the smell of it. This prejudice is said to have aided the conspiracy
which was formed against his life. But for his hatred of the smell,
the Emperor might have discovered the conspiracy. A certain official
who was talking with him had in his pocket at the moment a paper
which divulged the plans and the names of the conspirators. Paul put
his hand into the man’s pocket on some jesting pretext, but hastily
withdrew his fingers when they encountered loose snuff, which disgusted
him. And so, according to the story, Paul’s fate was sealed and the
conspiracy which was to cost him his life matured in secrecy.
Perhaps it was Catherine’s snuff-taking and coffee-drinking which had
made her palate indifferent to food. Nevertheless she continued to
put on weight in the most distressing way until her tiny feet ached
from carrying her heavy body around. The stout old lady never lost the
dignity of her carriage nor the uprightness of her posture, thanks to
the hangman’s jacket in which she had spent so many years of her youth.
Her bearing was extremely impressive. It was one of the things for
which her aunt, the Empress, and her husband, the Czar, had hated her.
Her blue-gray eyes had a commanding and open gaze. She had a long chin
and a firm jaw. In short, she had the features which are supposed to go
with a commanding personality and which in her Majesty’s case fulfilled
the tradition. Withal her eyes were friendly and smiling and at times
roguish. The person on whom they rested had an impulse to obey.
The Empress loved flattery. Her letters from Grimm, from Voltaire,
from Frederick the Great, are full of it. Best of all she liked to
be praised to her face. Diplomats arriving at the Russian Court were
warned by their well-wishers to indulge the Empress in her whim. It was
said that there was no limit to either the amount or the crudity of
what she could enjoy. This was an exaggeration. She wanted the tributes
to sound convincing, the flowers to seem real. Diderot, for instance,
was not always happy in his efforts, and the Empress could be cynical
if the flatterer allowed her to catch him red-handed.
“I do not like flattery,” she wrote to Prince Viazemsky, “and I expect
none from you.” But the Prince would not have risen to be one of the
chief advisers of her reign if he had taken her instructions too
literally. “Sie hatte die Eitelkeit eines _parvenu_, eines self-made
man,” says Brückner, borrowing from both French and English to express
her quality. The German Princess, whose native language has no word to
express exactly the kind of person that she became as Russian Empress,
was every inch a parvenu, if not literally a self-made man, and she had
the psychology of this type. Certainly she loved flattery, an art in
which the eighteenth century excelled. There were giants in those days;
magnificent egoists who knew how to drink their flattery like gentlemen.
The qualities of this complex Catherine scatter themselves before us
like the pictures in a scrap-book. She was this and she was that, and
in every instance she was also the opposite. Perhaps the simplest way
to organize the variegated picture of her complex personality is to say
at the start that she was a despot, in private relations and in public
life. No temperament more dominating, not even that of Peter the Great,
ever held sway over all the Russias, whose throne, by the way, both of
them obtained by usurpation. Catherine was a successful tyrant because
she knew how to command and also how to yield. She had extraordinary
insight into human nature with not many prejudices to block the view.
In all directions not so blocked, she was extremely clairvoyant. She
was easy on her servants, allowing them to sleep late while she waited
on herself and made her own fire. Petty graft she passed over with a
jest. Laughter she adored. One of her scientific essays discussed the
different ways of laughing. When Voltaire died it was not his wisdom
that she mourned but his gaiety. “Since Voltaire died,” she wrote, “it
seems to me that honor no longer attaches to good humor; it was he who
was the divinity of gaiety. Procure for me an edition, or rather a
complete copy of his works, to renew within me and confirm my natural
love of laughter.” Voltaire once compared her to Saint Catherine, but
she repudiated the title of saint. She prided herself on being a child
of nature, and one of the rowdier children of that careless mother
besides.
History has said of Catherine that she was a woman with a masculine
disposition. She had brains, she was ambitious, she kept favorites. All
this is comprised in the statement that she was one of the absolute
monarchs of her time; she followed a trade to which women were not
ordinarily admitted and got herself into it by her own efforts. To
out-Herod Herod was her way of staying there. She said of herself that
she had a masculine disposition and we know that she loved to play the
part of “Monsieur” in her correspondence and in her horseback riding,
and that she named herself Colonel of the Guards. As she grew older
and stouter, the rôle of “Matushka” blotted out that of “Monsieur” and
“Colonel”; but the change to Little Mother betokened no lessening of
the aggressive note in her personality. It was her tendency to dominate
and she could always find a rôle, either masculine or feminine, in
which she could play out her natural disposition.
Catherine’s estimates of her own character are the best that have been
written. It is a great loss to students of human nature that her sketch
of herself, written at the age of fifteen, was destroyed. We should
like to compare it with one which she wrote at the age of sixty-two,
addressed to Sénac de Meilhan, as the adolescent portrait had been
addressed to Count Gyllenborg. Her pen, it seems, moved best when her
thoughts were directed toward some person as if in a conversation _à
deux_.
“I have never believed that I had the creative spirit,” she wrote,
“I have come to know many people in whom I have recognized, without
envy or jealousy, much more genius than I have. It was always easy to
influence me, because in order to do that it was only necessary to have
really better and actually worthier ideas than my own. Then I was as
teachable as a lamb.... I have never tried to force people’s views but
I have also in any particular case held my own opinion. I do not love
strife, because I have always found that in the end each remains of the
same opinion. Besides I have never learned to lift my voice. I have
never been resentful, because providence has given me a position in
which I could not be so toward individuals, and because, in order to be
just, I could not regard the circumstances as equal. In general I love
justice but I am of the opinion that there is no unconditional justice
and that moderation alone corresponds to human weakness.... When old
people preached severity to me, I confessed my weakness to them with
tears in my eyes and it sometimes happened that many of them, also with
tears in their eyes, came over to my opinion. I am by nature cheerful
and open-hearted, but I have lived too long in the world not to know
that there are bitter natures which do not love cheerfulness and that
it is not everybody who can endure candor and truth.”
2
The love relationships of Catherine the Great form the most fascinating
aspect of her life and character. For nearly two hundred years she has
been celebrated as a Northern Semiramis, a Russian Messalina. Myths and
romances in countless numbers have been woven around her personality.
Posterity knows her as a loose woman.
She loved to picture herself in heaven conversing with Confucius and
Cæsar and Alexander the Great. If she could have seen herself as the
theme of all the pornographic stories which float around in Russia
about her to-day, or as the heroine with three hundred lovers who
sparkles so wickedly on so many modern stages, she would, without the
least shadow of a doubt, have been extremely happy and delighted. That
posterity should think of her as a feminine Don Juan would be exactly
to her taste. She thought of herself as a feminine Don Juan; or,
rather, as a feminine Henri le Grand whose life was in so many respects
the inspiration of her own. It was said of the brilliant Henri le Grand
that but for his fatal prowess as a Don Juan he would have succeeded in
driving the Turks out of Europe. Catherine hoped to succeed, though her
hero had failed, in both. She was willing to go down to posterity as a
light woman but she hoped also to be remembered as the monarch who had
driven the Turks out of Europe.
The number of her lovers was after all only thirteen if we count her
husband. They were openly acknowledged and no legitimate consort could
have enjoyed a brighter glow of publicity. The Empress did not indulge
in secret _rendezvous_ or episodic affairs. During the period when she
was breaking away from her ten-years’ union with Orlov, there were
passing episodes, but these were only means to an end. Nothing is more
surprising than the formality with which she surrounded her favorites
or the curious acquiescence and matter-of-factness with which they were
regarded by society in Russia. Most of the romancing and denouncing
came afterwards when Catherine and her twelve lovers had gone the way
of all flesh.
The Empress was, in this aspect of her life as well as others, a woman
of few explanations. But she wrote a sort of apologia for her sex life
and left it as a legacy to history, inserting it in the memoirs which
she wrote for publication. “I was very affectionate,” she said, “and
gifted with an appearance which was very attractive. I pleased at the
first glance, without employing any arts or pains to that end. I was
very sympathetic and possessed rather a masculine than a feminine
temperament. As I have already said, I pleased the men. The first half
of the temptation was there and the second followed the first according
to human nature; for to tempt and be tempted are very close to each
other. And if a strong feeling is added to this, however strongly the
principles of morality may be imbedded in the mind, one goes farther
than one would wish; and, even until now I do not know how that is
to be prevented. In this case, perhaps absence might bring aid; but
there are cases, situations in life, and circumstances which make
absence impossible. How can one in the midst of court life flee away,
remove oneself, turn aside? That would at once attract attention and
cause talk. Yes, if one cannot remove oneself, nothing is harder in my
opinion than not to yield to that which allures. All that is said to
the contrary is hypocrisy and ignorance of the human heart. One does
not hold one’s heart in one’s hand, and it does not obey the commands
of reason.”
This was a sincere effort on the part of a sixty-year-old Empress to
be truthful and candid about her past. Aside from certain obvious
misrepresentations, such as saying that she had an attractive
appearance though she did not believe it herself, she thought that
she was speaking the truth. But one is struck by the extraordinary
weakness of her defense. A woman who has had twelve lovers and has
learned no more from life than to defend herself on moralistic grounds
shows that she has remained unteachable to the last. Her explanation
of her conduct might suitably be given by a girl of fifteen. Catherine
once said of Diderot that in some respects he was a hundred years old
and in others he was no more than ten. It was a wise remark and could
be equally well applied to herself. When she tries to explain the
irregularities of her sex life by saying that temptation has been too
strong for her to resist she speaks as the pupil of Pastor Wagner. It
shows that her conduct was still just as much of a mystery to herself
as it was to anybody else. She had learned however one thing which
Pastor Wagner and the rationalists of the eighteenth century had not
taught her, and that is that the heart does not obey the commands of
reason.
However impulsive the Empress may have been in the initial stage of a
love affair, she was shockingly rational in the way that she developed
it. Like Frederick the Great, she had a terror of venereal disease but
she had a less ascetic method of protecting herself. She required the
hopeful candidate to submit himself to a medical examination at the
hands of Dr. Rogerson, her Scotch physician. He was then put through
a kind of ordeal or apprenticeship by Countess Bruce or Princess
Protassov who were known for their function as “les eprouveuses.” If
these experienced ladies recommended the young man for his office, he
was installed in the elegant apartments prepared for his reception. In
the drawer of his dressing-table he found the generous salary allotted
to the Empress’s Adjutant General, and then began for him a life of the
most appalling regularity.
At ten o’clock every morning, he called on the Empress, and at ten
every evening he escorted her to her private chambers. When she drove
out, he sat beside her, and on all occasions stood ready to offer his
arm. He was dedicated to his duties and lived in complete retirement.
After Gregory Orlov, none of Catherine’s lovers was allowed to make
visits or receive them. No Sultan could have been more arbitrary with
his harem than Catherine with her favorites. She lavished presents and
honors upon them; her extravagance toward them knew no bounds. The
English Ambassador Harris, who had a talent for statistics, estimated
that she spent $190,000,000 in cash on the men she kept. The amount
seems staggering even for our day. Yet it was not enough, with all the
other perquisites added, to prolong the bondage of the victim more
than two or three years on the average. After Gregory Orlov, they all
escaped in one way or another at the end of a period of about this
duration.
Vassilchikov, with whom she carried on the most perfunctory affair she
ever had, describes his life with the Empress thus: “I was nothing more
than a kept woman and was treated as such. I was not allowed to receive
guests or to go out. If I made a request for anyone else, I received no
answer. If I spoke for myself, it was the same. When I wished to have
the order of Saint Anne, I spoke to the Empress about it. The next day
I found a thirty thousand ruble banknote in my pocket. In this way,
they always stopped my mouth and sent me to my room.”
It must be said that Vassilchikov’s courtship was probably the poorest
performance given by any of Catherine’s lovers. The only one of
them who had royal blood in his veins, for he was supposed to be a
descendant of Rurik, he was nevertheless the last and least of all
in the eyes of his mistress. Catherine had installed him in Orlov’s
stead to displace the absent Gregory, and Vassilchikov’s office was
primarily to help her wean the Count. Not that the Empress was aware
that she was pushing Orlov out of his warm nest into a cold hard world.
On the contrary, she had got the idea that Orlov intended to desert
her and she did not mean to be left in the lurch. She also thought
at first that she was in love with Vassilchikov, tall scion of the
Ruriks, and was bitterly disappointed when the affair proved cold. Her
complaints of their relationship were fully as dismal as his and her
disappointment even more pathetic. This appears in a confession which
she wrote for Gregory Potiomkin, who in turn displaced Vassilchikov
and became Gregory Orlov’s first real and genuine successor. It
appears that Potiomkin had heard stories about his predecessors, which
shows that gossip had already begun to exaggerate the number of the
Empress’s lovers. To reassure him, the Empress wrote a brief confession
in which she told him all the facts about her previous relationships.
The Empress’s list begins with Sergei Saltikov and tells how she
accepted him on the advice of Madame Choglokov and how Madame Choglokov
in her turn had been induced to act by the “insistence of Sergei’s
Mama.” This sudden peeping out of Sergei’s mama from behind the scenes
of Catherine’s life makes a vivid impression. The lady was already an
invalid, it seems, who pulled the strings of history, just once and
silently, and died.
The next lover named in Catherine’s confession is the King of Poland.
“He was amiable,” says his mistress, “and was loved from 1755 to 1761.
After he had been away three years, that is since 1758, and because
Prince Gregory Gregorevich, to whom well-meaning people called my
attention, took trouble for me, I changed my way of thinking. He would
have stayed forever if he had not grown tired. I learned this on the
very day of his departure from Czarskoe Selo for the Congress and drew
from it the simple conclusion that with this knowledge I could no
longer have any confidence. The thought tortured me cruelly and led me
to make out of desperation a choice by chance (Vassilchikov). During
this time, yes until this month, I have fretted more than I can say
and never more than when others were satisfied. Every expression of
tenderness caused my tears to flow and I believe that never since I was
born have I wept so much as in this year and a half. In the beginning I
thought I would get used to it, but the longer it lasted the worse it
grew. For the other person began to sulk for three months at a time
and I must confess that I was never more contented than when he was
angry and left me in peace. But his tenderness forced me to weep.”
The confession ends for the time being with Gregory Potiomkin, the
lover to whom it is addressed and of whom she begs forgiveness for
earlier sins. “And now, Sir Hero, can I after this confession hope for
forgiveness of my sins? You will see that it is not fifteen but only
one-third as many. The first, against my will, and the fourth, who was
taken out of desperation, cannot be charged to frivolity. Of the other
three, only believe the truth. God knows that I took them not out of
debauchery, to which I have no tendency. If fate had given me in my
youth a husband whom I could love, I should have remained true to him
forever. The trouble is that my heart would not willingly be one hour
without love.... But I write you that needlessly for accordingly you
will love or will not wish to go away to the army, out of fear that
I could forget you. But really I do not believe that I could be so
foolish. If you would attach me to yourself forever, then show me as
much friendship as love, and beyond everything, love and speak the
truth.”
3
Potiomkin must have understood his lady’s wish and satisfied it in his
way, for Catherine loved him fifteen years. She had loved her first
Gregory ten years before she cast him off; her second Gregory held
first place in her affections for a longer period. She had a degree of
faithfulness with which she has never been credited. Not that Potiomkin
lingered in the terem all this time. As official favorite and public
escort he lasted only two years. He was too restless for captivity and
he could not bear to be stared at, a part which the handsome Orlov had
played to perfection. A curious arrangement was reached between the
wandering favorite and the Empress. Potiomkin went away to Novgorod,
to the Turkish wars, to the Crimea; he was driven hither and thither
across the endless plains of Russia by his craving restless spirit.
The Empress, left alone, something that she could not bear, took one
lover after the other in his place. But always Potiomkin returned and
compelled her to dispose of them. At a word from him, she turned them
out.
According to the legend, Potiomkin became a sort of panderer to his
lady and the gentlemen whom he chose for her survived as long as they
remained in his good graces. What really happened was that the Empress
chose each new lover for herself and certainly with the hope that he
would see her through. But, after a year or two, the unmanageable
Potiomkin would suddenly arrive on the scene and turn the rascal out.
His appearance would be preceded by threatening letters about what he
was going to do. For instance, the big blond Yermalov sat uneasily in
his armchair one day because Potiomkin had written her that he was
coming to Petersburg to send “that white nigger” away. Potiomkin came
and the white nigger went. Catherine turned her attention to dark
lovers and chose two of them, Mamonov and Zubov.
Mamonov proved to be one of her few mistakes. He was a normal man who
fell in love with one of the ladies of the court of his own age and
married her. It was the only time that her Majesty was ever actually
deserted by one of her lovers, unless Saltikov may be said to have
done so, and it was a shattering experience. She chose another dark
man, Plato Zubov, and tried to gain for him the approval of the
absentee Potiomkin. The little black boy, she wrote, was learning fast,
sent his love to Papa, and so on. But Potiomkin wrote back that he was
returning to Petersburg “to have a tooth out,” which had an ominous
play on Zubov’s name, which means “tooth.” The conflict over Zubov’s
removal brought to an end the relation between Catherine and Potiomkin
which had lasted for fifteen years. Potiomkin was not able to send this
rival away.
The lovers who followed Potiomkin were Zavadovsky, Zoritch, Korsakov,
Lanskoy, Yermalov, Mamonov, and finally Zubov. Except for Lanskoy, who
died, and Mamonov, who married, Potiomkin had arbitrarily dismissed all
of them or believed that he had so dismissed them. When he could no
longer do that he realized that his lady had discarded him for good. He
became, as Gregory Orlov had become fifteen years before, an exile from
the warm nest that had sheltered him for so long, and, like Gregory
Orlov, he could not survive his banishment.
Potiomkin had a fascinating personality. He was not likable but he
seized the imagination and captured the attention. Legend has pictured
him as a great Russian brute who drank heavily and swore outrageously.
Doubtlessly he swore, as every Russian swears as naturally as he
breathes. But he was not a drunkard and he was not a brute. He was
a frightened, timid hare, with a certain creative genius which came
through here and there without ever developing very far in any
direction. He could be a real poet on occasion, although he is known
as the author of only one song, and also a real general on occasion,
although he trembled at the sound of guns. The most contradictory
things have been said about him because the most contradictory things
were true about him.
He had the tall, well-built figure which Catherine required of her
lovers but otherwise his appearance was not prepossessing. He had
lost an eye and it is characteristic of Potiomkin’s reticence that
nobody knew when or how the accident had happened. Potiomkin himself
never spoke of it but his feelings on the subject may be imagined
from the fact that when a one-eyed man was sent to him one day with
a message, Potiomkin struck him down. Various stories are told about
the loss of his eye. Alexei Orlov is said to have put it out in a
struggle over a game of billiards. Another story told is that Potiomkin
himself destroyed it because it had a blemish, probably a squint.
It is doubtful whether Catherine herself knew the true cause of the
accident. In writing about Potiomkin, she passed over his handicap
as if it did not exist. And yet she made one indirect reference in
her memoirs. In speaking of the ignorance of the Russian court, she
remarked that even an ordinarily intelligent person at this court was
like a one-eyed man among the blind. Another peculiarity of Potiomkin’s
which she passed over in silence was a nervous jerking of his face, a
kind of facial _tic_ which she had once detested in Count Shuvalov.
One trait, however, she did refer to sometimes in a jesting tone and
that was the way he constantly gnawed his finger-nails. The rest of his
peculiarities she passed over in silence.
Potiomkin was cynical, morose, and silent; a wistful, tortured creature
who was obliged to make people afraid of him in order to conceal his
timidity toward others. They called him “Cyclops” and his imposing
figure did not belie the reference to the one-eyed giant. Perhaps the
original Cyclops also was as sensitive and fearful at the core as was
the awe-inspiring Potiomkin. Legend has made a great deal of the middle
syllable of his name, “tiom,” which means dark, and has served to
accentuate the romantic picture of Potiomkin as a villain and a hero.