When the Prince was in love, he would do anything for his mistress. In March and April 1790, he even ordered Faleev to rename two of his ships after Praskovia.29 'The jewels, diamonds and all the treasures of the four parts of the world were used to decorate her charms.' When she wanted jewels, 434 the apogee
Colonel Bauer galloped off to Paris; when she talked about perfumes, Major Lamsdorf headed for Florence and returned with two fragrant carriages of it.3°
Here is his Parisian shopping-list for one of those legendary missions, probably for Praskovia and other 'sultanas', in July 1790, second year of the French Revolution. The courier was Lamsdorf. When he arrived in Paris, the Russian envoy Baron Simolin was expected to drop everything. 'I have not ceased to occupy myself with him in the execution of the commissions Your Highness has wished to be discharged in Paris and to assist him with my advice and that of a lady of my acquaintance.' It sounds as if Simolin recruited his mistress to make sure he was buying the right stockings. Indeed, 'we have taken care to execute all things in the latest fashion'. Without the lady and Lamsdorf, Simolin admitted he could not have bought the following:
- fashion pieces [ballgowns] made by Mademoiselles Gosfit, Madame de Modes
14,333 livres
- fashion pieces [ballgowns] made by Henry Desreyeux 9,488 livres
- a piece of muslin from the Indies, embroidery from India in silk and silver (Henry
Desreyeux) 2400 livres
[fashion from] Madame Plumesfeur
724 lives - seller of Rubies 1224 livres - madame the florist 826 livres -couturier for 4 corsets 255 livres
-shoemakers for 72 pairs of shoes [ball slippers] 446 livres
-embroiderer for 12 pairs of shoes [ball slippers] 288 livres -a pair of ear muffs 132 livres
the stocking maker for 6 dozen pairs
648 livres -rubies 248 livres - madame the gauze seller 858 livres - the wrapping-up man Bocqueux 1200 livres.31
One suspects that not all of these were for the Prince himself. As soon as all the craftsmen and seamstresses had finished their work, Lamsdorf galloped them back to Jassy. These frivolous missions were also usefuclass="underline" the couriers who brought delicacies and ballgowns from Paris bore Potemkin's vast correspondence - twenty to thirty letters a day - and collected intelligence and replies; for example, Stackelberg in Warsaw reported that Potemkin's fastest courier had delivered an urgent despatch on his way to the West.32 This was a diplomatic, espionage, ballgown and catering service, all in one.
Serenissimus was certainly extravagant. That trip cost 44,000 livres for fourteen items, approximately £2,000, at a time when an English gentleman could live comfortably on £300 a year. It was more than the annual salary of a Russian field-marshal (7,000 roubles).33 These missions were quite frequent. Potemkin even sent Grimm regular shopping-lists of female clothing, maps or musical instruments which Catherine's philosophe dutifully provided.34 However, Potemkin's notorious inefficiency in paying debts drove Simolin to distraction. On 25 December 1788, he was even forced to appeal to Bezborodko for help in getting the Prince to pay for an earlier expedition that had cost another 32,000 livres.35
Potemkin's lifestyle had been royal if not imperial since 1774, and he possessed 'a fortune greater than certain kings'.36 It is impossible to work out the exact sums: even on his death, his estate was unquantifiable. The Prince was 'prodigiously rich and not worth a farthing', wrote Ligne, 'preferring prodigality and giving, to regularity in paying'.37 This was almost literally true, because he was essentially a member of the imperial household - so that, the Treasury was his private bank. 'It is true Potemkin had immediate access to the State Treasury,' claimed Masson, 'but he also spent a great deal for the State and showed himself as much a Grand Prince of Russia as a favourite of Catherine.'38 Pushkin later recorded the story that, when a Treasury clerk queried Potemkin's latest request for money, he sent back a note that read: 'Pay up or fuck off!' It was said that Catherine ordered the Treasury to regard his requests like her own, but this was not quite so.39
There is no record of Catherine ever turning down any of Potemkin's requests for money, but he still had to apply for the money, even though he knew it would be granted. During the building of his towns and fleets and during the war, massive amounts of money poured through his hands, but the image of his wanton waste of public funds is not borne out by the archives, which show how the money was assigned by Catherine, via Procurator- General Viazemsky, and then distributed by Potemkin, via his offices and officials like Faleev, Zeitlin or Popov, down to the actual regiments and fleets. Much of it never actually reached the Prince himself - though he was too grand to concern himself with smaller sums and Viazemsky complained to the Empress that he had neglected to account for all of it. This touches on the question of his financial probity. In his case, it was a meaningless concept:
Serenissimus used his own money for the state and the Treasury for his personal uses and saw little difference between the two.40
The Prince was hungry for money and he loved spending it - but it did not interest him for its own sake. He had to spend a fortune to maintain himself in the style of imperial consort when even senior courtiers strained themselves to keep up appearances. Furthermore, the delays in payments by the Treasury meant that, in order to push through his projects and raise his armies, he had to spend his own money. His avidity for riches was part of his insurance policy against the accession of Paul, one reason he invested in Polish land.
Once he was showing some officers round one of his palaces when they came upon a gold bath. The officers raved about it so much that Potemkin shouted: 'If you can shit enough to fill it up, you can keep it.' When a flatterer marvelled at the resplendence of some ball he gave, the Prince snapped: 'What, sir, do you presume to know the depth of my purse?' Potemkin himself never had any idea of its depth. He just knew there was almost no bottom: his fortune was variously estimated at nine, sixteen, forty and fifty million roubles. But given that during war and peace the whole military and southern development budgets of the Empire passed through his Chancellery, these figures are irrelevant and his debts enormous.41
Potemkin borrowed prodigiously and he tormented his Scottish banker, Richard Sutherland, who became rich on Potemkin's business and eventually rose to be Catherine's Court banker and a baron.[99] Bankers and merchants circled Potemkin like vultures, competing to offer goods and loans.42 Sutherland worked hardest, and suffered most, to win Potemkin's business. On 13 September 1783, he begged Potemkin 'humbly to condescend to give orders to make payment to me of the rising claims which I have the honour to send him coming to 167,029 roubles and sixty kopecks', mostly spent on state business, settling immigrants. The anguished banker tried to explain, 'again I take the liberty of representing to Your Highness that my credit depends, and depends a lot, on the return of this money'.43 Sutherland was evidently desperate, because he owed other bankers in Warsaw and beyond, and it often seems as if Potemkin was about to set off a chain-reaction banking crash across Europe - but it is worth noting that most of this money was not spent on baubles. Sutherland was the means by which Potemkin financed the settlement of immigrants, the procurement of timber and the building of his towns, the best example of how his personal and imperial spending were entangled.