Court Life From Within

by Infanta of Spain Eulalia

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.