Duncan's private life was tragic. Both her children were killed in a strange accident on the River Seine in 1913. The children were in a car with their nanny when the car stalled as the driver tried to avoid a collision. He got out to hand-crank the engine, but forgot to put the brake on. The car rolled across the road, down the bank and into the river. The children and their nanny drowned. Duncan married poet Sergei Yesenin (1895–1925) in 1922. He left her in 1923, and hanged himself two years later.