Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

‘My darling, what nonsense you talked yesterday…’, she wrote in these early days. ‘The time I spend with you is so happy. We passed four hours together, boredom vanishes and I don’t want to part with you. My dear, my friend, I love you so much: you are so handsome, so clever, so jovial, so witty: when I am with you, I attach no importance to the world. I’ve never been so happy…’.²⁷ For the first time, we can hear the intimate laughter that must have echoed at night out of the Winter Palace banya. They were both sensualists – a pair of Epicureans. ‘My darling friend, I fear you might be angry with me. If not, all the better. Come quickly to my bedroom and prove it.’²⁸

Vassilchikov was still in residence – at least officially. Catherine and Potemkin nicknamed him ‘soupe à la glace’ – ‘iced soup’.²⁹ It was now she told Potemkin that she wished they had started a year and half before instead of wasting precious time unhappily.³⁰ But the presence of Vassilchikov in his apartments was still upsetting Potemkin, who was always hysterically jealous. He had apparently flounced off because, in a letter a few days later, Catherine had to coax him back: ‘I cannot force someone to caress…You know my nature and my heart, you know my good and bad qualities, I let you choose your behaviour…It is silly to torment yourself…You ruin your health for nothing.’³¹

Vassilchikov has been almost forgotten, but these days must have been agonizing for him. Catherine was ruthless with those she could not respect and one senses she was ashamed of his mediocrity. Vassilchikov realized that he could never play the role of Potemkin, whose ‘standing was very different from mine. I was merely a sort of kept woman…I was scarcely allowed to see anyone or go out. When I asked for anything, no notice was taken whatsoever…When I was anxious for the Order of St Anna, I spoke about it to the Empress and found 30,000 roubles in my pocket next day in notes. I always had my mouth closed like that…As for Potemkin, he gets what he wants…he is the master.’³²

‘The master’ insisted that the unfortunate bowl of ‘Iced Soup’ be removed from the table. Vassilchikov moved out of his apartments in the Winter Palace. They became the Council Room, because Potemkin refused to live in someone else’s apartments. New rooms were decorated for him. Potemkin himself moved out of the cottage at the Samoilov’s to stay with the trusted Chamberlain Yelagin.³³

By late February, the relationship was no longer either an amorous courtship or a sexual affair: the couple were absolutely committed. On the 27th, Potemkin was confident enough to write a letter requesting that he be appointed ‘general and personal aide-de-camp to Her Majesty’. There were a handful of adjutant-generals, mostly just courtiers. But in this case the meaning would be clear. He added in what was presumably a Potemkinian joke, ‘it could not offend anybody’. Both of them must have laughed at this. His arrival would offend everybody, from the Orlovs to the Panins, from Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great to George III and Louis XVI. It would change the political landscape and ultimately Russia’s alliances abroad. But no matter, because he touchingly added his real feelings: ‘I would be the happiest man alive…’.³⁴ The letter was handed in to Stekalov, who was in charge of requests, like any other petition. But this one was answered far more quickly.

‘Lieutenant-General…I think your request is appropriate,’ she replied the next day, taking off official language, ‘in view of the services that you have rendered to me and our Motherland.’ It was typical of Potemkin simply to write officially: ‘he was the only one of her favourites who dared to become enamoured of her and to make the first advances’, wrote Charles Masson, later Swiss mathematics tutor at Court and author of scandalous but unreliable memoirs. Catherine appreciated this courage in her reply: ‘I am ordering the drawing up of your nomination to adjutant-general. I must confess to you that I am pleased that you, trusting me, decided to send your request directly to me without looking for roundabout ways.’³⁵ It is at this moment that Potemkin steps out of the shadows of history to become one of the most described and discussed statesmen of the century.

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