The Romanov Sisters
Page 23
Over the last few years Russia, which occupied one-sixth of the world’s surface, had been enjoying a remarkable period of growth that had seen St Petersburg become one of the six largest cities in Europe. The economy was still an agricultural-based one, the cornerstone of its enormous wealth being cereal production, but this now outstripped that of the USA and Canada combined. The territories of the Russian Empire contained a burgeoning iron and steel industry; and yet to be exploited natural reserves in Central Asia and Siberia that were being opened up by a vast new Trans-Siberian Railway network that was also linked to the valuable oilfields at Baku in Azerbaijan and Batumi in Georgia. In the City of London and on Wall Street, Russia, for so long viewed as Asiatic and backward, was now at last seen as a ‘profitable field for investment’. As the Illustrated London News told its readers, ‘the general public are beginning to awaken to the great riches and the greater potential riches – agricultural, mineral, and industrial – of the Empire of the Great White Tsar’.43 There was much talk abroad too about the growing military and political might of imperial Russia – having as it did a potential war strength of 4 million men – a fact that had recently been confirmed by the establishment of the entente cordiale with Britain and France.
But it was not just in industrial and military strength that Russia was carving out a higher international profile for itself: the country was enjoying an extraordinary and unprecedented burst of artistic creativity – with the music of Stravinsky and Rachmaninov; the avant-garde paintings of Malevich, Kandinsky and Chagall; Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, featuring outlandish set and costume designs, by Léon Bakst; a musical stage graced by the legendary dancers Pavlova and Nijinsky and the opera singer Chaliapin; the innovative direction of Stanislavsky and Meyerhold in the theatre; and a vibrant ‘Silver Age’ of poetry dominated by Alexander Blok, Andrey Bely and Anna Akhmatova.
In tones of the highest optimism The Times in early 1913 was therefore predicting a rosy future for Russia: ‘The House of Romanoff has done more than create a mighty Empire. It has flung wide the gates of knowledge to a great people, and has launched them upon all her boundless ways.’44 But in order to ensure further economic development it still lacked one crucial element: a stable political system and a proper, constitutional government. Since 1906 the Duma had juddered from one crisis to the next in an increasingly emasculated form, three times being dissolved and then reinstated by Nicholas. The Fourth Duma of 1912, created in the wake of Stolypin’s assassination, had been the most dysfunctional yet and the political mood that year of 1913 was ‘antagonistic’ in continuing response to the repressive measures instituted after the 1905 revolution.45 Many Russians felt there was little to celebrate. The Tercentary had brought a raft of concessions including amnesties and reductions in sentences for many prisoners – but not for those imprisoned for their opposition to tsarism.
In February Nicholas and Alexandra installed themselves and the children in the Winter Palace for the three days of official celebrations – their first real time in St Petersburg since 1905 – the focus of which was entirely religious. Thursday the 21st was a day of pious observance, with twenty-five different religious processions winding their way across the capital, singing hymns and bursts of the national anthem. From the Winter Palace, the imperial family led the procession of carriages, Nicholas and Alexey in uniform at its head in an open victoria, followed by closed state coaches containing Alexandra, Maria Feodorovna and the girls. It processed down the Nevsky Prospekt the short distance to the Kazan Cathedral for a very long Te Deum conducted by the Patriarch of Antioch, who had travelled from Greece specially, and attended by over 4,000 of the Russian nobility, and by foreign diplomats and dignitaries, as well as by representatives of the peasantry and from the duchy of Finland. ‘It was all brilliance,’ Novoe Vremya reported, ‘the brilliance of the ladies’ diamonds, the brilliance of the medals and the stars, the brilliance of the gold and silver of the uniforms.’46 But it was not the spectacular beauty of the assembled costumes, the icons, lighted tapers and incense, that had moved everyone; it was the ‘inexpressibly sad’ sight of the tsarevich, who was still too lame to walk, being carried into the service by a Cossack, his ‘white, pinched small face … gazing anxiously round him at all the sea of human beings before him’.47
Although the Okhrana had been prepared for trouble, on the streets of St Petersburg ordinary citizens, huddled in their quilted coats and felt boots, demonstrated a marked indifference towards much of the ceremonial. Prince Gavriil Konstantinovich later wrote that he had the ‘distinct impression that there was no special enthusiasm in the capital for the Romanov Dynasty Jubilee’. Meriel Buchanan noticed it too: the crowds were ‘strangely silent’, she recalled, ‘breaking into cheers only when they caught sight of the young Grand Duchesses smiling under their big flower-trimmed hats’.48
The ceremony at the Kazan Cathedral would be the first of many collective public professions of faith led by the imperial family that year, accompanied by much genuflection, crossing, and kissing of miracle-working icons, all intended to ‘arouse a general upsurge of patriotic sentiment in the people’ at a time of continuing political discontent.49 Meriel Buchanan had, like many, hoped that the festivities ‘would force the Imperial Family to come out of their seclusion, and that the Emperor, when he attended the Duma, would make some public announcement that would relieve the internal situation’.50 But she was disappointed; it soon became apparent that the primary objective of the Tercentary was to reinforce the image of a national life driven by religious faith, harking back to the ancient mystical union of tsar and people, rather than one where democracy and the work of the Duma held any true significance. Indeed, many members of the Fourth Duma were squeezed out at the celebrations, the limited number of places being given to members of the aristocracy and monarchist organizations.51
Later that day Nicholas and Alexandra received a great procession of 1,500 dignitaries in the Nicholas Hall at the Winter Palace in order to accept their congratulations. It was a milestone for Olga and Tatiana to be present, wearing matching formal Russian court dresses. These were made in the workshop of Olga Bulbenkova, who specialized in ceremonial clothes for the court, and were full-length, off-the-shoulder style in white satin with long, pointed, open sleeves, a front panel of pink velvet and a detachable train decorated with garlands of artificial roses.52 Across their chests both girls wore their orders of St Catherine on scarlet sashes, and on their heads kokoshniki of pink velvet encrusted with pearls and decorated with bows. It must have been a moment of great pride for them, for they had not worn full-length formal dresses before and it signalled their final arrival in the adult world of the court. The two sisters were never more beautiful, as official photographs taken of them by the family’s favourite studio, Boissonnas & Eggler, testified. The reception itself was something new for both of them, ‘a rare chance of seeing Petersburg society, and from their attentive, animated faces it was clear that they were trying to take everything in and remember all the faces’.53
That evening the still-crowded streets of St Petersburg were lit up with celebratory illuminations; it reminded Nicholas of his coronation, but the happiness of the occasion was marred by the news the following morning that Tatiana – who had not been feeling well for a day or so – was in bed with a fever. Alexandra had been too exhausted to take part in any of the public receptions during the day, where Maria Feodorovna had enjoyed the limelight in her stead. But the tsaritsa did steel herself to attend a gala performance of Glinka’s opera, A Life for the Tsar, starring Chaliapin that evening at the Mariinsky Theatre. She and Nicholas received a standing ovation from the audience as they entered the imperial box with Olga. But Anna Vyrubova detected a false note: ‘there was in the brilliant audience little real enthusiasm, little real loyalty’.54 Alexandra looked extremely pale and sombre, thought Meriel Buchanan, ‘her eyes, enigmatical in their dark gravity, seeming fixed on some secret inward thought that was certainly far removed from t
he crowded theatre and the people who acclaimed her’.55 Flushed and uncomfortable at all eyes being directed on her, the tsaritsa sank gratefully into her chair but she ‘looked listless, as though she were in pain’, thought Agnes de Stoeckl and indeed such was her extreme discomfort and her anxious laboured breathing, that she left after the first act. ‘A little wave of resentment rippled over the theatre’, noted Meriel Buchanan. ‘Was it not always the same story?’ with the empress yet again making no effort to disguise her distaste for St Petersburg society.56 For that is how her retreat that evening was perceived. Only her daughter Olga and her husband knew the terrible toll Alexey’s recent near-fatal illness had taken on her. It was the ‘sad knowledge’ of her son’s life-threatening condition that made the tsaritsa ‘so extraordinary in her ways’, thought Princess Radziwill. It explained why ‘she hates so much to see anyone, or to take part in any festivity, even for the sake of her daughters’. For their part, as always, the Romanov sisters had made the best of things. ‘The whole city was celebrating, a lot of people’, Olga recalled of the day in her diary, but, sensing as she did an atmosphere of change in Russia, it had not passed without some apprehension on her part: ‘Thank you God that everything is OK.’57
Chapter Twelve
LORD SEND HAPPINESS TO HIM, MY BELOVED ONE
The 23rd of February 1913 was a very special day for eighteen-year-old Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, when, accompanied by her father, her mother and her aunt Olga, she attended her first major public ball in St Petersburg, at the Assembly of Nobles. The tsar and tsaritsa had not attended a ball in the city since the grand costume ball of 1903, and Alexandra was determined to be there for her daughter even though she had spent most of the day lying down; but once again she had been obliged to leave early.1 Tatiana should have shared the occasion with her sister but she was ill in bed at the Winter Palace; a couple of days later the doctors confirmed that she had typhoid fever.*2
Olga had been determined not to let these disappointments spoil her evening. She looked lovely, ‘dressed in a simple pale-pink chiffon frock’. Much as at her sixteenth birthday ball in Livadia, ‘she danced every dance, enjoying herself as simply and wholeheartedly as any girl at her first ball’.3 Her own record of the evening was rather more prosaic: ‘I danced a lot – it was so much fun. A ton of people … it was so beautiful.’4 She enjoyed the quadrille and the mazurka with many of her favourite officers and was happy to have her dear friend Nikolay Sablin from the Shtandart in attendance. Meriel Buchanan was captivated by the sight of the eldest grand duchess that evening, dressed with ‘classical simplicity’, her only necklace a simple string of pearls, but yet so irresistible with her ‘tip-tilted nose’. She ‘had a charm, a freshness, an enchanting exuberance that made her irresistible’.5 Meriel Buchanan remembered seeing her ‘standing on the steps leading down from the gallery to the floor of the ball-room, trying gaily to settle a dispute between three young Grand Dukes who all protested that they had been promised the next dance’. It prompted a pause for thought: ‘watching her I wondered what the future was going to hold for her, and which of the many possible suitors who had been mentioned from time to time she would eventually marry.’6
The issue of Olga’s future marriage had, inevitably, gained in importance during the Tercentary year. Until now the imperial sisters had been a taboo subject in the Russian press, but here they were for the first time being officially presented to the nation. Discussion of Olga’s role as eldest child had once more been raised behind the scenes, when a crisis in the Russian succession broke during the winter of 1912–13. When Alexey had been lying at death’s door at Spala, Nicholas’s younger brother Mikhail had secretly gone off to Vienna to marry his mistress, Natalya Wulfert – a divorcee and a commoner – knowing that if Alexey died and he became heir presumptive again Nicholas would forbid this morganatic marriage. Mikhail hoped that if he married behind his brother’s back it would be accepted as a fait accompli, but Nicholas was furious. And his response was draconian: he demanded Mikhail renounce his right to the throne or immediately divorce Natalya in order to prevent a scandal. When Mikhail refused to do so, Nicholas froze Mikhail’s assets and banished him from Russia. At the end of 1912 a manifesto was published in the Russian papers removing Mikhail from the regency, his military command and imperial honours. According to the laws of succession, Grand Duchess Vladimir’s eldest son Kirill would become regent if Nicholas should die before Alexey was twenty-one, but he and his two brothers who followed in the pecking order were deeply unpopular in Russia. Instead Nicholas overruled existing law and ordered Count Freedericksz to draft a manifesto nominating Olga as regent with Alexandra as guardian during Alexey’s minority. It was published early in 1913 without Nicholas seeking, as he should have done, the Duma’s approval. It inevitably provoked a furious objection from Grand Duchess Vladimir.
From her well-connected position at the British Embassy, Meriel Buchanan could see that the imperial family was in a very bad way that year:
The marriage of the Grand Duke Michael has caused a tremendous upheaval and they say dear Emp.[eror] is heartbroken. Nobody quite knows what is the matter with the little boy and if the worst should happen the question of succession becomes a serious one. Kyrill is of course the nearest but there is some doubt as to whether any of the Vladimir lot will be allowed to succeed as their mother was not an Orthodox when they were born. It would then come to Dimitri and he would have to marry one of the Emperor’s daughters.7
Rumours were clearly still circulating about a match between Olga and Dmitri. The waspish Meriel found the thought rather amusing; she had seen much of Dmitri of late on the Petersburg social scene, where everyone had been learning the latest dance crazes. ‘I had a very ardous [sic] lesson from Dimitri the other day’, she wrote to her cousin. ‘It would be rather “chic” if Dimitri were one day Emperor of all the Russias to be able to say that he taught me the Bunnyhug wouldn’t it?’8 All talk of the match soon, however, evaporated when Dmitri proposed to his cousin, Irina, Grand Duchess Xenia’s only daughter, only to be spurned in favour of his friend Felix Yusupov. A distancing between Nicholas and Dmitri followed as the year wore on, even though Dmitri continued to serve as an ADC.
As for Olga, her romantic teenage thoughts were now firmly directed much lower down the ranks, towards a favourite officer, Alexander Konstantinovich Shvedov, a captain in the Tsar’s Escort. In her diary she referred to him by the acronym of AKSH and his presence at afternoon tea parties at Aunt Olga’s was the focal point of her very limited social life for much of the first half of that year. These occasions were little more than get-togethers for high jinks with a group of favourite hand-picked officers; of dancing to the phonograph and playing childish games of cat-and-mouse, slap-on-hands, hide-and-seek and tag. They were nominally supervised by Olga Alexandrovna but regularly degenerated into a lot of giggling and boisterous play that brought the four sisters into close physical proximity with men with whom they otherwise could never have had such intimacy. It was the strangest and most perverse kind of interplay – but one in which both their mother and their aunt saw no harm. Here were Russian imperial grand duchesses on the brink of womanhood indulging in infantile behaviour, the end result of which was to leave the impressionable Olga swooning about a young man who in every other way was totally off limits. ‘Sat with AKSH the whole time and strongly fell in love with him’, she confided to her diary on 10 February, ‘Lord, save us. Saw him all day long – at liturgy and in the evening. It was very nice and fun. He is so sweet.’9 For weeks afterwards the pattern of her life beyond lessons, walks with Papa, sitting with Mama and listening to Alexey say his prayers at bedtime was the occasional day release to Auntie Olga’s in St Petersburg to play silly games and gaze longingly at the handsome mustachioed AKSH in his dashing Cossack cherkeska.*
Tatiana was distraught at having to miss out on many of the celebrations for the Tercentary in St Petersburg, not to mention the trips to Aunt Olga’s, where she too h
ad looked forward to seeing her favourite officers. Because of her illness (which Dr Botkin and Trina Schneider also soon contracted), the family was obliged to leave the Winter Palace on 26 February and return to Tsarskoe Selo; but before doing so Tatiana asked her nurse Shura Tegleva to telephone Nikolay Rodionov and tell him that she would love it if some of her officers would come and walk past her window at the Winter Palace so she could at least see them. Rodionov and Nikolay Vasilevich Sablin were only too happy to oblige and remembered seeing the poor sick girl, wrapped in a blanket, bowing to them at the window.10
Upon her return to the Alexander Palace Tatiana was immediately quarantined from her sisters and was very ill for more than a month; on 5 March her beautiful long, chestnut hair had to be cropped short, though a wig was made of it for her to wear until her hair grew back sufficiently (which it had done by the end of December).11 Confined at home with her invalid mother, each looking after the other, it wasn’t until early April that Tatiana finally ventured outside onto Alexandra’s balcony, but it was still too cold and snowy to stay for long. When she did at last go outside she was deeply self-conscious about the wig. One day, when she was playing a skipping game in the park with Maria Rasputin and some young officers from the Corps de Pages, Alexey’s dog had run up to her barking; Tatiana got her foot caught in the rope, tripped and as she fell ‘her hair suddenly tumbled down and, to our amazement, we saw a wig drop off’, Maria recalled. Poor Tatiana ‘revealed to our eyes and those of the two embarrassed officers, the top of her head where a few short, sparse hairs were just beginning to grow’. She was absolutely mortified, and ‘with one bound she was on her feet, had picked up her wig and dashed towards the nearest clump of trees. We saw only her blushes and vexation and she did not appear again that day.’12