Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman (82 page)

He became Catherine’s lover—and immediately became intensely jealous. Apart from lying next to her hapless husband, Peter, Catherine had slept with four men before Potemkin—Saltykov, Poniatowski, Orlov, and Vasilchikov. The existence of these predecessors, and mental images of her as the sexual partner of other men, tormented Potemkin. He accused the empress of having had fifteen previous lovers. In an attempt to calm him, Catherine secluded herself in her apartment on February 21, writing a letter entitled “A Sincere Confession,” which gave an account of her previous romantic experiences. It is unique in the annals of written royal confessions; an all-powerful queen attempting to win forgiveness from a demanding new lover for previous actions in her life.

In spelling out the details of her past life, she began with the circumstances of her marriage, and then described the painful disappointments of the love affairs that followed. Her earnest, apologetic, almost pleading tone laid bare how desperately she wanted Potemkin. She began by explaining how Empress Elizabeth’s anxiety concerning her failure to produce an heir to the throne had led to her first love affair. She admitted that, under pressure from the empress and Maria Choglokova, she had chosen Sergei Saltykov, “chiefly because of his obvious inclination.” Then Saltykov was sent away, “for
he had conducted himself indiscreetly:”

Along with Catherine’s interpretation of her own romantic history, this letter displays the impact of Potemkin’s personality on her. Potemkin understood this. Assured that he eclipsed everyone who had gone before, he wrote to Catherine, demanding what he now saw as his due:

The rank of adjutant general was the official status of Catherine’s favorites, but that his advancement would offend no one was nonsense. In addition to Vasilchikov, who admittedly no longer counted, it would offend the Orlovs, Panin, most of the court, and Catherine’s son, Grand Duke Paul, the heir to the throne. Ignoring all this, Catherine replied the following day in a letter that mingled official wording with private tongue-in-cheek irony:

Catherine then wrote to General Alexander Bibikov, who was then commander of the troops opposing Pugachev, to tell him that she had appointed Potemkin her personal adjutant, “and, as he thinks that you, being fond of him, will rejoice at this news I am letting you know. It seems to me that considering his devotion and services to me, I have not done much for him, but his joy is hard to describe. And I, looking at him, feel glad that I see near me at least one person who is entirely happy.” She also made Potemkin lieutenant colonel of the Preobrazhensky Guards, the most famous regiment of the Imperial Guard, in which she herself, as sovereign, was colonel. A few days later, the British minister, Sir Robert Gunning, informed London of these developments:

As the news swept through the court, Countess Rumyantseva wrote to her husband, the general, who, a few months before, had been Potemkin’s
superior in the Turkish war, “
The thing to do now, my sweet, is to address yourself to Potemkin.”

Panin, despite his warning to Catherine about Potemkin, was pleased by the change because it promised to diminish the influence of the Orlovs. No concern was shown for the hapless Vasilchikov, who, still living in the palace, became simply an inconvenience. Catherine was enraptured by her new favorite; this extended to taking pride in his reputed success with other women. “
I’m not surprised that the entire city has ascribed to you a countless number of women as your lovers,” she wrote to him. “No one on earth is better at busying himself with them, I suppose, than you.” She wanted him now, however, exclusively for herself. Less than a week after writing her “Sincere Confession,” she waited at night for Potemkin to come to her. The following day, she wrote to him:

Potemkin remained jealous of everyone, flaring up when she paid attention to anyone else. One night at the theater, when she made friendly remarks to Gregory Orlov, he got up and stormed out of the imperial box. Catherine cautioned him to moderate his attitude toward this former lover:

In April, Potemkin moved into the apartment immediately beneath the private apartment of the empress; their rooms were now connected by the private, green-carpeted spiral staircase. Because they kept different hours—Catherine normally rose to begin work at six and retired at night by ten; Potemkin often talked and played cards until dawn and rose at noon—they did not regularly sleep together in the same bed. Instead, at night one climbed, or the other descended, the spiral staircase in order to spend time together.

When they became lovers, Catherine was forty-four, ten years older than Potemkin. She was inclining toward plumpness, but her mental acuity and vitality remained exceptional. And Potemkin could see that his passion for this woman was powerfully reciprocated, which only added to her attractiveness. He might have settled into the luxurious life of an imperial favorite and collected the rewards that came with that position. But Potemkin had no interest in simply becoming the purveyor of private pleasures to the empress. He wanted a life of action and responsibility, and he meant to achieve it with the support of the woman who personified Russia.

Catherine was eager to accept him on this basis. She thought him the handsomest man she had ever met; she scarcely noticed the damaged eye. At thirty-four, he had gained weight and his body was no longer slim. Biting his nails had become an obsession. None of this mattered. To Grimm, she wrote: “
I have parted from a certain excellent but very boring citizen [Vasilchikov] who was immediately replaced—I do not myself quite know how—by one of the greatest, most bizarre, and most entertaining eccentrics of the iron age.”

From the beginning there were quarrels. Hardly a day passed without a scene, and almost always it was Potemkin who began the quarrel and Catherine who took the first step toward reconciliation. He questioned the permanence of her feeling for him and worried her and himself with questions and reproaches. Because most of his letters and notes are lost, there is only a slender record of what he wrote to her, but her
letters to him give an idea of what he had said to her. In any case, she had to soothe and flatter him like a spoiled child:

Not only jealousy, but also Potemkin’s sensitivity to the possible impermanence of his new position provided a subject for argument. He refused to be treated as merely the empress’s favorite. There is a letter from him, annotated in the margins by Catherine and returned to him, which exhibits one of their arguments and its reconciliation:

Thus began the period in Catherine’s life when she had a lover and partner who gave her almost everything she wanted. Their intimacy permitted Potemkin to walk into her bedroom in the morning with only a dressing gown over his naked body, although the room was crowded with visitors and court officials. He scarcely noticed because his thoughts were on the fascinating conversation interrupted a few hours before when Catherine, declaring that she must have some sleep, had left his apartment below and returned to her room.

Because they worked in different parts of the palace during the day, they wrote notes to each other; continuations of their conversations. These were protestations of love mingled with affairs of state, court gossip, reproachful chiding, and discussions of mutual health. Catherine’s names for him were “My golden pheasant,” “Dearest Pigeon,” “Kitten,” “Little dog,” “Papa,” “Twin Soul,” “Little parrot,” “Grisha,” and “Grishenka.” Also: “Cossack,” “Muscovite,” “Lion in the Jungle,” “Tiger,” “Giaour (Infidel),” “My good sir,” “Prince,” “Your Excellency,” “Your Serene Highness,” “General,” and “My sweet beauty to whom no king can compare.” Potemkin’s forms of address to her were more formal, emphasizing the difference in station:
“Matushka,”
“Madame,” or “Your Gracious Imperial Majesty.” Catherine worried because he carried her little notes in his pocket and often pulled them out to reread. She feared that one would drop out and be picked up by the wrong person.