The Romanov Sisters
Page 46
2. Evening Star, 3 July 1862.
3. Karl Baedeker, A Handbook for Travellers on the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland (London: K. Baedeker, 1864), p. 171.
4. Seawell, ‘Annual Visit’, p. 323.
5. Davenport Daily Leader, 8 July 1894.
6. Helena and Sell, Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, p. 14.
7. Duff, Hessian Tapestry, p. 91.
8. Noel, Princess Alice, pp. 169, 177.
9. Fulford, Darling Child, p. 159.
10. ‘The Czarina’, Canadian Magazine, p. 302.
11. Fulford, Beloved Mama, pp. 23, 24.
12. Children’s Friend 36, 1896, p. 167.
13. Ibid.
14. Helena and Sell, Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, p. 270.
15. Noel, Princess Alice, p. 215.
16. Helena and Sell, Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, p. 304.
17. Ibid., p. 295.
18. Noel, Princess Alice, p. 230.
19. Letter of 13 December 1882, RA VIC/Z/87/121.
20. E.g. letter of 26 December 1891, RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/82–3, letter 19.
21. Letter of 15 April 1871, in Bokhanov et al., Romanovs, p. 49.
22. G. W. Weippiert, in Davenport Daily Leader, 8 July 1894.
23. Queen Victoria’s journal for 27 April 1892, in Zeepvat, Cradle to Crown, p. 133.
24. Hough, Advice to a Granddaughter, p. 116.
25. 15 February 1887 to Vicky, Bokhanov et al., Romanovs, p. 53; Hough, Advice to a Granddaughter, p. 88.
26. Hibbert, Queen Victoria, pp. 318, 329.
27. Vacaresco, Kings and Queens, p. 161.
28. Vassili, Behind the Veil, p. 226.
29. 26 December 1893, RA VIC/Z/90/66.
30. Poore, Memoirs of Emily Loch, p. 154.
31. 21 October 1894, in Miller, Four Graces, p. 93.
32. Mandache, Dearest Missy, p. 172.
33. Poore, Memoirs of Emily Loch, p. 155.
34. Westminster Budget, 6 June 1894, p. 37.
35. Letters to Nicky: 22 April 1894, LP, p. 59; 25 May 1894, LP, p. 70.
36. Westminster Budget, 22 June 1894, p. 4.
37. Malcolm Neesom, Bygone Harrogate (Derby: Breedon Books, 1999), p. 9.
38. LP, p. 68.
39. ‘Concerning Her Grand Ducal Highness, Princess Alix of Hesse’, Armstrong’s Harrogate Almanac (Harrogate, Yks: J. L. Armstrong, 1895), p. 2.
40. Ibid.
41. Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 58.
42. Correspondence, p. 157.
43. LP, p. 110.
44. New Weekly Courant, 1 December 1894.
45. Radziwill, It Really Happened, pp. 88–9.
46. 26 November 1894 OS, Correspondence, p. 166.
47. 20 November 1894 OS, Correspondence, pp. 163 and 164.
48. Queen Victoria to Victoria of Milford Haven, 31 March 1889 in Hough, Louis and Victoria, p. 149.
49. G. E. Buckle (ed.), Letters of Queen Victoria … 1886 to 1901, 3rd series (London: John Murray, 1931), vol. 2, p. 454.
50. Guardian, 7 November 1894.
Two – La Petite Duchesse
1. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, p. 148.
2. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 73.
3. LP, 11 December 1894, p. 117.
4. Correspondence, 20 February 1895, p. 180.
5. Ibid., 28 February 1895, p. 181.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 7 January 1895, p. 171; see also p. 174.
8. Ibid., 5 March 1895, p. 183.
9. For a discussion of the Russian laws of succession, see Harris, ‘Succession Prospects’.
10. Correspondence, 17 December 1894, p. 170.
11. W. T. Stead, ‘Interview with Nicholas’, in Joseph O. Baylen, The Tsar’s ‘Lecturer-General’: W. T. Stead and the Russian Revolution of 1905 (Atlanta: Georgia State College, 1969), p. 49.
12. Vay de Vaya and Luskod, Empires, p. 10.
13. Correspondence, 30 June 1895, p. 197.
14. Ibid., 5 July 1895, p. 203.
15. Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, pp. 2–3.
16. Correspondence, 15 September 1895, p. 222.
17. Evgeniya Konradovna Günst (a Russian of German extraction) was a much sought-after midwife to European royalty and delivered several of Nicholas and Alexandra’s relatives’ babies, including Marie of Romania’s son Carol in 1893 and her daughter Elisabeta in 1894. After delivering Ernie and Ducky’s baby Elisabeth in Darmstadt in February 1895, Günst returned to Russia for the birth of Grand Duchess Xenia’s first baby Irina in July. She was still in service to royal clients in 1915, when, in turn, she delivered Irina’s first baby by her husband Prince Felix Yusupov. There are numerous references to her in this guise in Mandache, Dearest Missy.
18. Correspondence, 21 August 1895, p. 216.
19. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/81: 31 October (12 November NS) 1895.
20. SL, pp. 98–9.
21. Ibid., p. 100.
22. Correspondence, 9 October 1895, p. 225.
23. Reuters telegram, North Eastern Daily Gazette, 12 November (NS) 1895; Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 4 November 1895 (NS).
24. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/83: 4 November (17 November NS) 1895.
25. Collier, Victorian Diarist, p. 4.
26. DN I, p. 234.
27. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/83: 4 November (17 November NS) 1895.
28. LP, p. 144; DN I, pp. 234, 246. See also Ella’s letter to Queen Victoria: RA VIC/MAIN/Z/90/83.
29. DN I, p. 235.
30. Queen Victoria’s Journal, vol. 102, p. 116, accessible @: http://www.queenvictoriasjournals.org/home.do
31. RA VIC/Main/Z/90/82: 13 November (25 November NS) 1895.
32. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 134.
33. Collier, Victorian Diarist, p. 4.
34. Woman’s Life, 27 March 1897.
35. Tillander-Godenhielm, ‘Russian Imperial Award System’, p. 357.
36. LP, p. 130.
37. Two Russian Girls, ‘Nestful of Princesses’, p. 937; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 56; LP, p. 244. Accounts vary on the number of volleys but 101/301 appears to be correct. Under the rules laid down by Nicholas I in 1834, there would be 201 volleys for any other sons born after the male heir. See N. P. Slavnitsky, ‘Sankt-Peterburgskaya Krepost i tseremonii, svyazannye s rossiiskim tsarstvuyushchim domom’, in Kultura i iskusstvo v epokhu Nikolaya I [conference papers] (St Petersburg: Alina, 2008), pp. 143–4.
38. ‘Alleged Dynamite Conspiracy’, Daily News, 15 September 1896.
39. Pall Mall Gazette, 16 November 1895 (NS).
40. Woman’s Life, 27 March 1897 (NS), p. 81.
41. Westminster Budget, 17 January 1896 (NS), p. 14.
42. Collier, Victorian Diarist, p. 4; Westminster Budget, 29 November 1895 (NS).
43. DN I, p. 235; LP, letter to Queen Victoria, 12 November 1895, p. 131.
44. Collier, Victorian Diarist, p. 4. See also Eagar, Five Years, pp. 78–9 for a fuller description of the christening ceremony, as performed for the third daughter, Maria.
45. 10 December 1895, Mandache, Dearest Missy, p. 245.
46. See Zeepvat, Cradle to Crown, p. 39; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 99. Orchie later returned to England, where she died in 1906.
47. Correspondence, 12 December 1895, p. 227.
48. DN I, p. 242; Correspondence, p. 229.
49. Zeepvat, Cradle to Crown, p. 20; LP, p. 133.
50. Birmingham Daily Post, 27 November 1895.
51. Correspondence, 9 January 1896, pp. 229–30.
52. Ibid., 13 April 1896, p. 230; DN I, p. 269.
53. RA VIC/ADD1/166/27: 20 May 1896.
54. Ibid.
55. Lutyens, Lady Lytton, p. 79.
56. Welch, Russian Court at Sea, p. 56; DN I, p. 270.
57. Correspondence, 12 July 1896, p. 232.
58. ‘Alleged Dynamite Conspiracy’: see extensive coverage of this in the British press July–September 1896, @: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
59. RA VIC/MAIN/H/47/92.
61. DN I, p. 297.
62. Ramm, Beloved and Darling Child, p. 195.
63. Lutyens, Lady Lytton, p. 75.
64. Huddersfield Daily Chronicle, 1 October 1896.
65. Yorkshire Herald, 2 October 1896.
66. DN I, p. 297.
67. Windsor Magazine 41, no. 240, December 1914, pp. 4–5; Hampshire Telegraph, 23 January 1897.
68. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 73.
69. SL, p. 114; ‘Daughters of Royal Houses’, Woman’s Life, 27 March 1897, pp. 81–2. When, a few years later, sailors on the Shtandart jokingly referred to Olga as the duchesse, she indignantly retorted that she was no ‘duchess’ but a Russian princess. See Sablin, Desyat’ let, p. 140.
70. See e.g. Church Weekly, 14 September 1900.
71. Zimin, Tsarskie dengi, p. 177. Two weeks before Olga’s birth the sum of 318,913 roubles as well as 60,000 French francs were put into a fund for the child and invested in stocks and shares. By 1908 the roubles had increased to 1,756,000.
72. ‘Daughters of Royal Houses’, Woman’s Life, 27 March 1897, p. 82.
73. Mandache, Dearest Missy, p. 281.
74. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 64.
75. Moe, Prelude, p. 100.
76. Correspondence, 26 March 1897, p. 239.
77. Ibid., p. 240.
78. Günst was awarded a pension for applying the forceps so skilfully during the birth of Tatiana. The pension was paid until 1917; she was also given regular free holidays in the Crimea. See Zimin, Tsarskie dengi, p. 19.
79. Marfa Mouchanow, My Empress (New York: John Long, 1918), p. 91.
Three – My God! What a Disappointment!… A Fourth Girl!
1. RA VIC/ADDU/127.
2. DN I, pp. 343–4; Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 66.
3. LP, p. 163; ibid.
4. Isle of Man Times, 12 June 1897.
5. Boston Daily Globe, 14 June 1897.
6. For descriptions of Alexandra’s mauve boudoir, see King, Court of the Last Tsar, p. 199; Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, pp. 34–5; Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, pp. 51–2; ‘Famous Opal-hued Boudoir of Alexandra’, accessible @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/mauve.html
7. Brisbane Courier, 19 October 1897.
8. Vassili, Behind the Veil, pp. 291–2; SL, pp. 126–7.
9. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 34.
10. ‘Something About Dolls’, English Illustrated Magazine 24, 1901, p. 246; Danville Republican, 30 December 1897.
11. LP, p. 166.
12. Bariatinsky, My Russian Life, p. 88.
13. SL, 21 November 1897, pp. 128–9.
14. If Alexandra miscarried this must have happened very early in the pregnancy. It has also been suggested that she may have suffered a miscarriage around the time of the coronation, in May 1896, but as she was seen riding soon afterwards, this seems unlikely. See Hough, Advice to a Granddaughter, p. 13; King, Court of the Last Tsar, p. 123.
15. Poore, Memoirs of Emily Loch, p. 194.
16. Ibid., pp. 194–5; ‘The Good Works of the Empress of Russia’, Review of Reviews 26, no. 151, July 1902, p. 58.
17. Poore, Memoirs of Emily Loch, pp. 199–200.
18. Ibid., p. 224.
19. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 76.
20. Correspondence, 2 April 1898, p. 244.
21. Mandache, Dearest Missy, p. 349.
22. LP, 20 September 1898, p. 174.
23. SL, 30 October 1898, pp. 130–1.
24. King, Court of the Last Tsar, p. 124.
25. Zeepvat, introduction to Eagar, Six Years, pp. 7–8, 14.
26. Eagar, Six Years, p. 49.
27. Ibid., p. 52; Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 34; for Vishnyakova, see Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 73–4.
28. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, pp. 34–5, 51.
29. See LP, pp. 184–5; DN I, pp. 470–1; LP, p. 183.
30. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 92; DN I, p. 476.
31. LP, p. 185.
32. Ibid., p. 186.
33. Mandache, Dearest Missy, p. 383.
34. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 2 July 1899 (NS).
35. Weekly Standard and Express, 29 July 1899 (NS).
36. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 2 July 1899 (NS).
37. Eagar, Six Years, pp. 78–9.
38. LP, p. 188.
39. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 6 August 1899; Fort Wayne Sentinel, 5 August 1899; Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, 5 August 1899.
40. Eagar, Six Years, p. 52.
41. Ibid., pp. 70–1.
42. ‘The Czarina of Russia’, Otago Witness, 4 January 1900. Eagar, ‘Russian Court in Summer’.
43. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 3; Bariatinsky, My Russian Life, pp. 66, 87.
44. Buxhoeveden, Life of Alexandra, pp. 78–9; Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, pp. 70–1.
45. Mee, ‘Empress of a Hundred Millions’, p. 6.
46. Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 15–16.
47. Daily News, 15 December 1900; Sunday Gazette, 11 December 1898.
48. Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 17–18; W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: Magic in Russia (Stroud, Glos: Sutton, 1999), p. 112; Boris Yeltsin, Against the Grain (London: Simon & Schuster, 1990), pp. 79–80.
49. SL, pp. 138–9.
50. See e.g. Standard, 30 November 1900.
51. Considerable rumour had been in circulation since 1897 that the after-effects of a head wound, inflicted on Nicholas by an attacker during a tour to Japan in 1891, had led to pressure on his brain caused by coagulated blood gathering at the site of the injury. It was further reported that he had had his skull trepanned by a German surgeon, Dr Bergman, to relieve it during his 1899 visit to Darmstadt; this claim was refuted but the rumours persisted. See Middlesborough Daily Gazette, 18 January 1897; Dundee Courier, 27 January 1897; Westminster Budget, 29 January 1897; Daily News, 24 November and 15 December 1900.
52. ‘The Truth about the Czar’, Daily News, 15 December 1900.
53. DN I, p. 564.
54. See Harris, ‘Succession Prospects’, pp. 65–6.
55. Harcave, Memoirs of Count Witte, p. 194; Crawford, Michael and Natasha, pp. 25–6.
56. Harcave, Memoirs of Count Witte, p. 297; Bogdanovich, Tri poslednykh samoderzhtsa, p. 269.
57. ‘The Truth about the Czar’, Daily News, 15 December 1900. In 1917 Ernest Rumley Dawson openly cited the tsaritsa’s case history in his The Causation of Sex in Man (London: H. K. Lewis), p. 218, in which he argued that ‘to secure a different sex child to the child last born, we must first find the ovulation month of the last child – i.e. the month during which the ovum shed was fertilised’, and from there ‘find the months which correspond in sex to the one which provided the last ovum’. Dawson’s simple conclusion was that ‘during these months, therefore, no intercourse must take place’. He went on to claim that his method had worked for several of his clients in the nobility and aristocracy and then took a look at the case of the tsaritsa, claiming that she had had four daughters consecutively, and at last a son, ‘because on four occasions a female ovulation was unfortunately fertilised’. ‘The long-wished-for heir, the Cesarewitch, was born in August 1904. Tracing back, we find that the ovulation month must have been November 1903. If, therefore, September 1900 was a female ovulation period, and produced the Princess Anastasia, we know that September 1901 would be a male, September 1902 a female, and September 1903 a male ovulation period; therefore October 1903 would be a female ovulation, and November 1903 was a male ovulation, which being fertilised, the long-looked-for son and heir was duly born in August 1904, his birth being by this plan correctly foretold by me.’ There is no evidence to show whether or not Nicholas and Alexandra did indeed consult directly with Dawson or follow his theories in attempting to conceive a son. Professor Schenk had died in 1902.
58. ‘Four Little Maids’, Delphos Daily Herald, 16 July 1901.
59. Ibid.
60. SL, p. 1
39.
61. DN I, p. 577.
62. LP, p. 204; in von Spreti, Alix an Gretchen, p. 117, the illness is described as typhus.
63. Letter to Toni Becker, 19 May 1901, in Kuhnt, Briefe der Zarin, p. 123; Eagar, Six Years, pp. 131–2.
64. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 16.
65. DN I, p. 599.
66. Eagar, Six Years, p. 132.
67. Anon. [Casper], Intimacies of Court and Society, p. 137.
68. LP, p. 206.
69. Daily Mail, 19 June 1901.
70. Paléologue, Alexandra-Féodorowna, p. 16.
71. Anon. [Casper], Intimacies of Court and Society, p. 137.
72. Paoli, My Royal Clients, p. 124.
73. Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, p. 150.
74. Holmes, Travelogues, p. 50.
75. Philippe stayed at Znamenka 9–21 July. See DN I, pp. 605–7.
Four – The Hope of Russia
1. Mintslov, Peterburg, pp. 37–8; Hapgood, Russian Rambles, p. 50.
2. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 135.
3. The spelling and the ordering of Philippe’s names vary widely but Nizier Anthelme Philippe is the name recorded on his tombstone. See Robert D. Warth, ‘Before Rasputin: Piety and the Occult at the Court of NII’, Historian XLVII, May 1985, pp. 323–6 (p. 327, n. 16). Warth is the most reliable source for Philippe; see also Spiridovich, Les Dernières années, vol. 1, pp. 80–4.
4. Paléologue, Ambassador’s Memoirs, pp. 185–6.
5. Hall, Little Mother of Russia, pp. 190–1.
6. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 19.
7. DN I, p. 588.
8. See LP, p. 219; Shemansky and Geichenko, Poslednye Romanovy v Petergofe, p. 90.
9. See Nicholas’s diary for July, DN I, pp. 605–6 and also pp. 629, 642.
10. Paléologue, Ambassador’s Diary, p. 188; see also Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 25–6.
11. Shemansky and Geichenko, Poslednye Romanovy v Petergofe, p. 52.
12. LP, p. 214.
13. DN I, p. 654.
14. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 171.
15. Pravitelstvennyi vestnik, no. 183, 21 August 1902.
16. The condition Alexandra had been suffering from is nowadays called a molar pregnancy. Hydatidiform moles form in the uterus when a non-viable egg – usually one where two sperm have entered at the moment of fertilization – implants itself in the lining of the womb and begins to grow. Instead of multiplying in the normal way, the cells mutate, and in some cases can become cancerous, and the placenta develops into a cyst. In Alexandra’s case, her body had ultimately rejected this mass of cells growing in the lining of her womb, but the condition would have raised her hormone levels, resulting in nausea and tiredness which were common symptoms in all her pregnancies, thus reassuring her that the pregnancy was progressing normally. Russian historian Igor Zimin rediscovered the private report in the Russian archives in 2010. See Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 22–5.