The festivities were to last two weeks: Potemkin had planned a rollicking and bucolic fairground on the Khodynskoe fields, where he had erected two pavilions to symbolize 'The Black Sea with all our conquests'. He created an imperial theme park with roads representing the Don and Dnieper, theatres and dining-rooms named after Black Sea ports, Turkish minarets, Gothic arches, Classical columns. Catherine enthusiastically praised Potemkin's first chance to display his unrivalled imagination as an impresario of political show business. Long lines of carriages were driven by coachmen 'dressed as Turks, Albanians, Serbs, Circassians, Hussars and "genuine Negro servants" in crimson turbans'. Catherine wheels exploded into light and as many as 60,000 people drank wines from fountains and feasted on roast oxen.40
On 12 July, the celebrations were delayed when Catherine fell ill. There is a legend that this was to disguise the birth of a child by Potemkin. She was a past mistress at concealing embarrassing pregnancies in the folds of clothes already designed for her plumpness. The cabinets of Europe were certainly gossiping that she was pregnant. 'Madame Potemkin is a good 45 years old - a fine age for having children,' Louis XVI had earlier joked to Vergennes.41 The child was said to have been Elisaveta Grigorevna Temkina, who was brought up in the Samoilov household, so she had some connection to the family. Illegitimate children in Russia traditionally adopted their father's name without the first syllable; thus Ivan Betskoi was the bastard of Prince Ivan Trubetskoi, Rontsov the son of Roman Vorontsov.
However, this story is unlikely. Potemkin was very family-minded and made a fuss of all his relations, yet there is no record of him paying any attention to Temkina. Catherine also would have cherished her. But there was a separate ancient Temkin family that had nothing to do with the Potemkins. Furthermore, in that time, it was not regarded as reprehensible to have a 'fille naturelle' or 'pupille'. Bobrinsky, Catherine's son with Prince Orlov, was not hidden, and Betskoi enjoyed a successful public career. If she was Potemkin's daughter by a low-born mistress, there was even less reason to conceal her. Temkina remains an enigma - but not one necessarily connected to Catherine and Potemkin.42 In Moscow, meanwhile, the Empress was confined to her apartments in the Prechistensky Palace for a week and then recovered. The festivities continued.
In Moscow, Count Potemkin was approached by the British with a strange request. In 1775, Britain's American colonies had rebelled against London. This was to distract the Western world from Russian affairs for eight years, a window of opportunity which Potemkin was to use well. France and its Bourbon ally, Spain, at once saw the possibility of avenging British victory in the Seven Years War twelve years earlier. London had turned down Panin's suggestion of an Anglo-Russian alliance because Britain refused to undertake the defence of Russia against the Ottoman Empire. But now George III and his Secretary of State for the North, the Earl of Suffolk, were suddenly faced with the American Revolution. Since Britain had the best fleet in the world but a negligible army, it traditionally hired mercenaries. In this case, it decided to procure Russian troops.
By 1 September 1775, Suffolk was complaining that 'the increasing frenzy of His Majesty's unhappy and deluded people on the other side of the Atlantic' meant that Russian assistance was needed immediately. Specifically, Britain wanted '20,000 disciplined infantry completely equipped and ready to embark as soon as the Baltic navigation opens in the spring'. When Panin showed no interest, Gunning approached Potemkin, who was intrigued. Ultimately Catherine refused, writing George III a polite letter and wishing him luck.43
Poor Gunning had to write home a few weeks later: 'I can scarcely entertain any hopes at present... could not His Majesty make use of Hanoverians?'44 Finally, the desperate British hired the army of that mercenary state of Hesse. The Americans with their united ideals and irregular tactics defeated the rigidly drilled, demoralized British, but one wonders if the hardy, brutal and homogeneous Russians, backed by Cossacks, could have beaten them. The tantalizing possibilities of this stretch out all the way to the Cold War and beyond.
Catherine and Potemkin's relationship was so all-consuming that it was beginning to burn them both. 'We would be happier', said Catherine, 'if we loved each other less.'45 The sexual cauldron of the first eighteen months could not be sustained, but there was evidence too that the tensions of his role as official favourite were taking a toll on their affair. The teacher- pupil relationship that Catherine so enjoyed was becoming irksome if not intolerable to a man as masterful, confident and able as Potemkin. Even the marriage could not change the realities of court politics and his complete dependence on her whim. Yet she loved his wildness - the very thing that made him want to escape. Was he withdrawing from her or did he just need space to breathe?
She tried desperately to restore their happiness. 'It's time to live in harmony. Don't torment me,' she wrote. When he was outraged at his subordinate position, the Empress promised: 'I will never order you to do anything, you fool, because I don't deserve such coldness ... I swore to give only caress for caress. I want cuddles and loving cuddles, the best sort. Stupid coldness and stupid spleen will only produce anger and vexation in return. It's difficult for you to say "my dear" or "my honey". Is it possible that your heart is silent? My heart does not keep silent.'46 Catherine was cut to the quick by his increasing harshness: was her consort falling out of love with her?
She did all she could to please him: during autumn 1775, when she was about to embark on a trip out of Moscow, reported Gunning, 'it had been forgotten that the succeeding Wednesday was Count Potemkin's nameday, the recollection of which determined her to postpone her intended excursion... to admit of the Count's receiving the compliments of the nobility'. Gunning added that the Empress had also given him a present of 100,000 roubles - and appointed a Greek archbishop for Potemkin's southern provinces on his recommendation. This was Potemkin at his most demanding: typical of him to change an empress's timetable, receive a prince's ransom of a present - and not forget to achieve a political appointment.47
Sometimes, Catherine complained that he humiliated her in front of the Court: 'My dear Lord, Grigory Alexandrovich, I wish Your Excellency happiness. This evening, you had better lose at cards because you absolutely forgot me and left me alone as if I was a gatepost.' But Potemkin knew how to play her, replying with a line of Arabesque symbols - possibly a sexual code in their secret language, adding: 'That's the answer .. .'.4® But what was the answer? How could she keep her consort and yet make him happy?