CHAPTER XXI

THE 300TH ANNIVERSARY OF A DYNASTY

It was a bleak and wet though not cold winter morning to which St. Petersburg awoke on March 6th, 1913. For weeks people had talked about what the anniversary would mean to Russia, and had been eagerly awaiting it. For it was to commemorate the momentous events that had taken place three centuries before, when the deputation of the Boyars of Moscow, headed by its venerable Patriarch, had set forth for the distant town of Kostroma, to offer the crown of the Ruriks to the young son of the two victims of the cruel Boris Godounov, the monk Philaret Romanoff and his wife Martha the nun, who had been thrown by Boris into cloisters whence he had never expected to emerge. How many important events had taken place in the history of Russia since that memorable day! and how closely the Romanoff Dynasty had identified itself with the nation that had called them to its head in those troubled and dark times, when it had seemed that the country was going to fall for ever under the Polish yoke! How many sad and terrible, how many glorious pages also had been added to the book of its history! Truly it was an anniversary to be rendered for ever memorable.

Had Nicholas I., his son Alexander II., or the late Tsar been alive, it is probable that some stupendous work of charity, as well as a wide political amnesty, would have marked that day. The public expected some such thing to happen. It hoped that some lasting monument would be raised by the initiative of the Sovereign, to render it for ever memorable; that mercies should be shown, miseries relieved, tears dried, an impulse given both to public and to private charities; something attempted to raise the moral standard of the people by the creation of new schools and educational establishments. In short, they expectantly hoped that the monarch would look from the height of his Throne to where so many needs waited to be satisfied, where so much was expected to be done, and had to be done if Russia was to emerge from her present state of semi-barbarism to take her place among the nations. Not only in political and social spheres did dire need exist, but also and especially exigent was the education of the lower classes, which at present constitute in Russia such a dangerous element in her social fabric, and who threaten to overturn the present order of things without being able to replace it by anything rational.

Nevertheless, March 6th was destined to overthrow all these hopes. The manifesto published upon that occasion disappointed everybody, even those who benefited by it. People had expected as a certainty that a wide political amnesty would wipe off old scores, allow old grievances to be forgotten, and permit people to begin their lives over again. One had hoped that on the morning of that spring day some who were living far away in the country of eternal snow and ice would wake up to the realisation that their exile was over, that henceforward they would be free to return to their old homes. Another had believed that the words of the nun Martha, when she blessed her only son on his being called to the Throne, and wished him to reign for the peace and joy of his people, would be remembered by her descendant, and that he, too, would wish to bring peace to those who trusted him and his instincts of mercy. But all these hopes, these tremulous anticipations, these flickering visions of mercy and peace, failed of realisation.

Any Sovereign placed in such exceptional circumstances would surely have had the impulse to do something for the nation in order to improve the general conditions of its existence. Such thoughts may have animated Nicholas II., but if they did they died before they were given expression. A large gift of a few millions coming from his private purse would have made him none the poorer, and would have brought again to him the popularity which he had been steadfastly losing ever since the day of his accession to the Throne of the Romanoffs. That sum, spent in building new schools, or even hospitals in various large towns in Russia, would have made his name and person popular all over the country; would have brought him blessings and thanks from millions of poor people whose needs, physical and moral, such a gift would have met. But apparently no such idea occurred to him or to his Consort. On March 6th their only thought was to admire the decorations and the bunting displayed in the streets of the capital; they accepted the addresses, felicitations, and gifts of their subjects. For all the outward expression evinced they never, even for one single moment, gave their attention to the fact that in return for what was presented to them they also ought to give something to those who offered them all that was in their means to give.

The amnesty so solemnly promulgated proved to be nothing less than a farce. All the thieves and common malefactors who were crowding the prisons of St. Petersburg and the other towns of the Empire were set free, but the political exiles, men of culture and the highest civic and private virtue, were left to their sad fate, with only their sorrow and their despairing memories.

There was one personage who had been the object of the general pity because a feeling of honesty, unknown generally in a man placed in the position he was in at the time of his fall and condemnation, had led him to tell the truth about the conduct and machinations of the political police of which he was the head. M. Lapoukhine had been followed into his exile by the sympathy not only of those who knew him well but also of many persons who had never seen him. It was felt that he was a victim of a corrupt order of things, perhaps also of private revenge coming from such high quarters that one could not even mention them. One had fully believed that the three hundredth year of the reign of the Romanoff Dynasty would bring him a free pardon and the right to take up once more his place in a Society that had never excluded him from its midst. But March 6th came and went, and nothing was heard about this unfortunate man, and this indifference to his fate raised such a storm of indignation everywhere that even the feelings of loyalty of many which until then had never wavered began to be shaken in presence of this arrant injustice.

A few days later, however, the mistake was rectified, and M. Lapoukhine was allowed to leave Siberia; but the first impression could not be corrected. It was felt that this act of mercy, coming as it did after the time it was hoped for, was robbing it of its whole grandeur and generosity. On the Jubilee Day it would have raised a universal acclamation; a week later, it fell flat, because it appeared to have been merely compelled by the general indignation evoked by its neglect on an occasion when peace and pardon ought to have been in the forefront with a strength that no circumstance and no advice from any individual should have been able to restrain.

The only point in which the amnesty satisfied the public was its application to all matters relating to the press and its misdeeds. There, for the first time in the history of modern Russia, the pardons granted were complete and without restrictions, and the satisfaction which they provoked was absolutely sincere and heart-whole.

It is one of the misfortunes of Nicholas II. that he is so badly advised by those who surround him.

The festivities themselves provoked no enthusiasm from the crowds. They were damped externally by the rain, which fell in torrents during the whole time they lasted, and morally by the disappointment provoked by the manifesto. The streets were sumptuously decorated, the illuminations in the town were splendid, the ball offered by the nobility of the province of St. Petersburg to the Sovereigns was like fairyland in its magnificence, but the nation remained indifferent. Its feelings were not in unison with the spirit of the celebrations; it did not share with the Imperial House the joy that House seemed to feel upon so auspicious an occasion.

The jubilee celebrations had, however, one distinguishing feature. The Emperor and his family came from Tsarskoye Selo, and for the first time since the war and the revolution resided for three days in the Winter Palace. On March 6th they drove in state to the Kazan Cathedral for a solemn service of thanksgiving. All the wealth and rank of St. Petersburg were assembled there to greet them. All the high functionaries of the Empire were present. Troops were assembled and lined the streets through which the Imperial procession passed. Their cheers alone, however, broke the stillness of those streets, for the populace was absent. Except a few chosen persons, police, and soldiers, none was present from the nation, which thus tacitly declined to participate in the festival. The Emperor himself looked grave and pale. He drove in an open carriage, with his little son seated beside him, and when he entered the cathedral a Cossack from the escort took the child in his arms and carried him inside the church, where he was placed in a chair beside his mother. The sight was inexpressibly sad, because it proved the truth of what had been whispered ever since the autumn, that the Heir to the Throne was still suffering from disease. The white, pinched, small face of the boy, gazing anxiously round him at all the sea of human beings before him, engrossed with the beauty of the unaccustomed pageant, painfully impressed the spectators in the cathedral, and many a mother among the ladies present sighed as she looked at him, murmuring to herself, “Poor little fellow, what a pity, and how sad for the parents!”

The members of the Imperial Family who had preceded the Sovereign to the cathedral bowed profoundly as he appeared through the huge doorway. The Patriarch of Antiochus, who had specially travelled to Russia for this important occasion, advanced, surrounded by priests, monks, bishops, and members of the higher clergy, whose flowing hair, long beards, golden robes, and heavily bejewelled mitres added to the picturesqueness of the spectacle. Everywhere one turned the eye rested on embroidered uniforms, glittering cuirasses, ladies attired in white, lighted tapers, and ikons shining forth in the semi-darkness of the vast cathedral, with the glory of the diamonds and precious stones which adorned them. The choristers intoned the anthem for the day in soft harmonies, which gradually grew louder and louder; whilst Nicholas II. and his Consort, bending down before the Patriarch, received from his hands the Holy Water which he presented to them, and kissed the Cross with which he blessed them.

Then they took up their places under the crimson canopy, which had been erected in their honour opposite the altar, and facing the miraculous image of Our Lady of Kazan, patroness of the church and of Russia. They stood there together, the Emperor erect, and with a glance that kept anxiously and furtively scanning the faces of the assembly as if afraid of meeting some secret danger lurking somewhere behind the pillars of the edifice; the Empress robed in white, with the blue ribbon of St. Andrew across her shoulder, sadness upon her classically beautiful features, was immobile as a statue, save when she bent down now and then over the arm-chair in which her little son had been placed. Standing a little before her, on the right side of Nicholas II., was his mother, the sweet Empress Marie, also dressed in white, with tears filling her beautiful soft eyes, the only pathetic figure in the vast assemblage save the child on whom so many hopes were centred, and who, by an irony which perhaps was realised by few among the spectators, appeared to have been brought there for the purpose of showing into what weak and frail hands was entrusted the future of that proud Romanoff Dynasty.

The head of it remained in his place throughout the Divine Service of thanksgiving, which was celebrated by all the bishops. He, too, bent his knee with his subjects during the blessing with which it ended, and then slowly he left the cathedral. As he appeared on its threshold a fleeting ray of sun rested on his head. It reminded me of that other glorious light that on an occasion perhaps even more solemn had hovered above the brow of his father Alexander III. as he emerged from the golden gates of the Church of the Assumption in Moscow, with the huge diamond crown of his ancestors which he had just assumed resting upon it. Nearly thirty years had gone by since that day; the mighty Tsar was lying in his quiet grave, and nearly all those who had accompanied him on that memorable day had also disappeared from this earthly scene. Nearly everything had been changed, but the places and people who knew him no more were weeping for him, even amidst the pomp of the present festival.

As I examined the pale, impassive features of his successor, I wondered whether he gave a thought to another bleak March morning, when, still a boy, he had waited, together with his brothers and sisters, for the return of his parents from the Winter Palace, where they had been summoned to see a monarch die whose Crown they were to inherit. Did he remember, I wondered, the first words uttered by the new Sovereign when receiving the bread and the salt with which his servants greeted him on his entering for the first time his Anitchkov Palace as the Tsar of All the Russias, “I will try to be a father to my people.” As the memory of those words rang in the ears of the few among that vast company who had heard them, what a melancholy contrast they afforded to the actual “mercies” with which Nicholas II. had seen fit to celebrate the three hundredth year of the accession of his Dynasty to the Throne of the Ruriks.

As I watched the brilliant procession pass before me, I thought, too, of that other far-away May morning which had witnessed the Coronation of Alexander III.; of the peace and prosperity which his short reign had brought to the vast Empire over the destinies of which he had so wisely presided. Whither had fled that peace he had tried so hard to establish permanently within his realms? The eighteen years that had elapsed since his death had only brought disaster, strife, uneasiness to the nation he had loved so well.

Whatever have been the faults of the Romanoffs, whatever mistakes they may have made, whatever cruelties they have been responsible for, no one can deny that they have been strong men. Fearlessly reckless sometimes, but always sincere in their convictions and their love for their people, never indifferent as to their fate and welfare. The present Tsar is the first representative of their race in whom weakness and indecision find themselves allied; the first whose existence practically counts for nothing in the eyes of his many subjects, whom they neither respect, fear, nor hate.

This indifference as to the importance of his person has never been more apparent than on that wet morning of March 6th, when he left the Kazan Cathedral to return to the Winter Palace, after having rendered his thanks to the Almighty for the protection accorded to his ancestors as well as to himself. The festival celebrated on that day was in no sense a popular one, nor did it leave any definite impression. The nation was simply interested, and perhaps in a certain degree amused, owing to the amount of bunting displayed during the day and the number of lamps lighted at night in honour of the occasion. Cheers of the kind these gauds provoke were heard, it is true; but sincere enthusiasm was totally lacking. And when, two days later, the Emperor, while attending the ball given in his honour by the nobility of St. Petersburg, replied to the address of welcome and loyalty with which they received him, the very tone in which his words were uttered seemed to be utterly wanting in firmness or conviction. True, the National Anthem was sung in reply to the speech of the monarch, and was sung with eagerness perhaps, as one might expect from the cultured imagination of such an assembly. But one felt, just as much, that this eagerness was imposed by circumstances, not that it proceeded from one of these inspirations which happen sometimes in the life of nations and unite it in one thought and one hope.

The words, as they solemnly called upon the Almighty to protect the Tsar, sounded almost defiant, but by one of those strange ironies which happen so often in life, they appeared only too appropriate to the needs of the situation as they remain at present; for never, believe me, in the whole history of Russia did a Sovereign more need the protection of the Almighty than His Majesty Nicholas II., Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, does now, in this nineteenth year of his sad and unfortunate reign!

THE END

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