The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (31 page)

in 1912 she was summoned to Nicholas’s study, where he asked her,

‘What is going on in the nursery?’ – or, as Anna Vyrubova would

have it, ‘rebuked her severely’.9 When Tyutcheva explained her

position, voicing her objections to Rasputin’s familiarity with the

children and her own strongly held opinions on how the girls should

be brought up, the tsar responded:

‘So you do not believe in the sanctity of Grigory?’ . . . I answered

negatively and the Emperor said ‘And what if I told you that all

these difficult years I have survived only because of his prayers?’

‘You have survived them because of the prayers of the whole of

Russia, Your Majesty,’ I replied. The Emperor started to say that

he was convinced it was all a lie, that he did not believe these

stories about R., that the pure always attracts everything dirty.10

Tyutcheva remained in her post for a while after this dressing-

down, Nicholas and Alexandra always reluctant to dismiss anyone

because of the attendant gossip, but finally, in March 1912 and still unrepentant, she was sent back to her home in Moscow, ‘for talking

too much and lying’, as Alexandra told Xenia.11 Iza Buxhoeveden

was sorry to see how ‘deeply distressed’ Tyutcheva was to have to

leave the girls, for she loved them dearly. But it was, sadly, her own fault: ‘What she said carelessly was twisted and turned into marvellous stories, which did the Empress a great deal of harm.’12 But she

continued to write regularly and before too long was allowed to

make occasional visits to see her former charges. Anastasia in particular remained strongly attached to her friend Savanna, and exchanged

letters with her until 1916.13

Tyutcheva was not the only member of the imperial household

to be caught up in the controversy. Mariya (Mary) Vishnyakova,

who after seeing the girls through their early years had become

nursemaid to Alexey in 1909, had at first been an ardent admirer

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of Grigory. But she had of late been suffering from the strain of

her difficult job. When, in the spring of 1910, Alexandra recom-

mended she go for a visit to Grigory at Pokrovskoe in the company

of three other women, Vishnyakova had returned, accusing him of

having sexually assaulted her and begging the empress to protect

her children from his ‘diabolical’ influence.14 There appears to be

no foundation in the disturbed Vishnyakova’s accusation. Anna

Vyrubova and others described her as ‘over-emotional’; indeed,

according to Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, during a subse-

quent investigation of Vishnyakova’s allegations, the hapless nurse-

maid was caught in bed with a Cossack from the imperial guard.15

Nicholas and Alexandra were as reluctant to dismiss her as they had

been Tyutcheva; she had served the family loyally for fifteen years

and was greatly loved by the children. She was therefore sent to the

Caucasus for a rest cure, and the following June, 1913, was quietly

retired rather than dismissed from service, with a comfortable

pension and her own three-bedroom flat in the commandant’s quar-

ters at the Winter Palace. Right up to the revolution, Nicholas and

Alexandra continued to pay for Mary to have annual rest cures in

the Crimea.16 There would be no replacement for her though; her

role would increasingly be taken by Alexey’s
dyadka
Derevenko, nor would there be any new governess for his sisters. The imperial family closed ranks, trusting to just a few loyal retainers. Trina Schneider
*

would act as chaperone for Maria and Anastasia, while the older

sisters would be accompanied on outings by one or other of

Alexandra’s ladies-in-waiting. Iza Buxhoeveden was finally taken on

formally as a lady-in-waiting in 1914, after which she and Nastenka

Hendrikova took over escorting Olga and Tatiana into town. But

over and above them all and keeping an eagle eye on the girls’ moral

welfare was ‘the old hen’, mistress of the robes Elizaveta Naryshkina.17

The loss of Sofya Tyutcheva left a still sick Alexandra with a lot

to prepare for the spring and summer seasons; for she had to ‘select

and organize the dresses, hats, coats for 4 girls’ to see them through

* According to Dr Botkin’s son Gleb, Schneider was ‘extremely priggish’, so much so that she ‘forbade the Grand Duchesses to stage a play because the dialogue contained the highly improper word “stockings”’. Botkin,
Real Romanovs
, p. 79.

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first a trip south to Livadia, then on to a series of formal engage-

ments in Moscow in May for which the girls needed ‘to be dressed

very elegantly’, and back to Moscow later in the year for the celebrations for the anniversary of the defeat of Napoleon in 1812. A

selection of tea dresses and semi-formal dresses would be required,

at considerable expense.18

Surviving accounts for Maria’s wardrobe allowance during

1909–10 provide a fascinating insight into the kind of money being

spent on each daughter on a wide range of items. All of Maria’s

accounts for that year are meticulously itemized, expenditure on

wardrobe alone amounting to 6,307 roubles (something like £14,500

today). Everything is accounted for: from ribbons, pins, lace, combs, handkerchiefs; to perfume and soap sent from Harrods to the St

Petersburg
parfumier
Brocard & Co; to her manicurist Madame Kühne; to Alice Guisser for repairs and cleaning of her lace; to her

mother’s
coiffeur
Henri-Joseph Delacroix; as well as payments for visits to the American dentist Dr Henry Wallison who had premises

on the upmarket Moika Embankment.19 A considerable variety of

footwear was purchased for Maria at Henry Weiss on 66 Nevsky

Prospekt, whose shoes all bore the legend ‘Fournisseur de S. M.

L’Impératrice de Russie’: thirty-two different pairs ranging from soft glacé leather pumps of various colours, to demi and high button

boots, sandals, felt boots and fur-lined overshoes. The smart firm

of Maison Anglaise on the Nevsky supplied silk and Lisle thread

stockings; swimming costumes and bathing caps came from Dahlberg,

and Robert Heath, ‘Hatter to HM the Queen and all the Courts of

Europe’, sent out hats from his fashionable London store at Hyde

Park Corner. The French couturier Auguste Brisac (next door to

Weiss in a prime spot at 68 Nevsky Prospekt), worked exclusively

for ladies of the imperial family and members of the court, his sixty staff creating the very latest Parisian gowns for special occasions.

But for more simple, day-to-day clothing, Alexandra had garments

made for her daughters by the Russian dressmaker Kitaev, and, true

to her frugal nature, got him to alter hand-me-downs from the older

girls to fit Maria, or enlarge clothes that she was growing out of.

In one year alone Kitaev supplied:

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a grey suit with a silk lining of a foreign fabric – 115 roubles, a

blue sheet-wadded silk-lined suit – 125 roubles, a blue cheviot

suit with a downy silk-lined collar and cuffs of dark mink – 245

roubles, a suit in the English style with a silk lining and a pleated skirt –135 roubles. He also altered a suit – made a new fur, a

new lining and made the slip longer – 40 roubles. He also altered

Olga Nikolaevna’s old suit for her – 35 roubles; made a long

overcoat of hand-made linen – 35 roubles; made two skirts longer

and bought some more fabric for that; made 3 skirts longer and

broader and made new linings for them – 40 roubles; made 4

jackets broader and their sleeves longer – 40 roubles; made new

belts for two skirts and made them broader – 15 roubles; altered

the eldest sister’s riding suit – the jacket, the skirt and the riding breeches – 50 roubles; mended a jacket – 7 roubles.20

*

In the last week of Lent 1912, the family headed south to Livadia

for their first Easter at the White Palace. They arrived in a still

cold and snowy Crimea, at a time of religious contemplation and

sobriety, with long hours spent standing in church and endless

prayers before candle-lit icons. The children’s time was occupied in

the days before Easter in painting and decorating dozens of hard-

boiled eggs that were traditionally exchanged to celebrate Christ’s

resurrection. On Great Saturday – a day when the bells rang out

across Russia and the faithful filled the churches to bursting – the

girls wore mourning, as was the tradition, during the final great

service leading up to midnight, the sadness finally broken by the

joyful announcement
Khristos voskres! –
‘Christ is Risen!’ Although it was now the early hours of the morning, the entire household

broke the long Lenten fast together, enjoying a great feast in the

White Hall. Its centrepiece was the two sweet cakes so looked

forward to after the long period of abstention: the
kulich
, a rich iced Easter cake made with almonds, candied orange peel and raisins;

and
pashka
,
a gloriously sweet blending of everything that the pious had not eaten for weeks: sugar, butter, eggs and cheese.

In private, as he had done every Easter since they were married

(except during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5), Nicholas

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presented his wife with an exquisite Fabergé jewelled Easter egg to

add to her collection, a tradition begun by his father in 1885, when

Maria Feodorovna had received her own first Fabergé egg. This

particular Easter, Fabergé’s son Eugene delivered Alexandra’s gift in person at the Livadia Palace.21 It would become known as the

Tsarevich Egg, for inside the outer shell of dark blue lapis lazuli

mounted with a gold cagework of flowers, cupids and imperial eagles

was a miniature portrait of Alexey encrusted with diamonds. On

Easter Monday the family gathered in the Italian Courtyard for the

ceremony of greeting the troops – in Livadia this being the crew

of the
Shtandart
and officers of the Tsar’s Escort. As Nicholas exchanged the traditional three kisses and greetings Tatiana and

Olga helped hand out the painted porcelain Easter eggs that the

imperial couple distributed every Easter.22

Whenever she was in the Crimea Alexandra always tried to visit

the TB sanatoria in the region of which she was patron, two of

which – the military and naval hospitals on the imperial estate at

Massandra – she had had built and paid for out of her own fortune.

There was also the Alexander III Sanatorium in Yalta catering to

460 patients, which she had opened in 1901. The care of the sick

had always been one of the few socially acceptable pursuits that

royal princesses could engage in, and Alexandra was determined that

her daughters should continue this family tradition. Elizaveta

Naryshkina was somewhat concerned about the children being

brought into contact with highly infectious TB patients: ‘Is it safe, Madame,’ she had asked the empress, ‘for the young Grand

Duchesses to have people in the last stage of consumption kiss their

hands?’ Alexandra’s response was unequivocal: ‘I don’t think it will

hurt the children, but I am sure it would hurt the sick if they thought that my daughters were afraid of infection.’ The children might love

Livadia but she wanted to ensure that they also learnt to ‘realize

the sadness underneath all this beauty’.23

In hospital visiting as in everything, the girls performed their

duty without complaint and with a smile. All five children took part

in White Flower Day, a major charitable event for the Anti-

Tuberculosis League and the Yalta sanatoria, celebrated on St

George’s Day, 23 April. The idea had originated with Margareta,

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Crown Princess of Sweden, and Alexandra had adopted it in Russia.

The day got its name from the white daisies, or marguerites, that

were carried wreathed round long wooden staffs. Holding their staffs

of flowers and dressed in white, the Romanov children walked round

the streets of Yalta taking donations in return for the gift of a flower, each of them proudly raising between 100 and 140 roubles that

year.24

One of the big social events of the Crimean season was another

charitable venture of the empress’s: the Grand Charity Bazaar in

aid of the sanatoria. Every year Alexandra enlisted the girls in busily knitting, embroidering and sewing, as well as painting water-colours

and making other hand-made items for sale, straining her own eyes

in the process. The bazaar had been held for the first time the

previous year, on the pier at Yalta, where the stall under its white

awning that she staffed with the girls had been besieged by the

fashionable ladies of Yalta eager to buy something made by their

own fair hands. There was barely room to move, with ‘people

pressing forward almost frenziedly to touch the empress’s hand or

her sleeve’.25 This in itself created great anxiety for the officers of the Okhrana and
Shtandart
, on the lookout always for any attack on the family. Their guard had been raised that year when a mild-looking old man in an old-fashioned frockcoat had approached the