Romola de Pulszky

Romola de Pulszky (or Romola Pulszky), (married name Nijinsky; February 20, 1891 – June 8, 1978), was a Hungarian aristocrat, the daughter of a politician and an actress. Her father had to go into exile when she was a child, and committed suicide in Australia. As a young woman she became interested in dance and specifically Vaslav Nijinsky, the noted premier danseur of the Ballets Russes. They married in Buenos Aires in 1913 while the company was on tour. They had two daughters, before he was institutionalized for the remaining 30 years of his life for schizophrenia.

In 1934 Romola de Pulszky published her first biography of Nijinsky, covering his early life and dance career. She discovered his diary, written before he went into an asylum, which she published in a "bowdlerized" version in 1936. She published a biography of her husband's later years in 1952, two years after his death in London.

Romola de Pulszky was born in Hungary as the second daughter of Emilia Márkus, the most renowned Hungarian actress of her time, and Károly (Charles) Pulszky (1853-1899), a Hungarian politician, member of Parliament and director of the Hungarian National Gallery of Art. His family came from Poland and were of French Huguenot descent, but had converted to Catholicism. Her older sister Tereza was called Tessa. Their father went into exile because of a political scandal associated with art purchases for the gallery, first to London and then to Australia. Romola was eight years old when he committed suicide at the age of 45 in Brisbane, Australia. She was deeply disturbed by the loss and resented her mother's remarriage a few years later.

Romola struggled with studies and direction, trying to work at acting but failed. She became engaged to a Hungarian baron at the age of 21, but called it off in 1912 after having seen the Ballets Russes. She decided to shift her focus to the theatrical world of ballet. She was particularly astounded by and attracted to the dancing of Vaslav Nijinsky, as were all of his audiences.

She fixed on wanting to dance for the Ballets Russes and become close to Nijinsky. For months she traveled on tour to South America with the Ballets Russes and gained approval from the group's director, Sergei Diaghilev, to take ballet lessons from their ballet master Enrico Cecchetti. Not realizing that he was in an intimate relationship with Diaghilev (who was seventeen years older than Nijinsky), she found it difficult to talk to Nijinsky alone, who was protected by a minder. She eventually got close to them while on a ship headed for South America. Diaghilev had decided against touring with the company and remained in Europe. Days before their arrival to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Nijinsky proposed to Romola and they married in port on September 10, 1913, shortly after they arrived.

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