The young Grand Duchesses themselves were smitten, with the second daughter, Tatiana, writing to Rasputin: ‘Without you it is so boring, so boring.’ Maria was equally keen: ‘As soon as I wake up in the morning, I take the gospel you gave me from under my pillow and kiss it… then I feel as though I am kissing you.’ The youngest, Anastasia, added urgently: ‘When are you coming? Come soon.’ In June, Olga wrote to her father: ‘My dear kind Papa. … Grigory is coming to see us this evening. We are all so very happy that we will see him again.’
While the Romanovs communed with Grigory, their Uncle Bertie had endured a challenging Mediterranean cruise with his wife and sister-in-law, the Dowager. Upon reaching Naples, the forceful sisters decided they wanted to visit Vesuvius.
Unbeknownst to the King, the Queen ordered donkeys to carry the party from the royal train to the mouth of the crater. Bertie, much put out and topping 16 stone, flatly refused to join the expedition, or even try to mount his donkey.
Half an hour after the party set off, accompanied by the redoubtable Ponsonby, a shrill whistle came from the train: Bertie was growing impatient. Ponsonby tried to persuade the sisters to turn back, but they were intent on reaching the crater. By the time the Queen relented, the Dowager, riding the fastest donkey, was a quarter of a mile ahead: ‘a speck in the distance’, as Ponsonby put it. He described his dismay as he set off after her: ‘Trotting over indented larva on a donkey of uncertain habits was not amusing.’ The Dowager was eventually persuaded to return, her speedy mount ensuring that she was first to reach the train. The King was by then, according to Ponsonby, ‘boiling with rage’.
THE ISLE OF WIGHT
It was at the height of that summer, in 1909, that the Tsar, Tsarina and their five children arrived for their first family visit to Britain.
The visit was painstakingly choreographed to avoid provoking, once again, the radical factions. The Isle of Wight was selected as suitably discreet and remote: an island would offer ‘Nicholas the Bloody’ protection from the more excitable of his detractors. Sixty years before, in 1848, Queen Victoria herself had used the Isle of Wight as a safe haven when mob rule loomed on the mainland. The Chartist movement, demanding more political rights for working people in Britain, had reached a climax, with large demonstrations and a petition containing nearly six million signatures presented to the House of Commons.
It was agreed that the Romanovs would be permitted to moor the Standart off Cowes for three nights and three days. As at Reval, meetings with the King, Queen and various royal cousins, would take place largely on board the Standart and the Victoria and Albert. The British party would include the Prince of Wales, the Tsar’s look-alike cousin and future King George V. The vexed question of whether the Tsar would be able to step ashore remained, for some time, unresolved.
The long-awaited visit to Britain got off to a bad start. All five children were seasick, obliged to retreat to a makeshift sickbay near the main mast, where there was less rocking. The seasickness had begun during some hefty swells on the way to their previous stop-off, in France. Sablin wrote that several desperate measures had failed, not least: ‘a whole trunkful of special remedies from America’.
At one point, the sailors had resorted to hanging a special chair on springs for Tatiana, now aged 12, who was the worst hit. But the chair made her feel more ill. She felt queasy continually, even when the yacht was docked. As Sablin wrote wryly: ‘The dear old nannies followed the Grand Duchesses with pails.’ Andrei Derevenko, the sailor who looked after the little Tsarevich, held a fifth silver pail under the boy’s chin while he ‘fed the fish’.
As the Standart neared the pas du Calais, the sea calmed and the family sat down to dinner in the grand dining room. But they had barely started eating before the yacht began rocking again and the Tsarina and the children had to rush from the table. The Tsar did not suffer any sickness himself, but he was, predictably, rattled: ‘The sovereign got up without having coffee,’ recalled Sablin. ‘Things started flying about, cabin crew rushed to save crockery and fasten the furniture. Huge ripples were coming from the Channel and we were awash… the sea was still raging and the ship was heaving severely.’
The Tsar steeled himself to stay up throughout the stormy night. As Sablin added: ‘All the officers were on the top deck in emergency mode, and the Emperor went down to his cabin only at dawn.’
The Tsar alluded to the conditions in his diary: ‘At 7pm we entered the English Channel and again there was a swell. During dinner the yacht swayed good enough in a belching sea, but it shook the ship even worse when at 9pm we dropped anchor in a turbulent sea around the Gris Nez [Grey Nose] lighthouse not far from Boulogne.’
The Standart, en route to Cowes, 1909
The turbulence at sea was matched by a build-up of protest. In the weeks leading up to the visit, the Tsar had been repeatedly lambasted in the House of Commons for his ongoing poor record on civil liberties and state censorship. One MP denounced the Tsar’s prospective visit as ‘repulsive to multitudes of our people’. In Russia, he added, there was a ‘vast amount of almost indescribable suffering’. It was pointed out that there was no sign of a let-up in the levels of repression and censorship – attention was drawn to the fact that prisoners in Russia now included some 237 deputies of the Duma and 400 editors of newspapers. The fiery Labour leader, Keir Hardie, who had objected so strongly to the Reval meeting, was back on the attack: ‘People of this country are rising in indignation against the visit.’
Hardie’s outburst led to an altercation between the King and the Home Secretary, Herbert Gladstone, son of the former Prime Minister. The younger Gladstone took it upon himself to give Hardie’s speech a mild seal of approval: ‘Mr Keir Hardie spoke on the whole with restraint.’ The following day he received a furious response: ‘The King CANNOT agree with his estimate of Keir Hardie’s speech.’ Gladstone hastily replied: ‘In using the word “restraint” it was in a relative and personal sense. I look upon Mr Keir Hardie’s attitude and views in the matter of the Tsar’s visit as objectionable… what I wished to convey was that having regard to Mr Hardie’s extreme views and his excitability and the expectation of a “scene” he did manage to keep himself under sufficient restraint.’
Outside the Commons, there was no shortage of ‘scenes’. Radicals were holding meetings with increasing frequency and calls were being made for the Tsar’s assassination. Questions were raised in the cabinet. As the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, reported on 16th June: ‘Attention was called to some violent articles which have recently appeared in a Socialist newspaper called Justice and which might be construed as an incitement to the assassination of the Tsar on his approaching visit.’
The Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, insisted that the protesters were no more than general trouble-makers. He wrote to Francis Knollys, on 25th July: ‘It is I fear impossible to make any impression upon the extreme men who oppose the Tsar’s visit. They want something about which to be violent, to force the more moderate men to be violent too. They have chosen the Tsar’s visit for this purpose and they will not discuss it on its merits.’ Signatories to a ‘Resolution of Protest’ included Explosive Workers (Woolwich Workers Union, 36 Kingsdale Road, Plumstead) and Citizens of Rochdale and Ramsbottom Weavers, Winders and Warpers Association, 62 Stanley Street.
Additional questions were raised in the house: how many members of the Metropolitan Police were to be stationed on the Isle of Wight? Who was paying? Who was protecting Britain?
Days before the visit, hundreds of protesters joined Keir Hardie for a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. The British and Russian authorities played it down, with Hardinge insisting that the protest comprised no more than: ‘five hundred Frenchmen, six hundred German waiters, a few Russian Jews and Italian ice vendors’.
Benckendorff assured Izvolsky, equally breezily, that there were barely 300 English Socialists present at the rally. The rest, he claimed, were simply ‘badauds’ (idlers). There seemed to be little trace of Pr
ince Kropotkin, who had been so ready with his ‘Down with the Romanovs’ note, or Burtsev, whose publication had once advocated the Tsar’s assassination. Benckendorff added that the British newspapers had been unimpressed: ‘La presse ne s’en est occupé qu’à peine.’
Indeed, in an effort to diffuse tension, the press was, at this stage, repeating assurances that the Tsar and the King would each play host to the other on their yachts. The Tsar, it was stressed, would not set foot on British soil.
Monday 2nd August
From the diary of Georgie, the Prince of Wales: ‘Dear Nicky, looking so well, and Alicky too’.
In a slight echo of the ‘dreich and misty’ weather in Scotland, in 1896, the day of the arrival was described by the Isle of Wight County Press as ‘dull and menacing’.
The poor conditions did nothing to dampen public interest. Thousands of stout-hearted spectators collected on the wind-swept shoreline to see the massive gathering of ships and boats, not least the British Naval Fleet: the spectacle enhanced by the roar of cannonfire, as Russian and British battleships exchanged greetings.
Private yachts and excursion boats crowded into the choppy Solent, vying for closer views, while hardy journalists ventured out on steamboats. The Isle of Wight County Press trumpeted: ‘It is safe to say a more brilliant assembly of fashionable people has never been seen at Cowes… some exquisite toilettes were seen.’
The mood aboard the Standart that morning, before the crossing to the Isle of Wight, had not been good. The children should have been excited, not least at the prospect of meeting some of their cousins for the first time. Their stop-over at Cherbourg had, in the end, proved a success; they had all received lavish presents, not least 12 miniature rifles for the little Tsarevich. But there were still some 75 miles to go before they reached their destination. And, as Spiridovich wrote: ‘The ladies on board the Standart were upset at having to go through the discomfort of the crossing again.’
Ladies’ misgivings, however, were not going to disrupt tight schedules. The Standart weighed anchor at 7am sharp: exactly an hour later, cannons were fired, as the French squadron escort was replaced by three British Dreadnoughts and several torpedo boats. A substantial Russian escort, already in place, comprised the Dowager’s yacht, the Polar Star, two destroyers and two cruisers. As the convoy set off, the British ships allowed the Standart to pass, before forming a protective semi-circle behind her. Conditions continued to be unpromising: ‘the sky cloudy and the sea gloomy’, wrote Spiridovich. The Tsarina and her daughters’ worst fears were borne out as they endured several hours of their dreaded discomfort. Even the imperturbable Georgie’s diary contains references to a ‘strongish breeze from the north’. Smudges of smoke from the three Dreadnoughts – Invincible, Inflexible and Indomitable – were seen from the Isle of Wight at around 11.30.
The imperial couple were both familiar with the Isle of Wight. The Tsarina had enjoyed many childhood holidays at Osborne, and her husband had come to share her enthusiasm, when he visited following his betrothal in 1894, writing exuberantly to Queen Victoria: ‘My dearest Grandmama, I loved Osborne so much and was too delighted when you asked me to spend with you the last five days there!’ It had not, in fact, been his first visit. In his diary, in 1894, he had referred, in passing, to a previous visit to Osborne, as a child: ‘It is strange to think that I stayed here 21 years ago, but almost do not remember anything. The view from the windows on to the sound and to the other side is surprisingly beautiful!’ His admission of memory failure elicited a sympathetic exclamation from his fiancée: ‘Sweety dear!’
The young Grand Duchesses and the little Tsarevich were, however, being introduced to England for the first time. As they emerged from their heavily blanketed den, they must have been excited by the sight of the surrounding boats and struck by the numbers of onlookers. But their initial impressions would have been clouded by the pervasive gloom. As the Tsar wrote in his diary: ‘Towards morning the yacht began to rock back and forth and crack up in the cabins. The day was grey and tedious.’
The Tsar’s head of security, Spiridovich, retained a bleak memory of the moment the Standart reached Cowes: ‘Here, the morning was even more unpleasant. A cold wind was blowing. The sea was inhospitable.’
The hardy crowd awaiting them would have been unaware of the exact choreography, but it was known that the King would be on the Victoria and Albert, ready to meet the Tsar. Those stalwarts watching from the shore would only be able to make out blurred figures, and unable to identify the principal characters – the Queen, the Tsarina and the Prince of Wales – without powerful binoculars.
Those braving the sea had a better chance of catching the finer details, such as the British royals boarding a smart launcher for the 200-yard transfer to the Standart and the 68-year-old King striding, in first place, up the gangway. The County Press described the British royal standard flag being hoisted slowly while: ‘The two monarchs embraced with great affection’. There were references to the King and Queen Alexandra ‘cordially saluting’ the Tsarina. The young Grand Duchesses, it was reported, wore white gowns and huge picture hats. All five children were putting up a good front as they coped with ongoing sea swells: ‘The imperial children were presented and formed an interesting portion of a happy domestic picture.’
One particularly captivating sight would have been the Tsar being reunited with his doppelgänger cousin, Georgie. The Standart officer Sablin found it hard to believe the extent of the resemblance: ‘They looked so much alike that we could hardly distinguish them.’
The King had squeezed into a Russian admiral’s uniform, while the Tsar dressed as a British admiral of the fleet. Later the Tsar would also appoint Georgie an Admiral in the Russian navy. The Tsar’s reference to his costume may carry a slight hint of complaint: ‘I stayed in the English admiral’s uniform for six hours.’
Few would have guessed that the King and the Tsar were both, in fact, reluctant players in the pageant. For all their pleasantries at Reval, the Tsar never quite discarded his reservations about his overbearing uncle. He had to be cajoled into the Cowes visit by Izvolsky, having been anxious about antagonising the leaders of other European countries, not least the touchy Kaiser. One of his favourite court officials, Count Fredericks, had insisted, additionally, that Britain could never be a loyal ally. Despite his gloomy prognosis, the lavishly moustached Fredericks, then aged 70, had dutifully attended Reval and was now present at the Isle of Wight. The Count once blotted his copybook at court by failing to introduce the Tsar and a visitor, leaving both parties languishing in different rooms.
Nicky with Georgie, his doppelgänger cousin
The Tsar knew only too well how upsetting the visit would be for Alix. With all her happy memories of Osborne, she would face endless painful reminders of her beloved grandmother. Queen Victoria had once written to the Tsar of her close relationship with Alix: ‘As she has no parents, I feel I am the only person who can really be answerable for her. All her dear sisters after their beloved mother’s death look to me as their second mother, but they still had their dear father… Now poor dear Alicky is an orphan and has no one but me at all in that position.’
The Romanovs’ itinerary over the next few days was not generally known and may even have been undecided. But there were newspaper reports insisting that the Tsarina would visit the 17th-century Barton Manor, next to Osborne House, and her grandmother’s church, St Mildred’s, at Whippingham. In the event, though she visited Barton Manor, she never managed to see the church.
The King, meanwhile, never changed his poor opinion of his Russian nephew, complaining, in private, that he was: ‘deplorably immature, unsophisticated and reactionary’. Though he was fond of the Tsarina, he had had no compunction about offending her at their last meeting: he must have known how hurtful she would have found his comments about her daughters’ accents.
His wife, Queen Alexandra, had mixed feelings regarding the Tsarina. Her dry mention of Alix’s rare smile, dur
ing Admiral Fisher’s antics at Reval, reveals what she thought of her niece’s dour temperament. She would have been aware of the ever-increasing tension between the Tsarina and her sister, the Dowager.
The central argument between the two women now revolved around the Tsarina’s weakness for so-called ‘holy fools’, the most recent being ‘Our Friend’ Rasputin.
By the summer of 1909, Rasputin’s visits to the palace were increasing as his reputation for drinking and womanising grew worse. Horrified courtiers and servants might have been reassured had they known of Rasputin’s role as a healer, but Alexis’s illness was kept secret, even from his relations: the Tsar’s own sister, Xenia, was not told about it until 1912, by which time the boy was eight.
Shortly before the Isle of Wight trip, Rasputin had sent an intimate, if slightly random, telegram: ‘Dear little children! Thank you for remembering me, for your sweet words, for your pure heart and your love for the people of God. Love the whole of God’s nature, the whole of his creation, in particular this earth. The mother of God was always occupied with flowers and needlework.’
The Dowager would undoubtedly have shared her suspicion of Rasputin, ‘that dubious individual’, with her sister Queen Alexandra. The Tsarina, looking back on the visit to Cowes in a letter, paid tribute to the King: ‘Dear uncle’ had been ‘most kind and attentive’. But there was no mention of her aunt.
While the royal parties put their efforts into ‘cordial salutations’, the authorities stepped up elaborate security arrangements. On the day of the Romanovs’ arrival at the Isle of Wight, 70 MPs and two bishops made formal complaints. Keir Hardie said he was glad that ‘contamination’ from the visit was being contained at Cowes. The Tsar’s yacht, he added, would be guarded ‘like a plague spot’.
The Imperial Tea Party Page 13
