Day before yesterday, on February ninth, it was fifty years since I arrived with my mother in Moscow. I doubt if there are ten people living today in St. Petersburg who remember. There is still Betskoy, blind, decrepit, gaga, asking young couples whether they remember Peter the Great.… There is one of my old maids, whom I still keep, though she forgets everything. These are proofs of old age and I am one of them. But in spite of this, I love as much as a five-year-old child to play blindman’s buff, and the young people, including my grandchildren, say that their games are never so merry as when I play with them. And I still love to laugh.
It was a long and remarkable journey that no one, not even she, could have imagined when, at fourteen, she set off for Russia across the snow.
* * *
* Jones wrote this letter in a mixture of French and English, and it was he who chose the French word badiner. This can mean “played with,” “bantered with,” “joked with,” “toyed with,” or “trifled with.” In today’s vernacular, it could mean “fooled around with.” No one will ever know now how intimate this encounter became. Jones, however, was not denying that something had happened. He was insisting that he did not have sexual intercourse with a ten- or twelve-year-old girl.
* Pitt had perhaps forgotten that in 1588, England had beheaded Mary Stuart, a former queen of France and, subsequently, of Scotland. And that in 1649, the English, after overthrowing their monarchy, had beheaded King Charles I.
For Deborah
And for Bob Loomis.
Twenty-four years, four books.
Thank you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In writing this book, I drew heavily from the rich collections of the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. Thanks to the library’s Privileges Office, I was able to spend days in the stacks, gather the books I wanted to bring home, and withdraw them for a reasonable period. I am grateful to the library for this generous policy and for the members of its staff who were always helpful. I also used the New York Public Library extensively and I thank the staff of this crown jewel of New York’s cultural life.
Among those who by word and deed gave me steady encouragement during the years of working on this book were Andre Bernard, Donald Bitsberger, Kenneth Burrows, Janet Byrne, Georgina Capel and Anthony Cheetham, Robert and Ina Caro, Patricia Civale, Robert and Aline Crumb, Donald Holden, Melanie Jackson and Thomas Pynchon, James Marlas and Marie Nugent-Head, Kim, Lorna, and Miranda Massie, Jack and Lynn May, Lawrence and Margaret McQuade, Gilbert Merritt, Eunice Meyer, David Michaelis and Nancy Steiner, Edmund and Sylvia Morris, Mary Mulligan, Sara Nelson, Sydney Offit, George Paine, Heather Previn, David Remnick and Esther B. Fein, Peter and Masha Sarandinaki, Richard Weiss, and Brenda Wineapple. Douglas Smith generously allowed me to use his translations of the Catherine-Potemkin correspondence. Doug Smith also permitted me to draw heavily on his book The Pearl and its descriptions of the institution of Russian serfdom, particularly in the areas of serf opera, ballet companies, theatrical companies, symphony orchestras, and other forms of the performing arts.
I have again been fortunate to have Random House, a gathering of extraordinary talents, as my book’s publisher. The members of this family who have worked to help me this time are Avideh Bashirrad, Evan Camfield, Gina Centrello, Jonathan Jao, Susan Kamil, London King, Carole Lowenstein, Jynne Martin, Sally Marvin, Tom Perry, Robbin Schiff, Ben Steinberg, and Jessica Waters. I have also been helped by Dolores Karl, Lane Trippe, and Alex Remnick.
For many years, my essential friend, counselor, and supporter at Random House has been Bob Loomis, who, in the summer of 2011, retired after fifty-four years of sustained effort and brilliant achievement at the same publishing house. I am one of hundreds of authors whose work has been guided and improved by his wisdom, enthusiasm, kindness, and firm but gentle admonitions, usually beginning, “Let’s see if we can find a way to make this even better.” There are no others like him.
Manuscript in hand, Deborah Karl, my wife, literary agent, and the best-read person I know, made many suggestions; every one is now in the book. Three of my children, Bob, Jr., Elizabeth, and Christopher, also read the manuscript and asked good questions. My daughter Susanna keeps track from far away, and at home, my daughters Sophia and Nora have sustained me with their love, unfailing optimism, and soaring artistic talent.
Finally, I must acknowledge the extraordinary pleasure I have had in the company of the remarkable woman who has been my subject. After eight years of having her a constant presence in my life, I shall miss her.
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NOTES
Catherine’s life divides into two halves almost equal in length. From 1729 to 1762, she was a German princess and a Russian grand duchess; from 1762 until her death in 1796, she was the empress of Russia. The primary source of information about the first half of her life is her own Memoirs, which begin with her earliest recollections and continue to 1758, when she was twenty-nine and under stress at the court of Empress Elizabeth. Naturally, her memoirs display the subjective perspective of any memoir writer; even so, they are invaluable.
Catherine wrote her memoirs in French, and at least four translations have been published in English. The first of these was by Alexander Herzen, a celebrated Russian author and exile in London; this work appeared in 1859. An American, Katharine Anthony, retranslated and edited the memoirs and published them in London and New York in 1927. Catherine’s memoirs in the original French were edited and published by Dominique Maroger in Paris, then translated into English by Moura Budberg, appearing in New York in 1955. Modern Library brought out a new translation by Mark Cruse and Hilde Hoogenboom in 2005 that put Catherine’s reminiscences in correct chronological sequence, which Catherine herself and previous translators never achieved. I have used the first three of these translations. They are identified in the notes as follows: Maroger and Budberg’s version is denoted simply as Memoirs. Herzen’s translation is identified as Herzen. The Anthony translation is denoted by Memoirs (Anthony).
1. SOPHIA’S CHILDHOOD
1 “that idiot”: Haslip
2 “It was told me”: Memoirs, 25–26
3 “He lived to be only twelve”: Ibid., 41
4 “Very early it was noticed”: Anthony, 27
5 “circumcision”: Ibid., 31
6 “every night at dusk”: Memoirs, 30
7 “I am convinced”: Anthony, 27
8 “All my life”: Memoirs, 30
9 “He always brought with him”: Anthony, 27
10 “Music to my ears”: Memoirs, 31
11 “She had a noble soul”: Ibid., 26
12 “the pupil”: Oldenbourg, 8
13 “One cannot always know”: Kaus, 11
14 “A large number of parrots”: Memoirs, 36
15 “I don’t know whether”: Anthony, 13
16 “agreeable and well-bred”: Memoirs, 33
17 “I knew that one day”: Ibid., 34
18 “Madame, you do not know”: Ibid., 49
19 “Galloped until”: Ibid., 38
20 “I was never caught”: Ibid.
21 “I knew nothing about love”: Ibid., 46
22 “My parents will not wish it”: Memoirs (Anthony), 28
23 “He was very good looking”: Memoirs, 46
2. SUMMONED TO RUSSIA
1 “The empress is charmed”: Kaus, 19
2 “At the explicit command”: Ibid., 25
3 “I will no longer conceal”: Ibid., 26
4 “She lacked only wings”: Ibid., 27
5 “Next to the empress”: Ibid., 28
6 “The prince, my husband”: Ibid.
7 “She told me”: Memoirs, 50
3. FREDERICK II AND THE JOURNEY TO RUSSIA
1 “ambition, the opportunity for gain”: Ritter, 7
2 “opera, comedy, poetry, dancing”: Memoirs, 54
3 “the entire company”: Oldenbourg, 21
4 “Accept this gift”: Memoirs, 54
5 “The little princess of Zerbst”: Haslip, 24
6 “My Lord: I beg you”: Oldenbourg, 59
7 “The bedchambers were unheated”: Waliszewski, 23
8 “I had never seen anything”: Memoirs, 54
9 “In these last days”: Anthony, 69
10 “I found ready to wrap us”: Ibid., 71
11 “Here everything goes on”: Ibid.
12 “It is the bride”: Kaus, 42
4. EMPRESS ELIZABETH
1 “loved both his girls”: Rice, 15
2 “My father often repeated”: Bain, Peter III, 13
3 “She is a beauty”: Massie, Peter the Great, 806
4 “I was too young then”: Rice, 48
5 “knew of no other family”: Ibid.
6 “Your Majesty may create me”: Ibid., 61
7 “In public”: Longworth, 162
8 “exceedingly obliging and affable”: Rice, 47
9 “Madame, you must choose”: Ibid., 57
5. THE MAKING OF A GRAND DUKE
1 “I don’t belive there is a princess”: Massie, 806
2 “I am Russian, remember”: Bain, Pupils of Peter the Great, 125
3 “the happiest day of my life”: Oldenbourg, 48
4 “I see that Your Highness”: Bain, Peter III, 11
br /> 5 “utterly frivolous”: Ibid., 14
6 “extremely weak”: Ibid., 15
7 “This will be your last”: Oldenbourg, 52
8 “I cannot express”: Bain, Peter III, 13
9 “One promised”: Oldenbourg, 53
10 “as he spoke”: Ibid.
6. MEETING ELIZABETH AND PETER
1 “I could wait no longer”: Kaus, 43
2 “All I have done for you”: Ibid.
3 “It was quite impossible”: Memoirs, 60
4 “one of the most handsome men”: Ibid., 61
5 “We are living like queens”: Kaus, 53
6 “for the first ten days”: Memoirs, 62
7 “because his aunt wished it”: Ibid.
8 “I blushed to hear”: Ibid.
7. PNEUMONIA
1 “the external forms”: Madariaga, Russia in the Age, 6
2 “Search yourself with care”: Anthony, 82
3 “The change of religion”: Ibid., 81
4 “There I lay with a high fever”: Memoirs, 63
5 “the devil would take her”: Oldenbourg, 68
6 “Call Simon Todorsky”: Anthony, 83
7 “the ladies would speak”: Herzen, 28,
8 “my mother’s behavior”: Memoirs, 64
9 “I had become as thin as a skeleton”: Memoirs, 65
10 “My Lord, I make so bold”: Oldenbourg, 68
11 “Our good prince”: Kaus, 58
12 “I have had more trouble”: Ibid., 59
8. INTERCEPTED LETTERS
1 “If the empress would give”: Kaus, 50
2 “frivolous, indolent, running to fat”: Haslip, 34
3 “This horseplay will stop”: Herzen, 29
4 “If your mother has done something wrong”: Memoirs, 66
9. CONVERSION AND BETROTHAL
1 “She slept soundly”: Oldenbourg, 74
2 “I thought she was lovely”: Ibid., 75
3 “The forehead, eyes, neck, throat”: Ibid., 76
4 “I had learned it by heart”: Anthony, 84
5 “Her bearing … through the entire ceremony”: Ibid.
6 “real little monsters, both of them”: Oldenbourg, 77