[Illustration: H.I.M. ALEXANDRA
(Given to the Author at Tsarskoe Selo, Spring, 1909)]
THE
REAL TSARITSA
BY
MADAME LILI DEHN
CLOSE FRIEND OF THE
LATE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA
[Illustration]
THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD.
15 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C.2
_First Published---- April, 1922_
TSARKOE SELO
To
H.I.M. ALEXANDRA
THE LATE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA
_Adieu, c’est pour un autre monde_
The fate which destined thee for lofty power,
And crowned thee Sovereign o’er an Empire wide,
Placed too the cup of suffering by thy side
And sorrow gave thee for imperial dower:
How little did’st thou dream in Fortune’s hour
Thy barque would founder on such tragic tide
Of blood as wrecks a mighty nation’s pride,
While black the clouds of Revolution lower!
What force sustained thee in those days of stress
When death and ruin held their sombre court,
And frenzied mob set might all right above?
What made thee still thy prayers to Heav’n address,
And solace to thy stricken spirit brought?
’Twas faith unshaken in a God of love.
OSWALD NORMAN.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
H.I.M. Alexandra _Frontispiece_
Anna (Ania) Virouboff _to face page_ 48
Her Imperial Majesty with Titi " 56
Her Imperial Majesty with the Tsarevitch " 56
H.I.M. The Tsar with Officers of the Royal Yacht “Standart” " 96
The Empress on board the “Standart” " 96
H.I.M. on board the tender of the “Standart” " 96
Grand Duchess Olga " 104
Grand Duchess Tatiana " 104
The Imperial Family " 152
Royal Shooting Party " 160
The Tsarevitch at G.H.Q. " 160
The Tsarevitch and his Spaniel “Joy” " 160
His Imperial Majesty and the Tsarevitch " 184
H.I.M. Alexandra (end of 1915) " 184
The Empress at Tobolsk " 208
The Empress with Tatiana at Tsarkoe Selo " 208
The Grand Duchesses Marie and Anastasie " 208
FACSIMILIA
Part of letter of June 5/18, 1917 _to face page_ 240
Part of letter of March 2/15, 1918 " 245
Note from the Empress " 208
Part of letter on day of departure for Siberia " 234
Letter from the Empress (1916) " 235
Part of letter of 30th July, 1917 " 241
Christmas Card drawn by the Empress " 242
FOREWORD
In giving to the world my memories of the Empress Alexandra of Russia, I
do not wish to pose as one who is biased by a long and intimate
friendship. I write of the Tsaritsa as I knew her: the real Tsaritsa. I
was not acquainted with the heroine of the films, the hysterical
devotee, or the pro-German who, it is asserted, betrayed both her
country by adoption and the country which knew her as a granddaughter of
Queen Victoria and the daughter of a much loved English Princess.
Part I--Old Russia
CHAPTER I
I was born on the beautiful estates in South Russia which belonged to my
grandmother and my uncle. My father was Ismail Selim Bek Smolsky, whose
ancestors hailed from Lithuanian Tartary, and my mother, before her
marriage, was Mlle Catherine Horvat, whose grandfather had been invited
by the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna to come from Hungary and assist in the
colonization of South Russia. Colonel Horvat, who was half Serbian and
half Hungarian by birth, was appointed general of the armies of the
South by the Empress, and there is a story in our family that when he
first arrived in Russia he was taken to the summit of a high mountain
and told to look at the panorama of fields and forests lying beneath
him.
Colonel Horvat dutifully admired the view, but an unexpected surprise
awaited him. “Look well around you, M. le Colonel,” said his guide, “the
country, as far as you can see, is yours; it is the gift of the
Empress!” Truly an Imperial gift, but all that remains of those great
possessions are the estates where I was born. These properties were
situated on the Dnieper, in the country known as “Little Russia,” which
in former times was the seat of the Ukranian Government. My forefathers
became typical Russian noblemen; they were lavishly generous where
their inclinations were concerned, and it is asserted that one of them
once exchanged a large forest for a sporting dog which he especially
coveted!
Revovka, my birthplace, was close to the other estates which came into
our possession through Prince Goleniktcheff Koutousoff, the hero who
saved Russia from falling into the hands of the French. It was a
delightful old house, standing in a well-wooded park, with avenues of
lime trees where the nightingales sang, and as I write, I can smell the
unforgettable perfume of the limes, and recall the beauty and peace of
the surroundings; it was, indeed, a real fairyland. All was prosperity
and happiness at Revovka. The village nestled close to the Great House,
and my ancestors were buried in the church. There were rows of little
cottages which were whitewashed every week; the roofs were thatched with
reeds, and the gardens were gay with flowers. A cherry tree stood in
every garden (cherry trees are typical of South Russia), it was the
country of cherry trees, spotless houses and simple joys.
The peasants were on the best of terms with my family, and they regarded
my grandmother Horvat as a beneficent deity who replaced the reed roofs
when they were destroyed by fire, and who supplied them with unlimited
quantities of fuel. They were quite contented, and my grandmother still
employed some of the peasants who had once been given to her as serfs.
In the old days, it was customary to include a few serfs in a bride’s
_corbeille_, and the ten peasants who had been chosen to accompany my
grandmother to Revovka adored her. “People say that we were unhappy as
serfs,” they would often remark, “but we were always well looked
after--our landlord and our owner was also our father.”
The peasant as master or mistress was invariably a tyrant, and I
remember hearing about a beautiful girl who had become the mistress of a
great nobleman, and who out-Heroded Herod in her arrogance. She employed
her family to do her laundry work, and she always insisted upon her
linen being rinsed in running water. If her petticoats were not
sufficiently starched, the whole batch of her relatives was flogged.
Personally, we did not resent the lack of starch, to this extent, but I
suppose that this family flogging may be regarded as typical of the
usual procedure of beggars on horseback!
My grandmother, Mme Horvat, _née_ Baroness Pilar, was the sweetest of
women, and I loved her with a child’s passionate devotion. She used to
tell me all kinds of stories, and our old nurse ably seconded her.
Whenever we walked by the river, and I exclaimed at the beauty of the
lilies, I was thrilled anew by hearing how, long ago, when the Tartar
hordes descended on Beletskovka, the women and children used to wade
into the water, and shelter under the broad green lily-leaves until the
marauders had passed. The peasants at Revovka were extremely
superstitious, and they believed implicitly in witches and warlocks. It
was common knowledge that certain women possessed tails and bewitched
the cows, and woe betide the widow who mourned her husband too much! He
would assuredly return in the likeness of a big snake, and make an
unwelcome descent down the chimney. I was terribly scared by some of
these narratives, and I much preferred the pretty customs prevalent at
certain seasons, now vanished, alas! under the Bolshevik regime, since
the teaching of Lenin would seemingly only include the ritual of blood
in its category.
I chiefly remember the quaint methods of divination practised on New
Year’s Eve, when the girls of the village went out to listen at the
closed doors, and those who heard a man’s name mentioned were certain to
marry within the year. They varied these proceedings by throwing their
slippers over their heads, to see if they fell in the shape of anything
that might be construed into an initial letter. Others preferred to try
and catch the rays of the moon in a towel; all pretty gay conceits, dear
to the heart of girlhood, and, on St. Catharine’s Day, cherry tree
branches were put in water, and, if the bare wood blossomed by Xmas,
then marriage bells were about to ring.
Midsummer Day was sacred to the river, a survival doubtless of those
pagan customs which are so difficult to destroy. Large fires were
lighted along the river banks, and the village maidens, wearing wreaths,
leapt into the water, across the fires, and left the wreaths in the
river as an offering, perchance to the God of Streams. The next morning,
they set out to look for their wreaths, and those who were lucky enough
to find them discovered by the direction in which the wreath had been
washed up the way by which marriage would come.
The storks brought luck, and they were invited to sojourn with us by
means of wheels placed in the roofs on which they built their nests. The
solemn birds were family friends, and, whenever a baby stork fell from
its nest, everyone went to enormous trouble to put it back.
My grandmother had a passion for embroidery, and she employed from ten
to fifteen girls constantly working for her. She believed that, as a
typical industry, the art of embroidery in South Russia ought to be
revived, and she spared no pains or expense over her hobby. She proved
conclusively that the progress of the nations from East to West had left
its traces even in embroidery patterns, as she often saw similar designs
in antique carpets and Venetian work.
None of my grandmother’s embroideries was ever sold: whenever a piece
was finished, it was labelled with the date of its commencement and
completion, and packed away in great presses, already nearly full of
exquisite work. She presented a quantity of this embroidery to the Grand
Duchess Elizabeth, the Tsaritsa’s sister, when she was received into the
Greek Church. My grandmother had the honour of acting as godmother to
the Grand Duchess, and I believe her “christening” present was much
appreciated. The embroideries were really wonderful: the designs were
never drawn, the threads only were counted, and the pattern was evolved
in this painstaking manner. Some of my grandmother’s favourite designs
were taken from Easter eggs, which were first covered with pinked-out
wax, and colour inserted in them. Snow crystals formed another
inspiration; my grandmother never tired of utilising anything
decorative, and she was unusually successful. I like to think of those
quiet days--the industrious girls, and the good feeling which existed
between the employer and the employed. It is difficult to realise that
the progress of Revolution has destroyed all this, that the great
presses have been broken open and their contents dispersed to the four
winds, and that to ask a peasant to pass her time profitably would be
accounted a sin.
My grandmother, notwithstanding her patriarchal outlook, could be the
“grande dame” when occasion warranted, and my old nurse used to relate
how one of her neighbours, a certain Prince, came to ask her in
marriage. This gentleman believed in the impressiveness of pomp and
circumstance, so he arrived at Beletskovka in a carriage and six horses.
He was most courteously received--and refused--by my grandmother, and,
when he drove away, his horses, by some preconceived arrangement, cast
their shoes in the avenue. These “cast off” shoes were solid silver, a
mute testimony to his wealth, and, as he passed through the village, he
and his postillions distributed undreamt-of largesse. The Prince was a
haughty personage, who lived in a gorgeous mansion boasting fifty rooms.
He gave two balls yearly, when an orchestra was specially sent for from
Petrograd, a four days’ journey from his estate. But in the Prince’s
opinion nobody, save my grandmother and our family, was good enough to
associate (even as a dance partner) with him and his, so the balls were
rather tame affairs, a few couples only taking the floor, but those who
did were--like Cæsar’s wife--entirely above suspicion.
Silver horse-shoes, expensive orchestras, and other unconsidered trifles
cost money, and, as the male members of this super-aristocratic family
were all in Hussar regiments, financial ruin eventually came as an
uninvited and unwelcome guest: it closed the doors of the castle, the
orchestra came no more, and the ladies of the house sought refuge in an
institution for noble ladies of fallen fortunes!
My great-aunt, the Baroness Nina Pilar, was a romantic figure in my
childhood’s memories, as her name conjured up the fascination which
surrounds those who breathe and have their being in the air of Courts.
She was Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Marie, wife of Alexander II, and
she made her appearance at Court when she was sixteen, under the
auspices of Countess Tizenhausen (another great-aunt), Grande Maîtresse
de la Cour, who brought up Felix Soumarokoff, the grandfather of Prince
Felix Yousopoff. There was a great deal of gossip about the paternity of
old Soumarokoff, who had been confided, as a baby, to Countess
Tizenhausen by an intimate friend, but nobody was ever any the wiser,
and Soumarokoff’s antecedents remained an unsolved mystery.
The Empress Marie loved Aunt Nina, and the Emperor was very kind to her
until my innocent relative was the victim of chance, and a _costumière_.
The Emperor had become infatuated with a certain Princess Dolgorouky,
and one day, when my aunt was walking on the Quai, looking especially
attractive in a new costume, she suddenly heard a voice addressing her
in most endearing terms. She turned sharply round, and found to her
dismay that the voice was the voice of the Emperor! Explanations
followed, and my aunt discovered that Princess Dolgorouky possessed a
duplicate of her new costume, and, as their heights and figures were
similar, it was a case of mistaken identity.
The Empress was almost always ill, but her Court was distinguished by
its elegance and refinement, and my aunt was one of the acknowledged
leaders of fashion.
Like most pretty women, Aunt Nina had her love story, but she never
married. Her Prince Charming was the Grand Duke Nicholas, to whom she
was secretly engaged. But, when the Grand Duke asked the Emperor’s
permission to marry his inamorata, the Emperor, who had never forgiven
the contretemps on the Quai, refused his consent!
The unhappy lovers met in Switzerland when Aunt Nina was in attendance
on the Empress, and there they bade each other farewell, and threw their
engagement rings into the lake. The Grand Duke never forgot his broken
romance, although he, like most lovers, eventually married someone else!
But he was present at my aunt’s funeral, and stood silently and
sorrowfully looking at the coffin which held many of the dreams and much
of the enchantment of his youth.
Aunt Nina practically sacrificed her life to save that of the Empress,
although the latter died years later at Petrograd, when, it is asserted,
a luminous Cross appeared over the Winter Palace, typical of her
physical and mental sufferings.
It so happened that when the Empress and my aunt were driving in
Switzerland, their carriage was run into by a cart, and, in order to
prevent one of the shafts from striking the Empress, my aunt stood up to
protect her, and was badly bruised in the chest. Some time afterwards
cancer developed, but my aunt survived her Imperial mistress, and became
Lady-in-Waiting to the Empress Dagmar, and Grande Maîtresse de la Cour
to the Grand Duchess Elizabeth. The Grand Duchess was very much attached
to her, and at her death she begged my grandmother to take her place. My
grandmother, for family reasons, declined the honour, but she often used
to visit the Grand Duchess and the Grand Duke Serge, and I remember
hearing her describe the pathetic figure presented by the Grand Duchess
after her husband’s assassination, when she had relinquished the
splendours of life and had become a nun at Moscow.
My childhood was chiefly passed on my grandmother’s estates. We led a
somewhat patriarchal life at Revovka; a simple existence which will, I
fear, never again return, and it is exceedingly difficult for me, as a
Russian, to recognise the peasants of then and now. The average peasant
was kindly by nature, entirely ignorant, and excessively difficult to
educate. Whenever my grandmother tried to persuade her tenants to send
their children to school, the answer was always the same: “Knowing how
to read and write doesn’t provide food. Our parents got on very well
without education, our sons can do likewise.” Their faith in the
aristocratic class was boundless, they entirely depended on their
landlords, but the Russian peasant has always, unfortunately for
himself, been easily influenced by speeches and printed matter--hence
the complete success of the Revolutionary Propaganda, and the belief in
many of the false statements circulated in order to damage the Imperial
family in the eyes of the people. I cannot defend our own attitude in
not attempting to combat this danger; we were aware that it existed, but
only one section, known as the Black Band, tried to destroy it by
counter propaganda. Its efforts were unsuccessful, it received no
support, for the very good reason that _nobody believed that the masses
would rise_. The Russian aristocrat, secure in his class prejudices, and
his optimistic faith in _himself_, was as loth as the French aristocrat
of 1789 to realise that his position was, or could ever be, insecure!
The South Russian peasant, as I knew him, was a poetical, simple soul.
After dinner we often used to watch the men turning their horses into
our meadows for safety, and securing the animals’ legs with chains, in
order to prevent any inclination to roam. They invariably sang whilst
making these nightly preparations, and they danced afterwards in the
bright moonlight which flooded meadows and woodland with a white
radiance. They had many quaint customs at Revovka, which may not be
uninteresting to English readers who only know the Russia of to-day as a
strange and poisonous growth, and not as the orchid which had its home
in the eternal snows--a curious simile, perhaps, but in my mind a
correct one. Our country, in many respects, was an exotic growth;
super-refinement walked cheek by jowl with ignorance, and an almost
oriental luxury brushed the skirts of poverty. It was a land of extreme
contrasts, where emotions and passions either ran riot or else were
suppressed to an undreamt-of extent.
It was almost inconceivable at one time that the family coachman, who
obstinately turned his horses’ heads in the direction of home because he
met a white dog in the road, could ever become the Bolshevik who would
have murdered his employers instead of protecting them from the bad luck
attendant on the unwelcome animal!
I must admit that my grandmother was as superstitious as her coachman.
She believed implicitly in dreams, and an old woman from the village was
always sent for to expound the more exciting ones. I remember that one
of her dreams had a disastrous sequel, inasmuch as it involved the
dismissal of a very devoted servant who, my grandmother dreamt, had
attempted to kill her. She resolutely declined to see him again, and he
was sent away to another estate. I supposed she was influenced in this
by the knowledge that, on several occasions, she had “dreamed true.”
Our peasants confided all their joys and sorrows in my grandmother, and,
when any of them married, we were always invited to the wedding. This
invitation was issued on set lines; the bride-to-be, dressed in full
national costume, plentifully bedecked with flowers and ribbons, came
with her bridesmaid to the servants’ sitting-room, where she was
received by my grandmother. The girl thereupon knelt, and bowed three
times, informing my relation what an honour our presence would confer on
her family, and, gratified by the assurance that we would promise to
come, she withdrew, all smiles! After the ceremony, which always took
place on a Sunday, the whole of the wedding party came back to our house
and assembled on the terrace, where a village orchestra discoursed
strange sweet sounds, and where unwearied dancing enlivened the music
and singing. We always gave one kind of present--a cow! When I married,
our employees surpassed themselves and gave me, not a cow, but two oxen!
We fasted on Christmas Eve until the first star appeared, when we
partook of a heavy supper of which the fifteen courses always included
fish. Hay was strewn under the tablecloth to remind us of the humility
of the Manger, and it was customary for the children to carry the
Christmas supper to their friends and relations. All the windows of the
Chateau were darkened, but one was left open, and, when the first star
appeared in the serene sky, this window was illuminated in honour of the
Christ-Child. It was then that the children arrived “en masse,” carrying
revolving paper transparencies adorned with pictures of Christ; it was
one illuminated stream of little children, and one of the prettiest
sights imaginable.
New Year’s Day was an occasion for general rejoicing, when the men of
the village assembled on the terrace to congratulate us, throwing wheat
in our pathway as a sign of prosperity. We then witnessed the procession
of our servants, who filed past us, accompanied by their special
charges. First, came the stablemen leading the horses, who, in addition
to being superlatively well-groomed, were adorned with gilt crowns and
many ribbons. Then came the herdsmen with their grave-eyed steers, whose
horns were gilded in honour of the New Year; the sheep were accompanied
by the shepherds, and the cortège was terminated by the poultry maid,
who escorted a turkey smothered in ribbons.
On the first New Year’s Day after the Revolution, the crowd came to the
Chateau as usual, but there was no procession of animals, no smiling
faces, and no wheat-strewn pathway. We were confronted by scowling
peasants, who roughly informed us that henceforth nothing belonged to
us, since they were masters. But to do our own people justice, the
better minded amongst them absented themselves, and only the worst
characters were in evidence--and these, in their turn, were under the
evil influences rampant in towns. I have no hesitation in stating that
the motive power in the destruction of Russia emanated, and still
emanates, from the Jews.
When the snows began to melt, the children and young people heralded the
approach of Spring with song. Joining hands, they wandered singing in
the twilight, a lovely, living chain of Youth in its Spring-time. They
repeated these songs at Easter, that wonderful festival of Resurrection
and the rebirth of Nature. On Holy Thursday the Gospels were read in the
churches until midnight, and everyone carried a taper. My mother’s
estates were situated in the mountains, and it was a picturesque sight
when the peasants wended their way churchwards at Easter. The church was
half-way up a steep ascent, and the procession of taper-bearers could be
traced by hundreds of lights, as two villages participated in the
ceremony.
Revovka was an entrancing home for a child blessed, as I was, with an
imaginative temperament. We had our particular White Lady, a tragic
phantom who haunted the Park, and who used to swing in the branches of
the lime trees. She had been the mistress of one of my great-uncles, and
she was buried in the Park. No one seemed to know her fate, but it was
said that she was beautiful and unhappy. Her grave was marked with a
flat stone, without any inscription, as the poor little creature had
sought refuge from love and life in self-destruction. But Nature was
kinder to her than Man, and an enormous bush of wild roses threw out
caressing arms towards the cold stones, and showered pink petal-tears on
the unhonoured dead.
There was a similar forgotten grave on my father’s property, formerly a
hunting-box of the Kings of Poland. The occupant of this grave had been
the mistress of a king, and, like the beauty of Revovka, she had killed
herself; but she was a restless spirit, and she used to haunt the Park
and the house in the summer, running swiftly across the greensward,
wearing little scarlet slippers and darting up the staircase, her
scarlet heels tap-tapping as she went her way, unsubstantial and
fantastic as the morning mist.
I used to dream all kinds of dreams, but I never anticipated what
Destiny held in store for me. I was, by nature, timid; I was to become
courageous through force of another’s shining example. I was to see and
experience the real meaning of selfless love, and I was to know the
comfort and beauty of religion. I do not say that I was irreligious--few
Russians are really irreligious--our Belief is too deeply rooted--but I
did not yet understand the meaning of the word Faith.
I always looked forward to our yearly pilgrimage to the Convent of
Tchigrin, twenty-five miles away from Revovka. Custom ordained that we
should proceed thither on foot, but the carriage invariably went with
us! The convent contained a miraculous Virgin which, when the Turks
pillaged Tchigrin, had been taken away by them. One day a disconsolate
nun walking on the river’s bank saw something floating on the surface of
the water. The Virgin had returned to her convent, and from that time it
became the scene of wonderful miracles, and many pilgrimages. I liked
Tchigrin; it breathed an atmosphere of calm, standing alone in the midst
of dense pine woods. But the wind, which respects neither convents nor
humanity, was occasionally unkind to Tchigrin, as it swept away the sand
which filled the crevices of the walls, almost like natural mortar, and
the nuns daily brought bags of sand wherewith to repair the damage. This
sand-carrying was an especial duty connected with Tchigrin, and
occasionally it was a penance--but I think those simple creatures rarely
deserved punishment.
I have perhaps devoted too much time to the festivals, ghosts and
unexciting incidents of a country life. But I have done this in order to
explain many subsequent happenings which would be otherwise
incomprehensible to an English public. These events cannot, and must
not, be judged entirely from an English standpoint. We are a race
apart, our country is one of extreme mysticism and superstition. It is a
land of miracles, where the holy pictures are believed to shed tears,
and where every village possesses its seer and its saint. It would be
possible to cover the length and breadth of England in a week’s motoring
tour, thus England is of necessity more circumscribed. One could not see
Russia in such a manner. It is a country of vast distances, of densely
populated cities, and lonely tracts which extend for thousands of miles.
You cannot contrast the mode of life prevalent at Tooting with that of
Tobolsk, or compare the customs of Moscow with those of Manchester. Our
upbringing is entirely un-English. True, we are citizens of the world,
we are indeed cosmopolitan, but--once a Russian, always a Russian. The
Tsaritsa told me that, when she first came to Russia, she was greatly
surprised to find that Russian servants did not understand the art of
blackleading grates. She had always been accustomed to see shining
grates in England when she stayed with her grandmother at Windsor--in
Petrograd, shining grates were non-existent. We are miles apart from
English ways in little things like these, and no Englishwoman worthy of
the name has ever been known to be ignorant of the use of blacklead. But
_we_ ought not to be condemned for the non-recognition of its virtue. It
is merely a question of outlook. In connection with these differences of
outlook, I cannot do better than quote the words of a contributor to the
“Daily Mail”; they will plead for my opinions, as the writer possesses
the peculiar gift of racial and temperamental understanding:
“We have,” he writes, “in England a cold fish-minded way of affecting to
laugh at what we are prone to call local superstition. Let me tell you
that this point of view will not work in Africa.” (He is dealing, I
fancy, with Morocco.) “What is obviously a childish hallucination in
Hampstead or Newcastle is sober reality under this immense blue sky. You
can disbelieve a lot of truths you do not understand as you strap-hang
homewards, but you will learn to believe everything in Africa.”
Might not this also apply to Russia?