Thus Princess Alix has always had grand connections, but the duchy of Hesse and the Rhine was poor and as the Grand Duke, her father, was not even ruler of the Duchy, and possessed of only small financial resources, the family household was forced to accept a comparatively frugal régime. There are hundreds of girls in America to-day who have never felt the press of poverty as did Princess Alix through the early years of her life. The little Princess was taught to sew and to assist in home duties, not only because this was all part of the proper training of a princess, but because of necessity.
The simplicity of this home was like the simplicity of an ordinary German or English middle class home of to-day. In her letters to Queen Victoria, the mother of Princess Alix was wont to speak very freely of the straitened circumstances of the family. Some of the items and incidents mentioned in these letters can hardly be credited. For instance, in one letter the death of a cow is lamented—“because it will be so difficult to get another.” In another she sends thanks for some furniture. In another the summer holiday is discussed and frank acknowledgment made that they cannot afford to go to Sheveningen, the charming and fashionable Dutch watering resort a few miles from The Hague, because it is too costly, but they must be content with Blankenberghe which is treeless, dull and uninteresting, but more reasonable of price.
Princess Alix’s allowance of pocket money was twenty-five cents a week up to the time of her confirmation, when she received double that amount. Alix was the youngest born of the Grand Duke and Duchess and was called “Alix” because Queen Victoria had always been annoyed at the way Germans pronounced Alice. And so at her suggestion Alice was changed to Alix to simplify it for the people of her own country. “Alicky” she was frequently called by her mother, but the neighbours and friends of the family early came to call her the “Little Princess Sonnenschein,” and from this came the name of endearment which she carried for so long—“Sunny.”
“Baby is a sweet, merry little person, like Ella (her sister), but her features are smaller,” her mother once wrote to Queen Victoria, “and her eyes are darker, and she has very long lashes and auburn hair. She is always laughing, and with a deep dimple in one cheek just like Ernie.” (Ernie was her brother who is now Grand Duke of Hesse and the Rhine.) On another occasion her mother wrote: “She is indeed the personification of her nickname ‘Sunny.’” During all this time Empress dreams were far off, and the big world with its infinite possibilities, its large joys and burden of days, but visions of twilight hours. When she was only six years old her mother died. This was the first deep shadow of her life, and from that time on she carried little responsibilities that tended to weigh upon her, to drive her more and more into herself, and perhaps to plant the seeds of moroseness which some say is now a quality of her character. At twelve the True Romance of her life came to her.
Princess Elizabeth, the older sister of Alix, had been courted by Grand Duke Sergius, of Russia, an uncle of the present Tsar and brother of the then reigning Emperor. In 1884 Sergius came to Darmstadt for his bride, and young Nicholas was of the Royal party. Nicholas here met Princess Alix for the first time and in her saw his future bride—the future Empress of his country. Nicholas, though nearly four years older than she, was only sixteen, but sometimes hearts can choose their own at sixteen as surely as in later years, and if love has since been the dominant element in the family life of this royal couple, it entered in, there in Darmstadt at this early time.
CHAPTER II
COURTSHIP AND A JOURNEY TO THE NORTHLAND
From the hour of their first meeting, Princess Alix never doubted the love of her young Russian scion, whose still boyish heart she knew she had reached. Child as she was, Princess Alix already felt germinating within her beginnings of woman love, and from that time through all the following girlhood days, through her period of lovely maidenhood, she held in close memory the picture of her first wooer. That her young lover was less faithful was not so much a matter of surprise, because first of all being a man, and especially a Russian man, not to include a Prince besides, Nicholas naturally went the way of all the rest, the way of so many men, of most Russians, and of all Princes, and under the tutelage of his relatives, the Grand Dukes, and other unavoidable corrupt associates of the Court, he sowed his wild oats as part of the day’s work, and as a matter of course, sowed them furiously and very, very wildly. Nicholas’ mother, spouse of the Emperor Alexander III, herself early suggested that a mistress for the young Nicholas might be well as a choice of evils, the lesser one. Thereupon, Nicholas was taken to the Imperial Ballet, there to make his choice of a temporary love. The woman whom he chose at that time lives to-day in St. Petersburg, in a grand palace, given her by the little man who now rules the mighty Empire of Russia, built by money exacted from thousands of starving peasants throughout the length and breadth of the vast empire.
Perhaps—for a time—Nicholas forgot the little German girl, but she never forgot her Prince! Perhaps Nicholas was lacking in that blessed quality we call “loyalty.” Or it may be that he was only weak of character as most of his friends of the time would have us believe. At all events, he was not even true to his Polish dancer, and when he became infatuated with a Jewess, his Imperial father cried “Enough!” and sent his son on a tour around the world. Nicholas was accompanied on this trip by another bon vivant, his cousin Prince George of Greece. Prince George, however, was also an athlete and a man of ready wit, and when in Japan a fanatic rushed upon the Tsarevitch to kill him, Prince George raised his arm and succeeded in so diverting the stroke that Nicholas received only a glancing blow on the forehead. Thus was he spared to return to Darmstadt and renew his suit with his love of earlier days.
Royal marriages are so rarely love matches, that the world watches the few that are with admiration and hope. Too often diplomatic objections prevent the coming together of royal lovers. And so in the case with Nicholas, his father desired the union of his son with a Montenegrin princess.
Queen Victoria never really opposed the match, but she feared for the safety of her grand-daughter. The Russian throne is supposed to offer unparalleled peril to its occupants, and the health of the Princess Alix had never been rugged. Queen Victoria feared that under the great stress and strain of St. Petersburg Princess Alix would not have the strength to bear up. The Empress Frederick of Germany, an aunt of Princess Alix, was also doubtful of the wisdom of the match. Her reasons, however, were somewhat different. Empress Frederick had had many opportunities to watch the development of her sister’s daughter and she had noticed, perchance with pain, certain qualities of temperament which may have been the result of her trying circumstances in early years, together with the fact that she had been left so much alone through the early death of her mother. She was reserved and shy, therefore seeming cold of nature, and haughty of manner. Having seen far less of the great world than most royal princesses she shrank from the social whirl. The loneliness of her childhood had taught her to find resource within herself, thus habits of reading, study, and contemplation had become part of her nature. These characteristics all make for the development of a splendid, substantial woman, but they fail to bring out the qualities essential to a woman who is to preside over a brilliant court, where the sway of personality, of grace, charm and wit—all of the surface virtues—count for as much, if not more, than the deeper qualities of sound character and a disciplined mind.