My Life In Russia’s Service:

Chapter Two

YOUTH

As I have already explained, my early instruction in mathematics had been, to say the least, unsatisfactory, and when, in the autumn of 1891, I started on the syllabus of the Naval College[1], I had to struggle hard to catch up with those of my own age who were to become my first shipmates.

At first I did not leave Tsarskoe for St. Petersburg, but received my lessons on the spot from instructors of the Naval College, who came specially to Tsarskoe for that purpose.

I found the work very laborious, as I had not the least knowledge of chemistry, mechanics, or trigonometry. All this was virgin soil to me. At the same time, I had to continue my other lessons in scripture, languages, drawing, and music.

All this hard work had one great advantage—it taught me from my early youth to organize my time, to divide the hours of the day, and set aside times for rest, and physical exercise, without which the mind is more apt to exhaust itself. During the whole of my life I have laid great stress on the necessity of keeping fit, being convinced of the benefits that arise from a well-trained and disciplined body. In this respect I may have been somewhat of an exception in Russia, where young men and women, overawed by the terrors of examinations and the consequences of failing in them, worked themselves to a state of complete exhaustion. Examinations were always considered a matter of family honour. A boy or girl who failed in them was a disgrace to the family, a person to be shunned for a time, a ‘ne’er-do-well,’ to be sure; he would never get on in the world. Youth was dominated by the ominous shadow of examinations and the malignant spectre of failure.

That fear of failing, coupled with the enormous ground which had to be covered for any of the State examinations, a scope of knowledge which was far too crammed and altogether too general, resulted in those pale, nervous, hysterical, and physically unfit persons, who could be seen wandering about like shadows during examination time and after. Russia in no way benefited from this system, which to no mean degree contributed to some of the sad events of later years. It was this class of overworked, ill-trained, and discontented students who, during the best years of their youth, had been subjected to these nerve-racking terrors that formed the fertile soil for terrorism, nihilism, and all the other evils, which could only flourish on such unsound ground. Had there been less cramming of brains and more physical training—and there was a total absence of it—among the youth of Russia, the sad events that were in store for us might yet have been avoided. It was the so-called ‘intelligentsia,’ the intellectual proletariat, and not the workers and peasants, who were the real carriers of discontent and revolutionary ideas. It is a trite but a true saying: ‘In corpore sano, mens sana.’ This ought to have been the device of our educationists.

I, too, was later to go through the teeth of that grinding mill, and to experience it in all its terrors.

It was during this winter of 1891, while I was being initiated into the secrets of theoretical navigation, that I was first brought into contact with the elegant and charming trivialities of Society. This, also, was one of the necessary equipments for setting out upon the course of life.

For the first time I met girls of my own age during our dancing lessons, arranged for us by Mother, who chose our partners. Some of the boys and girls I met during those jolly occasions—the Cantakouzenes, Bibikoffs, Gortchakoffs, Bariatinskys, and many others—became my friends for life. In this connection I especially remember Boris and Misha Cantakouzene,[i] and their charming sister ‘Dally,’ who later became Countess Nieroth. 

Then, all of a sudden, the curtain fell upon my childhood, upon that atmosphere of culture and refinement, which had formed the guarded environment in which I had grown up. Hitherto I had experienced nothing but the very- best examples of polished manners, of kindness, justice, and exalted moral and ethical standards in a home that was typical of the very best traditions of a brilliant and cultured period.

All this ceased suddenly in the summer of 1892, when I stepped across the shadow line which separates childhood from youth, and for the first time started life outside the parental home. I had never been pampered at home, and, as I have already pointed out, had been brought up strictly, but the things that lay in store for me exceeded all my imagination. It was a rude awakening, to be sure, an awakening, moreover, in which I found myself completely alone, in absolute isolation, to tackle all the new problems as well as I could, but only with the resources which I carried with me. I had to rely on myself for the first time, and with this reliance on myself I had crossed the frontier between childhood and the world outside.

I was to go to sea.

Father, of course, realized how hard it would be for me to separate myself from home and to enter into this completely strange new world, and so to lessen the rigours of this experience he had my future fellow-shipmates, boys of my age and stage of instruction, brought to Tsarskoe, so that we should get to know each other. We had tea together to get over our mutual shyness, and played all sorts of games in the park of our house. It was decided that my tutor, the Chevalier de Shaeck[2], and my old servant, Poliashenko, should accompany me on board my training-ship.

The separation from parents and home early in life is an experience which is quite natural to English boys, and is part of their usual public school education. Not so in Russia, however, where there were very few institutions for boarders. Boys lived at home while in their school years.

The Chevalier de Shaeck was an excellent individual, and more of a friend than a tutor. We shared in common our enthusiasm for hard physical exercise, and he was a past-master at gymnastics. He had been educated partly in Vienna, where he had graduated at the University, and in Geneva. To give him an official status on board he joined the officers’ mess in the capacity of language instructor, but this was entirely a fiction, as no teaching of any accepted European or other language, except of a quite different kind, to which I will have occasion to refer later, was done at all.

My personal servant, old Poliashenko, was a native of ‘Little Russia,’ better known abroad as the Ukraine. He was entirely representative of the region of his origin, being a severe puritan in the orthodox sense of the word, and very religious. He had been with me from my earliest childhood, had carried me about in his arms, and was to accompany me to all the various training-ships in my early stages of naval apprenticeship. Poliashenko’s wife had been one of our nursemaids. The couple were devoted to me, with that special kind of devotion to be found only with Russian retainers, who never stepped over the line of respect to become familiar, and yet treated their young master with something approaching parental solicitude. This was a relic of the feudal days—the feudal loyalty of the old patriarchal Society—which had come to an end in Russia in 1860; it had its parallel elsewhere, too, in the relations between squire and tenant. This spirit of fealty had drawn to a close with the industrial revolution, and with the retreat and surrender of the land to towns and factories. It bred a class of disinterested factory-owners, and a discontented proletariat, that in its wild and unscrupulous chase after wealth paved the way for the great disaster.

Poliashenko and his wife were invaluable to me as housekeepers in the years preceding my marriage, remaining with me until their deaths. They had been born serfs.

The great day had come. I was sent off to St. Petersburg with Shaeck and old Poliashenko, and was heartily glad of their company.

I assembled with my fellow-shipmates on the Neva quay, and with bundles, packages, and sea-boxes we were all hustled on board a small steamer, which soon cast off and began ploughing its way down the broad current of the Neva River, seaward bound to the Baltic naval base of Kronstadt[3].

When a midshipman goes to his ‘first ship’ in these modem times he comes into a world where the marvels of engineering and the ingenuities of science are blended into a floating town, where everything is cleverly devised to dovetail utility, defence, speed, and comfort into one great harmonious whole. Not so with me! When I started on my naval career, sail was still an almost indispensable part of a ship, although the period of transition to steam had already set in by that time.

I went to sea when the memories of the old, rough, salty days were still fresh in men’s minds and when the sea and those who fared upon it were more intimately bound to each other in a bond of fellowship, and by the spirit of their craft, when men were more at its mercy, and their success or failure, victory or defeat, life and death, were both in the gift of the sea and of the winds.

To master the elements one thing was essential above all others, and that was sail, its management, and the ability to manoeuvre in all the possible and seemingly impossible situations with which the cunning and the vicious nature of the sea could confront one. From the days of the Armada to Trafalgar victory and defeat had been decided in no small measure by the greater ability to make the most of sail, wind, and sea.

We were pestered with sail, we were crammed with every conceivable thing appertaining to that fearsome divinity, until in our sleep almost we could recite all that the riggings, the yards, the sails, fore, aft, and amidships, contained, even to the smallest details, until one got to hate the whole confounded thing. And of what use was it to us, who, when we became fully qualified ship’s officers, never set foot on board a sailing craft of the kind again?

However, there it was, and the futility of it all became quite obvious to me later, because that Noah’s Ark upon which I set foot that day, His Imperial Majesty’s Ship Moriak,[ii] [4] nearly capsized the first time they tried to hoist a few sails on her. She was top-heavy, unmanageable, and entirely unseaworthy. To add to the absurdity of it all, she was brand-new, having just been commissioned, but who had designed her and why, forsooth, she had been built at all in this manner, have remained an unsolved mystery to this day. Properly speaking, she ought to have finished at the bottom of the sea, but possibly her end was more appropriate to her very nature. She became a restaurant on the Neva side—an institution of the place, a sight to be seen, and a landmark. A dead hulk with none of that glamour about her of having done great things in her time, and resting from her labours, like a war-scarred veteran. No, she just lay there, a monument to inefficiency, an embodiment of the conception of failure.

If those who were responsible for her existence had been moved to hurry the deaths of those who were to entrust their lives to her, I would have understood this maritime enigma, but as this was unlikely, I had to accept this conundrum as unsolvable.

What made things considerably worse was the fact that her captain was what may be best described as an old fogy, and her commander a ruffian.

He was a brute, a bully, and a pestilent fellow all in one, whose sole mission on earth, his raison d'etre, so to speak, appeared to consist in manhandling the crew. His aim in life seemed to be nothing else than to ill-treat the crew like a devil specially appointed to lord it over us. Meanwhile, the captain, whose task it should have been to put a stop to these goings-on, contented himself with a perpetual state of far niente.

It appeared to me then that it was a special sort of fetish, a kind of indispensable ritual, that before anything could be done on that hulk of a frigate, a three-masted one, for such was her official status, there had to precede a storm of vehement abuse, without which no yard could be squared and no sail trimmed. This flow of dirt, for it was nothing but the uttermost filth, resounded from morning till night, accompanied by the savage outbursts of violence on the part of our commander. Those who are not acquainted with the Russian language have no conception of what Russian swearing is like. There is no comparison with it. It excels itself in unadulterated filth.

This is what came to my ears, and it was fortunate, indeed, that much of it was lost to me, I who had scarcely ever heard an angry word spoken.

But it was not lost on poor old Poliashenko, that kindly soul, who was most concerned for the welfare of his young Grand Duke, whom he had carried about as a babe.

“What sort of place is this, Your Imperial Highness, that we have got into,’’ he would say in utter despair, shocked to the marrow that a member of the Imperial Family should be allowed to flourish in such a rough, uncongenial atmosphere, more like a river-side ale-house than an educational establishment afloat, for about the only thing the ‘hulk’ could do was to float.

She was the most uncomfortable and fantastic vessel I have ever had the misfortune to be in. The pungent smell of her new paint and tar is still fresh in my nostrils. She had neither proper lighting nor heating, and the only machinery on board were the steam pumps. Fortunately, due to my status, I escaped the clutches of the commander, also, I had a bunk of my own, whereas the rest of my shipmates, about forty of them, slept in the usual way, in hammocks.

Not being able to move under our own power, we were taken in tow to Tralsund among the skerries of the Bay of Finland, between Viborg and Kronstadt. There, during the summer of 1892, we lay at anchor until August.

Only one attempt was made to set sail. It had to be abandoned at once, because the ‘hulk’ heeled over to such a dangerous angle that disaster was imminent. Thereafter the Admiral forbade any further efforts of the kind.

The officers on board fell into two groups. The first were real sailing men, and they taught us seamanship and navigation, whilst the others were a strange collection of ‘landlubbers’ from the Naval College, in no way suited to be in charge of boys. These latter had to supervise our conduct, in which capacity they did not prove themselves at all efficient.

They were longshoremen, who had, at one time in the very distant past of their youth, sailed upon the seven seas, but had lost all touch with it, since they never, unless they had to, set foot upon a deck, and with the passage of time had forgotten all they had known.

Once they entered the Naval College and donned its special uniforms, they remained there for life, like permanent fixtures. Old retired gentlemen they were, an archaic collection of worthy old fogys, who spent all their time at Kronstadt, where they did—nothing whatever!

However, they were considered by the naval authorities good enough to be supervisors.

Fortunately, all this was changed completely later, when first-class officers were appointed to this very responsible task.

My shipmates on all the training-ships to which I was apprenticed were, with very few exceptions, the sons of naval men, and some of those I met there became my friends. Most of them perished during the Japanese War: and with special regret I think of my good friend Kube[5], my earliest shipmate from the Moriak[6] days, and my dearest friend. Later he became my A.D.C. on the ill-fated Petropavlovsk. They have no grave but the sea.

There were about forty of us all told on the Moriak, and a happy, carefree lot we were, in spite of the atmosphere around us, which, incidentally, we soon got used to.

The crews of the Baltic Fleet[7], which, as one might have expected, should have been recruited from the Baltic and the White Sea coasts, with their excellent supply of material in men born and bred to the sea for centuries, were as a rule taken quite illogically, and for no earthly reason whatever, from the Central and Southern provinces of Russia. This fact is as incomprehensible as it is absurd. Our sailors were men who came straight from the plough, some of them had even never seen any water of navigable size, and that, indeed, when there was material of Viking stock available to us on our very threshold, and in close reach. To train these peasants took seven years, coupled with much State expense and an unnecessary waste of time. Even when they had been turned into the finished product they never looked upon the sea as their natural element. Yet it must be admitted that they proved themselves most adaptable and remarkably useful in their new environment. Later on the Navy had the further attraction for them in that they received elementary education there as ratings, and if they reached the higher ranks of able seamen and petty officers, they could, if they wished, have the benefits of intermediary education as well. In any case, those who were mechanics took with them, on leaving the fleets, a valuable knowledge of engineering, electricity, and much else.

We were divided in the usual watches, kept either on board or on the steam launches, and were given permission to choose our watch-mates from our friends.

The work was divided into practical seamanship, which included navigation, sailing-boat drill, training aloft, and signalling, and theoretical work below.

Up and down the rigging, along the yards, we clambered like a lot of little monkeys until we knew and had become perfectly familiar with every detail of the regions aloft, ropes, sails, and all else, a whole world of cumbersome detail, the particular functions of which had to be known by heart ad nauseam. Everything was concentrated on sail —which ruled supreme and unchallenged. 

My shipmates were a rough lot, but good fellows. In our spare time we used to organize expeditions in the boats to the islands nearby, of which there were literally myriads among the skerries, most of them moss-covered granite rocks of small size; there we picnicked.

During one of these expeditions we had no fresh water, and tried to make our coffee with sea-water, which in those regions is not very salty. The result was shocking! We spewed the poisonous stuff out into the sea, whence we had drawn it. 

Although the Gulf of Finland is not in itself dangerous for navigation, being well marked by buoys and lights, yet the skerries had to be surveyed once every year, and the channels marked afresh, due to the heavy ice which during the winter months shifted boulders into the channels through the force of its expansion.

One day I received an unexpected but very welcome visit from my early friend, philosopher, and guide, General Alexander Daller, accompanied by my brothers Boris and Andrey.

I was delighted to be able to show myself off to them by my knowledge of sails and rigging. I considered them with that patronizing air of contempt which is usual with sailors when dealing with landsmen on board their little realms. This visit was a very welcome diversion in the humdrum of my routine.

Towards the end of August there came a fearsome visitation, an infliction, in the shape of the Admiral Commanding the training-ships squadron, with the Naval College Board of Examiners. The Admiral was a fine old sailorman, very representative of the old days, a real old ‘salt’ to look at. He was straight and honest, and knew his job. In appearance he was a clumsy old fellow, very ugly indeed, and what struck me most about him were his boots with upturned toes, which looked as though they had been stuffed with walnuts.

The examination consisted mainly in testing our knowledge of sails and rigging, and the management of a ship under sail in various conditions of wind and weather. Considering that the only time we had put sail on her she nearly capsized, I think that I acquitted myself well of this examination. I passed successfully, and this was important in itself, as a failure in one’s knowledge of sails was tantamount to being put on the black list as ‘no good.’

This brought my days on the Moriak, to a conclusion, and I was heartily glad to shake her dust off my feet.

I was not sorry, however, to have had this experience. It was a rude entry into the world, but I had faced it squarely, learnt the lessons, roughed it as well as any of the others, and had stood the test. It was invaluable to me as an experience of youth.

During the winter of 1892 and 1893 I continued my studies for the intermediate Naval College examination for which I was going to sit in the spring of 1895. An enormous field had to be covered by then, and the nearer the time drew to this first serious test of my knowledge, the more exacting my studies became.

Most of the winter of 1892 and the spring of 1893 I spent between Tsarskoe and St. Petersburg.

My instructors were men well qualified in their special subjects, and I remember especially Youri Michaelovich Shokalsky, an oceanographer of repute, who, I believe, was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. At any rate he went frequently to London, where he was well known among the learned men of his day.

Although I had paid many visits abroad with my parents during my childhood, I had hitherto not been into the interior of Russia. St. Petersburg and the regions surrounding it were the New Russia, territories comparatively recently added to my country by Peter the Great on the conclusion of the Nordic War in 1721, and they were by no means typical of the country of which they formed the Western confines. The real Russia was as yet a terra incognita to me. This may strike one as odd, but the reason was that my father, as I have already stated, was the Commander-in-Chief of the military district of St. Petersburg, and while on duty he had to travel through the length and breadth of his Command. This district was very extensive indeed, and comprised within its radius the home provinces of the Metropolis, Finland, Esthonia, Livonia, Pskov, and Vitebsk. The Baltic littoral and its immediate hinterland, as well as the far Northern regions of Archangel and beyond, stretching away to the estuaries of the great Arctic rivers. My father had taken part in that famous expedition which attempted to investigate the possibilities of the Arctic sea route. It had tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Novaya Zemlya, during the summer months when the sea was not entirely icebound.

The Northern passage along the Arctic Ocean to the Pacific by the Bering Straits has always been an ambition of Russia. The feasibility of such a short cut would save one the tedious voyages from the Baltic to the Far East by way of the Suez Canal, and if ever such a route could be practically realized, it would bring Russia enormous economical advantages.

Thus it was not until the spring of 1893 that I first had an opportunity to visit Moscow, our ancient capital and second cradle of Russia, the very heart of the country and its holy city.

Uncle Serge,[iii] [8] was at that time its Governor-General and he had invited Mother and myself to some celebrations and gay society functions there during the season before Lent.

During this short visit—I only remained two days there— I had a very general impression of that most remarkable and entirely unique place, the beauties and treasures of which I was to get to know intimately during the Coronation of the late Emperor in 1896.

Suffice it then to give an impression of Moscow. Whereas St. Petersburg, in its general aspect, is a place of classical severity, efficiency, and majestic grandeur, methodically designed, equipped, moreover, with master works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it lacks that natural cohesion which alone the unplanned growth of centuries can bestow. St. Petersburg is new and therefore cold. Moscow, on the other hand, is different. For, being the work of many centuries, it provides a panorama of Russian history from the middle ages. It presents a motley ensemble of streets, broad and narrow, crooked and straight. Wealth and poverty are heaped together in natural disorder. Burnt down again and again, invaded, destroyed and rebuilt, Moscow has shared the fate of all great cities, and its destiny throughout history has stamped it with the mark of haphazardness. Unexpectedly, in the centre, one comes upon the Kremlin standing in the splendour of its originality, a blend of many centuries of Russia’s history and representative of the glories of her past. Another feature which lends special charm to this city is the  many houses belonging to the nobility and merchants, surrounded as a rule by extensive gardens and grounds. That Moscow abounds in an unusual number of churches, with their differently shaped and coloured cupolas is a well-known fact. This city, then, has an atmosphere which is at once congenial and inviting. Conveying an impression of intimacy and welcome, it is the true personification of Russia—an expression in material shape.

This then is the general impression one gleans of Moscow on one’s first visit. Later on I was fortunate in being able to witness Moscow in its most gorgeous apparel, a festive city adorned in its most festive robes, a great and last flare-up of a candle, which thereafter was to be extinguished.

In the summer of 1893 I again went to sea, but this time on board the Training Ship Prince Pojarsky[9]. She was an ancient three-master ironclad, steam and sail, of ante-diluvian design. Owing to her size and tonnage, she carried a veritable forest of yards and rigging, into which, except up the mainmast, we were forbidden to go because it was considered definitely dangerous.

However, in spite of this cumbersome world aloft, we cruised a good deal in her under sail, but only in the Gulf of Finland.

There was the same seemingly entirely indispensable and continuous flow of abuse, and the commander of the Moriakhad thoroughly worthy rivals in our captain and commander when it came to venting their tempers on the crew. They, too, were addicted to crew beating.

There was something new on the Pojarsky, which we had not experienced on the Moriak, and it was a truly interesting experience, something that had to be seen to be believed; this was her horizontal engine and the boilers—veritable museum pieces.

When I went to sea, engines, and those that dealt with them, were still considered by the older men as an unwelcome invasion, a wanton incursion into the hallowed and pure realm of sail. They were looked upon in the light of uninvited strangers, men who had filtered in unasked, bringing with them vapours, smoke, and pestilential odours. 

To some degree they were justified in their attitude, as I was soon to experience, and sail and steam did not in fact enter into any kind of harmonious partnership at any time; they interfered with each other, they did not ‘hit it off,’ as they belonged to different worlds.

Steam has taken much romance from the sea, it has broken her mystery and captivating glamour for ever. The art of the ancient craft of seamanship has retreated before the onslaught of progress. The sea, once a proud and domineering mistress, cruel and condescending, vicious and caressing to those who fared upon her, and lived by her, has become a liquid expanse, all planned out into lanes, along which steamers ply according to time-tables, like trains, to gather in merchandise from the uttermost ends of the earth. Every now and then the sea will rise and levy her toll, but she is being defied progressively not by art, but by soulless calculation and ingenious cunning.

Our living quarters were amidships and situated around the engine loft, into the mysterious gloom of which we could see quite easily like people looking over the parapet of a theatre gallery. And like in a theatre, we were occasionally treated to strange performances.

When her engines were started, and it took twelve hours to raise steam in her archaic boilers, there could be heard metallic clangs and the hissing noises of steam issuing forth from cylinders. Bright levers were moved, wheels turned, coppery tubes would flash in the yellow light of lamps, reflecting against mysterious clocks and cranks, among the deep shadows of that hellish and gloomy region. Figures moved, hurried, fled hither and thither in the steaming, oily vapours of this inferno. There were rumbling sounds, whistling sounds and sighs as from the lungs of an all-metal giant. There were the shrill ringings of the engine telegraph, whereon the hurrying shapes below could be seen turning more wheels, moving more levers, and then, with a jerk, moving first slowly forward and then falling heavily and retreating, the cranks might be seen sliding forward and backward, sallying forth and withdrawing smoothly in the unequal rhythm of a mechanical witch dance, faster and even faster. The whole procedure had the semblance of some fantastic ritual, ‘of a sordid farce enacted upon a sombre background,’ of a hellish fetish. This ‘rite’ of starting up the engines, quite appropriately had its sacrifices and its arch-priest, for they were considered so dangerous that there was only one man in the Russian Navy who was deemed initiated enough in the esoteric secrets of this engine to start it.

Meanwhile the waist, amidships, would be filled with the hot vapours of steam and oil. A fog would arise that shrouded us with its clammy and malodorous embrace. No wonder engines of this early design were unfavourably considered, as were also those who tended them, a greasy and dirty gang of men, who, whenever one of the ship’s officers drew into sight, would scurry away and down into the innermost depths of their regions, like frightened rabbits into burrows.

We carried with us four nine-pounder guns, which might have delighted the heart of Nelson—they were breech-loading affairs—but apart from that they differed little from the guns of his times, and were at most a danger to life—not, of course, to potential enemies, but to ourselves.

It was quite seriously considered right and fitting—and this was by no means intended as a practical joke—to teach us rudimentary gunnery with these things. The ‘things’ stood on wheels, and were nothing else but infernal machines. They had an eight-foot recoil, in which they were restrained by ropes. Every time they were fired they jumped viciously, as did the gunners—but for their lives, right out of the way, for one could never tell where these ‘cannons’ would land, and the ropes might burst too. Quite rightly, they were left alone as much as possible.

We had to work very hard on the Pojarsky from after breakfast in the early morning till night, and for that reason were excused night watches as we were much too tired. We continued with our theoretical and practical courses of the Naval College programme. They overworked us.

When she manoeuvred under sail, one of her funnels was lowered, so as not to interfere with the main royal of her mainmast. I do not now remember whether the Russian equivalent of the English command was given: ‘Down funnel, up screw,’ but it is likely. This, too, was one of the curiosities of those transition days.

When she moved under sail and the engines were not needed her propeller acted as an impediment to her speed. On such occasions it was disconnected and taken up through a special shaft which existed for that purpose aft.

This shaft provided us with much fun. It was narrow and deep, a kind of well at the bottom of which the sea gurgled and foamed. The motion of the vessel, specially in rough seas, her upward and downward pitch, strongest aft, of course, created a violent draught. We used to put our caps on this well and the draught blew them up in the air, throwing them about like a volcano ejecting rocks.

The conditions on board were exceedingly primitive, and although I had my own bunk, I felt the absence of the necessary comforts with which every ship of our navy at that period should have been equipped. There were neither baths nor electric light on board.

For our baths we had to go on shore with the crew, and in the few spare hours which were allowed bathed in the sea.

As young cadets we were taught the traditions of our navy. When entering the quarter-deck and during the midday ceremony of sharing out vodka to the crew, hats had to be removed. When in foreign waters the crews were served rum.

Before the midday meal, the food, which was excellent in our fleets—there was fresh bread every day—was tasted by the captain, and was presented to him by the commander and the chief cook. On Sundays we were piped to the quarter-deck for divine service, after which the ‘old man’ read out a chapter from the naval regulations.

When all this was done, the crew and the rest of us were given shore leave, and when at sea we were dismissed.

The only official punishments in the Russian Navy were confinement to the ship’s prison and cancellation of shore leave. This latter held the greater terror for us. When the Navy had been completely reorganized on a modern footing, and sail had gone the way of all things on earth, brutalities to the crews ceased entirely, but this in no manner reflected itself unfavourably on the excellent standard of discipline on board our ships.

No matches were allowed on board and no knives, unless specially attached by a thin cordon to our tunics. A knife dropped by accident from aloft has its obvious dangers.

As for matches, there were fusees kept in special brass-containers; we used to play with these fusees, chasing each other with them in the hope of giving one another hearty whacks with them.

When the crews were allowed to smoke, these fusees were lit by special command from the bridge. We did not have to do any manual work, except, of course, our drill aloft, sailing, rowing, gunnery, and the usual splicing, together with all the rest that belongs to the sphere of ropes. Deck scrubbing was the province of the crew, who incidentally went barefoot on these sailing-ships. They never wore boots and suffered much from sore feet as the result of climbing up and down the stays. 

In August 1893 I left Prince Pojarsky and joined my parents at Tsarskoe Selo.

In the autumn of the same year I accompanied them and my brothers and sister to Spain. On my previous two visits there I had only had the opportunity of seeing a small portion of it—the Basque country—and, in any case, was too small to appreciate the great historical treasures, the monuments of its glorious past, which make Spain one of the most interesting countries in Europe.

Father was the best possible guide, as he had a predilection for that country, the history of which he knew intimately.

Moreover, we were specially privileged in being able to see many of the treasures and works of art, which were jealously guarded by the clergy, and only shown to royalty. The ordinary visitor to Spain was not admitted to see them. How many of these, I wonder, have been spared from the blind outrages of hatred and destruction[10], from the appalling lust to annihilate the things which are beautiful and sublime when the bestial nature of man has broken the bounds of restraint?

We visited Valladolid, Saragossa, Barcelona, Valencia, and much else of interest, all of them names which then belonged to history, and now to the tragedy which is taking place in that country of sorrows—tierra de los dolores.

It was during this visit that I had my first impression of bullfights, which in their passion, death-defying courage and cruelty reflect better than anything else the true nature of the Iberians.

While on this Spanish tour we availed ourselves of the opportunity to go over a number of schools, institutions, and factories which gave us a general impression of its social and economical conditions at the close of the last century.

In order to complete our expedition, we crossed over to the Balearic Islands, the luxuriant and ethereal beauty of which made a very favourable impression on me. I remember especially our visit to the vast stalactite caves of the southern coast of Majorca.

After this very impressive and pleasant holiday I continued my studies partly at Tsarskoe and at St. Petersburg, where I remained alone for a few months, to make it easier for my instructors to attend to me.

I had to work very hard indeed, from nine o’clock in the morning until the evening, and then again after supper. The syllabus consisted of marine engineering, engines and boilers, electricity, mechanics, deviation of compasses, land fortifications, and nautical astronomy, and of much else besides. At the same time I continued with other lessons, not belonging to the Naval College programme. In spite of this crowded schedule, I found time for social functions, and physical exercises. About an hour before supper, Shaeck and I used to perform in our gymnasium at the Vladimir Palace.

I have always been a very keen tennis player, and during the winters of 1893 to 1896 I played frequently in the courts of Uncle Nicholas[iv] [11] and of Count Shouvaloff, whom we used to call ‘Bobby.’ These courts were, of course, not in the open, but had been improvised in their houses. We had another court in one of the large storehouses in the naval yards.

Father and Uncle Alexey[v] [12] frequently joined us in our games, as did also various foreign diplomats.

These were happy gatherings, carefree and merry.

How well I remember Uncle Alexey with his handsome figure accoutred in a strange garb of his own choosing and invention, which gave him the appearance of a real showman. It was a kind of red-striped flannel suit—a Mephistophelian affair—of which he, alone, among all men on earth, was the proud possessor. He was pleased with it and liked to be seen about in this fantastic get-up. “I am better dressed than any of you fellows,” he would say to us.

When we had our tea in this storehouse—the tea incidentally was brought to us from Uncle Alexey’s house nearby—the small boys from the Naval Training School, who were our ball-boys, would seize the opportunity to fool about with the tennis balls. When the ‘hullaballoo’ and din became too obvious, Uncle Alexey would thunder at them with his huge naval voice from the other end of the large building.

A fascinating part of my syllabus, fascinating because it was practical, was the making of nautical charts and survey work in the open, which I did on the lake at Tsarskoe with the able tuition of Youri Shokalsky.

Another equally absorbing part of my syllabus was nautical astronomy, taught me by M. Shulgin.

In the summer of 1894 I joined my third training ship, the Vovin.[vi]  She was a fully-rigged frigate, then of quite modern design, having been built in the Motala works in Sweden in the ’nineties. She was equipped with excellent engines, electric light, cabins, and baths. This was a welcome change, indeed, from the rough and primitive conditions to which I had hitherto been accustomed.

One day I was told to report to the captain. I presented myself to the old man accordingly, foreboding evil, but was to be happily disillusioned.

‘‘Your Imperial Highness is to report to His Majesty,” was his pronouncement. ‘‘There is a torpedo-boat alongside which will take you to the Imperial yacht.”

I was delighted! This meant two things—an interruption of board routine and a thoroughly pleasant time with Uncle Sasha (Emperor Alexander III), who always thought of everything and everyone.

He was on holiday at the time, cruising in his English-built yacht, the Tsarievna[13], in the Gulf of Finland.

Off I went on the torpedo-boat and clambered up on to the deck of the Tsarievna. There I met Uncle Sasha and Aunt Minnie with some of my cousins.

I spent two delightful days with them, and had, to use the schoolboy expression, a real treat. I was to distinguish myself, too. Uncle Sasha arranged a boat race for cousins Misha, Alexey Michaelovich, and myself. The race was to be rowed in dinghies, one dinghy to each of us with naval officers at the tillers. I won easily by several lengths, and on our return to the yacht received a handsome prize from Uncle Sasha.

Alas, this was to be the last occasion I was to meet him. Cousin Alexey,[vii][14] too, was to pass from us. He caught a severe chill during a gale and died soon after.

The circumstances which led to his death were interesting. Cousin Alexey was in the Navy, where he was finishing his training period afloat. He was of delicate health, and when he caught this chill it was suggested to his father, the Grand Duke Michael Nicholaevitch, that he should interrupt his course of training to get over his illness. Grand Duke Michael, however, who had a great, and possibly exaggerated, sense of duty, would have none of it, and insisted that the boy should finish his course. As a result cousin Alexey developed double pneumonia, of which he died. The first time he wore his midshipman’s uniform was in his coffin.

When I returned on board my ship I found myself an object of general envy among my young shipmates.

Death came to us and to all Russia, for in October of 1894 the Emperor Alexander III passed away.

The premature death of the man who had carried so admirably on his broad shoulders the heavy responsibilities of his vast empire, and during whose reign, for the first time for centuries, there had been no war, was an appalling disaster and a fearful calamity.

While he reigned all felt safe, because a strong man was known to stand at the helm of the Ship of State. His great and handsome frame of a blond giant held a character of iron and an absolutely truthful nature. He hated untruth and the crooked things of life. He was no subject to Hattery. In everything he was straight.

In his body as well as in his spirit, he was the veritable personification of a ‘bogatyr,’ the legendary national heroes of the early Russian chroniclers, like the Arthurs and Siegfrieds of other peoples. He was in all this an admirable pattern of what a Russian Emperor should be.

Had he lived, and he died when he was only forty-nine, there would have been no Japanese War and no revolution of 1905, and possibly also no World War either, nor the deluge of blood that followed in its fearful wake. Russia, and possibly the world as well, might have been spared from their Calvaries.

His death was a sunset, thereafter the sombre shadows of the dusk, preceding that fearful night which was to cover all things Russian with its ghastly gloom, advanced relent¬lessly. His death was the beginning of the end.

All the happy reminiscences of Gatchina, of the Anichkov Palace, of Peterhof, and the merry occasions also at which he and the Empress Maria Feodorovna had presided and which they had inspired with their personalities, all these were to end abruptly.

It was his policy, in which he was helped by his beautiful and charming wife, to keep the Imperial Family united in a bond of friendship and peace. He was the father of his family, as well as of his people, and all looked up to him as such.

I remember all the charming balls and dinners made bright by their presence. We were then a big, united family.

There were the winter balls, for example, periods of great festivities that came to a close when the rigorous fasting began, ascending in its severity the nearer it drew to Easter. This ball was usually held at the Anichkov Palace, where all of us would gather. It brought the season to its conclusion.

On those jolly occasions there would be a great display of flowers, adding to the informality of them, Because they were in pleasant contrast to the severe and formal atmosphere of the great Court balls.

During the intervals the older people would play cards, while we amused ourselves splendidly with all sorts of bright diversions. A start, as a rule, was made with figure dances, which were followed by quadrilles, with interludes of cotillons and finished with mazurkas. Viennese waltzes were not allowed at that time, except the two-step waltz.

Uncle Paul would occasionally conduct these dances, not an easy task by any means. One had to be very efficient to ensure good order and to maintain the harmony of them.

During the great Court balls, cavaliers presented their partners with coloured ribbons that had little bells attached to them. The ladies vied with each other for these, for the one who collected the most was naturally the heroine of the occasion. They used to wear them, during the balls, slung over their shoulders. This was a very old tradition of our Court.

I remember distinctly, when quite a small child, how mother used to give us her ribbons when we came to her dressing-room in the mornings. We used them as reins when we played horses.

My parents and all the members of the Imperial Family were near Uncle Sasha at his death in Livadia in the Crimea.

Never again was there to be that same spirit of understanding among us, that easy fellowship and gay merriment. All that had come to a final conclusion. It was a harsh stroke to Aunt Minnie, whose personality had been ideal for the exalted position which she had so admirably occupied. She had been an excellent consort. It was, I repeat, a dismal tragedy for Russia, the full extent and the real nature of which is clearer to me now than ever before.

His funeral was attended by a bevy of royalties and the representatives of foreign countries. The Prince of Wales represented England, and among the many others present were the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duke of Connaught, who later represented his country at the Coronation of the late Emperor.

While everyone was away at Livadia, I had remained at Tsarskoe, and found myself in the somewhat awkward situation of senior Grand Duke there, having to cope in that position with a crowd of officers, who were anxious to make certain of what they had to do concerning the oath of allegiance to the new monarch. They pestered me from morning till night.

On 14 November 1894, old style, my cousin, the late Emperor married Alexandra of Hesse. The Court was still in deep mourning for his father. Cousin Michael, my two brothers, and I officiated at the matrimonial rites as his best men in the Cathedral of the Winter Palace. I wore my Hussar uniform for that occasion, the right to which, as well as to those of three other regiments, Grandpapa had conferred on me at my birth.

The whole affair was very simple; it was entirely a family function, and was not, of course, followed by any festivities.

During the rest of that year and in the early part of 1895 I devoted myself entirely to my studies, and spent some months alone, for the first time, in the capital, to make it easier for my instructors to attend to me.

In the spring of 1895, the dread experience of the examination was at hand. My nerves were on edge. The expectation of the uncertain weighed upon me like a ghastly nightmare. One can get used to most things, but never to examinations. The memories of them pursue one throughout life, when many of the other recollections and experiences of childhood have been forgotten. I did not go to the examination—it came to me, to the Vladimir Palace.

When the great day came, I found myself faced by the formidable and forbidding array of my inquisitors, a board of Areopagites, with the director of the College presiding, and what made things considerably worse was that my father was in their very midst.

State examinations in Russia had a curious feature. To some degree one held the scales of one’s own fate, quite independent of how much or how little one knew. It was a matter of luck. The questions were written on slips of paper which contained every conceivable conundrum which the inventive genius of the examiners could devise. They covered all the subjects, and were piled up on a table, covered, of course, with that seeming indispensable feature of all examinations—the banner of them all—the green cloth.

One could only see the blank reverse side of these slips, the other side of which contained the ‘terror.’

One had to draw the tickets in this gruesome lottery', and ponder over them for a time before being admitted to the hall of judgment. My rank as a member of the Imperial Family made not the least difference to my chances of success or failure. I was treated equally with the rest, and I passed.

My joy was great, like appeasement after expectation of possible disaster.

Having acquitted myself well of this test, I was promoted to the rank of Petty Officer. There were no acrobatics of promotion for us. We all had to go through the mill with the rest, taste of their experiences and learn the lessons of the world as it presented itself to us in its natural and cold aspect.

Therein lay the wisdom of our traditions.

Before I joined my fourth and last training ship, the Vernyi,[viii] in the summer of 1896, Uncle Alexey,[ix] who was then Grand Admiral of our fleets, decided that his young nephew should have a little fun to compensate him for his hard work.

Germany was about to celebrate the completion of the Kiel Canal.

The Russian squadron was led by Admiral Skrydlov’s flagship, the Rurik, the latest and most up-to-date of our battleships at that time.

Hitherto I had not had an opportunity to see the Baltic proper, as all our activities on board the training ships had been confined to the narrow seas of the Gulf of Finland, between Kronstadt and Helsingfors.

It was on board the Rurik that I had my first impression of the open sea.

Arrived at the German Baltic Naval Base of Kiel, I took part in the procession through the canal on board the Russian gunboat Groziashchi. The procession of warships was led by Emperor William II on board his yacht. We were greatly impressed, not only by this amazing masterpiece of engineering skill but also by the excellent state of the German Navy. I must admit that at that time, in the late ’nineties, our fleet was in poor condition, most units being quite out of date and of no practical use whatever, but all this was to be subjected to a very thorough reorganization.

On our return to Kiel, the Rurik was inspected by the Kaiser, who always showed a very keen interest in all things Russian. He was a sincere friend of our country, and believed in the value of friendly relations between the two empires; a strong bond between them was always his cherished ambition.

On being informed of my presence on board, he sought me out specially. I was lined up on the immediate right of the petty officers of the Rurik. After he had shaken hands with the officers he came up to me, shook my hand and said some kind words. Later on I was invited to a big luncheon, a gorgeous affair indeed, at which nearly all the German princes and many other Royal personages were present. The Kaiser drank my health. This was the first, and somewhat alarming occasion of the kind I had experienced. I got up and bowed, and was decorated then and there by the Kaiser with the Order of the Black Eagle.

The rest of this summer, which was cold and damp, we cruised on the Vernyi between Reval, Helsingfors and Baltic Port. There was much fog and the sea was grey and uninviting.

This monotony was interrupted by a pleasant and quite informal diversion when we lay at Baltic Port for a few days. We got up a dance with the local girls in one of the harbour sheds and amused ourselves splendidly in this easy and popular atmosphere.

Baltic Port was in the military district of St. Petersburg, and as my father was just then inspecting this particular region, he came to see me.

The term was brought to an end with a practical examination on board the Vernyi, where a committee of examiners, who were always on our heels, tested our knowledge, in navigation, torpedoes, and a number of other practical subjects. On the last day of the term we had a boat race, and thereon I left for good the realm of sail, which is now almost a memory of other days, in so far as the great ships are concerned.

In the autumn of the same year I paid my first more or less independent visit abroad, with my good friend and tutor, de Shaeck. We went to Switzerland, where I had my first experience of climbing mountains. We did not attempt anything out of the ordinary, but did some mild climbing. This tour was a great success, and after a thorough inspection of that remarkably attractive country, we returned to Russia, stopping a few days in Coburg, where we stayed with Uncle Alfred and Aunt Marie,[x] [15] the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (later ruling Grand Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), my future parents-in-law.

My final examination was due in the early spring of 1896. There was the usual hard work and pre-examination feeling caused by excited nerves and by the hope of success and fear of failure. I succeeded, however, once more, and passed into the top class of the Naval College, where we were the nearest Russian equivalent to midshipmen. This entitled us to wear an anchor on the shoulder plates of our tunics. When later the Navy was reorganized an equivalent rank to midshipman was introduced, but at that period it did not exist as such.

There was yet much that would have to be learnt on board the various battleships in distant waters of other hemispheres, but that would be practical, and what made me feel relieved, delivered, and thoroughly appeased, was the knowledge that the almost unbearable humdrum of theoretical study had been left for ever behind. I suppose that at no time in life, except in very special circumstances, so much is demanded of the brain as during the period of one’s early studies.

It was spring; and spring in Russia is the loveliest season of the year, for it is Nature’s gradual awakening to new life.

I experienced the joy of having achieved, of having done the thing well, which comes to one after a great effort, when the brain is exhausted. 

My friends who had gone through the same experience gave me a party. It was held at Sheremetieff’s parental home and was a splendid occasion, made very jolly by the carefree attitude to life which had just held one in the grip of its severity. There was a choir of gypsies, an almost indispensable feature at Russian parties of those good old days.

By the time our celebration drew to a close we were well in ‘our cups,’ and poor Sheremetieff got into trouble later.

In the spring of that same year the late Emperor was to be crowned at Moscow. There was feverish activity in both capitals. St. Petersburg was preparing for a general exodus, and Moscow was organizing a brilliant reception.

There was a general déménagement in all the palaces of the members of the Imperial Family in St. Petersburg.

Uniforms were being fitted, and everything was being got ready. We were to take our own horses and carriages as well as our domestic staff.

At last, when all was ready, we left for Moscow, where the Nikolaevsky Palace within the walls of the Kremlin had been specially set aside for our family. 

There we stayed during the Coronation with our parents. We had the whole palace to ourselves.

Everything in Moscow was strange to me. It was like arriving in a new country, which at the same time was still one’s own. I have already given my first impression of Moscow', but now I was to see it and to get to know it intimately in all its exquisite beauties, with the guidance of Father, whose love for history made the past of that city live again.

We went over museums, saw the historical rooms of the Czars of Muscovy, the Granavitaya Palata,[xi] [16] the famous churches, and much else that breathed with the spirit of old Russia.

Moscow wore its most brilliant apparel. The streets of it and the houses were decorated, and there were special structures erected for the occasion to add to its already lavish gaiety. The whole place was like a city of fairyland.

The organization, barring one disastrous oversight, was quite unimpeachable.

On the day of the Coronation we assembled outside Moscow at the Petrovsky Palace for our entry into the capital. Everyone had been allotted his special place. The procession teemed with royalties from all over Europe and the East. We mounted our horses, and the Royal ladies stepped into their gilded carriages. I was riding a grey charger, a present to my father from the Emir of Buchara. It was a high-spirited animal, not easy to manage. I remember the beautifully embroidered saddle-cloth, a veritable chef-d'oeuvre of art. Everything on that occasion, from the very smallest detail to the highest and most sublime of them all, the climax of this unforgettable episode, was a blending of the best that art can produce with the dignified proportion of exquisite taste. The whole ensemble of the component parts of that ceremony was a drama acted in complete harmony with the surroundings.

The Emperor entered Moscow on a white charger, heading a brilliant cavalcade. He was followed by his uncles all in the different uniforms of their regiments, next came we and the Royal delegates from all the monarchies of Europe. There was among them a group of our Asiatic vassals, adding to the kaleidoscope of colour with the gorgeous costumes of the East.

This brilliant array of horsemen preceded a chain of golden carriages, flashing brightly in the sun of this warm spring day. The very weather, the blue sky and the sun seemed to collaborate with the effort of man to excel even Nature in a special and unique act of creation.

The line of carriages, most of which were of the period of the empresses of the eighteenth century, conveyed to the Sacring the Royal women of Europe, all of them radiant in their festive apparel. Among them were some of the greatest beauties of the time.

There was the carriage of the Empress and the one of Maria Feodorovna, always majestic, in spite of her bitter bereavement. There was another which contained the lovely daughters of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh,[xii][17]who were both striking beauties, and all the others who enhanced the charm of this occasion by their presence.

This procession proceeded along the streets of Moscow, among the enthusiastic cheering of the crowds that had gathered from the ends of Russia, from its colossal expanses, to witness this great event.

The climax of the great day was at hand. It took place in the Uspenski Cathedral of the Kremlin.

In spite of the fact that the Cathedral was packed with humanity, that the religious rites seemed interminable, and that one had to stand the whole time in a stifling atmosphere of heat, the general impression of the experience was altogether unique. It was a thing once and only once seen, a flash, as it were, of the beyond, only a sudden flash— and an enlightenment.

Whether it be in the smallest village church of our vast country, or even in some railway carriage eastward bound, or in the solitudes of the forests, Russian singing is a thing unique in this world, because it is almost celestial. It is a national gift and entirely original. And on this occasion a choir was gathered, composed of the finest known male voices in the whole land. The waves of harmony rose and fell, rolled and broke like the sea in tones which were scarcely of this world, vibrating throughout the length and breadth of the cathedral, filling it to its smallest recesses.

From sudden thunder it would dwindle to a still whisper. It implored, it triumphed, and it sorrowed, it conveyed an idea of the infinite, and while it lasted brought heaven down to earth.

The intricate rites of the Anointment followed each other in an uninterrupted flow of gorgeous ceremonial. The air was heavy with incense, the Cathedral resplendent with the flash of golden vestments and the sparkling of precious stones.

Upon this brilliant array of the officiating clergy, on those who were the objects of these rites and all those present, the icons looked down severely from their gold and silver screens, upon which the eternal lamps cast their coloured lights.

The mystery was great, and inscrutable, being in accord with the infinite.

The Coronation over, we took part in the brilliant gaieties that succeeded it. There were great balls, great gatherings of the cream of European Society, of royalty, and the representatives of the Great Powers. We had our first impression of the night life of the city, its cabarets and brilliant shows.

It was as though the past and the present had combined in a last great effort of joy before the gloom was to fall upon them. It was like the last great flare-up of a candle before it was to be extinguished.

The foreign princes who had come to Moscow provided us with much scope for merriment and pleasant buffoonery.

There was one of them, for example, who, after a very gay night, complained to me that he was “Alas, unable to make the best of the good time owing to the beastly education his grandfather had given him.”

There was another, too, a Siamese prince, who became the butt of our friendly teasing.

The music, the singing, the dances, and all the charming women there, the great dinners at the palaces of the Moscow nobility, the very cream of Russia’s ancient families, and of the merchant patriciate, the jolly, carefree hours of late nights, and many gallantries, too, all this has remained an unforgettable episode.

England was represented by the Duke of Connaught, a delegate of Her Majesty the Queen, and the Royal Family by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, who had with them their daughters and their son, Cousin Alfred.

Of all the Royal beauties the daughters[xiii] of the Duke of Edinburgh were among the most radiant.

I was included in the list of Coronation honours, and was to be promoted to the rank of sub-lieutenant of the Imperial Navy, to which the passing ot the final examination entitled me. I was given a year’s seniority over my contemporaries in the Navy, but before I received my first commission I had to go through a somewhat grim proceeding.

When members of the Imperial Family received commissions in the services, they had to take two oaths to the Emperor, the first was the oath of members of the Imperial Family, and the other was the ordinary service oath.

This ceremony took place at the Tchoudov monastery within the Kremlin, in the presence of the Emperor, his Court, and foreign royalties. I stood under the standard of the Corps of Naval Guards, which was held by a petty officer, with a naval officer on my right.

When the great festive gathering had dispersed, and things once more resumed their natural routine, I accompanied my father to the fair of Nijniy Novgorod, Russia’s great emporium on the upper reaches of the Volga.

Nijniy Novgorod, which means the Lower Novgorod, succeeded its more historical namesake, the mediaeval City Republic of Novgorod the Great as a place of great commercial importance. The power of Novgorod the Great was broken by Ivan IV, ‘The Terrible,’ who also put an end to the flourishing Oriental trade of Kazan, the Tartar city on the Volga, then Europe’s most northerly outpost of Islam. Their monopoly of trade passed to Nijniy Novgorod. This famous town had also the distinction of having been the birthplace of Minin, the Russian national hero, who, in the chaotic period of the interregnum during the early part of the seventeenth century, had been among those who led a national rising against the Polish invasion.

It has often been maintained that Russia knew no middle class. This is an erroneous assumption. The middle class of the country were the merchants, from the small shop-keepers to the great merchant dynasties.

When on this visit I first came into contact with our merchants, who entertained us lavishly both here and in Moscow. They were a highly cultured and thoroughly European lot. I remember especially Sava Morozoff[18] in Moscow, a member of that famous trading family.

These merchants of Nijniy Novgorod gave us an excellent time, which often resulted in a feeling of ‘the morning after the night before.’ After this visit we returned to Tsarskoe Selo.

It was my father’s wish that I should also experience the duties of an Army officer. Thus during the summer of 1896 I joined the Infantry Regiment of the Imperial Family’s Own Rifles, as an infantry officer. While I was in camp at Krasnoe, the Russian Aldershot, I was allotted a small timber-built house for my quarters—each officer had one to himself—of the same pattern as the ones which we had occupied with mother when we were quite small, during our visit to the military camp at Tsarskoe in the ’eighties.

During this camp season at Krasnoe I remember especially the splendid performances by the actors from the Imperial Theatre. These people lived their parts, and there was not the least trace of artificiality in their acting. In theatre technique Russians are unrivalled, as, I believe, the actors are unaware that they are doing anything unnatural; they live their parts, whatever these may be, and hence succeed in bringing real life to the stage.

There were comedies and ballets, with short ballet turns at the end of the performances.

So as to finish my education with an impression of the artistic beauties of Europe, my father decided that I should go to Italy. Thus, in the autumn of 1896, to conclude that year, which had been so full of splendid impressions, my friends Misha Cantakouzene and Ushakoff accompanied me on my Italian tour, during which we visited everything that was worth seeing there from the Lakes in the North to Sicily. We took our time, and had a very thorough impression of that country.

The winter season of 1896 was one of the most brilliant that could be imagined. The young Imperial couple entertained much, and there was an uninterrupted succession of balls and parties.

It was during this winter of 1896 that I started my service with the Naval Guards by joining Her Majesty’s first Company. I remained with them for twenty years—until the Revolution—and in 1916 was appointed their commander by the late Emperor[19].

Footnotes

(2024)

[1] “Naval College”  Today the “Peter the Great - St. Petersburg Naval Institute”, known from 1867-1891 as the “Naval School” (Морское училище), and later the Naval Cadet Corps.  The earliest origins of this institution are in the foundation of the School of Mathematics and Navigation Sciences in 1701 by Peter the Great, in Moscow. Once the capital was moved to St. Petersburg, the school was located there. The school was later reorganized under multiple names.

[2] Ivan de Schaeck, b. 1865 - d. 1926.  The little-known Ivan de Schaek became tutor to Grand Dukes Kirill and Boris in 1887. He remained in the service of Grand Duke Boris, becoming his private secretary, and was the author of several books about his trips with the Grand Duke, including “Six Months in Manchuria” (1906) and “Around the World With HIH Grand Duke Boris” (1910). De Schaeck was destined to follow the Vladimirs to the Caucasus, where he kept a diary which captured the events in Kislovodsk, Pyatigorsk, Yessentuki and Kabarda until August 1919. In 1920, this diary was published serially as “La Tourmente Bolschevique; Journal d’un Témoin” in “La Nouvelle Revue.”  (cf. Malbakhov, K.A. “Diary of A Witness" by The Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich’s Personal Secretary Ivan De Schaeck, Who Accompanied The Romanovs In the Caucasus from 1917-1919” Vestnik Arkhivista, No. 4, 2013.)

[3] “Kronstadt” The fortress and garrison city of Kronstadt was founded in 1703 on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland, not far from the mouth of the Neva river.  It became both a defense site for the city of St Peterburg, and an active training location for artillery, mine, diving, and machine schools of the Baltic Fleet of the Russian Navy.  By 1917, the garrison of Kronstadt was home to more than 30,000 sailors of the Baltic Fleet, with an additional 20,000 workers in the shipbuilding and ship repair yards.

[4] “Moriak” or “Sailor.”  In July 1890, the Ministry of the Navy sent out invitations to a number of Russian and foreign factories to participate in a competition for the construction of a three-masted steel sailing ship to replace obsolete training ships that made up the Training Detachment of the Naval Cadet Corps.  The winner, the “Sailor” proved unwieldy and useless and was, as GD Kirill notes, abandoned as a training vessel.

[5] Cf. note 7 of Chapter One

[6] “Moriak” “Sailor”. In 1890, the Ministry of the Navy commissioned the Sailor as a new training ship to replace several obsolete ships then in use.  The Training ship Moriak was launched in 1892, and Grand Duke Kirill was on the ship’s first training voyage.

[7] “Baltic Fleet”. The Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet was created by Peter I the Great, who ordered the first ships for the Baltic Fleet to be constructed at Lodeynoye Pole in 1702-1703. The first commander was a recruited Dutch admiral, Cornelius Cruys, who in 1723 was succeeded by Count Fyodor Apraksin. In 1703, the main base of the fleet was established in Kronshtadt, and by the 20th century was headquartered in Helsinki. Grand Duke Kirill astutely notes deficiencies in the recruitment policies of the Russian Navy here.

[8] Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich of Russia, b. 1857 – d. 1905. Serge Alexandrovch was the fifth son and seveth child of Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna.  Shy, religious, and deeply conservative, he married Princess Elizabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1884.  As Governor-General of Moscow during the reigns of his brother Alexander III and his nephew Nicholas II, he was blamed for reactionary and autocratic governance, and was assassinated in the Kremlin by a terrorist bomb during the revolution of 1905.

[9] “Prince Pojarsky” The Prince Pojarsky was a spar frigate, and later a 1st rank cruiser of the Baltic Fleet. The ship was launched in 1867, had a speed of 12 knots, and just under 500 men. A three-masted sailing frigate, the ship was known for its speed and maneuvrability, and was therefore used for long-range reconnaissance and cruising services, such as independent comabat and ocean communication duty to capture or destroy enemy Merchant ships.

[10] The Grand Duke refers here to the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, and which was still raging as he published his memoirs.

[11] Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich “the Younger” of Russia, b. 1856 – d. 1929.  The son of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891), and a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, the military man was a member of a junior branch of the imperial family.  In 1891, he had been forced to sell the Nikolaevsky Palace to settle his father’s enormous gambling debts, and with the remaining proceeds, he bought a house on Italianskaya Street on Mikhalovsky Square where tennis courts were installed. “Nikolasha” as he was known within the family, would ultimately become “Supreme Commander” of the armed forces, and later Viceroy of the Caucasus.

[12] Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich of Russia, b.1850 – d. 1908.  Grand Duke Alexis was the fifth child and the fourth son of Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. After a long naval career 1883, he was appointed General-Admiral of the Russian Imperial Fleet. While his actual influence over the navy was limited, and his role symbolic,  he was involved in naval strategy, and his influence over the Emperor Nicholas gave him power.  He was held responsible for the loss of the Russo Japanese war, and on 2 June 1905 (OS) he was relieved of his command and retired. He remained a beloved uncle of Kirill Vladimirovich, and died in Paris in 1909.

[13] “Tsarevna” “Princess” The Imperial Yacht Tsarevna was built 1874 in England for Emperor Alexander II, and was an elegant 840-ton yacht. The yacht was primarily used by Emperor Alexander III and his family for short trips off the coast around St. Petersburg and vacation trips to the Finnish skerries. The Tsarevna was used less after the completion of the Standart in 1896. The Tsarevna was decommissioned in 1917 and scrapped by the Soviets.

[14] Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich of Russia, b. 1875 – d. 1895. Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich was the sixth son and youngest child of Grand Duke Michael Nicolaievich of Russia and a first cousin of Alexander III of Russia. He was destined to follow a career in the Russian Navy.

[15] Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, b. – d. 1920.  Only daughter of Alexander II and Maria Alexandrovna, she married Alfred, Duke of Ediburgh, second son of Queen Victoria, and heir to the Duchy of Coburg. Educated, cultured, intelligent, and dismissive of those who did not meet her exceedingly high standards, the Grand Duchess influenced and vaguely terrified a generation of Romanov relatives.

[16] “Granovitaya Palata” “The Palace of Facets” contains the main ancient dining hall of the Kremlin, and is the oldest secular building In the Kremlin palace complex, built between 1487 and 1492.

[17] Queen Marie of Romania, and her sister the Grand Duchess Victoria of Hesse, who would later become Grand Duke Kirill’s wife.

[18] Savva Timofeyevich Morozov b. 1862- d. 1905. Savva Morozov was a Russian textile magnate and philanthropist, heir to a family fortune stablished by Savva Vasilyevich Morozov (1770–1862). The Morozov family was the fifth-richest in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century ranking only behind the Imperial Family, the Yusupovs, the Nobels, and the Vtorovs. The Morozov art collection was internationally famed. (Forbes Russia, Миллионщики, 22 October 2009.)

[19] Grand Duke Kirill misremembered.  He was appointed their captain in 1915.

Original Footnotes

(1939)

[i] Prince Cantakouzene, Ct. Speranski.

[ii] Sailor.

[iii] Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovitch, brother of Alexander III.

[iv] Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich (the younger)

[v] Grand Duke Alexey Alexandrovitch, then Grand Admiral of the Russian Navy. Brother of Alexander III.

[vi] Warrior.

[vii] Grand Duke Alexey Michaelovitch, son of Grand Duke Michael Nicolaevich (Uncle Micha).

[viii] Staunch.

[ix] Brother of Alexander III.

[x] Daughter of Alexander II.

[xi] A large hall in the Kremlin built in 'Muscovite Style' and used during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries for ceremonial occasions.

[xii] Queen Marie of Roumania, the Grand Duchess Kyrill.

[xiii] The Crown Princess Marie of Roumania, Grand Duchess Victoria of Hesse and Princess Beatrice of Cobourg.