into exile. (Pahlen and
Bennigsen[72] did show him, however, that there was an even better way to
‘wear the breeches’!)
This approbation of the victim is the final outrage on him, the
miscreant sets his conscience at rest with it. On one occasion, in the
presence of Ségur, Potyomkin gave some colonel a blow, and, recollecting
himself, said to the ambassador: ‘How is one to treat them differently
when they put up with everything?’
And what would Potyomkin’s answer have been, if the colonel had given him
a blow or a challenge?
Princess Dashkov settled in a peasant’s hut. She took another for her
daughter, and a third as a kitchen. To add to the discomforts of this
life in the wilds in winter, exiles from Petersburg to Siberia were
brought by her windows. The figure of one young officer haunted her long
afterwards; he was some distant relative of hers. Learning that she was
here, he wanted to see her. Risky as such an interview was, she received
him. She was shocked to see the convulsive twitching of his face, and how
ill he looked; this was the result of the tortures in which his limbs had
been twisted and dislocated. What had this criminal done? He had said
something about Paul in the barracks, and some one had informed against
him. Yet perhaps he, too, knew how to ‘wear the breeches,’ till his arms
were wrenched out of their sockets.
Before the spring flooding of the rivers, which would have cut off
Princess Dashkov from all communication for a long period, she wrote a
letter to the Empress Marya Feodorovna, and enclosed in it a request for
permission to move to her Kaluga estate. Paul could not have liked the
tone of her letter; she said in it that it was as little to her honour
to write this letter as it was to her Majesty’s to read it, but that
religion and humanity compelled her to make a final effort to save all
her people from this cruel exile.
Paul, as usual, flew into a fury, and gave orders that pen and paper
should be taken from Princess Dashkov, that she should be forbidden all
correspondence, be kept under stricter supervision, and I do not know
what else. ‘It is not so easy,’ he said, ‘to turn me off the throne.’
With these orders a courier was despatched, but the Empress and Madame
Nelidov induced the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovitch to beg his infuriated
father for mercy, and the little boy, with the help of the wife and
mistress, succeeded. Paul took up a pen and wrote: ‘Princess Ekaterina
Romanovna, since you desire to return to your Kaluga estate, I give you
permission for the same. I remain well disposed to you.—PAUL.’
Arharov had to despatch another courier: fortunately the second overtook
the first.
In 1798 Paul suddenly took a fancy to Prince Dashkov, showered undeserved
favours of all sorts upon him, and made him the present of an estate.
Dashkov asked Kurakin to submit to Paul that, instead of an estate, he
would prefer permission for his mother to live where she chose. Paul gave
the permission with the proviso that she should never remain in the same
town where he was.
The mother was forgiven. Now came the son’s turn. A certain Altesti was
tried for misappropriation of public money, but really for being a friend
of Zubov. Dashkov said to Lopuhin that Altesti was innocent. In the
evening he received the following note: ‘Since you meddle in affairs that
have nothing to do with you, I have dismissed you from your duties.—PAUL.’
Dashkov, afraid of worse to follow, went off to his Tambov estate.
At last, on the 12th of March 1801, Paul’s life ‘came to an end,’ as
Princess Dashkov says. With deep emotion and intense joy she learned that
this pernicious man had ceased to exist. ‘How many times,’ she goes on,
‘have I thanked Heaven that Paul exiled me! by so doing he saved me from
the humiliating obligation of appearing at the court of such a sovereign.’
She breathed freely again in the reign of Alexander ... she could appear
at his court without the loss of her human dignity, but she did not feel
at home in the new surroundings. Many things had changed since Catherine
had sent her the tailor’s bill. Princess Dashkov, now an old woman, is
angry with the younger generation surrounding Alexander, and thinks that
they are all Jacobins or martinets.
One pure presence arrested her, and with respectful love, with reverence,
she looked upon her and attached herself to her; sorrowful and
unappreciated, this melancholy being moved thoughtfully through the halls
of the Winter Palace, and vanished like a shadow; she would have been
forgotten, if we did not sometimes come across a well-known picture of
the year 1815, in which the Emperor Alexander and the Empress Elizabeth
are represented as the peacemakers of Europe.
Miss Wilmot has appended to Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs a well-drawn
portrait of the Empress Elizabeth; the unhappy woman is standing with her
arms folded, she looks out mournfully from the paper, a hidden grief and
a sort of perplexity can be seen in her eyes, the whole figure expresses
one thought: ‘I am a stranger here’; indeed, she is holding up her skirt
and wraps as though on the point of departure.
How strange was her destiny, and that of Anna Pavlovna, the wife of the
Tsarevitch!
After the coronation Princess Dashkov saw that there was really no place
for her at the new court, and she began making plans for repose at
Troitskoye. In her honoured seclusion she again became a power.
Friends and relations, celebrities whose fame was waning, and rising
stars visited her.
‘Crossing your threshold
I am back in Catherine’s days.
Taking no share in the world’s hopes and fears,
You at your window stand with mocking gaze
To watch at times the flying wheel of change.
E’en so, withdrawing from the busy whirl
To court the Muses and their idle ease,
In porphyry baths and marble palaces,
Grandees in Rome endured their world’s decay.
And to them from afar the young men came,—
Dictator, consul, tribune, warrior chief—
To rest in peace, to heave luxurious sighs,
Then off at once upon the road again.’
She often visited Moscow. There she was held in the highest respect;
active and inexhaustible, she was seen at balls and dinners, and arrived
there indeed earlier than any. Young ladies trembled at her criticisms
and observations, men sought the honour of being presented to her.
At the other end of Moscow, not far from the Donsky Monastery, another
living monument of the reign of Catherine was passing his last days in a
palace surrounded by gardens. He led a gloomy life, retaining in spite of
his age his athletic frame and savage energy of character. In 1796, with
a scowling brow but unrepentant, he carried all over Petersburg the crown
of the man whom he had murdered; hundreds of thousands of people pointed
the finger at him; his companion, Prince Baryatinsky, turned pale and
nearly fainted; old Orlov merely complained of his gout.
But his sombre life was not to pass uncheered. At his side a gentle,
tender little girl, exceptionally graceful and talented, was growing up.
The haughty old man began to live for her; he became her nurse, petted
her, cared for her, waited on her, and loved her beyond all measure, as
no one but her dead mother could have loved her.
Sitting on his sofa, he made his daughter dance gipsy and Russian dances,
watched her movements with fond tenderness and unspoken pride, sometimes
wiping a tear from eyes which had, dry and cold, looked on so many
horrors.
At last the time came for the old man to bring his treasure out into the
world; but to whom was he to confide her, into what woman’s care was he
to entrust this cherished flower? There was, indeed, one woman whom he
could have trusted, who with her marvellous tact might have directed her
first steps; but they were not on good terms. She had not forgiven him
for the stain he had brought on her revolution forty-two years before.
And now the haughty Alexey Orlov, the Orlov of Chesme,[73] whom even
Paul could not crush, sought the favour of an interview with Princess
Ekaterina Romanovna, and, receiving permission to present his daughter to
her, joyfully hastened to take advantage of it and went with his Annushka
to see her.
Princess Dashkov came in to greet him; bowing, the old man kissed her
hand; both were agitated; at last Princess Dashkov said to him: ‘So many
years have passed since we have met, Count, and so many events have
transformed the world in which we once lived that, indeed, I feel that
we are meeting now as shades in the other world. The presence of this
angel’ (she added, feelingly pressing to her bosom the daughter of her
former enemy) ‘who has brought us together again makes that feeling even
stronger.’ In his delight Orlov kissed the hand of Miss Wilmot, who was
afraid of him, in spite of the fact that she calls him ‘a majestic old
man,’ and saw with surprise the portrait of Catherine on his breast,
framed in nothing but diamonds, and the _heiduks_ standing in the hall,
and with them a dwarf dressed like a jester.
The Count invited Princess Dashkov, and gave one of those fabulous
banquets of which we used to hear traditions in our childhood,
feasts reminiscent of Versailles and the Golden Horde. The gardens
were brilliantly lighted up, the house was thrown open, throngs of
house-serfs in gorgeous masquerade costumes filled the rooms, an
orchestra played, the tables groaned under the viands; in short, a royal
banquet. He had some one now to whom to entrust his daughter!
At the height of the festivities, the father called her, the guests
formed a circle, and she danced, danced with a shawl and danced with a
tambourine in the Russian style. The old father beat time and watched
Princess Dashkov’s face; the old lady was pleased, the crowd was silent
through respect for the father’s rank and the daughter’s extraordinary
grace. ‘She danced,’ says Miss Wilmot, ‘with such simplicity, such
natural charm, such dignity and expression, that her movements seemed her
language.’
After each dance, she ran to her father and kissed his hand. Princess
Dashkov praised her; her father bade her kiss the princess’s hand too.
But he fancied that she was overheated, and with his own hands wrapped
her in a shawl that she might not take cold. At supper, with a blare
of trumpets and kettledrums, the Count, standing, drank the health of
Princess Dashkov. Then followed her favourite Russian songs accompanied
by a full orchestra. Then the strains of the polka were heard, and Orlov
led Princess Dashkov into the drawing-room, where the music of the wind
instruments astonished our Irish girl, who had never before heard serfdom
put to the service of art. At last Princess Dashkov got up to take leave,
and the Count, bowing and kissing her hand, thanked her for honouring his
poor house.
This was how Orlov of Chesme celebrated his reconciliation with old
Princess Dashkov, and this was how the grim, harsh man loved his daughter.
I, too, like Princess Ekaterina Romanovna, am almost reconciled to him.
Savage were the days in which he lived, and savage were his actions; the
Russia of Peter’s creation was still in the melting-pot: let us not judge
him more severely than Princess Dashkov did, and, if the prayers of
parents can do much in the next world, let us forgive Orlov much in this
for his love for his daughter.
Her fate, too, was a strange one.
As a boy I saw her once or twice, then I saw her again in 1841 at
Novgorod; she was living near the Yurev Monastery. Her whole life was one
prolonged, sorrowful penitence for a crime that she had not committed,
one prayer for the remission of her father’s sins, one act of atonement
for them. She could not overcome the horror inspired in her by the murder
of Peter III., and was crushed at the thought of her father’s eternal
punishment. All her mind, all her Orlov energy, she fixed on this one
object, and little by little abandoned herself completely to gloomy
mysticism and superstition. Called by birth, by wealth, and by talent
to one of the foremost positions not only in Russia, but in Europe, she
spent her days with tedious monks, with old bishops, with all sorts of
paralytics, sanctimonious hypocrites, crazy saints. I am told that after
1815 German hereditary princes sought her hand; Alexander showed her
marked attention; she withdrew from the court. Her palace grew emptier
and emptier, and at last sank into complete silence; neither the clatter
of old-fashioned goblets nor the choruses of singers were heard in it,
and no one cared about the cherished racehorses. Only the black figures
of bearded monks moved gloomily about the garden avenues and looked at
the fountains, as though Count Alexey’s funeral were not yet over—and,
indeed, the prayer for the repose of his soul still went on.
In the drawing-room, where she had spun and twirled in the gipsy dance in
her girlish purity, innocent of the significance of the ardent movements
of the Asiatic dance, where smoothly, with downcast eyes, she had danced
with modestly raised hand our languid feminine dances, and where her
terrible father had gazed at her with tears in his eyes, the bigoted
fanatic, Foty,[74] sat now uttering incoherent speeches, and bringing
even greater horror into her crushed soul; the daughter of the haughty
conqueror of Chesme meekly listened to his sinister words, carefully
covering his feet with a shawl, perhaps the very one in which her father
had wrapped her!
‘Anna,’ Foty would say, ‘fetch me water,’ and she ran for water. ‘Now sit
and listen,’ and she sat and listened. Poor woman!
Her palace and gardens in Moscow she presented to the Tsar. What for? I
do not know. The immense estates, the stud-farms, all went to adorn the
Yurev Monastery; thither she transferred, too, her father’s coffin; there
in a special vault a lamp for ever burned, and a prayer was muttered
over him, there her own sarcophagus, still empty when I saw it, was
prepared. In the church twilight, the wealth of the Orlovs, transformed
into rubies, pearls, and emeralds, glitters mournfully in the settings
of ikons and the caps of archimandrites. With them the luckless daughter
tried to bribe the Heavenly Judge.
Catherine had robbed the monasteries of their estates and distributed
them among the Orlovs and her other lovers. What a nemesis!
Princess Dashkov’s Memoirs fail us about this time. The very details of
her interview with Orlov we have taken from the letters of the two Wilmot
sisters.
Miss Mary Wilmot, grieving for the loss of her brother and dull at
home, received an invitation from Princess Dashkov to spend a year or
two with her. Miss Mary did not know the princess personally, but (she
was Mrs. Hamilton’s niece) she had from her childhood heard of this
wonderful woman, had heard how at eighteen she had been at the head of
a conspiracy, how she had dashed on horseback before revolting troops,
how afterwards she had lived in England and stayed in Ireland, had been
President of the Academy, and had written passionate letters to Mrs.
Hamilton. The young girl imagined her something fantastic, ‘a fairy and
partly a witch,’ and for that very reason decided, in 1803, to go to her.
When she reached Troitskoye, however, she felt so scared and homesick
that she would have been glad to return if it had been possible.
A short old lady, in a long dark cloth dress with a star on the left
side, and something like a peaked hat, came to meet her. Round her neck
she had a shabby old kerchief—one damp evening, when out for a walk,
twenty years earlier, Mrs. Hamilton had given her that kerchief, and from
that time forward she had kept it as a holy relic. But if her attire
really was suggestive of a witch, the noble features of her face and the
expression of infinite tenderness in her eyes fascinated the Irish girl
from the first moment. ‘There was so much truth, so much warmth, dignity,
and simplicity in her manner, that I loved her before she said anything.’
Miss Mary was completely under her influence from the first day, was
surprised at it, and angry with herself, but could not resist the
attraction of the splendid old lady. She liked everything in her, even
her broken English, which gave something childlike to her words. ‘Tears
and life,’ she says, ‘have given serenity and softness to her features,
and their expression of pride, of which slight traces still remain, has
been replaced by indulgence.’
But how Princess Dashkov loved her! She loved her passionately, as she
had once loved Catherine. Such freshness of feeling, such feminine
tenderness, such craving for love, such youthfulness of heart, are
astounding at sixty. The solicitude of a mother, the solicitude of
a sister, a lover, are what Miss Mary found at Troitskoye; for her
entertainment Princess Dashkov went to Moscow, took her to balls, showed
her monasteries, presented her to Empresses, adorned her room with
flowers, spent evenings with her reading the letters of Catherine and
other celebrities.
Miss Wilmot begged and besought her to write her Memoirs. ‘And what I
would never do for my relatives or my friends, I am doing for her.’
She wrote her Memoirs for her, and dedicated them to her.
In 1805 Princess Dashkov invited Miss Mary’s sister, Miss Katharine,
who was then in France and was obliged to leave that country, being
persecuted as an Englishwoman. The sisters were not in the least alike.
Mary was a soft, tender creature, delighted to have some one to protect
her, and to nestle under some one’s wing; she attached herself to
Princess Dashkov, as the weak twig to a strong old tree; she calls her
‘my Russian mother’; she came to her from a little town, and had seen
nothing before except her ‘Emerald Isle.’ Her sister, who had lived in
Paris, was lively and hot-tempered, independent in her opinions, clever
and ironical, not particularly loving or tolerant, and rather free in her
speech. Moreover, there was a great deal in Russia that she positively
disliked—and so her letters have for us a special interest of their own.
‘Russia,’ she says, ‘is like a girl of twelve—wild and awkward, who has
been dressed up in a fashionable Parisian hat. We are living here in the
fourteenth or fifteenth century.’[75]
She was far more shocked by serfdom than her kind-hearted sister. In
vain Princess Dashkov pointed out to her the prosperity of her peasants.
‘They are well off,’ writes Miss Katharine, ‘while the princess lives,
but what will happen to them afterwards?’ Every landowner seems to her an
iron link in the fetters of Russia.
In the pitiful cringing, the shameless servility of our society she very
correctly sees the reflection of slavery. With amazement she sees again
in assembly halls and drawing-rooms slaves devoid of all moral feeling
and personal dignity. She is astonished at visitors who dare not sit
down, and stand for hours at a time at the door, shifting from one foot
to the other, till they are dismissed with a nod. ‘The conceptions of
good and evil are in Russia mixed up with the idea of being in favour
or out of favour. A man’s worth is easily ascertained from the address
calendar, and it depends on the Tsar whether a man is unreservedly taken
for a snake or an ass.’
The Moscow grandees did not overawe her with the galaxy of their stars,
with their ponderous dignity and boring dinners.
‘I feel,’ she writes after the festivities of 1806, ‘that I have been
floating all this time among the shades and spirits of Catherine’s
palace. Moscow is the imperial political Elysium of Russia. All the
personages of power and authority in the reigns of Catherine and Paul,
who have long ago been succeeded by others, retire into the luxurious
idleness of this lazy city, maintaining a supposed consequence which is
allowed them out of courtesy. Influence and power have passed years ago
to another generation; nevertheless, the _oberkammerherr_ of the Empress
Catherine, Prince Golitsyn, is still hung all over with orders and
decorations under the burden of which his ninety years are weighed down
to the ground; still, as in the palace of Catherine, a diamond key is
tied to his skeleton, which is dressed in an embroidered kaftan, and he
still majestically accepts tokens of respect from his companion shades
who once shared power and honour with him.
‘By his side is another gaudy _revenant_, Count Osterman, once the great
Chancellor; he is hung with ribbons of every possible colour, red, blue,
and striped; eighty-three years are piled upon his head, but still he
drives his skeleton about with the bones rattling behind a team of six
horses, dines with _heiduks_ waiting at his table, and keeps up the
solemn etiquette by which he was surrounded when he was in power.’ Among
the shades she saw, too, Count Alexey Orlov.
‘The hand that murdered Peter III. is studded with diamonds, among
his gifts from royalty the portrait of the Empress is particularly
conspicuous; Catherine smiles from it in everlasting gratitude.’
Miss Wilmot mentions, too, Korsakov, ‘who might have been taken for a
glittering vision of diamonds,’ Prince Baryatinsky and some other figures
from this world of the past, ‘from which they have retained the habit of
court gossip about important nonentities, haughtiness, vanity, and the
empty bustle in which they find their joy and their sorrow.’
And she concludes with indignation: ‘And yet the open coffin stands at
their tottering feet threatening to consign their paltry existences to
speedy oblivion.’
‘All these old grandees are surrounded by wives, daughters, and
granddaughters, dressed up to the nines, and sitting in gilded
apartments, in patriarchal fashion making their maids dance for their
amusement, and incessantly regaling one on jam. There is something
French in their appearance, and, being brought up by Frenchwomen, they
speak that language well and dress in the latest Parisian mode. But
there is very little real politeness in these ladies; their education is
absolutely superficial, and there is not a trace here of the charming
lightness of French society. When a Moscow lady has scanned you from
head to foot and kissed you five or six times (though twice, one would
think, would be more than enough), has assured you of her everlasting
affection, told you to your face that you are sweet and charming, asked
you the price of everything you have got on, and babbled about the coming
ball at the Hall of the Nobility, she has nothing more to say.’
Both sisters were greatly shocked by the vulgar habit of wearing other
people’s diamonds at balls. Moreover, every one knew whose they were;
thus a Princess Golitsyn used to lend her friends a girdle of diamonds
and a headdress of marvellous beauty that was known to the whole town. On
one occasion she adorned the shoulders of a niece of Princess Dashkov’s
with her jewels; the young lady had completely forgotten that the
princess was to be present; the stern and implacable old lady, it need
hardly be said, detested these displays of other people’s wealth. The
young lady was so terrified at the sight of Princess Dashkov that she
kept out of sight all the evening. But the fatal hour of supper arrived;
Miss Mary, feeling cold, put on her shawl; this struck the young lady as
a way of salvation, and she took hers to conceal the rivers of diamonds
from Princess Dashkov. They sat down, the aunt opposite; the soup tureen
screened the niece a little, but her headdress burnt her like fire.
Princess Dashkov stared at it. Red patches came out on the poor girl’s
face and tears came into her eyes. The princess said not a word.