the mansion of Mathilde Kshessinskaya

[Constantinople]

The architecture looks extraordinary.  Nicholas must have deep pockets for his mistress.

[Janet Ashton]

The architecture looks extraordinary.  Nicholas must have deep pockets for his mistress.

Nicholas didn't pay for this house, which she commissioned years later. The one she lived in in his day was on English Embankment; I've no idea what the relative costs were of this and the other, but she certainly had money of her own and Serge Mikhailovich's and Andrei Vladimiroch's to fund the later construction.

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi Janet,

You're probably correct about Serge and Andrei....

My grandmother once told me that when she lived in Russia, it was common gossip that Mathilde's house was supported "by those two stupid Grand Dukes" (her words, not mine)......

Larry

[Janet Ashton]

Hi Janet,

You're probably correct about Serge and Andrei....

My grandmother once told me that when she lived in Russia, it was common gossip that Mathilde's house was supported "by those two stupid Grand Dukes" (her words, not mine)......

Larry

Hi Larry
   Possibly Serge was not as stupid as people thought he was, since he also fathered a child by another woman in these years. ;-D
But then again HIS child was adopted while he raised Vova as his own. I think Miehchen put it perfectly when she sneered that it would be hard to detach Andrei from his "horrible mistress" (as Miechen of course wished) since "there is a child, of which he believes himself the father, as Sergei Mikhailovich also believes himself the father."
I also think that for  a lot of people this very public menage a trois symbolised the depths of decadence and cynicism to which the whole dynasty was thought to have sunk!

J

[Constantinople]

And at a time when the Romanoff family  basically controlled the wealth of Russia, this type of decadence would have been seen as a catalyst for change.