Alexandra by Carolly Erickson

Author:Carolly Erickson [Erickson, Carolly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472107978
Publisher: Robinson

21

A reckless hedonism reigned in Petersburg in the mild winter and warm spring of 1911. There was a mania for skating, and the indoor rinks were full of eager skaters racing, leaping and turning with perilous abandon. The gaudy red, orange and green trams that sped along the main avenues of the city ran on oblivious of obstacles in their path, knocking over carts, injuring horses and maiming pedestrians who tried to jump on and off without waiting for the conductors to bring them jerkily to a halt. For three years running cholera epidemics had carried off thousands of Petersburgers, leaving the survivors with an avid thirst for life; they sought pleasure, sensation, the thrill of risk, and they seemed to care nothing for the danger.

In the drawing rooms and ballrooms of the great palaces were to be found the ultimate risk takers, the speculators who made and lost immense fortunes on the stock exchange and in financial ventures in steel and coal, copper and oil. Deal making was the preoccupation of the hour, how to raise money and which schemes to invest it in to make it go up the fastest. And once the wealth was acquired, there was the excitement of the gambling house, where it could all be wagered and, if lost, where a bullet to the head could put an end to the whole mad spiral of chance.

The reigning hostesses of the capital, Countess Betsy Shuvalov, Grand Duchess Victoria Melita (Ducky, recently returned to Petersburg from exile with her husband Grand Duke Cyril, and the leader of the young ‘smart set’), and, above all, the widowed Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna (Aunt Miechen), took the risk of throwing open their salons to a wide variety of guests, from the great aristocratic families – the Orlovs, Tolstoys, Dolgorukovs and Gorchakovs – to the nouveaux riches, wealthy foreign investors, painters and composers, and a variety of hangers-on whose manners were said by more staid guests to be ‘fast’ and whose morals did not bear scrutiny. Some said the social tone had been lowered, but there was no turning back; old and new elites together were swept up in the craze for loud music, strong cocktails and the newest fad, dancing the tango until the early hours of the morning.

Nowhere was the hedonistic mood more in evidence than in the explosive realm of the erotic. Censorship laws were repealed in the wake of the government upheaval of 1905-06, and the result was a wave of novels, poems and paintings that celebrated sexual expression in all its forms. Subjects once held to be unmentionable were now a frequent topic of conversation. People held forth on homosexuality, voyeurism, and pederasty and were not reticent on the theme of their own personal pleasures and gratifications. Women took ‘oriental pills’ to enlarge their breasts and men sought potions to enhance their virility. Nightlife became marked by decadence. Husbands and wives visited brothels together in the evenings, then went on to dance the tango at the fashionable Suicide Club.

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