CHAPTER XX
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.