Andrew Cook - To Kill Rasputin

Felix was an obnoxious child, wild and by his own admission dreadfully spoiled. He hated to be bored, but when his parents were not giving receptions and balls the state apartments of the palatial town houses would be closed, and the children confined to the duller utilitarian rooms. Tedium was at last alleviated when Nicholas, Felix’s elder brother, introduced Yusupov the schoolboy to the Bohemian circles of St Petersburg and his then mistress, Polya. Felix had a passion for furniture, interior design and clothes – women’s clothes, particularly, when he got the opportunity to wear them, and as a boy of about thirteen, he did. He and Nicholas and Polya would visit, in secret and in disguise, the night haunts of St Petersburg, with Felix dressed as a pretty girl. After all, as he disingenuously protested, he would hardly be admitted as a schoolboy.

The ‘pretty girl’ was quite a success, and much emboldened one particular night they went to the theatre. Yusupov was aware he was attracting interest from an old gentleman and when the lights went up, he recognised King Edward VII. An English equerry stopped Nicholas in the foyer during the interval and asked the name of ‘the lovely young woman he was escorting’.

I began to lead a double life: by day I was a school-boy and by night an elegant woman. Polia [ sic ] dressed very well and all her clothes suited me to perfection… I haunted café-concerts and knew most of the popular tunes of the time and could sing them in a soprano voice. Nicholas conceived the idea of turning this talent to account by getting an engagement for me at ‘The Aquarium’, at that time the smartest café-concert in St Petersburg. 8

He auditioned in ‘a grey tailored suit, fox fur and a large hat’ as a young French woman singing the latest songs from Paris, and was engaged on the spot. New frocks and headdresses were ordered. He appeared, took three encores on the first night and was, of course, the toast of the town. For a week. And then,

…on the seventh evening I saw some friends of my mother staring at me through opera glasses. They recognised me from my likeness to my mother, and also knew the jewels I was wearing. 9

There was of course a huge row, but this sort of scrape was just the beginning. Scandal followed Felix and his brother wherever they went. They had nothing in particular to do, no role at all – Nicholas at least would inherit the estates, but for Felix, there was no particular future; he certainly did not want to go into the army. They travelled a lot, most often to Paris, where Nicholas fell in love with a famous courtesan and he and his brother learned to smoke opium and escape from police raids. The merry-go-round of pleasure rolled on for several years, but ended in tears. In 1908 Nicholas fell desperately in love with a girl who was about to be married. Married she became; and he and she continued their affair. The husband found out, and challenged Nicholas to a duel. Felix’s beloved elder brother was shot dead.

The family was devastated. Princess Zenaïde never recovered. Prince Yusupov turned in his own fashion to religion and practical philanthropy. With typical savoir-vivre he began as one of a party disguised as beggars who spent a night in the stews of St Petersburg where the homeless and the alcoholic, the desperate and the diseased, sought shelter. He was a kindly young man, and this came as a sad revelation to him. After this he volunteered regularly to help down-and-outs. Also, he was inspired by Elizaveta Fyodorovna, who, since the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei, had turned to good works and the Orthodox Church.

Prince Felix Yusupov, too, began to have spiritual thoughts. In support of this new interest, Mounya Golovina introduced him to Rasputin in 1909, but he was not impressed.

The longer I examined him, the more I was struck by his eyes; they were amazingly repulsive. Not only was there no trace of spiritual refinement in the face, but it called to mind that of a cunning and lascivious satyr… His smile, too, was arresting: it was sickly yet cruel, cunning and sensual. Indeed, the whole of his being was redolent of something unspeakably revolting, hidden under the mask of hypocrisy and cant. 10

Felix’s spirituality and generosity to the poor having failed to keep him entirely on the straight and narrow, his parents were still concerned for him. After his brother’s death, the fate of the Yusupov fortune lay in his hands, and he now proposed that when he inherited he would give most of it away. His parents could see that there was not much hope that a good wife might cure him of this exaggerated tendency to largesse, and were probably quite relieved when, despite their protests, he took himself off to Oxford for three years of pleasure, followed by many months of dissipation in London. One photograph from 1910 shows Felix in a braid-encrusted costume and hat as a dashing sixteenth-century boyard , his diffident smile enhanced by lipstick and kohl.

The real trouble began when he got back, and Felix Yusupov and Dmitri Pavlovich got together. They had known each other since they were small children. Dmitri’s mother had died when he was small and his father, Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, had married again, to a Madame Pistolkors, who already had two children. Morganatic marriages such as this must be discouraged, and Dmitri’s father was banished to live in exile. Dmitri Pavlovich and his sister remained in Russia to be brought up by their uncle and aunt, the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife Elizaveta Fyodorovna, the Tsarina’s elder sister. Grand Duke Sergei was homosexual and they had no children; in 1905 he was shot dead by an assassin.

Dmitri grew up against this turbulent background, and in due course went into the army.

In 1913, after three years in England, Prince Felix Yusupov was in his twenties, sophisticated, cosmopolitan and still not really the marrying kind. And on his return,

…I saw a great deal of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, who had just joined the Horse Guards. The Emperor and Empress both loved him and looked upon him as a son; he lived at the Alexander Palace and went everywhere with the Tsar. He spent all his free time with me; I saw him almost every day and we took long walks and rides together.

Dmitri was extremely attractive; tall, elegant, well-bred, with deep thoughtful eyes, he recalled the portraits of his ancestors… Almost every night we took a car and drove to St Petersburg to have a gay time at restaurants and night clubs and with the gypsies. We would invite artists and musicians to supper with us in a private room; the well-known ballerina Anna Pavlova was often our guest. These wonderful evenings slipped by like dreams and we never went home until dawn. 11

The Tsar and Tsarina were outraged that Dmitri was falling under Felix’s spell, for they were ‘aware of the scandalous rumours about my mode of living’. Dmitri was confined to Tsarskoye Selo, and Felix tailed by Okhrana agents. Finally, Dmitri escaped the Alexander Palace, and, as young people will, moved into a palace of his own – the Sergei Palace on the Neva. His surrogate mother, Elizaveta Fyodorovna, now in a convent, had made him a present of it. ‘He asked me to help with the re-decoration of his new home’, explained Felix artlessly in his book. This kept the heir to the Yusupov fortunes delightfully occupied, but Princess Zenaïde could see that her son’s aimless mode of life could not be allowed to go on. She found him a wife. She knew Felix well, and perceived that only a beautiful, slender, elegant young girl, who looked very like him, would do: and she found one. Early in 1914, to the dismay of the Tsar and Tsarina, Felix Yusupov married their niece Princess Irina, the daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia. In 1915 their first and only child, a daughter, was born. The couple adored each other, but Irina was under no illusions about her husband’s sexuality.