Imperial Dancer: Mathilde Kschessinska and the Romanovs (7 page)

At first it seems that the Tsar did not know things had passed beyond a casual flirtation. Witte, the Minister of Finance, said ‘the Emperor did not know of the affair, but some of those around him nosed it out and began urging that the Tsarevich be married off as soon as possible.’
⁴⁶
When the Tsar found out he was strict with his heir, perhaps because he was afraid that the Tsarevich would set up home with his ballerina and have children. For this reason it is said that the Empress Marie was at first opposed to the liaison and, through an intermediary, asked Kschessinska to refuse Nicholas entry to her father’s house. Later the Empress relented. If we accept Mathilde’s
published
version of events the Tsar virtually threw them together at her graduation, so he must have expected something to happen.

Nicholas began to buy small presents for Mathilde, paid for from a fund specially set up for the purpose. Although the tight-fisted Emperor frowned, the Empress encouraged her son. Mathilde at first refused to accept them and only did so when she saw the sorrow her refusal gave to the Tsarevich. (Given her lifelong love of jewels this seems hard to believe.) The first was a gold bracelet set with two large diamonds and a large sapphire. On it she had engraved the year of their first meeting and of his first visit, ‘1890–1892’. He also wrote her many letters, some scattered with literary illusions: ‘Forgive me, divine creature, for having
disturbed your rest!’ he quoted from
The Queen of Spades
. And from
Tarass Bulba
, whose love made the hero forget both father and country: ‘Think of
Tarass Bulba
and what Andrei did for love of a young Polish girl!’
⁴⁷

On Sundays she watched the horse races at the Michael Riding School, an enormous coliseum. Two of Nicholas’s regimental comrades always delivered flowers from the Tsarevich to Mathilde, who sat opposite the Imperial box. They soon became known as her aides-de-camp, and they called Mathilde their angel. Afterwards she drove back to town slowly, so that the Tsarevich’s carriage would overtake her.

On 29 April Nicholas paid his last visit before leaving for Denmark. ‘The elder sister returned from the opera and went to bed, leaving M. and me together,’ he said. It was their very best evening yet. ‘We spoke about a lot for a while in a soulful way.’
⁴⁸
Mathilde’s family discreetly turned a blind eye. ‘We broke up at 5 o’clock when the sun had already risen high,’ Nicholas recorded. ‘I ashamedly rode past the policemen!’
⁴⁹

At the end of the winter season Mathilde and Julie spent a few weeks at Krasnitzy before returning to St Petersburg to prepare for Krasnoe Selo. As the servants had remained in the apartment during the summer the sisters entertained friends. Among them were some of the Tsarevich’s regimental comrades, Volodia Svetschin (who was courting Julie), Baron Alexander Zeddeler, and Mathilde’s two aides-de-camp from the racecourse, Prince Peter Galitzine and Pepa Kotliarevsky. Volodia often invited them all to dinner parties at his villa near Strelna.

At the apartment Mathilde found the longed-for letter from Nicholas. They had begun to correspond more frequently. Although things were going well with the Tsarevich, Mathilde was unhappy. She was tired of the long rehearsals for Krasnoe Selo and not at all pleased with the programme for that season’s performance, telling Nicholas that she was even willing not to dance. Nicholas had evidently tried to persuade her to stay nearer to the camp and Mathilde replied in a letter dated 25 June, believed to be from 1892.

For the second time you are writing to me about Duderhof. I wanted to live there, but you did not recommend it! Many times I imagined how wonderful it could be … I am very glad that you asked me to write to you more often, and that I can give you pleasure in that way.
⁵⁰

Every spring promotions were announced in the
Journal of Orders
, the official weekly gazette of the Imperial theatres, which was displayed in
a frame near the rehearsal room. In 1892 Mathilde was promoted from
coryphée
to second soloist and her salary increased to 1,000 roubles a year.
⁵¹
At Krasnoe Selo she was now given the best dressing room, probably because of her connection with the Tsarevich, with two windows overlooking the Imperial family’s private entrance. She fitted it out with light wood furniture, hung the walls with cretonne and filled the room with her favourite flowers.

During this season Mathilde became friendly with Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, the commander of the Guards and Chief of the St Petersburg Military District, who often attended rehearsals. The Tsar’s 45-year-old brother sat gossiping in Mathilde’s dressing room greatly regretting, as he put it, that he was no longer young. He gave her his photograph, inscribed
Bonjour douchka
(little darling). Vladimir was President of the Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the Academy of Science. As a connoisseur of the arts he was an enthusiastic patron of the ballet and his loud voice boomed across the auditorium, disconcerting the dancers.

Another visitor was the Tsarevich, with whom she was happily reunited at the beginning of the Krasnoe Selo season. From her dressing room window Mathilde could watch him approach on horseback through the park. They chatted in her dressing room, then Nicholas sat in the Imperial box to the left of the stage, almost on the same level, and insisted that Mathilde sit on the edge of the box in between rehearsals so that they could continue talking. ‘Spent a very pleasant hour with M. Kschessinska, who is definitely making my head spin,’ he admitted.
⁵²
One evening he rode 13 miles there and back just to see Mathilde dance.

In the evening the artists stood at the windows on all three floors of the theatre to watch the Imperial family arrive. When Nicholas was present Mathilde’s dancing always had an exceptional brilliance. ‘Short excerpts from ballets were given, but where other girls performed as birds or fish Mathilde always danced the
adagio
[slow movement] with the cavalier,’ said one ballet historian.
⁵³
In the intervals there were plenty of visitors to her dressing room – Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich, Grand Duke Vladimir, Prince Christian of Denmark (later Christian X) and Grand Duke Frederick Franz of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (brother of Grand Duchess Vladimir), with whom Mathilde formed a deep friendship. Sometimes Mathilde, escorted by a theatre attendant, waited in the dark alley for Nicholas to return and take her to supper.

One July evening the Tsarevich arrived in his troika and swept Mathilde off for a romantic ride across Krasnoe Selo. Sixty years later she recalled the excitement of that ride through the deserted streets of the town and out across the plain: ‘our blood lashed by the wind and our eyes filled with fleeting shadows in a star-studded sky’. Nicholas was ecstatic. ‘The deed of abducting her was accomplished very quickly and in secret!’ he wrote triumphantly. Afterwards they had supper at the camp of the Preobrajensky Regiment, where Baron Zeddeler shared quarters with a fellow officer, Schlitter. Julie, who was in love with Zeddeler, was also present and the five of them passed a very merry evening until the Tsarevich left at 6 a.m. Nicholas’s infatuation is clear. ‘I happened to get a little sleep – what is all this!’ he wrote the next day. ‘On the other hand the reason was very good and for her such vigilance was slight.… After lunch I sat by myself and the whole recalled last night.’
⁵⁴
To him she was Mala, while she called him Nicky. Mathilde now had the Tsarevich at her feet – all her dreams were coming true.

According to gossip, around this time Nicholas and Mathilde were involved in a scandal. Nicholas took Mathilde and some friends to supper at Cubat’s in St Petersburg and during the course of a rather rowdy evening glasses and plates were smashed. When the party was still in full swing at 2 o’clock the following morning the restaurant’s owner decided enough was enough and said it was high time it came to an end. He was bluntly told to ‘mind his own business’.
⁵⁵
Soon afterwards a passing policeman, seeing lights on in the restaurant after hours, told the party in the private room to leave. The aide-de-camp (ADC), without disclosing the Tsarevich’s identity, asked for a little more time. The officer refused, forced his way in and was pushed aside.

The policeman left, but he telephoned General Wahl, the Prefect of the City Police. He proceeded to Cubat’s, forced his way into the room and found himself face to face with the Tsarevich. Nicholas was furious and in the course of an argument threw the contents of a bowl of caviar at General Wahl. After ‘a scene of indescribable disorder’ the situation was finally brought under control. The next morning Nicholas was summoned by his father.
⁵⁶

‘People who were present at this ill-fated supper told afterwards … that Nicholas wished to do something worse than pour the contents of a caviar dish on General Wahl’s head, but that Mlle Krzesinska [
sic
] had thrown herself between them,’ reported Princess Catherine Radziwill. She placed this incident in the summer of 1890, claiming that Nicholas was sent on his trip to the Far East to separate him from
Kschessinska. There appears to be no evidence for this, as in 1890 the couple hardly knew each other. ‘True or not, it is certain that after this night … [Nicholas] began visiting the beautiful dancer in her home, and very soon their relations became an established fact,’ Princess Radziwill continued.
⁵⁷

At the end of the manoeuvres the Tsarevich was travelling abroad. ‘In the evening took M.K. for a drive in a troika and said goodbye,’ he recorded sadly.
⁵⁸
Mathilde now received many tender letters. During the summer the Tsarevich, both in conversations and in letters, told Mathilde that he would like a closer acquaintance. While he was away Mathilde decided to take matters into her own hands and move out of her parents’ apartment. First she had to tell her father. Knowing the pain this would cause, she stood hesitating at the door of his study until Julie came to the rescue and told their father everything. Felix was devastated and asked Mathilde whether she realised that the Tsarevich could never marry her. Mathilde replied that she loved Nicholas and did not care about the future.

Felix Kschessinsky consented, on condition that Julie lived with her. Mathilde acquiesced, determined to take her happiness while she could. She would become the Tsarevich’s mistress at any price.

Three

‘I A
M UNDER
H
ER
S
PELL
’

I
n the opinion of Alice Keppel, being mistress to one of Europe’s heirs presented no special problems. Her job, Mrs Keppel said, was to ‘curtsey first and then leap into bed’.
¹
Mathilde’s first step towards this occurred in the autumn of 1892 when she moved to English Prospekt 18, a house owned by the composer Rimsky-Korsakov.

She may well have been attracted by the house’s rather scandalous history. It was built by the Tsarevich’s great-uncle Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaievich for his mistress, the ballerina Anna Kuznetsova, by whom he had five children between 1873 and 1883. Constantine even applied to the Tsar for permission to divorce his wife and marry her but this was refused. Even so, Kuznetsova and her children were eventually ennobled and Mathilde was not averse to repeating the success of her predecessor.

The furnished house had a large basement, ground floor and one upper floor. Constantine was said to fear an attempt on his life so iron shutters had been installed on the windows of his ground-floor study, which also had a secret safe built into the walls. Mathilde’s bedroom (significantly the only room to which she made any changes) had an adjoining dressing room. Julie’s room was next door. As there was no private electricity at this time the house was lit by oil lamps.

Behind the house was a garden enclosed by a tall stone wall. It led to a second garden with stables, a barn and various outhouses. Another wall separated this from the palace of the Tsarevich’s uncle Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. To help in the house Mathilde had a manservant, whose wife acted as the maid. There was also a caretaker, Ivan Kajourkin, who later became the boiler-man. He remained in Mathilde’s service for twenty-five years and after he lost a leg when saving furniture from icy flood waters in her cellar Mathilde ordered him an artificial limb. Later she had her own coachman, Larion, who drove her for ten years and only retired when cars replaced carriages. At first they had no cook and meals were sent in from neighbouring restaurants.

When Nicholas returned Mathilde gave a housewarming party. Among the many presents she received was a set of eight jewel-encrusted vodka glasses from the Tsarevich, together with his photograph, inscribed ‘To my dear Panni’. Panni was short for
Pannotchka
, meaning young Polish girl.
²
As one Russian author has pointed out, the house was rented by the Tsarevich for Kschessinska. He probably also paid the expenses. ‘The important point is, that the heir kept her.’
³
Without Nicholas’s help, Mathilde surely could not have afforded to maintain such a house and pay the servants’ salaries at the age of just twenty.