Apart from their personal disinclination to go to England, the Soviets were opposed to the suggestion, and it was stated that, if any train left Tsarkoe with the Imperial fugitives, it would be stopped, and everyone murdered, as the Emperor knew too much to be allowed to leave Russia.
The Emperor brought me the newspaper which contained this statement. He was in a terrible rage.... He could scarcely contain himself, and he almost threw the paper at me.
“Read this, Lili,” he exclaimed, his face white with passion. “Beasts! How dare they say such things.... They judge others by themselves.”
“Oh, Your Majesty,” I answered, greatly troubled, “please don’t read these horrible papers.”
“I must, I must, Lili. I feel that I must know all,” said the Emperor.
Occasionally he was in better spirits, and more like his old cheerful self. The Emperor was generally able to see the humour of any situation, and he would sometimes laugh at the idea of being, what he called, “an Ex.” Everything was then “Ex.” “Don’t call me an Empress any more—I’m only an Ex,” laughed the Empress; and one day, when some especially unpalatable ham was served at lunch, the Emperor remarked, “Well, this may have once been ham, but now it’s nothing but an ‘ex-ham.’” He was always amused by the likeness between him and his cousin, King George. One day he showed me a photograph of the latter, saying, “Have you seen my last photograph, Lili? Doesn’t it flatter me?”
He had a great admiration for his cousin, and the Empress often spoke of Queen Alexandra, ... her beauty, her sympathetic nature, and her boundless charity. “I would so much like to see my married sister in England,” she invariably added, whenever she discussed her family. “Darmstadt is only a little spot in the garden of my memories,” she would say, “but my mother died there, so I can’t really be blamed for liking Darmstadt.... Isn’t ‘Home sweet Home’ typically English?
“None of my daughters shall marry German Princes,” she said on one occasion. It was suggested that Anastasie’s future home might be in England, and the Empress welcomed the idea.... An English marriage would have been very near her heart. But “l’homme propose, et Dieu dispose.” If Russia had not betrayed herself, or if she had remained as solidly united as France, nothing would ever have been heard of the pro-Germanism attributed to the Empress. She was essentially English—English in her dress, her personal habits, her absolutely Victorian outlook; some of her ideas respecting a ménage were akin to those of the Hausfrau, but even these were English, as domesticity has always been a British attribute.
The Empress showed no special marks of favour to Germans who had settled in Russia. The reports of her having done so are untrue, or greatly exaggerated. There is no doubt that German agents were very active in Russia, and that the octopus of espionage put forth its tentacles in every direction. But in justice to a much defamed woman, surely it is unfair to credit her with being the instigator of this. Every European country was riddled with Germans, England more so than any other, and, although it was more intimately connected with Germany by marriage and consanguinity, no stones were ever hurled at the various personages, Royal and otherwise, who were really not as English as was the Empress. I remember, in connection with her impartial outlook, that, in 1910, a wealthy German named Faltsfein, was obsessed with the idea of becoming a Russian nobleman. A friend of his, an officer named Masloff, asked the Empress to make it possible for Herr Faltsfein to change his skin, but she was very disgusted, and told Masloff that nothing would induce her to put such a proposal before the Emperor!
One awful day a lorry full of soldiers, in charge of an excessively ill-favoured officer, arrived at the Palace. Kotzebue interviewed him.