Imperial Dancer

by Coryne Hall

  As there is no biography of Mathilde, even in Russian, the main sources for her life remain her own memoirs Dancing in Petersburg and the slightly differing Russian edition Vospominaniia. These have formed the basis for any mention of Mathilde in numerous books – but contemporary letters and diaries, including some of Mathilde’s early attempts at her ‘memoirs’, tell a different story. Many of the well-known comments (‘Be the glory and the adornment of our ballet’, to mention just one) do not appear in the many revisions of her early memoirs written before she left Russia; nor does the often-quoted text of the Tsarevich’s letters. These were conveniently remembered in the 1950s when the trappings of wealth had gone and she was writing her autobiography in Paris.3

  She was the Imperial Ballet’s first ‘star’ – yet her connections with the hated Romanovs ensured that Kschessinska’s name remained taboo in Russia during the Soviet era. The opening up of the former Soviet Union has now enabled historians to access much new information. With the help of this it has finally become possible to reveal the real story of Mathilde’s life. Entries in Nicholas II’s diaries for 1892–4, previously unavailable in English, have thrown new light on his feelings for the young ballerina. Archives in America and private collections in England have also yielded a treasure trove of previously un-published information, particularly relating to her final years.

  The full story of Mathilde Kschessinska’s life has never been told before. It is a fascinating tale of love, wealth, power, sheer determination to succeed and, above all, survival.

  One

  GLORY AND ADORNMENT

  Theatre Street, an elegant little precinct lined with pretty yellow and white neoclassical buildings, lay almost secluded from the outside world. Tucked away behind the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, its cobbles were seldom disturbed by carriage wheels or footsteps. Along one side were the Lord Chamberlain’s office and various government ministries. On the opposite side, a heavy wooden door concealed the Imperial Ballet School.

  The cloistered life of its pupils was interrupted once a year for the graduation performance, usually attended by the Tsar and members of the Imperial family. This was the most important event in the pupils’ lives. On their performance that day reputations could be made – or lost.

  One of the star graduates on 23 March 1890 was seventeen-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska, a small, vivacious girl with dark, laughing eyes. ‘I can’t say that I awaited the evening with great anticipation, it was actually all the same to me if the Tsar’s family came or not,’ Mathilde wrote in a heavily edited unpublished account. ‘I was only excited that we got three days off. Yes, that’s what I thought during the day, but before the performance, I changed my mind.’1 Despite this attempt to remain unruffled, marks were awarded by a distinguished panel of judges, so Mathilde knew that competition would be fierce.

  After the performance the pupils, teachers and management of the Imperial Theatres administration stood in the rehearsal hall to await presentation to the Imperial family. ‘My excitement reached its ultimate bounds and it seemed that I wouldn’t have strength to wait any longer,’ Mathilde wrote.2 Then the giant figure of Tsar Alexander III strode into the room accompanied by his tiny wife Empress Marie Feodorovna, their eldest son Tsarevich Nicholas and other members of the Imperial family who would have a significant effect on Mathilde’s later life.

  The Tsar defied the tradition that the boarders be presented first. ‘Where is Kschessinska?’ he bellowed in his powerful voice.3

  ‘I couldn’t even describe the ecstasy I experienced when the Tsar first turned to me. Oh!’ she wrote breathlessly.4 As Mathilde curtseyed the Tsar held out his hand and said: ‘Be the glory and the adornment of our ballet!’5 For Mathilde, as she kissed the Empress’s hand, the whole thing was like a dream.

  That night, with the Tsar’s words still ringing in her ears, Mathilde said she was ‘overwhelmed by what had just happened’. Yet in the unpublished account, written before she left Russia, the Tsar’s comment does not appear.6

  Whether Alexander III uttered the famous line or not, ‘glory’ and ‘adornment’ proved to be appropriate words. Mathilde Kschessinska would strive and intrigue until she reached the pinnacle of glory in the Imperial ballet, and collect adornment in the way of gifts from three Grand Ducal lovers to the value of millions of roubles. She fulfilled Alexander III’s command in a far more spectacular way than he could ever have imagined, and along with glory and adornment came two more ingredients – power and influence.

  So began a chain of events that would dominate the whole of Mathilde’s long life.

  The stage was in her blood. Mathilde’s grandfather Jan Kschessinsky was one of the great artists of the Polish theatre, the principal tenor with the Warsaw Opera as well as a virtuoso violinist and superb actor. The family claimed descent from the Polish Counts Krasinsky (or Krasinski), who in the nineteenth century received the hereditary title of ‘Count’ in Prussia, France, Russia and Austria. In 1824 they were authorised to bear the title of ‘Count Krasinsky’ in Poland. In fact, there appears to be no documentary evidence to link Mathilde’s family with the Counts Krasinsky and the story that her family were deprived of their rightful inheritance by an unscrupulous relative was probably invented by Mathilde to enhance her status as a hereditary noblewoman.

  Jan’s second son Adam-Felix Kschessinsky was born, according to Mathilde, on 9 November 1821 in Warsaw, although later in an interview he claimed it was 1823.7 Felix trained at the Warsaw Ballet School and concentrated on ‘character’ dances (that is, national or folk dances, or dances illustrating a certain type of character) and mimed roles. His speciality was the Polish mazurka, a national dance in quick time involving much stamping of the feet and clicking of the heels. It was this dance which brought him to the notice of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia.

  Nicholas I’s passions were divided fairly equally between the army and dancing. His huge financial resources enabled ballet in Russia to be placed on a par with opera. It was during Nicholas’s reign that aristocrats began to take more than a passing interest in the dancers of the Imperial Theatre, encouraged by the Tsar. Nicholas visited Warsaw several times and particularly appreciated the spirited mazurka. In 1851 he invited five male and five female dancers to St Petersburg. Felix was unable to take up the offer because of an injury and it was only two years later that he arrived in the Russian capital.

  His first performance took place in the presence of the Emperor and Empress. Felix scored an immediate and overwhelming success on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, soon becoming Principal Character Dancer, famous for his performances of Polish, gypsy and Hungarian dances. The popularity of the mazurka was such that Felix was soon in demand to give lessons to the nobility and even the Imperial family. A simplified version of the dance was introduced into the ballrooms of Russia.

  In the early 1860s Felix married a former ballerina of the Imperial Theatres, Julia Dominska, or Deminska, born in 1830. Julia also came from a Catholic Polish family and had given up her stage career on marrying the dancer Ledé, by whom she had nine children. Five sons, including Philippe (‘Fili’), survived infancy. After Ledé died the widowed Julia married Felix Kschessinsky. In 1864 she gave birth to Stanislas, who died when he was four years old. The birth of a daughter, Julie, occurred on 22 April 1865, with Joseph-Michael following in 1868.

  In the early 1870s Felix and Julia rented a dacha at Ligovo, a fashionable area about 9 miles from St Petersburg where many members of the nobility spent the summer in their large villas. Peterhof, the Imperial family’s summer estate on the Gulf of Finland, was nearby, as was Krasnoe Selo, where the Tsar’s army staged their summer manoeuvres.

  It was in this Ligova dacha that Julia’s thirteenth child Matilda-Maria was born on 19 August 1872. Mathilde, as she was known in later life, always claimed that thirteen was her lucky number. She was baptised into the Catholic faith, her godparents being Monsieur Strakatch, owner of the largest linen shop in St Petersb
urg, and Mme Paule-Marie, both close friends of her parents. Saint Matilda’s Day, 2 March, was always referred to by Mathilde as her anniversary and in later years it became confused with her actual birthday. In the family she was known as Mala or Malechka.

  By the time Mathilde was born Felix Kschessinsky had acquired a large apartment on the Liteiny Prospekt, one of St Petersburg’s wide, fashionable thoroughfares. The apartment at number 38 had several servants and included a huge room where Felix gave mazurka classes. There was also a country estate, Krasnitzy, near Siverskaia Station on the Warsaw railway, about 40 miles from St Petersburg, which Felix purchased from General Gaussman. The two-storey wooden house overlooked the River Orlinka and the estate included a bathhouse, farm, large orchard and a forest full of mushrooms. The surrounding fields extended for miles.

  From an early age Mathilde liked to dance. Felix often took his younger, favourite, daughter to the theatre when he was appearing. On one memorable occasion Felix removed his make-up and hurried home, completely forgetting he had left his four-year-old daughter in one of the backstage boxes. Meanwhile, Mathilde had hidden under the seat hoping to avoid her father’s eye in order to witness the evening performance as well. The ruse failed. Felix returned and brought Mathilde home without further delay.

  At the age of four Mathilde was given her first Polish costume and as she grew older she accompanied Felix to his mazurka classes. Naturally she also learnt the first basic exercises of ballet. It must have been with a feeling of impatience that she watched first her sister Julie and then Joseph (who the family called Iouzia) enrol as pupils in the Imperial Ballet School. All the children inherited their parents’ love of the theatre and their enviable good health. At around this time Mathilde made her first appearance on the stage in The Little Hump-backed Horse, where her role was to take a ring out of the mouth of the fish in the underwater scene. Although she did not appear until the end of the ballet Mathilde insisted on arriving at the theatre a full hour before the start of the performance.

  Years later Mathilde recalled her happy childhood, particularly the idyllic summers at Krasnitzy. Felix, who loved entertaining friends, demolished the house’s old dining-room, replacing it with a spacious light room with a huge table large enough to seat the family and a constant stream of visitors. The Kschessinskys moved in the best Polish Catholic circles and although they were not fabulously wealthy, with a maid, a cook and several servants life was comfortable. A frequent visitor was Baron Gotsch, a great friend of the Kschessinskys from the time Mathilde was a child.

  At Krasnitzy Felix rose at 5 o’clock to supervise the farm workers. The children rose later, in time for an 8 o’clock breakfast of home-made dairy produce, bread rolls straight from the oven and jam. Then they were free until lunch at 1 o’clock, although Mathilde admitted to being greedy and was frequently found in the orchard eating fruit and berries. Wearing a grey boy’s suit she climbed trees, hid in the bushes and became a regular tomboy as the children played with the local peasants’ children until teatime at 5 o’clock. At nine in the evening the family tucked in to a cold supper of delicacies brought back from the local village by Felix. He always returned from these expeditions with presents for the children and every Sunday the peasant children were given treats and refreshments.

  Mathilde’s favourite occupation on summer mornings was to rise with the dawn and pick mushrooms. As she was afraid of spiders she always took along a big stick to clear the webs from her path. Once, without thinking, she rushed towards a wonderful mushroom under a tree, only to be confronted by a large web. The spider settled on her nose, and the petrified Mathilde dropped the basket and ran home at breakneck speed, screaming all the way, without even brushing the hated spider from her face.

  Mathilde was treated like a princess on her birthday, which was always celebrated as a holiday at Krasnitzy and in the surrounding estates and villages. Friends came from the capital bearing gifts and in the evening the grounds were lit by lamps as magnificent fireworks filled the sky. Afterwards there was a lavish supper with hot Swedish punch, during which a wreath of flowers descended from the ceiling on to Mathilde’s head.

  Soon after her eighth birthday in August 1880 a petition was sent to the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg and Mathilde was asked to attend the entrance examination. First came some preliminary tests – walking, running and an assessment of the physique – then a rigorous medical examination. After lunch the successful candidates were examined in music, reading, writing and arithmetic. Preference was given to the relatives or children of artists of the Imperial Theatres but, even so, only about 10 of the 100 or so applicants were enrolled.

  In the autumn of 1880 Mathilde followed in the footsteps of Julie and Joseph when she was accepted as a pupil at the prestigious Imperial Ballet School. Classes would begin on 1 September.

  The Russian School of Theatrical Dance had been founded in 1738 on an upper floor of the Tsar’s Winter Palace by the Empress Anna Ioannovna, niece of Peter the Great. There the French ballet master Jean-Baptiste Landé taught ‘foreign steps’ to twelve girls and twelve boys, children of the Imperial servants. The school blossomed in the reign of Catherine the Great. Then in 1801 the French ballet master Charles Diderlot arrived in St Petersburg and took over the direction of the ballet, which soon achieved a pre-eminence of its own. In 1836, during the reign of Nicholas I, the Imperial Theatre School was given the premises at No. 2 Theatre Street. The pupils were part of the Tsar’s household and the school was dependent on the Ministry of the Imperial Court. On the Tsar’s name day (his Saint’s Day, more important to Russians than a birthday) all the pupils received a present. Passing the doorman, resplendent in his livery with the Imperial eagles, Mathilde passed down corridors lined with portraitsof the Imperial family, teachers and former ballet stars to enter the cloistered world of the Imperial Ballet School. The premises were shared with the Imperial Drama School, and the whole ensemble was known as the Theatre School.

  The school occupied the two upper floors of the three-storey building, with the boys on the top and the girls, carefully segregated, below. Each had their own rehearsal rooms, classrooms and dormitories with high ceilings and enormous vaulted windows. Among the veritable warren of rooms there was an Orthodox chapel complete with choir, an infirmary and, in a small inner courtyard, a bathhouse. The floor of the large rehearsal room was raked at the same angle as the stage of the Maryinsky Theatre. Adjoining the classrooms was a theatre, shared with the Drama School, where the graduation examination took place. Although small, it was ‘a real theatre with footlights and several sets of scenery’.8

  The girls changed into grey Holland practice dresses and thick ballet shoes made from unbleached cotton ready for the morning’s ballet class and music lesson. After changing for lunch they donned large black winter pelisses (long cloaks) lined with fox fur, black silk bonnets and high boots ready for a twenty-minute walk in the courtyard. There were no games. The afternoon was devoted to schoolwork – mathematics, history, geography and, of course, French, the language of ballet. They also studied theory of dance and choreography, music and manners. Older girls learnt elocution, acting, singing and the art of putting on make-up for the stage.

  Like Julie and Joseph, Mathilde became a day pupil. Felix wanted his children to participate in family life, which he and his wife considered very important, rather than attend the Theatre School as boarders (pépinières) at the State’s expense. Normally only the less promising students were day pupils living at home. Felix Kschessinsky’s position as doyen of the dancers gave his children ‘exceptional freedom as a privilege for the special services’ of their father.9 Mathilde therefore took her own lunch to eat in the round room, which served as the school library, and was provided with hot tea with sugar by the school. Every evening Julie, Joseph and Mathilde returned home to study with a tutor. This gave them extra work but lessons at the Theatre School were often interrupted when pupils were called out for rehearsals and, anyway, they w
ere happy to remain with their parents.

  Mathilde joined the class of Lev Ivanov, the second ballet master, who accompanied lessons on his violin. She admitted taking little interest at first, having already learnt the beginners’ exercises at home. The school year finished at the end of May, when there was a dancing examination. Failure meant dismissal. After the three-month-long summer holiday pupils were weighed, measured and given a complete medical check-up before the start of the new school year.

  On 30 August 1881 Mathilde made her first appearance on stage as a pupil of the Theatre School. The venue was St Petersburg’s Bolshoi Theatre (demolished at the end of the nineteenth century) where she played a marionette in Don Quixote. The boys and girls from the Theatre School were frequently called upon to take small parts in performances. They were taken to the theatre in special carriages, nicknamed the antediluvians, which accommodated six pupils and a governess. When more children were needed they were taken in larger vehicles resembling Black Marias, accompanied by two governesses and a maid. Only ballerinas had a carriage to themselves. At the theatre the children were each given a costume and then called before the governess to be made up, which usually meant a dab of rouge on each cheek blended in with a hare’s foot. Mathilde soon became used to these performances. With thirty-one other children she also danced the mazurka in the last act of Paquita, wearing a blue taffeta skirt, white Polish surcoat covered with gold braid and white cotton gloves. All the students were given a notebook in which to record details of their performances. These were later checked and the pupils received a small payment, about fifty kopeks per appearance.