PREFACE by Maria Alexandrovna Tchernichev-Besorasov

Born in Russia, and brought up on the country estate of my father a hundred miles from Moscow, I inherited a strong love for outdoor life and animals of all kinds. Only at the age of  twelve was I taken on my first journey to a large city. At that time the roads in the country were very bad and the horse-drawn carriages stuck in the mud many times before reaching the nearest railroad station which was about sixty miles away. My childhood was spent hunting, skiing and skating in winter-time, and exploring the woods and rivers in summer. Happy recollections of that past still linger in my memory. Later on we would come back to that enchanting place for our summer vacation and Christmas holidays and pick up life where we had left it the year before.

I had three brothers in whose company I was educated. We used to play and have fun together as well as fight in between. This healthy life made me grow sturdy and strong. When I reached the age of fifteen, mother, deploring my tom-boy manners, engaged an English governess who was supposed to make a lady out of me. An entire summer was spent trying to reach that goal but with little success, I continued to have more interest in developing my physical strength and good marksmanship than wearing high heels, tight corsets and learning to move gracefully in a drawing-room. Then came the debutante year and at seventeen I was presented to the Imperial court of Russia and went through the routine of innumerable parties and Court balls. After four months of intense social life in St. Petersburg I married a charming young officer of the Imperial Guards. The Empress Alexandra and the Dowager Empress Marie appointed me an honorary Lady-in-waiting. In 1914 World War I was declared. I enlisted as a Red Cross nurse and left for the front where I worked until I contracted typhus and was brought back to St. Petersburg and to civilian life.