Alexandra by Carolly Erickson Read Free Book Online Page B

travelling. She wintered at Malta, where her sister Victoria had leased a house. Her sister, and her grandmother in England, hoped that Alix might
find a husband among her brother-in-law Louis of Battenberg’s fellow naval officers. But though Alix flirted, danced and sipped tea with the eligible young men, and even singled out one of
them, a handsome Scot, for special friendship, she was not swayed from her bond to Nicky, and went back to Darmstadt unattached.
    There were other trips: to Kiel, to visit her sister Irene, who had married Henry of Prussia, brother of Emperor William, and to Italy, where she joined Queen Victoria
and toured the museums of Florence and Venice.
    Most of the time, however, Alix stayed in Darmstadt and served as her father’s hostess and as the ‘Landesmütter’ of Hesse – a role she apparently relished. It is
worthy of remark that in all the socializing Alix did at this time, whether welcoming guests at banquets, or making speeches to open charity events, or visiting hospitals or delivering largesse
from the court to poor families, no one recorded that she was shy or ill at ease. Meeting new people, being highly visible, suited her – particularly if the event had an altruistic purpose.
In reaching towards the larger goal of helping others, including helping her father socially, she lost her self-consciousness.
    In the spring of 1891, Alix was nineteen. Three social seasons had come and gone and she was still without a fiancé. She was rapidly becoming an old maid, and her grandmother, concerned
that she had ‘so few choices’, and worried that before long Ella would arrange a match for her sister in Russia, once again decided to intervene in an effort to direct Alix’s
future.
    Among Alix’s few choices, Queen Victoria thought, was Prince Max of Baden, an ill-favoured, charmless but otherwise suitable prospective husband. She wrote to Louis, emphasizing the
urgency of the situation and asking him to invite Max to Darmstadt as soon as possible.
    Max duly arrived in Darmstadt, and a startled Alix was informed that he intended to propose to her. ‘I vividly remember the torments I suffered,’ Alix told an informant many years
later. ‘I did not know him at all and I shall never forget what I suffered when I met him for the first time.’ 14 Threatened with the
danger of marrying without love or even affection, she recoiled inwardly. She had already refused Eddy. Nicky was being kept from her. Now she was being asked to accept this unappealing stranger,
who might very well be her last hope.
    It was an awkward and painful situation. Max, it appears, had been led to believe that he would be accepted. With the aid of hersister Victoria, Alix managed to
convince him otherwise, and grandmother Victoria was appeased. But Alix knew that it was only a matter of time before another stranger was sent to Darmstadt, or was invited to Balmoral when she was
there, or was placed in her path during some other visit to relatives. The matchmaking would not cease, she knew, until everyone in the family was convinced that it was too late for her to marry at
all.
    Meanwhile life in Darmstadt was quite pleasant, if uneventful. Alix sat beside her bearded, balding father at stiff formal dinners and travelled with her beloved brother Ernie, handsome, dapper
and devil-may-care, whose cheerful companionship she enjoyed. Like Alix herself, Ernie had artistic tastes, and his nature also included a strong vein of whimsy. She spent time with her
effervescent new friend Julia Rantzau, whom she met through her sister Irene at Kiel. She played her banjo and piano, danced at the winter balls, kept up her large correspondence – and
thought, sadly, of Nicky, occasionally exchanging letters with him and receiving the small gifts he sent. 15
    Nicky, back in Russia after his global wanderings and suffering severe headaches from his slowly healing head wound, was confiding to his diary that marriage to Alix