During luncheon Lord Dufferin made himself perfectly charming, and I did my best to act as though it were quite normal to sit down to one's repasts in an immense fur coat.
The Ambassador was very susceptible to cold, and liked the house heated to a great temperature. That day the furnace-man must have been quite unusually active, for the steam hissed and sizzled in the radiators, until the heat of that dining-room was suffocating. Conscious of my extreme décolletage, I did not dare unhook the collar of my "shuba," being naturally of a modest disposition, and never, even in later years at Colombo or Singapore, have I suffered so terribly from heat as in that Petrograd dining-room in the depths of a Russian winter. The only cool thing in the room was the governess, who, when she caught sight of my bare feet, froze into an arctic iceberg of disdain, in spite of my really very ornamental Persian slippers. The poor lady had obviously never even caught a glimpse of pajamas before. After that episode I always came to the Embassy fully dressed.
Another instance of Lord Dufferin's methods occurs to me. We had a large evening party at the Embassy, and a certain very pushing and pertinacious English newspaper correspondent did everything in his power to get asked to this reception. For very excellent reasons, his request was refused. In spite of this, on the night of the party the journalist appeared. I informed Lord Dufferin, and asked what he wished me to do about it. "Let me deal with him myself," answered the Ambassador, and going up to the unbidden guest, he made him a little bow, and said with a bland smile, "May I inquire, sir, to what I owe this most unexpected honour?" Then as the unhappy newspaper-man stuttered out something, Lord Dufferin continued with an even blander smile, "Do not allow me, my dear sir, I beg of you, to detain you from your other doubtless numerous engagements"; then calling me, he added, "Will you kindly accompany this gentleman to the front door, and see that on a cold night like this he gets all his warm clothing." It was really impossible to turn a man out of your house in a more courteous fashion.
There was another plan Lord Dufferin used at times. All despatches, and most of our private letters, were sent home by hand, in charge of the Queen's Messenger. We knew perfectly well that anything sent from the Embassy through the ordinary mails would be opened at the Censor's office, and copies taken. Ministries of Foreign Affairs give at times "diplomatic" answers, and occasionally it was advisable to let the Russian Government know that the Ambassador was quite aware that the assurances given him did not quite tally with the actual facts. He would then write a despatch to London to that effect, and send it by mail, being well aware that it would be opened and a copy sent to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In this indirect fashion, he delicately conveyed to the Russian Government that he had not been hoodwinked by the rather fanciful statements made to him.
I was sitting at luncheon with some friends at a colleague's house on Sunday, the fateful 1st of March, 1881 (March 13, new style). Suddenly our white-headed old Chancery messenger burst unceremoniously into the room, and called out, "The Emperor has been assassinated!" We all jumped up; the old man, a German-speaking Russian from the Baltic Provinces, kept on wringing his hands, and moaning, "Unser arme gute Kaiser! unser arme gute Kaiser!" ("Our poor dear Emperor!") We hurried to the Embassy as fast as we could go, and found the Ambassador just stepping into his carriage to get the latest news from the Winter Palace. Lady Dufferin had not seen the actual crime committed, but she had heard the explosion of the bomb, and had seen the wounded horses led past, and was terribly upset in consequence. She was walking along the Catherine Canal with her youngest daughter when the Emperor's carriage passed and the first bomb was thrown. The carriage was one of Napoleon III's special armoured coaches, bought after the fall of the Second French Empire. The bomb shattered the wheels of the carriage, but the Emperor was untouched. He stepped out into the snow, when the second bomb was thrown, which blew his legs to pieces, and the Emperor was taken in a private sledge, in a dying condition, to the Winter Palace. The bombs had been painted white, to look like snowballs.
Ten minutes later one of the Court Chamberlains arrived. I met him in the hall, and he informed me, with the tears streaming down his face, that all was over.
That Chamberlain was a German-Russian named Stürmer, and he was the very same man who thirty-four years later was destined, by his gross incompetence, or worse, as Prime Minister, to bring the mighty Russian Empire crashing in ruins to the ground, and to drive the well-intentioned, irresolute Nicholas II, the grandson of the Sovereign for whom he professed so great an affection, to his abdication, imprisonment, and ignominious death.
There was a Queen's Messenger due in Petrograd from London that same afternoon, and Lord Dufferin, thinking that the police might give trouble, desired me to meet him at the station.
The Messenger refused to believe my news. He persisted in treating the whole thing as a joke, so I ordered my coachman to drive through the great semi-circular place in front of the Winter Palace. That place presented a wonderful sight. There were tens of thousands of people, all kneeling bare-headed in the snow, in close-packed ranks. I thought the sight of those serried thousands kneeling bare-headed, praying for the soul of their dead Emperor, a strangely moving and beautiful spectacle. When the Messenger saw this, and noted the black and yellow Imperial flag waving at half-mast over the Palace, he no longer doubted.