Catherine the Great & Potemkin
Page 27
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On Saturday, 27 May 1777, the Empress arrived at Potemkin’s new estate of Ozerki, outside Petersburg. When they sat down for dinner, there was a cannon salute to welcome her. Potemkin always entertained opulently. There were thirty-five guests, the top courtiers, the Prince’s nieces Alexandra and Ekaterina Engelhardt, his cousins Pavel and Mikhail Potemkin – and, at the very bottom of the list, Major of the Hussars Semyon Gavrilovich Zorich, a swarthy, curly-haired and athletic Serb aged thirty-one. It was his first appearance at an official reception, yet it seems that Catherine had already met him. Zorich, a handsome daredevil already known as ‘Adonis’ by the ladies at Court and as a ‘vrai sauvage’ by everyone else, was something of a war hero. Potemkin remembered him from the army. Zorich had been captured by the Turks. Prisoners were often decapitated in the exuberance of the moment, but noblemen were preserved for ransom – so Zorich loudly proclaimed himself a count and survived.
On his return, this ambitious rogue wrote to Potemkin and was appointed to his entourage. Potemkin’s aides-de-camp were obviously introduced to Court – and the Empress noticed him. Within a few days, Zorich was the new official favourite and his life changed instantly. He was the first of Catherine’s succession of so-called favourites or mignons who took the role as an official appointment. While raving about Zorich’s looks and calling him ‘Sima’ or ‘Senyusha’, Catherine was missing her Potemkin. ‘Give Senyusha the attached letters,’ she asked her consort. ‘It’s so dull without you.’9 Just as modest Zavadovsky was an antidote to the ebullient Potemkin, so the excitable Serb was a relief after the moping Zavadovsky. The latter heard about the emergence of Zorich and rushed back to Petersburg, staying with his friends, the Vorontsovs.
Zavadovsky suffered like ‘a stricken stag’ – and the Court treated him like one. He was told to behave himself. The Empress ‘respected’ him but suggested that he restrain himself ‘in order to extinguish the alarm.’10 What alarm? The Empress’s perhaps. But surely also the hypochondriacal, nailbiting Potemkin. In any case, Zavadovsky learned that, since he was not going to be reinstated, the courtiers no longer paid him much attention. He went back to his work. One warms to Zavadovsky for his diligent state service and his romantic pain, but he also spent the next twenty years moaning to his friends about Potemkin’s omnipotence and extravagance. He remained devoted to Catherine and did not marry for another ten years. And when he built his palace at Ekaterinodar (Catherine’s Gift) – with its 250 rooms, porcelain stones, malachite fireplaces, full library – its centrepiece was a lifesize statue of Catherine.11 But he was not a typical favourite because, while the Empress never gave him independent political power as she did to Potemkin, he enjoyed a distinguished career under Catherine and afterwards.*1
Catherine was in love with Zorich. Potemkin was happy with his former adjutant and gave him a plume of diamonds for his hat and a superb cane.12 Catherine, who was to work so hard to make her favourites respect Potemkin, wrote: ‘My dear Prince, I have received the plume, given it to Sima and Sima wears it, thanks to you.’ Since the vain King Gustavus III of Sweden was on a visit, she laughingly compared the two dandies.13 Zorich, who liked to strut around in the finest clothes, resembled nothing so much as a finely feathered fighting cock, but the vrai sauvage was soon out of his depth. He also suffered from the addiction of the age: gambling. Once Catherine had recovered from her early delight in his looks and vigour, she realized he was a liability. It was not the gambling that mattered – the Empress played daily and Potemkin all night – but his inability to understand his position vis-à-vis the Prince.14
Within a few months, everyone knew he would have to be dismissed and the diplomats were once again trying to guess the next lover. ‘There is a Persian candidate in case of Monsieur de Zorich’s resignation,’ wrote Sir James Harris as early as 2 February 1778. But Zorich swaggered around, announcing in a loud voice that, if he was dismissed, he was ‘resolved to call his successor to account’ – in other words to challenge him to a duel. This muscular braggadocio would really bring Catherine’s court into contempt. Far from delaying his fall, as he no doubt thought, this was precisely the sort of behaviour that made it inevitable. ‘By God,’ he threatened, ‘I’ll cut the ears of whoever takes my place.’ Soon Harris thought he had spotted another candidate for favourite. Like all the diplomats, Sir James believed that it was ‘probable that Potemkin will be commissioned to look out for a fresh minion and I have heard…that he already has picked on one Acharov – a Lieutenant of Police in Moscow, middle-aged, well made, more of a Hercules than Apollo.’15
Three months later, with the Court at Tsarkoe Selo for the summer, Zorich remained in place. When the Empress attended the theatre, Harris claimed the Prince presented to her a ‘tall hussar officer, one of his adjutants. She distinguished him a good deal.’ The moment Catherine had gone, Zorich ‘fell upon Potemkin in a very violent manner, made use of the strongest expressions of abuse and insisted on his fighting him’. Potemkin refused this insolent request with contempt. Zorich stormed into the imperial apartments and boasted what he had done. ‘When Potemkin appeared he was ill-received and Zorich seemed in favour.’
Potemkin left Tsarskoe Selo and returned to town. But, as so often with Potemkin and Catherine, appearances were deceptive. The sauvage was ordered to gallop all the way to St Petersburg in the Prince’s wake and humiliatingly invite him to supper to make friends. Serenissimus returned. The supper was held: ‘they are apparently good friends’. Zorich had made the mistake of crossing Prince Potemkin, though that in itself was not decisive, since virtually all the favourites crossed him at one time or another. But Sir James had the measure of Potemkin: ‘an artful man’, who, ‘in the end, will get the better of Zorich’s bluntness’.16
Sure enough, just six days later, Harris reported Zorich’s dismissal, ‘conveyed to him very gently by the Empress herself’. Zorich exploded in bitter reproaches, probably about Potemkin. He had already been granted the exceedingly valuable estate of Shklov, with 7,000 souls and an ‘immense sum of ready money’. He was last recorded at Court on 13 May.17 A day later, Catherine met Serenissimus for dinner at the Kerekinsky Palace on the way home from Tsarkoe Selo: ‘The child had gone and that’s all,’ she wrote after discussing Potemkin’s military plans, ‘as for the rest, we’ll discuss it together…’. She was most likely referring to the object of her new-found happiness.
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At the Kerekinsky, Prince Potemkin arrived with ‘Major Ivan Nikolaevich Rimsky-Korsakov’. Naturally, by the time Catherine parted with Zorich, she was already infatuated with a new friend. Zorich was still making blustering threats when Rimsky-Korsakov was appointed Potemkin’s adjutant on 8 May.18 Far from being a heartless hedonist, Catherine always experienced emotional crises, if not complete collapse, during these changes. Zorich was still brooding in St Petersburg when, according to Harris, Catherine contemplated recalling ‘the plain and quiet’ Zavadovsky. Potemkin ‘who has more cunning for effecting the purposes of the day than any man living, contrived to effect these good resolutions…’. He ‘introduced’ Korsakov ‘at the critical moment’.
A couple of days later, the Empress, along with her Court and many of Potemkin’s family, including two of his nieces, set off to stay at another of the Prince’s estates ‘to forget her cares…in the society of her new minion’. Potemkin’s estate was Eschenbaum (Osinovaya Rocha) ‘on the confines of Finland’. If one reads Catherine’s letter to Grimm from Eschenbaum, in which she raved about the views of lakes and woods from her window while grumbling that her entourage had to squeeze into a mere ten bedrooms, one would have no idea that her new passion had already hit a snag. Two grand and libidinous middle-aged women were competing for the attentions of Potemkin’s pretty adjutant.19
There were twenty guests out at Eschenbaum, including of course Potemkin’s old friend Countess Bruce, supposedly the sam
pler of Catherine’s lovers. Someone else – it must be Countess Bruce – was also attracted to the fine Korsakov. Catherine had noticed and hesitated before letting herself go. ‘I’m afraid of burning my fingers and it’s better not to lead into temptation…’, she wrote to Potemkin in an enigmatic appeal in which she seemed to be asking him to get someone to keep her distance: ‘I’m afraid that the last day dispelled the imaginary attraction which I hope is only one-sided and which can easily be stopped by your clever guidance.’ She obviously wanted the ‘child’ herself, but ‘I don’t want, wanting and I want, without wishing…that’s as clear as the day!’ Even in this oblique gibberish, it was clear she was falling in love – but wished the competition to be removed.
Potemkin’s ‘clever guidance’ did the trick. Countess Bruce, if it was she, backed off and Catherine claimed her new mignon.20 The house-party ended. Two days later, on 1 June, Korsakov was officially appointed adjutant-general to the Empress. In an age of neo-Classicism, Rimsky-Korsakov, aged twenty-four, immediately struck her with his Grecian ‘ancient beauty’, so that she soon nicknamed him ‘Pyrrhus, King of Epirus’. In her letters to Grimm, she claimed he was so beautiful that he was ‘the failure of painters, the despair of sculptors’.21 Catherine seemed to choose alternate types because Korsakov was as elegant and artistic as Zorich has been muscular and macho: portraits show his exquisitely Classical features. He loved to sing, and Catherine told Prince Orlov that he had a voice ‘like a nightingale’. Singing lessons were arranged. He was showered with gifts – 4,000 souls and presents worth half a million roubles. Arrogant, vain and not terribly clever, he was ‘good-natured but silly.’22
Once again, Catherine was wildly happy with her new companion: ‘Adieu mon bijou,’ she wrote to Potemkin in a summary of their special marriage. ‘Thanks to you and the King of Epirus, I am as happy as a chaffinch and I want you to be just as happy.’23 With the Empress happy, the Prince, increasingly busy running the army and governing the south, was so supreme that when Zavadovsky finally returned to Petersburg to find another favourite ensconced in his old apartment, he was shocked that Potemkin ‘doesn’t have any balance against him. In all the centuries’, he grumbled to Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky, ‘God has not created such a universal person as this. Prince P is everywhere and everything is him!’24
Catherine wrote passionately to her ‘King of Epirus: ‘my impatience to see the one who for me is the best of God’s creatures is so great: I longed for him more than 24 hours and have gone to meet him.’ Or as Harris put it drily: ‘Korsakov enjoys all the affection and favour which attend novelty.’ Korsakov was certainly enjoying his role, perhaps too much: Potemkin suggested that he should be made gentleman of the bedchamber, but Korsakov wanted to jump straight to chamberlain. When the mignon got his way, Catherine gave Pavel Potemkin the honour as well, to compensate Serenissimus. Soon Korsakov was a major-general; the King of Poland sent him the Golden Eagle, which he always wore. Catherine’s hunger for Korsakov sings through the letters. She sounded pathetically grateful, writing: ‘Thank you for loving me.’25
There were already ominous signs which the Empress alone could not, or would not, see. Even in her letters, Korsakov never seemed to be with her and she never seemed to know where he was. Here is a glimpse of her suffocating neediness and his avoidance of her companionship: ‘I’m unable to forget you for a moment. When will I see you?’ Soon she sounded almost feverish: ‘If he doesn’t come back soon, I’ll run away from here and go looking for him in every place in town.’ It was this emotional appetite that ruled Catherine and made her surprisingly vulnerable – the Achilles’ heel of this otherwise indestructible political machine.26
It was not long before Catherine, hooked on the shallow youngster, was upset again. In early August 1778, just a few months after Korsakov’s appointment, Harris reported to London that the new favourite was already in decline and that Potemkin, Grigory Orlov and Nikita Panin were each struggling to sponsor the replacement. Within a couple of weeks, he even knew ‘the secret in Count Panin’s office by name Strackhov…first noticed at a ball at Peterhof on 28 June’. If the connection lasted, Harris told his Secretary of State for the North, the Earl of Suffolk, ‘it must end in the fall of Potemkin’. By the end of the year, Harris decided that Korsakov was safe again but ‘entirely subservient to the orders of Prince Potemkin and Countess Bruce’.
The mention of Countess Bruce was ominous. By the end of January, the candidates for favourite were multiplying: there was still Strackhov, whose ‘friends were in great hope’, but then there was also Levashev, a major in the Semenovsky Guards, who might have become favourite ‘if a young man by name Svickhosky, patronised by Madame Bruce…had not stabbed himself through disappointment. The wound is not mortal.’ These rumours of Catherine’s affairs were often based on a whisper of gossip which had little foundation, but the diplomatic scandal-mongering signified intense political struggles at Court, even if it was not necessarily what was happening in the imperial bedchamber. Nonetheless Harris was better informed than most because of his friendship with Potemkin. By this time, even a new diplomat in town like Harris knew that Countess Bruce had returned to her ‘violent passion for Korsakov’.
The whole of Petersburg, except sadly the Empress herself, must have been aware that Countess Bruce had only restrained herself from Korsakov for a short time. Since both lived in the Palace only a few yards from the Empress’s bedroom, they conducted their liaison right under Catherine’s nose. Small wonder that the Empress was always looking for the favourite. Countess Bruce, the same age as Catherine and formerly a courtier of discretion and experience, must have lost her head to the beauties of the ‘King of Epirus’.27 Serenissimus and Countess Bruce fell out at this time, possibly over Korsakov. Potemkin, who would have known about the affair almost as soon as it started, wanted to remove Bruce. He must have tried to hint about it delicately to the Empress earlier in September. They rowed. The diplomats thought it was because he was jealous of Panin’s candidate Strackhov.28
The Prince, who did not wish to hurt the Empress nor again lose credit for trying to help, decided to fix the matter. When the Empress was looking around the Palace for the elusive Korsakov, someone loyal to Potemkin would direct her towards a certain room. This person was probably Potemkin’s favourite niece, Alexandra Engelhardt, who was a maid-of-honour. Harris would have heard this story from Alexandra herself since she was the secret recipient of English money.29 Catherine surprised her lover and Countess Bruce in a compromising position, if not in flagrante delicto. There ended the short reign of ‘silly’ Korsakov.
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The Empress was wounded and angry but never vindictive. As late as 10 October 1779, she still wrote kindly to Korsakov: ‘I’m repeating my request to calm yourself and to encourage you. Last week, I demonstrated that I’m taking care of you…’. Despite munificent presents, Korsakov lingered in Petersburg and even boasted of his sexual antics with the Empress in the salons in the most degrading way. Word of it must have reached the protective Potemkin, who loved Catherine too much not to do something about it. When she was discussing whether to reward her next favourite, Serenissimus suggested there should be limits to her generous treatment of Korsakov and the others. Once again, he hurt Catherine’s pride. Her generosity was partly a shield to conceal the depth of her own emotional wounds – and partly an effort to compensate for her age and their youth. According to Corberon, the two argued but later made up.
Korsakov was not finished. He had the effrontery not just to cuckold the Empress but also to cuckold the cuckoldress, Countess Bruce, by beginning an adulterous affair with a Court beauty, Countess Ekaterina Stroganova, who left her husband and child for him. This was too much even for Catherine. The ingrate was despatched to Moscow. An era of Catherine’s private life ended when Countess Bruce, now in disgrace, left the capital to pursue the ‘King of Epirus’ to Moscow. He no longer wanted her and she re
turned to her husband, Count Yakov Bruce.30 The Court cheerfully plunged into the amorous guessing game that was just as popular as whist and faro.
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The bruised Catherine enjoyed an unusual six months without being in love with anyone. It was at times of unhappiness like this, commented Harris, that Potemkin became even more powerful: did he return to Catherine’s bed to comfort his friend?
It is most likely they temporarily resumed their old habits as they were to do throughout their lives: this is suggested in her letters to Potemkin, which joke about the delicious effects of the ‘chemical medicines of Cagliostro’. The notorious charlatan, Count Cagliostro, rose to European fame in 1777 and became fashionable in Mittau, the Courland capital, before coming to Petersburg at precisely this time.*2 Catherine raved about ‘Cagliostro’s chemical medicine which is so soft, so agreeable, so handy that it embalms and gives elasticity to the mind and senses – enough, enough, basta, basta, caro amico, I mustn’t bore you too much…’.31 This tonic is either a jocular reference to some mystical balm sold by that necromancing snake-oil salesman – or one of Potemkin’s sexual specialities. Since Catherine had little patience for Cagliostro’s alchemy, Freemasonry and marketing of eternal life, but a proven tolerance for Potemkin’s love-making, one can guess which it was.