The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (10 page)

that the ambitious Maria Pavlovna, wife of Grand Duke Vladimir

– and herself the mother of three boys – ‘had consulted a gypsy

fortune teller, who had predicted that one of her sons would sit on

the throne of Russia’.5

It is little wonder that Nicholas and Alexandra detached them-

selves from such insidious gossip and kept well out of sight at

Tsarskoe Selo. Alexandra was exhausted, though she recovered

from this pregnancy rather quicker than the first. Now that she

had two children to mother, the focal point of family life at the

Alexander Palace increasingly became her Meltzer-designed

mauve boudoir, the room where she spent most of her day. In it,

as her family grew, Alexandra accumulated an eclectic mix of

sentimental objects, and aside from occasional redecoration,

nothing in the room would be altered in the twenty-one years

that followed.

Two high windows looked east, out on to the Alexander Park

and the lakes beyond. Within and close to the windows was a

large wooden plant holder full of vases of freshly cut, heavily

scented flowers – in particular the lilac Alexandra adored. In

addition there were roses, orchids, freesias and lilies of the valley

– many specially grown for Alexandra in the palace hothouses –

and ferns, palms and aspidistras, and other flowers in abundance

filling vases of Sèvres and other china placed around the room.

Simple white-painted lemonwood furniture, cream wood panelling

and opalescent grey and mauve silk wall coverings and draped

curtains were all carefully chosen to match the lilac hues of

Alexandra’s upholstered chaise longue cum daybed with its lace

cushions. This bed was concealed behind a wooden screen to

keep away draughts. Further into the room were a white upright

piano and a writing desk, and the tsaritsa’s personal library of

favourite books. But always, too, a basket of toys and children’s

games were at hand, for this is where the family would usually

gravitate in the evenings.6

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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:

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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 preg-

nancy 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

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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 perpet-

ually 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 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

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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 sharing 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
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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 lemon-

wood’, 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