The Romanov Sisters

by Helen Rappaport

  5. Radziwill, Taint, p. 397.

  6. Untitled TS memoirs, List 1 (82) Sydney Gibbes Papers, Bodleian Library, fo 4.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Gerald Hamilton, The Way It Was With Me (London: Leslie Frewin, 1969), p. 29.

  9. LP, p. 351.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Official statement of 3 November 1912, reported in The Times, 4 November. Some sources state, as per Spiridovich in Les Dernières années, vol. 2, pp. 284–5, that the bleeding was caused by Alexey hitting himself when jumping from the side of the large majolica bathtub. The boating accident is given as the cause by Nicholas himself in a letter to his mother, SL, p. 275 and also by Mossolov, Court, pp. 150–1, Vyrubova, Memories, p. 90, Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 143 and Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 32.

  12. See Vyrubova, Memories, p. 92.

  13. SL, p. 276.

  14. Spiridovich, Les Dernières années, vol. 2, p. 93; Vyrubova, Memories, p. 93.

  15. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 29.

  16. Ibid., p. 27.

  17. Mossolov, Court, p. 151.

  18. Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, p. 124.

  19. LP, p. 357.

  20. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 94; Rasputin, Rasputin, p. 177; Rasputin, Rasputin My Father, p. 72. Mossolov, Court, p. 151, has it differently, saying that Rasputin’s message told the tsaritsa that the tsarevich must not be ‘allowed to be martyred by the doctors’. Many sources seem to have conflated the contents of the two telegrams.

  21. Rasputin, Rasputin, p. 177.

  22. Mossolov, Court, p. 152.

  23. Alexandra Feodorovna, letter to Boyd Carpenter, 24 January 1913, ff. 241–2.

  24. Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, p. 125.

  25. SL, p. 275.

  26. Daily News, Maryland, 23 October 1912.

  27. Ibid. See also ‘Tragedy of the Czarevitch’, 12 December 1912, which repeats the rumour about Dmitri Pavlovich marrying Olga and becoming heir-designate.

  28. The Times, 4 November 1912.

  29. Ibid.

  30. New York Times, 10 November 1912.

  31. Mossolov, Court, p. 152; see also de Jonge, Life and Times of Rasputin, pp. 213–14.

  32. Correspondence, p. 361.

  33. Letter to General Alexander Pfuhlstein, 20 December 1912, in von Spreti, Alix an Gretchen, pp. 187–8.

  34. Spiridovich, Les Dernières années, vol. 2, pp. 293–4.

  35. Letter to General Alexander Pfuhlstein, 20 December 1912, in von Spreti, Alix an Gretchen, p. 188.

  36. Alexandra Feodorovna, letters to Boyd Carpenter, BL Add 46721, vol. 5, 24 January/7 February, ff. 240–1.

  37. Vorres, Last Grand Duchess, p. 143.

  38. Alexandra Feodorovna, letters to Boyd Carpenter, BL Add 46721, vol. 5, 24 January/7 February, f. 243.

  39. LP, p. 364.

  40. Baroness Souiny, Russia of Yesterday and Tomorrow (New York: Century, 1917), p. 119.

  41. For useful overviews of the Tercentary see King, Court of the Last Tsar, ch. 23; Wortman, Scenarios of Power, pp. 383–96.

  42. The Times, 7 March 1913.

  43. ‘Imperial Russia’, Illustrated London News, Supplement, July 1913, pp. xviii, xxi; Radzinsky, Last Tsar, pp. xxi, 109.

  44. ‘The Romanoff Celebrations’, The Times, 6 March 1913.

  45. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p. 383.

  46. Quoted in ibid., p. 386; see also The Times, 7 March 1913.

  47. Vassili, Taint, p. 404.

  48. Gavriil Konstantinovich, Marble Palace, p. 165; Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 35.

  49. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p. 384.

  50. Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, pp. 34–5.

  51. See Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p. 388.

  52. For the dresses, see @: http://www.nicholasandalexandra.com/dresso&t.html

  53. Lidiya Leonidovna Vasilchikova, Ischeznuvshaya Rossiya: Vospominaniya … 1886–1919 (St Petersburg: Peterburgskie sezony, 1995), p. 267.

  54. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 99.

  55. Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 36.

  56. Ibid., pp. 36–7; see also Hall, Little Mother, pp. 244–5.

  57. DON, p. 23.

  Twelve – Lord Send Happiness to Him, My Beloved One

  1. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 175.

  2. See Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, pp. 36–7; Gavriil Konstantinovich, Marble Palace, p. 165.

  3. Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 37.

  4. DON, p. 24.

  5. Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, p. 211.

  6. See Harris, ‘Succession Prospects’, pp. 74–5; Crawford, Michael and Natasha, p. 134.

  7. Meriel Buchanan diary, January 1913, BuB 6, MB Archive, Nottingham University, f. 41.

  8. Ibid., 19 February 1913, f. 45.

  9. DON, p. 19.

  10. Sablin, Desyat let, p. 286. Nicholas was clearly aware of Tatiana’s fondness for Nikolay Rodionov, but chose not to harm his career by transferring him from the Shtandart. See Vyrubova, Keisarinnan Hovineiti, p. 226, and web site accessible @: http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=7272.0

  11. Correspondence, p. 362, 18 March 1913: ‘Tatiana is still in bed, but she will move to a sofa tomorrow. She is always cheerful and looks well with her short hair’; and 27 December 1913, p. 367, ‘Tatiana’s hair has grown nice and thick, which means she no longer needs to wear a wig’.

  12. Rasputin, Real Rasputin, pp. 100–1.

  13. See DON, pp. 8, 9, 11, 12, 16, 18 and 21.

  14. Ofrosimova, ‘Tsarskaya semya’, p. 138.

  15. See Spiridovich, Les Dernières années, pp. 234–5; ‘Imperial Russia: Her Power and Progress’, Supplement to the Illustrated London News, 19 July 1913.

  16. Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 297–8.

  17. For the ceremonies at Kostroma, see Wortman, Scenarios of Power, pp. 391–3.

  18. Naryshkin-Kurakin, Under Three Tsars, p. 206.

  19. DON, p. 61.

  20. Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 296–7.

  21. DON, p. 63.

  22. Prince Wilhelm, Episoder (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1951), pp. 144–5 (translation courtesy of Trond Norén Isaksen).

  23. Heresch, Blood on the Snow, p. 41.

  24. Sergeant Alexander Bulgakov, quoted in ibid., p. 42.

  25. DON, p. 64.

  26. Ibid., p. 70.

  27. See Rowley, ‘Monarchy and the Mundane’, pp. 138–9.

  28. Elchaninov, Tsar, pp. 58–9. For a discussion of the Romanov public image during the Tercentary, see Slater, Many Deaths, ch. 7, ‘Family Portraits’. A two-shilling English paperback edition of the book was also published.

  29. Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, p. 212; Elchaninov, Tsar, p. 60.

  30. For this holiday see Nicholas’s diary for 10 June to 11 July, in Nikolay, pp. 48–58.

  31. See e.g. DON, pp. 81, 82, 87.

  32. Ibid., pp. 87–8.

  33. Ibid., p. 91.

  34. Nikolay, 17 July 1913, p. 59.

  35. Gavriil Konstantinovich, Marble Palace, p. 177.

  36. Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 324–5.

  37. Girardin, Précepteur, p. 60.

  38. Correspondence, p. 317; Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 43.

  39. Kalinin and Zemlyachenko, ‘Taina Velikoi Knyazhny’, pp. 245–6. This excellent chapter presents an enlightening overview of the Olga–Voronov story.

  40. Cherkashin, ‘Knyazhna i Michman’.

  41. Barkovets, ‘Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna’, in Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 78.

  42. DON, p. 126.

  43. Ibid., p. 141.

  44. Barkovets, ‘Grand Duchess’, in Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 76.

  45. DON, p. 148.

  46. Kalinin and Zemlyachenko, ‘Taina Velikoi Knyazhny’, p. 257; DON, pp. 143, 148, 154.

  47. Ibid., p. 156.

  48. Nikolay, p. 100.

  49. Barkovets, ‘Grand Duchess’, in Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 79.
>
  50. Ibid.

  51. DON, p. 172.

  52. Swezey, Nicholas and Alexandra, p. 79.

  53. When war broke out in 1914, Pavel Voronov fought in the 2nd Guards battalion and served in the Tsar’s Escort. But he fell ill with a heart complaint and was sent on leave during February–March 1917 when the Revolution broke. In April 1917 he was transferred to the Crimean Fleet; then into the reserve in August, after which he went into hiding from Bolshevik commissars. During the winter of 1920, Pavel and Olga escaped Russia in the British steamer Hanover and settled in the USA, where Pavel died in 1964. He never wrote any memoirs of his time with the imperial family, perhaps out of an enduring respect for the feelings he knew Olga Nikolaevna had held for him. In her own memoirs his wife Olga makes no mention of their romance either.

  Thirteen – God Save the Tsar!

  1. W. B., Russian Court Memoirs, p. 64.

  2. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 131.

  3. W. B., Russian Court Memoirs, p. 64; Anon. [Casper], Intimacies of Court and Society, p. 138.

  4. Some of the most vivid accounts of that last social season are given in the various memoirs of ambassador’s daughter Meriel Buchanan; see e.g. Diplomacy and Foreign Courts, Dissolution of an Empire and Ambassador’s Daughter. See also: Kochan, Last Days of Imperial Russia, ch. 2, ‘Haute Société in St Petersburg’ and King, Court of the Last Tsar, ch. 27, ‘The Last Season’.

  5. Buchanan, Diplomacy and Foreign Courts, pp. 147–8, 155; Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, p. 116.

  6. Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve, p. 83.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid., p. 85.

  10. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 181.

  11. Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve, p. 85.

  12. Duchess of Saxe-Coburg to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 17–19 February 1914, TS (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  13. Ibid.

  14. Buchanan, Diplomacy and Foreign Courts, p. 160.

  15. Iswolsky, No Time to Grieve, p. 85.

  16. Duchess of Saxe-Coburg to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 17–19 February 1914, TS (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  17. Buchanan, Diplomacy and Foreign Courts, p. 160.

  18. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 2 November 1913.

  19. ‘Sentimental Crisis’, p. 323.

  20. Ibid., p. 323.

  21. Ibid., p. 324. Even Sydney Gibbes remarked on the girls’ lack of style: ‘every so often their “toilets” looked dreadfully out of place, simple as they usually were’; and the men in the Shtandart noticed too that ‘the way they dressed, truth to tell, was not always fashionable and was even old-fashioned’. Gibbes, TS Memoirs, List 1 (82), f. 7; Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 317–18.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 2 November 1913.

  24. Biddle, ‘The Czar and His Family’, p. 6.

  25. DON, p. 162.

  26. For the political ramifications of the match see Gelardi, ‘Carol & Olga’.

  27. Kalinin and Zemlyachenko, Romanovy i Krym, p. 260; Sazonov, Fateful Years, p. 109.

  28. ‘May Wed Czar’s Daughter’, Washington Post, 1 February 1914; Biddle, ‘The Czar and His Family’, p. 6.

  29. Letter to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 27 January 1914, TS (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  30. Ibid.

  31. Duchess of Saxe-Coburg to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 7 February 1914, TS (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  32. Duchess of Saxe-Coburg to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 17–19 February 1914 (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  33. Duchess of Saxe-Coburg to Crown Princess Marie of Romania, 7 February 1914 (courtesy of John Wimbles).

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid.

  36. Ibid.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Titov, ‘OTMA’, p. 29.

  39. Ibid., p. 334.

  40. ‘Romanians in 1910s Russia’, accessible @: http://www.rri.ro/arh-art.shtml?lang=1&sec=9&art=28280

  41. James Lawrence Houghteling, A Diary of the Russian Revolution, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1918, p. 10; Virubova, Keisarinnan Hovineiti, p. 230.

  42. The Times, 31 March 1914.

  43. Sablin, Desyat let, pp. 316, 318.

  44. Ibid., p. 318.

  45. Azabal, Countess from Iowa, p. 144; Azabal, Romance and Revolutions, pp. 140–1.

  46. Azabal, Romance and Revolutions, p. 141.

  47. De Stoeckl, Not All Vanity, pp. 137–8.

  48. Ibid., p. 138.

  49. Sazonov, Fateful Years, p. 110.

  50. Elsberry, Marie of Romania, p. 101; Spiridovich, Les Dernières années, vol. 2, p. 455; Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 94.

  51. Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 92.

  52. Ibid., p. 93.

  53. Crown Princess Marie of Romania to the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, 18 June 1914.

  54. Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 94.

  55. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 95.

  56. Crown Princess Marie of Romania to the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, 1 June 1914.

  57. Ibid.

  58. Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 94.

  59. Ibid., p. 95.

  60. Marie of Romania, Story of My Life, p. 329.

  61. Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 96.

  62. Crown Princess Marie of Romania to Duchess of Saxe-Coburg, 18 June 1914; Elsberry, Marie of Romania, pp. 100–1.

  63. Marie of Romania, Story of My Life, p. 575.

  64. Buxhoeveden, Life and Tragedy, p. 182; Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 99; Elsberry, Marie of Romania, p. 102.

  65. Marie of Romania, Story of My Life, p. 330.

  66. Crown Princess Marie of Romania to Duchess of Saxe-Coburg 18 June 1914.

  67. Bibesco, Royal Portraits, p. 99.

  68. Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 73.

  69. Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, p. 118.

  70. Sablin, Desyat let, p. 343.

  71. Harold Tennyson RN, p. 198.

  72. Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, p. 216.

  73. Ibid., p. 217.

  74. Buchanan, Diplomacy and Foreign Courts, p. 164.

  75. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 103; Correspondence, p. 368.

  76. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, vol. 1, p. 204.

  77. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 106.

  78. Gilliard, Thirteen Years, p. 106.

  79. ASM, p. 13.

  80. The Times, 3 August 1914 (NS).

  81. Ibid.

  82. Merry, Two Months in Russia, p. 83.

  83. W. B., Russian Court Memoirs, p. 73.

  84. ASM, p. 13.

  85. Almedingen, Empress Alexandra, p. 134.

  86. Paléologue, Ambassador’s Memoirs, p. 41.

  87. Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 162.

  88. Azabal, Romance and Revolutions, p. 153.

  89. Cantacuzène, Revolutionary Days, p. 162.

  90. Azabal, Romance and Revolutions, p. 153; Marie Pavlovna, Things I Remember, p. 163.

  91. Ibid.

  92. ASM, p. 13.

  93. Nikolay, p. 157.

  94. Arbenina, Through Terror to Freedom, pp. 20–1.

  95. LP, p. 398.

  96. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, p. 401.

  97. The Times, 4 August 1914 (NS).

  98. A. Varlamov, Grigoriy Rasputin-Novyi (Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2007), p. 424.

  99. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, vol. 1, p. 214.

  100. Florence Farmborough, Nurse at the Russian Front (London: Constable, 1974), p. 21; Buchanan, Queen Victoria’s Relations, p. 217; Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, p. 102.

  101. Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, vol. 1, pp. 214–15.

  102. Vyrubova, Memories, p. 105.

  103. ASM, p. 14.

  Fourteen – Sisters of Mercy

  1. Dehn, Real Tsaritsa, p. 69.

  2. See e.g. issue no. 25 for 5 January 1915, p. 21. Several other female members of the Russian imperial family became wartime nurses – notably Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna and Grand Duchess
Marie Pavlovna – and were featured on the magazine’s pages.

  3. Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come, p. 84.

  4. WC, p. 15.

  5. Henniger, ‘To Lessen Their Suffering’, p. 5.

  6. Gromov, Moi vospominaniya za 50 let, p. 30.

  7. For the work of the British Colony Hospital, see Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire, ch. XI.

  8. Like many Russian women of her generation refused permission to study medicine in Russia, Gedroits had travelled to Switzerland to study and qualified in Lausanne in 1898, returning to Russia in 1900 to work as a doctor. An accomplished abdominal surgeon, she had served on the front line during the Russo-Japanese War. See J. D. Bennett, ‘Princess Vera Gedroits: Military Surgeon, Poet and Author’, British Medical Journal, 19 December 1992, pp. 1532–4.

  9. See SA, pp. 234, 250–2; ASM, pp. 5–7.

  10. NZ 181, p. 178. Note that many of the excerpts from Chebotareva’s diary cited in SA have been heavily redacted by the editor Fomin, who has removed any negative comments about the girls and about Alexey’s bad behaviour. In particular Chebotareva’s criticism of the empress’s relationship with Anna Vyrubova and Rasputin is totally excised. See e.g. ch. 15, n. 1, below. All entries in this regard are therefore taken from the uncut NZ version.

  11. Details of Olga and Tatiana’s daily routine at the annexe hospital can be found in their letters and diary entries for 1914–16, in ASM. See also articles by Stepanov and Belyaev and Valentina Chebotareva’s diary in SA as well as the fuller version of the diary in NZ and Popov, Vospominaniya, pp. 131–2.

  12. SA, p. 337.

  13. Tschebotarioff, Russia My Native Land, p. 60.

  14. See note 12 above.

  15. Vurubova, Memories, p. 109.

  16. See ASM, pp. 18, 19; SA, p. 234.

  17. WC, p. 53.

  18. Paul P. Gronsky and Nicholas J. Astrov, The War and the Russian Government (New York: Howard Fertig, 1973), pp. 30–1. For photographs of Olga and Tatiana taking donations at their Petrograd committees, see Stolitsa i usadba no. 23, 1 December 1914, pp. 20–1.

  19. Tyan’-Shansky, ‘Tsarstvenniya deti’, p. 55.

  20. Pavlov in SA, p. 413.

  21. W. B., Russian Court Memoirs, p. 159; Vyrubova, Romanov Family Album, p. 117; Melnik-Botkina, Vospominaniya, pp. 17–18; Ofrosimova, ‘Tsarskaya semya’, pp. 144–5.

  22. WC, p. 16.

  23. SA, pp. 235, 249.

  24. Ofrosimova, ‘Tsarskaya semya’, p. 144.