The Rasputin File (12 page)

And not by accident. Mitya was, in point of fact, an exceptional person. ‘His influence on the popular masses is immense — he gives the money he receives from his admirers to the poor. There is a rumour that he has the gift of foreknowledge and clairvoyance,’ I read in the files of the Department of Police. And he did have that gift.

As Bishop Feofan testified in the File, ‘The “Blessed Mitya” undoubtedly had the gift of clairvoyance, as I was able to convince myself on the basis of my own experience: at our first meeting, he beautifully and precisely outlined the circumstance of my life … The course of the war with Japan was exactly predicted … by him, in particular the fall of Port Arthur.’ But Mitya’s prayers were in vain: the tsarina failed to give birth to a boy.

And then Matryona the Barefoot made her appearance. She brought an icon with her. But dressed in rags and shouting barely comprehensible prophecies like some Delphic oracle, the barefoot woman herself vanished from the court just as suddenly as she had appeared. From the testimony of Vyrubova: ‘I heard about Matryona the Barefoot…she brought the sovereign an icon in Peterhof, but I never saw her.’ We’ll make a note of that route to the royal palace: bring a miracle-working icon that will assist in the birth of a son.

Such was the world the royal couple were now living in. A world of miracles, holy relics, icons, and miracle-workers. And they seemed ever more out of place in Petersburg, where enlightened society was becoming openly atheistic. It is no accident that Chekhov wrote in a letter to the writer Kuprin, ‘I now look with astonishment on any intellectual who is a believer.’

But the royal couple believed that their world continued beyond the limits of the depraved capital somewhere out there among the distant villages scattered across the boundless empire. The World of Holy Rus, of the simple folk who loved God, the tsar, and the church.

And they were waiting for an emissary from that world.

They Had Been Led Astray By A Legend

But that world, which had duped the West for so long, no longer existed. Its place had been taken by a resentful, impoverished people with an ever-diminishing faith in its clergy. The writer and religious philosopher Sergei Nilus (whose works Nicholas and the tsarina would read during their incarceration) bitterly records in his book
On the Banks of the River of God
the story of a nun of his acquaintance: ‘A nun arrived … and told me that it is impossible now for nuns to travel by train: there is no abuse, mockery, or oath that Satanic malice will not pour down on their poor heads…She has to put on a dark blue skirt so as to pass for a peaceable old woman, since otherwise she would be unable to walk down the aisle for all the cursing of monasteries and those who practise the monastic life.’

‘Such is “Holy Rus”!’ Nilus exclaims. ‘The poor people! Pitiful Russia!’ And the elders who lived in the great monasteries spoke of the same thing with the same anguish. In the words of an ascetic also cited by Nilus, ‘A Godless, faithless time has come for Orthodox Russia. The Russian has begun to live by the flesh and only the flesh … He is an Orthodox Christian in name but no longer in spirit.’ It is thus no surprise that after the Bolsheviks came to power, yesterday’s ‘chosen people’ took an eager part in the destruction of churches, the burning of icons, and the outrages against holy relics.

A Dress Rehearsal For The Coming Of Rasputin

And then the Montenegrin princesses at last found the tsarina a suitable miracle-worker. Militsa, a collector of rumours about supernatural occurrences, had heard about the Parisian miracles of a certain Monsieur Philippe. This miracle-worker was more agreeable to Alix, who had still not forgotten the European world that she had recently abandoned. Nor did his speech tire her out in the way that the barely comprehensible mumbling of Mitya or the incoherent ravings of Matryona the Barefoot had done. ‘The royal family met [at Militsa’s palace] with the Christian occultist Philippe, who had come from Paris,’ Vyrubova testified in the File.

His last name was Nizier-Vachod. He was a native of Lyons, a soothsayer and healer. He proclaimed that it was given to him to speak with the dead and that he lived, as it were, on the borderline between two worlds. Philippe was summoned to Russia. ‘A man of about fifty, small, with black hair and
a black moustache and a terrible southern French accent. He talked about the fall of religion in France and the West…As we were parting, he tried to kiss my hand, and it was only with difficulty that I managed to snatch it away,’ wrote Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich in his diary.

Philippe immediately sensed the tsarina’s high-strung nature and the terror in her soul. Appreciating her religiousness, he was able to reconcile his world of magic with that of Holy Scripture. For her, he at once became a man of God who had been sent to assist the divine dynasty. He also knew how to satisfy her hunger for miracles. He made generous use of cheap circus-type theatricality and all the tired baggage once employed by the great eighteenth-century adventurers Casanova and Cagliostro. That which the Paris press had made fun of produced an indelible impression in Petersburg. Nicky, overwhelmed by his wife’s passionate faith, shared in her delight. The court, however, watched the Parisian magus with derision. The court understood: he was merely the latest plaything devised by the Montenegrins for their royal friend. ‘Militsa introduced Philippe to the empress as someone who knows how to heal all diseases, including syphilis,’ A. Polovtsev, a respected member of the Council of State, mockingly wrote in his diary. ‘And this Philippe … has promised her that she will give birth to a son and not a daughter.’

The ironical stories alarmed Nicholas’s mother. ‘The dowager empress is very angry with Militsa and Stana … At her request, the Department of Police used their secret agents in Paris to check into Philippe’s past. The report that came back was frightful: the French termed Philippe a crooked adventurer. The Russian agent in Paris sent an ironical article from a French newspaper about a public hypnosis show of Philippe’s,’ Polovtsev also recorded in his diary.

But as in the future story with Rasputin, this had no effect whatever on Alix. She knew how to believe. She also knew how to be faithful, and she had a will of iron. In fact, Alix had a great many excellent qualities. Only one thing was lacking: an ability to heed the opinions of society. A quality without which it is unfortunately dangerous to occupy the throne, as Marie Antoinette, another beautiful woman just as completely lacking in that ability, might have told her.

Society grumbled. ‘Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich told me that after the unfavourable report on Philippe arrived from Paris, the emperor gave the order to sack the agent responsible for it in twenty-four hours,’ Polovtsev wrote in his diary. The pattern would be repeated in the story of Rasputin — the great Romanov family’s antipathy, Alix’s blind faith, and incredible gossip all around. Felix Yusupov recalled a story of his father’s. Once he
was out walking by the sea in the Crimea and encountered Militsa, who was driving somewhere with an acquaintance of hers. He bowed to her, but she didn’t respond. Several days later upon seeing her again he asked, ‘Why didn’t you respond to my greeting?’ ‘You could not have seen me,’ she said, ‘since I was with Dr Philippe. When he puts on his hat, he is invisible, and anyone with him is invisible, too.’ That’s the kind of mocking tale the courtiers were making up at the time.

Or another facetious rumour of the day: Philippe had been lodged in the royal couple’s bedroom to cast spells so Alix would give birth to an heir.

The saddest thing (as subsequently in the story of Rasputin) is that these fables came from the courts of the other grand dukes, who resented the favour shown to Nicky’s cousins Pyotr and Nikolai Nikolaevich. And in yet another anticipation of the future story of Rasputin, the dowager empress decided to have a serious talk with Nicky. He, of course, promised his mother to get rid of Philippe. And Alix, of course, proved to be the stronger. She pleaded with him not to touch the ‘man of God’, and everything remained unchanged. Just as we shall see more than once in the story of Rasputin.

And just as they would Rasputin, they called Philippe ‘Our Friend’.

At the time she was carrying a child. And joy — she had done it! Our Friend had predicted a boy. And on 5 June 1901, she gave birth to … a girl.

From the diary of Nicholas’s sister, Grand Duchess Xenia: ‘5 June … What disappointment: a fourth girl!’

But Our Friend explained it all away as the tsarina’s lack of faith. And as would happen with Rasputin, the Romanov family tried to replace the magus with somebody worthier. And the Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich even went to see the most famous man in Russia, the disgraced Leo Tolstoy. But Tolstoy could hardly exert any influence on the tsar.

‘How Rich Life Is Since We Know Him’

So as not to anger the dowager empress and the family, and to avoid court gossip, Alix and Nicky arranged to see Our Friend in secret. Just as they would later do with Rasputin.

They started meeting him at Militsa and Stana’s, running over to the Znamenka Palace after all their obligatory social business was done. From
worldly vanity to the mystical world of the Montenegrins and Our Friend with its captivating interlacing of life and miracle. From the tsar’s diary for 1901:

‘13 July, Peterhof. At 2:30 we went to Znamenka and sat in the garden until 5:00. Our Friend was there with us.’

‘19 July….We set off for Znamenka…We listened to Our Friend all evening. We came back at night in the marvellous moonlight.’

‘20 July … After dinner we went to Znamenka and spent the last evening with Our Friend. We all prayed together.’

And how much they missed Our Friend when he went back home to Lyons.

On 27 August Alix wrote to Nicky (in English, as was her custom), ‘Saturday evening towards 10.30 — all our thoughts will fly to Lyons then. How rich life is since we know him and everything seems easier to bear.’ ‘To bear’ meant getting the better of her premonitions and nervousness. Philippe had done the most important thing: he had relieved Alix of her constant stress, her hidden terror.

But Philippe’s chief accomplishment was that he had carried off the long-awaited miracle. Nicky and Alix were happy. She was pregnant, and Philippe had determined that it would be a boy. True, the doctors, after tedious medical tests, expressed doubt. But what were scientific fools and their tests next to a man who consorted with heaven? Alix forbade the doctors to examine her. Her Montenegrin friends and Monsieur Philippe, now officially certified a Russian doctor of medicine, became her doctors. All together awaited the birth of the predicted heir. The time of confinement was drawing near. Nine months had passed. And then, in August 1902, a shameful thing happened.

From one of Grand Duchess Xenia’s letters: ‘Imagine the horror of it: poor Alexandra Fyodorovna turned out not to be pregnant at all… Mama [the dowager empress] found her in a very melancholy state, even though she speaks like someone resigned to her fate… What a blow to her pride it must be!’

Polovtsev recorded in his diary what the court was saying about the matter:

30 August 1902 … By hypnotizing her, Philippe persuaded her she was pregnant. Yielding to his assurances, she refused all meetings with her doctors until the middle of August, when she summoned the obstetrician Ott, though only to consult with him about her sudden loss of weight. Ott
declared to her that she was not pregnant … An extremely muddled announcement about it was published in the
Government Herald
, so that among all classes of the population the most ridiculous rumours have spread, such as, for example, that the empress gave birth to a monster with horns that had to be strangled, and so on. The episode has not, however, shaken the imperial couple’s confidence in Philippe, who in their eyes continues to be a superb and inspiring person … It would all be funny if it were not so sad.

And the family sounded the alarm. Philippe was becoming a constant and painful topic of conversation in the Romanov family. Just as Rasputin later would.

‘He Will Soon Return…In The Form Of Another

Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich, a celebrated poet who wrote under the pseudonym ‘KR’, wrote in his diary for 24 August 1902, ‘Sergei [Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich, cousin to Nicholas and a friend of his youth] claims that Their Majesties have fallen into a mystical frame of mind, that they pray with Philippe at Znamenka … spend long evenings there, … and return home in a rapturous state, as if in ecstasy, with gleaming eyes and shining faces … My opinion is that it is more ridiculous than dangerous. The bad thing is that they cover their visits to Znamenka in secrecy.’

25 August: ‘Elena, the daughter of the King of Serbia, said that her brother has fallen under Militsa and Philippe’s influence. [Her brother] said that Philippe’s mission on earth has reached an end … that he will die soon, but will return to the circle of his friends in the form of another. What nonsense!! … Sergei told me that he is very upset about the emperor and empress’s visits to Znamenka.’

6 September: ‘I dropped in on Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich … He switched to the burning question of Philippe … He thinks it is the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich who is chiefly responsible for their closeness…who is the offender in this business … And that Philippe’s swindles have drawn down universal ridicule and abuse on the imperial couple.’

Now the whole family demanded Philippe’s departure, but Alix would prove that she knew how to believe and defend those she believed in.

Ella From The World Of The Kingdom Of Muscovy

The tsarina calmly endured the attacks of the Romanov family, who did not like her, and she gladly repaid them in kind. But Philippe became the cause of her first disagreement with her beloved sister Ella, Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna. The beauty Ella, the empress’s older sister, had married Nicholas’s uncle. It was in fact at Ella’s wedding that Nicky had first seen the fair-haired beauty Alix and fallen in love with her for ever. After their marriages, Alix and Ella were exceptionally close. Ella’s husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, was the governor-general of Moscow.