Grand Duke Nikolai Konstantinovitch and his family

[Marc]

Thank you Svtabel for the palace picrure!Maybe a stupid question,but was he sometimes bored beeing away from most of his family(I mean the whole Imperial family not just his wife,children etc.)?

[LisaDavidson]

Thank you Svtabel for the palace picrure!Maybe a stupid question,but was he sometimes bored beeing away from most of his family(I mean the whole Imperial family not just his wife,children etc.)?

He seemed to love living in Tashkent. I doubt it.

[Svetabel]

Thank you Svtabel for the palace picrure!Maybe a stupid question,but was he sometimes bored beeing away from most of his family(I mean the whole Imperial family not just his wife,children etc.)?

GD Nikolai considered himself deeply offended by the Imperial family and their behavoiur towards him. Also in Tashkent he led a busy life and loved the place.
According to GD Konstantin K.,his brother, the Grand Duke sometimes felt lonely without his siblings though but seemed that was not a real deep feeling.

[kmerov]

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.

I have also read that her memoirs did portray and accurate picture of the Grand Duke, and also of his discussions with his father, which made the book even more scandalous. Interesting that it was published in 1875, so that the events described had almost just happend.

I have read that Olga Konstantinovna visited him in his exile, but did other family members visit him aswell?

[Svetabel]

I have also read that her memoirs did portray and accurate picture of the Grand Duke, and also of his discussions with his father, which made the book even more scandalous. Interesting that it was published in 1875, so that the events described had almost just happend.

I have read that Olga Konstantinovna visited him in his exile, but did other family members visit him aswell?

Of course GD Konstantin, his brother, visited him 2 or 3 times. Other siblings (except Queen Olga)- no.

[kmerov]

Thanks. So his family didn't visit ham very often, considering he spend decades in exile. Did they correspond with him?

A quote from Fanny Lear's memoirs about the Grand Duke,
" He was highly strung, quick tempered, violent and arrogant: and at the same time extremely clear-sighted, avid for knowledge, good, loving and protective to all who was close to him, from myself to his smallest dog.
He was mean when it was a matter of small expenses and genereous bordering on prodigal when it came to mayor ones. He made a scene with me when I asked for five roubles, and then flung a host of thousand rouble notes at me."

[Svetabel]

Thanks. So his family didn't visit ham very often, considering he spend decades in exile. Did they correspond with him?

GD Nikolai K. rarely corresponded with his siblings as well as with parents and other Romanovs, esp. certainly after his exile.

[amelia]

Svetabek,

A while ago you kindly posted a website with the photograph of Fanny Lear's marble statue. Under the photographs it says that the statue is in the Yousupov collections. Do you think it is still there and is it exposed to the public?

Thanks Amelia

[Svetabel]

Svetabek,

A while ago you kindly posted a website with the photograph of Fanny Lear's marble statue. Under the photographs it says that the statue is in the Yousupov collections. Do you think it is still there and is it exposed to the public?

Thanks Amelia

I think it's still there,s the photo is modern, but I can't say exactly about exposing.

[Carolath Habsburg]

Nichols Constatinovich

[ashanti01]

Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovitch

[Carolath Habsburg]

The GD as a kid



 

[Carolath Habsburg]

 

[Carolath Habsburg]

Nicholas Constantinovich. He was incredible handsome _(in his younger days)



 

[Clemence]

OK, I found the cite we were talking about earlier.  Charlotte Zeepvat, The Camera and the Tsars, page 105.

For those who do not have the book, here is the paragraph, in full:

One of the first to rebel was Nikolai Konstantinovich.  Ignoring his mother's attempts to find him a suitable bride, Nikolai lavished his fortune on his mistress and his art collection.  By 1874 he was stealing from the family: when this emerged he was declared insane, stripped of his rank and placed under supervision--but wherever he was taken, trouble followed.  In 1874 and in 1876 a woman who should not have even come near him became pregnant by him; in 1878, in Orenburg, he married another woman in secret, and all the time he preached revolution.  Officially he ceased to exist and, in the summer of 1881, Alexander III sent him into exile in Tashkent.  In 1895, though still living with his wife, he bought a sixteen-year-old Cossack girl and started a family with her,  In 1900 he contracted a bigamous marriage with a schoolgirl which was quickly annulled.  Visiting him in 1904, his sister Olga said 'he has completely lost any moral sense of what can be done and what can be demanded.' But there was another side to Nikolai.  He took a serious interest in Central Asia, organising scientific expeditions and publishing his findings.  In Tashkent he launched irrigation schemes and other beneficial projects.  He welcomed the Revolution, and when he died of pulmonary disease in April 1918, local Bolsheviks arranged a grand funeral for him in Tashkent Cathedral.

Whew!  A lot of typing.  Reviewing my post, I will admit that Zeepvat did not say N.K.'s name was removed from the rolls of the family, that was my take on it; but she does say he was stripped of his rank and officially ceased to exist.  Perhaps I am just taking too literal a reading of her?

Regardless, he certainly seems to have been one of the more colorful Konstantinovichi.

Best,

Jane

Nikolai was killed by Bolsheviks in Tashkent. He was buried in St George's Cathedral Tashkent (later demolished by the Soviet regime).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Nikolai_Konstantinovich_of_Russia

When the revolution got going, the Iskander family decided that it was safer to be in Central Asia and they joined the old grand duke there in Tashkent, where Natalia's early childhood was spent. Natalia was barely one year old when her grandfather was killed by local revoulutionaries, the first grand duke to die in the Red Terror. The family never discussed the circumstances of his death, and now no one knows exactly what happened. Her father and uncle Artemi left home to join the Whites, and for a time the two Iskander princes were lost in the swirling havoc of civil war. Prince Alexander was reported missing in action. Meanwhile the revolutionaries forced Natalia, her brother Kirill and her mother Olga to leave the grand ducal palace, but they did not persecute them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Natalia_Romanovskaya-Iskander

Obviously there are many things we don't know but are we talking about the same Grand Duke? Could someone help me on this please?