Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

30 Christie, Benthams in Russia p 132.

31 RGADA 11.946.132–4, SB to GAP 18 July 1784, Krichev, unpublished.

32 Ségur, Memoirs 1960 p 71.

33 BM 33540 f70–78, SB to JB 10/12 June–20/1 July 1784.

34 BM 33540 f147, 30 March/10 April 1785.

35 BM 33540, SB to JB June 1784.

36 BM 33540 f68, SB to JB 19 June 1784, Kremenchuk.

37 BM 33540 f94, SB to JB 18 July 1784.

38 BM 33540 f235, Jeremiah Bentham 2 November 1784.

39 BM 33540 f306, Marquess of Lansdowne to Jeremiah Bentham 1 September 1788.

40 RGADA 11.946.141–2, JB to GAP 27 August 1785. RGADA 11.946.186–210. JB to GAP February 1785. These are partly unpublished.

41 BM 33540 ff151–2, SB to JB 27 March 1785.

42 BM 33540 f160, Robert Hynam to JB 10 May 1785.

43 BM 33540 f258, JB to? 9 May/28 April 1786.

44 SIRIO 23: 157.

45 Dimsdale p 51, 7 September NS 1781.

46 Cross, By the Banks of the Neva, pp 267–70, 274–6, 284. This account of GAP’s gardeners owes much to Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva. The delightful story of the roast beef is from Coxe’s Travels (5th edn), quoted by Cross at p 410 n 163.

47 RGIA 1146.1.33, unpublished. See note 49.

48 Anna Abramova Galichenka, Alupka Museum. Author’s visit to Crimea 1998.

49 RGIA 1146.1.33, unpublished. On Gould’s movements and projects in Astrakhan, Ukraine, Nikolaev and Crimea, see Cross, By the Banks of the Neva p 275. Call must have been Martin Miller Call, one of the three gardeners recruited by CtG from the Duke of Northumberland. Call only left for Russia in 1792 and worked in the Taurida Garden. Cross, By the Banks of the Neva p 285. Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun was one of the many who likened Potemkin’s ‘magnificence’ to the Arabian Nights and acclaimed ‘the power and grandeur of his imagination’. Vigée Lebrun pp 23–4.

50 RGADA 11.891.1, Prince Belozelsky to GAP 9/20 July 1780, unpublished.

51 RGADA 11.923.8, H to GAP 15 June 1784, London, unpublished.

52 RGADA 11.923.5, H to GAP 4 June 1784, unpublished. RGVIA 52.2.89.91, Lord Carysfort to GAP 12 July 1789, London. unpublished. Sir Joshua Reynolds to GAP 4 August 1789, quoted in ‘Sir Joshua and the Empress Catherine’ by Frederick W. Hilles pp 270–3 in Eighteenth Century Studies in Honor of Donald F. Hyde. Cross, By the Banks of the Neva pp 321–3.

53 Author’s visit to Hermitage Museum, W. Europe Dept, Maria P. Garnova, 1998.

54 B&F vol 1 p 115, Count Cobenzl to JII 4 February 1781; p 265, Cobenzl to JII 4 December 1781; p 278, JII to Cobenzl 27 December 1781. Brompton’s most famous painting is his dreamy portrayal of the two young Grand Dukes, Alexander and Constantine – it was, as Anthony Cross writes in his By the Banks of the Neva p 310, ‘the realisation of her “Greek Project” with her little grandsons in the starring roles of a future Alexander the Great and a Constantine the Great’. (The Bromptons named one of their children Alexander Constantine.) One of his paintings of the Empress must have been sent to Vienna, but its destiny is unknown.

55 RGADA 11.946.119–23, Richard Brompton to GAP 21 June 1782, Tsarskoe Selo, unpublished.

56 Cross, By the Banks of the Neva pp 309–10. Bentham quoted in Cross p 310.

57 Ségur, Mémoires (1826) vol 2 p 341. Also Lincolnshire Archives Office, Lincoln, Yarborough Collection, Worsley MS no 24 f205 quoted in Cross, By the Banks of the Neva pp 357–8. Worsley was one of the English gentlemen who now included Petersburg in their Grand Tours. He met Lady Craven, Prince Pavel Dashkov and the Benthams. In Ségur’s story, Potemkin and Catherine were closeted for one hour, but Worsley says two.

58 BM 33540 f168, Landsdowne to JB ud.

59 BM 33540 ff196, 199, 201, 219, 226, 232, 240, 256, JB’s trip to Krichev September 1785–January 1786.

60 BM 33540 f163, 18/29 June 1785.

61 Miranda pp 234–5, 9 January 1787. Druzhinina, Severnoye prichernomorye p 136n. Christie, Benthams in Russia p 148.

62 BM 33540 f163, SB to JB 10 June 1785.

63 BM 33540 ff318–21, JB to Christian Trompovsky 18/29 December 1786.

64 BM 33540 f339, JB to SB February 1787.

65 BM 33540 f432, JB to Charles Whitworth ud.

66 BM 33540 f31, 19/30 December 1786.

67 BM 33540 f151, JB to Jeremiah Bentham 27 March 1785.

68 BM 33540 f64, SB to Reginald Pole Carew 18 June 1784, Kremenchuk.

69 Christie, Benthams in Russia pp 166.

70 E. P. Zakalinskaya, Votchinye khozyaystva Mogilevskoy gubernii vo vtoroy polovinye XVIII veka pp 37, 41–3. See I. R. Christie, ‘Samuel Bentham and the Western Colony at Krichev’ p 140–50.

71 BM 33558 ff422–3, SB to Jeremiah Bentham 14/25 February 1788, Elisabethgrad.

72 Jeremy Bentham, Correspondence vol 3 p 443, JB to Jeremiah Bentham 28 April/9 May 1785.