Grandmama of Europe: The Crowned Descendants of Queen Victoria

by Theo Aronson

  As there was nothing that the doctors could do to alleviate, let alone cure, her son's illness, the Empress turned, more and more, to God. A miracle was what was needed. She prayed for hours on end; she sought the advice of various holy men. In her anguish, and with her ardent, introspective nature, Alicky was particularly susceptible to the mysticism of the Orthodox religion. She responded, not only to the sensuous splendours of its ceremonial, but to the aura of the supernatural diffusing its fringe.

  In Russia, the line between faith and superstition was blurred. The air was thick with talk of miracles, of weeping statues, of unaccountably glowing icons, of unexplained voices; across the vast spaces of the Empire tramped pilgrims, faith healers and so-called 'fools of the Lord'. The starets – the Man of God – was a familiar figure in most Russian villages; poor, unkempt, saintly, he took upon himself the sufferings of others. And it was not only the illiterate and superstitious peasants who so readily embraced the supernatural. The aristocracy was no less ready. For them the Orthodox ritual, no matter how colourful, was not enough. They dabbled in the occult, they consulted clairvoyants, they discussed miracles.

  Into this twilight world – half-pagan, mysterious, ecstatic – the unhappy Empress Alexandra flung herself with characteristic fervour. Within it, she was certain that she would find what she sought: the way to God, who would cure her son and make him, in time, the autocratic Tsar of Holy Russia.

  And in the autumn of 1905, when Alexis was just over a year old, the Empress Alexandra first met the man whom she came to believe to be her link with God. 'We have got to know a man of God, Gregory, from Tobolsk Province,' wrote Nicholas in his diary, on the fateful day that he and Alexandra met Gregory Rasputin.

  In the year 1905, Rasputin was thirty-three years old; a dirty, untidy, uncouth, tangle-bearded, lank-haired, evil-smelling peasant with a pair of extraordinary eyes. These eyes were large, blue-grey, brilliant, piercing and hypnotic. It was due, as much as anything, to the power of his gaze that Rasputin gained ascendancy over so many people. Few could resist the fascination of those probing eyes.

  As a youth, born in Siberia, Rasputin had been notable for his licentiousness; indeed, the name Rasputin meant 'debauchee'. It was only later, after he had married, that he became a Holy Man and began his wanderings through Russia. In time, he gained a reputation as a starets, a miracle worker, blessed with supernatural powers. Arriving in St Petersburg, he was taken up, first by various eminent priests, who were impressed by his apparent fervour and sincerity, and then by St Petersburg society, who thrilled to his more flamboyant qualities: his burning eyes, his unpolished speech, his earthiness.

  It was one of the leading members of St Petersburg society, the Grand Duchess Militsa, wife of one of the Tsar's cousins, who introduced the starets to the Emperor and Empress. This first meeting seems to have been little different from those with other holy men; a year was to go by before they met again. By their second meeting, however, the Empress had heard considerably more about Rasputin's powers of healing. She was told how he he had stood praying at the bedside of the Prime Minister's dying daughter and how the girl had made a miraculous recovery. When the starets came to Tsarskoe Selo in October 1906, the Empress introduced him to her children. From then on, he came more and more frequently to the palace.

  There was a good deal about Rasputin, other than his aura of mysticism, that the Empress found appealing: his unaffectedness, his frankness, his simplicity. She warmed to the way he addressed her, not as 'Your Majesty', but in the peasant fashion, as Matushka. He was never sycophantic, never grovelling. Here, she felt, was her link with the real Russia. To her, this plain-speaking moujik – this peasant – represented the Russian people; he personified the loyal, devout, unchanging Russia of her imaginings.

  The Empress's relationship with this uncouth man was not quite so extraordinary when one remembered that her grandmother, Queen Victoria, had established similar relationships in her time. Throughout Alicky's girlhood, the Queen had been very close, and had allowed every liberty, to that rough-mannered and bluntly-spoken Highlander, John Brown. As Rasputin called the Empress Matushka, so had Brown called the Queen 'Woman'. And after Brown's death, Alicky had seen the Queen give her confidence to yet another humbly-born creature – the Munshi. Thus, in befriending this man of the people, the Empress was following her grandmother's example.

  But to Alicky, Rasputin was more than a confidant and a support. Gradually, she came to look upon him as her longed-for link with God. For not only did he seem to be a man of simple piety but he was the one person who was able to relieve the Tsarevich's sufferings. How he managed to do this is uncertain. A likely explanation is that Rasputin, with his hypnotic eyes and his self-confident presence, was able to create the aura of tranquillity necessary to slow the flow of blood through the boy's veins. Where the demented mother and the dithering doctors merely increased the tenseness of the atmosphere around the suffering child, Rasputin calmed him and sent him to sleep. And even more miraculous was the fact that it sometimes needed only a telegram, in which the starets assured the Empress that he was praying for her son's recovery, for the boy's condition to improve.

  It was no wonder, then, that the Empress Alexandra developed an implicit faith in Rasputin's powers. Through him she was joined, not only to the Russian people, but to God. He had been sent by God to alleviate her son's sufferings and to ensure that he would one day become Batiushka – the autocratic father of the Russian peasants. If she wished Alexis to live, she must be guided by God – speaking through Rasputin or, as she called him, 'Our Friend' – in all things.

  In The Brothers Karamasov, Dostoevsky writes that 'The starets is he who takes your soul and will and makes them his. When you select your starets, you surrender your will. You give it to him in utter submission, in full renunciation.'

  And this, in effect, is what the Empress Alexandra did. In the twentieth century, in the age of electricity, the telephone, the motor car and the aeroplane, this half-English princess, granddaughter of the eminently practical Queen Victoria, put herself – and the fate of imperial Russia – into the hands of a coarse and ambitious faith healer who was able to bring a measure of relief to her little son.

  3

  The eighteen-year-old Queen Ena of Spain faced a formidable task. Overnight, one of the least important of Queen Victoria's thirty-two grandchildren had been transformed into one of Europe's leading queens. A shy, straightforward, unsophisticated girl from a secure background, Ena suddenly found herself mistress of the most formal and flamboyant court in Europe. It was a position that called out for someone of exceptional qualities: perhaps a Marie of Romania – passionate and theatrical, or an Alix of Russia – grave and burningly devout. But Spain had had queens like Marie and Alix before, and the capricious Spaniards had still not really approved of them. What hope, then, did the unaffected, uncomplicated Ena have?

  In spite of the first impression she made on the Spaniards, she was not a great beauty. What beauty she had was of colouring and complexion rather than of feature and expression. There was something a little stolid about Ena's face. A contemporary speaks of her 'set' expression, and her subjects complained that she did not smile enough. Her bearing was considered too stiff and her manner too wooden. Nor were her clothes especially elegant. In her large lavishly trimmed hats and richly detailed dresses, she looked matronly, older than her age.

  In time, of course, all this would change. The years would bring greater poise and Queen Ena would one day be known as the best-dressed Queen in Europe. But in these early days of her reign, her immaturity, coupled with her shyness, made her appear ill at ease in public.

  There were so many things, other than being always the centre of attention, to which Queen Ena had to accustom herself. Life in the grandiose palaces of Spain – the Palacio Real, El Pardo, Aranjuez, La Granja – was a far cry from what she had known before: the almost bourgeois simplicity of Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral in Queen Victoria's day. In Spa
in, royal etiquette had changed little since the sixteenth century. Everything was solemn, pompous and hedged about with protocol; court ritual was elaborate and complicated; the sovereigns moved as in a well-rehearsed pageant. At the time of Ena's wedding, Princess May had been fascinated by the ceremonial at the Spanish court. Each time the Prince and Princess of Wales left their apartments (and it was never without a Duke in attendance) an official would clap his hands and the superbly uniformed halberdier at their door would present arms, crying out 'Arriba Princesa! Arriba Principe!' The cry would be taken up by the next halberdier and, as the royal couple passed along, so would the cry echo and re-echo down the long, gleaming, colonnaded corridors.

  For the duration of a visit, such colourful ceremonial was indeed fascinating; to live with it every day of one's life could be very inhibiting.

  Different too, from those homely Sunday sermons in Crathie Church at Balmoral or Whippingham Church on the Isle of Wight, was the ritual surrounding the Queen's new faith. Spanish Catholicism was emotional, fervent and ostentatious. The lives of the soveriegns were closely interwoven with the faith of their country. Cross and Crown were inextricably linked. The King and Queen were expected to play their part in all the pageantry of the Church. They assisted at elaborately staged masses, they walked in great religious processions. At Easter, with the King in full uniform and the Queen in some opulently embroidered dress, they knelt to wash and kiss the feet of twelve old men and women. On meeting a priest carrying the last sacrament through the streets to some dying subject, the King would be obliged to offer his coach to the cleric and continue on his own way on foot.

  The character of the countryside, too, was alien. For Ena, who had spent most of her life amidst the soft green beauties of southern England, the landscape of Spain was strangely harsh, dry, unsympathetic. The summer was burningly hot and the winter bitterly cold. Instead of the leafy, informal parks that had surrounded Queen Victoria's homes, she was faced with the artificially created and mathematically laid out gardens of the various royal palaces: the flamboyant statuary, the pleached avenues, the arrow-straight paths, the ornamental waterways.

  Something of this harshness, only just tamed, seemed to characterize the people as well. A violence lurked beneath the formal manner, the proud bearing, the grave demeanour. The bomb on Ena's wedding-day was but the first of the many to explode during her husband's reign. In the roar of the bullring, too, did this violence reveal itself. Queen Ena hated bullfighting. Yet she was forced to sit in the royal box, with a mantilla over her head, pretending to enjoy what to her must always have been a cruel and distasteful spectacle.

  Within the intimate circle of the royal family she likewise faced problems. Not only did the Queen have to accustom herself to things like the extraordinary Spanish mealtimes – luncheon at three and dinner at ten – but she had to learn to live on close terms with her mother-in-law, Queen Marie Cristina. Although, in many ways, an admirable woman (her sixteen-year-long regency had been surprisingly successful) Maria Cristina lacked warmth. Her manner, although unpretentious, was withdrawn, formal, dignified. In time, by virtue of her self-effacement and innate goodness of heart, Queen Maria Cristina came to live in complete harmony with her daughter-in-law, but for Ena the constant presence of this cool, pious and stiff-backed Queen, the idol of her son Alfonso, could hardly have been comforting.

  During the first years of marriage, Ena and Alfonso were happy enough. In some ways, they were not unalike. They were neither of them intellectuals; their taste was conventional; they shared a love of sport and the outdoors. For relaxation they played golf and tennis, they danced, they swam and they went motoring – a sport for which Alfonso had a passion. The differences which would eventually undermine their marriage were not yet apparent.

  The first blow to their happiness fell with the birth of a son in May 1907. He was haemophilic. The realization marked merely the start of their parental tragedies. Their second son, born the following year, was a deaf-mute. Another of their off-spring was stillborn. Their two daughters and their third son were healthy enough, but their last son, like the first, suffered from haemophilia. Thus, of their four sons, only one was sound. The realization that their sons were haemophiliacs could not have been entirely unexpected for Ena and Alfonso. Two of the Queen's brothers, Prince Leopold and Prince Maurice of Battenberg, suffered from the disease. It was thus not unlikely that Ena, like her mother, Princess Beatrice, should prove to be a transmitter. The Spanish Embassy in London seems to have been fully aware of this danger inherent in Ena's blood and King Alfonso had been warned. But as it did not follow that every female wasa transmitter, and as Ena looked the very picture of health and vitality, Alfonso had decided to take the risk. He was always a man for risks.

  Disappointment, within the royal family, was acute. And by no one, of course, was it more deeply felt than by Queen Ena. Overriding her sense of failure was her sense of dread. No amount of hushing up or of making light could minimize the seriousness of her sons' afflictions; no amount of rationalization could stifle her feelings of pity, responsibility and fear. Like her cousin, the Tsaritsa, Ena had started out on her 'long Calvary'. Indeed the position of the two women, apart from their both being the mothers of haemophilic sons, was strangely similar. Once again the disease had struck in a court where the atmosphere was formal, flamboyant, religious and superstitious. While the country seethed with speculation on the nature of the illness, the royal family felt incapable of taking the people into its confidence. In Spain, no less than in Russia, the reigning family lived always under the threat of assassination; with the possibility of the sovereign being killed at any time, it was imperative that the succession be secure. Revolution was never far away.

  But whereas Alicky would always have the support of an adoring and sympathetic husband, Ena would not. Alfonso XIII had many sterling qualities, but constancy, patience and tenderness were not among them. While, with the passing years, he would remain virile, high-spirited, perennially boyish, she would gradually become sadder, quieter, more fatalistic.

  As her aunt, the Empress Frederick, had once predicted, Ena would never find life easy.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  A Family of Kings

  1

  Never had the myth that the destinies of Europe were controlled by a family of kings appeared to have more substance than during the first decade of the twentieth century. This was the Indian summer of monarchy. By their exchange of spectacular state visits, these sovereigns gave the impression that they were making history: that its tides ebbed and flowed to their commands. Who could doubt, as they watched some magnificently beplumed and bemedalled emperor in earnest conversation with some equally lavishly uniformed king, that they were settling matters of international importance? Who, on seeing some monarch being piped aboard a luxurious royal yacht or arriving at a palace in a glittering cavalcade, could suspect that it was not an occasion of great moment? Surely these sovereigns – so gorgeously dressed, so self-confidently mannered, so surrounded by pomp and deference – were as powerful as they looked?

  Few monarchs, of course, were more addicted to such state visits than King Edward VII. Delighting in travel, movement, change, ceremonial, dressing up and the creation of a harmonious atmosphere, he was forever setting out, by land or by sea, for yet another royal meeting. By doing so, he gave the impression that he was a political force; that by the authority and diplomacy of his manner he was manipulating the affairs of Europe.

  During his short reign, he managed to pay state visits to almost every sovereign on the Continent. Of these sovereigns, only the Austrian Emperor and the King of Italy were not closely related to him; he had family connections in Berlin, St Petersburg, Vienna, Madrid, Brussels, The Hague, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Bucharest, Sofia, Athens and Lisbon. This kinship appeared to render his visits more significant still. Few doubted that Uncle Bertie was making use of his position as the doyen of the great royal clan to guide European policy.

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bsp; To his credit, King Edward himself did not believe this. There were times, admittedly, when his enthusiasm for foreign affairs caused him to strain the limits of constitutional monarchy to the utmost but usually he merely eased the way for his Ministers. 'I have no wish to play the part of the German Emperor who always meddles in other people's business,' he once protested. Indeed, with his nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm II, King Edward usually refused to discuss politics at all. But there is no doubt that his Ministers found him extremely useful when it came to making the initial advance and creating a sympathetic atmosphere. 'The greatest diplomatic victories are gained by doing nothing,' Sir Harold Nicolson once wrote when contrasting the methods of the King and the Kaiser, 'and King Edward, although too superficial to be a statesman, was a supreme diplomatist.'

  If these visits to his relations were not always politically productive, they were invariably packed with incident. The King's obsession with such things as the correct choice of clothes, the number of decorations conferred and the value of gifts presented, caused his suite endless difficulties. In the matter of dress, the King could be tyrannical. Nothing would put him out of temper as much as to see an order incorrectly worn or an outfit wrongly chosen. The sight of a Cabinet Minister in a white instead of a black tie could ruin his meal.

  His own taste was impeccable. To Frederick Ponsonby, who was about to set out before luncheon to an exhibition of pictures in a tail coat, the King remarked, 'I thought everyone must know that a short jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private view in the morning.' And a Minister in attendance during a cruise up the British coast was once very amused to hear the King, as they approached the shores of Scotland, say to his valet, 'Something a little more Scottish tomorrow.'