Having sorted out the Sultan, the pair moved on to the happier topic of presentations. As he put it: ‘The two of us sorted out gifts for all of the court here.’
There was a sum of £1,000 to be distributed amongst the staff; the Queen’s head gamekeepers and Ballater’s stationmaster each received a gold watch. The Tsarina would present the ladies-in-waiting with a sachet of flawless diamonds and pearl jewellery.
Nicky may not have given much thought to security over his stay, but he presented the local police sergeant with a diamond ring. Another policeman on duty received a silver watch and chain, inscribed with the Russian eagle. The wife of the chief officer of the Queen’s household police was given a gold bracelet.
Dr. Reid was awarded a gold cigarette case with an imperial crest studded with diamonds. Presenting the cigarette case later, in the castle library, the grateful Tsar was brimming with goodwill, even assuring Reid that he had his heart set on returning to Balmoral next year.
The Queen was gratified by Nicky’s responses as she pressed him for information about his forthcoming trip to France: ‘With regard to my remark on Russia’s present great intimacy with France, Nicky told me that, finding herself isolated, owing to the Triple Alliance [between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy] which was formed behind her [Russia’s] back, she formed an alliance or treaty with France, but purely military and defensive.’
She added later: ‘Nicky did not seem at all to relish the French and regretted the visit to Paris, which was unavoidable. I said it was so important that Russia and England should go well together, as they were the most powerful empires, for then the world must be at peace.’ The day after the Romanovs’ departure, Georgie wrote a letter to his grandmother in which he revealed his own distaste for the French enterprise: ‘I trust their tiresome visit to Paris will pass off satisfactorily.’
With all his worries about political conversations, Nicky was proud of his rapport with the Queen. During his stay two years earlier, when he had become engaged to Alix, he had refused a dinner invitation to the guards’ mess at Windsor: ‘because Granny loves me so and doesn’t like me missing dinner’. The happy bond continued to flourish, despite the young Tsarevich finding himself embroiled in arduous diplomatic duties, not least receiving Russian trade companies and entertaining the formidable, exiled French Empress Eugenie. He kept a stiff record of his efforts: ‘We had dinner at 9pm – I sat next to the Empress… They sang selected melodies from the new opera Signa – very weak colourless music by the English composer Cowen [Sir Frederic Hymen Cowen]… My shoes were hurting my feet terribly.’
The Queen, smitten in her turn, was soon enjoying impromptu greetings from Russian sailors: ‘Tea all together in the upper alcove and afterwards all the Russian sailors from Polar Star [the Dowager’s yacht] came up on the terrace after having walked about in the grounds. They drew up and I bowed to them, all calling out a greeting in Russian. Nicky then told them I was pleased to see them and they answered and then marched off. They were fine looking, tall men.’
In a letter to his brother, Nicky had given a jubilant description of their burgeoning relationship, comparing himself to the Queen’s closest companions, Mr Brown (who had died 12 years before) and the Munshi: ‘It seems funny to me, all this life here and the extent to which I have become part of the English family. I have become almost as indispensable to my future grandmother as her two Indians and her Scotsman.’ The second Indian he referred to was Mohammed Bukhsh.
It seemed the only fault the Queen could ever find with her prospective ‘grandson’ was his over-generosity. During that same sojourn in England in 1894, Nicky and Alix had spent their last day together visiting the Main Street at West Cowes. Nicky wrote: ‘We rode by to a store where they make enamelled flags for pins and brooches and ordered two little ones for Alix.’
The brooches would follow lavish engagement presents, not least a Fabergé sautoir of pearls valued at $175,000. Parting gifts included a diamond brooch bearing the romantic inscription: ‘Nicky’s goodbye tear’. Examining the gifts, the Queen issued a solemn warning to her granddaughter: ‘Don’t get too proud.’
After playing host to the betrothed couple, the Queen would always consider herself part of their charmed union. Before he left, Nicky had been full of warmth towards Granny. She described him, in her curious English: ‘thanking me much for all my kindness and kissing me affectionately’. He referred only briefly to his impending departure: ‘I spent the last evening with my fiancée!’ Between ‘evening’ and ‘with’, Alix added one of her starker messages: ‘Ever true and ever loving, faithful pure and strong as death.’
Four months later, when Nicky and Alix were married in the Winter Palace, in St Petersburg, the Queen held a celebratory dinner for 37 guests at Windsor Castle. ‘Her Majesty’s Dinner’ featured ‘Escalope de Turbot à la Crème, La Mousse de Faisans and Le Boeuf à la Mode. An ornate menu gave the date as ‘Monday, 26th November, 1894’, though in Russia it would, of course, have been 14th November. The Queen offered a toast: ‘I propose the health of their majesties the Emperor and Empress of Russia, my dear grandchildren.’
Nicholas and Alexandra on their wedding day, November 1894
…and as depicted in a painting of the ceremony at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg
The menu for Queen Victoria’s celebratory dinner at Windsor Castle
Saturday 3rd October
Queen Victoria’s diary: ‘Showery and dark… Nicky and Alicky breakfasted with us.’
During the imperial couple’s last morning at Balmoral, the photographers, W. and D. Downey, returned to film moving pictures. The shoot took place outside the main entrance and the images can now be seen on the internet. The Queen is being pulled along in a buggy, awkwardly holding a lively little white dog. The Tsar and Tsarina walk alongside: Nicky looks self-conscious, walking stiffly and brandishing a cane. Towards the end of the reel, there are glimpses of the ubiquitous Munshi. In one of the stills, the Tsarina stands behind the buggy, gazing at the Duke of Connaught, now wearing a kilt.
Nicky would have been thankful not to be wearing a kilt. He had once worn one and not enjoyed the experience: ‘I never before exposed my knees.’
He had also successfully jettisoned the Scots Greys uniform. His choice of conventional dress, however, did him few favours. Though he is one of the few looking square on, his appearance is less tsar than diminutive bank manager. No one smiles.
The Tsar was strangely unexcited by the shoot: ‘After coffee we went outside together into the garden, where they took our picture, both stills and moving pictures.’ The Queen was a little more expansive: ‘At 12 went down to below the terrace, near the ball room and were photographed by Downey by the new cinematic process, which makes moving pictures by winding off a reel of films. We were walking up and down and the children jumping about. Then took a turn in the pony chair and not far from the garden cottage.’
British and Russian royals, including the Duke of Connaught, the Tsar, Queen Victoria and the Tsarina
Nearly two months later, the Queen did seem moved, or at least intrigued, after watching a screening at Windsor. The film marked the first time a British monarch had been captured on a motion picture: ‘After tea went to the Red drawing room where so-called “animated pictures” were shown off, including the groups taken in September [in fact October] at Balmoral. It is a very wonderful process, representing people, their movements and action, as if they were alive.’
On that last afternoon the imperial couple marked their visit in a more traditional way: As the Queen recorded: ‘Then took a turn in the pony chair, and not far from the garden cottage, Nicky and Alicky each planted a tree.’ John Mitchie, the head forester at Balmoral, had selected two Cumbrian pines. He was obliged to guide Nicky through the process of filling in the base around the trees with soil. The Tsar makes no mention in his diary of the planting or his confusion: ‘We went for a walk with Granny. We had lunch with all of Beatrice’s children, on the o
ccasion of her younger son’s [Maurice’s] birthday. At 3.30 Aunt Alix [Bertie’s wife] arrived with our girl cousins. We did not see them long, since we had to go off soon with Granny.’
The Queen made another of her rare allusions to her feelings, referring to Nicky and Alicky’s imminent departure: ‘In the afternoon drove out with them, alas!, for the last time and went to Invercauld and back by the Balloch Bhui. It was rather showery and dark.’ The Tsar, clearly by now innured to showers and darkness, mentioned nothing of the conditions. He wrote: ‘We had tea with her [the Queen] at home,’ adding, ‘I changed into my “Scots Greys” frock coat. Dinner at 8.45.’
In a recreation of the arrival ceremony, kilted Scottish attendants lit the Romanovs’ way from the castle with blazing torches. After their departure, the Queen referred, again, to her sadness: ‘At 10 dear Nicky and Alicky left to my great regret as I am so fond of them both… Went to the door to see our dear visitors leave. There were again the Highlanders bearing torches, but no pipes.’ Whatever the Tsar told Dr. Reid about his hopes to return, he seemed to journey on without a backward glance: ‘Around 10pm we bid farewell to Balmoral under torchlight and with the same convoy we went to Ballater.’
The couple took an overnight train for Portsmouth. The Times gave another exhaustively detailed description of the Tsarina’s outfit. She wore: ‘a pink silk dress with a train, heliotrope-coloured travelling cloak and cape with white lace, trimmed with white fur at the throat’. This was topped by a ‘small bonnet to match the cape, decorated with heliotrope, white and light-blue coloured flowers’. The Graphic was in agreement: ‘Another long railway voyage was set forth upon in a light pink silk gown and a heliotrope mantle and white bonnet.’
Little Olga’s night-time farewell was very different from her glittering arrival. There was just a short reference to her tearful upset, as she was whisked off by her nanny to a sort of nursery carriage. As The Times reported: ‘The child was inconsolable at her mother’s departure, and was carried weeping into her sleeping chamber.’
The Tsar’s account of the subsequent journey south is characteristically sparse: ‘We boarded the train and at 11pm we were under way. Alix and I were in Granny’s comfortable wagon-car. We slept in one section.’ As he gained distance from Scotland, his spirits seemed to lift, despite the continuing bad weather: ‘We slept beautifully… At 8.45 we stopped in Preston for coffee. It was raining and cold. We had lunch in Oxford at 2pm and saw there the former bombastic governor “Lord Harris”. At 5.30 we arrived at Portsmouth. There were two honour guards – the heavy artillery and seamen.’
There was no mention of security. Did the Tsar think back to the note he had written to Lynedoch Gardiner explaining that he couldn’t possibly visit London and that he would have to travel straight to Portsmouth? There is certainly a note of relief in the Queen’s diary: ‘Heard Nicky and Alicky had reached Preston safely.’
The Tsar continued: ‘Directly upon getting off the train, we boarded the Polar Star. The Standart stood in the roadstead.’ The Polar Star belonged to the Tsar’s mother, the Dowager Empress.
A photograph exists of the exotically named Sir Hamnet Holditch Share, later gentleman usher to King George V, on the Osborne, ‘on the day of Emperor of Russia leaving’. Sir Hamnet is looking away from the camera and out to sea, perhaps anxious about the proceedings. In 1932 he wrote his memoir, Under Great Bear and Southern Cross: Fifty Years Afloat and Ashore. He retained, alongside this picture of himself, a photograph of the Standart at Portsmouth.
That evening, still moored in Portsmouth Harbour, the Tsar was jubilant as he found himself enjoying Russian culture once again: ‘At 8 o’clock we had dinner with the English admirals, generals and our suite. We visited the Victoria and Albert, on which Uncle Arthur, Aunt Lonischen and Helena are spending the night. At last they listened to our music at dinner.’
Georgie later assured his grandmother: ‘I know they were charmed by their visit to Balmoral.’ In fact the Queen later admitted that, for all her first happy impressions, she felt Alix had become a little aloof. She had apparently, at one point, even been driven to talk to her about the importance of smiling and appearing pleasant. She would, additionally, have been conscious that, despite her immediate satisfaction with that last session, her talks with Nicky had been inconclusive. The author and historian, E.F. Benson, wrote: ‘Neither she [the Queen], nor England, nor Lord Salisbury knew any more about his real sentiment towards England than if he had never been to Balmoral at all.’ It was Benson’s brother A.C. Benson who later edited Queen Victoria’s letters.
The Standart, in Portsmouth Harbour, to which the Tsar returned delightedly after the rigours of Balmoral
Sir Hamnet Holditch Share, later gentleman usher to King George V, on the Osborne, ‘on the day of Emperor of Russia leaving’
The somewhat muted visit to chilly, wet Balmoral was thrown into the shade by the dazzling success of the Romanovs’ subsequent five days in Paris. Preparations for the decorations had begun almost a fortnight before, as platforms were built, with crimson and gilt fringes and flagstaffs. The front of the Bourbon Palace was cleaned and the inscriptions re-gilded; chestnut trees along the Champs-Elysées were decorated with red and white paper roses, at a cost of 500 francs per tree.
Royal guests had not been entertained since 1867 and more than 900,000 spectators lined the streets of Paris to watch the open landaus, chanting: ‘Long live the Tsar.’ Nicky was overwhelmed: ‘I can only compare it with my entry into Moscow [for the Coronation].’
Hundreds of boats gathered on the Seine, festooned with French and Russian flags. During elaborate firework displays, the Eiffel Tower was engulfed in cascades of flames and the Place de la Concorde was, according to an over-enthusiastic Times: ‘literally ablaze with light’.
It was reported that security was dealt with quietly and efficiently. Suspected terrorists had been detained or turned away from Paris. Routes were selected according to how easily they could be policed; at one point 32,000 soldiers stood in double lines along the streets.
The French paid tribute to the Tsar’s ‘graceful figure, serious countenance and erect bearing’ not to mention his ‘easy mastery’ of his horse. The baby, Grand Duchess Olga, was helped to wave at admirers chanting: ‘Vive la bébé’ and ‘La tsarinette’. The crowds snapped up Russian teddy bears, sweets decorated with Russian flags and soup labelled ‘Le Tsar’. A polka was composed ‘pour la Grand Duchess Olga’.
The Tsarina was included in the craze: portraits of all three Romanovs appeared on items of tableware. But she was the least fêted. She had been looking forward to this first trip to Paris, thrilled to be staying in the rooms of one of her heroines: the ill-fated Marie-Antoinette. Her shyness, however, was, by this time, compounded by the worst symptoms of early pregnancy. She felt tired and nauseous, disinclined to socialise. She unwittingly caused offence by refusing to meet grand dames with ties to the old monarchy. She could never quite grasp the French idea of embracing both old and new regimes.
Queen Victoria wrote to Nicky with strict instructions: ‘Kindly use your influence and let the French understand that you do not intend to support them in their constant inimicality towards England, which is the cause of much annoyance and difficulty to us… I would not have written this had you not told me that the agreement, or alliance or whatever it is called, is ONLY of a military nature.’
But Nicky, now a safe distance from Balmoral, was basking in the glow of a new French-Russian accord, proudly presenting the Minister of War, Jean Baptiste Billot, with a portrait set in diamonds. The Times deemed the portrait: ‘The highest mark of personal distinction which the Russian Emperor has at his disposal for a person not of supreme rank’. It was a curious situation, as the historian Robert K. Massie acknowledged: ‘Diplomacy made military allies of Europe’s greatest republic and its most absolute autocracy.’
Fortified by his bullish mood, Nicky now informed Granny that he had not broached any subject connected wit
h ‘inimicality’, before adding loftily: ‘Politics, alas, are not the same as private or domestic affairs and they are not guided by personal or relationship feeling. History is one’s real positive teacher in these matters and for me personally, except that I have always got the sacred example of my beloved father and also the result and proof of all his deeds.’ The Queen would not have appreciated Nicky’s effusive tribute to his ‘barbaric, Asiatic and tyrannical’ father.
The flow of chatty family letters fell to a dribble, though Nicky never quite gave up his fond conclusions, writing on 3rd November: ‘Now, goodbye, dearest Grandmama, with my best love to all, believe me your most loving and devoted grandson Nicky.’
Nearly four and a half years after the Romanovs’ visit to Balmoral, Queen Victoria died, at Osborne, in January 1901.
The Tsarina was devastated by the news of her grandmother’s death, writing to her sister Victoria: ‘I cannot really believe she has gone, that we shall never see her any more. Since one can remember, she was in our life and a dearer kinder being never was.’ By then pregnant with her fourth daughter, Anastasia, Alix could not travel to Windsor for the funeral. Instead, she and her sister Ella, wife of the Russian Grand Duke Serge, attended a memorial service in St Petersburg. The Tsarina and the Grand Duchess both wept openly for their grandmother. The Tsarina’s tears may have come as a surprise to the Russians, who had always dismissed her as cold and haughty: sadly for her, the demonstration was already too late.
The Imperial Tea Party Page 6
