Catherine
The couple developed their own way of communicating their feelings - his obscure and passionate, hers understanding and accommodating - the epistolary duet:
Potemkin
My precious soul You know that I am Absolutely yours And I have only you I will remain faithful To you until death And I need your Support
For this reason, and Because of my wish, Serving you and applying My abilities is most Pleasant to me.
I know
I know, I know It is true.
I don't doubt you.
I believe it.
That was proved long Ago.
Doing some- Thing for me
With gladness, but What?
You'll never regret It and you'll see Only benefits.
My soul is glad but unclear. Tell me more clearly.49
Potemkin was somehow withdrawing from her. It is said that he claimed to be ill to avoid her embraces. As he became restless, Catherine tired of his endless tempers. The towering, eye-flashing rages that are so attractive at the beginning of a love affair became irksome exhibitionism in the middle of a marriage. Potemkin's behaviour was impossible, but Catherine was partly to blame. She was slow to understand the constant tension of Potemkin's political and social position which was to break so many of her later lovers. Catherine- was just as emotionally greedy as he was. They were both human furnaces requiring an endless supply of fuel in the form of glory, extravagance and power on one hand, love, praise and attention on the other. It is these gargantuan appetites that made their relationship as painful as it was productive. Potemkin wanted to govern and build, but loving Catherine was a full-time job. It was a human impossibility for each of them to give each other enough of what they required. They were too similar to be together.
In May 1775, before the peace celebrations had started, Catherine did her Orthodox duty by leading a pilgrimage to the forbidding Troitsko-Sergeevna Monastery, an obligatory trip back into the Muscovite dark ages when women were kept in the seclusion of the terem and not on thrones. The visit brought out Potemkin's Slavic disgust for worldly success, his Orthodox yearnings and probably his discontent with his place. Succumbing to his coenobitic instincts and ignoring Catherine, he temporarily abandoned the Court and prayed in seclusion in a monk's cell.50
The rapidity of his mood changes must have been exhausting for both of them. Perhaps this was what she meant when she said that they loved each other too much to be happy: the relationship was so combustible that it was not settled enough to serve either of them well. They continued to love each other and work together throughout 1775, but the stress was rising. Catherine understood what was happening. She had found a partner in Potemkin - a rare diamond - but how was he to find a role? And how were they to satisfy their demanding natures and yet remain together? While they struggled, they looked around them.
The day before the peace celebrations, Count Potemkin received a sad note from his brother-in-law Vasily Engelhardt telling him of the death of his sister Elena Marfa. They had six daughters (the eldest was already married) and a son in the army. The five younger daughters were aged between twenty-one and eight. 'I ask you to take care of them and to take the place of Marfa Alexandrovna ...', Engelhardt wrote to Potemkin on 5 July. 'By your order, I'll send them to your mother.' There was no reason why their father could not bring them up in Smolensk, but Engelhardt, a man of the world, realized his daughters would benefit from life at Court. Potemkin summoned them to Moscow.
The Empress, like any dutiful wife, was meeting the Potemkin family. When her formidable mother-in-law, Daria Potemkina, who still lived in Moscow,[24] was presented, Catherine was at her thoughtful and sensitive best: 'I noticed your mother was most elegant but that she has no watch. Here is one which I ask you to give her.'51 When the nieces arrived, Catherine welcomed them warmly and told Potemkin, To make your mother happy you can nominate as many of your nieces as you want as Maids-of-Honour.'52 On 10 July, the climax of the peace celebrations, the eldest of this brood, Alexandra Engel- hardt, twenty-one, was appointed a frele or maid-of-honour to the Empress.53 The second and most decorous, Varvara, was soon to join her. As soon as they arrived, the nieces were hailed as Russia's superlative beauties.
Meanwhile, Catherine was busy drafting her legislation, aided by two young secretaries she had recently borrowed from Rumiantsev-Zadunaisky's staff: Peter Zavadovsky and Alexander Bezborodko. The latter, cleverest of the two, was so ugly and ungainly as to be somewhat fascinating. But Zavadovsky was methodical, cultured and good-looking. His pursued lips and humourless eyes suggested he was a sanctimonious plodder - the precise opposite of Potemkin, perhaps even antidote to him. During the many hours of drafting and during the tiresome journey back to St Petersburg, as they left grim Moscow at last, Catherine, Potemkin and Zavadovsky became an odd threesome.
We can imagine the scene in Catherine's apartments: Potemkin, stretched out on a divan in a flowing dressing gown, a bandana round his head, no wig and tousled hair everywhere, chewing radishes and imitating courtiers, bubbles with ideas, jokes and tantrums, while Zavadovsky perches stiffly and patiently in his wig and uniform, writing at his desk, his eyes fixed with labrador devotion on the Empress...
IO
HEARTBREAK AND UNDERSTANDING
My soul, I'm doing everything for you so at least encourage me a little with affectionate and calm behaviour ... my little dear lord, lovable husband.
Catherine II to Count Potemkin
But in such matters Russia's mighty Empress Behaved no better than a common sempstress
Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto IX: 77
'My husband just said to me "Where should I go, what should I do?"', Catherine wrote to Count Potemkin around this time. 'My darling and well- loved husband, come to my place and you will be received with open arms!'1 On 2 January 1776, Catherine appointed Peter Zavadovsky as adjutant- general. This menage-a-trois puzzled the Court.
The diplomats realized that something was happening in the Empress's private life and presumed that Potemkin's career was over: 'The Empress begins to see the liberties of her favourite [Potemkin] in a different light ... It is already whispered that a person placed about her by Mr Rumiantsev bids fair to gain her entire confidence.'2 There were rumours that Potemkin would lose the College of War, either to Alexei Orlov-Chesmensky or to Panin's nephew Prince Repnin. But an English diplomat, Richard Oakes, noticed that Potemkin was expanding his interests, not reducing them, and 'seems to interest himself more in foreign affairs than he at first affected to do.'3 While the Anglo-Saxons could not quite grasp what might be happening, the waspish French envoy, Chevalier Marie Daniel Bourree de Corberon, who kept an invaluable diary of his life at Court, suspected that it would take more than Zavadovsky to destroy him. 'Better in face than Potemkin,' he observed. 'But his favour not yet decided.' Then in the sarcastic tone that diplomats habitually adopted when discussing the imperial sex life: 'His talents have been put to the test in Moscow. But Potemkin ... still has the air of credit... so Zavadovsky is probably only an amusement.'4
Between January and March 1776, the Empress avoided large gatherings as she struggled to work out her relationship with Count Potemkin. That January, Prince Orlov reappeared after his travels and this muddied the waters even further because there were now three present or former favourites at Court. Grigory Orlov was back in his hearty old form, but he was no longer the man he had been: overweight and struck by attacks of 'palsy', he was in love with his cousin Ekaterina Zinovieva, aged fifteen, one of the Empress's maids-of-honour, whom some accounts claim he had raped. The ruthless competition at Court is reflected in the rumours that Potemkin was poisoning Orlov - something completely against his nature. Orlov's paralysis sounds like the later stages of syphilis, the sickly fruit of his well-known lack of discernment.