The entire Potemkin clan was treated as a member of the extended Cather- inian family that included Lanskoy, her lover. The Empress made a fuss not just of the Engelhardt sisters but also of Potemkin's other family - his cousin Pavel Potemkin, after serving against Pugachev, became viceroy of the Caucasus, and his brother Mikhail Chief Inspector of the College of War and one of Catherine's inner circle. The Prince's stalwart nephew Alexander Samoilov, son of his sister Maria, became secretary to the State Council and a general - 'brave but useless'. Other nephews, such as Vasily Engelhardt and Nikolai Vysotsky, son of his sister Pelageya, served as Catherine's aides-de- camp, being treated almost as family.
The Empress's favourite Sasha Lanskoy was very kind to Potemkin's nieces, as we know from Tatiana's letters, which have not been cited before this. 'Monsieur Lanskoy has had all sorts of attention,' she reported innocently. In one letter, Tatiana told her uncle how the Grand Duke and Duchess 'met me in the garden - they found me very grown up and spoke to me with a lot of kindness'.19 When, a couple of years later, Ekaterina was married and pregnant, it was Lanskoy who sent Potemkin reports on the birth. 'Father,' he wrote, 'the Sovereign has kindly ordered a bow to you and to baptize the baby ... here I'm sending a letter from Ekaterina Vasilievna ...'. A few days later he told him that the Empress had a fever but the niece was feeling better each day.
There is a sense that, away from the harsh political struggles, the Empress, to some extent, succeeded in creating a patchwork family out of her - or, as she put it, 'our' - Potemkin 'relatives' and her beloved Lanskoy. She chose her family as others choose their friends. There was a symmetry between Catherine's favourites and Potemkin's nieces. When the politics allowed some serenity, she treated the nieces like daughters and he the favourites like sons. Together, they were almost the children of that unconventional, childless marriage.20
Potemkin's relationships with his nieces were irregular and idiosyncratic but not unusual for his time, and certainly Catherine did not seem shocked by them. She tells in her Memoirs how, during her own childhood before leaving for Russia, she had flirted (and possibly more) with her uncle, Prince Georg- Ludwig of Holstein, who wanted to marry her. [28] Such behaviour - and worse - was not uncommon among royal families. The Habsburgs regularly married their nieces. Earlier in the century, the Regent of France, Philippe, Due d'Orleans, was supposed to have had affairs with his daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, f
Augustus the Strong, the King of Poland, Elector of Saxony and duplicitous ally of Peter the Great, set an unbeatable incestuous precedent for vigorous degeneracy that not even Potemkin could equal. Augustus, an art-loving, inpecunious and politically slippery bon vivant whom Carlyle called that 'cheerful Man of Sin, gay eupeptic Son of Belial', had, according to legend, not only fathered an heir and 354 bastards through a legion of mistresses but also supposedly made his daughter Countess Orczelska his mistress. To add insult to incest, the daughter-mistress in turn was in love with Count Rudorfski, her half-brother, another of his natural children. It was different for commoners, though in seventeenth-century France Cardinal Mazarin had made his nieces - the Mazarinettes - into the richest heiresses in France and there were rumours about his relationship with them. Meanwhile, Voltaire was having the last affair of his long life with his promiscuous, greedy niece, Madame Denis, but he kept it secret - only their correspondence revealed all. In the generation after Potemkin, Lord Byron flaunted his affair with his half- sister, and Prince Talleyrand set up house with his nephew's wife, the Duchesse de Dino.
In Russia, uncle-niece incest was much more common. The Orthodox Church turned a blind eye. Nikita Panin was rumoured to have had an affair with his niece (by marriage) Princess Dashkova - though she denied it. Kirill Razumovsky kept house at Baturin with the daughter of his sister Anna, Countess S. Apraxina, with whom he lived as man and wife. Yet the incestuous relationship of this prominent, much admired magnate was barely mentioned because it was done quietly in the country; no one 'frightened the horses'. Potemkin's sin was the openness with which he loved them. This shocked contemporaries just as it was Catherine's openness with her favourites that made her so notorious: they were the parallel lines of the same arrangement. Serenissimus regarded himself as semi-royal, so he would do what he wished and everyone could see him enjoying it.21
Wicked uncle Potemkin has been crucified by historians for his behaviour, but his nieces themselves were willing partners - Varvara was in love with him - and adored him throughout their lives. Far from being abused and damaged, Alexandra and Varvara enjoyed unusually happy marriages, while continuing to be close to their uncle. Ekaterina, occasional mistress for the rest of his life, was said to have merely 'tolerated' his embraces but she was a sleepy girl who 'tolerated' her husband, diamonds and everything else: that was her nature. They would surely have worshipped the protector of the family. In their letters, they always wanted to see him. Like Catherine, they found life was dull without him. No abuse is required to explain this peccadillo: in that place and time, it must have seemed natural.
The nieces were not his only mistresses after his withdrawal from Catherine's boudoir: Potemkin's archives are heavy with literally hundreds of unsigned love letters from unknown women who were obviously wildly in love with the one-eyed giant. There are two sorts of womanizer - the mechanical fornicator who despises his conquests, and the genuine lover of women for whom seduction is a foundation for love and friendship. Potemkin was very much the latter - he adored the companionship of women. Later, his Court was so crowded with foreigners that it was impossible to miss the identity of his paramours. But in the 1770s all we have left are yearning letters in curling feminine hands asking: 'How have you spent the night, my darling: better than me. I haven't slept for a second.' They were never satisfied with the time he gave them. 'I am not happy with you,' this one wrote. 'You have such a distracted air. There must be something on your mind ...'. His mistresses had to wait in their husband's palaces, hearing from their friends and servants exactly what Potemkin was doing: 'I know you were at the Empress's in the evening and you fell ill. Tell me how you are, it worries me and I don't know your news. Adieu, my angel, I can't tell you more, everything prevents it...'. It ends abruptly - the lady's husband had surely arrived, so she sent off the unfinished letter with her trusted maid.
These women fussed about his health, travelling, gambling, eating. His ability to attract such attention was perhaps the result of growing up surrounded by so many loving sisters: 'My dear Prince, can you make me this sacrifice and not give so much time to gaming? It can only destroy your health.' The mistresses ached to see him properly: 'Tomorrow there's a ball at the Grand Duke's: I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you there.' Around the same time, another woman was writing:
It's such a pity that I only saw you at a distance when I wanted so much to kiss you, my dear friend ... My God, it's a shame and I can't endure it! Tell me at least if you love me, my dear. It's the only thing that can reconcile me to myself ... I'd kiss you all the time but you'd get bored of me soon; I write to you before a mirror and it seems as if I'm chatting with you and I tell you everything that comes into my head...
In the billets-doux of these unknown women sitting in front of mirrors and pots of rouge, rolls of silk, puffs of powder, with a quill in their hands 200 years ago, we see Potemkin alive and reflected: 'I kiss you a million times before you go ... You work too much ... I kiss you thirty million times and with a tenderness that grows all the time ... Kiss me in your thoughts. Adieu, my life.'"