ROYAL BLOOD
A century after the massacre of the last Tsar and his family, a new exhibition at Buckingham Palace reveals how the close dynastic bonds between the Romanovs and the British monarchy were ripped asunder by the Russian Revolution. By Laura Thompson
One hundred years since the Bolsheviks’ murder of the Romanovs, we trace the close ties that were ruptured between the British and Russian Royal families
One hundred years ago, the Imperial family of Russia was rendered brutally extinct. The long line of Romanov Tsars – which stretched back to Michael I, and whose tercentenary had been celebrated in 1913 – was destroyed in a matter of minutes, by bullets and bayonets. Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their four daughters and one precious, haemophiliac son were murdered at Ipatiev House – to which they had recently been transferred by their Bolshevik guards – in the town of Ekaterinburg.
The February Revolution of 1917, and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks later that year, had long been prefigured. Nicholas’ grandfather, Alexander II, was assassinated in 1881. There was an abortive revolution in 1905. When Russia and its illprepared army became embroiled in World War I, the last vestiges of central authority fell apart. Nicholas was supremely ill-suited
to the role into which he was born, although perhaps nothing would have helped him, because throughout his reign the role itself lost its meaning. The Tsar was at the absolute mercy of history: an Imperial autocrat in the age of Lenin.
The killing of a ruler, however shocking, does not necessarily touch the heart, because – as with Tsar Alexander – it is the office rather than the person that is being attacked. But Nicholas, who had abdicated four months before he was killed, died as a family man, not an emperor – he entered the execution chamber carrying his son, Alexei, in his arms – and the events at Ekaterinburg evoke a different kind of shock, as if against nature rather than the established order. A collective shadowy memory persists of 17 July 1918, of the early hours of the summer morning on which the Romanovs were led into the basement, uncomprehending as yet as to why, while a 10-strong firing squad waited in an adjacent room.
There are details that refuse to be dismissed. The Tsarina, Alexandra, whose relationship with Rasputin had done so much to damage the reputation of the family, demanding that chairs be provided in the basement. Nicholas’ bewildered reply of ‘What? What?’ when it was announced that the ‘Ural Soviet of Workers’ Deputies’ had decided upon execution. The order of the deaths – Nicholas first – leaving time for grief, as well as mortal terror, in the ones who remained alive. The lovely girls, Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga and Maria, who survived longest because the jewels sewn into their clothes formed bright splintery bullet-proof vests, causing their killers to stab as well as shoot.
In the statement read to the family before they died, it was said that a plot to free the Romanovs had been uncovered and that this, had it succeeded, would have allowed Nicholas to escape ‘justice’. Here lay a most painful irony. Escape, which the family had always believed was possible, was in fact denied to them.
After the Revolution it had been Nicholas’ dearest hope that he might come to Britain. As is shown in a new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace – ‘Russia, Royalty & the Romanovs’ – the ties between the two Royal families were quite remarkably close. ‘Nicky’, whom one can easily imagine as an unassuming British aristocrat, was the cousin of King George V; at their last meeting in 1909, when they had dined on each others’ yachts during Cowes Week, a photograph was taken that showed the two men to be almost physical twins. The Tsar’s mother was sister to the wife of King Edward VII. His wife, the Tsarina, was born Alix of Hesse, the favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Asylum was offered by Britain, a little reluctantly, in March 1917. Then the fear intensified that it might give ammunition to the far left at home. Revolution elsewhere could cause unease everywhere: especially in a country dealing with a desperate war and a rebellious Ireland. At this point, the closeness of the Romanovs to the King probably worked against them. The Labour party, and quite a few Liberals, expressed outrage at the very idea of them receiving sanctuary, and perhaps parading about with the sovereign. And so George, who felt the overthrow of his cousin as a personal tragedy, as well as a threat, nevertheless did his duty and accepted his private secretary’s advice that the offer of asylum should be withdrawn.
He did not know, of course, what the consequences would be. Princess Katya Galitzine, the co-founder of the Prince George Galitzine Memorial Library in St Petersburg, whose ancestors were prominent members of the Imperial Court, now says: ‘When it happened, first there was disbelief. Then there was a lot of talk about trying to muster up foreign support.’ But support was not forthcoming. Instead Russia moved into the Soviet era, and the diaspora of ‘White Russians’ began. ‘It wasn’t until around 1927 that the Russians in emigration actually resigned themselves to the fact that they would not be going back.’ Those who got away were luckier than the Royal family, though it was sometimes a close thing: the Galitzines escaped in 1919 only because they missed their intended train, on which every passenger was killed by the Bolsheviks.
Although many White Russians went to France, the Galitzines came to London. Prince Vladimir – Katya’s grandfather – opened a shop in Berkeley Square selling Russian objets d’art, which in their way were also escapees from the Revolution. Queen Mary was said to be a particularly good customer. Indeed, the Queen and King George sought to assemble a collection of works that had belonged to their Romanov relations. Some of these pieces are displayed in the Queen’s Gallery exhibition, among them a Fabergé brooch given to the then Princess Mary during the visit of 1909, a Siberian amethyst of imperishable imperial purple.
Also on show are pages from the King’s diary, written when he was told about the killings. The sense of guilt was surely impossible to absorb; as were all emotions aroused by the murders. Katya Galitzine recalls: ‘My great-aunt would “spit” – not physically emit fluid, but make that breathless “spitting” sound that portrays disgust – whenever she passed the Russian Embassy building on Notting Hill,’ while her grandparents kept an annotated scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about the dead Romanovs. A commemorative ceremony for the family, held this centenary year in Russia, was attended by upwards of 100,000 people.
And in a strange way their fate still informs the relationship between the two countries: between Russia who killed its Royal family, and Britain who made the killing possible. The peculiar bond of respect and mistrust, mutual fascination and suspicion, persists today even during the cold-ish war of the Skripal era. It is explored in the Queen’s Gallery exhibition, through more than 400 works of art – a glorious mix of paintings, sculptures, ikons and textiles, many of these acquired as Royal gifts – tracing back some 300 years to the first visit by a Romanov Tsar.
It was in 1698 that Peter the Great arrived at the court of King William III and ensured that Russia would never again be wholly unknowable. Thereafter he brought his country immeasurably closer to Britain. He embarked upon a European tour known as the ‘Grand Embassy’, in which he disguised himself (unsuccessfully: he was six foot eight), absorbed the influence of the Enlightenment, and acquired an appreciation of Western customs and culture. He presented King William III with his own portrait by Godfrey Kneller, a superb tour de force that is on display at the exhibition; another of Kneller’s subjects, the Drury Lane actress Letitia Cross, beguiled the Tsar’s leisure during his stay in London.
Here, then, was the start; but the relationship between Britain and Russia developed apace in the hundred or so years before 1918. This was the era of the ‘Great Game’, as Kipling’s phrase had it, in which the two countries made strategic moves to gain imperial supremacy in Asia – Britain especially anxious to maintain control of India – while frequently playing on the same side, creating links that still hold.
For instance, Russia was the staunchest of allies with Britain against Napoleon. Portraits of its military figures – by Thomas Lawrence, on display at the exhibition – were commissioned for the Waterloo Chamber in Windsor Castle, and in 1816 the future Nicholas I was entertained to a 100-course dinner at Brighton Pavilion. Later, however, he would lead his empire into the Crimean War of 1853–1856, in which Britain fought with France against Russia. Lady Butler’s famous painting The Roll Call, which depicts a scene of grim aftermath of the Battle of Inkerman, is also on show at the Queen’s Gallery. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria, who made a point of showing it to Tsar Alexander II when he visited Britain in 1874.
By the time of the Crimean conflict the Russian empire had extended to 7.7 million square miles, but was in dire need of reform. The problems that would afflict future generations, and destroy Nicholas I’s descendants, were becoming blindingly apparent. Yet before the deluge there would be a final imperial flourish: a complex interweaving of marriages that would unite the Royal houses of Britain and Russia – also of Denmark – and generate a series of images, light-filled and impregnable and poignant, of a world of croquet and castles and limitless privilege, which seems all the more remote for being temporally recent.
Take the watercolours executed by the artist Nicholas Chevalier of the marriage between Queen Victoria’s son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, and the daughter of Alexander II, Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna. There is something deeply touching about the careful intricacy of these paintings, the extraordinary finesse with which every detail of dress is rendered, the almost dream-like atmosphere that they inhabit – like illustrations of fairy tales – despite their absolute fidelity to life. They are a record as accurate as the clicks of a smartphone camera; but how different in every other way!
This wedding in 1874, held in the Winter Palace, was the only direct dynastic marriage between the families. In 1866, however, the Danish Princess Dagmar – sister to Alexandra, Princess of Wales – had married the future Alexander III. Subsequently, two of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters would marry into the Russian Royal family. Alix of Hesse married the future Nicholas II. Her older sister Elizabeth married a son of Alexander II, became a nun after his death, and was murdered by the Bolsheviks – thrown into a pit along with a hand grenade – on the same day as the Imperial family.
Yet there was no sense of the apocalypse ahead in the serene group paintings produced by the Danish artist Laurits Regner Tuxen, commissioned to enshrine events such as The Marriage of Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia, 26th November 1894. Naturally, given the familial ties, the man who became the last Tsar visited Britain several times before the final occasion in 1909. As a boy of five, in 1873, he stayed at Marlborough House with his Uncle Bertie (the future Edward VII), and in 1893 attended the wedding of his cousin George. Three years later, he and his wife visited Queen Victoria at Balmoral, an occasion that was recorded on film: the young couple jump in front of the camera with gleeful exuberance, as if to prove that these are ‘moving pictures’.
This footage can be seen at the Queen’s Gallery exhibition. Then the story moves on; and for sure this is fascinating, to see for that Nikita Khrushchev, continuing the tradition of those very different earlier Russian leaders, should also have presented a gift to the Queen – an oil painting by Igor Grabar – in 1956, at the height of the Soviet era. Nevertheless the eye will be drawn back to the soft chiaroscuro pictures of the Romanov children, the anguished entries in a king’s diary, the images that tell one of the great tales of history, which was also the moment when the relationship between Britain and Russia was at its closest, and its most unbridgeable. What has followed are variants on that theme: the great game continues. ‘Russia, Royalty & the Romanovs’ is at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace (www.rct.uk), until 28 April 2019.
THE TSAR WAS THE COUSIN OF KING GEORGE V… HIS WIFE THE TSARINA WAS THE FAVOURITE GRANDCHILD OF QUEEN VICTORIA