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Updated: September 28, 2025
After she left my mother wrote to Nelka: "Max and I miss you very much. I was so happy to have you with us for a time; your visits are always so nice and cheerful. I always remember them with so much pleasure. We had a long talk with Max about you and decided you were a real friend for us and Max said: 'we must always be real friends to her. He is very fond of you."
We were tired from so much walking and so we slept. By morning it was obvious that Nelka was ill and had a temperature. We had to act quick and invent something, so we went back to the village and I entered the same hut again. The woman had quieted down and did not push us out.
Soon the lane ended and we were in thick woods. The snow was waste deep and with the fallen logs, the going was extremely difficult. We had to haul the women over the logs and pull them out of the deep snow. Both the women and especially Nelka who was ill, were completely exhausted. It was a painful procession.
By returning to Russia in 1913 and then the war breaking out the next year, she was prevented from returning to America and thus never again saw her Aunt Susie, who died without her in 1916, while Nelka was at the front. She then stayed on through the war and then the Revolution, and we were married in 1918.
Because of these conflicting feelings and attachments Nelka was restless and went back and forth between Europe and America always seeking a solution and a way of life. I think these conflicting feelings and the deep attachment to her family were the main reasons why for so long she had not married. She just was afraid to create or add a new attachment.
But decide she did and so one day early in September 1918 we went to Tsarskoe Selo, an hour by train from Petrograd where an old aunt of mine lived. We were married in a church there with just a handful of friends in attendance. Nelka wore a white sister's uniform for her wedding dress. My old aunt who was very fond of Nelka took off a gold bracelet she wore and put it on Nelka's arm.
During that winter my mother moved from the country where we were living to Petersburg, and Nelka happened to be with us when this took place and took part in the moving. Here is some of the description of the event: Kovno 1914. "We followed the next day with a dog and a cat. Veta, Max and I with all the baggage, a parrot 'Tommy' and two small birds in separate cages.
It had been a winter entirely filled with social activities balls, dinners, the White House, the Embassies and Nelka could not stand it any longer and was seeking some contrast. She certainly achieved the contrast all right, for as soon as she returned to Russia she was sent to the outskirts of the Oural Mountains.
Nelka rode a horse named 'Vive la France. If they were to move any distance they were loaded into trains. She always remembered a dark autumn night unloading the horses from the train in the dark, in the woods, and right next to the position of artillery batteries, firing steadily the difficulty of controlling and trying to keep the horses reasonably quiet.
They were settled in a large agricultural school building in very fine surroundings. I managed to visit Nelka at that hospital for a few days. Soon, however, the fighting resumed and the Germans resumed their advance. The hospital once again had to be moved. At that moment Nelka came down with a very severe case of scarlet fever.
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