In May 1781, there was a slight blip in Catherine's relationship with Lanskoy. Harris heard the usual rumours that Catherine was having an affair with a new favourite, Mordvinov, but that Potemkin helped to steer the Empress and Lanskoy through this rough patch in their relationship. If Catherine flirted with someone else, Lanskoy was 'neither jealous, inconstant, nor impertinent and laments the disgrace ... in so pathetic a manner' that Catherine's love for him revived and she could not bear to part with him.34 They settled down happily into a relationship that she hoped would continue until she died.
Potemkin benefited enormously from Catherine's system of favouritism. When she was in a stable relationship, it gave him time to win his place in history. During her happy years with Lanskoy, Potemkin became a statesman - he changed the direction of Russian foreign policy, annexed the Crimea, founded towns, colonized deserts, built the Black Sea Fleet and reformed the Russian army. However, by the end of her life, Catherine's sexual career was already both a legend and a joke.
Inside Russia, the disapproval of Catherine's and Potemkin's moral conduct often coincided with political opposition to their rule among critics, like Simon Vorontsov and the entourage of the 'Young Court' of Grand Duke Paul, both excluded from power. The view of a traditional Orthodox aristocrat is expressed in Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov's On the Corruption of Morals (published long after Catherine's death) which blamed virtually the entire morality of the eighteenth century on Catherine and Potemkin. Her critics charged that favouritism affected the whole atmosphere of the court: 'she has set other women the example of the possession of a long ... succession of lovers', grumbled Shcherbatov. As for the wicked puppetmaster, Potemkin radiated 'love of power, ostentation, pandering to all his desires, gluttony and hence luxury at table, flattery, avarice, rapaciousness'. In other words, the Prince was the source of 'all the vices known in the world with which he himself is full'.35
This titillating humbug reached its greatest extent during the later years of the Empress when no foreigner could discuss Russia without bringing the subject round to Catherine's sexuality. When the gossipy Oxford don John Parkinson visited Russia after Potemkin's death, he picked up and popularized any tidbit he could find and linked it all to Catherine's love life, even canal building: 'A party was considering which of the canals had cost the most money; when one of them observed there was not a doubt about the matter. Catherine's Canal (that is the name of the one of them) had unquestionably been the most expensive.' Even the distinguished ex-Ambassador Sir George Macartney, later celebrated for his pioneering mission to China, who had been recalled for siring a child with an imperial maid-of-honour, degraded himself by claiming that Catherine's taste for Russian men was due to the fact that 'Russian nurses it is said make a constant practice of pulling it when the child is young which has the great effect of lengthening the virile instrument'.36 The diplomats sniggered in their despatches about 'functions' and 'duties' and coined puns that would shame a modern tabloid newspaper, but they were usually misinformed and historians have simply repeated the lies that seem to confirm every male fantasy about the sexual voracity of powerful women. There are few subjects in history that have been so wilfully misunderstood.
The nature of 'favouritism' derived from the Empress's peculiar position and her unique relationship with Potemkin. It was undeniably true that anyone becoming a favourite of Catherine's was entering a relationship in which there were three, not two, participants. Favouritism was necessary because Catherine lived in a man's world. She could not publicly marry again and, whether in law or spirit, she already had a husband in Potemkin. Their egos, talents and emotions were too equal and too similar for them to live together, but Catherine needed constant loving and companionship. She yearned to have an effective family around her and she had strong maternal instincts to teach and nurture. These emotional longings were easily as strong as her famed sexual appetites. She was one of those who must have a companion, and often did not change partners without finding a new one first. Usually such habits are more based on insecurity than wantonness, but perhaps the two are linked. There was another reason why Catherine, as she got older, sought younger lovers, even at the cost of her dignity and reputation. She touched on it herself when she described the temptations of Elisabeth's Court. The Court was filled with handsome men; she was the Sovereign. Catherine did it because she could - like the proverbial child in the candyshop. Who would not?
The position of Catherine's favourite evolved into an unusual official appointment. 'Loving the Empress of Russia', explained the Prince de Ligne, the ultimate charmer of the Enlightenment who adored Potemkin and Catherine, 'is a function of the Court.'37 Instead of having a disorderly court, Catherine appointed her lover publicly. She hoped her system of favouritism would pull the sting of sleaziness. In a sense, she was applying the tenets of the Enlightenment to her loins, for surely clarity and reason would prevent superstition in the form of innuendo and gossip.
Appearances had to be maintained but this was an age of sexual frankness. Even the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa, the ultimate Catholic moralist, who presided over a court of stifling rectitude, gave Marie-Antoinette astonishingly frank gynaecological advice on her marriage to Louis XVI. Catherine herself was prudish in public. She reprimanded the Comte de Segur for making risque jokes, though she could make the odd one herself. When she was inspecting a pottery, Corberon recounted that she made such a shocking joke that he recorded it in code in his original diary: it sounds as if she chuckled that one of the shapes resembled a vagina. Later, her secretary recorded her laughing at how, in mythology, women could blame their pregnancies on visits from gods. In a lifetime in the public gaze, a couple of dirty jokes is not much - though one cannot imagine Maria Theresa making any.
Behind the facade, Catherine enjoyed a discreet earthiness with her lovers. Her letters to Potemkin and Zavadovsky displayed her animal sensuality such as when she said her body had taken over from her mind and she had to restrain every hair. She obviously enjoyed sex, but, as far as we know, it was always sex while she believed herself to be in love. There is no evidence at all for her ever having sex with a man for its own sake without believing it to be the start of a long relationship. The diplomats bandied names around and said they performed certain 'functions', which has been believed ever since.
However, there must have been transitory relationships and 'one-night stands' in the quest for compatibility, but they would have been rare because they were difficult to arrange. In the Winter Palace for example, it would have been surprisingly complicated to let in - and let out - a lover, even if he was a Guardsman, without other Guards, maids, valets and courtiers knowing about it. For example, when Catherine went to see Potemkin in 1774, she could not go into his rooms because he was with adjutants, who would be shocked to see the Empress appearing in his apartment: she had to return secretly to her rooms even though he was her official favourite. Later, when one favourite spent the night in her boudoir, he came out in the morning and met her secretary, and he recorded it in his diary.
Catherine spent her whole life in public in a way that makes even our own age of paparazzi seem private. Inside her Palace, every move she made was watched and commented upon. It is likely there would be much more evidence if there were regiments of Guardsmen being smuggled in and out of her apartments. Only Potemkin himself could wander into her bedroom whenever he liked because he had a covered passageway that led directly from his rooms to hers, and everyone accepted he was unique.38