The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (14 page)

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 Alexandra were loath to part with him but

at the end of 1902 Philippe returned to France with gifts from his

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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. Philippe 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 pos-

ition 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, begin-

ning 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 Mariya 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

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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 saint-

hood 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 sanc-

tioned 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

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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

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Skierniewice near the Bialowieza 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 Instead 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.

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The tsaritsa remained bedridden until mid-January and the family

did not transfer to St Petersburg for the winter season until the

following month.34 It was a difficult time to be laid so low by illness for Alexandra was pregnant again – her child probably conceived at

Skierniewice – and her illness only exacerbated her anxieties. Xenia

was sympathetic when she was finally told the news by Maria

Feodorovna on 13 March: ‘It’s become noticeable now, but she, poor

thing, had been concealing it as no doubt she was afraid that people

would find out about it too soon.’35

Alexandra was saved from further criticism when the St Petersburg

season was cut short with the outbreak in January 1904 of the

Russo-Japanese War, triggered by Nicholas’s expansionist policies

in southern Manchuria, a territory long contested by the Japanese.

Many at court believed it to be a direct result of the insidious influence of Philippe, who had assured the couple that a short, sharp

war would be a triumphant demonstration of Russian imperial might

that would underline the inviolability of their autocracy. But it was an ill-judged conflict for which Russia was not prepared, her troops

even less so, and the initial burst of patriotic fervour rapidly faded.

During the war, the little grand duchesses were inevitably suscep-

tible to the racist and xenophobic talk prevalent at court; Margaretta Eagar recalled that it was ‘very sad to witness the wrathful, vindic-tive spirit that the war raised in my little charges’. Maria and Anastasia were perplexed by images of the ‘queer little children’ of the Crown

Prince of Japan that they saw in magazines. ‘Horrid little people,’

exclaimed Maria, ‘they came and destroyed our poor little ships and

drowned our sailors.’ Mama had told them ‘the Japs were all only

little people’. ‘I hope the Russian soldiers will kill all of the Japanese’, exclaimed Olga one day, upon which Margaretta explained that the

Japanese women and children were not to blame. The bright and

opinionated Olga seemed satisfied after several of her questions had

been answered: ‘I did not know that the Japs were people like

ourselves. I thought they were only like monkeys.’36

The war, meanwhile, had galvanized Alexandra’s talent for phil-

anthropic work and despite her pregnancy, she had engaged in war

relief, sending portable field chapels to the troops and organizing

supplies and hospital trains. For the first time in years she was once
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