After the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport (Ebook)
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AFTER THE ROMANOVS

DR HELEN RAPPAPORT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including Magnificent Obsession, Four Sisters, and Caught in the Revolution. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a specialist in imperial Russian and Victorian history, and a frequent historical consultant on TV and radio. She lives in West Dorset.

Scribe Publications

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Published by Scribe 2022

Copyright © Helen Rappaport 2022

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

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978 1 922585 34 9 (Australian paperback)

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For Sue Woolmans, a good companion

on many of my Russian literary journeys

I have packed my Russia in my bag,

And take her with me anywhere I go.

—VLADISLAV KHODASEVICH, POEM READ TO NINA BERBEROVA

AS THEY LEFT RUSSIA BY TRAIN, 1922

There is no sweeter destiny than to lose everything.

There is no happier fate than to become a vagabond.

And you’ve never been closer to heaven

Than here, tired of boredom

Tired of breathing,

Without strength, without money,

Without love,

In Paris

—GEORGIY ADAMOVICH,

THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING, 1931

They do not know us. They do not know the Russian emigration. For most people, the émigrés are nothing but down-at-heel aristocrats, dragging their nostalgia and fatalism around the bars. . . . You only need to add balalaikas, sonorous songs of the Volga, a disorderly dance and there you have it—the Russian emigration.

—COUNT VLADIMIR KOKOVTSOV,

IN JEAN DELAGE, La Russie en exil, 1930

Contents

Russians in Paris: Cast of Characters

Chapter 1: La Tournée des Grands Ducs

Chapter 2: We Really Did Stagger the World

Chapter 3: Paris Taught Me, Enriched Me, Beggared Me, Put Me on My Feet

Chapter 4: We Had Outlived Our Epoch and Were Doomed

Chapter 5: I Never Thought I Would Have to Drag Out My Life as an Émigré

Chapter 6: Paris Is Full of Russians

Chapter 7: How Ruined Russians Earn a Living

Chapter 8: We Are Not in Exile, We Are on a Mission

Chapter 9: Emperor Kirill of All the Russias

Chapter 10: Ubiquitous Intriguers, Spies, and Assassins

Chapter 11: A Far Violin Among Near Balalaikas

Chapter 12: I Forever Pity the Exile, a Prisoner, an Invalid

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Russians in Paris: Cast of Characters

The list below comprises the most frequently cited Russian names in the text.

Akhmatova, Anna (1889–1966) one of Russia’s most revered poets; in Paris before World War I

Antonina Nesterovskaya (1890–1950) morganatic wife of Prince Gavriil; in Paris granted title Princess Romanovskaya-Strelninskaya

Bakst, Léon (1866–1924) painter and costume and set designer, famous for his work in Ballets Russes with Diaghilev

Benois, Alexandre (1870–1960) artist and critic, close collaborator in Ballets Russes with Diaghilev and Bakst

Berberova, Nina (1901–93) leading writer of the Russian Paris emigration; after 1951 enjoyed distinguished academic career in United States; partner of Khodasevich

Bunin, Ivan (1870–1953) much admired short story writer; leader of Paris literary emigration; Nobel laureate in 1933; husband of Vera Muromtseva

Chagall, Marc (1887–1985) Belarusian Jew, born Moishe Shagal; leading modernist painter in Paris; emigrated to the United States in 1941

Chaliapin, Feodor (1873–1938) opera singer who performed with Diaghilev and the Saisons Russes in Paris and toured Europe extensively

Countess von Hohenfelsen (see Princess Paley)

Diaghilev, Sergey (1872–1929) influential art critic, patron, and ballet impresario; founder of the Ballets Russes; associate of Bakst, Benois, Nijinsky, and Stravinsky

Don-Aminado (1888–1957) pen name of Aminodav Shpolyansky; journalist and satirist noted for his humorous short stories

Egorova, Lyubov (1880–1972) ballet dancer from St. Petersburg Imperial Theater; danced with Nijinsky for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

Ehrenburg, Ilya (1891–1967) pro-Soviet journalist, essayist, and writer who commuted between USSR and France and associated with many of the Paris literary émigrés

Fokine, Michel (1880–1942) born Mikhail Fokin, choreographer and ballet dancer, collaborator with Diaghilev

Gazdanov, Gaito (1903–1971) writer who supported himself in Paris driving a taxi from 1928 through 1952; member of French Resistance during World War II

General Alexander Kutepov (1882–1930) White Russian leader; commander of ROVS; in exile in Paris from 1928; abducted and murdered by OGPU in 1930

General Yevgeny Miller (1867–1939) succeeded Kutepov as head of ROVS in Paris; abducted in Paris 1937 by the NKVD; tortured and shot in Moscow

Gippius, Zinaida (1882–1945) poet, critic, and religious thinker; founder of Paris literary group the Green Lamp with her husband, Dmitri Merezhkovsky

Gorgulov (Gorguloff), Pavel (1895–1932) émigré who assassinated French president Paul Doumer in 1932

Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna (1890–1958) daughter of Grand Duke Paul; sister of Grand Duke Dmitri; daughter-in-law of Princess Poutiatine

Grand Duchess Vladimir (1854–1920) born Marie Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; became Maria Pavlovna on her marriage to Grand Duke Vladimir in 1874; mother of Grand Dukes Kirill, Boris, and Andrey and Grand Duchess Elena, Princess of Greece

Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (see Sandro)

Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich (1850–1908) son of Tsar Alexander II; brother of Grand Dukes Vladimir and Paul

Grand Duke Andrey Vladimirovich (1879–1956) son of Grand Duke Vladimir, husband of Kschessinska

Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich (1877–1943) son of Grand Duke Vladimir

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (1891–1942) eldest son of Grand Duke Paul, brother of Grand Duchess Maria; lover in Paris of Coco Chanel

Grand Duke Kirill (Cyril) Vladimirovich (1876–1938) curator of the Romanov throne in exile; proclaimed himself Emperor in Exile; husband of Victoria Melita

Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich (1878–1918) brother of Tsar Nicholas II; not to be confused with Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich (1861–1929), who was known as Miche-Miche

Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich (see Nikolasha)

Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich (1860–1919) son of Tsar Alexander II and brother of Grand Dukes Vladimir and Alexis; father of Grand Duke Dmitri and Grand Duchess Maria; husband of Princess Paley

Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (1847–1909) brother of Grand Duke Paul and husband of Grand Duchess Vladimir

Gul, Roman (1896–1986) writer and critic

Karsavina, Tamara (1885–1978) prima ballerina who danced with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris

Kerensky, Alexander (1881–1970) minister of war, then prime minister of the Provisional Government in 1917; in Paris, editor of émigré journal Dni

Khodasevich, Vladislav (1886–1939) leading poet and literary critic of the Paris emigration; partner of Nina Berberova

Knorring, Irina (1906–43) underrated poet of the emigration who died tragically young of diabetes

Kschessinska, Mathilde (1872–1971) Russian prima ballerina of Polish parentage; formerly mistress of Nicholas II when he was tsarevich; wife of Grand Duke Andrey

Kuprin, Alexander (1870–1938) short story writer; returned to Soviet Union in 1937

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (1870–1924) Bolshevik revolutionary; head of the first government of the Soviet Union from October 1917 through 1924

Lifar, Serge (Sergey) (1905–86) ballet dancer and choreographer; danced with Karsavina for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris

Merezhkovsky, Dmitri (1865–1941) influential poet, philosopher, and religious thinker; with his wife, Zinaida Gippius, founder of the Green Lamp literary society in Paris

Milyukov, Pavel (1859–1943) foreign minister in Russian Provisional Government in 1917; in Paris, editor of major Russian language newspaper Poslednie novosti (Latest News) (1920–40)

Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891–1945) née Elizaveta Pilenko, poet and nun who set up a food kitchen and refuge for Russian émigrés in Paris

Muromtseva, Vera (1881–1961) diarist and long-term partner of Ivan Bunin; from 1922, his second wife

Nabokov, Vladimir (1899–1977) émigré novelist and poet in Berlin 1922–37; after briefly fleeing Hitler’s Germany for Paris, emigrated to the United States in 1940

Nijinsky, Vaslav (1889–1950) ballet dancer and choreographer who created a sensation in Paris when he debuted with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes

Nikolasha, Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich (1856–1929) World War I general; leader of monarchists in Paris from 1919 till his death

Odoevtseva, Irina (1895–1990) novelist and poet who returned to Soviet Union in 1987 to considerable acclaim and published bestselling memoirs

Poplavsky, Boris (1903–35) one of the most promising young poets of the Paris emigration who destroyed himself through drug taking

Prince Felix Yusupov (1887–1967) leading aristocrat and socialite of the Paris community; with his wife, Irina, founded the fashion house Irfé

Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich (1887–1955) great-grandson of Tsar Nicholas I; contracted morganatic marriage to Antonina Nesterovskaya in 1917; elevated to grand duke in 1939

Prince Vladimir Paley (1897–1918) son of Grand Duke Paul and Princess Paley

Princess Paley (1865–1929) née Olga von Pistohlkors; from 1904 Countess von Hohenfelsen; wife of Grand Duke Paul, granted title Princess Paley in 1915

Princess Poutiatine (Sofya Putyatina) (1866–1940) mother of Sergey Poutiatine, second husband of Grand Duchess Maria

Princess Vera Meshcherskaya (1876–1949) founder of the Russia House, a home for indigent elderly Russian émigrés at Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois

Princess Zinaida Shakhovskaya (1906–2001) writer and literary critic

Remizov, Alexey (1877–1957) prolific writer, illustrator, and folklorist who struggled to find an audience in emigration

Sandro, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (1866–1933) husband of Nicholas II’s sister Grand Duchess Xenia

Sedykh, Andrey (1902–94) pen name of Yakov Tsvibak; writer and journalist; emigrated to New York in 1942

Soutine, Chaim (Chaim Sutin) (1893–1943) Jewish expressionist painter, friend of Chagall

Stravinsky, Igor (1882–1971) composer, collaborator with Diaghilev and Nijinsky on the groundbreaking Ballets Russes production of The Rite of Spring

Teffi (1872–1952) pen name of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya; popular short story writer in prerevolutionary Russia; leading figure in Paris literary emigration

Tsvetaeva, Marina (1892–1941) outstanding poet of the Paris emigration who struggled with loneliness and poverty; returned to Soviet Union in 1939

Troyat, Henri (1911–2007) pen name of Lev Tarasov; wrote in French and took citizenship in 1933; earned numerous honors, including the Prix Goncourt

Vertinsky, Alexander (1889–1997) popular singer and cabaret performer who enjoyed success in Europe and after his return to Soviet Union in 1943

Victoria Melita, Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna of Russia (1876–1936) daughter of Prince Alfred of Great Britain and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna; wife of Grand Duke Kirill

Yanovsky, Vasily (1906–89) writer and memoirist; emigrated to the United States in 1942

CHAPTER 1

La Tournée des Grands Ducs

In Paris during the summer of 1900, there was no more select place for Le Tout-Paris (a popular expression referring to those in fashionable French high society) to be than the Hôtel Ritz on place Vendôme, where they could be seen taking afternoon tea amid the elegant statues, urns, and fountains of its shady gardens. During a season when Paris was packed with tourists for the Exposition Universelle and the Second Olympiad, this quaint English tradition for le five-o-clock, as the French called it, was a magical ritual hour in the social round enjoyed by the superwealthy upper crust of Paris.

Afternoon tea at the Hôtel Ritz was also de rigueur for any well-heeled foreign visitor. In the Ritz garden you would see the best-dressed women in Paris in their fine gowns and enormous picture hats, presenting an image of a large aviary full of multicolored birds. ¹ The hats might obscure the view somewhat, but if you looked hard enough you would soon be sure to pick out a Russian grand duke or grand duchess, a prince or princess, a count or countess, among the chosen few. For the French-speaking Russian aristocracy, Paris for the last forty years or more had been a home away from home, a safe haven in winter from the bitter cold of the northern Russian climate and the rising threat of revolution that was increasingly targeting their class. So much so that by the beginning of the new twentieth century, Paris was fast becoming the capital of Russia out of Russia—for those with plenty of money. ²

The Russian discovery of the French capital in fact goes back to the time of the modernizing tsar, Peter the Great, who made a visit to Paris in 1717 and fell in love with Versailles. He had favored all things French in the construction of his own window on the West—the Russian capital St. Petersburg. Catherine the Great—the wife of Peter’s grandson—and herself an avowed Francophile, was, during her reign from 1762 to 1796, the most vigorous promoter of Franco-Russian cultural links. She ordained that French be the official language at court and entered into an extensive correspondence with the writers Voltaire and Diderot. Her patronage of French arts and crafts was everywhere to be seen in her palaces in St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo.

The beginning of the nineteenth century had brought a downturn in political relations between the two countries, with the French and Russians on opposing sides during the Napoleonic Wars, culminating in the ignominy for the French of Tsar Alexander I riding in triumph into Paris on March 31, 1814, after the rout of the Grande Armée from Russia. The two countries were at odds again during the Crimean War of 1853–56. But as relations recovered in the 1860s, the Russian aristocracy and moneyed classes returned to Paris in droves. Many made Paris their home, such as the writer Ivan Turgenev—familiar to Parisians since the mid-1850s in frenchified transliterated form as Tourgenieff. He had become an almost permanent resident in Paris after 1847, having left Russia in pursuit of his obsessive love for the married French opera singer Pauline Viardot. Turgenev lived for many years in an apartment in the same building as Viardot and her husband on the rue de Douai, till his death in 1883. So beloved was he by the French that he had by then become an unofficial cultural ambassador for Russia in Paris and a friend of some of its leading contemporary writers—Dumas, Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert, and George Sand.

The Exposition Universelle of 1867 brought a huge influx of twenty thousand Russian visitors into Paris. So many were now traveling to Paris on a regular basis that Tsar Alexander II donated 200,000 francs to help build a new and dedicated place of worship for them—the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, which opened on the rue Daru in the 8th arrondissement in 1861. After the disruptions in Europe caused by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and Russia’s estrangement from Germany and Austria-Hungary after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the first seeds of a new golden age of rapprochement with France were sown. By then the French were showing an increasing interest in Russian literature and culture, thanks to their promotion in French journals by the diplomat and critic Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé. ³ But during the reign of the authoritarian and straitlaced Alexander III, who came to the throne after his father’s assassination in 1881, reaction set in. For the pleasure-seeking Romanov grand dukes (including Alexander’s own brothers: Vladimir, Alexis, and Paul) the temptation to self-indulgence in the pleasure domes of Paris became even greater, along with trips to the luxurious hotels and casinos of Biarritz on the Atlantic coast and the French Riviera. ⁴

In France expatriate Russians could now bask in the burgeoning Franco-Russian friendship, which reached its pinnacle with a series of political alliances in the 1890s, much to the annoyance of Kaiser Wilhelm, who had tried hard to drive a wedge between the two countries. This newfound relationship was sealed by the hugely popular five-day state visit of Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, along with their ten-month-old baby daughter, Olga, to Cherbourg and Paris in October 1896. The family had sailed to France from Scotland after a visit to Queen Victoria at Balmoral. According to the tsaritsa’s close personal friend Baroness Buxhoeveden, The Russian Sovereigns, from the moment they set foot on French soil, were the objects of an unceasing ovation; on entering Paris, their reception became positively delirious. ⁵ Cries of "Vive le bébé et la nounou greeted even little Olga and her nanny as they drove in an open carriage down a Champs-Élysées festooned with decorations and artificial blooms in the chestnut trees. During that hectic Russian Week," Paris’s population, then 2 million, swelled with 930,000 visitors. President Fauré accompanied Nicholas and Alexandra on a whistle-stop tour of the Paris Opera, the Louvre, and Notre Dame, the mint, and the Sèvres factory. Nicholas also laid the foundation stone of a bridge—Le Pont Alexandre III—in his father Alexander III’s honor.

Throughout the visit security was very tight, for the tsar was the number one target of Russian revolutionaries and anarchists. There was no time for a shopping walkabout as Alexandra had hoped. But she and her husband were at least able to thrill, in splendid isolation, at the beauties of Versailles and be entertained in style at a sumptuous banquet followed by a theatrical performance from the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Throughout the tour the Romanov couple’s every move was closely followed and described in detail in the French press; Alexandra’s fashion sense and beauty were widely commended. Everything Russian or pseudo-Russian was snapped up in the shops: commemorative china, Le Tsar soap, Russian flags and emblems, portraits of the Romanov family, Russian bear toys, and cabinet-card photographs of Nicholas, Alexandra, and baby Olga. A special Franco-Russian cheese was created; Russian-style clothes were labeled as a Gift from the Tsars. ⁶ In the wake of the imperial visit, Paris went joyously Rooski as one contemporary observed. ⁷ The French birth registrars were soon recording increasing numbers of little Ivans, Dimitris, Olgas, and Serges.

Of all the expatriate Russians who haunted Paris during the season at this time, none reveled more in all that the capital had to offer than the colorful, if not notorious, Russian grand dukes. Such had been their predilection, since the 1860s, for visiting under cover of darkness all that the Parisian underworld of eroticism, not to say vice, had to offer that the concept of La Tournée des Grands Ducs (The Grand Dukes’ Tour) had become a feature of the off-the-map Paris tourist trail. The tour—taken after midnight, when the theaters turned out—provided paying customers with the frisson of experiencing the red-light district’s fashionable brothels; the gambling dens and bars of Belville, Montmartre, and Les Halles; and the cabarets of La Butte. It became part of the Belle Époque mystique. ⁸ There was even a novel on the subject, La Tournée des grands ducs: Moeurs parisiennes, published in 1901 by Jean-Louis Dubut de Laforest, a prolific French author and publisher of erotica who had been prosecuted for obscenity in 1885.

It is said that the catchphrase had originated with two particular Russian grand dukes—Vladimir and Alexis, sons of Tsar Alexander II—who had, since their youth, been regular visitors to Paris in search of its darker pleasures and the gourmet food that they both so enjoyed. Grand Duke Vladimir, Nicholas II’s most senior uncle (and, until the birth of the tsarevich in 1904, third in line to the throne), had been the focal point of an avuncular oligarchy that dominated court in the years up to the 1917 revolution. ⁹ Darkly handsome, with his immense height . . . piercing eyes and beetling brows, Vladimir was the most powerful of the grand dukes. He was a most imposing if not frightening figure, as was his worldly and equally formidable German-born wife, Maria Pavlovna (originally, Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin).* Vladimir never quite came to terms with the fact that he was not emperor himself (though his wife certainly nurtured that hope for their sons after his death). If he couldn’t be tsar in Russia, then at least he could play the grand seigneur to the hilt during his regular biannual visits to Paris, traveling there from St. Petersburg via Berlin in his own lavishly upholstered wagon-lit complete with a full-size bed. ¹⁰ Once installed at his favorite Hôtel Continental on rue Castiglione opposite the Tuileries, Vladimir would indulge his libidinous and sometimes violent behavior, his colossal appetite for gourmet food and wines, and his extravagant spending habit (a trait that rubbed off on his son Boris). His wife, who only demanded of life that it should amuse her, could, when she accompanied him, quietly feed her own passion for shopping and (when in Monte Carlo) a flutter on the gaming tables. ¹¹ It is hard to comprehend today the prodigious wealth Vladimir enjoyed, thanks to an income from the imperial treasury of $350,000 (equaling something like $10 million in 2022) that was further bolstered by his personal fortune, his lands, forests, and mines, as well as salaries from various military and other sinecures. It was indeed fair to say at the time that Vladimir’s wealth was equal to that of several of the Great Powers. ¹² At his 360-room palace in St. Petersburg, he kept volumes of recipes he had obtained from the best chefs in Russia, France, and Austria. He reputedly had the finest wine cellar in the city and thought nothing of ordering prime sturgeons from beyond the Urals and the best black caviar by the barrel. So well known was he in Paris as a hard drinker and gastronome that Vladimir was nicknamed Le Grand Duc Bon Vivant and you could find filet de sole Grand Duke Vladimir on most menus there. ¹³

[* As Maria Pavlovna bore the same name as Grand Duke Paul’s daughter, they were referred to as the elder and the younger respectively—though to make matters simpler, Vladimir’s wife was more often referred to as Grand Duchess Vladimir. She will be referred to in this latter form throughout this book to avoid confusion.]

Even though Vladimir’s cupidity went before him, he was redeemed by his exemplary good taste. He was keenly intelligent and cultured, a man whose refinement thus raised him above the level of merely an old buck about town. ¹⁴ He was extremely erudite—history and art being his passions—an amateur painter of some talent, and a collector of icons. In St. Petersburg he served from 1876 to his death as president of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy and enjoyed an extremely influential position in the art world. Russian money was always welcome in Paris and, as British ambassador’s daughter Meriel Buchanan recalled, Grand Duke Vladimir "did not merely engage in reckless extravagance when in Paris, but . . . spent many hours at museums and art galleries, collecting paintings and antiques." ¹⁵

The Russian aristocracy fitted in perfectly with Le Tout-Paris of the Belle Époque, which operated as one large private club with its own rules. The French press regularly titillated readers with stories of the vices and eccentricities of the grand dukes, particularly tales of their behavior at Maxim’s restaurant, "where everybody except the épouse légitime [legitimate spouse] went for a rollicking night out. Here you could just as easily rub shoulders with Prince Galitzine, Prince Karageorgevitch, Prince George of Greece, and, of course, Vladimir and his sons." ¹⁶ A tale was also told of a cousin of Vladimir’s, Grand Duke Sergey Mikhailovich, who was well known for gambling for high stakes in Cannes. At Maxim’s one evening, Grand Duke Sergey presented his mistress, Augustine de Lierre—one of Paris’s grandes cocottes (high-class prostitutes)—with a 20-million franc necklace of pearls tastefully served on a platter of oysters. ¹⁷ Other grand dukes vied over the favors of her fellow courtesan, the Spanish dancer La Belle Otero, who on one occasion returned from a trip to St. Petersburg with a traveling case full of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.

Grand Duke Vladimir was as lavish in his tips as his spending, even adding a number of unmounted gems to the gold coin tossing at Maxim’s on one occasion. As his cousin Grand Duke Alexander—better known as Sandro*—later recalled, Vladimir’s visits to Paris meant a red-letter day for the chefs and maîtres-d’hotel of the Ville Lumière, where, after making a terrific row about the ‘inadequacy’ of the menus he would invariably finish the evening by putting a lavish tip in every hand capable of being stretched out. ¹⁸

[* Everyone knew Grand Duke Alexander as Sandro. In order to spare the reader from an endless litany of grand duke this and grand duke that, he will be referred to as Sandro throughout.]

By the late nineteenth century, so popular were the wealthy Russians in Paris that they were nicknamed the Boyars. At his famous cabaret in Montmartre, the singer Aristide Bruant would yell out Here come the Cossacks whenever the Russians descended for an evening’s carousing. ¹⁹ On such occasions the Russian grand dukes tended to favor the private rooms—or cabinets particuliers—in which to enjoy the charms of French courtesans. But sometimes when the Boyars were out for a whirl, their behavior got out of hand: one particular count was partial to making pincushion designs with a sharp-pronged fork on a woman’s bare bosom, and a group of Russian officers played an interesting little game with loaded revolvers. They’d turn off all the lights, then fire in every direction. The extent of the human damage was hushed up but the material damage was stupendous, and their equerries paid royally for the frolic. ²⁰

Not all grand dukes came away unscathed, however. One such unnamed but very wealthy one had spent the night at a restaurant with a couple of ladies of the night, only to be overcome by tiredness. While their victim slumbered, his companions had helped themselves to all his personal possessions, including his clothes, leaving him only his white tie, which they tied round his neck before departing. When the maître d’hôtel went to the room a couple of hours later to check on his guest and present his bill, he discovered a stark naked figure snoring heavily on the sofa. On being aroused, the grand duke was presented with a bill for five hundred francs, but had no means of paying. The police were sent for and, wrapping the grand duke in a tablecloth, put him in a cab to take him to the police station. It took some persuasion for them to relent and take the grand duke instead to the Russian embassy. ²¹

Another grand duke who was a regular patron of Paris nightlife was Vladimir’s bachelor brother Grand Duke Alexis,* who in 1897 had bought a luxurious apartment at 38 rue Gabriel on the Seine’s Right Bank. Good-looking, and fairer than Vladimir, Alexis was remembered by Queen Marie of Romania as a type of the Vikings who would have made a perfect Lohengrin, as Wagner would have dreamed of him. ²² Tall, like all the Romanov grand dukes, Alexis was, however, heavily built and prone to being overweight, with a loud voice and larger-than-life manner to match his size. Like his brother Vladimir, he was an uninhibited pleasure-seeker. He made no bones about his love of wine, women, and carousing with gypsies, his unrepentant motto being you must experience everything in life. ²³ His cousin Sandro dubbed him The Beau Brummell of the Imperial Family. ²⁴ He certainly was the archetypal man-about-town; in fact, the burly Alexis bore no little resemblance to his hedonistic fellow royal, King Edward VII, who had also taken the sexual and culinary delights of Paris to his heart as Prince of Wales. Alexis was no intellectual or aesthete like his brother Vladimir, but rather a plain-speaking, good-natured navy man who could be an interminable bore on the subject of his glorious past days in sailing ships (equally, he would draw a veil over his incompetence as an admiral of the fleet during the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05). As Sandro quipped, His was a case of fast women and slow ships. Alexis made frequent extravagant trips to Paris with Vladimir—so much so that it was a common joke in St. Petersburg that the ladies of Paris cost Russia at least a battleship a year. ²⁵ There was much gossip about money destined to fund the construction of new battleships and cruisers for the Imperial Navy making its way into Alexis’s pockets during his tenure as commander in chief of the Imperial Fleet—but he was not alone in his brazen siphoning off of money from the treasury; this was but one of many gigantic swindles that helped boost the revenues of the unscrupulous Russian grand dukes. ²⁶

[* Actually Alexey, but he was better known by the French form of his name as he spent so much time in Paris.]

Alexis’s comfortable life in Paris went some way in consoling him for the loss of the love of his life—Zina, Countess Beauharnais, who was married to his first cousin and friend, the Duke of Leuchtenberg—and with whom Alexis had conducted an unhappy ménage royal à trois. ²⁷ When Zina died of throat cancer, Alexis comforted himself for his loss with a string of actresses and dancers; on one occasion, he arrived at the legendary Moulin Rouge with his suite, surrounded by police protection agents, demanding whether any of the dancing girls could dance the "russkaya" (presumably he meant the Cossack dance the lezginka). His request was derided with howls of laughter by the clientele. Instead, the resident star dancer, La Goulue (immortalized in the paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec), danced a cancan for him, after which Alexis is said to have literally covered her body with banknotes. He invited her to a tête-à-tête dinner later at Maxim’s, where they ate Beluga caviar and celebrated the Franco-Russian alliance in style. ²⁸

Eventually, Alexis transferred his affections and his money to a French-Jewish actress, Elizabeth Balletta, who was popular