Behind the veil at the Russian court

by Princess Catherine Radziwill

When, after the funeral of Alexander III., the arrangements for the marriage of Nicholas were discussed, and the question was broached as to where the Emperor and his bride were to live whilst the apartments in the Winter Palace were being got ready, the Princess Alix declared at once that they had better stop at the Anitchkov Palace with the Empress Mother, adding “that it was not the time when mamma ought to be left with another empty place at her dining-table.” She cheerfully seemed to allow her mother-in-law to keep that first place which had been hers for so long, and in its affection and tenderness her whole demeanour towards her was touching in the extreme.

Alas, alas! these halcyon days were not to last long. The Court mourning for the late Tsar had not come to an end when the public began to criticise the young Empress, and the enthusiasm of the first months cooled down and gradually gave place to hard judgments and unpleasant remarks. Alexandra Feodorovna had not the gift to make herself lovable nor to inspire sympathy. She developed a harsh, cruel temper, with fits of caprice worthy of a spoilt child. She did not like many things which she found were usual in Russia, and she made no secret of her desire to reform them. She contrived to offend the very people she should have conciliated, and in consequence her actions, contrasting as they did with those of the Dowager Empress, were severely judged and criticised. For instance, though it is etiquette at the Russian Court for ladies to kiss the Sovereign’s hand, Marie Feodorovna and her predecessors had never thought of allowing them to do so, and it was only débutantes on their presentation of whom this was required. With married ladies, however, the Empress invariably prevented them from performing that act of homage. But when Alexandra Feodorovna began to receive St. Petersburg Society, she extended her hand for the traditional kiss and seemed to impose it. She mostly granted her audiences standing and in the stiffest manner possible, never making a distinction where she ought to have done so. This incensed people against her, and all the dowagers who had come out of their retirement to be presented to her upon her marriage bitterly resented the haughty, disdainful way in which she received them. They immediately became her enemies and never spared criticism, which was the more unfortunate because there was much in her manner to be criticised.

Among other unpleasant gifts the young Empress had that of calling a spade a spade, and of giving an explanation of the reason which she thought she had for doing such and such a thing. She determined, for instance, to invite to her balls only ladies with unblemished reputations, and in order to prevent any black sheep entering her drawing-rooms she listened to every possible gossip concerning the Society of the capital. After weighing this more or less carefully, she had the list of invitations for the next Court ball brought to her and scratched out with her own hand the names of all those whom she thought fit to exclude. The result was disastrous. Only a few guests, elderly ladies, were present. St. Petersburg was incensed, and loud in its indignation. Indeed, the scandal assumed such proportions that at last the Emperor decided to allow his mother to look through, as she used to do formerly, the lists of the people invited to the Palace. The pretext given for this action was that his wife was not yet sufficiently acquainted with the ins and outs of the Society of the capital.

But this measure did not appease the wrath of the slighted ones; it only added to the popularity of the Dowager Empress, and to the dislike for her daughter-in-law, and at the next New Year’s reception at the Winter Palace very few ladies, not obliged to do so by virtue of their official position, were present. The young Empress was boycotted, and nothing since has effaced that first impression which she so unfortunately contrived to create around her person.

One must, however, say one thing. Alexandra Feodorovna has had plenty of bad luck in her life. I shall relate one instance as an example. It is very well known that the Empress possesses but a very imperfect knowledge of the French language. Now French is spoken more than any other language in St. Petersburg, and the lingual mistakes of Alexandra Feodorovna were seized upon with avidity by her enemies and circulated widely everywhere. One fine day a very old dowager, who by virtue of her deceased husband’s position was one of the leaders of Society and of the official world, decided to emerge from the retirement in which she had lived for a great many years, and to ask for the favour of a presentation to the young Sovereign. The latter received her standing, as she usually did; this aroused the ire of the old lady, who was further incensed when she saw that she was evidently expected to kiss the hand that was by no means graciously extended to her. With such a prelude the conversation could not be anything but stiff. At last, seeing that all her efforts at small talk met with no success, the lady asked the Empress whether she did not find the climate of St. Petersburg very trying. “Yes,” replied the Sovereign, “but”—and here the phrase must be repeated in French as it was uttered, or it would lose its point—“l’automne dernier j’ai pu me promener tous les jours dans le Crime.” The unfortunate creature had literally translated her phrase from the German, in which the Crimea is called “der Krim”; but one can imagine what laughter such an utterance, repeated all round with alacrity, aroused, and how it was discussed and commented upon everywhere.

On another occasion this ignorance of the French language was to lead the Empress into trouble. One day she had to write to a certain Ambassadress, and in doing so she made several mistakes in the spelling of words. The recipient of the letter, who did not count kindness among her many qualities, showed this note to several of her intimate friends, and these, of course, carried it farther. All these things were but trivial, and had Alexandra Feodorovna succeeded in making herself liked they would have remained unnoticed; but under the existing circumstances they were made the subject of every possible kind of attack. At last it became a case of “Give a dog a bad name and hang it,” and even the virtues of the Empress and her good qualities were turned into opportunities to discredit her.

She was not amiable or conciliating among her immediate entourage, and her ladies-in-waiting had to put up with a lot from her imperious temper and her cold and disdainful manner. She did not forgive them the slightest failing in their duties, and treated them with high disdain. She never allowed them to sit down in her presence, even expecting them to stand whilst reading aloud to her. They were always obliged, also, to be ready in full dress to await her commands, no matter whether she required their services or not.

One must be fair and say that the young Empress encountered many difficulties in her daily life. First and foremost among them was the subordinate position to which she found herself relegated. The Dowager Empress was intensely popular and immensely liked, and, moreover, did not like to play second fiddle where she had reigned for a number of years. She thrust aside her daughter-in-law in a most unceremonious way, and instead of drawing the latter’s attention to her mistakes she magnified them and used them to keep hold of both authority and position.

Being at the head of all the educational and charitable institutions in the country, she refused to delegate the slightest part of this arduous work to Alexandra Feodorovna, who, on her part, was eager to assert herself in all matters relating to good works, and who, despairing of being able to do so in an effectual manner, tried to invent means to exercise her activity in that direction. She opened a kind of working-room for making clothes for poor children, and began by personally attending to the administration of this institution, calling upon ladies belonging to the upper classes to attend the weekly reunions of the committee, over which she presided. At first the thing took, and the new Ouvroir, as it was called at the Winter Palace, became a rendezvous for Society; but when the Court left the capital to settle permanently at Tsarskoye Selo, Society took no further interest in the charitable work. When Nicholas II. and his consort were crowned the unpopularity of Alexandra Feodorovna was already a recognised fact, and it came into evidence during the Moscow festivities, when the difference between the reception she received and that accorded to her mother-in-law could not but have impressed itself upon her, as it did upon all those who were present on this occasion in the old capital. At that moment the Empress, by a strong effort, might still have changed the impression of dislike which she inspired, and which was aggravated by the fact that instead of bringing into the world the much-hoped-for son, that all Russia was expecting, she had given birth to a daughter. The breach was further widened by her attitude when the Khodinsky catastrophe took place. Had she shown some heart and commiseration for the victims sentiment would have changed, but on the same day that it occurred she attended a ball at the French Embassy, and danced as if nothing had happened; and during the days which followed upon that terrible episode she never once went to a hospital to visit the sick and wounded. This apparent indifference, perhaps, arose from the fact that she did not care to appear to imitate the Dowager Empress—whose first impulse had been to rush to the bedside of the wounded—or perhaps, also, she may have felt afraid of interfering with the directions given by her mother-in-law. Nevertheless, it occasioned bitter comment among the public, and she won for herself the reputation of being a heartless woman.

It must not be supposed that this dislike was unknown to the Empress. On the contrary, she was very well aware of it, and instead of inspiring in her the wish to do something to allay it, it made her harder even than she was by nature. She bitterly resented what she considered to be an awful injustice, in view of the good intentions with which she knew she had come to Russia. This feeling that she was misunderstood inspired her with the proud resolution to have as little as possible to do with the nation who had misjudged her so thoroughly, and whose prejudices against her she was too disdainful even to attempt to dissipate.