thought of herself as an embattled heroine, steeling herself to endure what was to come. She knew that Peter did not love her, that at best he showed her a fitful brotherly affection and a qualified friendship, which was clearly to be maintained only at his suffrance; his broad flirting with the empress's maids of honor upset her and made her uneasy, but she knew that to complain about his behavior would be the height of folly, and would do no good besides.
She hid her inner trepidation when in public, but among those closest to her, her maids o{ honor and personal servants, it was difficult to mask her qualms. She tried to dispel her fears by throwing herself into playing vigorous games and tiring herself out striding through the gardens of Peterhof, but her dark moods always returned. "The closer my wedding day came," she wrote looking back on these events many years later, "the more I became dejected, and often I began crying without knowing why." Her women were aware of her crying spells and tried to cheer her up, yet their efforts only lowered her spirits further. She feared that to give in to tears was a mark of weakness, and would lay her open to scorn.
To make matters worse, Peter seemed to become more withdrawn, seeing less of her than previously and treating her with callous disregard. The empress too was for the moment remote and inaccessible. And Johanna, her capabilities as a mother never
very high, was too self-absorbed to provide her daughter with comfort. To solace her own bruised ego she resorted to histrionics.
One spring morning Catherine went to visit her mother in her apartments, and came upon a frightening scene. Johanna, who may or may not have known that her daughter was coming to see her, was stretched out on a mattress in the middle of her room, apparently unconscious, her frantic attendants rushing here and there and Dr. Lestocq bending over her, looking very perplexed. At the sight of her Catherine cried out in alarm and wanted to know what had happened. No one, it seemed, could give her a coherent account, but eventually she gathered that Johanna had felt the need to be bled and had summoned a surgeon. The man was so inept that, having been unable to draw blood from her arms, he attempted to cut into veins in both of her feet, whereupon Johanna, for whom being bled was always a fearsome ordeal, had fainted. Eventually she revived, but instead of being pleased to see Catherine nearby, she told her irritably to go away, bringing tears to Catherine's eyes and reminding her of all that estranged them from one another.
Preparations went forward as the wedding day approached. Many nobles, in anticipation of the coming celebrations, had already ordered sumptuous finery for themselves and elegant livery for their servants. Some had sent orders to master wagon-makers in Paris and Vienna for new carriages, all were awaiting shipments of fine fabrics from Europe, Naples silk and English brocade, along with soft gloves and satin slippers from France and golden saddles and stirrups from the armorers of northern Italy. The empress dictated that those belonging to the highest grades of the nobility were to be attended by no fewer than twenty footmen, runners, pages and other servants during the wedding festivities, and that all the servants had to be expensively turned out in velvet coats and breeches with metallic trim, fine bag-wigs, silk stockings and lace cuffs.
Elizabeth had made up her mind to stage the most splendid
wedding ever seen at any European court. Taking as her model the wedding of the French dauphin, the son of Louis XV, she wrote to Versailles for details of the ceremony and aimed to surpass them. It was a lofty ambition, for the French court at that time was a gilded fairyland of ornament and bauble and decoration. There were said to be five hundred goldsmiths in Paris, all of them engaged in producing exquisite jewels and trinkets to embellish the wardrobes of the aristocracy.
She hid her inner trepidation when in public, but among those closest to her, her maids o{ honor and personal servants, it was difficult to mask her qualms. She tried to dispel her fears by throwing herself into playing vigorous games and tiring herself out striding through the gardens of Peterhof, but her dark moods always returned. "The closer my wedding day came," she wrote looking back on these events many years later, "the more I became dejected, and often I began crying without knowing why." Her women were aware of her crying spells and tried to cheer her up, yet their efforts only lowered her spirits further. She feared that to give in to tears was a mark of weakness, and would lay her open to scorn.
To make matters worse, Peter seemed to become more withdrawn, seeing less of her than previously and treating her with callous disregard. The empress too was for the moment remote and inaccessible. And Johanna, her capabilities as a mother never
very high, was too self-absorbed to provide her daughter with comfort. To solace her own bruised ego she resorted to histrionics.
One spring morning Catherine went to visit her mother in her apartments, and came upon a frightening scene. Johanna, who may or may not have known that her daughter was coming to see her, was stretched out on a mattress in the middle of her room, apparently unconscious, her frantic attendants rushing here and there and Dr. Lestocq bending over her, looking very perplexed. At the sight of her Catherine cried out in alarm and wanted to know what had happened. No one, it seemed, could give her a coherent account, but eventually she gathered that Johanna had felt the need to be bled and had summoned a surgeon. The man was so inept that, having been unable to draw blood from her arms, he attempted to cut into veins in both of her feet, whereupon Johanna, for whom being bled was always a fearsome ordeal, had fainted. Eventually she revived, but instead of being pleased to see Catherine nearby, she told her irritably to go away, bringing tears to Catherine's eyes and reminding her of all that estranged them from one another.
Preparations went forward as the wedding day approached. Many nobles, in anticipation of the coming celebrations, had already ordered sumptuous finery for themselves and elegant livery for their servants. Some had sent orders to master wagon-makers in Paris and Vienna for new carriages, all were awaiting shipments of fine fabrics from Europe, Naples silk and English brocade, along with soft gloves and satin slippers from France and golden saddles and stirrups from the armorers of northern Italy. The empress dictated that those belonging to the highest grades of the nobility were to be attended by no fewer than twenty footmen, runners, pages and other servants during the wedding festivities, and that all the servants had to be expensively turned out in velvet coats and breeches with metallic trim, fine bag-wigs, silk stockings and lace cuffs.
Elizabeth had made up her mind to stage the most splendid
wedding ever seen at any European court. Taking as her model the wedding of the French dauphin, the son of Louis XV, she wrote to Versailles for details of the ceremony and aimed to surpass them. It was a lofty ambition, for the French court at that time was a gilded fairyland of ornament and bauble and decoration. There were said to be five hundred goldsmiths in Paris, all of them engaged in producing exquisite jewels and trinkets to embellish the wardrobes of the aristocracy.
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