Evening star., 1923-06-01
Descendant of St. Michael and Rurik
Now Envoy of Soviets at Lausanne

, blame for the decline of the grandeur
or the house of Gortchakoff was his
brother Constantines wife, Marie
Stourdza, daughter of that Michael
Stourdza who was the most rapacious
of all those Hospodars or Christian
governors of what is now Rumania
| subject to Turkish sovereignty.
Some faint notion of the career OF
the late Princess Constantine Gort-
ehakoff may be gathered from the
courts of Germany and of France
alike with the robbing of her moth
er's corpse. with frauds and theft at
the expense of her brother. Prince
eral and statesman and senator; with
heaven knows what all besides.
There is an American interest in
this. For the mansion in Paris in the
Rue de Varnes, which was the scene
OF many of the crimes laid at her
door. is now owned by the Countess
of Grannard. who received il as a gift
York. 1t served as the metropolitan
headquarters of Gen. Pershing in the
great war, and was placed at the dis
posal of Princess Mary for her stay
year by Lady Grannard. Princess
Constantine Gortchakoff had inherit
| ed it from her father. the old Hos
podar, who had purchased it from
bello, the famous Marechal Lahnes.
!: x x
From the very outset of her mar
ried life the bonds of matrimony
proved extremely CALLING to tho prin-
cess, and she determined to rid her
self of them at the earliest oppor-
tunity, after the death of her father
in-law, the chancellor of the Russian
empire, and Of whom she stood in
great dread. Within a few months
after his demise, and with the avowed
object of provoking her husband to
demand a divorce, she associated her
self with an Englishman and travelled
all over Europe in his company. un-
der own name. creating a great scan
da1 everywhere. Neither this nor
other provocation of similar nature
succeeded in driving her husband to
sue for a divorce. The more she dis
played anxiety to secure the dissolu-
| ton of her marriage the less in
clination did he show to meet her
views in the matter. In despair she
actually went to the length of lodg-
ing petitions againStz17fm at Petro-
grad and at Bucharest on charges
which did not furnish sufficient cause
for decreeing the dissolution of the
union. At Stamboul she was more
successful, and by dint of enormous
bribes was able to induce the orthor
dox patriarch at ConStantinople to
pronounce the annulment of her mar
riage. 1t is needless to add that the
decree in question was treated as en-
tirely invalid both in Russia and In
Rumania, the synod of the Bosporus
having no legal competence to deal
with the case.
may add, by the way, that before
her father-in-law's death she bore
| three children to her husband, Prince
Alexander. who. as a member of the
Russian Red Cross, fell in Galicia
during the great war while tending
| the wounded on the field OF battle.
He had been medically rejected as
unfit for combatant military service.
OF her two daughters one is the
widow of Prince Alexis Koudacheff,
while the other, Helene, is the wife
of Wassili Soldatenkoff, formerly of
| the czar's diplomatic service.
That the mother. Princess Con-
| stantine Gortchakoff, nee Stourdza,
should have escaped the indignity OF
imprisonment, though not Of arrest,
in connection with the many crimes
Justly laid at her door by her rela+
| tives and by the authorities, may be
| aScribed to her great name and to
her colossal wealth, which enabled
her IaWyars to deal Win the various
situations by means of compromise.
| The Russian great world in Paris and
| on the Riviera would have nothing
| whatsoever to do with her and SUBJ
jected her to the severest boycott.
But she had quite a large circle of
| friends-many of them Americans
among the cosmopolitan colony on the
| banks of the Seine and, aside from
| her moral eccentricities, was a very
| brilliant and original woman, whose
tdelinquencies were perhaps more at
| tributable- to heredity and. above all.
| to the atmosphere in which she had
been reared, than to any actual
| yicfousness. &