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Authors: Michael Farquhar
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chatting incessantly. He then took Johanna by the arm, while the Prince of Hesse-Homburg took Sophia’s, and led them through a series of glittering passages to meet the empress.
Mother and daughter were awed by the tall, robust figure standing before them in her silver gown, shimmering in diamonds, with a black feather perched at the side of her head—sucha contrast to the puny, pale-faced heir. Elizabeth greeted her visitors warmly, visibly moved by the sight of Johanna, who so closely resembled her brother, the empress’s deceased fiancé, Charles Augustus of Holstein. And she seemed delighted with Sophia, the young princess upon whom all her hopes for the future rested. She showered the girl with gifts and embraced her—at least for a time—with the kind of maternal love Sophia had never known. Peter, on the other hand, was decidedly less enamored. Sophia would suit him well as a playmate, but he was not at all interested in having her as a wife.
“I was in my fifteenth year and he showed himself very assiduous for the first ten days,” Sophia wrote in her Memoirs . “In that short space of time I saw and understood that he cared but little for the nation over which he was destined to rule, that he clung to Lutheranism, that he had no affection for those about him and that he was very much a child. I kept silent and listened, which helped to gain his confidence. I remember he told me among other things that what he liked most in me was that I was his second cousin and in that capacity, as a relative, he could talk freely with me; after this he confided that he was in love with one of the Empress’s ladies-in-waiting who had been expelled from Court … he would have liked to marry her, but he had resigned himself to marrying me as his aunt wished it. I listened to these disclosures with a blush, thanked him for his premature confidence, but privately observed with astonishment his imprudence on a number of matters.”
Sophia willingly joined with Peter in his silly games. She was still a child herself, after all, so these simpleminded pastimes with her future spouse were not too troubling. Plus, she wanted to please Peter. It was an imperative emphasized toher by her father before she left Germany, and one upon which she believed her future ambitions absolutely depended. “I was the confidante of his childish nonsense,” she wrote, “and it was not for me to correct him; I let him do and say what he pleased.” Thus, when the odious Otto Brümmer, who had accompanied Peter to Russia and continued to torment him, asked Sophia to intervene and guide the grand duke to nobler pursuits, she refused. “I told him that it was impossible for me to do so, and that if I tried, I would become as hateful to him as all the others around him.”
Indulging her future spouse in all his inanities was one thing, but Sophia was wise enough to recognize that she also had to please Empress Elizabeth, as well as the rest of the nation. To that end, she set out to make herself thoroughly Russian. Unlike Peter, who stubbornly resisted learning the language and rejected the national religion, Sophia became an avid student. Indeed, she worked so hard that her health declined and she came down with a case of pneumonia that nearly killed her. Yet it was an illness that turned into a triumph.
The doctors tending Sophia insisted she be bled to alleviate her symptoms. But to this Johanna strenuously objected. Her brother had died after being bled while suffering from smallpox and she was terrified of the procedure—not to mention how her daughter’s death might adversely affect her own prospects. “There I lay with a high fever between my mother and the doctors arguing,” Sophia wrote. “I could not help groaning, for which I was scolded by my mother who expected me to suffer in silence.” It was then that Empress Elizabeth intervened, berating Johanna for daring interfere with her own doctors and kicking her out of the
Mother and daughter were awed by the tall, robust figure standing before them in her silver gown, shimmering in diamonds, with a black feather perched at the side of her head—sucha contrast to the puny, pale-faced heir. Elizabeth greeted her visitors warmly, visibly moved by the sight of Johanna, who so closely resembled her brother, the empress’s deceased fiancé, Charles Augustus of Holstein. And she seemed delighted with Sophia, the young princess upon whom all her hopes for the future rested. She showered the girl with gifts and embraced her—at least for a time—with the kind of maternal love Sophia had never known. Peter, on the other hand, was decidedly less enamored. Sophia would suit him well as a playmate, but he was not at all interested in having her as a wife.
“I was in my fifteenth year and he showed himself very assiduous for the first ten days,” Sophia wrote in her Memoirs . “In that short space of time I saw and understood that he cared but little for the nation over which he was destined to rule, that he clung to Lutheranism, that he had no affection for those about him and that he was very much a child. I kept silent and listened, which helped to gain his confidence. I remember he told me among other things that what he liked most in me was that I was his second cousin and in that capacity, as a relative, he could talk freely with me; after this he confided that he was in love with one of the Empress’s ladies-in-waiting who had been expelled from Court … he would have liked to marry her, but he had resigned himself to marrying me as his aunt wished it. I listened to these disclosures with a blush, thanked him for his premature confidence, but privately observed with astonishment his imprudence on a number of matters.”
Sophia willingly joined with Peter in his silly games. She was still a child herself, after all, so these simpleminded pastimes with her future spouse were not too troubling. Plus, she wanted to please Peter. It was an imperative emphasized toher by her father before she left Germany, and one upon which she believed her future ambitions absolutely depended. “I was the confidante of his childish nonsense,” she wrote, “and it was not for me to correct him; I let him do and say what he pleased.” Thus, when the odious Otto Brümmer, who had accompanied Peter to Russia and continued to torment him, asked Sophia to intervene and guide the grand duke to nobler pursuits, she refused. “I told him that it was impossible for me to do so, and that if I tried, I would become as hateful to him as all the others around him.”
Indulging her future spouse in all his inanities was one thing, but Sophia was wise enough to recognize that she also had to please Empress Elizabeth, as well as the rest of the nation. To that end, she set out to make herself thoroughly Russian. Unlike Peter, who stubbornly resisted learning the language and rejected the national religion, Sophia became an avid student. Indeed, she worked so hard that her health declined and she came down with a case of pneumonia that nearly killed her. Yet it was an illness that turned into a triumph.
The doctors tending Sophia insisted she be bled to alleviate her symptoms. But to this Johanna strenuously objected. Her brother had died after being bled while suffering from smallpox and she was terrified of the procedure—not to mention how her daughter’s death might adversely affect her own prospects. “There I lay with a high fever between my mother and the doctors arguing,” Sophia wrote. “I could not help groaning, for which I was scolded by my mother who expected me to suffer in silence.” It was then that Empress Elizabeth intervened, berating Johanna for daring interfere with her own doctors and kicking her out of the
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