Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings (19 page)

This seems to break the ice somewhat. ‘The poor boy was quite amiable and I sent messages of congratulations to his colleagues,’ Coward continues, ‘although the message I would have liked to send them was that they were bad-mannered little shits.’

IS SERENADED BY

Biarritz

July 29th 1946

Noël Coward and his friend Graham Payn are enjoying a summer holiday in post-war France. Their few weeks in Paris pass ‘in a whirl of pleasure and Alka-Seltzer’ as they spend time in the company of Sir Duff and Lady Diana Cooper. Coward pops into the British Embassy and finds ‘nobody about but Winston Churchill. He was very amiable and we talked for about forty minutes and I played him some of the operette tunes.’ From Paris, they motor down to Biarritz in Noël’s MG to stay with his old friend, the fashion designer Edward Molyneux.

On their first sunny day in Biarritz, they spend the morning sunbathing on the beach, followed by a light lunch and then back to the beach. In the early evening, Coward catches up on his correspondence and then dresses for dinner; he is a little excited, because one of Molyneux’s guests is none other than Prince Felix Youssoupoff, famous, or infamous, for the murder of Rasputin.

The gothic demise of Rasputin continues to hold an almost mesmeric appeal for high society. As with Lord Lucan’s murder of his children’s nanny some sixty years later, everyone likes to claim inside knowledge. A few days after the death of Rasputin, Duff Cooper writes in his diary, ‘We have had at the Foreign Office such thrilling telegrams about the murder of Rasputin. It appears to have been done by Felix Elston
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[Youssoupoff] whom I used to know intimately at Oxford. It took place at a supper party in his palace. The telegrams read like pages from Italian renaissance history.’ Later the same year, on December 6th 1917, Cooper records being driven home from a dinner party in Upper Berkeley Street by Bertie
Stopford. Perhaps inevitably, they gossip about Rasputin. ‘[Stopford] is a notorious bugger and was very attentive to me, saying I looked younger than when he last saw me which was in Venice before the war. He has been in Russia for some time and talked to me about the murder of Rasputin. After Rasputin was dead, Felix Elston fell on the body and beat it. Felix told Stopford this himself. He suspects there had been some relationship between Felix and Rasputin. The great charm of the latter for women was that when he had them he never came and so could go on forever. Also he had three large warts on his cock.’

Until his death at the age of eighty in 1967, Youssoupoff knows full well that his murder of Rasputin is the signature tune that accompanies his entrance into any gathering. He embraces his notoriety. In his Knightsbridge home in the 1920s, he regularly entertains guests with increasingly melodramatic renditions of that fateful night in 1916. He even submits paintings of bearded men with evil grimaces to an art exhibition. So identified are he and his wife Irina with the death of Rasputin that a New York hostess mistakenly introduces them as the Prince and Princess Rasputin. Around the same time, Helen Izvolsky, the daughter of the Tsar’s former ambassador to France, visits Youssoupoff and notices ‘something Satanic about his twisted smile. He talked for several hours about the assassination, and seemed quite pleased to reminisce, going over all the horrifying details. In conclusion, he showed me a ring he was wearing, with a bullet mounted in silver. He explained that this was the bullet that had killed Rasputin.’

The murder not only defines Youssoupoff’s life, but finances it too: in 1932, he gains between $2 million and $2.5 million, in today’s terms, in compensation from MGM, who in their movie
Rasputin and the Empress
suggested that Princess Irina was hypnotised and raped by the Mad Monk. This windfall allows the couple to live the high life.

By the time they enter the Molyneux house, ready to meet Noël Coward, the Youssoupoffs are resident in France, and mixing in a curious circle of the wealthy and the exiled that includes J. Paul Getty, Philippe de Rothschild, Sir Oswald and Lady Diana Mosley and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Felix, born in 1887, is now in late middle age. His youthful lustre has long gone, but he does his best to counterfeit it. Every morning, he prepares for the day ahead by spending hours at his dressing table,
applying eyeliner, mascara and rouge to his face, and combing his thinning hair into a latticework that very nearly covers his scalp.

The dinner party goes as planned. ‘Dinner very chic,’ Coward writes in his diary. ‘Felix Youssoupoff sang really quite sweetly with a guitar. He is made up to the teeth. I looked at him: a face that must, when young, have been very beautiful but now it is cracking with effort and age. I imagined him luring Rasputin to his doom with that guitar and “dem rollin’ eyes”. It was all a little macabre. I sang but not very well. Graham was really wonderful. He was not only socially vital and attractive, but he suddenly proceeded to sing in Russian so much better than Youssoupoff and his friend that the whole party was astonished. It went on far too long. Home about three o’clock.’

Twenty-one years later, on October 15th 1967, less than a month after the death of Felix Youssoupoff, Coward finishes reading
Nicholas and Alexandra
by Robert K. Massie. ‘It really is such an appalling story,’ he writes in his diary. ‘The Tsar amiable, kindly and stupid, and the Tsarina, a hysterical ass. The most fascinating character to emerge is, as usual, Rasputin. What an extraordinary phenomenon! His murder is brilliantly described and coincides in every detail with what Dmitri told me years ago. The only thing I query is that Youssoupoff lured Rasputin to his house to meet his wife Irina, who was in the Crimea. Rasputin would have known this perfectly well. The truth, I think, is that Rasputin had a tiny little lech on Youssoupoff himself.’

Oddly enough, this accords with what Duff Cooper first suspected, fifty years earlier.

MURDERS

The Moika Palace, St Petersburg

December 29th 1916

If, as Noël Coward suspects, Rasputin has a tiny little lech on Prince Felix Youssoupoff, it is a lech that backfires.

At their first meeting, in 1909, Youssoupoff draws back in horror. ‘There was something about him which disgusted me ... He had a low, common face, framed by a shaggy beard, coarse features and a long nose, with small shifty grey eyes ... He was not in the least like a holy man: on the contrary he looked like a lascivious, malicious satyr. There was something base in his unctuous countenance; something wicked, crafty and sensual.’

But others are captivated. By 1916, Rasputin’s hold over the Tsarina is more powerful than ever, so much so that some think it threatens the very stability of the state. Youssoupoff and his aristocratic friends decide to do away with him. They plan to gain his trust, then lure him to his death.

By chance, only a few days later, a mutual friend tells Youssoupoff that Rasputin wants to see him again. The two men meet. Even though Rasputin has spruced himself up in his smartest blue-silk blouse and velvet breeches, Youssoupoff continues to find him offputting. ‘His offensive familiarity and insolent assurance made him seem still more obnoxious.’ He feigns intense fatigue, which Rasputin, as if on cue, offers to cure. They meet for several surgeries, Rasputin attempting to cure the bogus fatigue through hypnosis.

The day of reckoning finally arrives. Rasputin accepts Youssoupoff’s invitation to spend an evening at his home. ‘The simple way in which he consented to everything, and even went out of his way to make things easier for me, horrified and surprised me.’

Youssoupoff plans to murder Rasputin in the cellar. To make Rasputin feel at home, he decorates it with curtains, carpets, ancient embroideries and a selection of charming knick-knacks. His fellow conspirators drop
round. The doctor among them, Lazovert, puts on rubber gloves, grinds the cyanide to powder, and places poison on each cake ‘sufficient to kill several men instantly’, and into several glasses as well. Rasputin arrives, smartly dressed for the evening’s entertainment in a silk blouse embroidered in cornflowers, a thick, raspberry-coloured belt and his velvet breeches. He has even gone to the trouble of brushing his hair and combing his beard. Youssoupoff notes, too, the smell of cheap soap.

As he helps him off with his overcoat, a feeling of great pity sweeps over Youssoupoff, who has accompanied Rasputin to the house. ‘I was ashamed of the despicable deceit, the horrible trickery to which I was obliged to resort ... I looked at my victim with dread, as he stood before me, quiet and trusting. What had become of his second sight?’

From upstairs comes the sound of his co-conspirators chatting while ‘Yankee Doodle Went to Town’ plays on the gramophone. ‘Is there a party going on?’ asks Rasputin. Youssoupoff explains that his wife is entertaining a few friends: she will be down soon. ‘Meanwhile, let’s have a cup of tea in the dining room.’

They go downstairs. Youssoupoff offers Rasputin wine, but he refuses. They gossip about mutual friends. Youssoupoff offers him some cake. He refuses, but then he changes his mind. He has another, but the poison does not seem to be working.

Rasputin accepts a glass of wine, then asks for some Madeira. He holds out the same glass, but Youssoupoff contrives to drop it, allowing him to pour the Madeira into a glass containing extra cyanide. Rasputin accepts a second glass of Madeira. He complains of a tickle in his throat and puts his head in his hands. Things are looking up. He asks for another cup of tea. ‘I’m very thirsty.’

He seems to rally. Spotting a guitar, he asks Youssoupoff to play a tune. By now, two hours have passed since his arrival at the palace. Youssoupoff finds an excuse to nip upstairs, where he consults with his friends. They are impatient: why can’t they just come down and strangle him? Youssoupoff urges discretion: he will return to the basement alone, with a revolver.

On his return, Rasputin is complaining of a headache and stomach pains, and suggests that another glass of wine might do the trick. He drinks it in a single gulp; it seems to revive him. He starts to admire a crystal crucifix: how much did it cost? Enough is enough. Youssoupoff
produces his revolver, tells Rasputin to say a prayer, and pulls the trigger. Rasputin lets out a wild scream and crumples to the floor.

The conspirators rush in. They watch Rasputin’s fingers twitch as blood spreads over his silk blouse. His body goes still. The doctor declares Rasputin dead. They all go upstairs, leaving Rasputin’s body below. But before long, Youssoupoff is filled with ‘an irresistible impulse’ to go back downstairs. ‘Rasputin lay exactly where we had left him. I felt his pulse: not a beat.’

For some reason, Youssoupoff seizes the corpse and shakes it violently. Without warning, the left eyelid quivers, and slight tremors contract the face. The left eye pops open, and a few seconds later the right eye too. ‘I then saw both eyes – the green eyes of a viper – staring at me with an expression of diabolical hatred.’

Rasputin leaps to his feet, foaming at the mouth. With a wild roar, he makes a grab for Youssoupoff. ‘His eyes were bursting from their sockets, blood oozed from his lips ... it was the reincarnation of Satan himself who held me in his clutches.’ They struggle. Youssoupoff breaks free. Rasputin falls on his back, gasping horribly.

Youssoupoff rushes upstairs, shouting for help. Rasputin follows him, ‘gasping and roaring like a wounded animal’. He manages to stumble out to the courtyard, and is struggling in the direction of the entrance when Youssoupoff’s co-conspirator Pourichkevitch shoots him four times at close quarters. Rasputin is dead at last.
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Towards the end of his long life, Youssoupoff is asked if he has any regrets over the murder of Rasputin. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘I shot a dog.’

TESTS THE PATIENCE OF

Tsarskoye Selo, nr St Petersburg

June 21st 1915

Eighteen months before he dies, Rasputin receives a rap over the knuckles from Tsar Nicholas II himself.

As Rasputin’s influence on the Tsarina has grown, so has his reputation for drunken debauchery. In 1911, an editorial in an Orthodox periodical describes him as a ‘sex maniac and a charlatan’, and by 1915 this is pretty much the view of the country at large. The Tsar, on the other hand, tries to think of him as ‘a good, simple-minded religious Russian’, while the Tsarina goes much further, addressing him as ‘My beloved, unforgettable teacher, redeemer and mentor’, and adding, ‘I am asking for your Holy Blessing and I am kissing your blessed hands. I love you for ever.’

She reveres his wisdom. ‘When he says not to do a thing and one does not listen, one sees one’s fault always afterwards.’

Meanwhile, the secret police have been keeping close tabs on Rasputin’s daily routine:

February 12th

Rasputin and an unknown woman went to house 15/17 on Troitskaya Street ... at 4.30 in the morning he came back with six drunken men and a guitar. They remained till six, singing and dancing.

March 11th

At 10.15 a.m. Rasputin was seen on Gorokhovaya Street and followed to No. 8 Pushkin Street, home of the prostitute Tregubova, from there he went to the bathhouse.

14 May

At 5.00 p.m. he drove to No. 15 Malaya Dvoryanskaya St. At 10.00 p.m. one of the windows in the flat was unlit, but one of the detectives could see a woman leave the lighted room to look into the dark one, she quickly ran back. Then Rasputin could be seen running out of the dark room, he grabbed his hat and coat and ran out on to the street with two men chasing him. They just ran out, called out, ‘There he goes,’ and went back inside. Rasputin jumped in to a cab at a run and went down Liteiny Prospekt looking anxiously over his shoulder.