28
MENSHIKOV AND CATHERINE
During these early years of war, two people emerged who were to become the closest companions of Peter’s life, Alexander Menshikov and Martha Skavronskaya. There were remarkable parallels between them: Both rose from obscurity; they met each other before she met Peter; they rose together, he from stable boy to mighty prince, she from orphaned peasant girl to be crowned as empress, Peter’s heir and successor as Russia’s sovereign. Both survived the giant Tsar who had created them, but not for long. After Peter died, the Empress Catherine quickly followed, and then the ambitious stable boy who had scaled the heights toppled dizzyingly back to earth.
The great Prince Menshikov, the empire’s mightiest satrap, Peter’s “Herzenkind” (child of the heart), the human whom after Catherine he loved most, the one man who could absolutely “speak for the Tsar,” who became a field marshal, First Senator, a “Serene Highness” and a Prince of Russia, as well as a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire! The best-known portrait of Menshikov shows a man with a high-domed forehead, intelligent blue-green eyes, a strong nose and a pencil-thin brown mustache. His smile is as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa’s. At first, it appears blandly open and pleasant; on second glance, it seems cooler, more distant. As one considers the mouth and eyes, the smile and the general visage become decidedly calculating and unpleasant. Menshikov is dressed as the Westernized “almost sovereign potentate” which Pushkin called him. He wears a curled white wig like a grandee of Louis XIV; an armored breastplate is covered with a white robe edged in gilt, with golden tassels. Around his neck is a red silk scarf, and across his chest the wide blue ribbon of the Order of St. Andrew. The star of the order, along with the stars of the Polish Order of the White Eagle and another order, are pinned to the robe. One can tell, looking at this painting, that here is an exceedingly clever, enormously powerful, unforgiving man.
The name and career of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov are inextricably entwined with the life of Peter the Great, yet the origins of Peter’s famous lieutenant are shrouded in legend. Some have said that his father was a Lithuanian peasant who sent his son as an apprentice to a pastry cook in Moscow, where young Alexashka sold small cakes and pirozhki. In the city streets one day, so the story goes, the clever lad’s perky cries as he hawked his wares attracted the attention of Lefort, who stopped to talk to him, was charmed and immediately took the boy into his personal service. Thereafter, although Menshikov could barely write his name, his wit and bold repartee sparkled so brightly that he soon was noticed by Peter. The Tsar, too, was intrigued by the intelligent, good-humored boy so near his own age, and, persuading Lefort to part with him, made Alexashka his own private servant. From this position, low in rank but at the elbow of the autocrat, Menshikov employed his great charm and his variety of useful talents to make himself one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in eighteenth-century Europe. His saucy boldness never deserted him. It led him to steal exorbitantly from the state funds entrusted to him, and then helped to shield him from the wrath of an outraged sovereign. Eventually, it is said, Peter threatened to send the mighty Prince back to selling pies in the Moscow streets. That same evening, Menshikov appeared before Peter dressed in an apron with a tray of pirozhki attached to his shoulders, calling out, “Hot pies! Hot pies! I sell fresh-baked pirozhki!” Peter shook his head in disbelief, burst out laughing and once again forgave his erring favorite.
The likelier story of the beginnings of Alexander Menshikov is only a shade less colorful. It is almost certain that Menshikov’s father was a soldier who served under Tsar Alexis and became a corporal-clerk stationed at Preobrazhenskoe. Probably, the family’s origins were Lithuanian: The diploma creating Menshikov a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire declared that the new Prince was descended from an ancient and noble Lithuanian family. “Ancient” and “noble” may have been added to make it easier for the rigidly conservative Hapsburg Emperor to bestow the title, but there is evidence that relatives of Menshikov were landed proprietors in the neighborhood of Minsk, at that time a part of Lithuania.
Whatever his antecedents, Menshikov was born in November 1673, a year and a half after Peter himself, and spent his childhood as a stable boy on the imperial estate at Preobrazhenskoe. From his earliest youth, he understood the value of proximity to Peter. He was one of the first boys to enroll as a play soldier in Peter’s youthful military company. By 1693, he was listed as a bombardier—Peter’s favorite branch of the army—in the Preobrazhensky Guards. As a sergeant, he stood next to the Tsar under the walls of Azov, and when Peter was making up his Great Embassy toWestern Europe, Menshikov was one of the first to volunteer and be chosen. By this time he had been appointed as a dentchik, one of the young men assigned as personal orderlies to the Tsar. A dentchik’s duty was to attend the sovereign day and night, taking his turn sleeping in the next room or, when the Tsar was traveling, sleeping on the floor at the foot of the royal bed. At Peter’s side, Menshikov worked in the shipyards of Amsterdam and Deptford. He was almost Peter’s equal in ship’s carpentry and the only Russian besides the Tsar who showed real aptitude for the trade. In Peter’s company, Menshikov visited Western workshops and laboratories, learned to speak a smattering of Dutch and German and acquired a surface polish of polite society. Adaptable and quick to learn, he still remained a thorough Russian and, as such, was almost a prototype of the kind of man Peter wanted to create in Russia. Here was at least one subject who tried to grasp Peter’s new ideas, who was willing to break with old Russian customs and who was not only intelligent enough and talented enough but actually eager to help.
On returning from Europe, Menshikov was included in the revels of Peter’s Jolly Company. Six feet tall, robust, agile and good at the sports Peter liked, he became a prominent figure at Preobrazhenskoe, where he was known by his nickname, Alexashka, or his patronymic, Danilovich. He appeared in the “great company of singers who sang carols over Christmas at General Gordon’s house,” and he played an enthusiastic part in the execution of the Streltsy. Peter gave him a house, and on February 2, 1699, in the presence of the Tsar, it was consecrated according to the “rites of Bacchus.”
Inevitably, the young man’s rapid rise stirred sneers behind his back at his obscure origins and lack of education. “By birth,” said Prince Boris Kurakin, “Menshikov is lower than a Pole.” Korb wrote disparagingly of “that Alexander who is so conspicuous at court through the Tsar’s graces” and reported that the young favorite already was selling his influence to merchants and others in need of help with various branches of the government. Whitworth, the English minister, reported in 1706, “I am credibly informed that Menshikov can neither read nor write,” a charge that was only partially true. Menshikov had learned to read, but always wrote through a secretary, signing his own name in a labored and shaky hand.
Yet, despite his detractors, Menshikov continued to ascend. His tact, his optimism, his uncanny way of understanding and almost anticipating all of Peter’s commands and personal moods, his acceptance and endurance of the Tsar’s anger and even violent blows, made him unique. When Peter, on returning from Europe, accused General Shein of selling army commissions and at a banquet drew his sword to strike the offender, it was Lefort who deflected the blow and saved Shein’s life, but it was Menshikov who grappled with and calmed the Tsar. Not long after, at a christening party for the son of the Danish ambassador, Peter saw Menshikov wearing a sword on the dance floor. Appalled at this breach of etiquette committed in the presence of foreigners, Peter struck the offender in the face with his fist, bringing blood spurting from Menshikov’s nose. The following spring in Voronezh, Menshikov bent forward to whisper something in Peter’s ear and was rewarded with a burst of anger and another blow in the face, this one so powerful that it stretched the victim on the ground. Menshikov accepted this abuse not simply with resignation but with unfailing good humor. In time, his understanding of Peter’s moods and his willingness to accept whatever Peter offered, be it favor or blow, made him indispensable to the Tsar. He had ceased to be a servant and become a friend.
In 1700, at the outbreak of the war, Menshikov was still attached to Peter’s private household—a letter to him from Peter in that year indicates that he had special charge of the Tsar’s wardrobe. But when the war began, Menshikov plunged into it, displaying a talent for military command as great as his talent for everything else. He was with Peter at Narva and left with the Tsar before the disastrous battle began. During the operations in Ingria in 1701, which Peter conducted personally, Menshikov distinguished himself as Peter’s lieutenant. After the siege and capture of Nöteborg (now Schlüsselburg), Menshikov was named governor of the fortress. He participated in the advance down the Neva, the taking of Nyenskans and the ambush and capture of the Swedish flotilla at the mouth of the river. With the founding of St. Petersburg in 1703 and the building of the Peter and Paul Fortress, Menshikov was assigned responsibility for construction of the one of the six great bastions which subsequently bore his name. That same year, he became Governor General of Karelia, Ingria and Estonia. In 1703, to please the Tsar, Peter Golitsyn, envoy to the imperial court at Vienna, arranged to have Menshikov named a Count of Hungary. In 1705, the Emperor Joseph created Alexashka a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Two years later, after Menshikov’s victory over the Swedes at Kalisz in Poland, Peter gave him the Russian title of Prince of Izhora, with large estates. Significantly, only two weeks after receiving these lands, the new Prince wrote to ascertain the number of parishes and people therein, what revenue could be collected from them, and to command that in religious services in churches in the district his name be mentioned with that of the Tsar.
Infinitely more important than titles or wealth—for both titles and wealth wholly depended on it—was Peter’s friendship. The death of Lefort in 1699 left the Tsar with no close friend to whom he could reveal both his greatness and his pettiness, his visions, his hopes and his despair. Menshikov assumed this role, and during these early years of war Peter’s friendship grew into deep affection. Alexashka would follow Peter anywhere and turn his hand to any enterprise the Tsar commanded. He could be the companion of Peter’s drunken orgies, the confidant of his amours, the commander of his cavalry and a minister of his government—all with equal devotion and skill. As their personal relationship grew more intimate, Peter’s form of addressing Menshikov changed. In 1703, the Tsar still called him “Mein Herz” and “Mein Herzenchen.” In 1704, it became “Mein Liebster Kamerad” and “Mein Liebster Freund.” After that, it was “Mein Brudder.” Peter ended his letters to Menshikov with the lines, “All is well. Only God grant to see you in joy again. You yourself know.”*
As Menshikov’s life progressed, honors and rewards continued to shower on him—and his enemies proliferated. To them he appeared obsequious, ambitious and, when he had power, despotic. He could be harsh and cruel and never forget a disservice done to him. His greatest flaw, several times his near-undoing, was avarice. Born with nothing and then surrounded by opportunities for acquiring wealth, he grabbed whatever he could. As he grew older, this trait became more pronounced—or at least less easy to hide. Peter, aware that his old friend was using his offices to amass wealth and often was stealing directly from the state, tried several times to stop him. Menshikov was hauled before courts of justice, stripped of his powers, fined, even beaten by the infuriated Tsar. But always the comradeship of thirty years intervened, Peter’s anger abated and Menshikov was reinstated.
In fact, Menshikov was far more than a clever, greedy sycophant. Although he rode to the heights on Peter’s back, he was indispensable to Peter as a friend. He became, as much as any man could, Peter’s alter ego; he knew so well how the Tsar would react to any situation that his commands were accepted as if they were Peter’s. “He does what he likes without asking my opinion,” Peter once said of him. “But I for my part never decide anything without asking him his.” For better or for worse, Menshikov helped Peter create a new Russia.
The origins of Martha Skavronskaya are even more obscure than those of Menshikov. Her life before her meeting with the Tsar in 1703, when she was nineteen, is only conjecture. The likeliest story is that she was one of four children of a Lithuanian peasant, possibly a Catholic, named Samuel Skavronsky. Skavronsky had moved from Lithuania and settled in the Swedish province of Livonia, where, in 1684, in the village of Ringen near Dorpat, Martha was born. When she was still an infant, her father died of plague, followed soon after by her mother. The destitute children were scattered, and Martha was taken into the family of Pastor Ernst Gluck, a Lutheran minister of Marienburg. Although not exactly a servant, she was expected to make herself useful in the household, doing laundry, sewing, baking bread and looking after the other children. That she was not considered a full member of the family seems likely since, in this relatively well-educated household, no effort was made to educate her and she left the Gluck family unable to read or write.
In adolescence, Martha grew into a comely, sturdy girl whose warm, dark eyes and full figure attracted attention. One story is that Frau Gluck grew wary, fearing the effect of the blossoming girl on her growing sons or even on the Pastor. Martha, accordingly, was encouraged to accept the suit of a Swedish dragoon whose regiment was quartered in the neighborhood. She was betrothed to him and, according to some accounts, was actually married to him for a brief span of eight days in the summer of 1702. At this point, the rapid successes of the invading Russians suddenly compelled his regiment to evacuate Marienburg. Martha never saw her fiancé/husband again.
With the Swedish withdrawal, the district of Dorpat fell into the hands of Sheremetev’s Russian army, and along with the entire population, Pastor Gluck and his family were taken prisoner. Sheremetev, a sophisticated man, received the Lutheran clergyman with kindness and accepted Gluck’s offer to go to Moscow to serve the Tsar as a translator. The attractive foundling Martha, however, did not go to Moscow, but remained for six months in the domestic service of Sheremetev himself. (One tale presents the vivid picture of the girl being brought into the Field Marshal’s camp wrapped only in a soldier’s cloak to cover her nakedness.) Some assume that the girl became his mistress, which would not have been impossible, although nothing indicates that such a relationship actually existed between the illiterate seventeen-year-old girl and the cultivated, middle-aged Field Marshal. Later, as Peter’s wife, she bore Sheremetev no ill-will, nor, on the other hand, did she especially favor him. In short, nothing except proximity suggests intimacy between them, and the likelihood is that the future Empress was a serving woman in Sheremetev’s household and nothing more.
Martha’s relations with her next protector, Menshikov, were closer and more complex. He was already emerging as the Tsar’s favorite when, visiting Sheremetev, he spotted her. Her comeliness had increased; her hands, once red with work, had become whiter and less coarse with her new, less arduous role. She had accepted the Orthodox faith and taken the Russian name of Ekaterina (Catherine). No one knows how Menshikov persuaded Sheremetev to transfer the Lithuanian girl to his own household—some say that he simply bought her. In any case, in the autumn of 1703 he took her to Moscow.
There is the possibility that during these months the eighteen-year-old woman shared the bed of the thirty-two-year-old favorite. True or not, the bond formed at this time between them became unbreakable and lifelong. They were to be the two most powerful people in the Russian empire after the Tsar himself, yet because of their mutually humble origins, both were totally dependent on Peter. Aside from the Tsar’s protection, the only separate strength either the wife or the favorite possessed was the support and alliance of the other.
In fact, there is no proof that Catherine was Menshikov’s mistress, and, indeed, there is circumstantial evidence that she was not. During these years, Menshikov was strongly attached to one of a group of girls who carried the title of Boyar Maidens and whose duties consisted only of being companions to the royal ladies. In 1694, after the death of Peter’s mother, the Tsar’s lively younger sister, Natalya, moved in to live with him in his masculine world at Preobrazhenskoe, bringing with her a small group of such maidens, including two sisters, Darya and Barbara Arseneeva, the daughters of an official in Siberia. Menshikov, as Peter’s friend, was welcomed at the feminine court around Natalya, and there soon developed an attachment between him and the beautiful Darya Arseneeva. Through his secretary, he wrote to her regularly from wherever he was and sent her rings and jewels. She wrote back and sent him dressing gowns, bed linen and shirts. In 1703, when Menshikov returned to Moscow in triumph from his military victories in Ingria, the Arseneev sisters came to live in the household which his own two sisters kept for him. It was to this same household that Menshikov brought Catherine. Although it is possible that he may, while courting a lady of higher birth, have amused himself with a Lithuanian serving girl, he was much in love with Darya, who later became his wife.
When Peter met Catherine in the autumn of 1703, she was a member of Menshikov’s household with a status which, if uncertain to us, must have been quite clear to him. She was important enough to have access to the Tsar and to speak to him, although he was thirty-one and she was only nineteen, and Peter admired her. His own twelve-year relationship with Anna Mons was breaking apart.* Here before him was a sturdy, healthy, appealing girl in the full bloom of youth. She was far from a classic beauty, but her velvet black eyes, her thick blond hair (which she later dyed black to lighten the appearance of her sun-tanned skin) and her full, womanly bosom already had caught the eye of a field marshal and a future prince; the Tsar was no less observant.
Whatever her previous arrangements, from that time on Catherine was Peter’s mistress. For convenience, she continued to live in Menshikov’s house in Moscow, a dwelling which by this time was filled with women. At first, it had been kept for him by his own two sisters, Maria and Anna, but in December 1703 Anna greatly advanced the Menshikov family fortunes by marrying an aristocrat, Alexis Golovin, the younger brother of Fedor Golovin, head of the Foreign Ministry. Now it also included the two Arseneev sisters, Barbara and Darya, their aunt, Anisya Tolstoy, and Catherine.
In October 1703, Peter came to Moscow to spend five weeks with this unusual Menshikov “family”; then he departed, but returned in December to stay until March. Soon Darya and Catherine were traveling together to join Menshikov and Peter in towns near where the army was camped. For several years, this quartet was so close that whichever male was apart from the others was sad and lonely. Peter and Menshikov were often separated; Menshikov, as an increasingly successful commander of cavalry and dragoons, was constantly away in Lithuania or Poland. The two women, always traveling together for propriety’s sake, could not be with both men at once; in consequence, either Peter or Menshikov was often reduced to writing mournful letters to the other three. In the winter of 1704, a son named Peter was born to Catherine, and in March 1705 Peter wrote to Catherine and Darya: “I am rarely merry here. O mothers! Do not abandon my little Petrushka. Have some clothes made for him and go as you will, but order that he shall have enough to eat and drink. And give my regards, ladies, to Alexander Danilovich. And you have shown me great unkindness in being unwilling to write to me about your health.” In October 1705, a second son, Paul, was born, and in December 1706 a daughter whom they called Catherine.
Then, in the spring of 1706, a lonely Menshikov, off in the field, sent Darya a present of five lemons, all he could gather, suggesting that she share them with the Tsar. Peter wrote to thank Menshikov for the lemons, but also to summon him to Kiev. “It is very necessary for you to come by Assumption Day in order to accomplish what we have already sufficiently talked about before I go.” The matter on which Peter now was sternly insisting was Menshikov’s marriage to Darya, which had been on his mind for some time. He had written Menshikov from St. Petersburg, giving him a push: “As you know, we are living in Paradise, but one idea never leaves me about which you yourself know, that I place my confidence not in human will, but in divine will and mercy.” Repeatedly, Menshikov had promised, but repeatedly the wedding was postponed.
Peter’s insistence on this marriage stemmed from his desire to regularize the situation in which the two couples were living. It would calm the talk about the quartet—including two unmarried women—roaming shamelessly around Russia. Not that it would end such talk completely; only a marriage to Catherine, who was regularly bearing him children, would do that, but about this he hesitated while Eudoxia still lived. Nevertheless, Menshikov’s marriage would be a first step—Darya would become a respectable matron with whom Catherine could properly travel. Finally, in August 1706, Menshikov bowed, and Darya became a wife who shared his thoughts and his burdens, looked after his comforts and accompanied him whenever she could on his travels and campaigns.
Once Menshikov was married, Peter began to think of taking the same step himself. In many ways, it seemed to offer more hazards than advantages. Traditional Russians would find it an act of madness for the Tsar to marry an illiterate foreign peasant. In a time of national crisis, when Peter was forcing Russians to sacrifice heavily for the state, could he inflict this outrage on them without serious disruptions? Eventually, these arguments, strong though they were, were shouldered aside by Peter’s need for this extraordinary woman, and fifteen months later, in November 1707, Peter followed Menshikov’s wedding with his own. The ceremony was privately performed in St. Petersburg without any of the fanfare which had surrounded the marriage of the Prince. For a while, even though Catherine had borne him three, then four, then five children, he continued to keep the marriage secret from his people and even from his ministers and some members of his family.
Catherine was content with her new status (never at any stage of her astonishing ascent did she push to go higher), but as she continued to bear his children and attach herself more deeply in his affections, Peter continued to worry about her. In March 1711, before leaving with Catherine on the Pruth campaign against the Turks, the Tsar summoned his sister Natalya, his sister-in-law, Praskovaya, and two of Praskovaya’s daughters. Presenting them to Catherine, he told them that she was his wife and should be considered the Russian Tsaritsa. He planned to marry her in public as soon as he could, he said, but if he were to die first, they were to accept Catherine as his legal widow.
In February 1712, Peter kept his word and married Catherine again—this time with drums and trumpets playing, with the diplomatic corps in attendance, with a magnificent banquet and a show of fireworks in celebration. Before the ceremony, Catherine had been publicly received and baptized into the Russian church with her stepson, the Tsarevich Alexis, acting as her godfather. Thereafter, the publicly proclaimed Tsaritsa was called Catherine Alexeevna.
His new wife had qualities which Peter had never found in another woman. She was warm, merry, compassionate, kind-hearted, generous, adaptable, comfortable, robustly healthy and possessed of great vitality. Among all of Peter’s followers, she and Menshikov came closest to keeping up with the Tsar’s phenomenal energy and compulsive drive. Catherine had an earthy common sense which immediately saw through flattery and deceit. The language she spoke, like Peter’s own, was simple, direct and honest. In private, she alone could indulge her playful humor and treat Peter like an overgrown boy; in public, she had the tact to remain in the background. She had enough intelligence and sympathy to understand Peter’s burdens as well as his character. With her own good nature, she did not take offense, no matter how gloomy his mood or outrageous his behavior. Alexander Gordon, son-in-law of Patrick Gordon, explained that “the great reason why the Tsar was so fond of her was her exceeding good temper; she was never seen peevish or out of humor; obliging and civil to all and never forgetful of her former condition.”
Better than anyone else, Catherine could deal with Peter’s convulsive fits. When the first symptoms of these attacks appeared, the Tsar’s attendants would run for Catherine, who would come at once and firmly lay him down, take his head in her lap and gently stroke his hair and temples until the convulsions abated and he fell asleep. While he slept, she would sit silently for hours, cradling his head, soothingly stroking it when he stirred. Peter always awakened refreshed. But his need for her went far deeper than mere nursing. Her qualities of mind and heart were such that she was able not only to soothe him, play with him, love him, but also to take part in his inner life, to talk to him about serious things, to discuss his views and projects, to encourage his hopes and aspirations. Not only did her presence comfort him, but her conversation cheered him and gave him balance.
Peter was never greatly interested in women for their special and mysterious female elixir. He had no time for dallying with delicious, witty ladies in a context of court life, like Louis XIV, and he was far too busy with war and government to undertake epic campaigns of sheer physical conquest similar to those which occupied Augustus of Saxony-Poland. After his marriage to Catherine, Peter had occasional mistresses, but they barely entered his thoughts and counted for nothing. In his life, Peter cared deeply for only four women: his mother, his sister Natalya, Anna Mons and Catherine. Of these, his mother and Catherine ranked highest, and Catherine achieved this in part by becoming his second mother. The total, uncritical love she gave to Peter was similar to a mother’s, constant even when the child is behaving horribly. Because of this, he trusted her completely. She—like Natalya Naryshkina or, to a lesser extent, Lefort, who also loved him without question—could approach him even in moments of ungovernable rage to quiet and soothe him. In her arms, he was able to pass peaceful nights. Often, especially in their early years, she appears in his letters as “Moder” or “Moeder.” Later, she becomes his Katerinushka. Thus, gradually, Catherine filled a larger and larger place in Peter’s life and heart. There might be an occasional infidelity with some young beauty, but Catherine, quiet and secure in the knowledge that she was indispensable, only smiled.
Their comradeship and love, as well as Catherine’s strength and endurance, were manifested by the birth of twelve children, six sons and six daughters. Ten of these died in infancy or after only a few years of life. There is pathos in reading the names and dates, for Peter and Catherine used the same names several times, hoping that the new little Peter or Paul or Natalya would be luckier than the buried namesake.* The two of their children who lived to adulthood were Anne, born in 1708, who became Duchess of Holstein and mother of Emperor Peter III, and Elizabeth, born in 1709, who ruled as empress from 1740 to 1762. Although infant deaths were all too normal for the age, it did not lighten the burden of grief for a mother who so often endured pregnancy, labor, early hope and then a funeral.
In every arena of life, Catherine was the opposite of a terem or boudoir princess. Merging the physical stamina of a hardy peasant woman with her keen desire to stay close to her lord, she traveled constantly with Peter through Russia, to Poland, Germany, Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Twice—first against the Turks on the Pruth and then against the Persians along the Caspian—she accompanied Peter on military campaigns, enduring without complaint the hardships of the march and the noisy violence of battle. Riding two or three days on horseback, sleeping in a tent on bare ground close to the thunder of artillery, even seeing a bullet strike one of the men attending her, left Catherine unperturbed.
She was neither prudish nor delicate but a man’s companion whom Peter wanted at his side even in the middle of his drunken revels. Catherine amiably obliged, although when she could do so without angering her husband, she exercised an influence for moderation. During one such orgy of excessive drinking, Catherine knocked on the door of the room in which Peter was locked with a few of his inebriated cronies. “It is time to come home,” she said. The door opened and the obedient Tsar followed her home.
But Catherine was not so hardy and mannish as to lack all feminine interests. She learned to dance and executed the most complicated steps with precision and grace, a talent which she passed along to her daughter Elizabeth. Catherine loved clothes and ornamental pomp. She could be Peter’s soldier-wife and sleep in a tent, but once the campaign was over, she liked to wear jewels and magnificent gowns and to live in palaces. Peter’s own tastes were simple; the smaller his house and the lower the ceiling, the happier he was. But for Catherine he built palaces and gardens in St. Petersburg, at Peterhof and in Reval. Here, at her court, the cloth tunics trimmed with simple braid which served for Peter were insufficient. Catherine’s courtiers wore silk, velvet and brocade embroidered in gold and silver with delicate lace ruffles at the sleeves and diamond and pearl buttons. Most portraits of her painted after she was thirty and had been publicly acknowledged as tsaritsa show a robust, white-bosomed lady with jet-black hair, dark, almond-shaped eyes, heavy eyebrows and a winsome, well-shaped mouth. Usually, she is wearing a diadem of pearls and rubies, a brocade dress edged with lace, a lavish, ermine-tailed cape casually slipping off her right shoulder and the red sash of the Order of St. Catherine, which Peter created in her honor.
Yet, despite her love of pomp, Catherine never pretended that her origins were anything but lowly, and even as Peter’s wife and tsaritsa, she always deferred to foreign royalty. A German diplomat, describing Catherine in 1717, touches on both her appearance and her manner:
The Tsaritsa was in the prime of life and showed no signs of having possessed beauty. She was tall and strong, exceedingly dark, and would have seemed darker but for the rouge and whitening with which she covered her face. There was nothing unpleasant about her manners, and anyone who remembered the Princess’s origins would have been disposed to think them good.… She had a great desire to do well.… It might fairly be said that if this Princess had not all the charms of her sex, she had all its gentleness.… During her visit to Berlin, she showed the Queen the greatest deference, and let it be understood that her own extraordinary fortune did not make her forget the difference between that Princess and herself.
The most graphic embodiment of the attachment between Peter and Catherine and its deepening strength as the years went by appears in their letters. Whenever they were apart, Peter wrote to her every third or fourth day, describing his loneliness, worrying about her health and reassuring her about his, sharing his anxiety when the news is bad and his elation when it is good. His only grumble is that she does not reply as often or as quickly as he would like. Catherine’s answers, which had to be dictated through a secretary and therefore were not as effortlessly composed as his, are filled with cheerful affection, concern for his health, and news of their children. She never complains and never offers advice either on policies or personalities. The tone on both sides is good-natured, concerned and tender, with private mischievous jokes, amused chiding about other romances and amorous promises between themselves. (“If you were here,” Catherine writes to her husband, “there soon would be another little Shishenka [a nickname for one of their small sons].” Almost always, the letters on both sides were accompanied by small parcels of fruit, salted fish, new shirts or dressing gowns for Peter, or oysters, which she loved, for Catherine.
Peter from Lublin, August 31, 1709
Moeder: Since I left you I have no news of what I want to know, especially how soon you will be in Vilna. I am bored without you and you, I think, are the same. King Augustus has come.… The Poles are constantly in conference about the affairs of Ivashka Khmelnitsky [i.e., they are drinking].
—Warsaw, September 24, 1709
… Thanks for your package. I send you some fresh lemons. You jest about amusements [with other women]; we have none, for we are old and not that kind of people. Give my regards to Aunty [Darya]. Her bridegroom [Menshikov] had an interview day before yesterday with Ivashka [i.e., got drunk], and had a bad fall on the boat and now lies powerless; which break gently to Aunty that she does not go to pieces.…
—Marienwerder, October 16, 1709
… Give my regards to Aunty. That she has fallen in love with a monk I have already told her bridegroom, about which he is very sad, and from grief wishes to commit some follies himself.
—Carlsbad, September 19, 1711
We, thank God, are well, only our bellies are swelled up with water, because we drink like horses, and we have nothing else to do.… You write that on account of the cure I should not hurry to you. It is quite evident that you have found somebody better than me. Kindly write about it. Is it one of ours or a man of Thorn? I rather think a man of Thorn, and that you want to be avenged for what I did two years ago. That is the way you daughters of Eve act with us old fellows.
—Greifswald, August 8, 1712
I hear that you are bored and I am not without being bored, but you can judge that business does not leave me much time for boredom. I don’t think I can get away from here to you quickly, and if the horses have arrived, come on with the three battalions that are ordered to go to Anclam. But, for God’s sake, take care not to go a hundred yards from the battalions, for there are many enemy ships in the Haff and the men constantly go into the woods in great numbers and through those woods you must pass.
—Berlin, October 2, 1712
Yesterday I arrived here and I went to see the King. Yesterday morning, he came to me and last night I went to the Queen. I send you as many oysters as I could find. I couldn’t get any more because they say the plague has broken out in Hamburg and it is forbidden to bring anything from there.
—Leipzig, October 6, 1712
I this moment start for Carlsbad and hope to arrive tomorrow. Your clothes and other things were bought, but I couldn’t get any oysters. With this I confide you to God’s keeping.
In 1716, Peter received a pair of spectacles from her. He wrote back:
Katerinushka, my heart’s friend, how are you? Thanks for the present. In the same way I send you something from here in return. Really on both sides the presents are suitable. You sent me wherewithal to help my old age and I send you with which to adorn your youth.
—Pyrmont, June 5, 1716
I received your letter with the present, and I think you have a prophetic spirit that you sent only one bottle, for I am not allowed to drink more than one glass a day, so that this store is quite enough for me. You write that you don’t admit my being old. In that way you try to cover up your first present [the spectacles] so that people should not guess. But it is easy to discover that young people don’t look through spectacles. I shall see you soon. The water is acting well, but it has become very tiresome here.
—Altona, November 23, 1716
Petrushka has cut his fourth tooth; God grant he cut all so well, and that we may see him grow up, thus rewarding us for our former grief over his brothers.…
Two years later, Catherine writes to Peter about this same son.
—July 24, 1718
I and the children, thank God, are in good health. Although on my way back to Petersburg, Petrushka was a little weak with his last teeth, yet now with God’s help he is quite well and has cut three back teeth. I beg you, little father, for protection against Petrushka, for he has no little quarrel with me about you; namely, because when I tell him that Papa has gone away he does not like it, but he likes it better and becomes glad when I say that Papa is here.
—Reval, August 1, 1718
Thanks, my friend, for the figs, which came safely. I have had myself shorn here and send you my shorn locks, though I know they will not be received.
In July 1723, only eighteen months before he died, Peter wrote again from Reval, where he had built himself a small white stucco house and Catherine an ornate pink palace.
The garden planted only two years ago has grown beyond belief, for the only big trees which you saw have in some places stretched their branches across the walk.… The chestnuts all have fine crowns. The house is being plastered outside, but is ready within and, in one word, we have hardly anywhere such a handsome house. I send you some strawberries which ripened before our arrival, as well as cherries. I am quite astonished that things are so early here, when it is in the same latitude as Petersburg.
It is reassuring to read these letters. Not many parts of Peter’s life were as unblemished and happy as his relationship with Catherine. Through these letters, we have the satisfaction of knowing that a man whose childhood was stained with horror, whose public life was filled with struggle, and whose family life saw the appalling tragedy of the Tsarevich Alexis, did at least have moments of felicity. In Catherine, Peter found an island amidst the storms.
* Was there anything else? Whitworth wrote that “some have thought their intimacy rather resembled love than friendship, they having frequent jars and constant reconcilements.” But there is, in fact, no evidence of any homosexual relationship between Peter and Menshikov.
* Anna, feeling that Peter was straying, had attempted to re-stimulate his interest by flirting provocatively with the Prussian envoy Keyserling. The envoy over-responded by falling in love and proposing marriage. Peter’s reaction was to expel Anna from her estate and his favor, reclaim his portrait set in diamonds and place her and her mother and sister under house arrest. Later, he relented, the marriage to Keyserling took place and Anna lived as the ambassador’s wife, then widow, until her own death in the German Suburb in 1715.
* Here is the melancholy list: Peter (b. 1704, d. 1707); Paul (b. 1705, d. 1707); Catherine (b. 1707, d. 1708); Anne (b. 1708, d. 1728); Elizabeth (b. 1709, d. 1762); Natalya (b. 1713, d. 1715); Margarita (b. 1714, d. 1715); Peter (b. 1715, d. 1719); Paul (b. and d. 1717); Natalya (b. 1718, d. 1725); Peter (b. and d. 1723); Paul (b. and d. 1724).