The Romanov Sisters
Page 20
Other smaller family dances were enjoyed by the sisters that autumn at Harax and Ai-Todor but General Mosolov later recalled that ‘the children long regarded [Olga’s] ball as one of the greatest events in their lives’.73 For on this one, special night in the Crimea the Romanov sisters had shown that despite the limitations of their till now sheltered lives, ‘they were simple, happy, normal young girls, loving dancing and all the frivolities which make youth bright and memorable’.74 Elizaveta Naryshkina could not help wishing that the girls would now be able to take their proper place in Russian aristocratic society. ‘In this, however, I was to be disappointed.’75 For although, when the family returned to Tsarskoe Selo, Olga and Tatiana were allowed to attend three more balls given by the Romanov grand dukes in the run-up to Christmas, their mother maintained a stern attitude about how ‘harmful’ she thought aristocratic society to be.76
But Olga, of all the girls the most deep-feeling and sensitive, was now struggling with her emotions, full of longing for something more from life. At sixteen she was already well aware of widespread discussion about her future marriage, only too painfully conscious that the men she most admired and felt comfortable with – the officers of the Shtandart and her father’s Cossack Escort – would never, ever, be acceptable candidates.
Chapter Ten
CUPID BY THE THRONES
In January 1912, on a week’s visit to Russia as one of a delegation of British officials, Sir Valentine Chirol of The Times remembered with particular pleasure a lunch with the imperial family at Tsarskoe Selo. ‘I happened to sit next to the little Grand Duchess Tatiana, a very attractive girl of fifteen’, he recalled. She talked with ease in English and told him how she was ‘longing to have another holiday in England’.
When I asked her what she liked best there she whispered quickly, almost in my ear, ‘Oh, it feels so free there,’ and when I remarked that she surely enjoyed a great deal of freedom at home she pursed up her lips into a little pout and with a toss of the head pointed towards an elderly lady sitting at another small table close to ours who was her gouvernante.1
Rasputin’s two daughters Maria and Varvara, who had been brought to St Petersburg by their father to be educated, also noticed how extremely curious the Romanov sisters were when they met them at Anna Vyrubova’s. They plied the Rasputin sisters with questions: ‘the life of a girl of fourteen living in the town, who went to school with other children, and once a week went to the cinema, sometimes to the circus, seemed to them the rarest and most enviable of wonders’, recalled Maria.2 In the years just before the war, she and her sister represented a rare female link of their own age with the outside world. The Romanov girls were especially anxious to know all about the dances Maria Rasputin attended, ‘they would question her at length about her clothes and who was there and what dances she danced’, recalled Sydney Gibbes.3 Two other young visitors to Trina Schneider at her apartments in the Alexander Palace found themselves bombarded with similar questions. Maria and Anastasia often joined them at Trina’s apartments after lunch and engaged the girls, Natalya and Fofa, in exuberant, mischievous games that were almost too much for Trina to cope with. In quieter moments Anastasia and Maria were endlessly inquisitive about their everyday lives. ‘They asked us about school, our friends, our teachers and wanted to know how we spent our time off, which theatres we went to, what books we read, and so on.’4
For now, however, the world of the Romanov sisters was strictly controlled by their governess Sofya Tyutcheva, who was still holding fast to her continuing campaign against the corrupting influence of Rasputin and the world outside. According to Anna Vyrubova, Tyutcheva had been encouraged in her ongoing vilification of Rasputin by ‘certain bigoted priests’, one of whom was Tyutcheva’s own cousin, Bishop Vladimir Putiyata.5 By the end of 1911 things had reached crisis point, at a time when Alexandra was also coming into conflict with the dowager and her sister-in-law over her con-tinuing patronage of Grigory. ‘My poor daughter-in-law does not perceive that she is ruining the dynasty and herself’, Maria Feodorovna had prophetically remarked to the murdered Stolypin’s successor, Vladimir Kokovtsov. ‘She sincerely believes in the holiness of an adventurer, and we are powerless to ward off the misfortune, which is sure to come.’6 The situation had been greatly exacerbated by circulation in St Petersburg in December 1911 of the letters written in all innocence to Father Grigory two years previously by the four sisters and the tsaritsa, and which he had given to an associate and defrocked monk named Iliodor.* Iliodor had since fallen out with Rasputin and, out of spite, had entrusted the letters to a Duma deputy who had had them copied and circulated among his political colleagues. When they were brought to Kokovtsov’s attention, he went straight to Nicholas. The tsar turned pale at the sight of the letters, but confirmed their authenticity before shutting them in a drawer.7 When she heard what had happened, Alexandra sent a furious telegram to Grigory, who was effectively banished back to Pokrovskoe and away from the family.
During the frantic damage limitation that followed, Sofya Tyutcheva was the first of Grigory’s detractors to be targeted, accused of spreading malicious gossip about him and also of taking too stubbornly independent a line in her management of the girls.8 Early in 1912 she was summoned to Nicholas’s study, where he asked her, ‘What is going on in the nursery?’ – or, as Anna Vyrubova would have it, ‘rebuked her severely’.9 When Tyutcheva explained her position, voicing her objections to Rasputin’s familiarity with the children and her own strongly held opinions on how the girls should be brought up, the tsar responded:
‘So you do not believe in the sanctity of Grigory?’… I answered negatively and the Emperor said ‘And what if I told you that all these difficult years I have survived only because of his prayers?’ ‘You have survived them because of the prayers of the whole of Russia, Your Majesty,’ I replied. The Emperor started to say that he was convinced it was all a lie, that he did not believe these stories about R., that the pure always attracts everything dirty.10
Tyutcheva remained in her post for a while after this dressing-down, Nicholas and Alexandra always reluctant to dismiss anyone because of the attendant gossip, but finally, in March 1912 and still unrepentant, she was sent back to her home in Moscow, ‘for talking too much and lying’, as Alexandra told Xenia.11 Iza Buxhoeveden was sorry to see how ‘deeply distressed’ Tyutcheva was to have to leave the girls, for she loved them dearly. But it was, sadly, her own fault: ‘What she said carelessly was twisted and turned into marvellous stories, which did the Empress a great deal of harm.’12 But she continued to write regularly and before too long was allowed to make occasional visits to see her former charges. Anastasia in particular remained strongly attached to her friend Savanna, and exchanged letters with her until 1916.13
Tyutcheva was not the only member of the imperial household to be caught up in the controversy. Mariya (Mary) Vishnyakova, who after seeing the girls through their early years had become nursemaid to Alexey in 1909, had at first been an ardent admirer of Grigory. But she had of late been suffering from the strain of her difficult job. When, in the spring of 1910, Alexandra recommended she go for a visit to Grigory at Pokrovskoe in the company of three other women, Vishnyakova had returned, accusing him of having sexually assaulted her and begging the empress to protect her children from his ‘diabolical’ influence.14 There appears to be no foundation in the disturbed Vishnyakova’s accusation. Anna Vyrubova and others described her as ‘over-emotional’; indeed, according to Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, during a subsequent investigation of Vishnyakova’s allegations, the hapless nursemaid was caught in bed with a Cossack from the imperial guard.15 Nicholas and Alexandra were as reluctant to dismiss her as they had been Tyutcheva; she had served the family loyally for fifteen years and was greatly loved by the children. She was therefore sent to the Caucasus for a rest cure, and the following June, 1913, was quietly retired rather than dismissed from service, with a comfortable pension and her own three-bedroom flat in the comman
dant’s quarters at the Winter Palace. Right up to the revolution, Nicholas and Alexandra continued to pay for Mary to have annual rest cures in the Crimea.16 There would be no replacement for her though; her role would increasingly be taken by Alexey’s dyadka Derevenko, nor would there be any new governess for his sisters. The imperial family closed ranks, trusting to just a few loyal retainers. Trina Schneider* would act as chaperone for Maria and Anastasia, while the older sisters would be accompanied on outings by one or other of Alexandra’s ladies-in-waiting. Iza Buxhoeveden was finally taken on formally as a lady-in-waiting in 1914, after which she and Nastenka Hendrikova took over escorting Olga and Tatiana into town. But over and above them all and keeping an eagle eye on the girls’ moral welfare was ‘the old hen’, mistress of the robes Elizaveta Naryshkina.17
The loss of Sofya Tyutcheva left a still sick Alexandra with a lot to prepare for the spring and summer seasons; for she had to ‘select and organize the dresses, hats, coats for 4 girls’ to see them through first a trip south to Livadia, then on to a series of formal engagements in Moscow in May for which the girls needed ‘to be dressed very elegantly’, and back to Moscow later in the year for the celebrations for the anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. A selection of tea dresses and semi-formal dresses would be required, at considerable expense.18
Surviving accounts for Maria’s wardrobe allowance during 1909–10 provide a fascinating insight into the kind of money being spent on each daughter on a wide range of items. All of Maria’s accounts for that year are meticulously itemized, expenditure on wardrobe alone amounting to 6,307 roubles (something like £14,500 today). Everything is accounted for: from ribbons, pins, lace, combs, handkerchiefs; to perfume and soap sent from Harrods to the St Petersburg parfumier Brocard & Co; to her manicurist Madame Kühne; to Alice Guisser for repairs and cleaning of her lace; to her mother’s coiffeur Henri-Joseph Delacroix; as well as payments for visits to the American dentist Dr Henry Wallison, who had premises on the upmarket Moika Embankment.19 A considerable variety of footwear was purchased for Maria at Henry Weiss on 66 Nevsky Prospekt, whose shoes all bore the legend ‘Fournisseur de S. M. L’Impératrice de Russie’: thirty-two different pairs ranging from soft glacé leather pumps of various colours, to demi and high button boots, sandals, felt boots and fur-lined overshoes. The smart firm of Maison Anglaise on the Nevsky supplied silk and Lisle thread stockings; swimming costumes and bathing caps came from Dahlberg, and Robert Heath, ‘Hatter to HM the Queen and all the Courts of Europe’, sent out hats from his fashionable London store at Hyde Park Corner. The French couturier Auguste Brisac (next door to Weiss in a prime spot at 68 Nevsky Prospekt), worked exclusively for ladies of the imperial family and members of the court, his sixty staff creating the very latest Parisian gowns for special occasions. But for more simple, day-to-day clothing, Alexandra had garments made for her daughters by the Russian dressmaker Kitaev, and, true to her frugal nature, got him to alter hand-me-downs from the older girls to fit Maria, or enlarge clothes that she was growing out of. In one year alone Kitaev supplied:
a grey suit with a silk lining of a foreign fabric – 115 roubles, a blue sheet-wadded silk-lined suit – 125 roubles, a blue cheviot suit with a downy silk-lined collar and cuffs of dark mink – 245 roubles, a suit in the English style with a silk lining and a pleated skirt –135 roubles. He also altered a suit – made a new fur, a new lining and made the slip longer – 40 roubles. He also altered Olga Nikolaevna’s old suit for her – 35 roubles; made a long overcoat of hand-made linen – 35 roubles; made two skirts longer and bought some more fabric for that; made 3 skirts longer and broader and made new linings for them – 40 roubles; made 4 jackets broader and their sleeves longer – 40 roubles; made new belts for two skirts and made them broader – 15 roubles; altered the eldest sister’s riding suit – the jacket, the skirt and the riding breeches – 50 roubles; mended a jacket – 7 roubles.20
* * *
In the last week of Lent 1912, the family headed south to Livadia for their first Easter at the White Palace. They arrived in a still cold and snowy Crimea, at a time of religious contemplation and sobriety, with long hours spent standing in church and endless prayers before candle-lit icons. The children’s time was occupied in the days before Easter in painting and decorating dozens of hard-boiled eggs that were traditionally exchanged to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. On Great Saturday – a day when the bells rang out across Russia and the faithful filled the churches to bursting – the girls wore mourning, as was the tradition, during the final great service leading up to midnight, the sadness finally broken by the joyful announcement Khristos voskres! – ‘Christ is Risen!’ Although it was now the early hours of the morning, the entire household broke the long Lenten fast together, enjoying a great feast in the White Hall. Its centrepiece was the two sweet cakes so looked forward to after the long period of abstention: the kulich, a rich iced Easter cake made with almonds, candied orange peel and raisins; and pashka, a gloriously sweet blending of everything that the pious had not eaten for weeks: sugar, butter, eggs and cream cheese.
In private, as he had done every Easter since they were married (except during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5), Nicholas presented his wife with an exquisite Fabergé jewelled Easter egg to add to her collection, a tradition begun by his father in 1885, when Maria Feodorovna had received her own first Fabergé egg. This particular Easter, Fabergé’s son Eugene delivered Alexandra’s gift in person at the Livadia Palace.21 It would become known as the Tsarevich Egg, for inside the outer shell of dark blue lapis lazuli mounted with a gold cagework of flowers, cupids and imperial eagles was a miniature portrait of Alexey encrusted with diamonds. On Easter Monday the family gathered in the Italian Courtyard for the ceremony of greeting the troops – in Livadia this being the crew of the Shtandart and officers of the Tsar’s Escort. As Nicholas exchanged the traditional three kisses and greetings Tatiana and Olga helped hand out the painted porcelain Easter eggs that the imperial couple distributed every Easter.22
Whenever she was in the Crimea Alexandra always tried to visit the TB sanatoria in the region of which she was patron, two of which – the military and naval hospitals on the imperial estate at Massandra – she had had built and paid for out of her own fortune. There was also the Alexander III Sanatorium in Yalta, catering to 460 patients, which she had opened in 1901. The care of the sick had always been one of the few socially acceptable pursuits that royal princesses could engage in, and Alexandra was determined that her daughters should continue this family tradition. Elizaveta Naryshkina was somewhat concerned about the children being brought into contact with highly infectious TB patients: ‘Is it safe, Madame,’ she had asked the empress, ‘for the young Grand Duchesses to have people in the last stage of consumption kiss their hands?’ Alexandra’s response was unequivocal: ‘I don’t think it will hurt the children, but I am sure it would hurt the sick if they thought that my daughters were afraid of infection.’ The children might love Livadia but she wanted to ensure that they also learnt to ‘realize the sadness underneath all this beauty’.23
In hospital visiting as in everything, the girls performed their duty without complaint and with a smile. All five children took part in White Flower Day, a major charitable event for the Anti-Tuberculosis League and the Yalta sanatoria, celebrated on St George’s Day, 23 April. The idea had originated with Margareta, Crown Princess of Sweden, and Alexandra had adopted it in Russia. The day got its name from the white daisies, or marguerites, that were carried wreathed round long wooden staffs. Holding their staffs of flowers and dressed in white, the Romanov children walked round the streets of Yalta taking donations in return for the gift of a flower, each of them proudly raising between 100 and 140 roubles that year.24
One of the big social events of the Crimean season was another charitable venture of the empress’s: the Grand Charity Bazaar in aid of the sanatoria. Every year Alexandra enlisted the girls in busily knitting, embroidering and sewing, as well as p
ainting water-colours and making other hand-made items for sale, straining her own eyes in the process. The bazaar had been held for the first time the previous year, on the pier at Yalta, where the stall under its white awning that she staffed with the girls had been besieged by the fashionable ladies of Yalta eager to buy something made by their own fair hands. There was barely room to move, with ‘people pressing forward almost frenziedly to touch the empress’s hand or her sleeve’.25 This in itself created great anxiety for the officers of the Okhrana and Shtandart, on the lookout always for any attack on the family. Their guard had been raised that year when a mild-looking old man in an old-fashioned frockcoat had approached the empress and stretched out his hand offering her an orange, which she had politely accepted. ‘It was the most ordinary looking fruit,’ recalled Nikolay Vasilievich Sablin, ‘but as we later said amongst ourselves, a terrible thought had flashed by, “That so-called Macedonian orange might have been a bomb!”’26 The bazaar was a great success and raised thousands of roubles for Alexandra’s good causes. It also provided an opportunity for people to see the elusive tsarevich. Anna Vyrubova remembered how on these occasions, ‘smiling with pleasure, the Empress would lift him to the table, where the child would bow shyly but sweetly, stretching out his hands in friendly greeting to the worshipping crowds’.27