Not only did Paul’s reception in Berlin thoroughly reconcile him to the idea of a second marriage, but he also developed an immediate liking for Sophia. She was tall, blond, wholesome, amiable, and sentimental. And, because she had been recommended by Frederick, she seemed to Paul twice as desirable. As for Sophia, she made no protest when her engagement to the handsome Lewis of Hesse was suddenly broken off and her great uncles Frederick and Henry introduced the small, less attractive Paul. Whatever her innermost feelings when she first saw Paul, she dutifully accepted him. “The grand duke is exceedingly amiable,” she wrote to her mother. “He has every charm.”
Catherine was pleased by what Paul wrote in his letters about Sophia’s appearance and good sense, her determination to be a good wife, and her resolve to learn Russian. The empress sent her blessing, but, in order to make certain that she would keep absolute control, she insisted that Sophia leave her mother behind in Berlin and come to Russia alone. She wrote to the princess, praising her willingness to make herself “my daughter.… Be assured that I shall not neglect a single occasion where I may prove to Your Highness the sentiments of a tender mother.” She also stressed that she wanted the marriage to take place as soon as possible. She wrote to Grimm:
We shall have her here within ten days. As soon as we have her, we shall proceed with her conversion. To convince her, it ought to take about fifteen days, I think. I do not know how long will be necessary to teach her to read intelligibly and correctly the confession of faith in Russian. But the faster this can be hurried through, the better.… To accelerate that … [a cabinet secretary] has gone to Memel to teach her the alphabet and the confession en route; conviction will follow afterwards. Eight days from this, I fix the wedding. If you wish to dance at it, you will have to hurry.
Meanwhile, the empress sent a diamond necklace and earrings to the bride-to-be, and a jewel-encrusted snuffbox and a sword to her parents. On August 24, Sophia crossed the Russian frontier at Riga, and on August 31, she and Paul were received by Catherine at Tsarskoe Selo. The empress greeted Sophia warmly, and, a few days later, she wrote to Madame Bielcke:
My son has returned very much taken with his princess. I confess to you that I am enchanted with her. She is precisely that which is desired; shapely as a nymph, a complexion the color of the lily and the rose, the most beautiful skin in the world, tall, but still graceful; modesty, sweetness, kindness, and innocence are reflected in her face.… The whole world is enchanted with her … she does everything to please.… In a word, my princess is everything that I desired. So there, I am content.
On September 6, Catherine, Paul, and Sophia traveled from Tsarskoe Selo to St. Petersburg. A Lutheran pastor and an obliging Orthodox priest confirmed Frederick of Prussia’s opinion that the differences between Lutheranism and Orthodoxy were minimal. On September 14, Sophia Dorothea’s official conversion took place; she accepted Orthodoxy and became Maria Fyodorovna. Her formal betrothal followed the next day, on which occasion she wrote to Paul, “I swear to love and adore you all my life and to be always attached to you, and nothing in the world will make me change with respect to you. Those are the sentiments of your ever affectionate and faithful betrothed.”
On September 26, 1776, only five months after Natalia died, Paul and Maria were married and the new grand duchess set about her duty. Fourteen and a half months later, on December 12, 1777, after only a few hours of labor and without complications, Maria gave birth to a healthy boy, Catherine’s first grandchild, a future emperor. Catherine, ecstatic, named him Alexander. A second child arrived eighteen months later, another healthy boy, insurance for the dynasty. Again, Catherine rejoiced. She named him Constantine.
Paul’s second marriage probably gave him the greatest happiness of his life. “This dear husband is an angel, the pearl of husbands. I am madly in love with him and I am perfectly happy,” Maria wrote to a friend in Germany. She was an excellent wife for Paul. She did her best to make him happy and to calm his anxieties, becoming not only his wife but his friend. She encouraged Paul’s best qualities at home and treated him with respect and deference in public. Paul was grateful and wrote to Henry of Prussia, “Wherever she goes, she has the gift of spreading gaiety and ease. And she has the art of not only driving out all my melancholy thoughts, but even of giving me back the good humor that I had completely lost during these last three unhappy years.” Together, Paul and Maria produced nine healthy children.
• • •
