CHAPTER III

THE EMPRESS ALIX

When the Princess Alix of Hesse left Darmstadt for the Crimea in order to be present at the death-bed of the Emperor Alexander III., there was one paper in Germany that dared to print what was spoken of in secret among many people, and to express some apprehension as to the fate that awaited the young bride in that distant country whither she was speeding in quest of an Imperial Crown.

Her marriage was not popular among her own country folk. The Protestant feelings of the German people revolted against the change of religion to which she would have to submit, and moreover there existed at that time a terrible prejudice in Hesse against Russia and everything that was Russian. The union which the Princess was about to contract was not popular, and, rightly or wrongly, it was firmly believed that she was being forced into it against her will; that, left to herself, she would have preferred to end her days in the peace of the little Darmstadt Court than to live among the splendours of St. Petersburg. It was this feeling that she was about to be sacrificed to reasons of State which inspired for her a pity that was freely expressed in the article already referred to and which is quoted hereunder:--

“It is only with feelings of deep grief and pity that the German people can follow during her journey to Russia the gracious and beloved Princess Alix. I cannot banish from

my thoughts the secret forewarning that this Princess, who wept such bitter tears when she left Darmstadt, will have a life full of tears and bitterness on foreign soil. One need not be a prophet to foresee what conflict of thoughts and impressions will crowd within the heart of the august bride during these decisive weeks: Human law requires that a young girl follows the husband of her choice into the unknown.

“But the German people _cannot_ consider this marriage with joy nor with the charm of things where the heart alone is in question. The German people cannot forget the old saying of the poet: ‘Princes are only the slaves of their position; they must not follow the leanings of their own hearts.’

“If we cast a glance upon the Tsar fighting against the throes of death; upon the ‘private life’ of the bridegroom; upon the renunciation of the evangelical faith of the Princess, a faith to which she has belonged to this day, sincere and convinced as to its truth--we consider that only an heroic nature can overcome all these terrors:

“After the German people had, until the last hour, reckoned on the rupture of this union, which cannot bring any happiness for the bride, so far as it is possible to judge of these things in advance, it only remains to feel ashamed that, in the country of liberty of conscience and of convictions, one can make to political considerations the sacrifice of one’s faith and of one’s heart.

“One would learn with a deep joy in Germany that the Princess has found by the side of her husband real and lasting happiness. In the meanwhile we can only indulge in wishes for her welfare, and hope for the best in presence of this dark and uncertain future.”

Nevertheless, in spite of the wrench which she must have undergone when parting from her country and from her family and friends, the Princess Alix was not so sorry, after all, to be married. Her life had not been a happy one in her home circle.

She had been left an orphan quite young, and when her father had died she had remained with her brother, and, so to speak, had kept house for him, spending also a good deal of her time in England with her grandmother, Queen Victoria. This unsettled kind of life had, as was to be expected, exercised an influence on the character of the young Princess, who had acutely felt the subordinate position into which events had thrust her.

When her brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, married, she did not get on with his consort, though the latter happened to be her own cousin, the daughter of her uncle the Duke of Coburg.

All these circumstances had given an element of bitterness to a temper which from nature was haughty and not pliable. Many of those peculiarities which she developed in after life can also be ascribed to the difficult time of her early youth. Deprived when quite a baby of a mother’s care, there had been no elements of softness introduced into her education, which, though carried out on strict lines, yet had not been so well attended to as should have been the case. Strong principles were instilled, but she was not taught that virtue must be amiable, especially in its contact with others and in its application to the events of existence.

The question of her marriage with the Heir to the Throne of Russia had been mooted long before this marriage became an accomplished fact. The Grand Duke of Hesse had even brought her on a visit to the Russian Court when she was beginning to go out into Society, but though at the time it was whispered that she was destined to become the bride of the Tsarevitch, yet nothing came of this visit, which, on the contrary, left bitter memories to the Princess Alix. She did not like the off-hand way in which she was treated, not only by the Imperial Family but also by St. Petersburg Society to whom she did not appeal, either by her manners or by her personal appearance, which was not then so beautiful as it became ultimately.

The idea of a German marriage was not popular in Russia, and it was hoped that the future Emperor would not choose his wife from that country. The Princess Alix was hurt at this latent animosity against her, which she felt rather than saw, and, of course, she resented it.

When the question of her wearing the Imperial Crown of the Romanoffs came to be seriously discussed a few years later, the idea did not appeal to her. The brilliancy of the position did not dazzle her, and her whole soul revolted at the thought that she would have to live in a country which had left such unpleasant impressions on her mind.

However, the advice of Queen Victoria, who was anxious for her granddaughter to accept the brilliant match thus offered to her, and the fact of the strained relations existing between her and her sister-in-law, the Grand Duchess of Hesse, with whom she was obliged to live, combined to prevail upon her, and she finally consented to become the bride of Nicholas Alexandrovitch.

At first it was intended to surround their nuptials with all the pomp and festivities which usually attend such occasions. But the fatal illness of the Emperor Alexander changed all these plans; and when the Princess Alix arrived in Russia, alone and with the utmost speed, she knew that she would not have to undergo the sometimes painful apprenticeship to the position of an Empress, which normally would have been the case, but at once would assume in her new country the position of the first lady in the land. She felt dazed and stunned by the turn events had taken. During the months that had elapsed since her engagement to the Tsarevitch she had tried to infuse some affectionate comradeship into her relations with him and to get to know him; she but partially succeeded. Both were timid, both were embarrassed in the position in which they found themselves placed, and both felt that theirs was more a union of convenience than one of affection. Their ideas were totally different, their bringing-up had been conducted on quite different lines; but they had one point in common: an exalted opinion of their own importance and their own capacities. This was to constitute the best bond between them.

When the Princess Alix first reached Russia, she had the best intentions to try to win the affections of the people who surrounded her. Her conduct during those first trying days was perfect, but she displayed no spontaneity in the care in which she performed what she considered to be her duties. She did not utter one single word that could have been badly construed; she did not overlook any of the small details of Russian Court etiquette, and she was respectful with those relatives of her future husband whose age and position commanded respect, whilst amiable with the others. But she forbore to express her private opinions, and whilst strictly polite with the people she met, she was neither frank nor familiar. The haughtiness which she did not attempt to hide was attributed to timidity, and, owing to the peculiarly sad circumstances that attended her first steps in the country which was about to become her own, the public viewed with indulgence all her actions, and were loud in their praise of her. They repeated all the kind words she was heard to utter; they admired the deference with which she spoke of the Dowager Empress and the respectful attitude she assumed towards her.

When, after the funeral of Alexander III., the arrangements for the marriage of Nicholas were discussed, and the question was broached as to where the Emperor and his bride were to live whilst the apartments in the Winter Palace were being got ready, the Princess Alix declared at once that they had better stop at the Anitchkov Palace with the Empress Mother, adding “that it was not the time when mamma ought to be left with another empty place at her dining-table.” She cheerfully seemed to allow her mother-in-law to keep that first place which had been hers for so long, and in its affection and tenderness her whole demeanour towards her was touching in the extreme.

Alas, alas! these halcyon days were not to last long. The Court mourning for the late Tsar had not come to an end when the public began to criticise the young Empress, and the enthusiasm of the first months cooled down and gradually gave place to hard judgments and unpleasant remarks. Alexandra Feodorovna had not the gift to make herself lovable nor to inspire sympathy. She developed a harsh, cruel temper, with fits of caprice worthy of a spoilt child. She did not like many things which she found were usual in Russia, and she made no secret of her desire to reform them. She contrived to offend the very people she should have conciliated, and in consequence her actions, contrasting as they did with those of the Dowager Empress, were severely judged and criticised. For instance, though it is etiquette at the Russian Court for ladies to kiss the Sovereign’s hand, Marie Feodorovna and her predecessors had never thought of allowing them to do so, and it was only débutantes on their presentation of whom this was required. With married ladies, however, the Empress invariably prevented them from performing that act of homage. But when Alexandra Feodorovna began to receive St. Petersburg Society, she extended her hand for the traditional kiss and seemed to impose it. She mostly granted her audiences standing and in the stiffest manner possible, never making a distinction where she ought to have done so. This incensed people against her, and all the dowagers who had come out of their retirement to be presented to her upon her marriage bitterly resented the haughty, disdainful way in which she received them. They immediately became her enemies and never spared criticism, which was the more unfortunate because there was much in her manner to be criticised.

Among other unpleasant gifts the young Empress had that of calling a spade a spade, and of giving an explanation of the reason which she thought she had for doing such and such a thing. She determined, for instance, to invite to her balls only ladies with unblemished reputations, and in order to prevent any black sheep entering her drawing-rooms she listened to every possible gossip concerning the Society of the capital. After weighing this more or less carefully, she had the list of invitations for the next Court ball brought to her and scratched out with her own hand the names of all those whom she thought fit to exclude. The result was disastrous. Only a few guests, elderly ladies, were present. St. Petersburg was incensed, and loud in its indignation. Indeed, the scandal assumed such proportions that at last the Emperor decided to allow his mother to look through, as she used to do formerly, the lists of the people invited to the Palace. The pretext given for this action was that his wife was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the ins and outs of the Society of the capital.

But this measure did not appease the wrath of the slighted ones; it only added to the popularity of the Dowager Empress, and to the dislike for her daughter-in-law, and at the next New Year’s reception at the Winter Palace very few ladies, not obliged to do so by virtue of their official position, were present. The young Empress was boycotted, and nothing since has effaced that first impression which she so unfortunately contrived to create around her person.

One must, however, say one thing. Alexandra Feodorovna has had plenty of bad luck in her life. I shall relate one instance as an example. It is very well known that the Empress possesses but a very imperfect knowledge of the French language. Now French is spoken more than any other language in St. Petersburg, and the lingual mistakes of Alexandra Feodorovna were seized upon with avidity by her enemies and circulated widely everywhere. One fine day a very old dowager, who by virtue of her deceased husband’s position was one of the leaders of Society and of the official world, decided to emerge from the retirement in which she had lived for a great many years, and to ask for the favour of a presentation to the young Sovereign. The latter received her standing, as she usually did; this aroused the ire of the old lady, who was further incensed when she saw that she was evidently expected to kiss the hand that was by no means graciously extended to her. With such a prelude the conversation could not be anything but stiff. At last, seeing that all her efforts at small talk met with no success, the lady asked the Empress whether she did not find the climate of St. Petersburg very trying. “Yes,” replied the Sovereign, “but”--and here the phrase must be repeated in French as it was uttered, or it would lose its point--“_l’automne dernier j’ai pu me promener tous les jours dans le Crime_.” The unfortunate creature had literally translated her phrase from the German, in which the Crimea is called “_der Krim_”; but one can imagine what laughter such an utterance, repeated all round with alacrity, aroused, and how it was discussed and commented upon everywhere.

On another occasion this ignorance of the French language was to lead the Empress into trouble. One day she had to write to a certain Ambassadress, and in doing so she made several mistakes in the spelling of words. The recipient of the letter, who did not count kindness among her many qualities, showed this note to several of her intimate friends, and these, of course, carried it farther. All these things were but trivial, and had Alexandra Feodorovna succeeded in making herself liked they would have remained unnoticed; but under the existing circumstances they were made the subject of every possible kind of attack. At last it became a case of “Give a dog a bad name and hang it,” and even the virtues of the Empress and her good qualities were turned into opportunities to discredit her.

She was not amiable or conciliating among her immediate entourage, and her ladies-in-waiting had to put up with a lot from her imperious temper and her cold and disdainful manner. She did not forgive them the slightest failing in their duties, and treated them with high disdain. She never allowed them to sit down in her presence, even expecting them to stand whilst reading aloud to her. They were always obliged, also, to be ready in full dress to await her commands, no matter whether she required their services or not.

One must be fair and say that the young Empress encountered many difficulties in her daily life. First and foremost among them was the subordinate position to which she found herself relegated. The Dowager Empress was intensely popular and immensely liked, and, moreover, did not like to play second fiddle where she had reigned for a number of years. She thrust aside her daughter-in-law in a most unceremonious way, and instead of drawing the latter’s attention to her mistakes she magnified them and used them to keep hold of both authority and position.

Being at the head of all the educational and charitable institutions in the country, she refused to delegate the slightest part of this arduous work to Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on her part, was eager to assert herself in all matters relating to good works, and who, despairing of being able to do so in an effectual manner, tried to invent means to exercise her activity in that direction. She opened a kind of working-room for making clothes for poor children, and began by personally attending to the administration of this institution, calling upon ladies belonging to the upper classes to attend the weekly reunions of the committee, over which she presided. At first the thing took, and the new _Ouvroir_, as it was called at the Winter Palace, became a rendezvous for Society; but when the Court left the capital to settle permanently at Tsarskoye Selo, Society took no further interest in the charitable work. When Nicholas II. and his consort were crowned the unpopularity of Alexandra Feodorovna was already a recognised fact, and it came into evidence during the Moscow festivities, when the difference between the reception she received and that accorded to her mother-in-law could not but have impressed itself upon her, as it did upon all those who were present on this occasion in the old capital. At that moment the Empress, by a strong effort, might still have changed the impression of dislike which she inspired, and which was aggravated by the fact that instead of bringing into the world the much-hoped-for son, that all Russia was expecting, she had given birth to a daughter. The breach was further widened by her attitude when the Khodinsky catastrophe took place. Had she shown some heart and commiseration for the victims sentiment would have changed, but on the same day that it occurred she attended a ball at the French Embassy, and danced as if nothing had happened; and during the days which followed upon that terrible episode she never once went to a hospital to visit the sick and wounded. This apparent indifference, perhaps, arose from the fact that she did not care to appear to imitate the Dowager Empress--whose first impulse had been to rush to the bedside of the wounded--or perhaps, also, she may have felt afraid of interfering with the directions given by her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, it occasioned bitter comment among the public, and she won for herself the reputation of being a heartless woman.

It must not be supposed that this dislike was unknown to the Empress. On the contrary, she was very well aware of it, and instead of inspiring in her the wish to do something to allay it, it made her harder even than she was by nature. She bitterly resented what she considered to be an awful injustice, in view of the good intentions with which she knew she had come to Russia. This feeling that she was misunderstood inspired her with the proud resolution to have as little as possible to do with the nation who had misjudged her so thoroughly, and whose prejudices against her she was too disdainful even to attempt to dissipate.

Misfortune seemed to be her lot. Four times her hopes of giving an Heir to the Crown were brought to naught as one girl after another was born to her, adding to her blighted life the knowledge that in this respect Russia was bitterly disappointed. Her relations with her husband were affectionate, but not tender, and she never knew how to manage him, or to develop by her sympathy the best side of his nature; her manner towards him, also, was not what it ought to have been. She treated him more like a naughty boy than like a monarch whose first subject she was. In the early days of their marriage it was related that one evening, when they had a few people to tea at Tsarskoye Selo, feeling tired and desiring to withdraw, she turned towards the Emperor, and said to him in English, a language always spoken in the Imperial Family, “Now come, my boy; it is time for me to go to bed.” One may imagine the stupefaction which this phrase caused among a people accustomed to all the rigidity of etiquette which had always ruled the Court of St. Petersburg. They could not understand how an Empress could forget herself so far in the presence of others as to address the Tsar of All the Russias as “my boy.”

All this appears at first sight insignificant, but in reality it sounded the knell of the respect in which the monarch had been held to that day, and it destroyed a great deal of his prestige, rousing at the same time a furious indignation against Alexandra Feodorovna, among all the old adherents of the autocratic regime, which, unknown to herself, she has done so much to shatter.

The disasters of the Japanese War left a deep impression on the mind of Alexandra Feodorovna, and added to the sadness of a naturally sad disposition; she began to tremble, not only for the safety of her Throne, but also for that of the son who at last, after many weary years of waiting, was born to her in the midst of unparalleled disasters. On that child she concentrated all her affections, and for him she trembled constantly. Before he came into the world her nerves already had begun to become affected. She had unfortunately allowed herself to be drawn into a circle of people, among whom the Grand Duke Nicholas and his wife were the most prominent, who were addicted to spiritualistic practices. A medium became an important personage at Court, and succeeded in imposing his influence even on the Emperor, who went so far as to consult him on matters of State.

The Empress’s nerves are certainly not in a sound condition, and this fact ought to be taken into consideration when thinking or speaking about her. The horrors of the Revolution left a deep impression upon her mind; she has no fatalism in her character, and lives in dread of seeing her children and husband murdered. Her highly strung nature takes more seriously even than they deserve certain circumstances which surround her, and she has not enough command of herself to meet with courage whatever fate lies before her. Not understanding that Sovereigns must pay with their persons for the privileges of their position in the world, she spends her time in imploring her husband to put himself and his family into safety instead of urging him to come forward and to confront whatever danger lies before him.

When it was said that the workmen of the capital were marching towards the Winter Palace and wanted to see their Tsar, Alexandra Feodorovna begged her husband to fly to Tsarskoye Selo for safety, and she has never wanted to return to the capital since that fateful day.

Owing to her nervousness the breach between the Sovereign and his people has become complete, and the estrangement that divides them has assumed proportions that can only become wider and wider as time goes by. For many people now the Emperor and Empress appear as very distant beings, something like the Mikado of Japan was before the reforms effected in that country raised it to the level of a European nation. In Society the Imperial Family serves only as a subject of gossip and nothing else, and it must be owned that never so much as at the present time has it given reason for it.

More and more the Empress shows her dislike for the Society of St. Petersburg, and whenever she can do it she flies away to the Crimea, which is the one place she cares for. She has had a new palace built there to replace the simple cottage where Alexander III. breathed his last, and she spends months in it, far from everybody, but showing herself more amiable than anywhere else to the few people privileged to see her. There also she entertains in a quiet way, and has even been known to give a dance for her daughters, which she witnessed from the door of a room near the one in which the festivity took place. She did not mix with her guests, but she looked at them, and this was already spoken of as a surprising event, so little had she been seen before. The great preoccupation of the Empress is her son; no child has ever been so spoiled as has the little Grand Duke, and no child has ever been brought up in a worse manner. Were he destined to live, it would be terrible to contemplate the future of Russia under his guidance; as it is, one can afford to pity him, and to pity his parents, for whom he represents so much. But I shall have more to say on that subject later on.

Some people say that Alexandra Feodorovna is mad, and that her madness takes an erotic direction, which accounts for the seclusion in which she is kept, and which is given out to be of her own desire. I do not believe in this rumour, which perhaps is circulated in order to account for her vagaries and extravagances of behaviour; but what I do think is that she is a woman very unfortunate in her life and in her friendships, who, dissatisfied by nature, always yearns for the impossible.