To Kill Rasputin: The Life and Death of Grigori Rasputin (Revealing History) (10 page)

On the morning of Friday 31 December/12 January, Sir George Buchanan had an audience with the Tsar. He was realistic about the desperately precarious state of political order in Russia and knew he must speak frankly; no one else would. He asked the Foreign Office for permission to say his piece on behalf of the King, but London replied that the King was out of town. Sir George would have to make it clear to the Tsar that his views were purely personal.

On all previous occasions His Majesty had received me informally in his study, and after asking me to sit down, had produced his cigarette case and asked me to smoke. I was, therefore, disagreeably surprised at being ushered this time into the audience chamber and at finding His Majesty awaiting me there, standing in the middle of the room. I at once realized that he had divined the object of my audience… My heart, I confess, sank within me… The Emperor of all the Russias was then an autocrat, whose slightest wish was law; and I was about not only to disregard the hint which he had so plainly given me but to put myself in the wrong by overstepping the bounds of an Ambassador’s sphere of action.
²⁰

The forthcoming Allied Mission – a deputation from England and France, due to arrive in less than three weeks – was to see people of influence and set up links to enable Russia to get in step with the other two Allied powers. Buchanan explained that it was difficult for the English and French visitors to have any faith in this process when one hardly knew which Minister would be in power from one week to the next. It was important to allow good people to make their own decisions about the team they wanted to work with. And on this topic, he felt he must warn His Majesty (again) that the Tsarina must not be used as a tool of the German propaganda machine by those around her. He tried to tell him (again) how important it was to work
with
the people of Russia. Warming to his theme, Sir George suggested that the Tsar had come to the parting of the ways.

If I were to see a friend walking through a wood on a dark night along a path which I knew ended in a precipice, would it not be my duty, sir, to warn him of his danger? And is it not equally my duty to warn Your Majesty of the abyss that lies ahead of you?
²¹

The Tsar thanked him but told him not to exaggerate Russia’s problems. If they were in any way as severe as he implied, he could in any case rely on his army to defend him from an uprising.

According to Stopford, who met him bounding up the embassy stairs, Sir George came back from the audience looking rather chipper. However, at some point the following day, his mood was to change to one of concern and trepidation. Quite how or when it reached him is not clear, but his own diary leaves us in little doubt that Buchanan received news of the most unwelcome kind – news that could have catastrophic diplomatic consequences for Britain. Rather than wait to see if he would be summoned, Buchanan decided to take the bull by the horns and raise the matter directly with the Tsar himself at the Russian New Year’s Reception.

The stunning news Buchanan had heard on the grapevine was to the effect that evidence had recently come into the possession of the Tsar that led him to suspect ‘a certain British subject’ of being Rasputin’s killer. According to Buchanan:

I took the opportunity of assuring him that the suspicion was absolutely groundless. His Majesty thanked me and said that he was very glad to hear this.
²²

Whether or not the Tsar believed Buchanan’s assurance and indeed how assured Buchanan himself actually was that no British subject was in anyway involved is equally unclear. It would seem that Buchanan had contacted Hoare for his reaction, but then again, Hoare was not necessarily aware of what his own men were up to a good deal of the time.

Who then was this nameless mystery man who had come to the Tsar’s attention and who had caused Buchanan at least one night’s troubled sleep? The Tsar had supported the Allies in the first place in order to get foreign debt written off and access to Constantinople as a reward when they won, so he did not want to offend them. But he, the Okhrana and Rasputin’s friends had been asking themselves exactly who had had an
interest
in murdering Rasputin, and had drawn certain conclusions.

R
obert H. Bruce Lockhart was a handsome rugger player with a weakness for dangerous love affairs. He was also a British consular officer with a better understanding of Russia’s troubles than most. He had been in Russia since 1912 and had learned to be wary of the political judgement of his compatriots. In particular, he wrote in 1932,

…my experiences of the war and of the Russian revolution have left me with a very poor opinion of secret service work. Doubtless it has its uses and its functions, but political work is not its strong point. The buying of information puts a premium on manufactured news. But even manufactured news is less dangerous than the honest reports of men who, however brave and however gifted as linguists, are frequently incapable of forming a reliable political judgement.
¹

The extreme revolutionary surge in Russia by the end of 1916 was unstoppable, but very few of the British had yet recognised that Russia’s imperial system was too far gone to save. Part of the problem was the company they kept. Bruce Lockhart was pretty well alone among the British in taking the progressive intelligentsia seriously as a political force, and he was stationed in Moscow. He was also a Foreign Office employee. In Petrograd, the capital, the Ambassador and Consul worked for the Foreign Office; the Military Attaché worked for the War Office; and the British Intelligence Mission was ostensibly part of the War Office, paid for out of Foreign Office funds. While the functions of all three were different, all must keep a close eye on their particular spheres of interest.

In Petrograd, both diplomats and Secret Service men felt it necessary to cultivate contacts in the Duma but also, importantly, among the aristocracy. As newcomers, Sir Samuel Hoare and his wife were completely out of the social loop, and had a dull time of it in consequence. The Hon. Albert Stopford knew the conspirators and brought Dmitri Pavlovich and Buchanan together. But Stopford and Buchanan were older men, on a different wavelength to Dmitri and Yusupov.

During the war years a junior lieutenant in the British Military Censor’s office probably went to more parties in high places than all the members of the Embassy staff put together.
²

Bruce Lockhart was referring to Lt Oswald Rayner, whose job disguised his intelligence function. Rayner, a good-looking young man, was a Smethwick draper’s son, the least likely recipient, one might suppose, of the glittering favours that Prince Yusupov could bestow. Yet at twenty-seven he had been taken up by the inner circle of gilded youth. He had reached this position by his own intellect, industry, charm and great good fortune.

He had been born in November 1888 into modest circumstances, and would in due course have five younger brothers and sisters. At eleven he obtained a scholarship to King Edward’s School, then located in New Street, Birmingham.
³
The boy absorbed education like blotting paper, but the son of a draper with six children could go only so far before lack of money would dictate that he go out in the world and obtain employment; and we know from correspondence that the family was in financial difficulties in the early years of the century.
⁴
Rayner was good at languages, and when he left school he was fortunate enough to obtain a position as an English teacher at an establishment run by a Mr Ölquist in Helsinki. In Finland (which was then annexed to Russia) he would meet a Finnish couple whose generosity would change his life forever. In February 1907, when he was eighteen, he wrote home delightedly:

Dear Mother and Father,

I am writing to you in order to lay before you such a romance as you would scarce expect to find anywhere outside the bounds of fiction.

As you already know, people have been very kind and hospitable to me in Finland. Amongst those who have been kindest, I believe I have already mentioned Mr and Mrs Uno Donner. Mr and Mrs Donner have very often invited me to spend evenings with them at their flat. I have always enjoyed these visits more than any others; for from the first, I could be perfectly natural there. At all other places I have been obliged, more or less, to pose as a good deal older than I really am, in order to apologise as it were for my position as English Teacher in the Institute… To make a long story short, they have asked me if I would like to put myself under their charge and continue my studies at Oxford! They broached the subject just after dinner one evening a few days ago. Naturally I was quite overcome with astonishment and returned home dazed, expecting every moment to wake up from a more than usually vivid dream. I promised to give them a definite answer the following day at 12 o’clock. I was brooding over the matter during the night, and came to the conclusion that provided you agreed to the proposal, this strange turn of my fortunes would open out new roads for my future, and provide me with my highest aspiration realised – an Oxford University career.
⁵

Thanks to this kind couple, Oswald Rayner was already soaring away from Smethwick. By April he had moved into the home of Mrs Sinebrichov, whom he described simply as a widow, and ‘Mrs Donner’s mother’. The Sinebrichov family had been providing Helsinki with fine port for over eighty years; in fact, they owned the monopoly on brewing in the city. They had amassed a superb collection of Old Masters and furniture, which was presented to the nation when Finland regained its independence after the First World War. Maybe Rayner was dining off Sèvres porcelain every night or maybe he wasn’t, but in any case he had flown so high that, sadly, his parents could no longer be expected to understand the social stratosphere he was living in. ‘There has not really… been anything extraordinary to write about – a constant round of dinners, and suppers, and clubs, and private entertainments, and parties of all descriptions…’. He gave an account, which was not intended to dazzle but could not fail to, of the lives of those with whom he was now associating.

Mr and Mrs Uno Donner left Finland on February 20th for Italy. They spent a month at Milano and Florence, thence proceeding to the Riviera – Cannes, Nice, Mentone, Monte Carlo &c… [I] shall… sail for England by the boat which leaves Helsingfors on the 15th of next month. By that time the Donners will probably be in England – that is to say in London. If so I shall go straight to London, and then arrive in Birmingham on the 20th or 21st of May. The Donners would like me to stay at Birmingham for about a fortnight and then to spend a month in Switzerland with them – at Aix-les-Bains… From Switzerland we shall go to Mrs Sinebrychoff’s [
sic
] country house for the summer, where there will be yachting, tennis, boating, swimming, riding horseback &c
ad libitum.
In the autumn the Donners will probably leave Finland for good, and settle down somewhere in England. For the autumn and winter they will hire a flat in London, and I shall begin studying Greek for Oxford. It will be impossible for me to join the University before January 1908.
⁶

He was now part of a circle that included ‘Consul Cooke’, and Count Sparre and his wife. Count Louis Sparre was a gifted and famous Swedish artist who had trained as a painter in Paris. He lived in Finland for nearly twenty years and married a Finn. In the last decade he had been a pioneer of Finnish industrial art and design; he had even founded a factory to produce Art Nouveau furniture and other pieces.

When Mr Donner returns to Finland in summer, he will probably visit his father for some time, and I shall at the same time live at Count Sparre’s country house near Borgå. He is an artist and will give me some drawing lessons there.

Oswald Rayner loved his family, but he would never again live in a back-to-back terraced house with a draper’s shop in the front room. At Oxford he would study Modern Languages, and entered the university in October 1907, graduating with Honours in 1910. By that time Prince Felix Yusupov was already at University College, where he occupied rooms on the ground floor overlooking the street – rooms traditionally known, according to the Master, as ‘the Club’, no matter who lived there. It was here in 1909, through a mutual friend, Eric Hamilton (later Bishop of Salisbury and Dean of Windsor), that Oswald Rayner met Felix Yusupov. The three scholars shared a mutual love of languages and would remain close friends for the rest of their lives. Indeed, Rayner would later name his only son ‘John Felix Hamilton Rayner’ as a testament to his two closest friends.
⁷

After university, Rayner applied for a post with the
Times
newspaper and, in November 1910, was duly appointed Second Assistant Correspondent in the Paris office at a salary of £150 per year.
⁸

The following year he moved back to London and embarked on a career in elevated government circles as Private Secretary to Sir Herbert Samuel, Asquith’s Postmaster General. Samuel and Rayner sailed together through choppy waters when, in 1912, Sir Herbert, along with Sir Rufus Isaacs and David Lloyd George, was accused by Belloc and Chesterton of insider trading in Marconi shares (an enquiry later exonerated all three, although there can be little doubt that they successfully conspired to frustrate the process and conceal truth from Parliament). It was during the course of this long and drawn-out episode that Rayner made the acquaintance of Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, with whom he stayed in close contact for at least a decade afterwards.