The Imperial Tea Party

by Frances Welch

  Subsequent talks about the Straits did not go quite so well. Nicky didn’t like the idea of the Straits being open to all shipping; he was worried about foreign warships getting into the Black Sea. Using a well-worn cliché, he told Salisbury the Straits were: ‘the door to the room in which he lived and he wanted the key’.

  His later boast, in a letter to his mother, of ‘very serious talks’ had some justification. The letter’s concluding comment, however, was wide of the mark: ‘It’s good at least for him [the Prime Minister] to learn from the source what the opinions and views of Russia are.’

  Still reeling from his grapple with international politics, the Tsar now found himself facing more immediate concerns. The British authorities had decided that it would be too risky to allow the Romanovs to travel through London on their return journey; the Tsar was obliged to notify the Queen’s former equerry, General Lynedoch Gardiner, that a London meeting was out of the question.

  An aide, D. Galitzine, wrote a letter, dated 27th September, on the Tsar’s behalf: ‘I am requested by HIM the Emperor to communicate to you that His Majesty regrets very much that he will not have the pleasure of seeing you during his present stay in England as he will not go to London and in leaving Balmoral he will go straight to Portsmouth to board the imperial yacht.’

  Was he unsettled by having to dictate such a letter? Did he worry about its implications? He wound up his diary entry blandly enough: ‘Dinner at 9pm and in the evening I worked’.

  Monday 28th September

  Queen Victoria’s diary: ‘A fine morning’.

  The following day began well for the Tsar. He appeared curiously happy to set off early with the hunters. Was it just the improvement in the weather? Or could he have decided that, on balance, his uncles’ company was preferable to Salisbury’s? Whichever was the case, he was jubilant as, on this fourth shoot, he managed to bag two grouse: ‘At last this was the first clear day. At 9.30 we went off to beat out some famous grouse on the hills around Birkhall and Glenmuich. In all, I killed two of them, since shooting these birds is very difficult.’

  Describing his subsequent meal with ‘numerous people’, however, he reverted to reticent form: ‘We had lunch in a tent courtesy of Lord Glenesk, at whose home we had tea at the end of our hunt.’ And for all his triumph with the grouse, he still managed a grumble: ‘I was tired enough from climbing around the hills and from standing on my feet for a long time in rooms inside earthen towers.’

  Meanwhile, the Queen took her granddaughter back to The Merchants’ shop. As she reported in her diary: ‘Went to the village where they all went into a shop’. Alix apparently now filled her basket with the sisters’ tartans, pastries and candies.

  The Tsar’s letter to General Gardiner

  After lunch, the two ladies were joined, once again, by the great-grandchildren. The Queen’s new-found passion for little Olga ran second only to her devotion to her great-grandson, David. The toddler was allowed all sort of liberties. As she enthused: ‘Dear little David, with the baby, came in at the end of luncheon to say goodbye. David is a most attractive little boy and so forward and clever. He always tries at luncheon time to pull me up out of my chair, saying “Get up Gangan” and then to one of the Indian servants, “Man, pull it,” which makes us laugh very much.’

  Soon after tea, the Queen spoke to Salisbury, who told her that he had made progress in his talks with Nicky. She reported triumphantly that Salisbury had been: ‘much struck by his [Nicky’s] great candour and desire to be on the best terms with us’. Salisbury was later overheard praising the Tsar in general, telling Georgie that he was: ‘very different from the other Emperor [the German Kaiser]!’

  Included at dinner was the writer Donald Mackenzie Wallace, who would later become extra-groom-in-waiting to Bertie. Wallace had lived in Russia and in 1877 published two volumes of books entitled Russia. He had acted as political officer for Nicky during his tour of India in 1891. A more controversial guest was, once again, the Russian Ambassador, George de Staal. Rumour had it that the Ambassador collared Nicky at some point that evening, persuading him to rethink the assurances he had given Salisbury the day before.

  Tuesday 29th September

  Queen Victoria’s diary: ‘Rather dull’.

  The Tsar wrote a cheerful report in his diary. ‘The day was free, that is, without going out of the house to hunt.’

  In fact, the Tsar’s seventh day at Balmoral turned out to be anything but free. The morning was taken up with posing for the Queen’s photographers, W. and D. Downey. The Tsar was obliged, once again, to put on his British uniform: ‘I had my picture taken in the uniform and coat of the Scots Greys.’ He was photographed with Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, both wearing identical uniforms. The Tsar looks nervous, his right hand grasping his left. The Duke of Connaught also seems ill at ease, as though his tunic is too well fitted about the waist. They both look earnestly at the camera.

  The two men were subsequently joined by the rest of the royal party, including Bertie. As the Tsar wrote: ‘The family came from Mar Lodge for lunch; they had their picture taken as a group.’ The Queen added: ‘Was photographed with Nicky, Alicky, Little Olga and Bertie’. The resulting photographs also seem curiously joyless. The Tsarina appears nervous and put-upon, while clutching Olga, who is making a face. The Tsar, still in the unpopular Scots Greys uniform, looks grimly at the camera. The Queen is the only one looking at the baby; but she looks like she’s delivering an admonishment. Bertie looks into the middle distance, as though wishing he were elsewhere.

  Tsar Nicholas with the Duke of Connaught

  The afternoon was busy and stressful. The Tsar found himself ensnared in a second talk with the Prime Minister: ‘I had an additional conversation with Salisbury,’ he wrote in dismay.

  As far as Salisbury was concerned, this ‘additional conversation’ was distinctly unsatisfactory. The Tsar had the reputation of being very impressionable, echoing the opinions of the last person he had spoken to, frequently his adored wife. Salisbury was now convinced that the Tsar was voicing De Staal’s views from the night before. He found Nicky altogether less agreeable, particularly on the subject of Turkey. He reported that the Tsar had changed his mind and was: ‘distinctly averse, at this stage, to any effort to dethrone the Sultan’.

  Queen Victoria with ‘Nicky, Alicky, little Olga and Bertie’

  Salisbury added that, as the pair discussed a further topic, Egypt, Nicky seemed about to say he had no objection to a British occupation: ‘But he stopped suddenly and turned the conversation as though he felt he was committing an imprudence.’

  The Prime Minister later discussed the Tsar’s propensity for ‘conversation turning’ with the Queen. She remained optimistic, convinced that Nicky would always, finally, be on side. As she reported: ‘Regarding the Sultan, he [Salisbury] saw that Nicky was rather less in favour of deportation than he had been at first, But he seemed favourable to a consultation between the ambassadors of the powers and their respective governments as to what could be done. Then, if we agreed to inform the Sultan of our decision and he refused, we must make him do so by force.’

  A second tea at the ‘Dantzig’ should have offered the Tsar a reprieve. As he wrote: ‘We took a walk and then rode up to the forest cottage “Danzig” where we had tea.’ But during the return carriage ride, the Queen couldn’t resist another grilling. As she reported: ‘Alicky and Nicky drove home with me and I talked a little about politics and what Lord Salisbury had said to him.’ His account was clipped: ‘We went home with Granny.’

  Nicky found all these discussions too much. The Tsarina’s sister, Victoria, remembered him complaining about his burdensome role as an autocrat. He had been talking enviously to her ever-receptive brother, Ernie: ‘I watched Nicky once at a luncheon saying to Ernie how he envied his being a constitutional monarch on whom the blame for all the mistakes made by his ministers was not heaped. Under other circumstances, Nicky would have made a remarkably good constitution
al sovereign, for he was in no way narrow-minded nor obsessed by his high position.’

  That evening Nicky was laid low with one of his frequent tooth-aches. As he complained in his diary: ‘I had an attack of neuralgia.’

  Wednesday 30th September

  Queen Victoria’s diary: ‘A little threatening… started with Nicky and Alicky for Mar Lodge’.

  In the morning, the Tsar’s neuralgia had really set in: ‘As a result of the pain, my left cheek swelled up in ugly fashion and I was completely unable to sleep during the night. I cannot bear to show myself in this condition. I stayed home in the morning.’ The Tsar had a dread of dentists and several of his teeth rotted early. He finally agreed to see the Queen’s physician, Dr. James Reid, who found an infection at the root of a decayed left molar. Dr. Reid prescribed iodine, to be applied at regular intervals throughout the day.

  The issue of the Tsar’s teeth was raised again only recently, during the ongoing investigations conducted by the Russian orthodox church into the identification of the Romanov bodies. A dental expert was obliged to explain why the Tsarina had had exquisite dental treatment while the Tsar appeared to have had none. ‘Nicholas II was like a real Russian peasant. When he had a tooth-ache, he did not have dental treatment, he waited until it was unbearable, drank 100g of vodka, and had his tooth torn out.’

  While not ready to expose his cheek on a hunt with the uncles, the Tsar gamely agreed to visit his Aunt Alexandra, at Mar Lodge. He would not have known that, as he passed through the village of Braemar in an open-top carriage, he would be ‘showing himself’ to a small crowd of cheering well-wishers.

  The Tsar made a particular mention of Mar Lodge’s modest proportions. In fact the lodge, like Victoria’s ‘little house’, Elm Grove, was quite substantial: ‘At 12pm I went off with Granny and Alix to Mar Lodge to Louise and Macduff. They met up with their people – 80 of them with a green flag… We looked over their not very large home and annex, built adjoining the house, in which Aunt Alix… [is] staying. We returned home at 6pm and had tea with Granny.’

  After tea, a beleaguered Nicky probably retired to his rooms to nurse his tooth, while Alix showed the Queen her jewellery. Granny’s appreciation had a slightly grim edge: ‘Alix showed me her beautiful jewels, of which she has quantities, all her own property.’

  Lady Lytton retained a seating plan for that night’s dinner. She was at the opposite end of the table from the Tsarina, and sitting between Sir Arthur Bigge and Lady Bigge: wry references to the Russian occupation would obviously have been avoided. The Queen was at the head, with Alix to her right. There was just one untitled diner: Nicky’s secretary, Monsieur Dubreuil Eschappar. The Tsar himself was absent. As he recorded disconsolately: ‘I had supper alone at 8pm due to my cheek.’ There was a sympathetic echo from Granny: ‘Nicky didn’t dine on account of having a swollen face.’

  The Tsarina would have been immensely sympathetic; just ten days previously, she had been the one bed-bound, with a headache. Nicky and Alix loved tending each other through life’s skirmishes. Following their idyll at ‘Walton’, the betrothed couple had transferred to Windsor, where Nicky had to be rescued by Alix after locking himself in the lavatory. As he reported: ‘Instead of quietly reading the newspapers, I happened to have locked myself accidentally in the bathroom, from which I could in no way extricate myself for more than half an hour. Alix finally managed to open the door from the outside, though I was yelling long and loudly, trying to open it myself, since I had the key.’ Two days later, he was complaining of an attack of neuralgia: ‘scribbling to you in by no means a merry mood’!

  A week later, Nicky was the one offering sympathy as it turned out that his fiancée had not quite shaken off her bout of sciatica. ‘Dear Alix is still not able to go out riding with us, since she has just recently finished her medical treatments, but the pain in her legs has still not passed.’

  If Alix could not help Nicky directly, she would annotate his diary with chivvying tips. Three days before her young fiancé left for Russia, she gushed: ‘My own boysy boysy dear, never changing, always true. Have confidence in your girly dear who loves you more deeply and devotedly than she can ever say.’ Nicky never quite matched her ‘sweety mannikins’ and ‘bad boysie’. He concluded his entry for that day with: ‘For dinner – Yakov Ivanovich [the priest] and Mr Heath [the English tutor]. Alix sat in my room.’

  Thursday 1st October

  The Queen hailed: ‘A beautiful day’.

  The Tsar’s ninth day at Balmoral would have been one of his best – his tooth was on the mend and the weather was good: ‘I felt great and the swelling has almost gone. The weather remained completely fine and warm.’ The Queen joined the chorus: ‘Nicky breakfasted with us and was much better.’

  The departure of both Salisbury and Uncle Bertie was a further boon. His uncle had left Balmoral to watch his horse, Persimmon, at Newmarket. The Queen very much disapproved, repeating her admonishment: ‘Il faut payer pour etre prince.’ But Nicky was exuberant, writing to his mother: ‘After he left I had an easier time, because I could at least do what I wanted to, and was NOT obliged to go out shooting every day in the cold and rain.’

  Nicky had frequently been baffled by his uncle’s predilections. Visiting Bertie at Sandringham during his visit in 1894, he had been unimpressed by his fellow ‘queer guests’, writing: ‘Place full of Jews – all men not Jews talking of nothing but horse racing and horse dealing’. He mused to his mother: ‘Rather strange. Most of them were horse dealers, amongst others, a Baron Hirsch.’ Hirsch, one of the richest men in the world, had launched a charity to help oppressed Russian Jews. The Tsar, known for his anti-Semitism, must have been particularly nonplussed by Hirsch’s presence. His mother, Bertie’s sister-in-law, shared his bemusement. As he later wrote: ‘Mama never understood how Bertie could enjoy having Jews in his house – never received a satisfactory explanation from her sister.’

  An outing with Bertie to a horse sale held few attractions for Nicky: ‘We entered a huge tent in which 200 farmers were sitting with their families. Lunch was served to them there, which we also had, sitting sort of on a stage at a separate table. The sale of 50 horses took impossibly long.’

  At Balmoral, the Tsar would finally be relishing the end in sight. He may once have looked forward to the visit but, after days of sodden hunts, exhausting talks and a bad tooth, he was ready to go. Indeed, he had already embarked on his packing, a full two days before he was due to leave. He wrote: ‘I read and started to pack little by little.’

  That day’s early lunch got in the way and was clearly unwelcome: ‘We had lunch at 12.15 – an ungodly hour.’ Baby Olga’s customary appearance after the meal would, however, have restored his good spirits. It was certainly much appreciated by the Queen: ‘The dear, fat, beautiful baby was brought in as usual toward the end of luncheon and sat playing on the floor with Maurice [the five-year-old Prince Maurice of Battenberg].’

  The afternoon featured an outing to a new hideaway cottage, at Glen Gelder. The Tsar boasted of walking to a different ‘tea house’ while the Queen described a drive to: ‘Glen Gelder Shiel’ (the Scottish word for a stable). When in Scotland, the Queen preferred to use local patois. It was said that, as soon as she crossed the border, she would hand ‘woon poond’ to a deserving crofter.

  Friday 2nd October

  Queen Victoria’s diary: ‘Very windy… and stormy looking’.

  Nicky’s high spirits showed no sign of flagging. He even regained his appetite for hunting, gamely taking yet more failures in his stride: ‘The day remained good throughout, but a genuine storm blew in. After coffee I went “deer-stalking” alone. I went walking the entire day about the hills, woods and marshes. I was growing hungry and as a result did not kill a thing and did not fire one shot. Really annoying! I met Granny and Alix on the way home.’ The Queen, in her diary, insisted that the Tsar was actually accompanied by the Duke of Connaught. It may be that Nicky found Uncle Arthur such relaxing company
, in comparison with Bertie, that he didn’t feel the need to mention him.

  The Queen and Alix, meanwhile, defied the stormy-looking weather, to enjoy a morning drive. After lunch, the pair had a second drive, to ‘McIntosh’s house’ for tea.

  That evening, the Queen treated herself to a viewing of Olga in her bath: ‘Went to see the dear Baby in its [sic] bath. She is a splendid child and so merry and so full of life.’ The Tsarina was a great believer in baths, insisting that they were essential for her daughter’s physical well-being. Baby Olga, she wrote: ‘has a salt bath every morning according to my wish, as I want her to be as strong as possible having to carry such a plump little body’. The Tsar himself joined the throng: ‘After my bath I attended little daughter’s bath.’

  The Tsar was probably still savouring the various baths when he found himself summoned by Granny for what turned out to be their final weighty discussion.

  The Queen later deemed this session particularly worthwhile, convincing herself that she and the Tsar were, at last, in agreement on the Sultan. ‘Afterwards Nicky came to my room and I had a very satisfactory conversation with him. He is strongly against deposing the Sultan, which he considers would be very risky and I agree, but he does not object to the various ambassadors consulting together and reporting as to what necessary measures should be taken to prevent further massacres. If the Sultan should refuse to agree to what is decided on, then force would have to be employed.’