by Coryne Hall
Joseph was delighted at Mathilde’s success. ‘I read with deep interest about the little one [Mathilde, who he never mentioned by name], about her work and her studio and I was happy to learn that her pupils gained first place,’ he told Julie in the summer of 1933. ‘Well, I was sure it could be no other way. She deserved it, because she is persistent, a true master of her subject. It is sad that I cannot be of any help to her and cannot share with her my vast experience.’16
Mathilde improvised movements which Ekaterina Wasmoundt, playing without sheet music, skilfully followed on the old upright piano. ‘None of the Russian teachers adhered to strict musical patterns,’ recalled Margot Fonteyn. ‘The accompanist was expected to lengthen some measures and add a few flourishes at the end of a phase as required.’ At the Maryinsky, the conductors had been expected to do the same.17 As Mathilde spoke no English classes were in French, although she quarrelled with Mme Wasmoundt in Russian. The students worked hard. Once when Diana Gould showed Mathilde her bleeding toes during an exhausting class she was told to repeat the step twelve more times.18
Mathilde guided Claire de Robilant towards the history of ballet, an unusual subject of research in the 1930s, and taught Nathalie Krassovska Le Spectre de la Rose. Later, when Nathalie was dancing with Fokine, he said that what Mathilde had taught her was wrong. ‘That woman can’t remember anything’, he claimed, changing the choreography.19 Nevertheless all their old differences were now forgotten and he sometimes choreographed dances for Mathilde’s pupils when he was in Paris. Before returning to America he gave her a set of crystal liqueur glasses.
On 21 April 1935, at the request of the Directors of the International Dance Archives, Mathilde gave a public demonstration of her methods. Six pupils, from a beginner to a graduate, were chosen to show the results of Mathilde’s teaching and were warmly praised in an article written by Prince Volkonsky. Her pupils also danced in charity performances and at private parties, for which Mathilde choreographed short pieces. They scored a particularly resounding success at the Russian Press Ball on 13 January 1930, their first performance.20
The publicity brought still more pupils, until the school was nearly bursting at the seams. Somehow a solution had to be found.
The death of the Dowager Empress Marie in October 1928, followed early in 1929 by that of Nicholasha, removed the two most senior members of the Romanov family and dealt a bitter blow to the monarchist movement. Both the Empress and Nicholasha had remained hostile to Cyril’s claims as ‘Emperor’ in exile but there were still those who hoped to see the old order restored.
Although Andrei’s morganatic marriage barred him (according to the Supreme Monarchist Council) as a serious claimant to the throne, in 1922 Cyril recruited him as one of the Grand Ducal representatives in his ‘Council for Building Imperial Russia’. The others were Grand Duke Dimitri, Grand Duke Alexander (Sandro) and his brother Grand Duke Michael. In 1929 many workers in the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow were accused of anti-Soviet activity and the creation of a National Society for the Revival of Free Russia. Among those arrested was the prominent historian S.F. Platonov, who boasted that he had once taught history to Nicholas II’s children – and at the head of the list of those he incriminated in plans for a restoration of the monarchy was Grand Duke Andrei.
In January 1930 Alexander Kutepov, a White general, was kidnapped by Soviet agents off the streets of Paris. Kutepov did not survive the journey to Russia but the very fact that the Soviets were active in Paris sent the Russian émigrés into a panic. Through ‘an associate of Grand Duke Andrei’, a collective letter was delivered to the French Prime Minister Andrei Tardieu asking the government for help. When the Soviets kidnapped General Miller from Paris in 1937 and took him to Moscow, where he was shot after a brutal interrogation, the Romanovs realised just how vulnerable they were.21
From now on they were often followed by agents of the French police and received warnings that this or that person was a Moscow agent and not trustworthy. They took their own precautions of course, but none of them was able to pay for extensive private security.
Mathilde and Andrei were all the more worried because Vova’s friendship with Grand Duke Dimitri had led to his involvement in the Young Russian movement, a political group which hoped to restore the Russian monarchy. The founder was a young aristocrat, Alexander Kazem-Bek, a great-nephew of Leo Tolstoy and cousin of Sima Astafieva. Kazem-Bek was an admirer of Italian fascism and wanted a restoration with Grand Duke Cyril as Tsar, but he wanted to preserve ‘the social gains the Soviet system had achieved for the lower classes’. The Young Russians’ uniform was a dark blue shirt and their symbol was an orb (monarchy) with a cross above (Orthodoxy). The chairman of the Council of Young Russians was Grand Duke Dimitri. When Vova was asked who he thought should be the next Russian Tsar he replied enigmatically, ‘in Russia there are people in whose veins flows the blood of the last Emperor’.22
By the early 1930s Vova was close to Dimitri and Kazem-Bek. He organised annual dinner galas for the Russian community and arranged the Young Russians’ People’s Fete, dinner and ball in December. He was also a frequent guest at Dimitri’s estate at Vienne during the 1930s.
Cyril’s cautious support for the movement risked alienating the more conservative White Monarchists, who were appalled at the Young Russians’ fascist-style rallies and songs glorifying the Red Army. Andrei was also ‘unhappy’ about Vova’s prominence in the movement and his closeness to Dimitri and Kazem-Bek.23 Without realising it, Vova was wading into some very muddy waters indeed.
In July 1937, Kazem-Bek was spotted talking to Colonel Alexei Ignatiev, ‘now a prominent figure in Stalin’s military establishment’. In the ensuing scandal Alexander Kazem-Bek was exposed as a Soviet agent working for Stalin.24
On 13 September 1934 Serafima Astafieva died in London at the age of fifty-eight. Sima had been Mathilde’s sister-in-law, friend and the companion on her travels in the early days of her relationship with Andrei. She was proud of the fact that she was never a refugee, having been living and working in London since 1914. Many of the great British dancers received their early training in her studio. Joseph remained fond of Sima despite their divorce, often asking for news of her.
Mathilde was now very worried about Joseph. His increasing deafness was becoming a problem and he was lonely without Romauld, who was on a scientific expedition to the Kara Sea. There had been no acknowledgement for the money recently sent, something about which Joseph was always very particular. With Stalin’s purges at their height and people being denounced and shot the family in Paris could only hope he was too frightened to write. Joseph was writing, but his letters were not received in Paris. After March 1936 he never mentioned Romauld, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Many years later a woman claimed to be Romauld’s daughter, born in one of Stalin’s camps.25
The fate of her Russian property was also on Mathilde’s mind. In the mid-1930s she bumped into Kamenka, former Director of the Bank of Azov & Don. Kamenka said that her boxes of silverware were so well hidden that they would never be found and even expressed the hope that they would soon be returned.
In the mid-1930s Pierre Vladimiroff became a teacher at the School of American Ballet in New York, where Felia joined him in 1938. They tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mathilde and Andrei to follow. From this time Mathilde and Felia maintained a long correspondence.
Felia was one of the few people Mathilde found time to write to personally. Andrei and Julie conducted most of the correspondence simply because Mathilde did not have the time. Her enthusiasm and energy were incredible. Soulamith Messerer and her brother Asaf, the first Soviet dancers to tour in Western Europe, met Kschessinska, Preobrajenska and Egorova in 1933. Asaf found Mathilde ‘especially lively’. Although now in her sixties ‘she looked simply magnificent. Uncommonly elegant, radiant, with lively intelligent eyes.’26 Soulamith could not take her eyes off the three great ballerinas, who came backstage with Prince Volkonsky. S
he was especially impressed with Mathilde. ‘Despite her age Matilda Felixovna was looking young and had a coquettish and clever smile in her eyes. I could imagine her as the Empress of the Petersburg ballet.’ She was surprised to see Mathilde in the company of her old enemy. ‘Volkonsky must have made peace with her,’ Soulamith wrote later. ‘The same goes for Preobrajenska who was trying to throw Kschessinska off her throne.’ Beside her Olga Preobrajenska, who was of a similar age, appeared old. As they left, Kschessinska called out in a dictatorial voice: ‘Come to me tomorrow. I will expect you!’ Mathilde, once described as a slight, autocratic figure with black hair wearing a beautiful necklace of large pearls, was used to being obeyed. This was, after all, the woman who Teliakovsky once allegedly described as ‘the true Director of the Imperial Theatre until the revolution’.27
The next morning the Messerers arrived at Kschessinska’s ‘so-called studio’, which Soulamith described as ‘actually a very small room’. The class was a mixture of small children and quite large girls, some trying their best and others doing little more than watching. Mathilde was apologetic and had lost the air of regal command which had impressed Soulamith the previous day. ‘Their attitude to work is different,’ she explained. ‘Some of them are professionals and some of them are just off the street.’ With a shake of the head she indicated a full-bodied student who wanted to learn the thirty-two fouettés. ‘She is paying and I am teaching. But alas, she cannot manage it.…’
The Messerers left with ‘a very unhappy impression’, finding the exercises almost illogical, with no trace of the Imperial Ballet school. Asaf, a particular admirer of the Petersburg school, was especially disappointed. Although they parted ‘with mutual respect’, the Messerers thought more highly of Preobrajenska’s teaching methods.28
Mathilde was working harder than ever and they wanted to go to London. Eudoxia Toukmojoff, the mother of a former pupil, had invited them to stay and they would have to decide whether to go, or to spend the money on cleaning the studio. A few days later everything was sorted out. Apologising for having no time to answer letters, Mathilde told Diana Gould that she was coming to see friends and have a well-earned rest, not to work. She signed the letter formally, ‘Princesse Krasinsky’.29
They arrived in London in the middle of August and stayed with Mme Toukmojoff at West Heath Road, Golders Green, until 2 September. Mathilde visited Ivy House, where Anna Pavlova had lived, and the cemetery where Pavlova’s ashes rested. Diana took them to lunch with her grandmother, as her own family was away. They liked England where, as Andrei said, everything was well-ordered, respectful and well-established on old traditions, so different from life in Paris. Despite the British government’s attitude to Romanov Grand Dukes residing in the country, he added wistfully that they were sad to leave and would love to move to England if it was financially possible.30
When they returned to Paris the studio had been enlarged. They had been able to rent the vacant neighbouring apartment and build a connecting door. The original staircase was taken out, enlarging the floor space in the studio, the piano was moved into the anteroom and a new floor laid. Upstairs were two dressing rooms and bathrooms, as well as a large reception hall.31 Mathilde now had to find an assistant. Anastasia Iolkina, a Russian acquaintance whose late husband had worked briefly for Mathilde, came to live in the studio with her daughter Genia to take care of the secretarial work and the upkeep of the place. Anastasia proved to be very good at keeping order when the children became naughty and was also called on to make running repairs. Genia, whose French was excellent, liaised with the pupils’ parents.
They took turns to prepare Mathilde’s lunch in the small kitchen. Although the meals were simple (Andrei told Diana that his speciality was scrambled eggs) it at least enabled her to have a decent meal between classes. Sometimes Elizabeth came from Villa Molitor to cook a proper lunch, and several times they even had dinner there.32
The new studio was blessed by Metropolitan Eulogius on 7 October, in the presence of Gabriel’s wife Nina, Prince Sergei Volkonsky, Prince Nikita Troubetzkoy and all Mathilde’s students. By November Mathilde had seventy-two pupils.
Among those who passed through Mathilde’s studio during the 1930s were Tatiana Riabouchinska and Mia Slavenska. Tatiana was Mathilde’s star pupil. Her father had been the Tsar’s banker and the family were friends of Mathilde before the Revolution. ‘Photographs of her best pupils adorned the walls above the positions they normally occupied at the barre,’ recalled a student. The great honour of working in Riabouchinska’s position was given to ‘favoured visitors’ to the studio. Among these visitors were Margot Fonteyn and Pamela May from the Vic-Wells Ballet in London. Fonteyn recalled that Mathilde was ‘very upright, with a rather aristocratic face … and the most coquettish, sparkling eyes’. When teaching she wore one of her floral-patterned chiffon dresses, all made to the same pattern but in different colours, with a single-coloured matching headband. ‘Everything about her class was … enchanting. … She had, after all, charmed the last Tsar.’33
Other girls came from Marie Rambert and Mathilde asked Diana Gould to send some roses to Rambert by way of thanks. By the new year the studio was over-full as more new pupils had arrived – but, despite Andrei’s pleading for several months, Diana never seems to have accepted any money for the bouquet.34
Cyril and Victoria had made their home at St Briac in France, where he set up his ‘court’ in exile, issuing proclamations, granting titles (some said selling titles) and living off the generosity of relations. On 30 August 1933 Andrei and Dimitri travelled to St Briac to attend celebrations for the sixteenth birthday of Cyril’s son Vladimir, which marked his coming of age. Neither Mathilde nor Vova was present at this event.
Grand Duke and Duchess Cyril were among the guests at Westminster Abbey in November 1934 for the wedding of the stylish and elegant Princess Marina of Greece and Prince George, Duke of Kent, youngest surviving son of King George V. Marina thus became a member of the British royal family. Conspicuously absent from the celebrations were Marina’s other uncles Andrei and Boris with their morganatic wives. Princess Marina had spent part of her youth in Paris and attended Princess Mestchersky’s finishing school. She and her sisters Olga (now married to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia) and Elizabeth (wife of Count Carl-Theodore of Toerring-Jettenbach) knew Andrei, and presumably Mathilde, well. Andrei was annoyed when Marina later visited Paris and failed to call at Villa Molitor.
Cyril was anxious to gain support from surviving Romanovs. In 1935 he granted morganatic wives and their children the surname Romanovsky, which would be hyphenated to a second name of their choice, and the prefix Serene Highness. On 28 July 1935 Mathilde therefore became Her Serene Highness Princess Romanovsky-Krasinsky.
Vova became Prince Romanovsky-Krasinsky. He was described by a friend as ‘a delightful man’, but miserable because he did not know which Grand Duke was his father. In Paris, rumour said it was Sergei. When one of the Russian community invited Vova to a party he was delighted. No one had bothered to ask him before.35
On 2 March 1936 Grand Duchess Victoria died after a stroke. Mathilde attended a service in the Russian Church with Andrei and Vova, although she was unable to accompany them to Coburg for the funeral because of the studio. Andrei brought back a huge bunch of violets which King Boris of Bulgaria had sent Mathilde from his estate.
Cyril and Vladimir often visited Villa Molitor – but just how friendly was Mathilde with Andrei’s royal relatives, who ‘tolerated’ her? She made light of this in her memoirs, dropping royal names (all, of course, were kind to her or fond of her) but many of Europe’s reigning royalty (and also the Russian monarchists) were scandalised by Andrei’s marriage. For many of them, the fact that ‘Andrei was married to Kschessinska [was] regarded as bad enough in itself’. She was shunned by many of the Russians in Paris, who did not consider that she belonged to real society. For his part Andrei was ‘totally uninterested’ in the succession.36
Natasha Brasov
a (the widow of Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich) was in a similar position. She had been living in an apartment in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris since 1926. When Natasha’s son was killed in a car crash in July 1931 Andrei attended the funeral without his wife.37 Mathilde had befriended Natasha in St Moritz in the glamorous days before the war but there is no evidence that they continued the association in exile.
Mathilde and Andrei cherished hopes of returning to England and discussed the idea with Arnold Haskell over lunch in Villa Molitor’s garden. England was in the early stages of founding a national ballet school under Ninette de Valois. Haskell actively supported this project and he invited Mathilde to visit the ballet school and demonstrate to the company at the Vic-Wells Theatre, believing that the publicity would attract pupils to Mathilde’s studio. Yet as Andrei pointed out in April, a trip to London would be expensive.38
In 1936 Colonel de Basil, whose Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo had taken over from Diaghilev, was giving a Russian season at Covent Garden and he had the idea of staging a gala performance with Mathilde Kschessinska, Olga Preobrajenska, Lubov Egorova and Alexandre Volinine. The others declined to appear but Mathilde, now almost sixty-four, agreed to perform the Russian Boyar Dance which she had last danced at the Conservatoire in 1917. (Not, as she said, ‘at Krasnoe Selo before the Tsar’.)39
Everything was arranged at the last minute. Only on 10 July could Andrei confirm that they would leave for London in three days’ time. Even then he was uncertain where they would be staying, but imagined it would be the Savoy.40
They left on the London Arrow on 13 July. Rough seas delayed the crossing and their train arrived fifty minutes late at Victoria Station. Many of the newspapers carried a photograph of Colonel de Basil and two of Mathilde’s former pupils, Tatiana Riabouchinska and David Lichine, greeting her with armfuls of flowers.