The Romanov Sisters Read online

  Militza soon began badgering Nicholas to arrange for Philippe to be allowed to practise in Russia, despite objections from the medical establishment. A medical diploma was contrived for him, under duress, from the Petersburg Military Medical Academy and Philippe was given the rank of State Councillor and the uniform of an imperial military doctor, complete with gold epaulettes. Close relatives – including Xenia, Maria Feodorovna and Ella – were alarmed and warned Nicholas and Alexandra to stay well away from Philippe, but all attempts to discredit him in their eyes failed. Even a report on his dubious practices, sent to Nicholas by the Okhrana in Paris with the connivance of Maria Feodorovna, had no effect; Nicholas promptly dismissed the agent who had prepared it.8

  Convinced that at last they had found a sympathetic ear, the couple hung on Maître Philippe’s words of pseudo-mystical wisdom at every opportunity. When he returned on a twelve-day visit in July they went to see him daily, making the short drive from the Lower Dacha to Znamenka, and often staying late into the night. ‘We were deeply moved listening to him’, wrote Nicholas; ‘what wonderful hours’ they spent with their friend.9 They even cut short a visit to the theatre on the 14th to go straight to Znamenka and sit talking to Philippe until 2.30 in the morning. The evening before Philippe left they all sat and prayed together and said goodbye with heavy hearts. During their brief visit to Compiègne Nicholas and Alexandra contrived to see Philippe again, and snatched another meeting with him when he returned to Znamenka in November.

  Beyond this inner sanctum, Nicholas and Alexandra’s association with Philippe was a closely guarded secret, though rumour at the time was rife. It was alleged that Philippe ‘carried out experiments in hypnotism, prophecy, incarnation and necromancy’ in the imperial couple’s presence and that utilizing his own particular combination of ‘hermetic medicine, astronomy and psychurgy’ he had claimed to direct ‘the evolution of the embryonic phenomena’.10 Psychobabble or not, during his visit in July Philippe had won the confidence of the empress and penetrated her intensely private world; after his departure he continued to offer advice to the imperial couple on achieving the birth of an heir, as well as passing on overtly political prognostications, advising that Nicholas should never grant a constitution, ‘as that would be the ruin of Russia’.11

  By the end of 1901, and within five months of giving birth to Anastasia, the tsaritsa had once more fallen pregnant. It seemed a total vindication of Philippe’s prayers and powers of autosuggestion. They kept the news of the pregnancy from their family as long as they could, but by the spring of 1902, it was clear that the tsaritsa was getting fatter and had stopped wearing a corset. Xenia, who by now was also pregnant – for a sixth time – did not find out for certain until April, when Alexandra wrote to her, admitting that ‘now it begins to be difficult to hide. Don’t write to Motherdear [the dowager empress], as I want to tell it to her when she returns next week. I feel so well, thank God; in August! – My broad waist all winter must have struck you.’12

  Philippe spent four days in St Petersburg in March of 1902, staying with Militza’s sister Stana – another devoted acolyte – and her husband the Duke of Leuchtenburg, where once again Nicholas and Alexandra visited. ‘We listened to him over supper and for the rest of that evening until one a.m. We could have gone on listening to him for ever’, Nicholas recalled.13 Philippe’s hold over Alexandra was such that he advised her not to allow any doctors to examine her, even as her due date approached. But by the summer she was showing worryingly little physical sign of what should have been an advanced state of pregnancy. Nevertheless, in August manifestos announcing the imminent birth were made ready. When Dr Ott took up residence at Peterhof for the delivery, he immediately realized something was wrong. It took considerable persuasion before Alexandra would agree to his examining her, upon which Ott immediately announced that she was not pregnant.

  Alexandra’s ‘phantom pregnancy’ provoked considerable consternation in the imperial family: ‘From 8 August we have been waiting every day for confirmation of the Empress’s pregnancy,’ wrote Grand Duke Konstantin. ‘Now we have suddenly learned that she is not pregnant, indeed that there never was any pregnancy, and that the symptoms that led to suppose it were in fact only anaemia! What a disappointment for the Tsar and Tsarina! Poor things!’ A deeply distressed Alexandra wrote to Elizaveta Naryshkina, who had been anxiously awaiting news at her estate in the country: ‘Dear Friend, do not come. There will be no christening – there is no child – there is nothing! It is a catastrophe!’14

  Such had been the level of rumour that an official, face-saving bulletin on the tsaritsa’s health was published by the court physicians Ott and Gustav Girsh on 21 August: ‘Several months ago there were changes in the state of health of Her Imperial Highness the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, indicating a pregnancy. At the present time, owing to a departure from the normal course of things, the pregnancy has resulted in a straightforward miscarriage, without any complications.’15

  Alexandra’s true condition had, however, been an unusual one that was never made public. In a secret report submitted to Nicholas, Dr Girsh gave the precise details. Alexandra had last menstruated on 1 November 1901 and had genuinely believed she was pregnant, anticipating a birth at the beginning of the following August, even though, approaching her due date, she had not significantly increased in size. Then on 16 August she had had a bleed. Ott and Günst had been called in but Alexandra had refused to let them examine her; on the evening of the 19th she experienced what seemed like early labour pains and had another show of blood that continued till the following morning. But when she got up to wash, she suffered a discharge – of a spherical, fleshy mass the size of a walnut, which when examined under the microscope by Ott was confirmed as a dead fertilized egg in the fourth week of gestation. In his opinion the tsaritsa had been suffering from a condition known as ‘Mole Carnosum’ (hydatidiform mole) – and the loss of blood had flushed the egg out.16

  The news that the tsaritsa had ‘miscarried’, far from winning sympathy for her among the Russian people, sadly had the reverse effect. It sparked a wave of merciless vilification and all kinds of outlandish rumour that she had given birth to some kind of deformed child – a monster, ‘a freak with horns’. Such was official paranoia about this that part of the libretto of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, referring to how ‘the tsaritsa gave birth in the night not to a son, nor a daughter, nor a dog, nor a frog but – some kind of unknown wild creature’, was censored.17 As far as the suspicious Russian people were concerned, the hand of God lay heavy on their ill-fated sovereigns. The absence of a son was the tsar’s punishment, many said, for the Khodynka tragedy of 1896, when thousands had been trampled to death during a stampede at the coronation festivities in Moscow.18

  In England, the Anglo-Russian responded, albeit with a jaundiced eye, to the growing criticism being heaped on the unfortunate tsaritsa for failing to produce an heir, by striking a blow for a female Russian monarch:

  Once again the Tsaritsa has disregarded the Salic law and disappointed the sex-biased Russian populace, who even show dislike amounting to hatred toward the gifted mother … yet a little knowledge of natural law and of history would demonstrate that ‘a perfect woman nobly planned’ is ‘Nature’s Crown’, and a female sovereign has often been the salvation of a people, denoting their era of greatest material and social progress.19

  Word was by now leaking into the foreign press that Philippe’s influence over the imperial couple went well beyond ‘psychical methods of healing’ in the conception of a son and that Nicholas had even subjected himself to ‘hypnotic experiments’, during which Philippe ‘calls forth the spirit of Alexander III, foretells the future, and inspires the Czar with one or another decision concerning not only his domestic, but also State affairs’.20 Philippe’s reputation took a dip and accusatory voices that he was a charlatan bent on meddling in affairs of state mounted, making his position at the Russian court untenable. Nicholas and A
lexandra were loath to part with him but at the end of 1902 Philippe returned to France with gifts from his grateful imperial patrons including a Serpollet motor car.21 In return Philippe presented Alexandra with an icon with a small bell, which, he told her, would ring to alert her should anyone meaning her harm enter the room. She also kept a frame with dried flowers that he gave her, which he claimed had been touched by the hand of the saviour. And then he departed, leaving one final, tantalizing prediction: ‘Someday you will have another friend like me who will speak to you of God.’22

  In the persisting climate of recrimination at the absence of an heir to the throne, rumours began circulating after the ‘miscarriage’ of 1902 that Nicholas would be prevailed upon to divorce Alexandra – much as Napoleon Bonaparte had divorced Empress Josephine in 1810, after fourteen years of marriage, for failing to provide him with a son. There was even talk that the tsar would abdicate if his next child was another daughter. Within Russia, the tsaritsa’s position was growing ‘extremely precarious’. Rumour abounded that she had become the victim of ‘profound and growing melancholy since her hope of becoming a mother again was dashed’, so much so that her desire to produce an heir had become ‘almost a mania with her’.23 Meanwhile sympathy abroad grew for the four imperial daughters so systematically marginalized in the Russian public’s imagination, such as in this quip published in the Pittsburgh press in November 1901:

  Mrs Gaswell: The Czar of Russia has now four little daughters.

  Mr Gaswell: Oh, the dear little Czardines.24

  * * *

  The year 1903 was an important one for the Romanov family, beginning with the celebrations for the bicentenary of the foundation of St Petersburg. In a rare court appearance – as it turned out, their last for several years to come – Nicholas and Alexandra took centre stage at what would be the last great costume ball held before the revolution. Alexandra looked magnificent, if rather uncomfortable, ornately dressed as the Tsaritsa Maria Miloslavskaya in a heavy gold brocade costume and unwieldy crown, with her husband at her side and rather eclipsed by her, dressed as their favourite tsar, Alexey I. Alexandra seemed a beautiful vision, a ‘Byzantine Madonna come down from among the jewelled ikons of a cathedral’.25 But it was an image of autocratic remoteness that, seen at the centre of this splendid gathering of St Petersburg’s wealthy aristocratic elite, served only to accentuate both her and Nicholas’s total isolation from the ordinary Russian people. Later that summer, however, the Russian people would be rewarded with a very rare glimpse of the royal couple, in their continuing quest for a son.

  Before Philippe had left for France he had recommended that the imperial couple pray for the intercession of St Seraphim of Sarov, and they would have a son. There was, however, a problem: there was no official saint of that name in the Russian Orthodox calendar. After a frantic search, it was eventually ascertained that a monk at the Diveevo Monastery at Sarov in the Tambov region, 250 miles (403 km) east of Moscow, had been revered locally for performing miracles. But none of these had been officially verified and Seraphim had been dead for seventy years. Nor had his body, when his coffin was opened for inspection, passed the acid test of sanctity by appearing miraculously uncorrupted. It was in an advanced state of decay. As emperor, Nicholas nevertheless had the power to order that this unknown miracle-worker be canonized, whatever the state of his corpse. The Metropolitan of Moscow found himself obliged to find a way of upholding Seraphim’s sanctity, as being ‘fully established by the many miracles performed in connexion with his remains, including the soil in which he lies buried, the stone on which he prayed, and the water from the well which he bored – by all of which many believers have been restored to health’.26 As Elizaveta Naryshkina noted, the contrivance of Seraphim’s sainthood was seen as a direct result of Alexandra’s involvement with her new ‘friend’: ‘It would be difficult to know where Philippe ends and Seraphim begins.’27 In February 1903 the Metropolitan finally sanctioned the canonization.

  Leaving their daughters behind in the care of Margaretta Eagar, Nicholas and Alexandra travelled in intense heat to Sarov for the formal ceremony, in the company of Nicholas’s sister Olga, Maria Feodorovna, Ella and Sergey, and Militza and Stana. Nicholas was well aware that the canonization ceremony would serve an important purpose, as an act of collective religious faith underpinning his autocratic rule, for the imperial guests were joined by something approaching 300,000 devout pilgrims, who descended on Sarov, raising a huge cloud of dust in the process. Hordes of the blind, the sick and the crippled, all seeking a miracle, tried to mob their little father and kiss his hand. In an atmosphere saturated with mystical religious fervour and the incessant ringing of bells, the family attended three days of protracted church services, often of over three hours’ duration, in the boiling heat.28 Despite the pain in her legs, Alexandra endured the devotions on her feet, with deep piety and without complaint. The intense faith manifested at Sarov by the many pilgrims fuelled her own unshakeable belief in the sacred, inviolable communion between tsar and people. Nicholas helped carry the coffin containing Seraphim’s sacred relics on a litter during the ceremonies, culminating in its interment on 19 August in a specially created shrine built in St Seraphim’s honour. That evening, as an important, symbolic act of religious faith, Alexandra and Nicholas went in private down to the nearby Sarova River, where Seraphim himself had once bathed and – as Philippe had instructed them – submerged themselves in its sacred waters in the hope that they might be blessed with a son.

  * * *

  In the autumn of 1903 the Romanov family made a visit to Darmstadt for the wedding of Princess Alice of Battenberg and Prince Andrew of Greece.* Ernie and Ducky – a mismatched couple from the first – had by now sadly separated and divorced, but Ernie was devoted to their eight-year-old daughter Elisabeth, who spent six months of the year with him. After the wedding, the two families travelled to Wolfsgarten for a private holiday, where Olga and Tatiana played happily with their cousin, riding bicycles and ponies and going out mushroom-picking. Elisabeth was a strange, ethereal child with eyes full of pathos and a halo of dark curly hair that contradicted her warm and lively personality. She was greatly taken with her ‘tiny cousin’ Anastasia, took to mothering her and wanted to take her back home with her to Darmstadt.29

  When the imperial family left Hesse, Ernie and Elisabeth travelled on with them to the tsar’s hunting lodge on the imperial estate at Skierniewice near the Białowiea Forest in today’s Poland, where Nicholas went for regular hunting trips. But on the morning of 15 November, and without warning, Elisabeth suddenly fell sick. It seemed at first to be a bad sore throat, but her temperature continued to rise and, lying dangerously ill, she begged Margaretta Eagar to send for her mother. The illness, however, overwhelmed her and there was nothing the doctors could do. Within forty-eight hours Elisabeth was dead, carried off by a particularly virulent form of typhoid that had caused heart failure.30 The sisters were greatly distressed by their cousin’s sudden death and immediately afterwards Margaretta took all four of them back to Tsarskoe Selo, so that their rooms at Skierniewice could be fumigated. Olga was bewildered: ‘What a pity that the dear God has taken away from me such a good friend!’ she told Margaretta plaintively. Later, at Christmas, she remembered Elisabeth again, wondering to Margaretta whether God had purposely ‘sent for her to keep with him’ in Heaven.31

  Almost immediately after Ernie took Elisabeth’s sad little coffin back to Darmstadt, Alexandra fell ill with a severe ear infection and instead of travelling on to Elisabeth’s funeral, remained confined to bed at Skierniewice for six long weeks. The pain was so bad that an ear specialist was called in from Warsaw. Desperate to be with her children for Christmas and arrange the tree and presents for them and the staff, Alexandra travelled back to Russia before she was fully recovered.32 No sooner had she arrived at Tsarskoe Selo than she went down with influenza and on Christmas Eve, as Margaretta Eagar recalled, she was ‘very ill and could not see the children’.33 Instea
d Nicholas supervised the tree and the distribution of presents. This was no mean task, for the family had eight large trees brought in at Christmas – for themselves, the staff and even the Tsar’s Escort. Alexandra liked to decorate them all herself, in addition to laying out the huge array of presents for the household on long tables covered with crisp white tablecloths – very much in the German style adopted by her grandmother at Windsor. The girls as usual took pride in making their own little gifts, but Christmas that year was a sad and subdued one, haunted by the death of their cousin and with their mother confined to bed. ‘Wanting her, we wanted more than half of our usual gaiety’, Margaretta remembered.