Catherine the Great & Potemkin: The Imperial Love Affair

‘I never forget you,’ she reassured ‘her beloved friend’ after one of his moods. ‘As soon as I finished listening to reports, which took three hours, I wanted to send somebody to you, especially as it was not yet ten o’clock and I was afraid of waking you up before. As you see, your anger has no foundation…Darling I love you like my soul.’⁴¹ If she was truly angry, she let him know it: ‘Fool! I am not ordering you to do anything! Not deserving this coldness, I blame it on our deadly enemy, your spleen!’⁴² She indulged his moods, finding his passion somewhat flattering, and tried to understand his torments: ‘You are talking nonsense, my darling. I love you and I’ll love you for ever in spite of yourself.’ Even more sweetly: ‘Batinka, come to see me so that I can calm you with my endless caresses.’⁴³ Her role is often to sooth this angry and frustrated man with her love.

Potemkin’s moods were so changeable that the two played games with each other. ‘Was there anything on that sheet?’, she wrote, pretending not to have read one of his raging notes. ‘Certainly reproaches, for Your Excellency has sulked all evening and I, brokenhearted, sought your caresses in vain…The quarrel took place the day before yesterday when I tried in all sincerity to have it out with you about my plans that…could be very useful to you. Last night, I confess, I deliberately did not send anyone…But when you had not arrived by nine o’clock I sent for news of your health. Then you turned up but with a sulky face. I pretended not to notice your bad mood which ended by really upsetting you…Wait darling, let my wounded heart heal again, tenderness will return as soon as we grant each other an audience.’⁴⁴

Perhaps it was after this that Potemkin sent her a blank piece of paper. The Empress was hurt yet somewhat amused and she rewarded him with an almost complete encyclopaedia of his nicknames: ‘This is not April Fool’s Day to send me a blank sheet. Probably…you have done it not to spoil me too much. But…I don’t guess the meaning of your silence either. Yet I am full of tenderness for you, giaour, Muscovite, Pugachev, golden cockerel, peacock, cat, pheasant, golden tiger, lion in the jungle.’⁴⁵

Catherine concealed an obsessive emotional neediness – ‘my cruel tenderness’ – beneath her cool German temperament, which was enough to suffocate any man, let alone the impossibly restless Potemkin. Rewarded lavishly, rising fast, spoilt by the woman he loved, he was such a bundle of nerves, poetical melodrama and Slavic contrariness that he could never relax and just be happy: ‘Calmness is for you a state your soul cannot bear.’ He needed space to breathe. His restlessness attracted her, but she could not help finding it insulting: ‘I came to wake you up and…I see you are out. Now I understand this sleep of yours was just an excuse to get rid of me. In town, you spent hours with me…whereas here I can only see you for short moments. Giaour, Cossack, Muscovite, you are always trying to avoid me!…You can laugh about me but I do not laugh when I see you bored in my company…’.⁴⁶ But Potemkin was as manipulative as Catherine herself. Whether it was pride or restlessness that made him avoid her, he liked to let her know it. ‘I’ll never come to see you if you’re avoiding me,’⁴⁷ she wrote pathetically on one occasion. Potemkin’s quicksilver mind was easily bored, though he never tired of Catherine’s company. They had too much in common.

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It was difficult for a traditional Russian like Potemkin, even one educated in the classics of the Enlightenment, to maintain an equal relationship with a woman not only more powerful but also so sexually independent. Potemkin’s behaviour was selfishly indulgent but he was in a difficult situation with enormous pressures on him, politically and personally. That is why he tormented Catherine. He was obsessively jealous of other men, which was foolish given her absolute devotion to him. The role of official lover was not easy on a masterful man.