Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (15 page)

Miechen was intelligent, well-educated and outshone all the other Romanov ladies as a hostess. She liked to gamble, both in casinos abroad and on the roulette wheel in her private rooms, refused to convert to Orthodoxy on her marriage and, alone among the Grand Duchesses, received divorced people. The Vladimirs were famous for the lavish costume balls held in their palace. In 1900 all the male guests wore Polish costume from the era of Napoleon and the ladies came in Empire-style dresses.

With Cyril in love with his married cousin Victoria Melita, and Boris already a confirmed
boulevardier
, Miechen realised that Andrei needed a strong woman who would provide him with a home. Even in the face of Miechen’s opposition, Mathilde determined to be that woman.

Every year a picnic was organised at Ropsha, near Strelna, for the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna’s name day, 22 July. Gypsy musicians played in the garden and the celebrations sometimes went on until late. Andrei had to attend the party but promised to visit Strelna afterwards, even if only for a few minutes. As the evening wore on, Mathilde waited impatiently until at last Andrei arrived.

She later wrote of long hours together on the terrace and ‘the discovery of the earthly Paradise’. So intense was their memory that they celebrated the date every year as their ‘anniversary’.
⁴
This has caused several Russian writers to assume that Mathilde and Andrei were secretly married around this time, which would have been impossible for a Russian Grand Duke. In fact on this day they became lovers.

At the end of the manoeuvres Andrei was due to visit Ai-Todor, the Crimean estate of Sandro and Xenia. Mathilde therefore arranged to meet him later in Biarritz. They had one final treasured rendezvous at Mathilde’s St Petersburg house before Andrei travelled south. The next day Mathilde drove very slowly down the Nevsky Prospekt so that Andrei’s carriage could overtake her and she could see him once more.

Biarritz, on the border near Spain, had grown from a small French fishing village to a resort made fashionable by Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie in the 1850s. Soon high society promenaded on the
Plage de l’Imperatrice
and other royals followed suit, assisted by the expanding railway network. By the last days of the French Empire the Russians had begun to travel there and by 1880 the
Saison Russe
lasted from August until November. There were few Grand Dukes who did not put in an appearance accompanied by their bejewelled wives or mistresses. Most patronised the Hotel du Palais, which remained the most prestigious establishment. Grand Dukes Cyril, Boris, Andrei and Constantine came regularly to play baccarat while the champagne flowed uninterrupted. Grand Duke and Duchess Vladimir were regular visitors. Grand Duke Alexei was seldom without a female companion and threw glittering parties in the hotel.

Mathilde and Andrei met in Biarritz as planned, hoping to spend plenty of time together. Unfortunately, Andrei was often invited to functions which Mathilde could not attend with him because it would
arouse gossip. He ‘was still very young and could not behave as he liked’, she wrote with more than a tinge of regret.
⁵
The trip was not turning out the way she had hoped.

On the way home they stopped in Paris, but after a few days Mathilde had to return home to begin the new season. She did not want to leave, admitting to feelings of jealousy, and when Andrei came to say goodbye at the Gare du Nord she persuaded him to come on the train to St Quentin, two hours down the line. Then, for the moment, they had to part.

That season Mathilde finally danced
La Bayadère
, a story of love and betrayal set around the temple dancers in ancient India. It is famous for one of Petipa’s masterpieces of choreography – the ‘Kingdom of the Shades’ scene, in which the
corps de ballet
move slowly down a ramp, one by one, repeating the same graceful movement until they fill the stage. For Mathilde the role of Nikiya, the Bayadère, provided ample scope for drama and mime. In Nikiya’s dance with the basket of flowers, during which she is bitten by an asp, Mathilde used a real, although drugged, snake. Her first performance was on 3 December 1900 in a benefit for Pavel Gerdt and some time after the première an extra
variation
was added for Mathilde, which then became her property. When the ballet was reconstructed in 2003 by the Kirov Ballet this
variation
could not be included.

Legnani’s contract was not renewed and she retired from the Imperial Theatres after a farewell benefit on 28 January 1901. Her ballets now entered Mathilde’s repertoire and one of them would bring her into direct conflict with the Director of the Imperial Theatres and threaten a scandal of near-monumental proportions.

‘Nothing was more inspiring to me than to know that I had admirers in the audience,’ Mathilde wrote.
⁶
That season Mathilde acquired another royal admirer. In the early years of the century there was a great friendship between the court of Russia and the court of Siam. In 1897 King Chulalongkorn visited Russia with two of his sons and the following year Prince Chakrabongse was enrolled in St Petersburg’s exclusive Corps des Pages. The young prince was treated as a member of the Imperial family and even had apartments in the Winter Palace. He liked to attend the theatre. Above all, he liked the Imperial Ballet and in particular he liked Mathilde Kschessinska.

By 1900 the prince, now seventeen, was sending her numerous little notes, occasionally rewarded with an answer or an invitation to
visit. These invitations were not as frequent as he would have liked. ‘Nothing is heard from K,’ he noted dejectedly after sending her a New Year present. The following day Mathilde invited him to visit her and was, he thought, really sorry for upsetting him. She extracted a promise that he would come to her Sunday performance.
⁷

On Sunday Grand Duke Sergei was also in the audience and it was obvious from Mathilde’s behaviour that she was worried about his reaction to the presence of the Siamese prince. The young prince complained that she failed to bow towards him and only looked directly at him while bowing towards the public. ‘The idea of his being jealous of me is simply ridiculous!’ Prince Chakrabongse commented, adding that he thought often about the delightful Mathilde, ‘she cheers me up wonderfully!’
⁸

Early in January 1901 the Prince’s brother Crown Prince Vajravudh arrived in St Petersburg and Chakrabongse took him to visit Mathilde, who was in a very cheerful mood. The two princes were appearing in a play during which Chakrabongse, playing a female role, had to faint. He confessed that he did not know how to do it so Mathilde showed him. As they left she begged the Crown Prince not to leave St Petersburg so soon and asked Prince Chakrabongse not to forget her. When, after the play, he was complimented on his fainting (‘because I had a fine teacher!’) he sent the flowers he received to Mathilde, who was moved by the gesture.
⁹

On 10 January Mathilde danced
The Sleeping Beauty
at the Maryinsky, where Prince Chakrabongse admired both her pretty face and her performance. Afterwards she bowed frequently to him. Unhappily for Prince Chakrabongse, the Siamese Minister in Russia had reported the friendship to the King, who felt his son had too much liberty and should be under tighter control. The messages and invitations suddenly ceased.

It may have been hinted to Mathilde that she should not encourage the prince’s attentions. There was no more contact and, now that the matter had come to his father’s attention, Chakrabongse decided it would be wise to end the friendship. ‘It’s extraordinary how people think that if one finds a woman charming and attractive, one is necessarily having an affair with her,’ he commented.
¹⁰
In view of Mathilde’s somewhat scandalous reputation, it was perhaps not as extraordinary as the prince believed.

Maybe Mathilde was trying to stir Andrei’s passion by making him jealous, or maybe she just felt sorry for a young man so far from home
and family, but at any rate that was the end of the matter. Prince Chakrabongse remained in St Petersburg and in 1906 he secretly married a Russian girl, Ekaterina Desnitsky.

Although Mathilde was in love with Andrei, ‘all’ St Petersburg knew that Sergei was sharing Kschessinska’s bed. So, by now, was Andrei, and the two men frequently shared her dacha at Strelna. Soon the more scurrilous publications were printing thinly disguised accounts of her affairs with the two Grand Dukes.
¹¹
The
ménage à trois
became the talk of St Petersburg. Herbert J. Hagerman, First Secretary at the American Embassy, commented on the queenly jewels given to the ballerina by Sergei Michaelovich.

Mathilde quickly used this aura of a kind of scandalous glory to her advantage. When told that she should be proud of having two Grand Dukes at her feet, Mathilde laughed. ‘What’s so surprising about that? I have two feet!’ A story goes that among the Grand Dukes she was known not as
Ma
-thilde but as
Notre
-tilde.
¹²

As the ballerina Alexandra Danilova recalled:

Her entourage was the most conspicuous and the most powerful … I would say that maybe half of the dancers in the company had ‘protectors’, but they were discreet about it – those things were kept secret then. Kschessinska was the exception. She flaunted her affairs with her Grand Dukes because she thought it showed the world how attractive she was.
¹³

Lydia Lopoukova, a pupil at the Theatre School, was walking in the snow with some friends after a performance of
The Nutcracker
. Suddenly a grand carriage pulled up and Mathilde leaned out, saying ‘Children, let me drive you home.’ Lydia was horrified, having been told that Kschessinska had a bad reputation. ‘Oh, no, no, no, we mustn’t go with her,’ she cried. ‘She is a wicked woman.’
¹⁴

Yet what
was
the secret of Mathilde’s fascination, that indefinable ‘something’ that kept so many Grand Dukes in thrall? Probably what we would now call sex appeal, allied with a coquettish charm and sheer determination to get what she wanted. Mathilde now embarked on a new game, to keep all the benefits of Sergei’s protection without losing Andrei. This continued until the Revolution, with Mathilde sharing her house, the dacha and her favours with Sergei and Andrei.

If she preferred Andrei as a lover, Sergei, as President of the Imperial Theatrical Society, was invaluable to her in the theatre. Although
his only artistic interest was said to be choral singing, his interference in matters of the theatre was chiefly guided by his affection for Kschessinska.

Mathilde and Sergei were now determined to bring about the downfall of the hated director, Prince Volkonsky. The director retracted his promise to put Diaghilev in charge of a new production of Delibes’ ballet
Sylvia
, so Diaghilev refused to continue editing
The Imperial Theatres Annual
. When asked for his resignation, Diaghilev refused. He was backed by Kschessinska and Grand Duke Sergei, who probably already saw himself in Volkonsky’s place as ‘August Manager of the Imperial Theatres’. Diaghilev presumed he would then be his right-hand man. ‘The Grand Duke – whom Diaghilev saw daily – encouraged him to resist Volkonsky,’ wrote Benois, saying that in this he would have the Tsar’s support. Sergei left immediately by special train for Tsarskoe Selo, where the Emperor is reported to have told him: ‘In Diaghilev’s place I would not have resigned.’
¹⁵
Volkonsky was informed that Diaghilev refused to resign or to edit the
Annual
. Mathilde and her Grand Duke had apparentlywon. The following day the assistant to the Minister of the Imperial Court showed the Emperor letters written by Volkonsky to Diaghilev and obtained the order for Diaghilev’s dismissal for improper conduct. Diaghilev was disgraced and could never hold an official appointment again.

Mathilde now used her influence against Volkonsky at every opportunity. Hearing him tell the stage manager that
Fiametta
, in which Vera Trefilova danced, was to be performed in front of the Tsar during the Friday of Carnival Week, Mathilde was furious. ‘Is that so?’ she remarked to a companion. ‘
Fiametta
shall not be given.’ Then, under the pretext that
Fiametta
needed many rehearsals and the dancers were tired after giving two performances daily all week, the Tsar was persuaded by Kschessinska’s entourage to insist that a different work be substituted.
¹⁶

Volkonsky said that the Tsar had interfered with details of the repertoire, and even the distribution of the roles, before but it was always done solely at the request of Kschessinska ‘and it was always accompanied by some injustice towards another dancer’. These requests were worded so carefully that Nicholas was unaware that any injustice was being committed; he was merely giving in to Kschessinska’s whims.
¹⁷
Mathilde always came out on top as Nicholas was too weak to refuse.

Things came to a head in April 1901. Volkonsky had already complained because when Lubov Roslavleva came from Moscow
to dance
Le Corsaire
, Mathilde asserted her rights to the music of the specially inserted solo. A whole night was spent in the library looking for some other appropriate music. Now Mathilde was due to appear in another ballet from Legnani’s repertoire,
La Camargo
, based on the true story of the dancer Marie Camargo and her sister, who in May 1729 were abducted by the Count de Meluno and taken to his mansion. The costumes were the hooped skirts of the Louis XV period and the costume for the Russian dance (traditionally inserted into all ballets on the Imperial stage) was an accurate copy of the Russian dress worn by Catherine the Great at the ball given in honour of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II.