Parisian apartment time capsule

[PennLady]

Found this via a Roger Ebert post on Facebook. He says the story could be the beginning of a novel. I suspect we here could find many plot bunnies.

http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/

 

[TE999]

What a cool find! The $3 mill Boldini painting was a nice touch. I wonder what happened to all the stuff inside. I bet that furniture and bric-a-brac brought a pretty penny at auction, especially that Mickey Mouse doll; and who wouldn't want a stuffed ostrich?

If those walls could talk ... I couldn't understand them because it would be in French.

 

[sr71plt]

because it would be in French.

Ah, but on listening again, it seemed to be Russian. White Russian. There were rumors that the French actress had a Russian count, a cousin of the tsar, as a lover--one who was rumored to have spirited the tsarevitch out of Russia (holding his Mikey Mouse doll ) . . . and another plot bunny is born.

 

[TE999]

Ah, but on listening again, it seemed to be Russian. White Russian. There were rumors that the French actress had a Russian count, a cousin of the tsar, as a lover--one who was rumored to have spirited the tsarevitch out of Russia (holding his Mikey Mouse doll ) . . . and another plot bunny is born.

Hmm ... so Alexi could be roaming about out there somewhere and those remains the Russians found in '07 could have been another hitherto unknown family member ... Heyyy, Alexi could be one of the Undead ... and not one of those sparlky little Twilight sissies either ... more like Nosferatu, or Drac ... "I do not dlink ... vine" ... Heheheh.

 

[sr71plt]

Hmm ... so Alexi could be roaming about out there somewhere and those remains the Russians found in '07 could have been another hitherto unknown family member ... Heyyy, Alexi could be one of the Undead ... and not one of those sparlky little Twilight sissies either ... more like Nosferatu, or Drac ... "I do not dlink ... vine" ... Heheheh.

I ask you. Did they find a Mickey Mouse doll next to the tsarevitch pretender at the bottom of that mine shaft? If not, there you go. The tsarevitch would never be seen dead without his Mickey Mouse doll--until that day that the Nazis were knocking on the front door of the Paris apartment and the French actress, who had moved from the affections of the Russian count to the more tender arms of his royal ward, pulled the tsarevitch out of the back door and down the stairs and to the street, where, at the very last moment, she pushed him out of the way of a runaway German tank, only to go under the treads herself, leaving the tsarevitch . . .

 

[PennLady]

But it was the Princess Anastasia who was rumored to have escaped. Could it have been her doll? A reminder of her family, her favored younger brother? Or could she have been Mrs. De Florian? She likely would have spoken French...

 

[sr71plt]

But it was the Princess Anastasia who was rumored to have escaped. Could it have been her doll? A reminder of her family, her favored younger brother? Or could she have been Mrs. De Florian? She likely would have spoken French...

The rumor (politically cast) was that they both escaped. The Whites needed to float the possibility the tsarevitch was still around.

(As for Anastasia [Anna Anderson], I used to have to go to her house and retrieve books on Anastasia she stole from the UVa library. I didn't see any Mickey Mouse dolls while I was searching for the books.)

 

[PennLady]

The rumor (politically cast) was that they both escaped. The Whites needed to float the possibility the tsarevitch was still around.

I hope the tsarevitch had a good doctor in his escape, since the poor little guy had hemophilia, IIRC.

(As for Anastasia [Anna Anderson], I used to have to go to her house and retrieve books on Anastasia she stole from the UVa library. I didn't see any Mickey Mouse dolls while I was searching for the books.)

You obviously didn't find the Mickey Mouse dolls b/c she'd left them in Paris. (No, I know. I'm just kidding.) But the movie with Ingrid Bergman and Yul Brynner isn't bad.

I actually have an MA in Russian Area Studies, and so covered this whole event a few times. It was so sad.

 

[TE999]

I ask you. Did they find a Mickey Mouse doll next to the tsarevitch pretender at the bottom of that mine shaft? If not, there you go. The tsarevitch would never be seen dead without his Mickey Mouse doll--until that day that the Nazis were knocking on the front door of the Paris apartment and the French actress, who had moved from the affections of the Russian count to the more tender arms of his royal ward, pulled the tsarevitch out of the back door and down the stairs and to the street, where, at the very last moment, she pushed him out of the way of a runaway German tank, only to go under the treads herself, leaving the tsarevitch . . .

*raises hand* Ooh, ooh, then the tsarevitch is taken in by a kind Parisian family, is cured of his hemophilia by Louis Pasteur, joins the resistance, becomes Julia Child's lover and they produce a child that grows up to be none other than Martha Stewart.

 

[sr71plt]

I actually have an MA in Russian Area Studies, and so covered this whole event a few times. It was so sad.

Then you probably know about Anna Anderson (the source of the "recognition scene" in Anastasia that Ingrid Bergman played) and how a UVa professor, Jack Manahan, married her to keep her from being deported. She was four-foot-nothing and scraggly (always kept her hand over her mouth and mumbled). She used to slip into the UVa library when I worked there as a graduate student and stole any book mentioning Anastasia because she considered it her property. When enough went missing, Manahan would take her for a ride in the country, and I'd go over to their house and retrieve the books. Eventually we had to lock them all up in the Rare Book Room.

 

[sr71plt]

*raises hand* Ooh, ooh, then the tsarevitch is taken in by a kind Parisian family, is cured of his hemophilia by Louis Pasteur, joins the resistance, becomes Julia Child's lover and they produce a child that grows up to be none other than Martha Stewart.

OK, you win.

(Thus the Macy's advertising jingle for Martha Stewart's Home Collection: "These Sheets Are Fit for a Tsar," set to the tune of Prokofiev's "Troika Suite," featuring a Parisian actress on the French horn.)

 

[Weird Harold]

I hope the tsarevitch had a good doctor in his escape, since the poor little guy had hemophilia, IIRC.

I figure that is why he became an Undead (of the non-sparkly kind.) Bloodless Undead don't have to worry about bleeding to death.

 

[PennLady]

Then you probably know about Anna Anderson (the source of the "recognition scene" in Anastasia that Ingrid Bergman played) and how a UVa professor, Jack Manahan, married her to keep her from being deported. She was four-foot-nothing and scraggly (always kept her hand over her mouth and mumbled). She used to slip into the UVa library when I worked there as a graduate student and stole any book mentioning Anastasia because she considered it her property. When enough went missing, Manahan would take her for a ride in the country, and I'd go over to their house and retrieve the books. Eventually we had to lock them all up in the Rare Book Room.

Actually no, I didn't. We didn't study the Anastasia myths, or at least I didn't. I heard of a few, including a peasant woman in Poland who was considered seriously to be Anastasia but I believe that was disproved. Personally, I believe the Russian royal family was killed and none escaped.

 

[sr71plt]

Actually no, I didn't. We didn't study the Anastasia myths, or at least I didn't. I heard of a few, including a peasant woman in Poland who was considered seriously to be Anastasia but I believe that was disproved. Personally, I believe the Russian royal family was killed and none escaped.

The Polish lady was Anna Anderson. She was acknowledged by the Grand Duchess Olga (thus the Ingrid Bergman movie Anastasia--for which Bergman won an Academy Award)--probably as a ploy to unlock the Romanovs' foreign bank accounts--and thus was the most famous of the pretenders. And, yes, she eventually (but not fully until the late 80s, after her death) was debunked (DNA), and, yes, within the last decade, I think, they verified Anastasia (and the tsarevitch)--again by DNA--to have been among the dead in the mine shaft in Ekaterinburg.

Charlottesville was once a center of White Russian emigre community--with Anna Anderson here and the son of Botkin, the physician killed with the tsar's family. And Rasputin's daughter showed up briefly. I wrote an essay once that got good play about the meeting between Anna Anderson and Rasputin's daughter, Maria. (Maria wanted Anna to go to the California with her and become part of some sort of circus/parlor party act). Quite a cat fight, and Maria slunk back to L.A.

I interviewed Jack Manahan once for both an essay and a play (and eventually did a short story as well) on why he married Anna Anderson and pretended to believe her. He was a Russian history professor, and although more than a bit nutty himself, surely knew she wasn't the genuine goods. His answer was "It doesn't matter so much whether she's really Anastasia. What matters is that she believes she is and has been taken advantage of by so many people in life that she deserves to have someone who will give her some dignity and treat her as simply another human being in her declining years." And he did treat her like she was a princess until she died in the mid 80s. He died about five years later.

Anderson was finally debunked because they did DNA testing on her hair after death. I sometimes kicked myself for not becoming part of history on that. While I was in the house collecting books, I could have taken hair out of her hairbrush and moved the debunking along by a good fifteen years (or at least when DNA testing kicked in).

(my latest GM erotica release, incidentally, Dirk Hessian's Constantinople, is about the White Russian evacuation through the Crimea and Constantinople and covers those momentous events pretty extensively. A fascinating but brutally violent time. I've edited several mainstream books on that period.)

 

[PennLady]

The Polish lady was Anna Anderson. She was acknowledged by the Grand Duchess Olga (thus the Ingrid Bergman movie Anastasia--for which Bergman won an Academy Award)--probably as a ploy to unlock the Romanovs' foreign bank accounts--and thus was the most famous of the pretenders. And, yes, she eventually (but not fully until the late 80s, after her death) was debunked (DNA), and, yes, within the last decade, I think, they verified Anastasia (and the tsarevitch)--again by DNA--to have been among the dead in the mine shaft in Ekaterinburg.

Thank you, that's all interesting. I've read some about it, of course, including Massey's book "Nicholas and Alexandra." It's just been a long time. Since graduating, I haven't had much use for what I studied; for various reasons I never went into the field. I don't regret the studies, but without a need to go back to it, it does fade.

I think what Jack Monahan did was very sweet.

 

[sr71plt]

Coincidentally, today (17 July) is the 94th anniversary of the assassination of the tsar and his family.

 

[sr71plt]

Dup thanks to the wacky ways of the forum tonight.