After her father's death, Mary moved back to her native Georgia and spent the rest of her youth in the west of the country with her mother and twin sisters, Ellen and Tamar.

To escape imminent imprisonment, deportation or death, Mary, along with other prominent Georgian noblemen and government officials, departed on a ship from the city of Batumi.

After arriving in Paris, Mary and George settled on the Rue de la Tour in the 16th arrondissement, a district popular with the French high society.

This situation changed when the family managed to open its own clothing atelier and further improved as Mary found a modeling position with Coco Chanel, an increasingly popular French designer at the time.

Princess Mary herself disagreed with the rumors, stressing that the poem was first published in 1915 in a Georgian journal Theater and Life, while her wedding to Prince George Eristavi did not occur until 1918.