Around the time that he took over night-time duties, Litke’s burdens as a tutor were relaxed slightly by the appointment of several assistants. He himself worked out each annual programme of studies, but he did not have to teach everything on his own. Konstantin took lessons from his brother Alexander’s head tutor, the poet Vasily Zhukovsky, from physicists and historians, among others. A.F. von Grimm, a German historian appointed to teach languages as well, found Konstantin at seven to be an intellectually precocious child, polite, with an “animated” manner. “I felt that my undertaking was likely to bring forth good fruits,” he wrote after their first meeting [22] A few days later he met the Empress, and the two agreed between them the principles that were to underpin Konstantin’s study. No titles were to be used: he was not to be permitted to be rude or imperious to servants, and his only princely privilege was the rather odd one of being served first at table. [23] Three hours a day were for formal lessons, and the rest of his twelve-hour schedule was spent doing gymnastics, walking, or playing with his sisters – all closely supervised by the tutors. This was how Nicholas and Alexandra allowed their children to be children: plenty of play and fresh air, but all of it strictly in the interest of building body and character. They withheld titles and expensive toys in the expectation that the children would appreciate these things more if introduced to them later, and thought that early exposure to the finer things in life would simply turn them into jaded or blasé adults.

Religious education was given by a priest named Bashanov [24], whose intention was to make him think about what he was learning. Nicholas, the Tsar who proclaimed Orthodoxy as an official religion, insisted that it be so, comparing this training with the inadequate one he and his siblings had received: “My children were better off than we, for we were taught only to make the sign of the cross at stated parts of the Church service, and to repeat by heart various prayers; what was going on inside us nobody troubled to learn” [25]

 

Friedrich von Luetke, otherwise Feodor Petrovich Litke, Konstantin's ominpresent tutor  

In preparation for his future career, Konstantin was to receive an education that was first and foremost scientific. His father had a particular animus against Latin and classical education, and the boy was not taught this at all, to Grimm’s great regret: “A core was wanting to this instruction, which in our German schools is given by the ancient languages….an acquirement of the classics, when not conducted by one-sided pedants, cultivates the mind…and accustoms youth to a certain degree of independence in work, awakening ideas more than natural history, and to the persevering student disclosing that world whose civilization became the basis of our own. To the Russian nation especially the Latin tongue would be the key to the whole of western Europe.” [26] Perhaps that was it though: Nicholas did not want Russia to become a part of western Europe. He was the first Tsar to consciously cultivate the spirit of “autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality” in Russia at large, emphasising the country’s unique and separate destiny in its evolving sense of nationhood. This must surely have been the reason for his agreeing to the choice of the liberal poet Vasily Zhukovsky as tutor to his heir: although less known today than Pushkin is, Zhukovsky was widely credited as the founder of Russian Romanticism, which elevated language, history, feeling and folk tradition, and which sought a general audience for the arts in preference to the narrowly aristocratic one of the eighteenth century.
 

The Romantics cultivated what can best be described as a spirit of “liberal nationalism”, preoccupied by Russian culture and ethnicity, but firmly believing that national greatness was best served by freedom and humanity.  Their liberal aspirations often brought them into conflict with the autocratic Emperor, most notably Pushkin’s case, but Zhukovsky – who professed a faith in humane autocracy - remained tutor to his sons. Oddly, although Alexander was the poet’s main pupil and received the broader and more academic education, it was Konstantin who perhaps came to bear the greater imprint of the Romantic movement: he grew up a liberal nationalist and almost a Slavophile, and his family was considered the most “Russian” amongst the later generations of Romanovs.
 

The Grand Duke’s education was practical as well as scientific. He took mathematical and statistical classes from Baron Korff, and was taught planing and carpentry, and taken on visits to factories, warehouses and workshops, where according to Grimm he asked questions eagerly and learned about peoples’ lives as well as their jobs, coming to appreciate how a serf’s descendants, if given their freedom, could rise in a couple of generations to be people of international reputation. This latter information comes to us as ever from Grimm, who could of course be accused of hagiographical wisdom after the fact – but many factors were undoubtedly at work already to turn Konstantin Nikolaevich into an advocate of reform. When he reported back to his mother on these visits to the outside world, she arranged for his sisters to go on some too. [27]

Konstantin learned fast. As a small child he spoke only Russian and English – the language of the imperial nursery, which was presided over by English nannies and obtained its provisions from the famous English Shop on the Nevsky Prospect. [28]. In the course of a few months, Grimm was apparently able to teach him enough German for him to be able to converse with his mother’s relatives when he visited them in Prussia in the summer of 1835, and after a summer playing together he struck up a correspondence with his cousin Princess “Mariechen” of Prussia, the future Queen of Bavaria [29]. After that he became preoccupied with a German translation of the Odyssey, racing through the Hermitage looking for pictures of that era and coaxing all of his friends and playmates into games about Ancient Greece. [30] When Zhukovsky’s Russian translation of Homer’s work was published a few years later, he duly dedicated it to the Grand Duke [31]. For this interest and for his generally intellectual bent, Konstantin’s uncle Michael called him “Aesop”. [32] The Empress in turn noted and encouraged his interest in art, something he’d apparently inherited from her. Drawing lessons were on the curriculum for most royal children, but not all took equally well to them. Konstantin’s early sketches show natural talent, though, and by the time he was fourteen he was producing skilful illustrations. [33] The boy was perhaps a little too aware that he had a superior mind. His sister Olga remembered how at ten years old “he had an answer for everything” and his fond mother had taken to repeating his little witticisms – even if many were uttered in answering her back. [34] There was a definite quiet conflict within the household between male and female influences, and Konstantin used this power over his mother for all he was worth. On one occasion, recalled a childhood companion, he decided he wanted to learn to play the piano and pestered his tutor until a music master was appointed. Litke reluctantly gave in, arguing that once started such lessons could not be stopped on a whim, only to have Konstantin change his mind once he discovered the self-discipline involved. The little boy appealed as usual to his mother for support, but Litke stuck to his guns, threatened to resign, convinced the Emperor to support him, and thus as a consequence of this complex power play between three adults the lessons continued and Konstantin discovered one of the real loves and genuine joys of his life: music. [35]   

The young Grand Duke knew the consequences of bad behaviour, but, he admitted, he often simply couldn’t stop himself. [36] Friends called him the family “goat”, gifted but wilful and stubborn. [37] Neither Litke nor Nicholas could tolerate this, and the tutor punished Konstantin a lot, channelling the boy’s bumptious confidence – if that was what it was - into a roughness of manner that accorded nicely with his planned Naval career, but ended by costing him a certain amount in terms of his inner life. His sisters watched the process with concern. “Sometimes,” Olga sadly wrote later, “he didn’t speak to anyone for days.”

 Olga Nikolaevna, Konstantin's gentle second sister, whose insight into his character is rather at variance with his image as a tough and insensitive man.

Someone else had misgivings too: Zhukovsky, his brother’s tutor who also played a significant role in Konstantin’s upbringing, was worried that excess punishment would rob him of his power to do good on his own volition:

“Discipline is the complete antithesis of lawfulness. It is a priceless pearl of military service; without it there cannot be an army. But God protect the state from legality based upon that model…then it is goodbye to justice and truth” [38] It is not hard to see who planted the ideas that were to inform the young Grand Duke’s political career.

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