This is how the favourites rose to the imperial bedchamber and how they lived when they got there. Catherine's love affair became a Court institution on the day that it was announced in the Court Journal that the young man in question, usually a Guardsman of provincial gentry and therefore not a magnate's scion, had been appointed adjutant-general to the Empress. In several cases, as we have seen, the gentlemen were already aides-de-camp to Potemkin, an appointment that brought them into regular contact with Catherine.39 So, whenever the diplomats wrote feverishly that Potemkin had presented an officer to Catherine, it could mean everything or nothing.[27] However, one senses Catherine preferred choosing her lovers from among Potemkin's staff, because they were somehow touched by a whiff of the Prince himself and they knew the form.
Before the appointment to adjutantcy, the young man would have jumped through several hoops. The legend claims that Potemkin simply selected the boy out of a list of candidates. Then if Catherine liked him, the 'eprouveuse' or sampler - her lady-in-waiting, first Countess Bruce and later Anna Protasova - would try him out. Saint-Jean, a dubious memoirist who apparently worked in Potemkin's chancellery, claimed the Prince became a sort of sex therapist: a prospective favourite stayed with Potemkin for six weeks to be 'taught all he needed to know' as Catherine's lover.40 He would then be checked by Dr Rogerson, Catherine's sociable Scottish doctor, and finally be sent to the Empress's room for the most important test of all. Almost all of this legend, particularly Potemkin's role, is false.
How were they selected? By chance, taste and artifice. Potemkin's pimping was widely believed: 'he now plays the same role that La Pompadour did at the end of her life with Louis XV', claimed Corberon. The truth was far more complicated because it involved the love, choice and emotions of an extremely dignified and shrewd woman. Neither Potemkin nor anyone else could actually 'supply' men to Catherine. Both of them were too proud to play the procuring game. He did not 'supply' Zavadovsky, who already worked with Catherine. As her consort and friend, he ultimately sanctioned it, though not before trying to get rid of the dull secretary. It was said that Zorich was 'appointed' by Potemkin. Earlier on the day of his dinner party at Ozerki just before Zorich became favourite, a written exchange between Catherine and the Prince holds a clue.
Potemkin wrote to his Empress humbly asking her to appoint Zorich as his aide-de-camp, 'granting him whatever rank Your Imperial Majesty thinks as necessary'. Potemkin was testing to see if Catherine approved Zorich or not. She simply wrote, 'Promote to Colonel.'41 Potemkin wanted Catherine to be happy and to preserve his power. Perhaps this indirect route, not the smutty innuendo of the diplomats, was the subtle way that Potemkin tested the waters, asking if Catherine wanted this young man around Court or not, but without demeaning her dignity. Once she had found her favourite, she often looked to Potemkin for what she called his 'clever guidance'.42 This was how these two highly sophisticated politicians and sensitive people communicated in such matters.
She made her own choices: when Lanskoy was chosen, he was one of Potemkin's aides-de-camp, but the Prince actually wanted someone else to be favourite. However it worked out, there was much competition, among Panins and Orlovs, to introduce potential favourites to Catherine since they were regarded as having much more influence than they probably did. Rumiantsev and Panin both hoped to benefit from Potemkin's rise: he was the downfall of both of them.
Were the favourites sampled by the 'eprouveuse'? There is no evidence at all of any 'trying out', but there is plenty of Catherine's jealous possessiveness of her favourites. This myth was based on Countess Bruce's possible earlier relationship with Potemkin, her mission to summon him to the Empress's favour from the Nevsky Monastery, and her affair with Korsakov well after Catherine's relationship with him had started. Did Korsakov, boasting after his dismissal, invent this arrangement, perhaps to excuse his own behaviour? As for the medical check, there is no proof of it, but it would seem sensible to have a rollicking Guardsman checked by Dr Rogerson for the pox before sleeping with the Empress.
After this, the lucky man would dine with the Empress, attend whatever receptions she was gracing and then adjourn to the Little Hermitage to play cards with her inner circle - Potemkin, Master of the Horse Lev Naryshkin, assorted Orlovs, if they were in favour, a handful of Potemkin's nieces and nephews, and the odd favoured foreigner. She sat for some rubbers of whist or faro or played rhyming games or charades. Everyone would be watching - though Potemkin would probably already know. At 11 p.m., Catherine rose and the young man accompanied her to her apartments. This would be the routine of their life virtually every day they were in Petersburg, unless there was a special holiday. Catherine was always grateful to Potemkin for his advice, kindness and generous lack of jealousy in such private matters - as she wrote to him after falling in love with Korsakov: 'He's an angel - big, big, big thanks!'43
The favourite derived massive benefits from his gilded position, but these were balanced by dire disadvantages. The advantages were enough land, serfs, jewels and cash to found an aristocratic dynasty. The disadvantages were, simply put, Catherine and Potemkin.
The first advantage - and the real mark of the position - was possession of the most potent piece of real estate in all the Russians. As in all property, location was paramount. Apartments in the Empress's wing of her palaces were as valuable as those at Versailles. The new favourite would take possession of the beautifully decorated, green-carpeted apartment linked to
Catherine's by the notorious staircase. There, it was claimed, he would find a certain sum of money as a welcoming present - 100,000 roubles or 10,000 roubles every week. But there is no evidence for this golden hello, though we know from Vassilchikov's 'kept woman' complaint that she regularly gave generous cash presents on birthdays, and she certainly paid for their fine clothes and granted them a monthly table allowance. Legend claims that, in gratitude for their privileged position, the favourites would then pay Potemkin a bribe-payment of around 100,000 roubles as if they had bought a tax farm - or as if they were renting his place. Even the unreliable Saint-Jean does not believe this story, which is saying something as he believes virtually everything else.44 Since the favourite would later receive untold riches, he might well thank the person who had sponsored his arrival in the highest circles, as anyone might thank a patron - but it is unlikely a penniless provincial would have 100,000 roubles to pay Potemkin even if the system existed. The only evidence of this payment was that, when they were appointed, one later favourite gave Potemkin a teapot, and another thanked his patron with a gold watch. Usually, Potemkin received nothing.
The favourite and his family would become rich. 'Believe me, my friend,' said Corberon, 'over here, this profession is a good one!'45 Foreigners were dazzled by the costs of maintaining, and especially dismissing, the favourites. 'Not less than a million roubles yearly, exclusive of the enormous pensions of Prince Orlov and Prince Potemkin,' calculated Harris, who estimated that the Orlovs had received seventeen million roubles between 1762 and 1783.46 The figures are impossible to verify, but Catherine was exceedingly generous even when she had been ill-treated, perhaps out of guilt or at least awareness that it was not an easy role. Maybe she hoped her magnanimity would demonstrate that she herself was not hurt. However, there was no shortage of ambitious young men eager for the position. Indeed, as the Empress was selecting a new lover, Potemkin's adjutant (and cousin of his nieces) Lev Engelhardt noticed that, 'during the church service for the court, lots of young men, who were even the slightest bit handsome, stood erect, hoping to regulate their destiny in such an easy way.'47