The Last Tsar: Emperor Michael II (6 page)

But he was worth a great deal more than that. His other assets included a palace on the English Embankment facing the Neva in St Petersburg — though he never chose to live there — a vast country estate, which he ran at a substantial profit, at Brasovo, near Orel, as well as another in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. To this could be added his ‘invisible’ assets — his homes in both the Gatchina and Anichkov palaces, as well as the elegant imperial yacht
Zarnista
, with a crew of 120 men, ten officers and a priest, and his own blue-and-gold imperial railway carriage, lavishly furnished, which would be hooked onto any express train whenever he wanted to travel by rail — all now lost to him as they would have been anyway by his leaving Russia as he did.

Nonetheless, Michael had no immediate cause for financial worry. In preparation for his runaway marriage, and the certainty of enforced exile thereafter, in the summer of 1912 he had transferred a large amount of cash to the Crédit Lyonnais on the Boulevard des Italiens in Paris — the Russian rouble was then an international currency, freely traded — ostensibly for the purpose of buying a large estate in France,
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so there was no need to be unduly concerned about cash in the short-term; nor was it in the power of the Tsar to stop payment of the imperial allowance to any Grand Duke — a figure of just over 23,000 roubles a month, the equivalent of £2,500, or almost $12,000 in the values of the day.

At the same time, his costs were considerable. He was paid as a Grand Duke, and not surprisingly he spent as a Grand Duke. He had not booked rooms at the
Hotel du Parc
, he had booked a whole floor to house not only himself and Natasha in a grand suite, but the children, nanny and governess, maids, chauffeurs, and a new secretary, Nikolai Johnson who, despite his surname, was a Russian. Johnson, a shortish, round-faced young man who spoke three languages — though his English was heavily-accented
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— was a more than competent pianist, his mother who also joined the household having been a court music teacher; Johnson’s keyboard talent was one reason why he and Michael got on so well, playing duets together — indeed, it was why he had been hired in the first place. In the end, it would be a post which would cost Johnson his life.

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’.
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But she had liked Michael, writing afterwards that he ‘is remarkably nice & pleasing & pleasing looking.’
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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.’
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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.
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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’.
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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.’
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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 title
¹³
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.
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It did not help that at Knebworth she had personal notepaper designed with her initials NB under a coronet.
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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.
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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-general
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— 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 company
¹⁸
— with his assets frozen he needed to make some money — though after some ‘unlucky’ investments it was to prove ultimately a total loss.
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