During the summer and autumn of 1722, while Peter and Catherine were away on the Caspian Sea, the court transferred itself to Moscow. Catherine of Mecklenburg was living with her mother at the Ismailovsky Palace, and she often invited people out from Moscow for entertainment. They came over the muddy country roads to be served with cups of vodka by the Duchess' own hand, be fed a badly cooked dinner and dance until midnight. When the heat of bodies and candles in the small drawing room became too great, the dancers moved into the bedroom where the crippled Tsaritsa Praskovaya was lying, or into the bedroom of the Duchess. The house was poorly designed, with bedrooms scattered between drawing room and dining room, and, in any case, Praskovaya cared little about appearances. When Peter returned from the Caspian, Bergholz hurried out in the middle of the night to be the first to bring the news to the Tsaritsa. He found everyone in bed, but Catherine of Mecklenburg was delighted and took Bergholz to announce the news to her mother, her sister and their maids of honor, who were all undressed. The Holsteiner was surprised by the small size and poor condition of the Tsaritsa's house. "In general, this nocturnal visit did not make a favorable impression on me," he noted in his diary, "although I had the luck to see many bare necks and bosoms."
In 1718, Peter instituted his new assemblies, or evening parties, which were held two or three times a week during the long winter. They were the most important part of the Tsar's effort to bring the two sexes together and give Petersburg a taste of the genteel social intercourse which he had witnessed in the salons of Paris. Because this idea was a novelty in Russia, Peter issued regulations* spelling out to his subjects exactly what the new assemblies were meant to be and how they were to be performed. His explanation, typically, has the sound of a teacher lecturing pupils:
Regulation for Keeping Assemblies at Petersburg
Assembly is a French term which cannot be rendered in a single Russian word: It signifies a number of persons meeting together, either for diversion or to talk about their own affairs. Friends may see each other on that occasion, to confer together on business or other subjects, to inquire after domestic and foreign news, and so to pass their time. After what manner we will have those assemblies kept may be learned from what follows:
1. The person at whose house the assembly is to be in the evening is to hand out a bill or other sign to give notice to all persons of either sex.
The assembly shall not begin sooner than four or five in the afternoon, nor continue later than ten at night.
The master of the house is not obliged to go and meet his guests, to conduct them out, or to entertain them; but though he himself is exempt from waiting on them, he ought to find chairs, candles, drink and all the other necessaries asked for, as also to provide for all sorts of gaming and what belongs thereto.
No certain hour is fixed for anybody's coming or going; it is sufficient if one makes his appearance at the assembly.
It is left to everyone's liberty to sit, walk or play, just as he likes, nor shall anybody hinder him or take exception at what he does, on pain of emptying the Great Eagle [a bowl filled with wine or brandy] to be swallowed as punishment. As for the rest, it is enough to salute at coming and going.
Persons of rank, as for instance noblemen, and superior officers, likewise merchants of note, and headmasters (by which are chiefly understood shipbuilders), persons employed in the Chancery, and their wives and children shall have the liberty of frequenting the assemblies.
A particular place shall be assigned to the footmen (those of the house excepted) that there may be sufficient room in the apartments designed for the assembly [that is, so that the rooms would not be clogged with footmen hanging about and mingling with guests].
Although the host was not asked to prepare anything more than tea or cold water for his guests, nothing prevented him from furnishing a large supper and plenty to drink. Yet no one was forced to drink, and, in contrast to Peter's famous all-made banquets, heavy drinking and drunkenness at the assemblies were severely frowned upon. Peter himself kept the list of hosts and designated the host whose turn it was; and although he still refused to give formal parties at his own palace, he readily agreed to act as host for an assembly when his name came up on the list.
Before long, St. Petersburg society flocked to these receptions. In one room there would be dancing, in another people playing cards, in a third a group of men solemnly smoking their long clay pipes and drinking from earthenware mugs, and in a fourth men and women laughing, gossiping and enjoying one another in a way hitherto unknown in Russia. Peter was always there, merry and talkative, moving from room to room or sitting at a table, smoking a long Dutch pipe, sipping Hungarian wine and studying his next move in a game of draughts or chess. The course of these assemblies did not always run smoothly. Prince Gregory Dolgoruky and the younger Prince Romodanovsky, old enemies from a divorce suit, got into a fist fight at the supper table; on another occasion, a guest climbed onto the table and, walking along it, stumbled into a pie. But in general, the level of behavior was pleasing to the watchful eye of the imperial mentor who had performed this miracle of blending the society of Old Russia with the society of Europe.
Most ladies in St. Petersburg society, once exposed to Peter's mixed assemblies, rushed to embrace the change. Instead of remaining in the reclusive world of their own households, they now stepped forward into a new, more exciting life. Young, unmarried girls now had a place to meet a wide range of young, unmarried men. It was delicious to be able to dress, to dance, to display their charms in public. Extravagant new dresses, glorious in color and style, appeared, and, reported Bergholz, "all the ladies here use rouge as much as the French." However, they were still unwilling to spend hours preparing the lavish coiffures of the ladies of Western courts. "It is still too hard for them to make a sacrifice of their accustomed love of ease," said Bergholz. "Russians think too much of their ease and coif themselves very unwillingly."
With Western manners in vogue, Russian mothers hurried to bring their daughters up in the style of Germany or France. "One must do the parents here justice," said Bergholz, "to say that they spare nothing to have their children well educated, so that it is with astonishment that one sees the great changes which have been made in this nation in such a short time. There is no more trace of the rude and displeasing behavior they had not long ago." Some of these young women had a special advantage gained in a somewhat ironic way. General Trubetskoy, who had been held prisoner in Stockholm with his wife and daughters, was exchanged in 1718 for Field Marshal Rehnskjold. When the family returned from Sweden, his three daughters, who had been in Stockholm "with their father from their tender years, had so much improved by a good education that upon their return to Russia they distinguished themselves far above any other ladies of their own country."
The gentlemen as well as the ladies of St. Petersburg rushed to adorn themselves. Instead of the traditional single fine robe worn on state occasions and passed down from father to son, Russian gentlemen now ordered numerous rich new coats, embroidered with gold. One foreigner, watching a group of Russians covered with furs coming into a house on a cold winter night, declared, "On entering any house, some of the servants immediately untie your fur shoes and divest you of your pelisse; nor is it unamusing to see fine gentlemen, adorned with silver and gold and purple, and precious stones, starting forth from their rough external guise like so many gaudy butterflies, bursting suddenly free from their winter encrustations."
The extravagance in clothes was accompanied by extravagance in other aspects of living. Russians kept regiments of servants and clothed them in splendid liveries. They ordered exquisite furniture, elegant carriages and rare foreign wines. Banquets, balls and other entertainments displayed their wealth, although all too often the wealth disappeared as expenses ate up the fortune. Debts and ruin were frequent, and impoverished officers and officials begging for a new position with a handsome salary were often to be seen in the offices of government.
Another result of
the sudden emancipation of Russian women after centuries of sequestration was a general easing of morality, or what Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov later described as "a depravation of morals." Peter's personal behavior in this area remains obscure. Anna Mons and Catherine were his mistresses at different times. Catherine's maids of honor Marie Hamilton and Marie Cantemir were rumored to have received his favors, and several eighteenth-century writers wrote rollicking accounts of Catherine traveling through Europe accompanied by a suite of ladies, each one carrying her baby by Peter in her arms. One presumes that Peter was not chaste and that the stories of a liaison with an actress in London or a lady in Paris may be true. It is clear, however, that these affairs, if they took place, were episodes to which Peter gave little thought and attached no importance. Catherine understood this and frequently teased him in her letters. Peter's assurances that no other woman would be interested in "an old fellow like me" were good-humored but sometimes a little red-faced.
Catherine could tease him, but others could not. In Copenhagen in 1716, King Frederick IV turned to him smiling and with an eyebrow raised. "Ah, my brother," he said, "I hear you also have a mistress." Peter's face instantly darkened. "My brother," he snapped, "my harlots do not cost me much, but yours cost you thousands of pounds which could be better spent."
Essentially, Peter's attitude toward morality in relations between men and women was based on a utilitarian social ethic. He was indulgent toward behavior and indiscretions which did no harm to society. Prostitutes enjoyed "perfect liberty in Russia," reported Weber, except in the case of one who had "peppered some hundreds of the Preobrazhensky Guards who, being unable to march on their duty with the rest, were obliged to remain behind at Petersburg in order to be cured"; this woman was knouted for having harmed state interests. In general, the Tsar refused to defend chastity or punish adultery. Told that the Emperor Charles
V had forbidden adultery under pain of death, he asked, "Is it possible? I should have thought that so great a prince had more judgment. Without a doubt he fancied that his people were too numerous. It is necessary to punish disorders and crimes, but we ought to spare the lives of our people as much as possible." Unmarried women, when pregnant, were encouraged to bear their infants. Once, when Peter found a pretty girl barred from the company of other maidens because she had an illegitimate son, he said, "I forbid her to be exluded from the company of other women and girls." The girl's son was placed under the Tsar's protection.
Peter's court was filled with examples of men and women who had profited from or been saved by the Tsar's leniency in these matters. He encouraged Yaguzhinsky to divorce his first wife, who was making his life miserable, and to marry Countess Golovkin, "one of the most agreeable and well-educated ladies in Russia," according to Bergholz. Although her face was scarred by smallpox, she had a splendid figure, spoke French and German fluently, danced exquisitely and was always cheerful. He denied Prince Repnin permission to take his Finnish mistress as his fourth wife (the Orthodox church permitted only three in sequence), but legitimized their children under the name Repninsky. When his favored dentchik Vasily Pospelov married a lady flute player, Peter not only attended their wedding but was present at the baptism of their baby the following morning. He supported General Anthony Devier in his suit for the hand of Menshikov's sister. Having been refused by the Prince, who hoped for a better match, Devier and the lady nevertheless conceived a child. Devier appealed again to Menshikov on the grounds that the child should be born legitimate, to which Menshikov responded by kicking Devier down the stairs. Peter intervened on Devier's appeal and the marriage was celebrated, although after the Emperor's death Menshikov exiled his brother-in-law to Siberia.
But if Peter was tolerant of indiscretion, he was implacable in criminal matters. Prenatal abortion or the murder of an unwanted infant after birth was punishable by death. The most dramatic example of the Tsar's unwavering stand on this issue came with the case of Marie Hamilton. This young woman, one of the Tsaritsa Catherine's favorite maids of honor, was, in the language of the day, "much addicted to gallantry." In consequence, she bore three illegitimate children. The first two were murdered in such secrecy that no one at court suspected, but the third dead infant was discovered and the mother arrested. In prison, she confessed that this was the third time this mournful event had occurred. To her surprise, for she believed that the friendship and favor of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa would win her a pardon, she was sentenced to death. On the day of the execution, the prisoner appeared on the scaffold in a white silk gown trimmed with black ribbons. Peter climbed the structure to stand beside her and spoke quietly into her ear. The condemned woman and most of the spectators assumed that this would be her last-minute reprieve. Instead, the Tsar gave her a kiss and said sadly, "I cannot violate the laws to save your life. Support your punishment with courage, and, in the hope that God may forgive you your sins, address your prayers to him with a heart full of faith and contrition." Miss Hamilton knelt and prayed, the Tsar turned away and the headsman struck.
During the final years of his reign, Peter turned his attention to bringing to St. Petersburg some of the institutional refinements of civilized society: museums, an art gallery, a library and even a zoo. Like almost everything new in Russia created by the Tsar's effort, these institutions strongly reflected his own taste. He had little inclination for theater (his preference ran to the crude masquery of his Mock-Synod) and none whatsoever for instrumental music. The only theatrical performances to which Russian society had access were those arranged by Peter's sister Princess Natalya, who established a small theater of her own, taking a large empty house and fitting it out with a stage, pit and boxes. Weber, who attended a performance, was not enthusiastic. "The actors and actresses, ten in number, were all native Russians who had never been abroad, so that it is easy to imagine their ability," he wrote. The play he saw, a tragedy written by the Princess herself and performed in Russian, was a moralistic tale of rebellion in Russia and the horrors proceeding from that unhappy event. And if Weber found the actors bad, he found the orchestra worse. "The orchestra was composed of sixteen musicians, all Russians," he wrote. "They are taught music as well as other sciences with the help of batogs. If a general pitches upon some spare fellow in a regiment who he decides should learn music, notwithstanding the soldier has not the least notion of it nor any talent that way, he is sent out to a master who gives him a certain time for learning his task; first, learning the handling of the instrument, then to play some Lutheran hymns or some minuet and so on. If the scholar has not learned his lesson during the term prefixed, the batogs are applied and repeated till such time as he is master of the tune."
Even this small theater disappeared in 1716 when Princess Natalya died. Later, in Moscow, the Duchess of Mecklenburg established a small theater at Ismailovo with herself as director, ladies of her court as actresses and the male roles being taken mostly by servants. Despite the distance from Moscow, many people came to see these performances, although some in the audience may have attended for mixed motives. Bergholz grumbled that on his first visit he was robbed of his snuffbox and that on another occasion the pockets of many Holstein gentlemen were picked of their silk handkerchiefs. In time, Peter made arrangements for a professional theatrical company to come from Hamburg, but it never arrived. For two or three years, a small, wretched theater existed in St. Petersburg on the banks of the Moika Canal, doing bad imitations of French plays and poor translations of German farces. But with the Tsar uninterested, his subjects also showed little interest. Like Peter himself, they preferred more popular spectacles, such as juggling and rope dancing. A special favorite of the Tsar's was the celebrated German strongman Samson, who arrived in Russia in 1719. Irritated by those, especially among the clergy, who said that Samson performed his feats by magic, witchcraft or trickery rather than by strength, the Tsar stood beside Samson and called some of the principal clergymen upon the stage to witness the performance at close range. Samson lay down across two cha
irs supported only under his head and feet; Peter placed an anvil on his chest, and then broke several large pieces of iron upon the anvil with a sledgehammer. Samson next placed a stick between his teeth, which the Tsar tried with both hands to pull out; he failed not only to move the stick but even to move Samson from his place. The strongman's power, Peter triumphantly announced to everyone present, lay solely in his sheer physical strength.
On his second visit to the West in 1716-1717, Peter went earnestly and regularly to see scientific collections and public and private collections of paintings, and brought many paintings home with him. Hoping that one day not all the paintings in Russia would be the work of foreigners, Peter sent a number of young Russian artists to Holland and Italy to study. The Tsar was even prouder of his new scientific collections. In 1717, he had purchased the entire collection of the celebrated Dutch anatomist Professor Ruysch, whose lecture hall and dissecting room the Tsar often had visited on his first trip twenty years before. The collection, which had been forty years in forming, came with an illustrated catalog titled Thesaurus Anatomicus. Peter also purchased the collection of the Dutch apothecary Seba, consisting of all known land and sea animals, birds, reptiles and insects of the East Indies. These two celebrated collections were the foundation of the Museum of the
Academy of Science, which Peter established in a large stone building on Vasilevsky Island across from the Admiralty. It was his custom to go to the museum at dawn two or three times a week to study the exhibits before he went to the Admiralty. He enjoyed being there so much that on one occasion he decided to hold an audience with the Austrian ambassador in the museum. The Chancellor asked whether the Summer Palace would not be more appropriate. "The ambassador is accredited to me, not to one of my palaces," Peter replied, and he received the ambassador at the museum at five a.m. on a subsequent morning.