Catherine the Great

Elizabeth soon learned what had happened, and on a Sunday morning after Mass, she suddenly burst into Catherine’s room and ordered that her nephew be summoned. Peter arrived wearing a dressing gown and carrying his nightcap in his hand. He appeared carefree and rushed to kiss his aunt’s hand. She accepted the gesture and then asked how he dared to behave as he had. She said that she had found the door riddled with holes, all of them immediately facing the spot where she sat. She could only suppose that he had forgotten what he owed her. She reminded him that her own father, Peter the Great, had had an ungrateful son whom he had punished by disinheriting. She said that the empress Anne had locked up in the fortress anyone who showed her disrespect. Her nephew, Elizabeth told him, was “no better than a disrespectful little boy who needed to be taught how to behave.”

Peter stammered a few words of defense, but Elizabeth ordered him to be silent. Her temper rose; she “let fly at him with the most shocking insults and abuse, displaying as much contempt as anger,” Catherine reported. “We were dumbfounded, stupefied and speechless, both of us, and, though this scene had nothing to do with me, it brought tears to my eyes.” Elizabeth noticed this and said to Catherine, “What I am saying is not directed at you. I know that you took no part in what he did and that you neither looked nor wanted to look through that door.” Then the empress calmed down, stopped talking, and left the room. The couple stared at each other. Then Peter, mingling contrition and sarcasm, said, “She was like a Fury. She did not know what she was saying.”

Later, when Peter had left, Madame Krause came in and said to Catherine, “One must admit that the empress behaved today like a real mother.” Unsure of her meaning, Catherine was silent. Madame Krause explained: “A mother gets angry and scolds her children and then it all blows over. You ought, both of you, to have said to her, ‘Vinovaty, Matushka’—‘We beg your pardon, Little Mother’—and she would have been disarmed.” Catherine replied that she had been so shaken by the empress’s anger that she could do nothing but keep silent. But she learned from the episode. Afterward, she wrote, “the phrase, ‘We beg your pardon, Mama,’ remained fixed in my memory as a way to disarm the empress’s wrath. Later, I used it successfully.”

When Catherine first arrived, unmarried, in Russia, Peter’s intimate circle included three young noblemen—two brothers and a cousin—named Chernyshev. Peter was immensely fond of all three. It was the eldest of the brothers, Zakhar, who had so worried his own mother with his obvious affection for Catherine that she had arranged to have him sent away from court, out of reach. The cousin and the younger brother remained, however, and the cousin, Andrei, also harbored feelings for Catherine. He began by making himself useful. Catherine had discovered that Madame Krause “had a great liking for the bottle. Often my entourage managed to make her drunk, after which she went to bed, leaving the young court to frolic without being scolded.” Her “entourage” in this case was Andrei Chernyshev, who could persuade Madame Krause to drink as much as he chose.

Before Catherine’s marriage to Peter, Andrei had fallen into a pattern of lighthearted flirtation with the bride-to-be. Far from opposing or feeling uncomfortable with this intimate but still innocent banter, Peter enjoyed and even encouraged it. For months, he talked to his wife of Chernyshev’s good looks and devotion. Several times a day, he would send Andrei to Catherine with trivial messages. Eventually, however, Andrei himself became uncomfortable with the situation. One day, he said to Peter, “Your Imperial Highness should bear in mind that the grand duchess is not Madame Chernyshev”—and, more bluntly—“She is not my fiancée, she’s yours.” Peter laughed and passed these remarks along to Catherine. To put an end to this uncomfortable joke after the couple was married, Andrei proposed to Peter that he redefine his relationship with Catherine by calling her Matushka (Little Mother) and that she call him synok (son). But as both Catherine and Peter continued to show great affection for the “son” and talked about him constantly, some of their servants became concerned.

One day, Catherine’s valet, Timothy Evreinov, took her aside and warned her that the whole household was gossiping about her relationship with Andrei. Frankly, he said, he was frightened by the danger into which she was heading. Catherine asked what he meant. “You talk and think of nothing but Andrei Chernyshev,” he said.

“What harm is there in that?” Catherine asked. “He is my son. My husband is fonder of him than I am and he is a loyal friend to both of us.”