Alexandra

by Carolly Erickson

  Even in Paris, where enthusiastic crowds shouted wildly ‘Vive l’impératrice!’ and where Alix was judged to be very pretty and most welcome, she responded with frostiness to the embrace of the French. The beauty of the city, specially adorned in honour of the imperial visitors, with even the bare chestnut trees covered with artificial flowers, left Alix unmoved, while the constant cheering and praise with which she was surrounded only brought out her flinty side; she ‘felt embarrassed’, Martha Mouchanow wrote, ‘at what she considered to be exaggerated expressions of admiration’.9

  In Paris, as in Breslau, Alix seemed almost perversely bent on destroying rather than cementing good relations. In a clumsily mistaken effort to align herself with the Republican government, she pointedly ignored some aristocratic women who had been invited to lunch at the Russian embassy. The snub was effective and devastating; the French public and press withdrew their approbation and decided that Alix was not after all very chic, that her personality was not likable, and that perhaps she did not deserve the privilege, which had been allowed her, of sleeping in Marie Antoinette’s former apartments at Versailles. After all, Marie Antoinette had not been a good Republican either.10

  It was noted that the empress was quite lethargic: she was in fact pregnant, having conceived another child in the early days of her tour. By the time she reached Paris she was yielding to the torpor of her condition. Once she returned to Russia she took to her bed, and stayed there, without interruption, for nearly two months, until the danger of another miscarriage was past.

  Along with the entire court, she was hoping for a boy, and confided her hopes to her sister Irene when she came to visit. Irene, the calmest and most undemanding of Alix’s three sisters – she and her husband Prince Henry of Prussia were known among their relatives as ‘the Very Amiables’ – may have come to Russia partly to soothe her younger sister and calm her anxieties. For apart from worrying that she might miscarry again, and that the child might be another girl, Alix was troubled by renewed threats of danger to the imperial family from revolutionaries.11

  Although no actual attempts had been made on the life of the tsar during the first two years of his reign, the constant menace of assassination was never far from his thoughts, with detectives in attendance at the palace around the clock and armed guards surrounding Nicky everywhere he went. While Nicky and Alix were in England, Scotland Yard sent information that a plot had been uncovered to dynamite the train they would ride to Ballater, near Balmoral. The conspiracy was international, with Belgian, French and Irish terrorists as well as Russians involved; bombs were being made in a secret laboratory near Antwerp. The imperials were put aboard their train, but many extra precautions were taken to ensure its safe arrival. The line was cleared by a second engine, travelling on ahead, and on the train itself were special British constables and railway agents, checking every passenger and searching every compartment.

  The Khodynka disaster had stirred up a fresh wave of antagonism among the public and, throughout the winter and spring of 1897, death threats were received by the Russian court. Murders of police chiefs and other officials in provincial cities led to the arrest and imprisonment of hundreds of suspected enemies of the regime. One of those arrested, a young woman student named Maria Vetrova, was the object of much talk and sympathy in Petersburg when her story became known in February. Imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for urging government reform, she was raped by one of her captors, following which she poured kerosene on her dress and lit it. News of her self-immolation, and of the crime that prompted it, sent a shudder of horror through the capital and triggered yet another wave of strong feeling against the tsar and his ministers, radicalizing more students.

  Nervous and beleaguered, made more anxious by the tides of hostility that radiated from Petersburg, Alix sewed and embroidered the layette for the new baby, praying that it would be a son. She was often ill in the final months of her pregnancy, and her chronic leg pains returned, but she forced herself to give four balls and invite guests to four plays at the Hermitage Theatre – all of which were sparsely attended. Society was snubbing the empress, with Minnie’s tacit approval (for a word from the dowager empress would have reversed this trend) and Nicky’s passive acquiescence.

  When in late May Alix’s birth pains began, only Irene, Nicky and Nicky’s Danish grandmother Queen Louise were present. Significantly, Minnie stayed away – possibly at the accoucheur’s request. Minnie’s presence would certainly have increased Alix’s nervousness, and made her labour more burdensome.

  Because of Alix’s apprehension about the baby’s gender – her exaggerated hope for a son, her dread of a second daughter – it had been agreed that, at the moment of birth, the accoucheur would give a silent signal to Nicky to indicate the baby’s sex. That way Alix would be spared any shock, and could be left to recover from the effects of the chloroform without the added strain of either elation or disappointment.

  The labour pains came on in the evening, and continued throughout the night. The court was alerted; once again word went out that the empress was about to give birth. At eight in the morning, Alix was moved into the bedroom Queen Louise was occupying during her stay, so that in tribute to her, the baby could be born there. Now the chloroform was administered, and the pains became more intense.

  ‘The second bright happy day in our family life,’ Nicky wrote in his diary later that day. ‘At 10:40 in the morning the Lord blessed us with a daughter – Tatiana . . . This time it all went quickly and safely, and I did not feel nervously exhausted.’12

  As at Olga’s birth, Nicky was elated. Little Tatiana was a large and beautiful child, weighing nearly nine pounds, and looked very much like Alix. Nicky was overjoyed, but the others present were glum. ‘When the child came into the world,’ Martha Mouchanow wrote, ‘there was a profound silence in the room.’ Everyone was disappointed, no one wanted to voice that disappointment.

  When after a moment or two Alix opened her eyes and knew where she was, she saw anxiety and distress on the faces of her sister and the others. She knew at once that she had had another daughter. Her sobs were louder than the crying of the newborn, and lasted long into the afternoon.

  13

  It was noticed by those in close contact with her that the empress had become increasingly preoccupied with the orderliness in which her possessions were kept. She had keys to all her trunks, wardrobes and cupboards, and kept them close at hand, so that at any moment she could open the container and inspect its contents, becoming very angry at her servants when anything was out of place or disarranged.

  At least once a month she went through every one of her hundreds of drawers and dozens of wardrobes, making certain that every gown, every hat, every pair of gloves was exactly where it should be. She checked her very extensive jewel collection, her cabinets of baubles and gifts, and especially her lace cabinet, for which she wrote out a catalogue in her own hand, every bit of lace entered in its own space and checked off as being present in its proper space. So conscientious was she about her lace, in fact, that she had her seamstresses remove all the lace trims from her hundreds of gowns and her lingerie in order to inventory it carefully; after she completed her inspection, the trims were laboriously sewn on again.

  When she discovered that a particular crystal and gold writing set, supposed to be stored on a special shelf, had been moved so that part of it was on another shelf, she became livid. She summoned all her maids of honour and lectured them harshly for keeping things ‘in such disorder’, and redoubled her surprise inspections.

  She turned the same obsessive attention to the keeping of the household records. Much to the annoyance of the stewards, she insisted upon inspecting the books in which household expenses were recorded, and criticized any expenditures that seemed to her excessive. Having managed her brother’s household in Darmstadt, Alix may have believed that she was competent to evaluate the capability of the palace staff, though she freely admitted that she had no idea how muc
h an egg or a potato cost in the markets of Tsarskoe Selo or Petersburg. The stewards complained – for in fact Alix’s understanding of the management of the huge, intricate system of palace administration was very limited, and her criticism was caustic – and Aunt Miechen, Uncle Vladimir and others in the family began to laugh over the ‘German housekeeper’ who made such a fuss about the price of potatoes.

  Alix’s increasing intolerance of disorder and mismanagement extended to her use of time. ‘Things had to be done at a certain hour,’ Martha Mouchanow wrote, ‘and if not, had to be put off until the next day. She would not for anything in the world have sacrificed five minutes of the time appointed for something else to finish what she was doing at the moment.’1 When she sat at her desk to write letters, she always stopped when her clock reached precisely the hour of five in the afternoon, even if she was in mid-sentence, leaving the written sheets strewn on the desk to be put in order the next day.

  The overconcern with orderliness, expenses and the management of her time were symptoms of a deep feeling of powerlessness that bedevilled Alix in the wake of Tatiana’s birth. If she could not control the sex of her children, the hostility of her in-laws and her husband’s subjects, she could at least attempt to govern how her possessions were kept and how her household was run. And if her excessive focus on these things bordered on an unhealthy fixation, she could not help it; that was part of her nature.

  Nor could she prevent the growing rift between herself and her mother-in-law, a rift that widened in the year of Tatiana’s birth. Relations between the two women had gone from cordial distance to an uneasy truce, and then to polite estrangement and muted antagonism. They did not exchange sharp words, but Alix complained that Minnie found other ways to make her feel inadequate in her role and to emphasize her provincial upbringing and the fact that she was not of royal birth.

  Minnie insisted that she, as a dowager empress and the daughter of a king, ought to be prayed for in the church liturgy immediately after the tsar himself, and that Alix’s name should follow hers. (The Synod disagreed, and Alix had a moment of triumph when it was decreed that her name would precede her mother-in-law’s; according to Mouchanow, Alix was ‘not wise enough to hide her joy’ at this turn of events, and Minnie took deep offence.)2

  Relations curdled over the matter of the crown jewels, a treasure hoard of white, yellow and pink diamonds, emeralds and sapphires and other ornaments of rare quality worth hundreds of millions of roubles. Minnie believed these were hers by right, and kept them in her possession, but soon after Nicky’s accession the treasury demanded the jewels, causing ‘painful scenes’ when Minnie, standing on her rights, tried to refuse entrance to her private apartments by the treasury officials. Ultimately Minnie was forced to give in and surrender the jewels, and every time Alix wore any of them Minnie took it as an affront. Alix, for her part, cared little for the brilliant stones in their old-fashioned settings, preferring her own pearls, amethysts and aquamarines, which Nicky showered on her in abundance and which the royal jewellers, Bolin and Fabergé, offered to her at frequent intervals.3 Much to Minnie’s chagrin, Alix let it be known that she actually disliked the crown jewels, and resented the fact that, at special court functions, she had to wear Catherine the Great’s huge and heavy pearl and diamond tiara, or another celebrated piece, a necklace worth twenty million roubles that had in fact been one of Minnie’s favourite possessions.

  Adding to the friction was the elaborate ritual surrounding the protection of the imperial jewels, which had to be escorted to and from the strong room by a detachment of soldiers every time they were worn, and handed over with an exchange of forms. Alix found all the fuss and paperwork tiresome, while Minnie, who continued to covet the jewels and who would gladly have filled out a dozen forms if only she could wear them, criticized her for complaining.

  By far the greatest source of conflict between the two women was the nursery. It was not just that Alix had had two daughters and no sons – while Xenia, Nicky’s sister, was producing only sons, and many of them – it was that she spent so much time with her daughters, nursing them herself (which everyone but Nicky considered ludicrously inappropriate for an empress), playing with them and supervising their care every morning and evening. Minnie and others remarked cuttingly that Alix ‘wasted all her time looking after little girls whose existence was of no interest at all to the Russian Empire’, when she ought to have been putting all her efforts into her imperial duties.4 If she could not give the realm an heir, at least she could act like an empress and not like a bourgeois Hausfrau.

  The nursery itself, to which an entire wing in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo was devoted, was a sunny, well-run domain of its own with spacious rooms and large windows framed in curtains of flowered cretonne. Lemonwood furniture, ordered from Alix’s favourite furniture supplier, Maple’s in England, lined the walls, which were hung with icons and lamps. A well-scrubbed English head nurse in a starched uniform ran the nursery establishment, with a staff of many Russian nurses and chambermaids, two of them dressed in regional Russian costume, the rest in crisp white skirts and shirtwaists with tall caps of white tulle.

  Baby Tatiana, a beautiful infant who was reportedly ‘always happy’, slept in her lemonwood cradle, while Olga, nearly two years old, tottered through the rooms or down the corridor, chattering alternately in Russian and English, gazing up at the guards and soldiers posted in the hallways. Both girls had an abundance of toys, including a special doll with her own large, fashionable wardrobe of gowns and hats and slippers, even a tiny comb and brush and mirror – a gift from the French president.

  The nursery was a healthy, well-run environment – but to Minnie it was just another of Alix’s many failures. Minnie criticized Olga, who had a broad forehead, for being ugly, found fault with the nursemaids for being too fond of drink or too eager to fraternize with the palace Cossacks. She found Alix as inadequate as a mother as she was as a wife and an empress. Indeed Minnie let it be known – and she took no pains to hide her view from anyone – that she would have preferred to have her son Michael, her late husband’s favourite, inherit the throne. With Michael as tsar, there would have been no starchy English nursery, no unwanted little girls, no awkward, inept empress.

  Michael was just nineteen in 1897, tall and handsome and genial, physically much more in the traditional Romanov mould than Nicky. Where Nicky was very much a home-lover, Michael was dashing, an able swordsman and a daring rider, a gunner in the Horse Guards artillery, much at home in society and attractive to women. On the surface at least, there was much in Michael that was lacking in Nicky. He was unproven, but promising. And even as she was complaining about Alix’s lack of a son, Minnie was rejoicing at the thought that, until Alix produced one, Michael was next in line for the throne after his sickly brother Georgy, a consumptive who was not expected to live much longer.

  In 1897 Minnie was given yet one more reason to regret her daughter-in-law. The ‘Hesse scandal’, as it came to be known, spread from court to court, darkening Alix’s reputation by association.

  Ernie’s marriage to Ducky was in ruins, and all Europe knew why. The incompatibility between the spouses had become more severe and, earlier in the year, Ducky had spent several months travelling, glad to be away from her husband. While she was gone, Ernie had let his secret life become public, and had indulged his homosexual preference indiscriminately – and most indiscreetly. On Ducky’s return to Darmstadt she discovered Ernie in bed with a young kitchen boy – and soon learned that, as she wrote afterwards, ‘no boy was safe, from the stable hands to the kitchen help. He slept quite openly with them all.’

  Ducky was ill, the Darmstadt court was shrouded temporarily in dishonour, and the Romanovs discovered a fresh reason to be contemptuous of Ernie’s sister Alix, who could not, they supposed, have been ignorant of her brother’s unmentionable proclivities.

  Another member of Alix’s large extended family, her childhood friend and cousin Helena Victoria, cam
e to Russia for a visit in the winter of 1897–98, and in her cousin’s presence some of Alix’s perpetual social discomfort seemed to abate. For a few weeks Alix and Nicky took Helena Victoria out into Petersburg society, introducing her at embassy parties, escorting her to balls and suppers. But then Alix caught the measles, and had to go into seclusion for many weeks, cutting short her participation in the winter season.

  Illness came again in the summer of 1898 when Olga developed scarlet fever and Alix, giving the new English nurse complete charge over Tatiana, devoted herself for many days and nights to Olga’s care.

  ‘I can remember her so well during these days and nights sitting by the cot in which her small daughter slept,’ Mouchanow recalled, ‘clad in a dressing gown of white flannel . . . her fair head resting on her hand, absorbed in her thoughts, and with that sweet but anxious expression on her beautiful face.’5 The Madonna-like image was striking, but even more striking was Alix’s sudden burst of candour. Until this time she had treated her chief waiting maid only as a servant, never as a confidante; now, made wretched by her worry about her daughter, her loss of sleep and general depression, she opened her heart.

  What tormented her was that her mother-in-law, Aunt Miechen and her other in-laws, far from commending her for watching by Olga’s bedside, scolded her for exposing herself to the very contagious disease of scarlet fever when the possibility existed that she might be pregnant – and with a son. Olga would live or die, they seemed to be saying, the outcome of her disease was of no consequence, and therefore Alix ought not to hover over her. All that mattered was that Alix keep herself healthy so that she could give the realm the all-important heir.