Catherine the Great

STANISLAUS PONIATOWSKI, the young Polish nobleman to whom Catherine had been introduced on the night she met Sir Charles Hanbury-Williams, was one of the adornments of the European aristocracy. His mother was a daughter of the Czartoryskis, one of Poland’s great families. She had married a Poniatowski, and Stanislaus was her youngest son. The young man was adored by his mother and patronized by her brothers, his uncles, two of the most powerful men in Poland. Politically, the family hoped, with Russian support, to end the rule of the elected king, Augustus III, a Saxon, and establish a native Polish dynasty.^*

At eighteen, Stanislaus had begun touring the capitals of Europe, accompanied by a retinue of servants. He carryied with him an impressive portfolio of introductions. In Paris, he was presented to Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour; in London to George II. He had already met Charles Hanbury-Williams, and when the diplomat was appointed English ambassador to Russia, he invited Stanislaus to accompany him as his secretary. The young man’s mother and uncles were pleased; the offer provided the Czartoryskis a means of strengthening their own diplomatic footing in St. Petersburg, and simultaneously gave Stanislaus a chance to begin his public career. Once in the Russian capital, Hanbury-Williams gave his young secretary complete confidence: “He let me read the most secret despatches and code and decode them,” said Stanislaus. Sir Charles rented a mansion on the bank of the Neva River to use as an embassy, and the two men lived together, sharing a view across the water of the Peter and Paul Fortress and its golden four-hundred-foot cathedral spire.

Stanislaus Poniatowski, three years younger than Catherine, could not compete in male beauty with Sergei Saltykov. He was short, his face heart-shaped, his eyes shortsighted and hazel. He had prominent eyebrows and a tapering chin, but he spoke six languages, his charm and conversation made him welcome everywhere, and, at twenty-three, he was a model of the young, sophisticated European aristocrat. He was the first of this type to stand before Catherine, and he represented in person the brilliant world for which the writings of Madame de Sévigné and Voltaire had stimulated her taste. He spoke in the language of the Enlightenment, could talk playfully on abstract questions, be dreamily romantic one day and childishly frivolous the next. Catherine was intrigued. Two qualities, however, Stanislaus lacked. There was little originality and no real gravitas in this young Pole, deficiencies that Catherine came to recognize and accept. In fact, no one recognized these limitations better than Stanislaus himself. In his memoirs he confessed:

An excellent education enables me to conceal my mental defects, so that many people expect more from me than I am able to give. I have sufficient wit to take part in any conversation, but not enough to converse long and in detail on any one subject. I have a natural penchant for the arts. My indolence, however, prevents me from going as far as I should like to go, either in the arts or sciences. I work either overmuch or not at all. I can judge very well of affairs. I can see at once the faults of a plan or the faults of those who propose it, but I am much in need of good counsel in order to carry out any plans of my own.

For a man of his sophistication, he was, in many respects, extraordinarily innocent. He had promised his mother not to drink wine or spirits, not to gamble, and not to marry before the age of thirty. Further, by his own account, Stanislaus had another singularity, odd enough in a young man just come from social triumph in Paris and other European capitals:

A severe education had kept me out of all vulgar debauchery. An ambition of winning and holding a place in high life had stood by me in my travels and a concourse of singular circumstances in the liaisons that I had barely entered upon, had seemed expressly to reserve me for her who has disposed of all my destiny.

In a word, he came to Catherine a virgin.

Poniatowski had other qualities appealing to a proud woman who had been rejected and discarded. His devotion showed her that she could inspire more than simple lust. He expressed admiration not merely for her title and beauty but also for Catherine’s mind and temperament, which both he and she recognized as superior to his own. He was affectionate, attentive, discreet, and faithful. He taught Catherine to know contentment and security as well as passion in love. He became a part of her process of healing.