THE CZARINA’S DAILY OCCUPATIONS
I have often been asked what the Czarina used to do with her days and
whether it was true that she spent them in absolute idleness. And
just as often I have wondered what could have given rise to such an
opinion. The Empress was, on the contrary, one of those industrious
women whose hands are never at rest, and who require to be always
occupied in some way or another, either mentally or with some manual
work which keeps their attention concentrated on its intricacies. At
Darmstadt the Princesses were trained to make their own clothes and to
wait upon themselves, and one of the great pleasures of my mistress
was to embroider, cut, and make the different objects composing the
layette and the wardrobe of her children. As I have already related,
she had tried to arrange in Czarskoi Selo a Needlework Guild, but she
did not meet with any enthusiastic response to her efforts in that
direction. Nevertheless, until she left it, there was in the Palace
where she had made her home a room set apart for the use of the ladies
who used to come and work on certain days and hours on clothes for
the poor which were distributed to the indigent of Czarskoi Selo and
St. Petersburg at Christmas time. When the Japanese war occurred, a
regular working room was established in the Winter Palace and never
closed, because it became the centre of the Empress’s activity in the
way of making garments for the poor. No Sovereign had ever thought of
anything of the kind in Russia, and of course the action of Alexandra
Feodorovna in that respect was discussed far and wide, and whilst many
people applauded her for the initiative she had taken, others thought
it was not dignified for a Russian Empress to cut flannels and knit
stockings, even for the poor. They would have liked her to depend for
her charities on other people, as her predecessors had done. In fact,
in this as in so many other things, she was ignoring the traditions
which governed all that went on in the Palaces of the Czars, and of
course this was resented. But the poor population of the capital learnt
to bless the Empress’s name, and for a time was grateful to her, until
the days of the first Revolution, when everything that was connected
with her became tinged with that unpopularity which had become attached
to her name.
The Empress was a great reader, but only of serious books, and
scientific ones were her favourites. She did not care for history,
which she frankly owned bored her, because she could not interest
herself in the sayings and doings of people long dead. But science
held her enthralled, and every work which was published in English,
French and German on astronomy, mathematics, and natural history was
perused by her with avidity. She admired immensely Darwin’s “Origin of
Species,” and had one day a furious battle with her Father Confessor,
who remonstrated with her for keeping such a dangerous work in her
rooms. Astronomy was also one of her hobbies, and she expounded it to
her children whenever she found an occasion or opportunity to do so.
She embroidered wonderfully, and made some church ornaments which would
easily have won a prize at any exhibition. But her great amusement
was the drawing of caricatures which she executed with an incredible
talent, having the knack of seizing the funny side of each thing or
person she tried her pencil upon. This talent, however, caused her
much annoyance, because the people whose ridiculous points she seized
upon became aware of it and were deeply offended, as a matter of
course, especially the members of the Imperial family, who, more than
any others, had the misfortune to fall under her satirical pencil.
[Illustration: _International Film Service_
GRAND DUCHESS OLGA]
Had she been prudent enough not to show her sketches to friends it would
not have been so bad, but she was, on the contrary, fond of exhibiting
them, and did so without the least discrimination, with the result that
she gained for herself the reputation of being an unkind and malicious
woman, which was far from the case. The Empress tried to develop a
love for music in her children, and greatly succeeded with her eldest
daughter, the Grand Duchess Olga, who had a really wonderful talent for
the piano. She could compose wild, melodious airs, imbued with that
Russian and Slav sadness which is latent in all Northern characters.
I remember one day last May when, entering unexpectedly the apartment
where the young Grand Duchesses were sitting, I was entranced by the
playing of Olga, who seemed to put into her music all the agony and
anxiety of her soul. Things were dark then. The possibility of
seeing exchanged the prison of Czarskoi Selo for another was already
looming on the horizon, and the young and blooming girl who was to be
sent to the horrors and solitude of a terrible exile was giving vent
to her feelings in the weird accents which she gave to the music with
which she tried to ease her troubled feelings.
In spite of her taste for music, the Empress rarely went to the Opera.
She hated showing herself in the big box where etiquette compelled her
to sit, and she disliked the one that was common to all the members
of the Imperial family. So that even during the early years of her
marriage, when she used to spend a few weeks each winter in St.
Petersburg, she rarely showed herself in any theatre, not even at the
French play, which it had been almost a matter of obligation, from
times immemorial, for the sovereigns to visit every Saturday.
She had made it a point to study the Russian language, but had never
really learned to speak it, and had never divested herself of a very
strong German accent that had a harsh sound, which added to its general
unpleasantness. The Empress had not a pleasant nor a harmonious
voice, and as she was aware of the fact she tried to overcome this
disadvantage by talking in very low tones, so low indeed that sometimes
it was difficult to hear her. She would then get impatient and break
off the conversation, to the dismay of her interlocutors. During the
last years she had grown slightly deaf, which added to the difficulty.
Her inability to talk Russian naturally displeased people, but I
have always wondered why she was so sharply taken to account for it,
considering the fact that her mother-in-law had never learnt it either,
which had not prevented her from becoming popular. It was again a case
of “give a dog a bad name and hang him.”
The Empress kept up a vast correspondence with her relatives all over
Europe. In England, where she had been brought up, she had also friends
with whom she liked to exchange her impressions and thoughts, and to
her brother she wrote daily. She had a very distinct handwriting,
plain and legible, and her signature was exceptionally large. Except
in official documents she always used the name “Alix,” instead of
Alexandra, and the Emperor in the privacy of their family life called
her “Alice.” She generally occupied herself with her correspondence in
the afternoon after her daily walk with the Emperor, and as soon as
her cup of tea was brought to her at five o’clock she stopped writing,
even if she was in the midst of a letter. In that respect she was quite
extraordinary. Things had to be done at a certain hour, and if not, had
to be put off until the next day. She would not for anything in the
world have sacrificed five minutes of the time appointed for something
else to finish what she was doing at the moment.
In Czarskoi Selo she had a lovely room full of flowers where she had
her writing table, a wonderful specimen of French art of the time of
Louis XV. Next to it stood a smaller table, where she used to throw the
sheets she had just finished writing upon, until all her letters were
finished, when she would pick them up and put them in their envelopes.
This led her sometimes to mix up one letter with another, and brought
her into trouble through people getting missives which were not meant
for them. While Queen Victoria was alive the Empress wrote to her
regularly every week, but she did not much care for so doing, and used
to say that it was a duty she would rather not have had imposed upon
her. At Christmas and the New Year, she regularly sent her best wishes
to the other European sovereigns whom she knew personally.
In this room I have just described, which was hung up with light and
bright chintz, reminding one of an English room, and which contained
comfortable and at the same time costly furniture, the Empress
transacted only her private correspondence. All her official writing
was done in a small library opening out of her sitting-room, where
stood a large, ugly and practical writing table with innumerable
pigeonholes, at which she used to sit when her private secretary
presented to her his daily reports. It was at this table she made up
her accounts and attended to all her business, and it was also here
that she made out the programme for her public work, receptions, visits
to charitable institutions, and so forth. She was most orderly and
neat in her habits, and could tell at once where she had put such or
such a paper. I do not think that she could have tolerated disorder in
any shape or form around her, and she used to go through her numerous
drawers and wardrobes every month, when she expected to find every
single thing in the place where she had ordered it to be put. All
her laces, of which she had a wonderful collection, were kept in
a separate cupboard, of which I was the only person to have a key.
The Empress herself possessed a duplicate one, as she did of all her
trunks, wardrobes, and cupboards, and she clung to them like a real
German housewife, and sometimes would unexpectedly open one or the
other of these receptacles to assure herself that they were kept in
order. I remember an amusing instance of this mania. When the Empress
married, she received among her wedding presents a beautiful writing
table set in crystal and gold with her monogram and the Russian Eagle
on the top of the inkstand. For some years she always used it, until at
last one day the Emperor noticed that there was some inaccuracy in the
coat of arms of the Romanoffs which was ornamenting the blotting book,
and he instantly presented his wife with another and far handsomer
writing table set, a masterpiece of the skill of Faberge, the great
Court jeweller in St. Petersburg, which was made out of platinum and
crystal, with big turquoises as ornaments. The pen was of solid gold
and had a turquoise as a finish to the handle. Of course the Empress
hastened to put away the old set which had displeased her spouse,
and we stored it up in one of the cupboards in which were kept the
innumerable possessions of the Czarina. One day she opened the said
cupboard when no one else was present and was highly displeased to find
that some parts of this writing table set were put on a different shelf
from the others. This had been done because we had thought that it
would suit better the amount of room which we had at our disposal, but
the Empress would not enter into considerations of that kind, and gave
us a good scolding for keeping her things “in such disorder,” as she
expressed it.
Twice a year she went over her whole wardrobe, at the time when she
ordered the new dresses which she required for each season. She then
looked over the different articles in it with care, and either made a
present of the things which she thought she would not want any longer,
or sent them to her sister the Grand Duchess Elizabeth in Moscow, where
the latter disposed of them among the poor girls of the Moscow nobility
about to be married. She would be very careful to have every bit of
real lace unpicked from these dresses, and then this lace was consigned
to the cupboard set apart for that purpose, and entered in a catalogue,
which was entirely written in the Empress’s own hand.
As may be imagined, all this kept my mistress busy; and indeed there
was hardly one hour in the day when she was not occupied with one
thing or another. Her children’s wardrobes were looked after by her
with the same care that she applied to her own things. And at Czarskoi
Selo and Livadia she herself used to look over the housekeeping books
of the Imperial household, much to the dismay of the head of it, who
often complained that the Empress did not in the least understand the
intricacies of the management which she sometimes so freely criticised.
But though she frankly owned that she did not know how much an egg or a
potato cost, yet, as she declared, she liked to be aware of the price
of the potatoes which she consumed. It was an innocent mania, and would
have been considered as such if there had not existed malicious people
ready to make fun of it, and to laugh at the “German Housekeeper,” as
they derisively called my poor mistress, who in view of this fact would
have done much better not to have meddled in matters in which after all
she had no need to enter, and which so many people would have been but
too happy not to have to think about.