Europe, being well known both in London and Berlin. Being married at the age of eighteen to my uncle, my grandmother’s brother, she had accompanied her husband during his entire diplomatic career—necessarily a somewhat nomadic existence. My aunt welcomed me with much warmth, which touched me profoundly. I had met her for the first time in 1900 on the occasion of her visit to Paris at the time of the Great Exhibition, after which she had come to Normandy, and it was during this visit that I began to form for her that deep admiration and affection which her memory will always invoke in me.
My aunt was altogether charming; tall and very distinguished looking, and extraordinarily refined—in fact a real grande dame to her fingertips. She appeared to be much younger than she was. Her beautiful features had preserved a wonderfully youthful charm, to be seen at their full value when she smiled that sweet smile of hers—so good and so true. I very soon began positively to adore her.
During her youth my aunt had been very pretty, with her dazzling fair hair and fresh pink and white complexion, so much so that at a great Court ball at the Winter Palace one of the Grand Dukes remarked: “She is not a woman, she is a swan!”
Even at the time of my visit she still gave one this impression: she was so graceful in all her movements and as active and supple as any young woman of twenty-five; and, to see her beautiful little head so proudly borne on her long flexible neck with its aristocratic lines attached to those exquisitely moulded shoulders of hers, one could imagine that she had simply sailed through life partaking of all its beauties and avoiding all contact with the horrors and pettiness of the great world she frequented, thus conserving intact, both in a moral and a physical sense, the pure whiteness of the “swan”!
Left a widow at thirty-two, my aunt was always an ideal mother, giving every proof of entire devotion to her children—her every thought was for them and theirs. Her voice, combining softness with firmness, was one of her most charming characteristics, with such a perfect pronunciation in French, English and German that a stranger would have asked himself which of the three was her native tongue.
She declared she did not know Russian well enough, and preferred never to speak in that language in society.
One of the first instructions I received from her was—“Always shake hands with a gentleman when he is presented.” How different from the English custom, where a slight nod and side look often suffices! While in France a young girl is more demure still! Where a married woman is concerned in Russia, a man generally kisses her hand—which suits the Russian as much as it renders ridiculous the Frenchman when he tries to imitate.
Then, another day, she said to me looking rather upset at having to touch such a delicate subject: “Tu sais—on a beaucoup de cousins ici.” This was said as a warning for me not to be shocked, as I might perhaps have been, at the sight of a somewhat too great familiarity between certain people on frequent occasion. This warning amused me intensely, as, although I was very innocent at the time, I was not sufficiently so not to understand the hint! I was simply charmed by the thought—more so still at the explanation and was never quite able to repress a smile when I came across “happy cousins”!
She always retained the best impressions of London life, having spent several years here. “Jews are very well received there,” she once said to me, “very different from here.” In fact, I think London is their Paradise, I am quite sure they are in no hurry for the accomplishment of the Gospel!