Princess Dashkova, revelling in her resurgent favour, claimed in her
Memoirs that Potemkin sent round his nephew Samoilov at the 'lover's hour' after dinner, 'to inquire whether Prince Dashkov was at home'. He was not. So Samoilov left a message that Potemkin wished to see him at his house as soon as possible. The Princess, writing years later, claimed that Potemkin was offering her son the disgusting post of favourite, which she denounced to Samoilov thus: 'While I love the Empress and dare not oppose her will, I have too much self-respect ... to take part in any affair of such a nature.' If her son did become favourite, she added, the only use she would make of her influence would be to ask for a passport to go abroad.
This dubious anecdote has spawned the myth that Potemkin sent youths over to Catherine at the 'lover's hour'. Since Dashkov was Potemkin's adjutant, there was nothing sordid in such a summons. It is far more likely that Potemkin was teasing the Princess. No doubt her answer was immediately repeated in his 'Dashkova-voice' to Catherine.18
Serenissimus held a masquerade at his Anichkov Palace - he never lived in this colossal residence,[56] on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and the Fontanka, but he kept his library there and used it for entertaining. He ordered his architect Starov to construct a third floor and alter the facade to add more of his beloved Doric columns. When Potemkin was low on funds, he repaid his debts to his merchant friend Nikita Shemiakin with the Anichkov. But Catherine repurchased it for him. This trading of palaces for debts happened periodically and the Empress always obliged.19
Two thousand people arrived all evening in costumes and dominoes. He arranged the orchestra, in the Anichkov's huge oval gallery, around a richly decorated pyramid. Over 100 musicians, conducted by Rosetti, played horns and accompanied a choir. The star of the orchestra was a 'silk-clad blackamoor playing a kettle drum' atop the pyramid. A curtain divided the room. Couples danced the quadrille: the courtiers watched Prince Dashkov partner a teenage girl named Princess Ekaterina Bariatinskaya, an outstanding beauty, who was coming out for the first time. She was to be one of Potemkin's last mistresses.
When the Empress arrived with Grand Duke Paul, everyone watched to see if any of the three young men would be favoured. Lev Engelhardt, who kept a graphic account of the evening, noticed Yermolov. Potemkin had ordered his staff to wear light cavalry uniforms, but Yermolov was dressed as a Dragoon, flouting the Prince's command. Engelhardt rushed to warn him to go home and change. 'Don't worry,' replied Yermolov confidently. 'But thanks all the same.' This daring arrogance puzzled Engelhardt.
Princess Dashkova buttonholed Potemkin: together they admired the athletic figure of her son, but then she pushed her luck either by presuming her son had been selected or by asking the Prince to propose another of her family. Potemkin turned to her sarcastically in front of everybody. There is no vacancy, he said. The post has just been filled by Lieutenant Yermolov. Who, stammered the humiliated Princess, who?
Potemkin abandoned her, took Yermolov by the hand and walked off into the crowd with him 'as if he was some high nobleman'. The Prince led Yermolov up to the table where the Empress was playing whist and deposited him, as it were, just four steps behind her chair, ahead of the senior courtiers. At that moment, everyone, even Dashkova, realized the Empress had taken a new favourite. The curtain was drawn to reveal the resplendently set table. Empress, Grand Duke and the courtiers sat at a special round table while forty others were laid out for the rest. The ball went on until three.20
The next morning, eleven months after the death of the much mourned Lanskoy, Yermolov moved into his old apartment in the Winter Palace and was nominated adjutant-general to the Empress. He was thirty-one years old, tall, blond, with almond-shaped eyes and a flat nose - Potemkin nicknamed him the 'white negro'. He was neither as decent nor as pretty as Lanskoy, nor as clever as Zavadovsky: 'he's a good boy', noted Cobenzl, 'but quite limited'. Soon promoted to major-general and decorated with the Order of the White Eagle, Yermolov was the nephew of one of Potemkin's friends, Levashov, but equally friendly with Bezborodko. Probably Potemkin was relieved that Catherine had found someone acceptable after that mournful year. Though the simpler historians have repeated Potemkin's jealousy of each favourite, shrewder observers like Cobenzl understood that he was pleased that Yermolov would prevent the Empress 'from falling into melancholy' and would stimulate her 'natural gaiety'.21
The ascension of Yermolov placed Potemkin at the height of his power. When the Prince was ill a few days later. Catherine 'went to see him, forced him to take medicine and took infinite care of his health'.22 But at last Potemkin's position was unchallenged. Court was harmonious. The Prince could return to running his provinces and armies because Catherine the woman was happily settled.
Catherine's Court had reached a height of extravagance and splendour in the mid-i78os: 'a great display of magnificence and state with the great taste and charm of the Court of France', wrote Comte de Damas. 'The splendour of the ceremonial was enhanced by Asiatic luxury.'23 Catherine and Potemkin both enjoyed holding masquerades, fetes and balls at vast expense: the Empress herself had a taste for transvestite balls. 'I've just had a pleasant idea,' she wrote, earlier in her reign, 'we must hold a ball in the Hermitage ... we must tell the ladies to come less dressed and without paniers and grande parure on their heads ... French comedians will make market stalls and they will sell on credit women's clothes to men and men's clothes to women .. Л24 This was perhaps because the plump Empress knew that she cut a fine figure in male attire.
If one was to meet the Empress of all the Russians at the Court ball during the 1780s, one might find her 'dressed in a purple tissue petticoat and long white tissue sleeves down the wrist and the body open ... of a very elegant dress', sitting 'in a large elbow chair covered with crimson velvet and richly ornamented', surrounded by standing courtiers. The sleeves, skirt and body of the dress were often of different colours. Catherine now always wore these long old Russian gowns with long sleeves. They concealed her corpulence, but they were also much more comfortable than corsets and paniers. Princess Dashkova and Countess Branicka copied her in this dress, but Baroness Dimsdale noted that the other ladies 'wore [it] very much in the French fashion' - though 'French gauzes and flowers were never', decreed Lady Craven, 'intended for Russian beauties'. There were card tables all round; everyone played whist while the Empress toured the room, graciously insisting that no one should stand - which of course they did.25
The Court moved between the Winter and Summer Palaces in St Petersburg during the winter. It followed the same weekly programme - the big gatherings in the Hermitage on Sundays with all the diplomats; Mondays, the ball at the Grand Duke's and so on. When Potemkin was in the capital, he usually spent his Thursday evenings wandering in and out of the Empress's Little Hermitage, where she continued to relax with her lover Yermolov and close friends like Naryshkin and Branicka. Conversation there was private. No servants eavesdropped. At dinner, the guests ordered their food by writing on little slates with a pencil, placing them in the midst of the special mechanical table and sending them down on a dumb waiter, whence came their meals a little later.26