Part 16

The dramatic example of the Empress did not, alas! put an end to smallpox in Russia. It meant only that the heir-apparent of the throne was now immune and the dynasty was to this extent assured. It meant that a few thousand nobles and their families were immune. But the vast population of Russia was no better off than if the celebrated Dimsdale had never visited their country. Perhaps the greatest contribution of his visit had been to diminish superstition among the least superstitious element of the population. The most superstitious element, the peasants, had never heard of Dimsdale or vaccination. When the smallpox came, they still fled to the Virgin, whose wonder-working portraits hung in every chapel. When the patient was too ill to go and the family could afford to pay for it, the wonder-working image of Our Lady would be borrowed from the church and carried to the sufferer’s bedside. This, however, was rare. Usually the sick one was borne into the church by the members of the family and laid at the feet of the Virgin whose pity they implored.

So it was in the city of Moscow in the autumn of 1771. For months the plague had raged and ravaged the town. The Empress had sent all the physicians she could commandeer, which meant a great many. Though she professed to hate physicians, she always kept a large retinue on call. The stricken city was unusually well taken care of during this epidemic. Catherine had opened hospitals for the victims of the plague. All these innovations failed to win the confidence of the terror-shaken population who had somehow got the idea that the physicians and their hospitals had brought the pest to Moscow. They fled from the medical men and gathered at the foot of the icons with their invalids. The Virgin at the Varvarsky Gate became more popular than the others, and the terrible pestilence lay massed at her feet day and night. She became the worst center of contagion in the entire city, distributing the pest to hundreds of new victims every day.

The physicians were at their wits’ end. They dared not take any radical steps to prevent the frightened people from doing what they pleased. The bishop of Moscow, Father Ambrosius, was an enlightened man who saw that the physicians were helpless. Relying on his authority as a priest, he resolved to adopt a desperate remedy. He had the Varvarsky Virgin removed under cover of night and hidden away. When the pilgrims arrived in the early dawn, Our Lady had vanished. The panacea was gone, and Death glowered in her vacant niche. Father Ambrosius believed that the authority of the Church was enough to make these fear-driven human beings submit. They were his children who had always obeyed. He thought that, as soon as they knew that the good father had done it, they would disperse to their homes and the plague spot would be wiped out. But instead of dispersing, they were suddenly welded into a mob, a growling, threatening, creeping, blood-thirsty pack. As the menacing thing began to move, Ambrosius fled from his home into the Kremlin, and took refuge in the Donskoy Monastery. On down into the cellar he fled, hiding himself in the darkest corner he could find. The mob came after him and invaded his sacred retreat. They found him in the darkness and tore him limb from limb.

When the Empress received a report of the tragedy, she realized that the population of Moscow was out of hand. The plague raged on. While the victims multiplied, the hospitals stood empty. Riots were added to smallpox until it seemed as if the old Muscovite city must soon perish under its burden of afflictions. The Empress had but one resource left and that was a military occupation. She sent Gregory Orlov with a regiment to take charge of the town. Gregory had been vaccinated by Dimsdale three years before, and the fact that he believed himself immune gave him extraordinary courage and effectiveness on this occasion. It must be admitted that Orlov was not distinguished ordinarily for courage and initiative. His record in putting down the smallpox in Moscow is exceptional. For once he seemed to take a leaf from the book of his brother Alexei. He bullied the populace into complete submission, so that the dying could at least die quietly undisturbed by mobs and riots. He asked the physicians what they wanted to have done and dragooned the people into actual obedience. A certain German doctor is said to have furnished the sanitary ideas which Gregory Orlov put into execution and which finally helped to wipe out the plague. Whatever the scientific man may have contributed, the heroic feat of Gregory Orlov is unquestionable. For once he behaved like a fearless man and deserved his mistress’s encomiums.

The Empress was almost giddy with delight. She was no longer obliged to invent reasons for praising her favorite in her correspondence. She wrote to Prince Henry, “The malady at Moscow has been reduced to a fifth of what it was, thanks to the care and intelligence of Count Orlov. He has, besides, understood how to subdue the fanatical spirit to obedience, not only in the matter of miracles, but he did not even permit the people to enter the Church to hear mass, because our churches are small; and, since everybody remained standing, the pressure that exists could increase the infection. During the service the people were made to remain outside the churches--an order which they followed to the letter. Another salutary regulation carried out despite the bigots, was the prohibition against burying in the churches and the cemeteries of the city. The Count made his own house into a hospital, took one of mine for his own use; after which every quarter of the city provided one.”

The Empress heaped honors upon her hero when he returned to Petersburg in December. She built a triumphal arch in the park of Czarskoe Selo with the inscription, “To him who saved Moscow from the plague.” A medal was struck to commemorate his bravery, on which Orlov’s portrait and that of Curtius were united. “Russia also has such sons,” read the inscription.

8

The favorite’s star was to set in glory. When he subdued the Moscow plague, he had been living with his Empress for a period of ten years. The end of the cycle had come. What had gone wrong between these two who had been like married people for so long and who had had three children together? There are stories of Orlov’s infidelities and Catherine says that he tired of her. Apparently she sincerely believed afterwards that Gregory deserted her, although it was only with the greatest difficulty that she drove the handsome guardsman from her side. She did not hesitate to employ force when force became necessary.

In the meantime, before and after Moscow, Orlov had played his part in the Turkish wars though it was by no means as gallant as his Moscow exploits. The Empress credited him with greater achievements in the South than others did. In the summer after the smallpox, she sent him to the Congress of Fokshani as her delegate in the peace negotiations. Here he swaggered about in a diamond-studded costume and offended the Turks by his high-handed attitude so that the negotiations came to nothing. Stories about Orlov’s conduct at this time suggest that he was a man of idiosyncrasies. After the battle of Tchesme he told Catherine with a shudder that the water in the harbor was colored red with the blood of the Turks who had perished. Two years later, his diamonds and his political indiscretions at Fokshani indicate that phantasy was growing on him. He was sometimes too timid and sometimes too bold.

Presently he was plunged straight from the clouds to the uttermost depths by a disconcerting piece of news. The Empress had taken a new lover in his absence. A young man named Vassilchikov had been installed in Orlov’s apartments. Taking French leave of his political and military responsibilities, Gregory Orlov started at once for Petersburg. Not many versts from the city he was stopped by the most ironical circumstance conceivable. The Empress had him quarantined in his own palace at Gatchina. There was smallpox in the South, she said, and he must not bring it to Petersburg. She had forgotten that Orlov was immune. She shut him up for four weeks, under military guards. She also put double locks and military posts at the doors of the apartment occupied by young Vassilchikov. All the while she wrote reassuring motherly letters to Orlov and sent him clean socks and shirts. She showered him with gifts; another palace, a thousand more serfs, the title of Prince contributed to the weaning process. At last it was successful. Orlov came to Petersburg and presented himself at the Empress’s receptions, looking on while his rival performed the functions which he alone had performed ever since Catherine had become Empress of Russia. He even overdid his part, making a comrade of Vassilchikov and going about with him everywhere.

Gregory Orlov was now past forty years of age. Cut adrift at this age, the exile did not know where to turn. At first he comforted himself with women of the streets, showing himself in their society in the vicinity of the Palace. He went abroad and boasted and squandered like the swashbuckler that he was. He came home again; hung for a short time in suspense and inaction and then married his first cousin, a girl of nineteen far gone in tuberculosis. The Senate issued a ukase commanding them to separate, as first cousins were not allowed to marry by the Russian Church. The Empress knew exactly what such ukases were worth; she had herself married a cousin when she came to Russia. As head of the Church, she issued a dispensation to Gregory Orlov and his bride and gave them her blessing. They went away to Europe where they wandered from specialist to specialist, trying to find some one who could restore the young wife’s health. But steadily she faded. Long before she died, Orlov had been declared insane.

Horrible stories are told of his last days: that he was constantly pursued by the apparition of the murdered Peter and that he covered his face with excrement to shut out the vision. Yet it was not Gregory who had struck the blow. His brother Alexei had done that, Alexei who throve on honors and riches and outlived them all even the Empress herself. But Gregory had always been soft and could not endure his exile from Catherine. Yet the Empress always said that he had tired of her.

X

POTIOMKIN

The middle-aged Empress grew enormously stout. Some of the clothes which she wore at fifty and thereabouts are still preserved in the Kremlin Museum. A skirt of blue velvet, her favorite wear, testifies to the ungraceful breadth of beam which detracted from her Majesty’s appearance and afflicted her pride. She had always been eager to look her best and as she grew older and stouter and more toothless, her cheeks grew brighter and brighter with rouge. She made up every day as if for a dress rehearsal. Her _friseur_ came regularly to arrange her really fine rich crop of hair, and the only time, so far as known, that he was turned away for more important matters was the day when the Empress rode up from Peterhof to Petersburg to seize her husband’s throne. She was proud of her hair, and her hairdressers were persons of considerable importance in her life. Yet none of them approached in this respect old Yevreinov who had been her first barber and paternal adviser when she came to Russia, and who had been banished from court because of his friendship for her.

She liked to dress well but not to eat well. Her contemporaries say she had no interest in food, that she employed wretched cooks and set a poor table. Those who enjoyed the distinction of dining daily with the Empress had to put up with bad cooking. When the cook burned the food, the Empress thought it a joke and that was the end of it. She herself had such an indifferent palate that all the dishes set before her were pretty much alike. At supper she ate nothing and wine she eschewed altogether. A decanter of currant-juice, _alcohol-frei_, stood beside her plate.

But this does not mean that she avoided stimulants entirely: she was addicted to both coffee and snuff. Catherine’s morning coffee was a daily feat which has impressed itself on history. Her cook used one pound of coffee for the five cups which she drank to the last drop. She was apparently immune to caffeine. “Anybody else would have got heart disease from this concentrated poison,” says one biographer, “Catherine however needed it for her health.” It certainly seems true that the health of those persons who lived to acquire the surname of “The Great” was apparently in need of some very peculiar things. The constitution of Catherine the Great might be expected to develop unique necessities, and it did. Besides one pound of coffee daily, it needed vast quantities of snuff. Like Frederick the Great, also a snuff addict, Catherine spilled the brown powder in her pockets and her clothes reeked of it.

The story goes that her son Paul detested snuff and could not abide 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.”