Prince Serge Oblensky - One Man In His Time: The Memoirs Of Serge Obolensky

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Text originally published in 1958 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

ONE MAN IN THIS TIME: THE MEMOIRS OF SERGE OBOLENSKY

Contents

I gratefully dedicate this book to Helen Hull,

a true friend throughout the years,

and to whom I owe so much.

All the worlds a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts

As You Like It

The author thanks Robert Cantwell for his editorial assistance and excellent research, and expresses his appreciation to the staff of McDowell, Obolensky, without whose efforts this volume would not have been possible.

The author also commends Rosine Raoul and Charles Criswell, the copy editors; Sidney Feinberg, the designer of the book; Jerome Mulcahy and Al Manso, who aided in design problems and organized the photographic material and art work; and Peter Markovitch, who provided the photographic engravings.

1. My father, the General

2. My mother, Princess Marie Obolensky

3. Myself in 1892

4. In 1894 mother had me wear horrible curls

5. My granddaughter, Marina

6. A family group at the Narishkins

7. Mother in fancy dress

8. Father in fancy dress

9. Catherine the Greats cattle road

10. 1909, Biarritz, with Irina Lazareff

11. My snapshot of the Czar

12. Pastookh

13. St. Petersburg, fancy dress, 1910

14. At the races, Rome, 1912

15. Maia and I, Yalta, 1913

16. Myself and Olga at Mothers hideous house

17. The Bullingdon Club, Oxford

18. Mrs. John Jacob Astor, later The Lady Ribblesdale

19. We hunted in ratcatcher clothes

20. Myself and Seersdorff, killed later fighting against me

21. Watching a steeplechase

22. Riding out to a steeplechase

23. First chukker on Little Blue Bags

24. Third chukker on Bullet

25. Juliet Duff arrives by plane at Oxford

26. Diana Manners, Juliet Duff, Nancy Cunard and Gustave Hammel

27. After Hammel took off to his death

28. After the BullingdonAthenaeum cricket match

29. The Czar and Czarevitch just before the war

30. Grand Duchesses Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and Olga

31. Officers of Her Majestys Squadron, Chevalier Guards

32. Emperor Alexander II with his daughter, my future wife

33. The Princess Yourievsky, the wife of Alexander II

34. The Kovelfront, 1916, back in reserve

35. The Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna

36. Princess Catherine Obolensky, my wife, 1920

37. Grand Duke Michael of Russia

38. In disguise: my Bolshevik passport photograph

39. Myself as an Australian jackeroo

40. Bertrand York and Sheila Loughborough at Melbas

41. 1921, Millicent Rogers and I were semi-engaged

42. June 24, 1924, Alice Astor and I were married

43. On our honeymoon at Deauville, Sorine arrived

44. 1924, Vincent Astor when I first knew him

45. 1925, the family, Hanover Lodge

46. 1928, Ivan and I at Rhinebeck

47. Ferncliff, 1926, Vincents house at Rhinebeck

48. Cecil Beatons wonderful photograph of Alice

49. Before Helen Astors fancy dress ball

50. The Nourmahal , Vincents great yacht

51. Doc Holden and I and our marlin

52. F.D.R.s hot dog invitation to meet King George VI and Queen Elizabeth

53. Vincent and I with penguin friends

54. With Grace Vanderbilt at Baileys Beach, 1938

55. One of my parachute jumps

56. Brigadier General Ted Roosevelt at Garibaldis Tomb

57. Ted Roosevelt, myself and group on Sardinia

58. Preparing to jump into France

59. Walking to the taxi

60. Ready for France, I talk to the pilots

61. The local colonel of the Maquis and I review his Leftists

62. The little Mayor of Chteauroux

63. After the war, in Central Park

64. Ginger Rogers at the Duke Box

65. Gina Lollobrigida at the Plaza

66. Gertie Lawrence and I try out a Sherry-Netherland bed

67. Two Democrats campaigning

68. Joan Fontaine and I at Southampton

69. Marilyn Monroe and I at the Ambassador

70. Hedda Hopper, Alice, Ivan and I at the Ambassador

71. Jeanne Crain and I have a chat

72. With Hedy Lamarr

73. My Russian New Years dagger dance

A WIDE BOULEVARD, with four rows of shade trees on both sides of it, ran from the railroad station at Czarskoe Selo to the park around the Summer Palace of the Emperor of Russia, and the houses of the nobility stood in their own grounds on both sides of the boulevard. My fathers house in Czarskoe Selo was the first in the row after leaving the station, and there I was born on October 3, 1890. I was my fathers first child; we were in the direct male line of the Obolensky family.

Each summer the Emperor and the Empress left the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, twenty miles away, for Czarskoe Selo; and the villas filled up with people whose position in Russian life was about like our own. By that I mean they belonged to one of the two hundred princely families of Russia, their wealth was generally in landed estates, their social life revolved around court functions, and their sons went into the army.

Under ordinary circumstances I might have been expected to do the same. My father was Colonel Platon Obolensky, then forty years old, a heavy-set, kindly man who had a military record of considerable distinction and was aide-de-camp to Grand Duke Vladimir. You see, in Russia in those days a boy with a background like mine would almost automatically be trained to become an officer, and if his father was aide-de-camp to a Grand Duke, it meant that he would probably be brought up close to court circles. But I was too young to have had a real life in the Russian court before the war and the Revolution came. Curiously enough, I had no military training whatever until 1914, when I entered the Russian cavalry as a private and was trained in actual combat.