Thank you so much Svetabel. This is the first time I have seen a photograph of Fanny Lear.
Amelia
And that's the only one photo of her as I know.
Back to Fanny's memoirs. I mentioned that a Russian historian considered the book a novelette. Well, by chance I've came across some quotations from Fanny's memoirs in another bio-article on GD Nikolai K. and I must say I can't agree the text is a fiction or a sob-stuff...Fanny (her real name was Hatty Ash, and Mrs Blackford by her husband) was a practical, down-to-earth and sharp-eyed woman without many prejudices and sentimental spirits. Of course her written revelations and love story must be viewed critically but it's obviuos
she was a first real friend for a lonely young Grand Duke. The handsome and dashing officer Grand Duke Nikolai had a lonely childhhood though he was surrounded by siblings, tutors and so on. His parents adored him but Grand Duke-Father was always busy with his fundamental projects and later with his second family (with ballerina Anna Kuznetsova), his pretty mother was busy with herself and later with her offences on her husband's adultery...And the boy was a victim of his pedant tutor Mirbach, a harsh German officer with whom he had been fighting for years. GD Nikolai grown up into a reclkess, bull-headed young man with a violent temper. He was desperately lonely and so plunged into dissipation. Fanny was that one who normalized his crazy life, and became definitely his first great love...Certainly this could not help her to escape from Russia with a hatful of money (compenstaion from the Russian Secret Police) after the fuss around Nikolai and stolen jewels of GDss Alexandra Iosifovna.
