CHAPTER XVI
THE CZARINA’S FRIENDS
Alexandra Feodorovna did not make any real friends during the first years that followed upon her marriage. Indeed it was only after the Japanese war that she started the intimacies for which she was so much reproached by her subjects. The most notorious was that for Rasputin, but there were two others just as nefarious—that with Madame Wyroubieva and with the Princess Dondoukoff.
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Grand Duchess Elizabeth
The latter was a lady of considerable intelligence and a physician of no mean skill whom the Empress had put at the head of the private hospital she had organised at Czarskoi Selo long before the war broke out. Later on when other lazarets and ambulances, the number of which increased every day as the terrific struggle went on, were organised in the Imperial residence, the Princess Dondoukoff was appointed general superintendent of all these establishments, and it was she who coached the Czarina as well as her daughters in the duties of a Red Cross nurse. She was of a pushing temperament, had the reputation of being loose in her morals, though personally I saw nothing that could have justified it, and was also gifted with a remarkable propensity for intrigue. No one liked her, but everybody feared her. She insinuated herself thoroughly into the confidence of the Empress, who referred to her in everything, and willingly listened to her. She was of course among the followers of Rasputin, and with him and Madame Wyroubieva formed a trio which it would have been difficult not only for the general public but also for the immediate attendants of the Russian Sovereign to fight against.
The Princess Dondoukoff used to give drugs to Alexandra Feodorovna which the latter used to take unknown to her medical attendants and which were declared by them, when they discovered the fact, to have had a good deal to do with her shattered nerves. This may or may not have been true,—I shall not venture an opinion upon the subject,—but certainly my mistress was far too fond of the Princess, and would have done better to have seen less of her, if only from the point of view that the weight which she laid on her opinions considerably incensed the doctors who were in regular attendance upon her, who objected to the manner in which their own prescriptions were neglected.
The Princess introduced at Court a quack medical man from Thibet called Bachmanoff, who, she pretended, had brought with him from his country all kinds of secret remedies which she advised the Czarina to try on the little Grand Duke Alexis. The fond mother believed her, and Bachmanoff became one of her favourites. It is impossible to say whether he would have cured the child, because the latter’s nurse, a sailor called Derewenko, of whom he was inordinately fond, and whom I have already had occasion to mention, threw out of the windows all the powders and potions which Alexandra Feodorovna asked him to give to her son, and took great care the boy should not get anything but what his own doctor had ordered him to take. Ultimately the Grand Duke got better and stronger, and last year he might have been pronounced cured, at least in so far as the chronic ailment from which he was suffering could be cured. But the Empress in her joy at this unexpected recovery was persuaded that it had taken place, thanks to the Thibetan, in whom she believed more than ever.
The friendship for Madame Wyroubieva was perhaps even worse than the attachment of the foolish Sovereign to the Princess Dondoukoff. Madame Wyroubieva was the daughter not of the Emperor’s private secretary, as she represented herself to be, but of a State Secretary (which is quite a different thing, being a purely honorific position) called Tanieieff. She had been married to a navy officer with whom she could not agree, and they were divorced, not because he had grown mad, as she declared (divorce for insanity is not allowed in Russia), but because he had found reason to object to her conduct. The Empress, for reasons no one ever understood, took her part and invited her once or twice to the Palace of Czarskoi Selo. Madame Wyroubieva made the most of her opportunities and soon became quite indispensable to Alexandra Feodorovna. She it was who, with the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, introduced Rasputin into the Imperial household, and with him she established such control of the Czarina’s actions that soon the latter became simply a tool in their hands.
Madame Wyroubieva was, above everything else, a grabbing woman. She fully meant to make a fortune out of the position of trust she was supposed to occupy. Both she and Rasputin were in their turn in the hands of a gang of adventurers who used them for their own ends, and they set up a shameful exploitation of the public exchequer for which unfortunately the Empress was made responsible. The latter only looked upon Rasputin as a saintly personage, a kind of orthodox yogi whose prayers were sure to be taken into account by the Almighty. Terrible things have been hinted at in regard to her relations with him, but all that I can say is that to my knowledge, at least, she was never alone with him for one single moment, and that except in regard to the health of the heir to the throne, my mistress never spoke with him of anything else but religious subjects. The public said that he was all powerful at Court, but I feel convinced that these rumours arose from certain unscrupulous persons who had an interest in spreading them because they managed (thanks to the intimacy of which they boasted with a personage who, as they related, could turn and twist the sovereigns at his will and pleasure) to obtain army contracts and other things they desired. Among them were Protopopoff and Sturmer, and the notorious Manassevitsch Maniuloff, whose blackmailing propensities caused him to be arrested and sentenced to several years’ hard labour from which he was released by order of the present Russian government. Rasputin in reality was treated in the Palace as a kind of jester who was allowed to do as he wished—a sort of fool, after the pattern of Chicot in Dumas’ novels, and neither Nicholas II., who liked him even better than did the Empress, nor the latter ever thought of him as of anything else than a holy pilgrim (for that was what he proclaimed himself to be) whose vocation was to go about preaching the gospel to the world. One must not forget that there have been many such in Russia, and that the natural tendency to mysticism, which is one of the characteristics of the Russian character, has always welcomed them with effusion. The Empress, who, though a German, was more superstitious than any Russian, fully believed that the presence of Rasputin at her side was a shield against all possible dangers. She therefore refused to be parted from him, and whenever anything happened of a nature to cause her worry she used to send for him, when he would prostrate himself on the ground and invoke the powers of Heaven to deliver him and his friends from evil. He was a thorough fanatic, or at least professed to affect the ways of a fanatic, and he used to force the Empress to prostrate herself before holy images beside him, and to remain with her face pressed to the floor for hours in earnest supplication to a God whom, he averred, he was the only one to honour as he ought to be honoured. It is difficult to realise that an Empress of Russia, and one of the haughty temperament of Alexandra Feodorovna, could lend herself to such ridiculous practices, but so it was, and I can only say what I have seen without attempting to explain it. But it was not surprising that when the Imperial family came to hear of all this, it should have been indignant and tried to oust from the Palace a man whose presence in it tended to discredit royalty at a time when, on the contrary, every possible means should have been resorted to in order to raise its prestige.
The Empress Dowager, when she heard all that was going on, raised her voice, and, disliking though she did to meddle in what she considered did not concern her, she made representations to the Czar when the latter paid her a visit in Kieff, whither she had transferred her residence. Nicholas listened to her, but did nothing. Others followed the example of Marie Feodorovna, and the Grand Dukes individually and collectively tried to open the eyes of the head of their dynasty to the evils caused by the presence of Rasputin. Everything proved useless, because the Emperor just as much as his wife was under the spell of the clever comedian whose strong will had completely mastered his own weak intellect. I have often witnessed the prayer meetings which were organised in the Czarina’s private oratory, at which Rasputin presided. Few people were admitted to them, and the congregation generally consisted of Madame Wyroubieva, the Princess Dondoukoff, the Czar and his Consort. The Imperial children were sometimes told to attend them but not often. Rasputin used to pray aloud, and then preach, touching in his sermons on subjects of every kind that had not the remotest claim to be considered religious. And then he assured his audience that the Lord had revealed himself to him and ordered him to acquaint the Czar with such and such a thing, choosing the one he had at heart at that particular moment. The Empress generally went into hysterics whilst listening to him, and it was on that account I was asked to remain in the vicinity of the room, so as to be able to come to her help. I had often to unlace her or else she would have choked, and for this purpose I took her into another apartment. The fact that one or other of her maids saw me carrying away some part of her clothes gave rise to the most malicious rumours. The most curious thing about it all was that the Emperor looked on unmoved whilst his wife was almost writhing in strong convulsions and extended no help whatever to her, because Rasputin assured him that these convulsions were a manifestation of the good spirits, and a proof that the prayers of the Czarina had been accepted by the Almighty.
I know that all this sounds incredible and yet it is but the truth. The unfortunate woman whom the world has slandered in the most cruel manner possible was after all nothing but a miserable being whose mental balance was unstrung, to say the least. It would have been more sensible to have put her in an asylum than to have accused her of immoral practices of which she was incapable. Of course others who were witnesses of the daily actions of Alexandra Feodorovna in Czarskoi Selo could not be expected to look at things with the same eyes as I did and I do not feel any surprise at the disgust which filled all the good and devoted servants of the dynasty when they heard about these mysterious meetings during which the Holy Ghost was supposed to descend in person on the heads of Nicholas II. and his wife. There were some still in existence, among others the Princess Wassiltschikoff, one of the most prominent women in St. Petersburg society, who took it upon herself to write to my mistress to warn her of the manner in which she was discrediting herself and the dynasty. The Czarina was terribly offended on receiving this letter, and fell into one of her rare fits of passion. She complained to the Emperor, and the author of this epistle that had aroused her anger was forthwith ordered to leave St. Petersburg and to retire in disgrace to one of her estates in the country. Alexandra Feodorovna clenched her teeth and could hardly restrain her tears when speaking about what she called “this infamous letter.” At that moment of rage I believe she could have killed the lady who had thus ventured to tell her things which she considered the most insolent she had ever heard in her whole life. She was destined to feel still more offended a few days later when the Grand Duke Nicholas Michaylovitsch, a cousin of the Czar, presented to the latter a memorandum in which he adjured him not to listen any longer to the advice he received from his wife, and to dismiss the gang of adventurers whose presence at his side was discrediting him. He also was repaid by being sent into exile for the audacity with which he had dared to criticise the conduct of Alexandra Feodorovna.
There is, therefore, nothing surprising if those who had come to look upon Rasputin as upon a national danger should at last have made up their minds to remove him by fair means or foul. Of course what lay behind his assassination was the desire to put an end to the influence of the Empress over her Consort, and to pave the way towards her internment in a private asylum or in a convent where it was felt that she would be happier than anywhere else. So long as Rasputin existed such a thing was not to be thought of, but it was secretly hoped that if he were finally put out of the way the mind of the Czarina would snap altogether and it would then become a relatively easy matter to persuade Nicholas II. to separate himself from her, when it was hoped that the dynasty would recover some of the prestige which it had lost. This, so far as I know, is the real key to the murder of the adventurer whose career constitutes a unique episode even in the annals of Russian history that has recorded so many queer things. In describing it I have anticipated events, and must now return a few years back and speak of the outbreak of the great war, even if superficially, because its declaration sounded the knell of the Romanoff dynasty and, in a certain way, sealed the fate of the illustrious lady at whose side I spent so many years before misfortune overwhelmed her.