by Coryne Hall
All this time Nicholas was also dreaming of a princess. ‘Oh God, how I want to go to Ilinskoe,’ he wrote on 20 August 1890. ‘Victoria and Alix are there now. If I don’t see her now I shall have to wait a whole year, and that would be terribly hard.’14 The princess was Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, eighteen-year-old granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who was staying at Ilinskoe with her sister Grand Duchess Elisabeth (‘Ella’), wife of Nicholas’s uncle Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Nicholas had fallen in love with Alix when she visited St Petersburg the previous year. Although she was beautiful, with red-gold hair, pale skin and blue-grey eyes, his parents did not approve. In the summer of 1890 Nicholas told his father of his wish to marry Alix. The Tsar was noncommittal. The Empress was already looking round for a suitable bride. Her plans did not include Alix.
At a family council the Tsar’s aunt Grand Duchess Alexandra Josifovna surveyed the options and decided a Polish girl would make the best mistress for the Tsarevich. Polish girls combined ‘beauty, elegance, passion, sentimental tenderness and passionate melancholy’.15 Mathilde was therefore an ideal candidate. She was healthy, had an easy manner, a sweet and good character, was blossoming in youth and although not a beauty, was vivacious and coquettish. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, with black hair, a slim waist, wide hips and expressive features. Her shoe size in English was only three. She had no noticeable negative traits. Princess Catherine Radziwill went as far as to say that ‘the dancer had been chosen by the Empress Marie herself as a fit friend for her eldest son’.16 This seems unlikely.
As far as Nicholas was concerned, Princess Alix was, for the moment at least, unattainable. Mathilde was not and she was determined to show it.
At her first Krasnoe Selo season Mathilde performed as part of the company with a shared dressing room. It was customary in the interval before the ballet divertissement for the Emperor and Grand Dukes to come on stage and talk to the performers. Mathilde, who had been hoping to see the Tsarevich again if only from a distance, was ecstatic when he came and spoke to her during every performance. Once as she ran happily on stage Mathilde almost collided with the Emperor. ‘Ah!’ he said as the ballerina pulled herself up sharply, ‘you must have been flirting!’17
Mathilde still had no idea of Nicholas’s feelings, yet the Tsarevich was not immune to her charms. ‘I positively like Kschessinska II very much,’ he admitted on 17 July.18 All that summer they continued to flirt. Only once as she allotted a solo performance and a corresponding better dressing room whose window looked out over the Imperial entrance, allowing her to stand and talk freely with the Tsarevich and the younger Grand Dukes. ‘The growing affair has heated up powerfully , … Was at the theatre … Talked with little Kschessinska through the window,’ Nicholas wrote.19 On 31 July he recorded: ‘After zakuskee [Russian hors d’oeuvres] went, for the last time, to the dear little Krasnoe Selo Theatre. Said goodbye to Kschessinska.’20 The following day he attended the ceremony of the Blessing of the Colours. ‘Those few minutes spent in front of the theatre tantalised my memory.’21 Yet Mathilde never had the chance to be alone with Nicholas. He made no attempt to pursue her and when the manoeuvres ended the relationship had progressed no further.
The Imperial family moved to The Cottage at Peterhof. Mathilde followed, staying with a friend nearby. Every day she walked around the area in the hope of meeting Nicholas. Her wish remained unfulfilled.
Soon afterwards, an announcement came from the Imperial court. The Tsarevich and his younger brother Grand Duke George Alexandrovich would be going on a trip to the Far East. They would leave on 23 October 1890 and be away for nine months.
Mathilde was devastated. She had spent the remainder of the summer trying to develop the relationship, and was looking forward to the winter season at the Maryinsky where Nicholas, a devotee of opera and ballet, would doubtless be in the Imperial box. Now all her dreams were shattered.
Eugene Volkoff, a Hussar officer, was asked by Nicholas to arrange for him to meet Mathilde before he left Russia. The request came via another dancer, an intimate friend of Volkoff. Mathilde lived with her parents, Nicholas was reluctant to visit her home and a meeting outside was too difficult to arrange. Nicholas then requested a photograph. Mathilde only possessed one, which she felt was not good enough, so did not send it.
The night before Nicholas left he was at the Maryinsky, where Kschessinska was dancing in Sleeping Beauty. They would not meet again for another year.
While Nicholas was away Mathilde’s career prospered. That season she danced twenty-two times in ballet performances, mainly in the corps de ballet, and twenty-one times in ballet scenes with the Imperial Opera. In Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades she appeared as a shepherdess, one of a group of statuettes wearing white wigs pushed out of the wings on little platforms. They jumped off and danced while a choir sang, then leapt back on to the platforms and were carried away again. Occasionally there were small solo roles. In one performance of Sleeping Beauty she danced the Fairy Candide in the first act, the Duchess in the second and Little Red Riding Hood in the third. Keen to emulate her idol Virginia Zucchi she took lessons with the Italian teacher Enrico Cecchetti, who gave his pupils ‘strength and endurance’.22 This so upset Johansson, with whom Mathilde continued to have private lessons, that she gave up Cecchetti’s classes and studied the Italian technique on her own.
Mathilde followed Nicholas’s progress in the newspapers – Athens, Egypt and on to Bombay, Singapore and then Japan. She made a pencil sketch of him and drew his portrait in naval uniform from a photograph. Unknown to Mathilde, Nicholas was kept informed about her by his sister.
Before he left St Petersburg Nicholas had confided to fifteen-year-old Grand Duchess Xenia that he now had a friend. Xenia was dying of curiosity and finally Nicholas told her more. The young Grand Duchess was close to her brother and eager to please. ‘I am sorry that I am not able to tell you anything about your friend Kschessinska, because unfortunately, she is too far from me,’ Xenia wrote. ‘I hope to see her often in winter, so that I can tell you more about her.’ At the same time, Xenia was also mischievously telling him about Princess Alix. ‘Your dear Alix we see every Saturday. She is really charming. … She thinks about you all the time.’23
Although Xenia knew little about Mathilde she very much wanted to find something to tell Nicholas. ‘I saw your friend, little Kschessinska,’ she reported a few weeks later, ‘this time in The Queen of Spades! She was dancing in the ballet during the ball and she reminded me of you.’ Xenia was unable to report anything scandalous about Mathilde, she could only tell her brother which performances she appeared in and what was said about her. Unfortunately, Xenia was unable to keep the secret and told many people ‘confidentially’. Soon St Petersburg was buzzing with rumours about the Tsarevich’s interest in the young ballerina.24
Actresses and dancers were considered to belong to the demi-monde, not really respectable. Rich balletomanes, the true devotees of the ballet, occupied the first few rows at the Maryinsky and many of them had a mistress in the company. The poorer balletomanes, especially students, watched their favourite ballerinas from high up in the ‘gods’ and flocked to the stage door afterwards.
The Grand Ducal loge was next to the Imperial box and it was said that a special passageway ran from there to the stage, giving the Grand Dukes easy access to the dancers. Most of them were notorious rakes. During the season they attended the balls given by the aristocracy and afterwards went for wild troika rides through the snow to St Petersburg’s night haunts. They dined at Cubat’s restaurant, a favourite venue of society, where their wild parties often ended in drunken brawls. At the Maryinsky uniforms predominated, and one Grand Duke described those ‘self-satisfied stalwart Guardsmen who watched the world go by through the short end of their opera glasses fixed on the limbs of a twirling ballerina’.25 The Imperial family and the aristocracy ‘considered the ballet as a nursery for carefully chosen women’, recalled Serge Lifar. ‘People went to the b
allet to choose a mistress.’26
Despite the critics’ good reviews and her early successes on the stage, Mathilde was becoming more and more depressed at Nicholas’s absence. Finally she was forced to admit the reason to her parents, who were worried about her health. (Later a legend grew up that, in Cairo, Nicholas was greeted by a handsome young officer who kissed the Tsarevich’s hand on presentation and hardly left his side. He allegedly bore a strong resemblance to the ballerina Kschessinska.)
Then in April 1891 came news that while riding in a rickshaw in Otsu, Japan, the Tsarevich had been attacked by a fanatic wielding a sword. With blood streaming down his face he jumped out and ran along the street, pursued by the madman. He was saved by the prompt action of his cousin Prince George of Greece, who knocked the man out with his cane.
For several days Mathilde lived in torment until the newspapers published reassuring news about the Tsarevich’s health. Despite profuse apologies from the Emperor and Empress of Japan the Tsar ordered his son to return to Russia immediately.
Reassured and relieved, Mathilde and her sister began to enjoy themselves. Mathilde and Julie shared a small bedroom and sitting-room in their parents’ St Petersburg apartment and despite the six-year gap in their ages remained close. As their parents only allowed them to visit close friends (if they were suitably chaperoned), they began to find ways to bend the rules. Pretending they were going to one of the approved houses, they slipped off somewhere else. Evening dresses were covered by a coat before they said goodbye to their parents, and on returning home they hastily changed into nightdresses before wishing them goodnight.
Nicholas arrived in St Petersburg on 4 August and went straight to Krasnoe Selo for a reunion with his parents. That evening he attended the theatre, where Mathilde was performing. Soon afterwards the Imperial family left for Denmark, travelling from there to the Crimea where the Tsar and Tsarina celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. It was late in the year before the Tsarevich returned to the capital.
When the summer season ended Mathilde’s godfather Monsieur Strakatch took her abroad. Officially, this was a reward for successfully finishing her studies. More probably her parents had heard rumours of the Tsarevich’s interest in their daughter and wanted to get her away from the gossip.
They went first to Biarritz and then crossed into France. Mathilde prayed before the Madonna at Lourdes and bought miraculous images and souvenirs. From there they went to Rome and Milan, where they attended a performance at La Scala, before travelling around Italy. They finished the journey in Paris, returning to St Petersburg in time for the winter season.
On 23 September 1891 the Italian ballerina Carlotta Brianza appeared in The Tulip of Harlem, the ballet in which she had made her debut at the Maryinsky two years earlier. This time she had to share the praise. ‘The success of the ballerina was shared with the youthful Mlle Kschessinska II,’ reported Colonel Bezobrazov in the St Petersburg Gazette. ‘Mlle Kschessinska astonished the connoisseurs with the audacity of her tours and her steel pointes. We will soon have an accomplished ballerina if the theatre administration does not obstruct her promotion.’27
Soon afterwards, Brianza left St Petersburg. With Virginia Zucchi already dancing in Europe the field was now temporarily clear for Mathilde Kschessinska – a situation she was determined to exploit. She was already outshining her main rival Olga Preobrajenska, who only came to the notice of the critics when she replaced an injured soloist.
With the way clear at the Maryinsky, Mathilde now began to pursue the Tsarevich almost obsessively.
After Nicholas returned from the Crimea in November 1891 Mathilde ‘only saw him by chance in the streets of the capital’.28 The ‘chances’, however, were entirely of her making. She discovered that almost every day he rode along Winter Palace Quay. Mathilde had a smart carriage drawn by two ponies, which reminded her of the carriage of the Fairy Carabosse in Sleeping Beauty. She now began driving out alone with a Russian coachman.
We had already reached Vladimir Alexandrovich’s Palace and I had lost all hope of seeing him. But the moment we went back, when I least expected to see him, he went by on his way to meet Xenia. It all happened so fast that I couldn’t even act. But I did manage to greet him. I’ll be going driving more often now.29
She went out every day and occasionally was rewarded with spectacular success. ‘Driving by the Anichkov Palace, we saw the Tsarevich and Xenia behind the fence. How happy I am that for three days in a row I’ve seen the Tsarevich!’30
There were also ‘chance’ meetings in the theatre. On 4 January 1892, during the interval of the opera Esclarmonde, Mathilde left her box and ran into Nicholas, who was on his way to the Imperial box. Another occasion did not go so well and Mathilde was annoyed:
When I left the stage I became angry with myself because I spent so little time looking through the hole in the curtain at the Tsarevich. Because of this I stayed in the theatre until the end of the opera in order to see him through the curtain hole. After it was over I met Nabokov at the stage door and purposefully stayed and talked to him, since the Tsarevich should have gone by and I wanted him to see me. He drove by in his coach with Xenia and nodded. But I don’t know if he nodded at Nabokov or me!31
These encounters triggered conflicting emotions. ‘I’m very happy to have seen the Tsarevich, but it’s unfortunate that we couldn’t speak. But at the same time I feel that I’ll be very sad and cry. It’s better not to have seen him at all. My heart is so pained every time I see him. And I have begun to fear for myself!’32
Plunged into the atmosphere of the Imperial Ballet with its intrigues, favourites and love affairs, Mathilde was soon to prove herself adept. First she had to dispose of a rival.
In 1892 Maria Labunskaya was banished from Russia, allegedly for spreading ‘gossip and slander’ about the Imperial family. The allegations were false. Some years later, according to Bronislava Nijinska, Labunskaya said she felt the source of these cruel allegations was Kschessinska, her rival for the attentions of the Tsarevich. Bronislava Nijinska was no admirer of Mathilde, seeing her hand behind every intrigue, but it is possible that in this instance she was right. Maria Labunskaya was granted leave of absence to study and dance in Paris. In 1894 while still officially on leave she was dismissed from the Imperial Ballet.33 A few years later she was one of the stars of the Gaité-Lyrique Theatre in Paris.
For Mathilde the turning point came towards the spring of 1892. On 10 March Nicholas again attended the graduation performance at the Theatre School. ‘During supper I sat with the pupils as before,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘only little Kschessinska was very much missed!’34
A boil had appeared on Mathilde’s leg and another on her right eye. At first she covered her eye with a bandage and continued to drive out as usual, until the boil became so bad that she remained home. Mathilde and Julie were at home alone on 11 March when the doorbell rang and Masha, the maid, announced the Hussar officer Eugene Volkoff. Mathilde asked Masha to show him into the sitting-room – but it was not Volkoff who walked through the door, it was the Tsarevich. ‘I spent the evening in a wonderful way,’ he recorded. ‘I went off to a new place for me – to the Kschessinsky sisters. They were awfully surprised to see me there.’ When Mathilde recovered from the shock she was overjoyed. Nicholas stayed for over two hours, ‘and we chatted about everything without cease … But our joy was mutual and grand!’35
Mathilde had dreamed of this meeting for a long time. Nicholas stayed until 1 a.m. and in the morning, before leaving for the suburban palace of Gatchina, he sent her a note. ‘… Since our meeting I have been in the clouds! I shall try to come back as soon as possible. Nikki.’36 Mathilde read and re-read that first letter until she knew it by heart, as indeed she must have done as the letter was ‘lost’ in the Revolution, yet she was able to quote it in her memoirs over sixty years later.
Nicholas returned to St Petersburg on 16 March. That afternoon Mathilde and Julie met him while he was out riding. They w
ere upset. ‘A total rumpus has taken place due to the fact that this evening at Koni’s [Nicolai Maximilianovich, Duke of Leuchtenberg] with the pupils they have to play a role as Ethiopians in the chorus!’ Nicholas recorded incredulously. The Kschessinsky sisters were saved from this indignity by the intervention of the Tsar’s brother Grand Duke Alexei, who was afraid of the publicity the next day. Nicholas was pleased.37
Now Mathilde again had to make all the running, popping up everywhere Nicholas went – out driving on the Morskaya, sitting in the opposite box at the Maly Theatre, attending the concours hippique at the riding school and later standing on Karavannaya Street opposite the Anichkov Palace.38 On 23 March Nicholas finally called at the Kschessinskys’ apartment, where he and Mathilde spent a ‘jovial and homey’ time chatting while Julie played the piano. ‘A wonderful evening!’39
On the Feast of the Ascension there was a regimental parade. Mathilde sat in one of the public boxes watching the Emperor review the troops. According to Mathilde, Nicholas walked behind him and constantly gazed at her, a loving look which she returned.That evening he visited the Kschessinskys, ‘where I spent a pleasant one and a half hours’.40
Although Nicholas was infatuated with Mathilde, he never stopped dreaming about Alix of Hesse. ‘I never thought that two … loves could co-exist at one time within one heart,’ he wrote in his diary on 1 April.
I have already loved Alix … for three years and constantly hope to marry her one day! The following year I fell very much in love with Olga D. [Dolgoruky]. … And since the camp of 1890 until now I have been madly (platonically) in love with little K.… At the same time I never stop thinking of Alix!41