Rogues Gallery Uncovered
Bad behaviour in period costume
Some non-judgmental Ogling into the scandalous lives of history’s greatest libertines’ lotharios and complete bastards
This podcast contains adult themes, reference to poison and use of the word gypsy.
DRUNK IN CHARGE OF AN ENORMOUS PENIS.
Letting it all hang out with Russia’s greatest love machine
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
As my Albanian tan fades in the overcast greyness of an English July, I have little of note to report about Roguish doings over the past fortnight.
I will say that I was introduced to some home made vodka made from Werther’s Originals boiled sweets – which if you don’t know are famous in the UK for being carried around in the pockets of old age pensioners.
Werther’s vodka isn’t as bad as it sounds but when foolishly mixed with some south American peach schnaps it becomes a powerful destructive force.
Never again.
I also attended a lovely wedding at the weekend which included a fantastic burlesque performance and was reminded by social media that 7 years previously I had been comparing a burlesque show myself in the guise of Beau Brummie the dandy from the West Midlands.
Dressing up and showing off two of my favourite things, I loved it! so of course I never did it again.
What’s that about?
There is a picture of me in costume on the about page of the website, if you feel the urge to check it out.
Shout out o clock
A very special new member shout out to Simon Cavil who not only became a Rogue with Benefits – link to the website in the show notes if you want to find out more – but also took the time to leave the podcast a lovely 5-star review.
It’s very much appreciated.
And another shout out goes to Richard Henson who got in touch via the website to suggest a Russian / Ukrainian rogue called Bloody Tam. I’m very keen to hear about non UK based rogues so this was a fascinating suggestion that I look forward to finding more about.
Apparently, he nailed children to barrels and threw them into rivers so he’s going in the ‘Complete Bastards’ section.
Right seeing as how my digestive system was pummelled by vodka and we have just had a suggestion for an eastern European rogue I suppose it’s time to get on with this
The following tale is written in the present tense of the period in which its set…. and as such, may contain attitudes and opinions of the protagonists and their times which would today be considered unacceptable.
As I’m not a heroically well endowed, hypnotically charismatic, supposedly indestructible Russian monk.
I’m not indestructible or Russian anyway
Those attitudes and opinions are… probably not mine.
MOSCOW 1915
Grigory Efimovich Rasputin opens one bleary eye and groans, “Я показал всем моем пенисе ”.
I SHOWED EVERY ONE MY PENIS
Forcing open the other, he realises that he is in possession of a truly spectacular hangover and appears to be locked in a police cell.
“What the hell did I do last night?”
It started out so well.
Rasputin, a 76-year-old widow named Ann is e ya Re shent nikova, a young woman and a male journalist had spent the evening drinking convivially at the widow’s house.
As the night wore on, they decided to take themselves into Moscow and visit a well-known gypsy restaurant on Kuz net sky Most , called “Yar”.
The restaurant was particularly well known for the beautiful women of its Sokolovsky Gypsy Choir and it was inevitable - at least to Rasputin - that they’d be falling over each other to sleep with the irresistible mystic monk.
Since he’d been seduced at the age of 14 (so he says) by some girls in his home village of Prokovskoe , Rasputin has had an almost supernatural way with the ladies.
He’s a prophet, a healer and a giver of knowledge who has moved from small time fame in the provinces to national phenomenon in St Petersburg.
Royalty have loved him for a decade and following his miraculous treatment of the young Tsarevitch Alexei’s haemophilia in 1912, in the eyes of the Empress Alexandra at least, he can do no wrong .
Some aristocrats think that a smelly peasant having so much influence over the Russian crown is a bad thing, others (mostly women) think it’s wonderful, the man himself likes dancing.
Rasputin and his friends drunkenly burst into Yar and loudly secure themselves a private second floor room.
Food is gorged, drink flows, dances are danced and the gypsy choir sings.
Rasputin decides to give his “broad peasant nature” full reign and let his long hair down.
He starts off by writing dirty notes on napkins and slipping them to the choir girls.
The notes contain such words of erotic wisdom as such as “Love Unselfishly” and are always accompanied by a wink and a leer.
His confidence is not surprising as this is the man who, despite looking like a vagrant dipped in horse hair, once had a sophisticated and respectable suburbanite called Olga Lokhtina clinging onto his penis in public shouting
“'I am your ewe, and you are Christ,”
Suffice it to say, he’s not used to rejection.
This is a shame, because as he moves from note writing to groping, he finds his roaming hands violently rebuffed by every girl in the place.
Furious at the impertinence, he swigs more vodka and becomes incandescent with rage.
Usually Rasputin’s obnoxiousness has the women swooning.
High born Russian ladies seem to like being humiliated by a gobby scarecrow. “
Are you married?” he asks “
Where is your husband?”
“Why did you come alone?”
Each question is accompanied by a mesmerizing look from those piercing grey eyes.
He always eats with his unwashed fingers and will often offer them to women to lick clean
“Humble yourself” he grins, and they do, gladly.
Gypsy girls however are made of stronger stuff and Rasputin starts to make a scene.
“I can do anything” he shouts “See this belt? It’s her majesties own work”.
He starts to pump his hips furiously “I could make the old girl dance like this if I wished.”
Deciding that loudly simulating sex with the Tsarina in a public place is her cue to leave, Anisya Reshentnikova calls for the bill.
It’s a wise move as other patrons are now asking if this loud, boorish letch really is the famous holy man Rasputin.
To confirm his identity Rasputin leaps onto their table, opens the front of his trousers and waves his pendulous genitals in their astonished faces.
It’s reputed that Rasputin’s penis is thirteen inches long although no one feels like asking for a tape measure tonight.
One woman claims that the first time she slept with him; her orgasm was so powerful she fainted.
Rasputin himself attributes his sexual stamina to a special Siberian recipe of codfish soup.
One of his alleged gay lovers says the location of a particularly large penile wart is the secret of his orgasmic success.
Whatever the reason, nobody wants to see it while they are eating borscht and listening to the balalaika.
Downstairs a British gentleman by the name of Bruce Lockhart hears “Wild shrieks of women, a man’s curses, broken glass and banging doors.”
As waiters scurry between tables apologising profusely, the police are called.
Standing on a table with his Khuy in his hand, Rasputin doesn’t think he’s doing anything wrong.
He is thought to be part of a religious group known as the Khlysty who believe that only after sinning can man truly repent and discover God.
To reach this higher state of grace – and for no other reason – they enjoy meeting up in church crypts in the middle of the night, whipping each other and then having group sex.
He certainly thinks that the greater the sinning, the greater the repentance and ultimately the greater the holiness, which is a wonderfully convenient way to be a man of God and have lots of fun at the same time.
By now Col Semenov of the Moscow police is on the scene and he’s not sure what to do.
On the one hand a scruffy, drunken pervert is bellowing filth, exposing himself and propositioning anyone in a skirt.
On the other hand, it’s the most famous man in Russia and a favourite of the Tsar.
At 2.30am he finally makes a decision and arrests Rasputin.
The holy man is led away “snarling and vowing vengeance.”
Sat in his police cell the next morning, Rasputin is just thinking that what he really needs is a shot of vodka and a prostitute when a police officer enters to tell him he is being released on orders emanating from “the highest level”.
He might call her “The old girl” and hint that they are having an affair but the Tsarina Alexandra really won’t hear a bad word said about him.
That afternoon he boards the train for Petrograd, the vents of the previous evening all but forgotten, a crowd of over excited women filling the platform and waving at his departure.
Its tricky with characters like Rasputin to be 100% sure what is true and what is not.
The mad monk had a lot of enemies particularly when he began to have an obvious influence over the decisions made by the Tsarina.
All sorts of fake stories about what a disgusting, monster he was began springing up fuelled by jealously and fear that his political meddling might destabilize Russia – which is ironic considering what happened in 1917.
Rasputin wasn’t averse to a bit of myth making himself.
He claimed that from a young age his enormous tackle made him a figure of fascination for all the local Siberian girls.
He claims to have had an almost religious experience after frolicking with three of them while swimming in a lake.
Apparently, he was also seduced as a youth by a woman named Irina Danilov Kubasova who was the wife of a local general ( of course)
She is supposed to have waited until her husband was on manoeuvres and then led teenage Rasputin to her bedroom where she ravished him with the help of six of her housemaids.
Its easy to dismiss this as bullshit ( six…yeah right Grigori) but when at the age of 20 Rasputin was exiled from his village – for unspecified reasons – along with his wife he also took one of the maids with him – a woman named Dunia Bekyeshova.
She remained one of his many mistress for years.
Rasputin’s wife, Praskovia Feodorovna, becomes the poster girl for the phrase ‘long suffering’ as if sharing the open road with your husbands mistress wasn’t bad enough, she also had to put up with Rasputin conducting unorthodox religious ceremonies in every village they passed through – which always ended with some kind of orgy.
She said that these could take place ‘in any convenient place, the woods, a barn, or the cottage of one of his converts’
She seems to have resigned herself to being one of many in Rasputin’s affections.
By dressing up promiscuity and orgies as part of a religious ceremony Rasputin gave lots of respectable single women and those in unsatisfying marriages , the chance to enjoy sex, guilt free for the first time.
As he looked like a peasant which to many of them was tantamount to being a farm animal, they could disassociate themselves from the act as – it wasn’t really cheating if wasn’t with a gentleman….and it brought them closer to God
There was something of a sacrifice however as its said that many of the women had to empty a bottle perfume over themselves before going anywhere near him because he smelt so bad
Funnily enough in the 1970s there was a perfume called Tramp.
By the time his rude Russian roadshow had reached St Petersburg he was already famous as a mystic and a healer – which is how he came to the attention of the Tsar and Tsarina.
There little boy Alexi suffered from haemophilia – a condition where blood doesn’t clot and even minor injuries can become serious.
In fairness he seems to have done a pretty good job, in helping the boy although I’m not sure if he knew why.
He stopped the use of leaches – which of course have anti-coagulant saliva – the worse thing to use on a haemophiliac and also stopped him being treated with Aspirin.
This was the wonder drug of the 1900s but does a lot of good but it thins the blood so only made the boys condition worse.
By prescribing simple rest he removed a lot of things making Alexi even more ill.
Rasputin relaxed and calmed the boy which obviously made him happy.
He didn’t really do anything to cure him however.
This didn’t matter as the moment the lad started to feel better Rasputin had carte blanche to do whatever he liked.
So, he did
Instead of some drafty barn he got his group sex jollies in a well-furnished apartment as hordes of female admirers knocked on his door for a bit of Rasputin magic.
He called is swanky new bedroom the ‘holy of holies’ and led a never-ending procession of fashionable ladies in and out.
Often, they had just danced and chanted themselves into trance like euphoria during one of his ceremonies - must have been hell for the neighbours.
There is one account of an evening when for some reason Rasputin was explaining to a room full of adoring women about the sex life of horses.
Its said that at one point he grabbed his favourite admirer by the hair and pulled her to the bedroom shouting “ ‘Come, my lovely mare”
Again, these stories are just hearsay, it’s certainly not beyond the realms of possibility for a celebrity to behave like that , but when thrown hard enough mud also sticks.
In another parallel to today celebrity idiocy, it’s also claimed that at the height of his fame husbands who wanted to appear fashionable would publicly boast that Rasputin had slept with their wives.
The Tsar finally kicked him out of St Petersburg in 1911 because of all the scandals but the Tsarina insisted that he return.
The fame couldn’t last – it never does- and when the Tsar went off to fight in the first world war Rasputin and the Tsarina became even closer. That he had an influence on her and by definition the country is not in doubt but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that they had a romantic relationship.
This didn’t stop the rumours from flying about and a series of pornographic postcards showing Rasputin and the Tsarina in a variety of erotic situations became very popular.
Rasputin’s enemies claimed that it was he who was in charge of Russia, controlling the royal wife using sex-magic.
In 1914 one of his female followers stabbed Rasputin in the stomach when he went back to his home village to visit his wife and 4 children.
She’s supposed to have shouted “I have killed the antichrist”
Rasputin’s rumoured invincibility may have begun here because despite having part of his intestines hanging out following the attack, he went on to make a full recovery.
Which brings us to the most mythologised part of Rasputin’s life – his death.
The story goes that in December 1916 a group of Russian nobles convinced that Rasputin would drag the country into defeat and ruin decided to assassinate him.
It was already widely believed that he was unkillable, but they decided to pull out all the stops.
They invited him to a high-class orgy – which he couldn’t resist.
With loud music playing to drown out any screams they plied the mad monk with his favourite sweet cakes which were literally dripping with cyanide – enough to kill a dozen men.
Rasputin wolfed them down and asked for more. One of the conspirators then emptied his revolver into him which only resulted in Rasputin becoming angry and roaring like a bull.
The rest of the gang joined in and grabbing heavy cudgels proceeded to beat Rasputin until he lay dead upon the floor.
They then took the body and threw it into the ice-cold depths of the River Neva.
When the body was recovered however it was revealed that Rasputin had in fact been alive when they checked him in and had finally dies through drowning.
Whata guy!
Or was he?
Relatively new evidence suggests that Rasputin was rather boringly killed by a single shot to the head before being thrown into the river.
The nobles who committed the deed – who the Tsar mealy exiled for a bit- made up the rest so their actions took on a more dramatic and heroic hue.
Some say that Rasputin’s outrageous behaviour and his links to the royal family helped to fuel the hatred of royalty among the ordinary people of Russia which in turn fuelled the Revolution of 1917.
This seems a bit excessive.
There are others who say that he was a genuinely holy man who has been totally maligned by history and who should be regarded in much the same way as Mother Teresa
That’s a bit excessive too
But what of his extraordinary penis?
There is a tale that claims his murderers chopped it off and threw it across the room when they were killing him and it was taken by a maid and put in a wooden box where it lay looking like quote ‘a blackened, overripe banana, about a foot long’
Apparently, it’s on display in the St Petersburg Museum of erotica where you can stare at it floating in a – sizable - glass jar of formaldehyde.
Like so much about Rasputin I really don’t know if this is true or not.
I would like to think though that as a shameless self-promoter Rasputin would have been very pleased that disco shufflers Boney M had a global hit with a song all about him
O those Russians
Next time on Rogues Gallery Uncovered
It’s the devils club….im just the manager.
Be at the head of the que for admittance to the VERY FIRST Hellfire Club
With
Phillip Duke of Wharton
Once again, I really hope you enjoyed this episode, and my Russian accent wasn’t too distressing.
In closing, I strongly urge you to visit the website roguesgalleryonline.com.
Click on the link that says “visit the website” at the bottom of this episodes show notes and you’ll go straight there.
You can sign up for a newsletter, buy some dandy merch or for a small financial outlay, become a rogue with benefits.
There are image galleries and other stuff too
it would be great to find out who you are, what you do and what you think of the podcast?
Email simon@roguesgalleryonlie.com
I’m off for a Werther’s Original
So have a great fortnight
Stay Roguish
And ill see you yesterday
