I've pulled out two more books for the KiKi Fund, and I was immediately struck by the differences between the women who wrote them. The first is Confessions of the Czarina by Count Paul Vassili. Paul Vassili's real name was Princess Catherine Radziwill and she was--by all accounts-- a character. At the age of 15 she was married to Prince Wilhelm Radziwill in 1873 and by the mid 1880's had begun writing under the name of Vassili. These were tell-all books of political and court life like, Behind the Veil of The Russian Court (1914) and The Austrian Court from Within (1916). She even wrote, The Royal Marriage Market of Europe but its 1915 date of publish was very, very ill-timed with the start of World War I. A scandal involving her and Cecil Rhodes and a claim of forgery ended her marriage and she just kept writing her tell alls (or what she claimed was "all"). She is one of those quirky characters who leaps across one world and into the next with seeming ease. She ended her days where most quirky characters do: America.


Upheaval, published in 1925, is altogether different; Olga Woronoff was the real thing. Her husband was the chief officer of Nicholas II's yacht, The Standart. She grew up close to Court and attended many of its functions; she was also a close companion of The Grand Duchess Marie and her brother Grand Duke Dmitri (eventually one of the assassins of Rasputin). It's typical of most of the survivors reminisces of that period. The first part of the book is a life of privilege and beauty, roller skating on the wooden decks of The Standart with the Tsar's five children, and memories of uniforms and tea parties. Then something happens and her world (and that of many others) comes to an abrupt halt; the war goes badly, food becomes scarce, and the trains stop running. Suddenly she is running in the middle of the night to someplace--anyplace--safe, staying one step ahead of the bayonet.


I like these books for the same reason my grandmother did; although drenched in bitterness of a world lost, of happiness snatched away, and of loved ones dead, these aristocratic eye witness accounts can't be duplicated because of that intense feeling of loss and survival.