fever and, in his delirium, raved about his love for Elizabeth. No one knew what to think. When Beketov recovered his health, he found himself in disgrace and withdrew from court.
Despite her personal troubles with Peter, Catherine’s position in Russia was based on her marriage; therefore, when he was in difficulty, she usually tried to help him. One constant concern to Peter was Holstein, the hereditary duchy of which he was the reigning duke. Catherine found his feelings about his native land exaggerated, even foolish, but she never doubted their strength. In her
The grand duke had an extraordinary passion for the little corner of the earth where he was born. It constantly occupied his mind though he had left it behind at the age of thirteen; his imagination became heated whenever he spoke of it, and, as none of the people around him had ever set foot in what was, by his account, a marvelous paradise, day after day he told us fantastical stories about it which almost put us to sleep.
Peter’s attachment to his little duchy became a diplomatic issue involving Catherine in the fall of 1750 when a Danish diplomat, Count Lynar, arrived in St. Petersburg to negotiate the exchange of Holstein for the principality of Oldenburg, a territory under Danish control on the North Sea coast. Count Bestuzhev urgently desired this exchange in order to remove an obstacle to the alliance he was seeking between Russia and Denmark. To Bestuzhev, Peter’s feelings about his duchy counted for nothing.
Once Count Lynar announced his mission, Bestuzhev summoned Baron Johan Pechlin, Peter’s minister for Holstein. Pechlin, short, fat, shrewd, and possessing Bestuzhev’s confidence, was empowered to open negotiations with Lynar. To reassure his nominal master, Grand Duke Peter, Pechlin told him that to listen was not to negotiate, that negotiation was far from acceptance, and that Peter would always retain the power to break off the discussions whenever he wished. Peter allowed Pechlin to begin, but he counted on Catherine for advice.
I listened to talk of these negotiations with great anxiety and I tried to thwart them as best I could. He had been advised to keep it a close secret, especially around women. That remark, of course, was directed at me, but they were deceived because my husband was always eager to tell me everything he knew. The further negotiations advanced, the more they tried to present everything to the grand duke in a favorable light. I often found him delighted by the prospect of what he would acquire, only to find him later bitterly regretting what he was going to have to give up. When he was seen to be hesitating, the conferences were slowed; they were renewed only after some new temptation had been devised to make things appear more appealing to him. But my husband did not know what to do.
The Austrian minister to Russia at this time was Count de Bernis, an intelligent, amiable man of fifty, respected by both Catherine and Peter. “If this man or someone like him had been placed in the grand duke’s service, it would have resulted in great good,” she wrote. Peter agreed and decided to consult Bernis about the negotiations. Unwilling to speak to the ambassador himself, he asked Catherine to do it for him. She was willing and, at the next masked ball, she approached the count. She spoke frankly, admitting her youth, lack of experience, and poor understanding of affairs of state. Nevertheless, she declared, it appeared to her that the affairs of Holstein were not as desperate as people were saying. Moreover, concerning the exchange itself, this appeared to be far more profitable for Russia than for the grand duke personally. Certainly, she admitted, as heir to the Russian throne, he must concern himself with the interests of the Russian empire. And, at some point, if these interests made it absolutely necessary to abandon Holstein in order to terminate the endless disputes with Denmark, the grand duke would consent. At present, however, the whole affair had such an air of intrigue about it that if it succeeded, it would make the grand duke appear so weak that he might never recover in the public eye. He loved Holstein, yet, despite this, the negotiators persisted in trying to persuade him to exchange it, without him really knowing why.
Count de Bernis listened and replied, “As ambassador, I have no instructions on this matter, but as Count de Bernis, I think you are right.” Peter told her later that the ambassador had said to him, “All I can say to you is that I believe your wife is right and that you will do well to listen to her.” As a result, Peter cooled toward these negotiations, and eventually the proposal for an exchange of territories was dropped. And in her first venture into international diplomacy, Catherine had succeeded in besting Count Bestuzhev
26
Reading, Dancing, and a Betrayal
PETER’S BEHAVIOR was always unpredictable. For an entire winter, he immersed himself in plans to build a country house near Oranienbaum in the style of a Capuchin monastery. There, he, Catherine, and their court would dress in brown robes as Capuchin friars; each person would have a personal donkey and take turns leading the animal to carry water and bring provisions to the “monastery.” The more details he produced, the more excited he became over his creation. To please him, Catherine made pencil sketches of the building and changed architectural features every day. These conversations left her exhausted. His talk was “of a dullness,” she said, “that I have never seen equaled. When he left me, the most boring book seemed delightful.”
Books were her refuge. Having set herself to learn the Russian language, she read every Russian book she could find. But French was the language she preferred, and she read French books indiscriminately, picking up whatever her ladies-in-waiting happened to be reading. She always kept a book in her room and carried another in her pocket. She discovered the letters of Madame de Sevigne describing life at the court of Louis XIV. When a
As she grew intellectually, Catherine was also becoming perceived as more physically attractive. “I had a slender waist; all I lacked was a little flesh for I was very thin. I liked to go without powder, for my hair was of an exceedingly fine brown, very thick and strong.” She had admirers. For a while, the most persistent of these was none other than Nicholas Choglokov, who, after his adventure with Mlle Kosheleva, became infatuated with the grand duchess. Catherine noticed him smiling and nodding foolishly at her. His attention was abhorrent to her. “He was blond and foppish, very fat, and as thick in mind as in body. He was universally hated; everyone considered him a disagreeable toad. I managed to evade all of his attentions, without ever failing to be polite to him. This was perfectly clear to his wife who was grateful to me.”
Catherine’s charms were most on display when she danced. She chose what she wore carefully. If a gown attracted everyone’s praise, she never wore it again; her rule was that if it made a striking impression the first time, it could only make a lesser one thereafter. At private court balls, she dressed as simply as possible. This pleased the empress, who did not like women to appear overdressed on these occasions. When women were ordered to come costumed as men, Catherine appeared in magnificent, richly embroidered outfits. This, too, seemed to please Elizabeth.
Dressing for a particular one of these masked balls at which the court women would be competing in splendor and elegance, Catherine decided to wear only a bodice of rough white cloth and a skirt of the same material over a small hoop. Her long, thick hair was curled and tied in a simple ponytail with a white ribbon. She wore a single rose in her hair and put a ruff of white gauze around her neck, with cuffs and a little apron of the same material. When she entered the hall, she walked up to the empress. “Good God, what modesty!” Elizabeth said approvingly. In high spirits when she left the empress, she danced every dance. “In my life,” she wrote later, “I never remember being so highly praised by everyone as on that night. To tell the truth, I have never believed myself to be beautiful, but I had charm and I knew how to please and I think this was my strength.”
It was during the masquerades and balls of that winter, 1750–51, that the former gentleman-of-the-
