The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (27 page)

Grand Duchess Xenia about his free access to the family, and the

children in particular. ‘He’s always there, goes into the nursery, visits Olga and Tatiana while they are getting ready for bed, sits there

talking to them and
caressing
them’, she had told her.
*
Under instruction from their mother, the children were becoming increasingly

secretive; even Elizaveta Naryshkina (who had taken over from the

recently deceased Princess Golitsyna as mistress of the robes), felt

that such was their mother’s fear of scandal, that the children were

being drilled to ‘hide their thoughts and feelings about Rasputin

from others’.65 ‘It can hardly be beneficial to accustom the children to such dissimulation’, thought Grand Duke Konstantin.66 Certainly

Tyutcheva’s renewed assault in the summer of 1910 was a criticism

too far; it further undermined the view of Alexandra within the

imperial family, with even her sister Ella and Xenia questioning the

wisdom of her continuing patronage of Rasputin.

Those such as Lili Dehn, who loved Alexandra and respected

her trust in Rasputin, put Tyutcheva’s behaviour down to ‘spite and

jealousy’; Anna Vyrubova and Iza Buxhoeveden both were convinced

that she was the source of much of the unfavourable gossip about

the empress and Rasputin circulating in St Petersburg. But the

damage had already been done; the rumours were becoming ever

more lurid by the day. Dehn herself soon had good reason to be

grateful for Rasputin’s help, when her two-year-old son Alexander

(known to everyone as Titi) contracted diphtheria. Seeing how

desperately ill Titi was, Alexandra and Anna Vyrubova had persuaded

her to ask for Grigory’s help. When he arrived, he had sat for a

long time on the boy’s bed, looking intently at him. Suddenly Titi

woke up, ‘stretched out his little hand, laughed and mouthed the

* In her book
My Father
,
p. 56,
Maria Rasputin denied this allegation vehemently:

‘My father was never received in Their Majesties’ bedchamber, nor in those of the Grand Duchesses, but only in that of Alexis Nicolaievitch [
sic
], or in one of the drawing rooms, and once or twice in the schoolroom.’

139

693GG_TXT.indd 139

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

words “uncle, uncle”’. Titi told him that his head ached ‘ever so

badly’ but all Rasputin did was ‘take the boy’s hand, ran his finger

down the side of his nose, stroked his head and kissed him’. As he

left he told Lili that the fever was going; her son would live.67 By

the following morning Titi’s symptoms had indeed abated; he recov-

ered a few days later. Lili remained convinced that this was entirely coincidental with Rasputin’s visit, but she was aware that Alexandra’s faith in him was based on her absolute conviction that he was the

only person who could help her son. In this regard, any power

Rasputin had over the empress was, as far as Lili was concerned,

entirely mystical – and never mercenary or political.68

But on the pages of the influential daily newspaper
Moskovskie

vedomosti
and elsewhere, the campaign of vilification against the empress and her ‘friend’ was mounting. The satirical magazine

Ogonek
was publishing interviews with his followers – giving lurid details of their ‘Egyptian nights of initiation’ into Rasputin’s circle.69

With Prime Minister Stolypin renewing his investigation of him,

Rasputin once more felt it best to beat a retreat to the safety of

Siberia.

140

693GG_TXT.indd 140

29/10/2013 16:17

‘IN ST PETERSBURG WE WORK,

BUT AT LIVADIA WE LIVE’

N

In the summer of 1910, in the face of the continuing dramatic

decline in the tsaritsa’s health, Dr Botkin persuaded her to go for

a rest cure at Bad Nauheim in Hesse, combining it with a visit to

Ernie and other European relatives. ‘It is very important for her to

get better, for her own sake and the children’s and mine’, Nicholas

told his mother before they left. ‘I am completely run down mentally

by worrying over her health.’ His words to Anna Vyrubova were

even more candid: ‘“I would do anything,” he said in quiet desper-

ation, “even going to prison, if she could only be well again.”’1

The Romanov family arrived at Schloss Friedberg near Nauheim

at the end of August. Most of their 140-strong entourage (inflated

by the presence of so many security officers) was farmed out to

guest houses in town. Welcome though it was to Ernie and his

family, the visit was a logistical nightmare, not to mention an enor-

mous expense. During the four weeks of their stay, which was an

entirely private visit, Nicholas for once adopted civvies, and made

occasional excursions incognito into town. Nevertheless, the security was as tight as at Cowes in 1909, with marksmen and dogs patrolling the grounds of the castle, and Nicholas’s Cossack Escort supple-

mented by Okhrana agents under the supervision of Spiridovich

shadowing the family’s every move.2

An English visitor, the writer and literary hostess Violet Hunt,

recalled the hoo-ha attendant on the Romanovs’ arrival. One evening

a notice was posted up in her
pension
, begging the guests

141

693GG_TXT.indd 141

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

not to pursue, persecute, or mob the Tzar of Russia, who was

staying at Friedberg, three miles off, and who came in every day

with the Tzaritza and her children . . . He went in danger of

his life so obvious and so imminent that the craven and business-

like municipality of Friedberg had insisted on his insuring the

public monuments of that place at his own expense!

Determined efforts were made by Spiridovich to ‘disseminate

fallacious announcements’ of the tsar’s movements, in order to deflect the curious from pursuit of the imperial couple. ‘When [Nicholas]

was supposed to be going to the baths it was at the Kursaal [public

rooms] you would find him; when it was the riding school it was

much more likely to be the lake.’3 Violet Hunt caught sight of him

there, ‘a disconsolate figure, encouraging his boy to sail his tiny

boat or being rowed about in one’. She often saw Alexandra on her

way to the baths, ‘in black with pearls . . . her face a tragic mask

. . . haughty, dejected. She looked a lovely fool; nay hardly lovely

now – the morbid shadow of a queen.’4 At a shop in town full of

Venetian glass she again encountered Nicholas with Alexey, intently

examining some
objets d’art
:

I saw his face through the beautiful clear glass; it did not exhibit

mere terror, for he was a brave man, but all at once it seemed

implicit with a summing up, a résumé of the composite agony

of all this race of kings consciously marked down for destruction.

His grandfather before him – his uncle – and only the little son

with his head below the counter to carry on the monstrous

imposthume of Russian Royalty!5

Well might Nicholas have been worried, for during his stay at

Friedberg came news of the
coup d’état
in Portugal on 5 October against the constitutional monarch Manuel II; it was yet another

warning, for Manuel’s father, like Nicholas’s grandfather, had been

assassinated (in 1908). A lady witnessed Nicholas’s reaction when

the newsboy came to the Kurhaus (the spa house) where they were

taking tea. ‘The Czar seemed to turn white and apparently was

greatly shocked.’ Pulling out a coin to pay the boy he read the news

story from end to end: ‘I could read from his face how it had affected him. In his eyes was fright and occasionally they seemed almost

142

693GG_TXT.indd 142

29/10/2013 16:17

‘IN ST PETERSBURG WE WORK . . .’

desperate. With some effort he shook off his feelings and realized

he was the object of curious persons’ gaze. Assuming an air as if

nothing had happened he walked to his waiting automobile.’6

At Friedberg the two families were joined by several more rela-

tives: Prince Andrew of Greece, his wife Alice and their two daugh-

ters Margarita and Theodora; Alexandra’s sister Victoria of Battenberg and her husband Louis and their children Louise, George and Louis.

Alexandra’s two other sisters also briefly joined them: Irene, with

her husband Prince Henry and their two boys Sigismund and the

haemophiliac Waldemar, and the widowed Grand Duchess Ella –

who had recently taken the veil and founded a convent in Moscow

– wearing the most stylish of grey nun’s habits and wimple, looking

like Elizabeth, the pious heroine of Wagner’s opera
Tannhäuser
.

The four Romanov sisters adored the company of their cousins

Louise and Louis, better known to them as Dickie. Although only

ten at the time, in later life, and by then Lord Mountbatten, Dickie

vividly remembered the girls: ‘Oh, they were lovely, and terribly

sweet, far more beautiful than their photographs.’ He was totally

smitten with the third sister: ‘I was crackers about Marie, and was

determined to marry her. She was absolutely lovely.’
*
Indeed, to his eyes all four girls were blossoming: ‘They seemed to get more and

more beautiful every time we saw them.’7

Cousin Thora had also come over from England with Emily

Loch. The morning after their arrival, Olga and Tatiana were eager

to go out shopping with Thora in Nauheim, where the jewellers’

shops entranced them, just as had happened in Cowes. They returned

the next day and ‘chose heaps to be inspected by the Empress which

we took back with us’, recalled Emily, but the crowds that gathered

round them had been considerable, and the girls had little oppor-

tunity to spend their pocket money, which had been regulated at

15 roubles a month by Alexandra in January of that year.8 At

* In Hough’s 1985 biography, Mountbatten misremembers this meeting as being at Heiligenberg in 1913, but the family did not travel out of Russia that year. The last time they visited Germany
en famille
was this particular summer of 1910.

Dickie did not see Maria again but he never forgot her. In later life, he kept her photograph on the mantelpiece in his bedroom until his death.

143

693GG_TXT.indd 143

29/10/2013 16:17

FOUR SISTERS

Friedberg and among their cousins, the four sisters seemed happy

to play childish games of diablo (a juggling toy) and ‘bumble puppy’

(a game for two with a ball on a string tied to a post). There were

plenty of carriage and bicycle rides in the park too, while Alexey

had fun playing with Ernie’s two sons Georg Donatus and Louis

and was taken out on bike rides by Derevenko, sitting in a specially

adapted bicycle seat. They also enjoyed several motor car expedi-

tions with the tsar (who enjoyed driving rather too fast), travelling into the densely wooded countryside for picnics. It was such a rare

opportunity for the girls to mix and play with cousins of their own

age, with even Nicholas for once letting go. ‘He seemed as happy

as a schoolboy in holiday-time.’9 Everyone found the girls polite

and solicitous, impressed by how conscientiously ‘they took the

greatest pains at table to make conversation for the Gentleman-in

Waiting’.10

After more than a month at Bad Nauheim the family moved on

to Wolfsgarten for an additional three weeks with Ernie and his

second wife, Onor. Alexandra’s health had improved; Dr Georg

Grote, who had attended her at Nauheim, had found no sign of

organic heart trouble but confirmed that the state of the empress’s

health was so serious that ‘had she not occupied such an exalted

position, she should have been sent to a sanatorium with two sisters

of mercy to take care of her, not letting her see anyone’. She ‘takes too much on herself’, said Grote, ‘and hides her sufferings from

everyone’.11 Nevertheless, Alexandra was transformed by being

among close family that summer, as Dickie Mountbatten recalled.

‘Even that crazy lunatic my aunt the Empress was absolutely sweet

and charming.’ However, many of her relatives were seriously

worried about her mental stability. Dickie overheard his father say

to his mother at Nauheim: ‘Alicky is absolutely mad – she’s going

to cause a revolution. Can’t you
do
anything?’12

The tsaritsa’s constant ill health was often being put down to

hypochondria. But Alexandra was adamant that her ailments were

not imagined. ‘If people speak to you about my “nerves”,’ she wrote

to Mariya Baryatinskaya, ‘please strongly contradict it. They are as

strong as ever, it’s the “overtired heart”.’13 She was aware of how

her ill health was affecting the children; ‘having a mama who is

144

693GG_TXT.indd 144

29/10/2013 16:17

‘IN ST PETERSBURG WE WORK . . .’

always ill does not make life bright for you’, she told Maria that

December, but it had its positives: ‘I know it’s dull . . . but it teaches you all to be loving and gentle.’14 She was now having to deal with

one of eleven-year-old Maria’s first adolescent crushes, which she

had confided in her. Grigory had clearly once more been acting as