Basily Treasures at the Hoover Institution

ABSTRACT

This article describes the life and career of the former Russian diplomat and art collector Nicolas de Basily (1883–1963), including a detailed history of his family background. Together with his second wife, Lascelle Meserve de Basily (1890–1989), he built a remarkable art and library collection, including paintings, furniture, and other decorative art objects. Considerable detail is provided on the art collection, as well as its provenance, especially with dealers such as Nicolas and Pavla de Koenigsberg.

KEYWORDS:

• Archives
• art collections
• Hoover Institution Library
• Lascelle Merserve de Basily
• Nicolas and Pavla de Koenigsberg
• Nicolas de Basily
• Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili
• 1883–1963

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

^1. Among Bazili’s early works: Arkhipelag i Gretsiia v 1830 i 1831 godakh [The Archipelago and Greece in 1830 and 1831] (St. Petersburg, Russia: Tip. N. Grecha, 1834), Ocherki Konstantinopolia [Sketches of Constantinople] (St. Petersburg, Russia: Tip. N. Grecha, 1835), and the two-volume Bosfor i novye ocherki Konstantinopolia [The Bosphorus and new sketches of Constantinople] (St. Petersburg, Russia: Tip. N. Grecha, 1836). (The latter two works were reissued together in Moscow in 2006. K. M. Bazili was the subject of a Ph.D. thesis by James Alan Tabor, “In the Service of the Russian Tsar: The Life and Work of Konstantin Mikhailovich Bazili, 1809–1884” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Minnesota, 2003).)

^2. This sketch of Konstantin Bazili and the Bazili line is taken largely from I. M. Smilianskaia’s introduction to the republication of K. M. Bazili’s Siriia i Palestina [Syria and Palestine] (Moskva, 2007), pp. 8–9, and the family histories in the Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili papers, 1851–1973, box 1, folder 13, Hoover Institution Archives.

^3. K. M. Bazili, Siriia i Palestina pod turetskim vladychestvom v istoricheskom i politicheskom otnosheniiakh [Syria and Palestine under Turkish rule in its historical and political perspective] (Moscow, Russia: Mosty kul’tury / Jerusalem, Israel: Gesharim, 2007).

^4. Evgenii Pchelov, “Rossiiskie dvoriane moldavskogo proiskhozhdeniia” [The Russian nobility of Moldavian descent], Rusin 3, no. 5 (2006): 35–47. Abdolonyme Ubicini, Letters on Turkey: An Account of the Religious, Political, Social, and Commercial Condition of the Ottoman Empire; the Reformed Institutions, Army, Navy, etc., etc., (New York, NY: Arno Press, 1973), 214.

^5. Alexandre Handjeri, Dictionnaire français-arabe-persan et turc. Enrichi d’exemples en langue turque avec des variantes, et de beaucoup de mots d’arts et de sciences [French-Arabic-Persian-Turkish dictionary: enriched by examples in Turkish with variants, and many words from the arts and sciences] (Moscow, Russia: Imprimerie de l’université impériale, 1840).

^6. Princess Anne-Marie Callimachi, Yesterday Was Mine (New York, NY: Whittlesey House, 1949), 212–213.

^7. E. de Basily-Callimaki, J.-B. Isabey: sa vie, son temps, 1767–1855, suivi du Catalogue de l o̓euvre gravée par et a̓près Isabey (Paris, France: Frazier-Soye, graveur-imprimeur, 1909).

^8. “Curriculum vitae of Nicolas de Basily,” box 1, folder 12, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili papers, 1851–1973, Hoover Institution Archives.

^9. Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili, Diplomat of Imperial Russia, 1903–1917: Memoirs (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973), 103–148.

^10. The drafts are discussed in Bertrand M. Patenaude, A Wealth of Ideas: Revelations from the Hoover Institution Archives (Stanford, CA: Stanford General Books, 2006), 42–46 and Witold S. Sworakowski, “The Authorship of the Abdication Document of Nicholas II,” Russian Review, 30, no. 3 (July 1971): 277–286. Charles G. Palm “The Document That Ended an Empire,” Hoover Digest, no. 3 (1993), 159–164.

^11. “H. F. Meserve Dies,” New York Times (6 April 1941): 48.

^12. Lascelle Meserve de Basily, Memoirs of a Lost World (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1975), 214.

^13. Ibid., 161.

^14. “Account of a Conversation with Adolf Hitler,” box 20, folder 6, January 1932, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili papers, 1851–1973, Hoover Institution Archives.

^15. Meserve de Basily, Memoirs, 231.

^16. Ibid., 237.

^17. Ibid., 244.

^18. “Pro memoria,” box 22, folder 6, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili papers, 1851–1973, Hoover Institution Archives.

^19. Hope Ridings Miller, “Capital Whirl,” Washington Post (19 May 1942): 14.

^20. Aleksei Shcherbatov, Pravo na proshloe [The right to the past] (Moscow, Russia: Izdanie Sretenskogo monastyria, 2005), 228–229. Judging by the brief section on Nicolas de Basily, Shcherbatov’s memoirs should be treated with great care: they are often erroneous and sometimes baffling. For example, he refers to Fessenden as a surname for both Lascelle and her father, and calls the “National Bank” (in reality the National City Bank of New York) “the largest Russian bank of that time” even though it was an American bank, and he places Nicolas de Basily in a position to choose between war and peace in 1914: “I chose war,” he has Nicolas confess to him, claiming that German ambassador Friedrich von Pourtales offered to have the July crisis mediated at The Hague. In Basily’s own writings, however, the story is that it was the Germans who refused Nicholas II’s offer for mediation at The Hague (see his Memoirs, p. 97). And indeed, who was Basily in 1914 to “choose war?” Also, Nicolas de Basily did not accompany Nicholas II from Pskov in March 1917, but met his train at Orsha on its return to Mogilev (Mohilau). According to Basily in Shcherbatov’s rendition, General Mikhail Alekseev asked him to prepare the abdication decree on March 4, but the text should read March 14 (new style). Shcherbatov gives Basily’s only son’s name as Nikolai, when it was Alexander. Basily’s monograph is entitled Rossiia pod sovetskoi vlast’iu [Russia under the Soviet regime], not Dvadtsat’ let sovetskoi vlasti [Twenty years of the Soviet regime].

Schcherbatov’s errors in recounting the events of Basily’s life cannot but leave the impression that he never read Basily’s memoirs, although he did reissue them under a different title: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bazili, The Abdication of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia: A Memoir (Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1984).

Some Soviet terms in the text of Shcherbatov’s memoirs, such as “spetsvoiska” [special forces] give grounds to doubt his authorship of “his” memoirs.

^21. Meserve de Basily, Memoirs, 263. The contents of the room were described by Lascelle de Basily in The Nicolas de Basily Room of the Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1972, reissued in 2015) and in Linda Bernard and Dennis Bark, “A Room Full of Memories,” Hoover Digest, no. 2 (2011): 192–203.

^22. Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Report, 1963–1966 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University, 1966), 30.

^23. “Pis’mo Aleksandra Benua Nikolaiu de Bazili,” Diaspora, Novye Materialy 2002, no. 3: 648–670.

^24. Shcherbatov, Pravo, 389.

^25. Meserve de Basily, Memoirs, 129.

^26. Callimachi, Yesterday, 214.

^27. Imperatorskii Aleksandrovskii Litsei, 1811–19 oktiabria—1961: pamiatnaia knizhka liseistov [Imperial Alexander Lyceum, 1811–19 October—1961: commemorative book of the lyceum students] ([Munich, Germany: Buchdruckerei I. Baschkirzew, 1962?]), 159.

^28. Shcherbatov, Pravo, 388.

^29. J. Edgar Hoover to Frederick Lyon, Division of Foreign Activity Correlation and Lewis Riley, Foreign Economic Administration, 12 October 1945, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

^30. Report of Edward J. Martin, 10 September 1945, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.

^31. Report by C. Jerome Nelson, 9 October 1943, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.

^32. Report on Nicolas and Paula Koenigsberg by Kenneth Crosby (Mexico), 22 June 1945, page 1, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.

^33. Report dated 5 February 1944, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.

^34. Report by Roy Deitchler, 6 February 1943, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.

^35. Ibid., 8.

^36. Report from Buenos Aires, 8 Sept. 1943, RG 65, Entry A1-136 F, box 1, file 14–21421, Nicolas Koenigsberg file, NARA.