The Romanov Sisters Page 7

  In August of 1897, on a reciprocal visit to Russia in furtherance of the Franco-Russian alliance, President Faure was eager to see ‘La Grande Duchesse Olga’ once more. He took great delight in dandling her on his knee – far longer, it was said, than ‘arranged for by the Protocol’ – and he held baby Tatiana in his arms as well.7 The president brought with him an expensive gift of a Morocco leather trunk emblazoned with Olga’s initials and coat of arms, containing three exquisite French dolls.8 One of them had a ‘complete trousseau: dresses, lingerie, hats, slippers, the entire equipment of a dressing-table, all reproduced with remarkable art and fidelity’.9 She was dressed in blue surah silk trimmed with the finest Valenciennes lace and when a spring was pressed on her chest her waxen lips would open and say ‘Bonjour ma chère, petite mama! As-tu bien dormi cette nuit?’10

  President Faure was not the only person to be smitten with the two little sisters: everyone found them the most sweet and winning children. ‘Our little daughters are growing, and turning into delightful happy little girls’, Nicholas told his mother that November. ‘Olga talks the same in Russian and in English and adores her little sister. Tatiana seems to us, understandably, a very beautiful child, her eyes have become dark and large. She is always happy and only cries once a day without fail, after her bath when they feed her.’11 Many were already beginning to note Olga’s precocious and friendly manner, among them Princess Mariya Baryatinskaya who was invited to Tsarskoe Selo to meet the tsaritsa by her niece and namesake, who was a lady-in-waiting:

  She had her little Olga by her side, who, when she saw me, said, ‘What are you?’ in English, and I said, ‘I am Princess Baryatinsky!’ ‘Oh but you can’t be,’ she replied, ‘we’ve got one already!’ The little lady regarded me with an air of great astonishment, then, pressing close to her mother’s side, she adjusted her shoes, which I could see were new ones. ‘New shoes,’ she said. ‘You like them?’ – this in English.12

  Everyone remarked on Alexandra’s relaxed manner in the privacy of their home with her children, but by November she was feeling very sick again, could not eat and was losing weight. Maria Feodorovna was swift to offer her own homespun medical advice:

  She ought to try eating raw ham in bed in the morning before breakfast. It really does help against nausea … She must eat something so as not to lose strength, and eat in small quantities but often, say every other hour, until her appetite comes back. It is your duty, my dear Nicky, to watch over her and to look after her in every possible way, to see she keeps her feet warm and above all that she doesn’t go out in the garden in shoes. That is very bad for her.13

  If another baby was on the way, nothing was said and the pregnancy did not progress. Alexandra’s English cousin Thora (daughter of her aunt Princess Helena) was making a four-month visit to Russia at the time and made no mention of it.14 Thora described Olga’s second birthday that November in a letter to Queen Victoria: ‘there was a short service in the morning … Alix took little Olga with us as it only last[ed] ten minutes or a quarter of an hour & she behaved beautifully & enjoyed the singing & tried to join in which nearly made us laugh.’15 Later that day they went to open an orphanage for 180 6–15-year-old girls and boys established to commemorate Olga’s birth, its upkeep personally funded by Alexandra.16 Life at Tsarskoe Selo was, as Thora told Grandmama, modest and familial:

  We lead a very quiet life here and one can scarcely realize that they are an Emperor & Empress as there is, here in the country, an entire absence of state. None of the gentlemen live in the house & the one lady on duty takes her meals in her own room, so one never sees any of the suite unless people come or there is some function.17

  The self-imposed isolation of her granddaughter clearly concerned Queen Victoria (who had been through her own troubled period of retreat from public view in the 1860s). Victoria demanded further elaboration from Thora, who responded: ‘As to what you say about Alix & Nicky seeing so few people … I think she quite knows how important it is she should get to know more of the society but the truth is she & Nicky are so absolutely happy together that they do not like to have to give up their evenings to receiving people.’18

  No one caught a glimpse of Alexandra that winter – even in St Petersburg, and nothing was imparted to newspaper readers eager to know something of the domestic life of their monarchs. ‘It was almost a minor state secret to know if they took sugar with their tea, or had mustard with their beef’, observed Anglo-Russian writer Edith Almedingen.19 In any event, Alexandra seemed to be perpetually ill or pregnant – or both. In February 1898 she went down with a severe bout of measles – caught on a visit to one of the charity schools she supported – and suffered severe bronchial complications.20 The St Petersburg season was over by the time she recovered and many of her royal relatives were beginning to worry. When the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg visited Russia in August that year she opted to stay in St Petersburg rather than endure the domestic boredom of the Alexander Palace. ‘It seems that Nicky and Alix shut themselves up more than ever and never see a soul’, she told her daughter, adding that ‘Alix is not a bit popular’.21 Alexandra for her part cared little. On 21 September, when Nicholas unexpectedly had to go to Copenhagen with his mother for the Queen of Denmark’s funeral, she was distraught: ‘I cannot bear to think what will become of me without you – you who are my one and all, who make up all my life’, the words eerily like those of her grandmother whenever she was separated from Prince Albert. All Alexandra wanted was that she and Nicky should ‘live a quiet life of love’; besides, she thought she might be pregnant again. ‘If I only knew whether something is beginning with me or not’, she wrote to Nicky as he left. ‘God grant it may be so, I long for it and so does my Huzy too, I think.’22

  Alexandra spent Nicholas’s absence at Livadia in the Crimea, where he rejoined her on 9 October, but it was the end of the month before his mother heard the news: ‘I am now in a position to tell you, dear Mama, that with God’s help – we expect a new happy event next May.’ But, he added:

  She begs you not to talk about it yet, although I think this is an unnecessary precaution, because such news always spreads very quickly. Surely everyone here is guessing it already, for we have both stopped lunching and dining in the common dining room and Alix does not go driving any more, twice she fainted during Mass – everybody notices all this, of course.23

  Privately, Alexandra was apprehensive not just about the sex of her unborn child, but the physical suffering to come: ‘I never like making plans’, she told Grandmama in England. ‘God knows how it will all end.’24 Fits of giddiness and severe nausea forced her to spend much of her third pregnancy lying down, or sitting on the balcony of the palace at Livadia. Her husband’s devotion to her was exemplary; he pushed his wife around in her bath chair and read to her daily and at length: first War and Peace and then a history of Alexander I. They remained in Livadia until 16 December. Till now managing only with a temporary nanny, Alexandra had set about finding a permanent one. Her cousin Thora’s lady-in-waiting Emily Loch had good contacts in England and knew whom to ask, and in December wrote to Alexandra recommending a Miss Margaretta Eagar. The thirty-six-year-old Irish Protestant came with good domestic skills as cook, housekeeper and needlewoman, as well as considerable experience in looking after children. She had trained as a medical nurse in Belfast and had worked as matron of a girls’ orphanage in Ireland, and was the older sister of one of Emily Loch’s friends. Emily sent a personal report on Miss Eagar to Alexandra, emphasizing that she was straightforward and unsophisticated, with no interest in court intrigues. When approached about the position, Margaretta had hesitated at first, fearful of the responsibility of looking after a newborn baby in addition to two small children. But as one of ten herself – seven of them girls – she had had plenty of experience looking after younger female siblings and took some additional training with babies before travelling to Russia.25 Her life there would, however, be extremely sheltered. She would have no opportunity of sh
aring her experiences with other British nannies and governesses, of whom there were many in St Petersburg. Any excursions with the children, and even on her own, would be strictly monitored by the tsar’s security police, allowing her little or no opportunity to see anything of ‘the land of the Czar’ beyond the confines of the imperial residences.26

  On 2 February 1899, Margaretta Eagar arrived at the Winter Palace by train from Berlin. After resting, she was taken by Alexandra to see her new charges. It was the feast of the Purification of the Virgin and Olga and Tatiana were exquisitely dressed ‘in transparent white muslin dresses trimmed with Brussels lace, and worn over pale-blue satin slips. Pale-blue sashes and shoulder ribbons completed their costumes.’ ‘Innumerable Russian nurses and chambermaids’ would of course assist Margaretta in her duties, including trained children’s nurse Mariya Vishnyakova who had been hired in May 1897. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna* recalled how the nursery staff at Tsarskoe Selo wore uniforms, ‘all in white, with small nurse-caps of white tulle. With this exception: two of their Russian nurses were peasants and wore the magnificent native peasant costumes.’27 Maria and her brother Dmitri (the children of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich), who were a few years older than Olga and Tatiana, were among the first playmates the girls had within the Romanov family. Maria remembered how pleasant the ambience of the girls’ apartments was: ‘The rooms, light and spacious, were hung with flowered cretonne and furnished throughout with polished lemonwood’, which she found ‘luxurious, yet peaceful and comfortable’. After playing upstairs, the children would have an early supper in the nursery and then be taken down to see Nicholas and Alexandra, where they would be greeted and kissed ‘and the Empress would take from the nurse’s arms her youngest daughter, keeping the baby beside her on the chaise-longue’. The older children would sit and look at photograph albums ‘of which there was at least one on every table’. Everything was extremely relaxed; Nicholas sitting opening and reading his sealed dispatches, as Alexandra passed round the glasses of tea.28

  Although Alexandra’s attitude to family life was unusually informal for an empress, she was certainly glad of Miss Eagar’s presence; for by March 1899 her pregnancy was proving extremely uncomfortable. The baby was lying in an awkward position that aggravated her sciatica; yet again she was spending most of her pregnancy in a bath chair.29 On 9 May the family left Tsarskoe Selo for Peterhof to await the arrival of the new member of the family, which was mercifully quick and straightforward. At 12.10 p.m. on 14 June 1899 another robust girl was born, weighing 10 lb (4.5 kg). They called her Maria, in honour of her grandmother, and Alexandra was soon happily breastfeeding her.

  Nicholas registered no obvious air of dismay, his religious fatalism no doubt playing a part in his phlegmatic response. Nevertheless, it was noticed that soon after the baby was born ‘he set off on a long solitary walk’. He returned, ‘as outwardly unruffled as ever’, and noted in his diary that this had been another ‘happy day’. ‘The Lord sent us a third daughter.’ God’s will be done; he was reconciled.30 Grand Duke Konstantin, however, once again expressed what Nicholas was probably feeling deep inside: ‘And so there’s no Heir. The whole of Russia will be disappointed by this news.’31

  ‘I am so thankful that dear Alicky has recovered so well’, wrote Queen Victoria on receiving the telegram, but she could not conceal the serious dynastic issue it raised: ‘I regret the 3rd girl for the country. I know that an Heir would be more welcome than a daughter.’32 ‘Poor Alix … had another daughter, and it seems she was so ill the whole time with it poor thing’, wrote Crown Princess Marie of Romania to her mother the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg. ‘Now I suppose she will have to begin over again and then once more she will shut herself up and it discontents everyone.’33

  When the European press got news of the arrival of yet another daughter they had a field day. The talk in St Petersburg, alleged Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, is

  that the birth of a third daughter to the Czar is regarded as an event of great political importance. Absurd as it may sound, there is a strong party there which waited only for this event to resume their mischievous intrigues against the Czarina, in whom they hate the Princess of Anglo-German blood. The influence of the Empress-Dowager, whose relations with her daughter-in-law are, as is known, anything but cordial, is expected to increase.34

  Another paper came up with a more chilling claim: ‘it is reported that the Dowager-Empress, who is evidently superstitious, on her arrival at Peterhof, met the Czar with the accusatory words: “Six daughters have been foretold unto me: to-day the half of the prophecy has been fulfilled.”’35 At home in Russia the birth of a third daughter certainly fuelled the widespread superstitious belief that Alexandra’s arrival in Russia – in the dying days of Alexander III – had been a bad omen for the marriage: ‘The birth of three daughters in succession with the empire still lacking an heir was seen as proof that their forebodings had been well founded.’36 A manifestation of how close rampant superstition lay beneath the surface of official Orthodoxy was brought home to Margaretta Eagar at Maria’s christening a fortnight later. After the baby was dipped in the font three times, ‘the hair was cut in four places, in the form of a cross. What was cut off was rolled in wax and thrown into the font.’ Eagar was told that ‘according to Russian superstition the good or evil future of the child’s life depends on whether the hair sinks or swims’. She was happy to note: ‘Little Marie’s hair behaved in an orthodox fashion and all sank at once, so there is no need for alarm concerning her future.’37

  Nicholas put a brave face on it and sent his wife a note: ‘I dare complain the least, having such happiness on earth, having a treasure like you my beloved Alix, and already the three little cherubs. From the depth of my heart do I thank God for all His blessings, in giving me you. He gave me paradise and has made my life an easy and happy one.’38 Such depth of feeling did not square with the confident claim of the Paris correspondent of The Times that the tsar was ‘weary of rule’. Apparently so dejected was Nicholas at the birth of another daughter that he had declared himself ‘disappointed and tired of the throne’ and was about to abdicate. ‘The absence of an heir excites his superstitious feelings,’ it went on to explain, ‘and he connects himself with a Russian legend according to which an heirless czar is to be succeeded by a Czar Michael, predestined to occupy Constantinople.’39

  * * *

  As things turned out Margaretta Eagar coped happily with the arrival of the new baby. She found her charges most endearing, particularly the precociously bright and quizzical Olga. The two older girls were fine-looking children and Tatiana had a particular delicate beauty. But it was the new baby who stole Margaretta’s heart: Maria ‘was born good, I often think, with the very smallest trace of original sin possible’.40 And who could resist her? She was ‘a real beauty, very big with enormous blue eyes’, according to the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg; a gentleman at court went one better, remarking that little Maria ‘had the face of one of Botticelli’s angels’.41

  By 1900 the three little Romanov sisters were attracting considerable attention abroad, with much discussion of which was the prettiest, cleverest, or most endearing. ‘The flower of the flock, as far as looks are concerned … is Grand Duchess Tatiana’, was the opinion of the British magazine, Woman at Home. ‘She is a real beauty, with dark pathetic eyes, and wistful little mouth. But the Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest, is such a hearty, merry child, everybody loves her.’ The author of the article wondered, as others had done since the Balmoral visit, ‘whether she is destined to be our future Queen Consort!’42

  Although Alexandra had plenty of staff at her disposal, she continued to spend so much time in the nursery that ‘they began to say at court that the empress was not a tsaritsa but only a mother’. Even when dealing with day-to-day official business in the mauve boudoir, she would often be dandling one child on her knee or rocking another in her cradle, ‘while with the other hand she signed official papers’. She and Nicholas were hardly seen,
even by members of their own entourage. When her ladies did have a moment’s conversation with the empress alone, she only ever had two topics of conversation – Nicky and her children. As Princess Baryatinskaya recalled, it was only when talking of how ‘deeply interesting’ she found it to ‘watch the gradual development of a child step by step’ that Alexandra’s mournful shyness was ‘for once subsumed in a moment’s true pleasure’.43

  Maria Feodorovna strongly disapproved of so much mothering by her daughter-in-law. An empress should be visible, performing her ceremonial duties, but Alexandra stubbornly refused to put herself or her children on show, although she genuinely wished to play an active role in philanthropic work, as her mother Alice had done. Her social projects included establishing workhouses for the poor, crèches for working mothers, a school for training nurses at Tsarskoe Selo and another for housemaids. Having a particular concern about the high infant mortality rate and the welfare of women during pregnancy, she also set about organizing midwives for rural areas.44 The illustrated magazines, however, were left to create their own fantasy figure of the ‘womanly woman, who lives in a secluded mansion and nurses her own children’. The tsaritsa was to be commended, readers of the Young Woman were told, for she was ‘something more than a figurehead. Even if she had done nothing else, she has nursed her own baby, and an Empress nursing a baby is a sight worth living to see.’45