Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley December 5, 1905-December 27, 1981 Nicholas II cousin, little sister to the Holy Royal Martyr Prince Vladimir Paley and the daughter of Grand Duke Paul and Princess Olga Paley. She described her childhood in France and then later, St. Petersburg, as idyllic. The Paley family was a very loving and close-knit family. After her brothers murder, Princess Paley arranged an escape for her two daughters via streetcars, cattle wagons, horse drawn sleighs and then by foot to the safety of Finland. The young girls anxiously awaited their parents arrival but only Princess Olga Paley was to safety leave Russia; Natalias father was also murdered by the Bolsheviks. From Finland they went to Sweden, then onto France. Princess Paley sent Natalia and Irina to boarding school in Switzerland and there Natalia describes a feeling of being very different from the other girls there... the others girls were watching Douglas Fairbanks on the movie screen...how could I have been like them? I was mute, I would not play. But I was reading a lot. I had faced death, so close. My father, my brother, my cousins, my uncles, executed, all Romanovs blood splashed on my adolescence. This gave me a taste for sad things, poetry, the icy and lightning antechamber of death. Soon, my classmates understood me. And respected the way I was, as strange as it may have seemed. Natalia married Lucien Lelong, a prominent French couturier but sadly it was an unhappy union. She worked as a model and later had a brief stint in Hollywood, even starring opposite Katharine Hepburn, who became a lifelong friend. Natalia married for a second time to John Chapman Wilson and settled in New York City. She became an American citizen in 1941. In the last 20 years of her life her health sadly declined. She became reclusive due to diabetes and loss of vision. She passed away following surgery at Roosevelt Hospital in New York City after a serious fall in her home. She is buried in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church in Ewing, New Jersey. https://youtube/watch?v=VoJQDEtEH6g
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 01:57:59 +0000
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