Wasn't Prince Prince Michael Cantacuzene the younger, married to a relative of Mrs. Merriweather Post at one time? You know I could have met Princess Cantacuzene when I was a teenager and lived for a summer in Washington D.C.
I was told at the time that she still resided in the nation's capital and that she had lived into her 90's. I remember being too scared to meet her. Perhaps the story of Princess' longevity and residence in the city is not true. The individual that would have arranged the meeting also said that Princess Cantacuzene had lost her sight in her late 70's but that she had regained her sight when she turned 90 and the first thing she did was to fire her extra servants. Do you know if that story is true?
A maturnal relative of mine, by marriage, married two Russian Princes. Prince Miskinoff; and Prince Galitzine. I don't know that much about Prince Mikinoff, but I have learned a bit more about Prince Galitizine. Prince Mstislav Galitzine, Count Ostermann, was born in Kiev, January 21, 1899, and died in Paris on Feb. 28, 1966. He married my relative in Paris on Sept. 22, 1925 and they were divorced two years later. My relative kept her title as a courtesy title for the rest of her life. Shortly after her marriage to Prince Galitizine, she met a paternal relative of mine who was a young art student studying at the Sorbonne. I believe he was her boy toy as she gave him his own valet and an small apt. in her three story townhouse in the Passy. She wrote a book in the mid 1930's which I own and I believe that she passed shortly after its publication. The same year Prince Galitizine and my relative were divorced, the Prince married Clarisse Biot on Sept. 27, 1927 in Paris. They had a child, Princess Maria Galitizine who married Raymond Pierre Dutherque in Paris on Oct. 4, 1962. Maria died in Paris in 1998. My paternal relative that was the young art student lived into his late 90's and passed on at about the same time.
In my mother's family there are other ties to titled Americans as it was so fashionable in my grandmother's era to marry abroad. I was exposed to many more exiled White Russians who I absolutely cherished and adored and felt this incredible affinity with. I believe that my attraction to these titled Americans, especially those who married Russian titles, iis based on something higher that snobbery or elitism. The attraction is something much more about a nobility of mind that I believe with all my heart was authentic to that group. If others could have seen some of those women in my mother's family just cross a room in a dinner gown, they would know what I am talking about.
