Centennial of the Death of Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr.

Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr. and her daughter Grand Duchess Helen Vladimirovna, Princess Nicholas of Greece.   by Nicholas Nicholson for Eurohistory ... As July drew to a close, Maria Pavlovna’s famous health and energy was beginning to leave her.  Alone in her rooms at the Hôtel la Souveraine, she began her decline.  Ducky and Kirill, who had been visiting with Queen Marie of Romania in Paris cut short their time to rush to her side at the once-fashionable Vosges resort. From Contréxeville, Ducky wrote her sister: “we found my mother-in-law in almost dying condition with an old ass of a Kurarzt[1] who has no notion what to do & a lady & gentleman at the end of their resources and the poor old lady crying in her bed for want of her family, feeling herself dying and deserted by all. She was so pleasant and touched that we came that it repays one for very much what one has been through. I cannot say if she will recover.  At moments one thinks there is but little hope, at other moments she rallies & talks but she is very weak, can take no food without hours of deadly sickness afterwards. They seem to think that one of her kidneys has … brought on a sortof blood poisoning. The old fool of a doctor here started her on the full cure[2]like in olden days which set all this matter in motion, causing an acute attack of the kidneys with excessive pain, followed by complete heart failure. The pulse almost stopped, and this off and on for nearly a week now.  We are awaiting your Doctor Abrams with greatest impatience.  One  keeps her going with camphor injections but they make her suffer terribly. This is a medeavel [sic] place, awful bare little rooms & no food or things to be got in the house.  One has to send for everything… I never saw such an arrangement.”[3]  The Grand Duchess was dying slowly of a combination of heart and renal failure with nothing to relieve her pain.  She floated in and out of consciousness for weeks as her family gathered by her side.  Boris arrived in early August and was followed by Andrei and Ellen.    Prince Nicholas of Greece, Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich, Princess Nicholas of Greece, Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich, Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr., and Grand Duke krill Vladimirovich. Ellen wrote later to her mother’s old friend Princess Galitzine “It was épouvantable for several days, but then she at last seemed at some peace -- sometimes calling out for Papa Wladimir! In a weak voice. There were a few days when she seemed almost well, but then on the last day it was a great struggle until at last she slept deeply, and the end came.”[4]  Ducky wrote Missy: “…Aunt Miechen died, repentant like one only reads in books. Asking pardon all round for all the harm she had done, even blaming herself more than seemed necessary to me. She suffered inhumanely and only the last day was quite unconscious. The death struggle lasted 14 hours. I was really, really sad as she was more than nice & touching to me in the end. If she could have lived as she died, what invincible friends we would have been.”[5]  Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna Sr. and her granddaughter Princess Olga of Greece. The funeral service was intimate and held in the tiny chapel of Sts. Vladimir and Mary Magdalene which she had built in 1909 to commemorate the death of her husband and her own conversion to the Orthodox faith. The “Grandest” of the Grand Duchesses, Maria Pavlovna was the last Romanov to leave Russia, and the first to die in exile.  Buried in a simple white marble sarcophagus as she would have been in Russia, outside the chapel a sign reads : “In this chapel raised by her own hands lies H.I.H. the Grand Duchess Wladimir, died at Contrexéville 6 September 1920.” --- [1] A Spa physician [2] Hot spa treatments, mineral waters, and enemas. [3] Fond Regina Maria: Dos V/3393/1920, Royal Archives Bucharest; John Wimbles Papers, Archivio Orléans-Borbón, Sanlucar de Barrmeda, Spain. [4] Princess Nicholas of Greece to Pcess Galitzine, 10 Sept 1920, private collection, USA. [5] Fond Regina Maria: Dos V/3395/1920, Wimbles, op cit.
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