Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (48 page)

By the time Mathilde and Andrei returned to Paris the situation in Europe was worrying. The threat of war loomed, France recalled its reservists and Paris was in darkness. The Munich Agreement between Britain, France, Germany and Italy (whereby Czechoslovakia had to surrender to Germany some border territory mainly inhabited by Germans) was signed on 28 September. Mathilde and Andrei spent a few weeks in Cauterets for the Grand Duke’s health but decided not to go further because of the uncertain situation. Vova had travelled south.

Then a telephone call alerted them to a sudden deterioration in Cyril’s health. There were symptoms of gangrene in his leg and an operation might be necessary. Cyril’s secretary asked Andrei and Boris to come to St Briac immediately. His condition was so bad that they decided to move him to the American Hospital in Paris where, despite the doctors’ efforts, Cyril died peacefully on 12 October. He was buried beside Victoria in Coburg.

Cyril’s role as self-proclaimed head of the Imperial House was now taken over by his only son, 21-year-old Vladimir, who did not take the title of ‘Emperor’.

Mathilde continued to take an interest in former pupils and many of them sent her presents. Thanking Georgia Hiden for the gift of some Virginia ham, Mathilde said she had received a visit from Yvette Chauviré, currently dancing at the Monte Carlo Opera. ‘I would like to write to you more often, but I have so little time,’ Mathilde added.
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With the number of pupils approaching 150 at the end of the school year in 1939 Mathilde and Andrei spent three weeks at Aix-les-Bains, going on to Lake Geneva. Mathilde had heard that Nijinsky was in a sanatorium at Kreuzlingen near the Swiss/German border. He had been declared incurably insane in 1919 and his memory was blank. Mathilde wanted to visit him, certain that he would remember his first stage
partner, but the European situation was serious and they had to cut short their holiday. The visit to Nijinsky did not take place.

On 23 August Germany and the Soviet Union signed a Non-Aggression Pact. In France the reservists and hotel workers were called up and people began to return to their homes. General mobilisation seemed imminent. On 25 August Mathilde and Andrei boarded an overcrowded train and returned hurriedly to Paris. The situation there was alarming. Defence measures were in force. At night there were blackouts. Air-raid sirens were tested, gas masks distributed and instructions were given on the procedure in case of air raids. As people were advised to leave Paris, the buses almost came to a standstill and the Metro rarely ran.

On 1 September Hitler invaded Poland. Two days later France and Britain were again at war with Germany.

Sixteen

S
TRUGGLE FOR
S
URVIVAL

‘W
e had a nice vacation time but only the end was troubled by the last sad events,’ Andrei wrote to a friend in England. ‘We came back to Paris and maybe will move to some place out of town if events force us to do so. Nobody may say what will happen next but we keep hopeful.’
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With the outbreak of war in 1939 all their plans changed and they were advised to leave Paris as soon as possible. With two other families they rented a villa at 14 avenue des Pages, Le Vésinet, 11 miles from the capital. Hiring two taxis, they piled on everything they could, including the dogs, cats and the pet canary. As they left Paris early the following morning the air-raid sirens were already wailing and when they arrived at Le Vésinet they were forced to spend three hours in the air-raid shelter. Although this time it was a false alarm they soon became used to these occurrences.

As France settled into the ‘phoney war’ Mathilde decided she must reopen the studio. All the foreign pupils had returned home but most of the students were Parisian. Although they had initially left the capital Mathilde hoped they would come back.

From the beginning of October Mathilde began commuting into Paris nearly every day, a twenty-minute journey by train and Metro, to give lessons. The money from this enabled them to live. Unfortunately there were few students and if the situation stayed this way Mathilde did not know whether she would be able to continue working. They could only hope for the best.
²

As if out of spite, that winter was particularly severe but Mathilde struggled into Paris in the deep snow. In her memoirs she glossed over the discomforts, saying that their house was comfortable and well heated, friends came from Paris on Sundays and almost every evening someone came to dinner.

The reality was somewhat different. The house was badly heated and the main rooms were without any heating at all. Every morning they
simply froze, Andrei explained to a friend as they struggled through the bitter winter. Julie was still living with them but on 8 December she was upset by the death of her dog Tobik, who had been with her since Ali died fifteen years earlier.
³

Christmas came. Mathilde and Andrei celebrated with a tree at Le Vésinet and another in Paris. The situation was calm, so they went to church in Paris as usual and then returned to Villa Molitor with their guests to light the candles on the tree. Later they also lit the tree at Le Vésinet.

As 1940 dawned and still nothing happened the theatres and restaurants remained open and people flocked back to Paris. About one-fifth of Mathilde’s pupils had returned but because of the blackout regulations lessons had to finish earlier. Although Andrei and Mathilde tried to keep their spirits up sometimes they gave in to bouts of depression.
⁴

On 19 January, unable to stand the cold house at Le Vésinet any longer, they returned to Villa Molitor. The number of pupils fluctuated but they were surviving and life was bearable. Mathilde received a greeting from Beryl Morina for her ‘birthday’ (actually her name day) which cheered her enormously. The loss of all the foreign pupils was upsetting. ‘I also hope, that when the war will be over, to see you again in my studio, see you work and advance in your art. It is very hard for me not to have you here,’ she told Beryl.
⁵

In March 1940 the
Tatler
optimistically published a feature on the White Russians in Paris who were waiting for the fall of the Soviet regime. ‘An outstanding and gallant figure in this collection is the Princess Romanovsky-Krasinsky, wife of the Grand Duke André of Russia, heir to the Russian throne [
sic
], who started a ballet school…to keep herself and her husband from starvation,’ the
Tatler
reported.
⁶

Then on 9 April 1940 Hitler invaded Denmark. By the following month Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium had been over-run and in June Norway fell. The Germans rolled towards the English Channel and the British forces were evacuated from Dunkirk.

As the situation deteriorated Mathilde continued to teach. ‘In two weeks’ time it will be our Easter. It is difficult to say how we are going to spend this holiday,’ she wrote on 14 April. Easter was the most important festival in the Orthodox Calendar, more important to Russians even than Christmas. ‘How wonderful it was when we were together during this day…I am so often thinking about you,’
she wrote sadly to Felia Doubrovska. ‘There is a lot of work, a lot of students came back to Paris,’ she continued more hopefully.

I have to do a lot of productions and they bring better income, but for all that it is beyond comparison with the income before and life is very hard. Adzhemova performed with Lifar in Cannes. She danced
Spectre
and two dances of my choreography. She had colossal success … I do not go anywhere, but sometimes have dinner with the Adzhemovs. I do not receive, except some guests like Kulnev and Lifar’s brother. Sereozha [Serge Lifar] visits my studio often … I played poker at Tamara’s, but the game does not attract [me] as I do not have any spare money to lose. Life is boring but peaceful so far. But I still think that the war will finish soon. What joy it will be if we meet again.
⁷

Mathilde was over-optimistic. By early June Hitler had turned his attention to France.

Panic seized the people of Paris as the Germans advanced. The Government left on 8 June. Everyone now had the same thought – to flee. Although Mathilde and Andrei at first tried to lie low it soon became apparent that catastrophe was inevitable. They decided to go to Boris’s villa in Biarritz to await the outcome of events. Yet assuming they could secure tickets and send off the luggage there still remained the problem of boarding the train.

The stations and the squares around them were crammed with thousands of people who had the same idea. An estimated two million people fled from Paris. Finally Mathilde, Andrei, Vova and Julie obtained two compartments in a sleeping car, fought their way to the carriage with difficulty and gratefully drank a bottle of champagne thoughtfully provided by the conductor. War or no war, Mathilde continued to do things in style.

They left on 11 June, arriving the following day after many delays. On 14 June German military vehicles rolled on to the Place de la Concorde. Soon huge swastikas were hanging beneath the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Refugees were pouring into Biarritz, which the Germans reached on 26 June. The heartrending sight of families fleeing their homes clutching a few possessions and sleeping in their cars reminded Mathilde all too clearly of their flight from Russia twenty years earlier.

France signed an armistice with Germany on 22 June, and with
Italy (which had entered the war on the Axis side) a few days later. Most of France now became occupied territory; the south-west was under Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy government. Officially, France’s war was over.

Mathilde now lost contact with Slava and her friends in England. Under the inspired leadership of Winston Churchill Britain continued to hold out against the nightly Nazi bombing raids.

With Biarritz now occupied there was little point in staying. Besides, they had no financial means unless Mathilde reopened the studio. So at the end of September, after three and a half months in Biarritz, they returned to Paris. Many other people did the same.

In spite of the occupation they found schools, restaurants, theatres, trains and newspapers running on a nearly normal basis. Even the Opéra reopened in November. Mathilde’s studio flourished throughout the winter, although there were no lights at night and she had to be home before the curfew. Then came a new anxiety.

On 22 June 1941 Germany invaded Russia.

The German invasion of Russia divided the
émigré
community. Some were appalled at the idea of Germans on their native soil, but others saw collaboration with the Nazis as an opportunity to put an end to Stalin’s regime.

On 22 June Vova went to church as usual and then caught the train to Le Vésinet to spend the day with friends. Shortly after he had left Paris the German police called at Villa Molitor to arrest him. Finding he was out all day they departed, although one of them returned later just to make sure, and said he was to report to the German police the next day without fail.

Vova returned from Le Vésinet at midnight, having told his parents on the telephone that he would obey the summons. In the morning Mathilde and Andrei watched him walk away down Villa Molitor with no idea when they would see him again. All day Andrei telephoned around Paris for news but all they could learn was that many Russians had been arrested, although most people thought this was merely for the purposes of a census.

According to Serge Lifar, Vova ‘was taken prisoner in the absence of the Governor of Paris’, Bernard Radermacher, personal representative of Dr Goebbels, who was ‘more or less the director of artistic activities in occupied Paris’.
⁸
Lifar said that he personally contacted Radermacher, after which all the prisoners

were immediately released – with excuses. Later on they all had important jobs in German departments dealing with Russian affairs or were put at the head of purchasing units set up by the Germans. But all of these people – still later on – discovered that they had been keen resistants and hastened to remember that one night’s imprisonment – due to a mistake!
⁹

In Vova’s case Lifar appears to be mistaken, as he certainly was not released straight away.

Along with other parents, Andrei ‘anxiously and repeatedly’ visited the German police headquarters.
¹⁰
Only four days later did they learn from a Russian who the Germans had released that Vova was imprisoned at Compiègne, in an army camp hemmed in by barbed wire. The prisoners were said to be treated well and adequately fed but Vova had taken no essentials with him when he left. Soon they received an urgent appeal for toilet articles and clean underclothes.

Vova’s association with Alexander Kazem-Bek and the Young Russians was responsible for his internment. At the beginning of the war Kazem-Bek had been arrested and his papers were confiscated by the French police. Andrei had taken ‘special pleasure’ in informing Dimitri, now living in Switzerland, of this fact. Now Vova was regarded by the German occupying forces as pro-Soviet because of his activity with the Young Russians. It was because of this past activity that, when Andrei swallowed his pride and sought help from prominent Russian
émigré
leaders, they refused to help secure Vova’s release. On 26 June Vassili Maklakov, former Russian Ambassador to France, replied to Andrei’s letter by telling him politely but firmly that ‘Your Highness will understand’ that ‘they could not help’.
¹¹