Secret Lives of the Tsars (17 page)

“Darling,” she wrote, “what comical stories you told me yesterday! I can’t stop laughing when I think of them.… We spend four hours together without a shadow of boredom, and it is always with reluctance that I leave you. My dearest pigeon, I love you very much. You are handsome, intelligent, amusing.”

An overwhelming passion consumed Catherine as she reveled in Potemkin’s rough, dominating sexuality. And the avalanche of love notes with which she inundated him gave free expression to it. A few choice excerpts:

—“There is not a cell in my whole body that does not yearn for you, oh infidel!”

—“I thank you for yesterday’s feast. My little Grisha fed me and quenched my thirst, but not with wine.”

—“My head is like that of a cat in heat.”

—“I will be a ‘woman of fire’ for you, as you often say. But I shall try to hide my flames.”

There were times when Catherine seemed to marvel at the intensity of her own feelings. “Oh, Monsieur Potemkin!” she wrote. “What a confounded miracle you have wrought to have so deranged a head that heretofore in the world passed for one of the best in Europe!… What shame! What a sin! Catherine the Second a prey to this mad passion! ‘You will disgust him with your folly,’ I tell myself.”

As the empress made abundantly evident in her feverish expressions, sex with Potemkin was spectacular. But there was far more to her “golden cock” than just a hulking body to keep her company at night. This was a man whom Catherine the Great considered to be her equal—an utterly dynamic character with the same energy, vision, and zeal for living that she possessed, yet with a bundle of contradictions tossed in to make him all the more alluring.

“He is the most extraordinary man I have ever met,” reported the Prince de Ligne. “He gives the appearance of laziness and yet works incessantly … always reclining on his couch yet never sleeping, day or night, because his devotion to the sovereign he adores keeps him constantly active.… Melancholy in his pleasures, unhappy by virtue of being happy, blasé about everything, quickly wearied of anything, morose, inconstant, a profound philosopher, an able minister, a sublime politician and a child of ten … prodigiously wealthy without having a sou; discoursing on theology to his generals and on war to his archbishops; never reading, but probing those to whom he speaks … wanting everything like a child, capable of dispensing with everything like a great man.… What then is his magic? Genius, and then genius, and then more genius!”

In recognition of her partner’s manifold gifts, the empress granted him unlimited powers in addition to the vast riches her other lovers enjoyed. Potemkin became in essence her co-sovereign, and together the pair spent endless hours planning Russia’s further greatness through the subjugation and incorporation of new territories. In all likelihood, he also became her secret husband, as much evidence suggests. Certainly Catherine’s letters and notes to Potemkin seem to confirm such a status. She often referred to him as “my beloved
spouse,” or “my dearest husband,” and to herself as “wife.” There was one piece of correspondence in which she wrote, “What is the good of believing your morbid imagination rather than the facts, all of which confirm the words of your wife?… Have I not been, for two years, bound to you by the most sacred ties?…I remain your faithful spouse who loves you with an eternal love.”
*
1

Although Catherine’s political partnership with Potemkin would endure until his death in 1791, the intimate side of their relationship was doomed from the beginning. Jealousy was the source of the problem; Potemkin was consumed by it. When he first arrived at court and found Vasilchikov still installed as the favorite, he retreated in a huff to a monastery and only reluctantly emerged after the empress’s repeated assurances that he was the only one she wanted. Even then, Potemkin remained obsessed with his predecessor and his own place in Catherine’s heart. “You have not the least reason to be afraid,” she wrote soothingly. “I burned my fingers badly with that imbecile Vasilchikov.… You can read in my soul and in my heart.… My love for you is boundless.”

But it was not only Vasilchikov who provoked such monumental insecurity in Potemkin. It was every man with whom Catherine had ever slept—a legion of lovers he believed to number fifteen. As a sop to his sensitivities, the empress went so far as to write what she called “A Sincere Confession,” in which she detailed the circumstances of the
four
affairs she
had actually conducted prior to Potemkin’s entry into her life. It was a stunning act of humility and devotion—one that few other absolute monarchs would ever deign to provide a subject—yet it wasn’t enough.

Potemkin was tortured not only by the previous men in Catherine’s life, but by irrational fears of his own status with her. Was he really her enduring partner, or would he be replaced on a whim? The doubts that gnawed at him often made him moody and quarrelsome, which exasperated the empress. Thus, between passionate lovemaking and the pursuit of statecraft, there were furious fights that erupted almost daily—started by Potemkin and usually smoothed over by Catherine:

—“If your stupid ill humor has left you, kindly let me know.… You are a wicked Tatar!”

—“Truly, it is time for us to live in perfect harmony. Do not torment me by mistreating me. Then you will not see my coldness.”

—“My little soul, I have a piece of string to one end of which I have attached a stone and, to the other end, all our quarrels, and I have thrown the whole thing into a bottomless pit.… Good day, my beloved! Good day, without quarrels, without discussions, without disputes.”

“There is no reason to be unhappy,” the empress wrote in one of her many conciliatory notes. “But no, it’s time to stop giving you assurances. You must be most, most, most certain by now that I love you.… I want you to love me. I want to appear desirable to you.… If you want, I shall paraphrase this page for you in three words and cross out all the rest. Here it is: I love you.”

Each passing storm was followed by a brief interlude of serenity before the next roared in, beginning anew the endless cycle of recriminations, doubts, and sulking, followed by the empress’s perpetual efforts to placate her tempestuous lover. After two and a half years of such upheaval, the relationship was becoming strained beyond endurance. “Your foolish acts remain the same,” Catherine wrote; “at the very moment when I feel safest a mountain drops on me.… To a madcap like you … tranquility is an unbearable state of mind
*
2
.… The gratitude I owe you has not vanished and I suppose there has never been a time when you haven’t received signs of this. But now you take away all my force by tormenting me with new fabrications.… Please tell me whether I should be grateful to you for that. Until now I always thought that good health and restful days were esteemed for something in this world, but I would like to know how this is possible with you.”

The volcanic intensity of Catherine and Potemkin’s passion quickly exhausted itself, and by 1776 they were no longer lovers. Nevertheless, they remained devoted partners (or perhaps spouses), ruling Russia together in restored harmony. And Potemkin still managed to maintain some kind of sexual authority over the aging empress by essentially pimping his replacements in her bed. Deftly separating her regal self from her vigorous love life, Catherine happily flitted from one virile youngster to the next—each of whom paid Potemkin a
handsome fee for the privilege of sleeping with her, and, of course, reaping the enormous bounty that came with such services.

Each in the succession of well-formed favorites was similar: young, handsome, rapturously extolled by the empress, and then, after a year or two of passion (in the case of most of them), sent away. Potemkin made certain of that. “Of course he did not for a moment contemplate resuming his place in Catherine’s bed,” wrote Troyat, “but he would not allow an intruder to claim her attention for longer than the duration of a caprice.”

According to irresistible legend, after procurement by Potemkin, candidates for Catherine’s bed were thoroughly vetted—first by her doctor, to ensure they were free of sexually transmitted disease, then by the empress’s confidante, Countess Bruce, who reportedly took them on an intimate test drive of sorts, just to make sure their performance would measure up to some rather exacting standards.
*
3

And so the servicemen came and went for two decades, each adored by the aging but still lustful empress until they were replaced. When her friend Voltaire gently chided Catherine for her inconstancy in love, she responded that she was, on the contrary, “absolutely faithful.”

“To whom?” she continued. “To beauty, of course. Beauty alone attracts me!”
^*4

The first of the post-Potemkin bedmates was a young Ukrainian by the name of Peter Zavadovsky, who, though relished by the empress, could never quite escape the shadow of the giant who had recommended him and still remained at his mistress’s side. As Zavadovsky noted with a mixture of admiration and frustration, “In all the centuries rarely had God produced a person so universal as that which is Prince Potemkin: he is everywhere and everything.” After about a year—just as the American colonies were declaring their independence from Britain—Catherine asserted hers in 1776. Zavadovsky was sent away, but not without ample reward for his services.

“He has received from Her Majesty fifty thousand rubles, a pension of five thousand, and four thousand peasants in the Ukraine, where they are worth a great deal,” the Chevalier de Corberon, the new French chargé d’affaires, reported to his brother. “You must agree, my friend, that it’s not a bad line of work to be in here.”
*
5

No sooner was Zavadovsky out the door than he was replaced by Simon Zorich, known among the court ladies as “the Adonis.” The Chevalier de Corberon duly reported the latest development: “[Potemkin], who is in higher favor than ever, and who now plays the same role that the Pompadour did with Louis XV toward the end of her life,
^*6
has presented
to [the empress] one Zorich, a major in the Hussars, who has been made lieutenant colonel and inspector of all the light troops. This new favorite has dined with her. They say that he received 1,800 peasants for his trial effort! After dinner, Potemkin drank to the Empress’s health and knelt before her.”

Like his predecessor, Zorich resented the looming presence of his procurer. Unlike Zavadovsky, however, the brash young lover—as his position began to inevitably totter—actually dared to challenge Potemkin’s supremacy. “Zoritz [
sic
] is prepared for his dismission [
sic
],” reported the new British ambassador, James Howard Harris, “but I am told he is resolved to call his successor to an account. ‘Of course I know that I’m going to be sacked, but by God I’ll cut off the ears of the man who takes my place,’ were his words, in talking the other day on the subject.”

The fading favorite made a violent scene, but his insignificance was such that Potemkin contemptuously dismissed his invitation to a duel. Soon enough, Catherine dismissed Zorich as well—her lavish parting gifts no doubt assuaging his impotent fury. “Last night I was in love with him,” the empress wrote candidly; “today I cannot stand him anymore.”

Catherine was a forty-nine-year-old grandmother when, in 1778, she was presented with her next paramour, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, who was half her age. The Chevalier de Corberon wrote of the empress’s latest love, “He was the model of conceit, but conceit of the pettiest kind, the sort that would not be tolerated even in Paris.” He was pretty, though, and really that’s all Catherine cared about. When her friend Grimm teased her about being “infatuated” with Rimsky-Korsakov, the empress responded, “Infatuated, infatuated! Are you aware that that term is entirely inappropriate when one is speaking of Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, who defies the
skill of painters and is the despair of sculptors? It is admiration, Monsieur, enthusiasm, that the masterpieces of nature inspire in us.”

Catherine’s enthusiasm for this particular work of art was diminished somewhat when she found him in bed with her lady-in-waiting, Countess Bruce. Thus, if there was any truth at all to the countess serving as the empress’s “tester,” she obviously liked this applicant so much that she went back for a more thorough examination. Both were dismissed as a result. Replacing the countess was Anna Protasova (“
l’Eprouveuse
” in Byron’s
Don Juan
);
*
7
the new lover was Alexander Lanskoy.

Though Catherine the Great was old enough to be the mother of any one of her later lovers, she had genuine maternal feelings for the unassuming Lanskoy, whose virtues were praised even by those hostile to the empress. “He is a model of kindness, humanity, civility, modesty and beauty,” wrote Charles Masson. “A lover of the arts and a friend to talent, he is humane, benevolent.” And Lanskoy seemed to reciprocate Catherine’s lavish attentions, which, in his case, extended beyond the bedroom. “Relations could not be more trusting between a mother and son,” the empress’s private secretary noted.

It was touching (albeit a tad creepy) how Catherine, whose own son Paul was such a disappointment (see following
chapter
), sought to groom this eager young man, this surrogate, for something greater—perhaps as a new Potemkin. They read and studied together, enjoyed the arts, and simply enjoyed each other’s company. With his good humor, the empress
wrote, Lanskoy made Tsarskoe Selo (the Tsar’s Village) “into the most charming and pleasant of places where the days passed so quickly one did not know what had become of them.”

After four years, “cheerful, honest, gentle” Lanskoy’s tenure had already outlasted all previous lovers except Orlov. And there appeared to be no end to it. “I hope that he’ll become the support of my old age,” Catherine shared in a letter to Grimm. Ten days later, however, the young man fell ill, probably of diphtheria, and on June 25, 1784, he died.