I often said to my aunt, “Do you know, I almost entertain a passion for my uncle,” whereupon she used to smile that beautiful smile of hers which I liked seeing so much.
My Aunt de Baranoff, née de Bibikoff, was charming; she had beautiful white hair and very pretty blue eyes, and in her youth must have been very much admired.
She combined tremendous entrain with much affability, and in her own set she was what might be called, in schoolboy language, a jolly good sort, which pleased me—her reflections being always to the point, and time spent with her never lagged. How we used to laugh over things together! I shall always retain much affection for her. I believe her first husband—whom she divorced—was a perfect brute to her.
By her marriage with my uncle she had two children; her daughter Olga was married to Lieutenant de Zinovieff, in the Garde à Cheval quartered at Petrograd, a late page of the Empress, but she was for the time being at the Camp of Crasnoë-Celo, not far from us, and I spent a few delightful days with her.
Russian soldiers always leave their barracks during the summer months and camp out of doors—those of Petrograd going into the neighbourhood. This healthy measure is never practised in France, which is a great mistake I think; and I always admired these huge camps composed of innumerable white tents, like parasols, erected in perfect symmetry, looking from a distance like so many small white mushrooms instead of being the improvised shelters of these giant-like soldiers. The Camp of Crasnoë-Celo was, I think, the largest.
Her son Petia, the regular type of a true Russian, not without charm and dark and good-looking, was at that time preparing at the Lycée to enter the regiment of the Chevaliers-Gardes in which he held a distinguished position before the war.
My poor aunt, fearing the wars, wanted him to choose a diplomatic career, but nothing would induce him to change his mind. He is now in the trenches—or was lately—and has been badly wounded once.
During the summer the heat is at times very intense in Russia—a kind of damp heat like the mild hot vapours of a conservatory—and the nights on the coast of the Baltic were very damp and a thick white steam rose spirally from the ground in patches, like smoke, between the Palace and the sea, which caused a most curious effect.
My aunt had one daughter, Lily, by her first marriage and she and I became great friends. She also lived with her parents, as she had been obliged to leave a brute of a husband who was an officer of the Lancers of the Guard, of which my uncle was in command at the time of her marriage at Peterhof. Not long after her marriage she had gone away for a few days to visit a relation who was ill, and on her return she found her own house occupied not only by her husband’s mistress but by the children of that illicit union as well. The wretch then proposed to her that she should remain on in the house and that they should all live together, which proposition she naturally scorned and thereupon returned to her old home.
She divorced the man in consequence, but not, like most people in Russian society, in order to try her luck again, having already looked out for number “two”—not at all, once having recovered her liberty she took good care to preserve it.