The festivities were to last two weeks: Potemkin had planned a rollicking and bucolic fairground on the Khodynskoe fields, where he had erected two pavilions to symbolize ‘The Black Sea with all our conquests’. He created an imperial theme park with roads representing the Don and Dnieper, theatres and dining-rooms named after Black Sea ports, Turkish minarets, Gothic arches, Classical columns. Catherine enthusiastically praised Potemkin’s first chance to display his unrivalled imagination as an impresario of political show business. Long lines of carriages were driven by coachmen ‘dressed as Turks, Albanians, Serbs, Circassians, Hussars and “genuine Negro servants” in crimson turbans’. Catherine wheels exploded into light and as many as 60,000 people drank wines from fountains and feasted on roast oxen.40
* * *
—
On 12 July, the celebrations were delayed when Catherine fell ill. There is a legend that this was to disguise the birth of a child by Potemkin. She was a past mistress at concealing embarrassing pregnancies in the folds of clothes already designed for her plumpness. The cabinets of Europe were certainly gossiping that she was pregnant. ‘Madame Potemkin is a good 45 years old – a fine age for having children,’ Louis XVI had earlier joked to Vergennes.41 The child was said to have been Elisaveta Grigorevna Temkina, who was brought up in the Samoilov household, so she had some connection to the family. Illegitimate children in Russia traditionally adopted their father’s name without the first syllable; thus Ivan Betskoi was the bastard of Prince Ivan Trubetskoi, Rontsov the son of Roman Vorontsov.
However, this story is unlikely. Potemkin was very family-minded and made a fuss of all his relations, yet there is no record of him paying any attention to Temkina. Catherine also would have cherished her. But there was a separate ancient Temkin family that had nothing to do with the Potemkins. Furthermore, in that time, it was not regarded as reprehensible to have a ‘fille naturelle’ or ‘pupille’. Bobrinsky, Catherine’s son with Prince Orlov, was not hidden, and Betskoi enjoyed a successful public career. If she was Potemkin’s daughter by a low-born mistress, there was even less reason to conceal her. Temkina remains an enigma – but not one necessarily connected to Catherine and Potemkin.42 In Moscow, meanwhile, the Empress was confined to her apartments in the Prechistensky Palace for a week and then recovered. The festivities continued.
* * *
—
In Moscow, Count Potemkin was approached by the British with a strange request. In 1775, Britain’s American colonies had rebelled against London. This was to distract the Western world from Russian affairs for eight years, a window of opportunity which Potemkin was to use well. France and its Bourbon ally, Spain, at once saw the possibility of avenging British victory in the Seven Years War twelve years earlier. London had turned down Panin’s suggestion of an Anglo-Russian alliance because Britain refused to undertake the defence of Russia against the Ottoman Empire. But now George III and his Secretary of State for the North, the Earl of Suffolk, were suddenly faced with the American Revolution. Since Britain had the best fleet in the world but a negligible army, it traditionally hired mercenaries. In this case, it decided to procure Russian troops.
By 1 September 1775, Suffolk was complaining that ‘the increasing frenzy of His Majesty’s unhappy and deluded people on the other side of the Atlantic’ meant that Russian assistance was needed immediately. Specifically, Britain wanted ‘20,000 disciplined infantry completely equipped and ready to embark as soon as the Baltic navigation opens in the spring’. When Panin showed no interest, Gunning approached Potemkin, who was intrigued. Ultimately Catherine refused, writing George III a polite letter and wishing him luck.43
Poor Gunning had to write home a few weeks later: ‘I can scarcely entertain any hopes at present…could not His Majesty make use of Hanoverians?’44 Finally, the desperate British hired the army of that mercenary state of Hesse. The Americans with their united ideals and irregular tactics defeated the rigidly drilled, demoralized British, but one wonders if the hardy, brutal and homogeneous Russians, backed by Cossacks, could have beaten them. The tantalizing possibilities of this stretch out all the way to the Cold War and beyond.
* * *
—
Catherine and Potemkin’s relationship was so all-consuming that it was beginning to burn them both. ‘We would be happier’, said Catherine, ‘if we loved each other less.’45 The sexual cauldron of the first eighteen months could not be sustained, but there was evidence too that the tensions of his role as official favourite were taking a toll on their affair. The teacher–pupil relationship that Catherine so enjoyed was becoming irksome if not intolerable to a man as masterful, confident and able as Potemkin. Even the marriage could not change the realities of court politics and his complete dependence on her whim. Yet she loved his wildness – the very thing that made him want to escape. Was he withdrawing from her or did he just need space to breathe?
She tried desperately to restore their happiness. ‘It’s time to live in harmony. Don’t torment me,’ she wrote. When he was outraged at his subordinate position, the Empress promised: ‘I will never order you to do anything, you fool, because I don’t deserve such coldness…I swore to give only caress for caress. I want cuddles and loving cuddles, the best sort. Stupid coldness and stupid spleen will only produce anger and vexation in return. It’s difficult for you to say “my dear” or “my honey”. Is it possible that your heart is silent? My heart does not keep silent.’46 Catherine was cut to the quick by his increasing harshness: was her consort falling out of love with her?
She did all she could to please him: during autumn 1775, when she was about to embark on a trip out of Moscow, reported Gunning, ‘it had been forgotten that the succeeding Wednesday was Count Potemkin’s nameday, the recollection of which determined her to postpone her intended excursion…to admit of the Count’s receiving the compliments of the nobility’. Gunning added that the Empress had also given him a present of 100,000 roubles - and appointed a Greek archbishop for Potemkin’s southern provinces on his recommendation. This was Potemkin at his most demanding: typical of him to change an empress’s timetable, receive a prince’s ransom of a present – and not forget to achieve a political appointment.47
Sometimes, Catherine complained that he humiliated her in front of the Court: ‘My dear Lord, Grigory Alexandrovich, I wish Your Excellency happiness. This evening, you had better lose at cards because you absolutely forgot me and left me alone as if I was a gatepost.’ But Potemkin knew how to play her, replying with a line of Arabesque symbols – possibly a sexual code in their secret language, adding: ‘That’s the answer…’.48 But what was the answer? How could she keep her consort and yet make him happy?
* * *
—
The couple developed their own way of communicating their feelings – his obscure and passionate, hers understanding and accommodating – the epistolary duet:
Potemkin
Catherine
My precious soul
I know
You know that I am
Absolutely yours
I know, I know
And I have only you
It is true.
I will remain faithful
To you until death
I don’t doubt you.
And I need your
Support
I believe it.
For this reason, and
Because of my wish,
Serving you and applying
My abilities is most
Pleasant to me.
That was proved long
Ago.
Doing some-
Thing for me
With gladness, but
What?
You’ll never regret
It and you’ll see
Only benefits.
My soul is glad but
unclear. Tell me more
clearly.49
* * *
—
Potemkin was somehow withdrawing from her. It is said that he claimed to be ill to avoid her embraces. As he became restless, Catherine tired of his endless tempers. The towering, eye-flashing rages that are so attractive at the beginning of a love affair became irksome exhibitionism in the middle of a marriage. Potemkin’s behaviour was impossible, but Catherine was partly to blame. She was slow to understand the constant tension of Potemkin’s political and social position which was to break so many of her later lovers. Catherine was just as emotionally greedy as he was. They were both human furnaces requiring an endless supply of fuel in the form of glory, extravagance and power on one hand, love, praise and attention on the other. It is these gargantuan appetites that made their relationship as painful as it was productive. Potemkin wanted to govern and build, but loving Catherine was a full-time job. It was a human impossibility for each of them to give each other enough of what they required. They were too similar to be together.
In May 1775, before the peace celebrations had started, Catherine did her Orthodox duty by leading a pilgrimage to the forbidding Troitsko-Sergeevna Monastery, an obligatory trip back into the Muscovite dark ages when women were kept in the seclusion of the terem and not on thrones. The visit brought out Potemkin’s Slavic disgust for worldly success, his Orthodox yearnings and probably his discontent with his place. Succumbing to his coenobitic instincts and ignoring Catherine, he temporarily abandoned the Court and prayed in seclusion in a monk’s cell.50
The rapidity of his mood changes must have been exhausting for both of them. Perhaps this was what she meant when she said that they loved each other too much to be happy: the relationship was so combustible that it was not settled enough to serve either of them well. They continued to love each other and work together throughout 1775, but the stress was rising. Catherine understood what was happening. She had found a partner in Potemkin – a rare diamond – but how was he to find a role? And how were they to satisfy their demanding natures and yet remain together? While they struggled, they looked around them.
* * *
—
The day before the peace celebrations, Count Potemkin received a sad note from his brother-in-law Vasily Engelhardt telling him of the death of his sister Elena Marfa. They had six daughters (the eldest was already married) and a son in the army. The five younger daughters were aged between twenty-one and eight. ‘I ask you to take care of them and to take the place of Marfa Alexandrovna…’, Engelhardt wrote to Potemkin on 5 July. ‘By your order, I’ll send them to your mother.’ There was no reason why their father could not bring them up in Smolensk, but Engelhardt, a man of the world, realized his daughters would benefit from life at Court. Potemkin summoned them to Moscow.
The Empress, like any dutiful wife, was meeting the Potemkin family. When her formidable mother-in-law, Daria Potemkina, who still lived in Moscow,*2 was presented, Catherine was at her thoughtful and sensitive best: ‘I noticed your mother was most elegant but that she has no watch. Here is one which I ask you to give her.’51 When the nieces arrived, Catherine welcomed them warmly and told Potemkin, ‘To make your mother happy you can nominate as many of your nieces as you want as Maids-of-Honour.’52 On 10 July, the climax of the peace celebrations, the eldest of this brood, Alexandra Engelhardt, twenty-one, was appointed a frele or maid-of-honour to the Empress.53 The second and most decorous, Varvara, was soon to join her. As soon as they arrived, the nieces were hailed as Russia’s superlative beauties.
* * *
—
Meanwhile, Catherine was busy drafting her legislation, aided by two young secretaries she had recently borrowed from Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky’s staff: Peter Zavadovsky and Alexander Bezborodko. The latter, cleverest of the two, was so ugly and ungainly as to be somewhat fascinating. But Zavadovsky was methodical, cultured and good-looking. His pursued lips and humourless eyes suggested he was a sanctimonious plodder – the precise opposite of Potemkin, perhaps even antidote to him. During the many hours of drafting and during the tiresome journey back to St Petersburg, as they left grim Moscow at last, Catherine, Potemkin and Zavadovsky became an odd threesome.
We can imagine the scene in Catherine’s apartments: Potemkin, stretched out on a divan in a flowing dressing gown, a bandana round his head, no wig and tousled hair everywhere, chewing radishes and imitating courtiers, bubbles with ideas, jokes and tantrums, while Zavadovsky perches stiffly and patiently in his wig and uniform, writing at his desk, his eyes fixed with labrador devotion on the Empress…
Skip Notes
*1 There is another possible Moscow venue. During the nineteenth century, a Prince S. Golitsyn, a collector, used to invite visitors to his palace on Volkonsky Street, said to be one of the places where Catherine stayed in Moscow during 1775. He used to show them two icons supposedly given by Catherine to his chapel to celebrate her marriage there to Potemkin.
*2 Catherine granted Daria a house on Prestichenka where she lived until her death.
10
HEARTBREAK AND UNDERSTANDING
My soul, I’m doing everything for you so at least encourage me a little with affectionate and calm behaviour…my little dear lord, lovable husband.
Catherine II to Count Potemkin
But in such matters Russia’s mighty Empress
Behaved no better than a common sempstress
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto IX: 77
‘My husband just said to me “Where should I go, what should I do?” ’, Catherine wrote to Count Potemkin around this time. ‘My darling and well-loved husband, come to my place and you will be received with open arms!’1 On 2 January 1776, Catherine appointed Peter Zavadovsky as adjutant-general. This ménage-à-trois puzzled the Court.
The diplomats realized that something was happening in the Empress’s private life and presumed that Potemkin’s career was over: ‘The Empress begins to see the liberties of her favourite [Potemkin] in a different light…It is already whispered that a person placed about her by Mr Rumiantsev bids fair to gain her entire confidence.’2 There were rumours that Potemkin would lose the College of War, either to Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky or to Panin’s nephew Prince Repnin. But an English diplomat, Richard Oakes, noticed that Potemkin was expanding his interests, not reducing them, and ‘seems to interest himself more in foreign affairs than he at first affected to do.’3 While the Anglo-Saxons could not quite grasp what might be happening, the waspish French envoy, Chevalier Marie Daniel Bourrée de Corberon, who kept an invaluable diary of his life at Court, suspected that it would take more than Zavadovsky to destroy him. ‘Better in face than Potemkin,’ he observed. ‘But his favour not yet decided.’ Then in the sarcastic tone that diplomats habitually adopted when discussing the imperial sex life: ‘His talents have been put to the test in Moscow. But Potemkin…still has the air of credit…so Zavadovsky is probably only an amusement.’4
Between January and March 1776, the Empress avoided large gatherings as she struggled to work out her relationship with Count Potemkin. That January, Prince Orlov reappeared after his travels and this muddied the waters even further because there were now three present or former favourites at Court. Grigory Orlov was back in his hearty old form, but he was no longer the man he had been: overweight and struck by attacks of ‘palsy’, he was in love with his cousin Ekaterina Zinovieva, aged fifteen, one of the Empress’s maids-of-honour, whom some accounts claim he had raped. The ruthless competi
tion at Court is reflected in the rumours that Potemkin was poisoning Orlov – something completely against his nature. Orlov’s paralysis sounds like the later stages of syphilis, the sickly fruit of his well-known lack of discernment.
Catherine appeared only at small dinners. Peter Zavadovsky was frequently present; Potemkin was there less than before – but still too much for the former’s liking. Zavadovsky must have felt inadequate between two of the most dynamic conversationalists of their time. Potemkin was still Catherine’s lover, while the earnest Zavadovsky was increasingly in love with her. We do not know when (or if) she withdrew from Potemkin and took Zavadovsky as a lover – it was some time during that winter. Indeed, it was most likely that she never completely ceased to sleep with the man she called ‘my husband’. Was she playing off one against the other, encouraging both? Naturally. Since by her own account she was one of those who could not contemplate a day without somebody to love her, it would have been only human for her to cast her eyes at her secretary when Potemkin was parading his lack of interest.
Catherine the Great & Potemkin Page 24