The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (17 page)

Stolypin’s predecessors in succession had been assassinated: Dmitri

Sipyagin in 1902 and Vyacheslav von Plehve – the victim of a bomb

attack on the streets of St Petersburg – two weeks before Alexey

was born. The Romanov family had long been living in the shadow

of political terrorism and in February 1905 the revolutionaries scored their most chilling success yet, when Ella’s husband, the much-hated

Grand Duke Sergey, was blown to pieces in a bomb attack in Moscow.

Such was the perceived danger to the imperial family that Nicholas

and Alexandra were not allowed to attend his funeral. Other attacks

followed thick and fast: in May the head of the Kiev section of the

Okhrana, Aleksandr Spiridovich, was shot and seriously wounded.

In August 1906 General Vonlyarlyarsky, the Russian military

governor of Warsaw, was assassinated, as too was General Min,

commander of the Life Guards regiment, who was gunned down

by a female revolutionary at Peterhof Railway Station in front of

his wife.5

Such were the dangers now threatening Nicholas that it ‘led to

the organization of a curiously complicated system of spying and

tattling; spies were set to watch spies; the air was filled with whisperings, cross-currents of fear and mistrust’, as the overstretched

tsarist police struggled to cope.6 Although the imperial family never walked out informally in crowded places in St Petersburg, every

eventuality had to be covered – such as those occasions when they

went out for drives in a landau or troika, or attended church services or public ceremonies where they might be surrounded by crowds.

This elaborate security network was bolstered by a ban on any press

announcements about their day-to-day appointments or any journeys

they might be making.7 Nothing escaped the rigorous inspection of

the Press Censor’s Department. As a result, the Russian people, as

one London paper observed, had absolutely no sense of the ‘sweet

family life’ of their tsar and tsaritsa; ‘the papers dare not print it
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– it is spoken about rarely, if at all, and always with bated breath’.

A few anodyne bulletins were released for public consumption, along

with official photographs and postcards available for sale, but that

was the sum of it. The Russian imperial family was becoming famous

for its ‘dazzling inaccessibility’.8

Four different security networks now guarded the Romanovs’

every move: the Tsar’s Escort was backed up by a special police force at Tsarskoe Selo that watched the surrounding streets and vetted all

visitors to the palace. A specially designated railway battalion monitored the line from St Petersburg out to Tsarskoe Selo and Peterhof.

All other railway lines were closely guarded by cordons of troops

positioned along both embankments of any route taken by the impe-

rial train and guards on board gave added protection to the family.9

Even here, though, Alexandra would insist that the blinds be drawn

and she refused to allow the children – or even Nicky – to go to

the windows to wave at passers-by. On one such journey, Alexander

Mosolov, head of the Court Chancellery, recalled how ‘the children

pressed their faces against the slits on either side between curtain

and window frame’, hungry for sight of the world beyond.10

The assassination of General Min so close to home – for the

imperial family had been in residence at the Lower Dacha at Peterhof

at the time – was unnerving for Nicholas, but far more so for

Alexandra, who lived in constant fear for his life and the safety of

her children.11 The growing isolation of the imperial family was

even felt abroad; a major article in the
Washington Post
at the end of May, headed ‘Children Without a Smile’, featured the latest set

of official photographs, the paper remarking on the sweetness of

the Romanov sisters’ expressions, but concluding that ‘melancholy

has marked them for her own’, living as the family now did as ‘almost prisoners in their palaces, surrounded by servants and guards whose

fidelity, in the light of past events, must always be distrusted’.12

Under threat of further political upheaval, in the autumn of 1905

Nicholas reluctantly agreed to the creation of a legislative assembly

– the State Duma – that was inaugurated in April 1906. Alexandra

abhorred his decision, for she resented any political concessions that might endanger the safe transition of the throne to their heir Alexey, and predictably, the Duma was short-lived. Deeply conservative and

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fearful of change, Nicholas lost his nerve and prorogued it two

months later having come to the conclusion that it was a hotbed of

political conflict. Violence inevitably escalated in response. On the afternoon of 12 August 1906 Stolypin narrowly escaped death when

a massive bomb attack on his wooden summer dacha in St Petersburg,

which was full of visitors at the time, practically demolished the

building and killed thirty people, leaving another thirty-two

wounded. Stolypin himself was miraculously unharmed but as they

dug him out of the wreckage he was heard to repeat over and over

again, ‘My poor children, my poor children.’13 Two of them, his son

Arkady and one of his daughters, Natalya, who had both been on

the balcony at the time, had been hurled onto the road below by

the explosion. Arkady, who was three years old, broke his hip, and

fifteen-year-old Natalya was very seriously injured. She lay in hospital in a critical state for weeks. The doctors had expected her to die or face the amputation of both of her badly broken legs, when, on 16

October, a note came from Nicholas telling Stolypin and his wife

that a man of God – ‘a peasant from the government of Tobolsk’

– wished to come and bless Natalya with an icon and pray for her.

Nicholas and Alexandra had met the man recently and he had made

‘such a distinctly powerful impression’ on them that Nicholas urged

Stolypin to let him visit the children in hospital.14 ‘When he came,

the man did not touch the child, just stood at the foot of the bed

holding up an icon of the miracle worker, St Simeon of Verkhotur’e,

and prayed. On leaving, he said “Don’t worry, everything will be

all right”.’ Natalya’s condition improved soon after and she eventu-

ally recovered, though she was left with a permanent limp as the

result of having one heel blown off.15

The mysterious healer was a
strannik –
a semi-literate, thirty-seven-year-old lay pilgrim – named Grigory Rasputin who had been gaining

a reputation in St Petersburg as a mystic and healer since his arrival there during Lent 1903.16 Nicholas and Alexandra had already met

him, briefly, in November 1905, at Stana’s home, Sergievka, near

Peterhof and saw him there again in July 1906. With Philippe now

dead, the Montenegrin sisters had recently adopted this new mystic

and healer and, being privy to the truth of Alexey’s incurable condi-

tion, they were concertedly steering Rasputin in the highly

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vulnerable couple’s direction. On the evening of 13 October 1906

Rasputin had come to see the imperial family at the Lower Dacha,

at his own request, to give them a wooden painted icon of St Simeon,

one of the most celebrated Russian saints from Siberia, whom he

particularly revered. While he was there he was allowed the privilege of meeting the children and ‘gave them blessed bread and holy

images, and spoke a few words to them’.17 But this is as far as it

went and Rasputin was not invited back. For now, Nicholas and

Alexandra remained impressed, and curious – but cautious.

The shock of the injuries to Stolypin’s children was, however,

profound for both of them; particularly as Stolypin and his wife had

finally had a son after five daughters in succession. Alexandra was,

at all times, inordinately protective of Alexey; she seemed to ‘press the little boy to her with the convulsive movement of a mother who

always seems in fear of her child’s life’.18 The harrowing events of

1905–6 coupled with the strain of Alexey’s haemophilia had already

taken a heavy toll on her. When her sisters Irene and Victoria visited that summer they thought she had aged and were alarmed by how

frequently incapacitated she was by her sciatica. She was complaining too of shortness of breath and pain in her heart, convinced that it

was ‘enlarged’. Victoria went back home greatly saddened by what

she had seen; it was ‘only in the faces of the four winsome little

girls’ that she had seen any real happiness at Tsarskoe Selo.19

The total clampdown on news about the Russian imperial family

was in stark contrast to the daily court circulars issued in Britain

on every royal carriage ride, ribbon-cutting and unveiling, however

trivial. In an attempt to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the

imperial family, St Petersburg was awash with foreign correspond-

ents chasing stories about the ‘home life’ of the tsar. The ‘Four

Little Russian Princesses’ were the object of endless curiosity across the women’s and girls’ magazines of Europe and America.20

Occasionally – before Nicholas and Alexandra quit the Winter Palace

in 1905 – the girls had sometimes been seen out in the streets of

St Petersburg in a landau with their nannies, often behaving in an

unruly fashion, climbing on the seats, standing up and bowing to

passers-by and eagerly taking in everything around them. An odd

glimpse could still also be caught of them, from beyond the

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perimeter fence of the Alexander Palace, riding their ponies or

bicycles in the park, or running around picking flowers. They seemed

full of energy and vivacity and the newspapers hungered for more.21

One of the first to provide an inside view was Margaretta Eagar,

who had, quite suddenly, been ‘let go’ from her post on 29 September

1904 not long after the birth of Alexey. No explanation was given,

either by Eagar in her later memoir and articles, or in Nicholas’s

brief diary entry alluding to her departure. But it is possible that

the forthright Margaretta had become too combative for Nicholas

and Alexandra’s tastes – much like Mrs Inman before her, when she

insisted on her right, as nanny, to discipline the children. She having spoken to Alexandra out of turn once on this matter, insisting that

she was ‘charged by Your Majesty with the education of the little

princesses’, the tsaritsa had been obliged to remind her that she was talking to the Empress of Russia.22 But Margaretta was also highly

opinionated and talkative. Perhaps, in any event, the imperial couple considered her a loose cannon at a time when they were anxious to

keep Alexey’s condition secret.

It had clearly been difficult for Alexandra to let Margaretta Eagar

go, for the nanny had performed her role with considerable skill

and dedication and the girls all adored her, but she decided from

now on to take charge of the girls’ upbringing herself and not hire

any more English nannies. This ran entirely counter to Russian

tradition, or for that matter the normal way of things among most

aristocratic parents of the day, who handed over the everyday care

of their children to a retinue of servants. Alexandra did of course

have the service of Russian nursemaids to help with the girls’ day-

to-day care, two of the most loyal and long-serving being Mariya

Vishnyakova, who would increasingly take care of Alexey, and

Alexandra – ‘Shura’ – Tegleva.

As for the girls’ education, Alexandra had already started tutoring

them herself in English and French and basic spelling, having taught

them needlework the moment they were able to hold a needle. She

enlisted her own
lectrice
Trina Schneider to teach the older two in other general subjects. Trina also acted as a chaperone, much as

Margaretta Eagar had done, when the girls went out for walks or

drives. Meanwhile male tutors for other subjects were sought out.23

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One of the first to be recruited was Petr Vasilevich Petrov – a teacher and former army officer who had been a senior government administrator responsible for military schools and who began teaching

Olga and Tatiana Russian language and literature in 1903. Although

approaching retirement Petrov was devoted to his charges, and they

responded to his genial manner with great affection, referring to

him by his initials PVP.24 But he found them a handful; the girls at

times could be wild and out of control. ‘They used to play with

him, shouting, laughing, pushing him, and generally hauling him

about without mercy’, recalled Baroness Buxhoeveden. Olga and

Tatiana could be ‘meek as mice’ when studying but once their teacher

had departed the schoolroom, ‘a wild scramble’ often followed during

which Olga would jump on the sofa and race along the row of neatly