Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

After this, the lucky man would dine with the Empress, attend whatever receptions she was gracing and then adjourn to the Little Hermitage to play cards with her inner circle – Potemkin, Master of the Horse Lev Naryshkin, assorted Orlovs, if they were in favour, a handful of Potemkin’s nieces and nephews, and the odd favoured foreigner. She sat for some rubbers of whist or faro or played rhyming games or charades. Everyone would be watching – though Potemkin would probably already know. At 11 p.m., Catherine rose and the young man accompanied her to her apartments. This would be the routine of their life virtually every day they were in Petersburg, unless there was a special holiday. Catherine was always grateful to Potemkin for his advice, kindness and generous lack of jealousy in such private matters – as she wrote to him after falling in love with Korsakov: ‘He’s an angel – big, big, big thanks!’⁴³

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The favourite derived massive benefits from his gilded position, but these were balanced by dire disadvantages. The advantages were enough land, serfs, jewels and cash to found an aristocratic dynasty. The disadvantages were, simply put, Catherine and Potemkin.

The first advantage – and the real mark of the position – was possession of the most potent piece of real estate in all the Russians. As in all property, location was paramount. Apartments in the Empress’s wing of her palaces were as valuable as those at Versailles. The new favourite would take possession of the beautifully decorated, green-carpeted apartment linked to Catherine’s by the notorious staircase. There, it was claimed, he would find a certain sum of money as a welcoming present – 100,000 roubles or 10,000 roubles every week. But there is no evidence for this golden hello, though we know from Vassilchikov’s ‘kept woman’ complaint that she regularly gave generous cash presents on birthdays, and she certainly paid for their fine clothes and granted them a monthly table allowance. Legend claims that, in gratitude for their privileged position, the favourites would then pay Potemkin a bribe-payment of around 100,000 roubles as if they had bought a tax farm – or as if they were renting his place. Even the unreliable Saint-Jean does not believe this story, which is saying something as he believes virtually everything else.⁴⁴ Since the favourite would later receive untold riches, he might well thank the person who had sponsored his arrival in the highest circles, as anyone might thank a patron – but it is unlikely a penniless provincial would have 100,000 roubles to pay Potemkin even if the system existed. The only evidence of this payment was that, when they were appointed, one later favourite gave Potemkin a teapot, and another thanked his patron with a gold watch. Usually, Potemkin received nothing.

The favourite and his family would become rich. ‘Believe me, my friend,’ said Corberon, ‘over here, this profession is a good one!’⁴⁵ Foreigners were dazzled by the costs of maintaining, and especially dismissing, the favourites. ‘Not less than a million roubles yearly, exclusive of the enormous pensions of Prince Orlov and Prince Potemkin,’ calculated Harris, who estimated that the Orlovs had received seventeen million roubles between 1762 and 1783.⁴⁶ The figures are impossible to verify, but Catherine was exceedingly generous even when she had been ill-treated, perhaps out of guilt or at least awareness that it was not an easy role. Maybe she hoped her magnanimity would demonstrate that she herself was not hurt. However, there was no shortage of ambitious young men eager for the position. Indeed, as the Empress was selecting a new lover, Potemkin’s adjutant (and cousin of his nieces) Lev Engelhardt noticed that, ‘during the church service for the court, lots of young men, who were even the slightest bit handsome, stood erect, hoping to regulate their destiny in such an easy way.’⁴⁷

The arrangement may sound cold and cynical but the relationship of Catherine and favourite could not have been more indulgent, loving and cosy. Indeed, Catherine was passionately enamoured with each one and bathed them in loving and controlling attention, spent hours talking to them and reading with them. The beginning of each affair was an explosion of her maternal love, Germanic sentimentality and admiration for their beauty. She raved about them to anyone who would listen and, because she was Empress, everyone had to. Even though most of them were too spoiled and stupid to govern, she loved each one as if the relationship would last until the day she died. When her relationships fell apart, she became desperate and depressed, and often little business was achieved for weeks.