This influence of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth was exercised not only in religious and political matters, but also in purely frivolous ones. For instance, she introduced into the Imperial Palace a dressmaker from Moscow who used to make her own gowns, and to whom she had promised she would procure the Empress as a client. This dressmaker, who, I have always felt convinced was a German spy, became quite an important personage at Court, and soon my mistress did not dare to order a gown from any one else but this woman. This of course caused great dissatisfaction among her former modistes, both in Petrograd and in Paris, who, after having enjoyed her patronage for a number of years, found it hard to be set aside for a newcomer. I tried more than once to remonstrate and to urge the expediency of not offending former friends, if such an expression can be used in the like case, but I was immediately silenced, with the result that the Empress spent twice as much on her clothes as she had done during the first years of her marriage and was dressed with much less taste. Under the pretext that she ought to wear Russian silks, gowns of inferior materials were made for her, and made abominably into the bargain. This was the more shameful that Moscow possesses silk manufactories, the produce of which is not a bit inferior to the loveliest French silks, but my poor mistress never got the chance to have them, and the cheapest and most vile satin and velvets were those which her famous Moscow dressmaker selected for her. Worth, who for years had had the privilege of making the dresses of the Russian Empresses, became very angry at the neglect with which his offers were treated, and soon the Empress came to be called stingy, not only in St. Petersburg but also in Paris, where proprietors of the many establishments where she had formerly got her clothes became her enemies, and took to calling her German, for the only reason that she did not any longer buy her dresses and other things from them. It would have been easy to avoid all this had one been possessed of a strong and independent will and not set trembling, as my poor mistress was, whenever her sister swept down upon her with a complaint or in an excitement of some kind or another. When the little Grand Duchesses grew up, their aunt also interfered with their education. She believed herself to be an excellent pedagogue, and was convinced that she had brought up admirably the two motherless children of her brother-in-law, the Grand Duke Paul, Dmitry and Marie, who was later on to become the wife of a Swedish Prince from whom she was divorced a short time afterwards. In reality she had done nothing of the kind, and neither the nephew nor the niece over whose childhood she was supposed to have watched with such care, did her any honour, nor proved in any way the excellence of the training which she was supposed to have given them. In regard to the children of the Czar and of the Czarina, her influence proved quite mischievous, and might have become even dangerous if the strong common sense of the two eldest girls had not saved them from the danger of the superstitious atmosphere with which their aunt wanted to surround them.
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Rasputin
The Empress was the best and most tender of mothers. Indeed her affection for her children was almost too fervent, for she was always anxious on their account and would hardly ever allow them to mix with other people for fear of anything evil befalling them. She thought, quite naturally, that she could trust her sister and share with her the responsibilities of the education of her family. In reality she could not have made a worse choice, because between ambition and superstition the Grand Duchess Elizabeth was about the last person who ought to have been permitted free access to girls of the impressionable temperament of the young daughters of Nicholas II.
CHAPTER VII
THE CZARINA’S FAMILY RELATIONS