Imperial Dancer

by Coryne Hall

  When the announcement finally came at 10 o’clock that evening the people went wild. Church bells pealed, the ‘Marseillaise’ blared out from a gramophone and jubilant crowds thronged the streets. On 25 August the German Commander of Paris surrendered. Mathilde, Andrei and Vova went to the nearby rue Michel-Ange to watch General Leclerc’s tanks pass through. Girls threw flowers and offered champagne to the soldiers. Despite all the celebrations occasional shots were fired from the rooftops, either from German soldiers or German sympathisers. The tanks fired back and there were several casualties.

  General de Gaulle made a triumphant entry into Paris on 26 August, followed three days later by the American army. Although the war in Europe continued, Paris at last was liberated.

  Soon after the liberation, letters and parcels began to pour in from anxious friends. Andrei sent a note to Diana Gould to tell her everyone was well,21 Mathilde resumed classes despite more problems with arthritis in her leg and the studio was soon full.

  In December 1944 Diana arrived in Paris. The small company in which she was dancing was performing at the Théâtre Marigny. Unable to find Mathilde at the studio she drove to Villa Molitor. Mathilde and Andrei were out but Diana left two pounds each of coffee and marmalade, soap, Lux washing powder, chocolates and 100 cigarettes with Ludmilla. Later Andrei called at Diana’s hotel to thank her personally and accept an invitation for them to lunch with her the following week.22

  There was also a letter from Slava. The family home at Queen’s Gate had been bombed in 1941 but luckily no one was in. Mathilde still had no news of Joseph and it was difficult for her and Julie to write because they had no wish to make life more difficult for their brother. Vova asked Slava if he had any news. ‘P.S. butter would be a great joy for us,’ he added. Slava adored Mathilde but never forgave her and Andrei for not taking French citizenship.23

  Not until the 1950s did Mathilde learn that Joseph and Marie-Antoinette had died in 1942 during the Siege of Leningrad. They were buried in a mass grave with other victims in the Piskarevskoe Memorial Cemetery.

  In the winter of 1944/5 Mathilde and Andrei suffered once more from the cold weather. Electricity was now turned off during the day and their house was freezing. In the studio Mathilde continued to work in temperatures of only two degrees.24

  On 27 February Margot Fonteyn and Pamela May arrived at the studio with Ninette de Valois and the Sadler’s Wells ballet company in an enormous army lorry all decorated with flowers. Mathilde had lunch with them in a British military club in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. They were in Paris as part of ENSA, the entertainment section of the army. Mathilde and Andrei attended most of their performances at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées and were very impressed with what had become a first-class company.25

  Several welcome food parcels arrived from Felia Doubrovska in New York, sent via a company called Mimosa Food Products. For these they were always very grateful, as many items were simply unobtainable or could be bought only at extortionate prices on the black market. ‘The Cocoa we drank with great pleasure but the biggest success was with the tinned chicken. That was amazingly tasty,’ Andrei told Felia gratefully. Often these packages arrived with various items missing. ‘There was nothing missing from the first parcel,’ he added.26 Everything was up to ten times dearer than before the war. Mathilde and Andrei were reduced to wearing shabby old clothes because they could not afford to buy anything new. Mathilde was ‘spending masses of energy but the results are small’, Andrei told Felia. They had no idea how they had managed to live through the war years, with all the horrors and worries. ‘Very often we regret not moving with you,’ Andrei continued, ‘we would not have experienced this terrible need and would have lived well and tranquil.’27

  Mathilde was still working in the studio, ‘but there are less girl students … so the income is much smaller. … All this makes life more difficult and creates hard conditions’, Andrei lamented. ‘Now there is spring outside and the war is close to an end. Everybody is taking heart.’28

  In early May the Russians captured Berlin and linked up with the Allies. These were dangerous times. The search was on for German collaborators. Serge Lifar was denounced for keeping the Opéra open and supplying entertainment for the Germans. He was later cleared and reinstated as Director of the Opéra, becoming the leading, and most controversial, figure in ballet in Paris.

  Nevertheless, the émigrés celebrated Easter in high spirits. On 8 May 1945 Germany surrendered. For Mathilde, ‘the nightmare was over’.29

  Seventeen

  THE END OF THE FAIRYTALE

  On 31 July 1945 Mathilde closed the studio for a two-month break. As life slowly returned to normal she and Andrei spent the summer in Paris, enjoying their garden and savouring the freedom. ‘The theatre does not interest me and I continue to work in the studio only because we have to live,’ she explained.1 Travelling was difficult and expensive, Mathilde’s leg was again giving trouble and she took comfort from her flowers and her numerous cats. It was a well-earned rest. Andrei told Diana that he was dreading the cold winter weather, which would again undermine Mathilde’s health.2 Mathilde was now almost seventy-three and Andrei sixty-six. Julie, who was just recovering from jaundice and had lost a lot of weight, was eighty. In the rare free moments Mathilde helped Julie in the garden and on warm days they had breakfast outside.

  Presents continued to pour in from generous friends including Tatiana Riabouchinska and Corporal Howard D. Rothschild of the US Army. Rothschild became a regular correspondent, passing on news of friends who Mathilde had lost touch with during the war. Someone called Kremer sent seventy-three parcels and a cheque every month for a year. Particularly welcome was some more coffee, sent by Diana through a Swedish girl.3

  That winter they hoped to heat the studio as the cold was becoming intolerable. Numbers had picked up after the war and the school was thriving, although it could not be compared with former times. ‘Now it costs 100,000 [francs] to keep the studio,’ Mathilde complained.4 As well as ordinary classes Mathilde coached older pupils in repertoire, passing on her knowledge of the old ballets to the younger generation. She taught Beryl Morina the second act of Giselle, as well as many of the classical pas-de-deux. ‘This was definitely a great experience for me,’ Beryl recalled, ‘but I also had the feeling this was the kind of work she enjoyed most: helping young artists to find their own interpretation of a role with which she herself was so familiar.’5

  Mathilde still occasionally regretted not joining Felia and Pierre in America. Her letters were full of complaints about the expense of running the studio, ‘and I have to work to cover this’, and she often arrived home after 9 o’clock at night. By 1946 she was able to ease up a little and open on 1 October. ‘I do not want to start earlier,’ she explained ‘but my students are already coming. The most profitable are children. I have a lot of them and the parents are very rich … I feel good and will start work with new energy.’6

  In between teaching Mathilde resumed her social life. In the years after the war she was a regular at the first nights of Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. George Cuevas, as he preferred to be known, hoped to take on the mantle of Diaghilev, a dream which eluded him. ‘We became accustomed to seeing him carried shoulder high by his ballet troupe at parties after his first night,’ recalled Alexis de Redé. ‘I remember seeing him above the crowd at Suzy Solidor’s café in April 1950, at a party attended by the Tsar’s former mistress Kschessinska, Michèle Morgan and the Aga Khan, a great patron of his.’ The company’s ballet mistress was Mathilde’s old adversary Bronislava Nijinska.7

  Mathilde also continued to entertain at home. To enable guests to find the house she chalked the figure ‘10’ on the nearest tree. Every Thursday Mathilde stopped work at 1 o’clock and spent the whole afternoon playing poker. On Sundays there were often guests for poker and bridge, ‘for Vova’, she explained, although no one was deceived.8 At dinner parties Mathilde and Andrei
preferred to serve cheese after the dessert and they always served the traditional Russian drink kvass. The actor Eric von Stroheim was a frequent guest at Mathilde’s parties. One dinner party in 1947 united Margot Fonteyn, Tamara Toumanova (whose recent performance of Giselle Mathilde told Felia was ‘very good’), Beryl Morina and George Balanchine around a large table in the conservatory.9 On the eve of the Revolution, as a twelve-year-old pupil at the Theatre School, Balanchine had appeared as a monkey in Pharaoh’s Daughter. Watched by the Tsar and Tsarina, he swung through the trees as Mathilde aimed at him from below with a bow and arrow.10 Balanchine also visited Mathilde with his wife, the ballerina Maria Tallchief. It was at ‘the Princess’s’ in 1946 that Maria first met Margot Fonteyn, who was taking a well-earned rest.

  Diana continued to visit whenever possible. She had given up dancing in 1947 to marry the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin. Diana brought back a drawing of Mathilde’s foot so that she could order her some more shoes at Lilley & Skinner in London. Mathilde still took an English size three. She ‘was always precious and profuse in thanks’ for any act of kindness.11

  Mathilde could be ‘very teasing’. One day Beryl Morina was with her in the small sitting room at Villa Molitor when Andrei arrived. ‘Voila le Grand Duc!’ Kschessinska said with a theatrical flourish of her hand. ‘Embrassez-le!’ [Kiss him!]12

  Nevertheless, by 1947 Mathilde was complaining that ‘life has become awful. Some time after the war it was better but now it is difficult again. It is very cold in the studio. When it is really cold we have a heater and electricity and it is very expensive but not very successful. And now we have an electricity bill for 15,000 francs for six weeks. It is not easy in such circumstances.’ Her former life of wealth and luxury must have seemed far away. ‘I love the nights,’ she added wistfully. ‘I see such wonderful dreams of my past life.’13

  In the summer of 1946 they spent a month at Plombières where Mathilde had treatment for her leg. ‘I have rested and hardly limp at all,’ she told Felia, ‘the treatment worked. I walked 8km [5 miles] but I could not walk a lot to start with. My weight is now 46 kilograms [7 stone 3 pounds] … but usually when I used to dance I was 48 kilograms [7 stone 7 pounds].’ During the war she had become very thin, ‘all due to sleepless nights and constant worries’.14

  One of these worries was Andrei. Although in the spring of 1947 he was well and, Mathilde said, ‘a lot of people say that he looks younger’,15 his health continued to cause concern. He spent the whole of September ill in bed. Once on his feet he passed the time by looking into the relationship between the Astafievs and the Tolstoys, which Slava was keen to know about, and reading about the wedding of Princess Elizabeth of England in the illustrated magazines.16

  Just as Andrei was recovering Mathilde fell off a stepladder, strained the tendons of her right ankle and broke her left arm. An ambulance took her to hospital for an operation but Mathilde insisted on going home the following day so that she would not have to cancel her usual Sunday reception for Vova. She then spent eight days in bed and the studio was only able to function with the aid of one of her best students. ‘One night in hospital cost me 11,000 francs,’ she lamented. ‘And also I have to pay the surgeon for the operation … life here is incredibly difficult, it does not matter how hard you work, and still it is not enough. Life is dreadful, everybody is complaining and the mood is foul.’17

  It was three weeks before Mathilde’s arm was out of plaster but then it became apparent that a crack on her heel bone had gone unnoticed on the X-ray. She had to spend two months with the heel in plaster. ‘The crack is worse than a broken leg,’ she complained.18

  Felia and Pierre had decided to sell her Paris flat and remain in America. This upset Mathilde, who believed that they would no longer come to Paris. Mathilde could not get used to the idea that she would probably never see them again and they invited her to visit New York. ‘Your invitation to come to America I appreciate very much,’ she told Felia in April 1948,

  but the trip is unthinkable to the Grand Duke and I would not risk going with [sic – without?] him and there is no money … Vova is earning and helping us. I earn a lot but all this is not enough. There are seven of us but life is very expensive and the illness of the Grand Duke and my accident cost a lot …19

  By the summer of 1949 Mathilde’s leg was much worse and she could not walk without pain. The family spent some weeks in Plombières, where she had a reunion with Henri Marre, now a priest in the nearby seminary, whom she had first met at a masked ball in St Petersburg in 1900. Henri’s health was poor and they were only able to meet once more before his death in September 1951.

  Coal was now 50,000 francs and life was a struggle. ‘If I could live without my work … I would like to give you both my studio and you could live in Paris very well,’ she informed Felia.

  I am sure that none of the students here earn as much as mine. I am not chasing students and artists who jump from one studio to another, I have rich children and youths who pay every month even if they miss a class and they take a lot of private lessons. All of this I would like to give to you and everybody would go to you with my advice. But before this I have to work …20

  Mathilde still liked to receive guests, saying ‘that is the best pleasure for me’, but was too tired to go out after returning home late from work.21 She was philosophical about the way life had turned out and the worsening condition of her leg. ‘I am resigned to all this misfortune,’ she said, ‘there must be a reason for it.’22

  In August 1948 Andrei’s nephew Vladimir married Princess Leonida Bagration-Moukhransky, a lady from the Georgian nobility three years his senior, who during the 1930s in Paris had become friendly with Boris’s wife Zina. By 1948 Leonida was already divorced from Sumner Moore Kirby, an American by whom she had a daughter, Helen, now aged nine.

  Vladimir’s wedding took place secretly in Lausanne. Two days later Andrei received a short note informing him of the event. This placed Andrei in a quandary. With people already asking his views on the marriage, he did not know how to reply. He therefore wrote to Eugene Sablin, former Russian Chargé d’Affaires in London, to ask his advice.

  ‘The main question is if it is possible to accept this marriage as equal or not,’ Andrei wrote.

  Some people argued that the Bagration family come from an old ruling and sovereign family from the 5th century and that is why this family is suitable in accordance with our Principal Law about suitability in matrimony. Others would like to see this marriage unequal because the family of Bagration-Moukhransky lost sovereignty in the 17th century. From the decision of this question either way depends Vladimir’s future and the future of his descendants …

  If we … accepted this marriage as equal, we would need to think how to register it. We need some sort of document which would not raise any suspicion later and nobody have any question about the consequences of the marriage. We know how easily this argument could occur.23

  The marriage shocked the émigré community and, among the Romanovs, only Andrei did not turn his back on Vladimir and Leonida. He and Vova visited him in Madrid and Helen Kirby took her first dance steps in Mathilde’s studio. Their relationship remained warm. Leonida described Mathilde as ‘an exquisite woman with the qualities of good manners and elegance … she mingled a fragile sweetness and a pugnacious will’.24

  In August 1950 Andrei and Mathilde spent a week at Vladimir and Leonida’s home in San Sebastian, the Villa Chapultepec, before going on to Oldenburg for the marriage of Andrei’s great-nephew Emich, Prince of Leiningen. ‘They and Vladimir and [his] wife are going to Germany for the marriage of the son of Vladimir’s eldest sister who is marrying a princess of Oldenburg,’ the Infanta Eulalia told her son.25 Through Vladimir and Leonida, whose brother Irakly had married Mercedes of Bavaria, a niece of Alfonso XIII, Mathilde and Andrei became friendly with members of the exiled Spanish royal family. On 21 August 1950 the Infanta Eulalia said that ‘Nando and Luisa [the Infante Don Ferdinand of B
avaria and his wife], [are] very worldly – with Mercedes, Irakly, Vladimir and wife and Grand Duke André and wife all giving luncheons and dinner teas and going out.’26

  To all these exiled and morganatic royalties, titles and the correct form of address were important. Mathilde, who ‘had spent her life becoming related to the Romanovs’, now ‘clung desperately’ to her title. The Dowager Duchess of Montpensier was reported to be ‘“indignant” at the way they call the princess Bagration Altesse Royale and now Altesse Impériale. All these “royalties” who are not “royal” are jealous of each other,’ she added.27 Mathilde and Andrei often accompanied Vladimir and Leonida when they visited Irakly and his family at Fuenterrabia near the Spanish/French border. When Leonida gave birth to a daughter, Maria, in Madrid on 23 December 1953 Andrei was godfather, although for reasons of health he was prevented from attending the christening.

  On 1 March 1951 Ludmilla died at the age of sixty-seven. She had been with Mathilde for thirty-nine years, first as personal dresser in the theatre, then as her personal maid. ‘It was a great sorrow for me,’ Mathilde told Felia. ‘She was my friend and witness of my happy and sad days.’28 Mathilde placed a Russian cross with an inset icon on Ludmilla’s grave in Ste Geneviève-des-Bois.

  A few weeks later Mathilde travelled to London to keep a promise to John and Barbara Gregory. In 1949 John Gregory and his wife Barbara Vernon (who had studied with Mathilde) opened a School of Russian Ballet in London. The following year John had the idea of forming a Federation of Russian Classical Ballet, to draw together teachers and old pupils of Nicolai Legat (who had taught in London until his death in 1937) and establish a syllabus and examinations similar to the larger institutions like the Royal Academy of Dancing. Twelve ballet studios agreed to participate. To lend distinction to their undertaking they needed a figurehead, ‘a world-famous celebrity’, as John expressed it. Barbara immediately contacted Mathilde Kschessinska, of whose studio she ‘cherished happy memories’.29