Book Description

My father, Prince Theodore Galitzine, married my mother being a widower with five children, three of whom died before my birth. My earliest vivid recollections begin when I was two years old. I distinctly remember feeling a terrible pain in parting with my wet-nurse, to whom I was passionately attached. I got hold of her skirt and wouldn’t let her go, weeping wildly. It was my first bitter affliction. I could not put up with the new nurse, whom I hated from the depths of my little heart, and I would not call her otherwise than Wild Cat, with baby petulance, having already at that early age pronounced likes and dislikes. We were in perpetual state of warfare. When I was about three years old that nurse was succeeded by a pretty Belgian girl named Melle. Henriette. The tutor of my two step-brothers, Mr. Liziar, made love to her and finished by marrying her some time after. He seemed somewhat half-witted; by night he went to chime the bells at the belfry of our village church in Dolgik, a fine estate belonging to my father, in the government of Kharkoff, and also amused himself by breaking, in the conservatory, the panes of glass with big stones. One day he frightened his sweetheart nearly to death by throwing a snake under her feet. After all these pranks it is no way astonishing that Mr. Liziar finished his days in a lunatic asylum. The tutor who succeeded him, asked my parents to bring his wife with him. He hastened to pocket the hundred roubles taken beforehand on account of his salary, and departed suddenly to Kharkoff to fetch her. Meanwhile my father received a letter from this tutor’s legitimate wife dated from St. Petersburg, in which she entreated papa to send her the half of her husband’s monthly salary, telling him he spent all his money on his mistress, whilst his wife and children had not a morsel of bread to put into their mouths. Of course, this too Don Juanesque tutor was instantly dismissed. My parents at that time kept an open house. On great occasions my smart nurse would appear in the dining-room carrying me in her arms, attired like a little fairy, all ribbons and lace, to be admired by our guests. She put me down on the table, and I promenaded quite at my ease between the flowers and fruits.