LIFE IN PRISON
It was only on the first day which followed upon the return of Nicholas
II. at Czarskoi Selo that he was allowed to see his wife without
witnesses. The very next morning Korniloff again appeared at the Palace
and delivered the following instructions to the gaolers (one can hardly
call them otherwise) who were to watch over the deposed monarch and his
family:
I. The Emperor was not to be allowed to communicate with his Consort,
except during mealtimes, when of course conversation could touch only
upon indifferent subjects. When he wanted to visit his children, with
whom he was allowed to remain as long as he liked, the Empress was to
leave the room immediately he had entered it.
II. Neither the Sovereign nor his Consort were allowed to walk out
alone and unattended in the park and grounds, but were always to be
escorted by a non-commissioned officer and three soldiers with armed
rifles.
III. When they went to church they were to be brought to the private
chapel of the Palace by the same escort, and not permitted to converse
with each other.
IV. Every time one of their attendants had to see them he or she had
to be thoroughly searched by the officer on duty and a woman specially
appointed for the purpose.
The young Grand Duchesses, when they had recovered, were not put under
the severe control to which their parents were subjected; they could
stay with their parents, and especially with the Emperor, as much and
as long as they liked. Olga made use of this permission more than her
sisters, and she used to spend hours with her father, to whom she was
particularly attached. But at the same time a strict though not so
apparent watch was kept over their actions, and they were not permitted
to leave the Palace grounds for the town of Czarskoi Selo, not even to
visit the numerous hospitals where they had hitherto worked as sisters
of charity.
None of the numerous members of the Imperial family, who were nearly
all in Petrograd, manifested a desire to see the chief of their race;
on the contrary, in many cases they went over to the cause of the
Revolution, as, for instance, the Grand Duke Cyrill, who was the first
to lead the troops of which he had the command to the Duma, to swear
allegiance to the new government. But several members of the former
household of the unfortunate sovereigns came to put themselves at
their disposal, among others old Madame Narischkine, the Mistress of
the Robes of the Empress, who, though she had never been liked by the
latter, remained faithful to her to the end, and even petitioned to be
allowed to go to Siberia with her, a request which was refused her by
the government.
The Czar accepted all these irksome regulations with complete
indifference. He used to take long walks with Count Benckendorff and
Prince Dolgoroukoff, with whom he chatted the whole of the time with
the most complete unconcern. He did not seem to mind in the very least
the presence of the men deputed to escort him during these walks, but
on the contrary made it a point to thank them when they had brought
him home, and to exchange a few words with them. He used to read the
papers very regularly, and seemed always anxious to learn what was
going on at the Front. The Empress, on the contrary, refused absolutely
to submit to the irritating restrictions imposed upon her, and during
the whole time that she was kept at Czarskoi Selo never once went out
of the Palace, not caring to take her walks under the watchful eyes
of an escort. She treated everybody with complete disdain. When the
Czar entered the room where she generally sat with her children, she
made him a deep and respectful curtsey, and immediately quitted the
apartment, before the officer on duty had an opportunity to request
her to do so. She had never got over the fact of Korniloff having
ordered her to stand up whilst he had read to her the orders of the
new government, and more than once in her conversations with me had
referred to this cruel humiliation, repeating, “Can you imagine! He
made me stand up, me, the Empress of Russia,” and she did not care to
incur a similar humiliation a second time. Though she was repeatedly
told that her health required her to be in the open air, especially
when spring arrived, she would not listen to any remonstrances on the
subject, but kept strictly indoors, snatching only breaths of fresh
air from her window which she used to keep wide open, and beside which
she sat working at garments and bandages for soldiers, which she asked
me to forward to the Red Cross. She never opened a book or glanced at a
paper, and except needlework her only occupations consisted in going to
church and giving lessons to her youngest children. She refused every
kind of sympathy and remained silent and forlorn in her misery until
the day when she was told that she was about to exchange her present
prison for another, far worse in every respect.
A few days after the one which had seen her confined in captivity a
commission sent by the Government had arrived at Czarskoi Selo to ask
the Empress to deliver to its keeping the crown jewels, as well as
her private ones. She had consented to receive the members of this
commission and told them that so far as the crown jewels were concerned
they had never been in her charge and could be found in the Winter
Palace; but her own diamonds and pearls belonged to her personally and
she was not going to give them up unless compelled by force to do so,
when she would solemnly protest against an act which she considered in
the light of a robbery pure and simple. Her attitude was so firm that
the commissioners withdrew without having achieved their mission, and
afterwards Kerensky, to whom the matter was referred, gave up the point
and allowed my mistress to retain possession of the ornaments she had
clung to with such determination and energy.
But the silver which adorned the Imperial dining table was all seized
by the Government, under the pretext that it was State property, until
eventually Nicholas II. found himself without one fork or knife with
which to eat. At last Count Benckendorff made an arrangement wherewith
part of this confiscated silver was bought back by him and the money
handed over to the treasury. But as the private fortune of the Czar had
been confiscated, it was the young Grand Duchesses, Olga and Tatiana,
who out of their own funds redeemed these things.
In general it became extremely difficult to meet the expenses of the
Imperial household, because the government refused to supply the means
to do so, and the treasury grumbled at every request made by Count
Benckendorff for funds. Every day saw something disappear of the
former luxury which had presided at the daily existence of the Czar
and of his family, until at last life at Czarskoi Selo became almost
ascetic in its simplicity. Meals consisted only of three courses, and
the favourite, Zakuska, or relishes with which every Russian dinner or
lunch begins, were suppressed. Wine disappeared altogether from the
table, and several automobiles were sold, whilst the chauffeurs were
dismissed. I even had to beg the Empress not to use as much linen as
she had been in the habit of doing formerly, because we lacked the
means to wash it, and these were but small miseries among the more
important ones which assailed us.
Among the many annoyances and indignities put upon the Emperor and
Empress was the order given by the Revolutionary Government not to
address them any more as Your Majesty, but to call them Colonel
and Mrs. Romanoff. The Czar took it good-humouredly, or, rather,
contemptuously, but the Empress was extremely affected by this
insolence. “We have been crowned in Moscow,” she used to say, “and
nothing can change this now. The Czar is always the Czar. No one
can rob him of this dignity, even if he has renounced it of his own
accord.”
Of course when we were alone with her we addressed her in the old
style. Beginning with Count Benckendorff, and ending with the last
of the few servants who had voluntarily elected to remain in the
service of the former sovereigns, we were very careful not to make
them feel more than could be helped the change that had taken place in
their destinies. But when one of the officers on guard was present it
was more difficult, because he used to reprove us quite aloud if we
ventured to speak with our master and mistress in the old respectful
way to which we had been used. The government was so particular in the
matter of the title allowed to Nicholas II., that all the newspapers
which were addressed to him bore the superscription of “Colonel
Nicholas Alexandrovitsch Romanoff.” And on the letters which the
Empress received, the appellation of “Her Majesty the Empress” was
scratched out, and replaced by “Alexandra Feodorovna Romanoff.” It was
the repetition of what had taken place with Louis XVI. when he was
designated by the name of Capet by his gaolers, and, strange as it may
appear, it was among all her misfortunes the one which, outwardly at
least, seemed most to affect the unhappy Empress.
Of course correspondence was a forbidden thing for all of us. Letters
were strictly censored and even the smallest parcel brought to the
Palace was examined two or three times before being handed over to the
person to whom it belonged. Books were equally the object of suspicion,
and at last the Empress and Emperor gave orders that new ones were no
longer to be forwarded to them, as had been done previously.
Of course all these vexatious measures depended a good deal on the
personality of the officer in charge of the interior arrangements and
guard of the Palace. If he were a humane man things would not be so
bad, but if he happened to belong to the ranks of the rabid republicans
or anarchists there was not an obstacle that he did not put in our way
or an unpleasantness that he spared us. I remember one of the latter
who, one morning when I was expecting a parcel containing a new blouse
from the Empress’s dressmaker, absolutely refused to let it pass until
I had unpicked the lining to prove to him that no letter or message
had been concealed between it and the stuff itself. It was the young
Grand Duchesses who were most to be pitied among the prisoners of
Czarskoi Selo. The girls were the sweetest things imaginable, and their
beautiful characters came out in a splendid light during that trying
time when, at an age where girls generally know only the sunny side
of life, they had to become acquainted and to be actors in one of the
greatest tragedies history has ever had to chronicle. And yet they
realised perhaps even better than did their father and mother, the
full extent of the drama which was being played around them. Olga, in
particular, seemed to have a forewarning that it was only beginning and
that it might end in blood just as it had begun in tears. She was a
clever, thoughtful woman, with a considerable amount of common sense,
and sometimes she used to confide to me her apprehensions in regard
to the future. “If the Germans get near to Petrograd, or if a new
revolution breaks out there,” she often said, “we shall be its first
victims, and either the mob or the Government will put us to death.”
Tatiana was not so resigned as her sister. She revolted against the
terrible injustice of which she was the victim, and she could not
understand how after all the care she had taken of wounded soldiers
and miserable refugees whom her committee had helped, her good
intentions had been misunderstood, and how she could have been put
aside at a moment’s notice and deprived of the possibility of going on
further with the work to which she had given all her energy, and with
which she had been so successful. She had an impetuous nature, more
like her mother’s than like the placid temperament of her father, and
she would have liked to be able to express aloud the contempt which she
felt for all those whose victim and prisoner she was. The two youngest
daughters of the Czar and Czarina were still too much in the schoolroom
to be able to do aught else but be astonished at the change which had
taken place in their existence. They looked at all that was occurring
with big, surprised eyes, and were more ready to weep than to attempt
to fight against a fate which had proved too strong for them. They
clung to their mother more than did Olga or Tatiana, and hardly left
her protection. The Empress, who had never been a fond mother in the
sense of caresses, had changed in that respect since the misfortunes
that had fallen upon her, and she now hugged her girls and drew them
to her breast with a passionate earnestness which made the children
exclaim that now they were happier than they had ever been before,
because their mother embraced them just as much as if they had been
poor little waifs, with a mamma ignorant of what etiquette meant. The
remark had something touching about it, and I think that the Empress
realised this as well as did others, because she showed herself more
affectionate towards her daughters than she had been used to do, and
was no longer absorbed by her exclusive tenderness for her son. She
seemed indeed to have lost her interest in the latter since the day
she had realised that he was no longer the heir to one of the greatest
thrones in the world.
The child himself understood it, and he was perhaps the one who
suffered most from the consequences of the change which had transformed
him into an ordinary little boy, after he had been the most important
personage in his family. He fretted over this change, and I fancy that
at times he felt resentful against his father and mother for having so
easily acquiesced in their own degradation. He would have liked to see
his father make a stand against the Revolution, and at least refuse
to surrender the rights of his son and heir. One day he betrayed
something of his feelings when he told Count Benckendorff that if he
had not been ill but with the Czar at Headquarters, as he generally
was, he would never have allowed him to abdicate. The Count did not
reply, but I imagine that he regretted such had not been the case.
Indeed to this day it is incomprehensible to me how Nicholas II. could
have been induced to sacrifice the rights of his son, and not to have
insisted on the latter being proclaimed Emperor in his stead.
In the meantime the days dragged on, and we were all wondering whither
all this was to lead. The feeling that a change of some kind was bound
to take place floated in the air, but no one could guess of what nature
this change was to be. At times the fear would seize us that the
Government would remove the Czar and his Consort to the fortress, which
would have meant that they would be tried, and perhaps condemned to
terrible penalties for their imaginary crimes, but hard as we all tried
to penetrate the secret of the future, we did not succeed in doing so,
and when this future was revealed to us, it surpassed in horror all
that we had ever imagined or dreaded.