Hesketh Pearson

by The Marrying Americans

  There is no evidence that he was under the spell of any American girl, but competition for his favor was very strong among the belles of New York, and if he had needed money he could have had the pick of the plums. Not only was he an Adonis in looks but he had a mild and tender nature, and none of those who idolized him could be made to believe in after years that he had been responsible for an action of excessive callousness and ferocity. He used to tell the story in full but his female listeners remained skeptical. As we know, Lady Cunard thought the Grand Duke Dmitri tough enough for the job, but she dismissed Youssoupoff as a susceptible soul who had been dragged into an affair which revolted him. Yet there can be very little doubt that this humane young man forced himself to do the deed, and we may briefly recount the story as he used to tell it to an audience of doting unbelievers. From it we learn that, reversing the usual procedure, Hyperion killed a satyr.

  Youssoupoff’s father had been appointed Governor-General of Moscow, but many ministers of state were then pro-German, owing their jobs to Rasputin’s influence, and when the Governor-General attacked them he was sacked. The monk Rasputin was a peasant with hypnotic powers. He had apparently cured the Tsarina’s only son of a dreadful disease, and when the boy survived an attack of haemophilia in the autumn of 1912, Rasputin’s assurance that he would live made the monk more than holy in the mother’s eyes. Thenceforward she was totally under his influence; and as the Tsar was under hers, Russia was practically ruled by Rasputin, whose real plan when war broke out in 1914 was to replace the Tsar by his sickly son, make the Tsarina regent, and patch up a peace with Germany. To save his country from this malign influence, Youssoupoff, the Grand Duke Dmitri, Captain Soukhotin and Pourichkevitch, a member of the Duma (Russian Parliament), decided to dispatch the monk. Though repelled by his personality, Youssoupoff became friendly with Rasputin and even submitted to being hypnotized by him. “I felt as if some active energy were pouring heat, like a warm current, into my whole being,” narrated Youssoupoff,{27} who fell into a torpor, lost the use of his limbs and speech, but managed to retain his senses and power of resistance.

  At last, after many meetings, Rasputin accepted the Prince’s invitation to his house on the Moika Canal at St. Petersburg (now Leningrad). He fitted up a flat in the basement, furnishing and decorating it in a manner that would lull the monk’s suspicions. On the fatal evening he went to the Cathedral, spending two hours in prayer. Dmitri and the others arrived, and Doctor Lazovert lifted the tops of the cakes to sprinkle the ground crystals of cyanide of potassium in each. The glasses were also treated, and either a drink or a cake was enough to kill a normal man instantaneously. Then Dmitri, Soukhotin and Pourichkevitch went upstairs to play lively tunes on the gramophone, which would put Rasputin at his ease. Having made the necessary arrangements, Youssoupoff went to fetch Rasputin in his car. Suddenly he felt a great pity for the monk, but as suddenly his heart hardened on recalling the fellow’s infamy. Arriving at the Prince’s house, the two descended to the basement, where Rasputin inspected the furniture with keen interest and Youssoupoff made a final attempt to make the monk leave St. Petersburg.

  At first Rasputin refused to eat and drink, but in time he did so and seemed to thrive on the poison in the wine and cakes. After a dreadful period of uncertainty Youssoupoff went upstairs to tell his friends that the poison had failed to act. They decided to go down in a body and strangle the monk, but Youssoupoff persuaded them to let him return alone with Dmitri’s revolver. When he got back Rasputin complained of a heavy head and burning stomach, asked for more wine, gulped it down, and began to talk of God. He got up and stood with his host looking at a crystal crucifix; then he admired an ebony cabinet, but Youssoupoff advised him to keep his eyes on the crucifix and say a prayer. At that Rasputin went close to the Prince and looked him in the eyes. With a shudder Youssoupoff lifted the revolver, aimed at the man’s heart and pulled the trigger. Rasputin screamed and collapsed on the floor. The noise of the shot brought his friends. Rasputin seemed to be dead, and they went upstairs to discuss their next action. But Youssoupoff had a twinge of doubt and returned to the basement. Rasputin still lay on the floor apparently lifeless, but with startling suddenness jumped up, foaming at the mouth and howling with rage. They struggled together until Youssoupoff managed to get away and dash upstairs to tell his friends what had happened. They descended rapidly and saw Rasputin crawling to a door which led into the courtyard. He disappeared through it before they could stop him, but Pourichkevitch followed and emptied several barrels of his revolver into the half-dead but still dangerous monk, whose body was then taken by Dmitri, Soukhotin and Doctor Lazovert, and flung into the river.

  As a result of police investigations, Dmitri and Youssoupoff were exiled from the capital. Youssoupoff’s action had made him popular with many nobles as well as the populace, and when the Russian Revolution broke out in March 1917 he was asked to become Tsar. But the Bolsheviks came to power and the offer was not renewed.

  Such was the account, given with graphic detail, which Youssoupoff’s friends refused to credit, though some of his onetime female zealots from America felt rather relieved that he had not returned their ecstatic devotion. Even an intimate male friend, Serge Obolensky, could not believe that such a gentle, sensitive soul had actually murdered, or done his best to murder, Rasputin.

  Grand Dukes and eminences of all sorts were scattered about the cradle of Serge, Prince Obolensky, at his birth in 1890. A childhood spent in Russia was followed by a period in England, where he finished his education at Christ Church, Oxford. He fought through the 1914-18 war on the Russian front, and while serving married Princess Catherine Bariatinsky. He got out of Russia after the Bolsheviks got in, and started a business career in England. Here he met Alice Astor at a golf match, though they had first bumped into one another at a dance, each unaware of the other’s identity at the time of the collision. Her parents had been divorced when she was sixteen, and her mother Ava had recently married Lord Ribblesdale. Her father, John Jacob Astor, had gone down with the Titanic, and her brother Vincent now managed the business. Unfortunately Ava’s second marriage was also unsatisfactory, Ribblesdale needing peace and quiet while she demanded chatter and bustle.

  Not only was Alice an excellent dancer, but she seemed to know everything about anything, from poetry to golf, from Louis Seize furniture to Egyptian philosophy, and Serge Obolensky was impressed. They attended many dances together and became great friends. One of her interests disturbed him. Believing herself a reincarnated Egyptian princess, she was attracted to the mysteries of the East and had been one of the first four people to enter Tutankhamen’s tomb. Serge did not care to meddle with such matters and tried to influence her in an opposite direction. His marriage had been a wartime romance, and as they had nothing in common his wife agreed to a divorce. He quickly became engaged to Alice Astor, an arrangement sternly opposed by her mother, an implacable adversary. Lady Ribblesdale decided that Alice should marry an English peer, not an exiled Russian prince, so she began to collect all sorts of eligible young men for her daughter’s choice.

  First they visited Spain, where a likely suitor was their host; then Alice was forced into other company; but she remained firm. Occasionally she and Serge came across Lady Ribblesdale at parties. A polite smile or bow and they passed on. Alice’s sister-in-law Helen Astor had a house in the Bois near Paris, and they occasionally visited her weekends. Soon Lady Ribblesdale determined to put an end to the affair and packed Alice off to America in the winter of 1922-23; but as she could not interfere with the postal system between the two countries, the pair kept up a regular correspondence. In the summer of ‘23 Alice came of age, and her mother gracefully surrendered her right to tyrannize, becoming friendly with Serge and remaining so until her death at the age of ninety.

  While waiting for his divorce to be made absolute, Serge and Alice discreetly saw a lot of one another. He was legally freed on June 23, 1924; his engagement to Alice was announced on July 4
th following; and on July 24th they were married at the registry office in Buckingham Palace Road, at the Savoy Chapel, and at the Russian Church of St. Philip. Whether three marriage ceremonies are more binding than one is perhaps a question for theologians to debate, but in practice the temperament of individuals is more decisive than sacramental forms.

  A week’s honeymoon at Deauville, a brief visit to London, and they were off to Canada, where they wanted to buy a ranch and settle down happily. They inspected sites near Calgary and in British Columbia, but the climate disagreed with Alice and the places were too remote. They dismissed the ranch from their minds and went to New York, where they stayed at the old family mansion on Fifth Avenue with Vincent and Helen Astor. Here Alice’s grandmother had given those famous dances and receptions when she was leader of New York society and with Ward McAllister had drawn up the famous list of Four Hundred people who constituted the cream of the fashionable world. The place was now like a mausoleum of late Victorian curiosities, such as statues, pictures with enormous frames, tapestries, chandeliers. Vincent Astor was about to demolish it and put up a block of flats in its place, though eventually a synagogue rose on the site. Alice and Serge also stayed on the Astor estate at Rhinebeck overlooking the Hudson River north of New York. That, too, Vincent planned to pull down and rebuild.

  Returning to London, they bought Hanover Lodge in Regent’s Park from Admiral Earl Beatty, furnished it and moved in during the spring of 1925, their son Ivan being born shortly after. Alice spent her money freely on objects with which her husband sympathized. She endowed a school in France for the children of Russian refugees, helped to get them jobs after their education, and made provision for many Russian émigrés. She also helped writers, painters, musicians and dancers. Their lives were spent in a constant succession of social engagements and a regular shifting of scene: summer weeks at Newport in the United States, the autumn at Rhinebeck, Christmas in London; then to St. Moritz in January, to the Riviera for the early spring, and back to London for the season. Sometimes they passed autumn weekends with such friends as the Duchess of Rutland at Belvoir, Lord and Lady Curzon at Hackwood, Mrs. Greville at Polesden Lacy. Theirs was a life of sport mixed with leisure, and Serge Obolensky later admitted: “I would be exaggerating my interest in world affairs if I did not admit that I enjoyed it immensely.”{28} He still had a stockbroking job in the city and occasionally visited the office. They lived in harmony, though his patience was tried by her unpunctuality when they went out to dinner. She tried to cure herself by putting all the clocks in the house forty minutes ahead of time, but even then sometimes had to complete her toilet arrangements in the car, which was driven as fast as the traffic would allow.

  But wealth does not breed contentment, and Alice wanted something more than riches and marriage could give. She found little satisfaction in the game of bridge, and one evening she left her husband in a huff because the rubber he was playing seemed endless. Possibly too she was irritated when he danced a lot with a particular partner. At any rate she began to dine with her friends, and what he called his “periodically uncontrollable stupidity at hitting back” did not ease the strain. Soon they had a “spectacular row” during which each pointed out the failings of the other, and he decided that they needed “a breather” He went off with friends to the south of France, but the change of air did not prevent him from missing Alice. At last she turned up at Cannes and all seemed to be well. They had a jolly time at innumerable parties and went on to Venice for more parties and another jolly time. But on returning to London he received “the real shock of my life,” for he found that Alice had deeply resented the Riviera interlude and wished to be divorced. He asked for a little time in which to find his feet, and departed for the United States to look for a job. Vincent Astor got him one, which he held for three years. Alice followed him and insisted on a divorce.

  The newspapers began to comment on their relationship, which added to their difficulties. She returned to London, and for a while a third party negotiated between them; but in 1932 she applied for a divorce from a town in Nevada. It was agreed that he should have the custody of their son Ivan, and that Alice should have their daughter Sylvia, born after the divorce proceedings had started. Later Vincent Astor made Serge a good offer to work in a real estate company, which he accepted, having become a naturalized American citizen in September 1931. The year after their divorce Alice married again, her husband being Raimund von Hofmannsthal, son of the poet Hugo who wrote libretti for Richard Strauss. As with his former wife, Serge remained on friendly terms with Alice.

  In the 1939-45 war Serge did valuable work as an officer in a parachute unit, dropping into Sardinia while the island was still under German occupation. Alice meanwhile drove an ambulance during the London blitz, and whenever Serge went there they dined together. By this time she had divorced Hofmannsthal and married Philip Harding, but she confided in Serge that she was not happy. During one of his brief visits Alice gave a party, her intention being to provide a really good meal as a change from wartime food. Everything was excellent except the salad dressing, for which she had used mineral oil in the belief that it would have the same effect as salad oil; but the effect on her guests was different.

  After the war, during which he won the Croix de Guerre, Obolensky returned to the United States and went into the hotel business, making a success first of the Plaza, then of the Sherry-Netherland, then of the Astor. He heard that Alice had married David Bouverie, and the news hurt him because he had hoped to remarry her after she had divorced Philip Harding. He reflected on the tragedy of human beings: “Once they make a mistake they can never quite recoup the ground that earlier was lost—they can never quite get back.” In spite of their mutual love, something divided them, and the division may have been due to an incurable discontent in the nature of Alice, whose feelings were probably expressed in the mournful conclusion of Shakespeare’s Richard II:

  ...but whate’er I be,

  Nor I nor any man that but man is

  With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased

  With being nothing.

  Had she married forty husbands instead of four, Alice would have looked in vain for the content she could only have found in herself. Toward the end of her life she “got herself deeply into the hands of mystics” and Serge believed that they derived worldly profit from her spiritual need. She died suddenly in 1956 and was buried at Rhinebeck.

  “I take it for granted that a primary objective in the lives of men is to have a good time,” wrote Serge. But it is possible that Alice and he differed over the meaning of a good time.

  CHAPTER 13—Sympathetic Matrimony

  May Goelet and the Duke of Roxburgh

  Florence Garner and Sir William Gordon-Cumming

  Elizabeth Cabot Ives and Sir William Harcourt

  Thelma Converse and Lord Furness

  By no means all of the well-publicized Anglo-American marriages were made for love or money, for power or position. Some of them were clearly the outcome of fellow feeling, community of interests, sense of comradeship; and though such sympathies are rarer than the other causes of marriage, as indeed they are rare in life, we must take note of some examples that have been recorded.

  Our first illustration does not promise well because dollars and dignity were ultimately matched, and at first the wealthy girl demanded a rank that would flatter her vanity; but it happened that her ambition was neutralized by affection. She is perhaps more interesting on account of her grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. R. T. Wilson, than for herself. Richard Thornton Wilson and his wife were a remarkable pair, the first making a great deal of money, the second forcing her way against strong opposition into the front rank of New York hostesses. Their children, backed by their opulence, paved the way for their social distinction.

  Wilson was born in Georgia in the year 1829, his father being a Scottish tanner. He started life as a commercial traveler, and was so well endowed both bodily and mentally that he soon persuad
ed a man to advance sufficient money for him to start a store, sell his own goods, and was soon to marry his backer’s daughter. He was an imposing figure, being six and a half feet tall, and his brains matched his physique. During the Civil War he became a commissary for the South, a job that placed him in a position to make money on a large European loan, to buy an estate in one place and a house in another. Rising rapidly to a position of prominence, he went to England on behalf of the cotton planters in the Southern States,{29} and with his family stayed there for the duration of the war. When it appeared that the fighting was going against the South, his moral sense was awakened, and he decided that his future career would be placed on a more satisfactory basis if he changed sides. Accordingly he visited the American Legation and took the Oath of Allegiance. The consciences of many other Southern exiles in England were similarly troubled, common sense prevailed, and they became citizens of the United States. But not all of them were enabled to return home with a fortune of half a million dollars, which was roughly the sum brought back to America by the Confederate agent, R. T. Wilson.