The Romanov Sisters (Four Sisters) (7 page)

a country where the succession laws, changed in 1797 by Tsar Paul

I, were based on male primogeniture.9 The Russian throne could

pass to a woman only if all legal male lines of descent were extinct.

But in Russia at the time, beyond Nicholas’s two younger brothers

Georgiy and Mikhail – who would be next in line – there were

several more grand dukes with sons aplenty.

While eagerly awaiting the birth of her child, Alexandra set about

creating something no Russian empress before her had ever

attempted: an intimate family home for herself, Nicky and the chil-

dren to come. They both loved the Alexander Palace out at Tsarksoe

Selo, preferring its location well away from inquisitive St Petersburg society. ‘The quiet here is so delightful,’ she told Ernie, ‘one feels quite another creature, than when in town.’10 She and Nicholas

chose not to take over Alexander III’s family apartments in the east

wing, but instead the somewhat neglected and sparsely furnished

west wing closer to the palace gates. The interior was to be neither

imperial in style nor in any way grandiose but renovated to

Alexandra’s own simple provincial tastes, the perfect environment

in which she anticipated living the life of a devoted
hausfrau
and mother. Simple modern furniture like that familiar from her

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childhood in Darmstadt was ordered from Maples, the London-based

furniture manufacturer and retailer, which sent out orders from its

Tottenham Court Road store. The ambience of this intentionally

family-oriented home, in which Nicholas and Alexandra would spend

the majority of their time – aside from the obligatory winter season

in St Petersburg from Christmas to Lent – was to be cosily Victorian, as Grandmama would have liked it. St Petersburg society was of

course duly horrified at the new tsaritsa’s bourgeoise tastes, for she had commissioned the Russian interior designer, Roman Meltzer,

to refurbish the rooms in the
Jugendstil
or art nouveau style then popular in Germany, rather than in a style to match the palace’s

Russian location and its classical exterior.

The heat was intolerable that summer of 1895 and as her preg-

nancy progressed and with it her discomfort, Alexandra was glad to

escape to the sea breezes of the Lower Dacha at Peterhof, located

in the Alexandria Park, one of six English-style landscaped parks on

the Peterhof estate. The Lower Dacha inhabited a world entirely

its own, located well out of sight of the golden cupolas of Peter the Great’s grand palace and its cascading fountains and ornamental

gardens, a charming, unobtrusive building of red and cream brick-

work laid in alternating, horizontal stripes. Between 1883 and 1885

Alexander III had had it enlarged from a two-storey turreted struc-

ture into a four-storey Italianate pavilion with balconies and glazed verandas. But it was still rather high and narrow with smallish rooms and low ceilings, giving it more the feel of a seaside villa than an

imperial residence. The location, however, was idyllic – tucked away

at the far north-east corner of the park behind a grove of shady

pine and deciduous trees and in sight of the boulder-strewn shore-

line of the Gulf of Finland. The park itself, where the wild flowers

grew in profusion and which was full of rabbits and hares, was

surrounded by 7-foot-high (2-m-high) railings, with a soldier with

fixed bayonet posted every 100 yards (every 90 m) and Cossacks of

the Tsar’s Escort – Nicholas’s personal bodyguard who went with

him everywhere – patrolling on horseback inside the grounds.11 The

Lower Dacha itself was encircled by a lawn and a flower garden of

lilies, hollyhocks, poppies and sweet peas. It reminded Alexandra of

the lovely gardens at Wolfsgarten, Ernie’s hunting lodge in the heart
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of the Hessian forest, and she felt safe and at home here. Anticipating the need for more rooms, Nicholas ordered an additional wing to

be constructed. The interior would remain much as the couple’s

new apartments at Tsarskoe Selo, only more modest in scale, with

plain and mainly white furniture and the familiar chintz draperies,

and everywhere, as always, Alexandra’s trademark: ‘tables, brackets,

and furniture . . . laden with jars, vases, and bowls filled with fresh-cut, sweet-smelling flowers’.12

She spent the months of June to September in absolute seclusion

at Peterhof. Her pregnancy was exhausting and the baby was very

active. As she told Ernie in July, ‘My tiny one hops like mad some-

times, and makes me feel quite giddy, and gives me stiches [
sic
]

(downstairs) when I walk.’13
*
She spent much of her time resting on a couch in sight of the sea, or taking gentle daily walks and drives

with Nicky, in between drawing, painting and making quilts and

baby clothes. ‘What a joy it must be to have a sweet little wee child of one’s own’, she wrote in July to Ernie, who now had a baby

daughter Elisabeth. ‘I am longing for the moment when God will

give us ours – it will be such a happiness for my darling Nicky too

. . . he has so many sorrows and worries that the appearance of a

tiny Baby of his very own will cheer him up. . . . So young, and in

such a responsible position and so many things to fight against.’14

At the end of August the apartments at Tsarskoe Selo were ready

for use. Despite its modest size, the palace and its 14 miles (22.5

km) of parkland would need a 1,000-strong staff of servants and

court officials to run it and a much larger military garrison to guard it.15 Alexandra loved her new rooms and was busy organizing her

layette, although suffering a lot of discomfort. ‘I do hope I shall not have to wait much longer – the weight and movements get so strong’,

she told Ernie.16 At the end of September she experienced a bout

of acute pain in her abdomen. Madame Günst was sent for and

immediately called in Dr Dmitri Ott – director of the St Petersburg

Institute of Midwifery and the most influential gynaecologist in

* Alexandra’s spelling was extremely idiosyncratic and her erratic grammar simply the result of writing in haste. All instances of misspelling and bad grammar in quotations from her letters and diaries are therefore
sic
.

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Russia at the time – with whom Günst had recently attended the

birth of Nicholas’s sister Xenia’s first child.17 Meanwhile Alexandra was thinking about a nurse for the baby. Like Xenia, she wanted

her to be English: ‘If I can only find a good one – they mostly dread going so far away, and have extraordinary ideas about the wild

Russians and I don’t know what other nonsense – the nursery maid

will of course be a Russian.’18

Nicholas and Alexandra were both convinced their baby would

arrive around the middle of October but it still had not been born

when Ella arrived from Moscow at the end of the month. She found

Alix looking ‘remarkably well thank God so much plumper in the

face such a healthy complexion better than I had seen for years’,

she reported to Queen Victoria. She was concerned that the baby

was ‘probably immense’, but Alix was transformed – ‘full of fun

quite like as a child & that dreadfully sad look which Papa’s death had printed on her disappears in her constant smiles’.19

Nicholas was keeping careful watch over his wife: ‘the “babe”

has sunk lower and makes her very uncomfortable, the poor dear!’

he told his mother.20 So preoccupied was he with its imminent

arrival, that he hoped his ministers would not ‘swamp’ him with

work when the time came. Anticipating a son he and Alexandra had

already decided on the name Paul. Maria Feodorovna, however, was

not at all keen on it, because of its associations with Paul I, who

had been murdered, but she was anxious to be there when labour

began. ‘It is understood, isn’t it, that you will let me know as soon as the first symptoms appear? I shall fly to you, my dear children,

and shall not be a nuisance, except perhaps by acting as
policeman
, to keep everybody else well away.’21

The baby’s size and position were causing Alexandra such terrible

pain in her back and legs that she was now forced to lie in bed or

on the sofa for much of the time. ‘Baby won’t come – it is at the

door but has not yet wished to appear & I do
so terribly
long for it’, she told Ernie.22 Dr Ott was now staying overnight and Madame

Günst had been there for the past two weeks. With no news

emanating from official sources about the progress of the Empress

of Russia’s pregnancy, rumour abroad was rife, just as it had been

in the run-up to her marriage. The gossip prompted a firm rebuttal

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in the British press, based on ‘well-informed quarters in Darmstadt

and Berlin’:

With reference to certain disquieting rumours which have been

circulated respecting the health of the Empress of Russia, and

the statement that some other physicians will be called in, a St

Petersburg correspondent says that Her Imperial Majesty,

according to the declaration of her medical adviser, is going on

as well as possible, and that she neither needs nor desires any

extraneous assistance.23

At around 1 o’clock in the morning of 3 November, Alexandra

finally went into labour. Ella was joined by Maria Feodorovna, and

together, as Ella reported to Queen Victoria, they ‘gently rubbed

her back & legs which relieved her’.24 Alexandra was grateful for their presence and that of her husband too, for her labour lasted

twenty hours, during which Nicholas was frequently in tears and

his mother often on her knees in prayer.25 Finally, at 9 p.m. ‘we

heard a child’s squeal, and all heaved a sigh of relief’, as Nicholas recalled.26

It was not, however, the longed-for boy, but a girl, and Ella’s

apprehensions had been correct: ‘The Baby was colossal but she was

so brave & patient & Minny [Maria Feodorovna] a great comfort encouraging her.’27 The baby girl weighed 10 pounds (4.5 kg); it

had required the combined skill of Ott and Günst to deliver her,

an episiotomy and forceps having been necessary, with the help of

chloroform.28 It was, Nicholas wrote in his diary, ‘A day I will

remember for ever’, but he had ‘suffered a very great deal’ at the

sight of his wife in the agonies of labour. His baby daughter, whom

he and Alexandra named Olga, seemed so robust that he remarked

that she didn’t look like a newborn at all.29

Queen Victoria was enormously relieved to hear the news: ‘At

Carlisle got a telegram from Nicky saying: “Darling Alix has just

given birth to a lovely enormous little daughter, Olga. My joy is

beyond words. Mother & child doing well.” Am so thankful.’30 She

was even more relieved to hear from Ella that ‘The joy of having

their baby has never one moment let them regret little Olga being

a girl’.31 Indeed Nicholas was quick to emphasize his and Alexandra’s
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joy, in a story later widely circulated in the press. Upon being

congratulated by the court chamberlain he is said to have remarked,

‘I am glad that our child is a girl. Had it been a boy he would have

belonged to the people, being a girl she belongs to us.’32 They were, quite simply, besotted. ‘They are so proud of themselves & each

other & the baby that they think nothing could be more perfect’,

wrote the wife of a British diplomat.33 ‘For us there is no question

of sex,’ Alexandra asserted, ‘our child is simply a gift from God.’34

She and Nicholas were quick to reward the skills of Dr Ott and

Madame Günst in the safe delivery of their daughter: Ott was

appointed
leib-akusher
*
to the imperial court and presented with a jewelled snuffbox of gold and diamonds and an honorarium of 10,000

roubles (as he would be for delivering all the Romanov children);

Evgeniya Günst received around 3,000 roubles each time.35

There was, inevitably, a sense of disappointment in the wider

Romanov family, expressed by Grand Duchess Xenia, who thought

Olga’s birth ‘a great joy, although it’s a pity it’s not a son!’.36 Such disquiet was not of course expressed in any of the heavily censored

Russian press. The whole of St Petersburg had been eagerly anti-

cipating the event, to be announced by the boom of cannons across

the Neva. When the moment came ‘people opened their windows,

others rushed out into the street to hear and count the volleys’. But alas the number of rounds fired was only 101; for a first son and

heir it would have been 301.37 The news reached many of the thea-

tres in St Petersburg just as people were leaving at the end of the

evening performance. It ‘duly called forth patriotic demonstrations

from the audiences, in response to whose wish the Russian national

anthem had to be played several times’.38 In Paris’s Little Russia, a
Te Deum
was sung at the St Alexander Nevsky Orthodox Church