The Romanov Sisters Page 13
For their part the crew, who relished the prestige of serving in the Shtandart, loved the four sisters, and found them enchanting, as Nikolay Vasilievich Sablin recalled later in his memoirs. Such was the informality on board that the sailors addressed the sisters by name and patronymic rather than by title, and could not do enough for them. From out of these first innocent, tentative acquaintances developed deep friendships; on that first trip in 1906 Olga attached herself to Nikolay Sablin and Tatiana to his namesake (no relation) Nikolay Vasilievich Sablin. Nikolay Vadbolsky was Maria’s favourite, while little Anastasia took a shine, surprisingly, to a rather taciturn navigator called Alexey Saltanov. She gave him and everyone else the run-around, including her sailor dyadka Babushkin, rushing around the yacht from dawn to dusk, climbing up to the bridge when no one was looking, always dishevelled and difficult to control, only to be finally carried off kicking and screaming to bed at the end of the day. Her phlegmatic sister Maria had a rather more relaxed approach to life on board. As Sablin remembered, she ‘liked to sit a little, have a read and eat sweet biscuits’, getting ever plumper in the process, no doubt explaining her sisters’ choice of nickname – ‘fat little bow-wow’.5
Alexandra was a quite different woman in the Shtandart – happier and more relaxed than anywhere else. She now had the companionship of a new-found friend, Anna Vyrubova, who had arrived at court in February 1905. Although she was never formally made a lady-in-waiting, Anna quickly filled the gap left by Alexandra’s favourite, Princess Sonya Orbeliani, who had been with her since 1898 but who was now suffering from a chronic wasting disease and was no longer able to serve.6 Soon Anna was the tsaritsa’s indispensable confidante and an almost permanent fixture in her daily life. God had sent her a friend, Alexandra said, and friends as trustworthy as Anna were hard to find in the closed-off world that she inhabited.
Small, dumpy and unprepossessing, with a short neck and an ample bosom, Anna Vyrubova had a credulous manner and was ‘so childish-looking in fact that she seemed only fit for boarding school’.7 It was precisely this unworldliness and her malleability that appealed to Alexandra: Anna was too simple-minded for intrigues and was thus no threat, indeed Alexandra took pity on her. Her uncharacteristic intimacy with the twenty-year-old ingénue provoked considerable resentment and jealousy among the other long-serving ladies of the imperial household – notably the displaced Orbeliani and Madeleine Zanotti. But on board the Shtandart Alexandra and Anna were inseparable. They would often sing duets and sit playing four-handed pieces at the piano together. The docile and adoring Anna hung on Alexandra’s every word and within a year the tsaritsa had, in motherly fashion, helpfully orchestrated her marriage.
The simple but idyllic Finnish sailing holidays that became a regular feature of Romanov family life until the outbreak of war in 1914 were for the four sisters the best and happiest of times; for unlike any on dry land, these voyages provided a degree of special intimacy with their parents, and in particular more time in the company of the father they all worshipped. ‘To be at sea with their father – that was what constituted their happiness’, recalled the tsar’s aide-de-camp Count Grabbe.8 There was nothing of the usual stultifying Victorian condescension in Nicholas’s attitude to his children, and they in turn were content just to be in his company, enjoying the simplest of pleasures. On board the Shtandart the Romanovs could act out the kind of idealized, untrammelled family life that they craved but which they could never enjoy on shore.
Sailing leisurely in the still golden autumn sunshine along the Finnish coast, out past the chain of small, wooded islands thick with fir, spruce and birch trees, and uninhabited bar a few fishermen’s huts, the family could stop off at will. The children delighted in going onshore in the launch with their nurses and dyadki to play ball games or tag, have picnics or go mushroom- and berry-picking. They often went out rowing with their father and many of their expeditions were captured in numerous photographs taken by General Spiridovich, who was always at hand, casting an eagle eye over their safety. Nicholas was never much of a huntsman and didn’t like fishing. But he did love long, vigorous walks and few in the entourage could keep up with him. Even on holiday he still had to give a great deal of time to his dispatch boxes, but when he did have time to himself he sometimes went ashore to play tennis on some local landowner’s court, or went off alone in his baidarka – a type of kayak – in the still waters as dusk fell, with an escort of officers following in a rowing boat at a discreet distance. At other times he would go on deck to check the weather, discuss navigation with the flag captain and inspect the ship’s company, or simply sit with Alexandra, cigarette in hand, reading a book or playing dominoes with his officers.
Day after tranquil day passed, the air clean and clear and the September sun low in the sky, but soon the nights were gathering in and the first frosts descending. On 21 September 1906 the family enjoyed their last day of ‘wonderful free-and-easy life’, as Nicholas ruefully described it.9 He loved Virolahti more than anywhere and would have liked to build a summer retreat there or buy one of the small islands. After the yacht docked at Kronstadt and the time came to leave and go ashore the girls clung to each other weeping at having to say goodbye to their special ‘family’ on board. Before they left, as on every trip they made in the Shtandart, the family gave generous gifts to all the crew.
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By November 1906 the family was once more ensconced at the Alexander Palace and, as always, the girls loved being out in the park. They liked to skate on the frozen ponds and cross over the ice to the little house built in 1830 for the children of Nicholas I in the middle of the Children’s Island, where they could enter their own fantasy play world.10 But their favourite winter pursuit, enjoyed from the moment they were big enough to sit on their father’s knee, was sledging down ice hills specially made for them. That particular winter, they had the pleasure of a newly constructed ‘American hill’ – a 200-foot-long (61-m-long) artificial toboggan run. A journalist from the Washington Post was fortunate to catch sight of them on it when reporting on security arrangements at Tsarskoe Selo. A group of red-coated officials ‘covered with so many medals they overlapped’ solemnly inspected the construction, followed by the girls’ nannies who tested the run, after which the three older girls, wearing thick bearskin coats, ‘appeared in such a tremendous hurry that they nearly upset the officials … and screamed so loudly in Russian that their governesses reprimanded them’. They then took their seats ‘without regard to precedence’, and ‘while the officials’ attention was momentarily distracted, they gave the toboggan a push and whizzed down the hill without any attendants. The governess screamed with horror, the little grand duchesses with delight. They had evidently played the trick before.’ Thereafter the officials insisted on keeping hold of the toboggan much to the disgust of the girls, who kept trying to slide down unguarded. ‘The tenth journey was signalized by the Grand Duchess Marya flopping down on the ice brink of the chute and attempting the feat known to Coney Islanders as “bumps”.’11
The long dark days were further enlivened that winter by regular visits from their Aunt Olga, Nicholas’s younger sister. Every Saturday she would take the train out to Tsarskoe Selo from her home in St Petersburg. ‘I think I can say that they were awfully pleased when I visited them and brought some change into their daily lives’, she later remarked. ‘The first thing I did was to run upstairs to the nursery where I generally found Olga and Tatiana finishing their last lesson before lunch … If I arrived before the professors had finished the morning’s work, they would be just as delighted to be interrupted as I had once been.’12 At 1 o’clock they would ‘rush down the staircase leading from the nursery to their mother’s room’, after which they would all have lunch, and then sit and chat and sew in the mauve boudoir. A walk in the Alexander Park would follow; after changing out of their coats and boots Olga and the girls would often indulge in a spate of high jinks on the stairs. The light would be turned off as they descended and �
��someone would lie down on one of the steps and when I trod on her she would grab me by the ankle and tickle me or think of other tricks. There was much laughter and screaming as we all rolled down to the bottom of the stairs in a heap – knocking our heads against the bannister on the way.’13
Over the years the girls would become closer to Aunt Olga than any of their other female relatives; she was like an older sister and frequently filled the breach when their mother was ill, accompanying them to public functions. ‘Someone had to be there to ensure that the children behaved properly, stood up when necessary and greeted people as they should – and anything else there was to look out for’, she later recalled. ‘In the end, it was taken for granted that I always had to come along wherever they went.’14 Olga was closest to her eldest niece and namesake, who was only thirteen years younger than she. ‘She resembled me in character, and that was perhaps why we understood each other so well.’ But as time went on she could not disguise her special affection for the seductively engaging Anastasia, whom she nicknamed Shvybzik (a German colloquialism meaning ‘little mischief’) in recognition of her incorrigible behaviour. The child had such courage, such a fierce love of life, and embraced everything as a great adventure; Olga had no doubt that of the four she was the most intelligent.15
Those Saturday games with their aunt were a time to be treasured: ‘this was how we appeared at the tea table every Saturday afternoon, happy, laughing and squabbling about all the dreadful things “the others” had thought of.’16 As dusk fell the family attended evensong together and Aunt Olga would stay till bedtime, after which she travelled back to St Petersburg. At the end of that year, she persuaded Nicholas and Alexandra to allow her to stay the night and take the girls back with her the following morning for the day.17 Here after lunch with Grandmama, Maria Feodorovna, at the Anichkov Palace – where even Anastasia would be on her best behaviour – they would then go to Aunt Olga’s to meet their favourite officers from the entourage, have tea, play games, enjoy music – and dance – before one of the ladies-in-waiting would come from Tsarskoe Selo to take them back home.
In later life Olga Alexandrovna reflected on those happy ‘red-letter Sundays’ with her nieces before the war. The extraordinary closeness and self-sufficiency that was the mark of the four Romanov sisters persisted, as too their touchingly childlike innocence about the world. But it was a strange hothouse atmosphere in which to grow up. ‘My nieces did not have any playmates,’ Grand Duchess Olga wistfully observed, ‘but they had each other, and probably did not miss them.’18
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Over in England, although it was four years since she had left her post, Margaretta Eagar had not forgotten her former charges. Now living in straitened circumstances, running a boarding house in Holland Park, she still wrote to the girls from time to time and sent gifts on their birthdays. But sitting in her drawing room, as she often did, gazing at the many treasured photographs in silver frames that she had of them, she was pining for news. Margaretta hated the London fogs; her life, she told Mariya Geringer, was ‘horrible … I wish I were returning to Russia. I do not think I shall ever be happy in this country.’ Sending Tatiana birthday wishes in June 1908, she wistfully commented: ‘I suppose you still have cakes and almond Toffee. How good they used to be!’19
No doubt the girls were missing her too, for since Margaretta’s departure at the end of 1904, the absence of a governess’s discipline had begun to have a detrimental effect. With so much natural energy and a huge curiosity about the world, the girls were increasingly boisterous. Alexandra was often too busy or indisposed to supervise her daughters herself, leaving them under the supervision of Trina Schneider. Modest and devoted Trina might be but she was clearly feeling the strain, as too was the girls’ exasperated general nursemaid, Mariya Vishnyakova, to whom they gave the constant run-around.20
In March 1907, therefore, Alexandra made the decision to appoint Sofya Tyutcheva – who had served as a lady-in-waiting at Peterhof the previous summer – as maid of honour-cum-governess to the girls, with responsibility for helping them prepare their lessons and chaperoning them on walks and other excursions. Sofya came on the recommendation of Grand Duchess Ella, and had an old-school pedigree, as granddaughter of the famous Russian poet Feodor Tyutchev. She also had a strong conservative streak. She was a stickler for good behaviour and took her role very seriously, but it was a challenge: the girls ‘wouldn’t listen and tried every which way to test my patience’, she recalled. She appealed to Olga: ‘You have an influence over your sisters, you’re the eldest and can persuade them to listen to me and not play up so much.’ ‘Oh no,’ Olga had replied, ‘then I would always have to behave myself, and that’s impossible!’ Sofya could not help thinking Olga was right, that it was hard for one so young to have to be forever setting an example to her siblings, though she later overheard her reprimanding Anastasia for her mischievous behaviour by saying ‘Stop it, or Savanna [Tyutcheva’s pet name] will leave, and then it will be even worse for us!’21
That same year another new female friend entered the girls’ lives in the shape of Lili Dehn, whose husband, a lieutenant in the Guards Equipage, was already a favourite with the family. The girls took to Lili immediately, for just like Aunt Olga she was willing to join in their often silly and very physical games, and would even race down the slide in Alexey’s downstairs playroom with them. While others outside the close family circle had already suggested that the four sisters were ‘Cinderellas who were entirely subservient in family life owing to the attention paid the Tsarevitch’, Lili found this was far from the truth.22 Alexandra loved her daughters; ‘they were her inseparable companions’. But there was no denying that the lives of the four sisters were very sheltered: ‘They had no idea of the ugly side of life’, as Lili recalled. The general assumption of the world’s press certainly was that the Romanov children lived stunted lives, hidden away for their own safety ‘in a land which resembles a great powder-magazine’; that they had to be ‘guarded by regiments of soldiers and thousands of highly paid spies’. Yet sufficient information was emerging by 1908 for the world to have a sense that Olga was ‘a very interesting girl, highly imaginative, and fond of reading’.23 More than that, she had a natural aptitude at arithmetic and read better in English than in Russian.24
The four sisters in fact all spoke good English, and had received additional tuition since 1905 from a Scotsman, John Epps.25 His legacy, however, was a strange Scottish twang acquired by Olga and Tatiana that their uncle Edward VII remarked on when the families met briefly in 1908 (it has also been suggested they had an Irish accent picked up from Margaretta Eagar).26 To replace Epps, Sofya Tyutcheva suggested an Englishman named Charles Sydney Gibbes, a Cambridge graduate who had been teaching in St Petersburg for several years. She sent a note to Alexandra’s secretary, enclosing a testimonial from the director of the Imperial School of Law where Gibbes had lately been running courses in modern languages, and which praised him as being ‘extremely talented’.27
When Gibbes took up his post with the imperial family in November 1908, Sofya Tyutcheva introduced him to thirteen-year-old Olga and eleven-year-old Tatiana. He thought them ‘good-looking, high-spirited girls, simple in their tastes and very pleasant to deal with’. Although they could be inattentive at times, ‘they were quite clever, and quick when they gave their minds to it’, but the atmosphere induced by the presence of Tyutcheva as chaperone made those first lessons somewhat tense.28 Gibbes also gave occasional, separate, tuition to Maria, who struck him as sweet and compliant and he was impressed by her gift for painting and drawing. The arrival in his classroom in 1909 of the whirlwind that was eight-year-old Anastasia changed everything. Gibbes later tactfully remarked that she was not always an easy child to teach but like everyone else, he was won over by her effervescent charm and her quirky intelligence. Gibbes thought her ‘fragile and dainty … a little lady of great self-possession, always bright, always happy’. He also found her endlessly inventive – a
lways coming up with ‘some new oddity of speech or manner; her perfect command of her features was remarkable’ – he had never come across anything to equal it in any other child.29 As for Alexey, at this point Gibbes, like the other tutors, had little contact with him apart from the occasional encounter in the classroom at break time when the little boy, who could be painfully shy with strangers, would come in and ‘gravely shake hands’.30