Potemkin had not paid them yet. Dr Debraw, gardener Roebuck and butler- factotum Benson were now in open rebellion. Many of the British clearly enjoyed a traditional expatriate life of abandoned debauchery. Soon they began to perish prolifically, a misfortune that Samuel said had more to do with their intemperate lifestyle than with the unwholesome climate. Debraw had just been made physician-general to the army when he died, possibly a mercy for the Russian soldiers. The rest either expired or were dispersed.71
'We have been in hourly expectation of the Prince on his way to his Governments for a considerable time ...', wrote Jeremy Bentham, but, as so often, the Prince was always delayed.72 A few days later, Potemkin's niece- mistress Countess Skavronskaya stopped at Krichev on her way to Petersburg from Naples and told them that 'the Prince of Princes had given up his intentions of coming'.73 Some biographers have claimed that Potemkin and Jeremy Bentham had long philosophical discussions,74 but there is no account of such a meeting. If they had met, it is hard to believe that Jeremy would not have written about it.[54]
Finally, after more than a year in Potemkin's world, Jeremy Bentham departed through Poland, staying in lots of 'Jew inns'. Dirty houses and filthy animals had their consolations: gorgeous Jewesses. Here's a typical entry: 'Pretty Jewess, hogs in the stable ... fowls free in the house.'75 The philosopher even managed a singular compliment for a travelling Englishman of his century: one household of Jewesses were so magnificent that 'the whole family, fine flesh and blood, [were] not inferior to English' (author's italics).
The estate flourished: in Krichev, Potemkin had taken advice from his Swiss medical adviser Dr Behr on reducing mortality, possibly by inoculation. The male serf population had risen from 14,000 to 21,000 in just a few years.76 Its estate and financial accounts show its importance to the Kherson fleet, while Bentham's unpublished letters in Potemkin's archives reveal how the Black Sea cities used Krichev as their supply yard. In the two years and eight months up to August 1785, Bentham's enterprise sent Kherson rigging, sailcloth and riverboats worth 120,000 roubles and cable and canvas worth 90,000 roubles. In 1786, Bentham delivered 11,000 roubles's worth of baidaks. When Samuel had moved on, its canvas production trebled, its ships' tackle doubled. Many of the factories were highly profitable by 1786: the brandy distillery made 25,000 roubles per annum; the 172 looms made another 25,000 roubles; and the ropewalk produced 1,000 poods or sixteen tons a week, creating maybe 12,000 roubles.77 However, profit and loss accounts meant little to Potemkin: his sole criterion was what brought glory and power to the Empire - which meant his army, navy and cities. By this criterion, this imperial arsenal and factory was an outstanding success.
Suddenly, in 1787, the Prince sold the entire complex, for 900,000 roubles, in order to purchase even bigger estates in Poland. He had received the estate for nothing and, though he had invested a lot, it is unlikely that hiring English artisans cost anything close to that. As always with the Machiavellian Prince, there were grand political reasons for the sudden sale of what he had built up so carefully. He moved some of the factories to his estates in Kremenchuk, leaving others to continue under new management. When the estate was sold, Krichev's Jews tried to raise a purse to buy the estate themselves 'to enable Sam[uel Bentham] to buy up this town'. But nothing came of it.
This was the end of the Krichev adventure for Jeremy Bentham and his British recruits. But it was far from the end for Potemkin's two favourite Englishmen - Samuel Bentham and William Gould. Both were to play large roles in his future. The Prince had so far used Sam Bentham as a Siberian mining consultant, factory-manager, shipbuilder, colonel of Musketeers, agronomist and inventor. Now he was to bring his barges up the river on a special mission and then become a quartermaster, artillery expert, fighting naval officer, Siberian instructor and Chinese-Alaskan trader, in that order.
Gould, his team constantly increasing with more experts from England, became an indispensable part of the Prince's entourage - the harbinger of Potemkin himself, arriving with tools, workmen and trees, a few weeks before the great man himself. In the coming war, none of Potemkin's peripatetic headquarters was complete without a Gould garden. But his masterpiece was to be the Winter Garden at the Taurida Palace.
Serenissimus occasionally neglected his British guests because of the necessity of his juggling Petersburg politics with southern enterprise. At the very beginning of Samuel Bentham's adventure, when he was travelling with Potemkin on the way back from the Crimea, Potemkin promised to accompany him to Krichev to decide what to do there. They stopped in Kremenchuk, where news reached Potemkin from Petersburg that changed everything.
Without a word of goodbye, the Prince left Kremenchuk with the 'utmost expedition', taking just one servant with him.78 Only one person in the world could make Potemkin drop everything like that.
THE WHITE NEGRO
Besides the Empress sometimes liked a boy And had just buried the fair faced Lanskoi
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto IX: 47
On 25 June 1784, Lieutenant-General Alexander Lanskoy, Catherine's twenty-six-year-old favourite, died at Tsarskoe Selo with the Empress beside him. His illness was sudden: he had come down with a sore throat less than a week earlier. Lanskoy seemed to know he was going to die - though Catherine tried to dissuade him - and he did so with the quiet dignity he had brought to his awkward position.1 Yet the most malicious rumours were soon abroad about his demise: he had died 'in place' with Catherine, he had ruined his fragile health by taking dangerous aphrodisiacs to satisfy his nymphomaniacal old mistress. As he died, it was claimed he 'quite literally burst - his belly burst'. Soon after death, 'his legs dropped off. The stench was also insufferable. Those who gave him his coffin ... died.' These were rumours of poisoning: had Potemkin, already blamed for bringing on Prince Orlov's madness by slow poison, killed another rival? Judging by Catherine's tragic account to Grimm and other witnesses, Lanskoy probably died of diphtheria. Thanks to the baking summer and the delay before Catherine could bear to bury him, the stench is only too believable. The innards of unburied corpses do tend to swell in the heat.2
The Empress collapsed in a paroxysm of overpowering grief. Her courtiers had never seen her in such a state. The imperial body-physician Rogerson and minister Bezborodko, gambling and drinking partners, consulted, no doubt in the quick whispers that must have been the background music of Court crises. Rogerson let loose his often fatal laxatives and bleeding, but both men sensed an emotional prescription would heal her better.[55] The Empress naturally thought of her 'husband', her 'dearest friend'. In her desperate unhappiness, she kept asking touchingly if Potemkin had been told. Rogerson informed Bezborodko that it was 'most necessary' to try to calm the Empress's sorrow and anxiety: 'And we know there is just one way to achieve this - the soonest arrival of His Highness.' As soon as Lanskoy was dead, Bezborodko despatched the Court's fastest courier southwards. Catherine inquired like a child if the Prince could be expected soon. Yes, they surely replied, the Prince is on his way.3
The courier found Serenissimus, accompanied by Samuel Bentham, at Kremenchuk in the midst of arranging the foundation of Sebastopol and the management of Krichev. The Prince left immediately. Two indivisible sentiments, as always, dominated his actions: his beloved friend needed him and his power depended on it. Potemkin prided himself on being the swiftest traveller across Russia. If the couriers usually took ten days, Potemkin made it back in seven. On 10 July, he arrived at Tsarskoe Selo.