Until the procession of young Guards officers began, Catherine’s love affairs had not shocked Europe. The example set by other contemporary monarchs left scant grounds for rebuke. Monarchs everywhere had mistresses or lovers. In Russia, Peter the Great had children by his mistress before marrying her and making her an empress. Empress Anne and Empress Elizabeth had both paved the way for the acceptance of favoritism in Russia. Catherine’s political achievements also made flaws in her private life easy to overlook or discount; beyond that, she conducted her court “with the greatest dignity and exterior decorum,” said Sir James Harris, the British ambassador in the 1780s.
The problem, as the years went by, was not the institution of favoritism but the extreme youth of the favorites and the discrepancy between their ages and Catherine’s. As attention focused increasingly on the question of age, Catherine explained that these relationships served an important pedagogical function. Her young men, she said, were being schooled to ornament a sophisticated, cosmopolitan court; they were to be accomplished and useful, not just to the monarch personally but ultimately to the empire. In her correspondence with Grimm, she explained that these young men were so extraordinary that she was obliged to give them opportunity to develop their talents.
When Peter Zavadovsky fell from favor, Potemkin looked around for a candidate whom Catherine might accept and whose loyalty to him he could trust. His choice was thirty-two-year-old Simon Zorich, a Russian officer of Serbian descent. Zorich was tall, handsome, and polite, although he lacked notable intelligence. He had an honorable war record; he had displayed bravery in battle against the Turks and had borne up well during five years as a prisoner of war. Returning to Russia in 1774, he became an aide to Potemkin. In May 1777, with Zavadovsky’s departure, he became the new favorite.
Zorich’s tenure was briefer than Zavadovsky’s. His new position went to his head. Catherine made him a count, but he demanded to be made a prince like Orlov and Potemkin. His complaints offended the empress; Zorich had been in favor for only ten months when she told Potemkin, “Last night I was in love with him; today I cannot stand him any more.” Potemkin had ignored the fact that Catherine needed someone she could talk to. As the relationship deteriorated, Zorich could not understand why the woman who had covered him with riches had suddenly retreated. Blaming Potemkin, he determined to fight for his place. He challenged Potemkin; the prince disdainfully turned his back and walked away. In May 1778, only a year after his arrival, Zorich was dismissed with a pension. A compulsive gambler, he was later discovered embezzling army funds and died in disgrace.
Zorich was replaced by a twenty-four-year-old Guards officer, Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov, whose term lasted two years. The new favorite was handsome, played the violin, and had a fine tenor voice. In Catherine’s eyes, his male beauty evoked the heroes of ancient Greece, and in her letters to Grimm she refers to her new lover as “Pyrrhus, king of Epirus whom every painter should paint, every sculptor should sculpt and every poet should sing.… He makes no gesture, no movement, that is not graceful and noble.”
His brilliance did not encompass the intellect, however. When Catherine gave him a mansion in St. Petersburg, he decided that it needed a library to proclaim his new status. He had shelves built and then called on the capital’s leading bookseller. What books were wanted, he was asked. “You understand that better than I,” said the new bibliophile. “Big books at the bottom, then smaller books, and so on up to the top.” The bookseller unloaded many rows of unsold German Bible commentaries bound in fine leather. Soon afterward, the British ambassador probed the favorite’s background and discovered that he had “changed his original common name of Ivan Korsak to the better-sounding one of Ivan Rimsky-Korsakov.”*
Despite Catherine’s praise, most in the Russian court expected Rimsky-Korsakov to last only briefly, because everyone except the empress saw that his heart was not in his work. He was expected to be in constant attendance, was forbidden to leave the palace, and became bored and restless. He escaped into the arms of Countess Bruce, Catherine’s principal lady-in-waiting and for years one of her closest friends. Foolishly, the couple believed that they could carry on their affair inside the palace. They managed for almost a year, but it ended abruptly one day when the empress opened a door and discovered them making love. Catherine sent a message to Rimsky-Korsakov informing him that she would be generous provided he left St. Petersburg immediately. Countess Bruce was commanded to return to her husband.
