My empress; twenty-three years of intimate life with the empress of all the Russias from her marriage to the day of her exile

by Marfa Mouchanow

CHAPTER VI

THE GRAND DUCHESS ELIZABETH

At the risk of rousing a storm of indignation against me, I must say that one of the misfortunes of the Czarina was to have in Russia an elder sister already married to a Russian Grand Duke. I know that it is an established legend that the Grand Duchess Elizabeth is a saint, who ought to have been canonised in her lifetime. But, in reality, things were not as represented. The Grand Duchess was a very ambitious woman, and moreover one who cared for nothing and for nobody in the world with the exception of her own self. In spite of the report that her marriage was a very miserable one, she was on the contrary perfectly happy with her husband, who was quite content to let her live her own life, and who never interfered with anything it might please her to do. When he was appointed Governor General of Moscow, she hastened to go over to the Greek Church, in order to win for herself popularity in the ancient capital of the Russian Czars, and to a certain extent she succeeded in doing so. She took advantage of her position as eldest sister of the young Czarina to try to influence her, and to prejudice her against those people of whom she thought she had personally reason to complain. The weakness of the character of Nicholas II. was well known to his family, long before he ever ascended the throne, and both the Grand Duke Sergius, who, let it be said by the way, was an exceedingly clever man, and his wife made up their minds to rule Russia through the influence of its new Empress, and to become the only really important personages in the State. They partly succeeded, and this was the cause of most of the misfortunes which were later on to assail the unfortunate Czarina.

The latter, in spite of her impetuous and, if the truth need be said, haughty disposition, stood in awe of her eldest sister, a feeling out of which the Grand Duchess Elizabeth knew very well how to make capital. She set herself to persuade her sister that it was indispensable she should affect a far stronger attachment to the orthodox faith than she really professed, and that if only the orthodox clergy should think they had found in her an energetic support, she would rapidly become popular. It must not be forgotten that at that time the influence of priests in general was fast waning, and that they were aware of the fact. It is not surprising, therefore, that they tried to find a ally among the Imperial family, and that the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, who made a profession of being absorbed in the practices of a narrow devotion, became the object of their pet affection. She was quite conscious of this fact, and being a far cleverer woman than she looked, she used it to her own advantage and to the detriment of her sister.

Elizabeth Feodorovna had the reputation of being a semi-saint. In reality she was nothing of the kind, for she liked the bad as well as the good things of this world to an inordinate degree. Fond of admiration, she had not been insensible to the one which she inspired, and her admirers had been many, to begin with her own husband’s brother, the Grand Duke Paul. But she had carried all her intrigues in a grand manner, and had never allowed them to interfere with the general comfort of her existence. Worldly to her finger tips, she yet affected the manners of an unworldly woman, and she “took in” most of those with whom she came into contact by her hypocrisy, for it could hardly be called anything else.

At heart she was jealous of her sister, just as she had been jealous of the Empress Marie Feodorovna, during the latter’s reign. It was for this reason principally that she had been so glad to go to Moscow, where she knew she would be the first lady in the town, and would enjoy a semi-Imperial position. She did not care to see any one put before her, and she applied herself to render the young Czarina unpopular by every means in her power.

Of course the unfortunate Alexandra Feodorovna, who knew nothing about Russia and still less about Russian society when she married, believed all that her sister told her, and the latter gave her a totally false opinion as to most of the people whom she saw, or with whom she was thrown into contact—the Empress Dowager to begin with, and all the other members of the Imperial family. Among the latter the young Czarina might have found friends but too happy to guide her, such for instance as her own sister-in-law, the Grand Duchess Xenia, who was about her own age, and who would have been only too glad to be of use to her. But the latter’s husband, the Grand Duke Alexander Michaylovitsch, was credited with ambitious designs, and was moreover one of the most intelligent men of his day. This was more than sufficient to eliminate him from the number of the people whom it was deemed expedient for Alexandra Feodorovna to see much of.

I shall quote one instance of the kind of influence which the Grand Duchess Elizabeth exercised over her sister. One day the Empress came to me and told me (this happened during the war) that her sister had sent her some relics of a famous saint in the Orthodox Church, who was buried in the cathedral of Rostoff on the Don, telling her at the same time that she ought to have them dissolved in water and then drink this water early in the morning before she had partaken of any other food. Should she do so, success would come to the Russian arms without fail. The poor Empress was torn asunder between her conviction that her duty required her to obey her sister and her distaste for the abominable beverage she was expected to swallow. I tried my best to persuade her that the whole thing was nonsense, but then Rasputin, who was one of the instruments of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, interfered, and, after much hesitation, the unfortunate Czarina at last made up her mind to drink the dirty relics as she had been ordered, and, as a consequence, was abominably sick.

It was also Elizabeth Feodorovna who was responsible for the introduction of Rasputin into the immediate circle of the Imperial family. Before that she had presented to her sister a Frenchman, called Philippe, who was supposed to be one of the first mediums in Europe, and for a short time this Philippe was quite an important personage at Court. It was about the time the Japanese war broke out, and the intriguing Frenchman did his best to consolidate his influence and power, by making all kinds of prophecies as to the course the struggle was about to take. Events, however, gave the lie to his predictions, because instead of the brilliant successes which he had prophesied, defeat attended the course of the campaign, and the Russian armies were routed. This shook the reputation of the medium, and, finally, after another failure of a private nature (he had promised the Empress she would give birth to a son in the course of the next six months, which did not happen) he was dismissed, principally at the request of the Grand Duke Nicholas, who called upon the Czar and revealed to the latter the many intrigues of which Philippe had been guilty. When he was gone the Empress spent her time turning tables alone or with a few chosen friends, and she at last got her nervous system into such a condition that it is no wonder she fell an easy prey to Rasputin when the latter was presented to her by her sister, with the assurance that he was one of the greatest saints the Russian Orthodox Church had ever known.

This influence of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth was exercised not only in religious and political matters, but also in purely frivolous ones. For instance, she introduced into the Imperial Palace a dressmaker from Moscow who used to make her own gowns, and to whom she had promised she would procure the Empress as a client. This dressmaker, who, I have always felt convinced was a German spy, became quite an important personage at Court, and soon my mistress did not dare to order a gown from any one else but this woman. This of course caused great dissatisfaction among her former modistes, both in Petrograd and in Paris, who, after having enjoyed her patronage for a number of years, found it hard to be set aside for a newcomer. I tried more than once to remonstrate and to urge the expediency of not offending former friends, if such an expression can be used in the like case, but I was immediately silenced, with the result that the Empress spent twice as much on her clothes as she had done during the first years of her marriage and was dressed with much less taste. Under the pretext that she ought to wear Russian silks, gowns of inferior materials were made for her, and made abominably into the bargain. This was the more shameful that Moscow possesses silk manufactories, the produce of which is not a bit inferior to the loveliest French silks, but my poor mistress never got the chance to have them, and the cheapest and most vile satin and velvets were those which her famous Moscow dressmaker selected for her. Worth, who for years had had the privilege of making the dresses of the Russian Empresses, became very angry at the neglect with which his offers were treated, and soon the Empress came to be called stingy, not only in St. Petersburg but also in Paris, where proprietors of the many establishments where she had formerly got her clothes became her enemies, and took to calling her German, for the only reason that she did not any longer buy her dresses and other things from them. It would have been easy to avoid all this had one been possessed of a strong and independent will and not set trembling, as my poor mistress was, whenever her sister swept down upon her with a complaint or in an excitement of some kind or another. When the little Grand Duchesses grew up, their aunt also interfered with their education. She believed herself to be an excellent pedagogue, and was convinced that she had brought up admirably the two motherless children of her brother-in-law, the Grand Duke Paul, Dmitry and Marie, who was later on to become the wife of a Swedish Prince from whom she was divorced a short time afterwards. In reality she had done nothing of the kind, and neither the nephew nor the niece over whose childhood she was supposed to have watched with such care, did her any honour, nor proved in any way the excellence of the training which she was supposed to have given them. In regard to the children of the Czar and of the Czarina, her influence proved quite mischievous, and might have become even dangerous if the strong common sense of the two eldest girls had not saved them from the danger of the superstitious atmosphere with which their aunt wanted to surround them.

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Rasputin

The Empress was the best and most tender of mothers. Indeed her affection for her children was almost too fervent, for she was always anxious on their account and would hardly ever allow them to mix with other people for fear of anything evil befalling them. She thought, quite naturally, that she could trust her sister and share with her the responsibilities of the education of her family. In reality she could not have made a worse choice, because between ambition and superstition the Grand Duchess Elizabeth was about the last person who ought to have been permitted free access to girls of the impressionable temperament of the young daughters of Nicholas II.

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