Nicholas and Alexandra

somewhere near the town, it rained hard after which the air became delightful and much fresher. We slept well with the window open.… Thank God he looks so well and has become sunburnt.… He wakes up early in the morning between 7 and 8, sits up in bed and begins to talk quietly to me. I answer drowsily, he settles down and lies quietly until I am called.”

There was a tender charm in this intimate companionship between father and son, briefly shared in the middle of a great war; for them, the room at Mogilev became a tiny haven of peace and affection set in the eye of the hurricane. “He brings much light into my life here,” Nicholas wrote. Later, he said, “His company gives light and life to all of us.”

Every morning at Headquarters, the Tsarevich did lessons with Gilliard on the veranda. Afterward, he played in the garden with a toy rifle. “He always carries his little gun with him and walks backwards and forwards on the path marching and singing loudly,” wrote Nicholas. “I went into the little garden where Alexei was marching about singing loudly and Derevenko was walking on another path, whistling.… His left hand hurts him a little because yesterday he worked in the sand on the river bank but he pays no attention and is very cheerful. After lunch, he rests for about a half an hour and Mr. Gilliard reads to him while I write. At the table, he sits on my left hand.… Alexei loves to tease. It is extraordinary how he has lost his shyness. He always follows me when I greet my gentlemen.”

In the afternoons, “we go out in the car … either into a wood or on the bank of the river, where we light a fire and I walk about nearby.” On hot days in summer, they swam in the Dnieper: “He splashes about near the bank. I bathe not far away.” Once “we found a lovely place with soft sand where he played happily. The sand was as soft and white as on the seashore. Baby [Alexis] ran about shouting. Fedorov allowed him to go barefoot. Naturally, he was delighted.” Sometimes, playmates appeared. “Did he [Alexis] describe to you how the peasant boys played all sorts of games with him?”

In Mogilev, meals were served in the dining room of the governor’s house or, in warm weather, in a large green tent set up in the garden. Along with the regular Headquarters staff, there were always “colonels and generals who are returning from the front.… [I] invite them to lunch and dinner. Mogilev is like an enormous hotel where crowds of people pass through.” Alexis plunged happily into this bustling atmosphere. “He sits on my left hand and behaves well but sometimes becomes inordinately gay and noisy, especially when I am talking with the others in the drawing room. In any case, it is pleasant for them and makes them smile.”

The Tsarevich’s favorites at Headquarters were “the foreigners—the military attaches of Britain, France, Italy, Serbia, Belgium and Japan. Before long, they had, in effect, adopted the high-spirited boy as their mascot. “I had expected to find a very delicate and not very lively boy,” wrote Hanbury-Williams, who became one of the Tsarevich’s favorites. “But in the periods of what may be called his good health, he had all the spirits and the mischief of any ordinary boy of that age.… He wore a khaki uniform and long Russian boots and was very proud of himself as a soldier, had excellent manners and spoke various languages well and clearly.

“As time went on and his first shyness wore off, he treated us as old friends and … had always some bit of fun with us. With me it was to make sure that each button on my coat was properly fastened, a habit which naturally made me take great care to have one or two unbuttoned, in which case he used at once to stop and tell me I was ‘untidy again,’ give a sigh at my lack of attention to these details and stop and carefully button me all up again.”

Once Alexis had made sure of his new friends, quite incredible things began to happen, especially at lunch: “While the rest of the party were eating zakouska, every conceivable game went on, a ‘rag’ in fact, ending most likely in a game of football with anything that came handy. The Belgian general of whom he was very fond, and used always to call ‘Papa de Ricquel,’ being a man of no mean girth, gave great opportunities for attack. The devoted tutor was almost in despair and it generally ended with the intervention of the Emperor, by which time the small boy was carefully hidden behind a curtain. He then used to reappear with a twinkle in his eye and solemnly march to take his place at the table. There he would begin again by a bread pellet attack … which risked all the Imperial china and glasses. If, however, he had a stranger sitting next to him he had all the courtesy and charm of his father, talking freely and asking sensible questions. The moment, however, that we adjourned to the anteroom the games used to begin again, and went on fast and furious till either the Emperor or his tutor carried him off.”

After lunch, the games often continued in the garden: “He dragged some of us off after lunch in the tent to a round fountain in the garden which had porpoise heads all round it, with two holes in each to represent the eyes. The game is to plug up these holes with one’s fingers, then turn on the fountain full split and suddenly let go. The result was that I nearly drowned the Emperor and his son and they returned the compliment, and we all had to go back and change, laughing till we nearly cried.” Nicholas, expecting that the Empress might disapprove of such rough games, wrote an explanatory note: “I am writing … having come in from the garden with wet sleeves and boots as Alexei has sprayed us at the fountain. It is his favorite game … peals of laughter ring out. I keep an eye in order to see that things do not go too far.”

Late in October, to show his son that war was not all games and toy forts and lead soldiers, the Tsar took Alexis on a month-long trip the length of the battlefront. In Galicia, returning after dark from a mass review, Nicholas and Alexis made a surprise visit to a front-line dressing station. The rooms were lit only by torches. Moving from one bandaged body to the next, Nicholas spoke to the suffering men, many of whom could scarcely believe that the Tsar himself was walking among them. Close behind came Alexis, deeply moved by the groaning and suffering all around him. Later, standing before a field of men on parade, Nicholas asked those who had served since the beginning of the war to raise their hands. “But very few hands were lifted above those thousands of heads,” wrote Gilliard. “There were whole companies in which not a man moved.… [This] made a very great impression on Alexis Nicolaievich.”

Wherever they went, Alexis was insatiably curious. At Reval, on the. Baltic coast, they visited four British submarines which had been sinking German ships in the Baltic. The hulls and conning towers were sheathed in sparkling ice as Nicholas thanked the officers and men and awarded the St. George Cross to the four Royal Navy captains. For Alexis, the submarines had an extraordinary fascination. “Alexei … crept into every possible hole,” wrote Nicholas. “I even overheard him talking freely to a lieutenant asking him questions.” That night, to the Tsarevich’s delight, the Tsar brought the four submarine captains back to the train for dinner.

In the south, the Tsar and his son inspected four regiments of Caucasian cavalry. Alexis was thrilled, and even the stolid Gilliard was impressed: “Among other units were the Kuban and Terek Cossacks, perched high in the saddle and wearing the huge fur caps which make them look so fierce. As we started to return, the whole mass of cavalry suddenly moved forward, took stations on both sides of the road, broke into a gallop, tearing up the hills, sweeping down the banks of ravines, clearing all obstacles, and thus escorted us to the station in a terrific charge in which men and animals crashed together on the ground while the melee rose the raucous yells of the Caucasian mountaineers. It was a spectacle at once magnificent and terrible.”

Besides visiting troops, father and son toured cities, factories, shipyards and hospitals. In Odessa, wrote Nicholas, “the streets were crowded with young soldiers and … people.… Our Treasure [Alexis] sat with a serious face, saluting all the time. Through the tumult of the crowd and the shouts of ‘Hurrah!’ I managed to hear women’s voices calling out, ‘The Heir!, The Angel!, The pretty boy!’ … He heard them too and smiled at them.” Once when the train stopped outside a town, “Alexei’s cat ran away and hid under a big pile of board. We put on our great coats and went to look for her. Nagorny found her at once with a flashlight, but it took a long time to make the wretch come out. She would not listen to Alexei. At last, he caught her by one of her hind legs and dragged her through the narrow chink.” Returning to Headquarters after a month on the train, Nicholas reported happily to Alexandra, “Alexei has borne the strain … astonishingly well, only occasionally he suffered from a little bleeding at the nose.”

The Empress, as if unable to stay away from the exclusive male retreat of her husband and son, made occasional visits to Headquarters. Bringing her daughters and sometimes Anna Vyrubova, she lived aboard her train. During the mornings, while the Tsar was at work, she sat by the river or visited the families of peasants and railway workers. At noon, staff motorcars arrived to bring the ladies to the governor’s house for lunch. In the afternoon, while the family went driving together, the cars went back to the train for the maids, gowns and jewels needed to costume the women for dinner. In a house crowded with men, the ladies changed as best they could in niches and closets.

At dinner, Hanbury-Williams found her “much easier to get on with than I expected.… She told me how terribly shy she felt on coming into the room where we all were assembled … the chiefs of the Allied military