Rasputin by Frances Welch Page B

he had hurt his leg and his face was so badly swollen that his eyes had closed. He had been ill for three days before the Man of God was summoned and appeared in his bedroom. After several minutes of silent prayer, the boy smiled and his mother cried with joy. Rasputin silenced the ecstatic Tsarina with the same gesture with which he had rebuffed the dog-loving Grand Duke Nicholas four years earlier.
    On another occasion, it was said, Rasputin was talking to the Tsarina about providence when he suddenly interrupted himself, shouting: ‘He’s in the blue room.’ The pair ran to the blue billiard room, to find Alexis standing on the table. Rasputin scooped the boy up seconds before the table was hit by a huge, falling chandelier. Of such stuff are legends created.
    Rasputin’s visits to the Palace, dressed, according to one unlikely report, in ‘thick black glasses and a cossack uniform’ became increasingly frequent. Unfortunately, in these early days, it was deemed crucial to keep the boy’s illness secret, even from his tutors. This meant that nobody outside the immediate family would have been aware of the poignant reason behind the visits. The Tsar’s own sister, Grand Duchess Xenia, reported that she knew nothing of Alexis’s haemophilia until the spring of 1912, by which time the boy was nearly eight.
    The reasons behind Rasputin’s uncharacteristic discretion cannot be known. Did he fail to grasp the significance of the boy’s illness? Was he simply being considerate towards the Tsar and Tsarina? The most likely explanation is that he believed it in his own interests to be discreet, though this was not always enough to silence him.
    The Court doctors did, of course, understand the reasons behind Rasputin’s presence. But their understanding did not make the visits any less irksome to them. The blow to their professional pride was exacerbated by Brother Grigory’s lack of social graces. This despite at least one of the doctors barely cutting the mustard himself. As Gleb Botkin sniffed of Dr Derevenko: ‘He was… of peasant stock and showed it only too clearly in his manners and speech.’ The smarter Dr Botkin was frequently involved in slanging matches with Rasputin: Botkin baited him by insisting he had performed autopsies and never found a soul, while Rasputin retorted snappily: ‘How many emotions, memories, imagination have you found?’
    In a misjudged bid to improve relations, Rasputin once visited Dr Botkin at his house in Tsarskoye Selo. He pretended to have some interesting medical complaint but was shown the door, with Dr Botkin’s words ringing in his ears: ‘I can see you’re as fit and healthy as a bull.’ Whenever they subsequently passed each other in a corridor, Dr Botkin would turn his back.

    F or all the fervent support he enjoyed within the immediate Imperial family, Rasputin’s position at Court was ever more precarious. The younger of the Tsar’s sisters, Grand Duchess Olga, who first saw him when he was visiting the Imperial children, had initially been chary of Rasputin, but was then impressed by how relaxed Alexis was with him, jumping about and pretending to be a rabbit. She was completely won over after seeing him praying with the children: ‘I was conscious of the man’s sincerity.’
    But her approval was short-lived. Within months he had offended her by snuggling up to her on a sofa, putting his arm around her shoulder, stroking her and asking if she was happy and loved her husband. The Grand Duchess, who was in fact not happy with her husband, reacted badly, finding his curiosity ‘unbridled and embarrassing’.
    While Mossolov, the Director of the Imperial Court, acknowledged Rasputin’s healing powers, he never got over his initial dislike. He described Rasputin as having‘an impudent familiarity combined with a servility which fitted like a glove on this upstart’.