in a panic; death had robbed her so often. Were all her plans to be
brought to naught on the eve of their bright fulfilment? She cast all
caution to the winds and decided to bring the German Princess to Russia
at once. Brümmer was sent to write a letter inviting the mother and
daughter for a visit. Scarcely was this letter dispatched than Brümmer
was sent to write another bidding the ladies to make haste. Elisabeth
was off; nothing could stop her now. Her customary indolence laid
aside, she summoned Brümmer again after a few days had elapsed and
demanded to know whether the guests from Zerbst were not already on
their way. The officer played his part between the two ladies well. To
the Empress he said that the Princess of Zerbst wished only for wings
to come flying to her Majesty. To the Princess of Zerbst he wrote that
the invitation was due to his devoted services on behalf of the House
of Holstein. He continued to bully the prospective bridegroom just as
much as ever.
2
While Brümmer’s letter was traveling from Petersburg to Berlin,
the Stettin family was spending Christmas in Zerbst with Uncle
Johann Ludwig. There were three children at this time: Fike, Fritz
and Lischen, the baby who had been named for the glorious Russian
kinswoman. Christmas at Zerbst was a sober Lutheran Festival with
much hymn singing in which Fike did not shine, and gifts of handiwork
in which she excelled. Came Sylvesterabend, when the future can be
glimpsed in candle-flames, in bits of molten lead, and similar strange
messengers of fate. It was a night for Fräulein Khayn to see ghosts
if she ever saw them, for a courier was riding from Berlin to Zerbst
bearing destiny in the form of Brümmer’s letter.
On the morning of New Year’s day the family all went to church. When
the bells began to ring the little procession emerged from the castle,
two stiff old men and a frail little nine-year-old boy accompanied
by their numerous women folk, among whom the youthful Sophie walked
as tall as any of them. It was time that she should be married, but
dowerless and plain how was she to find a husband? Fike’s thoughts
were at this time fixed on her Uncle George, a younger brother of her
mother’s who had been paying her court. Although the Princess of Zerbst
had encouraged her brother’s suit, viewing him favorably as a bird in
the hand, the melancholy George had not really asked his niece to marry
him. Still, on this New Year’s day Fike’s thoughts were with her uncle
as she sang out of key with the others the long, chanting hymns of the
Lutheran service.
While the family sat at dinner the courier arrived. A package of
letters was handed to the General who tore off the outside covering and
gave a thick missive to his wife. As the Princess read, her daughter
sitting next to her caught sight of the words “... with the Princess
your eldest daughter.” From that moment Uncle George was forgotten.
The shrewd girl guessed the contents of the twelve-page letter in her
mother’s hands although nothing was said to her. Her parents shut
themselves up in the library for three days with ostentatious secrecy
while the rest of the household buzzed with excitement. Behind the
closed doors the old General was putting up a stubborn resistance. He
did not wish to send his daughter to Russia for the same reason that
Frederick did not wish to send his sister there.
“At the express and particular command of her Imperial Highness,” said
Brümmer’s letter, “I have to inform you, Madame, that the Empress
wishes that your Highness accompanied by the Princess your eldest
daughter, shall come hither as soon as possible and without loss of
time and repair to whatever place the Imperial Court at the moment may
be. Your Highness is too clever not to understand the true meaning of
the impatience of the Empress to see you here as well as the Princess
your daughter of whom report has said so much that is lovely. There are
times when the voice of the world is not other than the voice of God.
“At the same time our incomparable Monarch has expressly charged me to
inform your Highness that his Highness, your consort, shall under no
circumstances come with you. Her Majesty has very important reasons
for wishing it so. A word from your Highness will, I believe, be all
that is necessary to fulfill the will of our divine Empress.” Brümmer
enclosed an order for ten thousand rubles payable in Berlin and another
credit for two thousand rubles payable in Petersburg.
A second courier arrived two hours later bringing a letter from King
Frederick who, like Brümmer, took all the credit for the invitation,
urged the need of secrecy, and repeated the injunction of the Empress
about leaving the General at home. Elisabeth Petrovna guessed that
Fike’s father would be a hindrance to her plans. She had bought off
the guardian of Karl Peter Ulrich by transferring to him the boy’s own
claim to the Swedish throne. In the same canny spirit, she limited her
dealings to the mother of the bride whom she wanted for the Grand Duke
and excluded the girl’s father from any share in the negotiations.
Having put the General firmly in his place she left it to his
over-lord, the King of Prussia, to keep him there. Even had the Prince
been a man of aggressive character, which he certainly was not, his
hands could not have been tied more effectively.
Three days sufficed to demolish the General’s resistance. On the fourth
of January, the Princess Johanna Elisabeth penned her replies to the
letters. Her correspondence with Elisabeth has unfortunately been lost;
the Empress was notoriously careless with letters. In her answer to
Frederick the Princess declared her intention of bowing to the will
of Providence and of following the instructions of the Empress to the
last detail excepting one. “I understand completely the necessity for
secrecy which your Majesty has recommended. Yet for various reasons,
which can be more easily understood than written, I have been obliged
to initiate the Prince, whose discretion I will guarantee, into the
secret. I hope thereby to have merited no reproach.” She had really
considered the possibility of taking Fike off to Russia without her
father’s knowledge.
Preparations for the journey were simple. The trousseau of the German
Princess consisted of little more than a traveling apprentice might
have carried in his bundle. Three dresses, a dozen chemises, and as
many handkerchiefs were all that Fike had to pack for that mid-winter
journey. The Baroness von Prinzen who afterwards said in her memoirs
that she had helped Catherine the Great to pack her trunks for Russia
rather overstated the case. The packing of Fike’s trunks must have
been a simple matter. It was a source of life-long chagrin to her
that she came to Russia without a bridal chest. Her mother at least
had had that. She had no bed-linen of her own and was obliged to use
her mother’s sheets. No deeper humiliation for a German bride can
be imagined. Even as an old woman Fike could not forget it. It was
something which she had always to make up. Because she had come without
sheets to Russia she was obliged to put through the Partition of Poland.
On the 10th of January, 1744, Fike’s mother set forth, ostensibly
for the Berlin Carnival. The party consisted of the General, who was
to accompany them as far as Schwedt, the Princess and her daughter,
two attendant Fräuleins, an officer named Lattorf, and a cook. They
made their first stop in Berlin. The Princess hastened to an audience
with the King and Minister von Podewils who invested her with the
responsibility of furthering the Prussian cause with the Russian
Empress.
In Berlin, the Princess continued as formerly to neglect her daughter.
Her tactlessness was illustrated by an incident described in Fike’s
memoirs. “When the King of Prussia, who knew exactly the object of the
journey, learned that I had arrived in Berlin, he wished without fail
to see me. My mother said I was ill. Two days later he caused her to be
invited to dinner with the Queen, his consort, and expressly requested
her to bring me with her. My mother promised but when the time came
she went alone to the court. When the King saw her he inquired about
me. She replied that I was ill. Whereupon he replied that he well knew
that it was not true. Then she said that I was not dressed for court,
to which he answered that he would postpone the dinner for me until the
next day. Finally, my mother said that I had no court dress. He ordered
that one of his sisters should send me one. At last my mother saw there
was no way out of it and sent me word that I should dress myself and
come to the palace.”
It was late in the afternoon when Cinderella arrived. During supper she
sat at the right hand of the King, who paid her elaborate eighteenth
century compliments. The shy girl blushed furiously, but kept her head.
It was the one and only meeting of these two great monarchs. Between
the Princess of fourteen and the King of thirty-one no vital contact
was made; it was an official occasion. But his flattery lingered with
her always like a pleasant dream. She only hated sister Ulrica, who was
too precious to be sent to Russia and whose dress the King had offered
to lend her.
In the middle of January, the Princess’s coach rolled out of Berlin.
Lumbering through the deep frozen ruts of the outer streets, it took
a northerly direction as if homeward bound for Stettin. The snowless
winter obliged the party to travel on wheels as far as Riga, while the
bitter winds sweeping down from the Baltic waters made the journey a
severe ordeal. They lost no time, however. Frederick had ordered fresh
relays of horses at every post. No expense had been spared; were not
the rubles of the Russian Empress to pay for everything? But real
comfort was not procurable at any price. Few travellers, except the
couriers, took the post road from Berlin to Petersburg at this time of
the year. The quarters in which the party sought their night’s lodging
were just endurable. “As the rooms in the stations were not heated,”
the Princess wrote her husband, “we were obliged to go into the common
room which was not unlike a pig-sty; the master and mistress, the house
dog, the cock and the children,--children everywhere, in cradles, in
beds, on the stove, on mattresses--everything was rolled together in
disorder like weeds and roots. There was nothing else to be done; I
ordered a bench to be brought and lay down in the middle of the room.”
In spite of the cold and discomfort, they hastened onward, through the
short days and the long nights. The Princess wrote her husband about an
encounter with robbers but her daughter’s description of the journey
contains no reference to any adventure of this kind. More exciting
for Fike was the great comet of 1744 which they saw while crossing
Courland. Against the background of the long black nights and the
tedium of the never-ending journey, accented by the hoof-beats of the
flying horses, the comet lingered in the girl’s memory as something
awful and unforgettable. The cold grew worse and worse. The ladies wore
woollen masks to keep their faces from freezing. Fike’s feet succumbed
to the frost and were so swollen that she had to be carried to and from
the carriage. She also made herself ill drinking beer. “In these last
days I had a little indigestion,” she wrote to dear Papa, “but it has
had no further consequences. I was partly myself to blame because I
had drunk all the beer I could find along the way. Dear Mama has put a
stop to that, and I am well again.” This was priggish Fike travelling
to Russia in her fifteenth year. She obeyed her dear Mama but dear Papa
could understand her better about the beer.
Having said goodbye at Schwedt, the General returned to Stettin with
his secret. The town marked the disappearance of his wife and daughter
and rumors began to circulate. They made the Prince uncomfortable.
He wrote a letter which overtook the Princess at Köslin and asked
permission to announce the journey in the newspapers. But the Princess
said no. “It seems to me essential that you should hold back the
announcement in the newspapers of my journey until I have passed Memel.
Likewise the prayers for a safe journey which you plan to have said in
the churches of Zerbst must be postponed.” As far as Memel, she felt
that she could manage the trip without any special aid from Providence.
From Königsberg she wrote to Fike’s grandmother, who drew a yearly
pension of ten thousand rubles from the Russian Empress. The aged
Duchess was the only one of Sophie’s relatives who did not join the
protest against the marriage. The Abbess of Quedlinburg and the Duchess
of Brunswick were outraged. They heaped reproaches on the head of the
General whom, without regard to justice, they made the scapegoat for
his wife’s proceedings. They bombarded the Prince with long letters
which reminded him of the tragic fate of Princess Charlotte who had
married Alexei Petrovich and the sad plight of the Brunswick family
imprisoned by Elisabeth. The Prince was harassed by Holstein and Anhalt
relatives at the same time, since he had luckily remained where both
sides of the family could get at him and relieve their feelings. The
Princess Johanna Elisabeth was not surprised; she had not expected
their support.
“I did not doubt,” she wrote to her husband, “that our journey to
Moscow would stir up a storm. Religion and rivalry give the best
grounds for that. But the Tante [the Abbess] as little as we would have
had the power to turn aside the wise decrees of Providence. We cannot
ascribe my journey here and the entire circumstance to anything else
and we can be assured that the All-Wise One fulfils thereby purposes
for us inscrutable.” To arguments like this the pious General had no
reply. But still disturbed by memories of the unhappy marriage of
Princess Charlotte, he asked his wife to stiffen the terms on Sophie’s
behalf in the marriage contract. He wanted for his daughter the
guarantee of a pension with a home if possible in Holstein if not in
Livonia. Nothing of the kind was ever even discussed by his wife after
her arrival in Russia.
Thanks to the foresight of the Princess, none of this opposition was
started until mother and daughter were safe beyond the Russian border.
As far as Riga, the Princess travelled under the name of the Countess
of Rheinbeck, the cognomen which Brümmer had suggested for the purpose.
In Fike’s memoirs, she says that her mother assumed a fictitious name
for the journey but she could no longer remember it. At Riga the
travellers were met by escorts, compliments and presents. “At mid-day,”
wrote the Princess, “I met Chamberlain Narishkin, whom her Imperial
Majesty had placed at the head of a guard of honor that came to meet
me as a mark of distinction. He brought me letters and greetings from
her Majesty who overwhelmed me with honors and compliments. A quarter
of a mile from the city I was met by Vice-Governor Prince Dolgorukov.
We drove across the ice of the Dwina. As the carriage in which I was
sitting was just beyond the end of the great bridge, the first salvo
was fired from the great guns on the fortresses. I found ready to wrap
us in the sleigh two splendid sables covered with gold brocade for my
daughter and myself, two collars of the same fur and a coverlet of
another fur, quite as beautiful.”
Wrapped in their rich sables, the travellers climbed into the long
Russian sleigh, designed by Peter the Great, and flew over the snowy
chaussées that led to Petersburg. On a brittle February day they
arrived at the Winter Palace. The Empress and the court had gone away
to Moscow. Petersburg was empty, but a small group of courtiers had
remained to welcome the German guests. The Princess was more than
bedazzled by the reception they gave her. “It seems as if I were in
the suite of her Imperial Majesty or of some great monarch. It does
not seem real that all this can happen to poor me, for whom at only a
few places a drum was ever stirred and at others not even that. Here
everything goes on in such magnificent and respectful style that it
seemed to me then and now at the sight of the luxury surrounding me as
if it all were only a dream.”
Fike’s memories of her arrival in Petersburg are appropriate to a
fourteen-year-old girl. She remembered the names of the four young
ladies of honor who came forward to welcome her and the names of
the men they subsequently married; the fourteen elephants which the
Shah of Persia had given to the Empress and which actually performed
tricks in the snowy palace court-yard; the carnival and the wonderful
coasting expedition led by Semion Kyrilovich Narishkin; above all she
remembered and described to the last knot and ringlet the extraordinary
style of hair-dressing favored by her new Russian friends. Once in
the Petersburg palace, the girl promptly forgot all the hardships of
the journey. Her mother, a little tired but ever busy with her pen,
continued her stream of correspondence with Zerbst and Berlin. “Fike
bears the fatigue better than I, yet we are both well, praise be to
God. May He continue to guide and direct us.” This to her husband, the
General; to King Frederick, she wrote rather less piously: “Considering
the hardships of the season, the journey and the change of air, I
should need to have an iron constitution to keep up my resistance. My
daughter is more fortunate. Her youth supports her health and like
young soldiers who scorn danger because they know nothing about it, she
delights in the splendor by which she is surrounded.”
In some subtle way, the conquering spirit of the Princess of Zerbst
began to fail her as soon as she arrived in Russia. It was equally
evident that Fike, from the moment when Narishkin helped her with a
jest into the sleigh at Riga, was swimming with the current. Not that
the Princess was aware of falling behind in the race. Courageous and
confident, she attacked the great task before her, her diplomatic
mission from King Frederick and von Podewils. She had found everything
in Petersburg just as they had said. Things had to be changed.
Bestushev, the enemy of Prussia, must go. While her mother pursued
these political interests, Fike was learning to stand on her own feet
in a strange environment. For the first time she allowed herself the
luxury of a cold-blooded judgment of the Princess’s character. It
happened on the journey from Petersburg to Moscow.
“After the departure from Petersburg,” says Fike, “the sleigh in which
my mother and I were traveling struck in turning against a house,
whereby an iron hook became dislodged and fell, striking my mother
on the head and shoulder. She insisted that she was severely hurt
but outwardly there was nothing to be seen, not even a bruise. This
incident delayed our journey by several hours.” In describing the
accident, her mother says, “I believed myself to be wounded but I was
not. The blow had struck with full strength against the fur; otherwise,
without doubt, my head, neck and arm would have been crushed.” Only the
costly furs given by the Empress had saved her.
With this one interruption, the train of thirty sleighs, each drawn
by ten horses, dashed onward without pause. They intended to arrive
in Moscow before the Grand Duke’s birthday, on the twenty-first of
February. The way was prepared. Bonfires burned at night along the
snowy highway. Post-stations sprang up suddenly out of the snow-drifts,
ready with hot coffee and fish soup, while fresh horses stood waiting
in their dugas. The excitement was intense. At four o’clock on the
third day, the flying train came suddenly to a halt within seventy
versts of Moscow. An envoy from the Empress met the party here with
the request that they should delay their entrance into Moscow until
after darkness had fallen. While they waited, the travellers arrayed
themselves with as much care as possible. Fike put on a close-fitting
dress of rose-colored moiré silk, trimmed with silver.
The horses were again put to the sleighs, this time sixteen instead
of ten to each, and the train leaped forward. Sievers, the Empress’s
envoy, seated himself beside the Princess of Zerbst, and urged the
coachman forward at every breath in true Russian style. The procession
drew up before the Golovin Palace at eight o’clock in the evening. It
was just six weeks since the country cousins had driven with so much
caution and secrecy out of the little Lutheran town of Zerbst.
They were received on the stairway by the Prince von Hessen-Homberg,
General Adjutant of the Empress, who conducted them to their chambers.
Scarcely had they laid aside their heavy sables when the Grand Duke
came running into their room, unable longer to control his impatience
to see them. At ten o’clock Lestocq appeared with greeting and a
summons from the Empress. Attended by the Prince von Hessen-Homberg
and the Grand Duke, the two Princesses made their way to the Empress’s
reception room. As they passed from room to room, the court ladies
and gentlemen were presented and bowed low to them. “It is impossible
to say how all those present stared at these Germans from head to
foot,” wrote the Princess to her husband. Yet those musty old aunts at
Quedlinburg who opposed the journey would have wished the Princess of
Zerbst to forego this triumph.
The Empress advanced to her threshold to meet them. “She allowed me,”
exulted the Princess, “scarcely time to take off my gloves and embraced
me, I must say, with tenderness.” In rhetorical French, the Princess
delivered an address of gratitude for all the Empress had done for the
Holstein-Gottorp family. The Empress replied that her own blood was
not more dear to her than that of the Princess and that all she had
done was nothing in comparison with what she intended to do. It was a
meeting of Greek with Greek. Fike was at last presented and embraced.
The Empress invited the company to be seated, but, since she herself
was too excited to sit down, nobody else could do so. The reception
lasted for half an hour. At one point the Empress abruptly left the
room to conceal the tears she was obliged to shed. They were called
forth by the strong resemblance between the Princess Johanna Elisabeth
and her deceased brother once betrothed to the Empress Elisabeth.
Fike’s memoirs say nothing of these tears, although her mother was much
affected by them.
Fike preserved for us, however, the appearance of the Empress at this
time: “More than anything else, I was astonished by her great height,”
she says. “I must say one could not behold her for the first time
without astonishment at her beauty and her majesty. She was tall and,
though rather stout, it did not detract, as no lack of freedom was
noticeable in her movements. Her head was very beautiful. On this day
she wore an enormous hoop-skirt, which she loved to do when she made
a grand toilette and which she only did when she showed herself in
public. Her dress was of shimmering silver taffeta trimmed with gold
lace; she wore a black feather on her head standing upright a little
to one side with many diamonds in a coiffure of her own hair.” The
young girl in the rose-colored moiré frock never forgot the picture.
The next morning, the Princess and her daughter were summoned to the
audience chamber by the Empress. “A few moments later, the Empress
in grand attire came from her dressing-room. She wore a brown dress
embroidered in silver and quite, that is as far as head, neck and waist
were concerned, covered with jewels.” She presented the ribbon and star
of Saint Catherine to her guests. Then she passed on to mass. When
they next saw her, she was on her way to confession; the next time, to
communion. A few days later, on her way to the Troitsky Monastery, she
came to say farewell “in a long-sleeved gown of black velvet adorned
with all the Russian orders; that is, the order of Saint Andrew as a
scarf, of Saint Alexander about the neck, and of Saint Catherine on
the left side.” There seemed no possible limit to all this grandeur.
Elisabeth had ten thousand dresses and five thousand pairs of shoes.
But Fike, her mother’s own child, was not over-awed. She expanded in an
atmosphere where ostentation was the rule. With precocious tact, which
she owed either to her own glands or to Babet Cardel but scarcely to
her mother, she established herself securely in this glittering and
treacherous environment.
4