Mike!!! Thank you so much for your helpful information. By-the-by, might you know what de Bourdoukoff's title was? I thought he was a Count, but I am not sure.
Also, Mike do you know if my Uncle Morgan's other friend, Baron B. de Ludinghausen-Wolff's wife, Princess Xenia Stcherbatov, was the daughter of the former Minister of the Interior, Prince N. B. Stcherbatov, or was her father another member of the Stcherbatov family? I do hope that Xenia was not the daughter of Prince N. B. Stcherbatov as he gave the Empress such a hard time.
Again, Mike, I can't help wondering if Xenia's mother, Princess Sophia Wassiltchkov, married a second time in exile? Was Wassiltchkov her former married name or was it her maiden name? There was a certain Princess Sophia Wassilchkov who managed to write a very rude letter to the Empress in December 1916 and was expelled from Petrograd along with her husband, Senator-Prince Wassiltchkov who was a member of the Council of the Empire. Of course the couple’s exile lasted only a few short months, as the Emperor abdicated in March 1917 and the Princess and husband returned to Petrograd in a rather splendid but short lived triumphal entry.
As grateful as I am for every Russian Noble that managed, through God’s good grace, to escape the barbaric Bolshevik exterminators, including those families that were able to remain in Russia without being eradicated; still I have always hoped and prayed that Xenia’s mother was not the same Princess Sophie Wassiltchov whose incautious letter so offended the Empress.
Uncle Morgan told my mother that the long hand of the Bolsheviks was never far from Paris during the nineteen twenties and the nineteen thirties. Uncle Morgan told my mother that, in spite of the fact that the Paris Émigré Russian colony was constantly on alert, one individual after another would suddenly disappear. The way my mother told my sister’s and I about those terrifying years made the hair on the back of our necks rise as we cuddled around her on Saturday mornings when my father had gone off hunting with his friends. As we snuggled next to our Mum, eating biscuits and drinking tea, I suppose the security of our lovely home and Mum’s vivid narration made the distant past and all of its dangers seem all the more real to us children. It created in my heart a life-long desire to learn more about my family, and in turn this interest led me at an early age to learn about nineteenth/early twentieth century Russia.
I must add that my Mum, who was a direct maternal descendant of the British Poet, Lord Byron, George Gordon, never failed me. As my appetite for Eurpoean history grew, even at the age of twelve, when I discovered in my father’s library one of my grandfather’s books, the memoirs of Princess Cantacuzène nee Grant, it turned out that my Mum knew more details about the Princess than were written in her book. The amazing thing was that my Mum was not an individual who looked to the past, it was the present that interested her. So for her to share information about the past with me was an incredible honor.
Even when I discover Queen Marie of Romania’s memoirs in a local library at the age of fourteen, my Mum quietly informed me that her father had been among the dignitaries who had presented Queen Marie with gold mesh stockings during her tour of the USA with her daughters in the mid -1920’s.
Forgive me for my diversion from our topic. Returning to the Russian Émigré Community in Paris in the late twenties and early nineteen thirties, my Uncle Morgan told my mother that sometimes abductions would occur in broad daylight. Once when a party of friends was leaving the Ritz, after a charming luncheon, a taxi pulled up and before anyone could do anything some hideous distorted Soviet Animal jumped out and grabbed one of my Uncle’s friends and speed away. The French police seemed incapable of apprehending these demented criminals. My Uncle Morgan told my mother that he had lost several good friends in this shocking manner, not to mention several of his friend’s fathers.
Well Mike thank you again for your very helpful information……toddle pip….Griff
