The Prince and Sir James spent their days and nights chatting, drinking, plotting and gambling. Potemkin may have been playing Harris like a game of poker, but he was also truly fond of him. One has the distinct sense that, while Harris was talking business, Potemkin was taking a course in English civilization. Couriers rushed between the two. Harris's published letters give his official account of the friendship, but his unpublished letters to Potemkin in the Russian archives show the extent of their familiarity: one is about a wardrobe that one of Harris's debtors gave him instead of the 1,500 guineas he was owed. 'You'd give me incontestable proof of your friendship', wrote the Envoy Extraordinary, 'if you could get the Empress to buy it... Forgive me for talking to you so frankly ...'. It is not recorded if Potemkin arranged this, but he was a generous friend. In May 1780, Harris sent his father, a respected Classical scholar, a 'packet of Greek productions given to me for you by Prince Potemkin'. When Harris's father died, Potemkin was assiduous in his sympathy. In an undated note, the envoy thanked him: 'I'm not yet in a state to come round to your place my Prince but the part you've been kind enough to play in my sadness has softened it infinitely ... No one could love you, esteem you, respect you more than I.'25
When they met in the Winter Palace, Potemkin pulled Harris into the Empress's private apartments as if they were his own and the two chatted there all evening.26 They obviously caroused together. 'I gave a soupe dansant about three weeks ago to Prince Potemkin and his set,' Harris told his sister Gertrude in 1780, at which they drank 'three bottles of the King of Poland's tokay and a dozen of claret and champagne'. Harris claimed he drank only water.
This Anglo-Russian friendship intensified the diplomatic intrigue in Petersburg as the other diplomats frantically watched, eavesdropped and bribed to discover what they were talking about. The surveillance and espionage was so obvious it must have been comical, and we can almost hear the rustle of curtains and the flicker of eyes at keyholes. The French were most alarmed. Corberon was reduced to spying constantly on Potemkin's various houses: he noted down that Harris had a tent in his garden 'seating ten' that he claimed was a gift from Potemkin. Catherine's doctor, Rogerson, was definitely 'Har- ris's spy', Corberon even called on Potemkin to accuse him of enmity towards France. He then 'took from his pocket a paper from which he read a list of the several times' Harris had been seen socializing with Potemkin. The Prince abruptly ended this otiose conversation by saying he was busy. Harris probably heard about this encounter from his spy, the Prince's omnipresent niece- mistress, Alexandra. The Englishman became so close to her that Corberon accused him of courting. The Prussians were also watching. 'For a month, the table and house of the British Ambassador are filled with the relations and creatures of the favourite,' Goertz told Frederick on 21 September 1779.27
This elegant skulduggery reached a new low when Harris delivered his second memorandum to Potemkin, who was said to have languidly placed it in his dressing-gown pocket or 'under his pillow'. Somehow, it was removed and given to the French charge, Corberon, and thence to Panin. The Chevalier de la Teyssoniere, basse-cour hanger-on, played some part, but it was another Frenchwoman, a mistress of the Prince and a governess of his nieces, Mademoiselle Guibald, who actually stole the document. It was later claimed that Panin then added notes contradicting the British arguments and left it on Catherine's desk so that she would believe the notes were Potemkin's advice. This is obviously designed to give Potemkin's house a disorderly air, hence most historians have dismissed it, and Guibald, as legends. Catherine would certainly have known Potemkin's handwriting and views, making the notes an unlikely detail. But Teyssoniere was certainly skulking around Potemkin's Court and Tatania Engelhardt's letters to her uncle reveal that Miss Guibald did exist. Besides, virtually every member of Potemkin's household would have been receiving bribes from somebody, which is probably why Guibald was not dismissed. She remained in Potemkin's household for years after. The story may have some truth after all.28
Serenissimus did not spend all his time with Harris. In the midst of this intrigue, a European phenomenon arrived in Petersburg. The soi-disant Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, accompanied by a pretty wife and posing as a Spanish colonel, set up shop as a healer, purveyor of the Egyptian Masonic rite, alchemist, magus and necromancer. The famous charlatan's real name was probably Giuseppe Balsamo of Sicily, but this squat, swarthy and balding Sicilian with black eyes and a throbbing forehead clearly possessed plenty of chutzpah and charisma.
The Age of Reason had undermined Religion, but there was a natural yearning for spirituality to fill the void. This was one reason for the fashion for Freemasonry, manifested in both rationalist and occult varieties. The latter spread rapidly in all its esoteric diversity - hypnotism, necromancy, alchemy, Kabbalism, preached in cults such as Martinism, Illuminism, Rosicrucianism and Swedenborgism. These ideas were propagated through Masonic lodges and by a remarkable series of healers and charlatans. Some like Swedenborg,
Mesmer and Lavater were magi whose knowledge of human nature, if not healing powers, helped people in an era when doctors and scientists could explain little.29 Many were just charlatans like the lover Casanova and the notorious George Psalmanazar, travelling Europe deceiving innocent noblemen with their tales of the Philosopher's Stone and the Fountain of Youth. They always presented themselves as exotically titled men of wealth, taste and mystery. Each offered an enticing mixture of common sense, practical medical advice, promises of eternal youth, guides to the after-life - and the ability to convert base metals, and even urine, into gold.
Their doyen, the so-called Comte de Saint-Germain, who claimed to be almost two thousand years old and to have witnessed the Crucifixion in his youth (his valet remembered it too), impressed Louis XV by creating, out of ether, a diamond worth 10,000 livres. A substantial chunk of Europe's aristocracy at this time was somehow involved in these cults of Freemasonry.
Cagliostro had dazzled Mittau, capital of Courland, but he then had to leave swiftly. Now he hoped to reproduce his success in Petersburg. As Catherine told Grimm, the hierophant 'came at a good moment for him when several Masonic lodges wanted to see spirits ...'. The 'master sorcerer' duly provided as many as required, along with all sorts of tricks involving disappearing money, sales of mysterious potions and 'chemical operations that don't work'. She especially laughed at his claim to be able to create gold out of urine and offer eternal life.
Nonetheless Cagliostro conducted healings and won a distinguished following for his Egyptian Masonic rite. Corberon and courtiers like Ivan Yelagin and Count Alexander Stroganov ardently subscribed to the necromancer's powers. Many Russian nobles joined Masonic lodges. Some gradually evolved into something like an anti-Catherinian opposition, which explained her deep suspicion of Freemasonry.
Potemkin attended some of Cagliostro's seances but never believed in them, remaining one of the few senior courtiers who did not become a Mason. He and Catherine thoroughly enjoyed joking about Cagliostro's tricks.30 Potemkin's real interest was in Countess Cagliostro. Serenissimus is said to have enjoyed an affair with the hierophant's wife, born Lorenza, renamed Serafina and sometimes calling herself Princess di Santa Croce. This may have damaged Cagliostro more than he realized. Catherine teased Potemkin about the time he spent at their house: perhaps he should learn to keep Cagliostro's spirits in check ... Did she mean the ersatz Princess-Countess?31