In those early days of her married life there arose another cause of friction between the Empress and her mother-in-law. It was connected with the manner of praying in church for the two ladies. The Dowager insisted that her name ought to come first, immediately after that of her son, the Sovereign. But the ministers, and even the Holy Synod, objected and declared that, according to custom, the mother ought to rank after the wife. Finally it was the opinion of the Synod that prevailed. But Alexandra Feodorovna, who had interested herself deeply in the matter, was not wise enough to hide her joy at the turn things had taken, and this of course contributed to the strained relations that soon established themselves between her and the widow of Alexander III.
No harmony reigned at the Anitschkoff Palace during those early days of my mistress’ married life, and it is no wonder that the latter became more and more embittered as time went on. She felt herself neglected, and did nothing to please those whom she suspected of wilfully slighting her. She had a morbid desire to please, combined with a natural haughtiness, which made her not only sensible to a rebuff, but also desirous of avenging it. She did not care to be brushed aside by her relatives, and yet she was herself contributing to the cause of their actions, by her aloofness from all those who might have been of use to her. She did not understand St. Petersburg society; she considered it immoral and fast, and she made no secret of the fact, snubbing unnecessarily people strong enough to do her serious harm by their judgments and appreciations of her conduct and personality. The misunderstandings which caused her future unpopularity began from the very first hours of her arrival in Russia.
With her attendants, however, she was always kind and gracious, though distant in her manner. It was only after many years that she grew to have confidence in me, but then it was a complete one, and sometimes she would allow herself to give way in my presence to fits of despondency such as over-took her from time to time, during which I feel perfectly convinced she was not entirely responsible for her actions. Her mind, always prone to melancholy, made her look at things on their blackest side, and this partly accounts for the tendency towards mysticism which she was to develop later on, and which contributed, more than anything else, to the catastrophe that was to send her an exile to the solitudes of Siberia. She was never well balanced, and, when judging her, one must not forget that insanity was hereditary in the House of Hesse, a fact of which many people in Russia were aware, but of which it seems that the Imperial family were left in ignorance. Sensitive to a degree, she could not get rid of prejudices which she was inclined to adopt without any reason other than caprice, and prejudices are among the things which sovereigns ought never to entertain in regard to those whom they may happen to meet, or with whom they are surrounded. But with it all she was sweet and gentle, and good, and conscientious; a perfect mother, a most devoted wife, a staunch friend, incapable of meanness or of treachery, but destined by her very qualities to be always misunderstood, and never appreciated as she ought to have been. Amidst the pomp and splendour that surrounded her she was lonely; she felt isolated, and though she had found on her arrival in her new country hosts of relatives and courtiers, she had not met one single disinterested friend whom she could trust, or towards whom she could turn for advice and protection. The grandeur of her position put her, as it were, outside of the world, and, unfortunately, she was so overpowered by this grandeur that she did not even attempt to break through the barriers it had erected around her, and which divided her from the rest of mankind.
CHAPTER III
BIRTH OF GRAND DUCHESS OLGA
The uncomfortable winter which followed upon the marriage of the Czar came at last to an end without his young bride having been much seen in public. The ladies prominent in St. Petersburg society were presented to her during a great reception which she held in the Winter Palace, but this presentation consisted simply in their passing before her with a curtsey, whilst her Mistress of the Robes, the Princess Galitzyne, whispered their names into her ear. She spoke to no one, and of course no one spoke to her, and for the influence that this reception had upon her relations with that society over which she had to preside, it might just as well never have taken place. There were, it is true, a few old ladies whose husbands either had been, or still were, in high official positions, who were received by the Empress in private audience, but these interviews were generally of short duration, and consisted in the exchange of a few banalities in the way of conversation. The Empress did not speak French well, and English at that time was not the fashionable language of the upper class, as is the case at present. Ill-natured people commented on the mistakes made by the young Sovereign in her use of the French idiom, and ridiculed them. She became aware of the fact, and it hurt her deeply, and added to the natural diffidence of her character. In those early days of her married life, Alexandra Feodorovna was striving still for popularity, but doing it in a clumsy, mistaken manner. She felt afraid of being called pro-German, and exaggerated in consequence her manifestations of amiability in regard to everybody and everything that was connected with France, to such an extent that she was accused of want of frankness, not to use a more emphatic word. It was the same thing with her sympathies for the autocratic régime. At the time of her marriage, people hoped that her influence over her husband would result in his granting to Russia that constitution which everybody had been sighing for, for years. But the Imperial family, from the very first hour of her arrival in the country, had repeated to her that it was her duty to uphold the principles of that autocracy which Alexander III. had so successfully maintained during the whole time of his reign. She accepted this bad advice, and, in her dread of being thought adverse to it, she applied herself to persuade the Czar that he ought to make some public declaration of his intentions to govern according to the principles that had inspired his deceased father. She partly succeeded, but the attempt was not a happy one, because the famous speech of Nicholas II. to the zemstvos, where he affirmed his resolve to govern despotically, and characterised as senseless dreams the aspirations of his people, contributed more than anything else to make him, together with his consort, the most hated and unpopular Sovereign Russia had ever known.
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