Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (56 page)

She never complained, never dwelt on what might have been. Life was for enjoying – and Mathilde enjoyed it to the full. Above all, she was a born survivor.

Mathilde wrote her own obituary. In a letter to Felia Doubrovska in 1949, she said simply: ‘My life was beautiful.’
⁵⁹

Mathilde’s funeral took place at the Russian Church at 12.30 p.m. on 10 December. Masses of people filled the church. Serge Lifar was a pall-bearer and among the flowers which submerged the coffin was a wreath from Paul-Louis Weiller. Vova was supported by his cousin. ‘Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Vladimir were by my side the whole time,’ he told Howard Rothschild a few days later.
⁶⁰
After the service Mathilde’s coffin was placed beside Andrei’s in the crypt. Vova was now alone.

Mathilde Kschessinska, Prima Ballerina
assoluta
of the Imperial Ballet, had taken her final curtain.

Postscript

V
ova had made no attempt over the years to prepare for his mother’s death, either mentally or financially. ‘Certainly life was leaving her progressively and her strength was visibly giving up,’ he told Georgia Hiden. ‘Nevetheless, there was nothing to suggest such a close end.’
¹
As he said, on her death the estate would be liquidated and he would have nothing. In truth, although loyal and devoted to his parents Vova was spoilt and not really equipped for life in the real world. His cousin, with whom he maintained sporadic contact, described him as ‘a lost soul’.
²
Financially he was absolutely hopeless.

Nevertheless, Mathilde’s funeral had to be paid for – about £508 for the undertakers, £80 for services at the house and the Russian Church, and £12 for the announcement in a Russian newspaper. A total of £600. Vova also wanted to buy a plot in the Russian cemetery at Ste Geneviève-des-Bois, build a modest monument and transfer his parents’ coffins there.

All this was beyond poor Vova, whose salary was minimal after a series of accidents to his hip and leg. Diana Menuhin wrote to Colette Duhamel, one of Mathilde’s former pupils whose husband was at the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, to tell her of Vova’s plight in the hope of obtaining some government help. Jacques Duhamel promised to do what he could. Loyal friends in England, France and America, as well as organisations such as the Royal Ballet Benevolent Fund and the
Dancing Times
Fund, helped with the funeral costs and medical bills, despite the fact that money from the two funds was technically meant for Mathilde and legally they were not obliged to pass it on to her son. Vova hoped the RBBF would continue their help for another year. Margot Fonteyn was very generous, as was Claudine Booth (another former pupil now married to the wealthy George Courtauld) who when she passed through Paris had often given Vova money to buy something for his mother.

Vova also had to be rehoused as soon as possible, as Villa Molitor was too expensive for him to run. The new accommodation had to be cheap, somewhere in the Auteuil/Passy area and near the centre
so that he could get to work. Vova could not envisage this happening in less than a year, as his eyes were bad and he was still feeling the effects of his accident. The liquidation of Mathilde’s affairs would also take time. Unnecessary furniture, pictures and other objects had to be sold and the numerous files moved to other locations. It was suggested that the Dance Museum in Stockholm might be interested in buying Mathilde’s ballet relics but, as Vova explained, she had left few relics, just a few photographs.

Friends applied to the French authorities to allow Vova (who they mistakenly called a descendant of Alexander III) exemption from taxes and various other contributions as a political refugee. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs now took over the question of rehousing Vova.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maurice Schuman, finally said that he would see if it was possible to house Vova in one of the rented apartment blocks belonging to the City of Paris. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed that the aid given to Mathilde would now be transferred to her son. By May 1972 Vova had signed the contract for an apartment at number 8 rue de la Source, Paris 16. He expected to move around 1 July, although he hated the thought of moving.

On Tuesday 27 June 1972, after a service in the Russian Church, the coffins of Mathilde and Andrei were moved to the tiny plot Vova had bought in Ste Geneviève-des-Bois. Once again money was collected to pay for a fitting memorial and contributions poured in from former pupils and friends. The transfer cost £110. Although the church charged no fee (apart from the choir), Vova said he would give what he could. The cost of the new tomb was beyond his means and he relied solely on the generosity of friends. The Royal Ballet Benevolent Fund made one more payment, and other friends contributed generously as a final gesture in memory of Mathilde.

Early in August Vova moved to rue de la Source to begin a new life at the age of seventy. He was delighted with his ‘very cosy’ little apartment. ‘There is a small garden and it seems like I am in the country,’ he wrote. Mme Anastasia Iolkina, who had once looked after Mathilde’s studio, cooked and kept house. When her daughter Genia died from cancer in the summer of 1972 it was once again Vova who arranged the funeral.
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Monsieur Georges and Mme Anastasia now became Vova’s ‘family’.

He continued to keep in touch with his mother’s former pupils and friends, always telling them the progress of the tomb, never forgetting to add that ‘everything is expensive here’
⁴
– and never forgetting to thank them for the inevitable donation which followed. He kept
reasonably busy with his wine business, he had a small pension, his salary and some financial help from his cousin Vladimir which enabled him to live.

On the eve of the first anniversary of Mathilde’s death Mass was said in the Russian Church. On the actual anniversary Vova went to pray at his parents’ tomb.

In March 1973 Vova was admitted to the Hospital St Antoine, Paris, for a hernia operation, remaining there for two weeks. He spent the summer partly with Vladimir and Leonida at St Briac and partly in Plombières, delighting in the open air. Monsieur Georges had recently died aged over eighty but Vova was still looked after by Mme Anastasia. In October he sent his uncle Joseph’s letters back to Slava with a friend who was returning to England.

Vova died suddenly in the Hospital Necker at 149 rue de Sèvres on 23 April 1974, aged seventy-one. According to one source, he was admitted for an appendix operation and died from the effects of an injection of a drug to which he was allergic.
⁵

After the funeral service at 2 p.m. on 29 April he was buried with Andrei, Mathilde and her devoted maid Ludmilla in the small plot at Ste Geneviève-des-Bois. Poor Vova never knew who his father really was. Mathilde took the secret with her to the grave.

The house in Villa Molitor is still inhabited and, certainly until 1995, the bedroom where Mathilde died remained unchanged. Even her bed was still there.
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The house on the English Prospekt in St Petersburg, now Prospekt Maklina, where Mathilde once entertained the Tsarevich, is still there. On the eve of the Revolution Prince Alexander Romanovsky, 7th Duke of Leuchtenberg, managed to sell it and bring many of his family’s valuables out of Russia. The house was badly damaged in the Siege of Leningrad and its original appearance was lost during restoration work. It is currently occupied by the military and few visitors to St Petersburg today realise that it was the scene of passionate encounters between the Tsarevich and Mathilde Kschessinska.

Andrei’s palace on the English Embankment (the former Von Dervis mansion) has also survived and was at one time a Soviet Palace of Weddings.

After the October Revolution the Kschessinska mansion became the property of the Petrograd Soviet. Various organisations moved in and out, including a clinic and, in the late 1920s a
boarding school for mentally retarded children. The ballerina Nina Tikonova, a friend of Mathilde’s, later recalled seeing children on the mansion’s terrace chopping up a white grand piano with an axe and throwing porcelain statues against the wall of the house. From 1931 to 1935 the mansion passed to the Society of Old Bolsheviks, changing hands twice more before 1937. All these organisations adapted the house to their own requirements, blocking up windows and doors so that the original layout of many of the rooms, plus what was left of the original furniture, disappeared.

In 1937 the mansion was again altered and restored and on 6 November 1938 it opened as the Museum of S.M. Kirov. ‘So the private residence of Kschessinska stood as a mouthpiece of party ideology’, as two recent writers expressed it.
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In 1956 it was connected to the neighbouring Brandt residence by a two-storey addition (now the entrance to the house) and reopened on 5 November 1957 as the Museum of the October Revolution. Eventually the room used as a study by Lenin (Vova’s room) was restored, and by the 70th anniversary of the October revolution in 1987 the central enfilade of ground-floor rooms had been returned to their former beauty. These included the entrance hall, marble staircase and Winter Garden. The White Hall was damaged during the Revolution and the war but has now been completely renovated, although the only original part left is the floor.

With the fall of communism in 1991 the mansion became the Museum of Russian Political History, with a small exhibition devoted to Mathilde in one corner. Theatrical costumes, letters, photographs and other personal items were displayed. Mathilde’s dresses were found in the entresol of Joseph’s home in St Petersburg, and also in the basement of her former home in Paris, by Constantine Sevenard, the State Duma representative, Joseph’s great-grandson.
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One of these items, a light green gold-spangled concert dress, was displayed in the museum.

Other exhibitions have included in 1992 ‘Mathilde Kschessinska, Star of the Imperial Ballet’; and in 1995 ‘Dedicated to Mathilde Kschessinska’, for which Constantine Sevenard donated some items belonging to Mathilde and Joseph,
⁹
including letters, a pencil sketch of the Tsarevich done by Mathilde, and photographs of Kschessinska in her stage costumes from
The Queen of Spades, Esmeralda
and
The Sleeping Beauty
.

Sometimes concerts are held in the White Hall and it seems as if the ghost of Mathilde Kschessinska hovers by the side of the dancers, immersed again in the glories of the Russian ballet.

One of the more enduring legends about Kschessinska’s mansion
is that it was a gift from Nicholas II, who had a tunnel constructed underneath the River Neva to the Winter Palace opposite, so that he could make secret visits to his mistress. Visitors to the mansion have often asked to see the tunnel and experts have persistently tried to find it, but its existence has never been established.

In the summer of 2001 a rumour circulated that before her flight in 1917 Kschessinska had hidden a cache of treasure underneath the house. A fabulous fortune was said to have been concealed there, estimated by experts to be valued at approximately $2 million.

The house had already been searched several times. The Bolsheviks looked for German gold and German money with which to finance their revolution. They did not find it. Over the years the house was repeatedly altered by the Soviets and according to one rumour, during these alterations the building was thoroughly searched for hidden treasure. In the 1930s the parquet floors were torn up, the space between the storeys was opened and walls knocked down. The attic and cellar were searched and the garden dug up on the pretext of equipping the place with ‘services’. Constantine Yurievich Sevenard, great-great-nephew of Mathilde, told the media that a hoard of treasure was buried about 10 to 20 metres below the house in a network of hiding places underneath the building. Gold, silver, jewels and porcelain were among the items said by Russian
émigrés
to be concealed. ‘The authority of my sources is beyond question,’ Mr Sevenard stated and he expected the hoard to include both ‘Kschessinska’s own possessions and valuables from the Romanovs.’
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He believed that the hiding of valuables took place between July and October 1917 and claimed to have confirmation from people who knew Mathilde in Paris, and from old photographs taken in the summer of 1917. Yet it would have been impossible to hide anything in the house at that time without being seen. A more plausible explanation, given that the house was completed just after the 1905 Revolution and designed so that its entrance did not face the street, would be that items were hidden soon after the house was built, in case of another revolution. This has never been proved.

With a small-scale dig expected to begin ‘within weeks’ staff at the mansion were sceptical about the claim. ‘There have been all sorts of myths, legends and different versions about this house,’ said the museum’s director Yevgeny Artemev. ‘This is just another one.’
¹¹

A few days later the
Daily Telegraph
reported that ‘jewellery, old coins, banknotes and rare books’ had been discovered in a box hidden
18 feet below the house. It proved to be a hoax perpetrated by local television, the Museum’s management and the Agency of Investigative Journalism.
¹²

Although the idea of a cache hidden beneath the house is alluring, no more has been heard of Kschessinska’s treasure in the St Petersburg mansion.