Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov

 

Prince Felix Yusupov by Linse. The Yusupovs were the wealthiest family in Russia. They owned dozens of estates and palaces and Prince Felix Yusupov was married to the niece of Tsar Nicholas II, Irina Alexandrovna. The prince is best remembered for his involvement in the murder of the mad monk Rasputin in the Yusupov family’s palace in St Petersburg. He was able to escape to Paris in 1917, taking many fine family jewels.

The Moika Palace or Yusupov Palace  was once the primary residence in St. Petersburg, Russia of the House of Yusupov. The building was the site of Grigori Rasputin's murder in the early morning of December 17, 1916.

He was born in the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire. 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 Crimean Tatar origin, and very wealthy. For the Yusupov name not to die out, his father (5 October 1856, Saint Petersburg – 10 June 1928, Rome, Italy) was granted the title and the surname of his wife, Princess Zenaida Nikolaievna Yusupova (2 September 1861, Saint Petersburg – 24 November 1939, Paris) upon their marriage, on 4 April 1882 in Saint Petersburg.

Zinaida and Felix Yusupov at a ball "in traditional Russian costume", 1903.

The Yusupov family, richer than any of the Romanovs, had acquired their wealth generations earlier. It included four palaces in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg), three palaces in Moscow, 37 estates in different parts of Russia (Kursk, Voronezh and Poltava), coal and iron-ore mines, plants and factories, flour mills and oil fields on the Caspian Sea.

Portrait of Felix Yusupov (1903) by Valentin Serov

Felix led a flamboyant life. "At twelve he began wearing his mother's gowns. He describes in his autobiography often spending time with Gypsy bands and adopting female clothing. His older brother took him often to restaurants and cafés". Felix became one of the richest men in Russia after his older brother, Nikolai Felixovich, Count Sumarokov-Elston (1883-22 June 1908), had an affair with a married woman and was killed on Krestovsky Island in a duel by the jealous husband, Arvid Manteuffel, in the summer of 1908. From 1909 to 1913, he studied fine arts at University College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, established the Oxford University Russian Society. Yusupov was living on 14 King Edward Street, had a Russian cook, a French driver, an English valet, a housekeeper, and he spent much time partying. He owned three horses, a macaw and a bulldog called Punch. He smoked hashish, played polo and became friendly with Luigi Franchetti, a piano player, Jacques de Beistegui, who both moved in. At some time, Yusupov got acquainted with Albert Stopford and Oswald Rayner. He rented an apartment in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and met several times with the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who lived in Hampstead.

Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia with her fiance Prince Felix Yusupov, 1914

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 their honeymoon to Cairo, Jerusalem, London and Bad Kissingen, where his parents were staying.

In exile

One week after the February Revolution, Nicholas abdicated the throne on 2 March. Following the abdication, the Yusupovs returned to the Moika Palace before they went to Crimea. They later returned to the palace to retrieve jewels (containing the blue Sultan of Morocco Diamond, the Polar Star Diamond, and a pair of diamond earrings that once belonged to Marie-Antoinette) 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." The Yusupovs founded a short-lived couture house Irfé, named after the first two letters of their first names. Irina modeled some of the dresses the pair and other designers at the firm created. They 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.

On September 27, 1967, Prince Felix Youssoupoff passed away in his modest Paris home.

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 died three years later He was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery, in the southern suburbs of Paris. Yusupov's private papers and a number of family artifacts and paintings are now owned by Víctor Contreras, a Mexican sculptor who, as a young art student in the 1960s, met Yusupov and lived with the family for five years in Paris. It seems that Felix had never abandoned his pursuit for men.