The colourful life of Prince Felix Yusupov

23 March 1887 marks the birth of Prince Felix Yusupov. He was born at Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg.

Family

His father was Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, the son of Count Felix Nikolaievich Sumarokov-Elston. Zinaida Yusupova, his mother, was the last of the Yusupov line, of Tatar origin, and
very wealthy. 

For the Yusupov name not to die out, his father (1856, Saint Petersburg – 1928, Rome, Italy) was granted the title and the surname of his wife, Princess Zinaida Yusupova, on 11 June 1885, a year after their marriage, but effective after the death of his father-in-law in 1891.

The Yusupov family, one of the richest families in Imperial Russia,  had acquired their wealth generations earlier. It included four palaces in Saint Petersburg, three palaces in Moscow, 37 estates in different parts of Russia, on the Crimea (at Koreiz, Kökköz and Balaklava), coal and iron-ore mines, plants and factories, flour mills and oil fields on the Caspian Sea. 

Youth

Felix led a flamboyant life. As a young man, he cross-dressed, wearing ball gowns and his mother's jewelry to public events. He is thought to have been bisexual. When he addresses this claim in his book Lost Splendor, however, he flat out denied it. 

From 1909 to 1913, he studied Forestry and later English at University College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club,  and established the Oxford Russian Club. 

Yusupov was living on 14 King Edward Street, had a Russian cook, a French driver, an English valet, and a housekeeper, and spent much of his time partying. 

He owned three horses, a macaw, and a bulldog called Punch. He smoked hashish, danced tango and became friendly with Luigi Franchetti, a piano player, and Jacques de Beistegui, who both moved in.

At some time, Yusupov became acquainted with Albert Stopford and Oswald Rayner, a classmate. He rented an apartment in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and met several times with the ballerina Anna Pavlova,
who lived in Hampstead.

Love and Marriage

The engagement took place in the fall of 1913 in the Yusupov Palace in Koreiz. Back in Saint Petersburg, he married Princess Irina of Russia, the Tsar's only niece, in the Anichkov Palace on 22 February 1914. 

The bride was wearing a veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette. The Yusupovs went on honeymoon to the Crimea, Italy, Egypt, Jerusalem,  London, and Bad Kissingen, where his parents were staying. No one suspected  that this was the last grand wedding in the Russian Empire.

 

World War I

Then World War I broke out in August 1914, both were briefly detained in Berlin. Irina asked her relative, Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia, to intervene with Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser refused to permit the Yusupov family to leave but offered them a choice of three country estates to live in for the duration of the war. Felix's father appealed to the Spanish ambassador in Germany and won permission for them to return to Russia via neutral Denmark to the Grand Duchy of Finland and from there to Saint Petersburg.

The Yusupovs' only daughter, Princess Irina Felixovna Yusupova, nicknamed Bébé, was born on 21 March 1915. Bébé was largely raised by her  paternal grandparents until she was nine. She was very spoiled by them.  Her unstable upbringing caused her to become "capricious," according to  Felix. Felix and Irina, raised mainly by nannies themselves, were ill-suited  to take on the day-to-day burdens of child-rearing. Bébé adored her father  but had a more distant relationship with her mother.

After the death of his brother, Felix was the heir to an immense  fortune. Consulting with family members about how best to administer  the money and property, he decided to devote time and money to charitable  works to help the poor. The losses at the Eastern Front were enormous,  and so Felix converted a wing/floor of the Liteyny House into a hospital  for wounded soldiers.

Felix was able to avoid entering military service himself by taking advantage of a law exempting only-sons from serving.  In February 1916 Felix began studies at the elite Page Corps military academy and tried joining a regiment in August.

the Yusupov Palace in St. Petersburg

The Yusupov Family

Rasputin

On the night of 29/30 December (NS) 1916, Felix, Dmitri, Vladimir Purishkevich, assistant Stanislas de Lazovert, and Sukhotin killed Rasputin in the Moika Palace under the pretense of a housewarming party. A major reconstruction of the palace had almost been finished, with a small room
in the basement carefully furnished.

According to both Yusupov and Purishkevich, a gramophone in the study played interminably the Yankee Doodle when Rasputin came in. Yusupov mentions in his unreliable memoirs, he then offered Rasputin tea and petit fours laced with a large amount of potassium cyanide.  

After an hour or so, Rasputin was fairly drunk. Still waiting for Rasputin to collapse, Yusupov became anxious that Rasputin might live until the morning, leaving the conspirators no time to conceal his body. Yusupov went upstairs and came back with a revolver.

Rasputin was hit at close range by a bullet that entered his left chest and penetrated the stomach and the liver. The wounds were serious, and Rasputin would have died in 10–20 min, but he succeeded in escaping outside. A second bullet from a distance with a firearm lodged into his spine after penetrating
the right kidney. 

Rasputin fell in the snow-clad courtyard and his body was taken inside. It is not clear whether or not Yusupov beat Rasputin with a sort of dumb bell. It is also not clear if it was Purishkevich who shot him point-blank into the forehead. A curious policeman on duty on the other side of the Moika had heard the shots, rang at the door, and was sent away. Half an hour later, another policeman arrived, and Purishkevich invited him into the palace. Purishkevich told him that he had shot Rasputin and asked him to keep it quiet for the sake of the Tsar. The conspirators finally threw the corpse from Bolshoy Petrovsky Bridge into an ice hole in the Malaya Neva.

On the Empress's orders, a police investigation commenced and traces of blood were discovered on the steps to the back door of the Yusupov Palace. Prince Felix attempted to explain the blood with a story
that one of his favourite dogs was shot accidentally by Grand Duke Dmitri. Yusupov and Dmitri were placed under house arrest in the Sergei Palace. (The upper levels of the palace were occupied by the British embassy and the Anglo-Russian Hospital.)

The Empress had refused to meet the two but said that they could explain what had happened in a letter to her. She wanted both shot immediately, but she was persuaded to back off from the idea.

Without a trial, the Tsar sent Dmitri to the front in Persia; Purishkevich  was already on his way to the front in Romania. The Tsar banished  Yusupov to his estate in Rakitnoye, Belgorod Oblast.

Leaving Russia

One week after the February Revolution, Nicholas abdicated the throne on 2 March 1917. Following the abdication, the Yusupovs returned to the Moika Palace before they went to Crimea. They later returned to the palace to retrieve jewels (including the blue Sultan of Morocco Diamond, the Polar Star Diamond, and the Marie Antoinette Diamond Earrings) and two paintings by Rembrandt, the sale proceeds of which helped sustain the family in exile. The paintings were bought by Joseph E. Widener in 1921 and are now in the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

In Crimea, the family boarded a British warship, HMS Marlborough, which took them from Yalta to Malta. On the ship, Felix enjoyed boasting about the murder of Rasputin. One of the British officers noted that Irina "appeared shy and retiring at first, but it was only necessary to take a little notice of her pretty, small daughter to break through her reserve and discover that she was also very charming and spoke fluent English."

From Malta, they travelled to Italy and then to Paris. In Italy, lacking a visa, he bribed the officials with diamonds. In Paris, they stayed a few days in Hôtel de Vendôme before they went on to London.
In 1920, they returned to Paris. 

Château de Kériolet in France

Exile

Yusupov became renowned in the Russian émigré community for his financial generosity. Their philanthropy and their continued high living and poor financial management extinguished what

remained of the family fortune. Felix's bad business sense and the Wall Street crash of 1929 eventually forced the company to shut down.

The Yusupovs lived in the following places in France:

1920–1939: 37, Rue Gutenberg then 19 rue de La Tourelle in Boulogne-sur-Seine

1939–1940: they rented a mansion in rue Victor-Hugo, Sarcelles

1940–1943: they moved to rue Agar and 65 rue La Fontaine (16th arrondissement of Paris)

from 1943 until their deaths: 38 rue Pierre-Guérin (Auteuil)

Death

Irina and Felix enjoyed a happy and successful marriage for more than 50 years. When Felix died in 1967, Irina was stricken by grief and she died three years later, in 26 February 1970. He was buried in

Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, in the southern suburbs of Paris. 

A very interesting books about the Romanov family after the revolution in Paris written by Helen Rappaport. 

Royal History blogger Marlene Koenig mentioned a new book about  Prince Felix Yusupov. You can read her blogpost about the book on this link. 

Coat of Arms of the House of Yusuov

Source pictures: Wikipedia