You can feel & understand what we have been through during all this sad time, it was frightful to see beloved Mama suffer like a martyr & not be able to help her, & one thankful that God released her of all pain & that she has peace & rest at last! But oh! the blank she leaves behind is too terrible & you know what we have lost in her; it seems all like a dream, not possible to be true!…all the details…are too long & painful to write.11
“With the death of the Empress Frederick there passed from the European stage one of the most tragic figures in nineteenth-century history,” wrote her godson, Sir Frederick Ponsonby12 But as Princess Sophie so poignantly said in her letter, the loss of her mother was profoundly more personal in nature, leaving a deep void in her life.
In the space of only seven months, Princess Sophie had lost a cherished grandmother and mother. She would have seconded Tsarina Alexandra’s cry: “Oh this dreadful 1901, I am truly thankful it lies behind us…the sorrows and the troubles it brought.”13
The court into which Tsarina Alexandra had married was the most splendid in all Europe. Even in the rarefied world of contemporary European royalty, few, if any, could surpass the gilt-encrusted fairy-tale kingdom of imperial Russia, where luxury and opulence were the bywords of the Romanov dynasty.
Peter the Great’s ambitious plan in taming acres of marshland in a corner of the Gulf of Finland to become St. Petersburg had garnered impressive results. By the nineteenth century, grandiose buildings designed by some of the leading architects of the day imparted their special stamp on the imperial city on the Neva. Aristocratic mansions in the Neo-classical and Baroque styles, owned by the princely families of the land, added a magnificent sheen. Canals, like shimmering silver ribbons, cut swatches into this, the grandest city in the Russian Empire. And in this majestic city, there was nothing grander than the imposing Winter Palace. Among its one thousand five hundred rooms and acres of glass stood out marvels of elaborate design such as the massive Jordan staircase with its extensive expanse of gleaming white marble; the Malachite Hall, which awed visitors with its tons of vivid green malachite; and the Gold Drawing Room, layered in gilt from floor to ceiling.
Marie of Romania, who was no stranger to Russia and visited her Romanov relations in her youth, described imperial Russia as “the most aristocratic of courts, the splendour of which had to be seen to be realized.”14 Sadly for Alexandra, it was not enough for her to be a part of this magnificent court. As the Empress of Russia, she was expected—indeed, it was assumed automatically—to take on the leading role that every wife of a ruling aristocrat must carry out. But her shy and diffident nature prevented her from doing so. Moreover, multiple pregnancies kept Alexandra indisposed; and as time passed, her ill health, ranging from sciatica to weak legs and painful headaches, contributed to the tsarina’s disappearing acts.
By the early 1900s, Nicholas and Alexandra had practically ceased to entertain those that mattered and, instead, firmly ensconced themselves at Tsarskoe Selo. Alix delighted in decorating her home. Unlike many a royal couple, the tsar and tsarina shared the same bed and so had one bedroom. Decorated in a riot of pink and green, recalling an English garden, this room also gave evidence of the tsarina’s increasing religious conviction and her total immersion in Russia’s Orthodox Church. On one wall of her bedroom were innumerable religious icons and nearby was a prayer center, which Alexandra often used. Next to the imperial bedroom was the very nerve center of the private quarters and the most famous of all the rooms in the Alexander Palace: the tsarina’s Mauve Room, or Mauve Boudoir, so named for the color scheme—Alexandra’s favorite—which completely dominated the room. From the expensive silks covering the walls down to the chintzes and even the vases of perfumed lilac and other flowers placed all over the room, mauve and yet more mauve cascaded. The Mauve Boudoir also contained not one but two pianos, as this enabled Alexandra to participate in duets. Her skill at the piano was something Alix shared with Ena of Battenberg. The Mauve Boudoir was to remain Alix’s favorite room, especially when her health gave way through the years. In this refuge, the tsarina increasingly rested on a plump, comfortable couch propped up with embroidered cushions and pillows, where she would write, sew, or embroider.
As the years passed, the tsarina cherished what friendships she could find, particularly those with a connection to her English past. One such friend was William Boyd Carpenter, the Bishop of Ripon. His kindly disposition had endeared him to Alexandra when she was newly engaged and visiting Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. It was Boyd Carpenter who tried to ease the future tsarina’s conversion from Lutheranism to Russian Orthodoxy by pointing out the similarities between both religions.
After nearly a decade as Empress of Russia, Alexandra never forgot Boyd Carpenter and told him so: “For me it is indeed a great happiness to find old friends have not forgotten me, tho’ I live so far away.” In this letter, written at the turn of 1902–03, Alexandra reveals much about herself. Uppermost in her mind was Queen Victoria’s death, as the tsarina was still coming to terms with the fact that her grandmother was gone. Alix told the bishop: “I cannot imagine England without beloved Grandmama. How well I remember sitting by her side, listening to your beautiful sermon—one you kindly gave me at Windsor.” This was nearly two years after Victoria’s death and sheds light on how Alix’s thoughts were still very much with the grandmother who had meant so much to her. Alexandra also permitted herself to ruminate about man’s place on earth, saying, “we have so much to do in our short sojourn on this earth; such manifold tasks for all of us to accomplish. What joy if in any small way we can help another wanderer bear his heavy cross or give him courage to battle bravely on! How many faults we have to try and master—the hours seem too scarce in which to fulfil all our tasks.”15 These were not shallow thoughts or empty words but an expression of the tsarina’s sincere and deeply held religious convictions, which permeated so much of her life. The Reverend William Boyd Carpenter was one of the few individuals whom Alexandra allowed an intimate glimpse of her religious views, which had only increased in profundity.
When not at Tsarskoe Selo, the imperial family moved in the summer to Peter-hof, Russia’s answer to Versailles. From Peterhof, which is on the Baltic, the tsar and tsarina and their family embarked on leisurely cruises. On board the gleaming-hulled imperial yacht Standart, Nicholas and Alexandra, their children and retinue, relaxed as they sailed the waters, often disembarking for picnics on the many islands dotting the gulf.
After a stay at Peterhof and the Standart cruises, the family would go off again, this time to their retreats in Russian Poland, where the tsar went hunting. The village of Bialowieza contained a comfortable hunting lodge and stables, along with a nearby Russian Orthodox church. The forest of age-old oaks was famous for its huge bison, which roamed freely. These creatures often towered over six feet tall and made for spectacular hunting trophies. A second imperial hunting ground in Poland was located at Spala. Years later, the very word “Spala” was to bring back bitter memories for the tsarina.
No such unhappy memories clouded Alexandra’s views of the Palace of Liva-dia, in the Crimea. The family’s journey to this southern part of the empire began by boarding the imperial train. It was a much-anticipated holiday, for the Crimea was a veritable paradise, with its picturesque views and balmy climate. As the years passed, the Livadia Palace, near Yalta, was transformed into a large and impressive white limestone building. With its proximity to the Black Sea, its location in the temperate South, and its Italianate style, Livadia could easily be cast as the Russian equivalent of Osborne House. Just as Queen Victoria loved escaping to her Isle of Wight retreat, so too did Tsarina Alexandra delight in going south to Livadia for some much-needed rest and relaxation amidst the scent of oleanders, acacias, and cypresses.
Ever since she had decided to join herself in holy matrimony to Tsar Nicholas II, the former Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt threw herself into absorbing as much of Russia as she could. And though years after her arri
val Tsarina Alexandra continued to harbor misgivings about the country’s elite, the same could not be said where the country’s peasants were concerned. In Alexandra’s eyes, it was these, the ordinary people—whom she referred to as the “simple minded” —who truly reflected the Russian character and soul. What increasingly drew the tsarina to Russia’s illiterate and poverty-stricken masses was the fact that they seemed to lack the artifice found among the educated and wealthy classes. This was most appealing to a woman who valued honesty. Even more important, in the eyes of Alexandra, the Russian peasants took their religion to heart, and in so doing, welded the tsar, their father figure, with faith in the Almighty.
In many ways, the rich traditions, dogmas, and practices of the Russian Orthodox Church were more in tune with Tsarina Alexandra’s passionate and intensely serious nature than the less flamboyant characteristics of German Lutheranism. Once she had embraced Orthodoxy, the form and beliefs offered by her new religion struck a deep chord in Alexandra’s heart. She was certainly not the first to come under the spell of Russia’s brand of Christianity. Even those who were not of the Orthodox faith could not help but express great admiration for the religion of Russia. One foreign observer who lived in Tsarist Russia wrote of the church’s music in exalted terms: “I know no country except Russia where church music attains such heights of mystery and majesty by vocal polyphony alone…I could stay for hours listening to these anthems, responses, chants, psalms, and free passages.”17 Above all, “what is so particularly splendid in these works is the deep religious feeling; their appeal is to the mysterious recesses of the soul, and they touch the most secret places of the heart.” Little wonder then, that once she embraced Orthodoxy, Tsarina Alexandra was overcome by the music, services, and doctrines of her new religion. Here was faith so rich it helped Alix face her increasingly frail and disordered world. As a result of the music alone, Alexandra found herself transported into a deeper, more spiritual communion with God.
For the tsarina, the heady effects of Orthodoxy, coupled with an almost naive understanding of Russia’s peasants, would make her ripe for the complete acceptance of a new figure in her life, who seemed the very embodiment of a Russian soul touched through God’s mercy.
Alix was drawn even closer to the Russian soul by her own marriage to a man who himself so readily identified with the country over which he was tsar. Although it has been calculated that “Tsar Nicholas II was only 1/128 Russian,”18 this did not in any way prevent him from feeling Russian to the core. Here was a man who easily cleaved to the traditions and culture of his country. Above all, Tsar Nicholas’s devotion to the Russian Church was genuine and strong, and here his wife readily found a supportive soul mate, who encouraged her growing devotion to the church he loved.
By the time she had been in Russia for a decade, Alexandra Feodorovna had become an exotic hybrid, combining characteristics derived from her Western childhood and adolescence with Eastern traits from her adopted land. This was certainly the conclusion arrived at by two of the tsarina’s close friends, who believed that although Alexandra still on the surface continued to be “a practical Englishwoman,” underneath, she had been transformed into a “mystical Russian.”19
For all the comfort and luxury surrounding the tsarina, her world was essentially a hermetically sealed environment that few could penetrate. Away from the prying eyes and wagging tongues of St. Petersburg and those meddlesome Romanovs, Nicholas and Alexandra had succeeded in creating a retreat that kept them in splendid isolation. Considering the tsarina’s excessive timidity, profound dislike of society, and now her increasing frailty, this desire to hide away at the Alexander Palace was understandable. But it ultimately led to tragic consequences. Splendid isolation might do for a country squire, a role much better suited to Nicky’s character than that of the autocrat demanded of him; splendid isolation might do as well for the squire’s wife or the leading lady of a small and far less significant principality such as Alexandra Feodorovna’s native Darmstadt. But mighty and vast Russia was neither a squire’s fiefdom nor some small principality. The empire and the court demanded that the first couple of the land be on show in a manner befitting their exalted station in life.
In many respects, the tsarina’s decision to shut herself away gradually from the public gaze was much like that of Queen Victoria soon after she was left a widow in 1861. The death of the Prince Consort was an earth-shattering event for the queen. The only way she could cope with this sudden widowhood was to retreat from public life for years, which naturally did not sit well with certain elements of the government and society. As Victoria’s biographer, Lady Longford, has described this episode in the life of the queen: “She was not an hysteric in search of a sharp slap but someone disabled by a fearful wound.”20 Those same words could just as easily be applied to the tsarina, for her intense shyness, like some fearful wound, had a serious debilitating effect upon her.
The tsarina’s spells of depression, brought about by her timidity and struggle at conversing with strangers, were characteristics that Queen Victoria had herself experienced. Even after over twenty years on the throne, the queen could still be seized with attacks of nerves while making a speech. At one point, she told her eldest daughter, Vicky, “I often wonder how I shall ever be able to go on. Everything upsets me. Talking especially tries me.”21 Yet Queen Victoria did go on. Like her grandmother, Alexandra had a strong sense of self that alternated with bouts of self-doubt. She also had the same sort of steeliness. This granitelike aspect in her personality was to harden and become even clearer as a debilitating illness in one of the tsarina’s children transformed her life into a bitter struggle with death.
Eight
EMBATTLED BUT NOT DEFEATED
AFTER YEARS OF SOMBER DIGNITY UNDER QUEEN VICTORIA, THE English court burst forth in full bloom under the stylish and gregarious new monarchs, King Edward VII and his still-youthful-looking queen, Alexandra. Poised to cut a blazing trail in the realms of fashion, entertainment, and social egalitarianism, and to some extent also relaxing rigid moral principles at court, the new King of England lent his name to a more sophisticated era. The coronation of such a charismatic couple became an eagerly anticipated event.
When it took place at Westminster Abbey on 9 August 1902, an impressive array of royals were in attendance. Riding in state that day to the abbey in a splendid line of carriages were the king’s daughter, thirty-two-year-old Princess Maud, and the king’s three nieces: twenty-six-year-old Crown Princess Marie of Romania; thirty-two-year-old Crown Princess Sophie of Greece; and fourteen-year-old Princess Ena of Battenberg.
With her parents on the throne of England, Princess Maud continued her regular visits to her native land. Appleton, of course, became her favorite destination. Her cozy two-story English-style home on the Sandringham estate had everything she could hope for. King Edward VII could not have done better in giving this country house to his daughter as a wedding present.
These visits to Appleton, however, were not only meant to soothe Maud’s very English soul; from a physical standpoint, they proved to be a necessity. Without such visits, Maud’s bronchitis and neuralgia would have aggravated her already delicate constitution. The princess waited out the winter months in a climate more amenable to her health.
When the welcome news came that Maud, married for over six years, was at last expecting a child, her doctors encouraged the princess to go to England for the birth. Since the child was not destined to reign in Denmark, or anywhere else for that matter, an accouchement in England seemed perfectly acceptable at the time. On 2 July 1903, a son—Alexander—was born to Maud at Appleton. When Alexander was two days old, the bells of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, were rung in honor of this infant prince. No one realized he would one day become King of Norway.
For Crown Princess Marie of Romania, life continued its erratic course. But at Cotroceni, her three-story Bucharest palace, she decorated zealously. Already a budding artist, with an eye for flamboyance
and theatricality, Missy set about imprinting her own unique style on the many rooms, a project that would keep her occupied through the years. Visitors gaped at the fantastic decor: intricate Byzantine artwork in gold, evoking true Oriental splendor, vied with the sleeker, more modern lines of Art Nouveau in a riot of styles. Flowers overflowed from vases—especially lilies, Missy’s favorite.
For Missy, her memories of that English summer of 1902 when she was in England for Edward VII’s coronation were forever etched in her mind thanks in large part to two newfound friends, Pauline Astor and her brother, Waldorf, whose father, the immensely wealthy William Waldorf Astor, a transplanted American, made his home in England but had been, at one time, the richest man in the United States. For Missy, wealth was not the overriding factor that drew her to the Astor siblings, though. She simply found like-minded individuals, kindred spirits who became fast friends. So attached did she become to Waldorf and Pauline that in her memoirs, she unequivocally told the world: “my dearest friends of all were the Astors.”1
The crown princess first met Waldorf and Pauline when she accepted an invitation to Sunday lunch with the Astor family at Cliveden, their spectacular home in the Buckinghamshire countryside overlooking the Thames. There, Missy found to her delight that she had a close affinity with the brother and sister, who like her, led lonely lives. Just as the crown princess suffered under an oppressive taskmaster, King Carol I of Romania, Waldorf and Pauline were subjected to an equally difficult and diffident father.
By the end of the visit, the trio had bonded to such an extent that Marie became a fixture at Cliveden for the rest of the summer. Years later, she was to write that “those few weeks at beautiful Cliveden belong to the most perfect memories of my life. It was pure bliss.”2 A large part of this bliss undoubtedly came from Missy’s growing attachment to Waldorf Astor.
Born to Rule: Five Reigning Consorts, Granddaughters of Queen Victoria Page 15