by Coryne Hall
Mathilde was not short of admirers. In the spring she had met Stanislas Poklewski-Koziell, First Secretary at the Russian Embassy in London, a great friend of the Prince of Wales, who eventually became Russian Ambassador in Rome. He was exceptionally generous when it came to giving gifts, often turning up at English country house parties with two large suitcases full of Fabergé trinkets for the ladies. He constantly sent Mathilde flowers and presents, including a stuffed bear which decorated her entrance hall, and a mechanical piano with tunes imprinted on paper rolls. This so delighted her that the first evening she played it continuously and later was unable to sleep because of pains in her arms.
In June, as there was no season at Krasnoe Selo, Mathilde went to Warsaw with her father, Nicolai Legat and Alfred Bekeffi to give four performances at the Grand Theatre, where she received a most energetic ovation from the delighted audience. The Polish Gazette reported that she ‘completely justified her reputation as a famous dancer. … We have not seen such a wonderful performance of the Czardas [the Hungarian national dance] as Mlle Kschessinska has given us.’ The Kschessinskys being of Polish origin, Mathilde was especially gratified by the rousing reception and deluge of flowers which greeted the mazurka, in which she was partnered by her father. At the age of seventy-four Felix was still sprightly, erect and able to hold his own on the stage, despite the hot weather. Mathilde’s classical ballet performances with Legat also brought rave reviews from the Warsaw critics.
When she returned to Russia Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich still acted as her ‘ever-faithful lapdog … running errands and posing as her protector’. His wealth ensured her every wish was granted, she had the continued prestige of a Grand-Ducal lover and, more importantly, a ‘hotline’ to Nicholas in case of need. Yet nothing could compensate for her lost happiness. ‘I tried hard to appear carefree and gay, [but] when I was alone I could not help weeping as I remembered my first love.’13
On 1 June 1895 Mathilde moved into her dacha.14 Thanks to Sergei’s lavish spending it was soon considered one of the best seaside villas in Europe. Delicate openwork entry gates marked the entrance to the extensive park of about 25 acres, which was enclosed by decorative fencing. Near the house was a fountain in the middle of a large lawn, surrounded by gardens with flowerbeds, seed beds and an orangerie.
The house, which included a large cellar, had been completely refurbished and its elegant interiors often featured in magazines. As usual Mathilde paid great attention to her bedroom, covering the walls in cretonne and ordering furniture from Meltzer, St Petersburg’s best manufacturer. She also arranged a small round boudoir, with light wood furniture from Buchner.
The outbuildings consisted of an ice-house, a farm for the cows, greenhouses, a kitchen garden, a steam cabinet and stables. Sergei built a reinforced pier, a landing stage and a slipway. Later there was a motor launch and a garage for several cars.
Many members of the nobility, including Prince Alexander Lvov who established the Strelna fire brigade in 1881, and Prince Vladimir Orlov, a close friend of the Tsar, had summer homes at Strelna. The most illustrious residents, however, were members of the Imperial family.
The large Constantine Palace had been owned by Alexander III’s uncle Grand Duke Constantine Nicolaievich. Thanks to him it had become fashionable to relax at Strelna during the summer. On his death in 1892 it was inherited by his unmarried son Grand Duke Dimitri Constantinovich, whose brothers and sisters regularly visited the estate. Among them was Queen Olga of Greece, whose suite overlooking the Gulf of Finland was reserved for her frequent visits to Russia, and Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovich, whose large family occupied eight rooms and several service rooms. Constantine Constantinovich, a talented poet and playwright, was particularly attached to Strelna, his birthplace, and wrote several lyrical poems about the area while living in the palace. An anonymous poem from the early 1900s called M.F. Kschessinska (believed to be written by Grand Duke Constantine) is about Mathilde in her garden at Strelna:
Branches of lilacs spread out their beauty,
The fountain burbles in the garden walk,
The spruce trees cast their shadows with design
A deep blue sky, in sunset’s shadows,
Flashes colour beams …
A pomegranate tree hangs over a fragrant rose,
A stream trickles down from the hill,
Swaying a tulip’s petals with its water,
And there Bayaderka in the flowers,
Dances passionately to the sound of timbrels.15
Mathilde later became very friendly with Constantine’s family but she spent most of that sad summer gathering mushrooms in the forest, as she had done in the happy days of her childhood.
In her memoirs Mathilde said that she was ill all that summer. Legnani was given all the plum roles, she felt little enthusiasm for the stage and used illness as an excuse to delay her return to the theatre until November. Her only noticeable role that season was Galatea in Actis & Galatea, which she received when Lubov Roslavleva left after the Moscow première.
This seclusion at Strelna has since spawned rumours that Mathilde gave birth to Nicholas’s child. A popular story in Russia today is that Mathilde wanted a ‘keepsake’, a child who, one version says, was adopted by her sister Julie. The Lamsdorff family claim descent from this supposed child. Another story says she gave birth in 1893 or 1894.
Most of the contemporary gossip comes from the pen of Princess Catherine Radziwill. She reported that Kschessinska gave the Tsar ‘two sons who were very richly dowered’, which ‘gave her a distinct advantage over all his other flirtations which she was far too clever to notice’.16 The World Magazine of 12 March 1911 reported that these boys were being brought up in Paris and that the eldest had just reached the age of seventeen. Whoever they were, they were not Mathilde’s children.
Having paraded her relationship with Nicholas so openly, telling everyone that her Imperial admirer ‘worshipped her and would do everything she desired’17 it would seem logical for Mathilde to keep a hold on Nicholas. The most obvious way to do that was to have his child. This was the usual scenario. The annals of the Imperial family are full of Grand Dukes with illegitimate children. Yet there is no evidence at all that Mathilde had Nicholas’s baby and surely, if she had, Mathilde would have ensured that everybody knew about it. Were they careful, or were their encounters perhaps not quite as intimate as has always been assumed? We shall probably never know.
In fact it was the Empress who was pregnant. On 3 November 1895 Alexandra gave birth to her first child, a daughter christened Olga. When he came to the throne Nicholas discontinued his visits to the graduation performance of the Imperial Theatre School. These were now undertaken by Grand Duke Vladimir. The Empress was obviously taking no chances that he might meet another dancer.
After the incident of the jealous letters and Mathilde’s indiscreet comments about ‘despicable Alix’, Nicholas’s feelings had changed. Mathilde may have been aware of Imperial disfavour. When the court came out of mourning in January 1896 Nicholas and Alexandra attended a performance at the Maryinsky.
‘On Sunday [28 January] we went to Sleeping Beauty (Nicky and Alix also),’ Xenia told her brother George, ‘and we saw Malechka for the first time. Nicky was telling me later that he had terrible emotions and it was quite unpleasant for the first minute of her appearance … Alix was looking sad, and it was understandable!’18
Despite this Mathilde still retained the backing of the influential Grand Duke Vladimir and of Sergei Michaelovich. This was to prove crucial.
In 1896 Mathilde’s brother Joseph married Princess Serafima Astafieva (‘Sima’), twenty-year-old daughter of Prince Alexander Astafiev, a general in the Imperial army. Her mother was related to Baron Frederiks, later Minister of the Imperial Court. Sima’s grandmother was Count Leo Tolstoy’s sister, Maria. As a child, Sima sat on Tolstoy’s knee and tugged at his beard. She was educated first at the exclusive Smolny Institute, a boarding school for daught
ers of the nobility, but after a serious illness Tolstoy suggested that she be enrolled instead into the Imperial Theatre School to help regain her strength.
Sima graduated into the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky Theatre in 1895. ‘She was a great beauty,’ recalled Alicia Markova, ‘and moved with a grace which was a joy to watch. A woman of temperament and spirit, she was a commanding personality. … She had what is known as a presence.’19
When their son Viacheslav (known as Slava) was born on 28 February 1898 Julie Kschessinska and Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich were his godparents. The Grand Duke presented Sima with a ruby brooch.
She became one of Mathilde’s closest friends.
The coronation of the new Tsar was to be in Moscow in May 1896. Feverish preparations were in hand, not only for the lavish ceremony itself but for the gala performance at the Bolshoi Theatre. For this the Moscow and St Petersburg ballet companies joined forces, so Mathilde booked into the Dresden Hotel in Moscow. Although she would be dancing in the ordinary Moscow season, Mathilde, a ballerina with her own repertoire, was left out of the gala performance for which a new ballet, The Pearl, was being arranged. The title role had been given to Legnani because it was considered that Mathilde’s appearance in front of the young Empress would be inappropriate.
Faced with what she regarded as an insult, Mathilde decided to act. She had Nicholas’s promise that she could go to him in time of need, yet she did not appeal direct to the Tsar. Instead she went to Grand Duke Vladimir.
Whatever she said to Vladimir worked, because he went straight to the Tsar. Nicholas was in awe of his powerful uncles and rather than face an unpleasant confrontation he gave in. Suddenly an order was issued to the administration of the Imperial Theatres that Kschessinska was to take part in the gala. Mathilde was triumphant. One writer has called this ‘the first of many successful appeals, for which “blackmail’‘ is perhaps too strong a word’.20
As rehearsals for The Pearl were already over, Petipa had to arrange a new pas-de-deux for Mathilde to specially written music. She would dance the Yellow Pearl. This, of course, drew attention to Mathilde (which must have delighted her) but it also caused ‘much resentment’ among the members of the Maryinsky Ballet Company.21
The main event was naturally the coronation itself. As the Romanovs gathered in Moscow, Mathilde met other members of the family including two of Vladimir’s sons, nineteen-year-old Grand Duke Cyril and eighteen-year-old Grand Duke Boris. Cyril was tall, dark-haired and, Mathilde said, ‘incredibly handsome, I must confess’. He had just been commissioned a sub-lieutenant in the Imperial Navy and appointed an ADC to the Emperor. The sociable Boris graduated that year from the Nikolaevsky Cavalry School, becoming a Cornet in the Life Guards Hussar Regiment. He ‘liked to drink and have fun’ and had started on a career as a ‘world class womaniser’.22
Mathilde flirted with the younger Grand Dukes. She was once late for a rehearsal when a friend came to lunch at her hotel. Although Mathilde apologised to Petipa for keeping the whole cast waiting she did not give the real reason for her lateness, which surely could only have been lunch with a prominent member of the Imperial family who prevented her from leaving on time. Whoever it was the incident caused resentment and the company began to fear Mathilde and the influence she wielded.23 All this time she was ‘tormented by thoughts about Nicky and his new wife’.24 From the hotel window Mathilde watched the Tsar’s entry into Moscow on 9 May, an imposing procession of colourfully dressed notables which wound along Tverskaya from the Petrovsky Palace to the Kremlin. Don Cossacks, Cossacks from the Urals, Dragoons, Cuirassiers, Asiatic tribes with exotic names in colourful oriental dress, all clattering by on horses and looking like a scene from the Arabian Nights. Rows of colourfully dressed courtiers – footmen in frock-coats and powdered wigs, huge Arabs in gold jackets with billowing red trousers, the Imperial Huntsmen with the falconers’ feather in their tall caps, gentlemen-in-waiting and chamberlains. Then came a line of golden carriages carrying foreign royalty and distinguished guests. Finally the Emperor appeared. To Mathilde it was agonising to see the Tsar ride by on his white horse – to her he was still Nicky, the man she adored but who could never belong to her.
The coronation took place in the Uspensky Sobor, one of the three great Kremlin cathedrals, on 14 May. Mathilde obtained a seat in one of the tribunes outside, from where she could watch the Emperor and Empress descend the Red Staircase from the Kremlin Palace as the bells of 1,600 Moscow churches pealed joyfully. Afterwards Mathilde found it extremely upsetting to watch Nicholas and his wife, crowned and robed, walk in procession across the square under huge canopies. That night the Emperor and Empress appeared on the Kremlin Palace balcony and, as Alexandra pressed a switch hidden in a bouquet of flowers, magnificent illuminations lit up the city.
Many balls and festivities were given in honour of the coronation and at one of these Mathilde and her friend, the Moscow ballerina Ekaterina Geltzer, sold champagne.
Mathilde danced in the normal performances during the Moscow season, receiving many bouquets as well as a pretty silver basket, but there was general surprise when her name appeared on the programme for the coronation gala on 17 May. It was known that the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna had been opposed to her inclusion, saying that her appearance would be ‘a scandal’.25 Several writers have mentioned that the Dowager Empress did not want Mathilde to dance in front of the young Empress but, of course, she had already done so.
The Bolshoi Theatre had been refurbished at a cost of 50,000 roubles. A foreign guest later observed that he was almost blinded by the sparkling diamonds of the ladies in the audience. ‘We went to the Bolshoi for the gala performance. As usual, they were giving the first and last act of A Life for the Tsar and a beautiful new ballet, The Pearl,’ Nicholas wrote in his diary that night.26 That was his only comment.
Krasnoe Selo was enlivened for Mathilde by the presence of Grand Dukes Cyril and Boris. Yet the coronation celebrations and the lively summer season hid disturbing undercurrents beneath the surface. During the festivities in Moscow over 1,000 people were crushed to death in a stampede for the free food, drink and a souvenir mug at the traditional People’s Fete on Khodynka Meadow. The Tsar and Tsarina, misled as to the magnitude of the catastrophe, attended the French Ambassador’s ball that evening, while the peasants murmured about their heartlessness.
Nicholas paid for the funerals out of his own purse but the damage had been done. The sovereigns were condemned as callous and heartless and the disaster was seen as a bad omen for the new reign.
Five
‘MAGNIFICIENT MATILDA’
On 1 November 1896 Mathilde was appointed Prima Ballerina assoluta of the Imperial Theatres,1 the only pre-Revolutionary Russian dancer to be given this title. Nevertheless, her struggle to take over first place at the Maryinsky continued and Legnani still received all the best roles.
At the Maryinsky the ballerina was queen. Conductors held up the music so that the orchestra would finish as the dancer completed her variation (solo); ballerinas introduced steps which would exhibit their particular skill and even included a favourite variation from another ballet (often with music by a completely different composer) into a work. They had the best dressing rooms, which opened directly off the artists’ foyer on the same level as the Maryinsky stage. Senior ballerinas, particularly Mathilde, fought to keep the roles which they had been allocated.
In 1895 Johansson began teaching ‘the class of perfection’ (the ‘ballerinas’ class’), for Mathilde and others who had already graduated. Mathilde developed an incredibly demanding technique. ‘When practising, she would put four chairs in a square and swing her legs within the tight space of the square. If she had touched the back of a chair, the force of her swing would immediately have broken a leg.’2 This technique may partly be attributable to Cecchetti, whose classes Mathilde resumed in 1899.
On 4 September 1896 Mathilde danced the full three acts of La Fille mal Gardée, ‘the best comed
y role in the repertoire’, for the first time. With choreography by Petipa and Ivanov, it tells the story of Lise and Colin, her lover, ‘and their attempts to outwit her mother’s plans to marry her to Alain, the simple-witted son of a rich landowner’.3 The role of the high-spirited, flirtatious Lise was perfect for the bubbly Mathilde – but critics recognised in her portrayal a projection of her shrewd, conniving, off-stage personality. She danced it with brio and it later became one of her favourite ballets.
Later that month Mathilde danced in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet Mlada, in which her variation to the accompaniment of the harp delighted the audience. She took over the leading role of Therese in The Cavalry Halt after Legnani danced it at the première in January 1896. Yet when a new ballet, Bluebeard, was performed on 8 December for Petipa’s benefit performance the plum role was again given to Legnani. Mathilde danced Venus in the last act but ensured that her name was alongside Legnani’s on the posters. Others who danced Venus were not so fortunate. Their names were down below with the junior soloists.
That season Mathilde received yet another Imperial gift, this time from Grand Dukes Vladimir, Alexei and Paul Alexandrovich (the Tsar’s uncles) and his great-uncle Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich (Sergei’s father). The present was a ring-shaped diamond brooch with four huge sapphires and it came in a case accompanied by a little plaque engraved with their names.
This was a welcome boost, because Mathilde had suddenly noticed that the Tsar and Tsarina invariably attended the ballet on Sundays, while the administration arranged that she would perform only on Wednesdays. After several weeks Mathilde was at last given a Sunday performance of The Sleeping Beauty – only to find that Nicholas had been persuaded by the administration to attend the French play at the Michaelovsky Theatre. Mathilde therefore wrote to the Tsar, explaining the position and saying she found it impossible to remain on the Imperial stage under such conditions. The letter was personally delivered by Grand Duke Sergei Michaelovich, President of the Russian Theatrical Society, who was only too willing to do everything in his power to help. All Mathilde could do now was wait.