Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (53 page)

Mathilde now stopped socialising. Yet despite chronic arthritis contracted during the war, which impaired her agility and stopped her showing the movements properly, she continued to teach. ‘You see, I have no means of existence apart from earnings, since I did not have a fortune abroad,’ she explained.
¹
Vova’s job in the wine trade now only brought in a fraction of the income they needed.

During that year Mathilde received a letter from the Director of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin. He said they knew little about her artistic abilities and he requested photographs and details of how she had prepared and interpreted her roles in Tchaikovsky’s ballets. Mathilde was only too happy to help, pleased that she was in contact with Russia (which at least proved she had not been forgotten) and that the museum was interested in her theatrical career. After detailing all the problems of her health and the difficulties of keeping the school running during the war, Mathilde added that she wanted to live life to the full and not be an old lady sitting in an armchair.

In another letter two years later the Director asked about Mathilde’s teaching methods and impressions of her top pupils. Offering congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the studio, he urged Mathilde to write her memoirs. He added that they would really appreciate the donation of the shoes Mathilde had worn for her final appearance at Covent Garden.

‘Many of my pupils shine on the stage,’ Mathilde replied. ‘Many have created their very own dance school. In America now there are nearly ten. And through these our Russian choreographic art will penetrate everywhere.’
²
She sent the shoes and Russian costume made for her last stage appearance in 1936.

Just over four months after Andrei’s death Elena died in Athens. Now all of Andrei’s siblings were dead but Mathilde still soldiered on, unwillingly it seems. On the first anniversary of Andrei’s death a service was held in the Russian Church. [It] was full of people and there were so many flowers,’ Mathilde told Felia.

Vova and I went to the church in the morning and decorated it with flowers and we prayed in the hour of [Andrei’s] death. Everybody was coming to me with such touching words. Last year when this terrible misfortune happened I could hold back my tears, I only cried when left on my own. But now I cannot and at the service I cried bitterly. I … so want to go to my beloved Andrei and I try to do everything to get to him.
³

Mathilde kept going because of Vova. She was always worried about him, ‘always afraid of something’.
⁴

Mathilde, as always, found comfort in religion. ‘I … often go to confession and receive communion, that helps me to be closer to him.’ She even wanted to try and contact Andrei through a medium but ‘my priest told me that it is a sin, you cannot disturb the soul and cause suffering. You see, Felia, what I have become,’ she added.
⁵

In 1958 Mathilde broke her solitude to attend a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet at the Paris Opéra. She was delighted to find it had retained all the style and traditions of the old Imperial ballet. Nothing had really changed since the Revolution.

The stars of the Bolshoi Ballet were forbidden to have any contact with Kschessinska on pain of being deprived of their visas. Despite this, visitors sometimes came – secretly, because it was dangerous – from Russia, where it was forbidden to even mention Mathilde’s name until the 1990s. Some were journalists, or former members of the old Maryinsky ballet company (now renamed the Kirov Ballet). To everyone who came from Russia the question was the same – ‘Who lives in my private residence in St Petersburg?’
⁶
She then launched into the old story of the ‘hoops’, but in the end always returned to the subject of her mansion and never tired of telling people how comfortable and well-looked-after it was and about the guests entertained there. These memories supported her, particularly in the twilight years.

In December 1958 Mathilde learnt of the death of Andrei’s cousin Marie at Mainau, her son’s home on Lake Constance in Germany. ‘Very sad that Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna died,’ Mathilde told
Nadezhda Sablina. ‘The Grand Duke and I loved her a lot. She was my best friend and we called each other “
tu
” … I have a wonderful photograph in 1953 with the Grand Duke [Andrei], the Grand Duchess and me.’ Mathilde continued. After Andrei’s funeral Marie went to Monte Carlo ‘where she started feeling worse. I did not see her again. From Monte Carlo she was taken to her son and she died there.’
⁷

By 1960 Mathilde’s leg was giving so much trouble that she was hardly able to walk and the students often drove her home after class, ‘but I am giving classes very well, everybody is surprised, even myself’. Mathilde continued working only to help Vova, ‘the only goal of my life’. Luckily that autumn she acquired an assistant, a former pupil, Trunina.
⁸

During that year Mathilde’s memoirs were published in France under the title
Souvenirs de la Kschessinska
. Like many prominent people she had used a ghost writer to put the manuscript into shape. This was Julia Sazonova-Slonimskaia, Russian writer, journalist and theatre critic, who lived in Paris at various periods during the emigration until her death in 1957.
⁹
Mathilde now especially lamented the loss of the Tsarevich’s letters in the Revolution. With the Soviet archives closed to the outside world and no means of being contradicted, Mathilde reconstructed their romance from memory, occasionally omitting inconvenient facts (like the jealous letters to Alexandra) and inserting others which it was impossible to corroborate. The English translation (finally done by Arnold Haskell) was called
Dancing in Petersburg
. ‘I would really like to know your opinion of my book, all my soul is in it,’ Mathilde wrote to Nadezhda Sablina.
¹⁰

The memoirs were well received. Many critics said the book was historic and gave an understanding of the splendour of Imperial Russia. Mathilde had given a rosy picture of her life. Asked why she had not mentioned all the difficulties Mathilde replied, ‘Oh, I couldn’t!’ Yet there were those in the Russian community in Paris who felt that she should not have written about her relationship with the murdered Tsar and at least one person returned her copy of the book.
¹¹
Nevertheless, Mathilde was excited, especially when the book was published in America. ‘It had great success, I receive a lot of touching and enthusiastic letters,’ she informed Felia. ‘I did not send the book to you, because it seems that you would not be interested,’ she added. ‘I had a big advance, everything is for Vova.’
¹²

In an article for
Dance Magazine
, the New York journalist Eileen O’Connor, who had been recommended to study with Mathilde in
1935 by Fokine, said that Kschessinska still showed great emotion at the mention of the Tsar. ‘When you read the accounts of the fabulous galas given for her … the fancy dress balls attended by royal patrons and balletomanes, the list of jewels and extravagant presents … it becomes obvious why neither Diaghilev nor other foreign offers could tempt her for long. She saw no future in touring the world.’
¹³

Mathilde entrusted the original manuscript in the Russian language to a diplomat for delivery to the Director of the Tchaikovsky Museum. Unfortunately, it appears that the man was not a diplomat at all – unknown to Mathilde he was probably a KGB agent. The parcel was confiscated and never arrived at Klin.
¹⁴

By 1961 Mathilde was having further problems. Already restricted in her movements because of her bad leg, she now needed a cataract operation on her left eye. Struggling to write to Felia, she was convinced that this would be her last letter. ‘I cannot pull myself together,’ she told Felia in January, and for the first time in their long correspondence ended her letter with a religious phrase, ‘God will keep you’.
¹⁵
The operation went well and Mathilde was under the care of Dr Zalewski. ‘I visited him 3 days ago and he was very pleased, saying that by Christmas I will see very well … I am not wearing glasses, I only use them to read and write.’
¹⁶

Vova persuaded some of his Russian friends to invite his mother to dinner. Although hardly able to walk, Mathilde was delighted, as no one had ever considered inviting her before. When the hosts put on a record of some ballet music she tried to dance the steps with her fingers on the table.
¹⁷

On 1 September 1962 Mathilde celebrated her ninetieth birthday. ‘Ninety years, who would believe it,’ she wrote incredulously. ‘My room was full of flowers, letters and despatches from all corners of the world.’ She could hardly believe so many people had remembered.
¹⁸

Yet she was convinced her end was near. ‘I am also sorting out my things, because it will be difficult for Vova,’ she wrote in April. ‘I have prepared clothes to be buried in and what to put in the coffin with me. Everything is sad!’
¹⁹

In one of her letters to the Tchaikovsky Museum Mathilde told the Director that she would like to learn the fate of her brother’s family. The museum had informed her that Joseph was dead, but what of his children?

Through the museum Mathilde obtained the address of Yuri Sevenard, a high-ranking engineer and son of her much-loved niece
Celina. Mathilde wrote to Yuri, begging him to meet her in Odessa because she wanted to tell him ‘something very important’, asking him to preserve her letter and to keep it secret.
²⁰

In 1995 Celina’s husband Constantine Sevenard, his son Yuri and grandson Constantine (‘Kostia’) were interviewed for a documentary about Mathilde which was broadcast on Swedish television. Although the elder Constantine at first said that the following incident occurred at the end of the 1960s, they all finally agreed it was around 1963:

‘One summer at the end of the 1960s [
sic
] she came in a boat to the Black Sea and the ship docked in the roads outside Odessa,’ said Constantine. ‘They were looking for relatives of Mathilde Kschessinska who were still alive. They found us, Yuri and me … no other relatives were still alive.’

Helena Sevenard, a relative of Sima Astafieva, took up the story, saying that they heard Mathilde had come to find her relatives but it would have been impossible for them to see her. At that time it was dangerous; they would all have been taken away.

Although this was the period of the thaw, in the 1960s the shadow of Stalin, who had died in 1953, still loomed large. Constantine senior explained that although they received the official request it was thought inappropriate to meet the mistress of Nicholas II and they had no choice but to refrain from seeing her. ‘Was that in 1963?’ he asked his son.

Yuri agreed. ‘I know that just that year Mathilde visited Odessa. I showed Papa a letter with Mathilde Kschessinska’s signature,’ he explained to the interviewer. ‘Papa said that it was best not to react to it.’ The letter was burnt. An unnamed relative of the Romanovs was later quoted in the
St Petersburg Times
as saying, ‘When [in Soviet times] the relatives of Kschessinska came here, [the Sevenards] always said, “We don’t know them”.’
²¹

There is also some confusion over whether it was Mathilde, the even older Julie (who was ninety-eight!), or someone else who was supposed to have visited Odessa. In 1963 Mathilde was almost ninety-one, reasonably fit, still teaching at the studio and still lucid. Although difficult to believe that she would have been willing to undertake such a journey, it is certainly not impossible. In any event, the meeting did not take place and the family never learnt Mathilde’s secret.

By 1964 she was still limping to catch the Metro every day, despite a broken hip. The money she earned was desperately needed. Vova told
Howard D. Rothschild that they needed $6,000 a year (£2,150) in order to live. Mathilde earned £358; Vova, who was almost sixty-two, also earned around £358 from his business delivering wine; another American, an old friend of Andrei, gave £716 annually; £225 each came from Andrei’s nephew Vladimir and Prince Troubetzkoy; and a further £115 each from Prince Bielosselsky and Mr Serguievsky. Rothschild, a devoted friend for nearly twenty years, began sending anonymous cheques to Mathilde through a New York bank from 1963. Mathilde, who said her financial situation was ‘very difficult’, was grateful for the extra money that enabled her to buy things she needed, even though she had no idea to whom she owed this generosity.
²²
Every year on 1 May Rothschild sent a flacon of Mathilde’s favourite perfume and he usually telephoned from America on her birthday. Georgia Hiden sent lily-of-the valley every May Day, frequent presents arrived from Diana, and other friends sometimes gave financial assistance.

In the summer of 1964 it all finally became too much and at the age of almost ninety-two Mathilde was forced to close her school after thirty-five years. The studio was sold for around £1,400 and Vova planned to use £350 of this money annually for the next four years to make up the deficit of Mathilde’s earnings. Unfortunately, the unnamed American then cut his contribution to £350 and Vova realised they would only be able to count on £1,050 to live on. The liquidation of the studio in 1965 yielded some funds but it was still not enough.