THE CZARINA AND ST. PETERSBURG SOCIETY
At the time of her marriage St. Petersburg society was well disposed
toward my unfortunate mistress, and it would have been easy for her
to have made herself popular. Unfortunately she had, as I have said,
a sarcastic tongue, and made no secret of her likes and dislikes;
nor did she hesitate to ridicule certain customs to which old and
important dowagers clung with persistency. She always feared to be
thought too familiar, owing to the fact that the Imperial family, from
the very first day of her arrival in Russia, had drilled into her
ears the caution that St. Petersburg was not Darmstadt, and that the
free and easy manners of a little German town would be out of place
at the Court of the mighty Czar of All the Russias. She had therefore
fallen into the other extreme, and disciplined herself to be as stiff
as possible. The Empress Marie had been in the habit of receiving in
her own private boudoir the ladies who craved an audience from her,
and of asking them to sit beside her. Her daughter-in-law made it a
point to give her audience standing, and to converse for a few minutes
without ever offering a chair to the old women who had applied for the
honour of an introduction to her. She coldly extended to them her hand
to kiss, which further incensed them, and her natural shyness, added
to this stiff reception, of course made her many enemies. She began
to be criticized, and that in no friendly spirit. Unfortunately she
became aware of this, and it set her from the very first against the
people she ought to have tried to make her friends. Then gossip, and
that mostly ill natured, too, did its work, and all kinds of anecdotes
were put into circulation concerning the want of kindness of the
young Empress. She was accused of being sarcastic and of making fun
of old people whom age and past service ought to have preserved from
the ridicule she was supposed to shower upon them. Then, again, the
Czarina had the imprudence to express in public her disgust at what she
called the loose manners of St. Petersburg society. She tried to become
acquainted with all the gossip going about town, and declared that she
was going to reform the morals of her empire, proceeding by striking
off the list of invitations for a Court ball the names of all the women
supposed rightly or wrongly to have had a flirtation of some kind. The
result was that hardly any ladies appeared at this particular ball,
with the exception of mothers with girls to bring out, and the whole
of St. Petersburg rose up in arms against its Empress. It was decided
to boycott her, which was done, and the Empress Mother was asked to
interfere and to explain to her daughter-in-law that it was not her
business to brand with any kind of stigma the names of ladies in regard
to whom no open scandal had ever taken place. The incident assumed
such proportions that the Czar was asked to interfere, and he decided
that in future the list of invitations for Court festivities was to be
submitted to his mother and not to his wife, who was still too great a
stranger in Russia to know who ought or ought not to be invited to the
Winter Palace.
As may be imagined, the little incident I have just narrated did
not tend to improve the relations between the young Czarina and
the Dowager, and the former’s popularity suffered from it to a
considerable extent. On the New Year following upon this memorable
tempest in a tea-cup, St. Petersburg ladies made up their minds not to
put in an appearance at the great reception which followed upon divine
service in the Winter Palace, a reception during which Court society
offered its New Year’s wishes to the sovereigns. So about four of
them, who by virtue of the official position of their husbands could
not absent themselves, were the only ones who attended the function.
This absence, _en masse_, could not but be noticed, and of course the
Czarina was offended. But she was powerless to retort otherwise than
passively, which she did by avoiding in the future showing herself in
public, also by discontinuing her audiences and even the ball which had
been considered as an indispensable feature of every winter season in
the Russian capital. This manner of manifesting her displeasure only
added to the bitterness of the feelings which she had inspired, as was
to be expected, and soon fashionable ladies deserted St. Petersburg for
the Riviera or Paris, where they felt happier and more at their ease
than in their own country. One after another the big houses, which used
to rival the Court itself by the splendour of their entertainments,
closed their doors, and the “Palmyra of the North,” as the capital of
the Czars used to be called, became one of the dullest cities in the
whole world.
There were people who attempted to remonstrate with my mistress for
this retirement in which she persisted in living. She was told that it
would be relatively easy for her to regain some of her lost popularity
if she would only allow people to eat, drink, and be merry in her
presence. Alexander III., too, had hated society, and preferred his
beloved Gatschina to all his other residences, but he had fulfilled the
social duties he was expected to fulfill, and during his reign there
had not existed in the whole of Europe a more brilliant Court than that
of Russia. His daughter-in-law was advised to follow his example in
this respect. But she would not do so.
I remember that one day whilst we were discussing the question of what
kind of new clothes she would want for the coming winter, I remarked
that she ought to order more evening dresses than she had done. The
Empress interrupted me with the remark that she did not mean to have
any more, because there would be no necessity for her to have them. I
then observed that it would be a great disappointment to the many young
girls about to make their appearance in society for the first time if
no Court balls were given. Alexandra Feodorovna got quite angry, and,
getting up with impatience, exclaimed, “I cannot understand why it
is expected of me to amuse all the silly children their parents are
bringing out.”
[Illustration: _International Film Service_
GROUNDS OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE AT TZARSKOIÉ SÉLO]
Happily for her no one was present when she gave way to this fit of
temper, but one may imagine how it would have been commented upon by
any of her numerous enemies had they chanced to overhear it. This state
of antagonism (for it can hardly be called by any other name) which
existed between Alexandra Feodorovna and the smart set of her capital
was not extended to other places. In the Crimea she liked to have
people about her, as I have already related, and she even gave dances
for her daughters. But though the Grand Duchess Olga had attained her
eighteenth year during the winter which preceded the outbreak of the
great war, her mother did not attempt to invite any one to the Palace
of Czarskoi Selo to amuse her. The Empress Dowager had to arrange some
entertainments in her own Anitschkoff Palace for her granddaughter’s
benefit, but each time they were invited to attend them there was an
explosion of grief on the part of their mother which completely spoilt
their pleasure. The Czarina had a morbid fear of the sharp tongues
of the ladies of the capital, and she was always expecting that her
daughters would be subjected to the same kind of criticism which had
been applied so liberally to her own self. This she wished to guard
them against. The idea was a mistaken one, because everybody admired
and liked the graceful girls, who had always an amiable word for those
they met, and who seemed so happy and so delighted whenever they had an
opportunity of enjoying themselves like all other girls of their age.
The only person who at one time was in possession of the confidence
of the Czarina to a limited degree, the Grand Duchess Anastasia, wife
of the Grand Duke Nicholas, tried, without success, to get her to
look upon people with more indulgence, and not in such a morbid way.
My mistress would not hear reason, and at last declared that it was
useless to be an Empress of Russia if one could not do what one liked,
and that all she craved was the privilege to be left alone and allowed
to enjoy, unrestrained, her taste for solitude.
In that respect the Empress was certainly not quite normal, and at
times she most undoubtedly suffered from what is called the mania of
persecution. People abroad have attributed this abnormal condition of
hers to the dread of revolution, the spectre of which was supposed to
haunt her constantly. This, however, was not at all the case, because
long before any one had an idea that revolution might break out, my
mistress was already affected by that strange fear of seeing strangers
approach her. The fact is that she had become morbid, thanks to the
latent dislike which she knew but too well was felt in regard to her,
and which worried her to the extent that she felt disgusted with the
world in general and had come to the conclusion that it was not worth
while to try to conciliate it, but that the best thing to do was to
avoid seeing too much of it.
People have spoken at length of her tastes for occultism and spiritism,
and said that she looked for consolation for imaginary woes to the
practices of turning tables and other rubbish of the same kind.
Unfortunately this was true to a certain extent, because it is a sad
fact that the Empress liked to sit at tables for hours in the hope
that they would begin turning, and she firmly believed that people
could come back from the other world and manifest themselves to their
friends. But what is not so generally known is that it was the Grand
Duke Nicholas, the future generalissimo of the Russian armies, who
first set her to do so. He it was who brought to the Palace of Czarskoi
Selo a man called Philippe, who professed to be a powerful medium, and
who certainly inspired the Czarina with great confidence. For a year or
two he remained in favour, then was dismissed quite suddenly because he
had been found out by accident, but so completely that even Alexandra
Feodorovna could not defend him.
Some people have said that it was not without malicious intention that
the Grand Duke Nicholas introduced this dangerous person to Czarskoi
Selo. It has been reported that he wanted to bring about a scandal to
the effect that the Empress should be declared, if not quite insane,
at least afflicted with melancholia, and put under restraint. She was
already at that time suspected of German leanings and sympathies, and
supposed to influence her husband in favour of Germany and a German
alliance. The Grand Duke Nicholas was a strong partisan of a close
union with France, and of course he considered that my poor mistress
was an obstacle to his views, so he would have been delighted had any
circumstance arisen which would have put her aside. Certainly he was
the means through which the Empress acquired her strange tastes for
all things connected with occultism, and he was also the first person
to draw the attention of the public and of the Imperial family to this
peculiarity, and to insist on the dangers which it presented. The fact
was that the Czarina was the only obstacle which the Grand Dukes and
their party encountered in the realisation of their plans to take under
their protection and to keep in their power the weak-minded Nicholas
II., who, it was known but too well, always adopted the opinion of
the last person who spoke with him, and was incapable of making any
decision of his own accord. The Empress, thanks to the fact that she
was always with him, had the best chance to make herself heard and
listened to, and consequently she represented a formidable danger
to the ambitions of those haughty Romanoffs who aspired, if not to
dethrone, at least to keep in their own hands this feeble nephew, so
devoid of initiative.
During the last two or three years which preceded the war, these
different intrigues had assumed quite a dangerous character, and when
the Rasputin incident occurred, they only grew in intensity. The
Empress became the one great enemy, to the destruction of whom many
applied themselves with the more energy that she began to do what she
had carefully avoided before—to interest herself in politics, and
to study them carefully, in view to being able to advise her husband
amidst the growing difficulties of the international political position
in general. The Grand Duke Nicholas, who headed the faction having for
aim the removal of Alexandra Feodorovna, spared no means to destroy her
influence, and to ruin her reputation as a Sovereign and as a woman. He
partly succeeded, as we have seen, but at the same time he contributed
to the fall of his own dynasty, and to the ruin of his country. It is a
sad but certain fact that the Russian Imperial family never understood
the meaning of the word “solidarity,” and perhaps it is thanks to this
defect of theirs that the head of the House of Romanoff has been sent
into exile and his race deprived of the throne which Peter the Great
and Catherine II. had so gloriously occupied.