Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (27 page)

Maybe Mathilde did not realise that the Palace Theatre was in fact a music hall. Bronislava Nijinska recalled her own distress at seeing Pavlova ‘following acts by magicians, clowns and acrobats … how could one watch the incomparable Pavlova in a music hall?’ she wondered. ‘Why was Pavlova here?’
²⁷
Although there were at least four classical ballerinas appearing in London music halls at that time, it is hard to imagine Mathilde in this setting. Perhaps she was misled by the name of the theatre.

British newspapers speculated that Mathilde, ‘Russia’s greatest dancer’, and ‘a great favourite of the Tsar’, would shortly be performing with Michael Mordkin before British royalty although, they added, she was currently in England ‘for her own amusement’. Only Mordkin, Mathilde told them, had been able to persuade her to travel to England and she had refused all offers to dance in London by herself.
²⁸
As soon as Pavlova learnt of Mathilde’s arrival she made a rapid recovery and by Tuesday night was on her way back to the Palace Theatre.

On Wednesday
The Times
theatre column announced that Pavlova had recovered and would be appearing ‘at the matinees today and tomorrow with Mr Mordkin’. Meanwhile, the
Daily Sketch
ran the story of ‘Mordkin’s New Partner’ Mme Kjanski [
sic
] on Thursday
morning.
²⁹
With Pavlova back in action Mathilde had no choice but to retreat.

Mordkin had already accepted an invitation to dance (with Kschessinska) at Baron Henri de Rothschild’s house, but Mathilde said she had to hurry home and could not take part in this performance. By the time the
Tatler
published a photograph of Mathilde (which the ballerina had given them the previous week) on the cover of their Coronation Issue, she had slipped quietly out of London.

Mathilde passed this incident off by saying that Mordkin came to Monte Carlo in the spring and asked her to dance with him in London during the summer season because he had quarrelled with Pavlova. She did not give a definite answer, but went to London, where she learnt that the invitation came from Mordkin and not the theatre management. She therefore declined, feeling it would be wrong to take Pavlova’s place.

Mordkin had been negotiating with the American impresario Max Rabinoff about a season in New York. Pavlova was hesitating and in preliminary announcements for the engagements two names were mentioned – Ekaterina Geltzer and Mathilde Kschessinska. Maybe this was the invitation which came from Mordkin.

That was the end of a rather confusing episode.

Deprived of her expected triumph in London, Mathilde prepared to dance at Krasnoe Selo. Princess Stephanie Dolgoruky said that during the interval before Mathilde’s appearance the Tsar left his box and sat near the gangway ‘in the front row of the stalls, to avoid being closely watched’. On his left sat Grand Dukes Sergei and Andrei. After Mathilde and her brother had danced a ‘suggestive mazurka’, she curtseyed deeply to the Tsar ‘amidst thunderous applause’ and with an interrogative look asked if they should give an encore. The Tsar nodded his approval and they repeated the number ‘with greater animation than before’.
³⁰

At another performance in the camp Mathilde performed a Russian dance in folk costume partnered by two cavaliers, receiving a resounding welcome from the audience of soldiers. As the Tsar left the theatre he looked up at Mathilde’s dressing-room window as he had done twenty years before.

‘Bravo, Malechka! Bravo!’ called out her old friend Ivan Orlov. ‘Such a triumph in front of His Majesty!’
³¹

Mathilde always celebrated her birthday at Strelna amid brilliant festivities. In 1911 she announced that Pavlova, Preobrajenska, and she would take part in a gala performance, followed by supper at Felicien (a restaurant on the edge of the water near Yelagin Island in St Petersburg). Nadejda Bakerkina would sell champagne. The evening would conclude with a firework display and a special train would take the guests back to St Petersburg.

At the last moment all Mathilde’s carefully laid plans nearly fell through when the Tsar gave a gala dinner at Peterhof for King Peter of Serbia, whose daughter Elena was about to marry Prince Ioann Constantinovich. All the Grand Dukes, as well as Ioann’s brother Prince Gabriel, were obliged to attend. Afterwards they all hurried over to Strelna for the gala performance.

In fact it was a parody. Baron Gotsch imitated Mathilde’s Russian dance and later impersonated Olga Preobrajenska; Misha Alexandrov mimicked Anna Pavlova in
Giselle
, complete with tutu; while Mathilde, disguised as Nadejda Bakerkina, sold the champagne. Afterwards the guests went to ‘Felicien’ (in this case the jetty by the sea at Strelna) for supper, which was followed by fireworks and the promised special train.

During 1911 Mathilde petitioned the Tsar for the status of her son to be regularised. By a
ukaze
[order] of the Tsar dated 15 October 1911 the rank of a hereditary Russian nobleman was granted to ‘Vladimir Sergeievich Krasinsky, born 18 June 1902, of the Orthodox confession’. This
ukaze
was not made public.
³²

Vova was spoilt by his mother and doted on by his two putative fathers. When he was small Mathilde took him everywhere. ‘Rehearsals were abruptly halted by his shrill voice commanding, “Mamma! Vova wants a kiss!” Not another step did Kschessinska dance until Vova had been kissed.’
³³
As he grew older he was left mainly in the care of an English governess Miss Mitchell and his tutors Richard Vissotzky, the French tutor Franz Scherdlin and the Russian tutor George Pflüger. Vova often complained about Mathilde’s long absences at rehearsals and it was Sergei who watched over the young boy in her absence.

In 1911, at a time when children worked for fifteen hours a day in St Petersburg’s factories, a small lodge was built for Vova at Strelna. It had a drawing room, dining-room and two bedrooms, and was completely furnished right down to the china, linen and silver. (Mathilde was no
different from other aristocrats in her disregard for the workers’ plight.) Mathilde said that she used one season’s salary to build the lodge but it seems more likely that the money came from a Grand Ducal purse. Vova was most put out to find there was no bathroom and was not satisfied when told that he could easily run next door to the dacha. Mathilde had to promise to make up the deficiency the following year.

It has been claimed recently that Vova was not Mathilde’s only child and that she had a baby in the summer of 1911 at the age of thirty-nine.

According to an article in a Russian newspaper, during the autumn of 1910 (a period which is admittedly blank in Mathilde’s memoirs) she was resting at Strelna while the Tsar was staying at the Constantine Palace next door – without his family. During the spring and summer of 1911 Mathilde then disappeared from society, staying on the estate of the Sevenards (relatives of Sima Astafieva) in Tver province, only returning to the capital in July.

In June Joseph and his young wife Celina supposedly joined Mathilde at the Sevenards’ estate. Joseph had just returned from a visit to Switzerland, where his son Slava was staying for his health accompanied by a tutor. Slava was studying to go into farming. He spoke Russian, French, German and, in later life, English. Joseph never really came to terms with the separation from his eldest child, for whom his heart often ached. When Joseph and Celina returned to St Petersburg in November they took with them their infant daughter, also called Celina, whose birth certificate stated she was born in October. Local people later ‘recalled’ seeing Joseph’s wife with a small child during the summer.
³⁴

The inference of the article is that little Celina was really the daughter of Mathilde and Nicholas II. The whole claim revolves around Mathilde’s excessive fondness for her niece Celina whom she treated exactly the same as Vova, and Celina’s later talent as a dancer – hardly surprising for a member of the Kschessinsky family.

This claim does not withstand scrutiny. The child would have been conceived in the autumn of 1910. During this period Nicholas and his family were in Germany so that Alexandra could take the cure at Bad Neuheim. They stayed with her brother the Grand Duke of Hesse at nearby Schloss Friedberg from 17/30 August until 11/24 October. The visit is well documented. In October they transferred to Wolfsgarten, the Grand Duke’s property near Darmstadt, where they remained until their return to Russia on 1/14 November. During this period Nicholas
only left his family once – for a three-day courtesy visit to Kaiser Wilhelm II at Potsdam. One of the Empress’s ladies said that the Tsar found this stay abroad ‘rather trying’ and was glad to return to Russia.
³⁵

In the spring of 1911 Mathilde was in Monte Carlo, a stay broken by the hurried visit to London at the end of May [OS]. According to her memoirs she then performed at Krasnoe Selo (before the Tsar) during the summer season, celebrated her birthday at Strelna and was in London again with Diaghilev’s company towards the end of October [OS].

Little Celina was almost constantly at Strelna when Mathilde was there – but that does not make her Mathilde’s daughter.

Ten

‘T
HE
W
EALTHIEST
W
OMAN ON THE
S
TAGE
’

I
n 1911 Kschessinska and Diaghilev were reconciled at the home of General Bezobrazov. Each needed the other. Mathilde was attracted by the possibility of again acquiring Nijinsky as a partner, and had already been making ‘strategic moves’ in Diaghilev’s direction.
¹
Despite her age Kschessinska was still an excellent dancer, and would bring Diaghilev prestige and money. Her friendship would be a great help when he was forming his company for the new season, as she would attract other prominent dancers. Diaghilev never seemed to have much money and Mathilde was known never to spare any expense for performances in which she was involved. She had already turned down an offer from Victor Dandré to arrange a reconciliation with Diaghilev in return for her help over a lawsuit. Mathilde needed to add London to her list of conquests, especially after the recent successes of Karsavina and Pavlova, whom she knew were to be part of the next London season. If she could not beat Diaghilev, then the only option was to join him.

Mathilde therefore accepted Diaghilev’s offer to dance in London in the autumn of 1911, followed by a season in Monte Carlo in April 1912. To give her an opportunity to shine in London, Diaghilev (who ‘hated
fouettés
’) arranged to buy the whole of the Moscow production of
Swan Lake
, possibly with Mathilde’s help.
²
She would provide her own costumes. Mathilde was to dance Fokine’s
Carnival, Le Lac des Cygnes
(a special two-act version of
Swan Lake
), and part of
The Sleeping Beauty
, which Diaghilev re-christened
Aurora and the Prince
. She would share the honours as prima ballerina with Pavlova and Karsavina. All three would be partnered by Nijinsky.

There is no indication of how much Mathilde was paid for these performances but in 1910 Diaghilev’s dancers ‘received more than their total yearly salary at the Maryinsky’ for just a few months’ work, while Pavlova, Karsavina and Fokine all received between 10,000 and 25,000 francs (between £22,000 and £55,000 in today’s values). Mathilde’s fees would surely have been commensurate with the 55,000
francs earned by Chaliapin during Diaghilev’s 1909 season,
³
equivalent to £122,000 today.

Taking no chances this time with Vova’s health, Mathilde and Andrei left from St Petersburg’s Warsaw Station accompanied by Dr Milk, Vova’s English governess, Baron Gotsch, Mathilde’s maid, her dresser Ludmilla and Andrei’s staff. At the station Mathilde discovered that all the keys to her trunks had been left at the mansion. The station master agreed to hold up the train while her chauffeur returned to fetch them, but after ten minutes he could wait no longer. The keys would have to be posted to London. Mathilde’s jewels had been despatched separately by Agathon Fabergé and were awaiting her arrival in the strong room of Fabergé’s premises at 173 New Bond Street.

Mathilde’s party was bound for Calais but a derailed train at Berlin caused them to be diverted to Ostend. They arrived at dinner time but as their boat was not due to leave until midnight they set off in search of a hotel to dine and rest. In a raging squall, staggering from lamp-post to lamp-post, they tried to find a reasonable hotel in a deserted town where all the best establishments were closed for the winter. Despite the storm the boat put to sea on time. Vova was immediately sent to bed and Mathilde rested in her cabin, trying to forget the pitching and rolling of the vessel.

Mathilde swept into London on Tuesday 7 November [NS] and now had to explain to the customs officials why she could not open her trunks for inspection. Presumably with the help of Andrei, who spoke English, and the governess, Mathilde explained that she was an artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet, invited to perform with Diaghilev at Covent Garden and they would be able to see her name on all the posters. She then said that the vast amount of luggage contained merely her stage costumes with all their accessories, that there was nothing illegal, ‘no Russian cigarettes, no wine’. The officials huddled in a corner to deliberate. Finally one of them made a mark on the trunks indicating that they had been examined and freed. ‘I was extremely touched by such consideration to an artist and the belief in my word.’
⁴
No doubt the sight of a Russian Grand Duke in tow helped the officials come to a favourable decision.