The scheme worked successfully and Sophie continued to make regular unchecked visits to her mother at Friedrichshof but it would be four years before Willy officially lifted the ban.
Word of the Kaiser’s reaction to Sophie’s conversion must have sent a shudder down Cousin Ella’s spine for, at the very moment that Sophie was arguing with Willy, Ella was agonising over how to tell her family that she, too, intended to convert to the Orthodox faith.
After seven years of a fruitless and stultifying marriage, Ella had lost none of her beauty or charm. She was still capable of stunning her guests in the ballroom and continued to win the affection of both the aristocracy and the hundreds of ordinary people who benefited from her charities. Yet for Princess Alice’s daughter the pleasure of adulation and abundant riches had quickly lost its allure.
From her earliest years, Ella had been a deeply spiritual child and her faith in the goodness of God had sustained her through the traumas and tragedies of her childhood, including the deaths of her mother, brother and sister. Princess Alice had repeatedly emphasised the briefness of life and the necessity of seeing heaven as an ultimate goal:
“Life is not endless in this world, God be praised! There is much joy - but oh! so much trial and pain and, as the number of those one loves increases in Heaven, it makes our passage easier - and home is there.”[112]
As a child, Ella had been fascinated by her ancestor and namesake, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the queen who, six centuries earlier, had disbanded her court to spend her life in the service of the sick. Inspired by the example of the saint and by her own mother’s commitment to the poor, Ella herself had grown up with ‘a longing to help those who suffer.’ Now, in the midst of such opulence, her Lutheran faith appeared self-righteous and was becoming as unfulfilling as her marriage. Beneath the priceless jewels, the palaces and exaltation, Ella was slowly suffocating in the superficiality of her life.
Only on the country estate of Ilinskoe could she find peace. There, profoundly impressed by the peasants’ sincere and humble devotion, she felt herself increasingly drawn to Orthodoxy. In September 1888, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the consecration of a church, made a deep impression on the young Grand Duchess. The spiritual atmosphere of the Holy Places and the mysterious Russian rites convinced her that God was calling her to the religion of her adopted home. By the time she returned to St. Petersburg she had made a decision to learn all she could about Orthodoxy. Her husband, Serge, was overjoyed; he longed for her to convert and, what was more, in a marriage where so much was lacking, shared faith might draw them closer together.
There was, however, a problem. At the age of sixteen, in the presence of her grandmother, Ella had made her confirmation, committing herself to Lutheranism, and she firmly believed that promises made before God were binding for life. Still more poignantly, before leaving Darmstadt she had given her father her word that she would never abandon the faith of her childhood. Torn between her inner conviction and the promises she had made, she entered a spiritual crisis like that which her mother had endured almost thirty years earlier. Privately she studied the lives of Russian saints and the works of contemporary Orthodox writers but for two more years, unable to renege on the promise she had made to her father, she prevaricated.
“…Then again came many months of doubts and worries. I always wished to put it off although ‘au fond de mon coeur’ I already belonged to [Orthodoxy]. Alas, I am very bad and did not have enough strength, enough faith.”[113]
Eventually, in the course of her reading, Ella discovered a loophole. It was not necessary to abjure Lutheranism to embrace Orthodoxy; in effect she could convert without breaking her promise. There could be no more excuses. At Christmas 1890, Serge ‘wept with joy’ when she told him that she had finally made her decision but with great trepidation she sat down to write an explanatory letter to her father.
“May God forgive you!” he wrote in reply, accusing her of spurning her true faith and turning her back on all she had been brought up to believe.
In Russia, too, her conversion was viewed cynically in some quarters. Her husband, the gossips claimed, had forced her into the decision, since he was about to be made Governor General of Moscow and in such a prestigious position he needed an Orthodox wife. Ella did not argue. In the early morning Saturday 25th April 1891, she quietly slipped into the Chapel where in a private ceremony attended by the Tsar, Tsarina and Serge, she was received into the Orthodox faith.
“No conversion was ever more sincere, thorough or complete,” wrote the French Ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, “…All her instinct for dreams and emotion, fervour and tenderness suddenly found its outlet in the mysterious rites and pomp and pageantry of Orthodoxy. Her piety soared to amazing levels. She knew heights and depths whose existence she never suspected.”[114]
It would have suited Ella from then on to withdraw into a more ascetic existence but within a month, she and Serge had left St. Petersburg for Moscow. The duties of the wife of the Governor General – a position virtually equivalent to that of a viceroy – were numerous and her days were spent ‘receiving, seeing heaps of people, giving receptions, dinners, balls…’ Whatever time she could spare she spent praying in one of the Kremlin’s many basilicas or involving herself in charitable works. Patronising hospitals and orphanages, ‘a certain mixture of idealism and mystery added to her natural charm which made her adored by all with whom she came into contact.’[115]
Ella’s benevolence and beauty quickly won the hearts of the Muscovites, and, as her lady-in-waiting wrote:
“People quickly got into the habit of referring to her, of putting her at the head of new organisations, of making her the patroness of charitable institutions.”[116]
Her popularity, however, did nothing to improve the reputation of her husband. Word of his reactionary views had preceded him from St. Petersburg and, from the moment he arrived in the city, his actions justified the Muscovites’ fears. Convinced that the Jews were at the heart of every revolutionary plot, Serge ordered their expulsion from the city before imposing a series of stern regulations on the universities. Stories and lewd jokes about his alleged perversions circulated through the city while his genuine attempts to improve the lives of the poor passed unnoticed.
In fact, those who knew Serge well, found him approachable and supportive. Countess Tolstoy was one of many who came to him to present a petition and found the Grand Duke ‘exceeding courteous and affable.’ When she requested a particular position in a specific regiment for her son, Serge listened attentively and within a short time the young man received his commission. The countess was also aware of an occasion when, out of loyalty to his retainers, Serge made the three hundred mile journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow for one day to be present at the wedding of one of his servants.
Unwaveringly loyal, Ella never uttered a single word of criticism of her husband and yet, ironically, rather than bringing them together, her conversion drove her and Serge further apart. He viewed her ‘excessive’ devotions with anxiety and, fearing that her inspirations were based on superstition, frequently warned her not to trust her own judgement in spiritual matters.
If, in her loneliness, Ella hoped that her sister Alix, as an equally enthusiastic convert, might empathise with her devotion, she was about to discover that the Tsarina’s faith was leading in quite a different direction.
Chapter 22 – We Were All So Hoping for A Boy
Russians
Alix: youngest daughter of Alice; Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia
Nicholas (Nicky): Alix’s husband; Tsar Nicholas II
Ella: Grand Duchess Serge; Alix’s elder sister
Shortly after Alix’s engagement, Ella had warned her sister of the dangers of making a poor first impression in her new homeland. Her warning was to prove tragically appropriate. Contrary to Ella’s high expectations, Alix had made a very poor initial impression in St. Petersburg and the results would overshadow the rest of her life.
For any of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters, the dramatic transformation from the relatively lowly position of a minor German princess to the Empress of so vast an empire would have been daunting, and for Alix of Hesse the sudden elevation to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was positively traumatic. Thrust from the backwater of a small German Grand Duchy into the gaudy and glittering limelight of the wealthiest court in the world, she stood tongue tied and blushing before the aristocracy who expected her to shine as brilliantly as her predecessor had done. Unable to speak Russian, she might have been grateful that French was the customary language at court, yet even that she spoke with a ‘terrible accent’ and, according to one observer could barely ‘squeeze out a word.’
From the start, the nobility compared her to her ebullient mother-in-law, who delighted in hosting receptions and leading the social life of the capital. The contrast between the Dowager Empress and her successor showed Alix in a most unfavourable light. Shy among strangers, her awkward silences were mistaken for arrogance, and formal gatherings became so tortuous that at the first possible opportunity she made her excuses to escape, firing unjust rumours that she believed the company beneath her.
“She undoubtedly possessed [a Victorian] strain, as in many ways she was a typical Victorian;” wrote her friend, Lili Dehn. “She shared her grandmother’s love of law and order, her faithful adherence to family duty, her dislike of modernity, and she also possessed the ‘homeliness’ of the Coburgs, which annoyed Society so much.”[117]
More familiar with the sedate palaces of Queen Victoria than the decadent world of St. Petersburg high society, she glared with disdain on the loose morals and idleness of the Russian nobles. “Most Russian girls seem to have nothing in their heads but officers,” she complained but her attempts to impose her own standards met only with mockery and contempt.
“The Empress,” wrote her close friend Anna Vyrubova, “possessed a heart and a mind utterly incapable of dishonesty or deceit, consequently she could never tolerate it either in other people. This naturally got her heartily disliked by people of society to whom deceit was a matter of long practice.”[118]
With Ella’s encouragement, Alix tried to interest the aristocracy in charitable works. True to her upbringing, she established nurse training schools based on the ideas instituted by Aunt Lenchen in England and funded from her own private income; she visited hospitals, secretly paid out fortunes to various medical charities and even called on the sick in their own homes, but her efforts to engage the upper classes in more meaningful activities did nothing to increase her popularity:
“One of her early projects was a society of handwork composed of ladies of the Court and society circles, each one of whom should make with her own hands three garments a year to be given to the poor. The society, I am sorry to say, did not long flourish. The idea was too foreign to the soil.”[119]
Nor did her natural and genuine simplicity appeal to the aristocracy, who:
“…could not understand why on all the earth their Empress knitted scarves and shawls as presents for her friends, or gave them dress-lengths. Their conception of an Imperial gift was totally different, and they were oblivious of the love which had been crocheted into the despised scarf or the useful shawl – but the Empress, with her Victorian ideas as to the value of friendship, would not, or could not, see that she was a failure in this sense.”[120]
Unsurprisingly, Alix withdrew ever more frequently from society, seeking solace within the walls of her favourite home, the Alexander Palace, with a few close friends and her beloved Nicky. Content in her husband’s company and isolated from the world, Alix was convinced that the opinions of the aristocracy were of no consequence. The ‘real’ Russians – the peasants, like those whom she had met on Ella’s country estate – were devoted to their Tsar. St. Petersburg was, in her view, filled with foreign schemers and, with ever-increasing vehemence, she urged Nicholas to pay no heed to the advisers who sought only to manipulate and trap him.
Unfortunately, Nicholas had neither the desire nor the temperament for power. In the early years of his reign, unprepared for the weight of responsibility, he stood in awe of his giant uncles who towered over him physically. His character contrasted sharply with that of his father, the mighty Alexander III, and his willingness to listen to opposing points of view gave the impression that he vacillated too easily and lacked any firm conviction.
With his mild manner and gentle way of speaking, Nicholas was more suited to the role of country gentleman than the autocratic Tsar of All the Russias, and his reign seemed doomed to disaster. Tragedy even marred the coronation celebrations when thousands of Muscovites were crushed to death as they waited for the customary hand-outs of souvenirs and free meals.
In a non-autocratic country, Alix would surely have prospered since many of her perceived failings were identical to those of her grandmother. Queen Victoria had been much criticised for her failure to appear in public after the Prince Consort’s death and, like Alix, she excused herself on account of shyness, ill-health and nerves. Both were devoted to their husbands and both were equally quick to disregard the advice of family and ministers who warned them of too close an association with ‘favourites’. Queen Victoria’s attachment to John Brown and her refusal to heed the complaints of his critics would be mirrored to a more devastating effect, in Alix’s perceived dependence on the peasant, Grigory Rasputin. Neither the Queen nor her granddaughter readily accepted advice but where Queen Victoria was able to rely on the good will of her ministers and the loyalty of the people, there was no such fidelity for Alix. As a constitutional monarch, Queen Victoria was never held directly responsible for the problems of her country; as the foreign wife of an autocrat, Alix took the blame for every disaster that befell the Russian people.
Unsurprisingly, an air of sadness seemed to surround her, as Countess Olsufieff observed:
“…even in the height of her prosperity [she] never quite lost the sad lines of the mouth which gave her beauty a preordained tragedy.”[121]
For all her disappointments, Alix had at least the consolation of discovering within months of her wedding that she was pregnant and, if anything could help endear her to the Russian people, it would be the birth of an heir. Since the death of Catherine the Great, the Salic law debarring females from the throne had been operant in Russia and so, as word of her condition spread, the Imperial Family united in prayer that the baby would be a boy.
In autumn 1895, Ella travelled from Moscow to Tsarskoe Selo and remained at Alix’s side throughout the twenty-hour labour. At nine o’clock in the evening of 15th November, the baby – a ‘huge’ daughter – was born. Across St. Petersburg, soldiers fired their hundred-and-one gun salutes while the family participated in a Te Deum in thanksgiving for the safe delivery of Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaevna. Though the parents were elated and the family rejoiced, there was a general sense of disappointment that the child was not a boy.
Times had certainly changed since Queen Victoria had named a cow in the royal dairy, ‘Alice.’ Now, thirty years later, Nicky was writing confidently to the Queen that he was delighted that Alix was nursing the baby herself. The Queen’s reaction is unrecorded.
Little Olga delighted her parents, neither of whom saw any cause for alarm in her gender. After all, when Queen Victoria’s first child, Vicky, was born, the Queen had accurately predicted, ‘the next one will be a prince.’ Alix had good reason to hope that the same would be true in her case, particularly when the following year she was pregnant again. In May 1897, after a shorter and easier labour, she gave birth to a second daughter, Tatiana. Two years later, when a third daughter, Maria, was born, there was even greater sense of disappointment in the country at large.
In 1901 Alix, pregnant for a fourth time, was convinced that this time she would bear a son. In June, Anastasia was born. Nicholas recorded that he was pleased that the birth had gone well and without complications, but even he could hardly conceal his disappointment and, on hearing the news,
went for a long walk alone.
The desperate longing for a son did not diminish the deep love that both the Tsar and Tsarina had for their daughters. Both of them worshipped their ‘precious girlies’ and Alix, like her own mother, took far more direct responsibility for them than was common among Queens and Empresses. Breast-feeding them, bathing them, playing with them and attending to their education, her letters and diaries were filled with details of their health, their temperature and even, as her daughters grew older, the dates of their periods; and yet, until she had a son, she had failed in her duty both as a wife and an Empress.
Alix was desolate. She had prayed, she had hoped, she had produced four daughters and, at the age of thirty-two, she was becoming desperate; the only solution she could envisage was a miracle, and Russia, as she was about to discover, was filled with miracle-workers.
Alix, no less than Ella, had taken her conversion to heart. According to Baroness Buxhoeveden, ‘she held views that were considered unduly strict by many modern Russians, and zealously studied the intricate works of the old Fathers of the Church.’[122]
But for all her sincere religious devotion, Alix’s desperation to bear a son was driving her further and further to the edge of what her detractors would describe as superstition.
Queen Victoria's Granddaughters 1860-1918 Page 19