by Greg King
What did this mean, this sudden outburst of bad, ungrammatical German? How could it be that not a single person before 1925 noted any peculiarities in her German if she indeed spoke it so badly? Surely someone would have recorded this fact at the Elisabeth Hospital or at Dalldorf, particularly when active attempts were under way to determine her identity. It was only one curiosity among many in her case.
Evidence of Frau Tchaikovsky’s English, too, remained elusive. Aside from the later, problematic claim that she had regularly used the language while staying with Inspector Grunberg’s niece and an almost casual mention by Franz Jaenicke, thirty years after the fact, that she had supposedly conversed in English, no one hinted at any familiarity with English until 1925. In her first few weeks with the claimant at St. Mary’s Hospital, Rathlef-Keilmann tried to practice English with her: “I wrote some English words down for Frau Tchaikovsky,” she noted. “She read them and was silent. I asked the significance of the words. She was silent, but I could see that she understood them but was afraid to pronounce them.” Rathlef-Keilmann bought her a copybook and worked with her to practice the language.42 How proficient Frau Tchaikovsky may have been—or how far such lessons went—is not known; that fall, during her stay at Mommsen, according to Professor Serge Rudnev, the claimant had “raved in English” while under anesthetic.43 Although a number of assistants presumably attended Rudnev during the operation, none was ever questioned on this point, nor did anyone step forward to confirm the assertion. Rudnev himself, as he frankly admitted, spoke no English, and couldn’t confirm what he had heard.44 Serge Botkin challenged these stories, stating, “She did not speak English during her stay in Berlin.”45 Only thirty-three years after Rudnev’s statement did someone offer confirmation, when French journalist Dominique Auclères heard thirdhand that a certain Frau Spes Stahlberg—who happened to be a relative of Baron von Kleist—insisted that she had been at the surgery and heard the claimant “speaking English incessantly” while under anesthetic.46 Evidence on the point might be more compelling if it rested on something beyond a thirdhand account delivered three decades after the fact, and if Rudnev was not prone to demonstrably untrue exaggeration in his attempts to support the claimant’s case. But assuming it to be true, it is possible that Frau Tchaikovsky, after working on lessons with Rathlef, did indeed mutter in a language that had occupied her waking hours and thoughts.
As with Russian, Rathlef-Keilmann made sure that Frau Tchaikovsky, while at Lugano, had been able to practice her English—“every day,” she noted.47 It wasn’t just lessons with Rathlef-Keilmann, either; an English lady in Lugano also spent time working with the claimant, according to Baron Osten-Sacken.48 Even so, Frau Tchaikovsky’s fluency in the language, thought Eitel later that year, amounted to only a few “isolated words.”49 Things improved at Seeon. Frau Tchaikovsky began to read English books and newspapers, and to have them read aloud to her as well.50 Was this simply the effect of the lessons, or was the claimant finally remembering the English she said had been lost? The duke of Leuchtenberg insisted that she could “read, speak, and even think” in English.51 Yet just a few weeks after he wrote this, Faith Lavington found that when she spoke to the claimant in English, Frau Tchaikovsky—though she seemed to understand what was said—“could not manage” to reply in the same language.52 German, she wrote, “is really the only thing she can speak.”53
Lavington now picked up where Rathlef-Keilmann had left off, beginning English lessons with Frau Tchaikovsky at Seeon. “In order to get her to talk,” Lavington wrote, “I took a nursery rhyme book with me, with very gay colors, and by asking her questions about these pictures I got her to speak quite a lot and could see quite well that she does know English very well, but the trouble is to get her to speak. She also can write, for she copied a line today very clearly, in a trembling but entirely educated handwriting, which is rather a triumph.” During the course of these lessons, Lavington would ask questions in English about the stories, and Frau Tchaikovsky answered in German. “It really is very interesting to see how, when she does not think at all, she can say quite a lot of English words—but ask her to repeat a thing that she has to think over, and she is lost.” Still, Lavington, as Frau Tchaikovsky’s supporters were quick to point out, said that the claimant spoke with “the clearest and best English accent.”54
Or did she? In fact, these words, often quoted as proof that Frau Tchaikovsky always knew and spoke impeccable English, offer a misleading impression of Lavington’s actual experience. One night, she wrote in her diary, she went to the claimant’s room, and Frau Tchaikovsky greeted her with, “Oh, please do sit down,” before reverting to her usual German. It was these five words—and these five words only—“Oh, please do sit down”—that Lavington described as having been spoken with “the clearest and best English accent.”55 Agnes Wasserschleben honestly admitted that while she “often spoke English” with the claimant, “this means that I spoke English, and she answered me in German.”56
There were similar stories about Frau Tchaikovsky’s musical abilities. At Seeon, she was said to have readily played the piano, indicating a talent that had, to this point, been unsuspected, but that was fully in keeping with Anastasia’s music lessons. The reality, though, was not quite as compelling. One day, the claimant told Fraulein Vera von Klemenz that she would like to again play, but explained that she had “forgotten all the notes.” Klemenz played for her as Frau Tchaikovsky carefully watched; after a few more days of such observation, she accepted von Klemenz’s invitation to “practice with her.”57 The pair began with a simple children’s song; at first, von Klemenz recorded, “she found it difficult. I had the impression that she could not see well, and could not distinguish the individual keys. Then suddenly, she repeated the song without the music, by ear.”58 The next day, von Klemenz noted, “She is playing better and better, and, in this connection, I have noticed that, when she is taking trouble, she is generally not able to place her fingers on the keys correctly; but, when she plays quite automatically, without thinking much about it, she does very well.”59 After twenty-five days of such lessons, von Klemenz concluded, “It is quite clear to me that she has known how to play.”60
Has she played before? Perhaps, but Frau Tchaikovsky also struggled with these efforts. She was able to repeat a simple children’s tune only after carefully watching Fraulein von Klemenz; there was no evidence that she mastered this ability or that she could read music. Here, though, she at least had a valid excuse: because of a tubercular infection, she could not fully extend her left arm, and could play the piano with only one hand. It required exceptional effort, and after a few months, she abandoned the practice, saying that she found it too painful to continue, a real possibility but also a convenient one.61
In her months at Seeon, Frau Tchaikovsky thus succeeded in offering evidence seemingly favorable to her claim and at the same time revealing facts that damaged it. If the legend surrounding her case was not quite as compelling as history has been led to believe, nor was there solid evidence that she was an impostor. This enigma tore the Leuchtenberg family apart. Duke Dimitri and his wife, Catherine, as well as Duke Konstantin, were all convinced that she was an impostor, and a clumsy one at that; Duchesses Elena and Nathalia seem to have believed that she was Anastasia; and Duchess Tamara wavered between these two positions.62 The duchess of Leuchtenberg also offered contradictory opinions, occasionally based less on the evidence than on the undoubted difficulties involved in playing host to this temperamental houseguest. She frequently argued with the claimant—Faith Lavington forthrightly insisted “the Duchess hates her”—yet at the same time she seemed torn by the question of her identity.63 Once, Olga confided that she was “pretty confident” that Frau Tchaikovsky “was not an imposter,” explaining that she “carried herself just like her grandmother in Denmark.”64
As for the duke of Leuchtenberg, he proved himself to be a less than discerning judge of character. His wife apparently thought him gullible, and the
duke clearly let his belief in and sympathies for the claimant override any critical appraisal of the evidence.65 Even Frau Tchaikovsky thought so: she later declared, rather thoughtlessly, that although the duke “was always very kind, I had to take him in hand.”66 A few months after the claimant first came to Seeon, the duke fell ill, suffering the first effects of a brain tumor that was to kill him within two years.67 One visitor to Seeon in 1927 described him as “on the verge of a nervous collapse.”68 This illness may have impeded his judgment, for he certainly demonstrated a propensity for wishful thinking, a habit of deliberately ignoring unfavorable events and developments, and of recounting experiences in ways at considerable variance with the known facts. He also occasionally asserted incidents unsupported by evidence, including claims that he had repelled numerous attempts to kidnap and poison Frau Tchaikovsky during her stay under his roof.69
The duke of Leuchtenberg never made an overt public declaration that he believed the claimant was Anastasia, explaining that his brief encounters with the real grand duchess had not left him in a position to make an educated judgment.70 Privately, he seemed to oscillate between acceptance and rejection.71 To his daughter Nathalia, he once confessed that “deep down in his innermost conscience,” he did not believe the claimant was Anastasia, at the same time confusingly adding that he was “ninety-five-percent certain” that she was the grand duchess.72 “My father agreed to receive Mrs. Tchaikovsky in Seeon,” wrote Dimitri Leuchtenberg, “because, as he told us, ‘If she is the Grand Duchess, it would be a crime not to help her and if she is not the Grand Duchess, I do not commit a crime by giving shelter to a poor, sick, persecuted woman, while making investigations regarding her identity.’”73
In Russia, before coming to the imperial court, Pierre Gilliard had worked as a tutor for one of the duke’s relatives, which gave him some familiarity with the Leuchtenberg family. It also gave him a certain ability to approach Georg Leuchtenberg with a particular frankness. In 1928, the former tutor called on the duke at his castle and spoke to him at length about Frau Tchaikovsky’s claim. Gilliard fully admitted to what he termed the duke’s “goodness” and kind heart, but as he tried to lay out what he believed to be the evidence against her, he found Leuchtenberg less than receptive. In the end, according to Gilliard, the duke dismissed Gilliard’s concerns for the same reason he once gave to Faith Lavington, a reason that would seem out of place except in this most convoluted and confusing of cases: “How can you be satisfied that she isn’t Anastasia Nikolaievna,” the duke asked Gilliard bluntly, “when three clairvoyants have told us that she is?”74
Spiritualists assuring exiled aristocrats, well-intentioned ladies attempting to awaken memories of languages presumably lost, suspicious eyes diligently watching to see how she crossed herself—thus passed Frau Tchaikovsky’s days at Seeon. People continued to believe or to deny, but as Faith Lavington learned firsthand, one thing was abundantly clear: no one could pretend to understand how Frau Tchaikovsky’s mind worked. She had, Lavington thought, “a sort of weird charm” about her, something that attracted despite the claimant’s “very bad character” and “complete lack of the most elementary gratitude.”75 There was Frau Tchaikovsky’s “atrociously high opinion of her own importance” and her “towering and quite ill-directed pride.”76 At times she found the claimant pleasant; then, without warning, something would set Frau Tchaikovsky off and her screams would upset the entire household. “Another day straight from Dante’s Purgatory,” Lavington recorded in her diary, after the claimant was “wild all day, and finished up in a screaming gale of passion.” Although Lavington pitied her, it was, she said, “impossible to really like her, she has no winning charms, nothing to attract.”77 “I only know one thing,” she added presciently, “that wherever she is or in what circumstances she is, her unhappy character will always bring grief and pain upon the people surrounding her.”78
12
The Making of a Myth
As the bavarian winter of 1927 turned to spring, Frau Tchaikovsky remained largely isolated in her small suite on the second floor of Schloss Seeon. Seven years had passed since her leap into the Landwehr Canal, years fraught with seemingly endless arguments over languages and memories, over scars and manners. With contradictory assertions flying back and forth, she remained very much an enigma, a damaged, unlikely Anastasia, perhaps, but one still wrapped in a veneer of plausibility.
And then there were the recognitions and denunciations, often subjective, frequently flawed, occasionally compelling, but all mute testament to Frau Tchaikovsky’s unique status in the pantheon of royal claimants. Anastasia’s Romanov and Hessian relatives, former courtiers and servants, acquaintances and the merely curious, friend and foe—they all continued to shake their heads over a woman they believed to be an impostor, or blazed with fury that a miraculously rescued grand duchess was being denied her rightful name. On the opposing side, former nursemaid Margaretta Eagar, who had last seen a four-year-old Anastasia in 1905, rejected Frau Tchaikovsky after looking at photographs of the presumably twenty-six-year-old claimant, as did Madeleine Zanotti, Empress Alexandra’s principal lady’s maid, and Alexander Conrad, who had given the grand duchesses music lessons.1 “There is,” Conrad asserted, “not the slightest resemblance with my dear little pupil.”2
Given the passage of time—particularly with Eagar—and the reliance on photographs, these negative judgments were somewhat less than compelling. Similarly problematic were the opinions offered by Maria von Hesse, widow of the former commander of the imperial palaces at Tsarskoye Selo, and her daughter Darya, Countess Hollenstein. Although her relations with the grand duchesses had been rather formal, Maria von Hesse was adamant in rejecting Frau Tchaikovsky. “I was struck by the lack of resemblance in her vulgar features and gestures to either Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaievna or to any other member of the Imperial Family,” she insisted. She thought that the mouth and lips were too large, adding that the claimant “wore high-heeled shoes, which Grand Duchess Anastasia could not do on account of the problem with her foot.”3 Darya had known the older grand duchesses a little better, having taken dancing lessons with them, and she showed Faith Lavington a number of their letters to her, though she most certainly had not, as she insisted, “lived with the Grand Duchesses” and “known them as real friends all my life until I married.”4 After visiting the claimant in her room at Seeon, Darya told Lavington that she could find “no earthly resemblance to the real Anastasia.” She mentioned several childhood incidents but said that the claimant showed “absolutely no sign of recognition.” “This creature,” she told Lavington, “is laughing at us all for being so simple—you can see it in her eyes.”5
Always eager to insinuate himself into any potential excitement, Prince Felix Yusupov arrived at Seeon to judge Frau Tchaikovsky, despite the fact that he had scarcely known Anastasia; indeed, his contact with her had been limited to a few meetings in the Crimea and some rare court functions. Yusupov, though, had heard too many stories and wanted to see this enigmatic woman for himself. With him came Professor Serge Rudnev, who went off to convince Frau Tchaikovsky to receive her visitor; according to Yusupov, Rudnev quickly returned, saying that the claimant had shouted with excitement, “Felix, Felix! What a joy to see him again! I will dress and go down at once! Is Irina with him?” To Yusupov, “this joy at seeing me appeared to be exaggerated,” but he spent some thirty minutes with her. “I spoke to her in Russian, but she answered in German, seeming not to hear either the French or the English in which I had first attempted to converse.” She answered some of his questions while, to others, she was silent—“she feigned a lack of understanding,” Yusupov insisted. “From the first disastrous impression,” the prince declared, “I understood that this affair was simply that of a comedienne badly playing her part. Even at a distance, nothing in her resembled any of the Grand Duchesses, neither her carriage nor her appearance.”6
Prince Felix Yusupov.
Yusupov was a melodramatic m
an, given to sweeping theatrics, and he certainly encapsulated something of this in a letter to Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, denouncing Frau Tchaikovsky as “a sick hysteric and frightful play-actress,” a “frightful creature” from whom anyone would “recoil in horror.”7 But Frau Tchaikovsky could be equally melodramatic. On learning of his arrival, she supposedly ran to Duchess Olga of Leuchtenberg in hysterics, shouting, “Yusupov is here! Felix . . . Yusupov!”8 It was, at least, a more convincing reaction from a presumed Anastasia, given Yusupov’s role in murdering Rasputin, a man whose prayers the Romanovs believed had kept Tsesarevich Alexei alive. Later, though, she insisted—in a bizarre flight of fancy—that during the meeting Yusupov tried to kill her and that she had run screaming down a hall to escape death at his murderous hands.9
These denunciations were of varying significance, given reliance on photographs and, with the Hesses and Yusupov, little personal experience with Anastasia on which to base their opinions. Someone who had known Anastasia well, though, did arrive at Seeon that spring of 1927 to see Frau Tchaikovsky; this was Nicholas II’s former adjutant Colonel Anatole Mordvinov, invited by the duke of Leuchtenberg to meet her and offer an opinion. Having served at court for many years, Mordvinov knew the grand duchesses well and was presumably able to render a reliable opinion; he came, despite having been told by Olga Alexandrovna that the claimant was not Anastasia, because, as he said, “I hoped that the Grand Duchess was miraculously saved.”10