A nostalgic view of the daily life of children in the
late 1800s is shown in these delightful illustrations published in 1892 (click
on each to enlarge). It is fascinating identifying familiar objects.
The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg has been waiting to share its intimate details in English. My book is a story of a palace of immense size and of an Imperial family of immense wealth. It is a story of the daily public and intimate life in the palace that was loved and disdained and withstood decades of changes.
Thursday, 21 December 2017
Sunday, 17 December 2017
A Christmas Visit to Vienna in 1781
The Count and Countess von Norden left Saint
Petersburg on September 30th 1781 for a trip through Europe. Who were
they? It was not unknown for royals to travel incognito although the attempt to
conceal their identities was laughable. The Austrian imperial court began
preparation in July to receive the son and daughter-in-law of Catherine the
Great, Paul and Maria Feodorovna.
They arrived in Vienna on the afternoon of November 21st,
stopping first at the Augarten Palace where Maria was reunited with her
Wurttemberg family before proceeding to the Hofburg.
Karl Schütz c1780s engraving (below) of Vienna from the Belvedere Palace
Karl Schütz c1780s engraving (below) of the Hofbibliothek, St. Stephan's and a Platz in
Vienna
The Russian guests did not have a free moment. The
receptions at court, balls, masquerades, operas and plays were followed by
excursions around the city. They went to libraries, galleries, universities,
hospitals, orphanages and factories.
Emperor Joseph II wrote to his brother Leopold, the
Grand Duke of Tuscany advising that ‘it
would be desirable to arrange everything so that the couple do not need to
leave before 9 or 10 in the morning and in particular they could retire by 10
or 11 in the evening as they devote a considerable part of the morning and
evening to learning and correspondence. Do not bother them with seeing several
objects in one day but on the contrary you need to give them an opportunity to
examine in detail all the curious and wonderful’. Later Leopold reported
back to Joseph that he was struck by the knowledge of the grand ducal couple
surprising him with ‘their information
about Vienna, all civil and military ranks, family relations, individuals, etc.’
A magnificent masquerade ball was held in Schönbrunn
Palace on November 25th. The couple left the festival at 2:00 am
while the other guests continued having fun until 8:00.
Karl Schütz engravings c1780s (below) of Schönbrunn
Palace and Gardens
They toured the rich collection of artwork in the
Belvedere Palace. On December 15th they visited the Academy of Fine
Arts and on the 23rd the Music Academy.
In the Leopoldine Wing of the Hofburg on December 24th
Joseph II hosted a musical contest for the couple between Wolfgang Mozart and
Muzio Clementi. On Christmas day Maria held a small concert for selected guests
in the Amalienhof, a part of the Hofburg Palace. Joseph Haydn played, for the
first time, his ‘Russian Quartets’ and received from the enthusiastic Maria a
box studded with diamonds.
Painting (below) of Joseph Hadyn playing his Quartets
Aerial View of the Hofburg Palace
Photographs (below) of the Amalienhof and its
interior today
Wednesday, 13 December 2017
Emperor Nicholas’ apology on a bus!
The huge and clumsy omnibuses pulled by horses of the
1830s along the Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg, had
been taken off the route due to a lack of passengers.
Officials decided in 1847 to try again with a
ten seater carriage drawn by a pair of horses. The buses now had springs, rare
for the city, for a more comfortable ride. The route was inaugurated on Sunday April
20th. The public were enthusiastic from the start. They were so
crowded that it was hard to get a seat.
Photograph (below) of an omnibus in Palace Square
Nicholas I was curious. In early May he climbed aboard
a bus to try it out. The other passengers were stunned to see their emperor.
Sitting down, Nicholas then apologized for his long legs that took up a lot of
space.
Photographs (below) of omnibuses on the Nevsky Prospekt
Photograph (below) of the new electric omnibuses in 1899 at Gatchina Palace
Sunday, 10 December 2017
The Artist stands in for Nicholas II
On Monday January 30th 1895 in the Anichkov
Palace, Nicholas II had his ‘first sitting with Repin, Antokolsky and
Vasyutinsky as they painted and sculpted me from all angles at the same time.
This lasted for more than an hour – a bore!’
Nicholas had another sitting with Repin and Antokolsky the following Monday on February 6th.
The artist Ilya Repin had his photograph taken of him standing
in St. George’s Hall in the Winter Palace (below) for the background of his
portrait of the emperor.
Repin’s Portrait (below) of Nicholas II
Thursday, 7 December 2017
Grand Duke Sergei & Ella at home in Illinskoe
The Empress Marie Alexandrovna wrote her will
disposing of her property in May 1868, twelve years before her death. The
Illinskoe estate near Moscow was left to her daughter Maria but only on
condition that with her marriage she lived in Russia. The will stipulated that
in the event she moved abroad the estate passed to her son Sergei and, in case
of his death without issue, then to her youngest son Paul. In January 1874
Grand Duchess Maria married the Duke of Edinburgh and left for England.
Illinskoe then became the summer home for Sergei and Elizabeth (Ella) of
Hesse-Darmstadt after their marriage on June 3rd 1884.
The two-story wooden manor house had a wide central
balcony. It overlooked the Moskva River.
Photographs (below) of Illinskoe late 1800s and today
Lithograph c1867 (below) of Illinskoe
Plan (below) of the 1st floor of the manor house
Sergei’s future adjutant Vladimir Dzhunkovsky was
invited to visit Illinskoe in the summer of 1886. Arriving on August 23rd
he was shown to his rooms in one of the small dachas around the park. Sharing a
drawing room he had his own study, bedroom and bathroom and was advised that he
could order at any time coffee, tea, wine, etc. The routine for the day was as
follows: mornings free, lunch at 1:00, afternoon walks, dinner at 7:30 all
together, then reading or playing cards and tea at 11:00.
Photograph (below) of the small dacha today
When Sergei returned in the afternoon from picking
mushrooms, he greeted Vladimir in his study. He showed him the room and said it
was exactly as in the years of his mother.
K. Lemoch’s 1886 painting (below) of Sergei in his
Study
The dinner guests that night included Sergei’s sister Maria,
her lady-in-waiting Miss Johnson and Ober-Hofmeister Ozerov, his brother Paul,
Count Stenbock who was in charge of the palace, Ella’s lady-in-waiting Maria
Vasilchikova and her Russian teacher Ekaterina Schneider, a distant relative of
Dzhunknovsky. The dinner started disastrously for Vladimir. He poured too much vodka
in his glass, spilling it on the tablecloth.
After dinner they gathered in the drawing room. Other
evenings they would walk around the park, laughingly playing tricks and
frightening each other in the dark. Ekaterina Schneider, a quiet and innocent
young woman, was surprising good at instigating jokes. One night she placed a
peach under the sheet of Maria Vasilchikova, scaring her when she crushed it
getting into bed. Maria and Ella retaliated the next evening with a watermelon as
a head and a white sheet, frightening all who were not in on it. Another time
Ella filled her glove with sand, extending it when greeting Schneider the next
morning who then turned pale, totally confused.
Vladimir, appointed adjutant in 1891, was entrusted by
Sergei with the care of his niece Maria and nephew Dmitry in Illinskoe when he
was away. On July 22nd 1893 he wrote Sergei that he gave Maria his
presents of a doll and watering can. ‘If you could have seen her delight when
she saw the doll and its many clothes, which she immediately wanted to take
everything off and dress her up.’
Later in November 1895 Valdimir’s sister Evdokia was
appointed governess to the grand duchess.
Photograph (below) of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and
Evdokia Dzhunkovskaya in 1908
Photograph (below) of Evdokia’s room in Illinskoe
Monday, 4 December 2017
Panorama of the Bedroom of the Little Grand Dukes
The toddlers, three year old Nikolai and one and half year old Mikhail, were the youngest sons of Nicholas I and Alexandra. They shared a bedroom (159) on the 2nd
floor of the Winter Palace facing the Large Inner Courtyard.
Photograph (below) of the former bedroom today
Panorama of the former bedroom (link below)
Friday, 1 December 2017
Wednesday, 29 November 2017
The Friend and ‘Secretary’ of Nicholas I
‘He kept a diary about us which was sent to Papa on a weekly basis. He
answered with the next courier writing on the edges of the same sheet. I do not
know if these letters with drawings and full of jokes have survived’. When writing her memoirs in the early 1880s, Grand Duchess Olga was
unaware the letters between Prince Alexander Golitsyn and her father Nicholas I
were preserved in the Winter Palace’s 2nd floor library.
Alexander Golitsyn (1773-1844) was a confident of
Nicholas who entrusted him with the care of the children while absent from St.
Petersburg. Beloved by the young grand dukes and duchesses, one of their
nicknames for the prince was ‘dear papa’s papa’.
Golitsyn added at the end of his September 7th
1834 letter: ‘Having already written, I
met Grand Duke Nikolai and asked him if he would bow to Papa. He answered ‘yes,
yes’ and Mikhail said ‘and me please’. Nikolai was three years old and
Mikhail a toddler of one and a half.
Painting (below) of Nikolai and Mikhail in the Dark
Corridor at the door to the ship playroom in the Winter Palace
Copy (below) of Prince Golitsyn’s letter [on the
right] dated September 9th 1834 Tsarskoe Selo with Nicholas I’s
reply in pencil [on the left]
In the above letter, the prince wrote that Grand Duke
Konstantin was sick from the 7th during the night to the 8th where after dinner he was again healthy and merry. The doctor Arendt
believed he was very upset by the departure of his parents. In his note in
pencil, Nicholas added ‘I hug all the
children’.
On September 12th Golitsyn related that
when he told Nikolai he would write about him to his father, he hugged the
prince and said to write ‘he kisses papa’. Mikhail, when he heard his brother, also
hugged and kissed Golitsyn. Nicholas replied that he ‘kisses all the children’ and ends the note with a joking plea
about himself to his friend ‘Do not
forget the old man with the long nose and wig’.
Horace Vernet’s 1836 sketch (below) of Nicholas I with
his youngest sons Nikolai [Nissi] and Mikhail [Missi]
Golitsyn was so trusted by Nicholas that he handled
the emperor’s correspondence while he was away, sorting and forwarding letters
and reports. In the Alexander Palace on October 4th 1834, the prince
wrote that the day before when he entered the emperor’s study with the younger
sons, the toddler Mikhail said ‘there is
no papa’. Then both started beating on their drums and the three year old
made the prince dance with their English nannies in the study. Nicholas replied
that he hoped Golitsyn ‘did not get too
tired from dancing to the drum’.
Hau’s watercolor c1860 (below) of Nicholas I’s Study
in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo
In 1842 Prince Golitsyn retired and moved to his
estate in Crimea. Nicholas lamented the loss of his friend writing in 1843 ‘with heartfelt reverence we look at the chair
where you sat and we still think of seeing you but you are no longer with us’.
Monday, 27 November 2017
Grand Duke’s diary on the painter Franz Winterhalter
The diaries from 1836 to 1890 of Grand Duke
Konstantin, the second son of Nicholas I and Empress Alexandra, reveal rare
insights of imperial sittings with the portrait painter Franz Xavier
Winterhalter.
Konstantin, his wife Alexandra Iosifovna and their
eight year old son Nikolai left St. Petersburg on October 8th 1858 for a long journey through Europe.
Sailing from Genoa they anchored in Villafranche on
November 24th where his cousin Catherine, the daughter of Mikhail
Pavlovich, had a villa. Four days later on the 28th Franz
Winterhalter arrived at their villa in Nice.
The following day Konstantin wrote that ‘Winterhalter began the portrait of my wife
and from the first strokes of the brush grabbed the resemblance. But for a long
time they were busy choosing the place for the sitting and the lighting!’
After lunch on November 30th, Konstantin returned to their villa and
found ‘Winterhalter continued to paint my
wife’ and on the 1st of December ‘Winterhalter painted my wife’s portrait all day which comes out
surprisingly similar’.
Winterhalter’s portrait (below) of Grand Duchess
Alexandra Iosifovna
After the ceremony of the laying of the foundation of
the Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas and St. Alexandra and lunch with the dignitaries
on December 2nd, Konstantin wrote ‘Winterhalter began to paint my portrait’.
Photograph (below) of Église Saint-Nicolas-et-Sainte-Alexandra
in Nice
The next day the grand duke went to Villafranche in
the morning and on returning to Nice ‘Winterhalter
continued with my portrait. It seems it will also be good’. On December 4th
Konstantin had to wait! ‘Winterhalter
painted in the morning another client and after lunch me’.
Winterhalter’s painting of the grand duke is lost. A
lithograph (below) of Konstantin in 1859 may be a copy of it.
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