Mademoiselle Page 14

  On February 17, 1905, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party threw a nitroglycerin bomb into Duke Sergei’s carriage, killing him instantly. His wife, Elizabeth, arrived to find her husband’s body in fragments on the ground. Without weeping, the duchess knelt to retrieve shards of her husband’s skull, shreds of his clothing, and one of his hands—still wearing its ring—from the bloodstained snow. By her side stood the teenaged Dmitri and Marie, bearing witness to the ghastly mutilation of the man they knew as a second father. Soon after the murder, Dmitri and Marie—orphans again—moved into the imperial palace, as wards of the tsar himself. Nicholas II proved a doting guardian and took a special interest in his nephew, whom he compared favorably to his own son, the tsarevitch Alexei, whose hemophilia had rendered him frail. Rumors even flew about Dmitri’s replacing Alexei as heir to the throne, in a foreshadowing of later events in Dmitri’s life.

  Despite the tragic losses that beset his childhood, Grand Duke Dmitri passed the rest of his youth pursuing the pleasures and successes expected of a young Russian nobleman. He joined the Guards Regiment as a cavalry officer. He was an exceptional athlete and even competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm as an equestrian, finishing seventh. “No one had ever begun life with more ease or brilliance,” wrote his sister, Marie, in her memoirs. “He trod a golden path, was caressed and feted by everyone. His destiny seemed almost too dazzling.”

  When you’re a surviving member of the Romanov dynasty, life necessarily divides into “before” and “after.” As Marie’s wistful last sentence makes plain, she is looking back here, through the lens of her later expulsion from paradise, to a time before the slaughter of the rest of their family, before they had fled Russia forever, stripped of their fortunes and their titles. But the revolution was not the only historic cataclysm to divide Dmitri’s youth.

  Through boyhood years of shared adventures, Dmitri and his cousin, Prince Felix Youssoupoff, had cemented an abiding and loving friendship. When they were both young men, Felix—four years older and the more daring of the two—inducted Dmitri into his life of hedonistic exploits. Together, they explored the Gypsy camps outside of St. Petersburg, where prostitutes and drugs were readily available, and the opium dens of Paris’s Montmartre district. Their exploits grew even more extravagant once the prince discovered his penchant for cross-dressing, and began a drag career as a nightclub “chanteuse.”

  Ignoring stern warnings from the tsar, Dmitri continued to fraternize with Felix, who gradually exchanged debauchery for mysticism, coming to regard himself as nearly supernaturally powerful. Dmitri’s susceptibility to Felix’s domineering influence would prove dangerous.

  Although a semiliterate Siberian peasant, the megalomaniacal Grigori Rasputin had won great favor with the Russian royal family by styling himself a divinely inspired monk and religious adviser. The tsarina, convinced of Rasputin’s ability to cure her son’s hemophilia, ceded increasing authority to the monk, who was secretly plotting to seize power over the tsar, destroy the Duma, and replace all the cabinet ministers with his own appointees. With Russia’s entry into World War I, the threat posed by Rasputin grew more serious, and many members of the court thought he would destroy the empire. Seeing no other options and convinced of his own, nearly mystical invincibility, Prince Felix decided to murder the monk, enlisting his impressionable cousin Dmitri.

  On December 16, 1916, Felix, Dmitri, and a group of confederates attempted to kill Rasputin by feeding him tea cakes laced with cyanide. What followed has acquired the surreal aura of myth: According to Felix, Rasputin remained alive even after consuming the cakes, whereupon Felix shot the monk with Dmitri’s revolver. Other accounts say that even after the men had thrown the monk’s corpse into the Neva River, Rasputin emerged, unharmed, from the water, forcing them to shoot him yet again, this time fatally. This supernatural element of the story originates entirely with Prince Felix, who had a vested interest in depicting a demonic Rasputin.

  What is certain is that the original poisoning plan failed (no poison was found upon autopsy), Rasputin was shot to death, and Dmitri, whether he’d handled the gun or not, was named accessory to murder.

  Both cousins were sentenced to permanent exile, but while Felix was permitted a fairly gentle escape by ship, Dmitri was less fortunate. Thrown into an unheated freight train hurtling toward the Persian front of the war, Dmitri was expected to die either en route or soon afterward. Yet, while he suffered severely, Dmitri survived and made his way back to Europe, settling in Paris in 1920.

  In murdering Rasputin, Felix and Dmitri had unknowingly saved their own lives. The chaos unleashed by the monk’s death, and the subsequent unrest of Russia’s so-called February Revolution of 1917, resulted in the abdication of Tsar Nicholas and the end of the Romanov dynasty. The replacement body, the “Provisional Government,” lasted only until the November 1917 Bolshevik coup, which led famously to the slaughter of most remaining members of the imperial family.

  Dmitri had escaped it all, but life as he knew it had vanished forever. He found himself bereft of fortune, rank, employment, family, and country. Dmitri had also severed all ties with his boon companion, Felix. Their joint participation in murder had taken a heavy toll on their friendship, which, judging from their correspondence, had, at times, veered into an erotic relationship.

  In Paris, Dmitri was utterly free but lacked both the means and the will to reshape his life. Even the city held few charms for him: “The social class which had money … and which lived well … is giving way aux nouveaux riches, of whom there are terribly many in Paris!”

  Dmitri’s Paris social circle consisted of his beloved sister, Marie, who had also managed to flee the Bolsheviks, and fellow expatriate Russians, many of whom were promoting a restored Russian monarchy. Dmitri was the prime contender in their eyes for emperor, preferred largely over the only other possibility, his cousin Grand Duke Cyril Vladimirovich Romanov. Though plans remained vague, the dream of becoming tsar occupied Dmitri entirely in the early 1920s. In long diary entries, he pondered how best to rule the new, modern Russia—how to be an enlightened emperor.

  While he dreamed of the imperial palace, in real life, Dmitri was falling into poverty, borrowing heavily from friends, and doing little to pursue meaningful work. In this he was quite unlike his sister, Marie, who had begun a career in fashion, producing exquisite Russian embroidery. The few professional paths Dmitri did contemplate were hardly more practical than waiting to be tsar: “I will indeed be someone very great in Russia, but when?… If I began to receive enormous sums of money for acting in the movies or if I became a professional dancer—that would go against my conscience.” With little sign of imminent stardom (or tsardom) Dmitri compounded his troubles by turning to the only financial activity he knew: high-stakes gambling. His debts soon approached 100,000 francs.

  Despite his difficulties Dmitri continued to live as a carefree socialite. His appointment book reveals long lunches and dinners enjoyed amid a constant stream of deposed nobility, reigning royals, ambassadors, and celebrities. The hotel letterheads atop his correspondence chart numerous trips to European capitals and posh resort towns.

  Dmitri did consider one possible financial remedy: “The thought of marrying a very rich bride is less distasteful to me now than it used to be,” the duke wrote in his diary on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1920, on page 71 of his journal. On page 82, an out-of-sequence entry appears, dated January 23, 1921. Dmitri has decided to add some recollections of a dinner party he’d attended the week before: “On that day I ate dinner with [French singer] Marthe Davelli. It was very pleasant.… Coco Chanelle [sic] [was there.] I had not seen her in 10 years. It was very nice to meet her again. Her face has not changed, but of course her looks are much more mature. She did not say a word about Boy Capell [sic]. The evening turned out wonderfully cheerful. We stayed until 4 in the morning. I was driven home by Coco, with whom I developed a surprisingly good relationship right away.” This was one member of
the deplored nouveaux riches Dmitri would learn to like.

  As Dmitri suggests, he had met Coco a decade earlier, almost certainly through Etienne Balsan, whom he knew through polo circles. Their renewed acquaintance quickly evolved into a romance. Dmitri was Chanel’s physical type: Like Boy, he was handsome, athletic, and sure of his appeal to women. His eyes were even green, like Boy’s. Coco swept in and, within days, Dmitri’s diary mentions numerous visits to Chanel’s home, drives in her car, and long nights.

  Dmitri may have been drenched in nostalgia, but at thirty-seven, Coco Chanel faced squarely forward. She was a multimillionaire by today’s standards, with three thriving boutiques in France, an international clientele, and a workforce of hundreds. Still grief-stricken over Boy Capel, she dated many men (and was sporadically seeing poet Pierre Reverdy at this time), but remained emotionally aloof, allowing work to define her existence. No success, though, fulfilled her need for the ultimate social status, the kind acquired usually only by birth. Chanel longed to be royal. Chanel’s friend Lady Iya Abdy, herself of White Russian origin and an émigré from the Bolshevik Revolution, would later write, “Coco [was] always impressed by … money and titles. She … was ashamed of her roots. Instead of being proud of where she came from, she tried fiercely to hide her origins.”

  Chanel soon had Dmitri on an allowance, a small price to pay for bragging rights. Her police file suggests that she deliberately bruited about her relationship: “Information gathered allows us to establish that Chanel, today in possession of a fortune, provides financial support for her lover, with the unacknowledged goal of getting him to marry her and thus make her a Grand Duchess, or even Empress. It is said that she herself started the rumor of this marriage.” We also know, from the stamped visas in her passport, that during her affair with Dmitri, Chanel traveled to Berlin with him, where he held meetings meant to plan his ascension to the throne.

  In an attempt perhaps to live life more on Dmitri’s terms, Chanel conducted the affair with uncharacteristic leisure, absenting herself from her studio longer than ever before. They traveled frequently and may even have lived together for a time, in Zurich, and later in adjoining suites (paid for by Coco) at the splendid Hôtel Le Meurice on the rue de Rivoli. After two months of dating in Paris, Coco urged Dmitri to accompany her to the Riviera, and the next day they drove in her new midnight blue Rolls-Royce (which she appears to have bought to tempt him) to the Côte d’Azur. (Dark-colored Rolls-Royces had been associated only with funerals, but once Coco put her stamp of approval on them, they became the fashionable car to drive—as she herself had predicted.)

  On the Riviera, they spent three weeks in luxury hotels in Menton and Monte Carlo, golfing, shopping, dining, and visiting the casinos, with Chanel footing all bills. Chanel’s chambermaid and Dmitri’s valet, Piotr, came along to see to their personal needs. Coco said almost nothing about the tenor of their time together, but Dmitri’s diaries describe the relationship as relaxed and companionable. He makes very clear, though, who was pursuing whom: “I … gave in to Coco’s passionate pleas to travel with her … to bathe in the sun.… She is extremely kind and a surprisingly dear and joyful companion.… Time passes very quickly and pleasantly with her.”

  “Pleasant” falls far short of “passionate,” and nowhere does Dmitri suggest any erotic interest on his part—quite the contrary: “I could not have chosen a better friend than dearest Coco to pass the time. We have the strangest relationship. I am far from being in love with her and never was. I fully realize that she is not even very beautiful, but nevertheless I am very attached to her. She herself, I don’t know why, is astonishingly good to me, although she never brings up ‘African’ passions and does not ask about what is happening or about the future.”

  With the casual racism of his era and class, Dmitri here uses “African” as a synonym for “sexual,” and suggests that their relationship may have been largely chaste. Chanel herself enjoyed intimacy with men, but Dmitri may have been more inclined toward male lovers (or, as he implies, was simply not attracted to her), although he certainly had dated women and later married, and fathered a son. Dmitri’s account of their vacation suggests that Chanel was troubled by his ambivalence toward her. His description reveals her more vulnerable, even insecure side: “Coco is … sad … all the time thinking that I am most awfully bored and that I hated my time in Monte Carlo.… Though I [did] have a nice time, I am pleased to come back.” However tepid their affair, Chanel wished to woo and please this man.

  Other difficulties arose. Dmitri and Chanel were each anxious about the affair’s potential effect on their reputations. Dmitri feared that being perceived as a kept man would harm him in the eyes of his monarchist supporters. “I personally have no illusions on this account.… They will spread the nastiest rumors among the Russian colony. They will go so far as to say that I am being kept by Coco.”

  Even worse, Chanel was a tradesperson, a commoner, which further threatened Dmitri’s reputation. He had no thoughts of marrying her; he had his eye on a far more appropriate woman, Danish countess Marie-Louise Moltke, whom he had been cultivating for about a year. Surely recalling his father’s banishment from court, Dmitri repeatedly describes his relationship with Coco using the highly charged word that besmirched Duke Pavel’s second marriage: “I am not capable of living in such … falseness. After all … I have no experience with ‘morganatic’ relationships; I tremble at the thought of meeting acquaintances.… I am completely incapable of such a morganatic relationship.… It is of course black ingratitude towards Coco, but I have had enough of gallivanting around France in a morganatic situation.” (Emphasis is mine.) Chanel’s private hopes notwithstanding, Dmitri—like Boy Capel before him—deemed her entirely unsuitable for matrimony.

  Coco had her own cause for concern. In 1921, she was already involved with a besotted, highly jealous (and married) Igor Stravinsky, whose work for the Ballets Russes she was subsidizing while housing him and his entire family at Bel Respiro. Coco’s sudden zeal for a seaside vacation with Dmitri may have stemmed simply from her desire to avoid Igor and his possessiveness. Chanel also likely worried that her dignity would suffer if her financial upkeep of another bankrupt Russian became public knowledge.

  Even more than Dmitri did, Coco took pains to keep them shielded from the public on the Riviera. “I am not used to always thinking about whether or not I will meet acquaintances and to have to hide my location,” wrote Dmitri. “It apparently also troubled Coco, since every time we entered a restaurant she asked me to go in first and see whether there were any acquaintances. It was absolutely clear that she did not particularly wish to be noticed. In general she was surprisingly naive about our trip, since she sincerely hoped that no one would find out about her leaving Paris, and especially with me.” In one entry, Dmitri even describes Coco rushing to hide behind a wall in a restaurant upon catching sight of some friends.

  Their attempts at secrecy failed. Stravinsky got wind of Chanel’s escapades with Dmitri—probably via Coco’s close friend and sometime rival, Misia Sert—and broke off their affair in a rage. It would have been impossible, in any case, for Dmitri to keep his personal life a secret, given the police surveillance that dogged him in France since his arrival in 1920. Police files contain careful records of Dmitri’s varied residences, the hotels where he stayed in Paris and elsewhere, and the apartment he rented in Paris in 1920 on the rue de Miromesnil. The police kept track of Dmitri’s social life, the femmes galantes he entertained, and the friends he frequented. Dmitri must have been keenly aware of being spied upon, for the file mentions that he had asked his concierge to keep his identity a secret (a request obviously disregarded).

  It was perhaps this surveillance and the fear of prying eyes that prompted Chanel to install Dmitri at Bel Respiro after Stravinsky left. They took another extended vacation in 1922, when she whisked him off to Biarritz where she rented Ama Tikia, a white villa hidden by dunes, for two uninterrupted months—the longest vacatio
n of Coco’s life.

  While clearly passive and dependent, Dmitri did wish to improve himself. One small notebook among his papers reveals that he sought inspiration in mysticism, perhaps inspired by his years with Prince Felix. Bearing the heading “Books I’ve read,” the notebook contains a list of five volumes in the “self-help” genre: three by early twentieth-century mystic Hashnu O. Hara, and one each by spiritual gurus Lida Churchill and Flora Bigelow. Several of these volumes purported to teach a method for using the supernatural to “command luchre.”

  Dabbling in the occult was so unexceptional among exiled Russian aristocrats that Dmitri’s supporters even used spiritualism as a cover for their political activities, claiming that their meetings were séances. Chanel might well have attended some of these spiritual meetings with Dmitri. She was drawn to Christian mysticism and, since Boy, to theosophy and its offshoots. She also loved numerology and astrology, good luck symbols, and talismans. She kept tarot cards and a crystal ball in her apartment, and read the works of such authors as Joseph Péladan, the Rosicrucian novelist. Coco drew inspiration as well from Eastern religion and mysticism, referring often to one of her favorite texts, the Bhagavad Gita, to which Boy had introduced her.

  It’s easy to understand why the occult appealed to impoverished Russian monarchists. They all craved precisely what the occult promises: power and a way to manipulate one’s environment. The occult and royalty have much in common: Both rely upon systems of signs, charged symbols of privilege—omens, secret numbers, royal insignias or jewels, titles—that grant power and knowledge to an elite, to those who can interpret or inherit them. Rasputin knew this; as a mere peasant, he had successfully harnessed the occult to counter the seemingly invincible power of dynastic royalty.

  Chanel’s interest in the occult stemmed from similar impulses. Psychoanalyst Claude Delay understood: “She was superstitious, and believed in the talismans of poor children.” Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie concurs: “Without symbols there was nothing. As a child she must have needed something to cling to. She constructed her own myth out of mysteries, signs, and symbols; she lived it and was imbued with it; symbols were everywhere in her beliefs, her apartment, her jewelry and her lucky charms, her style.”