How very different from when I married Ernie. I didn’t even buy a new gown. The ceremony was soon over, very short by Russian standards because it was abbreviated in view of my regrettable divorce. The light grew strangely yellow and snow began to fall, unseasonably early. We had a hasty wedding breakfast then our very few guests all left. Poor Father Arseny led the stampede.
Cyril said, ‘Did someone give the order to abandon ship? Was it something we said?’
It all felt a bit flat. We’d waited so long to be married, and we were already lovers. But something strange occurred. I found I was more in love than ever. Not wildly, as before, but deeply. And we were beyond the reach of anyone’s disapproval, or so I thought. The snow melted, the sun came out and we spent our honeymoon motoring around the lake, rowing on the lake, and paddling our feet in the lake.
‘Good morning, Wife,’ Cyril would greet me.
‘Good morning, Husband,’ I’d reply. ‘Is the lake still there?’
‘Lake present and correct,’ he’d say.
*
Missy sent a rather lukewarm message. Something along the lines of, she hoped my saintly patience would be rewarded and that marriage to Cyril would live up to my expectations. Aunt Louise sent a card. And still the ravens haven’t left the Tower!
At the end of October, I went back to Coburg to begin packing for my new life and Cyril travelled on to St Petersburg to announce the news of our marriage.
He said, ‘While I’m gone you must think what name you wish to go by in Russia. You can probably get away with “Victoria” but your patronymic is a problem. “Victoria Alfredovna” doesn’t really work.’
Mother recommended ‘Fyodorovna’. It was the patronymic Dowager Empress Minnie had taken when she went to Russia to be married, and Sunny too.
She said, ‘Saint Fyodor’s a perfectly respectable saint and look, Fyodorovna isn’t so very different from Alfredovna. Quite similar at a glance.’
That was how I became the Grand Duchess Victoria Fyodorovna.
The plan was that Cyril would spend two weeks in St Petersburg, seeing family members and choosing a place for us to live. I would then follow on. We’d be together in Russia in time for Christmas. Cyril said not to buy any new furs, to wait until I got to Russia and he’d buy me a sable.
Three days after his arrival there I received a telegram from Aunt Miechen. CYRIL VLADIMIROVICH RETURNING COBURG, it said. DISASTER.
My new husband seemed shorter and less dashing after his brief visit to Saint Petersburg. Half the man, I thought, when he walked back through the door at Rosenau. He had been reduced and humiliated and it showed. Here’s what had happened.
Things had begun well enough. Aunt Miechen and Uncle Vladimir were very happy to hear about our marriage.
‘Thrilled,’ he said. ‘But you know they always loved you.’
After he’d received their congratulations and they’d opened a bottle of champagne, Cyril arranged to go and see Emperor Nicky the next morning. But the reason for Cyril’s arrival in St Petersburg reached Nicky’s ears before bedtime. I suppose if you’re the Emperor of All the Russias you had better know what everyone is up to. Emperor Nicky sent one of his courtiers, Count Fredericks, to deliver the blow. His Imperial Majesty would not receive Cyril the next morning, nor at any other hour. Cyril had contracted a marriage without his Emperor’s consent and must pay the price. He had forty-eight hours to leave Russia, for ever.
Given an opening Aunt Miechen still talks about it, all these years later. ‘Coming to a person’s house on Court business at that time of night,’ she says. ‘Unheard of. Of course it wasn’t poor old Fredericks’s fault. One mustn’t blame the messenger. It was Nicky’s doing and not even entirely his. He’ll have had Sunny urging him on.’
Cyril’s parents were beside themselves, both at Cyril’s punishment and at the way it was announced. Uncle Vladimir went out to Tsarskoe Selo the next morning to protest. He didn’t have an appointment, or even wait to be admitted. He just marched right in to Emperor Nicky’s study. Aunt Miechen told Mother that Nicky’s knees were knocking – well, Uncle Vladimir did have a very considerable presence and an extremely loud voice – but Uncle Vladimir himself told a rather different story. That Nicky just continued smoking a cigarette and leafing through papers as though he’d no more noticed Uncle Vladimir’s presence than he might a fly on the window pane. Better to accept Uncle Vladimir’s version, I think. Aunt Miechen does tend to embellish. And Uncle Vladimir’s actions speak for themselves. When there was no sign of Emperor Nicky reversing his order, Uncle resigned all his own positions in protest. It was a grand gesture but it made no difference to us. Cyril was stripped of his titles and honours, his allowance, his naval rank and decorations, and the right to live in Russia. I was the Grand Duchess of Nowhere and my husband was unemployed.
I said, ‘Things will work out.’
‘Just a setback,’ Cyril said. ‘We’ll survive.’
Mother didn’t utter a word. Her face said it all. ‘Didn’t I warn you?’
*
The news of our marriage reached Darmstadt via St Petersburg and I received a wire from Ernie. HOPE YOU’VE FOUND HAPPINESS AT LAST. I think he meant it sincerely.
Cyril, who had been accustomed to the Navy telling him what to do, seemed not to have a plan. He filled his days playing golf and his evenings smoking too much. As to where we should make our home now Russia was off the menu, he left that up to me. I chose Paris. Dear, banished Grand Duke Uncle Paul was already living there with his new wife, Olga, so it seemed like a fitting place for Cyril’s exile. And his brothers, Boris and Alexei, both loved Paris. I knew they would visit us often. The only difficulty was money. I thought I’d try my hand at watercolours. Ernie had always said I painted quite well.
Mother said, ‘You’re going to paint watercolours? And sell them?’
I said, ‘Just until Cyril can find something.’
Mother said, ‘Find something?’
‘Employment.’
‘And what do you imagine he’ll do? Drive a hansom? Don’t be silly, Ducky. He’s a Grand Duke.’
I said, ‘Well, Pa was a Royal Highness and he had a naval command. That was employment.’
‘Do you really think so, dear?’ she said.
She sat and thought for a while and then she said, ‘Well, before you starve to death I think I’d better buy you an apartment.’
She chose a property in Passy. As she said, the 16th arrondissement was a superior area and the apartment had a south-eastern aspect. It could only be a good investment. That was our first home together, small and simple, with only room for four servants. We were like children playing house.
‘And what’s on the cards for today?’ Cyril would ask me every morning, even though we both knew perfectly well he was going to play golf while I shopped for cushions.
We saw a lot of Uncle Paul and Olga. They lived nearby and as they said, we banished ones had better stick together. Olga would have been happy to stay in Paris for ever but there was always a sadness about Uncle Paul. He longed to go back to Russia. Russians always do, no matter how badly Russia has treated them.
Olga used to say, ‘Paul wants all his children to know each other. What could be more natural? But it won’t happen, not as long as those stiff-necks are on the throne.’
Olga and Uncle Paul had three children by then. Vova was nine, Irina was three, Natalya was just a baby. They’d never even met their half-brother, Dmitri, or their half-sister, Marie. It was the spring of 1906 when we settled in Paris. Only eleven years ago and yet it seems like a lifetime. Marie has been married and divorced, Dmitri is banished to Persia, and the last we heard of Vova, he was under house arrest. His pen got him into trouble, as we feared it might. I don’t think Minister Kerensky has a highly developed sense of humour. Better anyway not to have put it to the test. But both such lovely boys, Vova and Dmitri Pavlovich. I hope they’ll come through this all right.
Missy visited us the ve
ry minute we’d nested. She was pretty jealous.
‘Paris!’ she said. ‘Well, your bread certainly landed butter side up. Mother never offered to buy me a place in Paris. But you always were her favourite.’
It wasn’t true at all. Mother didn’t have favourites. She just wasn’t convinced that Cyril could keep me in fitting style, nor could she see the point in our paying rent to a stranger.
Brother-in-law Boris visited us too, and brought news from St Petersburg. The Tsesarevich wasn’t thriving. We’d already heard something to that effect, though Aunt Miechen wasn’t the most reliable of sources, but it seemed it was true. Tsesarevich Alexis had the bleeding disease. One of Pa’s brothers had had it and Ernie’s brother Frittie. Ernie’s sister, Irene, had just lost her youngest son to it. And now Nicky and Sunny’s precious Alyosha, who had been so long in coming, and on whom so much depended.
People said I shouldn’t feel sorry for Sunny and Nicky, after what they’d done to Cyril, but I did feel sorry for them, particularly Sunny. After all, it was her main purpose in life, to give Nicky an heir. I thought she might try again, for another, healthier boy, but Aunt Miechen said she very much doubted it. Empress Sunny had withdrawn to her boudoir with sciatica and Emperor Nicky had other things on his mind. Since his defeat by Japan, the Russian people had begun to change. Some of them weren’t so ready to look upon him as their wise and protecting father. They met in secret rooms and questioned whether Russia even needed an Emperor or Deputies or bosses of any kind.
Cyril’s old friend Vice-Admiral Kuzmich was assassinated, stabbed in the back by his own port workers. Then there was an attempt on the life of the new Governor of Moscow. A monarchist meeting was attacked, some said by anarchists, some said by socialist revolutionaries. No one could explain to me what the difference was. Every week there was some new outrage, and Emperor Nicky’s answer was always to be more severe, and with everyone, not just the perpetrators.
Cyril said, ‘One can understand Nicky’s thinking. Give troublemakers an inch, they’ll take a mile. He’s evidently decided the most efficient way to keep order is to use the big stick on everyone. Not sure he’s right though. Beat a dog too harshly and it can go either way. It may learn to behave. Or it may just slink away and wait for the next opportunity to bite you. I wonder who’s advising him?’
People were anxious. Aunt Miechen told us so in every letter. But it was hardly any of our concern. Cyril hadn’t deserved to be exiled, and neither had Uncle Paul. It wasn’t our fault if we were having a splendid time in Paris.
It’s funny how things turn out. I was expecting our first child that autumn and feeling absolutely sick and fatigued, when I received a letter from Ernie. He and the Tongue-Twister had had a son, Georg.
Just wanted you to hear it from me, Ducky, he wrote. Hope all’s well with you.
I did feel a pang. What was it? Not regret, that’s for sure. Irritation, perhaps, that with dreary old Onor he’d forced himself to do what he’d resisted with me. I shall never understand Ernie as long as I live.
But his letter unsettled me and made me think of Elli and a lot of pointless What Ifs. What if she hadn’t run about too much at Skierniewice and made herself so thirsty that she drank unboiled water? What if my new baby wasn’t as pretty as she’d been? I found myself hoping the child I was carrying was a boy. It wasn’t. Masha was born on 20th January 1907. I went back to Coburg for my confinement. Mother insisted. She said the French were all very well for gowns and wine but for childbirth there was nothing to beat a German doctor.
Masha wasn’t as beautiful as Elli. She was different. And I felt she was mine in a way Elli never had been. Cyril was delighted with her but he wasn’t the kind of father to look in on the nursery a dozen times a day and pick her up out of her cradle. We wondered whether Cyril’s parents would be allowed to visit us, to see their little granddaughter. Emperor Nicky could easily have forbidden them to travel, but he didn’t. Uncle Vladimir and Aunt Miechen came to stay with us in Passy. It was the first time I’d seen them since Cyril and I had married.
Aunt Miechen said, ‘Ducky, we must settle on what you’re going to call me. It seems silly to keep calling me Aunt but I don’t want to be Ma-in-Law.’
We decided I should simply call her Miechen.
‘And Masha can do the same,’ she said, ‘when she’s old enough to talk. “Grandma” makes one sound so ancient.’
‘Time that woman acted her age,’ was Mother’s verdict. In fact Miechen became Granny Miechen.
We had a riotous time. We went to the Bobino to hear the darkie singers and the Cirque d’Hiver to see the wrestling. Uncle Paul’s Olga took us shopping for affordable hats. Miechen thought it the greatest adventure to go to Bon Marché and rub shoulders with ordinary people.
We dined together every night and sometimes at home, with just a cook and a maid. ‘The Undesirables’, we called ourselves. We joked, but Uncle Vladimir didn’t really think it was funny that perfectly decent members of the family had been forced to live abroad.
‘Nicky’s out of his depth,’ he said. ‘But he won’t ask for advice. Well, who can he go to? Serge is dead, Paul’s banished and I’m on his blacklist since he chucked Cyril out. The only person he seems to listen to is his wife, heaven help Russia.’
Miechen had a tasty morsel to add.
‘It’s not just that Nicky goes running to Sunny every time he has to make a decision. It’s who Sunny goes to for advice. She has a new medicine man. Every day he’s there, in the inner sanctum, and they don’t just talk about Sunny’s aches and pains, let me tell you.’
Sunny had had many doctors. When she was desperate for a boy she’d try anyone.
Miechen said, ‘No, not a doctor. This new man’s a monk, can you believe?! She’s brought him in because of Alexis’s bleeding disease and he’s a very strange fellow. Stana Nikolaevna discovered him. I don’t know where she found him but she says he’s quite a miracle-worker.’
Grand Duchess Stana was the wife of Cyril’s great-uncle, Grand Duke Nikolasha. I knew nothing of her except that Mother disapproved of her.
‘A Montenegrin!’ she’d say, as though that explained everything. Miechen seemed to agree.
She said, ‘Well, of course Stana is very odd herself. We never mix. All those séances! Not the thing at all. But this monk she’s discovered apparently has bishops vouching for him, so what is one to think? I don’t know whether he’s done anything for the Tsesarevich, but they say Sunny won’t move a finger now without his approval and of course Nicky won’t do anything without Sunny’s.’
Miechen said Sunny’s monk was called Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.
‘But he’s not really a monk because he doesn’t live in a monastery. He has a six-room apartment on Gorokhovaya. He’s more of a holy man. A wandering holy man.’
‘Wandering’s about right,’ Uncle Vladimir said. ‘He wandered all the way from Siberia and into the Empress’s private drawing room, if you please. And there you have it. Russia’s heading for the rocks and we have a henpecked ninny at the helm and a quack monk navigating.’
Cyril said, ‘So, can the Tsesarevich be cured?’
‘Who knows?’ Miechen said. ‘But Isa Buxhoeveden is one of Sunny’s bedchamber ladies now and she says this monk has a great calming effect on Alyosha. He sits with him, when he has an attack, and holds his hand and the crisis passes. And one time he wasn’t even there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was out of town but he sent word that he was with Alyosha in spirit and the pain and swelling subsided.’
Uncle Vladimir said it was nothing but mumbo-jumbo.
Miechen said, ‘But, surely it can’t hurt. Anything that restores calm. Alyosha’s such a boisterous child. I’m sure it’s because Sunny keeps him so swaddled. She won’t allow him to do anything and then of course, the minute the nurse’s back is turned he’s clambering onto furniture and throwing himself about. Well, it’s natural. Boys can’t be kept indoors all t
he time with story books. I should know. I’ve raised three sons. Boys need to run about and climb trees.’
But not when they bleed.
Cyril said, ‘How serious is it? Will the boy live?’
I knew what he was thinking, and so did his father.
Uncle Vladimir said, ‘Serious enough. One bad knock and they could lose him. One feels sorry for them, of course. Damned tragic thing to see in a child. But how can he ever be Tsar if they daren’t let him sit astride a horse? So I suppose we must hope for the best but prepare for the worst. Meanwhile we seem to have a magician beguiling our Emperor and Empress. Wandering miracle-worker indeed!’
As things stood, Cyril was fourth in the line of succession. Ahead of him were Tsesarevich Alexis, then Emperor Nicky’s brother, Grand Duke Misha, and then Cyril’s father, Uncle Vladimir. Uncle Paul was out of the running because of his double sin. Olga wasn’t just divorced, she was a commoner too. What we didn’t know at the time was that Grand Duke Misha was about to set out on his own road to exile. He’d just taken up with Natalya Wulfert, a married woman and highly unsuitable for the Emperor’s brother. It was the absolute end of Baby Bee’s dreams, and the start of another fine Romanov mess, but I’ll tell you about that later.
Cyril was fourth in line so you might say that Russia’s throne wasn’t an impossible prospect but a distant enough one that I never really gave it any serious thought, even when Uncle Vladimir said, ‘You can count me out of the running. I’m starting to feel my years.’
He was sixty and quite vigorous. He didn’t seem terribly old. But that summer in Paris was the last time we saw him. Soon after they got back to Russia he began to suffer little attacks of apoplexy, each one worse than the one before and he was such a contrary man he ignored all medical opinion on principle. If he was told to drink less he’d send for another bottle. If he was advised to be calm and close his eyes to the shortcomings of Emperor Nicky, he ranted all the more.
The Grand Duchess of Nowhere Page 11
