Love Affairs of the Courts of Europe | Page 3

presence and her ministrations infinitely pleasant to him; her prudent counsel saved him from many a blunder and mad excess, and on at least one occasion rescued his army from destruction.
So strong was the hold she soon won on his affection and gratitude that he is said to have married her secretly within three years of first setting eyes on her. Her future and that of the children she had borne to him became his chief concern; and as early as 1708, when he was leaving Moscow to join his army, he left behind him a note: "If, by God's will, anything should happen to me, let the 3000 roubles which will be found in Menshikoff's house be given to Catherine Vassilevska and her daughter."
But whatever the truth may be about the alleged secret marriage, we know that early in 1712, Peter, in his Admiral's uniform, stood at the altar with the Livonian maid-servant, in the presence of his Court officials, and with two of her own little daughters as bridesmaids. The wedding, we are told, was performed in a little chapel belonging to Prince Menshikoff, and was preceded by an interview with the Dowager-Empress and his Princess sisters, in which Peter declared his intention to make Catherine his wife and commanded them to pay her the respect due to her new rank. Then followed, in brilliant sequence, State dinners, receptions, and balls, at all of which the laundress-bride sat at her husband's right hand and received the homage of his subjects as his Queen.
Picture now the woman who but a few years earlier had scrubbed Pastor Gl��ck's floors and cleaned Menshikoff's window-panes, in all her new splendours as Empress of Russia. The portraits of her, in her unaccustomed glories, are far from flattering and by no means consistent. "She showed no sign of ever having possessed beauty," says Baron von P?llnitz; "she was tall and strong and very dark, and would have seemed darker but for the rouge and whitening with which she plastered her face."
The picture drawn by the Margravine of Baireuth is still less attractive: "She was short and huddled up, much tanned, and utterly devoid of dignity or grace. Muffled up in her clothes, she looked like a German comedy-actress. Her old-fashioned gown, heavily embroidered with silver, and covered with dirt, had been bought in some old-clothes shop. The front of her skirt was adorned with jewels, and she had a dozen orders and as many portraits of saints fastened all along the facings of her dress, so that when she walked she jingled like a mule."
But in the eyes of one man at least--and he the greatest in all Russia--she was beautiful. His allegiance never wavered, nor indeed did that of his army, which idolised her to a man. She might have no boudoir graces, but at least she was the typical soldier's wife, and cut a brave figure, as she reviewed the troops or rode at their head in her uniform and grenadier cap. She shared all the hardships and dangers of campaigns with a smile on her lips, sleeping on the hard ground, and standing in the trenches with the bullets whistling about her ears, and men dropping to right and left of her.
Nor was there ever a trace of vanity in her. She was as proud of her humble origin as if she had been cradled in a palace. To princes and ambassadors she would talk freely of the days when she was a household drudge, and loved to remind her husband of the time when his Empress used to wash shirts for his favourite. "Though, no doubt, you have other laundresses about you," she wrote to him once, "the old one never forgets you."
The letters that passed between this oddly assorted couple, if couched in terms which could scarcely see print in our more restrained age, are eloquent of affection and devotion. To Peter his kitchen-Queen was "friend of my Heart," "dearest Heart," and "dear little Mother." He complains pathetically, when away with his army, "I am dull without you--and there is nobody to take care of my shirts." When Catherine once left him on a round of visits, he grew so impatient at her absence that he sent a yacht to bring her back, and with it a note: "When I go into my rooms and find them deserted, I feel as if I must rush away at once. It is all so empty without thee."
And each letter is accompanied by a present--now a watch, now some costly lace, and again a lock of his hair, or a simple bunch of dried flowers, while she returns some such homely gift as a little fruit or a fur-lined waistcoat. On both sides, too, a vein of jocularity runs through the letters,