Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie Read Free Book Online Page B

father's champagne and listened while they sang songs from Russian Georgia. On Sundays, Mathilde went to the race track and sat just opposite the Imperial box, never failing to receive a bouquet of flowers, delivered for the Tsarevich by two fellow officers of the Guards.
    As Nicholas's affection for Kschessinska grew stronger, he gave her a gold bracelet studded with diamonds and a large sapphire. The following summer, when Kschessinska returned to the military theatre at Krasnoe Selo, Nicholas came often to rehearsals, sitting in her dressing room, talking until the rehearsal began. After the performance, Nicholas came for Kschessinska, driving his own troika. Alone together they set off on starlit rides, galloping through the shadows on the great plain of Krasnoe Selo. Sometimes, after these blood-stirring rides, the Tsarevich stayed after supper until dawn.
    At the end of that summer of 1892, Kschessinska decided that she needed a place of her own. "Though he did not openly mention it," she said, "I guessed that the Tsarevich shared this wish." Her father, shattered by her announcement, asked whether she understood that Nicholas could never marry her. Mathilde replied that she cared nothing about the future and wished only to seize whatever brief happiness Fate was offering her. Soon after, she rented a small two-story house in St. Petersburg, owned by the composer Rimsky-Korsakov.
    When her house was ready, Nicholas celebrated the housewarming by giving her a vodka service of eight small gold glasses inlaid with jewels. Thereafter, she said, "we led a quiet, retiring life." Nicholas usually rode up on horseback in time for supper. They gave little parties, attended by the three young Grand Dukes, another dancer or two and a tenor of whom Nicholas was fond. After supper, in "an intimate and delightful atmosphere" the company played baccarat.
    Nicholas, meanwhile, continued his functions at court. "I have been nominated a member of the Finance Committee," he wrote at one point. "A great honor, but not much pleasure. ... I received six members of this institution; I admit that I never suspected its existence." He became president of a committee to aid those who were starving in a famine, and he worked hard at the job, raising money and donating substantial funds of his own. His relations with his father
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    remained distant and deferential. "I would have liked to exercise with the Hussars today," he wrote, "but I forgot to ask Papa." Sergius Witte, the burly, efficient Finance Minister who built the Trans-Siberian Railway and later served Nicholas during the Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution, gave an account of a conversation he had with Alexander III. According to Witte, he began the conversation by suggesting to the Tsar that the Tsarevich be appointed president of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Witte says Alexander III was astonished by his proposal.
    "What? But you know the Tsarevich. Have you ever had a serious conversation with him?"
    "No, Sire, I have never had the pleasure of having such a conversation with the Heir."
    "He is still absolutely a child, he has only infantile judgments, how would he be able to be president of a committee?"
    "Nevertheless, Sire, if you do not begin to initiate him to affairs of state, he will never understand them."
    In 1893, Nicholas was sent to London to represent the family at the wedding of his first cousin George, Duke of York—later King George V—to Princess Mary of Teck. The Tsarevich was lodged in Marlborough House with most of the royal personages of Europe living just down the hall. The Prince of Wales, always concerned with sartorial matters, immediately decided that the young visitor needed sprucing. "Uncle Bertie, of course, sent me at once a tailor, a bootmaker and a hatter," Nicholas reported to his mother. This was his first visit to London. "I never thought I would like it so much," he said, describing his visits to Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's and the Tower.