Remembering Grand Duke Serge (- the much maligned and often misunderstood husband of Grand Duchess Elizabeth -) who was murdered on 17th February 1905.
Showing posts with label Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grand Duchess Elizabeth. Show all posts
Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich
Remembering Grand Duke Serge (- the much maligned and often misunderstood husband of Grand Duchess Elizabeth -) who was murdered on 17th February 1905.
"A Saintly Heroine" - More Of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
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, the 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 bother her unduly 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 life jackets, were able to climb into a boat. Their ordeal was only just beginning. Waves lashed at the vessel, filling it with water and ultimately throwing the family overboard.
“We floated in our belts,” Louise wrote to her brother, “- waves like iron walls tore over us, knocked us under, Admiral Cradock gripped my shoulder & saved me! - Thank God my Macduff & children both on beach but had been under too, it was an awful moment, our clothes so heavy & we were breathless & shivery, we ran to get warm as best we could.”
Drenched and exhausted, the family and sailors found themselves 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 and 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!”
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 Serge’s assassination had led to a far more dramatic transformation in the life of her Hessian cousin, Ella. Though heartbroken at her husband’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 wife of the Governor General, she withdrew from the ballrooms 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 the longing she had had since childhood ‘to help those who suffer.’
“How,” she asked, “can you expect workmen who toil all day in hot hideous factories or on remote farms with nothing in their lives but work and worry, to have beauty in their souls?”
It was no longer sufficient for her to patronise charities at 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 and purchased 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 ‘The House of Martha and Mary’ official recognition as a convent. Ella, having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was appointed its abbess.
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.”
Far from the gaudy world of the ballrooms, Ella dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her foundation. 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. Her young friend, Prince Felix Youssoupov recalled one such case:
“A woman who had overturned a lighted oil stove was brought in; her clothes had caught fire and her body was a mass of burns. Gangrene had set in and the doctors despaired of saving her. With a gentle but obstinate courage, the Grand Duchess nursed her back to life. It took two hours each day to dress her wounds and the stench was such that several of the nurses fainted. The patient recovered within a few weeks and this was considered a miracle at the time.”
As the foundation flourished, she 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. Requests poured in by the thousand and Ella, employing all the administrative talents she had learned in childhood, attempted to deal with them all:
“[Ella] never used the words, ‘I can not’ and there was never anything gloomy in the life of the Martha and Mary Home,” wrote her sister Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Nona Kerr, “Anyone who had been there took away with him a precious feeling.”
Ella’s 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 through the family 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 she 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.’ It was a dream which would ultimately lead to death and canonisation.
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, the 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 bother her unduly 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 life jackets, were able to climb into a boat. Their ordeal was only just beginning. Waves lashed at the vessel, filling it with water and ultimately throwing the family overboard.
“We floated in our belts,” Louise wrote to her brother, “- waves like iron walls tore over us, knocked us under, Admiral Cradock gripped my shoulder & saved me! - Thank God my Macduff & children both on beach but had been under too, it was an awful moment, our clothes so heavy & we were breathless & shivery, we ran to get warm as best we could.”
Drenched and exhausted, the family and sailors found themselves 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 and 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!”
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 Serge’s assassination had led to a far more dramatic transformation in the life of her Hessian cousin, Ella. Though heartbroken at her husband’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 wife of the Governor General, she withdrew from the ballrooms 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 the longing she had had since childhood ‘to help those who suffer.’
“How,” she asked, “can you expect workmen who toil all day in hot hideous factories or on remote farms with nothing in their lives but work and worry, to have beauty in their souls?”
It was no longer sufficient for her to patronise charities at 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 and purchased 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 ‘The House of Martha and Mary’ official recognition as a convent. Ella, having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, was appointed its abbess.
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.”
Far from the gaudy world of the ballrooms, Ella dedicated herself wholeheartedly to her foundation. 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. Her young friend, Prince Felix Youssoupov recalled one such case:
“A woman who had overturned a lighted oil stove was brought in; her clothes had caught fire and her body was a mass of burns. Gangrene had set in and the doctors despaired of saving her. With a gentle but obstinate courage, the Grand Duchess nursed her back to life. It took two hours each day to dress her wounds and the stench was such that several of the nurses fainted. The patient recovered within a few weeks and this was considered a miracle at the time.”
As the foundation flourished, she 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. Requests poured in by the thousand and Ella, employing all the administrative talents she had learned in childhood, attempted to deal with them all:
“[Ella] never used the words, ‘I can not’ and there was never anything gloomy in the life of the Martha and Mary Home,” wrote her sister Victoria’s lady-in-waiting, Nona Kerr, “Anyone who had been there took away with him a precious feeling.”
Ella’s 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 through the family 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 she 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.’ It was a dream which would ultimately lead to death and canonisation.
"Revolution is Banging on the Door" - More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters
Grand Duke Kyril’s s flouting of the Tsar’s authority was but one in a series of misdemeanours of members of the Russian Imperial Family from the start of the reign of Nicholas II. Each minor misdemeanour – each affair, each morganatic marriage, each disregard of the traditional mores – might have seemed insignificant in itself, but together amounted to a severe blow against the old order and undermined the autocracy.
As Russia struggled from medieval feudalism to industrialisation, the country was
clamouring for reform. For centuries peasants in remote rural communities had accepted the distant Tsar as God’s holy, anointed ruler but now, as they flocked into the overcrowded cities, attitudes were rapidly changing. Workers toiling in appalling conditions; peasants half-starving in the countryside and radicals in the universities, were demanding an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Tsardom. Even the most conservative thinkers were forced to accept the inevitability of a shift to a more democratic form of government.
Conditions at home were fraught and, in foreign affairs, too, the Tsar’s ministers had their share of problems. If Russia were to compete with the rest of the industrialised world, she needed access to the Pacific but even the major port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for several months each year. The ideal solution would be to extend the Trans-Siberian railway eastwards through Korea, but the Japanese, seeking to expand their own empire, were totally opposed to such a plan.
It occurred to some of the Tsar’s advisors that it might be possible to take advantage of the situation in the east, not only to secure Korea and Manchuria, but also to improve the Tsar’s standing. The vast Russian ranks easily outnumbered the small Japanese army and an early victory would restore a sense of national pride and reunite the people behind their Emperor. Heedless of the warnings of the Finance Minister, Count de Witte, the ministers and Nicholas’ uncles painted an image of a glorious Tsar leading his heroic army through a blaze of glory behind the Romanov double-headed eagle.
The dull reality was quite different from that dream. The Japanese had no desire for war and would willingly have settled the matter through negotiation but as Russian troops continued to move through the region, they had no alternative but to take up arms. In January 1904, they struck the first blow, attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and, with self-righteous indignation, the Russians declared war. A tide of patriotic fervour swept the country and crowds gathered to cheer the troops setting out on their long journey east.
Although already in the later stages of her final pregnancy, Alix threw herself wholeheartedly into the war effort. She opened a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo where she paid daily visits to the wounded and arranged for the men to learn various crafts during their recuperation.
“The great salons of the Winter Palace were turned into workrooms and there every day society flocked to sew and knit for our soldiers and sailors fighting such incredible distances away, as well as for the wounded in hospitals at home and abroad…Every day the Empress came to inspect the work, often sitting down at a table and sewing diligently with the others.”
In the Kremlin, her sister, Ella also established workrooms and employed hundreds of women of all classes to arrange packages of icons and gifts to send to the Front. As the wounded returned to the city, she made daily visits to the military hospitals taking the time to talk to each man in turn.
“There is no end of work to be done,” wrote the Tsarina, “but it is a great comfort to be able to help one’s poor sufferers a little…All work hard…We work for the army hospitals (apart from the Red Cross) and for the well who need clothes, tobacco ... and then we furnish military trains...I like following all and not to be a mere doll. Yes, it is a trying time, but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage.”
The Tsarina’s sincere efforts made little impression on the vast majority of her people and as the lists of Russian casualties grew, the enthusiastic cheers turned to cries of anger. Far from being a weak little enemy, the Japanese were well-disciplined, efficient soldiers capable of inflicting terrible losses on the massive Russian army. The ‘short’ war was rapidly turning into a prolonged fiasco.
By autumn, after nine months of fighting, the disillusioned Russians had grown weary of sacrificing their sons in the hopeless campaign. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the reactionary Minister of the Interior was assassinated. Strikes threatened to bring St. Petersburg to a standstill and the unrest was in danger of spilling into greater violence.
“Revolution is banging on the door,” wrote the Tsar’s cousin, Konstantin Konstantinovich, “A constitution is being almost openly discussed. How shameful and how terrifying.”
For Nicholas and Alix, the suggestion that Tsar should hand over his authority to an elected council (the Duma) was unthinkable. At his Coronation, Nicholas had taken an oath to uphold the autocracy and, regardless of the personal cost, he felt duty-bound by the promise made before God. From the seclusion of Tsarskoe Selo, Alix urged her husband to be strong, dismissing the ministers’ reports of imminent revolution as scare-mongering and assuring him that the ordinary Russians loved their Emperor.
It was true that many thousands of his subjects still revered their Tsar. He was their ‘Little Father’ who loved his people and only permitted the injustices they endured because he was unaware of their sufferings. If they could only reach him and tell him of their plight, he would surely deal kindly with their grievances. Encouraging such thoughts was a socialist priest, Father Gapon, who, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed, offered to lead a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace so that the people could petition the Emperor.
On Saturday 21st January 1905, Gapon, unaware that the Tsar was several miles away in Tsarskoe Selo, informed the Minister of the Interior, Prince Mirsky, that the following day he would lead over one hundred thousand people to the palace. At the thought of so vast a crown, Mirsky panicked. He warned the Tsar that violence may erupt and advised him to stay out of the city, before summoning mounted troops to guard the bridges over the frozen River Neva to prevent the crowds from reaching the palace.
The next day, Sunday 22nd January, thousands of men, women and children walked peacefully through the streets of St. Petersburg with the sole intention of presenting Nicky with their petitions. As the orderly procession neared the Neva bridges, many of the marchers held aloft icons and portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina to demonstrate their fidelity to the Orthodox Church and trust in their ‘Little Father.’
With absolute faith in their anointed Emperor, the crowds ignored the soldiers’ warnings to turn back and as the vast horde continued to advance, the terrified generals ordered the troops to open fire. Within minutes over a thousand of the Tsar’s most devoted subjects were gunned down, dropping their bloodstained icons beside the corpses of little children.
As news of the massacre spread through the country, Moscow exploded in violence. The city had long been a hot bed of sedition and now, as outraged revolutionaries incited the ordinary citizens to take up arms against ‘Bloody Nicholas the Butcher,’ barricades rose in the streets. The entire Romanov family became a symbol of oppression and tyranny and the most obvious target for the revolutionaries’ anger was Ella’s much-maligned husband, Grand Duke Serge.
The one member of the Imperial family to escape the revolutionary wrath was Ella. Before the outbreak of war, her charitable works had earned her a saintly reputation and once the hostilities started, her popularity soared. Even as the barricades rose in the streets, she ignored the police warnings, to make her daily round of the hospital wards. But Ella was not blind to the dangers. Serge had received several death threats while she herself was sent anonymous letters warning her, for her own safety, not to appear with her husband in public.
The strain of such an existence was enormous, and a final blow to reactionary Serge was the realisation that the Tsar was planning to grant limited reforms. Unable to accept the changes and worn down by the stress of his position, Serge finally decided to tender his resignation as Governor General of Moscow.
In the early afternoon February 18th 1905, as her husband left the Kremlin for the Governor General’s residence to clear his papers, Ella was working on her Red Cross projects, when an explosion shattered the silence.
“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, and rushing from the palace summoned a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square the gathering crowd tried to hold her back, but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone - all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was laid on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“Drops of blood fell on the floor, slowly forming a dark pool,” wrote Serge’s niece, Maria Pavlovna. “My aunt was on her knees beside the litter, her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her…
…Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep…When she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her.
‘He loved you so, he loved you so,’ she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that, low on her right arm, the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers in which she tightly gripped [Serge’s] medals…”
That evening, though barely recovered from the shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured, and as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar issued an order forbidding the Imperial family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Victoria hurried to Russia to be at her sister’s side, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, ‘Baby Bee.’ Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime. Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev had to tell her that he felt no remorse and believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
“I will not conceal,” he wrote to his friends, “that we looked at each other with a kind of mystical feeling.”
Newspapers later reported that she had even petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of revolution sweeping through Russia and by August it was clear that there was no point in prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organizing schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages. But again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicky realized he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the revolutionary fervour cooled but the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, revolutionaries were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had deeply loved, was about to make a more revolutionary change in her life, than even the most committed Bolsheviks could have imagined.
As Russia struggled from medieval feudalism to industrialisation, the country was
clamouring for reform. For centuries peasants in remote rural communities had accepted the distant Tsar as God’s holy, anointed ruler but now, as they flocked into the overcrowded cities, attitudes were rapidly changing. Workers toiling in appalling conditions; peasants half-starving in the countryside and radicals in the universities, were demanding an end to the ‘tyranny’ of Tsardom. Even the most conservative thinkers were forced to accept the inevitability of a shift to a more democratic form of government.
Conditions at home were fraught and, in foreign affairs, too, the Tsar’s ministers had their share of problems. If Russia were to compete with the rest of the industrialised world, she needed access to the Pacific but even the major port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for several months each year. The ideal solution would be to extend the Trans-Siberian railway eastwards through Korea, but the Japanese, seeking to expand their own empire, were totally opposed to such a plan.
It occurred to some of the Tsar’s advisors that it might be possible to take advantage of the situation in the east, not only to secure Korea and Manchuria, but also to improve the Tsar’s standing. The vast Russian ranks easily outnumbered the small Japanese army and an early victory would restore a sense of national pride and reunite the people behind their Emperor. Heedless of the warnings of the Finance Minister, Count de Witte, the ministers and Nicholas’ uncles painted an image of a glorious Tsar leading his heroic army through a blaze of glory behind the Romanov double-headed eagle.
The dull reality was quite different from that dream. The Japanese had no desire for war and would willingly have settled the matter through negotiation but as Russian troops continued to move through the region, they had no alternative but to take up arms. In January 1904, they struck the first blow, attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and, with self-righteous indignation, the Russians declared war. A tide of patriotic fervour swept the country and crowds gathered to cheer the troops setting out on their long journey east.
Although already in the later stages of her final pregnancy, Alix threw herself wholeheartedly into the war effort. She opened a hospital at Tsarskoe Selo where she paid daily visits to the wounded and arranged for the men to learn various crafts during their recuperation.
“The great salons of the Winter Palace were turned into workrooms and there every day society flocked to sew and knit for our soldiers and sailors fighting such incredible distances away, as well as for the wounded in hospitals at home and abroad…Every day the Empress came to inspect the work, often sitting down at a table and sewing diligently with the others.”
In the Kremlin, her sister, Ella also established workrooms and employed hundreds of women of all classes to arrange packages of icons and gifts to send to the Front. As the wounded returned to the city, she made daily visits to the military hospitals taking the time to talk to each man in turn.
“There is no end of work to be done,” wrote the Tsarina, “but it is a great comfort to be able to help one’s poor sufferers a little…All work hard…We work for the army hospitals (apart from the Red Cross) and for the well who need clothes, tobacco ... and then we furnish military trains...I like following all and not to be a mere doll. Yes, it is a trying time, but one must put all one’s trust in God, who gives strength and courage.”
The Tsarina’s sincere efforts made little impression on the vast majority of her people and as the lists of Russian casualties grew, the enthusiastic cheers turned to cries of anger. Far from being a weak little enemy, the Japanese were well-disciplined, efficient soldiers capable of inflicting terrible losses on the massive Russian army. The ‘short’ war was rapidly turning into a prolonged fiasco.
By autumn, after nine months of fighting, the disillusioned Russians had grown weary of sacrificing their sons in the hopeless campaign. Disturbances broke out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the reactionary Minister of the Interior was assassinated. Strikes threatened to bring St. Petersburg to a standstill and the unrest was in danger of spilling into greater violence.
“Revolution is banging on the door,” wrote the Tsar’s cousin, Konstantin Konstantinovich, “A constitution is being almost openly discussed. How shameful and how terrifying.”
For Nicholas and Alix, the suggestion that Tsar should hand over his authority to an elected council (the Duma) was unthinkable. At his Coronation, Nicholas had taken an oath to uphold the autocracy and, regardless of the personal cost, he felt duty-bound by the promise made before God. From the seclusion of Tsarskoe Selo, Alix urged her husband to be strong, dismissing the ministers’ reports of imminent revolution as scare-mongering and assuring him that the ordinary Russians loved their Emperor.
It was true that many thousands of his subjects still revered their Tsar. He was their ‘Little Father’ who loved his people and only permitted the injustices they endured because he was unaware of their sufferings. If they could only reach him and tell him of their plight, he would surely deal kindly with their grievances. Encouraging such thoughts was a socialist priest, Father Gapon, who, in an attempt to prevent bloodshed, offered to lead a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace so that the people could petition the Emperor.
On Saturday 21st January 1905, Gapon, unaware that the Tsar was several miles away in Tsarskoe Selo, informed the Minister of the Interior, Prince Mirsky, that the following day he would lead over one hundred thousand people to the palace. At the thought of so vast a crown, Mirsky panicked. He warned the Tsar that violence may erupt and advised him to stay out of the city, before summoning mounted troops to guard the bridges over the frozen River Neva to prevent the crowds from reaching the palace.
The next day, Sunday 22nd January, thousands of men, women and children walked peacefully through the streets of St. Petersburg with the sole intention of presenting Nicky with their petitions. As the orderly procession neared the Neva bridges, many of the marchers held aloft icons and portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina to demonstrate their fidelity to the Orthodox Church and trust in their ‘Little Father.’
With absolute faith in their anointed Emperor, the crowds ignored the soldiers’ warnings to turn back and as the vast horde continued to advance, the terrified generals ordered the troops to open fire. Within minutes over a thousand of the Tsar’s most devoted subjects were gunned down, dropping their bloodstained icons beside the corpses of little children.
As news of the massacre spread through the country, Moscow exploded in violence. The city had long been a hot bed of sedition and now, as outraged revolutionaries incited the ordinary citizens to take up arms against ‘Bloody Nicholas the Butcher,’ barricades rose in the streets. The entire Romanov family became a symbol of oppression and tyranny and the most obvious target for the revolutionaries’ anger was Ella’s much-maligned husband, Grand Duke Serge.
The one member of the Imperial family to escape the revolutionary wrath was Ella. Before the outbreak of war, her charitable works had earned her a saintly reputation and once the hostilities started, her popularity soared. Even as the barricades rose in the streets, she ignored the police warnings, to make her daily round of the hospital wards. But Ella was not blind to the dangers. Serge had received several death threats while she herself was sent anonymous letters warning her, for her own safety, not to appear with her husband in public.
The strain of such an existence was enormous, and a final blow to reactionary Serge was the realisation that the Tsar was planning to grant limited reforms. Unable to accept the changes and worn down by the stress of his position, Serge finally decided to tender his resignation as Governor General of Moscow.
In the early afternoon February 18th 1905, as her husband left the Kremlin for the Governor General’s residence to clear his papers, Ella was working on her Red Cross projects, when an explosion shattered the silence.
“It’s Serge!” Ella cried, and rushing from the palace summoned a sleigh to speed her to the scene. As she approached Senate Square the gathering crowd tried to hold her back, but it was too late. Before her in the snow lay a tangled mess of flesh and bone - all that was left of her husband. His head, his leg and his arm had been blown off by a terrorist’s bomb. The blast was so great that, days later, his fingers were found on the roof of the Kremlin.
Scrambling through the gore for Serge’s medals and icons, Ella called to the soldiers for a stretcher from one of her Red Cross ambulances, then, with her own hands, placed what was left of her husband on the palette, which she ordered to be covered with soldiers’ coats and taken to a neighbouring monastery. A silent crowd followed her into the chapel where the stretcher was laid on the altar steps while she knelt and prayed.
“Drops of blood fell on the floor, slowly forming a dark pool,” wrote Serge’s niece, Maria Pavlovna. “My aunt was on her knees beside the litter, her bright dress shone forth grotesquely amid the humble garments surrounding her…
…Her face was white, her features terrible in their stricken rigidity. She did not weep…When she perceived us she stretched out her arms to us. We ran to her.
‘He loved you so, he loved you so,’ she repeated endlessly, pressing our heads against her. I noticed that, low on her right arm, the sleeve of her gay blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers in which she tightly gripped [Serge’s] medals…”
That evening, though barely recovered from the shock, Ella summoned a carriage to take her to the hospital where Serge’s coachman lay fatally wounded. To avoid causing him further distress, the doctors had told him that his master was only slightly injured, and as Ella neared his bed, he asked for news of the Grand Duke.
She smiled gently, “It was he who sent me to you.”
That night the coachman, passed away in his sleep.
Fearful of further assassinations, the Tsar issued an order forbidding the Imperial family to travel to Moscow for the funeral. Victoria hurried to Russia to be at her sister’s side, and Serge’s sister, Marie, arrived from Coburg with Ella’s young cousin, ‘Baby Bee.’ Constrained in Tsarskoe Selo, Alix could only take comfort from the news that Ella was ‘bearing her terrible grief like a saint.’
Two days later Ella revealed the depths of her sanctity. Carrying a Bible and an icon of Christ, she set out for the prison where her husband’s killer, Ivan Kalyaev, was being held. In a private meeting, she wept as she told him that she had forgiven him and, without least hint of malice or anger, asked what had driven him to commit such a crime. Touched as he was by her sorrow and evident sincerity, Kalyaev had to tell her that he felt no remorse and believed his actions had been entirely justified. As she rose to leave, she told him, “I will pray for you,” and handed him the icon and Bible.
“I will not conceal,” he wrote to his friends, “that we looked at each other with a kind of mystical feeling.”
Newspapers later reported that she had even petitioned the Tsar for a pardon but, since the assassin failed to repent, her request was refused.
Kalyaev’s execution did nothing to still the tide of revolution sweeping through Russia and by August it was clear that there was no point in prolonging the disastrous Japanese War. In the humiliation of defeat, Alix continued her work for the wounded soldiers, organizing schemes to teach the disabled men new trades and providing them and their families with new cottages. But again her efforts passed largely unnoticed and the violence continued unabated. In the Caucasus, rebels attacked and murdered officials, and in Moscow, angry mobs manned barricades in the streets until Nicky realized he had no alternative but to call a Duma, effectively signing away the three-hundred-year-old autocracy.
With the opening of the Duma in October 1905, a semblance of peace was restored. The barricades were dismantled, the strikers returned to work and the revolutionary fervour cooled but the Tsar’s reputation had suffered a blow from which it would never fully recover. While Alix was disgusted at the manner in which he had been forced to accept the Duma, revolutionaries were disappointed that the reforms had not gone far enough. Ella, meanwhile, mourning the loss of a husband she had deeply loved, was about to make a more revolutionary change in her life, than even the most committed Bolsheviks could have imagined.
"All I Can Repeat Is that I am Perfectly Happy." More of Queen Victoria's Granddaughters...
When Victoria of Hesse married Louis Battenberg in April 1884, Queen Victoria had more on her mind than the aberration of the bride’s father and the unforeseen romance between Beatrice and Liko. Though, of course, she had been informed in advance, the announcement of Ella’s engagement to a Russian Grand Duke sent a shiver of terror down a fond grandmother’s spine.
Since her formal entry into society three years previously, nineteen-year-old Ella might have had her pick of several European princes. Renowned as one of the most beautiful women in Europe, word of her charm, intelligence and gentleness brought proposals from many quarters. While Cousin Willy was still smarting at her rebuttal, Uncle Leo entreated her father not to throw her away on a dull Scandinavian prince who was earnestly seeking her hand. Ella herself had turned down the son of the Duke of Manchester and in 1883, Queen Victoria was mildly disappointed to hear that she had declined the proposal of her childhood friend, Fritz of Baden. The Queen’s disappointment turned to horror when she discovered that Ella had rejected him in favour of ‘a Russian!’
Apart from his great wealth, there was little to commend Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich to the Queen. Not only was he a Russian and a Romanov - the younger brother of Tsar Alexander III and Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh - but his highly-strung nature and unyielding reactionary views had created many enemies in his native St. Petersburg. His natural reticence had always given him a haughty air and the assassination of his father, Alexander II, had filled him with such a deep hatred of revolutionaries that he would mercilessly oppose any reform that might undermine the Romanov autocracy. Even in Russia, where the power of the Tsar was unlimited, Serge was commonly viewed as a sadistic despot.
Nor was the Grand Duke’s appearance particularly appealing to a Queen. His niece, Ella’s cousin, Missy of Roumania, thought him strikingly handsome, but noticed too the coldness in his steely-grey eyes. The French Ambassador, Maurice Paleologue observed that his face was disagreeable, ‘distinguished by greyish-white eyebrows and a hard look.’ Tall and extremely thin, he accentuated his gaunt figure by wearing whalebone corsets that showed through his clothes.
As if that were not to disenchant the Queen, she may well have heard the more insidious rumours, emanating from St. Petersburg.
“Try as I will,” wrote his cousin Sandro Mikhailovich, “I cannot find a single redeeming feature in his character…obstinate, arrogant, disagreeable, he flaunted his many peculiarities in the face of the entire nation, providing the enemies of the regime with inexhaustible material for calumnies and libels.”
Stories of his alleged ‘peculiarities’ were to haunt the Grand Duke all his life. As a young man, his devotion to the officers of his beloved Preobrazhensky Regiment led to speculation that he was homosexual and his apparent reluctance to marry, added further fuel to rumours.
What on earth, Queen Victoria wondered, could attract ‘dear lovely Ella’ to such an unpleasant man? It was true that Princess Alice had been fond of the shy little boy who, throughout Ella’s childhood, had often accompanied his consumptive mother on her recuperative visits to her native Hesse-Darmstadt. It was equally true that he was so different from bombastic Willy that Ella had responded with affection to his friendship; but now, surrounded by so many more sparkling suitors, the aloof Grand Duke seemed a most unlikely choice. He had made little impression upon her when he accompanied his mother on her final visit to Darmstadt in 1879, and Ella had even confessed to her sister that she found him ‘rather boring.’ Yet, when he returned to Hesse after his father’s assassination, her opinion changed dramatically.
Perhaps it was his heartfelt sorrow at the loss of his father that convinced her that his brittle exterior concealed a more sensitive nature. Having lost her own mother Ella empathised with his grief and, spending more time in his company, gradually came to realise that in spite of their disparate political and religious opinions, they shared the same aesthetic interest in music and art, inspired by a deeply spiritual temperament.
Gossip spread quickly through the family and by the time of Victoria’s engagement, word of Ella’s growing attachment to the Russian had reached a horrified Queen Victoria in Scotland. Summoning her granddaughter to Balmoral, the Queen earnestly attempted to dissuade her from the match. Princess Alice, she claimed, would never have wanted her daughter to marry a Russian. The vast Romanov wealth would ‘turn Ella’s head’; the country was very unstable and St. Petersburg society, immoral. The thought that ‘our sweet but undecided and inexperienced Ella, with her lovely face,’ may be led astray by the unscrupulous Russians was more than the Queen could bear. And if that were not disconcerting enough, Ella need only think of the cold Russian climate that would ruin her health, as it had that of several German princesses including Serge’s own mother.
Chastened by the lecture and unwilling to distress her grandmother, Ella assured the Queen that she had no intention of marrying Serge and that she would ‘hate to live in Russia.’ She returned to Darmstadt in the early autumn determined to put him from her mind and when Serge proposed, she refused him. Though the Russians, including Serge’s sister, the Duchess of Edinburgh, considered the refusal an insult, the relieved Queen was filled with admiration:
“I never gave Ella credit for so much independence of character.”
She had yet to discover quite how independent her gentle granddaughter could be.
Serge’s proposal had come at a time of great upheaval in Darmstadt. The New Palace was buzzing in preparation for Victoria’s wedding and her father was on the point of marrying Madame de Kolomine. Within a month of Ella’s departure from Scotland the Queen was alarmed to hear that Serge had received a further invitation to Hesse and could only pray that, in his presence, Ella would ‘remain firm.’
Her hopes and warnings were in vain. Whether it was the sense of romance in the air, or she had truly fallen in love, when Serge proposed for a second time Ella accepted him. It was left to Victoria to break the news to the Queen, before Ella dared pick up her pen to write to ‘dearest grandmama’ with some trepidation:
“…I am afraid this letter will not give you as much pleasure as I should wish but as it concerns my happiness and you have always been so kind to me, I wish you to know what I think about Serge…though he may have opinions you do not like, do you not think, dear Grandmama, that I might do him good?
…I shall try to keep to the right path and will always keep those I love in my mind and follow their good example...I think I know what I’m doing and if I am unhappy, which I am sure I never will be, it will all be my doing, as you know. Please forgive me if you are vexed with what I shall do, and although I will have to begin a new life, I will always cling to those who have been dearer to me than I can say.”
Queen Victoria could only shake her head in despair:
“Dear Ella, she really is so changeable and unaccountable, she told me how she hated all Russians, she refused Serge three weeks ago and now she takes him and forgets all.”
Six weeks after Victoria’s wedding, the royalties migrated to St. Petersburg where, on 15th June 1884, Ella and Serge were married according to both the Lutheran and Orthodox rites in the chapel of the Winter Palace. Cousin Willy, having made tactful excuses for his absence, missed the beautiful spectacle of his first love, draped in Russian Court dress and the jewels of Catherine the Great, walking down the aisle ‘on the arm of haughty Sergei.’ Even so, the Prussians managed to use the celebrations to humiliate the Battenbergs. Still angered by Moretta’s attachment to Sandro, Bismarck whispered a word in the right Russian ears to ensure that during the wedding banquet Louis was placed as far away as possible from the top table where his wife, Victoria, was seated near the bride.
After the wedding, the celebrations continued for a further ten days before Ella, now Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna Romanova, bade goodbye to her family. She and Serge travelled east for a honeymoon on his country estate, Ilinskoe, not far from Moscow, where her generosity and eagerness to learn everything about her new homeland, quickly endeared her to the villagers. In the autumn, the couple returned to the magnificent Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg for ‘the season,’ where Ella threw herself into the social life of the capital and soon made her mark in the ballrooms and receptions of the aristocracy.
“Ravishing beauty, rare intelligence, delightful sense of humour, infinite patience, hospitality of thought, generous heart, all gifts were hers,” wrote Serge’s cousin, Sandro Mikhailovich. “Everybody fell in love with ‘Aunt Ella’ the very first moment she arrived in St. Petersburg.”
The winter days were filled with skating parties, theatre visits and balls where, dripping in the jewels that Serge lavished upon her, she often disappeared partway through the evening only to re-emerge in an entirely new gown and another set of priceless gems. Devoted to her husband, popular at Court and loved by the people, life appeared idyllic for the naïve Grand Duchess but, within months of her wedding, rumours began to surface, that would plague her for the next twenty years.
Marriage had done nothing to improve Serge’s reputation. On the contrary, Ella’s calm passivity contrasted so sharply with his shortness of temper and dictatorial manner that her very presence at his side seemed to highlight the many flaws in his character. Observers, disgusted by the way he criticised and humiliated her in public, were convinced he must be still more cruel when they were alone. It was said that he was so jealous that he spied on all her movements, refused to allow her to go out without his permission and that he even read all her letters.
While Ella could not deny that Serge made every decision affecting their lives - even to choosing her partners at balls - the rumours of his unkindness were greatly exaggerated and caused her far more pain than his supposedly cruel treatment of her. But, however vehemently she protested that she ‘adored’ her husband and was ‘perfectly happy’ in Russia, increasingly outlandish stories spread not only through Russia but via the large family network to all the Courts of Europe.
“These tiresome reports about Ella being divorced etc. are all over the place; and in everyone’s mouth.” Vicky wrote to her mother only six months after the wedding, “I think it would be very good to have them contradicted.”
Queen Victoria was deeply troubled. She had dreaded this marriage from the start and now the rumours that she heard convinced her that her fears were well-founded. Ella’s letters repeatedly assured her that all was well but protestations of happiness served only to increase the Queen’s doubts.
“Ella’s constantly speaking of her happiness I don’t quite like. When people are very happy they don’t require to tell others of it.”
What was more, as the Queen could not fail to observe, there was evidence enough that something was awry in the marriage: many months had passed since the wedding yet Ella showed no sign of conceiving a child. In a family where children were as numerous ‘as the rabbits in Windsor Park’ her childlessness proved to Serge’s detractors that he was homosexual and had no interest in his wife. Increasingly salacious stories proliferated. Some claimed, without justification, that Ella refused to yield to Serge’s ‘unnatural’ perversions while others, more charitably but no less humiliatingly, believed that the shock of his father’s death had left him impotent.
It is possible that Ella was simply unable to have children. Since her adolescence, her grandmother had often commented on her frailty and, with her usual euphemistic references to her ‘health,’ implied that as a young girl Ella suffered from gynaecological problems. Advising Victoria not to ride too quickly or too often she added:
“For Ella it would be bad for her health as well, but then she cannot…ride just now.”
Conversely, though Ella frequently went to great lengths to defend her husband, she never made any attempt to explain away her childlessness. It was not simply a matter of coyness - after all, her Aunt Louise, Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, also remained childless but had openly sought a cure in various European spas. Other members of the family were equally candid in the correspondence with the Queen, who for all her professed distaste for the subject, was remarkably inquisitive about the married lives of her daughters and granddaughters. Ella’s refusal to discuss the matter seems simply to confirm what the gossips had surmised: due to some failing on Serge’s part, the marriage remained unconsummated.
As the rumours continued unabated, the Queen seized every opportunity to cast a concerned eye over her precious granddaughter. When they met for a christening in Darmstadt in 1885, she was able to observe:
“They seems quite happy and comfortable together but Ella is looking pale and thin – which however they say is caused by the heat.”
Two years later Ella arrived in London for the Golden Jubilee celebrations, totally unprepared for the grilling she was about to receive. It was humiliating enough to hear the rumours and ‘disgusting lies’ that circulated through St. Petersburg, but mortifying to discover that the most intimate details of her marriage were being discussed as far away as Windsor. Deeply embarrassed by the Queen’s probing questions she could only reply with increasing desperation:
“All I can repeat is that I am perfectly happy.”
Ella’s heartfelt protestations were sincere. She loved Serge enough to endure a celibate marriage, but with each passing year the pain of her childlessness became harder to bear. Ella loved children and longed for a child of her own. During a visit to Ilinskoe in 1886, her Aunt Marie of Edinburgh noticed how readily she spoiled her eight-year-old cousin, Sandra, and she could not have been more thrilled to hear of the birth of her first niece, Alice. In Russia, too, she delighted in the company of her friends’ children, whom she frequently entertained by hiding gifts and sweets for them to seek out in the rooms of her palaces. Among the many charitable organisations that she patronised, the dearest to her heart was the ‘Elizabethan Society,’ which she had established to take care of orphans and neglected children. In the early years of her marriage, she entertained the forlorn hope that eventually something would change and she might have a child of her own, but with each passing season her optimism gradually faded.
For an intelligent, well-educated woman dogged by scandalous rumours, the trivial hours in the ballroom soon lost their appeal. She been raised to a life of service and duty, yet now she was little more than a beautiful ornament to a husband who showed her no physical affection and denied her any say in the decisions affecting her life. Had she sought them, the beautiful and charming Grand Duchess would have had no shortage of lovers in the infamously decadent Russian Court, but, believing that vows made before God were binding for life, Ella could not contemplate infidelity. Instead, like her mother before her, she devoted herself to her charities and, with ever greater fervency, to her religion•.
Although stories of Serge’s ‘perversions’ and sadism continued until his death and beyond Ella never spoke so much as one word of criticism against him. If the rumours of his homosexuality were true, she accepted the situation without complaint or self-pity and remained convinced that in his own peculiar way, he loved her. In that, at least, she found the comfort that was denied to one of her cousins, for out of all Queen Victoria’s granddaughters none suffered greater humiliation at the hands of a homosexual husband than the desperately unlucky Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein.
Pedestals
There sometimes seems to be a fairy tale which we haven't outgrown. In a fairy tale there are heroes and villains and everyone wants the hero (or the victim princess) to win and the villain to get his/her comeuppance. We're brought up on this idea from the wicked fairy in the Sleeping Beauty, to the Ugly Sisters in Cinderella and the manipulative Rumpelstiltskin (who actually made a fair deal and was cheated out his winnings!). Things are black and white and everyone fits the template.
The danger is that it detracts from the depths and many facets of each person and leads to a complete toppling of them from a pedestal which they had never asked for. In Victorian times, a few people were raised as great heroes: Gordon at Khartoum, Florence Nightingale, Baden-Powell, Lawremce of Arabia, Kitchener and many more whose statues grace the streets of London and elsewhere. As a child, I read of these people as brave heroes and later saw programmes or read articles which aimed to completely destroy the myth about them as some kind of super-human beings (like the shattered Ozymandias in the picture). This is why I so dislike the idea of canonisation. The moment someone is set up as an ideal character, someone attempts to turn them into a plaster cast ideal and along comes someone else to point out their flaws and topple them from that pinnacle.
Recently, after a relatively few years of people admiring the courage and sanctity of Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, much has been written about her flaws and attention is drawn to that. It's another knocking off a pedestal on which I don't believe she ever wanted to stand and I have never perceived her as a saint or as a sinner - though I greatly admire many aspects of her character, love her hidden warmth and her response to events. The same is undoubtedly going to happen to Karl of Austria; the same is already happening around John Henry Newman. The reason the Tsar and the Imperial Family was murdered was because someone idolised them, and then felt let down by them. They didn't ask to be someone else's excuse for his/her own failure - they were just doing the very best they could and became the scapegoat for the unhappiness of the masses.
I think it's because there is no template of what is 'perfection' or saintly. In a garden there are countless flowers and weeds, all growing as they grow, not trying to fit another plant's pattern; in fields of animals, there are all different and individual versions of that species, and none of them seems to care how they look in comparison to the others. Only among humans do we create heroes and villains and, while we are all quite happy to see ourselves as way above our villains, nothing seems to be more satisfying than to topple a saint/hero from his/her pedestal.
I think all of the people of the past - those I admire, and those I do not like - were doing the best they could in their own circumstances. They didn't ask to be saints or heroes or anything of the sort, any more than the villains intended to be villains. They probably knew their own flaws better than anyone else could, and I think it is better to observe and love and learn from all of them and recognise that they really were paving the way to new ideas and new aspirations. For that, I am very grateful. Pedestals and statues make me smile - it's lovely to see people honouring others' achievements - and it's lovelier to attempt to understand than to idolise or condemn.
Beauty and Freedom
To quote Queen Victoria, "dear, lovely Ella" was thrown down a mine shaft on this date 92 years ago.
I believe Ella's - Grand Duchess Elizabeth's - whole life was dedicated to beauty and bringing beauty to the lives of those around her, by recognising the beauty in every individual being.
In these days of a throw-away society - or perhaps a post-throw-away society, as we become more aware of the beauty of the planet, of animals (Ella became a vegetarian, too), of Nature and craftsmanship - someone who exudes true beauty (not what passes for beauty in the shallow advertising of everyone appearing to look the same) still remains a bright light!
In memory of 'dear, lovely Ella' - an individual, murdered by the conformist bolsheviks on 18th July 1918.
Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich
In memory of Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich, murdered 105 years ago today, this is an extract from Most Beautiful Princess. Ella and Serge are sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, after the consecration of the Russian Orthodox church in Jerusalem.
“It sometimes feels to me,” he said, “as though there is a gap, like a great well, inside us. A sort of wound, an inner loneliness and, no matter how close or intimate our relationships, the wound is so deep that nothing on earth can alleviate it. Do you ever feel that?”
“Yes,” she murmured, “I do.”
“Perhaps everyone does. Some people run around trying to assuage the pain of it; the pain of being alive. Some try to numb it with vodka or opium or laudanum and all kinds of excesses. Others fill every spare moment with activity or seeking out company, small talk, chatter, noise, any noise, being so afraid of silence and solitude because when we’re alone and silent we feel it most deeply. But no matter how we try to avoid it, we know it’s there and there is nothing we can do to be rid of it.”
“Perhaps it’s a reminder that we’re not simply creatures of the earth. We’re pilgrims passing through, longing for heaven.”
“Longing for death?” he frowned.
“No, not death but the Infinite. Perhaps it is a kind of death, though I cannot think that God would create all this beauty, nature, oceans, skies, dawns, sunsets, flowers and creatures to be so ephemeral. I can only believe that what we see here is the reflection of an even greater beauty beyond this life.”
“For here,” he said, “we see ‘but darkly as through a glass’. Isn’t it strange how desperately and deeply we feel this longing that can only be satisfied when our souls are free of these bodies, and yet, faced with prospect of death, we cling to life how ever mundane, dull, empty and meaningless it seems. Even those who live in the most abject poverty, whose lives are nothing but drudgery and misery, would, if faced with the prospect of death, cling with all their might to this existence how ever painful or sad.”
“Perhaps they’re afraid of what is beyond.”
“Or perhaps they fear there is nothing beyond except total annihilation.”
She moved closer to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Are you afraid of death, Serge?”
“Not now. Not in this moment when everything is peaceful. Heaven seems so close that I would happily step out of my body and into that life. But,” he sighed, “when we’re back in the city, amid all the clamour and routine and petty irritations, death will no longer seem like a radiant angel welcoming us home, but rather a dark spectre hovering menacingly over our shoulders. That is what I fear, being caught unprepared as my father was. One minute there, walking, talking, breathing...the next minute, blown to pieces.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “If it were not for my faith, I don’t think I would have been able to live with that. For those who don’t believe, such times must be unbearable.”
"Ask Sir James" by Michaela Reid
A first glance at the cover of "Ask Sir James - The Life of Sir James Reid, Personal Physician to Queen Victoria" might cause one to think it would be a very dull medical tome but it is an utterly absorbing book, filled with so many fascinating details, which are not recorded elsewhere. Written by Sir James' daughter, Michaela Reid, the book follows the doctor through the reigns of Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V, and has a foreword by Elizabeth Longford.
Among countless other anecdotes, it includes the riding accident of the Queen's youngest granddaughter, Ena of Battenberg - the future Queen of Spain - and the story of the dreadful shooting accident in which the Queen's son-in-law, Prince Christian, lost an eye. Although that might appear macabre, Reid's description of Queen Victoria's response to the necessity of surgery to remove the eye is almost amusing:
"Her Majesty said that it was quite unnecessary as formerly she knew several people with shot eyes who did not have it done and who did not become blind; that nowadays doctors were always for taking out eyes; and in short she spoke as if Lawson and I wished to do it for our own brutal pleasure...."
Another tiny detail concerns Grand Duchess Elizabeth sending for Reid, while she was in London for her grandmother's jubilee, in order to treat a small spot on her face - which he did with nitric acid!
All in all, it is a really wonderful book to return to again and again!
Passion
About depths of feeling, it's so clear that so much of what passes for 'passion' nowadays misses the mark completely. There was a time in film and music where much was left hidden and had an air of mystery about it. Nowadays 'anything goes' but it isn't passion and lacks depth. Most fascinating of all is the fact that the some of the people who are often described as 'cold' or viewed as remote are often those with the greatest depths of passion and feeling.
To cite but 3 examples: Prince Albert, Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Emily Bronte. Apart from being the love of Queen Victoria's life, Prince Albert is often seen as the epitome of Victorian coldness, yet here was a man who inspired not only the love of so passionate a woman, but also wrote music and painted with such depths of feeling. He died at only 42 and I think that had a lot to do with the power of his unexpressed feelings. Being the child of an unhappy marriage, he learned to hide his feelings at an early age but, looking at his art, his music, his social conscience, his devotion to his family, he was one of the most intensely passionate men ever to have lived.
Because she didn't have children and was married to someone who is often maligned, Grand Duchess Elizabeth is also often described as 'cold'. Her letters - filled with exclamation marks and dramatic expressions of endearment and passion - reveal a very different personality! Emily Bronte, because she longed always to be alone, is seen as another 'cold' person and yet she wrote the most passionate novel, and still more the most wonderful poetry of her century.
In an age where blatant and rather boring displays of short-lived sexuality passes for passion, it's small wonder that such people who were so 'whole' in their passion are dismissed as 'cold'. But, as Wordsworth rather clumsily wrote: "To me, the meanest flower the blows can give thoughts that lie too deep for human tears..." I often think that those with the deepest sensitivities, do not wear their hearts on their sleeves because they know that it would not be understood in a rather dispassionate world.
Perhaps it's not that people no longer have these sensibilities - it's that the most powerful feelings are frightening to most people and those who feel them most deeply feel it is better to remain silent about them.
Glib Lines Without Meaning
I wonder why it is that multi-faceted people find it so easy to write off other people of the past in glib one-dimensional lines. Imagine if someone were to describe you in one short phrase - your whole life experience with all its ebbs and flows narrowed down to that - and worse, if that short phrase were so often repeated that it became generally accepted as 'truth'.
How many times have I read such phrases regarding the last Imperial Family of Russia? "Nicholas was a weak Tsar." "Alexandra was psychologically unsound." Serge was gay." "Ella was cold." These things are written on blogs and websites all over the place and they are as far from the whole truth as the popular (and untrue) myth that Queen Victoria was puritanical and seldom amused.
Happily, there are also many people who are not so trite in their descriptions and understanding. Most of the people whom I know who have any depths of understanding of that family, eventually come to a point of giving up trying to refute these easy statements so the glib lies continue uncontested. It would be possible to write at length of all the reasons why these statements are inaccurate but there is little point in doing that among people who prefer to make everything black and white and are constantly seeking someone to blame for all the errors of the past.
There are many examples to illustrate that Nicholas was not weak. There are many examples of Alexandra's strength of mind and character, and happily other people write of these with such knowledge and insight. Very few people have even heard of Serge and Ella, and it is so unjust to see how often they are passed off with those lines: "Serge was gay. Ella was cold." Personally, though I don't give two hoots about whether he was or he wasn't, I don't believe that Serge was gay. Nowadays, a person's sexual orientation is happily a matter for that person and not anyone else's business. In late 19th century Russia (as elsewhere) it was a criminal offence and to accuse someone of being homosexual was a means of shaming them. So many accusations were levelled against Serge because of his political stance. It was difficult to contradict his views politically and so much easier to make such an accusation about his sexuality simply to demean him! That aside, it must be remembered that his servants were utterly devoted to him. Not many people inspire such devotion in their staff. The diaries of Css. Tolstoy - no great fan of the Grand Duke - include references to his kindness when she asked for help for her son to gain a commission in a particular regiment. She also writes of how, trying to make a request to him in St. Petersburg, she couldn't reach him because he had made the very long journey to Moscow simply to attend the wedding of one of his servants, to which he had been invited. But Serge, according to the myth was 'gay, a sadist and a control-freak' - Funny that, since all the gay men that I know are far from being control-freaks or sadists. So, please would those who make up or repeat these stories decide which stance they are taking before making such glib accusations?
Then, 'Ella was cold'. What is cold? Numbed and shocked to the core by witnessing the horrific death of her husband? Crikey!! Wouldn't you be cold with shock and horror if you saw someone you loved in such a mutilated state? Obviously, the glib accusation of 'cold' cannot apply simply to that moment. So she was generally cold? Hmm....Ella, who, on being parted from her sisters 'cried like a child'...Ella, who wrote to Nicholas in such extremely effusive tones: "Darling boy, dearest, darling Nicholas, may I call you so?" Ella, who 'sobbed' after her final meeting with Alix. Ella, whose letters are filled with effusions: her descriptions of her feelings in the Holy Land or at Sarov; her 'boundless' love, her 'longing'...are these the words of a cold person?
If people dislike people of the past, that's fair enough. If people have issues or disagreements with people of the past, that's fair enough too. But to narrow a person down to an often repeated statement is just so shallow! Nicholas was weak, Alix was psychologically disturbed, Serge was gay, Ella was cold...take it back further, Richard III (so loved by the people of Yorkshire!) was just the wicked uncle who killed his nephews (yeah right!! where was Henry Tudor in this?)...King John was evil; Richard the Lionheart is a hero (though he virtually bankrupted England and spent hardly any time here)....Please, if we write of people, let's at least get the wider picture....
How many times have I read such phrases regarding the last Imperial Family of Russia? "Nicholas was a weak Tsar." "Alexandra was psychologically unsound." Serge was gay." "Ella was cold." These things are written on blogs and websites all over the place and they are as far from the whole truth as the popular (and untrue) myth that Queen Victoria was puritanical and seldom amused.
Happily, there are also many people who are not so trite in their descriptions and understanding. Most of the people whom I know who have any depths of understanding of that family, eventually come to a point of giving up trying to refute these easy statements so the glib lies continue uncontested. It would be possible to write at length of all the reasons why these statements are inaccurate but there is little point in doing that among people who prefer to make everything black and white and are constantly seeking someone to blame for all the errors of the past.
There are many examples to illustrate that Nicholas was not weak. There are many examples of Alexandra's strength of mind and character, and happily other people write of these with such knowledge and insight. Very few people have even heard of Serge and Ella, and it is so unjust to see how often they are passed off with those lines: "Serge was gay. Ella was cold." Personally, though I don't give two hoots about whether he was or he wasn't, I don't believe that Serge was gay. Nowadays, a person's sexual orientation is happily a matter for that person and not anyone else's business. In late 19th century Russia (as elsewhere) it was a criminal offence and to accuse someone of being homosexual was a means of shaming them. So many accusations were levelled against Serge because of his political stance. It was difficult to contradict his views politically and so much easier to make such an accusation about his sexuality simply to demean him! That aside, it must be remembered that his servants were utterly devoted to him. Not many people inspire such devotion in their staff. The diaries of Css. Tolstoy - no great fan of the Grand Duke - include references to his kindness when she asked for help for her son to gain a commission in a particular regiment. She also writes of how, trying to make a request to him in St. Petersburg, she couldn't reach him because he had made the very long journey to Moscow simply to attend the wedding of one of his servants, to which he had been invited. But Serge, according to the myth was 'gay, a sadist and a control-freak' - Funny that, since all the gay men that I know are far from being control-freaks or sadists. So, please would those who make up or repeat these stories decide which stance they are taking before making such glib accusations?
Then, 'Ella was cold'. What is cold? Numbed and shocked to the core by witnessing the horrific death of her husband? Crikey!! Wouldn't you be cold with shock and horror if you saw someone you loved in such a mutilated state? Obviously, the glib accusation of 'cold' cannot apply simply to that moment. So she was generally cold? Hmm....Ella, who, on being parted from her sisters 'cried like a child'...Ella, who wrote to Nicholas in such extremely effusive tones: "Darling boy, dearest, darling Nicholas, may I call you so?" Ella, who 'sobbed' after her final meeting with Alix. Ella, whose letters are filled with effusions: her descriptions of her feelings in the Holy Land or at Sarov; her 'boundless' love, her 'longing'...are these the words of a cold person?
If people dislike people of the past, that's fair enough. If people have issues or disagreements with people of the past, that's fair enough too. But to narrow a person down to an often repeated statement is just so shallow! Nicholas was weak, Alix was psychologically disturbed, Serge was gay, Ella was cold...take it back further, Richard III (so loved by the people of Yorkshire!) was just the wicked uncle who killed his nephews (yeah right!! where was Henry Tudor in this?)...King John was evil; Richard the Lionheart is a hero (though he virtually bankrupted England and spent hardly any time here)....Please, if we write of people, let's at least get the wider picture....
Grand Duchess Elizabeth & The Imperial Family
For a clearer and updated version of this, please visit Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NA2U3K5dI8
In case the words don't appear clearly, since the images are small....
The first verse is Alix, the Tsarina singing to Alexei, her haemophiliac son; the second verse, Alix sings to her hsuband, Tsar Nicholas, after his abdication:
Close your eyes and let me paint a picture,
A landscape of a season long ago:
Starlit skies, the trees aglow with winter,
St. Petersburg beneath a veil of snow.
From high cathedral spires the bells are ringing,
Chiming through the country near and far,
A thousand voices eloquently singing,
Echoing their prayer: "God bless the Tsar....God bless the Tsar...God Bless the Tsar..."
Close your eyes and let me soothe the sadness,
The paint that brings your gentle eyes to tears.
Love prevails in spite of all this madness -
The love that we have shared through all these years.
And though the battles rage and hope is dying,
Remember who you were and who you are,
With all your heart, you'll hear my spirit sighing,
In a fervent prayer, "God bless the Tsar...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NA2U3K5dI8
In case the words don't appear clearly, since the images are small....
The first verse is Alix, the Tsarina singing to Alexei, her haemophiliac son; the second verse, Alix sings to her hsuband, Tsar Nicholas, after his abdication:
Close your eyes and let me paint a picture,
A landscape of a season long ago:
Starlit skies, the trees aglow with winter,
St. Petersburg beneath a veil of snow.
From high cathedral spires the bells are ringing,
Chiming through the country near and far,
A thousand voices eloquently singing,
Echoing their prayer: "God bless the Tsar....God bless the Tsar...God Bless the Tsar..."
Close your eyes and let me soothe the sadness,
The paint that brings your gentle eyes to tears.
Love prevails in spite of all this madness -
The love that we have shared through all these years.
And though the battles rage and hope is dying,
Remember who you were and who you are,
With all your heart, you'll hear my spirit sighing,
In a fervent prayer, "God bless the Tsar...."
Unless A Seed Falls Into the Ground and Dies
When Ella - Grand Duchess Elizabeth - went to the prison to forgive her husband's killer, he told her that on a previous occasion he could have killed her, too, but spared her life. Ella replied that in killing her husband, Serge, he had killed her, too.
Considering it was only three days since she had gathered Serge's bloody remains in her own hands, the shock and horror of what she had witnessed must have been so traumatic as to render her almost incapable of thinking straight but there was something in those words to which subsequent events bear testimony.
The Ella whom people had known as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', the Ella who had stunned every man in every ballroom, who had disappeared partway through an evening to reappear in a completely different set of jewels and attire, who won the hearts of the same people who despised her husband, suddenly was no more.
Instead there was the real Ella: the person who had been raised in an atmosphere of beauty and service to the poor; the Ella who had 'longed since childhood to help those who suffer, especially those in moral suffering' - the Ella to whom beauty meant something more than superficial appearances.
It seems very much a visible example of 'unless a seed falls into the ground and dies...'
Ella's whole life changed through horror and tragedy but it wasn't destroyed - on the contrary, after twenty years as a stifled and passive wife, it returned her to herself.
Perhaps, had she not been raised in an atmosphere of tragedy and suffering, she might have learned that lesson in happier circumstances. It seems to me that when we believe suffering is necessary, we find it and it can change us for the better, if we so choose, but the greater lesson is to know that suffering isn't necessary and was never part of the Divine Plan. The only thing we die to is the false notion of the need to be anything other than our true selves. If we learn that lesson through suffering, good comes of it. If we learn that lesson through joy, so much the better!
Considering it was only three days since she had gathered Serge's bloody remains in her own hands, the shock and horror of what she had witnessed must have been so traumatic as to render her almost incapable of thinking straight but there was something in those words to which subsequent events bear testimony.
The Ella whom people had known as the 'most beautiful princess in Europe', the Ella who had stunned every man in every ballroom, who had disappeared partway through an evening to reappear in a completely different set of jewels and attire, who won the hearts of the same people who despised her husband, suddenly was no more.
Instead there was the real Ella: the person who had been raised in an atmosphere of beauty and service to the poor; the Ella who had 'longed since childhood to help those who suffer, especially those in moral suffering' - the Ella to whom beauty meant something more than superficial appearances.
It seems very much a visible example of 'unless a seed falls into the ground and dies...'
Ella's whole life changed through horror and tragedy but it wasn't destroyed - on the contrary, after twenty years as a stifled and passive wife, it returned her to herself.
Perhaps, had she not been raised in an atmosphere of tragedy and suffering, she might have learned that lesson in happier circumstances. It seems to me that when we believe suffering is necessary, we find it and it can change us for the better, if we so choose, but the greater lesson is to know that suffering isn't necessary and was never part of the Divine Plan. The only thing we die to is the false notion of the need to be anything other than our true selves. If we learn that lesson through suffering, good comes of it. If we learn that lesson through joy, so much the better!
Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich
On 17th February 1905, Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich was blown to pieces by a terrorist's bomb. His wife, Ella, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, heard the explosion and hurried to the scene where she picked up what was left of him with her own hands and, having his remains placed in the neighbouring Chudov chapel, knelt in prayer as his blood trickled down the steps.
Three days later, she visited his assassin in prison, taking with her a Bible and an icon of Christ.
This event changed her life forever. Little by little, she gave away all her jewels and other possessions to create a sort of palace of the poor, where she nursed the most abject patients, built an orphanage and arranged all kinds of work for young people.
Grand Duke Serge was hated in proportion the degree to which Ella was loved. His name has been vilified through history but he was not a 'bad' man at heart. Highly strung, reactionary and probably unable to consummate his marriage, he became more intransigent each year and his treatment of the Jews in Moscow was horrendous (but he was acting, too, on the orders of his brother, Tsar Alexander III, and both of them were under the sway of the Procurator General of the Holy Synod). Serge also took a great deal of interest in the people and truly believed in Tsardom as building the kingdom of God on earth. His servants respected him and were devoted to him (which says a lot, considering 'no man is a hero to his valet'). Countess Tolstoy records in her diary how she visited him to ask for a military position for her son, and how very accommodating he was. She also wrote of his travelling all the way from St. Petersburg to Moscow for one day to attend a wedding of one of his servants.
Ella, who was so different from him, would never hear a word against him. I truly believe that he, for all his faults, was one of those people whom history turns into a monster, when he was just a man, doing his best with what he had...Blinkered he might have been, prejudiced he might have been, but cruel and nasty, he wasn't.
The Average Family Gathering
If, in the midst of organizing Christmas gatherings and accommodating various - sometimes contrary - characters in families, it is worth sparing an amused thought for Queen Victoria and the challenge she faced in the organization of her Golden Jubilee celebrations. Apart from the representatives from so many corners of her Empire, the more pressing concern was where to house and seat different members of her own family.
Buckingham Palace itself was bursting at the seams; the Duke of Edinburgh had offered the use of Clarence House, and the Prince of Wales was open to guests at Marlborough House. Nonetheless, it would require very careful and tactful planning to ensure that everyone was housed with 'suitable' companions.
Her grandson, the future Wilhelm II, was originally not invited, since his father, the future Frederick III, would be representing the Kaiser. 'Willy' however was angling for an invitation and, to keep Willy's mother, Crown Princess Victoria, happy, Queen Victoria agreed to invite him. He would have to be kept away from his aunt, Beatrice, and his cousin, Victoria of Hesse, since their husbands were 'Battenbergs' and, to Willy's mind, not sufficiently royal or 'of the blood'. His own sister, Moretta, was as that time, still hoping to marry a third Battenberg brother, Sandro - a notion which Willy and his paternal grandfather refused to even consider.
Willy's father, diagnosed with throat cancer, needed to be housed in a place where he could enjoy quiet after the celebrations; and then there was Willy's sister, Charlotte, who was known for making a scene and for whom, the Queen decided, the possibility of staying with her Uncle Bertie - with his 'fast set' - at Marlborough House was hardly appropriate.
Much as the Queen was looking forward to meeting Ella (Grand Duchess Elizabeth) again, she was certainly not so enamoured at the prospect of having to entertain Ella's husband, Serge.
On top of a myriad of other children and grandchildren and their spouses, were the Indian Maharajas and the splendid Queen of Hawaii (whose position in the order of precedence irked Willy, who ridiculously believed that a European prince should come before a black Queen!).
All things considered, the average family gathering is very easily arranged!
Dear Papa
On December 14th 1861, England lost the greatest king we never had, and Queen Victoria was plunged into mourning for the untimely death, at the age of 42, of her 'beloved angel', Albert.
The mourning continued for many, many years; his night shirt was laid out on his bed ever evening and his shaving water changed each day, and Queen Victoria withdrew from public life for so long - unable to 'face the world alone' - that public patience ran out and a sign was placed on Buckingham Palace gates, saying: "Situation Vacant".
In the immediate aftermath of his death, his second daughter, Alice - mother of Grand Duchess Elizabeth - was the one who held the family together and sustained her mother through those early weeks. Alice was particularly close to her father and resembled him in many way - both exhausted themselves in the service of their countries, and had an overriding sense of the responsibility that came with their privileged positions.
Two years after Prince Albert's death, Alice - now married to Louis of Hesse - write to her mother:
"Pray for me when you kneel at his grace - pray that my happiness may be allowed to last long; think of me when you kneel there where on that day my hand rested on your and Papa's dear hands, two years ago. That bond between us is so strong, beloved Mama. I feel it is a legacy from him."
Seventeen years to the day after her father's death, Alice - having exhausted herself caring for her family who had been struck with diphtheria, succumbed to the illness herself. She had been virtually unconscious for some days when, on 14th December 1878, she opened her eyes and murmured, "Dear Papa!" He had come to take her home.
Statues
I love statues - I try not to, but I can't help it.
Our cities are filled with statues most of which we pass by, never knowing anything about what or whom they represent. It's lovely to see the instantly recognizable Queen Victoria in most English cities, and then there are forgotten soldiers and heroes of wars that are now politically incorrect but who mattered once, and occasionally are moved or hidden away, according to what is acceptable in any given age. Churches are filled with statues that bear no resemblance whatsoever to the lives of the saints they are supposed to represent - gentle smiles and uplifted eyes as though they suffer nothing in the midst unspeakable torture! - and all the same, I love statues - they tell stories.
One day, I went to Westminster Abbey in search of the statue of Ella - Grand Duchess Elizabeth. After searching every nook and cranny (and finding some amazing stories but unable to find Ella) I gave up, disheartened, went outside and, sitting in the sun (a rare sight that summer!), looked up at the sky and saw her among the other 20th Century martyrs above the West Door. It took me by happy surprise - always looking the wrong place and then finding what I was looking for when I gave up trying. There was something poignant about that, too...the thought of her being out of sight, in second place...a bit like those statues that are lost beneath leafy glades and overgrown parks - a footnote in history. And there is something that I think she would have appreciated about that - the kind of statue that says, "Yes, I did what I did. Maybe I made a difference for some people and I don't want to be centre-stage."
It rather reminds me of children running through poppy fields besides war memorials. The busy world goes on, we walk past statues and whether they are heroes, kings, villains or saints, it all just goes to making up life today. Statues make me think of the athletes in races who hand on the baton. Statues seems to say, "Okay, it's your race now...go on and take it up from where we left off...."
I wonder if, when Ella walked into the Abbey for her grandmother's Golden Jubilee celebration, she looked up at the door and had any inkling that one day her statue would stand there. I doubt she did and I'm glad it does.
One day, I went to Westminster Abbey in search of the statue of Ella - Grand Duchess Elizabeth. After searching every nook and cranny (and finding some amazing stories but unable to find Ella) I gave up, disheartened, went outside and, sitting in the sun (a rare sight that summer!), looked up at the sky and saw her among the other 20th Century martyrs above the West Door. It took me by happy surprise - always looking the wrong place and then finding what I was looking for when I gave up trying. There was something poignant about that, too...the thought of her being out of sight, in second place...a bit like those statues that are lost beneath leafy glades and overgrown parks - a footnote in history. And there is something that I think she would have appreciated about that - the kind of statue that says, "Yes, I did what I did. Maybe I made a difference for some people and I don't want to be centre-stage."
It rather reminds me of children running through poppy fields besides war memorials. The busy world goes on, we walk past statues and whether they are heroes, kings, villains or saints, it all just goes to making up life today. Statues make me think of the athletes in races who hand on the baton. Statues seems to say, "Okay, it's your race now...go on and take it up from where we left off...."
I wonder if, when Ella walked into the Abbey for her grandmother's Golden Jubilee celebration, she looked up at the door and had any inkling that one day her statue would stand there. I doubt she did and I'm glad it does.
Today is the 144th birthday of Grand Duchess Elizabeth, whose birth shocked her grandmother, Queen Victoria, because the Queen felt her daughter - Princess Alice - should have waited longer before having a second child. The Queen was in for an even greater shock when she discovered that Alice had chosen to breast-feed her baby - something that the Queen considered unpleasant for anyone, and for a princess unneccessary and demeaning! So great was the Queen's annoyance that she ordered a cow in the royal dairy to be named Alice!
Wow!
Anyone who has ever written from the heart will empathise with this: Wow!! This book is published and, for the first time, it is published exactly as I created it, and will be available for anyone who wishes to read it within a couple of weeks. A labour of love that has become a reality at last!!
Thank you so much for all the emails and kind support given to this book!! I trust it lives up to expectations!! And am deeply grateful to you!!
Thank you so much for all the emails and kind support given to this book!! I trust it lives up to expectations!! And am deeply grateful to you!!
True Beauty
The most striking aspect of Grand Duchess Elizabeth has always been for me, her natural inclination to create beauty in everything. Renowned as 'the most beautiful princess in Europe', far from being possessive about that gift, she used it to the full both for herself and for others. When young, she paid great attention to her appearance; as time passed, that beauty went deeper and deeper and culminated in bringing beauty into the most 'ugly' places - into slums and hovels, into lives devoid of dignity, and into a world thrown into confusion by murder and war.
Now, more than at any other time in history, I believe that message is vital. We have made such advances in technology and science - wonderful advances, bringing people together - but I cannot help but feel sometimes that, along the way, we have forgotten the true meaning of beauty. One only need browse the shelves of video shops to see how many films are made about destruction and violence - 'action films' they are called. One only need glance at billboards or watch a couple of adverts to see how beauty is narrowed down to some designers' ideas of how we should all look, what we should wear....what beauty means.
I live near a wood filled with ancient trees, beside which is a new wood planted for the millennium. To see the young trees growing so quickly is amazing! To see the ancient trees with their gnarled roots, their twisted and heavily-laded branches, the marks in the bark, the intertwining of their limbs is truly breath-taking. Not one tree quite resembles another. Yet, there they all stand having absorbed centuries of wisdom and their beauty is ineffable. They don't fit a pattern. They don't do anything in the way of 'action'. But, strong and solid, they sometimes seem to me to have watched and listened and absorbed centuries of thoughts of passers-by, like me, and they are truly uplifting.
There is, I think, a beauty that doesn't ever try to be anything other than itself at its very best. I think Ella knew that so deeply and, unlike Rasputin, who felt a need to debase people in order to destroy their pride, she simply drew that loveliness from others.
In the midst of financial crises, toppling of governments and ending of empires; in the midst of turmoil in politics and the power-seeking scare-mongering of some politicians, true beauty cannot be destroyed. It is. And, like the ancient trees growing happily beside the newer woods, it simply continues because it is real. And reality is eternal.
Now, more than at any other time in history, I believe that message is vital. We have made such advances in technology and science - wonderful advances, bringing people together - but I cannot help but feel sometimes that, along the way, we have forgotten the true meaning of beauty. One only need browse the shelves of video shops to see how many films are made about destruction and violence - 'action films' they are called. One only need glance at billboards or watch a couple of adverts to see how beauty is narrowed down to some designers' ideas of how we should all look, what we should wear....what beauty means.
I live near a wood filled with ancient trees, beside which is a new wood planted for the millennium. To see the young trees growing so quickly is amazing! To see the ancient trees with their gnarled roots, their twisted and heavily-laded branches, the marks in the bark, the intertwining of their limbs is truly breath-taking. Not one tree quite resembles another. Yet, there they all stand having absorbed centuries of wisdom and their beauty is ineffable. They don't fit a pattern. They don't do anything in the way of 'action'. But, strong and solid, they sometimes seem to me to have watched and listened and absorbed centuries of thoughts of passers-by, like me, and they are truly uplifting.
There is, I think, a beauty that doesn't ever try to be anything other than itself at its very best. I think Ella knew that so deeply and, unlike Rasputin, who felt a need to debase people in order to destroy their pride, she simply drew that loveliness from others.
In the midst of financial crises, toppling of governments and ending of empires; in the midst of turmoil in politics and the power-seeking scare-mongering of some politicians, true beauty cannot be destroyed. It is. And, like the ancient trees growing happily beside the newer woods, it simply continues because it is real. And reality is eternal.
3rd excerpt from "Most Beautiful Princess"
It was early evening as she walked alone on the shores of the Sea of Galilee...
...A fishing boat moved silently over the water and a solitary seagull soared through the pale blue sky. The setting sun spread an amber glow across the horizon like a heavenly vision and, for a moment, breathlessly she paused. Perhaps it was indeed a heavenly vision: a vision of serenity, simplicity and perfection, so far, far removed from the shallow world of glittering ballrooms and palaces. So deep was the sense of peace that tears filled her eyes and a kind of sadness flooded her soul. She raised her hand to her heart. What a strange pain this was: nostalgia for something she had never known? Or a glimpse into another world of ineffable beauty?
She had known this feeling before but never to such depths. Like the glimmer of a candle caught through the corner of her eye, something so close and yet just out of reach; something so simple yet too profound to grasp; like a whispered word or the echo of a sigh; something…something…familiar yet different. She recalled one amber evening as a child, running through the meadows of Osborne, suddenly arrested by a sense that she was running through her childhood, running through her life, running through the whole of history; no longer simply an isolated being running on summer lawns, but a part of the great stream of Spirit, timeless and changeless yet endlessly flowing, creating, evolving. Even then, came the paradoxical awareness of the transience of the moment, captured forever in one eternal now..
Now, as the silent boat sailed across the Galilean sea, it seemed but a shadow of other boats, sailing the same waters long, long before she was born. She could almost hear the voices of fishermen calling to the other boats to help with the miraculous catch; and see the outline the Man walking across the waves. Christ, the fishermen, the apostles, all humanity seemed as close to her as her own self, woven into the fabric of her being as they were woven into the fabric of history; woven into everyone’s being, into Being Itself.
...A fishing boat moved silently over the water and a solitary seagull soared through the pale blue sky. The setting sun spread an amber glow across the horizon like a heavenly vision and, for a moment, breathlessly she paused. Perhaps it was indeed a heavenly vision: a vision of serenity, simplicity and perfection, so far, far removed from the shallow world of glittering ballrooms and palaces. So deep was the sense of peace that tears filled her eyes and a kind of sadness flooded her soul. She raised her hand to her heart. What a strange pain this was: nostalgia for something she had never known? Or a glimpse into another world of ineffable beauty?
She had known this feeling before but never to such depths. Like the glimmer of a candle caught through the corner of her eye, something so close and yet just out of reach; something so simple yet too profound to grasp; like a whispered word or the echo of a sigh; something…something…familiar yet different. She recalled one amber evening as a child, running through the meadows of Osborne, suddenly arrested by a sense that she was running through her childhood, running through her life, running through the whole of history; no longer simply an isolated being running on summer lawns, but a part of the great stream of Spirit, timeless and changeless yet endlessly flowing, creating, evolving. Even then, came the paradoxical awareness of the transience of the moment, captured forever in one eternal now..
Now, as the silent boat sailed across the Galilean sea, it seemed but a shadow of other boats, sailing the same waters long, long before she was born. She could almost hear the voices of fishermen calling to the other boats to help with the miraculous catch; and see the outline the Man walking across the waves. Christ, the fishermen, the apostles, all humanity seemed as close to her as her own self, woven into the fabric of her being as they were woven into the fabric of history; woven into everyone’s being, into Being Itself.
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