Like her cousins, Ena was familiar with haemophilia. Two of her three brothers were afflicted by the illness and before her engagement her family believed it imperative to inform Alfonso of the risk. The King, with no direct experience of the condition, ignored the warning and it was only after the birth of their first son that he understood the effects of the ‘terrible illness of the English family.’
Since the Spanish throne was no safer than that of Russia, King Alfonso had as much need of a healthy heir as the Tsar had but, unlike Nicholas, he was quick to deny all responsibility for the boy’s poor health and laid the blame entirely at Ena’s feet. Since only healthy sons could inherit the throne, young Alfonso was struck from the succession.
Although Ena had grown up with haemophiliac brothers, her husband’s reaction made it difficult for her to cope with her sickly son. Unlike Alix, who could not bear to be separated from the Tsarevich, Ena was unable to face little Alfonso and, sending him away from Madrid, avoided seeing him for long periods. If she hoped that subsequent healthy children might restore her husband’s affection and assuage his insatiable appetite for mistresses, she was quickly disappointed. Her second son, Jaime born in 1908, escaped haemophilia but, following an infection while still a baby, became deaf and unable to speak. He, too, was struck from the succession.
Ena’s third child, Beatriz, was a haemophiliac carrier; her fourth, a haemophiliac son, died soon after his birth. Her fifth and sixth children, Maria Cristina and Juan, were healthy but her seventh and last child, Gonzalo, was another haemophiliac who died before his first birthday.
For Empresses and Queens, the tragedy of haemophilia would have far reaching consequences, but the anxiety was equally traumatic for cousins in less elevated positions. Irène’s first-born haemophiliac son, Waldemar, survived to the age of fifty-six, outliving many of his hardier cousins, despite frequent bouts of bleeding from the crippling illness. The sons of Alice of Albany were not so fortunate. As the daughter of the haemophiliac Prince Leopold, Alice was certain to have inherited the defective gene. While there is a possibility that her baby son, Maurice, had died of the illness before his first birthday, her elder son Rupert might have avoided the condition. He survived until 1928 when, at the age of twenty-one, he died of ‘repeated haemorrhaging’ following a road accident in Paris in 1928.
Chapter 29 – A Saintly Heroine & A Lascivious Satyr
Louise: Duchess of Fife; Princess Royal; eldest daughter of King Edward VII
Macduff: Louise’s husband; Alexander, Duke of Fife
Maud and Alexandra: Louise’s daughters
Ella: Daughter of Princess Alice; widow of Grand Duke Serge of Russia
Alix: Ella’s sister; Tsarina of Russia
Ever conscious of her health, Louise of Wales, Duchess of Fife, escaped each summer from the cold British winters to warmer climes. In November 1911, accompanied by her husband, Macduff, and their two daughters, Alexandra and Maud, she boarded the P&O liner, Delhi, bound for Egypt by way of the Bay of Biscay. In spite of her delicate constitution, the rough seas and strong winds did not unduly bother her and, on the night of 12th December, she retired to her cabin untroubled by the rising storm. While the royal party slept, gales forced the ship off course towards Morocco where it ran aground, throwing several crew members overboard and destroying many of the lifeboats.
Awoken by the chaos, Louise and Macduff made their way to the deck where officers urged the princess and her family to hurry into the remaining lifeboats. With remarkable calm, Louise displayed her true nobility and insisted on remaining on board until all the other passengers were safe.
When word of the danger reached the British fleet, boats were immediately dispatched to assist in the rescue and eventually Louise, Macduff and their daughters, dressed only in their nightclothes covered by coats and lifejackets, were able to climb into a rescue vessel. Their ordeal was only just beginning. Waves lashed at the boat, filling it with water and ultimately throwing the family overboard, kept afloat only by their lifejackets.
Drenched and exhausted, the family and sailors found themselves washed up in a forlorn spot and trudged shivering for miles through the darkness of the continuing storm. Eventually they reached Tangier where they finally found warmth and rest.
Although it took several weeks for Louise to regain her strength, she had come through the disaster unscathed and her courage earned the admiration of her rescuers. A month later, the family embarked on a recuperative cruise along the Nile, where it was soon apparent to Louise that the shipwreck had affected her husband more deeply than she had first realised. He contracted a series of chills, which developed into pleurisy and pneumonia. He died on the 19th January 1912.
In England, the Royal Family awaited the return of his coffin and, for a second time in three months, the reputedly weak Louise impressed everyone by her composure and strength of character.
“What a saintly heroine our poor darling Louise has become!” wrote a proud Queen Alexandra, “a changed being who can bear every cross now!”[155]
Resigning herself to the will of God, Louise calmly accepted her widowhood and assumed full responsibility for her daughters and the running of Macduff’s estates. Her eldest daughter, Alexandra, inherited her father’s title and became the first Duchess of Fife in her own right. Two years later she married her mother’s first cousin, Arthur, the brother of Daisy and Patsy Connaught.
Louise was not the only one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters to be regarded as a saintly heroine that year. Just as Macduff’s death brought out Louise’s finest qualities, the shock of her husband’s assassination had led to a far more dramatic transformation in the life of her Hessian cousin, Ella. Though heartbroken at Serge’s horrific murder, the forty-year-old Grand Duchess refused to give way to despair. For twenty years, she had been seen as little more than a beautiful appendage to the Grand Duke – a bejewelled ornament who, for all her numerous charitable causes, remained entirely under Serge’s overbearing command.
Beneath her passive exterior, however, Ella had lost none of the intelligence or strength of character she had inherited from her mother. Her decision to convert to Orthodoxy had not been taken lightly and with each passing year she had absorbed herself more deeply in her faith. She may have endured Serge’s accusations of ‘immoderate devotion’ in silence but throughout her difficult marriage she had ‘kept her ears open’ to what was going on around her and had nurtured a secret dream.
Now, relieved of her duties as the wife of the Governor General, she withdrew from aristocratic society to adopt a more ascetic existence. Dispensing with the trappings of royalty, she stripped her Kremlin apartments of their expensive furnishings and, adopting a vegetarian diet, divided her time between prayer and charitable works, venturing ever deeper into the heart of Moscow’s slums. The ignorance, poverty and debauchery she encountered revived her childhood longing ‘to help those who suffer.’
It was no longer enough for her to patronise charities from a distance. Like her mother before her, Ella felt drawn to take a more direct approach. After many months of careful planning and consultations with Church elders, she gradually disposed of her possessions, dividing her jewels into three parts: those which belonged to, and were returned to, the Crown; those which she gave to her relatives; and those which she sold to purchase a piece of land in the poorest part of Moscow. There, she built a convent, orphanage, church and hospital where the poor could be treated free of charge. She undertook a course of nurse training and, after two years of wrangling, the Orthodox Church agreed to grant her foundation official recognition as a convent. The foundation was named The House of Martha and Mary, as it was intended to combine the contemplative approach of the biblical Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet, with the more active approach of her sister, Martha, who served the guests. On April 2nd 1910, Ella donned a pearl grey habit and pronounced the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and was then created the Abbess of her Order.
“It was a beautifu
l ceremony, which those who took part in it can never forget. She left the world where she had played a brilliant part, to go, as she said herself, ‘into the greater world, the world of the poor and the afflicted.’”[156]
In her desire to create a beautiful haven for the poor, Ella had the white buildings of her foundation surrounded with flowers and trees. She employed the finest artists in Russia to decorate the walls of her church with frescos and paintings, and funded a permanent chaplain for her sisters:
“It is a very gentle and delicate experience to stand on the stone flags of the wide church,” wrote a visiting Englishman. “[The sisters’] religion is a religion of good deeds. They visit, clothe, comfort, heal the poor, and all but work miracles, flowers springing in their footsteps where they go.”[157]
Far from the gaudy world of the ballrooms, Ella dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her new life. Sleeping for only a few hours on a plain wooden bed, she spent the nights trailing through the back streets of Moscow in search of child prostitutes and abandoned children. She personally attended the most abject patients in her hospital, often receiving those whom other hospitals were unable or unwilling to treat. Countess Olsufieff recalled one such case of a cook who had been burned so badly by an overturned oil stove that death seemed inevitable.
“She was brought, already suffering from gangrene, from one of the hospital of the town. The Grand Duchess herself did the dressings, which were so painful that she had to pause each moment to comfort and reassure the patient. It took two hours and a half twice a day to do the dressings, and the Grand Duchess’s gown had to be aired afterwards to get rid of the terrible smell of gangrene, yet she persevered in the treatment till the woman was cured to the astonishment of the doctors, who had given her up.”[158]
As the foundation flourished, Ella extended the work to establish hostels for students and young workers, and a scheme for employing messenger boys, providing them with accommodation and fair wages. Thousands of requests poured in each week, and Ella, employing the administrative talents she had learned in childhood, attempted to deal with them all.
Her saintly reputation soon spread through the country and wherever she went, crowds gathered to kiss the hem of her garments as she passed, but if the poor were convinced that a saint lived among them, the aristocracy were aghast. Many of her former friends considered her lifestyle demeaning to the Imperial Family and rumours spread that she had suffered a nervous breakdown and intended to shut herself off from the world. Only with the staunch support of her sister, Victoria Battenberg, did Ella manage to convince her relatives in Darmstadt and England that this was no sudden adventure but a dream she had nurtured since childhood which ‘grew in me more and more.’
Unfortunately, no one was less convinced of Ella’s sanctity than her younger sister, the Tsarina. With more than a hint of animosity Alix poured scorn on her endeavours, accusing her of self-seeking and a desire to be called a saint.
“Oh, I wish you knew me better,” Ella wrote in exasperation to the Tsar, “I know Alix imagines I allow people to call me a saint…I - good gracious! - What am I, no better and probably worse than others. If people have said foolish exaggerated things is it my fault, but they don’t say it to my face.”[159]
But the fact that the Muscovites did revere her as a saint must have been galling for Alix, who had seen all her own attempts at charitable works backfire. What was more, Ella’s spirituality was respected and admired, while Alix’s equally sincere devotions were criticised as superstitious and bizarre. The growing tension between the sisters was becoming more pronounced, particularly since Alix had now fallen under the pernicious influence of one man to whom Ella’s way of life was abhorrent: a debauched Siberian peasant named Grigory Elfimovich Rasputin.
Around the time of the birth of the Tsarevich, Rasputin arrived in St. Petersburg claiming that the Virgin Mary had appeared to him in a vision and sent him on a mission to serve the Imperial Family. By his evident simplicity and powers of healing he soon succeeded in ingratiating himself with the some of the most powerful clerics in the capital and it was not long before accounts of his miraculous cures reached the Tsarina.
Intrigued by the stories and desperate to find some means of healing her son’s haemophilia, Alix invited him to the Alexander Palace where the little Tsarevich Alexei lay desperately ill after another bout of bleeding. Rasputin leaned over the boy, whispered softly to him then left, assuring his mother that there was no cause for alarm. Alexei’s pain vanished and within hours the swelling in his leg had subsided. Alix had received her miracle. This ‘Man of God’ was the Friend whom Philippe had promised.
“‘Why should humanity nowadays,’ she said, ‘be deprived of the comfort and support given to former generations?’ St. Seraphim of Sarov had not lived so very long- ago and the Church had canonised him. Thus she reasoned, in her conviction that to her, too, had been vouchsafed the blessing of seeing a wonder-working saint walk upon this earth.”[160]
To Ella and other members of the Imperial Family, Rasputin was nothing of the sort. Described by one observer as a ‘lascivious satyr’, his theology was distorted and bizarre. Sin, he claimed, was beneficial, since only the sinner could repent and, by receiving forgiveness, draw closer to God. The harder and more often a man sinned, the greater would be his humility and hence his sanctity. The doctrine suited the lascivious moujik, who took great delight in stripping young and beautiful women of their pride, and ‘testing his flesh’ in the brothels of the capital.
Stories of his licentious behaviour and the number of innocent young women he had seduced were alarming enough, but for Ella it was still more disconcerting to hear the gossip surrounding his relationship with the Tsarina. Since the Tsarevich’s illness remained a state secret, few people outside the Tsar’s immediate circle were aware of the reason for the peasant’s frequent visits to the Alexander Palace, and, as he bragged of his proximity to the Imperial Family, rumours soon spread that he and the Empress were lovers.
Ella’s attempts to warn Alix that the peasant was compromising her reputation met with a swift rebuttal. Prophets, Alix said citing biblical examples, were never accepted by their own people and were always the victims of slander. For his part, Rasputin was happy to encourage the growing rift between the sisters. In his opinion, Ella’s chastity was evidence of nothing but hypocrisy and conceit. A beautiful woman had a duty to use her God-given gifts to give and receive pleasure but Ella had remained faithful in an apparently loveless marriage and, still worse, she had adopted the celibate lifestyle of a nun.
“There is a lack of warmth in the relations between the Grand Duchess Elizabeth and the Empress Alexandra,” the French Ambassador, Maurice Paléologue, observed. “The original cause, or at any rate the principal reason, for their estrangement is Rasputin. In Elizabeth Feodorovna’s eyes Grigory is nothing but a sacrilegious impostor, an emissary of Satan. The two sisters have often had disputes about him which have several times led to an open quarrel. They never mention him now.”[161]
Ella was not alone in voicing her concerns about the peasant’s rising influence. Nicholas’ mother and several Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses were becoming increasingly perturbed by the stories of his debauchery. Nor were the tales confined to Russia; Alix’s sisters in Germany and England were equally anxious. Prince Felix Youssoupov recalled dining with Victoria Battenberg in England where she asked him about Rasputin’s influence and was alarmed by his response.
No amount of persuasion, however, could undermine Alix’s faith in Our Friend. Even when government reports detailed his unholy activities, she refused to listen. All she saw was the young Tsarevich, one moment crying in agony, the next, sleeping peacefully soothed by the peasant’s hypnotic words. Rasputin was her saviour sent from God and anyone who opposed him no longer merited her affection.
As loyal and obstinate as her grandmother and blinded by the desperation to save her son, Alix could not see that his sinister presence would cause greater devastati
on to her family and the whole of Russia than the disease he claimed to cure.
Part IV – Marching to Their Deaths
(War & Tragedy)
Chapter 30 – The Bulgarians Have Gone Off Their Heads
Bertie: King Edward VII
Toria: Bertie’s unmarried daughter
Sophie: Vicky’s daughter; Crown Princess of Greece
Tino: Sophie’s husband; Crown Prince of Greece
George: Tino’s father; King of Greece
Alice: daughter of Victoria & Louis of Battenberg; Princess of Greece.
Marie (Missy): daughter of Affie, Duke of Edinburgh; Crown Princess of Roumania
Ferdinand (Nando): Marie’s husband; Crown Prince of Roumania
Carol: German-born King of Roumania.
In the spring of 1910, King Edward VII, portly and bronchitic, arranged to meet his mistress, Alice Keppel, in Biarritz. Though inured to her husband’s infidelities, this most blatant display of affection for the ubiquitous Mrs Keppel greatly irked Queen Alexandra, who decided to embark on a separate holiday of her own with her daughter, long-suffering Toria, in tow. At least on this occasion Toria was spared the boredom of ‘that vile’ Danish Court to which her mother so frequently repaired, as the Queen opted instead for a Mediterranean cruise, including a visit to her brother, King George of the Hellenes, in Corfu.
Her husband, meanwhile, en route to Biarritz, spent an evening in an ill-ventilated theatre in Paris where he caught a cold, which exacerbated his chronic bronchitis. By the time he reached his destination he was far from well and spent much of the holiday confined to his rooms. Returning to England at the end of April, he insisted on continuing with his duties but it was obvious that his illness was no mere chill, and his friends thought it prudent to send word of his condition to his wife.
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