This article appeared
in Volume 21: No. 1 of the Orient
Express magazine.
White Magic
HRH Princess Michael of Kent and her family spend the twilight evenings
of the June equinox touring St Petersburg.
To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg,
my husband organised and led the St Petersburg Tercentenary Rally
between Ekaterinburg and the city—a distance of about 2,000
miles. Fifteen cars participated, predominantly vintage Bentleys
built between 1920 and 1930. The aim was to raise funds for two charities
of which my husband is patron, as well as others along the route,
and it proved hugely successful, attracting considerable sums.
Our visit coincided with the June equinox, and the fabled White
Nights stretched the daylight hours, so we could cram a full round
of activities into the following weekend before we wilted with fatigue.
Still in his rally attire, my husband was whisked to his second
assignment of the trip—opening an exhibition at the State Hermitage
Museum. Similar to the Louvre, the treasures displayed throughout
this vast palace can only be absorbed in stages or one’s head
spins. After thoroughly digesting the collection of old Dutch masters,
our children marvelled at the size of Peter the Great’s clothes
and boots—he was 6ft 6in tall. This remarkable giant created
St Petersburg out of inhospitable marshes to become Russia’s
window on the West.
We then crossed the Gulf of Finland by hovercraft to reach the magnificent
Palace of Peterhof, built by Peter the Great. Bombed nearly flat
during World War II, it has been painstakingly and beautifully restored,
with a stunning collection of ornate fountains shooting water skywards
and then cascading down to a canal stretching out into the gulf.
Steep terracing leads up to the entrance, past grottos containing
the original machinery (which powers the water features without the
use of any pumps) to a breathtaking view out over the Baltic Sea.
This was the first of many remarkable palaces we were to explore.
As we moved on to Catherine’s Palace, or Tsarskoe Selo as
it is sometimes known, I was reminded of my first visit to St Petersburg
some years earlier in deep winter with snow all around—another
variety of the region’s White Nights. This time, however, the
palace, all white and gold pillars, was bathed in the midday sunshine.
We moved, rapt in admiration, from room to room, an endless enfilade
of what Catherine the Great later deplored as her predecessor’s
rococo excesses of “whipped cream and gilt”. We, however,
delighted in its exuberance, until we reached the newly reconstructed
Amber Room, its walls made up of a mosaic of amber panels, in shades
ranging from burnt umber to pale yellow, reputed to be 50 million
years old and extracted from deep mines. To me, it resembled temptingly
lickable toffee.
Not far from Tsarskoe Selo, in the park at the Oranienbaum Palace,
stands Catherine the Great’s small Chinese Palace, currently
being restored by the World Monuments Fund. It was this enchanting
pavilion that really impressed our children.
The first in a series of small pleasure palaces in the Oranienbaum
Palace (or Lomonosov Palace) grounds, Catherine commissioned the
Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi to build it immediately after having
seized the throne from her husband. Such a pavilion was known as
an hermitage or solitude: a place to be (relatively) alone—a
fashion imported from
Versailles. Catherine was a regular visitor to the building site
and even sent her chancellor to China to buy the wallpaper. To the
Russians, China meant the mysterious East, an appropriate description
given that the two countries had only recently established very delicate
communications. Catherine wanted to be transported into a magical
world, an enchanted private place of escape, along with her friends
or lovers.
Hidden away in the park, the single-storey pale-pink pavilion embellished
with white stucco, overlooks a small lake. Its simple exterior quite
belies the extraordinary lavishness of the 17 rooms within. Full
of images of the triumph of love and art, the walls are covered with
imitation marble, hand-painted silk and paper, murals and fine carving.
The intricate inlaid floors are made from the rarest local and foreign
woods—palisander, amarant, black tree, lime tree, birch, red
wood, oak and maple. Masters of mosaic and stone cutters at the nearby
Peterhof Palace also contributed to the ornamention.
The Chinese Palace derived its name from two of its most remarkable
and extravagant interiors, the Small and Great Chinese Cabinets—a “cabinet” in
French being a small room. In this “palace within a snuff-box”,
as it was once described, Rinaldi produced the most original and
fanciful interior in the realm of chinoiserie. The Great Chinese
Cabinet was used as a billiard room, and the table, with its legs
beautifully carved in the Chinese style, still stands waiting to
be played upon. The room is decorated with super-fine wooden marquetry
forming pictures similar to those you would find on a Chinese scroll.
Tiny pieces of ivory represent faces, while others, painted green,
evoke foliage and fields. In the centre of the ceiling hangs a symbolic
painting by the Italian Barozzi brothers: The Union of Europe and
Asia. The palace’s overwhelming effect is of warmth and calm,
implying the possibility of another world, mysterious and alluring.
My favourite room in the Chinese Palace is the Glass Bead Study,
its walls covered with 12 panels embroidered with two million milky-glass
bugle-beads, which shimmer and dance blue, mauve and pink in the
candlelight. Fantastic birds fly, swirl and alight on extraordinary
trees and plants. The panels were designed in France but all sewn
by Russian seamstresses using locally made beads.
The park surrounding the Chinese Palace was left more or less to
nature, in keeping with the garden fashion of that time. Catherine
much admired the English style of lawns and artificially arranged “natural” clumps
of trees and ponds. It has not changed much.
More delicious pavilions, most notably the Temple of Friendship,
can be found at Pavlovsk, the palace built by the British architect
Charles Cameron (who claimed to be a noble Scotsman but was actually
born in London, the son of a builder, and had never set foot north
of the border). A masterpiece of the classical revival, Pavlosk was
an extraordinary combination of Cameron’s talents and Catherine’s
vision. It was ostensibly built for her son Peter, though once she
died, Cameron, along with everyone associated with his mother, was
dismissed by the new emperor, Paul. Others were to put the finishing
touches to the architect’s tour de force.
The Temple of Friendship was the first building in Russia of a true
Doric order. In a country accustomed to ornate carving and gilding,
golden cupolas and strong colours, it was startlingly new and was
to exert a tremendous influence on the design of Russia’s grand
country houses. Built to resemble an ancient temple, with 16 columns
supporting a low dome, it is perfectly proportioned and decorated
with friezes, classical garlands and dolphins (a symbol of friendship).
By contrast, we found the 19th-century Yusupov Palace an ugly building,
but were all keen to see it for its connections with the man credited
with killing Rasputin. It housed little of interest, barring a malachite
fireplace and a Moorish room complete with onyx fireplace and monolithic
bath in carved marble. I liked the blonde birch-wood doors and floors
throughout. But all we really wanted to see was the cellar where
the process of Rasputin’s bloody assassination began.
On the way down we passed the enchanting little private theatre—a
small jewel seating 156 people in two tiers and stalls with the original
French-style chairs. Its large stage—deeper than the stalls—is
still in use. I looked down the most terrifyingly steep drop into
the orchestra pit, the conductor’s stand a small isolated podium
on a free-standing plinth—rather similar to that of St Simon
Stylites.
The Yusupovs were the richest family in Russia. Much of their fame
is thanks largely to Prince Felix, leader of the group that plotted
to kill Rasputin—the mystic, lecherous monk on whom the Tsarina
depended to cure her haemophiliac only son. Stories abounded of Rasputin’s
evil hold on the empress. Playing on the monk’s legendary weakness
for pretty women, Felix invited him to make the acquaintance of his
wife Irena.
The meeting was to take place in a vaulted sitting room in the basement.
Rasputin was offered Madeira and sweet cakes heavily laced with strychnine,
but he touched neither. Finally, he was persuaded to do so but, although
the conspirators (all five of them) had used enough poison to kill
a horse, Rasputin showed no ill effects, apart from profuse sweating.
Later it was posited that the sugar used to disguise the taste of
the poison might have diluted it.
Next, Yusupov persuaded Rasputin to rise and look at a crucifix
on an ornate stand. When he did so, Felix shot him in the back and
the monk fell. Presuming him dead, Yusupov ran to call the others,
but Rasputin was not dead at all and managed to haul his great bulk
up a tiny staircase to escape. He was discovered by the other conspirators,
shot again and beaten senseless, then thrown into the icy Neva river.
The next day, when his body was found, he still had air in his lungs.
After hearing this story, and with a shudder, we returned to our
guest house to prepare for a ball that evening—a dazzling affair
which brought our visit to a memorable close. It was held in the
newly restored Konstantinov Palace, a triumph of Russian craftsmanship
into which President Putin, a native of St Petersburg, put tremendous
passion and energy.
On an evening that would never fade into night, we congregated on
a terrace facing the Gulf of Finland before moving to tented pavilions
for dinner while the Kirov danced on a stage around us. The previous
night we had also seen the Kirov, at the Mariinsky Theatre. The entire
company, it seemed, performed solo spots one after another, to show
off their ability and glorious costumes. But that night, under a
light, 11pm sky, we were able to take our turn at dancing, too, waltzing
to the Kirov orchestra. At midnight, fireworks exploded into a hazy
twilight sky—a fitting end to a magical weekend.
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