Queen Victoria's Matchmaking

by Deborah Cadbury

  However hard Ella tried to recreate the fairy tale for her sister, the circumstances were beyond her. At Windsor, Beatrice read out loud to her mother the reports of the funeral procession across Russia. The funeral train bearing Alexander III’s coffin made slow progress from the Crimea to Moscow, the route lined with crowds waiting for a glimpse as it passed. They stood silently: this was the closest they would ever be to the remote, legendary figure, half-man, half-god, who had ruled their lives. With frequent stops for services in the open air, Bertie found it all ‘very fatiguing’. There was no respite in Moscow where the streets were packed for the imperial procession to the Kremlin. Finally, on 13 November the funeral train arrived at St Petersburg, where it took four hours for the cortege to cross town in heavy fog and a bitter wind to the Cathedral of the Fortress of Peter and Paul.44 Bertie’s equerry, Sir Arthur Ellis, was struck by the chaotic security arrangements. Police were ‘using and threatening a fire hose on the multitude near the cathedral’ and ‘not a single window was permitted to be open’ as the cortege went by. The measures seemed to Sir Arthur a curious mixture of ‘cruel interference and infinite laxity and the result is clearly the same, that the dastard who will give up his life in an attempt cannot fail to succeed’.45 Inside the cathedral, the rapidly decomposing body of the tsar lay in state, his familiar countenance a fearsome black, his rotting flesh emanating a pungent odour of death. Royal mourners were obliged to lean over the coffin and kiss the icon in his hand during the many services. ‘It gave me a shock when I saw his dear face so close to mine,’ Prince George wrote to May.46

  The queen lived through her granddaughter’s experiences vicariously. She held a Memorial Service in Windsor Chapel on 19 November to coincide with the final funeral service for Alexander III in St Petersburg. ‘A fine Russian hymn always sung at funerals . . . was sung without accompaniment & was very impressive,’ she wrote.47 Her mind was filled with worrying thoughts. The one thing that she had understood to be of immeasurable danger for Alix had happened. There was no escape. She turned to her beloved Albert, looking for the comfort that she always found from being near him at the mausoleum. ‘Tomorrow poor dear Alicky’s fate will be sealed,’ she confided to Vicky on 25 November. ‘The dangers and responsibilities fill me with anxiety and I shall be constantly thinking of them with anxiety,’ she continued. ‘I daily pray for them.’48

  Alix did not tell her grandmother what she admitted to her sister: her wedding on 26 November 1894 felt like an extension of the funeral, as though ‘a mere continuation of masses for the dead’ except she wore ‘a white dress instead of a black’.49 She seemed so frail and vulnerable to Nicholas’s cousin, Grand Duke Konstantin, she could have been ‘a victim destined for sacrifice’. Thousands of miles away at Windsor, the queen felt the same way. She held a large banquet in honour of the new tsarina and proposed a toast ‘to the health of their Majesties the Emperor and Empress of Russia, my grandchildren’. The assembly stood as stirring strains of the Russian national anthem were played in the Windsor dining hall. It seemed almost impossible to believe that ‘gentle little simple Alicky should be the great Empress of Russia’.50

  Ella wrote to the queen putting the inevitable gloss on events. The Russian people were ‘mad with joy’ to see their new sovereigns, she observed. Alix had entered the Russian Church and was praying alongside the family, she and Nicholas had nursed the dying tsar, comforted his widow, and now were ready to do their duty: ‘all this is understood with loving hearts by the people & they bless their young sovereigns and love them,’ she wrote. ‘I wish you could see and feel all this, it would be a true comfort to you as I see you are worrying about them.’ Alix ‘hardly feels her leg’, she added.51 For months afterwards she continued to reassure the queen. Alix ‘is already adored for her tact and sweet winning manners’ and ‘that dreadfully sad look which papa’s death printed on her has disappeared’.52

  Prince George, who had struggled to feel any passion for his own wife May, did not miss the unmistakable signs of his cousins’ evident happiness. Despite the pressure they were under he told Queen Victoria that he had ‘never seen two people more in love’.53 Alix herself told the queen of her ‘utter happiness. I never can thank God enough for having given me such a husband.’54 A famous exchange in Nicholas’s diary conveys their strength of feeling. ‘My bliss is without bounds,’ Nicholas wrote. Alix discovered his journal and added an entry of her own: ‘Never did I believe there could be such utter happiness in this world, such a feeling of unity between two mortal beings. I love you – those three words have my life in them.’55

  Nicholas’s reign opened with high expectations. Ever the idealist, Vicky saw his golden opportunity to reform Russia. ‘What a benefactor to his country, what a saviour to his poor oppressed nation, what a godsend to Europe he might be!’ she wrote to her mother on 3 November. She believed his gentle and sensitive character could be an asset. Nicholas formed such a contrast to his Romanov forebears, he might embrace the reforms started by his grandfather. ‘No one ever had a finer mission. May the truth reach his ears and wise disinterested counsel. He might make himself adored.’56

  But Nicholas let himself be guided by his forceful uncles, among them his Uncle Sergei, who encouraged him to follow the path set out by his father. Their grandfather’s liberalism had led directly to his death, he reasoned. No one in the family could ever forget the deathbed scene of Alexander II. What could be a plainer demonstration that Russia was not yet ready for democracy? The land of all the Russias was ungovernable without the firm hand of autocracy. Those hoping for a revival of the reforms started by Alexander II were soon disappointed. Gentle Nicky, the quintessential quiet family man, aimed to continue his father’s hardline policies. In January 1895 Emperor Nicholas II took to the stage before a delegation from Tver who sought greater liberalism. Such reforms were mere ‘senseless dreams’, he declared. ‘I will maintain the principle of autocracy as firmly and unflinchingly as it was preserved by my unforgettable late father.’57

  In clinging ‘unflinchingly’ to autocracy Nicholas did not just ally himself to the oppressive autocracy of his Romanov forebears. It was not long before the new tsar and tsarina became personally associated with their bloodshed too. The catastrophe occurred in May 1896 during the celebrations held for their magnificent coronation in Moscow. Governor General Sergei had overall charge of the arrangements and, according to Ella, laboured hard over the preparations beforehand. Twenty-year-old Missy, Crown Princess of Romania, now the mother of two children, travelled to Moscow with her husband, Ferdinand, and has left a vivid account of the unfolding drama. She was struck at once by how ill-fitted Nicholas and Alexandra appeared for their public roles.

  A mass of people lined the streets to cheer the new imperial couple for their symbolic entry into Moscow. The funereal atmosphere was at last dispelled. The sun shone and bells rang out as the tsar entered at the head of the procession on a white horse. He had the ease of a good rider, Missy noted, but in his physical appearance he was ‘less well cut out’ for the part than his forebears. Missy’s impressive Romanov uncles dominated the scene, tall, good-looking and ‘so sure of themselves, so wealthy and powerful, real autocrats’. Nicholas was unable to project the same air of certainty. He seemed ‘small, almost frail-looking’ and unlike his uncles, his ‘eyes were kind, had a caressing expression, there was something gentle about him and his voice was soft and low pitched . . .’ Nonetheless, he was the tsar and Missy felt he was loved and seemed ‘imbued with mystic power’.58

  Two golden coaches followed the tsar, ‘such as children picture to themselves in fairy-stories, white horses, glittering trappings, pages, followers’. The tsar’s mother, now Dowager Empress, was in the first carriage, in a gown ‘of shining gold’, her neck ‘one mass of glittering jewels’. She judged her part perfectly, bowing with ease to the left and right to great applause. But Missy was concerned for Alix in the second coach. Although she was ‘much more handsome than her mother-i
n-law ever was’ and looked every inch the beautiful empress, she was quite unable to play the part. There was an awkwardness about her that could not be disguised. She ‘does not smile and her expression is one of almost painful earnestness. There is a tightness about the lips which is disconcerting in one so young. There is no happiness in the large steady eyes . . . It is as though she were holding Fate off at arm’s length, as though darkly guessing that life might be a foe, she must set out to meet it sword in hand’.59

  The five-hour coronation ceremony in the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin confirmed Missy’s first impressions of the new emperor and empress. The setting could hardly have been more stunning. ‘The very atmosphere seemed golden, a golden light enveloped the glittering assembly,’ she wrote. The chants ‘were almost unearthly. They rose and swelled, filling the church with such mighty waves of harmony that one’s heart felt like bursting . . . it was more like a dream than reality.’ All eyes were on the tsar and tsarina, seen through a haze of incense, figures of such symbolic potency they were like ‘two shining apparitions’. Standing side by side they could have been ‘deities almost . . . two diamond crowned figures at the zenith of their glory’. As sunlight suddenly flooded the scene it was almost possible to believe that they had indeed been chosen by God. But Nicholas appeared overwhelmed, ‘the prodigious crown of his ancestors appeared to be too heavy for his head’. As for the tsarina, despite being ‘imbued with a glamour that few ever achieve’, she was ‘all dignity but . . . no warmth . . . Her face was flushed, her lips compressed; even at this supreme hour no joy seemed to uplift her.’ As the festivities continued, Alix struck her cousin as ‘more and more pathetic’.60

  The spectacular coronation in the ancient city of the tsars was overshadowed a few days later by a tragedy that came to be seen as ‘a great sin’, even an omen. The calamity also marked the start of a split between the Hesse sisters in Russia.61 A feast was to be held at Khodynka Field, a former military training ground on the outskirts of town. Word spread fast of free food, beer and souvenirs – mugs and handkerchiefs with sweets and gingerbread. Some 700,000 people, many of them peasants who had travelled from the country, made their way to the site, almost double the numbers expected. A rumour that supplies would run out led to a stampede as the vast crowd surged forward. ‘Nobody fully realised the danger,’ observed Victoria of Battenberg. ‘Those who stumbled were trampled down, others falling on top of them.’ All morning ‘we saw the dead and wounded carted past the Governor-General’s house’.62 Sergei insisted that the ‘joyous occasion’ should continue as planned that afternoon with thousands still waiting for the arrival of the tsar. Reluctantly, Nicholas and Alix submitted. They arrived at Khodynka to the triumphant fanfare of the national anthem played several times over, even as bodies were still being removed from the field.63

  Missy witnessed at first hand the toll this exacted on Nicholas and Alexandra. They were scheduled to attend a glamorous ball at the French Embassy that night. Alix had had enough. She was ‘cruelly impressed’ by the disaster and resolved to take no further part in celebrations that day. She was opposed by Nicholas’s uncles, notably Ella’s husband Sergei, who insisted that the French must be honoured. Tearfully, Alix begged to be excused. ‘God alone knows how much rather she would have stayed at home to pray for the dead!’ recalled Missy. Ella agreed with her sister and as Sergei became more vehement, ‘beautiful Aunt Ella’s despair was pitiful to see’.64 Both women intuitively understood that in their adopted land of mystic icons and superstitions the tragedy would be read as a portent. Both women wanted to pray for the souls of the departed. This was not a show of piety but central to their beliefs, essential to help expiate such a destructive and wanton act.

  Overriding Alix’s feelings, Nicholas was persuaded that they must attend the ball. The event was excruciating – the young tsarina even more rigid and nervous than usual, Sergei with a forced ‘broad smile’. The family seemed suddenly split in two, the younger generation, notably the tsar’s sister, Xenia, and her husband, Sandro, blaming Sergei bitterly for the tragedy and its mishandled aftermath. Why had he not made better arrangements with police for safety at Khodynka Field? At the very least, he should acknowledge the tragedy, rather than ignore it. And why did he appear to block a special inquiry into its cause? Alix and Nicky were tarred with serious failings that many laid at Sergei’s door. Horrified at events and torn between her loyalty to her husband and her sister, Ella would not admit any blame. ‘Thank God Sergei had nothing to do with all this,’ she insisted.65 Alix did not voice any criticism of Sergei, but for the first time both sisters had a chance to appreciate their grandmother’s warnings in a new light.

  On the other side of the continent, Queen Victoria soon had the measure of the situation. Three thousand dead, she recorded in her journal on 4 June 1896, ‘& there are grave accusations against the Police and others’. She was greatly distressed by the accounts of the funerals in the papers. ‘The people of Moscow are showing signs of anger and exasperation at the frightful mismanagement of the authorities. It makes me anxious.’66

  Victoria of Battenberg was also troubled. She knew that Nicholas could not shake off ‘a feeling of profound depression’ and the stress continued unabated for Alix. Even the tsarina’s hand was ‘swollen and red’ as if ‘she had been stung by a wasp’, because so many people were presented to her during the celebrations.67 Victoria’s notes on her reading at that time show she studied The Statesman’s Handbook for Russia – lent to her by Alix – which set out the far-reaching powers and rights of the tsar. But she also studied Paris under the Commune by John Leighton, showing how discontent had turned to open revolt in 1871, leading to what Marx termed ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’. In Paris the veneer of civilisation had proved wafer thin under the onslaught of revolution. What would it take for the same to occur in Russia?68

  In the late summer of 1896 Balmoral’s unvarying routine was upturned in preparation for the visit of the tsar and tsarina. Almost two years had elapsed since Queen Victoria had seen her granddaughter and in the weeks beforehand she was ‘much occupied with preparations’. Arrangements were made for lodging Nicholas’s huge entourage, ensuring their safety and providing a travelling escort. The Balmoral ballroom was adapted to become a dining room and a temporary passage constructed to make it easier for the company to reach it. On 21 September the queen drove to Ballater Station to inspect the welcoming decorations of Venetian masts and festoons. The place was ‘prettily decorated’, she noted, complete with a new portico over the platform. But in the event there was drenching rain on 22 September, ‘the worst we have yet had’, Queen Victoria observed as the Russian imperial yacht approached the Scottish coast.69 She sent her two sons, Bertie and Arthur, to welcome the tsar and tsarina. It was evening before their imminent arrival was heralded by the sound of church bells and pipes. The queen was waiting in eager anticipation on the doorstep as an escort of Scots Greys came into view, followed by the pipers, a procession of torchbearers, and finally the carriage with Alix and Nicholas.

  Nicholas stepped down first and the queen was struck that he appeared ‘thin . . . and careworn’.70 She embraced him and then saw ‘darling Alicky, all in white, looking so well, whom I likewise embraced most tenderly’. It was a great relief to see her at last, ‘in great beauty’ and positively blooming. They hurried out of the rain to the drawing room where to the queen’s delight she was presented with her first Russian great grandchild, ten-month-old Olga. Olga had been born in November 1895 and her great-grandmother thought her ‘a most beautiful child’. After the many months of anxiety, it was ‘quite like a dream’ to see them at last and she spent hours happily talking with Alix.71 Nicholas found the experience rather less gratifying as he was commandeered by his British uncles, who were keen to take him out shooting despite atrocious weather. Nicholas adored his wife and resented moments apart even after two years of marriage. The only consolation was that George came too and the rapport
felt by the cousins immediately struck up again. ‘We can at least talk over the good times,’ Nicholas told his mother.72

  The queen still believed in the value of family relations to enhance foreign diplomacy. The Russian visit was presented to the press as a private affair and many days did pass in the privacy of family, driving out to the Highlands, visiting relatives, and walking on the estate. This was poignantly captured in an early cinematograph – the first private family film – the jerky, grainy images revealing what looked like an ordinary family in their garden, the elderly lady in her bathchair, her dog on her lap, far removed from the image of a great queen and empress of a quarter of the globe.73 But this was also the longest visit of any reigning monarch to see the queen and she took the opportunity to sound out the tsar on Russian foreign policy.

  By the time of the tsar and tsarina’s visit, the relationship between Germany and Britain had sunk to a new low, with hostility often surfacing between Bertie and his German nephew. Emperor Wilhelm had arrived at the Cowes Regatta in 1895 accompanied by German warships and exasperated his francophile Uncle Bertie by making triumphant speeches on the anniversary of the German victory in 1870 against the French. But such provocations faded into insignificance compared to the uproar that followed in the New Year of 1896 when Wilhelm sent a letter of congratulation to Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, a state in southern Africa, who had successfully suppressed a British coup. The coup, led by Dr Leander Jameson, had aimed to provoke an insurrection against the Boer government in the Transvaal and advance British mining interests in the area. The Kaiser’s ‘Kruger telegram’ implied that Germany supported the Boers against the British.74