She rose at six and wrapped herself in a silk dressing gown. Her movements awakened the family of small English greyhounds sleeping on a pink satin couch next to her bed. The oldest of them, whom she had named Sir Tom Anderson, and his spouse, Duchess Anderson, were gifts from Dr. Dimsdale, who had inoculated her and her son, Paul, against smallpox. They, with the help of Sir Tom’s second wife, Mademoiselle Mimi, had produced numerous litters. Catherine attended them; when the dogs wanted to go out, Catherine herself opened the door into the garden. This done, she drank four or five cups of black coffee and settled down to work on the mass of official and personal correspondence awaiting her. Her sight had weakened, and she read with spectacles and sometimes used a magnifying glass. Once when her secretary saw her reading this way, she smiled and said, “You probably don’t need this contrivance yet. How old are you?” He said that he was twenty-eight. Catherine nodded and said, “Our sight has been blunted by long service to the State and now we have to use spectacles.” Promptly at nine, she put down her pen and rang a little bell, which told the servant outside her door that she was ready for her daily visitors. This meant a long morning of receiving ministers, generals, and other government officials; of reading or listening to their reports; and of signing the papers they had prepared for her. These were working sessions; visitors were expected to object to her ideas and offer their own when they thought she was wrong. Her attitude almost always remained attentive, pleasant, and imperturbable.
An exception to this demeanor was her reaction to the visits of her brilliant general Alexander Suvorov. Devout as well as eccentric, Suvorov entered her room, bowed three times to the icon of Our Lady of Kazan hanging on a wall, and fell on his knees before the empress, touching the ground with his forehead. Catherine always tried to stop him, saying, “For heaven’s sake, are you not ashamed of yourself?” Unabashed, Suvorov sat down and repeated his request to be allowed to fight the French army in northern Italy, commanded by a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte. “Matushka, let me march against the French!” he pleaded. After many visits and many pleas, she agreed, and in November 1796, Suvorov was ready to march at the head of sixty thousand Russians. Catherine died on the eve of his departure, and the campaign was canceled. No battlefield meeting of these two famous soldiers ever took place.
At one in the afternoon, her morning work was finished, and Catherine retired to dress, often in gray or violet silk, for midday dinner. Ten to twenty guests sat down with her: personal friends, noblemen, senior officials, and her favorite foreign diplomats. She was not interested in food, and the fare was Spartan; afterward guests discreetly retreated to the apartments of courtiers living in the palace where they could supplement their meal.
In the afternoon, Catherine read books or was read to while she sewed or embroidered. At six, if there were a court reception, she moved among her guests in the drawing rooms of the Winter Palace. Supper was served, but Catherine never ate, and at ten she withdrew. When there was no official court reception, she entertained privately in the Hermitage. The company listened to a concert, watched a French or Russian play, or simply played games, performed charades, or played whist. During these gatherings, her long-standing rules remained in force: formality was banned; it was forbidden to rise when the empress stood; everyone talked freely; bad tempers were not tolerated; laughter was required. To her friend Frau Bielcke, she wrote: “Madame, you must be gay; only thus can life be endured. I speak from experience for I have had to endure much, and have only been able to endure it because I have always laughed whenever I had the chance.”
In the 1790s, Catherine’s health was declining. For years, she had suffered from headaches and indigestion; now colds and rheumatism were added. By the summer of 1796 she was afflicted by open leg sores. Sometimes swollen and bleeding, her legs bothered her so much that she tried soaking them daily in fresh, ice-cold seawater; Dr. Rogerson’s skepticism regarding this unconventional treatment only made her more certain that it was having “marvelous effects.”
