Death Comes to the Ballets Russes

9

The excitement in the Servants’ Hall at Blenheim was almost palpable. The footmen and the chambermaids and the gardeners and the coachmen and the chauffeurs hadn’t been so excited since they learned that their lord and master, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, was to play an important role in the coronation service of King George V. But this was something different. The Duke’s man of business had mentioned it to the manager of the Bear Hotel in Woodstock. He had been overheard by one of the barmen. The barman, in his turn, told his brother, who kept a clothing shop in the town, but who was married to a local girl whose sister was one of the chambermaids in the big house. The intelligence took strange shapes on its voyages. The Russian Ballet was coming to the palace. That was definite. There were varying attempts to guess the size of the company. Some said thirty. Some attested that that must be rubbish, there had to be at least a hundred of them. The Tsar was coming, said the monarchists below stairs. No he wasn’t, said the others — the whole thing was run by a big man called Diaghilev who spoke no English but swore at everybody in Russian. On two points there was general agreement. The ballerinas would be very beautiful. And that it would be a triumph for Blenheim Palace, making it for a time the most famous big house in the country — which it was anyway, they acknowledged, but people needed to be reminded of it from time to time.

Upstairs in the Big House, the mood was different. Blenheim Palace had been built for a man said to have been the finest military commander in Europe. The building, constructed with such elaborate panache and sense of triumph, was one of architect Sir John Vanbrugh’s finest achievements. The original Duke’s successors had not inherited his military prowess, or his political skill. They were not even particularly good husbands. The 9th Duke of Marlborough, one Charles Spencer Churchill, had, as it were, won the Derby and the Grand National in one go when he carried off Consuelo Vanderbilt, daughter and heiress to the vast Vanderbilt fortune, acquired in the trains and steamships of New York, and a great beauty to boot. Hundreds of thousands of pounds from her dowry were poured into the fabric of Blenheim. She, for her part, bore him two sons. She also brought an American friend of hers to stay, one Gladys Deacon, reportedly one of the most beautiful women in Europe. Her services soon replaced those of the Duchess in the marital bed.

La Vanderbilt lived with this for a while but then departed. Perhaps the Blenheim train services weren’t up to the standards she had been used to on the Vanderbilt lines in and around New York. And she refused to get divorced. The Deacon woman, who might have been convinced that her presence in the marital bed gave her the right of Duchess by virtue of position, as it were, was permanently annoyed, not to say livid, to be fobbed off with the title of Your Ladyship inside the household and plain Mrs Deacon without. It was this acute awareness of the inferiority of her position that roused her to battle stations when the question of the Ballets Russes reached the State Drawing Room of Blenheim Palace.

‘Think of it, Charles, just think of how famous these Russian dancers will make us.’

‘I don’t understand. They’re far too expensive. I could buy the winner of the Oaks for less than that.’

‘Who cares about winning horses? People say this is the finest ballet company in the world. We could invite anybody who is anybody from London. The trains to Oxford from London run all the time. Think of the attention! Think of the newspapers!’

Her Ladyship did not say so, but she planned to be at the Duke’s side at all times. Those photos should put that railroad woman from New York in her place.

‘It’s all very vague still, anyway. Nobody’s even decided where the ballets should take place.’

‘You mark my words,’ said Mrs Deacon, preparing a grand departure from the room, ‘that if those dancers don’t come, I shall be seriously displeased. To hell with the money. You’ve got loads of it tucked away for buying racehorses and things. I’m depending on you!’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said the Duke to the departing figure. He knew only too well what serious displeasure meant.

Johnny Fitzgerald thought his friend Francis always gave him the worst jobs. Here he was, standing outside the house of a Mrs Maud Butler, youngest sister of Richard Wagstaff Gilbert, mother to one of the three surviving nephews who might inherit his fortune, aunt of the boy murdered at the Royal Opera House only a few days before. And he had already pressed the bell. What, in God’s name, was he to say to the poor woman? He was shown into an immaculate drawing room with one or two Impressionists that looked like originals on the walls.

‘Mr Fitzgerald, Johnny Fitzgerald,’ a middle-aged woman with blonde hair and a winning smile was inspecting him closely. ‘I think I know you. Aren’t you a great friend of that Lord Francis Powerscourt who used to own half of Wicklow until he sold it to a Guinness years ago? And didn’t you come to help us with the missing pictures of the ancestors that had disappeared off the walls?’

‘How well remembered!’ said Johnny. ‘You must be one of the Butler daughters who lived in Butlers Court. There was a grocer man at the bottom of the thefts, if I’m not mistaken. And is Butlers Court still thriving? Not taken over yet by the rebels?’

‘It’s still there. But look, Mr Fitzgerald, we can’t sit around here all day gassing about the old times. What brings you here today?’

Her hands suddenly shot up to her face. ‘Forgive me, I know why you have come. It’s about poor Alexander, isn’t it? His mother may be here next week, poor Molly. She and I were never close, but you have to be on hand at times like this.’

‘I’m afraid you may find the nature of my questions rather inappropriate at a time like this, Mrs Butler.’

‘No, I won’t. I know just how your friend Powerscourt thinks after watching him at work in Ireland. Alexander’s uncle is a very rich man. Is Alexander his heir? If he is, or maybe if he is not, who else might stand to inherit Mr Gilbert’s fortune? Am I right?’

‘You are.’

‘Some families play pass the parcel, Mr Fitzgerald. We play pass the inheritance round our children and their cousins. You can never tell who’s going to win when the music stops. I know I shouldn’t call him a wicked uncle at a time like this but I will, so there. He teases us. One year it’s my Mark to inherit. Then it’s poor Alexander, God rest his soul, then my two nephews Peter or Nicholas. I should tell you, Mr Fitzgerald, that there are now three nephews left in the hunt. Alexander was Molly’s only son. She and that Prince of hers, they’re all called Princes in St Petersburg, as far as I can make out, have three daughters living, no more boys. My sister Clarissa, Clary we call her, has two boys older than my Mark — Peter and Nicholas, they live near Oxford. Uncle Richard, the wicked old goat, never says who is his final choice. Oh no, that would be too kind on his relations. And he always said he was going to tie up his will so the money couldn’t be shared out between the rival contenders. Heaven only knows how he would do that, but we are all sure he could and he would.’

‘I think that makes the position very clear. Do you know who the current favourite nephew is, or was?’

‘It was Alexander, no question of it. We all had a letter about it in the post a couple of months ago. Not that it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to change his mind.’

‘Perhaps you could warn your sister that I shall be coming?’ asked Johnny.

‘Of course.’

‘And your Mark? Is he still here with you?’

‘No, Mark is at Oxford, failing, according to his father, to pay enough attention to his law books. He’s had to stay behind after term to catch up on his studies. Mind you, he and his friends have hardly been there these last few days. They all keep coming up and down to see the Ballets Russes. I think they’ve managed to see every single performance.’

The telegram came the afternoon before. ‘Eight o’clock a.m. Prepare to accept a call. K.’

Captain Yuri Gorodetsky, sole representative of the Okhrana in London, was ready at his command post near Holborn Station.

‘Captain! Are you there? It is I, General Kilyagin, who speaks!’

Gorodetsky didn’t think there could be many other Kilyagins booming at him down the phone.

‘Yes, sir! Here, sir!’

‘What news of the Bolsheviks? Have they departed from Bethnal Green to learn the rules of changing money?’

‘Yes, they have, sir. They have been most diligent. The chief Bolshevik — can you have a chief Bolshevik, sir?’

‘Bugger the chief Bolshevik, Gorodetsky, just carry on.’

‘He changed some money into French francs. They’ve been going round local banks changing it in and out. The locals must be expecting a French invasion.’

‘Stick to the point, man, for heaven’s sake. When is the big day?’

‘It’s two or three days from now, sir. There’s some question of one of the railwaymen being able to change his shift, and the others won’t go without him.’

‘Good! Excellent! And are our English friends going to funnel them into twelve banks as before?’

‘It’s down to six now, sir. And the banks have agreed to put their smallest porters on duty. The English police are ready and waiting, sir.’

‘Carry on Gorodetsky, carry on.’

‘Diaghilev strode up and down that train in Paddington Station, as though he was the Duke of Marlborough himself on some kind of state visit. He tapped with his cane on the windows of all the carriages where his people were. Then he boarded the train at the rear into his own first-class carriage.’

Michel Fokine was stretched out on the sofa in Powerscourt’s drawing room, giving a first-hand account of what he and the Powerscourts were to refer to ever afterwards as ‘The Grand Reconnaissance’, the day Diaghilev took the first division of his people to check out Blenheim Palace and prepare it for ballet.

‘We were all there,’ Fokine went on: ‘dancers, choreographers, musicians, set designers, painters, an acoustic man, even Stravinsky turned up for the day. And when we got to Oxford, no minor train, no branch line from the outer reaches of the Vanderbilt Empire for us: there were four horsedrawn carriages. Not a whiff of petrol in the air. Diaghilev, in the lead position now, must have thought he was back on his quest for ancestral portraits that took him all over Russia, horse and carriage conveying him from stations miles away to some crumbling heap with masterpieces in the attic.

‘When they got there the steward — he’s the man in charge of the whole estate, am I right?’

Powerscourt nodded, reluctant to interrupt the flow. ‘Well, he’d lined all the servants up around that great front door, like Diaghilev was the King or something. He spoke perfect French, by the way, and he and Diaghilev got on like a house on fire.

‘“Welcome to Blenheim,” says the steward, embracing Diaghilev on both cheeks, “and welcome to the Great Hall.” Diaghilev raised his cane as his eye took in the enormous room rising high up to the painted ceiling. Then he brought it crashing down and rapped the floor very hard. Then he waved it around.

‘“Here! my friend,” he said.

‘“Here?” repeated the steward.

‘“Here!” said Diaghilev, “we shall have one performance of our ballet! In this great chamber here! It will be wonderful.” He summoned the other choreographer and a number of his people to work out the details.

‘“About one hundred souls will watch the Ballets Russes in this magnificent room!” Diaghilev proclaimed, and then he embraced the steward and kissed him on both cheeks. “And now, my friend, we must find the other location. Did I not see a lake on the way in? Lead me to it!”’

Fokine sprang from the sofa suddenly and grabbed the longest poker from the Powerscourt fire irons. ‘Now,’ he beamed, ‘I can be more like Diaghilev with this poker to serve as his cane!’

With that he moved rapidly to the door and began waddling on the spot.

‘Here is Diaghilev, cane raised as a sign of leadership, progressing with his motley army of Ballets Russes people — carpenters, builders and God knows who else from the palace, a couple of tall footmen and a pair of curious chambermaids bringing up the rear. He is Joshua at the walls of Jericho, perhaps, or the Pied Piper at the gates of Hamelin.’

Fokine made his way to the back of the sofa. ‘Here you have to use your imagination, Lord and Lady Powerscourt.’

He took up his position at the back of the sofa. ‘This is what they call the Palladian bridge, designed not by the man from Vicenza but by architect Vanbrugh himself, with dining rooms beneath where you could take dinner at a level below the water line. In front of you is a great sweep of water, ending up in a shape bigger than a U and slightly smaller than an O. There are gates into the park at the far end. Behind you is more water, more lake, but not so good perhaps for the ballet. Ahead of me, beyond the bridge, is the path through the grounds that leads up to the great obelisk that commemorates the warrior’s triumphs. Behind me is the palace, with scarcely a window unoccupied as the staff and perhaps the family watch the show.’

Fokine waddled to the middle of the sofa and struck the parapet in the centre three mighty blows. ‘Neither water nor gold ran out, I fear to say, but a great silence descended on the gossiping attendants.

‘“Here! Here!” Diaghilev cried, “is where the musicians shall play. Not on the bridge, but I can see in my mind’s eye a great platform in the lake, secured on the bridge here, with the orchestra, and on a further platform, the dancers, with wooden tongues running out from their base, deep into the lake and towards the dry land.”’

Fokine tapped his cane poker twice more on the parapet and pointed dramatically out towards the imaginary lake and the grass sloping down towards the water.

‘“And on either side,” Diaghilev said, virtually shouting now, “we have the audience in tiers of seats if our friends can provide them, or squatting on the grass, or standing at the back. All will be welcome. For the first” — and almost certainly the last — ’ Fokine added in an aside — ‘“time in its history, the Ballets Russes will dance for free! For the first time in its history, the Ballets Russes will perform in the open air! I and my artists do not care if it rains. What is a little damp to interrupt a spectacle such as ours? Ever since we started, our company has tried to perform before the maximum number of people. Let them come from Woodstock! Let them come from Oxford! Let them come from the four points of the compass and enjoy our ballets! This is our thank you to the people of England for the welcome we always enjoy here. Let us cheer for the Ballets Russes! Let us cheer for the Duke of Marlborough who invited us here! Let us cheer for Blenheim Palace for the joy and the glory it is about to deliver.”’

Fokine returned to his recumbent position on the sofa. ‘Diaghilev then convened a series of meetings, with the steward ever present, with the carpenters, the acoustic men, who wanted to put a series of heavy curtains over the musicians to stop the sound disappearing into the heavens, with conductors, with me, with the dancers. Little working parties were established. As far as I know, Diaghilev is still there supervising everything. All I know is that the ballets will have the minimum number of dancers in case the platform begins to wobble. The most likely thing to happen then,’ Fokine said with a smile, ‘is that the dancers would start to giggle and would probably fall into the water.’

‘Thank you for your performance, Monsieur Fokine,’ said Lady Lucy, clapping his description of the scene at Blenheim, ‘it was magnificent. Would you care for a drink after your efforts?’

‘I’d love a beer,’ said the choreographer, sinking back into the sofa, the poker still clutched firmly in his hand.