animal
Potemkin (racehorse)
Potemkin
also: Потемкин
A racehorse named Potemkin, mentioned in this letter's one-line closing joke (§14) as having failed to win an expected race on 1 March 1889. Almost certainly a turf-racing entrant of the day rather than a literary or historical reference; the specific race and stable are not otherwise identified in this letter. Explicitly distinct from, the eighteenth-century prince and statesman -- this is a contemporary (1889) racehorse bearing the same name, not the historical figure or the later battleship named for him, and must not be conflated with either.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 5 March 1889. Moscow. §14 And Potemkin didn't win
A one-line closing joke referring to a racehorse named Potemkin, which failed to win an expected race on 1 March 1889. This is almost certainly a contemporary turf-racing entrant and NOT the historical Prince Grigory Potemkin -- who would be a wholly anachronistic reference here -- nor the battleship later named for him (commissioned 1905, well after this 1889 letter). Kept as a distinct entity to avoid conflating the racehorse with the eighteenth-century statesman; the specific race and stable are not otherwise identified in this letter.