Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

Late in 1780, the diplomats claimed that Potemkin’s ‘family harem’ caused a ‘diabolical row’ at Court. The headstrong Varvara Golitsyna, defiantly respectable now that she was married, expressed her views on the Empress’s life. This blundering tactlessness irritated Catherine. Varvara compounded her pigheaded folly by loudly proclaiming that one could hardly be knouted for telling the truth. Potemkin was furious too and sent her off to Golitsyn’s estates. At this embarrassing moment, the ‘angel-incarnate’ Ekaterina allegedly became pregnant by her uncle. Dr Rogerson prescribed taking the waters at a spa. Serenissimus persuaded Varvara to take her sister. Corberon admired Potemkin’s typical manipulation of what could have been a disaster by giving the impression that Varvara was just accompanying her sister on a medical mission instead of being exiled, and that Ekaterina was not being sent away to conceal her belly, merely going on a jaunt with the Golitsyns. By the time Ekaterina left, she was supposedly six months gone.

Catherine now made a suggestion that upset Potemkin and caused yet another row. When Ekaterina was appointed maid-of-honour in the summer of 1777, she immediately attracted the attention of Catherine and Prince Orlov’s son, Bobrinsky, much to the amusement of the Empress, who joked about it in her letters to Potemkin.¹⁵ Bobrinsky fell in love with the girl. The Empress, according to Corberon, had even promised that he could marry her. Bobrinsky was an insubstantial playboy who was a victim of the birth that made him everything yet nothing. Plenty of royal bastards found brilliant careers in those days – none greater than Louis XV’s Marshal Maurice de Saxe, son of Augustus the Strong of Poland and Saxony – but Bobrinsky did not and was a notorious wastrel. Did he now refuse to marry a girl pregnant by her uncle? Or did Potemkin object because he considered Bobrinsky a fool – and, worse, an Orlov? This moral, sexual and familial maze presents a little kaleidoscope of Court morals.¹⁶

Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky, who had retired to Moscow and hated Potemkin, scented blood in the water and arrived in town in September 1778 hoping to overthrow the Prince. Serenissimus displayed the ‘highest good humour and indifference’ as the two giant opponents, Cyclops and Scarface, publicly served at the Empress’s table. ‘It is beyond the description of my pen’, observed Harris, ‘to describe…a scene, in which every passion that can affect the human mind, bore a part which, by all the actors, was concealed by the most masterly hypocrisy.’ Orlov-Chesmensky was determined to make one last attempt to overthrow Serenissimus, whom, he told Catherine, had ‘ruined your army’: ‘his only superior talent is cunning’ and his only aim to ‘invest himself with sovereign power’. Catherine was displeased by this but she tried to conciliate. ‘Be friends with Potemkin,’ she begged Orlov-Chesmensky. ‘Prevail on that extraordinary man to be more circumspect in his conduct…[and] pay more attention to the duties of the great offices he fills…’.

‘You know Madam,’ Scarface said, ‘I am your slave…if Potemkin disturbs your peace of mind, give me your orders. He shall disappear immediately…’. The offer to kill Potemkin may be merely diplomatic gossip, but everyone knew that Orlov-Chesmensky was quite capable of delivering. Catherine was unimpressed and this marked the last gasp of Orlov power.¹⁷

Despite the rows, Potemkin and the Empress were so involved at that time in recasting foreign policy that his political position was entirely stable. When the row got hottest, Potemkin simply absented himself in a diplomatic sulk until the Empress had calmed down. Ekaterina returned with no sign of a baby, so far as we know.

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The youngest niece, Tatiana, was already ‘full of spirit’ when, aged twelve in 1781, she was appointed a maid-of-honour. When her uncle was in the south, she wrote him letters, in big girlish handwriting, which provide clues to the nature of Catherine and Potemkin’s ‘family’. She usually signed off as she did on 3 June 1785: ‘I want your return with the most lively impatience.’ Like everyone else, Tatiana was bored without Serenissimus: ‘I don’t know, my dear Uncle, when I will have the happiness to see you but those I ask tell me they know nothing and say you’ll stay all winter. Ah! How long that time seems to me if it’s true but I don’t believe these clowns.’ He gave her generous presents: ‘My dear Uncle, a thousand, thousand and million thanks for your gracious present, I will never forget your kindness and beg you to continue for ever. I will do everything possible to deserve them.’ She never became his mistress.¹⁸