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By Root 1962 0

the story of your grandfather and grandmother’s marriage. When he met Anouska, Misha was known as ‘the catch of the decade.’ The year was 1908 and he was twenty-four years old with an honors degree in archaeology from Oxford and two years of riotous travel behind him. He was tall and handsome and for some reason that mystified him, the young ladies of Europe and America had told him he was a heartbreaker. He loved all sports and kept his six-foot-five-inch body in peak physical condition, but riding was his favorite and he loved to play polo at Deauville. Anouska Nicholaevna Orloff was just eighteen years old and a niece of the tsar. Her family was a noble one but they were poor, and young Anouska was already a renowned beauty and a notorious flirt. Every eligible young man in St. Petersburg was in love with her, and your grandfather was no different. As soon as he met her he fell under the spell of her beauty.”

Missie paused for a moment and then added, “You have to understand that flawless beauty like Anouska’s is compelling: You just couldn’t take your eyes off her; she was like a living work of art. Sofia said it didn’t matter that Anouska was not well educated; she had a quick mind that picked up on all the latest happenings, and she would talk about the theater and the latest plays and novels as easily as she would the latest dressmaker or fashionable jeweler. And she was a wonderful dancer and always the star of any party. It didn’t matter that she was selfish and petulant, and that sometimes she behaved strangely, not showing up at dinner parties arranged especially in her honor or simply disappearing for days on end. The young men still showered her with bouquets of flowers and love poems, as well as jewelry, which her mother always scrupulously returned. She had her daughter’s reputation to think of, and the stakes were higher than a mere diamond bracelet.

“Misha could think of nothing else and for weeks she kept him dangling, playing him like a fish on a line. Sometimes she would see him, sometimes she wouldn’t, and he was crazy with jealousy thinking some rival was going to snatch her from him. He proposed and after a week’s consideration, when she left him to cool his heels alone in St. Petersburg while she went to stay with friends in the country, she finally consented to be his wife.

“Sofia told me their wedding was the grandest seen in Russia for many years. Anouska wore a cloth-of-gold train over cream satin and the great Ivanoff tiara with the huge ninety-carat maharaja’s emerald that had been reset specially for her by Cartier in Paris. The tsar and all his family came to the wedding, and the ceremony was held in St. Isaac’s Cathedral with its golden domes and columns of malachite and lazurite, but huge as it was, it was too small to accommodate all their guests. Afterward a lavish reception was held for everyone at the mansion overlooking the river Neva.

“Misha took his bride to America for a three-month honeymoon, and Anouska insisted on lingering in Europe on their way back. She needed more new clothes, more jewels. Misha was young and in love; he indulged her. Anything Anouska wanted, she could have. When she finally grew bored with shopping, she summoned her friends to the Ivanoff yacht and they all cruised through the Mediterranean, up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea, and back home to Russia.

“Sofia said that even then Misha knew there were problems. There were days when Anouska would refuse to get out of bed; her face lost all its color and her eyes looked far away. Sometimes she would just cry, not hysterically, just endlessly. The tears would run down her white, pinched face and Misha didn’t know how to stop them no matter how he tried to comfort her, to coax her, to bribe her with the promise of presents. She just could not stop crying. Back in St. Petersburg things got suddenly worse: Anouska locked her bedroom door and refused to let anyone in. Misha summoned Sofia and she called Anouska’s mother.

“Ilona Orloff told them Anouska was highly strung; she always pushed herself to the limits