Imperial Dancer

by Coryne Hall

  Vladimir and Leonida sometimes brought their small daughter to tea. Maria liked Mathilde’s tame tortoise Rosalie. ‘The adorable animal would take tea with us, let us stroke her and even nibble the cakes which were lying around on the table!’ Mathilde insisted that Rosalie knew her own name and would come when called. Although this did happen once or twice, if Rosalie was a long way away they had quite a wait before she reached the tea-table.61

  Another visitor was Andrei’s cousin Grand Duchess Marie, who had returned to Europe in the late 1940s. An annuity from King Gustav V of Sweden enabled her to travel and she often visited Mathilde and Andrei. Marie could be a ‘difficult guest’, always arriving with a vast amount of luggage which included photographic equipment and a typewriter but she became very close to Mathilde, who called her ‘my best friend’.62

  Mathilde’s memoirs had still not been published. Marie, a successful author, read the draft and encouraged Mathilde, offering to translate the manuscript into English. The Grand Duchess worked on the text for several months, until in the spring of 1954 she suffered a stroke and had to abandon the project. Andrei then took over but in 1956 Mathilde suffered yet another fall, which kept her immobilised for six months. The memoirs were shelved.

  Mathilde was now eighty-four and Julie, at ninety, was still pottering about in the garden all day and enjoying the occasional glass of vodka. Andrei’s health was hardly robust and his sight was fading. In May 1956 he celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday, old by the standards of Romanov men.

  Nevertheless, his sudden death on 30 October that year was a terrible blow to Mathilde and Vova. ‘Yes … The grief is massive and the blow was terrible,’ Vova told Felia.

  Of course, during the last two years we could expect the end, but there were all reasons to think and hope that his life would last a few more years. For the last 8–9 months Papa was feeling better and better. In the middle of October he had influenza, it was very weak, but it exhausted him … But he got better and the day before the doctor found him in good condition. On the day of his death he said when he woke up: ‘At last after ten days of flu I feel very good.’ Twenty minutes before the end I talked with Papa. He was cheerful and absorbing.63

  Andrei was just finishing a letter on his typewriter when he stood up and with the words ‘my head is spinning’ went to his room, lay down on the bed and died. ‘I ran after him but the end came immediately,’ Mathilde wrote. ‘It was so sudden and so terrible that I did not want to believe it. It could have happened when he was alone.’64

  There was nothing Mathilde and Vova could do except pray. ‘God is kind,’ Vova commented. ‘He did not suffer and did not even know that the end was coming.’65

  The drawing room was converted into a mortuary chapel. Andrei’s body lay in state for three days with a guard of honour provided by veterans of the old Russian Army. Hundreds of people attended the twice-daily funeral services. ‘During the requiem people were even standing in the garden,’ Mathilde told Felia, ‘it was impossible to get into the house. On the last night officers were on guard next to the coffin all night. The coffin was opened (we had permission). I sat all night next to the coffin.’66 For the first forty-eight hours the area was without electricity and the house could be lit only by candles. Later Mathilde told Margot Fonteyn about his lying-in-state and how she had received the condolences of 3,000 Russian émigrés without once breaking down.

  Andrei was buried in the uniform of the Horse Artillery Brigade of the Guard, which he had commanded during the First World War. Crowds packed the church, the courtyard and the neighbouring streets for the funeral at 11.30 a.m. on 3 November. Among the mourners were Vladimir and Leonida, Grand Duchess Marie (who, despite failing health attended all the requiems) and Princess Irina Youssoupov, the Tsar’s niece. Elena sent condolences, as did the officers of all the regiments. There was a ‘very touching telegram from Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna from London and a wonderful letter from Olga Alexandrovna’, the Tsar’s sisters and Andrei’s cousins. ‘Of course everything is very reassuring but Andrei is not here any more,’ Mathilde added sadly.67

  The funeral was conducted by Metropolitan Vladimir, with many other members of the Russian clergy. Throughout the service Mathilde was supported by Vova and Vladimir. ‘After the reading of the service I was in the church for more than two hours while everybody was coming to me and Grand Duke Vladimir did not leave me. But I was holding on, I am strong and my tears dropped only when I was alone,’ she told Felia.68 Then Andrei’s coffin was taken to the small church, where it remained for two months before being moved to the crypt. Andrei, the last of the Grand Dukes born in Russia, had broken by six months the longevity record set in 1909 by Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich.

  ‘With Andrei’s death,’ Mathilde wrote in her memoirs, ‘my fairy-tale life came to an end.’69 To Felia, she poured out her heart and said she only dreamed of joining Andrei. ‘He was exceptional and everybody, everybody loved him … I am not afraid of death but I cannot get there yet, I do not deserve it yet.’70

  Andrei had been her right-hand man. Now, at the age of eighty-four, for the first time in over sixty years she no longer had a Grand Duke by her side. ‘Mama is holding on wonderfully, but poor thing is suffering and feeling unhappy,’ Vova wrote during the New Year of 1957.71

  Mathilde now had to face life on her own – without the Romanovs.

  Eighteen

  THE FINAL CURTAIN

  By February 1957 Mathilde was back at work in the studio. She needed the money in order to survive – Andrei had apparently left her nothing in his will. Even during his lifetime the house at Villa Molitor had been sold and they were paying rent.

  Mathilde now stopped socialising. Yet despite chronic arthritis contracted during the war, which impaired her agility and stopped her showing the movements properly, she continued to teach. ‘You see, I have no means of existence apart from earnings, since I did not have a fortune abroad,’ she explained.1 Vova’s job in the wine trade now only brought in a fraction of the income they needed.

  During that year Mathilde received a letter from the Director of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin. He said they knew little about her artistic abilities and he requested photographs and details of how she had prepared and interpreted her roles in Tchaikovsky’s ballets. Mathilde was only too happy to help, pleased that she was in contact with Russia (which at least proved she had not been forgotten) and that the museum was interested in her theatrical career. After detailing all the problems of her health and the difficulties of keeping the school running during the war, Mathilde added that she wanted to live life to the full and not be an old lady sitting in an armchair.

  In another letter two years later the Director asked about Mathilde’s teaching methods and impressions of her top pupils. Offering congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the studio, he urged Mathilde to write her memoirs. He added that they would really appreciate the donation of the shoes Mathilde had worn for her final appearance at Covent Garden.

  ‘Many of my pupils shine on the stage,’ Mathilde replied. ‘Many have created their very own dance school. In America now there are nearly ten. And through these our Russian choreographic art will penetrate everywhere.’2 She sent the shoes and Russian costume made for her last stage appearance in 1936.

  Just over four months after Andrei’s death Elena died in Athens. Now all of Andrei’s siblings were dead but Mathilde still soldiered on, unwillingly it seems. On the first anniversary of Andrei’s death a service was held in the Russian Church. [It] was full of people and there were so many flowers,’ Mathilde told Felia.

  Vova and I went to the church in the morning and decorated it with flowers and we prayed in the hour of [Andrei’s] death. Everybody was coming to me with such touching words. Last year when this terrible misfortune happened I could hold back my tears, I only cried when left on my own. But now I cannot and at the service I cried bitterly. I … so want to go to my beloved Andrei and I try to do everything to get t
o him.3

  Mathilde kept going because of Vova. She was always worried about him, ‘always afraid of something’.4

  Mathilde, as always, found comfort in religion. ‘I … often go to confession and receive communion, that helps me to be closer to him.’ She even wanted to try and contact Andrei through a medium but ‘my priest told me that it is a sin, you cannot disturb the soul and cause suffering. You see, Felia, what I have become,’ she added.5

  In 1958 Mathilde broke her solitude to attend a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet at the Paris Opéra. She was delighted to find it had retained all the style and traditions of the old Imperial ballet. Nothing had really changed since the Revolution.

  The stars of the Bolshoi Ballet were forbidden to have any contact with Kschessinska on pain of being deprived of their visas. Despite this, visitors sometimes came – secretly, because it was dangerous – from Russia, where it was forbidden to even mention Mathilde’s name until the 1990s. Some were journalists, or former members of the old Maryinsky ballet company (now renamed the Kirov Ballet). To everyone who came from Russia the question was the same – ‘Who lives in my private residence in St Petersburg?’6 She then launched into the old story of the ‘hoops’, but in the end always returned to the subject of her mansion and never tired of telling people how comfortable and well-looked-after it was and about the guests entertained there. These memories supported her, particularly in the twilight years.

  In December 1958 Mathilde learnt of the death of Andrei’s cousin Marie at Mainau, her son’s home on Lake Constance in Germany. ‘Very sad that Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna died,’ Mathilde told Nadezhda Sablina. ‘The Grand Duke and I loved her a lot. She was my best friend and we called each other “tu” … I have a wonderful photograph in 1953 with the Grand Duke [Andrei], the Grand Duchess and me.’ Mathilde continued. After Andrei’s funeral Marie went to Monte Carlo ‘where she started feeling worse. I did not see her again. From Monte Carlo she was taken to her son and she died there.’7

  By 1960 Mathilde’s leg was giving so much trouble that she was hardly able to walk and the students often drove her home after class, ‘but I am giving classes very well, everybody is surprised, even myself’. Mathilde continued working only to help Vova, ‘the only goal of my life’. Luckily that autumn she acquired an assistant, a former pupil, Trunina.8

  During that year Mathilde’s memoirs were published in France under the title Souvenirs de la Kschessinska. Like many prominent people she had used a ghost writer to put the manuscript into shape. This was Julia Sazonova-Slonimskaia, Russian writer, journalist and theatre critic, who lived in Paris at various periods during the emigration until her death in 1957.9 Mathilde now especially lamented the loss of the Tsarevich’s letters in the Revolution. With the Soviet archives closed to the outside world and no means of being contradicted, Mathilde reconstructed their romance from memory, occasionally omitting inconvenient facts (like the jealous letters to Alexandra) and inserting others which it was impossible to corroborate. The English translation (finally done by Arnold Haskell) was called Dancing in Petersburg. ‘I would really like to know your opinion of my book, all my soul is in it,’ Mathilde wrote to Nadezhda Sablina.10

  The memoirs were well received. Many critics said the book was historic and gave an understanding of the splendour of Imperial Russia. Mathilde had given a rosy picture of her life. Asked why she had not mentioned all the difficulties Mathilde replied, ‘Oh, I couldn’t!’ Yet there were those in the Russian community in Paris who felt that she should not have written about her relationship with the murdered Tsar and at least one person returned her copy of the book.11 Nevertheless, Mathilde was excited, especially when the book was published in America. ‘It had great success, I receive a lot of touching and enthusiastic letters,’ she informed Felia. ‘I did not send the book to you, because it seems that you would not be interested,’ she added. ‘I had a big advance, everything is for Vova.’12

  In an article for Dance Magazine, the New York journalist Eileen O’Connor, who had been recommended to study with Mathilde in 1935 by Fokine, said that Kschessinska still showed great emotion at the mention of the Tsar. ‘When you read the accounts of the fabulous galas given for her … the fancy dress balls attended by royal patrons and balletomanes, the list of jewels and extravagant presents … it becomes obvious why neither Diaghilev nor other foreign offers could tempt her for long. She saw no future in touring the world.’13

  Mathilde entrusted the original manuscript in the Russian language to a diplomat for delivery to the Director of the Tchaikovsky Museum. Unfortunately, it appears that the man was not a diplomat at all – unknown to Mathilde he was probably a KGB agent. The parcel was confiscated and never arrived at Klin.14

  By 1961 Mathilde was having further problems. Already restricted in her movements because of her bad leg, she now needed a cataract operation on her left eye. Struggling to write to Felia, she was convinced that this would be her last letter. ‘I cannot pull myself together,’ she told Felia in January, and for the first time in their long correspondence ended her letter with a religious phrase, ‘God will keep you’.15 The operation went well and Mathilde was under the care of Dr Zalewski. ‘I visited him 3 days ago and he was very pleased, saying that by Christmas I will see very well … I am not wearing glasses, I only use them to read and write.’16

  Vova persuaded some of his Russian friends to invite his mother to dinner. Although hardly able to walk, Mathilde was delighted, as no one had ever considered inviting her before. When the hosts put on a record of some ballet music she tried to dance the steps with her fingers on the table.17

  On 1 September 1962 Mathilde celebrated her ninetieth birthday. ‘Ninety years, who would believe it,’ she wrote incredulously. ‘My room was full of flowers, letters and despatches from all corners of the world.’ She could hardly believe so many people had remembered.18

  Yet she was convinced her end was near. ‘I am also sorting out my things, because it will be difficult for Vova,’ she wrote in April. ‘I have prepared clothes to be buried in and what to put in the coffin with me. Everything is sad!’19

  In one of her letters to the Tchaikovsky Museum Mathilde told the Director that she would like to learn the fate of her brother’s family. The museum had informed her that Joseph was dead, but what of his children?

  Through the museum Mathilde obtained the address of Yuri Sevenard, a high-ranking engineer and son of her much-loved niece Celina. Mathilde wrote to Yuri, begging him to meet her in Odessa because she wanted to tell him ‘something very important’, asking him to preserve her letter and to keep it secret.20

  In 1995 Celina’s husband Constantine Sevenard, his son Yuri and grandson Constantine (‘Kostia’) were interviewed for a documentary about Mathilde which was broadcast on Swedish television. Although the elder Constantine at first said that the following incident occurred at the end of the 1960s, they all finally agreed it was around 1963:

  ‘One summer at the end of the 1960s [sic] she came in a boat to the Black Sea and the ship docked in the roads outside Odessa,’ said Constantine. ‘They were looking for relatives of Mathilde Kschessinska who were still alive. They found us, Yuri and me … no other relatives were still alive.’

  Helena Sevenard, a relative of Sima Astafieva, took up the story, saying that they heard Mathilde had come to find her relatives but it would have been impossible for them to see her. At that time it was dangerous; they would all have been taken away.

  Although this was the period of the thaw, in the 1960s the shadow of Stalin, who had died in 1953, still loomed large. Constantine senior explained that although they received the official request it was thought inappropriate to meet the mistress of Nicholas II and they had no choice but to refrain from seeing her. ‘Was that in 1963?’ he asked his son.

  Yuri agreed. ‘I know that just that year Mathilde visited Odessa. I showed Papa a letter with Mathilde Kschessinska’s signature,’ he explained to the interviewer. ‘Papa said that it
was best not to react to it.’ The letter was burnt. An unnamed relative of the Romanovs was later quoted in the St Petersburg Times as saying, ‘When [in Soviet times] the relatives of Kschessinska came here, [the Sevenards] always said, “We don’t know them”.’21

  There is also some confusion over whether it was Mathilde, the even older Julie (who was ninety-eight!), or someone else who was supposed to have visited Odessa. In 1963 Mathilde was almost ninety-one, reasonably fit, still teaching at the studio and still lucid. Although difficult to believe that she would have been willing to undertake such a journey, it is certainly not impossible. In any event, the meeting did not take place and the family never learnt Mathilde’s secret.

  By 1964 she was still limping to catch the Metro every day, despite a broken hip. The money she earned was desperately needed. Vova told Howard D. Rothschild that they needed $6,000 a year (£2,150) in order to live. Mathilde earned £358; Vova, who was almost sixty-two, also earned around £358 from his business delivering wine; another American, an old friend of Andrei, gave £716 annually; £225 each came from Andrei’s nephew Vladimir and Prince Troubetzkoy; and a further £115 each from Prince Bielosselsky and Mr Serguievsky. Rothschild, a devoted friend for nearly twenty years, began sending anonymous cheques to Mathilde through a New York bank from 1963. Mathilde, who said her financial situation was ‘very difficult’, was grateful for the extra money that enabled her to buy things she needed, even though she had no idea to whom she owed this generosity.22 Every year on 1 May Rothschild sent a flacon of Mathilde’s favourite perfume and he usually telephoned from America on her birthday. Georgia Hiden sent lily-of-the valley every May Day, frequent presents arrived from Diana, and other friends sometimes gave financial assistance.