The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (39 page)

deprivation and continuing political oppression.4

There was a mass of high-society parties, amateur theatricals and

masked balls to choose from that year, for those with an ‘in’ to the

clique-ridden social scene, all described in detail and lavishly photographed on the pages of the high-society magazine
Stolitsa i usadba

[Capital and Country Estate], its title reflecting the charmed lives

of those privileged to have homes in both locations. After Grand

Duchess Vladimir’s four-day Grand Christmas Bazaar had opened

the season at the Assembly of Nobles, the hot tickets were for

Princess Obolenskaya’s Greek Mythology Ball at her big white palace

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on the Moika; Countess Kleinmikhel’s fancy-dress ball with costumes

designed by Bakst; and two more opulent balls – one in black-and-

white and the other featuring wigs and multicoloured turbans – held

by the fabulously wealthy Princess Betsy Shuvalov at her palace on

the Fontanka. In addition there were endless, rather more sedate

bals blancs
for debutantes in white watched over by their chaperones,
bals roses
for young married women and dances at the various embas-sies, the two at the British Embassy on the English Embankment

being the most sought after. At the Imperial Ballet at the Mariinsky

Theatre society ladies flocked to see its star performers Mathilde

Kschessinska and Anna Pavlova, while gentlemen could indulge in

extravagant private dinners and gaming at Grand Duke Dmitri’s

favourite haunt, the Imperial Yacht Club.5

The tsaritsa of course would not dream of allowing her daughters

to attend any of these functions; it was their grandmother who gave

a special ball – at the Anichkov Palace on 13 February 1914 – to

mark Olga’s and Tatiana’s official debut in society and which was

the highlight of the social season. Guests were greeted by ‘masters

of ceremony in gold-embroidered court dress, black silk breeches

and stockings, and buckled, patent leather shoes’, holding ‘thin ivory canes which made them look like rococo shepherds’.6 From here

they were herded past ‘two tall black Ethiopian footmen in Oriental

costume and high turbans’ into the ballroom, where they awaited

the entrance of the emperor and empress, followed by Tatiana and

Olga, ‘tall, slim lovely creatures’ who looked at those assembled

‘with a sort of amused curiosity’.7 After the tsar had opened the ball with a ceremonial polonaise, there was a moment of confused embarrassment. ‘Not a single young man made a move to ask the two

grand duchesses to dance’, noticed debutante Helene Iswolsky. ‘Were

they all too shy to make the plunge? Or was it the sudden realiza-

tion that the two girls were strangers?’8 After an embarrassing pause a few officers from the Tsar’s Escort who had danced with them

before were ‘jockeyed into position’, but it was clear that these young men ‘did not belong to the smart set’; they were ‘completely

unknown, rather uncouth, common looking’.9

Alexandra managed to tolerate the ball for an hour and a half,

leaving Nicholas with the girls until a wearying 4.30 in the morning,
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his daughters having ‘refused to be torn away any earlier’.10 But he

had spent the whole evening looking timid and feeling uncomfort-

able: ‘
Je ne connais personne ici
’, he confided to one dancing partner.11

Such was the isolation in which he and his family had been living

for the last eight years that they were completely out of touch with

who was who in fashionable society. This fact did not go unnoticed

by Nicholas’s aunt, the forthright Duchess of Coburg, who was in

St Petersburg for the wedding of Grand Duchess Xenia’s daughter

Irina to Prince Felix Yusupov. She did not mince her words when

describing the evening in a letter to her daughter Marie, the Crown

Princess of Romania. The duchess had very decided views on the

high-born company young women such as her great-nieces should

keep. But instead,

they were surrounded by a Chinese wall of Cossack and other

third class officers who would not let any of the real good society

ones come near them. As the girls know nobody in society, they

simply hopped about like provincial demoiselles without anybody

being presented to them and they were never made to talk with

any of the ladies young or old.12

The duchess was appalled: ‘Now fancy Grand Duchesses who

perhaps will soon marry and perhaps leave the country not being

properly introduced into the Petersburg society!’

If I only think of my young days when before going out I knew

all the ladies and the young gentlemen who were presented

during a ball. As Alix has allowed her daughters to be engaged

by their dancers instead of sending for them like we did (and

liked it much better as we got all those we really wanted and

not the bores, so that the young ladies even envied us) the whole

of the old and good etiquette has been abandoned. The result

is that only certain officers danced with them.13

This mattered not a jot to Olga and Tatiana, who continued to

make the most of what precious few social engagements came their

way that winter before the austerity of Lent was upon them. A few

days later Alexandra allowed Anastasia and Maria to join them for

a small
thé-dansant
at Grand Duchess Vladimir’s palace, given ‘almost in defiance of the cloistered tsarina’ and in which the grand duchess
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‘made a great display of luxury and decoration’, as though empha-

sizing to the sisters the lifestyle they were being deprived of by their anti-social mother. Here Olga and Tatiana ‘danced every dance with

wholehearted and intense enjoyment’ and Meriel Buchanan took

pleasure in watching them ‘whispering in a corner, fair head and

dark head close together, blue eyes and amber eyes alight with

merriment’.14 But again, Nicholas, who accompanied them, looked

lost, not knowing any of the ladies and gentlemen present.15

The Duchess of Coburg was totally exasperated with Alexandra’s

endless retreats and non-appearances that season and her daughters’

total lack of social experience, but she had to admit that she could

not help admiring ‘their great devotion to her’. ‘How trying it must

be for young gay creatures to have an eternally ailing mother’, she

told Marie.16 Nevertheless, by 1914 the eldest two Romanov daugh-

ters were finally coming into their own. St Petersburg was full of

rumours

which coupled their names with those of one or two Foreign

Princes, with that of a young Grand Duke very popular in Society

[i.e. Dmitri Pavlovich]; the story of a too forward suitor who got

his cheek severely slapped by the Grand Duchess Olga, the

whisper of a romance with one of the officers attached to the

Staff which was promptly squashed by those in authority.17

Was the latter, one wonders, an allusion to Voronov? Certainly,

all the royal princes of Europe were once more being thrown into

a mix that was being vigorously stirred by the ‘matchmaking busy-

bodies’ of the Continental press.18 A ‘sentimental crisis’ was now

approaching in the careers of the tsar’s two eldest daughters

according to
Current Opinion
, which depicted Olga as grave and somewhat melancholy, a reminder of ‘her august origin’. Yet even

so, who could miss the exquisiteness of her throat, her slender neck

and ‘soft white arms dimpling at the elbow and the long tapering

fingers’? But it was Tatiana who intrigued. With her fascinating eyes that ‘alternated from deep grey to violet’ she had ‘all the seductive-ness of a sprite’.19 Both sisters were nevertheless noted for their

piety, their mother having admitted to a departing French ambas-

sador: ‘My ambition for my girls is that they may become Christian

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ladies.’20 Their modesty was also reflected in the continuing simplicity of their dress, a fact mourned by the French
modistes
: ‘The Czarina will not allow her girls to don gold gauze or flaunt in the colours

of the Avenue d’Alma.’21 It was clear that the clothes of the young

grand duchesses ‘must still be made under the supervizion [
sic
] of their mother, as they were ten years ago’. Unsophisticated they

might be but one thing impressed: the girls’ military ranks were by

no means a ‘formality, a mere honour’, for, gasped
Current Opinion
,

‘the royal ladies can actually put their men through the drill’, a fact which seemed to confirm that not only was Nicholas ensuring his

daughters were privy to the mysteries of statecraft but that one or

either might if necessary ‘take their father’s place on the throne with the same ease’.22

In all respects there were, by 1914, no two more wealthy, desir-

able and marriageable royal princesses than Olga and Tatiana

Romanova. According to the Berlin
Tageblatt
, it was Tatiana who was now being paired off with the Prince of Wales, in anticipation

of a projected visit he was to make to St Petersburg in the spring.

The rumour soon received short shrift from George V’s private

secretary, Lord Stamfordham: ‘There is not a vestige of truth in the

statement . . . It is pure invention.’23 Tatiana was also the object of an informal approach by Nikola Pašic´, the Serbian prime minister,

on behalf of the king, for his son Prince Alexander. The names of

Boris of Bulgaria, Peter of Montenegro and Adalbert of Germany

were all also once more raised and discussed. Meanwhile rumours

persisted that ‘Grand Duchess Olga is willing to become the consort

of her second cousin, Grand Duke Demetrius Pavlovich, and that

it is on his account that she has rejected the suggestion of other

matrimonial alliances’.24 The gossips would not let go of what they

still perceived as the ideal match; but in fact Dmitri, whose disrep-

utable reputation was growing, was suffering from tuberculosis of

the throat and spending much of his time abroad for his health.

Olga’s diary for December 1913 had made quite clear the rather

dim view that she took of him and his louche
badinage
during a visit to the family: ‘Dmitri was talking nonsense.’25

Press speculation aside, by early 1914 Nicholas and Alexandra

were clearly giving serious consideration to a new royal candidate

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for their eldest daughter: twenty-year-old Prince Carol of Romania,

grandson of the Duchess of Coburg. The initiative for the match

seems to have been theirs, urged on by Foreign Minister Sergey

Sazonov, who wished to ensure that the Romanian royal family, who

were Hohenzollerns, were in the right political camp – Russia’s and

not Germany’s – before the now inevitable war broke out. Such a

dynastic union would certainly bring long-term political and

economic benefits and Nicholas and Alexandra could see the logic

in it.26 Their sole reservation was that ‘that the grand duchess’s

marriage . . . should take place only as the result of a much closer

acquaintance between the young people and on the absolute condi-

tion of their daughter’s voluntary agreement to it’.27 It was the

Washington Post
that on 1 February broke the story in the West of a possible engagement. ‘Prince Charles [Carol] is a handsome, clever

young man’, it reported and ‘his bride-to-be has great musical talent and is a remarkably accomplished linguist. She is a general favourite in court circles.’28 But in fact the couple had yet even to meet; Carol and his parents were due to visit St Petersburg in March, although

everyone was already anticipating that an engagement would take

place.

In the run-up to the Romanian visit and still in St Petersburg,

the busybodying Duchess of Coburg was doing her best to lay the

ground for a favourable outcome, writing to Marie quashing the

persisting rumours about Olga and her cousin: ‘the imperial girls

don’t care at all for Dmitri’, she insisted.29 But how she pitied them: shut up at Zarskoe, never even allowed to come to the theatre,

not one single amusement the whole winter. Of course Alix would

not allow them to come to Aunt Miechen’s [Grand Duchess

Vladimir’s] ball, they are only granted a Sunday afternoon at

Olga’s where they play
des petits jeux
[little games] with officers: now why this is considered
convenable
[appropriate] is a real puzzle to us all as Olga is a tomboy without any manners and her

surroundings always second rate. She never sees the real society

because it bores her to put on better manners.30

Indeed the duchess talked of how offended Maria Feodorovna

was that her granddaughters spent so little time with her when in

St Petersburg, preferring to pass their Sundays ‘under the sole

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chaperonage of that madcap [aunt] Olga . . . for dinner and romps