Miss Margaret Eager, an Irish lady of good education, was called to Russia in the year 1899 to serve in the capacity of Nursery Governess to the Royal Family. Miss Eager is very much of a Celt. She has a profound belief in the philosophy of mysticism and indeed she herself seems to be possessed of certain supernatural powers, second sight, visions and dreams that come true. Miss Eager related to me various occurrences in the Royal Family concerning strange and seemingly mystical manifestations. Miss Eager herself, believes firmly in the reality of the spiritualistic sense of the Empress.
When the Grand Duchess Olga was three years old, she was taken ill with a gastric attack from which she did not fully recover for two or three weeks, the attack itself, in its severe form, keeping the Royal child in bed three or four days. The first time Miss Eager left the bedside of the sick child for a breath of fresh air, she went for a walk along the quays of the Neva. Upon her return, as she entered the room, little Olga looked up and said, “An old lady was here!” “What old lady?” she asked. “An old lady who wears a blue dress,” the child replied. Miss Eager was frankly puzzled because the Court was in mourning at that time and there was no one wearing a blue dress. “Surely, you mean blue. What kind of blue?” questioned Miss Eager. “It was not like Mamma’s,” and the child paused. Miss Eager thought perhaps one of the maids had had a visitor and so they were all questioned, but nobody knew of any visitor during Miss Eager’s absence, and so the matter for the moment was dropped and dismissed by Miss Eager as a possible vagary of the child’s imagination. A few days later, Miss Eager was sitting on the floor with the Royal children in a certain room in the Royal Palace playing at building castles of cards. Suddenly, Olga looked up and exclaimed, “There is the old lady in blue!” “Where? Where?” said Miss Eager and the other children. “There! she came through the bedroom door; she is standing at the door now!” Miss Eager quickly caught up the child and ran through the bedroom into the room beyond and into yet another room, but she could find no one nor could she hear any footsteps. “Well,” said Olga to Miss Eager, “you must be very stupid because the old lady was there.” Two days later, the Empress directed Miss Eager to take the child to the Chapel in the Winter Palace and there, in the hall on the way to the chapel, are two life-sized portraits of the Emperor Alexander II and his wife. Looking at the picture of Alexander II’s wife, Olga said, “Why, that is the lady I saw in the blue dress and see, her dress is not the dress Mamma wears.” The identification was made by the Grand Duchess with the utmost assurance.
Now, this incident by itself would have no significance, but Miss Eager relates in connection with it other incidents which give it interesting if fantastic value. Miss Eager, during her long stay in the Royal Household, always slept with the nursery. One night, she maintains, she distinctly heard a voice coming from directly beneath her bed. The voice was far off and weird and was as of one weeping bitterly and making terrible complaints and the language used was French. The story she was relating was one of extreme intimacy. Miss Eager says that she sat up in bed to try to locate from whence the sounds were coming, but no sooner had she raised herself upright than the voice ceased. Upon laying her head on the pillow again, the voice resumed and the complaints were of her husband’s unfaithfulness. While Miss Eager was still meditating the extraordinary experience, the Empress as was her wont, entered the room and Miss Eager asked her what room was directly beneath the room they were then in. The Empress replied, “Merely storerooms.” Miss Eager then said to the Empress, “But there is some poor woman there and suffering from the most terrible affliction.” The Empress replied, “What are you saying?” Whereupon, Miss Eager related what she had just experienced. The Empress then asked if the words were spoken in English. “No,” replied Miss Eager, “It is French; at first I thought it might be the cook, but that is impossible because the French spoken was very pure and elegant.” The Empress then said that if Miss Eager thought there was any one below, she had better get out of bed and listen at the floor, which she did, but could hear nothing. The Empress then told her to get back into bed and go to sleep. Immediately her head touched the pillow, the voice was again audible to her. Suddenly the Empress said, “Tell me, does it remind you of anything you have ever heard before? Do you know anything of the story of this room before it was done up for my little ones?” Miss Eager replied that she knew that the wife of Alexander II slept in this room and then she recalled having heard that this woman was very unhappy because of her husband’s numerous peccadilloes with other women. She recalled, also, that the Princess Dolgoruki was Alexander II’s mistress. His wife, who used this room over a long period of time, used nightly to bury her face in her pillow and cry aloud. After she recalled these things, the Empress said, “Yes, but before she died, she went to the Dolgoruki and told her of her unhappiness, using the very selfsame words that you have just repeated to me as having heard while on your pillow.” The Empress thereupon told Miss Eager that she was sleeping on the very bed which Alexander II’s wife had used and upon which she died. The next day, the Empress herself, insisted that the entire furnishings of the room be changed and that a new bed be installed. It is said that Alexander II, after the death of his wife, wanted to marry the Princess Dolgoruki, which indeed, he may have done morganatically. Miss Eager was deeply impressed by this experience and in the mind of the Empress there was no question or shadow of doubt whatever.
Another incident related by Miss Eager in connection with the Empress occurred in the Palace at Peterhof. One night, according to her custom, the Empress entered Miss Eager’s room. Miss Eager relates that she awoke to find herself being shaken by Her Majesty who was crying, “Awake! awake! come back!” and when Miss Eager came to her senses, she realised that she was crying bitterly. “What is it? What is it?” exclaimed the Empress. “I have been here five minutes shaking you and you would not wake up; what is the matter?” Miss Eager replied that she must have had a nightmare. The Empress insisted upon knowing what Miss Eager had seen in her unhappy dream, whereupon, the nursery governess related that in her dream, she appeared to be in a town of some far distant country—a southern land. The streets were badly lighted; many of them were narrow and the people round about her who filled the streets, were dark and swarthy. Traversing these streets, she presently came to a great building before which a crowd had collected. As she stood and wondered what interest held the people, an open carriage drove up. The thought flashed through her mind, “Royalty must be expected; who can it be?” Just then, out of the building came an elderly gentleman whom Miss Eager did not recognise, but he was followed closely by a man in uniform. After the man got into the carriage, there was the glint of flashing steel and immediately the oldish man dropped back apparently lifeless. At once, all was turned into a mad dream and Miss Eager found herself trying to crush the Empress and the Royal Princesses under the seat of the carriage. Whereupon, the Empress laughed and said, “You can see for yourself, that it was only a dream, for you could not shove me under the seat of the carriage even if you could succeed in putting the children there.” When the Empress had gone Miss Eager once more drifted off into sleep. In the morning when she awoke, she was tired and nervous as if after some long journey. When Mary, the nurse, came in, she said, “Why, Miss Eager, what is the matter with you this morning?” and Miss Eager told her that in the night she had had a terrible dream in which she had seen a man in a carriage murdered. At breakfast time, when she saw the Empress, she said, “Have you had any more nightmares?” and then turning to the Emperor, who had just entered the room, Her Majesty directed Miss Eager to relate to him the hideous dream of the night before. Whereupon, Miss Eager related the unhappy scenes of her nightmare. The Tsar listened with the utmost attention and when Miss Eager had finished speaking, he said, “Miss Eager, I hope that you won’t be very much frightened because what you saw in your dream last night was an incident which occurred in a town of Northern Italy where His Majesty, King Humbert, was assassinated at precisely the hour that the Empress entered your room and in that manner that you describe in your dream.” Miss Eager, like a flash, remembered the picture she had seen of the late King of Italy and it was the man whom she had seen enter the carriage followed by the officer in uniform! As the Tsar told her this, he held in his hand a telegram which had just been received detailing the news of this assassination.
On one occasion, the Empress told Miss Eager that all her life she had been much interested in the spiritual world, but that she had come to the conclusion that it was wrong to meddle with such things because if there was anything in it, it must come from the devil.
Early one evening, the Empress entered the nursery and told the children that she was going to dinner and would probably be very late, consequently would not come in to see them on her return, as was her wont. There was going to be a séance after the dinner. The next day, Miss Eager took occasion to ask Her Majesty if she had enjoyed the séance. The Tsaritsa proceeded to tell her all about a clairvoyant called Philippe but with a note of bitterness in her recital, for she said that Philippe had mesmerised her husband and made him do exactly what he told him. The Empress steadfastly refused to see Philippe after that. Just what occurred at this séance, the Empress never did say, at least to Miss Eager, but it was quite clear to her that Her Majesty had been unfavourably impressed and that she would have nothing more to do with the mysterious Frenchman. Considerable pressure was brought to bear upon the Empress by various ladies of the Court to persuade her to go once more to Philippe, but she never would do it.
These incidents indicating this phase of the Tsaritsa’s character are, of course, sympathetically interpreted by Miss Eager because she, herself, believes so absolutely in the spirit world, in dreams and intuitions.
For example, before Port Arthur was beseiged, Miss Eager in a dream saw its fall and told the Empress about it. The Empress afterwards reminded her of this dream and deeply regretted that the Tsar had not taken counsel from Miss Eager’s vision rather than from Philippe.
On another occasion, Miss Eager told Mary, the nurse, to go and tell a certain lift-man in the Palace that he was not to work that day as, in a dream, she had seen him terribly crushed and mangled, but Mary laughed and refused to convey the message. Miss Eager thought it seemed rather foolish and so did not insist upon sending the message to the man. That afternoon, when she returned from the daily drive with the Grand Duchesses, the Empress sent for her and said, “Miss Eager, this morning, you told Mary to warn the lift-man not to work to-day and Mary refused to carry your message.” Miss Eager said, “Yes, that is true.” “Well,” said the Empress, “I sent for you because I wanted to tell you myself that while you were out with the children, the lift-man was killed.”
Another curious incident which is hard to explain occurred at the time of the death of Princess Ella, a daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse, a charming child of seven years, who succumbed to an illness of only 36 hours’ duration,—apparently ptomaine poisoning. The child was staying at the time with her Royal uncle and aunt, the Tsar and Tsaritsa at the Palace in Poland. While the child was ill, and just before her life spark was extinguished, two of the Russian Grand Duchesses, Olga and Tatiana, who were sleeping together in a neighbouring room, suddenly began to scream frantically. The Empress, the physicians in attendance upon Princess Ella and Miss Eager rushed into the room where the children were and saw them standing in their beds and shrieking in terror. It was long before they could be pacified and then they told how they had seen a strange man with flowing robes and great wings, walk through their room. While they were still telling of the fearful apparition, the eyes of both the children suddenly became dilated with terror and both of them simultaneously pointing in the same direction, cried, “Look! Look! There he is again. Don’t you see him? He is going into Ella’s room. Poor Ella! Poor Ella!” Of course, none of the adults could see anything and the physicians assured the Empress that it was but an attack of childish hysteria which had suddenly and strangely come upon both children. Only a few moments later, the Empress and the physicians were hurriedly summoned to the bedside of the dying child who, lapsing into a state of coma, died in the Tsaritsa’s arms. To this day, the Empress, as well as the Emperor and Miss Eager, are convinced that the children actually saw this Angel of Death passing into the room of the dying Princess. At least, it is true that there are many similar inexplicable cases on record of children and sometimes of animals, as well as of dying persons, having supernatural vision at moments of death. Horses, for example, have been known to become terror-stricken when passing the scene of a murder, while the well-known death-rap is of such common occurrence that there can be no doubt of its existence.