institutions for their courtesy and efficiency. I especially appreciate the assistance of Miss Margery Wynne for making available the unique collection of Romanov albums and papers at the Beinecke Library. Without the help of Mr. Richard Orlando, who painstakingly traced numerous volumes, my research would have been thinner and more difficult.
I am greatly indebted to Mr. Dimitry Lehovich and to Professor. Robert Williams of Williams College, each of whom read the entire manuscript and offered numerous helpful suggestions. Neither is responsible for any errors of fact or judgment which may appear in the book. On specific points, I drew on the knowledge of Father James Griffiths of the Orthodox Church, Mrs. Svetlana Umrichin, and Mrs. Evgenia Lehovich. These three also gave their constant encouragement to the project as a whole.
My understanding of the medical problems of hemophilia has been guided by a succession of interviews and conversations with Dr. Kenneth Brinkhous, Dr. Martin Rosenthal, the late Dr. Leandro Tocantins, Dr. Oscar Lucas, Dr. David Agle and Dr. Ake Mattson. For specific questions relating to this book, and for their devoted support over the years, I am profoundly grateful to Dr. Leroy Engel and Dr. Herbert Newman.
Among those who by word and deed gave me steady encouragement during the many long months of writing were Suzanne and Maurice Rohrbach, the late N. Hardin Massie, Simon Michael Bessie, Alfred Knopf, Jr., Robert Lantz, and Janet Dowling, who, along with Terry Conover, typed the manuscript. My children have sustained me with their unfailing optimism and with dozens of cheerful drawings.
The contribution made by my wife, Suzanne, is immeasurable. Along with her own career in journalism, she produced a constant flow of research for this book. At nights and on weekends, she read and edited every line. Her ideas and suggestions, carefully recorded by me on hundreds of hours of tape, provided a constant environment of creative stimulus. Without this help, the book would never have been written. Now that it is finished, it is hers as much as mine.
ROBERT K. MASSIE
Four primary sources are cited in abbreviated form throughout these Notes. Nicholas II’s
CHAPTER I 1894: IMPERIAL RUSSIA
1 “This curious conglomeration”: Paleologue, I, 93.
2 “Cleaving the city down the center”: Kennan, 3.
3 River breezes and salt air: Paleologue, I, 348.
4 “Fashionable decolletage”: Dehn, 44. “Nobody thought of leaving”:
5 Receptions and balls: Meriel Buchanan, 13; Vorres, 99.
6 Imperial balls: Mosolov, 192–202; Vorres, 100–1; Alexander,
7 “That is what I’m going to do to your … army corps”: Alexander, 67.
8 Alexander III: Mosolov, 4. “A sovereign whom she does not look upon”: Bainbridge, 13.
9 “On the point of striking you”: Kaun, 130.
10 The bassoon: Pares, 30
11 Dagmar engaged to Alexander’s brother: Vorres, 21.
12 Empress Marie: Alexander, 73; Mosolov, 65; Vorres, 53, 57.
13 “They danced the mazurka for half an hour”: MF to N, 44.
14 “He is feted, he is stuffed”: MF to N, 45. The Imperial train derailed: Alexander, 168; Vorres, 29.
CHAPTER 2 THE TSAREVICH NICHOLAS
1 An older brother, Alexander: Alexander, 165; Vorres, 21.
2 Nicholas admired George’s humor: Vorres, 34. George’s tuberculosis: Alexander, 120.
3 Gatchina, 900 rooms: Vorres, 24. Alexander III up at seven:
4 “Nicky was so hungry”:
5 Dancing tutor: Vorres, 35.
6 “The High Priest of Social Stagnation”: Mazour, 36. “The dominant and most baleful influence”: Charques, 51. Coldly ascetic: Vorres, 38.
7 “Abode of the ‘Bad Man’ “: Alexander, 188.
8 “Among the falsest of political principles”: Pobedonostsev, 32.
9 “Parliament is an institution”:
10 Pobedonostsev’s philosophy: Pares,
11 Pobedonostsev excommunicated Tolstoy: Introduction to Pobedonostsev, ix.
12
13 “It is too early to thank God”: Pares,
14 The death scene: Alexander, 59–61.
15 “Their red lances shining brightly”:
16 “With faith in the power and right of autocracy”: Pares,
17 A slender youth, five feet seven inches: Alexander, 173. “His usual tender, shy, slightly sad smile”:
18 Languages: Alexander, 165.
19 N’s Diary: Pares, 15. The cryptic, emotionless style of Nicholas’s diary often is cited as evidence of a shallow character. “It is the diary of a nobody,” writes Charques, “of a man of transparently immature and of patently insignificant interests … triviality piled on triviality.”
Nevertheless, this kind of diary is not universally condemned. In certain circumstances, these terse, monotonous Edwardian diaries have been found admirable and praiseworthy: “On May 3, 1880 … [he] began to keep a diary,” begins one account of a royal diarist, “and from then onward he continued it without intermission until three days before his death. For fifty-six years, in his clear handwriting, he recorded daily the moment at which he got up, the times of his meals, and the hour when he went to bed. He acquired the nautical habit of registering the direction of the wind, the condition of the barometer and the state of the weather throughout the day. He would take careful notes of the places which he visited, the people whom he met, or the number of birds and other animals which he shot. Seldom did he indulge in any comment upon personal or public affairs; his diary is little more than a detailed catalogue of his engagements. He was not one of those to whom the physical act of writing comes easily and with pleasure; his pen would travel slowly across the page. Yet only when he was seriously ill would he allow his mother, his sisters or, later, his wife, to make the entries for him. His diaries swelled to twenty-four bound and locked volumes, each opening with a small golden key. They became for him part of the discipline of life.”
This description, with only minor alterations, could have been written of Nicholas II. In fact, it was written by Harold Nicolson in his biography of Nicholas’s cousin, King George V, pp. 15–16.
20 “Today I finished … my education: Radziwill, 37.
21 “As always after a ball”: N’s Diary, 13. “I got up at 10:30”:
