Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (42 page)

Andrei also wrote to the most senior surviving member of the family, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, who was living in Denmark with her daughter Olga. In reply he received a kind letter from Olga saying that the Dowager Empress favoured the union ‘and wished us a great deal of happiness’.
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Although Mathilde was a Catholic they were married in the Russian Orthodox Church of St Michael Archangel in Cannes on 30 January 1921. Owing to mourning for Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna it was a quiet wedding, conducted by Andrei’s confessor Father Gregory Ostroounov at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Only Vova and the four witnesses – Ali, Count Sergei Zoubov, Colonel Constantine Molostrov and Colonel Vladimir Slovitsky – were present. Mathilde made no mention of Julie, who surely must have been there to see her sister’s ultimate triumph. Nor, for once, did Mathilde give any details of what she wore.

Immediately after the ceremony Andrei kept his promise to formally present his wife to Grand Duke Cyril and Grand Duchess Victoria at their nearby hotel. Andrei and Mathilde then returned to Cap d’Ail for the wedding breakfast. Around the table, beautifully decorated by Arnold, the witnesses were joined by the Marquis Passano with his wife, and Lili Likhatcheva, her husband and eldest son. The celebrations lasted far into the evening. Later that night Andrei wrote in his diary: ‘My dream has at last come true. I am infinitely happy.’
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It was a sentiment echoed by Mathilde. After many years of waiting and, one could almost say, third time lucky, she had achieved her dearest ambition. Although the marriage was morganatic,
Mathilde Kschessinska was now Princess Krasinsky, a member of the Romanov family.

Unlike Boris’s wife Zina, for whom few of the Romanovs seemed to have a good word, Mathilde was ‘tolerated’ by the family. Andrei informed his relatives of the marriage but many of them were detached and uninterested.
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Most of them did not recognise Cyril’s right to be ‘Tsar in exile’ and grant titles. Although Andrei now adopted Vova, the titles of Princess and Prince Krasinsky given to Mathilde and Vova by Cyril were not considered legitimate by many of his relatives. Dimitri thought the funniest thing was the title given to Mathilde, which he said ‘reminds one of an operetta.’
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Nevertheless, soon after their wedding Mathilde and Andrei began to call on his royal relations. Their first visit was to Andrei’s cousin Queen Alexandrine of Denmark (elder daughter of Grand Duchess Anastasia of Mecklenburg-Schwerin), who was staying in Cannes. Mathilde found her ‘pleasant and kind’. Next they went to Nice to see Queen Marie of Roumania at the Chateau Fabron. Marie and her sister, Cyril’s wife Victoria, were out when they arrived but Cyril’s daughters Marie and Kyra happily showed Mathilde their rooms and Kyra’s collection of silver objects, while Andrei and Vova went to see their young brother Vladimir have his bath. Mathilde thought Queen Marie ‘very beautiful’ and was utterly charmed by her intelligent, witty conversation.
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In Paris they called on Queen Olga of Greece, mother-in-law of Andrei’s sister, at the Ritz. The short-sighted Queen stared at Mathilde through her lorgnettes.

Several friends also gave parties to celebrate the wedding. Among them was the wealthy Prince Paul Demidov, who gave a luncheon in honour of the newlyweds.

Back at Villa Alam Grand Duchess Anastasia continued to be a regular visitor. Once the mourning for Andrei’s mother had ended they all frequently went dancing and Mathilde gave parties again. One evening, as they were dancing in the drawing room after dinner, Arnold surprised them by turning out all the house lights so that they could see the garden, which he had illuminated with pretty Bengal lights. The young Peter Kovalyevskii, whose grandfather had been Minister of Education to Alexander III, recalled a visit to Villa Alam on 28 October 1921 during which Andrei, Mathilde and Vova spoke ‘spiritedly’ about their flight through the Caucasus. Sitting in candlelight, because the electricity had not been turned on, they discussed writers, literature and life in Russia.

On 15 February 1922 Princess Yourievsky, morganatic wife of Andrei’s grandfather Tsar Alexander II, died in Nice at the age of seventy-four. Mathilde and Andrei accompanied Grand Duchess Anastasia to the funeral. Within a month they received an urgent summons to Anastasia’s villa, where a servant told them she was gravely ill. The Grand Duchess was already unconscious and died soon afterwards.

As relatives arrived, including Anastasia’s brother Grand Duke Alexander (the ‘Sandro’ of Mathilde’s youthful evenings with the Tsarevich) and her niece Princess Xenia Georgievna, Mathilde helped Queen Alexandrine to sort her mother’s possessions. Andrei was given some Russian books and miniatures and there was even a memento for Vova.

In the spring Andrei’s niece Princess Olga of Greece, who was staying with her family in Nice, became engaged to Queen Alexandrine’s son Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. By September the engagement had been broken.

Sima had settled in England, becoming the first Russian to open a ballet school in London. Beside the Chelsea studio was accommodation for her and Slava, who on 15 September 1919 married Margot Luck, one of his mother’s pupils.

In 1921 Mathilde invited Slava, Margot and Sima to stay at Villa Alam. Sima was a striking figure, ‘tallish, worldly and elegant with slender legs and an indefinable mixture of the stylish and the grubby that only such an aristocratic personality from Czarist Russia could hope to carry off successfully’, recalled Margot Fonteyn.
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She wore a silk bandeau round her head, white cotton stockings, very high heels, long strings of pearls and smoked Balkan Sobranies through a long cigarette holder. Every year Sima now spent her two weeks’ holiday at Cap d’Ail with Mathilde and Andrei.

Diaghilev had made another unsuccessful attempt to lure Mathilde back to the stage in 1921, this time to dance
Sleeping Beauty
with Pierre Vladimiroff in London. Using her powerful connections, Mathilde had offered to help Vladimiroff escape from Russia soon after the Revolution. He refused but finally escaped during Easter 1920 by skiing across the Finnish border disguised as a peasant. Felia Doubrovska, who had graduated into the Maryinsky in 1913, went with him and they married on 11 January 1922.

Diaghilev had an agreement whereby he provided dancers for the opera season in Monte Carlo and then had his own ballet season
before the company moved to Paris. The company was based in Monte Carlo from November until April every year and their presence ensured that Mathilde visited, or was visited by, many old friends. Villa Alam’s guest book was soon filled with signatures. Virginia Zucchi, Lady de Bathe (the former Lillie Langtry), Anna Pavlova, Alexander Mossolov, former head of the Imperial Chancellery, and the Polish-born tenor Jean de Reszke were among the visitors during the 1920s, as well as many old friends from the Maryinsky Theatre. Diaghilev introduced Mathilde to Arnold Haskell, who would become one of her most fervent admirers and who always regretted that she never returned to the stage.

In 1922 Tamara Karsavina arrived in Monte Carlo. She escaped at the height of the Revolution with her British husband and also joined Diaghilev. Karsavina wrote admiringly of Mathilde: ‘Although she had lost practically all her wealth, she was as cheerful as ever, without a single wrinkle or trace of worry. … She made a joke of her many privations and viewed her present situation with philosophy and courage.’
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When Mathilde recounted how she continued to practise ballet exercises even without proper shoes, Tamara immediately offered one of her own pairs.

Despite their somewhat reduced circumstances Mathilde and Andrei maintained as much as possible the lifestyle of members of the Imperial family. Besides Margot and Arnold, Mathilde had her maid Ludmilla, while Ivan Kournossov acted as manservant and looked after Andrei and Vova. To take care of the estate there was the gardener, Botin, who had looked after the grounds all through their six years’ absence. They lunched at Claridges in Nice, danced at the Carlton in Monte Carlo, gambled at the Casino and made regular trips to Paris where they often bumped into Cyril or Boris. Zina’s Paris salon was ‘frequented by cosmopolitan
nouveaux riches
who were excited by the proximity to a “real grand duke”.’
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Cyril’s pretensions had already divided the family, with Grand Duke Dimitri acting as mediator between Andrei and Boris on one side, with Nicholasha and his brother Peter on the other. After one stormy meeting with Andrei, Dimitri wrote in his diary: ‘he is absolutely under the sway of his clever, cunning Kschessinska.’ In 1922, with the presumed deaths of the Tsar, Tsarevich and Grand Duke Michael, Cyril proclaimed himself Guardian of the Throne. Two years later he proclaimed himself ‘Emperor’ and raised the status of his children. His only son now became ‘Grand Duke’ Vladimir and his daughters were
created ‘Grand Duchesses’. Apart from Andrei and Boris, few members of the Imperial family supported his action. His claims split the
émigré
monarchist movement and caused a rift in the Imperial family which has never healed. As Cyril’s mother had not converted to Orthodoxy until 1908, and because he had married his divorced first cousin, many
émigrés
claimed he had no right to the throne at all.
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Although Princess Radziwill said that Mathilde and Andrei received few people, seldom left Villa Alam for long and were ‘never seen in any of the gay places for which the Riviera is so famous’
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they continued to entertain, living off the proceeds of Miechen’s rubies, which were reputed (probably erroneously) to have been sold for twenty million francs (equivalent to over twelve and a half million pounds today). These included a Cartier tiara containing the 5.22 carat Beauharnais ruby, purchased in 1908, which was now sold back to Cartier. Miechen’s children had been friendly with Cartier since his first visit to St Petersburg in 1909. Through Andrei, Mathilde also formed a friendship with Cartier which lasted for many years.
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Vova’s twenty-first birthday was celebrated on 1 July 1923 (the equivalent of 18 June in the old Russian calendar) with a dinner party in the Chateau de Madrid in Paris for their closest friends. Afterwards they went on to the Chateau Caucasian, a Russian nightclub, and listened to gypsy music into the small hours. They were joined by Grand Duke Dimitri, who was living the life of a playboy, his wealth depleting rapidly. He was sometimes reduced to being an idle spectator at the Casino because he could not afford to play.

The Casino was to be Mathilde’s downfall.

Julie and her husband had been living with them since the flight from Russia. Ali’s health had been causing concern since the war, when he underwent various courses of treatment in the Crimea. He died on 18 November 1924 and was buried in the cemetery at Cap d’Ail. Julie was devastated and consoled herself with a little dog called Tobik.

France (and Paris in particular) had become home to thousands of
émigré
Russians. At first they believed that the Bolshevik regime would fall and that their return to Russia was only a matter of time. The death of Lenin in 1924 raised their hopes – but Petrograd was renamed Leningrad and Stalin’s iron hand took control.

Like other exiled Romanovs, Andrei and Mathilde were involved in charity work. From 1925 Andrei was patron of the Alexandrino Lycée
in Nice. One hundred pupils attended classes at the Villa Saint-Cyr in avenue du Dauphiné. Andrei visited regularly and gave each child a blue Cross of St Andrei with the Imperial crown and his initials. At Villa Alam parties were given for the pupils, with a buffet in the large dining-room. Some of the children had never seen a fresh pineapple before and thought it was an animal. One little girl returned from the bathroom and told her incredulous friends that there were two birds in a cage on the window ledge. ‘That is a
real
Imperial house!’ the girls agreed.
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Every year Andrei organised a gala at the Hotel de Paris to collect funds for the school. Mathilde usually arranged for Diaghilev’s company to perform and there was a lottery with prizes from the most exclusive establishments. One year King Gustav of Sweden won three first prizes, which included a case of champagne and a Molyneux coat. Rejecting Mathilde’s suggestion that they be delivered later to his hotel, he insisted on taking everything in his car to give to his granddaughters. Even after they moved to Paris, Andrei and Mathilde returned twice to Monte Carlo to give dinner parties in aid of the Lycée. In 1934 a second Lycée Russe was founded in the Boulevard d’Auteuil, Boulogne-sur-Seine in Paris. The inauguration was attended by Mathilde, Andrei and Vova, as well as Lady Lydia Deterding. Among the older pupils in the spring of 1935 were Andrei’s nephew Vladimir, and Tihon and Guri Kulikovsky, whose mother Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna visited the school from her home in Denmark in 1934.

After the fall of the Greek monarchy in 1923 Prince and Princess Nicholas of Greece moved to Paris with their daughters Olga, Elizabeth and Marina. Elena founded a home for Russian refugees on the Riviera and presided over charity galas, although she doubtless preferred her daughters not to associate with their scandalous Aunt Mala.

Having again failed to persuade Mathilde to return to the stage, this time to dance
Lac des Cygnes
with Serge Lifar, in 1924 Diaghilev began to call on her experience. Mathilde now coached Vera Nemtchinova and Diaghilev’s new ‘baby ballerina’, fourteen-year-old Alicia Markova, in
Lac des Cygnes
. Diaghilev was on good terms with Princess Charlotte and Prince Pierre of Monaco. The princess, an avid balletomane, sometimes came to rehearsals and always attended performances. Cyril and Victoria sometimes attended, as did King Manuel of Portugal and Grand Duke Michael Michaelovich and his wife Sophie.