by Theo Aronson
If he, with his lack of self-confidence, did not resent this, his fiancée did. Alicky might have been reserved but she had a certain steeliness of character. Before many days had passed, she gave the first indication of her strength of will.
'Be firm and make the doctors come to you every day and tell you how they find him . . .' she instructed her fiancé, 'so that you are always the first to know. Don't let others be put first and you left out. You are your Father's dear son and must be told all and asked about everything. Show your own mind and don't let others forget who you are. Forgive me, lovy.'
In this manner did the withdrawn and nervous Princess set the pattern for the future relationship between Nicholas and herself.
Tsar Alexander III died on 1 November 1894. His twenty-six-year-old son now became Tsar Nicholas II. For him, it was an appalling prospect. 'Sandro, what am I going to do?' he asked of a brother-in-law, with tears spilling from his blue eyes. 'What is going to happen to me . . . to all of Russia? I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling. I have no idea of even how to talk to the Ministers.'
Queen Victoria was hardly less appalled. She was desperately worried about her granddaughter. 'May God help them all!' she wrote. 'What a terrible load of responsibility and anxiety has been laid upon the poor children! I had hoped and trusted they would have many years of comparative quiet and happiness before ascending to this thorny throne.'
The first thing to do was to secure the succession. The Dowager Empress was all for Nicholas and Alix marrying immediately. The young couple were quite willing, but the late Tsar's brothers were not. They felt that the wedding ceremony should take place publicly, after the funeral. No time was lost, however, in the receiving of Alix into the Orthodox faith. On the morning after Tsar Alexander III's death, the ceremony of conversion took place. The new Tsar's first imperial decree was to proclaim the new faith, title and name of the former Princess Alix of Hesse. She became the Grand Duchess Alexandra Fedorovna.
Now began the long, sad journey of the Tsar's remains from the Crimea to St Petersburg. For thirteen hundred miles, from the balmy air of Livadia to the snow-bound capital, the funeral train, draped in black and carrying the mourning family, rolled north across the vast Russian Empire. To the tens of thousands of Russians who watched the Tsar's remains pass by, it seemed ill-omened that their future Empress, all in black and heavily veiled, should come to them behind a coffin.
In St Petersburg were gathered a host of royalties. To represent Queen Victoria came the Prince and Princess of Wales and their son Prince George, the Duke of York. For seven days the body of the Tsar lay exposed in its coffin in the Cathedral of the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul. There were innumerable, elaborate and prolonged services (the Prince of Wales's equerry complained to Queen Victoria of the 'thirty-ninth repetition of the same mass) which the long-suffering royal mourners were obliged to attend. The most severe ordeal of all was having to kiss the Holy Picture which the dead man held in his hand. 'It gave me a shock when I saw his dear face so close to mine when I stooped down,' wrote Prince George to Princess May, 'he looks so beautiful and peaceful, but of course the face has changed very much, it is a fortnight today.'
At the final ceremony, which lasted for four hours, an even worse ordeal faced the mourners. The Tsar, dead by now for almost three weeks, had to be kissed on the lips. His face, reported a member of the Duke of York's suite, 'looked a dreadful colour and the smell was awful'.
A week after the funeral, Nicholas and Alexandra were married in the chapel of the Winter Palace. To Alicky her marriage seemed no more than a continuation of the masses for the dead but with one difference: 'now I wore a white dress instead of a black'. Her wedding-dress, in fact, was more elaborate than she made it sound. It was one of those opulent Russian court garments, made of rich silver brocade and covered by a trailing mantle of cloth of gold, lined with ermine. On her copper-coloured hair she wore a nuptial crown, all flashing with diamonds. This combined weight was such that, without help, she simply could not move. Yet she is said to have looked radiant. The Princess of Wales was in raptures about her appearance and Prince George assured his grandmother that 'Nicky is a very lucky man to have got such a lovely and charming wife and I must say I never saw two people more in love with each other and happier than they are.'
To celebrate her granddaughter's wedding, the Queen gave a large dinner party at Windsor Castle. She proposed the health of the imperial couple and stood to attention during the playing of the Russian national anthem. 'Oh! How I do wish I had been there!' she exclaimed.
The wedding ceremony over, Nicholas and Alexandra drove through cheering crowds to the Anitchkov Palace which was to be their home. Because the court was in mourning, there was no reception and no honeymoon. The couple went to bed early that evening and came down to breakfast the following morning looking, according to Alicky's Uncle Bertie, the Prince of Wales, 'as if nothing had happened'.
But something had indeed happened. There had been consummated, that night, a deep and passionate love which was to last for the rest of their lives. 'Never did I believe that there could be such utter happiness in this world,' wrote Alix in her husband's diary that morning, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings.'
CHAPTER NINE
Missy and Alicky
1
For Alicky's cousin, Princess Marie of Romania, there was no marital bliss to alleviate the misery of her first few months in her new country. Her husband, Crown Prince Ferdinand, remained a withdrawn and negative figure, utterly incapable of providing her with the companionship she craved. Nor could she find anyone else from whom to draw comfort. Her husband's uncle, the intimidating King Carol, was totally absorbed in his work. His Queen, Carmen Sylva, was still absent from court. Missy was allowed no intimate friends; royalties, commanded der Onkel, must remain aloof. In so new, so Eastern and so politically unstable a country as Romania, friends could be positively dangerous; intimacy would encourage intrigue. The Princess thus came into contact with others on official occasions only: at dull tea parties, at enormous banquets, at receptions in which rows of opulently dressed people stood waiting to be spoken to. With her heart sinking and with Nando trailing behind, Missy would move along beside the King, all the while racking her brains for something to say, in her inadequate French, to these hundreds of strange people.
Nor could Marie take any delight in her surroundings. The Bucharest palace was a squat, undistinguished building of no particular style. Her rooms were hideously furnished; 'German mauvais goût at its worst,' she called it. Everything was dark, pompous, over-ornate, completely lacking in elegance or comfort. For one of Queen Victoria's grandchildren, accustomed to open windows, flower-filled rooms, crackling fires and cosily screened-off corners, the atmosphere in these ostentatious rooms was stifling. She was not even allowed to go out for a walk. The little she saw of Bucharest she found dull. It seemed to her a city of no special character or mood, simply a poor imitation of other European capitals.
Worst of all, perhaps, was the denial of any independence for the young bride. Neither she, nor her husband, was allowed any say in the running of their lives and certainly none in the running of the country. King Carol controlled everything. They could make no move without his permission. Not even the humblest chambermaid could be employed unless he had approved her first. He was obsessed by the fear of political conspiracies within the palace. Any suggestion the young couple might make for a brightening of their circumscribed lives was invariably vetoed.
To this state of affairs, Prince Ferdinand had long since accustomed himself. Such little spirit as he had ever had had been entirely crushed. He was, says Charles Hardinge, the British chargé d'affaires in Bucharest, 'a very stupid young man with large protruding ears'. Amongst the diplomatic community Ferdinand was nicknamed Prince Doch – Prince Just-so – because of his habit of saying 'Doch! Doch!' in answer to almost any remark. 'He listened to
his uncle in all things,' complains Marie, 'blindly following his lead, submitting to his every demand, never revolting . . . he remained pliant, acquiescent and patient.'
With Marie it was different. She might, in these early days, have been unsure of herself but she was never as compliant as her husband. Not for nothing was she the granddaughter of the Queen of England. Through her veins there ran a great deal of Coburg tenacity, of Coburg obstinacy, of Coburg resilience. Moreover, she was young, high-spirited and blessed with a great lust for life. Like her aunt, the Empress Frederick, she was something of a rebel; she enjoyed nothing so much as a good fight.
Before long, she was beginning to kick against King Carol's restrictive régime. 'His one object,' she says, 'was to fit me into his scheme of things . . . while mine was to remain a free agent, to be my own master, to develop along my own lines a being with thoughts of her own, a life of her own.' There were endless disagreements. Once, after a particularly bitter argument, Marie wrote the King a letter in which she attacked him for his dictatorial and repressive behaviour; she was determined, she told him, not to have the best years of her life ruined by his joylessness. His answer had been concise. 'Only the frivolous consider youth the best years of life,' he wrote.
Side by side with Marie's surge of revolt against the King's behaviour came something else: a gradual awareness of the attractions of her new country. She had always been a lover of the outdoors; the first time that the King permitted her to venture beyond the capital she felt the beginnings of what would one day be her great love for the Romanian countryside. This first outing was simply a drive to a nearby monastery and convent but it fired her always vivid imagination. She had never seen a country as open or as melancholy as this; she had never seen a people as proud and picturesque as the gypsies that thronged the dusty roads. 'All this I saw and my eyes opened wide, the artist within me rejoiced,' she wrote. 'Yes, this was Roumania, the land of the Rising Sun. These endless roads, this dust, these peasants, these villages, these files of carts, these long-poled wells painted against the enormous sky, all those fields, that wide, wide view over the plain . . . Roumania . . .'
In the summer they went to Sinaia, the King's country estate, and again those irrepressible spirits soared heavenwards. The castle itself might have been too grandiose and its furnishings too sombre for her taste but with the setting she had no fault to find. She loved the mountain backdrop, the great trees, the fresh air and, above all, the lush green meadows starred with thousands upon thousands of flowers. 'After the hot dusty ugliness of Bucharest,' she effuses, 'it was release, rapture, enchantment.'
She had further cause for satisfaction that summer: she was pregnant. Earlier in the year, when she had started feeling sick, she could not – in her innocence – imagine why this should be. Her mother had told her nothing. A lady-in-waiting had had to explain it all to her and since then she had been acutely embarrassed by the open fashion in which the ladies of the royal household questioned her about her condition. As a British princess, she had been brought up to believe that it was improper to refer to pregnancy in company. Here, such things were obviously discussed quite naturally.
If the Duchess of Edinburgh had neglected to enlighten her daughter on the early stages of her pregnancy, she was determined to give her all the help and advice she could in the final stages. In October 1893 she arrived in Romania. The advent of this practical, autocratic and strong-willed woman led to immediate trouble. In her, King Carol met his match. So accustomed to having his own way, the King was determined to have his say on every aspect of the coming birth. The Duchess was having none of it. She could not see what such matters as the choice of doctors, wet-nurses, names and suitable rooms had to do with him. Her stand led to innumerable battles, with poor Nando caught in the cross-fire.
In her fight, the Duchess of Edinburgh had one formidable ally: her mother-in-law, Queen Victoria. The Queen put an end to some of the controversies by sending an English accoucheur, Dr Playfair, to Romania. 'We want to be on the safe side,' was her imperious comment; Romania was 'so near the East . . . so uncertain . . .' Faced with her intervention, even the resolute King Carol had to submit.
Princess Marie's baby was born on 15 October 1893. It was a boy. 'Listen to the cannon,' whispered the Duchess of Edinburgh to her daughter as she laid the newborn baby in her arms, 'think of how delighted the people will be when they hear the hundred and one salutes.'
The news was wired to Grandmama Queen immediately. 'When I got up and went to my dressingroom I found telegrams from Marie [of Edinburgh], from Sinaia, announcing that dear Missy had been safely delivered of a son. . . .' she wrote in her Journal.
The royal heir safely delivered, Dr Playfair returned home to report to Queen Victoria. A family council was called at Buckingham Palace to discuss the matter of a reward for the doctor. After all, he had delivered, not only the Queen's great-grandson but a future King of Romania. As the doctor's elder brother was already Lord Playfair, the assembled royalties could not decide on a suitable title for him. Finally Princess Alexandra, who shared the family weakness for punning, came up with a suggestion. 'I know,' she said, 'why not call him Lord Deliver-us?'
A year or two later, when Missy was visiting the Queen at Osborne, Victoria suddenly asked her if she had been given chloroform during childbirth. The young woman was disconcerted by the question. Would her grandmother think less of her for having had chloroform? Was she one of those spartan creatures who disapproved of the easing of pain during childbirth? Did she, like Carmen Sylva, consider that 'bringing a child into the world was a moment of such poetical rapture that nothing must be allowed to allay the ecstasy of the pain'?
Timidly, Marie confessed to having been given just a whiff of chloroform. She had not been put to sleep, she added defensively; it was simply that the edge of her suffering had been blunted.
Her shamefaced admission was greeted with peals of laughter from the Queen. 'Quite right, my dear,' said her grandmother. 'I was only given chloroform with my ninth and last baby; it had, alas, not been discovered before, and I assure you, my child, I deeply deplore the fact that I had to bring eight children into the world without its precious aid!'
Marie's child was baptised, in the Orthodox faith, on 29 October 1893. It was the mother's eighteenth birthday. In honour of his great-uncle, the King, the boy was given the name of Carol. As King Carol II of Romania, he was to lead an extraordinarily eventful life.
2
The Empress Alexandra's happiness, so joyously proclaimed in her husband's diary on the morning after her wedding, was confined to the hours she spent alone with him. For the rest of the time, she was desperately unhappy. Even her home life was disheartening. Because the young couple had married in such haste, no palace had been prepared for them; therefore, for the first few months of their marriage, they shared the Anitchkov Palace with the Empress Marie. That the Dowager Empress was still mistress of the house, there was no question. Nicky and Alicky did not even have a dining-room of their own and were obliged to dine at the Empress Marie's table.
In addition to this, the young Tsar, feeling sorry for his widowed mother, spent a great deal of time with her. It was to her, rather than to his inexperienced wife, that he looked for encouragement, example and advice. These, the Empress Marie was only too ready to give. Although she, like her sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, was not an assertive or domineering woman, the Dowager Empress was quite prepared to remain in control of family affairs. To her, Nicky was little more than a schoolboy while Alicky appeared pathetically timid and unsophisticated.
Nor was the Empress Marie's dominant position confined to the private life of the imperial family, As, according to Russian court protocol, a dowager empress took precedence over an empress, Marie quite naturally continued to act as first lady. It was she, and not the Empress Alexandra, who took the place beside the new young Tsar; his wife was obliged to follow after. And, of the two women, Marie was much better equipped for the role of Emp
ress. She had served a fourteen-year-long apprenticeship before becoming Empress (and she had been an Empress for thirteen years) whereas Alexandra had been pitched into the position almost overnight. Where Marie was soignée, vivacious and assured, Alexandra was awkward, immature and painfully shy. Public appearances were a nightmare for Alexandra. She loathed what her British relations referred to as cercle-ing – that slow round of guests when one was expected to speak a few words to each of them. She blushed, she stammered, she could never think of anything to say. Every face was a strange one. Her poor French became poorer. Numb with nerves, she could not even smile. As a result, she made no effort to speak; she simply stood there, stiff, silent, and solemn-faced. Before long, she was being described as hard, haughty and uninterested.
Some years later Alicky's cousin, Princess Marie of Romania, who was as extrovert as Alicky was withdrawn, gave her impressions of the new Tsaritsa at this time of her life. 'The young Empress never relaxed this severely aloof attitude which was in part, no doubt, timidity. Nothing ever seemed to give her pleasure, she seldom smiled, and when she did it was grudgingly as though making a concession. This of course damped every impulse towards her. In spite of her beauty, no warmth emanated from her; in her presence enthusiasm wilted. Serious, earnest-minded, with a high sense of duty and a desire towards all that is good and right; she was nevertheless not of "those who win"; she was too distrustful, too much on the defensive, she was no warming flame. Life, like all else, needs to be loved; those who cannot love life are vanquished from the very start.'
Even allowing for hindsight, for antipathy towards a totally different character and for the customary underlay of self-satisfaction, Princess Marie's picture of her cousin Alexandra is perceptive.
If Alicky was overshadowed by her accomplished mother-in-law, Nicky suffered in the same way in the presence of his formidable uncles, his father's brothers. Beside these giant and assertive grand dukes, small, gentle, vacillating Nicky seemed insignificant indeed. 'Nicholas II spent the first ten years of his reign sitting behind a massive desk in the palace and listening with near-awe to the well-rehearsed bellowing of his towering uncles,' wrote one of Nicky's cousins. 'He dreaded to be left alone with them.'