When a Romanov puts on a swimsuit - le prince Théodore Alexandrovitch de Russie à la plage

All these photographs are believed to have been taken in the south of France, circa first half of the 1920s.

Prince Feodor Alexandrovich (23 December 1898, St. Petersburg - 30 November 1968, Ascain), the second son of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna (elder sister of the last Tsar) and Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, he reached manhood just as Russia devolved into revolution, and his family was forced into exile. He was tall - more than six foot four inches - athletic and handsome; he had something of Gary Cooper about him, and something of Cooper's earnest, boyish charm. He was apparently a simple soul, liked to work with his hands. He was also probably not possessed of the most brilliant intellect. And he certainly was rather inept at making his way in the world; throughout his life he was rarely able to find and maintain steady employment or sufficient income. His only sister, Irina, was the wife of Prince Felix Yusupov, and Feodor spent much of the early Twenties living with the couple in Paris, traveling in Italy, Corsica, England. In 1923, he married his first cousin once removed, Princess Irina Pavlovna Paley, the morganatic daughter of the murdered Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich. The couple had a son the following year. But the marriage proved a failure; Irina had an affair with a French count, whose daughter she bore in 1934, and she and Feodor were divorced two years later. In the aftermath of the affair, Feodor went to America, was unhappy there and, after more professional disappointments, he returned to England where, heading into his forties, he settled with his mother. During World War II, still in England, he developed tuberculosis; by the end of the War, he was gravely ill. With the support of his sister and brother-in-law, he returned to France, arriving in Paris on a stretcher; the doctor's prognosis was that death might be imminent. Instead, he was sent to a little house in the Basque region where, supported by his family, he spent the next twenty years, surviving to the age of seventy.

With his wife, née Princess Irina Paley, and her sister, Princess Natalia Paley, later the wife of couturier Lucien Lelong.

With his brother (on the left) Prince Nikita Alexandrovich.

With his brother Nikita (center) and Nikita's wife, née Countess Maria Illarionovna Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Irina on Corsica

Princess Irina Yusupova, only niece of the last tsar, and her husband, the notorious Prince Felix Yusupov, fared better than most after having fled revolutionary Russia in 1919. They hadn't a shadow of their former wealth, but they had a home in Paris and sufficient capital to afford them a quite comfortable lifestyle and allow them to be very generous with those emigrés who were less fortunate. They also had a rather ramshackle house at Calvi on the island of Corsica.* In her second memoir, "A Princess in Exile", Irina's cousin, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, who visited with them there, describes it as a "ridiculous half-tumbledown building" and a "shack", and said that there was little to eat, no proper water supply, and "appalling" sanitary conditions. She also mentions that they all managed to have a very good time.

With an unidentified companion at left.

With her brother, Prince Feodor Alexandrovich.

With Feodor and two other gentlemen.

With an unidentified companion.

***

* Since I found most of these images uncaptioned, I can't promise that they were all taken on Corsica. In some cases I'm making an educated guess. At any rate, they were taken someplace warm and sunny and at least a bit rustic, someplace that decidedly isn't Paris.