Source:
The Real Tsaritsa, Lili Dehn, 1923
(photo courtesy of GMZ Tsarskoe Selo)
The 1,000th post on this blog!
The Mauve Boudoir memories:
One day the Empress and I were sitting in the mauve boudoir, when we heard the excited voices of the Tsarevitch and Titi [Lili's son] in the next room.
"I believe they're quarreling," said the Empress, and she went to the door and listened to what the children were saying. Then she turned to me laughing. "Why, they're not quarreling, Lili. Alexis is insisting that Titi shall come into the mauve room first, and the good Titi won't hear of it!"
...
On December 16th [1916], when I was at Tsarkoe Selo, I told the Empress that I wanted to see Rasputin on the morrow, but just before starting for his house — about five o'clock on the afternoon of December 17th — I was rung up from Tsarkoe Selo — the Empress wished to speak to me. Her voice seemed agitated.
"Lili," she said, "don't go to Father Gregory's to-day. Something strange has happened. He disappeared last night — nothing has been heard of him, but I'm sure it will be all right. Will you come to the Palace at once?"
Thoroughly startled by this disturbing news, I lost no time in taking the train to Tsarkoe Selo. An Imperial carriage was waiting for me, and I soon found myself at the Palace.
The Empress was in her mauve boudoir; once again I felt the premonition of coming disaster, but I endeavoured to disregard it. Never did the "cabinet mauve" look so homelike. The air was sweet with the fragrance of many flowers and the clean odour of burning wood; the Empress was lying down, the Grand Duchesses sat near her, and Anna Virouboff was sitting on a footstool close to the couch. The Empress was very pale — her blue eyes were full of trouble, the young girls were silent, and Anna had evidently been weeping. I heard all there was to tell me: Gregory had disappeared, but I believe the Empress never imagined for one moment that he was dead. She discountenanced any sinister conjectures; she soothed the ever weeping Anna, and then she told me what she wished me to do.
"You will sleep in Anna's house to-night," she said. "I want you to see people for me tomorrow — I am advised that it will be better for me not to do so."
I told the Empress that I was only too happy to be of service to her. ...
...
On Saturday, February 25th, 1917, the Empress told me that she wished me to come to Tsarkoe Selo on the following Monday, and I was (let me confess it) still in bed when the telephone rang at 10 a.m. I suppose my delay in answering must have amused the Empress, for her first words were: "I believe you have only just got out of bed, Lili. Listen, I want you to come to Tsarkoe by the 10.45 train. It's a lovely morning. We'll go for a run in the car, so I'll meet you at the station. You can see the girls and Anna, and return to Petrograd at 4 P.M. — I'm certain you won't catch the train, but anyhow I'll be at the station to meet it."
I dressed at express speed, and, snatching up my gloves, a few rings, and a bracelet, I ran into the street in search of a fiacre. I had quite forgotten that there was a strike, and no conveyances were available! ...
The train for Tsarkoe was just moving out of the station when I arrived on the platform, ... as the Grand Duchesses Anastasie and Marie had just come to fetch me, I returned to the private apartments with them.
The winter afternoon was fast drawing in, and I found the Empress alone in her boudoir. She could give me no message for Mme Pistolkors. "I don't know what to advise," she said, sadly. Then, turning to me, "What are you going to do, Lili? Titi is in Petrograd... had you not better return to him this evening?"
At the sight of the Empress, so tragically alone, so helpless in the midst of the signs and splendour of temporal power, I could hardly restrain my tears. Controlling myself with an effort, I tried to steady my voice:
"Permit me to remain with you, Madame," I entreated.
The Empress looked at me without speaking. Then she took me in her arms and held me close, and kissed me many times, saying as she did so:
"I cannot ask you to do this, Lili."
"But I must, Madame," I answered.... "Please, please let me stay. I can't go back to Petrograd and leave you here."
The Empress told me that she had tried to 'phone the Emperor, and that she had been unable to do so. "But I have wired him, asking him to return immediately. He'll be here on Wednesday morning."
...
I spent the evening with the Empress in the mauve boudoir, and she told me how glad she was to have me near her.
...
During the afternoon the Empress called me into her boudoir. "Lili," she said, "they say that a hostile crowd of 300,000 persons is marching on the Palace. We shall not be, we must not be afraid. Everything is in the hands of God. To-morrow the Emperor is sure to come.... I know that, when he does, all will be well." She then asked me to 'phone to Petrograd, and get in touch with my aunt, Countess Pilar, and other friends. I 'phoned to several, but the news grew worse and worse. At last I 'phoned to my flat. The Emperor's A. D. C., Sablin, who lived in the same building, answered my ring. I begged him to take care of Titi, and, if it were possible, to join us at Tsarkoe, as the Imperial Family needed protection; but he replied that a ring of flames practically surrounded the building, which was well watched by hostile sailors. He managed, however, to bring Titi to the 'phone — and my heart ached when I heard my child's anxious voice:
"Mamma, when are you coming back?"
"Darling, I'll come very soon."
"Oh, please come; it's so dreadful here."
I felt torn between love and duty, but I had long since decided where my duty lay.
I told the Empress what Sablin had reported; she listened in silence, and then, by some tremendous effort of will, she regained her usual composure. Her strength strengthened me. We had, indeed, every need for courage. ...
...
The officers of the Garde were received by the Empress in the mauve boudoir during the morning [March 2]: I was present, and I heard from one of my husband's friends that the duty of taking the Garde to Petrograd had been carried out by a "temporary gentleman," Lieutenant Kouzmine. The officers were furious, especially their commandant, Miasocdoff-Ivanof, a big, burly sailor, whose kind eyes were full of tears.... One and all begged to be allowed to remain with the Empress, who, almost overcome by emotion, thanked them, saying: "Yes — Yes — I beg you to remain: this has been a terrible blow, what will the Emperor say when he hears about it."
...
After lunch, when the Empress and I were sitting in the mauve boudoir, we were startled by the sudden entrance of Volkoff. He was very agitated, his face was pale, he trembled in every limb. Without waiting to be addressed by the Empress, and utterly oblivious of etiquette, he cried: "The Emperor is on the 'phone!"
The Empress looked at Volkoff as if he had taken leave of his senses; then, as she realised the full import of his words, she jumped up with the alacrity of a girl of sixteen, and rushed out of the room.
I waited anxiously. I kept on praying that a little happiness might yet be hers... perhaps, for all we knew, the danger had passed.
When the Empress returned, her face was like an April day — all smiles and tears!
"Lili," she exclaimed, "imagine what were his first words... he said: 'I thought that I might have come back to you, but they keep me here. However, I'll be with you all very soon.'" The Emperor added that the Dowager Empress was coming from Kieff to be with him, and that he had only received the Empress's wires after the abdication. "The poor one!" said the Empress. "How much he has suffered! how pleased he'll be to see his mother!"
...
We remained in the mauve boudoir until quite late, but, just as we were about to go to bed, Volkoff entered in a state of painful agitation. He managed to tell us that M. Goutchkoff had arrived, and insisted upon seeing the Empress. It was then 11 o'clock.
"But, at this hour — it's impossible," said the Empress.
"Your Majesty, he insists," stammered Volkoff. The Empress turned to me — terror and pathos in her eyes. "He has come to arrest me, Lili," she exclaimed. "Telephone to the Grand Duke Paul, and ask him to come at once." Regaining her composure, the Empress rearranged the Red Cross head-dress which she had taken off, and stood waiting in silence for the Grand Duke. At length, after what seemed an interminable agony of suspense, the Grand Duke entered, and the Empress told him in a few words about her ominous summons. The next moment, loud voices in the corridor, and the banging of a door, announced Goutchkoff's arrival in the adjoining room. ...
At last footsteps sounded in the corridor — the door of the boudoir opened — and, to our unspeakable relief, we saw the Empress!
Marie ran towards her mother, half crying, half laughing, and the Empress quickly reassured us.
"I am not to be arrested this time," she said. "But, oh! the humiliation of the interview! Goutchkoff was impossible — I could not give him my hand. He told me that he merely wanted to see how I was supporting my trials, and whether or no I was frightened." Her pale cheeks were rose-flushed, her eyes sparkled — at this moment the Empress was terrible in her anger. But she soon regained her calm dignity, and we bade her good night, thankful that she was spared to us.
...
(photo courtesy of Ms. Svetlava Klychkova)
It was a bright moonlight night [March 8]. Outside, the snow lay like a pall on the frost-bound Park. The cold was intense. The silence of the great Palace was occasionally broken by snatches of drunken songs and the coarse laughter of the soldiers. The intermittent firing of guns was audible. It was a night of beauty, defiled by the base passions of men.
I went quietly downstairs to the mauve boudoir. The Empress was waiting for me, and as she stood there I thought how girlish she looked. Her long hair fell in a heavy plait down her back, and she wore a loose silk dressing-gown over her night-clothes. She was very pale, very ethereal, but unutterably pathetic.
As I stumbled into the boudoir with my draperies of sheets and blankets she smiled — a little affectionate, mocking smile, which deepened as she watched me trying to to arrange my bed on the couch. She came forward, still smiling. "Oh, Lili... you Russian ladies don't know how to be useful. When I was a girl, my grandmother, Queen Victoria, showed me how to make a bed. I'll teach you." And she deftly arranged the bedding, saying, as she did so: "Take care not to lie on this broken spring. I always had an idea something was amiss with this couch."
The bed-making "à la mode de Windsor" was soon finished, and the Empress kissed me affectionately and bade me good night. "I'll leave my bedroom door open," she said; "then you won't feel lonely."
Sleep for me was impossible. I lay on the mauve couch — her couch — unable to realise that this strange happening was a part of ordinary life. Surely I must be dreaming; surely I should suddenly awake in my own bed at Petrograd, and find that the Revolution and its attendant horrors were only a nightmare! But the sound of coughing in the Empress's bedroom told me that, alas! it was no dream... She was moving about, unable, like myself, to sleep. The light above the sacred ikon made a luminous pathway between the bedroom and the boudoir, and presently the Empress came back to me, carrying an eiderdown. "It's bitterly cold," she said. "I want you to be comfortable, Lili, so I've brought you another quilt." She tucked the quilt well round my shoulders, regardless of my protestations, and again bade me good night.
The mauve boudoir was flooded with moonlight, which fell directly on the portrait of the Empress's mother, and on the picture of the Annunciation. Both seemed alive.... The sad eyes of the dead woman watched the gradually unfolding tragedy of her daughter's life, whilst the radiant Virgin, overcome with divine condecension, welcomed the angel who hailed her as blessed among women.
(image courtesy of Gosfond)
(image courtesy of Laura Mabee)
Masses of lilac were arranged in front of the tall windows. It was customary for a fresh supply of lilac for the mauve boudoir to be sent daily to Tsarkoe Selo from the south of France, owing to the troublous times, no flowers had reached the Palace for a couple of days. Just before dawn, the dying lilac seemed to expire a last breath of perfume... the boudoir was suddenly redolent of the perfume of Spring... tears filled my eyes. The poignant sweetness hurt me — winter was around us, and within our hearts. Should we ever know the joys of blue skies, and the glory of a world new-born?
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