Up at the Net

Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia was thirty-three when this was published in Vanity Fair.

This is how he is described.

Fourteen years later he looks older and more serious.

He moved to England in 1900, leasing Keele Hall in Staffordshire and then Kenwood House in Hampstead. Exile from Russia saved his life as his three brothers were killed by the Bolsheviks after the Revolution. He merely became short of money, downsizing to Cambridge Gate in Regent’s Park. Poverty is relative; George V bunged him £10,000.

It was Robert’s birthday last week and the caricature of the Grand Duke playing tennis was an original present and got me interested in this Russian royalty and his ultimately rather tragic life. He died in London of flu in 1929 aged sixty-three.

He had a son and two daughters:

Count Michael Mikhailovich de Torbay, who went to Eton and was an artist. He died unmarried in 1959, aged sixty.

Anastasia Mikhailovna, Lady Zia Wernher. Two of her grandchildren became Duchesses: Abercorn and Westminster.

Nadejda Mikhailovna Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven. Her sister-in-law was Edwina Mountbatten.