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« on: November 04, 2004, 08:15:46 AM »
In the book The End of the Romanovs by Victor Alexandrov quotes the memoirs of a Colonel Mstislavsky whose real name was Maslovsky as follows:
“When the door opened with a sinister groan and we were at last in the entrance hall, we found ourselves surrounded by a respectful but curious throng of court retainers—their numbers seemed fantastic after the simplicity of the revolutionary days we had been living through. An enormous haidouk, the size to Alexander’s monument at Trubetzhoy, wearing a bearskin as tall as a barrel; ‘runners’” court Negroes in crimson velvet jackets embroidered with gold, turbans on their head and long pointed slippers on their feet; footmen in three-cornered hats and red capes embroidered with the Imperial arms; valets in snow-white gaiters and polished shoes with felt soles—these preceded us up the stairs, running along the carpets. After mounting the stairs we went through innumerable drawing rooms, banqueting-rooms, retiring rooms; outside the door of each room stood a motionless pair of lackeys wearing varied costumes answering to the purpose of the room to which they were posted, sometimes traditional black suits, sometimes white, black or red kuntuches. In front of one door there were tow magnificently costumed valets in white stockings, polished shoes and absurd crimson head-bands held in place by hooks of tinsel.
In a glass-roofed upper corridor used as a picture gallery, a little group of courtiers with Benkendorf as their head, was awaiting us. They were wearing black frock coats buttoned up to the neck.
A few yards beyond this group the corridor was crossed by another one, and it was from there that the ex-Emperor was to appear. I put myself in the middle of the corridor with Benkendorf on my right and Prince Dolgoruky (Grand Marshall of the Court) and a civilian whose face I did not know on my left. The officers who had accompanied me stood a little behind me.
Somewhere on one side a lock clicked. Benkdorf fell silent and smoothed his grey whiskers with a trembling hand. The officers buttoned their gloves and stood to attention. Hurried steps could be heard, and a faint clinking of spurs. Romanov was wearing the khaki summer uniform of the Imperial hussars and his head was bare. With his habitual shoulder-movement, and rubbing his hands together as if he was washing, he stopped at the intersection of the corridors and turned towards us. His face was red and chubby; his swollen, inflamed eyelids heavily framed his lusterless, leaden, bloodshot eyes. He paused and seemed to hesitate for a moment, rubbed his hands together, and then walked towards our group.
He seemed on the point of addressing us. I looked at him, he looked at me. There was dead silence. Then suddenly the Emperors’s eye–yellow and fixed like that of a tired and hunted wolf—lit up. In the depths of his pupils there suddenly shone a mortal hatred; it was as if a flame had suddenly melted the leaden indifference of his gaze.
Nicholas stopped a moment, trod the ground, then abruptly turned and went away, jerking his shoulder. I thereupon drew out my right hand from below my waist where it was thrust, raised it to my fur cap to salute the courtiers, and , to the tune of ill-mannered throat-clearing from Benkendorf who also spat, I turned to go. ‘You did wrong not to take off your cap,’ an officer told me; ‘the Emperor seemed to want to talk to you, but seeing the way you behaved…’ And another chimed in with, ‘You’d better be careful. If the Romanovs come back to power, you’ll be found at the bottom of the sea’”
Not only an interesting descripton of the servants, but I wondered if anyone can tell me more about this glass-roofed picture gallery? Also, the books seems to say that the family was confined to the 2nd floor of the palace during their arrest. I had not know that.
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