Nicholas and Alexandra

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Royal Progress

EACH year as spring crept north across Russia, the Imperial family fled the frosts and snows of Tsarskoe Selo for the flowering gardens of the Crimea. As the moment of departure approached, the Tsar’s spirits always lifted. “I am only sorry for you who have to remain in this bog,” he said cheerfully to the cluster of grand dukes and government ministers who came to see him off in March 1912.

There was a regular cyclical pattern to these annual migrations. March brought the spring exodus to the Crimea; in May, the family moved to the villa on the Baltic coast at Peterhof; in June, they cruised the Finnish fjords on the Imperial yacht; August found them at a hunting lodge deep in the Polish forest; in September, they came back to the Crimea; in November, they returned to Tsarskoe Selo for the winter.

The Imperial train which bore the Tsar and his family on these trips across Russia was a traveling miniature palace. It consisted of a string of luxurious royal-blue salon cars with the double-eagled crest emblazoned in gold on their sides, pulled by a gleaming black locomotive. The private car of Nicholas and Alexandra contained a bedroom the size of three normal compartments, a sitting room for the Empress upholstered in mauve and gray, and a private study for the Tsar furnished with a desk and green leather chairs. The white-tiled bathroom off the Imperial bedroom boasted a tub with such ingeniously designed overhangs that water could not slosh out even when the train was rounding a curve.

Elsewhere in the train, there was an entire car of rooms for the four Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevich, with all the furniture painted white. A mahogany-paneled lounge car with deep rugs and damask-covered chairs and sofas served as a gathering place for the ladies-in-waiting, aides-de-camp and other members of the Imperial suite, each of whom had a private compartment. One car was devoted entirely to dining. It included a kitchen equipped with three stoves, an icebox and a wine cabinet; a dining room with a table for twenty; and a small anteroom, where before every meal zakouski were served. Even while traveling, the Imperial suite observed the Russian custom of standing and helping themselves from a table spread with caviar, cold salmon, sardines, reindeer tongue, sausages, pickled mushrooms, radishes, smoked herring, sliced cucumber and other dishes. At dinner, Nicholas always sat at the middle of a long table with his daughters beside him, while Count Fredericks and other court functionaries sat opposite. With rare exceptions, the Empress ate alone on the train or had her meals with Alexis.

Despite the excitement of leaving St. Petersburg, a trip on the Imperial train was not an unmitigated pleasure. There was always the nagging thought that, at any moment, the train might be blown up by revolutionaries. To make this less likely, two identical Imperial trains made every trip, traveling a few miles apart; potential assassins could never know on which the Tsar and his family were riding. Worse for the travelers were the normal discomforts and boredom of long train trips. Although it could go faster, the train customarily rattled along at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Accordingly, the trip from St. Petersburg to the Crimea meant two nights and a day of bumping and jostling across the interminable vastness of the Russian landscape. In the summer, the sun beat down on the metal roofs, turning the salon cars into carpeted ovens. It was a regular practice to halt the train for half an hour wherever a grove of trees or a river offered an opportunity for the passengers to get out, stretch their legs and cool themselves in the shade or by the water.

Once when the train was stopped in open country at the top of a high embankment, the children took large silver trays from the pantry and used them to toboggan down the sandy slope. After dinner, in the presence of the Tsar and Empress, General Strukov, an aide-de-camp, shouted to the children that he would beat them on foot to the bottom. Wearing his dinner uniform with the ribbon of Alexander Nevsky over his shoulder and his diamond-studded sword of honor in hand, the General threw himself down the bank. He slid for twenty feet, became mired up to his knees and gallantly waved as the children glided past, giggling with pleasure, on their silver saucers.

If the Imperial train was a means of travel, the Imperial yachts were a mode of relaxation. For two weeks every June, the Tsar gave himself completely to a slow, seaborne meandering along the rocky coast of Finland. By day, the yacht steamed among the islands, finding an anchorage at night in a cove deserted except for the lonely hut of an isolated fisherman. The following morning, when the passengers awoke, they found themselves surrounded by sparkling blue water, beaches of yellow sand, red granite islands and dark forests of green pines.

Nicholas’s favorite yacht was a 4,500-ton, black-hulled beauty named the Standart, especially built for him in a Danish shipyard. Moored in a Baltic cove or tied up beneath the Crimean cliffs in Yalta harbor, the Standart was a marvel of nautical elegance. As big as a small cruiser, fueled by coal and propelled by steam, the Standart nevertheless was designed with the graceful majesty of a great sailing ship. An immense bowsprit encrusted with gold leaf jutted forward from her clipper bow. Three tall varnished masts towered above her twin white funnels. The gleaming decks were covered with white canvas awnings and lined with wicker tables and chairs. Below were drawing rooms, lounges and dining rooms paneled in mahogany, with polished floors, crystal chandeliers and velvet drapes; only the private staterooms of the family were done in chintz. Along with a chapel and spacious rooms for the Imperial suite, there were quarters for the ship’s officers, engineers, stokers, deckhands, stewards, valets, maids and a whole platoon of Marine Guards. In addition, somewhere in the yacht’s lower decks, space had been found to house the members of the Standart’s brass band and balalaika orchestra.

Life aboard the Standart was easy and informal. The family mingled freely with the crew and knew many of the sailors by their first names. Often a group of ship’s officers was invited to dine at the Imperial table. During the day, the girls wandered the decks unescorted, wearing white blouses and polka-dotted skirts. Conversations and bantering shipboard flirtations sprang up between young officers and the blossoming Grand Duchesses. Even in the winter, when the yacht was laid up for refurbishing, the special bonds of shipboard life held firm. “During the performances of the opera, especially Aida,… sailors from the Imperial yacht Standart would often be called upon to play parts of warriors,” wrote the Tsar’s sister Grand Duchess Olga. “It was a riot to see those tall husky men standing awkwardly on the stage, wearing helmets and sandals and showing their bare, hairy legs. Despite the frantic signals of the producer, they would stare up at us [in the Imperial box] with broad grins.”

When the children were young, each was assigned a sailor whose duty it was to prevent his small charge from toddling overboard. As the children grew older and went ashore to swim, the sailor-nannies went along. At the end of each year’s cruise, the Tsar rewarded these husky seafaring nursemaids by giving each man a gold watch.

Even aboard the Standart, Nicholas was not free of the burdens of office. Although he barred government ministers and police security agents from the decks of the yacht, courier boats from St. Petersburg churned up daily to the foot of the Standart’s ladder, bringing reports and documents. As a further reminder of the presence of its august passenger, the yacht was never without an escort of navy torpedo boats anchored nearby or cruising slowly along the horizon.

At sea, Nicholas worked two days a week. The other five he relaxed. In the morning, he rowed ashore to take long walks through the wild Finnish forests. When the Standart moored near the country estate of a Russian or Finnish nobleman, the owner might awake to find the Tsar at his door asking politely if he might use a court for tennis. Sometimes Nicholas dismissed the gentlemen who accompanied him on these hikes and walked alone with his children, searching the woods for mushrooms or wandering down a beach looking for bright-colored rocks.

Because her sciatica made it difficult for her to move, Alexandra rarely left the yacht. She spent the days peacefully sitting on deck, knitting, doing needlework, writing letters, watching the gulls and the sea. Alone in the lounge, she played Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky at the piano. As they grew older, the girls took turns staying aboard the ship, keeping their mother company. In 1907, when Anna Vyrubova began making these cruises, the two women spent their days sitting in the sun, knitting and talking.

At teatime, the Tsar and the children returned with stories, wildflowers, mosses, cups of berries and pieces of quartz. Tea was served on deck while the ship’s band thumped out marches or the balalaika orchestra strummed Russian folk melodies. Occasionally, the girls acted out skits. Anna Vyrubova recalled the day that the older Imperial yacht, Polar Star, carrying the Dowager Empress, anchored nearby and the girls’ grandmother came on board the Standart for tea and a play. Afterward, Vyrubova saw Marie “sitting on Alexis’s bed talking to him gaily and helping him peel an apple just like any other grandmother.”

The part of the day Alexandra liked best was sunset. As the last slanting rays touched trees, rocks, water and boats with golden light, she sat on deck watching the lowering of the flag and listening to the deep, echoing male voices of the crew singing the Orthodox service of Evening Prayer. Later in the evening, while Nicholas played billiards and smoked with his staff, the Empress read and sewed by lamplight. Everyone went to bed early. By eleven p.m. the waves had rocked them to sleep, and stewards bringing evening tea into the drawing room invariably found the place deserted.

In 1907, the cruise on the Standart ended in near-calamity. The yacht was moving out to sea through a narrow channel while, on deck, the passengers were having afternoon tea. Suddenly, with a shuddering crash, the ship hit a rock. Teacups flew, chairs overturned, the band went sprawling. As water poured into the hull, the ship listed and began to settle. Sirens wailed and lifeboats were lowered. For a moment, the three-year-old Tsarevich was missing, and both parents were distraught until he was located. Then Alexandra herded her children and maids into boats and, with Anna Vyrubova, bustled back to her own stateroom. Stripping sheets from the bed, she tossed jewels, icons and mementoes into a bundle. When she left the yacht, the last woman to depart, she carried this priceless bundle securely in her lap.

Nicholas, meanwhile, stood at the rail supervising the lowering and casting off of the lifeboats. As he did so, he bent over the side every few seconds and looked at the waterline, then consulted a pocket watch he held in his hand. The Tsar explained that he intended to stay aboard to the last, and that he was calculating how many inches a minute the boat was sinking; he estimated that twenty minutes remained. Nevertheless, due to its watertight compartments, the Standart did not sink, and it was later pulled off the rock and repaired. That night the family slept in crowded quarters aboard the navy cruiser Asia. “The Emperor, rather disheveled, brought basins of water to the Empress and me to wash our faces and hands,” said Anna. “The next morning, the Polar Star appeared and we transferred to its more spacious quarters.”

In August 1909, the Standart steamed slowly past the Isle of Wight, carrying the Russian Imperial family on its last visit to England. The Tsar arrived just before Regatta Week, and before the races began, King Edward VII honored Nicholas with a formal review of the Royal Navy. In three lines, the world’s mightiest armada of battleships and dreadnoughts lay at anchor. As the British royal yacht, Victoria and Albert, steamed slowly under the rail of each of these mountains of gray steel, pennants dipped, saluting cannon boomed, bands played “God Save the Tsar” and “God Save the King,” and hundreds of British seamen burst into rippling cheers. On the deck of the yacht, the portly King and his Russian guest, wearing the white uniform of a British admiral, stood at salute.

After the naval review, the sailing races which climaxed the summer social season began. A great fleet of hundreds of yachts lay in the roadstead, their varnished masts gleaming in the sunlight like a forest of golden spars. “Ashore and afloat,” wrote a British observer, “there were dinner parties and balls. Steam launches, with gleaming brass funnels, and slender cutters and gigs, pulled by their crews at the long white oars, plied between the yachts and the Squadron steps. By day, the sails of the racing yachts spread across the blue waters of the Solent like the wings of giant butterflies, by night the riding lights and lanterns gleamed and shone like glow-worms against the onyx water and fireworks burst and spent themselves in the night sky.”

This visit was the only time that Prince Edward, the present Duke of Windsor, met his Russian cousins. Prince Edward, then fifteen, and his younger brother Prince Albert, who became King George VI, were cadets at the Naval College of Osborne, near Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Both British Princes were scheduled to show the Russian party through their school, but, at the last minute, Albert developed a cold which rapidly worsened into whooping cough. Dr. Botkin feared that if Albert passed the disease along to Alexis, the fits of coughing might trigger bleeding. Accordingly, Albert was quarantined.

“[This] was the one and only time I ever saw Tsar Nicholas,” wrote the Duke of Windsor, looking back on the event. “Because of assassination plots … the Imperial government would not risk their Little Father’s life in a great metropolis. Therefore the meeting was set for Cowes on the Isle of Wight, which could be sealed off almost completely. Uncle Nicky came for the regatta with his Empress and their numerous children aboard the Standart. I do remember being astonished at the elaborate police guard thrown around his every movement when I showed him through Osborne College.”

The Empress Alexandra was overjoyed to be back in the land where she had spent the happiest days of her childhood. Pleased with the warm hospitality offered by King Edward, she wrote that “dear Uncle” has “been most kind and attentive.” Less than a year later, “dear Uncle” was dead. His son, King George V, was on the throne and the young Prince Edward became the Prince of Wales.

Every emperor, king and president in Europe trod at one time or another upon the polished decks of the Standart. The Kaiser, whose own 4,000-ton white-and-gold Hohenzollern was slightly smaller than the Standart, openly proclaimed his envy of the Russian yacht. “He said he would have been happy to get it as a present,” Nicholas wrote to Marie after William had come aboard for the first time. In reply, Marie sputtered indignantly, “His joke … was in very doubtful taste. I hope he will not have the cheek to order himself a similar one here [in Denmark]. This really would be the limit, though just like him, with the tact that distinguishes him.”

The Tsar and the Kaiser saw each other for the last time in June 1912, when the two Imperial yachts Standart and Hohenzollern anchored side by side at the Russian Baltic port of Reval. “Emperor William’s visit was a success,” Nicholas reported to Marie. “He remained three days and … he was very gay and affable and would have his joke with Anastasia.… He gave very fine presents to the children and quite a lot of toys to Alexei.… On his last day he invited all the officers to a morning reception on board his yacht. It lasted about an hour and a half and afterwards he … said that our officers had got through sixty bottles of his champagne.”

To every other place in Russia, Nicholas and Alexandra preferred the Crimea. To the traveler coming down from the north by train, wearied by hour after hour of the flatness and emptiness of the Ukrainian steppe, the scenery of the Russian Crimea is lushly dramatic. On this southern peninsula washed by the Black Sea, rugged mountain peaks rise from the blue and emerald waters. On the upper slopes of this Haila range, there are forests of tall pines. In the valleys and along the sea cliffs, there are groves of cypresses, orchards, vineyards, villages and pastures. The flowers and grapes of the Crimea have always been famous. In Nicholas’s day, no winter ball in St. Petersburg was complete without a carload of fresh flowers rushed north by train from the Crimea. No grand-ducal or princely table anywhere in Russia was set without bottles of red and white wine from the host’s Crimean estate. The Crimean climate was mild the year around, but in the spring the sudden massive flowering of fruit trees, shrubs, vines and wildflowers transformed the wild valleys of the peninsula into a vast perfumed garden. Lilacs, wisteria, violets and white acacias bloomed. Apple, peach and cherry trees burst into pink and white blossoms. Wild strawberries covered every slope. Grapes of every taste and color could be plucked wild along the road. Most spectacular of all were the roses. Huge, thick vines curled over buildings and walls, dropping petals across paths, courtyards, lawns and fields. With its swirl of colors and delicate odors, with its bright sun and warm sea breezes, with the aura of health and freedom that it bestowed, it is not surprising that of all the Imperial estates scattered across Russia, Nicholas and Alexandra preferred to be at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea.

Before 1917, the Crimea was deliberately maintained as an unspoiled wilderness. Along the coast between Yalta and Sevastopol, the handsome villas of the Imperial family and the aristocracy nestled between the cliffs and the sea. Half the peninsula lay behind the high posts surmounted by golden eagles which marked the lands of the Imperial family. To preserve the natural seclusion and beauty of these valleys, Alexander III and Nicholas II had forbidden the building of railways, except for the track coming down from the north through Simferopol to Sevastopol. From this port, one traveled overland by carriage or by boat along the sea cliffs to reach Yalta, the little harbor on the edge of the Imperial estate. The voyage took four hours, the carriage ride all day.

The people of the Crimea were Tartars of the Moslem faith, the residue of the thunderous Tartar invasions of Russia in the thirteenth century. Until they were conquered by Prince Gregory Potemkin for Catherine the Great in the eighteenth century, the Tartars were ruled by their own khans. Under the tsars, they lived in picturesque whitewashed villages scattered along the slopes and marked from afar by the delicately laced minarets of their Moslem mosques rising gracefully into the blue sky. Tartar men, sinewy and dark-complexioned, wore round black hats, short embroidered coats and tight white trousers. “To see a cavalcade of Tartars sweep by was to imagine a race of Centaurs come back to earth,” wrote the admiring Anna Vyrubova. Tartar women were handsome creatures who dyed their hair bright red and wore floating veils to hide their faces. At the summit of all fervent Tartar loyalties stood the tsar, successor to the khan. When the Imperial carriage passed through Tartar villages, it had first to be halted so that the ranking Tartar chief could exercise his duty and privilege of riding through his village before his Imperial master.

The Imperial palace at Livadia was the special pride of the Empress Alexandra. Built in 1911 to replace an older wooden structure, it was made of white limestone and perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Its columned balconies and courtyards were in an Italianate style admired by the Empress from her fond recollection of the palaces and cloisters she had seen in Florence before her marriage. The gardens, laid out in large, triangular flower beds, were studded with ancient Greek marbles excavated from Crimean ruins. On the ground floor, a white state dining room was also used—with tables and chairs removed—for dances. From the dining room, glass doors opened directly into the rose garden; at night, the sweet smell filled every corner of the palace. Upstairs, from her rooms furnished in pink chintz with mauve flowers, Alexandra had magnificent vistas. From her boudoir she could see the mountains, still glistening with snow in May; from her bedroom, she could see the sweeping sea horizon. Nearby was Nicholas’s study; down the corridor were rooms for the children and a private family dining room. On the day in April 1911 when the new palace was opened, it was blessed in the Orthodox fashion by priests going from room to room, swinging smoldering censers of incense and sprinkling holy water. When they finished, Alexandra hustled in to unpack and arrange her favorite pictures and icons on the walls and tables.

For Alexandra and Alexis, the warm days at Livadia meant recovery from illness and renewal of strength. The Empress and her son spent their mornings together, she lying in a chair on her balcony, he playing nearby with his toys. In the afternoon, she went into the garden or drove her pony cart along the paths around the palace, while Alexis went swimming with his father in the warm sea. Once in 1906, Nicholas was swimming in the surf with his four daughters when a large wave swept over them. The Tsar and the three older girls rose to the crest of the wave, but Anastasia, then five, disappeared. “Little Alexis [aged two] and I saw it happen from the beach,” wrote the Tsar’s sister Olga Alexandrovna. “The child, of course, didn’t realize the danger, and kept clapping his hands at the tidal wave. Then Nicky dived again, grabbed Anastasia by her long hair, and swam back with her to the beach. I had gone cold with terror.”

Despite this accident, Nicholas enjoyed the water so much and considered it so healthy for his children that he had a large indoor bath constructed and filled with warm salt water so that their daily swimming would not be affected by wind or rain or a drop in the temperature of the sea. When Alexis appeared healthy, Nicholas was overjoyed. In 1909, in the middle of writing to Empress Marie, the Tsar interrupted himself to report cheerfully, “Just now, Alexei has come in after his bath and insists that I write to you that he kisses ‘Granny’ very tenderly. He is very sunburned, so are his sisters and I.”

At Livadia, Nicholas and Alexandra could live more informally than anywhere else. The Empress drove into Yalta to shop, something she never did in St. Petersburg or Tsarskoe Selo. Once, entering a store from a rainy street, she lowered her umbrella, allowing a stream of water to form a puddle on the floor. Annoyed, the salesman indicated a rack near the door, saying sharply, “Madame, this is for umbrellas.” The Empress meekly obeyed. Only when Anna Vyrubova, who was with the Empress, addressed her in conversation as “Alexandra Fedorovna” did the astonished salesman begin to realize who his customer was.

Nicholas spent most of his days at Livadia outdoors. Every morning, he played tennis. He made horseback excursions with his daughters to neighboring villas, to the farm which supplied their table, to a mountain waterfall. As in Finland, the children and their father collected berries and mushrooms in the woods. Sometimes in the fall, Nicholas built a small fire of twigs and dry leaves and cooked mushrooms in wine, stirring the bubbling tidbit in a tin cup. In 1909, when the Russian Ministry of War was redesigning the clothing and equipment of the Russian infantryman, Nicholas decided to test it himself for lightness and comfort and ordered an entire kit in his size brought to Livadia. He put on shirt, breeches and boots, shouldered the rifle, cartridges, knapsack and bedding roll and, leaving the palace, marched alone for nine hours, covering twenty-five miles. He was stopped at one point by a security policeman who did not recognize him and roughly ordered him to leave the vicinity. Returning at dusk, Nicholas pronounced the uniform satisfactory. When the Kaiser heard about this exploit, he was vexed that the idea had not occurred to him and asked his military attaché for a full report. Later, the commander of the regiment whose uniform the Tsar had worn asked Nicholas to fill out a common soldier’s identity booklet as a memento. In the booklet, Nicholas filled in the form: Last name: “Romanov”; Home: “Tsarskoe Selo”; Service Completed: “When I am in my grave.”

If possible, the Imperial family always spent Easter at Livadia. The celebration of Easter was an exhausting but exhilarating experience for the Empress. During the days of the great religious festival, she spent freely of the strength she had been carefully hoarding. In Imperial Russia, Easter was the climax of the Orthodox Church year. More profoundly holy and more joyous than Christmas, it brought an intense outpouring of emotion. Across Russia on Easter night, huge, reverent crowds packed into cathedrals and stood, holding lighted candles, to hear the great choral litany. Beginning just before midnight, they waited for the moment when the priest, the bishop, the Metropolitan, or all of them in procession, went in search of the Savior. Followed by the entire congregation, making a river of candles, they circled the outside of the church. Then, returning to the door, they reenacted the discovery of Christ’s tomb when the stone before it was rolled away. Looking inside, seeing that the church was empty, the priest turned his face to the crowd. His features lighted with joy, he shouted, “Khristos Voskres!”: “Christ is risen!” The congregation, the candles lighting their own glowing faces, responded with a mighty shout, “Voistinu Voskrese!”: “Indeed he is risen!” Everywhere in Russia—in Red Square before St. Basil’s Cathedral, at the doors of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan in St. Petersburg, in tiny churches in lost villages—this was the moment when the Russian people, peasants and princes alike, laughed and wept in unison.

At the conclusion of the religious service, the Russian Easter festival began. It was an unbelievable surge of eating, visiting and exchanging gifts. Most Russians hurried from the church to begin, in the middle of the night, the sumptuous feasting which broke the long Lenten fast. Because butter, cheese and eggs had been denied, the climax of these meals was paskha, a rich, creamy dessert, and kulich, the round Easter cake, crowned with white icing and the symbol XB, “Christ is risen.” It was a tradition that any stranger who entered the house was welcome, and the table was set with food night and day. In the Crimea, the Imperial palace became a vast banqueting hall. Presiding over this gaiety, Nicholas and Alexandra greeted the entire household with the traditional three kisses of blessing, welcome and joy. Schoolchildren came the following morning from Yalta to stand in line and receive little cakes of kulich from the Empress and her daughters. To members of the court and the Imperial Guard, the sovereigns gave their famous Easter eggs. Some were simple: exquisitely painted eggshells from which the yolks had been drawn through tiny pinholes. Others were the fabulous gem-encrusted miracles made by the immortal master jeweler Fabergé.

Peter Carl Fabergé was a Russian of French descent. At the peak of his success, around the turn of the century, his workshops in St. Petersburg employed five hundred jewelers, smiths and apprentices. He had branch offices in Moscow, London and Paris, and he did an enormous business in silver and gold, especially in large dinner services. His lasting fame, however, rests on the extraordinary quality of his jewelry. It was Fabergé’s genius to ignore the usual flamboyant emphasis on precious stones and to subordinate gems to the over-all pattern of the work. In designing a cigarette box, for example, Fabergé’s craftsmen used translucent blue, red or rose enamel as the primary material, lining the edges with a row of tiny diamonds. The result was a masterpiece of restraint, elegance and beauty.

Fabergé was officially the court jeweler to the Tsar of Russia, but his clients were international. King Edward VII was a regular customer, always demanding, “We must have no duplicates,” to which Fabergé could always reply with serene assurance, “Your Majesty will be content.” In a single day in 1898, the House of Fabergé played host to the King and Queen of Norway, the Kings of Denmark and Greece, and Queen Alexandra of England, Edward VII’s consort. In Russia, no princely wedding, no grand-ducal birthday, no regimental or society jubilee was complete without a shower of Fabergé brooches, necklaces, pendants, cigarette cases, cufflinks, writing sets and clocks. To satisfy his eager patrons, Fabergé produced a breathtaking array of imaginative jewelry. In an endless, gorgeous stream, his craftsmen turned out jeweled flowers, a menagerie of tiny animals, and figures of Russian peasants, gypsy singers and Cossack horsemen. His miniatures included tiny parasols, garden watering cans ornamented in diamonds, an equestrian statue of Peter the Great done in gold and less than an inch high, a gold Louis XVI cabinet only five inches tall, and three-inch sedan chairs made of gold and enamel with interiors of mother-of-pearl.

The supreme expressions of Fabergé’s art were the fifty-six fabled Imperial Easter eggs which he created for two Russian tsars, Alexander III and Nicholas II. Alexander began the custom in 1884 when he presented a Fabergé egg to his wife, Marie. After his father’s death, Nicholas continued the custom, ordering two eggs each year, one for his wife and one for his mother. The choice of materials and the design were left entirely to Fabergé, who surrounded their construction in his workshops with enormous secrecy. From the first of these commissions, Fabergé hit upon the idea of using the egg only as a shell which would open, revealing a “surprise.” Inside, there might be a basket of wildflowers made with milky chalcedony petals and gold leaves. Or the top of the egg might fly open every hour on the hour to elevate a jeweled and enameled cockerel which crowed and flapped its wings.

Fabergé’s problem was that every year’s masterpiece made his task that much more difficult in the year that followed. He never really excelled the Great Siberian Railway Easter Egg which he made in 1900. Because Nicholas as Tsarevich had been chairman of the railway committee, Fabergé created an egg of blue, green and yellow enamel on which delicate inlays of silver traced the map of Siberia and the route of the Trans-Siberian. The top could be lifted from the egg by touching the golden double-headed eagle which surmounted it, revealing the “surprise” within. It was a scale model, one foot long, five eighths of an inch wide, of the five cars and a locomotive of the Siberian express. “Driving wheels, double trucks under carriages, and other moving parts were precision made to work so that, given a few turns with the gold key … the gold and platinum locomotive, with a ruby gleaming from its headlight, could actually pull the train,” wrote an observer. “Coupled to the baggage car are a carriage with half the seats reserved for ladies, another car for children,… still another car for smokers … [and a] church car with a Russian cross and gold bells on the roof.”

Fabergé himself survived the Revolution, but his art did not. With his workshops broken up and his master craftsmen scattered, Fabergé escaped Russia in 1918 disguised as a diplomat and lived his last two years in Switzerland. An artist and purveyor to emperors, he had created works of art that survive as symbols of a vanished age, an age of opulence but also of craftsmanship, integrity and beauty.

Along with the palaces and villas of the Russian aristocracy, the seaside hills of the Crimea were dotted with hospitals and sanatoria for tuberculosis. Alexandra often visited these institutions; when she could not go herself, she sent her daughters. “They should realize the sadness that lies beneath all this beauty,” she said to a lady-in-waiting. The Empress herself founded two hospitals in the Crimea, and every year she sold her own needlework and embroidery at a charity bazaar in Yalta to raise money for these institutions. The bazaar was held near the Yalta pier, with the Standart, tied alongside, used as a lounge and stockroom. Sometimes Alexis appeared at his mother’s table. When this happened, a crowd gathered and men and women begged that the boy be lifted up high so they could see him. Smiling, Alexandra placed the small Tsarevich on the tabletop, where he sat cross-legged and, at her whisper, made a courtly bow.

Nicholas and Alexandra preferred to live quietly at Livadia, but the inhabitants of the neighboring estates followed a lively existence of picnics, sailing parties and summer balls. As they grew up, Olga and Tatiana were invited to these parties, and occasionally, well chaperoned, they were allowed to attend. Even the Tsar’s household life was more active than at Tsarskoe Selo. The palace was usually filled with visitors—ministers down from St. Petersburg to report to the Tsar, local residents or guests from neighboring palaces, officers of the Standart or one of the army regiments stationed in the Crimea—and unlike the procedure at Tsarskoe Selo, visitors were always invited to lunch. The children’s favorite guest was the Emir of Bokhara, the ruler of an autonomous state within the Russian Empire, near the border of Afghanistan. The Emir was a tall, dark man whose beard flowed down over a robe topped with a Russian general’s epaulets encrusted with diamonds. Although he had been educated in St. Petersburg and spoke perfect Russian, the Emir followed the custom of Bokhara, and when he spoke officially to the Tsar, he used an interpreter. When the Emir arrived, escorted by two of his ministers wearing long beards dyed bright red, he gave extraordinary gifts. The Tsar’s sister remembered receiving from the Emir “an enormous gold necklace from which, like tongues of flame, hung tassels of rubies.”

At Livadia in 1911, to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of her oldest daughter, Grand Duchess Olga, the Empress gave a full-dress ball. Before the dance, Olga’s parents gave her a diamond ring and a necklace of thirty-two diamonds and pearls. These were Olga’s first jewels, intended to symbolize her coming into young womanhood. Olga was dressed in pink in her first ballgown. With her thick blond hair coiled for the first time in womanly style atop her head, she arrived at the dance, flushed and fair.

The ball was held in the state dining room of the new white Livadia Palace. The glass doors were thrown open and the fragrance of the roses in the garden filled the room. The lights in the chandeliers blazed in clusters, catching the gowns and jewels of the women and the bright decorations on the white uniforms of the men. Afterward, a cotillion supper was served and the dancers strolled in the garden and along the marble balconies at the top of the cliffs. As they stood watching from the palace of the Tsar, a huge autumn moon came up and cast its silver light across the shining waters of the Black Sea.