AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE EMPRESS CATHERINE II.*

How the Memoirs of Catherine the Great-the Semiramis of the North, as Voltaire called her, but the Messalina of the North, according to others-indited by herself, ever saw light, is a mystery. We have a preface penned by the editor, A. Herzen, in which the history of the MS. is recorded from the day when the Emperor Paul ordered Count Rostoptchine to seal the papers of the defunct empress to that when copies were circulating even in the library of the poet Pouschkine; and from the time when Nicholas ordered the confiscation of the said copies to the day when one or two more came into circulation: it is insinuated as a consequence of the present emperor having in 1855 requested to have it in his power to peruse the same scandalous record. All this gives zest to the mystical history of the manuscript, without enhancing its authenticity. As to that, we are told it is sufficient to read two or three pages to be convinced.

Catherine II. propounds her Memoirs then with an axiom, vindicated by a syllogism, which is again enforced by two examples:

"Fortune is not so blind as she is imagined to be. She is often the result of just and calculated measures not perceived by the vulgar, yet which nevertheless preceded the event. Still more is such the result of

personal qualities, character, and conduct.

"In order to render this more palpable, I shall expound it as follows:

"Qualities and character are the major;

"Conduct, the minor;

"Fortune, or misfortune, the conclusion.

"Here are two striking examples:

"Peter III.
"Catherine II."

Considering the fate that awaited Peter III. at Catherine's hands, the conclusion arrived at is, to say the least, a strange one. Peter III. was brought up by his cousin, Adolphus Frederick, Bishop of Lubeck, Duke of Holstein, and afterwards King of Sweden. His education was superintended by Brummer, a Swede, but the young prince spurned all tutorship to cultivate the more congenial society of his two valets, Cramer, a Livonian, and Romberg, a Swede. He particularly affected the latter, a rude and coarse dragoon of the time of Charles XII. Already, ten years of age, the prince is said to have shown a marked predilection for drink.

The Empress Elizabeth having succeeded to the throne of Russia, she sent for her nephew from Holstein. Catherine, whose mother was sister to the Bishop of Lubeck, was acquainted with the prince before he left that country, when she was also about ten years of age. He was, she declares, given to drink, impetuous, and self-willed, disliking those who were around his person, sickly-looking, thin, and delicate.

Mémoires de l'Impératrice Catherine II. Ecrits par elle-même, et précédés d'une préface par A. Herzen. Trübner and Co.

Peter having been inducted into the Greek Church, was declared heir to the Empress Elizabeth, and Grand-Duke of Russia. He had been baptised and brought up as a Lutheran, but he was as indifferent to the one form as to the other, as he soon testified to his newly appointed preceptor, Simon Theodorsky, afterwards Archbishop of Pleskov.

In 1744, the Russian court being at Moscow, Catherine arrived there with her mother. She was at that time fifteen years of age. The court Iwas divided into two hostile factions. At the head of the first were Woronzoff, Lestocq, and other of the conspirators who had raised Elizabeth to the throne. This party held by France, Prussia, and Sweden, and hence the Marquis de la Chetardie was high in favour with it. The other party, with Bestoujeff at its head, held by Austria, England, and Saxony.

Catherine places on record that Peter paid her much attention the first days of her arrival. She says that she could at once perceive four things: first, that he did not much care for the country which had adopted him (he is said to have preferred Sweden, for which he was originally destined), that he favoured Lutheranism, that he did not like those who were around his person, and that he was very childish in his manners and ideas. He said to her (Catherine), that what pleased him most in her was that she was his cousin, and that he could be candid with her. He added, that he had loved one of the empress's maids of honour, and that he would have wished to have married her, but that he was resigned to marry her (Catherine), since his aunt wished it.

Catherine had not been long in Russia before she caught a violent cold, which had nearly been the death of her. Her mother insisted that it was small-pox. The doctors said it was pleurisy, and bled her sixteen times, sometimes four times a day! Her mother sent for a Lutheran minister: Catherine was wise enough to ask for Theodorsky. Youth triumphed over not only the sickness, but over the still more formidable assaults of the professional men. But Catherine remained thin and pale; so the empress provided her with carmine. The mother of Catherine was so little in favour with the empress at the onset, that both had nigh been dismissed from Russia together. Catherine and Peter were having a little chat on the occasion in the recess of a window when Lestocq came in. "Ah!" he said, "your pleasures will soon be over. As to you," turning to Catherine, "you may make up your baggage, as you are going home at once." Peter ventured to remark, "But if your mother is to blame, you are not so." "But," adds Catherine, with quite as much naïveté as belonged to Peter, "I saw clearly that he would have left me without regret. As to me, seeing his indifference, he was equally indifferent to me; but the crown of Russia was not so."

On the 28th of June, Catherine made a public profession of faith, and the next day-St. Peter's-she was affianced to the grand-duke. From that time she had her own little court. The course of what little love existed between the parties no more ran smooth, however, than had it been a deeper passion. Small-very small-trifles are as much an occasion for quarrelling among the great as among the little. Catherine's mother, who appears to have been disliked by all, certainly does not seem to have possessed either temper or amiability of disposition. Being at Koselsk:

One day the grand-duke came into my mother's room while she was writing. She had her casket open beside her, and he went to ferret in it. My mother bade him not to touch it, so he jumped away to an opposite side of the room. But as he continued his gymnastics, jumping from one side to another in order to make me laugh, he caught the cover of the casket and tumbled it over. Then my mother got into a passion, and there were violent words between them. My mother reproached him with having purposely upset the casket, and he denied it, both appealing to me for the truth of their statements. I, who knew my mother's temper, was afraid of having my ears boxed if I did not side with her, yet not wishing to tell a story or disoblige the grand-duke, I remained between two fires. Nevertheless, I said to my mother that I did not think that the act had been intentional on the part of the grand-duke, but that when jumping his coat had got entangled with the cover of the casket, which was on a low stool. Then my mother took me to task, for, when she was in a passion, she must have some one on whom to vent her anger. I held my tongue, but began to weep. The grand-duke, seeing that I had incurred my mother's anger by taking his part, and that I was weeping, accused my mother of injustice, and said she was furious in her anger: she, on her side, retorting that he was a badly educated urchin. In a word, it was difficult to carry the quarrel further than the two did without actually fighting.

From that time the grand-duke took a dislike to the mother of his affianced. He never forgot that quarrel. She, on her part, held him in equal dislike; so Catherine had a difficult part to play between the two. It would appear, however, with such a disposition as Peter's, this unpleasant state of things was rather favourable to her prospects than otherwise, for Peter stuck by Catherine against the mother, and thus became a little more attached to her. If Peter, however, took Catherine's part against her mother, he was not equally gallant when the empress was concerned; and one night, when the latter took the strange opportunity of being at the theatre at Moscow to publicly rebuke Catherine for getting into debt, Peter, who was in the same box, took his aunt's part, and did not conceal the pleasure he felt at seeing her get a scolding. Catherine excuses herself for getting into debt by intimating that she had to be constantly making presents to her mother, to keep her in good humour; to the grand-duke, to attach him to her person; to her lady-in-waiting, to gratify her cupidity; and to all and every one because it was the absurd practice of the country.

Nor did matters in other respects go on over well between her and the grand-duke-the affianced were always quarrelling. One day she was too pious, another she was too lively; Romberg taught him that a wife should not open her mouth, and finally his visits ceased almost altogether. Catherine did not feel the neglect poignantly; ever since Peter had had the small-pox she had a positive repugnance to his person, and declares that he was frightful. Preparations were all the time being made for the ill-starred marriage. "In proportion as the day approached," says Catherine, "I became more and more melancholy. My heart foretold no happiness ambition alone supported me."

cence.

The nuptials, however, were effected with much pomp and magnifi"But," adds the discontented Catherine, "my husband did not pay me the slightest attention, he was always with his valets, playing at soldiers, making them go through the manual exercise in his room, and change their uniform twenty times a day. I did nothing but yawn, having no one to speak to." This was the day after the wedding! On

the one hand, Catherine gained by her marriage in the departure of her mother and the dismissal of Countess Roumianzoff, two persons with whom she never could agree; but, on the other, she suffered a grievous loss in the person of Mademoiselle Joukoff, to whom she was much attached, and who was replaced by a Madame Krouse, and who was in consequence naturally taken in great dudgeon. Catherine, however, found a husband for her favourite, but when the empress discovered this she banished the two from the country.

The ducal couple had, on removing to the Winter Palace, separate apartments, but still they met frequently, and Catherine played at billiards with the chamberlain Berkholtz, whilst Peter played at soldiers with his valets. A fortnight after his marriage, the grand-duke told his wife in confidence that he was in love with Mademoiselle Carr, and that there was no comparison between herself and that young lady. On the other hand, the empress and the court generally gave Catherine just as little credit for loving her husband. Indeed, there seems scarcely any doubt, from her own avowal, that she was as much attached, at the time of her marriage, to one Czernicheff, the son of a lieutenant in the empress's grenadiers and page to the grand-duke, as the grand-duke himself was to Mademoiselle Carr. Peter, however, was very inconstant. When at Reval, a short time afterwards, he fell in love with a Madame Coderaparre, and, as usual, took Catherine into his confidence. Catherine, on her side, was, according to her own account, hypochondriacal and surly she was always either sick or sulking. One day it is Madame Tchoglokoff who makes herself pre-eminently disagreeable; another, she loses at pharaon, a game played in the empress's ante-chamber from morning till evening; another, she is in tears, or in bed, or being bled. As to the grand-duke, whether at Oranienbaum or at Peterhoff, he had always the same resources, and that was to put all about him through the musket exercise. Chamberlains, gentlemen of the bedchamber, adjutants, domestics, huntsmen, gardeners, all alike were pressed into the ranks, and in the evening Catherine and her ladies were made to dance with the gentlemen in gaiters. During the day, Catherine would sometimes read a book, or ride out on horseback. Then again, when the grand-duke was tired of playing at soldiers, he would sometimes play on the fiddle. Catherine, who detested him, says that he only grated her ears. At night, when in bed, he would cover the counterpane with dolls and other toys, and Catherine and Madame Krouse had to keep awake and play with him till one or two in the morning. He would vary these amusements by bringing his dogs into the bedroom, and then his domestics masked, and he would dance with the latter, playing at the same time on the fiddle. He would also at times gamble with his wife, in which case, she asserts, he would get furious if he lost, and would sulk for two or three days.

When at Oranienbaum, Catherine would sometimes get up at three in the morning, dress herself as a man, and, attended by an old huntsman, would go out in a canoe to shoot wild duck. The grand-duke would follow in another boat an hour or two after to partake of the same diversion.

Catherine's chief confidant all this time appears to have been her valet, Timothy Yevreinoff. By his means she succeeded in obtaining Feb.-VOL. CXV. NO. CCCCLVIII.

Q

occasional intelligence of Czernicheff, who had been imprisoned with his brothers in the fortress of Smolnoy Dvor. She even received letters from her lover, which she managed to reply to, although she was forbidden to write even to her mother. As in all other matters excess of zeal or prudence defeats the very object proposed, so it is impossible not to feel that the extraordinary system of discipline, the rigorous etiquette, and the petty vexatious surveillance which was observed at the Russian court, entailed that extraordinary state of things-petty intrigues, courtly jealousies and rivalries, and almost overt profligacywhich these memoirs attest to have existed to a degree that is in the present day scarcely credible. The empress herself, proud and choleric as she was, set the example, which appears to have been followed by every one else. She had for gentleman of the bedchamber one Ivan Ivanowitch Schouvaloff, who was understood by the whole court to be the empress's favourite.

Often for months together Catherine only met her ducal husband at table or in bed. He came to the latter, she states, after she was asleep, and went away before she woke up. This with some few exceptions, which were not always of a very agreeable character. A certain princess Courland had captivated the duke's vagrant affections. She was not, to believe her wedded rival, either pretty or handsome; on the contrary, she was small and humpy, but she had fine eyes, was intelligent, and possessed a singular capacity for intrigue.

It must not be supposed, however, that all the evil results of this ill-assorted union lay to the charge of the grand-duke. Catherine, by her own admission, and as we have seen before, was rarely, if ever, in a good humour. The only instance of actual gaiety that we find throughout the whole record was when she was playing tricks to Madame Arnheim, who, being a bad horsewoman, it was Catherine's especial pleasure to canter away from her and let her follow as she could, and the more tumbles she had the greater the fun. But with a few silly exceptions of this or a similar description, Catherine was either ill with toothache, headache, sore-throats, colds, rashes, or some ailment or other, or was intriguing for or against the courtiers and valets and employés of all kinds and descriptions, or sulking, or flirting. Even M. Tchoglokoff, a coarse, fat old courtier, "who was hated by every one as if he were a toad," yet who appears by his adventure with one of Catherine's maids of honour, Mademoiselle Kocheleff, to have been a successful gallant, presumed to flirt with the grand-duchess; but the latter acquired the friendship of Madame Tchoglokoff by rejecting his advances-a sacrifice which it cost her nothing to make, yet for which she took no small credit to herself.

At the beginning of 1751, Schouvaloff encountered a rival in his mistress's affections in the person of the cadet Beketoff, but the latter, being fond of music and song, was so much in the company of the empress's young choristers, that a malicious turn was given to the circumstance, and he was dismissed in disgrace. Catherine, on her side, was equally wrapt up in a new favourite, one Leon Narichkine, whom she describes as an "arlequin né," but he seems to have been as shrewd and clever as he was comical. He was indeed a lucky man: he could make Catherine laugh. It was, however, in the autumn of the same year that Count Czernicheff came to St. Petersburg: