Lot n° 36
Estimation :
5000 - 7000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 6 760EUR
TATIANA NICOLAYEVNA, Grand Duchess of Russia (1897-1918). - Lot 36
TATIANA NICOLAYEVNA, Grand Duchess of Russia (1897-1918).
Polychrome postcard decorated on one side with a painting entitled Le Premier jour d'été by Alfred Broge, and on the other side with an autograph text by the Grand Duchess signed "Tatiana", addressed to Countess Zénaïde Sergueïèvna
Tolstoy, née Bekhteeff (1880-1961), dated April 2, 1917, sent from Tsarskoye Selo, 1 page, in-4°, text in Russian, overall good condition.
Translation: "He is truly risen! Alexis, the sisters and I thank you, dear Zénaïde Serguïévna and your children for the Easter eggs. We were very touched. We think of you often. We send you a big kiss."
STORY OF A SECRET CORRESPONDENCE The letters and postcards presented below are completely unpublished. They were addressed to Zénaïde (Zinochka) Tolstoï, née Bekhteef (1880-1961) and her children :
Nathalie and Serge, by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and her children during their captivity in Tsarskoe-Selo and then in
Tobolsk. The imperial family's letters and postcards are the last to be preserved by the Tolstoy family. They complete those previously sold by the Coutau-Begarie firm on November 14, 2007 under nos. 105 to 120 and on December 20, 2022 under nos. 358 to 362. This deeply moving correspondence has never before been published, and remains a unique testimony of inestimable historical value. It reveals, in precious detail, the daily life of the imperial family during the last weeks of its existence. The story begins one day in 1915, when the Tolstoy family, recently settled in St. Petersburg, were out for a stroll in Bablovsky Park when they met the daughters of Emperor Nicholas II. The children regularly bump into each other, until one day the grand duchesses express the desire to get to know each other better. The Empress
Alexandra Feodorovna asked her friend Anna
Wyroubova to organize a meeting at her home. Nathalie (Dalechka) Tolstoy (1901-1981) immediately befriended the Grand Duchesses, and Serge (Seriocha) Tolstoy (1904-1999) Alexis. The two boys were the same age. From then on, the children saw each other very often, sometimes on a daily basis, right up until the revolution.
Even during the imperial family's first captivity in the Alexander Palace, they were still able to talk to each other from afar and regularly wave to each other without arousing the attention of their guards during their daily strolls through the palace grounds. Pierre Tolstoï, a distant relative of the famous writer, was educated at the Corps des
Pages in St. Petersburg. After becoming a colonel in the
Chevaliers-Gardes regiment, he served during the First World War at the Grand Headquarters of the Guard and as aide-de-camp to Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch of Russia. Having inherited a comfortable fortune, he had no hesitation in putting his funds at the service of the Imperial Family to organize their escape from Yekaterinburg, in the midst of the revolutionary turmoil.
But after weeks of investigation organized by a trusted man named Sidorof, he was unable to find enough courageous men to undertake the mission. So, with the help of Dr. Dérévenko, the Imperial Family's personal physician, he decided to use the money to send daily deliveries of books, gifts and, above all, foodstuffs to the prisoners via the Bolshevik-authorized nuns of the Ivanoski convent.
It was during these transfers that letters managed to get through, including those shown above. Most of the time, they were hidden in the lining of food baskets, and inside bottles of wine and milk. During this period, the Tolstoys found refuge in Odessa, where they stayed from 1917 to 1919. It was from here that they emigrated to Constantinople
Constantinople, then Malta, Nice, Paris and Berlin, taking with them this precious correspondence.
The execution of the Imperial Family put an abrupt end to Pierre Tolstoï's endeavours, and he too died a few months later, in November 1918. Several years later, while the Anna Anderson affair was reverberating, the Russian
Monarchical Council learned of the existence of an unknown woman in a Berlin hospital, claiming to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolayevna, youngest daughter of Nicholas
II'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER. He decided to send someone who knew the Romanoffs well, and asked Zenaide Tolstoy, who was living in Berlin at the time, to go. She went every day, first with her daughter Nathalie, then with her son Serge. They didn't recognize Anastasia, but rather found a vague
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