by Greg King
2
The Imp
Anastasia’s youthful vivacity and eagerness for life, so pervasive in her early years, seemed to grind to a halt when she faced the ordeal of the classroom. She was never described as an intellectual, but the quality of her natural curiosity was especially engaging. “Whenever I talked with her,” wrote General Count Alexander von Grabbe of the Cossack Konvoi Regiment that guarded the family, “I always came away impressed by the breadth of her interests. That her mind was keenly alive was immediately apparent.”1
Early on, though, before she faced the formalized rigors of education, Anastasia seemed positively possessed by a desire to learn. Everything fascinated her, and she wanted to know who people were, how things worked, what words meant. In 1905, twenty-five-year-old, Swiss-born Pierre Gilliard, who had previously worked as a tutor for distant Romanov relation Duke Serge of Leuchtenberg, took a position at court instructing the older grand duchesses in French.2 One day, he recalled, he had just finished a lesson with Olga Nikolaievna when a nearly five-year-old Anastasia burst into the classroom. “She carried beneath her arm a big book of pictures, which she ceremoniously placed on the table before me,” he wrote, “then she gave me her hand and said in Russian, ‘I would like to learn French, too.’ Without waiting for my reply, she climbed atop a chair, knelt down, opened the book, and pointing to a picture of a huge elephant, asked, ‘And what is this called in French?’ Soon I was confronted with an entire Ark of names—lions, tigers, and every other animal pictured.” Anastasia seemed intrigued not just by the exotic French language but also by this new addition to the imperial court, and she became a regular visitor to Gilliard’s classroom, “running in” as soon as he was alone and “telling me all about the important incidents in her life. She had a child’s picturesque turn of phrase, and the melodious Russian gave her voice a soft, almost coaxing tone. Occasionally she even got me to let her sit and listen as I taught one of the older girls. She preferred to sit on the carpet, watching everything in earnest silence for she knew that any interruption would lead to banishment from the schoolroom, which at that time she seemed to regard as a sort of forbidden paradise.”3
This idea of the schoolroom as a paradise vanished as soon as it became a required destination. Anastasia began lessons when she was eight. Gilliard remembered that at first she possessed a “zeal for learning” and “remarkable memory,” though her mind tended to move quickly from one subject to another as her attention waned.4 She was not just a diffident pupil: she could also be a difficult one. Perhaps because her more outrageous behavior had largely been indulged, Anastasia seemed to approach lessons with a sense of amusement, as though they were simply obstacles requiring escape. Her usual approach, when confronted with difficulty, was simply to charm her way out of unpleasant situations. Once, after a particularly disastrous test, a tutor graded her accordingly; Anastasia left the classroom, returning a few minutes later and offering a large bouquet of flowers snatched from a nearby table if her marks were changed. When the tutor refused, she drew “herself up to the most of her small height” and “marched into the schoolroom next door,” loudly and pointedly presenting the flowers to another teacher.5
Perhaps part of the problem for Anastasia stemmed from the unimaginative road her education followed, for like her sisters she was tutored by a string of instructors—of varying degrees of ability and psychological insight—in history, religion, arithmetic, geography, science, and literature, as well as dancing, drawing, painting, and music. In most, she did just well enough to achieve minimal marks or comprehension; she was never outstanding in any subject, and frequently below expectations in many areas, but then, she could argue, what really was demanded of her in life except that she one day marry some suitable prince and raise a family? The things she would need for such a position—especially if she married some distant European cousin—were languages. For Anastasia, this meant Russian, English, French, and, later, German. “Four languages is a lot,” Alexandra wrote of her daughters, “but they need them absolutely.”6
Anastasia was brought up in a multilingual household, speaking Russian with her father, siblings, courtiers, and servants, and English with her mother.7 “Grammar, alas, was never her strong point, even in Russian,” Gilliard wrote, and her written essays and letters were always more effusively enthusiastic than formally correct.8 Because Anastasia spoke English with her mother from birth, many assumed that she carried a very proper and precise aristocratic English accent, as befitting a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. It was part of the fairy tale’s charm for much of the English-speaking world, the idea that the ruling family of Russia spent their days talking, joking, and whispering away in a language that somehow made them seem less exotic. Yet this bit of mythology is almost certainly wrong. While Nicholas and Alexandra may have been skilled linguists and employed English, the casual proficiency and accents of their children—at least in that language—left something to be desired. In 1908, after thirteen years of daily speaking the language with her mother, Olga Nikolaievna had what was termed a bad English accent; Anastasia and Marie were even worse, and Alexei seems to have spoken almost nothing of the language before 1914.9 This led Empress Alexandra to hire Charles Sidney Gibbes, a thirty-three-year-old native of Yorkshire who taught English in St. Petersburg, to tutor her children.10 In time, and under Gibbes’s tutelage, Anastasia’s spoken English vastly improved, though her spelling and grammar left something to be desired.11
Anastasia, in an informal photo taken during a 1910 visit by the Russian imperial family to Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse in Germany.
Gilliard took on the task of teaching French to Anastasia. Her early curiosity and desire to learn the language, though, soon dissipated in the classroom; still, of all the foreign languages she learned, it was probably the one she liked best. Gilliard thought that Anastasia had an “excellent” accent, but she never succeeded in mastering grammar and had no real fluency; after seven years of instruction, he was forced to admit that she “spoke French badly.”12
In 1912, when she was eleven, Anastasia also began instruction in German with tutor Erich Kleinenberg; this continued sporadically until the Revolution.13 By 1916, after four years of lessons, she was writing German compositions in Gothic script, though—as with her other languages—spelling and grammar were often beyond her grasp.14 Gilliard noted that Kleinenberg had “great difficulty” in his lessons, “for the Grand Duchesses had no practice in German” beyond the classroom; what little they spoke, according to Gibbes, they did so “badly” and, as the Empress’s Lady-in-Waiting Buxhoeveden recalled, with a “strong Russian accent.”15
The five imperial children in a formal photograph from 1910. From left: Tatiana, Anastasia, Alexei, Marie, and Olga.
Anastasia in Russian court dress, 1910.
The end results of all of these lessons were negligible. Anastasia strained under the confines of the classroom. Gilliard thought that her behavior was often that of “a gifted child,” but noted that she was only a very moderate pupil, with “little taste for learning.”16 In time, even this halfhearted dedication faded and she became, he thought, “distinctly lazy” in her approach. “In vain I tried to fight against the pronounced indifference she showed during lessons,” Gilliard recalled, “but this only turned them into tearful scenes that produced no results. To the end, she remained a lazy pupil.”17 The problem, thought her aunt Olga Alexandrovna, was not that Anastasia was lazy; rather, she believed that “books, as books, never said much to her.”18
Anastasia during the imperial family’s 1910 visit to Germany.
The years passed. The grand duchesses were maturing into young women; Tsesarevich Alexei, though he periodically suffered from a painful hemorrhage, was largely well—because of Rasputin’s prayers, the empress thought—and the unrest plaguing the empire seemed to ebb. Anastasia was growing up, even if her mother continued to dress her two youngest daughters identically, as if they were matching porcelain dolls,
and there was little opportunity to express personal taste or individuality. Olga was pretty if not beautiful, serious if not brilliant; Tatiana was lean and elegant; Marie was transforming into a stunning young woman; and Anastasia—well, Anastasia was fat, short, and dumpy, as if somehow the genetic gods had poured out all their bounty on her sisters and had nothing left for the youngest daughter. Her features, it is true, were good, but they seemed lost in a face that lacked refinement. She hated the way she looked: the fact that she was so short, the fact that she could never lose the pudginess that inevitably followed from her love of everything sweet.19 Once, Dr. Botkin found her alone in a room, covered in sweat and hopping up and down on one leg. To his bemused look, she explained with all seriousness: “An officer on the yacht told me that to hop around a dining room table on one leg helps one to grow!”20 She didn’t even have the consolation of a few extra inches gained from wearing high heels, not that Alexandra would have favored the idea in any case, for Anastasia suffered from hallux valgus: her big toes curled inward, forming painful bunions that meant she had to wear specially designed, low-heeled shoes.21
But if Olga could be smart, Tatiana dignified, and Marie beautiful, Anastasia found that she could be practical, a young girl ambitious for everything in life except for lessons, with a zest for enjoying herself and making the most of her admittedly peculiar environment. “I never noticed in her the least trace of mawkishness or dreamy melancholy,” recalled Gilliard, “not even at an age when girls fall prey to such tendencies. . . . She was very boisterous, and sometimes too temperamental. Every impulse, every new sensation was something she immediately had to indulge to the utmost; she glowed with animated life. Even at sixteen, she behaved like a headstrong young foal that has run away from its master. In her play, in realizing her wishes, in her schemes, in everything she did, there was the same impetuousness and youthful enthusiasm.”22
Age brought a natural end to the most audacious of her practical jokes and tomboyish behavior, though Anastasia replaced them with an often reckless, acerbic wit. Her humor, sharp, pointed, and often unwelcome, honed in on humiliation and mockery, and she developed a keen sense of mimicry.23 Relatives, courtiers, servants—no one was safe from her unstinting lampoons of personal foibles and flaws. “Ladies who came to see my sister-in-law,” recalled Olga Alexandrovna, “never knew that, somewhere unseen in the background, their Empress’s youngest daughter was watching every movement of theirs, every peculiarity, and later it would all come out when we were by ourselves. That art of Anastasia’s was not really encouraged but, oh, what fun we had!” She especially recalled how adeptly her niece had acted the role of an obese countess who claimed to have suffered a heart attack on seeing a mouse; it was, Olga admitted, all “very naughty,” though she had to admit that everyone thought Anastasia “was certainly brilliant at it.”24
Aboard the imperial yacht Standart about 1911. From left: Tatiana, Marie, Olga, Empress Alexandra, and Anastasia.
These petty amusements perhaps hinted at something of greater concern, had Nicholas and Alexandra possessed a more discerning attitude, for all of their children tended, in varying degrees, to be somewhat immature. The imperial couple encouraged innocent little romances with young officers from their yacht or with members of the suite who partnered the girls in dancing and tennis matches but “continued to regard them as children,” as Anna Vyrubova recalled.25 “Even when the two eldest had grown into real young women,” said one courtier, “one might hear them talking like little girls of ten or twelve.”26 It was as Alexandra wanted it: a family protected from the potentially dangerous and morally questionable world beyond the palace walls, but it left her son and daughters isolated from emotional influences that might have better helped steer them through the tumultuous years to come. Anastasia’s own letters underscored not just the normalcy of her life but also the childish atmosphere in which she lived. “I am sitting picking my nose with my left hand,” a twelve-year-old Anastasia wrote to her father. “Olga wanted to biff me one, but I escaped her swinish hand!”27 A year later, again writing to her father, she noted how a nineteen-year-old Olga Nikolaievna was “hitting Marie, and Marie is shouting like an idiot”; even at a time when uncertainty and death hovered over the empire, Anastasia thought it funny that her eldest sister had led them all in mock battles using toy guns and in racing their bicycles through the palace rooms.28
Anastasia enjoyed this stream of happy games and laughter, and indeed, there was much to enjoy. Life settled into a quiet, pleasant routine: winters at Tsarskoye Selo; perhaps a few nights—when it was absolutely unavoidable—in St. Petersburg’s immense Winter Palace; and, if possible, Easter in the Crimea. The isolated peninsula, jutting its rocky cliffs and beaches into the clear waters of the Black Sea, was a world unto itself, a tropical paradise of palm and cypress trees, rolling vineyards and lush roses. Here, at the imperial estate of Livadia, Nicholas and Alexandra built an Italianate palazzo, a sprawling white palace of loggias and sun-washed courtyards high above the crashing surf. Life at Livadia was deliberately informal, dominated by walks in the fragrant gardens, games of tennis, excursions to nearby picturesque villages, and afternoons spent swimming, though the waves that broke along the beach were particularly dangerous. Once, Anastasia was happily splashing about in the water when a breaker sucked her beneath the surface. Nicholas, watching from the beach, dove into the sea and barely managed to pull his youngest daughter to safety; shortly after, he had a canvas pool built atop the bluff so that his children could swim in safety.29
The warm climate in the Crimea was particularly beneficial for tubercular patients, and the empress used the fact to introduce her daughters to the idea of noblesse oblige. They sponsored hospitals and clinics in the surrounding hills, and regularly visited patients despite occasional protests. A courtier once objected to the practice, asking Alexandra, “Is it safe, Madame, for the young Grand Duchesses to have people in the last stages of consumption kiss their hands?”
“I don’t think it will hurt the children,” the empress replied, “but I am sure it would hurt the sick if they thought that my daughters were afraid of infection.”30 To aid these patients, Alexandra organized two annual events. The first, a charity bazaar, always took place along the quay in Yalta, and everyone contributed, the grand duchesses adding their needlework, small watercolors, and vases they had painted to the assemblage of knickknacks, souvenir postcards, furniture, and food that Alexandra and others sold from awning-draped booths along the pier.31 But it was the Day of White Flowers that not only allowed the imperial siblings to make a meaningful contribution but also gave them a rare taste of freedom. On the appointed day, they left the protected confines of Livadia and freely roamed the streets of Yalta, holding long staffs decorated with clusters of white flowers. They entered shops, stopped motorcars, and engaged strollers in impromptu conversations, asking for donations in exchange for one of their flowers “as enthusiastically as though their fortunes depended on selling them all,” remembered Anna Vyrubova.32 On no other occasion, and in no other place than the Crimea, could Anastasia so freely meet and mingle with her father’s subjects.
The Russian imperial family, 1914. From left: Olga, Marie, Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Anastasia, Alexei, and Tatiana.
Time in the Crimea was pleasant and relaxed, but lessons, duties, and imperial obligations still managed to intrude. Real escape only came each June, when the Romanovs spent several weeks cruising through the Gulf of Finland aboard their yacht Standart. If, at Livadia, the routine of court life carried on in abbreviated form, summer cruises were true holidays, free of all cares. More than four hundred feet long and manned by some three hundred sailors, the Standart was a sleek, black-hulled vessel, with wicker furniture scattered over awning-shaded teak decks and comfortably appointed cabins decorated in chintz and mahogany.33 All of the grand duchesses, recalled a courtier, “loved the sea,” as well as the “intimacy with their beloved father, which was otherwise impossible. To be at s
ea with their father—that was what constituted their happiness.”34 Sailing through the Finnish Skerries, the yacht would anchor in some secluded cove, and the imperial family went ashore. Nicholas walked with the suite, rowed, and shot game; Alexandra read and did needlework; and the grand duchesses hunted in the forest for wild berries and mushrooms. When they returned to the Standart, there were teas on deck and dances for the grand duchesses, partnered by handsome young officers.35
Tsesarevich Alexei with Alexandra Tegleva (“Shura,” later the wife of Pierre Gilliard).
With autumn came another move, this one to Poland, so that Nicholas could hunt at one of his country estates. In September 1912 they arrived excited and relieved at Spala: excited to once again temporarily abandon some of the intrusive pressures that came from life at court, and relieved because just two weeks earlier, Alexei had injured himself while jumping into a boat, but after a few days the crisis had luckily passed.36 The lodge, a rambling wooden chalet so gloomy that electric lights burned throughout the day, sat in the middle of a thick forest of evergreen, fir, and pine fringed by the chilly waters of the Pilitsa River.37 While Nicholas hunted, the grand duchesses roamed the woods collecting mushrooms, took carriage rides over the sandy roads, or played games of tennis on the clay court.