I BEGIN MY DUTIES AS TUTOR--THE CZAREVITCH’S ILLNESS
(AUTUMN, 1913)
I returned to St. Petersburg at the end of August. The Imperial family
was in the Crimea. I called on the Controller of Her Majesty’s Household
for my instructions and left for Livadia, which I reached on September
3rd. I found Alexis Nicolaïevitch pale and thin. He still suffered very
much, and was undergoing a course of high-temperature mud-baths, which
the doctors had ordered as a cure for the last traces of his accident
but which he found extremely trying.
Naturally I waited to be summoned by the Czarina to receive exact
instructions and suggestions from her personally. But she did not appear
at meals and was not to be seen. She merely informed me through Tatiana
Nicolaïevna that while the treatment was in progress regular lessons
with Alexis Nicolaïevitch were out of the question. As she wished the
boy to get used to me, she asked me to go with him on his walks and
spend as much time with him as I could.
I then had a long talk with Dr. Derevenko. He told me that the Heir was
a prey to hæmophilia, a hereditary disease which in certain families is
transmitted from generation to generation _by the women_ to their male
children. Only males are affected. He told me that the slightest wound
might cause the boy’s death, for the blood of a bleeder had not the
power of coagulating like that of a normal individual. Further, the
tissue of the arteries and veins is so frail that any blow or shock may
rupture the blood-vessel and bring on a fatal hæmorrhage.
Such was the terrible disease from which Alexis Nicolaïevitch was
suffering, such the perpetual menace to his life. A fall, nose-bleeding,
a simple cut--things which were a trifle to any other child--might prove
fatal to him. All that could be done was to watch over him closely day
and night, especially in his early years,[7] and by extreme vigilance
try to prevent accidents. Hence the fact that at the suggestion of the
doctors he had been given two ex-sailors of the Imperial yacht,
Derevenko and his assistant Nagorny, as his personal attendants and
bodyguard. They looked after him in rotation.
My first relations with the boy in my new appointment were not easy. I
was obliged to talk in Russian with him and give up French. My position
was delicate, as I had no rights and therefore no hold over him.
As I have said, at first I was astonished and disappointed at the lack
of support given me by the Czarina. A whole month had passed before I
received any instructions from her. I had a feeling that she did not
want to come between her son and myself. It made my initial task much
more difficult, but it might have the advantage, once I had established
my position, of enjoying it with greater freedom and personal
authority. About this time I had moments of extreme discouragement, and
in fact I sometimes despaired of success and felt ready to abandon the
task I had undertaken.
Fortunately for me, in Dr. Derevenko I found a wise adviser whose help
was of infinite value. He impressed on me the necessity for patience,
and told me that, in view of the constant danger of the boy’s relapse,
and as a result of a kind of religious fatalism which the Czarina had
developed, she tended to leave decision to circumstance and kept on
postponing her intervention, which would simply inflict useless
suffering on her son if he was not to survive. She did not feel equal to
battling with the child to make him accept me.
I understood myself, of course, that circumstances were unfavourable,
but I still cherished a hope that one day the health of my pupil would
improve.
The serious malady from which the Czarevitch had barely recovered had
left him very weak and nervous. At this time he was the kind of child
who can hardly bear correction. He had never been under any regular
discipline. In his eyes I was the person appointed to extract work and
attention from him, and it was my business to bend his will to the habit
of obedience. To all the existing supervision, which at any rate allowed
him idleness as a place of refuge, was to be added a new control which
would violate even that last retreat. He felt it instinctively without
realising it consciously. I had a definite impression of his mute
hostility, and at times it reached a stage of open defiance.
I felt a terrible burden of responsibility, for with all my precautions
it was impossible always to prevent accidents. There were three in the
course of the first month.
Yet as time passed by I felt my authority gaining a hold. I noticed
more and more frequent bursts of confidence on the part of my pupil, and
they seemed to me a promise of affectionate relations before long.
The more the boy opened his heart to me the better I realised the
treasures of his nature, and I gradually began to feel certain that with
so many precious gifts it would be unjust to give up hope.
Alexis Nicolaïevitch was then nine and a half, and rather tall for his
age. He had a long, finely-chiselled face, delicate features, auburn
hair with a coppery glint in it, and large blue-grey eyes like his
mother’s. He thoroughly enjoyed life--when it let him--and was a happy,
romping boy. Very simple in his tastes, he extracted no false
satisfaction from the fact that he was the Heir--there was nothing he
thought about less--and his greatest delight was to play with the two
sons of his sailor Derevenko, both of them a little younger than he.
He had very quick wits and a keen and penetrating mind. He sometimes
surprised me with questions beyond his years which bore witness to a
delicate and intuitive spirit. I had no difficulty in believing that
those who were not forced, as I was, to teach him habits of discipline,
but could unreservedly enjoy his charm, easily fell under its spell.
Under the capricious little creature I had known at first I discovered a
child of a naturally affectionate disposition, sensitive to suffering in
others just because he had already suffered so much himself. When this
conviction had taken root in my mind I was full of hope for the future.
My task would have been easy had it not been for the Czarevitch’s
associates and environment.
* * * * *
As I have already said, I was on excellent terms with Dr. Derevenko.
There was, however, one point on which we were
[Illustration: THE FOUR GRAND-DUCHESSES GATHERING MUSHROOMS IN THE
FOREST OF BIELOVESA. AUTUMN OF 1912.]
[Illustration: THE CZAREVITCH CUTTING CORN HE HAD SOWN IN THE PARK AT
PETERHOF. SUMMER OF 1913.
{_Facing page_ 40.]
not in agreement. I considered that the perpetual presence of the sailor
Derevenko and his assistant Nagorny was harmful to the child. The
external power which intervened whenever danger threatened seemed to me
to hinder the development of will-power and the faculty of observation.
What the child gained--possibly--in safety he lost in real discipline. I
thought it would have been better to give him more freedom and accustom
him to look to himself for the energy to resist the impulses of his own
motion.
Besides, accidents continued to happen. It was impossible to guard
against everything, and the closer the supervision became, the more
irritating and humiliating it seemed to the boy, and the greater the
risk that it would develop his skill at evasion and make him cunning and
deceitful. It was the best way of turning an already physically delicate
child into a characterless individual, without self-control and
backbone, even in the moral sense.
I spoke in that sense to Dr. Derevenko, but he was so obsessed by fears
of a fatal attack, and so conscious of the terrible load of
responsibility that devolved upon him as the doctor, that I could not
bring him round to share my view.
It was for the parents, and the parents alone, in the last resort, to
take a decision which might have serious consequences for their child.
To my great astonishment, they entirely agreed with me, and said they
were ready to accept all the risks of an experiment on which I did not
enter myself without terrible anxiety. No doubt they realised how much
harm the existing system was doing to all that was best in their son,
and if they loved him to distraction their love itself gave them the
strength to let him run the risk of an accident which might prove fatal
rather than see him grow up a man without strength of character or moral
fibre.
Alexis Nicolaïevitch was delighted at this decision. In his relations
with his playmates he was always suffering from the incessant
supervision to which he was subject. He promised me to repay the
confidence reposed in him.
Yet, sure though I was of the soundness of my view, the moment the
parents’ consent was obtained my fears were greater than ever. I seemed
to have a presentiment of what was to come....
Everything went well at first, and I was beginning to be easy in my
mind, when the accident I had so much feared happened without a word of
warning. The Czarevitch was in the schoolroom standing on a chair, when
he slipped, and in falling hit his right knee against the corner of some
piece of furniture. The next day he could not walk. On the day after the
subcutaneous hæmorrhage had progressed, and the swelling which had
formed below the knee rapidly spread down the leg. The skin, which was
greatly distended, had hardened under the force of the extravasated
blood, which pressed on the nerves of the leg and thus caused shooting
pains, which grew worse every hour.
I was thunderstruck. Yet neither the Czar nor the Czarina blamed me in
the slightest. So far from it, they seemed to be intent on preventing me
from despairing of a task my pupil’s malady made so perilous. As if they
wished by their example to make me face the inevitable ordeal, and
enlist me as an ally in the struggle they had carried on so long, they
associated me in their anxieties with a truly touching kindness.
The Czarina was at her son’s side from the first onset of the attack.
She watched over him, surrounding him with her tender love and care and
trying by a thousand attentions to alleviate his sufferings. The Czar
came the moment he was free. He tried to comfort and amuse the boy, but
the pain was stronger than his mother’s caresses or his father’s
stories, and the moans and tears began once more. Every now and then the
door opened and one of the Grand-Duchesses came in on tip-toe and kissed
her little brother, bringing a gust of sweetness and health into the
room. For a moment the boy would open his great eyes, round which the
malady had already painted black rings, and then almost immediately
close them again.
One morning I found the mother at her son’s bedside. He had had a very
bad night. Dr. Derevenko was anxious, as the hæmorrhage had not been
stopped and his temperature was rising. The inflammation had spread
further and the pain was even worse than the day before. The Czarevitch
lay in bed groaning piteously. His head rested on his mother’s arm, and
his small, deathly-white face was unrecognisable. At times the groans
ceased and he murmured the one word “Mummy!” in which he expressed all
his sufferings and distress. His mother kissed him on the hair,
forehead, and eyes, as if the touch of her lips could have relieved his
pain and restored some of the life which was leaving him. Think of the
tortures of that mother, an impotent witness of her son’s martyrdom in
those hours of mortal anguish--a mother who knew that _she herself_ was
the cause of his sufferings, that _she_ had transmitted to him the
terrible disease against which human science was powerless! _Now_ I
understood the secret tragedy of her life! How easy it was to
reconstruct the stages of that long Calvary.