by Janet Ashton
September 27, 2009
© Unofficial Royalty 2009
Everyone has heard of Grigorii Rasputin, right?
Every schoolchild knows how the “Mad Monk” brought down the throne of Tsar Nicholas II by meddling in politics during the First World War. The Tsar, apparently, was unconvinced of his abilities, but allowed him free reign to avoid upsetting the Empress, who was sure that he had saved their son’s life and would be God’s voice in government. So had it not been for the Heir’s haemophilia, runs the story, all would have been well in Russia. There are even books about how it happened: “How Rasputin and the Empress brought down the Russian throne” is the title of an early example.
But let’s leave this over-told tale alone at last, and turn from the unkempt bearded figure of Rasputin to look at another man, smaller, slighter, smartly dressed, though still bearded (it being the 1890s, all fashionable young men looked like that). Who is this and why he is important? Well, it is Esper Ukhtomskii, who from 1890 to around 1905 was Nicholas’s Svengali, an eminence gris who mixed up politics and religion, encouraging Nicholas’s belief in theocracy and exerting an unhelpful influence on the Tsar long before Alexandra went anywhere near politics.
Esper Ukhtomskii was one of the companions who went with Nicholas on his tour of Asia in 1890-1, where his ideas were heavily impressed on the then heir to the throne. He also wrote the official record of it. In addition to being an oriental scholar, he was also a poet and author of some very evocative prose. He and that tour are the subject of this article.
Nicholas was twenty-two when the tour began, and it was less a royal tour than a trip in the tradition of the Grand Tour that wealthy young men took in the eighteenth century: a reward for his completed education, a chance to rebel and kick over the traces in an acceptable way before settling down to a career. George, Nicholas’s brother, went too, and George’s ship, the Pamiat Azova, on which he served as a midshipman, was their home for a year.
Their parents sent them East, because Europe was considered stale, passé, to the adventurous traveller and to Russian foreign policy: the East was the future. Russian literature of this era called visiting Europe a journey “to a graveyard”; and radical Slavophiles like Esper Ukhtomskii himself were even trying to argue that Russia was part of Asia historically. Sheltered as he was, Nicholas would be profoundly impressed by his tour and all he saw on it; he had no other frame of reference for looking at the world.
The route first took them west from St Petersburg and then through Austria by train. Nicholas judged it sweepingly on brief acquaintance as “false” – though the Habsburgs at least didn’t have too great an opinion of him either: on a previous visit for military maneuvers the famous Empress Sisi described the whole imperial family as monkeys and asked for a vomit bowl. This time she didn’t even bother to turn up. In Austria’s port of Trieste they boarded their ships and met up with Grand Duke George, and then another cousin named George joined them in Greece. This was “Greek Georgie”, another sailor prince.
The first real stop was Egypt, where they visited the pyramids and sailed down the Nile as far as Karnak and the first cataract. They climbed the Great Pyramid with their hardy guides. It nearly did for the Europeans, but they carved their names at the top, so I assume you can still see them there still. Esper Ukhtomskii was making notes for his future book, and as they made their way down the Nile on the Khedive’s yacht he had some nasty surprises: one moment he was sitting dreaming on the deck of Pharoah’s flotillas; the next he found himself contemplating “the unsightly deck of [Cook’s steamers]”!
Actually, for all his condescension, his own book sounds exactly like any other western account of Egypt: travellers always wanted to “immerse themselves” in the “kaleidoscope” of sound and colour, and have an experience beyond that of the ordinary tripper, and his superior attitude is as old as travel. The educated have always felt themselves superior to other tourists…..
Nicholas and chums had famous archaeologists as guide to the tombs and temples of the Nile, and they heard first-hand stories of the opening of the tomb of Rameses I, and the tale of how his body was transported up-river to Cairo Museum, travelling in First Class with its own ticket, as demanded by the steamer company – which was probably Cook’s as well, since they had a monopoly. Nicholas’s diary is famously bland, but his empty, laddish entries are an amusing counterpoint to Ukhtomskii’s florid prose. When they got to Luxor and the hotel built by Thomas Cook, Ukhtomskii describes in detail the delicious Arab meal they ate with their consul, and says no more; but Nicholas’s diary tells us that they were not too superior to go into Cook’s hotel afterwards and get very drunk, as a reward for the boredom they’d felt in the company of the archaeologists the last few days. So perhaps they weren’t so educated and superior after all. They had several trips to see belly dancers, and Ukhtomskii is very snooty about these girls; he calls them “creatures of another world” and does not mention an episode during which, Nicholas writes, “they undressed themselves and did all sorted of things with Ukhtomksii”!
Nicholas’s parents made sure he wasn’t having TOO good a time. They wrote with a constant stream of complaints: they hadn’t heard from him in three weeks; he hadn’t sent them any photographs; his letters were bland and dull by contrast with the ones his cousin wrote home to Greece, and they kept reminding him how much they missed him. I think they were demanding and clingy, very difficult to deal with.
After Egypt, the party went on through the Red Sea, via Aden to India, landing in Bombay, where Grand Duke George was confined to ship with a fever. The rest of the party went on across the country in a sort of inverted V shape, to Roaza, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Delhi, Kanpur, Benares and Calcutta. It was supposed to be an informal trip, but they were accompanied throughout by a group of British attaches, one of whom, Donald Mackenzie Wallace, was actually charged to produce an official report to send back to the India Office, letting them know whom Nicholas talked to and what he was up to. Nicholas actually had quite a few letters from people who were disloyal to the British government, but most of these didn’t even make sense.Most dubious incidents concerned etiquette: there were little contretemps over the precedence given to Nicholas, and over the clothes worn by British officials who met him: one was reputed to have received him in cricket whites. Nicholas managed to give offence in turn by paying too much attention to sport and not enough to being polite to Indian princes they met, despite accusing the British of being arrogant to these princes in turn. They spent an inordinate amount of time chasing tigers, but Nicholas didn’t have much luck. While hunting, they lived in luxurious tents with a dining pavilion at the centre, and dined on champagne cooled by ice that was sent in bulk by the Nizam of Hyderabad. So as you can see, this was camping with a difference!
As the trip to India went on, Prince George of Greece started making a fuss because no-one was playing the Greek anthem at stations they passed through, so one of the British attaches was charged to find regiments who knew it, and make damn sure they were waiting at the relevant stations when the imperial train passed through. When they went to towns, they generally stayed with the British Resident, the governor, but in Alwar they were accommodated by the Maharaja, a rather westernised man who was not impressed by the Russians. He sidled up to the Russians and told Donald Mackenzie Wallace that he found them “a poor lot.” Wallace obviously wondered if he was just trying to show how loyal he was to Britain, but decided he must be giving his honest opinion, because, he said, “there may be some truth in the motto in vino veritas, and when the Maharaja said this he was very much under the influence of alcohol.”!
After a formal reception in the British imperial capital Calcutta, Nicholas went on to Madras, but he took a detour first to say goodbye to his brother George, who was still sick and was now sent off to North Africa for the winter. In Madras Esper Ukhtomksii went to visit the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, that strange body dedicated to increasing east-west understanding and founded by a Russian woman, Mme Blavatsky. He saw her society as a sign that Russia had natural ties to the east, and also to India, which Britain in his opinion was unable to understand, and he was firmly convinced by Blavatsky’s dubious stories about her ability to conjure up spirits. So here you see where Nicholas’s interest in spiritualism came from: people shouldn’t be too quick to pin it on Alexandra!
The party went on next to Ceylon, where they met up with yet another of Nicholas’s cousins: Alexander Mikhailovich, who was also a sailor like both Georges; was also on tour in the east and was another one obsessed by Russia’s ties to the east. He had been raised in the Caucasus, and he despised what he called his “northern” cousins in Petersburg, thinking them bland and hide-bound. He quite liked Nicholas though, because he could talk down to him.
After Ceylon, they steamed on down to Java and Sumatra, via Singapore. It was very hot and steamy, and Nicholas didn’t appreciate his trips to volcanoes and parties. “I was bored and sweated like hell,” he wrote in his diary. But one person he apparently did take note of: everywhere they went they saw statues of or memorials to Sir Stamford Raffles, the early 19th-century British imperialist who established the city state of Singapore and had also been in the East Indies for a time. Raffles had always employed the time-honoured technique of moving into a piece of land and setting up his base. If all went well, he would claim it for his government.; if it didn’t, they could deny responsibility. I think Nicholas took careful note of this practice!
They went back to the Asian mainland after this, to Siam and to French Indo-china. Nicholas and Ukhtomskii both loved Siam: Nicholas kept writing of how blessed the nation was because it was “entirely free of Europeans,” being an independent kingdom rather than a colony – and this you can see is Ukhtomskii’s influence, as is Nicholas’s growing love for Buddhism. Frankly, I think he liked Buddhism because it elevated a monarch to semi-divine status and insisted on the calm subservience of the people. When he went into the temples in Bangkok he said he had the same sense of reverence he felt in a Christian Church.
All along the way, they were offered gifts from people they encountered. In India, to the disgust of George of Greece, they had to give these back ceremonially, but in Siam and Indo-China they could accept them, and the ship departed from Bangkok with a lot of new animals on board. The crew didn’t know how to take care of these: there are a lot of rather sad little tales about these animals, ranging from a sloth called “Tony the Topman” which they feed on fruit and slowly unwittingly starved to death to a little elephant which slid sadly around the decks, unable to keep its balance. There were also human disappointments: in Indo-China they cancelled a hunt on a whim because they were short of time, never thinking that the villagers might have spent a great deal on organising it. In this case, the villagers were at least persistent and determined enough to come to Nicholas instead, bringing him a present he paid them for. But I wonder how many sad stories like this lie behind every royal tour, and whether royalty ever gives it a second thought?
Nicholas went to China, but the weather was grey and the country impressed him less than any other on his visit. He made some racist comments about everyone looking the same, and wrote little else about it. But in Japan, he came back to life. He absolutely loved this country. He and George of Greece went to the tea houses, bought memorabilia, got tattoos, and stayed in small, informal Japanese hotel. Much as they loved it, their views on Japan were exactly the same as those of many westerners: they saw it as precious, sweet, doll-like, a fairyland created for their pleasure, and he even sentimentalised Japan’s warlike past, simply because it was old. I think Ukhtomskii’s assessment is rather more thoughtful and realistic; he said: “Japan has a very peculiar past and a very problematic future; a rooted tendency to despise the foreigner in his heart while submissively learning of him.”
In Otsu on April 23rd, Nicholas was attacked by a policeman who resented his presence. He caught a blow across the forehead and was only saved from further attack and likely death by the actions of his rickshaw drivers, who disarmed the policeman. Nicholas believed it was George of Greece who had done this, and for the rest of his life offered annual thanks in his diary to his cousin. The stick George carried, with which he hit the driver but did not fell him, found its way into a museum in Greece as the item that saved Nicholas’s life. But police reports contain the truth of the matter.
Japan was mortified; people were naturally afraid of the way that Europe would see them for this, and they were genuinely horrified too that an honoured guest had been attacked on Japanese soil. The Emperor tried to insist that the policeman be executed, according to a law that made the attempted assassination of the heir to the throne a capital offence. It was pointed out that this provision was meant for the Japanese heir, and did not include foreign ones. Thus Sanzo got life imprisonment, but actually died not long after this from pneumonia – and possibly from neglect of course.
Despite Japan’s fevered attempts to make amends, and Russia’s own generally very conciliatory approach to the attack as well, Alexander III insisted – as a father more than Emperor – that Nicholas break off his tour and go home. There had been talk that he might go on to San Francisco and then take the train across the US, but his father now required him to go at once to Vladivostock (the port symbolically named “Ruler of the East”) to lay the foundation stone for the eastern stretch of the Trans-Siberian railway, and then travel slowly back across Siberia to St Petersburg. Nicholas was the only Tsar ever to traverse Siberia, and in Tobolsk he came briefly and unknowingly face to face with Jakov Yurovsky, the man who was to kill him 27 years later. Yurovsky, a boy of 13, was in the crowd that greeted Nicholas on his arrival.
The whole thrust of foreign policy and even domestic policy in the early part of Nicholas’s reign bears the imprint of this tour. Heavily impressed by his first real glimpse of the world, he saw the tour as confirming what he had been taught about his own role: he was the anointed of God, the autocrat destined to lead all people who looked to an autocratic leader. This included much of Asia.
Of course, there were other things afoot that led the Tsar into problems with Japan – the Trans Siberian railway and simple, old-fashioned imperialism were highly significant – but no-one should under-estimate the impact of his own beliefs, or indeed the effect this war had in undermining Russia’s faith in Nicholas as tsar and setting the scene for the revolution of 1917. Well well before Rasputin came on the scene, Nicholas was subject to the influence of secret advisers who whispered in his ear that his ministers were conspiring to cut him off from his people, and he should assert his voice in his Holy mission as Tsar and autocrat. And that is why I am writing a whole book on all of this, which one day I hope finally to complete!
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