Misfortune seemed to be her lot. Four times her hopes of giving an Heir to the Crown were brought to naught as one girl after another was born to her, adding to her blighted life the knowledge that in this respect Russia was bitterly disappointed. Her relations with her husband were affectionate, but not tender, and she never knew how to manage him, or to develop by her sympathy the best side of his nature; her manner towards him, also, was not what it ought to have been. She treated him more like a naughty boy than like a monarch whose first subject she was. In the early days of their marriage it was related that one evening, when they had a few people to tea at Tsarskoye Selo, feeling tired and desiring to withdraw, she turned towards the Emperor, and said to him in English, a language always spoken in the Imperial Family, “Now come, my boy; it is time for me to go to bed.” One may imagine the stupefaction which this phrase caused among a people accustomed to all the rigidity of etiquette which had always ruled the Court of St. Petersburg. They could not understand how an Empress could forget herself so far in the presence of others as to address the Tsar of All the Russias as “my boy.”
All this appears at first sight insignificant, but in reality it sounded the knell of the respect in which the monarch had been held to that day, and it destroyed a great deal of his prestige, rousing at the same time a furious indignation against Alexandra Feodorovna, among all the old adherents of the autocratic regime, which, unknown to herself, she has done so much to shatter.
The disasters of the Japanese War left a deep impression on the mind of Alexandra Feodorovna, and added to the sadness of a naturally sad disposition; she began to tremble, not only for the safety of her Throne, but also for that of the son who at last, after many weary years of waiting, was born to her in the midst of unparalleled disasters. On that child she concentrated all her affections, and for him she trembled constantly. Before he came into the world her nerves already had begun to become affected. She had unfortunately allowed herself to be drawn into a circle of people, among whom the Grand Duke Nicholas and his wife were the most prominent, who were addicted to spiritualistic practices. A medium became an important personage at Court, and succeeded in imposing his influence even on the Emperor, who went so far as to consult him on matters of State.
The Empress’s nerves are certainly not in a sound condition, and this fact ought to be taken into consideration when thinking or speaking about her. The horrors of the Revolution left a deep impression upon her mind; she has no fatalism in her character, and lives in dread of seeing her children and husband murdered. Her highly strung nature takes more seriously even than they deserve certain circumstances which surround her, and she has not enough command of herself to meet with courage whatever fate lies before her. Not understanding that Sovereigns must pay with their persons for the privileges of their position in the world, she spends her time in imploring her husband to put himself and his family into safety instead of urging him to come forward and to confront whatever danger lies before him.
When it was said that the workmen of the capital were marching towards the Winter Palace and wanted to see their Tsar, Alexandra Feodorovna begged her husband to fly to Tsarskoye Selo for safety, and she has never wanted to return to the capital since that fateful day.
Owing to her nervousness the breach between the Sovereign and his people has become complete, and the estrangement that divides them has assumed proportions that can only become wider and wider as time goes by. For many people now the Emperor and Empress appear as very distant beings, something like the Mikado of Japan was before the reforms effected in that country raised it to the level of a European nation. In Society the Imperial Family serves only as a subject of gossip and nothing else, and it must be owned that never so much as at the present time has it given reason for it.
More and more the Empress shows her dislike for the Society of St. Petersburg, and whenever she can do it she flies away to the Crimea, which is the one place she cares for. She has had a new palace built there to replace the simple cottage where Alexander III. breathed his last, and she spends months in it, far from everybody, but showing herself more amiable than anywhere else to the few people privileged to see her. There also she entertains in a quiet way, and has even been known to give a dance for her daughters, which she witnessed from the door of a room near the one in which the festivity took place. She did not mix with her guests, but she looked at them, and this was already spoken of as a surprising event, so little had she been seen before. The great preoccupation of the Empress is her son; no child has ever been so spoiled as has the little Grand Duke, and no child has ever been brought up in a worse manner. Were he destined to live, it would be terrible to contemplate the future of Russia under his guidance; as it is, one can afford to pity him, and to pity his parents, for whom he represents so much. But I shall have more to say on that subject later on.
Some people say that Alexandra Feodorovna is mad, and that her madness takes an erotic direction, which accounts for the seclusion in which she is kept, and which is given out to be of her own desire. I do not believe in this rumour, which perhaps is circulated in order to account for her vagaries and extravagances of behaviour; but what I do think is that she is a woman very unfortunate in her life and in her friendships, who, dissatisfied by nature, always yearns for the impossible.
CHAPTER IV
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY TO-DAY
The Imperial Family of Russia at the present day is in a position far different from what it was before the Revolution, and even before the accession of the present Sovereign.