On another occasion she remarked that she knew that the Emperor and herself were blamed for not surrounding themselves with genuine people.
“It’s an extraordinary thing, Lili,” she said, “we’ve tried to find genuine advisers for the last twenty years, but we’ve never found them. I wonder whether any exist!”
The Empress always resented the cruel slanders which were circulated about the Emperor.
“I wonder they don’t accuse him of being too good: that, at least, would be true!” she cried.
As for herself, she troubled little.
“Why do people want to discuss me,” she said. “Why can’t they leave me alone!” Again: “Why will people insist that I am pro-German? I have spent twenty years in Germany, and twenty years in Russia. My interests, and my son’s future lie in Russia: how, therefore, can I be anything but Russian?”
The Empress has been censured for exerting undue influence over her husband, and this “pernicious” influence has made her the scapegoat for all the ills which have befallen Russia. But her “influence” was merely that of a good woman over a man. If she influenced the Emperor in any other way, it was done unconsciously. I will never believe otherwise, although, in making this assertion, I shall perhaps be confronted with all kinds of hostile criticism. It will be asked by what right I dare defend a woman who has been tried and found guilty. But I dare to do so. True, I am a person whose name is entirely unknown to the general public, but it cannot be disputed by those who knew life at Tsarkoe Selo and Petrograd that I was honoured by the Empress’s friendship and confidence.
The Emperor shared his wife’s “thoroughness”; he never believed anything until (were it possible) he had tried it for himself. During the war, a new uniform was submitted for the Emperor’s approval; he determined to test its qualities, and he walked for twenty miles wearing it, in order to see what weight was possible to carry with it. The sentinels failed to recognise the Emperor when he passed them wearing the sample “Tommy’s” kit, a fact which greatly amused him; but, as a result of his practical experiment, the uniform (with certain alterations suggested by the Emperor) was “passed.”
The Empress put her husband first in everything—it was always “The Emperor wishes it,” “The Emperor says so”; she was very tender towards him, the maternal element was apparent in her love even for her husband: she took care of him, but perhaps this arose chiefly from a feeling that he suffered by reason of his love for her.
As husband and wife they were indeed one. They only asked happiness of life. The Emperor’s tastes were of the simplest, the Empress was shy and retiring—both their dispositions were similar—and this similarity of tastes, ideal in the usual walks of life, was fatal to both of them as rulers. By this I do not for one moment wish to infer that they shirked their responsibilities: far from it, they were always ready to assume them, but they forgot that the times were out of joint, that it was their duty always to live in the fierce light that beats upon a throne. I do not think that by so doing they could have saved Russia. The case of Nicholas II and Alexandra of Russia is almost parallel with that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The Russian monarchs, like their French prototypes, were called upon to reign over a country ripe for Revolution, whose dragon’s teeth had been sown by the vicious hands of their predecessors. France boasted as extravagant and exotic a society as that of Russia: the writing was already to be seen on the walls of Versailles and the Winter Palace, but the Sovereigns of Then and Now heeded it not. Louis XVI wanted to be left alone in his workroom, to make locks and to mend watches, and Marie Antoinette sighed for the simple pleasures of the Trianon and the pastoral joys of a farmer’s wife.