International Film Service
The ex-Czarevitch
The birth of an heir to the throne was an event of such magnitude that it absorbed for some time the whole attention of the public, and diverted it from all that was taking place in the Far East. For his parents it came as a consolation after long years of waiting, and seemed to have been destined to comfort them for the disasters which were taking place at the front. The Czar could not restrain his joy, and at every moment he used to speak of “his son,” and to look out for occasions to pronounce the magic words, “My Boy.” The Empress’s happiness was less buoyant but just as intense, perhaps even more so, for this opportune arrival of the little man whom one had already left off expecting improved considerably her own position, and gave her an importance which had been denied to her before. She became passionately attached to this child of promise, and almost painfully and morbidly devoted to him. Unfortunately he proved a most delicate little mortal, and for the first years that followed upon his birth the doctors who attended him hardly hoped they would be able to save his life. He was born with an organic disease, or rather defect, a weakness of the blood vessels which ruptured on the slightest provocation, causing hemorrhages that sometimes could not be stopped for hours. For a long time his condition was hidden from the public, but at last concealment became impossible, especially after an attack which occurred about two years before the great war, which was of so serious a nature that the child’s life was absolutely despaired of. A few months before this he had been obliged to undergo an operation for hernia and had hardly recovered from the effects of it when an accident brought about the hemhorrhage which for weeks resisted every remedy employed to stop it. These were anxious times for the parents, and the Empress’s hair changed colour and showed streaks of grey before her son was at last pronounced out of danger.
I have spoken at length of this serious illness of the little Alexis because so many ridiculous tales were put into circulation concerning it, tales which were as malicious as they were foundationless. The small heir of Nicholas II. was never the object of any attack of nihilists, and all the detailed circumstances which some newspapers related concerning him were all of them pure invention. It is sufficient to say that when he became ill the Imperial family were not on their yacht, but were staying at one of the Czar’s shooting boxes at Spala in Poland. I have often wondered who could have had an interest in giving publicity to the ridiculous and distressing tale which is to this day firmly believed by many people outside of Russia.
When the Grand Duke was able to be moved his parents returned to Czarskoi Selo, whence they went for many months to the Crimea, the mild climate of which was considered to be necessary for his convalescence. But for more than two years after this attack the boy was not allowed to walk, and was constantly carried about in the arms of a sailor from the Imperial yacht whom he had taken into his affection, and who to this day is with him, having chosen to accompany him to Siberia. This necessity of having to exhibit, so to say, a sick child, was most painful to the feelings of the Empress, whose maternal pride was hurt by the knowledge that the whole of Russia was commenting on it and pitying the Emperor for having an heir in such a sad state of health. She was also continually subjected to the railleries of her husband’s family that reproached her for having, as one of the Grand Duchesses once expressed it, “contaminated the Romanoffs with the diseases of her own race.” There was some truth in the accusation, because the illness from which the boy suffered was hereditary in the Saxe-Coburg family, and had been brought into the House of Hesse by the Princess Alice, the mother of the Empress, whose own brother, the Duke of Albany, had died from the effects of it at Cannes. The worst thing about it was that one could never know when it was going to break out afresh. The slightest knock was sufficient to bring on an attack, and one can imagine how far from easy it was to watch over every movement of a lively boy full of fun and high spirited, such as Alexis proved to be. On the other hand this physical infirmity (for it could hardly be called anything else) had this result that the child got to be inordinately spoiled. The mother was afraid to contradict him or to refuse to submit to any of his caprices, because she had been told that it was dangerous for him even to cry, as any exertion of his lungs or throat might bring about the rupture of some blood vessel. One may therefore form an idea of the system of education to which Alexis was subjected, and perhaps one will feel indulgent in regard to the Empress when thinking of the perpetual dread and anxiety in which her days and nights were spent, and forgive her for the weakness which made her yield to every whim or caprice of the boy who seemed to have been born to add to her cup of sorrow, and not for the purpose of bringing joy into her life.
I will now relate an incident which deeply impressed the Czarina at the time when it occurred. It was a few days before the birth of her son. We were at Peterhof and she was dressing for dinner. Suddenly we heard a crash behind us, and were dismayed to see that a heavy looking glass which hung upon the wall behind Alexandra Feodorovna had fallen to the floor, where it had been shattered into a thousand fragments. The Empress cried aloud in her emotion, and for one moment I believed that she was about to faint, so white did her features become. I applied myself to reassure her, but she would not be comforted, and declared that it was an ill omen and that probably she would die in childbirth. When everything was over, and on the day of the christening of the Grand Duke Alexis, I ventured to remind his mother of her fright of a few weeks before, and added that it was a clear proof how wrong it was to be superstitious, because certainly nothing happier could have occurred than the event which had just taken place, notwithstanding the bad omen of the broken looking glass. The Empress smiled sadly, and replied: “My good Marfa, we do not know yet what is going to befall my baby, and whether his will be a happy life or not. Perhaps the bad omen was for him and not for me.”
A curious thing is that exactly ten years later, in July, 1914, just before the war, we were again at Peterhof, and the Czarina was dressing for dinner in the same room, when that identical looking glass, which had been rehung, fell with the same noise and just as unexpectedly, terrifying her as it had done before. Alas, alas, we could afford then to laugh at omens, but now that so many tragic things have occurred I wonder sometimes whether these accidents (for one can hardly call them anything else) were a kind of warning of the calamities about to follow. Certainly they could not fail to impress a woman as superstitious as the Empress grew in time to be.
When I say “grew,” it is not quite exact. She had always believed in good and bad omens, and she had brought with her from her German home a quantity of beliefs in all kinds of uncanny things. She would not have sat down thirteen at dinner for anything, and the sight of three candles on a table made her frantic. She would not have put on a green dress for fear it would bring her bad luck, and she was always careful to look at a new moon from the right side. She never began anything on a Friday, and she was firmly convinced that one could, if only one were strong enough as a medium, summon people from another world into one’s presence. She believed also in miracles, and would worship any dirty relic which hundreds of unwashed peasants had kissed, without feeling the least disgust, which was the more strange in that generally she was almost meticulously careful not to touch anything that had not been thoroughly cleansed. The influence which Rasputin grew to acquire over her mind proceeded only from this weakness of hers, which was continually fomented and encouraged by her sister, the Grand Duchess Elizabeth, herself a most devout person who combined bigotry with an utter unscrupulousness as to the means with which she could realise the many ambitions that she entertained.
If the Emperor had been a man of strong character he might have prevented his young wife from falling under the influence of the many people who merely used her as a pawn in their game. But in his way he was just as superstitious as she, and they both were so absorbed by their love and anxiety for their only son, that they clung to all those whom they thought could be of use to him. Thus when they saw Rasputin, whom they considered to be a saint, prostrate himself on the ground and implore the Almighty to cure the boy, and when after this they noticed that the boy was getting stronger, they felt more and more tempted to think that it was not the doctors (who had told them that the child could never be permanently cured) who had made him better, but the will of the Almighty, and that it was to the Almighty alone they had to look for the conservation of the life of that much cherished son.