THE TSAR AND HIS PEOPLE
Looking back over my travels, few visits stand out with more pleasant
recollections than those I have paid to Petrograd.
In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not
only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my
experience, unique. Sovereigns may have moments of an affectionate
emotion; they rarely have consistent tenderness. In their most intimate
relations of family life they are apt to resume suddenly the frigid
tones of royalty; and I have seen a king, talking even with his mother,
get himself unexpectedly into his royal manner and speak as stiffly as
if he were giving his mind to some lower breed of human being. Many a
person, chatting _tête-à-tête_ with a sovereign alone, has been charmed
by the simple naturalness of his manner, and meeting him an hour later,
before others, has wondered if it could be the same man. Not so the
Tsar. He has more human tenderness than I ever saw in any other man. He
enters a crowded audience-room with the same charming kindliness and
unconsciousness of self that he has in the privacy of family life. His
eyes have always the one clear gaze of a clean soul.
He is not at first impressive, simply because he is incapable of playing
a part, even a royal one. But the more you see of him the more he grows
on you. He has no love of display, of uniforms, of the parade of royal
power. He is wise with the wisdom of sympathy, and eager to help his
people, and benevolent in his thought of them to a degree for which I
know no parallel. I think it must be due to the unmistakable
irradiations of this kindliness of heart that no attempts have been made
upon his life, even during the bitterest frenzies of revolutionary hate.
In the menace with which the existence of royalty is surrounded, one
would expect to find the Imperial family living amid all the oppressions
of constant fear. On the contrary, I thought them the happiest royal
family I have seen. They were so naturally affectionate and happy that
it was even possible to forget that they were royal. They had apparently
accepted the dangers of their life as soldiers do--as we all accept the
lesser dangers of our ordinary day--and were unaffected by them.
What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do
not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really
are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this
man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of
his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to
administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as
impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the
Tsar himself.
He is a Dane, through his mother, and his qualities are those that make
the Royal Families of Denmark and Sweden so charming. But these are the
constitutional monarchies of a kindly and contented people, who have no
cause to rebel against a government that is their own creation, and who
show no awe of a ruling family as unassuming as themselves. I think, if
one must be born Royal, it would be wise to be born to a Scandinavian
Crown.
I have rarely felt happier than I did when I heard that Nicholas II. had
called on his subjects to take a share in the government of the vast
Russian Empire. The publication of the Imperial Manifesto of October,
1905, in which the Emperor announced the creation of the Imperial Duma,
was an event of first-class importance, and I admired the spirit of the
nation which had shown its determination to limit the power of the Crown
and the wisdom of the Emperor in yielding to the desires of his
subjects.
“This is the first step,” I said, “on the path which must ultimately
lead to the substitution of democratic for autocratic government in
Russia.”
My affection for the Emperor and Empress, my enthusiasm for the
advancement of democratic ideas, my recollections of a long visit to
Russia, all combined to intensify my interest in the dawn of freedom in
a land which I felt, when I visited it, was part of Asia included in
Europe by some strange mistake of the geographers.
It was mid-winter when I arrived for the first time in Petersburg,
magical beneath its snow mantle, and I came as a simple tourist to see
the country and to study the conditions of Russian life. I established
myself in a hotel as a Spanish countess, feeling delighted that nobody
knew who I actually was, and revelling in the freedom of strict
incognito. But I had not been in the hotel five hours before a Grand
Master of Ceremonies arrived and betrayed my secret. From that minute
everybody knew that the countess was an Infanta of Spain, and my liberty
was gone. It is my usual experience. I arrive somewhere, believing that
not a soul knows where I am, and, almost before I have taken possession
of my rooms, there is a whirr of the telephone bell and somebody at the
other end saying: “Eulalia, how did you get here? You must come and see
us at once.”
The Grand Master of Ceremonies brought me a message from the Emperor and
Empress, telling me how delighted they were to know that they were going
to see me soon, and suggesting that I should come to the Winter Palace
the next morning for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the Blessing of the
Waters.
“But I have nothing to wear!” I cried.
It was absolutely true. I had never expected to figure at a Court
ceremony, and it had not occurred to me to bring a _manteau de cour_.
Etiquette, however, is less severe in Russia than in Spain or in
Prussia, as I soon discovered, and the next morning I put on my
smartest frock and drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic building,
painted dull red, with rows of gods and goddesses standing on the
cornice of its stupendous façade, looking cold and unhappy in the
nipping air.
I had not seen the Empress since we were girls, staying with Queen
Victoria at Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. And what a
charming girl she was! A simple English girl in appearance, in a skirt
and blouse, utterly unaffected, warm-hearted, and fresh as a rosebud
touched with dew. I was thinking of the happy, careless days when we
were in England together, as I drove to the palace, forgetting the
change that the passage of the years makes in the friends of one’s
youth, and when I went into the room where the Empress was waiting to
watch the Blessing of the Waters from the window, I felt startled to
find, instead of the girl I used to know, a surpassingly beautiful and
stately woman. The petals of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the
centre of a brilliant group of Grand Duchesses and ladies, all wearing
the strange but beautiful dress of the Russian Court, with long hanging
sleeves. On her head was a _kokoshnik_, a crescent-shaped diadem,
flaming with diamonds, from which fell a long white veil, and her
stateliness and beauty distinguished her from all the other sumptuous
figures surrounding her. A stranger who had never seen her before would
have been certain that it was she, and not one of the others, who was
Empress.
“How good to see you again, Eulalia, after all these years,” she said,
coming towards me; and she put her arms round me and kissed me.
And in that greeting I realised that the Tsaritsa had not changed. She
was still the affectionate and unaffected friend I had known years
before. We had a hundred questions to ask each other, but almost before
we had had time to begin, we had to stop talking to attend to the
imposing ceremony which was beginning on the frozen Neva.
From the window I saw that a pavilion, like an exceedingly decorative
bandstand, had been erected on the ice, just in front of the palace, and
I watched a procession of ecclesiastics in stiff Byzantine robes and
glittering mitres move slowly across the road separating it from the
palace, followed by the Grand Dukes and the Emperor. The singing of the
choir floated to us through the frosty air and the Empress crossed
herself devoutly. She is a sincerely religious woman.
I watched the Emperor standing motionless beneath the fretted and gilded
canopy of the pavilion, and the thought suddenly flashed into my mind
that the Russian Emperors alone claim the right to govern the souls as
well as the bodies of their subjects. The Autocrat is a great
ecclesiastical personage as well as a secular ruler, and the Russian
Church depends upon him and can do nothing without his consent. I
remembered that banishment to Siberia was the punishment for those who
deserted the Orthodox Church and refused to believe as the Tsar believes
and to pray as the Tsar prays. The Kings of Spain and the Emperors of
Austria are sons, not rulers, of the Church, and I had been taught that
the Pope was king of kings. It seemed to me that no worse form of
despotism could be conceived than the concentration in the hands of an
autocratic ruler of the spiritual and temporal power and, as these
thoughts crowded into my mind, there seemed to me something sinister and
terrible in the ceremony I was watching, and I realised, as I had never
done before, the immensity and the awfulness of the power
[Illustration: Courtesy of Collier’s
NICHOLAS II AND THE HEIR OF RUSSIA]
wielded by the motionless figure beneath the gay pavilion. Nobody
rejoiced more than I did when the Emperor published the Manifesto of
April, 1905, granting his subjects religious liberty, and I realised
that the stupendous claim which had made me shudder when I thought of
it, as I watched the sumptuous Twelfth Day ceremony from the windows of
the Winter Palace, had been renounced for ever. In point of fact,
Nicholas II. had no desire to maintain it, and he renounced it as soon
as an appropriate occasion arose.
After the picturesque ceremony which had stirred these thoughts had
ended and the Archbishop had dipped a golden cross in the water running
below the ice of the river, the holy water was brought into the palace
to the Empress, and the Emperor joined us. He gave me a
characteristically Russian welcome. His manner was engagingly simple and
unaffected. The contrast between him and the German Emperor was
extraordinary. The Kaiser, a constitutional monarch, whose power is
strictly limited, shows by his bearing and his manner, as I have
indicated in another chapter, that he holds the divine right of kings to
be a cardinal article of faith. When one is with the Tsar it requires a
certain effort of the imagination to remember that he possesses
autocratic power over the lives of 160,000,000 human beings. The
Russians are the most hospitable people in the world, and the Emperor
and Empress are not excelled by any of their subjects in kindness and
generosity to guests. They both insisted that, so long as I remained in
Petersburg, I must be with them as much as possible, and, in point of
fact, although I slept at the hotel, I was constantly at the Winter
Palace, and had my part in the intimate family life of the Imperial
family.
When a man likes nothing better than to remain at home with his wife, it
is a sure sign that he is very much in love with her. Judged by that
test, there is no happier couple in Europe than the Emperor and Empress
of Russia. They are never more contented than when together, and it was
obvious to me that the Tsar simply adores his wife. It would be strange
if he did not, for there is not a gentler or sweeter woman in the world
than the beautiful Tsaritsa. And both of them are devoted to their
children. They used to make me come with them sometimes to the nursery,
where the little Grand Duchesses used to welcome us with shrieks of
delight. What games there were! People who think of the Tsar as a
frowning despot would have been astonished to see a vigorous
pillow-fight going on between him and his children. And away from the
formalities of the Court, closeted with her children, the Tsaritsa was
always radiant and happy. Under the spell of their prattle and of their
caresses she was transformed. The smiling mother seemed a different
woman to the beautiful but grave lady seen by the public in the
ceremonies of the Court.
“Do try and get the Empress to smile, Eulalia,” said one of the Grand
Duchesses to me at some Court function.
But that was sooner said than done. There is not a trace of
artificiality in the Empress’s character. She seemed unable to pretend
she was enjoying herself, when, in point of fact, she was fatigued and
bored. Moving as the central figure of a splendid pageant, I think she
was always wishing the ceremony to be at an end and to find herself free
to be with her children again.
The tastes of the Emperor are as simple as those of the Empress and in
curious contrast to those of most of the Imperial family. Neither of
them likes the late supper-parties in which the majority of their
relations indulge. Early to bed and early to rise is my motto, and
supper-parties, hardly finished at two o’clock in the morning, bored me
unutterably. When I went to the opera with the Emperor and Empress, we
used to take time by the forelock and sup in the second _entr’acte_, in
order to be able to go straight to bed when we got home. The ballets
given at the Marinsky Theatre were exceedingly beautiful, and the
Empress followed the movements of the dancers with evident enjoyment
from the stage-box. Behind the box is a charming room, and there it was
that supper used to be served.
“Here is your high tea, Eulalia,” the Empress would say merrily, and
then we sat down to a square meal of cold meat and countless cups of
tea, to which I used to do ample justice, as I did not dine before going
to the theatre.
His love of simplicity does not, however, prevent the Emperor from
enjoying Society. Like most Russians, he is fond of it, and his
animation and vivacity at Court balls were delightful and, moreover,
genuine. I liked to watch him dance the mazurka, that rushing, almost
violent, dance that they say only a Slav can dance to perfection. It was
so obvious that he enjoyed it. When supper was served we went to a long
table on a dais, set at one end of a great hall, and I discovered that
the Russian Court has a very charming custom which does not obtain
elsewhere. The Emperor and Empress took their places, facing the general
company, with their Royal guests and other members of the Imperial
family to right and to left of them; but we had hardly been a minute at
table before the Emperor rose and went to one of the tables below the
dais, where he sat down and chatted with the people supping at it. After
talking for five minutes, he went to another table to greet other
guests, and then passed from group to group, sitting down at each table
for a few minutes. And, with the Russian instinct of hospitality, the
Emperor played the part of host so well that the conversation became
more animated at each table he visited. The presence of some sovereigns,
too careful of preserving the distance between themselves and persons
who are not of the blood royal, sometimes casts a gloom on their
guests.
Perhaps the Emperor’s obvious enjoyment of a ball was due to the fact
that it is but seldom he can allow himself relaxation. There is not a
busier man in the world. I once remarked to him that I find it
impossible to get through the work of the day unless I follow a definite
rule, and I asked him how he divided up his time.
“I get up early,” he answered, “and after a light breakfast I work until
eleven. Then I take a walk and come back for luncheon at half-past
twelve. After that comes the task of giving audiences to ministers and
others, and, when work allows it, I take a drive before tea in order to
get some fresh air. Immediately after tea I am busy again with my
secretaries, and work with them lasts until dinner-time.”
“A strenuous day,” I said.
“But that is not the end of it,” he answered, smiling. “I am very often
obliged to go back to work straight from the dinner-table, and sometimes
it is not finished until far on into the night.”
The Emperor’s devotion to duty is in striking contrast to the almost
traditional love of pleasure displayed by the Grand Dukes. A foreigner
might easily be led to suppose that the House of Romanoff is at heart
in sympathy with democratic ideas. The lack of formality at Court, the
marriages between Grand Dukes and commoners, the presence of unlettered
peasants at certain of the ceremonies of the Winter Palace, the share
taken by some of the members of the Imperial family in amusements
accessible to anybody who has money in his pocket, their supper parties
in restaurants and their enjoyment of the _café concerts_ of the
capital--all these things might deceive the stranger. To know the Grand
Dukes and Grand Duchesses is to realise that they neither understand the
aspirations of the democracy nor sympathise with them, for, reflecting
the glory of Autocracy they are more firmly convinced than any other
Royal persons in Europe that a gulf divides them from the rest of
mankind. And this conviction is so deep that they appear to believe that
the most ordinary actions are ennobled by the mere fact that they are
performed by persons in whose veins flows the Imperial blood.
The life led by most of them would be unbearable to me. A perpetual
round of amusements becomes in the end as wearisome as the treadmill.
How people who are not in the first flush of youth can day after day sit
up until two o’clock in the morning, as too many of them do, eating
unnecessary suppers and drinking champagne, I can not understand. High
tea with the Emperor and Empress pleased me better than late suppers
with the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses. Indeed, when I yielded to
persuasion and went out with them for an evening’s amusement my
sleepiness used to divert them immensely.
“Eulalia, you’re yawning,” they would say.
“It is two hours past my bedtime,” I would answer.
And then we laughed, and it was probably the Grand Duke Alexis who would
suggest that we should all drive out to the Islands and have another
supper at a _café concert_. Then I would strike and go home, scolding
myself for sitting up so late and marvelling at the extraordinary
vitality of the rest of the company, starting merrily on the long sledge
drive to the Islands, where they would sit by the hour in a private room
overlooking the little stage on which the unsuccessful artists of Paris
danced and sang.
Perhaps it is because I am Spanish and not Russian that I failed to see
the pleasure to be derived from spending the night in frivolity; for, in
point of fact, there is nothing characteristically grand-ducal in this
curious craze; it is simply Russian, and Moscow merchants will spend
thousands of roubles in extravagant amusements between midnight and
sunrise. The Grand Dukes are typical Russians. They have the virtues and
the failings of the typical Russian, and--I am not sure whether it is a
virtue or a failing--they are, like all the Russians I have ever met,
exceedingly susceptible to feminine charms. To the Russian, love is
everything, and in Russia women have more power to change men’s lives
than in any other land.
To please the woman he loves a Russian will exile himself to a foreign
country, will alter his habits, and change his manner of life
completely. It is not, therefore, surprising that members of the House
of Romanoff have deliberately incurred the anger of the Emperor and
voluntarily left Russia to live abroad for the sake of the women they
love. They make their homes in Paris or in the English countryside, and
become the humble slaves of the wives they have chosen; while these
ladies, although perhaps of humble origin, find themselves treated by
Society, always anxious to gain the approval of princes, with hardly
less reverence than princesses of the blood royal.
But if the majority of the members of the Imperial family love
extravagant amusement, there is one notable exception to the rule. The
Grand Duchess Elizabeth, widow of the Grand Duke Serge, who was
assassinated by revolutionists, shares the simple tastes of her sister,
the Empress, and detests the empty formality of Courts as much as I do.
When we were girls we saw a great deal of each other at Windsor and in
the Isle of Wight, and it was a great delight to me to talk over the old
days when I visited her in her palace within the fantastic battlements
of the Kremlin.
She was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful women in Europe, and her
husband was extraordinarily handsome; indeed, their beauty and their
bearing made them the most distinguished couple at the great gathering
of Royal personages I met at Buckingham Palace when the Jubilee of Queen
Victoria was celebrated. After the terrible death of her husband, the
Grand Duchess devoted herself to the education of the Grand Duke Paul’s
motherless children, the Grand Duke Dmitri and the Grand Duchess Maria
Pavlovna, and, that task accomplished, she became a sister of charity.
She has founded a convent in Moscow, where she follows a severe rule and
devotes herself to hospital work and the care of the poor, realising
that even a princess has no excuse to shirk the responsibilities of life
and to lead a useless existence.
How is it that there is such a marked difference between the tastes of
the Emperor and those of his uncles and cousins? The answer is not
difficult to find. The Emperor’s love of simplicity comes from his
mother, the Empress Marie, who, now that she can indulge her own tastes,
lives the greater part of the year with Queen Alexandra in a small villa
on the Danish coast. When I visited them there I found that they were
living as simply as private persons who know nothing of the life of
Courts.
But, while recognising the influence of his mother in the formation of
the Emperor’s character, I like to think that something of the spirit of
Peter the Great has been conserved in the Imperial family, and that the
love of work, the courage, and the simplicity displaced by Nicholas II.
are in some measure gifts from his great ancestor. One afternoon I drove
out to the Islands in a troika, a sledge that might have come from
Fairyland, covered with glistening trappings and luxurious furs and
drawn by three horses abreast, and, on my way, I stopped to visit the
little house in which Peter the Great lived when he was building his new
capital. It is a tiny cottage, a mere hut, with two rooms. Nothing could
be simpler or more unlike the vast Winter Palace. Yet I felt, as I left
this humble abode, that the spirit of the man who was content to live in
it still reigns in the splendid home of his descendant, the present
Emperor.
I have alluded to the courage of Nicholas II., and it may surprise those
who only know him by repute that I should emphasise this trait of his
character. I myself had often heard that he was timorous and dreaded
assassination. It was therefore a great surprise to me to find that he
often walked from the palace to my hotel, with only a single
aide-de-camp in attendance. Although his grandfather had been
assassinated by revolutionists, he himself appeared to be absolutely
fearless and to disregard the risk he ran by walking about Petersburg.
If precautions are taken to protect him now, he permits them solely
because he is convinced that his life is of value to his people. Russia
is his one thought. During recent months he has proved this, too, by the
way he has identified himself personally with the campaign in which his
soldiers are engaged.
Those who do not know him often speak or write of him as cruel,
tyrannical, caring for nothing but the conservation of the Imperial
power and wealth. That is an absolutely false estimate of his character.
One has only to look into his beautiful blue eyes to realise that he is
neither harsh nor cruel and to understand his great tenderness. Indeed,
it is his tenderness that distinguishes him from most of the sovereigns
I know. His affection for his mother, his devotion to his wife and
children, are the outcome of this quality, and its exercise is not
confined to his domestic life. I have heard him speak on more than one
occasion with the utmost feeling of persons who had been condemned to
exile in Siberia. It was perfectly clear to me from the way in which he
spoke of them that, had he followed the dictates of his own heart, he
would have cancelled the sentences and pardoned the offenders. I could
see that the thought of their sufferings made him suffer himself, and
that it was only a stern sense of duty that made him acquiesce in
penalties he regretted.
The bulk of the Tsar’s subjects are peasants, and he very often spoke of
their life and their customs. Indeed, he displayed the keenest interest
in plans to better their condition and to raise their standard of
culture. Sovereigns, I have noticed, carefully eschew any reference to
questions which they and their ministers are unable to solve, and it is
to me significant that neither the Tsar nor the Kaiser has ever spoken
to me of the Polish question. The Tsar was, however, aware that the
Bourbons and the great Polish family of Zamoyski are now connected--my
cousin, Princess Caroline of Bourbon, married a Zamoyski--and he very
delicately appointed a gentleman of that family to be in attendance on
me during my stay in Petersburg. From intercourse with this gentleman
and with other Poles I met in Russia I discovered that there is a
profound difference between the Russian and the Polish character. There
always remains something of the Asiatic in the Russian, but the Pole
belongs to the West. He has the Slav charm and the Latin culture. I know
of nothing sadder than the tragedy of Poland. That splendid nation,
which once saved Europe from the Turks, has been parcelled out between
three Empires, but neither the iron will of the German Emperor nor the
autocratic power of Nicholas II. has succeeded in killing the Polish
spirit. Small wonder that both at Berlin and Petersburg the subject was
not broached at Court. Since then the war has come. Will the end of it
witness the resurrection of Poland as a nation?
The Emperor is perfectly well aware that my sympathies are with the
democracy. But naturally I never attempted to force my ideas upon him. I
am able to understand that a sovereign who wields absolute power and to
whom the most powerful of his ministers is obliged to yield may be
necessary for Russia at the present day. I am convinced that the world
will be happier--princes and people alike--when democracy has triumphed,
but I realise that in a country like Russia, the bulk of whose
population is unlettered, it would be foolish, as well as dangerous, to
introduce suddenly and without preparation methods which are successful
in the West. Education, and education alone, can establish the victory
of democracy.
From my home in the capital of a great people, in whose motto is
enshrined a profound belief in the brotherhood of mankind and the
essential equality of prince and peasant, I look out over Europe and see
the decay of old institutions and the movements which are slowly but
certainly reducing those monarchs who still retain power to the position
of decorative figureheads. In Norway the process is already finished,
and, although I confess that I was first surprised, I was immensely
pleased to find, during a recent visit to King Haakon and Queen Maud,
that they were simply the first among equals. I am firmly convinced that
this will be the ultimate form of monarchy throughout Europe, but long
years must pass before the Russian people have the culture and political
knowledge which make a simple Norwegian the equal of his sovereign.
Meanwhile, it is satisfactory to know that the man guiding the destinies
of the Russian people possesses the fine qualities which distinguish
Nicholas II.