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Authors: Robert Goddard
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on the Tsar , published while they were at Cambridge, even though he could not recall what those theories were. Their interest had been heightened by Clem’s airy claim to have met Anastasia – the real Anastasia – during his brush with the Russian imperial family in Cowes in August 1909. He had supposedly visited the imperial yacht to receive the thanks of the Tsar and Tsarina for saving their eldest daughters, Olga and Tatiana, from assassination and Anastasia had briefly spoken to him. ‘A forward little girl’, was his later summation. She would have been eight years old at the time, so perhaps it was not surprising he had no more to say about her than that.
But perhaps, Eusden was now forced to consider, Clem’s dismissive attitude was a smokescreen. It was otherwise hard to account for his presence in Hamburg in the spring of 1960 as a witness in Anna Anderson’s civil action for recognition as sole surviving child of the last Tsar of All the Russias.
‘I had no idea trying to find out who Clem’s mysterious Danish pen pal was would lead to Anastasia,’ said Marty as he lit a third Camel from the end of the second. ‘I was just looking for something to take my mind off . . . well, death, frankly; specifically, my own. Anyway, I went to Copenhagen to get the goods on Hakon Nydahl. He was a Danish naval officer who graduated to a number of confidential court appointments. Gets a shortish write-up in the Danish DNB. Born 1884, which makes him just a few years older than Clem. His bit-part in history comes in 1920, when the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, arrived back in her native Denmark, where she was known by her original Danish name, Dagmar. She’d been in the Crimea when the Soviets started rounding up royals after the October Revolution and was evacuated on a British warship. Her sister was Edward the Seventh’s widow, Queen Alexandra. After staying with her for a while, Dagmar headed for Copenhagen and moved into a house in the seaside resort of Klampenborg, which she and Alexandra kept as a holiday home. King Christian the Tenth, her nephew, appointed Nydahl to manage her affairs. And that’s what he did, dutifully and diligently, until her death in 1928. Anna Anderson had gone public with her claim to be Anastasia by then, but Dagmar dismissed her as an impostor without even bothering to meet her. There’s not much more to say about Nydahl, if you trust the official accounts. He died a bachelor in 1961, aged seventy-seven.’
‘How come he was in touch with Clem, then?’ asked Eusden, when no explanation was immediately forthcoming.
‘That’s what I wondered, obviously. There’s no apparent connection. But clearly there was one. Why else would Clem go to the bother of learning Danish?’
‘Why would he anyway? A courtier like Nydahl must have spoken English.’
‘Secrecy, maybe? Clem could be sure no one in our family – or in Cowes, come to that – was going to be able to read letters written in Danish.’
‘But what was there to be secret about?’
‘That’s what I tried to find out. I hit a brick wall at first. Then I did what I should have done earlier: look for Nydahl on the Web. He gets a single mention, in one of the hundreds of Anastasia-related sites. Needless to say, there are a lot of people out there in cyberspace convinced she was the genuine article and the DNA results were faked. I put out some feelers and Werner responded. It was my name that did it. He’d been trying to discover who Clem Hewitson was for years because of his father’s account of Clem’s mysterious participation in the Anna Anderson court case. Apparently, the judges wanted to hear testimony from Nydahl about Dagmar’s attitude to the claimant. Nydahl said he was too ill to appear, but suggested Clem could tell them all they needed to know. Otto Straub, like most other observers, couldn’t understand what this retired British police officer had to do with it. And they
But perhaps, Eusden was now forced to consider, Clem’s dismissive attitude was a smokescreen. It was otherwise hard to account for his presence in Hamburg in the spring of 1960 as a witness in Anna Anderson’s civil action for recognition as sole surviving child of the last Tsar of All the Russias.
‘I had no idea trying to find out who Clem’s mysterious Danish pen pal was would lead to Anastasia,’ said Marty as he lit a third Camel from the end of the second. ‘I was just looking for something to take my mind off . . . well, death, frankly; specifically, my own. Anyway, I went to Copenhagen to get the goods on Hakon Nydahl. He was a Danish naval officer who graduated to a number of confidential court appointments. Gets a shortish write-up in the Danish DNB. Born 1884, which makes him just a few years older than Clem. His bit-part in history comes in 1920, when the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, arrived back in her native Denmark, where she was known by her original Danish name, Dagmar. She’d been in the Crimea when the Soviets started rounding up royals after the October Revolution and was evacuated on a British warship. Her sister was Edward the Seventh’s widow, Queen Alexandra. After staying with her for a while, Dagmar headed for Copenhagen and moved into a house in the seaside resort of Klampenborg, which she and Alexandra kept as a holiday home. King Christian the Tenth, her nephew, appointed Nydahl to manage her affairs. And that’s what he did, dutifully and diligently, until her death in 1928. Anna Anderson had gone public with her claim to be Anastasia by then, but Dagmar dismissed her as an impostor without even bothering to meet her. There’s not much more to say about Nydahl, if you trust the official accounts. He died a bachelor in 1961, aged seventy-seven.’
‘How come he was in touch with Clem, then?’ asked Eusden, when no explanation was immediately forthcoming.
‘That’s what I wondered, obviously. There’s no apparent connection. But clearly there was one. Why else would Clem go to the bother of learning Danish?’
‘Why would he anyway? A courtier like Nydahl must have spoken English.’
‘Secrecy, maybe? Clem could be sure no one in our family – or in Cowes, come to that – was going to be able to read letters written in Danish.’
‘But what was there to be secret about?’
‘That’s what I tried to find out. I hit a brick wall at first. Then I did what I should have done earlier: look for Nydahl on the Web. He gets a single mention, in one of the hundreds of Anastasia-related sites. Needless to say, there are a lot of people out there in cyberspace convinced she was the genuine article and the DNA results were faked. I put out some feelers and Werner responded. It was my name that did it. He’d been trying to discover who Clem Hewitson was for years because of his father’s account of Clem’s mysterious participation in the Anna Anderson court case. Apparently, the judges wanted to hear testimony from Nydahl about Dagmar’s attitude to the claimant. Nydahl said he was too ill to appear, but suggested Clem could tell them all they needed to know. Otto Straub, like most other observers, couldn’t understand what this retired British police officer had to do with it. And they
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