Initially, the couple lived in a grand apartment at 11 avenue d’Iéna, a lovely tree-lined avenue in the 16th arrondissement, where their daughters Irina and Nataliya were born in 1903 and 1905 and where they held their first salons and receptions.

Head Chef Monsieur Gimon, who had previously worked at the Russian embassy in Madrid, was more than able to cater to the quirks of Russian taste in food and wine: “He could turn out such things as borscht, blinis, bitokes, and lobster aspics as masterfully as any chef at the Russian court. At the same time, continuing class suspicion and distrust of progressive intellectuals showed their 'naive enmity' as they consistently failed to work together. Rappaport successfully traces those first Belle Époque artists and royals, those who were forced to flee with nothing during the revolution, and their experiences through World War I and beyond. She is also a member of the Royal Historical Society, the Genealogical Society, the Society of Authors and the Victorian Society.I would absolutely recommend this book to any who have an interest in the events of the Russian Revolution. Tall “like a column of marble,”32 slim and elegant in his uniform of commander of the Horse Guards—for he was a military man like his cousin Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich—Grand Duke Paul was quietly handsome with a neat but large bushy mustache and gentle brown eyes that stared out of an austere, oblong face.

Once installed at his favorite Hôtel Continental on rue Castiglione opposite the Tuileries, Vladimir would indulge his libidinous and sometimes violent behavior, his colossal appetite for gourmet food and wines, and his extravagant spending habit (a trait that rubbed off on his son Boris). For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Époque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. Eventually, Alexis transferred his affections and his money to a French-Jewish actress, Elizabeth Balletta, who was popular with the French theater company in St. But sometimes when the Boyars were out for a whirl, their behavior got out of hand: one particular count was “partial to making pincushion designs with a sharp-pronged fork on a woman’s bare bosom,” and a group of Russian officers “played an interesting little game with loaded revolvers. Petersburg his wife might be a shamed woman, a persona non grata, but in Paris Olga would become the meteoric star of French high society.From the internationally bestselling author of Four Sisters comes the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought refuge in Belle Époque Paris. For the pleasure-seeking Romanov grand dukes (including Alexander’s own brothers: Vladimir, Alexis, and Paul) the temptation to self-indulgence in the pleasure domes of Paris became even greater, along with trips to the luxurious hotels and casinos of Biarritz on the Atlantic coast and the French Riviera.

Rappaport has created a concise and scholarly study of the exiles and their steady transition of decadence and indulgence to exile and poverty. At Maxim’s one evening, Grand Duke Sergey presented his mistress, Augustine de Lierre—one of Paris’s grandes cocottes (high-class prostitutes) —“with a 20-million franc necklace of pearls tastefully served on a platter of oysters. Olga, herself a most forceful personality, urged Paul to save her from the disaster of social ostracization, and with his brother Vladimir’s help, he managed to persuade Nicholas II to agree to granting Olga a divorce.But Paul was not allowed to reclaim his children from his widowed sister-in-law Ella, and Olga was not welcome. But she and her husband were at least able to thrill, in splendid isolation, at the beauties of Versailles and be entertained in style at a sumptuous banquet followed by a theatrical performance from the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. It was indeed fair to say at the time that Vladimir’s wealth was equal to that “of several of the Great Powers. Of all the expatriate Russians who haunted Paris during the season at this time, none reveled more in all that the capital had to offer than the colorful, if not notorious, Russian grand dukes.