CHAPTER XIV
THE CZARINA, HER CHILDREN AND HER CHARITIES
It would be difficult to find a better mother than the Empress Alexandra. She entered into the smallest details of the training of her daughters and her son, and she tried before everything else to imbue them with the same serious points of view with which she looked upon life and its numerous duties. She insisted on her children always speaking the truth, and the only time I ever saw her really angry with the little Alexis was one morning when he was caught by her telling a falsehood. She had suffered so much through the insincerity which continually dogged her footsteps that she made up her mind to save her children from this misery, and she applied herself to make out of them sincere people. She had been very lucky in the choice of the lady who was appointed to superintend the education of the young Grand Duchesses. Mademoiselle Toutscheff was a person of the highest moral character, who gave herself up to her duties of governess to the daughters of Nicholas II. with a complete devotion. People said that she had been the whole time in variance with the Empress, and that she had left at last because her advice had been disregarded. But this was not quite correct. It is true that she objected to the introduction of Rasputin to her pupils, but that was principally because she feared the influence which this illiterate peasant might come to exercise over the impressionable minds of the young girls entrusted to her care, whom she did not wish to see afflicted with the superstitious religious exaggerations to which their mother unfortunately succumbed. This led to friction between her and Alexandra Feodorovna, and she preferred to resign her functions rather than to remain at her post after having lost the confidence of the mother of her pupils. There may also have been another reason for her going. The Grand Duchess Olga was already twenty years of age, and she had developed an independent character which had made the position of Mademoiselle Toutscheff extremely difficult. She thought that it would be to the advantage of everybody if she severed her connection with the Imperial family before she had spoilt it by unseemly quarrels.
In a certain sense she was right, because it was unfortunately an undoubted fact that the Empress had become quite fanatical in her allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church, and that she tried to induce her daughters to follow her example. Happily for them the girls had a great deal of common sense, and they managed to keep themselves free from the religious excesses into which their mother had fallen. They loved her tenderly, and would have given their life for her, and she on her side doted on these girls. When they were babies she spent most of her spare time with them in their nursery or schoolroom, and later on she shared with them all her occupations and associated them with her life as much as she could. She never parted from them or from their brother, and there was not a thing which concerned their well-being, down to the smallest details, into which she did not enter. When the war broke out she with her two eldest daughters followed a course of training as sisters of charity, and in the hospital which she opened in Czarskoi Selo she nursed the wounded soldiers with them.
In regard to the little boy whose advent had been such a source of joy to his parents, the Empress was also full of solicitude. She had taken upon herself his religious training, and every morning had him brought to her room for an hour, when she would read to him the gospel and teach him the catechism. She was a fond, but by no means a foolish mother, and what she aspired after was to make out of her children honest men and women and worthy members of society. But at the same time she had very determined opinions in the matter of education, and there were things which she could not understand, as, for instance, the necessity for her girls to have some amusements in their lives. She imagined that it was quite enough for them to live with their parents, in possession of all that their hearts could desire in the matter of material satisfactions, and would not hear of the necessity of marriage for them. She could not bring herself to look upon them as upon grown-up women, and considered them always in the light of babies in need of her care. She is not the only mother who may be reproached for this failing, and she was more reproached for it than she deserved to be.
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