The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II

3. A BRIEF PEACE

A YEAR after his runaway marriage, Michael moved Natasha and his extensive retinue to England, preferring to make his home there rather than in Paris, or anywhere else in Europe. After all, he knew the country well and spoke English as well as any Englishman. His first cousin George was its king; his beloved aunt, the Dowager Queen Alexandra — sister of his mother the Dowager Empress Marie — had her own court at Marlborough House, a stroll from Buckingham Palace. Michael had known Queen Victoria and had spent a holiday at her Scottish home, Balmoral. She had thought his father Alexander III ‘a boor’ — in turn, he had described her as ‘a nasty interfering old woman’.¹ But she had liked Michael, writing afterwards that he ‘is remarkably nice & pleasing & pleasing looking.’² Michael had represented Russia at her funeral in 1901, as he had done at the coronation of her successor, her eldest son King Edward VII, after which ‘Uncle Bertie’ had made Michael a Knight of the Garter, a member of Britain’s most illustrious order, with his own standard to hang in the chapel at Windsor Castle.

Natasha’s introduction to England came in July 1913 when she and Michael arrived at the Ritz Hotel on London’s Piccadilly. It was not a happy experience, for they had gone there in the hope of some sort of reconciliation with Michael’s mother, who was staying with her sister at Marlborough House. The meeting had been arranged by Michael’s sister Xenia — ‘she so wants to see him!’ Her husband Sandro had sent Michael a telegram ‘saying that he must come.’³

Michael went to the first meeting on his own, leaving a very nervous Natasha to pace up and down their suite at the Ritz, dreading what might happen. His mother had been ‘very agitated at the prospect of seeing him’ and had been ‘completely unable to sleep — she was so excited and upset’, Xenia wrote in her diary. At last he arrived and ‘they disappeared into the next room for a minute, but returned looking quite calm! Thank God it went all right. I was so anxious for Mama…’⁴

That evening Michael returned to Marlborough House, this time with Natasha, and he and his mother ‘had a good quiet talk, thank God, and he was happy to be able to speak.’⁵ Then it was Natasha’s turn to face the Dowager Empress and the tongue-lashing that inevitably awaited her. There was no hope of ‘a good quiet talk’ now and all Natasha could do was to keep her head up and allow the anger to wash over her. As Xenia recorded it later, the Dowager Empress ‘saw his wife and told her a few home truths in front of Misha…in general it was terribly penible (unpleasant) on all sides.’⁶

Afterwards the Dowager Empress wrote to Nicholas to give him her account of her meeting. I was happy to see that he has remained the same; just as nice and good and even kinder than ever. We talked everything over quite frankly and all was said so nicely and quietly without a bitter word, that for the first time after all these dreadful worries my heart felt relieved and so, I think, did his…⁷

She made no mention at all of Natasha. The next time they would meet it would again be at Marlborough House, but by then the world would have changed for ever and both would have more to worry about than either could have imagined in that summer of 1913.

What Michael and Natasha did imagine was that they could remake their lives in England and live there happily ever after. Notwithstanding her bruising encounter with the Dowager Empress, Natasha was excited at the prospect of actually having a home not a hotel suite as had been the case for the past year. Looking around, they found a house some 20 miles north of London, near Stevenage in Hertfordshire. It was a magnificent stately home with an oak banqueting hall, four-poster bedrooms, state drawing room, picture gallery — and a small army of servants, including footmen who at dinner wore knee-breeches and powdered hair.⁸ Called Knebworth House, and owned by the Earl of Lytton, it was available for a year from that September 1913 at an annual rent of £3,000 or a tenth of Michael’s annual income from the imperial purse. On the lease, Michael was described as ‘at present residing at Palace Anichkov in St Petersburg’.⁹ The drafting lawyers in Belgravia knew, as did everyone else, that His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich, ‘hereinafter the tenant of the other part’ ought properly to be described as ‘of no fixed abode’; however that would have appeared unseemly. A palace sounded better than a hotel room.

He paid the first six-month rental in advance. However, he found it a struggle in March 1914 to pay the next six months. After almost two years his cash was running out. Suddenly, having to find £1,500 from his monthly income of £2,500 was both a problem and a cause for bitter complaint. In his absence his personal estate had generated some two million roubles of profit — and not a penny of that had come his way. Mordvinov was deaf to pleas. He and his department were ‘unfair and discourteous’ he complained to Nicholas. ‘Life in England is very expensive… this month I have had to pay a six-month rent for the estate in which I am living, which is why I have been left without any money.’¹⁰ The only concession was to agree that his monthly income could increase to 30,000 roubles, or £3,300.

Yet in all other respects he was more content than he had been for the past five years. At least in England he and his wife Natasha were left in peace and that had never been the case in their lives together in Russia. Looking ahead, they planned to move that September of 1914 to another but much larger estate, Paddockhurst in Sussex, owned by Lord Cowdray, with a two-year lease at a slightly higher rent of £3,460 a year.¹¹

There would be time enough to decide by 1916 what next to do. After all, who could know what might happen in the interval?

Who indeed.

THE announcement in the Court Circular published in The Times a few months earlier, that Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich was taking possession of Knebworth House, would normally have been enough for crested invitations to fall thick and fast on their doormat. Society, however, had turned a polite back on Michael and Natasha, taking its lead from Michael’s cousin King George V and his aunt the Dowager Queen Alexandra that while Michael remained family, ‘that woman’ was not welcome in any respectable household.

One other influential and determined enemy in the British camp was Countess Torby, married to a namesake Grand Duke, Michael Mikhailovich, the 52-year-old brother-in-law of Michael’s elder sister Xenia, and known in the family as Miche-Miche. On the face of it, Michael might have expected Miche-Miche and his wife to have been the first to come to his support, since they too had been banished from Russia for a very similar offence — a runaway marriage which had caused almost as much uproar as had Michael’s.

In 1891, Miche-Miche had secretly married the well-born but not royal Sophie von Merenberg — a grand-daughter of the celebrated Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. The news came as such a shock that when Miche-Miche’s mother Grand Duchess Olga received his telegram while standing on a station platform she collapsed with a heart attack and died.¹²

Alexander III banished the couple from Russia, and like Michael and Natasha 22 years later, they moved to England. Sophie was re-invented as Countess Torby, and they settled down happily in British society, eventually taking a long lease on Kenwood, a magnificent house overlooking London’s Hampstead Heath. The British took a much more relaxed view about ‘morganatic marriage’ — between a royal and a non-royal — which was why London was seen as a sanctuary for those who had blotted their copybook in the other stricter European courts. Knowing that in St. Petersburg they would never be accepted as they were in London, Miche-Miche and his wife had no interest in returning to Russia and never would.

At the same time, they closed their own doors on Michael and Natasha. Miche-Miche was pressing George V for a British title¹³ and that being so — though she would never get one — the much grander Countess Torby did not want the arrival of Natasha to remind anyone of her own runaway marriage. Natasha was too close for comfort, and therefore was on her black-list. She discouraged her friends from having anything to do with her, making clear that she disapproved — a double divorcée was enough for that.

Yet the British did not ignore her altogether. Since she was accepted in Britain as the lawful wife of Grand Duke Michael Aleksandrovich, her name was included whenever he was mentioned in the Court Circular, published in The Times and Morning Post; however, on the three occasions when her name was listed, confused Buckingham Palace officials changed the spelling each time.

She was listed as the ‘Comtesse de Brassow’ when she stayed with Michael at the Ritz Hotel on London’s Piccadilly in December 1913, ‘Mme de Brasov’ when she went to a luncheon two weeks later, and ‘Countess’ when she came back with Michael from Cannes in May.¹⁴ It did not help that at Knebworth she had personal notepaper designed with her initials NB under a coronet.¹⁵ That in itself did not encourage invitations: no one really knew what to call her.

Michael did not mind about that. He had never cared greatly for fashionable society in St. Petersburg and never would; he took the same view in London. What mattered to him was that after the long and bitter family battles over Natasha they were at last able to live openly and peacefully together, as man and wife, and with the two children — his baby son George and her ten-year-old daughter Tata.

Nonetheless, they were by no means cold-shouldered everywhere. The luncheon at which in January 1914 the Court Circular recorded Natasha as ‘Mme de Brassow’ was at the home of Sir Frederick Pollock and the guests included Walter Hines Page, the US ambassador, and his wife, and the Russian actress Princess Baryatinskaya, whose stage name was Lydia Yavorska.¹⁶ She was playing the title role in an English adaptation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a love story with some uncomfortable reminders of Natasha’s own life; Michael and she had gone to the opening night with the Russian chargé d’affaires and the consul-general¹⁷ — both carefully arranging themselves so that they were dutifully beside the Grand Duke, but not next to his wife.

His Russian connections apart, Michael’s principal interest that evening was a business one: he had joined with Sir Frederick in a theatrical enterprise, the New International Theatre, which had backed the play. It was a world in which both Michael and Natasha felt very much at home, and Michael took a five per cent stake in the company¹⁸ — with his assets frozen he needed to make some money — though after some ‘unlucky’ investments it was to prove ultimately a total loss.¹⁹

There were also small victories which could bring no pleasure to Tsarskoe Selo. Grand Duke Andrew, for example, showed what he thought of it all by turning up at Knebworth House in January as he had done at Cannes after the marriage, and two months later Michael and Natasha went off to St. Moritz to join his cousin and his long-time mistress Kschessinska. Michael and Andrew skied; Natasha and Kschessinska ice-skated.²⁰

They made an interesting foursome: two Grand Dukes and two of the best-known women in Europe — both the mothers of illegitimate children, with the dainty but dazzling Kschessinska admired as the celebrated prima ballerina assoluta, the younger and beautiful Natasha known as the most notorious woman in high society; each was outrageous and what made them more so was that each was clearly adored by the two proud Grand Dukes hovering around them. Society, pretending to look the other way, could only stare in wonderment.

They were back in England in time to offer ‘open house’ at Knebworth to the stars of Diaghilev’s famed Ballets Russes, then taking London by storm. They had already conquered Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna and Budapest and had done much the same when they came to London in 1911. Their return in 1914 was eagerly awaited, and Natasha invited the dancers en bloc to Knebworth, along with the stars of the Russian opera who also were appearing as part of the ‘Russian season’ at Drury Lane.

Her old friend Chaliapin, who had visited them in Cannes after their marriage, was among them. Another guest was the celebrated Russian sculptor and stage designer Sudeikin, whose ‘thank you’ was a bust of Michael, George and Tata.²¹

Natasha was in her element in those days at Knebworth, when the house rang with laughter and music and no one went to bed until the early hours. ‘On the morning after the parties, the gardeners were not allowed to start work near the house, so as to leave undisturbed the slumber of the guests, who would eventually arise, yawning, just in time for lunch’.²²

The ‘Russian season’ in London that summer also included a good number of St Petersburg royals, including the Dowager Empress. Michael’s sister Xenia also came with her husband Sandro to stay at the Piccadilly Hotel, and they were followed by Xenia’s daughter Irina and her new young husband Prince Felix Yusupov, who owned an apartment at 15 Parkside, Belgravia. As summer wore on, the Russian imperial contingent increased when Grand Duchess George Mikhailovich, Sandro’s sister-in-law arrived at Claridge’s with her two daughters, bringing to nine the number of Romanovs in London, in addition to Michael and Miche-Miche.

Michael met them all, including his mother at Marlborough House where, as usual on her many visits to England, she was staying with her widowed sister Alexandra, now the Dowager Queen. Among the other Romanovs there was nothing but sympathy and concern for Michael, and sighs at the venom of Alexandra’s court at Tsarskoe Selo.

No, of course he should not have married her, but yes, he had been put in an impossible position. At least that was all over, and he could make a new life for himself. Unfortunately, they would not be able to meet her. They were sure Michael understood that: no point in stirring up a family row. Not in London, and not with the Dowager Empress in town.

Michael could not complain about that, and nor could Natasha. The ‘season’ was not a place for a divorcée at the best of times — barred from the Royal Enclosure at Ascot races, barred from balls at Buckingham Palace, and effectively barred from any grand table likely to be dined at by a royal. With their days in top hats and designer dresses, their evenings in white-tie and ballgowns, the only outside event that anyone noticed was that on June 29 the London newspapers were reporting the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz-Ferdinand.

It was a brief sensation before society got back to the serious business of parties and balls, not least the great State Ball at Buckingham Palace, fixed for July 16, when the grandest people, including Miche-Miche and Countess Torby, but predictably not Michael and Natasha, would be present.²³

This would be followed by racing at Goodwood and by the regatta at Cowes, which Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of the Kaiser and brother-in-law of Empress Alexandra, would be attending in his steam yacht Carmen.

German royals were as prominent as the Russian royals in London in the last summer of old Europe. At the State Ball the most distinguished guests included the Tecks, Battenbergs, Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, and Schleswig-Holsteins, all closely related to the British royal family, as were the Russian imperial family. That ball in Buckingham Palace would be the last time old Europe danced the quadrille. Three weeks later, the world exploded.

THE news that Germany had declared war on Russia came to Knebworth on Saturday August 1, 1914 — July 19 in Russia. Michael, determined to return to the army, cabled Nicholas at once asking permission for both he and Natasha to return. Alexandra was opposed to ‘that woman’ ever setting foot in Russia again, but there was larger problems to worry about now, and just as promptly Nicholas cabled back his agreement. At Knebworth, Michael’s private war would now have to be set aside for the greater duty of serving his country. For both Michael and Natasha their brief peace was over.

There was much to do in the next frantic days. With some Moscow friends who had joined them in Knebworth there were twenty people seeking to get back to Russia, including secretaries, governesses, valets and servants. The best route home was across the North Sea to Norway, thence through Sweden and Finland to St. Petersburg. A ship was found, the s.s. Venus, which could accommodate the whole party, and it was leaving from Newcastle, 200 miles north on the River Tyne.²⁴

The lease on Knebworth was to end in September, when they were due to move to Lord Cowdray’s Paddockhurst estate in Sussex. Although he would not now be moving there himself, Michael still needed a property in England to house his possessions from Knebworth— furniture, paintings, books, linen, cars and horses. Besides, no one expected the war — which Britain joined on August 4 — to last very long. A year perhaps, or maybe less? Certainly it would be no longer than their two-year lease, so Paddockhurst would be home when they came back. In the meantime, he would entrust the care of that estate to Mr Bennett, the head groom he had hired at Knebworth. The only Russian who would stay behind was Mme Johnson, mother of Michael’s new secretary. Having been terrified by the stormy crossing of the English Channel in her journey to Britain, she could not face the prospect of another and much longer sea journey; she would stay behind and help to manage the house. After all, they would all be back soon.²⁵

On Thursday, August 13, Michael went up to Buckingham Palace to say goodbye to his cousin King George. Just over two weeks earlier the king had met another cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, hurrying home from the yachting regatta at Cowes as the Balkans crisis deepened. It was a gloomy meeting, with the king grimly predicting that if war came it was almost certain that Britain would be ‘dragged into it.’²⁶ Now it was Michael’s turn, and a more cheerful handshake, for at least they were on the same side. But as with Henry, the farewell would also prove to be goodbye. King George would never see either cousin again.

With that, Michael and his party prepared to depart Knebworth the following day. All the servants, together with the local villagers, gathered together to wave them farewell as they began the first leg of their journey home. That Friday evening they boarded the s.s. Venus and escorted by British destroyers sailed off to Norway. Once there, the party crossed over to Sweden then travelled on to Finland. A week after leaving Knebworth they were back in St. Petersburg — now renamed Petrograd, patriotic sentiment having deemed that Petersburg sounded too German.

Michael’s mother the Dowager Empress had also returned to Russia, but after a more eventful journey.

She had left London hurriedly, travelling with daughter Xenia through Germany; by the time the train reached Berlin the war had already started. Hostile crowds broke the windows of her carriage and tore down the blinds, until police intervened. On orders from the Kaiser, her train was allowed to continue on to neutral Denmark, and from there she got back via Sweden and Finland.²⁷

Returning home to the Anichkov Palace she was naturally anxious to see Michael, albeit without Natasha, but accepted that this time he would set up home with her. There would be no further demands that they lived separately, or were not to be seen in public together. She would still be Madame Brasova, but she was also his wife, and that was a fact which it was pointless now to deny. There was also a war on. Nonetheless, there could be no question of her ever living in an imperial palace — that would be a step too far. Given that, Michael would never again live in one either.

On arriving back in the capital, Michael and Natasha had booked into the Hotel de l’Europe,²⁸ near the Anichkov Palace but on the other side of the Nevsky Prospekt. That was something they could never have done two years earlier, but the real question now was where should they make their home?

Michael was in doubt about that: it had to be his beloved Gatchina. The Blue Cuirassiers were on their way to the front line; there would be no more insults from them, and local society would have to learn that Natasha was no longer to be reviled as before.

The decision made, he and Natasha waited until her ‘hideaway house’ at 24 Nikolaevskaya Street, securely locked up when the children had left to join them in Cannes two years earlier, was re-opened and made a home again, though it was so run-down that Natasha was ashamed of it. She would get it right eventually, but as it stood it was the last place anyone would expect to find a Grand Duke. Nonetheless, Michael liked it so much he also bought the property next door, to house guests as well as some of his staff.²⁹

With that, he was ready to go to war.