The Romanov Sisters

by Helen Rappaport

  17. Ibid., pp. 21–2.

  18. ‘The Tsar: A Character Sketch’, Fortnightly Review 75, no. 467, 1 March 1904, p. 364.

  19. Anglo-Russian VI, no. 5, November 1902, p. 653.

  20. Ibid., p. 654.

  21. Moe, Prelude, p. 104, n. 114.

  22. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 27; Fuhrmann, Rasputin, p. 36.

  23. Post-Standard, Syracuse, 21 September 1902; Boston Sunday Globe, 16 November 1902; Post-Standard, Syracuse, 17 November 1902.

  24. Pittsburgh Chronicle-Telegraph, as quoted in the Kalona News, Iowa, 8 November 1901.

  25. Anon. [Casper], Intimacies of Court and Society, p. 133.

  26. The Times, 11 July 1903.

  27. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 175.

  28. See Paléologue, Ambassador’s Memoirs, pp. 190–1; DN I, pp. 740–1. For a fuller description of the visit to Sarov, see Rounding, Alix and Nicky, pp. 44–7; Moe, Prelude, pp. 54–7. For the fate of Seraphim’s remains, which were vandalized under the Soviets, see John and Carol Garrard, Russian Orthodoxy Resurgent: Faith and Power in the New Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), ch. 2.

  29. Eagar, Six Years, pp. 159–60.

  30. DN I, p. 764; Eagar, Six Years, pp. 164–5.

  31. Durland, Royal Romances, pp. 165–6; Daily Mirror, 29 December 1903; Eagar, Six Years, p. 169.

  32. DN I, p. 765.

  33. Eagar, ‘Christmas at the Court of the Tsar’, p. 30.

  34. Ibid.

  35. LP, p. 240.

  36. Durland, Royal Romances, pp. 185–6; Eagar, Six Years, p. 172.

  37. Eagar, ‘Further Glimpses’, p. 366; Eagar, Six Years, p. 177.

  38. Quoted in the Brisbane Courier, 1 October 1904.

  39. Letter to Boyd Carpenter, 29 December 1902 (OS), BL Add. 46721 f. 238; Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 147, quoting the American author George Miller.

  40. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 68.

  41. See Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 28–9.

  42. ‘New Czarevitch’, Daily Express, 13 August 1904.

  43. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, pp. 237–8.

  44. DN I, p. 817; LP, p. 244.

  45. Zimin, Tsarskie dengi, p. 28.

  46. Unitarian Register 83, 1904, p. 901.

  47. For fuller details, see ‘The Cesarevitch’, The Times, 25 August 1904.

  48. LP, p. 244.

  49. Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm, ‘The Russian Imperial Award System during the Reign of Nicholas II 1894–1917’, Journal of the Finnish Antiquarian Society 113, 2005, p. 358.

  50. Fedchenko Papers, ‘Vospominaniya o Marii Fedorovne Geringere’, ff. 27–8.

  51. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, pp. 240–1. It is unclear whether all four sisters attended the actual ceremony as reports vary considerably. Olga and Tatiana were certainly in the procession going to the church but The Times reported that the four girls did not attend the actual ceremony but watched ‘from an alcove’ – see The Times, 25 August 1904.

  52. Ioann Konstantinovich, letter from Livadia to his family, 9–17 September 1904, in Rossiiskii Arkhiv XV, 2007, p. 426.

  53. Eagar, Six Years, p. 223; Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, p. 241.

  54. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 135; Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 106.

  55. ‘Passing Events’, Broad Views, 12 September 1904, p. 266.

  56. Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, p. 100.

  57. ‘Passing Events’, Broad Views, 12 September 1904, p. 266.

  58. Thomas Bentley Mott, Twenty Years as a Military Attaché (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 131.

  59. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 31.

  60. LP, p. 245.

  61. Roman Romanoff, Det var et rigt hus … Erindringer af Roman Romanoff prins af rusland, 1896–1919, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1991, pp. 58–9. I am grateful to Karen Roth for this translation from the Danish.

  62. Fedchenko, ‘Vospominaniya’, f. 15.

  63. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 61.

  64. Zimin, Tsarskie dengi, pp. 30–1.

  65. ‘The Hope of Russia – The Infant Tsarevich’, Illustrated London News, front cover, 31 March 1906.

  66. LP, p. 240; Wilton and Telberg, Last Days of the Romanovs, p. 33.

  67. This remained the predicted life expectancy until the 1960s when the first really effective treatment – Factor VIII plasma, a blood-clotting protein – was introduced.

  Five – The Big Pair and the Little Pair

  1. See Frederick Doloman, ‘How the Russian Censor Works’, Strand Magazine 29, no. 170, February 1905, p. 213.

  2. LP, p. 251.

  3. Elton, One Year, p. 110. See also SL, pp. 247–8; ‘Cannon Fired at the Czar’, The Call, San Francisco, 20 January 1905.

  4. The following year Nicholas’s security forces insisted that the ceremony take place out of town, at the lake in front of the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

  5. Min’s assassin, Zinaida Konoplyannikova, was hanged soon afterwards at the Shlisselburg Fortress – the first female revolutionary to be executed since Sofya Perovskaya, one of the assassins of Alexander II, in 1881. The American ambassador to St Petersburg, George von Lengerke Meyer, made a report to US Senator Lodge summarizing the number of attacks and assassinations carried out in Russia between 1900 and 1906: ‘killed or injured by bombs, revolvers, assaults: 1,937 officials and important persons, 1 grand duke, 67 governors, general governors and town prefects; 985 police officers and policemen; 500 army officers and soldiers; 214 civil functionaries, 117 manufacturers, 53 clergymen.’ See Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, p. 329.

  6. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 76.

  7. ‘Home Life of the Czar’, London Journal, 14 February 1903, p. 150.

  8. Ibid.

  9. See Spiridovich, Last Years, pp.12–17.

  10. Mossolov, At the Court, p. 36.

  11. See ‘Terrible Bomb Outrage’, Advertiser, Adelaide, 2 October 1906.

  12. ‘Children Without a Smile’, Washington Post, 28 May 1905.

  13. Andrei Almarik, Rasputin: dokumentalnaya povest, ch. IX, accessible @: http://www.erlib.com/Андрей_Амальрик/Распутин/9/

  14. Ibid.; Kokovtsov, Iz moego proshlago 2, p. 348; Wyrubova, Muistelmia Venäjän, p. 105.

  15. Ibid. See also Wheeler and Rives, Dome, pp. 348–9. A monument to the victims of the attack on Stolypin’s villa was erected on the site in 1908, and surprisingly survived the Soviet era.

  16. For a more balanced view of Rasputin by a close member of the family who witnessed him first hand, see Olga Alexandrovna’s memoirs in Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, ch. 7, pp. 133–46. An interesting and objective contemporary view that does much to demystify him can also be found in Shelley, Blue Steppes, ch. V, ‘The Era of Rasputin’.

  17. Spiridovich, Last Years, p. 109; see Nicholas’s diary entries for 1 November 1905, 18 July, 12 October, 9 December 1906, accessible @: http://lib.ec/b/384140/read#t22

  18. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 26.

  19. Poore, Memoirs of Emily Loch, p. 301.

  20. ‘The Tsar’s Children’, Daily Mirror, 29 December 1903.

  21. ‘Tottering House of the Romanoffs’.

  22. Marina de Heyden, Les Rubis portent malheur (Monte Carlo: Editions Regain, 1967), p. 27.

  23. Bonetsakaya, Tsarskie deti, p. 332.

  24. Spiridovich, Last Years, p. 26.

  25. Girardin, Précepteur des Romanov, p. 45.

  26. Ibid. In 1906 Stana would divorce the duke and marry her sister’s brother-in-law Grand Duke Nikolay, effecting, for a while, an even closer rapport with Nicholas and Alexandra, until Stana and Nikolay became alienated from the imperial couple in the wake of Rasputin’s increasing influence.

  27. For the daily routine of family life at Tsarskoe Selo, see e.g. Alexey Volkov’s Memories, ch. 10, accessible @: http://www.alexanderpalace.org/volkov/8.html

  28. LP, letter from Alexandra when in Pskov, 4 August 1905, p. 278.

  29. Bokan
ov, Love, Power and Tragedy, p. 112.

  30. ‘Tottering House of the Romanoffs’.

  31. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, p. 258.

  32. ‘The Tsar’s Children’, Daily Mirror, 29 December 1903.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p. 331; Letter to Boyd Carpenter, 29 December 1902 (11 January 1903 NS), BL Add 46721 f. 238.

  35. LP, p. 256.

  36. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 187; Eagar, Six Years, p. 163.

  37. Eagar, ‘Christmas at the Court of the Tsar’, p. 27.

  38. Eagar, Six Years, p. 214.

  39. LP, p. 221.

  40. Eagar, Six Years, p. 169.

  41. Daily Mirror, 29 December 1903.

  42. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 197.

  43. Virubova, Keisarinnan Hovineiti, p. 230.

  44. Minzlov [Mintslov], ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 163; Eagar, ‘Further Glimpses’, p. 367; Durland, Royal Romances, p. 188.

  45. Eagar, Six Years, p. 71.

  46. Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 162. For perhaps the best portrait of the much-written-about Anastasia, see her aunt Olga’s account in Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, pp. 108–13. Note these very detailed and personal memories were the basis for Olga Alexandrovna’s emphatic rejection of false claimant Anna Anderson.

  47. Minzlov, ‘Home Life of the Romanoffs’, p. 162.

  48. Eagar, ‘Russian Court in Summer’, p. 390.

  49. Durland, Royal Romances, pp. 202–3.

  50. Eagar, ‘Further Glimpses’, pp. 366–7.

  51. King and Wilson, Resurrection of the Romanovs, p. 24.

  52. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, p. 245.

  Six – The Shtandart

  1. See Zimin, Tsarskaya rabota, pp. 262–4.

  2. See SL, pp. 216–18; Hall, ‘No Bombs, No Bandits’.

  3. Grabbe and Grabbe, Private World, p. 91.

  4. For a detailed description of the interior of the Shtandart and life on board the yacht in 1906, see Nikolay Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 18–39. See also King, Court of the Last Tsar, pp. 274–85 and Tuomi-Nikula, Imperatory.

  5. Sablin, Desyat let, p. 234.

  6. The sick Orbeliani was given her own suite of rooms at the Alexander Palace where Alexandra paid for her care and nursed her as her health declined. Sonya died in her arms in December 1915 – see Vyrubova, Memoirs, p. 371. Alexandra’s care of and concern for Orbeliani is typical of how she always looked after those dear to her. See Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 365–6.

  7. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 38; Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 137. For an assessment of Vyrubova’s character see Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, pp. 48–9.

  8. Grabbe and Grabbe, Private World, p. 57.

  9. 21 September 1906, Nikolai, accessible @: http://lib.ec/b/384140/read#t22

  10. See Linda Predovsky, ‘The Playhouse on Children’s Island’, Royalty Digest, no. 119, May 2001, pp. 347–9.

  11. ‘Take the “Bumps”: Little Grand Duchesses Experiment with Toboggan in Czar’s Park’, Washington Post, 25 March 1907.

  12. Kulikovsky, 25 Chapters, p. 75.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Ibid., p. 74; Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 111.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Kulikovsky, 25 Chapters, p. 75.

  17. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 112.

  18. Ibid.; Kulikovsky, 25 Chapters, p. 74.

  19. Zeepvat, introduction to Eagar, Six Years, pp. 33, 34.

  20. Bonetskaya, Tsarskie deti, p. 332. For more on Trina Schneider, a Baltic German, original name Schneiderlein, see Chernova, Vernye, pp. 169–75, 565.

  21. The pet name Savanna was a contraction of the names Sofya Ivanovna. See Sof’ya Ivanovna Tyutcheva, ‘Za neskolko let do katastrofy’, Vospominaniya’.

  22. According to an editorial note, these memoirs were dictated by Tyutcheva to a niece in January 1945.

  23. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 75.

  24. ‘Children of the Czar’, Scrap-Book V, 1908, p. 60.

  25. Eagar, Six Years, p. 226.

  26. John Epps was born in 1848 and went to Russia in 1880 at the age of thirty-one. When he died in Australia in 1935 he had in his possession numerous drawings and schoolbooks by the four Romanov sisters. These went missing for many years, then finally resurfaced in Australia in 2004, with a relative, Janet Epps. Sadly the author has not been able to trace either her or the current location of these precious memorabilia. See @: http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1220082.htm

  27. See Trewin, Tutor to the Tsarevich, p. 10 and Zeepvat, Cradle to Crown, p. 223.

  28. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 163.

  29. Nicholas [Gibbes], ‘Ten Years’, p. 9. C. S. Gibbes Papers, List 1 (76), Statement by Gibbes, 1 December 1928.

  30. Welch, Romanovs and Mr Gibbes, p. 33.

  31. For details of the girls’ curriculum, see Girardin, Précepteur, p. 49, Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 162–4, Zimin, Vzroslyi mir, pp. 497–8, although there is some inconsistency in the timings of lessons.

  32. The plotters – eleven men and seven women of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, among them ‘the Madonna-like’ Mariya Prokofieva and the equally attractive general’s daughter ‘Madame Fedosieff’, both of whom the western press depicted as precursors of Mata Hari – went on trial in August behind closed doors and a total press blackout. Three of the male conspirators were sentenced to death and hanged and several of the women involved were jailed or, in Prokofieva’s case sent into exile. See ‘Beautiful Women Accused of Plotting against the Tsar’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 31 August 1907; SL, p. 228.

  33. Norregaard, ‘The Czar at Home’, Daily Mail, 10 June 1908.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 33.

  36. The strong and resourceful Dina, as Alexey called him, was increasingly relied on to protect the tsarevich against any harm and paid a generous salary in recognition of this. He would henceforth sleep in the room next to Alexey’s in all the imperial residences. See Zimin, Detskiy mir, pp. 82–3.

  37. Tuomi-Nikula, Imperatory, pp. 188–9. See also the account in Spiridovich, Last Years, pp. 174–5.

  38. Sablin, ‘S tsarskoy semei na “shtandarte”’, f. 4. See also ch. 9 of Spiridovich, Last Years and Sablin’s account in Desyat let, pp. 100–4.

  39. See Tuomi-Nikula, Imperatory, pp. 188–90; Vyrubova, Memories, p. 34.

  Seven – Our Friend

  1. Dehn, My Empress, p. 81.

  2. ‘The Three-year-old Heir to the Throne of the Czar’, Current Literature 43, no. 1, July 1907, p. 38.

  3. Botkin, Real Romanovs, p. 28; Spiridovich, Last Years, p. 179.

  4. Durland, Royal Romances, p. 206; Bonetskaya, Tsarskie deti, p. 324.

  5. Wheeler and Rives, Dome, p. 356.

  6. Welch, Romanovs and Mr Gibbes, p. 37.

  7. René Fulop-Miller, Rasputin: The Holy Devil (London: G. P. Putnam, 1927), p. 25.

  8. Radziwill, Taint, p. 196. See also ‘The Three-year-old Heir’, pp. 36–8.

  9. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 142. Olga Alexandrovna’s is one of the very few reliable sources for Alexey’s first serious haemophilia attacks. See also Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 35.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Rasputin, Rasputin, p. 114.

  12. For accounts of this 1907 accident, see Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 35; Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, pp. 142–3; Spiridovich, Raspoutine, p. 71; Rasputin, Rasputin, p. 115.

  13. De Jonge, Life and Times of Rasputin, p. 154.

  14. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 142.

  15. Buxhoeveden, Before the Storm, p. 119.

  16. Dolgorouky, ‘Gone For Ever’, TS, Hoover Institution, p. 11.

  17. Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 193; Dehn, My Empress, p. 103.

  18. Fedchenko, ‘Vospominaniya’, f. 27. See also Almarik re the ‘New One’ coined by Alexey, @: http://www.erlib.com/Андрей_Амальрик/Распутин/9/

  19. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 138.

  20. C. E. Bechhofer, A Wand
erer’s Log (London: Mills & Boon, 1922), p. 149, and also ch. VII.

  21. Ibid., p. 150.

  22. Dehn, My Empress, p. 103.

  23. Shelley, Blue Steppes, p. 85; see ch. VI, ‘Days and Nights with Rasputin’.

  24. For a summary, see Nelipa, Murder of Rasputin, pp. 26–9.

  25. Sablin, ‘S tsarskoy semei na “Shtandarte”’, f. 9.

  26. Ibid., f. 10.

  27. Ibid.

  28. Welch, Romanovs and Mr Gibbes, p. 43; Bowra, Memories, p. 65.

  29. According to Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 121, Alexandra sent two telegrams to Rasputin in Pokrovskoe and he assured her that ‘her little son would never die of his illness’.

  30. SL, p. 231; Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 35; Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 143.

  31. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 122.

  32. Marie of Romania, Story of My Life, pp. 474–5.

  33. Ular, Russia from Within, p. 41; Radziwill, Taint, p. 208.

  34. Zimin, Detskiy mir, p. 36.

  35. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 122.

  36. LP, pp. 315–16.

  37. LP, p. 320.

  38. Bonetskaya, Tsarskie deti, p. 400.

  39. LP, p. 318.

  40. Ibid., p. 319.

  41. Bonetskaya, Tsarskie deti, pp. 407–8.

  42. Ibid., p. 409.

  43. Ibid.

  44. LP, p. 321; Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 195.

  45. LP, p. 321.

  46. Bokhanov, Aleksandra Feodorovna, p. 195.

  47. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 141.

  48. Prime Minister Stolypin had also commissioned a private investigation of Rasputin by the Okhrana. A damning report, like that on Philippe in 1902, it was shown to Nicholas and Alexandra but they chose to ignore it.

  49. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 196.

  50. See @: http://traditio-ru.org/wiki/Письма_царских_дочерей_Григорию_Распутину The letters came into the possession of a monk and associate of Rasputin’s named Iliodor (Sergey Trufanov), who claimed that when Rasputin had met him at Christmas 1909 in Pokrovskoe, he had shown Iliodor numerous letters sent to him by Alexandra and the girls, and had given him seven of these letters as a ‘souvenir’. The text of the letters appeared in a book on Rasputin by the Russian dissident writer Andrey Almarik that was published in French in 1982. The Russian text can be found online @: http://www.erlib.com/Андрей_Амальрик/Распутин/9/. Some of the letters were also published in S. P. Istratova, Zhitie bludnogo startsa Grishki Rasputina (Moscow: Vozrozhdenie, 1990), pp. 1015–16. Note that the letters appear to have been redacted at some point and are quoted in various forms in different sources. No single source has yet come to light that gives them in full.