Life
Catherine Chislova was born on September 21, 1846, the daughter of Gabriel Chislov. She became a danceuse with the Imperial Ballet. She was an unrivalled partner to the famous Felix Kschessinsky in the Polish mazurka.
In the mid 1860s, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, the third son of Emperor Nicholas I, fell in love with her and they became lovers. Although the Grand Duke was married, they have an open affair that caused a great scandal. He installed her in a fashionable house situated directly across from his own palace in the capital. When Chislova wanted her paramour to visit, she would light two candles and set them on her windowsill, where the Grand Duke could see them from the windows of his study. In 1868, Catherine gave birth to the first of their five children.
Tsar Alexander II advised his brother to be more discrete and the couple traveled to San Remo and the Crimea. In 1881, the Grand Duke’s wife, Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna, retired to a convent in Kiev. Catherine Chislova was ambitious and nagged Nicholas Nikolaievich to provide for her and their family. He arranged a change of class into the gentry for Catherine, and the couple’s illegitimate children were granted the surname Nikolaiev on December 8, 1882 by Tsar Alexander III of Russia.
Unable to obtain a divorce, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich hoped to survive his wife and then marry his mistress. However, Catherine Chislova died unexpectedly in Crimea on December 13, 1889. She was buried in the monastery of Saint Serge in St Petersburg under the name Catherine Gavrilovna Nikolaiev. The Grand Duke had cancer and survived her by only two years. The couple’s two sons were elevated to the Russian nobility in 1894.
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