Amongst the three daughters of the Duchess were Princess Talleyrand-Périgord, whose marriage was a failure, but who is dead now. Princess Murat does not get on very well with her husband, so no one was surprised when the third daughter, before selecting a fiancé, exclaimed: “My eldest sister was married to a man who says, ‘Vive le Roi,’ my other sister to one who says ‘Vive l’Empereur,’ I want a husband who says ‘Vive la Raison.’” She eventually married a Caraman-Chimay.
The various regiments from the basis of all social activity and I spent delightful moments with Princesses Orbeliani, Ratieff, Melikoff, Heristoff, etc. I saw much of the Princess de Georgia and the young Troubetzkoy princes, Nikita and Petia, all more or less related to my aunt; they gave delightful evening parties and I really think I did not spend one evening at home.
The evening parties at Tiflis were of the gayest, and there was an uninterrupted succession of them. One ended by knowing each other well, as one was continually meeting the same people which I thought was delightful. I saw not a few little glasses of vodka emptied by the gentlemen, but without traces of injurious or disastrous results—“Honi soit qui mal y pense”—with the exception, however, of an old general whose nose was always like a lighthouse, and who I saw fall down three times in the same evening, so tipsy was he; but he was set up again on his legs the same number of times and there was no more to be said. I always found in that liquid an awful smell of methylated spirit and took good care not to get further acquainted with it.
When short of vodka the moujik easily drinks methylated spirit, it appears, and gets drunk on it; this often happened during the last Revolution. And to think that the “Little Father” suppressed the use of it among his troops since the war! What a marvellous result of the so much abused “autocratic” power.
We often began our evenings at the theatre. The Opera was very good; and the house a very fine one; my aunt had her box, needless to say. It was there that I saw performed “Mademoiselle Fifi,” that story of Maupassant’s, episode of the war of 1870 and 1871 which would, alas, be so life-like to-day. Then we went to visit some of our friends. I must mention a charming party given by an attractive woman à l’air gamin Madame Cheremetieff—Lise. The drawing-rooms represented a little country inn and its garden, what the Italians would describe as an “osteria.” It was full of local colour. Round the tables the women in full toilette, most of the men officers in uniform—which the Russians always wear. Many among them officers in the Cossacks and Tcherkesses, wearing on their heads their high astrakhan caps either white or black. Certainly in the soft veiled light it was a very pretty sight, and created a most charming and picturesque effect.
Madame Z——, a rich Armenian, gave charming fêtes, to which my aunt and I often went: excellent buffet, amidst every possible luxury. But the story of this lady having been discovered in her own house a few days before on the knees of a young officer, whose moustache she was lovingly pulling, somewhat cooled my aunt’s feelings towards her and she begged me not to go there without her in the future.
Anyone of importance passing through Tiflis always found a warm welcome at my aunt’s house.
I remember meeting the Envoy Extraordinary of the Shah of Persia while on his way to Petrograd to present the Empress with a magnificent necklace of enormous pearls and the Tzarevitch with a portrait of the Shah.
Two days after I met him again at a large dinner-party at the Swetchines’—Mr Swetchine was governor of Tiflis.
My Uncle de Nicolay had known this Persian official, with his strangely languorous brilliant eyes, when he was merely Persian Consul-General during my uncle’s governorship, the cholera epidemic at that period having brought the two together in their work of mercy.